Warming Heretic

The Civil Heretic - Freeman Dyson - Profile - NYTimes.com

Long article on Freeman Dyson -- sort of sad that the fact that he doubts Global Warming is somehow "controversial". He also is very anti nuclear weapons and has been a big war protester -- he is just a very intelligent man that keeps his own counsel. The kind of man that our founding fathers created America for, but now one that our elites find "inconvenient".

Heil BO, Der Corporate Fuhrer

GM and Chrysler failing to turnaround. Wagoner out. - Mar. 30, 2009

Forget shareholders. Forget the Board of Directors. Forget the Constitution. Forget it all, this isn't America any more, it is the Obamination!!! Der Fuhrer has spoken!

This **is** "National Socialism". "Nazi" is derived from "National Socialism" -- the hallmark of SOCIALISM is redistribution of income and the "safety net". The hallmark of communism is the government just 100% takes over everything.

Nazis like BO are very tricky -- they essentially raise lying to a new art form, and the removal of Wagoner is a great example. BO ousts the CEO, names a replacement, and then says that the government is going to back car warranties! ... But THEN, he clearly states that "he doesn't want to be in the car business"!!! What does that mean? Well, it is a direct bold faced lie! Nazis redefine EVERYTHING in political terms -- Der Fuhrer is god, leader, father, brother, boss -- everything. We aren't "in danger of turning Nazi", we are THERE!!!

Where in the constitution under the "separation of powers" does it say that the President can remove a corporate CEO??? Where are all the people that talked about how "chilling" it was when Bush tapped calls to known terrorist cell numbers?

Nowhere. The sheep are bleating quietly.

Heil BO!!!

Seeing the Space Station

My recent quest to watch the ISS pass over was rewarded this evening on the 8:53 orbital pass. I found the time and likely magnitued on HeavensAbove walked out the front door at 8:50, and right on schedule, a nice yellowish bright object began rising in the W-NW. I was actually surprised that it wasn't faster, but then when I watch it on the satellite tracker on the web, it doesn't exactly race along the screen either -- even at 16,500 an hour, it takes over an hour for it to get all the way around, and it was visible for close to 3 min.

The listed magnitude was -2.5, which is brighter than the brightest star, and close to Venus (magnitude 4.0) ... I'd guess it was about that as it got to around 45 degrees, but I was surprised that it was already getting dimmer by the time it went over and when it got to like 70 degrees in the E-SE sky, it rapidly declined in brightness and winked out -- my assumption is that it went into the earths shadow at that point.

It is easy to see, so probably worth going out on a reasonable evening and seeing it.

Pin Drop Patriotism

This showed up in my mail with the "pass it on if you are proud to be an American". Having Bush named in it prominently made me reflect on  how we heard from celebrities that they wanted to leave the country when Bush was elected, how little actual policy difference there was between Bush and Clinton, and how few folks from the right you hear talking about leaving the country now. 

I suspect that the pride in America for most on the right has not changed much, since HISTORY has meaning in our constrained vision. For those on the left, "today is what counts" -- the mere election of Bush was outside of their vision and something that caused them to question that vision. For those of us that are of the constrained vision, a country picking BO is all too understandable. We see human nature as a constant, so the selection of leadership that operates against the very values of America is no surprise at all. 

I suspect that Snopes or somebody has found things to say this is "apocryphal" (like "myth") ... well, so be it. This is the sort of America that I believe in. 

We just elected a complete hoax to be president -- I'm guessing none of the "fact checking" sites will bother to point that out! 

On to the "Pin Drops"

When in England, at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of empire building by George Bush.

He answered by saying, 'Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.'

You could have heard a pin drop.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American. During a break, one of the French engineers came back into the room saying 'Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intended to do, bomb them?'  

A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: 'Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?'

You could have heard a pin drop.
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the U.S. , English,Canadian, Australian and French Navies. At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of Officers that included personnel from most of those countries. Everyone was  chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks but a French admiral suddenly complained that, whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English. He then asked, 'Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?'

Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied, 'Maybe it's because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it so you wouldn't have to speak German.'

You could have heard a pin drop.
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

AND

Robert Whiting, an elderly gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane. At French Customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry on. "You have been to France before, monsieur?" the customs officer asked sarcastically

Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously. "Then you should know enough to have your passport ready." The American said, ''The last time I was here, I didn't have to show it."  

"Impossible. Americans always have to show your passports on arrival in France !" The American senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he quietly explained, ''Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn't find a single Frenchmen to show a passport to."

You could have heard a pin drop.

If you are proud to be an American, pass this on!

Not Being Europe

The Europe Syndrome and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism — The American, A Magazine of Ideas

This is a FANTASTIC article by Charles Murry. I rate it a "must read", it is slightly long, but he is a solid writer and it is EXTREMELY well thought out. Best of all, it ends on a HOPEFUL NOTE!! Not very common among those that think with their brains in these times. Don't be distracted by my prattling ... skip it and just go read it yourself!

One of the main things I dislike about BO and many Democrats is that they fail to understand the very core of what makes America unique and special in the world! I've only recently discovered that is because they believe in the "unconstrained vision", and one of the many things they are unconstrained from is HISTORY! They are 100% positive that their current ideas are better than any before in the history of mankind. They tend to apologize for America, and their general attitude in looking at Europe, or even Canada is "hey, the grass looks greener over there!".

Putting aside the fact that without the exceptionalism of America, we would all be speaking German today, there is (or at least WAS, pre-BO) more to America than money!

First, the problem with the European model, namely: It drains too much of the life from life. And that statement applies as much to the lives of janitors—even more to the lives of janitors—as it does to the lives of CEOs.

I start from this premise: A human life can have transcendent meaning, with transcendence defined either by one of the world’s great religions or one of the world’s great secular philosophies. If transcendence is too big a word, let me put it another way: I suspect that almost all of you agree that the phrase “a life well-lived” has meaning. That’s the phrase I’ll use from now on.

"Drains too much of life from life" -- from the few trips that I've taken to Europe, that is a really good description. Life is "secure", but also "closely controlled and boring" -- there is no "future potential". If your historic family had some kind of a home, you may be able to keep living there, if not, you are in a price controlled very small apartment and that is where you will stay. The old joke of "you are born, life is hard, then you die" is replaced by, "you are born, life is predicable and easy, then you die". It SEEMS like that ought to be "better", but it turns out that it isn't.

To become a source of deep satisfaction, a human activity has to meet some stringent requirements. It has to have been important (we don’t get deep satisfaction from trivial things). You have to have put a lot of effort into it (hence the cliché “nothing worth having comes easily”). And you have to have been responsible for the consequences.

"Nothing worth having comes easily". We all know that to be true, yet the mass culture often encourages us to forget it. So how do we get worth? Largely "relationships in organizations" (including very small ones like a family).

If we ask what are the institutions through which human beings achieve deep satisfactions in life, the answer is that there are just four: family, community, vocation, and faith. Two clarifications: “Community” can embrace people who are scattered geographically. “Vocation” can include avocations or causes.

He talks about the whole social democrat program boiling down to "having the government take some of the trouble out of things" -- about where that is good (eg. having an FAA and having a police force), and then discusses what the problem with it is:

The problem is this: Every time the government takes some of the trouble out of performing the functions of family, community, vocation, and faith, it also strips those institutions of some of their vitality—it drains some of the life from them. It’s inevitable.

When the government takes the trouble out of being a spouse and parent, it doesn’t affect the sources of deep satisfaction for the CEO. Rather, it makes life difficult for the janitor. A man who is holding down a menial job and thereby supporting a wife and children is doing something authentically important with his life. He should take deep satisfaction from that, and be praised by his community for doing so. Think of all the phrases we used to have for it: “He is a man who pulls his own weight.” “He’s a good provider.” If that same man lives under a system that says that the children of the woman he sleeps with will be taken care of whether or not he contributes, then that status goes away.

There is the precision of "the life out of life", and a better job of capturing the reasoning that I've tried to impart about why it is that BO actually hurts those at the "bottom" of life more than those at the top. Even if he takes ALL the money from those at the top! The people at the "top" believe what they are doing is important! Many of the people at the "bottom" very much need families and the local church to make their lives worth living!

He then goes into some of things that are being found and that he imagines will be heeded, he talks about Consilience, which I blogged on previously. I would love to share his optimism on the reasonableness of the "anointed" on the left, but I fear that the their vision of "heaven on earth" is far too strong to believe that "human nature can not be changed" -- they have gone down this path before, most famously in Nazi Germany, and modern methods may well just make them more virulent -- eugenics, drugs, brain washing, taking children from families -- when the ends justify the means and there is no belief in a higher power doing any judging, there is literally no limit to the methods they might seek to employ. However, I applaud Murray on his optimism -- it is better psychological policy to believe him than me!

The second tendency of the new findings of biology will be to show that the New Man premise is nonsense. Human nature tightly constrains what is politically or culturally possible. More than that, the new findings will broadly confirm that human beings are pretty much the way that wise human observers have thought for thousands of years, and that is going to be wonderful news for those of us who are already basing our policy analyses on that assumption.

But the real effect is going to be much more profound than making my job easier. The 20th century was a very strange century, riddled from beginning to end with toxic political movements and nutty ideas. For some years a metaphor has been stuck in my mind: the 20th century was the adolescence of Homo sapiens. Nineteenth-century science, from Darwin to Freud, offered a series of body blows to ways of thinking about human beings and human lives that had prevailed since the dawn of civilization. Humans, just like adolescents, were deprived of some of the comforting simplicities of childhood and exposed to more complex knowledge about the world. And 20th-century intellectuals reacted precisely the way that adolescents react when they think they have discovered Mom and Dad are hopelessly out of date. They think that the grown-ups are wrong about everything. In the case of 20th-century intellectuals, it was as if they thought that if Darwin was right about evolution, then Aquinas is no longer worth reading; that if Freud was right about the unconscious mind, then Nicomachean Ethics had nothing to teach us.

Here it is, that which was once the unique province of Americans -- an optimism that "they will make the future better", not only in some "responsible aggregate", but for THEM -- for their own families! What is more, their children will do the same and the country will just continue to get better! And it DID! or at least it did until we decided to start throwing it away and heading down the wrong road in '06.

American exceptionalism is not just something that Americans claim for themselves. Historically, Americans have been different as a people, even peculiar, and everyone around the world has recognized it. I’m thinking of qualities such as American optimism even when there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for it. That’s quite uncommon among the peoples of the world. There is the striking lack of class envy in America—by and large, Americans celebrate others’ success instead of resenting it. That’s just about unique, certainly compared to European countries, and something that drives European intellectuals crazy. And then there is perhaps the most important symptom of all, the signature of American exceptionalism—the assumption by most Americans that they are in control of their own destinies. It is hard to think of a more inspiriting quality for a population to possess, and the American population still possesses it to an astonishing degree. No other country comes close.

Note that class warfare is at the CENTER of the BO agenda! He seeks to "blame the successful", and new dangerous levels of envy and outraged are spread to the masses every day now. I'll let Murray close here -- I agree that it is important that this happen, I shudder to think "how"?

What it comes down to is that America’s elites must once again fall in love again with what makes America different. I am not being theoretical. The possibility that irreversible damage will be done to the American project over the next few years is real. The drift toward the European model can be slowed by piecemeal victories on specific items of legislation, but only slowed. It is going to be stopped only when we are all talking again about why America is exceptional, and why it is so important that America remain exceptional. That requires once again seeing the American project for what it is: a different way for people to live together, unique among the nations of the earth, and immeasurably precious.

Saint Pelosi

On a Saturday afternoon, in Washington D.C., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's aide visited the Cardinal of the Catholic Cathedral.

He told the Cardinal that Nancy Pelosi would be attending the next day's sermon, and he asked if the Cardinal would kindly point out Pelosi to the congregation and say a few words that would include calling Pelosi a saint.

The Cardinal replied, "No. I don't really like the woman, and there are issues of conflict with the Catholic Church over certain of Pelosi's views." Pelosi's aide then said, "Look. I'll write a check here and now for a donation of $100,000 to your church if you'll just tell the
congregation you see Pelosi as a saint."

The Cardinal thought about it and said, "Well, the church can use the money, so I'll work your request into tomorrow's sermon." As Pelosi's aide promised, House Speaker Pelosi appeared for the Sunday sermon and seated herself prominently at the edge of the main aisle.

And, during the sermon, as promised, the Cardinal pointed out that House Speaker Pelosi was present.

Then the Cardinal went on to explain to the congregation -- "While Speaker Pelosi's presence is probably an honor to some, she is not my favorite person. Some of her views are contrary to those of the church, and she tends to flip-flop on many other views. Nancy Pelosi is a petty, self-absorbed hypocrite, a thumb sucker, and a nit-wit. Nancy Pelosi is also a serial liar, a cheat, and a thief.

Nancy Pelosi is the worst example of a Catholic I have ever personally witnessed.

She married for money and is using it to lie to the American people. She also has a reputation for shirking her Representative obligations both in Washington, and in California. She simply is not to be trusted."

The Cardinal completed his view of Pelosi with, "But, when compared to Senators Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid, and John Kerry, House Speaker Pelosi is a saint."

Type "O" in the Water

O'S FOREIGN FAILURES - New York Post

Great article.

AMERICA'S enemies smell blood and it's type "O."

All new administrations stumble a bit as they seek their footing. But President Obama's foreign-policy botches have set new records for instant incompetence.

He goes on to cover a litany of sad facts from the first couple months of BO. As I predicted, we have a President that finally looks to be able to fill that Democrat dream of making Jimmy Carter seem like a decent president!

Apart from Iraq a success Sen. Obama did all he could to prevent his foreign policy's an instant wasteland. By comparison, the Carter administration is starting to look like a model of manly strength, courage and patriotism.

Those Horrible AIG "Bonuses"

Op-Ed Contributor - Dear A.I.G., I Quit! - NYTimes.com

Just read the article -- and weep. This nation has driven off a cliff and is lighting boosters to see if we can accelerate into the ground. We are beyond madness.

Nervous In Boston?

Cool it on the bonus blowback - The Boston Globe

Beantown isn't known as exactly a bastion of conservatism. Could it be that even some of the snobs of Kerry/Kennedy ville realize that there is danger that lurks in "off with their heads populism". Especially when it is "your own team" -- Democrats, that were completely responsible for all sides of the bonus dilemma. Would that Republicans could have seen the danger on turning their backs on their own guys and merely going for "a pox on both your houses"!!!

Ater all, Congress created the AIG bailout plan, with input from the White House economic team. Either lawmakers knew what was in it when they voted for it, or voted for it without knowing important details. If they are angry at anyone, it should be at themselves, for failing to fulfill their responsibility as fiscal watchdogs.

The same holds true for Obama's economic team.

The AIG contracts, which provide for the bonuses regardless of performance, were written in March 2008. A full year later - after the taxpayers became 80 percent owners in AIG with a $165 billion bailout - the bonuses were protected by a special provision inserted into the stimulus law by Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd.

So, the lefty media is telling it's boys to just shut up and move on! When you are in a hole, STOP DIGGING!!!!

Pretty hard for folks with egos the size of Dodd and BO -- we shall see.

The Vision of the Anointed

I'm on a Thomas Sowell binge I guess. The subtitle of this one is "Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy". I like his terminology of "constrained vs unconstrained" used in Conflict of Visions better, but this one is even more readable, and focuses on the real use of the unconstrained vision in social policy with disastrous results that are never allowed to be attributed to "vision problems" because the media is part of the "anointed".

He mostly calls unconstrained "anointed" in this book, the constrained is either called "benighted" or "tragic". I think "tragic" is OK, since it points to the "tragedy" of mans position -- limited, flawed, mortal and all the while tending to think far more of ourselves than an unbiased "higher power" likely would.

I think he does a great job of capturing how the anointed put their ideas over on the sheep:

1. Assertions of a great danger to the whole society, a danger to which the masses of people are oblivious. (remind anyone of Global Warming?)
2. An urgent need for action to avert impending catastrophe. (Stimulus?)
3. A need for government to drastically curtail the dangerous behavior of the many, in response to the prescient conclusions of the few. (Carbon Cap and Trade)
4. A disdainful dismissal of arguments to the contrary as either uninformed, irresponsible, or motivated by unworthy purposes. (The Surge HAS failed -- Harry Reid, before it started)

One of the points Sowell  hammers home very well is how the anointed find the decisions of "others" to always be wrong -- it makes no difference if they are the cumulative decisions of thousands of years of law and culture or the combined decisions of a market of millions or even billions of people, the anointed believe in their vision of "justice" or "equality" or "morality" with such fervor that there will be no consideration for alternate views whose results they blame for all problems. Their vision will fix all that -- TOMORROW! Their perfect ends justify use of any means.

I love this quote from Hayek: "Compared with the totality of knowledge which is continually utilized in the evolution of a dynamic civilization, the difference between the knowledge that the wisest and that which the most ignorant individual can deliberately employ is comparatively insignificant. "

Well said!

This is about as true as it gets: "Systematic processes tend to reward people for making decisions that turn out to be right-creating, producing great resentments among the anointed, who feel themselves entitled to rewards for being articulate, politically active, and morally fervent".

I enjoyed his discussion on the political left and right. "Among the many thoughtless labels which have gained currency, the dichotomy between the political left and right is one of the most striking, not only for its wide acceptance, but also for its utter lack of definition--or even an attempt at definition. Essentially, only the left is defined -- very loosely, and "the right" is just defined as "those that are opposed to the left". As he points out; "Although the free market is the antithesis of state control of the economy, such as fascists advocate, the left-right dichotomy makes it seem as if fascists are a more extreme version of "conservatives"".

I find his "constrained/unconstrained" to be a MUCH better description of the differences that we commonly refer to as "left/right" or "liberal/conservative" in this country.

It is hard to leave this book without having a significantly negative prospects for the long term chances of the US. The anointed are never interested in the actual results of their policies, in fact, when one of their policies like "the war on poverty" INCREASES poverty, that is simply a call to do more of the same!

The same sort of problem is very severe in the case of the courts. While those of the tragic vision feel that a constitution is meant to be followed and only amended by the procedures for amendment that were set down at the founding, the anointed feel that each case ought to be judged on "the best capabilities of the judges on that day". Sadly, since the those of the tragic vision have a strong desire to preserve precedent, the nation continues to legally drift to the vision of the anointed with very little prospect but for the "rate of slide" to be slowed during some periods of history.

I highly recommend the book and at this point suspect that I need to try to find the time to read most everything this guy has written.

Punch Drunk

It is a rather good description -- is it really that funny to have millions unemployed and the government throwing TRILLIONS at every nook and cranny that they can, including million dollar retention bonuses -- that were a "mistake"??

BO Special Olympics

NYTimes' Cooper Somehow Misses Obama 'Special Olympics' Jab | NewsBusters.org

So the great and powerful BO has made a quip about "The Special Olympics" on national TV. Naturally, the RIGHT thing to do about this is for him to "apologize and move on" -- he has, and it appears that to the entire national media, this has happened. Let's think about why this is.

Those on the right believe that ALL humans are flawed and prone to saying AND even "believing" (deep down) things that are "inappropriate". BO saying this is as expected. In fact, the difference in the actual "innate goodness" of Mother Teresa and Hitler isn't all that much -- it is more about "who is driving" -- God, or "other". Even in the case of Mother Teresa, the amount of "God direction" is exceedingly low compared to Jesus (100%) -- BUT, a very little God makes a VERY big difference!

Those on the right believe in CONSISTENCY -- "do unto others". They know they would defend themselves or someone on their side of the political spectrum if they did something "equivalent" -- say misspelled "potato", got drunk and said something about Jews while being arrested (Mel Gibson), etc.

On the left, the NYT and most of the MSM have done about all they can do to completely ignore that it even happened, and when they DO mention it is to assure everyone that it is nothing at all -- doesn't do ANYTHING to diminish him in ANY way. In fact, maybe it makes him better!!

Since they care NOTHING for consistency, and "do unto others" is some sort of "radical religious idea", it bothers them none at all that if Bush, Rush, Newt, or even a midly conservative entertainer (Mel Gibson) did this, they would do all they could do to destroy him in any way possible! It WOULD be  EITHER a very serious character flaw, or very serious stupidity!!! It would be important for the "violator" to answer the question over and over that effectively is "Are you evil, stupid, or both?" ... and in what ratio???

Were Bush to have made this comment, it would be "bigger than Misunderestimated". If Sarah Palin said this, she would be FINISHED politically!!

This is the America we live in. To not realize this is to ignore reality plain and simple.

Constant Campaign

Obama re-enlists volunteers to build support for agenda - CNN.com

One of the horrible things of the Bush administration was that the evil Karl Rove constantly worked with a large national organization to try to "control the message". It was often brought out as somehow immoral, and some how "inappropriate" for the Bush administration to try to "influence people". It also had connotations of "big money" being involved.

One of BAD things about the Bush White House was that it was supposedly "in constant campaign mode".

I'd argue that it WASN'T nearly enough in "campaign mode" and that turned out to be a HUGE problem for both Bush and Republicans in general.

So, what would be different now??? This is bigger? The amount of money that BO has to do this kind of thing is more vast than has ever been seen?

Oh, wait -- BO is good, and Bush was EVIL. Yes, that's it!!!

Iraq Anniversary

Got a chance to hear a little NPR piece on the anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq. In the past, I've been lucky to hear a few of these, and they tended to dig into the "lost cause" aspects with gusto. Today had a certain sad and haunting quality as they sent reporters to Fallujah to talk to people about how much they had lost. I really didn't get a chance to hear the whole thing -- one of the problems of radio and the car, but it struck me how certain NPR is. They were certain Iraq could not be run, now they seem certain that it was too costly. Apparently the costs of living under Saddam Hussein are "free" -- sort of like the costs of Castro dictatorship, USSR Gulags, or Mao killing his millions.

Meanwhile, the BO budget deficit is now projected at $2 TRILLION -- Bush getting close to hitting $500 Billion was a scandal for them. The only issue now is that it is important for people to understand that we need "Education, Green Energy and Federal Healthcare" to get out of this. Apparently, there is no such thing as too big a deficit for NPR when we have a Democrat for President.

The new organic garden at the White House that includes arugula was also an important news item!!

Ah yes, publicly funded radio.

Dodd-ering Bonus?

Amid AIG Furor, Dodd Tries to Undo Bonus Protections He Put In - FOXBusiness.com


Think that the financial crisis has any Democrat fingerprints? Gee, AIG alone gave over $100 grand each to Dodd and BO. Early on in the campaign I wondered why BO was getting a huge amount of his money from the financial houses.

If the MSM would report it, everyone would know why now!

That Dodd actually WROTE THE PROVISIONS in the TARP under which these bonuses were paid and is now talking about taxing them would get a LOT of ink were Dodd a Republican.

Maybe Suicide and Stay?

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time - Blogs from CNN.com

Nice to see our elected officials having a good time beating up on businessmen that actually make and LOSE money. Taking money by force, spending that and trillions more on pork while flapping your jaws randomly must be quite respectable in some circles. The average person in prison is probably only about twice as trustworthy as 90% of our Senators.

Given the size of the Federal Deficit and the general ineptitude of our government, potentially we would be MUCH farther ahead if the Senators all committed suicide and STAYED in their positions!!

Grassley's initial comments came Monday afternoon during an interview with Iowa radio station WMT. During the interview, Grassley endorsed what he viewed as Japan's corporate model, saying it is customary for failed executives to either relinquish their posts or commit suicide in disgrace.

"In the case of the Japanese, they usually commit suicide before they make any apology," he said during that interview.

I wonder if Chuck is aware that Japan has been in a deeper recession than we are currently in since '92 and shows no sign of getting out? Does he endorse their RESULTS as well as their practices?

Seems to me that committing suicide prior to making the apology at least guarantees that the apology won't be wordy. In the case of the Senators, I think doing the suicide prior to the apology would REALLY save a lot of time -- heck, Biden might never get around to the permanent exit if he was doing an apology with words.

Bottom?

How Will We Know When the Economy Hits Bottom? - NYTimes.com

This article contains 3 very well done charts. There is no way of knowing if history is any guide at all to the future, but it is pretty much the only thing we really have to look at. Based on the P/E ratio, we MIGHT be either just at, or close to a bottom in the market.

The consumer spending chart would indicate that we are still at pretty high levels of spending relative to savings and will likely need to do some more catchup before we "return to the mean".

The housing chart is the most depressing of the 3 -- Fannie, Freddie and the Democrats took us a LONG way up a steep bubble and we likely to have to drop another 30-40% before we are close to returning to THAT mean.

History is no Guide

Commentary: Don't let history be your guide to investing - CNN.com

The following information is quite interesting:

Historically, stocks have produced the greatest long-term return of any financial asset, and "stocks for the long term" was the traditional mantra.

The thinking was that investors took on a worthwhile risk by putting money in stocks rather than taking the guaranteed interest on a U.S. Treasury bond. The idea was that the risk would be justified by stocks posting a better return than bonds. But by the end of 2008, for the first time ever, we saw a 25-year period in which long-term U.S. Treasury bonds actually outperformed the Standard & Poor's 500 stocks

So are bonds a good bet now?

A word of warning about long-term Treasury bonds. I think rates are likely to rise, probably quite sharply, over the next few years, which would clobber the prices of existing bonds. My reasoning: As the world financial panic (which has turned Treasury securities into a supposed safe haven) abates and the impact of huge U.S. government budget deficits is felt as the government has to sell vast amounts of bonds to raise money, rates have nowhere to go but up.

Diversify, Diversify, Diversify ...

Cutting The Cable

Dreaming of cutting the subscription TV cord | Digital Media - CNET News

In the BO Economy, doing with less is the expectation. One pretty much has to have the internet in the current world unless we are down to ARs and beans over the fire. A discussion of some ways to get by without cable.

An Exception

TSA to look at Vitter airport incident - CNN.com

CNN managed to do a negative article on a Republican Senator without having "R" in the headline, or even in the article! I must admit to amazement.

I'd guess this would never even make the news at all if it were a Democrat, but never the less, I have to give them accolades for not following their normal pattern.

I did enjoy the inclusion of the 2007 item -- are we going to include that Joe Biden quit a Presidential bid due to plagarism and Teddy Kennedy was involved in the death of a young woman (not his wife)? or maybe they will include "David Geitner -- admitted tax cheat" whenever he does something?

I'm not holding my breath.

Ecclesiastes 7:4

There's No Pill for This Kind of Depression - WSJ.com

KJV says it best: "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth."

I think Peggy is back from being "lost", but the Bible verse says it as best as is possible. We are still pretty close to a 50/50 nation in reality. Right now BO's numbers are still high because about 10% of the people that know better are still giving him the benefit of the doubt in hope against hope that this won't be as bad as it looks -- so he is at 60% popularity as opposed to 50. The people that produce, invest, once dreamed of having a future, thought their kids could have a bright future, believed in what had always been America -- those kinds of folks are now mired in a depression that goes beyond mere financial ruin. They see that the core values of America have been squandered and we are careening to being "Really Western Europe", or some yet unknown Pagan Socialist Pauper Nation -- "On Nation Under Nothing" -- or maybe just "Under".

Two, the economy isn't the only reason for our unease. There's more to it. People sense something slipping away, a world receding, not only an economic one but a world of old structures, old ways and assumptions. People don't talk about this much because it's too big, but I suspect more than a few see themselves, deep down, as "the designated mourner," from the title of the Wallace Shawn play.

What I see around me is essentially "the loss of the future". For people in their 40's and 50's, they have seen 12 years of their investing lives go up in smoke, and any last vestiges of job security blow away (if not their actual jobs). They look out at the early wreckage of "the change", and they see no hope of a recovery that allows them to postulate a future any better than most likely a cinder block appartment in a government building where they will essentially be "a ward of the state". The future that looks most likely to them from today is a future that scarcely would have crossed their mind 6-12 months ago.


Meanwhile, our media and the 50% of people that always figured that "things were stacked against them" are in a paroxysm of joy. The wise know that will not last -- that is why gun sales are breaking all records. When the fools realize that yet again, they have duped themselves, they will return again to their natural state of anger. Will BO be able to turn their anger away from where it deserves to be (him) and toward the wise? Who knows, that is why the wise are buying guns.

Gun sales continue up. The FBI's criminal background check system showed a 23% increase in February over the previous year, a 29% increase in January, a 24% increase in December and a 42% increase in November, when a record 1.5 million background checks were performed. Yes, people fear Obama will take away the guns he thinks they cling to, but a likely equal contributor to what The Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch called a "gun-buying binge" is captured in the slogan on one firearms maker's Web site: "Smith & Wesson stands for
protection." People are scared.

I think "scared" is the wrong term -- "prepared" is better. The wise are always thinking of preparation -- a year ago it was saving, investing, not buying on credit, doing well at your job. Today it is laying in some cash/gold, supplies and firearms in case BO continues to take the nation in the current direction. We DO want him to fail to destroy America, but he has one hell of a good start if turning us into Kenya or worse is his objective.

"The heart of fools is in the house of mirth".

Democrats Made Off With Madoff

Media Forgets That Wall Street Rip Off Artist is BIG Democrat Donor | NewsBusters.org

One of my airtight rules: If the negative stories about a person don't mention the political party that they are associated with or have contributed to, you can rest assured that they are Democrats.

Ever see which party Madoff associated with? Nope -- Me neither, so it is no surprise that he is documented to have given in the 100s of K to the Democrats.

The MSM keeps a very careful picture of Republicans as "wealthy and corrupt" in front of the eyes of the sheep. Actually, Republicans are pretty much made up of:
 
- Practicing Christians
- working people of modest means that believe in responsibility and independence vs the Nanny State
- middle income folks that are trying to "work / invest their way up"
- nasty iconoclastic independent thinkers that don't believe "what everyone knows to be true"

Most all of the Wall Street Fat Cats, CEOs, "Intelligencia" and "wealthy over $500K" are Democrats, because they can afford to be, and if you are taking everyone's money, it is better if they like you. Basically the top and the bottom are Democrats -- The plutocrats and the teeming masses looking to be gaurenteed happiness by someone else.

Success for BO

The World's Billionaires - Forbes.com

It's working! There is already less income disparity, the billionaires have lost an average of 23% in the last 12 months!!! GREAT!! Of course most of the rest of us that have worked and saved our whole lives have lost more like 50% because we don't have enough money to be nearly as diversified as they are, but Hey -- LESS DISPARITY!!! If we can just all get to ZERO, then we will all be EQUAL!!!

Won't that be grand? I can hardly wait!

Thanks a bunch to BO and his loyal sheep, things are just going wonderfully!

Why Can't the Left Be Happy?

The A-word | Salon

"apocalypse"???? From Salon, a magazine so left it makes the NYT look middle of the road? EEEEEK!!!!

I think the biggest problem with putting the left in charge is that NOBODY is happy! Did Jimmuh Carter look happy to you when he was President??? I know Slick Willie was trying his best to get his mind off how tough things were going with pizza and BJs at the offfice during the day, but I still think that is a sign of shall we say "not being totally into the job". (or at least I think my management would take that view if I was similarly spending my work time).

It is true that the left is never happy, but I think that they are actually as positive as they can get when they are hopping mad at the imperfection of some feckless Republican leader. When are in charge, they quickly descend into despair and it starts to look to them like the world is ending. Heck, we have only lost $26 Trillion in value out of the market SO FAR, and of course the vast majority of that money wasn't theirs anyway since they were mostly long on hemp sandals and hooka pipes.

The Democrat Platform

Quoted off this Wikipedia page:

The Socialist Party candidate for President of the US , Norman Thomas , said this in a 1944 speech: " The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of "liberalism," they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened." He went on to say: "I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party . The Democrat Party has adopted our platform."

This guy was early, but he knew of what he spoke. Welcome to Socialist Amerika!

BO's Rove

David Axelrod, Obama’s Political Protector, Is Ever Close at Hand - NYTimes.com

It is nice to be on the left, the media let's you define yourself as you see fit. When you are the Republican version, (Rove), THEY define you -- and they color in the horns and tail that they add in RED to be sure that everyone "gets it". Here? "Political Protector" -- poor BO needs that, because of all the nasty right wingers! See, Bush didn't have ANYONE in the press or on the other side "hoping he would fail" -- nope. There were NEVER any indications of say him being "appointed rather than elected", "most incompetent President ever", etc early on in HIS administration!!

He never needed a "protector", but he had the shadowy evil Rove in the background!

Hey Hill-Billy, WRONG BUTTON!!

VIDEO: Wrong red button - David S. Cloud - POLITICO.com

For starters, what could possibly be a more reasonable way to try to "improve" relations with Russia than to give them a BIG RED BUTTON!! Let's see now, has there ever been any BUTTON involved in US / Russian relations??? Oh well, as long as we are being stupid, lets just muddle on. Hey, let's denigrate the previous US administration to a foreign government that we might have to do tough negotiations with!!! That's smart, shows the US people elect STUPID PEOPLE from time to time --- er, well, IN THE PAST!!!

Here we are, let me mention my wonderful self Hill Billy, qualified for this post by hanging around a womanizing husband that treated me like crap for a long time. Oh, and of course there is Joe "let me copy your paper" Biden, and the legendary BO, failed community organizer from Chicago.

See, it says RESET !!! Oops??? It doesn't??? You mean our most brilliant in the history of the universe administration can't find anyone that knows the difference between "reset" and "overload" in Russian??? Hmmm, damn!!

Ok, well at least nobody in the MSM or late night TV will make fun of the BO Administration, so that is good. Too darned bad that we haven't cleaned up the rest of the media yet, so no doubt some right wing zealot idiots will pick this up and take it the wrong way. No matter -- soon we will have all that "hate media" off the air and have those wingnuts rounded up and "dissappeared".

Anyway, the new administration is tough, fair, and SMART ... especially SMART!!!

Gotta love this one off another site in passing:

Translation gaffes are nothing new. President Kennedy famously declared himself a jelly donut standing in Berlin. President Carter's translator, wishing to express the commander in chief's enthusiasm upon arriving in Warsaw, mistakenly told the stunned Poles that Carter would like to make love to them.

Let's see here ... Kennedy, Carter, Obama??? Pattern? They are all the "smart ones", right? How could such a thing happen to them? I'm guessing "right wing plot" -- only reasonable explanation.

A Conflict of Visions

This book by Thomas Sowell takes it's place in 3rd position in my all time book hall of fame behind "Closing of the American Mind" and "Ideas Have Consequences". The book is smaller in the scope of ideas dealt with, but much more reachable than than the other two books.

The central theme is that there are two primary visions that people and "schools of thought" have as their initial "pre-analytic models of thinking".

Constrained - Largely the Judaeo / Christian view of man as "flawed, incomplete, incapable of reaching perfection". Social goods must be obtained by providing incentives and disincentives to allow individuals and society in general to move forward. Much of human knowledge is implicit -- buried in traditions, mores, institutions and practices that are effectively unconscious. Trying to make rapid and supposedly "well understood" change due to supposedly superior modern knowledge is likely to destroy rather than improve the situation of most of society.

Unconstrained -- Man is the measure of all things and man's basic character is good and clearly perfectible. Rather than attempting to vaguely move forward via indirect incentives and disincentives, the most intellectually and morally superior people of the current time must take direct action to achieve results. The results desired are clear -- equality of economic OUTCOME, "justice" of all sorts, recognition of each person as a unique, special and worthy individual. Since human kind is moving forward, those alive today are best able to decide what is best -- history, tradition, laws, institutions, cultures, etc are dangerous in that they are always less perfect than the currently most advanced thinking of the current intellectuals. 

Naturally, nobody is purely constrained or unconstrained, but in general, conservatives start from the constrained vision and liberals start from the unconstrained. Communication between those of different visions is extremely difficult. As Sowell says after discussing some common terms like "equality" or "justice":

One consequence .. is that those with different visions often argue past each other, even when they accept the same rules of logic and utilize the same data, for the same terms of discourse signify very different things.

One of those very different things is process vs results. The unconstrained vision person will believe that some good, say "equality of income" can easily be directly achieved by adequately communicating it to the masses, and if needed simply "making it so" via redistribution of some sort. The constrained vision will believe that any such attempt will be highly likely to reduce the overall ability of the society to produce goods and end up leaving all worse off. They see "equality of income" as something barely of any use if the standard of living of the whole of society can be improved more reasonably by having inequality of income.

There are countless examples in the book of how various thinkers -- Rosseau, Smith, Jefferson, Hobbes, Hayek, Mill, Burke and fit into this framework and how it helps make sense of the vast differences in how people look at the same issues. The fact that most people will deny all manner of facts in order to maintain their vision is also covered.

 For example, even though "National Socialism" in Germany had been widely praised by the unconstrained camp prior to WWII, the descent of something that they generally admired into a vicious totalitarian regime forced them to abandon their former name "socialists" and take the one that the constrained vision previously held "liberal". They changed their name, but they never changed their belief -- which of course is what actually led to the disaster in Germany, not the name.

I recommend the book very highly, and it is especially important in these times as the US seems to be shifting from a constrained vision (the one held by our founding fathers), again toward an unconstrained vision as we did under FDR and to a lesser degree during the LBJ "Great Society".

BO Supports Cheney

The Obama Justice Department Adopts the George W. Bush Administration's Legal Stance on Presidential Powers - WSJ.com

I applaud this of course, but it is amazing to watch how the MSM allows the BO admin to say one thing in order to be popular with the sheep, and then do another. GREAT, if the "other" keeps us safe, not so great if the hidden agenda is messing up the economy or opening portals for terrorists.

The Obama Justice Department has adopted a legal stance identical to, if not more aggressive than, the Bush version. It argues that the court-forced disclosure of the surveillance programs would cause "exceptional harm to national security" by exposing intelligence sources and methods. Last Friday the Ninth Circuit denied the latest emergency motion to dismiss, again kicking matters back to Judge Walker.

Yes We Did!

John Yoo Says Barack Obama's Assault on George W. Bush's Antiterror Strategy Will Inhibit Counterterrorism Officials - WSJ.com

But maybe we can't any longer thanks to BO and company? The evil John Yoo, demonized of late in the MSM writes a short sweet article that states the obvious. If terrorists attack on US soil, the US troops aren't going to seek a court order before moving into whatever position they take up for cover. Had US forces followed such rules during the civil war, it could have never have been fought, let alone won by the North, and THEN where would BO be?

The hatred of Bush lives on and it appears that it will now drive the BO minions and the MSM to tie our hands ever more firmly -- unfortunately, most likely until we fall on our faces and eventually some opportunistic terrorist will put a bullet in the back of our collective head.

Poverty In America

Michelle Obama serves food to D.C. poor and homeless, but... | Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times

Gotta love a country where the homeless have cell phones! Man, those 7 years of Bush neglect must have been hell -- suppose the standard after 8 more will be the the homeless have electric cars?

The BO Deception

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Deception at Core of Obama Plans

"Our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care, and education -- importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools.

The "day of reckoning" has now arrived. And because "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament," Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.

Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.

My sense is that BO and company have no intent of any economic improvement. In fact, I strongly suspect that it fits their plans just perfectly to have the nation descend into the economic abyss and remove every safety catch they possibly can. While the MSM brayed about the "Bush attack on constitutional rights", nobody anybody knew was ever affected at all -- the "constitutional crisis" was completely fabricated.

Now OTOH, the MSM is generally ecstatic, but if one looks closely, BO is in fact deepening the ability to do domestic surveillance and HR 645, to create large camps where civilians can be herded to for "their protection" has already been proposed in congress. Naturally, since the MSM has complete trust in BO, there are no stories that the majority of the people are hearing that would let people be aware that such camps COULD be used as "concentration camps". BO is good, BO is a savior -- he is responsible for good things, anything bad that happens is due to BUSH and "failed right wing policies" -- pay no attention to the market, business results or taxes. The every watchful BO will make us all unified and happy -- heil BO!

And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.

What's going on? "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."

As Lenin said, "The Worse The Better"!!! The far left of course constantly harped on how Bush was "using 9-11 to manufacture a crisis and take people's rights". The far left even argued that "9-11 was an inside job". Now we have markets falling like rocks, unemployment rising like a moon rocket, and BO's own chief of staff saying that "the crisis is an opportunity". Meanwhile, they admit (and take gleefull credit for) orchestrating this "Rush Limbagh is the leader of the Republican party" gambit. BUT, the PROBLEM with the Busy administration was that they "played political games" -- or at least so the MSM and the Democrats said. So what does one call a staged fight with Rush??

Why Doesn't MSM Find BO Stupid?

Political Punch: Bullish Obama Suggests Nation Should Buy! Buy!

"What you're now seeing is ... profit and earning ratios are starting
to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal if
you've got a long-term perspective on it," the president said on a day
that trading continued to hover under 7,000.

But wait, it is PRICE / Earnings ratio! He said the wrong thing! Doesn't that mean he is STUPID? I'm sure it would have with Bush, but not with BO. I wonder why that is?

Ok, forget what may be a slip of the tongue (I'm CERTAIN that the media would have taken that tack with Bush!). How about "substance"?

Obama said he wasn't focused on "the day-to-day gyrations of the stock
market, but the long-term ability for the United States and the entire
world economy to regain its footing." he compared the Dow Jones
Industrial Average to a daily tracking poll in politics. "You know, it
bobs up and down day to day," he said. "And if you spend all your time
worrying about that, then you're probably going to get the long-term
strategy wrong."

Uh, a "tracking poll"? Where people are just randomly sampled over the phone? Hmm -- actually, the market is people RISKING THEIR LIFE SAVINNGS Mr Financial Fool in Chief!! BTW, I'm betting that this WH pays just as much attention to "daily tracking polls" as any other has. If he had ANY experience in business and investing, he would CERTAINLY realize that:

1. The Market looks primarily SHORT TERM -- 6 months or so. The wild drop since Sept '08 is Business and Investors giving HIM a solid vote of "NO CONFIDENCE"!!!
2. The Market looks only forward -- like we all ought to do in life, the Market plays from today forward. Yesterday is past history. Today and expectations for tomorrow are what matter!
   
3. He apparently throws TRILLIONS of TAXPAYERS dollars into the wind with no thought of where they will land, but investors are using THEIR OWN MONEY, and they tend to place their bets where they believe they will get a payoff.

Had Bush said anything this foolish and dismissive of the half of the population that saves and invests, the fallout in the press would have been devastating. BO gets a pass!! That is what is called an "unbiased media"!

A Black Woman's Election View

Link to the Anne Wortham text

Just read it, I have nothing to add. Brilliant, fearless, inspiring. As long as there are people like this woman, hope will NEVER die!

Fellow Americans,

Please know: I am black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul’s name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a black president to love the ideal of America.

I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival – all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America. Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn’t look like them. I would have to be wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration – political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

I would have to believe that "fairness" is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.

Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead – and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.

So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over – and that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a black person. So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to – Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine – what little there is left – for the chance to feel good. There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.

Even The Left Gets a Whiff of BO?

Team Obama’s Petty Limbaugh Strategy :: Swampland - TIME.com

Gee, even Time notices that BO's politics is "same old, same old", even as much as having the same folks involved -- Carvelle and Begalla for example.

So why are we talking about Rush? According to Martin, the Rush
"controversy" began as an idea last fall that followed a poll taken by
Stanley Greenberg, who owns the house where White House Chief of Staff
Rahm Emanuel stays when he is in Washington. With his old Clinton
Administration colleagues, Paul Begala and James Carville, Greenberg
realized that Limbaugh was deeply unpopular among wide swaths of the
American electorate. So, the strategists figured, why not turn the turn
Republican Party into a Limbaughesque caricature? Limbaugh, a
consummate publicity hound, was only too eager to help. Earlier this
year, he said he hoped Obama "fails," a reasonable claim in context,
given that Limbaugh's entire worldview is constructed around an
opposition to the sorts of policies that Obama has proposed.

But echoed over the "chatter on the cable stations" thanks to Obama
aides, including Emanuel and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs,
Limbaugh's comment took on a whiff of treason. Limbaugh's rapid
comebacks to the White House assault created what economists might call
a "downward spiral" effect. “It's great for us, great for him, great
for the press,” Carville told the Politico, describing the White House
and Limbaugh. “The only people he's not good for are the actual
Republicans in Congress.”

See, that is what a "different kind of politics is" -- nastier, more subversive, and less interested in the good of the nation than BOs own political gain.

Memo to Post: Bush No Longer in Office!

Bush's Secret Dictatorship - White House Watch - Dan Froomkin's Blog on washingtonpost.com

One would think that BO supporting papers would have more important things to do than go looking at old Bush administration memos that they find to be "whiney", and "unconvincing". In case they have missed it, the economy and the markets are in shambles and we are shedding 100's of thousands of jobs a month. Does that seem like a great time for partisan navel gazing and old wounds? Guess it does:

But Bradbury was also making excuses for them. They were afraid, he
wrote: "The opinions addressed herein were issued in the wake of the
atrocities of 9/11, when policymakers, fearing that additional
catastrophic terrorist attacks were imminent, strived to employ all
lawful means to protect the nation." They were rushed, confronting
"novel and complex legal questions in a time of great danger and under
extraordinary time pressure."

No excuse. Not even close.

Good to see that there a "no excuses" for the Bush administration, not even 9/11. One hopes that BO doesn't ever get that type of a test, because I'm not sure we even can envision how abject failure can really be. I'm CERTAIN though that if such comes to pass, the Washington Post will be WAY on the side of "No Excuse for BO"!

BO Exposed

RealClearPolitics - Articles - A Week of Revelation

The "true stripes" are exposed, and we see the mixture of black and white -- a two tone kitty with a white stripe down the back!

But governments do not "invest," they spend. Such spending can be justified or unjustified. It is wealthy individuals, however, who actually invest their capital in job creation. Most have much less capital than they used to. Under the Obama budget, they would have less still. This does not seem to matter in the economic worldview of the Obama budget. Equality is the goal instead of opportunity or economic mobility. And government, in this approach, is more capable of investing national wealth than America's discredited plutocrats -- meaning successful two-income families, entrepreneurs and professionals.

Actually, the real goal is POWER for "The Party" (D)

Obama lied; the economy died

Washington Times - BLANKLEY: Obama lied; the economy died

Very well written, I love this opening, but ignor my little tirade here -- the piece is a MUST READ!

I am trying to capture the spirit of bipartisanship as practiced by the Democratic Party over the last eight years.

What rational person could deny that? The supposed "bipartisan Democrats" used "Bush lied, people died" over and over ad-nauseum. As Blankly points out, Bush didn't lie, he was mistaken. BO clearly uttered "I'm not in favor of larger government" after signing $800 Billion in stimulus, deciding he was going to sign on to $400 Billion from last years Democrats with 9,000 earmarks, and had his $3.6 Trillion largest budget and largest deficit ever by ALL measures ready to roll. To absolutely KNOW one thing and say the other live on national TV talking directly to the nation is CLEARLY "lying to the American People".

When Bush said in the State of the Union of '03 that "The British say that ---", there would have been a "lie" had the British NOT said that -- in fact they DID, **AND** what they said (Saddam was trying to get Yellowcake from Niger) was in fact verified by their own intelligence agency (not ours) to be true.

But, the left was certain that was "impeachable" on the grounds of "lying to the American people". Naturally, since the left is such a bunch of fair minded and impartial people, I'm certain they will be demanding impeachment post haste.

Of course, with the havoc that the Democrat congress and BO have wreaked in just a couple short years, having BO eating off a tin tray would be small consolation for the rest of us eating dog food pizza.

I Come to Bury Reagan

Commentary » Blog Archive » From Thatcherism and Reaganism to . . .

Had BO stated what he obviously intended to do, it is doubtful that he would have been elected.

This is a good summary of the philosophy that BO seeks to repudiate:

The illusion that government can be a universal provider, and yet
society still stay free and prosperous. The illusion that government
can print money, and yet the nation still have sound money. The
illusion that every loss can be covered by a subsidy. The illusion that
we can break the link between reward and effort, and still get the
reward.

Therefore:

• government CAN be a universal provider, ind society will stay free and prosperous
• government CAN print money, yet the nations money remain sound
• losses can be covered by subsidy and "bailout"
• we can break the link between reward and effort -- and still get the reward.
  

Which do you believe? If you voted for BO, you had best believe the latter, because he clearly does!!

Moderate Buyers Remorse

Op-Ed Columnist - A Moderate Manifesto - NYTimes.com

Brooks and his paper, the NYT have been huge BO supporters. Brooks is viewed by the NYT as a "conservative", but as he himself says "he is a moderate" -- which is being very charitable to himself. Essentially he is just less radical than BO, which it turns out is not hard at all to be!

I might wonder what David was smoking that led him to his ideas that somehow what BO said could be trusted -- it has been clear for a long time that BO is a radical lefty intent on "unification" the old fashioned way -- by destroying any other alternative. Now Brooks has seen the error of his ways, but it is far too late and his thinking is far too wishful.

The U.S. has never been a society riven by class resentment. Yet the
Obama budget is predicated on a class divide. The president issued a
read-my-lips pledge that no new burdens will fall on 95 percent of the
American people. All the costs will be borne by the rich and all
benefits redistributed downward.

Welcome to full scale class warfare -- courtesy of BO. It WASN'T riven, but it is now! That ANYONE could have been surprised that this was his agenda all along amazes me.

The U.S. has always had vibrant neighborhood associations. But in its
very first budget, the Obama administration raises the cost of charitable giving. It punishes civic activism and expands state intervention.

Heil BO, comrade! Fascism involves the destruction of the local in favor of the national. Whatever BO calls himself he is a fascist bent on the politicization of all!

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative,
in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice. As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it
addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.

One might say "welcome to reality". Sadly, you discovered the truth too late and BO and his minions have two full years to try to make it impossible for those that care about the America of the Consitution to have any future chance -- a couple of the battles to come are "The Fairness Doctrine", which will be used to silence opposition on the right, and massive gun control and registration which will be used to clear away any last hope that the population can rise up and check the destruction of the country.

BO Economy

Our Troubled Economy Is a Response to Barack Obama's Policies - WSJ.com

The market has notably plunged since Mr. Obama introduced his budget
last week, and that should be no surprise. The document was a
declaration of hostility toward capitalists across the economy.
Health-care stocks have dived on fears of new government mandates and
price controls. Private lenders to students have been told they're no
longer wanted. Anyone who uses carbon energy has been warned to expect
a huge tax increase from cap and trade. And every risk-taker and
investor now knows that another tax increase will slam the economy in
2011, unless Mr. Obama lets Speaker Nancy Pelosi impose one even
earlier.

Surprise surprise, being a failed Community Organizer from the political cesspool of Chicago isn't good job training for running the worlds largest economy. Well, duh!!!

Audacity of Nope

The Audacity of Nope - The Daily Beast

Christopher Buckley -- only half as smart as dad, but that is still pretty smart.

Multiply Wealth By Division

Just read the quote, nuff said! (Dr Adrian Rodgers)

You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that, my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

Understanding High Taxes

Obama's trade rep pick owes almost $10,000 in taxes - CNN.com

How simple the Democrat love of high taxes is. They have no morals, so they simply don't pay them and leave that up to us foolish Republicans!

I guess I thought that SOME of them paid them, but apparently not. It seems a bit hard to imagine the BO and company could be so foolish as to just pick out the few bad apples unless the problem was virtually universal!

Message In Here Somewhere?

Power Line - Protesting Global Warming in the Snow

It just seems to happen too often for pure coincidence -- Al Gore seems to regularly give his speeches on Warming in some sort of "freaky cold weather".

Sharing the Fixed Pie

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Do We Want a More Equal Society?

"Over the past two or three decades, the top 1 percent of Americans
have experienced a dramatic increase from 10 percent to more than 20
percent in the share of national income that's accruing to them," said
Peter Orszag, Obama's budget director. Now, he said, was their time "to
pitch in a bit more."

• US GDP in '82 - $5 Trillion, 90% of 5 Trillion = $4.5 Trillion

• US GDP in '08 - $12 Trillion, 80% of 12 Trillion = $9.6 Trillion

Now, I ask you, would you rather have $4.5 Trillion or $9.6 Trillion? How about if it meant that someone else went from having $500 Billion to having $2.4 Trillion? Would that bother you? If so, why? You more than doubled what you had, why does it bother you if someone else got 5x what they had? How about if the choice was either that, or you got $2.25 Trillion, and they got only $250 Billion? Does that make you feel better, because it is more "just"? Can't you do a whole lot more good with $9.6 Trillion than you can with $2.25 Trillion? If you can just ignore those awful people that got more money?

EITHER, Democrats don't understand growth at all, OR, their envy exceeds their common sense -- or I suppose both.

What they ALSO apparently don't understand is contraction! When their policies seek to "take a little more", the tendency is for all that wealth to simply disappear, because a lot of it is based on expectations for the future. In case you haven't noticed, the market isn't very positive on the future at the moment!

Democrats and Sweaters

George F. Will: FDR's Sweater Fable | Newsweek Voices - George F. Will | Newsweek.com

Do all Democrats have some fascination with sweaters? This little fable does a good job of explaining why things got so bad in the '30s and late '70s:

The factory, which FDR said was the town's only industry, normally
employed about 200 people who "had always been on exceedingly good
terms" with the owners. However, "it was difficult to sell enough
sweaters to keep them going because there were so many sweater
factories" in the nation, all of which had had only about six weeks'
worth of work in the past year. The town, FDR said, was "practically
starving to death." So the people decided that they all could work if
they reduced everyone's wages 33 percent. That would cut the cost of
their sweaters and enable them to undersell competitors. FDR said the
factory's sales agent went to New York and "in 24 hours" sold "enough
sweaters to keep that factory going for six months, 24 hours a day,
three shifts.

A heartwarming triumph of community solidarity over adversity? Not as
seen through the pince-nez of Roosevelt, who pronounced it "bad
business, in all ways." Granted, "they get a good deal of cash into the
community." But "they undoubtedly, by taking these orders, put two
other sweater factories completely out of business." So:

"That brings up the question as to whether we can work out some kind of
plan that will distribute the volume of consumption in a given industry
over the whole industry. Instead of trying to concentrate production to
meet that consumption into the hands of a small portion of the
industry, we want to spread it out … It might be called the regulation
of production or, to put it better, the prevention of foolish
overproduction."

In other words, competition is bad and centralized control can do better! Once one moves to a leveling redistribution strategy, there is no end to what needs to be controlled. Rather than a system that runs imperfectly but well on natural principles, you get one that lurches all over the place on conflicting commands from a bunch of bureaucrats.

The end result has been seen over and over in the world in the past century -- the poor economy starts kicking and hitting itself and running into things like some macabre slapstick clown or failing horror movie robot and soon the wreck that remains is unable to even feed the bulk of the nation that has been so foolish to turn down this path.

Put on a sweater!

Extremely!

Power Line - How Dumb Does He Think We Are?

Some words from our supreme odiferous unifying leader:

These steps won't sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who
are invested in the old way of doing business. I know they're gearing
up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this: So am I.

I give BO more credit than PowerLine here -- the OLD "special interests and lobbyists" may not ALL be happy -- but there are certainly a whole bunch new ones that are positively ecstatic! TRILLIONS of pork being larded out is a bounty that hasn't been seen since the Johnson era!

Fight, oh yes, it is clear that BO is way ahead in the fight to turn a $14 Trillion economy into one that is $7 Trillion or much less!