Fluent Austrian?

Uh, gee BO, I think you will find that "Austrian" is not a language. He isn't sounding so good again -- maybe they don't have a teleprompter there?

How Could Al Qaeda Last So Long"?

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Axelrod hits back at Cheney: Not behaving like a ’statesman’ « - Blogs from CNN.com

We all remember that supportive "statesman" Al Gore, and all the MSM criticism of him! Yes, former VPs coming out with such incendiary statements as "we think our policies were better" is something that certainly calls for condemnation.

I find it supremely ironic, on a day when we were meeting with NATO, to talk about the continued threat from Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they're still plotting against us eight years — or seven years later," he said. "I think the question for Mr. Cheney is, how could that be? How could this have gone so long? Why are they still in business?"

Irony -- one of those things like beauty that tend to mostly be in the mind of the beholder. Now of course the MSM successfully spent a lot of time rubbing the nose of any Bush adviser that predicted that Iraq would be a "short battle" in it over and over -- and indeed, extended the comments of a few to be "administration policy that it would be short and easy", when the facts show that it was well understood to likely be a long hard slog.

So, we can be guarenteed that there will be no terrorist threat from Al Qaeda against the US in MUCH less than 7 years. It is utterly amazing to Mr Axlerod how even an administration that they have labled as "utterly incompetent" and "the worst ever" could not take care of this problem in less than 7 years. Let's not push them very hard, let's just assume that they are a mere 4x better than the "worst administration ever". That would mean that it would be "ironic" if there was still any remaining threat from Al Qaeda in 1.75 years. So by the time of the congressional elections next year, the new "better way" will have completely removed the Al Qaeda threat.

This is very useful. I'm sure the MSM will be reporting on that with the same alacrity that they are on this Axlerod comment.

BO Does Bush Impression

The great BO goes overseas where apparently not everyone in the press feels that licking his boots is the key function of "reporting". Looks like maybe no teleprompter for a change?

All of a sudden it is uh, ah, pause, uh ... and then a very meandering dissertation of who knows what. Of course, if he was a Republican, the nightly news would be the worst 15 sec sound bite!

The One Thing You Need to Know

About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success, By Marcus Buckingham

This book is at the crossroads between business success directions and self-help. More on the business side. It is quite efficiently written, so I'll try to do the same in the review. There are 3 major points, I'll reverse his order because I think the last is applicable to all of us, the other two are less so.

1. The one thing you need to know about individual success -- "Discover what you don't like doing and stop doing it". Whenever you become aware of some aspect you dislike, do not try to work through it. Do not chalk it up to the realities of life. Do not put up with it. Instead, cut it out of your life as fast as you can. Eradicate it.
2. Are leaders born, or are they made? They are born. A leader is born with an optimistic disposition or she is not. If she is not, then no amount of "optimism training"is going to make her view of the world as optimistic as it needs to be to lead. To lead effectively you must be unfailingly, unrealistically, even irrationally optimistic. Like it or not, this is not learnable.
3. All managers excel at turning one person's talent into performance. They will succeed or fail based on their ability to make their employees more productive working with them than they would be working with someone else.

The rest of the book is coverage of why these 3 items are especially important, as well as supporting information and anecdotes as to why the specific positions taken are true. My belief is that these three items ARE as critical as indicated, and are very much related. If you are bad at the task of turning talents into performance, you aren't ever going to be a great manager, no matter how hard you work at it ... and indeed, by breaking rule one, you are most likely to fail.

The same sort of analysis is key relative to leadership -- are you leading or are you managing? They are very different things.

The idea to not do what you don't like (and will typically be bad at as well) is sort of a reverse on discovering your strengths. There is some logic here -- sort of like the discussion about Michelangelo doing "David" supposedly said he didn't "create", he just uncovered the image that was in the stone. By removing that which we do not like, we become better in touch with "what we are", and increase our chances for success.

Quick read, well written, fairly useful information from a big picture point of view. Recommended.

BO Bows In Respect

I guess BO must know where all the oil comes from!!

90% of Guns

The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S. - Presidential Politics | Political News - FOXNews.com

Common sense would tell you that the statement "90% of the guns used in crime in Mexico come from the US" is a lie. Virtually all of those guns are fully automatic, and fully auto guns are ALREADY illegal here, and have been since the '30s.

This article shows that the number comes from "Of those guns that have serial numbers indicating that they MIGHT come from the US and are sent here for tracing, 90% of them actually are from here"!

That is like saying that "90% of the crime committed in WI is committed by Minnesotans" when what you "meant" was that of the criminals that you found to have MN IDs, 90% of them actually turned out to be from MN".

Doesn't seem like a "mistake" does it? That is because it isn't -- it is an overt attempt to set the sheep up to support an "assault weapons" ban because "of all the harm our guns are causing in Mexico". This is how the lefty's and the MSM get the herd bleating in unison!

Steven's Charges Dropped

Some Alaskans See Stevens As Good As Vindicated : NPR

I'm sure this won't get nearly the coverage as his conviction one week before the election!! The article says "some Alaskan's think he would have won had he not been convicted the week before the election". Ya think?? Gee, he lost by a whole 1% even though he WAS convicted!! Sure glad that I have NPR to tell me that he MIGHT have won!!!

I wonder if this was reversed and a long time Democrat had lost, the Republicans had taken over the White House and the Congress with big margins, if there might be "one or two" media stories about how the legal system was used to take away a Senate seat???

Note, CNN finds there is some really big news this PM so the Steven's story can't make it on their page -- the HEADLINE is a "Struggle With Food Allergies"!!! Democrats outright manipulate an election to steal a Senate seat and then it turns out that they had no case!!!!

Not even a National Story!!!

Make Democrats Tax Exempt?

The Associated Press: Sebelius admits errors, pays $7,000 in back taxes

Can BO find **ANY** Democrats without tax issues? It just becomes clearer and clearer why they are so much in favor of high taxes!! If you aren't going to pay them, it really doesn't make any difference how high they are!!

No Half Measures

Obama, Brown call for tough moves against economic crisis - CNN.com

BO seems to believe that mankind controls it's own destiny and that there is no need to have "cycles". I wonder if that means he is due to banish death? I've heard that is unpopular with a number of people and gives them the "false impression" that many really important things are not within their control. Oh well, I guess that is old pre-BO irresponsibility talking. Now that BO has got it all in hand, the future is only sweetness and light!

"We've passed through an era of profound irresponsibility," Obama said at a joint news conference. "Now, we cannot afford half-measures and we cannot go back to the kind of risk-taking that leads to bubbles that inevitably burst. So we have a choice: We either shape our future or let events shape it for us."

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."