Saturday AM American Musings

 I woke up this AM after a nice relaxing evening at home watching "The Battle of the Bulge" off Netflix, having some pizza and doing some reading. I have 100's of things I ought to be doing, but I'm moving slow, drinking coffee and surfing the web.

A lot of folks seem extremely confused about "what happened to America"  from all sorts of angles, so I decided to write down some thoughts.

First, there is no "right to jobs", "right to some wage", or "right to a standard of living". All of it has to be EARNED in a world where competition is a fact for weeds and crops in fields, NFL teams in playoffs, and yes businesses, employers and even governments on the world stage. SOME of what is earned can be "re-distributed", but when a nation gets to the point where the top 10% of the folks are paying for 40% of the total budget, robbing Peter to pay Paul starts to get shaky.

California used to be close to the #1 state in the country for just about everything positive -- now it has a $20 Billion deficit and is losing 1,500 taxpayers a week and is ranked 40th in the Forbes ranking.  Detroit in the late 50's was a model for the nation, now vast sections of it look like a 3rd world country and MI is 47th. Meanwhile, Texas, the Dakotas and Utah are examples of states that are improving their rankings even in the current economic climate -- Texas is essentially the new CA now ranked 9th.

Most of the reasons ARE known -- strong property rights including low taxes, reasonable levels of regulation, stable/predictable tax/regulatory environment, well educated work force with minimal unionization and increasingly a university system that fosters innovation for new business creation make winners, the opposite makes losers.

There are some GREAT opportunities to understand what works and what doesn't:

• Virginia is #1, W Virginia is #50 -- right next to each other, the best and the worst!
  
• MN #11, IL #35, WI #40 -- these are states right around where I live. It is easy to put the rules for success from above against them and see why they are where they are, and what direction they seem to be going.
  

Essentially, our top 25 states ARE competitive on the world stage, but our bottom 25 are not. What has happened is that increasingly (with FL and TX as shining counter examples), our most populous states have slipped from the top 25 to the bottom 25, so nationally, we are worse off.

This isn't rocket science, it has pretty much been known since Genesis and the requirement for "the sweat of our brow". Policies that encourage education excellence, work, thrift and prudent risk taking and discourage the counter behaviors create growth. However, we seem intent on rewarding massive unionization and slipping results in education, increasing regulation and costs for employers, higher taxation for those that save and invest, and rewards (bail outs) for those that take IMPRUDENT risk, while trying to pay for those bail outs from the people that took prudent risks and created and retained some level of value.

I guess it is like my waistline -- I certainly KNOW that I need to eat less, but eating more "seems too good at the time".  I think we all basically know the answers to economics, we just "wish they were different". It would be wonderful if everyone could have a great standard of living, super jobs, lots of free entitlements, all without much in the way of hard classes, stress, long hours etc, and somebody would pay for it "somehow".

We have been going along thinking that some growing population of kids in the distant future was going to provide our wishes -- basically since the '30s. Sadly, nobody had enough kids, people lived too long, and the rest of the world didn't sit by and do nothing. The IOUs are coming due, and it appears we needed to have one last big national debt tantrum before we either get down to business, or decide on a standard of living that is more like the bottom half of the nations on the planet than what we currently have.

I guess that wisdom motivated me enough to at least LOOK at my work list. We will see how much it does from there!

American Progressivism, A Reader

The subject book, edited by Ronald Pestritto and William Atto provides a sampling of some of the key speeches and writings of key American "progressives". It is a sobering book.

"We today who stand fore the Progressive movement here in the United States are not wedded to any particular kind of machinery, save solely as means to the end desired. Our aim is to secure the real and not nominal rule of the people. With this purpose in view, we propose to do away with whatever in our government tends to secure privilege ..." (TR)

There you have it. Yes, it DOES include doing away with private property and the constitution as we know it, and the subjugation of any individual. The end is mob rule -- any means needed to get there is justified!

 "Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop."

"By tyranny, as we no fight it, we mean control of the law, of legislation and adjudication, by organizations which to not represent the people, by means which are private and selfish."

 Those quotes are from Woodrow Wilson. What is the problem? The rule of law. Everything ought to "evolve" to what "the people want". As if life did not "obey" the laws of physics (mechanics). At the core of progressivism is simple wishful thinking -- we can have what we want by voting for what we want and telling others to give it to us. It is a movement dedicated to the ends somehow not only justifying the means, but somehow creating the means.

"Now that mines are great social undertakings, and their products are sold at monopoly prices, has private ownership any basis is reason or ethics?" (Walter Rauschenbusch, theologian, social gospel movement"

Private property is obviously the root of American freedom and economic success, but it is the bane of those who are primarily driven by envy rather than productivity as progressives are. If a thing has value, then a progressive believes that everyone ought own it collectively -- which as we know from the USSR, means that the value is destroyed and everyone loses. No matter to the progressive -- better that all should starve than a few are able to earn their way to wealth through their efforts and at the same time save any from starving. The burning anger in the breast of the progressive for the success of that one person is worth the deaths of any number of people required so that his success can be "leveled".

While the book is useful and contains a lot of good material, I hesitate to recommend anyone but an academic or those hopelessly dedicated to looking at both sides reading it. There are no surprises here, "progressive" is synonomous with "anti-American" if America means anything different from "A standard European socialist state". If it doesn't, then why should there even BE an America?

Gitmo Obsession

RealClearPolitics - The Gitmo Obsession

This a slightly long quote, but worthy. The idea that closing Gitmo is going to have any effect on al-Qaeda recruitment has no connection to reality. It is either just a cynical political ploy (likely for BO), or complete blindness to the facts (common to many on the left).

Obama also sensibly suspended all transfers of Yemenis from Guantanamo. Nonetheless, Obama insisted on repeating his determination to close the prison, invoking his usual rationale of eliminating a rallying cry and recruiting tool for al-Qaeda.

Imagine that Guantanamo were to disappear tomorrow, swallowed in a giant tsunami. Do you think there'd be any less recruiting for al-Qaeda in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, London?

Jihadism's list of grievances against the West is not only self-replenishing but endlessly creative. Osama bin Laden's 1998 fatwa commanding universal jihad against America cited as its two top grievances our stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia and Iraqi suffering under anti-Saddam sanctions.

Today, there are virtually no U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. And the sanctions regime against Iraq was abolished years ago. Has al-Qaeda stopped recruiting? Ayman al-Zawahiri often invokes Andalusia in his speeches. For those not steeped in the multivolume lexicon of Islamist grievances, Andalusia refers to Iberia, lost by Islam to Christendom -- in 1492.

This is a fanatical religious sect dedicated to establishing the most oppressive medieval theocracy and therefore committed to unending war with America not just because it is infidel but because it represents modernity with its individual liberty, social equality (especially for women) and profound tolerance (religious, sexual, philosophical). You going to change that by evacuating Guantanamo?

Nevertheless, Obama will not change his determination to close Guantanamo. He is too politically committed. The only hope is that perhaps now he is offering his "recruiting" rationale out of political expediency rather than real belief. With suicide bombers in the air, cynicism is far less dangerous to the country than naivete.

Stalingrad

Finished the subject book by Antony Beevor last night. Incredible book that brings to stark light "how bad it can get". Very well written, very academic, even handed, historical and non-sensational. But even with a clinical description, the horror of having two totalitarian regimes in conflict is very instructive. It is impossible to convey the grinding destruction, cold, hunger, lice, pain, death and just flat out despair. The total military dead was nearly a million German, far more than that for USSR. Soviet civilian casualties ran into the millions as well.

I'm not going to try to pick out specific anecdotes, since there are just too many -- the descriptions of the cold, the fighting, the hunger, the desolate steppe and a myriad of other things will likely stay with me for a long time, but given the three winters of struggle, it is the context that really brings it all home.

Some thoughts:

• The fact that "central government control is the problem" is really brought home here. Communist, Fascist, it really makes no difference -- BOTH demand that the individual be subordinated to the state and that is the only way this level of disaster is possible. "LEFT wing" is ANY form of state control and loss of individual rights. Communist / Fascist / Socialist / Monarchy / etc ... FREEDOM only exists in the "middle right". "Libertarian Republic" -- what the USA used to be! 
• BOTH sides were rife with "political officers" -- SS / NKVD, whose job it was to propogandize and "insure loyalty". Both sides in some situations had "2nd fronts" to shoot deserters from the main front. Worse for the USSR, but problem for both. 
• Generals needing to get orders from the top to do obvious things or risk being shot, and the fact that providing real information to either Stalin or Hitler could easily result in people being shot made both sides make gigantic errors. 
• Once you let the government take over there are ample numbers of folks to "do the bidding" of whomever, and their "morals" are simply about supporting the regime since it supports them.

Highly recommended, a warning for the age of BOism!

A Tea Party Future?

Op-Ed Columnist - The Tea Party Teens - NYTimes.com

The tea party movement is mostly famous for its flamboyant fringe. But it is now more popular than either major party. According to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 41 percent of Americans have a positive view of the tea party movement. Only 35 percent of Americans have a positive view of the Democrats and only 28 percent have a positive view of the Republican Party.

Imagine a movement that is universally derided and peppered with sexual slurs by the MSM and the Democrats for the better part of the year, but STILL is up to a 41% positive in polling! One has to wonder about a political party and media that find it intelligent to deride 41% of the electorate.

BOcare and Mayo

Medicare and the Mayo Clinic - The Boston Globe

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a branch of the US Department of Health and Human Services, estimated last month that the Senate bill would squeeze $493 billion out of Medicare over the next 10 years. As a result, it cautioned, “providers for whom Medicare constitutes a substantive portion of their business could find it difficult to remain profitable and . . . might end their participation in the program (possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries).’’ In short, the Democratic understanding of health care reform - more government power to set prices, combined with reduced freedom for individuals - will make medical care harder to come by: an Economics 101 lesson in the pitfalls of price controls.

Just imagine the howls of protest if the Republicans were trying to squeeze $500 Billion out of "needy seniors"!! Oh the horror that would be trumpeted from every front page and coffee shop. Since it is BO and the Dems, we hear barely a whisper.

Mayo has stopped taking Medicare patients in Arizona. BO held up Mayo as the shining example of "doing it right", but the stench of BOcare has sent them retching for the door.

Ahead of His Time

Op-Ed Columnist - That 1937 Feeling - NYTimes.com

Gee Paul, how did we get to '37? FDR took over in '33, BO took over in '09. Isn't this "'34"? I'd expect more destruction before 2011, and THEN of course BO like FDR will HAVE to declare his programs a raging success to be re-elected the next year in 2012 as FDR was in '38. Most likely, had it not been for WWII on the horizon, FDR would have lost in '38 and the US would have been a better place.

Will BO have the "luck" of a major terrorist attack in '12 to assist in "BO II, The Final Solution"?

I suppose the lefties are already hoping.

Fighting Over Scraps of Nothing

RealClearPolitics - Fighting Over the Squandered Decade

EJ is a nice well respected far lefty, and I think he does a good job of laying out the false choices of the supposed "left / right" dichotomy that I increasingly reject. Both Democrats and Republicans of today are very far to the left in terms of the America of 1900. We have been on the "wrong track" for essentially 100 years and part of how it shows is that most of our arguments are so false that we don't even realize what they are about.

I'm afraid that the past 10 years will be seen as a time when the United States badly lost its way by using our military power carelessly, misunderstanding the real challenges to our long-term security, and pursuing domestic policies that constrained our options for the future while needlessly threatening our prosperity.

"Afraid"? Don't you mean that you "fervently hope"? Later in the article he is going to hold up the 60's and the 30's as exemplary -- the 30's involved ignoring the rising threat of Fascism and a world war that followed, the 60's brought us Vietnam and the 70's economic collapse that followed (EJ fails to remember the existence of the 70's). EJ fervently hopes that Bush is seen as "the cause" of what he probably realizes will be the disastrous decade of the teens given the policies that BO has already embarked on. What are the actual drivers of the deficis? FICA, Medicare and other entitlements -- policies of the 30's and 60's. Dionne has a nice sleight of hand.

Domestically, Obama inherited an economic catastrophe. Dealing with the wreckage required a large expenditure of public funds that increased a deficit already bloated by the previous president's decision to fight two wars and to cut taxes at the same time. Bush's defenders, preferring to focus attention away from this earlier period of irresponsibility, act as if the world began on Jan. 20, 2009, by way of saddling Obama with the blame for everything that now ails us. But the previous eight years cannot be wished away.

I certainly hope that Democrats are in complete agreement that who controls congress is meaningless. They took over in '07, and it was obvious that they were going to do so in '06. If the Republican's could manage to wrest control in '10, I'm sure that EJ would never blame any subsequent problems on them. It must be a tidy world that is split into "Bush defenders" and "reasonable people". Did deficits start with Bush? Other than '69 and '99, we have always had deficits since the '30s. The major false choice here is that there is somehow a big difference between W and BO -- W created a medicare drug benefit that is about as big a bloat as something like half of BOcare. Over even the medium term, that alone is more costly than the "two wars". It is always interesting to me how the liberal retrospectives of the decade somehow tend to ignore 9-11. Were BOTH wars optional? Should Bush have raised taxes into the teeth of the recession that he was handed from the Clinton administration after the dot com crash and the 9-11 shock?

It should not surprise us that the battle for the future will be shaped by struggles over the past. How often over the last 40 years have conservatives defended their policies in the name of rolling back "the excesses of the '60s"? For even longer, liberals were charged with being locked into "the New Deal approaches of the 1930s." Liberals, in turn, pointed proudly to both eras as times of unparalleled social advance. 

As for the 1980s, they remain a positive reference point for conservatives even as progressives condemn the Age of Reagan for opening the way to the deregulatory excesses that led to the recent downturn.

I'd say that the core difference is really there -- the 30's and the 60's gave us a host of entitlements and expansion of government that have saddled us with ever increasing debt, unfunded liabilities, and loss of the sense of individual responsibility to save to provide for ones own retirement. Both eras also gave us significant wars -- WWII and Vietnam. If Iraq was a "war of convenience", then Vietnam was even more so -- NOBODY attacked us. It is very interesting to try to claim that the subprime bubble is a product of "Reagan deregulatory excess". There is plenty of blame to go around, but the key element in sub-prime was the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 that forces lenders down the path of finding ways to loan money to people that actually didn't qualify for loans. It simply got out of hand.

BOTH parties have been giving away the store for 100 years. The original "progressives" were led by Teddy Roosevelt, supposedly a Republican. Wilson, FDR, Johnson, Nixon and Carter moved the "progressive" ball farther -- Nixon was big on the environment, lots of government controls and big government in general. Yes, Reagan did away with enough of the excesses of 80 years of government fattening to ignite the best period of economic growth in our history, but he did NOTHING to fix the entitlements mess, and in fact did the biggest tax INCREASE in history with the FICA/Medicare bill that increased the rate and allowed the caps to keep rising.

We need a MASSIVE entitlement REDUCTION -- but we are getting the exact opposite!

What Ever Happened to the US?

Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out - New York Times

Scientists and technologists have the same uneasy status in our society as the Jedi in the Galactic Republic. They are scorned by the cultural left and the cultural right, and young people avoid science and math classes in hordes. The tedious particulars of keeping ourselves alive, comfortable and free are being taken offline to countries where people are happy to sweat the details, as long as we have some foreign exchange left to send their way. Nothing is more seductive than to think that we, like the Jedi, could be masters of the most advanced technologies while living simple lives: to have a geek standard of living and spend our copious leisure time vegging out.

If the "Star Wars" movies are remembered a century from now, it'll be because they are such exact parables for this state of affairs. Young people in other countries will watch them in classrooms as an answer to the question: Whatever became of that big rich country that used to buy the stuff we make? The answer: It went the way of the old Republic.

Listened to MPR chortling over a judge deciding that the governor has no right to use his unallotment power to cut funding to some group or the other. We live in a "make it so" world where ever more of the teeming masses believe they have a "right" to everything from talks with a shrink to a flat screen TV -- oh, and while that is being gotten up for them, please be sure it has a negative carbon footprint. People know how less and less of how and why their lives operate, but they feel that they are totally justified to get more of whatever they want at someone else's expense, and complain that it wasn't acquired with a cheap enough rate from the folks that knew how to do it!!

Avatar: "Dances With Ewoks"

First of all, I went to see the movie with the family last night in 3D and it was great, a real trip -- immersive, enjoyable, beautiful, exciting and a lot of fun, go see it. I pretty much checked my brain at the door and just thought of it as an amusement park theme thrill ride, and it did extremely well at that level.

The blog title is a mostly tongue in cheek joke -- someone else on FB had mentioned the "Dances With Wolves" connection and when they were in the forest retreating, the Ewoks came to mind. There is some truth to the pangs of it being a really good ride, but it IS quite long for the volume of  insanely shallow plot while trotting out new effects. I think it leaves an "ontological hangover".

This isn't a movie that I'd worry about "spoilers" -- it is the all formula all the time, good vs evil, princess kisses frog, earth mother vs war god father, buddy bonding, technology vs nature, etc. with a blatant attempt at being a "Wizard of Oz" (color), Star Wars" (special effects), Toy Story (all computer generated imagery), etc  blockbuster that changes the industry for the digital / 3D technology. It may, but it seems a bit "tarted up" in trying.

My stream of consciousness:

• Must we ALWAYS suspend tactical awareness in odd ways? Humans can't breath the air on the planet. Your forces have to break off close contact with the core human base because of strong difference of operational objectives/outlook. You are willing to "go native". You have a group of "natives" at your disposal. Take control of the air supply in some innovative way for gods sake! You only have to put up with pompous ass old marines for a max of 4 min if they won't negotiate on air issues!
• I think "We're not in Kansas anymore" is a bit too much of a wishful reference to Wizard of Oz being the first film of the color eara -- 3D was interesting, but I think it is "always" going to be a high stakes tech two edged sword on the border of "immersive" vs "intrusive". It isn't color.
  
• OK, so we quit paying attention to religion, philosophy and have ditched western culture for the "noble savage". How does a guy worth over $100 million spend $300+ million on popcorn munching entertainment that supposedly disses the war god Yahweh "man has dominion" material / technical model for the eco green nurturing earth mother mixed with Klingon warrior uses the force model with a straight face? Only in America circa early 21st century. Oh, and the main character makes this transition while inhabiting a bio-engineered amalgam of human and alien DNA linked up by some sort of MRI / wifi from the Star Trek school of technology. Maybe there is a meta humor statement here of this is what happens when any concept of "the good" or "the sacred" is forcefully removed from the Prometheus / Pandora / etc world of myth? I mean, he named the planet "Pandora" -- he must have SOME understanding of mythology. 
• The witch goddess psuedo orgy pagan transfer of human to "golem" TWICE (attempted) was just a bit much. Yes, yes, we got it -- western civilization murdered mother earth. Father god = evil. Mother god = good. Mother god get angry, mother god kill just like daddy. Mother god better though -- use spears and arrows and have swaying tail and chanting at home rather than nasty polluting boy toys with smoke, fire, video games and enough comfort to drink your coffee while mass murdering. Those men are all alike -- and no doubt they would waste time watching football on Sunday rather than tending the flowers too!
  

I really don't need to be reminded "this is just entertainment", I did have fun DURING the film. Is there really any reason to go QUITE as far out on the "noble savage vs technology" theme?. MUST we have TOTAL boobs on the side of technology (the compound reminded me of Jurrasic Park)? Is it REALLY "all or nothing"? The Pandora planet is 100% nurturing for those that are adapted -- with luminescent plants for the night, giant leaves to enfold you in secure sleep, and lovely creatures for you to "plug in" in order to have all the high speed thrills and spills of your earthly atv, hang glider, mountain climb, etc.Come to mommy and you can have everything if you just "grow up" like mommy says is best. There there now, mommy can provide with just a few simple rituals of "joining". So much better than awful "separation".

Damn -- daddy threw us out of Eden. If ONLY we were lucky enough to have a mommy god,  it would have been so much better! At least we got to play with all our nature destroying daddy tech computers and build us one hell of an amusement film making mommy look nice while we are destroying the planet!

Only a SLIGHT Double Standard!

Power Line - In which the Strib arrives late to the case

Golly Mark Dayton had some struggles in his life -- depression, alcoholism, a couple of dissolved marriages. He had plenty of erratic behavior, and to listen to him talk was painful -- he seemed to be unaware of a ton of things. For example he thought that a call about "depleted uranium" used in military projectiles was rather about "uranium being depleted -- as in short". He kept mumbling about how he was unaware, but would look into it even though Gary Eichten kept trying to bail him out.

So how long would we not know about such things from a Republican? I had never heard a word about any of it relative to Dayton, even though he apparently covered it in detail to everyone on his Christmas card list! One would think that media would at least report it in that case, but NADA! I guess we have no right to know -- as long as we are talking about a Democrat!

The "Spirit" of Ted Kennedy

Incredible! If this doesn't hit the MSM they are COMPLETELY out to lunch! The guy that authored BOcare drunk on the Senate floor!!

Judaism: A Way of Being

Really enjoyed the subject book by Davide Gelertner. Gelernter is special to me because he is a leading computer scientist teaching at Yale, he survived an attack by the Unabomber, and he was the doctoral adviser for a coworker from Haifa Israel (Michael Factor)

He opens in the preface with the great questions of human existence:

1. How do we understand our place in the unspeakable vastness of creation?
2. Is physical creation all there is?
3. How do I order my life as a human being?
4. Does life have a goal (purpose) beyond comfort, power, prosperity, survival?

He breaks Judaism into four key theme images:

1. Separation -- From the "waters" in creation, at the Red Sea, at the Jordan, at birth, and with the Sabbath. God creates a separation for life, for holiness, for transcendence. Man is not part of nature, he is held separate and must struggle with nature. Man is made in God's image, not God in man's. That is paganism, of which the end is simply man worshiping himself. "Jews defy nature by defying its most fundamental impulse -- the onrush of chaos, reducing all things to one level, abolishing all distinctions". How profound, and how at odds with the onrush of chaos of our current political climate.
2. The veil -- God can not be seen, imagined, named. He is "on the other side", but paradoxically, deep within. He is not nature, he is behind nature. He is not man, he is behind man -- and what sets us apart from nature is his image. Maybe that is what it means to be conscious, maybe not that simple.
3. Perfect asymmetry -- God is one but man is two, male and female. "The force field between maleness and femaleness creates marriage and colors the whole universe. But the modern attempt to make the two sexes interchangeable, shorting out the battery that operates civilization, wiring it's poles together is an act of aggression against both sanctity and humanity."
4. The inward pilgrimage -- "The still small voice".

"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" (Psalms 14:1). Today the atheist publishes a book proudly proclaiming his "wisdom". Such an atheist is like an emotionally frigid philosopher who says in his heart "there is no love in the world." Should he wish to change this apparent state of affairs, he need only love someone and accept love in return. But if he chooses not to, he must understand that he has made an assertion not about the world, but about himself. If you see no God in the universe, striving to make yourself holy (or godly) will change your way of seeing."

Having read a couple atheist authors in the last couple of years (Dawkins, Harris), that particular paragraph struck me.

The book is relatively short, but also quite information dense. I recommend it highly, even if the Hebrew terms do tend to get in the way from time to time. It is infused with the core of the special nature of Israel -- that they are the only embodiment of God that exists on earth since he "withdrew his presence" after the loss of the Ark. For a Christian, one really sees the stark contrast between "God With Us" and "the veil", and it gives a whole new meaning to "the veil of the temple was rent".

I KNOW I didn't "get it all", but it is a marvelously well and lovingly written book by a highly intelligent and spiritual man.

Victory or Death

It's long, but it really needs to be watched.

AGW Enemy Action?

Power Line - Three Times Is Enemy Action

Nice set of pictures. Both sides can be guilty of assigning "divine justice" to things -- the left often found Katrina to be "mother earth sent", and some conservatives thought it was "justice for New Orleans". The assignment of cosmic significance to earthbound affairs is nothing new at all, and I'd argue it is common for the human.

The Bard:

Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?