A Bright Future

Op-Ed Columnist - Relax, We’ll Be Fine - NYTimes.com

David Brooks is the "conservative" at the NYT, which means he is a Socialist rather than a Marxist. I like optimism, especially warranted optimism. We finally have some optimism, I'm just afraid we already gutted the goose that lays the golden eggs.

The United States already measures at the top or close to the top of nearly every global measure of economic competitiveness. A comprehensive 2008 Rand Corporation study found that the U.S. leads the world in scientific and technological development. The U.S. now accounts for a third of the world’s research-and-development spending. Partly as a result, the average American worker is nearly 10 times more productive than the average Chinese worker, a gap that will close but not go away in our lifetimes.

A 2008 study? Gee, what policies had the US been operating under since '81, other than during a very short Clinton induced bender in '93-'94 before we were saved by a Republican Congress? I really don't think outlets like the NYT thought that we did so much R&D, top or close to top in every measure, 10x as productive as the Chinese -- but maybe I was asleep in '08. I could have sworn that '08 was the year that "Change" was the only thing that counted ... things were so bad that certainly ANYTHING would be better than Bush!

This produces a lot of dynamism. As Stephen J. Rose points out in his book “Rebound: Why America Will Emerge Stronger From the Financial Crisis,” when income is adjusted for family size, the percentage of prime-age American adults earning between $35,000 and $70,000 declined by 12 points between 1979 and 2007. But that’s largely because the percentage earning more than $105,000 increased by 14 points. Over the last 10 years, 60 percent of Americans made more than $100,000 in at least one of those years, and 40 percent had incomes that high for at least three.

Note ... 2007. I listen to MPR, I can't count how often I was made aware of the "decline in the middle class". Somehow (even though I've been aware of it from "biased conservative sources") they always failed to mention that the largest reason for that is the fact that 14% of folks went UP to earning over $105K. Shocking. How could they miss that statistic???

Well, we are in the 4th year of Democrats in congress and the 2nd year of BO, so the MSM is recognizing good news. That is good to see. It is a bit disconserting to realize how dense they feel that their supporters really are to believe that news from '07 / '08 is likely to help us much now. Nancy, Harry and BO have been very busy with "change" since '07. Added regulations, rewards for failure, penalties for success, kickbacks to their supporters in unions and industry, vast increases in low productivity government workers, etc. Yes, I whole heartedly agree that while we still had huge problems in '08 ( sub-prime mortgages heavily due to FANNIE / FREDDIE, structural deficits do to unaffordable FICA / Medicare, costly regulations like Sarbanes - Oxley, etc) -- we were WAY ahead of where we are now.

So, we were in great shape in '07 and '08 based on long standing policies. The smart thing was to CHANGE those policies to be more like the folks that we were beating back then. If football was like liberal thinking; if your team is running the West Coast offense and winning consecutive Super Bowls, while the teams you are beating are mostly running the Wishbone, the smart thing to do is to start running the Wishbone, start losing, then point back at the years you ran the West Coast and use that as an indication that you have a bright future!

Tipping Over Series of Tubes

I heard from my teen/early 20's sons about the stupidity of the "series of tubes" over and over again. Apparently it was a hot item on John Stewart. If you have the stomach to listen to the long versions of these, I'll let you draw your own conclusions about relative intelligence. Then draw your own conclusions about which one gets the most MSM coverage!

BTW, I'd never listened to the Steven's one before, from listening to the whole thing -- while clearly not an Internet expert, it seems pretty clear that he was using the very standard metaphor that all of us that actually work on technology. Usually "pipes", but not PHYSICAL ... just a way to think of it. 

Positive Ridicule

Obama, in Maine, Needles Republicans Over Calls to Repeal Health Care Overhaul - NYTimes.com

Mr. Obama ridiculed Republicans for apocalyptic predictions about the health care program and needled them about their campaign platform calling for repeal, repeating the “Go for it” challenge he issued in Iowa last week.

Bush of course was called extremely arrogant for saying "bring it on" to terrorists. Democrats reveled in any sign that America's troops were losing in Iraq, pushing that joy right to the limits as their "wisdom" meant declaring our efforts "lost" on a number of occasions, including the spring of '07 after Bush announced the surge. I don't believe he ever ridiculed Democrats.

Cheering for defeat in Iraq was of course "patriotic" from the MSM POV as long as Bush was in office--along with hailing any jobs report that was "below estimates" as a sign of "a jobless recovery", even after the 9-11 attacks. The wars, Gitmo, the Patriot Act, offshore drilling, and a host of other things are now either "no news" or "good" as long as we have BO in the big chair.

My view is that the MSM actually does what I consider to be a decent job when there is a Republican in the oval office. ALL leadership deserves to be 2nd guessed and questioned -- and even ridiculed a little. The late night TV folks do a decent job of that when a Republican is in, but they can't even find it in their liberal souls to make some fun of BO saying company health insurance was going to go DOWN by "3000%".  They do go too far when they cheer for America's defeat at war however. Why can't they find it in their professional responsibility to criticize the elected officials that they agree with? Why have an "adversarial press" when they turn into a lapdog press when their guy is in?

Those of us that have checked into BO's background know that ridicule is #5 on his list of "commandments" from his own personal hero, Saul Alinsky. It is in his own personal code to ridicule the opposition, but the MSM shows their true colors just a bit too much when they revel in his ridicule of Republicans, but considers any opposition to his programs by Republicans to be tantamount to treason.

I've long ago given up on the myth of an "unbiased press". I just wish the rest of the country would recognize it as the dangerous myth it is. The NYT, NPR, CBS, CNN, etc are simply "Fox News on the left". They are every bit as "faux" as Fox, it is simply that the 20% of the left realize that they can't continue to govern the 80% in the middle - right if the opposition viewpoint is openly expressed.

The OTHER Threats

Karl Rove heckled, called 'war criminal' at book event - CNN.com

Last week we heard a lot about "uncivil Republicans" and threats on Democrats. Above you see a link to Karl Rove being heckled Code Pink -- hardly news, Republicans endure heckling, threats and actual attacks all the time.

Last week the MSM was all primed to watch the Tea Party gathering at Searchlight NV to see if there were threats and violence -- there were http://www.foundingbloggers.com/wordpress/2010/03/harry-reid-supporters-threaten-violence-against-breitbart-at-tea-party-protest/ but it wasn't newsworthy since the perpetrators were Reid supporters.

The Democrats also used the idea of "incivility" in a campaign mailing last week and Axlerod on weekend shout shows talked about how "Republicans bear responsibility for the heated rhetoric". This week, there is an arrest for a death threat against a REPUBLICAN Congressman.

Notice a pattern? Just think for a moment. JFK - shot by a Castro supporter that had been to the USSR, RFK, shot by a Palestinian immigrant, MLK, shot by James Earl Ray, small time criminal -- not many of those are Republicans.

Jerry Ford was shot at twice by Manson followers -- pretty unlikely they were right wing. Reagan was shot by a guy that was trying to get a date with Jody Foster -- doesn't sound very political to me.

Calling Republicans names and claiming that they are "fascists", "taking your rights" and demanding protests and disruption is so standard as to be boring. Anyone say anything bad about a Democrat? Oh, wow, better call out the Gaurd!

Welcome To A Mismanaged Third World Nation

Robert J. Samuelson - With health bill, Obama has sown the seeds of a budget crisis - washingtonpost.com

When historians recount the momentous events of recent weeks, they will note a curious coincidence. On March 15, Moody's Investors Service -- the bond rating agency -- published a paper warning that the exploding U.S. government debt could cause a downgrade of Treasury bonds. Just six days later, the House of Representatives passed President Obama's health-care legislation costing $900 billion or so over a decade and worsening an already-bleak budget outlook.

He covers the accounting sleight of hands that turn the supposed "savings" into added deficit as well. Worth a read.

The Title Is Right

Op-Ed Columnist - Going to Extreme - NYTimes.com

Reasonable people need to be aware of what gets spewed from the left, as painful as it might be.

Paul likes to revel the losses of the other side, but of course a "reasonable other side" would roll over, put their legs up, and let Paul and his buddies kick them in the head. Any form of backbone in opposition is something that must be thoroughly dishonored from the left.

Here is his assertion about Democrats:

All of this goes far beyond politics as usual. Democrats had a lot of harsh things to say about former President George W. Bush — but you’ll search in vain for anything comparably menacing, anything that even hinted at an appeal to violence, from members of Congress, let alone senior party officials.

Let's see if we can find any counter example rhetoric on the net. Here we have BO in Philly in the summer of '08. Sounds nice doesn't it?

That’s exactly what Barack Obama said he would do to counter Republican attacks “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said at a Philadelphia fundraiser Friday night. “Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”

Here is Al Gore:

The Bush administration works closely with a network of rapid response digital brownshirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for 'undermining support for our troops.'

Why is Krugman still in the NYTs?

Closing Gitmo "Complicated"

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Axelrod: still no date for closing Guantanamo Bay facility « - Blogs from CNN.com

I believe we're going to get there, but it's complicated," David Axelrod told the CNN program "State of the Union," adding that there has been progress toward closing the facility.

I think we will get to fusion energy as well.

So if Gitmo was a "recruiting device for terrorists" under Bush, why isn't it now? Well, because it never was, it was a POLITICAL DEVICE ... it served it's purpose, so no hurry. It is hard, expensive and damaging to security to close it, but if you are BO, those costs are worth the political gain it gave him as a campaign issue, especially since the "adversarial press" is the "lapdog press" for him.

Remember Recess Appointments Being Big News?

Democrats, Republicans spar over Obama's recess appointments - CNN.com

Remember when the news media went berserk over recess appointments? John Bolton is a name that comes to mind.

Expect anything noisy out of this, even though it sounds like one of them is a union lawyer who even Democrats have signed up to filibuster? (if Republican's sign up, that is called "bi-partisanship" ... in case you forget)

Income Gap

The Government Pay Boom - WSJ.com

Now here is an income gap that isn't likely to get a lot of media coverage. For every $1 earned in an equivalent private sector job, a government worker gets $1.45. Sweet ... if you are not receiving vs the paying end, and heck, there are more government workers and less private workers all the time, so what the heck?

What if government workers earned the average of what private workers earn? States and localities would save $339 billion a year from their more than $2.1 trillion budgets. These savings are larger than the combined estimated deficits for 2010 and 2011 of every state in America.

Oh, deficits. Spoil sport. This seems like a story worth VERY little coverage in the MSM. Let's see if they surprise me.

Shoot the Messenger!

Democrats threaten companies hit hard by health care bill | Washington Examiner

Worth reading through. A number companies realize that BOcare is going to cost them a lot of money, so they are reporting it in their financial forward looking statements and taking charges as SOX and other Federal regulations demand. Of course, the emperor does not like being told not only that he has no clothes along with the fact that the view is not flattering.

What is the logical thing to do? Shoot the messenger of course!

Bankrupt

We live in a morally, spiritually, financially and politically bankrupt nation. The passage of BOcare in the corrupt way it happened after the election of Brown in MA shows that the left officially doesn't respect either the Constitution nor the electorate.

Where to from here? Down. Way down. When you are looking forward to roasted rat as "your first good meal in a month", remember, you once lived in a great country where men were free, God was revered, laws and institutions were respected, and everyone had both rights and responsibility.

We failed and fell. Now we suffer the consequences.

Ethics of Rhetoric, Richard Weaver

Confession: I like to read more than I like to write. Maybe to put it more correctly, reading is more of an escape for me than writing. That means that there is a stack of books that have been read, but not blogged on, and this is the highest priority. The book is FANTASTIC, if 10-20% of Americans could manage to read it, the quality of our dialogue and understanding of ourselves and the universe would rise exponentially!

"Our difficulty with the Phaedrus may be that our interpretation has been too literal and too topical". It doesn't get a lot closer to the bone than that for a technocratic culture that has lost most of what it means to be human!

In response to a question if Socrates really believes if something in the myth of Boreas and Oreithyia is true, Weaver writes:

"The answer of Socrates is that many tales are open to this kind of rationalization, but the result is tedious and irrelevant. It is irrelevant because our chief concern is with the nature of man, and it is beside the point to probe into such matters while we are yet ignorant of ourselves. The scientific criticism of Greek mythology, which may be likened to the scientific criticism of the myths of the Bible in our own day, produces at best "a boorish sort of wisdom". It is a limitation to suppose that the truth of the story lies in its historicity."

*** historicity can be thought of as "scientific history" -- perfectly factual, verifiable, evidence based history -- which really can't exist, because even the MOST learned current historians can't possibly share the LIVED CONTEXT of the time. As opposed to the "narrative of history". Since all human thought is "story based", so the left attempts to make the "historical story" into an "untrue myth", while making the present into "factual truth" -- or really a "false truth" that they use their dominance to present as "factually true".

Or to put it in Weaver's words: "... some things are best told by parable and some perhaps discoverable only by parable. Real investigation goes forward with the help of analogy."

We humans have forgotten that all each of us  ever "know" is "known" by a mere single human being's perception (our own). We don't really understand human beings. Consciousness is mostly a mystery. We can't create life, and it is likely that even if we could, our understanding of it would be no greater (maybe less?). The Greeks and Romans understood this, as did our founding fathers -- as in "The Closing of the American Mind", modern man has forgotten.

The start of the book has a discourse between Phaedrus and Socrates on the thought that "people should grant favors to non-lovers rather than to lovers". The essential point is that facts and dialectic are more "real" than rhetoric (lovers speech), so they are "the good". The counter argument is that we are humans, and nobody is moved, nor really "takes facts to heart". Three person's are introduced; the non-lover, the evil lover and the noble lover. Again, "love" is the idea of "bringing the emotions in".

The non-lover is straightforward -- facts and rational argument. Lots of respect for the audience, the assumption being that "they will make up their own mind" (Bush). The noble lover is the leader or speaker that cares deeply (loves) their constituency of people of lesser gifts, and uses his soaring rhetoric to take them to a better place than they would go to otherwise ... what a conservative would see Reagan as, or a liberal would see Obama as.

The evil lover is essentially what the conservative sees Obama as, and many liberals saw Reagan as -- just using the electorate for their own means. Pulling the wool over the eyes of the simpler masses.

As we look now for the parallel in language, we find ourselves confronting the 2nd alternative: speech which influences us in the direction of evil. This we shall call base rhetoric because it's end is the exploitation which Socrates has been condemning. We find the base rhetoric hates that which is opposed, or is equal or better because all such things are impediments to its will, and in the last analysis it knows only its will. Truth is the stubborn, objective restraint which this will endeavors to overcome. Base rhetoric is therefore always trying to keep it's objects from the support which personal courage, noble associations, and divine philosophy provide to a man.

The day that the Democrats conspire to use "Deem and Pass" to ram health care through the congress is a great day to write this. The Democrats want no "market", no Constitution, and in the final analysis, no rules at all to stand in the way of their will to power!

The next section of the book is an excellent discourse on the relationship of fact, dialectic and rhetoric in the context of the "Scopes Monkey Trial". How one of the major problems of discourse, and especially modern discourse is "What is the question?" Are we talking means or goals? Do we believe in law and the Constitution, or did someone "decide behind the curtain" that we were going to throw them out in the name of some "higher value" (like "equality", or "the "right" of health care)?

There follows an excellent discussion that might be titled "ye shall know them by their arguments". Edmund Burke is exposed by this analysis as essentially a liberal, since his arguments are almost always from circumstance, and that is the ground that the liberal feels best upon. "We HAVE to do SOMETHING, there are 45 million uninsured in this country"!

Lincoln is shown as a conservative, as his most standard argument is from definition. "If a negro is a man, then ... let me show how you in fact recognize him as a man ....".  Here is an example from Lincoln:

"Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored--contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between right and wrong: vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nore a dead man; such a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true men do care ..."

There are excellent discussions on how circumstance tends to better appeal to the common man, since examples can be brought to the front (BO putting up someone on stage that lost their insurance, had to stop cancer treatment, or whatever) ... circumstance is easy because it is real and immediate, and allows us to "see ourselves in their place".

Right and wrong, reality, means, principle -- these things are hard. Most of our supposed "good" today is claiming to feel so bad we will send someone a bad check, or demand that our richer neighbor send money to help -- or that our children or grandchildren  cover the cost of our "doing good under the circumstances". We are besieged with base rhetoric;  "how can you stand there doing NOTHING when people are going broke" -- as if random action in the face of problems was somehow virtuous.

This book is certainly not "easy", but I think it is within the grasp of most, and it is an excellent introduction to what is actually going on behind the curtain of a lot of the communication that we are bombarded with today. Highly recommended!

The BO Narrative

The Obama "Narrative" Narrative - Reason Magazine

Good little article, read it. Simple facts:

1. Humans explain the world in stories (narrative) ... that is just how our minds work
2. The real world isn't actually a story -- enter "gap"
3. Campaigning is pure story (narrative) ... governing has to deal with the real world.
   

So the master reductionist David Brooks judges President Obama to be "the most determined education reformer in the modern presidency" without citing a single shred of the Obama administration's real-world education policy (which has—surprise!—ladeled unprecedented sums of money to the unreformed status quo). Not a day goes by without some semi-well-regarded commentator stating as fact that George W. Bush helped to intentionally "sap" the "strength" and even "disable" the federal government, leading directly to the financial crisis and various other horrors. I can't begin to tell you how often I watch reporters' jaws drop when I mention that, actually, Bush grew the federal government at a rate not seen since LBJ and jacked up regulations (including on the financial industry) in a way that would make Bill Clinton blush.

BOcare Crossroads

The ObamaCare Crossroads - WSJ.com

They voted on Christmas eve. If they could just hold off a couple more weeks and vote again on Easter, the symbolism of the "Deem N Pass" would be more complete for me. I guess just voting on a Sunday will have to cover it. Couple good sobering paragraphs on what we have wrought as a nation by the election of this Luo radical and assorted henchmen.

With the House's climactic vote on ObamaCare tomorrow, Democrats are on the cusp of a profound and historic mistake, comparable in our view to the Smoot-Hawley tariff and FDR's National Industrial Recovery Act. Everyone is preoccupied now with the politics, but ultimately at stake on Sunday is the kind of country America will be.

The consequences of this bill will not only be destructive for the health-care system and the country's fiscal condition, though those will be bad enough. Inextricably bound up in a plan as far-reaching and ambitious as ObamaCare are also larger questions about the role of government, the dynamism of American enterprise and the nature of a free society. Above anything else, this explains why Democrats have had such trouble convincing the public, let alone their own Members.

Honesty, A Rare Democrat Policy

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/03/18/dem_congressman_if_you_dont_tie_our_hands_we_will_keep_stealing.html

"If you don't tie our hands, we will keep stealing". The truth is so simple, and unfortunately it applies to both parties. Could we finally all just get it?