Let's Burn the Mosque

Obama: Quran-burning plan is 'recruitment bonanza for al Qaeda' - CNN.com

How DOES the mind of BO operate? On the Mosque issue, he is a "constitutional defender" -- well, of COURSE they have a legal right to build a Mosque, but DO YOU SUPPORT IT???  Which of course, he really does, but he sorta backpedaled on the "wisdom of it". The Victory Mosque will be an excellent recruiting tool for al Qaeda ... they don't have any other Victory Mosques at Ground Zero, and it will give explicit proof that they are winning and we are rubes.

Might some Islamic nuts put quaran burning by some hick in FL on their "hit parade"? Sure, but it isn't like they don't have THOUSANDS of grievances against us infidels anyway ... Israel, Democracy, loaning money for interest, allowing gays to live (uh, marry? I'm not sure they can even fathom that one), letting women vote and show their faces, US forces anywhere on "Muslim soil", made up things like US soliders flushing the Quran at Gitmo (Note, the MSM nor Democrats were hardly concerned at all about that hoax potentially killing US soliders. It made Gitmo look bad, which made W look bad -- WIN! ...  no matter how many soliders may have died over the supposed "added anger") ... we could go on and on ad nauseum. They are going to hate us until we praise allah and are under sharia law! GET USED TO IT!!!

The only thing that makes sense here is that to a liberal, consistency is NOT an issue!

Some other points:

• Must both the MSM and BO be such complete idiots and give this guy publicity? He has a congregation of FIFTY PEOPLE!!! Helllloooooo ... there is ZERO reason to make this an international issue!!!
• BTW, our media CLEARLY knows how to ignore things ... palestinian kids laughing and singing in the streets after 9-11, IGNORED. many many things in BOs first book ... IGNORED! All sorts of crap about "Community Organizers" ... IGNORED ... the list could go to PAGES.
• My God, BO is supposed to be PRESIDENT of the most powerful nation on earth. Doesn't SOME little buzzer go off in his supposedly brilliant little brain when he is commenting on what some nut with a congregation of FIFTY!!! people MIGHT do???? A first line manager at most tiny companies would be at least 2x that smart or they would ge GONE!

Liberal Help for BO

RealClearPolitics - Obama's Shrinking Presidency

One of the bad parts of being a liberal politician is that you have to rely on liberals for your support. Since liberals possess no underlying principles, and don't believe in the personal responsibility of anyone (except maybe rich Republicans), "liberal support" is something that I suspect makes the recipient shake their head as much as to be happy he has their "support" -- such as it is.

First of all, very little, if anything is ACTUALLY wrong -- the basic problem is that standard problem of "the stupid American". What is so disheartening is that Americans were absolutely BRILLIANT less than 24 months ago, but stupidity has set in yet again. Why? Well mostly the same old bugaboos -- stupid stupid rumors, innuendo, all that bad stuff. Like "W didn't fly when he should have, we have PROOF!" ... "W is a coke addict, and Laura sold the stuff in college", "Reagan is a complete dunce that is running the country based on astrology tables and sleeping in meetings" -- you know, that BAD STUFF, that only ever happens to Democrats because Fox news and talk radio just ignore the facts like the MSM never would! The MSM is always "fair and balanced", so you would never hear "bad stuff" about a Republican president.

Oh, yes, were you aware that both Ronnie and W were so stupid that it was hard to even measure how stupid they were? Yes, it is absolutely true, but somehow, through hook, crook and just blatant luck, they got just absolutely BRILLIANT handlers to somehow make them look way way better than they were -- even though the 20% or so truly smart Americans could still see their stupidity.

What is really really odd though is that guys like Carter and BO, and Slick Willie in his first two years, even though they are certifiable geniuses which is completely plain to all, they somehow manage to surround themselves with dunces that are almost as stupid and incompetent as republican presidents! It is a gigantic mystery how this happens, but it makes these brilliant democrat presidents come off as somehow lackluster when the opposite is true. Yes, they are victims, just like the rest of us!

You can read the whole piece, but I've summarized it faithfully -- it is just plain a sad state of affairs that is very very hard to fathom.

Iconoclast, by Gregory Burns

Very solid read on how the mind of an iconoclast works. By his definition,  "A person that does something that others say can't be done". That definition is a bit of an update -- originally it meant "breaker of icons" as in religious icons. The word morphed to at least something like the way I like to think of it "one who challenges the common view", which is my personal definition and one that I see as critical to us moving forward. It is also something that I naturally enjoy doing -- although I'm not nearly as successful as some of the really cool iconoclasts he uses as examples.

The book has a good general brain science, historical, psychology and other approaches to how iconoclasm works, doesn't, how you can get more of it, how you can more effective, etc. There are a lot of little examples and anecdotes of how humans are risk and especially loss averse. One, the "Ellsberg paradox" has two urns -- the left one with 10 white and 10 black marbles, the right one,  a different, but unknown ratio of black and white marbles. Subjects are asked which urn they would prefer to randomly pick a white marble, then the same question with a black marble. A very high percentage take both picks from the known left, but of course that makes no sense. You know the odds on the left are 50/50 ... if you took white from there, you are ASSUMING that black is in a higher percentage in the unknown jar. The fact that you take the known shows that you (like everyone else) are risk averse.

One of the other problems with the human brain is that we want to "go with the crowd", which isn't going to do much for innovation. Why?

All our primate cousins, and even the earliest hominids, have depended on their clans for survival. As a result, a million years of mammalian evolution have produced a human brain that values social contact and communication above all else. The way in which we interact with each other is, in many ways, more important than what our own eyes and ears tell us.

Of course, following the crowd does not an iconoclast make -- and in fact, part of being an iconoclast is almost always going to cause some friction with at least some of the crowd.

There is a very good section though on "connecting with iconoclasts" through familiarity and reputation, in which Picasso, an iconoclast who died popular and rich, and Van Gogh, who died penniless and alone are contrasted. Picasso was prolific and loved, Van Gogh was less prolific and positively aloof. Picasso had a much more influence -- a key difference between successful and unsuccessful iconoclasts.

I thought the following by Peter Diamandis, an iconoclast working on private spaceflight was interesting:

"We are killing ourselves in this country by how risk averse we have gotten. It is destroying our ability to make breakthroughs." Speaking to entrepreneurs and CEOs and venture capitalists, Diamandis exhorts, "You have to take risks, because the governments can't, and the large corporations cannot. The government can't stand the Congressional investigations every time something goes wrong. The large corporations can't stand the plummeting stock prices".  ... "There is only one group left. It is the individual who says, "I can't afford not to! This is my dream! If I don't do it, no one else will". 

He was talking of spaceflight, but one might just as well apply it to the economy in general. Worthy book, fairly easy read, positive but not must read recommendation.

The Supreme Court: William Rehnquist

Very worthy read on the history of the court. Here is an excerpt written by John Marshall as part of Marbury vs Madison, one of the key cases in court history:

The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished, if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed, are of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the constitution controls andy legislative act repugnant to it; or, that the legislature may alter the constitution by an ordinary act. 

Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acs it is alterable when the legislature shall place to alter it.

But of course, today, basically since the '30s, the congress is no longer limited, so we now have UNlimited government. Rehnquist doesn't go there at all -- he provides the history of what happened, but there is very little in the way of his opinion. One of the most interesting parts for me was the way that the cases are decided -- lots of prep work by the justices and law clerks, but then, with ONLY the justices in the Chief Justices conference room, the Chief starts out with his analysis of the case and how is is going to vote and then it proceeds to each justice in order of seniority to have their say. I found the following comment interesting ... especially as Rehnquist had moved all the way from the most junior to being Chief.

Probably most junior justices before me must have felt as I did, that they had some very significant contributions to make, and were disappointed that they hardly ever seemed to influence anyone because people didn't change their votes in response to their, the junior justices, contrary views. 

This book is what it says it is -- history, from an insider. There is VERY little in the way of opinion. These are the justices involved, these are the key cases (as seen by Rehnquist), here is how they were decided, some of the key reasoning for and in dissent, and how the court works from the inside.

I found it an easy and good read, but the only "answers" in it (NOT stated by Rehnquist) is that the power of the court has increased, the constitution has decreased, and the power of the government in general has grown most of all.

Bring Back the Unions

RealClearPolitics - On Missing "Big Labor":

Dionne lefts his socialism way out of the bag on this one including praise not just for big labor, but for Eugene Debs. If all there was to wealth was "spreading it around", and it was never created or lost but just "was", then I suppose we could spend our time just distributing it. As it is, it is more like "beer", and if you just focus on distributing it, there will soon be none to drink!

Please Please take note that the primary home for unions today is with public workers where the profit motive isn't operative and all they need do is fleece taxpayers for ever more. That is why their current average wages and benefits are DOUBLE those that are paying for them! (roughly $60K vs $120K)

"A movement historically associated with the brawny workers in auto, steel, rubber, construction, rail, and the ports now represents more employees in the public sector (7.9 million) than in the private sector (7.4 million)."

Weekend With Summer Recovery

Power Line

With apologies to "Weekend At Bernies" ;-)

Economic Indigestion

Dana Milbank - Economist Christina Romer serves up dismal news at her farewell luncheon

I actually got to hear some of this mess, it was enough to give ardent left winger Dana Milbank a good deal of heartburn. Her cheery HS glee club delivery did add sort of an air of the surreal to the proceedings. She had no idea how bad the economic collapse would be. She still doesn't understand exactly why it was so bad. The response to the collapse was inadequate. And she doesn't have much of an idea about how to fix things. Here is Milbank on the topic:

What she did have was a binder full of scary descriptions and warnings, offered with a perma-smile and singsong delivery: "Terrible recession. . . . Incredibly searing. . . . Dramatically below trend. . . . Suffering terribly. . . . Risk of making high unemployment permanent. . . . Economic nightmare."

It must be a bit scary to even the liberal elite as they bask in the remembrance of that joyous time of Katrina, just 5 short years ago, when it was all so simple. The combination stupid and evil W was responsible for all that was ill. Through maximum press and political maneuvering, they managed to convince vast swaths of the electorate that what was needed was "change". 14 months later, the shining new "age of change" was ushered in Nov '06, as Nancy and Harry took the reigns of congressional power, and Dodd and Frank the control of legislation over our nations financial system. The evil W was the lamest of lame ducks, one last "declared to be a failure before it started" gasp in "The Surge", and happy days would be fully here.

A year and a half later, the financial system would teeter on collapse. Victim of a housing bubble exacerbated by Sub-Prime Loans and lax government oversight on one hand, and massive amounts of leverage from Wall Street on the other. To the Democrats, "sauce for the goose". The broad shoulders of W would do yeoman service as scapegoat, the likely shallow recession would be trumped up to "Depression" in the interests of electing the ultimate change agent: BO. Even sweeter, vast amounts of taxpayer money and debt would be transferred to the financiers that had bankrolled the Democrat takeover, as well as the Unions and any other group that was on the left side of politics.

Now in charge of the candy store, the joy of handing out free candy to all their friends is fading as the shelves become more and more bare. Clearly the world is unfair, the shelves ought to be automatically replenished by hard working conservative drones ... or something. For certain, the entire enterprise is a matter of extreme confusion to the liberal economists in the BO stable.

It's All Hopeless

Op-Ed Columnist - Freedom’s Just Another Word - NYTimes.com

When reality becomes apparent to liberals, their heart turns to hopelessness. Their shining knights of goodness -- currently BO, formerly Slick Wille, and in the 7o's, Jimmuh, of "Desert Classic" fame were all certain (in their minds) to achieve greatness upon election, but their images end up needing much burnishing of the kind that can only be gotten by working to tarnish those of Republican presidents -- even those from decades ago. In the Democrat mind, their leaders stand tall because they have buried their counterparts to the waist in mud. The way BO is going, it looks like they are going to need more mud. Perhaps BO will look "tall" if Reagan is buried to his ears.

I remember the Carter time -- the twin spots of Vietnam and Watergate could never and should never be expunged from our American political soul (the only kind of soul that Democrats will admit to). The situation was not fixable -- and of course, in their minds, it was not fixed by the '80s ... as Rich says in the article, a "cartoonish" era. America was and is a tarnished place -- racist, sexist, militaristic, unkind to the poor. In need of massive change, not jingoistic cheering of the Reagan sort. Oh, how sad the '80s were for guys like Rich.

Now, 30 years later, the twin spots of Iraq and "overspending" under Bush have added yet more rot to that imaginary American "political soul". There is a lot of sadness in being a liberal -- the only thing that apparently approaches "happy" is pointing out the supposed horror of being a conservative. There was a brief 2 years of hope under Slick Willie, before those hopes were dashed by Newt and that horrible band of pirates taking the house that had so rightly belonged to the Democrats for 50 years.

Now, after owning that house for 4 short years, and the whole of government for a mere two, they survey a wreckage beyond what they beheld in '94 and possibly commensurate with the devastation of '80. How can it be so?? They are so good, so right, so intelligent, and yet the powers of reality seem to work against them -- yes, yes, it MUST be that "political soul", corrupted by the evil right ... with their lies and machinations of power cooked in kettles by Rupert Murdoch and the demons of Fox news.

Oh, the pain ... the sadness. The little people are blinded and even the brilliant BO has failed to transmit the proper message to their sorry "political souls" ... oh, the humanity!! Perhaps if we put on sack cloth and ashes and tended our boils alone in the wilderness -- then, maybe then, we could see the truth of life as seen by guys like Rich. Yes, there ought to be the campaign mantra of the Democrats --- vote for us, pay your penance in poverty and pain, admit to your political sins and willingly accept your punishment. Only by seeing the decadence and failing of America and by being very very sorry for the sins of electing evil people like Bush and Reagan is there hope of atonement for America -- and even then, it is but very very dim!

I think I'm beginning to understand why Howard Dean's favorite New Testament book was "Job". To the liberal mind, that IS reality!!

Hawking As Lord

Stephen Hawking on God, Science and the Origins of the Universe - WSJ.com

A good short synapsis of the fact that we live in a "Goldilocks Universe" ... not too hot, not too cold ... or "too" a whole bunch of stuff, but JUST RIGHT. How can that be if it is all "random"?

Well, the easy answer is that God created it that way, but that is never good enough for the REALLY REALLY smart among us. As Hawking says at the end:

Each universe has many possible histories and many possible states. Only a very few would allow creatures like us to exist. Although we are puny and insignificant on the scale of the cosmos, this makes us in a sense the lords of creation.

Were one to accept even the strong potential of a creator infinitely smarter than even Hawking, Hawking would no longer be "lord of creation". Given Hawking's physical state, this would seem to prove that the human mind is the source of hubris, not the body.

So how is the new level of "just right" explained, now that Carl Sagan's "billions of stars" that used to be the explanation has proved too small? Easy ... way, way, way, way .... way, more UNIVERSES than even billions x billions ... 10 to the 400th is a postulated number of universes "theorized" (imagined?) at this point.

What is my prediction? Well, it used to be "enough time", then it was "enough time and enough systems" ... but the more we learn, the more it looks impossible with even the time and space that we can see that we could happen, so we are now "scientifically" postulating 10 to the 400th universes with no current way to verify in order to say "there is no god" with a semi-straight face.

BUT, I strongly bet that if we manage to create say a quantum computer, that allows us to see vastly more than we do now, and it turns out that 10 to the 400th is still not enough, I wager there will be some amazingly larger number of "meta-universes" ... or "sub-universes" or maybe "string dimensions" that allow it to be "clear" that God really isn't necessary after all and at least the REALLY REALLY "smart" among us are "lords of creation".

No matter how far we "advance", there we are.

Steve Wynn Takes On Washington

Steve Wynn Takes On Washington

Well said. Just take the time to watch a guy that knows just say it simply as it is.

Carter or Clinton

Will Obama be a Clinton -- or a Carter? - CNN.com

My my, the old comparisons were FDR or Lincoln, the new comparisons are Slick Willie or Jimmuh. The mighty have indeed fallen. This is CNN, so maybe the Obamanites are finally returning to earth.

Iraq Through the Looking Glass

Iraq Through the Looking Glass - The Corner - National Review Online

He covers a lot of my thinking with some different text, but the thesis is the same.

1). BO can't possibly take legitimate credit for Iraq. He was against the surge (as were Biden and Hillary), the withdrawal agreement was done by Bush/Petrayus, he just honored it. (which, given Gitmo, "open government", campaign finance, and a ton of other things, is pretty amazing).

2). It is REALLY disingenuous to take credit for Iraq when he opposed to the surge, but blame Bush for the economy when the Democrats took over both houses of congress in '07 -- and managed to defeat Bush's requests for ending sub-prime since '01, something like 13 times. Bush bears responsibility for the surge (it worked), at BEST, as a very politically weak lame duck, economic responsibility during the last two years of his term would be "shared". BO himself was in the congress that had significant responsibility for the economy.

If Democrats don't believe that control of congress is important, why don't they just cede control to Republicans without a fight? If it IS important, then how can they not accept significant blame for what happened to the economy after they took over in '07?

The Failure of the Liberal Economic Experiment?

The Failure of the Liberal Economic Experiment?:

The liberals were quick to declare "the end of capitalism" after the '08 election. It now appears that their declaration was far premature. I like this quote ... the whole article is excellent. This quote refers to an old observation on government spending -- typically, the "seen" are some more government jobs, some public works projects, maybe even a new building or bridge; the "unseen" is effectively "the bill", the higher taxes and the misallocated resources that result in a lower standard of living for all; since the "seen" is immediate, and the "unseen" tends to be less so, often even wildly off the mark government spending can be a political asset. Apparently, thankfully, not this time!!

"Because of these policies, the “unseen” became “seen” in a fashion devastating to the politicians supporting them. Americans judged that the party in power intends the radical expansion of the size of government in perpetuity. That expansion will have to be paid for. There is no reason to expect very much good from the future if you are the sort of person who generates income and creates jobs. Your “permanent income” is going to decline, and your gut response will be to husband your resources."

All the ways to Kill an Economy

Our Macroeconomic Fetish - Forbes.com:

One of they liberal problems is that they never know "when to say when". Everything they want calls for more, more, more ... more stimulus, more taxes, more entitlements, more regulation, but they have zero concept of "enough". They are addicted to government in the same way as a heroin addict is addicted to their drug of choice.

Now the semi-thoughtful liberal will say "conservatives are just the same with money, they want more, more, more money for the rich, and there is never such a thing as enough".

To which I'd reply, spending and making are NOT the same thing! Bill Gates is fabulously wealthy because he was the best at putting personal computers on everyone's desk. Warren Buffett is fabulously wealthy because he is the best allocator or scarce economic resources in the world. Putting limits on either of these guys limits us all -- not just them. Taking both their fortunes and spending them buying votes from unions doesn't grow a thing (other than more government bureaucracy when the same crooks get elected).

Great article, read it. A sample on the lack of limits:

"The situation is only worse because while our Keynesian disciplines preach the need for more stimulus now, they offer no explanation as to how much stimulus is too much. The law of diminishing returns applies to every known human activity, including government decisions to prime the pump. Yet both Tyson and Krugman give us no hint about when to quit or why."

Basically, there is more than one way to kill an economy, and BO and company are coming close to finding them all.

It is possible to tell a similar tale of woe in virtually any other sector that comes to mind: health care, energy, environment, banking and money, securities regulation, corporate policy, intellectual property. At every stage we see a populist frenzy to support new layers of regulation, each of which in its own way kills jobs and chokes off economic growth.

In sum, there is more than one way to kill an economy. Ours is dying a death of a thousand cuts, which no stimulus program can cure.

Government Pay, Upside Down

Government Pay: Now For The Really Bad News - Forbes.com

Not only are we getting fleeced, we are paying them make our lives even worse while we pay them more to do it!!!

By now, most Americans are familiar with the newly revealed statistics concerning federal pay. As we slept, as it were, our federal minders awarded themselves impressive pay/benefits increases that average out to $123,000 per year, compared with $61,000 in the private sector.

Not only are we fleeced to cover the rising pay and gold-plated benefits of federal workers, we're essentially paying them to make our lives more difficult. The more they're able to do so, the more they advance.