Moonday

Obama: I Need another Term to Finish Us Off

Concerned that the damage will prove to be neither lasting nor complete, the president pressed his case…

"I'm going to need another term to finish the job," he said.

Not Even Barack Hussein Obama can destroy a 235 year old country in just four years. Progressives of all parties have been softening us up over the past 100 years, to the point where a critical mass now believes our rights come from government and the states work for the federal government. Are we citizens or subjects?

Biden 2016!

Gaffmaster Joe could make a play in 2016! Maybe he could run on his embarrassing honesty. He’s too dumb to be crooked.

Liberal Logic: Requiring voter ID is “rigging an election.”

Debbie Washerman Schultz (is she married to Ed Schultz? They’d make a perfect couple) says voter ID laws disenfranchise voters. 

So you need an ID to buy a pack of cigarettes, but not to protect the citizens' greatest exercise of power over government?  Democrats counter that voter fraud is not a problem, but how do they know that? With such lax rules in place, all but the most blatant fraud would be almost impossible to detect.

It takes a village of idiots…

As this fecund human playground reminds us…

"Somebody needs to be held accountable, and they need to pay."




We all pay, whether we want to or not.  Everyone pays but the serial empregnators who score with these stupid women and then leave them with the trophies.  The liberals whose policies have destroyed the American family need to be held accountable.  Create a nanny state and you will end up with a nation of  infants, wards of the state, crying for mommy and daddy to clean up their messes.

Clash of Civilizations

Did Nostradamus predict 9/11?

No, but Samuel P. Huntington did. Dr. Huntington of "Clash of Civilizations" fame, died back in December of 2008, but his work lives on. As Mark Steyn points out, this Harvard professor of Political Science championed the idea that culture trumps all. Steyn gives us an example of his own:

in Bradford, 75 per cent of Pakistani Britons are married to their first cousins. As to the seductive assimilatory charms of time, 30 years ago the percentage was half that. A victory for culture over economics. (Mark Steyn)

The Australian has an interesting article on this great man who foresaw this current age of terrorism back in 1993:

The Clash of Civilizations was a hard-headed look at what political scientists had traditionally dismissed as a soft subject: culture. Originating as a 1993 article in the policy journal Foreign Affairs, and published three years later as a book, it argued that the key sources of post-Cold War conflicts would not be national or ideological but cultural. It was Huntington's riposte to those who thought the fall of communism meant the universal triumph of Western values. The West's arrogance about the universality of its own culture would blind it to the ascent of "challenger civilisations", particularly Islam and China.

Shot through with cautions about Western decline, the book counsels Europe and the US to unite: "The prudent course of the West is not to attempt to stop the shift in power, but to learn to navigate the shallows, to endure the miseries, moderate its ventures, and safeguard its culture." Exporting American pop culture and trainers was easy; exporting values of freedom and democracy far harder.

"Somewhere in the Middle East," Huntington wrote, "a half-dozen young men could well be dressed in jeans, drinking Coke, listening to rap, and between their bows to Mecca, putting together a bomb to blow up an American airliner." (The Australian)

"Brilliant" minds and miscellaneous critics poo-pooed his thesis at the time, but 9/11 and its aftermath brought a sad vindication.

We really are undergoing a clash of civilizations.

To understand Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, follow these three easy steps. If you care about the future of Western society and culture, it's worth it:

1) Read Huntington's famous essay. It is a scholarly work yet easily readable by ordinary folks. It  puts the current global struggle into focus. Unfortunately, it is locked up tight, inaccessible unless you pay a fee to Foreign Affairs Magazine. They should be ashamed of themselves for sequestering such a seminal work. Some Googling can usually find it clandestinely posted somewhere. Even better, go get the book.

2) Scholars and other thinkers often pitted Huntington's thesis against Francis Fukuyama's "End of History." You can read Stanley Kurtz's commentary on the subject at Policy Review.

3) Finally, Professor Fouad Ajami, himself an imminent scholar and brilliant writer, wrote an insightful piece on Huntinton's essay the January after Huntington's death.

Huntington had the integrity and the foresight to see the falseness of a borderless world, a world without differences. (He is one of two great intellectual figures who peered into the heart of things and were not taken in by globalism’s conceit, Bernard Lewis being the other.)

I still harbor doubts about whether the radical Islamists knocking at the gates of Europe, or assaulting it from within, are the bearers of a whole civilization. They flee the burning grounds of Islam, but carry the fire with them. They are “nowhere men,” children of the frontier between Islam and the West, belonging to neither. If anything, they are a testament to the failure of modern Islam to provide for its own and to hold the fidelities of the young.

More ominously perhaps, there ran through Huntington’s pages an anxiety about the will and the coherence of the West — openly stated at times, made by allusions throughout. The ramparts of the West are not carefully monitored and defended, Huntington feared. Islam will remain Islam, he worried, but it is “dubious” whether the West will remain true to itself and its mission. Clearly, commerce has not delivered us out of history’s passions, the World Wide Web has not cast aside blood and kin and faith. It is no fault of Samuel Huntington’s that we have not heeded his darker, and possibly truer, vision. (Fouad Ajami - The Clash)

I pray we at least pause to contemplate Dr. Huntington's thesis. A self-ashamed society that stands for nothing will fall for anything; and angry fire-bearers from the East really could burn it all down.

Green Dreams, Economic Nightmares

California continues to serve as an object lesson to the rest of the nation.  

That most blessed land of Queen Calafia, that could be an economically and geographically viable nation in its own right, is stumbling and staggering under the weight of progressive statism. It's latest woe, like all the others, is of its own doing.

The state has mandated that one-third of its energy must come from renewable sources by 2020.

California's increasing use of renewable power will come at a price, pushing up electricity bills across the state.

And while it's impossible to tell how big the cost to consumers will be, some experts fear the total cost of renewable energy in California will be in the billions of dollars.

"You're going to see significant price increases over time from renewables," said Aaron Johnson, director of renewable energy policy at Pacific Gas and Electric Co. "As you add it to the system, it is going to result in higher costs for consumers."  (SF Gate - California Renewable Energy)

Eschewing cheap and bountiful gas and coal for green pipe dreams is suicidal, but suicide is California's specialty.  The only thing that keeps such governmental action from being criminal is the fact that people can escape, and they are.  The ones that are still there voted for higher energy bills, so I don't feel sorry for them.

Meanwhile, in China, a Boom Goes Bust...

Jersey (I think it was Jersey, if not, it was one of the statists that comment here) was complaining last week about China subsidizing it's solar industry.  I told him we should thank the government of China for chipping in to make solar panels we buy cheaper.  Our government would be stupid to do the same.

Now comes news that China's solar industry is collapsing...

Nov. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Losses for China’s largest solar manufacturers, including Suntech Power Holdings Co. and JA Solar Holdings Co. may continue through next year as declining shipments prompt them to slash prices and liquidate inventory.

“Liquidation is leading to suicidal pricing.” Polavarapu said in an interview today. "There are too many solar companies in China, he said, and they are cutting prices to maintain share."

Once freed from government intervention (bad money always chases out good), solar will make technological gains and perhaps be economically viable someday.  For now, it remains the energy of the future.

Meanwhile, as Obama's venture socialists still talk of stimulus multipliers and lust for the opportunity to dump even more money down green job sinkholes, the gas and oil industry is creating real jobs and providing cheap energy to an America mired in high-unemployment Obamanomics.

The petroleum industry has done more for this country than Obama could ever dream of.

WRM - Chinese Solar Industry Goes Belly Up
The Fraying of China's Guilded Age

Why Orwell Matters

"Thus he faced the competing orthodoxies and despotisms of his day with little more than a battered typewriter and a stubborn personality."    -- Christopher Hitchens, Why Orwell Matters

Christopher Hitchens is very much an Orwell for our times, only more caustic and with sharp edges. He wrote a book back in 2002 entitled, Why Orwell Matters. It's a great introduction to Orwell for those who may only be familiar with his two greatest works, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four.

George Orwell was many things: A brilliant essayist who was considered a mediocre novelist who ended up writing two of the 20th century's most gripping novels; a socialist who was an anti-communist; a hater of war who warned his fellows about the dangers of pacifism; a champion of the poor and benighted who could suddenly provide uncanny insight into the mind of the overlord.

George Orwell was completely unencumbered by received ideology and orthodoxy, a rare genuine freethinker. He faced life as it presented itself to him, and that's what makes him such a compelling and authentic figure even today.

He was a truly independent man, holding views anathema to both left and right. Disdained by both, until the other side deploys one of his arguments, then they fight over who the true Orwellites are. Truth is, nobody owns him. Like God, he is not on anyone's side; we can only hope to be on his side, because he was unwaveringly on the side of liberty over tyranny, humanity over bureaucratic mechanization, natural beauty with warts and all over ginned up fripperies packaged by elites and sold to the rubes.

Best of all, he was a keen analyst of life, using his experience and the light of reason to draw logical inferences that bore themselves out with frightening accuracy.  Yes, communism really was slaughtering millions.  Orwell knew it, years before the truth slipped out, even as useful idiots on both sides of the Atlantic sung the praises of Uncle Joe Stalin and wrote glowingly of strong men making the trains run on time.

If you're looking for a short and well-written introduction to George Orwell, Hitchens' book is just the thing.

Hayek’s Revenge

The European ruling elites are struggling to hold the whole project together...

But the real problems emerge from the technocratic mind-set, from the arrogant gray men who believe they can engineer society, oblivious to history, language, culture, values and place. (NY Times - Brooks)

Nobody has all the answers. And no single person or body needs all the answers. That’s the fallacy: That government must be omnipotent and omniscient. It is neither, and vesting it with power and control as if it were is crazy.

The more concentrated power and decision-making becomes, the more information is needed to feed into the power center. Free markets make decisions and evolve solutions organically; static control centers cannot.

One Size Does Not Fit All

Also, as you make one-size-fits-all decisions for larger and larger groups of people, discontent can only grow among those you are trying to help.  We argue over everything because government has pushed everything in to the collective, making your rights negotiable and subject to snotty bickering.

For example, imagine a Friday night alone. You’re going to settle in for a night of movie watching and you decide to order pizza. Easy. Now imagine you’re snuggled in with your loved one. The decision on movie-night fare is now a shared one. Take it a step further and imagine a houseful of people. They cannot decide on the toppings, or even which takeout place to order from. Worse, some are on a gluten-free diet and want BBQ, while other clamor for Chinese food. The bigger the crowd, the harder it is to reach a decision.

So we are better off making our individual decisions for ourselves and allowing the spontaneous economy to bloom. It works. Don’t believe me? There are literally billions of people in this world who know nothing of growing crops or killing animals, yet they do not want for food.

People and nations can capitalize on specialization, making things that others want, while not worrying about making necessities they know they can buy from others.  And governments' involvement is limited to providing some infrastructure and mediating trade agreements.

How We Got Here

Every emergency has been used by the federal government as an opportunity to take another bite out of our liberties, with expediency as the excuse.  As Hayek predicted, "our freedom" has been "destroyed by piecemeal encroachments."

Hayek was a big proponent of governing from broad principles where possible rather than from narrow, specific laws.

"The argument for liberty, in the last resort, is indeed an argument for principles and against expediency in collective action..."

He foresaw the "fatal weakness" of government leaving free people alone with their liberties:  Uncertain outcomes and glaring inequalities would scare us off our freedoms and into the arms of big daddy government.  Liberty cannot compare to concrete promises and "definite gifts offered to particular individuals" in exchange for some "curtailment of freedom."

That is the fatal seduction.  Not treating freedom as the "supreme principle..."

"...would inevitably prove a fatal weakness and lead to its slow erosion." 

Meanwhile, here in America, where Obama ignored the rule of law and saved GM from a richly-deserved bankruptcy...

The Treasury Department yesterday revised its loss estimate for the Government Motors bailout from $14.33 billion to $23.6 billion, thanks to the company’s sinking stock price.

 Add in the special tax breaks, and...

This means that the total hit to taxpayers, who still own about a quarter of the company, could add up to $38.6 billion. (Reason)

Europe is playing a shell game, and they're running out of suckers.  Here in the US, we're rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The elites have stolen our freedoms in the name of expediency and progress, but their promises of equality and prosperity are just chaff in the wind.  They've led us to the brink of collapse.  As Peter, Paul and Mary used to sing, "When will they ever learn?  When will they ever learn?"

Or, to Paraphrase Ben Franklin, "Those who trade liberty for security end up with neither."

Quotes Taken from Hayek's "The Constitution of Liberty," pp 129-130.

Are teachers overpaid?

Big Ed is most definitely ripping us off...

The biggest consumer ripoff in America today -- and the next economic bubble to burst -- is higher education.

Tuition and fees at colleges and universities rose 439 percent between 1982 and 2007. Median family income rose just 147 percent during that period.

Median household income has fallen 6.7 percent since June 2009. The cost of attending the average public university rose 5.4 percent this year. (Jack Kelly)

Closer to home, are primary and secondary teachers overpaid?

It's a complex question, and I'm not one of those who automatically say that they are.  God knows you could not pay me enough to put up with what our public school educators must endure on a daily basis.

The Atlantic published an excellent article asking Are Teachers Paid Too Much? In it they cite four studies, two saying yes and two saying no. It's an short and interesting read.

Two scholars, one from American Enterprise Institute and the other from The Heritage Foundation conclude that Public School Teachers are not Underpaid.

Public school teachers do receive salaries 19.3% lower than similarly-educated private workers, according to our analysis of Census Bureau data. However, a majority of public school teachers were education majors in college, and more than two in three received their highest degree (typically a master's) in an education-related field. A salary comparison that controls only for years spent in school makes no distinction between degrees in education and those in biology, mathematics, history or other demanding fields. 

Education is widely regarded by researchers and college students alike as one of the easiest fields of study, and one that features substantially higher average grades than most other college majors. On objective tests of cognitive ability such as the SAT, ACT, GRE (Graduate Record Examination) and Armed Forces Qualification Test, teachers score only around the 40th percentile of college graduates. If we compare teachers and non-teachers with similar AFQT scores, the teacher salary penalty disappears. (WSJ)

They conclude by explaining how teachers' benefits are far superior what non-public sector workers receive. Here's a link to the study.

Unleash The Market Forces!

My own conclusion, based on what I've read and the many conversations I've had with the many teachers I've known, is that the teachers unions are protecting too many overpaid bum teachers, the education bureaucracy is way too fat, and that results in the good teachers being underpaid.

The free marketplace has price signals and other market indicators that drive employee wages; the public sector does not.  Also, companies must keep bureaucratic overhead to a minimum in order to remain competitive; government agencies feel no such pressure.  This doesn’t make government jobs less worthwhile than those in the private sector, but it does lead us to endless arguments over what a public employee is worth.

Privatizing all education would end this controversy.  Consumers (parents) voting with their dollars would quickly sort the wheat from the chaff and result in the superstar teachers getting the paychecks they deserve, while driving the bums out and into other fields of employment.

Why Government Doesn't Work

Government doesn't work because it was never meant to work the way liberal statists want it to work

The founders never envisioned 535 men and women, teamed with an imperial president and his coterie of unelected czars and a multi-million man bureaucratic army dictating rules on how the rest of us should live and arguing over how to split the loot.

Like mercy, the quality of liberty is not strained

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. (US Constitution, 9th Amendment)

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. (US Constitution, 10th Amendment)

They didn't put those amendments in there for the hell of it. The larger the collective, the more difficult it is to find solutions that satisfy everyone. Coercion and unhappiness will logically follow.

Western Hero - US Constitution

Living Wills and the Will to Live

When the public funds your lifestyle, it has a right to question your lifestyle choices.  That includes health care.

"It is a good day to die"
-- Old Lodge Skins in Little Big Man

"We've got a duty to die and get out of the way with all of our machines and artificial hearts and everything else like that and let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life."
-- Colorado Governor Richard Lamm

A good discussion broke out in the comment thread of a recent blog post, Rule of Law. We got off on a healthcare tangent, but it was an interesting exploration of life and death.

Finntann kicked it off with a raw, ripped-off scab look at reality that had a sad ending ...

The failure of modern medicine is not in treatement or cost but directly attributable to our innate desire for immortality.

It's harsh, but we treat those that we should not treat. We refuse to accept the diagnosis of mortality. We trade vast fortunes for six months, a year, two years to the detriment of all involved, except those making money off of it.

What is reasonable action and what is reasonable cost? How much is six months of additional life worth?

My sister died of breast cancer a little over a year ago with medical bills well into the six figures. In the end, she wished she had gone to Europe instead of to the doctor.

AOW then chimed in with a report from real life about insurance and existing conditions. As her blogger buddies know, she's been navigating the health care system as she nurses her husband back to good health. She knows what she is talking about.

Ducky had good advice on medical directives...

My family knows exactly what to do. If quality of life has been lost, end it.

This spurred KP (after telling a great story about a Vietnam war combat pilot) to remind us that it's not always so simple:

A perfect example would be stroke in the midbrain. Patient is unconcious, surgeon tells you the stroke is "in a good place" making decent recovery possible. You have five minutes to decide what to do at 4:30am. The directive isn't worth the paper it is written on. You will decide while trying to gather some degree of medical certainty.

Quite simply, all of this is properly the purview of the individual and the family, upon consultation with the family's doctor and pastor.

Collectivizing health care by pushing our money into a big government pot makes our private affairs public

In a government-run, publicly funded healthcare system, every medical and lifestyle decision becomes the purview of every taxpayer and of the armies of bureaucrats who are charged with the custody of government funds.

Justice Kagan will shake her gavel at you and tell you to each your congressionally-mandated vegetables, and put out that cigarette!  If government-enforced diets and exercise save me from paying for the diabetes, obesity and other expensive health problems of the fatties among us, why not?

Life and Death

Who's life is worth more, the 87 year old physics PhD who is still doing productive research, or the poor child living in a ghetto?

Government-created scarcity will inevitably bring about such utilitarian decisions.  Wouldn't it be better to get government out of it, completely?  Free up the insurance industry to craft policies tailored to specific groups and let a well-policed free market set prices and determine what care looks like.  More importantly, let the consumer see what the real price of health care is.

Cut out the red tape and overregulation, and set the consumer free in the marketplace with his or her own dollars, and prices will come down.  They always do.  The truly indigent could be helped by government paying their health care premiums instead of setting up a whole bureaucracy.

The alternative is a scolding nanny state making all your decisions for you, creating a nation of infants.  Some would say we're already a long way down that road.

Weekend Wrap (Naked Women Riding Scooters)

On the lighter side...

Two tales from Right Blogistan.  One involving our friend Liberaldude, and the other features fellow Right Blogistani Proof Positive and naked women...











Oh! The Irony!

Liberal Dude, who I suspect is Bd reincarnated, provided some comic relief...

liberaldude said...I listen to Fox News and within 5 minutes I've heard more lies than I can count. [...]

So, they feel they have to go after Keith to keep others from learning the truth and when you ask them to point out a single lie, they can't Hmm.

If this were a boxing match, that would be the equivalent of leading with your chin. Jutted out. With your gloves down...

My response:

[...] Speaking of that, please list for us all those lies you heard in 5 minutes on FOX.

Crickets. Liberaldude couldn't point out a single lie. Hmmm.

Note to readers: If you are offended by mild descriptions of pornography, please go no further. I do not find pornography funny, or even entertaining. Like any red blooded man, pictures of naked women are a temptation, but I abominate pornography as a poison to humankind and a corrosive of the soul. Having said that, I found these broken-English descriptions of a porn site's offerings pretty darn funny...

Rule 5 Gone Wild

Warning! When perusing Rule 5 type material, stay on the beaten path, or you will end up in the land of "naked fat black women," young naked redneck women photo of women privates" and "amazon naked women naked women riding scooters"

Proof Positive posted an article headlined, "Israeli Women Nude," and I bit. Not because I wanted to see nudity, but because I appreciate Proof's tongue-in-cheek humor. Well, I followed the links, did some googling they suggested, and ended up at a porn site that featured some rather vivid descriptions of its supposed content...

naked women photos of girl scout swaps pictures of naked beautiful women(including naked women fishing);naked farting women girls in belly shirt photo latest friendster private photo hack.Most popular recommended for you: lawley model girl photos hotr naked women facebook view private photos, private girlfriend photos young illusion girl photos mature naked older women|||naked sexey women|||naked overweight women|||snow naked women|||hot sluty naked women|||movies naked women|||

Now, I'm a career military man, been around the world a time or two, and I spent most of it single, and I must admit that I was blissfully ignorant of such genres.  I still don't know what "snow naked women" is, and I have no interest whatsoever in "naked farting women," and for all the fishing I've done, alas, I have never spotted "naked women fishing."

We represent your attention to the catalog photos by topic: (including "photo private of wife", "naked israeli women" and "naked tanning women pics" Women golfing sharing naked self pic sexy...

Other interestingly described niches included...

Naked Sports Women, Celtic Women, Photos Of Shaven Female Private Parts, mountain naked women buff girl photos Most popular recommended for you: track and field girls photos photos of naked hot sexy girls peeing naked plus sized women, sexy long hair girl free photo naked women playing golf (including pictuers of naked irish women)

Naked pictures of cartoon women humiliating naked men!

Sampling top photos from the gallery - anatomy girls photos  naked older women and grannies(including naked mexican women pictures);muscle girl photos escort girl photos mature nake women.Most popular recommended for you: |||naked pictures of cartoon women|||sketches of naked women|||women humiliating naked men|||naked women scuba diving coral reef|||womens over 40 naked in pictures|||free hairy girl photos|||pictures of tribal african women naked|||naked lesbian women in stockings|||mature naked older women|||old men and women naked|||naked sexy older women|||

I wonder if it was the muscle girls who were humiliating those poor naked men?  And no, I'm not linking to the site. It's bad enough that I went there...

The lesson here is to trust Proof's journalistic skills.  When he features something, it is complete.  Do not try to did deeper.  It could get ugly.

Crapitalism's Axis of Evil

"The Bigs – Big Wall Street, Big Government, Big Labor, and Big Business – are all protected classes in the American political system."

Wall Street gambling and corporate tax avoidance are direct results of government policy passed and signed into law by Democrats and Republicans.  You can't leave the silo door open and then blame the rats for eating the grain.

Wall Street seems synonymous with capitalism, but few there espouse market principles. Likewise, Big Business rarely eschews state intervention, instead playing willing harlots for Washington’s wiles. The further Leviathan reaches, the more special interests latch to its tentacles. Restricting the state is essential to curtailing corruption and ensuring earnings come honestly. Smaller government affords less power for those with clout to co-opt.

The Crux:

A widening rift between political ideals rends America’s social tapestry. The Right, as embodied by the Tea Party, seeks individual liberty and equality before the law where each may earn as merit warrants. The Left, as evidenced by OWS, demands that government level results regardless of merit. Personal identity yields to collectivized class or demographic consciousness. (Bill Flax – Obama Tears Down his own Wall Street)

Michael Needham and Tim Chapman bring a big, nebulous problem into sharp focus...

The Bigs – Big Wall Street, Big Government, Big Labor, and Big Business – are all protected classes in the American political system.

The tax code, regulatory regime, and campaign finance laws are all written by those powerful enough to hire an army of lobbyists to descend on Washington. Labor unions pushed their way ahead of bond holders when the Establishment bailed out Chrysler. Solyndra got venture funding from the middle class taxpayer after spending $1.9 million lobbying the Establishment.

This corrupt nexus is at the heart of the dissatisfaction across the country towards Washington. (The Washington Establishment’s Big Problem)

Santa Claus is not a Religious Figure

Ah...  Thanksgiving Day...  A perfect time for a Christmas-themed story... 

Would someone please explain to these dingbats that Santa Claus is not a religious figure?

"Because of our state affiliation, we decided not to have a Santa presence this year," Hollings spokeswoman Vicky Agnew said. Hollings is a part of the Medical University of South Carolina.

Decorations will be "more secular and respectful to all beliefs," Agnew said. "We don't want to offend a volunteer with good intentions, but we need to think of the bigger picture. People who are Muslim or Jewish or have no religious beliefs come here for treatment," she said. (Cancer Center’s Santa Gets the Boot)

First off, I really doubt any atheists, Jews or Muslims would be offended by the Jolly Old Elf, who is after all NOT A RELIGIOUS FIGURE!

And of course, even when the ACLU is not involved, it’s influence still hangs in the air like a noxious, flatulent cloud…

The director of the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union declined comment but pointed to the association's national website. It said while "some limited governmental celebrations of Christmas are not per se unconstitutional ... the burden for the government to show that its activities do not have the purpose or effect of endorsing a religious message is high."

This official stupidity resulted in a firestorm of criticism, so the petty bureaucrats announced that Santa would be invited back.  Maybe they were worried about getting coal in their stockings...

Got Christmas?

So does the federal government listing Christmas as one of its ten official federal holidays constitute endorsement of Christianity? If not, then the Santa-phobes need to check themselves and take the sticks out of their rears.

Do you get a Christmas holiday off from work or school?  If so, thank Jesus!  After all, the holiday was named in his honor.

Rule of Law

Michael Barone asks...

If Obamacare is so great, why do so many people want to get out from under it?

He goes on to make some excellent points about how passing a law and then selling exemptions to it is a fundamental violation of the Rule of Law. (Yes, I said sell. Organizations don't give candidates and political parties campaign contributions just for the fun of it.)

The Rule of Law

We’ve lost the original definition of “Rule of Law.” Republicans misused the term during the Clinton impeachment trials, but both parties bear responsibility for the perversion of this important concept.

Hayek gives us the classical definition:

“Government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand--rules which make it possible to foresee with fair certainty how the authority will use its coercive powers in given circumstances and to plan ones individual affairs on the basis of this knowledge." (The Road to Serfdom)

The Rule of Law is not ad hoc, but rather the pre-established “rules of the game,” predictable and understandable, allowing free people to exercise their rights while refraining from violating the rights of others. No exemptions for government or for special groups. No leeway for arbitrary exercise of power by bureaucratic fiefdoms. The tax code alone violates this principle, and OSHA and the EPA gouge out its eyes and tear out its tongue.

We Are Here

70 years ago, Hayek described what an absence of the rule of law looks like.

...The use of the government’s coercive power will no longer be limited and determined by pre-established rules. The law can ... legalize what to all intents and purposes remains arbitrary action.

If the law says that such a board or authority may do what it pleases, anything that board or authority does is legal--but its actions are certainly not subject to the rule of law.

By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable

The rule of law is a good and right exercise of the coercive power of government to protect the natural rights of the people. What we have today is a grotesque repudiation of that Lockean principle that inspired our founders.

For a short explanation of Hayek’s classical understanding of the rule of law, see Charles W. Baird’s article, Hayek on the Rule of Law and Unions. Substitute “corporation” or “government" for his use of “union” in the  article, and his point will still remain the same. A government that hands out favors and disrespects the natural rights of the free citizenry becomes debased, arbitrary and eventually, tyrannical.

Why are We Still in Afghanistan?

Professor Fouad Ajami

Dr. Fouad Ajami is a brilliant scholar and life-long student of the Islamic world, fluent in its languages and its cultures. He is a patriotic American born in Lebanon to Shia parents. He has traveled extensively all over the Middle East for decades, consulting with his deep rolodex of friends and contacts, which includes commoners as well as royalty.

There is no more trenchant observer of that world than Dr. Ajami, so I pay attention when he speaks. In his latest article, he wonders why we are still propping up the corrupt Hamid Karzai crime family. Besides knowing what he's talking about, he also writes beautifully:

American and NATO forces bleed in that hopeless land, Al Qaeda fighters who pulled our soldiers into the Hindu Kush are mostly gone by now. [...]

Truth be known, neither the Karzai regime, nor the Taliban warlords, want the Americans out of Afghanistan. The treasure we pour into that country sustains the ruling cabal and the Taliban alike. We are the straight man at the bazaar, the stranger fleeced by the locals. The protection money we pay for our convoys wends its way into the pockets of the Taliban.

Here's the crux of it:

Long ago, Afghan society had lost the ability to provide for its own people: There is no economic life to speak of, the pillars are the drug trade and the foreign handouts. It is in the interest of the Afghans that their country be seen as a dangerous land. Were we to head for the exits, the Afghans are certain to block our way with reminders that Al Qaeda is there, or could make a quick return. This is an odd kind of nationalism, one that wants to keep a foreign military presence—and deride it at the same time.

Professor Ajami can at times can be too optimistic, but his insights into the Islamic culture are invaluable and brilliant, and again, he states them so beautifully:

I still harbor doubts about whether the radical Islamists knocking at the gates of Europe, or assaulting it from within, are the bearers of a whole civilization. They flee the burning grounds of Islam, but carry the fire with them. They are “nowhere men,” children of the frontier between Islam and the West, belonging to neither. If anything, they are a testament to the failure of modern Islam to provide for its own and to hold the fidelities of the young.

If you long for non-political, non-agenda driven commentary on Islam and the Middle East, Professor Ajami is your man.  He writes with a sympathy for the culture that produced him, but he can also be critical of it in a way that others could not.  Most importantly, he writes of the Islamic world's affairs from the perspective of an American and explains how they affect America, dispensing solid advice along the way.

Ajami WSJ Google Search
Fouad Ajami - Pakistan and America
Fouad Ajami - Dream Palace of the Arabs
Western Hero - Fouad Ajami: American

Unfair and Unbalanced

I am often accused of not being fair and balanced, to which I reply, "Thank you for noticing."

I am a man of the right, so when I draw comparisons and examples, of course I am going to feature outrages of the left. I don’t need to constantly criticize the right; there is already a whole industry devoted to that: It’s called the Mainstream Media.

No conspiracy; just a group of people who are biased to the left, as evidenced by their own avowed beliefs, voting patterns, and the preponderance of campaign cash from this group going to Democrats.

These statistics suggest that journalists, as a group, are more liberal than almost any congressional district in the country. For instance, in the Ninth California district, which includes Berkeley, twelve percent voted for Bush in 1992, nearly double the rate of journalists. In the Eighth Massachusetts district, which includes Cambridge, nineteen percent voted for Bush, approximately triple the rate of journalists. (A Measure of Media Bias)

Remember reporters not just interviewing tea partiers, but debating them and pushing back? Remember how such interviews turned into verbal wrestling matches, with journalists striving to pin sign-wielding grannies to the intellectual mat? Where are those reporters now? Why are they not challenging the OWS people in the same way? Is it really about the truth, or is it about reinforcing preconceived notions and advancing an agenda?

The press eats this propaganda up and spreads it like manure, where a thousand liberal fantasies bloom. No argumentation, no logic examinations, just channeling the emotion.  (Silverfiddle - Is this a protest or a debate?)

I wrote a criticism of reporters and the left awhile back over at Ontological Angst entitled, Is this a protest or a debate?  In it I explore the use of logic, and contra logic, the meta-narrative.  I invite you to check it out.

OWS: Operation Wasteful Slacking

Ben Stein has produced some entertaining and trenchant commentary on Occupy Wall Street...

You poor kids. You are basically asking to be supported and taken care of by Mommy and Daddy. Wake up, kids. Wall Street is you, with all of your wants and needs and wishes, only they have the balls to go out and work for it. Sometimes they are crooks and sometimes they are fools -- but you know what? So are all of us. (Ben Stein – American Spectator)

Time has named him one of the Five Most Colorful OWS Celebrity Critics. Among his observations are that yes, he hates crony capitalism too, but sleeping in tents and crapping in parks doesn’t really do anything about it. He wishes the protesters would take more productive steps like doing actual investigative work. As for the outrage at the greed, he observed that you might as well get angry at people for breathing in too much air.

7 Deadly Sins -- Why Stop at Just One?

"You know what the worst deadly sin is? Spiritual pride or thinking that you're morally better than other people," Stein says. "That's what the Occupy Wall Street people are all about; thinking they're better than other people and that's a sin, too." (Ben Stein – Yahoo)

I agree.  Have the OWS screamers looked in the mirror?  Wrath and Envy are not pretty either.  And why just focus on greed?  Let's go after all the deadly sins!  Wrath, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, and of course, Greed are all corrosives, eating away at our society and destroying our souls.

The seven deadly sins, or cardinal sins, are so identified because they are believed to be the root sins from which all worldly iniquities branch out. As the plethora of morality systems throughout the ages testify, these sinful seven have haunted our human existence since the dawn of time. The beauty of this list is that one does not have to be a member of the big three (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) to agree that they are bad. More importantly, if we could restore self-control to its rightful pedestal, we would have the moral authority to tell Big Government to go to hell next time it scolds us over salted french fries.

Make Yourself Useful

Stein used to write 7,000 word in-depth exposes on corporate fraud. "They were a lot of work but they eventually got some people prosecuted," Stein says. "They got some money recovered for stockholders." Stein offers that if the OWS crowd wants to do something helpful they should do the research necessary to direct and inform their discontent. (Ben Stein – Yahoo)

I would be cheering them on, and maybe joining them, if instead of extolling the virtues socialism and using bank lobbies as toilets, they hired lawyers and went about investigating the crony crapitalists and the politicians who love them. Stein has posited the possibility of grand internet clearing houses of information where tens of thousands of independent investigators could submit what they've found.  Lawyers and accountants could then collate the information and connect the grimy dots, shine a light on malfeasance, and perhaps get some crooks indicted.

The human bowel movement in the Guy Fawkes mask is losing steam anyway…

When Public Policy Polling took the temperature of Occupy Wall Street in October, “voters were split, with 35% supporting the movement’s goals and 36% opposing them.” As of today, the “split is 33-45, 11 points worse.” And it’s worse among everybody. The percentage of Democrats opposed to the movement “has risen from 16% to 24%. Meanwhile, both Republicans (from 13-59 to 11-71) and independents (from 39-34 to 34-42) have moved 13 or 14 points against O.W.S.” (Reason)

For every thousand lice-infested protestors beating the leaves, there is one dogged investigator hacking at the root 

Maybe OWS could grow up and make itself useful like Steve Croft at 60 Minutes. He's now braving a firestorm of criticism from Big Government's praetorian guard in the press over his expose on Congressional insider trading.  See Big Journalism’s takedown of Politico,  tongue bath giver to big government.  That Democratic Party web site lashed out at Croft with an especial wrath, exposing it as the  shameful purveyor of putrescent progressive porn that it is.

The first step to getting to the bottom of something is to face facts.  The left has not yet done that. 

Links to responsible journalists exposing crony corruption and congressional get rich quick schemes:
WaPo – Crony Capitalism Exposed
The Wonk Who Slays Washington
The Get Rich Congress

Race to the Bottom

Toure:  Mess NBC Common Tater

If we're going to have a productive discussion on race, we need to drop the generalities and focus in on the specifics

There's been some back and forth over the tiresome issue of racism in America, thanks to the equally-tiresome sexual harassment charges against Herman Cain. 


Diversity Ink blogmeister Malcolm recommended I listen to what Toure had to say.  I didn't want to be combative, Malcolm is a nice guy, but I find Toure shallow, predictable and short on specifics.

I did read his NY Times article, No Such Place as 'Post-Racial America.'  While I agree with the title and some of what's in it, I found it clumsy and liberally sprinkled with hot-button words and phrases as he argues against using...  hot-button words and phrases.  I agree with him that words are abused in order to shut down dialog. I posted on the topic just a few weeks back (Speech Codes are Thought Codes).

He makes some good points when he cautions whites (correctly) that racism is our problem too. He says we have a duty to “interrogate the system,” because even though we may not support racism, we do benefit from it (OK.  How?).

He starts out well, rightly assailing the use of catchall words designed to snuff dialog, and he makes his case for this quite convincingly. The big unfounded assertion he leaves out there is that America is a racist country.

Race and racism are still critical factors in determining what happens and who gets ahead in America.

In what way?  He doesn't say. He continues...

A place where black unemployment is far higher than white unemployment, [...]

Could there be other factors to blame besides race? Could it be that those who are unemployed are unemployable? Without a diploma or job skills?  I keep trying to picture well-dressed, well-educated black people standing around in groups unable to get a job, but I can’t quite manage it.

[...] where profiling and institutional racism and white privilege and myriad other forms of racism still shape so much of life in America.

His credibility would be helped by some actual examples of profiling, institutional racism, white privilege and the myriad other forms of racism. Just playing buzz-word bingo and firing off broad generalities doesn't cut it.  Time to get down to brass tacks and name names.

Toure's Syndrom: A fact-free spasm of guilty white liberal nonsense...

Now I've seen ol' Toure in action, and he gets wound up when egged on by the gape-mouthed, guilty-white leftwing levellers at MSNBC. They eagerly and masochistically accept the bracing flagellations administered by people of color. We're white! We deserve it!

Here's a particularly stinging lash, swung rather broadly...

But it makes you part of the system and reveals why it’s also your responsibility to interrogate and examine how our society works and be aware of the biases that keep white supremacy functioning.

White Supremacy?  Is he serious?  I understand his point, but plastering a broad swath of America with such a fraught term is guaranteed to kill any hoped-for dialog.

This is why there are so many of us white "cowards" the Attorney General complained about awhile back.  Invite me in to dialog, and then start slapping me with the broad brush and hanging labels around my neck?   No thanks.  Life's too short.

See Also:
Hush Rush:  Bigotry Goes Equal Opportunity
Leftwing Hate and Anger

There Will be Mud

The Democrats are in deep doo doo.  The two-year hopium-induced progressive-palooza angered the electorate and resulted in Republicans retaking the house.  Decisively.  The senate is next, and they risk losing the presidency as well.

Signs of Democrat desperation are everywhere.  Rushing to embrace the stinking anti-capitalist agglomeration of street bums, latte leftists, liberal arts students, anarchists and assorted weirdos squatting in fetid tent camps is just their latest act of desperation.  Identifying with sweaty mobs who attack police, smash windows and rail against the Jews will not help them.  Even Joe Biden threatening more rapes and murders only moved Obama's public opinion needle lower.

The Democrat Party:  Old, Tired, Gray, Yesterday...

I said it years ago, and we're seeing it play out now. Obama is all the Democrats have.  The group picture of the Democrat political headliners looks like a Halloween display.

The Democrat party is spilling over with grotesque freaks (Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Michael Moore), angry jackasses (Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Sheila Jackson Lee, Al Franken), criminals (Charlie Rangel, Rod Balgojevich, William Jefferson, Anthony Wiener) or grumpy anonymi (Harry Reid, Carl Levin, Dick Durban).

The states and cities Democrats control are putrid sinkholes of corruption and economic collapse.  Liberal mayors who vowed to be "down with the struggle," are now trapped between losing cred by cleaning up the violent, unsanitary rabble that is destroying their cities, or letting them rant and rage unmolested.

Obama's All They Got

The sagging, aging Democrat party hung its fortunes on the youthful and handsome Barack Obama. He was clean and articulate, his speech was free of ethnic dialect.  He was the last hope for the intellectually and morally bankrupt statists. The dems had slept their way to the top with Wall Street; exchanging their mantle of virtue for a see-through nightie, and it ain't pretty what's underneath.

"We came, we saw, he died."
-- Hilary Clinton gloating over Gadhaffi's death

As Barack Obama goes, so goes the Democrat party, so we're hearing talk about how tough he is.  How he shot Bin Laden, bravely bombed all those brown people in south Asia, and put Khadaffi on the run, personally ordering him to be beaten, dragged through the streets, sodomized with a chunk of rebar, and killed.

You know they're desperate when the Obama sycophants churn out laughable playground smack like this:

And he’s the same guy who will leave quarts of blood on the floor in the coming months to defend his office.

Obama likes to get into people’s heads. It might be a coincidence that Obama called Texas Gov. Rick Perry about the wildfires in the Lone Star State just hours before Perry was participating in his first debate. And it might not.

On the golf course, on the basketball court and even in the Cabinet Room, the president has shown repeatedly that he is a mindfreak, to use a term from the basketball courts. (Sam Youngman - I Want to be Obama's Love Slave)

When Obama goes down, they all go down...

“It didn’t have to be this way,” said another House Democrat who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly. “Obama’s presidency has fizzled. It’s going to be every person for himself in 2012. There just won’t be any coattails, and any effect he does have on the ballot will hurt us.” (Politico)

Left Blogistanis still cheer one another by pointing to polls showing that Americans hate the Republican party. Well, it’s worse than that for democrats: America hates their policies, their legislation, their progressive wealth-destroying monstrosities, and their anti-liberty philosophy.  Americans hate big government.  Obamacare is a carcass rotting in the sun. The stink swells as time goes on.

All they have left is fear and smear. There will be mud

China Declared War on Us Years Ago

China has committed multiple acts of war against the United States

According to a January report from the Commerce Department, counterfeit electronics in the defense industry are on the rise. In 2005, there were 3,868 incidents detected, compared with 9,356 in 2008, according to the report. (Navy Times)

Those inscrutable Chinese have managed to slip unreliable counterfeit electronics into equipment critical to our national defense. This is an act of sabotage that nations used to only dream of being able to pull off back in the old days. Now, China has done it to "the most powerful nation on earth."

Poisoned food, toxic drywall, and now shoddy fake electronic components that go into our national defense hardware. Cyber spying, cyber warfare, suborning LORAL to turn over advanced missile technology during the Clinton administration. They forced down one of our USAF surveillance planes in 2001 when Bush was president, and we stood by powerless, a hapless nation with a hapless president.

In an earlier age, any one of these deliberate actions would be considered an act of war.

Why don’t we tell China to back off and shove their toxic crap where the sun don't shine? Why are we taking this from them?   Oh yeah... we’re in hock to them to the tune of trillions… And we don’t make stuff in this country anymore.  We need them.

Our profligacy has put us in mortal danger, and our government has done its damnedest to make the USA a terrible place to do business. Because we’ve lost control of ourselves, our spending and our jobs, we’ve also lost control of our destiny. We are a pauper nation at the whim of our creditors. We are Greece without all the naps and the smoking.

We are a walking brain dead zombie nation, more concerned about millionaire men who play with balls and their billionaire owners than we are about national defense and fiscal sanity. We are reaping what we have sown.

"In every democracy, the people get the government they deserve"  -- Alexis de Tocqueville

In an OWS World...

If you agree with OWS that more government control over the economy is the answer, then you must be willing to accept more Solyndras, more Fannie and Freddie failures, and more bailouts of businesses, banks and unions, as they gamble with your money.  


The result will be less entrepreneurship resulting in more expensive goods and services, lower wages, higher taxes and a lower standard of living.

Mark Steyn explains...

My colleague Rich Lowry correctly notes that many of the beleaguered families on the "We are the 99%" websites have real problems.

However, the "occupy" movement has no real solutions, except more government, more spending, more regulation, more bureaucracy, more unsustainable, lethargic pseudo university with no return on investment, more more more of what got us into this hole. (Mark Steyn)

Indeed. Unrepentant capitalist Charles Gasparino reminds us that capitalism's predations on the proletariat are mere trifles when compared to the serial Marxist miseries that have stained humanity and snuffed liberty and the light of reason while slaughtering hundreds of millions:

Don’t try to explain to any of these protesters how those who sought to create a Marxist utopian dream of revolution also gave us the Stalinist purges, Mao’s bloody Cultural Revolution and many other efforts to collectivize thought in the name of economic “justice.” (Gasparino)

Even the benign Western European democratic socialist model is collapsing. Germany is cutting back, and what's left of the safety net comes at a high price: Wage cuts, benefit cuts, compliant unions voluntarily  trading away worker bennies in exchange for no layoffs. Their tax system is grossly un-progressive, with consumption taxes hitting the rich and the poor equally.  A gallon of gasoline costs over six dollars, and everything else, including food and heating oil, is taxed at 19%, and that's on top of the income tax. 

"Call it Crapitalism"

Gasparino visited the socialist squatter's encampment on Wall Street, and came away with this observation...

Also absent was any notice of how the much-hated banks benefited not from free-market capitalism, which would have let them fail in 2008, but from crony capitalism that bailed them out.

The similar cronyism practiced by Trumka and the Obama administration -- massive spending on useless but politically connected businesses like Solyndra, paired with class-warfare rhetoric -- likewise has very little to do with free markets.  (Gasparino)

As John Stossel Says, Occupy Wall Street is Half Right...

If by "capitalism" they mean crony capitalism (let's call it crapitalism), a system in which favored business interests are supported by government, I'm against that, too.

But if they mean the free market, then they are fools. When allowed to work, the market has lifted more people out of the mud and misery of poverty than any government, ever.

I have at least found some common ground with some Wall Street protest supporters. Joe Sibilia, who runs the website CSRWire (Corporate Social Responsibility), told me, "You can't have an environment where people are betting on financial instruments with the expectation that the government is going to bail them out."

So we agree that Wall Street bailouts are intolerable. Now we just have to teach our progressive friends that truly free markets work for the benefit of all.

Good News, America!

Liberals are hooting and trumpeting the big union win in Ohio, where voters overwhelmingly gave public sector unions the green light to continue raping them until the state goes bankrupt, but they ignore that these same voters also overwhelmingly rejected Obamacare.

And the GOP Takeover of the Virginia legislature and senate was another voter-administered slap to President Obama and the Democrats.    

Nile Gardiner, America-observing Brit, observes: Barack Obama is facing an anti-big government revolution.

...from Gallup, has conservatives in America now outnumbering liberals by a two-to-one margin.

Thirty-one percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll are downright angry at the way the federal government works, a record in polling back to 1992. Add in those who are merely dissatisfied and the total soars to 80 percent, one point from its high 19 years ago.

According to The Post/ABC survey, a staggering 89 per cent of Americans now say the economy is in “bad shape”, with nearly half calling it “poor”; 61 per cent of respondents disapprove of Obama’s handling of the economy, with 48 per cent strongly disapproving.

Yes, America, Obama's job is almost complete.  Now if the GOP can just get its act together...