Bastards

It is with great trepidation that I provide a link to this story (h/t Instapundit, April 30, 2009) . Fair Use requires that I provide links, but I ask that readers are careful about clicking on any of the links on the linked post (below). I will explain my reasons for linking it, given that warning.

Background

A Fordham law professor assigned his students the task of snooping into Justice Antonin Scalia's personal information to see what they could discover through public sources. This was done in response to Justice Scalia's remarks that every data point about our lives is private as, "That's silly."  To conclude that the law professor's assignment was anything other than "see how you like it" is disingenuous.

Scalia Responds

In response to the detailed report of Scalia's private affairs (including pictures of his grandchildren and his wife's email address) posted on the Internet in toto, Scalia emailed a response (Above the Law, Justice Scalia Responds to Fordham Privacy Invasion!, April 29, 2009):

I stand by my remark at the Institute of American and Talmudic Law conference that it is silly to think that every single datum about my life is private. I was referring, of course, to whether every single datum about my life deserves privacy protection in law.

It is not a rare phenomenon that what is legal may also be quite irresponsible. That appears in the First Amendment context all the time. What can be said often should not be said. Prof. Reidenberg's exercise is an example of perfectly legal, abominably poor judgment. Since he was not teaching a course in judgment, I presume he felt no responsibility to display any.

Justice Scalia demonstrated that he is both a brilliant jurist and a tempered gentleman.

Poor Judgement Indeed

There was a time when ethics were valued above all else. With ethical (and moral behavior) set aside, people will look to the law to control the inappropriate behavior of others. There was also a time, not too distant from today, when turning to the courts to resolve petty grievances was the mark of scoundrel. There is a word that sums up the assignment of this law professor: shyster.

Chapter 12: The Shame of Judge Driscoll, The Tragedy of Pudd`nhead Wilson, Mark Twain:

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!--incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who "didn`t know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea--and put him at the head of the procession.

- Pudd`nhead Wilson`s Calendar

The Study of Ethics

"The entertainments of fiction are useful as well as pleasant... Everything is useful which contributes to fix us in the principles and practice of virtue. When any signal act of charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable and grateful acts also. On the contrary, when we see or read of any atrocious deed, we are disgusted with its deformity and conceive an abhorrence of vice. Now every emotion of this kind is an exercise of our virtuous dispositions; and dispositions of the mind, like limbs of the body, acquire strength by exercise. But exercise produces habit, and in the instance of which we speak, the exercise being of the moral feelings, produces a habit of thinking and acting virtuously."

-Thomas Jefferson, 1771

Ethics (and honor) were a common theme in Mark Twain's works. He contrasted the application of the law against the backdrop of ethics and immoral law. No better was the conflict presented than in the mind of young Huck Finn when faced with the conflict of turning in his friend and runaway slave, Jim, or protecting him:

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking- thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me, all the time; in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him agin in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around, and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

"All right, then, I'll go to hell"- and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.

In The Tragedy of Puddin' Head Wilson we find this passage between Tom and his uncle (Judge Driscoll). Tom begins:

"It's perfectly true. Wilson detected it in his hand, by palmistry, and charged him with it, and cornered him up so close that he had to confess; but both twins begged us on their knees to keep the secret, and swore they would lead straight lives here; and it was all so pitiful that we gave our word of honor never to expose them while they kept the promise. You would have done it yourself, uncle."

"You are right, my boy; I would. A man's secret is still his own property, and sacred, when it has been surprised out of him like that. You did well, and I am proud of you." Then he added mournfully, "But I wish I could have been saved the shame of meeting an assassin on the field on honor."

Earlier in the novel we hear Judge Driscoll's opinion of a member of his family having a matter of honor decided in court:

"You cur! You scum! You vermin! Do you mean to tell me that blood of my race has suffered a blow and crawled to a court of law about it? Answer me!"

In short, honorable and ethical men do not need the law (or the courts) to determine how to behave, nor to settle their grievances or respect a man's privacy as sacred. Hiding behind the law, excusing immoral laws, or lack of civil law, is the bastion of rogues. Regardless of what the law says, or how it is interpreted, ethnics and morality trump. To do otherwise is to set aside one's aspirations of being a gentleman... and a moral person.

The Law(yer) is an Ass

The Internet and vast computing power capable of storing trillions of lines of data on each of us (the datam Justice Scalia referred to) means that a significant part of our property and papers is now available to those who seek it out, but our property and papers are denied to the government without just cause, not to the public.  Anyone with access to one of the credit reporting bureaus can find details of our financial history, our previous addresses, and our employers. Home valuations can be provided to anyone who types an address into an online calculator.

These individual data points are relatively harmless, in the hand of those who mean no harm, but aggregated, they provide a method and mechanism of stalking an individual by anyone inclined to do so. There can be no law that would protect us from those who wish to do us harm, or prevent individuals from aggregating the data for malicious purposes. The ultimate protection is a society that demands that others do no such a thing, under any guise, including and especially, "the ends justify the means."

How then to reprimand this law professor for what he has done?  We should resort to other means to reject the immoral behavior of others, and demand that they lose all respect and privilege of our society.

"Society [has] a right to erase from the roll of its members any one who rendered his own existence inconsistent with theirs; to withdraw from him the protection of their laws, and to remove him from among them by exile, or even by death if necessary."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1815

We do not need a law to deal with this law professor in the same way we do not need a law to tell us that aggregating one's personal history for malicious purposes is immoral. We need only act in one voice, and to remove from him any place or position in respectable society.

The first dictum of the Hippocratic Oath is to do no harm. Unfortunately, lawyers are not constrained in their actions by requirement to take the same oath that doctors do. It is far too common for lawyers to demand a civil law to constrain one's behavior. They too often look to the law books as their sole arbiter of personal conduct.

As I indicated in my opening paragraph, I was reluctant to link to any of this, thus the limelight of tainted fame be associated with those who have done and linked to this horrid thing. When I read the post this morning I clicked off it, disgusted, feeling dirty by reading about it, even without clicking on or reading the summary of Justice Scalia's private affairs. It is not the light of celebrity or praise that causes me to link to the above, but a different kind of light and attention: one that allows us to see the vermin that hide amongst us, and how good men such a Justice Scalia respond: not in the courts, but as a gentleman.  It is, unfortunately, the perfect example of why our society, civilization, and country is in decline... and it is the charter of this blog to document these attrocities, regardless of how miserable it is to do so.

Justice Scalia was kind in his response, for there is no moral justication for what was done to him, and that was his point from the beginning. There is civil law and moral law, and there can be no set of laws to protect our data points, nor control completely who may access them.  Good judgment is a requirement of all. Any law to prevent the kinds of actions done to Justice Scalia would be Draconian, and unenforceable, as it would be impossible to make a law requiring that everyone destroy their address books or letters. Moral law is the basis for sound judgements, and this law professor has shown that he has no such inclination to abide by it. For this, he should have no place in influencing the minds of future jurists, for a jurist without ethics and the practice of good judgement is not someone with whom we should entrust with the law.

"Is it the less dishonest to do what is wrong, because not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1813

Take down from the Internet the summary of Justice Scalia's private affairs.  It was wrong to create it and to post it.  

The Other Front

Since the main focus of the news is on the Swine Flu and Arlen Spector's changing the letter after his name (and I have nothing to add to all the good commentary and reporting thereof), I thought it might be a good idea to focus on something else.

Michael Barone has a good summary of the policy plans to make us more like Europe (Washington Examiner, U.S. moving toward Europe, but do Americans want to go?, April 27, 2009):

Ninety-nine days in, with 1,362 days to go, and we can see with some clarity the trajectory on which Barack Obama wants to take the United States. To put it in geographical terms, he wants to move us some considerable distance toward Europe.

I won't spoil the ending, but the article's title gives the game away. Americans, consciously or not, voted for a shift to Europeanize America when they voted for Obama and a Democratic Congress. What Mr. Barone doesn't mention is the key factor necessary to make us more like Europe. That key factor is, in a comment by Paul Marks (Johnathan Pearce, Samizdata.net, Harry Palmer is shrugging, Ayn Rand style, April 28, 2009):

Of course, in private, government people admit they will not get any more revenue by pushing up taxes to this level (over time they will get less revenue) - it is all about appealing to envy.

Although, like the late John Rawls, they do not like admitting they are appealing to envy.

Envy is unproductive and taxation based on it is counterproductive.  This loss of tax revenue is already happening in the U.S. (Source: Tom Blummer, Pajamas Media, ‘Going Galt’ Got Going Last Summer, April 23, 2009):



Mr. Blummer suggests:

Starting in June and all the way through to Election Day, Pelosi, Obama, and Reid — but especially presidential nominee Obama — told the country that they were ready, willing, and would soon be able to punitively tax the 5% of the nation’s most productive so they could redistribute money to everyone else. Enough high producers to make a difference believed them and abandoned their previous guarded optimism.

It may seem like overreach to suggest that the Two Horsemen of the Congress, in cahoots with the President, proposed raising tax rates knowing that it would cause a decline in revenue, but certainly Obama knew that punitive tax rates are a net loss, as detailed at the Presidential Debate on April 16, 2008 (Tax Foundation, Obama and Gibson Capital Gains Tax Exchange, April 17, 2008):

GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.

So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?

OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.

Increasing taxes on the wealthy has nothing to do with raising revenue, but everything to do with the appearance of taxing those who earn too much money (Gene Laber, Sun Newspapers, Taxes and Economic Growth, April 11, 2009):

The proposed increase in the tax rate on capital gains exposes a major weakness in the fairness argument. Evidence shows convincingly that low tax rates on capital gains produce more tax revenue than high tax rates. Investors are more willing to sell assets and realize capital gains when they keep more of the proceeds than when they hand over a larger share to Washington. Thus, if we need more revenue to support expansion of government programs, the evidence says we will get more at current rates than at the higher rates being proposed. If Washington wants to tax sin, then encourage it with low tax rates.

The benefits of raising tax revenues are meaningless in this discussion. When someone says they want to make the tax code more "fair" by taxing the rich, what they're really saying is that they want a sound-byte to make it appear that some other person will be taxed, not me, and a distraction to the spending plans that someone else will pay for.  That some other person is generally someone who is thought to have come by their wealth by stealing it from someone else and has too much money.

"The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects - his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity."

-Henry Hazlitt

Ultimately, everyone will be taxed more because there aren't enough rich people to make up for the shortfall, even if the rich are taxed at 100%.

Once Americans accepted envy as a pastime, the Europeanization of America is a fait accompli.  The only thing fair about these tax and spend proposals is finding fair game among those who will be fooled by it.

Envy, slothful vice,
Never makes its way in lofty characters,
But, like the skulking viper, creeps and crawls
Close to the ground. 

- Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)

From His Mouth to God's Ear

From Russ Douthat (NY Times, Cheney for President, April 27, 2009):

Watching Dick Cheney defend the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, it’s been hard to escape the impression that both the Republican Party and the country would be better off today if Cheney, rather than John McCain, had been a candidate for president in 2008.

Unfortunately, Cheney's health issues made him unacceptable, and that's before you consider the high-tech lynching he would have received from those spreading the Cheney-Halliburton-Cabal memes. The JournoList folks would have had a field day.

Learning From Our Mistakes

The more appropriate complaint is that Cheney was not replaced in the mid-term to groom a replacement in 2008. Considering Cheney's health issues and the fact that Bush knew he could not be a contender in 2008 for that reason, the Republicans once again showed their daftness at succession-planning-politics by not replacing him.  Republicans are soft on throwing a good guy under a bus, but until we're willing to play hardball, we're doomed to lose.

Cheney is a good man, no doubt, but he is physically damaged. The vicious attacks of him were completely without merit.  If Bush had replaced him in 2004 with anyone besides Dan Quayle, we'd be whining about infinitesimal overreach and continuing to giggle at show-boat ignoramuses such as Cindy Sheehan, all the while watching our government run by competent grown-ups with a less than optimal, but a still too-large Federal budget.  Instead, we are watching our country dissolve into the abyss in the fascist-overthrow of our system of government by the Obama Administration.

Cheney, if he was half the man we want him to be, should have removed himself. Since he didn't, he isn't.  Even Spiro Agnew had the decency to resign for the sake of the country.

Cheney's found his place and is good in his new role:  the ex-administration's attack dog, allowing the polite and gentlemanly George Bush to maintain the dignity of the Presidency and fade into the history textbooks awaiting the writing of his amazing legacy.  That is something that Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter never had the character or decency to do, nor the contrain of ego to accomplish.

h/t Instapundit.

Empty Suits

Rick Moran is one of many bloggers and other op-ed columnists reporting on the vacancy of figureheads in HHS, in considering the Federal response to the swine flu (American Thinker, Half a government, April 28, 2009):

It is telling that the executive departments responsible for those problems - Treasury and HHS - are suffering from a lack of attention by the administration to fully staffing those agencies with competent, honest appointees.

This is an interesting bit of stone throwing, but it is a bit hypocritical in a larger context. Those of us on the right side of politics should be careful what we wish for.

The truth is that there are hundreds of people at HHS in career positions who function with or without a boss. There are also field offices all over the country that continue to do what they did yesterday, the day before, and nothing has changed for them since Obama took his Oath of Office.

I once had a friend who spent a large portion of her professional life working in Washington, DC. She commented that if a nuclear bomb exploded in Washington, DC, nothing much would change, "... the mail would still be delivered, social security checks would still be issued, and since communication out of DC would be broken, it could be years before anyone noticed."

While it makes for nice mud-pies to sling at the opposition, those of us who champion small government and constraining the Federal government to their Jeffersonian-limited levels, need to be careful when we spread ideas that the country will fall apart if we don't have figureheads in DC handling things for us.

Hospitals, nurses, and doctors, as well as local support systems (fire, police, and local health departments) are perfectly capable of handling an epidemic. They have emergency plans for these sorts of things that didn't self-destruct when HHS lost its chairman, nor do they need a Papal blessing to create them.  States also have the National Guard to call upon, should they need additional boots on the ground.

HHS or DoD didn't need to tell the fireman at the World Trade Towers how to put out a fire, how to handle a building collapse, how to get medical treatment to the thousands who were injured, nor did the fireman running up the stairs need someone from Washington, DC to tell them how to evacuate a building.

There is always going to be a percentage of people who don't have the good sense to wash their hands or get medical treatment for an illness before it's too late, but whether or not there is someone managing budgets or signing off on public affairs briefings is not going to make a difference.  Darwin will take care of those who only listen when Washington, DC conducts a press conference, rather than tuning-in to their local news issuing warnings, or school boards closing schools.  It is the job of local health officials, managed by Governors and Mayors who have the responsibility and the ability to handle these matters.

The whole concept of smaller, Constitutionally-limited government is that we don't need HHS, nor a Chief Potentate to tell Americans how to handle an emergency.

The Federal government is strictly limited to national defense, printing coin, and international affairs. Our state governors and city/town mayors are responsible for the domestic security of their citizens, and that includes their health. They know how to coordinate with each other (they have phones and everything), even without a switchboard in Washington, DC to schedule a meeting. In fact, the switchboard in Washington, DC has always been a bottleneck, and the fact that no one is manning it, is a good thing.

Katrina was the most recent warning, with thousands sitting in front of their TV sets wondering when the Federal Calvary was going to arrive.  There are folks still complaining about the Federal response, when it was the fault and responsibility of the Governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans to have and launch an emergency plan. The fact that they didn't have plans, or didn't follow them, was a wake-up call to the locals that they need to choose better, but even with that obvious failure, nothing changed.  There are far too few with the gumption to act, "You can all go to Hell.  I'm going to Texas."

If Governors and Mayors have been looking to Washington, DC to supply them with enough medicines or vaccines to keep their constituency safe, they have been derelict in their duties.

This should be a wake-up call to them, as well as the rest of us, that a large, centralized bureacracy is never a good strategy for domestic security.  Decentralized, local leadership is how our system of government was designed, and it is what we should rely on and look to in times of crisis.

The fact that things are being handled even while there are empty desks at Treasury and HHS should be a reminder that those positions are not needed, nor their entire, bloated departments, not that we're all gonna die if their seats are vacant.

Neat Trick

From David Alexander (Reuters, Obama backs measure to restore fiscal discipline, April 25, 2009):

President Barack Obama unveiled new steps on Saturday to restore U.S. fiscal discipline, including support for legislation that would require Congress to pay for any new programs by raising taxes or cutting other expenditures.

It would be interesting to take bets on which line items of the budget would be cut, if any.

Sleight of Hand

In detailing the group-think indoctrination of universities, Robert Shibley accurately posits (Pajamas Media, Pajamas Media » U.S. Universities: Education or Indoctrination?, April 27, 2009):

Delaware’s program was such a blatantly Orwellian operation that the entire thing was abandoned two days after FIRE went public — but it had already been operating for at least a year. And one year of reeducation at an American university is one year too many.

While I wouldn't want to discount the impact of indoctrination in education, it is just as important to watch what corporate America is imposing on its employees.  "Diversity" is being imposed (NYT) on the employees in the workplace at a much accelerated rate:

For the last five years, Wachovia Bank, N.A., has required all of its leaders, from the manager level on up, to take a three-day course focusing on the philosophy behind the company’s seven-year-old diversity initiative. “The course sets up a learning environment, essentially an orientation to diversity,” explained Reginald Davis, chief executive of the Atlantic banking group (New Jersey, New York and Connecticut) of Wachovia Bank, N.A. “We cover the terminology that we need to communicate the concept of diversity and then zero in on the experiences of people who have been affected or influenced by diversity in some way. It is an experiential learning process, with exercises in which people speak about their differences. They learn to express themselves about their own identity group and then how to interact with others.”

When plain-speaking was the norm, we called it brainwashing.

Dr. Smith has a post today describing the suicide rate among white men, and offers advice to help them.  Another way to help them might be to stop preaching that being a white man is inherently evil, and requiring that they attend courses intent on making them accept their evilness.  Perhaps convincing them that they're evil, and then being surprised when they accept it and act on it, is counterproductive.

Brainwashing Techniques (HowStuffWorks.com, How Brainwashing Works):

In the late 1950s, psychologist Robert Jay Lifton studied former prisoners of Korean War and Chinese war camps. He determined that they'd undergone a multistep process that began with attacks on the prisoner's sense of self and ended with what appeared to be a change in beliefs. Lifton ultimately defined a set of steps involved in the brainwashing cases he studied:

1. Assault on identity


2. Guilt


3. Self-betrayal


4. Breaking point


5. Leniency


6. Compulsion to confess


7. Channeling of guilt


8. Releasing of guilt


9. Progress and harmony


10. Final confession and rebirth

From Lifton on Thought Reform:

Loaded language

New words and language are created to explain the new and profound meanings that have been discovered. Existing words are also hijacked and given new and different meaning.

This is particularly effective due to the way we think a lot though language. The consequence of this is that the person who controls the meaning of words also controls how people think. In this way, black-and-white thinking is embedded in the language, such that wrong-doers are framed as terrible and evil, whilst those who do right (as defined by the group) are perfect and marvellous.

The meaning of words are kept hidden both from the outside world, giving a sense of exclusivity. The meaning of special words may also be revealed in careful illuminatory rituals, where people who are being elevated within the order are given the power of understanding this new language.

The importance of the group is elevated over the importance of the individual in all ways. Along with this comes the importance of the the group's ideas and rules over personal beliefs and values.

Doctrine over person

Past experiences, beliefs and values can all thus be cast as being invalid if they conflict with group rules. In fact this conflict can be used as a reason for confession of sins. Likewise, the beliefs, values and words of those outside the group are equally invalid.

Hence we have new terms such as team building and project teams, which are destructive to the self, and the ideals of Western society... imposed through diversity training, as a condition of employment.

John Leo (City Journal, Orwell Lives, February 4, 2008):

Jean Bethke Elshtain, a professor of social and political ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School, calls this establishment pressure “liberal monism.” She means that those who talk the most about diversity and pluralism are often the most willing to mandate that all private and religious institutions conform to one ideological framework. Liberals, she says, are eradicating the differences needed to make tolerance a viable practice. In order to enhance diversity, it is necessary to suppress it.

[Emphasis mine.]

"The freedom to share one’s insights and judgments verbally or in writing is, just like the freedom to think, a holy and inalienable right of humanity that, as a universal human right, is above all the rights of princes."

- Carl Friedrich Bahrdt

It isn't simply the language that is under attack through indoctrination.  It is the ideals of Western society and the very concept of the right of individual thought, judgments, and actions.

Chuckle of the Day Award

The CoDA goes to Noel (Cold Fury, You Are the Wings Beneath My Wind, April 27, 2009):

Sorry, P.J., but Night Wolf the Magical Activist now has an office in the West Wing, and he’s conjuring policy out of organic free-range snail darter placentas tossed into solar-evaporated distilled bong-water.

Heh.

Gold Ring

Rick Moran nails it (American Thinker, 'Mr. President: About that national health care idea you have..., April 27, 2009):

Government interference in health care is a direct cause of this crisis - and, of course, trial lawyers who make it their business to enrich themselves to the tune of multi-million dollar settlements when a medical outcome is not to a patient's liking. Certainly there are incompetent physicians that must be penalized and even kicked out of the profession. But the majority of suits are initiated by patients who see doctors as an easy mark and more often than not, a physician's insurance company will settle even a bogus suit rather than pursue the matter in court.

Exactly. Escalating medical costs are not caused by doctors. It is caused by tort lawyers. If we want to reform health care, the first place to start is reforming government intrusion in health care and reforming tort.  Throw out these lawsuits and penalize those who file them, or we could take The Bard's advice, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

Fiction

From Randolph E. Schmid, AP Science Writer (Yahoo Finance, Obama promises major investment in science, April 27, 2009), writing about Obama's call to spend 3% of GDP on science:

"We can do this," Obama said to applause.

The president drew chuckles when he added: "I want to be sure that facts are driving scientific decisions, not the other way around."

Obama said his administration would double the budget of key agencies, including the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

He'll do that and simultaneously restore fiscal responsibility to the government. That's not science. That's fantasy.  Obama is talking about high-tech welfare.
 


Link: Sources: Congressional Budget Office and National Science Foundation.

The private sector is perfectly capable of filing the gap.

h/t Drudge

Assault

From Jeff Soyer (Alphecca, How the AP Defines “Assault Rifle”, April 21, 2009):

Still seems rather cosmetic to me. With all of the above, it’s still just a semi-automatic rifle regardless of what the ATF or the AP chooses to call it. Actually, though, the AP isn’t using the ATF definition, they’re using the one dreamed up by politicians for the original 1994 Clinton ban on so called “assault weapons.”

My problem is that when a newspaper writer uses the term “assault rifle,” they do so not for any particular accuracy but rather for the emotional or “fear factor” response they hope to raise in their readers.

If a rifle wasn't capable of "assault" it would be broken.  Describing it an "assault rifle" is done for the effect it has on the masses.  Of course it is an "assault" weapon.  All guns are "assault weapons."  The selective categorization is pejorative, and purely Orwellian, and as Mr. Soyer accurately points out, cosmetic.  

"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind."

-  Rudyard Kipling

h/t Instapundit

Silver Lining

From Michael Barone (Washington Examiner, The Left’s angry mob recalls Madame Defarge, April 26, 2009):

Whence cometh the fury of these people? I think it arises less from revulsion at interrogation techniques — who thinks that captured al Qaeda leaders should be treated politely and will then tell the whole truth? — than it does from a desire to see George W. Bush and Bush administration officials publicly humiliated and repudiated. Just as Madame Defarge relished watching the condemned walk from the tumbrel to the guillotine, our contemporary Defarges want to see the people they hate condemned and destroyed.

It doesn’t seem to matter to our Madame Defarges that it’s not clear that Bush officials violated any criminal law. One of the core principles of our law is that criminal statutes must be construed strictly against the government. If the government wants to deprive someone of his liberty for doing something, it should be very specific about what that something is. This distinguishes our system from authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that demand, like Alice’s Red Queen, “verdict first, trial later.”

It also doesn’t occur to the Madame Defarges of our times that revolutions like hers tend to devour their own.

A little bit of sunshine on a cloudy day.

A Little Late

From Andie Coller and Patrick O'Connor (Politico, Why GOP is devouring one book, April 21, 2009):

Garrett said the book “is a good read” that details, among other things, “how FDR engaged in vitriolic demonizing of Wall Street and Big Business to advance his agenda.”

Also, he jokes, “it had good pictures when you get to the middle.”

“The Forgotten Man” is currently out of stock at The Trover Shop, the bookstore closest to the House side of the Capitol. Co-owner Al Schuman said sales haven’t been off the charts but added: “If all my books sold that well, I’d be a rich man.”

It’s not hard to see what Republicans find compelling about the book. Shlaes, a columnist at Bloomberg, a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former editorial board member at The Wall Street Journal, presents a vision of the Great Depression that challenges the conventional wisdom that casts Herbert Hoover as a goat, FDR as a hero and the New Deal as the country’s salvation.

It also looks at the Great Depression with particular sympathy upon the plight of those who were burdened with supporting the “weak members of society” during the New Deal and endeavors to give a voice to those “forgotten men.”

I guess the cliché, "better late than never"  applies here.  If the Republicans had studied history, rather than simply accepting the conventional wisdom about the atrocities of FDR's New Deal, perhaps we wouldn't be in the mess we're in today.

FDR was a democrat and democrats always screw things up under the pretense of fixing something (they broke).

Government intervention and spending beyond essentials for domestic security is always a recipe for disaster.  Empirical evidence abounds, but you have to read it for it to be useful.

 

"Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned." 

- Mark Twain

The Laffer Curve will not be denied. 

From the Duh Files

From Andrew Marshall, Reuters (The Independent, Has globalisation made us more catastrophe-prone?, April 27, 2009):

Analysts point out that when the Black Death plague hit Europe in the 14th century, killing around a third of the population, society did not collapse, because economic and social systems were relatively simple and so insulated from shocks.

By contrast, a plague that hit the Roman empire in the 2nd century, with a similar death rate, caused chaos - Roman society was much more complex and economically advanced.

Despite many people believing that globalization is something new, man has been spreading ideas and disease since man became mobile.  Cohorting with our fellows can be dangerous.  The only thing that has changed is the speed at which we can get from Mexico City to London.

Be careful out there.  If possible, this might be a good time to work remotely and avoid people as much as possible.  There will be other days to rejoin the fraternity.

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."

- Helen Keller

From The "No" Party

From AP (Washington Examiner, Republicans push nuclear energy to lower costs, April 25, 2009):

The U.S. should build 100 more nuclear plants rather than spend "billions in subsidies" for renewable energy if it is truly committed to lowering electric bills and having clean air, the Republicans say.

Under Democrat Party rule the commitment is to raise taxes, not to do something actually useful to solve a problem.  The Republicans suggestions will be ignored, all the while the JouroList MSM will continue touting the meme that the Republicans have no ideas (fit to report).

Whining or Winning

From Jake Tapper (ABCNews Blogs, DNI Blair Suggests the Bush Interrogation Policies Worked, April 21, 2009):

“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country," Blair wrote.

Added Blair: “I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past, but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given.”

The blogosphere is rampant with discussions about the morality of torture and if water-boarding fits the definition of torture.

Inherent in these discussions is the idea that you can make war, especially a war of terrorism, less offensive, deadly, or horrible to those easily offended.  

War is Hell and any suggestion that we should play nicer, conducting a war without actually hurting anyone (lest we loose our civility), is a grave error in thinking.  This collective weeping and wailing about the treatment of the world's truly evil will prolong the war, embolden our enemies, and put the Western world at risk of collapse.

Holding Firm

From AP, (MSNBC, Dems: Texas governor should reject secession, April 16, 2009):

Perry emphasized Thursday that he is not advocating secession but understands why Americans may have those feelings because of frustration with Washington, D.C. He said it's fine to express the thought. He offered no apology and did not back away from his earlier comments.

Good for him.

Earlier in the article:

State Sen. Rodney Ellis, a Houston Democrat, said that by not rejecting the possibility of secession out of hand, Perry "is taking a step down a very dangerous and divisive path encouraged by the fringe of Texas politics."

He's got it backwards.  What Washington is doing is a very dangerous and divisive path.  Gov. Perry is simply telling the truth. If the Federal government continues on this path, Americans will reach a tipping point.   The fact that some people have realized that we've reaching the tipping point already doesn't make them "fringe." It makes them ahead of the curve.

“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.”

- Samuel Adams

A 1000 Words

From Matthew Day (Telegraph.co.uk, Poland 'to ban' Che Guevara image, April 23, 2009):

The proposal, which could see the faces of some of the leading lights of communist history such as Lenin and Trotsky removed from t-shirts and flags, reflects a Polish view on communism far different from the rose-tinted and romantic images often found in the West.

After experiencing 40 hard years of communism, as well as the horrors of Nazi occupation, few Poles have qualms equating under law the inequities of Nazism and communism.

"Communism was a terrible, murderous system that claimed millions of lives," said Professor Wojciech Roszkowski, a leading Polish historian and member of the European parliament.

"It was very similar to National Socialism, and there is no reason to treat those two systems, and their symbols, differently. Their glorification should be prohibited."

The Polish position is even more interesting when it is contrasted with this (Toby Harnden, Telegraph.co.uk, Barack Obama to release up to 2,000 photographs of prisoner abuse, April 24, 2009):

President Barack Obama is to release up to 2,000 photographs of alleged abuse at American prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan in a move which will reignite the scandal surrounding Abu Ghraib prison in 2004.

The story goes on to say:

The Pentagon fears a backlash in the Middle East similar to the one provoked by pictures from Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, in 2004 which became emblematic of American mistakes in Iraq.

Interesting.

Curriculum Vitae

From Jonah Goldberg (Townhall.com, Giving Back Cold War Gains, April 24, 2009):

The truth is that the Cold War's most dangerous legacy remains the bundle of radioactive lies that poisoned so many lands and deformed so many minds. The Soviets fueled national-socialist movements around the globe, telling the poor that if they embraced violent revolution and systematically purged capitalism, tradition and religion from their societies, they would hasten their ascent to the sunny uplands of history. The reverse was true: Whole generations were either slaughtered or left to live as dehumanized industrial cogs, or to labor as serfs tending crops amidst the bleached bones of their fellow countrymen.

The Soviets spread lies about the nature of democracy and destroyed indigenous democratic movements, lest they leech off the revolutionary ardor of groups both more murderous and more loyal to the Kremlin. In the West, they employed useful idiots in academia and the press to foment self-hatred and eat away at civilizational self-confidence with cancerously idiotic arguments about the "moral equivalence" between West and East. They funded antiwar movements, peace congresses and supposedly crusading "independent" journalists. For example, they spread the lie around the globe that America invented AIDS to kill blacks.

That lie made it all the way to Barack Obama's church, where Obama's former mentor and pastor, Jeremiah Wright, would repeat it with blindingly ignorant passion, saying that America invented "the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color."

That is the background, education, and confidants of the man who is our President.

“Most people who read The Communist Manifesto probably have no idea that it was written by a couple of young men who had never worked a day in their lives, and who nevertheless spoke boldly in the name of the workers.”

- Thomas Sowell

Does community organizer count as working?

The Second Coming

From Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (Telegraph.co.uk, Germanys slump risks explosive mood as second banking crisis looms, April 24, 2009):

A detailed "stress test" of 17 lenders worldwide found that European banks have much lower reserve cushions than US banks, leaving them acutely vulnerable to the coming phase of rising defaults. "The biggest risk is in Europe," said Peter Jeggli, Credit Views founder.

Deutsche Bank has reserves to cover a default rate of 0.7pc, against non-performing assets NPAs of 1.67pc; RBS has 1.23pc against NPAs of 2.43pc, and Credit Agricole has 2.63pc against NPAs 3.64pc. None have put aside enough money.

By contrast, Citigroup has reserves of 4pc against NPAs of 3.22pc; and JP Morgan has 3.11pc against NPAs of 1.95pc.

There goes the neighborhood.

The New Normal

From Howard (Oraculations, House of Cards with a Different Deck, April 18, 2009):

"V" shaped recovery? More like an inverted "U" economic meltdown. I'm not an economist nor am I a fund manager so I have never looked at things like banking tech, capital flows, correlations between the prices that Wall Street and Hollywood hookers charge and the stock market, but there are more and more people on both left and right who are coming apart at the seams over the banking bailout, which to incompetent me, looks like a Wall Street protection racket combined with a banking system cover up by the usual suspects.

Economic contraction is the new black. There is no recovery from a $3 trillion Federal budget, with an even greater contraction in Federal revenue (h/t Instapundit).

What is astonishing is that there are still experts predicting when the recovery will occur at the end of the year, or next year, or in a few years. Barring a world war or another type of wake-up-call, cataclysmic event, there will be no recovery, only decline.  This is the new normal.

The Crash of 1929: the Great Depression (Business Week):

The Crash of 1929: the Great Depression
Oct. 28, 1929

Dow’s Performance that year. -17.2%

On Oct. 28, 1929, The Wall Street Journal’s main headline read: ''Industrials off 38.33'' -- meaning the Dow had plunged 12.82%. The following day the average fell another 30.57 points, or 11.73%. The two-day rout marked the second- and third-largest percentage drops in the average’s history. In six days the industrial average lost more than 96 points, nearly 30% of its value. After hitting 300 on the last day of 1928, the Dow industrials would rally until peaking at 381.17 in September, only to crash the next month. It would not hit 300 again until 1954, 25 years later.

1Q 2009 (source: Financial Pragmatist):

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 13.3 percent, the S&P 500 slid 11.7 percent, and the Nasdaq fell 3.1 percent.

Two if by Sea

From Mackenzie Eaglen (Heritage.org: The Foundry, Two Decades of Investment on Display, April 23, 2009):

The scope of China’s military advancements in recent decades was summarized well in the Pentagon’s new 2009 Report to Congress:

On March 4, 2008, Beijing announced a 17.6 percent increase in its military budget to approximately $60 billion. China’s military budget doubled between 1989 and 1994, and almost doubled again between 1994 and 1999. The 2005 military budget was almost ten times the 1989 military budget. If these trends continue, China’s military budget for 2009 will nearly double the 2005 figure. 

Our military budget will remain flat and declining.

For the U.S. to continue to protect its interest throughout the blue waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans—maintaining influence, protecting trade routes, and reassuring allies—the nation will require a Navy capable of generating sustained access above, on, and below the seas.

This Administration has shown no desire to improve our Navy's capabilities.

Volley

From Michael Goldfarb (The Weekly Standard, Boxed In, April 23, 2009):

In the event, the American public seems to take a Cheneyesque view of the document dump. Rasmussen reports that 58 percent of Americans "believe the Obama administration’s recent release of CIA memos about the harsh interrogation methods used on terrorism suspects endangers the national security of the United States." That means that Cheney already boxed in the Obama administration, prompting an overreaction that has turned the debate over detention policy into a runaway train. A public that seems to adore this administration is, on this issue, firmly against it.

Game. Set. Match.

Crazy as a Fox

From Mencius Moldbug (Unqualified Reservations, America: zombie nation, April 9, 2009):

What is zombie finance? Zombie finance is the financing of zombies. To be more exact: you commit an act of zombie finance when you lend money to a zombie.

Mr. Moldbug is a nutter extraordinaire, but the linked post is a good read, nonetheless.

[caption id="attachment_115" align="alignnone" width="433" caption="Quentin Metsys, The Money Lenders (c. 1515)"][/caption]

Stating the Obvious

From Bill Quick (Daily Pundit, hillary, of america’s left-wing government, says…, April 23, 2009):

How lunatic has US foreign policy become? Do our leaders honestly believe that it is more important for the process of negotiation to continue, whether or not it keeps Iran from going nuke?

Yes.

"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."

- Joseph Goebbels

Thy Name is Imprudence

Alan Reynolds (Forbes.com, Behind The Scenes Of Imprudent Bank Loans, April 22, 2009):

Speaking in Trinidad-Tobago, President Obama nonetheless complained, "Banks still are not lending at previous levels." So what? Why would anyone expect banks to lend as much while the economy was shrinking as they did when it was growing? When people buy fewer cars and houses, they don't need as many auto loans and mortgages. When retail businesses and car dealers are raising cash by liquidating inventories, they don't need to borrow to buy more inventories.

When households and firms borrow sensibly, they are borrowing against expected future earnings or against accumulated wealth (assets minus debts). Debt does not allow people to live beyond their means. On the contrary, heavily indebted consumers actually acquire fewer goods over time, because so much of their budget is wasted on interest payments.

RTWT.

Double or Nothing

From Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Edward Leamer (Forbes.com A Banking System We Can Trust, April 23, 2009):

The system was supposed to channel our hard-earned savings into the best real investments: new homes, offices, factories, equipment and research. And it was supposed to correctly price our assets.

It did neither. Instead, Wall Street morphed into a vast gambling enterprise, generating massive trades of existing securities without, in fact, raising the investment rate or growing the economy.

During the dot-com bubble, Wall Street funded all manner of silly businesses, and during the housing bubble, it put millions of people in homes they couldn't afford. This "expertise," which cost one-tenth of our output, was delivered by the best and brightest, with half of Harvard's graduating classes becoming high-class croupiers.

The banking industry accomplished this with willing investors.

The only things missing were the sound of slot machines, flashing lights, and well-hidden exit doors.

There are three roads to ruin; women, gambling and technicians. The most pleasant is with women, the quickest is with gambling, but the surest is with technicians.

-Georges Pompidou, 1968

More of the Same

From Christopher S Rugaber (ABCNews, Geithner to Outline Efforts to Fix Banking System, April 24, 2009):

Meanwhile, Strauss-Kahn and Robert Zoellick, the head of the IMF's sister organization, pledged new resources to fight the worst global downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, while warning that the crisis is far from over.

"We still have long months of economic distress in front of us," Strauss-Kahn said.

The IMF's board agreed to double the borrowing limits for 78 of the poorest countries in an effort to meet the needs of developing nations harmed by the downturn.

In other words, rather than individual nations demanding that lenders give loans to people who can't afford them, they're going global, extending loans to nations who will never be able to repay them.

(h/t Breitbart)

Mockery

From Andrea Mitchell (MSNBC, The Obama doctrine: Listening, not just talking - The First 100 Days, April 23, 2009):

Dismissing criticism from the right, Obama said, "It's unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interests of the United States."

That is one opinion. History has shown that it is, in fact, very likely.

"I love [the] proposition of cutting off all communication with [a] nation which has conducted itself... atrociously. This may bring on war. If it does, we will meet it like men; but it may not bring on war, and then the experiment will have been a happy one."

-Thomas Jefferson, 1794.

"[If another nation throws] down the gauntlet of war or submission as the only alternatives, we cannot blame the government for choosing that of war, because certainly the great majority of the nation [would think] it ought to be chosen, not that they were to gain by it in dollars and cents; all men know that war is a losing game to both parties. But they know also that if they do not resist encroachment at some point, all will be taken from them, and that more would then be lost even in dollars and cents by submission than resistance. It is the case of giving a part to save the whole, a limb to save a life. It is the melancholy law of human societies to be compelled sometimes to choose a great evil in order to ward off a greater, to deter their neighbors from rapine by making it cost them more than honest gains... We must consider... that although the evils of resistance are great, those of submission would be greater. We must meet, therefore, the former as the casualties of tempests and earthquakes, and like them necessarily resulting from the constitution of the world."

-Thomas Jefferson, 1814.

The measurement for success of our foreign policy is not how well they like us, how popular the president is abroad, or how many despots are happy to shake our President's hand. The success will be measured on deeds: disarming North Korea, stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan, preventing Russia from invading Georgia, preventing Iran from having nuclear weapons, preventing Islamic-terrorists from taking over Pakistan, providing safe passage for our ships and goods on the high seas, assuring that our goods and services find open markets on foreign soil, and preventing a terrorist attack on our shores.

Foreign relations is the prime directive of the Federal government. Domestic matters are the responsibility of the states.

More from Ms. Mitchell:

From his first trip overseas last summer to his tour de force during the G-20, Obama has projected a rare combination of charisma and humility, in contrast to the stereotype of a domineering U.S. president trying to dictate by fiat to the rest of the world.

The Obama World Tour has been nothing more than an embarrassment and dangerous.

"I never doubted the propriety of our adopting as a system that of pomp and fulsome attentions by our citizens to their functionaries. I am decidedly against it, as it makes the citizen in his own eye exalting his functionary and creating a distance between the two, which does not tend to aid the morals of either. I think it a practice which we ought to destroy and must destroy and, therefore, must not adopt as a general thing even for a short time." 

-Thomas Jefferson, 1800.

It is Obama's vanity that is the most dangerous aspect of his character.

Populism

From Ed Stoddard (Reuters, U.S. conservatives riled up but where do they go?, April 23, 2009):

Few took Perry's comments about Texas secession seriously but they created a political stir and highlighted the conservative backlash to Obama's policies. Perry also has rejected about $550 million in potential funds for his state from the federal stimulus package for jobless claims.

But in a sign that this is out of step with the broader public mood, the Republican-controlled Texas legislature is moving toward changing the state's unemployment benefits rules so the funds can be accepted.

Liberty does seem to be at odds with "the broader public mood" and that is what this blog is attempting to document. Unless (or until) the public values liberty we shall continue our decline.

Government dependency is the same as any other deleterious addiction: You have to hit bottom before you will seek treatment.   While under the influence, a person is at a more vulnerable state.  It should not be assumed that everyone will seek treatment, or if they do, will overcome it. Regardless, it is just as likely they will die or suffer permanent injuries.

So too with civilizations.  It should not be assumed that we will reform ourselves, at least not in our collective lifetimes.  It is just as possible that the feeding frenzy from the public troth will increase, especially as the economy weakens further.

While we are in that depressed state, we are vulnerable.  

From A Short History of the World, H.G. Wells (1866–1946), Chapter XXXIX.  The Barbarians Break the Empire into East and West:

The opening half of the fifth century saw the whole of the Roman Empire in Europe the prey of robber armies of barbarians. It is difficult to visualize the state of affairs in the world at that time. Over France, Spain, Italy and the Balkan peninsula, the great cities that had flourished under the early empire still stood, impoverished, partly depopulated and falling into decay. Life in them must have been shallow, mean and full of uncertainty. Local officials asserted their authority and went on with their work with such conscience as they had, no doubt in the name of a now remote and inaccessible emperor. The churches went on, but usually with illiterate priests. There was little reading and much superstition and fear. But everywhere except where looters had destroyed them, books and pictures and statuary and such-like works of art were still to be found.

The life of the countryside had also degenerated. Everywhere this Roman world was much more weedy and untidy than it had been. In some regions war and pestilence had brought the land down to the level of a waste. Roads and forests were infested with robbers. Into such regions the barbarians marched, with little or no opposition, and set up their chiefs as rulers, often with Roman official titles. If they were half civilized barbarians they would give the conquered districts tolerable terms, they would take possession of the towns, associate and intermarry, and acquire (with an accent) the Latin speech; but the Jutes, the Angles and Saxons who submerged the Roman province of Britain were agriculturalists and had no use for towns, they seem to have swept south Britain clear of the Romanized population and they replaced the language by their own Teutonic dialects, which became at last English.

It is impossible in the space at our disposal to trace the movements of all the various German and Slavonic tribes as they went to and fro in the disorganized empire in search of plunder and a pleasant home. But let the Vandals serve as an example. They came into history in east Germany. They settled as we have told in Pannonia. Thence they moved somewhen about 425 A.D. through the intervening provinces to Spain. There they found Visigoths from South Russia and other German tribes setting up dukes and kings. From Spain the Vandals under Genseric sailed for North Africa (429), captured Carthage (439), and built a fleet. They secured the mastery of the sea and captured and pillaged Rome (455), which had recovered very imperfectly from her capture and looting by Alaric half a century earlier. Then the Vandals made themselves masters of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and most of the other islands of the western Mediterranean. They made, in fact, a sea empire very similar in its extent to the sea empire of Carthage seven hundred odd years before. They were at the climax of their power about 477. They were a mere handful of conquerors holding all this country. In the next century almost all their territory had been reconquered for the empire of Constantinople during a transitory blaze of energy under Justinian I.

The story of the Vandals is but one sample of a host of similar adventures. But now there was coming into the European world the least kindred and most redoubtable of all these devastators, the Mongolian Huns or Tartars, a yellow people active and able, such as the western world had never before encountered. 

It was a thousand years before the dark ages ended.

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.

- Aldous Huxley 

The Noose

From Jeff G. (Protein Wisdom, “Why Is Venture Capital Under Assault?, April 22, 2009):

Obama is either in clearly in over his head, or else he is working to undermine the foundations of the capitalist system from within in order to strengthen the centralized power of the state.

Or both.

Fascism (Library of Economics and Literature):

Fascism embodied corporatism, in which political representation was based on trade and industry rather than on geography. In this, fascism revealed its roots in syndicalism, a form of socialism originating on the left. The government cartelized firms of the same industry, with representatives of labor and management serving on myriad local, regional, and national boards—subject always to the final authority of the dictator’s economic plan. Corporatism was intended to avert unsettling divisions within the nation, such as lockouts and union strikes. The price of such forced “harmony” was the loss of the ability to bargain and move about freely.

Without a Doubt

From Rick Moran (American Thinker Blog, Is Russia preparing to attack Georgia?, April 22, 2009):

The Obama administration will probably not assist Georgia as we are pursuing better relations with Russia in order to receive their help in Afghanistan as well as with North Korea. Russia has warned the US not to help in rebuilding the Georgian military following the debacle last summer.

Ya think? In the end, Obama will get nothing, and we will have allowed the Georgian people to be absorbed.

Desperate peoples of the world will be left to fend for themselves against tyranny. The last great hope of the world will have the audacity to do nothing.

Narishkeit

From Sammy Benoit (American Thinker Blog, The Media, the Blogisphere and Middle East Madness, April 22, 2009):

America and its relationship with Israel are at a dynamic crossroads. Both the United States and Israeli governments are relatively new. The extent, parameters and depth of the alliance will certainly change, after all the personalities and the priorities of both countries have changed.

Not for the better.

Before the election many of us warned of the dangers to Israel of an Obama win. Barack Obama has spent much of his life being mentored by, advised by, or simply associating with people who are Anti-Israel. Additionally it is expected that his one-world, everyone loves each other, let's engage, approach to foreign policy will be harmful to the Jewish State.

RTWT.

Backwards

From, Breitbart (Govt hikes top income tax rate to 50%, April 22, 2009):

The [UK] government will increase its top rate of income tax to a higher than expected 50 percent from next year, Chancellor Alistair Darling said on Wednesday as he delivered the government's annual budget.

They will likely see at least a 25% drop in tax revenue as the working classes run for the border. That sucking sound you hear is from the Chunnel.

The Laffer Curve will not be denied.

Empty Barricades

From Richard Fernandez (Belmont Club, The Gates defense budget, April 21, 2009):

The financial meltdown is a reminder that managers have yet to find a foolproof way to predict the future. In the end, the shape of a defense budget characterizes the kinds of risk that defense planners are prepared to accept. It is possible to get it right for a long time and yet for it to fail at the crucial moment. Peter Bernstein, writing on risk, described the tension between those who believed it was possible to predict the future from the past and the inevitable tyranny of contingent events.

‘The story that I have to tell is marked all the way through by a persistent tension between those who assert that the best decisions are based on quantification and numbers, determined by the patterns of the past, and those who base their decisions on more subjective degrees of belief about the uncertain future. This is a controversy that has never been resolved.’

 
The military should be prepared to face any foe, as the security of the nation is the prime directive of the Federal government, it should make up the lion's share of the spending, not the cuts.



Source: Heritage Foundation, Defense FY 2008 Budget Analysis: Four Percent for Freedom.

Smoked Glass

From Mike (Cold Fury, Another crack in the wall of denial, April 22, 2009):

Our shiny new Führer doesn’t want this generally known, natch:

Admiral Blair’s assessment that the interrogation methods did produce important information was deleted from a condensed version of his memo released to the media last Thursday. Also deleted was a line in which he empathized with his predecessors who originally approved some of the harsh tactics after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

[Emphasis mine.]

Transparency, with a rose-colored filter.

Spilt Milk

From Mark Steyn (SteynOnline The Europeanization of American, March 31, 2009):

Most Americans don’t yet grasp the scale of the Obama project. The naysayers complain, oh, it’s another Jimmy Carter, or it’s the new New Deal, or it’s LBJ’s Great Society applied to health care… You should be so lucky. Forget these parochial nickel’n’dime comparisons. It’s all those multiplied a gazillionfold and nuclearized – or Europeanized, which is less dramatic but ultimately more lethal.

The Obama Administration and this Congress will make LBJ, Carter and FBR seem like Barry Goldwater in comparison. We should be so lucky to only have it as bad as those three.

Even if conservatives are able to galvanize and retake the Congress in 2010, the money will be spent and the damage will be done.  It will take decades to recover.

I predict that there will be more suicides (Breitbart) in America's business future:  A killing field.

Diss Missive

From Eric (Classical Values, Today's bigots):

It's too easy to dismiss Garofalo as an over-the-top washed up actress whose tattoos are fading along with her mind.

As Instapundit would say, Indeed.

Losing Its Taint

From Theodore Dalrymple (FrontPage, And So He Became a Communist, April 21, 2009):

Suppose the late Ron had been a fascist instead of a communist, and – as is not very likely - The Guardian had accorded him space for an obituary, would it not have been possible to write the following?

Like so many of his generation, he was deeply affected by mass unemployment, poverty, and the threat of communism and war, so he joined the British Union of Fascists.

[Emphasis mine.]

Dalrymple goes on to explain how we've become accepting of communists as do-gooders, and dismisses the myth of it being a moral position.  RTWT.

No More 'Uppity Blacks' in DC

From Jillian Bandes (Townhall, Obama and Dems Block School Choice for Underpriviliged Children):

Last month, House Democrats rejected a measure introduced by Republicans to keep the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (DCOSP) in the federal budget past its 2010 expiration date. Last week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that no additional DC school children would be introduced into the voucher program because of the possibility Congress would withhold funding.

Hope and change.

Prediction

From Instapundit (source: Susan Crabtree, The Hill, Reps. look to cut ties between earmarks, donations):

Two reform-minded Democrats will introduce a bill Wednesday to address the growing controversy around the corruptive influence of earmarks and campaign donations from the companies that receive them.

Reps. Paul Hodes (D-N.H.) and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), who are in their second terms, are co-sponsoring a measure that would prevent lawmakers from taking campaign contributions from entities for which they have requested earmarks, as well as the entities lobbyists and employees.

It won't pass.

When a Tax Cut Isn't

Americans are being told they should be happy about their $400 a year tax cut, as if Americans are too stupid to realize that direct taxation is the only tax to worry about (Hugh Hewitt, Town Hall, Tea time with Mark Steyn and Hugh, April 17, 2009):

Susan Roesgen: Do you realize that you’re eligible for a $400 credit…

Buried Taxes

When we pay $2.00 a gallon for gasoline, we all realize that a portion of that $2.00 goes to taxes (Federal and State taxes). There are also direct and indirect taxes in that gallon of gas.

If the oil companies are taxed at a higher rate, the additional taxes will be passed along to the consumer.

• Section 199
  
  Section 199 was a tax break for oil companies to encourage domestic production. A repeal of this tax break would be passed along to consumers in addition to forcing oil companies to look offshore (IdahoStatements.com, Kirk Sullivan: Repeal of tax break will cost U.S. jobs, hike energy prices) :

Tucked into the budget is the repeal of tax deductions in Section 199 of the tax code that were implemented in order to boost investment in domestic manufacturing. This "repeal of deductions," which most people recognize as a tax hike, is directed at the energy industry. In essence, the administration is saying, "Let's punish industries that aren't asking for bailouts by raising their taxes."

Even if the effects of this proposed tax increase fell only on these companies, we would all suffer as stocks would likely fall even further. But the fact is that this proposal will hit everyone in multiple ways.

First, this tax increase will hit every American who uses energy - to fill our gas tanks, to heat and cool our homes, even to purchase products such as plastic made from petroleum.

Simply put, it is a tax increase on everyone. Higher taxes on oil and gas manufacturing and production in this country will result in less of it, and that will raise prices.

Second, we would see a loss of jobs to other countries. When the cost to create jobs in this country goes up, companies striving to survive in this economy will put those jobs where they will cost the least. New taxes would reduce the number of American jobs.

• Gulf of Mexico 
  
  Section 199 isn't the only target. US Treasury secretary attacks oil, gas tax breaks (Reuters India, Mar 5, 2009):

"We don't believe it makes sense to significantly subsidize the production and use of sources of energy (like oil and gas) that are dramatically going to add to our climate change (problem). We don't think that's good economic policy and we think changing those incentives is good for the country," Geithner told the Senate Finance Committee at a hearing on the White House's proposed budget for the 2010 spending year.

The Obama administration's budget would levy an excise tax on oil and natural gas produced in the Gulf of Mexico, raising $5.3 billion in revenue from 2011 to 2019.

The rise in fuel prices last year contributed to the economic downturn and Americans called for more domestic production to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. The response to that call is to increase the taxes on domestic production, forcing the industry to look offshore. In addition, those tax increases will be passed along to consumers in the form of indirect tax increases.

The summary of proposed tax increases on business is (Jake Tapper, Blogs ABC News, Obama's Budget: Almost $1 Trillion in New Taxes Over Next 10 yrs, Starting 2011, February 26, 2009):

$17 billion - Reinstate Superfund taxes
$24 billion - tax carried-interest as income
$5 billion - codify "economic substance doctrine"
$61 billion - repeal LIFO
$210 billion - international enforcement, reform deferral, other tax reform
$4 billion - information reporting for rental payments
$5.3 billion - excise tax on Gulf of Mexico oil and gas
$3.4 billion - repeal expensing of tangible drilling costs
$62 million - repeal deduction for tertiary injectants
$49 million - repeal passive loss exception for working interests in oil and natural gas properties
$13 billion - repeal manufacturing tax deduction for oil and natural gas companies
$1 billion - increase to 7 years geological and geophysical amortization period for independent producers
$882 million - eliminate advanced earned income tax credit

Total: $353 billion/10 years

That $353 billion that will be passed on to consumers represents approximately $1,000 per person ($100 each year).

The above is only the increased taxes on business. In addition to the above (same source):

On people making more than $250,000.

$338 billion - Bush tax cuts expire
$179 billlion - eliminate itemized deduction
$118 billion - capital gains tax hike
Total: $636 billion/10 years

It should not be forgotten that people earning more than $250,000 spend their money. For those making more than $250,000, it will represent a loss of buying power. They're also owners of businesses who will be forced to lay off workers, cut production or services, or raise their prices. The $636 billion represents $180 per person, per year.

All of the above are before we consider the impacts of the proposed cap and trade (considered a dead horse), the changes at the EPA (H/T Instapundit) or socialized medicine.

So far I've described $280 per person in indirect taxes or loss of buying power, but we still have $120 remaining of the $400 tax cut (for those earning under $250,000). Next we need to consider how that $120 stand up against the impacts of all these increases and deficit spending.

Inflation
From Andy Kessler (The Weekly Standard, Putting the Toothpaste Back into the Tube, 04/27/2009):

The Fed has been cranking money out like water over Niagara Falls. The monetary base has increased by a trillion dollars in just the last six months. And he's not done, furiously printing dollars (bank credits, really) and buying Treasuries in an attempt to flood the economy with dollars. When will it end? $3 trillion? $4 trillion? And then what? A functioning economy doesn't need all that cash sloshing around. Is runaway inflation our next crisis?

Printing that much money is a foolproof recipe for hyperinflation, at a level not seen since the Carter Administration.

Summary

Americans are smart enough to know that wasteful spending on blue collar welfare projects leads to higher unemployment in the private sector, increased direct and indirect taxation, and hyperinflation. They're not dumb enough to be appeased with a "$400 tax credit."

Socialism by Any Other Name

A recent Rasmussen poll reported:

Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.

Yesterday at the Washington Examiner, Michael Barone filed, The knowledgeable public, wherein he provides some possible background to the Rasmussen data:

So I was heartened to see a poll, conducted March 26-29, by Pew Research, which showed that most of the American public knows knows more about the economic crisis than one might have thought. Large majorities know that TARP money is intended to get banks to lend more and that China holds more U.S. government debt than any other country. People are evidently paying attention, and to a greater extent I think than they usually do. Pew asked several quiz questions, and in the past I’ve thought that these tend to underestimate the degree of people’s knowledge. 

Mr. Barone goes on to detail:

So what do our surprisingly knowledgeable fellow citizens think the government should be doing about our economic problems. Pollster Scott Rasmussen reports that 52% of Americans now worry that the government will do too much to fix the economy. That’s up (insignificantly) from 50% in March and (significantly) from 43% in mid-February. Only 31% fear the government will do too little, down from 40% in March and 43% in February. To put it another way, Americans in April worry that the government will do too much rather than too little by a 52%-31% margin, while Americans in February were split 43%-43% on whether the government was doing too much or too little. That’s a significant shift of opinion over a short period of time.

Also yesterday (at NRO, h/t Drudge) Mitt Romney filed, A Timid Advocate of Freedom, with his opinion of the importance of appearances and language used by our government:

The words spoken by the leader of the free world can expand the frontiers of freedom or shrink them. When Ronald Reagan called on Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” a surge of confidence rose that would ultimately breach the bounds of the evil empire. It was the same confidence that had been ignited decades earlier when John F. Kennedy declared to a people surrounded by Communism that they were not alone. “We are all Berliners,” he said, because “freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s confident commitment, spoken as he led us into the war that would free millions in Europe, inspired not only Americans but freedom fighters around the globe: “The American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.” Such words of solidarity, of confidence, and of unwavering conviction that America is indeed “the last best hope on earth” are what freedom’s friends would have expected to hear from our president when our nation was slandered. Instead he offered silence, smiles, and a handshake.

In Mr. Obama's first 100 days there have been quite a number of faux pas and other political gaffes, including low-rent and thoughtless gifts to other world leaders and dignitaries.  Shaking the hand of the Venezuelan dictator was the last in the series, demonstrating for anyone who is paying attention that our President is not capable of hitting the bricks running, as we were promised and persuaded during the election cycle, at least in terms of behavior.

For those uneducated or undisciplined in the realm of diplomacy, these may seem like minor foibles of a simple(ton) man, peter principled into the Office of President; however, the President is supposed to have a staff of people who prevent him from making a fool of himself, and by extension, a fool of all of us.  The explanations for these gaffes fall into three categories:

1. He has no diplomacy advisers


2. His diplomacy advisers are dunces


3. He doesn't listen to anyone

None of the explanations bode well.

Diplomacy, especially at the nation-state level, is the dance of politics.  Wars begin and are prevented at these dance parties, with our allies and enemies sizing up the competition by how well they perform on the dance floor.

It is possible that those who craved a materialistically egalitarian society, and voted for Mr. Obama as the means to those ends, see his gaffes as charming or common.  They may also see them as unimportant, and dismiss their significance as old-fashioned.  Mr. Romney's article points out just how significant and important the world's dance floor can be when it comes to achieving our goals, protecting our interests, and preventing global war.

In discussions with the late Mr. Nikita Khrushchev he was asked why he attempted to install missile silos in Cuba.  In response, he said that he believed that John F. Kennedy was weak:

Kennedy went there shortly after his spectacular blunders at the Bay of Pigs, and was savaged by Khrushchev.... I had an hour alone with President Kennedy immediately after his last meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna at that time...Khrushchev had assumed, Kennedy said, that any American President who invaded Cuba without adequate preparation was inexperienced, and any president who then didn't use force to see the invasion through was weak. Kennedy admitted Khrushchev's logic on both points.

The recent events with Iran's blustering about having the ability to enrich uranium and North Korea's missile testing are both examples of the world test Mr. Biden spoke about:

Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here, if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.

By any reasonable measure, Mr. Obama has failed the Kennedy weakness test, miserably.  

Napoleon Bonaparte is credited with saying, "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence."  However, there comes a point when Occam's Razor rears its ugly edge and it becomes more important to attribute these series of gaffes to one of malice and intention, rather than simple stupidity.  Either Mr. Obama is stupid, weak, and incompetent, or he is smart, and knows exactly what he is doing.

During the campaign, when asked by Joe, The Plumber about Mr. Obama's economic proclivities, Mr. Obama responded by saying, "I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody."

Despite that bold admission, during arguments of Obama's fitness for office, against charges of Obama as a socialist, there were loud cries of "NO, HE IS NOT!"  They were deafening.   Now we are told that socialism isn't so bad, maybe not in word, but in deed, so there's nothing for us to be upset about.

The TARP rescued banks have been told that they might not be able to payback their loaned money.  Instead, the ex post facto strings attached to the money will continue unabated while the government considers if it will trade their loans for stock (ownership).  In non-Orwellian double-speak, government ownership is called, nationalization, and that defines what socialism is:

Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating public or state ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and a society characterized by economic equality for all individuals, with an egalitarian method of compensation.

Add a little incompetence to the mix, special favors for those who are more equal than others, and you have a totalitarian state.

I doubt that those who were polled by Rasmussen would have responded as favorably with the idea of a totalitarian state, but that is exactly what socialism is, with better marketing through research.    If queried about their happiness with fascism, Americans might also have responded differently, but it is important to realize that there are only minor differences between socialism and fascism:

Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions.

What communism, socialism, and fascism have in common is that they are all totalitarian.  It matters not a bit if the boots stomping on the faces of the people are made by Patagonia, Timberland, or Frye.  They all leave a nasty mark.  Capitalism can be brutal, but it is better than the other options.

It would be correct, in hindsight, to have referred to Mr. Obama as a fascist, not a socialist.  I doubt, however, if the defenses would have been any less shrill, or any more inaccurate.

We should revise Rasmussen's questions and see what the results would be:

1. Do you favor fascism or free markets?


2. Do you favor capitalism or totalitarianism?


3. Do you think the government should control all aspects of private business or should business owners be left alone?

I think that Mr. Barone may be on to something:  The American people may be smarter than our government thinks they are.