SOTU 2013

Back in January 2013 I was surprised to hear from my daughter (a 21 year old college student at the time) that she and her boyfriend had decided to watch Obama's SOTU speech. She told me what a wonderful speaker he is and that he had some good ideas. I was shocked. Below is my deconstruction of several parts of the speech written for her benefit.

"Verbatim excerpts from 2013 State of the Union speech with my annotations in italics. http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-02-12/politics/37059380_1_applause-task-free-enterprise

In 2011, Congress passed a law saying that if both parties couldn't agree on a plan to reach our deficit goal, about a trillion dollars' worth of budget cuts would automatically go into effect this year. These sudden, harsh, arbitrary cuts would jeopardize our military readiness. They'd devastate priorities like education, energy, and medical research. They would certainly slow our recovery, and cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs. That's why Democrats, Republicans, business leaders, and economists have already said that these cuts, known here in Washington as "the sequester," are a really bad idea. A really bad idea proposed by Obama, not that he would do other than pretend he had nothing to do with it. http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/sperling-admits-obama-misled-debate-president-did-propose-sequester_705015.html

After years of talking about it, we are finally poised to control our own energy future. We produce more oil at home than we have in 15 years. Yes we do. However this is in spite of, rather than because of Obama. We are producing less oil on Federal Lands which he controls access to. The increase has come exclusively from state and private land production. http://eenews.net/public/Greenwire/2012/02/27/4 We have doubled the distance our cars will go on a gallon of gas, and the amount of renewable energy we generate from sources like wind and solar – with tens of thousands of good, American jobs right  http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/13/us-usa-campaign-green-idUSBRE83C08D20120413 to show for it. We produce more natural gas than ever before – and nearly everyone's energy bill is lower because of it. And over the last four years, our emissions of the dangerous carbon pollution that threatens our planet have actually fallen. Yes, they have fallen without any need for Kyoto or any other climate change nonsense regulation. Our emissions have fallen because the economy stinks and we have found and produced fantastic amounts of cheap natural gas causing the conversion of many factories from coal (dirty) to gas (much cleaner) http://news.yahoo.com/ap-impact-co2-emissions-us-drop-20-low-174616030--finance.html  Keep in mind that most of the new gas is available because of fracking which Obama and his minions oppose! Does that stop this lying piece of crap from taking credit for it? Of course not.

But for the sake of our children (the use of the preceeding phrase should always cause you to become more vigilant. It actually means that we are going to propose limiting your freedom and you would never go for it unless we invoke “the children”) and our future, we must do more to combat climate change. Yes, it's true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15 ( Maybe. There are a lot of questions about the baseline data and since the world leaders in this research refuse to release their raw data, in stark violation of non-proprietary scientific endeavors,  who knows. There is one thing we do know if we concede the assertion. 11 of the 12 took place between 1998 and 2007 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071213101419.htm which means that only one has occurred in the last 6 years.   Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense complete nonsense http://www.prisonplanet.com/global-warming-doublespeak-snowmageddon-blizzards-are-part-of-heating-trend.html . We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades nonsense http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drought_in_the_United_States , and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it's too late.

As long as countries like China keep going all-in on clean energy, so must we. Right. Researchers from Harvard University and Tsinghua University have found that the People's Republic could meet all of its electricity demands from wind power by 2030.^[5]
Despite this, Wen Jiabao Premier of China stated in a March 5, 2012 report that China will end the "blind expansion" into wind and solar energy, instead developing nuclear power, hydropower, and shale gas.^[6]  Why? Because solar and wind are unreliable and unpredictable. We don’t know when the sun will shine or when the wind will blow.

That's why my Administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits. More lies.  http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/04/politics/fact-check-oil-gas/  . Whenever Obama talks about this stuff you must keep in mind that his stated goal is that energy prices of all kinds should rise dramatically. Here he is talking about electricity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlTxGHn4sH4 )

Indeed, much of our new-found energy is drawn from lands and waters that we, the public, own together. ( As stated above, almost none of the new production comes from Federal Land and, overall production is down on Federal lands that “we, the public, own together”.

Study after study shows that the sooner a child begins learning, the better he or she does down the road. But today, fewer than 3 in 10 four year-olds are enrolled in a high-quality preschool program. Most middle-class parents can't afford a few hundred bucks a week for private preschool. And for poor kids who need help the most, this lack of access to preschool education can shadow them for the rest of their lives. enough said on this in our earlier communication.

Through tax credits, grants, and better loans, we have made college more affordable for millions of students and families over the last few years. But taxpayers cannot continue to subsidize the soaring cost of higher education. (Costs are soaring because of tax credits, loans and grants. It is the same phenomenon as we see in the medical care business. Government money skews the economics of the market. If there were fewer students able to “afford” college then the colleges would be forced to be more competitive. Easy government money means they do not have to be competitive so they hire more and more people to do less and less work. Ultimately, it is these poor saps taking out these loans who pay the price for “affordable” college”.

But today, a full-time worker making the minimum wage earns $14,500 a year. Even with the tax relief we've put in place, a family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. Minimum wage is paid for entry level jobs. Your first job might be minimum wage but if you are a decent employee, an employee your employer considers valuable, your wages will increase steadily. You saw that dynamic in action yourself at City Tan. You did a good job and got raises because your employer didn’t want you looking elsewhere for a better paying job. As a high school student working part-time or a recent graduate working full-time at an entry level job you should not be married with two kids! So, if you spend year after year making minimum wage it is your fault, not the fault of the minimum wage and making that wage more “livable” will make the problem worse, not better. Also note the real agenda here, as with mandatory pre-school. Most union contracts define wage levels as a function of the minimum wage http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061111000556AAr0KHu  so a raise in the minimum wage means an increase for almost all union members, a democrat constituency. I negotiated a union contract years ago and this is exactly how it works.

Tonight, let's declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour. This single step would raise the incomes of millions of working families. Indeed. It will also raise prices on many things, including many that this guy now making $9/hr will have to buy since business owners do not take the money for the increase out of their pockets, they charge more for goods and services to make up for their increased costs.

When any Americans – no matter where they live or what their party – are denied that right (to vote) simply because they can't wait for five, six, seven hours just to cast their ballot, we are betraying our ideals.

We should follow the example of a North Miami woman named Desiline Victor. When she arrived at her polling place, she was told the wait to vote might be six hours. And as time ticked by, her concern was not with her tired body or aching feet, but whether folks like her would get to have their say. Hour after hour, a throng of people stayed in line in support of her. Because Desiline is 102 years old. And they erupted in cheers when she finally put on a sticker that read "I Voted." ( Wow, what a story. Ancient woman goes to vote on election day and stands in line for hours and hours. Terrible. Of course, that is not what happened. What happened was that some democrat booster wanted to make sure this woman voted and so took her to a polling station on the first day of early voting, not election day. There was no reason for her to be there at all. Early voting was intended to allow people who would not be in their district on election day to cast their ballots early. Dems have since used early voting to ensure as many of their voters as possible cast their votes without the excuses for failing to vote on election day coming into play. “had to work late; kids had a soccer game” etc. There are very few polling places open for early voting and even they would be adequate but for democrats taking advantage of the system. If they had an ounce of decency they would have arranged an absentee ballot for this 102 year old woman and she could have voted without ever leaving her home. By the way, what sort of people stand in line for hours ahead of a 102 year-old women? Would you not have given up your place to her? Do you know anyone who would not have done the same? Me either.  http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/a-102-year-old-face-of-voting-delays-at-the-state-of-the-union/ 

In the linked article you will see that the longest wait times in the country on election day were actually in Florida. How long? 3 hours, no; 2 hours, no; 1 hour, no; 45 minutes, yes and that was the longest wait time in the entire country! The article does say that blacks and Hispanics had the longest wait times. Big surprise since a much greater proportion of them live in urban areas which are, by definition, more crowded.

So, that’s all for now. Please note that links to CNN, Reuters and AP are links to media wildly in favor of Obama so they do their best to minimize his transgressions but even they, as you have seen from reading the links, have to reluctantly concede that he is lying.

Love…Me

Human Nature 2, Civility and Gridlock

You will often hear politicians and pundits complaining about government gridlock.

Anytime you hear this be assured that the speaker either has no understanding of the nature of the history of the founding of our Constitutional Republic or is a Democrat trying to shut up any opposition to their grand plans. Unfortunately, usually both.

Our system of government is designed to be slow and cumbersome. Checks and balances are in place to prevent humans from being human. It is supposed to be very difficult to move legislation through the House and the Senate and get a President to sign it into law.
If it was easy the route from a Constitutional Republic to an Authoritarian State administered by the political elites would have been a quick one. We are seeing, in Obama's Executive actions, what the Founders were trying to prevent. Not being able to get Congress to go along with his wishes he has invoked "Gridlock" (the prescribed state of normal for a Constitutional Republic) in order to justify his actions.

It is demoralizing to watch supposedly informed policy makers and their critics display their utter lack of understanding of our Constitutional Republic. The Founders were very clear that they were creating a system where getting anything done politically would be very difficult. Persuasion and compromise would be the only paths to legislation. That was the point. Every new law infringes our liberty. It was never their intention that we should have 51 legislatures filled with career politicians doing nothing but passing laws day and night.

Civility has never been part of American politics. Today whenever the admonition to be civil in politics is issued it is from the mouths of Democrats and actually means Republicans should shut up and go along with whatever it is Democrats want to do.

Politics were so "civil" around the time of the Founding that Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr fought a duel with pistols. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr%E2%80%93Hamilton_duel  Hamilton died of his wound.

Things were so civil when Lincoln was elected President that political cartoons portrayed him as a monkey.

In 1856 things were so civil..."In 1856, a South Carolina Congressman, Preston Brooks, nearly killed Sumner on the Senate floor two days after Sumner delivered an intensely anti-slavery speech called "The Crime Against Kansas".^[2] In the speech, Sumner characterized the attacker's cousin,^[3][4] South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, as a pimp for slavery.<sup>[5]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sumner

Brooks never suffered any real consequences for his attempted murder. 

 " Although an attempt to oust him from the House of Representatives failed, and he immediately resigned his seat, he received only token punishment ( a $300 fine. A fairly large sum at the time) and was re-elected by the people of South Carolina." http://www.ushistory.org/us/31e.asp

In fact, Southern newspapers  applauded his actions and suggested there should be much more of the same.

George W Bush was routinely vilified in and out of the press as a Nazi, warmonger, war criminal and everything else under the sun by every Democrat with a mouth.

"Politics ain't bean bag" has been a saying in active use since 1895.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finley_Peter_Dunne

Civility and Gridlock lamentations have only one goal, as I stated earlier: To bully us into going along. My advice? Don't.</sup>

Human Nature 1

Human nature is many things. Among the most important of its components:

a) The further from destitution we are removed the lazier we become. It was not long ago, perhaps 300 years, that the vast majority of humans were engaged in agriculture in some form or other. We had to make sure we had enough to eat. Now, far removed from any threat of starvation, at least in the West, we are a fat, lazy and entitled civilization.

b) The further we get from an embarrassing or troubling event the smaller its impact on our behavior. Our heart-felt apologies and pledges to never do "that" again lose their urgency and so the old event has an ever decreasing impact on our current behavior.

c) Honesty and integrity are highly valued characteristics. Like so many things of great value, diamonds, gold and beauty, for example, they are in short supply. Be honest, have integrity and you will be highly valued. I do not mean this in a monetized way, although that may come to pass.

Reporting as it is now known and ideological blinders

 At the link below is an article that appeared in the Boston Globe. It describes LSU's economic struggles in an era of shrinking State support.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/04/23/lsu-draft-insolvency-plan-jindal-cuts-loom/e2dMpep32tc3GgVU99MHtJ/story.html#comments

What I consider noteworthy about the report is the editorializing of the piece's final sentence:

"State cuts to higher education have sent tuition soaring across the United States, adding to the more than $1.2 trillion in student-loan debt. "

It is manifestly not reduced government support that has caused tuition to "soar". Reduced government support has caused revenues to fall. "Soaring" tuition rates are the remedy of choice by administrators who refuse to cut costs and would rather burden their students with the costs of their own comfort.

It is a combination of an explosion in non-academic (read administrative) hiring:

" Between 1975 and 2005, total spending by American higher educational institutions, stated in constant dollars, tripled, to more than $325 billion per year. Over the same period, the faculty-to-student ratio has remained fairly constant, at approximately fifteen or sixteen students per instructor. One thing that has changed, dramatically, is the administrator-per-student ratio. In 1975, colleges employed one administrator for every eighty-four students and one professional staffer—admissions officers, information technology specialists, and the like—for every fifty students. By 2005, the administrator-to-student ratio had dropped to one administrator for every sixty-eight students while the ratio of professional staffers had dropped to one for every twenty-one students."
 http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2011/features/administrators_ate_my_tuition031641.php?page=all

and the apparent refusal of college administrations to do what families and businesses do when revenue decreases. Decrease spending. Not for these empire builders, nor for their like-minded friends in the press.

It is no surprise that democrat activists with by-lines, also known as Reporters when Republicans are in office, push this line. It has two objectives, in no particular order of importance;
1) Blame Bobby Jindal, the Republican Governor of Louisiana and,
2) Continue laying the groundwork for forgiving student loans.

Obamacare, Pelosi, Garrett et al

Following the implosion of Obamacare has been at once great fun and very frustrating.

Great fun because it almost always is when liberal programs bump into reality. Ah yes, those brilliant technocrats. They know what is best and how to accomplish it.

It is always the same of course; Have meetings, give speeches, lie as needed to persuade your listeners that you are not doing what you are doing. And then the fun part, ducking the blowback. They are not doing quite as well at the last part as usual and it is great fun to watch them all squirm.

The frustrating part is the apparent cluelessness of many of the people interviewing the latest crop of miscreants.

There is the clip of Nancy Pelosi being grilled by Major Garrett about the "Big Lie". Her answers are incoherent, as usual. She prattles on about the goal of the ACA being to make sure everyone has the coverage they need.  Garrett fails to ask the obvious...Really? 60 year old couples need maternity and pediatric coverage? Goodness, how did we survive not having coverage we cannot ever, ever use?

Any structure built on a financial footing so deceitful that in order to charge customers what you really need to charge them to make your product work you have to include phantom benefits because you could not otherwise sell it is doomed.

Obama the neophyte

Our hapless President declares that we have no right to meddle in Iran's internal politics. Aside from the disgrace of not supporting the protesters the idea that we will not be accused of meddling is so preposterous as to be funny, if it wasn't so sad.

Does Obama really not understand that the leaders of Iran, and the third world in general do not actually rely on reality to make their pronouncements? They simply say what they want to regardless of the facts. Think Baghdad Bob.

The Iranians immediately do the obvious: Declare that we are meddling in their internal politics. Brilliant.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090617/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran_election

Giving away money with no spending instructions is not wise

I have read a lot of stories recently about cancelled junkets to Los Vegas and elsewhere. The cancellers are recipients of government bail outs and the public, rightfully outraged about the need for and/or usefulness of the bailouts, made a fuss about the lavish plans.

Our political class, which gave away the money with no restrictions that I am aware of, suddenly becomes outraged. Righteous indignation abounds.

Who doesn't know that if you give someone a bag of money with no instructions on how it is to be spent it may not be spent the way you might have hoped. Blame the givers, not the givees.

I would suggest that we all take a step back and ask ourselves what difference it makes how the money is spent. The point is, it has to be spent. Spending a few million in a Las Vega resort is a far better and more direct stimulus than keeping it in the bank's vault.

Confessing to Strategic not Moral Errors

Obama confessed to a "mistake" today. He will quickly learn that the leader of the free world does not make such confessions.

In reading MSM coverage of the Daschle debacle it is noteworthy that nowhere (as far as I have seen) is his "mistake" called what it is: A willing, knowing effort to illegally avoid paying income taxes. Can anyone really believe that after a million years in Congress he wasn't aware of the rules? Nonsense. How much time do Senators spend crafting ethics laws and dealing with what is and is not income to them so that they can endeavor to pay as little income tax as possible? How long was he a Senator. What a lying sack of crap.

Obama actually is admitting only to a strategic error, not the moral error of considering a tax cheat an appropriate candidate for a US cabinet position. Of course, we already knew that, didn't we.

Mr. Geithner also made a "mistake". Yes, of course he did. After having signed an agreement with his employer, IMF, that clearly stated that he understood he was being paid a sum that was to be passed on to the government in payment of Social Security and Medicare taxes he kept the money. His Turbo Tax error argument has been strongly rebutted by Turbo Tax and a zillion "experts".

Here too, Obama admits to a strategic error, not the moral error of considering a tax cheat an appropriate candidate for a US cabinet position. Irony of ironies, we now have a willful, knowing tax cheat as the Treasury Secretary.

Now that is Change!

Stimulus - Not - Letter to Congressman Mitchell

Dear Mr. Mitchell,

The purpose of this note is to encourage you to vote against the "stimulus" bill.

To put it most simply, we have engaged in vast amounts of deficit spending over the last 8 years. It did not prevent a recession. More of the same will obviously not cure one.

As is well known, this manner of economic stimulation did not work in the 30's, 60's or 70's. Even Keynes said himself after the FDR effort in the 30's that massive government spending is not an effective way to stimulate an economy in severe downturn.

This bill has turned into a massive pork barrel and it will do no good to the reputations of any of you who vote for it.

We often make mistakes when we are in a hurry. This is no time for mistakes. A yes vote will mortgage the futures of our children to extent not previously seen.

As has been pointed out in the "disappeared" CBO report and is confirmed as less severe in the current one, a great deal of the spending called for will not be immediate.

I urge you to caution your colleagues that they are embarking on a catastrophic course from which recovery will be difficult.

The most likely solution to the current problem is to let the markets do their work. It is government interference in the mortgage markets that produced the problem we are dealing with in the first place. More government interference will only delay the market correction that is essential to the business cycle and recovery.

If we want to help those with mortgages they can't afford, let's do it. If we want to help the unemployed, let's support them. We don't have to spend a trillion dollars to do it.

Good long-term jobs come from the private sector, not government construction programs. Stimulate the housing industry with buyer tax credits. Support business friendly policies and tax cuts. They work.

Yours truly,
Michael Markowitz

What Obama voters don't know

I have been thinking a lot about the election. Trying to find a suitable answer to a simple question: How could voters (other than those voting to confiscate for themselves some of the wealth of those more successful than them) possibly vote for Obama if they knew anything about him? The only answer I could come up with is that they couldn't. They must know little about him. As has been obvious for some time the MSM didn't bother to do much educating of the electorate where Obama was concerned.

A recent study by Zogby http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.cfm?ID=1641#Anchor-37902 makes three things clear:

1) Obama voters know (or care to know) little about him;
2) Almost half of them are so ill-informed that they are unaware that the Democrats have controlled Congress for the last two years. Bring back the poll tax please. There has to be a way to stop these people from voting.
3) An overwhelming majority of these same voters were very well informed about various Republican ticket "scandals". No surprise there thanks to an in the tank MSM.

The study was commissioned by the people who made this video http://howobamagotelected.com/ Watch it. Its worthwhile, if a bit tedious.

Obama , America

The land of the free and the home of the brave died today. The less well off have been convinced that they can bleed the wealth from those better off. This has not and never will work.

Election Day

Finally it's here. Election Day 2008. Is it really possible that we will elect a man like Obama. I have written about him several times before. At least we won't have to deal with his serial lying anymore, one way or another.

You may have heard the clip from his January 8, 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board where he assured them any new coal fired electric generating stations would be bankrupted by his Cap and Trade program. He was very pleased with himself.

I hope he has not considered that the people who will be hurt by the rising electricity costs resulting from his program will not be me and my rich friends. It hardly matters to us what electricity costs. It will be all the middle class and lower people he claims to want to help so much. You know those tax credits and transfer payments that are going to make their lives so much better? They'll be used to pay for electricity. Wow, what a boon to humanity.

If he has considered the impact of his proposed policy and would go ahead anyway, so much the worse.

Through the Looking Glass

I'm not sure when it happened, but it has. We now live in Alice's world.

We are being told with that unless we agree to spend/lend/guarantee $700,000,000,000 to big financial institutions our economy will melt down. We have all heard the clarion cry "There's no credit!!!".

At the same time we are told banks aren't lending to each other. What could they possibly have to lend to each other? They have no money. Right?

Perhaps they should give prospective borrowers the phone numbers for Citibank, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs. These three entities have raised $45,000,000,000 in new capital over the last couple of weeks and have been buying everything in sight; MerrilLynch, Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers and Wachovia to name several.

What has actually happened is that solvent banks have raised the interest rate to insolvent banks. Makes sense. You have more risk, you charge more interest. The converse is, after all, what has caused the situation in the first place.

The people in charge of the solution, like Barney Franks and Chris Dodd, created the problem in the first place. Imagine. You can actually see video at YouTube of Barney Frank et al in 2003, 2004 and 2005 rejecting calls for more oversight of Fanny/Freddie. Insisting they were doing a great job. Amazing.

Michelle Obama Now and Then

Michelle in her own words:

“My piece of the American Dream is a blessing hard won by those who came before me driven by the same conviction that drove my dad to get up an hour early each day to painstakingly dress himself for work — the same conviction that drives the men and women I’ve met all across this country…That’s why I love this country.” August 2008.

“We’re still living in a time and in a nation where the bar is set, right?…You start working hard and sacrificing and you think you’re getting close to that bar, you’re working and you’re struggling, and then what happens? They raise the bar…keep it just out of reach.”May 2008.

“For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.” February 2008.

Remarkable transformation eh? Do you have any doubt which is the real Michelle? I didn't think so.

Obama the Diplomat

When Dubya was running in 2000 some reporter asked him the name of the President of Somewhere or Other. He mangled it, if he guessed at all. I don't remember. What I do remember are the ramifications. "Obviously", all the lefties said "this guy isn't ready to be President". They may have been right.

Yesterday Obama suggested, among other things, that the UN Security Council should convene immediately to discuss and pass resolutions to stop the war in Georgia.

This Columbia and Harvard educated lawyer is apparently not aware that Russia has a veto in the UN Security Council and there will be no resolutions passed until the Bear (note to Obama: Russia has been known as the Bear for a couple of hundred years, at least) achieves its goals in Georgia.

Unremarkably, one of our former Ambassadors to the UN, Governor Richardson of New Mexico, a wannabee VP for Obama, is also unaware of Russia's veto, having suggested the same prescription as Obama for stopping the war.

The well of these peoples' ignorance apparently has no bottom. Is it really possible that the dems would elect someone without even the most basic understanding of the most important (if utterly useless) international institution in the world?

Of course it is. They do not appear to care about anything but beating Republicans, no matter what the cost to the country and the world.

Update 8/27/08: Apparently nobody mentioned the Russian Security Council Veto in the last few weeks. He again called for the Council to convene on the subject. Wow. What a bubble this guy and his advisers live in. It is so hard to fathom that I find myself making excuses for him: What if he actually knows about the veto power but figures Americans are so stupid they don't know about it so he says it anyway. Let's hope so. It would certainly be the lesser of two evils.

Obama's AmeriKa

"America is …, uh, is no longer, uh … what it could be, what it once was. And I say to myself, I don’t want that future for my children.” Obama answering a question from a 7 year old girl. The question? "Why do you want to be president" on August 7, 2008.

Mr. Obama your negativity really doesn't have to be used to depress children. You might have considered an answer that shows that you recognize where you are and who you are talking to. How about, "I want to be President because I am sure that this, the greatest country in the history of the world, can be even greater. I intend to help make it so. That is why I want to be President".

By the way, when was it "what it once was"? Could it have been in the age of American slavery? How about the Depression? No wait, how about in the 40's when we were fighting all over the world. Or maybe it was during the Jim Crow 50's. Oh, I know, it was the pre-Civil Rights Act/Voting Rights Act 60's. No? Ok, how about the mid-60's to mid 70's when we were involved in Vietnam, sending conscripts to their deaths by the thousands and enduring the Arab Oil Boycott. Hm, no good either. Well how about the Jimmy Carter 70's. You remember those right? 20% interest rates, double digit inflation. The "Misery Index" and our folks held hostage in Iran? Not then either..hm.

Well I know 1980-88 is out of the question. Can't have been any good going on then. After all, we were being protested all over the world for stationing nukes in England and Europe and pointing them at the Russians.

The 90's? Didn't sound so great in your books. Bunch of greedy white people running the world, you know how it was. We also know with great certainty that it cannot possibly have been during the 2000's what with Bush and Cheney running roughshod over the Constitution.

Looks like, on balance, it must have been the 90's so why not let Mrs. Clinton run the show again since she and hubby were in charge for almost the entire decade?


"I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." Obama on the day he became the presumptive nominee.

In an earlier post I commented on Eugene Robinson's assertion that white people calling Obama arrogant or presumptuous were really saying he was an uppity black man. Anyone who could utter a statement like Obama's above is such a complete narcissist that the words arrogant and presumptuous do not properly describe his hubris.

Obama, Stupendously Stupid

I don't know how much more of this I can take.

Now Obama tells us that we are going to eliminate all the oil we import from the Middle East and Venezuela in 10 years. How? Well, we are going to invest $150 billion of your money in research and development and have the private sector go full out to develop alternative energy. Senator, you can't make the private sector do anything. Typical democrat. As I wrote earlier about John Edwards and Hillary, they all seem to think that the presidency is a dictatorship.

Senator, billions in subsidies have gone to wind and solar power undertakings over the years. They are inefficient and uneconomic in their current states. Billions are being invested by the private sector to improve the technology for both. This is being done because PROFITS are forecast. That is the reason most things get done. Not by presidential fiat.

Racism

Eugene Robinson had a column published in our local rag, The Arizona Republic, yesterday. In it he makes the usual assertions that people who call Obama arrogant or presumptuous are racists.

His piece got me to thinking about stereotypes. He doesn't realize that he is dealing not in white racist stereotypes but in black stereotypes. White people, in my experience, don't think much about race. There is no reason they should. Their race or color doesn't adversely affect their lives, generally speaking. Its a non-issue.

Black people, it seems to me on the other hand, are constantly aware of their color. It is an essential element of their self image. Unfortunately they seem not to understand that racial identity does not motivate white people, particularly not conservative white people.

We refer to Obama as arrogant and presumptuous because he is, independent of his skin color. He lectures us about things that we are all well aware of. For example, inflating tires. Are you driving around on half-inflated tires? Of course not, you aren't an idiot. He believes you are. Arrogant.

Has any other presidential candidate had his own seal? No. Arrogant. Presumptuous.

Has any other presidential candidate replaced the American Flag on the tail of his airplane with his own campaign logo? No. Arrogant.

Has any other presidential candidate ever gone on a world tour giving campaign speeches in foreign countries? No. Arrogant.

What being arrogant and presumptuous has to do with race is precisely nothing. Those who believe it does are projecting their own race based self-identification on white people. Its misplaced.

The syndrome is no different than many of my fellow Jews blaming any set-back and/or insult on anti-Semitism; homosexuals blaming any set-back and/or insult on homophobia; fat people blaming any set-back and/or insult on fatophobia. You get the picture.

Barack and the Truth Revisited

In an earlier post I had declared that he is a liar. I am more convinced than ever he is one of the most cynical and devious politicians to run for national office in my adult lifetime.

In recent correspondence with a Dem acquaintance I mentioned that it appears Obama, although a lecturer in Constitutional Law, is unfamiliar with the opening words of the Declaration of Independence.

I wrote, "On June 30, 2008 Obama gave a silly "patriotism" speech. This was a prepared speech. I assume his regular speechwriters wrote it, with or without his help. Obama is a Columbia and Harvard educated Constitutional Law lecturer. Apparently he doesn't know that his statement regarding the Declaration of Independence is wrong:

"I remember, when living for four years in Indonesia as a child, listening to my mother reading me the first lines (emphasis added) of the Declaration of Independence--"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Reproduced below is the actual language of the Declaration.
"The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
Presented by the Indiana University School of Law—Bloomington
The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen ColoniesIn CONGRESS, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve..."

Obama's "first lines" are actually the first lines of the second paragraph. In the ordinary course of things this wouldn't be very important. Here it is and I will tell you why.

In the first place he is supposed to be a Constitutional Law scholar. Lack of familiarity with the DofI makes one wonder what he doesn't know about things he has not spent years studying.

There is a more important aspect to this. Imagine your mother had read you something when you were 10 years old or so that was so important that you remembered it 36 years later at 46 years old. Likely you would also have remembered it when you were 25 years old and studying Constitutional Law or 14 years old studying High School Civics.

As with all of us, regarding memories so important, when you read the DofI for yourself you would have said to yourself, "Gee, Mom got it wrong". You would never forget that would you? No, you wouldn't.

What all this means is that Obama made the story up. He is a liar of the first order.

We Have Won

The AP has confirmed today that the war in Iraq is being won. Their headline:

"Analysis: US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost"

Yes, it seemed lost to those willing to lose and those who hoped to lose. Not to those determined to win.

Not surprisingly the article mentions President Bush only to criticize his "Mission Accomplished" speech and never uses the word "surge". Apparently neither had much to do with the outcome.

Its nice to see the enemy, AP, finally surrender. They have been doing so much for so long to try to win the war for the bad guys.

It will be amusing to watch the reactions of the surrender caucus.

When will Hillary apologize for calling Petraeus a liar. Right, never.

When will Harry Reid take to the Senate floor and declare his 2007 and 2008 declarations of our loss to have been mistakes? Never.

When will John Kerry take to the Senate floor to declare his gas bag speeches of 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 to have been wrong? Never.

When will MoveOn.org take out a full page ad in the NYT to declare that their "General Betray Us" ad of 2007 was a mistake? Never.

These are the same people who demanded that President Bush own up to his mistakes. Hypocrites of the first order all.

Several commentators have pointed out that the AP story seems to coincide with Obama's trip to Iraq. Are they preparing the ground for a narrative that has Obama's visit turning the tide? I guess we'll see.

An examination of gas prices

I am told that a year ago gas was $2.00/gallon. Today it is $4.00/gallon.

My expectation was that as prices rose the economy would grind to a halt and I have been surprised that it hasn't happened.

Looking at the figures, I think I can see why.

If you drive a car that gets 15mpg and commute 20 miles to work each day you have to drive 200 miles a week. The cost difference to you with gas at $5.00/gallon is $8.40 per day if $2.00 per gallon is your base line.

Is it likely that most drivers have discretionary income of $8.40 per day. Do you?

There was a story in the AZ Republic yesterday reporting on the increase in public transit ridership. The reporter described it as having "soared" 18% in recent months.

She went on to describe the two types of service offered, express and traditional stating that you could ride the express for "a small amount more". Traditional is $1.25, express is $1.75. So in this case a 40% increase is a "small amount" but increase ridership 18% and it has "soared".

Barack and the Truth

I have written before about Barack's problems with the truth.

Today he has set a new standard for himself and truthfulness. He is a liar.

Does he really believe that we are willing to believe that some recent events have caused Wright to go off his rocker? Does he really believe that we are willing to believe that sermons from 2001 and 2003 were aberrant departures from his usual form and content?

Does he really believe that we are willing to believe that the very first sermon that so impressed him, which he used a line from for the title of his first book, which described a miserable world run by greedy white people, was a departure from his normal sermon?

What a bunch of nonsense.

At best, he was deceived by a vicious racist for 20 years. Says a lot for his judgement.

At worst, he couldn't care less what Wright says or said. He joined Wright's church for his "street cred". A cold, calculating opportunist.

On another subject, Michelle Obama gave a speech this past Friday night, somewhere in Indiana I think. Her usual litany of complaints about this crummy country of ours. One was particularly amusing. She spoke about the crushing load of student loans which makes it impossible for the people who worked hard for those degrees to use them in the careers they had hoped to pursue.

Among those she listed as impossible to pursue because it doesn't pay enough to enable you to pay off your student loans; Community Organizer. What was her husband's profession? Community Organizer. How can anyone be that stupid? I don't know.

What is even more curious is that there are actually people who don't notice how dishonest this pair of ungrateful beneficiaries of the greatest country on earth are.

Hillary and the Truth

Those of us on the right are amused and puzzled at the left's recent discovery that Bill and Hill are world class dissemblers. They are, as we have long known, embodiments of the old joke
"Q: How do you know when a salesman is lying?"
"A: His lips are moving".

I wrote in an earlier post about Bill's craveness in this regard. A few months ago he loudly proclaimed that among Hill's first acts as Prez would be to send him and Bush 41 around the world on a mission to repair our reputation, torn asunder by the execrable W. Of course, Bush 41 hadn't been consulted on his new mission and issued a prompt statement supportive of 43. Bill never even considered that in the Internet age his assertion wouldn't stand up for 5 minutes. He just didn't care.

Over the last few months Hill has been talking about her harrowing arrival in Bosnia in 1996 amid sniper fire. She described being hurried across the tarmac to her car and the cancellation of the scheduled greeting ceremony because of the danger presented by the snipers.

For reasons best known to the MSMers who accompanied her on that trip, filmed and reported on it, they waited months to contradict her. But contradict her they have. Showing her, once again (but perhaps for the first time to her loyalists) to be the craven liar she is. No snipers, no rush across the tarmac, no cancelled greeting ceremony.

As one commentator mentioned today, to her it likely isn't a lie. She may well have convinced herself it happened (think John Kerry and the Cambodian memory "seared, seared into my brain" that never happened). That is suggested as the only reason she would, in this age of instant verification, have described a version of an event witnessed in full by TV cameras, that never happened.

Rush has a better explanation and it is consistent with reality. The MSM rarely challenges Dems and they have become complacent in the knowledge that they can say almost anything and those who get their info from the MSM will never know that they have made it all up.

For some reason, after almost 4 months of sitting on it, the MSM finally got up the nerve to call Hill what she is: a liar.

Obama and the Truth

Barak Obama has demonstrated repeatedly throughout his campaign that he is among the most cynical politicians we have seen in a long time. His message is Hope and Change. The only thing he really Hopes is that we are all too stupid to listen to what he is saying. The only thing he wants to Change is his status, from Senator to President.

His most recent demonstration of Hope is that he Hopes we will not notice that when confronted about his pastor's outrageous anti-americanism he claimed it was news to him. The reason he Hopes we won't notice is that a few days later when his original explanation became completely untenable he confessed to being aware of it, but said that he didn't agree with it.

His most recent manifestation of Change is the changing description of his grandmother's comments about being afraid of black men on the street. The recent Change differs in very important ways from his description of the same event in his autobiography. In that telling she was afraid of one black man who she felt threatened by because of his particular actions. Which is the truth? Who knows and it doesn't matter.

What does matter is that Obama is a liar with Clinton-like loyalty (see earlier posts) who is perfectly happy to try and further his political career by trashing his still living grandmother's reputation branding her as a racist. The grandmother, by the way, who was his primary parent and support, according to his autobiography, in his growing up years. Disgusting.

Hillary's Democracy

I never fail to be amazed by Democrats' seemingly instinctive authoritarianism. I described in an earlier post John Edwards' apparent belief that as President he would have the authority to cancel the health insurance coverage of members of Congress and his Cabinet. It is possible that Dem's never waning assertion that Republicans favor an "Imperial" presidency is merely another case of projection.

In promoting her Universal Health Care Plan recently Hillary informed us that she would consider garnishing the wages of those who refuse to purchase health insurance in order to ensure the universality of the plan.

So here we have a proposal supposedly initiated to "help" the less fortunate. If they have the audacity to refuse to accept and pay for the "help" they will be forced to participate against their will. Oh, wait, she would only garnish the wages of those who could "afford" to pay for the coverage. Great, thanks Hill. So, you 18 million 18 - 30's who see that paying health insurance premiums is a waste of money for you, we're going to "help" you. Reminds me of Reagan's 10 words you never want to hear: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you".

Of course she also wants to confiscate some or all of the profits of those nasty oil companies. You know, the ones who have vast investment programs to find and drill more of the stuff so we can keep driving. Its odd, but I don't remember any dems offering to give money to the oil companies when they were struggling and oil was $10 barrel.

She wants to prohibit medical insurance companies from screening for pre-existing conditions and she claimed last week in a speech at a GM Plant in Lordstown, OH that the companies spend $50 billion a year "trying to figure out how not to cover people".

She went on to say that, "I'm going to save them a fortune and a whole lot of time, because here's the new policy: No more discrimination period. So even if you have a pre-existing condition you can get the health insurance you need no questions asked".

Now there's an example of the rhetoric and mind set of a truly democratic person. Beyond the appalling spectre of authoritarianism raised by such dictats is the much worse and much more practical result of such stupidity.

If you are buying your insurance from an insurer that doesn't accept subscribers with pre-existing conditions (group insurance policy issuers have long since stopped screening for pre-existing conditions) and that company is now forced to accept them, your premium will simply be raised to pay for the inevitable rise in claims the company will have to pay. That is how insurance works. The risk is spread among the policy holders. More risk = more expense = higher premiums for all policy holders. So, what Hillary is telling all you individual policy holders is that you are about to be forced to subsidize your neighbors.

Not surprisingly, she didn't give any support or meaningful explanation for that $50 billion statement. Let's assume the figure, wherever it came from is accurate. What does it mean? It means that the combined budgets of insurance companies' claims departments is $50 billion a year.

Every claim has to be evaluated and some will be turned down. So what she could just as easily have said, although it probably wouldn't enter her mind to do so since the evil insurance companies must be vilified, is insurance companies spend $50 billion a year processing claims.

She leaves the impression, purposely, I'm sure, that the companies are spending $50 billion a year to ferret out claims for pre-existing conditions, nonsense obviously. To get an idea of just how preposterous this notion is consider that it would cost less than 50 billion annually to pay $100,000 in claims for 499,000 people. Most people accumulate less than $100,000 for medical care in a lifetime, never mind a year.

Why Shouldn't We Buy into the Global Warming Hoax?

Because the UN is telling us it is so.

The UN, the promoter of the worldwide Aids epidemic will shortly be reporting that their numbers are wildly wrong, according to the Washington Post today.

One of the reasons the numbers are so far off is:

"There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda," said Helen Epstein, author of "The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS." "I hope these new numbers will help refocus the response in a more pragmatic way." (emphasis added).

The same money driven agenda will be shown to be at work in the Global Warming Industry. It won't be long now. As Radar used to say in M.A.S.H. "Wait for it".

The Trouble with "Liberals" Part 98

Dear old Senator Ted Kennedy put his prodigious writing and reasoning skills on display for us today in a piece published in The American Prospect. His subject is those nasty right wingers, Roberts and Alito. His thesis is that they jobbed the system and somehow got onto the Court without having to share with the public what their views and intentions really were.

His example is a job discrimination case, Ledbetter. I won't go into the facts here. They are boring and Ted finds them irrelevant anyway. His critique:

"And for two judges who repeatedly proclaimed a concern for the real-world impact of their decisions, Alito and Roberts have turned out to be remarkably blinded to the plight of America's most vulnerable. "

It is neither the job nor the function of the SCOTUS to match outcomes to policy. It is both its job and function to apply the law as it exists. The outcome will be whatever the best legal, not policy, minds in America determine it to be. Whatever the "plight of America's most vulnerable" might be, it is up to Teddy and his friends to fix it. Not SCOTUS.

One of the commenters at The American Prospect suggests that in Kennedy's view the best outcome would be determined by examining the net worth of the parties to the suit and giving judgement to the less wealthy of them. A logical conclusion to a customarily stupid Kennedy/Liberal argument.

The Trouble with "Liberals" Part 97

Of course, it should read the "Troubles" with liberals, there are so many of them. When you preach the doctrine of "diversity" and opine that we should be non-judgmental contradictions flow so fast and hard that incoherence quickly results. If diversity is good why prevent conservatives from speaking on college campi? Non-judgmental? Not if it concerns vilifying conservatives for the sin of being conservative.

An NFL pre-game show was polluted with a bunch of PETA nonsense yesterday. It was so preposterous that I couldn't stop watching. The subject was PETA/Michael Vick. The story was about PETA's re-education of Michael Vick. A striking, although not unexpected aspect, was the PETA spokesman's (I don't recall his name) condescending attitude toward a repentant Vick.

Most striking, also not unexpected, was a line in a letter PETA sent to Vick's judge. I haven't been able to find a copy of the letter on PETA's web site (http://blog.peta.org/archives/vick/).
A sentence from the letter was shown, highlighted, during the show. As best I can remember it said something like Michael Vick should never have any contact with animals (that is on the web site) and that he should never (emphasis added) be allowed to own an animal. Imagine that. Never. What kind of mind conjures up a lifetime penalty for harming animals and finds no difficulty promoting the notion that a judge could/should order such an outcome.

Is this the product of a non-judgemental attitude? Of course not. What they mean by non-judgmental is that we ought not to judge anything they do nor criticize them for judging us.

Rush Limbaugh, a Small Fault

I am a big Rush fan and have been for years. I even bought some of his "Club Gitmo" T-Shirts. I don't subscribe to his newsletter or Rush 24/7. Both strike me as manifestations of greed. Maybe its just me.

Like so many others I am always amused when some dem starts talking about what a rotten, racist, homophobic, misogynist etc etc person Rush is. The amusement stems of course from the obvious fact that anyone who would make such comments has never listened to Rush.

Like most of the rest of us, he does have some faults. There are two in particular that have annoyed me over the years.

When we went into Bosnia Rush (and I) were demanding an "exit strategy". The fact that we didn't have one was an anathema. Any idiot knows you have to have one. On Iraq, no exit strategy required. To quote Rush, "Winning is the exit strategy". Why the double standard? Well, because we are human I guess. Doesn't make it right though.

Rush also talks a lot about leadership. About politicians and people who do what they think is right regardless of what the polls say. How many times did we nod in agreement as he scoffed at the Clintons whose every move was preceded by "wetting a finger and lifting it into the breeze"?

Now, however, on the issue of Driver's Licenses for illegals and immigration in general, the fact that 70% of the country oppose the licenses and the comprehensive approach to immigration reform is supposed to mean that politicians who oppose the will of the majority are out of touch elitists, not leaders. They may indeed be elitists but that doesn't mean they are not leaders. They are leaders who will live and die (figuratively) promoting the approaches to these issues they believe to be right.

What Rush really means is that, like most of us, someone with whom we agree is a leader and someone with whom we disagree is not. The majority does rule. It doesn't mean we are always right.

John Edwards, Constitutional Monarch Wanabee

I saw an hilarious video of John Edwards yesterday (if I could figure out how to link things I would). I know, they are all hilarious.

Here is what he had to say:

"When I'm president, I'm going to say to members of Congress, and members of my administration, including my Cabinet, I'm glad that you have health care coverage and your family has health care coverage. But if you don't pass universal health care by July of 2009, in six months, I'm going to use my power as president to take your health care away from you."

It is possible, even likely, that Johnnie thinks a President could do that. It is possible, even likely, that he doesn't care whether a President could do that.

It is interesting to consider the mind of a person who would say such a spectacularly stupid thing.

Equally stupid are the two women seated behind him nodding their approval of his stupidity, not to mention the unseen audience applauding heartily.

For all of you, here are some facts:

1) Every American has "Health Care".
2) Every American does not have Health Insurance.
3) All but a very few of us have the free will to choose to live a healthy or unhealthy life.
4) There are said to be 47 million uninsured in this country.
5) Of those, about 18 million choose to be uninsured. Mostly young people who see no
reason to spend good money on insurance they are unlikely to need anytime soon.
6) Of the remaining 31 million there is an unknown number eligible for Medicaid or
Medicare who will not apply for it until they need it.
7) There are also an unknown number eligible for S-CHIPS who will not apply for it
until they need it.
8) The population of the group described in #4 above is constantly changing.
9) There is no reason, as in NO REASON, to dismantle the world's best (yes, I know,
its not perfect) medical care delivery system to accommodate the
needs of less than 10% of the population of this country. If we feel compelled to supplement the county medical system in place across the country to accommodate them we can do that without removing the profit motive from, and thereby wrecking, the existing system.

Can you think of any other situation in which otherwise rational people would
consider such a thing? Of course not. The real problems here are demagoguery
and a hopelessly misinformed political class.

Among the model systems these misinformed demagogues praise is Canada's. I grew up there and know quite a few people who still live there. The system is great of you aren't sick. There is now objective proof for that notion: private clinics are being opened. Cleveland Clinic is now open in Toronto providing American style health care and charging for it. They are doing great. Can't imagine why.

With Friends like these...

Way back when, in 2001, W came to Washington expressing his determination to bring about bipartisan co-operation there as he had in Austin, Texas. I don't think much of bipartisanship. In my experience it is usually shorthand for republicans abandoning their principles.

It wasn't long before W embraced Ted Kennedy and "No Child Left Behind" became the unfortunate law of the land. It wasn't long before Ted Kennedy was calling W a liar and making his usual bombastic, insulting remarks about W and everything he said or did. Declaring Abu Ghraib to have been re-opened under American sponsorship. What a sickening piece of garbage he is. It is astonishing that he is so shameless as to open his mouth on the subject of waterboarding. Mary JoKopechne was not available for comment.

A year or two later Hill and Bill were invited to the WH for the unveiling of their portraits. I listened to W's incredibly gracious speech. It wasn't long before Bill was travelling the world taking pot shots at W.

Fast forward to May 2007. The "Comprehensive Immigration Act" (or whatever that putrid piece of legislation was called) is cooked up in private among the Senators. McCain tells us it will be passed without debate in 48 hours because he's happy with it. Hill is a supporter. W is a supporter. The bill gets beaten to death by an informed public. McCain and W are both big losers with the republican base.

Fast forward to November 2007. The dem presidential candidates are having a "debate". Russert is moderating. He asks Hill about NY Governor Spitzer's licenses for illegals plan. She gives a typical Clinton answer but is eventually pushed to say whether she supports Spitzer's plan or not. What does she do? Blame the Bush administration for failing to come up with a comprehensive immigration plan thus forcing governors to try to do something.

W spent enormous political capital trying to push the Senate's legislation through. Its failure had nothing to do with the administration. Does Hill give W an ounce of credit for his effort? Of course not. These people have not a shred of loyalty or decency.

UPDATE 12/26/07. The Clintons are nothing if not consistent. A few days ago Bill proclaimed that the first thing Hill would do as Prez would be to send him and Bush 41 on a world tour to repair the damage Bush 43 had done to our reputation.

Puts me in mind of a phrase credited to Benjamin Disraeli, speaking about William Gladstone:
"Nothing delights me more than the sight of an unsophisticated rhetorician intoxicated by the exuberance of his own natural verbosity".

Bill, in the instant info world of 2007, actually believes that he can pretend to have the co-operation of 41 in trashing 43! Amazing, but consistent. No fallout of course. 41 issued a statement supportive of 43 and no doubt will go back to calling Bill his "other"son. Just because the Bushes are too nice to hold a grudge.

Readers of the NYTimes probably didn't hear about 41's statement and are no doubt doubled over laughing at their dinner parties: "Even his own father thinks he's an idiot!"

Your Money as Viewed from the Left

Jonah Goldberg in today's NRO quotes Gene Sperling, Hillary Clinton's chief economic adviser, as saying "The question is, should we be giving an extra $120 billion to the top 1%?"

Sperling's reference is to tax cuts. His perspective is instructive. Apparently everything we earn belongs to the government. The only question, in his view, is how much of it the government will let us keep.

It is difficult to quantify how far removed from basic American principles this view pushes the left. Sentiments like this dredge up images of Soviet Commissars concocting five year plans that were the laughing stock of the world while dooming millions to lives of desperation and never ending queing up for food.

What sort of egotism results in the view that a bureaucrat should take from a producer as much as he sees fit in order to spend it differently than would the producer of all this wealth? If I am so smart, lucky, rapacious or energetic as to place myself within the top 1% of all earners in the biggest, wealthiest economy in all of human history it is quite possible that I would spend it well. In fact, it is arguable that whatever I choose to spend it on would be spending it well and spending it more effectively than government would.

I took an economics course long ago about which I remember very little except the color of the text book cover, blue, and one nugget of information. The nugget is that spending by the private sector creates more wealth than spending by government. I don't remember the explanation for that bit of information. I do know that I have seen it repeated in real life twice. The tax cuts of the 80's produced a huge boom and dramatically increased tax revenues. The tax cuts of the 2000's produced a huge boom and dramatically increased tax revenues.

That the Congress, state, county and local governments have chosen to use most if not all of it to fund new programs and produce budget problems doesn't change the facts: Less taxation = more economic activity = more tax revenue.

The fruits of my labor do not belong to the government. They belong to me. I am willing to contribute a portion of what I earn to the government for the common good. I think that is the sentiment this country was founded on.

Buffet Continued

In my previous post I wrote about Warren Buffet's dubious determination to pay more taxes to the Federal Government. In my opinion, he really wants us, not him, to pay more taxes.

As I thought more about the issue I realized that he is right in one respect. People in the middle-income bracket pay too much in taxes. That is not because the rich pay too little. It is the result of misguided policies put in place by incompetent, corrupt politicians.

I have heard, countless times, of the dismal savings rate of Americans. Small wonder. The government confiscates 6.2% of our income, regardless of our income level, and forces us to "save" it in Social Security. How much do people really have left to "save"? Do you earn 6.2% more than you wish to use for living expenses? Few of us are so fortunate. As has been well documented, the Social Security Trust Fund earns nothing so the confiscated assets of every working American earn nothing. My theory on why it earns nothing is that it is invested exclusively in US Treasury Bonds that have to be repaid with tax money, the money we pay the Federal Government in income tax, for the most part.

If that is not bad enough, Social Security confiscations end at $92,500 of annual income. This is simply neither fair, nor right. It clearly places the heaviest burden for funding Social Security on those least able to afford it, although arguably those to whom it is most important in terms of retirement planning. According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2007 , Table 673 about 17% of households earned more than $100,000 in 2004 (the latest year reported) and so had an advantage over those earning less in terms of the impact of SS confiscations on them. (Household income is not the perfect measure here but all I could find for now.)

So about 17% of households are less burdened by the current system than the other 83%. Should the misery be shared equally? No.

In my view Social Security and Medicare should both be means tested. For those of us in the top 5%, the idea that we "need" SS is ridiculous. If SS is going to continue as it is (a bad idea) then we should continue to pay to the $92,500 cap but not be eligible to receive any benefits.

What would be the impact on the system of removing me, Bill Gates, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy (oops, probably not in it since he has done nothing but "work" for the federal gov't his whole life), John Kerry (oops, same problem) and Warren Buffet from it?

Even though my skills are lacking, please consider the following:

If I received $14,400 annually ( $1200/month) and live to age 80 I would have received $216,000.

As of 2001 (Table 700, 2001 is the latest data available) there were 3,510,000 millionaires in the USA. If we were all removed from SS eligibility (how could any of us object in any meaningful way) and lived only to age 70 the system would save $252.7 billion dollars(based on the figures I used for my case and generalising them). If half of us lived to 70 and the rest to 75, $379.1 billion would be saved and so on and so forth.

The SSA site indicates that SS payments will be reduced, probably to zero, although it is hard to tell, by withholding SS benefits for all earned income over $34,400 (there are other numbers but this is the most common in my opinion). If I understand it correctly, $1 is withheld for every $3 earned.

Not surprisingly only ordinary income is included in the calculation. By 65, most, if not all of the income earned by the vast majority of the millionaires will be dividends, interest , capital gains or pensions. None of this income would reduce our SS payments. We get a break again. We don't need it in the first place. A retiree who has to work to make ends meet has his benefits reduced, but I don't? Ridiculous.

Please do not leap to the conclusion that I am a bleeding heart. I'm not. I realize that, for the most part, we end up where we end up through a series of choices. Generally speaking, those who end up with bad outcomes have made bad choices. That doesn't mean that I should be living off their misfortunes, earned or serendipitous. Nor does it mean that they should live off the fruits of my better choices. Given a choice between the two, however, I would rather contribute meaningfully to their well-being rather than force them to contribute meaninglessly to mine.

This post is long enough. I'll leave medicare to another day.

Silly Warren

Warren Buffet, among the richest people in the world, has declared that he doesn't think he pays enough taxes and that the rich should pay more. As James Tarranto pointed out in Monday's Best of the Web at http://www.opinionjournal.com/, he can always send in money to the "Gifts to the Treasury" address if he wants to pay more. Don't hold your breath.

In fact, Buffet is an excellent example of the "say one thing, do another" culture that makes the sanctimony of the left so amusing and annoying.

Buffet complains that he pays less federal tax, as a percentage of his income, than do any of his employees. No doubt this is true. The reason for this is obvious: Most of his income is either dividends (often not taxed at all) or capital gains, taxed at 15%. Neither of these sources of income is subject to Social Security taxes, which end at $92,500(a much greater percentage of his employees' incomes than his own) anyway. His argument is knowingly misleading. That makes him a liar, not an advocate. What he really should be saying is that he wants you and me to pay more taxes.

The hypocrisy does not end there. A year or two ago he announced that the bulk of his estate would be distributed to charitable foundations before his demise. There is one reason to do this: To avoid estate taxes.

How pathetic.

The Trouble with "Liberals"

I put the word Liberals in quotes because it is no longer an accurate description of the people it once described. Today's liberals are reactionaries.

It has become more and more difficult to engage in discussion with them because their arguments are fundamentally dishonest.

A column by Mark Steyn (www.steynonline.com) and comments on it by John Hinderacker (www.powerlineblog.com) explain the basics of the problem.

"Steyn: There's a kind of decadence about all this: If 9/11 was really an inside job, you wouldn't be driving around with a bumper sticker bragging that you were on to it. Fantasy is a by-product of security....

Hinderacker: That is exactly right, I think. It is the luxury of knowing they are bull******** that allows American liberals to claim that their freedoms are going up in smoke and that dissent is being suppressed, when in fact, "dissent" is socially mandated in polite society from Manhattan to Marin County.

I would add this parallel: any survey of Europeans you look at will say that they think the United States is the biggest danger to world peace, worse than North Korea or the Islamofascists. But they don't mean it. If they did, they would be clamoring for their own countries to re-arm. But the very people who claim to believe that the U.S. is bent on world domination are the same ones who don't want their own governments to spend a dollar on defense. They are entirely content to let us keep the peace. Which means that what they tell pollsters about threats to world peace, like what liberals say about threats to their civil liberties, is, to put it politely, disingenuous."

There is the problem. The reactionaries (progressives?) are all over television, radio, the blogs, campus rallies and everywhere else yelling about the suppression of dissent. Is there any greater contradiction than that?

The Associated Press: Cheerleader for the Bad Guys

A near perfect example of the AP's determined effort in support of the Bad Guys, to undermine the public's confidence in the war effort and to minimize the accomplishments of the US Military is on full display in today's Arizona Republic.

Published on Page A8, the headline reads:

"Aide: Sadr could lift cease-fire amid anger over U.S. raids"

Indeed, the first paragraph of the story says just that:

"Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr could end a ban on his milita's activities because of rising anger over U.S. and Iraqi raids against his followers, an aide said Friday amid concerns about rising violence and clashes between rival factions in the mainly Shiite south"

Eight paragraphs later, in paragraph nine, we are told:

"Sadr nonetheless renewed his appeal to uphold the cease-fire and threatened to expel Mahdi army members who don't in what his office called a response to questions from supporters about whether the cease-fire still applied in the face of the U.S. crackdown."(sic)

Apparently rather than report the news (facts): Sadr renewed the cease-fire the AP reporter(s) preferred to report their hope(speculation): Sadr could end the cease-fire.

Obviously, if this was a news story the headline would have read:

" Amid anger over U.S. raids Sadr reafirms committment to cease-fire"

and the ninth paragraph would have appeared first, the first, ninth.

In addition to the nugget above, midway through the story we are told that the U.S. Army announced the discovery of a big cache of Iranian arms. We are then told:

"The military has announced a series of such finds in recent days as it seeks to bolster its claim of Iranian support for rogue Shiite fighters".

A real reporter, without an agenda, probably would have written the same information somewhat differently:

The military has announced a series of such finds in recent days bolstering its claim of Iranian support for rogue Shiite fighters.

There, now I feel better although I hate having to do the AP's job for it.

The Global Warming Hoax

We have all been subject to the nauseating spectacle that the Nobel Peace Prize has become. Yasser Arafat, Jimmy Carter, good grief.

Now, "best" of all, AlGore. It has been noted by people much more accomplished than me that the work AlGore has been recognized for is supposed to be science. Why not the Science Prize? Well, because "An Inconvenient Truth" is as far from contributing anything to Science as Arafat and Carter were from contributing anything to Peace.

The central puzzle in the global warming debate, to me, is: where does the assumption that there is an ideal temperature range for the earth come from? As kids we all learned about the Ice Ages, some of us learned about the mini-ice Age (I didn't until recently). We learned that areas that were once lakes (Lake Bonneville) are now deserts (The Bonneville Salt Flats). On and on. During the time I was being taught about these things no value judgement was ever made about whether these dramatic changes were good or bad, at least none were shared with me. They just happened.

Turn the clock back to 1400 Europe. It was cold. People died from the cold. Then the earth began to warm. A continent flourished. Why? Global Warming. Is it the left's assertion now that it was bad? Who is to say that this round of Global warming, if that is what it is, won't produce desireable results? The models being used point only to catastrophe. Why? Because they want to.

Now the left, notable for their amazing and ridiculous apparant assumption that mankind is not "natural" have created a huge movement decrying the warming of the planet because mankind may be part of its cause.

"An Inconvenient Truth" is the superstar of this effort despite the fact that it has been thoroughly debunked many times over. See http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/press/goreerrors.html for a long, elaborate, academically sound deconstruction of most of the movie's assertions.

The central notion of the environmental and global warming movements is that mankind is not natural. The goods and pollution we produce are not natural. How silly is that? How can anything capable of being produced by a product of nature be anything other than natural?

SoCal Wildfires

I saw a story a few minutes ago stating that the San Diego County fires have already caused 1 billion dollars in damage.

A billion dollars just isn't what it used to be folks. We bought a downtown San Diego condo recently. It is located in a property 3 years old, comprised of two 30 story towers. The combined value of the units in these two buildings located on about an acre, maybe 2, of land is about $350,000,000. That is one property and certainly not the most expensive in downtown.

Individual property owners whose homes are burning down are certainly being harmed and will feel the bite heavily. My sympathies are with them. The overall cost of the destruction is, mercifully, tiny.

There are wild fires every year and, as far as we know, there always have been. As Roger L Simon points out on his blog, having lived in Malibu for years, the fires happen in the same places, generally, year after year and we keep rebuilding in the same places, year after year. Can the outcome really be said to be surprising?

With every hurricane in the east and wild fire in the west we hear of constantly climbing dollar value destruction as though things are getting worse, hurricanes stronger, fires wilder.

How can the losses do anything but rise? How many more houses/appartments have been built in harm's way in Southern Florida and Southern California in the last 20 years? 100's of thousands probably. That means hundreds of thousands more properties and people in harm's way. Not to mention the impact of fabulous appreciation in property values on the ultimate calculation of the losses.

It is not remarkable that losses have increased steadily, it is entirely predictable. It is completely amazing that loss of life has decreased.

What would the Southwest look like?

There are stories out today regarding the abuse heaped on the USA contestant in the Miss Universe pageant that took place in Mexico City recently. In the ordinary course of things I wouldn't be much interested in news of this nature.

The immigration debate has managed to make me more sensitive to all US-Mexico stories so I took a look at this one.

Among the reasons for the abuse, and Mexican anti-Americanism generally, cited by a Mexican interviewed for the piece was that the Mexicans haven't forgotten 1848 and how the USA stole the Southwest and California from Mexico. I have read a fair amount about the Mexican - American conflict. I may be mistaken but I think that it was a young congressman, Abe Lincoln, who asked where, exactly, on the US side of the then border, the American blood that was the causus belli was spilled. No clear answer was forthcoming.

The argument can fairly be made that we did indeed extort the Southwest and California from Mexico.

If we hadn't, all it would mean is that in 2007 the incredibly vibrant and productive states of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and California would look like the rest of modern day dysfunctional Mexico and millions more Mexicans would be fleeing to a smaller, but undoubtedly just as successful USA.

Natural Tensions

In an earlier post I had confessed that I am not an expert on anything military. I make the same confession with respect to Physics. In fact, if I recall correctly, Physics was one of two courses I failed in High School. I think the other was Geometry.

One concept I did understand, although only in the most basic fashion, was the one that described how surface tension is the force that allows a water droplet to exist in the form we know it.

I call the concept "Natural Tension". In my view, natural tension exists in all manner of relationships, physical or not.

For example, there is a natural tension between parents and their children. The children are expected to explore their limits, the parents are expected to resist at whatever point they consider appropriate. In our modern era, where it seems every natural tendancy that is obviously ordinary has suddenly become complicated, the natural tension between parents and their children is now monitored by thousands of laws and bureaucrats.

Remarkably, or not, millions of parents seem to embrace the notion that child rearing is just too complicated for them and welcome the intrusion of Federal ( School Lunch programs, No Child Left Behind Act), State (each one has a Secretary of Education), County (innumerable Child Protective Services bureaucracies) and local governments in the raising of their children.

I, for example, cannot take my child out of her High School and bring her back later the same day without a note from a doctor. Why is my determination that it is ok for her to be out of school for any reason I deem appropriate insufficient? Because the bureaucrats and the parents who elected and/or acquiesce in the appointment of them presume me to be an idiot and/or a predator. Unfortuantely it appears that the majority of my peers agree with that assessment of parents in general; not themselves, of course, just "other parents". For reasons best known to themselves they happily or unwittingly have placed control of their kids in the hands of people they don't even know and seem comfortable with the notion.

There is also a natural tension in our political system. The executive and legislative branches, for example, are involved in a constant battle with each other over any number of issues. The absence of tension leads to cronyism and corruption. Too much tension and the "water droplet" that is our system may break. The exacerbation of natural tension is one of the several explanations for the seccession of the South.

Today, in the same way that so many of us have abdicated our responsibilities as parents to bureaucrats, many of us appear to have succumed to the notion that there is something unnatural about the natural tension of politics. We hear endless demands from the left for more civility in politics that are reported as though they are sincere. In the same breath that they call W all manner of vile names, compare our troops to Nazis (Sen. Durbin), declare that our troops in control of Abu Grahib are no better than Sadam (Sen. Kennedy), and vilify the politicization of the post of US Attorney (Sen. Schumer).

What Durbin, Kennedy, Schumer et al understand is the natural tension of politics. The tension is essential. They pretend sincerety while throwing their verbal bombs, but they cannot be sincere. I am often surprised that they are able to keep straight faces while making their silly assertions.

Schumer, for example, knows that the position of US Attorney is a political appointment and that the US Attorneys "serve at the pleasure of the President". The President has unfettered power to dismiss them at any time, for any reason or no reason. He knows, but does not say that Bill Clinton dismissed all 93 US Attorneys early in his first term, they were mostly Republican appointees, so thier dismissals were entirely political.

He knows but does not say that US Attorney Lamm in San Diego served to the end of her term, indicted and convicted Red Duke durng her term and was not removed to thwart that investigation. The suggestion to remove her was made months before the expiration of her term and the determination made that she would be replaced at the end of her term. There was obviously no intent to influence the Duke investigation.

The natural tension in politics is stretched to the breaking point when politicians succumb to the temptation to put politics ahead of the good of the country. Unfortunately we may be seeing evidence of just such an event now. Dems and Rinos have decided that for political gain they are going to try to force us out of Iraq.

The same people who were patiently explaining to us in 2005 and 2006 why it would be such a bad idea to set a timetable for withdrawal (Reid, Biden, Clinton) are now advocating the opposite. We know that they are doing so purely for perceived political gain because they do not refer to their earlier positions and explain why they have changed their minds. The reason they avoid that is there is no reasoning, other than personal political gain for their reversals of position and we as a group don't look kindly on the placing of self-interest before national interest.