Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Outline for Obama's upcoming address on jobs has been stolen

An undercover Breitbart operative posing as a housekeeper at the $50,000/week estate in Martha's Vinyard where the Obama's vacationed has stolen an outline of Obama's upcoming address on jobs.

That outline is reproduced below:

0. Check that teleprompter is on
1. Note severity of crisis and historic challenge
2. Shout out to the person on Michelle's left who still has a federally funded green job
3. Praise self for everything bad that didn't happen
4. Shout out to Navy Seal's widow on Michelle's right; praise self for Bin Laden's demise
5. Blame Bush for everything bad that did happen
6. Blame earthquakes, etc, while praising government response to Irene as way of blaming Bush for Katrina
7. Call for government to "invest" more money on "targeted" programs to restart economy
8. Call for balance, civility and common effort in the national interest while castigating GOP as ideologically extreme, heartless, politically driven Tea Party scum
9. Blame GOP for everything bad that will happen if money not invested
10. Say Congress cannot afford to "do nothing" to establish liberal talking points of Do Nothing Republicans and Truman/Dewey analogy, which we will hear from now until November 2012
11. Close with soaring Obama rhetoric that acts like a Progressive date-rape drug -- Liberals swoon when drug is administered but shortly after coming to, can't recall anything that was said or done

Friday, August 26, 2011

The Black American: Object or Subject?

The dedication of the Martin Luther King Memorial on the National Mall encourages us to reflect on our past as a people and to consider our future.

There is a Great American Myth that treats Blacks as objects rather than subjects.  In numerous movies, for example, such as To Kill a Mockingbird, Mississippi Burning and Hairspray, Black Americans suffer with dignity until a moral Awakening transforms the hearts of White Americans.  The unspoken moral is that racial peace, freedom and equality come about when Whites decide to become liberals.

This gloss is wrong, repugnant and harmful.  It is wrong because throughout their history in America, Blacks struggled and fought for their own freedom, rights and welfare.  During the Civil War, hundreds of thousands of slaves emancipated themselves by escaping to Union lines.  Nearly 200,000 Black Americans served in uniform, while tens of thousands of others served in pioneer construction battalions or in the war economy.  Blacks fought and died for their rights during Reconstruction and persevered to maintain their families and communities during Jim Crow, with millions migrating North for work and freer lives.  As the Civil Rights era opened, Black Americans had organized themselves around churches, Black educational institutions and community organizations to militate for their rights. 

In light of this history, the Great American Myth as expressed in the film Mississippi Burning is particularly repugnant since it uses the backdrop of real events to tell a White buddy action story.  The FBI is portrayed as the white knight come to rescue the helpless Blacks.  In reality, Hoover's FBI was convinced the Civil Rights movement was Communist motivated and sought to weaken, not support, the movement.  What's particularly vile about Mississippi Burning is that, although Blacks have been murdered, raped and beaten throughout the story, the act which drives the by-the-book FBI agent to finally get tough is the beating of a White woman.

So why is all of this harmful?  In re-writing American history as a White Awakening, the Great American Myth treats Blacks as inferior and incapable.  As recipients of White sympathy and largess, Blacks remain the other, the passive objects of White benevolence, victims incapable of deciding and achieving for themselves.  Blacks serve as salves for White consciences and lab rats for Progressive social experimenters.

Rosa Parks, whose refusal to yield her bus seat to a White person triggered the Montgomery bus boycott, has been depicted as a "humble seamstress."  Like Mac in Yertle the Turtle, she cracked when she could take no more.  In reality, Ms Parks was a hard-nosed activist, part of a network of activists, who understood their rights and asserted them through a calculated act of law breaking.

Rosa Parks, like millions of other Black Americans who have struggled and fought in the political, economic and social arenas, was the subject of her own life.  To pretend otherwise so Whites can feel good about themselves, or so that politicians and activists of various races can make a living tending a grievance industry, is to perpetuate the racism and discrimination we should have rejected as a people long ago.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Bush/Cheney and Iraq; Obama/Hillary and Libya

Former Vice President Dick Cheney's book is coming out.  We'll see what he has to say about the George W. Bush Administration's biggest blunder: the conquest of Iraq.

Our war on Iraq was a proxy attack on Saudi Arabian Wahhabiism, which has been the inspiration and funding source for Sunni global jihad, including Al Qaeda.  Since we could not invade Saudi Arabia directly, the goal was to topple an oil-rich dictatorship with a relatively educated populace and to establish a pluralistic government with a market economy that would drive down the price of oil and provide a counter-example to other Moslem dictatorships, especially Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria.

The war was a huge strategic gamble, akin to the U.S. invasion of Guadalcanal, which we launched before we were ready, but which took the Japanese so much by surprise that they did not view the invasion as a serious challenge until it was too late.

Where Bush, Cheney, et al, failed was in confusing overrunning Iraq with conquering it.  Army Chief of Staff Shinseki correctly estimated before the war that 300,000 occupation troops would be required.  For his outspoken prescience, he was forced to retire.

I suspect the decision to invade Iraq was made not long after September 11, 2001.  While Bush had the mandate, he should have called for 3,000,000 volunteers to go through basic training and to enter the Reserves.  This would have established an adequate pool of occupation troops to prevent Iraq from unraveling as it did.  The Administration also demonstrated cultural and historical ignorance in post-overrun relations with Iraqi society.  One example was the disbanding of the Iraqi army, which took its weapons, went home, and started an insurgency.

Bush and Cheney bear responsibility for their mistakes.  Now Obama and Hillary -- without Congressional authorzation -- have attacked Libya, a sovereign country that did not threaten us.  The country has been overrun by anti-government forces backed by U.S. airpower and likely elite ground units.  Is the U.S. any better prepared -- materially or morally -- for post-overrun conquest than the U.S. was in Iraq?

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Marco Rubio Gets It Half Right

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio recently spoke at the Reagan Presidential Library.  He identified two broad goals for national policy: prosperity and compassion.

Rubio is a principled and thoughtful leader.  He combines strength and kindness.  He will play a great role on the national stage. 

But in the case of his speech, he is only half right. 

Prosperity is an appropriate policy goal because it is an outcome.  We can define the elements of prosperity and measure the efficacy and efficiency of efforts to achieve that outcome.

Compassion, on the other hand, cannot be a policy goal because it is a sentiment, not an outcome.  Motivated by this sentiment, I can act in ways that have wasteful or harmful results.  I can expend a dollar's worth of society's resources to do a penny's worth of good.  I can impose a restriction out of concern for one person that results in poverty, injury or death to others.  Out of compassion, I can even intentionally euthanize a fellow human being. 

Some would argue that "equality" is the policy goal that counterbalances prosperity.  But, history, including recent history, shows that the more we sacrifice prosperity for equality, the less we get of both.  History also shows that the more we promote freedom, the more we get of both prosperity and equality.

Let our overarching goal be freedom.

Only in America: Our Political Leaders Are Clowns and Our Clowns are Political Leaders

Four minutes well spent: comedian Red Skelton talking about the Pledge of Allegiance

Monday, August 22, 2011

The Progressive World View: It Takes a Villain

Our President likes to accuse the "other side" of putting politics above national interest.  Implied is the purity of his own motives and actions.  The President's moral posturing is politics, too, of course.  What should worry us is that he might actually believe what he says.

At a root level, he does.  The Progressive world view requires a villain.  What is the moral basis for pursuing economic or social justice except purging injustice?  Unless remedying previous exploitation, Obama's desire to "spread the wealth around" resembles Lincoln's description of tyranny/slavery: "You toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it."

Villains also personify the rationale for increasing government control over our lives.  If we could individually, or collectively through voluntary associations (church, charity, mutual-aid society, club), look after ourselves, what need for government to assert and insert itself?

Today's villains are millionaires and billionaires, Tea Partiers, racists, sexists, homophobes and climate-change deniers, the contours of these categories conveniently expanding to comprise people making $200,000 or more, as well as virtually anyone who disagrees with the Progressive agenda.  It is not enough that such people be mistaken, since that would create a moral obligation for Progressives to persuade through argument; as villains, opponents can be ignored or crushed.

Is such a worldview that much different from other systems where officials have gathered ever more wealth and power to themselves while ostensibly defending the exploited and weak from bourgeois capitalism, international Jewry, heretics or infidels? 

For any world view based on envy and control, it takes a villain.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Embracing Life without Borders

The Borders mega-bookstore near our house is having a going-out-of-business sale.

Pre-children, my wife and I used to enjoy browsing bookstores together.  So, the shuttering of the largest bookstore chain, like the death of a distant relative, mixed peripheral loss with a direct reminder of the march of time.  Still, my wife and I weren't too grief-stricken to search for bargains.

The search went something like this:

Better half:    "Check out these great cookbooks"
Me:               "Wouldn't you rather download Foodily recipes for free on your iPad?"

Me:              "Those DVDs are 40% off."
Better Half:   "We've already got Netflix, and you can download them for less on iTunes."

Me:              "Anything for the kids' for back-to-school?"
Better Half :  "I got everything on-line for about the same."
Me:              "No sales tax, either."

My wife and I took a last look around the store.  What had been a place to pursue knowledge for fun and profit now struck me as so much wasted real estate.  Well, hadn't my great grandfather's smithy become an auto repair shop?

The only constant in life is change.  Embrace it.

Friday, August 19, 2011

The Left Turns on Obama -- Better to Blame the Cook Than the Recipe

The recent fight over the debt ceiling increase obscures the fact that in 2009-2010, the Left had near total control of the federal government.

The Left did not waste its position -- TARP handouts to favored firms, cramdown of GM/Chrysler bondholders, $1 trillion stimulus, federal spending up 25%, ObamaCare, Dodd Frank, ban on offshore exploration in the Gulf, extended unemployment benefits, thousands of new rules and regulations.

The economy stopped contracting, but we never experienced the strong growth and increased employment typical of a recovery. We now see ourselves sliding back into recession.

We also see the Left turning on Obama for not delivering. But the fact is, he has delivered, spectacularly so. The Left's real problem is that its policies do not work. Wherever tried -- New Deal, Soviet Union, Maoist China, Latin America, India, Western Europe -- they have failed.

That is why the Left is turning with such bitterness on its hero. If it's not his fault in executing the Left's cherished policies, the problems must lie with the policies themselves.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Buffett and Higher Taxes -- A Hypothetical Case Study

Let's say that Warren Buffett owned a company that was deeply in debt, hemorhaging cash, losing market share and supporting large numbers of idle employees.

What would the Oracle of Omaha do to turn things around? It's simple -- cut the commissions of the top 3% of salemen who bring in half the revenues and use the savings to give raises to the idle employees. This will encourage the top salesmen to go out and win new business while the idle employees stimulate the company's finances by spending money in the company cafeteria.

Yeah, right.