The Misanthropic Humanist

John Galt Smiles

2011-04-07T20:16:00.002-07:00

I just realized several things all at once...

1. Atlas Shrugged has been made into a movie, and I cannot wait to see it.
2. It comes out - no doubt intentionally - on April 15th.
3. By sheer serendipity, there is a very good chance that the federal government will be CLOSED at the time of the release, because of the same unsustainable levels of government taxation and regulation that the story is about.

Beautiful.

Arizona Congressional District 8

2010-04-05T21:14:00.002-07:00

Arizona CD 8

Tomorrow night (April 6th) there is going to be another debate between the four Republicans competing to see who gets to replace Gabrielle Giffords as our representative to Congress this fall. I'd like to share my impressions of the candidates from the last debate, and we can see how they compare with who shows up tomorrow night. I’m not going to go into detailed examples, because I want this post to be read (so I’ve got to keep it short).

I like Jesse Kelly a lot. He is articulate, straightforward, and he understands the constitution and freedom. He runs his own business, which should be a prerequisite for any public office. He knows when to fight, and when to let an ad-hominem attack go by. Mostly, I trust him and his instincts. I trust that when he represents me, he will actually REPRESENT me, and that his own moral compass is aligned well enough with my own that I won't have to wonder which way he'll vote. I already know how he'll vote, because I know who he is.

Andy Goss. Andy Goss is a good man, and I actually like his instincts a little bit more than Jesse Kelly's (but not much). On one debate question in particular - airline security - he was the only candidate that even suggested airport security might not be handled best by the government, but by the airlines themselves. Sacrilege to many, but I love that his instincts tended toward solving a problem with freedom rather than with more government. Unfortunately for Mr. Goss, I think that Jesse Kelly is more polished, and has a better chance of defeating Giffords in a fairly liberal town where style will carry more weight than it should, so my vote still goes to Jesse. (In the best of worlds, Goss would run for the House, and Jesse Kelly would take McCain’s Senate seat! Maybe in 6 more years... But I digress.)

Jonathan Paton is a decent guy. If he wins, I’ll vote for him. Politically speaking, he strikes me as a junior McCain. Everything he says is measured and balanced against what he thinks everybody wants to hear. The answers he gave at the debate compared to what he says in smaller settings are pretty different: more stridently conservative in the personal setting, more generally palatable when the cameras are rolling. For nearly every question at the debate his answer had something to do with legislation he would, would like to, did, tried, or once thought of passing, either in the Arizona legislature, or someday in Congress. He said things along the lines of "Unlike any of my opponents, I've actually written legislation for... blah blah" so many times I wanted to pull my hair out. Basically, he’s conservative, but he is in no way an “undo legislation that does harm to the constitution” type of conservative that I’m looking for. Put another way, he’ll play the game on our side, while Jesse Kelly is in it to break the rules.

Brian Miller. Wow. He’s a dyed in the wool Ron-Paul nut, and that means you get the good with the bad. He knows the constitution inside and out, and he’s passionate about it, which is great. He also says things like “this illegal war” and that there are only 100 Al Qaeda left in Afghanistan (without mentioning the Taliban... which there are a whole lot more of). There are reasonable arguments about where Afghanistan is going, but those aren’t the ones he’s making. But here’s the thing that made me lose any and all respect for the man: This Air Force pilot – a Major – called Jesse Kelly a quitter for honorably serving 4 years in the Marine Corps and then choosing to have a child and join the family business. That’s right, Marines who go to war for their country and serve their terms of enlistment are quitters. He said this in front of hundreds of people at the closing of the last debate. Major Miller does not deserve the salute his rank demands let alone my vote, and if I see him on base, he won’t get either. His personality and his style would be abrasive and counter-productive in Congress. If he wins, Gabby can keep her seat, and maybe she’ll just get bored with commuting to Houston.

This guy speaks for me

2009-08-23T14:08:00.002-07:00

It's short and sweet. No wonder the royalty is nervous.

My water has a fever

2009-07-10T15:59:00.001-07:00

So here's the downside of Arizona in the summer. Our cold water always gets warm in the summer, but I've never actually checked to see HOW warm. I just measured. 101.2ºF. From the cold faucet.

Hilarious

2009-07-08T23:20:00.003-07:00

I've been ridiculously busy lately, and politics have been making me almost too angry to write about them. It reaches a point where the cause and effect of bad choices are so blatantly obvious that I can no longer believe that people can possibly be so stupid. Maybe half. The other half are just evil.

Anyway, THIS is hilarious. I hope to get back to writing soon.

If this doesn't make you cringe, you are the problem. (updated)

2009-06-17T12:17:00.000-07:00

Irregardless of whether or not ending a sentence with a preposition is one of your personal peeves, I think Western Pennsylvanians supposably say it wrong more often. So, for all intensive purposes, I was right that it's an eastern peccadillioe. Not that you need to call the calvary or anything; No need to go nucular about it. It's prolly not a big deal anyhow. Though I do admit that it can be really fustrating when people say things that bother you. Aks yourself: is it just the way people are brought up? I could care less personally, it's just an itch that I've always wanted to, you know, itch. But are we loosing any attachment to grammar, spelling, and sentence usage? Maybe it's the evils of spell-check, or perhaps people just don't spend enough time in the libary. Whatever the problem, we need a concerned effort to nip it in the butt because less and less people are good writers.

"Daily" short: Conservative Politics are Harder

2009-06-09T21:51:00.003-07:00

I've put my finger on another one of those things that has bothered me for a while, but refused to take shape in my brain: When a conservative goes against his principles or makes a mistake, it's because he's wrong. When a liberal goes against his "principles"... or at least his campaign promises, he's actually right!
Pretty basic, but also a pretty good explanation of why the Republican takeover of the 90's ended because they failed to live up to their own goals, but Barack Obama can continue to contradict his party, his campaign, and even himself from week to week and get away with it: He's usually flip-flopping to the correct answer. OK... to the less wrong answer.

Put another way, if a conservative runs on conservatives principles - also known as reality - but then governs like a liberal, he's useless. He's a liar, he's a bad leader, and he's quite frankly wrong. The governor of California comes to mind. And, in fact, the vast majority of Republicans in Congress come to mind. They say one thing during the campaign, but then screw everything up when in office. But liberals don't carry this onus. They're wrong the whole time they're campaigning. So when they actually do something that goes against those principles, everybody's happy. If you run on closing Gitmo, immediate withdrawal of troops, and banning guns, but then leave the prison open, keep the preceding secretary of defense running a continuing war, and respect - or at least pretend not to notice - the 2nd amendment... well, it's hard to criticize those things. And because conservatives attack ideas, we also acknowledge when people get things right. A liberal would never stray so far from his agenda just to acknowledging truth.

Great (and funny) article on the economy

2009-06-08T10:50:00.002-07:00

Here is a great piece talking about how backwards and damaging the administration's approach to the economy is. It's also a great off-hand warning about Obamacare!

homicide

2009-06-01T23:25:00.003-07:00

It has been a full month since my last post, and I apologize. Kinda. My post deployment break (yeah, I figured it was pretty obvious why I'm doing this anonymously, so I've decided to just hang that out there. I don't speak for the military, I'm just in it... for now) is over, and I'm going to try to get back into this. Luckily, Chris Matthews has provided me a segue.

Mathews has been really getting his figurative ass handed to him lately, and it's good to see. But I heard something today that independently irked me. OK, I didn't so much hear it as read the hearing impaired subtitles while listening to Rush (not the band) on my iPod and running on the gym treadmill. But I digress. The point is that I didn't catch the whole discussion, but it was about the abortion doctor killing that just happened in Kansas. Like I said, I didn't hear the whole discussion, but I did hear Mathews saying that his guest should not use the term "murder" of an unborn child because even if you believe that it is "killing" another person, murder is a "legal term".

Now, for the record, I'm walking a fine line here with regards to the murder of the doctor. I do not think it was right. I am not in favor of vigilante justice of abortion doctors, mostly because I believe that it hurts the pro-life cause more than it helps it. If we are to remain a nation of laws in spite of our current government, then as civilized people we must work within those laws until such time (if ever) that it becomes impossible to preserve freedom that way. So for the record, I'm against it.

But morally, I also "get it". I do believe that the doctor was a murderer. He specialized in, and advertized late-term abortions. So he was killing children older than those that might have been incubated and saved as premature births in a local hospital. No matter what you think of early abortions - and for me there is little difference - this is unarguably a baby human. It can cry, feel, eat, shiver, and suckle it's mother. Morally, what the killer did yesterday is stop another killer. Even though I wish, for a whole host of reasons, that he hadn't done it I can't be sad at the passing of a man who I morally rate as no better than Charles Manson or Ted Bundy.

That aside, let's get back to Chris Matthews and the subject of Murder as a legal term. To start, I disagree on the face of it. Murder has meant the unjustified killing of another person for about as long as it has been an English word. The fact that it has a legal meaning does not make the common use of it invalid. What that doctor did was murder babies. But I'm going to give Matthews the benefit of the doubt here, and accept his premise: Murder is far too technical of a legal term to apply to a man who kills womb-entrapped infants for a living. So we are going to be more technically accurate ourselves. If Chris Matthews doesn't like using "Murder" to describe these killings, then we shall henceforth use the word "Homicide" as it is more specifically descriptive. A child, unborn or not, is a homo-sapiens. Homicide is the killing of a member of homo-sapiens. Therfore, that abortion doctor, and ALL abortion doctors, commit homicide.

"Daily" short: Planning and Crisis

2009-05-01T19:53:00.003-07:00

Liberalism and socialized economies are plainly short-sighted, no matter how far-sighted they aspire or claim to be. That such a philosophy can call its opponents "reactionary" is hilarious in a pot, kettle sort of way. They intend the epithet of reactionary as a contrast to their "planned" economy, but in practice it is like Hitler accusing FDR of heavy-handedness, or Bill Clinton calling the Pope a womanizing liar. The reality is that business owners use the capitalist system "reactions" to plan ahead, while state control so quickly falls behind the pace of events that in no time at all it is merely reacting to the loudest complaint of the day, or the highest number of mouths demanding food. There is nothing efficient about this, which most people agree about in theory. That's why nobody actually claims to want socialism anymore. But even without somebody openly advocating the destruction of our competitive culture, the prevailing crisis mentality provides daily steps in that direction. Trying to plan an economy when you claim to know that it's a bad idea is even dumber than doing it on purpose.

Sitemeter

2009-04-29T11:03:00.002-07:00

The last traffic counter I had seems to have quit working, so I've switched to Sitemeter. It's a much better known site, and the free version provides more stats. I don't know what my total was before the reset, but it was around one thousand, one hundred and... something. So I just set the "starting number" at 1,100 to guess on the cautious side.

Mock Ignorance

2009-04-27T19:36:00.001-07:00

I've noticed a trend in relation to the TEA parties. It's not a new technique, but one that's becoming more painfully obvious as I pick up bits of news here and there, be it that painful video on New American's website, callers to Rush Limbaugh, or random statements from "administration officials". That trend is intentional ignorance about the movement. Now, don't get me wrong, there is plenty of normal ignorance to go around, but the particular subject that's vexing me right now is people who pretend not to understand that these protests and the organizing impulse behind them aren't about MY taxes. It is a flat out lie that everybody who makes less than $250,000 is going to get a tax cut, but even if it wasn't, I wouldn't care. Because I do not look at the government as a sugar-daddy. I don't view all taxes through the lens of what exactly it will do to my personal return, I look at fairness and any tax's effect on the entire economy. I am a huge fan of either a flat tax, or even better the Fair national sales tax, but the reality is that BOTH of those methods would raise my personal contribution. I don't care. That doesn't make me any less aware that they are more equitable and it doesn't make it any less true that they would help the country as a whole. Beyond any of that, it also neglects my personal financial benefits in a strong economy, and that I truly hope to someday make more than $250,000!

Never trust a liberal with your freedom, and never let the main stream media guide your thoughts on anything. They are pretending that they can't understand what those of us making less than a quarter of a million dollars are complaining about so that the less informed or thoughtful will think, "yeah!" right along with them. The protests are about right and wrong. They are about the size of government. They are about impending massive inflation. They are about the debt we're sinking our children with. They are about so much more than what's on my personal 1040 come next April 15th.

A "Daily" Short

2009-04-25T19:28:00.000-07:00

By saving bad banks and "spreading the impact", or misery, responsibility, burden, or however else you want to put it, we have also spread the lack of market confidence. Six months ago we had good banks and bad banks. We had justifiably lost confidence is some (CITI), but maintained our faith in others (Wells Fargo). Now that the government has stepped in to "help" the banks all look weak, and the DOW is around 8,000. Why be different and responsible if there is nothing to be gained?

Things to come

2009-04-25T19:15:00.006-07:00

So I've started working on two separate posts that are currently looking monstrous and not yet ready for publishing. One is an essay on the great Liberal/Libertarian/Conservative contest that we having going right now while these disparate views (or are they all?) slug it out for the spirit of the country. The second should be less sweeping, but just my two cents on original health care (ie insurance and regulatory) reform. And now that I've told you about it, I have to finish them. So there's my motivation.

In the meantime, however, I'll try to supply some more frequent shorts to keep you sated!

Phishing

2009-04-18T21:29:00.002-07:00

Luckily for us, not everybody who goes phishing for your personal information is very good at it. This elegant example arrived in my in-box just today:

we wishes to inform you that your E-mail id have won you a lump sum pay
out of Eight hundred and ninty-one thousand,nine hundred and thirty-four
Great Britain pounds £891,934.00 pounds sterlings)you are to contact our
agent.

Mr Phil Herald.
Email:cgnl_claimsagent@gala.net
TEL: +447031907814
+447031925941

He will brief you on steps to be taken for due processing and remittance
of your prize money.

PLEASE FILL OUT THE VERIFICATION AND FUNDS RELEASE
============================================
1. FULL NAMES OF BENEFICIARY:
2. RESIDENTIAL ADDRESS:
3. DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:
4. PHONE/FAX NUMBERS:
5. NAME AND ADDRESS OF NEXT OF KIN:
6. SEX:
7. OCCUPATION:
8. MARITAL STATUS:
9. NATIONALITY:
10. REF NUMBER AND BATCH NUMBER:
11. AMOUNT WON:

Sincerely,
Mrs. Dianne Thompson
Online Coordinator,
CAMELOT GROUP,Operators of The National Lottery.

My email address, by nature of being so danged long, used to be nearly spam-proof. Starting a blog and publishing it seems to have weakened its resistance. Lesson? If you're going to start a blog, make sure you create a NEW email address for it. I should have thought of that before hand, but this site started as sort of a test... I didn't realize that I'd keep it or enjoy writing so much!

-The Misanthrope

Genius

2009-04-11T18:01:00.003-07:00

It always happens that just when I start to think that I'm pretty smart, I read a book by somebody who is (or was) a whole lot smarter than I am. It happened again today, as it has nearly every day in which I've picked up The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek. I started reading it in my quest to learn all of the stuff that neither high school nor college even pretended to teach me. I'm compiling a list that I'll get to another time. Anyway, this book is amazing. Just about everything a libertarian-leaning conservative might think about the relationship of economics, citizens, and government is in this book. He predicts behavior that we're seeing today, and it does so with astounding accuracy because he saw exactly the same things in his lifetime. At the risk of violating Godwin's Law, a great majority of his writing was based on being raised in Germany as it worked its way down the path to socialism. In the forward to the definitive edition (edited by Bruce Caldwell) Hayek states that he would have loved to have make more direct comparissons to the Soviet Union as well, but they were a putative ally at the time the book was written, and hammering them too hard would have been impolitic.

In the end, however, I believe that this post will be innocent of violating Godwin's law, because I am not actually comparing anybody to Hitler or the Nazis. There are actions they took that led to certain results. Not everything that they did was related to the evil part of their existence. If that was the case, then Liberals could never push gun control, and conservatives could never support hard work. But I digress...

Reading a book as thorough and clearly thought out as this is tough, because I want to copy every page to this blog and add, "What he said!" Of course that would be pretty inefficient. But I've got to include at least a few excerpts that seem more than appropriate in today's world, if only to convince you to buy the book for yourself. Here's the first, which discusses how totalitarian regimes convince people to follow them (I've edited for brevity):

The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those which they, or at least the best among them, have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before... ...And the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language, the change of meaning of the words by which the ideals of the new regimes are expressed.

The worst sufferer in this respect is, of course, the word "Liberty". It is a word used as freely in totalitarian states as elsewhere. Indeed, it could almost be said... ...that wherever liberty as we understand it has been destroyed, this has almost always been done in the name of some new freedom promised to the people. [such as -ed] ...the "collective freedom" [...] is not the freedom of members of the society, but the unlimited freedom of the planner to do with society what he pleases. It is the confusion of freedom with power carried to the extreme.

...But "Freedom" or "Liberty" are by no means the only words whose meaning has been changed into their opposites to make them serve as instruments of totalitarian propaganda. We have already seen how the same happens to "justice" and "law," "right" and "equality." The list could be extended until it includes almost all moral and political terms in general use.

Like I said, he was a genius. Obviously not for this one observation, but because the entire book is filled with things like this that describe the difficulty of teaching and preserving true political freedom. Try explaining to somebody why they are less free today than they were six months ago, and only about a fifth of the population will actually understand you. The people who vote for government bailouts, government control of private companies, government supply of healthcare and confiscatory taxes to pay for it all think that they are every bit (or more) in favor of freedom, justice, and equality as you are, because they no longer - or never have - understood what those words really mean.

Hope and Change are harkening back to an era they'd probably rather we not associate them with. Let's make the association obvious.

Short: Charity

2009-04-09T04:58:00.002-07:00

Charity is efficient welfare. Because charity is freely given, it can include the concept of deserving where government welfare never can. When only deserving folks get help, more people will make themselves worthy, and some will end up no longer needing the charity. This is a solution to - among others - the problem I personally saw working at Safeway when somebody would come to the register with a pile of food to be purchased with the WIC (women, infants, and children) program and food stamps, then finish up with a separate purchase of alcohol and cigarettes. If they can afford $60.00 in alcohol and cigarettes, then they can afford that $40.00 worth of food that I just paid for. I don't give a hoot if adults choose to drink and smoke, but it's not my job to fund their party. This problem is a small, perfect example of social welfare's utterly unsolvable problem. There is literally no possible way to stop this without extreme limits on personal freedom. It is the flaw of all social programs distilled into a common, ubiquitous example. The answer to all of them is that there is no answer so long as collective largess is distributed through the government or, in fact, any "program" at all. The answer is personal, private charity. Americans are the most charitable people on the planet. Allow us to keep our money, and we will give charitably as we see fit. If nobody sees fit, the recipient is likely not deserving.

Short: A hidden cost

2009-04-09T04:46:00.004-07:00

The more health insurance we provide, the less we will have. As always, the trump card for statists is children; that if you are against socialized medicine, then you want poor children to go without healthcare. The math is wrong. Every dollar forceably taken to be spent on an "uninsured child" is a dollar not available to spend on a different child. If my taxes go up to pay for somebody else's kid, then I have less available to care for my own son. The end result of providing health insurance for all is an overall loss of healthcare for children and adults alike. If you think that we "should" provide free healthcare to people who need it, you must realize that we cannot. Try to understand that no matter how much it makes you feel good, in the end you are hurting more people than you are helping.

Short: The Cost of Socialism

2009-04-05T15:34:00.002-07:00

Socialism always appeals to the dim and uneducated because they cannot see the cost. What is lost through socialist policies is opportunity. The food that wasn't purchased, the business that wasn't started, the investments that never happened: these are the costs of socialism. When your taxes are taken from you and used to pay rent for somebody else, the cost is not only what you did not get to buy, but what you did not get to create. And if your money had not been taken would the rent you supplied go unpaid and the tenant put out on the street? Maybe. Or maybe, if there was no other option available, he would work to keep his home, feed his kids, and live his life. In the process, he would inadvertently create his own wealth and send it on down the line. He would be teach his children to do the same. ALL of that is lost in redistribution. ALL of that is the cost of socialism. Capitalism isn't politics, it's math.

"Daily" short - Central Planning

2009-04-02T16:14:00.004-07:00

"Central planning for an economy works only in a war, because the price of failure is death. The image of one's child incinerated by an enemy will get a man early to work and keep him on task all day. In the absence of war, the consequences are the still death: his family will eventually die of starvation if people don't do work in the socialist utopia. But that's further off and fuzzier and besides he's sure that somebody will do get it done. He'll work a little when forced, but not very hard. Only an immediate threat from above can motivate him, but only for a while. This is why socialism leads inexorably to totalitarianism, and this is why both of them always fail in the end."

Benevolent Society of Angry Misanthropes

2009-04-02T16:03:00.004-07:00

I only wish I'd thought of it first!

The comic is free here.

Traffic

2009-04-02T15:56:00.003-07:00

Well, I finally hit 1000 views. Unfortunately, 300 of them were probably me. But it's still a cool mile-marker. I've decided that if I want more readers, I should post more often, and some shorter things. Sometimes an opinion as long as the ones I offer is a bit too daunting for a casual browser to read. So I think I'll start today. First off a link. P.J. O'Rourke, always an excellent humoristic writer (he's like Dave Barry with an economic fetish), he has a great article here in the Weekly Standard about how we're paying for everything twice. It's to the point, and funnier than anything I could ever write.

Abortion

2009-04-01T22:08:00.002-07:00

Abortion

The abortion argument is constantly getting bogged down in legal arguments that don't matter. People who I otherwise respect, such as Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, see the argument in strictly legal terms that tend to ignore the basic morality of the question. It seems that we have gotten so caught up in the propriety of the Roe vs Wade decision that we frequently fail to make the clear moral argument. In posing the argument that I am about to make, the issue - societally and legally speaking - is greatly simplified. The whole kit and kaboodle comes down to one very simple question.

Is an unborn child a person?

That's it. Honestly answer that question, and all the rest logically flows from it. Now, while I know what I believe - that a baby is a baby from the moment of conception - it is not always an easy position to defend. And yet, once that question is answered, all of the "tricky" legal questions are no longer so tricky at all.

Roe was decided on a constitutionally undefined right to privacy. Some folks on our side attack the decision from that point of view: that there isn't a specific right to privacy in the constitution, so the whole thing is bogus. As somebody who loves my freedom, my privacy, and my constitution, I'm not quite on board with that. The constitution is pretty specific about how any power not given to the federal government is left to the states and to the people. So let's take it as a given - even if it isn't - that we have a right to privacy. Doesn't matter. If the unborn child is a person, no right to privacy supersedes the right to life. I can't kill you in my house and get away with it because there was nobody else around in my basement. Private murder is still murder, and still punishable under the law.

Don't let the straw man of "you can't legislate morality" get in your way. That's bumpkis. We can, do, and must legislate morality. What do you think the laws against stealing are, if not morality put into legal code? The idea that abortion is somehow different from all the rest of our laws - every last one of which is codifying morality - is one of the most facile and easily destroyed arguments I've ever heard, and yet I hear it constantly! It's stupid. When you hear somebody say it, tell them so.

When does a baby become a person? Here is where judgement comes into play. Few would argue that a child that is "to term" is a person, President Obama being one of the obvious exceptions since he thinks even newborn babies can be killed! What about a child who is not quite able to live on his own? Perhaps he needs an incubator and intense medical treatment. Is he not a person? The same thing might be asked about someone in intensive care. Does the ventilator and feeding tube make him an un-person? Can we kill him even if he's conscious and will heal? Would we leave an injured soldier to die on the road in Iraq because he "can't live on his own"? Of course not. His survivability without treatment in no way lessens his humanity. Why it should be different for a child, I cannot tell. Oh, but what if the child is so small that consciousness is in doubt? If there's no self-awareness, then it can't be a person, right? Do you remember your first birthday? No? Perhaps you weren't self aware. Do we kill people with Alzheimer's disease? What kind of consciousness and self-awareness do they have? Some perhaps, but it's certainly not complete.

The difference between all of these unborn examples and their adult counterparts is that we can see and know the adults. The difference is in our experience of them, not in the humanity of the people themselves. Perhaps this difference is answered psychologically: we evolved to feel the death of unborn babies less acutely as a defense mechanism because so many are miscarried and lost unwillingly. It makes sense that the loss of a 1st trimester pregnancy doesn't affect us the way the loss of a toddler does because too many people would cease to function. The difference is that we do know the toddler. We do have shared experiences and will feel a greater loss. But that does not make the younger child dispensable.

The final place they get you - the argument that takes it to it's logical conclusion where only "religious zealots" could care - is with the morning after pill. At this stage, a baby is merely a couple of cells bound together. It has no recognizable human form, no organs, and no thoughts. I admit that I myself do not feel the attachment or horror at this stage that I do for babies that are further developed. My gut reaction is different, and I'm tempted to accept it. So is it OK? And if it is, where is the cut off? Do my other arguments not apply here?

They do. The problem is that we cannot prove when a baby becomes a person. When defining personhood, religion and spirituality are necessarily part of the question, and that's where a liberal's rejection of morality becomes so harmful. Birth is a nice, clean-cut place to define personhood legally, but it doesn't really account for the whole truth of the matter and, well, truth matters. Just because the law says that a person is a person on the day that he is born doesn't mean that morally or realistically he is not a person the day before that. At the instant an egg is fertilized, the genetic combination is unique to that person. It is an individual that is distinct from others and will develop specific traits throughout life. It is not an it, but a He or a She. But does she have a soul? I don't know. Being a-religious, I can't even clearly define for you what a soul is, but I know that live exists, and that human life has value.

So babies are people. Nearly everybody - even those who support abortion but choose not to think about it too hard - will agree that a baby is a person at some point before he is born. What people don't want to do, is admit that they don't know when. Everybody wants to pick a time or stage of development where he declares that the baby deserves protection, be it at the start of a heartbeat, full "viability" on his own, or even at birth. If you say viability and you're wrong, every baby with a heartbeat that's killed is a murder. If you say heartbeat, but humanity starts at conception, they every "morning after" pill is an intentional violation of morality, God's will, or "natural law", whichever you choose to recognize.

We cannot be so bold. Admit that you do not know, and you are left with only one option: to err on the side of caution. To err on the side of life. To say that since you cannot show that a child of any certain stage is not a person, you must allow that it may be murder. No killing past conception. We do not shoot randomly into crowds, and we should not allow the abortion of innocent people. Privacy has nothing to do with it.

If you are pro-life already, do not follow this link. The photographs will ruin your whole day. But if you are one of the people who thinks that a baby you don't see can't possibly be a person, then you need to see what abortion is. Go to Priestsforlife.org

Some Facts

2009-03-31T04:36:00.005-07:00

This isn't a full post, just an expression of frustration. Every single time I pass a television with the news on, I want to throw things at it. The level of abject stupidity has reached a point that is simply inexplicable. Every time an "expert" starts pronouncing on the country and the economy lately, they are wrong before they've even left the gate. You can never reach the right conclusion when ALL of your premises are blatantly false. About the only person vehemently exposing the stupidity is Glenn Beck. He is histrionic, but some hysteria is called for right now.

The financial crisis was NOT caused by wall-street. It was caused by Congress.

Taking money from rich people will NEVER help an economy. Poor people do not hire new workers.

GM etc CANNOT be saved by the government. The cannot, in their current form, be saved at all. Bankruptcy will have to happen, and barring government meddling, it will fix the problem.

The free market always works. Always. When the government blocks it's function in one area, it moves to another. When it fails to respond internally, it responds externally. When a company has to give bad loans to compete with federal ones they will. When auto manufactures are forced to pay people who aren't working, they will. The government cannot outsmart, fix, direct, or heal the market, they can only make it less efficient.

Government is not the answer. Government is the problem.

Following

2009-03-31T04:32:00.002-07:00

Just a plug for more views: Off to the right there you can sign up for "following" that will alert you when I submit a new post. It only works with certain email address, but if yours isn't one of them you can still hit the "Atom" link at the very bottom of the page and sign up to get updates emailed to you on any address.

Thanks!

FEMA, in or out? (moved to top)

2009-03-27T22:12:00.002-07:00

[Original post May 27th]

A White house "White Paper" [here] came out in February of this year (2009) discussing whether FEMA should remain under DHS or be brought back under the direct supervision of the president, where it used to reside. The discussion, though predictably derogatory towards the Bush administration, actually does fairly accurately represent the pros and cons of placing the department under each authority. At first I must admit that I was shocked the Obama administration didn't make the easy and obvious power grab, until it occurred to me that they don't want to be responsible for FEMA. It is an agency that nobody will ever be happy with. Even on the rare occasions that the agency does its job well, the media will always those most hurt or least helped, and that is press that no president wants.

Part and parcel with the discussion about where FEMA belongs is its role regarding terrorist attacks or "man made" disasters versus natural disasters. A good reason for the agency to exist at all is not discussed. A friend recently suggested that all federal agencies should be made to periodically justify themselves, and that good idea applies here. As the name states, this is a Federal Emergency Response Agency. As such, its role and operation should be limited not only by the laws of our land (it may not constrain constitutional rights, as with police confiscation of firearms after Katrina), but also by the principles on which our federal government was originally founded. In spirit of this principle, FEMA should only facilitate during an emergency, not direct it. The distinction is important for many reasons, but the first and most obvious is that FEMA cannot respond quickly enough to most emergencies, and we should not expect that to change. Just like a policeman may be a phone call and 3-minute drive away when you need him in 20 seconds, so even a well-run agency will not be able to respond effectively to unpredictable disasters.

In all cases - though it is truer for some than others - disaster preparedness is best handled locally. Folks in Florida know about wind and rain, Pennsylvanians know snow, Arizonans wildfires, and Californians earthquakes, fires, riots, mudslides.. well, you get it. All plans for such disasters are best handled locally with volunteer or contracted support when necessary.

For terrorism or even - as mentioned in the paper - nuclear attacks, the local knowledge is less complete or applicable, but it is still primary. Volunteers in personal watercraft moved far more people off Manhattan Island on September 11th than FEMA could ever have dreamed of, and those volunteers largely organized themselves. How about the Hudson rescue? Did the federal government save those lives in this half natural, half man-made disaster? Not a chance. The primary responders were civilians, the secondary were local, and the federal government has added grand insight by saying the disaster was "probably" caused by birds.

So does FEMA have a role at all? What should it do in a disaster? The most effective way it could help is by doing only things that cannot be handled locally. Like the federal government itself, FEMA should only provide a structure and environment in which state and small district planning can independently flourish. Give recommendations for standardization. Provide inter-state communications links for cross-border disasters. Most importantly, facilitate rather than hamper America's huge potential for volunteerism that we demonstrate after every single major disaster. Rather than hanging red tape like tinsel from a Christmas tree, the agency should look for ways around obstacles already in place. Clear the way for the transportation of people, goods, and information.

To some degree this can include equipment and personnel that a state may not have. I have no objections to providing things like radios, helicopters, rations, or medical supplies when and where they are truly needed. I do have an issue with trailers being lived in more than 3 years after a hurricane destroyed somebody's home.

Luckily the kind of supplies that I'm talking about don't even require spending much money. Doctors, military folks, and yes even rich people with helicopters are willing to help if you will only tell them how. Private donation shipments can be collected and delivered by private volunteers through all modes of private transportation that could, in turn, be effectively coordinated by an agency with half-competent leadership. Military medical supplies have expiration dates, so increase the turn-over speed for a handy supply. There are around 1.4 million healthy, trained, smart active duty military guys (under two hundred thousand of which are in Iraq and Afghanistan) sitting around just looking for something helpful and adventurous to do. Give them 2 weeks ad-hoc leave if they use that time in a FEMA assigned volunteer role. They'd be cleaning and re-building before the disaster was even over.

The key to all these things is that they are run from the bottom up. No emergency agency will ever get food and water to the "Littletown" of 300 people cut off in a disaster affecting a much larger city. But when Littletown has a plan and sends a representative to walk 40 miles through the woods to tell the FEMA coordinator about their plight, that agent can point two of the 3,000 volunteers with chain saws and pickup-trucks packed full of donated supplies to get moving that direction.

In the end, it makes little difference whether FEMA is run by the president or the DHS, because it will be ineffective and bureaucratic either way. The changes needed are not going to happen in either location - though they would be more likely under a strong executive than under any society of self-interested directors of lobbying money. We don't have the former and we're drowning under the latter, so I'd have to say that no matter which answer is arrived upon, the correct question was never asked. "FEMA in or out?" is moot. "FEMA: to be, or not to be?" That, my friends, is the question.

What's Next?

2009-03-15T16:26:00.000-07:00

A brief discussion of the stock market is in order.

Before that gets underway, though, a discussion of my own economic credentials is warranted: There aren't any. I'm just a guy who watches things that happen and things that don't happen. All that is really necessary is an ability to see abject stupidity when it happens, and what we have seen recently is exactly that. (For details on the stupidity, please see "Depression Package" two posts ago.) Whether the purpose of that stupidity is, well, just purposeless incompetence, or if it is a more nefarious plan is not provable. I hesitate to accuse because that's one of the things that bothered me so much about the criticism of President Bush: people didn't just claim that he was wrong, they claimed that he was evil. They took clearly reasonable policy decisions, the wisdom of which could be honestly debated, and attributed the motivations to cabals, conspiracies, and just plain old dictatorial meanness. Which is stupid in and of itself. The one thing that was plain to most of us about GW is that right or wrong, he was and is a good man. I disagree with about 1/3 of his policies - marginally acceptable on average - but I don't think that where we disagree is due to his purely evil nature. So that is why I'm hesitant to attribute any of the current crisis to ill-intent by Obama. Not because I think it isn't possible, but because though I vehemently disagree with nearly every aspect of his public life, I still owe my own president the benefit of the doubt when it comes to harming his own country. And yet. And yet I cannot avoid my gut, and my gut is telling me that on the incompetent/nefarious axis, Obama falls right in the middle where there's just a bit of nefariousness (is that a word?) exasperated by incompetence.

Here's what I think: I think that before the election, Democrats saw a squishy economy and decided to exploit it in the polls. It worked, but having a weak to non-existent understanding of economics themselves, they didn't see where they has so severely undermined it with Freddy, Fannie, Chriss, and Barney. They thought that they could call a spade a spade without the rest of us noticing that it was in fact a back-hoe. They talked the economy into sliding faster and harder than it had too. Then they started talking about bail-outs: Bad ideas that held the economy in limbo during their discussion. While waiting for the government to get off its butt and give the markets something to react to, everything slipped further. Then incompetence took over entirely. Oh, trillions of dollars of pork and hand-outs represent more than their share of personal greed and corruption as well, but the vast majority of all this bail-out crap was incompetence. The bailouts passed, and the markets said "hell no!". And if you think I'm wrong, check out the dates each "stimulus" or "bailout" was signed and then look at the DOW for the next week. Markets don't lie. Markets can be inaccurate, but they cannot lie. If the did and got caught, I'd be rich, and they still would have worked. But I digress.

A little immorality and personal ambition drop-kicked a weak economy over the edge. Good policy could have softened the slide. If upon taking office the president had slashed top quintile personal income taxes, corporate income taxes, and capital gains while letting a few bad banks fail, the drop would have not been half as bad and recovery would be more complete. But they had to throw in that little bit of state-sponsored immorality where banks were actually pressured into taking bailout money. No big deal on the face of it (No, no, please don't give me billions of dollars!!), but then incompetence followed public outrage into restricting the behavior of companies trying to be competitive. And the markets lost even more confidence.

So here we are. The DOW dropped into the six thousands, and has now had a few day upswing. Economists debate whether this is a "sucker's surge" or if it's the real deal, but there is a lot of confusion. Mostly because so much of what markets are being drive by has nothing to do with what markets are supposed to be driven by. Irwin Stelzer discusses that here better than I can. So what what's next long term?

Here's my guess: Where good policy would have seen our 13000 pt DOW drop to about 10,000, it instead dropped to just below 7,000. The value of the stocks in our market are currently under-valued in relation to their own ability to produce real value. They will recover back to a somewhat tolerable level, but that will not be their "real" level. I guess that within a year we'll be back at 9,000, and within 2 years it'll be between 10,000 and 11,000. Five years later, it won't have moved significantly higher. Maybe 12,000.

That will be trumpeted as "the stimulus worked!" What it will really mean is that the stimulus is still undermining an otherwise healthy economy. Unemployment will still be relatively high, and the housing market still won't be sure what to with itself. The people who were bailed out will stop paying again, and the people who were not bailed out because they were too responsible will start saying "screw it" and hit the reset button themselves. Add this to the long term de-valuation of the dollar that everybody BUT a democrat understands is nothing but simple math, and the most dynamic economy on earth will not act that way again for nearly a decade.

We are not the cradle of world freedom because of our wealth. We are wealthy because of our persistent freedom. If we lose that free-market mentality, we will all lose in the long run.

Single Subject, Descriptive Title (SSDT) *updated 15 Mar 09 2005Z

2009-03-13T18:00:00.004-07:00

[Updated text is Green]

A while back, I was perusing some blogs when I came across this question: If you could issue a decree adding a single amendment to the U.S. Constitution, what would it be? I was intrigued. Mostly because there are so very many that I would like to see. For some reason or other, I didn't read too many of the comments to see what others' ideas were - I was probably doing something silly like working - but it really got me thinking. Of all the ideas I had - re-issue the whole constitution with "we really mean it this time" after every section and amendment, eliminate agencies' ability to make rules with the effect of law, clarify just what counts as interstate commerce, or even just make myself king for life - I settled on one idea that I thought was pretty good. I think the most harmful general legal problem we have is that there are too many laws, and they are too complicated. Add to that things like 1,419 page stimulus bills that pass without being read, and what we have is an opportunity for severe abuse. Which is sadly obvious to anybody who has actually tried to read that stimulus bill. So what was my great idea? One topic only in each and every bill. Just one. If there is anything in a bill that doesn't clearly pertain to the subject at hand, it can't pass. If the jerks do it anyway, then the Supreme court is required to immediately overturn it.

Now, I couldn't remember where I read that original question, but since I check Instapundit constantly, I figured there was a good chance I'd find it there. Lo and behold, I found instead a link to a proposed amendment addressing exactly this point! As much as that guy blogs, I should have known that he'd have written about an idea I just had before I even had it. Anyway, the best part is that it met with approval from the Law-professing blogfather. I couldn't find any working links to the actual proposal, but I found a link to the text here. It reads: "Congress shall pass no bill, and no bill shall become law, which embraces more than one subject, that subject being clearly expressed in the title."

I like it a lot. I was originally worried about intentional misinterpretation of the "only one idea" concept, for example by claiming everything in the stimulus bill has to do with "stimulation" and therefore passes muster. But since at least forty states have a related law on the books, it must be well tested. I think that use of the word "subject" is the perfect selection, because different things all related to an economic stimulus would be related, but they would not all pertain to one subject.

Still, that's not quite enough. Even before I found that somebody already had this idea, I had gone further. I don't just want one subject, I want it to be short and simple. I want every bill to be only one page long. We now have so many laws that are over-written, confusing, and contradictory that people are frozen to inaction by fear of breaching the law. Rather than wade through the regulatory swamp that sits between here and entrepreneurial job creation, many a man will instead keep his current lousy job and skip the hassle. The number of times in a week that I hear "I don't know if we're allowed to do that" is frustrating beyond belief. The idea that free people are "not allowed" to do something that isn't clearly harmful to somebody else is one of the silliest and saddest things I've ever heard. If the concept of "not allowed" is not uncomfortable to free people, then they are not really free people at all.

So here is the text as I would write it:
"No bill shall become law unless it can be printed in English, single-spaced, on one side of an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper in a font of 10 points or larger. Any existing law that cannot be printed to conform to this requirement shall be null and void. Each bill shall be read aloud in both the house and the senate chambers. In order to vote on a bill, each senator and representative shall have been present to hear it read aloud in its entirety. This amendment shall not limit the number of times a bill may be read aloud."

I have no doubt that this is not yet perfect. My later section is clearly not written as well as the first part. Brevity is one of the most redeeming features of our current constitution, and I struggle with how to balance that with the specificity that I think it is lacking. Our forefathers intended to leave room for later interpretation specifically because they could not know what time bring. It is a wise idea that they took a little too far, or perhaps our courts have wiggled too far around. After all "shall not be infringed" sounds pretty clear to me, but apparently not to the supreme court. I would prefer if any new amendments were not immediately undermined by a work-around. That's why I want bills read aloud and listened to in this one: So that congresscritters can't just mail in a thousand "yea's" or "nay's" and claim that one big document was really a thousand different bills when we all know it was not. But if you have suggestions for additions, subtractions, clarifications, or if you can just write this one better, please leave it all in the comments. And feel free to continue adding other ideas for later amendments!

Depression Package

2009-02-01T22:23:00.001-07:00

The stimulus package that Congress is about to pass will not stimulate the economy. The past weeks have seen Liberals saying that it will work, conservatives believing it will not work, and most citizens just hoping blindly that it can. It cannot. What I haven't seen is a good explanation of exactly why it cannot work, so I'm going to take a crack at that myself. I apologize, but this will probably be a little long.

I read a comment recently on somebody else's blog that basically claimed an economy is a closed system; that whether you spend your own money, or the government spends it for you, the money is still being spent, so economically speaking the results are the same. You can't get rid of the money unless you burn it. I suddenly realized that this misconception, shared by millions of people, is the false concept behind the idea that spending makes an economy work. It is a self-falsifying argument, because in a closed system it shouldn't matter who does the spending, the effect would be the same. Therefore a government stimulus would be useless. About the only possible difference is when the spending would happen: You might have plans to spend your money during your retirement, but the government wants to spend it for you right now instead. Either way it's a moot point, since an economy is not a closed system. If it were, we would still be banging rocks together in a field and hunting with sticks. Instead, we have space ships and internet video. This change would be impossible in a closed system.

The value that is traded with money, represented by gold, sought after by politicians and measured by economists is called work. That's it. If the economy goes up, more work happened. Now, a narrow view of work would mean that more people were simply busy. That's almost right, but not quite. The real definition of work (here, not in physics) is not the busyness itself, but the results of people being busy. So if two companies produce the same thing with the same number of employees, but one company produces more of those things, then that company did more work.

Now, who's to say what's worth working for? Is a car worth more than a motorcycle? Which car? Which motorcycle? Is it better for the economy to produce lots and lots of cars, or is it better for the economy to produce one diamond bracelet? If you happen to work in congress, you'd probably say lots and lots of cars, because that keeps more people in jobs. You'd be wrong. The correct answer is that it's better for an economy to produce something that can be sold, whatever that is. If nobody wants it, it isn't worth making. If you think it's objectively useless, but someone else will pay you exorbitant amounts of money for it, then it's worth producing. Things have value only because people want them. Beyond the basic necessities of life like food and shelter, everything we have is luxury. We're not talking about perishing in this bad economy; we're talking about mediocrity. A recession won’t to kill you; it will prevent you from accomplishing, buying, or doing something that you want to do.

Now, this all sounds very basic and simple. You knew all this, right? But what does it have to do with the stimulus package? Waste. Busyness is made more efficient when it is applied intelligently. You could stay busy for a week building something in your garage and sell it for $100. Or, you could sit for the exact same amount of time on an assembly line and make $800. The difference between the two is that whoever is paying you has made you more efficient with his assembly line. You now do more work. He used his own intelligence and through invested money used the collected work of other intelligent people to increase your efficiency. You both win. The only reason he, or anybody, would do this is for profit. For his own good, not for yours. But he needs you to do the producing, so it's worth paying you that $800 which, by a happy coincidence, is exactly what is good for you!

These kinds of transactions, uncountable numbers of them per day, are not just A stimulus, but THE stimulus of our economy and every other economy possible. What the government plans to do now is to take some of your work and spread it around as they see fit. A lot of people seem to think that this is a fine plan, so long as when something is produced with that stolen money, they get it back.

The problem is, it never works out like that. It can't work out like that. From the very start, there is the overhead cost of the government itself. You have to pay somebody at the IRS to collect those taxes, the collection of which doesn't produce anything to sell. Then there are accountants and bureaucrats and others involved along the way that get their salaries paid. Somebody has to author bid requests, sort through responses, study environmental impacts, investigate banks' financial documents, pay for over-runs, and then have dinner with a congressman. In the end, not all of the money makes it out the other end. Sure, the people paid in between will spend it again, but what value did they create with it in the mean time? And in the end, how much of the money intended for… let's say infrastructure, is actually used for infrastructure? Eighty percent? If only we were so lucky. It's never even close (As you can see here with transportation spending as an example) How much does that missing 20% matter? It's more than a business’ average profit, that's for sure. So the government just lost more than a company would make with that same investment, and that is the harm. There are inefficiencies in everything, including the private sector, but two things control business inefficiencies: 1. The need for the value of what they create to compete with other products of value to see which one is the best. 2. The need to make a profit from that value. If they do this, they stay in business and their work is rewarded. If not, they don't and it isn't.

Government never submits to these controls. Never. They don't have to sell you their roads, and they have nobody under-bidding them.

These differences in spending through government and spending through the private sector may seem small. If the total outcome is a difference of 5% in production, what does that matter? Well, many companies hold on for many years without much more than a 5% profit. If that's lost through misappropriated funds and work with no value, then what has been created? How has this helped the economy? The answer is that it hasn't.

A simple real world example comes down to this: If GM isn't producing something that people want to buy, it is not helping the economy. If we give them billions of dollars to continue producing something people don't want to buy, that is not helping the economy. If the billions of dollars the government just gave GM are taxes that would have otherwise been used to buy or produce something of value, then taking that money away does not help the economy. So the rescue of GM damages the economy three times over. If GM goes under and everybody -- even the working age retirees who were consuming money but not making any -- gets jobs making something people actually want, that would improve the economy.

Beyond simply leaving the market alone, tax cuts are the only way to stimulate an economy. Tax cuts get money back into the hands of the people who produce. But not tax cuts in lower-income tax brackets. In fact, just ignore income taxes entirely. If you want money to be used to make even more money, and thus get the economy going, there are two taxes you should cut: capital gains and corporate Income. Capital gains taxes are on the money that you make on investments. People who are smart enough to make money by investing keep re-investing money when they make it. If you cut that tax, they'll invest more. Period. Corporate income taxes are taxes on the profit made by companies. The federal rate right now is 35% (link) http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/22917.html If you’re barely making a profit, losing 35% of it is disastrous. This is the highest rate in the modern world and it is a really poor incentive to hiring more people or reinvesting in your own business. In effect, our tax rates are so high that even very efficient companies go out of business. In both situations, tax cuts here would get money, and therefore work, back into the hands of the people who use it most efficiently.

There are many, many reasons to oppose these bailouts, but only one that you need to know: They will not end the recession. They will prolong it, deepen it, and risk a true depression. The American economy is an amazing and powerful thing. It has pulled out of previous depressions even with poor policy and no leadership. While not likely, it could do the same thing again. Attitude does matter, and ours is indomitable. But no matter how short or long this recession would be, Congress will make it longer. No matter how deep or shallow, it will be deeper because of them. Throw the bums out.

Simplicity

2009-01-22T21:13:00.002-07:00

Well, I was feeling pretty wordy the other day. But I guess all that last post can be said much more succinctly like this:

If Obama succeeds, the country fails.

The Clarity of Truth

2009-01-20T21:03:00.003-07:00

I DO NOT hope that Barak Obama is successful. I know why that is, but I've had trouble figuring out how to say so without developing "Limbaugh Echo Syndrome". I've known for a while that I've got something more to add to it, and Ayn Rand has helped me figure out what that is. It's truth.

I am a newly minted Ayn Rand devotee. I finally started reading Atlas Shrugged about a month before the election and finished a little more than a week ago. The the world that she created more than 50 years ago is absolutely stunning, not just in its applicability today, but in its tonal accuracy. I can't believe the number of situations and statements in this book that I heard repeated in our world on the same day I read them in the novel.

I am not going to become a rabid follower. There are people who have pretty much formed a cult around this lady, and I won't be one of them. In the short term, however, I will have to work at not constantly referencing our real world back to her imagined one since it is so fresh in my mind. I'll let it happen a few times, and I may even do a "book review" on the pages that I've marked. It could make an interesting article as well as a handy "cliff's notes" for anybody who can't stomach her hyper-wordiness. The point of this prelude is that what I got from this book was clarity. Not strict adherence to her philosophy, but a functional way of looking at something. I think the power of a philosophy is exactly its ability to clarify the world. My personal maturity when reading this notwithstanding, every other philosophy I've read up to this point has muddled the truth rather than exposing it. They've asked questions that merely led to more questions and a distinct lack of utility. Objectivism, at least in its political applications, leads me down no blind alleys.

So how did Ms. Rand show me a clear way of explaining my wish for a mitigated disaster during the Obama administration? I think I'd better give my original logic first: Barack Obama, if he's not a socialist, sure ran as one. He's a pandering populist who wants to restrict freedom at every turn and redistribute wealth. His Tax policies will depress the economy. The bailouts he'll sign will devalue the dollar, which will devalue everything I have, everything I save, and everything I earn. His conciliatory foreign policy will weaken the United States' standing in the world, which "lowers the tide for all boats" and will result in even more economic pain. And finally, to hope for Obama success is to hope for the ascendence of moral bankruptcy along with all the actual bankruptcy of these times. This is what I would have said before reading this book and, in fact, earlier today before I had my little epiphany. But I can already hear the futile argument that would follow:

Them: "But if he's successful, then those things won't be true!"
Me: "But he won't be."
Them: "Because people like you hope that he won't! You'll make it come true!"
Me: "No, I just know that it can't. Socialism cannot work"
Them: "But you just don't want it to work, because then you'd be wrong!"
Me: "No, I don't want it to work, because it is wrong."

And so on. I was thinking along these lines today, looking for a way to clarify the fact that I think Socialism and income redistribution in all forms are wrong, and if they "worked" that would be worse, and the opposite of what I want. I could make that exact argument, but it falls on deaf ears over and over again. People want us to give Obama a chance, but I now say, a chance to do what? If we take him at his word, if we accept his campaign as being his plan, then they are asking us to give socialism a chance. I'm afraid that it's already been tried, and it's failed every time. But here is the clarity: Socialism and income redistribution are ineffective and immoral. That is a truth. They fail because they should fail. An immorality of that size can appear successful for a period of time by mortgaging the future, and they can hold on with moderate, "acceptable" levels of failure for quite a while, but they can never approach the success of freedom. If Obama's reign is billed as success, it will be a lie. And that is all we need to know.

The Block

2009-01-20T19:12:00.004-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted here. At first it was because I'd hit my personal political saturation level. I had no more capacity to give a damn as the unimaginable happened. I know, It's not like I'm a particularly prolific poster. It wasn't the writing that I was swamped by, it was watching stupidity march forward in spite of readily available facts. I've since gone from that kind of frustration as the election happened, to now having the opposite of writer's block: There are so many things that I want to write about that I'm continuously unable to decide where to start. I also don't want to be repetitive, because so many of the connections and causal relationships in society and life in general seem so clear and direct that I can't imagine everybody doesn't know them. Which I guess is stupid of me, because the very proof of that fact is what frustrated me in the first place. Anyway here it comes, in no particular order!

Bailouts and pain medication

2008-12-02T20:29:00.015-07:00

Sometimes the general "wisdom" of the people is astoundingly stupid. I could rail for hours about how dumb the idea of every single bail-out proposal we've heard in the last month is, and I'd still have more material left. The problem is that I consistently can't believe that anybody is really stupid enough to think that they're a good idea. I haven't come across one, not one person in my daily life who thinks that it'll work. A few examples of colossal genius have actually told me that no, they don't think it'll work but yes, they think it's a good idea. Ummm. Well, that's a whole new level of stupid, but at least they're aware that it won't work. Unfortunately these mental masters are at least as smart as our congress and media, and likely smarter. Folks in congress either think it WILL work, or agree that it's a good idea anyway.

Alas, I may be shouting into the hurricane here, (or preaching to the choir... I'm not sure which metaphor is more appropriate. Perhaps peeing into the wind?) but I'm going to go ahead and point out some simple reasons that this is really stupid.

For starters, there's historical precedent. The "Great Society" didn't pull us out of the depression, it prolonged it. If WWII hadn't come about, who knows how long it might have taken to get our economy back. I'd like to think that if it hadn't, it would prove undeniably that socialism and government programs don't work, but socialists and liberals don't respond to facts anyway, so... never mind.

Ignoring historical precedent, let's look at the fact that we're rewarding poor performance. If Detroit is paying millions of people not to work, and can't figure out why they're losing to imports, it's not my responsibility to give them more money through the government. It's the equivalent of just charging twice as much for the cars they're already selling, and it's wrong. Their manufacturing model is obviously inefficient, and supporting inefficiency will NEVER improve an economy. It's simply using manufactured "crisis" as an end-run around government directly paying for the retirement and medical benefits for swaths of people who were obviously guaranteed more compensation than their work was worth.

"But don't I deserve a good living wage, retirement, and medical plan for my 30 years of service to the auto industry?" Answer: No. You deserve what the market says your labor is worth, not what your union forced the company to accept. Wanna know why so many American jobs go overseas? Unions.

Incentives. In order to receive this government "bailout" money, do you realize that there is an incentive for me to not pay my bills? Every version of the plan that I've seen for bailing out lenders includes "helping" home-owners to stay in their homes by lowering the interest rates and/or the principal on their homes, but only if they're at least 90 days delinquent on their payments. So what you're telling me is that you're going to take more taxes from me and the "rich" (slowing the economy further), run them through a government agency (losing money along the way), give those taxes to companies that deserve to fail (promoting and extending inefficiency), and then give more to people who don't pay their bills (and aren't going to start), while finally expecting me to go on paying the higher amount... just because? Awesome. That'll fix things.

Crisis. Who, other than the Obama campaign and our media (but I repeat myself), decided that this was a crisis in the first place? It seems to me that this was really only a crisis for some banks. Again, those were the bad banks anyway, so who really cares if they fail? Oh, I'm sure their stock-holders do, but hey stocks are a risk in the first place. If you bet on the wrong horse, too bad. Don't bet if you can't afford to. And don't go telling me about how horrible it is for people to have their houses forclosed on. A bunch of those people were investors, and even if they weren't, so what? Ever heard of apartments!? Besides, the banks will just turn around and sell those houses for less, thereby lowering the costs of housing for whoever now does qualify for a loan. Who knows, maybe it'll be the people paying low taxes who invested in good banks buying cheap houses and renting them back to the same people. Voila! Market forces. But instead it's talked up into a crisis, and markets being what they are, people got scared. Others saw this as an opportunity to get some cash themselves and talked down they're own industry (auto, home-builders, etc) and extended the appearance of crisis. And now it becomes real. Panic sets in, the goverment destroys wealth, and a real crisis arrives.

The whole situation is akin to going to the doctor for an ingrown toe-nail and dying from a morphine overdose. Sure, it was going to hurt a little, but we've skipped local anesthetic for a lethal overdose of pain-killer.

A socialist?

2008-11-18T17:44:00.004-07:00

Patriot Girl links to an article here by Donald J. Boudreaux that asks the question "Is Barack Obama really a Socialist?" It was a worthwhile article about the dangers of "Socialist-lite", but he's wrong when he answers his own question:

No. At least not in the classic sense of the term. "Socialism" originally meant government ownership of the major means of production and finance, such as land, coal mines, steel mills, automobile factories, and banks. ... A principal promise of socialism was to replace the alleged uncertainty of markets with the comforting certainty of a central economic plan.

The author's first point is wrong for two reasons. First, while there may be a scholastic definition of socialism that fits the one he presents, I'm unconvinced that it has such a narrow and specific meaning. Socialism can be what he says, but it can also refer to the entire left wing of the political spectrum. In my understanding, Marxism, Chinese Communism, Socialism (with a capital S) and Social-Democracies all fall under the broader category of socialist since they are based on a concept of wealth distribution and equality of results rather than equality before the law. The second reason I think he's wrong is that even if I give him the first point - that socialism is based on government ownership of the means of production - I still think Obama qualifies. When the Government gets an "Ownership Stake" in the private market, it does own and control the means of production. I've heard this argument before, and it sounds pretty lame. Just because Obama isn't quoting directly from Marx and Engels (currently) it doesn't mean that he - and most of congress for that matter - isn't advocating socialism.

Now let's take on his second point, that socialism tries to "replace the alleged uncertainty of markets with the comforting certainty of a central economic plan." Trying to replace market uncertainty with central economic planning is exactly what our loving leaders in Washington are doing with the economic bailouts. What else could it possibly be? They've stated as much publicly. They're trying to get the market to settle down by heading off the failure of business that by all rights should fail. You say you gave bad loans to people that you knew couldn't pay them back? No worries, Uncle Sugar-daddy will guarantee them. Mortgaged your future profit margins by promising unrealistic pensions and health care? (albeit while being blackmailed by unions) No worries, we'll spend $25 Billion covering up the problem for a bit without doing anything to fix the systemic problems.

Sorry, but from where I sit, Obama is not only a socialist, he's just a 5-year plan away from Communist.

The source of my anger

2008-11-05T22:40:00.005-07:00

I'm truly angry about the outcome of this election, but until now I've had trouble pinning down why. I've said that I'm angry about the stupidity of the general electorate, but that doesn't quite explain it. I know that stupidity simply exists, it's not a thing to be angry about but rather simply a fact to deal with. It occurred to me that it might be the cheating. I hate cheaters, and I hate feeling that I've been cheated, especially when it's something that matters as significantly as an election. (No, I'm not conspiratorial, but it does bother me that every election brings more and more stories of dead voters registering 15 times in Ohio and I can't stand that it could continue to exist). But I don't think there were enough of those votes to sway this election, so I'm not really mad about that, either. I hate that an election about ideology, truth, and governing philosophy is daily diminished to a racial landmark in the media. But again, that's not enough to explain the depths of what I'm feeling.

These questions aren't new. I've been distraught for a while at the liberal direction that my country has been taking. I've been bothered since Reagan by the lack of truly visionary leadership on the right. But tonight I realized the source.

I can't leave. I have no options, and the frustration is killing me. Every election year we here a bunch of liberals claiming that if the Republican wins, they'll leave the country, but the cowards never do. You never hear a conservative say that. It's because we have nowhere else to go. As bad as it's gotten since the 80's we're still the most free country in the world. That sounds like a compliment, but it's not. It's a lament. If I found somewhere with more freedom and better protections of my liberty, I'd leave in a heartbeat, because America is an idea, not a land. But I don't have the option. Liberals do.

And THAT is the source of my anger: If you like socialized health care, redistribution of wealth, public transportation and high taxes, more power to you. Go to Sweden. Go to England. Go anywhere in Europe. But don't ruin my America because it's all I've got. If I ruin your America, there's always France.

It's not all OK

2008-11-04T22:50:00.001-07:00

The results of this election are not easy to face. I listened to McCain's concessions speech in abject anger at him. He spoke the way that he did during the campaign, and it showed exactly why he lost. He had the attitude and the disposition of a loser. Since the moment he was nominated, it was obvious that if McCain won, it would not be of his own doing. He was always the wrong man; his only redeeming quality is that he is not Barack Obama.

So I turned to the political blogs that I have followed so closely to see their reactions, and I'm even sad at their conciliatory tone. I understand the patriotic intent behind it. But Glenn Reynolds, Jonah Goldberg, and others who seemingly understand the depth of our current danger are still congratulating Obama. They recommend an attitude of "he's still my president". I get it, but this time I cannot agree.

A patriotic rallying behind the man elected to the office of president makes sense if you believe doing so is in the interest of the country. If, by the patriotic good intentions of the remaining conservatives Obama's presidency manages to only be a minor disaster rather than a major one, it will only make the resulting depression deeper and longer. If he is not opposed vehemently and at every turn, we will only lose further ideological ground to those who are already succeeding in pushing us socialist. To congratulate him as a historical candidate and a "good man" (in McCain's words) is to give credence to the the lie that his race matters or that his ideas are not evil when I believe that they are.

I don't know where this is going. In every way that I can, I will now push to go "John Galt" at the same time that I espouse the ideals of self-sufficiency and personal liberty. I will teach my son right from wrong and the honor of making his own way, while doing my best to bleed the social services system of any money that I can. The more quickly and spectacularly it fails, the easier it will be to teach a new generation of individualists. Socialism, redistribution of wealth, internationalism, and cowardice in the face of our enemies are not what America is. I will not support it in the name if equananimity.

I don't think the country is going to fall apart tomorrow. I realize that this isn't apocalyptic. But it isn't good.

To support the constitutional process of electing a president while ignoring the damage such a president (and congress) will do to the constitution is very short sighted. The American People deserve the government that they elect. It doesn't mean that I do.

First thoughts

2008-11-04T22:47:00.002-07:00

The most immediate effects of these election results are this:

1. I think I may have trouble sleeping tonight.
2. I owe somebody a case of beer.

Keeping the Poor Poor

2008-10-30T19:52:00.009-07:00

We have a guest blogger of sorts today. A friend who is much more eloquent than I sent out the following as an email. I'm posting it here with his permission:

Glenn Beck got me thinking about this from his radio show today.

You've all heard the argument, however petty, that claims the Republican Party is the party of the rich. It's a popular bumper sticker among Liberal voters. Well, let's suppose that's actually true. From some perspectives (moronic though I may find them), it certainly looks true. It feels true. So let's take that and run with it. The Republican Party's constituents are all rich. And if they're not rich, then at least they're greedy and want to become rich. Right? Ok, so in order to get into power, the Republicans need to keep their constituents happy...i.e. keep the rich people rich and find ways to make the non-rich but greedy people rich, too. Makes sense, right?

So, the Republicans = support for rich people and corporate greed (to keep this exercise going, please disregard the fact that rich people and corporations do most of the job creating in this country). Ok. Let's look at the other side of our two-party system here. Where, then, does the Democratic party get their power? Who are the Democrats' constituents? Do they go after rich people, too? Well, except for Hollywood, George Soros, and a hand-full of others out there, the answer is "no". They promote themselves as the champions of the poor, and maybe you could argue the middle class. Ok. We'll give you that one, too. So, if the Dems get in office and have their way, are they going to attempt to uplift their constituents and try to make everybody rich, or even to get out of the way so people can make themselves rich? Are they going to be working to improve the lives of all Americans? They may think so, but their goals conflict with each other. The Democratic Party, like the Republican Party, is a collection of politicians. And no matter how good their hearts or intentions, the only way those politicians can stay in power and continue to inflict...excuse me, enact the changes they want for the betterment society as they see it (ex. France), is to maintain their voting base. If the poor or middle-class get rich, then wouldn't they switch teams to the GOP - the party of the rich? I imagine that not all, but most would do so in order to protect what they have. It's human nature. So, say it with me, if the Republicans want to keep rich people rich in order to stay in power, then in order for the Dems to stay in power, don't they need to keep poor people poor?

Sounds silly, doesn't it? No, of course they don't want that. They're the party for the poor and middle class, right? Sure, they tell us all the time. They wouldn't say it if it weren't true. Well, for argument's sake, if you wanted to keep people from becoming too successful but still interested in keeping you in power, how would you do it? For those of you who said, "Voter Fraud", good answer, but that's not what I'm talking about right now. The answer I'm looking for is, at least to me, an obvious one - make them dependent upon you. Promise them things like tax cuts for 95% of Americans but ignore the fact that 95% of Americans don't pay taxes in the first place. Don't mention that you're going to let Bush's tax cuts expire in 2010, so by doing nothing, our taxes will automatically rise. Poll popular ideas first, and then talk about those as if they are your own. Don't worry, you don't have to say the same things to the same people. Instill feelings of class-envy and jealousy by playing Robin Hood - promising to tax the "unjustly" rich and give to the poor, and define for all of America a threshold for when you have "enough" money (currently fluctuating somewhere between $150K and $300K). Promise inclusion and welcome everyone into a hate-free environment - unless you're one of the other guys. Raise taxes for the rich, and challenge their patriotism if they balk at the idea. Promise health care for everybody. Promise affordable housing for everybody. Work to help the country by taking over everyone's 401-K's and rolling them all under the social security administration. And all this is a pill more easily swallowed when you get a smooth, suave, steel-spined spokesman to sell it. Neither does it hurt when most major entertainment sources blindly follow your agenda without asking any of the tough questions. But occasionally, one of those tough questions does happen to sneak through. And if it makes its way to the news and you're running the risk of having your flock of sheep start to wake up and question you, just simply fire up the mob again. It's easy. All you have to do is discredit the questioner with claims of racism, right-wing political propaganda, past financial or legal trouble, or anything else handy, which will effectively shift the focus back on the them and not on you.

I don't know...maybe it's me. Or maybe it's easier for me to see since I'm on the outside of this party, looking in. Both parties are guilty of seeing what they want and ignoring what they don't want to think about or can justify for some "greater good". But, while the Republican party and its candidate are by NO means perfect, or even what I would consider to be conservative, how can anyone with an ounce of ambition or self respect choose to be lied to and held back by the current incarnation of the Democratic Party, only so they can turn around and take care of you?

Update: Related video link from a poster in the comments Here. Not the style I'm accustomed to, but very well put. He makes the same point as my friend at the beginning, and then goes on to criticize Democrats and The One on lots of other things.

Megyn Kelly inerviews an Obama stooge

2008-10-29T19:04:00.005-07:00

This is awesome. Watch the video.

(link from Instapundit)

Debate

2008-10-09T09:59:00.004-07:00

I listened to the debate the other night. Well, I tried to listen to the debate the other night, but it was too painful to stick with. There's nothing more frustrating than knowing that you're going to vote for somebody that you really don't like. I really don't like John McCain. There's no way around it, the guy is a liberal. He can't espouse real conservatism because he doesn't even understand it. His name is on the piece of legislation that has done more direct damage to our constitution since the Alien and Sedition Acts. But at least he doesn't hate his country.

Listening to the "debate" - which it can hardly be called when both candidates try to be a better liberal than the other - it is painfully obvious that McCain cannot explain a conservative point of view. Rather than getting government out of the way, he just wants to be a less aggressive liberal. Even on an issue where McCain was right (Fannie/Freddie) he fails to pin the blame when he's presented with the opportunity. It's pathetic, but whatever. At least he doesn't hate his country.

When given the opportunity to explain that "Yes, I am for lowering taxes on the rich", he fails to explain that if a multi-millionaire gets a $700,000.00 tax break, he could hire 15 people with that money. How many jobs are created by cutting taxes on people who earn $30,000 per year!? Instead he let's Obama's claim that the rich need to "give their fair share" go unchallenged. But at least he doesn't hate his country

I'll even question McCain's honor. I'm tired of hearing that he's such an honest and honorable buy when the man met his current wife by sleaping with her while married to another woman. I thought we were done with that when Clinton left office. But hey, at least he doesn't hate his country.

John McCain is the best democrat that's run for President in years. He wants to raise taxes (but do it smarter), he wanted a government bailout of a private problem (but with less pork), he want's to close the "gunshow loophole" and limit private property (but allow you to keep your guns), he want's to give citizenship to illegals (after securing the border), he's already curbed your freedom of speech (but got money out of politics... wait, never mind). But at least he doesn't hate his country.

John McCain believes in global warming. That would be the straw for this camel if I didn't think the other candidate was threatening to shoot the camel directly. He's given up on the idea that the left's global warming theory just might be completely full of crap, and is rather going along with only marginally less socialistic fixes than Obama. During the "debate" he was given a question about whether we should promote alternative sources of energy by subsidizing a Manhattan Project style search or by subsidizing a thousand home garages. His answer was a squishy, muddled, socialistic mess. He should have said "Neither. The government should not be subsidizing anything of the sort, but can help by getting out of the way and letting the market do what it's supposed to do. Allow oil to maintain it's rightful place as the cheapest and most efficient source of transportation energy, and when technology finds a way to beat that efficiency somebody will simultaneously find a way to make money doing so." but that kind of political spine from somebody who has created the illusion of having one is too much to ask. We got squishy, not clarity. But at least he doesn't hate his country.

I'm going to hold my nose and vote for John McCain, and when he wins, I'll immediately start working against him. I don't like John McCain at all. He ran on a record of constantly undermining conservative principles to compromise with liberalism, and compromising with evil is never a sign of strength. But my other option is voting for evil itself, and that's not really an option at all.

Financial woes explained

2008-09-28T20:38:00.006-07:00

There is NO WAY our current financial strife should EVER damage a republican election. It's true that perhaps they should have pushed harder, but the good guys were on the right side of this one. This video needs to be played over and over and over!!

Caught Red Handed (pun intended)

(thanks Vodkapundit, who got it from Gatewaypundit, and so on...)

Palin

2008-09-26T15:29:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the delay in posting, I was out of the country on a trip.

Well now, it's been about a month since the announcement that Sarah Palin will be John McCain's vice-presidential nominee. If you had asked me the day before the announcement whether or not the VP selection could get me excited about the Republican ticket, I'd have said, "no way". VP's don't matter, and I couldn't think of a single person who could change that. But then she did. I worried that I was just swept along with the moment and that it would all wear off in a week, but I continue to be optimistic about her. Why?

Because she may just be different enough, strong enough, and conservative enough to win the presidency on her own after 4 years as McCain's VP. And that's saying something. I worried before in an earlier post (here ) that no matter who McCain's VP was, "he" would be weakened by the 4 years as McCain's VP. That's still the case, but her personality is so strong, and she is so unafraid of saying what she thinks, that she may yet be able to rise above his moderation with her conservatism. Where a run of the mill VP would have to go out and help sell the socially liberal-but less expansive!!- ideas of McCain and never live them down when they fail, she may very well just give those a pass and only sell what she likes. I can hear in my head her speeches 4 years from now saying that "No, in fact I don't agree with everything he did, but he's a good man and I served my country by doing my job as VP well; now lets see what I can do when I'm in charge!"

It's funny to me that it took a woman to show Republican men (especially her future boss) how to talk to and about Democrats. There is no reason at all to be afraid of the Left, and yet the Right tucks tail again and again. When George Bush gets an approval rating of 25%, you can bet money that while 45%-ish of the disapproval numbers are Dems who don't like him, the other 30 or-so percent is made up of Republicans who are mad that he keeps giving in. If I answered polls (I don't), I'd be in the disapproving column too. Conventional wisdom would say that must be due to Iraq and Bush's cowboy mentality with the economy. Not even close. I'm mad that he tried to get amnesty for illegals, threw more wasted money at failing public schools, and never continued to sell a perfectly legitimate war in Iraq. He's a good man, but not much of a leader, and too liberal for my tastes. The point is that moving left will not help Republicans when the votes they are losing are from the right. Palin gets this. In her speech at the convention, she never accepted the premises of the left. She was aggressive, she attacked, and she laid out her position clearly. She is exactly what we need, and I hope against hope that she survives the next four years without compromising away that clarity of purpose and morality that excited me and millions like me. As Rush Limbaugh never fails to point out, Liberalism is always the easy answer. Conservatism is much harder, and it requires constant education. Sarah Palin is clearly a great teacher.

I stand humbly corrected

2008-08-29T15:44:00.004-07:00

And shocked. OK, that's not entirely true because I'm rarely humble. But I will admit when I'm wrong. In this case I was completely wrong. The political interest tracking must really be the case...

No liberal media bias!?

2008-08-23T16:35:00.004-07:00

Yeah, right. Have you ever heard some left-wing whacko claiming that there's a conservative bias in the news? It happens all the time, and the only explanation is chemically induced dementia. So anyway, Barak Obama picked Joe Biden as his VP. Well, that's certainly valid news. I'll even grant that it's fairly big news. But it's not this big:

I'd like to provide a link, but it isn't on the main Yahoo news page, it's what pops up when I sign on. Maybe it knows that I'm a political junkie because I click on those stories a lot, but beyond that, there's no way for yahoo to know that (I clear my cookies a lot). But even if they've got me figured for a political junkie, it's still no excuse for every single article on the page having Biden as a topic. 10 to one odds that does not happen on the 29th when McCain announces his.

I'm just sayin'

Strategic Error

2008-08-22T22:43:00.006-07:00

I've read quite a bit lately about how clever the Russians are for calling our bluff with regards to Georgia and it's neighboring states. The basic line is that Putin knew that if this went down while President Bush was in China, the face to face meeting along with all the other distractions could help him to pull it off with no risk of greater conflict. At first blush this appears to be completely correct. The political maneuvering and information management was handled well as documented here (hat tip instapundit). Because of the spin, it took several days for most of the West to decide what we thought about all of this. A lot of people said, "Georgia? Well, I really don't know much about that place. The Russians say the Georgians started it? Could be true." Then they sign a truce but continue to occupy the territory. This is a classic appeal to Western liberals, who will scream bloody murder if the US or NATO tries to move the Russians back out. There's a peace deal after all, so any action by us would be inflammatory war-mongering. Never mind the fact that the Russians haven't given anything. They just kept what they took and signed a nominal "peace" treaty, the violation of which by us would be breaking the "peace".

On the surface, it seems like a complete Russian victory. Their mistake is the American elections. Before the Gorgian episode, there was a chance that Barak Obama could have pulled out the election. Not a good chance, but a chance. He was and is obviously weak on foreign policy. But really that doesn't matter very much when the only foreign policy happening has already been dealt with and is mostly over. Don't get me wrong, the GWOT is important and it is ongoing. But really, the heavy lifting is done. And as far as enemies go, these ones are pretty weak. Terrorism is evil, dangerous, and rampant, but it has never been an existential challenge. Russia? Well now, that's a different story.

Two weeks ago, foreign policy weakness could pretty much be ignored. Two weeks ago we had one candidate who was terrible on foreign policy, and one candidate who's only selling point was foreign policy. Unfortunately for both of them, our economy is the biggest issue. Unfortunately for us, neither one of them has the foggiest idea about how the economy works. It's a bit like an American Idol competition where one guy dances and the other plays the drums, but neither one sings. And then from out of nowhere, Vladamir Putin throws a full drum set in front of John McCain.

When Iraq is looking up and Afghanistan is looking messy, but still mostly like a pile of rocks, it's pretty easy to ignore what an idiot Obama is on the issue and vote about something else. Or, more electorally significant; to not vote at all in protest of McCain running as a Democrat. But when the Russians start threatening to nuke Poland, the whole situation looks a bit more serious. The world suddenly started looking very cold-war-ish last week, and everybody but Obama noticed.

Barak had a chance before this. If Putin had waited a few months, he may have had a pushover US president in office and a free hand to do whatever his little black heart desired on his border with Europe. But he couldn't wait, and this week I'm sure that several million US voters went, "hmmm..."

Putin just bought himself an American president who had his teeth smashed by communists, and isn't afraid to call them that. Oops.

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

2008-08-07T21:04:00.007-07:00

There is oil in Alaska. A lot of it. Folks argue about exactly how much is really there, but whichever way you look at it, the answer is "a bunch". I'll get to global warming in a different post but for right now lets just start with these two facts: 1. Your car runs on refined oil called gas. 2. Gas is pretty darned expensive right now. Obviously there isn't enough gas, so going out and getting more will make it cheaper. If you don't think this is obvious, you need to quit the democrat party (AKA the McCain Campaign) and take an introductory economics class. After you understand the law of supply and demand, come back and read this again. But for now, I'll assume that everybody reading this grasps the idea that when there are people trying to buy more of something than is available, the price goes up.

Drilling in a deserted wasteland is a no-brainer. If you ask me, they should drill for oil, start some land-fills, and store depleted uranium there. But hey, that's just me. For anybody who thinks it really does need to be preserved in it's barren, useless state, we can pretty much guarantee it'll be just as bleak and desolate for years after the oil is gone. To show you why, I've worked up the following reference. If there are any drastic flaws in my logic, please let me know:

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is 19,049,236 acres. Yes, that's over 19 million acres. The area to be developed for oil drilling is 2,000 acres. Now, I've seen a few visual representations of what a percentage that is, but... well, they seemed off. The drilled area always looked to be a LOT bigger than what I imagined one nine-thousandth of the area would look like. So I worked it out myself. 19,049,236 acres divided by 2000 acres = 9,524.6. That's 9,524.6 to one. Shall we do this visually? I'll make each acre one pixel in a digital picture. OK, to make the picture big enough to see, we'll do 9,524.6 x 4 = 38098.4 acres. The square root of that rounds 195 pixels on each side of a square for ANWR, and 4 pixels for the area to be drilled. I've created a square in an ugly grayish, greenish brown (the color of ANWR) and the oil drilling area in black since that's the color of oil in all it's demonic evil. The contrast would really look nothing like this, but I'm giving the benefit of the doubt here. So what's that look like?

<---- The little black spot there is 4 pixles among 38,021 baby-food green pixles, and that is what those 2,000 acres would look like. Just a shame that we'll ruin the place, isn't it? A little spot in a barren wasteland that nobody ever visits might have some heavy equipment parked in it, and a bunch of people get so worked up that even the "republican" candidate is afraid to include drilling there in the plan. I can't believe there is even a question. I think we should drill pretty much everywhere. I sure wish there was oil under my back yard because I'd throw a derrick in there tomorrow, home owner's association be damned. In the mean-time I've gotten a "Drill here, drill now, pay less" bumper sticker. If you feel like doing so yourself, go here: www.americansolutions.com

14 Aug 08 update: This guy has some great pictures.

Delay

2008-08-07T18:48:00.003-07:00

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. Not the way to get a new blog off the ground, now is it? Well, I've been rather busy, but I'll get back to it shortly. I'm working on an ANWR / Global Warming post that should be ready shortly.

-The Misanthropic Humanist

Taxes are Tyranny

2008-07-16T12:10:00.004-07:00

Our country was founded on a disdain for taxes. Sure, the rallying cry of the time wasn't against taxes themselves, but a much more reasonable "no taxation without representation". Well, we've got the representation today, and a whole lot more taxes to boot. Even after independence, George Washington himself had to come out to Pittsburgh to quell the Whiskey Rebellion. But that wasn't about whiskey, it was about taxes on whiskey. Why taxes?

Doesn't the whole situation seem a bit quaint in today's world? I mean really, does dressing up like Indians and throwing tea into Boston harbor because you're mad about taxes sound like a civilized thing to do? One gets the idea that when most folks look back they find the tax issues almost unseemly against the backdrop of higher ideals that this nation was founded on. When compared to concepts such as equality before the law and freedom of self defense, freedom from unreasonable taxation just doesn't sound quite as sweeping or high-minded, especially when confronted with all the "good" that our tithings to the church of government are supposed to be doing.

I vehemently disagree. My money is my freedom. Every dollar that is taken from me to be redistributed to somebody else is a dollar that I cannot use in my own pursuit of happiness. Every hundred dollars that is forcibly taken from me for social security is another four hundred dollars that I cannot receive from my own investments. Even typing this, I can see that some people think I'm being selfish... that this is just money-grubbing, and that I should want to help others. Well, a pox on you and yours (to use a quaint term). I'll donate my own time and money as I see fit, and I don't need you to do it for me, thank you very much. What I do with my money is live. I drive to work, I feed my family, I pay for my house, and I enjoy my life. Our constitution guarantees freedom of movement without restriction of the state or federal governments. Yet, if 40% of my money goes to taxes (and really, it's more than that), is that not restricting my movement? If I make $70,000 per year, but my real income without (all) taxes would be nearly $117,000, don't you think I might be able to use that additional $47,000 to pursue some happiness? Perhaps I'd use it to improve my family's situation, perhaps I'd use it to travel freely. I could use some of that additional money to promote the political ideas that I care about. I could invest in a business or perhaps start my own. I could buy a small airplane to free myself from the insecurity and humiliation of commercial aviation. I could lose it all in Vegas. Doesn't matter. The point is that no matter what I chose to do with that money, it would provide me with additional freedom.

Let me put this a different way: Let's say that you have a hankering to go watch your sister's college graduation. She's a smart kid who's going places, and you are very proud of her. Problem is that you live in New Mexico, but her graduation is in North Carolina. In the US today, What's more likely to prevent you from going, a heavy-handed government of jack-booted thugs asking for travel papers, or the money you don't have to travel because you just funded unemployment benefits for somebody you don't know in Minnesota? Is your barrier to travel the intrusive border crossing between New Mexico and Texas, or is it the money that you paid to subsidize already lucrative corn farming in Nebraska? The answer is that it doesn't matter. You still can't go, so it doesn't matter which method the government used to prevent you.

You spent at least 18 good years of your life learning how to be a productive citizen. Now you spend at least 40 hours a week applying yourself to whatever skill you think you are best suited to (and therefore most efficient at). The money you earn from that labor and investment is what you use to live your life. It is the conduit of your freedom, and every dollar that is stolen from you is a moment of your time and a limit on your horizon. Now let me say that there is a legitimate function of government and yes, even for taxes. As far as I'm concerned, the only thing the federal government should be doing is supplying a military, conducting foreign policy, and settling interstate disputes. You know, pretty much what the constitution says it should do. Everything else is local, and even that should be limited to the absolutely necessary things that cannot be provided any other way. Welfare is not necessary. Unemployment insurance is not necessary. Payroll taxes are not necessary. When you vote, remember that every single dollar that is taken from you is another 10 miles that you cannot drive your car, that each time a politician says "the government needs to do" something he really means that you need to pay for something, and remember that no matter what you hear on television, the government really can do with less. Because if it can't, you will.

Doctors Gone Wild

2008-07-07T09:12:00.002-07:00

This is just disgusting. Some group of doctors wants to start giving cholesterol medicine to kids as young as 8 years old. There's more wrong with that than just the side effects of an unnecessary life-long medication.

Little Freedoms: Happy Fourth!

2008-07-04T16:11:00.002-07:00

On the 4th of July, we celebrate our freedom from England. It seems to me that this is a great time to address the Tyranny of self-oppression. That is the tendency even within a republic to continually restrict behavior when we see somebody else doing something that we don't like. Thomas Jefferson said that "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Would were it that simple. In modern times the patriots and tyrants are one in the same. If the enemy of our freedom was an easily identifiable outsider with evil aims and an obvious purpose, then no doubt we would all band together and defend to the death the big freedoms that we all hold so dear. Things become much more difficult when we oppress ourselves incrementally, day in and day out with small and often well meaning regulations of our daily lives. The battlefront against this assault on freedom doesn't involve blood or weapons, but a re-kindling of fervor for the real and tangible freedoms that we all forget to defend.

Which fireworks did you purchase this 4th of July? Bottle rockets? Roman Candles? How about those cool flying saucers that whistle and shoot up in the air before catching on fire? Probably none of the above, because they're all illegal. Are you building a house? You'll discover that you really don't have much say at all in where to build it or what it will look like. In most of the country, building codes, zoning laws, and CCR's now restrict nearly every aspect of your home, from the height and number of stories, to the building materials, what color you can paint it, and whether the doors open in our out. And then for your efforts, you'll pay around $30,000 for required impact fees, taxes, permits, and the services of "professionals" that you are required to solicit whether you need them or not. Our ancestors were picking off redcoats for taxing their morning tea, but we allow local authorities to determine elements that are very basic to how we live our daily lives. Do you ride a motorcycle? Chances are that the state you live in requires you to wear a helmet. Think about that... I'm not recommending riding without one - I personally think that's kinda stupid - but the only person you will potentially hurt by doing so is yourself. How is that anybody's business buy your own?

You can't buy apple cider any more because it all has to have the flavor pasteurized out of it. You can't get on an airline without taking your shoes off, because some moron from England didn't blow up a plane with his sneakers. You can't try an experimental medicine that may save your life. You kids can't ride a big-wheel without a helmet. You can't grade your land without a native plant preservation plan. You can't have a campfire on the beach. You can't camp where you want in a national park. You have to have corn in your gas. You can only water your grass on odd days. The government wants to set your thermostat. You are required to have a fence around your swimming pool. You need a permit to chop firewood. You can't sell beer on sundays. You can't distill. You can't smoke in a restaurant. A-ha!

I bet I got some of you on that one. You like smoke-free restaurants. How about a bar? How about a cigar shop? How about a personally owned business where the owner is the sole employee? This is where I make my point. I too enjoy smoke free bars and restaurants, but that is beside the point. Each and every one of the laws above was made to help somebody in some way, but each and every one of them also restricts somebody else. You may be irked by one that restricts something that you like to do, but then champion and cheer for one that restricts something that you don't like. Like smoking. The point is not to find what the majority of people want. That's not freedom. Freedom is when the majority of people agree that the right to do what you want - even if I don't like it - is what matters. All this without even mentioning the sanctity of private property. Even when a ban (such as smoking) makes reasonable sense on public property where people have to go, it does not stand the test of private rights on private land. So even if second hand smoke was proven to cause cancer (it isn't) at some ridiculously high rate (2 hours exposure doubles lung cancer rates for instance) people should choose whether or not to choose that risk. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it should be banned. The strength of freedom in a democracy comes only from our willingness to accept other people doing things that we don't approve of. Your freedoms end at the tip of my nose. Accepting that, and realizing how far we have slipped, is the key to maintaining a free society.

Demand from all political candidates a commitment to the medical tenet of "first do no harm". Every law, restriction, guideline and code should be looked at not with the question "is this good?" But with the question "is this right?" When any limit on freedom is considered, it must not merely be nice, it must be necessary. True maturity and strength in a leader is not found in the man that says what he will do for us, but in the man who runs openly on what he will not do for us. We are our own tyrants now. Enjoy your fourth of July, and remember on this day what real freedom is all about.

Really?

2008-07-01T23:37:00.006-07:00

Really.
According to this link, the messiah picture above came along with an endorsement of Obama.

How do you solve a problem like John McCain?

2008-06-15T11:14:00.003-07:00

If Senator Obama wins the election this November, we will have the most liberal president in the history of the country. A drastically, radically left wing president will have two heavily democratic majorities in congress, and plenty of empty judicial seats to fill. If that doesn’t scare the crap out of you, maybe this will: If Senator McCain wins the election this november, we’ll not only have a left wing president with two houses of congress on his side, we’ll have that for the next 12 years.

The wholesale push from the mainstream media to get McCain nominated for the republican presidential nomination was a resounding success for them. By repeating over and over again that he was the only candidate that even had a chance at beating the Democrat nominee, they managed to secure the nomination for one of the only people that has a chance of losing. Really, I know that the common wisdom out there is that after 8 years of George Bush, the country is really tired of the right wing, and McCain is just moderate enough that he might have a chance. I don’t even accept the premise. Starting with George Bush being right wing. The man let Ted Kennedy write the education bill. He tried to push through an amnesty bill. Oh, and he signed McCain/Feingold. Sure, no president is perfect, and even if one was, I’m sure I’d still find a way to disagree with him, but to believe the labeling of Bush as “extreme right wing” is to throw away all critical assessment of the political spectrum. What he did was to pass exactly ONE substantial tax cut - which increased the total income of the federal government - and he defended the country when it was attacked. Those two things ought to be the bare minimum before a person is even considered for the nomination of either party. That they’re not is exactly why McCain has a chance to lose the election. Because the only conservatives that will vote for him will do so out of fear of Obama.

So about those 12 years... The next 4 years are going to be rough no matter who the next president is. The economy is wobbly, gas prices are astronomical, and we’re teetering on a victory in the middle east that may or may not be accepted as such by the electorate. If Obama becomes president those rough four years will become a disaster. In response to a weak economy, he’ll easily convince congress to increase taxes, and the economy will spiral faster. His solution to a gas price crunch caused by a lack of supply will be to punish those who supply it. Or maybe take things even further and effectively nationalize the industry through regulation and taxation. Either way, the situation will get worse, not better. Oh, and with Iraq on the verge of standing on its own two feet and joining the civilized world, and he’ll pull the carpet out from under them. Iran will likely invade. What do you think THAT will do to oil prices? What will THAT do to the economy? And don’t even get me started on social issues. The good news is that the backlash would be huge. A conservative leader would HAVE to arise from this mess, because conservative ideas will become inarguably true. (I must add here that I already think they’re completely self-evident, and I’m shocked every time some adult who apparently functions on his own in society tries to argue otherwise.) Epic, public failures have a way of changing even the votes of people who don’t really understand the argument, and this will happen in four years if Obama gets elected. The real question is: Can we afford that? How much will be given away in those four years? How much national sovereignty will we cede? How far will our economy slide, and how dependent will people be on the inevitably expanded federal government? In what state will our freedom really be? I don’t know for sure, but I know that it doesn’t look good. The end result will be a re-birth of conservatism. Leadership often develops to fill a vacuum, and we would certainly have that. I think the fear of being “right” would fall away and even some congressmen would start to think on their own.

What happens if McCain wins? Well, the next four years won’t be rosy, but they’ll be survivable. He’ll work with the Democrats and I won’t be happy about 75% of the judges appointed, but at least he won’t nominate Gloria Steinem. The economy will continue to slump, what with “obscene profits” of oil companies being a target of his, but at least he won’t try to nationalize them. Iraq will have a chance to turn out alright, though I hardly think he’ll be the one to sell the victory for what it is. So in the long run, that may turn out to be OK, too. Not great, but OK. In the meantime, the same vitriol we’ve heard from the left for the last 8 years would continue. The miserable economy would be the great depression. The energy crisis would be the result of Republican collusion with Big Oil, and dirty gutters in Iraq would be the obviously heinous result of continued right wing hatred for any people even a little bit swarthy in complexion. It would all be our fault for sending up another “right wing conservative” even though he bears no resemblance to one (if only...). So the conventional wisdom and evening news will rise together and declare that conservatism is dead. Our guy had his chance and blew it. Supermajorities in both houses of congress will grow even further, and with all the country’s problems blamed on the “Republican” (I have to use quotation marks to call him that), a Democrat will win the oval office in 2012. Any republican VP chosen by McCain for this election will be buried under the previous 12 years of combined bad press and bad ideas. No matter how conservative this man started out, he would be completely unable to champion his most valuable ideas, as he would be inevitably weakened by his term of vice-presidency with McCain. So the Democrat would serve for 8 years while masses of people believe that conservatism has been proven ineffective despite never having witnessed any of it at all.

Again, pretty bleak. With no conservative leadership in sight, neither option looks very good. I only see one opening. I think there is a way to have the 4 years of McCain (much less tragic than 4 years of Obama) and still prevent the murder of conservatism. I want John McCain to win the election, but I want Democrats to elect him. I want the lowest Presidential election turnout in history. I want it to be painfully, unavoidably obvious that conservatives DO NOT want to vote for him. It’s the only way to prevent “He was the only one who can win” from becoming the truth it never was. So if he’s elected by democrats, voting for his liberal ideas, then true conservatives (and hopefully Republicans) can disown his presidency. We didn’t want that, we’ll say. We wanted Thompson, or Romney, or even Newt Gingrich, but not John McCain. We’ll have a president that we can respect, and still survive to mount a defense of conservatism four years later.

It ain’t perfect, but it’s something.