Cesspool of Humanity

When Night Fell In IndoChina

2011-01-06T10:00:00.004-05:00

I haven't posted for awhile. I get this inertia going and it can't stop it. I will try to post at least once a week just to keep this madness going. Not that I get a lot of readers, but I do like the thought of having a blog.

So here is my favorite article on the web on the Vietnam War. I originally found it on the Nixon Library website. I think I got there from a link from the Powerline Blog. Then one day it was gone when they redid the website. I actually contacted them and asked them to put it back up. It took them a little bit to find it but put it up they did. Every so often I go back and read this article. It moved me then, and it still moves me now. The mark of a great article for me is the fact that I still go back to read it.

When Night Fell In Indochina
by Bruce Herschensohn

I am currently reading The Black Book of Communism. Just started actually. It is a big book and I think I will tackle some parts at a time in sections. I think I will read about Vietnam and Indochina and the massacres that happened there.

I think we need to rethink the history of the Vietnam war in respect to how history has played out for the region. We knew how bad communism was. We knew those people would get slaughtered. Get slaughtered they did. We promised them freedom, and we had blood on our hands. Thanks to shoving that history down the memory hole, we have washed that blood off for the next generations of Americans who don't know the history of the Holocaust of Indochina.

History, they say is written after we are all dead. It has been 35 years since the fall of Saigon, and I think it is time to write the real history of what really happened, what was at stake, what we were fighting for and what happened to those people after we left them to fend from themseleves alone.

A quote from the article above:

As the Khmer Rouge prepared to murder at least a million men, women, and children over the next two years, a New York Times editorial noted that further U.S. aid to Cambodia would “only extend Cambodia’s misery.”

Sidney Schanberg wrote directly from Southeast Asia: “I have seen the Khmer Rouge and they are not killing anyone…Wars nourish brutality and sadism and sometimes certain people are executed by the victors but it would be tendentious to forecast such abnormal behavior as a national policy under a communist government once the war is over.”

The situation looked different to our brave allies.

In Cambodia, General Sirik Matak of Phnom Penh wrote a letter to U.S. Ambassador John Gunther Dean on April 2, 1975, 15 days before the fall of that city, in which he thanked Ambassador Dean “for your order to transport me towards freedom,” but he said he would not accept the kind offer. “As for you, and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which have chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection and we can do nothing about it…You leave, and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under this sky. But, mark it well that if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is too bad [but] we all are born and must die [one day]. I have only committed this mistake of believing in you [America].”

General Matak was reported to have been executed three days after the fall of Phnom Penh, near the start of the genocide of Cambodians.

I printed this article years ago so that I would never lose it again. I read it at least once a year. Reading it today I still got emotional when I read the passage of the Cambodian General Sirik Matak. He could have had freedom for himself and his family. He choose to stay and fight for his country in vain. He loved his country and his people. He only mistake was actually believing in America. That stings. It hurts. But the wound for America is nothing like the wound for IndoChina. And we have largely whitewashed the pertinent facts of our history of the region out of American history textbooks. I guess their is only enough room for one Holocaust.

Republicans take back the House

2010-11-03T12:42:00.002-04:00

Nice to see Steve Chabot back in Cincinnati representing. I have high hopes for John Kasich as Gov, especially when it comes to expanding the Ohio EdChoice school voucher program. I am still committed to vouchers with my heart and soul. Things go slowly but over generations if we take back our schools we can really take back our freedom. So much of the Culture war comes from the government monopoly in education. As long as we have that we will always have the culture wars. It is the belly of the beast as far as I am concerned.

Here is a quote I grabbed from the Corner about Wisconsin Tea Party Republican Ron Johnson:

Ron Johnson is explicit about this. “The reason we’re here,” he says near the end of his speech, in one of his signature lines, “is that we think we’re losing America and we’re a group of people who refuse to let America go without a knock-down fight.” The crowd waves its flags and chants “USA!”

I was a avid Tea Party participant. I went to rallies and even took the family to Washington DC. It has been a great run so far. Now the real challenge begins. Can the people we are sending to Washington carry out the message without getting swallowed by the coruption?

I am not always optimistic about that. But like Ron Johnson I too feel like we are losing America. And if they great lady should fall let it not be said that we let her go down without a fight. And fight we must.

In the name of John Paul Jones, we have not yet begun to fight!

In command of Ranger in 1777 and 1778, he operated in British home waters and made audacious raids on England’s shore.In recognition of his exploits, he was placed in command of five French and American vessels. Aboard his flagship, the Bonhomme Richard, Jones led his small squadron in the capture of seven merchantmen off of the Scottish coast. On September 23, 1779, Jones fought one of the bloodiest engagements in naval history. Jones struggled with the 44-gun Royal Navy frigate Serapis, and although his own vessel was burning and sinking, Jones would not accept the British demand for surrender, replying, “I have not yet begun to fight.” More than three hours later, Serapis surrendered and Jones took command.

Long Live The Tea Party Revolution!

Diversity, Sustainability ~ Campus Ideology

2010-10-13T14:32:00.001-04:00

Things I read on the web today:

Jay P. Greene directs us to the Chronicle of Higher Education:

From Diversity to Sustainability: How Campus Ideology Is Born

Here is the money shot as quoted by Greene:

I view this changing of the ideological guard with wariness. Diversity was pretty bad; sustainability may be even worse. Both movements subtract from the better purposes of higher education. Diversity authorizes double standards in admissions and hiring, breeds a campus culture of hypocrisy, mismatches students to educational opportunities, fosters ethnic resentments, elevates group identity over individual achievement, and trivializes the curriculum. Of course, those punishments were something that had to be accepted in the spirit of atoning for the original sin of racism.

But for its part, sustainability has the logic of a stampede. We all must run in the same direction for fear of some rumored and largely invisible threat. The real threat is the stampede itself. Sustainability numbers among its advocates some scrupulous scientists and quite a few sober facilities managers who simply want to trim utility bills. But in the main, sustainability is the triumph of hypothesis over evidence. Its scientific grounding is mostly a matter of models and extrapolations and appeals to authority. Evoking imminent and planet-destroying catastrophe, sustainatopians call for radical changes in economic arrangements and social patterns. Higher education is summoned to set aside whatever it is doing to help make this revolution in production, distribution, and consumption a reality.

Sustainability combines some astonishingly radical ideas with mere wackiness. Many sustainability advocates want to replace free markets (a source, as they see it, of unsustainable growth and exploitation) with some kind of pan-national rule with little scope for private property rights. On the other hand, sustainatopians also busy themselves with eliminating trays from cafeterias and attacking the threat of plastic soda straws. Sustainability thus unites vaunting political ambition and comic burlesque. Both are at odds with patient and open-minded intellectual inquiry.

The diversity movement has always been rife with contradictions. Seeking to promote racial equality, it evolved into a system that perpetuates inequalities. But whatever else it is, the diversity movement thirsts to be part of mainstream America. Its ultimate goal is to make diversity a principle of the same standing as freedom and equality in our national life. The sustainability movement, by contrast, has no such affection for the larger culture or loyalty to the American experiment. It dismisses the comforts of American life, including our political freedom, as unworthy extravagance. Sustainability summons us to a supposedly higher good. Personal security, national prosperity, and individual freedom may just have to go as we press on to our low-impact, carbon-free new order. In this sense, it goes beyond promising to redeem us from social iniquity to redeeming us from human nature itself.

Many campus adherents to sustainability may eventually tire of its puritanical preachiness and its unfulfilled prophecies, but for the moment, sustainability has cachet. Diversity, meanwhile, has aged into a static bureaucracy, and diversicrats increasingly spend their energy polishing the spoons…

Unrelated to this post but still amusing is this from Greg Mankiw's Blog:

Barney Frank, Then and Now

You can tell the man has been playing at the highest level of politics for quite a long time. If Barney Frank claims to love his mother, check it out.

David Brooks on some of the real costs of the State Pension Crisis: (H/T Cafe Hayek)

The Paralysis of the State

Over the past few decades, governments have become entwined in a series of arrangements that drain money from productive uses and direct it toward unproductive ones.

New Jersey can’t afford to build its tunnel, but benefits packages for the state’s employees are 41 percent more expensive than those offered by the average Fortune 500 company. These benefits costs are rising by 16 percent a year.

New York City has to strain to finance its schools but must support 10,000 former cops who have retired before age 50.

California can’t afford new water projects, but state cops often receive 90 percent of their salaries when they retire at 50. The average corrections officer there makes $70,000 a year in base salary and $100,000 with overtime (California spends more on its prison system than on its schools).

States across the nation will be paralyzed for the rest of our lives because they face unfunded pension obligations that, if counted accurately, amount to $2 trillion — or $87,000 per plan participant.

All in all, governments can’t promote future prosperity because they are strangling on their own self-indulgence.

New study: State pensions in dire situation

Cincinnati is on the list. The pain is to come:

A new study by the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Rochester shows that in the not-too-distant future several state-sponsored pensions will fail to provide promised benefits to pension holders.

Five major cities have current pension assets that can only pay for promised benefits through 2020: Boston; Chicago; Cincinnati; Jacksonville, Fla.; and St. Paul. An additional 18 cities and counties, including New York City; Cook County, Ill.; and Orange County, Calif., will be solvent through 2020 but not past 2025.

Philadelphia has the most immediate cause for concern, as the city can pay existing promises with existing assets through 2015, less than five years from now, the study states.

The study also states that state and local governments are not far from the point where pension promises will impact governments' ability to operate. Once the funds are liquidated, promised pension payments will compete with other programs and erode a large portion of many municipal budgets.

"The fact that there is such a large burden of public employee pensions concentrated in urban metropolitan areas threatens the long-run economic viability of these cites, as residents can potentially move elsewhere to escape the situation," said professor Rauh, associate professor of finance at the Kellogg School who helped author the study, in prepared remarks.

Rauh estimates each household already owes an average of about $14,000 to current and former municipal public employees in the 50 cities and counties that were studied. This figure only represents the unfunded portion of benefits that have already been promised — not future promises. In New York City, San Francisco and Boston, the total is more than $30,000 per household. In Chicago, the total is more than $40,000 per household.

Can't say we didn't see it coming...

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What I have been thinking lately:

I should put a post together on this but I am lazy on my little undiscovered blog.

I have a theory of Democrats accusing Republicans of everything that they do.

Lately it is foreign donations, but that is exactly what Obama did when he eased online credit card donations during his campaign. Clinton took the Chinese money as well. I think Democrats accuse Republicans of things because they know they do them so they assume Republicans do them too.

Think about Astroturf. That phrase comes from the left, but who invented it and perfected it? They call the tea party Astroturf and "fake grass roots" because so much of their blather is all faked and they have been doing it for years.

They accuse Republicans or wanting to raid the Social Security trust fund that is already and emptied from their big government spending. They tell people that Republicans want to cut Medicare while passing Obamacare which is destined to cut Medicare. It seems like everything they accuse people of is something that they already have on their own agenda.

I am going to get more examples of this and I encourage anyone to suggest more. Just a passing thought.

Bring Michelle Rhee to Cincinnati!

2010-10-13T14:30:00.002-04:00

From the Washington Post: Michelle Rhee resigns as D.C. schools chancellor

She is going to be out of a job. She did good work in Washington DC. Cincinnati Public Schools have been looking for a good leader for years, and they need someone who can take back education from the teachers unions and give it back to the children.

Start the campaign to bring Michelle Rhee to Cincinnati today!

Entitlement Mentality ~ Obama's Aunt Edition

2010-09-22T13:32:00.004-04:00

Malkin: Obama’s Aunt Update: ‘The System Took Advantage of Me’

Breitbart:

"If I come as an immigrant, you have the obligation to make me a citizen."

"I didn't take any advantage of the system. The system took advantage of me."

Onyango came to the U.S. from Kenya in 2000 and was denied asylum by an immigration judge in 2004.

She stayed in the country illegally, living in Boston public housing, where she remains to this day. She also currently receives $700 per month in disability benefits.

She was granted asylum earlier this year by the same judge who said she could be in danger if she returned to her homeland because of her relationship with the president.

"It's a great country," she said of the U.S. "It's nice to live here. You can do whatever you want when you live here."

"To me, America's dream became America's worst nightmare,"

It's a great country! Hell to the yeah it is compared to Kenya. In Kenya the per capita GDP is $1,000 a year. In America she lives in Boston Public Housing and gets an additional disability check for $700 a month. The disability total is $8,400 a year. The free rent total has to be at least that much subsidy in a big city like Boston. The average rent for a one bedroom in Boston is $1,000. $12,000 in rent and $8,400 in disablity checks is $20,400 per year. The cost of living in Boston is 240% the national average. I bet she gets $400+ per month in foodstamps. That should take us up to $25,000 a year.

But it doesn't end there. She also gets free medical care and somebody paid for her lawyer too. And sending her to trial multiple times had to cost a pretty penny, those resources are not free.

"She was paralyzed for more than three months because of an autoimmune disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome and had to learn to walk again".

Wonder how much three months in the hospital costs? I bet she racked up over $100,000 in hospital bills.

I would estimate that we have already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on her in the form of one subsidy or another. Housing, Government Checks, Food Stamps, Health Care and Legal services add up. And I doubt she has ever paid a penny in federal taxes.

The worst part is she isn't even gracious about it. We have some sort of duty to her to giver her all this stuff. She doesn't thank the taxpayer for her "American Nightmare". Talk about the entitlement mentality.

It is enough to make me vomit.

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Update: The costs in the United States related to Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) have been estimated as $110,000 for direct health care

This rental estimate for Boston Housing indicates 1 bedrooms rent in a range between $1,200 & $1,600 per month ($14,400 - $19,200 a year)

And it looks like I was a bit high on the food stamps. She probably gets something in a range of $150 - $200 a month. Who knows what other social services (both public and private) she also takes advantage of.

~

The Drug Pipeline and the FDA

2010-09-10T09:41:00.002-04:00

No RefillsBy Megan McArdle

Over time, critics say, high-profile disasters like Fen-Phen and Vioxx, which killed or seriously harmed some of the people who took them, have encouraged ever-more-stringent review. The number of clinical trials required to support a new-drug application has more than doubled since 1980, while the number of patients needed in each trial has almost tripled. As a result of these and many other factors, the clinical-trial stage now costs more than four times as much, even after adjusting for inflation.

...

This means that clinical trials have unwanted side effects. Because of their astronomical expense, one drug with a huge market is more commercially desirable than 25 drugs that each treat a less common disease, because only one set of trials is necessary. If you’re targeting a disease that affects relatively few people, one of two things will happen: the drug will be very expensive, or the drug will be shelved because it’s unlikely to earn back its R&D investment.

Tougher safety and efficacy standards may also be keeping good drugs out of the public’s hands. Most people agree that today’s FDA would not have approved aspirin; even penicillin, the miracle drug that helped dramatically extend the human lifespan when introduced in the early 1940s, is questionable. Allergic reactions to penicillin kill a higher percentage of its takers than Vioxx ever did, while the gastrointestinal bleeding produced by aspirin means it probably would have flunked while still in animal testing.

Interesting stuff. We are killing ourselves with regulation.

Here is Milton Friedman on the FDA:

TAKE IT TO THE LIMITS: Milton Friedman on Libertarianism

DRUG-STALL COWBOYS

ROBINSON The Food and Drug Administration which regulates everything from the drugs that pharmaceutical companies may put on the market to the ingredients in items we purchase off the grocery store shelves. Let me give you an example- Thalidomide [FRIEDMAN Everybody's favorite example...] Well I may be leading with my chin on this one but I'm going to lead with it anyway. 50's and 60's it is marketed in Europe as a drug to help women get through the nausea that they sometimes experience during pregnancy. The Food and Drug Administration said it had been inadequately tested in the United States and forbade it to be marketed in this country with the result that thousands of children were born with horrible birth defects in Europe to mothers who had used Thalidomide but that didn't happen to American children, because the FDA had intervened and kept that drug off the market. Thank god for the FDA, right?

FRIEDMAN Wrong [ROBINSON Alright, why?] this is a case in which they did save lives, this was a good case, but suppose they are equally slow in adopting a drug which turns out to be very good and beneficial. How would you ever see the lives that are lost because of that? You're an FDA official, you have a question of whether to approve or disapprove a new drug. If you approve it and it turns out to be a bad drug like Thalidomide, you're in the soup, your name is going to be on every front page [ROBINSON cost me my job, I get hauled up to Congress to testify..] right. On the other hand if you disapprove it, but it turns out to be good, well then later on you approve it four or five years later, nobody's going to complain about the fact that you didn't approve it earlier except those greedy pharmaceutical companies that want make profits at the expense of the public, as everybody will say. So the result is that the pressure on the FDA is always to be late in approving. And there's enormous evidence that they have caused more deaths by late approvals than they have saved by early approval.

ROBINSON So your view is abolish the FDA..

FRIEDMAN Absolutely [ROBINSON And what comes up in its place?] what comes up? It's in the self-interest of pharmaceutical companies not to have these bad things. Do you think the manufacturer of Thalidomide made a profit out of Thalidomide or lost? [ROBINSON I see, ok.] And you have to have..people should be responsible for harm that they do. It should've been possible...[ROBINSON So tort law takes care of a lot of this.] Absolutely, absolutely..

Bankrupt California Paying Lifeguards $150k a Year In Retirement

2010-09-08T06:48:00.003-04:00

A Tsunami Approaches: The Beginning of the Great Deconstruction
by Robert J. Cristiano 09/05/2010, New Geography

By 2010, the general public received a series of shocks. The first shock was the jobless recovery of the Great Recession that cost 8 million jobs. Most of the job losses occurred in the private sector yet the majority of the $800 billion Stimulus Bill went to “save and create” public sector employment. The second shock was learning that civil servants earned twice that of private workers. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Federal workers received average pay and benefits of $123,049 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation. The third shock was revelation of incredible retirement plans doled out by politicians since 1999. In 2002, California passed SB 183 that allowed police and safety workers to retire after 30 years on the job with 3% of salary for each year of service, or 90% of their last year’s pay. During the Great Recession, fireman began retiring with $150,000 pensions at age 52 despite a life expectancy approaching 80. In Orange County CA, lifeguards, deemed safety workers, retired with $147,000 annual pensions. The Orange County sheriff, recently convicted of witness tampering, will receive $215,000 annually while in jail. Bob Citron, the Treasurer of Orange County who pushed the county into bankruptcy in the 1990s, receives a pension of $150,000 per year. A tsunami of anger and resentment is building.

New Geography is a great site with lots of interesting material on the front page and in the archives. Highly recommmended. Read the whole thing here.

I wish I was a retired lifeguard making $150,000 a year. When California goes before the judge and asks for a federal bailout we are going to have to all pay for that lifeguard's lavish retirement.

I will do whatever I can to fight bailing them out for that type of spending. When you read the numbers it blows your mind.

Bed Bug News ~ Use Malathion!

2010-08-31T10:02:00.002-04:00

From the AP:

US grapples with bedbugs, misuse of pesticides

The problem has gotten so bad that the Environmental Protection Agency warned this month against the indoor use of chemicals meant for the outside. The agency also warned of an increase in pest control companies and others making "unrealistic promises of effectiveness or low cost."

The Agency may be warning against it, but if you have bedbugs that is exactly what you should be doing. Buy some Malathion. They still sell it. It was used for years against bed bugs indooors. It is still recommended by the World Health Organization. See this.

Ohio authorities, struggling against widespread infestations in Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton and other cities, are pleading with EPA to approve the indoor use of the pesticide propoxur, which the agency considers a probable carcinogen and banned for in-home use in 2007. About 25 other states are supporting Ohio's request for an emergency exemption.

The Federal Government is to blame for Bed Bugs coming back, and they won't let you do anything about it. A majority of states support teh repeal of the EPA ban of propoxur, but it doesn't matter to the EPA. So buy some Malathion instead. Get some at Lowes or the Home Depot.

Here is an article from Jonathan Strong at the Daily Caller:

Is the EPA to blame for the bed bug ‘epidemic’?
By Jonathan Strong - The Daily Caller

Eradication can take months and cost thousands of dollars. There’s also the stigma — many high-end New York residences, for instance, keep their bed bug infestations secret to avoid embarrassment.

But why are bed bugs back? Though they’ve been sucking humans’ blood since at least ancient Greece, bed bugs became virtually extinct in America following the invention of pesticide DDT.

There were almost no bed bugs in the United States between World War II and the mid-1990s.

Around when bed bugs started their resurgence, Congress passed a major pesticides law in 1996 and the Clinton EPA banned several classes of chemicals that had been effective bed bug killers.

The debate isn’t over long-banned DDT, since modern bed bugs have developed a tolerance for that chemical. But in the pre-1996 regime, experts say, bed bugs were “collateral damage” from broader and more aggressive use of now-banned pesticides like Malathion and Propoxur.

And now that we have banned our most effective course of action, Bed Bugs are becoming more resistant to the remaining available pesticides:

the economic impact to victims can be severe. In many cases, victims discard most or all of their furniture and other belongings in a desperate push to rid themselves of the problem. There are extermination costs and expensive preventative measures like mattress encasements as well.

Compounding the spread of bed bugs are several factors other than EPA regulations, including the increased levels of travel and growing resistance in wild bed bug populations to the pesticides that are still allowed by the government.

According to research at the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, academic headquarters for studying the six-legged beast, some strains of bed bugs can survive, zombie-like, for up to 16 days after being directly sprayed with currently used pesticides.

Do yourself a favor and break out the Malathion! Don't listen to the government!

If you consider that in most instances insects are intended to die shortly after coming into brief contact with pesticide residue, that’s pretty dramatic.

Meanwhile, tests at the University of Kentucky show the EPA-banned pesticides are still deadly effective at bed bug mass murder.

Notably, pest controllers can still rid your house or apartment building of bed bugs. It’s just way more expensive and time consuming since they’re using nerf guns instead of nukes.

Malathion is still deadly effective at bed bug mass murder! You can buy it at the hardware store for outside use. It is better than anything your exterminator is allowed to use. Call an exterminator and expect to pay hundreds or dollars for multiple treatments with a nerf gun, or just pay $8 for some Malathion at Lowes and kill them all in one application. It really is that simple.

Previously on the Cesspool:

Malathion Will Kill Your Bed Bugs!

Cincinnati ~ Bedbug Capital of the World! ~ Blame the EPA!

.

Links

2010-08-26T00:49:00.002-04:00

Spank Your Kids and they could be much better off.

American "Islamophobia" -- the MSM/left-liberal contribution - Sometime Powerline hits it just right. It was the first blog I ever read and I still read it today.

If the mainstream media promoted moderate Muslims, Americans would be thinking Muslims are moderate. When they trot out people who say that America was to blame for 9/11 and treat them as moderate, then Americans could skew their opinion.

One Liberal Voice Dares to Say, Cut the Budget

This shocked me coming from the New York Times:

The coalition bases its case on the idea that Social Security is actually in fine fiscal shape, since it has amassed a pile of Treasury Bills — often referred to as i.o.u.’s — in a dedicated trust fund. This is true enough, except that the only way for the government to actually make good on these i.o.u.’s is to issue mountains of new debt or to take the money from elsewhere in the federal budget, or perhaps impose significant tax increases — none of which seem like especially practical options for the long term. So this is sort of like saying that you’re rich because your friend has promised to give you 10 million bucks just as soon as he wins the lottery.

Amen to Matt Bai on that.

Health Insurance is a Human Right!

2010-08-26T00:21:00.004-04:00

From Cato:

Making a Joke of Human Rights
Posted by Michael F. Cannon

Earlier this year, Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama signed legislation that threatens U.S. residents with prison if they fail to purchase health insurance.

This week, his administration told the United Nations that this legislation shows the United States is making progress on human rights.

Now that is progress.

Malathion Will Kill Your Bed Bugs!

2010-08-22T00:50:00.000-04:00

I would like to preface this post with a disclaimer: Using Malathion indoors is not allowed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. I don't want to advocate breaking US Law in a way that could get me into trouble. So this post is for all of my readers who live outside of the United States. For those readers, I would advocate that thy buy some Malathion and use it to kill their bed bugs.

BUY MALATHION! MALATHION WILL KILL YOUR BED BUGS!

I bought some today that looks like this:

Ortho makes some that looks like this:

Malathion is BETTER THAN DDT!

Here is a Scientific Study of Malathion & Bedbugs. It compares Malathion to DDT.
The conclusion? Malathion will kill all of your Bedbugs!

The World Health Organization advocates using Malathion against Bedbugs.

Table 4.1
Residual insecticides for use against bedbugs
Insecticide Concentration in spray (%)
malathion 2.0
fenitrothion 0.5–1.0
propoxur 2.0
carbaryl 1.0
diazinon 0.5
bendiocarb 0.2–0.3
fenchlorvos 1.0
pirimiphos methyl 1.0
propetamphos 0.5–1.0
permethrin 0.5
cyfluthrin 0.01
deltamethrin 0.005
lambdacyhalothrin 0.005

On May 12th, of 2000, The New York Times reported that the E.P.A. Finds Malathion Poses Low Risk

Here is a letter to the Editor to the New York Times from Gilbert L. Ross,ROSS, M.D.

It is dated May 16, 2000 and it notes that Gilbert Ross is "medical director of the American Council on Science and Health".

As a public health scientist, I applaud you for pointing out that malathion poses ''no health threat to people'' (news article, May 12).

In its new report, the Environmental Protection Agency, generally no friend to pesticides, agrees with the overwhelming body of scientific evidence. While malathion is possibly a threat to mice at very high doses, the trace levels to which New Yorkers would be exposed via spraying should cause no alarm.

Why then do we still hesitate to use our most potent weapon to prevent the recurrence of a potentially lethal mosquito-borne epidemic? Could it be because of pressure from activist groups, whose agendas are based on unfounded fear, not science?

GILBERT L. ROSS, M.D.

New York, May 12, 2000

The writer is medical director of the American Council on Science and Health.

More Times Articles:

Pesticide Spray Is Said to Pose Almost No Risk To Humans (1999)

Malathion, a pesticide commonly used in mosquito control programs, is the compound that the city Department of Health is using in aerial spraying to stop the spread of encephalitis. First registered in the United States in 1956, malathion is one of the most widely used home and garden pesticides and is also used to control pests in agriculture, according to reports from the Internet site of the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Dr. Neal L. Cohen, the city's Health Commissioner, released a prepared statement yesterday that said that the spraying ''poses virtually no health risk to humans or pets.''

THE BIG CITY; Public Beliefs, Global Politics And Pesticides

How about this one from 1986?

Q&A (1986)

Q. Is the jingle ''Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite!'' just a silly rhyme, or do bed bugs really exist?

A. Dr. Stanley G. Green, an entomologist with the Pennsylvania State University Extension Service, said there is an entire family of insects called bed bugs that feed on the blood of birds and animals. These insects are oval, chestnut brown in color, flattened from top to bottom, and about one-fourth of an inch in length. The common bed bug, Cimex lectularius L., attacks man. Bed bugs are active only at night, usually just before dawn, Dr. Green said. When only a few bed bugs are present, they live close to human sleeping areas, he said, but when numerous they can be found in many rooms of the house. Their bite produces irritating itching and burning sensations. The insects feed rapidly, becoming engorged in less than 10 minutes. The act of biting is not usually felt, but later there is an allergic reaction to the protein found in the bed bug's saliva. A colorless lump develops at the bite location. Discomfort from bed bug bites may last a week or more. To get rid of them, Dr. Green suggests using malathion or pyrethrin insecticide in upholstered furniture, cracks and crevices in floors, walls, baseboards, in the seams of mattresses and bed coils, and behind wall pictures and loose wallpaper.

Not only does Dr. Green suggest using Malathion, he suggests spraying it all over the place...cracks and crevices, on your furniture, on the floors and walls, on your mattress! Dr. Green wants you to spray the holy hell out of your place with Malathion and you will be just fine.

Malathion was banned in 1996 for INDOOR use. It is still used outdoors and it is still available for purchase at Lowes, The Home Depot, other department stores, and even on the internet. I do not sell Malathion, nor do I own stock in any company that makes or sells Malathion.

To recap:

Malathion was developed in the 1950s and used for decades.

Malathion is more effective than DDT against Bed Bugs. It is probably the most effective chemical pesticide against Bed Bugs that we have.

The Who Health Organization recommends Malathion against Bed Bugs.

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Cincinnati ~ Bedbug Capital of the World! ~ Blame the EPA!

2010-08-21T16:21:00.003-04:00

I don't know if it is Bed Bug or Bedbug, but I do know that our fair city has some new citizens in the last few years.

Time Magazine:

For reasons still unknown, bedbugs really seem to like the state of Ohio. The problem is so dire in Cincinnati that some people with infested apartments have resorted to sleeping on the streets.

Cincinnati created a Bedbug Remediation Commission in 2007 and, like other local and national governments around the world, the city is trying to mobilize strategies to control infestations of the resilient insects, which can hide in almost any crack or crevice and can go a year or more without eating. On Aug. 10, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a consumer alert about off-label bedbug treatments, warning in particular of the dangers of using outdoor pesticides in homes. The Ohio Department of Agriculture has mounted a more unusual response to the crisis: it petitioned the EPA for an exemption to allow in-home use of propoxur, a pesticide and neurotoxin banned in the 1990s out of concern for its effects on children.

The EPA doesn't want people using off label products, or products that the EPA has already banned. The fact that the EPA has banned our most effective pesticides is something at the heart of the problem. The Ohio Department of Agriculture realizes this, so they petitioned the EPA to remove the ban. The EPA refused.

This is how the article finishes:

For home infestations, the EPA recommends reducing clutter, sealing cracks and crevices, vacuuming often, drying infested clothes at high heat and using a special mattress cover so you can sleep tight without letting the bedbugs bite. Travelers should inspect hotel mattresses, box springs and headboards for the pests and the inklike streaks of their droppings.

In other words, a dose of vigilance — if not outright paranoia — is the best preventive.

"We are looking at what we did a hundred years ago," says entomologist Miller. "We need to develop an individual consciousness, like we had then. You should think twice about leaving your purse on a seat in the movie theater and storing your kids' college furniture in the basement when they come home. We need to be conscious that anybody from a group-living situation may come back with bedbugs."

What a great forward-thinking solution. We need to look at we did 100 years ago! That is quite telling. Also, don't trust other people or other families! That is just great. Bedbugs hit the black population harder than the white population, so make sure if you are white not to let you kids play with black kids, let alone a sleep over. I can see this is going to go over real well. Why not just give the mostly poor people with bed bug infestations the proper chemicals and advice on how to use them?

Some more articles:

Bed Bug Battle Escalates
Crisis Meeting Held In Cincinnati

Many experts said the U.S. EPA has the ultimate weapon by bringing back insecticides, like DDT, that got rid of the problem decades ago, but were banned due to environmental concerns.

Meanwhile, Cincinnati created a bedbug remediation commission three years ago that's overseeing all crisis meetings with federal officials as they hope to come up with a solution.

That article talks about infested hotels in Cincinnati. The headline should be "DON'T TRAVEL TO CINCINNATI!!!!" Meanwhile, Cincinnati created a commission on bedbugs three years ago and nothing has been accomplished. That doesn't surprise me. If you have bedbugs you have to get rid of them yourself. I will teach you how later.

Interesting that the article brought up the EPA's banning of pesticides, which is the real reason that bedbugs are back.

Bedbugs becoming major U.S. nuisance

A plague of bedbugs spreading across the United States prompted a federal conference and calls for vigilance by the hotel industry.

The nation's worst cities for bedbugs are Cincinnati; Columbus, Ohio; Chicago; Denver and Detroit, according to data from Orkin Pest Control reported by the Detroit Free Press.

It is great to be a leader in something. I hate being on any list that involves Detroit.

From ABC News: Eeek! Are Bedbugs Becoming National Security Issue?

At least five states have called on the Department of Defense pleading for money to get rid of the pesky bloodsuckers.

Cincinnati is the latest city forced to deal with the tiny reddish-brown insects that are mostly found near one's bed in cracks and crevices. These scratch-inducing pests can even live without feeding for 18 months.

"Hopefully, we're going to see more resources devoted to things such as educational things, resources to perhaps to help pay for treatment," said Camille Jones, assistant health commissioner for the Cincinnati Health Department.

The state of Ohio was so desperate that it petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to allow in-home use of a pesticide called propoxur, which was banned out of concern for its effect on children. That request was denied.

On Wednesday, the EPA, decided the problem was serious enough to warrant hosting a meeting in Columbus, Ohio, today to conjure up a solution. And while bedbugs are not yet a national security issue, the meeting did include representatives from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Defense.

The bugs were eradicated from the U.S. around the end of World War II, but in the last decade have been making a comeback.

Why and how were the bugs eradicated from the US? I know why. Pesticides! Then the EPA banned the pesticides and now we have the bugs back. If you want to get rid of the bugs, give us back the pesticides!

Do we really need the Department of Defense, the Department of Agriculture, The Center for Disease Control and the Environmental Protection Agency? Do we really need a increase in Federal Funding? Is that always the answer? Think about the salaries of all these people on the taxpayer dole sitting around on their commissions. I bet they don't have bedbugs. What a waste of time and our tax dollars. Just give us back the ammo for the gun. For the love of God, release the Lions!

Bedbugs have forced people out of their apartments in Lexington, Ky.

In Fort Worth, Texas, the city housing authority spent half a million dollars in an unsuccessful attempt to rid an apartment building of the pests.

Also, in Seattle, calls to exterminators are up 70 percent in the last two years.

But it seems as though the Big Apple has seen the brunt of the bedbug attack, with the city receiving nearly 11,000 complaints last year.

Just this week, one of the largest movie theatres in New York City, AMC Empire 25 in Times Square, announced that it was closing its doors to deal with an infestation problem. It since has reopened.

Look at all the taxpayer money they are spending with no credible results. Pesticides are cheap. Give us the pesticides and then go away and bother somebody else on the public dole.

Homeowners also can choose extermination, but it's a process that easily could cost anywhere from $800 to $1,200.

No it won't, not if you have cheap and effective pesticides. What happened to Dursban? What happened to Diazinon? Those two products were banned in the last decade. DDT was banned by the EPA in 1972. The EPA came into existence and opened its doors on December 2nd, 1970. The first thing they did was go after pesticides and they have been doing it ever since. Now that the evidence is in I am sure we have gone way too far. It is time for them to back off. People are suffering because of the EPA. I am not even going to go into the millions in Africa that die of Malaria (more than AIDS). This is about common sense policy for suffering Americans.

Here is local News 5 on the story as well:

Time Dubs Cincinnati 'Bedbug Capital Of U.S.'
DOD Experts Called To Ohio To Help Combat Problem

I am going to put together a post on how to deal with Bedbugs. You can kill them and it is easier than you think.

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Forbes 535 v. the US Congress

2010-08-12T12:18:00.003-04:00

This post is a blast from the past. I remember reading it and thinking about it and from time to time it crosses my mind. So I thought I would just put it out there.

This post is stolen from Robert Lawson, Bengals Fan, and Econ professor at Auburn. WHO DEY! It was posted at the Division of Labor blog on October 1st, 2008.

Forbes 535 v. the US Congress

Comparing the concentration of financial power in the hands of the 535 members of the United States Congress with the concentration of financial power of the 535 richest people in the United States.

According to Forbes, the 400 richest people had a combined net worth of $1.57 trillion. Let's simply assume the next 135 richest people had the same net worth, though they surely didn't, as the 400th person--$1.3 billion each. That brings our estimate of the combined net wealth of the richest 535 Americans to $1.75 trillion.

But wait, this is net worth, which is a stock, not income, which is a flow. So let's figure the annual income flow from the ownership of $1.75 trillion to be 10% of that amount. (I don't know if this number is high or low. On the one hand really rich folks probably are good at making high rates of return. On the other hand much of that $1.75 in net worth is likely to be speculative, consumptive, and/or illiquid assets like real estate, yachts, artwork, etc where the return is difficult to determine without selling the item. It turns out, you could double or triple this estimated return and still make the point I'm going to make.) Our estimate therefore is that the richest 535 Americans have about $175 billion (10% of $1.75 trillion) to spend on an annual basis.

Ok, let's compare this group with the 535 members of the US Congress. According to the latest Economic Report of the President, the annual outlays of the federal government amounted to $2.73 trillion in fiscal year 2007.

So I estimate that the 535 members of the US Congress enjoy over 15 times the financial power of the 535 richest Americans.

But do note how charitable I am being here. Unlike the 535 richest Americans, the US Congress also reserves the right to regulate the hell out of practically ever aspect of our lives. Furthermore, unlilke the 535 richest Americans, who hardly know each other and who certainly never hold meetings to coordinate their decisions, the US Congress does in fact meet regularly to decide exactly how this vast financial power is to be spent. Furthermore, I have failed to say anything about the various state legislatures in the land who annually spend an additional $1.9 trillion.

Why do we worry so much about the supposed concentration of economic power in the hands of "the rich", a group of strangers who don't coordinate their actions in any way, but care so little about the vastly greater concentration of economic power in the hands of Congress?

Brilliant. I extend a thank you and a WHO DEY! to Robert Lawson, who provided today's blast from the past...

Retirement Risk by Arnold Kling

2010-08-12T11:45:00.002-04:00

King Kling!

Retirement Risk

Money Shot:

For any given level of output, more consumption by one group (say, people over 65) is going to reduce what can be consumed by everyone else. As the ratio of people over 65 to everyone else goes up, this increases the ratio of state-confiscated income to total income required to keep Social Security and Medicare going. Perhaps to Cohn, this higher confiscation rate represents a kinder and gentler society. But it may not feel kind and gentle to those who earn incomes and have them confiscated.

Don't know how you get around it.

What Hope?

2010-08-11T16:40:00.002-04:00

Race, Wrongs, and Remedies: Group Justice in the 21st Century
by Amy Wax

What Hope?
A book review by John McWhorter

What this means, Wax points out, is that scrupulous recountings of the historical reasons for black problems are of no significant use in finding solutions. She notes:

The black family was far more stable 50 years ago, when conditions for blacks were far worse than they are today. Black out-of-wedlock births started to climb and marriage rates to fall around 1960, long after slavery was abolished and just as the civil rights movement gained momentum. Perhaps a more nuanced explanation for the recent deterioration is that the legacy of slavery made the black family more vulnerable to the cultural subversions of the 1960s. But what does this tell us that is useful today? The answer is: nothing.

One of the most sobering observations made by Wax comes in the form of a disarmingly simple calculus presented first by Isabel Sawhill and Christopher Jencks. If you finish high school and keep a job without having children before marriage, you will almost certainly not be poor. Period. I have repeatedly felt the air go out of the room upon putting this to black audiences. No one of any political stripe can deny it. It is human truth on view. In 2004, the poverty rate among blacks who followed that formula was less than 6 percent, as opposed to the overall rate of 24.7 percent. Even after hearing the earnest musings about employers who are less interested in people with names like Tomika, no one can gainsay the simple truth of that advice. Crucially, neither bigotry nor even structural racism can explain why an individual does not live up to it.

This data should be taught in every public school. Everyone can choose not be poor, you simply have to follow life's little guidelines. Graduate high school. Everyone can do that if they apply themselves. Don't have kids before you get married. Get a job and keep it. These are not impossible things for any American to do. It isn't that hard when you play by the rules.

Bankrupt Nation

2010-08-11T14:44:00.003-04:00

U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don't Even Know: Laurence Kotlikoff

How can the fiscal gap be so enormous?

Simple. We have 78 million baby boomers who, when fully retired, will collect benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that, on average, exceed per-capita GDP. The annual costs of these entitlements will total about $4 trillion in today’s dollars. Yes, our economy will be bigger in 20 years, but not big enough to handle this size load year after year.

This is what happens when you run a massive Ponzi scheme for six decades straight, taking ever larger resources from the young and giving them to the old while promising the young their eventual turn at passing the generational buck.

Herb Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under U.S. President Richard Nixon, coined an oft-repeated phrase: “Something that can’t go on, will stop.” True enough. Uncle Sam’s Ponzi scheme will stop. But it will stop too late.

And it will stop in a very nasty manner. The first possibility is massive benefit cuts visited on the baby boomers in retirement. The second is astronomical tax increases that leave the young with little incentive to work and save. And the third is the government simply printing vast quantities of money to cover its bills.

Worse Than Greece

Most likely we will see a combination of all three responses with dramatic increases in poverty, tax, interest rates and consumer prices. This is an awful, downhill road to follow, but it’s the one we are on. And bond traders will kick us miles down our road once they wake up and realize the U.S. is in worse fiscal shape than Greece.

and this

Not In 25 Years, Social Security Is Bankrupt Now

For the first time in its history the Social Security program will pay out more money than it takes in. This watershed event will occur this year, to the tune of $41 Billion dollars. Under any rational accounting standards this makes the Social Security program bankrupt. And that's right now, not in 25 years when the so-called Trust Fund becomes insolvent.

You see, most pension programs hold income producing assets in their Trust Funds. Stocks, bonds, real estate, oil and gas partnerships, that sort of thing. A fully funded pension program owns enough of those assets to pay its liabilities even if the company closes its doors and not a penny more of new money comes in from current employees.

Social Security plays by a different set of rules enshrined under the New Deal and Great Society programs. These are the same rules that landed Bernie Madoff in jail. Although the Social Security system has been regularly taking in billions for decades and socking it into its Trust Fund just like a normal pension plan, Congress has just as regularly been draining the money out for current spending. All of the money collected from every American's paycheck throughout all of our careers is now gone. In its place are not stocks, bonds, real estate, and oil and gas partnership. In its place are IOUs from Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel, and Barney Frank. $2.5 Trillion dollars worth of IOUs.

Speaking of Bankrupt, lets look at the Chicago Way (thanks to Gordon Gekko):

Illinois owes nearly 2,000 organizations $100,000 or more.

I think I read somewhere that Illinois is paying bills at around 255 days. They don't have the money so they keep pushing paying bills on time. At some point the whole system is going to bust.
link

Illinois’ total bill backlog was $4.2 billion as of Friday. The state also must repay $2.25 billion, plus interest, in short-term loans it took out in May and August, Knowles said.

The loans are due starting in March and must be fully repaid by early June, putting the state’s total backlog at more than $6 billion.

“We (the comptroller’s office) have tried to work closely with those who are owed money across the state to address payment emergencies, but when a bill backlog exists that is as large as the state of Illinois’, it makes it very difficult to address even emergency situations,” Knowles said.

“We would love to pay every bill as soon as it arrives at the office, but unfortunately the revenues do not exist to be able to do that. We are doing our best to pay bills with the limited resources we have.”

The collapse is going to be spectacular.

The American way of life is about to change.

The Proud Racist History of Labor Unions

2010-08-09T16:14:00.001-04:00

David Henderson at EconLog quotes Morgan Reynolds today:

I do have an answer to this positive question: what is the origin of national origin labels? In the United States, it's labor union racism. Here's what Morgan Reynolds wrote in his Concise Encyclopedia of Economics article, "Labor Unions":

Economist Ray Marshall, although a prounion secretary of labor under President Jimmy Carter, made his academic reputation by documenting how unions excluded blacks from membership in the 1930s and 1940s. Marshall also wrote of incidents in which union members assaulted black workers hired to replace them during strikes. During the 1911 strike against the Illinois Central, noted Marshall, whites killed two black strikebreakers and wounded three others at McComb, Mississippi. He also noted that white strikers killed ten black firemen in 1911 because the New Orleans and Texas Pacific Railroad had granted them equal seniority. Not surprisingly, therefore, black leader Booker T. Washington opposed unions all his life, and W. E. B. DuBois called unions the greatest enemy of the black working class. Another interesting fact: the "union label" was started in the 1880s to proclaim that a product was made by white rather than yellow (Chinese) hands.

As Jonah Goldberg has noted, people on the left have a short memory. They are also usually the first ones to claim racism.

Around the horn

2010-08-09T12:11:00.002-04:00

Across Texas, 60,000 babies of noncitizens get U.S. birthright

Between 2001 and 2009, births to illegal immigrant women totaled 542,152 in Texas alone.

Illegal aliens account for 13 percent of DUI arrests in Prince William County, Va.

That is just Virginia

How public worker pensions are too rich for New York's - and America's - blood

That is a story that bears repeating, and repeating, and repeating....

Minorities will be New American Majority by 2050

"More of the country is going to be like California," said William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution. Minorities make up 57% of the population in California.

"In California, minorities make up 72% of those under age 15."

I wonder if much of the country will also be bankrupt like California...

Compare that to the 1960 Census Numbers:

California 1960 Census Totals

White Population: 14,455,280 (92.0%)

Black Population: 883,861 (5.6%)

Other Races: 378,133 (2.4%)

Demographics is destiny. How will this country change during your life when the rest of the country starts looking like California?

I was born in the 1960s. A state that was 92% white now has 72% minorities in the under 15 demographic. During one persons lifetime is not a gradual change, that is more like a radical change. We talk about immigrants assimilating over generations, but so much happens so fast. If you come from Mexico to California today you can live in a hispanic community and speak Spannish your whole life. The odds are you won't feel out of place or out of your culture at all, but the white people would.

Michael P. Fleischer is not hiring.

2010-08-09T10:10:00.002-04:00

From the Wall Street Journal:

Why I'm Not Hiring
When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally's pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits.

Meet Sally (not her real name; details changed to preserve privacy). Sally is a terrific employee, and she happens to be the median person in terms of base pay among the 83 people at my little company in New Jersey, where we provide audio systems for use in educational, commercial and industrial settings. She's been with us for over 15 years. She's a high school graduate with some specialized training. She makes $59,000 a year—on paper. In reality, she makes only $44,000 a year because $15,000 is taken from her thanks to various deductions and taxes, all of which form the steep, sad slope between gross and net pay.

Before that money hits her bank, it is reduced by the $2,376 she pays as her share of the medical and dental insurance that my company provides. And then the government takes its due. She pays $126 for state unemployment insurance, $149 for disability insurance and $856 for Medicare. That's the small stuff. New Jersey takes $1,893 in income taxes. The federal government gets $3,661 for Social Security and another $6,250 for income tax withholding. The roughly $13,000 taken from her by various government entities means that some 22% of her gross pay goes to Washington or Trenton. She's lucky she doesn't live in New York City, where the toll would be even higher.

Employing Sally costs plenty too. My company has to write checks for $74,000 so Sally can receive her nominal $59,000 in base pay. Health insurance is a big, added cost: While Sally pays nearly $2,400 for coverage, my company pays the rest—$9,561 for employee/spouse medical and dental. We also provide company-paid life and other insurance premiums amounting to $153. Altogether, company-paid benefits add $9,714 to the cost of employing Sally.

Then the federal and state governments want a little something extra. They take $56 for federal unemployment coverage, $149 for disability insurance, $300 for workers' comp and $505 for state unemployment insurance. Finally, the feds make me pay $856 for Sally's Medicare and $3,661 for her Social Security.

When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally's pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits. Bottom line: Governments impose a 33% surtax on Sally's job each year.

Because my company has been conscripted by the government and forced to serve as a tax collector, we have lost control of a big chunk of our cost structure. Tax increases, whether cloaked as changes in unemployment or disability insurance, Medicare increases or in any other form can dramatically alter our financial situation. With government spending and deficits growing as fast as they have been, you know that more tax increases are coming—for my company, and even for Sally too.

I love it when an employer breaks down the actual costs of doing business and explains it to the masses. Sometimes just a simply explanation of the facts can tell you a lot.

I am a big supporter of the Fair Tax, which is a proposed plan to abolish the Internal Revenue Service, scrap the income tax and fund this country with a progressive consumption tax.

I haven't argued here much about the Fair Tax because I think our main problem is spending anyway, not taxes. Any political party can raise or lower taxes, neither political party has had the balls to cut the size and scope of government. I would like to free Michael P. Fleicher from having to worry about all those government regulations and tax laws and free him to just concentrate on running his business.

He also makes a great point about employer provided health insurance:

Companies have also been pressed into serving as providers of health insurance. In a saner world, health insurance would be something that individuals buy for themselves and their families, just as they do with auto insurance. Now, adding to the insanity, there is ObamaCare.

Every year, we negotiate a renewal to our health coverage. This year, our provider demanded a 28% increase in premiums—for a lesser plan. This is in part a tax increase that the federal government has co-opted insurance providers to collect. We had never faced an increase anywhere near this large; in each of the last two years, the increase was under 10%.

We really do need to create a more free markter for insurance by doing away with employer provided health care. It shouldn't be a burden on every business to do this and it takes them away from their core competancy. If 300,000,000 Americans had to find their own insurance the insurance market would be a lot more competative. That doesn't even address the level of service. When you have a loved one in the hospital it is hard to get good service or answers to your questions. The doctors like to make rounds at 5:00 in the morning when patients are asleep and nobody is there to ask questions. Hospitals are big bureaucracies and they don't really have to answer to you. Do you know one reason why? You aren't paying the bill. Every see a doctor talk down to someone who asks a question? That probably wouldn't happen if he was on your dime.

Things I would like:

1) Cut the size and scope of government.
2) Sever the tie between employment and health care.
3) Abolish the IRS, income taxes, and all taxes on business
4) Institute the Fair Tax, a progressive consumption tax that encourages conservation and saving.

Free the People.

No More Bailouts!

2010-08-07T12:43:00.002-04:00

From The Nation:

The AIG Bailout Scandal

The government’s $182 billion bailout of insurance giant AIG should be seen as the Rosetta Stone for understanding the financial crisis and its costly aftermath. The story of American International Group explains the larger catastrophe not because this was the biggest corporate bailout in history but because AIG’s collapse and subsequent rescue involved nearly all the critical elements, including delusion and deception. These financial dealings are monstrously complicated, but this account focuses on something mere mortals can understand—moral confusion in high places, and the failure of governing institutions to fulfill their obligations to the public.

Three governmental investigative bodies have now pored through the AIG wreckage and turned up disturbing facts—the House Committee on Oversight and Reform; the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which will make its report at year’s end; and the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), which issued its report on AIG in June.

The five-member COP, chaired by Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, has produced the most devastating and comprehensive account so far. Unanimously adopted by its bipartisan members, it provides alarming insights that should be fodder for the larger debate many citizens long to hear—why Washington rushed to forgive the very interests that produced this mess, while innocent others were made to suffer the consequences. The Congressional panel’s critique helps explain why bankers and their Washington allies do not want Elizabeth Warren to chair the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The report concludes that the Federal Reserve Board’s intimate relations with the leading powers of Wall Street—the same banks that benefited most from the government’s massive bailout—influenced its strategic decisions on AIG. The panel accuses the Fed and the Treasury Department of brushing aside alternative approaches that would have saved tens of billions in public funds by making these same banks “share the pain.”

Bailing out AIG effectively meant rescuing Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Merrill Lynch (as well as a dozens of European banks) from huge losses. Those financial institutions played the derivatives game with AIG, the esoteric practice of placing financial bets on future events. AIG lost its bets, which led to its collapse. But other gamblers—the counterparties in AIG’s derivative deals—were made whole on their bets, paid off 100 cents on the dollar. Taxpayers got stuck with the bill.

“The AIG rescue demonstrated that Treasury and the Federal Reserve would commit taxpayers to pay any price and bear any burden to prevent the collapse of America’s largest financial institutions,” the COP report said. This could have been avoided, the report argues, if the Fed had listened to disinterested advisers with a less parochial understanding of the public interest.

I would have passed a one sentence bill to regulate Wall Street. As opposed to the 2300+ pages that Congress just passed, I would have given just this: "No More Bailouts!"

the AIG story raises real doubts and suspicions about how the government will respond next time. Or whether the new financial reform legislation actually corrects government’s deference to the pinnacles of private financial power.

We bailout the financial industry once a decade. They have come to expect it. We need to tell them in advance: "No More Bailouts!"

The AIG rescue was done in ways that had “poisonous effects” on the financial marketplace and public opinion, the report concluded. Cynical expectations were confirmed, both for citizens and financial players. Some financial firms are simply “too big to fail,” it seems; Washington will not let them collapse, no matter what the president claims.

The most troubling revelation in this story is the astonishing weakness of the Federal Reserve and its incompetence as a faithful defender of the public interest. In the lore of central banking, the Fed is awesomely powerful and intimidating. As regulator of the banking system, it has life-and-death influence over banks. As manager of the economy, it has open-ended authority to intervene in the financial system to restore stability, as the central bank did massively during the crisis.

Yet the Fed was strangely passive and compliant when it came to demanding cooperation and sacrifice from the largest financial institutions. Timothy Geithner was then president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, the lead regulator of Wall Street’s largest banks. He briefly insisted they must accept the burden of rescuing AIG. But the bankers called his bluff and blew him off—and Geithner deferred to their wishes. The taxpayer bailout followed. The episode is relevant to the future, because Geithner is now Obama’s Treasury Secretary and in charge of preventing the next taxpayer bailout.

Makes me think of how this all relates to the "Country Class" vs "The Ruling Class". We bailout out the fatcats on Wall Street. We have welfare for the rich anc connected as well as welfare for the poor. The rest of us just have to turn around and bend over.

No More Bailouts!

New York Times on Pensions

2010-08-07T12:19:00.003-04:00

Battle Looms Over Huge Costs of Public Pensions

There’s a class war coming to the world of government pensions.

The haves are retirees who were once state or municipal workers. Their seemingly guaranteed and ever-escalating monthly pension benefits are breaking budgets nationwide.

The have-nots are taxpayers who don’t have generous pensions. Their 401(k)s or individual retirement accounts have taken a real beating in recent years and are not guaranteed. And soon, many of those people will be paying higher taxes or getting fewer state services as their states put more money aside to cover those pension checks.

At stake is at least $1 trillion. That’s trillion, with a “t,” as in titanic and terrifying.

The figure comes from a study by the Pew Center on the States that came out in February. Pew estimated a $1 trillion gap as of fiscal 2008 between what states had promised workers in the way of retiree pension, health care and other benefits and the money they currently had to pay for it all. And some economists say that Pew is too conservative and the problem is two or three times as large.

So a question of extraordinary financial, political, legal and moral complexity emerges, something that every one of us will be taking into town meetings and voting booths for years to come: Given how wrong past pension projections were, who should pay to fill the 13-figure financing gap?

This is a war that has been brewing for a very long time.

I still don't like government employee unions. Labor negotiations used to be with the Union and Management. The Union knew that if it asked for too much it would kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Managment knew that it had to keep it's workers happy and on the line working but still make a profit. When Government Unions sit down at the table with Government Management, they often both sit at the same side of the table. No profit exists to pay the workers, only higher and higher taxes. Administrators have long wanted to give Unions higher and higher future benefits instead of other compensation because the costs can be masked in the short term and they won't have to raise taxes. In this process taxpayers get sold down the river with future obligations they never wanted.

Another valuable lesson here is to not trust your government. This state workers worked their whole careers and were promised a deal. Now that they have retired the government is going to come along and change the terms of it. The same thing is going to happen with Social Security. You can't trust the Government, and people should be clueing into that by now.

Free The People - State Marriage Edition

2010-08-07T12:13:00.003-04:00

From the talented David Harsanyi of the Denver Post: Time for a divorce

In the 1500s, a pestering theologian instituted something called the Marriage Ordinance in Geneva, which made "state registration and church consecration" a dual requirement of matrimony.

We have yet to get over this mistake. But isn't it about time we freed marriage from the state?

Imagine if government had no interest in the definition of marriage. Individuals could commit to each other, head to the local priest or rabbi or shaman — or no one at all — and enter into contractual agreements, call their blissful union whatever they felt it should be called and go about the business of their lives.

I certainly don't believe that gay marriage will trigger societal instability or undermine traditional marriage — we already have that covered — but mostly I believe your private relationships are none of my business. And without any government role in the institution, it wouldn't be the business of the 9th Circuit Court, either.

As the debate stands now, we have two activist groups trying to force their own ethical construction of marriage on the rest of us. And to enforce it, they have been using the power of the state — one via majority rule and the other using the judiciary (subject to change with the vagaries of public opinion).

I think the state should get out of the marriage business. What an easy solution to erase that battlefield from the culture war.

The great thing is that everyone could finally STFU. I don't need once side grandstanding on the sanctity of marriage while another talks about civil rights. Enough of the preaching and get to the governing and making this country competative. When I got married I made a vow both to my wife and to God, to death do us part. I didn't kneel at the alter of the State. I don't need the State in my bedroom or yours. Free the People.

Jim Webb in the WSJ

2010-07-23T12:10:00.003-04:00

Jim Webb is one of my favorite Democrats. I still haven't read his book on Nam but I hear it is well worth the time. I need to do that.

OPINION JULY 22, 2010 Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege
America still owes a debt to its black citizens, but government programs to help all 'people of color' are unfair. They should end.

I am not sure how the Federal Government can make amends to black people. I think of the law of unintended consequenses and I know it will all go wrong. Webb points out that people from Africa come to this country today and take advantage of our affirmative action programs. I read once that a large proportion of Ivy League blacks are African and not American.

On a side note, Obama admitted that he benefitted from Afirmative Action. His dad was from Kenya and didn't have an American slave legacy. His mom was white. He was raised by his white grandparents and he went to an exclusive prep school in Hawaii, which isn't a "white dominated" state exactly. He then got into Columbia and was even a legacy at Harvard since his dad attended. In many ways Barack is whiter than I am. Webb is arguing that Barack shouldn't have gotten an edge, though he doesn't mention Obama and I doubt it crossed his mind.

Thomas Sowell has made similar arguments in distiction about white people. White people are not all the same. The Highlanders from rural Scottland and the urban dwellers of London have vastly different historical outcomes in income and education, but we lump them all together when they come to the USA. If the Highlanders were a shade apart maybe they could particpate in government programs to and show studies of disparte impact. You just can't legislate equal outcomes.

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Update: From Roger Clegg at The Corner

Consider, in any event, those African Americans who were born in, say, 1992 — the birth year of those now getting college-admissions preferences. Those students are not slaves or former slaves, were not alive under Jim Crow and have never been victims of government discrimination, and were born over a quarter-century after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed to protect them from public and private discrimination. Additionally, the African Americans who get these preferences at the more selective universities come overwhelmingly from middle- and upper-class backgrounds, not from impoverished farms or ghettos.

So two cheers for Senator Webb, reserving the third for when he acknowledges that the time has come to end racial preferences for all groups, rather than for all but one.

Tom Tancredo: Impeach Obama

2010-07-23T10:37:00.005-04:00

TANCREDO: The case for impeachment
Obama has violated his oath of office over immigration

Mr. Obama's most egregious and brazen betrayal of our Constitution was his statement to Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, that the administration will not enforce security on our southern border because that would remove Republicans' desire to negotiate a "comprehensive" immigration bill. That is, to put it plainly, a decision that by any reasonable standard constitutes an impeachable offense against the Constitution. For partisan political advantage, he is willfully disregarding his obligation under Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution to protect states from foreign invasion.

There is no higher duty of the federal government and our elected representatives than to protect our nation from invasion. Multiple reports and testimony before Congress by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials have stated that a porous border with Mexico is "a path" terrorists will use if they can. Some would-be terrorists, including at least one associated with Hezbollah, already have. Recent reports of contacts between Hezbollah and Mexican drug cartels make it all but certain that terrorists intent on destroying us will come across our southwestern border. Therefore, it is of utmost importance for the administration to do everything in its power to keep Americans safe. Our safety is not a bargaining chip for another amnesty - or for any other political objective whatsoever.

What to do with Tom Tancredo? Once he left office he started speaking his mind. I remember when he came out for drug legalization. I remember thinking that I wish he would have said something in office.

His point about Jon Kyl is well taken. But...

Republicans don't have the numbers to impeach, and talking impeachment plays into Democrat hands. It is crazy talk that could rally their base, especially with the black population that goes 90+% for Obama. Blacks may largely sit out this election according to some prognostications. Could rumblings of impeachment change that? I don't know. I saw a recent poll that 90% of black people think Obama is doing well as President. I am not surprised given that he is the first black President. We have had plenty of white dopes in office during our history. I would probably give him the benefit of the doubt too less than two years in if I was black and a Democrat. I honestly don't know. I didn't care for Shirley Sharrod calling Tea Partiers racist either but if the Klan killed my dad I would probably wouldn't be half as charitable as she. That doesn't make me like her marxist views, and I hate that she can call me a racist for being in the tea party but still get sympathy when someone calls her a racist.

I didn't like it when they impeached Clinton. I think Republicans could have spent better use of their time than chasing a President around with a stained blue dress. Osama was plotting his attacks, and we were talking about consensual sex. I don't give Clinton a pass for his behavior, but I don't give Republicans a pass either. Too often they are waving the bloody flag, be it a blue dress or a campaign against gay marriage when other more substantive problems affect our nation. If this country goes bankrupt, nobody will really give a damn about what was on that dress or what those guys down the street do in their own bedroom.

I have to say I am against impeachment, but I am in agreement with Tancredo that using our borders as a political pawn is despicable. I think Tancredo will be written off as a kook. He surely has at least some kook in him (which isn't always bad). He certainly does amuse, and some of his points are valid in my humble opinion.

I don't know how we can argue we even have much of a Constitution when the government can seize the auto and health care industries and force people to buy health insurance. During the lame duck session they will probably seize the energy sector and put through card check as Special K points out.

During the Bush regime all the liberals talked about W trashing the Constitution. Now we have Obama in power conservatives are doing the same thing. I think some of it is justified on both sides (I think Obama is worse). To the disinterested observer though it has to sound a lot like the boy who cried wolf. Most normal people don't pay too much attention to politics, they mind their own business. After all, it pays to mind your own business because that is what you can control. We expect politicians to lie and break promises. When you point out that Obama lied or broke promises it doesn't surprise people, it is more like the boy who cried wolf. The problem is not the crying, it is when the wolf actually shows up and everyone is so disenchanted with politics to get out of bed and see what all the noise is about.

It doesn't help that when Republicans had the Presidency, the House and and Senate that they acted like self serving Democrats. The reason to vote Republican hasn't been because they are so swell, it is because electing Democrats is worse. It is like the choices are dumb and dumber. I am sick of that bs.

I don't know Obama personally. I bet he is a great dad. I bet George Bush really is a fine and decent man. I don't like Obama's spending and love for big government. I didn't like Bush's spending or big government. Government crowds out the private sector in every way. The more government you have the less freedom you have. Albert Nock said that you have social power and you have state power. For the state to gain power it has to come at the expense of social power.

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have." - Gerald Ford

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground." - Thomas Jefferson

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Update: DaTechGuy supported the Clinton impeachment but doesn't support this. I don't support either, but I think Tancredo's case is stronger. Border safety for American Citizens that live near it is far more consequential than Monica Lewinsky.

A Sort Of Tea Party Manifesto

2010-07-17T11:14:00.006-04:00

Angelo M. Codevilla

From The American Spectator:

America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution
By Angelo M. Codevilla from the July 2010 - August 2010 issue

It is a long essay. I agree with a lot of what it has to say. Not the first time I have cited Codevilla on the cesspool either. I have to confess I am a big fan at this point.

Hat tip to Left Coast Rebel.

Dan Riehl has more:

The so called conservative pundit class that is actually DC-centric punditry in new media is not our true ally. It functions more as a filter, or governor of our beliefs and desires as regards politics, than our enabler. And that will remain true until more people stop being nice to it, or fawning over it, simply because it has power and is purported to be wise. Its more truly Reaganesque thinking has long been corrupted by money, influence, access and power, just as has the GOP establishment.

It is hard to make sweeping generalizations about America and Americans. Not everyone is going to fit into a little box. But a lot of what Codevilla says hits close to my heart. As I was reading it I thought of it as my very own Tea Party Manifesto.

When I have attended Tea Party events I have taken my wife and children. They are family events. I have never seen any rascim, bad behavior or even anyone littering. Most of the people there are with their families. My family went to one with my brother and his family and another with my in laws. In every one of those cases nobody from our group had ever attended a political rally in their lives until the Tea Party. And you meet people there that will tell you the same thing. Those people have finally gotten to a point where enough is enough. I think of the people that I attended with and the people that I met there and it really gets my goat when people start calling us racist.

I liked so much of Codevilla's article and it is so long I can't quote much to do it justice. Here is one part other bloggers I have checked out haven't quoted yet for a teaser:

To the extent party leaders do not have to worry about voters, they can choose privileged interlocutors, representing those in society whom they find most amenable. In America ever more since the 1930s -- elsewhere in the world this practice is ubiquitous and long-standing -- government has designated certain individuals, companies, and organizations within each of society's sectors as (junior) partners in elaborating laws and administrative rules for those sectors. The government empowers the persons it has chosen over those not chosen, deems them the sector's true representatives, and rewards them. They become part of the ruling class.

Thus in 2009-10 the American Medical Association (AMA) strongly supported the new medical care law, which the administration touted as having the support of "the doctors" even though the vast majority of America's 975,000 physicians opposed it. Those who run the AMA, however, have a government contract as exclusive providers of the codes by which physicians and hospitals bill the government for their services. The millions of dollars that flow thereby to the AMA's officers keep them in line, while the impracticality of doing without the billing codes tamps down rebellion in the doctor ranks. When the administration wanted to bolster its case that the state of Arizona's enforcement of federal immigration laws was offensive to Hispanics, the National Association of Chiefs of Police -- whose officials depend on the administration for their salaries -- issued a statement that the laws would endanger all Americans by raising Hispanics' animosity. This reflected conversations with the administration rather than a vote of the nation's police chiefs.

Similarly, modern labor unions are ever less bunches of workers banding together and ever more bundled under the aegis of an organization chosen jointly by employers and government. Prototypical is the Service Employees International Union, which grew spectacularly by persuading managers of government agencies as well as of publicly funded private entities that placing their employees in the SEIU would relieve them of responsibility. Not by being elected by workers' secret ballots did the SEIU conquer workplace after workplace, but rather by such deals, or by the union presenting what it claims are cards from workers approving of representation. The union gets 2 percent of the workers' pay, which it recycles as contributions to the Democratic Party, which it recycles in greater power over public employees. The union's leadership is part of the ruling class's beating heart.

We have a sea of non-profits and government experts that are like wolves in sheeps clothing. The AMA is more an arm of the government than it is a representation of the doctors. The climate science industry is funded by big government FOR big government. Many non-profits take money from the government and use that money expressly TO LOBBY the very government who just gave them your tax dollars.

Imagine that. It is a great system I guess if you agree with the goals (and good work if you can get it!). But imagine if you oppose the measures. The government takes property from you to give to your opponents, who use that money to lobby the government against you.

Pease read the whole thing.

Update: Rasmussen Reports: 68% Say Political Class Doesn’t Care What Most Americans Think

Those numbers dovetail quite nicely with Angelo M. Codevilla

.

Just The Facts, Mam

2010-07-12T11:15:00.002-04:00

How facts backfire
Researchers discover a surprising threat to democracy: our brains
By Joe Keohane, The Boston Globe
July 11, 2010

“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” says political scientist Brendan Nyhan, the lead researcher on the Michigan study. The phenomenon — known as “backfire” — is “a natural defense mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance.”

The problem is that Bredan Nyhan has apparently conducted a study where the facts don't matter, to prove that facts don't matter:

On its own, this might not be a problem: People ignorant of the facts could simply choose not to vote. But instead, it appears that misinformed people often have some of the strongest political opinions. A striking recent example was a study done in the year 2000, led by James Kuklinski of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He led an influential experiment in which more than 1,000 Illinois residents were asked questions about welfare — the percentage of the federal budget spent on welfare, the number of people enrolled in the program, the percentage of enrollees who are black, and the average payout. More than half indicated that they were confident that their answers were correct — but in fact only 3 percent of the people got more than half of the questions right. Perhaps more disturbingly, the ones who were the most confident they were right were by and large the ones who knew the least about the topic. (Most of these participants expressed views that suggested a strong antiwelfare bias.)

Studies by other researchers have observed similar phenomena when addressing education, health care reform, immigration, affirmative action, gun control, and other issues that tend to attract strong partisan opinion. Kuklinski calls this sort of response the “I know I’m right” syndrome, and considers it a “potentially formidable problem” in a democratic system. “It implies not only that most people will resist correcting their factual beliefs,” he wrote, “but also that the very people who most need to correct them will be least likely to do so.”

What was the "fact" on welfare spending? The article goes on to tell us...

There are also some cases where directness works. Kuklinski’s welfare study suggested that people will actually update their beliefs if you hit them “between the eyes” with bluntly presented, objective facts that contradict their preconceived ideas. He asked one group of participants what percentage of its budget they believed the federal government spent on welfare, and what percentage they believed the government should spend. Another group was given the same questions, but the second group was immediately told the correct percentage the government spends on welfare (1 percent).

The government spends 1% on welfare? That is the correct percentage?

From Kiki Bradley and Robert Rector at The Heritage Institute:

Confronting the Unsustainable Growth of Welfare Entitlements: Principles of Reform and the Next Steps
Published on June 24, 2010
by Kiki Bradley and Robert Rector Backgrounder

Here is the abstract:

Abstract: The growth of welfare spending is unsustainable and will drive the United States into bankruptcy if allowed to continue. President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2011 budget request would increase total welfare spending to $953 billion—a 42 percent increase over welfare spending in FY 2008, the last full year of the Bush Administration. To bring welfare spending under control, Congress should reduce welfare spending to pre-recession levels after the recession ends and then limit future growth to the rate of inflation. Congress should also restore work requirements in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and apply them to other federal welfare programs.

Is that 1%?

More:

The federal government runs over 70 different means-tested anti-poverty programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care, and social services to poor and low-income persons. These means-tested programs—including food stamps, public housing, low-income energy assistance, and Medicaid—pay the bills and meet the physical needs of tens of millions of low-income families. However, these programs do not help the recipients move from a position of dependence on the government to being able to provide for themselves.

Over 70 means tested programs? I wonder which ones Brendan Nyhan included when coming up with his figures? I also wonder why Joe Keohane doesn't fact check when writting these articles. Talk about putting politics into science and "facts".

More:

The Need for Reform

When President Lyndon Johnson announced the War on Poverty in 1964, he created large-scale national programs to help the poor and needy. Spending on these programs has grown to alarmingly high levels. In 1964, programs for the poor consumed 1.2 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). Today, spending on welfare programs is 13 times greater than it was in 1964 and consumes over 5 percent of GDP. Spending per poor person in 2008 amounted to around $16,800 in programmatic benefits.

The Obama Administration has worked rapidly to expand the welfare state further. President Obama’s fiscal year (FY) 2011 budget would continue this trend, further increasing spending on programs for the poor to 42 percent above levels in FY 2008, President George W. Bush’s last full year in office. By 2011, total welfare spending (including the state portion) would rise to $953 billion.[5] (See Chart 1.)

Isn't it amazing that liberal political scientists think conservatives "Can't handle the truth" about things such as welfare spending and to demonstrate it they have to lie about actual welfare spending? Maybe the researchers are confirming their own study. They seem to come to conclusions without looking at the actual facts about welfare spending. Aren't they also prone to be victims of this very same human behavior that they are talking about?

Should we rely on left leaning media and leftist academics to give us facts? Is it any surprise that left leaning people more readily accept other leftys "facts". Is it any surprise that conservatives don't buy the whole ball of crap wholesale?

Successful Tyranny

2010-07-06T14:23:00.002-04:00

"The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside." (Closing of the American Mind, 249)

I often think of the advancement of the welfare state in these terms. Once you get everyone on the dole it seems impossible to think that our nation could function any other way. And if you tried to cut social security, medicare, medicade, pensions, welfare, housing vouchers, foodstamps or any other program people will fight you and believe you are mad.

LBJ's War on Poverty was going to eliminate poverty in a decade. Fourty years later, all we have accomplished is the institutionalization of poverty on the public dole. Even liberals that admit that the War on Poverty failed, or admit that paying women to become single mothers was a horrible idea still won't lift a finger to reverse those policies.

Today some young women can get a college education if they just have a child. Think about that. All that debt you are about to incur going to college, it can all be avoided in some circumstances if you just have a kid. And we will throw in some food stamps and put you at the top of the Section 8 voucher list for a free apartment as well. We pay for poor single mothers, and the old saw applies: You get what you pay for.

I would rather pay women not to have children. I would rather pay children to get straight As and good behavior than to give a social security disability check to the children who don't do well in school. We pay single women to have kids and we pay for kids to become disabled. What a system.

At some point we need to strike down every law and start over at the Constitution.

90% of Young Philadelphians Not Fit For Military

2010-06-14T21:34:00.002-04:00

Report: Most Philadelphians Not Fit For Military

PHILADELPHIA (AP) ― A nonprofit group says that up to 90 percent of young Philadelphians are ineligible for military service because of criminal records, obesity or lack of education.

Pennsylvania-based Mission: Readiness released its report Monday. It says 1 million Pennsylvanians are ineligible for the same reasons.

Mission: Readiness is made up of more than 150 retired generals and admirals. The group wants state and federal funding for pre-kindergarten programs that it says give children a solid foundation for academic and personal success.

The report says 145,000 Philadelphians ages 18 to 24 cannot meet the military's medical, moral and mental standards.
Nationally, the Department of Defense estimates that 75 percent of young adults are disqualified from military service.

Now that is just something. With the recent flash mobs and wilding in the streets, you have to wonder just what young Philadelphians actually are fit for.

Regna Lee Wood on literacy

2010-05-25T23:10:00.002-04:00

From surfing Lew Rockwell I read this article by Linda Schrock Taylor:

Keeping Their Toes to the Fire

My own personal mission to end the travesty of public miseducation began in 1992 after reading the article, "That's Right – They're Wrong" written by Regna Lee Wood. Mrs. Wood is the Director of Statistical Research for the National Right to Read Foundation, and her work has appeared in National Review, Destiny, and The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs 'Perspective'. I recommend that parents and other advocates begin their own educations, as I did, by reading the work of Regna Lee Wood.

Speaking with the directness and strength that we all must bring into play as we attempt to educate others regarding the actual errors and agendas behind the fraud of public schooling, Regna boldly states, "Nothing can be done with our schools until the basic problem is solved – and no one even sees what it is." We must join Regna in seeing the problem and planning for a solution. With "That's Right – They're Wrong," Regna Lee Wood provides strong fuel for the fires of change as she addresses:

Literacy rates –

"Official" literacy rates, published after the Census every ten years, have been as fictional as Little Red Riding Hood ever since 1940. Through 1930, Census takers counted readers – by giving reading tests if necessary. But starting in 1940 the Census no longer counted readers. Instead, it counted as literate, adults with a certain number of years of school attendance.

Correctly interpreted, the official 1980 and 1990 literacy rates of 95 percent and 95.5 percent indicate that 95 to 96 out of 100 U.S. residents have attended American schools for at least five years. This may be valuable information, but it has little to do with literacy. Schooling for any length of time no longer equals literacy.

Reading Grade Levels –

Reading grade levels (RGLs) have been similarly disguised. Since World War II they haven't equaled skills that students must have to read lessons in particular grades. Instead, reading grade levels have equaled skills that students in each grade do have – as demonstrated by average scores on standardized reading tests. And the difference in reading skills that students must have and those they do have is like the difference between Mark Twain's "lightning" and "lightning bug." It's a big one.

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Literacy is a touchy subject, and it is measured in different ways by different people.

The following comes from an outfit called Pro Literacy Detroit:

Functional Illiteracy Defined

Functional illiteracy refers to the inability of an individual to use reading, speaking, writing, and computational skills in everyday life situations. The functional illiterate person cannot process written material. Quite often, this person is unable to understand basic mathematics.

The impact of functional illiteracy is tremendous. The health, safety, and welfare of entire families are compromised. Illiteracy tends to be intergenerational, resulting in poor academic performance, and higher school dropout rates among school-age children in homes where caregivers cannot read. The inability to read dosage information on over-the-counter and prescription drugs is life threatening.

Now get these statistics from the same site:

The Scope of Functional Illiteracy in Detroit, Highland Park, and Hamtramck, Michigan Adult literacy estimates, complied by the National Institute for Literacy in 1998, for Detroit , Highland Park , and Hamtramck , defined illiteracy rates, among adults as follows: Detroit 47%, Highland Park , 56%, Hamtramck 38%. The social and economic impact of illiteracy in these cities is staggering.

Those stats are an eye opener. One thing I have to beg though, isn't that a run-on sentence in bold? Couldn't they clean that up a bit? I shouldn't throw stones about English composition, but they are a literacy site. That said, half of the city of Detroit being functionally illiterate is staggering. Where is the outrage?

Back to Regna Lee Wood:

So, someone should have noticed that there was trouble in more than River City long before the 1983 National Commission on Excellence in Education report. For the average SAT verbal scores fell 24 points – from 500 to 476 – in the 11 years from 1941 to 1952, and AFQT scores indicated that illiteracy (defined by the War Department as inability to read 4th-grade lessons, or today's 5th-grade lessons) among millions of prospective recruits with at least four years of schooling soared from almost zero (0.004 per cent) during World War II to an unbelievable 17 percent during the Korean War.

But apparently no one did notice. No one wondered why virtually all World War II recruits with any schooling could read, whereas 17 out of 100 Korean War recruits could not read.

I should add for further reading an article by Gary North "The Good Old Days". I think it is a classic and one of my internet favorites. It touches on historical literacy as well. It is tough to quote it without quoting too much of it so check it out...

From John Taylor Gatto, Intellectual Espionage

"Looking back, abundant data exist from states like Connecticut and Massachusetts to show that by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100 percent wherever such a thing mattered. According to the Connecticut census of 1840, only one citizen out of every 579 was illiterate and you probably don’t want to know, not really, what people in those days considered literate; it’s too embarrassing. Popular novels of the period give a clue: Last of the Mohicans, published in 1826, sold so well that a contemporary equivalent would have to move 10 million copies to match it. If you pick up an uncut version you find yourself in a dense thicket of philosophy, history, culture, manners, politics, geography, analysis of human motives and actions, all conveyed in data-rich periodic sentences so formidable only a determined and well-educated reader can handle it nowadays. Yet in 1818 we were a small-farm nation without colleges or universities to speak of. Could those simple folk have had more complex minds than our own?

By 1940, the literacy figure for all states stood at 96 percent for whites, 80 percent for blacks. Notice that for all the disadvantages blacks labored under, four of five were nevertheless literate. Six decades later, at the end of the twentieth century, the National Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Educational Progress say 40 percent of blacks and 17 percent of whites can’t read at all. Put another way, black illiteracy doubled, white illiteracy quadrupled. Before you think of anything else in regard to these numbers, think of this: we spend three to four times as much real money on schooling as we did sixty years ago, but sixty years ago virtually everyone, black or white, could read."

I always wondered why anyone thought it was a good idea to put the government in charge of educating our children.

Robert Nisbet Quote I read today...

2010-05-18T22:43:00.003-04:00

Link

From Busing’s Boston Massacre

In The Quest for Community, Robert Nisbet wrote that the central crisis of the 20th century is the continuous assault on "natural authority" and community through the state’s progressive invasion into our daily lives. "The alleged disorganization of the modern family is, in fact, simply an erosion of its natural authority, the consequence, in considerable part, of the absorption of its functions by other bodies, chiefly the state." Busing is a perfect example of such a state-sponsored assault on community and family.

Dad used to "bring home the bread" and "put a roof over your head". In the womb to tomb nanny state, the State can give you food stamps and housing vouchers. No need for dad. You can see what has happened to the family.

I think the real cuture war is Married with Children (or had Children) vs. the other. People of all races and creeds that marry and have children tend to share similar values and be more conservative than those who don't. And single women who have kids out of wedlock have the most to gain by joining the Democratic party and supporting their nanny state gravey train.

James Galbraith Will Prove To Be The Most Ignorant Man In America

2010-05-13T00:15:00.003-04:00

James Galbraith actually said this to Ezra Klein:

Galbraith: The danger posed by the deficit ‘is zero’

EK: But putting inflation aside, the gap between spending and revenues won't have other ill effects?

JG: Is there any terrible consequence because we haven't prefunded the defense budget? No. There's only one budget and one borrowing authority and all that matters is what that authority pays. Say I'm the federal government and I wish to pay you, Ezra Klein, a billion dollars to build an aircraft carrier. I put money in your bank account for that. Did the Federal Reserve look into that? Did the IRS sign off on it? Government does not need money to spend just as a bowling alley does not run out of points.

What people worry about is that the federal government won't be able to sell bonds. But there can never be a problem for the federal government selling bonds. It goes the other way. The government's spending creates the bank's demand for bonds, because they want a higher return on the money that the government is putting into the economy. My father said this process is so simple that the mind recoils from it.

EK: What are the policy implications of this view?

JG: It says that we should be focusing on real problems and not fake ones. We have serious problems. Unemployment is at 10 percent. if we got busy and worked out things for the unemployed to do, we'd be much better off. And we can certainly afford it. We have an impending energy crisis and a climate crisis. We could spend a generation fixing those problems in a way that would rebuild our country, too. On the tax side, what you want to do is reverse the burden on working people. Since the beginning of the crisis, I've supported a payroll tax holiday so everyone gets an increase in their after-tax earnings so they can pay down their mortgages, which would be a good thing. You also want to encourage rich people to recycle their money, which is why I support the estate tax, which has accounted for an enormous number of our great universities and nonprofits and philanthropic organizations. That's one difference between us and Europe.

EK: That does it for my questions, I think.

JG: I have one more answer, though! Since the 1790s, how often has the federal government not run a deficit? Six short periods, all leading to recession. Why? Because the government needs to run a deficit, it's the only way to inject financial resources into the economy. If you're not running a deficit, it's draining the pockets of the private sector. I was at a meeting in Cambridge last month where the managing director of the IMF said he was against deficits but in favor of saving, but they're exactly the same thing! A government deficit means more money in private pockets.

The way people suggest they can cut spending without cutting activity is completely fallacious. This is appalling in Europe right now. The Greeks are being asked to cut 10 percent from spending in a few years. And the assumption is that this won't affect GDP. But of course it will! It will cut at least 10 percent! And so they won't have the tax collections to fund the new lower level of spending. Spain was forced to make the same announcement yesterday. So the Eurozone is going down the tubes.

On the other hand, look at Japan. They've had enormous deficits ever since the crash in 1988. What's been the interest rate on government bonds ever since? It's zero! They've had no problem funding themselves. The best asset to own in Japan is cash, because the price level is falling. It gets you 4 percent return. The idea that funding difficulties are driven by deficits is an argument backed by a very powerful metaphor, but not much in the way of fact, theory or current experience.

Speechless. James Galbraith and I live in different worlds. I find it hard to believe that people believe him.

As Michael Kinsley noted, if deficits aren't the problem and will never be the problem, why not spend more? Why aren't we doing more for the poor? Why aren't we doing more for the unemployed? If deficits don't have any drawbacks, why not double the deficit? Even that would be wrong if you could triple or quaduple the deficit instead without any ill effects. The reason we don't is because the whole system could collapse.

James Galbraith will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Markets In Everything: Revenge Crabs

2010-05-12T23:16:00.004-04:00

This site is absolutely hilarious. I don't endorse giving anyone crabs. I am married and have never strayed. If I came down with genital crabs I would be convinced my wife had cheated on me. What a horrible thing to do, but the humor is somewhat delicious on the FAQ page. What a riot.

Revenge Crabs

Also on the web this week is the Yo-Yo Champ that did a tour of Wisconsin television. I don't know if the guy is disturbed of if he is a comic genius...

Fake Yo-Yo Trickster fools TV stations everywhere

If you click that link you have to suffer through all the videos. It is hard to watch, but that guy bombs on every show and gets progressively worse. Made me laugh and cringe at the same time.

Back to the revenge crabs. I laughed my ass off and that is evil. Think of the dinner parties you go to or other social occasions. You pause and go to the bathroom and take out a vial and infect the bed of the hosts (which presumably you don't like) with these genital crabs. When they start itching they both with be blaming the other mate. You could disrupt a marriage. It is pure evil.

Lucky for me I don't go to parties with people I don't like. And even the people I don't like I wouldn't wish crabs on them. If that is a serious business (which it appears to be), that is really something. I can only imagine the real life drama.

Markets in Everthing! Even genital crabs.

Greek Tragedy

2010-05-11T09:19:00.002-04:00

Paul Krugman

The bad news is that Greece’s problems are deeper than Europe’s leaders are willing to acknowledge, even now — and they’re shared, to a lesser degree, by other European countries. Many observers now expect the Greek tragedy to end in default; I’m increasingly convinced that they’re too optimistic, that default will be accompanied or followed by departure from the euro.

I remember when people talked up the Euro against the dollar and the moneyman at Berkshire was betting on the Euro. Hope he got he money out.

I expect the Greek tragedy to end in default. At some point you simply rack up too much debt. Here in America, I fully expect us to just print money to pay off our bills. For Greece that is not an option.

Robert Samuelson

What we're seeing in Greece is the death spiral of the welfare state. This isn't Greece's problem alone, and that's why its crisis has rattled global stock markets and threatens economic recovery. Virtually every advanced nation, including the United States, faces the same prospect. Aging populations have been promised huge health and retirement benefits, which countries haven't fully covered with taxes. The reckoning has arrived in Greece, but it awaits most wealthy societies.

Coming to a theater near you!

Samuelson's closer:

If only a few countries faced these problems, the solution would be easy. Unlucky countries would trim budgets and resume growth by exporting to healthier nations. But developed countries represent about half the world economy; most have overcommitted welfare states. They might defuse the dangers by gradually trimming future benefits in a way that reassured financial markets. In practice, they haven't done that; indeed, President Obama's health program expands benefits. What happens if all these countries are thrust into Greece's situation? One answer -- another worldwide economic collapse -- explains why dawdling is so risky.

The collapse is going to be spectacular.

I have often joked (darkly) that it is wishful thinking when conservatives complain that our children are going to be paying off the debts that we are incurring today. I think that assumes that we can keep spending like we do and just hand it off to our children. I think the reality is that WE are going to be paying off these bills, and that the due date is going to come sooner rather than later.

Like everything else, in hindsight it will be abundantly clear for all to see. Life isn't lived in hindsight though, and it is going to be one collasal clusterfudge when we hit the wall. At this point I am convinced that neither political party has the will to cut the size of government until it is too late.

"Things that can't go on forever, don't"

20 Things You Will Need To Survive When the Economy Collapses and the Next Great Depression Begins

The New York Times on Health Care Reform:

Another reform high on the list is removing the state from the marketplace in crucial sectors like health care, transportation and energy and allowing private investment. Economists say that the liberalization of trucking routes — where a trucking license can cost up to $90,000 — and the health care industry would help bring down prices in these areas, which are among the highest in Europe.

It looks as if the New York Times doesn't support socialized medicine, at least when it comes to the Greeks. Maybe they should have told us a little about this when Obamacare was making the rounds...

The Politics of 'Anything Goes'

2010-04-27T11:51:00.003-04:00

From the Wall Street Journal's "Best Of the Web"

• "Even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us--the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of 'anything goes.' Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America--there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America--there's the United States of America."--state senator Barack Obama, Democratic National Convention, July 27, 2004

• "In the video message to his supporters, [President] Obama said his administration's success depends on the outcome of this fall's elections and warned that if Republicans regain control of Congress, they could 'undo all that we have accomplished.' 'This year, the stakes are higher than ever,' he said, according to a transcript of his remarks provided by Democratic officials. 'It will be up to each of you to make sure that young people, African Americans, Latinos and women who powered our victory in 2008 stand together once again. . . .' "--Washington Post, April 26, 2010

I think it is the Democrat's Southern Strategy.

Death of a President

2010-04-27T00:07:00.002-04:00

I saw this movie tonight for the first time. I couldn't imagine seeing it at the time it was in cinemas or was on the new release wall. I chuckled at Blockbuster when I rented it because I could only imagine what would happen if a conservative made an identical movie today.

After watching it I feel the same way. It wasn't poorly done but I think it could have been better. It was slow. I would not recommend it. It did win some awards. I doubt a movie about killing Obama would win any awards.

The director was interviewed in the bonus section of the DVD and he was so excited when they came up with the idea of killing George Bush. Imagine how a conservative would be portrayed if he acted with glee at the notion of making a realistic film showing Obama's death. No epistemic closure there.

And the movie is portrayed as even handed, but they sink all the left wing issues in. The real victim in the movie is a Muslim who is found guilty of racial profiling, just because he trained at an Al Queada terrorist camp. One quote was "Just because he went to the wrong summer camp".

And the aftermath is horrible still, because Dick Cheney becomes President and then enact "Patriot Act III" which gives the government more power for the police state.

Many liberals hate the police state. I saw thousands of them protest George W. Bush. The Patriot Act authorized people looking into library records. I never saw anyone convicted or persecuted from library records. That doesn't make it right. I don't want the government to be able to access my library records, while even in theory I am going to the government library. That is the sticky part, the government already has your library records, because the government owns the library.

But most on the left have no problem with our system of income taxation. You have to report all your sources of income to the government, which in great detail is your life...much more than your library records. You bank account has your social security number attached and is reported to the government, and credit card companies have given the government leeway with your files for quite some time.

When it comes to checking out books liberals get defensive, when it comes to making or spending money liberals think the government should play. Not all liberals, but many of them. You could be avoiding taxes! So banks are required to report suspicious transactions as well as credit card companies. And then you have the IRS, which will now make sure you have health insurance or they will fine you. Let alone the health records that government health care entails. And many liberals were complaining about library books!

I think that someday we will yearn for the day that all people worried about was library records.

The government tracks all political activity. If you donate to a candidate, campaign finance laws dictate that we must have a record. As Prop 8 in California has taught us, that can lead to consequences. Eightmaps.com told everyone your address if you gave money and people lost their jobs.

Think of a society where the government has a monopoly on education. We have that right now. The government is in charge of teaching everyone what is right. Think of a society where all your political activity is actively monitored by the government. We have that right now. Think of a society where all the money you make must be reported and the source of that income must be reported as well. We have that right now. You even have to report you retirement accounts, and they have floated taxing and taking those too. They want to know what you have and once they know they can angle on getting some of that.

Liberals were pissed about library records from a library already owned by the government. It is funny. Truth be told, I am pissed about library records. I don't want the government to look at those records. But if you look at what we already have to give them it is minuscule. I want liberals that were pissed about library records to join with me and demand independence for other freedoms. Freedoms in education, income and political activity. Why shouldn't we be free to do those things?

If you agree with me you may be an extremist. Welcome to the lunatic frindge. I just had several shots of rum, so excuse my blather.

The national debt and Washington's deficit of will

2010-04-26T16:16:00.002-04:00

Joel Achenbach makes some good points about the political will to take on the national debt...

The national debt and Washington's deficit of will
Washington Post
By Joel Achenbach
Sunday, April 25, 2010; B01

The national debt -- which totaled $8,370,635,856,604.98 as of a few days ago, not even counting the trillions owed by the government to Social Security and other pilfered trust funds -- is rapidly becoming a dominant political issue in Washington and across the country, and not just among the "tea party" crowd. President Obama is feeling the pressure, and on Tuesday he will open the first session of a high-level bipartisan commission that will look for ways to reduce deficits and put the country on a sustainable fiscal path.

It's a tough task. The short term looks awful, and the long term looks hideous. Under any likely scenario, the federal debt will continue to balloon in the years to come. The Congressional Budget Office expects it to reach $20 trillion over the next decade -- and that assumes no new recessions, no new wars and no new financial crises. In the doomsday scenario, foreign investors get spooked and demand higher interest rates to continue bankrolling American profligacy. As rates shoot up, the United States has to borrow more and more simply to pay the interest on its debt, and soon the economy is in a downward spiral.

Of course, at least in theory, this problem can be fixed. Unlike a real Ponzi scheme, which collapses when no new suckers offer money that can be used to pay off earlier investors, the government can restore fiscal sanity whenever our leaders decide to do so.

But that premise is what has people like Gross worried. In addition to running a budget deficit, Washington for years has had a massive deficit of political will.

Over the past decade, lawmakers have avoided the kind of unpopular decisions -- tax increases, spending cuts or some combination -- needed to keep the debt under control. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified recently that, for investors, the underlying problem with the debt isn't economic. "At some point, the markets will make a judgment about, really, not our economic capacity but our political ability, our political will, to achieve longer-term sustainability," he said.

How hard is it to cut the debt? Not hard if you have the will. Simply cut every federal outlay by the percentage that we overspend. If we spend 25% more than we take in, then cut the funding to every department by %25. Cut all federal salaries above $50k by $25 while you are at it, and get them on defined contribution benefit plans instead of open ended pensions.

When I spoke to Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, he expressed optimism that the administration can balance the primary budget -- not including interest payments -- by 2015. The longer-term deficits are his bigger worry. Asked if the political process in Washington is broken, he answered: "I think it's too soon to know whether the system's broken. The problem is not what happened last year or this year. The real issue is when we move forward in time, something has to give."

The danger is that what "gives" will be investors' confidence in the United States. Bill Gross told me that Pimco still has $150 billion in Treasuries, but that's seriously "underweight" given that the company controls $1 trillion in assets.

"It's becoming immediately apparent that some countries will not do especially well and may not escape the debt trap from the recent financial crisis, Greece and Iceland being the most prominent cases," Gross said. "But now investors are even looking at the best of the best, including the United States."

Part of me doubts we will ever have the political will to cut the size of government. Government grows under Democrats and Republicans. At some point the dollar will collapse and that will be a disaster for America. If they thought the Tea Party is an angry bunch wait until they see the pitchforks when that day comes...

Los Angeles is going to go Bankrupt

2010-04-14T23:35:00.004-04:00

Going for broke in L.A.?

Former mayor Richard Riordan has been roiling the civic waters by arguing that the surest -- and perhaps the only -- way out of Los Angeles' fiscal crisis is a declaration of municipal bankruptcy, which he believes ought to come sooner rather than later.

In a conversation with The Times over the weekend, Riordan argued that bankruptcy may be the only way to attack the structural problem gnawing the heart out of the city budget: unsustainable public employee pension costs. Currently, Riordan says, the city is struggling to meet its pension obligations, and that's assuming it will receive 8% annually on the money invested on retirees' behalf. In fact, the average return over the past decade has been just 4%. Over the next few years, L.A. may be looking at $1.5 billion in pension obligations it can't meet. "We need some adults to come alive in the city and to talk through how to meet that liability," he said. "If that doesn't happen, we shouldn't rule out bankruptcy."

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's chief of staff, Jeff Carr, says categorically that "this mayor has made it clear that we are not going to declare bankruptcy." Moreover, while federal law lets bankruptcy judges reduce negotiated pension and health benefits in the private sector, it forbids changes in public employees' agreements.

Interesting federal law that forbids changes in public employees' agreements.

At one time I could never imagine a city like LA going bankrupt. LA is the second biggest city in the USA.

California is in trouble. The whole state is going to go bankrupt. Welcome to the progressive version of the future. They are hiking energy rates across the state because they mandated "green" renewable energy. The refuse to drill off their coasts and harvest the oil that lays patiently for them. It is amazing.

The State of California will be bankrupt at some point. The cities in California are about to go bankrupt, some sooner, some later. And on a nationwide level, Uncle Sam might reach the same fate. Our whole country is bankrupt. At least we have Obamacare and green energy.

The California city of Vallerjo went bankrupt in 2008. The details are both delicious and nutricious.

Vallejo's Painful Lessons in Municipal Bankruptcy
Two years after going broke, the California city still

Vallejo is a Bay Area community of 121,000 that two years ago became the state's largest city to declare bankruptcy. Like other municipalities, its public-sector unions had driven its budget deep into the red. A report issued by the Cato Institute last September noted that 74% of the city's general budget was eaten up by police and firefighter salaries and overtime along with pension obligations. The average city in the state spends 60% of its budget on those things.

The study also found that lavish pay and benefit packages were a root cause of the city's problems. In Vallejo compensation packages for police captains top $300,000 a year and average $171,000 a year for firefighters. Regular public employees in the city can retire at age 55 with 81% of their final year's pay guaranteed. Police and fire officials can retire at age 50 with a pension that pays them 90% of their final year's salary every year for life and the lives of their spouses.

Over the past five years, Vallejo has slashed spending where it could, mostly by cutting personnel and services. As a recent San Francisco Chronicle editorial pointed out, the city cut its police force to about 100 officers from nearly 160 and warned residents to use the 911 system judiciously, even while it experienced crime rates higher than other comparable cities in California. The city has also cut funding for a senior center, youth groups, and arts organizations and has done little to restore an increasingly decrepit downtown, develop waterfront properties, or attract new businesses.

Imagine the Police Chief that retires at 50 and makes $300,000. He gets $270,000 (90%) a year every year (not including health benefits) for the rest of both his life and the life of his spouse. The odds of them living into their 80's isn't off the hook. You could have 35 more years to pay that sum easy. That would amount to be about 10 million dollars not even counting the health benefits. It is staggering.

Consider the hypothetical case: Let's say I worked hard when I was in the police corps and I rose to the top job. It took me 25 years. I graduated at 22, applied and went into the academy at 23, and after 25 years in service I am now 47. In three years I am going to retire making $270,000 a year. I do this so my best friend and loyal confidant who is vice Chief can retire next year. It isn't like we are paying 1 guy $270k a year, as soon as these guys get the creds the pressure is on for them to retire so their friends can move up. Who wants to work past 50 if you don't have to?

I wonder how many people just from this small city get pensions of over $100k a year. I have seen some data from San Diego's firefighters in the past and it is something.

I have never made $270,000 in a year. I am still holding out hope that I can accomplish this feat in my dreams. But imagine a public servant making that every year in retirement. I am jealous. I would love that life. Not only that life, but the life of the poor schmucks that only make $100,000 every year in retirement with full government health benefits to boot.

But the catch is, they are all going to go bankrupt. Los Angeles is going to go bankrupt. San Diego is going to go bankrupt. California is going to go bankrupt. Unless the feds step in, I can't see any way around it, and I find it hard to see the feds stepping in, because I will clue you in on a little secret, they don't really have any money either.

--------------------
Update: 1 in 3 San Francisco employees earned $100,000

More than 1 in 3 of San Francisco's nearly 27,000 city workers earned $100,000 or more last year - a number that has been growing steadily for the past decade.

The number of city workers paid at least $100,000 in base salary totaled 6,449 last year. When such extras as overtime are included, the number jumped to 9,487 workers, nearly eight times the number from a decade ago. And that calculation doesn't include the cost of often-generous city benefits such as health care and pensions.

LA is going bankrupt. California is going bankrupt. The progressive vision of our future is going bankrupt.

Bin Laden: Dead Again

2010-01-22T10:36:00.003-05:00

Dead or Alive?
Thursday, January 21, 2010
By Charles Ferndale

On 10th Jan 10, BBC 2 aired a program dealing with the question of whether or not Osama bin Laden is dead or alive. During an hour long program many views were aired, all of which failed to answer the question conclusively. This should surprise no one, because, as in any murder investigation, the only conclusive proof that someone is dead is the discovery of the person’s body. If Osama bin Laden is dead, it is most unlikely that his body will ever be found and, until it is, we can only argue on the basis of probabilities. And the balance of probabilities strongly favours the hypothesis that he is dead and has been dead for a very long time, probably since December 2001

I shall not discuss here all the arguments for and against his probable death. These are discussed lucidly and with cautious honesty by David Ray Griffin in his book Osama bin Laden--Dead or Alive?

I shall concern myself here with only one argument which, so far, no one seems to have considered.

US intelligence officials base the claim that Bin Laden was at the caves of Tora Bora in December 2001 on intercepted mobile phone conversations emanating from that region. Ever since the bombing of the Tora Bora caves, Osama bin Laden’s voice has never again been heard from a source that can be trusted. According to Robert Bauer, an ex-member of the CIA, at least half of the US intelligence community concerned with this issue believe Osama was killed during the bombing at Tora Bora. I suspect the percentage is higher. My argument is simple: if he was in the Tora Bora complex when it was bombed in December 2001, then he certainly died during that bombing, because nothing living could have survived it.

I still believe that he died at Tora Bora. Other AQ heavyweights put out videos that are authentic and digital and clear. If Osama was alive he would be taunting us all the time. He had quite an ego, and he would use it.

David Ray Griffin was quoted and linked in this quote. David Ray Griffin thinks that the United States Government knows Bin Laden is dead and that the Bush Administration was behind the fake tapes. That is not the belief held by this blogger. I was not a huge fan of Bush (though Obama has made me actually miss him). George Bush was a big spender but in the end I believe a fine and decent man.

I think we should dress the Gitmo prisoners up in Pashtun garb and drop them from a plane on a fabricated Afghan villiage on the Paki-Afghan border. Then we should fake some Bin Laden DNA and say that we discovered the village that he was hiding in and killed him and all of his terrorist pals. Obama can take some victory laps and we can all go home from Afghanistan.

More:

BBC: Is Osama Bin Laden dead or alive?

Bruce Riedel, who chaired President Barack Obama's Afghanistan/Pakistan policy review, and who has seen the intelligence on Bin Laden, says the trail has not so much gone cold as "frozen over".

"We don't have a clue where he is," he says.

...

One former CIA agent also questions its authenticity. Robert Baer dismisses the suggestion of a conspiracy by Western intelligence but thinks that al-Qaeda may have faked the video.

"[al-Qaeda has] an interest in manipulating it to look like current tapes," he says. "You can digitally manipulate voice to say anything. You can change months, years, you can tape vowels and syllables and put it into a recording and change it."

Do the Fake Bin Laden Videos Prove he is Dead?

my vote goes to Bin Laden being dead. The photos before 9/11 showed a very sickly person and it is not likely that he could have jumped around the mountains carrying a dialysis machine evading the most sophisticated intelligence and technology for nearly a decade.

ABC News: Hunt for Osama Over? Obama Steers Clear of Bin Laden References

Some conspiracy theorists have said the U.S. government created the most recent bin Laden tapes. Others have dismissed his tapes as fake, but no one has been able to say with certainty if the world's most-wanted terrorist is still alive.

Banks Bundled Bad Debt, Bet Against It and Won

2009-12-24T11:49:00.002-05:00

Banks Bundled Bad Debt, Bet Against It and Won

By GRETCHEN MORGENSON and LOUISE STORY
Published: December 23, 2009

Goldman and other firms eventually used the C.D.O.’s to place unusually large negative bets that were not mainly for hedging purposes, and investors and industry experts say that put the firms at odds with their own clients’ interests.

“The simultaneous selling of securities to customers and shorting them because they believed they were going to default is the most cynical use of credit information that I have ever seen,” said Sylvain R. Raynes, an expert in structured finance at R & R Consulting in New York. “When you buy protection against an event that you have a hand in causing, you are buying fire insurance on someone else’s house and then committing arson.”

I don't know why people would do business with Goldman Sachs. I don't know why the taxpayer bailed them out via AIG either.

Hadley Hacked "In the interest of Science"!!!!!!!!

2009-11-20T12:32:00.003-05:00

Hadley hacked: warmist conspiracy exposed?

Andrew Bolt is on the case:

Hackers have broken into the data base of the Hadley GRU unit - one of the world’s leading alarmist centres - and put the files they stole on the Internet, on the grounds that the science is too important to be kept under wraps.

Indeed!!!!!!!

So the 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of the most prominent scientists pushing the man-made warming theory - a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science. I’ve been adding some of the most astonishing in updates below - emails suggesting conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more. If it is as it now seems, never again will “peer review” be used to shout down sceptics.

This is clearly not the work of some hacker, but of an insider who’s now blown the whistle.

F-ing Bombshell!!!!!!!!!!

BAM!

Some good links can be found here:

environmentalists exposed as liars

Planet Gore: The Blue-Dress Moment May Have Arrived

If legit, this apparently devastating series of revelations will be very hard for the media to ignore. I didn't say impossible — they're fully vested partners in the global warming industry, because catastrophism sells. But so does scandal, and this appears to be the makings of a very big one. Imagine this sort of news coming in the field of AIDS research. Then reflect that the taxpayer spends more on climate-related research than on the entire suite of AIDS programs, far beyond drug research.

This is a scandal that will rock the scientific world. Watch out baby, bombs below!

I celebrate the hackers! I drink in their honor!

HUGE!!

.

Health Care Numbers

2009-11-19T10:04:00.003-05:00

Obama has said that we have 30 million uninsured in this country.

"There are now more than thirty million American citizens who cannot get coverage."

"These are the facts. Nobody disputes them."

That was in his September address to Congress. Those "were the facts", and "nobody disputes them". Nobody accept Obama in August:

“I don't have to explain to you that nearly 46 million Americans don't have health insurance coverage today,” Obama said in his remarks at the beginning of the town hall meeting. “In the wealthiest nation on Earth, 46 million of our ,fellow citizens have no coverage. They are just vulnerable.”

Nice to have all the facts! Especially when they seem to change from speech to speech.

The population of the United States is 308 million.

From Obama's speech:

"In just a two year period, one in every three Americans goes without health care coverage at some point."

Given our population, that would be close to 103,000,000 that go without health care coverage at some point over two years. That is a large number. I would like to see the statistics behind it.

From the Washington Post:

"Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid presented an $848 billion health-care overhaul package on Wednesday that would extend coverage to 31 million Americans and reform insurance."

I am struck by the fact that out of the 30 million uninsured, Harry Reid will insure 31 million of them. His bill would cover 103% of the uninsured. Now that is what I call effective government.

"The bill would cover an additional 31 million people over the next decade. That would boost the percentage of nonelderly Americans with medical insurance from 83% to 94% over the next decade -- slightly less than the 96% who would be covered by the House bill."

It is obvious that Harry Reid isn't using the 30 million uninsured number that Obama rolled out before Congress and the American people. He is using the old 46 million uninsured number. Why do these people keep switching around the numbers?

Here is the source of the 46 million uninsured number:

In fact, the latest available government statistics on the number of uninsured in America comes from the Census Bureau’s “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007,” which is published every August. (The Census Bureau report that will estimate the number of uninsured in 2008 will be released later this month.)

The current report says that there were 35.920 million uninsured U.S. citizens and 9.737 million uninsured foreign nationals in the United States.

Table 6 on page 22 of the report says that in 2007 there were a total of 45.657 million uninsured people residing in the United States. The table provides a breakout on the demographics of these 45.657 uninsured, indicating that it includes 33.269 million native born citizens and 2.651 million naturalized citizens, for a total of 35.920 U.S. citizens who are uninsured.

The report also states there were also 9.737 million persons in the United States in 2007 who were “not a citizen” and who did not have health insurance.

The Senate plan by Harry Reid is going to cost 848 billion. And by their own admission, it is also going to leave 16 to 17 million people still uninsured.

From the LA Times:

"The bill would cover an additional 31 million people over the next decade. That would boost the percentage of nonelderly Americans with medical insurance from 83% to 94% over the next decade -- slightly less than the 96% who would be covered by the House bill."

If the 11% increase represents 31,000,000 people, the 6% left off represent almost 17,000,000 people by my math. Of course, that would leave us with 48 million uninsured, which is a new high. So maybe those pecentages have some rounding errors. Maybe the numbers are just fudged anyway.

I think all the numbers are bogus, but they do matter because they are used to push the government takeover.

Here is a breakdown of the uninsured by Keith Hennessey:

Also from Hennessey:

Let us walk through the graph from top to bottom.

There were 45.7 million uninsured people in the U.S. in 2007.

Of that amount, 6.4 million are the Medicaid undercount. These are people who are on one of two government health insurance programs, Medicaid or S-CHIP, but mistakenly (intentionally or not) tell the Census taker that they are uninsured. There is disagreement about the size of the Medicaid undercount. This figure is based on a 2005 analysis from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Another 4.3 million are eligible for free or heavily subsidized government health insurance (again, either Medcaid or SCHIP), but have not yet signed up. While these people are not pre-enrolled in a health insurance program and are therefore counted as uninsured, if they were to go to an emergency room (or a free clinic), they would be automatically enrolled in that program by the provider after receiving medical care. There’s an interesting philosophical question that I will skip about whether they are, in fact, uninsured, if technically they are protected from risk.

Another 9.3 million are non-citizens. I cannot break that down into documented vs. undocumented citizens.

Another 10.1 million do not fit into any of the above categories, and they have incomes more than 3X the poverty level. For a single person that means their income exceeded $30,600 in 2007, when the median income for a single male was $33,200 and for a female, $21,000. For a family of four, if your income was more than 3X the poverty level in 2007, you had $62,000 of income or more, and you were above the national median.

Of the remaining 15.6 million uninsured, 5 million are adults between ages 18 and 34 and without kids.

The remaining 10.6 million do not fit into any of the above categories, so they are:

U.S. citizens;

with income below 300% of poverty;

not on or eligible for a taxpayer-subsidized health insurance program;

and not a childless adult between age 18 and 34.

Look at the breakdown above. Ask yourself the question, who will the 16-17 million uninsured be after this bill? And who does the bill actually insure?

You have 10.7 million who are already covered. Some are the Medicare undercount who don't realize that Medicare/Medicade already covers them. Some are people that are eligible but haven't signed up for the programs. It is easy to take credit for insuring these people, they already have the saftey net.

You have 10.1 million people that already live above 300% of the poverty line. Those people can afford to buy insurance and they will be forced to buy it under the new plan.

So in two easy steps it is easy to get to 20.8 million people. Surely all of those people will be "covered" in the new plan. They are the low hanging fruit.

Think about that. That is over 2/3rds of Harry Reid's 31 million people. He is going to insure 10.7 people that already have insurance. The cost to insure the already insured should be zero. Then he will mandate and force 10.1 million people that can afford it to buy insurance. The cost to force other people to buy insurance should be zero. That means he is only going to really pay to insure 10 million people, and he will be paying 848 billion dollars to do it. That comes in at $85,000 per head.

Is that what it comes down too? We are going to force 10.1 million people to buy overpriced insurance they don't want to buy. We are going to pay dearly to cover another 10 million people, while still leaving 16 million people uninsured. It seems like a really bad plan that won't really satisfy anyone. But at least it will cost a lot of money.

Terrorists on Trial

2009-11-17T00:39:00.002-05:00

I can't help but thinking that the liberals in power want a conservative federal Judge to preside over the terrorist hearings. The last thing they want is a liberal activist judge. Think about that.

They don't want one of their own kind that they like to appoint because of the damage that could be done.

Liberals want KSM to hang as much as we do, they just want it done in the nice and neat US Justice System. If they get an activist Judge that they appointed, he could throw out the whole of the evidence based upon tourture.

The last thing they want is these guys to walk. It would be a disaster for America.

Thinking through that vein, it could be a constitutional crisis. Imagine if they threw out the case against KSM. Many people would not be able to accept KSM, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks going free. They would take action. It could be bloody. The liberals seem to think the death penalty or life in jail is a lock. I don't share their optimism. Anything can happen in our legal system, and I don't like taking things to chance.

They say they roll judges, but I doubt they will roll this one at random. I bet 10-1 that a conservative judge gets this case because that is what we all need. This should not be a trial on torture or the Bush White House. It needs to be a trail of terrorists that killed thousands of people.

If done poorly, this could be the dry powder keg that could explode. You simply can't let these people go for any reason.

Afghanistan is a Cesspool of Humanity

2009-11-12T11:00:00.002-05:00

One more reason to leave the place for good...

How the US Funds the Taliban

From Aram Rosten at The Nation:

In this grotesque carnival, the US military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. "It's a big part of their income," one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts--hundreds of millions of dollars--consists of payments to insurgents.

In order to fight the Taliban, first we need to pay the Taliban. WTF?!?!?!

I wonder where those Taliban get funding to kill Americans? Maybe from tax paying Americans? WTF!

The bizarre fact is that the practice of buying the Taliban's protection is not a secret. I asked Col. David Haight, who commands the Third Brigade of the Tenth Mountain Division, about it. After all, part of Highway 1 runs through his area of operations. What did he think about security companies paying off insurgents? "The American soldier in me is repulsed by it," he said in an interview in his office at FOB Shank in Logar Province. "But I know that it is what it is: essentially paying the enemy, saying, 'Hey, don't hassle me.' I don't like it, but it is what it is."

As a military official in Kabul explained contracting in Afghanistan overall, "We understand that across the board 10 percent to 20 percent goes to the insurgents. My intel guy would say it is closer to 10 percent. Generally it is happening in logistics."

In a statement to The Nation about Host Nation Trucking, Col. Wayne Shanks, the chief public affairs officer for the international forces in Afghanistan, said that military officials are "aware of allegations that procurement funds may find their way into the hands of insurgent groups, but we do not directly support or condone this activity, if it is occurring." He added that, despite oversight, "the relationships between contractors and their subcontractors, as well as between subcontractors and others in their operational communities, are not entirely transparent."

In any case, the main issue is not that the US military is turning a blind eye to the problem. Many officials acknowledge what is going on while also expressing a deep disquiet about the situation. The trouble is that--as with so much in Afghanistan--the United States doesn't seem to know how to fix it.

No doubt why the military invented the term "SNAFU" - "Situation Normal All F@#ked Up". I can tell you one way to fix the problem though, leave that place for the stone age.

I am quite convinced we have no idea what we are doing or why we are really even fighting. The President doesn't seem to know either. If Obama decides to bail out he has my full support. It will be tougher for him than me. He has spent the last couple of years describing Afghanistan as the "Right War". I thought it was a bad idea all along.

And if we are to stay, we should force them to legalize the drug trade and buy up all the poppy production and make it into morphine. We need to stop the black market that helps fund the Taliban. And we need to stop paying the Taliban for security services. I guess that would be a starting point.

It is madness. I wish we would leave now. Leave in 5 or 10 years I doubt it makes much difference in that cesspool of humanity. That place was meant for the stone age. Leave now and let them on their way.

Some links

2009-11-02T14:36:00.003-05:00

Some links to stuff I want to remember.

First some polls

Center Right Nation

Conservatives Maintain Edge as Top Ideological GroupCompared with 2008, more Americans “conservative” in general, and on issues.

Another poll of interest is about how Mexican nationals see the immigration issue:

Public Opinion in Mexico on U.S. Immigration: Zogby Poll Examines Attitudes

Among the findings:

A clear majority of people in Mexico, 56 percent, thought giving legal status to illegal immigrants in the United States would make it more likely that people they know would go to the United States illegally. Just 17 percent thought it would make Mexicans less likely to go illegally. The rest were unsure or thought it would make no difference.

Of Mexicans with a member of their immediate household in the United States, 65 percent said a legalization program would make people they know more likely to go to America illegally.

Two-thirds of Mexicans know someone living in the United States; one-third said an immediate member of their household was living in the United States.

Interest in going to the United States remains strong even in the current recession, with 36 percent of Mexicans (39 million people) saying they would move to the United States if they could. At present, 12 to 13 million Mexico-born people live in the United States.

A new Pew Research Center poll also found that about one-third of Mexicans would go to the United States if they could.

An overwhelming majority (69 percent) of people in Mexico thought that the primary loyalty of Mexican-Americans (Mexico- and U.S.-born) should be to Mexico. Just 20 percent said it should be to the United States. The rest were unsure.

Also, 69 percent of people in Mexico felt that the Mexican government should represent the interests of Mexican-Americans (Mexico- and U.S.-born) in the United States.

And check out this piece from the LA Times:

The Golden State isn't worth it

The smackdown of California big government is a must read.

Did the New York Times just out an undercover CIA Operative?

2009-10-28T09:44:00.004-04:00

Brother of Afghan Leader Is Said to Be on C.I.A. Payroll

KABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

If this guy is working for the CIA, why is it OK for the New York Times to put it out in the paper for all to see? I wouldn't want my name out there if I was a CIA mole in a country with a civil war. What are the odds that someone comes gunning for his life now?

More from the article:

Ahmed Wali Karzai said in an interview that he cooperated with American civilian and military officials, but did not engage in the drug trade and did not receive payments from the C.I.A.

The relationship between Mr. Karzai and the C.I.A. is wide ranging, several American officials said. He helps the C.I.A. operate a paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, that is used for raids against suspected insurgents and terrorists. On at least one occasion, the strike force has been accused of mounting an unauthorized operation against an official of the Afghan government, the officials said.

Mr. Karzai is also paid for allowing the C.I.A. and American Special Operations troops to rent a large compound outside the city — the former home of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban’s founder. The same compound is also the base of the Kandahar Strike Force. “He’s our landlord,” a senior American official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Mr. Karzai also helps the C.I.A. communicate with and sometimes meet with Afghans loyal to the Taliban. Mr. Karzai’s role as a go-between between the Americans and the Taliban is now regarded as valuable by those who support working with Mr. Karzai, as the Obama administration is placing a greater focus on encouraging Taliban leaders to change sides.

A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment for this article.

So the alleged "CIA Agent" denies it, and the CIA won't comment on it. Someone else in the Obama administration has leaked this information, and now this agent and his operations have a raised threat level. They even detail his work with the strike force, and they even pinpoint the compound and name the actual house where they are basing operations.

Is publishing this information of a undercover CIA agent and the extent of the details of the covert operation good for America? Where is the Daily Kos or the Huffington Post on this? It appears they are with the New York Times.

Also from the Wall Street Journal:

October Marks Deadliest Month for U.S. in Afghanistan

Afghanistan is a cesspool of humanity that can't even give Detroit a run for its money. I don't see what we are really trying to accomplish there anymore. What would be victory and what would it look like? The Generals want a sustained effort and increased troops that could last another decade. From a cost benefit analysis, I see lots of costs that are clear and unavoidable. From the benefit side of the analysis I see little gain and perhaps some loss. "Walking through the region is "like walking through the Old Testament." (- Dutch Commander) Afghanistan is in the stone age. It was Stone Age before we came in, and it will be in the stone age long after we leave. Time to cut bait.

Yesterday the Washington Post ran this:

U.S. official resigns over Afghan war
Foreign Service officer and former Marine captain says he no longer knows why his nation is fighting

"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department's head of personnel. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."

...

"I'm not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love," Hoh said. Although he said his time in Zabul was the "second-best job I've ever had," his dominant experience is from the Marines, where many of his closest friends still serve.

"There are plenty of dudes who need to be killed," he said of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "I was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys."

But many Afghans, he wrote in his resignation letter, are fighting the United States largely because its troops are there -- a growing military presence in villages and valleys where outsiders, including other Afghans, are not welcome and where the corrupt, U.S.-backed national government is rejected. While the Taliban is a malign presence, and Pakistan-based al-Qaeda needs to be confronted, he said, the United States is asking its troops to die in Afghanistan for what is essentially a far-off civil war.

Read the whole thing.

Looks like I got a bit off topic, but it is my blog and I am a ramblin man.

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Detroit is a Cesspool of Humanity

2009-10-26T11:27:00.007-04:00

Detroit house auction flops for urban wasteland

Life in "Progress" City

In a crowded ballroom next to a bankrupt casino, what remains of the Detroit property market was being picked over by speculators and mostly discarded.
After five hours of calling out a drumbeat of "no bid" for properties listed in an auction book as thick as a city phone directory, the energy of the county auctioneer began to flag.

"OK," he said. "We only have 300 more pages to go."

There was tired laughter from investors ready to roll the dice on a city that has become a symbol of the collapse of the U.S. auto industry, pressures on the industrial middle-class and intractable problems for the urban poor.

On the auction block in Detroit: almost 9,000 homes and lots in various states of abandonment and decay from the tidy owner-occupied to the burned-out shell claimed by squatters.

Taken together, the properties seized by tax collectors for arrears and put up for sale last week represented an area the size of New York's Central Park. Total vacant land in Detroit now occupies an area almost the size of Boston, according to a Detroit Free Press estimate.

These auctioned properties were only from one year (2006). Things have only got worse in the housing market since then and the Auto Companies just went bankrupt. I read that last year Detroit had 50,000 to 60,000 abandoned buildings. Wouldn't surprise me if that number is larger now.

Gordon Gekko at the Taxman Blog notes that it wasn't conservative administrations that turned Detroit into a cesspool of humanity. You can make that argument for every big city in decline in middle america.

That argument was made very well in the past by Steven Hayward:

Broken Cities- Liberalism’s urban legacy

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Polution In China

2009-10-26T11:14:00.002-04:00

Found the link to this at The Corner:

Amazing Pictures, Pollution in China at Chinahush.com

Be sure not to be eating anything when you view.

The Dollar's Decline

2009-10-14T14:08:00.003-04:00

Dollar loses reserve status to yen & euro

From the New York Post:

Over the last three months, banks put 63 percent of their new cash into euros and yen -- not the greenbacks -- a nearly complete reversal of the dollar's onetime dominance for reserves, according to Barclays Capital. The dollar's share of new cash in the central banks was down to 37 percent -- compared with two-thirds a decade ago.

Currently, dollars account for about 62 percent of the currency reserve at central banks -- the lowest on record, said the International Monetary Fund.

Bernanke could go down in economic history as the man who killed the greenback on the operating table.

After printing up trillions of new dollars and new bonds to stimulate the US economy, the Federal Reserve chief is now boxed into a corner battling two separate monsters that could devour the economy -- ravenous inflation on one hand, and a perilous recession on the other.

"He's in a crisis worse than the meltdown ever was," said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital. "I fear that he could be the Fed chairman who brought down the whole thing."

I wish Peter Schiff was President. He is on my list of favorite Americans. I fear that he is correct about our prospects. My biggest fear has always been the collapse of the dollar.

"Things that can't go on forever, don't" - Herbert Stein

Jack Cashill Getting Traction (Ayers-Obama Authorship)

2009-10-06T23:59:00.003-04:00

-
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Literary Fraud!

From Mark Whittington at Associated Content:

Barack Obama Alleged to Have Committed Literary Fraud
October 06, 2009 by Mark Whittington

The evidence that William Ayers is the actual author of Dreams From My Father seems to have been confirmed by Christopher Anderson, the author of a sympathetic Obama book Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage.

Ayers, in allegedly ghostwriting the Obama memoir, seems to have resorted to fiction on at least one occasion. There is mention in Dreams From My Father of a "rich green-eyed lovely" with whom Obama is alleged to have had a year-long affair while in college. The problem is, the woman likely never existed and seems to have been based upon a former lover of William Ayers.

Besides the odor of literary fraud, the most interesting thing about this is the that Cashill says it was William Ayers who had been the actual author of Dreams From My Father. During the campaign, Barack Obama downplayed his relationship with William Ayers, a former terrorist with the Weather Underground who would have been in jail for a long time had it not been for FBI bungling. Barack Obama presented his friendship with William Ayers as casual.

Obviously Barack Obama's friendship with William Ayers was much more than just casual. William Ayers was entrusted with the production of a book that launched Barack Obama as a intellectual/politician, someone who not only read books, but wrote them. William Ayers was also trusted enough to conceal his authorship of Dreams From My Father and hence the literary fraud that had been committed by Barack Obama.

I think the case is quite good that Barack Obama is a literary fraud. As time has gone on evidence mounts and more people that look at the facts come to the same conclusion.

If one thinks about it, it is stunning how little we know about the actual Barack Obama.

The Summer of Lies, 1981

Moving on, we have an interesting post on a site called Family Security Matters. The post was by Paul Hollrah. Perhaps I should have led with this: The Summer of 1981

Paul Hollrah makes an interesting point about the summer of 1981 in "Dreams From My Father". In Obama/Ayers' Dreams, Barack was hard at work in New York City. He was finding a place to live. Finding a job. He was searching out the City and exploring. I will quote liberally, as is my nature. Amazingly there is this:

Then his life took an unexpected turn. He writes, “It was in this humorless mood that my mother and sister (Maya Soetoro) found me when they came to visit during my first summer in New York,” and that, “They stayed with Sadik and me for a few nights, then moved to a condominium on Park Avenue that a friend of my mother’s had offered them while she was away.”

Obama explains, “That summer I had found a job clearing a construction site on the Upper West Side, so my mother and sister spent most of their days exploring the city on their own. When we met for dinner, they would give me a detailed report of their adventures… I would eat in silence until they were finished and then begin a long discourse on the problems of the city and the politics of the dispossessed.” He says, “I instructed my mother on the various ways that foreign donors and international development organizations like the one she was working for bred dependence in the Third World.”

It sounds as if Obama was an absolute joy to be around. The “dog-eat-dog” environment of the streets of New York must have been a welcome departure from their evenings with Obama.

But wait a minute. How can this be?

Although Obama fails to mention it in either of his memoirs… not in Dreams from My Father and not in The Audacity of Hope… he traveled to Indonesia and Pakistan during the summer of 1981. In an April 6, 2008 speech in San Francisco… the same speech in which he referred to rural Pennsylvanians as “bitter” people who “cling to guns or religion…” he explained, offhand, the value of his trip to Pakistan, vis-à-vis his knowledge of foreign affairs. He said, “I knew what Sunni and Shia was (sic) before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”

When questioned about that trip, Obama’s campaign press secretary, Bill Burton, confirmed to the New York Times, and others, that Obama had visited his mother and his sister in Indonesia during the summer of 1981 and that, after leaving Indonesia, he’d spent three weeks in Pakistan, traveling with a Pakistani friend from Occidental College, Wahid Hamid. According to Burton, Obama stayed in Karachi with the family of another Pakistani friend, Mohammed Hasan Chandoo. Obama has never mentioned the Pakistan trip again.

So the question arises, which version are we to believe: the version contained in his memoir, Dreams from My Father, or the version his press secretary provided following his April 2008 speech in San Francisco? In other words, if Obama arrived in New York, say, during the first week of June, had housing problems, explored Manhattan like a “lab rat,” lived for a time with a friend, spent time with his mother and sister during their stay in New York, and worked as a laborer on a construction site on the Upper West Side, how did he find the time or the money to embark on an around-the-world trip to Indonesia and Pakistan by the middle of July?

I would say that is pretty damning stuff. In his book he is finding a place to live, getting a job and getting his life organized in New York City. He had problems finding a place, then he got kicked out of a place and someone ran away with his deposit. He finally settled in and explored the city. Then he got a job and was paying the bills. Then his mom and sister show up. That is a lot going on.

He never mentioned he went to Indonesia and Pakistan in his own autobiography. It can be confirmed that he went there to visit his mother and his sister. How likely is it in the same summer his mother and his sister came to New York City to visit him? Please!

And what about the way the passages are written? Read this again:

“I instructed my mother on the various ways that foreign donors and international development organizations like the one she was working for bred dependence in the Third World.”

Who do you think wrote that sentence? Is that a 20 something year old kid remembering conversations with his mother, or is that Bill Ayers? Sanity please rule the day. As far as I can tell, his mom wasn't even anywhere near New York City.

Kudos to Paul Hollrah. It is hard to look at his autobiography as anything more than a lie. It really is amazing how little we know about this man who is our President.

Ayers Admits or Mocks?

Blogger Anne Leary at Backyard Conservative met up with Bill Ayers at the Washington airport. She took this picture:

She went on to write this:

There I was, sitting in Reagan National Monday morning, sipping a Starbucks by the United counter before going through security. I had a little time, so I was browsing through the news. Some military guys had borrowed a chair from my table. I looked up from time to time to enjoy the sun streaming through. That's when I saw Bill Ayers, an instant blight. Scruffy, thinning beard, dippy earring, and the wirerims, heading to order. I gathered my things, got my camera ready, and snapped a shot right when he got his coffee.

I asked--what are you doing in D.C. Mr. Ayers?

For a moment I thought he might be on my flight back to Chicago. Charming. Initially I guess he thought I was laying claim to his coffee or something. He gave me an uneasy cheesy smile when he realized I was taking his picture. I asked him if he was speaking at GW? (Only I said GFW, guess I had the VFW on my mind) He said oh you mean GW, he said no...was trying to decide if I was a fan, then said he was giving a lecture in Arlington to a Renaissance group on education--that's what I do, education--you shouldn't believe everything you hear about me, you know nothing about me. I said, I know plenty--I'm from Chicago, a conservative blogger, and I'll post this. (Oh, yeah, Bill Ayers, quite the Renaissance man, nail-bomber extraordinaire. Gee, I see another friend of Barack, U.S. Sec. of Education Arne Duncan was there too. "The conference theme is “A Time for Reflection, Celebration and Rebirth.” How touching. At best, useless, at worst, so wrong.)

Then, unprompted he said--I wrote Dreams From My Father. I said, oh, so you admit it. He said--Michelle asked me to. I looked at him. He seemed eager. He's about my height, short. He went on to say--and if you can prove it, we can split the royalties. So I said, stop pulling my leg. Horrible thought. But he came again--I really wrote it, the wording was similar. I said I believe you probably heavily edited it. He said--I wrote it. I said--why would I believe you, you're a liar.

He had no answer to that. Just looked at me. Then he turned and walked off, and said again his bit about my proving it and splitting the proceeds.

I stole all of this from her blog. It was also written up in the Chicago Daily Observer. I couldn't parse it well without stealing, even though Jim Simpson of Renew America did a fine job in this post:

Ayers admits writing 'Dreams' to conservative blogger

If I take a step back and try to put on the objective hat, it is easy to say that Bill Ayers was joking. That is what he could easily claim if push comes to shove. It would be believable that he could say such things in mocking jest. I am a fan of sarcasm myself.

I don't know Anne Leary. If we accept her story of how this came out it does seem interesting. She didn't ask him about it. That is what struck me. He wanted to throw that out there. And he insisted on going back and reiterating the point to throw it out there again. From a critical standpoint, it does seem from reading her post that she might border on Ayers obsession. I doubt I would be able to spot him in an airport. That doesn't disqualify her account, but it does pose some questions.

Obviously at this point Cashill's theory is out there in some quarters, but it isn't a national story. Part of me tends to think that Bill Ayers would like that story. And if he did write or heavily edit the book, part of him probably would like to see that story. I am biased and have my own notions of what is going on, so maybe I am a bad judge. I found the tidbit interesting though, enough to pass it on to my massive following.

I think the "Summer of 1981" post adds a serious dimension to this just as a factual matter. Both of the stories didn't happen. One did. Either Barack way lying on the campaign trail or he was lying in his book.

The Whittington article just shows that other people are looking at the facts and coming to some of the same conclusions.

Don't know exactly what to make of blogger Anne who took him on in the DC airport, but I am a junkie and that had to be displayed.

So here are some other links on the topic. Most cover the exact same ground, but I link them so I can go back and read the comments. Sometimes some good stuff comes out in the comments. We have a world of diverse knowledge and talents, and you never know where the next angle will break. I believe that Ayers played a huge part in editing Dreams, and he probably did write it. The evidence looks better today than it did a year ago when it first came up. It will probably look much better a year from now. By the time the Democrats will actually have to acknowledge it, they will probably say "What? That old story? Ghostwriters are commonly used throughout history. What is the big deal? Shouldn't we focus on the real problems that affect us all, like healthcare, global warming or any other topic of the day?"

Jack Cashill is a stud for calling this early.

I would like to thank a lot of people I don't know for this post. I cited everything I could find. I would also like to thank my alcohol problem. In my life I have had trials and tribulations. Friends come and go, situations and circumstances can change, sometimes turning on a dime. The only constant that has stayed with me is my alcohol problem. I know at least that she will never leave.

What was my original point again? Oh yeah, the other links to this fiasco. So here they are:

Marathon Pundit: Backyard Conservative's encounter with Ayers--and his claim he wrote "Dreams," catches fire

According to Anderson, Michelle Obama suggested that the then little-known Barack approach Ayers for assistance in writing the book. And last week, while a guest on Cashill's show, the author said two people witnessed the future 44th president handing notes and tapes over to Ayers during the time Obama was said to have been writing the book.

I have a good memory, and I remember then-Sen. Obama saying this to the Chicago Tribune:

I would feel very uncomfortable putting my name to something that was written by somebody else or co-written or dictated. If my name is on it, it belongs to me.

Someone is lying. And it's certainly not Anne Leary.

You wonder what the political fallout would be if it could be proved without a doubt. I think there will always be plausible deniability. Wink wink, nudge nudge... Of course I have already swallowed the bait.

Tymon Smith from South Africas TimesLive:

Dreams from Obama's ghostwriter
Critics say he did not write his 1995 memoir alone

Steve Sailer: Ayers tells blogger in Starbucks he wrote "Dreams from My Father"

Ace of Spades: Claim: Conservative Blogger Says Bill Ayers Admits, Unprompted, He Wrote Dreams From My Father

Dennis Byrne from Chicago Now: Bill Ayers claims he wrote Obama's "Dreams From My Father"

Hot Air and AllahPundit: Bill Ayers to righty blogger: Of course I wrote “Dreams from My Father”

Rachel Slajda of TPM Livewire: Bill Ayers: Sure, I Wrote Obama's Book. Now How 'Bout Those Royalties?

World Net Daily: Palin co-author probed, Obama's ignored
News outlets silent about fresh evidence terrorist Ayers wrote 'Dreams'

American Thinker: Media Malpractice: Ayers' Dreams authorship suppressed

Maybe his significance to Martin Luther King, Jr. is plagerism.

Here and Here.

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Related Posts:

More of Ayers, Obama and Jack Cashill

Dreams From My Ghost Writer?

Cincinnati Football: Best In Ohio

2009-10-05T11:40:00.003-04:00

The Cincinnati Bengals just beat the Cleveland Browns in the "Battle of Ohio. They are 3-1 and sit atop the division.

The Cincinnati Bearcats remained undefeated by thrashing Miami. They leapfrogged "The" Ohio State University in the polls, moving up to #8 in the nation:

The best college football team in Ohio, according to the voters in the Associated Press media poll, is the University of Cincinnati.

UC (5-0) moved ahead of mighty Ohio State on Sunday, jumping from No. 10 to No. 8. The Buckeyes remained at No.9.

It’s the first time since Nov. 21, 1951 that UC has been ranked ahead of Ohio State

And on the high school level, Cincinnati continues to dominate the state, with five of the last seven State Champions hailing from the Queen City.

As of right now Cincinnati feels like a football town. Nothing last forever, and this feeling could be short lived. But it is worth a little strut. From the high schools on Friday Night, to the College field on Saturday, to the pro ranks on Sunday right now WE OWN THE ENTIRE WEEKEND!

Take that Cleve Land and Columbus. You got nothing on us. Bunch of Sallys if you ask me. The Nati is where it is at.

And while I am running some smack up the flag pole, I wanted to add something about tOSU. They way they insist on saying "The Ohio State University" instead of Ohio State University is just gay. Nobody is impressed by that.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled programing.

Tough History is Coming

2009-10-02T01:02:00.003-04:00

From Tyler Durden at Zerohedge:

Visualizing The Upcoming Treasury Funding Crisis

Summary: foreign purchasers are congregating exclusively around the front end of the Treasury curve, meaning that the primary net purchaser of dated bonds has been the Federal Reserve. As everyone knows by now, the Fed only has $10 billion left out of the $300 billion total allotted for Treasury QE. That should expire next week. The question then becomes will we see another major steepening leg in the UST curve as yields on long-dated paper finally catch up to the real supply-demand curve absent the Fed's manipulation of the equilibrium point. Or will we see an outright funding crisis as foreigners pull out entirely of all treasury purchases, not just Long-term USTs.

The time of unravelling may be upon us sooner than most think.

Translation: Other countries don't want to buy our crap. They don't want to buy American bonds and invest in America anymore. They think it is a losing proposition. When they do buy, they buy short term on the front end, the don't want anything to do with long term.

In fact, The Fed is the one buying up all the bonds. And if you are like me, you probably figured the Fed was the one selling the bonds! It doesn't matter. The Fed, the Treasury, it is all one government (OUR GOVERNMENT!) and one currency, and when the shit hits the fan nobody will care. We are financing our debt by having the Treasury selling bonds to the Fed. Next they will tell you to finance your new car by having your left hand promise to pay your right hand.

That was a stupid analogy. But so what. If you read this you should realize that we are alone in a dark corner of the web. I mean you no harm, but tough history is coming.

But just as The Incredible Ginzu: But Wait! There is MORE!

From Doug Ross:

Analysts: Government borrowing will lead to 'Armageddon', 'Collapse of our Capitalistic System', '$5000 per ounce' gold

Financial gurus Henry Blodget, Marc Faber, Peter Schiff and Julian Robertson represent a wide spectrum of political opinion but are unified in their assessment of Democrat spending policies. Unprecedented government borrowing -- in a climate hostile to small business -- is hastening the "collapse" of capitalism.

Henry Blodget: "...the economy is being sustained by one huge borrower that is taking on debt faster than it has anytime since World War 2: The government. Government spending and government lending is REPLACING private spending and lending. And if it wasn't, the economy would have collapsed... The government can't keep borrowing like this forever, though, or we'll become Argentina. So the hope is that consumers and businesses will start borrowing BEFORE the government has to get itself under control. The history of financial crises suggests that this transition is unlikely to be smooth."

Don't Cry For Me Argentina! Tough History Is Coming. WOO HOO!

Marc Faber: "The future will be a total disaster, with a collapse of our capitalistic system as we know it today, wars, massive government debt defaults and the impoverishment of large segments of Western society."

Hard to improve on that! Tough History is Coming. Dance a jig!

Senate candidate Peter Schiff: "The worst is not over... the Dow will fall another 90% from current levels when measured against gold... gold [will hit] $5000 per ounce in the next couple of years..."

Peter Schiff is like a God to me. I wish he was the President. He predicted this crisis. Now Peter Schiff says that "the Dow will fall another 90% from current levels when measured against gold". I wish he was a crackpot like me. From my general experience with that man, he generally knows WTF he is talking about. Given that, I would say that Tough History Is Coming.

Julian Robertson: "You're in for some real rough sledding... we are borrowing so much money that we can't possibly pay it back... unless the Chinese and Japanese buy our bonds... it's tragic that we've let ourselves be put in this position... it's almost Armageddon if the Chinese and Japanese don't buy our debt. I don't know where we could get the money. And-- maybe we-- end up printing it-- and-- taking-- a million dollar bill-- bill to the grocery... which you have to do now in Zimbabwe. But I think we've let ourselves get in-- in [a] terrible situation... we're totally dependent on the Chinese and Japanese."

The reality is that we already owe so much money. It is an incredible sum. We can't really afford to pay it back. And we are borrowing at a pace never seen before. It is laughable to think that debt will be repaid.

The World Currency and Argentina

Argentina was one of the top 10 wealthiest nations in 1900. I have seen reports that put them at 4 or 5, though I read that some time ago and can't find a link. By the end of the century in 2000 they were bankrupt. Today they are around 35-40 range. It was an astounding fall, especially for a country with great people, infrastructure, natural resources and the like. The most striking aspect is that Argentina didn't play a part in either World War. What an ideal location. You are a wealthy country and World Wars don't even mean a damn to you. But yet they went from the top to the bottom. The government took over, and it can happen here too.

One ace in our hole is that the world currency is the US Dollar. We can print as much of the world currency as we like. At some point, those stupid bastards will reject our currency. That appears to be happening now. When that happens for a substantive amount of time, we will fail to be the world currency.

The problem Argentina had is that they couldn't print dollars. That is the main asset that is keeping us afloat. Our government is running the printing press and printing dollars for anyone that wants them. Argentina tried printing Pesos or some such things, but their debt was held in dollars. Who cares about Pesos when you need dollars? The great thing about out debt is that it is in dollars. And we get to print the dollars.

At some point soon, I predict the other players will clue into this critical flaw. It really is just paper with some green and black printing on it. I don't know why they took it so seriously. It was fun while it lasted.

Tough History is Coming.

My first post on this blog was from Peggy Noonan, and I don't even care for her much. Seems like an uppity bitch ass to me, but she wrote this:

A Separate Peace
America is in trouble--and our elites are merely resigned.

That link was the first post on this blog.

That piece haunts me to this day.

Tough history is coming.

More of Ayers, Obama and Jack Cashill

2009-10-01T01:31:00.004-04:00

I have read my own blog. It seems that I am a one trick pony. Post after post about Barack Obama. I really need to mix it up. It appears that I am part of a pathetic echo chamber.

That said, I do what I do. I love my conspiracy theories. My favorite conspiracy theory is that Osama Bin Laden is dead. He really is. I would bet on that.

Another pet theory I have followed and am begining to believe is the Jack Cashill theory that Bill Ayers had a lot more input and linkage with Barack Obama than the media revealed to us.

From Ed Laskey at the American Thinker:

Obama's Work Ethic

Barack Obama won praise for Dreams From My Father, a 1995 memoir of his life that was published when he reached the grand old age of thirty-four. The provenance of the book has come into question, led by a series of American Thinker columns by Jack Cashill, who used textual analysis to ascribe its writing --or at least a good portion of it -- to Bill Ayers, Obama's neighbor, former Weatherman, Obama campaign supporter and partner in various activist groups in Chicago. This claim has been echoed in a new book by best-selling author Christian Andersen, Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage who wrote that sources close to the Obamas told him that Barack Obama turned over his notes and tapes to Bill Ayers to compose the book.

Subsequently, under questioning by Cashill on a nationally-syndicated radio program, Andersen averred that two separate sources in Hyde Park confirmed to him the story of sending the notes and tapes to Ayers.

We still have the problem that Anderson won't come forward with his sources. If they exist, and I think they might, they would not want to come forward because they would be destroyed by the media. Our press loves the choosen one, and as Joe the Plumber can attest if you "speak truth to power" it is time to come and get your whoppin. I can see why they don't speak out on the record, but if they don't you have a very thin case.

The article isn't just about Obama/Ayers, there is much more interesting stuff at the link. Just wanted to highlight one thing for my own pet project.

On a related note, this from Thomas Lifson:

Unmasking Obama

It is now abundantly clear that the image of Barack Obama sold to the American electorate was tightly edited, air-brushed, and exaggerated. He has worn a series of masks -- eloquent orator, brilliant scholar, centrist, and literary sensation. All of these masks are coming off as he copes with a job for which image will not suffice. For instance, hiding behind the eloquent orator mask is a guy who says "uhh" a lot when he is winging it, and who makes lots of factual and grammatical mistakes.

Now, thanks to Jack Cashill, the literary mask has been removed. Obama is a literary pretender. Case closed. The evidence is overwhelming that Bill Ayers ghost-wrote Dreams from my Father, the book which established Obama's pose as a brilliant writer (and therefore a fine mind, in the estimation of many). The stylistic resemblance between the Dreams and Ayers' work is stunning. Now we know, thanks to Chris Andersen's new book,that Obama hit a brick wall trying to fulfill his contract to produce a book, and shipped off his notes and tapes to Ayers. That is the classic description of a ghost writer's assignment. And it completely fits the theories Cashill had inferentially reasoned from the data of his literary studies.

The revelation that Chris Andersen had two separate sources means that this fact meets the journalistic standard of reliability, provided by a respected, established bestselling author. Obama's dismissal of Ayers as "just a guy in the neighborhood" has been shown to be an outright lie.

That will certainly be the verdict of history, regardless of whether or not the issue of Obama's ghost written book ever breaks through into the national discussion. My bet is that the media will not be able to suppress discussion. The image of Obama packing boxes full of tapes and notebooks and hauling them over to Ayers' house a couple of blocks away, is simple and compelling evidence of a ghost writer being put to work. Jack's literary detective work made the case, and Andersen's two neighborhood sources confirm it.

Thomas Lifson lays it out quite well. Again, I don't know Anderson or anything about him. If he has any credibility, these charges are damning. I have read Cashill's work and have found it compelling.

And here is Jack Cashill on his interview with Anderson:

Andersen Claims'Two Sources' for Ayers' Role in Dreams

On Monday morning, Mancow Muller arranged for me to question author Chris Andersen on The Mancow Show.

Andersen's largely benign new book, Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage, now tops the New York Times best seller list.

Andersen claims that the "hopelessly blocked" Obama turned to the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers to help him write his much acclaimed 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father.

When I asked about Andersen's sources, Andersen said that he had two separate sources "within Hyde Park" but, understandably, would not elaborate.

Andersen, who was gracious throughout, insisted that he had made no claim that Ayers wrote Dreams but he did not deny Ayers' deep involvement, conceding that Dreams is much the better book than Obama's 2006 Audacity of Hope. This, of course, has to trouble the Obama acolytes who insist that Obama is a uniquely gifted writer.

"I've read Obama's books, and they are first-rate," wrote Christopher Buckley, explaining his decision to endorse Obama in October 2008, "He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine."

Obama has maintained this fiction himself. "I've written two books," Obama told an audience of teachers in Virginia last year. "I actually wrote them myself."

Whether the mainstream media will remain silent on still another Obama scandal remains to be seen. But the journalistic standard of two sources has been met.

Again it comes down to the credibility of Anderson. I sound like a broken record with that. If this story gains any traction I would suspect that Anderson will be attacked.

Links both pro and con:

Wizbang:

Bill Ayers: Not Just Another Guy In The Neighborhood

Building the perfect beast?

Did Young Barack Have a Ghostwriter?
Did an ex-Weatherman terrorist really write 'Dreams from My Father'? Dream on.

The ‘Bill Ayers Wrote Obama’s Memoir’ Train Rolls On

Media acolytes protect their man

I'm going to spend the rest of my life apologizing to Jack Cashill, aren't I?

Marathon Pundit:

Did Bill Ayers ghostwrite Obama's "Dreams from my Father?"

Time for me to get some rest. I will edit my typos in the morning. Or not.

------------------

Related Posts:

Jack Cashill Getting Traction (Ayers-Obama Authorship)

Dreams From My Ghost Writer?

Still in Campaign mode.

2009-09-29T23:21:00.002-04:00

Richard Cohen from The Washington Post speaks:

Time to Act Like a President

By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Sooner or later it is going to occur to Barack Obama that he is the president of the United States. As of yet, though, he does not act that way, appearing promiscuously on television and granting interviews like the presidential candidate he no longer is. The election has been held, but the campaign goes on and on. The candidate has yet to become commander in chief.

It doesn't end there. He had a lot to say. Much of with I agree with. Sometimes Cohen rubs me the wrong way. Sometimes I think he is spot on. I respect him for that. He goes from asshole to kindred spirit on my meter, and sometimes his volume even goes up to 11. I liked the column and I recomend it.

More:

The trouble with Obama is that he gets into the moment and means what he says for that moment only. He meant what he said when he called Afghanistan a "war of necessity" -- and now is not necessarily so sure. He meant what he said about the public option in his health-care plan -- and then again maybe not. He would not prosecute CIA agents for getting rough with detainees -- and then again maybe he would.

Most tellingly, he gave Congress an August deadline for passage of health-care legislation -- "Now, if there are no deadlines, nothing gets done in this town . . . " -- and then let it pass. It seemed not to occur to Obama that a deadline comes with a consequence -- meet it or else.

Obama lost credibility with his deadline-that-never-was, and now he threatens to lose some more with his posturing toward Iran.

I have constantly had the feeling that the campaign was never over. It is an uneasy feeling to have an American President still on the campaign trail. At some point he has to lead. It appears obvious to me that if both Richard Cohen and I can see eye to eye on this, we are not the only ones that feel this way.

Howard Fineman of Newsweek has this article:

The Limits of Charisma
Mr. President, please stay off TV.

As much as I respect Richard Cohen every now and then, I have to bear no such respect for Howard Fineman. But even he beats the drum:

If ubiquity were the measure of a presidency, Barack Obama would already be grinning at us from Mount Rushmore. But of course it is not. Despite his many words and television appearances, our elegant and eloquent president remains more an emblem of change than an agent of it. He's a man with an endless, worthy to-do list—health care, climate change, bank reform, global capital regulation, AfPak, the Middle East, you name it—but, as yet, no boxes checked "done." This is a problem that style will not fix. Unless Obama learns to rely less on charm, rhetoric, and good intentions and more on picking his spots and winning in political combat, he's not going to be reelected, let alone enshrined in South Dakota.

The president's problem isn't that he is too visible; it's the lack of content in what he says when he keeps showing up on the tube. Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer. There is, at times, a self-referential (even self-reverential) tone in his big speeches. They are heavily salted with the words "I" and "my." (He used the former 11 times in the first few paragraphs of his address to the U.N. last week.) Obama is a historic figure, but that is the beginning, not the end, of the story.

The article is shocking coming from Fineman. I never thought I would ever quote the man. I don't hold him in high regard. I quote him to say: "For the love of God, if Fineman can see it we have really hit the wall".

And bad news for Obama comes in threes for sure. Just when you thought it was bad for our Messiah, the fucking French even pile on. Here is Nicholas Sarkozy's take on our embattled savior:

French Atomic Pique
Sarkozy unloads on Obama's 'virtual' disarmament reality.

"We are right to talk about the future," Mr. Sarkozy said, referring to the U.S. resolution on strengthening arms control treaties. "But the present comes before the future, and the present includes two major nuclear crises," i.e., Iran and North Korea. "We live in the real world, not in a virtual one." No prize for guessing into which world the Frenchman puts Mr. Obama.

"We say that we must reduce," he went on. "President Obama himself has said that he dreams of a world without nuclear weapons. Before our very eyes, two countries are doing exactly the opposite at this very moment. Since 2005, Iran has violated five Security Council Resolutions . . .

"I support America's 'extended hand.' But what have these proposals for dialogue produced for the international community? Nothing but more enriched uranium and more centrifuges. And last but not least, it has resulted in a statement by Iranian leaders calling for wiping off the map a Member of the United Nations. What are we to do? What conclusions are we to draw? At a certain moment hard facts will force us to make decisions."

We thought we'd never see the day when the President of France shows more resolve than America's Commander in Chief for confronting one of the gravest challenges to global security. But here we are.

Getting undressed and flogged by the French President? Are you fucking serious?

But of course he is not serious. Obama probably has another campaign speech scheduled for tomorrow. Takes me back to Rudi's speach at the Convention. This man has never run a damn thing but a campaign. Never had to make a payroll. Never accomplished anything in his life outside of public office.

Obama really has no clue as to how the world works. I never thought I would miss George W. Bush. The so called: "Worst. President. Ever." suddenly looks like a lot better option than people believed at the time.

May God Bless us all. We are going to need it.

Dreams From My Ghost Writer?

2009-09-25T10:20:00.008-04:00

Say it ain't so Joe, Say it ain't so!

Is Obama a literary fraud? Can of worms reopened

By Nigel Horne

As well as providing juicy titbits about the Obama marriage, a new book supports the right-wing theory that the president needed help to produce ‘Dreams From My Father’

The long-held suspicion in American right-wing circles that Barack Obama was not the sole author - not even the lead author - of his brilliantly received 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father, has been rekindled by the publication of a new book about the Obamas, Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage.

...

the book has opened a can of worms concerning the provenance of Dreams From My Father. It appears to support the theory that Obama needed considerable help to produce Dreams - labeled by Time magazine "the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician" - and yet has never owned up to using a ghost writer or even co-author.

What can of worms would be opened up? Some of them might come crawling out of this exchange in a primary debate with George Stephanopolous when asked about Ayers:

OBAMA: George, but this is an example of what I'm talking about. This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense, George.

The whole equation would change if it could be proved that Ayers did substantial work on his famous and best selling book.

Nigel Horne continues...

Forget Dreams From My Father - a more accurate title might be Thoughts From My Neighbour.

The anecdotal evidence in Andersen's book - some of it thought to have come direct from Michelle Obama, though there is no proof of that - certainly supports Cashill. Amid the juicy morsels about Michelle and Barack's sometimes miserable marriage is a passage in which Andersen reveals how in the early 1990s Obama was under real pressure from his publishers to deliver the manuscript of Dreams.

Obama had been given the chance to write the memoir not because anyone thought he would one day be President of the United States, but because, in 1990, he became the first African-American to be elected president of the Harvard Law Review.

Simon & Schuster offered an advance of $125,000, but despite taking a holiday in Bali in an effort to get going on it, the contract had to be cancelled because Obama could not deliver.

A second publisher stepped in - the Time Books division of Random House - and it was their deadline that was looming when, according to Andersen's book, Michelle, fearing a second failure, suggested that Barack should seek the help of "his friend and Hyde Park neighbour Bill Ayers".

Obama had made taped interviews with relatives about his family history, and, according to Andersen, those "oral histories, along with a partial manuscript and a truckload of notes, were given to Ayers".

Andersen quotes a neighbour in the Hyde Park area of Chicago, where Obama and Ayers lived, who said of the two, "Everyone knew they were friends and that they worked on various projects together. It was no secret. Why would it be?"

Andersen concludes by saying: "In the end, Ayers's contribution to Barack's Dreams From My Father would be significant - so much so that the book's language, oddly specific references, literary devices, and themes would bear a jarring similarity to Ayers's own writing."

I have to add that at this point nothing has been proved, and I can't vouch for Michael Anderson. Somebody else that has inside information would have to go on the record, even if it is the same person who gave Anderson his information.

Jack Cashill has been working on this theory since last year. He has been dismissed by many. Andersen's account is the first big thing to come out to back him up, but the account of Andersen is unsourced, or at least poorly sourced. The whole thing still requires somewhat of a leap of faith, but the leap isn't as long as it was before.

Ron Radosh from Pajamas Media has this:

An Old Claim Arises Once More: Did Barack Obama Write ‘Dreams From My Father’?

Andersen Book Blows Ayers' Cover on 'Dreams' by Jack Cashill

American Thinker Articles by Jack Cashill

Jack Cashill's website

Jack Cashill interview on Breitbart TV

In dissent:

The ‘Ayers Wrote Obama’s Book’ Theorist Gets a Sympathizer
By David Weigel

Media Matters for America: Hannity, Andersen advance discredited claim that Ayers helped Obama pen his autobiography

Turns out I owe Jack Cashill an apology.

And Cashill's response:

Jack Cashill responds to suggestions that he is Chris Anderson’s source

Update: Somebody actually linked to one of my posts! Like citing me is something! WOO HOO!

Did Young Barack Have a Ghostwriter?
Did an ex-Weatherman terrorist really write 'Dreams from My Father'? Dream on.

Don't know much about Crawford Kilian, and Crawford doesn't believe a word of it, but at least it is a link! One link and already I am a total link whore.

I should say something bad about Crawford to encourgage more debate, but I don't have it in me. It seems he is a bit naive from reading his article. 'Why would Ayers do that?' seem naive. I think Ayers would like to enhance his own agenda and his power base, as well as make some money. Plenty of people Ghostwrite, and they all do it for a reason. Like Bill Ayers would somehow be above that.

Also see this post

More of Ayers, Obama and Jack Cashill

Jack Cashill Getting Traction (Ayers-Obama Authorship)

Popular Mechanics interviews Dean Kamen

2009-09-23T09:58:00.002-04:00

Inventor Dean Kamen Says Healthcare Debate "Backward Looking"

Some quotes:

Kamen: Well, I mean the whole supposition that "We have a crisis in healthcare." Our healthcare system has seen some of the greatest achievements of the human intellect since we started recording history: We're developing incredible devices and implantables to improve the quantity and quality of people's lives. We're developing pharmaceuticals that alleviate the need for surgery and eliminate the volatile effects of diseases. We're making the surgeries that are necessary ever less invasive. You can get a stent through your femoral artery all the way up into your heart and fix a blockage without surgery. I'd say, if we have a crisis, it's the embarrassment of riches. Nobody wants to deal with the fact that we're no longer in a world where you can simply give everybody all the healthcare that is available.

Each side of this debate has created the boogieman and monsters, like "We don't want let this program to come into existence because that will mean rationing." Well, I hate to tell you the news but as soon as medicine started being able to do incredible things that are very expensive, we started rationing. The reason 100 years ago everyone could afford their healthcare is because healthcare was a doctor giving you some elixir and telling you you'll be fine. And if it was a cold you would be fine. And if it turns out it was consumption; it was tuberculosis; it was lung cancer—you could still sit there. He'd give you some sympathy, and you'd die. Either way, it's pretty cheap.

We now live in a world where technology has triumphed, in many ways, over death. The problem with that is that it's enormously expensive. And big pharmaceutical giants and big medical products companies have stopped working on stuff that could be extraordinary because they know they won't be reimbursed, according to the common standards. We're not only rationing today; we're rationing our future.

We didn't use to have the options that we have today in healthcare. We have incredible technology. It doesn't come free.

The whole debate is twisted. These guys want you to be afraid this is going up. We should celebrate that. These guys say, "We don't want to ration." You're rationing now. The way to ration less is to make more good technical solutions.

Popular Mechanics: So you're saying that rather than trying so much to control costs, we should be encouraging new cures?

Kamen: Every drug that's made is a gift from one generation to the next because, while it may be expensive now, it goes off patent and your kids will have it essentially for free.

Whatever the marketplace, if talented people are given resources they're going to keep driving us to having better, simpler, cheaper solutions to problems. And, by the way, if they come up with a better solution but it can't be cheaper—which, in the beginning, most things aren't—nobody says you have to buy it. If you think this new drug is too expensive, it's not a good deal, we have a crisis, buy the old one. It's a generic now. It's cheap.

That is a great way of looking at it. Every expensive patent now is a "gift from one generation to the next". The expensive drugs today are the generics of the future. Brilliant simple truth that is easy for even me to understand.

I can't quote the entire article, but he also adds some forward thinking analysis of why health care costs can come down if we continue to invest in the future. I thought the interview was an excelllent take and I appreciate reading his viewpoint.

I also found this on Marginal Revolution

The cost of the Medicare prescription drug benefit

I would remind everyone of this recent research result:

In spite of its relatively low benefit levels, the Medicare Part D benefit generate $3.5 billion of annual static deadweight loss reduction, and at least $2.8 billion of annual value from extra innovation. These two components alone cover 87% of the social cost of publicly financing the benefit.

And here's another research result:

Overall, a $1 increase in prescription drug spending is associated with a $2.06 reduction in Medicare spending.

Both papers are from very reputable sources. Left-wingers focus on the "giveaways" in this plan and conservatives focus on the cost or maybe they don't walk to talk about it at all. It's a little late to go through all the usual pro and con arguments on the policy as a whole. I'd just like to note that -- relative to its reputation -- the Medicare prescription drug benefit is one of the most underrated government programs of our time. If the goal is to cut or check Medicare spending, and I think it should be, we should do it elsewhere in the program.

It's also possible that the prescription drug benefit will do more for peoples' health (as opposed to their financial security) than will the Obama plan.

I was not a fan of Medicare expansion under Bush. It was the largest expansion of government healthcare since the sixties. If Tyler Cowen likes it though, I could be wrong. And I bet if it is using free market forces to be effective, expect the current administration to shut it down like the DC Voucher program.

ACORN Does Schools too...

2009-09-21T10:11:00.003-04:00

This is an old Sol Stern Article on ACORN from the Spring 2003 issue of City Journal.

ACORN’s Nutty Regime for Cities

Stern gives a pretty full take down of Acorn in the article. He begins with the founders and the roots of the organization. He talks about their initial intent of overwhelming the system. They shockingly even organize and unionize welfare participants.

It is no surprise that ACORN preaches a New Left–inspired gospel, since it grew out of one of the New Left’s silliest and most destructive groups, the National Welfare Rights Organization. In the mid-sixties, founder George Wiley forged an army of tens of thousands of single minority mothers, whom he sent out to disrupt welfare offices through sit-ins and demonstrations demanding an end to the “oppressive” eligibility restrictions that kept down the welfare rolls. His aim: to flood the welfare system with so many clients that it would burst, creating a crisis that, he believed, would force a radical restructuring of America’s unjust capitalist economy.

and then this:

The biggest “but” of all has been ACORN’s effort to unionize “workfare” workers—welfare recipients who, under the terms of welfare reform, must put in a certain number of hours of work at city agencies in exchange for their benefits. Though it hasn’t gotten everything it wanted, ACORN has successfully agitated for the creation of workfare grievance processes in Los Angeles and New York, and it seeks to expand rights and entitlements on all workfare jobs. All these efforts are subversive of reform: they send exactly the wrong message to welfare recipients, who aren’t really workers bargaining with their employers, after all, but recipients of charity. Encouraging them to resist and resent those who seek to help them, to file grievances against them and to feel victimized by them, undermines workfare’s purpose of teaching discipline and good work habits to people often deficient in such skills, without which it is hard to take advantage of the abundant opportunity that American society offers. There is nothing progressive about such “help.”

It really is a radical organization. He also talks about some scary stuff about Acorn schools and indoctrination going on in their name in New York City. Bertha Lewis has been in the news lately because she is running the national organization. At this point back in 93 she was running New York City...

So who did profit? ACORN. Little appreciated was the crucial detail that ACORN itself is part of the failed bureaucratic system that any successful privatization program would unsettle. For more than a decade, ACORN has used foundation grants to start up its own New York public schools, something the Board of Ed sometimes allows community-based organizations to do. With warm-sounding names like the Bread and Roses High School, ACORN’s schools are political-indoctrination centers with mediocre academic records. Their curricula abound with “social justice” themes that wouldn’t be out of place at an ACORN community organizers’ training school. Bread and Roses, for example, holds an annual “Why Unions Matter” art project to “teach students how labor unions work and what they do to support social change, economic growth and democratic principles.” The schools have even bused kids to Washington to demonstrate against “tax cuts for the rich.”

In addition to its visceral antipathy to any for-profit entity and its fear that the schools run by Edison might look better to parents than its
own schools, ACORN had another ulterior motive for opposing any privatization experiment. ACORN has political ties with teachers’ unions—and they fiercely oppose privatization and vouchers in education, because these reforms might threaten union members’ jobs. It is fitting that leading the anti-Edison campaign was Bertha Lewis, New York ACORN chief and co-chair of the Working Families Party—fast becoming the key vehicle for advancing the political agenda of several of the city’s trade unions. Though ACORN sent hundreds of cadres to demonstrate outside Edison’s headquarters, it has never uttered an unkind word about the teachers’ unions, the main culprit in New York City’s educational failure.

Every recent opinion poll of inner-city parents reveals that the poor quality of the public school system is their Number One concern and that a large majority favor a voucher program to allow their children to opt for private or parochial schools. ACORN tells organizers like Heather Appell to take the pulse of the community; considering this mandate, it’s amazing how adamant ACORN’s leaders are in excluding the options of privatization or vouchers for school improvement.

I spoke to Bertha Lewis about her approach to school improvement. Our polite conversation took a nasty turn when I proposed that ACORN families might benefit by a voucher program for kids in failing schools. She launched into a tirade. Vouchers were just “a hoax to destroy the public schools,” she charged. The voucher movement wasn’t about education, but rather about “race and class.” “This is capitalism at its worst,” she shouted. “You always do it on the backs of the poor. It’s all bullshit, and you know it. I grew up in the ghetto. These vouchers are just a life raft for a few people to get out. It’s another education urban renewal plan. It’s gentrification.”

I can only imagine why anyone would want these people taking charge of schools and indoctrinating young children.

The more people shine the light on this organization the scarier it gets.

The End Game on Health Care for Illegal Immigrants

2009-09-18T19:52:00.004-04:00

Obama: Legalize illegals to get them health care

You won't have to worry about giving health care to illegal immigrants if you make them all legal.

I am kind of shocked that he was brazen enough to lay it all out like that. I would think it would be a political bombshell.

If you currently have health care, I believe the quality of your care will go down under the Obama plan. I also believe the costs will go up. Pay more for less, not a great situation. But at least you will be able to sleep well at night knowing that you are paying for the health care of illegal immigrants. What a winning combination.

I expect a backlash on this.

Captain Ed Morrissey opines

In other words, not only should everyone pay for Americans to get health care, we should pay for health care for those who came here illegally. That’s going to be a winning argument in 2010, especially in Blue Dog districts! We’re going to bust the budget and infringe on your personal choices, and we’re going to make you pay for insurance for illegal immigrants!

If a Republican had run an ad making those charges in 2008, the media would have called it a “smear”. If comedians used it in their act, it would have been a joke about GOP paranoia. The joke, unfortunately, is on those who voted for the Blue Dogs because of their supposed conservatism, and on those who voted for Obama because of his supposed centrism.

Indeed.

Wizbang's Kim Priestap

"Has your head exploded yet? It should be obvious to everyone by now that hope and change is nothing but leftist code for bait and switch."

Sister Toldjah

If illegals are thrown into the mix by becoming “legal” that is going to put even more of an unsustainable crush on our entire medical system, making the costs skyrocket and the quality drop dramatically.

Really. Does anyone in this adminstration think about what they’re advocating before they go about trying to sell it? Or does it matter anymore, since they think they can pretty much get away with anything?

Can they get away with this? I doubt it but we will see.

The Ghost Fleet of the Recession

2009-09-16T20:05:00.002-04:00

Kind of sad and creepy:

Revealed: The ghost fleet of the recession anchored just east of Singapore

They are all out there alone. I bet they don't like the location being printed in the paper. If I was a pirate...

At night they light them all up, and from the shoreline it looks like a city on the water.

From the article:

The biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history lies at anchor east of Singapore. Never before photographed, it is bigger than the U.S. and British navies combined but has no crew, no cargo and no destination - and is why your Christmas stocking may be on the light side this year

...

It is so far off the beaten track that nobody ever really comes close, which is why these ships are here. The world's ship owners and government economists would prefer you not to see this symbol of the depths of the plague still crippling the world's economies.

So they have been quietly retired to this equatorial backwater, to be maintained only by a handful of bored sailors. The skeleton crews are left alone to fend off the ever-present threats of piracy and collisions in the congested waters as the hulls gather rust and seaweed at what should be their busiest time of year.
Local fisherman Ah Wat, 42, who for more than 20 years has made a living fishing for prawns from his home in Sungai Rengit, says: 'Before, there was nothing out there - just sea. Then the big ships just suddenly came one day, and every day there are more of them.

'Some of them stay for a few weeks and then go away. But most of them just stay. You used to look Christmas from here straight over to Indonesia and see nothing but a few passing boats. Now you can no longer see the horizon.'

Kind of depressing. I guess it costs too much money to keep them on a dock. I can only imagine how pissed the owners are that this article gets printed.

Osama Is Dead

2009-09-15T18:23:00.002-04:00

Has Osama Bin Laden been dead for seven years

A guy has a book out, and claims that the United States and the UK know about it and hide it to keep the cause for war. I don't agree with that.

I do agree that Osama is dead though.

Another article:

Sept 10 - Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has said that al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden is dead

Back in April:

Pak intelligence believes Osama is dead: Zardari
Updated at: 1508 PST, Monday, April 27, 2009

ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari said Monday that Pakistani intelligence believes Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is dead but acknowledged they had no evidence.

"The Americans tell me they don't know, and they are much more equipped than us to trace him. And our own intelligence services obviously think that he does not exist any more, that he is dead," Zardari told reporters.

"But there is no evidence, you cannot take that as a fact," he said. "We are between facts and fiction."

Zardari was responding to reports that Pakistani Taliban in the troubled Swat valley have said they would welcome bin Laden if he wants to visit the former Pakistani hill resort which is now in the hands of Taliban.

"The question is whether he is alive or dead. There is no trace of him," the president said.

Also this, which I enjoyed very much in the March issue of the American Spectator...

Osama bin Elvis
By Angelo M. Codevilla from the March 2009 issue

Seven years after Osama bin Laden's last verifiable appearance among the living, there is more evidence for Elvis's presence among us than for his. Hence there is reason to ask whether the paradigm of Osama bin Laden as terrorism's deus ex machina and of al Qaeda as the prototype of terrorism may be an artifact of our Best and Brightest's imagination, and whether investment in this paradigm has kept our national security establishment from thinking seriously about our troubles' sources. So let us take a fresh look at the fundamentals.

Dead or Alive?

Negative evidence alone compels the conclusion that Osama is long since dead. Since October 2001, when Al Jazeera's Tayseer Alouni interviewed him, no reputable person reports having seen him—not even after multiple-blind journeys through intermediaries. The audio and video tapes alleged to be Osama's never convinced impartial observers. The guy just does not look like Osama. Some videos show him with a Semitic aquiline nose, while others show him with a shorter, broader one. Next to that, differences between colors and styles of beard are small stuff.

Nor does the tapes' Osama sound like Osama. In 2007 Switzerland's Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which does computer voice recognition for bank security, compared the voices on 15 undisputed recordings of Osama with the voices on 15 subsequent ones attributed to Osama, to which they added two by native Arab speakers who had trained to imitate him and were reading his writings. All of the purported Osama recordings (with one falling into a gray area) differed clearly from one another as well as from the genuine ones. By contrast, the CIA found all the recordings authentic. It is hard to imagine what methodology might support this conclusion.

This would not come as news to the people who read his obit in December of 2001.

Translation of Funeral Article in Egyptian Paper:

al-Wafd, Wednesday, December 26, 2001 Vol 15 No 4633

News of Bin Laden's Death and Funeral 10 days ago

Islamabad -
A prominent official in the Afghan Taleban movement announced yesterday the death of Osama bin Laden, the chief of al-Qa'da organization, stating that binLaden suffered serious complications in the lungs and died a natural and quiet death.

The official, who asked to remain anonymous, stated to The Observer of Pakistan that he had himself attended the funeral of bin Laden and saw his face prior to burial in Tora Bora 10 days ago.

He mentioned that 30 of al-Qa'da fighters attended the burial as well as members of his family and some friends from the Taleban. In the farewell ceremony to his final rest guns were fired in the air. The official stated that it is difficult to pinpoint the burial location of bin Laden because according to the Wahhabi tradition no mark is left by the grave. He stressed that it is unlikely that the American forces would ever uncover any traces of bin Laden.

Osama died in Tora Bora. I think we killed him with a cluster bomb or two. He was rumored to have escaped, but he was never seen again. The tapes are crude fakes. The audio has been looked at by experts and discounted. Even the things he "says" today in the fake audio tapes aren't the type of things he said when he was alive. He sounds like some second rate poli-sci major.

I can't believe people continue to buy into it, including our whole media, who always reports when he releases a tape.

9/12 March on Washington / Tea Party Photos

2009-09-14T12:30:00.004-04:00

From Glen Beck

From Protein Wisdom:

Daily Mail

Ought Implies Can - "Fantasy is Not a Serious Policy Option."

2009-09-11T02:05:00.003-04:00

Stole this link from Art Carden of Division of Labor.

Ought Implies Can
The Freeman
By Steven Horwitz • May 2009 • Volume: 59 • Issue: 4

In exploring the relationship between economics and ethics, we can start with two definitions that seem relevant here. The economist David Prychitko once defined economics as “the art of putting parameters on our utopias.” And in a particularly insightful definition, Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek wrote that “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” What both definitions suggest is that economics deals with the realm of the possible and in doing so demarcates the limits to what should be imaginable. Before we say we “ought” to do something, perhaps we should be sure we can do it, in the sense that the action is likely to achieve the intended ends. Put differently: ought implies can.

Ethicists can imagine all kinds of schemes to remedy perceived social ills, but none of the aspiring benefactors can afford to ignore economic analysis. Being able to dream something doesn’t guarantee it is possible. Too often ethical pronouncements have an air of hubris about them, as the pronouncer simply assumes we can do what he says we ought to do. By contrast, economics demands some humility. We always have to ask whether it’s humanly possible to do what the ethicists say we ought. To say we ought to do something we cannot do, in the sense that it won’t achieve our end, is to engage in a pointless exercise. If we cannot do it, to say that we ought to is to command the impossible.

So contrary to the commonly heard complaint, it is not that economists ignore ethical issues. Rather we attempt to describe the likely results of putting particular ethical rules into practice. For example, someone can argue that a living wage is an ethical imperative, but that doesn’t change the economic analysis of minimum-wage laws. Those laws increase unemployment and/or lead to reductions in nonmonetary forms of compensation among all unskilled workers, but especially the young, male, and nonwhite. No matter how much we think we ought to pass such legislation as a way of helping the poor, the reality remains that economics shows us that we cannot help them that way. Those who argue we ought to have such a law can still pass it if they want, but they should do it with eyes wide open to the fact that it will not achieve the result they wish, no matter how much they think we ought to have it.

Once again, my favorite law is the law of unintended consequences. If you want radical change and believe in social engineering it is always the bitch waiting to bite you in the ass.

Every kid ought to have a stable and loving home. In that frame of mind, we might as well pass legislation to make that happen. But what is stable? What is loving? You have to debate and define those things in legal terms. And even if we all could agree on the definition, would it be possible to ensure? No.

We can all agree that we don't want human suffering, especially with children. What we can't agree upon is the best way to prevent such suffering. Some people favor intrusive government intervention because it is "the right thing to do" or "we ought to do it for the kids".

The results don't seem to matter to some people. Read Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy .

In some estimates the difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals support policy that is right or just in their intention regardless of the consequences, and that conservatives support policy that is sound in what we can reasonably achieve. I know that isn't entirely fair given what some conservatives do, but those conservative probably aren't real conservatives anyway. That is my ideal conservative.

In my mind the ideal conservative makes the world a better place by looking at how policy actually impacts and effects people. The intentions are nice, but the results are the key. What we can do is different than your vision of the way the world should be if you were God and everyone should be happy. We have limitations. We live in a world of scarce resources.

Back to the article at hand:

It might be more accurate to say that ethicists ignore economics than that economists ignore ethics. To the extent that good economics shows what we can and cannot do with social policy, it is engaged with ethics. After all, if the point of saying we ought to do X is that we think it will achieve some set of morally desirable goals, then knowing whether or not doing X will actually achieve those goals is, or at least should be, a key part of moral inquiry. One of the tasks that economists should set for themselves is to engage in this sort of dialogue with moral philosophers and others who argue from “oughts.”

Economics is a study of incentives that I have continued all of my life. Why do people do what they do? How do incentives affect society? Politicians rarely think of unintended consequences.

What if we have insurance with no preexisting conditions? If so, I don't want to buy insurance at all. I want to find away around the system. I am a healthy man with a healthy family. We don't need medical care.

If something happens to one of us, we could simply apply for insurance and not be rejected because of preexisting conditions. So if I have cancer, I need to apply then, but I don't need to pay now. That would be silly for me from a personal economic standpoint.

I pay for insurance now because I might have cancer one day, knock on wood. It could be next week of 30 years from now. I buy insurance despite my good health. I may need it someday. But what happens if you say that I can sign up whenever and nobody can deny me? Well then I don't need insurance right now at all. The Obama administration will try to make me join anyway, but my motivation will be to find a way to get around that, because my needs will be taken care of regardless. I may not find a way around paying, but in a country of hundreds of millions of people acting on their own self interest, many people will. It is the law of unintended consequences.

I have a gift

2009-09-10T02:36:00.003-04:00

To again back up Thomas Sowell and the post below, "I Have A Gift"

To quote it is to be it:

Early in the campaign, in January 2007, a New York Times reporter wrote a story about Mr. Obama's time as president of the Harvard Law Review. It was there, the reporter noted, "he first became a political sensation."

Here's why: "Mr. Obama cast himself as an eager listener, sometimes giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with all of them at once." Also: "People had a way of hearing what they wanted in Mr. Obama's words."

Harvard Law Prof. Charles Ogletree told how Mr. Obama spoke on one contentious issue at the law school, and each side thought he was endorsing their view. Mr. Ogletree said: "Everyone was nodding, Oh, he agrees with me."

The reason I have never forgotten this article is its last sentence, in which Al Gore's former chief of staff Ron Klain, also of Harvard Law, reflects on the Obama sensation: "The interesting caveat is that is a style of leadership more effective running a law review than running a country."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in a book out next week, tells of congratulating freshman Sen. Obama on a phenomenal speech. Without a hint of conceit, Mr. Obama replied, "Harry, I have a gift."

I have a gift indeed.

A fuller quote can be found here:

In a 15-page epilog to the paperback version of Reid's book, The Good Fight, coming out May 5, the Nevada Democrat writes of "The Obama Era.'' A copy of the epilog was provided to the Associated Press.

Reid writes of being impressed with Obama when the then-freshman delivered a speech about then-President George W. Bush's war policy.

"''That speech was phenomenal, Barack,' I told him,'' Reid writes. "And I will never forget his response. Without the barest hint of braggadocio or conceit, and with what I would describe as deep humility, he said quietly: 'I have a gift, Harry."'

The man is gifted. It doesn't matter if it is 47 million or 30 million uninsured. He has a gift.

What the hell do you have?

You Lie!

2009-09-10T01:58:00.002-04:00

The House Bill Does Cover Illegals

I also wanted to add here that I have no "photos of tila tequila naked".

That also includes "photos of tila tequlia with a donkey"

Or even Tila Tequila with wild pigs. Though I would pay to watch that.

Don't take him seriously.

2009-09-10T01:23:00.003-04:00

Obama: I used to say 47 million uninsured. Now, it's 30 million.
Byron York

A few weeks ago it was 47 million. Now it is 30 million.

That is not the work of serious man. I am not meaning that he is not serious in his goals. He is dead serious. I believe that. But in his words he is not a serious man. Trust deeds and not words, and read the Thomas Sowell article below again.

Powerline says:

At this rate, if we can wait until November, the problem may resolve itself.

Which I thought was seriously hilarious.

And this also:

JOHN adds: The number of "uninsured" who have suddenly disappeared amount to three and a half times the population of the State of Minnesota. You get the feeling that Barack Obama is a person to whom numbers don't mean much. He's not someone you would put in charge of a business.

He is simply not a serious man. You should not take his words seriously. What other conclusion can you arrive at?

The Obama Speach To Congress: Listening to a Liar

2009-09-10T00:03:00.002-04:00

Thomas Sowell is my favorite American.

Listening to a Liar
by Thomas Sowell

Why paraphrase Sowell? Do I have to? Can I sum it up better than he can? Why not just quote the whole damn thing? He is better at this than me. Check the link for the full article.

Also, I have a drinking problem. It agrees with me.

He starts out like this:

The most important thing about what anyone says are not the words themselves but the credibility of the person who says them.

The words of convicted swindler Bernie Madoff were apparently quite convincing to many people who were regarded as knowledgeable and sophisticated. If you go by words, you can be led into anything.

No doubt millions of people will be listening to the words of President Barack Obama Wednesday night when he makes a televised address to a joint session of Congress on his medical care plans. But, if they think that the words he says are what matters, they can be led into something much worse than being swindled out of their money.

I like the analogy of the snake oil salesman and the pyramid scheme. Bernie Madoff had a pyramid scheme. The United States Government and our national debt is one big Ponzi scheme. I hope I die before the whole thing falls. It will fall, and the collapse is going to be spectacular.

Back to the action:

One plain fact should outweigh all the words of Barack Obama and all the impressive trappings of the setting in which he says them: He tried to rush Congress into passing a massive government takeover of the nation's medical care before the August recess-- for a program that would not take effect until 2013!

Whatever President Obama is, he is not stupid. If the urgency to pass the medical care legislation was to deal with a problem immediately, then why postpone the date when the legislation goes into effect for years-- more specifically, until the year after the next Presidential election?

If this is such an urgently needed program, why wait for years to put it into effect? And if the public is going to benefit from this, why not let them experience those benefits before the next Presidential election?

If it is not urgent that the legislation goes into effect immediately, then why don't we have time to go through the normal process of holding Congressional hearings on the pros and cons, accompanied by public discussions of its innumerable provisions? What sense does it make to "hurry up and wait" on something that is literally a matter of life and death?

What is up with that? A month ago we needed to adress this "crisis" before the August recess. It was that important. A thousand page bill that nobody had read was ploped upon the Congressional desks with a Presidential mandate that we need to do this now.

Tonight he talked about how we have years to work out the kinks. What happened between then and now. Why should we pass something this year if we are working out the kinks for years to come, yet alone when the damn behemoth is actually implemented.

Madness. And he wants you to believe him as a serious man. He is not a serious man, not if you take him at his word. This didn't need to be done last month.

Again, back to the Thomas Sowell action:

If we do not believe that the President is stupid, then what do we believe? The only reasonable alternative seems to be that he wanted to get this massive government takeover of medical care passed into law before the public understood what was in it.

Moreover, he wanted to get re-elected in 2012 before the public experienced what its actual consequences would be.

Unfortunately, this way of doing things is all too typical of the way this administration has acted on a wide range of issues.

Thomas Sowell is preaching to the choir here. Can I get an AMEN!

Halleahluya!

Obama was saying this needed to been done now. Inaction would cause us great peril. To not act on such a crisis would betray America! Or whatever, nobody even had a chance to read the bill. Have you heard that story before?

Sowell provides an easy answer to that question:

Consider the "stimulus" legislation. Here the administration was successful in rushing a massive spending bill through Congress in just two days-- after which it sat on the President's desk for three days, while he was away on vacation. But, like the medical care legislation, the "stimulus" legislation takes effect slowly.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will be September 2010 before even three-quarters of the money will be spent. Some economists expect that it will not all be spent by the end of 2010.

What was the rush to pass it, then? It was not to get that money out into the economy as fast as possible. It was to get that money-- and the power that goes with it-- into the hands of the government. Power is what politics is all about.

The worst thing that could happen, from the standpoint of those seeking more government power over the economy, would be for the economy to begin recovering on its own while months were being spent debating the need for a "stimulus" bill. As the President's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said, you can't let a crisis "go to waste" when "it's an opportunity to do things you could not do before."

I am begining to see a pattern here. Maybe Obama is up to something.

There are lots of people in the Obama administration who want to do things that have not been done before-- and to do them before the public realizes what is happening.

...

What Barack Obama says Wednesday night is not nearly as important as what he has been doing-- and how he has been doing it.

I end as I begin.

Thomas Sowell is my favorite American.

Violence in DC Public Schools

2009-09-09T12:35:00.003-04:00

I got this link from Jay P. Greene's blog

Maybe they need a voucher program:

Jonetta Rose Barras: School safety in the District
Washington Examiner

The Metropolitan Police Department received 3,500 reports of crime in D.C. Public Schools -- including homicides, sex offenses, robberies and assaults -- during 2007-2008, according an Aug. 24 report by The Heritage Foundation and the Lexington Institute.

That is how the police department reports the crime numbers. Let's see how the schools report the same numbers:

The Office of the State Superintendent of Education, which is responsible for analyzing incident reports, appears to be out of touch or playing with the numbers. Chad Colby, agency spokesman, said there was a decrease in violent crimes reported in DCPS and public charter schools for the same time period "as reported by the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department." He provided a chart showing 60 violent crimes in DCPS in 2006-2007 and 40 in 2007-2008.

You need a bablefish to interpret the language of the State Superintendent of ~~Misinformation~~ Education.

Some more glowing facts:

The U.S Department of Education "Indicators of School Crime and Safety," released earlier this year, noted 11.3 percent of D.C. high school students told of " 'being threatened or injured with a weapon while on school property' the previous [2008] school year -- a rate well above the national average." (Anacostia Senior High, Ballou, Cardozo, Coolidge, Dunbar, Eastern, Roosevelt and Springarn had a total of 7,813 students during the 2007-2008, according to audited data used by Heritage/Lexington. Eleven percent comes out to 859 threatened or injured students.)

Those numbers are shocking. I couldn't imagine sending a child to one of those schools.

It doesn't get any better for the elementary schools...

Safety at elementary schools was no better. There were 60 incidents reported at Moten Elementary; with a population of 275, the rate was 21.8 incidents per 100 students. At Webb, the rate of violence was 22 incidents per 100 students, according to Heritage/Lexington.

It is amazing that anyone could make it out alive AND become a productive citizen. Talking about a stacked deck. We need to reinstate and expand DC Vouchers now.

And what is the offical take of the The Office of the State Superintendent of ~~Misinformation~~ Education? "OSSE has not found any persistently dangerous schools."

Incredible. If we were not talking about something as serious as violent acts against children a farcical statement like that would be enough to make you spit out your drink all over the keyboard.

Heritage Study Here

Jay P. Greene's blog here

-----------------------------
Also found through Jay's blog:

So We Can't Have Single Payer for Health Care, But How About Single Payer for Education?

Arianna Huffington embraces school choice under the guise of "Single Payer for Education".

I don't often get a chance to agree with Arianna Huffington, but today I salute her efforts for school choice.

Van Jones, Continued

2009-09-06T22:15:00.003-04:00

Jimmie at the Sundries Shack

There are three things that struck me about this story.

1) There wasn’t a single left-wing crackpot conspiracy that Jones didn’t believe, from “Bush knew” to “The CIA is poisoning black people” to “Mumia-Abu Jamal was framed”. Jones showed no independent thought at all. You could get a perfect summary of his political beliefs by reading the signs and banners at an International ANSWER rally. The idea that someone so utterly hidebound in his political thought could ever be in charge of an innovative and dynamic “green jobs” economy is laughable. So how did he end up in the White House? How did he get past the most intrusive vetting questionnaire in the history of vetting questionnaires? Well, it’s pretty clear that the White House thought him perfectly mainstream, which should tell you all you need to know about today’s Democratic Party.

2) Jones picked a really bad time to become a communist. According to Jones, he converted in prison in the early 1990s, not all that long after the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall fell. By that point, communism was a thoroughly and loudly discredited political and economic system which had never been successful anywhere it had ever been tried. People were so eager to flee communism that they tore down a wall with their bare hands to get away from it just a couple years before Van Jones declared it an awesome life philosophy. In other words, Van Jones went running toward a completely failed political ideology at the same time that most everyone who had ever followed it was running in the other direction. His conversion was like someone deciding to become the Detroit Lions biggest fan the week after the team went 0-16.

3) Isn’t it something that the MSM spent less time digging into Van Jones’ background than it did Joe Wurzelbacher’s? If the New York Times and the Washington Post had spilled half the ink the man named to an important and highly visible government post as it did on a plumber who dared to ask a question of a Presidential candidate who showed up on his front lawn one day, Jones would have resigned long before now.

Quoted either for truth or bottom shelf vodka. I can't tell which at this point but I thought that was awesome. If not maybe I have a drinking problem.

----------------------------

Also a link to something else:

Amity Shlaes: The Forgotten Man, a review by C.J. Maloney at the Mises Institute.

Little Green Footballs highlights Cincy Tea Party "Truther"

2009-09-06T17:47:00.002-04:00

Cincinnati Tea Party Organizer: A Truther

LGF highlights

One of the main organizers, and a featured speaker, is Jason Rink. Here’s his bio from the official site:

Jason Rink

Jason Rink is one of the founders of the Ohio Freedom Alliance and is the Director of Education and Outreach for the group. “Today’s Ohio Liber-TEA Party is not about partisan politics. It’s not an anti-Obama rally. It’s not an anti-tax rally. It’s a pro-freedom rally. Our goal is to gather together like-minded citizens from around Ohio to promote three ideas: liberty, unity, and sovereignty. We want to empower citizens to enact changes in government through education and political action.”

Jason is a contributing author in the recently published biography of Congressman Ron Paul, Ron Paul: A Life of Ideas. Jason’s work has also been featured on the website LewRockwell.com.

Lovely! A highly placed Ron Paulian, and an associate of racist paleocon Lew Rockwell!

And Rink is also ... you guessed it ... a Truther. 9/11 Equations: The Math of Propaganda « Think Rink.

For the record, I am a moderate “twoofer.” I believe that the 9/11 Commission Report contains some serious omissions and inaccuracies. This troubles me. Is smells like a whitewash. I don’t claim to know who did what, or how it really happened. That’s precisely the problem. I want to know and so do the other 68% of Americans who suspect we aren’t getting the whole truth. We need a new, independent investigation.

No matter where you fall on the issue, you have to admit that the broad brush by which the mainstream media, and frankly a lot of “diggers,” paint everyone within the 9/11 Movement is completely biased. Granted, the zeal of some Truthers can come off as a bit abrasive. And there are some far-out theories concerning holograms and laser beams. But, this does not represent the majority. In fact, the diversity of people who are calling for a new investigation ranges from university professors to structural engineers to members of the FDNY to family members of those who died on that day. It is a vast a varied bunch. They deserve to be heard.

In most cases the ”twoofers” are usually those who have nothing to gain, and everything to lose. Even though prior to being labled a 9/11 “nutjob,” the impeccable credentials of many of these scholars have never been questioned, and their contributions to their respecive fields of study praised. This makes absolutely no sense, unless you factor in the simple equation as I have presented above. No matter who you are or what your credentials, the strategy is always the same. Attack the character of the messenger, not the facts of the message.

I won’t be holding my breath waiting for the same bloggers who are screaming for Van Jones’ head to denounce the Cincinnati Tea Party — even though one of the main organizers is a self-admitted 9/11 Truther. But the hypocrisy is rather stunning.

Jason Rink was a speaker at a Cincinnati Tea Party event. I do not think he is one of the main organizers, as LGF claims.

LGF doesn't care for Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell or Glenn Beck either. I link to Rockwell. Those guys are pretty extreme even for moderate libertarians, but I enjoy sampling it and they make good arguments. I am also a huge fan of "Dr. No". I was for Romney in the last election, but my heart goes out to Ron Paul.

I have attended the Cincinnati Tea Party events. I had no hand in organizing them. I have also denounced Van Jones and rejoiced with glee at his downfall. Should I feel like a hypocrite when it turns out I attended an event where a truther spoke? If not, is that stunning hypocrisy?

There is plenty not to like about Van Jones, and in some ways I might have been considered a "truther" myself. For example, what in the hell was in Sandy Berger's pants? I don't think we got an answer to that. And why didn't the 9/11 commission even investigate if 9/11 was state sponsored? (not the United States) It didn't seem like that was covered.

And the people in the comments section ravage Ron Paul. What about the big tent? Colin Powell is a proud member of the party. So is Ron Paul. We need to reach out to the Powells as well as the Pauls. I don't get how Ron Paul and the people that follow him are so crazy and toxic.

I used to read a fair amount of LGF. It has been a few years. It appears that site has changed a bit. Maybe Ron Paul's defenders were so ardent in posting a defense on the site that they got sick of them.

Since I am a fan of Ron Paul it should be no surprise that I am fine with fans of Ron Paul at tea parties. But what is the rationale at trying to keep them out or to marginalize Ron Paul?

Van Jones Out - Glenn Beck & Gateway Pundit Win

2009-09-06T12:03:00.002-04:00

GREEN CZAR VAN JONES RESIGNS!... Communist Leaves White House

Embattled talk show host Glenn Beck scored a victory last night when radical leftist Van Jones stepped down from his post at the White House.

I am a fan of Glenn Beck. He is crazy as a loon but that doesn't mean he isn't right. I think he is right on a lot of things. I don't watch his television spot, but I do catch him on the radio most days. Radio is a unique medium. With TV you watch it and it controls all of your attention. With radio you put it on and go on with your day. You can be driving a car, answering email, or filling out a report and still have it on in the background. After listening to a person for awhile it is like you have let them into your life.

I don't agree with everything Beck says, but I have to confess that I love the man. I think he is funny. I like his sidekick Stu. I like the commotion that they cause and the fun they have. I am also apocalyptic like Glenn Beck. I think at some point the whole system is bound to collapse.

When they came after Beck and started boycotting him it made me upset. He has lost so many sponsors and more continue to cave. Van Jones did play a part in Color of Change, the group that is boycotting Beck. It may make this situation play as a tit for tat retribution. I don't see it directly that way, but I am glad to see Glenn Beck score a knock out punch on Van Jones.

Gateway Pundit was on the case and clearly deserves credit. I have added Gateway Pundit to the blog list.

Ramblings

I also added Robert Stacey McCain, "The Other McCain". The man cracks me up and I find myself checking it every day for a laugh. Might as well add him to my blog list to save me some time.

I added Mickey Kaus as well. Kausfiles is always short and sweet and packs ten pounds of kick-ass into a five pound bag. He cuts to the chase and is worth checking out.

Recently I added The Capitol Tribune, which I stumbled across and like to check out. On the About my blog post, Jeff at the Capitol Tribune says this:

My political views are not entirely easy to categorize. I’m a conservative on most issues, a moderate on some, and a liberal on a few. It all depends on the issue. However, if forced to choose, I consider myself a conservative. Michael Gerson said it perfectly: “I am a conservative because I believe in the accumulated wisdom of humanity—a kind of democracy that gives a vote to the dead—expressed in the institutions and moral ideals we inherit from the past. When those ideals and institutions are causally discarded in the cause of personal liberation, the result is usually personal suffering and social decay. We cannot prosper as a ‘cut-flower civilization’—separated from our sustaining roots.” For those with a classical history background, I’d consider my perspective a cross between Tacitus and Livy. A sort of realistic idealist.

I love the Gerson quote. I can identify with all of what Jeff said there, and I like reading what he has to say.

Getting on my blog list won't get anyone mega-hits or fame, but it is a reflection of who I am checking out. I use this blog as my personal control center for the blogosphere. I check out certain blogs on a regular basis, and having this blog is a neat way of organizing my links. When I find something interesting I can comment and link to it on my blog, and then I know it is here so I can find it again.

I don't do that enough either. I don't know how many times I try to remember an article I read just a few weeks ago, and wish I had linked to it so I could go back and review it. It is a very useful function for a blog, and this blog is obviously more for me than anyone else.

I was initially reluctant to say that I loved Glenn Beck. I have read some intellectuals lament his influence on the right. A friend of mine recently commented that Beck is part of what is wrong with the Republican Party. As far as I can tell, Beck isn't even part of the Republican Party. In my opinion, the Republican Party has been what is wrong with the Republican Party. Maybe if they didn't act like big government Democrats when elected...

And they say that Beck is crazy and a conspiracy theorist. It is true. He is a bat-shit crazy conspiracy theorist. He was right about Van Jones though, and I think he is right about a lot of things. He gets trashed by the other side, so much so that his name has a negative connotation. It made me reluctant to even admit I was a fan, and I don't even use my real name here. How pathetic is that?

If loving Glen Beck is wrong, I don't want to be right.

The Voice Of America Rally - Sept 5th, 2009

2009-09-05T12:33:00.004-04:00

Today I will attend the Voice of America Freedom Rally with my family.

Here are the speakers:

Speakers 2:30pm-5:00pm
Meteorologist Rich Apuzzo
Vietnamese Immigrant and Small Business Owner DakLak Do
Honduran Immigrant Harlene Holland
Small Business Owner Greg McAfee
Cancer Survivor, Activist, and Houston Tea Party Member Tracy Miller
Physical Therapist and Small Business Owner Chris Orecchio
Ohio Freedom Alliance's Jason Rink
Dayton Tea Party Founder Rob Scott
Author Thomas Tabback
Cincinnati Tea Party Founder Mike Wilson
Lawyer, Grassroots Activist, and Candidate for Indiana's 9th District Todd Young
East German Immigrant Harald Zieger

Don't know if I will attend all day with kids in tow. I have no idea how they are going to take to it. Should be nice weather for it though.

-----------------

Update: I had a fun time at the tea party and my kids had plenty of snacks and Ice Cream.

My favorite speakers were Rich Apuzzo and DakLak Do. I booed Mean Jean Schmidt.

The Taxman, Gordon Gecko went as well. He put the crowd at around 10,000.

The Cincinnati Enquirer put the crowd at over 6,000.

The offical Cincinnati Tea Party site claims 18,000.

This apparently came from the Sheriff, quoted in the Middletown Journal:

The crowd continued to grow throughout the afternoon, and an estimated 18,000 people had come together at the event’s peak, according to Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones.

Jones said the crowd Saturday nearly doubled that of the Tea Party’s event he witnessed in Columbus, which drew an estimated 10,000 people to the state’s capital in April.

Oxford Press repeated 18,000.

Channel 12: "Largest Tea Party Event in the Region, 18,000.

My brother was there early and had to leave. His estimate was 6000+ and growing. I got there after he left, and I would have put the estimate in around Mr. Geckos at 10k. My wife however claims it was easily 16-20k.

So there you have it, clear as mud. I do understand that politics come into play when it comes to crowd estimates. Supporters want the largest possible number, detractors want the smallest and most insignificant number. Does the Sheriff have an agenda? Does the Enquirer? Do they both.

My honest bet would be the Cincinnati Enquirer was way too low, and that the Sheriff was way too high. But I don't do this for a living, and both of those people would be better than I in acessing crowd size. So why does one say 6k and another 18k. That is a difference in order of magnitude.

And you can tell from the following email that the 18k number is something the Cincinnati Tea Party is going to tout big time.

Update 2:

Email from the Cincinnati Tea Party

Dear Fellow Citizens and Taxpayers,

This is the first of two email that I'll send today. I need to get some information together on the Washington DC rally next week.

First, a wrapup of yesterday's events. The first Voice of America Rally was held at the Voice of America Museum in West Chester. According to Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones, the crowd was almost double the 10,000 that attended the Columbus Rally on 8/1. He estimated the crowd size at about 18,000 as more people were still streaming in.

This would make it the largest in Ohio, the largest in the Midwest, and in the top 10 or so nationally so far this year. This is pretty impressive as the ones that I know about are in much bigger cities than Cincinnati and Dayton like Atlanta, Dallas and Houston.

18,000 is a number normally reserved for sporting events and presidential appearances.

To put this in perspective, this is the paid (not actual) attendance at the last Reds weekday home games:

9/2 - 11,541
9/1 - 10,304
8/31 - 9,087
8/31 - 13,051

I struggle to find the words to describe how amazing the event was. However, I can tell you that it was tremendously inspiring that so many people came on a holiday weekend.

They were treated to a great lineup of speakers and a town hall that exceeded all expectations. The representatives and John Kasich were subjected to a series of difficult questions that put them on the spot. Many videos are already up on Youtube and we're looking to get a list together that we can share on our web site.

The media covered it well in general, but some did a very poor job. I didn't see the Fox19 story on the news, but the article on their web site was terrible. The headline said we drew opposition at another event which was true. The problem is that they only got 20 people which meant we outnumbered them 900-1. I wrote a quick blog post last night with screenshots of the article. If you were there, give them a call at 513-421-1919 and let them know what you think of them being so deceptive.

The Enquirer also got it wrong. I am glad they highlighted the tough nature of the questions, but the reporter was clearly deceptive about the size. At one point, he asked our VP - National Affairs and Strategy, Justin Binik-Thomas, for a crowd estimate. Justin provided the 18,000 number given by Sheriff Jones and was told that the reporter did not believe it. Justin then brought the reporter to see Sheriff Jones where he repeated 18,000. Clearly the reporter is entitled to his own opinion, but he failed by not reporting his interaction with the Sheriff and going with his own unsubstantiated number. Again, if you were at the event, I suggest you contact the reporter, Steve Kemme - skemme@enquirer.com.

Death Panels In The UK

2009-09-03T10:12:00.002-04:00

From the London Telegraph:

Sentenced to death on the NHS
Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives, leading doctors have warned.

Some exerpts:

“Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.

“As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients."

The warning comes just a week after a report by the Patients Association estimated that up to one million patients had received poor or cruel care on the NHS.

The scheme, called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), was designed to reduce patient suffering in their final hours.

Designed to reduce paitent suffering for sure!

Dr Hargreaves...added that some patients were being “wrongly” put on the pathway, which created a “self-fulfilling prophecy” that they would die.

He said: “I have been practising palliative medicine for more than 20 years and I am getting more concerned about this “death pathway” that is coming in.

“It is supposed to let people die with dignity but it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Patients who are allowed to become dehydrated and then become confused can be wrongly put on this pathway.”...

He said that he had personally taken patients off the pathway who went on to live for “significant” amounts of time and warned that many doctors were not checking the progress of patients enough to notice improvement in their condition.

But I bet it saves dollars and pension benefits!

Prof Millard said that it was “worrying” that patients were being “terminally” sedated, using syringe drivers, which continually empty their contents into a patient over the course of 24 hours.

In 2007-08 16.5 per cent of deaths in Britain came about after continuous deep sedation, according to researchers at the Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, twice as many as in Belgium and the Netherlands.

“If they are sedated it is much harder to see that a patient is getting better,” Prof Millard said.

To put those numbers another way, one in every six deaths in the United Kingdom came about after deep sedation. Considering they like to put so many people under, they probably don't get too many nagging patient complaints.

I SEE DEAD PEOPLE!

George Will is Against the War

2009-09-01T12:39:00.003-04:00

Afghanistan: Time to Stop Nation-Building

Adm. Mullen speaks of combating Afghanistan's "culture of poverty." But that took decades in just a few square miles of the South Bronx. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, U.S. commander in Afghanistan, thinks jobs programs and local government services might entice many "accidental guerrillas" to leave the Taliban. But before launching New Deal 2.0 in Afghanistan, the Obama administration should ask itself: If U.S. forces are there to prevent re-establishment of al-Qaeda bases -- evidently there are none now -- must there be nation-building invasions of Somalia, Yemen and other sovereignty vacuums?

U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000 to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from Britain, where support for the war is waning. Counterinsurgency theory concerning the time and the ratio of forces required to protect the population indicates that, nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.

So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

Genius, said de Gaulle, recalling Bismarck's decision to halt German forces short of Paris in 1870, sometimes consists of knowing when to stop. Genius is not required to recognize that in Afghanistan, when means now, before more American valor, such as Allen's, is squandered.

From a cost/benefit standpoint, I don't see the material benefits from staying in Afghanistan as opposed to the tremendous costs associated with the endeavor.

I think it is the wrong war for us to be in. Iraq had a chance to be something successful. They have roads, indoor plumbing, telephone lines, newspapers and television. They have universities and a highly literate populace. And they have the oil wealth to make it all so much more. Iraq could be quite a country one day. Afghanistan will be in the stone age right after we leave.

A quote I liked from Will's article:

This city should keep faith with them by rapidly reversing the trajectory of America's involvement in Afghanistan, where, says the Dutch commander of coalition forces in a southern province, walking through the region is "like walking through the Old Testament."

Walking through the Old Testament is one way to put it. Afghanistan appears to have a timeless quality. It is as it was at the begining of time, and it shall be until the end of time. No amount of American blood and treasure will make much of a difference.

I want out of Afghanistan.

Rich Lowry says No.
Robert Stacy McCain has no use for the Cut and Run Bridage
Bill Kristol: "Will is urging retreat, and accepting defeat."

It would be nice for someone somewhere to define what victory in Afghanistan would look like. At what cost in blood and treasure would this be possible? Do we need to stay there for 12 more years and spend another trillion? What if it is 15 years and 3 trillion? We live in a world of scarce resources. Is there any limit where one can say why not just choose a different path?

I think Afghanistan is not worth it. We simply can't afford it. The upside in Afghanistan is what? The potential is where? Might as well just flush dollars down the toilet.

Reagan Remix

2009-09-01T12:05:00.002-04:00

From Glenn Beck

Reagan Audio - Don't say we weren't warned

I approve of this message.

Russia Nukes Berlin. What happens with a nuclear attack on Berlin?

2009-08-22T00:59:00.003-04:00

What happens if Russia nukes Berlin? What do we do? Do we promise to nuke them back? What happened to mutually assured destruction?

Is that theory still in place? If Russia attacks Germany do we have an obligation to respond? I don't know. It isn't clear to me.

Growing up we had allies and we had enemies. If Russia attacked West Germany we were bound to attack them back. After the "end of history" things seem murky. What happens if Russia would attack now?

What if Iran nukes Israel? Israel is our friend and ally. What countries that are our friends do we have pledges to defend? Do we know? Does it change? Should their be a list.

If we our obligated to strike against a foe shouldn’t that be spelled out before hand. Isn’t that the way mutually assured destruction works?

What countries are we obliged to defend at this point? If London was attacked, I think we would respond. But are we obligated? Have we made the pledge? If Berlin was attacked, I think we would also respond.

What if Israel is attacked? I am not sure what happens. Do we have an SOP? A standard operation procedure? Do we have rules? I don’t think we do. Maybe if Iran nuked Berlin we wouldn’t do anything but use diplomacy to ask them not to bomb anyone else.

It used to be that the people with nukes knew full well what would happen if they used them. Now it seems as if we are in a time where nobody knows what the American response would be. If you think about that, it defies mutual assured destruction tenants. They may think they can get away with it. Who is going to call them on it after the fact? The first response may to be to limit any more nuclear shots.

We used to have a policy that I understood and was taught in schools. Now I don’t think we have a policy. I think that is dangerous. We are not prepared to act upon the next Nuke fired. We used to have a plan, tomorrow we have none.

Post Racial America

2009-08-07T20:40:00.004-04:00

Via Gateway Pundit

This is a letter from the attorney of Kenneth Gladney. Kenneth Gladney happens to be conservative black man who was attacked by SEIU union thugs at a town hall meeting in St. Louis.

August 7, 2009

Dear Mr. Hennessy:

I am Kenneth Gladney’s attorney. Kenneth was attacked on the evening of August 6, 2009 at Rep. Russ Carnahan’s town hall meeting in South St. Louis County. I was at the town hall meeting as well and witnessed the events leading up to the attack of Kenneth. Kenneth was approached by an SEIU representative as Kenneth was handing out “Don’t Tread on Me” flags to other conservatives. The SEIU representative demanded to know why a black man was handing out these flags. The SEIU member used a racial slur against Kenneth, then punched him in the face. Kenneth fell to the ground. Another SEIU member yelled racial epithets at Kenneth as he kicked him in the head and back. Kenneth was also brutally attacked by one other male SEIU member and an unidentified woman. The three men were clearly SEIU members, as they were wearing T-shirts with the SEIU logo.

Kenneth was beaten badly. One assailant fled on foot; three others were arrested. Kenneth was admitted to St. John’s Mercy Medical Center emergency room, where he was treated for his numerous injuries. Kenneth was merely expressing his freedom of speech by handing out the flags. In fact, he merely asked people as they exited the town hall meeting whether they would like a flag. He in no way provoked any argument or altercation, as evidenced by the fact that three assailants were arrested.

We hope that Kenneth fully recovers from his injuries; however, he is in great pain at this time. We will be pursuing legal action at our discretion. This was a truly senseless hate crime carried out by racist union thugs. Regretfully, Representative Carnahan’s statements blaming Kenneth for being a disruptive force are wholly untrue and slanderous. We would like to think that an elected official in Representative Carnahan’s position would gather accurate information before carelessly rushing to judgment.

Kenneth supports conservative ideals, although he subscribes to no particular political party. We are calling on the SEIU, Representative Carnahan, and President Obama to condemn the racist actions of these union thugs. In the days to come, we will be investigating whether these thugs are working at the behest of Representative Carnahan and how strong their alliances to various organizations–such as ACORN–may be.

We hope the St. Louis Tea Party and tea party organizations around the country will protest Representative Carnahan’s offices and also protest SEIU offices in every major city across the U.S. These Democratic strong-arm tactics must end now.

Regards,

Attorney David B. Brown

Not that anyone reads this, but I join the protest on behalf of Kenneth and his legal council.

Here is some video from the event.

Edit: I am new to posting video and I think it did something with my comments section.

Henry Gates to Suppress Proof that Crawley is a Racial Profiling Racist Pig.

2009-07-26T00:22:00.004-04:00

Obama was an idiot to get involved. His public opinion has taken a hit, as well as the notion that he is the first “post racial candidate” (much less post partisan, which died an early death). It isn’t just in public opinion where he took a hit; it also appears he took the wrong side in terms of the facts. That is why he is giving the mea culpa to Crowley and begging the press to make it go away.

Consider this though:

Gates' legal team argues that authorities are misrepresenting the professor and the officer, and Gates has said he is determined to keep the issue alive despite the charges being dropped.

"This is not about me; this is about the vulnerability of black men in America," he said this week.

Ogletree said Gates might sue the department and would bring forward witnesses who say they've had similar experiences with Crowley.

When asked for examples, Ogletree said only that they may come out in time depending on how the police department handles the situation moving forward.

"I think you will be hearing much more complex and different perspective on him [Crowley] in the coming days and weeks," Ogletree said, alleging that Crowley "is well-known among people, particularly young people, for some of his police practices."

So here we have a case where Gates claims to have evidence that Crowley is a racial profiling racist. That is what I read into it. They have witnesses willing to testify and evidence that he is a racial profiling racist. As of today it appears they are going to drop any of those claims as long as the Gates matter is put to sleep. And mind you, they still haven't released the tapes. Sgt. Crowley had an open mic, and I believe all of that stuff is taped. I think the tapes will vindicate Crowley and make Gates look bad. To the date of this post, they still haven’t released the tapes, which are supposed to be a public record accessible to all.

Fancy taking Gates and his legal team at their word for a moment. They claim to have evidence that Crowley is a racial profiling racist. Why would they drop such a case? For the common good doesn’t a veteran and historian of the civil rights movement like Gates have the responsibility to expose what his legal team has found? In their own admission, they already had people willing to testify.

I don’t think Crowley is a bad cop myself. But they say they have evidence that he is a bad cop. At least that is what they said until Obama did his best to shut down the investigation.

If Gates actually had such proof, he would have a moral right to expose the corruption. In that case it really wouldn’t be about him, it would be about getting a corrupt cop off the streets. His lawyers said they have proof.

What if Gates does have proof that Crowley is a racist?

What if he puts that away and doesn’t proceed on the case because it is not in his personal interest? What type of civil rights icon does that make?

Personally, I think Gates is a liar and a fraud, and this situation has outed him greatly. But if you think he is telling the truth, why would he not go after a man that is known to discriminate?

Steyn On Obama (Gates)

Mark Steyn: Obama knows 'stupidly' when he doesn't see it

When Sgt. Crowley announced through the glass-paneled front door that he was here to investigate a break-in, Gates opened it up and roared back: "Why? Because I'm a black man in America?"

Gates then told him, "I'll speak with your mama outside." Outside, Sgt. Crowley's mama failed to show. But among his colleagues were a black officer and a Hispanic officer. Which is an odd kind of posse for what the Rev. Al Sharpton calls, inevitably, "the highest example of racial profiling I have seen." But what of our post-racial president? After noting that "'Skip' Gates is a friend" of his, President Obama said that "there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately." But, if they're being "disproportionately" stopped by African American and Latino cops, does that really fall under the category of systemic racism? Short of dispatching one of those Uighur Muslims from China recently liberated from Gitmo by Obama to frolic and gambol on the beaches of Bermuda, the assembled officers were a veritable rainbow coalition. The photograph of the arrest shows a bullet-headed black cop – Sgt. Leon Lashley, I believe – standing in front of the porch while behind him a handcuffed Gates yells accusations of racism. This is the pitiful state the Bull Connors of the 21st century are reduced to, forced to take along a squad recruited from the nearest Benetton ad when they go out to whup some uppity Negro boy.

Steyn is one of my favs. The man makes me laugh. Another man I have been reading lately is Robert Stacy McCain. Now there is one McCain I would have taken pride in voting for.

The coverage of Gates in the press overshadowed his press confrence on health care. The death spiral kept spinning until Obama stepped in again to quell the storm. I think he may be successful in making the situation go away. In his press conference he pretty much asked the press to stop. He also contacted both parties and asked to have a beer with them.

I hope that Crawley brings his mother this time, as requested. I think Gates was mad about not being able to see her once they were outside as he predicted.

Space storm alert: 90 seconds from catastrophe

2009-07-05T14:06:00.002-04:00

An article in by Michael Brooks in the New Scientist
Space storm alert: 90 seconds from catastrophe

"IT IS midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment. Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power.

A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation's infrastructure lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing nation. Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling to recover from the same fateful event - a violent storm, 150 million kilometres away on the surface of the sun.

It sounds ridiculous. Surely the sun couldn't create so profound a disaster on Earth. Yet an extraordinary report funded by NASA and issued by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in January this year claims it could do just that.

Over the last few decades, western civilisations have busily sown the seeds of their own destruction. Our modern way of life, with its reliance on technology, has unwittingly exposed us to an extraordinary danger: plasma balls spewed from the surface of the sun could wipe out our power grids, with catastrophic consequences.

The projections of just how catastrophic make chilling reading. "We're moving closer and closer to the edge of a possible disaster," says Daniel Baker, a space weather expert based at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and chair of the NAS committee responsible for the report."

The article really captured my imagination.

This report says that a severe space storm could knock out all of the huge power grids in the world. It would melt all of the transformers and those would take years to replace if they all went bad all at once.

Life without electricity would mean death for millions. Hospitals would stop running after back up generators ran out of fuel. Water would stop running from the tap within days, and sooner than that for people in high rises. You couldn't pump gas without electricity. All the food in your fridge would go bad, and the just in time inventory of your supermarket would break down. Food would become the new gold.

Communication would break down in a severe solar storm, as would gps navigation systems.

I could only imagine the lawlessness. The whole system could break down, and eventually you would have every man for himself.

I think this would be a great basis for a science fiction novel. Check out the artcile. It goes into detail about what could happen.

Iran

2009-06-15T19:33:00.003-04:00

This is the big story for a few days now. It could be the biggest story of the year.

I am rooting for a Revolution.

You go to Memeorandum and story after story about Iran.

This is really fast paced and incredible. The crowds they are getting at the protests appear to be massive. I couldn't think of a better thing to happen in the world than for the government of Iran to fall.

Free the Liberty Dollar Four

2009-06-05T11:10:00.002-04:00

Lew Rockwell is on the case:

Feds Arrest the Liberty Dollar Competition

The actual charge the feds care about is at the end, that the Liberty Dollar is "intended for use as current money," in direct competition with the state. Should someone be allowed to mint whatever he wants, charge whatever he wants, and try to pass it as money? Of course, so long as no fraud is involved (fraud being a government monopoly). So it is an outrage that these four people have been arrested for non-crimes, and will be tried in a federal kangaroo court, where they will not be allowed to mention the Constitution or many other things, and perhaps be put in cages for years when they are pronounced "guilty."

I am not a big Liberty Dollar guy. I don't own any Liberty Dollars. I thought about getting one as a novelty once. They way our government is running the printing press though I think the argument for the Liberty Dollar gets stonger every day.

Reading this reminded my of The Gold Standard. The government outlawed private ownership of gold in 1933 and they mandated that all safe deposits be opened in the presence of IRS agents.

It seems as if the government is hostile to the community using any of store of value other than the Federal Reserve Note. They want to use the printing press to finance all of their spending, and they don't want competition. There is no way out.

The inflation that is going to hit us is going to be substantial.

Via Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek, here is Keynes on inflation:

By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls . . . become 'profiteers', who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished not less than the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds . . . all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless.

I stand with Lew Rockwell. FREE THE LIBERTY DOLLAR FOUR!

Barney Frank is running the car companies

2009-06-05T10:48:00.002-04:00

From the Boston Globe via Greg Mankiw:

Frank intervention extends life of GM's Norton center

The plant manager received word yesterday that Frank had successfully lobbied GM chief executive Fritz Henderson to delay the closing, according to Ridenour.

Frank said he met with Henderson on Wednesday to urge him to reevaluate the center's value to GM. He said he also stressed the loss of jobs would hurt already struggling Massachusetts families.

Frank, whose district includes Norton, said he told Henderson, "Look, I understand that these things have to happen but they don't have to happen in the midst of the worst recession in years."

Frank did so well in his oversight of Fannie and Freddie. I didn't know he was an auto expert to boot. This will not end well.

Socialism 101

2009-06-05T00:54:00.002-04:00

This article was from over two years ago:

As US tax rates drop, government's reach grows
Study: 1 in 2 Americans now receives income from government programs.

Slightly over half of all Americans – 52.6 percent – now receive significant income from government programs, according to an analysis by Gary Shilling, an economist in Springfield, N.J. That's up from 49.4 percent in 2000 and far above the 28.3 percent of Americans in 1950. If the trend continues, the percentage could rise within ten years to pass 55 percent, where it stood in 1980 on the eve of President's Reagan's move to scale back the size of government.

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And that was two years ago, before the bailout, the stimulus and the nationalization of the auto industry or the financial sector.

The trolley is off the tracks. Things are bad and they aren't getting better soon. We have been down this path for quite awhile. It isn't all Obama's fault. Obama is a bitch for sure, and he embraces it with open arms. But he didn't start the fire.

We are all screwed.

5% of the people pay over 50% of the federal taxes. 50% don't pay anything. And over 50% get money from the government. That is one way to build a workable majority, at least until the damn breaks.

The collapse is going to be spectacular.

Drug Cartels Fight Legalization

2009-06-04T11:18:00.002-04:00

From Keith Halderman at the Liberty and Power Group Blog

The Drug War Chronicle is reporting that members and candidates of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) are being subject to violent attacks. The SDP Party Chairman Jose Carlos Diaz Cuervo believes this is happening because the party’s platform strongly calls for the legalization of drugs. He asserts that, "doubtless, unlike the federal government, it appears the drug traffickers do understand that the regulation of that market would take the business away from them and would be a more intelligent way to combat them."

It doesn't surprise me that drug cartels understand market forces better than the governments that fight the drug war.

School Reforms on the Brink

2009-06-04T10:27:00.002-04:00

From The Wall Street Journal

School Reforms on the Brink
The empire strikes back in Milwaukee and NYC.

The education establishment and its political allies employ multiple methods to keep kids trapped in rotten schools. One tactic is to use control of school boards to prevent or limit the creation of charter schools. Another is to smother existing voucher programs with rules and red tape. Real world examples are currently playing out in Milwaukee and New York City.

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program provides vouchers for some 20,000 low-income, mostly minority children to attend private schools. Because the 20-year-old program polls above 60% with voters, and even higher among minorities, killing it outright would be unpopular. Instead, Democratic Governor Jim Doyle wants to reduce funding and pass "reforms" designed to regulate the program to death. The goal is to discourage private schools from enrolling voucher students and thus force kids to return to unionized public schools.

To that end, Democrats in the state legislature voted last week to cut per-pupil payments to private schools by $165 while increasing public school spending by $400 per student. Taxpayer support for students in the program is only $6,607 per student to begin with, which is less that half of the $13,468 for students in Milwaukee public schools.

They also add this:

The irony is that satisfaction and enrollment at Milwaukee public schools has steadily declined despite these very policies that choice opponents want to impose on successful private schools. A recent evaluation of the Milwaukee choice program found that its high school graduation rate was 85%, compared to 58% for students in the city's public schools. Between 1994 and 2008, the voucher program saved taxpayers more than $180 million. Yet opponents insist these schools need additional regulations to make them more like the public schools that cost more and produce inferior results.

This program is entrenched and popular, so they seek to cut it by stealth. You can simply regulate anything to death. They are increasing the costs of compliance and decreasing the subsidy at the same time. And the more demands you make on a private school, the less private it becomes.

The biggest scare of vouchers to libertarians is that the government will insert itself into private education and corrupt the good schools that we have left. While I have always supported vouchers I have always been aware and afraid of that unintended consequense.

The teachers unions and their allies are in power, and choice advocates are getting a bitter taste of just what that means. The DC voucher program has been ended for all intents and purposes. They will play out the string with the students currently enrolled but nobody new is allowed into the pipeline. Now they are coming after Milwaukee and the Charter Schools of NYC. It is sad.

And this from the party that "Is for the Children".

Spitting in the eye of mainstream education

2009-05-31T02:12:00.000-04:00

Spitting in the eye of mainstream education

This should be on the front page.

Dealergate isn't going away

2009-05-29T10:06:00.003-04:00

Closing Chrysler's Dealerships: The Reader's Digest Version

"Item 1: Using the list of all 789 dealerships to be closed, WND found that owners contributed $450,000 to GOP presidential candidates; $7,970 to Sen. Hillary Clinton; $2,200 to John Edwards and $450 to Barack Obama. For the "progressives" out there, that's a 1000-to-1 ratio of GOP-to-Obama donations for closed dealerships.

Item 2: Dealership conglomerate RLJ is owned by Democrat bigwigs Mack McLarty and Robert Johnson. RLJ magically happened to keep all six (6) of their dealerships while its competitors were shuttered. McLarty is a former Clinton chief-of-staff and Robert Johnson (founder of BET) is a major Democrat fundraiser. These politically connected, powerful Democrat supporters were completely insulated from the closings in every market in which they compete.

Item 3: Democratic donor Sidney Deboer is Chairman of Lithia Motors. He donated over $14,000 to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY). Lithia Motors lost only two of its 29 dealerships while gaining as many as five additional ones in the resulting carnage. Deboer was also insulated from Chrysler's closings."

This isn't going to go away without an investigation. They have uncovered enough evidence that makes the closings look politically motivated. I don't think that this well end well for the administration.

Gateway Pundit has more with links as well

Leave them on the battlefield

2009-05-26T10:03:00.002-04:00

I have often thought that we do ourselves more harm than good by taking terrorists alive on the battlefield. We end up releasing many of them only to fight them again. And it costs too much taxpayer money to lock them up.

Ralph Peters makes the case today:

INSTANT JUSTICE
GITMO? NO, KILL THUGS ON SPOT

WE made one great mistake regarding Guantanamo: No terrorist should have made it that far. All but a handful of those grotesquely romanticized prisoners should have been killed on the battlefield.

The few kept alive for their intelligence value should have been interrogated secretly, then executed.

Terrorists don't have legal rights or human rights. By committing or abetting acts of terror against the innocent, they place themselves outside of humanity's borders. They must be hunted as man-killing animals.

And, as a side benefit, dead terrorists don't pose legal quandaries.

I couldn't agree more.

Political donations and Chrysler

2009-05-26T09:16:00.002-04:00

If this is true we all have problems.

We live in a "free country" that made it law that everyone's political activity will be tracked via campaign finance disclosure laws. I always thought it was a bad idea that anyone can find out if you supported a certain candidate. They can look you up on line and see how much you gave. It was only a matter of time until this information got abused.

Eightmaps.com is a good example of this. People were singled out for supporting traditional marriage, and many of them were targeted. If Chrysler dealers were targeted it is a huge problem for this country.

My advice would be to not contribute to political campaigns if you can help it. Keep your name off the lists. Someday you may need a job, a loan, or your company may compete for a government contract. With the government swallowing up the private sector, the odds of that for everyone is going up substantially.

Likewise one should probably think before registering for a political party if you can help it. Information that is held in these databases are accessable to the public. In the new grand state, it is better to live off of the information grid and keep your name off of the lists.

I am glad I don't put my name on this blog.

Obama in Bush Clothing: America Fights On

2009-05-25T14:05:00.003-04:00

Obama in Bush Clothing: America Fights On

Charles Krauthammer shows why Hammer is part of the family name:

The genius of democracy is that the rotation of power forces the opposition to come to its senses when it takes over. When the new guys, brought to power by popular will, then adopt the policies of the old guys, a national consensus is forged and a new legitimacy established.

That's happening before our eyes. The Bush policies in the war on terror won't have to await vindication by historians. Obama is doing it day by day. His denials mean nothing. Look at his deeds.

It is amazing how much Bush gets bashed by Obama while he adopts the exact same policies. It blows the mind. Krauthammer is a master at laying it on the table.

Also from the WSJ: Bush's Gitmo Vindication

No Thanks to the Government Health Care Plantation

2009-05-25T13:53:00.003-04:00

Star Parker: No thanks to government health care plantation

Star lets it rip:

First, we already have massive government involvement in health care. Practically half of all health care delivered today comes directly from government programs -- mainly those begun in the 1960's. Medicare, Medicaid, and then later the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

Only 35 percent of health care is paid for through private insurance. Some 87 percent of it is paid for by third parties -- either government or employers. In 1960, 60 percent of Americans' health care expenditures were out of their own pocket. Today it is 12 percent.

Star makes some great points about the government health care we already have in place. You look at the scandal over the VA hospital during the Bush Administration or local scandals about Cincinnati nursing homes and you really have to question government health care. Health care from the same people that give us crappy government schools? Do you want to live next to government housing? I am sure government healthcare is a bad idea indeed. I don't want to move on to that plantation either. I have seen how this ends, and it ain't pretty.

The Gold Standard

2009-05-23T00:27:00.005-04:00

The Gold Standard circa 1933

"All safe deposit boxes in banks or financial institutions have been sealed... and may only be opened in the presence of an agent of the I.R.S." - President F.D. Roosevelt, 1933 – DOW ~ 65

Gold was outlawed from 1933 until the 1970's. I knew that FDR outlawed gold. I guess that is the way you would have to do it if you were serious.

How safe are your safe deposit boxes?