Archive for the ‘Nanny State Crap’ Category

If Earth Hour is a Slippery Slope…

Monday, March 30th, 2009

…then what lies at the bottom of the slope?

Hat tip to Harvey at IMAO.

“Cool Paints”

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

You can’t write this stuff.

If California regulators get their way, auto makers may soon be forced to rewrite a cliché from the Ford Model T era and start telling customers they can have any color they want as long as it isn’t black.

Some darker hues will be available in place of black, but right now they are indentified internally at paint suppliers with names such as “mud-puddle brown” and are truly ugly substitutes for today’s rich ebony hues.
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The measure is aimed at reducing carbon-dioxide emissions and improving fuel economy by keeping vehicles cooler on sunny days and decreasing the amount of time drivers use their air conditioners.

The rationale goes like this: Vehicle AC units sap engine power and hurt fuel economy. If vehicle paint and glass reflect more heat, car interiors will be cooler. That means drivers will use their AC units less, the compressors won’t have to work as hard and auto makers will be able to use smaller AC units in the future.

Reflective coatings and glazing (glass) already have proven to save energy when used on buildings, and this legislation is based on architectural standards.

On the surface, it’s not a bad idea, but fundamental issues reveal profoundly flawed legislation: Buildings and vehicles are manufactured and recycled differently, and no one buys a building based on its color.

Another troublesome fact: Heat-reflecting paints for black and other dark colors on vehicles have not been invented yet.

Paint suppliers also say heat-reflecting pigments that could be used in automotive applications contain toxic heavy metals that cause environmental damage and create health and safety issues during manufacturing and recycling.

How Do Stimulus Plans Work, in History?

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

Stimulating Ourselves To Death.

Hint: History and hope aren’t seeing eye-to-eye on this one.

Best Sentence LVII

Sunday, March 15th, 2009

This afternoon’s Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award is for Frank at IMAO, who I think came up with this awhile ago…March 11, yes, that’s it.

When you’re done snickering, keep in mind it’s a pretty freakin’ important message.

Using socialism to help revive a failing economy is like putting angry weasels down your pants because you need some rest.

Maybe the message can be spread to those who need to hear it, with some nice sixties hippie-music. “How intertwined must a government be…before people figure out it’s just f@**king everything up? And how any trillions of dollars should it spend, before it’s seen as a bad idea?”

Exhausted the Use of Rush Limbaugh as an Attention Getter

Sunday, March 15th, 2009

You know what they say about sausage and the law — never watch either one being made.

On ABC’s “This Week,” White House economic adviser Larry Summers said the president had proposed a “strategic budget” that “will let us have a sound economic expansion” through a combination of “substantial cuts” and new spending on education, health, energy and environment.

The president himself plans to carry that message in the coming week, “engaging directly with Congress more, and speaking more forcefully on behalf of his budget,” a top adviser said.

And officials throughout the party plan to hammer the idea that Republicans are just saying “no” to the president’s budget plans without offering their own alternative.

Vice President Cheney, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” articulated the harshest conservative case against the president’s plans, accused the Obama administration of “using the current set of economic difficulties to try to justify a massive expansion in the government, and much more authority for the government over the private sector.”

“I think the programs that he has recommended and pursuing in health care, in energy, and so forth, constitute probably the biggest or one of the biggest expansions of federal authority over the private economy in the history of the republic,” Cheney said.

The Democrats’ new plan follows the private complaints of some Democrats that Obama let the GOP get the better of him during the debate over pork in the budget bill he just signed, and growing concerns among some Democrats that charges of big spending could stick to the president.

A participant in the planning meetings described the push as a successor to Democrats’ message that Rush Limbaugh is the Republican Party leader. “We have exhausted the use of Rush as an attention-getter,” the official said.

David Plouffe, manager of Obama’s presidential race, helped design the strategy, which includes the most extensive activation since November of the campaign’s grassroots network. The database—which includes information for at least 10 million donors, supporters and volunteers—will now be used as a unique tool for governing, with former canvassers now being enlisted to mobilize support for the president’s legislative agenda.
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Democratic strategists explain that the message is designed to accomplish three things:

—First, it could deflect attention from the size of Obama’s budget and blunt attacks on the ambition of his agenda.

“It helps change the conversation from their criticism of the president’s plan,” a top Democratic official said. “If they want to say he’s going to raise taxes in the middle of a recession or he’s got socialist tendencies—none of which we agree with—one of the easy things for us to come back with is: We have tough choices to make right now, and you have nothing to offer.”

—Second, by painting Republicans as politically motivated, the conservative House Democrats known as Blue Dogs may be less likely to side with the GOP.

“As long as they’re seen as reflexively political—saying ‘no’ to everything—the Blue Dog Democrats can say, ‘I don’t agree with everything the president proposes, but at least he has a plan, an outline of what we should be working on,’” the official said.

—Third, Republicans could look like they’re playing politics in a time of crisis, rather than disagreeing based on substance.

The DNC on Saturday issued a “Party of ‘No’ Update” accusing House Republican leaders of “obstructionist rhetoric.”

Left-wing bloggers are already following suit. It isn’t an ideology, it’s a way of life.

Oh me oh my, how in the world are Republicans going to reply to such a devastating assault?

Republican public-relations dudes and dudettes: Do you really need me to do all your work for you? Really? C’mon…come on. The democrat party wants to be the party of ideas, huh. They wanna be idea-people. They’re the only ones who have any ideas — oh, let me guess the next three words — “on the table.” They’re going to jack up our public debt to $23 trillion in the next ten years and they want to defend this with “well look, it’s not like anybody else has an idea about what to do.”

By 2019, that will have made eighty-seven years of the democrat party coming up with one idea after another after another…all of which have to do with spending loot. That’s the only idea they’ve had for better part of a century by now. “Which party has the ideas”…I do not think this is a discussion they want to get going. Especially not when the question is “we’re all out of money and our economy is grinding to a halt, what are we to do?” You want to be the guy that says — Spend Faster?

One of the reasons the democrat party is not fit for leadership, although there are many, is that they have incorporated into their party philosophy one of the tell-tale signs that a complete stranger is probably a clueless turd. It’s Number Seven on my list of such indicators

Speaking of a tax cut as something that “costs” money.

I think I’ve found a compromise that will make everybody happy. The strange fools on Planet Liberal think that tax cuts costs money…okay. And, they won the election, we have to let them run everything now — besides of which, they’re the only ones with any ideas. And for eighty years or so all their ideas have had to do with spending money. They think tax cuts are a part of that. They are committed to the idea that tax cuts constitute a form of money-spending.

See where I’m going with this?

No, I won’t complete the thought. Let some young upstart up-and-coming guy in the Republican spin machine, think it was his idea. Take it and run with it. Better yet, let the democrat party take it and run with it. They like to spend money, they’ve got this bizarre idea of what that is, and like Rahm Emmanuel said, you never want to let a good crisis go to waste.

Rance!

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

I’m going to have to make this a regular feature…which is going to make it as boring as hell, to everyone, myself included. But it’s gotta be done. Might as well spice things up by spelling it wrong.

Daphne:

We pay our mortgage and debts, live within our means and try to save responsibly for our future needs. We provide health coverage, food, housing and clothes for our children without assistance. We pay our taxes and fees in full and on time, never dreaming to ask any agency we fund for a handout or exception. My husband keeps tens of people fully employed, at high pay, by his hard efforts. We volunteer our time and money to worthy causes. Our bill to the city, state and feds well exceeds the poverty line for a family of four. Why are we suffering the price for everyone else’s mistakes? We haven’t made any.

I am unapologetically conservative. I don’t believe another man has any right to the fruits of my labor. I do not believe that I am beholden, on any terms, to provide for another man’s housing, food, children, medical care, education or the thousand other items on the endless list of needs demanded of my money in the name of social responsibility. I have an obligation to abide by the law and be a productive citizen who honors his own responsibilities, the state does not have the right to mandate that I bailout its negligent mistakes or support its unproductive members. I don’t owe your destitute grandma or ill conceived child a damn dime. My children certainly shouldn’t be expected to pay for current lawmakers ignorant legislative blunders or Joe Blow’s lackadaisical take on mortgage payments or unaffordable procreation.

Save me the arguments that my money funds the betterment of society. It obviously doesn’t when 1 in 30 of our citizens are in the criminal justice system, as much as forty percent of our high schoolers drop out before graduation, a scandalous number of non-performing public schools, warehousing ignorant children, are still in existence and we have up to 70% out of wedlock birth rates standing alongside the total disintegration of normal family units in significant segments of society. My money hasn’t done diddley shit for the generations of shiftless idiots unable to carry their own water, except exacerbate the growth of disgustingly useless government programs that induced these ills to epidemic heights.

The ranting turns toward the Republicans, with a rant found at Right Coast by Tom Smith, against Chairman Michael Steele. Like Daphne above, Mr. Smith speaks for me…

The left wing of the Democratic Party is in power now and it looks like they will pass their budget and their agenda for the next year or two or four. There’s every reason to think it will be a disaster for the country. It’s not looking so great so far and the disaster may arrive ahead of schedule. I’d say there’s a nontrivial chance the country will be irreparably harmed by our American mid-life crisis. It’s going to suck, big time. All Republicans can do is be the party that says, this is a bad idea and we should return to what we really believe in. We should wear the label the Party of No as a badge of honor. No to higher taxes. No to soaking the rich. No to nationalizing health care. No to abadoning Israel (just wait — that’s coming). There will be a lot to say no to. No to tyranny. This whole country is founded on a No.

I love that last line. It’s true. We say “yes” when we imagine what we can do. We do not have a tradition of saying “yes” when others tell us what to do. There are enough other countries that can carry on that tradition.

The best for last: Melissa lets the moderates have it with both barrels. These are the folks who were not fainting at Obama rallies, holding Him aloft like some kind of rock star or movie actor, wanting “to be a part of this thing”…they had nothing to say, nothing at all. They just didn’t want to take a stand, and by standing in the middle of the road hoped to be thought-of as super-duper smart. They figured voting for The Holy One was just the thing everyone was doing last fall, so they want-along to get along.

May your chains rest lightly on you and may posterity forget you were our countrymen…

Moderates, as usual, are stupid. They play along with the administration’s games. They’re useful dupes. Rather than help shape an alternative argument, they trash the people who pay attention. Independents and moderates don’t pay attention–they hope for a middle, gentle, “nice” way. That way lead to the Obama administration to begin with.

Have you written your postcard to let Congress and the administration know your feelings? You don’t even need to leave the house…or the computer you’re using right this very second. One click away. Do it, do it, do it.

I just did…

People working hard to succeed, are being made to fail through taxes and government-sponsored debt.

People who bought more house than they can afford, are being given a perverse “guarantee” from that government that they can stay where they are.

So people who don’t try, are set up to succeed, and people who do try, are set up to fail.

Our President, who’s supposed to be the best ever, is blowing unprecedented amounts of money while telling us we must not burden our children with “a debt they cannot pay.” He’s telling us, when you’re out of money and neck-deep in debt from spending money you do not have, the thing to do is to spend it a whole lot faster. Congress seems to be in agreement.

The Dow is tumbling down like a lawn dart. It can’t be reasonably expected to do anything else.

Our President sees this and comments on how good he is at his job. I suppose, if you define that job just “right,” it must be true.

This is the delivery of what, half a year ago, I was told was “hope.”

It truly is an upside-down world.

Where the Present Crisis Began

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

Baron’s, via Hot Air, via Newsbusters, via Gateway Pundit:

We are in this mess largely because critical thought and moral judgment have been subordinated to the politicization of our economy, resulting in regulatory gaps and excessive controls of the wrong kind. Government regulations should be limited to those that increase and protect transparency and competition, protect public and private property, promote individual responsibility and enforce equal opportunity under the law. Even if the right laws and regulations could be found, they would prove insufficient to protect freedom and prosperity.
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Today’s problems have their roots in programs and financial instruments that shifted the locus of moral responsibility away from private individuals and institutions to wider circles that were understood to end with a government guarantee. Heads of the top banks and financial institutions could approve substandard home-mortgage underwriting — prone to increased default — because those loans could be securitized by Wall Street and sold off to investors or to government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), with no likely recourse to the financial institution of origin.

Our present crisis began in the 1970s, during the Carter administration, with passage of the Community Reinvestment Act to stem bank redlining and liberalize lending in order to extend home ownership in lower-income communities. Then in the 1990s, the Department of Housing and Urban Development took a fateful step by getting the GSEs to accept subprime mortgages. With Fannie and Freddie easing credit requirements on loans they would purchase from lenders, banks could greatly increase lending to borrowers unqualified for conventional loans. In the name of extending affordable housing, this broadened the acceptability of risky loans throughout the financial system.
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There is plenty of blame to go around on both sides of the political aisle. But the lesson should be clear that socializing failed businesses — whether in housing, health care or in Detroit — is not a long-term solution. Expanding government’s intrusion into the private sector doesn’t come without great risk. The renewing and self-correcting nature of the private sector is largely lost in the public sector, where accountability is impaired by obfuscation of responsibility, and where special interests benefit even when the public good is ill-served.

It’s not Bush-apologia, it’s just plain truth…and it’s important truth. This conundrum was not caused by a dearth of government meddling, but rather by an abundance of it.

With Peeling Removed, How Long Does an Orange Last?

Friday, January 30th, 2009

I agree with Fat in Indiana. It’s like the folks writing this nonsense, don’t want the country to succeed — difficult to see how anyone could deny or question it, and remain intellectually diligent and honest about the matter.

You wanted change. Looks like you’re getting it. Suckers.

Here’s some more change you said you wanted…

Well … at least the Republicans stood fast yesterday in the House. They were joined by several Democrats in opposing this $825 billion government growth bill. Now it’s off to the Senate…I love what House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said yesterday in response to criticism of the government growth plan. “Americans voted for change.” There you go. The Democrat’s answer for every objection to a Democrat atrocity? Does Obama’s focus group created slogan give Democrats a clear field to destroy our free market economy and burden your children and grandchildren with a bill they may never be able to repay? Oh yeah…we did all of this because Americans voted for change. What a jerk. What an asinine and arrogant response to the valid concerns of many Americans.

Just think about this stuff for a minute or two. We imagine this as a discourse between the weak and the strong, who in turn are positioned oppositionally…what benefits one side automatically injures the other side. We imagine it that way not because reality counsels us to, but because the democrat party counsels us to.

Even those who say they are championing the cause of the weak…the voiceless (hah!) weak…acknowledge the weak are dependent on the strong. Hell, they’re the ones making it that way.

Now, how would you destroy a civilized country? I really can’t think of a better way. Make the degenerates dependent on the functional, pump up the ranks of the degenerates to the point where they outnumber the functional, then use those votes to see to it the functional can no longer function.

You couldn’t do this kind of damage to a country in an entire century — overthrowing Saddam Hussein over and over again, every five years.

Time for a Third Party?

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

I still remember how it stung when I found out Ross Perot was crazy, and how this disuaded me from supporting the very idea of third parties for years afterward. Actually, right up until this week. But I also remember how Arnie was elected Governor of California. Gray Davis won the 2002 election, and we were scolded, tut-tutted, knuckle-rapped, that “The People Had Spoken” and Gov. Davis was the representation of that will, don’t we dare question it. The recall petition, therefore, was pre-destined to fail. Well, now. That isn’t how history unfolded, is it.

I’m looking at President Obama and I’m seeing another Gray Davis. The representation of vox populi…”mandate” and everything…we shall not question it…but what does one say, when we do so question, and this popularly-elected official is popped like a soap bubble Gray-Davis style?

I don’t understand Obama’s base at all, and I understand very little of what’s popular. But I do understand there is a common theme to the dissatisfaction simmering nationwide lately, and Obama’s policies, to the extent they can be defined, don’t seem to address this theme much.

Maybe it’s time.

If I wrote the platform, I notice I wouldn’t have to choose between “What I Know Is Right Come Hell Or High Water” and “What The People Want”. Those two appear to have merged. And they merge here…

Don’t Pass On More Debt to Our Children.

How would a party like that work out? It seems to me, if the Obama voters are being honest, a large chunk of their crowd would swarm over to my new party. How many times have we heard it…”spending under George W. Bush at an all time high, public debt swelled to ten trillion, expen$ive War in Iraq costing umpthyfratz billion a day, blah blah blah.” Would it not be fair to say this is part of Obama’s “mandate,” even though The Chosen One doesn’t seem to be acting on it?

I’d say, let’s take baby steps. Let’s start with passing on a public debt to our children, equal to or lesser than what it is now — adjusted for inflation. Let’s define a generation as twenty years.

Yes I know how the public debt swelled over the last eight years. The George Bush compromise was, support the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, mister democrat congressman, and I’ll put my signature under any feel-good social program you care to name. Maybe that’s just the way people behave once they get real power. Maybe it was even the responsible thing to do. I gotta admit, if you make me choose between a President who’s willing to bribe a congressman to protect the country, and a congressman who’s going to bitch and piss and moan about “war crimes” until he gets his bribe and then suddenly shuts up…I know which one I’d trust more, and it isn’t the congressman.

But I simply can’t get behind this. President Freeberg would have said, this is the right thing to do, and if you don’t support it I’ll do everything I can to make sure you pay a cost for failing to protect the country at the voting booth. And you won’t get one nickel of spending past my veto pen over this.

But then again, President Freeberg probably wouldn’t have achieved that compromise, or any other. It’s very likely President Freeberg would have been stuck in a shouting match with Congress, with no troops mobilized anywhere.

Still and all, I can’t accept that we need to nearly double our public debt anytime some asshole like Saddam Hussein starts making trouble for the sake of making trouble.

From what I’m gathering, the democrats are getting elected by faking this “responsible stewardship of nation’s purse strings” thing. Their support comes from the idea that Former President Bush, all by his lonesome, stuck a valve in the public debt innertube and started pump pump pumping away. I think the electorate voted for whoever would pay the debt down, or at least quit racking it up. This other stuff democrats want…tax cuts are evil, we need Europe to like us moar better, you’re not a citizen you’re a serf, every little thing different about you makes you part of a complaining advocacy group, all men are rapists, guns iz bad, ten commandments are offensive, black people can’t make it without help, seventy languages are better than one, and my all-time favorite, all elections were stolen unless the democrat won ’em — the public is not, repeat not, on board.

I think the public wants fiscal conservatism.

I think they’re sold on the notion that tax hikes aren’t the answer. I think if you pass a true-false test around, with one question: “If you raise a tax rate 20%, you collect 20% more revenue” — the vast majority will, rightfully, choose FALSE. Furthermore, I think the public understands it is not only possible, but probable, that the public policy can raise more money by cutting tax rates.

But I think they further understand that raising the revenue is not the problem. Spending the revenue is the problem. Congress is entrusted with a responsibility of which, by design, it can never be worthy. My guys are doing a great job, your guys are demanding all these stupid line items in the budget we don’t really need. The system is not hospitable to the process of trying to bring a budget under control. We know this for a fact, because we have pretty much the same governmental structure in the states and they’re having exactly the same problem.

This is the source of the public’s discontent. They desperately want to send the message to Washington that spending should be brought under control — we don’t want all these feel-good programs, we don’t see ourselves as that weak, and we don’t need some burgeoning, bloated, tricked-out nanny state to tell us when our kids need to be wearing seat belts, or to put miniature trampolines under the trees for when those poor squirrels fall out of ’em.

And they don’t want a huge mess o’bailouts.

That’s why it’s so rare for the politicians to really come out and support the bailouts. It’s always the other guy supporting them. The guy you’re talking to, he hasn’t got a word to say about it, he just votes for the bailout.

That’s wrong, and the electorate knows it. They want it fixed. This time, neither one of the major parties is up to the task…or if either one really is, it isn’t really inspiring confidence in that department.

Food Police

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009

Groan

Tea. Crates. Ships. Boston Harbor. Ker-SPLOOSH.

Where Liberalism Leads

Sunday, December 14th, 2008

You’ve already seen this story many times…as We, Anthem, 1984, Brave New World, THX-1138, Soylent Green, Logan’s Run, that weird Apple Macintosh commercial, etc. etc. etc….

…Chris Muir scribbled down his vision of it two weekends ago. It’s a vision worth repeating over and over, because it’s where we’re headed. All liberals agree we should trudge off in this direction, they only disagree about how far. That is the point that has to be stressed, because it is one hundred percent true.

Strength, aggression, recklessness, creativity, innovation, intuition, pride, individuality, manhood, the instinct to protect, faith, weaponry…a halfway decent long-term memory…you know, if those things were banned-outright, it wouldn’t be nearly so frightening. What all those stories listed above have to do with these precious commodities of humanity, is not that the commodities are actually banned, but rather that they are seized for the purpose of erecting and preserving the state. Our liberals have demonstrated over and over again — all those things are fine if they’re brandished or used in service of liberalism. It’s when they’re used for something else, that you’re supposed to give ’em up or put ’em away.

This is the paradox we embrace when we vote for left-wingers. The underlying concern is what bubbled to the surface in the Watergate days, and lingered under the surface in the decades before that — that our government will insist on making all our decisions for us, and ultimately fail to respect human life. In Logan’s Run, when you turn 30 (or 21) your time is up; in Soylent Green, people eat human flesh without knowing it; in THX, Anthem and We, procreation is controlled and devoid of passion. Our phobia is the lack of respect for human life.

So then we vote in these liberals, who don’t have any respect for human life. They’re dedicated to killing off, at whatever sluggish pace they need to proceed in order to keep their popular support somewhat intact, all of these things that make human life as we know it possible. All the things that nourish it, make it grow, give it hope.

Thing I Know #287. To live a life devoid of recklessness, is the most reckless thing any thinking human can do.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Memo For File LXXVII

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Morgan Rule Number One lately — which says:

If I’m going to be accused, I want to be guilty.

There are a lot of reasons for my thinking about that right about now. We’re just coming off a two-year-long Presidential election, and I’ve been up to my ears like everyone else in all this talk about whether X is a “good guy” or not. We spend an abundance of energy trying to sort out whether this-guy or that-guy is a good guy. I don’t know why we do this. I think deep down, we all understand Barack Obama can be a wonderful guy and still botch quite a few things; John McCain can be a dirty rotten creepy jerk (DRCJ) and still make a lot of good decisions.

Maybe it’s television. When I was a little kid, it was very popular to have these things called action TV shows, which lasted roughly an hour, and aired about eight or nine o’clock weeknights. Pretty much every minute of that hour was spent proving over and over again what a good guy the main character was. He’d do wonderful ordinary things, like gettin’ down to the latest tunes in a honky-tonk bar or discoteque. And then he’d do wonderful amazing things like jumping over a grain silo in an orange car yelling “yee haw!” Or clocking a bad guy in the jaw with his fist. (Back in those days, you could get hit in the face a hundred times with another man’s fist and suffer no structural damage or even any bruising; a swift karate chop between your shoulder blades, however, would knock you out for a couple hours.) Ordinary or extraordinary, it was all wonderful.

He’d put his arm lovingly across the back of the tender doe-eyed vixen of tonight’s episode, and sensitively tell her that her stepfather’s drinking problem was not her fault and she’d have to stop blaming herself. Of course, as an amateur psychologist, every word he said was gospel, even though this was a guy who chose to wear cowboy boots when chasing bad guys on foot.

You know, we really should have known better. When those shows were on, we had a nice southern peanut farmer in the White House who was about as nice a guy as you’d ever want. Sure, I never saw him jump an orange car over a grain silo, but he was generally regarded as a Good Man. Even all these years later, most people think he’s a Good Man. Even people of different political leanings than his, will grudgingly acknowledge this. At least, the ones who haven’t been paying attention to the pus-filled rancid rot that so regularly spews out of this guy’s cakehole. Today, only by paying close attention can you come to the conclusion that Jimmy Carter is an asshole.

But back then, even the people who followed political events, were convinced he was some kind of super-duper-Messiah guy. Not Jesus, but a really nice man come to deliver us from our own inherent nastiness.

Know what happened?

He screwed up everything he touched. Foreign-policy, stagflation, unemployment, energy, hostages…etc., etc., etc. Jimmy Carter would take charge at noon; by seven o’clock that evening, everything that could possibly be busted, would be.

Therein lies the problem with proving what a good guy you are. If you’ve proven it once, you shouldn’t have to prove it again, like Buck Rogers or Those Duke Boys or Dr. David Banner or Steve Austin or Walker Texas Ranger. And people shouldn’t be spending that much time or energy wondering about it.

There is another reason I’ve been thinking about the Morgan Rule.

Blogger friend JohnJ referred me to an unusually informative article over on — of all places — Cracked Magazine. Really. Y’all gotta go check this out.

5 Government Programs That Backfired Horrifically

No, it’s not a bunch of Bush-bashing about the invasion of Iraq. America figures in to only two-and-a-half of them. Your list is…

#5. Prohibition
#4. Glasnost
#3. The Strategic Hamlet Program
#2. The Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909
#1. China’s Great Leap Forward

I’m glad to have an excuse to highlight this one. I think more people need to understand the correlation between dimwitted government programs, and waking up one morning with a trantula the size of a poodle sitting on your face. (Fair disclosure: My grandparents were those people, and they worked through the situation okay. The chronicles scribbled down by those who lived through it, all agree, though, that it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t too much fun.)

Now read that, from top to bottom. Do you see what I see?

Yup. An essential pillar of all five plans…sometimes stated, sometimes not…is…

And after it all falls into place, everyone will be forced to recognize that we are really, really good people.

Why is this a bad idea. Why, in fact, does this always seem to lead to disaster.

The hitch in the giddy-up is a simple one: People will think whatever they want to. This is the simple truism people in power seem to forget, after not too long a time. The worst plans all have it in common that they’ll convince people whoever made the plan, was “good.” In reality, even if the plan turns out to be a roaring success…and this really hasn’t happened very often…the most likely outcome is that after a few years, people can’t remember whose idea it was. There really is no such thing as a plan that will force the common people, to think any identifiable band of elite people, are good. People think what they want to think.

On the other hand, the best plans are the ones that end with “And then people will think about us, the architects of the plan, whatever they damn well want. But at least the plan will be effective.”

These are two diametrically-opposed styles of thinking about plans.

This is why America is a good country: It doesn’t rush to the front of that big pack of countries desperately trying to prove how generically wonderful their leaders are. Quite to the contrary, America is founded on the non-negotiable platform that our leaders are lousy, lying, drunken, dirty-rotten-creepy-jerks. Not so much that, but they require constant oversight.

It’s a precious part of our legacy. And I’m afraid we’re going to lose it on January 20. Millions of my fellow citizens are already convinced that if an idea came out of the mouth of the iPresident-Elect Man-God Modern-Messiah, it must be a good idea.

Face it, Obamatons: Barack Obama could do all five of those things on that list, all over again. He could do ’em before breakfast. After they turn out the same way they did before, you’d still think His poop doesn’t stink.

And that’s fine. An incoming President, by definition, should be popular. Just not to the point where everyone’s distracted from the central issue of whether his ideas are good or not.

Because I think it’s been demonstrated, by now, that governments like ours are at their least effective when they are 1) turned over to people who’ve proven what decent wonderful nice guys they are, and then 2) thrust into a bunch of feel-good experiments designed to prove what is supposed to have already been proven.

Gosh, you know, someone should start a country that is dedicated to not repeating such failures. We could have some, like, really really super-important pieces of paper to remind us not to think that highly of our leaders, so they won’t be tempted to launch such hairbrained schemes to prove what decent guys they are. We could call one of ’em the Declaration of Independence and the other one, the Konstitooshyun…

Seriously, though. I think that’s what the Founding Fathers were trying to do. I think this is exactly what their concern was. Here we are learning it all over again, the hard way, as if we have some internal wiring that compels us to live as serfs within a monarchy. The whole “Make This Guy Think That Guy Is Wonderful” is nothing but a fool’s errand…for both sides. It’s true outside of governments, too. When people are constantly proving what good people they are, something bad is about to happen. It’s a much better option, once you’re accused of something, to just go ahead and be guilty of it if you aren’t already. Because experience has taught me you might as well — people don’t change their minds about things after they have ’em made up. And if you have to work that hard to prove something, you’re probably hiding something ugly, and you’re probably hiding it from yourself.

Just a little thing to think about, in the weeks and years ahead.

Thing I Know #272. When people accuse you of doing something or being something and it isn’t true; when it comes as a surprise to you that anyone would think such a thing about you; I’ve found it is a mistake to put any effort into proving them wrong. If they’re sincere, something is coloring their perception, and whatever it is, it’s outside of your control. If they’re not, then they’re trying to get you to do something that’s probably contrary to your interests. Either way — you aren’t going to change their minds. Don’t try.

Thing I Know #273. This is the flip-side to TIK #272. When you want someone to do something, and you don’t have the authority to force them to, it’s contrary to their interests, and they’ve figured out it’s contrary to their interests or they’re plenty bright enough to figure out it’s contrary to their interests — accuse them of something. It’s your only option. Make sure they aren’t guilty of it. If they’re guilty, they’ll resign themselves to the fact that you’ve figured them out; if they’re not guilty, they’ll do anything you want to prove it. Then you just tie that in to what you want them to do.

High Capacity Magazines

Sunday, December 7th, 2008

GunPundit says bullets and magazines are the next battleground, contemplating this surge in gun-buying in the wake of the election of the iPresident Man-God.

I’m afraid they’re right.

Being a Golden State citizen, I’ve already been gelded. I can legitimately consider ten of the most popular models of Glock, out of two dozen available. That’s a representative sampling of automatic pistol market overall, along with the target rifles as well. Half to three quarters of what is available, is closed to me.

Doesn’t seem like much of a handicap until you make a list of features you really want to see in your next purchase, and then browse those glass cases at your nearest out-of-state shop (Boomtown Cabellas, in my case). Lots of things that can’t be bought. Because of a law that really doesn’t help too much of anything.

I’m in the Sacramento area. That means I get to read about these drive-by gang killings as local stories. I’m hard-pressed to recall one in which the perpetrator was caught, or even identified. And I’ve yet to read about one that took place because his pistol magazine held more than ten rounds. How would that work, anyway? Ten “aw gosh darn it”s followed by a “Zing, I got ‘im, now let’s get outta here”?

Having trouble envisioning it.

Gun Pulled on Bareheaded Moped Rider

Sunday, December 7th, 2008

This is why those brave men chucked all that tea into Boston Harbor.

The nanny-state is a real threat. It is enduring. Timeless. Never forget.

Have you purchased your fair share of carbon offsets today?

Best Sentence L

Saturday, November 29th, 2008

The fiftieth award for the Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) goes to Thomas Sowell for this most elegant and concise truism…

Too many people who argue that there is a beneficial role for the government to play in the economy glide swiftly from that to the conclusion that the government will in fact confine itself to playing such a role.

Hat tip to Inst.

Santa Ignores Elf, Gets Sacked

Saturday, November 29th, 2008

Telegraph.uk.

Andrew Mondia, 32, was one of several Father Christmases handing out presents and seasonal good cheer in the grotto of the London fashion store.

The store said an elf had warned Mr Mondia he should not be inviting either children or adults to sit on his knee and it was against company policy.

A spokesman for Selfridges told the Guardian: “It’s vital that everyone bringing children to see Santa can be absolutely confident that the visit will be a happy one. Unfortunately, this particular Santa didn’t behave in line with his training or the standards we’ve set so we acted swiftly and asked him to leave.”

I see the nanny-state is doing well with our perpetually-offended friends across the pond.

Ship. Tea. Crates. Boston Harbor. Ker-sploosh.

Streaker Justice

Sunday, November 9th, 2008

Oh my

Sex charge worries streaker in Boulder Pumpkin Run

Now that the general election’s over, let’s get on to more important matters: Justice for the Pumpkin 12.

Recent University of Colorado graduate Eric Rasmussen, 23, is among the 12 runners ticketed Halloween night for indecent exposure after running naked with a wobbly orange squash on their heads along the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder.

If convicted, he and 11 others could be required to register as sex offenders. Like many of the Pumpkin 12, he is finding a lawyer.

Rasmussen said it was his first time streaking. He had a great time – until he saw 12 police awaiting him and 150 other naked people at the courthouse.
:
“I was under the assumption there would be safety in numbers – it didn’t occur to me that it would be OK for the police just to take 12 people and disregard the other couple hundred.”

Now that I have some measure of empathy for a stranger looking at this kind of conviction, I must admit — and it pleases me to admit this — I’m ignorant of the details involved. That’s a lifetime, interstate thing, is it not? It would have to be, wouldn’t it?

Folks in the law profession are assuring this fellow that the judge will likely let him off, or at least, not force him to reprise John Turturro’s role in The Big Lebowski. That doesn’t impress me as an adequate protection. I’m sure some judges are wonderful, but I just voted for a couple of judges Tuesday evening, and they were both running unopposed. So who’s swinging that gavel? It seems to all come down to that.

I’m left wondering who’s swinging something else. Who streaks? We live, today, in a time in which hanging a calendar in your private work cubicle with pictures of women wearing tasteful bathing suits is thought to be “going over the line.” So tearing through a public venue in your birthday suit just to be a bad boy, with the curse of Je-soos dangling over your head like the Sword of Damoclese, I guess, would be a result of a) intoxication b) knowledge that you already have to ring doorbells in your neighborhood, and therefore have nothing to lose, or c) profound recklessness bordering on stupidity.

You know, this movie has a judge-scene in it. It’s not likely to invigorate anybody’s faith in the legal system; maybe it should be required viewing at the UC, and in the rest of our colleges.

(Note to self: Scribble down that link somewhere, you’re going to be needing it quite a lot over the next four years.)

Memo For File LXXV

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

Today, I’m linking to a page on Lew Rockwell…

Hey. Come back.

On Lew Rockwell, there is the story of one Horatio Bunce, who may or may not have actually existed, quotes within said story having may or may not occurred. I’m inclined toward the negative — they tend to drone on for a bit, without any mention of who exactly is so meticulously scribbling ’em down.

Be that as it may, the principles involved make good sense, and the principles are what the story is really about. Click on the link and read. Top to bottom. I’ll wait. Believe me, I’ve got nothing better to do with my time. I’ll just wait for you to come back. La dee da dee da…oh but do make sure, if you’re the casually skimming type, that you give an especially hard read to the passage below:

The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man, particularly under our system of collecting revenue by a tariff, which reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be, and the poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means. What is worse, it presses upon him without his knowledge where the weight centers, for there is not a man in the United States who can ever guess how much he pays to the government. So you see, that while you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are even worse off than he. If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give to one, you have the right to give to all; and, as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe, is a charity, and to any amount you may think proper. You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other. No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity. Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose. If twice as many houses had been burned in this county as in Georgetown, neither you nor any other member of Congress would have thought of appropriating a dollar for our relief. There are about two hundred and forty members of Congress. If they had shown their sympathy for the sufferers by contributing each one week’s pay, it would have made over $13,000. There are plenty of wealthy men in and around Washington who could have given $20,000 without depriving themselves of even a luxury of life. The Congressmen chose to keep their own money, which, if reports be true, some of them spend not very creditably; and the people about Washington, no doubt, applauded you for relieving them from the necessity of giving by giving what was not yours to give. The people have delegated to Congress, by the Constitution, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution.

I’d like to add just one other thing.

I am, by the grace of God, presently employed in an industry and in an occupation which is compensated to the extent of excess, and I am debt free. In my economic circumstances, any ol’ numb-nuts can post such a thing without a second thought.

It was passed on to me, by one of my blogger pals who has been out of work for quite some time and whose gas tank and cupboards are becoming quite empty. He is the very picture of the human wreckage being tempted toward voting for Obama the day after tomorrow. He will not be doing that — in fact, he is manning the console, forwarding on fascinating true-patriot libertarian material such as this.

If he can remember principles such as these, I say, then so can we all.

And in a position like that, this takes heap big huge ginormous balls. The kind that an ordinary gentleman cannot easily ambulate, without the benefit of a wheelbarrow, and not of the casual-gardening kind.

Join me in raising a glass to my as-yet-anonymous blogger friend and those like him. And do give him a think or three on Tuesday as you step into the voting booth. Frankly, if he isn’t quite yet ready to give up on capitalism, then I really don’t see where anyone else better off has any business contemplating such a thing.

Obama, no, merci beaucoup.

This Is Good LVI

Sunday, October 19th, 2008

In an open letter to Peggy Noonan (H/T: Conservative Grapevine), Ace of Spades touches on the dark, sinister, evil power of the beltway to turn good conservatives into liberals.

That’s one of the reasons the base is a “vast and broken hearted thing”; whenever something or someone we can celebrate happens to it, there is no shortage of “conservative intelligentsia” who can be counted on to suddenly “grow” in their thinking. The pain comes not from any disappointment in the selection of or performance of Gov. Palin, but from the fact that all too often conservatives are left to feel betrayed by the very people who have made their fortunes by proclaiming themselves to be our spokesmen.

Whoooo gotttsssss itssss preciousssssssss???

It’s often said the U.S. Constitution is a perfect document. This is not true. Our government is beleaguered by a debilitating design flaw. Our country is supposed to be dedicated to the concept of federalism: Minimal powers accorded to the overall, centrist government, with the balance of power devolved to “the States respectively, or to the people” as mandated by the Tenth Amendment.

Yes, believe it or not, that is the intended design: People in Tallahassee should not be deciding how fast you can drive in Broken Bow, Nebraska, and people in Atlantic City shouldn’t be voting on the capacity of the automatic pistol you bought in Colfax, California.

And yet, we have a nation’s capitol. It is surrounded by a beltway. Good conservatives like Peggy Noonan, Earl Warren, Anthony Kennedy, et al, cross over that moat surrounding the castle. And they become hard-core left-wing radical fringe extreme liberals.

It’s the power. All that power sucked into the gravity well that is at the galaxy’s center. They don’t believe in local government anymore. They don’t believe in local intellectual acumen anymore. Once they are part of the octopus’ head, they don’t think the tentacles can be trusted with anything anymore.

They are seduced to the Power of the Dark Side. Once down that road you start, forever will it dominate your destiny.

Meanwhile — can anyone prove to me Sarah Palin is a dimwit? Because if you can’t…and you haven’t met her personally…you people who say she is one, are pretty much talking out your asses. There’s been a lot of ass-talking goin’ on, inside the beltway as well as without, over the last fifty-one days. Ass-talking commencing without running into too much by way of resistance. Or question.

That’s a serious problem. When we forget all about the Tenth Amendment, we’re supposed to be forgetting about it out of a conviction that people in our nation’s capitol, must be gifted, reasoned, intelligent, logical thinkers to end up where they now are. But curiously, the people who spend all their time in that ivory tower within the moat that is the beltway, find it so easy to say Sarah Palin is a chucklehead and a know-nothing redneck, when they haven’t personally met her. Huh. If they’re really worth all this confidence from the rest of us, shouldn’t this at least give them some pause?

Election Year Sanity

Saturday, October 18th, 2008

…from Stossel.

H/T: Becky the Girl in Short Shorts Talking About Stuff.

What’s it gonna take for everyone to stop being so stupid? Maybe we can elect a President who’ll get us all smartened up.

Just kiddin’. Calm down.

Caption Contest: Rahm Emmanuel and Nancy Pelosi

Saturday, October 4th, 2008

FARK thread here.

And at this point, I’m gonna give it to Mr. Blather 2008-10-04 01:28:59 AM. Maybe someone will come up with a better one, but at this point that takes the prize.

On the $700 Billion

Monday, September 29th, 2008

Ace

Did Paulson Pull The $700 Billion Number Out Of His Ass?

Um, maybe.

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

In that case…Mission Accomplished!

And Obama says the answer is more regulation. Yeah, let’s do it! Subject the businesses that have to justify every little number on every little ledger to “oversight” by pencil-neck government bureaucrats who so easily pull big numbers outta their butts. Put the inmates in charge of the asylum.

Anyone who agrees with that, I say, has his head crammed so far up his ass that I estimate he can stick his tongue out and lick his own tonsils.

Not that that’s based on any particular data point or anything.

No Crisis at Fan or Fred

Monday, September 29th, 2008

No flashy-blinky-stuff, no laughey-talky-jokey-smokey stuff…just substance.

Watch it. Just…watch it. And share, with whatever methods and resources you have available.

H/T: Good Lieutenant at Jawa Report.

Toilets With Urinals

Monday, September 29th, 2008

Manchester Evening News

STUDENTS say new signs on toilets at their union building might be making their WC just a ‘bit too PC’.

The traditional sign on the door of the Gents has been temporarily replaced with one that says ‘toilets with urinals’.

And the sign on the Ladies now simply says ‘toilets’ in a move to make the lavatories more inclusive for trans-gender students.

The signs on the toilets in the basement of Manchester University students’ union were changed after a meeting of the union’s executive in the summer.

It is thought the temporary ones will be replaced with permanent new signs in the near future.

How come it is, that over across the pond as well as here, when people become especially worried about making the right decision they start to talk in passive voice?

That really is the most effective way to make a bad decision, I’ve noticed. People start babbling away about what’s going to be inevitable, managing to squeak on through without muttering a word about who exactly thinks something’s a good idea, or what they plan to get out of it…they do it a couple more times…and voila. Poor decision. With consequences. That will be blamed on no one.

Thing I Know #243. With an amazing consistency, ideas mature into dark futures and cloudy legacies after having been repeatedly expressed in passive voice. When they are unowned. “It was decided that…”

Potty Peer

Monday, September 29th, 2008

London Daily Mail Online

The BBC is being investigated by television watchdogs after a leading climate change sceptic claimed his views were deliberately misrepresented.

Lord Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, says he was made to look like a ‘potty peer’ on a TV programme that ‘was a one-sided polemic for the new religion of global warming’.

Earth: The Climate Wars, which was broadcast on BBC 2, was billed as a definitive guide to the history of global warming, including arguments for and against.

During the series, Dr Iain Stewart, a geologist, interviewed leading climate change sceptics, including Lord Monckton. But the peer complained to Ofcom that the broadcast had been unfairly edited.

‘I very much hope Ofcom will do something about this,’ he said yesterday.

‘The BBC very gravely misrepresented me and several others, as well as the science behind our argument. It is a breach of its code of conduct.

‘I was interviewed for 90 minutes and all my views were backed up by sound scientific data, but this was all omitted. They made it sound as if these were just my personal views, as if I was some potty peer. It was caddish of them.’

You certainly can’t accuse the bloke of having been too Americanized. This yankee barely understands the meaning of “caddish” and he is completely baffled by this “potty peer” thing. What in the hell does that mean?

The article continues…

All their interviews, he claims, were heavily cut so that they appeared as personal views.

‘We do not dispute that there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but we do dispute its effects’, he said. ‘The data shows that 2008 is the same temperature as 1980 and that the effects of these changes in the atmosphere are not negative but more likely to be beneficial.’

It’s been said before that 2008 will be recorded by history as the end of the global warming hoax. I predict that will be the case…but nevertheless…the carbon cap-and-trade nonsense will continue, in fact, it will shift from voluntary voucher purchases, to voluntary-with-incentives, to “do it or we’ll withhold your highway funding” or some such.

Things work here pretty much the same way they work in Lord Monckton’s country, after all. Republicans and democrats are both in favor of personal liberties, protection of freedoms and choice, and making it easier to live life. And yet, decade by decade, there are more and more hoops you have to jump through to live that life, fewer decisions you’re allowed to make for yourself, and if you utter a peep of protest about it both Republicans and democrats will accuse you of being a whining little bitch.

Sure you have freedom of speech. You are absolutely allowed to call into question these various nanny-state rules and regulations. But how many of ’em do you recall ever having been rolled back…in your lifetime?

So global warming has been exposed as a complete sham. But the momentum has been built. The regulations are on the way, and once they’re here they’re carved in granite. They’re not going anywhere.

What’s a potty peer?

Bipartisanship

Saturday, September 27th, 2008

This whole “bailout” thing — the actual money it’s going to cost is, is only a portion of the real damage, and it’s a minority portion. The real crippling payment for it comes out of the purse of our thinking. This is the price we really can’t afford.

We can’t have bipartisanship in the United States, because the fissure between our two parties is too deep. We have a party that values life, and another party that only pretends to value life when it really values death. We have a party that wants to work with the market and uphold the virtues of free enterprise, and another party that wants to get rid of free enterprise and put the market out of existence. We have a party that wants people to be independent and another party that wants people to be more dependent on their government.

You don’t find a compromise between these. You simply don’t.

This is where Sarah Palin really slipped and fell during that Couric interview. It’s always been her weak point — the talking points about bipartisanship. She runs out of things to say, she loops these things two, three, four times, it sounds terrible. Repeating something doesn’t automatically make it terrible. Speaking from talking points, instead of from the heart, sounds terrible. As a product, Gov. Palin has been enormously successful, and the success of that product comes from the prospect of translating ideas that work in the real world into our government. Whoever’s feeding her these talking points, is diminishing what’s wonderful about her and in so doing defeating the entire purpose.

Palin’s not alone. Nobody has said anything about the bailout yet, that has captured the public’s enthusiasm…which is a great pity, because the one thing that has a chance of getting us out of this mess is the one thing that would so capture the public’s enthusiasm.

And that thing is this.

Market forces, and populism, are like oil and water. Our nation has a long history, by now, of trying to mix the two together and it has never worked. It creates problems. Our tendency in dealing with these problems has been to blame them on the marketplace, rather than on the mixing, and then to indulge in more mixing. This latest meltdown is no exception, in fact, it’s already gone three laps on this merry-go-round and is starting a fourth. That’s why the dollar amounts we’re discussing are so staggeringly high. If we opt for more compromises where they aren’t possible, we will start that fourth lap and the next time we have to deal with it the dollar amounts will be even higher.

The marketplace has always been friendly to us when we have been friendly to the marketplace. That should be our paramount goal as we seek a solution to this crisis. And if it’s solvency we want, then we need to show our dedication to that solvency, and include that solvency in the objectives of this “oversight” we discuss so much and so often. I don’t know about you, but for the last several decades when I hear about regulatory oversight in the home lending market, I’ve heard a lot about “community outreach” and very little about solvency. So if solvency’s our goal, let’s make the oversight all about that, or else get rid of it altogether. But the status quo is, we pretend to appreciate the virtues of free enterprise, while engaging in a vicious assault upon it — and today, you see the result.

America needs to return to her roots. There is a difference between making it possible for people to live in freedom, with a minimalist government, and bringing them to harm. If you don’t believe that is so, you must not believe in the competence of people to eventually learn from whatever mistakes they may make. You have a right to that opinion. But that opinion is not centrist; it is not moderate; it is not compromise; it isn’t even American. From there, let the debate go forward, but let us debate things as they really are. Humans are glorious, intelligent creatures, Americans are among the most courageous and resourceful among humans, and we have always realized our most dazzling successes when left to embrace opportunity and danger as capable individuals. We got into this mess by putting security above opportunity. We will head in the exact opposite direction, to get ourselves out of it. And we will succeed. We will fix this mess we have made. That is the only way we can.

Update: Talk about humming from the same hymnbook. But there’s been no collaboration here, I found this after I’d written the above. It captures perfectly what I had in mind with these comments about the merry-go-round…so before anybody asks what that was all about, just hit play.

H/T to Neptunus Lex, via blogger friend Buck.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Here I Stand. I Am John Galt.

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

Here you go, you so-called “Objectivists” with your goth clothes and your black lipstick and matching fingernail polish and your candles and your pentagrams. This is what it’s all about, right here. It isn’t centered around denying the existence of God or overly concerned with killing babies.

It’s about being objective. Staying true to yourself. Living your life for the sake of none other, nor asking another man to live for yours.

I have had it up to my eyeballs with the ever-growing government, the nanny-state, the collectivism, the whole world demanding more and more from the producers. I am done with the corrupt politicians, the slackers, the deadbeats, and all the looters and moochers.

I am sick of a government which has drifted from its early Constitutional foundation of limited central goverment and great individual freedom, and become a bloated behemoth consuming 40 percent of our economy and hungry for more. I am finished with out-of-control political correctness and its attendant thought police outlawing truth in order to cater to those who would destroy us.

HERE I STAND. I AM JOHN GALT.

Whether the world around me likes it or not, I will put my foot down and insist on personal responsibility and accountability. I will tell my government to take its hands off my rights, my freedom, and my wallet. If the people of other nations are content to allow their countries to devolve into Hell, that’s their business. I’m sick of financing their destruction. They can plunge into chaos on their own dime.

As for my own, I will be a call for my government to return to doing those things which are right for a legitimate government to do – to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. Not to regulate the price of milk, meddle with the mortgage market, bail out failing companies, or tell me how to raise my children.

HERE I STAND. I AM JOHN GALT.

And I have a pulpit. I may not be able to stop the motor of the world, but I will stomp on the brake, and I will fight for control of the steering wheel before the motor seizes up on its own – and believe me, that motor is on its way to seizing up.

I will give Caesar his due, but I will not bow to him.

I am John Galt. Come and join me, or come and get me. Here I stand.

H/T: Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler.

Individualism and Collectivism

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

Thanks to JohnJ for pointing out this excellent series to me in an off-line.

National Education Service

Saturday, September 20th, 2008

Liberalism and conservatism. Here’s the difference…right here, baby.

Let’s make the elections all about this. Because they’re all about this already.

H/T: Bookworm.

Memo For File LXXIV

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

Quoting myself over at Cassy’s place, as usual, nurturing my bad software-developer’s habit of leaving absolutely nothing unsaid. The subject is this weird article written up by some asshole by the name of Nicholas Provenzo, who is “troubled by…[Gov. Palin]’s decision to knowingly give birth to a child disabled with Down syndrome.”

I do not know how Mr. Provenzo feels about other issues we are debating hotly, nor do I very much care. For he is in some very impressive company on the “should’ve aborted Trig” platform, and that platform splices into some other platforms in a way that can no longer be denied by anyone honestly studying the polling and demographics. Elaborating further, I radiate my wisdom thusly…

It’s really damned peculiar when you start looking at other issues: The people who support these kinds of eugenics — that’s exactly what this guy is talking about — are the same ones who are constantly working at making people as expensive as possible, once they are here.

The minimum wage has to be automatically boosted. Everything’s gotta be a union shop. The “workers” deserve more vacation time, more medical benefits. Welfare benefits aren’t extended enough. You have the RIGHT…to family and medical leave, to sue your employer for looking at you funny, to sue him for not firing someone else who looked at you funny, to sue that guy who owns the house you were breaking into when you hurt yourself, to inspect the coins jingling around in your pocket and not see those horrible letters G, O, D.

Wouldn’t it be more logical if we were divided according to — make this enormous smorgasbord of rights available to every baby from the moment of conception…versus…people cost too much, so let’s cut these rights to the bone *and* institute a draconian code of eugenics. That kind of a divide would make a lot more sense. But instead, it’s flip-flopped. And these lefties are all twisty like a Mobeus strip; they say you have this enormous buffet of “rights” legislated in, a handful at a time, in response to random populist rage. But only if you make it across that vaginal finish line. Until then, you don’t get your vacation time, you don’t get annual bonuses, you don’t get the Bill of Rights, you don’t get to live and you aren’t even entitled to a humane demise…because you don’t exist.

It’s like they know. Their enormous accumulations of artificial “rights” are so expensive, that after awhile they can only be afforded if strict controls are put in place regarding who’s entitled to live in the precious utopia they’re trying to construct. Abortion is like the turnstyle to their precious little domed city.

It fascinates me endlessly that the same people who want the tree we call “humanity” to suck away at water and nutrients at an excessive rate through this exploding nanny-state, are the same people who want said vegetation…properly trimmed. Quality over quantity. There has to be something tying these oppositional motivations together. And they themselves cannot explain what it is, so it has to be something psychological.

Update: Provenzo himself replies, again, over at Cassy’s place. He says we’ve misstated his position — but then, every time he refers to the situation at hand, he’s careful to couch it in terms of a woman who would choose to abort the baby, and is perhaps about to be forced to carry it to term by some thuggish masculine martinet.

As a mother, Gov. Sarah Palin chose to carry Trig to term. This is not only the point Cassy was trying to make — although it is that — it renders Mr. Provenzo’s various summaries of the situation utterly invalid.

Provenzo clarifies himself in this follow-up:

In affirming a woman’s absolute right to abort an unwanted fetus, it seems I have triggered the wrath of the anti-abortion lynch mob if the recent death threats in my inbox are any indication. Such is life when confronting the morally ignorant with their irrationality, yet all their “pro-life” death threats aside, the fact remains: a woman has the unqualified moral right to abort a fetus she carries inside her in accordance with her own judgment.

What is the basis for this claim? What facts of reality demand that a woman enjoy the freedom to exercise her discretion in such a manner? At root, it is the simple fact that until the fetus is born and exists as a separate, physically independent human entity, the fetus is potential life and the actual life of the woman grants her interests and wishes primacy. As an acorn is not the same thing as an oak tree, a fetus is not the same thing as an independent human being. In the case of the fetus, its location matters: inside the woman and attached to her via the umbilical cord, its position in relation to the woman subordinates its status to her wishes; outside the woman, welcome to life in the human race.

But why is biological independence the defining factor of personhood in both morality and under the law? Why isn’t it the moment of conception, or the first instance of fetal heartbeat, or the first instance of fetal brain wave activity (just to name a few of the benchmarks often put forward by anti-abortion activists)? Again, it is the nature of the direct physical connection between the fetus and the mother. Physically attached to a woman in the manner a fetus is, the woman’s right to regulate the processes of her own body is controlling. Unattached and physically independent, the fetus is thus transformed; it is a person no different from anyone else and enjoys all the individual rights of personhood.

Needless, to say, this truth offends the sensibilities of some. They cannot fathom that something like the physical presence of the fetus inside a woman grants a woman power to control it as she controls the affairs of her own body. In a more just world, such people would simply choose not to have abortions, which is their every right. And leave it at that. Yet justice is not the aim of the anti-abortion mob. They simply seek to sacrifice unwilling women upon their altar of the unborn, reducing a woman to a mere birthing vessel the second a fetus exists in her body.

Here’s the flaw with Provenzo’s argument: It depends on the breezy conflation with moral sensibilities and facts. Now granted, perhaps he is so conflating so that he can stand atop the dais of intellectual superiority over his antagonists, as well as ethical superiority. It seems his ego gets a great charge when he does this. But it’s quite a simple truth that the two concepts he is so conflating, are quite different, so the conflation is a rather egregious abuse of logic and common sense.

Whatever you might make of the matter at hand — whether the mother’s right to choose supersedes the right of the “fetus” to live, or the right of the baby to live supersedes momma’s right to choose — this is a conclusion you have drawn, and it’s not a conclusion solely of logic. In using words like “truth” and “fact” Provenzo is essentially confessing to not sticking to the plane of reality and common sense, but rather departing from it. He’s arrived at his own moral code, and as icing on the cake has insisted, with no rational justification whatsoever, that whoever doesn’t agree with him is in possession of an inferior command of the facts.

Additionally, Provenzo has outlined his argument as the very definition of an invalid logical shortcut. It boils down to “babies are not babies until they have matured to the point they can exist outside of the mother; it is so, for I have decide that it is.” It’s fine fodder for those who already agree with Provenzo, who sympathize with him in the desire to feel superior to those who disagree! But it fails the most rudimentary test of a logical argument, for it isn’t even a compelling one. It has absolutely zero potential for winning reasoned converts.

There are a lot of people running around with this idea in their heads. I think what’s going on, is they’re just starting to understand why the Declaration of Independence was written the way it was; they’re just barely grasping the concept that rights can come from something, and of necessity, must come from something. They understand people can have “rights” that may offend those around them.

But they don’t know where to take that thought, because they won’t permit themselve to think of a Higher Power to whom the human race is accountable. That would interfere, you see, with this sacrosanct Right To Choose. I’ve hit on a favorite way to trip them up, and so far, not a single one of them has found a way out of the netting, in spite of their much self-professed intellectual horsepower.

It’s a simple question.

If a woman has an absolute right to abort a pregnancy at any instant in the term, and it’s non-negotiable, but some “mistaken” referendum pops up on my ballot in November that would criminalize abortions, do I have the “right” to vote yes on such a bill?

They don’t know how to answer that. About the most coherent answer I’ve ever gotten to that one is “yes, provided it doesn’t actually pass” or some such…yeah, you got it. At some point I have to stop challenging them, because I’m not sure their brains can think on this too long without melting down.

But the lesson here is, rights have to come from someplace. That’s how God does, after all, get involved in politics. If rights just come from people because there’s no God…then our rights are simply products of self-important snots like Nicholas Provenzo, jotting down words that say “this person has a right to do this, that person has a right to do that.” And this is the opinion of — whom, exactly? Provenzo? A majority? A minority that should be a majority? How long do we have these rights? Forever? Until next week? Until someone gets really, really grumpy and upset that these people have these rights? Until it costs someone some money?

It’s a fair question to ask. Because rights aren’t really rights, if you can only hang onto them so long as it makes someone happy that you’ve got ’em.

Perhaps, in the sitaution where a “fetus” continues living only in contravention to the wishes of the mother, what we are seeing is the very most emotionally jarring test possible of these things we call “rights,” and that attribute they have of enduring against the desires of others. And some of us have what it takes to continue a rational discussion past the point of realizing this, while some others do not.

Update: Cassy Fiano responds to Nick.

Nick’s argument seems to be that all he was saying is that it’s a legitimate choice to abort a child with severe retardation. But poor Nick seems to forget that we can still access what he wrote. And that wasn’t his argument. His argument was never simply about whether or not a woman had the right to choose. Nick’s original argument was that it was morally wrong and selfish for a woman to carry a disabled child to term, not to mention sheer disgust and condescension towards people with disabilities. You can see him saying that here:

Given that Palin’s decision is being celebrated in some quarters, it is crucial to reaffirm the morality of aborting a fetus diagnosed with Down syndrome (or by extension, any unborn fetus)—a freedom that anti-abortion advocates seek to deny.

And there’s more. You should go read it all, really. I can’t do it justice.

Cassy lives in a somewhat different world from me. This “what the liberal meant to say” stuff requires empathy, something I don’t have. So when I say “nurturing my bad software-developer’s habit of leaving absolutely nothing unsaid,” I mean leaving nothing unsaid regarding the subject at hand, according to the text of what the offender (Nicholas) actually wrote. Being empathy-challenged I’m unable to engage in a discourse about what he meant to say, should he so challenge…and, obviously, that is his game. “I never meant that.” Having talent in this area that I lack, Cassy is ready, willing and able to nail his ass to the wall.

I live in a universe that is much more about cause and effect. Nicholas’ argument boils down to one of — as I’ve said — “this right exists because I have decided that it exists.” It is the ultimate weak argument, because it is the ultimate non-argument; it purports to prove exactly what it presumes.

Without being able to empathize with Mr. Provenzo, however, I do believe I can define exactly where he has confused himself. When he says “inside the woman and attached to her via the umbilical cord, its position in relation to the woman subordinates its status to her wishes,” he is not so much stating a fact or a conclusion of sound logic, as announcing a personal value system for the purpose of accumulating a fellowship. If you agree, he’s ready to be your friend, if not, then move on.

That’s not truth. That’s not fact. It’s a belief, nothing more and nothing less.

No, in my world when we debate “rights,” we discuss the ramifications from all sides. Once a right is proposed for a specific class, obviously there is an interest held by the membership of that class in having the right. If there is a debate about the right at all, there’s probably another class that has an interest in the right not being granted. Here’s a great example — freedom of speech. I can think of all kinds of speech I’d like to have suppressed. What speech Mr. Provenzo would like suppressed, should be obvious. But if society is to work that way, it has to be a society with regulated speech. We sit down and vote on who gets to decide what, and whoever is in the minority has to just lump it and shut up.

You have the right not to be beaten up, and not to be killed. This is uncontested (or mostly so). Does that mean it’s impossible to find someone who would have an interest in you not having this right? Ah, no. Normal people, every week if not every day, feel that irrational impulse to clock somebody now and then. But we respect the rights of people not to be abused, not because that is the law, but because intelligent people know that’s what is needed to have even the beginnings of a civilized society.

Here we come to the central handicap of Provenzo’s argument(s). Most rights are accorded after some deliberation regarding whose desires are going to be thwarted. Provenzo sidesteps this deliberation and debate with the prized tactic of the forensically weak: You identify whoever would have an interest in not-granting the right Provenzo wants granted, and you define them out of existence.

In the 1700’s, the “negro” didn’t count.

In the 1800’s, the “injuns” didn’t count.

Post-Roe-v.-Wade, the “fetus” doesn’t count. It’s not a person. It’s tissue. Just like the people with black and red skin in centuries past…they didn’t count.

Provenzo’s argument(s): It sounds good, to a significant number of people, to say this stuff. Therefore, it must be so.

We do not want rights decided this way. In my cause-and-effect universe, if that’s the way they are parceled out then none of us really have ’em.

Update 9/20/08: This radio interview is a good one, by no means a softball session. Provenzo is confused, he says, about why he is being criticized. If he’s sincere in this, then he possesses a stunning apathy and ignorance about the concept of “choice,” such that I find it surprising he’d choose to write an article that’s supposed to be all about this.

The point of the opening line in the first essay, was to criticize a choice someone made. The opening line. Contextless. I really don’t see what else has to be deliberated about it, or why Provenzo finds it appealing to spin it the way he’s trying to.

Good interview. I recommend a listen or two…although it didn’t change my mind much.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.