Births and Deaths: Congratulations Mr. & Mrs. GOP, it's an Objectivist....?; Conservatism R.I.P.

Now Playing: "Lookin' out for No. 1 (Reprise)" from the rock masterpiece Obsession.

What we've just witnessed is sad confirmation that at least 50% of the American voting population are too stupid to value their liberty, and though I'm trying not to be too negative here, a fact is a fact. As of the year 2008, there remains no plausible excuse for an embrace of shopworn Marxism, other than a vast and comprehensive ignorance of philosophy, economics and history. But tempting though it is, I can't really tap into the newly-popular phrase "For the first time in my adult... lifetime, I'm... really ashamed of my country."

Just part of it.

Sincere congrats are due to Obama and the Democrat-Socialist Party however, for a successful campaign that, unlike the Republicans', based its success on fidelity to core principles, albeit evil ones. [Note of emphasis to the GOP "leadership": I just made an evaluation of political ideology based on Ethics. Try it sometime, presumably for what would be your very first.]

Silver linings to the 2008 McCain trouncing:

- John McCain will never be a candidate for American President again;

- The fact of President-elect Obama's ethnicity is a devastating blow to all of America's racists: Black supremecists no longer have the last shred of plausibility in claiming America is a "racist nation," and white supremecists have just gotten the mother of all body-slams. Unfortunately, racism will never be eradicated on an institutional or societal basis until there is an explicit, widespread embrace of individualism. That goal remains a long, long way off, particularly given four years ahead under an American government largely dedicated to individualism's polar antithesis, collectivism;

- The Obama Administration and the Democrat-Socialist majority in Congress face an economic debacle entirely of their own making and a geopolitical situation that can only be described as a powder keg - and have absolutely nobody else upon whom to heap blame for any of the catastrophes their policies will initiate;

- The chaos that will result from Obama's neo-Marxian economics and the certain loss of liberty under his Orwellian government model will, assuming America as a nation survives to tell the tale, bestow upon a catastrophically-maleducated generation (read on,) a gargantuan lesson in economics, politics and history that they ought to have gotten in school, but all-too-clearly did not.

As to the valuation of liberty among the general American population, you may have missed it but we all had a kind of preview or "miner's canary" bellwether back in spring of 2000 with the polls on Clinton/Reno's forced de-liberation of Elian Gonzalez. It's no stunning insight to conclude that when a majority of a nation's people no longer understand and/or value liberty in the midst of such a horrific violation of it, that that nation will likely lose it, and even vote enthusiastically for a politician sworn to the systematic destruction of it.

More to the cause of the situation America finds itself in in November 2008 is the adage that "All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." What I'm talking about here is the simple truth that a Marxist American Presidency as late as the 21st century is something that could only have happened via the intellectual default among the ostensible defenders of Americanism, the conservatives.

There is a lengthy chain here and for brevity (hah) I'm only going to touch on key links of it.

The reason more than half of the voting population of America are ignorant enough to have repeated the potentially-catastrophic choice of collectivist government is because...more than half of the voting population of America were educated in the collectivist cesspool that is American public education.

The reason that American education has become a collectivist cesspool is because the conservatives have nonchalantly conceded that entire institution's control to the hardcore Left over the last two decades. By default. Maybe it was just too much of a bother for them. As I posted earlier, if you've conceded the education of at least one entire generation of Americans to a system inundated with Leftwing ideologues from daycare classrooms up to "prestigious" post-graduate institutions, it is flatly irrational to expect that the products of that system will magically turn out to be something other than...budding Leftwing ideologues.

That vote.
That run for office.
That run newsrooms.
That print newspapers.
That run influential businesses.
That write screenplays and make movies consumed by tens of millions.

Similarly, the takeover of the Republican Party by RINOs, by 'neocons' and by 'social' conservatives more interested in theology than in the fundamentals of individual rights, was not a product of any cohesive effort, it was the filling of a void.

That void is the space where the Republican Party's core philosophy once stood. Every rank-and-file Republican I've spoken with and every one I've heard call in to talk radio and every one whose posts I've read online, has expressed a justifiable dismay at the intellectual rootlessness of today's Republican Party "leadership." Not of the GOP as a whole, mind you, but of its ostensible leaders - the ones who are running the show.

What Should Be Done

I've heard a number of commentators from within the GOP today repeating the same post-rout refocus on goals: "What should the GOP do now?"

1. Well, the first priority, clearly, is to toss out all of the current "leaders" of the Republican party's key organs - the RNC, the NRCC, the NRSC-M.O.U.S.E., etc.

2. The second priority, just as clearly, is for the GOP as a whole to perform a comprehensive head-shed and rediscover - or simply, discover - its core principles.

A mandatory springboard for that journey of discovery is an invaluable set of critiques published in the wake of the 2006 Congressional election rout, titled "Straight Talk About the Soul of the Republican Party. [Note that the "Straight Talk" title is coincidental, not to be confused with McCain's campaign slogan.] Excerpted from that booklet are some articles of vital importance to the GOP, if it is ever to regain a future as the champion of Americanism and of individual liberty:

- Edward L. Hudgins' landmark analysis The Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party;

- Robert J. Bidinotto's Folio Gold Award winner Up From Conservatism;

- Hudgins' amusing yet vital 12-Step Cure for Big-Government Conservatism.

Beyond those worthy introductions, one question looms large, and it goes just like this:

Now is it time to have a look at the philosophy of Ayn Rand?

If the Republican Party - and by extension the future of individual liberty and civilized society - are to recover, strengthen and prosper once again, they will require no less than a second Renaissance and Enlightenment, a.k.a. the intellectual context of America's Founding. To achieve this, they will of necessity need to study and adopt the key elements of objectivist philosophy, which means the explicit embrace of:

- Reason rather than faith as the bedrock of Americanism;

- the ethics of egoism rather than altruism;

- the supremacy and ethical propriety of Individualism and rejection of collectivism in politics;

- the imperative of government strictly limited to the purpose explicitly stated in the Declaration: the defense of rights;

- the moral, not merely pragmatic, defense of capitalism, together with the proper definition of capitalism as laissez faire;

- the moral and intransigent defense of America as a just, sovereign nation - as opposed to the entire edifice of "multicultural" relativism and the continuing atrocity that is the "United Nations."

- the entire philosophic chain that links all of the above into a cohesive intellectual whole, and the ability to defend it, in whole or in part, in rational debate.

The Republican Party has been in the grip of factions far removed from core American principles for at least fifteen years - chief among them that hazy fluff that calls itself "conservatism"; the gaping political void they've left where those principles and principled practice ought to have been has just been filled - by the most radical collectivist politician ever to reach the White House, backed by an equally-militant hard-Left Congressional majority.

After the blatant, altruistic cave-in by the "Freshman" GOP Congress in late 1995 over the "heartless" government shutdown; after the contemptible rewarding of Bob "What am I doing here" Dole with the GOP candidacy only months later and his subsequent trouncing by Clinton; after the steady election-by-election downward spiral of GOP Congressional numbers since, culminating in the loss of both houses to the Demo-Socialists in 2006; after the slap in the face of the GOP base that was the 2008 McCain nomination; after the shellacking of that candidate by the lunatic-fringe Left's candidate yesterday - one would hope that the message might at last have sunk in with our Party's conservative "leaders": Your habitual default on core GOP philosophy is destroying America and placing the very survival of America and of Western Civilization itself at risk.

Come to think of it, maybe you ought to just start with Rand's March 6, 1974 West Point address "Philosophy: Who Needs it?" The answer to that question ought to be amply clear at this point.

It's time for you to step down, and to return the Republican Party to... Republicans.
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11-05-08: The Golgafrinchans Have Landed!

Now Playing: Winston Smith Takes It On The Jaw by Utopia

Would you like to have a bath and a ducky?

I'm going to have a bath and a ducky.

Stay tuned for some announcements on deaths and births.
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Fred Speaks on the Election

Now Playing: This...



Good stuff, but he's putting it mildly. Too mildly.

Just yesterday we got a couple new glimpses into the retro-commie agenda behind Barack Obama's smiling mask:




So assuming you're making less than $250,000, ermm, $200,000, ermm, $150,000, ermm, $120,000, ermm, $75,000, ermm, $25,000, or...whatever is BO's latest Threshold for Human Rights Forfeiture, 'think your Obama "tax cut" will likely offset energy prices that "skyrocket" by his intentional plan?

Forget about that - do you think that a functioning, semi-free society will somehow continue onward if a power-crazed collectivist intentionally causes an economic catastrophe so as to create an opportunity for a vast upward-ratcheting of government power over individuals? 'Want to bet that that is the real meaning behind the "change" that he's been going on about?

To be perfectly clear, I do not think that John McCain will ever be mistaken for a friend of economic liberty, much less an advocate of a restoration of laissez faire in America. But I do not believe that his opponent intends to leave open the possibility of his retro-collectivist experiment being scrapped after it does its inevitable damage to the American economy and population. His openly-stated contempt for the Constitution should be alarming to every American individual who yet values the institution of liberty.

California's electoral votes are universally conceded to be in the Democrat Party column already. But if you're a voter in one of those states where one's vote does matter - the key battleground states where it's neck-and-neck - and if you're still undecided, you need to ask yourself a very important question:

Given the picture that's emerged of Obama from the start of this calendar year - from the raging black supremecist and America-hater Jeremiah Wright to the evidence of Wright's influence in Michelle Obama's infamous "first time I'm proud" quote to Obama's warm relations with unrepentant and remorseless Stalinist butcher-wannabes to his stated belief that the United States Constitution itself is "fundamentally flawed" to this latest revelation of Obama's apparent plan to dump the American and world economies into chaos intentionally - do you still think he is "another mainstream Democrat Presidential candidate?"

Coulter is right: If one of our foreign enemies had announced this kind of intentional assault on America, we could get a UN Resolution on it - it would be tantamount to a declaration of war against America. And this guy is a candidate for President of the United States?

McCain we can work with. Obama, backed by a monolithic, hard-Left Congress would comprise a collectivist trojan horse, now openly bent on destroying the American and Western politico-economic system in hopes of dragging a new century into a "new" Marxist utopia.

All the rest of us know where that road leads, inescapably.
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Open Letter to the GOP: Obama Candidacy as an American Crisis, i.e., Failure is Not an Option

Now Playing: True Love, from Pat Benatar's best and most-maligned album



Perhaps this post is superfluous in that McCain/Palin's numbers have seen a dramatic and consistent late-campaign surge in polls - even when filtered through the stunningly biased media that sponsor and report them. At any rate, I think it's worthwhile to reiterate the vast, crisis-level threat to core Americanism that the Obama candidacy and the political context in which it has appeared represent. For the knee-jerk types not in the habit of listening to reasoned discussion nor of reading earlier posts, you can drop the "fear of a black candidate" race-baiting pretty much any time now. I don't give a damn if the candidate is orange, blue or purple with aquamarine polka-dots. This is about ideology. If you want "proof of color-blindness," you can take note of the fact that Janice Rogers Brown stands foremost in my mind as the single figure within D.C. government who really gets it, all the way down the philosophic line to First Principles - something of which the GOP "leadership" currently have no clue.

On the other hand, what we have in Obama, in hard factual evidence, is a candidate that:

- Openly advocates the transformation of America's semi-free, semi-capitalist system into a full-blown socialist state with all its noxious and deadly trimmings: obliteration of property rights under "redistribution" or "spreading the wealth around," massive expansion of the size, scope, expense and power of the State over individuals, and by extrapolation of his chosen ideological and personal associations, the subjugation of any and all who dare disagree;

- Openly advocates moral capitulation to the absolute worst of the world's butchers, thugs and tinhorn dictators - to basically the Who's Who of Worldwide Tyranny - concurrent with a policy of gutting America's defense, which defense is the first obligation of government under the Constitution...;

- Openly advocates, along with his ideological clones in Reid, Pelosi, et al., the shredding of the First Amendment, the censorship of his/their prime political opposition via the corruptly misnamed "fairness doctrine";

- Considers the United States Constitution, that precious, indispensible lifeline to individual liberty, to be "fundamentally flawed" - which given the Obama "change" mantra one can only assume to mean: something to be obliterated in favor of some other (i.e., collectivist and therefore deadly) credo;

- Openly advocates the complete reversal of the Founder's magnificent, historically-unprecedented achievement: Their subordination of the collective to the individual, their subordination of might to right, their subordination of "nations of men" to a "nation of laws";

- Openly advocates writing into binding law a catastrophic logical contradiction that philosopher Ayn Rand identified explicitly a full forty-five years ago: the notion that one can establish "rights" that depend by their very nature on the violation of the legitimate rights of others - i.e., a "right to violate rights," i.e., slavery. For the first time in a generation a Presidential candidate and his Party are, once again, openly advocating not just confiscatory taxation, but the establishment of "rights" to goods and services produced by other people, to be confiscated by brute force for the purpose;

- Openly acknowledges - rather, brags about - having worked with militant Marxist "Weather Underground" terrorist William Ayers on education "reform" in Chicago - which "reform" involves transforming the education of American children into a neo-Leninist indoctrination in "revolution";

- Not-so-openly chooses as friends and mentors frothing, racist, America-hating black supremecists; Marxist professors; who remains curiously silent while those chosen mentors heap praise and awards on the "Nation of Islam's" virulent racist Louis Farrakhan, etc. ad nauseam.

Folks, over its 232 years America has seen its share of gutter-evil haters of humanity; its bloodthirsty killers; its fascist, socialist and other collectivist-variant killers and killer-wannabes; its domestic terrorists and its mass murderers. And always, they were ultimately acknowledged as outlaws acting in defiance of America's core principles of reason and ethically-inalienable individual rights.

But never has America had a Presidential candidate who has, at various times throughout his life, made ideological common cause with elements from all of those groups, in "unity" against the most moral, decent, demonstrably good civilization in human history: America and, by extension, the whole of that Western Civilization.

* It is time for the GOP to wake up - though I think it finally has - and mobilize to defeat the Obama machine;

* Time to stop complaining about media that are monolithically in the pocket of the Obama campaign, and rather to perform an all-out last minute voter mobilization drive and get this election won, decisively;

* Time to network geometrically with any and all who value liberty, to persuade any on-the-fence "undecided" voters that their very lives and the very civilization in which they live and thrive are at stake here.

_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_

=> Above all, it is time for the GOP to wake itself up to its most catastrophic of defaults: Its de facto relinquishment of American education into the hands of these selfsame militant collectivist thugs.

See, there is a reason for this seemingly bizarre Obama phenomenon - an obscure politician with next to zero political experience who's suddenly propelled into the limelight, then to within reach of the most powerful office in the semi-free world, in the space of a decade.

That reason is: A generation of new voters who've just completed 12+ years of education under militant Leftwing academics.

The reason for that, in turn and to complete the circle, is: Republican "leadership" that's long since jettisoned its grasp of its ostensible First Principles (see the essays Man's Rights and The Nature of Government by Rand,) and allowed the education of their children to be carried out by people with, at best, a sneering contempt for the best within America, and at worst with an open desire to repeat Hitler's bloodbath four times over, right here in America.

As Rand said again and again: It is ideas, not people, that determine the course of history and the fate of nations. It was not Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, Guevara, Pol Pot, Kim Jong-Il, Milosevic, Ceauceascu and the like who created their respective barbarities by themselves or even via their cliques of like-minded killers, it was the people-at-large who put them in power and thereby enabled them to murder on a massive scale.

It is my own opinion that the frothing, goose-stepping collectivist ideologue is not motivated primarily by his/her warped, misanthropic worldview, but rather by a core-level bloodlust, a simple desire to... murder on a massive scale.

The ideology is just an enabling mechanism.

The choice of the wrong ideology, therefore, and to paraphrase John Ridpath, is as deadly as the choice of poison over food. If the population are allowed to be maleducated and/or intentionally miseducated with such poison, to expect some result other than disaster is irrational.

As philosopher Leonard Peikoff put it in his disturbing, landmark work The Ominous Parallels, we have come dangerously close to the point of no return.

So it is imperative that from this point forward the number one priority of the Republican establishment, as well as the libertarians and every other non-Democrat-Socialist organization in this country, should be to take back education from the intellectual killers who by their own admission seek to manufacture their future enablers via the replacement of education with collectivist indoctrination.

No, we can't know in advance if Obama's ideology, either stated or strenuously-concealed, is merely the rhetoric of a benign Leftwing radical (if such a thing can be posited with a straight face,) and we won't know until next Tuesday if the American population have become so intellectually corrupt, so historically vacuous, and so divorced from their valuation of even their own liberty that they will vote that liberty away in the manner of a collective/collectivist suicide.

What we can know with certainty is that if mankind is to have a future that does not involve a descent into the barbarity and raw evil of another collectivist "experiment," if mankind is instead to reclaim civilization's intellectual bedrock and spark another Renaissance and Enlightenment, then we must take back the whole of our educational establishment from the intellectual child molesters who have been allowed to set up shop right in front of America's young people.

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Yet More Debate Notes

Now Playing: "Slow Ride by KWS - bitchin' vid!

Another week, another debate in an endless campaign cycle. When McCain/Palin lock this thing up, let's hope that one of the first things they hammer out is a reform of Presidential primaries, maybe restoration of the earliest primary to a nice tolerable maximum of eight months prior to general elections.

What the Democrat-Socialist Party's corrupt, intentional truncation of Bush's second term by roughly one-half has done is to replace one half of this and every future American Presidential term with a different form of government: First a rule by committee or tribal council - made up of the pack of candidates from both Parties - followed by a de facto triumvirate, consisting of the sitting President and the two opposing challengers (assuming the sitting President himself is not running for re-election, in which case it's a kind of uneasy, two-year "co-Presidency.")

None of which is allowable under the Constitution.

As if the United States Constitution yet mattered to any given Democrat. By now it ought to be obvious that to today's neo-barbarian Democrats that particular document is only a tool, to be utilized or ignored as expediency demands.

In tonight's debate - and through the remainder of this campaign - the win is there for McCain/Palin's taking. Yes, I know that all of the polls are reflecting the Primacy of Consciousness view of the standings. In the interests of "fairness," maybe. For the philosophically uninitiated, the Primacy of Consciousness is the Platonic school of thought that says that there is no reality independent of consciousness, rather that consiousness creates or determines reality. In short, it's the view that "It's true because I say so." The valid antithesis to that demonstrable fraud is the Primacy of Existence, hammered out by America's first Founding Father, Aristotle - which states, irrefutably, that existence exists independently, regardless of the wishes of anyone within it. Anyhow, the polls' sponsors are singing a unison paean to Obama, with a current (as of October 15,) median (with the polar extremes excised,) of something like Obama 48% to McCain 44%, a.k.a. a dead heat.

This election is nearly impossible to call at this point, even though historically the polls were spectacularly, landslidingly wrong in their skew to the Democrat side in the 1980, 1984 and 1988 elections. The primary reason (pun if you want one,) is that never in our lifetimes have the media been so comprehensively, unconcealedly shilling for a single candidate. The factual examples are as endless as the last two years' "news" articles, but one need look no farther than a simple comparison between the media's treatment of the Foley scandal in 2006 and the near-identical scandal of his Democrat successor, Tim Mahoney, right today as you read this.

Yes, it's true: Foley's Democrat-Socialist successor, Tim Mahoney, is embroiled in a sex scandal. What, you didn't know? It differs only in the plumbing of the various sexual partners and in the fact that, for some reason, this time nobody's demanding the resignation of the House speaker for covering up the story. When the story started to filter through - mostly via talk radio, which the Demo-Soc barbarians' Constitution-shredding wing is clamoring to censor - Pelosi abruptly found her voice and decided it was time to have a look at it. Maybe she was just distracted.

So I have absolutely zero trust of what I hear from news media and their polls. They're giving the concept of "giggling cheerleaders" a bad name. Therefore we're left to rely on the one poll that is decisive, the one that will be taken on November 4. Even that has been clouded in doubt, since "ACORN," an Obamanista organization from way back that is up to its hairy eyebrows in the mortgage meltdown, has also been working diligently to destroy the cornerstone of America: pluralism itself.

If law enforcement is still capable of... enforcing the law, we will have this Obama-Campaign-sponsored attack on American pluralism cleaned up and indictments handed down for all involved, well before Election Day.  And assuming an accurate and properly-administered election, a whole lot of Obama supporters who've been glued to poll data will be in for a rude awakening on November 5.

If one half of the American population are committed to the destruction of American pluralism - and it would apppear they are - and if they are allowed to succeed as they very nearly did in November and December of 2000, then American liberty itself is in jeopardy.

Now, though the debate is roughly 40 minutes along, I'm going to grab some food instead of trying to do play-by-play. I'll have a look at it on repeat, but I expect it'll be roughly identical to that of September 26, (excepting the absence of a roomful of mostly clueless participant-questioners): No major advantage gained, no opinions changed.

I'll be glad when this endless campaign is over, and the saturation coverage of that Illinois Marxist will at last be behind us.
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Grilling The Perp

Now Playing: This...



Wesley Mouch lives.

It's never going to happen, but one wishes that at least a handful of Republican Congressmen would trade their "go-along-to-get-along" Nice Guy posture for some of what Mr. O'Reilly's been imbibing. Philosophically O'Reilly is all over the map but one thing he's got is a full understanding of how to scrap when the situation calls for it. No, emotion is seldom the best mode of discourse, but neither is the Dead Bug posture the GOP "leadership" have adopted - when they're not joining creeps like Frank in signing onto the monstrosity that's just become law. It's a sad thing when the simple fact of someone openly and unapologetically challenging a crook becomes cause for celebration...

To get a little perspective on what the Franks, Dodds, Pelosis, Reids and...Bushes and McCains have just signed off on; some of the lard, tinkerings, manipulations and goodies tacked onto this vast, slobbering mutant pig:

Targeted Tax Credits and Changes

Sec. 101. Renewable energy credit.
Sec. 102. Production credit for electricity produced from marine renewables.
Sec. 103. Energy credit.
Sec. 104. Energy credit for small wind property.
Sec. 105. Energy credit for geothermal heat pump systems.
Sec. 106. Credit for residential energy efficient property.
Sec. 107. New clean renewable energy bonds.
Sec. 108. Credit for steel industry fuel.
Sec. 109. Special rule to implement FERC and State electric restructuring policy.
Sec. 111. Expansion and modification of advanced coal project investment credit.
Sec. 112. Expansion and modification of coal gasification investment credit.
Sec. 113. Temporary increase in coal excise tax; funding of Black Lung Disability Trust Fund.
Sec. 114. Special rules for refund of the coal excise tax to certain coal producers and exporters.
Sec. 115. Tax credit for carbon dioxide sequestration.
Sec. 116. Certain income and gains relating to industrial source carbon dioxide treated as qualifying income for publicly traded partnerships.
Sec. 117. Carbon audit of the tax code.
Sec. 201. Inclusion of cellulosic biofuel in bonus depreciation for biomass ethanol plant property.
Sec. 202. Credits for biodiesel and renewable diesel.
Sec. 203. Clarification that credits for fuel are designed to provide an incentive for United States production.
Sec. 204. Extension and modification of alternative fuel credit.
Sec. 205. Credit for new qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicles.
Sec. 206. Exclusion from heavy truck tax for idling reduction units and advanced insulation.
Sec. 207. Alternative fuel vehicle refueling property credit.
Sec. 208. Certain income and gains relating to alcohol fuels and mixtures, biodiesel fuels and mixtures, and alternative fuels and mixtures treated as qualifying income for publicly traded partnerships.
Sec. 209. Extension and modification of election to expense certain refineries.
Sec. 210. Extension of suspension of taxable income limit on percentage depletion for oil and natural gas produced from marginal properties.
Sec. 211. Transportation fringe benefit to bicycle commuters.
Sec. 301. Qualified energy conservation bonds.
Sec. 302. Credit for nonbusiness energy property.
Sec. 303. Energy efficient commercial buildings deduction.
Sec. 304. New energy efficient home credit.
Sec. 305. Modifications of energy efficient appliance credit for appliances produced after 2007.

Other Tax Credits and Changes

Sec. 101. Extension of alternative minimum tax relief for nonrefundable personal credits.
Sec. 102. Extension of increased alternative minimum tax exemption amount.
Sec. 103. Increase of AMT refundable credit amount for individuals with longterm unused credits for prior year minimum tax liability, etc.
Sec. 201. Deduction for State and local sales taxes.
Sec. 202. Deduction of qualified tuition and related expenses.
Sec. 203. Deduction for certain expenses of elementary and secondary school teachers.
Sec. 204. Additional standard deduction for real property taxes for nonitemizers.
Sec. 205. Tax-free distributions from individual retirement plans for charitable purposes.
Sec. 206. Treatment of certain dividends of regulated investment companies.
Sec. 207. Stock in RIC for purposes of determining estates of nonresidents not citizens.
Sec. 208. Qualified investment entities.
Sec. 301. Extension and modification of research credit.
Sec. 302. New markets tax credit.
Sec. 303. Subpart F exception for active financing income.
Sec. 304. Extension of look-thru rule for related controlled foreign corporations.
Sec. 305. Extension of 15-year straight-line cost recovery for qualified leasehold improvements and qualified restaurant improvements; 15-year straight-line cost recovery for certain improvements to retail space.
Sec. 306. Modification of tax treatment of certain payments to controlling exempt organizations.
Sec. 307. Basis adjustment to stock of S corporations making charitable contributions of property.
Sec. 308. Increase in limit on cover over of rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Sec. 309. Extension of economic development credit for American Samoa.
Sec. 310. Extension of mine rescue team training credit.
Sec. 311. Extension of election to expense advanced mine safety equipment.
Sec. 312. Deduction allowable with respect to income attributable to domestic production activities in Puerto Rico.
Sec. 313. Qualified zone academy bonds.
Sec. 314. Indian employment credit.
Sec. 315. Accelerated depreciation for business property on Indian reservations.
Sec. 316. Railroad track maintenance.
Sec. 317. Seven-year cost recovery period for motorsports racing track facility.
Sec. 318. Expensing of environmental remediation costs.
Sec. 319. Extension of work opportunity tax credit for Hurricane Katrina employees.
Sec. 320. Extension of increased rehabilitation credit for structures in the Gulf Opportunity Zone.
Sec. 321. Enhanced deduction for qualified computer contributions.
Sec. 322. Tax incentives for investment in the District of Columbia.
Sec. 323. Enhanced charitable deductions for contributions of food inventory.
Sec. 324. Extension of enhanced charitable deduction for contributions of book inventory.
Sec. 325. Extension and modification of duty suspension on wool products; wool research fund; wool duty refunds.
Sec. 401. Permanent authority for undercover operations.
Sec. 402. Permanent authority for disclosure of information relating to terrorist activities.
Sec. 501. $8,500 income threshold used to calculate refundable portion of child tax credit.
Sec. 502. Provisions related to film and television productions.
Sec. 503. Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children.
Sec. 504. Income averaging for amounts received in connection with the Exxon Valdez litigation.
Sec. 505. Certain farming business machinery and equipment treated as 5-year property.
Sec. 506. Modification of penalty on understatement of taxpayer’s liability by tax return preparer.
Sec. 512. Mental health parity.
Sec. 601. Secure rural schools and community self-determination program.
Sec. 602. Transfer to abandoned mine reclamation fund.
Sec. 702. Temporary tax relief for areas damaged by 2008 Midwestern severe storms, tornados, and flooding.
Sec. 703. Reporting requirements relating to disaster relief contributions.
Sec. 704. Temporary tax-exempt bond financing and low-income housing tax relief for areas damaged by Hurricane Ike.
Sec. 706. Losses attributable to federally declared disasters.
Sec. 707. Expensing of Qualified Disaster Expenses.
Sec. 708. Net operating losses attributable to federally declared disasters.
Sec. 709. Waiver of certain mortgage revenue bond requirements following federally declared disasters.
Sec. 710. Special depreciation allowance for qualified disaster property.
Sec. 711. Increased expensing for qualified disaster assistance property.
Sec. 712. Coordination with Heartland disaster relief.
Sec. 801. Nonqualified deferred compensation from certain tax indifferent parties.

No more. I've reached my disgust limit for the day. Later.

Debate Non-Coverage

Now Playing: The VP Debate, natch...

I'm not going to do play-by-play commentary on this debate folks. I'm not a journalist, and I'm not going to sit here and pretend I'm a journalist. Granted, a ham sandwich could do a better job than 90% of the "journalists" out there today - hence the explosive popularity of the New Media and the precipitous nosedive in viewership and readership of "mainstream" media.

I don't type that fast, so just some general observations, as they come up...

#1: Why is there a live audience? Is this "Jeopardy?" Given the Katie Couric interview and the blatant conflict of interest in the "moderater" of this debate I suppose you could say that it is, copyright infringement notwithstanding. Yet I have that question: Why? So far they're fairly well-behaved, but... I'm watching this to find out what these two - that's: two - people think about this and that vis-à-vis the American political scene, not what a random audience of irrelevant outbursts thinks.

- Both candidates have utterly, infuriatingly, remained floating entirely on the populist surface of the current economic debacle. The downside goes mostly to Palin, because (shock of all shocks,) she is the Republican candidate. And there she stands, pointing the fraudulent, populist finger at "the greed of Wall Street," and not a peep about the government-sponsored regulatory swamp that is the primary cause of what we're looking at in headlines today. No mouth on that stage has yet formed the words "Fannie Mae" or "Freddie Mac." (!) Tell me: What is wrong with this picture?

- On "climate change," a.k.a. "weather," Biden is spewing 100% faith in the eco-fascist line that EvilGreedyHumanity is the cause of... weather, and that EvilGreedyHumanity must therefore be punished. By government.

- Our "moderator" has just tossed Biden a helpful hint in his narrative with "Clean coal, clean coal." Nice.

- "Ahahahahahaha..." Are we watching a rerun of "The Munsters?" Hmmm... Why do we have a live audien... Oh forget it.

- Ohhh, serendipity! Despite the oddly selective camera POV changes that we're seeing - what union do they serve? - just as Palin is hammering Obama on his naïve pledge to meet face-to-face with international mass murderers, dictators and terrorists, there's another one of those split-screen things (that only show up when Palin is speaking, oddly,) and Biden, visibly knocked off balance, starts a neck-scratch that looks for all the world like someone trying to loosen his collar under the heat. As well it should. 8^D Bravo, Palin!

- One difference I'm seeing here - and I will acknowledge a bias in favor of Palin - is demonstrably obvious: Biden has given a series of what are obviously rehearsed mini-speeches, while Palin has been doing mostly extemporaneous responses off of rehearsed notes. Advantage: Palin.

- She hit it out of the park on education, and our "impartial moderator" appropriated her line by way of dilution... arrggh.

- My scorecard thus far says that, on the surface, these are two appealing candidates. Biden is someone I've always considered oddly likeable, in the manner of a circus clown - he's prone to some of the most spectacular verbal gaffes in American politics (so far absent in this debate) - unfortunately his ideology is entirely antithetical to individual liberty. Palin's palpable, Reaganesque self-confidence and command of both herself and facts and issues is nearly overwhelming. Just now she's touching upon Reagan's "Shining city on a hill" and it's got me ready to stand up and do the wave... Damn! Errrmmm... can we change the GOP ticket to "Palin/McCain?" Just wondering...

- Biden: "They're lookin' for help. They're lookin' for help." Hmmm, that reminds me of a great lady's simple statement: "Life is not one huge hospital."

- Oh, he's off again on another speech, this time the "McCain Is Not A Maverick" speech. Note to Biden: If you're gonna deliver a memorized speech in the context of a debate, you've got to try to keep it from sounding like... a rehearsed speech.

Number one is that you don't launch into it within 200 milliseconds of the "moderator's" prompt, as if we're supposed to believe a polished flourish of immaculate prose just sprung forth unbidden (un-Biden?) from a relatively mundane question. And you don't blurt it out in a machine gun staccato for two solid minutes. Geez.

- Closing arguments... Fluff, mostly, but Biden, apparently victim to some bizarre temporal shift, is going off on the Bush Administration. Closing arguments are speechlike by definition, but Biden is again sounding a little...too rehearsed. "Selfishly may God protect our troops." Huh?

- Ok, what's with Palin's lapel mic volume being jacked up to clipping level, pre and post-debate? 'Guess the Democrat-Socialist technical staff at this debate (say it isn't so!) are hoping for a usable gaffe. Errmm, why are these people so petrified by Palin?

My unvarnished appraisal of "Who won?":

More than any recent debate I've experienced, and (unfortunately) there have been one hell of a lot of them, this one reminds me of a PKA or WBA title bout. In a nutshell:

Nobody was knocked out, but one contender unquestionably dominated the ring: Palin.

To give Biden his due, he fought well and didn't make any major mistakes. But his younger, more articulate and down-to-Earth opponent danced rings around him, despite her often infuriating lapses in philosophical grounding.

As that MSM dweeb ('forget his name but I remember it was weird,) said earlier today: "This election is over."

But only if McCain/Palin don't make any serious mistakes.

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What Would Ronald Reagan Do?

Now Playing: "Heretics" - Lane, Hellborg, Sipe, from "Time Is The Enemy 1996

Or more specifically, How Would Ronald Reagan Handle This Bureaucratic Meltdown?

Gee, see if you can guess:

"The government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."

That, in a nice nutshell, is a concise history of the twin Italian-Fascism-Revival entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and how they evolved into the corruption bomb we've just had blow up in our faces.

Where, oh where, is Reagan's brand of cut-through-the-crap leadership today? I'll tell you where it's not, and that's between the ears of that frothing, nonsense-spewing retro-Marxist and economic illiterate Obama, nor that craven conformist and... economic illiterate John McCain.

Gee, I'd like someone to vote for...

Once again, with feeling:

Dear France, can we borrow your President for eight years or so?

Le Monde Va de Lui Même: a.k.a. So...Where's the Economic Armageddon?

Now Playing: "Paper Money" by RonMon and... some singer

(Oh, those pesky - nay, infuriating - voids...)

Washington, D.C. (pAP) - In a development that wrought waves of apoplectic panic among scores of D.C. politicians and minor functionaries, the Economic Meltdown of 2008 rudely failed to show up today. The development sent deeply-cherished Visions of Discretionary Sugarplums and Bundles of Earmarks to evaporate in agonized shrieks. Rep. Barney Frank (S-MA) was rushed to an undisclosed Georgetown hospital today on complaints of drool-related dehydration complicated by a metastatizing guilt, and was assigned to a bed beside that of Senator Christopher Dodd (S-CT) who remains in critical condition with the same illness.

Seriously, with today's 485-point rebound from Monday's record plunge, haven't we all just seen a blatant, in-your-face, reality-based confirmation of the market's ability to take care of itself? Of the fact that the fervently-promoted $700B Mortgage Bailout is, in fact, not even pragmatically justifiable? (I mean "pragmatic" aside from the overriding need to pander.)

Hmmm?

Call me deeply not-shocked-in-the-slightest, but every single major politician is getting this mortgage crisis wrong, most conspicuously - and stupidly - the Bush Administration and GOP Presidential candidate John McCain.

The Democrat-Socialists we can take as simple givens: They will advocate whatever is most likely to facilitate the destruction of America, and what is most thoroughly at odds with the facts of reality. The Demo-Socialists remain reliably constant.

But... what's the GOP's excuse?

First, some necessary background, in the form of three excellent and beleaguered video summations, posted at The Bidinotto Blog

If only Bush and/or McCain had a couple sane economic advisors - for the record, Dr. George Reisman and Dr. Walter E. Williams are at the top of the list - and listened to them, they would likely make a new announcement that this bailout is not needed (if it ever was.)

But Bush and McCain do not have sane economic advisors, nor apparently even competent political strategists. The no-brainer position on principle (look the word up, guys,) is staring them right in the face, yet they're consumed with an obsessive-compulsive devotion to this $700 Billion Congressional hog-wallow. A prime opportunity to divorce themselves from the Demo-Socialist Party's power-grab and realign themselves with the overwhelming wishes of the American people is also there for the taking. Can you imagine the looks on the faces of Pelosi, Frank, Obama and that pack of clowns if the Republicans left them standing alone in the cold with their mega-looting bill? So do you think Bush or McCain will spot the principled option and seize it? Naaaaahhh.

Wall Street nosedived yesterday, but... has the economy melted down? Or is this just a massive yet otherwise normal self-correction, much like the self-correction of the market following the implosion of the tech bubble ca. Winter 2000-2001? As of today, the market has gotten its legs back handily, with absolutely no help from the Federal Government. That's: All by its lonesome. Say it isn't so! As testimony to the embarrassment now afflicting the pack of looters who've been licking their chops for some of that fabled $700B, note the near-unanimity of condemnations...not of Washington's "Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac" corporativist scammers (BARNEYFrank! Ach...ach...CHRISDodd!! 'Sneeze, sorry,) but of Wall Street and its producers. Naturally.

Granted, some of that stock rebound may be attributable to Wall St.'s expectation that the government will eventually play Mega-Santa. But could it be that maybe, just maybe, Wall Street can indeed wean itself off of the government teat and walk on its own two feet? The fact that "economic armageddon" has not occurred, as predicted so hopefully by the Democrat-Socialist Party, argues that Wall Street can.

So... what should Bush, McCain and the GOP "leadership" be pushing for? I mean, What Would Ronald Reagan Do? I... have some suggestions, which I trust will be roughly the opposite of what those "leaders" will choose:

1. McCain prides himself on the label of "maverick," and just today made the ridiculous statement that "'bipartisanship' is a tough thing." To paraphrase Mr. Limbaugh: No, it isn't. What is a "tough thing" is sticking to one's principles in the face of withering, often barbaric criticism from an opposition Party that has lost the capacity for civilized behavior.

If Bush and McCain wanted to embrace proper principle for a change, one or both would schedule a press conference tomorrow morning to announce that, given Wall Street's Tuesday rebound and its indication of a resilient and self-correcting economy, that the GOP has now canceled its endorsement of and now opposes any government bailout. This on the sound principle that any market correction needs to happen, not to be prevented.

2. As a reassurance in keeping with the government's mission to protect, rather than violate, people's property rights, Bush and/or McCain could unveil a modest, temporary and strictly as-needed fund to bolster the FDIC - to protect the property of depositers in any bank failures not absorbed by buyouts by solvent banks. Period.

Prior to the mass intrusion of government controls into the private banking industry, banks deposits were not guaranteed by government - the "FDIC" did not exist. So how did people bank with confidence? Oh, however did anybody function without an omnipresent government nanny?

Simple: The natural mechanisms of the market provided all the security they needed. Banks, bereft of any outside "guarantees," had to earn the trust of customers over a long period and with a record of consistent security and trustworthiness. After the government jumped in, the door was opened to any and all, honest and dishonest, competent and incompetent alike, into the wonderful profession of banking.

What we are seeing today is the end result of (among many other things, also government-caused,) an artificial, blanket guarantee that removed from the banking industry any natural incentive to trustworthiness and competence. It's a directly-analogous repeat of the 20th-century Welfare State's removal of the incentive to responsible, self-reliant behavior - and the consequence of multiple-generation welfare junkies.

Which means that after this particular crisis has passed, principled lawmakers must also proceed with the abolition and dismantling of Federal Deposit Insurance, along with the entire edifice of government involvement with the banking industry, of which, all too obviously, it knows nothing.


A must-read on a longer-term fix for this government-engineered calamity is economist George Reisman's March 22 article Our Financial House of Cards and How to Start Replacing It With Solid Gold

And as always, if you're not in contact with your elected officious at least quarterly, you're a chump. So don't be a chump.

Reporting a Void; Science as Frankenstein; Democrat-Socialists Gone Wild and McCain/Palin's First Gaffe

Now Playing: "This Room Is My Castle Of Quiet" by Billie May and his Orchestra, from Space Capades

Seven years ago today this happened. Please take a few minutes, if you haven't already, and watch the video footage again. Understandably, the passage of time has transformed the evil of that day into an abstraction - yet it is vital that we review the events of that day as a concrete reality, not just "September 11, 2001."

This is the first time I've watched it since that day, and what I feel now is anger. Anger at the animals - porcine, to be precise - that did this; at their fellow pigs who cheered them after the fact, both in the Middle East and in some of America's "colleges"; at the fools in American government who gutted our national defense and intelligence capabilities throughout the 1990s; at the King of the Fools, Jimmy Carter, the official midwife to these animals - via his craven cowardice and "diplomacy" in the face of blatant aggression ca. 1979; at Carter's present-day apprentices within the Democrat-Socialist Party, from Obama to Reid to Pelosi to the rest of that pack; and at the gutter-sludge that follow and feed in their wake, the Moores and Churchills and Penns and Baldwins and Sheehans and Code Pinkos and MorOn.orgs and plethora of random others who despise America to its core.

Fortunately, that human debris has been driven back by the good and the decent the world over, from President Bush and Vice President Cheney to Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the firemen and policemen of NYC, to all of those in Congress who have consistently stood up against the cake-eating pragmatists who lost their stomach for America's defense within mere months of that monstrous attack.

I will say without the slightest hesitation that a review of that awful day brings into stark relief the dangerous stew of shallowness, irresponsibility and scarcely-concealed contempt for Americanism that is the Obama-Biden ticket.

The last time the American voting population got complacent enough - complacent following the Reagan-engineered collapse of the Soviet empire - to elect an irresponsible charlatan as President, it led to eight years of criminal neglect of American national security. Wildly-popular and poll-friendly neglect, but...neglect. Can you say "Peace Dividend?"

Which in turn led directly to the atrocity we remember today.

Some "peace."

So, is it time to re-elect Jimmy Carter? Oyeah! HipHipHooray!

We would do so at our grave peril, for the world is a vastly more dangerous place, and America's place within it significantly more precarious, than it was thirty years ago. It is essential that we have someone in the White House with enough rudimentary intelligence to distinguish good from evil.

Obama, as part of that New/Old-Left trendiness steeped in "PC"-relativist muck, has shown evidence of disdain for the idea of moral distinctions per se. I guess moral distinctions might offend the evil and hurt their feelings.

=> An important truism of life is the difficulty that lies in getting people to appreciate a herculean job of preventing a mess - precisely because the mess has been...prevented.

The "mess" in this case is a pleasant metaphor for: another catastrophic attack on America. The man who's done the herculean job of preventing it, for seven full years, has not just had his successful work ignored, he's been the target of some of the most consistently vicious and personal attacks any American politician has had to endure, in many cases precisely for that effort. His name is President George W. Bush.

I have leveled some hefty - and valid - criticism of the Bush Administration myself over his two terms, but the one thing you cannot fault President Bush on is his record of keeping the United States of America safe.

Columnist Ann Coulter of all people, a caustic political commentator for whom I ordinarily have little use, has nevertheless proven herself to be capable of flashes of admirable insight. Her September 10 article "Bush 7, Terrorists 0," is one such example and a must-read in this context. An excerpt:

"As many have pointed out, the reason elected officials tend to neglect infrastructure projects, like reinforcing levees in New Orleans and bridges in Minneapolis, is that there's no glory when a bridge doesn't collapse. There are no round-the-clock news specials when the levees hold. You can't even name an overpass retrofitting project after yourself - it just looks too silly. But everyone's taxes go up to pay for the reinforcements.

Preventing another terrorist attack is like that. There is no media coverage when another 9/11 doesn't happen. We can thank God that President George Bush didn't care about doing the safe thing for himself; he cared about keeping Americans safe. And he has, for seven years...

By [the leftists'] own standard, Bush's war on terrorism has been a smashing, unimaginable success.

A year after the 9/11 attack, The New York Times' Frank Rich was carping about Bush's national security plans, saying we could judge Bush's war on terror by whether there was a major al-Qaida attack in 2003, which - according to Rich - would have been on al-Qaida's normal schedule.

Rich wrote: 'Since major al-Qaida attacks are planned well in advance and have historically been separated by intervals of 12 to 24 months, we will find out how much we've been distracted soon enough.' ('Never Forget What?' New York Times, Sept. 14, 2002.)

There wasn't a major al-Qaida attack in 2003. Nor in 2004, 2005, 2006 or 2007. Manifestly, liberals thought there would be: They announced a standard of success that they expected Bush to fail.

As Bush has said, we have to be right 100 percent of the time, the terrorists only have to be right one time. Bush has been right 100 percent of the time for seven years - so much so that Americans have completely forgotten about the threat of Islamic terrorism."

So...go have a look at those horrific videos, ask yourself why we've had no such horrors since - and at the very least breathe a word of thanks that we've had a President who cares more about national security than maintaining high poll numbers or "creating a legacy."

Then ask yourself the implications of a President-wannabe's plan to have a series of cozy chats with, among a vertiable who's who of international tyrants, a militant Islamofascist regime that stands on the brink of producing nuclear weapons and which has openly vowed to obliterate America and its chief Mideast ally by any means available. In context of foreign policy, "popular" and "poll-friendly" can also be deadly.


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Since we're on the subject of appreciating negations: You may have completely missed it, but the universe failed to disintegrate on Wednesday when physicists started up the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN facility in Switzerland.

I'm not a particle physicist, but the panicky hysteria surrounding that experiment was at once comical and disheartening. For many, including hysterical types within the scientific community itself, the torch and pitchfork are always close at hand, should Victor Frankenstein persist in his unholy experimentation which will surely Doom Us All.

For those of us who are not torch-wielding villagers, and despite the ethics of its funding, we can look with optimism at the LHC as another avenue to unlocking physics puzzles that currently seem insurmountable. The LHC is a state-of-the-art tool with the potential to propel technology to dramatic new heights, perhaps including development of new, cheaper sources of raw energy, and long-overdue improvements in space propulsion.

Another interesting article, from this side of the gothic horror tracks.


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To move just briefly to the Presidential campaign: It should come as no surprise that the vestigial, recidivistic Left have devolved, immediately and as if on cue, to their standard-default, the ad hominem, in their frantic effort to regain verticality after McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his Veep candidate.

Again, Robert Bidinotto has done some extensive cataloging of the post-Palin mudslinging by apoplectic Leftists in his September 10, September 09 and previous posts.

As I've alluded previously, ad hominem slurs are ultimately the only tool Leftists have at their disposal in any kind of political debate, because their ideology is flatly indefensible - logically, ethically, politically, even pragmatically - much less promotable. The increasing vileness and barbarity of their attacks only underscores the intellectual vacuity of their position, and ought to be left as the wonderfully self-refuting comedy that it is. As the saying goes, never get in the way of an opponent who is busily self-destructing.

Most recently there's been the flap over Obama's "Lipstick on a pig" gaffe. As Bidinotto put it:

"For an allegedly glib guy of such supposedly superior intellect, Barack "57 States" Obama seems instead to be a one-man gaffe factory. Today's example of his chronic case of hoof-in-mouth disease is his inadvertently likening Sarah Palin to a pig... Now, of course he didn't mean it that way; but his cheering audience took it that way, which speaks volumes about what he's attracting. More to the point, the Great Orator's epic verbal stumbles are making George W. Bush seem like Demosthenes. Maybe he should take some public speaking tips from his running mate, Joe "Neil Kinnock" Biden. Or perhaps he should just humble himself and take solace in his Muslim faith. No, he meant Christian faith. Whatever."

The McCain/Palin camp, in its first major gaffe since the Palin pick, chose not to ignore the slur, but rather to demand an apology. In displaying the kind of glass-jawed fragility previously owned by the Obama camp, McCain/Palin have turned an instant Obama negative - which ought to have just lain there in the middle of the road, emitting its fetid stench - into a needless confession of weakness.

Ermm, bravo?

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Mr. Bidinotto nails it with "The McCain Gamble"

Now Playing: 'Giving another chance to "Presto" from Rush, an album I've never liked much musically - at the moment it's "Show Don't Tell," with some of my fave Objectiv-ish lyrics...

Objectivist author and publisher Robert Bidinotto has done an excellent analysis of McCain's antagonism toward individual rights with his recent post The McCain Gamble and numerous updates.

In analyzing the Hobson's Choice principled Americans face this election, Bidinotto argues that the choice ultimately is between a mixed bag that nonetheless contains the GOP's vital intellectual elements along with the toxins of "selflessness" and Rooseveltian "Progressivism" (McCain) - vs. an opponent who is 100% hostile to every significant element of American individualism and liberty (Obama.)

I'm not convinced I could ever vote for McCain in good conscience - but actually casting a vote for a vestigial, recidivistic Marxist and closet anti-American is unthinkable, while a vote for Barr or someone else as a write-in (Janice Rogers Brown, etc.,) can be nothing but a throwaway vote of extremely-limited symbolic value.

Arrggh.
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Back in Convention Monitor Mode

Now Playing: Again, the GOP Convention, via the only objective news source left on the tube, Fox News.

Rudy is in the middle of his speech, and for the very first time at this convention I'm hearing some of the fire, the guts and no-punches-pulled oratory that's been singularly lacking.

Zowie! The man - my first pick of the GOP primary crop, for the record - is hitting the ball right out of the park! This is one for the books, folks. Geez, can we swap Rudy for McCain? Even Fred Thompson's speech came across as tepid and listless, but Giuliani is showing the kind of energy and enthusiasm - as if he actually believes what he says is important - that's so far been missing in the extravaganza.

Just now he's making a point I've been waiting to hear someone make since Obama's "change" mantra first appeared: "Change" is never neutral, it is either change for the better or change for the worse.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

- "If I were Joe Biden, I'd want to get that VP thing in writing." LOL 8^D

Ouch.

- Quoting McCain on the Russian invasion of Georgia: "We are all Georgians." Excellent. Standing up to Putin's neo-totalitarianism? I am too, proudly. For more, read this amazing account, by one truly courageous journalist, Michael J. Totten.

Again, this is going to go down as one of the greatest Convention speeches ever. Rudy is just kicking arse! This guy needs a Cabinet post, at the very least. Rudy Giuliani, like Sarah Palin, grows in my estimation with nearly every word he utters. BRAVO!!

Am I raving? I think I'm raving. I've been advised that this is not advisable, but I'm not listening. Rudy has set a new tone for a convention that has, up to this point, been a flaccid, going-through-the-motions affair, perhaps as a result of having been preempted by Hurricane Gustav and craven self-abnegation.

At last, the Grand Old Party has a Convention!

Bravo, Mr. Mayor, and hats off to you!
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On to future-Veep Palin:

I tuned in a little late - editing! Hey, she couldn't have asked for a better opening band...

Ok, "...two decades and five children later and he's still my guy." Straight talk from "one of us." I like this lady. Intensely refreshing - and the feverish buzz in that arena is palpable.

Wow - "...They grow our food, and fight our wars, and run our factories." An advocate of American industry in the position of Vice President? Umm, I think I'll come out in favor of that. 8^D

In terms of aggressiveness, Palin is cut from the same cloth as Rudy, clearly, though her speaking style is markedly different. It's always a major relief to see someone who is 100% comfortable in front of an audience likely running to the tens of millions. "I'm not going to Wasington to serve their opinions, I'm going to serve the people of this nation."

Oyeah.

- Urp - "...to serve the common good, and leave the nation better than we found it." There's that circular concept "common good" again.

- "That luxury jet was over the top...I put it on Ebay." Heh-Heh.

- On to an affirmation of the Veto as a powerful tool against corruption. President Bush, are you listening?

- Facing off against Russia head-on? Compare Palin's straight talk to the nebulous fluff of BO-Biden.

- In her discussion of energy, she puts oil and nuclear first, then mentions clean coal and alternative sources. I like. I'm an Asimov nuclear enthusiast, which means that I, like future historians, look upon early the 21st Century's clinging to chemical energy sources as a primitive anachronism, to be overcome by embracing the untold promise of nuclear energy as man's logical next step in the evolution of power production technology.

- OOooo, Zingers: "...and those styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot..." 8^]

- She's citing the concrete example of her sister's business and the effects on it that Obama's massive tax burdens would present. Again, great stuff.

Whether you agree with her specific points or not, Palin's confidence and "coolness" under the spotlight is undeniable. After five days of vicious, caustic ad hominem assaults against Palin and her 17-year-old daughter by the vestigial and clueless Left, from the New York Daily Socialist Worker (a.k.a. the Times) to "US Weekly" to the vaunted National Enquirer, Palin's poise and unflappable self-discipline are truly admirable.

In a break from stale tradition, McCain himself has come out to salute Palin and her family. Despite his beliefs, you've similarly got to admire McCain's improvisational, unscripted, outside-the-box attitude.

Folks, there is a reason - rather, three of them - why the vestigial Left wing have latched themselves, wolf-pack-fashion, onto Palin the person and her innocent children:



#1. They simply do not have a persuasive argument against any given element of Palin's ideological position on any given subject, hence the vicious ad hominems;

#2. Palin's enormous and instantaneous popularity among vast swaths of the American public scares the hell out of them, as in "we are going to lose in November, badly, in the Presidential and Congressional arenas alike";

#3. Palin, as a woman and mother who is not a Leftist, represents the antithesis of everything the Left have strived - mostly successfully - to achieve in the nihilistic corrosion of American society ca. 1960-present. More on this in a bit.



Update: The McCain Acceptance Speech, Thursday Sept. 4

McCain's just finished his speech - I missed the "warmup" speeches this time - and I have to agree with Objectivist writer and publisher Robert Bidinotto, who asks, only partly in jest, whether we could possibly invert the ticket to read: Palin/McCain.

McCain's speech contained much to be enthused about: restoring the GOP to its roots; ending the spoiled-brats-in-the-toystore mentality that's gripped Congress and governments from Federal down to local levels; ending subsidies to "countries that don't like us very much" (a no-brainer, that); getting government the hell out of the way of Americans and returning it to the role of servant, not nanny and nursemaid; his Veto pledge "I will make them ['earmark' big-spenders] famous, and you will know their names."

But those positives are undercut by and contradicted at root by McCain's personal war against American individualism. As expected, he reaffirmed, in some of the most offensive language I've heard on the national stage, his irrational and profoundly mistaken hostility to what he calls "the shallowness of self" and "selfish individualism." Again, to the extent that he's directing that admonition at his fellow government officious, it can be an acceptable, even positive admonition - if locked within that limited context. Which of course it isn't.

McCain's sneering contempt for the concept of individualism and independence is also, clearly, directed at each of us, straight through to the core of America's unique ethics: the ethics of self-interest and self-sovereignty, the right of every individual to live his own life as he sees fit, for his own sake, as his inalienable right, first and foremost. It's the ethic that was woven into America's very foundation by the Founding Fathers: Every individual is a sovereign within himself, not an indentured servant to any king, tribe, church, government, collective, mob, tyrannical majority. Man is an end in himself; the role of government is to uphold and defend that fact and ethical sanction.

As a lifelong "Reagan Republican" and objectivist, McCain's attack on independence is a dissonance that offends me to the core of my being.

Obama, of course, remains exactly as Henry Mark Holtzer identified him in his September 1 article "Questions for Obama about Justice Thomas - a pompous, pretentious wannabe too dishonest even to admit his goose-stepping hard Left agenda to the world, much less his empty résumé - even as he trashes scholars of vastly superior intellect and integrity.

I truly do not believe America - and by extension Westen Civilization as a whole - would survive another Democrat-Socialist presidency. So I'm faced with the dilemma of casting an enthusiastic vote for what appears to be an American Margaret Thatcher in the making, while simultaneously holding my nose about the man who heads the ticket. Every time McCain opens his mouth and lets fly with another attack on America's ethical core - individualism - any such notion flees.

Though the debates remain to be won, even without my vote I think the Obama/Biden ticket is going to get its arse kicked resoundingly by McCain/Palin in November, perhaps as badly as Carter in '80, Mondale in '84, and Dukakis in '88. I remember in each of those cases the pollsters were gaga over the Democrat-Socialist candidates too - and their rosy stats were off by factors of ten. The two Clinton wins and the two Gore/Kerry squeakers were a function of weakness in, respectively, Bush I, Dole and Bush II as candidates, not any mythical strength of the Demo-Socialists.

As it stands today, and despite McCain's corrupt ethical inversion, McCain/Palin would have to screw up really, really badly to fail to walk away with this election with ease.


_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ LAISSEZ FAIRE \_ \_ \_ \_ \_

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"Country First?" Correction: LIBERTY First.

Now Playing: GOP Convention Coverage (finally,) on Fox News Channel

I had known that McCain is yet another of those politicians whose ethical credo is "self-sacrifice" (for self-sacrifice's sake,) but I hadn't expected it to become the official slogan of my Party's Presidential Convention. Silly me.

At the moment President Bush too is making paeans to "selflessness," and after yesterday's ostentatiously "selfless" postponement of the Convention for the sake of...umm... ........aah......... does anybody know what that was for? Or what, precisely, it accomplished? At any rate, I'm wondering if there's another American left who understands the core principles upon which this country was built, who understands to whom it is that those principles apply, who understands their relation to the Party called "Republican."

Those principles are, for the record (now listen up John): Reason, Self-Sovereignty, Individual Rights, and Liberty. To recap, the entities to whom they apply are: Individuals.

Period.

The negation of those principles can come in many forms, but the prime destroyer, both in philosophic theory and in existential practice, of individual rights and the individual lives that depend on them, is precisely: "selflessness."

I know, I know - the intended context of McCain's usage, presumably, is an admonition to his fellow politicians to do their jobs rather than to pander to future voters. It's also a call to attenuate some of the rancorous partisanship that's appeared in the wake of Gore's and Kerry's razor-thin defeats in 2000 and 2004. Fine - tell it to those militant Leftists who are the ones who need to hear it, though they're not likely to listen nor even to comprehend.

McCain's Mantra is also a kind of feelgood demand on the rest of us to pull together as a nation to solve its many problems. [Problems. Not "challenges." If there isn't a guy in frilly ruffles and a ridiculous hat throwing his glove at my feet and demanding that I meet him at dawn for a manly duel, it's not a "challenge." It's a problem. 'K? We're Republicans - can we drop that Leftwing "PC" lingo? Words are important. Thanks. We now return you to our regularly-scheduled programming.]

But partisanship, though amplified to a disturbing new nihilism by the Democrat-Socialist Left, has always been a part of free - or even semi-free - political discourse in America. America's problems are not caused by its people, they are caused by its government, and occasionally, by various & sundry international thugs.

Unfortunately, the "selfless sacrifice" mantra is also an appeal to the gutter busybody mentality among us that seeks to control the lives of others - because those others are just "too independent." It's that old biddie who phones the police every time a neighbor has a backyard barbeque - because other people's open enjoyment of life is an unintentional reproach to a stale, embittered life; those envy-ridden mentalities that spew blanket condemnations of Bill Gates, Sam Walton, Phil Knight and basically...anybody whose income is greater than theirs - for their heinous crime of... succeeding at the American Dream; it's that "Why, there oughtta be a law against thaaat!" pathology that's responsible in part for the cancerous growth of our leviathan regulatory state over the past century; it's the eco-fascist mentalities who seek to ram their standard of living, from the homes we live in to the cars we drive to the bathroom equipment available to us, down other people's throats by brute force.

At root, the demand for "selflessness" is a frontal assault on the right of each of us to the Life, the Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness that America's Founders placed explicitly at the heart of the American Revolution - as something inherent to our nature as rational beings, as something ethically inalienable. That enumeration of rights applies to each one of us as an individual - not as a collective - and not as a temporary "privilege," to be withdrawn at the whim of condescending politicians who've forgotten, or never knew in the first place, that the rights of individuals are not subordinate to any collective.

McCain's "Country First/Service" placards represent the triumph too of an erroneous and potentially catastrophic ethical-political credo: "My country, right or wrong." It's an elevation of a place and a government over the vital principles that define what kind of place and how just a government may be present there.

Rand identified the corrected formulation as "My country is right, therefore I love it" - assuming it is right. Love of country is not a primary, it's a secondary consequence of that country's first accepting and upholding the rights of individuals, something America was the first nation in history to do. Even Thoreau had it figured out in 1849:

"There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly."

Rand blew the issue wide open in her seminal lecture given on December 7, 1960 at Princeton University, titled "Conservatism: An Obituary":

"The American political system was based on a different moral principle: on the principle of man's inalienable right to his own life - which means: on the principle that man has the right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself, and that men must deal with one another as traders, by voluntary choice to mutual benefit...

The social system based on and consonant with the altruist morality - with the code of self-sacrifice - is socialism, in all or any of its variants: fascism, Nazism, communism. All of them treat man as a sacrificial animal to be immolated for the benefit of the group, the tribe, the society, the state."

To the extent to which he is demanding of his fellow politicians that they get their noses back to the grindstone and start doing what's best for the country - i.e., doing what's needed to re-establish and defend individual liberty - then McCain's "Country First/Service" slogan, while poorly chosen, is valid.

To the extent to which it's aimed at we the American individuals, it is a corrupt perversion of core Americanism, which needs to be rejected outright by all Republicans and all others who yet value their priceless freedoms.

...Ah, they've got former Republican Newt Gingrich on the tube, in an interview with a reporter. The same Newt Gingrich, mind you, who sold out to the Climate Armageddon Cult a year ago (in his pusillanimous "debate" with John F'n Kerry.)

'Think SpongeBob Squarepants is on - where's that remote...

.

Palin Veep Choice is a Brilliant Strategic Coup

Now Playing: Rick Wakeman's jam ("Gone But Not Forgotten," "Catherine Parr" and "Merlin the Magician,") from An Evening of Yes Music Plus by ABWHL

WOW! A mere matter of hours after Obama's attempted "big splash," nobody anywhere in media is talking about anything except McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as Veep candidate. Announcing it on the eve of the Labor Day holiday means the American population will be talking to each other about it all weekend, rather than being soaked with the customary Leftwing propaganda about it from the monolithic Leftwing "mainstream" media. The MSM as a single unit will certainly launch into full-blown attack mode against the McCain-Palin ticket for the duration of the election season, right after next week's saturation coverage of...Hurricane Gustav.

Love McCain or hate him (I pretty much despise him, for the record,) you have to admire the sheer brilliance of political strategy in this pick. If you're a Republican you've got to be completely jazzed at the fact that McCain has brought back a sense of razor-sharp political strategy to the GOP, something that's been gone for far too long. In one single stroke, McCain has absolutely buried the Democrat-Socialist Convention and news about it.

To say there is a lot to admire about Palin is a vast understatement - she's someone who's elevated "unconventional" and "overachiever" to near-freakish levels, and I'm not talking about her gender vis-à-vis the VP candidacy:

- Governor of Alaska, the only American state that borders on two foreign countries, maintaining approval ratings ranging from the upper 80s to mid-90s;

- a competent mother of five;

- an aggressive opponent of taxation, wasteful spending and corruption, with a rep as a whistleblower;

- an avid firearms proponent, NRA member and shooter;

- operator of a snowmobile/watercraft/ATV business, an adept snowmobiler and outdoorswoman;

- a hockey player, eh?, a champion basketballer and former beauty queen


From the standpoint of cross-partisan election season appeal:

- she's been a union member and has strong blue-collar roots;

- she will instantly appeal to the woman's vote and Clinton supporters angered at being snubbed by the DNC;

- she's spent more time with American troops in the Middle East than the Democrats' candidate for President would spend with American troops at a hospital in Germany - which means instant appeal in particular to "military moms," a powerful voting block.

- as a woman, her ascendance to the historic position of "first female Vice President in American history," though philosophically trivial, will steal a huge political prize from the Democrat-Socialist Party. If she goes on to the Presidency and wins that too...

- a woman as Vice President of the most powerful and benevolent nation on Earth will send a long-overdue message to foreign nations and, er, religions, that are steeped in often monstrous misogyny.

On the downside, Palin has raised taxes against the oil industry as Alaska Governor; she, like McCain, has drunk the Kool-Aid on "climate change," a.k.a. "weather"; she shows every sign of being firmly entrenched within the religious right, reportedly even to the point of advocating "creationism"; and though an indirect negative, McCain praises her commitment to "the common good" - an inherently circular concept - and that she's "fought oil companies."

[Earth to McCain: The very reason we're shoveling $4 a gallon into the bank accounts of OPEC and al Qaida, is that government has been "fighting oil companies" - instead of getting the hell out of the way and allowing them to produce.]

All in all the positives vastly outweigh the negatives, and the pick is indeed strategically brilliant.

Expect the "mainstream media" to focus almost exclusively on Hurricane Gustav in their every single broadcast, above-the-fold headline and article, for the duration of the coming week. For obvious reasons. So those of us who are interested in the Presidential campaign will have to stick with the 'Net.

Not a problem.
.

Some Brief Notes on the Democrat-Socialist Party's Pep Rally

Now Playing: "Payin' the Cost to Be the Boss by B.B. King - a lyrical aptness to this week's events that's none too subtle...

'Been a long time gone - so sorry, but summer beckoned and I responded. Anyhoo, the Democrat-Socialist Party is having its pep rally in Colorado this week, and frankly I can't stand to sit through more than five consecutive minutes of it. It's not really what's being said so much as the mind-numbing boredom. Didn't I see and hear all of this same drivel exactly 32 years ago? Déjà Carter...more on that in a sec.

To be perfectly even-handed here, I'm not planning on doing much different with the GOP convention, though there may be a speaker or two I'm interested in hearing, should they turn out to have been invited - Shadegg, Pence, Coburn. You know, the people McCain wouldn't touch with a forty-foot Constitution-tested flamethrower as VP options. We'll see - in every sense.

Obama's choice of Biden was very, very strange - as was his decision to make The Earth-Shattering Announcement at 3am on a Saturday, almost as if he were embarrassed at his own pick and were trying to conceal it.

As if to confirm the sentiment, today's Gallup Daily tracking poll shows zero bounce for the Obama camp after the Biden pick. I could have told BO that - Biden and his appalling, often comically misguided worldview flatly bores me. Sorry folks, but aside from the occasional spectacular verbal gaffe, the man is a walking yawn factory, a Leftwing cipher. As a lifelong Republican I can't say I'm unhappy with his choice, but it's yet more evidence of Obama's lifetime of poor judgment.

On a lighter note, America's worst of the worst, Jimmy Carter, was essentially Miltonized by the Obama camp yesterday. The ex-President and proud midwife to modern Islamic terrorism was relegated to a four-and-a-half-minute prerecorded video clip, shown when the crowd had thinned for dinner, and a 60-second stroll across the stage with Rosalynn. That's it. No speech, just a walk & wave.

I wouldn't want to make a hasty assumption, but I think the Obama-Carter comparisons have gotten a little too close to the truth and a little too hot to handle. Or maybe the Democrats-in-charge have decided it's more prudent to keep the frothing anti-Semitism a little more discreet.

At any rate, it's looking more and more like a McGovern-type landslide defeat for the Democrats this November - even the expected rosy picture for Congressional Democrats has evaporated. Polls are showing overwhelming public support for new oil drilling that Pelosi & Co. have militantly stonewalled. That ought to be a no-brainer, and if the GOP "leadership" have enough remaining sense to focus on that issue - not just in the Presidential contest but Congressional ones too - they ought to be able to neutralize any Democrat-Socialist Congressional advantage.

And that's about all the silver lining I can pull out of this muck. Regardless of how badly Obama loses, we're still...stuck with McCain, and unless he has some kind of Matrix-Neo-type headshed that rearranges roughly 75% of his synaptic roadmap, we don't have much advantage over Obama except on national defense and energy.

More later.

Popping The OPEC Oil Price Bubble in One Easy Step

Now Playing: Ride 'Til I'm Satisfied from Mr. Trout's classic Go The Distance

An uncompromising commitment from the Federal Government to reawakening American oil production through deregulation and government roadblock elimination, would a.) almost certainly pop that portion of the current oil price attributable to a speculative bubble, and b.) scare the hell out of OPEC by guaranteeing future competition from America in the oil market.

Both would translate as a rapid, dramatic downward pressure on oil prices worldwide.

As I've said here repeatedly, the fact that America has locked away its resources as a shrine to the religion of "environmentalism," thereby granting to OPEC a pledge of non-competition by what ought to be its largest competitor, is ethically obscene.

We have it within our power to relegate OPEC to the status of secondary player in the world petroleum market, if not bankrupt it altogether, even reestablish America as top dog in oil production and export. Economist George Reisman's landmark article Free Markets Would Be OPEC's Undoing discusses the point in some detail. All we have to do is get our power-junkies in D.C. to swear off their legislative hooch, get the hell out of the way and let American producers produce. Just that.

Increasing American oil production, whether today, next week or next decade, will be a vast, no-brainer benefit on multiple levels:

- Every new barrel of oil produced in America is a barrel NOT purchased from OPEC;

- Every new barrel of oil produced in America is a barrel that can be sold on the world market;

- Every new barrel of American oil sold on the world market represents an addition to American GDP;

- Every new barrel of American oil sold on the world market represents an increase in global oil supply vs. demand;

- Every new barrel of American oil sold on the world market represents further reduction in revenues to OPEC, via both downward pressure on oil prices and by drawing international customers away from the OPEC cartel;

- Every new barrel of American oil sold on the world market represents more jobs and income for Americans;

- Every new barrel of American oil sold on the world market represents a powerful shot in the arm of the world economy, with the potential to spur another long-term economic boom cycle;

- History has shown that worldwide economic recession is a catalyst for war, while worldwide economic prosperity is a powerful catalyst for peace - therefore every new barrel of American oil is a brick in a new foundation of world peace.


So...why isn't this simple regulatory tweak being performed by Congress, to set that long-overdue avalanche of oil prices in motion?

Simple: The Democrat-Socialist Party holds the majority in both houses of Congress, and refuses to restore freedom to America's energy industries.



Solution: Oust those neo-Luddite morons in November.

Just In: Saudi King says "Get used to high oil prices"

FYI:

Saudi king urges consumers to get used to high oil prices, from Agence France-Presse

The Earth is Swimming in Oil

Now Playing: The Reason I'm Gone by Mr. Trout, live & loud

Some reference facts:

* America's oil import total from OPEC since 1973: ave. 3.5 billion barrels annually;
* Saudi Arabia's estimated total oil reserves: 260 billion barrels.


Conventional Crude Oil and Natural Gas Resources:

- In a February 2006 report titled EPCA III, the Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS) stated that there are 85.9 billion barrels of unrecovered oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas on North America's outer continental shelf alone;

- That same report estimates America's resources onshore, on federally-controlled land kept off-limits to oil and gas production, at 117 billion barrels of oil and 651 trillion cubic feet of natural gas;

- That same report estimates America's onshore resources on private lands at 139 billion barrels;

- That same report states that 60 percent of the onshore government-controlled lands are presently closed to leasing, and that an additional 30 percent of onshore Federal oil and 49 percent of onshore Federal gas may only be developed subject to restrictions over and above deal-killer environmental regulations;

- In a development sure to drive eco-fascists to apoplexy, the thawing ice on Greenland could yield 50 billion barrels of previously-inaccessible oil, according to Norwegian and British estimates;

- Brazil's government-run oil monopoly, Petrobras (also producers of fine lingerie for fetishists, apparently,) announced the discovery of a huge offshore oil field - "Tupi" - some 200 miles due south of Rio, with an estimated yield of 8 billion barrels. Petrobras' nearby, existing Jupiter field is roughly equivalent in yield to the Tupi discovery;

- An April USGS report estimates that the recently-discovered Bakken Formation oil field in western North Dakota / eastern Montana contains between 3 billion and 4.3 billion barrels of crude;

Tar Sand:

- A couple years ago Raytheon and CF Technologies developed a breakthrough microwave technology that allows an orders-of-magnitude increase in the petroleum yield from tar sands. The Athabasca region of northern Alberta contains tar sands with a potential yield estimated at 870 billion to 1.3 trillion barrels of oil, an amount well in excess of all of the crude oil extracted by man to date, i.e., in all of recorded history;

- Venezuela's tar sand deposits are roughly equivalent in yield to those of Canada, albeit currently infested with a bloodthirsty socialist dictator;

- The tar sand oil yield for the State of Utah alone is estimated at between 12 to 19 billion barrels;

- Russia's Volga-Ural basin and northeastern Siberia contains tar sand deposits with an estimated total of between 76 and 246 billion barrels;

Arctic Ocean Oil Resources:

- The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic Ocean contains about one quarter of the entire world's undiscovered oil and gas, somewhere around 400 billion barrels;

- A couple months ago, Anatoly Zolotukhin of Gubkin Russian State University stated in an Anchorage speech that Russia's Arctic shelf holds a potential 580 billion barrels of crude.


...To name but a few.

...That we're aware of.


Once again, with feeling: As Pepperdine University economist George Reisman has said, the Earth is an immense, solidly-packed ball of chemical elements. We, the human race, have not yet made a scratch-within-a-scratch of the surface of that ball of elements.

Read Reisman's articles:

Free Markets Would Be OPEC's Undoing

and

Environmentalism Refuted, both posted at the Ludwig von Mises Institute website.

Future historians will look back at this early 21st Century neo-Malthusian madness with raucous laughter, but we're having to live in it. Hopefully not for long.

Rattle some cages with your elected officious via USA.gov's directory

CARBON BELCH DAY IS JUNE 12 - SPREAD THE WORD!

Now Playing: Hidoi Ame from "Los Angeles" by The Brilliant Green

If you've been looking for a nice symbolic way to tweak the delicate sensibilities of adherents to burgeoning eco-collectivism, search no more.

This Thursday, June 12th, is "Carbon Belch Day" - spread the word and make your pledge.

It's very simple: Given that the entire concept of CO2 as a significant causal factor in "global warming" is blatantly false, and given the entire dubious premise that...the globe will, er, warm at all, on Carbon Belch Day you intentionally make your "carbon footprint" as big as you possibly can for at least one day.

Critics of it who claim it's a demand that people "pollute" for a day miss the point entirely, and, I presume, intentionally. There are multiple points to Carbon Belch Day, at least in my interpretation:

First, it's an expression of long-overdue contempt for the entire "global warming" sham - which, oddly, becomes "climate change" during the, er, winter months;

Second, it illustrates the point that CO2 is largely irrelevant as a causal factor in climate change - historically CO2 increases have lagged, not led, temperature increases, usually by hundreds of years; compared with proportionally vast greenhouse gases that actually do impact global temperature, with water vapor being the overwhelming #1 on the list, CO2 is negligible even as a contributing factor.

No legislation yet on keeping them outlaw oceans in line with eco-dogma...

Third, it demonstrates, albeit in oblique fashion, that the very fact of being a living organism involves constant alteration of the "environment" by every one of us - from basic respiration to every action we take in maintaining our lives, such as cultivating food, building shelters, interacting and trading values in the marketplace. A day of exaggerated consumption is a defiant assertion of your right to exist.

Fourth, it serves as a refutation, again oblique, of the neo-Medieval asceticism that's been a constant undercurrent of the "green" religion - through the proud reassertion of the right to use one's property however one sees fit.

Fifth, it's a long-overdue lampooning of the bizarre, feel-good cottage industry of "green" fads that has grown out of the Climate Armageddon hysteria: The "carbon trading" lunacy; the aesthetic atrocity that is the Toyota Prius; the whole potentially-deadly fad of "organic" products; the self-flagellation that is the "vegan" lifestyle, also occasionally deadly; etc.

Other criticisms of it carry more weight: That random waste comes across as irrational, and therefore undercuts the effectiveness of the message. I think that's an overstatement - do you "waste" the paper and ink you use to make placards for a political demonstration? The point is the message behind it; the products consumed in the process are the means of drawing attention to that message, and are the property of those who've bought them in any case. Anything that's likely to cause a budding eco-collectivist to question his dogma is worthwhile, IMO.

So I've calculated my Carbon Belch, made my pledge, and kicked in a monetary donation to Grassfire.org. I urge you to do the same.

My estimated Carbon Belch, BTW, will be 121 pounds. I'm sorry it can't be more but I have no flight plans and don't own a speedboat. Maybe next year.

 

"Junta?" Try "Socialist Dictatorship": The Media's Myanmar Ideology Coverup

Now Playing: "Go For Soda" by Kim Mitchell

The Associated Press and the rest of the major (i.e., leftwing,) media seem to be having considerable difficulty in identifying the nature of the Myanmar government - those considerate folk who, in the wake of a catastrophic cyclone are forbidding the delivery of most disaster relief and unceremoniously confiscating the rest, while tens of thousands lay dead and tens of thousands more face death by disease and/or starvation.

Though one would never know it from reportage in the wake of the Myanmar disaster, that country has been ruled over by socialist military dictatorships since 1958.

If you're a vestigial, recidivistic collectivist in the employ of a large news organization, this fact presents a problem in reporting the disaster, and in identifying motives in the bizarre, monstrous position that government has taken in its wake. 'Can't allow the reputation of Glorious Socialism to be tarnished, folks. Unh-uh!

What to do, what to do...

So in the last week we've seen the bizarre spectacle of news report after news report after news report after news report - most of them reprints of the Official Line from the Associated Press, but with CNN, Reuters and Agence France-Presse performing a similar ideological blackout - that refer to Myanmar's socialist regime as, simply, a "junta."

Yes, apparently that southeast Asian country is now a part of Latin America.

Who knew?

To be fair, "military junta" is the generic description used by the State Department but...since when have intrepid "investigative journalists" been content with vague official terminology in reporting events in which ideology plays the essential role in otherwise inexplicable atrocities?

Veddy, veddy odd, Keptin.

Pay No Attention To That Klan Behind The Curtain: Obama, Wright, and the Poison of Collectivism

Now Playing: U. Shrinivas' Samjanitha

In Asimov's Sci-Fi classic "Foundation," a great mathematician develops a science of predicting the future using mathematical probabilities involving vast numbers of people over vast periods of time. In the real world we only have that kind of certainty in hindsight, but philosophy performs a similar role in the forward direction.

It certainly did after the Reagan-engineered collapse of Soviet Socialism ca. 1989. We saw in vivid detail the practical expression of something philosopher Ayn Rand had told us repeatedly a full quarter-century before that collapse: Ideas shape the course of people and of nations, and the mere absence of an evil regime does not imply the automatic rise of a good one. The Russian Federation had a promising start on the road to a free society under Yeltsin, but there was never an explicit rejection of Russia's collectivist culture, much less an embrace of an explicitly individualistic one. The result has been Russia's descent, following the death of Yeltsin, into a neo-authoritarian regime under Putin. A vacuum does not make for a solid foundation.

It's taken longer in America, but the same philosophic void exists here. Perhaps due to the gulf between the rank-and-file American and the Ivory-tower intellectual with regard to individualism vs. collectivism, respectively, we haven't slipped into a Putin-type quagmire. It's been more of a study in "wishy-washy," under the back-to-back vacuity of the Clinton and Bush Administrations. We've bumped along more or less intact, government of course has continued its unchecked growth in size, expense and its progressive elimination of rights (pun intended,) but we've maintained a kind of uneasy continuity. Rand identified that phenomenon as: coasting along on remnants of the principled structures of the past. Also not much of a stable foundation for a robust civilization.

But 2008 is a Presidential election year, and this time a situation exists that America hasn't faced before: Our only viable (electable) alternatives for President are three committed collectivists, and at least one of them is steeped in an intellectual sewer of virulent, frothing hatred for the very country he seeks to lead.

By now the rants of Jeremiah Wright are a matter of public record, as is Obama's initial attempt to sweep his twenty-year association with Wright and his church under the rug as a "distraction" over someone he "stands behind." That attempt failed miserably, so following a series of public appearances by Wright over the weekend that culminated in his finding a new 'deep end' to go off of, Obama on Tuesday tried some stronger wording, which got rave reviews from the media (what a shock!) but not quite the same reaction from less-incestuous quarters.

At this point I think we can accurately categorize Wright as an Afro-neo-Nazi and Obama one of his followers, and if that sounds like hyperbole try the standard substitution test:

Imagine a GOP Presidential candidate, say Sam Brownback, having been found to have attended one of those creepy white supremecist churches for twenty years with his family. Imagine him suddenly, after those 20 years, finding reason to denounce that church - at a time that just happens to be seven months before a contentious election. What would you say about his apparent worldview, folksy public persona aside? What would you say about his fitness for the Presidency?

Imagine that same GOP candidate's wife going on record expressing the sentiment that she had never been proud to be an American before "appearances" within a Presidential campaign required it.

Imagine news reports surfacing that that candidate had surrounded himself with violent domestic terrorists - as close personal friends - who for forty years had maintained an explicit hatred of America, a stated desire to destroy it, and who made their names via deadly terrorist bombings committed in the attempt. Imagine that those domestic terrorists had reaffirmed that hatred of America and that commitment to its destruction as recently as a year ago.

Taken as a whole, what would you say about this hypothetical Sen. Brownback's suitability for the position of American President?

So...what of Obama's?


What we have in Obama is a stark contrast between words and deeds, and I don't think it's necessary to spell out which is the indicator of a given person's core beliefs.

He says he is "outraged" and "angered" and "saddened" by Wright's "wrong and destructive" comments. Even if we take him at his word, one inescapable fact looms over the carefully-chosen public pronouncements:

Obama has only found this "outrage" and "anger" and "sadness," has only recognized Wright's neo-Nazi rhetoric as "wrong and destructive," a paltry seven months before a Presidential campaign, only after sustained political backlash, and, again, after a full twenty years of uncritically accepting those same "wrong and destructive" ideas.

Obama can't have it both ways: He is a highly-educated graduate of a prestigious law school. Either he is a closet adherent to the Wright school of racism and hatred of Western Civilization, and is lying to the world about his "not knowing about" Wright's message - or he is, frankly, far too stupid to be holding the post of County Alderman, much less the President of the United States. Again: We are talking about two decades of chosen intellectual immersion in Jeremiah Wright vs. a sudden, pre-election stab at damage control.

Here too is another place where conservatism falls on its face:

The world of conservative punditry has generally granted to Obama the rather absurd leap that he doesn't really agree with anything in Wright's worldview - they're essentially taking him at his word.

I think that the duration of attendance at Wright's institution argues that Obama's worldview corresponds to far more of Wright's spew than he desperately hopes we will believe. His personality is as mild-mannered, guarded and reserved as Wright's is exhibitionistic and bombastic, but a thinking human being does not spend ten minutes in the audience of someone screaming "wrong, destructive and outrageous" neo-fascism. Obama clearly embraced Wright's raving as a deep, "spiritual" element of his family life. Else why, how, could he remain a part of that noxious community?

The philosophic link connecting Obama's strident hard-left worldview and ominous paeans to "change," Wright's (and presumably Obama's,) strident racism, and the broader Left's strident hatred of America and of Western Civilization, is: Collectivism.

That toxic philosophy's sole antidote is: Individualism.

Too bad we don't have an individualist candidate to support.

Eco-Fascism as a Corruption of Causality

Now Playing: Red Barchetta, the tale of a post-industrial future from Rush, 1981 - based on the short story "A Nice Morning Drive" by Richard S. Foster.

A few years ago the whole New Age / Environmentalist / Mystic / Totalitarian axis regurgitated a bit of intellectual fraud going by the name of "The Butterfly Effect," which originated as a theory of that name in the early 1960s. It has since spilled into pop culture in dozens of books, films, television shows, "infotainment" and "reality"[sic] programs - and most significantly, into government policy under the aegis of the environmental cult.

It takes a supposed truism about cause and effect, obliterates all contextual - indeed, causal - requirements and declares every minute, inconsequential act as a causal wild card and assumes it to be an imposition on others. This assumption, in turn, is used to "justify" any arbitrary, coercive act government decides it wants to impose.

The concept of an isolated event setting in motion a chain of events that is utterly unexpected, is a tried-and-true formula in fiction - an entertaining example being the recent film 11:14. Causality is certainly a given in life, but it is constrained by the same contextual limits implied in its definition. In short, it requires proof of a cause-effect link - which is singularly, often boastfully(pg. 5,) lacking throughout the entire corpus of "environmentalist" dogma.

The eco-totalitarian cult has seized upon the "Butterfly Effect"'s conceptual elasticity - not to mention the collapse of rationality within American government and law - to extrapolate negative, usually catastrophic, "externalities" for the most innocuous of human actions. The causal wild card proclaims that, since the most subtle of actions, from moving about within the fluid of atmosphere to respiration itself, allegedly "impacts" others, then every human action - indeed, our very existence - is fair game for coercive control by government.

Thus we have seen the standard - even justifiable, on occasion - laws governing tangible externalities of heavy industry, expanded through the realm of the ridiculous into the area of the openly arbitrary (read: fascistic.) It's the same deterioration we've had as a kind of preview in the last two decades, in the Litigation Lottery phenomenon.

The cause (pun if you want one,) is the same for each: the ejection of reason from law.

The litigation lottery stories are infamous: $3 million awards for "inadequate warning" that...coffee might be hot; the judge who sued his drycleaners for $67 million for...misplacing his pants; the phone company sued by an accident victim who happened to be in one of their phone booths when a car crashed into it; the suicidal New Yorker who sued the city for the subway's failure to kill him after he jumped; the New York snakebite victim who narrowly avoided a suit by "environmental authorities" for killing the snake that bit him, etc.

Eco-fascists are busily integrating that same lunacy into laws purporting to "protect the environment":

- In January of this year, the State of California Energy Commission inserted a shocking bit of Orwell into an obscure section of the California building codes. It would mandate, by 2009, something called a "PCT" or "Programmable Communicating Thermostat" in all new residential buildings. What that device would do is place the control of your home's temperature in the hands of State bureaucrats. That's right: picture a DMV employee remotely controlling how much air conditioning you'll get in July, and how much heat you'll get in mid-January. As Joseph Somsel puts it:

"In other words, the temperature of your home will no longer be yours to control. Your desires and needs can and will be overridden by the state of California through its public and private utility organizations. All this is for the common good, of course."

Jon Christian Ryter elaborates:

"It turns out the PCT is a universal thermostat. Not only will it regulate the temperature in the home, it can also determine when power is allocated to other receptacles in the home—appliances the State doesn't think you need to run during peak hours—your water heater, washing machine and dryer, and your dishwasher. Big Brother, after all, always knows best."

So far I've been unable to find information as to whether or not this thing has actually passed into law. Update feedback encouraged.

- Los Angeles' corrupt city officious are boasting loudly about their plans to impose an entire new layer of Orwellian regulation to all new development, under the breathless headings of "Historic Front" in the "Battle Against Global Warming." Yesterday, LA Mayor Antonio VivaLaRaza loudly and proudly signed into law a new ordinance that will force all new development to conform to a "standard" cooked up by something called the "US Green Building Council," listed simply as "a Washington-based nonprofit organization." Rest(?) assured, similar laws are being developed across the country for imposition on your town, which means: on you.

- The European Union, that Petri dish of toxic political atrocities, has announced it will apply the all-purpose abracadabra of "carbon emissions" to the problem of sparse funding, via an imposition of quotas on carbon dioxide emissions on airlines. If standard trends apply, the same will happen in America shortly - and inexpensive air travel, not to mention half a dozen current airline companies, will be things of the past, or of "A better, vanished time," as Professor Peart once put it.

- The incandescent light bulb has been officially driven into Black Market territory, at least as of 2014. At that time light bulb manufacturers will be required, at gunpoint, to curtail production of incandescent bulbs, and we will all be forced to use flourescent tube bulbs that a.) give off harsh yet weak light that most of us would deem unsuitable for a garage, much less living areas, and b.) which contain toxic substances like mercury - a bizarre irony that belies the "environmental" agenda's ostensible concern for "the environment" and indicates, rather, the priority of stomping on capitalism and individual liberty. Is it too much of a stretch to assume that by 2024 the same eco-totalitarians will have banned electric light altogether, in favor of "wholesome, organic candlelight?"

- They have already intruded all the way into our restrooms - "low-flow" toilets were mandated by government in 1992 and that mandate is now a reality, admirable attempts to abolish it notwithstanding; Last year erstwhile singer and "environmental activist" Sheryl Crow...ermm...floated the idea of "a limitation...on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting."

- As economist George Reisman has reported, in addition to all of the above, the environmental cult now has clothes dryers, hot water, central heating, lawn mowers, elevators and who knows what else in its crosshairs.

The equation is simple and deadly: If anything and everything human beings do in the course of ordinary life can be defined as harmful to others, with no proof required in support of the proposition, then coercive government control of any and every aspect of human life can be justified in binding law, arbitrarily.

The environmentalist cult, in short, is a watershed in the imposition of neo-fascism. It must be opposed - openly, unapologetically, vigorously, and relentlessly. Our lives literally depend on it. As Rand once pointed out, it is often enough simply to register opposition in any situation in which your silence can be construed as acceptance. The simple assertion of disagreement confers a vital judgment on the corrupt idea and plants the seed of self-doubt in the mind of that corrupt idea's supporters. Just do it.

Happy Industrial Revolution Day 2008!

Now Playing: Voyager by RonMon, from the Gamma 2 album - a must-listen after finishing an episode of the excellent "Deadliest Catch" from Discovery - a celebration of productivity, as it happens...

Just the facts, Ma'am:

1. If you didn't have access to a.) your kitchen, b.) a grocery store, or c.) a restaurant, for something like three weeks, you'd starve to death. Think about it and test the theory - just stop eating for a day or two and see how long you can stand it.

2. Every living entity faces the constant alternative of remaining alive or dying, every waking and sleeping moment.

3. Every living entity has a means of survival that is specific to its nature; if it wishes to remain alive, it must take action to do so in a manner that is consistent with its nature.

4. No living entity can survive on a consistent basis by using the means of a lower creature - a moth can't survive by the same means as a paramecium; an aardvark can't survive by the same means as a moth.

5. Man's specific method of survival is: Reason applied via production. Man survives precisely by taking what he finds in nature and altering it to suit his needs, via a process of reason.

6. A systematic destruction of man's freedom to alter nature, logically and practically means the destruction of man's ability to remain alive.

The systematic destruction of man's freedom to alter nature is a basic but accurate description of the operative principle behind something called the "environmental" movement.

Its most recent tool in destroying man's means of survival is a hypothesis called "global warming," which predicts a rise in global temperatures that is allegedly the result of human activity, and which will allegedly result in worldwide catastrophe.

Various scientists have both promoted the hypothesis and refuted refuted refuted refuted refuted refuted refuted it. (Stuck keys - 'sorry.)

What is clear, beyond the utter lack of consensus on the hypothesis, is that it has already been employed in the drastic confiscation of man's freedoms to act in the furtherance of his life.

- As you read this, the price of petroleum, the lifeblood of industrial civilization, has been driven through the roof by a de facto grant of non-competition in perpetuity by the United States to the OPEC monopoly - which latter has been documented as having transferred oil sales proceeds into the bank accounts of the Islamic terrorists who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, and who have been at war with America and Western Civilization ever since.

That constriction of oil production throughout America is the consequence of legislation that essentially transforms the natural resources of the North American continental shelf into a kind of de facto, quasi-religious shrine to the "environmental" movement.

The explosion in the cost of fuel has in turn driven up costs in virtually every aspect of every economy worldwide, driving those economies into recession.

- Countless proposals are being hatched, also as you read this, to impose a blizzard of coercive government controls, regulations, restrictions and bans on countless elements of human life - from the vehicles we use for transportation, to the foods we eat, to the very dwellings in which we live, to the electric light bulbs we use, to the to the planes we fly, to the way wash machines wash our clothing (we're already forced to marinate it in the previous person's waste water,) to the quantity of toilet paper we ought to be "allowed" to use(!)

The "global warming" hypothesis has also opened the floodgates for a deluge of "justifications" for new taxes. Since the Climate Armageddon hypothesis states that the 5% of "greenhouse gases" that is carbon dioxide will nonetheless be labeled the primary cause of the hypothetical "warming," carbon emissions are to be taxed. Not coincidentally, emitting carbon is a natural, inescapable byproduct of human life - of all mammalian life, for that matter. There are currently no proposals to impose taxes on non-human gas emitters however, to the vast relief of the world's herbivores...

So what the Climate Armageddon industry represents, in vivid yet somehow overlooked clarity, is merely a post-Soviet political repackaging of anti-capitalism, and more deeply, an assault on humanity per se.

And that is all that it is.


So today on Industrial Revolution Day, say a silent "Thank You" - to every smokestack, power plant, steel mill, railroad, tailpipe, logging crew, oil tanker, fishing fleet, 18 wheeler, airliner, family farm, factory farm, oil refinery, offshore platform, gas pump, power line, freeway, SUV, cow pasture, skyscraper, fast-food joint, television set, backyard barbeque, incandescent bulb, tobacco field, ski resort, subdivision, McMansion, and, oh yes: kitchen, grocery store and restaurant that's keeping you alive and thriving as a human being.

And tell any starry-eyed, greenshirt neo-totalitarian that goose-steps across your path today, to go straight to hell.


Further reading:

"The Arithmetic of Environmentalist Devastation," by Pepperdine University economist George Reisman, Ph.D.
 

Tax Slavery Day vs. Tax Freedom Day - April 23

Now Playing: Nothing - Oh-dark-hundred again and can't sleep

Today is officially the day we all line up and pay our forced homage to that vast, bloated, slobbering, oppressive pig that our once-limited government has become - no thanks to President George "W-for-What's-A-Veto?" Bush, the RINOs ousted from Congress in '06, and of course the ever-constant Democrat-Socialists. As we sit here, two of the latter are struggling for the power to impose an even heavier load on the already-crushing burden we're paying today, while the alleged Republican candidate is poised to dump repackaged Marxism on us in the form of the faith-based "global warming" ideology.

According to the Tax Foundation, this year's Tax Freedom Day - the day at which your annual Indentured Servitude to the IRS ends and you officially start keeping what you've earned - falls on April 23, a week from tomorrow. The celebrated - and mostly meaningless - tax rebate checks have reportedly pushed the date up three days from the 2007 date. That's cold comfort in the face of 113 days - nearly four full months - of what is essentially slavery imposed on us annually.

Contemplate that fact in context of alleged "Republican" candidate John McCain's constant, career-long agitation for mandatory "national service" and his campaign's regurgitation of the socialist ethic of "serving a cause greater than yourself."

Note to candidate McCain: Read the Declaration of Independence. You know, that important-looking sheet of old paper they have under glass at the National Archives. In it, you'll discover an ideological mandate for a complete break with the centuries of self-sacrificial muck that had preceded it - and toward which you seek to drag us by force. We're currently your slaves for 113 days out of the 365/6 every year. How many more would be "enough" self-sacrificial duty in your eyes?

The individual's right to his life, to his liberty, to the pursuit of his happiness (i.e., the right to produce and to keep, by right, the property that is the consequence of production) ...in context of politics, there is no cause greater than this. At least not according to this nation's Founders.

Self-sacrificial duty to some "cause greater than yourself," on the other hand, has been the ethical foundation for every single one of the most evil and deadly collectivist regimes in human history. Pick your "greater cause": For the Bolsheviks, it was "the dictatorship of the proletariat"; for the Nazis it was "der Volk" and "Common Good Before Individual Good"; for today's Islamofascists, it's "submit or die"; for today's Ecofascists, it's "Are you ready to change the way you live?" - with the unspoken implication "If not, we will make you." Not surprisingly, McCain has officially drunk the "global warming" Kool-Aid.

What America's political climate (pun if you want one,) desperately needs at this point in history is a reaffirmation of individualism - of the sovereign rights of individuals to their own lives - and of a government limited to the just role of defending that right.

As opposed to violating it with impunity while clamoring for yet more loot.

Black Supremecism and the Obama Implosion

Now Playing: Run, from Darby Mills' Don't Look Back

As of last week the racist cat had been let out of the bag, and his name is Jeremiah Wright, preacher and 20-year intellectual mentor to Democrat Presidential candidate Barack Obama. Wright's frothing, racist anti-American rants are a matter of record, a record many on the neo-fascist Left would dearly love to obliterate as dearly as they'd love to silence their opposition on talk radio and the 'Net. Sadly for them, the First Amendment is, for the moment, still intact, and the cat, again, is forever out of the bag. We have all just gotten a horrific glimpse into the intellectual toxin behind Obama's slick façade of mild-mannered all-American Presidential candidate.

No, Obama is not Wright, and yes, he's issued a speech intended to distance himself from Wright's black supremecist rot. His campaign has hastily removed from its official website an endorsement of Obama by the militant racist group the "New Black Panther Party"; all major leftwing media have unceremoniously Spiked reporting on the endorsements of Obama by Daniel Ortega and Fidel Castro; and wife Michelle Obama's open contempt for America has been similarly swept under the rug. Ditto Obama's connection with indicted Syrian developer Tony Rezko and the disturbing financial relationship between the two. Pfft! Gone.

But there is nothing Obama - nor his supportive, cheering-squad media - can do to erase the last twenty years of his religious life. Every week for the last two decades Obama has taken his family to absorb the fascist vitriol of Jeremiah Wright and the black supremecist church he runs. Obama chose Wright and his church; he's clearly accepted what he has been hearing there; he chose Wright to conduct his marriage and to baptize his kids; his two daughters have grown up with that racist, anti-American drool as their formative intellectual backdrop.

The rationalizations to the effect that Obama "doesn't necessarily agree" with the black supremecist ideas dished out at Trinity United Church of Christ are powerless to sweep away an, er, inconvenient truth: Most people of sound, ethical mind would have been making for the exit doors on the day twenty years ago when they heard the very first racist, America-hating sentence - whether spewed by a Wright or a Farraklan or a David Duke or a Tom Metzger. Obama, having heard the Afro-Klan rantings of Wright, not only did not ditch Trinity church, but rather affirmed his tacit approval by remaining a devoted member of its congregation for twenty years and counting. Well, right up until the moment, roughly a week ago, when it became politically expedient to feign surprise and disapproval.

My question to the Obama camp and to the Democrat-Socialist Left: Granted your guy is in a rough spot of his own making, but...do you really think we're that stupid?

Ordinarily I would say that the Obama run for the Presidency is now effectively over. A twenty-year acceptance of violent hate-speak against America and against...every ethnicity that is not of African derivation, is an instant disqualifier for the Presidency of the United States - or of any country that wishes to continue its existence.

But this is not an ordinary Presidential campaign season. Obama is running against two opponents who are virtual carbon copies politically, and who, along with the media and broad swaths of both Parties' "leadership," have taken a "kid gloves" approach to any discussion of Obama.

Historically, every Presidential candidate has been vetted for suitability for office through the (now-endless) campaign season. Politicians who have been on the national scene longer than...two years...add the scrutiny of their prior public record to that vetting process. Barack Obama has with few exceptions been treated as being somehow exempt from such scrutiny. Why?

There is a bizarre dynamic going on with Obama's candidacy, due to a.) his race and the historic implications of that race vis á vis the Presidency, b.) the fact that ideologically he's a hardcore but well-concealed socialist, and complicated by c.) the entire problem of Hillary Clinton's ambitions.

Since Obama is ethnically black - well, one-half black - hordes of people to whom the wavelengths of pigment-reflectivity are important are trumpeting his potential to become "the first black American President" as a significant milestone. Indeed, a black Presidency would eliminate the last remnants of the whole racial "ancestral victimization" lunacy that comedian Bill Cosby took so much heat for debunking before the NAACP on May 17, 2004. Since Obama's race is of prime importance to so many among the Demo-Socialist Left, and since vestigial Leftwing ideology is inherently impossible to defend in rational debate, Obama's supporters, predictably, have labeled anyone who attempts critical scrutiny of his radical-Left politics as someone attacking his race. It's a blatantly racist attempt to use race as leverage in securing a wildcard-type exemption from ideological scrutiny, indeed even the most rudimentary vetting for the office of United States President.

Try to imagine how long that kind of ploy would work if the candidate were Walter Williams, Janice Rogers Brown or Clarence Thomas. Well, we don't really have to imagine in Thomas' case, do we? Nor in Brown's case, for that matter.

In simple terms, if you are a Leftist and also member of an ethnic "minority," your race is deemed sufficient by the Left to exempt you from critical scrutiny of ideology or character; if you are a member of an ethnic "minority" but are a non-Leftist, you're fair game.

I think some people need to be reminded that this is the office of President of the United States at stake here, and that it is perfectly rational to question the fitness for that position of someone who for twenty years has had no ethical, social or political problem with Mr. "God Damn America."

Leftists Gone Wild

Now Playing: Marathon, from the Rush "Power Windows" disc - a song about...life...with some clever, moving, play-on-words-laced lyrics

As you can see from the post dates here, I'd gone into one of my periodic, recuperative withdrawals from the sewer that is contemporary American politics over the last couple of weeks. But recently the hard-left Democrat Party has erupted with scandals all over the place, in a way that's becoming quite entertaining. It's really too bad that collectivists are running uncontested in this year's Presidential race...

* Last week an Obama advisor had to backtrack hastily, then resign, after calling Hillary Clinton a "monster" in an interview for a Scottish paper;

* Today former Democrat vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro (a.k.a. Zaccaro) stepped down from Hillary Clinton's finance team after telling a Torrance, CA newspaper last week that "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position";

* At 8 o'clock this morning Democrat New York governor ELIOT SPITZER, WHO, BY THE WAY, IS A DEMOCRAT, (for the benefit of those who get their news from the "mainstream" media,) announced his resignation from office after having been caught in the thick of a high-dollar prostitution ring - after a career of high-profile prosecution of...high-dollar prostitution rings;

* On a virtual daily basis the swamp...er...wetland...surrounding Obama's sweetheart real estate deal involving shady Syrian contributor Tony Rezko deepens, though I don't think we can expect the eco-fascists will be demanding that this one be turned into a nature preserve;

* A report today from Jeff Goldblatt says that Jeremiah Wright, Jr., the leader of the black supremecist church regularly attended by Obama since the late 1980s, may be in trouble with the IRS over political advocacy of the Obama campaign from the pulpit. In other...interesting moments from that speech, delivered on January 13, Wright said "Barack knows what it means living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary would never know that... Hillary ain't never been called a nigger."

This frothing racist's video can be seen here, if you don't mind a little nausea. (Keep in mind that this is what the Democrat-Socialist Party's Presidential frontrunner has been listening to every week for the last twenty years, with approval.)

As a footnote, recall that both racism and sexism, like the fascist/socialist strains of public policy being pushed by Clinton, Obama and McCain, are variants of collectivist philosophy - a.k.a. group-think. It's interesting that it's taken this long for those particular chickens to have finally come home to roost in the appropriate coop.

It's always edifying to watch the political opposition self-destruct before one's eyes. But again, it's really too bad the Republicans aren't fielding a candidate for President this year.

Umm, Nader Ain't It.

Now Playing: Pluie de Etincelles - the late Mr. Lane's 1995 piano jam

Sorry,'couldn't resist.

America's Core Conflict in Ethics

Now Playing: "Easy Blues" from Message From Nine To The Universe - just sublime...

As I've alluded here previously, we the people of the United States of America have been locked into a Presidential contest that, due to the politicians placed in front of us as "choices," guarantees that the next American President will be a hardcore statist. It is inescapable, barring some thoroughly improbable Douglas Adams-type upset in which an improbable number of American voters writes in an improbable candidate who, improbably, has a brain between his/her ears, at an improbability ratio of, roughly, 16,438,951,238 to 1 against.

As I've also suggested, the situation dictates (pun if you want one,) that principled, individualist Republicans dedicate themselves to "Alternate Plan B": focusing on non-Presidential electoral races, especially Congressional ones, for the long haul. Since we're doomed to having a committed enemy of individual liberty in the White House for the next four years, it is essential that Congress be bolstered this year, in 2010 and in 2012 with more people willing and able to counter his (or her) collectivist lunacy. The GOP's "leadership" sure as hell aren't going to step up to the plate on this.

Just this week the GOP gained a narrow recovery from disaster in the reversal by John Shadegg(R-AZ) of his Feb 8 announcement of retirement from Congress. Shadegg, recall, is one of the handful of Republican Congressmen that typically stands on principle against big government, out-of-control spending, "earmarks" corruption and generalized statism. Shadegg needs company; let's try to find similar people and work to get them elected, in positions from Congressman down to County Alderman.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Anyway, fresh in mind are soundbites from last night's Clinton/Obama debate, from recent speeches by each, and from the McCain/NeoCon/RINO wing. All three candidates are spewing brazen demands for "national service" and "self-sacrifice" and "giving back" and "duty," etc. ad nauseam, and most tellingly (pay attention here,) for a veritable avalanche of statist proposals based directly on that foundation of self-sacrifice.

In the wake of the recapture of Congress by the Democrat-Socialist Party in the 2006 election, I resumed frequent listening to conservative talk radio programs - 'cause those guys are at their best when they're in the opposition - and none of them have had much of anything to say against the Three Stooges' self-renunciation sermons, rather only against those consequential policy proposals.

Well, consequences do indeed have ideas behind them.

The phenomenon immediately calls to mind something I read in Leonard Peikoff's seminal 1982 work "The Ominous Parallels", the smarter older brother of Jonah Golberg's new book "Liberal Fascism". Funny how the observations of sound philosophy are bourne out in practice, consistently. Actually there's nothing funny there at all - just logic at work.

Something that cannot be stated often enough nor strenuously enough - particularly to today's conservatives (the Demo-Socialist Left are mostly beyond the reach of reason in any case,) is that:

a) economic liberty is an inescapable pre-requisite of political liberty, and

b) economic liberty is inherently - inescapably - egoistic.

In other words, economic liberty's core motive power is the individual's drive for personal self-betterment, personal innovation, personal enterprise, personal achievement, and for personal profit. The benefits derived by others - Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" - are secondary, as are decisions by individuals to engage in charity. In a meta-ethical sense this is an extension of man's inherent nature and inherent requirement for survival: Man is either free to think and act (i.e., to produce,) or he dies.

This, in turn, is why capitalism, and ONLY capitalism, is the politico-economic system perfectly in tune with the requirements of human survival and flourishing, and why capitalism walks hand-in-hand with human liberty - the two live or die together. Political and economic liberty are, in a word, inseparable; you simply cannot have either without the other. The argument for economic liberty - i.e., capitalism - is therefore primarily ethical, not merely pragmatic.

It is a fact that people the world over derive their ethics from religion of one sect or another. Virtually every religion's ethical credo is some form of codified altruism: Self-sacrifice for others is considered the unquestionable, highest virtue; self-interest (such as the entire drive for personal advancement, achievement and profit,) is considered as an unquestionable evil, or at best as something low and base.

Since philosophy is inescapably hierarchical in its structure and ethics is an antecedent branch to politics within that hierarchy, one's ethics - or a nation's ethics - will always inform and/or determine its politics.

A nation ostensibly dedicated to political freedom must, by that fact, also be a nation dedicated to economic freedom; a nation dedicated to economic freedom must, by that fact, also be a nation dedicated, at root, to egoism, the recognition of self-interest and individual sovereignty as moral and practical primaries.

If that nation instead embraces the opposite ethical credo - as in Clinton/Obama/McCain's fetishistic preachments that self-interest is "narcissistic greed" and that altruistic sacrifice to others constitutes "virtue" - and simultaneously attempts to retain its economic and political liberty, the result is an inescapable conflict.

It is precisely that conflict, the implicitly egoistic system of the Founders' conception vs. the explicit altruism being pushed aggressively by today's politicians and intellectual establishment, that has brought the United States to its present chaotic state - and the nightmarish Hobson's Choice of three committed statists as our only Presidential options. Again, it is flatly impossible to square a commitment to self-sacrificial duty within ethics with a political agenda of eliminating the dizzying array of altruistic government programs, agencies, entitlements, allocations, regulations, restrictions, bans, taxes, fees, licenses, permits, directives and bureaucracies to administer and enforce them.

If this conflict is not resolved, and resolved in a specific way - namely, the restoration of egoism as the appropriate moral credo of a free society - then a slide into freedom's antithesis: collectivism, can only be a matter of time. As to the practical mechanism by which that slide occurs, I will refer you to Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises' Planned Chaos.

 

Hobson's Choice '08: Second Thoughts

Now Playing: Lip Service, from Max Webster's Mutiny Up My Sleeve

I can't do it. There remains no power in the universe that could compel me to cast a vote for McCain, and that situation will not change, ever - but neither can I actively support the election of a Clinton or an Obama. Though I understand perfectly the argument for voting for the Demo-Socialist - a dual vote, essentially: one withheld from McCain and another given to whichever candidate has the best chance of beating him - I could never live with the knowledge that I had consciously voted for any of these people - McCain, Clinton or Obama. They're intellectual clones and antithetical to everything I value. We've been given the Hobson's Choice between: the GOP's hardcore statist or the Democrat-Socialists' hardcore statist.

Sorry, but that is a contemptible charade, not a choice, and I will be voting "None Of The Above," likely via a throwaway write-in - Judge Janice Rogers Brown or George Reisman or Walter Williams or maybe T.J. Rogers.

Every time I reconsider Ron Paul, even as a throwaway vote, he...opens his mouth. And I'm once again running through creative combinations of harsh language in as many languages as I can access. A man who thinks Islamofascism is the fault of America is no better in practice than an al-Qaida propagandist - not to mention a walking, talking suicide pact.

I try and I try not to wax pessimistic, but to my mind the Elian Gonzales atrocity of Y2K was a chilling indicator of the degree to which Americans have lost their respect for the concept of individual liberty.

[Which brings up another tangential implication of the upcoming election, one that nobody is talking about: It is not just several Supreme Court Justices that will likely be replaced during the next Presidential term. Try "one Cuban dictator." When Castro finally does us the favor of assuming room temperature, the fate of Cuba will rest in no small part with the occupant of the White House.]


The Bright Side: (Oh damn - Monty Python! Sorreee...)

Given the horrible situation the Party powers-that-be have dumped in our laps, what individualist Republicans can focus their activism on is: everything else. We need to shift our focus to every other elected office besides the Presidency - Congressional seats, governorships, State legislatures, right down to city politicians. We need to seek out and promote solid GOP candidates and weed out RINOs at all costs. We, not the recidivistic Left, have the valid arguments; we have the best "product," as Logan Clements puts it. It is only with candidates steeped in the philosophy of American individualism and capable of articulating it clearly that entrenched statists can be dislodged. Above all, this needs to stop:



Another vital point: We non-leftists have always been spectacularly inept at political activism. This too must change.

Maybe it's complacency; definitely it has to do with being productive and therefore having far less time to be stomping around in street demonstrations. In any case, we need to be more willing to get off of our duffs and engage in activism on behalf of our values, consistently and long-haul-permanently.

It may be something as simple as hammering out a periodic letter to the editor of a local newsrag, starting a blog (though they're admittedly a dime a thousand these days,) organizing or joining a simple street corner demonstration on a specific issue, and of course the imperative of frequent phone calls, letters and emails to our elected officious. To paraphrase something rocker Ted Nugent said in a 2005 LibertyFest speech, if you are not in contact with your elected officials at least quarterly, you're a chump - so don't be a chump.

With the ascendancy of John McCain the battle for liberty has taken a major blow, and it's happened for the same reason it always happens: Default on the part of liberty's defenders.

Time to get active and stay active on the promotion of individualism and freedom. At this point it's the only political option we have left to us.

Cut to the chase: GO HILLARY. Rah.

Now Playing: Umm, three guesses.

"...then he woke up and, to his utter horror, discovered that he'd been turned into a card-carrying Democrat." Yeah, my life as a cheesy Stephen King novel - tell me about it. In the grips of yet another
- type moment, Joe Verbose here is not feeling in a particularly talkative mood...

So I will defer to two of the clearest analyses of Tuesday's implications that I've yet seen anywhere.

First up is Robert Tracinski's Jan. 22 article "Why McCain Needs to Be Stopped", a far more eloquent (not to mention concise) enumeration of McCain's record and what it implies for principled, individualist Republicans than my preceding post.

Second is Robert Bidinotto's excellent Election Night entry "Will Super-Duper Tuesday anoint the new "progressives"?

With conservative radio pundit Hugh Hewitt already having pledged to fall in line behind McCain despite prior opposition to him, and the likelihood of party heavyweights like Rush Limbaugh and National Review following suit later in the election season, it looks to be a long, lonely road with some unsavory traveling companions for us individualist Republicans. Maybe we could all move to France for some better political representation.

Yes, Hewitt's points about national security and several likely SCotUS vacancies are well taken, but RJB is right: McCain must be defeated at all costs if this country's intellectual catalyst for liberty is to be preserved.

Anyhoo, though she's got my vote she will never have my respect - I've already swapped out my "RUDY" bumpersticker with a new one:


 

Addendum: A Vote for Paul, Huckabee, etc. is a Vote for McCain

I have a lot of friends who have talked themselves into the Paul camp, and I've heard lots in media - though thankfully I know not a single one personally - who are marching in lockstep behind Huckabee oblivious to the world around them, just like those two linear-obsessives in Dr. Seuss' "The Zax."

Allow me to amplify unapologetically that nagging little voice that's likely been flitting around your mind for some time now:

There is not a proverbial snowball's chance of Ron Paul nor of Mike Huckabee getting anywhere near a GOP primary win in the year 2008. Period, full stop, everyone out of the pool.

Read that again.

Got it?

Good, that means we've both got hold of the reality of the situation. And don't let's be blabbering about "Oh, well, with that defeatist attitude, of course nobody could win."

Hey, not all the Power of Positive Thinking nor Strenuous Media Spin nor Irrational Exuberance nor Drunken Unison Caterwauling nor Mystical Incantations By Firelight on behalf of those guys will alter reality. "You can twist perceptions/reality won't budge," as the Professor has written. (There is a Rush lyric for every situation in life, but this one works overtime...)

So, given the fact that the guy you're planning on voting for remains without...the proverbial snowball's chance of winning so much as the presidency of an ant farm, what would casting such a vote mean in practice?

Simple: It means a vote for John McCain.

And that, in turn... To recap in as much depth as my current supply of Pepto-Bismol will allow:

-> This is the same John McCain whose "Campaign Finance Reform" (read: Political Censorship,) legislation has run the priceless First Amendment of my Constitution and yours through the equivalent of a fine-pitch industrial paper shredder;

-> This is the same John McCain who once openly, now quietly (for some reason) has pledged his sycophantic fealty to the Climate Armageddon Industry and its faith-based "global warming" construct, at precisely the time when it is crucial we have at least a modicum of opposition to them.

-> This is the same John McCain who straight-facedly compared drilling for oil in a tiny sliver of the ANWR wastelands to drilling for oil in the Grand Canyon - at a time when every barrel of oil that McCain-type environmentalists force American producers not to produce means yet more oil revenue to OPEC. You know, to those kind folks who're fond of al-Qaida, Hugo Chavez, and the public torture of teenaged girls as punishment for being rape victims;

-> This is the same John McCain who in 2006 led the infamous "Gang of 14," siding with Democrat Patrick "WherrrzMyDrinkhh" Leahy & Co.'s filibusters of Bush Administration judicial appointments. This was, recall, at a time of an unprecedented quantity of judicial vacancies during rare GOP control of the Presidency and both Houses of Congress. Thanks to Traitor McCain, most of those vacancies remain...vacant, with both Houses of Congress now controlled by Democrats and the very real possibility of a White House presided over by a Democrat - or that very "Gang Of 14" leader himself. Imagine the militant lunacy that is the Ninth Circus Court of Appeals, expanded across courtrooms nationwide;

-> This is the same John McCain who for years has fought for higher taxation, who has parroted Marxian class warfare lingo in his virtually every statement on tax policy, and who as recently as last week voiced the contemptible dichotomy of " patriotism over profits."
This while he dares compare himself to President Reagan, no less.

Need I go on?

-> This is the politician to whom a Paul vote or a Huckabee vote goes, inescapably. As I've indicated clearly in a number of posts over the last year, Romney is far from being anything better than a placeholder in my book, and was at least three notches down on my ordered list of the original ten GOP candidates.

But if you take Michael Hurd's August 2004 article "Election 2004: Looking Ahead While Living Today" and apply it to the present situation with the particulars substituted, you have essentially the same argument in favor of voting for Romney, not just in the general election but in tomorrow's primary. Only in this case the primary opponent is a militant authoritarian-collectivist calling himself a "Republican," adding a whole new dimension of intellectual perversity to the mix.

Finally, if arch anti-Republican McCain is somehow jammed into the Republican nomination, the only principled choice left will be to pull a Peikoff - i.e. vote for whichever Democrat has the best chance of defeating him - in this instance with ample justification.

'Gonna be an interesting 24 hours - hopefully not in the 'Chinese' sense...

 

Giuliani's Wimp-Out Leaves Romney As Clear Choice

Now Playing: "I Won't Mind" from Uriah Heep's Wonderworld - Mick Box in a particularly snarly mood...

In a thoroughly inexplicable move, Rudolph Giuliani dropped out of the GOP primary race on Thursday, leaving Mitt Romney as the sole choice for Republicans.

I say "inexplicable" because of my difficulty in believing that the man couldn't have stuck around a lousy five more days 'til "super Tuesday," in which he was expected to make his leap to the head of the pack with delagates from New York, New Jersey and California. Though his campaign was reportedly broke, and with a fatally-botched strategy in the early primaries, his early pullout is nonetheless bizarre. Presumably his poor choice of strategic advisors was matched from the outset by a lack of will to win.

At any rate, Romney is now the only actual Republican candidate in the GOP primary race, though that insufferable traitor John McCain, propped up with the vigorous and near-continuous campaigning by the major - read: leftwing - media, entertains himself with delusional self-stylizations as a "Reagan conservative." Methinks he's in for a large surprise come the wee hours of Wednesday morning. The leftwing-wannabe Huckabee too is trotting along in the dust, presumably out of some warped species of religious vanity.

This Tuesday's voting is a crapshoot, also a true test of what today's GOP is made of. I think of it as an intelligence test: Will the rank-and-file Republican voters close their eyes to McCain's atrocious record on virtually every key element of Republicanism throughout his political career, and buy into his threadbare "war hero" schtick? A bright nine-year-old can grasp the fact that a McCain vs. Clinton or Obama race would dump on America the first single-Party "election" in its history - a Party which is most accurately described as Fabian Fascist.

At a time when America is in a battle for the very survival of Western Civilization, the transfer of American government into the clutches of any of those megalomaniacal statists would be an unmitigated disaster.

Like him or not, Romney is our only rational choice in the GOP primary race.

 

"Global Warming" My Ass

Now Playing: Nine to the Universe, from Jimi's "Message From Nine to the Universe," just arrived on CD - sounds great after 26 years...

Just a quick note about that vast neo-collectivist fraud called "global warming":  This morning (well, yesterday morning - it's oh-dark-hundred,) I had to scrape ice off of my car before I went to work.

Yes, it's January but...



I live in sunny Los Angeles.

Ten years ago in January I was getting sunburned by the pool.

Then there's this...

and this...

and this...

And those are just what's happening here. As Robert Bidinotto has reported, the weather is roughly the same in China.

And in the Middle East...(!)

As a matter of fact - "inconvenient" for some, I suspect - temperatures over the last year have been colder than hell all over the planet.

Noticeably muted has been reportage among major media of this; conspicuously silent too these last couple of months have been the Climate Armageddon faithful. As Mr. Bidinotto pithily observes, the eco-faithful's terminology of "global warming" is at max volume in the dog days of summer, but mysteriously transforms itself into "climate change" when people worldwide are up to their hairy eyebrows in Winter Wonderland.

Generally speaking, people with respect for and rudimentary grasp of science don't try to extrapolate incidental weather into broad, epochal climatic shifts, but the Climate Armageddon faithful have never been particularly fond of scientific rigor (pg. 5.) So when their own logic is bounced back at them courtesy of this inconvenient blizzard of...blizzard reports from around the world, their response is a uniform "Well, cold weather, too, is caused by...global warming."

Ah.

It's a neat trick, the non-falsifiable concept. Sews everything up and preserves the myth for the devout, and wipes out all of that tedious mucking about with...proof.

By the time I'd gotten halfway into Michael Crichton's excellent thriller State of Fear," I knew that I wouldn't be able to keep a straight face ever again upon hearing some breathless new media splash about "global warming." Yet there are people who persist in buying into that fraud, all around us.

What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall some 250 years from now, at a gathering of historians and cultural anthropologists looking back at early 21st-century politics. Those guys are going to be clutching at their sides, hooting in laughter.

For those of us in the here-and-now, the primary question (pun if you want one,) is: How much of our lives and of our livelihoods will be destroyed, how much economic and social wreckage will come about, as a result of this collective lunacy going by the name of "environmentalism?"
 

Annual Political Theater - Instant Impressions

Now Playing: The 2008 State of the Union address

Our annual exercise in cheesy political theater is under way, and I'm here to provide some initial impressions.

Once upon a time I'd go through the text of SotU addresses line-by-line and take them apart, but it's long since become clear that that is a colossal waste of time and threat to sanity. Better to do some more generalized observations - plus the task of posting here while watching will make anything more in-depth impossible.

First off, there's the Grand Entrance, in which camera-whores Congressional members line up along the aisle and, as the Cabinet and President pass, they struggle to grab hands, pat backs, and most importantly, get their smiling mugs on camera - including the ones who hate the President's guts and who have never given him the time of day, much less cooperation on vital issues. Maybe they had a sudden change of heart.

- The President just announced his full-on attack on earmarks, and Herr Pelosi looks like she's fighting back tears...; Speaking of Pelosi: If she slides any farther to the right to get better camera position she'll be in Cheney's lap...

- Fast-forward to education: Some proposal to help children get better grades, but not a peep about...getting government out of education. Which means: Status Quo Pablum;

- A call to improve trade with a number of South American countries and South Korea - clearly a veiled proposition to compete against China head-to-head...

- The rundown of energy proposals, and Pelosi sits motionless during applause for nuclear power, the cleanest and most technologically-advanced source of raw energy available. An eco-fascist to the end...

- Oh, a cut to Hillary: She's got a weird, dreamy look on her face, and it's hard to avoid the assumption that she's daydreaming about one day being in Bush's place. Maybe when she grows up?

- Now that's strange... the Republican side of the aisle is on its feet applauding advances in stem cell technology, and the Democrat-Socialists are motionless...

- D'OH! They're showing their unanimous approval of Bush's idiotic, Medieval proposal to ban "buying, selling, patenting or cloning of human life." Just what an emerging, vital and potentially history-altering technology needs - government stomping on its economic component at square one...

- Anybody keeping an eyeblink count on Pelosi? It went crazy when Bush read the line about "evil people who despise freedom and hate America." Hmmm...

- Ahh, "Our military and civilians in Iraq...deserve the gratitude of the whole nation." Can nauseating, self-serving hypocrisy get any worse than those contemptible Democrat pacifists jumping to their feet after that line? Do they think we haven't been keeping tabs on their behavior? Arrrrrghh...

- Funny, they're all sitting motionless after Bush's call on Congress "to fully fund our troops." Hmph. Now I'm all confused...

- Still on Iraq... Interesting but in no way surprising to see the further reactions of the aforementioned Democrat-Socialist hypocrites members; nothing new from the President - 'likely he's reasserting his policy on that country with as in-your-face an attitude as he can muster, which is to say: not much...

- Uh-oh...talk of "compassion" and the "call of our conscience" - not a good combination to be hearing from a government official. Which means we're moving into a litany of welfare programs?

- We oppose genocide in Sudan and support freedom in Cuba (tick!tock!tick!tock!,) Zimbabwe, Belarus and Burma (Rambo - go see it, if for no other reason than to tweak the sensibilities of Hollywood's leftists.) That's all good...

- "Fight against global hunger" and "humanitarian assistance" and "education initiatives..." Yeah, let's internationalize American welfare, that's the ticket. Sheesh...

- He's wrapped it up, surprisingly with no smarmy and overt religiosity - rather with a decided focus on liberty as a beacon of hope. So...why did he wait until his last SotU speech for that?

- More copious theatrical hand-pumping, back-patting and autograph-scamming, from both plausible members and blatant hypocrites. *sigh* Could future productions limit camera coverage to the actual speech? Unlikely.

Bottom line: Pretty standard GW Bush fare - the only standout moment was when he basically declared war on "earmarks," something that, again, should have shown up at least five years ago. Never better than late, as the GOP "leadership" would say. Or something.

We can be fairly certain, unfortunately, that aside from his promised vetoes - assuming they actually, finally show up - his sudden conversion to fiscal responsibility won't amount to much in the way of government downsizing.

'Guess Rudy'll have to tackle it.

Thompson's Lesson to Giuliani

Now Playing: Brush With The Blues (the Master at work,) originally recorded on Who Else?, 1999

Johnny-come-lately GOP Presidential contender Fred Thompson officially bowed out of the race today, bringing to a close a near-perfect exposition of the GOP "leadership's" philosophical vacuity.

Recall that less than a year ago we heard breathless talk of Thompson being "the keeper of the Reagan flame," a candidate who "...like Ronald Reagan, is a man of tremendous substance" sure to champion the same brand of (relatively) principled Republicanism and sweep his way to the GOP nomination.

Our first clue that something was seriously amiss with this appraisal came in the form of a purely strategic error that can only be defined as "boneheaded." Thompson stayed out of the early stages of the GOP primary season, even to the point of missing several of the early debates - a move that saw him transformed in both street buzz and media from "eagerly-awaited" to "indecisive and lazy." In short, he entered at least two months later than he ought to have.

The second clue came right at the end of Thompson's candidacy announcement speech of September 6, 2007: "We are steeped in the tradition of honor and sacrifice for the greater good. ...That's the belief that this campaign is based upon." As you can see and hear, there isn't a word in that speech related to individual rights as a foundation for changes to government policy. "Sacrifice for the greater good" was elevated to the status of core principle, while man's right to live for his own benefit - America's political First Principle - was not worthy even of passing allusion.

John Locke wrote these magnificent words in his Second Treatise:

"Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself."

Thompson, evidently, has never read them.

Our third clue arrived at Thompson's first debate showing on Oct. 9, 2007. The burst of proudly-professed Reaganism eagerly awaited by the GOP rank & file was...a no-show. What we heard was lukewarm, visionless pragmatism, a stark contrast to Reagan's emphatic and urgent assertions of the need to control and shrink, drastically, an out-of-control government. Thompson's campaign moved into a more or less continuous downward spiral thereafter.

So...why, after all the buildup, did Thompson's campaign fizzle, sputter and die like a post-Nanny-State firecracker?

Simple: There was a gaping void where, at the very least, an aggressive commitment to individual rights and to strictly-limited government should have been.

The reason for that void? Unquestioning acceptance of altruism as a foundational principle. As I wrote to the Thompson campaign's website on September 25, 2007: "How do you propose to effect any significant Reaganesque downsizing of that bloated, slobbering, oppressive pig that is our government, if your ethical credo is precisely the same as that used to bring it to that condition in the first place?... 'Sacrifice for the greater good' is the flipside of 'It Takes a Village.'"

It's no wonder Thompson had such a hard time mobilizing enthusiasm for his message, even within himself - it was anchored to a large dinosaur carcass.

Note to Mayor Giuliani: If you want to win this thing, familiarize yourself with the proper principles, and fight for them as though they matter. Your reading list could start with Capitalism, economist George Reisman's 1996 treatise. Or maybe just a certain 1957 novel.
 

Michigan Primary Caveat: "Open"

Now Playing: One Note At A Time by the immortal Shawn Lane - playing all instruments...

The Michigan primary has officially been called - Romney for the Republicans and Clinton for the Democrat-Socialists. This is pretty much as expected, and given the fact that no one person has yet won two GOP primaries in a row, any prognistications are pure speculation. While I'm normally loath to engage in guessing on political matters and even less fond of "spin," the exception in this case is that this is getting fun, and I'm a big fan of fun.

So what's my angle?

First, an essential attribute of the Michigan primary is that it's an "open" primary - which means that anyone can cast a vote for anyone, regardless of party affiliation. Secondly, Hillary Clinton was the sole candidate on the Democrat ballot due to the DNC's penalizing the state for holding its primary earlier than that party's rules allow. For once the Demo-Socs get something right - bravo!

Thirdly, though there's no positive confirmation that this actually took place, leftwing activists were urging Michigan Democrats to monkeywrench the GOP results by picking up Republican ballots and skewing the vote to their liking. Given the total absence of any appreciable stake in the Democrat contest, it's likely that a large percentage of votes on the Republican side were actually cast by hardcore leftists from the dark other side

One leftwing blogger had argued for Democrats to cast votes for Romney, on the theory that Romney's continued presence in the race would dilute the perception of any clear GOP frontrunner, thereby benefiting (somehow,) the Demo-Socialist Party. Umm, I always say "there's a Rush lyric for every situation in life," in this case it's: "You can twist perceptions / reality won't budge." If the Demo-Socs think they're going to get some kind of tangible uptick in November from that strategy, they're more delusional than even their ideology would suggest.

My take on the results: The more likely scenario of leftwing electoral tinkering is that they cast votes for McCain, who aside from his stance on the war is one of the two Democrats currently masquerading as Republicans. The other, of course, is Huckabee, but his theocratic worldview is too disturbing even for those enamored of his strident statism and hostility to economic liberty. The Romney-McCain-Huckabee trifecta indicates that Michigan GOP voters a.) like the Romney pedigree, and b.) remain disturbingly aligned with the religious right's tunnel-vision - as evidenced by Huckabee's double-digit showing well ahead of Giuliani, Thompson and Paul, also their probable contribution to the religious Romney's win.

All in all, with the GOP results from upcoming primaries in Nevada, South Carolina and Florida projected to maintain the "horse race" status of no consistent frontrunner, the GOP primaries prior to "Super Tuesday" will be a push. As I've said before, the real battle within the GOP field won't have been joined until the results are in the night of February 5 - and the fact that Giuliani is my current fave has absolutely nothing to do with that appraisal, honest.

Seriously, Giuliani won't really have entered this race until and unless he wins some of the huge delegate prizes on the 5th, though pulling off a victory in Florida ahead of that would be a huge coup. He's selected a do-or-die strategy, and the gloves have to come off February 5th or he's out of this.

Stay tuned...

Fox News Reverts To The Gong Show Format

Now Playing: "Every Time it Rains" from KWS' Live On

Fox News has got a game show running just now - it's got the snazzy stage sets, the packed cheerleader audience, the groovy panning multi-angle cameras, and there are six contestants. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

Some play-by-play:

- Much as I dislike Paul, you've got to admire a candidate who actually talks about Austrian economics by name in the midst of a televised debate. When he did so (on a question on an impending recession,) you could almost hear - and see, in Romney's case - five other throats swallowing hard... The problem with Paul, once again, is that his irrational foreign policy stance - and his vehement emotionalism whenever it comes up - has instantly disqualified him as a serious Presidential candidate at a time when the very survival of Western Civilization is on the chopping block. Therefore everything else he says, no matter how valid and admirable taken by itself, is disgraced by association. This guy is a one-track broken record on retro-60s head-in-the-sand pacifism.

- I'm wondering why, after John "Traitor" McCain's and The Reverend Huckabee's being queried specifically by the "moderator" about the apparent betrayal of Reaganomics by the current GOP "leadership," Fred Thompson had to ask that "moderator" to be given the same opportunity and time to...have his turn. After he had done the "moderator's" job for him, Thompson landed a one-two punch to the solar plexus of the confused Reverend Democrat Huckabee. So..why the odd focus by the network on the two Democrat candidates, Huckabee and McCain? 'Guess we know who the media are backing... I'll be interested to see a comparative breakdown of time and speaking opportunity allotments given the candidates.

- A detail note: I'm a big fan of precision in speaking and in choosing one's words. Which means I'm liking, big time, Hizzoner Giuliani's alteration of the phrase "war on terror" to "the terrorists' war on us." Precise, pithy, illustrative. More of that, please.

- Clapping. Lots...and lots...and lots...of clapping. Back and forth. And back and forth. And squealing - literally squealing - cheerleaders jumping into the "debate" on their idol's cue. As if I give a tinker's damn what a game show crowd thinks of a given point, and as if their emotional response is likely to cause me to rearrange my beliefs - which intent is palpable with every childish outburst. *sigh* This is not a good use of my time, Fox. Can you study the difference between a game show and a Presidential debate, then try to apply whatever you might learn to the situation at hand? Could somebody else create a news network that's run by professionals? Please?

- Paul eats serious crow on his 60s-flower-child pacifism when, after a lengthy rant of escalating emotionalism (as mentioned above,) the moderator asks what Paul was responding to, when the rest of the candidates had all urged calm and restraint on the Iranian agression against the American Navy. In the aftermath, even the half-baked rest of the field made Paul look like a naïve teenager on national defense, which, as I've said earlier here, is kinda-sorta important...?

- A big part of me wants very badly to be a Thompson supporter. His body-slam reply to Michael Moore's taunt in May of last year was the kind of thing I'd expected would be the tip of an iceberg of Reaganism. Unfortunately, we only hear that from Thompson on the rarest of occasions. And there's his noxious endorsement of the altruist ethics, the foundation of collectivism, in his paean to "sacrifice for the greater good," which "greater good," historically, has shown itself to be malleable to whatever the mob wants it to be, and generally enforced by a dictator. Essentially, the precise, polar opposite of inalienable rights of individuals.

The characterizations of him as "lazy" would be more accurately described as something like "inexplicably reticent" or "inappropriately passive." In any case, though Thompson's style of quiet gruffness and authenticity is a refreshing contrast to the slick, prepackaged, and coached artifice that's become the norm among American politicians, an appealing style - oddly attenuated at that - can't mitigate a disastrous view of ethics and some consequently disastrous black marks on his record. He'd have to convince me that the "sacrifice" blather was a momentary lapse of reason and outline some proposals at least as bold as Reagan's. Like eliminating entire cabinet departments like Education and Energy, alphabet soup agencies like the FDA, EPA, ICC, FTC, and above all, the FCC. But Thompson's most egregious offense remains his support for the McCain Campaign Censorship Act.

So as it stands, Thompson got some great soundbite points - and by the calculation of one of Fox' instant reaction panels "won" the debate overall - but he'd have to undergo a sea change of both substance and style to merit nomination.


All in all, the last two debates have illustrated vividly that, on a philosophical level, Giuliani is as good as Thompson is as good as Romney. The only real differences between them are superficial, mostly personality and stylistic differences. None of the GOP candidates is anything close to the Reaganesque fiscal conservative / social libertarian mold except Paul, but he has, as I've indicated, disqualified himself as a serious candidate on that whole Basic Survival question. That's really too bad because he literally ran rings around the others whenever he got away from 60s pacifism, which was roughly: 15% of his total speaking time. So given that we're left only with induced pragmatism, the candidate with the best cross-partisan appeal, therefore the candidate most likely to score the landslide defeat of Clinton / Obama / Edwards / Mussolini / etc., is the logical choice. That would be: Giuliani.

Yes, I'd rather vote for a candidate I could back enthusiastically and strictly on principle, but Janice Rogers Brown, Robert Bidinotto and T.J. Rogers are all gainfully employed. So I'm reduced to gutter pragmatism.

Just like the last five Presidential elections. This is getting real, real old - but what's a guy to do?

Hey France! Can we borrow....

Yeah, yeah - "No Person except a natural born citizen...shall be eligible..."

Aarrgh.

Please pass the Jenlain, s'il vous plait.
 

The First Presidential Debate Finally Airs - Bravo FoxNews!

Now Playing: Woogie the Weasel by Freeway Philharmonic, from Car Tunes, 1991

~~ Ah, back in the New Year from a self-induced vacation blackout on all things political - even political junkies need the periodic reboot. 'Hope everyone had a happy holiday season. [Note that I said absolutely nothing about "safe" - I'm not your nanny and neither is anyone else, assuming you're past the diaper stage.] ~~

I think congratulations of some sort are in order - with an adjectival mixture of "exasperated" and "relieved" - to Fox News for airing the first Presidential debate of the ‘08 campaign.

That's right, the first Presidential debate of the '08 campaign. No game-show format, no arena crowds of screaming, booing, jeering, applauding, groaning bonehead cheerleaders dragging discourse into the fetid gutter of tabloid journalism. Just Presidential candidates seated before a moderator, discussing issues. Imagine that.

Why we've had to wait the better part of a year through the inane game shows before getting a real discussion - you know, as if hearing what the candidates have to say were important or something - will likely remain a mystery. The vastly-improved format did not prevent the candidates from evasion, of course, nor did it suddenly instill in them better ideas, but for the first time we got to hear them.

The question now is: How do we drum into the collectiv(ist) heads of the rest of America’s news media that this is the kind of format that the debates from here to November 4 need to adopt?

This is a backhanded compliment, to be sure, but a compliment nonetheless. Televised political "debates" in America have been atrocious - nay, scandalous - in their juvenility for years, but thanks are due to Fox News for finally getting it right, and may the idea stick.

More on the debate's content as I digest it in reruns - this is a snapshot impression of format based on having caught the last 1/3 of it.
 

"Consensus": As Vast A Fraud As "Global Warming" Itself

Now Playing: There Is A Hot Lady In My Bedroom And I Need A Drink" from Terje Rypdal's "Singles Collection"

The purveyors of the concept of a "scientific consensus on global warming" continue to get slammed by, errm, cold reality. The last two weeks in particular saw the "consensus" unravel further as two new groups of prominent scientists directly refuted, on the record, the entire edifice of anthropogenic "global warming" and all proposed government force applied on its basis.

On December 13, 2007, one hundred prominent scientists, representing disciplines of climatology, meteorology, hydrogeology, physics, computer science, biology, remote sensing, oceanography, atmospheric physics, isotope geophysics, molecular genetics, paleoclimatology, chemical engineering, marine geology/sedimentology, etc., signed an open letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon which reads as follows:

"Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations
Dec. 13, 2007

His Excellency Ban Ki-Moon
Secretary-General, United Nations
New York, N.Y.

Dear Mr. Secretary-General,

Re: UN climate conference taking the World in entirely the wrong direction

It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages. Geological, archaeological, oral and written histories all attest to the dramatic challenges posed to past societies from unanticipated changes in temperature, precipitation, winds and other climatic variables. We therefore need to equip nations to become resilient to the full range of these natural phenomena by promoting economic growth and wealth generation.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued increasingly alarming conclusions about the climatic influences of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2), a non-polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis. While we understand the evidence that has led them to view CO2 emissions as harmful, the IPCC's conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions. On top of which, because attempts to cut emissions will slow development, the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it.

The IPCC Summaries for Policy Makers are the most widely read IPCC reports amongst politicians and non-scientists and are the basis for most climate change policy formulation. Yet these Summaries are prepared by a relatively small core writing team with the final drafts approved line-by-line by ­government ­representatives. The great ­majority of IPCC contributors and ­reviewers, and the tens of thousands of other scientists who are qualified to comment on these matters, are not involved in the preparation of these documents. The summaries therefore cannot properly be represented as a consensus view among experts.

Contrary to the impression left by the IPCC Summary reports:

* Recent observations of phenomena such as glacial retreats, sea-level rise and the migration of temperature-sensitive species are not evidence for abnormal climate change, for none of these changes has been shown to lie outside the bounds of known natural variability.

* The average rate of warming of 0.1 to 0. 2 degrees Celsius per decade recorded by satellites during the late 20th century falls within known natural rates of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years.

* Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today's computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling.

In stark contrast to the often repeated assertion that the science of climate change is "settled," significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming. But because IPCC working groups were generally instructed (see http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/docs/wg1_timetable_2006-08-14.pdf) to consider work published only through May, 2005, these important findings are not included in their reports; i.e., the IPCC assessment reports are already materially outdated.

The UN climate conference in Bali has been planned to take the world along a path of severe CO2 restrictions, ignoring the lessons apparent from the failure of the Kyoto Protocol, the chaotic nature of the European CO2 trading market, and the ineffectiveness of other costly initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Balanced cost/benefit analyses provide no support for the introduction of global measures to cap and reduce energy consumption for the purpose of restricting CO2 emissions. Furthermore, it is irrational to apply the "precautionary principle" because many scientists recognize that both climatic coolings and warmings are realistic possibilities over the medium-term future.

The current UN focus on "fighting climate change," as illustrated in the Nov. 27 UN Development Programme's Human Development Report, is distracting governments from adapting to the threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever forms they may take. National and international planning for such changes is needed, with a focus on helping our most vulnerable citizens adapt to conditions that lie ahead. Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity's real and pressing problems.

Yours faithfully,

[List of signatories]

Copy to: Heads of state of countries of the signatory persons."

Ouch, that's gotta hurt.

Yesterday, December 20, 2007, the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works issued a press release titled U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007, subtitled "Senate Report Debunks 'Consensus.'"

That's: Four hundred scientists.

That report is particularly damning in that it reproduces some of the creepy attempts, from Gore to a number of "nonbiased" media personnel, to quash dissent. This is an indication that the McCarthyism being employed against Climate Armageddon dissenters, described by MIT atmospheric scientist Richard Lindzen a year ago in Climate of Fear, is still in full force.

The Global Warming Petition, which has been on the books - and strenuously evaded by the Left and their media - for a number of years, is now well past the 19,000 mark in signatures from interdisciplinary scientists. The Global Warming Petition states:

"We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."

That's: Nineteen thousand scientists.

From the Left...no comment.

To be fair, RINO Republicans in Congress and in the White House appear utterly oblivious to this as well. Enlighten them.

Reports on specific scientific findings are similarly confronting the eco-totalitarians with uncomfortably cold, hard facts. In summer of 2007 a loudly-trumpeted junket to Greenland was indulged in by a group of Senators, which trip conferred the status of Climate Science Expert upon each of the Senators, incidentally. Sen. Benjamin Cardin of Maryland summed up the emotions of all present: "Seeing the receding glaciers in Greenland showed us visible signs of global climate change. It helped me to understand our universal responsibility to reduce greenhouse gases, to protect our planet and our Maryland economy."

Unfortunately for the Good Senators, their instant expertise has hit a similarly-instant snag, for a new study shows evidence that Greenland's melting is in large part due to volcanic activity deep beneath that land mass:

From Ohio State University: Earth's Heat Adds to Climate Change to Melt Greenland Ice

And in a story from Agence France-Presse titled Extreme weather? Sure. Blame global warming? Not so fast", Barry Gromett of Britain's Met Office says "There's a danger in taking isolated incidents in any given year and attributing this to something like climate change. It's really important to look for trends over a longer period of time. More heat equals more moisture equals probably higher rains, so in that respect some of it ties in quite nicely (with climate change). But there are many different facets that appear to contradict each other."

French IPCC climatologist Jean Jouzel says "Several more years would be needed to establish a link, or to not establish a link, between these extremes and global warming."

Uh-huh.

Yes, "the science is settled." Definitely.

There is a reason behind this climate armageddon push - and it has nothing whatever to do with the environment, the climate, nor with concern for humanity. 'Care to take a guess?
 

Romney Tips His RINO Hand

In the December 12 Iowa debate Romney made the following statement, which he clearly believes is acceptable and perfectly ethical:

"I don't stay awake at night worrying about the taxes that rich people are paying, I'm concerned about the taxes middle-class people are paying."

Think about that for a minute.

In other words:

"Americans, under my Presidency, would forfeit their natural rights - e.g. property and economic liberty - upon crossing some arbitrary threshold of 'acceptable' income. It's fine to strive for success, but if you actually achieve success, well then to hell with you."

In yet other words:

"Screw ethics, this is all about populism, votes and getting elected, and the 'middle class' is a way, way bigger group of voters than 'the rich.'"

And this is the GOP candidate who dares pose as a moralist?

- I wonder if anyone will ever sit down with Romney and explain to him the relationship between taxation and force, then the relationship between force and ethics.

- I wonder if he'd comprehend a word of it if anyone did.

- To keep it simpler for him, I wonder (ha!) if he could come up with an answer to the question of what criteria he would use to define someone as "rich," and how he would validate that definition.

- I wonder, on a purely pragmatic note, if Comrade Romney has ever contemplated the fact that economic income groups are not static in their composition.

Romney's sneering disdain for the property of "the rich" is pure poison in its perpetuation of an amoral collectivistic premise. It's a simplified manifestation of what economist George Reisman calls Platonic Competition. What that ethical blackout means in practice is something that was amply demonstrated under Bill Clinton: Taxation-at-will is simply a matter of expanding the definition of "the rich."

Bottom line:

Romney is no defender of individual rights, no defender of economic liberty, therefore no friend of core Americanism.

To repeat to Romney what I wrote to talk radio's Resident Lightweight, Laura Ingraham, after she made a similar statement the first - and last - time I listened to her show:

"With 'Republicans' like you, who needs socialists?"

Romney and leopards and spots, oh my!

Arrgh.
 

Barack O'Brien Dumps Reagan Into The Memory Hole

Now Playing: Winston Smith Takes It On The Jaw from Utopia's "Oblivion" - the Orwell reference made a listen mandatory.

Amid the endless, tired regurgitations of shopworn collectivism that was today's Democrat Debate was a subtle yet interesting omission. In response to a question about using Clinton-era advisors on foreign policy, Obama/O'Brien makes a strange temporal leap:

Moderator:"Senator Obama, you have Bill Clinton's former National Security Advisor, State Department Policy Director, and Navy Secretarial[sic] among others advising you. With relatively little foreign policy experience of your own, how will you rely on so many Clinton advisors and still deliver the kind of break from the past that you're promising voters?"

Obama:"...I want to gather up talent from everywhere... I think that there are a lot of good people in the Clinton years, the Carter years, George Bush 1, who understand that our military power is just one component of our power, and I revere what our military does."

Ummm, anyone we're forgetting from that time frame? Anyone who might have some foreign policy expertise? Someone, say, from an administration that inherited a foreign policy rat nest and not only cleaned it up but, after an enormous struggle, engineered the successful, history-altering defeat of the Soviet empire?

Hmmmm...

Nope. The Clinton years, the Bush 1 years and the Carter years - that about covers it.

I can only assume that the prospect of bringing even Reagan's name into the picture presents a crisis of comparison so intolerable that it demands an Orwellian memory-wipe.

...And these recidivistic socialist clowns want to play President again - at a time when we're in a fight for the survival of Western Civilization.

Wow.

OK, Mitt - We're Clear On Your Religion, But...What About...?!

Now Playing: Les Petites Notes by Liane Foly. Sublime, and...very Christmassy

Today GOP Presidential contender Mitt Romney gave his speech on religiosity and Mormonism, ostensibly to clear the air in defense of his and every American's right to his own creed. Fine, that's his bag, whatever.

Buuuuuuut....

Am I the only one out here driven to shirt-rending paroxysms by the pin-drop silence on, errm, that thing called politics?

WHAT ABOUT THE POLITICAL DIRECTION OF THIS COUNTRY?

'Last time I checked, the American people weren't suffering from any marked lack of religiosity. On the contrary, religion-fueled altruism has been making alarming inroads into public policy - most recently in President Bush's asinine decision to freeze subprime mortgage rates so that the 6% of Americans irresponsible enough to get themselves into hot water on real estate can get a free ride, courtesy of a forced bailout by...the rest of us. The examples of the wreckage done to public policy by smarmy altruism are legion - another of them, not surprisingly, is precisely Presidential candidates evading the hard, crucial issues in favor of cultivating religious populism.

Could it be that there might be other things to which Presidential candidates ought to be paying attention?

It's been nearly a year since Romney declared his intent to seek the Presidency, roughly six months since he and the rest of the GOP lineup wrapped themselves in the mantle of "Reaganism," and we have yet to hear a peep out of him on what he plans to do - nay, even what, if anything, he thinks should be done - to get control of our leviathan government.

Where is the clarity and uniquivocal dedication to reversing - not "slowing the rate of growth of," but reversing - the out-of-control size, scope, cost and intrusiveness of American government?

- Where are the goal-oriented, uncompromising plans to attack - and dismantle - entitlements head-on?

- Where are the goal-oriented, uncompromising road maps to the full divestiture and privatization of Social "Security" á la Chile and... Ethics?

- The commitment to counter, head-on, the Democrat-Socialists' health care nationalization scheme with the exact, polar opposite: a full separation of medicine and State, on Ethical and practical grounds?

- To link, in principle and in legislative practice, all government action to the limited sphere stated in the Declaration of Independence, namely: "...To secure these rights (Life, Liberty, Property,) governments are instituted among men..."?

- To end, once and for all, the litigation cancer that is destroying our rights and freedoms via litigants' end-runs around the Bill of Rights?

- To replace the multi-rate Income Tax with a sales tax having - take note, Mr. Thompson - a single rate for all with no exceptions?

- To drain the industry-killing swamp that is environmental regulation?

- To end, once and for all, our involvement with - and physical hosting of - the international septic tank that is the "United Nations"?

- To blow apart the retro-Marxian fraud that is anthropogenic "global warming" and the toxic retro-Medievalist industry that's grown up in support of that fraud?

- To obliterate every last trace within American law of the atrocity known as the McCain/Feingold/Shays/Meehan Campaign Censorship Act of 2002?

- To obliterate every last trace within American law of the atrocity known as the Kelo v. New London decision, i.e., to abolish "Eminent Domain" nationwide, totally and permanently?

- To pull America at least up to the level of bureaucratic Japan, socialist Britain, and Ahmad-In-A-Jar's Iran(!) on privatizing the Postal "Service"?

- etc.


But...Silence.

Romney gave his speech on religious liberty for the ostensible purpose of clearing away the negative perceptions of his Mormonism (primarily among Evangelical Christians, an eagerly-sought voting block for him.) But all Romney has done is underscore the fact that he is a virtual carbon copy of G.W. Bush: A man of deep religious conviction who...hasn't got the slightest shred of political vision, much less of philosophic grounding.

Romney's - or any other candidate's - professions of religious belief tell us nothing except that he has an ethical credo. Swell. But without a cohesive, integrated political agenda, the only conclusion to which we out here in Realityland can arrive is that Mitt Romney's sole focus in running for the Presidency is to promote religiosity.

Sorry Mitt, but we've kinda-sorta got some other, rather pressing problems on our plate, and the President sits at the head of the table.

Obviously, it is precisely that set of religious core premises that makes it impossible for Romney to formulate a cohesive philosophic framework for individual rights and a properly-limited government. As I wrote to Fred Thompson's campaign a couple months ago, how do you propose to dismantle unjustifiable government programs, agencies, regulations and taxes, when your ethical credo - which you're promoting as your highest purpose in seeking office - holds that self-sacrifice for the sake of others is a primary virtue?

What we need is political vision, specifically in the vein of "Reaganism," only with real teeth on government downsizing and significantly less compromise with the purveyors of intellectual poison (e.g., Democrats.) The above examples are goals that sound radical in an age of craven "moderate-ism," but they are valid, achievable, and long, long overdue. Even if we had a President willing to set those goals and fight for them we wouldn't get them in total, nor in many cases even in part. But the point of goal-setting is to advance relentlessly in the direction of those goals without expectation of overnight success.

Absent even the articulation of those policy goals by the Presidential candidates, we can know one thing with certainty: The battle to recapture core Americanism will be dead at Square One.

So far we've got the full, detailed dope from Romney on religion, and meanwhile we're...dead at Square One.

We're waiting, Mitt...

Rudy...

Fred...

George...

Arrgh.


Postscript, 12-07-07:
Yes, what we really need are this-worldly metaphysics, reason in epistemology and egoism in ethics, but the context here is the current crop of GOP Presidential candidates, none of which is likely to embrace objectivist philosophy any time soon. We have what we have to work with, dismal as it is...
 

Election '08: CNN's Egg and the GOP's Decision Point

Now Playing: Io Ameró, from Eros' Dove C'e Musica

With the unearthing of every new leftwing connection among the "undecided Republican voters" at the November 28 Republican debate, DNCNN's fraud is further illuminated. At this point we can enjoy the spectacle of that once-reputable news source's implosion, but one further thought:

CNN chose the video "questions" used in the debate, and they chose them for obvious reasons. Contemplate the magnitude of insularity in their assumption that hard-left "gotcha" questions straight from the DNC playbook could be successfully passed off as random GOP voters; the sneering condescension in the assumption that the GOP rank-and-file wouldn't notice.

Amazing. But...not particularly surprising.

Again, call your cable company and ask them to drop CNN networks from their channel lineup in favor of other news outlets - the BBC perhaps, one of Europe's state-run newspeak channels, or maybe Russia's Pervy Kanal.

You know, something a little more honest than CNN.

* * * *

Meanwhile, the current dust-up among the GOP candidates illustrates yet again the destructive power of mixing religion and politics (not to mention the altruist ethics,) or more specifically of its incompatibility with core Republicanism. That, folks, is why this Presidential election has become a kind of decision point on those two opposing alternatives: GOP principles vs. religion.

To the religious wing of the Republican Party, the ideals of Republicanism - indeed, of Americanism in the Founders' conception - have always languished at a distant second place to "social conservatism," i.e., enlisting the power of government in the promotion of religious mores. The results have become a predictable reality: a bloated, slobbering, out-of-control monster government, unchecked even in its growth for decades; a foreign policy riddled with compromise on vital principles even in wartime; subversion of the American electoral process, narrowly averted by an alert SCotUS; an alarming, recent escalation of legislative attacks on the Constitution itself.

Today we are seeing that Republicanism vs. religionism conflict coming to a head, in the full-bore promotion of Huckabee for the GOP nomination - under the auspices of some of the worst exponents of RINOism - the former political director of the NRSC, etc.

Huckabee is best described as one of those horrid political creatures who has the "fiscal" vs. "social" mix exactly backward: fiscally "liberal" and socially conservative - which means he represents the worst elements of left and right, albeit watered-down in both cases. That guarantees him at least temporary support by a mainstream media petrified by the prospect of a Giuliani/Clinton contest a year from now - which, again, I predict will be Giuliani by a heavily-lopsided margin, if not landslide, should those two end up as the contenders.

Huckabee doesn't have the proverbial snowball's chance of winning the nomination, but the MSM - and by extension the Left in general - are all about strategic propaganda. To their reckoning, any second-tier candidate (third, in Huckabee's case,) who can make a strong showing in the primaries will dilute the strength of the first-tier GOP candidates in the eyes of the public, particularly the one they dread most (with good reason) - Giuliani.

More instructive is the phenomenon of Huckabee's support from the vestiges of the religious right.

As I've said, the entire '08 GOP lineup is dismal for anyone loyal to core GOP principles, to wit: advocacy of individual rights; of aggressive and radical reduction of the size, scope, intrusiveness and expense of government in every sphere except those identified by the Founders as justifiable (e.g., the armed forces, the police and the courts); of secular governance; of intransigent, uncompromising defense of America and American sovereignty.

Given what we have to work with, given the current geopolitical situation, and given that the opposition party is populated by frothing maniacs, I've argued that the most rational choice left to us is a placeholder, the candidate with the best chance of beating any Democrat-Socialist and who is solid on at least the one most vital issue facing America, national security.

This forced reduction to crude pragmatism is something that approaches physical pain, but I see no alternative.

That placeholder is: Giuliani.

One need look no further than at the behavior of the leftwing media for confirmation, but Giuliani's status as most likely '08 winner stands to reason: Giuliani, more than any other GOP candidate, enjoys the broadest cross-partisan appeal in terms of both ideology and populism. Whatever votes he loses to the hardcore religious right will be compensated for amply by independents and moderate Democrats disgusted with what their party has become. His imminent nomination could very well prompt the Democrats to snub Clinton in favor of their apparent next-strongest candidate, fellow arch-leftist Obama.

At any rate, the Democrat left clearly see Giuliani as their most formidable opponent in the GOP, particularly if his choice of running mate is strategically sane.

The hardcore religious wing of the GOP have an inter-sectarian abhorrence for Romney's Mormonism so he's out - a good thing too, given that any more RINOs in political office are easily as destructive, if not more so, than radical leftists. That leaves Huckabee. Since for the religious fundamentalists religious affiliation trumps even a political record one would be hard-pressed to distinguish from a big-government Democrat, the religious right have thrown in with him - and by that fact, with the Democrats.

Perhaps it's a premature evaluation, pending Huckabee's elimination. We shall see.

The bottom line is that the majority of rank-and-file Republicans have to decide whether they're voting for President of the United States or Pastor of the National Church. If it's the latter, we can count on a new clutch of rabid leftists in the White House - and likely majorities in both Houses of Congress - at a time when:

- Islamofascism remains a growing threat, with the potential for nuclear attack on America by terrorist elements a new reality;

- Vladimir Putin seems bent on returning Russia to collectivist totalitarianism;

- The Communist Chinese are showing disturbing signs of belligerence and of meddling in Central and South American politics;

- A fool by the name of Rudd has ascended to power in Australia and signed that nation onto the bizarre global totalitarian push calling itself "The Kyoto Protocol," which means America must have an unbending advocate for American sovereignty and human liberty in the White House;

- A number of Supreme Court vacancies are likely to come about through retirement of Stevens, Ginsberg, possibly Kennedy - left-leaning all;

- American governments, Federal, State and local are approaching a critical mass of...sheer mass;

- The state of American education and culture is at a veritable crisis point;

- etc.

The "error buffer" left us by Reagan has been largely burned up - we need someone who is at least semi-sane in charge. That rules out the Democrat Party - and their enablers within the GOP.
 

Atlanta (AP) - John, "DNC," Caught In Flagrante Delicto With Prostitute Identified Only As "CNN"

Now Playing: "The Pilgrim," from the 1973 Wishbone Ash masterpiece Live Dates

That seasonal - or just "periodic," perhaps? - disgust with politics has settled in a bit of late. One tires of mopping up other people's garbage, particularly when the season turns a festive and contemplative focus, and even more so when the "other people" in question seem to be acquiring ever more capacious dump trucks...

At any rate, last night's "debate" is now history - or rather, infamy - and with the backlash against DNCNN's comical attempt to pass off card-carrying operatives for various Democrat candidates and leftwing organizations as "undecided GOP voters," there are two basic messages to be distilled:

1. CNN has disposed of any shred of credibility it ever had, and has completed its transformation into campaign publicist for the Democrat National Committee;

2. Even against a deck stacked with hostile adversaries, the entire GOP field stepped up and met the assault with alacrity and surprising ease.

CNN/YouTube have actually done us a favor (inadvertently,) in drawing a vivid contrast between the two major Parties:

- The Democrat Party candidates do not dare appear in debates on the centrist Fox News Channel, hiding instead behind back-room demands for softball questions from CNN's Wolf Blitzer, demands happily agreed-to by that network - and still have trouble giving straight answers (or keeping massive contradictions on vital issues concealed);

- The GOP candidates unhesitatingly agree to appear on a hard-left network, submitting to (what turns out to have been) hand-picked "questions" from leftwing activists masquerading as "undecideds" - and still handle the onslaught with relative competence.

So...even though we're miles away from anything like an ideal candidate, which is better equipped to lead America and Western Civilization through one of the most dangerous eras in its history, the GOP or the Democrat-Socialists?

Next...

[Oyeah, on an activist point, you may want to contact your local cable company and ask that CNN and its affiliates be dropped from your channel lineup, in favor of news organizations that are marginally closer to ethics, or at least sanity.]

* * * * * * * * * * *

This debate was perhaps the worst example this year of my perennial (quadrennial,) peeve: the superfluous, disruptive live mobs arena audiences.

Once again we had a faceless herd of live attendees communicating to us, loudly, what they think the rest of us should like and dislike - on the irrefutable basis of...there being a whole bunch of them.

When a raucous cheer goes up after a point that is clearly noxious, rotten or just wrong, it brings to mind what Madison warned us about mob rule:

"Democracy is the most vile form of government... democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention, have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property, and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

There's that same gnawing in the pit of one's stomach that one imagines was felt - albeit to a far greater degree - by those lined up for the guillotines of '93, for the Salem witch trials, by those unfortunate enough to have been caught wearing eyeglasses by the Khmer Rouge; etc. In short, the mob mentality is the killer of rationality and of rational debate. It cares not a whit about the merits or demerits of a given point of view - it doesn't listen to points of view. It just obliterates all else in favor of an orgy of quantity, as if that's a substitute for reason.

Yet there it is, right smack in the middle of American Presidential game shows debates.

Once again, with feeling: Can someone explain to me the rationale for having any live audience at a Presidential debate? Does someone believe that careful analysis of contenders for the Presidency is in any way enhanced by juvenile pep squads trading cheers and boos while the rest of us...wait for them to shut up?

Enough already. 'Back in a few.

Dear France: Could You Loan Us Your President?

Now Playing: "Ouray" - Andy McKee, from The Gates of Gnomeria

A few months ago I cheered the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as President of France, a country whose socialist leaders' general attitudes toward America had hovered between ambivalence and hostility for decades.

Sarkozy's unabashedly pro-American stance was reason enough to cheer his win; how stunning, then, to discover that his love of America not only eclipses that of most of America's political "leadership" in either party, but that his affection for America is neither causeless nor superficial. The man actually gets it, right down to first principles:

"From the very beginning, the American dream meant proving to all mankind that freedom, justice, human rights and democracy were no utopia but were rather the most realistic policy there is and the most likely to improve the fate of each and every person.

"America did not tell the millions of men and women who came from every country in the world and who — with their hands, their intelligence and their heart — built the greatest nation in the world: 'Come, and everything will be given to you.' She said: 'Come, and the only limits to what you'll be able to achieve will be your own courage and your own talent.' America embodies this extraordinary ability to grant each and every person a second chance.

"Here, both the humblest and most illustrious citizens alike know that nothing is owed to them and that everything has to be earned. That's what constitutes the moral value of America. America did not teach men the idea of freedom; she taught them how to practice it. And she fought for this freedom whenever she felt it to be threatened somewhere in the world. It was by watching America grow that men and women understood that freedom was possible."

It remains to be seen whether Sarkozy's words will be borne out in action, but I'm not particularly worried. We may very well be witnessing the ascendance of France's Reagan. With Germany's new chancellor Angela Merkel garnering comparisons to Margaret Thatcher and signaling a moderation of that nation's largely anti-American stance, could the entire character of Europe be transformed from a Kantian/Rousseauian muck into a new embrace of Enlightenment values? We now have reason to hope, at least.

As for Sarkozy's November 7, 2007 speech in Washington, methinks it is no accident that the full text of it is buried deep even on the Internet, to say nothing of the standard (read: leftwing) media. To hear these Reaganesque sentiments coming from the new leader of...France... is deadly news for a hard-left Democrat Party that's heavily invested itself in the premise that America is despised internationally. As for the GOP "leadership," which has been mostly silent on the subject of American greatness for two decades, the pure Americanism expressed by Sarkozy has got to be a source of profound embarrassment for that contrast. As well it should.

Can you imagine a single one of the current Presidential hopefuls - of either Party - coming anywhere close to Sarkozy's grasp of core Americanism? I can't either. And that's lamentable, because never in America's history has it been needed more.

So let me post a reply directly to M. Sarkozy and to the people of France as a whole:

Neither will Americans - Americans of principle - ever forget that without France, the United States of America likely would not even exist. We shall never forget that France risked war with the British Empire by covertly supplying desperately-needed money and munitions to the American colonies from the start, and by becoming the first foreign power to recognize America officially as a sovereign nation in 1778. France took this enormous risk out of a love of and commitment to the same ideals for which America was struggling. And we shall never forget. Vive la France!

Venezuela: Pro-Chavez Thugs Open Fire on Student Demonstrators

Now Playing: "Sojourn" by Billy Currie with Steve Howe, also from Keys and the Fiddle

Breaking news from Venezuela: Masked gunmen opened fire on university students today as they returned from a massive but peaceful demonstration march against dictator Chavez' impending alteration of the Venezuelan constitution to keep himself in power indefinitely. There are conflicting reports about deaths, but eight confirmed injuries. Note that the Associated Press report initially tries to make it appear as though this attack was caused by its victims, not by Chavez' thugs. Oh, excuse me, by the pro-Chavez thugs - there is no evidence available to link them with Chavez himself. A-ahem...

Today's events serve as an object lesson on what leftwing ideology ultimately means in practice, what it must of necessity mean: Rule by iron fist by a self-appointed deity, over a population reduced to the status of rightless serfs.

Why "of necessity?"

Logically, every form of collectivism, from Chavez' budding totalitarianism down to Gore's budding eco-fascism or the Clintons' recidivistic Marxism, is characterized by an assertion of the "rights" of a group at the expense of the valid rights of individuals (if indeed the latter are even acknowledged.)

Yet in reality a "group" is only a figure of speech we use to denote two or more...individuals. To assert the supremacy of a concept while simultaneously denying the validity of the constituent referents of that concept, is to engage in a gross logical contradiction, the fallacy of the stolen concept. The entire edifice of collectivist philosophy is built upon this logical contradiction.

To attempt in real-world practice to invert that logical relationship, to ascribe rights to a concept at the expense of the valid rights of the very entities that compose it, requires the violation of individual rights by force. Keep in mind that rights can only be violated by force or some indirect species of force (such as fraud.)

That is the insignia of collectivism in any variant: It literally cannot be implemented without the violation of rights.

My condolences to the victims of this particular attack, and to the people of Venezuela in general for the descent of their once-free nation into the cesspool of collectivism. May Chavez and his cancerous regime be overthrown by the good people he's currently stepping on and liberty be restored to Venezuela quickly.

Though she has not yet posted on today's shootings, I recommend bookmarking The end of Venezuela as I know it - an insightful blog published from the belly of the beast by a student in Caracas who has a simple thirst for liberty one dearly wishes more of her American counterparts shared.

Essential reading:
George Reisman's Blog on Economics, Politics, Society, and Culture: Hugo Chavez: Collectivist Throwback
 

Weather Channel Founder Calls Global Warming Hypothesis "The Greatest Scam in History"

Now Playing: "Quiet Words" by Billy Currie, from Keys and the Fiddle

'Rough day for the "global warming" faithful as John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, called the "global warming" hypothesis "the greatest scam in history."

That would be obvious to anybody with an elementary-level education in science and history, and anyone else who's had the chance to watch The Great Global Warming Swindle, the decisive rebuttal to Gore's sermon by British filmmaker Martin Durkin. [Note: The film is viewable in full at a German video site, but I urge the purchase of the film, either via Amazon or the WagTV site linked above.]

More on this later...
 

Some Political Predictions - You Heard 'Em Here First, Folks

Now Playing: "Stick it Out" by the Men of Willowdale, from Counterparts, 1993

No crystal ball, no ouija board, no Al Gore whispering his Revealed Truths in my ear, just some prognostication based on philosophy and the simple patterns of recent history. See if you agree:

Prediction #1:  If the GOP doesn't hammer out and announce - very soon - a radical, focused and committed agenda to privatize and deregulate American medicine, then stick to it without compromise, there WILL be socialized medicine in America, á la Canada or the UK (where things like "self-dentistry" have become all the rage.)

The Democrat-Socialist Left have demonstrated conclusively that they are in this for the long haul - having just regurgitated a new SCHIT bill a mere matter of days after their first was rejected via a sustained veto. It's clear they have no interest in identifying and eliminating the root of the current "crisis" in government controls. For the Democrat-Socialists this is not about quality medical care for Americans, it's about the acquisition of political power for themselves, in perpetuity.

It's clear they intend to stop at nothing short of Clinton Care - a.k.a. health care nationalization - and absent principled opposition from the GOP, they will get it. The Demo-Socialists know that the (current) GOP typically compromise and cave on principle over time, so all they need do is continue chipping away at the few remaining private elements in the medical industry, and their patience will be rewarded by GOP default.

Note to the GOP in office and running for office: The defensive posture is no longer adequate, and "adequate" was never conscionable in the first place. Unless you get together as a team, hammer out and strike back with a proposal as radical in the direction of free markets as the Leftists' plans are in the direction of de facto fascism... the latter will be a Done Deal. We cannot allow that to happen, not if we value our continued physical existence.

Frankly, I remain amazed - though not surprised - at the in-your-face barbarity of the Democrat-Socialists in this nationalization push. The very notion that government has a "right" to take over something as intensely personal as the care and maintenance of my own physical body is contemptible. But history has shown that when governments engage in violating the property rights of citizens for decades, the attempt to violate the last, most direct property each of us has - our own physical bodies - is inevitable.

We must plot a course directly opposite that of the Demo-Socialists. We must fight for a complete Separation of Medicine and State - on ethical grounds.

Prediction #2:  If Rudy Giuliani is nominated as the GOP candidate and Hillary Rodham-Umbridge-Clinton is nominated by the opposition, Giuliani will win decisively, probably by a landslide. Whatever votes he loses to the myopic and destructive vestiges of the religious right, he will gain ten times over from Independents and (genuine) Democrats who are as disgusted with the Clinton/Reid/Obama/Pelosi/Boxer crazies as the rest of us. Recall that Clinton's negative approval numbers are breaking records while approval of the new Democrat-controlled Congress has been at a record-low 11% for two months running.

As for the GOP: Given that none of the GOP candidates is on a par with Reagan - easily the closest we've come to principled leadership in the last 50 years - the next best choice is a placeholder who at least appears committed to fighting the foreign barbarians who want to destroy us, and who will not turn the SCotUS into a mirror of the lunatic-left Ninth Circus Court of Appeals. IOW, in the absence of a candidate of consistent principle, and with frothing statist maniacs as the certain alternative, a pragmatic choice is all that's left to the...non-Left, and Giuliani will have to do.

Prediction #3:  If Fred Thompson is nominated as the GOP candidate and Hillary Rodham-Umbridge-Clinton is nominated by the opposition, the spread will be narrower - Giuliani enjoys a cross-partisan popularity that Thompson does not - but Thompson will still win a decisive victory.

The problem with Thompson is an echo of the problem at the core of the contemporary GOP: a conflict between a stated embrace of altruist ethics on the one hand, and on the other, the pressing need to shut down copious quantities of altruism-fueled Big Government institutions and edicts. As such, his campaign has been muted and lacking any kind of decisive ideological punch. As I wrote in a letter to the Fred'08 site, "How do you propose to effect any significant Reaganesque downsizing of that bloated, slobbering, oppressive pig that is our government, if your ethical credo is precisely the same as that used to impose that 'alphabet soup' leviathan in the first place?" Whether Thompson will reject that hoary, collectivist "sacrifice for the greater good" lingo in favor of an unequivocal defense of individualism remains to be seen. Even with that rot, however, he still handily defeats Rodham-Umbridge-Clinton.

If you guessed that I believe Clinton to be unelectable you'd be 90% correct: Unless the GOP defaults spectacularly with some late-hour intellectual sellout, with some "October surprise" scandal, or...

Prediction #4:  If Mitt Romney is nominated as the GOP candidate, the next President of the United States will be a Democrat-Socialist. Period. Trust me on this. The man reeks of RINOism and everybody knows it but the Romney camp, the religious conservatives, and talk radio host Hugh Hewitt (one of his staunchest backers.) Romney is Bush III, only with better speaking skills and a better barber. He would not sell America and Western Civilization down the river like a Democrat-Socialist, but his default on key principles would effect the same thing over time. That's if he somehow got elected. Romney is the embodiment of everything voters tossed out of Congress on its compromising, Big-Government-Conservative arse in November of 2006, and I think it's readily apparent. Like any other RINO, Romney is a non-starter with the GOP base - at least those who plan on voting for a President of the United States, not Pastor of the National Church.

Moral of the Story:  The GOP have this to win or to lose, and any bright nine-year-old could blow any current Democrat out of the water in the 2008 Campaign. But the GOP will have to go on the offense, not lounge around on defense. In other words, lampooning the Democrat-Socialist Party's lunacies is not enough.

They must propose a Republican agenda that aggressively counters the Democrat dry-rot that's been allowed to fester in American government, law and society for decades. That means we will need to hear more than "Wel-l-l-l, we could maybe sorta try to control the rate of growth of Federal spending..." and "Wel-l-l-l, the health care industry maybe should be unshackled, but...we can't be 'ham-fisted extremists,' now can we..."

We need to hear some solid Reaganism: Radical reductions in the size and scope of government power and of all government institutions not directly related to the defense of individual rights (i.e., the armed forces, the police and the courts); We need to hear some concrete proposals for regulatory review and sweeping repeal on a government-wide scale.

I will post some specifics on this eventually, but when you get right down to it, I shouldn't have to. Everybody knows that Big Government is out of control, but our political "leaders" are too frightened of negative press - or the dread labels of "ham-fisted extremist!" and "mean-spiritedness!" to even identify the problem, much less its sole solution.

Frankly, I don't know what's more exasperating:

a.) The fact that the patently obvious - the ethics and practicality of private, independent, free institutions - is still getting edged out in the battle for liberty by the threadbare yet historically-deadly toxin that is collectivism;

or...

b.) The fact that default on the part of those who are supposed to understand individual liberty, uphold individual liberty and defend individual liberty - i.e., the GOP leadership - is the primary reason for liberty's disintegration in America.


Get with it, guys. If you can't beat a mental midget like Dolores Umbridge Clinton, you're in the wrong line of work.
 

Limbaugh vs. Censorship: A Call For Action

Now Playing: "A Handful of Earth" by Lane/Hellborg/Baker, from Abstract Logic, 1995

Last Friday a letter signed by 41 Democrat-Socialist members of the United States Senate and sent to the head of Clear Channel Communications, talk radio host Rush Limbaugh's syndication partner, was successfully sold for $2.1 Million on Ebay in a brilliant counter-maneuver by Limbaugh. The letter, recall, had been issued by Reid et al. demanding that Limbaugh be reprimanded for an on-air characterization - which characterization turned out to have been misrepresented by the Honorable Senators in any case.

I'm an objectivist, not a conservative, so there are a multitude of core issues on which Limbaugh's beliefs conflict with my own. But in general he is an exemplary political pundit, activist, entertainer and advocate for Americanism - even though he generally gets the philosophic basics wrong.

The now-infamous letter by censor-wannabes Reid, Clinton, Obama, Boxer, Feinkenstein, Dodd, Wyden, Dorgan, et al. is the most direct and chilling attack on our First Amendment since John "Traitor" McCain launched what eventually became the Shays/Meehan First Amendment Arsewipe-Transformation Act of 2002.

This isn't an issue of the political leanings or philosophic shortcomings of Limbaugh, nor of what different people may think of him. Rather, it is the issue of a shocking, ominous act by a group of powerful government figures against our core Constitutional rights. To understand the magnitude of what that letter represents, simply swap in for Limbaugh any given newspaper columnist, editor, or publisher, any network news anchor, any given author, or... any given Founding pamphleteer.

Am I the only one willing to identify the implications of forty-one sitting United States Senators trying to intimidate into silence the political speech of an American broadcaster?

The complete list of the New American Censors:

Harry Reid
Hillary Rodham Umbridge Clinton
Blanche Lincoln
Richard Durbin
Kent Conrad
Bob Menendez
Charles Schumer
Christopher Dodd
Barbara Mikulski
Patty Murray
Byron Dorgan
Bill Nelson
Daniel Akaka
Dianne Feinstein
Barack Obama
Max Baucus
Tom Harkin
Jack Reed
Joseph Biden
Daniel Inouye
Jay Rockefeller
Barbara Boxer
Edward M. Kennedy
Ken Salazar
Sherrod Brown
John Kerry
Bernie Sanders
Robert Byrd
Amy Klobuchar
Debbie Stabenow
Benjamin Cardin
Mary Landrieu
Jon Tester
Tom Carper
Frank Lautenberg
Jim Webb
Bob Casey
Patrick Leahy
Sheldon Whitehouse
Carl Levin
Ron Wyden

That list of Senators is a veritable who's-who of people in dire need of targeting and ejection from American government by American voters of every political stripe.

Let me emphasize that: This is not about Limbaugh's politics nor even him specifically, it's about preserving the right of all of us to speak out on politics, however, whenever, wherever we want - without being threatened with retaliation by monarchic, power-mad politicians. This was not censorship in actuality, rather a censorship trial balloon to peel away another layer of resistance to the confiscation of our priceless First Amendment. Keep in mind that "trial balloon" is another name for "preparation for future action."

These 41 b*stards need to be sent back to private life on each of their next end-of-term election bids. Every single one of them, in signing that letter, has openly admitted to violating his sworn oath to "uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America."

As I've pointed out many times before, some form of political censorship has always been the first step - the miner's canary, if you will - of advancing totalitarianism. If we allow these creeps to confiscate our right to speak, print, advertise, assemble, demonstrate, petition and believe whatever we choose, then we're all just rightless serfs, marking time until the next dictator du jour decides he - or she - wants to dispose of us.

So far I'm not hearing a peep from any of the rest of Congress, those vaunted Defenders of the Constitution... I recommend calling/writing/rattling their cages. Hard.
 

Why Conservatives Drive Me Crazy - Case # 6,241

(...or: How Conservative Ineptitude Is Neutralizing the Republican Party,)

Now Playing: "Begin the Beguine" et seq., via Art Tatum, from California Melodies

Today I switched on Sean Hannity's radio show and....I lasted about four minutes before I had to bail. Hannity was discussing the Democrat-Socialist Party's rash of proposals to nationalize what remains of America's medical industry; what I heard in his delivery was a distillation of everything the conservatives' philosophical and strategic ineptitude is doing (and has done,) to enable the triumph of irrationality and statism in America.

- Ineptitude Point #1: Conceding Premises at the Outset -

The conservatives are responding to Hillary's collectivized medicine crusade. That's: responding. They've heard her presentation; they object to it - not on ethical principle but because "it won't work" - so they spend the bulk of their time arguing over whatever specifics the Demo-Socialists toss out.

Note what the conservatives are not doing, conspicuously: They are not defending the inalienable right of doctors and patients to trade with one another without the interference of politicians, and they are not launching a principled agenda of privatization and deregulation as a direct rejection of the Demos' nationalization scam.

No, they simply criticize, passively and defensively, whatever outrages the Demo-Socialists lob at us.

This, incidentally, has been the pattern since the mid-1990s: The only time the conservative Republicans ever get around to proposing anything aggressively, it's in the form of one-upsmanship with the Demo-Socs on pathological altruism. As in "Hey, we can pass a bigger new entitlement program than you can... See? We care too." (A vivid and horrific example is the prescription drug wallow they recently tacked onto that slobbering, illegitimate monster called Medicare.)

But actually take stands on principle and reverse the slide into statism? Uh, no.

Note the deadly error in this default. In leapfrogging over ethical principle directly into debate on the details of Health Care Nationalization, they miss the vital first question, which ought to be the immediate focus of debate on all such Demo-Socialist proposals - and, sadly, most RINO proposals as well:

"What right does government have to meddle in the medical industry in the first place - especially when it is precisely that meddling, ca. 1965, which created the health care "crisis" we now see before us?"

To recap per Mises, as summarized nicely in Planned Chaos:

a.) Whenever a government interferes with a market, it initially seems a benefit - until the costs roll in and create a condition orders of magnitude worse than had existed before the interference;

b.) Rather than recognize the government intervention as the cause of the worsened condition and immediately repeal it, government officials, shunting blame to the very businesses into which they've intruded, add a new intervention to the first, to "fix" the problem;

c.) This secondary intervention initially improves the picture - until...the costs roll in and create a condition orders of magnitude worse than had existed before this latest intervention...

Etc., ad snowballum.

Which is how we got to the crisis condition we're in today. So...how many conservatives do you hear identifying the root cause of the health care crisis and demanding an all-out assault on that root?

[~Sound of pin hitting floor, followed by dramatic echo...~]

The reason behind all of this is simple: Conservatives have replaced the right to one's Life, to one's Liberty, to the Pursuit of one's Happiness - and the self-responsibility that goes with explicit individualism - with the collectivist ethics of self-sacrifice and altruism. Therefore they have absolutely no answer to the most lame of Democrat-Socialist criticisms and cave under the faintest of pressure. That, in turn, means they do not dare propose anything for which they might face opposition.

Recall the lame-duck session of November and December 1995, when the GOP Congress was accused of "ham-fisted extremism" and "heartlessness" after refusing an omnibus (pork) spending bill, which refusal shut off funding for government operations just prior to the '95 holidays. The GOP had no principled reply (like, "How dare you Democrats claim a 'right' to squander other people's money, then evade responsibility for your actions?") Bob Dole, in his State of the Union response a month later, questioned why so many poor government employees had to have their Christmas seasons disrupted by anything so idiotic as principle. This man was rewarded with the 1996 candidacy for President of the United States.

Dole lost, deservedly; the celebrated "Freshman" GOP Congress, incapable of championing individual rights on ethical principle, folded along with its Contract With America, and the downward spiral began. And so it continues to this day.

Meanwhile, the rest of us GOP'ers out here in Realityland wait in vain for a single conservative GOP "leader" to stand up and challenge the core premise that government involvement in the medical industry is ethically, Constitutionally or even pragmatically justifiable in the first place. These people just can't - or won't - or don't dare - do it.

Instead they...discuss Hillary's plan.

So, having signed on at the outset to the Demo-Socialist Party's starting premises, (i.e., that doctors are slaves, hospitals are government fiefdoms, patients are cattle, and it's A-OK to fight a regulatory fire with gasoline explosives,) the conservatives lock themselves onto a dead-end track. They're left only to react to - and attempt to minimize the damage of - a Democrat power-grab that's all but certain to pass, with little opposition, into binding law.

Which is precisely how our government has mutated and metastasized into the vast, bloated, slobbering, oppressive pig we see before us. Conservatives busy themselves not with reversing the steady stream of Democrat-Socialist slop, but in debating what items ought to go on the hog's menu.

- Ineptitude Point #2: Tug-Of-War Forfeiture -

Something that ought to be obvious even to casual observers of politics is that Democrat-Socialists always jump right in with their maximum, hard-left bid - what Hearts players call "shooting the moon" - then back off a little if necessary, to preserve the comparative illusion of "moderation." Which means they generally get what they're after - which generally means the confiscation of more of our liberty.

Something that ought to be obvious even to casual observers of politics is that conservative Republican "leaders" never jump in with anything remotely related to achieving core GOP policies. They fall all over each other groveling for a chance to be the first to accept, then offer meek compromises on, the opposition's hard-left proposals - then congratulate themselves for "working in a spirit of unselfish bipartisanship."

Take note of what we haven't heard a peep of since the days of Reagan: Proposals for radical reductions in the size and scope of government, for eliminating programs, departments, regulations. Instead we hear a little timid muttering about "controlling spending."

So we have a tug-of-war in which one side goes for broke and pulls with all its might, consistently - while the other side gives in, sissy-fashion, every step of the way.

Guess which side loses?


- Conclusion -

The conservative "leadership" of the GOP, being spectacularly inept both intellectually and strategically, just never quite clue in to the larger picture of what's going on.

And what's going on? In a nutshell:

The Democrat Party is leading the GOP "leadership" around by the nose.

...Which is why our country is awash in the militant irrationality and out-of-control government power we have today. When those ostensibly charged with the defense of reason and liberty (the GOP's leaders,) consistently default on that responsibility, there is left a void. That void will always be filled by the most aggressive opportunists - in this case, the MoveOn wing of the Democrat Party.

Again, are there any Republicans left among the GOP "leadership"?
 

Essential Reading:

Robert J. Bidinotto's Up From Conservatism
and
Dr. Hudgins' 12-Step Cure for Big-Government Conservatism
 

Demonizing Columbus...for Barbarity's Sake

Now Playing: "Sticky Fingers" from T-Lev

Today is the day when the civilized world, or rather, the civilized people remaining within it, celebrate the discovery of the Western Hemisphere by the explorer Christopher Columbus.

Yeah, you read that right. It was Columbus, not the pre-Columbian immigrants from Asia whom we are now urged to call "indigenous," who brought to the Western Hemisphere the entire Greco-Roman philosophical corpus that ultimately made individual rights and liberty possible. It is Columbus, not the earlier Scandinavian explorers who settled on, then abandoned, what is now eastern Canada, who opened a new world to the whole of the Eastern Hemisphere - as a refuge to people of any ethnicity who sought escape from the collectivist tyrannies of feudalism and tribalism.

Predictably, the haters of Western Civilization, worshippers of primitivism and apologists for barbarity have spent the last couple decades in an attempt to demonize Columbus as an amoral juggernaut.

- Because Columbus and his crews inadvertently brought with them pathogens such as smallpox and rudely failed to bring 21st Century medical technology as well, he/they are to be considered guilty of "genocide";

- Because subsequent European explorers and "indigenous peoples" waged wars against each other, the former are to be considered guilty of having introduced injustice and strife to the latter.

The presumption here is that pre-Columbians were noble, peace-loving folk who lived in blissful harmony with one another and enjoyed an Eden-like "highly-advanced civilization."

...Like the peace-loving, errm, warriors of what is now North America, who lived in a state of perpetual warfare with one another and subsisted at a stone-age, tribal level that had not advanced in millennia;

...And like the Aztec, Toltec, Maya, Inca, Chimu and several other pre-Columbian cultures that routinely - presumably with a "have a nice day" at the ready - slaughtered both their own people and the subjugated peoples of neighboring tribes in vast ritual human sacrifices - in the case of the Aztecs several thousand per single ceremony - until literal rivers of blood drenched their "beautiful and highly-advanced" pyramids. Human sacrifice and cannibalism were also prominent in Hawaiian culture prior to the arrival of Western Civilization.

In short, what the ultimate conquest of the Western Hemisphere by the Eastern Hemisphere represented for the immigrant "indigenous peoples," was another conflict with yet another "tribe" - but with two vital differences: 1.) This new "tribe" had overwhelmingly superior technology, therefore won decisively, and 2.) this new "tribe" carried with it a body of ideas that revolutionized and, over time, vastly improved not just the lives of Europeans but the entire human race in its every ethnic derivation, including the descendents of the pre-Columbian immigrants themselves.

That body of ideas was, and is: Western Civilization.

I cannot recommend more highly the seminal essay by economist George Reisman titled Education and the Racist Road to Barbarism, first published in 1990 in The Intellectual Activist.

Pass the link on to every thinking person you know; there are links at the end of the essay to printed pamphlet versions, useful for mailing to your elected officious, harassing your leftwing professors (but I repeat myself,) and annoying - possibly enlightening - leftwing acquaintances. It should be considered required reading, not just as intellectual ammunition in the multiculturacists' attack on Columbus, but as a timeless reiteration of Western Civilization's nature and value.

Other excellent articles:

Columbus Day: In Praise of Exploitation by Edward Hudgins, 2005

On Columbus Day, Celebrate Western Civilization, Not Multiculturalism by Michael S. Berliner, 2003;

Columbus Day: The Cure for 9/11 by Thomas A. Bowden, author of The Enemies of Christopher Columbus, 2003

Also highly recommended:

Gibson's film "Apocalypto", an extremely well-done exercise in historical perspective.
 

Hatred of Humanity: The Ideological Core of the American Left

Now Playing: Nothing. 'Not in a particularly musical mood just now, for reasons that should become readily apparent...

Philosopher Ayn Rand once made the pithy admonition "Don't bother to examine a folly, ask yourself only what it accomplishes." There are times, however, when a depth of depravity is observed that veritably demands that one seek its cause - particularly when most commentators seem either unable or unwilling to identify that cause.

This week's contemptible charade involving the visit of Iran's collectivist butcher, or more accurately the treatment of it by secondary parties in the United States, brings into sharp focus the newest depths of Leftwing depravity, not to mention of ineptitude, default and generalized spinelessness among the conservatives. Another such focal point was news of the latest pilgrimages southward by Hollywood play-actors, to lick the boots of Venezuela's collectivist butcher.

These are but two examples of many, proliferating everywhere from college campuses to political headlines to cinema screens to MP3 players. There is a consistent thread running through all of it that one would expect is obvious, yet which remains largely, tellingly, unspoken:

- How is it that a "prestigious" (well, maybe at one time,) American university, an institution one would presume to be inhabited by at least semi-intelligent minds, would choose to engineer and grant a vast propaganda coup to one of perhaps the Top 5 most brutal human rights violators crawling the face of planet Earth?

- How is it that, aside from the scores of sane people protesting Ah'm-A-Dinner-Jacket's glorious Columbia University appearance, we heard an auditorium-load of students offering thunderous applause, repeatedly, to someone whose closest ideological counterpart is Hermann Göring? [I would invite those brainless little Leftwing sycophants to have a good, long look at the kind of thing they're applauding...]

- How is it that, given the fact that the struggle we face is literally a war for the very survival of America and Western Civilization, the American Left have positioned themselves, openly and unapologetically, on the side of America's enemies at every turn?

- How is it that a major figure in the Democrat-Socialist Party, Rep. James Clyburn, openly admits that positive news from Iraq - i.e., news that America is winning there - "would be a real big problem for us," with the "us" meaning the Democrat-Socialists?

- How is it that after one hundred years, dozens upon dozens of shattered economies, generations of destroyed lives, a mountain of corpses estimated by a group of unusually-honest European Leftists to be well in excess of 100,000,000, and the epochal, worldwide changes ca. 1989-1990, the American Left continue a vestigial, militant belief that collectivism is still A Pretty Neato Idea and seek to impose it here, by force?

- How is it that soul-crushing dictatorships like Hugo  Chavez' Venezuela, Ahmad-In-A-Jar's Iran, Castro's Cuba, etc., are worshipped by a broad swath of the American Left, while the most demonstrably just, benevolent, prosperous and free nation on Earth is reflexively vilified by those same Leftists - all of whom curiously choose to remain here rather than under the dictatorships they admire?

*  *  *  *  *
The old "blame America first" excuses they typically offer have grown increasingly threadbare as the gap between the semi-free world's basic decency and the unspeakable brutality of the regimes and ideologies they admire becomes ever more pronounced.

I could spend hours and reams documenting the manifestly absurd: the proposition that America in its most egregious faults bears rational comparison to the savage barbarity of collectivism of any variety or era. Frankly the latter subject is sickening to any civilized being, but like the horrific video of Iranian "justice" linked above, it is vital that we periodically remind ourselves what we're up against - and what the American Left, from mindless intellectual vandals like Soros and Chomsky to their applauding progeny at Columbia, are endorsing.

One could - more easily than is comfortable, even for a polemecist - come to the conclusion that the American Left are simply too stupid to grasp the difference between life and death, between survival and suicide. That the Left's cognitive mode is overwhelmingly emotion-driven is obvious, yet every living entity, from protozoan to human, possesses a purposive, hard-wired instinct to remain alive.

The difference is that human beings, exclusively, possess the ability to choose the evil and the irrational, consciously. That includes the choice of self-destruction.

Where that urge comes from, well that's the point at which I'll defer to Rand's admonition and/or the research of psychotherapists - why some people consciously choose destructive irrationality is beyond the scope of this post, at any rate. The point is, some do, in fact.

So I'm left with these elemental, nagging questions - so elemental, in fact, that they're difficult even to formulate in words. An attempt:

- What is it about leaving other individual human beings free to live and flourish as they see fit, unmolested, that Leftists do not understand?

- What is it that makes them strive to control the lives of others by brute force, either directly or by proxy(government policy)?

- What species of psychosis prompts some to struggle to appoint themselves as deities and subjugate entire nations under iron fists and reigns of terror?

- What is it that lowers a (former) human being to the level of depravity that finds gleeful enjoyment in the suffering of others?

- What species of worm admires and applauds such tyranny, or at best, turns a blind eye to it?

- What kind of ethical corruption must occur for a person to attack, simultaneously, the single most consistent defender of human rights in human history, the United States of America?

- What kind of militant self-delusion must one perform to obliterate the moral distinction between the extremes of pro-humanity and hatred of humanity that that inversion implies?

*  *  *  *  *
The non-Left, of whatever variety, need to pause for a re-examination of basic premises - most importantly, the premise that the American Left are just as concerned with the advancement of the human condition as the rest of us, but are merely mistaken as to means.

Whether it's just a consequence of the worldwide implosion of their cherished ideology ca. 1989, or the imminent collapse of their last-gasp replacement, is academic.

The salient fact is this: The Left, demonstrably, have devolved from mere advocacy of collectivist ideology into a raging nihilism that is at war against America and Western Civilization, therefore against humanity itself.

Look at the consistent irrationality in contemporary Leftwing advocacy, the inverted ethics in virtually every arena, from politics to academia to entertainment.

This inversion is "inexplicable" only if one presumes the Left to be fellow advocates for the advancement of humanity.

=> Now look again, from the perspective of the Left's ideological slide into raw hatred of humanity. You will find that everything fits, that their every action follows logically from that core.
 

Health Care Nationalization: The False "Auto Insurance" Analogy

Now Playing: "Brother Wind Shear" by Agent 22

One grows weary of hearing the rhetorical tactic of preschoolers used in political debates over vital issues, but a popular one is a variant of the one our parents and teachers typically dispelled with the question "If Johnny jumped into the lake, would you jump into the lake too?"

"We tax x, so why not y?"

"We regulate drinking, so why not smoking too?"

A particularly vapid form of this argument has already been advanced with some frequency in just the three days since Hillary "Umbridge" Clinton announced her wish to join litigation attorney John Edwards in nationalizing American medicine.

It goes like this: "We require people to carry auto liability insurance, therefore we should require people to carry medical insurance."

I say "particularly vapid" because the "auto insurance" argument, upon closer inspection, actually contradicts and refutes Clinton's/Edwards' authoritarian power-grab at root.

To recap the basics of America's Founding ideology, the purpose for which governments are necessary in the first place is, solely, to uphold and defend the rights of the individual against any and all who would violate them. That purpose is stated explicitly in the Declaration of Independence: Inherent to our nature as rational beings are the inalienable rights of life, of liberty, of property, and "...to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men."  Period.

Automobile liability insurance is required precisely because of the possibility that during the normal course of travel a given vehicle may collide with another vehicle, thereby causing personal or property damage to another person. The law is there to protect the rights of every person to their life and their property, should they choose to drive.

Clinton's health care nationalization scam would require that people's property be damaged, directly, as a matter of binding law - via coercive, forced participation and the attendant, inherently coercive taxation to finance it (until the scam's inevitable collapse.) Under Clinton's proto-fascist scheme this property damage would be an actuality in all cases, not just a statistical possibility of accidental damage.

By the same standard upon which automobile liability insurance is required - the defense of individual rights - Clinton's health care nationalization must be prohibited, not endorsed, at the outset.

So much for "If we require auto insurance, then..."

* * * * *
Again, we must demand - from our GOP "leadership" and Presidential candidates - an aggressive policy precisely the opposite of the Clinton/Edwards plan: an immediate dismantling of the entire edifice of government regulation of American medicine, with a complete separation of medicine and state as a specific goal.

If the state owns our very bodies, it also owns the "right" to dispose of them if it suits the whim of the bureaucrat du jour. I do not define Clinton's plan as "fascist" for cheap hyperbole - it's an identification of fact.

[Essential reference: "Health Care Is Not A Right" by Leonard Peikoff, 1993]

_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others." - Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781

_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_

The Iraq the MSM Don't Want You To See

Now Playing: "Perfect Flight" from Billy Currie's "Transportation"  (disc #5 of the brilliant but short-lived instrumentals-only series on the defunct I.R.S. NoSpeak label)

I have another take on Clinton's Orwell Care - specifically its self-refuting reliance on the analogy to compulsory auto liability insurance - but I must push all else aside in favor of freelance journalist Michael J. Totten's article "Anbar Awakens Part 1: The Battle of Ramadi".

Set aside some time and read Totten's astounding - and newsworthy, for news outlets that are rational - story of the transformation of the Iraqi city of Ramadi. What was once the most dangerous al-Qaeda infestation in Iraq, is now one of its safest and most enthusiastically pro-American cities.

Totten has just posted Part II: Hell is Over. In a perfect world, some Congressional Children would be sat down in front of this material and required to memorize it verbatim. Alas, coercing the coercers is not a high probability. Instead I recommend doing your part to make this article go viral. Spread the word/URL to everyone you know. This story needs to escape The Spike.
 

Achtung! You Vill Haff Health Insurance! Or Else! Obey!

Now Playing: "Ibland" from Bla Kongo (more frostbitten musicians - this time from socialist Sweden, newly threatened with peaceful Islamic violence for...publishing cartoons.)

Today Hillary "Dolores Umbridge" Clinton announced the 2008 repackaging of her proto-fascist health care nationalization scheme. Its most shocking aspect is its core element: forced participation under the Orwellian euphemism "Individual Mandate." The rest of it, similarly, consists of ramming a large-bore weapon up the nose of every business owner in America, demanding compliance with a panoply of new government edicts to make Mussolini weep.

This may come as a shock, but Clinton's latest effort to expand #21 of the infamous "25 Points", is of significantly less importance than the thing that enables such an intellectual atrocity in the first place:

Republican Default.

Yeah, that again.

I presume that most are familiar with that Burke quote about "all that's needed for evil to triumph is the silence of the good." Whether they're cognizant of the fact or not, the GOP "leadership," the entire 2008 roster of GOP Presidential candidates, and the most dialed-in talk radio pundits, have all taken an entirely defensive/passive/roll-over-and-play-dead posture on American Medicine.

Aside from opposition to Democrat ravings, which is the simple part, and a few vague mumblings about "cost control measures" and "tax deductions," not a single one of them has proposed a principled, aggressive antidote to the Clintons' (and before them Lyndon Johnson's) militant statism. Not - a - one - of - them.

Hello? GOP? Is there anybody out there? Your proposals, please?

Well, somebody's got to do this...

~PSSST! LOOK! RIGHT HEEERE! => Here's what you do to unravel the mess that is American Medicine ca. 2007-08:

You take a tip from the late, great Ronald Reagan - plus eight or ten brilliant but ignored giants of economics - and you...

DEREGULATE THE HELL OUT OF IT. PERMANENTLY.
What I'm talking about here is taking the offensive, seizing upon the precise, polar opposite of Clinton's and Edwards' neo-fascist lurch and using that stark contrast not only to prevent a calamity but to illuminate the vast gulf between the Democrats' authoritarian nightmare and the ethics of individual liberty, and to restore freedom to a vital, shackled industry.

Instant analogy: The Airline Industry.

Recall the pre-Reagan decades: Air travel was heavily regulated and generally the sole province of people of considerable wealth and/or businesspeople on expense accounts. The price of even a routine "milk run" flight, in real dollars adjusted for inflation, ran well into the thousands.

By the time Reagan left office, air travel had become inexpensive enough to be routine transportation for everyone from business travelers to middle class teenagers and blue collar working stiffs.

And so it continues today, even with the massive blow that the 9/11 atrocity dealt to the airline industry, and the cancer that is the "TSA" that was subsequently dealt to it (and us,) by the Federal government. In the intervening years we've seen half a dozen new "budget" airlines take root in turf formerly only trod by industry giants, offering an ever-expanding variety of choices. Some have failed, but most have prospered and expanded operations. Airline safety stats have shown vast improvement over that same period as well.

The same results have been replayed in every arena in which regulated businesses have been deregulated - and that is an economic no-brainer. The market, when left alone, regulates itself: Costs plummet, efficiency and plenitude expand dramatically. And this is just the pragmatic side of the issue.

* * *
The root cause of the current health care mess - also at the pragmatic level - is best illustrated by a little historical perspective and the question philosopher Leonard Peikoff asked in his seminal lecture "Medicine: Death of a Profession"[paraphrased]: "Why was it possible for a person of modest means to afford good health care [50] years ago, but not today?"

A quick glance at a graph of aggregate medical costs in America over the last century would show something very curious beginning in the late 1960s - namely, a cost spiral into the stratosphere. And what happened in the mid-'60s? Why, the wholesale invasion of America's once-free health care industry by government, that's what.

As Peikoff correctly noted, initially Medicare/Medicaid was a big hit: (using the analogy of a food subsidy program,) everybody loved being able to eat steak & lobster every night on the government's dime.

And then the bills started rolling in.

And then the frantic cost-control mechanisms were imposed, which translate as: comprehensive micro-management of an entire industry by a vast bureaucracy.

Which is why we have the mess we have today.

Naturally, the initial, disastrous consequences did not prompt the bureaucrats to scrap their intrusions into the medical market, but rather to pile on more and ever more regulations to compensate for the havoc wrought by the previous regulations, etc. ad infinitum. This is how leviathan government metastasizes. In 1947 Ludwig von Mises wrote an indispensible little book about it, describing this upward-ratcheting statist mechanism in detail, but he was ignored.

* * *
All Mrs. Bill Clinton's latest power-grab represents is a gargantuan pile of new regulations designed to smooth over the wreckage caused by the previous ones (which are blamed on private industry,) thickly wrapped in sunny promises of goodies for all. All that's needed in exchange is your individual liberty, your willingness to ignore the entire concept of Ethics, and your willingness to ignore a century worth of theoretical and practical proof of collectivism's vicious falsity.

On the other hand, all that is needed to "fix" American medicine - that's: actually solve the problem - is...the sole antidote that not one candidate, Democrat-Socialist or, most conspicuously, Republican, will breathe a word of:   A program of full deregulation and divestiture of all government involvement in American medicine, a program at least as aggressive as the nationalization agenda of the Clintons and Edwardses. To boil it down to a catchy one-liner, you demand - and fight for, without compromise - a complete Separation of Medicine and State.

But....not a peep.

And then there's the Litigation Lottery - just don't get me started.

On that too...not a peep.

So - is there a Republican running for President somewhere out there?


Here's some essential reading on the root cause of the medical crisis in Ethical principle.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
P.S. - Sign the petition to the Swedish government in support of the cartoonist and editor threatened by al-Qaida.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

New Zenith for American Higher Education

Now Playing: "The Big Wheel" from Roll the Bones, by the Frostbitten Canadian Boys

I was gonna try to be funny here but I couldn't top the source material. You just can't make this kind of stuff up - another shining example of what an "education" consists of in a prominent American college:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296809,00.html
 

And Now, The...Weather

Now Playing: "If You Go Away," Patou '02, from the Piano Bar disc.

Baton Rouge (pAP) - Hurricane Humberto, the...ahem!...first hurricane to make landfall in the United States in nearly two years, was downgraded to tropical storm status today as it moved from Texas toward Louisiana. LA governor Kathleen Blanco immediately declared a state of emergency and has scheduled an early press conference at which she will, according to a source at the governor's office, "have a good preemptive cry." New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was also seen in the late afternoon hours, burning the United States Constitution in effigy over a large bonfire on the steps of New Orleans City Hall.

Meanwhile, though skies were clear above Washington D.C., Albert Gore and a number of environmental activists expressed shock and bitter disappointment that their cause was deprived of a high death toll and, worst of all, impressive disaster footage for Gore's upcoming film "Day After Tomorrow: III." One environmentalist, who asked not to be identified, said he "felt betrayed" by global warming's continued failure to show up. "It's enough to make a guy just give up and start using toilet paper again," he said, tossing his copy of Tuesday Night Music Club across the room with a defiant huff.

"He needn't worry," commented Jonathan Beardsley, senior diviner at the Greenpeace Meteorological Center, "Our forecast for September 13, 2238 is 4,610 degrees under a light rain of molten basalt - he just needs to be patient and have faith."

Back to you, Larry...

No More Bong Hits For You, Osama

Now Playing: "More Love, Less Attitude" by Curtis Salgado, from Soul Activated

If you were fortunate enough to have been in high school during the '60s or '70s, you likely remember being at one of those ubiquitous keg parties when someone who'd had a bit of the Forbidden Weed would start pontificating at length on his/her worldview in wacky flourishes only possible via the synaptic distortions of THC. The performance was invariably delivered in a tone suggesting a strenuous attempt at sobriety and seriousness - the impossibility of which made its unintentional humor all the more uproarious.

Last week Arab playboy and fugitive mass-murderer Osama bin Laden waxed Micheal Moorish and released another of his video sermons. A transcript of it is here. When talk radio host Hugh Hewitt read the entire thing verbatim on his Friday show, I had an unexpected High School keg party flashback. If I'd read something like this at the time my instant reaction would have been "Too much drugs for you, bub." Come to think of it, there is the close proximity of all them Afghan poppy fields...

Comedy aside, the speech is valuable in its identification of the intellectual symbiosis of bin Laden's Islamofascism with just about every popular cause championed by the American Left. Just read the thing. But then, we had a vivid, dramatic confirmation of that fact just prior to the September 11 attacks, in the Left's highly-regarded (by them,) film "Fight Club." In short, the "progressive" Left have been aching for something like the WTC attacks to happen since the late 19th century - and they want more.

Along with, again, some hilarious lines like "...more than a million orphans in Baghdad alone" and "...during it [the Vietnam War] Rumsfield and his aides killed two million villagers," Osama professes:

- a warm admiration for the "sober words" of Leftwing messiah Noam Chomsky;
- vilifications of "major corporations" strident enough to bring hot tears of filial pride to Ralph Nader;
- an uproarious tie-in of all geopolitical strife to "Global Warming" and our refusal to sign the Kyoto Fatwa. Allah be pissed.

Significant too is his visceral frustration with the Democrat-Socialist Party's failure to end the Iraq war after taking control of the Senate in '06. In the fantasyland that is Leftwing ideology, "major corporations" have an all-encompassing, magical power that allows them to exercise mind control on any and all who come into contact with them - and so it is with Leftist Osama: "And since the democratic system [sic] permits major corporations to back candidates, be they presidential or congressional, there shouldn't be any cause for astonishment - and there isn't any - in the Democrats' failure to stop the war."

Earth to Democrats: Your Blood-Brother-In-Spirit is not happy with you.

His narrative thereafter morphs from the high comedy of Leftwing ideology to standard mystical quackery, including a prediction of the demise of the "American Empire" based on "the thinkers who study events and happenings...among them...the European thinker who anticipated the fall of the Soviet Union..." Oddly, he doesn't mention who he's talking about here - Nostradamus? C.F. Volney? Brigitte Bardot? Hmmm...

At any rate, it's nice to know the world's most evil mass-murderer is openly identifying his ideological unity with Leftism, and that - reading between his lines - he's apparently getting a little desperate.

America Ditches Presidency For Triumverate

Now Playing: "Wanna Be Your Idol," also by Tomoko...

An unprecedented epidemic of States moving their primary dates earlier in the already ridiculously-long campaign season signals a trend that could change the very structure of American government: from an executive branch featuring a single President, into a Roman-modeled Triumverate.

Project this trend a few years into the future, say November 2012: As the Thompson/Giuliani ticket celebrates its re-election victory and prepares for its second term, the 2016 candidate rosters for each party have formed up, and by mid-March 2013 the primaries and conventions for the 2016 race are concluded and nominees chosen. For the duration of the 2012-2016 term, sitting President Thompson is joined, second-guessed, advised, critiqued, conferred at and consulted to, by pontificating, soapboxing, and as-yet-unelected candidates for the next election.

In effect, we'll have three Presidents instead of one.

I exaggerate only a little. Given the gravity of the times in which we live and the undeniable tendency of the campaign season to interfere with both the focus of governance and the motives of elected officials, the expansion of that season is precisely the opposite of what should happen.

How about scheduling all primaries after Marx Day, April 15, in the Election year? A nice way to sharpen people's political focus on taxation, that.

And we'd only have to listen to these clowns for 6 1/2 months every four years.

** Tangent **

Somebody once had a simple but valuable idea for a revision of the IRS's deadline: Move Marx Day from April 15 to October 15 - a mere two weeks prior to Election Day.

Ooh, you can just imagine the squeals of opposition such a proposal would provoke from the Kings of Compassion(read: pork.) Can you imagine the remedial effect it could ultimately have on the ratio of conscientious Republicans to RINOs and Democrat-Socialists in Congress? On the rate and/or form of taxation in America?

Boggles the mind, don't it?

An idea whose time has come, I'd say.

GOP Debate Morphs Into Rocky Horror Screening

Now Playing: "2bfree" by Tommy Heavenly 6 (a.k.a. Kawase Tomoko) - J-Pop with some great, punchy guitar.

The umpteenth Presidential debate, this time the Republicans, just concluded and once in awhile we heard the candidates talk about political issues - in those little gaps between the cheers, boos, applause, tossed toast and rice, shouts of "where's your neck," and I believe a fan-produced costume facsimile of the spectacle at one side of the arena.

Not to belabor the point, but this debate was aired (cabled, whatever,) and therefore readily available for viewing, on the highest-rated news network in the United States. The entire thing will be posted in dozens of versions on YouTube in the days to follow, for anyone who missed the real time version and Fox's repeats.

So somebody please explain to me the rationale behind staging the event in a large arena with a live audience of rival cheerleading squads, gathered in force to alternately squeal with delight, hoot with indignation, shout out worthless "suggestions" and applaud endlessly while the rest of us, candidates and viewers alike, ...wait.

This is a debate for the future occupant of the single most important office in the semi-free world at a time when the lives of every one of us hangs in the balance - and we get stuck with a game show held at an arena-scale version of a frat house?

As I mentioned in a previous post, a number of years ago I saw a debate for Canadian Prime Minister on C-Span and it was just the candidates, the host/moderator, and the unseen camera crew. Period.

What I noticed - and what's made it stick in my mind all these years - is that the depth of discussion and the sheer absence of cheap posturing were in stark, painful contrast to these contemptible game show formats we've had to endure with American debates. There was no "playing to the crowd" because there was no crowd. There was more time for discussion - because nobody had to wait for random, meaningless noise to subside. There were no cheap "sound bite" one-liners dispatched - because there was no need to enlist applause in the manner of instant spin.

If you've been as disgusted on this as me, contact Fox News and let them know what you think of their formatting.

As for what little substance of it remained, some general observations:

Surprisingly, confused Democrat John McCain actually gained a little respectability this time with a one-two punch:

- Illuminating Romney's limp RINO-speak assertion that "the surge is apparently working." McCain's response: "The surge is working. No, not 'apparently,' it's working."

- Stating a hard line on government spending the others seem curiously unwilling to match.

I still consider McCain to be unworthy of Republican Party affiliation, not to mention the Presidency - an appraisal that won't change, unless he suddenly announces that his 2002 Campaign Censorship Act was indeed an abomination that must be destroyed as a first priority in January 2009. That and a dozen or so other authoritarian gems he's sponsored through the years...

Paul reinforced his militant unsuitability for the job of leader of the semi-free world in the most vivid terms yet, with comments on foreign policy that were as noxious as they were misguided. Consider this statement: "The fact that we had troops in Saudi Arabia was one of the three reasons given for the attack on 9/11. So why leave them in the region? They don’t want our troops on the Arabian Peninsula."
Credit goes to moderator Wallace who replied with this followup question: "...you’re basically saying that we should take our marching orders from al Qaeda? If they want us off the Arabian Peninsula, we should leave?" Yes Mike, that is what he said, basically.

The fact that Paul is so catastrophically, dangerously wrong on the vital issue of America's (and Western Civilization's) continued existence, while being dead-on with nearly every domestic issue, means that he is of vastly more use to the cause of liberty as a member of Congress than as President. Unfortunately, his going off the deep end on national defense represents a kind of PR disaster for the valid positions he holds on other issues. Fortunately, the media are focused on his foreign policy position rather than his valid criticisms of leviathan government in any case. The quicker he drops out, the better.

All in all a lackluster evening, and at last Fred Thompson is ending what time will show to be either a clever strategy or a vast political blunder. I'm curious to learn more about the man and to compare him to the current pack. I don't watch network television - ever - so all I know of him is the vague snippets written about him in the press and that rather brilliant 'back atcha' he delivered to Michael Moore back in May. And - on the downside - the fact that he voted for McCain's shredding of the First Amendment back in 2002.

Stay tuned...

Minneapolis: "Maintenance? Hey, we got a heck of a train instead, ya know."

Now Playing: "Tonga" by RonMon, from the Mutatis Mutandis disc. Very smooooth.

A couple hours ago the I-35 bridge across the Mississippi in south Minneapolis (which I remember crossing on the way to the '81 Rush concert mentioned in the previous, coincidentally,) abruptly broke apart and fell into the river during the thick of the Twin Cities rush hour. Three confirmed deaths so far, lots and lots of property damage, and a huge traffic mess likely for years to come.

Minneapolis, not coincidentally, is one of the American cities to have contracted a bizarre but rare disease that's been jokingly labeled "Smart Growth." Its symptoms include an obsessive devotion to unbelievably expensive and very large toy train sets, and a pathological neglect of roadway infrastructure to finance them.

As economist George Reisman said in a debate several years ago, government has no business financing transit to begin with, but having long since arrogated to itself that responsibility anyway, it has created with the people a de facto contract guaranteeing competent management and maintenance, until such time as roadways and bridges can be returned to private ownership and operation. For the present, people have the right to expect that every effort will be made by that government custodian to ensure a reasonable level of safety in that infrastructure.

Minneapolis began building its 12-mile train set in 2001 with a projected cost of $400M; the total bill is still climbing but currently is at just over $715M, $424M of which came from the Federal Government, which means from your pocket and mine.

No estimates on the cost of maintaining the I-35 bridge over the Mississippi River.

But the trains are shiny, reportedly neato, and just impressive as hell to visiting dignitaries and anti-automobile activists.


Some related reading:

- "A Desire Named Streetcar" by the go-to guy on the "smart growth" affliction - and fellow victim of the Portland Light Rail boondoggle - Randal O'Toole;

- "Railroaded," a critical review of the Minneapolis light rail project, written by Britt Robson on the eve of the project's commencement;

- "I Don't Get Light Rail" at the ever-pithy Coyote Blog;

- "Smart Growth is Neither" page at the Alliance of Contra Costa Taxpayers site.

Week of July 23-27: Cultural Highs

Now Playing: One of the tunes off of Takanaka's "Rainbow Goblins Story", I forget which. It's not actually on, just bouncing around my head relentlessly. I think it's the concert's last tune, "You Can Never Come To This Place." 'Gotta dig out that video later...

This last week was the aesthetic equivalent of catnip for me, a characteristically-spectacular concert by Rush at the Hollywood Bowl on Monday, and similarly-spectacular weeklong immersion into J.K. Rowling's magnificent final book of the Harry Potter saga, "Deathly Hallows."


[RUSH at the Hollywood Bowl - Photos taken by and © by me, 07-23-07.]
As I've alluded earlier here, Rush struck a chord with me from the first time I slapped an older sibling's copy of "Fly By Night" onto the turntable as a wee lad back in 1975. Something about the way they played was immediately appealing to my ingrained individualist streak, on a gut level. I'd listened to some of the progressive rock available at that time, but there was always something uniquely logical about Rush's extended instrumental flourishes that was not present with other bands. It was a musical affinity that happened several years before I would discover, then gain comprehension of, the philosophy that would influence their work - and my life - so profoundly over the years: Objectivism.

That beat-subtraction thing they did in the middle of "By-Tor and the Snow Dog"; that tight, stop-on-a-dime precision that seems almost telepathic; Peart's elevation of rock percussion - which in a typical percussionist is mundane timekeeping at best - to a level of artistry in which percussion literally shapes the compositions...!

An interesting and telling fact is that despite their incredible musical ability, their career has been hampered - nay, vilified - by the music media from the release of "Fly By Night" onward, doubtlessly because the objectivist sentiments in its first track "Anthem" flew smack in the face of the unspoken, requisite leftwing conformity within rock, almost as a kind of heresy. The career of Rush bears a striking resemblance to that of a certain literary architect, as a matter of fact - which is not a coincidence:

"Howard Roark stood as a role model for me - as exactly the way I already was living. Even at that tender age [18] I already felt that. And it was intuitive or instinctive or inbred stubbornness or whatever; but I had already made those choices and suffered for them." - Peart, in a September 1997 interview in Liberty

Though Peart has devolved intellectually from objectivist to "objectivish," his insights are always thought-provoking even when infuriating, and their music remains some of the most innovative and radically individual (not to mention individualistic,) within the rock genre. Musically, it is no exaggeration to say that they have lost nothing to age except, obviously, in Geddy's ability to sing at that same mega-high-pitch as the '70s. They tore through two enormous sets last Monday with their trademark precision and commitment to excellence. It was on May 5, 1977 that they played the first concert I ever attended - with the irrepressible Max Webster opening - and in attending another ten tours since...well maybe it's the bias of a hardcore fan but not one of those performances - nor any of the dozen audio/video concert recordings I've heard and memorized note-for-note since - has ever been substandard. These guys just continue to amaze.

In an age in which all that's needed for a successful career in music is a sequencer, an ability to shout violent juvenile epithets, and/or a frothing leftwing/countercultural "message," it is a truly magnificent thing to hear rock musicians who not only can play musical instruments (imagine that,) but do justice to and frequently surpass studio compositions that are as complex as they are powerful.

The setlist:

Limelight
Digital Man
Entre Nous
Mission
Freewill
The Main Monkey Business
The Larger Bowl
Secret Touch
Circumstances
Between The Wheels
Dreamline

Intermission

Far Cry
Workin' Them Angels
Armor And Sword
Spindrift
The Way The Wind Blows
Subdivisions
Natural Science
Witch Hunt
MalNar
Drum Solo
Hope
Distant Early Warning
The Spirit Of Radio
Tom Sawyer

Encores:

One Little Victory
A Passage to Bangkok
YYZ

LiveDaily has a good encapsulation of the concert, and if you're curious there are copious bootleg videos of wildly-varying audio and video quality posted at YouTube. My pick for best of the lot is this excerpt from Neil's solo. You hadda be there, really - so just do it.
Peart's writeup on the making of their latest album is also a great read, in pdf format and titled The Game of Snakes And Arrows.

Copious thanks go to the Bergomeister for the great 2nd-row tickets BTW - only the second time someone's given me Rush tix as a birthday present. The first was in 1981 - from someone ten times curvier and a damnsight prettier, but second row at the Hollywood Bowl beats the hell out of back-end nosebleeds at the late, great Met Center (now buried beneath the Mall of America.) 'Had other things on my mind besides band visibility then anyway, fortunately... (!)

But I digress. I claim my reminiscence waiver! Sorry.


1001001001001001001001001001001001001001


And Rowling's Potter saga... What can you say about a modern masterpiece that began as a fanciful tale for kids and almost instantly unfolded as literature on a par with Tolkien? The seventh and final book is signed, sealed and delivered - and, perhaps barring fourteen or fifteen people in a remote village in the jungles of East Timor, now devoured by every literate human being on the planet.

The sixth of the series, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," was a significant disappointment - all flat, journalistic exposition and oddly little in the way of drama or suspense to carry it. I had worried that JKR had run out of steam, but "Deathly Hallows" blew that notion to smithereens. (And if you've ever actually seen a smithereen, well let me tellya....)

The primary flaw in the series has been the implicit ethics of self-sacrifice, and though it does indeed form the catalyst for the final climactic battle, it's thankfully understated enough to be palatable. I've read criticisms from objectivists focusing on that fact, but I think a dose of perspective is needed here.

Rowling is not an objectivist and her work exhibits mixed premises, to be sure, but the baby/bathwater analogy applies fully here. I was surprised and relieved that the standard-default self-sacrificial climax - which would have been stoked to a maudlin crescendo in the hands of a lesser writer - took a back seat to the multitude of virtues - and I mean virtues in the objectivist sense - that Potter and the rest of Rowling's primary characters have exhibited throughout the series.

Scholarship, productivity (a.k.a. hard work,) achievement, justice, honesty, integrity, volition, independence and courage have been the most vivid characteristics of Potter and his gang from the beginning of the series to the last chapter. To find these elements prominent in what is perhaps the most popular fictional series of the present day is something worthy of ovation, not condemnation. The sheer quantity of positive themes and lessons for readers of all ages within these books is staggering, and, I would argue, vastly outweigh the philosophical flaws of altruism, determinism and arbitrary chance.

Rowling just nailed the caricature of Hillary Clinton (either intentionally or not,) with the power-crazed bureaucrat Dolores Umbridge introduced in Book 5, "Order of the Phoenix" - and that in itself makes the entire series worthwhile, IMO. A more vivid dramatic exposition of the mechanism by which statism slowly but inexorably confiscates freedoms, is something I can't recall since Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" itself. To find such a thing in a series ostensibly written for children is just fantastic. As a shameless plug, you can now get the Scare Pair's '08 campaign sticker:


Though I wouldn't rank "Deathly Hallows" as the best of the series - I think that's a toss-up between "Prisoner of Azkaban" and "Order of the Phoenix" - it's on a worthy par with the rest of the series, and a magnificent rebound from the lackluster "Half-Blood Prince." Hats off to Ms. Rowling, and let's hope she dives right back into something new after what I would expect will be a well-deserved hiatus.

Related reading: "Thank You, Harry Potter!" by Dianne Durante of ARI.

The Left, The War, and The Only Argument They Know

Now Playing: "Sunday Papers" by Joe Jackson. I'm not bringing this tune up for sake of relevance - it's been in my head since doing it on karaoke last night, so of course I had to put it on...

It seems that the leftwing, er, publication The New Republic didn't quite clue in to the overall message of its infamous Steven Glass story-fabrication scandal some ten years ago. On July 13 it published a story called "Shock Troops," essentially an anecdotal hit piece against American troops in Iraq written by an anonymous "soldier" who goes by the pseudonym "Scott Thomas." It describes a number of incidents chosen both to shock and titillate: Two soldiers in a mess hall cruelly trash-talking a female comrade who'd had part of her face "melted" by an IED; another running around with parts of an Iraqi corpse - nay, an Iraqi child's corpse, presumably for added emotional impact - balanced on his head; another running down stray dogs with a Bradley armored vehicle.

Now if you're looking for a link to the TNR article you won't find it here. I refuse to link to its TNR page directly because I will not give those creeps any more publicity even than what's necessary to post this commentary on it - in any case it's a subscription-only read. Dean Barnett hits the essentials over at talk radio host Hugh Hewitt's site (scroll to the Thursday, July 19 entry "'The New Republic' Supports the Troops.") Barnett points out there are only three possibilities:

- The "soldier" is real and the story is completely true;
- The "soldier" is real and the story is heavily embellished for effect;
- The "soldier" and/or the story are fabricated.

I think scenario #3 is the most likely but the world may never know.

Michael Goldfarb at The Weekly Standard quotes extensively from the article and asks the public for factual data to either back up or refute its claims, and not surprisingly most of the article's key points are debunked by military and civilians with first-hand experience with the situations and hardware described. The devil's advocate could say the respondents are expressing personal biases of their own, but a point by Barnett remains indisputable: there is no corroborating evidence to support the "Scott Thomas" accounts. In logic the burden of proof lies with he who makes the assertion. Until independent verification is forthcoming we can only treat the "Scott Thomas" story as a kind of leftwing urban legend.

For my part I can testify as to the configuration of the Bradley fighting vehicle - there were a couple of them parked on the grounds of a defense contractor by which I was employed awhile back. The driver sits on the left front side of the vehicle and is therefore in no position to see anything to the immediate right of the vehicle, much less to out-maneuver something as small, agile and demonstrably invisible to the driver as a dog.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


Call me a polemicist but I tire of the habit among non-leftist commentators - even those wise enough to know better - of granting to the American left the benefit of the doubt as to attitudes on the American military.

Barnett states, ever-so-gently, that he "...[finds] it impossible not to get the sense that even though they [the left] purportedly support the troops, they sure do seem to relish every setback the troops incur." I hate to resort to slang, but the most appropriate response to this would be:

Well, Duh.

If you take, as a whole, the statements and actions of leftists on America at war - from The New Republic's Steven-Glass-relapse to the relentless attempts by Democrat-Socialists in Congress to grab defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq - the overriding message is this:

Leftists want America - and the cause of security, freedom and civilization in Iraq - to be defeated. Full stop.

I have long bristled at the characterization of über-leftists as "smart" - a characterization we heard, and still hear, repeatedly in reference to the Clintons. A vestigial, slavish devotion to an ideology that has left a mountain of corpses with a tally running to nine figures can be called many things, but "smart" is not one of them. Nonetheless, I find it decisively impossible to believe that the likes of Reid, Feinstein, Pelosi etc. are incapable of understanding the gravity of America's current position and the logical implications of retreat from Iraq. I'm not talking about the likely Cambodia-style bloodbath that would erupt in the wake of an American pullout, but rather a pullout's implication for radical Islam's perception of American resolve. It would be an engraved invitation to al-Qaida types to go back on the offensive - at precisely the time when we ought to be pursuing al-Qaida militants to the ends of the Earth.

As Barnett puts it (correctly this time,) in his July 18 post titled "How Big a Problem?":

"That’s one of the reasons that the Battle of Iraq is so vitally important. If the fans of Sharia (like Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and their tens of millions of philosophical fellow travelers) get the idea that America won’t fight and can be chased from the battlefield, we will have sent them an incredibly toxic message. Remember, they consider the whole world to be part of the battlefield, including Lower Manhattan, Washington D.C., Madrid, London..."

The leftists either cannot grasp, or are in denial and strenuously evading, the nature of evil and of its political concomitant, the initiation of force. They were dead wrong on the Soviet Union, they were dead wrong on Reagan's intransigence (which ultimately defeated it,) they are dead wrong on Islamofascism and the current conflict with it. It can be boiled down to a shopworn but accurate truism: aggressive thugs ultimately understand nothing but force, and must be dealt with on that basis.

Something I've learned in a decade or so of debate with leftists is that they really have no arguments. Collectivism is a self-contradictory philosophy at root, therefore every argument attempted on its basis is inescapably just as illogical. That leaves its proponents with few options beyond the classic logical fallacies.

I've found that the ad hominem is far and away the most common form any given leftwing argument takes, and this New Republic hit piece is no exception. What it amounts to is a vast smear of every American soldier, presented in lieu of any kind of substantive argument in favor of surrender and retreat.

For their part, Congressional Democrat-Socialists just concluded a loudly-publicized but unsuccessful "all-nighter" - a symbolic vote to pull the rug from beneath the Bush Administration's efforts in Iraq. Reams have been written on this and there are a number of different things to be said about it, few of them complimentary.

What the behavior of Congressional and civilian leftists says to me is that they have descended to a level of intellectual corruption and seething hatred of all things Bush so deep that they've transformed themselves into a kind of kamikaze or runaway train, willing to sell America's national security down the river for the sake of destroying Bush and the Bush Presidency.

Can one oppose war in Iraq honorably? Certainly. At the other end of the spectrum, can one object to the pusillanimous, altruistic way in which Bush has conducted the war? I certainly do. (Relevant here would be a pithy quote about "doing" vs. "trying" that comes from a short bald guy with enormous ears...)

But the Demo-Socialist Party is actively striving to achieve disaster in Iraq, so as to have something impressive to blame on the Bush Administration in the thick of the 2008 campaign. Impressive, indeed.

These people have jettisoned any care for what message this would send to the evil creatures who want to kill us - if indeed they had any such care to begin with. Even on an altruistic level, they care not a whit about the virtually-certain slaughter that would occur in Iraq if Congress forced a withdrawal.

They have become the Party of Rage, locked in a death-embrace with an emotionalism that blinds them to all other considerations, up to and including their own safety along with yours and mine. One can argue the merits or lack of them for engaging the war on Hussein's Iraq, but every major Democrat now trying to short-circuit American foreign policy voted to go to war there, and we are, in fact, now in it. We either win it or we lose it - there is no third alternative.

These corrupt politicians must not be allowed to secure defeat - in Iraq or anywhere else.

As for The New Republic, well we already knew American journalism, at least in its traditional forms, has been dead for years.


Addendum, 07-27-07: The New Republic's "Scott Thomas" Identified

The New Republic, apparently feeling the backlash from their anonymously-published hit piece on the U.S. military in Iraq, have identified its author, one Scott Thomas Beauchamp. He is indeed an enlisted Army private, at least for the moment. So now that the kid's identity is established, the military people in charge of getting to the bottom of his "story" are busily doing so, but a few relevant facts are already known: He is apparently a hardcore leftwing activist who fancies himself a writer/poet/diarist of the Hunter S. Thompson/Jack Kerouac mold. Along with many, many other suggestions for him I'd add: pick some better heroes. He's also been publishing a blog where, in addition to identifying his ideological proclivities conclusively, he confesses that his motive in enlisting in the military was specifically to "...add a legitimacy to...my opinions" and for "...chasing down the muse..." In other words, he had an agenda going in.

Assuming, devil's-advocate-fashion, that every word of what he wrote is fact, the story (*sigh* - the boycott has to end for the sake of reference,) describes actions that are aberrant by any standards, particularly those of the military. So why was it published? Well, this is the left we're talking about, and the left, as posted previously, share with the Islamofascists a common hatred of America and of Western Civilization - therefore of American military success in their defense.

The best dissection of Beauchamp's "Shock Troops" I've read is John Barnes' "The Scott Thomas Affair", written before the Great Coming-Out.

Bottom line: What we have is The New Republic going ahead with story of unsubstantiated - likely unsubstantiatable - events highly defamatory of American soldiers in wartime; a story apparently written for the sole purpose of generating notoriety for its author, who enlisted in the Army for the sole purpose of gaining "legitimacy" in a hoped-for future writing career at...The New Republic as yet another left wing war critic.

On the whole the incident is valuable as a glimpse into what goes on within that horrid place between the ears of ethics-free leftists. I'd wager that his college professors are shedding tears of pride.

Happy Independence Day!

Now Playing: Pluie de Etincelles by Shawn Lane, from "Abstract Logic" with Hellborg & Baker, 1995

It's America's most important holiday and my personal favorite, so I'm off to enjoy a little freedom. I trust most understand the importance of the concepts being celebrated today and their implications for how governments ought to be, but generally aren't, run. The list of ways in which our own government has undermined and openly confiscated freedoms guaranteed to us under individual rights is staggering, but today is a day to contemplate the source of liberty in reason and individualism, to take a breather, and renew our commitment to their restoration.

It's also a day to make a not-so-silent "thank you" to the Founders who engineered this great but constantly-besieged nation. We still have the ability to correct the continued expansion of our leviathan government; we can defeat the enemies of Western Civilization on both the Islamofascist and Ecofascist fronts.

One of the foremost proponents of the latter, a Mr. Albert Gore, is sponsoring another propaganda blitz this coming weekend. If you haven't already, set aside an hour this Saturday and view British filmmaker Martin Durkin's "The Great Global Warming Swindle as an essential reference.

Beyond simply boycotting Gore's coming anti-humanist spectacle I urge everyone to find the most visible, public way of voicing opposition to ecofascism open to you. Letters to the editor are important - though most American news dailies have devolved into left wing broadsheets; posting on any of the myriad Internet forums is an option; blogging is another.

Perhaps this is also a good time to contact your government representation and tell them to defend, not attack, the industrial civilization upon which our very lives depend.

And of course there's always your bumper:




You can get one here.

Immigration "Reform": Two Victories

Now Playing: "Les Lignes de Nos Mains" - Patou ca. 1997, serious gooseflesh material for me - 'makes me feel like I'm standing on a Parisian street corner after a light rain...which in point of fact I was, shortly after I first heard this...

This has been a momentous week on a number of fronts - a lethal terrorist bombing averted in Britain, the Fed leaving interest rates alone, Bigelow Aerospace's unmanned test module for their private space station successfully launched to Earth orbit, and of course the infamous "comprehensive immigration reform" bill was defeated in the U.S. Senate under an avalanche of angry opposition from the American people.

Defeat of the immigration bill is an overwhelming relief, qualified by the fact that we've only regained zero, not progressed in any measure toward a proper immigration policy.

More significant than the bill's defeat itself was the manner in which it was defeated by the American people, and on the downside the backlash of censorship demands it provoked from the most corrupt of American politicians.

The bill itself was by all accounts a monstrosity, nearly 800 pages that few in Congress who voted on it either for or against had even read (understandably if not justifiably.) Not meaning to shock anyone, but it left the "public assistance" (read: welfare) dole and the government's atrocious education monopoly untouched - which implies the "internationalizing" of America's welfare state; It was utterly toothless in establishing English as a common language, which implies the eventual Balkanization of the United States; It did little or nothing to squeeze off the alarming conduit for terrorism that our borders have become in recent years; It made no significant streamlining of the process of legal immigration for those waiting patiently in line in their home countries.

The one most significant feature of the immigration "reform" debate has been what is absent from it, namely: A call to end welfare.

Again, excluding criminals, untreated communicable disease carriers and terrorist or revanchist agents, the only way in which any immigrant, legal or otherwise, can be a burden on American citizens is if he latches onto the government dole and begins feeding off of their taxed property.

The bill also did not raise a peep about correcting the root cause of the exodus from Mexico: that nation's needless economic inertia and resulting poverty.

Mexico is analogous to an emaciated man in rags sitting on a cache of buried treasure. Mexico's oil fields are reportedly as vast as those of the Mideast, albeit of a lesser grade of crude, which means it's somewhat more expensive to refine; Mexico therefore ought to be one of the most prosperous, vibrant and thriving economies on Earth. If our government were to adopt a focused policy of working with the Mexican government to establish laissez faire on a foundation of individual rights, one can envision a future in which Americans might be flocking south of the border for lucrative jobs.

None of that, however. Actually solving a problem by addressing its root causes would be out of character for government functionaries. So how does one account for the inexplicable and bizarre alliance of a Republican President with hardcore, goose-stepping leftists like Kennedy, Reid and Feinkenstein? Simple.

What the "reform" bill would have done, at least in the eyes of its "bipartisan" supporters, is buy gobs and gobs of future votes - at the cost of selling out America's identity, perhaps even sovereignty. The President is naïve and unprincipled enough to believe that currying favor with illegals rather than eliminating the mechanisms by which they become a detriment to American citizens will somehow translate to election wins down the road; Democrat-Socialists are merely acting in a manner consistent with their normal, countercultural corruption. The lot of them are little more than pragmatist power-whores.

On a different level, the defeat of the immigration monstrosity is probably the single most dramatic, tangible triumph for the American people-at-large over insular, monarchic government bureaucrats since the second Reagan landslide. This defeat was a smackdown of out-of-control, power-crazed politicians by the American rank & file, and we WON. Big.

More of this, please.

On a significant downside, a number of militantly-corrupt government officious are "considering" running our priceless and untouchable First Amendment through a fine-pitch industrial shredder. As evidenced by:

Diane Feinstein and her ideological blood-brother Trent Lott;

Democrat-Socialist Dennis Kucinich;

Senator and former D-S Presidential candidate John Kerry;

And of course yesterday on the floor of the Senate, majority leader Harry Reid vilified his opposition in talk radio and elsewhere - as "generators of simplicity" who are "filled with hate," etc. The jury's out as to whether his oration was a simple whine or a threat. I think both, and I find that chilling.

We have a lot of reason to be encouraged when we contemplate the actual mechanism by which the omnibus bill was defeated. As reported in the above-referenced Washington Post article, the outpouring of opposition on the bill was so overwhelming today that it shut down the Senate switchboard. The losers on the immigration bill are blaming the First Amendment, in so many words. Naturally.

Each talk radio host, each blogger (such as this one,) each podcaster, each commentator in any forum, is the de facto leader of a kind of coalition of American citizens - the audience for that commentary. Every instance of such a "coalition" gathering to listen to a radio show or surfing to a blog site, is an instance of Americans exercising their untouchable First Amendment rights.

Those talk show hosts, bloggers, podcasters, publishers are exercising their right to speak and print freely;

Their respective audiences, whether in the tens or in the millions, are exercising their right to assemble peaceably and exercising their freedom of conscience in considering whatever viewpoint they choose - regardless of how acceptible any given viewpoint is to others;

Those who subsequently choose to contact their elected officials - among both the commentators and their audiences - are exercising their right to petition government.

With the exception of the clauses on religion (which don't come up in this context,) the opposition press and audience that the neo-fascists are trying to demonize are the very embodiment of our Constitution's First Amendment in its every application.

Now back away a step or two and marvel at the sheer benevolent genius of America's Founders. One cannot help but experience a sense of awe at the magnificent system they built into our Constitution - yet another safeguard against the abuse of power by that most dangerous of entities, the state.

In this one crucial issue - how we are to handle immigration - the American people sensed a dangerous disconnect among elected officials on their sworn duty to represent, not dictate, and rose up to remind them of that duty. Our First Amendment has operated like a finely-tuned, well-oiled, precision machine, empowering the rank-and-file of American citizenry to rein in an insular, monarchic and power-crazed government. The astounding thing is that this mechanism operated spontaneously, as a function of the marketplace of ideas.

The rights enumerated in that Amendment apply equally to print, to the airwaves, to electronics. Speech is speech, the printed word is the printed word. The mechanism by which they are delivered to their audience is immaterial - but that is what those clamoring for censorship are hoping you won't realize.

The out-of-control government officials at the receiving end of that public outrage are predictably livid at having been brought to heel - that all of that opposition welled up as a function of free people exercising rights they (the politicians,) are Constitutionally forbidden to tamper with. Led by the fascist wing of the Democrat-Socialist Party - Kerry, Pelosi, Reid, Feinstein, etc. - they're expressing a desire to smash that machine, our First Amendment rights, so as to wield monarchic power without any pesky feedback from us plebes.

And as I posted previously, the time has come for GOP lawmakers to begin taking the offensive on this. Legislation should be introduced to penalize - via censure or whatever other penalties are appropriate - any Congressman who proposes legislation that by its very nature represents a violation of that member's oath to uphold and defend the United States Constitution.

As for the rest of us, that lurch to Constitution-shredding needs to be smacked down even more decisively than was the "immigration reform" monstrosity. Every politician currently jabbering about "fairness doctrines" and "net neutrality" needs to hear from us - loudly and proudly. Our system functions magnificently by design - but it cannot abide internal vandalism.

The assault on America's Constitution must end, now.

The Demo-Socialist Left's Neo-Fascist Lurch

Now Playing: Jupiter by Ayaka Hirahara, from "Odyssey" - more "cultural cross-pollination," as Mr. Peart would say... Stunning.

Just a few minutes ago the space shuttle Atlantis passed overhead on its approach to landing at Edwards AFB. Some 35 years after telling my piano teacher essentially to go to hell while I watched an Apollo launch the comings and goings of human spacecraft are no less thrilling, but I mention it here because it's also a vivid example of government getting something right, albeit at high cost.

At the opposite (gutter) end of the government activity spectrum, the Democrat-Socialist Party's alarming lurch into what can only be described as fascism continues with their new attempt at censorship of political opposition.

In this news item Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma says he overheard Hillary Clinton and Barbara Boxer talking about finding "a legislative fix" - read: censorship - to the "extremism" of talk radio. Here is the audio of Inhofe's interview on the John Zeigler Show.

Boxer's handlers vociferously deny that any such conversation ever took place and contest the date it didn't occur, but despite the diversions the handwriting Boxer's intellectual clones have etched on the public record remain in place and underscore Inhofe's account with uncontestable fact.

This attack on talk radio is a First Amendment attack to rival that of Traitor McCain's Campaign Censorship Act that was passed as Shays/Meehan in 2002, and something that must be stopped.

If you have a cast-iron stomach and want the full, explicit dope on what the neo-fascist Left have planned for the First Amendment, have a listen to any of the talks given last January at the Left's "National Conference on Media Reform" in Memphis. It was Hanoi Jane, Bill Moyers, Danny "Please Commandante Chavez may I lick your boots" Glover, Jessie "Hymietown" Jackson, Dennis Kuchinich, actress Geena Davis (thankfully in solid clothing,) and a number of lesser-known others.

In short, these neo-fascist Democrat crazies can "propose" all they want, but those in possession of Congressional seats who are talking about this stuff must be exposed and smacked down, hard. Which is the proper job of their ostensible opposition, the Congressional Republicans. As I've said before, if we allow these thugs - or their GOP blood-brothers like the insufferable Trent Lott - to destroy our right to speak, print, assemble and petition, using whatever media we choose, we're all serfs and as good as dead. I recommend rattling their cages, like right today.

I'm no Constitutional lawyer, but I think the GOP should take a new tack with this new crop of Constitution-shredders. Every member of Congress, like the President, swears an oath upon taking office that they will uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. If a Congressman authors what is in fact a blatant attack on the Constitution, some form of legal censure needs to be leveled on that member for violating his oath. "Censure" is perhaps toothless but it gets the censor-wannabe's corruption exposed, and hopefully acts as a deterrent against those of similar neo-fascist bent.

I'm getting just a little frustrated out here in ConstituentLand because I expect that such an attitude of no-compromise hardball against this noxious, unconstitutional rot would be second nature for anyone calling himself a "Republican." But I'm not hearing a peep of protest from anyone on the GOP side of the aisle. This must change, immediately if not sooner.

More reading on this:

If You Can't Compete, Cheat by Blake Dvorak at RealClearPolitics;

Michelle Malkin's "Fairness Doctrine Watch"

A Tale of Two Debates

Now Playing: "Savitri" by Lane, Hellborg, Srinivas and the Vinayakrams, from the San Diego "Muzik3" concert 02/24/01, via DVD - as spellbinding a night as I'd remembered...

'Back from a brief vacation of sorts from all of this, and well, things haven't improved much in the Presidential Election arena.

On Sunday, June 3 the Democrat-Socialist Party of America held its second debate for the 2008 Presidential campaign. I missed it for some reason (?) so caught it in pieces later at You Tube (see link.)

What I heard didn't surprise me much except perhaps in the depth of potentially catastrophic naïveté on foreign policy - and let's face it folks, that would be the Go/NoGo test for any prospective President at this particular point in history.

It would appear that by some odd coincidental quirk these eight distinguished collectivists had all slept soundly through the month of September 2001...? The one striking aspect of their comments on foreign policy, particularly but not exclusively as relates to the war in Iraq, was that their entire context for policy is not American national security, but momentary American polling data.

Go ahead, listen to the segments of the debate addressing foreign policy. What you will hear is a consistent refrain of "The American people want out of this war," and "we need to bring the troops home," somber concerns about "the need to work with our allies" and "restore America's reputation with the rest of the world," and "This is Bush's war!" What you will not hear is any reference to the gravity of the situation we continue to face on a number of fronts. That very cut-and-run weakness and inconsistency the Demo-Socialists have adopted as their official Party policy on the Arab world since the Carter years has been a major factor in the rise of Islamic terrorism. As I've posted earlier, there remain areas beyond America's leftwing ivory tower that are similarly infested with predatory haters of individualism, of liberty, of trade, of prosperity - and which, like all predators, sense weakness in their prey. The Demo-Socialists won't even say the phrase "Islamic terrorism" publicly.

The Democrat-Socialist candidates, each and every one, show an unnerving obliviousness to the implacable danger America and the whole of Western Civilization face in the post-9/11 world.

* * * * * *

I've long thought that pacifism as a political ideology is an expression of perceptual-level hedonism, or more deeply of the subordination of reason to emotion. The emotionalist/hedonist mentality - an honored tradition with the "live for today" American Left since the '60s - wants to feel good at all costs and in defiance of all conflicting contexts. No matter that an international cabal of fanatics wants to kill us because we've moved out of the Dark Ages and are proud of the fact; "We wanna feel good" and... war feels bad.

Add to that the frantic need to cater to the actual or perceived whims of the masses as indicated by the poll du jour, plus the stultifying dread of offending "the International Community" (presumably as exemplified by the International Tyrants' Day Care Center, Manhattan Campus, a.k.a. the UN,) and what you've got is...the Democrat-Socialist Party platform, ca. 2007.

On an epistemological level pacifism is a manifestation of the skepticism/subjectivism/relativism axis that festers at the core of American leftism - respectively: "There are no absolutes, your ethical evaluations are just opinions, and nobody is more evil or more good than anyone else."

Voting Democrat in time of war is like snorting coke: It's pushed as something that'll make you feel real, real good, but in reality it's something that will ultimately kill you. They're not even particularly subtle about this, their blissful disconnect from reality. If you listen to the Demo-Socialist Party candidates for the 2008 election, then stack them up against the Republican candidates (contemptibly lame as these latter are,) what will smack you right between the eyes is the utter juvenility, the intense naïveté of their attitudes toward the dangerous world in which we live.

As I've mentioned before, what is at stake here is nothing less than the very survival of Western Civilization. It is absolutely not something to be entrusted to children.

_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_

The third Republican debate was held two days later and was thoroughly as annoying, but for an entirely different reason. In a word: Default.

What could be heard of this debate between CNN's mysterious audio anomalies - loud periodic crackles of static interjected freely over those speaking and strangely regular muting of Giuliani's microphone - was significant primarily in what was missing from it. Just a few absent items I jotted down:

- In context of war, ending the Clinton-era "Rules of Non-Engagement" that essentially transform American troops into shooting gallery ducks;

- In context of war, ending the Bush-era "Compassionate" war concept that has essentially transformed American national security into an immoral exercise in altruistic martyrdom rather than decisive victory;

- The full, absolute and comprehensive negation of John "Traitor" McCain's censorship abomination, the Shays/Meehan act of 2002 - as a first domestic priority;

- Evidence that any one of the candidates has seen and digested Martin Durkin's film "The Great Global Warming Swindle" and has the audacity to point out that anthropogenic climate change is at best a neo-Marxian myth;

- Proposals for the drastic reduction in the size, scope, expense and intrusiveness of government at all levels - starting with major "alphabet soup" government departments and the welfare state as a whole;

- The word "deregulation." Just the word, simple as that, is all I wanted to hear. I'd have settled for it in pretty much any context, but it has left these boneheads' vocabularies entirely while the great Ronald Reagan spins in his grave;

- The word "privatization" - see above;

- More specifically, privatization of the United States Postal Monopoly, so that we can have at least as good a level of service with first class mail as bureaucratic Japan, socialist Britain and Ahmad-in-a-jar's Iran - each of which has recently privatized its postal monopoly, successfully;

- Privatization of the TSA/ThousandsStandingAround, which, predictably, has morphed into an arrogant, monarchical, unaccountable and un-criticizable monster bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Gestapo or NKVD;

- The phase-out and ultimate privatization of Social Security - rather than Bush's timid proposal to "allow" up to 4% (zowie) of wages to be diverted into "voluntary" private accounts. The only ethical Ponzi scheme is a dead Ponzi scheme;

- The full privatization of that vast, colossal failure that is "public education";

- Replacement of the Income Tax with a consumption tax - not an elimination (yet) but a dramatic change with a multitude of positive consequences for American liberty, privacy and prosperity;

- On immigration, the elimination of any possibility of illegal immigrants to access public (read: taxee-funded) services of any kind; denial of voting rights until full citizenship is gained through normal, legal channels - i.e., after the people in line before them who've played by the rules.


So in the absence of these basic Reaganesque proposals or anything remotely like them - certainly they're radical but consistent with Reagan's vision of eliminating entire cabinet-level departments and the like - what we're left with is ten "Republican" candidates who seem committed to: the Status Quo.

Which means: committed to sliding into full-blown totalitarian statism, but at a slightly slower rate than their Demo-Socialist counterparts would do. Swell.

Again, what a dismal lineup.


Addendum, June 21:

WagTV has announced that an expanded version of Martin Durkin's "The Great Global Warming Swindle" will be released on DVD in July, and that you can reserve a copy now. I would hope that a full-blown theatrical release of the documentary could be arranged for North America and Europe given the film's popularity, but that we'll have to keep lobbying for and just wait and see.

F. Thompson's Mooore Smackdown; GOP Debate II; Postal Tar Pit Nudge

Now Playing: Rush's Snakes & Arrows again - "Just ok," not great...I'll put it several notches above Vapor Trails (2002); on a rough par with Test For Echo (1996); a couple notches below the mixed-bag Counterparts (1993); several dozen below the timeless Roll The Bones (1991) - but it will likely grow on me... 'Mini-review! D'OH!

_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/

Ok sporting fans, things got damn tasty in the political world today after leftwing video op-ed purveyor Michael Moore wrote a snotty letter to Presidential non-candidate Fred Thompson demanding that he help Moore get publicity via a debate. Thompson fired back with a true rarity among contemporary GOP "leaders": a quick, cool and acid response that succeeded in shoving Moore's transparent self-promo right back down his throat - yet with a masterful sense of style and understatement. Why can't the rest of the GOP machine get a grasp on this kind of basic competence in communication, rather than such dismal, horrid attempts at mass appeal as the Half Hour News Hour...

It is unfortunate that Thompson supported and voted for the McCain/Feingold/Shays/Meehan First Amendment Arsewipe-Transformation Act of 2002, something I consider despicable, unpardonable, and an instant disqualifier for any political office. The restoration of our Bill of Rights is a priority second only to national defense, and it is precisely McCain's atrocity that constitutes (pun if you want one,) the single most dangerous breach of that priceless document in America's history. To support such a breach is to confess an ignorance of essential principle that is nothing short of pathological.

Nice smackdown of the comically-mislabeled "progressive" Moore though...

_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/

The second GOP primary "debate" in South Carolina starts in roughly a minute and a half - my appraisal to follow. Ummm... hopefully someone will ask these guys if they've seen Martin Durkin's film and what they'll do to defend industrial civilization against the "green al-Qaida"......

.......

........................

...3/4 of the way through, give or take, and the first thing that leaps to mind is a criticism I've had of every televised American debate in recent memory:

Dump the live audiences already!

"Televised" means: readily viewable by an audience potentially in the millions. Can somebody explain to me why a live audience is needed at all? It reminds me of that peculiar American fetish with ramming (usually rotten) music into our ears in literally every public place within America's borders. It's an assumption of something being needed, but nobody bothers to question exactly why.

So...why?

What we do know is that the applause is a needless distraction, a waste of already-limited speaking time, and worst of all a motivation among the candidates to cheap crowd-pleasing rather than thoughtful, reasoned debate.

Several years ago - 'forget when, exactly - I saw a televised debate for Canadian Prime Minister. I remember it vividly because it was just the candidates, the moderators pitching the questions, and the camera crew - nobody else. That ought to be the standard format for American political debates. The level of discourse and depth of analysis were miles and miles above the "Jeopardy" format we're used to. We have to decide whether we're seeking cheap entertainment or vital, sober information about the candidates for the highest office in the semi-free world.

Secondly, though I haven't had a stopwatch handy I'm a little disgusted with the disproportionate amount of time that is being given to non-Republican McCain. Is it just my imagination or is that insufferable authoritarian-censor-pragmatist being given twice as frequent comment opportunities as any other candidate? Fortunately, there's an episode of Deadliest Catch playing on Discovery and my remote has a "last channel" button...

Afterthoughts:

- The only question on eco-fascism and the "global warming" fraud was softballed to Sen. Brownback - who replied with a stale middle-of-the-road hash that began with lip service to drilling in ANWR, then blather about ethanol and biodiesel, then "conservation" as an energy option. Umm, Earth to Brownback: conservation is not a source of energy. Besides being a willful retreat from our standard of living as human beings, it is only a shift of energy use from one locale to another, as the great economist George Reisman identifies. "Conservation" is also: a cheap evasion.

Nowhere in Brownback's reply was any hint of eco-regulation repeal, and given that his was the single question of the entire debate in which the issue was even broached, this was the proverbial it. Again, I sense a level of disinterested complacency among the GOP "leadership" about the intentions of the anti-industrial movement, which is both revealing and alarming.

- Rep. Ron Paul was only asked questions on his stance on the Iraq war, presumably because the questioners knew it's the only issue on which he's seriously wrong, and presumably because his articulate, principled positions on other issues are too dangerous to be heard... Unfortunately for Paul, he is way wrong on foreign policy - and in terms of his campaign as a GOP candidate, terminally wrong.

- I have to give this one to Giuliani, narrowly. But oh! what a dismal lineup...

_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/

Lastly, some words about the single most blatant textbook-definition monopoly in America, the United States Postal "Service." Ohhhboy...

Yesterday, Monday May 14, the dinosaur Americanus Postalisaurus Wrecks helped itself to another bump in its own already-bloated diet, a rate increase to 41 cents for a first class letter a scant year after its increase to 39 cents. It's instituted a gimmick called the "forever stamp" by way of an instant distraction from the fact, but the fact remains.

Q.: What do socialist Britain, bureaucratic Japan and even the theocratic dictatorship in Iran have in common?

A.: They've all privatized their government postal monopolies.

I haven't read reports on Iran's results; Japan's privatization is hampered by compromises that guarantee some government involvement; but Britain has seen predictable success in its privatization just over a year after the Royal Mail monopoly was ended.

Errmmm, couldn't our allegedly free-market nation do at least as well as Britain? Japan? Ahmad-in-a-jar's Iran?!?

So we grin and bear it while the one service we're forced to use for mail delivery jacks up its fee schedule a year after its last price hike, while local P.O. slugs freely delay, mangle and/or misdeliver items from political organizations with which said slugs disagree (a problem - or crime, really - I've experienced directly and repeatedly,) and while our political "leaders" remain meekly silent on the issue.

Time to rattle their cages, I think.

The United States Postal Monopoly is a massive, monolithic, expensive, inefficient, arrogant, unethically staffed and utterly corrupt political dinosaur that's too daft to find its way into the nearest tar pit.

I say the time to give it a nice, friendly nudge is long overdue.

French Election Mumbling; GOP Debate Notes

Now Playing: Rush, "Snakes & Arrows" - hmmm....

Anyone else notice how abruptly American media fled the French PM election story after their hopeful - the vestigial socialist Segolene Royal - lost to the reportedly "conservative" and America-friendly Nicolas Sarkozy?

Yeah, that sounded a lot like a pin from this end too...

That election result has gotta just burn if you're on the staff of the New York Daily Socialist Worker (a.k.a. "Times") - 'considerably more encouraging to those of us who count ourselves among the civilized. The big question is whether Sarkozy can do much of anything in the direction of rationality and liberty, as head of a nation rooted in the intellectual goo that is Rousseau.

The instant rioting that followed Sarkozy's victory over Royal is not encouraging - though rioting has been a more or less constant feature of France regardless of who's running the show. At any rate, an about-face to enthusiastic pro-American, semi-free-market leadership is an unexpected shot in the arm from an ally that's traditionally been an antagonist. There may be hope for Western Civilization yet.

America's Presidential prospects, however... Well, last week we got a good preview of what the GOP has to offer and it's a mixed bag at best. The only one who approached the Reaganism to which they all paid lip service was Ron Paul, who made some now-unheard-of admonishments to Constitutional reference for all government activity. The man clearly possesses sincere conviction on that point - unfortunately, he's stuck in a kind of Kantian quicksand on the subject of national security. Echoing the most disastrous of Libertarianism's flaws, Paul embraces what he calls "non-interventionism" as a kind of categorical imperative on foreign policy, to be adhered to regardless of context.

In terms of consequence it doesn't matter whether his advocacy of retreat and Ostrich Mode is based on his reading of Founding principles or the Left's emotionalist pacifism. On 21st century Earth it's tantamount to suicide, or more precisely, "victim-assisted homicide." Isolationism was only practicable when crossing an ocean was a matter of months rather than hours - the only issue for which the passage of time and development of technology have changed the equation.

'Most unfortunate that Paul is most solidly wrong on the one most vital issue: National security and the defense of Western Civilization. His eloquent, often passionate articulation of first principles in nearly every other area relegated the rest of the rostrum to the status of maleducated teenagers. The contrast was unexpected and stunning:

- Giuliani's most valuable assets are limited to a.) his status as "most likely landslide material" given his potential to pull from Democrat moderates and b.) his palpable commitment to the fight against terrorism, wherever that may end up being. Beyond that he's perhaps the King of All Mixed Bags;

- Romney takes the prize for slickest telegenic presence, also for most readily-identifiable RINO - but then we had his record as Governor of Massachusetts as proof of that;

- the rest of the pack are studies in mixed premises, destined as also-rans;

- and lastly, Constitution-shredder McCain remains embarrassingly confused as to the location of the Democrat-Socialist debate.

Speaking of Demo-Socialists, they continue their slide into blind rage and de facto neo-Nazism, which is only disturbing - as opposed to merely pathetic - if the GOP leaders on the "do" end of Edmund Burke's famous quote do...what Burke described, yet again.

Stay tuned...

Environmentalists Live Up To Their Philosophy

Now Playing: Far Cry, the new Rush single, because..."There's a Rush lyric for every situation in life."

This morning I discovered that my car had been vandalized, obviously (due to the nature of the crime,) because I have an "EcoSickle" sticker displayed on the back:


I seem to remember that somewhere in America's past there was this thing called "the First Amendment to the Constitution" and that it upheld the right of American individuals to speak their minds freely. Apparently that principle is not acceptible to some - particularly those who demonstrably have no valid counter-argument to present...

"It's a far cry from the world we thought we'd inherit," indeed.

Without further lingering on the vestigial, nihilist Left's evil and corruption - "there's nothing as boring as depravity," as a great lady once said - suffice it to say that, consistent with reality as I've just experienced it, I've opted for the more precise version:



I am an American.

I will not be silenced.


_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_


Last night I returned to Six Flags with some friends after a full decade, and...that place has changed. I think that most O-people who are fond of thrill rides, extreme sports, etc., are familiar with the question "Why would you put your life at risk unnecessarily?" First off, if "putting your life at risk" sounds overblown, I invite you to have a ride on this monster called "Déjà Vu" - with your eyes wide open. The expression "death staring you in the face" doesn't even scratch the surface...

Not to overstate the case, but there are at least two things of value to be gained from...hmmm, what to call it... extreme recreation:

First, what struck me last night is that there are few experiences that more vividly and directly fuse one's very life with human reason. It is only through the science of engineering that it is possible for the delicate human body to be flung around three dimensional space with such speed and violence - at a degree of safety so complete that we can defy death almost casually. There is only one reason why we can trust those fantastic machines to drop us hundreds of feet at speeds approaching 100 mph, through loops and rolls, backward and forward, upside-down and rightside-up, to hold us suspended those hundreds of feet above ground with nothing between us and certain death but a mechanical harness. It's because we know that the structural engineers who designed it all worked from rationally-proven theory, did the math, tested the structural specifications, and built accordingly.

The only thing that comes close to this vivid a technology/body integration - for me, anyway - is the simple contemplation of an airliner's wings and Bernoulli's Principle while flying tens of thousands of feet above the Earth.

Secondly, there is a palpable psychological benefit to managing the kind of raw fear - a.k.a. panic - that a mega-coaster is designed to instill in its riders. Every ride is at once loads of fun and, more deeply, a simple exercise in instantly-gratified courage. Along with a pronounced stagger, you will emerge from something like "Déjà Vu" with the conviction that absolutely nothing less will scare you again, ever. 8^D

...Certainly not an eco-fascist with an anger management problem - which I presume to be a redundancy.

Addendum, Sun. April 29

If you haven't already, set aside twenty bucks and an hour and watch The Great Global Warming Swindle, Martin Durkin's thorough debunking of the vast fraud perpetrated by Gore and the lucrative Climate Armageddon industry. If all you've seen and/or heard about the issue is Gore's Academy-Award-winning opinion piece, you have only seen one fraudulent and distorted side of the story - in what is really a full-on attack on the industrial civilization that's keeping you alive.

The Virginia Tech Massacre & "Gun Control": The Unasked Question

Now Playing: The instrumental "Captain Nemo," from Michael Schenker - Live in Tokyo '97, via DVD.

There's something I've been waiting to hear from commentators - in vain, so far - from conservatives like Prager, Limbaugh and Hewitt to the leftists (not likely) at places like CNN and MSNBC...

Thirty-two individual lives were snuffed out a week ago, right in the middle of an institution of higher education, right in the middle of what is supposed to be the most civilized nation on Earth - in large part because they were ordered by their employees in government to accept the role of defenseless sheep.

Keep in mind that that death toll was the destructive action of a single murderer, blissfully unconcerned with the possibility of any kind of armed opposition.

Q: What if a group of ten or fifteen armed terrorists were to infiltrate a crowded campus, mall, airport or the like? A single murderer snuffed out thirty-two lives before anyone "officially" armed was able to arrive and do battle with him; extrapolate the death toll if a highly-trained, coordinated squad of several murderers were to mount a similar attack. How many hundreds would be slaughtered?

We, the American populace, remain defenseless as sheep thanks to a combination of sheer complacency and the government's unjust and unjustifiable constraints on our Constitutional rights.

The instant demands from the countercultural left for yet more of such constraints are now a matter of record. They are also unconscionable. They bring to mind something rocker and Constitutional rights activist Ted Nugent said a couple years ago in a speech at FreedomFest [paraphrased]: How dare these people tell us to our faces that we must remain defenseless as babies before deadly predators, that we must forfeit our Constitutional rights and indeed our very lives, for the sake of their corrupt ideology?

I will repeat the call for action that I made in a September 2005 post on the illegal post-Katrina gun confiscation in New Orleans: Contact your elected representation and demand a restoration of the "bear" portion of our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, then go out and shop for a firearm, learn to use and maintain it, and urge everyone you care about to do the same.

We Americans need to start thinking like the Israelis. The people of that nation have, through the necessity imposed on them by perennial attacks from surrounding regimes, gotten into the habit of doing what America's Founders admonished us to do: Consider the ownership and bearing of arms to be a matter of personal and civic responsibility. We should do so not out of a kind of siege mentality - though given the intellectual state of our political "leaders" we should expect a coming escalation of terrorist attacks on American soil - but because we ought never to have abandoned that responsibility. To suggest it in today's context only sounds like advocacy of a "siege mentality" because we have spent so many years living as complacent sheep while corrupt elected officials gut our Bill of Rights. That's "Bill of Rights," guys, not Bill of "Privileges," which "privileges" can be taken from us at whim. That we have allowed the corrupt likes of the Bradys, Feinkensteins, Waxmans to get away with this - and the McCains, Feingolds, Shayses and Meehans to wipe their backsides with our priceless First Amendment - is shameful and must be reversed if America is to survive as a nation of free individuals.

Again, the mechanism at work here is so obvious as to preclude the possibility that the anti-gun leftists are merely mistaken: Unarmed people are largely helpless against an armed assailant, while even a single armed civilian can stop such a murderer dead in his tracks; several armed civilians can reduce exponentially an armed murderer's odds of killing before he himself is put down. The left's knee-jerk demands for yet more Second Amendment violations are motivated by something entirely other than "public safety." The vicious irony of that premise ought to be crystal clear just now.

By way of a refresher, what are some of the relevant attitudes expressed by our Founders? A sample:

"The Constitution of most of our states, and the United States, assert that all power is inherent in the people, that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of prosperity, and freedom of the press."
- Thomas Jefferson, proposed Virginia Constitution, June 1776

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
- Thomas Jefferson, proposed Virginia constitution, June 1776

"Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life, secondly to liberty, thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can."
- Samuel Adams, "The Rights of the Colonists," Nov. 1772

"Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at the individual discretion, in private self-defense."
- John Adams, "A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America" 1787-88

"To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
- Richard Henry Lee, Additional Letters from the Federal Farmer #53, 1788.

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined. The great object is that every man be armed. Every man who is able may have a gun."
- Patrick Henry, Virginia ratification convention for the U.S. Constitution.

"Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived the use of them."
- Thomas Paine, "Thoughts on Defensive War" 1775

"To ensure peace, security, and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that is good."
- George Washington, The Federalist #53.

"A free people ought to be armed. When firearms go, all goes, we need them by the hour. Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence."
- George Washington, Boston Independence Chronicle, January 14, 1790.

Finally, I urge you to put your money where your ideals are and become a member of one or more of the organizations that are fighting to restore our confiscated Second Amendment rights:

* The Second Amendment Foundation - the organization that brought a successful lawsuit against New Orleans city officials for their post-Katrina gun confiscations, and which is at work on several others;

* The Liberty Belles;

* Ted Nugent Kamp For Kids

* Gun Owners of America;

* and of course the National Rifle Association.

Happy Industrial Revolution Day!

Now Playing: Dove c'e Musica, Eros Ramazzotti's great, jazzier followup to "Tutte Storie"

Indeed - 'hope you all had a chance to raise a toast and give a quiet "thank you" to every smokestack, freeway, automobile, cellphone, skyscraper, and - oyeah - computer that the retro-Medievalists were out protesting, hypocritically, this weekend. Well, presumably - I didn't watch the news today. 'Matter of fact, I've tuned out on news all weekend, so as to focus on more enjoyable aspects of life.

I had intended on performing my usual one-man I.R. Day demonstration, which consists of taking my usual umpty-mile run with my now-threadbare "Laissez Faire" t-shirt on prominent display - but it was (ahem!) too cold outside.

What...?

Also fitting is a rerun of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" that's playing on the tube at the moment (so I'm cutting this short...) Endlessly vilified by leftwing culture pundits as an iconic expression of '80s enthusiasm for reason, science, technology, civilization and unabashed humanism - which of course it is, in spades - TNG increasingly amazes me with what it managed to convey philosophically. Hats off to the late Mr. Roddenberry and all involved in TNG's production, and may someone in Hollywood one day match that level of excellence.

Enough already! Stay tuned!

Rampage Notes

Now Playing: Far Cry, the first single from the new Rush disc, "Snakes and Arrows," due out May 1 - can't stop listening to this tune...

I had intended to do a post on the increasingly-fascistic tone of the Democrat-Socialist Party, but that particular type of rampaging irrationality was eclipsed earlier this week by a more direct counterpart...

There's been wall-to-wall commentary on the Virginia Tech massacre, and an incredible amount of it consists of variants on the line "Nobody can make sense of this." I never know what exactly is meant by that and I doubt whether those uttering it do either. There is perhaps no making sense of exactly what went on (if anything,) between the ears of the predatory animal who committed the crimes, but yes, in fact we can make sense of this.

What we know about this particular predator is that a.) like most other such mass-murderers he was ruled by emotion rather than reason, and b.) like most other such mass-murderers he directed blame at others, not himself, for whatever frustrations he was experiencing in life. At some point this human turned that inner chaos outward, and transformed himself into an animal.

So long as human beings possess the faculty of volition (which would be: permanently, since it's hard-wired into our cognitive apparatus,) some will choose evil and choose to inflict that evil on other people. It's a metaphysical given, "sono cose della vita," as the Elton John of Italy once put it.

In that sense the presence of evil is forever outside of our control. What remains within our control is twofold:

On one level, we have it within our power to cultivate the attitude that training in self-defense is as vital to one's education as basic grammar and mathematics. This is something I picked up from writings either by or about ('forget which) Miyamoto Musashi, the 17th century sword-saint of Japan. What stuck in my mind was Miyamoto's attitude - common-sensical but rather alien to modern America - that going through life incapable of defending one's own physical person with reasonable competence is flatly irresponsible. Yes, one hopes and works for a level of civilized society in which physical conflict is never encountered, but in context of the aforementioned "metaphysical given," Miyamoto's is a good attitude to adopt, I think.

No, a legally disarmed student or teacher has limited options against an armed assailant, but a fighting chance can tip a life-or-death difference to the "life" side, as the now-legendary actions of unarmed passengers aboard United Flight 93 on September 11, 2001 demonstrated. Had Virginia Tech not fought only a year ago to forbid lawfully-licensed gun owners from carrying their weapons onto the Virginia Tech campus, readily-available training in weapons and live-fire combat would doubtlessly have saved dozens of lives before they were snuffed out.

What remains within our control on another, "macro" level, is precisely that work of establishing - or re-establishing - a civilization in which man lives and acts as man, not as a predatory animal. That, of course, is the province of philosophy and of its application in politics, in art, in the entire fabric of Western Civilization. The fact that the word "philosophy" will inspire in half of the people around you a blank stare, and in the other half vague thoughts of old men in white flowing beards and robes on mountaintops, contemplating their toenails - is suggestive of some of the elements that have made homicidal rampages far more common than they ought to be.

Western Civilization's intellectual foundation has been undermined for decades by the corrupt skepticism/subjectivism/relativism axis in philosophy - which has manifested itself more recently as the "PC" (Philosophically Corrupt) movement, now fully entrenched in academia, media and culture-at-large. The skeptics have been teaching generations the standard line "nothing can be known with certainty"; the subjectivists and relativists have followed up with "facts are only opinions" and "every idea is as valid as any other."

As a result, not only has the distinction between good and evil been intentionally blurred, the very idea of making such a distinction is militantly suppressed by the "PC" brownshirts marching around today's colleges and universities. The graduates of these schools now run key institutions within our culture, so our culture has become fertile ground for people who, having been indoctrinated with the idea that reason is powerless to apprehend the perpetually-uncertain, gravitate to the more readily-perceivable faculty of emotion as a mode of cognition. The result is creatures who grant to their emotions the status of ethical determinants and act according to their emotional whims du jour. The results are massacres like this one and the one that happened at Littleton, Colorado some eight years ago.

In addition, the standard collectivist idea that we are all undifferentiated appendages of a collective blob means that our cultural valuation of individualism - of the priceless nature of an individual human life - has been nearly obliterated. Therefore, in modern America there are far fewer cultural inhibitions to barbaric behavior than existed prior to the '60s decade, when the philosophical dry rot first began to take hold in America.

So expect more of this, and expect it to get much worse before it gets better.

Gingrich: Treason on Principle or just Gross Ignorance?

Now Playing: Nothing. Not in a musical mood just now...

While Tuesday's headlines were awash in the Imus racism flap (more on that in a minute,) a far more ominous story flitted beneath the radar entirely: Today (Tuesday Apr 10) Newt Gingrich, erstwhile star of the conservatives, rolled out a contemptible betrayal of principle in a D.C. debate against John Kerry on "global warming".

Gingrich, a ma