politics
"I chose my friends carefully."
Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father:
To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists.
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In search of some inspiration, I went to hear Kwame Toure, formerly Stokely Carmichael of Black Panther fame, speak at Columbia. These are not the words of a politically conservative op-ed columnist. These are not words from a press release from the McCain camp. These are Barack Obama's own indicting words, revealing his choice in how he was influenced during his college years. "Everyone experiments in college, Phisch," I can hear someone say. "Sex, religions, philosophies, politics. It's all about figuring out who you are, what you believe." And what Barack Obama figured out is that he is a hard-line leftist. A socialist. Perhaps even a total Marxist. National Journal has ranked Senator Obama as the most liberal member of the Senate, and it is hardly a right-wing publication. Linda Douglass used to write for National Journal; now she's Obama's traveling press secretary. He chose his friends carefully. William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Jeremiah Wright. Hardly people in touch with mainstream America. With mainstream American politics. These people are not moderates. They are not even slightly left of center. These are people who are either hardcore Marxists, or, in the case of Wright, subscribe to a theology heavily influenced by Marxism. These are the people Obama chose to be his friends. To be mentored by. To be influenced by. To be helped by. If you are still undecided in this election, if you still think that Senator Obama is just another moderate Democrat with a message of hope and change, think again. His own words show him to be what he really is. What do you think "spreading the wealth around" really means? Government doesn't have "wealth" to spread around. Government only has what funds it gains from its citizens by means of taxation. The bottom 50 percent of taxpayers in this country only pay 3% of the taxes. Three percent. So when Obama and others talk about "spreading the wealth around", they are talking about taking money from the 50 percent of us paying the 97% of taxes, and giving it, somehow, to the other 50 percent. That is not democracy. That is not free-market capitalism. That is outright Marxism, and Marxism has not worked anywhere it's been tried. Why do we believe we can make it work here? Because the right people haven't been in power to implement it yet? That's insanity.
Replacing water fountains with soda fountains
Obama’s acceptance speech at the DNC was touching. It was a brilliant speech.
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Don’t get me wrong, it all sounded wonderful, but I came away from it reminded of the kid who ran for class president when I was in 6th grade based on campaign promises of replacing all of the school’s water fountains with soda fountains. Plenty of kids voted for him because they loved the promise and incorrectly assumed that if he was promising it, he must have a way to make it happen. Those of us who took a minute to think about it realized that it was something that was beyond the power of one person and that it would take one heck of a lot of convincing and a whole lot of spending of money the school didn’t have in order to actually make it happen. Sounded great. Wasn’t realistic. So, are we voting for what sounds great, or what sounds realistic?
Businesses don't pay taxes
"The most dangerous myth is the demagoguery that business can be made to pay a larger share, thus relieving the individual. Politicians preaching this are either deliberately dishonest, or economically illiterate, and either one should scare us. Business doesn't pay taxes, and who better than business to make this message known? "Only people pay taxes, and people pay as consumers every tax that is assessed against a business. Begin with the food and fiber raised in the farm, to the ore drilled in a mine, to the oil and gas from out of the ground, whatever it may be--through the processing, through the manufacturing, on out to the retailer's license. If the tax cannot be included in the price of the product, no one along that line can stay in business." [Emphasis added. --R]
I'm hanging my hat on this one
"Who is in the White House is not as important as Who is on the White Throne." --Stewart Briscoe [Via Mike.]
Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.
This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.
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If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.
If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.
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Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.
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If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth -- even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.
Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means. That's how trust is earned.
Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.
Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.
So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?
Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for? Wow. And I didn't even quote all of the good parts.
The only constant is change
When asked what the market would do, J. Pierpont Morgan is supposed to have replied, "It will fluctuate." And so it has always done. For the time being, capital will be tighter than before, restricting credit--which is not always a bad thing--and businessmen will be reminded (as legislators, state and federal, seem never to learn) that neither bull markets nor recessions last indefinitely.
This is a fundamental reality of capitalism that seems never to penetrate the minds of journalists or politicians: Markets expand, contract a bit, and expand again, revenue streams are not always smooth, and for economic enterprise, the cost of overconfidence can be the same as the price of inertia: swift self-immolation. What appears to be huge, venerable, and financially indestructible today can be gone tomorrow.
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The financial markets are unsteady at the moment, and Wall Street is undergoing elective surgery. But change, not stasis, is the hallmark of the free market [...]
Fire in the Night
During the April 16 debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, moderator George Stephanopoulos brought up "a gentleman named William Ayers," who "was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He’s never apologized for that." Stephanopoulos then asked Obama to explain his relationship with Ayers. Obama’s answer: "The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George." Obama was indeed only eight in early 1970. I was only nine then, the year Ayers’s Weathermen tried to murder me.
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Nobody should hold the junior senator from Illinois responsible for his friends’ and supporters’ violent terrorist acts. But it is fair to hold him responsible for a startling lack of judgment in his choice of mentors, associates, and friends, and for showing a callous disregard for the lives they damaged and the hatred they have demonstrated for this country. It is fair, too, to ask what those choices say about Obama’s own beliefs, his philosophy, and the direction he would take our nation.
Attachments we don't want
James Madison:
"For the same reason that the members of the State legislatures will be unlikely to attach themselves sufficiently to national objects, the members of the federal legislature will be likely to attach themselves too much to local objects." (Federalist No. 46, 1 February 1788)
The Endgame in Iraq
General Jack Keane (USA, Ret.), Frederick W. Kagan, and Kimberly Kagan:
Reducing our troop strength solely on the basis of trends in violence also misses the critical point that the mission of American forces in Iraq is shifting rapidly from counterinsurgency to peace enforcement. The counter-insurgency fight that characterized 2007 continues mainly in areas of northern Iraq. The ability of organized enemy groups, either Sunni or Shia, to conduct large-scale military or terrorist operations and to threaten the existence of the Iraqi government is gone for now. No area of Iraq today requires the massive, violent, and dangerous military operations that American and Iraqi forces had to conduct over the last 18 months in order to pacify various places or restore them to government control. Although enemy networks and organizations have survived and are regrouping, they will likely need considerable time to rebuild their capabilities to levels that pose more than a local challenge--and intelligent political, economic, military, and police efforts can prevent them from rebuilding at all.
American troops continue to conduct counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda in Iraq, which has not given up, and against Iranian-backed Special Groups, which are also reconstituting. U.S. forces support Iraqi forces conducting counterinsurgency operations in the handful of areas where any significant insurgent capability remains. But mostly our troops are enforcing the peace.
In ethnically mixed areas, American troops are seen as impartial arbiters and mediators. In predominantly Shia or Sunni areas, they are seen as guarantors of continued safety, destroying the justification for illegal militias. American brigades also play critical roles in economic reconstruction, not by spending American money but by helping Iraqis spend their own money. American staffs help local Iraqi leaders develop prioritized lists of their needs, budgets to match those priorities, and plans for executing those budgets. American troops support the Provincial Reconstruction Teams that mentor Iraqi provincial leaders and help local communities communicate their needs to the central government. American soldiers provide essential support to Iraqi soldiers and police working hard to develop their ability to function on their own.
Indeed, American combat brigades have become the principal enablers of economic and political development in Iraq. When an American brigade is withdrawn from an area, there is nothing to take its place--all of these functions go unperformed. Clearly, then, the number of brigades needed in Iraq should be tied not to the level of violence but to the roles the Americans perform and the importance of those roles to the further development of Iraq as a stable and peaceful state. [Emphasis added. --R]
Raiding our piggy bank
"Sometimes bipartisanship is grounds for celebration, but more often it is cause for tears. Last week, congressional leaders from both parties went into a room to hammer out a plan that would put taxpayers on the hook for $700 billion. But they assert that the investment is essential to the health of the economy. And they insist that if we make this investment, we'll get all or most of it back.
"This promise would be more believable if the federal government had a long record of using tax dollars responsibly. In fact, it's the equivalent of the guy who raids his kid's piggy bank to feed the slots. The most notable impulse of our leaders is spending money the Treasury doesn't have, piling up bills that future Americans will have to cover."
Unfair
"I can think of nothing more unfair to an unborn child than to come into this world unwanted," declares the Rev. Dr. Susan K. Smith, senior pastor of Advent United Church of Christ in Columbus, Ohio. And that’s the difference between those of us who are pro-life, and those who aren’t: we, the former, can think of something much more unfair.
The last thing Jesus needs...
"The last thing Jesus needs is the State. Stupid Christians like James Dobson and Pat Roberton like D.C. more than grace ... sad."
Happy Constitution Day
"[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes -- rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments." -- Alexander Hamilton (letter to James Bayard, April 1802)
Reference: Selected Writings and Speeches of Alexander Hamilton, Frisch, ed. (511) Oh, how far we have fallen...
"It is at least excellent."
Jeff Jacoby, in "The brilliance of the Electoral College", on the latest attempts to abolish or skirt the Electoral College:
Actually, in no more than four of the nation's 54 presidential elections since 1789 has the electoral vote winner not been the candidate who won the popular vote...
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Such concerns didn't trouble the framers of the Constitution, who did not believe that political contests should be decided by majority rule. They rejected "pure democracy," as James Madison explained in Federalist No. 10. They knew that with "nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual," blind majoritarianism can become as great a menace to liberty as any king or dictator. The term "tyranny of the majority" was coined for good reason.
That is why the framers went to such lengths to prevent popular majorities from too easily getting their way. They didn't concentrate unlimited power in any single institution, or in the hands of voters.
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The Electoral College (like the Senate) was designed to preserve the role of the states in governing a nation whose name - the United States of America - reflects its fundamental federal nature. We are a nation of states, not of autonomous citizens, and those states have distinct identities and interests, which the framers were at pains to protect. Too many Americans today forget - or never learned - that the states created the central government; it wasn't the other way around. [Bold emphasis added. --R] I encourage you to read the whole thing.
I don't want to be at war a hundred years from now, either, but...
Clifford D. May, A Hundred Years of War?:
A hundred years from now, Americans might still be fighting militant Islamists in Iraq and other places. What could be worse than that? A hundred years from now, America and the West could have been defeated by militant Islamists.
Al-Qaeda, Iran’s ruling mullahs, Hezbollah, and others militant jihadis have told us what they are fighting for. The well-known Islamist, Hassan al-Banna, described the movement’s goals succinctly: "to dominate...to impose its laws on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet." He said that in 1928. Who would have believed then that his heirs would acquire the wealth, power, and lethality they enjoy today? Who can say where they may be 100 years from now? Who can say where the West will be? Survival is not an entitlement. Freedom must be earned by every generation.
"Insight"
I don't know about you, but I prefer my candidates to come equipped without the "High Octane Marxist Cant" option. Indeed. [Wave of the phin to Dom.]
"Let's 'Surge' Some More"
It is said that generals always fight the last war. But when David Petraeus came to town it was senators -- on both sides of the aisle -- who battled over the Iraq war of 2004-2006. That war has little in common with the war we are fighting today.
I may well have spent more time embedded with combat units in Iraq than any other journalist alive. I have seen this war -- and our part in it -- at its brutal worst. And I say the transformation over the last 14 months is little short of miraculous.
The change goes far beyond the statistical decline in casualties or incidents of violence. A young Iraqi translator, wounded in battle and fearing death, asked an American commander to bury his heart in America. Iraqi special forces units took to the streets to track down terrorists who killed American soldiers. The U.S. military is the most respected institution in Iraq, and many Iraqi boys dream of becoming American soldiers.
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We know now that we can pull off a successful counterinsurgency in Iraq. We know that we are working with an increasingly willing citizenry. But counterinsurgency, like community policing, requires lots of boots on the ground. You can't do it from inside a jet or a tank.
Over the past 15 months, we have proved that we can win this war. We stand now at the moment of truth. Victory -- and a democracy in the Arab world -- is within our grasp. But it could yet slip away if our leaders remain transfixed by the war we almost lost, rather than focusing on the war we are winning today.
Regarding those nasty unintended consequences...
One of the biggest problems with government intervention in the economy is that politicians usually have neither the knowledge nor the incentives to intervene at the right time.
Bruce Bartlett has pointed out that most government intervention in an economic downturn comes too late. That is, the problem it is trying to solve has already worked itself out and the government intervention can create new problems.
More fundamentally, markets readjust themselves for a reason. That reason is that people pay a price for their misjudgments and mistakes.
Government interventions are usually based on trying to stop them from having to pay that price.
People who went way out on a limb to buy a house that they could not afford are now being pictured as victims of a heartless market or deceptive lenders.
Just a few years ago, people who went out on that limb made money big-time in a skyrocketing housing market. But now that they have been caught in the ups and downs that markets have gone through for centuries, the government is supposed to bail them out.
Solving short-run problems, especially in an election year, often means creating long-run problems. Pumping money into the economy can help many problems, but do not be surprised if it also leads to inflationary pressures and financial repercussions around the world. In other words, people should bear some personal responsibility for their choices and actions. The government should leave well enough alone. Better yet, perhaps the government would like to admit to some responsibility in the matter, and perhaps rather than bailing out people from their own mistakes, rectify it's own? (Yeah, I know, fat chance of the latter.) [Emphasis in the quote added. --R]
When is a recession not a recession?
The Patriot Post, 08-06 Digest:
Traditionally, however, Wall Street defines a recession as two consecutive quarters of falling Gross Domestic Product. By this definition, even the one-quarter "recession" in 2001 was hardly that. The National Bureau of Economic Research says a recession involves "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months," and Congress' Joint Economic Committee, which boasts a 60-year track record of successfully predicting recessions, ranked the probability that the U.S. was in a recession in December at 35.5 percent. In January, a mere six percent. [Emphasis added. --R]