December 30, 2009
ALTHOUSE LINKS
Two links via
Ann Althouse:
Obama and Our Post-Modern Race ProblemA Less Than Honest Policy
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Surprising to see this from someone like Bob Herbert.
Posted by: david foster at December 30, 2009 06:07 PM (uWlpq)
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Shelby Steele wrote (emphasis mine):
I would argue further that Barack Obama's election to the presidency of
the United States was essentially an American sophistication, a
national exercise in seeing what was not there and a refusal to see
what was there—all to escape the stigma not of stupidity but of racism.
Willful blindness is a form of stupidity. And giving Obama a pass because of his race
is racist.
He aspires to be "post-ideological," "post-racial" and "post-partisan,"
which is to say that he defines himself by a series of "nots"—thus
implying that being nothing is better than being something.Perfect for a
nihilist populace.
He always wore the bargainer's mask—winning the loyalty and gratitude
of whites by flattering them with his racial trust: I will presume that
you are not a racist if you will not hold my race against me.Racial 'bargains' are bogus.
Many whites still love Mr. Cosby, but they worry now that expressing
their affection openly may identify them with his ideas, thus putting
them at risk of being seen as racist.This is the depth of Omerican insanity: whites agreeing with a black man about how to uplift blacks is 'racist'.
david, I agree. I didn't expect to see Sarah linking to Herbert! He asked,
Can you believe it?I can't believe he wrote this. Is this the beginning of a liberal revolt against Obama? Nah.
Posted by: Amritas at December 30, 2009 06:53 PM (ke9P1)
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"Willful blindness is a form of stupidity. And giving Obama a pass because of his race
is racist."
They weren't worried about being stupid, they were worried about
appearing stupid. Likewise to racist.
Posted by: David Boxenhorn at December 31, 2009 05:53 AM (tdogJ)
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David, you're right to specify that they are more interested in appearance. In whether other people think they are right as opposed to actually being right. Ayn Rand described their world in
The Fountainhead (emphasis mine):
A world where the thought of each man will not be his own, but an
attempt to guess the thought of the next neighbor who’ll have no
thought – and so on, Peter, around the globe. Since all must agree with
all. [Notice how Leftists love the word 'consensus'.] [...]
A world in which man will not work for so innocent an incentive as
money, but for that headless monster – prestige. The approval of his
fellows – their good opinion – the opinion of men who’ll be allowed to
hold no opinion [of their own].
[...]
A world with
its motor cut off and a single heart, pumped by hand. My hand – and the
hands of a few, a very few other men like me [fictional MSM icon Ellsworth Toohey].
Whose hands pump the heart of our PC world?
Posted by: Amritas at December 31, 2009 11:50 AM (ke9P1)
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December 26, 2009
TWO HEALTH CARE LINKS
First, a summary of Mark Steyn's
strategy vs tactics theory.
Second, a great rundown of a "movement powered by mindlessness" by
Dan Freeman:
- Who but the mindless can believe that government run health care will reduce costs and improve care while covering more people?
- Who but the mindless can believe that this President is now serious about reducing the deficit after shattering spending records during his first year?
- Who but the mindless can take seriously the sham “jobs summit†held
by a President whose every policy is a lesson in job destruction?
- Who but the mindless can believe Obama’s lie that “Cash for Clunkers†which cost taxpayers $24,000 per car was successful?
- Who but the mindless would not outraged that our government has reneged on its promise pay back the unused TARP fund to taxpayers?
- Who but the mindless would not question the morality that the
world’s finest health care, which has extended and improved human life
in unimaginable ways—conceived and produced by countless unsung heroes
in the private sector—should magically be transformed by Harry Reid and
Nancy Pelosi into a “human rightâ€, taken over by the state and rationed
out as they please?
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Who but the Mindless indeed!
Posted by: Darla at December 26, 2009 10:59 AM (XvIN7)
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If mindlessness were a power source, perpetual motion would be a reality ... unless the government were in charge of an alternative energy program. Then we'd hear demands to fund a noble cause, even if the program produced no results.
The government is a virus for wealth and productivity. It wastes and wastes and wastes, and then it expects you to celebrate it for doing so.
- onlyaliberal.com
Why would you entrust your health to a virus?
Posted by: Amritas at December 26, 2009 04:38 PM (6uMC+)
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From the link article about Obama (FOXNews.com): Obama's first-year budget, adjusted for inflation, is about five times that. - I hope Obama knows what he is doing right now. First year budget, five times more than his predecessors, that a huge number. So, I just hope he not just waste the money for nothing. If not, something like
gggsss will be more meaningful than what he is doing. Btw, Merry Christmas...
Posted by: Alex at December 26, 2009 05:56 PM (U3O6Z)
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December 20, 2009
HEALTH CARE BILL
More summaries on the health care bill:
Yuval Levin:
The
CBO assessment of the bill tells the appalling story. We are going to raise taxes by half a trillion dollars over the next ten years, increase spending by more than a trillion dollars, cut Medicare by $470 billion but use that money to fund a new entitlement rather than to fix Medicare itself, bend the health care cost curve up rather than down, insert layers of bureaucracy between doctors and patients, and compel and subsidize universal participation in a failed system of health insurance rather than reform or improve it. Indeed, this bill will make it exceedingly difficult to fix our health insurance financing system in the future, since it sucks dry the potential means of such reform but leaves the fundamental cost problem essentially untouched (and in some respects worsened.)
:
So why the stubborn insistence on passing health reform? Think big. The liberal wing of the party—the Barney Franks, the David Obeys—are focused beyond November 2010, to the long-term political prize. They want a health-care program that inevitably leads to a value-added tax and a permanent welfare state. Big government then becomes fact, and another Ronald Reagan becomes impossible. See Continental Europe.
The entitlement crazes of the 1930s and 1960s also caused a backlash, but liberal Democrats know the programs of those periods survived. They are more than happy to sacrifice a few Blue Dogs, a Blanche Lincoln, a Michael Bennet, if they can expand government so that in the long run it benefits the party of government.
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cut Medicare by $470 billion but use that money to fund a new entitlement rather than to fix Medicare itselfI find it sad that conservatives criticize one socialist program by saying that it hurts
another socialist program. Even
Kristol didn't dare to criticize the third rail (
via an earlier post of yours):
So less access and lower quality is a very real possible consequence of
this legislation [due to reductions in Medicare spending].
This is a point critics of the bill cannot allow to
be lost in all the hubbub.If even Republicans dread Medicare cuts,
who will cut it?If any Republican gives the slightest hint of reforming Medicare,
the Democrats immediately smirk and ask, “So you’re going to cut
Medicare?†The Republican instantly swears eternal allegiance to never
cutting Medicare.
Medicare will be cut all right, but by the domestic and
international bond markets who are currently financing it, not Congress
or Obama.
Posted by: Amritas at December 23, 2009 08:06 PM (dWG01)
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I like how the comments bar on the right fails to distinguish italic for nonitalic text. Right now it says,
"Amritas cut Medicare by $470 billion"If only I had such power!
John T. Reed proposed that
All government health care programs should be ended including
Medicare, Medicaid, VA [even VA!? - but see below],
Congress, and so on. Why? The government does
not have enough money to pay for Medicare and Medicaid. They have
enough money to pay for the VA and Congress, but those are unfair to
the taxpayers. The VA should only pay for line-of-duty veteran injuries
or illnesses, not all veteran medical care [so I guess he wants to mend, not end VA].
The government is even more
inefficient—far more inefficient—than insurance companies and private
hospitals.
People should pay for procedures other than major
ones out of their own pocket. That is how we handle other necessities
like food, clothing, cars, pets, farm animals, and shelter. It will
result in the lowest costs because when people pay out of their own
pocket, they shop around for the best prices thereby triggering
downward competitive pressures on prices. The current high cost problem
stems from costs being paid by people other than the patients. The
system I am advocating is approximately the way Americans got health
care in the 1950s, early 1960s, and before. It was not the intolerable
disaster advocates of Obama care claim. I was there. So were you or
your ancestors unless you emigrated here since then.
Posted by: Amritas at December 23, 2009 08:17 PM (dWG01)
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December 19, 2009
"DIMINISH THE QUALITY OF CARE"
A
must-read paragraph from the CBO on the Senate health care bill.
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THIS JUST IN
Breaking news: women are
superficial morons.
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Based on the article, I observed that they were dealing with college students. Undergrads aren't exactly known for their decision making skills.
Especially in an ever-increasing competitive environment like computer science, with far more jobs being shipped abroad, and 22% unemployment at home, I'd venture to say that the majority of the unemployed female computer science majors wouldn't care if they worked in an office decorated with inflatable penises. Most would be thrilled to have a job, even if that meant when they watched "the Office" they thought of it longingly as a Dream Job.
As far as morons--no. Wimmin are way smarter than that. Superficial... well, there's a reason the fairer sex prefers jewelry and other shiny baubles as gifts and signs of love. Cost=ability to provide, shiny=demonstrates that ability to others.
I'll stick to phasers and canned bacon, sociology and psychology aren't real science, anyway.
Posted by: Chuck Z at December 19, 2009 11:24 AM (bMH2g)
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I can see the day coming where my Darth Tater will be considered a sign of a hostile work environment.
As long as they don't come after my red Swingline...
Posted by: Code Monkey at December 20, 2009 02:26 AM (GN0tT)
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Code Monkey, staplers are Europpressive and must go!
Seriously, the story has Leftist premises:
Geeks drive girls out of computer scienceThe title makes it sound as if sexist (male) geeks are telling women to not get into computer science and spoil their boys' club. But it is actually the attitudes of the women that are at fault. A more accurate title might be "Women dislike geekery and avoid computer science". But that doesn't fit the script:
- men are eeeevil
- women's (anti-geek) attitudes are a given
Let's turn the tables. Suppose there is a 'feminine' profession with few men. Most men think the environment associated with that profession is too 'girly'. Would that situation be described as "Women drive men away from (profession)"? I doubt it.
All the above assumes that gender parity is the ideal. Is it? Does everything have to be split 50/50?
Nature is unbalanced. Diverse. We are not all the same. We are all good at different things, like different things, etc. Conservatives recognize the way things are and are reluctant to change it.
Leftists reject the status quo and want to impose unnatural equality through redistribution. More females must do male things, and vice versa. Since Leftists can't win against nature, Big Brother must become even bigger to battle our biology.
Posted by: Amritas at December 25, 2009 07:22 AM (dWG01)
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Amritas -- I think there are professions like your turned-tables hypothetical, namely nursing and being a kindergarten teacher. Few males do those jobs.
Posted by: Sarah at December 25, 2009 09:35 AM (gWUle)
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Sarah, both nursing and school teaching came to mind when I wrote my comment, but I didn't use those examples because I don't think of hospitals and schools as 'girly' places. Male doctors work in the same environment as mostly female nurses. And elementary schools don't look like life-size Barbie houses, though I haven't been in one since the early 80s. Maybe they're all painted pink now.
So yes, those professions are mostly female, but their environments lack an equivalent of the geek factor that turns off the opposite sex.
Posted by: Amritas at December 25, 2009 03:14 PM (dWG01)
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Amritas -- True, which is why I jokingly wrote that women are "superficial morons." If you will turn down a career field simply because someone might have a Star Trek figurine in the cubicle next to you, you are a moron.
Posted by: Sarah at December 26, 2009 08:47 AM (gWUle)
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December 12, 2009
CONGRESS SUCKS
Someone who works in DC on budgeting writes:
Again, this is Congress's *most important function*, and they can't
even do this right. They act surprised by it every year, even though
they've been doing it since 1788 or thereabouts.
Read the whole thing.
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What's the opposite of progress? Congress.
Posted by: David Boxenhorn at December 13, 2009 08:06 AM (6QcMn)
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David, the best humor is the most truthful.
If approving a federal budget is Congress' "most important function", shouldn't taxpayers demand that Congresspeople have economic expertise? Almost half of Congress consists of lawyers. Understandable, since lawyers by definition are legal experts, and Congress makes laws. But how many Congresspeople have expertise in both economics and law?
What does expertise mean?I define expertise very broadly as simply knowing specific inputs that
produce certain outputs. That is, if you do X, Y will happen.The world is one gigantic economics lab. Has Congress studied it? Do they understand what Y will result from X? What if X is a 2,000-page health care bill? What if the input is so massive that it is beyond human comprehension? This is the danger of socialism. Incomprehensible input times elite decisions in the name of the people equals disaster. Capitalism empowers the individual to make decisions based on smaller amounts of data that he can understand. There will always be error, so we must aim for error reduction, not error magnification. The state is the ultimate error multiplier.
Posted by: Amritas at December 13, 2009 06:03 PM (dWG01)
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December 06, 2009
WELL, I DON'T BLAME THEM FOR CHOOSING OBAMA
Oy.
More than 50 percent of Americans wrongly attributed the quote “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs†to either George Washington, Thomas Paine, or President Barack Obama, when it is in fact a quote from Karl Marx, author of The Communist Manifesto.
This from a study called
The American Revolution. Who Cares? via this Powerline
post.
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This issue is one that Neal Boortz and I never differ on--government schools & their founding mission statement of creating people who would not be great thinkers, just good workers.
And, we're far enough into this that the teachers aren't even really that literate in history unless they have educated themselves.
Posted by: Guard Wife at December 07, 2009 07:50 AM (I6LTM)
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To put this into perspective, how many Americans would have done well on this test in previous decades or the last century?
My guess is that knowledge of facts has only slightly declined (in other words, it's never been high) whereas values have become more socialist. Somebody a century ago wouldn't have known a whole lot about the American Revolution, but he might not think "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" had anything to do with its principles (even if he had never even heard of Marx).
Given a choice, I would rather have someone with American principles and without historical knowledge than the reverse. There are Leftists who know about the American Revolution and American history in general in great detail. Yet they voted for Obama. Rightists do not have a monopoly on Revolutionary knowledge. Shared knowledge of facts does not necessarily lead to shared interpretations of those facts.
Results also revealed that 90 percent of Americans think that knowledge
of the American Revolution and its principles is very importantI don't think piety on paper is meaningful. People say whatever they think the tester wants to hear. In real life, nearly all of these people get along just fine without knowing anything about the American Revolution despite their claims to the contrary. The remaining 10 percent may be honest.
If Americans were really "yearning to know", the commercial networks would be showing Revolutionary War shows, RW books would outsell
Harry Potter and
The Secret, etc.
89 percent of Americans expected to pass a test on basic knowledge of
the American Revolution, but scored an average of 44 percent.Inflated self-esteem is a major product of American 'education'.
Joanne Jacobs' comments section has further discussion.
Posted by: Amritas at December 25, 2009 07:53 AM (dWG01)
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December 05, 2009
NOT SETTLED BY A LONG SHOT
Here's a long and detailed article on the Climategate fiasco:
Scientists Behaving BadlyOne of the striking features of the CRU emails is how much time the CRU circle spent discussing with each other
the myriad problems with processing these data and how to display them
to a wider world. On the one hand, this is typical of what one might
expect of an evolving scientific enterprise. On the other hand, these
are the selfsame scientists who have insisted most vehemently that
there is a settled consensus adhered to by all researchers of repute
and that there is nothing left to debate.
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Posted by: Ruth H at December 06, 2009 12:14 AM (zlUde)
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Ruth -- Here's another one, called
The Dog Ate Global Warming:
*****
So the weather data that go into the historical climate records that
are required to verify models of global warming aren’t the original
records at all. Jones and Wigley, however, weren’t specific about what
was done to which station in order to produce their record, which,
according to the IPCC, showed a warming of 0.6° +/– 0.2°C in the 20th
century.
Now begins the fun. Warwick Hughes, an Australian
scientist, wondered where that “+/–†came from, so he politely wrote
Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones’s
response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was,
“We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the
data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong
with it?â€
Reread that statement, for it is breathtaking in its
anti-scientific thrust. In fact, the entire purpose of replication is
to “try and find something wrong.†The ultimate objective of science is
to do things so well that, indeed, nothing is wrong.
*****
Posted by: Sarah at December 06, 2009 07:46 AM (gWUle)
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The original article on
The Dog Ate Global Warming: was dated Sept 23, and has been amended but it tells me more and more that this was a whistle blower. There has to be
someone with a conscience in there somewhere. That would have been around the time someone was shopping those emails around to reporters who took no action.
Posted by: Ruth H at December 06, 2009 02:00 PM (JFseb)
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December 04, 2009
STOSSEL BEGINS
FYI: John Stossel's new show begins on the Fox Business Network next Thursday, Dec 10, at 8 PM. And the first show is
on Ayn Rand. I can't wait!
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Thanks for the good news. I could sure use it these days.
I doubt I have that channel where I am now, but I'll be home next week so I should be able to see this.
Maybe I should prepare myself by rereading
For the New Intellectual during my flight back.
After this last year, I don't think I could reread
Atlas any day soon. We're living it.
Posted by: Amritas at December 04, 2009 09:28 PM (hQWcB)
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December 03, 2009
WHAT IF?
Diana West asks an
interesting question (via Amritas):
[W]hat if WWII had been fought as a "counterinsurgency"?
What if, instead of firebombing every important German city and
killing tens of thousands of civilians from Hamburg to Dresden, and
instead of firebombing Tokyo and nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki and tens
of thousands of Japanese in the all-out effort to defeat the Axis
powers and End All Fighting, the Allies had sought instead to win hearts and minds?
What if Gen. Eisenhower, like Gen. McChrystal today in Afghanistan,
wandered through German towns, asking das volk, "What do you need?
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We'd be leaving by June, 2011, of course.
Posted by: Chuck Z at December 03, 2009 03:47 PM (bMH2g)
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Thanks, Sarah.
I want to make it clear that neither Diana West nor I think that genocide is the answer. The point is that she and I fear
the militarywill continue to be
tightly leashed, hands behind its back, bound by criminally perilous
rules of engagement and limited strategies that actually cause US
casualties, all in a criminally misguided effort to put over a
hearts-and-mind ivory tower thesis to "protect the Afghan people from
everything that can hurt them," which is how Gen. McChrystal memorably
and shamefully put it.Today, the
Las Vegas Review-Journal asked,
Our military forces are more than
able. Will they truly now be set loose to do the job and win? Or do
they have to fear being hauled up before a court-martial if they give
some terrorist a bloody lip?I agree with
John T. Reed:
The U.S. should not use more force than necessary to terminate a particular threat, but the rule should be to use the necessary force to end it right now, not to pussy foot around trying to avoid injuring any civilians, including those who deliberately allow themselves to be used as human shields. All of the above assumes we are targeting a threat. The title of West's article asked, "How Important Is Marjeh?"
If Marjeh is so important
to this war it should be bombed into surrender or smithereens, whichever comes first.Andrew Bacevich (via
the article you linked to yesterday) went further:
What is it about Afghanistan, possessing next to nothing that the United States requires, that justifies such lavish attention?[...]
As long as we maintain adequate defenses, Al Qaeda operatives, hunkered
down in their caves, pose no more than a modest threat. As for the
Taliban, unless they manage to establish enclaves in places like New
Jersey or Miami, the danger they pose to the United States falls
several notches below the threat posed by Cuba, which is no threat at
all."Adequate defenses" include locking our doors so that al-Qaeda and the Taliban can't come here. If they are already here, deport them.
Suppose Afghanistan collapses and al-Qaeda take over. Can't we just bomb them?
I am not a pacifist. I advocate selective aggression.
We have to ask ourselves, what are the greatest threats to the US? All this focus on Afghanistan has made us forget about the remaining two-thirds of the Axis of Evil.
All the furor over Iran's elections has died down, but
the Iranian threat remains:
Iran’s apparent full-speed charge to nuclear weapons is the
equivalent [of the Cuban missile crisis], if not worse. The Soviet Union was run by grown-ups who
probably would not have used those Cuban nukes. Iran is not run by grown-ups. We cannot chance Iran having nuclear weapons and giving them to terrorists.
If and when such a nuke goes off in the U.S., the U.S. will not do what Hillary said during the campaign—swift retaliation—because we will not know for sure who did it. But we do know now, for sure, who is building nuclear factories as fast as they can.
And we know
who already has nukes:
North Korea probably has fissile material for up to 9 nuclear weapons, and has the capability to deploy nuclear warheads on intermediate-range ballistic missiles.I wouldn't consider Kim Jong Il to be grown up either.
I am not advocating war against Iran and North Korea tomorrow. I don't know what to do about them. I am simply trying to keep Afghanistan in perspective.
America has many enemies. It can try to keep them out. It can attack those who can harm us from afar. But it can't defeat them all.
Posted by: Amritas at December 03, 2009 04:19 PM (+nV09)
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Chuck Z,
Did you mean June 1943?
Imagine where we'd be 66 years later if Diana West's scenario were real.
Posted by: Amritas at December 03, 2009 04:32 PM (+nV09)
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Remember, well at least I am old enough to, the Marshall Plan? We made sure we won and
then we sent the money.
Seems like a good way to do it to me.
Posted by: Ruth H at December 03, 2009 07:58 PM (JFseb)
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