The Progressive Age

We are Living in The Progressive Age

Rachel Maddow, who I think is the smartest person on MSNBC, read a litany of liberal actions undertaken by President Ronald Reagan.  The purpose was to throw all Obama criticism back in the faces of us racist conservatives.  It was unbalanced and simplistic, just the way Obama devotees like their propaganda. 

If you want some actual thinking Reagan criticism, look no further than libertarian economist Murray Rothbard.  He hits the same point Maddow does, damning all modern-day liberalism in the process.

Progressivism is Here

Progressivism was ushered in by Teddy Roosevelt and nurtured by Professor Woodrow Wilson.  It was finally rammed home by FDR, who never let a crisis go to waste.  The constitution is trampled, our personal freedoms diminished, and government continues to grow. 

That is the political environment President Reagan found himself in.  That is the only defense I can muster.  Ours is a progressive structure, built over the decades, and even a good strong man like Ronald Reagan weilding a sledgehammer couldn't knock the damned thing down, although he did pull us out of Carter's malaise.  President Clinton was smart enough to continue Reaganomics, and we had the greatest economic boom in our country's history. 

It's not "Liberty versus Tyranny"
Rather, it's "which version of tyranny do you prefer?  Republican or Democrat?"

Better stated, it is statist progressivism versus classical liberalism.  This is why "progressive" fits the current crowd on the left so much better than "liberal."  For they are very illiberal and they castigate all who refuse to pay obeisance to their man-made dogma.  As the state increases, individualism decreases.  We cede more and more control of our lives to the state and the to the busybody control freaks who infest it.

A Socialist by any other name...
F.A. Hayek rightly calls all of it Socialism.  For that is what it is:  Chinese and Russian Communism, Italian and German Fascism, and the US Progressive movement embodied in FDR's new deal and Johnson's great society all have theoretical non-party socialism at their core.

Hayek uses the term to include even states that do not physically take over the means of production, but merely redistribute the fruits of those enterprises through the coercive power of government.  Why should the bureaucratic overlords get their hands dirty when all they have to do is shake down the producers at the end of each workday? 

The end result is the same:  The state ignoring its founding principles and confiscating personal property and "spreadin' it around."  That is how progressivism leads to totalitarianism.   

The Road to Serfdom, F.A. Hayek, Edited by Bruce Caldwell

American Messiah

America Needs a Political Messiah

Barack Obama may command the oceans to recede and inspire unquestioning fanaticism in his disciples, but he is no messiah.

We need a real political messiah, whose zeal for the founding fathers' house consumes him.

We need a messiah who will make a whip of cords and drive the moneychangers from the US Capitol, which they have turned into a "den of robbers."

We need a messiah who will call the politicians what they are: A brood of vipers, hypocrites! who bind up laws to burden good citizens, while they exempt themselves.

These political pharisees strain out a gnat when circumscribing citizens' rights, but swallow the camel for personal and partisan political gain and the millions that it brings them.

Their cup is clean on the outside, but on the inside it is full of greed and self-indulgence.

Our government institutions are "beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean." This leads We The People to view those in power with suspicion: "In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness."

Yes, we need a messiah, but President Obama ain't it.

Matthew 23
John 2

Thank You, President Obama!

Thanks to President Obama and The Pelosicrats, Americans are waking up and abandoning liberalism in droves.

The latest Gallup poll shows that there are now twice as many self-identified conservatives as liberals here in America:   

Since 2008, the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as conservative has risen 5 percentage points to 42 percent, while the number of liberals has dropped 2 points to 20 percent, Gallup reports this morning.

Those who consider themselves independents increasingly view themselves as conservative. In 2008, 30 percent of independents called themselves conservative; so far in 2010, that number is 36 percent. (RCP - Gallup Poll)

Americans know "Cap and Trade" and "Green Energy" are job killing scams.  Despite what T Boone Pickpocket says, this is self-evident.  If they were economically viable, the private sector would be doing it already.

Americans see that the federal government has failed miserably at regulating Wall Street and the petroleum industry.  We don't want them doing the same job on our health care.

Carter created the Department of Education, and our kids' test scores have been heading south ever since.

Liberals scream for ever more government, when government has failed to control the borders or its own reckless and dangerous spending.

ENOUGH!  America is tired of crack-brained progressive ideas, their pseudo-intellectual social theories, and the Big Brother regulations spreading, blob-like into every last corner of our lives.  Get lost!  Go home and nudge yourselves! 

Time to kick out the crony capitalists and their Utopian Progressive partners in crime.  The Federal Government exists for The People, not the other way around!

Thank you, President Obama!
You ushered in unvarnished, unapologetic liberalism, and Americans are recoiling in horror and disgust.  President Obama may actually be better than President Reagan...  at bringing people to conservatism.

War Protesting is Too Important to be left to Liberals

Despite tea party camaraderie, conservatives remain suspicious of that oddball ideology called libertarianism.  Conservatives agree with perhaps 90% of it, but it's that other 10% that's bothersome. 

Kinda like the new guy at work.  A solid family man, he seems normal, likes sports and enjoys bantering over the issues of the day...  but he wears a bowtie and drives a '56 Citroen.  Hmmm...

Leftists Give "Anti-War" a Bad Name
Libertarians, like our founders, believe we should only resort to war when our nation is threatened.  This irks many conservatives rubbed raw by eight years of screaming Bush-haters.

To understand where these anti-war libertarians are coming from, I recommend The Siren Song of Pax Americana, a coherent argument for discontinuing American military interventions.  I don't agree with every line, but it is a good anti-war argument minus the "Bush is Hitler" and "America is terrorizing little brown people" crap constantly being slung in all directions by the slobbering baboons on the left.

His first point is that there are so many fires we just don't have enough people or equipment to stamp them all out, and endemic cultural dysfunction (or mere cultural differences) make the task even more difficult.  A close corollary is that world peace can never be achieved, so we are wasting time, money and lives in a Utopian pursuit. 

If an inconsequential and globally un-strategic country falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it really make a sound?

The author asks a good question:

Why must a single power act to restore order? If America does not act, will not those nations in the vicinity of a crisis have a strong incentive to cope with it?

The Balkans in the 1990's comes to mind.  Nobody coped with it.  Europe dithered and we had to go in.  Or did we?  Would it have damaged our national interests to stand back and let them go genocidal on one another?  Sounds callous, but "Nothing" is exactly what we are doing in the hundreds of other hot spots, most famously, Darfur.  More importantly, The US Constitution nowhere charges the federal government to "do something" just because our moral sensibilities are offended.

OK, what about "protecting" Middle Eastern oil?

As oil is the principal source of revenue for the Persian Gulf countries, an explicit attempt to withhold this source of wealth from world markets would certainly be more painful for the perpetrators of such a policy than for their intended victims.

But he lost me at the end...

We will never be able to limit American overreaching so long as the current imbalance in military power persists.

Given America's overwhelming military superiority to any opponent, the temptation to use that power is well-nigh irresistible. To cope with this problem, our military forces must be drastically reduced.

Logically, that makes sense.  Build war toys and politicians can't resist using them.  But in today's world, it is just not practical. 

The best we can hope for is to maintain a very strong defense tempered by a citizenry who demands that a very high bar must be cleared before we actually use it.

November is Rodent Extermination Month

November is set to be rodent extermination month. 

 A short spelling lesson :                                                
                                                                           
        The last four letters in American..........I Can                         
        The last four letters in Republican........I Can                    
        The last four letters in Democrats.........Rats                    
                                                                           
        End of lesson...........  Test to follow in November.

* - Grazie to Papa Silverfiddle

Know Thyself

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."  -- John Adams

Why do megalomaniacal dictators turn their dominions into a forced death march?

Why do benevolent leaders run the public coffers dry continuing to ply voters with goodies they can no longer afford?

Because they can.  Power must be wielded.  Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus and George Washington are rare historical exceptions. 

“An orgy looks particularly alluring seen through the mists of righteous indignation.”  -- Malcolm Muggeridge

Why do we see rich celebrities engaging debased acts?  Because they can.  People like Tiger Woods face temptations ordinary men only dream of.  A beautiful family, fame and a bounty of material possessions mean nothing.  We are hardwired to seek a bigger bang. 

It's Human Nature
All human beings have desires, a will to power, money, sex, getting high...  It's in our nature.  The Ancient Greeks knew it, and all great thinkers up through our founding fathers recognized it as well.

We're bastards, and we'll take every advantage if left to our basest animal instincts.  Hence the need for society and morality.

Unfortunately, we've forgotten this, or stupidly thought we'd evolved past it. We've thrown The Basic Virtues over the side:  Honesty...  Ker-plunk!  Thrift... Ker-plop!  Prudence...  Ker-splash! 

And we wonder how the Wall Street four-flushers cheated us out of everything, and we can't understand why our governments and societies are bankrupt...  Morally, intellectually, financially.

Look at Greece, America...  It's a mirror:

When the crowd tried to storm the Greek parliament, shouting, “Thieves! Thieves!,” its anger was misdirected. It was a classic case of what Freudians call projection: the attribution to others of one’s own faults.  [...] 

The crime of that substantial proportion of the Greek population was to accept the bribe that the politicians offered; they were only too prepared to live well at someone else’s expense. The thieves were not principally the politicians, but the demonstrators.

There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

The Greek demonstrators did not understand, or did not want to understand, that if there were justice in the world, many people, including themselves, would be worse rather than better off, and that a reduction in their salaries and perquisites was not only economically necessary but just.


They had never really earned their wages in the first place; politicians borrowed the money and then dispensed largesse, like monarchs throwing coins to the multitudes.


It is an obvious but often forgotten lesson of economics: what cannot continue will not continue.   (Know Thyself - Theodore Dalrymple)

McChrystal Fired, Petraeus Demoted, Obama Diminished (Further)

Adversity does not build character, it reveals it

President Obama is living proof.  He is a petty, petulant man who has failed every test since becoming president.  So the child-caesar fired the general.  Good enough, but he had to drag him halfway around the world (where he was leading tens of thousands of America's finest) to publicly kick him when he was down.  Must've been a real ego builder.

Here is the true test of these two men
Stanley McChrystal, stripped of his command and military rank, will still be a battle-tested man of cast iron character and a rock-solid American hero.  Barack Obama, once he vacates the presidency, will be nothing but a self-absorbed man whose only accomplishments were fooling some of the people one time and winning an anticipatory Nobel Prize. 



For the conspiratorial-minded, here are three thoughts...

General McChrystal did not really vote for Obama; they were just playing the Rolling Stone reporter.

The Rolling Stone reporter did this all on purpose to poison the military-press relationship.  Since 9/11, even liberal reporters have gained a grudging respect for our troops, often writing glowing reports about them while still criticizing the wars they fight.  That's over now.  No embed will ever be the same again, and that's how the liberals want it.

Obama demoted General Petraeus (the Afghanistan commander falls under CENTCOM) to take him out of the 2012 Presidential Campaign equation.

As The World Burns

The world is reverting back to empires with narrow parochial interests and a willingness to resort to naked brutality


The Post-WW II era was an historical anomaly...

"Europe's decline after World War II was immediately followed the era of American liberal internationalism.

With NATO and Japan as junior partners, the United States underwrote a variety of global institutions (mostly of its own making), maintained a vast array of military bases, waged and won a Cold War, and sought-with varying degrees of enthusiasm and success-to spread core "Western" values and institutions to different parts of the world.  (Stephen M. Walt - End of the World as We Know it)

We kicked countries' asses and then invited them into the global family of interlocking economic, banking and security organizations.  That fabric is now coming unraveled, with nations like Russia, Turkey, Brazil and China picking at the loose threads.

The collective will to hold these international institutions together is waning.  Too many actors on the world stage see going solo as their shot at stardom.  Walt concludes:

If this analysis is even partly correct, then we are going to need some serious rethinking of grand strategy in both Europe and the United States. Hard choices will have to be made, and traditional world-views and familiar platitudes won't help us very much.

Foreign policy expert Walter Russell Meade agrees:

[T]he world economy is evolving in ways that undermine the ability of international institutions to manage it.

In the future, American diplomacy will work better if we cut to the chase.  Rather than chasing liberal internationalist mirages, we should focus on what we want and need, think about how we can get as much of it as possible at the best price — and go for it in the most efficient way possible. (Walter Russell Mead)

Learn to Let it Burn
As the Wilsonian World Order crumbles, both men point to international organizations being supplanted by regional ones.  Some will be no better than crime syndicates, but most will simply be nations banding together for self-preservation. Individual treaties and pacts will replace UN resolutions, GATT agreements and IMF deals.

We Were The World...
Perhaps we've been ranging too far abroad.  Do you think leaving Afghanistan and Pakistan will cause us problems?  Nothing like the hell it will cause Russia and China, and they don't have the luxury of leaving like we do.  They live there.

Closer to Home
Perhaps it's time for us to mend fences at home and leave the rest of the world to the idiots who are determined to burn it down.  Hemispheric isolationism is not the evil that liberal internationalists portray it as.  I've been up and down North and South America; our hemisphere is richly blessed.  If you can't get it here, it ain't worth gettin', and making nice with Mexicans is way preferable to messing with Muslims.  Just ask a European.

Barack Obama is No Harry Truman

General McChrystal voted for Obama? Holy crap!

WASHINGTON – The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan has been summoned to Washington to explain derogatory comments about President Barack Obama and his colleagues, administration officials said Tuesday. (Yahoo)

Obama gets his Truman-MacArthur moment*
I know his advisors think he needs it to increase his stature, but to those who know history, it diminishes him further. Harry Truman was no effete metrosexual unfamiliar with basic military terms.  He was a combat veteran of WW I, serving as an artillary Captain in France. But Obama is the president, as he so often reminds us.

McChrystal Earned It
He should have kept his mouth shut and his thoughts to himself. No military person should make those types of comments about civilian leadership and he knows that. Rolling Stone? What the hell was he thinking?

His comments sound arrogant, but they are borne of an arrogance produced by real-world success. Our US military is practically the only government institution that still knows how to get things done, and it has been getting a lot of things done over these past years.

It sometimes rankles and chafes to be overlorded by people in Gucci shoes, but that is how our system is set up and I wouldn't want it any other way. It is a classical separation of powers. Those who know how to prosecute war cannot authorize it, and those who authorize war do not know how to successfully carry one out.

General McChrystal Must Be Punished

Defending General McChrystal over this is defending the indefensible. I wish to hell he hadn't said what he said, but he did. Now he takes his lumps. If you love the constitution, you cannot protest the president firing the general.  Fat head liberal pissants like Joe Klein are already howling.

* Harry Truman's Military Background

The Obamatards at MSNBC and other Democratic party propaganda outlets will be blanketing the airwaves with Obama-Truman comparisons, so here is a little history lesson to nip this in the bud. Not only was Truman a great president, he was also a military veteran. Such comparisons insult the memory of this great man.

Truman enlisted in the Missouri Army National Guard in 1905, and served until 1911. At his physical in 1905, his eyesight had been an unacceptable 20/50 in the right eye and 20/40 in the left.[22] Reportedly, he passed by secretly memorizing the eye chart.[23]

Truman was chosen to be an officer, and then battery commander in an artillery regiment in France. His unit was Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, 60th Brigade, 35th Infantry Division, known for its discipline problems.[28]

During a sudden attack by the Germans in the Vosges Mountains, the battery started to disperse; Truman ordered them back into position using profanities that he had "learned while working on the Santa Fe railroad."[28] Shocked by the outburst, his men reassembled and followed him to safety. Under Captain Truman's command in France, the battery did not lose a single man.[28] H

On November 11, 1918 his artillery unit fired some of the last shots of World War I into German positions. The war was a transformative experience that brought out Truman's leadership qualities; he later rose to the rank of Colonel in the Army Reserves,[30] and his war record made possible his later political career in Missouri.[28] (Wikipedia)

As usual, Blackfive has the definitive take.  Go read it here.

Emanuel: Obama Golfing 'a big mistake'

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel blames bad PR skills for the photographs over the weekend of US President Barack Obama at a Golf Course in Southern Maryland. 

“Well, to quote Barack Obama, he's got to plug 18 holes, he would say,” Emanuel said in an interview aired Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “And I think we can all conclude that Barack Obama is not going to have a second career in PR consulting. This has just been part of a long line of PR gaffes and mistakes.”

Golfing is “a big mistake,” Emanuel said, on par (ha ha, get it?  On "par") with him claiming his daughter had wandered into his presidential bathroom one morning and impertinently asked, "have you plugged that damned hole yet daddy?" 

But he said it’s the “substance” beyond the golf photo that matters.

“People will chew over this,” Emanuel said. “But don't take your eye off the major priorities and the key goals, that is dealing with the problem down on the 18th green, er...  I mean in the well, and dealing with the problems of the region as it makes as important the people getting the resources they need to restore their lives and restoring that coastline to it environmental purity that it had at one point.” (Politico)

An editorial apology
Oops!  I apologize.  My word processor accidentally substituted "Barack Obama" for "Tony Hayward," "President" for "BP Chief," and "Golfing" for "Yachting."  This is why reporterating should be left to the professional journalistic presstitutes...
Read More:  Obama  Goes Golfing Again

Boobgate

Sarah Palin denied getting breast implants when asked by Greta Van Sustern.  The issue doesn't interest me, but there were a few good comments to the Breitbart posting.  I especially like the quotes, and the last comment is priceless...

"This latest blog about Mrs.Palin shows that the left has nothing to offer against her. They lie, again what else do you expect from Extremeist leftist freaks?"

Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.
-- George Washington

A man’s most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe.”

-- Greek playwright Euripides (485-406 B.C.)

I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero

I have never been hurt by what I have not said.
-- Calvin Coolidge

"It’s shameful that Palin has to address something like this because the lefiist loons are so frightened of her."

"Hey leftys…..look in the mirror for the biggest boobs out there!"

Saturday Shooting

I love guns...

Junior and I went shooting at the range on post last Saturday.  It was his first time shooting the SKS.

Ruger .357 Magnum at 25 Yards

He may be a better fiddler than the old man, but I can still outshoot him.

























I love guns, and I also love music.  Whoever put this video together has my greatest appreciation.  Enjoy!

Magna Cum Lousy

What Obama thinks of us, America

President Obama has revealed himself to be an abject failure

If he tried to lead an army of Larry Flynts to a pornography convention in Vegas they would end up at the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City (God forbid).

And what did any reasonable person expect?  The average Army corporal has more leadership experience than Obama.  The man had accomplished nothing...  zero, zip, naaaadaaa before getting elected.

Worshipful liberals keep pointing to his academic record, and that's a great thing to point to...  if you're a new grad looking for your first job.  If you're 47 years old and you're still pointing to your college record, it's actually a kinda sad commentary on your adult life.

An Obama Career Recap
He did nothing of note during his short tenure on Wall Street.  He supposedly forsook a lucrative career there to instead help the needy as a community organizer.  Yeah, and I forsook a career as a doctor to enlist in the Air Force.

I'm being sarcastic, but what evidence do we have that he was some kind of wiz kid there?  Maybe he stunk at his first job and community organizing was all that was left for him.  He never argued any court cases...  He was a lecturer, not a professor...  The Chicago Democrap Machine cleared the way to The Senate for him...  All he's really done is write two self-absorbed books.

There is no substitute for real-world experience, especially when you're leader of The United States of America in a very dangerous world.  I hope the voters see that now.


How bad is it?  
It's so bad even lefty Obama-lama-ding-dongs David Corn, The New York Times, and Eugene Robinson can no longer avert their eyes.

It's so bad, even the MSNBC Obamatards trashed his oil spill performance. 

Breitbart has the best summary, Is the Thrill Gone?

The tingle up Chris Matthews' leg has left the building.  Maybe it was just the termites escaping Olbermann's head...

Democrats Accused of Stealing Communist Party Agenda

"They stole our entire platform, rebranded it 'progressive', and claimed it as their own," declared a CPUSA spokesperson at a press conference in San Francisco. "And we communists say, not so fast!

The Communist Party representative explained that government ownership of the auto and financial industries, redistribution of wealth, and free rationed healthcare have always been among the glorious CPUSA objectives: "We held on to these goals through all the difficult years of factional infighting, purges, denunciations, and heroic espionage on behalf of the Soviet intelligence services. (The People's Cube)


The Democratic Party responded by kicking off it's 2012 presidential campaign.  You decide...

Liberals are Naive

Some are still dreaming of immigration "reform" this year.  

You Thought BP Was Bad?
The Federal Government has failed to enforce existing laws and defend the border.  Greedy businesses still  hire illegal aliens for slave wages.

What would make a reasonable person believe our government could carry out this dreamed-of reform without completely screwing it up?  More likely, they will emulate BP and blast open a hole that cannot be plugged.

We can't even put the situation in proper perspective

"There (in the United States), they'll deport you," Hector Vázquez, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, said as he rested in a makeshift camp with other migrants under a highway bridge in Tultitlán. "In Mexico they'll probably let you go, but they'll beat you up and steal everything you've got first." (USA Today - Mexican Immigration Laws)

The naive and the stupid in this country who have no idea what life is like outside their insulated enclaves.  They also have a fetish for anyone non-American, especially those from benighted third-world countries who come bearing criticism of the United States. 

Yet Mexico's Arizona-style law requires local police to check IDs. And Mexican police freely engage in racial profiling and routinely harass Central American migrants, say immigration activists.

"The Mexican government should probably clean up its own house before looking at someone else's," said Melissa Vertíz, spokeswoman for the Fray Matías de Córdova Human Rights Center in Tapachula, Mexico.

People in Latin America are laughing at our naivete.  We are the preeminent human rights champion of the world, yet we flagellate ourselves and allow the president of a rotten, corrupt government to lecture us from our capitol about the treatment of immigrants. And the liberals stood on their hind legs cheering this grotesquerie.

We are stupid.  Correction, the liberal thirty-something percent who applaud this BS and egg it on are stupid.  The rest of the country is catching on to the scam and we're just not buying it anymore.

Meanwhile, Arizona shows us that if you enforce the law, illegal immigrants will self-deport. 

Governments Make More on Oil than "Big Oil" Does

The gulf is an environmental disaster and gas prices are going up.  Big Oil is girding its loins against Obama's Plouffian onslaught



As the president dodges and lectures tonight, here's a little perspective on Big Oil's "obscene" profits. 


$  Profit from a gallon of gas:  Around 10%
$ Average tax on a gallon of gas:  15% - 20%

Profit is shared between the oil company, transporter, and gas station.  The gas station gets almost no profit at all, which is why they have all morphed into convenience stores.  Free market innovation!  Tax is federal, state and local.

The Tax Foundation points out that Big Oil is paying record taxes as well. What the demagogic politicians don't tell us is that Uncle Sam's cut of those record profits is almost 50%! Add in all taxes big oil paid to all governments, and one sees that governments are making more money off of petroleum than the oil companies are!

Here's the chart from the tax foundation. My HTML skills aren't the best, so if the chart is unreadable just go to the tax foundation's web site:

"Big Oil" made $20 Billion in net profits in the first quarter of 2008. "Big Government" made $47 Billion. Who's calling who obscene?

* I originally wrote this during the gas price spike of '08, but the basic facts have not changed.

Keeping "A Breast" of Islamic Issues

"The thought of a huge hairy face at a woman's breast does not evoke motherly or even brotherly feelings. It could go from the grotesque to the erotic but definitely not maternal."

OK, I'm a guy, so I see a story with the word breasts in it and I gotta go check it out.  This story, however, was not titillating, just creepy. 

Saudi Clerics Advocate Adult Breast Feeding

Dennis Prager cautions us that every religion has certain aspects that look weird to an outsider, but Islam, with the genital mutilation, things going boom, etc, seems really out there...

(June 5) -- Women in Saudi Arabia should give their breast milk to male colleagues and acquaintances in order to avoid breaking strict Islamic law forbidding mixing between the sexes, two powerful Saudi clerics have said. They are at odds, however, over precisely how the milk should be conveyed.

This is what happens when a belief system becomes hidebound by its own legalism.  Is there a word in Arabic for Pharisee? 

Seems a woman cannot be alone with a man who is not a blood relative, but men who have been breastfed by a woman are OK.  I can't waste any more space explaining this, so go read the article and it will at least make sense it its own bizarre way...

"The whole issue just shows how clueless men are," blogger Eman Al Nafjan wrote on her website. "All this back and forth between sheiks and not one bothers to ask a woman if it's logical, let alone possible to breastfeed a grown man five fulfilling breast milk meals.

This reminded me of some breastfeeding issues right here in the good ol' US of A involving a breastfeeding group fighting with Facebook over what constitutes "nudity."   I'll leave the Saudi breastfeeding controversy alone since (Thank God) I don't live there.  I do believe mothers have the right to discreetly breastfeed in public.

From my article on the subject:

Breastfeeding is a beautiful, intimate experience between mother and child, and there is something creepy about the desire to turn it into a notorious display of "look at me" defiance.  (Read More)

Liberals Flunk Econ 101

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
-- Milton Friedman

The worldwide collapse of welfare states and government ponzi schemes prove Friedman's point.  A simple glance at Michigan or California should sway liberals off of their stubborn belief in free stuff for everybody, but it doesn't...

Our capitalist economy came crashing down as well.  No surprise.  Government-sanctioned cronyism fails everywhere it is tried.  It encourages corruption and distorts markets, chasing away honest money.  The upside is that capitalism, being a coherent and self-sustaining system, contains the seeds of its own renewal; liberal welfare states do not.

Life it tough, but it's tougher when you're stupid  -- John Wayne



Daniel B. Klein explains why liberals stubbornly wallow in such irrational beliefs.  They are economically ignorant:

According to a Zogby International survey that I write about in the May issue of Econ Journal Watch [...],  The left flunks Econ 101.

Liberals believe such fallacies as:

$ Rent control makes apartments more plentiful and restrictions on housing development make home buying more affordable (It's just the opposite.  Scarcity drives up prices.  My kids knew that in grade school.)

$ Our standard of living is lower than it was 30 years ago.  (why are liberals so eager to think ill of our country and our people?)

$ Minimum wage and other employment laws do not increase unemployment (Yes they do.  Look at France)

White House Rejects Friedman for Marx
The economic ignorance extends to the White House.  Senior White House communists like Valerie Jarrett can't understand why the oil companies won't just sit there and suck up a half-million dollars per rig per day cost during the six month moratorium.  They're going to haul their equipment somewhere else where they can make money!

These rigs cost about $500,000 a day for oil companies. [...] the oil companies are going to move them, while they have them under contract, to foreign leases they own in order to seek oil.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) estimates that the moratorium will cost us 130,000 barrels of oil a day by 2011 and up to 500,000 a day by 2013. And it could put up to 46,200 jobs at risk short-term and as many as 120,000 over the long term.

Cover the Incompetence with Lies

Even Senior White House Communist Carol Browner couldn't spin this one:  That panel of experts selected by the National Academy of Engineering DID NOT endorse the six month moratorium:

The seven experts who advised President Obama on how to deal with offshore drilling safety after the Deepwater Horizon explosion are accusing his administration of misrepresenting their views to make it appear that they supported a six-month drilling moratorium -- something they actually oppose.

Elect a klatch of leftist pseudo-intellectuals and this is what you get...

Heartbreak Ridge

My son and I enjoyed a Clint Eastwood double-header last night.  We watched Gran Torino and Heartbreak Ridge.

Gran Torino was, I think, Eastwood's crowning achievement.  Subtle, politically incorrect, yet ultimately celebrating humanity.

Heartbreak Ridge, one of my all time favorites, is a blast from the past.  It reminds us of the bad old days of the post-Vietnam Carter years, when we were supposed to be in decline.  The military was a joke, and many of the leaders coming up were REMFs trying to grab some glory the easy way.


Gunny Sergeant Highway was a war hero who rocked it old school, and he wasn't appreciated by peacetime desk jockeys.  Many despised  our military back then.  Hard to imagine in this post-9/11 world.


Remember Grenada?
We had a president with balls who was not afraid to make a stand.  We sent the Cubans (the ones who survived) packing back to their gulag on the Caribbean, and put some starch back in our step.

The US Military I retired from was much improved over the one I entered in the early 80's.  Some whine about the billions spend and that we have dissipated our power over the past 9 years, but that's bull.   Our military is leaps and bound over what it was in 2000.  Yes, we have spent a ton of money, but we still possess the most powerful  economic engine in the world and the greatest workforce on the planet.

America is great because her people are great.

Barack BS Bingo

If you're like me, you can't stand to hear President Obama speak and you avoid his orations like the plague that they are.  Well, here's a great way to enjoy the experience:

Play Barack BS Bingo!  (See rules below)

Rules for Barack BS Bingo:
1. Before President Obama's next televised speech, print your "Bullshit Bingo" card
2. Check off the appropriate block when you hear one of those words/phrases.
3. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout "BULLSHIT!"

And folks, I must warn you now.  Some of my redneck buddies tried to turn this into a drinking game during the last press conference.  Ol' Bubba ended up drinking so much Jack Daniels that he lit himself on fire while trying to smoke a cigarette.   You could die of alcohol poisoning, so just stick to the bingo.  ;)

Heads They Win, Tails We Lose

Much blather and hand wringing over "Banking Reform."  The solution is simple:  Don't let them gamble with government money.

Tunku Varadarajan interviews Nouriel Roubini.  Roubini boils down the Wall Street problem and what to do about it:

“Look, I’ve nothing against Goldman Sachs. But Goldman Sachs isn’t an investment bank. Goldman Sachs is a hedge fund. It’s bigger than any hedge fund. It’s more leveraged, to the power of three or five, than any hedge fund. And unlike other hedge funds, it has access to zero-interest loans from the Fed, and to implicit and explicit guarantees of the government.

So if Goldman thinks they are so good at ‘prop’ trading that they can make a profit every day—as they did in the last quarter… there was not a single day on which they lost money—fine, let them be a ‘prop’ trading firm, be a hedge fund.

But don’t use the taxpayers’ money to do stuff that’s very risky and highly leveraged.

Exactly.  No new bureaucracies and hierarchies of oversight boards and agencies.  Simply cut them loose and let them fend for themselves.

Inflation: A Silent Tax

Progressives do not want us to be self-sufficient

Citizens and governments worldwide are arguing over pension plans.  Progressive social diddlers love schemes like social security and government funded pension plans because they are a pipeline of money from the taxpayers' wallets directly to the state.  It decreases citizens' ability to take care of themselves, making many of us wards of the state.

Any talk of privatizing social security and other government pension plans is squelched by those simply pointing to the stock market and the deflated 401K's that so many had staked their retirement dreams on.  Fair enough. 

Big Government conspires against against the self-sufficient saver
A dollar is not worth what it was.  It continues to shrink.  This makes your stash of money comparatively smaller and smaller as the years go by.  You can't make it on your own.  You need government assistance or you are forced to gamble your money in the stock market.

Inflation is a silent thief.  It is a colony of termites and vermin eating away at the consumer's savings and purchasing power.  It hits those on fixed incomes especially hard, and like the silent thief it is, we don't even notice the robbery.  It leaves us wondering at the end of the month where all our money went.

Inflation is also a Silent Tax.  Progressive governments love printing money, because the rickety ponzi schemes they've constructed require it.  They must expand the money supply faster than GDP growth to keep the fraud from collapsing (they are doing this now).  This in turn causes inflation, diminishing the value of the dollar.

The Solution:  Maintain the Dollar's Value
If government would simply maintain the value of our currency, we wouldn't need to gamble on the stock market or depend on social security.  Each of us could secure a comfy and safe retirement nest egg by simply putting money, say $200 per month, in a traditional bank account each month.

See For Yourself-An Example
The good folks at Dinkytown.net have a wonderful collection of financial planning calculators, ranging from simple to quite complex.  Their Savings, Taxes and Inflation Calculator is an eye-opener. 

Say you start with nothing at 20 years old and want to save $200 per month until you're 60, when you will retire with your savings.  I've kept all the parameters very conservative so no one accuses me of rigging the game: 

Here are the inputs
Monthly Amount:  $200
Number of Years:  40
Savings Interest:  2%
Annual Rate of Inflation:  2.1%
Total deposited:  $96,000

After 40 years, you would have:  $63, 811

That's less than the $96,000 you deposited over those 40 years!

With no inflation, your ending balance would be:  $146,530

At the same 2% rate, that sum would earn you $2,800 per annum on the balance.  Not quite enough to live a Hollywood lifestyle, but it's nothing to sneeze at either. 

Bump up your monthly contributions to $400 per month accruing at 3%, and work till you're 65, and you'll have over $450,000! 

With a paid-off house and no other debt, this money could at least keep you in beer and skittles well into your late 80's.

For more on inflation see: 
CPI Data
Thomas Del Beccaro - Destroying Your Wealth

California: Greece on the Pacific

Liberal love to blame Republican-backed Prop 13 for destroying California's tax base.  It's the number one talking point used to defend the failed liberal experiment known as California.

Only New York collects more taxes per capita than California
William Voegeli explains just how wrong these liberals are in his excellent article, Don't Blame Prop 13. 

Property-tax revenues in the state have increased from $4.9 billion to $47 billion in the 30 years since Proposition 13. Adjust those figures for inflation and population growth, and property-tax revenues in California were 87 percent higher in 2009 than they were in 1979, chiefly because of rising property values.

Census Bureau data show that California ranked tenth in the nation in 2007 in terms of per-capita receipts from all state and local taxes (property, income, sales, and excise taxes) paid by individuals and corporations.

Per-capita receipts from individual and corporate income taxes were 64 percent higher in California than they were in the rest of the country: $1,764 in California, $1,077 elsewhere. All told, California’s governments received $4,731 per resident from all taxes, 14 percent more than the $4,160 average outside California.

The problem isn't too little taxes, it's too much spending.  If taxation were the answer, New York and California would be booming right now and Texas would be bust.  Liberalism kills economies.

No Respect

Our problem in this country?  No Respect.  For anything.  We have lampooned and demeaned every last institution in the country, a slow motion French Revolution where even the highest offices of government and church leaders do not escape the rhetorical torches and pitchforks.  We've set it all ablaze and we dance with glee as we watch it burn.

We didn't earn it, so we don't respect it
We are ignorant of our history.  We only hear the Howard Zinn versions now, being screamed out by blasphemous preachers from their pulpits of anger and resentment. 

President Obama was proselytizing his fellow international cosmopolitans when he reduced American exceptionalism to patriotic self-delusion:

"I believe in American exceptionalism," Barack Obama said, "just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."

"It's all in your minds, you jingoistic morons!  Get over it.  Your stinking country is no better than than Greece or West Stinkhole-istan!"
And the cognoscenti applaud...  (Read More)

Inside a Can of Whoop-Ass

Thanks, OD!

Stand With Israel

Israelis are also Western Heroes, standing guard on the Eastern frontier of tyranny, bigotry, murder, and ignorance.  And they refuse to surrender.  I'm proudly flying their flag on this blog to show my support

Israel is a tiny island of civility, completely surrounded by medieval torturers who still openly admire the nazis and seek to emulate their "final solution."  The 1.2 million Muslims living in the Jewish State enjoy freedoms their coreligionists in Muslim countries can only dream of.

Helen Thomas disagrees, which makes me even more sure that I am right...

WHY IS GREEN ENERGY GREEN ???

THERE'S GREEN IN THEM THAR TECHNOLOGIES !!!!!!!!!!!
President Barack Obama on Wednesday called on Congress to roll back billions of dollars in tax breaks for oil and pass a clean-energy bill that he says would help the nation end its dependence on fossil fuels.

And the plan is....

Drive up the price of existing energy sources to a level that makes immature and unreliable "green" alternative technologies a viable alternative, thus ending our dependence on fossil fuels and foreign oil.

Great for the environment, good for green technology investors and companies, bad for the American consumer.

So, which party is it that is in bed with big business? Oh yeah...that's right, BOTH OF THEM! They're just in bed with different businesses, lobbies, and donors.

As of 5/31 the average price of gas in the US was $2.73 of that 47.7 cents went to the government (18.4 cents federal). So, for a gallon of gas that average US worker had to work 7 minutes.

The average price of gas per gallon in the UK is currently 120p/liter, at 3.79 liters to the gallon the price per gallon in the UK is 4.54....but wait, that's in Pounds....at the current exchange rate of 1.4643 dollars to the pound the price of a gallon of gas in the UK is $6.66 USD (Honestly, that number is just coincidence...the price is 6.6596).

Of that 120p per liter, the UK petrol tax is 56.9p per litre, almost half (47.4%)....but wait, that's before the 17.5% VAT tax... with the VAT the total tax on petrol is roughly 65% of the cost versus 17.5% in the US.

Who gets hurt by higher gas prices? The average American worker.

With gas at $2.73 a gallon the US average hourly wage is $22.47

With gas at $6.66 a gallon the UK average hourly wage is $19.05 USD (Thats 488 pounds for 37.5 hours of work in 2009)

In real terms a gallon of gas is 7 minutes of work in the US and 20 minutes of work in the UK

British cars on average are 20% more fuel efficient than American cars, but gas cost roughly 140% more.

The average economy of 2009 new passenger cars was 32 MPG and the average US commute was 16 miles. That's 1 gallon of gas round trip (ideal), $2.73 cents, or 7 minutes of work. With British gas prices and fuel economy that would equate to $5.32 cents or 14 minutes of work.

Raising taxes or rolling back tax breaks for oil will both do the same thing, raise the price of gas, this will also cause price increases for everything else due to increased transportation costs. When the general prices of goods rise over time in respect to currency, that is inflation, plain and simple.

The false assumption is that when common market energy costs rise, the costs of alternatives won't. What is your viable alternative to fossil fuels? Electric cars? When the price of fossil fuels rise, the cost of the electricity used to charge them will also rise. A Toyota Prius currently gets 48-52 MPG under ideal circumstances. If the price of gas goes up 140%....are you going to be happy with a car that gets 60% better mileage? Even with a Prius the commute that now costs you $2.73 is going to cost you $4 (instead of $6.66) and that doesn't include the increased cost of charging due to increased fossil fuel costs for those of you with plug-ins.

Keep in mind that $6.66 petrol prices in England has not spurred a massive development and market of alternative fueled vehicles. The vast majority of cars in England still burn fossil fuels, albeit most are low displacement turbo diesel sub-compacts with mileage rates similar to the Prius and we all know how you environmentalists feel about diesel. The vast majority of high mileage turbo-diesels in the UK aren't for sale here because they can't pass the EPA standards for diesel emissions.

Take an easy example:

US Volkswagen Golf 2-DR 2.0 TDI/UK Volkswagen Golf Match 2-DR 2.0 TDI

US: 30 city/41 highway, MSRP $22,354 USD
UK: 46 city/70 highway, MSRP $30,625 USD

Another good example for you performance enthusiasts is the Mercedes C350

The British petrol version of the C350 has the same size engine (3.5 liter V6 200 kW (268 hp) has a top speed of 155 and a 0-62 of 6.4s (62 because that is 100 km/hr) it gets 20/38 mpg and has CO2 emissions of 232 g/km.

The American version has the same size engine (3.5 liter V6 268 hp (200kW) has a top speed limited to 130 mph and a 0-60 of 6.1 seconds but it only gets 17/25 mpg and has calculated* CO2 emissions of 487g/km. You can't say that American Mercedes enthusiasts wouldn't flock to a C350 that gets 38 mpg on the highway for a performance sacrifice measured in tenths of a second.

* The UK MB website provides the CO2 g/km figure, no figure provided on the US MB website, but the EPA provides a figure of 9.2 metric tons/year. A little research provided the EPA calculation is based on 11720 miles per year and is based on gallons of gas consumed (metric tons/gallon times gallons used). I converted the metric tons to grams (9200000), converted 11720 miles into kilometers (18862) and divided... coming up with 487.75 g/km. Now I have no idea how the Europeans calculate that, but I would guess it's measured. This is the best figure I can come up with for the American version... any engineers out there are free to correct me.

So the question is: Why can't you buy a European C350 in the USA?

And don't think it's just European manufacturers... the European Ford Focus Econetic gets 62 mpg, the best you can expect from the US version is 35 mpg.

That all comes down to NHTSA and EPA regulations, the US blocks the importation of vehicles built to the international ECE standard and it currently impossible to build a vehicle that meets both the ECE and US FMVSS. The two standards are not as divergent as you would think, one major sticking point in reconciliation being headlight design. I don't think many would argue that European model cars are not as safe as their American counterparts. Differences in environmental testing diverge less in end results than in testing methodologies and individual focus. A European clean diesel engine is arguably more environmentally friendly, yet will not pass US emission requirements.

Repealing oil tax breaks and driving up the price of gas is not a winning move for the American public. We don't need more fossil fuel regulations and taxes to promote green energy. The answer is less regulation not more. Want a 70 mpg car? adopt the international ECE vehicle standard and allow the importation of European models into the US. Afraid of killing off the rest of the automotive industry? Provide a 1-3 year window in which American manufacturers can retool, say allowing sale of ECE vehicles by American manufactures the first year, and gradually raise the number of allowed foreign ECE imports by 20% per year in subsequent years for 5 years until we are back to a free-market on sales.

If you're for penalizing fossil fuels to promote green technology, follow the money... Oil loses, Coal loses, the American Public loses, who wins? It's certainly not the environment.

Cheers!

Finntann

Islam for Dhimmis: Flotilla of Fools

Jihad Jackassery is a virulent strain of the same brain disease that spawned Latte Leftism.  Self-loathing liberals who hate the culture that nurtured them are the most susceptible.

Latte Leftists
Starting from the 60's we have had a phenomenon I call Latte Leftism.  Sanctimonious lefties who got their Latin America experience from Taco Bell U belligerently defend all manner of socialist terror going on south of our border.  Murderers Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Hugo Chavez are their heroes.


Now, a new strain has broken out: Jihad Jackassery

Ignorant liberals loudly defend Islam and make serial excuses for its bloody predations on the civilized world. 

They have never experienced the displeasure of living day to day in a shit-smeared Muslim hell-hole.  A place where goats and dancing boys are the main attraction for men.  A very illiberal place, where speaking your mind or doing what you want can get you killed.

We should sponsor an international field trip for these ignorant dingbats.  Dump them off where sharia reigns supreme and women are draped head to toe and chained to the kitchen.

Let that stupid little mental midget Jew-hating girl who confronted David Horowitz go live in Saudia Arabia or the Pashtun Belt for awhile.  I'd love to hear her stories when she returned.  If she returned.  She's pretty mouthy, and 7th century misogynists don't tolerate strong women.  Just ask Hirsi Ali.

Beyond Entertainment and into the Danger Zone

With the Palestinian "Freedom Flotilla" incident, these self-loathing western patsies have gone from entertaining to dangerous. 

It was a deliberate, premeditated provocation. 
Israel allows aid ships to dock at its ports.  They inspect the cargo, then allow it to go overland to Hamas-istan.  The only reason for violating this legal Israeli and Egyptian blockade was to give Israel a black eye.

This convoy was nothing but leftwing international agitprop mixed with Muslim passive-aggressive provocation.  Violently force a confrontation, then cry and scream when responsible people step in and smack you.

A New, New World Order
This is about Turkey rejecting the west and becoming the Hero of the Muslim World.  Worse, European dhimmis played a key role, doing the bidding of their Muslim overlords.

Europe is dying, demographically, financially and culturally.  America is vulnerable, with a naive and callow cosmopolitan at the helm.  Enemies are drawing long knives...

Here are the very best articles explaining what the Flotilla of Fools was really all about:
TNR - Marty Peretz
Daily Beast - Leslie H. Gelb
Liberal Zionists - Time to Choose

The Decline and Fall of Nothing

It's always been fun sport for Schadenfreudistas to predict America's decline.  Tim Cavanaugh at Reason has a wry take on it all: 

"The problem isn’t that things are collapsing. It’s that not enough things are collapsing. General Motors, AIG, and the government of California have committed enough errors to merit immediate extinction, but there they still are."

We've destroyed our constitution and replaced it with a progressive bulwark against Schumpeter's creative destruction.  America's centerpiece is now a Bill of Rights for the venal and the stupid, constantly updated by an elected criminal class.

Like the energizer bunny, America's failures keep going and going, while the successful pick up the tab.  

We have the government we deserve.

Five Myths of Green Energy

While government watchdogs did drugs and surfed porn, BP was busy wrecking the Gulf Coast.  Talk is turning again to "Green Energy."

I love the environment (it's where the tasty creatures are) and I am cheering for the good scientists struggling to advance "green energy." 

Despite what scientifically-ignorant charlatans like Al Gore and Van Jones say, "green energy" is simply too inefficient to compete with fossil fuels.  The science is advancing, but it's just not there yet.

Robert Bryce performs a public service by publishing Five Myths of Green Energy in The Washington Post.

Here are the Five Myths

1. Solar and wind power are the greenest of them all.
Wrong!  They are land hogs that actually destroy the environment by displacing natural habitat.

2. Going green will reduce our dependence on imports from unsavory regimes.
"China controls between 95 and 100 percent of the global market in" rare elements needed to construct batteries.

3. A green American economy will create green American jobs.

In a global market, American wind turbine manufacturers face the same problem as American shoe manufacturers: high domestic labor costs.

Meanwhile, the very concept of a green job is not well defined. Is a job still green if it's created not by the market, but by subsidy or mandate? 

Growth Energy, an industry lobby group, says increasing the percentage of ethanol blended into the U.S. gasoline supply would create 136,000 jobs. But an analysis by the Environmental Working Group found that no more than 27,000 jobs would be created, and each one could cost taxpayers as much as $446,000 per year. Sure, the government can create more green jobs. But at what cost?

Not to mention, Ethanol is Immoral.  Starving people to feed cars should give all human beings pause.  If that's not enough, the "Bio-fuels" industry destroys the biosphere, and there is not enough biosphere on the planet to support this government-sponsored corporate welfare travesty.

4. Electric cars will substantially reduce demand for oil.

Electric cars haven't been sidelined by a cabal to sell internal combustion engines or a lack of political will, but by physics and math. Gasoline contains about 80 times as much energy, by weight, as the best lithium-ion battery.

And in the absence of nuclear power, these cars that are plugged into the power grid are coal-powered.  How environmentally friendly is that?

5. The United States lags behind other rich countries in going green.

Over the past three decades, the United States has improved its energy efficiency as much as or more than other developed countries.

According to data from the Energy Information Administration, average per capita energy consumption in the United States fell by 2.5 percent from 1980 through 2006. That reduction was greater than in any other developed country except Switzerland and Denmark, and the United States achieved it without participating in the Kyoto Protocol or creating an emissions trading system like the one employed in Europe.

EIA data also show that the United States has been among the best at reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per $1 of GDP and the amount of energy consumed per $1 of GDP.

This was just a sample.  Go read the whole thing here.