Showing posts with label character. Show all posts
Showing posts with label character. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Debt Limit - A Guide to What is Going on.
The guy requesting more debt is postmodernist philosophy in action. He's acting as if his world of values is the truth even though it does not correspond to reality. We see this same absurd way of being in President Obama.
Postmodernist philosophy holds that everything is political and if enough people believe something, it is true. Not!
Thursday, September 8, 2011
JUDGMENT - The Missing Moral Principle
Who is the Ragnar Danneskjold* of our time? Who is calling the destroyers of value to account?
We live in a time of a giant sucking sound. The WEST is flushing itself down the toilet.
Why? It cannot pronounce moral judgment. When I say "it," I mean that the culture is in such a weakened state that a strong pronouncement of moral judgment to true matters up would be shouted down as unseemly. Given this state, the strong pronouncement will have to be yelled through a din of naysayers. Someone will hear it anyway. I promise you, I will hear it if it can be heard.
I dedicate this piece to Bosch Fawstin. He's fearless, especially in his fingering the contradictions and inhumanity of the Muslims, and I love him for that. I really liked his entry into the Twin Towers Goes Global contest. Maybe now they can get why people don't want the Ground Zero Mosque.
Along this line, I've been thinking of all the "brands" that are being diminished because the people who speak for and work to enhance those brands will not pronounce moral judgment against Obama who, highly associated with them, is taking them down with him.
Here's some: Democrats, Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, Illinois, Oprah, Unions, Blacks in general, and the USA. (The only one I care about supporting is the USA. The rest will have to earn my respect one man or institution at a time.)
Wouldn't it be something if a leader from Harvard came forward and said that he now sees, with Obama as its currently most famous product, the enormous cost of Affirmative Action? OR wouldn't if be astounding if a black leader came forward and said that it's time for blacks to stop acting like a "pack" that "goes along to get along" and call Obama to account for all of his violations of human freedom, the most precious of conditions for the people who knew and tell the stories of slavery? Wouldn't it be amazing if a Democrat denounced Obama for enacting policies destroying the economy stating that it is time to call him to account regardless that he is black? Or gosh, wouldn't it be something if someone would stand up for America and apologize to "the best within us" for "forgetting who we are," by letting Obama, our President, besmirch the ideal that quickens the beat of the human heart around the globe?
All of us are going to pay dearly for "going along" with Obama - the Con. Every brand associated with Obama will pay. Oprah has never been held as high as she was before she endorsed Obama. (It's interesting about Oprah. People loved her and were always talking about her when her program was geared to all people. Who is she now that Obama favors blacks over whites in instance after instance and she says nothing? Swiss cheese?)
Harvard and Columbia are being drug through the streets insofar as providing a solid education for real values. They are gaining the reputation of being an intellectual hot house that doesn't know what goes on in the real world.
Chicago and Illinois have been corrupt for a long time, but now they have taken on a real and dangerous quality that they didn't have before. Why? Obama thrived there.
America granted grace, which I don't think has been an entirely good thing since freedom is its own reward, to blacks because their ancestors were slaves. That's over. I called the grocery clerk to account where before I would have let her slide.
The thing that is so clearly missing in the public arena of our era is judgment. No one will pronounce it. No one will take action for a proper standard. No one in Congress is making a dent on the corruption that is overtaking our government. It is simply missing.
In the ever-present choice of wings or spine, we've chosen wings.
Where is the spine. It doesn't exist in this soupy, slurpy world of words. Just words - words that mean nothing except to have you think they do. For every statement coming out of Obama's mouth, we have a video or audio clip of him saying the opposite. Insanity reigns. Obama, the Con, spins more words tonight in his Jobs Speech. Words, just words. Except they are costing us not only our treasure, but our moral vitality.
Obama may paint a socialist utopia, but we all know that it shall not happen. Never has, never will. Why would it? No one gives a damn. And, no one does because the government won't allow it. Who can care when you are regulated from morning 'til night and this plague is spreading faster than we can get rid of it?
All will stop when someone with a voice that can be heard pronounces moral judgment - the judgment that gives one's moral vitality a bracing jolt!**
Who among us possesses THE VOICE THAT CAN BE HEARD? That is who we are waiting for.
*Ragnar Danneskjold is a character in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. He was a pirate for justice. He calculated the amount a businessmen deserved from his production and trade, because he earned by trading value for value. Then he would attack ships which the government used to transfer wealth from America to People's States around the globe. (Sound like Obama?) When he got the wealth on board, he took it to a place where it was held in account for the producer of it. It became available to him when he chose to take his power back, go on strike and renounce being a sacrificial lamb.
**Ayn Rand is the only one in my lifetime that has done this. And she did it the hard way. She earned it.
We live in a time of a giant sucking sound. The WEST is flushing itself down the toilet.
Why? It cannot pronounce moral judgment. When I say "it," I mean that the culture is in such a weakened state that a strong pronouncement of moral judgment to true matters up would be shouted down as unseemly. Given this state, the strong pronouncement will have to be yelled through a din of naysayers. Someone will hear it anyway. I promise you, I will hear it if it can be heard.
I dedicate this piece to Bosch Fawstin. He's fearless, especially in his fingering the contradictions and inhumanity of the Muslims, and I love him for that. I really liked his entry into the Twin Towers Goes Global contest. Maybe now they can get why people don't want the Ground Zero Mosque.
Along this line, I've been thinking of all the "brands" that are being diminished because the people who speak for and work to enhance those brands will not pronounce moral judgment against Obama who, highly associated with them, is taking them down with him.
Here's some: Democrats, Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, Illinois, Oprah, Unions, Blacks in general, and the USA. (The only one I care about supporting is the USA. The rest will have to earn my respect one man or institution at a time.)
Wouldn't it be something if a leader from Harvard came forward and said that he now sees, with Obama as its currently most famous product, the enormous cost of Affirmative Action? OR wouldn't if be astounding if a black leader came forward and said that it's time for blacks to stop acting like a "pack" that "goes along to get along" and call Obama to account for all of his violations of human freedom, the most precious of conditions for the people who knew and tell the stories of slavery? Wouldn't it be amazing if a Democrat denounced Obama for enacting policies destroying the economy stating that it is time to call him to account regardless that he is black? Or gosh, wouldn't it be something if someone would stand up for America and apologize to "the best within us" for "forgetting who we are," by letting Obama, our President, besmirch the ideal that quickens the beat of the human heart around the globe?
All of us are going to pay dearly for "going along" with Obama - the Con. Every brand associated with Obama will pay. Oprah has never been held as high as she was before she endorsed Obama. (It's interesting about Oprah. People loved her and were always talking about her when her program was geared to all people. Who is she now that Obama favors blacks over whites in instance after instance and she says nothing? Swiss cheese?)
Harvard and Columbia are being drug through the streets insofar as providing a solid education for real values. They are gaining the reputation of being an intellectual hot house that doesn't know what goes on in the real world.
Chicago and Illinois have been corrupt for a long time, but now they have taken on a real and dangerous quality that they didn't have before. Why? Obama thrived there.
America granted grace, which I don't think has been an entirely good thing since freedom is its own reward, to blacks because their ancestors were slaves. That's over. I called the grocery clerk to account where before I would have let her slide.
The thing that is so clearly missing in the public arena of our era is judgment. No one will pronounce it. No one will take action for a proper standard. No one in Congress is making a dent on the corruption that is overtaking our government. It is simply missing.
In the ever-present choice of wings or spine, we've chosen wings.
Where is the spine. It doesn't exist in this soupy, slurpy world of words. Just words - words that mean nothing except to have you think they do. For every statement coming out of Obama's mouth, we have a video or audio clip of him saying the opposite. Insanity reigns. Obama, the Con, spins more words tonight in his Jobs Speech. Words, just words. Except they are costing us not only our treasure, but our moral vitality.
Obama may paint a socialist utopia, but we all know that it shall not happen. Never has, never will. Why would it? No one gives a damn. And, no one does because the government won't allow it. Who can care when you are regulated from morning 'til night and this plague is spreading faster than we can get rid of it?
All will stop when someone with a voice that can be heard pronounces moral judgment - the judgment that gives one's moral vitality a bracing jolt!**
Who among us possesses THE VOICE THAT CAN BE HEARD? That is who we are waiting for.
_______________________________
*Ragnar Danneskjold is a character in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. He was a pirate for justice. He calculated the amount a businessmen deserved from his production and trade, because he earned by trading value for value. Then he would attack ships which the government used to transfer wealth from America to People's States around the globe. (Sound like Obama?) When he got the wealth on board, he took it to a place where it was held in account for the producer of it. It became available to him when he chose to take his power back, go on strike and renounce being a sacrificial lamb.
**Ayn Rand is the only one in my lifetime that has done this. And she did it the hard way. She earned it.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
"Need" as the Ultimate Justification
I believe the liberal mind is a more socially accepted version of the criminal mind. Both justify taking other people's money and property for their purposes.
The human condition at bottom is that one must traverse the gap from "need" to "value produced" which satisfies the need. The need is generated by a living organism using its energy to maintain its life. That process, life, gives rise to needs which must be fulfilled if the life is to continue.
The blue arrow is "the gap." To mature as a human being means that one is able to navigate that gap and provide for his needs in a way that works while at the same time doesn't undermine his continued ability to provide for his needs.
The criminal mind and the liberal mind emphasize "need" as a lack - ultimately a lack of stuff or status. They think it unfair that the needy are not provided for. They believe that it is fundamentally unjust that everyone is not provided for - that it is some kind of cosmic injustice and that the world, because of this, is basically unfair. Because this is unjust, they say, they feel justified to correct this injustice and that is why they can, with a straight face, advocate taking your stuff, destroy a country such as America that has a system that allows people to traverse the gap of being human and create value, giving away other people's values (money) to poor people and poor nations, etc., etc.
Every time they open their mouths, they reinforce the "goodness," the "appropriateness" of being needy. When Obama brings some poor person or crippled person or in some way needy person onto the stage with him, he wants to hear about their neediness - the more needy the better - and he adds importance to their being needy. (I find this embarrassing for the person he is using.) He gives them his ear and kindness, attention and ultimately some money or goods. The one thing he doesn't do is talk about how they resourcefully went from need to results that satisfied their need. To focus on that would mean he would have no reason to exert his power over us and take our stuff.
Because Obama and Michelle, the current point people for this view, and the rest of the liberals do this, I consider them and their kind the embodiment of evil in mankind. (I'm not talking about evil in the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments manner. Because man possesses volition, he chooses his course of action. He can choose to get across that gap, using his talents and mind to do that or not and this is his fundamental choice - to live as a human being or not.) There is nothing evil about having needs. We all have them by virtue of being alive. Granting them ultimate status and holding them aloft rather than supporting getting across the gap - by being creative and productive - is evil.
The ultimate joke, though, is on those that hold aloft need as the ultimate in importance. Although evil appears potent because it counts on fear and causes havoc in human lives by destroying their values and it always seems pleasurable in the short run, it is ultimately impotent. That is because it is not about developing the means for producing real value and satisfying needs. To continue, the mind besieged by evil must feed off the people who do traverse the gap since they are the ones who know how to get from need to value produced. (Frederick Douglas made clear that taking care of the needy for its own sake provides nothing lasting: "A man, at times, gets something for nothing, but it will, in his hands, amount to nothing.")
When I hear/see Obama, Michelle, the Pope, mother Theresa when she was alive, Pelosi, Schumer, Reid, Weiner, Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and thousands of other such people, I see evil incarnate. They foster a world that doesn't and cannot work, and they work to create parasites wherever they go. There is nothing more hideous that that. (If you think Mother Theresa was humane, she had millions of dollars and would not spend a frickin' dime on having the dying people she cared for have some measure of comfort as they went through the dying process. She could have conditioned the air because she could have easily have afforded it. Why? Because she thought suffering was the way to becoming whole - and holy, i.e., coming to know god. Source: The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens.)
The criminal mind is always justified to commit his crime. Why? Because to his mind, the world is not just and did not treat him fairly for him to properly mature when he was dependent on others. To him, this shouldn't be. (I wonder if some portion of humanity is pissed because their God or their ancestors' God threw they out of the Garden of Eden? There everything was provided. Now they must work for the values they need.) He stays needy rather than find a way to clear away his fears and his grievances such that he become a value producer.
A person stuck in need ends up hating the good (value production) for being the good. (The good is value production and virtue is action which produces value.) Hating the good for being the good is envy and this mental orientation is sourcing the destruction of values now upon us.
So how do we get through this? Create and produce value. In everything you do. You will love it and will feel so nourished by it.
The human condition at bottom is that one must traverse the gap from "need" to "value produced" which satisfies the need. The need is generated by a living organism using its energy to maintain its life. That process, life, gives rise to needs which must be fulfilled if the life is to continue.
The blue arrow is "the gap." To mature as a human being means that one is able to navigate that gap and provide for his needs in a way that works while at the same time doesn't undermine his continued ability to provide for his needs.
The criminal mind and the liberal mind emphasize "need" as a lack - ultimately a lack of stuff or status. They think it unfair that the needy are not provided for. They believe that it is fundamentally unjust that everyone is not provided for - that it is some kind of cosmic injustice and that the world, because of this, is basically unfair. Because this is unjust, they say, they feel justified to correct this injustice and that is why they can, with a straight face, advocate taking your stuff, destroy a country such as America that has a system that allows people to traverse the gap of being human and create value, giving away other people's values (money) to poor people and poor nations, etc., etc.
Every time they open their mouths, they reinforce the "goodness," the "appropriateness" of being needy. When Obama brings some poor person or crippled person or in some way needy person onto the stage with him, he wants to hear about their neediness - the more needy the better - and he adds importance to their being needy. (I find this embarrassing for the person he is using.) He gives them his ear and kindness, attention and ultimately some money or goods. The one thing he doesn't do is talk about how they resourcefully went from need to results that satisfied their need. To focus on that would mean he would have no reason to exert his power over us and take our stuff.
Because Obama and Michelle, the current point people for this view, and the rest of the liberals do this, I consider them and their kind the embodiment of evil in mankind. (I'm not talking about evil in the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments manner. Because man possesses volition, he chooses his course of action. He can choose to get across that gap, using his talents and mind to do that or not and this is his fundamental choice - to live as a human being or not.) There is nothing evil about having needs. We all have them by virtue of being alive. Granting them ultimate status and holding them aloft rather than supporting getting across the gap - by being creative and productive - is evil.
The ultimate joke, though, is on those that hold aloft need as the ultimate in importance. Although evil appears potent because it counts on fear and causes havoc in human lives by destroying their values and it always seems pleasurable in the short run, it is ultimately impotent. That is because it is not about developing the means for producing real value and satisfying needs. To continue, the mind besieged by evil must feed off the people who do traverse the gap since they are the ones who know how to get from need to value produced. (Frederick Douglas made clear that taking care of the needy for its own sake provides nothing lasting: "A man, at times, gets something for nothing, but it will, in his hands, amount to nothing.")
When I hear/see Obama, Michelle, the Pope, mother Theresa when she was alive, Pelosi, Schumer, Reid, Weiner, Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and thousands of other such people, I see evil incarnate. They foster a world that doesn't and cannot work, and they work to create parasites wherever they go. There is nothing more hideous that that. (If you think Mother Theresa was humane, she had millions of dollars and would not spend a frickin' dime on having the dying people she cared for have some measure of comfort as they went through the dying process. She could have conditioned the air because she could have easily have afforded it. Why? Because she thought suffering was the way to becoming whole - and holy, i.e., coming to know god. Source: The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens.)
The criminal mind is always justified to commit his crime. Why? Because to his mind, the world is not just and did not treat him fairly for him to properly mature when he was dependent on others. To him, this shouldn't be. (I wonder if some portion of humanity is pissed because their God or their ancestors' God threw they out of the Garden of Eden? There everything was provided. Now they must work for the values they need.) He stays needy rather than find a way to clear away his fears and his grievances such that he become a value producer.
A person stuck in need ends up hating the good (value production) for being the good. (The good is value production and virtue is action which produces value.) Hating the good for being the good is envy and this mental orientation is sourcing the destruction of values now upon us.
So how do we get through this? Create and produce value. In everything you do. You will love it and will feel so nourished by it.
The torch represents the value you seek to produce that
lights your way. The stiffened arm is your moral strength
to get on with it and produce the result!
lights your way. The stiffened arm is your moral strength
to get on with it and produce the result!
Friday, May 28, 2010
Our Incredibly Shrinking President
(Today I would like to register a rename for this article. It should read, "Our Incredibly Shrunken President." It's clear to me that Obama has never had a stature that he could shrink. He's been operating from the premises he's operating from now for a long, long time. He is stricken with the incredible facility to be Alinksy incarnate. I think he is a monster, my category for his character. 
Allowing Louisiana, to the tune of blocking efforts to save her shores and her industry and then suing Arizona when the Federal Government's role is to protect her borders, is beyond the pale. This man, to me, is on the order of all the heartless dictators the world has known and I don't see how he can do anything except get worse. His work to keep America in a perpetual Jerry Springer drama as a way of life has me write him off as a misguided, evil human being. It's definitely unfortunate for us that he has so much power to wield, and I hope we get him out of office before he develops paranoia to a degree whereby he feels justified to act even more irrationally. He's definitely animating the forces to vote him out of office. July 6, 2010)
_______________________________________________________
Yesterday was a new low for President Obama. We are now witnessing the "chickens coming home to roost" on a host of his bad premises. This happened yesterday in his remarks about the oil spill.
First, and I think the most despicable, happened when he used his daughter to create an appeal to his listeners' emotions. He said his daughter said to him, "Plug the hole, daddy." That was theater, nothing more. However, it was revealing because he threw his daughter under the bus and ran over her privacy all in service of his "any means necessary" modus operandi premise. Because this statement came off as inauthentic, his use of his daughter opened her to public "use" in service of political points and who knows what else.
This morning on the Glenn Beck show, who, by the way, I'm liking more all the time (see next paragraph), he had a segment where his associate played the daughter, asking her "daddy, the President", all kinds of questions and offering her observations about the world. Obama opened his daughter to this. We can now look forward to a "do as I say, not as I do" upbraiding of Beck. I suppose this megalomaniac will attempt to ban free speech rather than apologize to his daughter and stop using her as pawn in his political power games.
Today I ran across this quote of Obama's about 9/11: "The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity." Yet, when it came to using his daughter as a pawn in his games, he forgot all of this and used her anyway. Obama is the disconnect that he names in his 9/11 remarks.
(About Beck: Beck is doing such investigative and historically integrative work. The last couple days he has been showing how the structure of the Progressive Administration of the "evil" (his description and one I agree with) Woodrow Wilson was picked up by FDR and now picked up by Obama, albeit using different particular forms for the same basic purposes in the latter two cases. Also, I give Beck a big medal of courage for the "teaching" he is doing. Really great. He's one of the amazing media people of our time. And my accolades are in spite of his ultimate grounding in God [faith] rather than in nature [facts] when he gets to the roots of his conceptual structure.)
The second thing O did was tell us his experience in his own bathroom, looking morning and night in the mirror at his constantly worried face. I was listening to his remarks for the facts I could learn about what is going on and what his plans are in relation to it. Instead I get this trip to his bathroom. (Faulty premise: The personal trumps our common values.)
Talk about whiplash. I wondered: "Where has this man's mind gone?" It is gone, I'm sure of that. He's not capable of knowing what is on purpose and what is not, and where his listeners are, and so he's now trying to enroll us that he, after all, is worrying about this problem. Sorry. Doesn't fly, Barack. We expect that. That would be normal and not mentionable.
(Makes you wonder if he had to say that. Is it because he isn't worrying about it? Or is he worrying that people who mean something to him are getting upset with him? Or maybe he really likes the oil spill and wants to use it to kill energy production in all traditional forms through taxation and regulation. I don't know, but his behavior raises such questions - especially when he is going off to Chicago over the weekend, playing golf, and generally living life as he always does - I'm sure justifying, all the while, that this current trouble requires getting away to clear his head. Actually I think he is doing that because he suffers from victim's disease - "I'm entitled." (Faulty premise: I'm somehow not constrained by the morality that mere mortals are constrained by.)
One thing I do know. THIS MAN IS NOT COUNT-ON-ABLE! He will never be there when the country needs him. Frankly, I think he's committing disloyalty to our country, our home, on a grand scale - treason - and he needs to be called to account as soon as possible.
The last thing he did was address people accusing him of not getting on the problem and causing a solution. He's been railing against BP and big oil, capitalist, and the all of it. So in his fear, he runs for the high ground only to see that it's not solid. (Faulty premise: Words is all that matter. Deeds and the meaning of words count for nothing.)
His answer is to declare that he and his Administration have been in charge of this matter from the first hours of its happening. So, if he's responsible, he owns it - all of it. So all the vituperation to BP and anyone trying to get the problem fixed is now useless by him when uttered in public. After all, it is only Barack being pissed at himself since he is the owner of it all. Woops!
Obama's mind is shot. There is no doubt about that. Our work is to maintain the grounding to be sure that we can see what is true and what is b--s---. True to a sociopath's nature, his job is to get us to think he is God and we don't know what we are talking about. Good luck. It's woolly out there.
A person, by the way, doesn't have to have a degree from Harvard or Columbia and in fact, one is likely better off if he doesn't have that. That's because these universities are notoriously intellectually corrupt, and in order to have power to produce results in the world depends on one's solidly grounded, conceptual structural. Then when some high blown guy comes along, one can hear where his assertions and underlying premises don't jive with the basics. Obama has no clue about this. Nada. He thinks we cling to our guns and our religion. Oh my.
Have a great Memorial Day weekend in this great country that still enjoys the bounty of the independent minds that have continued to create it.
Allowing Louisiana, to the tune of blocking efforts to save her shores and her industry and then suing Arizona when the Federal Government's role is to protect her borders, is beyond the pale. This man, to me, is on the order of all the heartless dictators the world has known and I don't see how he can do anything except get worse. His work to keep America in a perpetual Jerry Springer drama as a way of life has me write him off as a misguided, evil human being. It's definitely unfortunate for us that he has so much power to wield, and I hope we get him out of office before he develops paranoia to a degree whereby he feels justified to act even more irrationally. He's definitely animating the forces to vote him out of office. July 6, 2010)_______________________________________________________
Yesterday was a new low for President Obama. We are now witnessing the "chickens coming home to roost" on a host of his bad premises. This happened yesterday in his remarks about the oil spill.
First, and I think the most despicable, happened when he used his daughter to create an appeal to his listeners' emotions. He said his daughter said to him, "Plug the hole, daddy." That was theater, nothing more. However, it was revealing because he threw his daughter under the bus and ran over her privacy all in service of his "any means necessary" modus operandi premise. Because this statement came off as inauthentic, his use of his daughter opened her to public "use" in service of political points and who knows what else.
This morning on the Glenn Beck show, who, by the way, I'm liking more all the time (see next paragraph), he had a segment where his associate played the daughter, asking her "daddy, the President", all kinds of questions and offering her observations about the world. Obama opened his daughter to this. We can now look forward to a "do as I say, not as I do" upbraiding of Beck. I suppose this megalomaniac will attempt to ban free speech rather than apologize to his daughter and stop using her as pawn in his political power games.
Today I ran across this quote of Obama's about 9/11: "The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity." Yet, when it came to using his daughter as a pawn in his games, he forgot all of this and used her anyway. Obama is the disconnect that he names in his 9/11 remarks.
(About Beck: Beck is doing such investigative and historically integrative work. The last couple days he has been showing how the structure of the Progressive Administration of the "evil" (his description and one I agree with) Woodrow Wilson was picked up by FDR and now picked up by Obama, albeit using different particular forms for the same basic purposes in the latter two cases. Also, I give Beck a big medal of courage for the "teaching" he is doing. Really great. He's one of the amazing media people of our time. And my accolades are in spite of his ultimate grounding in God [faith] rather than in nature [facts] when he gets to the roots of his conceptual structure.)
The second thing O did was tell us his experience in his own bathroom, looking morning and night in the mirror at his constantly worried face. I was listening to his remarks for the facts I could learn about what is going on and what his plans are in relation to it. Instead I get this trip to his bathroom. (Faulty premise: The personal trumps our common values.)
Talk about whiplash. I wondered: "Where has this man's mind gone?" It is gone, I'm sure of that. He's not capable of knowing what is on purpose and what is not, and where his listeners are, and so he's now trying to enroll us that he, after all, is worrying about this problem. Sorry. Doesn't fly, Barack. We expect that. That would be normal and not mentionable.
(Makes you wonder if he had to say that. Is it because he isn't worrying about it? Or is he worrying that people who mean something to him are getting upset with him? Or maybe he really likes the oil spill and wants to use it to kill energy production in all traditional forms through taxation and regulation. I don't know, but his behavior raises such questions - especially when he is going off to Chicago over the weekend, playing golf, and generally living life as he always does - I'm sure justifying, all the while, that this current trouble requires getting away to clear his head. Actually I think he is doing that because he suffers from victim's disease - "I'm entitled." (Faulty premise: I'm somehow not constrained by the morality that mere mortals are constrained by.)
One thing I do know. THIS MAN IS NOT COUNT-ON-ABLE! He will never be there when the country needs him. Frankly, I think he's committing disloyalty to our country, our home, on a grand scale - treason - and he needs to be called to account as soon as possible.
The last thing he did was address people accusing him of not getting on the problem and causing a solution. He's been railing against BP and big oil, capitalist, and the all of it. So in his fear, he runs for the high ground only to see that it's not solid. (Faulty premise: Words is all that matter. Deeds and the meaning of words count for nothing.)
His answer is to declare that he and his Administration have been in charge of this matter from the first hours of its happening. So, if he's responsible, he owns it - all of it. So all the vituperation to BP and anyone trying to get the problem fixed is now useless by him when uttered in public. After all, it is only Barack being pissed at himself since he is the owner of it all. Woops!
Obama's mind is shot. There is no doubt about that. Our work is to maintain the grounding to be sure that we can see what is true and what is b--s---. True to a sociopath's nature, his job is to get us to think he is God and we don't know what we are talking about. Good luck. It's woolly out there.
A person, by the way, doesn't have to have a degree from Harvard or Columbia and in fact, one is likely better off if he doesn't have that. That's because these universities are notoriously intellectually corrupt, and in order to have power to produce results in the world depends on one's solidly grounded, conceptual structural. Then when some high blown guy comes along, one can hear where his assertions and underlying premises don't jive with the basics. Obama has no clue about this. Nada. He thinks we cling to our guns and our religion. Oh my.
Have a great Memorial Day weekend in this great country that still enjoys the bounty of the independent minds that have continued to create it.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
In Defiance of the Law of Cause and Effect
How many times have we heard this same refrain? Act against your nature, people! Our President pretends that somehow, when people have a purpose and build their life on it, they won't chose to act consistent with that purpose - that they can be seduced into changing their purpose - or more like this, "because of me, my charm and my idealism, you will want to change". It garners no credit for anyone to believe (and hope) for such a magical "transformation." It isn't generous. It isn't intelligent. It's stupid. Why? Because it defies a law of nature.
What law? The Law of Cause and Effect!
Listening to John Allison III of BB&T fame,(a recorded speech I possess) he said it this way. The Law of Cause and Effect: Everything in nature has a nature and it acts consistent with its nature. Tigers are tigers, stones are stones and people are people.
So what is the nature of a person? At root, a person is consistent with his purpose. One cannot operate for a minute without a purpose of some kind. An idea that comes into one's conscious mind is the event which unites spirit with body, mental with physical to cause a result of some kind.
Suppose a person laid in bed until he had some idea that he wanted to get up. He can say all kinds of things to himself - like, "I've got to get up because I've got to go to work. Yah, no one should have to work and because I have to, life is hell. I'm consigned to the burden and drudgery of life" - in other words, he may consider himself completely at the effect of, a victim of life. Of course there are zillions of positive reasons for getting up too.
No matter, what had to happen - regardless of the reason - was that an idea had to pop into the person's head and that became his purpose for the next few minutes or hours or longer. Whether he's willing to be responsible for that is another matter in this discussion. One simply could not operate without a purpose - at even the most rudimentary level above the automatic functions that the body provides so long as it lives.
But, creating a purpose for which one lives his life is more than a momentary undertaking. That goes far beyond waiting until one is struck by an idea or a feeling. It is something that one can create in the largest sense and generated from one's loves and one's ideals for an eminently fulfilling life. Or it is something one can create from the unquestioned beliefs he got from his childhood - but to the same scope. It can provide motive for a moment, a month or a lifetime.
A purpose sets the aspect of one's personal nature - his character. And this doesn't change in the broadest sense. It is possible to change it, but not without a lot of serious self-examination and work extending oneself into new, uncharted areas of his life.
When any leader has gotten to where he is, by virtue of his purpose and by enrolling, willingly or unwillingly, millions of followers, and further, when his purpose is rooted in the soil of centuries, that person is not going to change. To pretend otherwise and enroll the American people on that idea is immensely, horrendously disingenuous. (It could only be done with such people who defer to faith as a valid mental action, be it in a specifically religious form or in a modern mystical form. Anyone who lives in and is oriented to the real, everyday world and is working to manifest their larger and long-range purposes and have some capacity to integrate ideas and the events of life, simply would not buy this idea. One has to revert to the "magical thinking" of childhood [a stage in an individual's development] in order to consider this a real possibility.)
And yet, this is the foreign policy of this Administration that we are asked to swallow.
The cartoonists are reacting. (I got these from Sultan Knish's blog.)
What law? The Law of Cause and Effect!
Listening to John Allison III of BB&T fame,(a recorded speech I possess) he said it this way. The Law of Cause and Effect: Everything in nature has a nature and it acts consistent with its nature. Tigers are tigers, stones are stones and people are people.
So what is the nature of a person? At root, a person is consistent with his purpose. One cannot operate for a minute without a purpose of some kind. An idea that comes into one's conscious mind is the event which unites spirit with body, mental with physical to cause a result of some kind.
Suppose a person laid in bed until he had some idea that he wanted to get up. He can say all kinds of things to himself - like, "I've got to get up because I've got to go to work. Yah, no one should have to work and because I have to, life is hell. I'm consigned to the burden and drudgery of life" - in other words, he may consider himself completely at the effect of, a victim of life. Of course there are zillions of positive reasons for getting up too.
No matter, what had to happen - regardless of the reason - was that an idea had to pop into the person's head and that became his purpose for the next few minutes or hours or longer. Whether he's willing to be responsible for that is another matter in this discussion. One simply could not operate without a purpose - at even the most rudimentary level above the automatic functions that the body provides so long as it lives.
But, creating a purpose for which one lives his life is more than a momentary undertaking. That goes far beyond waiting until one is struck by an idea or a feeling. It is something that one can create in the largest sense and generated from one's loves and one's ideals for an eminently fulfilling life. Or it is something one can create from the unquestioned beliefs he got from his childhood - but to the same scope. It can provide motive for a moment, a month or a lifetime.
A purpose sets the aspect of one's personal nature - his character. And this doesn't change in the broadest sense. It is possible to change it, but not without a lot of serious self-examination and work extending oneself into new, uncharted areas of his life.
When any leader has gotten to where he is, by virtue of his purpose and by enrolling, willingly or unwillingly, millions of followers, and further, when his purpose is rooted in the soil of centuries, that person is not going to change. To pretend otherwise and enroll the American people on that idea is immensely, horrendously disingenuous. (It could only be done with such people who defer to faith as a valid mental action, be it in a specifically religious form or in a modern mystical form. Anyone who lives in and is oriented to the real, everyday world and is working to manifest their larger and long-range purposes and have some capacity to integrate ideas and the events of life, simply would not buy this idea. One has to revert to the "magical thinking" of childhood [a stage in an individual's development] in order to consider this a real possibility.)And yet, this is the foreign policy of this Administration that we are asked to swallow.
The cartoonists are reacting. (I got these from Sultan Knish's blog.)
Saturday, November 14, 2009
The Necessity of Wandering in a Desert for 40 Days and Nights in an Age of Abundance.
America seems to be in a phase of self-hatred. It has been going on for 40 years, starting small and growing into the current crescendo. Out of the 60s came people who thought America was a bad place - all dominating and treating people badly around the world. These stories have advanced to absurd proportions and at last, we have elected a president who is an expression of what I call, the American Distortion. President Obama holds up as the ideal before the United Nations "No nation should dominate another." (Since domination appears to occur quite naturally among all life, there's nothing like trying to create an anti-life vacuum. This is soooo Obama.) He then apologizes for America's dominance. He doesn't see much of anything that has been accomplished by America as a great thing. He, as I have said before, prefers sores to pick which naturally blinds him to accomplishments. So far as I can tell, he considers everything that America has produced a product of an evil system which causes evil men. He then feels perfectly justified taking property from one and giving to another, rearranging businesses to his liking and all of the kinds of actions that despots and tyrants throughout history have taken. (Hmm. Did he include himself as a product of America?)
Given that abundance has been all about us, why suddenly have people taken to making it wrong? If you notice, President Obama has done nothing to stimulate the economy. He's said he wants to use money to do that but then he passes it out to his cronies to insure his reelection. Almost no jobs have been created so he has taken to emphasizing that some have been 'saved', although no one knows how to measure that. Clearly President Obama and his Administration have a completely different view of man and what is appropriate for a man's life than I do.
To me this left turn into the desert is uncalled for and even mean spirited, but what if there is something underneath it that needs to be recognized. What if there is a lesson to be learned here.
There are two kinds of men - the one who knows who he is and knows where he is going, and the one who is lost and doesn't know where he is going. It is a much noticed phenomenon that rich kids are often lost. They have had everything and so they never had to figure out what is important. In relation to purposeful human beings, they appear as robust weeds in an otherwise naturally ordered garden.
But now we have a different phenomenon. Man has risen to the level of material abundance such that we have a society of rich kids. Thus we are seeing all kinds of thing that we have never seen before. We see kids who lose their lives to a computer game, never knowing what it is like to live in a real world rather than a virtual one. We see ordinary people weighing 300 pounds. With food so plentiful, they cannot resist the pleasures of food. They have not figured out how to reshape their values such that they use their resources for other things that will yield new pleasures and rewards.
So, how does one figure out what is important and make something of his life? Given that by and large human kind has handled the matter of his physical existence and we depended on going after those values to keep us true to what life requires, we are realizing that if that matter is largely handled we no longer have that truing-up mechanism to keep us present to what life requires. What we took for granted before can no longer be taken for granted. We are realizing that there is something deeper that we have to take care of. We cannot merely keep ourselves alive; we have to keep ourselves vital.
Or said another way, given that we have handled the material side of life, how do we reform the spiritual side of life given that vitality is a function of one's spiritual notions?
Clearly this problem can be handled two ways. One is to not see it as a problem and every time things get too good, arbitrarily create a situation such that one strips himself back to basics so he learns those lessons and knows who he is. In the vernacular of my upbringing, "Whenever a man get too cocky, he needs to be brought down off his high horse." The other is to embrace the progress and see this as a problem which progress itself brings.
Rather than all the preachers getting up on Sunday and telling people how evil they've been to have allowed themselves to be seduced by abundance and therefore gotten soft and lazy, what if they congratulated their congregations on their great achievement and then began the process of discovering the nature of living now that they have achieved that?
(And what's even worse about someone trying to solve the problem by damning the present and taking a person back to a previous solution is that it does not advance the knowledge required to handle the problem at this level. This suggests to me that the moral principles as formulated in old-time religion are not going to work for where we are now and that we need to look at this matter newly.)
A man to be effective must know his values. Further, he must know the ranking of his values. There are many choices made that are bad choices because one acts for a lower value and gives up a resource that he should have used to gain a higher value. If a dad is writing a book to earn a living and has children, chances are both are values high on his list of values. But which is higher? Writing the book or being with the children? If he chooses to be with the children, he gives up the time he could use to write the book. Likewise, if he spends his time writing the book, he gives up time he could be with his children. If his wife urges him to be with the children and he does so to please her, that doesn't work either. Who is he anyway? These are the questions that trouble men's souls.
All of these troubles fall into the category of forging oneself into a mighty purpose. To do that one has to know who he is. He has to know his values, what captures his energies such that he causes something to happen. Then he must rank them in a way that he knows supports the life he wants to live. After he has discovered this for himself and knows who he is, he is a force to be reckoned with. He becomes as a piece of steel that was once liquid but has now taken shape in a particular form.
In the Bible, Jesus went to the desert for 40 days and 40 nights. Why? I say, to sort himself out. He had to learn the ranking of his values and come to know who he was -- what was most important for him so he could design himself true to himself.* Thus, he made himself into a man who could be responsible for his own vitality.
In the Age of Abundance, if man is to advance, he must put in this sorting process. When living is not that hard, one isn't required to put forth much effort to obtain the values he needs to just keep himself alive. He can live well easily. But, in the doing of that, he has to watch that he doesn't give up the most important thing of life - his vitality - his life and what he could have made of himself. No one wants to die with that "On the Waterfront" line: "I could have been a contender."
Unless we tackle this problem, it grows and creates wild distortions in culture. We have parents who never sorted themselves out and are scared to death of alone time with only themselves for company. In raising their kids, they won't let them settle down into this sorting time because it threatens them, the parents. They can only see it as "something is wrong here."
But what if nothing is wrong? In fact, what if it is what the requirements of being human ordered? This is the opportunity hidden in the Age of Abundance. How does one sort through his values and craft them into a clear cut code such that he is able to use the resources he has in the best way he is able? This is the challenge of abundance and it is the challenge of political and personal freedom. This is a challenge we take up one at a time. Until we learn this, we, as a culture and society and as the leader of men to the full bounty of political freedom, are going to fall back into the old ways. Eras will be dedicated to learning this lesson until we master it and are able to go through it and beyond it.
And, we know what those old ways are. Our leaders tell everyone "There is something wrong here. We have sinned. Now it is time to exact punishment for those sins." Today how they do that is tax us within an inch of our lives and give it to their friends. Is this an uptick from how the Catholic church did it? Come in for confessions and leave your offering. You remain poor, we put our riches into the churches and institutions to take care of us. Hmmm. That's another seminar.
*When I say design himself true to himself what I'm saying is that there are two levels of things going on in man. At one level, he is determined by his nature. He possesses a life force which came with being born a living thing. That life force in a human being has a particular nature. It seeks to live and maintain itself and it has to do it a human way. Inside that, it will do it according to its particularity as an individual human being. Exactly what this nature is is part of what a man must discover about himself.
To be true to himself, he must act consistent with not only his nature as a man, but also consistent with the particular traits and aptitudes that he was born with. A successful design for one's life is mounted with full knowledge of oneself on that basic template. The truth? No one has full knowledge of himself at any point in time - ever. So what I mean is that one's mind is properly related to the facts one discovers about himself such that he is able to integrate and build on them.
People get into forcing themselves to be a particular way at the expense of their nature. The character of this is that they will not face a particular painful event that happened to themselves and integrate the facts of their lives. Consequently, there is a distortion in their personality which is shaped by this avoidance of anything which hints at that event which they have shaped themselves to avoid. (Character is not something that can be developed, I assert, until one has cleared out all of the generating factors of this distortion. Character is something one must develop by choice and it cannot be counted on until it is developed and held by choice.) Given this, they cannot discover their nature - their talents, the things they love, all the things that they cannot relax and enjoy because of the fear that has shaped their evaluations of their perceptions.
A big part of forming oneself is discovery. If one is not getting the things he wants in life, then he has to discover why that is so. He has to discover the misalignment of his values. He has to notice when he sacrifices himself (acts on a lower value and sacrifices a higher value) and why he doesn't like himself right then. This can be an involved process where at first one doesn't have many tools available to do it. But with an increase in the powers of inspection, he gains those tools. Once he understands what is going on, he is in a position to rearrange his values and cause a different outcome. And above all, he is in a position to design his own character. Once that is done, he becomes a force to be reckoned with. Until then, he's mere flotsam and jetsam, floating on the surf of humanity
Given that abundance has been all about us, why suddenly have people taken to making it wrong? If you notice, President Obama has done nothing to stimulate the economy. He's said he wants to use money to do that but then he passes it out to his cronies to insure his reelection. Almost no jobs have been created so he has taken to emphasizing that some have been 'saved', although no one knows how to measure that. Clearly President Obama and his Administration have a completely different view of man and what is appropriate for a man's life than I do.
To me this left turn into the desert is uncalled for and even mean spirited, but what if there is something underneath it that needs to be recognized. What if there is a lesson to be learned here.
There are two kinds of men - the one who knows who he is and knows where he is going, and the one who is lost and doesn't know where he is going. It is a much noticed phenomenon that rich kids are often lost. They have had everything and so they never had to figure out what is important. In relation to purposeful human beings, they appear as robust weeds in an otherwise naturally ordered garden.
But now we have a different phenomenon. Man has risen to the level of material abundance such that we have a society of rich kids. Thus we are seeing all kinds of thing that we have never seen before. We see kids who lose their lives to a computer game, never knowing what it is like to live in a real world rather than a virtual one. We see ordinary people weighing 300 pounds. With food so plentiful, they cannot resist the pleasures of food. They have not figured out how to reshape their values such that they use their resources for other things that will yield new pleasures and rewards.
So, how does one figure out what is important and make something of his life? Given that by and large human kind has handled the matter of his physical existence and we depended on going after those values to keep us true to what life requires, we are realizing that if that matter is largely handled we no longer have that truing-up mechanism to keep us present to what life requires. What we took for granted before can no longer be taken for granted. We are realizing that there is something deeper that we have to take care of. We cannot merely keep ourselves alive; we have to keep ourselves vital.
Or said another way, given that we have handled the material side of life, how do we reform the spiritual side of life given that vitality is a function of one's spiritual notions?
Clearly this problem can be handled two ways. One is to not see it as a problem and every time things get too good, arbitrarily create a situation such that one strips himself back to basics so he learns those lessons and knows who he is. In the vernacular of my upbringing, "Whenever a man get too cocky, he needs to be brought down off his high horse." The other is to embrace the progress and see this as a problem which progress itself brings.
Rather than all the preachers getting up on Sunday and telling people how evil they've been to have allowed themselves to be seduced by abundance and therefore gotten soft and lazy, what if they congratulated their congregations on their great achievement and then began the process of discovering the nature of living now that they have achieved that?
(And what's even worse about someone trying to solve the problem by damning the present and taking a person back to a previous solution is that it does not advance the knowledge required to handle the problem at this level. This suggests to me that the moral principles as formulated in old-time religion are not going to work for where we are now and that we need to look at this matter newly.)
A man to be effective must know his values. Further, he must know the ranking of his values. There are many choices made that are bad choices because one acts for a lower value and gives up a resource that he should have used to gain a higher value. If a dad is writing a book to earn a living and has children, chances are both are values high on his list of values. But which is higher? Writing the book or being with the children? If he chooses to be with the children, he gives up the time he could use to write the book. Likewise, if he spends his time writing the book, he gives up time he could be with his children. If his wife urges him to be with the children and he does so to please her, that doesn't work either. Who is he anyway? These are the questions that trouble men's souls.
All of these troubles fall into the category of forging oneself into a mighty purpose. To do that one has to know who he is. He has to know his values, what captures his energies such that he causes something to happen. Then he must rank them in a way that he knows supports the life he wants to live. After he has discovered this for himself and knows who he is, he is a force to be reckoned with. He becomes as a piece of steel that was once liquid but has now taken shape in a particular form.
In the Bible, Jesus went to the desert for 40 days and 40 nights. Why? I say, to sort himself out. He had to learn the ranking of his values and come to know who he was -- what was most important for him so he could design himself true to himself.* Thus, he made himself into a man who could be responsible for his own vitality.
In the Age of Abundance, if man is to advance, he must put in this sorting process. When living is not that hard, one isn't required to put forth much effort to obtain the values he needs to just keep himself alive. He can live well easily. But, in the doing of that, he has to watch that he doesn't give up the most important thing of life - his vitality - his life and what he could have made of himself. No one wants to die with that "On the Waterfront" line: "I could have been a contender."
Unless we tackle this problem, it grows and creates wild distortions in culture. We have parents who never sorted themselves out and are scared to death of alone time with only themselves for company. In raising their kids, they won't let them settle down into this sorting time because it threatens them, the parents. They can only see it as "something is wrong here."
But what if nothing is wrong? In fact, what if it is what the requirements of being human ordered? This is the opportunity hidden in the Age of Abundance. How does one sort through his values and craft them into a clear cut code such that he is able to use the resources he has in the best way he is able? This is the challenge of abundance and it is the challenge of political and personal freedom. This is a challenge we take up one at a time. Until we learn this, we, as a culture and society and as the leader of men to the full bounty of political freedom, are going to fall back into the old ways. Eras will be dedicated to learning this lesson until we master it and are able to go through it and beyond it.
And, we know what those old ways are. Our leaders tell everyone "There is something wrong here. We have sinned. Now it is time to exact punishment for those sins." Today how they do that is tax us within an inch of our lives and give it to their friends. Is this an uptick from how the Catholic church did it? Come in for confessions and leave your offering. You remain poor, we put our riches into the churches and institutions to take care of us. Hmmm. That's another seminar.
*When I say design himself true to himself what I'm saying is that there are two levels of things going on in man. At one level, he is determined by his nature. He possesses a life force which came with being born a living thing. That life force in a human being has a particular nature. It seeks to live and maintain itself and it has to do it a human way. Inside that, it will do it according to its particularity as an individual human being. Exactly what this nature is is part of what a man must discover about himself.
To be true to himself, he must act consistent with not only his nature as a man, but also consistent with the particular traits and aptitudes that he was born with. A successful design for one's life is mounted with full knowledge of oneself on that basic template. The truth? No one has full knowledge of himself at any point in time - ever. So what I mean is that one's mind is properly related to the facts one discovers about himself such that he is able to integrate and build on them.
People get into forcing themselves to be a particular way at the expense of their nature. The character of this is that they will not face a particular painful event that happened to themselves and integrate the facts of their lives. Consequently, there is a distortion in their personality which is shaped by this avoidance of anything which hints at that event which they have shaped themselves to avoid. (Character is not something that can be developed, I assert, until one has cleared out all of the generating factors of this distortion. Character is something one must develop by choice and it cannot be counted on until it is developed and held by choice.) Given this, they cannot discover their nature - their talents, the things they love, all the things that they cannot relax and enjoy because of the fear that has shaped their evaluations of their perceptions.
A big part of forming oneself is discovery. If one is not getting the things he wants in life, then he has to discover why that is so. He has to discover the misalignment of his values. He has to notice when he sacrifices himself (acts on a lower value and sacrifices a higher value) and why he doesn't like himself right then. This can be an involved process where at first one doesn't have many tools available to do it. But with an increase in the powers of inspection, he gains those tools. Once he understands what is going on, he is in a position to rearrange his values and cause a different outcome. And above all, he is in a position to design his own character. Once that is done, he becomes a force to be reckoned with. Until then, he's mere flotsam and jetsam, floating on the surf of humanity
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Is it Race or Class? Both Collectivist!
I read this article by Sultan Knish. You can go to the website by clicking on the title of the article below which is a link.
I think this interpretation of the Gates episode makes the most sense of any I've read. The issue of race which Obama seeks to keep in place covers a much deeper power issue - not the earned power, be it economic or intelligence, of individual citizens developing themselves, but the political power of a some individuals over others. Obama has, in every way he can, manifest the trappings of an imperial presidency. The one thing he cannot see and will have to learn the hard way is that he has to earn it - not by rhetoric, but by results which work. He's not merely weak in this area, he eschews it as necessary. Why? He won.
Race, Class and Henry Louis Gates in Obama's America
In the wake of the Gates arrest heard 'round the world, the media, Obama and of course Henry Louis Gates himself, have done their best to position this as a black and white incident, the collision of two men divided by race. But in fact the arrest of Henry Louis Gates was not about two men divided by race, but two men divided by class.
Henry Louis Gates was not arrested because he was black. He was arrested because he was a famous man who felt entitled to tell off a middle class police officer, warning him, "You don't know who you're messing with." Those are not the words of a powerless victim of America's racial oppression. They're the words of an important man who was warning the low paid city employee he was dealing with, that he was too prominent to be touched.
And indeed the remaining narrative, which moved from a media firestorm over a simple arrest, to a supportive statement from the White House, proved Gates right. Crowley indeed didn't "know who he was messing with". He was messing not with a black man, but with a rich and important man. A man who was above the law.
Had Gates been arrested because he was a black man, there would have been no media response and no attention from the White House. Had Henry Louis Gates been a plumber or an associate professor whose name wasn't listed in Who's Who in America, with three names, and a list of titles and awards long enough to choke a whale-- his arrest would never have made the news. Nor would Gates have acted the way he did.
Once arrested, Gates and his defenders cynically used race as a smokescreen to conceal the real issue, which was class. Henry Louis Gates was not the victim of racism, he was the beneficiary of it. And all the media's huffing and puffing about race in America cannot successfully transform a wealthy and prominent man who felt free to warn a police sergeant, "You don't know who you're messing with" into a victim.
Gates' arrest elicited sympathy from Obama, not because Gates shares a race with him, but because Henry Louis Gates shares a class with him. Like Gates, Obama has cynically done his best to exploit a racial guilt that has nothing to do, not only with him, but not even with his ancestors, to provide cover for his arrogance and sense of entitlement. Like the collision between Obama and Palin, the collision between Gates and Crowley, was a blatant clash of class, not race.
So too when Obama felt free enough to complain to his fellow upper class elitists at a San Francisco fundraiser about the middle class and lower class folks, "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion", it was not a racial complaint, it was a typically upper class liberal complaint. That same sense of class entitlement would feed the Obama campaign's fury against Sarah Palin for stepping outside her class, and proceed to portray her as ignorant white trash. So too Obama's media cult and Gates were eager enough to portray Crowley as thuggish and racist, only halting when they realized that their narrative had been disproven and was actually producing a backlash.
When black officers blasted Gates and in turn Obama, it ripped away the mask of race, and revealed the underlying issue of class. It was no longer one white man and one black man, but the middle class hardworking police officers pitted against the wealthy and powerful Henry Louis Gates and Barack Obama. And that was a dangerous narrative, particularly after Obama had run up a tremendous deficit bailing out Wall Street banks and car companies.
Obama's condescending gambit of a beer summit was meant to appeal to what he thought were the sensibilities of the middle class white men he had offended. Of course that in turn served as a forum for Elizabeth Gates, Henry Louis Gates' daughter to pen an essay snidely commenting on Crowley's daughter's eyeliner, "she was wearing an appropriately heavy and charmingly untrained amount of green eyeliner on her lower lashes", again a comment denoting a class putdown, rather than a racial putdown.
In the famous photo of Crowley helping Gates walk, Americans may have seen compassion, but Gates only saw a lower class city employee providing service to a prominent civic figure. It is how Gates truly saw the conflict all along.
While American liberals insist on exploiting the arrest to argue that race remains a serious issue for Americans, the fact that large numbers of Americans were willing to vote for a black man into the top post in the nation suggests otherwise. It is not race that haunts America, but class. Yet what class is Henry Louis Gates?
Gates is not a captain of industry. He did not make money or gain fame inventing anything that people needed, or marketing a product that millions of Americans want. Instead Gates is a racial profiteer. A cleaner more academic version of Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, running an institute named after W.E. Du Bois, a well known Communist who supported virtually every atrocity the USSR carried out, and was even willing to back Imperial Japan's massacres in China, in the name of race.
That is something which Gates has in common with Obama. Neither of the two men honestly came by their fame, fortune and positions. They came by them by exploiting racial guilt, not for any larger benefit, but for their own class standing. Behind all the twaddle about role models, is the elitism of two men, neither of whom have worked for a living, but who built up images of themselves as representing a race, in order to partake of the benefits of a class.
The rise of Obama, like the rise of Gates, is a story not of race, but of political parasitism. It is also the larger story of an America in which hard work no longer matters, in which it is safe to sneer at the middle class values of a Crowley or a Palin, because they represent an old fashioned dedication to achievement and duty, that is no longer meant to be relevant in the "New America".
In the "New America" you don't get recognized for hard work. You get recognized for being the squeaky wheel. For turning yourself into a brand. For finding an identity and marketing it for all you can. Race, gender, sexual identity, ethnicity are only counters in a larger game of media politics that everyone can play, but only a few can succeed at.
It's not about the 9 to 5 anymore. It's about the 12 to 3 in a four day week. It's about the triumph over the middle class by people who excel at talking, but not at working. It's about playing divide and conquer with a multicultural America, certain that no matter how it goes, you will always pocket the winnings. It's not just about class, it's about the new class. The one that doesn't earn money, but has it transferred over from the coffers of the taxpayer. It's not about America. It's about the New America. It's about the Obama's America.
And if you're "unfortunate" enough to still believe in hard work and doing your job as best as you can, you don't belong in it anymore. Here have a beer. Then help Henry Louis Gates, Jr, down the stairs.
___________________________________________
This picture has been circulating on the web today. I found it on an NBC website. While I'm sure that some people see this as appropriate in the "Royal Style," I see it as bad taste. It is one more indication of Obama's desparate need to possess the trappings of importance.
A couple months ago I saw a video where O was going for burgers and fries. The limo pulled up, he got in and the first thing he did was throw his feet on the seat opposite as would an unknowing or disrespting child. I was offended to see a 47-year old adult do such a thing. I'm one of the taxpayers that own that limo. I wouldn't want him coming into my house treating my stuff that way and I didn't like it he treated "my" limo that way. This attitude is endemic to his presidency, if not his life.
What am I learning from all this? Disgust is more formidable than fear to move beyond.
I think this interpretation of the Gates episode makes the most sense of any I've read. The issue of race which Obama seeks to keep in place covers a much deeper power issue - not the earned power, be it economic or intelligence, of individual citizens developing themselves, but the political power of a some individuals over others. Obama has, in every way he can, manifest the trappings of an imperial presidency. The one thing he cannot see and will have to learn the hard way is that he has to earn it - not by rhetoric, but by results which work. He's not merely weak in this area, he eschews it as necessary. Why? He won.
Race, Class and Henry Louis Gates in Obama's America
In the wake of the Gates arrest heard 'round the world, the media, Obama and of course Henry Louis Gates himself, have done their best to position this as a black and white incident, the collision of two men divided by race. But in fact the arrest of Henry Louis Gates was not about two men divided by race, but two men divided by class.
Henry Louis Gates was not arrested because he was black. He was arrested because he was a famous man who felt entitled to tell off a middle class police officer, warning him, "You don't know who you're messing with." Those are not the words of a powerless victim of America's racial oppression. They're the words of an important man who was warning the low paid city employee he was dealing with, that he was too prominent to be touched.And indeed the remaining narrative, which moved from a media firestorm over a simple arrest, to a supportive statement from the White House, proved Gates right. Crowley indeed didn't "know who he was messing with". He was messing not with a black man, but with a rich and important man. A man who was above the law.
Had Gates been arrested because he was a black man, there would have been no media response and no attention from the White House. Had Henry Louis Gates been a plumber or an associate professor whose name wasn't listed in Who's Who in America, with three names, and a list of titles and awards long enough to choke a whale-- his arrest would never have made the news. Nor would Gates have acted the way he did.
Once arrested, Gates and his defenders cynically used race as a smokescreen to conceal the real issue, which was class. Henry Louis Gates was not the victim of racism, he was the beneficiary of it. And all the media's huffing and puffing about race in America cannot successfully transform a wealthy and prominent man who felt free to warn a police sergeant, "You don't know who you're messing with" into a victim.
Gates' arrest elicited sympathy from Obama, not because Gates shares a race with him, but because Henry Louis Gates shares a class with him. Like Gates, Obama has cynically done his best to exploit a racial guilt that has nothing to do, not only with him, but not even with his ancestors, to provide cover for his arrogance and sense of entitlement. Like the collision between Obama and Palin, the collision between Gates and Crowley, was a blatant clash of class, not race.
So too when Obama felt free enough to complain to his fellow upper class elitists at a San Francisco fundraiser about the middle class and lower class folks, "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion", it was not a racial complaint, it was a typically upper class liberal complaint. That same sense of class entitlement would feed the Obama campaign's fury against Sarah Palin for stepping outside her class, and proceed to portray her as ignorant white trash. So too Obama's media cult and Gates were eager enough to portray Crowley as thuggish and racist, only halting when they realized that their narrative had been disproven and was actually producing a backlash.
When black officers blasted Gates and in turn Obama, it ripped away the mask of race, and revealed the underlying issue of class. It was no longer one white man and one black man, but the middle class hardworking police officers pitted against the wealthy and powerful Henry Louis Gates and Barack Obama. And that was a dangerous narrative, particularly after Obama had run up a tremendous deficit bailing out Wall Street banks and car companies.
Obama's condescending gambit of a beer summit was meant to appeal to what he thought were the sensibilities of the middle class white men he had offended. Of course that in turn served as a forum for Elizabeth Gates, Henry Louis Gates' daughter to pen an essay snidely commenting on Crowley's daughter's eyeliner, "she was wearing an appropriately heavy and charmingly untrained amount of green eyeliner on her lower lashes", again a comment denoting a class putdown, rather than a racial putdown.
In the famous photo of Crowley helping Gates walk, Americans may have seen compassion, but Gates only saw a lower class city employee providing service to a prominent civic figure. It is how Gates truly saw the conflict all along.While American liberals insist on exploiting the arrest to argue that race remains a serious issue for Americans, the fact that large numbers of Americans were willing to vote for a black man into the top post in the nation suggests otherwise. It is not race that haunts America, but class. Yet what class is Henry Louis Gates?
Gates is not a captain of industry. He did not make money or gain fame inventing anything that people needed, or marketing a product that millions of Americans want. Instead Gates is a racial profiteer. A cleaner more academic version of Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, running an institute named after W.E. Du Bois, a well known Communist who supported virtually every atrocity the USSR carried out, and was even willing to back Imperial Japan's massacres in China, in the name of race.
That is something which Gates has in common with Obama. Neither of the two men honestly came by their fame, fortune and positions. They came by them by exploiting racial guilt, not for any larger benefit, but for their own class standing. Behind all the twaddle about role models, is the elitism of two men, neither of whom have worked for a living, but who built up images of themselves as representing a race, in order to partake of the benefits of a class.
The rise of Obama, like the rise of Gates, is a story not of race, but of political parasitism. It is also the larger story of an America in which hard work no longer matters, in which it is safe to sneer at the middle class values of a Crowley or a Palin, because they represent an old fashioned dedication to achievement and duty, that is no longer meant to be relevant in the "New America".
In the "New America" you don't get recognized for hard work. You get recognized for being the squeaky wheel. For turning yourself into a brand. For finding an identity and marketing it for all you can. Race, gender, sexual identity, ethnicity are only counters in a larger game of media politics that everyone can play, but only a few can succeed at.
It's not about the 9 to 5 anymore. It's about the 12 to 3 in a four day week. It's about the triumph over the middle class by people who excel at talking, but not at working. It's about playing divide and conquer with a multicultural America, certain that no matter how it goes, you will always pocket the winnings. It's not just about class, it's about the new class. The one that doesn't earn money, but has it transferred over from the coffers of the taxpayer. It's not about America. It's about the New America. It's about the Obama's America.And if you're "unfortunate" enough to still believe in hard work and doing your job as best as you can, you don't belong in it anymore. Here have a beer. Then help Henry Louis Gates, Jr, down the stairs.
___________________________________________
This picture has been circulating on the web today. I found it on an NBC website. While I'm sure that some people see this as appropriate in the "Royal Style," I see it as bad taste. It is one more indication of Obama's desparate need to possess the trappings of importance.
A couple months ago I saw a video where O was going for burgers and fries. The limo pulled up, he got in and the first thing he did was throw his feet on the seat opposite as would an unknowing or disrespting child. I was offended to see a 47-year old adult do such a thing. I'm one of the taxpayers that own that limo. I wouldn't want him coming into my house treating my stuff that way and I didn't like it he treated "my" limo that way. This attitude is endemic to his presidency, if not his life.
What am I learning from all this? Disgust is more formidable than fear to move beyond.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
The Coming Leadership Vacuum
I think Obama has just about worn out his rhetoric.
The things he is willing to say about how great universal health care is going to be, how it won't cost us anything, how it will save our economy, on and on, is over the top - WAY over the top. I can no longer listen to him without involuntary yelling BULLLL SHIT! There is simply no way he can have what he says come true except at a tremendous cost to America and to his authority in every way other than "he got it done" - if he does.
The cost will be in the results. The relationship with your doctor will be gone. The costs of health care will skyrocket because when it is free there are no brakes on its use. And with that, the clampdown necessarily will descend upon us. How that will look, I don't know. I just know that the quality we now have will decrease, and decrease, and decrease. Of course, those politicians got to get paid - they and their bedfellows. That part will increase. The best and the brightest in that industry will do something else more rewarding than being under the gun of an Emergency Room pace every day for the rest of their lives and not get paid enough in money or respect and appreciation.
Maybe that decreased quality will look like the English where they don't use anesthesia for dental work. Or maybe it will look like the Canadians where you have to wait at least a month for an MRI that may make the difference between living and dying. And if that isn't enough to gall you, your pet can get an MRI the next day because freedom and competition reign in pet health care. One thing that will happen is that old people will be flushed. They are not the productive ones doing most of the paying for the system. And speaking of paying, the wealthy will have moved their wealth elsewhere so it cannot be taxed and insofar as America is concerned, they will have gone Galt or maybe just "gone fishin'."
And health care is just a piece of it. Where are Obama's triumphs in foreign policy? Isn't democracy, the term he does use, meaningless unless people are free? Where was he when the dissidents of Iran were putting their lives at stake for freedom? Oh, I know, not meddling while desiring to shake the bloody hands of their dictators in what he hopes will be some agreement about nuclear weapons. Am I supposed to believe that if Iran's dictators tromp down the lives of their own people their agreements with us, Satin incarnate, will amount to anything?
I haven't heard any hosannas regarding his foreign policy ideas, have you? I see there are some Russians and some Arabs that don't think much of them or apparently, even of him. Now let's see, is that him as his role or him as a person? Maybe they smell the same thing I smell.
And where was he when Honduras realized that its leader was going to install himself as their dictator? When the people stood up to his actions, Obama supported the future dictator. Great. Obama is someone you want in your corner? Right? Wellll - not if freedom is at stake.
From what it looks like, a recession which normally takes about two years to correct will likely last much longer - maybe ten years. Obama is doing all the same kinds of things FDR did to stretch that recession into ten years. Tell me that the best thing to do if you lose your job is to go out and borrow as much money as you can and spend it? Oh really?
And don't get me started on Cap and Trade and Gore's fantasy. Now that is a scam. I expect the Congress to fund, with billions, research and then a program to teach cows to not fart. On the other hand, maybe they will teach them how to light a fart.
At some point, Obama is going to be only a voice desperately trying to be listened to. The people will look elsewhere for leadership - real leadership - not this posturing kind of leadership. The leadership vacuum will then be manifest. How long until then? Not sure. But I am picking up a vibe.
Postmodern philosophy tells us that the truth is a social construction and that everything is political. Politics is how the truth is determined, they say. Obama thinks he is The Truth and The Way (that's why we and every other country around the world suffer his constant moralizing) and that he can control that social construction. To my way of thinking, he's a fool trying to control a fickle master, given his way of being. Much better to ground himself in reality and construct truth on that. It doesn't shift and suddenly wash out from under you.
Worrying about the consensus and leadership don't ride in the same boat. And this boat is headed for a vacuum in leadership.
As painful as it is to watch this happening up close and personal, my hope is that it ends postmodernism and the socialist ideal forever. There are no good people nor right way to make socialism work. It is founded on a false premise. You simply cannot change a man to a being that will systematically sacrifice his own life without gutting him of his will to live or drive him into rebellion. And that is true even if he holds the ideal. I don't know of any Blacks in America touting the wonders of slavery. I don't expect them nor the Whites nor the Hispanics nor the Orientals nor any human being to be touting it this time around.
Does America have a true leader that can step into this vacuum? You know, the one that understands that America's Constitution was a breakthrough in human history that set forth the rights of the individual as primary and constructed the state to protect those rights? The one that understands the progress of human history and gets us back on the right track? Where is that leader?
The things he is willing to say about how great universal health care is going to be, how it won't cost us anything, how it will save our economy, on and on, is over the top - WAY over the top. I can no longer listen to him without involuntary yelling BULLLL SHIT! There is simply no way he can have what he says come true except at a tremendous cost to America and to his authority in every way other than "he got it done" - if he does.
The cost will be in the results. The relationship with your doctor will be gone. The costs of health care will skyrocket because when it is free there are no brakes on its use. And with that, the clampdown necessarily will descend upon us. How that will look, I don't know. I just know that the quality we now have will decrease, and decrease, and decrease. Of course, those politicians got to get paid - they and their bedfellows. That part will increase. The best and the brightest in that industry will do something else more rewarding than being under the gun of an Emergency Room pace every day for the rest of their lives and not get paid enough in money or respect and appreciation.
Maybe that decreased quality will look like the English where they don't use anesthesia for dental work. Or maybe it will look like the Canadians where you have to wait at least a month for an MRI that may make the difference between living and dying. And if that isn't enough to gall you, your pet can get an MRI the next day because freedom and competition reign in pet health care. One thing that will happen is that old people will be flushed. They are not the productive ones doing most of the paying for the system. And speaking of paying, the wealthy will have moved their wealth elsewhere so it cannot be taxed and insofar as America is concerned, they will have gone Galt or maybe just "gone fishin'."
And health care is just a piece of it. Where are Obama's triumphs in foreign policy? Isn't democracy, the term he does use, meaningless unless people are free? Where was he when the dissidents of Iran were putting their lives at stake for freedom? Oh, I know, not meddling while desiring to shake the bloody hands of their dictators in what he hopes will be some agreement about nuclear weapons. Am I supposed to believe that if Iran's dictators tromp down the lives of their own people their agreements with us, Satin incarnate, will amount to anything?
I haven't heard any hosannas regarding his foreign policy ideas, have you? I see there are some Russians and some Arabs that don't think much of them or apparently, even of him. Now let's see, is that him as his role or him as a person? Maybe they smell the same thing I smell.
And where was he when Honduras realized that its leader was going to install himself as their dictator? When the people stood up to his actions, Obama supported the future dictator. Great. Obama is someone you want in your corner? Right? Wellll - not if freedom is at stake.
From what it looks like, a recession which normally takes about two years to correct will likely last much longer - maybe ten years. Obama is doing all the same kinds of things FDR did to stretch that recession into ten years. Tell me that the best thing to do if you lose your job is to go out and borrow as much money as you can and spend it? Oh really?
And don't get me started on Cap and Trade and Gore's fantasy. Now that is a scam. I expect the Congress to fund, with billions, research and then a program to teach cows to not fart. On the other hand, maybe they will teach them how to light a fart.
At some point, Obama is going to be only a voice desperately trying to be listened to. The people will look elsewhere for leadership - real leadership - not this posturing kind of leadership. The leadership vacuum will then be manifest. How long until then? Not sure. But I am picking up a vibe.
Postmodern philosophy tells us that the truth is a social construction and that everything is political. Politics is how the truth is determined, they say. Obama thinks he is The Truth and The Way (that's why we and every other country around the world suffer his constant moralizing) and that he can control that social construction. To my way of thinking, he's a fool trying to control a fickle master, given his way of being. Much better to ground himself in reality and construct truth on that. It doesn't shift and suddenly wash out from under you.
Worrying about the consensus and leadership don't ride in the same boat. And this boat is headed for a vacuum in leadership.
As painful as it is to watch this happening up close and personal, my hope is that it ends postmodernism and the socialist ideal forever. There are no good people nor right way to make socialism work. It is founded on a false premise. You simply cannot change a man to a being that will systematically sacrifice his own life without gutting him of his will to live or drive him into rebellion. And that is true even if he holds the ideal. I don't know of any Blacks in America touting the wonders of slavery. I don't expect them nor the Whites nor the Hispanics nor the Orientals nor any human being to be touting it this time around.
Does America have a true leader that can step into this vacuum? You know, the one that understands that America's Constitution was a breakthrough in human history that set forth the rights of the individual as primary and constructed the state to protect those rights? The one that understands the progress of human history and gets us back on the right track? Where is that leader?
Monday, July 6, 2009
The Palin Episode
The news this past weekend featured Sarah Palin quitting her job as Governor of Alaska. What do you make of this?
She said that her being Governor has become a burden on the state. She, having run for national office, has incurred numerous lawsuits for which she has had to mount a defense. Apparently they all were ethics charges and I understand that all of them have been proven baseless. Nevertheless, this has cost Alaska millions of $s and her personally somewhere around a half million dollars.
I think she takes her oath of office seriously and I think she saw that it cost her and the state a lot for her to run for Vice President. With that past and this still mounting up, it makes sense that she would question whether she is fulfilling the purpose for which she took her oath of office.
At this point, I am taking her at her word.
All the facts behind her words could be checked out by any responsible news organization. I have not heard that they have been. All I hear are opinions and speculations as to her motives, her future, her character - whatever. None of it makes a damn bit of difference in my book.
If she lied about the facts, Sarah Palin is done.
If she told the truth about the facts, she struck a blow for honor.
Honor. Now there's something woefully lacking in our public life. I mean, where do you find anyone these days that honors the oath they took or the word they give?
In politics it's deuces wild. Reverend Wright encouraged us to buy into the cynicism that surrounds politicians. "Weeell, Barack is a politician. What do you expect?" The lowlife know that if you are cynical, they thrive.
I'm sure Palin has a purpose. Exactly what it is, I don't know.
I do know she electrified the Republicans and conservatives big time last year. That hasn't really gone away which is why I think the Left is still working overtime to destroy her any despicable way they can. Whether she can capitalize on the excitement she created, time will tell.
In the meantime I'm saying that Palin has some honor to her and I hope she can use that to bring honor to our political and cultural conversation.
I wish her the best.
(I'd like to give her a little coaching on her gravitas, but that's another story.)
She said that her being Governor has become a burden on the state. She, having run for national office, has incurred numerous lawsuits for which she has had to mount a defense. Apparently they all were ethics charges and I understand that all of them have been proven baseless. Nevertheless, this has cost Alaska millions of $s and her personally somewhere around a half million dollars.
I think she takes her oath of office seriously and I think she saw that it cost her and the state a lot for her to run for Vice President. With that past and this still mounting up, it makes sense that she would question whether she is fulfilling the purpose for which she took her oath of office.
At this point, I am taking her at her word.
All the facts behind her words could be checked out by any responsible news organization. I have not heard that they have been. All I hear are opinions and speculations as to her motives, her future, her character - whatever. None of it makes a damn bit of difference in my book.
If she lied about the facts, Sarah Palin is done.
If she told the truth about the facts, she struck a blow for honor.
Honor. Now there's something woefully lacking in our public life. I mean, where do you find anyone these days that honors the oath they took or the word they give?
In politics it's deuces wild. Reverend Wright encouraged us to buy into the cynicism that surrounds politicians. "Weeell, Barack is a politician. What do you expect?" The lowlife know that if you are cynical, they thrive.
I'm sure Palin has a purpose. Exactly what it is, I don't know.
I do know she electrified the Republicans and conservatives big time last year. That hasn't really gone away which is why I think the Left is still working overtime to destroy her any despicable way they can. Whether she can capitalize on the excitement she created, time will tell.
In the meantime I'm saying that Palin has some honor to her and I hope she can use that to bring honor to our political and cultural conversation.
I wish her the best.
(I'd like to give her a little coaching on her gravitas, but that's another story.)
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Bail Bill Upholds Unreality - Kill It
Here is an article by Robert Tracinski who writes the TIA Daily column. I'm copying it whole as it is great to get your feet on the ground in terms of free market principles. Also, I must say that I am shocked regarding Bernake's complete disregard for what has the free market work. After reading this and his attempt at Czardom, I'm persuaded the guy is a psychopath.
TIA Daily • October 1, 2008
Kill the Bailout
The Government Can't Rewrite Reality
The House of Representatives deserves praise for taking swift action to avert a growing economic crisis—by not approving the trillion-dollar financial bailout plan.
The bailout bill was blocked Monday by a rebellion among House Republicans, who voted two-to-one against a plan they consider a step down the "slippery slope to socialism," in the words of Texas Representative Jeb Hensarling.
They are absolutely correct, and the 133 Republicans who voted to stop this coup against the financial markets—not to mention some of the 95 Democrats who may have balked for similar reasons—need to find the courage to stand firm. That's especially true since the Senate is likely to vote today to approve the bailout.
The Senate is supposed to serve, in James Madison's analogy, as the "cooling saucer" for the hot tea served up by the House—but in this case, it is the House that has remained cool and refused to panic. That's because the hysterical demand for a bailout didn't come up from the people; it came down from the elites in Washington and Manhattan. The House is reflecting the sensible skepticism coming up from the folks on Main Street who don't want to pay the bills for bailing out Hank Paulson's former colleagues on Wall Street.
Some cold, realistic scrutiny of the bailout is desperately needed because this plan is not just an attack on the free market. It is an attack on reality. The financial crisis was caused by more than a decade of using government power to rewrite the facts of reality and override the judgment of the market, and the bailout just offers more of the same fantasy economics.
Congress wanted everyone to be able to get a mortgage to buy a home, regardless of income, credit history, or ability to save for a down payment. The name for this contradiction was "affordable housing," an initiative aimed at providing the benefits of home ownership to those who could not, in fact, afford it. So when the market concluded that low-income borrowers could not meet the credit requirements for mortgages, the Clinton administration invoked trumped-up charges of racism to expand enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act, bullying banks into dropping as "arbitrary" such old-fashioned credit standards as proof of income. And when the market balked at the increased credit risk created by these loans, Congress backed the expansion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-sponsored enterprises that used federally guaranteed money to buy up the increasingly risky mortgages.
At every point, when the market sent the message that reality would not support the higher level of risk being taken on by mortgage lenders, the government used its power to override this message.
The vigorous government-created market for riskier "sub-prime" loans masked the real dangers, creating the illusion that increased profits could be obtained without increased risk—an illusion that encouraged some private lenders to follow Fannie and Freddie's lead. To be sure, some of this private risk-taking was part of the normal process of failure in a capitalist economy. A large part of the current financial upheaval originated with high-risk investment banks and hedge funds that held large amounts of mortgage-backed securities. These securities were carefully balanced against one another according to mathematical formulas that were calculated to cancel out their risks. But the mathematical formulas were new and hadn't been tested in a bear market. When the downturn came, they failed.
This is a normal part of the rough and tumble of capitalism. All of the current talk about the "failure" of the free market ignores the fact that the process of failure is a crucial benefit of the free market. In a capitalist system, high-risk firms are always trying out new and untested ideas, and failure is the messenger that tells the market which strategies work and which strategies don't. It is also an indispensable corrective mechanism that moves capital from enterprises with failing strategies to those with successful strategies.
But the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve have repeatedly short-circuited this mechanism by trying to outlaw failure. When the market sent the message that too many bad loans had been made and that this needed to be corrected by a contraction in the amount of available credit, the government wanted to avoid the unpleasant consequences of such a contraction. So the Federal Reserve papered over the facts—with a flurry of paper money—by artificially reducing interest rates and loosening up credit just when it needed to be tightened.
But that didn't change the underlying facts, and the bad investments still went bad. Yet as the market has sent the message that some firms have become over-extended and are no longer solvent, the government has still tried to avoid letting the market face the facts. The Treasury and the Fed kept trying to rewrite reality by orchestrating a series of government-backed bailouts.
Over at RealClearMarkets, Joseph Calhoun points out a crucial part of this assault on facts:
There has always been a stigma attached to borrowing directly from the Fed and for good reason. If a bank can’t get other banks to lend it money, that tells the market something about the condition of the bank in question.
Last August, Bernanke convinced three large banks to borrow at the discount window in an effort to remove that stigma. When that didn’t work, he concocted a scheme to allow banks to borrow from the Fed in anonymity via a mechanism he called the Term Auction Facility. When Bear Stearns blew up, he added the Term Securities Lending Facility for investment banks. By removing the stigma of borrowing from the Fed and hiding the identity of the borrowers, Bernanke removed important information from the market.
So the Fed's approach to potential bank failures was to try to help failing banks pretend that they weren't failing.
Or consider the SEC's ban on short sales for a list of about 700 stocks—with more companies lobbying to get themselves put on the list. Again, the whole approach of the SEC is not to prevent companies from failing, but to help them pretend that they are not failing, by outlawing trades that would tend to drive their stock prices down.
In fact, all that this sort of policy has achieved is to expand business failures. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, for example, it had been in negotiations with several major financial institutions who were considering investing billions in a private buy-out of the firm. But they balked at making the deal because they were waiting for the Fed to offer incentives and guarantees. Thus, the Fed's yelping about how each bankruptcy of a Wall Street firm poses a risk of "systemic failure" turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the prospect of an open-ended series of bailouts is blocking all of the mechanisms by which a free market actually prevents widespread failure.
The bailout package would have the government buy out up to $700 billion worth of bad loans. But this is merely delaying the re-pricing of those loans to their proper value. Left to themselves, the holders of these loans would eventually find it necessary to sell them at pennies on the dollar; Merrill Lynch sold its bad loans at 22 cents on the dollar. Private companies could then recognize the magnitude of the loss and start to rebuild their businesses with the remaining assets they possess. But now no firm has an incentive to sell off its bad loans. Why dump them for 22 cents on the dollar when the government might buy them, a few weeks later, at 50 or 80 cents?
So instead what is going to happen is that the federal government is going to go into the financial markets and dictate which securities are worth how much. It is still unclear exactly which loans the government will buy or how much it will pay for them, so no private investor can say whether an investment will pay off or not. This is how the prospect of a government bailout blocks the private buyouts that would actually clean all of the bad debt out of the system.
Instead, this plan transforms the US Treasury into a trillion-dollar hedge fund, making investments in securities whose proper market value is unknown and promising its shareholders—us—that unlike the best Wall Street investment banks, Treasury bureaucrats really know how to make a profit on sub-prime mortgage loans. That's why probably the best comment on the bailout is an e-mail making the rounds on Capitol Hill presenting Paulson's pitch for the bailout deal—in the style of a Nigerian banking scam. "I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude," it begins. Time to hit the "delete" button.
The bailout represents more of the same problems that got us here because it is backed by all of the same people who created those problems. And I'm not just talking about Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who organized the series of ad hoc bailouts that spread uncertainty through the financial industry. Much worse is the fact that a chief negotiator for the bailout is House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, the chief sponsor of the "affordable housing" scam. And as for Barack Obama, Stanley Kurtz exposes the role played by ACORN, Obama's former employer as a "community organizer." It turns out that a big part of ACORN's "community organizing" was to use thug tactics and the threat of government regulation to intimidate banks into making high-risk mortgage loans.
Fortunately, the public has the good sense to smell that something is rotten. I just got an e-mail recounting what Virginia Representative Jim Moran told Fox News: that calls from constituents commenting on the bailout were running 50-50—50% "no" and 50% "hell, no."
The House should not simply delay the bailout bill or mitigate its worst features; that will prolong the uncertainty in the financial markets. Instead, they need to make sure that the bailout meets with firm and repeated rejection over the next week, preferably by a growing margin of votes.
It is time for the House to kill the bailout and kill it decisively.
It is time for Congress to stop the government from rewriting reality, so that the market can be free to recognize the facts, pick up the pieces of failing firms, and begin rebuilding.
TIA Daily • October 1, 2008
Kill the Bailout
The Government Can't Rewrite Reality
The House of Representatives deserves praise for taking swift action to avert a growing economic crisis—by not approving the trillion-dollar financial bailout plan.
The bailout bill was blocked Monday by a rebellion among House Republicans, who voted two-to-one against a plan they consider a step down the "slippery slope to socialism," in the words of Texas Representative Jeb Hensarling.
They are absolutely correct, and the 133 Republicans who voted to stop this coup against the financial markets—not to mention some of the 95 Democrats who may have balked for similar reasons—need to find the courage to stand firm. That's especially true since the Senate is likely to vote today to approve the bailout.
The Senate is supposed to serve, in James Madison's analogy, as the "cooling saucer" for the hot tea served up by the House—but in this case, it is the House that has remained cool and refused to panic. That's because the hysterical demand for a bailout didn't come up from the people; it came down from the elites in Washington and Manhattan. The House is reflecting the sensible skepticism coming up from the folks on Main Street who don't want to pay the bills for bailing out Hank Paulson's former colleagues on Wall Street.
Some cold, realistic scrutiny of the bailout is desperately needed because this plan is not just an attack on the free market. It is an attack on reality. The financial crisis was caused by more than a decade of using government power to rewrite the facts of reality and override the judgment of the market, and the bailout just offers more of the same fantasy economics.
Congress wanted everyone to be able to get a mortgage to buy a home, regardless of income, credit history, or ability to save for a down payment. The name for this contradiction was "affordable housing," an initiative aimed at providing the benefits of home ownership to those who could not, in fact, afford it. So when the market concluded that low-income borrowers could not meet the credit requirements for mortgages, the Clinton administration invoked trumped-up charges of racism to expand enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act, bullying banks into dropping as "arbitrary" such old-fashioned credit standards as proof of income. And when the market balked at the increased credit risk created by these loans, Congress backed the expansion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-sponsored enterprises that used federally guaranteed money to buy up the increasingly risky mortgages.
At every point, when the market sent the message that reality would not support the higher level of risk being taken on by mortgage lenders, the government used its power to override this message.
The vigorous government-created market for riskier "sub-prime" loans masked the real dangers, creating the illusion that increased profits could be obtained without increased risk—an illusion that encouraged some private lenders to follow Fannie and Freddie's lead. To be sure, some of this private risk-taking was part of the normal process of failure in a capitalist economy. A large part of the current financial upheaval originated with high-risk investment banks and hedge funds that held large amounts of mortgage-backed securities. These securities were carefully balanced against one another according to mathematical formulas that were calculated to cancel out their risks. But the mathematical formulas were new and hadn't been tested in a bear market. When the downturn came, they failed.
This is a normal part of the rough and tumble of capitalism. All of the current talk about the "failure" of the free market ignores the fact that the process of failure is a crucial benefit of the free market. In a capitalist system, high-risk firms are always trying out new and untested ideas, and failure is the messenger that tells the market which strategies work and which strategies don't. It is also an indispensable corrective mechanism that moves capital from enterprises with failing strategies to those with successful strategies.
But the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve have repeatedly short-circuited this mechanism by trying to outlaw failure. When the market sent the message that too many bad loans had been made and that this needed to be corrected by a contraction in the amount of available credit, the government wanted to avoid the unpleasant consequences of such a contraction. So the Federal Reserve papered over the facts—with a flurry of paper money—by artificially reducing interest rates and loosening up credit just when it needed to be tightened.
But that didn't change the underlying facts, and the bad investments still went bad. Yet as the market has sent the message that some firms have become over-extended and are no longer solvent, the government has still tried to avoid letting the market face the facts. The Treasury and the Fed kept trying to rewrite reality by orchestrating a series of government-backed bailouts.
Over at RealClearMarkets, Joseph Calhoun points out a crucial part of this assault on facts:
There has always been a stigma attached to borrowing directly from the Fed and for good reason. If a bank can’t get other banks to lend it money, that tells the market something about the condition of the bank in question.
Last August, Bernanke convinced three large banks to borrow at the discount window in an effort to remove that stigma. When that didn’t work, he concocted a scheme to allow banks to borrow from the Fed in anonymity via a mechanism he called the Term Auction Facility. When Bear Stearns blew up, he added the Term Securities Lending Facility for investment banks. By removing the stigma of borrowing from the Fed and hiding the identity of the borrowers, Bernanke removed important information from the market.
So the Fed's approach to potential bank failures was to try to help failing banks pretend that they weren't failing.
Or consider the SEC's ban on short sales for a list of about 700 stocks—with more companies lobbying to get themselves put on the list. Again, the whole approach of the SEC is not to prevent companies from failing, but to help them pretend that they are not failing, by outlawing trades that would tend to drive their stock prices down.
In fact, all that this sort of policy has achieved is to expand business failures. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, for example, it had been in negotiations with several major financial institutions who were considering investing billions in a private buy-out of the firm. But they balked at making the deal because they were waiting for the Fed to offer incentives and guarantees. Thus, the Fed's yelping about how each bankruptcy of a Wall Street firm poses a risk of "systemic failure" turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the prospect of an open-ended series of bailouts is blocking all of the mechanisms by which a free market actually prevents widespread failure.
The bailout package would have the government buy out up to $700 billion worth of bad loans. But this is merely delaying the re-pricing of those loans to their proper value. Left to themselves, the holders of these loans would eventually find it necessary to sell them at pennies on the dollar; Merrill Lynch sold its bad loans at 22 cents on the dollar. Private companies could then recognize the magnitude of the loss and start to rebuild their businesses with the remaining assets they possess. But now no firm has an incentive to sell off its bad loans. Why dump them for 22 cents on the dollar when the government might buy them, a few weeks later, at 50 or 80 cents?
So instead what is going to happen is that the federal government is going to go into the financial markets and dictate which securities are worth how much. It is still unclear exactly which loans the government will buy or how much it will pay for them, so no private investor can say whether an investment will pay off or not. This is how the prospect of a government bailout blocks the private buyouts that would actually clean all of the bad debt out of the system.
Instead, this plan transforms the US Treasury into a trillion-dollar hedge fund, making investments in securities whose proper market value is unknown and promising its shareholders—us—that unlike the best Wall Street investment banks, Treasury bureaucrats really know how to make a profit on sub-prime mortgage loans. That's why probably the best comment on the bailout is an e-mail making the rounds on Capitol Hill presenting Paulson's pitch for the bailout deal—in the style of a Nigerian banking scam. "I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude," it begins. Time to hit the "delete" button.
The bailout represents more of the same problems that got us here because it is backed by all of the same people who created those problems. And I'm not just talking about Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who organized the series of ad hoc bailouts that spread uncertainty through the financial industry. Much worse is the fact that a chief negotiator for the bailout is House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, the chief sponsor of the "affordable housing" scam. And as for Barack Obama, Stanley Kurtz exposes the role played by ACORN, Obama's former employer as a "community organizer." It turns out that a big part of ACORN's "community organizing" was to use thug tactics and the threat of government regulation to intimidate banks into making high-risk mortgage loans.
Fortunately, the public has the good sense to smell that something is rotten. I just got an e-mail recounting what Virginia Representative Jim Moran told Fox News: that calls from constituents commenting on the bailout were running 50-50—50% "no" and 50% "hell, no."
The House should not simply delay the bailout bill or mitigate its worst features; that will prolong the uncertainty in the financial markets. Instead, they need to make sure that the bailout meets with firm and repeated rejection over the next week, preferably by a growing margin of votes.
It is time for the House to kill the bailout and kill it decisively.
It is time for Congress to stop the government from rewriting reality, so that the market can be free to recognize the facts, pick up the pieces of failing firms, and begin rebuilding.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Is Alinsky's Principle Turning on Obama?
Saul Alinsky is Obama's primary mentor. He was powerful because he had a specific plan of action for gaining power. Alinsky was a psychopath, pure and simple. He appeals to people who want power and are angry. Hillary liked him and so does Obama.
"Teaching hatred for the normal majority is the key to power for radicals. But Alinsky taught that you can't easily hate millions of people. To do that effectively you need a one-person scapegoat to focus all your hatred on. 'Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.' (Saul Alinsky) That is the politics of personal destruction, and it doesn't matter if the target is black like Clarence Thomas, or a woman like Sarah Palin, or a severely wounded war veteran like John McCain." (or a President, George Bush - SCB) (This quote from here.)
The internet is abuzz with articles about Obama's underhanded dealings and being the thug behind the scenes. This was mentioned a few weeks ago related to other people and organizations but had died down. Now it is back.
And what a perfect place to put all the frustration and outrage over the general government incompetance. It's clear to me there is a crisis of confidence in the US Government. Two of the biggest crooks, Frank and Dodd, at the heart of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fiasco are making pronouncements, yelling in response to every question, as if they have moral authority - which they don't.
McCain supporters are increasingly frustrated. Their hope has been that given all the mess maybe McCain would have enough belief in freedom to at least forestall the complete capitulation of our relatively free society to liberal fascism and the socialist state.
All of this is now accentuating Obama's fascism and willingness to operate via threats of force. What follows is a list of links that I gleaned from the internet, thanks to a friend sending them to me. Further most of these links came from http://www.instapundit.com/, a middle-of-the-road website written by a law professor.
Start with this one about Alinsky and his tactics.
Then read this from the UK on how Obama undermined our government's negotiations with Iraq leaving them confused.
Then how about this one on how Obama is silencing the voice of Gun Owners. Also here.
One comment on a blog: "I fear that under the Obama administration, the lawyers sending these letters will be government employees."
And here is evidence of that already. Two elected officials are protecting the Obama campaign and only the Obama campaign. How unjust is that?
And here is a video showing how prosecutors and sheriffs are becoming part of the Obama's truth squad. And even the Justice Department is working for Obama.
Here in Reason Magazine's website is an article explaining why Obama is vulnerable on the Second Amendment. Notice how, in Obama's world, you have no rights. That means that you are not and independent human being who gets to live his life as he chooses. You are the property of the Government and the politicians get to decide. Your life is to be negotiated by someone else. Whatever that is, it ain't American and individual rights.
Or how about this Alinsky tactic to undermine free speech?
Here's an article regarding the NRA's response.
Obama's attempt to interrupt and silence a Chicago radio show back in August when Stanley Kurtz who investigated the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was featured.
And just a couple days before that stories were run on how Obama threatened the major TV stations who might run the ad produced by the American Issues Project. I detailed that here.
Although the Left may have overriden your voice at the US Justice Department, if you want to file a complaint, the numbers are at the link.
"Teaching hatred for the normal majority is the key to power for radicals. But Alinsky taught that you can't easily hate millions of people. To do that effectively you need a one-person scapegoat to focus all your hatred on. 'Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.' (Saul Alinsky) That is the politics of personal destruction, and it doesn't matter if the target is black like Clarence Thomas, or a woman like Sarah Palin, or a severely wounded war veteran like John McCain." (or a President, George Bush - SCB) (This quote from here.)
The internet is abuzz with articles about Obama's underhanded dealings and being the thug behind the scenes. This was mentioned a few weeks ago related to other people and organizations but had died down. Now it is back.
And what a perfect place to put all the frustration and outrage over the general government incompetance. It's clear to me there is a crisis of confidence in the US Government. Two of the biggest crooks, Frank and Dodd, at the heart of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fiasco are making pronouncements, yelling in response to every question, as if they have moral authority - which they don't.
McCain supporters are increasingly frustrated. Their hope has been that given all the mess maybe McCain would have enough belief in freedom to at least forestall the complete capitulation of our relatively free society to liberal fascism and the socialist state.
All of this is now accentuating Obama's fascism and willingness to operate via threats of force. What follows is a list of links that I gleaned from the internet, thanks to a friend sending them to me. Further most of these links came from http://www.instapundit.com/, a middle-of-the-road website written by a law professor.
Start with this one about Alinsky and his tactics.
Then read this from the UK on how Obama undermined our government's negotiations with Iraq leaving them confused.
Then how about this one on how Obama is silencing the voice of Gun Owners. Also here.
One comment on a blog: "I fear that under the Obama administration, the lawyers sending these letters will be government employees."
And here is evidence of that already. Two elected officials are protecting the Obama campaign and only the Obama campaign. How unjust is that?
And here is a video showing how prosecutors and sheriffs are becoming part of the Obama's truth squad. And even the Justice Department is working for Obama.
Here in Reason Magazine's website is an article explaining why Obama is vulnerable on the Second Amendment. Notice how, in Obama's world, you have no rights. That means that you are not and independent human being who gets to live his life as he chooses. You are the property of the Government and the politicians get to decide. Your life is to be negotiated by someone else. Whatever that is, it ain't American and individual rights.
Or how about this Alinsky tactic to undermine free speech?
Here's an article regarding the NRA's response.
Obama's attempt to interrupt and silence a Chicago radio show back in August when Stanley Kurtz who investigated the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was featured.
And just a couple days before that stories were run on how Obama threatened the major TV stations who might run the ad produced by the American Issues Project. I detailed that here.
Although the Left may have overriden your voice at the US Justice Department, if you want to file a complaint, the numbers are at the link.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Showboat Obama Loves Mobs
This image says to me that Obama loves crowds - not mobs. But given the way he and his campaign is operating to quash The American Issues Project's video and Stanley Kurtz, contributing editor to the National Review who is now revealing the relationship of William Ayers and Barack Obama, I'm now persuaded he loves the mob.Why?
Because he must! A man who does not deal in facts must get you to accept him by relating personal evaluations which you cannot argue with OR he must appeal to masses who eschew critical thinking - a mob.
(This last is Argument from Popularity, a logical fallacy. Yes, millions of people can be wrong. Both of the above techniques are a subset of Appeals to Emotion, a larger category of non-reason.)
The article below by the Chicago Tribune is about Obama's response to WGN's scheduling of an interview with Stanley Kurtz. WGN called the Obama Campaign for a spokesman and it declined the request. And this is not their first action against the charges now being constructed regarding Obama's lying regarding his relationship with the unrepentant domestic terrorist, William Ayers. Obama's Campaign has sent letters implying the loss of broadcast license to intimidate all the major TV stations who might show the American Issues Project video.
The one thing the Obama Campaign and Obama himself is unwilling to do is tell the truth. Notice the language of the emails sent to WGN. Below that notice how there are no facts provided in Obama's countervideo, directed erroneously to McCain rather than AIP.
This is a battle that promises to become huge because Obama is willing to quash our Individual Right of the Freedom of Speech - the First Ammendment to the Constitution of the United States. (And Bill Clinton said Obama is now ready to defend the Constitution? I don't think so!)
Obama campaign confronts WGN radio
by John McCormick and Steve Schmadeke
Chicago Tribune Washington Bureau
Posted August 27, 2008 11:02 PM
DENVER -- Sen. Barack Obama's campaign organized its supporters Wednesday night to confront Tribune-owned WGN-AM in Chicago for having a critic of the Illinois Democrat on its air.
"WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears," Obama's campaign wrote in an e-mail to supporters. "He's currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers."
Kurtz, a conservative writer, recently wrote an article for the National Review that looked at Obama's ties to Ayers, a former 1960s radical.
The magazine had been blocked in its initial attempts to obtain records from the University of Illinois at Chicago regarding the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Obama chaired and Ayers co-founded. The school later reserved its position and made the records available Tuesday.
Obama's campaign urged supporters to call the radio station to complain.
"Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse," the note said.
"It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves," the note continued. "At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz's lies."
Zack Christenson, executive producer of "Extension 720 with Milt Rosenburg," said the response was strong.
"I would say this is the biggest response we've ever got from a campaign or a candidate," he said. "This is really unprecedented with the show, the way that people are flooding the calls and our email boxes."
Christenson said the Obama campaign was asked to have someone appear on the show and declined the request.
"He got into the files just yesterday, so we wanted to have him on to find out what he found. And, if at all possible, we wanted to get the Obama campaign, to get their side of the story," Christenson said. "That's why the uproar is kind of amazing, because we wanted the Obama campaign's take as well."
The show's producer said the calls dropped off after the show's first hour. He did not have a count of calls, but said it was "non-stop."
Obama's campaign has launched similar offensives against stations that have run campaign ads that it did not like.
Here is Obama's video response to AIP aired August 25, 2008.
I can see the bumper stickers now.
We are now going to see the proof that Obama lied. The only defense to a charge is to either counter it with facts or smear it. See my ** (footnote) on "Swiftboating".
Obama not only lied, he is a vicious systematic liar. Lying, shading, obfuscating, and pooh-poohing is everywhere in his telling of his past. Everywhere. And this is why Obama loves mobs. They, and the relating of his personal experiences which we cannot argue with, are his defense against reason, purposeful evasion, and the only thing you and I have in common with any other human being: the real world.Monday, August 25, 2008
The "Piercing" Has Begun
Obama has carefully crafted a story about his life and associations; one that leeks like a sieve. The mystery has been so great and so deep that many people, myself included, have been drawn to learn the truth. There are too many clues that something is amiss from his grandiose attempt to configure his politics as spiritual symbolism, metaphor and ideals; his inordinate opinion of himself; his moral equivocation on values regarding the country's very founding and survival; his inability to stand for many of the most important people in his life; and his parrying of Muslims - be they in his family, among his friends or simply fans that would happen to be in a picture of Obama taken at a rally. People are traveling the globe to glean these facts in order to sort out this mystery.
Now a backlash has occurred that threatens Obama's facade. The piercing of this fraud has begun. Here's the first video I've seen.*
Now a backlash has occurred that threatens Obama's facade. The piercing of this fraud has begun. Here's the first video I've seen.*
This was produced by http://www.americanissuesproject.org/.
Naturally the Obama campaign was outraged. They responded by having its lawyers send a threatening letter to all the major TV stations in the country. They demanded the Department of Justice to stop the ads.** They also produced a counter ad. (Obama is also calling for the same against McCain's ads.)
The lawyers for American Issue Project (AIP) were ready since AIP had done its research and written a 160 page report documenting every aspect of their ad before they aired it. The lawyers responded to Obama's letter to the TV stations with their own letter to those stations by showing that the Obama campaign had not proved its claim that the AIP ad was false or misconstrued in any way.
If this story interests you, go to No Quarter. Or Politico.com.
Obama prefers to quash the Individual Right to Free Speech than to blow his created cover. He is simply unwilling to confront the question asked and answer it with verifiable facts. What we are seeing is a Dictator in the making. Not willing to use reason and facts as the final arbiter of his claims, he has no choice but to use force. And he will. If he doesn't get it done now, he will if he is President. Count on it.
* There have also been books, the most extensive documented one that I have run across being Obama Nation by Jerome Corsi, Ph.D. Obama thought it worthy to attempt destruction of this salvo. He published a rebuttal of 40 pages on his campaign website.
**This action is an attempt to prevent Swiftboating. The Swiftboat ads sunk John Kerry in 2004. The Democrats have tried to turn the Swiftboat ads into some kind of evil campaign technique which they call Swiftboating. It was nothing of the kind. It was a group of fellow soldiers of Kerry who knew him and his character and did not think he was of a quality that would be a good President. They exercised their freedom of speech and put together the ads.
The truth is Kerry could have answered the Swiftboat ads with verifiable countervailing facts. He never did. The best he could do was smear the Swiftboaters. The Swiftboat claims stood and Kerry's showboat sunk like a stone. Swiftboating is the most fearsome technique a person can use. It amounts to an assertion based on facts and authenticity that requires countervailing facts to stop its power. Without verifiable facts as the basis for rebuttal, the rebuttal gains no traction.
See "'Extremism' or the Art of Smearing" by Ayn Rand in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal published by The New American Library, 1967, for an analysis of this method of "warfare."
The smear does its damage by initiating a story that is not supported by the facts. By the time the facts disproving the story are assembled, the story has reached a wide audience. On the other hand, if a story is grounded in fact in the first place, it is not a smear. Further if some minor and non-essential facts are discovered to be incorrect, it does not change the essential point of the story.
A smear does not work in the first place nor as a defense against a real story. Although it may do damage, ultimately it destroys the "smearer's" credibility.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Which One Are You Ready to Saddle Up?
A friend. Rob Diego, with whom I exchange observations of current affairs and often test ideas is guest contributor tonight. Thanks, Rob.
During the questioning (at the Saddleback Civil Forum) last night, Obama was repeatedly equivocating on important issues and this exposes his inability to lead, his lack of any clear convictions. A leader must be decisive, he must use his own mind and rely on his own experiences; and he must know the right questions and how to get the right answers from knowledgeable people. I've been a leader during certain times of my life, and even on that modest level, it was a major responsibility and a very sobering thought to know that my job was making decisions about others and inspiring them to be better. I loved being a leader because I saw the results in people who were better every day and happier and more secure because my leadership helped them be more productive employees.
Obama would never be worth a $32 million dollar CEO salary because he could never be decisive enough to steer a company in the right direction. How can we put him in charge of the most powerful institution in the world? Equivocation and ambiguity are not signs of leadership ability; they are signs of indecision. We can't afford to have him learn on the job. Our lives are at stake. I'd put those million dollar CEOs (that Obama criticizes for making too much money) in the oval office any day before Obama.
McCain was decisive last night, clear and forthright...a characteristic that is rare, even in Presidents. Obama has never been in the line of fire where his own personal freedom was at stake; he's never been in the line of fire where his own life was at stake; he's never had to make a decision that meant a crucial turning point for the nation...he wouldn't know how to recognize such a situation. He'd equivocate and call a meeting of a bunch of people to tell him how to nuance his responses.
A man who makes a decision to become a street organizer is not making a decision that affects an important issue for the country; he is making a decision to avoid making a difference. It sets him up to blame others for problems rather than show the leadership necessary to solve real problems. He admits that 10 years ago he didn't know the value of work as a social phenomenon. Doing things for others by causing a redistribution of someone else's money is not the same as making decisions that make it possible for people to be successful.
Anyone can "bring people together." That takes no special skill, it does not make Obama unique. Even Bush said he could do it. The real problem is that Obama has no real tangible leadership skills, has demonstrated no such skills, and has never made the amount of money in his life that makes him something special. He cannot prove that he is special. He is no Bill Gates, no T. Boone Pickens, no Warren Buffet...he is nothing special. Knowing how to leave people free takes a lot more leadership than knowing who will pay higher taxes.
McCain wants us to all be rich. That Obama doesn't even think in these terms tells you so much about him...it tells you everything. With terrorism one of the major issues of our time, we can't afford to wait for a man to ask his wife or grandmother, or even Ted Kennedy, what to do (I can almost tell you what they will say to him: "Do what helps the most people, honey.") I'm wondering if he asked them what to say before he made his early statements about the situation in Georgia. He clearly is only reciting leftist cliches without an understanding of how his statements relate to the real world, or whether they relate at all. I wonder what his grandmother's leadership skills are and how many thousands of people she has led. And why haven't scholars written about her unique mind? I'd like to read her books. Where are they?
Obama came off of a vacation and the media had to use that fact as a reason why he didn't do as well as McCain. All he has to do is get back on the campaign trail and he'll get his words back. That is a rationalization of the worst kind. What a tough life he's had...his vacation complicated his candidacy and muddled his mind. Imagine McCain saying that he was indecisive because he spent 5 years in a prisoner of war camp tied up with ropes, unable to move. Imagine the media using that fact as an excuse for McCain. It is unthinkable because that event molded his convictions, gave him certainty for a lifetime about important issues, helped him to see things clearly. A vacation that makes a man not have the presence of mind to remember his convictions is not an excuse; it is a sign of no convictions.
What defeated Obama last night is that he had no idea what McCain would say so he could not adjust his statements to match McCain's convictions and passion. Obama has no convictions of his own. That is clear. The worst thing is that there are a lot of people who don't care that he has no convictions; there are lots of people who think Obama's equivocations are an indication of a refined and educated mind. I'll take a prisoner of war, even a graduate of the University of Hard Knocks over Obama any time.
Rob Diego
During the questioning (at the Saddleback Civil Forum) last night, Obama was repeatedly equivocating on important issues and this exposes his inability to lead, his lack of any clear convictions. A leader must be decisive, he must use his own mind and rely on his own experiences; and he must know the right questions and how to get the right answers from knowledgeable people. I've been a leader during certain times of my life, and even on that modest level, it was a major responsibility and a very sobering thought to know that my job was making decisions about others and inspiring them to be better. I loved being a leader because I saw the results in people who were better every day and happier and more secure because my leadership helped them be more productive employees.
Obama would never be worth a $32 million dollar CEO salary because he could never be decisive enough to steer a company in the right direction. How can we put him in charge of the most powerful institution in the world? Equivocation and ambiguity are not signs of leadership ability; they are signs of indecision. We can't afford to have him learn on the job. Our lives are at stake. I'd put those million dollar CEOs (that Obama criticizes for making too much money) in the oval office any day before Obama.
McCain was decisive last night, clear and forthright...a characteristic that is rare, even in Presidents. Obama has never been in the line of fire where his own personal freedom was at stake; he's never been in the line of fire where his own life was at stake; he's never had to make a decision that meant a crucial turning point for the nation...he wouldn't know how to recognize such a situation. He'd equivocate and call a meeting of a bunch of people to tell him how to nuance his responses.
A man who makes a decision to become a street organizer is not making a decision that affects an important issue for the country; he is making a decision to avoid making a difference. It sets him up to blame others for problems rather than show the leadership necessary to solve real problems. He admits that 10 years ago he didn't know the value of work as a social phenomenon. Doing things for others by causing a redistribution of someone else's money is not the same as making decisions that make it possible for people to be successful.
Anyone can "bring people together." That takes no special skill, it does not make Obama unique. Even Bush said he could do it. The real problem is that Obama has no real tangible leadership skills, has demonstrated no such skills, and has never made the amount of money in his life that makes him something special. He cannot prove that he is special. He is no Bill Gates, no T. Boone Pickens, no Warren Buffet...he is nothing special. Knowing how to leave people free takes a lot more leadership than knowing who will pay higher taxes.
McCain wants us to all be rich. That Obama doesn't even think in these terms tells you so much about him...it tells you everything. With terrorism one of the major issues of our time, we can't afford to wait for a man to ask his wife or grandmother, or even Ted Kennedy, what to do (I can almost tell you what they will say to him: "Do what helps the most people, honey.") I'm wondering if he asked them what to say before he made his early statements about the situation in Georgia. He clearly is only reciting leftist cliches without an understanding of how his statements relate to the real world, or whether they relate at all. I wonder what his grandmother's leadership skills are and how many thousands of people she has led. And why haven't scholars written about her unique mind? I'd like to read her books. Where are they?
Obama came off of a vacation and the media had to use that fact as a reason why he didn't do as well as McCain. All he has to do is get back on the campaign trail and he'll get his words back. That is a rationalization of the worst kind. What a tough life he's had...his vacation complicated his candidacy and muddled his mind. Imagine McCain saying that he was indecisive because he spent 5 years in a prisoner of war camp tied up with ropes, unable to move. Imagine the media using that fact as an excuse for McCain. It is unthinkable because that event molded his convictions, gave him certainty for a lifetime about important issues, helped him to see things clearly. A vacation that makes a man not have the presence of mind to remember his convictions is not an excuse; it is a sign of no convictions.
What defeated Obama last night is that he had no idea what McCain would say so he could not adjust his statements to match McCain's convictions and passion. Obama has no convictions of his own. That is clear. The worst thing is that there are a lot of people who don't care that he has no convictions; there are lots of people who think Obama's equivocations are an indication of a refined and educated mind. I'll take a prisoner of war, even a graduate of the University of Hard Knocks over Obama any time.
Rob Diego
Monday, August 11, 2008
The Man Who Led Our Olympic Team
Los Angeles Times, August 9, 2008 This article is from TIA Daily • August 10, 2008 • If you choose, subscribe here.
Thanks, Mr. Tracinski, for this inspiring article. I recommend following the links he included as they flesh out the story. The ones about Mr. Lomong are all inspiring.
Who We Are
Lopez Lomong Represents America
by Robert Tracinski
Amid the gargantuan spectacle of Friday's opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, there was a much smaller detail that really caught my attention: the story of the man whom the US delegation chose as its flag-bearer for the Parade of Nations.
Who We Are
Lopez Lomong Represents America
by Robert Tracinski
Amid the gargantuan spectacle of Friday's opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, there was a much smaller detail that really caught my attention: the story of the man whom the US delegation chose as its flag-bearer for the Parade of Nations.
I don't begrudge the Chinese their desire to put on a spectacular display. China has achieved a remarkable transformation in the past 30 years, raising itself up from the abject poverty of a nation brutalized by its Communist dictators, to become one of the world's fastest-growing economies with an increasingly vibrant culture.
And I was particularly encouraged by the way in which China chose to celebrate its moment at the center of the world's attention. Like most Olympic opening ceremonies, it was a sprawling event without much in the way of a connected narrative, but it seemed to be mostly built around two themes. The first theme was the Four Great Inventions of Ancient China: paper, moveable type, gunpowder (represented by fireworks, of course), and the compass. The second theme was China's openness to the rest of the world, a theme emphasized when the ceremony's pantomimed overview of Chinese history skipped forward from the silk road and the 15th-century sea voyages of explorer Zheng He to the opening up of China to the global economy in 1978—skipping pretty much everything in between, including Mao Tse Tung and Communism. This is perhaps no surprise, when you consider the background of the ceremony's director, filmmaker Zhang Yimou, who as a young man suffered through the lost decade of Mao's Cultural Revolution.
My impression is that the people of China are not eager to remember the horrors of Mao's rule, because they are looking forward to the better life they are beginning to enjoy. And China's rulers are not eager to remind their subjects of that history, because it does not reflect well on the moral legitimacy of the Communist Party.
So the upshot of the opening ceremony could be boiled down to: China wants to be a thriving part of the world again. It was as good a message as you could expect.
Yet there is a contradiction behind that message, and America sent its own messenger to remind the world of this fact.
The Chinese people as a whole are no doubt sincere in the aspirations they projected at the opening ceremonies. But the relationship of China's rulers to the world is not nearly as benevolent. China's government has maintained what one analyst calls a Zombie Empire of failed and dying dictatorships. Like the zombies of folklore, these states are kept in a state of artificial animation by Chinese support—in exchange for doing China's bidding. And one of the zombies in China's empire is Sudan, which has been shunned by every other civilized nation for its complicity in mass murder and war crimes in its province of Darfur.
That is why the US Olympic team made such a profound statement by choosing as its flag-bearer the middle-distance runner Lopez Lomong. China made its statement to the world last Friday with masses of people—2,008 drummers, 2,008 Tai Chi masters, and so on—while America answered it, quietly, with a single individual.
Lomong's story is a both heartbreaking and inspirational. He was one of the famous "Lost Boys of Sudan." Stolen from his family by Sudanese Muslims as part of their war against Christians and animists in Southern Sudan, he was taken to what was basically a death camp for children—if you can imagine such a thing, which I hope you can't. With the help of some older boys from his village, he escaped and ran for many miles to a refugee camp in Kenya, where he lived in squalor for ten years until he was brought to the US by an American charity.
This is the bare outline of a story that is told movingly in Lomong's own words and in many other reports in the past few weeks (see here and here especially).
It is a story full of details no one would dare to make up in a Hollywood movie—like this one, from a Washington Post report: Once, in Kenya, he was given five shillings for watering cows. It was his only money but he never spent it, keeping it for the right moment. He heard others talking about the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and how, on the only TV set in the area, five miles away, they might watch it. So Lomong and friends walked five miles to the black-and-white TV only to find out that, for each event you watched, you had to pay—five shillings.
That day, Lopez Lomong saw sprinter Michael Johnson run and win, stand on the podium in a US uniform and cry as his anthem was played. "I want to run as fast as that guy," Lomong says he thought. "And I want to wear that same uniform."
What stands out most from the story is Lomong's gratitude to and love for America. Lomong became a US citizen last year and told reporters, "Now I'm not just one of the 'Lost Boys.' I'm an American." The Lost Boy has been found. "Before, I ran from danger and death," he says. "Now, I run for sport. It would be an honor to represent the country that saved me and showed me the way." And describing what it means to him to carry his new country's flag, Lomong says, "The American flag means everything in my life—everything that describes me, coming from another country and going through all the stages that I have to become a US citizen. This is another amazing step for me in celebrating being an American."
If you want to know why Lomong loves America so much, check out a terrific interview with his foster parents, Robert and Barbara Rogers.
There has been some discussion about whether athletes at the Olympics should try to make some kind of political statement about causes like Darfur or Tibet or China's record on individual rights. But Lomong makes the most effective statement of all. He makes a statement just by being who he is—and by what he implies about who we are as Americans.
An estimated four billion people watched the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, and in every broadcast in every country around the world, the broadcasters would have had to explain, as Lomong led the American delegation into the stadium, who this person was, why America is represented by a young black man from Sudan, and how it is that in America a lost and penniless refugee can become an elite athlete who is chosen by his peers to represent, as one athlete put it, "the epitome of the American dream."
It is a story that says everything about the freedom and opportunity we enjoy in America, and about the benevolence and generosity that follow from it. And one could not imagine a more pointed or effective contrast to the policies of China's rulers.
And I was particularly encouraged by the way in which China chose to celebrate its moment at the center of the world's attention. Like most Olympic opening ceremonies, it was a sprawling event without much in the way of a connected narrative, but it seemed to be mostly built around two themes. The first theme was the Four Great Inventions of Ancient China: paper, moveable type, gunpowder (represented by fireworks, of course), and the compass. The second theme was China's openness to the rest of the world, a theme emphasized when the ceremony's pantomimed overview of Chinese history skipped forward from the silk road and the 15th-century sea voyages of explorer Zheng He to the opening up of China to the global economy in 1978—skipping pretty much everything in between, including Mao Tse Tung and Communism. This is perhaps no surprise, when you consider the background of the ceremony's director, filmmaker Zhang Yimou, who as a young man suffered through the lost decade of Mao's Cultural Revolution.
My impression is that the people of China are not eager to remember the horrors of Mao's rule, because they are looking forward to the better life they are beginning to enjoy. And China's rulers are not eager to remind their subjects of that history, because it does not reflect well on the moral legitimacy of the Communist Party.
So the upshot of the opening ceremony could be boiled down to: China wants to be a thriving part of the world again. It was as good a message as you could expect.
Yet there is a contradiction behind that message, and America sent its own messenger to remind the world of this fact.
The Chinese people as a whole are no doubt sincere in the aspirations they projected at the opening ceremonies. But the relationship of China's rulers to the world is not nearly as benevolent. China's government has maintained what one analyst calls a Zombie Empire of failed and dying dictatorships. Like the zombies of folklore, these states are kept in a state of artificial animation by Chinese support—in exchange for doing China's bidding. And one of the zombies in China's empire is Sudan, which has been shunned by every other civilized nation for its complicity in mass murder and war crimes in its province of Darfur.
That is why the US Olympic team made such a profound statement by choosing as its flag-bearer the middle-distance runner Lopez Lomong. China made its statement to the world last Friday with masses of people—2,008 drummers, 2,008 Tai Chi masters, and so on—while America answered it, quietly, with a single individual.
Lomong's story is a both heartbreaking and inspirational. He was one of the famous "Lost Boys of Sudan." Stolen from his family by Sudanese Muslims as part of their war against Christians and animists in Southern Sudan, he was taken to what was basically a death camp for children—if you can imagine such a thing, which I hope you can't. With the help of some older boys from his village, he escaped and ran for many miles to a refugee camp in Kenya, where he lived in squalor for ten years until he was brought to the US by an American charity.
This is the bare outline of a story that is told movingly in Lomong's own words and in many other reports in the past few weeks (see here and here especially).
It is a story full of details no one would dare to make up in a Hollywood movie—like this one, from a Washington Post report: Once, in Kenya, he was given five shillings for watering cows. It was his only money but he never spent it, keeping it for the right moment. He heard others talking about the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and how, on the only TV set in the area, five miles away, they might watch it. So Lomong and friends walked five miles to the black-and-white TV only to find out that, for each event you watched, you had to pay—five shillings.
That day, Lopez Lomong saw sprinter Michael Johnson run and win, stand on the podium in a US uniform and cry as his anthem was played. "I want to run as fast as that guy," Lomong says he thought. "And I want to wear that same uniform."
What stands out most from the story is Lomong's gratitude to and love for America. Lomong became a US citizen last year and told reporters, "Now I'm not just one of the 'Lost Boys.' I'm an American." The Lost Boy has been found. "Before, I ran from danger and death," he says. "Now, I run for sport. It would be an honor to represent the country that saved me and showed me the way." And describing what it means to him to carry his new country's flag, Lomong says, "The American flag means everything in my life—everything that describes me, coming from another country and going through all the stages that I have to become a US citizen. This is another amazing step for me in celebrating being an American."
If you want to know why Lomong loves America so much, check out a terrific interview with his foster parents, Robert and Barbara Rogers.
There has been some discussion about whether athletes at the Olympics should try to make some kind of political statement about causes like Darfur or Tibet or China's record on individual rights. But Lomong makes the most effective statement of all. He makes a statement just by being who he is—and by what he implies about who we are as Americans.
An estimated four billion people watched the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, and in every broadcast in every country around the world, the broadcasters would have had to explain, as Lomong led the American delegation into the stadium, who this person was, why America is represented by a young black man from Sudan, and how it is that in America a lost and penniless refugee can become an elite athlete who is chosen by his peers to represent, as one athlete put it, "the epitome of the American dream."
It is a story that says everything about the freedom and opportunity we enjoy in America, and about the benevolence and generosity that follow from it. And one could not imagine a more pointed or effective contrast to the policies of China's rulers.
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