Ruminations From the Void



Meaningless Graphic



*   Baseball season is upon us and I'm afraid my beloved St. Louis Cardinals are, sadly, already out of contention.  With the loss of ace pitcher Adam Wainwright and the addition of a Lance 'Crutches' Berkman to Right Field/DL, it could be a very difficult year for the Redbirds.  If nothing else, it should make it clear to Cardinal Nation that it takes more than one $30 million man to make a winning team.  I'm not saying Albert Pujols is not worth the money, but not at the cost of fielding a competitive team.  The new 72" 3D TV may be worth $10,000, but not if it means I stop making my mortgage payment.

*  Good news for parents and society.  Abstinence is not dead.  Recent studies show that more teens are choosing not to have sex.  From the Washington Post,

Among the findings of a sweeping federal government survey of American sexual behavior is one that may surprise those bewailing a permissive and eros-soaked popular culture: More than one-quarter of people interviewed in their late teens and early 20s had never had sex.

And the number was growing.

The latest round of the quaintly named National Survey of Family Growth found that among 15-to-24-year-olds, 29 percent of females and 27 percent of males reported no sexual contact with another person ever – up from the 22 percent of both sexes when the survey was last conducted in 2002.

[h/t Kathryn Lopez, NRO]

Perhaps this is a reflection of President Bush's push for including abstinence in school's sex education.  In the 1980's, drug use declined during Nancy Reagan's "Just say no" campaign.  The two residents of the White House can have a tremendous impact on our young people, so shouldn't the current First Lady find a more urgent message than "Eat your veggies".   The President has gone on the record to tell us to "Check your tire pressure" to help with fuel economy.  I mean, I'm really going to lose it if I hear Michelle start a "Wait 30" campaign to encourage children to wait 30 minutes after eating before swimming.

*  Obamacare may be over before it really began.  President Obama's administration asked Judge Vinson on clarification of the judge's ruling that the new Health Care Reform law was unconstitutional.  The judge explained that he failed to issue an injunction against the law's implementation because he assumed that it wouldn't be necessary.  Here's what he wrote regarding this clarification,

So to “clarify” my order and judgment: The individual mandate was declared unconstitutional. Because that “essential” provision was unseverable from the rest of the Act, the entire legislation was void. This declaratory judgment was expected to be treated as the “practical” and “functional equivalent of an injunction” with respect to the parties to the litigation. This expectation was based on the “longstanding presumption” that the defendants themselves identified and agreed to be bound by, which provides that a declaratory judgment against federal officials is a de facto injunction. To the extent that the defendants were unable (or believed that they were unable) to comply, it was expected that they would immediately seek a stay of the ruling, and at that point in time present their arguments for why such a stay is necessary, which is the usual and standard procedure. It was not expected that they would effectively ignore the order and declaratory judgment for two and one-half weeks, continue to implement the Act, and only then file a belated motion to “clarify.” [h/t Avik Roy, NRO]

In legal speak, this was a smack down on the Obama's administration.  As it stands now, Obama has seven days to get this fast-tracked for the Supreme Court or the administration will be instructed to stop implementation of the law.

*  While we are on the topic of health care, Jim Manzi comes to a dramatic conclusion after looking at the results of the RAND Health Insurance Experiment.  Jim says,

Providing people coverage of their medical costs caused no average improvement in health.

That is one very big argument against a costly universal health care program.  As we have seen all too well in our home over the past few years, more care does not equal improved health.  My daughter has had procedures, medicines, and multiple specialists while seeing absolutely no improvement in her health.  She is one very frustrated young woman. 

Just like my old car was going to drip oil no matter what I fixed, some people are more prone to getting a sinus, ear or bladder infection and no amount of money spent is going to fix that.  Well at least not unless we're in some sci-fi movie where they're changing people's DNA.  And then, it usually turns them into psychos, monsters or zombies (oh my).  It's hard to justify the cost if that's the end result.

*  Speaking of Science-fiction, a Nasa Scientist claims to have discovered alien life forms here on Earth.  Searching within a class of meteorites - CI1 carbonaceous chondrites - of which only 9 such meteorites are known to exist on Earth, Dr. Richard Hoover claims to have found alien lifeforms, some of which are similar to organisms on earth.  In his own words,

“The exciting thing is that they are in many cases recognizable and can be associated very closely with the generic species here on earth.  There are some that are just very strange and don’t look like anything that I’ve been able to identify, and I’ve shown them to many other experts that have also come up stumped.”

When another NASA scientist was questioned about Hoover's findings, he expressed a need for caution.  He stopped short of saying that Dr. Hoover often sits by himself in the corner of the cafeteria eating sugar sandwiches while talking to the ghost of Genghis Khan, but he seemed doubtful about the claim.

I don't doubt the sincerity of the lonely Dr. Hoover, but finding fossilized organisms on the surface of a meterorite that seem to bear a remarkable similarity to earth life, is a bit like finding a spot of blood on the floor of a pizza joint that tastes remarkably like tomato sauce.  He has his conclusions and I have mine.  We'll see who's right after further study from other scientists.

*  For those who think I've been too hard on the Public Employee Unions in Wisconsin, the average teacher in the Milwaukee Public Schools received compensation in the amount of $101,091 - that's $59,500 in salary plus $41,591 in benefits.  As a total package that is comparable to what the plant managers at my company make.  The difference is our managers are considered Exempt employees and are not eligible to form a union and collectively bargain.  As I've said before, this isn't really about money after all now, is it? [h/t John McCormack, Weekly Standard]

*  Gas prices getting you mad.  Don't expect much relief from the White House.  Obama does not seem interested in allowing the gulf oil industry to get back into action, which along with the events in the Middle East are causing the upward shift.  I say shift and not spike because a spike implies prices falling, which I don't expect to happen.

According to the Energy Information Administration, the Obama offshore drilling moratorium will cause a 13-percent fall in domestic offshore oil production this year, which translates to a loss of about 220,000 barrels of oil a day. That means lower GDP growth for the nation, higher gas prices for all Americans, lower tax revenues for the federal government, and most importantly, fewer jobs for Americans living in the Gulf region.

[h/t Bryan Preston, PJ Tatler]

The administration may begin using some of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve as a short term stopgap, but as long as we are drilling less instead of more, this administration is condemning us to a large and long term increase in fuel prices.  Chevy sold less than 300 Volt electric cars in February.  Obama wants that to change.  Allowing gas prices to climb to $4 or $5 a gallon is a feature of his energy plan, not a bug.

*  Any lobster fans on a budget out there?  Sorry, but the McLobster will not be going nationwide, McDonald's announced last week.  But it does appears that my wish has finally come true.

*  Blogging may be a little short the next few days.  I am going to be in Jefferson City, Missouri meeting with state legislators discussing the issues I think are important for Missouri.  On my agenda:

• Stop the push for a Right to Work law
• Cut the corporate sales tax rate
• Fund tax incentives that make Missouri competitive
• Greater use of the E-verify system to stop the employment of illegal aliens
• Cut, cut, cut the red tape on small businesses
• Fight the implementation of Obamacare
• End the practice of funeral protests
• Discuss the different Fair Tax proposals (I'm inclined against it)
• End the practice of regulating normal household products that may be used for Meth production (bath salts? - really? Where does it stop?)
• School vouchers / school choice

If I'm missing anything important, please let me know.  Let your voice be heard.

Have a great week!

Go...go with God, but just go.

Reagan/Obama 1984

I wrote this a few days ago.  I was waiting for someone else to make this point, but no one did. 
It's a bit lengthy, but I think worth the read.

Reagan/Obama 1984

by

Sam Ritter

As I read and listened to the comments following President Obama’s recent State of the Union address, it became obvious that the concerted effort to seem more Reaganesque had succeeded.  Following news reports that he had put Reagan on his reading list and then submitted an editorial on Reagan to USA Today, it was expected that the President would try to hit the sunny side of America - Reagan style.  The commentators made this the central theme of the post speech discussion.  Time magazine photoshopped President Obama with an apparently, approving Reagan for its cover.  But was Barack Obama channeling Ronald Reagan or something very different?

            President Reagan often proclaimed an optimistic future for America. As he would say, it was morning in America.  His presidency, not unlike others, was heavily draped in patriotic colors.  But it has become clear that some Americans have misunderstood this patriotism.  In fact, functioning patriotism has come to be an elusive enigma that seems to leave some on the left groping in the dark.  They have proclaimed taxes patriotic, but decry the patriotic glory of everyday Americans taking pride in the accomplishments of their fellow citizens during the Olympics.  They disparage our founders and are ashamed of those espousing American exceptionalism.  They wish to educate our children of all the wrongs ever perpetuated by America, but seek to bypass all the good that has come to exist because of her.

            In the past I never understood why they seemed so inept at showing patriotism, but now it seems they’ve let their slip show.  They, along with our President, either have no idea what patriotism is or they do, and have absolutely no need for it.  The SOTU, protestations otherwise was not a patriotic address – it was a nationalistic address.  Therein lays the danger.

            The patriotism/nationalism dichotomy has always been difficult for some to comprehend.  For some, overt patriotism would lead to nationalism, it was feared.  But that shows a basic failure to understand the underlying nature of the concepts.  Perhaps some have been distracted by the principle of American exceptionalism, which holds that the nature of America’s founding and the documents and ideals that have formed our nation are unique, i.e. exceptional.  Many misunderstand and believe this to mean that some feel that Americans are a better, more exceptional people than those of other nations.  This is of course, far from the truth.

            While both patriotism and nationalism are centered on our attitude and feelings toward our nation, they are very different.  They represent two sides of the same coin as they relate the citizenry toward the state. Patriotism is about pride – pride in the nation, pride in our fellow citizens, pride in accomplishments without a loss of self, whereas nationalism is about submission – pieces in a cog working for the greater good, submitting their own desires toward the collective, marked by a self-less devotion.  Often there will be an overlap between the two, which can be seen most clearly during martial events.  During WWII, patriotic Americans heeded the national call for sacrifice, while the German people surely felt a sense of patriotic pride following military victories.  But at the core, they retain differences.

            At times, the left has revealed how they truly feel about America.  Remember when Michelle Obama said, “And let me tell you something -- for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.”  In the absence of pride, there is no patriotism.  Without a patriotic pride in America, there is no reverence for the nature and history of America.  When nothing of America’s past is sacred and honored, the only way forward is to remake America into what you want it to be.  During the 2008 campaign, we heard both Obamas talk about how the world “as it is just isn’t good enough” and fighting for the world “as it should be”.

            In his address, Obama called upon us to realize our Sputnik moment, and then proceeded to “launch” into a list of “investments” for the greater good.  Children must go to college because our nation needs them to have a college degree.  We must move forward as a nation to beat the Chinese in solar panels and win the green revolution.  We will lose the future without high speed rail.  It all sounded like the normal boilerplate we hear in these types of speeches, but was it?

            Sputnik put fear in Americans, not because it showed that we were behind technologically or commercially to the Soviets, but because we feared that it put us at a disadvantage militarily and thus mortally.  When JFK called on America to go boldly where no man has gone before, it wasn’t because he wanted to ride the technological wave of the future.  He, along with many Americans feared a militarization of space – armed satellites ready to rein destruction on us from above.  For the protection of America, he stated a goal and made it clear that America would accomplish what it set out to do.  Because this was a matter of national defense, it was a task for the federal government.

            Watch the movie “The Right Stuff” based on the novel by Tom Wolfe and you will see the rugged individuals who came to epitomize the early days of NASA.  Life and death were on the line for our first “space voyagers” much as it was on the line for America as we entered the Space Race with the Soviets.  To compare our perceived deficiency in solar panels or high speed rail to the Chinese with these events is beyond believability.

            Yet, there was our president telling us we need to “Win The Future™”, by circumventing our capitalist system and throwing our efforts to the state in order to succeed in the marketplace of the future.  By his reasoning, I’m amazed that America has survived to the present, unless my history is off and Eli Whitney worked for the Department of the Interior.  Or were John Fulton and Henry Ford working for the Federal Transportation Authority?  Is it too much to think that Samuel Colt was part of the ATF?  I’m not sure which area of the Federal government Steve Jobs worked in as he developed the iPOD.  To understand where Obama is wrong is to understand when and where the state should have primacy.  In matters of national defense, it should.  In matters of commerce, it should not.  It is understood that the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution gives the federal government directive to regulate, but it does not have primacy and should only interfere with the open marketplace as a last resort, whereas “provide for the common defence” is a stated federal obligation found in the preamble.

            In truth, America succeeds because of our open marketplace, where good ideas flourish and bad ideas are quickly and mercilessly destroyed.  Many can recall the state of fear that believed Japan’s lead in the electronic age was going to leave us behind?  Even when America does not lead the way, our open market allows American innovation to improve and market these ideas and succeed. If an idea is worthy, it will succeed in the market and if not, it will fail miserably as it should.  In the government bureaucracy an idea may continue to be pursued regardless of any future success.

Certainly some good ideas develop from government research, but often they are inadvertent successes.  The basic framework for the internet was developed as a defense project.  Many innovations have developed from NASA, but as side effects, so to speak.  Among these are freeze drying, solar energy, portable cordless vacuums, Light-emitting diodes (LED) and Tempur foam.  What this shows is that in any properly funded research and development department, good ideas will come, often in unexpected forms.  But this does not show that the state is the best place for research.  The government beast makes for a highly inefficient laboratory with no true mechanism for harvesting the good or ridding the bad.  At this point in time, NASA is a mess of a bureaucracy filled with red-tape, whose once tightly focused mission has become so scattershot that it is no longer able to complete its primary goal of sending Americans into space, but must pay to hitch a ride with the Russians.  By raising the specter of Sputnik, the irony of NASA’s current failures could not be made clearer.

            Yet despite what was made clear by his allusion, the President called for Americans to put more of our private sector and research under the control and direction of the state and asked the American people to rally together toward our common good as dictated by him.  Thus lays the heart of the leftists’ nationalism.  For those who think of Mussolini or Hitler, Obama’s is not a militant nationalism.  No, this movement flows from leftist, social justice thinkers who believe America needs to be liberated; liberated not from some external enemy, but from the enemy within – free market capitalism.  Obama seeks to accomplish this from the top down, but others seek the same from the bottom up.  We’ve seen this recently in the call by Francis Fox Piven for mass protests and riots among the working class.  Our open markets are the oppressor that must be vanquished.  This way forward is with the mass of nameless, faceless “oppressed” in open rebellion.  Both directions seek to suppress the will of the individual to the group.  This is a radical departure for a nation founded upon the virtues of the individual and the general will identified in liberal nationalism as originally espoused by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  In his writings, Rousseau claimed that citizens constrained to obey the general will are free.  He emphasized that the general will exists to protect individuals against the mass, not to require them to be sacrificed to it

Taking their cue from him, the founders formed a nation of individuals called to a joined purpose of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; a general will that leaves them free to follow the path of their own choosing.  Obama now seeks to call us for joined goals through singular means – individuals need not apply, as we must sacrifice ourselves for the common good.  By invoking Reagan, Obama sought to put a happy, patriotic face on left-wing/Marxist nationalism and make it more palatable to the people.  By their reactions, this has worked with the mainstream press. Thus far it has failed with the people.  With the advent of the Tea Parties, there is a renewed interest in the founders and perhaps as the public becomes more aware of federal encroachment, it can be restrained or even pulled back.

But the leftist, like an expert chess player sees several steps ahead.  If you’ve ever wondered why the leftists seek out a crisis, it is because of this – the American people are willing to humble themselves for the public good and pull together during a crisis, whether war, disaster, terrorism attack, etc. because that is part of our nation’s social contract.  In that moment, our civic nationalism becomes exploitable and that is exactly where Barack Hussein Obama wants us.  Only in the Orwellian world found in the aptly titled “1984” would it be anything other than reprehensible that this man could ever be compared to Ronald Wilson Reagan.