Sacrifice

Early in his term, President Obama stressed shared sacrifice as a means to correct the various problems with which he said we were beset. He has shied away lately from that terminology. Why is that?

Perhaps it is because having it called for it incorrectly, and then been stung with his own blatant hypocrisy, he now also incorrectly reckons it politically damaging to call for sacrifice at all. Or perhaps it's just incompatible with his new lifestyle.

Like Dan Perrin, I think Mr. Obama's slide in the polls is a self-inflicted wound, almost an own goal.

Americans understand sacrifice. If all virtue consists in risking something of known value for something of greater, but uncertain value, then some sort of sacrifice is inherent in all acts of virtue.

In our nation's past, we have rallied to the cry of shared sacrifice. In times of war, we have been willing to risk life and limb for the sake of a cause no more definite than putting down evil in some far off place. When presented with a clear goal -- defeating an enemy, sending a man to the moon -- we are inspired to greatness. When some are called on more than others, such as in Southeast Asia, we rebel.

And so it is with economic hardship. When asked to sacrifice to get the nation past economic hard times, we chafe. Such sacrifice is passive, and we are a people of action, immigrants all. To come to these shores we first had to leave somewhere else, and I think that's burned into our culture. Or perhaps we merely distrust that the sacrifice will indeed be shared.

And we are already sacrificing, thank you very much. With the onset of $4 per gallon gasoline in 2008, Americans quickly changed their consumptive ways, altering their lifestyles. More and more of us are turning away from living by credit. We're cutting back on spending now, and saving for later. We're responding to the crisis in a rational way, which happens also to be the virtuous path that got our parents and grandparents through Great Depression I.

We suspect that government policies forcing cheap and easy credit led us into the economic mess, and the only way out of the mess is to shun the cheap and easy credit.

And 10% of us are unemployed; even more underemployed, our talents lying fallow. In that situation no one wants either to sacrifice or to benefit from the sacrifices of others.

Even more fundamentally, we don't believe that such sacrifice would be required if we hadn't wasted our resources on foolish consumerism. We believe in the economic engine our personal liberty creates, and we don't think it ought to be controlled from Washington.

Mr. Obama conceives of sacrifice as shared sacrifice, a thing imposed on the People by the State. And it is not to all of the people that he calls, but merely the Haves. The Haves are asked to sacrifice their capital, the very thing most Americans believe will enable them to end our economic troubles. The Have Nots are not called to sacrifice, but to benefit from the bounty he will lay before them.

And at that, whether Have or Have Not, we chafe even more.

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First Pitch Explanation

President Obama threw out the first pitch at the MLB All-Star Game.

It did not bounce before getting to the catcher. That bactrian trajectory is a new pitch perfected by Obama in preparation for the game.

The president threw out the first pitch without a teleprompter.

There is no evidence that the Commander-in-Chief was distracted by a hot Brazilian teenager, nor even that any were present at the game.

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Obama, ACORN, Iran

I wonder if Barack Obama's tepid, mealy-mouthed response to the violent protests by the Iranian opposition stems from his own complicity in election fixing?

Nah. That would imply possession of a conscience.

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Following

I'm tivoing the Iranian revolution. I have people right now gathering the information into book form, and in a few months I will purchase the paperback.

That's my way of saying it's great the the Iranians are dissatisfied with Ahmedicatedad, but I don't have to spend my day following it. It's not like I can affect the situation.

On the other hand, it does show once again that the global connectivity in general and the Internet in particular make it hard to keep tyranny going. Just as the PC and fax machine are said to have helped bring down the former Soviet Union, it appears that the Iranian revolution is being broadcast on Twitter.

But that presupposes that this is a revolution. It's impossible for me to know whether that is true or not -- are the protests against Ahmedinnerjacket, or against the Islamic regime itself?

And if they are against the Islamic regime, with what form of government will the revolution replace it?

I guess Barack Obama thinks maybe the revolution will bring something worse than totalitarian dictatorship - capitalism.

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The Health Insurance Mistake We're Going to Make

In any market, there has to be the freedom not to participate. Without that freedom, there is far less downward pressure on prices, and less incentive to compete.

What the Democrats will do instead is to enforce price controls on the market. They will say, as they do now with Medicare and other services, that a doctor must bill the government no more than what they bill other insurers for a given procedure or service.

That will cause doctors to do what every other regulated group has ever done: they will find ways around the regulations. They will find new services to provide -- or new labels for old services -- and bill whatever the market will bear. Prices will zoom out of sight.

In addition, if everyone has insurance, everyone will go to the doctor. People with head colds will line up for treatment, which will not be forthcoming. But they will still show up, and insist on being fixed.

I know this, because I've been to a hospital emergency room.

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GM Bankruptcy: Toldja.

On November 11, 2008, I said:

• The former Big Three are hemorrhaging cash, which an infusion will not stop.
• They'll have a larger debt load.
• Strings attached to the bailout will include limits on executive compensation and, possibly, government mandates to produce smaller, more efficient cars.

Since the Big Three lose money making smaller, more efficient cars, making more of them in itself won't help profitability. Since a big problem with the automakers has been poor management, limits on executive compensation will only cause the best managers to leave for more pastures which are perhaps less green, but more golden.

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Something Funny About Obama

He hardly ever uses a hard 's' sound at the end of words. Instead, he uses a whistling, hissing soft 's'.

It's like fingernailssss on a chalkboard.

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Obama 1, Pelosi 0

And so we have before us the Pelosi waterboarding kerfuffle (which I am dubbing "Prevari-gate" because "Watergate" was already taken).

Who wins if Nancy Pelosi is weakened politically?

Barack Obama. Pelosi will give him whatever he wants, without so much as a whimper.

Note that CIA Director Leon Panetta has come down on the side of the Bush CIA on this one. He wouldn't do that without White House approval. They want Pelosi out of there.

So who wins if Pelosi resigns?

Barack Obama. Obama will have his pick for Speaker, which would probably be long-time Rahm Emanuel ally House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.

House Republicans, agitating against Pelosi because they don't like her very much, are going to give Obama just the Speaker he wants.

In the long run, it will all work out, because Obama-Hoyer-Reid triumvirate will ultimately bring about electoral defeat. But not before they screw the country up in some very bad ways.

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Hammer, Nail, Assembly Required

U.S. News and World Report's Peter Rolff puts steel to work:

It is true that the U.S. economy was in bad shape when Obama came into office. But he and his top appointees want us to believe that their preferred solution—pushing huge increases in federal spending in his so-called economic recovery act and his budget for the upcoming fiscal year though Congress to prime the Keynesian pump, putting money in the hands of their political constituencies—are in no way related to the just announced record $1.8 trillion federal deficit.

Perhaps the worm is turning. RTWT.

w/t TPM

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Gibbs: We Have Ways of Making You Talk

Via Ace, we have Obama spokesdroid Robert Gibbs admitting that waterboarding worked, but who knows what else would have worked?

In the category of things that work, there are two obvious categories: mean and nice. There is no logical room between them.

The mean things are being roundly criticized as Stuff We Wouldn't Do To Save LA. If there are mean things that are not as mean as those we used, how do we know that they would have been effective? And being effective, would that not signify that they were too mean?

The "nice" category is also properly bisected by "costs something" and "costs nothing".

The things that are nice and cost nothing, I trust we've already tried. Oh, we haven't? You've had 100 days. Put up or shut up. The only possible explanation, then, is that this category of things that cost nothing and are nice takes longer than 100 days to produce results. I posit that there are terrorists targeting the United States with action plans taking less than 100 days to implement.

The things that cost us something can be summarized as bargaining with terrorists.

So the official position of the Obama Adminstruation is that it's better to bargain with terrorists than to waterboard them.

Just so we're clear.


P.S.: Gibbs is now tacitly admitting that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to these prisoners. Otherwise, we would not be able to question them at all.

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Obama To Make Draconian Budget Cuts

President Obama, after spending a mere trillion dollars on government growth in an effort to "stimulate" the economy, and pushing dramatic leaps in Federal spending in his budget, has laid out a bold plan to cut as much as $100 million.

Budget:	$3,000,000,000,000
Stimulus:	$900,000,000,000
Cuts:	$100,000,000

How can he make these awful cuts, while spending in other areas barely keeps pace? Is he going to order women and children to starve in the street, while AIDS patients are left with no medicines, and senior citizens choose between paying the light bill and buying cat food to eat?

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The Single-Tasking President

I've often said we ask too much of our Presidents. Whenever I hear someone criticize the President for taking vacation, or not handling today's crisis or local emergency, I respond that one guy shouldn't make or break the system.

Barack Obama on the campaign trail, in response to John McCain's call to cancel a debate to deal with the credit crisis:

"It's my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person will be the next president," the Democrat said in Clearwater, Florida. "It is going to be part of the president's job to deal with more than one thing at once. It's more important than ever to present ourselves to the American people."

But after a few scant weeks in the Oval Office:

Sources close to the White House say Mr Obama and his staff have been "overwhelmed" by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.

British officials, meanwhile, admit that the White House and US State Department staff were utterly bemused by complaints that the Prime Minister should have been granted full-blown press conference and a formal dinner, as has been customary. They concede that Obama aides seemed unfamiliar with the expectations that surround a major visit by a British prime minister.

But Washington figures with access to Mr Obama's inner circle explained the slight by saying that those high up in the administration have had little time to deal with international matters, let alone the diplomatic niceties of the special relationship.

Apparently, Barry never had a job in which he had to satisfy multiple customers at once.

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One Trillion Dollars

(orig)(Jonah Goldberg)

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Tax Loopholes

Tax loopholes are measures enacted by Congress to achieve some policy goal, like encouraging oil production or getting people to move back to central urban areas from the suburbs.

Tax loopholes are evil economic manipulation, I think.

But closing a loophole doesn't help the economy, generally. All it does is remove the incentive it was put in place to provide, so discouraging the activity it was designed to foster. Generally there isn't a lot of money for the government to gain.

Another effect of closing tax loopholes is to raise the general level of economic uncertainty. What is a good business activity? Companies and individuals don't know what the rules are if they keep changing.

Similarly, the more loopholes that are created and subsequently removed, the less effective tax policy will be.

But I guess in the end, any business which bases its activity on the presence of a tax loophole for it deserves what they get when the loophole goes away.

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More Proof Robert Reich is an Idiot

As if more proof were required to verify his status as world-class moron, Robert Reich provides it:

We're in a deepening recession, in case you hadn't noticed. The biggest challenge is to ramp up aggregate demand. Yes, we have to borrow lots from the Chinese and Japanese to do this, and, yes, it's costly in terms of additional interest payments to them. But there's no choice. In fact, if the slump gets worse -- and I have every reason to fear it will because that's the direction we're heading in as fast as you can imagine -- we'll probably have to have a second stimulus. And if the second isn't enough, a third. And so on. FDR's biggest mistake was doing too little until World War II. (No one should interpret this as a recommendation for more military spending -- I'm just saying Obama will probably have to think and do much bigger than the $787 billion stimulus so far.)

Shorter Reich: A never works, B has worked before, and there is no C. Let's do A.

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Santelli Gets To Obama

Robert Gibbs, the partially sentient White House Press Secretary, lashed out in an ad hominem attack at Rick Santelli.

My, what thin skins these Obamians have.

Mr Santelli had the audacity to say that if the Keynesian multipliers were above 1.0, that is, if every dollar of government spending yielded more than a dollar in private sector growth, then why do we need to worry any more? Just keep spending, and spending, and spending as we have been, and everything would be fine.

But the fact that no sane policy maker would do that, shows that the "multiplier" is not above 1.0. Instinctively, we know that to be so.

In fact, the multiplier is not a constant number at all, but a variable depending on a number of factors we don't even fully understand, and cannot predict. The multiplier is a random function, rather than a constant. The effect of government spending is not linear, but decreases after some maximum point.

But Mr. Gibbs did not address that point. He merely attacked an American citizen who dared to speak out, to raise his head up from his miserable work to question the One.

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A Nation of Slaves

Now comes Barack Obama, with his vast experience as a mortgage broker, corporate CEO, Chairman of the Board, and Wall Street investment analyst, to

• Adjust mortgages negotiated by lenders and borrowers,
• Set executive salaries
• Tell us all that unless we completely reorder our society, culture, and most of all our economy, all three are irretrievably bound for unmitigatable disaster.

Have we, a once proudly free people, accepted the premise that we need the government to run our economy, our business, our very lives?

Notice the strings attached to the TARP, after companies accepted money from the government, often under duress: "You have taken our money, now you must run your business to suit us. No longer can you offer incentives to salespeople to accel. No longer can you structure executive pay as you wish. Now you are our slaves, and will do as you are told."

Can there be any other result with the other bailouts that are coming? States, beware. Car makers, you know who will run your companies already.

And you, slave, you accepted a loan. How dare you smoke on these premises? How dare you purchase that foreign-made vehicle, while you sit in this home we bought you? And that thermostat setting on the in the home we bought you -- do you not know how much carbon dioxide you are venting into the public's air?

Do as you are told, slave.

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Of Envy and Admiration

Sometimes people are successful at what they do. Others are not. Sometimes people succeed, sometimes they fail. Having failed, we learn (or not) and try again.

When we see other people who are more successful, we have really only two options, though a third lingers: we can resent them, or we can emulate them. The lingering third is what most people end up doing, which is observing from afar and doing nothing. On some level we pass judgment, either in favor of or against the more successful. From the corrupt.org link above:

Some people assume that if any person they don't like is more successful than someone they like it is primarily or solely due to moral inferiority - a greater willingness to lie, cheat and steal. This mindset is common in underground subcultures, though some mainstream progressives also think this way. A more advanced version of this mentality adds the assumption that anyone who is successful in the "wrong" areas - for example dating or country music - must be a despicable and morally inferior individual.

There is a danger in giving up, in deciding that your sweat and diligence are no match for the world. But there is no higher virtue than working, being paid for it, and saving for a better future in which you no longer work for money, but money works for you. That, and not mere home ownership, is the American Dream.

When people decide that the only way they can get ahead is to lie, cheat, and steal their way to the top, they have one of two options: do it themselves, or vote for it. We call the first group criminals, and the second group liberals.

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Iowahawk Speaks Truth to Power

They may be criminals, but they care.

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America Is Useless and Doomed Without Obama

This recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.

It's not polite to call the President of the United States a liar.

So I'm impolite: Barack Obama is a liar, and a fear-mongering liar, at that.

An irreversible recession? The American economy does not depend on the skill with stimuli of the politicians in Washington. It depends on the hard work of Americans. It will recover, despite Obama's best efforts to destroy it.

All of this is a sham, anyway. He knows it will recover. He's just bad-mouthing the economy until some kind of "stimulus" package passes. After he gets his economic program through, he will become a cheerleader. When the economy recovers, which it is bound to do by its very nature, he will take credit.

What a disingenuous, self-serving piece of work that man is.

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