The New Clarion

In this article, Warren Buffett opines:

Buffett’s interview centered on President-elect Barack Obama and the tough task he faces in fixing the U.S. economy.

“You couldn’t have anybody better in charge,” the Omaha resident said of Obama, who’ll be sworn into office on Tuesday.

As one of Obama’s economic advisers, Buffett said the president-elect listens to what his advisers say, but ultimately comes up with better ideas.

He predicted that Obama will be able to convey the severity of the economic situation to the American people and explain their part in alleviating it.

Which proves that a man can be brilliant in one area of existence, such as investing, while being totally ignorant in others, such as politics, government, and philosophy.

From the which-is-more-efficacious department:

“Some passengers screamed, others tucked their heads between their knees, and several prayed over and over: ‘Lord, forgive me for my sins.’ But a man named Josh who was sitting in the exit row did exactly what everyone is supposed to do but few ever do: he pulled out the safety card and read the instructions on how to open the exit door.”

President Bush declared the Washington, D.C. area a federal disaster area and in a state of emergency in anticipation of the Obama coronation next week. This was done to allow federal funds to flow to the city to cover costs associated with the inauguration, which the city estimate at $75 million. Total costs for the event are expected to top $160 million. And we may be facing these expenses every four years until Obama decides to stop.

There is an emergency in Washington, D.C. The Constitution and the view of individual rights that it stems from have been swept aside in a hurricane of statism. Unfortunately, the disaster is going on 75 years now and there are no signs of federal relief.

An Objectivist friend in Ohio, Tim DiVeto, sent me this email on Jan. 16th. With his permission I post it in its entirety below because it matches my thoughts exactly.

“When speaking to the press about flight 1549 NY Gov. David Paterson said. “We had a miracle on 34th Street. I believe now we have had a miracle on the Hudson,” Was the happy ending of this flight a miracle? Or was the safe landing of the plane an effect caused by heroism? I think the latter. 

A miracle is: A deviation from the known laws of nature; a supernatural event, or one transcending the ordinary laws by which the universe is governed. [1913 Webster]

What “deviation from the known laws of nature” happened in flight 1549? Every account I have read and viewed is believable. What I think Gov. Paterson is missing is that man, by his very nature, is heroic. How can one be heroic? Can heroism be achieved in day to day life, or is one appointed a hero by some supernatural force? I think it’s the former. Man’s mind is what makes him heroic. That is, the capacity to reason over weeks, months, and years. Do my claims seem arbitrary? Observe some basic examples in life. The Olympian who praises God for winning a Gold Medal. What’s his lifestyle, his focus, his aim? Is a supernatural force involved in athletic feats? If so, why must the professional devote every waking minute to imagining, planning, and acting to achieve values like muscle memory, morale, diet, et cetera. Consider the honor student who pays her way through school. Note the student’s day to day devotion to a goal that, at times, is barely palpable if not seemingly impossible. Does she get her drive from some external forces? Or is the student’s engine fueled by her ability to conceptualize the setting, income, lifestyle, and happiness that’s obtainable if she’s loyal to her long range goal? What about Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III? Is he not a lucid illustration of the heroism one may achieve through years of dedication, passion, and study towards a purpose? Is his level of professionalism an inexplicable mystery? A quick search of Mr. Sullenberger provides one with an impressive list of accomplishments, goals, and lectures performed by the man. As an honest reader, one can only conclude that the survival of flight 1549 was actualized by Mr. Sullenberger’s mastery of his art. His heroic lifelong dedication to flight enabled him to calmly execute in the presence of an ominous disaster that loomed right before his eyes. In all three of my examples, the subjects lived like heroes well before they achieved a major heroic feat.

While waiting to be rescued, a survivor praised Mr. Sullenberger who simply responded, “You’re welcome.” This is the appropriate behavior of a hero—he does not boast about or degrade his accomplishments. To the hero, his actions just are. His decisions are based on facts that he has accepted to be true, and his knowledge has become natural and almost automatic.

I can project how some mistakenly conclude that a man must be overcome by an external force to perform a feat of heroism. That premise is based on a combination of tired and illogical ideas, but it cannot be excused. A good man deserves justice too, e.g. recognition for his worth. To find the heroic in men, all one has to do is think. Look at the details and identity of a heroic accomplishment. After some investigation one will find that everything leading to a victory has a logical cause and effect. One will also see that a hero doesn’t just simply survive, he lives.”

Yes indeed. Both “Sully” and his co-pilot Jeff Skiles are examples of man the hero.

Many blogs do a caption contest every Friday wherein the blogger posts a picture and then visitors leave their take on an appropriate and funny caption for that photo. I really enjoy contributing to those sorts of things, but it doesn’t seem appropriate for TNC so how about a comment contest on Fridays. We select an article—nothing too lengthy—and you supply a comment analyzing it. Our commenters thus far have been exceedingly insightful so I’ll be most interested to read your take. Winner gets a free RSS subscription to TNC!

“Inauguration Is Inspiring Classrooms Nationwide”

Michelle Obama’s $300,000 “job” at the University of Chicago Hospitals has been eliminated. It’s no longer necessary now that Mrs. Obama has moved on to bigger things and does not need a $300,000 kickback for earmarks her Senator husband sends to the institution. As Ace of Spades puts it, “The Chicago Way. Cush no-show jobs for political favors.”

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According to this article, Hugo Chavez is willing to allow foreign oil companies to begin investing in Venezuelan oil projects again, since Venezuela’s state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA, is in dire need of new victims to despoil. 

It is a telling sign of how deeply the global economic crisis has cut: President Hugo Chávez, who initially reveled in describing the crash as proof of capitalism’s flaws, is now quietly courting Western oil companies once again.

Until recently, buoyed by the surging price of oil, Chávez had pushed foreign oil companies here into a corner by nationalizing their oil fields, raiding their offices with the tax authorities and imposing a series of royalty increases.

But faced with the plunge in oil prices and a decline in domestic production, senior officials here have quietly begun soliciting some of the largest Western oil companies in recent weeks, including Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell and Total, in the hope of getting them to invest in Venezuela again.

It is hard to imagine any company would consider accepting such an invitation to disaster.  Nevertheless, they are considering it.     

But energy executives here speak with restrained optimism. Nineteen companies paid $2 million each last month for data on areas open for exploration, twice what such data costs elsewhere.

Perhaps the oil companies can make some kind of profit from such ventures, even after Chavez nationalizes them, since he is magnanimous enough (sarcasm) to allow them to remain as minority partners after the nationalizations.  But that is no excuse for aiding and abetting the rule of an anti-American socialist, who allies himself with all of America’s enemies.

None of this seems to register with oil company executives, who would rather “go along to get along” than stand on such old fashioned grounds as principles, such as justice, (freely negotiated) contracts, and property rights.  They are dunces, the proverbial type who will sell our enemies the rope with which to hang us.   These are the same executives who support the anthropogenic global warming hysteria that demonizes their own industry, and the catastrophic legislation to slay that mythical dragon.

“If re-engaging with foreign oil companies is necessary to his political survival, then Chávez will do it,” said Roger Tissot, an authority on the Venezuelan oil industry at Gas Energy, a Brazilian consulting firm focusing on Latin America. “He is a military man who understands losing a battle to win the war.”

There is no secret about Chavez’s intentions here.  He is saying: “I need some useful idiots to help me fight America.  Any takers?”  And oil executives are not being wall-flowers in their eagerness to dance to Hugo’s tune.

The Monday 1/12/09 print edition of the Detroit News printed most of an LTE I sent taking issue with an op-ed of 1/07/09 by Rep. John Dingell from Michigan. For those who may not remember, Rep. Dingell was recently voted out of the chairmanship of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce by his colleagues who gave the chair to Henry Waxman. Now Mr. Dingell regrets not being even tougher on the auto companies. (The News left out two sentences and edited another but did not affect the message at all. And two other letter writers disputed Mr. Dingell as well, at the above link.)

“Americans are angry about what has happened to our country. No one seems to be willing to take responsibility. I will take some.

I should have held the automotive companies more accountable for their actions, or inactions, over the years. My colleagues voted to make another member, who views the auto industry in a much different way than I do, the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. I find that some members voted against me because I was perceived to be sympathetic to the auto industry.

I don’t regret fighting for millions of Americans who work in the auto industry, even if that fight might have hurt me. I will fight for those workers, the UAW and others in the industry until they kick me out of this place.

But I, and the auto industry, must recognize that fighting for those jobs means doing things differently. And while I may occasionally be put at odds with the companies themselves, I will continue my fight to protect the finest, most loyal men and women who work in the industry as well as the need to continue a manufacturing base in this country — whatever the personal cost.”

My LTE to The News:

I laugh at the Jan. 7 op-ed by U.S. Rep. John Dingell “I will hold the automakers more accountable.” It is Dingell who needs to be held accountable.

He prides himself on being a defender of the auto industry, but whenever the more leftist members of his party wanted to place more and more straws on the back of the camel that was the auto industry, all he’s ever done is to insist on smaller straws (such as slightly less stringent fuel economy standards). With that kind of defense, is it any wonder the auto industry is on life support? Dingell is claiming to be for workers’ jobs while being antagonistic toward the source of those jobs, management.

Michael Neibel

And so it goes with all the other political lifers here in Michigan not just Dingell (53 years in Mi. politics) but also Rep. John Conyers (over 40 years),Rep. Sander Levin (25 years) Sen Carl Levin (over 30 years) and others. All they do is blame someone else and call for more straws to be placed on the camel’s back.

There are other things wrong with Dingell’s op-ed but the point I wanted to make was that you can’t defend an industry by only defending the workers and not the management. Nor can one defend an industry by constantly compromising with those who want to regulate it to death. The auto industry is on the brink precisely because the Michigan politicos have refused to defend the individual rights of car makers to make the kind of cars they want to make and market them as they see fit. As Dingell demonstrates, they are still refusing to defend the automakers. Notice the sentence “I should have held the automotive companies more accountable for their actions, or inactions, over the years.” In other words, “I could have bashed ‘em for something.” Sader still, the industry won’t even defend its own rights.

In the latest revelation regarding President Obama’s Cabinet-to-be, Carol Browner—his climate change “czar”—was outed as a leader of Socialist International’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society. The blogging right is outraged by The Washington Times report, but I’m sure Obama picked her precisely for the sort of beliefs she would have to have to be a leader of that group.

Environmentalism and socialism are natural partners in the attack on capitalism and freedom. Whether you regard man’s productive nature as a blight because it pollutes pristine wilderness or because it pollutes society’s will, you’re going to seek to rein him in. Man, in the environmentalist and socialist’s eyes, is a despoiler.

To achieve the 90% reduction in carbon dioxide production that Al Gore has called for, the administration is going to need someone experienced in the wholesale destruction of wealth and capitalism. What better choice than an avowed socialist.

Dr. Paul Kengor reminds us of the left’s virulent hatred of President Bush for the last eight years, as seen most famously in Howard Dean.

Perpetually angry, Vermont Governor Howard Dean not only disagreed with George W. Bush but detested him. In fact, it was that palpable sentiment that on Jan. 11, 2004 prompted 66-year-old Iowan, Dale Ungerer, to rise at a Democratic debate and question Dean.

Appealing to the spirit of the season, Ungerer asked Dean why he acted “crass” and did not treat the president in a neighborly way. He urged Dean to “please tone down” the heated rhetoric, invoking Scripture: “You should help your neighbor and not tear him down.”

Dean was displeased. The physician-turned-governor leveled his finger at the senior citizen and ordered, “You sit down!” To raucous applause from a hall of screaming liberals, he shouted: “George Bush is not my neighbor! … It is time not to put up [with] any of this ‘love thy neighbor’ stuff!”

Ultimately, Dr. Dean’s presidential bid failed, torpedoed by too many outbursts, most notably an infamous episode where he looked into the camera, clenched his fist, and yelped a primal scream, sounding like a disturbed man.

But Dean wasn’t finished. Amazingly, Democrats had the audacity to tap him to run the Democratic National Committee, where Dean’s revulsion of George W. Bush and “white, Christian” Republicans—which was Howard Dean’s divisive description—could be channeled into a campaign to take the presidency—and Congress—by 2008. Unthinkable as it seemed, it worked.

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Clint Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a retired auto worker in  Detroit. He is a crotchety old man and a racist, the last white guy in a neighborhood that now has Hmong immigrants from Laos. Kowalski calls them slopes, zips and other epithets.

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We got two ominous signs of the shape of the Obama Presidency this week in the President-Elect’s speech on economic policy, “American Recovery and Reinvestment,” and less important, in his appointment of Leon Panetta to head the CIA. In domestic policy Obama wants to take the state further into the economy and our lives than it has ever been; in foreign policy, Obama hopes to return to the days before 9/11, when we ignored the Islamist threat and stumbled from day to day in unthinking pragmatism.

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Many blogs do a caption contest every Friday wherein the blogger posts a picture and then visitors leave their take on an appropriate and funny caption for that photo. I really enjoy contributing to those sorts of things, but it doesn’t seem appropriate for TNC so how about a comment contest on Fridays. We select an article—nothing too lengthy—and you supply a comment analyzing it. Our commenters thus far have been exceedingly insightful so I’ll be most interested to read your take. Winner gets a free RSS subscription to TNC!

“Exxon CEO Advocates Emissions Tax”

I guess the ongoing financial implosion at The New York Times and its desperation to gain revenue wherever it can has gotten to the point that, in order to pick up a few more subscribers from its core audience, it no longer even pretends to be something other than a cheerleading Democratic Party version of Pravda. 

In my mail this morning, I received the following solicitation.  After I got over the initial shock – well, I wanted to throw up. 

For those who cannot view the image, it features a photo of Obama on a black background with white lettering “DON’T MISS HISTORY IN THE MAKING November 4 was just the beginning.”

Just the beginning?   Of what?  Whatever it is they have in mind, I can assure you it is quite dreadful.  

Even I wouldn’t have suspected that the Times would stoop so low in such an explicit manner. 

This is a publication that has the nerve to go around suggesting that it is credible, “objective,” non-biased and somehow a cut above all other American newspapers. 

Here is the flip side of the solicitation:

This side is on white background with black text:  ”IN THESE MOMENTOUS TIMES there is no better way to stay on top of all the historic moments yet to come than by subscribing to the nation’s most honored newspaper.”

Honored? By whom and for what?  Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer? 

On the right hand side is an image of spread out newspaper sections.  The top section has the headline “OBAMA Racial Barrier Falls In Decisive Victory.” One of the sections shows the cover of The New York Times Magazine featuring a photo of the Oval Office and an anti-Bush article “After The Imperial Presidency.” 

Lots of newspapers have an  editorial slant.  But I have never seen a mainstream daily newspaper be so explicitly slanted in its circulation efforts.   Perhaps they realize that, with all of the options now available on the Internet, nobody else other than liberals and Leftists would be interested enough in their product to actually pay for it.   And having to depend on convincing Leftists to pay for something – well, I suspect that would be a rather tough sell given that even affluent Leftists tend to be notorious for trying to get everybody else to pay for the the things they claim to value. 

I shed no tears for the decline and fall of this contemptible rag. 

The Monday 12/29/08 Detroit News carried a commentary by Pete Maurer, a local school teacher, titled “Bullies don’t have self-esteem issues”. The article starts:

“For years, the conventional wisdom was that bullies picked on others because they had low self-esteem and often turned to hurting others so they could feel better about themselves.
I’m not sure about you, but the bullies I went to school with seemed to have no problems with self-esteem issues; they actually appeared to enjoy pushing people around.

Now comes research that suggests bullies do get a kick out of kicking others around. If anything, bullies enjoy extremely high self-esteem.”

He doesn’t define what he means by self-esteem but evidently he means feeling happy with oneself. But is momentarily feeling good about one’s self a sign of self-esteem? Not necessarily. A man of low self-esteem can feel good about himself for getting away with something he shouldn’t have.

He then cites this research:

“Researchers at the University of Chicago recently conducted brain scans of teen-agers who had a history of aggressive bullying, showing them video clips of people inflicting pain on others.
To the researchers’ surprise, the portions of the brain most associated with reward, areas called the amygdala and ventral striatum, lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree. In other words, the bullies enjoyed watching someone starting a fight or using a weapon to intimidate someone.

Lending support to this discovery, the self-regulatory areas of the brain showed little or no activity. The control group of teenage boys, by the way, had the opposite results; their brains showed increased activity in self-regulation, along with decreased activity in the reward centers.

What isn’t clear to researchers is whether this type of brain activity is learned or is hard-wired since birth, a genetic mistake that sends the bully on a lifelong pursuit of hurting others to earn his or her reward.”

But is getting a reward the essence of self-esteem? What about the issue of earning one’s esteem?

I fired off this LTE which the News has not yet printed.

The commentary of 12/29/08 “School bullies don’t have self-esteem issues” is way off base. Genuine self-esteem comes from confidence in one’s efficacy at living a productive life proper to a rational being. Such a person knows that reason is the only tool that can provide a genuine happiness and that such a value must be earned.
A bully has subordinated his reason to justifying his feelings whose satisfaction can only come from forcing others to provide him with an unearned or commanded esteem. The man of self-esteem reshapes reality to serve his survival according to his best judgment. The bully tries to reshape men and reality to conform to his feelings and whims.

To suggest as Mr. Maurer, and the studies he cites, that self-esteem can be achieved by starting the use of force against others, is to obliterate the difference between the earned and the unearned and to teach students a wrong notion of self-esteem.

Michael Neibel

Speaking of self esteem Ayn rand writes:

“Self-esteem is reliance on one’s power to think. It cannot be replaced by one’s power to deceive. The self-confidence of a scientist and the self-confidence of a con man are not interchangeable states, and do not come from the same psychological universe. The success of a man who deals with reality augments his self-confidence. The success of a con man augments his panic.” (from her essay ‘The Age of Envy’ in the book Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution)

And so the self confidence of a productive person and that of a bully are two different things. One is earned the other is forced. It is a dangerous practice to even suggest that self-esteem can be had by bullying others. That a reputable university is claiming to support this notion is scary.

The “crisis” we are told is getting worse. Paul Krugman’s recent column is breathless in its anxiety:

The fact is that recent economic numbers have been terrifying, not just in the United States but around the world. Manufacturing, in particular, is plunging everywhere. Banks aren’t lending; businesses and consumers aren’t spending. Let’s not mince words: This looks an awful lot like the beginning of a second Great Depression.

Around the time of the financial institution bailout, we were told that banks weren’t lending and that nearly every business was in jeopardy since short-term credit is the lifeblood of the economy. That, as flimsy as it seems, was the justification for the massive monetary expansion and subsequent unprecedented interventions.

But for being on the precipice of total collapse and the cusp of a “Great Depression II” I can’t say that I see much evidence of it. There’s increased unemployment, depressed home values, and slowed growth but it’s hard to say that we are in a period worse than the doldrums of the 70s or the recession of the 80s. We are certainly a far cry from the mass unemployment and economic retraction of the 30s. However, it has been difficult to find contrary evidence.

This graph from the St. Louis Federal Reserve is damning—Robert Higgs calls it evidence of the “Great Hoax of 2008.” (Mouse over it to see a close-up of the 11/1/2007–12/24/2009 period. Click to see a bigger version of the long view or this to see a bigger version of the close-up.)

The plateau initially seems to support the Treasury’s story of a liquidity problem. But this is an aggregate of the total credit outstanding at banks. Loans, especially short-term loans, are constantly being retired. If the money was being hoarded, then we would see a downward trend as attrition decreased the total bank credit. A plateau means that retired debt is being lent out again, resulting in a neutral line on net. When the supply of credit increases, the line would trend upward.

So credit wasn’t expanding, but it wasn’t contracting either. In fact, the plateau is at a higher level than at the beginning of 2008 and the entire episode lasted all of six months or so. This is what passes for a crisis that was not to be squandered: justifying calls for over a trillion dollars in new federal spending in order to stave off … nothing.

Secular Right notes that this campaign video did not help Elizabeth Dole get reelected.

As Walter Olson notes,

If this sort of thing goes over badly with voters in North Carolina, a state with strong evangelical church attendance and long the base of Sen. Jesse Helms, it’s hard to see it as a viable strategy nationwide. (And don’t write it off as an isolated lapse of some Dole staffers, either: as YouTube confirms, the official National Republican Senatorial Committee was hip-deep in the strategy.)

Elizabeth Dole did not deserve reelection. She was very much the standard welfare statist with no understanding of free market economics. In desperation she scaremongered against “godless Americans.” I laughed when the ad said Dole’s opponent, Kay Hagen, “took godless money.”

I don’t know if all this means much in big picture, but I take this ad’s failure as a small good sign — at least, I hope it is. If Republicans pursue this line of attack against “godless Americans,” they are heading for permanent minority status.

Barack Obama’s latest radio address, wherein he announced the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, deserves a thorough fisking because of its importance as well as its pregnancy:

As the holiday season comes to end, we are thankful for family and friends and all the blessings that make life worth living. But as we mark the beginning of a new year, we also know that America faces great and growing challenges—challenges that threaten our nation’s economy and our dreams for the future. Nearly two million Americans have lost their jobs this past year—and millions more are working harder in jobs that pay less and come with fewer benefits. For too many families, this new year brings new unease and uncertainty as bills pile up, debts continue to mount and parents worry that their children won’t have the same opportunities they had.

These challenges of which he speaks—the ones that “threaten our nation’s economy and our dreams for the future”—come from this promising of everything to everyone and his willingness to plunder the economy toward his own ends. This new year will, in fact, bring “new unease” and our children will not have the same opportunities we have since they will be saddled with unprecedented levels of deficit spending and government intervention all in the name of “doing something.”

However we got here, the problems we face today are not Democratic problems or Republican problems. The dreams of putting a child through college, or staying in your home, or retiring with dignity and security know no boundaries of party or ideology.

The problems are Democratic problems and they are Republican problems. The incredible expansion of government power and interference was caused by these two power-lusting parties. These parties know no boundaries or limitations on government.

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This post has nothing to do with nuclear energy.  I’m trying to find an explanation for a seemingly random event – a good policy decision emanating from the camp of the President Elect, Barack Obama. 

According to this article Obama may be militarizing NASA:

President-elect Barack Obama will probably tear down long-standing barriers between the U.S.’s civilian and military space programs to speed up a mission to the moon amid the prospect of a new space race with China.

Obama’s transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because military rockets may be cheaper and ready sooner than the space agency’s planned launch vehicle, which isn’t slated to fly until 2015, according to people who’ve discussed the idea with the Obama team.

I call this a good idea since the only justification for a government space program is as a tool of self-defense.  Space exploration for non-military purposes has nothing to do with the government’s only reason for existence, the protection of individual rights.  I do not say this to belittle the undoubted achievements of NASA.  If taxpayers are going to be robbed to support government welfare programs, space exploration is the best that could be chosen.  But it is still welfare – for scientists and space enthusiasts.

But it is only a good idea if it is indeed for purposes of national security, which seems, at least in part, to be the case:

 The potential change comes as Pentagon concerns are rising over China’s space ambitions because of what is perceived as an eventual threat to U.S. defense satellites, the lofty battlefield eyes of the military.

“The Obama administration will have all those issues on the table,” said Neal Lane, who served as President Bill Clinton’s science adviser and wrote recently that Obama must make early decisions critical to retaining U.S. space dominance. “The foreign affairs and national security implications have to be considered.”

“ . . . . .  China is designing satellites that, once launched, could catch up with and destroy U.S. spy and communication satellites, said a Nov. 20 report to Congress from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. China’s State Council Information Office declined to comment on the nation’s anti- satellite or manned programs.

To boost cooperation between NASA and the Pentagon, Obama has promised to revive the National Aeronautics and Space Council, which oversaw the entire space arena for four presidents, most actively from 1958 to 1973.

But since when have Democrats, at least since the 1970′s, been concerned with national defense?  And what of the massive fossil fuel pollution that Atlases and Deltas spew into the atmosphere?  What trumps that, national security?

The only explanation I can think of is that Democrats in recent years are anti-China, because of labor issues.  The unions are a big part of their election base, and the unions have lost thousands of jobs to China.  So the Democrats like to look tough on China.  Even to the point of militarizing NASA, and polluting the atmosphere. 

I cannot believe they actually care about national security.

Governor Richardson has withdrawn as Obama’s Secretary of Commerce because of scandal.

Looks like Al Franken is on his way to the Senate. (Prediction: Franken will be funnier as a Senator than he was as a comedian.)

Looks like Caroline Kennedy is on her way to the Senate. (More laughs!)

Looks like Roland Burris, appointed by Governor Blagojevich, is on his way to the Senate. He meets Harry Reid on Wednesday.

Clinton crony Terry McAuliffe is running for Governor of Virginia.

Neither President-Elect Obama nor his Secretary of State-but not yet Hillary Clinton can move themselves to support President Bush’s support of Israel. Such a statement would make someone angry, so they’re taking the politician’s way out by saying nothing.

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell says Republicans could support a $1 trillion “stimulus” deal.

“If they pursue a fair process…and give both sides an opportunity to have input, to have a true bipartisan stamp, he’s likely to get significant support,” McConnell said of a broad stimulus plan supported by President-elect Obama. “I don’t think that they even seriously can defend… doing this without bipartisan consideration.”

Let me translate McConnell’s statement: If you want our support, give us Republicans our share of the loot stolen from the Americans who produce wealth. We too have campaign donors to keep happy.

The three Republicans favored to win the presidential nomination in 2012 are Governors Palin, Romney and Huckabee.

What conclusion can we draw from this collection of stories about corruption and mediocrity? These are the kinds of politicians who tend to succeed in a welfare state. In the back rooms they cut deals and play pressure group politics; in front of the cameras they preen about their compassion and urge Americans to sacrifice.

Keep sacrificing, America! Without that, these politicians might lose their power.