(HT: Daily Pundit)
From Delta, a lesson for woke corporations: if Biden does fancy himself after FDR, then this is exactly the sort of corporate cronyist environment one would expect.
Found on the Web
The (Long-Running) Economic Causes of the Texas Electricity Crisis: holy crap! This is California-level “deregulation” and the results are similar. It is a highly-distorted energy system, yet vilified as a “free market.”
Tucker Carlson Tonight Reacts To Joe Biden’s “Surreal” “Bizarro” Speech: his disgust at the tentative permission at gathering in small groups for Independence Day is the correct response. “How dare you tell us who we can spend the Fourth of July with.” (Side note: I think Tucker Carlson has strayed pretty far from a liberty-oriented perspective since Trump took office but I value his independence and courage.)
The Miseducation of America’s Elites: this is the most hopeful article I’ve read in a long while. If there’s a dissident subculture among the woke, then it’s possible that they might give room to their children to explore alternate ideologies—perhaps even liberty-oriented ones. Sadly, this appears to be more groping-in-the-dark questioning than principled opposition.
Democrats’ Voting Rights “For the People” HR 1 Bill Is a Scandal: absolutely sickening. Many of these provisions were contributors to wins in the most-recent election so they want to make them mandatory nationwide. If this becomes law, I predict two outcomes: 1) extensive litigation of almost every provision and 2) a nationwide blue wave that is statistically improbable but incontestable.
How to Asymmetrically Out-Compete Xi Jinping’s One Belt One Road Initiative: outstanding explication of China’s foundational efforts towards regional—and inevitably, global—hegemony plus what the United States can do (and is doing) about it. You could spend days following its hyperlinks to abundant further context.
There’s hope with Biden but it probably would have gone better with Trump at the helm.
Self-Driving, Not Self-Governing: this is an intriguing aspect of self-governance that I hadn’t considered. Having others do things for you is great and vital to productivity, but self-resilience, self-reliance, and self-esteem all come from being able to do things for yourself. Getting the balance right is crucial for ourselves but also for America.
Feds quietly dismiss dozens of cases: the decriminalization of crime as “just property crime” or “happened at night” or “federal misdemeanor” really undermines the rule of law, which is something that Biden declared was important.
H.R. 1 and S. 1 Resource Guide (2021): those last-minute election rule changes that likely made a difference in countless races, including the presidential one? This bill will cement them into law and abridge local efforts to thwart the changes. It’s legitimately troubling.
Democrats ask Biden to give up power to launch nuclear bomb: this feels like it should be legislation—unless there’s some imminent threat of first-strike by the moderate, sensible Biden. I am always in favor of reducing the president’s powers and re-situating warmongering back in Congress where it belongs.
No Proof January 6 Was an ‘Armed Insurrection’: this, the Sicknick thing, and the fact that it just dissipated the day of make this “insurrection” talk smell of Reichstag fire more than coup d’état. The author went through the charging documents for the perpetrators and found no indication that there were guns in the Capitol on January 6th. It shouldn’t be up to an opinion columnist on a blog to uncover these facts but here we are.
Coronavirus – Anthony Fauci Is a Public Health Official, Not Our Parent: this is how you get fascism.
Rand Paul – Why We Need to End the Forever Wars Now: I think all it would take is for Congress to repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force of 2001 that somehow allows the President to wage war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and (somehow) Syria. It is simply outrageous that this is still going on and it is frustrating that Senator Paul stands mostly alone on this.
MA Undersecretary for Climate Change David Ismay – “We Have to Break Your Will.”: naturally, he resigned once this all became public. Not because he was lying, but because he stated an “inconvenient truth” that could give away the show.
The Energy Solution for Texas — And the US: this is a great analysis of a problem. Every grid in America is susceptible to this; wind and solar capacity is inherently unreliable and must be 100% backstopped by natural gas generation. But it isn’t because that would be expensive and generally we get away with it, with the added “bonus” of maintaining the fiction of solar and wind’s cheapness.
But the real problem is this: when you enforce ersatz markets, you get shaky, unstable results. If the market were allowed to work, reliable energy sources and on-site fuel would be prevalent with spot capacity provided by more-expensive, but readily-dispatchable sources. All it takes is freedom because the market need and wealth is there.
Dolly Parton’s 2021 Super Bowl commercial is playing a rich man’s game: repugnant editorial. The commercial—linked within—is delightful, as is Dolly Parton herself.
What went wrong with the Texas power grid?: right question, wrong answers. Electricity is a very controlled, regulated industry even at its most deregulated. It is Ptolemaic in its layers of solutions to flaws brought about by its flawed premise: we need an energy Copernicus to go back to first principles and let an actual market get established.
Grid operator requests energy conservation for system reliability: we should be aiming towards a future of energy abundance. Wind and solar energy are unreliable and fail when they are needed most, while introducing chaos into the grid.
A World Without Billionaires Would Be Brutal: a little more utilitarian leaning than I’d prefer, but it’s an unusual sentiment nonetheless.
Mandalorian’s Gina Carano Under Fire For Jeffrey Epstein & Holocaust Posts: this is sickening because her Instagram post was not offensive and was actually quite trenchant. A robust civil society does not informally restrict speech, and a free government does not formally restrict speech. Her treatment—and the wider “cancel culture” movement—is evidence against the former even though it doesn’t rise to actual censorship.
© 2008–2015 The New Clarion — Sitemap — Cutline by Chris Pearson
I object! This is an insult to Peter Keating! At least Keating sought to acquire unearned and second-handed greatness. This evil creature wants nothing to do with greatness whatsoever.
The Fountainhead character Chief Little Big Man most closely resembles is Gus Webb, the nihilist who got an orgasmic delight over witnessing the degradation and destruction of greatness.
Little Big Man’s bowing down to the Saudi rulers is a perfect example of him being Gus Webb. Ask yourself under what sort of circumstances a civilized person VOLUNTEERS to bow down to someone outside the context of rote ceremony? They do so as a sign of RESPECT. Now ask yourself, is there anything at all about Little Big Man that would suggest that he would have authentic respect for ANYONE, let alone some random foreign thug he does not know who rules a country, if his line today about speaking “Austrian” is any indication, he probably knows very little about? Little Big Man is too much of a narcissist to bow down to someone out of respect. People like him expect the world to bow down to THEM.
So why would a pathetic narcissist like him choose to bow down to someone else? In his case, it is because he is doing it not on behalf of himself but rather, on behalf of the OFFICE and the POSITION that he holds. He did not bow out of respect for the Saudi king. He bowed out of DISRESPECT for the office that he holds and for the country that he represents. The disgusting remarks he made at other stops on his appeasement and apology tour were not made out of any desire to win the authentic respect on the part of people in other countries. It was his opportunity to show his DISRESPECT for the country he represents – a disrespect that he has had his entire life, a disrespect that motivated him to associate with the likes of Bill Ayres and Jeremiah Wright.
This evil creature is disgusting – and dangerous. Quite frankly, I don’t think that even the treasonous John F. Kerry Who Served In Vietnam would stoop so low (pun intended!)
Mark Steyn, subbing for Rush today, was puzzled as to what Obama could have been thinking when he made that bow. I believe it was the perfect expression of his foreign policy. He believes America must altuistically serve the world, and do nothing in its self-interest. So he makes a point of bowing to the Saudis, a prominent muslim nation that funds terrorists and should be considered our enemy. He is showing the world that America will bow to Islam. It’s his way of showing that the Bush era is decidedly over, no more arrogance, etc. He thinks this will repair our image in the world.
Our enemies will understand the gesture. I suspect plans are being made in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Pyongyang and other place to test just how far Obama’s weakness goes.
The Saudi King looks like a fat mafia thug. I don’t think even Ayn Rand could have contemplated this. This post-modern/Kantian/Judeo-Christian world is spinning out of control. Obama has absolutely no good elements to him. In some ways we have a budding dictator as President and in other ways we are totally leaderless. Can we survive 4 (8?) years of this?
We’ll survive. That is a certainty. America will not be wiped off the map. But what will we survive as? How changed will we be?
Barring some ghastly crisis involving mass deaths — something that triggers unrest and chaos and martial law — we will probably be the welfare state we are now, but worse, with higher taxes, more regulations and higher inflation. Free speech, free elections and a market economy will be intact. This is now my best case scenario — which says something about how bad it’s getting.
“In some ways we have a budding dictator as President and in other ways we are totally leaderless. ”
So true.
“Can we survive 4 (8?) years of this?”
I’m very much afraid we can’t. The really bad thing is that this is the worst possible time to have someone like Obama in office. He reminds me so much of Carter, whom I vividly remember.
He also reminds me, at times, of someone with narcissistic personality disorder. The preening and posing, the characterization of himself as the only hope of the fortunate nation he has condescended to lead, the astonished reaction when challenged in any way, the basic disconnect from reality. It is from these things that the authoritarianism springs. It’s how he’s planning on saving us from ourselves. From the dark side of us that doesn’t see the truth as clearly as he does.
Well, we’ve elected a narcissistic incompetent to office because we wanted to feel better about ourselves. When you peel away all the layers of posing from narcissists, you find no real abilities and no substance. Because they live to admire themselves in the mirror that others provide, they have never developed anything real within themselves, and they always remain mostly cut off from reality. When they can finally no longer fake it any more, and they hit the hard wall of truth, the crash is very bad.
“Can we survive 4 (8?) years of this?”
We will. The question is, at the end of those years, will we want to?
Remember how the libs used to complain about Bush being in the Saudis’ pocket? And not a peep about this.
Man, I want some of that koolaid…
Basically, best case is France or Sweden. I’m a-tingle with anticipation.
On the other hand, could we get some type of backlash against the extreme welfare state (obviously not the welfare state itself) that happened with Reagan in the 80s? Maybe after 4 years of this we might get some type of limited gov’t Republican.
If we get the type of inflation that Peter Schiff is predicting and the hyper-Carter type Presidency that we all expect of Obama, then maybe the country might be open to electing some type of Reagan/Thatcher type Republican. This is not ideal but it might buy us time.
Also to consider, will we be safe from Islam over Obama’s term? Did Iraq and Afghanistan do enough damage to the Islamic war against the West to set them back for a decade or so and hopefully get us past the Appeaser-in-Chief that is Obama? (Bush was an appeaser also but Obama looks to be an order of magnitude worse.)
So many questions.
If history is any guide, when an underachiever with delusions of grandeur amasses power the prognosis is not good.
Disturbing when the leader of the free world, bows, to the leader of the unfree. This moment will not be recounted positively in the history books.
I hold a differing opinion on this issue. I do not think that it is serious that Obama in particular has bowed to the Saudis, but rather that it is “traditional” foreign policy to do this. We should concern ourselves more with the practice rather than who in particular is doing it.
Charles of Little Green Footballs has pointed out that it is not only Obama and Bush Jr. that bowed, but several presidents before them.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/33293_Monday_Morning_Bow
Look at Bush’s bowing in context: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/33289_Bush_Bowed_Too
He was taking a medal from the Saudi king and bowing down so that the shorter person could get it over his head. It seems vastly different.
I know that Charles Johnson is trying to prevent the Christian fundamentalists from dominating the conservative movement (too late for that I think) but it does seem that he is becoming annoying as of late. There are legitimate criticisms to be made of Obama but Johnson seems that he would rather they not be made because they would give the “impression” that conservatives are all “wingnuts” or some such. The difference between Obama’s bow and Bush’s bow does seem significant.
Now I agree that it is entirely proper to point out the similarities between Bush and Obama with regards to their foreign policy and their view of Islam. But Bush was a misguided wimp. Obama is far worse. He is potentially a traitor, but I will wait for the evidence of that to roll on in over the coming years before I say that with certainty.
In the long-run and on the broad scale of events, which is more fundamental (causal) — a president’s psychology (“narcissist”) or his philosophy (supernaturalism, mysticism, altruism, and statism)?