The New Clarion

Michael Barone writes about the disarray on Capitol Hill. I was surprised to read that as of June 19, only $29 billion of the massive stimulus bill had been spent. You remember how it was so urgent that the bill was passed quickly that Congressmen didn’t have time to read the thing? It turns out they could have waited until now to pass the bill and they would have “stimulated” the economy about as much as they have. (Actually the economy would be in better shape if they had not passed that bill.)

And where did that $29 billion go?

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There are some interesting pieces on Obama around the web. 

Commentary has two good ones. Decoding Obama by Peter Wehner looks at Obama’s lies. The man has no shame and will say anything. As we have learned from the 20th century totalitarian regimes, the truth is always their first victim — and those who destroy the truth as a matter of policy (as opposed to the occasional hypocrisy or moment of weakness) are capable of any enormity.

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The news about the Obama administration, the Reid Senate and the Pelosi House continues to be bad. Jaw-dropping bad. Obama won’t allow pilots to fly armed.

After the September 11 attacks, commercial airline pilots were allowed to carry guns if they completed a federal-safety program. No longer would unarmed pilots be defenseless as remorseless hijackers seized control of aircraft and rammed them into buildings.

Now President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology.

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There are some good posts on this Tuesday 3/10/09.

First, Robb at Robbservations has a good post on the concept’To big to fail.’ He shows how the whole policy is wrong headed.
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Doug Reich at The Rational Capitalist takes a liberal writer to task for misrepresenting Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in a post titled “How can we take these people seriously?”
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Rob at The Morality War discusses your relationship to yourself and to others in a post titled “Who do you think you are?”
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Stephen Bourque at One Reality posts on the Republican’s role in the banking collapse in “Ted Kennedy’s down Payment.”
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Brian Phillips at Live Oaks laments Houston mayoral candidate Peter Brown’s desire to fashion Houston after other cities in terms of government provided services while ignoring Houston’s success at doing without them. I commented that Mr. Brown is a power luster since Houston’s freedom caused success means nothing to him.
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Ever wonder what a trillion dollars looks like? Beth at “Wealth is not the problem” links to another site that shows how awesome that number really is. And to think our new government is throwing multiples of that quantity around like it was candy.

1. “Piloting the Plane of State” is an excellent example of media slobbering over Barack Obama. It’s got it all: leftist tastelessness, check—calling the Hudson River emergency landing “the anti-9/11″ is spectacularly bad form; breathless adoration, check—he is that heroic pilot to the author; and audience castigation, check—we the people that Obama is trying to rescue, need to keep calm or he won’t be able to help us “however heroic.” (There is a weird part where she actually realizes that “people entrusted with public money are overwhelmingly inclined to waste it, steal it, or simply misuse it” but that moment of clarity was an obvious interruption in this stream of consciousness article.)

2. “Book is Rallying Resistance to the Antivaccine Crusade” also appears to be rallying the antivaccine crusade itself, if the Amazon page is any indication. I’m tempted to say that natural selection will take care of this crowd over time, but it is a moral travesty that children are being denied needed immunizations. I have met several mothers who subscribe to this garbage and they are the most fad-conscious, secondhand people I have encountered. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is at work since the likelihood that any child will be autistic is fairly minimal.

3. The Huffington Post is decidedly in the tank for global warming, this bout of sense notwithstanding. From Huffington herself: “It was an error in judgment. I would not have posted it. Although HuffPost welcomes a vigorous debate on many subjects, I am a firm believer that there are not two sides to every issue, and that on some issues the jury is no longer out. The climate crisis is one of these issues.” This is yet another salvo in the left’s war on dissent and it is very much akin to religion’s fervent desire to squelch doubt in any form. The introduction of doubt cannot be tolerated by either for it gives the lie to their purported (and coveted) legitimacy. Without that, the coming government repression in the name of “doing something” to stop the irreversible climate change.

4. US Government Spending is a handy little site for data mining federal budgets. For example, federal spending declined every year from 1920 to 1929. Strangely, we think of the decade as the “Roaring Twenties” and a time of unalloyed prosperity. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. Or maybe that’s the real way (as opposed to this one) to stimulate the economy—by removing the drain that the federal budget represents.

5. This report from the Pacific Research Institute on the benefits of economic freedom is just the thing that would persuade a politician who wants to do whatever works. Right? Oh, he’s just saying that to disarm his critics.

6. “Health Care Reform: Why So Much Talk and So Little Action?” {via} attempts to outline the roadblocks that traditionally have stood in the way of meaningful health care reform. The real obstacle to reform has been the American people’s shaky hesitation to tamper with something that is literally a matter of life and death. Everyone agrees that there’s something wrong with the system, but no one dares to change things up in a significant way. And they certainly don’t trust the federal government to do it right. For all of Michael Moore’s posturing, the average American can see that the rest of the world flocks here when serious medical problems arise. Sadly, this makes the likelihood of a radical restoration of individual rights in medicine similarly low.

7. James Hansen’s former supervisor has publicly castigated Hansen as an embarrassment to NASA. I think that’s probably as close as we’re going to get to Mike’s dream headline.

I posted this too on my website and it sparked an uptic in interest. So I thought I would recommend three sites to visit for any TNC readers who may be interested in Objectivist psychology.

First is Dr. Michael J. Hurd Ph.D. who now post his Daily Dose of Reason for all to read.

Second is Dr. Ellen Kenner Ph.D. who has her own radio show titled “The Rational Basis of Happiness”. You can listen to some of her past shows via pod casts or even listen in on a live one. Her show is carried on 44 stations in North America and 2 in Canada.

Third is Fire Fly Sun hosted by Dr. Scott J. Adams Ph.D. This is an interesting and large site to explore. You’ll also see contributions by both the above Dr. Hurd and Dr. Kenner as well as others.
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At his blog Scott Holleran informs us that “Penguin has announced that it will publish a trade paperback for We the Living by Ayn Rand.”

And…

“The powerful We the Living, one of my favorite novels, is the last of Ayn Rand’s four novels to be reprinted in the larger trade paperback format. Publicity materials also make reference to a biography of Ayn Rand (1905-1982) that’s slated for sale next month.”

Now that’s good news.

1. “BB&T Took Federal Rescue Money at Treasury’s Urging”: it looks like BB&T’s acceptance of federal bailout money wasn’t a selling out of its principles so much as a grudging recognition that the failure to do so could have federal consequences as well as competitive ramifications. In today’s legal environment, it probably also would have faced a shareholder lawsuit. While I would have preferred its CEO, John Allison, to have told the Treasury officials where they could deposit their “investment,” I understand that an officer of a public corporation has a fiduciary responsibility that forces his hand in these situations. I am glad that they’ve publicly opposed the program in which they were forced to participate.
2. Name of Russia: thankfully, Joseph Stalin ended up losing to Alexander Nevsky and Pyotr Stolypin but it seemed possible that he might have been voted number one as late as last week. There’s movement afoot in Russia to rehabilitate Stalin by squelching researchers seeking to explore the contours of his bloodshed and rewriting the history books to suggest that he did what he had to do in order to protect Russia’s greatness. While one of the researchers attributes the embrace of Stalinism as a failure of “historical memory” on the part of the Russian people, I think the problem runs much deeper than a lack of official recognition of Stalin’s atrocities. It seems as if the average Russian’s identity is tied up with some notion of national greatness, causing them to long for the time when Russia was a superpower even though they cannot have enjoyed life under communist rule. Stalin, perhaps, is seen as a strong leader that held total sway over the country and incredible influence with the West. Putin has definitely sought to capitalize on this trend, which does not bode well given the way FDR—er, Obama—is likely to relate to him.
3. “Resolutions still worth making”: I love New Year’s because it’s the perfect day to take stock of your life and see what you’d like from the coming year. But Epstein points out that too many are passive about goal-setting. Like Valentine’s Day for the feckless husband, New Year’s becomes the one day a year when one does what one should be doing all year long. The good life does not come easily: it takes effort and resolve and lifelong commitment. The good life requires living consciously and conscientiously.
4. “Obama and Education Reform”: Bill Ayers—yes, that one—argues that education in America should be built around the maxim that “the fullest development of all is the necessary condition for the full development of each” and that its students should be able “to develop initiative and imagination, the capacity to name the world, to identify the obstacles to their full humanity, and the courage to act upon whatever the known demands.” Further, he argues that “all children and youth in a democracy, regardless of economic circumstance, deserve full access to richly-resourced classrooms led by caring, qualified and generously compensated teachers.” The mind reels at how wholly Obama may have taken in this guy’s ideas in all the time that they were working together in Chicago.
5. Letter to President Bush from Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina [PDF]: “I believe we are at a tipping point in moving from a market-based economy to a politically-based economy, wherein one’s success can be determined not by good decisions and hard work, but by the size of one’s voice and connection to Washington.” Hear, hear! I’ll definitely keep my eye on the South Carolina governor.

5. It’s COLD! Cold weather has hit North America and much of the world. Here in Southern California it got down to the 30′s at night. Environmentalists claim that weather extremes are the result of global warming, but I don’t think people are buying it. I believe doubt is starting to spread. There is a lot of talk among scientists that we’re heading for a new Ice Age now. All of this is important because if global warming hysteria fails, environmentalism will suffer a huge blow to its credibility.

4. The Never-Ending War. It’s been seven years now since September 11, 2001, and American troops are still dying in the Middle East. We have settled for a state of permanent war and altruistic nation building because all-out war would be an assertion of our national self-interest that would anger the rest of the world. Every American death in the Middle East now is a sacrifice to the gods of altruism and world opinion.

And how much of our never-ending war is a function of welfare state pressure-group politics? The libertarians and paleo-conservatives, though wrong on many things, have a good point with the link between the welfare state and the warfare state. Randolph Bourne said, “War is the health of the state.” I predict that at the end of President Obama’s four years we will still be have troops in the Middle East. Do you think that a statist like Obama would want to give up that power?

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1. Where Have All the Doctors Gone? They’re quitting. Too much paperwork and regulation. As Instapundit notes, Atlas is shrugging.

2. This headline is not from the Onion: Gay penguins expelled from zoo colony for stealing eggs are given their own to look after following animal rights protest.

3. The Kossacks are upset at Senate collegiality. They want Democrat Senators to hate the Republican Senators as much as they do. Trapper John gets hysterical about Senator Corker, who led the fight against the auto bailout:

Bob Corker just led the charge to kill the American auto industry, and with it some 10% of the American economy, because he wasn’t allowed to bust the UAW.  As such, Bob Corker is definitionally one of the most traitorous and despicable human beings ever to track slime across the floors of the Senate. He is attempting to take advantage of the financial crisis to literally dismantle the American middle class. He is beneath the contempt with which partisans regard even their most radical and craven domestic political opponents. 

4. The Kossacks are also angry at Harry Reid because he is ineffective in crushing those traitorous and despicable Republicans. Kos argues Reid is a crappy Senate leader. (Interesting graph in that post.)

But let’s not sniff at partisan bickering. As long as Republicans and Democrats are at one another’s throat, then less will be accomplished by the federal government — and that is the best we can hope for. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of politics!

5. Over at Eschaton Atrios is upset because corporations want to dispose of their property in a way different from how Atrios would do it. It doesn’t take much to make Atrios cuss, and this report did it:

The celebrated openness of the Internet — network providers are not supposed to give preferential treatment to any traffic — is quietly losing powerful defenders.

Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers.

In the name of “internet openness” the left wants the government to regulate the internet. They would rather the state violate property rights in the name of equality than let greedy capitalists employ their property in the pursuit of profit.

6. These are heady days for the left. Not only is the state expanding faster than Aunt Bessie’s dress size, but now the Madoff crime proves, to the eyes of the left, that all capitalists are crooks. Anne Applebaum believes Madoff will cripple US capitalism — wishful thinking of the left. She says one of our culture’s mistakes is believing that wealthy people “have earned their money.” Every Marxist knows this is not so.