Note Well: This blog is intended for rational audiences. Its contents are the personal opinions of its author. If you quote from this blog, which you may do with attribution, please assume personal accountability for any consequences of mischaracterizing these expressed intentions.
Read related » Hamas gunmen murder four Israelis in ambush near Hebron [Reading this related article in its entirety is recommended.]
“Two of the victims were a pregnant woman and her husband. The gunmen sprayed their car at the Beni Naim junction near Kiryat Arba Tuesday night, Aug. 31. They then approached the vehicle and shot all four victims again at point-blank range to make sure they were dead. Hamas leaders threatened to sabotage the Israeli-Palestinian talks in Washington this week with a wave of terror.”
— DEBKAfile Special Report August 31, 2010 (debka.com)
PLEASE NOTE: If, for you, the building of houses in Jerusalem by Israel is the moral equivalent of the murder of Israeli civilians by Hamas, you have come to the wrong blog. Your sentiments would be better served by firedoglake.com, dailykos.com, and barackobama.com.
The murderous Hamas scum deserve to be terminated with extreme prejudice. If that is not sufficiently PC for you, the same goes for the horses they rode-in on.
In general, I am not favorably disposed to "beating a dead horse". But certain recurring outrages against humanity must be beaten until their lifeless bodies stop twitching, and their graves have been salted.
So President "No, I am not an ideologue" Obama persists in violent agreement with everyone else who concedes the right to build the Ground-Zero mosque. I suppose He thinks 68% of America is too stupid to understand that he is simply sidestepping the real controversy, namely that the would-be builders want to humiliate those who suffered great personal loss on that 9/11 date of infamy, and, indeed, to humiliate all those Americans who love this great Country.
So I have a question for President "Yes, we can" Obama. How does He resolve the obvious contradiction in His attitude, which might be described as "fit to be tied", toward Israel's announcement that they intend to build new housing in their capital city, Jerusalem? Don't they have a right to do so?
Are we not to conclude that He is biased against Israel and all those American Jews, whose funding He, nevertheless, loves? Perhaps He requires a new appellation: "Yes, I am a hypocrite".
Joe "Effing" Biden, Vice-Economist/Co-Pilot (image h/t Theo)
Read related » Welcome To 'The Great Lessening' [Reading this related article in its entirety is recommended.]
“We start the new week with a decidedly glass-half-empty view of the domestic economy. Last week's revised Q2 GDP release showed a modest improvement to 1.6% versus the 1.4% initial reading. Although a moderately bullish data point on the margin, underlying figures showed that government spending accounted for much of that growth figure. It is now clear that the pace of US economic growth is slowing. While the chances of a true double dip recession seem increasingly less likely, we are now certainly at least on path to reach a cycle of moderate growth, of sustained high unemployment and of continued pressure in the housing markets that could potentially last for years. Indeed as the "great recession" fades into history we now appear to be entering the "great lessening", a sustained period of lessened expectations for growth broadly that will have a profound impact on sentiment.”
— The Macro Report | Aug. 30, 2010 (businessinsider.com)
Unless you are in the market and betting long on Kool-Aid, you are resigned to a long period of economic gloom. And just in time for such an extended projection of less than "happy days", I have recently established a computed and color-coded mood index.
Being a long-term optimist, however, I have implemented the broadest range of potential American moods, from the current lowly "WTF?" mood, which is one tick above "Rage", to the theoretically highest possible mood of "Ecstasy!" Nevertheless, be prepared to hover in the neighborhood of "FML" for the foreseeable future.
Read related » "Moral Hazard" in Politics [Reading this related article in its entirety is recommended.]
“Although "moral hazard" is an insurance term, it applies to other government policies besides insurance. International studies show that people in countries with more generous and long-lasting unemployment compensation spend less time looking for jobs. […] People change their behavior in other ways when the government pays with the taxpayers' money. After welfare became more readily available in the 1960s, unwed motherhood skyrocketed. […] San Francisco has been one of the most generous cities in the country when it comes to subsidizing the homeless. Should we be surprised that homelessness is a big problem in San Francisco? Most people are not born homeless. They usually become homeless because of their own behavior, and the friends and family they alienate to the point that those who know them will not help them. […] We hear a lot of talk about "safety nets" from big-government liberals, who act as if there is a certain pre-destined amount of harm that people will suffer, so that it is just a question of the government helping those who are harmed. But we hear very little about "moral hazard" from big-government liberals. We all need safety nets. That is why we "save for a rainy day," instead of living it up to the limit of our income and beyond. We also hear a lot of talk about "the uninsured," for whose benefit we are to drastically change the whole medical-care system. But income data show that many of those uninsured people have incomes from which they could easily afford insurance. But they can live it up instead, because the government has mandated that hospital emergency rooms treat everyone. All of this is a large hazard to taxpayers. And it is not very moral.”
— Thomas Sowell, 2010/08/27 (townhall.com)
Having audited several courses in the excellent department of economics at North Carolina State University, I now have a much better appreciation for the scope of this naively-maligned "dismal science". If economics is to be "dismal", then the political hacks (are you listening Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, et al.), who adapt their perversions of economic concepts for their own despicable aims as purveyors of "political science", deserve a more descriptive sobriquet for their own field of endeavor — the "deplorable science".
If the nitwits in Congress would spend a fraction of the time they waste on trading insults, based on unsupported assertions and dis-proven assumptions, towards constructing legislation based on sound economic principles, we would undoubtedly be in much better economic health as a nation of traditionally work-ethic-oriented people. Not only do we have more than two-centuries worth of evidence to support such a contention, but most Americans know this intuitively.
We just need big government and progressive insanity to get out of our way.
What is more obnoxious than a sycophant? A Letter Man, who, as it happens, is just a fair-weather sycophant.
Apparently (since I am not paid to watch), that purveyor of light-weight political wisdom has smelled the taint of ripeness in the freshness that once was Obamination. Alphabet Man has now dipped his dipshit toes in the shallowness of his ad hominem humor. Referring to The Obama's penchant for vacationing whenever White-House kitchen-heat exceeds that of a corpse, A-hole Man opined that The Won will have plenty of vacation time when His one-term presidency expires. And the band played on, while the drone-like sheeple in his audience yukked it up, as if they had never before acknowledged A-hole Man's sycophantic praises of Walks-on-Water Man.
Could this be the start of something never-before beheld in unicorn land? Might Tingle-berry Man be on deck with feelings of dread coursing up and down his spineless back? Might the mighty head-exploding Teeth D'Olber Mann shock his mighty fan base of 7 viewers with a shockingly new choice of worst person in the world — Barack Man?
Stay tuned, if you have the stomach for it. I'll take my updates secondhand, thank you very much.
Read related » Will’s Formula for Peace: Stop the Process [Reading this related article in its entirety is recommended.]
“George Will has been on a roll, writing one blockbuster column after another on Israel and what he correctly dubs the “mirage” that passes for a “peace process”. […] It would be a refreshing and important development if American Jewish leaders adopted Will’s approach: utter candor. The peace process is destructive, masks continued bad behavior by the Palestinians, and promotes animosity between the U.S. and Israel. Let’s get on with what matters: Iran. It would be bracing, brave, and clarifying. That it is also inconceivable tells you much about the state of mainstream American Jewish organizations and why so many of them teeter on the verge of irrelevance.” [emphasis added]
— JENNIFER RUBIN - 08.26.2010 (commentarymagazine.com)
Though I agree wholeheartedly with the thrust of Ms. Rubin's commentary, I believe her candor in this instance is somewhat subdued, to wit: mainstream American Jewish organizations no longer "teeter on the verge of irrelevance". They have, in fact, fallen past irrelevance into perversely relevant negativity promoted by The Obama Himself.
I am old enough to recall vividly the postmortems (there's a euphemism for the ages) among survivors of the Holocaust, those fortunate few who would seed the resurgence of passion for new beginnings, pursuit of happiness, light, and life itself. And it was good. For a while.
But as is humanity's wont, trans-generational memories fade all too quickly, accelerating along with technological advances, their concomitant distractions, and a propensity to focus on the minutia of the here and now. And then the hippies discovered free love, drugs, and flower power, along with the redundancy of personal accountability ("What a drag, man").
And so the costly (six million Jewish lives, and upwards of fifty million lives total) lessons of "Never again!" and "L'Chaim!" were cast aside in favor of "Make love, not war", "What, me worry?", and "I want my free lunch, and I want it now!".
Read related » Medical Care Facts and Fables [Reading this related article in its entirety is recommended.]
“There is so much political spin, and so many numbers games being played, when it comes to medical care, that we have to go back to square one and the simplest common sense, in order to get some rational idea of what government-run medical care means. […] We hear a lot about how wonderful it is that the Canadians or the British or the Swedes get free medical treatment because the government runs the system. But we don't hear much about the quality of that medical care. […] British newspapers have for years carried stories about the neglect of patients under the National Health Service […] But the American media don't tell you about such things when they are gushing over the wonders of "universal health care" that will "bring down the cost of medical care." Instead, the media spin is that various countries with government-run medical systems have life expectancies that are as long as ours, or longer. That is very clever as media spin, if you don't bother to stop and think about it. Author Sally Pipes did bother to stop and think about it in her book, "The Truth About ObamaCare." She points out that medical care is just one of the factors in life expectancy. She cites a study by Professors Ohsfeldt and Schneider at the University of Iowa, which shows that, if you leave out people who are victims of homicide or who die in automobile accidents, Americans live longer than people in any other Western country. Doctors do not prevent homicides or car crashes. In the things that doctors can affect, such as the survival rates of cancer patients, the United States leads the world. […] But is life and death something to play spin games about?” [emphasis added]
— Thomas Sowell, 2010/08/24 (townhall.com)
Absolutely! American main-stream media (MSM) is all about spin. In case you have just returned from extended vacation on Planet Pelosi, which is just beyond Uranus, know that the MSM is now merely an extension of the leftist progressives currently doing everything in their power to exacerbate every problem afflicting the Nation they pretend to represent.
Unless you are perpetually perplexed, it is straightforward to cut through the spin maze. Just accept that:
All goods and services must be paid for by someone;
all government-allocated goods and services are ultimately paid for by taxpayers;
the costs of government-allocated goods and services always include enormous overhead, inefficiencies, and bureaucratic malfeasance;
with few exceptions, and health care is most definitely NOT one of them, the most efficient means known to man and beast alike for allocating goods and services is free-market capitalism;
the costs of market-allocated goods and services are subject to supply, demand, competition, and the fact that living organisms respond positively to incentives.
With such common-sense economics in hand, ask yourself, "How in the name of good health could the atrocity pushed through Congress by Pelosi, Reid, and The Obama Himself do anything but increase costs, decrease service, dissuade the best and the brightest from pursuing a career in medicine and nursing, discourage innovation in high-tech instruments and procedures, and attenuate research and development for medicinal improvements?"
If you ask yourself that question in front of a mirror, your reflection, upon reflection, will respond thusly:
It can't!
Post1,397Spin-Doctors' Rx for Low-Cost Obamacare: Drop Dead
Read related » NTEB: President George Bush Greeting Troops at DFW 2010 [Reading this related article in its entirety is recommended.]
“For those of you who've forgotten what it's like to have a President who loves America and loves the troops - enjoy.”
— Now The End Begins (NTEB2012), August 19, 2010
Miss him yet? You betcha. I began to miss him in January 2009.
A decent man. An honorable man. An intelligent man. An American who loves America, respects our troops, and as President, acted on behalf of his Country, not his own ego.
So, how's that hopey-dopey workin' for ya?
A Nation turns its lonely eyes to you … (Image via Wikipedia)
Read related » Clinton Invokes Climate Change Debate to Explain Pakistan Floods [Reading this related article in its entirety is recommended.]
“Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other officials are pointing to the devastating floods in Pakistan and other extreme weather events as signs that climate change is getting worse. […] "You can't point to any particular disaster and say, 'it was caused by,' but we are changing the climate of the world," she said.”
— Published August 21, 2010 | FoxNews.com
Now that a respectable amount of time has elapsed after the debunking of "man-caused climate change", AKA "clammy chum", the mega-scam that Nobel-lariat Al "The Love Poodle" Gore converted into a cool 100 megabucks, here comes Hillary "The Boomerang" Clinton with her pronouncement of "linkage" between flooding in Pakistan and man-caused climate change. It's like you slam the door in her face, and she comes slithering back through the window. "Hi there! Have you heard about that nasty man-caused climate change?", she asks innocently, as you retch uncontrollably.
If I were a betting man, I would wager that cap and trade is back on The Obama's radar of destruction. These political hacks are as predictable as they are despicable.
Read related » Pentagon Lawyers Consider Criminal Charges Against WikiLeaks [Reading this related article in its entirety is recommended.]
“WASHINGTON—Pentagon lawyers believe that online whistleblower group WikiLeaks acted illegally in disclosing thousands of classified Afghanistan war reports and other material, and federal prosecutors are exploring possible criminal charges, officials familiar with the matter said.”
— Published August 21, 2010 | The Wall Street Journal
There are those who look at conflict as it is, and ask, "What are the rules of engagement"? I see an existential clash of civilizations and ask, "Why not engage the rules of total war"?
Western civilization is under attack by international terror organizations, all of whom have explicitly stated their aim to annihilate our chosen way of life, as well as the lives of those who live it. These rogue regimes and death-dealing sects, as well as their mindless enablers on the periphery of perverse political correctness, have explicitly declared and unambiguously demonstrated their willingness to commit, nay, their passion for committing indiscriminate murder and mayhem. But our Leader of the Free World can't bring Himself to acknowledge that they mean what they say and mean to persist, to the bitter end, in doing what they do.
Many have wondered why the civilized world was so slow to realize the scope of the evils launched by Nazi Germany. I do not presume to know the myriad contributing factors, but it seems clear to me that that monstrous malignancy was unprecedented in modern times. Not so for the monstrous malignancy now metastasizing.
As for the miserable little self-righteous pricks who see fit to perpetrate their personal vendettas against those who risk their lives to protect the rights granted to those miserable excuses for holier-than-thou-ism, have we not a Predator or two to spare? You could look it up in the rules of engagement for total war.
{Song #75 « Song #76 » Song #77}
§ ≡ One of an ongoing series of posts in which I pick, in my not-so-humble opinion, the best songs of the second millennium. Feel free to offer constructive dissenting opinions; preferably set to music.
Song #76 is Sentimental Journey, sung by Doris Day. With Les Brown and His Band of Renown, the song, whose release coincided with the end of WWII in Europe and became the unofficial homecoming theme for many veterans, was Day's first #1 hit, in 1945. The record first reached the Billboard charts on March 29, 1945 and lasted 23 weeks on the chart, peaking at #1.
Read related » Skip the lecture on Israel's 'risks for peace' [Reading this related article in its entirety is recommended.]
“In the intifada that began in 2000, Palestinian terrorism killed more than 1,000 Israelis. As a portion of U.S. population, that would be 42,000, approaching the toll of America's eight years in Vietnam. […] In the 62 years since this homeland was founded on one-sixth of 1 percent of the land of what is carelessly and inaccurately called "the Arab world," Israelis have never known an hour of real peace. Patronizing American lectures on the reality of risks and the desirableness of peace, which once were merely fatuous, are now obscene.”
— By George F. Will, August 19, 2010 (washingtonpost.com)
So much for the fatuous and the obscene. As for the truly loathsome, I must turn to the vast majority of Jewish Americans themselves.
Of the 74% of Jewish Americans who voted for The Lecturer-in-Chief, their mindless disregard of all the signs and signals that He displayed and projected during His nauseating hopey-dopey campaign is as unfathomable as it is unforgivable. It was eminently clear, for all who deigned to look, that He is no friend of Israel, and most likely a closet Jew-hater. The latter clarity of vision, though admittedly speculative, could well be the reason all His personal documents are as closely guarded as never before for any Chief Executive of this Nation.
For all the lip-service to the "Never Again" mantra, the Americans who are within a couple of generations of someone they knew of, who either perished in or survived the Holocaust, it is simply amazing to me that they could ignore, excuse, or apologize for The Obama's lecturing and hectoring in support of not only the mortal enemies of Israel, but of the United States as well.
Post1,392The fatuous; the obscene; and the loathsome
Read related » Obama: U.S. on 'right track'
Message for Columbus upbeat, but Democrats urged to hold off GOP [Reading this related article in its entirety is recommended.]
“With his job-approval numbers flagging, Obama returned to the battleground state he won handily in 2008 to convince voters that his economic policies are beginning to pay dividends in the form of new jobs and to exhort Democrats to turn back an expected GOP juggernaut at the Nov. 2 midterm election. "Slowly but surely, we are moving in the right direction. We're on the right track," Obama told a group […].” [emphasis added]
— BY MARK NIQUETTE AND JOE HALLETT, AUGUST 19, 2010 (THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH)
To paraphrase that great political parser, "It depends on what the meaning of the words 'right track' is". If we assign the correct meaning, namely that we are lying helplessly on the left track, towards which the out-of-control train-wreck-in-the-making is headed, then yes, we are on the "right track", as it were.
Our politicized Metaphor-in-Chief is once again (thankfully) concentrating on what He does best, which prevents Him from stoking further His out-of-control deficit spending.
I have no doubt that He Himself is on the "right track", however. If he manages to stay His course of mesmerizing His hopey-dopey tingle-berries, albeit boring everyone else with His sophomoric cheerleading, then, just maybe, we can manage to get out of that train-wreck's path in time.
"Tolerance" is the "fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward opinions and practices that differ from one's own". It is not equivalent to "acquiescence", which is "agreement or consent by silence or without objection". One can be tolerant of another's opinions and/or practices without simultaneously acquiescing to or agreeing with those same opinions and/or practices. These two attitudes are neither mutually inclusive nor mutually exclusive. It is logically wrong to conflate these attitudinal concepts.
The famous quote often attributed to Voltaire (but actually first used by Evelyn Beatrice Hall), "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" is a perfect example of disapproval of an opinion but the utmost tolerance for the right to express it.
In like manner, I, along with a 68% majority of Americans disapprove of the intent to build a mosque near Ground Zero, but concede the legal right to build it. A minority of Americans are all bent out of shape, claiming that disapproval of the intent is tantamount to intolerance of the right. These people either willfully or ignorantly fail to recognize the irony in their accusations, for it is they, in fact, who are intolerant of their opponents' objections.
The Constitution of the United States of America (Image by Dan_H via Flickr)
Read related » Rule of Law in the United States [Reading this related article in its entirety is recommended.]
“All government officers of the United States, including the President, the Justices of the Supreme Court, and all members of Congress, pledge first and foremost to uphold the Constitution. These oaths affirm that the rule of law is superior to the rule of any human leader.” [emphasis added]
— From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Read related » Dismantling America [Reading this related article in its entirety is recommended.]
“We the people" are the familiar opening words of the Constitution of the United States-- the framework for a self-governing people, free from the arbitrary edicts of rulers. It was the blueprint for America, and the success of America made that blueprint something that other nations sought to follow. […] The first open attack on the Constitution by a President of the United States was made by our only president with a Ph.D., Woodrow Wilson. […] It is no coincidence that those who imagine themselves so much wiser and nobler than the rest of us should be in the forefront of those who seek to erode Constitutional restrictions on the arbitrary powers of government. How can our betters impose their superior wisdom and virtue on us, when the Constitution gets in the way at every turn, with all its provisions to safeguard a system based on a self-governing people? To get their way, the elites must erode or dismantle the Constitution, bit by bit, in one way or another. What that means is that they must dismantle America. This has been going on piecemeal over the years but now we have an administration in Washington that circumvents the Constitution wholesale, with its laws passed so fast that the public cannot know what is in them, its appointment of "czars" wielding greater power than Cabinet members, without having to be exposed to pubic scrutiny by going through the confirmation process prescribed by the Constitution for Cabinet members. […] If the Obama administration gets away with [adding] a few million illegals to the voting rolls in time for the 2012 elections, that can mean reelection, and with it a continuing and accelerating dismantling of America.” [emphasis added]
— Thomas Sowell, 2010/08/17 (townhall.com)
[Full Disclosure: I have a Ph.D. from Columbia University, one of the hotbeds of "those who imagine themselves so much wiser and nobler than the rest of us". Nevertheless, I am not now, nor have I ever been one of those presumptuous leftists who have infested most of our institutions of higher learning.]
We the people must not allow the dismantling of the rule of law in the United States. The Constitution's establishment of the rule of law is what stands between us and the barbarians at the gates. All our other safeguards, including our nuclear stockpile and our armed forces, are merely an elaboration of our sacred rule of law.
I am quite conscious of the "Constitution-shredding" taunts these same insufferable elitists hurled at President Bush, so I do not venture lightly into such trash-talking. But if, as has been alleged, Bush "shredded" the Constitution (presumably via the Patriot Act), then what would be a corresponding characterization of The Obama's wholesale assaults on the Constitution and our rule of law? How about "pulverizing"? Does pulverizing the Constitution work for you as well as hopey-dopey does?
Repeat after me, "We the people must not allow the dismantling of the rule of law in the United States of America."
Read related » Articulate No More [Reading this related article in its entirety is recommended.]
“During the campaign, many conservatives, including me, were mystified by the media’s assertion that Obama was the most eloquent man of his era. He was charismatic and inspiring, we were lectured. But conservatives could barely figure out what he was saying […] It seemed gibberish to many of us. But at least it was all of the same piece, all recycled leftist sloganeering. […] And just to twist the knife, CNN acknowledges that George W. Bush was a more effective communicator:
“While many poked fun at former President George W. Bush for mispronouncing words and stumbling through sentences, observers note that he rarely had to backtrack on his answers because he employed a simple and direct messaging approach.”
So Obama has gone from inspirational to exasperating for his followers and cheerleaders. Maybe he just ran out of left-wing bumper-sticker phrases.
— JENNIFER RUBIN - 08.17.2010 - commentarymagazine.com
Though I tend to be as amused as the next guy by clever bumper stickers, I never confused that thoroughly-American brand of amusement with eloquence, as that very same confusion is frequently the source of its humor. But when significant portions of the general population, along with the majority of the MSM, invest bumper-sticker-sized sound bites with eloquence and meaning, the national dialog descends to the level of playground trash talk. And the ensuing din is what the Tower of Babel must have sounded like.
The world is a complex assembly of mass-energy and mediating-forces, including some seven billion of the most complex sub-assemblies, AKA humans. A principle force of mediation for those often intractable sub-assemblies is dialog, which itself is a complex assembly of varying flavors. And trash-talking is among the least effective means of constructive dialog, limited, as it is, to inciting animosity.
Hopey-dopey is to eloquence as minutes are to years.
No, I haven't lost my mind (or as far as I can tell; then again, if I have lost it, how could I tell?). I know it's counterintuitive, but hear me out before making a final judgement.
I have concluded that it is hopeless to hope that hopey-dopey will magically morph into something remotely resembling America-friendly policy. Ain't gonna happen; not in the lifetime of this administration. So, what is the next best thing? Obviously, it is to hope for a minimum of policy-generating initiative by The Obama Himself.
Lets face it, everything He touches turns to crap; it's like an anti-Midas touch. Let's take a page out of Rahm "It Up Your Ass" Emanuel's play-book and urge The Won to reach out and touch His deep-pocketed support base. In perpetuity, or until it all turns into a cataclysmic scheisse-storm. You just know He's up for it; it's what He does best.
So, we get Him to go out on the money-grubbing trail, which gets Him out of the White House where He is normally bullish on China shopping for clues about elementary economics.
It's win-win, America.
Bullish on China while shopping for economics clues (h/t Theo)
What are Mr. Grosz's points here, which the WWDTM audience so appreciates? One underlying point is that the proposed site for the World Trade Center mosque is insignificant. Another is that opposition to an event amounts to intolerance of the idea of the event. And, the motivating force driving Mr. Grosz and his audience toward the punchline is that old favorite -- the need to show who's a clever boy, then. Clever enough to be dangerous, but not intelligent enough to grasp the concepts one so blithely tosses about.
The proposed site for the World Trade Center community center and mosque is not insignificant. Is Mr. Grosz suggesting that the Cordoba Initiative had no other options in choosing a site for the community center/mosque? Is there a suggestion that this is the most convenient location for an Islamic community center/mosque because it is central to a large Muslim population? Doesn't it seem more likely that the Cordoba Initiative chose the proposed site precisely for its symbolic value? For some Americans, the symbolic value of a World Trade Center mosque has a positive valence; but for many more the valence is negative. The controversy over the Cordoba Initiative's proposed location is exactly because the location is significant. Ignoring this (or pretending otherwise) is ignorant (or pretentious).
How is opposition to locating the Cordoba Initiative on the ruins of the World Trade Center -- a location that has become one of great significance in our national consciousness -- an act of intolerance?
Intolerance is the unwillingness or inability to tolerate circumstances that are important for other people's well-being and are not overly burdensome to one's own. The virtue of tolerance in no way demands that one accepts, or goes along with, or supports all propositions. Individuals, groups of individuals, communities, and organizations throughout this country oppose proposed building plans regularly (the location of a Walmart, for example, or of a neighbor's shed). Opposition is not intolerance. People who are engaged with their communities and their local environments have ideas (often very passionate ideas) about how those communities and those local environments ought to be organized. Stating one's opposition to proposals that contradict one's own beliefs is not an act of intolerance. Effacing oneself in the face of another's self-assertion is not practicing the virtue of tolerance, nor is it sound ethical behavior.
It is funny, to some people I suppose, to reduce the concept of tolerance to the point of cliche (especially if one can throw in a clever reference to Irony). It's slightly grating, though -- the self-congratulatory laughter of the NPR audience, much like the regular mock self-mockery on NPR of the nerdy (read:smart) NPR community, which as a life-long NPR listener I can confess I find particularly cringe-inducing.
I compute "America's Mood" index [%] as a weighted average of three indices, based on three of Gallup's Daily Averages: Obama Job Approval, Economic Confidence, and Consumer Spending, each of those three expressed as a % of its corresponding 52-week spread.
My choices of weights are 1/6, 1/3, and 1/2 for "Approval", "Confidence", and "Spending", respectively.
The color-coded mood characterizations, based on the computed index values [%] are:
Read related » Obama's Support for Ground Zero Mosque Draws Fire [Reading this related article in its entirety is recommended.]
“While the Muslim community has the right to build the mosque, they are abusing that right by needlessly offending so many people who have suffered so much," he said. "The right and moral thing for President Obama to have done was to urge Muslim leaders to respect the families of those who died and move their mosque away from ground zero. Unfortunately, the president caved into political correctness.” [emphasis added]
— Published August 14, 2010 | FoxNews.com
Separation of church and state is one of our fundamental Constitutional guarantees. It is, nevertheless, not at issue in the present instance. The controversy swirling about does not concern the legality of the proposed building of the mosque; that is a protected right. The controversy concerns the perceived reason for the mosque's proposed location, the perceived amoral, unethical, and unpatriotic nature of the undertaking, as well as the perceived obligations of the President, to whom the electorate has entrusted the moral, ethical, and patriotic leadership of the Nation, not just the command of our armed forces.
What is at issue is the fundamental Constitutional obligation of the American President, namely, to "faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and [to] preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States". And as such, it is clear that this generally-stated obligation to the Nation includes the obligation to faithfully represent the moral, ethical and patriotic principles of its people. We do not require an affirmation of the legality of the controversial endeavor. We require a proper condemnation of its improper design.
I would submit that the present state of our disunion includes strikingly similar elements to those that existed during the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, and even the prelude to the Second World War. We are polarized to the extent that party affiliation overwhelms allegiance to the Flag; regional associations overwhelm National pride; economic recession is threatening to metastasize into depression; and a nuclear-armed axis-of-evil is gathering undeterred in opposition to everything we once held dear.
Read related » Facing Ethics Charges, Rep. Waters Points Finger at Bush Administration [Reading this related article in its entirety is recommended.]
“Embattled Rep. Maxine Waters on Friday blamed the Bush administration for her ethics problems -- saying she had to intervene with the Treasury Department on behalf of minority-owned banks seeking federal bailout funds -- including one tied to her husband -- because the Treasury Department wouldn't schedule its own appointments.”
— Published August 13, 2010 | FoxNews.com
Read related » Joseph Welch confronts McCarthy [Reading this related article in its entirety is recommended.]
“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
— Joseph Welch, June 9, 1954 (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Have the Democrat clowns no sense of decency, at long last? Have they left no sense of humor?
Have they abandoned all sense of reality? Neutrality? Abnormality? Conviviality?
This obsessive compulsion to blame Pres. Bush for everything, from Democrat insomnia to Democrat insanity, is beyond the pale. It's beyond the blue horizon. It is even beyond Planet Pelosi, which, as everyone knows, is just beyond Uranus.
I could go on, but what would be the point? The clowns to the left of me are immune to derision.
Read related » U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don't Even Know It: Laurence Kotlikoff [Reading this related article in its entirety is recommended.]
“Uncle Sam’s Ponzi scheme will stop. But it will stop too late. And it will stop in a very nasty manner. The first possibility is massive benefit cuts visited on the baby boomers in retirement. The second is astronomical tax increases that leave the young with little incentive to work and save. And the third is the government simply printing vast quantities of money to cover its bills. Most likely we will see a combination of all three responses with dramatic increases in poverty, tax, interest rates and consumer prices. This is an awful, downhill road to follow, but it’s the one we are on. And bond traders will kick us miles down our road once they wake up and realize the U.S. is in worse fiscal shape than Greece. Some doctrinaire Keynesian economists would say any stimulus over the next few years won’t affect our ability to deal with deficits in the long run. This is wrong as a simple matter of arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the government’s credit-card bill and each year’s 14 percent of GDP is the interest on that bill. If it doesn’t pay this year’s interest, it will be added to the balance. Demand-siders say forgoing this year’s 14 percent fiscal tightening, and spending even more, will pay for itself, in present value, by expanding the economy and tax revenue. My reaction? Get real, or go hang out with equally deluded supply-siders. Our country is broke and can no longer afford no- pain, all-gain "solutions".”
— By Laurence Kotlikoff - Aug 10, 2010 (bloomberg.com)
So, how's that hopey-dopey workin' for ya? Gettin' your groove on? Party hardy, dude, just like Lady Obama is doin', 'cause the party's gonna crash-land way before your concerns about payin' your mortgage and fillin' your gas tank fully materialize.
I know most people are not interested in trying to decipher which economist's forecast is most nearly correct; after all, economics is "the dismal science". Dismal or no, prudence requires that people who haven't abandoned all personal accountability take note of what the responsible practitioners of this science predict, the operative word being "responsible".
Paul Krugman is not a responsible practitioner; he is a shill for the liberal-leftist media. How can this be substantiated? Easy. Krugman, along with Al Gore and Barack Obama, is a recent recipient of what has become the Dismal Prize, formerly known as the Nobel Prize, when it's awarded for excellence in shilling. FULL DISCLOSURE: I am not an economist, but last year I took a couple of courses from two very intelligent professors of economics at North Carolina State University. Moreover, I recently stayed at a Holiday Inn Express.
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