Let’s watch the subject of his post first, shall we, before looking at Johnson’s comments.

The video starts with a question by Sen. Grassley where he asks, “do you believe the 2nd Amendment codified a pre-existing right, or was it a right created by the constitution?” This is an excellent question to ask a nominee to the Supreme Court to see what they think about natural rights versus legal positivism. Does Kagan think we have unalienable natural rights, or do we have them at the discretion of the Constitution and the majority? Is the Declaration of Independence the founding document of the country that the Constitution relies on for moral support, or, being the law of the land, does the Constitution render the Declaration irrelevant?

What does Johnson have to say?

Sen. Grassley: God Wanted Us to Pack Heat

My goodness. Goodness gracious. Goodness me.

Watch as GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley hopelessly confuses the Declaration of Independence with the US Constitution, and declares that the right to bear arms comes directly from God.

In his haste to disparage the right for it’s history with the religious right, Charles really misses the mark with this one. The point of the line of questioning eludes him and he ends up looking like the one who is confused.

Senator Grassley never confuses the Declaration with the Constitution at all in the video. He may not quote the Declaration very well (it’s “unalienable rights” not “individual rights”), but there is no mix up. In fact, Grassley takes the time to distinguish between the two.

“I know the Declaration of Independence is not the law of the land, but it does express the philosophy of why we went to war [with the British] and why our country exists.”

Also, Grassely doesn’t say that the right to bear arms comes directly from God, nor is that the point of his questioning. Given the language of his first question, a direct quote from the Declaration is entirely appropriate to back it up, and it is clearly used to see what Kagan’s views on natural rights are. Does quoting from the deistic words of our Founding Fathers in the Declaration Independence, with its intentionally nebulous “Nature’s God / Creator,” make you a theocrat these days?

Grassley could have worded his question differently, as the natural right we have is to self-preservation in general, not to arms specifically. A better question would have been “do you believe we have a natural right to self-defense, or is it a legal right granted by the Constitution, and how does the 2nd Amendment relate?” The correct answer is yes, we do have a natural, pre-existing, and unalienable right to self-defense and the 2nd Amendment restricts our government from banning the common weapons we use to protect ourselves from others that wish to infringe upon our rights.

So what are Kagan’s views on natural rights? Tony Blankley has the answer at RealClearPolitics with a telling contrast of Abraham Lincoln’s thoughts on the matter.

Abraham Lincoln: “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”

Kagan: Senator Coburn, to be honest with you, I don’t have a view of what are natural rights, independent of the Constitution. And my job as a justice will be to enforce and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States.

Actually, to be picky, the enforcement of the Constitution and the laws is the job of the Executive Branch. Your job as a justice, Ms. Kagan, would be to determine if the laws of the land and the actions of its people are constitutional, based on your interpretation of the Constitution. And what better way to inform your interpretation of the Constitution than by studying it along side of the ideas and philosophy that made its possible and necessary?

Let’s go back to Blankley’s article for more on that philosophy (read the whole thing).

Apparently unbeknownst to Ms. Kagan [and to Mr. Johnson], from the very beginning, it was the inalienable rights of the people that made the people sovereign and thus permitted the people to form the Constitution and continue to guide its application.

The very reason for the American experiment was — and is — to establish the principle and the reality that no man or government may alienate a person’s life, liberty or pursuit of happiness… [These unalienable rights] are the animating purposes of all our laws — of the law. They are the soul of our Constitution. Without those rights, the body of law is a corpse — a soulless, purposeless, manipulable, disposable, dead, material thing. If Ms. Kagan does not know that, then she knows nothing of our law. [Emphasis added.]

… [All government powers] subordinate to the undergirding sovereignty of the people.

THIS!

With the growth of the Tea Party and disarray of the established parties, along with the promotion and communication advantages of the internet, this is the time for grassroot candidates who understand that deficit spending, bailouts, and the erosion (or the jackhammering, bulldozing, and wrecking-balling from the last couple of years) of individual rights and representative government need to stop.

I guess I was on to something when I announced my campaign:

Much has been said about experience this election season. But aren’t you sick of experienced politicians? I am. I am tired of people who have been bought and sold, who owe favors for favors received, who have been sullied by the process of rising through the political ranks, and who have compromised their values while violating individual rights at every turn. I don’t want leaders with a lot of political experience. I’ll trust an honest person with an honest job before an “experienced politician” any day of the week.

So here I am, an absolutely inexperienced politician, starting his campaign and public life at zero; zero political experience, zero financial backing, zero recognition…This will be an internet experiment to see if an honest and intelligent person can come out of nowhere and compete with established politicians on the national stage.

Independence Day Game at Wrigley

It’s a little late to say “let’s get some runs.”

Protesting reality. The futility of doing this is summed up in this vulgar yet pithy quote from Bad Santa. Ignoring and failing to understand the facts gets us nowhere. I take that back. It takes us in the wrong direction.

Wake up America! How many million unionists are we expected to carry on our public payrolls? How long can we keep government employees on defined-benefit pension plans while the rest of us scramble to fund our 401(k)s ? How many more people are we going to drop from the income tax rolls as we lean on a smaller and smaller slice of citizens to carry an ever greater percentage of the load, leaving the rest free to vote for tax increases? How large a swath of our population can we pretend to keep supplied with newly manufactured economic rights like free healthcare as Social Security and Medicare careen toward insolvency? How much more do we think we can borrow from the Chinese to fund day-to-day government operations? How long do we think we can afford to police the world?

What the world’s political leaders and those who elect them need most right now is a shocking example of the only possible outcome of trying to practice redistributive justice on a national or even global scale. Rescuing Greece is a mistake. What they deserve is a good hard dose of exactly what they are asking for – unvarnished socialism.

Throw Greece out of the European Union. Let them default on their debts. Teach buyers to beware before they invest in sovereign bonds. Dare Greece to print Drachmas by the wheelbarrow. Put the whole country on the public payroll then challenge them to demonstrate what a truly egalitarian society looks like. Maybe a dramatic spectacle of what a workers paradise looks like under the media’s glare will teach us what’s in store if we don’t change our ways.

Democracy is broken. You can’t mix Freedom and Free Lunch. One or the other has got to go.

Yes, let them default on their debts. Nobody is too big to fail. No bailouts. Ever. But let’s not ask them to give socialism another shot to prove it’s worth. It’s had enough goes. I wish a dose of “unvarnished socialism” would wake the world up, but if the current example of Cuba and past example of Soviet Russia, among many other examples, don’t do the trick, I doubt another failed collectivist experiment in Greece will.

And today, they are applauding more government interference because the FCC says they want to tackle bill shock.

The FCC is taking a stand against absurd phone bills. The regulatory agency is requesting public comment on a new initiative that will force wireless carriers to notify consumers about high charges, like unanticipated roaming or data fees.

“We are hearing from consumers about unpleasant surprises on their bills,” Joel Gurin, FCC Chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau said in a press release today. “This is an avoidable problem. Avoiding bill shock is good for consumers and ultimately good business for wireless carriers as well.”

If you go over your minutes, or are charged for texting too much, you have a couple of obvious options; use the services less, or upgrade to a better plan. Unfortunately, many people use a third option of complaining to the government and asking to be rewarded for their mistakes.

I guess I look at my phone bill a little differently. The “bill shock” I see is the 25% increase in cost due to “municipal and state telecommunications taxes.” And those costs will only increase with more government regulators to pay. It’s similar to the “paycheck shock” I feel when I see federal, FICA, Medicare, and state deductions.

Well here’s a news flash for the host; nearly 80% of the US population is White. Yes, her charge is this absurd. She is essentially calling the Tea Party a racist movement because it has the same demographic breakdown as the rest of the country! Is she prepared to ask minorities if they feel there is really a place for them in America (I hesitate to ask that question because I have a hunch how she and her comrades on the Left would answer)? It’s more clear everyday that the Left is unable to argue against the ideas of this movement, and is resorting to tactics like this, twisting numbers and putting words in others’ mouths, even when the facts don’t agree with what they want to believe.

If the numbers mentioned by the host are true, then they are a ringing endorsement of the Tea Parties and they show that the opposite of the media’s smear is true; that the Tea Party movement is a place for people of all backgrounds. It’s good to hear Martin, as one of it’s leaders, say there is no place for racism in the movement and that people that hold and espouse those beliefs are asked to leave.

As Martin said, the core values of the movement are Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and Free Markets. I agree with these values completely, but would add that they stem from the one core value and “founding principle” of Individual Rights. I think that most tea party supporters have at least an implicit understanding of this, that they believe ”the smallest minority on earth is the individual [and that] those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.” This is why the movement has no place for racism.

Information from census.gov

People like Rep. King are usually the same ones who claim that the rights of Americans are granted by God, not by the government.

Individual Rights are not granted by anyone as they are no one’s to grant in the first place. They are a part of us, automatically and intrinsically, by our nature of being individual reasoning beings. They cannot be granted anymore than they can be changed or taken away. This is what unalienable means.

A government’s proper function is to protect the rights of individuals, ensuring that these rights are not infringed upon by others, not to decide who should be granted them at the expense of another. But I guess a government needs to understand the unalienable nature of rights before it can defend them.

“Those of us who pay others to do our taxes spend more on that than the Fortune 500′s five biggest employers pay all their workers. In other words, what we spend on tax paperwork is greater than the pay of every worker at Wal-Mart, United Parcel Service, and McDonald’s, and IBM, and Citigroup – all those places combined!”

This means that there is an enormous void in our economy. Imagine all of the productive work that these companies do, all of the products they sell and create, and all of the families who rely on the jobs they provide. That is what is missing from our economy because it is wasted on tax preparation.

And the above example only takes into account the money spent, not the time spent. I shudder to think of what the true waste is if the IRS is right and “the average time required to complete and file the commonly used Form 1040 this year [2009] should be 26.4 hours.”

We have more evidence than we need to know government initiatives grow well beyond their estimated cost, size, and scope (Social Security, Medicare, Fanny and Freddie, and oh does the list go on). To think this will be any different is delusional.

Ryan is correct in saying at the end that this all comes down to an ideological differerence; “we don’t think government should be in control of this, we think people should be in control.” I agree, though I would replace “people” with “individuals.”

So what is a pre-existing condition? Let’s examine the phrase. Taking the last part first, it’s a medical condition, like diabetes, or asthma, or cancer, or any of a number of other maladies, that a patient needs to continue to treat because of its persistence. But what does the “pre-existing” part mean? That needs a little more explanation I think. What event took place that this condition existed before?

To the leftist politician, defining that part doesn’t matter. All they want you to believe is that insurance companies are unfairly withholding their service from innocent people. To them “pre-existing” only means the patient’s condition pre-existed their current search for coverage.

But this event, that makes the pre-existing modifier possible, is very important in understanding the mess the insurance industry is in. This event always has to do with someone’s job situation. It could be an employer changing providers, or it could be an employee switching jobs or losing a job altogether.

You see, the government has been meddling with the insurance industry for a while and in many ways. For this discussion though, we only need to look at the tax benefit given to employers for purchasing coverage for their employees. This is a leftover from WWII price and wage controls where employers weren’t allowed to offer bigger salaries to attract workers. Instead, America’s resourceful companies offered more benefits to employees that they wanted. Eventually big tax benefits were attached to these benefits when offered by an employer, while individuals searching for insurance on their own couldn’t get the same benefits. So now it’s much cheaper to get your insurance through your employer than it is to get it on your own. This system has essentially killed the market for individually purchased insurance.

You might think this is a nice way to save a buck, but rather it has caused the situation we now have. It’s what we call “unintended consequences.” Because your insurance is attached to your job, you make employment decisions based on that insurance, instead of making employment decisions based solely on the employment situation. This is especially true if you have a pre-existing condition.

For example, let’s say you’ve had a decent job for a few years, and recently developed a medical condition (it’s not “pre-existing” yet!). You’ve had the same insurance at this job for a while and since your condition arose while under your current policy, your treatment is covered. But another company has seen your work and they are impressed enough to offer you a 15% raise along with a new title and bigger responsibilities. And your current company can’t match the offer. Without our government’s interference, this would be a no-brainer; you would take the new job, the new salary, and be excited about advancing your career. But as you see, government controls are affecting your decision. The new company’s insurance isn’t that great. You’ll have to pay a lot more for your treatments. Maybe they won’t cover it at all. What do you do? Do your own thought experiments for losing a job, or for having a child with a condition that grows up and has to leave your family’s coverage, and you’ll find similar government created predicaments.

And of course, this mess is driving up costs. People end up switching insurance companies more often than they would without government interference, especially today when we switch jobs more than people did a generation before. Every new policy creates more paperwork, and paperwork costs money. For an example of this waste, I didn’t have to look too far. I switched jobs recently. My new gig has the same insurance that the last one did, but still I had to get a new policy and I had the pleasure of filling out the same exciting paperwork. How ridiculous is that? I didn’t have to change my auto or home insurance because I took a new job.

Back to my main point though. The only reason we are familiar with the term “pre-existing condition” is because of government intervention in the economy. Incentivizing employer based insurance has created the problem and pushed the term onto the stage. If the government got out of the way, the problem, and the term, would practically disappear. And it only takes an ounce of economic imagination to see why.

Using the example from above, you would have shopped for your own insurance separately from your job (just like car insurance, life insurance, home insurance, boat insurance, or other non-insurance things like groceries), and when offered that new position at a different company you’d happily accept it, keeping your current insurance in tact. What if you lost your job and couldn’t pay your insurance? Well, insurance companies would be free to offer job-loss insurance for a higher premium. Maybe an extra $20 a month would cover you if you were out of work for a couple years (isn’t this what Aflac does?).

But what about the child that has grown too old to stay on his families insurance? After all, they’re not switching jobs? Well, I think the insurance companies would have this figured out as well. I actually think they would be banging on the delivery room door with offers for lifelong policies. Instead of being on your parent’s employer’s plan as a child, your parents might put you on your own plan that you can keep with you and pay for when you come of age. Under the current system, they’re not banging on anybody’s doors. They don’t have to. They don’t have to compete for our business.

Of course our government doesn’t understand this. They rarely take the time to understand the cause of a problem, especially when that cause is staring back at them in the mirror. Instead, they think of new laws, penalties, and subsidies (funded by ours truly) adding gasoline to the fire. Unintended consequences like this are pre-existing conditions of government intervention.

It looks like it will be easier to use the due-process route, rather than the privileges and immunities option, to get the court to incorporate Second Amendment rights to state and local governments. The latter approach could have the added benefit of expanding economic liberty, but I’ll take whichever one that works.

As a reaction to the recent supreme court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the New York Times has a truly execrable piece where they twist and/or ignore the meaning of an individual’s right to free speech.

With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century. Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment, the court’s conservative majority has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding.

First, note the choice of the word “intimidate.” Will these corporations threaten the safety of an elected official’s family? Will they hang the official over a 5 story balcony until he promises to vote their way? No. Intimidation here means a corporation will suspend funding and give it to another candidate that shares their views. I’m shaking in my boots from the intimidation.

McDonald’s doesn’t “intimidate” you into buying a Big Mac. They advertise to persuade you. It’s the government that has a monopoly on intimidation. Corporations only have economic power, i.e. the power to persuade, while governments have political power, i.e. the legal right to use force.

And “dangerously waving the flag of the First Amendment?” What is dangerous about demanding and protecting free speech?

Congress must act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision, which strikes at the heart of democracy.

The heart of our democracy constitutional republic is individual rights, including the right to free speech. This decision protects that heart. At the inception of our country, the discovery and protection of individual rights was a radical idea, but after a couple hundred years I’m quite used to it.

As a result of Thursday’s ruling, corporations have been unleashed from the longstanding ban against their spending directly on political campaigns and will be free to spend as much money as they want to elect and defeat candidates. If a member of Congress tries to stand up to a wealthy special interest, its lobbyists can credibly threaten: We’ll spend whatever it takes to defeat you.

Another scary word; threaten. This is some serious intimidation. There’s nothing wrong with ”spending whatever it takes to defeat” someone. This is a right and option that earned economic power gives you. Compare “we’ll spend whatever it takes to defeat you” to the government’s use of political power when they say “we’ll fine you and/or put you in jail if you say what you think.” The latter is a real, and current threat.

The ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission radically reverses well-established law and erodes a wall that has stood for a century between corporations and electoral politics. (The ruling also frees up labor unions to spend, though they have far less money at their disposal.)

The founders of this nation warned about the dangers of corporate influence. The Constitution they wrote mentions many things and assigns them rights and protections — the people, militias, the press, religions. But it does not mention corporations.

And here’s where we see their complete misunderstanding of individual rights. Militias don’t have rights. The press doesn’t have rights. Religions don’t have rights. Corporations don’t have rights. And “the people” don’t even have rights. Only individuals, and every individual, have rights. So individuals have the right to form a militia. Individuals in the press have the right to say they want in papers, on tv, and online. Individuals have the right to practice their religious beliefs, so long as they don’t infringe on other individuals. And thus, individuals have the right to create contracts with each other that form corporations. And those individuals have the right to decide what the corporation sells, where the corporation operates, what the corporation says, and how much the corporation spends to say it.

It’s a common tactic to paint the corporation as an evil entity, with evil intentions (i.e. profit), that makes evil decisions. But a corporation isn’t an entity capable of making decisions, therefore, it is an amoral entity. Only the individuals that are a part of the company are capable of making decisions. So making people believe a business is evil that needs to be held in check is how they get away with denying the rights of those that own and run it.

In 1907, as corporations reached new heights of wealth and power, Congress made its views of the relationship between corporations and campaigning clear: It banned them from contributing to candidates. At midcentury, it enacted the broader ban on spending that was repeatedly reaffirmed over the decades until it was struck down on Thursday.

Congress made it’s view clear, and now the SCOTUS is saying that view is unconstitutional.

This issue should never have been before the court. The justices overreached and seized on a case involving a narrower, technical question involving the broadcast of a movie that attacked Hillary Rodham Clinton during the 2008 campaign. The court elevated that case to a forum for striking down the entire ban on corporate spending and then rushed the process of hearing the case at breakneck speed. It gave lawyers a month to prepare briefs on an issue of enormous complexity, and it scheduled arguments during its vacation.

Are they really complaining about having only a month to prepare? Please. They’ve been making the case for 103 years.

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., no doubt aware of how sharply these actions clash with his confirmation-time vow to be judicially modest and simply “call balls and strikes,” wrote a separate opinion trying to excuse the shameless judicial overreaching.

An indivdual’s right to free speech is pretty clear cut; Congress shall make no law. This isn’t as hard as calling balls and strikes. It’s more like judging whether the ball went through the hoop. It’s an easy call.

The majority is deeply wrong on the law. Most wrongheaded of all is its insistence that corporations are just like people and entitled to the same First Amendment rights. It is an odd claim since companies are creations of the state that exist to make money. They are given special privileges, including different tax rates, to do just that. It was a fundamental misreading of the Constitution to say that these artificial legal constructs have the same right to spend money on politics as ordinary Americans have to speak out in support of a candidate.

No, it’s not that corporations are just like people, it’s that THEY ARE PEOPLE. They are associations of individuals who retain their rights when they form these business entities. And corporations aren’t creations of the state. They are creations of individuals that exist to do whatever those individuals decide it should to do.

The majority also makes the nonsensical claim that, unlike campaign contributions, which are still prohibited, independent expenditures by corporations “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” If Wall Street bankers told members of Congress that they would spend millions of dollars to defeat anyone who opposed their bailout, and then did so, it would certainly look corrupt.

Campaign contributions should be unlimited too. But let’s touch on this idea of corruption. Only in our mess of a mixed economy, where government has its tentacles in every imaginable place, is corruption like this possible. So yes, the Wall Street example would look bad, but only because the government has the power to steal from individuals for a bailout. The government’s intervention in the market, with its ability to choose winners and losers, is what creates the corruption. When you make the intervention illegal, the Wall Street example falls to bits. Money doesn’t corrupt politics, politics corrupts money.

After the court heard the case, Senator John McCain told reporters that he was troubled by the “extreme naïveté” some of the justices showed about the role of special-interest money in Congressional lawmaking.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens warned that the ruling not only threatens democracy but “will, I fear, do damage to this institution.” History is, indeed, likely to look harshly not only on the decision but the court that delivered it. The Citizens United ruling is likely to be viewed as a shameful bookend to Bush v. Gore. With one 5-to-4 decision, the court’s conservative majority stopped valid votes from being counted to ensure the election of a conservative president. Now a similar conservative majority has distorted the political system to ensure that Republican candidates will be at an enormous advantage in future elections.

In case you missed their true colors, there they are laid bare. They want to suspend the First Amendment for those that would vote against them. Rather than trying to win the battle of ideas, they are happy to resort to using political force to shut those ideas down. And let’s not forget who, with a very short term outlook, broke his promise and turned his (and his party’s) back on publicly financed campaigns, thus opening the door for greater private influence in elections.

Congress and members of the public who care about fair elections and clean government need to mobilize right away, a cause President Obama has said he would join. Congress should repair the presidential public finance system and create another one for Congressional elections to help ordinary Americans contribute to campaigns. It should also enact a law requiring publicly traded corporations to get the approval of their shareholders before spending on political campaigns.

Yes, this is just what we need. More controls and diktats for how shareholders can deal with their boards. Or here’s an idea. Let’s leave it up to the free market. If people don’t agree with a company’s support of a given candidate, they can sell their shares of that company’s stock.

And btw, the whole idea of this country is that we are all “ordinary” Americans with the same equality under the law. The owner of a successful business who has earned the money to contribute to a campaign is just as ordinary as the person who hasn’t.

These would be important steps, but they would not be enough. The real solution lies in getting the court’s ruling overturned. The four dissenters made an eloquent case for why the decision was wrong on the law and dangerous. With one more vote, they could rescue democracy.

This was a great victory for free speech and a step in the right direction of limiting the power the government has to interfere in our lives.

This election shows that the Tea Party movement is real. It is not a fringe movement of crazy anarchists. It is an uprising of regular Americans, from Massachusetts and elsewhere, that understand our country was founded on the principle of liberty for the purpose of defending individual rights. The health care bill (and the bailouts, the state bribes, the union deals, etc.) is a clear violation of the rights of some for the benefit of others, and people are sick of it.

Congratulations Senator Brown. See you around in 2012.

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

How much of this was a business decision vs. a moral stand, I don’t know. China is such a massive market that I think guilt finally set in a bit, so I’m leaning toward the latter. If they said their initial decision was to get a foot in the door so free speech could eventually sneak in, and they couldn’t publicly say that at the time, I could buy that.

But I vividly remember the fall of the Berlin Wall. My family visited New York City shortly after the wall’s destruction began, where I noticed street hustlers trying to sell pieces of the wall to the gullible. I would say it is my first strong political and ideological memory. Hearing that you could be shot for trying to leave East Germany, without doing anything wrong, was all I needed to know which side was evil. So seeing people with hammers and pick axes tearing down that wall made me feel like the good guys had won something.

This morning on Meet The Press, Tom Brokaw made an appearance to discuss his live reporting of these events back in 1989. They showed some great footage, and I particularly enjoyed this shot.

Protesters sitting on the Berlin Wall.

Assuming I understand Brokaw’s explanation and the geography of the location, this shot is of a few West Germans who climbed the wall, and rather than climbing down when police forces from the East used fire hoses to try to remove them, they put up with getting a bit wet and and just stayed put. The nonchalant pose struck by the man with the umbrella who thinks he’s Gene Kelly is simply classic. And the composition of the scene is great too, with the dark and dreary East contrasted with the colorful and happy West. Or as this article explains the contrast between the two societies, “it was as if one side of the wall were in black and white and the other side in Technicolor.” I would love to see an artist’s rendition of this in oil.

The fall of the Berlin Wall is something that should be commemorated and celebrated. It should be used as philosophical ammunition by others fighting tyranny in their own land.  As a 7th grader, I understood the significance of the occasion. As the President of the United States, Barack Obama does not.

Here’s the full clip from Meet The Press.

If you caught Meet The Press this weekend, you heard Chris Dodd repeat a standard line in support of the public option; that we need it to “create competition.” A bit more than a month ago on the same program, Chuck Schumer said the same nonsense several times along with the phrase “level the playing field.”

They claim that the goverment needs to step in and create a less expensive (if you can believe that) option thereby forcing the insurance companies to compete with each other for clients. The rising costs of healthcare, among other things, is their proof that insurers are extorting consumers. So they want you to believe that the current playing field is lopsided in favor of the insurance providers and, more importantly, they want you to blame the free market for this situation.

The playing field they see has the big, mean insurance providers on one side and the underdog consumers on the other. Their delusion continues with how they see themselves; as the morally perfect referee who needs to step in to defend the little guy. A more realistic look at this game metaphor is to think of the government as a fight promoter that fixes matches hoping not to get caught. They have the power to change the rules whenever they like, and if things go wrong they shift the blame. And as for a level playing field, the government clearly has the high ground as the only side with the legal authority to use force.

If they really wanted to create competition, it would be quite easy to do. They just have to ALLOW IT. You see, the current state of the healthcare industry is because competition is restricted. There are thousands of rules that restrict companies from competing. There are two changes that would immediately create competition.

The first is to allow Americans to buy insurance in any state (or country even; you can put your money in a foreign bank) that they would like. This would allow consumers many more options and prices to choose from. Instead of a few options in a given state, there could be hundreds to choose from.

But having more to choose from won’t make a difference as long as your insurance is tied to your job. So the second change is to remove the tax advantages of getting insurance through an employer. Consumers really don’t shop for insurance because it’s tied to a job. This means they never understand the costs because they don’t have to. Detaching it from employment would give consumers the freedom to switch insurance providers while keeping the same job, and vice versa.

The senators don’t want competition. They want more control. And while the senators’ obfuscation of the issue annoys me, what kills me is that no one on either show stood up for capitalism by showing how wrong they were. This is easy to do and brings me back to my initial question about automobile insurance advertising.

Government interference destroys competition, and in the insurance industry this is clearly evident by the lack of advertising. This is a multi-trillion dollar industry without commercials! In America!! Billy Mays is rolling over in his grave. If you allow competition by making the changes suggested above, along with repealing the other myriad government restrictions on the industry, there would be health insurance commercials between spots for GoDaddy and Coke during halftime of the Super Bowl in no time, and there would be real competition.

Ok. I felt the same for a few minutes this morning. This is like giving the Lombardi Trophy to Pete Sampras. Or maybe like giving a catcher in the minors the Cy Young.

But after the shock wore off, I realized this is a step in the right direction for The Nobel Foundation. They are used to giving the peace(!) prize to people like Yasser Arafat, a purveyor of war and suffering. So to give it to the neutral and unaccomplished Obama is an improvement. Next time around, maybe they’ll actually award it to a deserving group like the pro-liberty Chinese dissidents commemorating 20 years since the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Enjoy this choice line from that two-day-old article:

U.S. President Barack Obama is thought to have been nominated but it’s unclear on what grounds.

Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals. While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter?

Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That’s because there isn’t any. This “right” has never existed in America

…

Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.

It’s great to see Mr. Mackey invoke the Declaration of Independence to argue that there is no right to health care, as that great document doesn’t say we have a right to “life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and a $10 copay.” Our right to life doesn’t mean others are required to keep us alive. That would necessarily violate their rights. Our right to life is a restriction on others, forbidding them from taking our lives, and us taking theirs. Our rights are rights of action, forbidding others from stopping these actions, not rights to take the fruits of another’s labor.

This is ridiculous. Dan Rather, a man who has blood on his hands for helping to kill mainstream media, is calling for a government commission to save it.

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather called on President Barack Obama to form a White House commission to help save the press Tuesday night in an impassioned speech at the Aspen Institute.

“I personally encourage the president to establish a White House commission on public media,” the legendary newsman said.

Such a commission on media reform, Rather said, ought to make recommendations on saving journalism jobs and creating new business models to keep news organizations alive.

What he, and the others calling for journalism to be saved, don’t understand is that journalism isn’t dying, it’s just changing. Asking the government to save the press now is what it would have been like calling for transportation to be saved because horse & buggy manufacturers were going out of business a hundred years ago. Transportation wasn’t dying, it was evolving. Automobiles were better at getting people from point A to point B, and they did it for less money. When a better product comes out you either adapt or die. It was just business.

And it’s the same now. Old newspapers have massive budgets and overhead, while bloggers and other internet news organizations do not. The latter is arguably better at covering the news than the former, and because of the minimal costs involved with distibuting over the intenet, they can do it for less. It’s just business. If MSM can’t adapt, they will die.

At stake, he argued, is the very survival of American democracy.

“A truly free and independent press is the red beating heart of democracy and freedom,” Rather said in an interview yesterday afternoon. “This is not something just for journalists to be concerned about, and the loss of jobs and the loss of newspapers, and the diminution of the American press’ traditional role of being the watchdog on power. This is something every citizen should be concerned about.” (Emphasis mine)

Another bit of irony missed by Rather is that he, CBS, and the rest of the MSM are to many the very power group that needs watch dogs. It was brilliant watch-dogging by bloggers that caught Rather in a lie and forced him from his chair at CBS. The free press isn’t dying. It’s been reborn and is alive and kicking.

Early in the game, President Obama visited the booth to chat with the announcers when Joe Buck noted that the NL hasn’t won an All-Star game since 96. He then asked if there was a bailout plan in place for the National League. The President joked, “no man, we’re out of money.”

Mr. President, our failing and flailing economy is no laughing matter. The destruction of free markets in our country’s march down the pit of statism isn’t funny. The pillaging of current and future generations isn’t something to casually joke about. Jokes have different meanings depending on which side you’re on (maybe that’s why some people joke about the Special Olympics), so maybe it’s funny when you’re the one doing the pillaging. I guess the joke’s on us.

Now the suggestion: Draft Steve Jobs (his health willing) to run a combined GM and Chrysler. After all, who has done a better job developing and marketing products consumers want to buy? Who has been more successful keeping the US ahead of other nations in competitive, technology-based markets?…

As has been widely reported, Mr. Jobs has some health issues and it is possible that he may not be able to dedicate the time and effort required to put the US auto industry back on firm footing. Only Mr. Jobs knows if he is up to the task. If anyone can convince him to take this on, I suspect it’s you.

Mr. Jobs couldn’t save Detroit, but bankruptcy could.

“Joe’s veneer of confidence is a perfect match for what we are trying to achieve,” noted Sex Panther spokesman Brian Fantana. “We’re 40% sure this is definitely the right decision. And it doesn’t hurt that he really knows how to connect with the ladies.”

Nervous and confident at the same time, Biden discussed the first TV spot shot on Wednesday saying, “I was absolutely certain there was a 30 percent chance I’d get the slogan wrong.” And he was right, delivering on 7 of 10 takes where he held the product and recited the tagline, Sex Panther. 60% of the time, it works every time.

Omni Consumer Products would like to note that this announcement was planned for yesterday to coincide with Valentine’s Day, but their ISP only guarantees 99% percent uptime.

Biden and Fantana at Sex Panther partnership announcement.

Who was more influential and important to world history? Who would I rather have dinner with? These are tough questions that I will gladly ignore.

We can thank Lincoln for defending republican liberty:

Lincoln was clearly motivated by something other than the dictator’s desire for power. During the Civil War, he sought to save the Constitution and the Union, but only because they were the means of preserving that most precious of goods, republican liberty [ed- note that the most precious good isn't "democracy"]. It is with this end in mind, and with an understanding of the nature of prudence, that we can properly understand Lincoln’s actions as commander-in-chief.

Lincoln is probably more emotionally stirring for me. See if this part of his July 10, 1858 speech gives you any goose bumps.

We are now a mighty nation, we are thirty—or about thirty millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country,—with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men,—we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men, they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity that we now enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these [Independence Day] meetings in better humor with ourselves—we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these men—descended by blood from our ancestors—among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration [loud and long continued applause], and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world. [Applause.]

But I’m a sucker for any story that mentions an aspect of Evolution (which isn’t just a theory) that I haven’t heard of before. So Darwin wins the battle for intellectual stimulation.

Until recently, conventional wisdom held that human beings had mastered their environment so thoroughly that the imperative to evolve in many ways diminished about 10,000 years ago, when agriculture gave rise to more-stable societies.

“People thought that with technology and culture, there’d be no reason for physical things to make any difference,” said Milford Wolpoff, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Michigan. “If you can ride a horse, it doesn’t matter if you can run fast.”

That turned out to be wrong. As it happens, the pace of evolution has been speeding up — not slowing down — in the 40,000 years since our ancestors fanned out from Ethiopia to populate the globe.

And in the 5,000 to 10,000 years since agriculture triggered the growth of large societies, the pace has accelerated to 100 times historical levels.

“When there’s more people, there are more mutations,” Wolpoff said. “And when there are more mutations, there’s more selection.”

…

Diet is another big force behind recent human evolution. As humans made the transition from being hunter-gatherers to farmers, their bodies had to adapt to new kinds of foods.

The best-known example involves the gene that regulates a person’s ability to make an enzyme required to digest lactose, the sugar in milk. Historically, the LCT gene shut down in early childhood as babies were weaned off breast milk. But after cows, sheep and goats were domesticated, people with a mutation that allowed them to drink milk as adults had a nutritional advantage that made it easier for them to propagate their genes.

DNA analyses have shown that the mutation cropped up in Europe about 8,000 years ago, and quickly spread all the way to India. Today, it is carried by more than 95% of people of Northern European descent.

Good stuff. Happy Birthday Boys!

PALO ALTO, CA – An international mathematics research team announced today that they had discovered a new integer that surpasses any previously known value “by a totally mindblowning shitload.” Project director Yujin Xiao of Stanford University said the theoretical number, dubbed a “stimulus,” could lead to breakthroughs in fields as diverse as astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and Chicago asphalt contracting.

“Unlike previous large numbers like the Googleplex or the Bazillionty, the Stimulus has no static numerical definition,” said Xiao. “It keeps growing and growing, compounding factorially, eating up all zeros in its path. It moves freely across Cartesian dimensions and has the power to make any other number irrational.”

Jean-Luc Brossard, a researcher with the European consortium CERN, said the number is so staggeringly large that it is difficult to for even mathematicians to grasp, let alone lay people.

“The number itself is incomprehensible by human minds, and can only be theoretically understood in a fractional parallel universe which we refer to as the DC dimension,” said Brossard. “The best way to understand a stimulus is to imagine a dollar sign followed by a packed string of hexidecimal nanodigits, wound into a triple helix, woven into a dodecahedron, and stacked on top of one another. Now imagine you were a black hole on the far edge of the universe, trying to escape the stimulus at 30 times the speed of light. The stimulus would still catch up to you and ram your black hole with such furious, repeated force that it would cause your entire reality itself to collapse.”

[W]rite off anyone who asserts that it’s always better to cut taxes than to increase government spending because taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their money.

Here’s how to think about this argument: it implies that we should shut down the air traffic control system. After all, that system is paid for with fees on air tickets — and surely it would be better to let the flying public keep its money rather than hand it over to government bureaucrats. If that would mean lots of midair collisions, hey, stuff happens.

Claiming that government provides a level of consumer protection that wouldn’t be there in a free market is an argument as common as it is false. Here’s a newsflash for you; it’s in the best interest of an airline to not have midair collisions. Shocking I know.

Left to their own devices, airlines and airports would create their own system to track and manage air traffic. And I bet it would be more efficient and cheaper than the government model. Planes won’t start running into each other without the FAA, elevators won’t start plummeting to the basement without goverment inspectors, and canned goods won’t be full of E. coli without the FDA.

I trust the people who’s livelihood, and in fact lives, depend on the safe delivery of their products and services, not the government.

Fiscal Conservatism

Philosophical basis: The marketplace is a more efficient allocator of resources than the government; hence when deciding how resources should be allocated, the bias should always be in favor of private-sector decision making. Free markets build wealth, create prosperity, and raises standards of living for all; hence markets should be kept as free as reasonably possible. Moreover capitalism and free markets do a great job at preserving individual liberty [moreover!], as those participating in the marketplace aren’t requied to obey the will of the majority (e.g. if 90% of the population prefers Pepsi but I prefer Coke, I can still buy Coke if I so desire); hence regulations that restrict choices in the marketplace should be kept to a minimum.

Moreover? When defending a free marketplace, individual liberty deserves and demands better than a passing “moreover.” The “philosophical basis” for fiscal conservatism is individual liberty. It’s not a happenstance side benefit. A moral right to the product of one’s labor is the basis for capitalism and fiscal conservatism. The above is a very weak “ends justifies the means” defense of capitalism; it works better for everyone, so it is the moral choice. Weak ideology like this will continue to lose elections and leave a vacuum to be filled by government which assumes the moral authority to fix break things.

And I take issue with this line discussing the second pillar, Social Conservatism.

[I]ndividual liberty is only beneficially meaningful when it is conjoined with a moral people.

Protecting individual liberty is what makes a people moral. The two can’t be conjoined because they can’t be separated in the first place. The first is what defines the second as such.

When the post gets to the third pillar of National Security, I want to agree that we should “[u]napologetically defend the ideals upon which this nation was founded,” but based on what we’ve gone over above, the writer doesn’t understand what the ideals this nation was founded on actually are.

The post finishes with some questions for the audience. The first question shouldn’t even have to be asked, ironically, because the answer is the same as the unknown ideals (that is, unknown in this post) which inspired our founding fathers to create this nation, and is what the “next” right still needs to be retooled to defend.

Q. What is the philosophical basis for the brand of conservatism that you wish to see adopted?

A. Reason and Individual Rights.

I don’t understand why these precious ideas need to be rediscovered and are so hard for some to defend, but that’s why I’m throwing my hat in the ring for the next election.

In the last few months, we’ve been taking a long, hard look at all the things we are doing to ensure we are investing our resources in the projects that will have the biggest impact for our users and partners. While we hoped that Print Ads would create a new revenue stream for newspapers and produce more relevant advertising for consumers, the product has not created the impact that we — or our partners — wanted. As a result, we will stop offering Print Ads on February 28. For advertisers who have campaigns already booked, we will place their ads through March 31.

With advertisers pulling out, newspapers are dropping like flies. A list of the dead or dying includes the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Rocky Mountain News, Tucson Citizen, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Miami Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Daily News, and the New York Observer. Will cash infusions be enough to keep the New York Times going?

Former French President Jacques Chirac was rushed to a hospital after being mauled by his pet dog who is being treated for depression, in a dramatic incident that rattled the ex-president’s wife.

The State Board of Education shall require every textbook that includes the teaching of evolution in its contents to include the following language on the inside front cover of the textbook:

“The word ‘theory’ has many meanings, including: systematically organized knowledge; abstract reasoning; a speculative idea or plan; or a systematic statement of principles. Scientific theories are based on both observations of the natural world and assumptions about the natural world. They are always subject to change in view of new and confirmed observations.

This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things. No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life’s origins should be considered a theory.

Evolution refers to the unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced living things. There are many topics with unanswered questions about the origin of life which are not mentioned in your textbook, including: the sudden appearance of the major groups of animals in the fossil record (known as the Cambrian Explosion); the lack of new major groups of other living things appearing in the fossil record; the lack of transitional forms of major groups of plants and animals in the fossil record; and the complete and complex set of instructions for building a living body possessed by all living things.

Study hard and keep an open mind.”

If you want to make sure that people know that evolution is a just a “theory (love the scare quotes btw),” you’d better be willing to explain what theory means to the scientific community.

In everyday use, theory means a guess or a hunch, something that maybe needs proof. In science, a theory is not a guess, not a hunch. It’s a well-substantiated, well-supported, well-documented explanation for our observations. It ties together all the facts about something, providing an explanation that fits all the observations and can be used to make predictions. In science, theory is the ultimate goal, the explanation. It’s as close to proven as anything in science can be.

In a science textbook, the word theory does not have many meanings. It has a specific and profound meaning. Evolution is not “a controversial theory some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things.” It is a decidedly uncontroversial theory (in the full scientific meaning of the word) that nearly all scientists support because “[i]t has been tested and scrutinised for over 150 years, and is supported by all the relevant observations.” It’s so uncontroversial to scientists that the National Academy of Sciences calls it a fact.

Scientists most often use the word “fact” to describe an observation. But scientists can also use fact to mean something that has been tested or observed so many times that there is no longer a compelling reason to keep testing or looking for examples. The occurrence of evolution in this sense is a fact. Scientists no longer question whether descent with modification occurred because the evidence supporting the idea is so strong.

I’ll finish with Ed Brayton, who tears apart another part of the proposed disclaimer.

[T]he notion that if no one witnessed an event, any and all claims about the event are equally valid is breathtakingly idiotic. I doubt Mr. Chism would apply the same “reasoning” to, say, forensic medicine. We convict people and even put them to death for crimes committed with no eyewitnesses. Let’s imagine a hypothetical crime and apply Chism’s “logic.”

A man is arrested for the rape and murder of a woman. His semen is found inside her body, his fingerprints are found on the murder weapon. But no one else was present to see him do it. Therefore, according to Chism’s argument, any statement made about the crime should be considered a theory and be given equal time and equal presumed validity. Pure idiocy.

Mr. Bush’s disfavor in Washington owes more to his greatest success. Simply put, there are those who will never forgive Mr. Bush for not losing a war they had all declared unwinnable.

Here in the afterglow of the turnaround led by Gen. David Petraeus, it’s easy to forget what the smart set was saying two years ago — and how categorical they all were in their certainty. The president was a simpleton, it was agreed. Didn’t he know that Iraq was a civil war, and the only answer was to get out as fast as we could?

“Americans must be clear that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave,” read the [New York Times] editorial. “There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide.” Even genocide. With no hint of irony, the Times nevertheless went on to conclude that it would be even worse if we stayed.

This is Vietnam thinking. And the president never accepted it.

Bush’s legacy will be that he didn’t surrender his beliefs when everyone around him clamored that Iraq was unwinnable. It takes a strong will to avoid the four types of conformity, especially when your convictions are based more on a gut feeling than on reason. We can thank Bush for expecting victory from the outset of the war and counting on our superior armed forces to carry out the mission.

According to the National Venture Capital Association, in all of 2008 there have been just six companies that have gone public. Compare that with 269 IPOs in 1999, 272 in 1996, and 365 in 1986.

That’s quite a change and here’s the reason for the decline.

From the beginning of this decade, the process of new company creation has been under assault by legislators and regulators. They treat it as if it is a natural phenomenon that can be manipulated and exploited, rather than the fragile creation of several generations of hard work, risk-taking and inventiveness. In the name of “fairness,” preventing future Enrons, and increased oversight, Congress, the SEC and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) have piled burdens onto the economy that put entrepreneurship at risk.

Many in government assume that the producers will keep on producing independent of the shifting rules imposed on them. This is not the case. Rules and regulations meant to keep businessmen honest take the honest men out of business.

Of course, this wasn’t an award show. This was the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball hosted by the President himself. He slow-danced with his wife, and picked up the pace with the commoners filling stage, all under the adoring eyes celebrities giving a bit of credence to one of McCain’s attack ads.

If you ask me, a president should avoid events like this as a matter of principle. A president shouldn’t share the stage with P. Diddy, nor seek the approval of Shakira. Celebrity worship as it applies to musicians and actors is sickening enough. Its encroachment into politics is nothing new, but with Obama it’s at a level never before seen and the President is embracing it with open arms.

The expectations for this presidency are high and this unfounded fame will backfire. The house of cards is getting bigger by the day.

That’s water vapor rising from Lake Michigan to the left and the Hancock Center straight ahead. This was the first time I’ve worn ski goggles while riding btw.

Chicago Lakefront Path at 15° Below

Yesterday, I posted about the never-ending guilt trip we get for having an environmental footprint. This is exactly what that guilt trip looks like:

If your internet use is in place of more energy-intensive activities, such as driving your car to the shops, that’s good. But if it is adding activities and energy consumption that would not otherwise happen, that may pose problems.

Only use your internet for important tasks. You’d better not enjoy it. Environmentalism sounds more like a religion every day, telling us to suffer through life for a higher cause instead of enjoying the convenience of an amazing technology.

The article goes on to tell us that Google is too good at what they do and should scale back on that a bit:

When you type in a Google search for, say, “energy saving tips”, your request doesn’t go to just one server. It goes to several competing against each other. It may even be sent to servers thousands of miles apart. Google’s infrastructure sends you data from whichever produces the answer fastest. The system minimises delays but raises energy consumption.

Google’s speed and quality of results are their bread and butter. They’ve grown to be one of the greatest company’s ever because of these qualities and their ability to improve on them. And this article suggests that they deliberately make their product worse and therefore less marketable to the consumer. Does choosing to make an inferior product, that nobody wants and which will hurt profitability, in order to be more “efficient” sound familiar? If the government catches wind of this article we’ll be bailing out the search engines along with Detroit.

Google violates no one’s rights by buying and using the energy required by their business. Running a successful business is not a sin and requires no apology. The opposite is true. It is a moral achievement that demands respect which I offer Google in the form of using their products.

If you want to question the morality of Google, ask them about their business practices and goals that do violate individual rights. Ask them to stand up to the Chinese government and end their complicity in censoring search results. Or tell them to stop their support for net neutrality which would be a terrible violation of the rights of the individuals and companies that build and provide the infrastructure that makes Google’s success possible, and improves our lives immeasurably.

The bottom line is Google is awesome. I’ve been pimping out Gmail since I got my invite. And I’m sick of people apologizing for being good at what they do.

[F]or environmentalism, the size of your “footprint” is the measure of your guilt. Nature, according to green philosophy, is something to be left alone to be preserved untouched by human activity. Their notion of an “environmental footprint” is intended as a measure of how much you “disturb” nature, with disturbing nature viewed as a sin requiring atonement. Just as the Christian concept of original sin conveys the message that human beings are stained with evil simply for having been born, the green concept of an “environmental footprint” implies that you should feel guilty for your very existence.

It should hardly be any surprise, then, that nothing you do to try to lighten your “footprint” will ever be deemed satisfactory… So long as you still have some “footprint,” further penance is required; so long as you are still alive, no degree of sacrifice can erase your guilt. The only way to leave no “footprint” would be to die.

So should you empty your RV’s septic tank in the sewer? Of course not, but don’t be ashamed of the footprint you make to achieve your own happiness. Our survival and happiness are dependent on our ability to understand and reshape nature, and it the moral right of a reasoning mind to do just that. From our 80-year life expectancy to the tap water we take for granted, “[e]very good thing in our lives comes from altering nature for our own benefit.” So take pride in the human footprint (a task rendered effortless when pondering the image below) and the many more we will make.

One of the first footprints on the moon.

Banks made loans without concern for whether borrowers could repay them…

Assuming he’s referring to mortgages, these banks were forced to lower their standards and offer “affordable” loans to borrowers that couldn’t repay them. And when those loans were taken off the bank’s hands by concerns backed by Freddie/Fannie, the moral hazard of the banks not being tied to the failure of said loans was created. This is another example of government avoiding the blame for the crisis it created.

But Obama’s statist beliefs have always been there and bubble up on occasion. His “spread the wealth” comment should have cost him the election, but his opponent wouldn’t stand up for economic freedom, and that lost him the election. In his speech on Thursday, we see Obama’s penchant for statism in all its glory ignominy.

[O]nly government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe. Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy – where a lack of spending leads to lost jobs which leads to even less spending; where an inability to lend and borrow stops growth and leads to even less credit.

This disgusts me. This is the opposite of what I stand for. And I believe it is the opposite of the truth. Only government can cause recessions this deep and severe. Only government can create the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy.

Only free men undeterred by round after round of poisonous government intervention (which is again the wolf in sheep’s clothing posing as the remedy) can lift us out of our economy’s current state. Only vast numbers of free individuals making the incalculable amount of individual decisions can steer the market. A few government officials can never have the skill to accomplish this impossible task, and should never have the authority to try.

Just as Carter had his “malaise” speech, this should go down as Obama’s “only government” speech. This is the speech that should lose him the next election.

Pew Research Center reports that the Internet has overtaken newspapers and “has now surpassed all other media except television as an outlet for national and international news.” For young people (Americans under 30, sadly a demographic I no longer match) the Internet rivals television with the same numbers.

Internet Overtakes Newspapers - pewresearch.org

TechCrunch tells us to follow the money for more evidence of traditional media’s precipitous nosedive reporting “that between 88 percent of the publishing and advertising industry’s revenue growth over the next few years will come from four sectors: Database & Information, B2B Online Media, Consumer Online Media, and Interactive Marketing Services. In other words, it will be coming mostly from the Web.”

As the MSM commits suicide dies, so dies the Left’s stranglehold over the news. It’s a great time to be alive and witness the fall of these Bastions of BS as internet sources take them down one notch at a time.

This is obviously preaching to the choir, but on the off chance that you’re reading this post and don’t already use the Internet as your source for news, give it a shot. Start using a news reader like Google Reader. Subscribe to a few feeds. You’ll never look back.

No-one in their right mind would suggest that any person would allow doctors to play games with a dying or dead younger brother. The idea is bizarre and deeply insulting…

This is true. No one in their right mind would do such a despicable thing. Unfortunately, we aren’t always dealing with people in their right minds. In the Palestinian territories, we are quite often dealing with people that are out of their minds. This is a culture that holds suicide bombing as a moral achievement; where proudly sacrificing your children and celebrating their deaths gets you elected to office. Faking a CPR attempt is hardly beyond them.

Charles has asked for expert doctor opinions regarding the CPR in the video, but it doesn’t take an expert to see that the scene could have been staged. Anyone that has taken a CPR class could tell you that. I worked as a day care/camp counselor for 5 summers back in the day where we had to take a CPR class and renew our credentials every year or two. During instruction, I remember them telling us that what they show in TV shows is not how it’s done. We were taught to keep our arms straight and locked at the elbows, to lean over the patient, and to use our body weight to push in the chest a few inches. Clearly, that isn’t happening in the video.

We need to be careful to always promote individual rights instead of democracy. Basing anything on “the will of the people” is a recipe for disaster.

When you set democracy as your ideal, without constitutional restraints on government that provide for the protection of every individual’s rights, you get an evil entity like Hamas running things in the Gaza Strip and sending mortars into Israel. This legitimizes any winner of a democratic election and sanctions their future actions thus making it more difficult to oppose them when they continue their evil ways. Validating the authority of organizations that consistently violate individual rights by giving them the weapon of democracy, or by giving them a seat in the UN for that matter, is a mistake that we need to stop making.

Chicago Man Offers Gov Blagojevich Monopoly Money and a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Card for US Senate Seat

In a mocking letter sent to the office of embattled Governor Blagojevich, political wannabe Patrick McDonald offers a bribe of Monopoly money in exchange for an appointment to the U.S. Senate seat soon to be vacated by president elect, Barack Obama.

PRLog (Press Release) – Dec 17, 2008 – Chicago, IL – In a sarcastic letter sent to Governor Blagojevich, Chicago resident Patrick McDonald offered one million dollars in Monopoly money, along with a get-out-of-jail-free card from the same board game, as a bribe to be appointed to Barack Obama’s congressional seat. The 31-year-old is already campaigning for the office of president for the next general election (his campaign site is at http://McDonald2012.com) but would accept the appointment should the Governor accept his bribe, or if he were offered the seat by legitimate means.

“When I announced my campaign back in November, I said that we shouldn’t look for experienced politicians to fill roles of leadership because they are too often tainted by a corrupt system,” recalled McDonald. “Thank you Governor for proving me right to an absurd extent.”

So absurd is the extent of alleged corruption and improbity that McDonald felt compelled to write the letter. “The only way I would ever stoop to pay-to-play politics is in the realm of satire. I hope the governor accepts my generous offer.”

His focus still on the 2012 election, McDonald would be willing to “pull an Obama” and use the U.S. Senate as a stepping stone to the oval office.

Read the letter at http://mcdonald2012.com/2008/12/17/pay-to-play/

For more information about the campaign, visit http://McDonald2012.com

Contact:
(773) 467-7849
pr@McDonald2012.com

About Patrick McDonald
Patrick McDonald is a web developer in Chicago who has already announced his candidacy for the office of President of the United States for the election of 2012. Priding himself on his lack of political experience, McDonald is relying on the power of the Internet to gain enough exposure over the next four years to compete with established politicians. If elected, by then at the age of 35, McDonald would be the youngest president to hold the office.

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You can find better satire elsewhere, but this fiasco put me in the mood to mail this letter to the Governor:

December 17, 2008

Mr. Rod R. Blagojevich
Office of the Governor
207 State House
Springfield, IL 62706

Dear Mr. Governor,

I commend you for removing from the realm of partisan politics, the filling of the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by President Elect Barack Obama. It takes a man of your vision and capacity for leadership to reach across party lines and offer the position to the highest bidder. As obscenity is the highest form of honesty, your character, sir, is indubitably beyond reproach.

Neighborly pleasantries aside, I submit myself as a worthy candidate for the empty seat in congress. Please accept the enclosed 500 in Monopoly dollars as down payment for said seat. Of course, there is more where that came from as I wouldn’t dare insult you with such a low bid. I am prepared to offer 1,000,000.00 in yellow-gold colored, five-hundred dollar denomination, pretend non-legal tender. As a bonus, I’ve included one get-out-of-jail-free card; you never know when that will come in handy.

I look forward to your reply and the opportunity to serve the great people of Illinois. One can only hope to live up to the high standard set by you in your governorship.

Your honored constituent,
Patrick C. McDonald

Enclosures (2)

P.S. On a side note, I just picked up some choice property on Ventnor Avenue that would be perfect for a residential development, or even a hotel. Who’s palm do I have to grease around here for building permit?

I am not expecting a response even though this is waiting for him.

Briefcase full of Monopoly money

Financial markets, of course, are not perfect. In particular, they are susceptible to boom-and-bust cycles. Cycles of this sort have been a hardy perennial over the past 400 years of experience with organized markets. Addressing the results of these cycles is why we have protective mechanisms such as the Federal Reserve System and federal deposit insurance. But clearly these mechanisms proved inadequate to prevent the current crisis.

Just two quick points about this. First, boom-and-bust cycles are an assumed, if not welcomed, part of financial markets. A recession is simply a market indicator that too much credit has been extended. It’s like calling a timeout during the game to take a breather and figure out what the next play will be. And second, government intervention to “address the results of these cycles” only exacerbates the problem. The mechanisms that were supposed to prevent boom-and-bust cycles caused the current crisis. Artificially low interest rates over the past several years extended the boom when a free market would have curtailed it, and caused a bigger bust instead of a small market correction.

But even though he defends an “arm’s length” amount of intervetion, Cox makes some good points defending free markets.

Our emphasis on private ownership is directly tied to America’s dedication to individual freedom. It’s in our DNA. It is, in large part, why the United States came to be at all. Our Declaration of Independence is a recitation of the abuses of excessive government power. Our Constitution is a brilliantly crafted system of checks and balances to prevent that abuse by limiting government’s authority over individuals — including in the economic realm, where we’re guaranteed our constitutional rights to liberty and property, to freedom from expropriation, and to freedom of contract.

But beyond that, beyond ideals of freedom, the national preference for private ownership is also based on the most basic practicality: It works. America’s rise from New World outpost to global superpower was fueled by the dramatic growth of our free enterprise economy into the world’s largest. Free enterprise has produced spectacular results. Compared to other national economies with substantial government ownership and central planning, America’s economy has been more creative, resilient and dynamic.

We’ve found that decentralized decision-making, in which millions of independent economic actors make judgments using their own money, results in the wisest allocation of scarce resources across our complex society. And we’ve found the market to be more reliable in heeding price signals and meting out discipline to failing enterprises than government could ever be.

I’m writing this post is to call attention to the line “it’s in our DNA.” Cox uses the line as a figure of speech, but it’s more than that.

Our dedication to individual freedom IS in our DNA. On our evolutionary path we lost many tools that help other species survive; e.g. a thick coat of fur to endure the winter (it’s 7 degrees in Chicago right now), or heightened senses to catch prey. But on that evolutionary path we gained the tool that affords us a chance of survival; a conscious and reasoning mind. It is our moral right to use this tool, and in order to use it we must be free from coercion. This moral right phrased so eloquently as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is why the United States came to be. With a touch hyperbole, our DNA is red, white and blue.

Thanks to Rick Perry and Mark Sanford for being Governors Against State Bailouts in the WSJ:

[T]he bailout mentality threatens Americans’ sense of personal responsibility.

In a free-market system, competition and one’s own personal stake motivate people to do their best. In this process, the winners create wealth, jobs and new investment, while others go back to the drawing board better prepared to try again.

To an unprecedented degree, government is currently picking winners and losers in the private marketplace, and throwing good money after bad. A prudent investor takes money from low-yield investments and puts them in those that yield better returns. Recent government intervention is doing the opposite — taking capital generated from productive activities and throwing it at enterprises that in many cases need to reorganize their business model.

From Wall Street, to the automakers, and even to New Orleans, the government is doing the opposite of what the free market dictates. Banks that make poor lending decisions should fail. Car companies that can’t produce a product at the cost that others can should fail. A city below sea level that is bombarded by hurricanes should fail. Failure is not only acceptable, it is good because it shows us how to improve. Failure is why we succeed.

Our foe, once one of the great powers, has been in noticeable decline. They are currently inferior and though some questioned our ability, and even seemed to hope for our defeat, victory was inevitable. But we fought them like we always do, and we won.

In the early goings, the enemy made more noise and fought harder. But our men on the ground wore them down. We deposed their previous regime. We liberated minds witnessing conversions of the enemy from the dark side to the light.

And because the media rarely gives our troops the credit they deserve, we are forced to declare victory for them. We won! Today, the Ohio State Buckeyes defeated the Michigan Wolverines!

But seriously, this post is to observe Victory in Iraq Day. Those in our armed forces deserve, and have earned, our gratitude, admiration, and respect. We cannot count on our governments to declare victory, and we couldn’t count on our media to accept it even if they did. And I don’t expect Hollywood to start churning out uplifting movies based on the war and the success of our men and women fighting it anytime soon. So it’s up to us, those that have yearned for and expected victory (instead of campaigning for our surrender) to congratulate those that made it possible. From zombie:

Indeed, everywhere you look, someone has highlighted yet another detail which, cumulatively, demonstrate that “peace has broken out all over” Iraq.

Each person has their own criteria as to when the war was won: Some say we won the war long ago when we defeated the Iraqi Army in three weeks. Some say we won when the Iraqi government tried and executed Saddam Hussein. Some say we won when Iraqis voted democratically to elect their own leaders. Some say we won when we established control over the entirety of the country last year, eliminating the last remaining insurgent strongholds. Some say we won six months ago when the last remaining organized resistance evaporated.

On the other hand, there are those who are saying (in response to this essay) that we have not reached that magical benchmark. The Iraqi parliament may have passed the security agreement solidifying Iraq’s post-war stability, but some people say we should wait until the U.S. Senate approves it before we declare victory. Others say that the war won’t be won until casualty levels literally drop to zero. Other say we haven’t won until all troops are gone from the country. Others wait in vain for an official announcement.

There is no consensus. And there never will be. Still, the cut-off point between “war” and “not war” has to be drawn somewhere, and if we don’t draw the line ourselves, I guarantee it will NEVER be drawn. Because the Left and the media want to make sure that even ten years from now, when perhaps one US soldier is killed per year in an otherwise completely stable Iraq, that still won’t qualify as “victory.” Because their overarching goal is to to make sure that the war goes down in history as a defeat, no matter what.

My opinion is: This is as good a time to declare victory as we’re ever going to get.
All signs point to “Yes.

And Go Buckeyes. Let’s go for 6 in a row next year.

The Media Advantage

Well, they haven’t lost this advantage completely yet, but its erosion has surely been hastened by the biased reporting in this presidential election. The MSM continues to lose readers to other outlets and their performance this time around has pushed more away. It’s an embarrassing time to be a journalist. This advantage will continue to deteriorate as the exodus of readers toward the internet marches on.

Black Victimhood

To be sure, this was an important event for all Americans. There was great, real emotion because of Obama’s victory. And though America gets more blame for the institution of slavery, rather than the encomium it deserves for being the cause of its eradication the world over, she now stands as the least racist country in the world with a black president elect as proof. This is the most visible of countless examples yet that achievement is possible to every individual in America no matter the minority or majority group they hail from. This is a great event for America, but a bad one for the Left.

How many votes do Democrats get from telling blacks they need their help to survive in a racist country like America? The Left will begin to lose this argument because how racist can a country be that elects a black man to its highest office? Their argument of white racism oppressing minorities no longer holds water. I will give Jesse Jackson some credit and say he wasn’t crying all crocodile tears on the night of the election, but how much of his emotion was a show for the cameras, or due to a feeling of jealously, or because he’s lost his meal ticket, vs. actual happiness and pride. If the Left and people like Rev. Jackson continue to push this agenda, they will alienate whites that are sick of being blamed, and they’ll be seen as racial agitators fomenting the problem instead of healers that are part of the solution. The other option is to open their eyes to the evidence before them and admit that racism has long been waning in our nation, thereby losing the support of those that no longer feel discriminated against. It’s a lose-lose situation for the Democrats and a win for America.

Public Campaign Financing

Long since an ace in the hole for Democrats because of its power to even out campaign spending, public financing for presidential elections may never be used again. Private financing will no longer be seen as corrupt and the handicap of spending limits will never befall the Right. As the first candidate to forgo public financing since it started 1970′s, Barack Obama broke his promise to “aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election,” and outspent McCain three-to-one in the general election. If we see numbers like this again, they may very well lean the other way, and if they do, Democrats will be powerless to defend a public financing system because a fellow Democrat destroyed it.

They won this election, but they killed the golden goose to do so.

Actually, the scenario was perfect for a capitalist to win. There was a candidate explaining his socialist belief that spreading the wealth around is good for everybody (“It’s not that I want to punish your success” but I will as a means to an end). There were ordinary, extraordinary Americans standing up for free markets and their right to pursue their own happiness. There was a financial meltdown caused by government interference in the economy; creating “affordable housing” that borrowers couldn’t afford in the end, and by keeping interest rates artificially low. And there was an unpopular sitting president trying to push through a $700 billion bailout plan to “save” the economy by bilking the taxpayers.

The Right tried to take advantage of the “spread the wealth” comment and the Joe-the-Plumber’s to help their campaign, but it was too late. McCain had already taken the me-too Republican stance by pointing the finger at the greed of Wall Street, and cheerleading the bailout. It’s hard to fight Socialism when you espouse their views and repeat their bromides.

Especially as the Left pushed the idea that a McCain victory would be the same as a third term for Bush, the economic mess and the subsequent bailout could have been seen as a gift. McCain could have fought the bailout thus distancing himself from the Bush administration and positioning himself as a defender of free markets. And he could have won.

31-Year-Old Political Novice Announces Presidential Campaign for the Next Election

On the day of this year’s election, a 31 year old Chicagoan, without an ounce of political experience, announces his candidacy for the office of President of the United States for the election of 2012. The young man is relying on the power of the Internet to gain enough exposure over the next four years to compete with established politicians.

Chicago, IL (PRWEB) November 4, 2008 — Priding himself on his lack of political experience, Chicago resident Patrick McDonald has declared his intention to run for office in the next presidential election. At the age of 31, McDonald’s youth makes him ineligible for the next term starting on January 20, 2009. He is counting on the Internet to lift him from obscurity to a viable candidate and is starting his campaign at McDonald2012.com.

“A lot has been said about political experience in this campaign with each side claiming to have the requisite amount to lead the nation, and each side casting doubts about their opponents’ abilities because of a lack thereof,” said McDonald. “Let me be the first to say what I think a lot of people will agree with; I don’t want leaders with a lot of political experience. I don’t want leaders that have risen through a corrupt system by selling favors and compromising their values to do so. I’ll trust an honest person with an honest job over an ‘experienced politician’ any day of the week.”

A Web developer by trade, McDonald sees his campaign as an experiment with the power of the Internet. Can an unestablished unknown use the Internet to compete with experienced politicians on the national stage? McDonald hopes so. “This whole thing is starting at zero,” he says. “I have zero political experience, zero financial backing, and zero recognition. America doesn’t know me and we have 4 years to make friends.” McDonald asks visitors to his site to leave comments in his blog, with questions they would like answered, in order to learn about his values and political views.

Born on March 21, 1977, and if elected, taking office on January 20, 2013, McDonald would be the youngest president at 35 years 305 days, besting Theodore Roosevelt at 42 years and 322 days. Would his age hurt his campaign, or help to effect a victory? McDonald is unsure saying, “My youth is a side story that could get some people interested, but the real story is about finding honest leaders, untainted by the political establishment, that will fight for every individual’s rights instead of violating them at every turn.”

For more information visit McDonald2012.com.

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So here I am, an absolutely inexperienced politician, starting his campaign and public life at zero; zero political experience, zero financial backing, zero recognition. In fact, I’ll carry this zero theme a bit further. I’m not telling anyone I know about this campaign. No friends, no family, no coworkers. I’m only publishing a website, sending out a few press releases and emails, and commenting on a few blogs to get the ball rolling. We’ll keep it a secret between you (the internets) and me, until word of mouth takes it around the horn and my acquaintances start asking me about it. This will be an internet experiment to see if an honest and intelligent person can come out of nowhere and compete with established politicians on the national stage.

And now it’s your turn. If you have something to say, or have a question to ask, speak up by leaving a comment. The slate is clean and we should get to know each other…

Hello World, nice to meet you.