R.I.P.

We remember with fondness and gratitude the contribution she made to our young lives.

WE NEED CONSERVATIVE THOUGHT IN OUR UNIVERSITIES

WE NEED CONSERVATIVE THOUGHT IN OUR UNIVERSITIES

Why is conservative thought even needed in our universities? The Wall Street Journal, gives an excellent editorial in defense of conservative thought. Here is an exerpt:

That constellation (Conservative thought) begins to come into focus at the end of the 18th century with Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France." It draws on the conservative side of the liberal tradition, particularly Adam Smith and David Hume and includes Tocqueville's great writings on democracy and aristocracy and John Stuart Mill's classical liberalism. It gets new life in the years following World War II from Friedrich Hayek's seminal writings on liberty and limited government and Russell Kirk's reconstruction of traditionalist conservatism. And it is elevated by Michael Oakeshott's eloquent reflections on the pervasive tendency in modern politics to substitute abstract reason for experience and historical knowledge, and by Leo Strauss's deft explorations of the dependence of liberty on moral and intellectual virtue.

Without an introduction to the conservative tradition in America and the conservative dimensions of modern political philosophy, political science students are condemned to a substantially incomplete and seriously unbalanced knowledge of their subject. Courses on this tradition should be mandatory for students of politics; today they are not even an option at most American universities.

Of course, I'm having a hard time just getting my University to let me expose my students to William F. Buckley, much less Leo Strauss.

THE PRESIDENCY ISN'T ABOUT BRAINS BUT HARD WORK

A few weeks ago I ran across Wayne Allen Root’s challenge from last summer. Root was the Libertarian VP candidate and he was theoretically a schoolmate of Obama’s at Columbia.

Welch: Were you the exact same class?

Root: Class of '83 political science, pre-law Columbia University. You don't get more exact than that. Never met him in my life, don't know anyone who ever met him. At the class reunion, our 20th reunion five years ago, 20th reunion, who was asked to be the speaker of the class? Me. No one ever heard of Barack! Who was he, and five years ago, nobody even knew who he was.

Other guy: Did he even show up to the reunion?

Root: I don't know! I didn't know him. I don't think anybody knew him. But I know that the guy who writes the class notes, who's kind of the, as we say in New York, the macha who knows everybody, has yet to find a person, a human who ever met him. Is that not strange? It's very strange.

I’ve read over this several times since because it’s more poignant than all off the plot points that we heard last summer because it kind of explains everything with Wright, Ayers, Allinsky and what not.

He most likely skirted at Columbia and that’s why no one knows him there and it’s why he won’t release his grades. After four years in the real world and the added maturity he went to Harvard Law and applied himself and he’s more than willing to share those grades and stories. But like a talented athlete he treated Columbia like he was a bonus baby and he treated Harvard like he was playing in his option year.

I'm kind of getting the feeling that he treated the campaign last year as the option year and he's now skirting. It’s common to make campaign promises that you don’t intend to keep, but it’s surprising the number of times he’s made an actual policy decision as president and then backtracked. That’s clearly the tendency of a guy who isn’t doing his homework. It’s also one explanation as to why the teleprompter is going everywhere. He’s a talented guy use to getting by on glib philosophical statements and that just doesn’t work in the White House. The CEO of a successful corporation isn’t the smartest guy in the company but the hardest working.

Look at Obama's post Harvard Law years. Instead of using such a degree to find his own success he went into public service where even if he were a failure no one would ever know. We do know that he couldn't make enough money to buy his own house and needed the shady Tony Rezko to accomplish it for him.

When all the talk was going around last summer that he had no personal accomplishments it was derided because he was such an exciting person. But electing a man with no accomplishments gives such a man the idea that the world is about keeping cool rather than making tough decisions. Obama has been accomplished in getting elected to things, but he has yet to make his mark in any particular job.

Bush didn’t speak well, but he knew the issues and where he stood as President. Obama has been unable to understand how his radical upbringing fits into the real world decisions of the presidency. It’s going to take a lot of hard work for him to be as comfortable with decision-making as Bush and nothing in his past suggests that he is up to the task. Once the newness wears off so will the facade. At some point you have to actually judge a president based on his own accomplishments instead of his contrast to the previous leader. I hope that we can get there before the 2010 election.

THIS WEEK IN BASEBALL HISTORY

May 26, 1959 -- The Pirates' Harvey Haddix pitches a perfect game thru 12 innings and loses 1-0 in 13.

The Pirates were retired in the top of the 13th by Lew Burdette — who, like Haddix, had started the game and was still pitching.

Felix Mantilla, who was to record a lifetime batting average of .261, led off the bottom of the Braves' 13th. He hit a grounder to Don Hoak at third. Hoak appeared to take his time gripping the ball, got it right, but his throw to first baseman Rocky Nelson — who regularly fielded better than .990 — was on a bounce. Nelson could not dig it out. Hoak was given an error. The perfect game was over, but not the no-hitter.

With Mantilla at first, the Braves’ great home run hitter Eddie Mathews was up. He did something he was to do only two more times that season — hit a sacrifice bunt. It was successful, and Mantilla moved to second. Now Haddix was facing Hank Aaron, who was leading the major leagues in batting. Of course, Aaron was intentionally walked.

Then big Joe Adcock was up. He was a home run hitter who once had smacked four in a game against my Dodgers at Ebbets Field. This time, he stroked a low liner that went over the head of right fielder Roman Mejias, toward the fence about 330 feet from home.

From Aaron’s vantage point, it did not seem to clear the fence. Aaron
took off for second, saw Mantilla racing home, and Aaron thought that was the ballgame. So he touched second, then cut across the infield for the dugout. He believed the ball had landed inside the stadium and that the game was over. But the ball had cleared the fence.

Adcock continued running, though, and rounded the bases. He touched home and the plate umpire Vinnie Smith declared the game over.

But not so fast. There was some confusion. The Braves thought it was a 3-0 game, but Adcock had passed Aaron on the bases. That made Adcock out. That night, the National League president, Warren Giles, ruled that the game was actually a 1-0 affair, that Adcock’s hit was a double. And for Haddix, officially it was never ruled a no-hitter, nor a perfect game, even though it went beyond nine innings.

Haddix went on to win Game 7 of the 1960 World Series over the Yankees but nobody remembers that.

LINKS to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette archives here.

OBAMA ELECTION ESTABLISHES NEW STANDARD

Now being black is sufficient qualification in itself, and not endorsing whoever the black candidates are is racist.

Two Philadelphia state senators and the city Democratic City Committee chairman held a press conference today in front of the Philadelphia Inquirer building in support of the black female judicial candidates who did not receive the endorsement of Inquirer editorial board.

Is this what MLK had in mind?

MILITARY TRIBUNALS

The New York Daily News take:

Lest there be any doubt that civilian courts are precisely the wrong place for these folks, consider the prosecution of Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, who was arrested in Illinois in December 2001 and held as an enemy combatant in a Navy brig.

Al-Marri joined Al Qaeda in 1998. In 2001, he was approached by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, architect of 9/11, about becoming a sleeper agent for a second wave of attacks.

With $10,000, Al-Marri entered the country Sept. 10, 2001, researched how to make cyanide gas bombs and focused on dams, waterways and tunnels.

The facts are beyond dispute; Al-Marri confessed in a plea bargain. In return, the Justice Department agreed Al-Marri would face no more than 15 years in prison, with the possibility of having his sentence reduced by the time he has already served.

Al-Marri's term of incarceration for active confederation with the forces that attacked America, killing 3,000, is, in a word, pathetic.

Credit card fraud can carry a stiffer punishment.

It would be more of the same if he closed Gitmo and brought them here.

ROCKET MISFIRES

I heard Mike and Mike's interview with Roger Clemens this morning on ESPN Radio. After quite a buildup that Roger was taking to the airwaves to break his long silence, the actual interview provided a lot of nothing. Clemens missed his opportunity to speak straight up with the folks, and Mike and Mike missed their opportunity to make news by asking hard, direct questions. Maybe they had a softball agreement in place, sure seemed like it. What I learned is that Clemens talks to kids, lots of kids, and high school players too, and he has a foundation, and the foundation serves kids, and he likes to get out and talk to kids. Did he mention how warmly he is received by the kids he goes out to talk to?

Hall of Fame credentials are worth a great deal of money, not just ego strokes, during a ballplayer's remaining lifetime and to his heirs. That is really what Clemens is all about at this point methinks.

EMPATHY IN THE LAW

Thomas Sowell produced 4 great columns about this topic last week. A response of sorts from slate magazine.

Webster's defines empathy as "the experiencing as one's own the feelings of another." Obama, in The Audacity of Hope, described empathy as "a call to stand in somebody else's shoes and see through their eyes." To Obama, empathy chiefly means applying a principle his mother taught him: asking, "How would that make you feel?" before acting. Empathy in a judge does not mean stopping midtrial to tenderly clutch the defendant to your heart and weep. It doesn't mean reflexively giving one class of people an advantage over another because their lives are sad or difficult. When the president talks about empathy, he talks not of legal outcomes but of an intellectual and ethical process: the ability to think about the law from more than one perspective.

It's funny that this writer seems to know exactly what the President means while everyone suspects that empathy in the law is supposed to right those wrongs the legislature didn't get around to righting. We suspect this because every other liberal nominated to the court since the 1950s crusaded instead of applying the law.

The court has already become a super legislature that answers to no one and Obama is asking that a potential justice be willing to peek through the blindfold.

WANDA SYKES

What she said doesn't surprise me, but I am surprised by how many people seem to be surprised. It's not worth blogging about except that James Taranto has a larger point about why it's funny to the Left.

The answer, it seems clear, is that this is an example of shock humor: a genre that relies on the frisson of violating taboos. By our count, Sykes runs afoul of five taboos in her Limbaugh joke: She equates dissent with treason. She likens a domestic political opponent to a foreign enemy. She makes fun of the disabled (Limbaugh's past addiction to painkillers would entitle him to protection under the Americans With Disabilities Act). She makes light of a form of interrogation that some people consider torture. And she wishes somebody dead.

Except for the last one, these are all taboos that liberals promote and enforce with especial vigor. If a conservative violated any one of them, he would be on the inside track to be named "Worst Person in the World" by that NBC blowhard (as indeed Feherty was).

What makes Sykes's joke funny to a liberal, then, is the sense of danger that accompanies her risky themes, combined with the secure knowledge that since the joke is at the expense of a liberal hate figure, the usual rules do not apply. It's the same reason people on the left evince particular glee when they attack Clarence Thomas or Michael Steele in expressly racist terms, or when they use antigay innuendo against their political opponents (regardless of the latter's sexual orientation).

One of the great PC tricks of the Left is making certain words and thoughts by the Right taboo. They reserve the ability to go down those roads to attack members of the Right before locking the thoughts and words up again for the sake of decency.

BASEBALL BRIEFING

Buck Martinez made an interesting point today on XM's Baseball This Morning regarding whether DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak will ever be broken. He thinks not, because Joe faced 73 pitchers in those 56 games, whereas today a hitter would face any number of pitchers that he had not seen before, or had seen little. Deep in games, Joe would have seen the pitcher 3 or 4 times already. Buck cited games during the streak in which Joe saw the same pitcher 5 times and finally collected a hit. Now a hitter faces situational matchups designed specifically to get him out. Scott Graham's argument was weak but maybe right: that statistically anything is possible, and other records we never thought would fall have fallen.

Speaking of fallen, the Bucs started off 11-7 and have since lost 12 of 13, so they're out of it by mid-May and I can turn my attention to the Phils.

We saw a minor league game Saturday night and my younger son watched the whole game (and consumed many treats) without complaining, so I have entered the Golden Age of parenting. My older son scored the game, prompting the couple behind us to whisper how clever we were to find a way to keep him occupied, but he has been scoring games for years at his own initiative. He even tracks balls and strikes and the fielded location and relative arc of batted balls.

In other baseball news, apparently there is an ambidextrous pitcher having success in the Yankees system. There have been others who could throw both ways (Tulane pitcher and future Major League Gene Harris could do it while I was there in the 80s, but never actually switched arms on the mound as far as I know), but this guy is both an anomaly and a success. The catch is you have to start training the kid to do everything with either hand when he is 3.

You can see something right now that hasn't been around in baseball since the late 1800s: a switch-pitcher.

His name is Pat Venditte, he's 23, and he's pro baseball's only ambidextrous pitcher. This living piece of history is more than a YouTube star; he's throwing almost daily for the Charleston RiverDogs, the Yankees' Single-A club. And he's not just throwing: He's blowing through hitters like a Cub Scout through Skittles. At one point in April, the closer's ERA was 0.00 in 6 1/3 innings, and he hadn't blown a save in five games.

Last season, he had 23 saves for the Staten Island Yankees, with a 0.83 ERA. And best of all, the kid can relieve himself!

He wears a specially made six-fingered Mizuno glove with two thumbs. (His Dominican teammates call him Pulpo, Spanish for "octopus.") When he warms up, he throws four pitches righty and four lefty.

I feel bad for Dodgers management who were daily reaping from all things Manny and then this. And for all the dads who get to explain to their kids, as I did, that Manny will make $15m this year for cheating and will be joyfully welcomed back after his 50 games off. But eventually he becomes a rich retired ballplayer who everbody knows is a cheater, and he will pay that price forever. (I didn't ask what they would have done in Manny's situation; $15m buys a lot of Skittles.)

THE CHRYSLER NONSENSE

Megan Mcardle has the lowdown on why the bailouts are all about the unions:

Chrysler is a good company caught in a bad situation. Chrysler has been a bad headache for years. Daimler bought it for $36 billion in 1998, and actually paid $650 million to have Cerebrus take the company off their hands in 2007.

The hedge funds benefited from the government money, so they're getting more than they would have otherwise. As far as I know, Chrysler has burned basically all the cash they got from the government, which is why they're in bankruptcy. They haven't bought exciting new assets the secureds can liquidate; they've just produced more cars that can't be sold at a profit, put more wear and tear on machinery, etc. The deal they made with Fiat doesn't put any cash into the company.

The administration isn't kowtowing to the unions; it's trying to prevent massive job loss. Chrysler employs about 60,000 people. This is a rounding error in the number of jobs that have been lost since this recession began.

To put it another way, we could have taken the $8 billion or so we gave to Chrysler and given every one of the company's employees $133,000 to start their own War on Poverty, while still providing much of their pensions through the PBGC. Of cours, the new Chrysler is going to cut many of those jobs, so the cost of actual jobs saved will probably top $200K per. For as long as the company lasts. Which most analysts do not expect to be long, given that their super secret surprise scheme for turning everything around is to have Chrysler sell retooled Fiats to a country with one-seventh the population density and almost twice the birthrate of Italy.

Good points all. Here is Business Insider.

CLIFF MAY ON TORTURE

CLIFF MAY ON TORTURE

A couple of days ago I posted the Hiroshima history inspired by the Daily Show. May was on the show to talk about the memos and whether the United States tortured anyone. Dude said that Obama had a point and I rejoined that Obama was being disingenuous.

Here are some of May's points:

Obama's top intelligence official, Admiral Dennis Blair, says these techniques produced "high-value information" that gave the U.S. government "a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country."

Former CIA director, Gen. Michael Hayden, and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey recently wrote: "As late as 2006, fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of Al Qaeda came from those [coercive] interrogations."

Former CIA Director George Tenet has said, "I know that this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than [what] the FBI, the [CIA], and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."

Former National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has said, "We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened."

Many other top intelligence officials say the same: coercive interrogations are the only way we have to get life-saving information out of trained, hardened al-Qaeda terrorists.

I think the evidence is clear. But if others do not, let's release the "effectiveness memos" as former Vice President Cheney has requested and let's release other data on this question. Perhaps at this point we need a national debate on security and morality.

By not releasing the memos, Obama and company can make people think the worst instead of analyzing the actual events. His supporters have been yelling torture since before the 2004 election and they won't be happy with a conclusion that says otherwise so therefore the memos and an honest discussion on the issue cannot take place.

Look, we know this: Khalid Sheikh Mohamed was captured. He said: "I want a lawyer." He didn't get one - I know some people think he deserved one but he's not a criminal defendant or an honorable prisoner of war. The Geneva Convention does not cover him - even Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder has said that.

Later, they asked KSM over and over: "Will there be another attack?" He would just smile and say: "Soon you will see."

Now maybe you think asking him again and adding pretty please with a cherry on top would have produced results in time. The intelligence officials didn't think that. They went to the Justice Department and said: "What can we do? How far can we go to save lives?" And they got the information they needed -- and we haven't had another attack on American soil since.

And after being waterboarded and suffering other coercive methods in 2002, Abu Zubaydah explained that he and his "brothers" were permitted to give up information - only once interrogators pushed them to the limit of their endurance. At that point, he provided information that helped the CIA capture terrorist Ramzi Binalshibh.

The current administration appears to have ruled out any coercive techniques: No sleep deprivation - not even for a night. No loud music - it drives the terrorists crazy! So it's torture! Better to let the attack proceed. The victims and their families surely will understand.

We basically have three weapons against terrorists: capture them, interrogate them, kill them. But there's no point in capturing if you can't effectively interrogate, so that leaves just killing. How do you justify that? How do you say, yes you can hit that terrorist with a Predator missile but you can't make him listen to Shady Slim?

I would hope that President Obama would change his mind. I would hope he would say to his advisors: "Give me a list of all the techniques that are effective. I'll take a red pen and cross out the ones we will never use no matter what. But I'll circle the ones that may be used if I'm asked -- and if I give specific authorization. As for other techniques that are clearly not torture but may inflict discomfort, there will be detailed guidelines and I want the director of the CIA to sign off every time they are used.

This sounds reasonable to me. Since we rarely have a debate on here I welcome Dude to identify the chicanery in May's depiction or conclusions.

The TV debate was more rancorous. Here it is:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Cliff May Unedited Interview Pt. 1
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

EMPATHY IN THE LAW

EMPATHY IN THE LAW

Dr. Sowell and another gem.

Would you want to go into court to appear before a judge with "empathy" for groups A, B and C, if you were a member of groups X, Y or Z? Nothing could be further from the rule of law. That would be bad news, even in a traffic court, much less in a court that has the last word on your rights under the Constitution of the United States.

Appoint enough Supreme Court justices with "empathy" for particular groups and you would have, for all practical purposes, repealed the 14th Amendment, which guarantees "equal protection of the laws" for all Americans.

PROUD TO BE PART OF THE PARTY OF "NO"

PROUD TO BE PART OF THE PARTY OF "NO"

Much has been made by the Democrats in their latest attempt to demonize the Republicans and create a new moniker for them. Their latest efforts is in calling the Republicans the "Party of No." But there is more to this than meets the eye. In fact the Democrats are correct in form if not in intent. When I first heard this statement I was immediately reminded of a wise saying by my old Philosophy Professor "To Know something first begin by no-ing it. To no it, is to Know it and vice versa." What does this mean precisely? When humans first begin to learn language and learn we have choices or determination we begin exerting these new powers by saying, "no." Any parent of a 2 year old will tell you one of the reasons the terrible 2's are so terrible is because the 2 year old is saying no to everything. We know what we don't want before we know what we do want. This cognitive propensity continues into our adulthood. For example, if you go to a restaurant with a large menu you may not be certain immediately what you want. You may begin with narrowing your options by eliminating what you know you do not want before you arrive at what you do want. This is a process that happens anytime that there are a large number of choices.

Likewise, when the framers of the U.S. Constitution met to explore precisely how they were to create a new government, they too had many choices from the present as well as historical forms of government. They began the process of framing the constitution by saying no. The U.S. Constitution is a document that uses the words "no" and "not" dozens of times. The Future of Freedom Foundation, a non-partisan think tank, reports that the U.S. Constitution was a terribly shocking document when it was first written, especially to rulers all over the world. Because here were a people who were placing themselves in the role of master and placing government in the role of servant. In other words, in one fell swoop, the American people had inverted the historical relationship between citizen and government.

But there was a logic behind their actions. Think back to the Declaration of Independence. Expressing the commonly held sentiments of the people in that document, Thomas Jefferson had said that man has been endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights and that governments are instituted to protect those rights.

That was why the people of the United States called into existence a federal government — to protect rights that preexisted the government they were calling into existence.

Notice that they could have called into existence a government that had omnipotent powers over the citizenry. They did not do that. After all, that was the nature of the government they had recently rebelled against.

Instead, they created a government whose powers were limited to those enumerated in a document. They told the Government NO! It was the first time in history that people had had the audacity to limit the powers of their own governmental officials, by repeatedly saying "NO" to the powers of the government.

For example, Article 1, Section 8, sets forth the powers of Congress. Whether you believe that all of these enumerated powers are proper or not, one fact is indisputable: that the powers of Congress were indeed limited. In other words, if the powers of Congress were unlimited, there would have been no reason to enumerate specific powers. By listing the specific powers, the Founders made it clear that the federal government’s powers over the people were not omnipotent.

To clarify matters even more, the Founders enumerated specific restrictions on the powers of both the federal and state governments. See, for example, Article 1, Sections 9 and 10, and notice the number of times that the words “no” and “not” are used.

Look at the 1st Amendment to the Constitution, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." The Founders didn't list every possible way religion or speech, or the press could be formed. They in their wisdom understood that was impossible. Rather, they limited the Government by saying "No." Most of the Bill of Rights are written this way.

Thomas Jefferson understood the sole purpose of good Government was to protect the freedom and liberty of it's people. When Government begins to grow beyond it's constitutional limits and threatens that very liberty it was originally designed to protect, it is then time for the American People to rise up and say with a loud and resounding voice, "No!"

And that is why, I am proud to be part of the party of "No."

RIO BRAVO IS FIFTY

RIO BRAVO IS FIFTY

I'm not sure if any of you all have seen it, but Rio Bravo is my favorite Western and maybe my favorite movie of all-time. I first saw it in High School during the summer when Brother John and I stayed up all night to catch it on some Texas station when we had a satellite Dish in Indiana. I have seen it again and again and it never ceases to entertain. Here is Big Hollywood's take.

The next time you watch Bravo pay close attention to the compositions, most of which are medium-wide shots, with the camera at chest level. There are virtually no close-ups in the picture, a gutsy decision at a time when technique was becoming far more elaborate in Hollywood fare. In hindsight, it was a bold choice that enhanced the languorous, easygoing byplay between the film’s charismatic stars. Director Michael Powell once said that Hawks “had a very deep understanding of people, what was inside people.” The relaxed purposefulness of Rio Bravo’s confident compositions allows a rare richness of character to shine through.

Here is Hawks talking about the movie:

I like things like — I think it was in Rio Bravo — Wayne went over to a man and said, “So nobody ran in here?” Some man said, “Nobody ran in here.” And Wayne went like this and hit him right across here with a gun so blood was coming all over his face. And Dean Martin said, “Take it easy, Chance.” And Wayne turned and said, “I’m not going to hurt him.” The audience laughed so at that.

I anticipate that moment every time.

Most crucially, it was director Hawks who crafted John Wayne’s character into a master not only of action but of reaction, in the process establishing an overriding feeling of camaraderie that makes the film endlessly rewatchable. “John Wayne represents more force, more power than anyone else on screen,” Hawks claimed, and yet by dint of directorial will the star of Rio Bravo becomes everyone else’s straight man. During the course of the plot the Duke gets socked by Dean Martin (twice!), is verbally out-dueled by the precocious Ricky Nelson, suffers the outrageous behavior of Walter Brennan, is relentlessly teased by the ever-flirtatious Angie Dickinson, and is continuously rescued by all of the above. “You give everybody else the fireworks,” Wayne grumbled to Hawks at one point, “but I have to carry the damn thing.”

Wayne spends virtually the entire film loaning his star power to others in this fashion, not acting so much as reacting, and using those reactions to give his co-stars a much brighter spotlight in which to shine. Indisputably, we have Howard Hawks to thank for that. The Duke was known to sometimes distrust and argue with lesser directors, but along with John Ford only Howard Hawks commanded his absolute respect. “Hawks I trust with my life,” he once declared, a sentiment amply proven by the fearless bigheartedness of his performance in Rio Bravo.

The Wall Street Journal also has a nice story.

OBAMA'S 100 DAYS PRESS CONFERENCE

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. You've said in the past that waterboarding, in your opinion, is torture. Torture is a violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions. Do you believe that the previous administration sanctioned torture?

OBAMA: What I've said -- and I will repeat -- is that waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture. I don't think that's just my opinion; that's the opinion of many who've examined the topic. And that's why I put an end to these practices.

I would explain why it is torture, but I will instead say that other people think it's torture too.

I am absolutely convinced it was the right thing to do, not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways, in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are.

2 years in the Senate, 2 years on the campaign trail, no real career beforehand and yet an expert in counter-terrorism that could have gotten anything out of these guys without making them uncomfortable.

I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, "We don't torture," when the entire British -- all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat.

Germany was a signer of the Geneva Convention and al Qaeda was not. We shot 200 Germans by firing squad during the Battle of the Bulge because they impersonated American soldiers although it would be retroactively inconsistent with Obama's values.

And then the reason was that Churchill understood, you start taking short-cuts, over time, that corrodes what's -- what's best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country.

On the economy of course we need all the shortcuts I can dream up.

And -- and so I strongly believed that the steps that we've taken to prevent these kinds of enhanced interrogation techniques will make us stronger over the long term and make us safer over the long term because it will put us in a -- in a position where we can still get information.

Check out that answer. He's in the enhanced interrogation prevention business. It will make us stronger because it will put us in a position where we can still get information. Lighting my car on fire will make me stronger because it will still put me in a position where I can still get to work on Monday.

In some cases, it may be harder, but part of what makes us, I think, still a beacon to the world is that we are willing to hold true to our ideals even when it's hard, not just when it's easy.

But not for the economy where we must spend the money of generations yet to come to maintain whatever creature comforts voters want now.

At the same time, it takes away a critical recruitment tool that Al Qaida and other terrorist organizations have used to try to demonize the United States and justify the killing of civilians.

Terrorists are simple folk just running the fruit cart for a meager living when they hear a report on NPR about innocent countrymen dunked into water in Cuba and they join the cause (without even pledging support to their local NPR station).

And it makes us -- it puts us in a much stronger position to work with our allies in the kind of international, coordinated intelligence activity that can shut down these networks.

Bush never worked with the allies. Any intelligence they sent he put it through the shredder.

So this is a decision that I'm very comfortable with. And I think the American people over time will recognize that it is better for us to stick to who we are, even when we're taking on an unscrupulous enemy.

Let's get back to treating these people as jaywalkers.

QUESTION: Thank you, sir. Let me follow up, if I may, on Jake's question. Did you read the documents recently referred to by former Vice President Cheney and others saying that the use of so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" not only protected the nation but saved lives?

And if part of the United States were under imminent threat, could you envision yourself ever authorizing the use of those enhanced interrogation techniques?

OBAMA: I have read the documents. Now they have not been officially declassified and released. And so I don't want to go to the details of them. But here's what I can tell you, that the public reports and the public justifications for these techniques, which is that we got information from these individuals that were subjected to these techniques, doesn't answer the core question.

Which is, could we have gotten that same information without resorting to these techniques? And it doesn't answer the broader question, are we safer as a consequence of having used these techniques?

The underlying premise is that the Bush Administration was just too lazy or sadistic to do it the hard way. Does even the most staunch leftists believe that? But how many of the Far Left want these tactics to end because they were successful?

So when I made the decision to release these memos and when I made the decision to bar these practices, this was based on consultation with my entire national security team, and based on my understanding that ultimately I will be judged as commander-in-chief on how safe I'm keeping the American people.

Yes, I think we know that a president has consultants and a legacy.

That's the responsibility I wake up with and it's the responsibility I go to sleep with. And so I will do whatever is required to keep the American people safe. But I am absolutely convinced that the best way I can do that is to make sure that we are not taking short cuts that undermine who we are.

Is this idealism or veiled cynicism? Sometimes I'm not sure with him. Is the best way to keep us safe to live up to some imagined ideal? He needs to be a realistic leader here and say that there are no solutions in the war on terror just trade offs. He would rather trade a few more American lives not to look bad to his international friends. The American people will get to decide if he traded too many.

And there have been no circumstances during the course of this first 100 days in which I have seen information that would make me second guess the decision that I have made. OK?

I think this is an important point. Being President is the first job that Barrack Obama has ever had with real decision-making responsibilities. And so in his experience, so far so good.

REASON ON THE FIRST 100 DAYS

So here we are, 100 days into the great eight-year triumph of Hope over Change, a new Era of Really Good Feelings in which only one thing has become increasingly, even irrefutably, clear: President Barack Obama is about as visionary as the guy who invented Dippin' Dots, Ice Cream of the Future. Far from sketching out a truly forward-looking set of policies for the 21st century, as his supporters had hoped, Obama is instead serving up cryogenically tasteless and headache-inducing morsels from years gone by.

Consider the president's recent "major" speech about transportation, yet another Castro-like exhortation in which Obama boldly rejected the failed policies of the past in favor of the failed policies of the future.

In nearly every key area of policy concern, from industrial bailouts to massive deficits, from Afghanistan to the Middle East, from education to energy, the president's standard operating or reach back into the Carter playbook for ideas that didn't work back then, either. All while rhetorically valuing "good ideas ahead of old ideological battles."

Obama's typical M.O. is to proclaim a new era of responsibility while ushering in a new era of irresponsible debt, promise to close the revolving door of lobbyists and government while keeping it open, and vow to post all bills online for five days without doing anything of the sort. He says the bailout is "not about helping banks—it's about helping people," then gives more of the people's money to banks. He says he doesn't want to run General Motors, then fires its CEO, guarantees its warranties, and wags his finger about the company's surplus of brands. He says he's taking a battle-axe to the budget, then offers to shave $100 million off a $3.4 trillion tab. At his gee-whiz, interactive, online town hall meeting, he laughed off the most popular question asked by web viewers—should marijuana be legalized—with a lame joke before embracing the status quo like Jimmy Carter hugging a Third World dictator.

Reason thinks that such policies will ultimately fail with moderates once they tire of the shtick.

WIRETAPS DOWN IN 2008

The number of wiretaps used by federal and state law enforcement is surprisingly low. I had never seen a number before.

Note the strange editing of the last sentence.

Wiretap Applications Drop for First Time in Eight Years

Jordan Weissman
04-28-2009

The number of wiretaps used by federal and state law enforcement dropped 14 percent in 2008, declining for the first time in eight years, according to a report released this week by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Judges approved 1,891 wiretaps last year, down from 2,208 the year before. The number of intercept applications had been steadily climbing since 2001, when there were 1,491. No applications were rejected.

State agencies accounted for 1,505 of the applications, while federal law enforcement asked for 386.

Like every other year for the past decade, the vast majority of the wiretaps in 2008 were used in narcotics cases. Those investigations also accounted for much of the drop. Last year, there were 1,593 wiretaps in drug cases, down from 1,792 the year before. In the next largest category, homicide and assault investigations, law enforcement officials asked for just 92 wiretaps.

The report found that wiretaps contributed to 4,133 arrests and 810 convictions.

The average cost of executing each wiretap also continued to drop, down to about $47,000 from the decade high of $63,000 in 2004. The average cost of a federal wiretap was $70,536.

The report compiles statistics on the surveillance methods used in domestic investigations. Wiretaps used in terrorism-related cases.

WSJ ON THE LATEST HOOEY

WSJ ON THE LATEST HOOEY

Policy disputes, often bitter, are the stuff of democratic politics. Elections settle those battles, at least for a time, and Mr. Obama's victory in November has given him the right to change policies on interrogations, Guantanamo, or anything on which he can muster enough support. But at least until now, the U.S. political system has avoided the spectacle of a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements. This is what happens in Argentina, Malaysia or Peru, countries where the law is treated merely as an extension of political power.

Mr. Obama may think he can soar above all of this, but he'll soon learn otherwise. The Beltway's political energy will focus more on the spectacle of revenge, and less on his agenda. The CIA will have its reputation smeared, and its agents second-guessing themselves. And if there is another terror attack against Americans, Mr. Obama will have set himself up for the argument that his campaign against the Bush policies is partly to blame.

What was once an inkling and soon a fear has become a reality. Barack Obama doesn't much care about the security of this country.

KERRY TO THE RESCUE

KERRY TO THE RESCUE
via Instapundit

Troubled by the possible shuttering of his hometown paper, Sen. John Kerry reached out to the Boston Globe on Tuesday, then called for Senate hearings to address the woes of the nation's print media.

"America's newspapers are struggling to survive, and while there will be serious consequences in terms of the lives and financial security of the employees involved, including hundreds at the Globe, there will also be serious consequences for our democracy where diversity of opinion and strong debate are paramount," Mr. Kerry said.

Maybe Kerry should read the Internet where real diversity of opinion resides. He knows that any paper saved by the government will become a mouthpiece for government intervention and that is just what he wants.

APPEARANCE OVER RESULTS

APPEARANCE OVER RESULTS

Even the New York Times admits it.

President Obama’s national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in its struggle with terrorists.

“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country,” Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday.

Admiral Blair’s assessment that the interrogation methods did produce important information was deleted from a condensed version of his memo released to the media last Thursday. Also deleted was a line in which he empathized with his predecessors who originally approved some of the harsh tactics after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past,” he wrote, “but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given.”

Ah, but here are the political considerations.

Admiral Blair said in a written statement issued last night. “The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."

There it is:

1. World Opinion
2. Protecting American Lives

Where in the constitution does it says we must maintain America's reputation among the coward nations?

NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT

NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT

What will America stand for under Obama?

And if Obama feels that he has to be the one to greet a man like Chavez, must it be with the kind of ear-to-ear grin that one might show girl scouts selling cookies? It must surely be disheartening for those who suffer oppression in countries like Venezuela, Cuba and Saudi Arabia to see the American president backslapping their oppressors when these victims have always looked up to the United States as their champions.

HIS ONLY ENEMIES ARE DOMESTIC

HIS ONLY ENEMIES ARE DOMESTIC

Drudge has been feeding a steady diet of Obama meets the Latin dictator and the results are much like Bill Ayers meeting a Latin dictator. He graciously met Hugo Chavez and he recently listen to Daniel Ortega knock the U.S. in a speech.

This is Obama's mild retort and my favorite part of the article:

"To move forward, we cannot let ourselves be prisoners of past disagreements. I'm grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old. Too often, an opportunity to build a fresh partnership of the Americas has been undermined by stale debates. We've all heard these arguments before."

Actually, the president misspoke on the sequence of events in Cuba. The invasion of CIA-trained rebels at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba occurred in April 1961. Obama was born August 4, 1961.

He's grateful that Ortega didn't blame him for things that happened when he is three months old and yet the entire grievance industry in the United States is based on retribution for what people's grandfathers did to other people's grandfather. I'll save that gem for a future Obama speech.

As far as not knowing the history of Cuba, a President is only a dunce if the media wants him to be. Does President Obama ever get anything right when he is off script?

Back to my major point. . . do you notice how the loyal opposition in America needs to be crushed to the point of releasing warnings about them through Homeland security? And yet our foreign enemies should be listened to patiently with a sigh now and then followed by a please love me retort. This is no mainstream politician.

Stimulus: Print our way to recovery

BIDEN'S MOUTH

BIDEN'S MOUTH

President Obama probably had buyer's remorse before he became President Obama, but it's only getting worse.

Republican strategist Karl Rove called Vice President Biden a "liar" on Thursday, dramatically escalating a feud between Biden and aides to former President George W. Bush over Biden's claims to have rebuked Bush in private meetings.

"I hate to say this, but he's a serial exaggerator," Rove told FOX News. "If I was being unkind I would say liar. But it is a habit he ought to drop."

Rove added: "You should not exaggerate and lie like this when you are the Vice President of the United States."

Biden's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, although Biden spokesman Jay Carney told Fox on Wednesday: "The vice president stands by his remarks."

I doubt Jay Carney will last long in this job. He's already speaking in a detached manner about his boss. He should seriously consider putting in for hazard pay.

BUYER'S REMORSE

In March, the number of Democrats in the nation fell two percentage points while
the number of Republicans fell by half-a-point.

The number of unaffiliated went up of course. I would not be surprised to see a viable third party candidate as soon as 2012, one with horse sense and a chip on his (not her) shoulder.

PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF AMERICA

News Flash: People with capital favor capitalism. 30% of Democrats favor socialism. A majority of young adults either favor socialism or don't know the difference. Possibly they think "socialism" means hanging out with friends.

Investors by a 5-to-1 margin choose capitalism. As for those who do not invest, 40% say capitalism is better while 25% prefer socialism.

There is a partisan gap as well. Republicans - by an 11-to-1 margin - favor capitalism. Democrats are much more closely divided: Just 39% say capitalism is
better while 30% prefer socialism.

We never did find out which McCain prefers. The economy is not his strong suit.

CRYSTAL BALL

An article from 3 years ago about wasteful spending.

The nation's strong economic growth is creating a tax-revenue boom for the states. State tax revenues jumped 8.7 percent in 2004 and about 8 percent in 2005. About three-quarters of state governments had tax-revenue growth of 6 percent or more in 2005.

What will the states do with their overflowing coffers? During the revenue boom of the 1990s, states allowed their budgets to bloat as they expanded programs such as Medicaid to unsustainable levels. When the recession hit in 2001 and revenues stagnated, state officials moaned that they were innocent victims of a fiscal crisis. They responded by hiking taxes and clamoring for more aid from Washington.

He nailed that one.

HOW BAD IS IT, DOC?

The slowly moving crisis ahead.

Mike Whalen, former policy chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, commenting on last year's Social Security Trustees annual report on the state of the Social Security and Medicare programs, said, "The report on the state of entitlement programs is rather grim -- the combined unfunded liabilities of both programs are $101 trillion." What that means is that in order for government to make good on its promises, Congress would have to put aside tens of trillions of dollars in the bank today. Keep in mind that our GDP is only $14 trillion.

In the absence of massive tax increases or cuts in benefits, in order to meet its promises Congress must cease spending on one in four programs by 2020, such as education and highway construction, and one in two by 2030, and by 2050 or so all federal revenue will be spent supporting Social Security, Medicare and prescription drug benefits. Such a scenario is unsustainable. There will be economic and political chaos. Today's politicians are not likely to take measures to avoid the coming chaos because senior citizens, the major beneficiaries of Social Security and Medicare, vote in large numbers and will exact a high political price.

And that doesn't even count the government health care we're likely to see.

THE PAPER

A funny little guy came to my door selling the Orlando Sentinel a few weeks ago. I stopped getting the Sentinel in 2004 when they endorsed John Kerry. Two salesmen have been to my door prior to this one and I sent them away. The last dude said he was just trying to save me money with coupons. The new guy offered me 13 weeks of Wed, Fri, and Sun for 50 cents a week and I took it. I figured it would be nice to read the CALENDAR section again and the movie reviews and show times, not that I have time for the movies. That crazy Commander Coconut is still at it though he moved to the end of the section.

It use to be fun to read the Sunday travel section, but it's all wire stuff now. The sports section has a columnist that thinks referencing Paris Hilton in a college basketball quip is witty. But the previous salesman was right about saving me money on the coupons. I bought these corn/rice chips with a coupon that saved me more than a week's subscription. Decline can be great for the pocketbook, but I won't miss the paper when it finally folds. Or I should say I won't miss it once my 13 weeks introductory offer ends.

THE YANKEE YEARS by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci (A Book Review)

The Yankee Years gives you the history of the Yankees during Torre's reign with an account of how baseball changed after the Yankees won their last championship. You'll learn about the Yankees' internal problems and successes along with larger issues like steroids and the impact of Michael Lewis's MONEYBALL. Neither issue the Yankees were ready to deal with in a timely manner.

Joe Torre, ever the decent man, shares his feelings on many topics including the players he loved and the players who frustrated him. Derek Jeter was the most professional of baseball players and the greatest of teammates. Paul O'Neill was a fierce competitor. David Cone was the rare pitcher who was a team leader in the clubhouse. Jorge Posada was a leader on the field who had no problem getting in your face if you weren't working hard enough. David Wells was a talented pitcher always getting in his own way. Alex Rodriguez was a hard working ballplayer that spent too much time worrying about what was written and thought about him. Carl Pavano was a lazy dog who would do anything not to pitch. Randy Johnson just couldn't deal with the pressures of New York, nor could Javier Vazquez, Jeff Weaver, Kevin Brown, etc.

Verducci and Torre's first collaboration, CHASING THE DREAM was written more than 10 years ago and I remember it being a pretty standard sports biography although Torre's story was more intriguing than most. This seems like an entirely different kind of book, one that deals with the Yankees within the larger issues of baseball. I can't honestly remember the voice in the first book, but here Verducci's voice dominates and Torre is always close by to add a supporting quote. Any baseball fan should want to read this book just to find out how Joe Torre made it so long in that boiling pot of water.

THE NEW MONEYBALL

Now that GMs understand the old Moneyball, this is what they are doing now:

Baseball writer Tom Verducci recently noted in Sports Illustrated that teams are moving toward “placing more and more value on young players under control.” That is, they are signing their young players to contracts that extend past their years of indentured servitude. Doing so may mean paying a relative premium in the short term, but the team in turn can still afford the player after year six.

Take what the Tampa Bay Rays did with their rookie third baseman Evan Longoria. Since they considered him the cornerstone of their team, they signed him to a nine-year deal that could be worth up to $44 million. Ordinarily, the way a player of his talent (assuming he lives up to it) would earn that much money would be by toiling for a total of, say, $10 million to $15 million for six years and then signing a blockbuster free-agent deal that would pay $13 million to $15 million per year over the next three years and beyond.

As the league slowly corrects the reserve clause inefficiency by paying players what they are worth before they hit free agency, we will see a smoothing of salary distribution throughout players’ careers. Young players will not be as inexpensive and older players will not be as overpaid. Top free agents will become scarcer over time; their hometown teams have found a way to keep them. In a way, this change will be toughest on the big-spending teams that rely predominately on the free-agent market, and whose fans demand that they pursue marquee names.

THE WORLD LOVES US AGAIN. . . IN THEORY

Barack visits the Continent:

Barack Obama made an impassioned plea to America’s allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, warning that failure to do so would leave Europe vulnerable to more terrorist atrocities.

But though he continued to dazzle Europeans on his debut international tour, the Continent’s leaders turned their backs on the US President.

Gordon Brown was the only one to offer substantial help. He offered to send several hundred extra British soldiers to provide security during the August election, but even that fell short of the thousands of combat troops that the US was hoping to prise from the Prime Minister.

Just two other allies made firm offers of troops. Belgium offered to send 35 military trainers and Spain offered 12. Mr Obama’s host, Nicolas Sarkozy, refused his request.

If I remember correctly, Obama's supporters during the election said that Bush had tarnished our image in the world and Barack could heal that wound and the world would better help us in the war on terror.

35+12=47 and there you have it. The election of Barack Obama gained us 47 additional troops. They won't pick up a gun or anything, but they are ready to man the phones. That is leadership.

JOKE IS ON ME?

Wednesday evening in Pittsburgh I was walking from my hotel to a meeting. On the sidewalk up ahead was a peaceful demonstration by 40 or 50 anti-capitalism protestors. There were 2 police cars and 2 police motorcycles keeping the peace. The protestors were in a tight little bunch at the entry of some building. A woman in the middle was shouting something through a bullhorn. There were some signs that I didn't really read, just struck me as "Socialism good, capitalism bad" kind of stuff. It was clear from the police presence that there was meant to be separation between the throng and any onlookers, but from what I could tell there were no onlookers and no threat of disturbance. There was also no way to cross the street due to a concrete median erected for construction purposes and the fact that traffic was moving in both directions. And I was in a hurry. So I barged right past them on the sidewalk in my suit and tie. After I passed by, I heard, "Sir! Excuse me, sir!" I was concerned that it was a cop eager to tell me the error of my ways, or maybe a protestor wishing to engage my capitalist ass. I had time for neither and kept on walking without incident.

At the time I felt a bit of satisfaction as the object of their scorn. Later as I reflected on it, I couldn't make any sense of what they were doing. There were no onlookers, they weren't really roused up, there were no cameras, and I hadn't read their signs. So now I am wondering whether the whole thing was somehow April Fools related. I wish I had stopped long enough to read the signs. I checked the websites of the two Pittsburgh papers on Thursday but couldn't find anything on it. Now it lingers as one of those memories that I don't know what to do with, which cabinet to file it in.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

I know of several Obama supporters from last year who are mostly apolitical, but the country was going down the tubes with President Bush and something had to be done. Now here you have Obama following almost all of the Bush policies and on top of that spending us into an economic collapse, and we have silence from last year's critics. It was like Bush's presidency was some big reality show and now that he's voted off the island everybody is safely back to their superficial pursuits until the new season begins in four years.

--------------------------------

I've been reading THE FORGOTTEN MAN by Amity Shales and I recommend it to my Junto brethren. I doubt a better book on what caused the Great Depression will ever be written. The short version is that Hoover started us off with the Smoot-Hartley tariff act that made prices climb and hurt the poorest people and Roosevelt spent the 1930s experimenting so many ways that investment capital was afraid to take any risks, because the rules kept changing. The author surmises that without government action it would have been a mild recession and been over in a few years, but it instead stretch until 1942.

---------------------------------

Baseball season without dad is tough. Without him convincing me that the Yankee acquisitions will be fruitful I am left to consider them objectively and get depressed.

FRAID

I fear that all the activity over at Facebook marks the end of this blog. Am I wrong?

THE SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Those Thomas Paine videos that Steve has posted on Facebook have energized me. I wrote something very eloquent on this forum a year or two ago which I have been unable to find via search - it must have been written in the comments section. Anyways, I was predicting revolution in America's future and vowing to be true to the cause for the sake of our progeny as our forefathers had sacrificed to ensure our freedom. Now there are national tea parties and reminders from long dead pamphleteers indicating that the time is ripe for revolution while we can still be somewhat civilized about it. Fake Thomas Paine speaks sense and I'm all riled up about it. I'm ready to go. It's game on!

BEARER OF BAD NEWS

Periodically I get economic updates from a certain investment firm. Following is some of what they had to say this week.

I am reminded of the National Weather Service alert that went out in the days before Katrina hit New Orleans. It warned of massive destruction of property, flooding, loss of electricity and water for weeks or months, and human suffering on an "incredible" scale. It said in plain English that the area would be uninhabitable for weeks or months. And yet somehow we were unprepared to deal with a scenario that common sense and our own eyes told us was coming. At least with Katrina we could blame it on a natural disaster. This one we created ourselves. The smart money is stocking up on staples before inevitable inflation.

AS WE EXPECTED, THE WORLD STOCK MARKETS BEGAN A SUBSTANTIAL RALLY
It should continue for at least another few weeks, possibly for a few months. It is typical of major bear markets to have major rallies. Initially, we chose to participate in this rally by buying some of the heavily shorted stocks in the financial area, we have been quick to take profits after these rose. More recently, we have been buying more oil and gold shares on dips, and have purchased some technology companies that are selling at very low valuations versus their growth rates. We also view the technology purchases as short term. We view the oil and gold share purchases as longer term.

We will also be buying undervalued companies in various industries in the U.S. and China, which we believe are attractively valued and have proven to have long term growth prospects.

So many absurd moves are being made by the U.S. Government; it is hard to keep track of them.

1. Continued auto industry bailouts are ridiculous, and history has shown time and again in other countries that it is a disaster for taxpayers. Eventually, the auto companies and their suppliers end up failing, but only after massive amounts of taxpayer money has been wasted trying to revive an inefficient, short sighted, and uncompetitive industry. The Swedes are demonstrating wisdom by refusing to nationalize Saab.

2. Quantitative Easing, or in plainer English, PRINTING MONEY TO PAY DEBTS, is another costly endeavor. Our politicians had better read up on their history. This is an immense mistake...and the VERY SAME MISTAKE that has set off disastrous inflations in numerous countries, bankrupted millions of honest citizens around the world, and caused serious economic and social disruptions including wars, revolutions and national bankruptcies.

Politicians opt for Quantitative Easing because it serves their purpose. The politicians had a big role in causing the financial problems, with their decades of cheerleading for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and with their pressure on banks to make home loans to those who had no hope of paying their lenders back.

PLEASE DO NOT GET CONFUSED BY THE CHANGE IN TERMINOLOGY...THE TOXIC ASSETS ARE DERIVATIVES.
The politicians looked the other way and cheered for more broad home ownership while:
· buyers who could not afford the houses they were buying lied to lenders (many downloaded from the Internet fraudulent K-1's and 1099's to submit to lenders to help with their deception)
· real estate finance and sales professionals engaged in several kinds of fraud due to the high commissions and fees they earn from each transaction
· greedy bankers from Wall Street (whose crimes have been plastered in the papers in recent weeks) who created new derivatives that made it easy to sell the toxic assets to themselves and others
· greedy accounting and rating agency participants who helped perpetrate the overvaluation of the toxic assets

Now, to deflect the blame from themselves, the politicians are engaging in the theatre of blame...pretending that they did not know about so many of the things that they have known all along, such as big pay and bonuses to their big donors at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Wall Street firms, and in the real estate industry (which was for years the biggest political donor in the U.S.).

The politicians must think the public is so stupid as not to realize what a fraud has been perpetrated by all of the various parties.
Maybe the public is slow to gather the details, but they get the general thrust of the problem. There were too many greedy people making too many political donations to Congress...and too little oversight by the supposed regulators.

None of this is new. Please feel free to review our archives at www.guildinvestment.com to see what we have said about the derivatives crisis numerous times in the years before the problem came to public attention. A further review of our archives will show that we have discussed many global economic and financial events long before they hit the public's radar.

In our opinion, one of the worst mistakes thus far is currently being made, and in a few months or years the public will come to realize it. Just as we notified our readers about the problems with derivatives/toxic assets years before the public became aware of it, this latest tragic mistake is another one that we will discuss in our letters long before the public comes to understand it.

With respect to fixing the banking system, our leaders in Washington appear to be ignoring the advice of former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, who as one of President Obama's advisors, suggests going back to a much less levered banking system. Paul Volcker suggests returning to something much like the banking system that existed under the Glass-Stegal Act. Instead, the politicians are opting for Treasury Secretary Geithner's plan which includes continuing with a more highly levered banking and finance system.

Why, after all of the problems caused by excess leverage, would they opt for the Geithner plan? Could it be that the financial institutions are too connected, and have been huge donors to many of the politicians at the national level?

England, Switzerland, the U.S., and many other countries have begun to use quantitative easing "money printing" to create a lower currency so they can export their way to prosperity. The countries want to state that they are pro free trade, so they will use the excuse that 'our currency has fallen, and that is why our exports are up and imports are down' argument. This, of course, is a misrepresentation.
When you lower the value of your currency to increase economic activity, it usually leads to more trade, more exports, and more cash in the financial system to spur consumption. Another result is that you encourage inflation. It will work. You will get inflation and perhaps some small economic growth. So it may still be a depression, but an inflationary depression.

The very politicians who are posturing that they care about the elderly, the retired, and low income groups are today creating a circumstance that will devastate those very groups with inflation. Inflation hurts primarily the poor, those on fixed income, and the retired. This is because it is hard for them to work and earn money at the new inflated pay rates. They are forced to sit by and watch as their savings be gradually eaten up by inflation, which erodes the purchasing power of their money.

We expect the U.S. dollar to fall and will invest accordingly.

SEXTING ON TRIAL

Grown-up lawyers are trying to figure out how the law applies to all the things kids do with technology.

In one of the first civil rights suits to focus on the growing practice of "sexting," lawyers for the ACLU of Pennsylvania will be asking a federal judge today to protect three teenage girls from the threat of criminal charges for using their cell phones to take and send semi-nude photographs of themselves.

I think about the parents when I hear about cases like this. The parents of the teenage girls are placed in the position of having to argue for the right of their precious babies to send topless pictures of themselves to be passed around the school. And spend two years of their lives doing it. And I thought I had problems.

THE BURSTING BUBBLE

This is an excellent rendering of what has happened in the economy:

The central banks hold $845 billion in gold. But of course, currency is no longer pegged to gold.
The money supply = $3.9 trillion = notes + coins + reserves.
$39 trillion was borrowed against it, using the "fractional reserve" system that is built on the premise that everybody won't want their money at once.
Derivatives got around the limits on how much could be borrowed, to the tune of $62 trillion.
Easy money created a huge asset bubble of $290 trillion, where the price of assets greatly exceeded any measure of the world's wealth.

It was all happy time as long as people bought in to the idea that the economy would keep growing and growing -- an irrational idea but people were making money by pretending that it could be true. Eventually, of course, the Ponzi scheme collapses like a house of cards and many get screwed.

JUNTOBOYS NEWS REPORTS:
Live from the ORLANDO TEA PARTY

ORLANDO TEA PARTY

It was a fun time. Steve, Donovan and I enjoyed lunch and quite a few spirited speakers.

Instapundit linked these picutres:
Here is the Orlando Sentinel story:

Here are some photos from my phone:

WOW

President Obama's budget increases federal govt spending from 20% to GDP to almost 30% in HIS FIRST YEAR IN OFFICE. What can be said about that but WOW. He'll be on the cover of the history books all right.

THE OTHER BLACKLIST

Remember Dwight Schultz from the A-Team? This is an interesting article about trying to make a living as a conservative actor in Hollywood.

Big Hollywood also has an article that explain how Jon Stewart and Bill Maher for hide behind comedy while delivering a steady partisan message.

Both were interesting.

E's BEST BUSINESS BOOKS

I have on my shelf a book called THE BEST BUSINESS BOOKS EVER and another called THE 100 BEST BUSINESS BOOKS OF ALL TIME. The lists have quite a bit of overlap, as you would expect, and I've read 18 on each list. If I had to recommend just five personal favorites, and using a broad definition of "business book," I'd start here (with main takeaways, from memory):

1. THE EFFECTIVE EXECUTIVE by Peter Drucker.
a. The only thing you can measure is results. And the only thing you should measure is results.
b. Results exist only on the outside.
c. Know thy time. Most people don't have a very good idea of how they actually spend their time.
d. Time is an utterly non-renewable resource (unlike money, capital, workers) and must be invested purposefully.
e. Make strengths productive.
f. Do not spend valuable time trying to turn weaknesses into mediocrities.

2. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BEN FRANKLIN.
a. Timeless principles of industry, frugality, self-management, enterprise and leadership.
b. Lessons in technology transfer from a renowned inventor-capitalist.
c. A useful history lesson.
d. A useful model for writing anything in terms of structure and style.

3. WARFIGHTING by USMC.
a. The object of war is to win.
b. You gain decisive advantage by hitting your enemy decisively at their point of greatest vulnerabilty.
c. Moral considerations trump direct orders.
d. Some prefer THE ART OF WAR by Sun Tzu or ON WAR by von Clausewitz. I like this one.

4. GOOD TO GREAT by Jim Collins.
a. First get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus.
b. Don't worry about where you're driving the bus until you have the right people on and the wrong people off.
c. You don't have to worry about how to motivate people when you get the right people on the bus.
d. Get people in the right seats.
e. Then decide where to steer the bus.
f. Great leaders have a paradoxical combination of humility and professional will.
g. Great organizations commit to doing just a couple of things relentlessly well.

5. THE KNOWING-DOING GAP by Pfeffer and Sutton.
a. Something has to get done, and somebody has to do it.
b. If you do it, then you will know.
c. In America you get ahead more by sounding smart than by being smart. You sound smarter when you are critical than when you agree.
d. Successful problem solvers think when they've had the discussion and solved the problem, they're done. But nothing actually changes until something happens next.
e. Good strategy is obvious. What separates winners from losers is disciplined implementation of the obvious.
f. Disciplined implementation isn't sexy, just successful.

Honorable Mention:
6. MANAGING TRANSITIONS by William Bridges. Managing organizational change is about dealing with the emotions people have around letting go.
7. THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE by Stephen Covey. Because we are humans not Pavlovian dogs, we can choose how we respond to stimuli. Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
8. THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE by Peter Senge. Every system is perfectly designed to produce the outcomes it produces. Whoa.
9. THE VISUAL DISPLAY OF QUANTITATIVE INFORMATION by Edward Tufte. The higher the information-to-ink ratio, the more effective your communication.
10. PLEASE UNDERSTAND ME by Kiersey and Bates. Understanding personality types is critical to working effectively with others. Understanding your own personality and temperament will set you up for success rather than failure.

Articles:
1. "Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey?" by William Oncken. Don't let others' monkeys jump from their shoulders to yours for care and feeding.
2. "Leadership That Gets Results" by Daniel Goleman. Discusses six main leadership styles, when to use each, and which ones generally work best.

I would love to hear your favorite books in this or any genre.

ARI VS. MATHEWS

Sorry to be throwing all of these film clips on here, but Ari Fleisher's performance on HARDBALL is worth seeing. Via The Corner:

BILL CLINTON AND SCIENCE

Have yet to meet. . .



How does Bill Clinton create an embryo without fertilization? Rhodes Scholar? What can explain it?

A CONGRESSMAN WITH WIT

via Big Hollywood

HE'S NOT EVERYTHING WE READ INTO HIM

The ranks indeed are filling with the disaffected and the disappointed — Chris Buckley, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, David Gergen, and even that gynecological sleuth and blogger Andrew Sullivan. And then there is the very angry Marty Peretz. Their complaints are varied but expressed with equal amounts of remorse and bitterness. They all have been done wrong by Barack.

They and the rest of the country are figuring out the bitter truth: Obama bears little resemblance to the moderate and soothing figure who tied up John McCain in knots. He bears even less resemblance to the Agent of Change. Rather he’s pretty much the Chicago pol who went to the Senate to be its most liberal member.

And for the wounded Obama supporters, we can offer just one bit of counsel: you have lots of company. There are trading floors filled with sympathetic souls and businesses filled with stunned executives. They didn’t get what they bargained for either. Just ask Jim Cramer. Oh yes, please do invite him to your sessions when he’s not busy with the “I lost my life’s savings” support group.

It's worth reading the whole thing, because he quotes each of the authors who were duped.