There are many reasons why I, if I were somehow to attend, would not be handed the microphone during a campaign-style Town Hall meeting.  And no, I don’t know why Obama is still doing them.  I am sure he is quite aware that the campaign is over, though you wouldn’t know that from his frequent, vague, accountability-free promises he makes nearly every day.  But I digress.  A few of those reasons are:

1) I would not sound like an ignorant idiot like this guy.  (Though at the same time I find myself thankful for Julio, as he succinctly demonstrates a great many things that are so hideously wrong in America today.  Briefly, they are: 1) rampant celebrity worship, now turned politician worship, 2) unbelievable ignorance of basic economics/business/capitalism, 3) lack of shame in asking for or receiving handouts, 4) ignorance as to exactly where those handouts come from.)

2) I probably can’t read from cue cards as well as Obama.

3) I would ask actual questions.  Like, for example: “Mr. President, can you please tell me where then constitution gives the federal government the right to intervene into the economic affairs of our country?” Or, “Mr. President, can you explain the concept of enumerated powers to your pathetic, historically and constitutionally ignorant electorate please?” Or, “Mr. President, can you please tell me how equal protection applies to members of your administration who are known tax cheats?  Does that mean that I am exempt from penalties or interest as well?  Or does this constitute what John Adams warned of, a ‘rule of men’ instead of a ‘rule of law’?  I thought we were living in an era of responsibility.”  Or, perhaps, “Mr. President, can you explain how your administration, the most ethical and and transparent government in the history of humanity, has hired numerous lobbyists, sought or hired three known tax evaders, even appointing one member who had to resign due to being under criminal investigation.  Additionally you have not required Congress to post your stimulus bill online so everyone could read it, have held closed door meetings with corporate CEOs, and are already a notorious press conference question dodger.  Please reconcile these.”

Maybe someday I’ll get up there and have my 15 minutes of talking head fame.  I’m not holding my breath though.

Excellent article by George Will about doomsday predictions:

An unstated premise of eco-pessimism is that environmental conditions are, or recently were, optimal.  The proclaimed faith of eco-pessimists is weirdly optimistic: These optimal conditions must and can be preserved or restored if government will make us minimize our carbon footprints, and if government will “remake” the economy.

It’s cunningly smart: Create a global scare in a field that confuses most people where government action to curtail the freedoms of its citizenry is the only solution.  Then, wait for the citizenry to demand that the government take away its freedoms in order to eliminate the global scare.  King George III couldn’t have done it any better.  Sadly, more people have died as a result of the “good intentions” of command economies than have ever perished as the result of what Adam Smith deemed “the invisible hand.”

The growing list of cons that “experts” were absolutely positive would lead to the destruction of the earth:

1. Overpopulation in the 1960s
2. Resource Scarcity in the 1970s
3. Global Cooling (!) in the 1970s
4. Global Warming in the 2000s

Ironically (and sadly) the only scare that had any real basis in fact - total nuclear annihilation (1950-1990) - was approached with absolute weakness by the Left, whose solutions amounted to unilateral disarmament and appeasement.  We can only wish they’d take such an approach to global warming.

Perhaps the most important reading you could do would be to read the Stimulus Bill for yourself at ReadTheStimulus.org.

The Action Americans Need by Barack Obama.  From the Washington Post.  So now he’s writing Op-Eds?  Smacks a bit of desperation if you ask me.  Maybe it should have been titled, “The Crushing Debt Future Americans Don’t Want, But Will Get Anyway.”  Also see his speech to House Democrats from the other night.

The New Great Communicator… Isn’t, by Joan Walsh.  From Salon.com.  So basically, rich people are evil and horde all the money, so all we need to do is take their money and get it to poor people who will spend it, thus saving everyone.  And all Obama needs to do is sell that point better, and he’s in the clear.  You think I’m joking, but I’m not.  Keynesian, demand side economics hard at work.  Until she runs into, you know, facts, reality, truth, history, etc.  Also see this refutation of her original (bad) premise.

A guy goes undercover into the pit of all evil, Wal Mart.  And finds?  It’s not so bad.  (via Powerlineblog.com)

Twelve Thoughts on the Election Contest Order, from Powerlineblog.com  Update on the Franken/Coleman case/election.

Republicans as Democrats, Part 1 and Part 2, by Thomas Sowell.  From Townhall.com

We Can’t Spend Our Way to Prosperity, by John Stossel.  From Townhall.com

The National Ponzi Scheme, by Walter E. Williams.  From Townhall.com.  Great article about Social Security, by one of my current favorite thinkers.

Venezuela’s Chaves says Obama has “stench” of Bush.  But I thought the world would love us now?  Also, the French are smarter than us.

Tom Daschle: Symbol of All That’s Wrong in DC, from Powerlineblog.com.

What Are They Buying? by Thomas Sowell, from Townhall.com.

Legislating the Lillie Ledbetter Lie, from Powerlineblog.com.

Fan and Fred’s Lunch Tab, from the Wall Street Journal.

The Entitlement Stimulus, from the Wall Street Journal.  Here comes socialized health care…

My Bipartisan Stimulus, by Rush Limbaugh.  From the Wall Street Journal.  Makes more sense than anything I’ve heard out of DC.

Get Over It: New Deal Didn’t Do The Job.  From the Heritage Foundation.

But Obama was only getting warmed up. His major howler was this:

So then you get the argument, well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? (Laughter and applause.) That’s the whole point. No, seriously. (Laughter.) That’s the point.

Under this “logic,” any bill that contains spending should be enacted because, by definition, it provides “stimulus.” It doesn’t matter how much stimulus is provided or when the stimulus will occur. This is quite possibly the most irresponsible position ever taken by a president on an economic issue…  The problem is that given enough time, every spending program in that plan will have to be paid for by taking money out of the economy. The result of taking money out of the economy is the opposite of stimulus.

President Obama ran a campaign promising change.  He ran promising openness and a ethical administration while denouncing the Bush administration.  However, the reality seems to be quite different (like so much of Obama’s campaign rhetoric vs. reality).  So far, Obama’s track record for ethical nominees is closer to a bad SNL skit rather than an administration that the American people can be proud of.

- Bill Richardson withdrew his name to be Commerce Secretary due to a grand jury investigation into political favors to donors.

- Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner failed to pay more than $40,000 in payroll taxes when he worked for the International Monetary Fund.  This is the person who was placed in charge of collecting taxes from the rest of us?  What would happen to any of us for not paying $40,000 in taxes?  I doubt we would get a promotion.

- Tom Daschle, nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, had to withdraw his name today as pressure mounted.  The problems Daschle faced were due to his filing more than $140,000 in back taxes and interest (he failed to disclose more than $300,000 in past income, including the use of a car and driver for three years).

- Nancy Killefer had to withdraw her name today as well due to tax issues.  She “failed for a year and a half to pay employment taxes on household help, has withdrawn her candidacy to be the first chief performance officer for the federal government.”  Chief Performance Officer?  Seems like with her tax issues she fits right in with the rest of Obama’s picks.

I thought it was patriotic to pay taxes?  Someone get Vice President Biden on the phone!

Judea Pearl, the father of Daniel Pearl who was kidnapped and beheaded by terrorists in the name of the “religion of peace,” writes about the mainstream legitimization of terrorism by Western media and academia.

The key graph:

But somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of “resistance,” has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words “war on terror” cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.

I believe it all started with well-meaning analysts, who in their zeal to find creative solutions to terror decided that terror is not a real enemy, but a tactic. Thus the basic engine that propels acts of terrorism — the ideological license to elevate one’s grievances above the norms of civilized society — was wished away in favor of seemingly more manageable “tactical” considerations.

Frank Gaffney writes that this mentality is adhered to and promoted by President Obama:

Several observers have noted in recent days that Mr. Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world is not only defensive and apologetic. It explicitly embraces a narrative that is factually erroneous and deprecating to his own country.

For example, in his Inaugural address, the president spoke of seeking “a new way forward [with the Muslim world], based on mutual interest and mutual respect.” He amplified this idea during his first post-Inaugural interview, which was granted to a Saudi-owned network, Al Arabiya: He is determined to “restore” the “same respect and partnership America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago.”

The problem with this formulation is that it misrepresents the more distant as well as the recent past, even as it panders to those (abroad and at home) who would blame the United States for the ills of the Muslim world.

He continues:

Mr. Obama has also seriously mischaracterized our enemy as “a far-reaching network of violence and hatred,” averring “We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence done in that faith’s name.” Such statements deliberately ignore the animating and unifying role in jihad of authoritative Islam’s violent and hateful theo-political-legal program: Shariah.

What is really worrying is that Mr. Obama’s actions and rhetoric are almost certainly being perceived by his target audience as evidence not of respect but of subservience - precisely what Islam (literally, “submission” in Arabic) requires of all of us, Muslims and non-Muslims, alike.

Many supporters of Obama appreciate his supposed ability to improve the American image in the eyes of the rest of the world.  However, if the world is blind to evil, if it refuses to denounce terrorism as a barbaric attack on civilization, if it would rather protect itself than stand up to the most obvious tyrannies in human history (the former Soviet Union, North Korea, Saddam’s Iraq, Sudan, Iran and any other state that endorses Shariah law),  should we really be concerned with seeking the world’s approval?  Weren’t we supposed to learn in high school that seeking popularity for its own sake is worthless?

So I’m at the grocery store today in suburban Washington, DC.  There is a woman in her 40’s in front of me in the checkout line with whom I presume to be her late teens/early twenties daughter.  The daughter is dressed incredibly well: the latest fashions, the latest hairdo and all the latest gadgets, bells and whistles.  The cashier rings up their items: a 12 pack of bottled Miller Light, a case of Bottled Water, a 12 pack of Lipton Brisk Iced Tea, a 12 pack of Ginger Ale, a DVD (Are we Done Yet? starring Ice Cube) and various other food items.  (Despite what it sounds like, I wasn’t actually taking notes.)  Her bill comes to $171.  She turns to the cashier and tells him that she has $51 dollars left in food stamps for the week, swipes her card and her bill magically becomes $120.  She pays the rest with a credit/debit card.

Now, I don’t have anything against helping the poor, but what is wrong with this picture?  Is this the picture of “social justice” that Liberals talk about ad nauseum?  Does the government really intend for people to buy DVDs with food stamps?  Do the taxpayers really need to support someone who’s spending $50 on items that are clearly luxury items.  I don’t have any problem with luxury items when you pay for them yourself.  But when you’re on the government’s (read: the American people’s) dime, you probably shouldn’t be buying anything starring Ice Cube and you certainly shouldn’t be buying bottled water for crying out loud.  (Note: I live in urban DC.  While the tap water here was once unsafe for consumption - and the city actually mailed water filters to each residence - those problems have been fixed.  Unless there’s some health scare of which I’m not aware, it’s perfectly healthy for her to drink out of the tap).

This experience underlines the problem with socialism and government programs in general.  There are unintended consequences for every action.  When legislators on Capitol Hill supported a bill to help the poor with food stamps, they certainly weren’t thinking of supporting this woman’s desire to dress her daughter in flashy clothes, entertain her family with DVDs and pop open a cool bottle of Miller Light at the end of the day.  But naturally, when this woman has $50 of her grocery bill covered by the government, it enables her to afford luxury items that she otherwise would not have been able to.  (Another anecdote:  A friend of my mother’s teaches in inner-city schools and she says that its easy to spot the families who are on food stamps because their children have the nicest/most expensive shoes.)

Capital L Liberalism presupposes that human beings have a perfect understanding of human nature and can predict with certitude that Action X with have Effect Y (and only Effect Y).  This is patently false and impossible.  But under the tenets of Liberalism, the government is omniscient and can perfectly shape human action through legislation.  It has a moral duty to fix the problems in this world!  Sadly, however, it creates more problems (and injustice) in the process.

Its not that conservatives don’t care about helping the poor.  We just don’t think that the government is the “man for the job.”  We despise government assistance/intervention because we care about helping the poor (instead of fake-helping them over the short term).  How did the woman’s experience help her in the long run?  Did it teach her to save?  Did it teach her that hard work pays off?  Did it teach her daughter that sometimes you have to forego the DVD and the bottled water in order to keep up with the latest fashions?  Of course not!  It taught her that the government will take care of you with money that magically appears; you can work less and still buy more than you are able to afford.  Thus, the poor will always be poor.

On the bright side, I got to meet the woman who ended up with the 12 pack of Lipton Brisk that I could’ve afforded had the government not taken my money and given it to the woman in front of me in the checkout line.

Here’s an awesome map that depicts each U.S. state as the country whose GDP it most closely resembles:

In short, the U.S. has the economic power of all of these nations combined! Not to minimize the stress that has been placed on those who have lost jobs or 401ks, but overall we’re still doing pretty well as a nation.  Our economy - measured in purchasing power parity - is still almost double that of China’s!  While not all things are rosy, things are not all bad either.  Even the poor in the US have cell phones and satellite television.

Here in Washington DC, specifically all over Union Station (near my home), countless signs with images of Bigfoot, Martians and mermaids declare “There is no such thing as clean coal.”  Several yards away are signs of windmills and solar panels and an Obamian catch phrase: “Clean energy can repower our economy.”  It’s a cute advertising gimmick, but it’s missing a key reality.   While it is true that “clean coal” is somewhat of a mirage - it should really be defined as “not as dirty” coal - at present, so are sustainable wind and solar energy programs powerful and cheap enough to power the nation.  So in the interest of environmentalism, the ad campaign simply displaces one “myth” with another one that appeals to its sensibilities and supports its call for increased funding for “renewable” energy programs.

I am not saying that we shouldn’t pursue revolutionary technologies that would eliminate our need for oil and coal based fuel.  But, half of the nation’s electricity is powered by coal.  Until some genius develops sustainable wind and solar energies, what else are we supposed to use?  The best option is nuclear energy, the cleanest, cheapest and most sustainable energy yet known to mankind.  But environmentalists and peaceniks also hate that option due to unfounded fears - particularly in the 21st century - of reactor meltdown and soil toxicity and because the term “nuclear” simply causes them to break out in cold sweats.  Even France, one of the most Liberal nations on earth (arguably second to Sweden) heavily relies on nuclear power, yet nuclear plants in the United States are being closed down due to age with no intention to replace them.

Perhaps “absolute clean” coal does not exist.  But neither does large scale and sustainable wind or solar energy.  In the short-term why don’t we use the resources that actually work and minimize pollution while we work on another solution.  Methods that produce no pollution, but are not yet feasible do not benefit anyone (except those individuals who can afford them).  After all, poverty-stricken nations like Botswana don’t have carbon footprints, but they can’t feed their people either.

The fact is that Liberals are simply using their blind, cultist faith in global warming to ignore the realities of feasible energy solutions - coal, nuclear, oil or otherwise - for today.

Global warming is no different than the alarmist movement in the 1970s caused by the publication of a book in 1968 called The Population Bomb.  The theory was that as worldwide population increased the world would run out of the agricultural resources necessary to feed everyone resulting in widespread famine and the extinction of entire peoples.  Scientists the world over rang the alarm; those selfish enough to have children were condemned; worldwide socialism was called for to regulate the food supply and address the emergency.  Then, nothing happened.  The population boomed, but so did the food supply due to technological improvements, innovation and new discoveries unforseen by the omniscient scientists.  The issue simply became obsolete.

The same is happening today:  scientists, Al Gore and Prius owners the world over are predicting that the world’s icecaps will soon melt and California will become part of the Pacific Ocean’s Continental Shelf.  They show pictures of cute polar bears (who can swim mind you) stranded on lonely chunks of ice floating out to sea and blame economic success and industrial progress for its plight.  They sound the alarm, demand that every nation (except China and India) sign the feckless Kyoto Treaty (to which half of the signatories don’t even abide), pillory those, namely the United States, who refuse to sign and guilt Middle America into buying compact cars while they use their private jets to fly cross-country to attend the next global warming conference cancelled due to snow, all the while decrying the poverty in sub-Saharan Africa (which as previously noted has zero carbon footprint).

Don’t buy into the hype.  Like the economic plight, Liberals are simply using global warming to consolidate power and socialize the country.  Fortunately, according to Powerline a pluarality of Americans now believe global warming is not caused by human activity, but rather planetary weather cycles.  And according to one scientist, we’re actually entering an age of global cooling.  Oh no! Begin hording fur coats and hand warmers!  Rally for electronic heaters!  Protest ice rinks!  Shut down Dairy Queen!

I recently had a rather enlightening conversation that confirmed the foundational truth of (capital L) Liberalism:  It views the world as a fictional realm that works itself out on paper.  As such, the world can be changed by simply altering a sentence here and there, whether or not those sentences represent actual people.

For example, most Liberals, at best, take a postmodern approach to religion: whatever works for you.  Thus, in the public square, they have no problem with communities displaying crosses and nativities so long as they are forced to also display menorahs, crescents, wiccan symbols or atheist screed, et. al.  To them, it’s an issue of equality.  If the community is going to represent one belief, it must represent all beliefs.  That’s only fair, right?

I suppose it would be fair in a vacuum where people’s beliefs did not influence their life choices and thereby did not influence the community in which they live; however, in reality it is the exact opposite of fairness.  The United States is not perfectly divided between Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Atheists and Wiccans where “equal representation” actually reflects the reality of the community (the same is true racially: the US is not perfectly divided between the races so a commericial with one black, one white, one Latino and one Asian is not equally representing the US, but rather over-representing minorities and under-representing whites).  So mandating fairness from above actually results in unequal representation.  In the US, a lawn featuring a cross, a menorah, a crescent and a declaration that their is no God is not representative of the realities of the US.  It actually distorts the fact that the US is predominantly Christian.  It is a farce that attempts to create a false reality “more perfect” (under the Liberal definition) than our present reality.  In reality, it’s ridiculous (as would be a nativity display in Saudi Arabia) because it presumes that the American public is equally split between the religions.

Furthermore, such an obsession with “fairness” suggests that every belief system is perfectly equal in creating/maintaining the society that we in the United States value.  This is patently false:  as any passing glance at world news can attest, Christian nations, defined broadly (The West), are more peaceful than Muslim nations (Africa, the Middle East, SE Asia); Christian nations are economically better off than Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist nations (India, Nepal, SE Asia); and Christian nations are far more accepting of “free expression” (art, etc.) than Muslim and Atheist nations (Cuba, China).  This isn’t coincidence! In fact, nations not rooted in some version of Christian principles (love they neighbor, grace, forgiveness and a personal responsibility to the rule of law) have had to align themselves closer to such ideals in order to move past the barbarism of old (eg. China & India).

This is not to say that Christian nations are perfect or that they even model themselves after Christ (Western Europe is becoming largely Atheist as it declines), but they certainly have been more successful by any worldly definition (or any definition of social justice).  Under the simplest metric: not only do they feed their people, but in fact, their people feed the world (both literally and figuratively).

Thus, conservatives view it as a good thing that the US is a Christian nation rooted in Christian principles.  To alter this is to destroy the national fabric and usher in the nation’s decline.  However, to Liberals all of this is blasphemy.  To Liberals, the United States is nothing more than one big canvas upon which the world is invited to draw (for better or worse).  As all cultures and religions are equal (in the absolute) then it does not matter if the US is Christian, Muslim or Wiccan, so long as it “fairly” represents all ideas and people groups.  Thus, “freedom of religion” does not mean that people can worship as they please (as this would result in more public nativities and less crescents), but rather that in no way should people in any way be pressured, even indirectly, to adopt any religion.  “Separation of church and state” does not mean, simply, that church and state are separate entities with separate authority structures, but rather that the church should not (and constitutionally - even though the statement never appears in the Constitution - cannot) influence society in any meaningful way.

This example, applied to all areas, explains the Liberal mindset:  fairness means every possibility is represented, rather than representation proportionate to reality; elimating racism means preferring minority groups over whites, rather than merit-based advancement regardless of skin color; economic equality means robbing from those who start their own businesses and work hard, sacrificing time with their families to do so, to give to those who have little, if any, desire to work and have no ideas to bring to that process; love means allowing everyone to do whatever they want, rather than advising people to make good decisions that benefit their future.  Up is down, forward is backward and falsehood is passed off as truth.