VOTE

Please.

What He Said

It's amazing, thirty years gone and we're right back in the same spot (actually, a worse spot - things are even more grave than they were under Carter, IMHO).

When will we learn?

SCOTUS And Kelo

LauraW (at Ace of Spades), on the aftermath of Kelo:

SCOTUS' Chickens Come Home To Roost In New London

This cannot be emphasized enough.

The people who run your city, the politicians who are full of bright ideas for improving your life by infringing on others' rights, and the black-robed genius who is tasked with interpreting our founding documents; NONE of these people are smarter than you.

NONE of these people are gifted with superior insight on how better to run your life or use our native resources. But they believe that they are. So without the brake of morality or explicit law, these geniuses and pols and town busybodies will extend professional courtesy to each other as they go about dismantling your life for some dubious utopian idea.

Think hard about those words, particularly in the context of the current healthscare debate.

From the comments of that post:

I have kept saying this since the campaign. Obama is sooooo smart. Why? Well, uh, he got accepted to Harvard Law School (finishing is not a problem, the day you are accepted, they print your diploma). He wrote that super-awesome book about himself.

First, none of this is a serious intellectual task. There ain't no math. It's not about solving problems, it's about empty rhetoric at best. Just because pretentious people, who like to think they are smart (David Brooks) can understand nothing more complicated than prose in their mother tongue, doesn't mean someone who does it well is intelligent. Just the opposite, in my experience.

Second, this is why I rag on lawyers. If lawyers were like accountants -- experienced, professional specialists who (Doug Hoffman aside) don't try to parlay their education into some sort of divine right to rule -- then I'd have no problem. But there ain't nothin' special about lawyers. They're idiots by my scale. They usually have trouble with math. Send a native-English speaking PhD mathematician -- one of the two of them left -- to Harvard Law and see him laugh at the trivialities involved.

Law school is where you go when math is too hard for you.

So not only are these self-styled philosopher kings not smarter, they're dumber. But even if you do get a true genius, he doesn't know anything. Look at the brilliant economists who said that the unemployment rate wouldn't get above 8%. Has one of them apologized? Committed hara-kiri?

One thing math tells you is that everything, in the real world or theory, is waaaaay too complicated for even the most brilliant person to understand. It is one of the reasons American democracy has worked so far. We have resisted the siren's song -- more or less -- of the ubermensch and we are better for it.

Posted by: AmishDude at November 11, 2009 10:56 AM

What he said.

More & more excellent comments at the link.

LATER: Related only in the style over substance sense, Snapped Shot on President Pose & Prose.

h/t Carin, at Is This Blog On?

EVEN LATER: Uncle Jay Explains The News.

OMG

The competition's getting really fierce at the Iowahawk Endowment for the Arts $33.18 Steel Cage Art Death Match. Some great new entries: I'm partial to The Battle Hymn of the Obamatons - First verse & chorus:

Barack Hussein Obama is the coming of the Lord!
He has taken o’er the banks where all the cap’t’list wealth is stored,
He runs all the auto comp’nies save those bastards out at Ford!
His lies keep rolling on!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Barack Obama is our ruler!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His lies keep rolling on!

Whole song here. The downsized auto worker in me couldn't resist that one, but go see them all - you'll laugh & laugh.

So Sue Me

From Sarah Palin's Facebook site, copied in its entirety CUZ IT'S IMPORTANT:

YOUR TAX DOLLARS HARD AT WORK: FIRST CARS, NOW FOREIGN OIL
Today at 12:10am

Today's Wall Street Journal contains some puzzling news for all Americans who are impacted by high energy prices and who share the goal of moving us toward energy independence.

For years, states rich with an abundance of oil and natural gas have been begging Washington, DC politicians for the right to develop their own natural resources on federal lands and off shore. Such development would mean good paying jobs here in the United States (with health benefits) and the resulting royalties and taxes would provide money for federal coffers that would potentially off-set the need for higher income taxes, reduce the federal debt and deficits, or even help fund a trillion dollar health care plan if one were so inclined to support such a plan.

So why is it that during these tough times, when we have great needs at home, the Obama White House is prepared to send more than two billion of your hard-earned tax dollars to Brazil so that the nation's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, can drill off shore and create jobs developing its own resources? That's all Americans want; but such rational energy development has been continually thwarted by rabid environmentalists, faceless bureaucrats and a seemingly endless parade of lawsuits aimed at shutting down new energy projects.

I'll speak for the talent I have personally witnessed on the oil fields in Alaska when I say no other country in the world has a stronger workforce than America, no other country in the world has better safety standards than America, and no other country in the world has stricter environmental standards than America. Come to Alaska to witness how oil and gas can be developed simultaneously with the preservation of our eco-system. America has the resources. We deserve the opportunity to develop our resources no less than the Brazilians. Millions of Americans know it is true: "Drill, baby, drill." Alaska is proof you can drill and develop, and preserve nature, with its magnificent caribou herds passing by the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS), completely unaffected. One has to wonder if Obama is playing politics and perhaps refusing a "win" for some states just to play to the left with our money.

The new Gulf of Mexico lease sales tomorrow sound promising and perhaps will move some states in the right direction, but we all know that the extreme environmentalists who serve to block progress elsewhere, including in Alaska, continue to block opportunities. These environmentalists are putting our nation in peril and forcing us to rely on unstable and hostile foreign countries. Mr. Obama can stop the extreme tactics and exert proper government authority to encourage resource development and create jobs and health benefits in the U.S.; instead, he chooses to use American dollars in Brazil that will help to pay the salaries and benefits for Brazilians to drill for resources when the need and desire is great in America.

Buy American is a wonderful slogan, but you can't say in one breath that you want to strengthen our economy and stimulate it, and then in another ship our much-needed dollars to a nation desperate to drill while depriving us of the same opportunity.

- Sarah Palin


And this interesting nugget, from an Ace of Spades commenter:

83 OT but,
This happened last August.. Soros hedge fund invests $811m to buy Petrobras stake.

LINK

he's lost money since.
I wonder why the one has invested money in Petrobras?

Posted by: paul at August 19, 2009 08:46 AM (uSt2Q)

Yeah, I wonder, too.

Paul Krugman ...

of the NYT, is this, without the charm of Claude Rains:



See why, here.

Who Knew?

Certainly not I. Whole Foods founder John Mackey has health care reform ideas that I could embrace (via a commenter at AoSHQ, from Sweetness & Light, from The Wall Street Journal):

The Whole Foods Alternative to Obama Care

It's a perfectly sensible list of capitalist-friendly reform items (including tort reform! health savings accounts! increased competition among insurers!) that would bring about immediate savings for those who currently are un- or under-insured, without throwing the baby out with the bath water. I repeat, who knew? I haven't been in a Whole Foods store in over a decade, but I may make the half-hour trek to Ann Arbor, on the strength of this article alone.

From the Sweetness & Light remarks:

Mr. Mackey admits he used to be a "democratic socialist" in college. But when he began a business and barely made money while being accused by workers of not paying them enough and customers of charging too high prices, he began to take a more capitalistic worldview.

He discovered the works of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Friedman. Mr. Mackey is also an avowed admirer of author Ayn Rand.

As the CEO of Whole Foods, John has been attacked in leftwing and union publications for his supposed anti-union views. Mr. Mackey wrote about unions on his blog:

Unions as they evolved in the United States became very adversarial, untrusting, and opposed to the success and prosperity of the business. This is my major objection to unions today — they harm the flourishing of the business for all the stakeholders. Instead of cooperation between stakeholders, they focus on competition between management and labor. Instead of embracing the notion of the ‘expanding pie’ vision of capitalism — more for everyone, or win-win — they frequently embrace the zero-sum philosophy of win-lose."

Despite such backward views, Whole Foods Market somehow managed to be one of only two Fortune 500 companies listed among the 25 Best Companies to Work For in 2005.

And now here he is, a former uber hippy, who ran a health food store – quoting Margaret Thatcher and opposing Mr. Obama’s takeover of our healthcare system.

John Mackey proves there is hope for all of us.

I'm ... dazzled! Mr. Mackey, this non-vegetarian salutes you.