Iran, Obama and Intellectual Masturbation

In the crush of the 2008 presidential election campaign, the MSM made a lot over Obama’s “cool” and “nuance.”  As opposed to McCain’s high stung temperament and “gut” reactions.

Now, with Iran, we can truly see what “cool” and “nuance” are really worth.  Because in the world of power politics where there is evil and real enemies.  Where there are people who will just as soon as kill you as look at you.  Where there are evil people who have the means to kill you; and a thousand times over.  You need the guts of a fighter pilot closing in at 400 knots.  The guts of a fighter who know you have one chance to get it right.  Someone who’s already thought through the complex permutations and can render judgement without hesitation.  Because at 400+ knots, if you hesitate, you’re dead.  You are now in the world of brutal black and white, where you need to make definitive yes and no decisions.  This is real executive decision making.  And, this is no longer the midnight dorm room bull session where you mixed pot, alcohol and trendy discussion on some vogue Marxist theory.

This is the world of Churchill, May 1940.  Dunkirk, France.  330,00 of your forces trapped on the beaches.  What do you do?  Sue for peace?   Become Vichy England?  There are historians that theorize that Hitler pulled his punches at Dunkirk to work out a peace deal.  Or, with little to hope for, evacuate, re-group and hope for better fortunes in battle; hope for eventual victory.  D-day, the 8th Air Force, V-E day with Britain as one of Berlin’s occupiers were, in 1940, dreams that would buy a ticket to a padded cell.

Yet, this is real history.  As Mark Steyn once pointed out, crucial decisions at crucial junctures of history are never clear distinctions between unalloyed good and unalloyed bad.  In many cases, in the maw of the circumstances of that decision, you have no idea that your decision will be the crucial tipping point.

So, what’s it going to be?  Yes or no?  Surrender to the Nazis or fight on?  Pick sides with the “street” that is literally dying in its challenge of the mad mullahs that run Iran or throw you lot with the power establishment–the ruling Mullahs?  The fact is that neither presidential candidate–Ahmadinejad or Mir Hussein Mousavi–is some paragon of Jeffersonian democracy.  Both have had active roles in setting policies that makes Iran the pariah it now is.

Both candidates are just two flavors of dung, take your pick.  Both required approval by the ruling mullahs to even run in the first place.  But, the significance is that the “street” is taking this debate beyond the a presidential election.  Now, the people are asking for accountability from the ruling mullahs.  And, in this respect, Obama’s been handed a gift.  Because there is a clear choice; to come down on the side of an electorate that wants accountability.  To come down on the side of true democracy.

Yet, all we get, after a week of waffling, is Obama steps up to the plate. And, we get a kumbaya response.  Let’s just all get along.  The folks on the street are dying so they don’t have to get along.  Instead of a response of solid and unequivocal support for the demands of accountability, Obama publicly urinates on the sacrifice of those protesters demanding that accountability; demanding the right to a vote equal to anyone else’s.

This is the 3 a.m. phone call; launch missiles or not?  As far as 3 a.m. phone calls go, this is a relatively simple choice.  You blow this choice and the next 3 a.m. phone call won’t be as easy.  Maybe an Israeli nuclear retaliation against an Iranian nuclear attack.  Standing on the side of democracy is generally the best default position you can take because democracies generally don’t make war on democracies.

But, Obama and many of his supporters have had little to do in the world of hard decision making.  In the brutal world of decision making were, you as president, have your options winnowed down to two, yea or nay.  Nuance has other words and synonyms.  Trying to have your cake and eat it.  Dithering.  Waffling.  Bullshitting.  Intellectual Masturbation.  Obama’s out of the bubble of unreality of Chicago machine politics where decisions are made by the bosses and “ratified” by bought elections to maintain the thin veneer of democracy–like Ahmadinejad’s election.  But, whereas Chicago machine politics has just run a city into the ground, here we have a high stakes nuclear game afoot, a game being run by a two-bit machine politician who’s idea of high negotiation is greasing the right palms.

Socialized Medicine; More Snuffing

Let’s start with Clive Cook’s commentary about medical care in the US being far too expensive for the results is obtains; as compared to statistics of such things as longevity when compared to other countries around the world.

The cost differential is the cost of treating patients out on the margins.  But, before we discuss that more specifically, we need to explore some fundamental concepts that animate our attitudes about the worth of the individual.  The United States and its founding documents–Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights–reflect the highest attainment of the ideals undergird the amalgam of concepts and ideas that we call Western Civilization.  And, on its own as well as part of that amalgam is Judeo-Christian morality.  These ideas and the institutions that they spawned all have a common thread of elevating the rights of the individual and preserving those rights.  

These are moral precepts based on a God that created man in His own image, gave him the knowledge to know Him and the free will to acknowledge God.  This is the God of the Ten Commandments; rules that supersede any majoritarian or human authority.  This is a God that will require every human to stand alone, at the final judgement, and be judged worthy of Heaven on his actions alone.  No Nurembergian “collective guilt.”

It is with this in mind, we have developed a sense of individual worth through the ages that is designed to protect those rights conferred upon the individual by his Creator.  And, our secular institutions reflect that philosophy.  Trial by jury of one’s peers; so as to check the power of governmental authority.  The jury stands as the highest officers of the court, who’s decision is final.  Not guilty will stand regardless of the case the state may have made.  Rule of law.  Due process.  Presumption of innocence.  The burden of proof on the accuser, not the accused.  A Constitution and Bill of Rights that acknowledges and secures right; not grants them. 

This commitment to the individual is reflected in all our activities, economic and otherwise.  It is reflected in our medical care and medical system.  Is it more expensive than any other country in the world?  Heck, yes!  But, that’s American Exceptionalism.  Besides, for all the blathering about how much we spend, as a percentage of GDP, on medical care, I’d rather have 84 percent of the American economy than, say, 95 percent of the Canadian economy.

But, medical care today is being fought on the margins.  Just like the defense of our rights secured by the Bill of Rights.  All the easy stuff has been done.  The big gains in life expectancy and infant mortality rates came largely because of public health measures.  Public sanitation; sewers and clean water.  Immunizations.  Better nutrition.  

Medical progress is now being made into rarer disorders.  And, in pushing the frontiers in the care for the critically ill.  Or, neonatology.  It is reflected in the medical economic fact that eighty percent of a group of insured persons consume only twenty percent of the benefits paid out.  And, the sickest twenty percent consume the other eighty percent of those benefits. 

The most expensive year of your life, medically, is your last year of life.  As is your last hospitalization.  About thirty to fifty percent of Medicare dollars fund this phenomena.  

Infanticide is still practice in many portions of the world.  In many of these societies, poverty so rampant, that resources aren’t available to try to salvage these “defective” babies.  Even in the case of a cleft lip/palate baby.  These are otherwise fully functional humans; but the care, rehab and surgery to repair these deformities is enormous.  The US doesn’t fare well in statistics regarding infant mortality rates since we count premature babies in our statistics of live births.  While the field of neonatology has made great strides in salvaging many of those babies, many, more than full term infants, still die pushing up our infant mortality rates. 

To take a completely mechanistic view of human life, to equate life as some many parts that make the machine of society function; you can ask why we keep some many “defective’ people around.  Or, at least, if we don’t immediately discard them outright, why we spend so much in giving them medical care above and beyond those in society who are still working.  Those persons who are still functioning cogs.

All of the above creates hundreds of billions of dollars of temptations to deny care.  Dead people are much cheaper than keeping sick people alive.  In a single payer system this temptation can go unchecked.  Only in a private, market-based system, where 300 million people interact in their own respective self interests do checks exist against such base temptations.

Those temptations are in operation even as we speak.  The British system deny renal dialysis for any over the age of 59.  Your kidneys go out, you die.  Here in America, cigarette taxes are jiggered to maximize revenue, not to discourage smoking.  And, those same said state treasury officials know that smokers usually die at the age of sixty; no state Medicare or Medicaid costs for these folks since they never make it to age 65.  State helmet laws for motorcyclists are being questioned; not wearing a helmet usually kills outright.  That’s much cheaper than surviving and requiring medical care. 

There are lots of illnesses that, at the margins, require very esoteric and very expensive medications.  How about Infliximab (Remicade) for Rheumatoid Arthritis.  It wholesales for about $20,000 per year per patient.  Or, do you just draw the line and let them become cripples.  The Remicade lobby isn’t very big since sick people, by virtue of their debilities, will have very little economic pull.  In the brave new world of government health care all medical decisions will be political.  The sickest will likely be on the margins economically as well.  Unless you have the cash, serious cash, like the amounts to buy a recently vacated Senate seat from Illinois, you’re not going to get some health care bureaucrat to score you twenty grand worth of Remicade.

It’s very easy to fudge the statistics to truly marginalize the sickest twenty percent, create billions in savings and even show, statically, that our new governmental health care system is superior to the old system.  Stop counting pre-term infants as live births.  With no pre-term infants, it becomes easier to stop funding such care.  Those babies die, but, no one’s counting.

Of course, no health bureaucrat is going to order pulling the plug on granny sitting, comatose, on a ventilator in some intensive care unit if she’s surrounded by tons of loving family.  But, how many old folks live, alone, moldering in some nursing home out on the wrong side of the tracks.  Why bother with that last hospitalization, that last year.  They won’t live long enough to matter as a vote.  No witnesses.  No real advocacy.  As mentioned above that last year, last hospitalization is something like 50 percent of Medicare expenditures.  Over 100 billion dollars per year.  That would go a long way to Obama’s goal of saving one trillion dollars over the next ten year.  So tempting.

Fifty bucks of Pentothal is so much cheaper than 100 thousand dollars of hospice care.  And, in Oregon, assisted suicide is legal.  So tempting.

 

GM; An Abortion Known As “Industrial Policy”

“What’s good for GM is good….”  You know the rest.  The irony, is that GM and the US government has been bound at the hip for nearly three quarters of a century.  It started with the Wagner National Labor Relations act.  And, ended there.  For this company, in particular, became the vehicle that has been the government-mandated honey pot for the UAW.  

Indeed, with governmental help, GM evolved into a Social Security agency and a Medicare agency; with three out of every four UAW members drawing down on retirement benefits.  It a wonder that GM had any time to make cars.  This charade led to GM’s current business model of manufacturing large cars, SUV’s and trucks to generate the profits needed to subsidize the lush benefits that the UAW now enjoys.  Moreover, the CAFE standards were originally conceived to keep small car production in the US, thereby guaranteeing more UAW jobs.  So, those same said large cars and trucks also had to subsidize small car production as well.

This delicate homeostasis succeeded until energy became politicized by the environmentalists.  The act of pumping gas became political statement.  And, scientific inquiry about global weather patterns became similarly politicized.  

An energy policy designed to create scarcity, to drive up the price of gas, succeeded with four dollar per gallon gas last summer.  And, GM’s balancing act collapsed.  Not that any of this ever had to happen.  Because, most Americans like large cars.  We are, generally, a country that has a very low population density.  Ours is under 100 persons per square mile as opposed to populations densities in the hundreds if not over a thousand persons per square foot in Europe or Asia.  We therefore, on average travel farther for a given trip.  And, given these longer trips will want to carry more.  Hence the need for a bigger car.

Energy policy that abandoned the flat-earth mythology of global-warming (sorry, climate change), could easily provide the necessary gas, well under two dollars per gallon, by off-shore drilling.  Extraction of shale-oil.  Nuclear power.  The energy densities of these sources outstrip all other sources.  It is only because of energy production politicization that “alternative” power sources are remotely economically viable. 

Yes, there are people who live in very congested inner-city areas who would want a very small car.  But, the free market is more than capable of providing such cars.  But, in America, we engage in gigantic carbon-footprint activities such as having, instead of aborting, children and that, with our low population density makes for a demand for larger vehicles–like Obama’s Tahoe.  But, how about letting individuals choose what they want to drive?  I guess not in Obama’s command economy.

So, welcome to the brave new world of econo-boxes.  Mandated by Obama’s acolytes in the EPA and department of transportation.  Actually, the brave-old world of econo-boxes.  Once again, thanks to Reagan and the prosperity his policies engendered, we have a whole generation of people who simply forgot or never experienced the world of the 70’s.  Remember the le Car?  Or, the Gremlin, Pinto or Maverick?  How about the incredibly sexy 1974 Mustang?  Or, a car so bad, it became the official wheels of Wayne’s World–the AMC Pacer.

And, so, the picture at the top of this post is supposed to represent the new, Obama controlled GM (h.t., Drudge).  What we have is a state controlled car company capable of being as innovative as the old Soviet block manufacturers that gave us the Lada or the Trabant.  GM is going to require permanent government subsidies to give away these cars.  Because, for those with some pocket change left after Obama’s systematic looting via taxes, you aren’t going to lay down one penny more on something out of GM.  We’ll also know when some lowly bureaucrat is out an about since they’ll be driving one of those ridiculous GM econo-boxes.  The GSA is going to become the official buyer of all products, GM.  How else to prop up the US Treasury’s investment in GM.

Since, Obama’s GM will keep the Cadillac nameplate, we’ll also be producing the Zil.  So, our solons will be able to look down upon all of us unwashed rubes as they are whisked to their oh so important governmental meetings.  We could even, like in the old Soviet Union, have special lanes reserved for the limousines of the high party big-shots.  

In a way, it’s fitting.  Keep  GM. Because GM has been the province of the government and the UAW since 1935.  Produce exactly the kind of cars that the enviro’s get wet dreams over.  And, keep the UAW as an object lesson, with three retirees for every worker on the line, for the future of Medicare and Social Security.

 

Spilling Secrets

We learn that our Veep, Joe Biden, spilled the beans on the existence and location of a top-secret bunker reserved for the Vice President at the Vice Presidential residence at the Naval Observatory.  What was disturbing was the dissemination of such information was done at the Gridiron Club in a manner to set up a shot at former Vice President Cheney to create a impression of a “bunker mentality” and thereby Cheney’s off-the-wall policies.

Here again is another manifestation of a patently unserious administration that now thinks that state secrets are not only to pillory former out-of-office figures from the former administration.  Now, these same secrets are to serve as fodder for jest and humorous talking points.  Not once does it seem to occur that people, like Biden, are given a public trust and entrusted to keep this country safe.  And, this means keeping certain knowledge safe; safe for enemies who would use this information to harm our country and its citizens.  

There is a quaint practice, in the Senate, for the Senators to refer to each other as the Senior or Junior Senator from thus and such state.  Not, notice, a reference to a given Senator by his name.  But, this practice points to a fundamental fact that in filling a Constitutionally mandated office, you the individual lose that identity and become that office.  There is not to be a cult of personality, rather you the individual is subordinated to the Constitution and the office and duties that the Constitution mandates.  Your “feelings” and your “empathy” do not matter when wearing the mantle of power as specified by the Constitution.  

Yet, Joe Biden seems to regard those awesome duties as matter of personal choice.   That the person of Joe Biden is more important than the office of Vice President.  This is a man that barely two years out of law school, won an election as Senator.  And, has spent his entire adult working life drawing a paycheck as a US Senator; and now Vice President.  He is so inured to the trappings of power that he no longer has the perspective to understand the need to subordinate his person to the public trust that serves as the source of his power.  But, what perspective does he really have?  None, because his entire adult life has been in the bubble of power and prestige of being a Senator.  Never, ever, having to derive income by holding down a job that actually requires productivity.  

So, Joe Biden the person, now Joe Biden the Constitutional officer, who so regards all this power as his personal entitlement, makes jokes about state secrets.

The Perniciousness Of Evidence Based Medicine

Here, from Hugh Hewitt is the outline of Waxman’s health care reform bill.  I’d like to specifically comment on the provision for “evidenced based medical practices.”  And, to comment on how pernicious a practice that can be.  Medicine in not pure science, rather it is more like engineering.  It is a reflection that the human body is too complex to accurate model on the lab bench and expect those results from the lab to work in the day to day real world.  

The best examples of this concept can be drawn from the world of engineering.  One can create a small chemical reaction on the lab bench and prove out that a certain new material can be made, say a plastic.  It can then be determined that this new material will have thus and such properties.  And, those properties can be deemed desirable enough to make in large quantities for commercial purposes.  But, miniscule variables, to small to be detected on the lab bench because of the small quantities involved, now become major problems in creating the same material on an industrial scale as you scale up from making a few ounces of this material to now making hundreds or thousands of pounds per hour of that same material.

One does not create a new aircraft merely by drawing a blueprint and going directly into production.  You create models, test the aircraft in wind tunnels.  Then you hand craft your first full scale model, the prototype.  Then you take that prototype out for a first flight.  Which amounts to taking the aircraft off and landing it.  Just proving that the basic concept works.

Human bodies, like the examples cited above, involve the concept of the “black box.”  Inputs go in and reactions/outputs come out.  We, sort of know what happens inside, but not quite.  Therefore, we carefully tweek the inputs until we get the desired outputs.  Science may give you the ball park figures the basic inputs, but engineering empiricism makes the final adjustments.  At every aircraft plant.  At every chemical refinery.  In every surgical procedure, in every operating room, every day.

The effects of Evidence Based Medicine will be the following.  The most important would be to render vast stores of medical knowledge, knowledge that is the reflection of literally thousands of years of empiric experience, “suspect.”  In fact, going back and instituting double blinded studies to brings this medical knowledge into the evidence based medicine” clubhouse would be immoral and unethical.  

The ancient Egyptians knew that one treated a boil or abscess by incision and drainage.  Penicillin was never involved in double blinded trials for bacterial meningitis.  What was once a disease that had essentially a one hundred percent mortality was now cured by penicillin.  Much of our modern knowledge in handling trauma came from our experiences in handling combat casualties from the Vietnam War.  The appendectomy was invented about 120 years ago and has been a well established procedure for the once lethal disease, appendicitis.  

And, now we’re going to double blind all of the above?  Of course the all-wise solons who will run Obama care will avoid the bad publicity of denying antibiotics for bacterial meningitis sans a double blinded study.  But, in the name of cost containment, there are a lot of more obscure treatments and diseases that can be denied for that reason.  Because, absent the imprimatur of “evidence based,” these treatments can be denied because they are “experimental.”

The fact is that double blinded studies forever run against the constraint that you are purposely denying a potentially life-saving treatment to one half of the cohort you intend to test for efficacy of some new treatment.  And, unless you truly do not know which alternative is indeed better, you are embarking on an unethical and immoral practice of medicine.  Further, you must have provisions to break into the blinded study should you discover, mid-study, that one group is indeed benefiting.  Yet, with hundreds of billions of dollars at stake, there will be plenty of temptation to start to cut ethical corners.

The second factor will be to freeze new treatments, procedures and drugs from ever making it to the market; to the patient.  With the government controlling the purse strings, it will have an enormous financial incentive to not advance medical knowledge.  With money controlled and curtained to test new advances, we have no way to meed the “evidence based” standard.  And, absent that standard, empiric experience gets buried.  Medical advances, for what they will be worth, will be few, highly selective and highly politicized. 

Consider the parachute.  This was a humorous article published in the British Medical Journal in 2003; but a profound commentary on the serious shortcoming “evidence based medicine.”  It pointed out that the efficacy of the  parachute had never been tested in a double blinded study.  And, why not?  People have survived falls from airplanes with out wearing parachutes.  People have died despite the proper use of a parachute.  Do people who choose to wear (or not wear) parachutes self-select?  We have all sorts of variables left unanswered and yet we spend millions of dollars equipping our military pilots and paratroopers with these untested (from an evidence based perspective) devices.  Maybe we should take the advice of the authors and put together a “double blind, randomized, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the parachute” for the advocates of evidence based medicine.  Maybe Obama, with his cool faith in science, can volunteer his administration.

Knifing Pelosi

Rep. Steny Hoyer will allow investigations of “torture” to proceed with he inclusion of investigations of Pelosi’s knowledge.  Oh, there are the usual bromides about how the GOP diverting attention from the “truth” to a witch hunt about what the Democrats knew and when.  

The real truth is that Hoyer knows that everyone knew, the practice of water-boarding was very circumscribed and used with specific intent on specific suspects.  And, that specific intent was the fact that there was information, life saving information, that had to be extracted.  Hoyer also knows that this use of so-called torture was not used gratuitously to extract a confession for some Stalin-purge show trial.  

In sum, this subject as a useful weapon against the GOP is kaput.  And, Hoyer knows that too.  So, Hoyer is now going to use this weapon against an equally inviting target–Pelosi.  He’s got a payback to deliver.  Force her out and he’s the speaker.  Hoyer also knows that the minute Pelosi gets sworn in, these hearing are going to turn into the when-did-Pelosi-know hearings.  At this point, it won’t matter if former vice-President Cheney gets arrested with thumbscrews in his back pocket.

And, then the law of unintended consequences kicks in.  First, you can bet that if Pelosi gets called on the rug, she’s going to be sure she’s got as many fellow democrats who “knew” up there with her.  Further, with the long knives out, there’s a very good chance that just about every other agenda on the Hill is going to be dropped.  Especially, if there’s any chance that there’s going to be a shake up in the House leadership.  And, Obama might as well as take his teleprompter to Death Valley to yammer on about having his program priorities delivered to his desk by thus and such a date.

All of which points to the lack of leadership and executive experience of either Pelosi or Obama.  Obama farmed out his agenda to rich dilettante, by virtue of marrying well, whose first act was to come up with a “stimulus” bill that beyond caricatured the “tax and spend” liberal.  Then Obama came up with these torture memo releases with the full knowledge, despite his protestations to the contrary, that his fellow travelers would immediately use them in an anti-Bush show trial vendetta.

All of which, increasingly, will distract from issues that will really make or break Obama’s presidency–putting the country back on track to prosperity.  Executive experience would inform Obama that you need to focus your agenda, sort through all the chaff and distractions to find the real issues that need to be addressed and to pick your lieutenants very carefully.  Of which, Pelosi turned out to be a very poor choice.  Not that I’m complaining that hard.  There’s a very good chance that Obama’s agenda is going down in flames all over informed executive experience that would have told our President that there are somethings you just leave alone.

Socialized Medicine; Stiffing II

Here’s the report from the Fox News web site.  And here.  A coalition of health care leaders will present a program to “save” two trillion dollars over the next ten years; thereby making Obama’s health care reform fiscally possible by reducing the up-front costs.  What this really is is crony capitalism.  These players get a place at the table, and a cut in the profits.  In exchange, they will do what everyone in government is unwilling to say–ration.

In going to the nirvana of single payer health care, the government is going to take over the private sector to the tune of one trillion dollars per year.  Of the two or so trillions dollars that make up 18 percent of the GDP, the share that is spent on health care, about 45 percent is already tied up in governmental medical programs.  The rest, in the private sector, is what takes care of the rest of us.  And, through cost shifting and unfunded mandates, props up the shortfalls of the governmental sector.  

There is no such thing as “uninsured.”  Thanks to EMTALA (emergency medical treatment and active labor act), you can walk into any emergency room and must be seen, evaluated and deemed “stabilized” regardless of ability to pay–even if you’re an illegal immigrant.  Whether, you show up for a cold or you show up, flat on your back, having just smeared your face over a mile of interstate after wrecking your motorcycle, drunk.  In fact, so 50 percent of emergency visits are gratis thanks to EMTALA.  The fact is, once the private sector is consumed by the government for matters medical, the government will formally own all of those mandates.  That trillion dollars that will be confiscated by the single payer government program is already accounted for.  It will be a recurring cost, above and beyond the current Medicare/Medicaid tab, forever.

So, two trillion divided by ten means that we have to come up with 200 billion dollars of “savings” for the next ten years.  This is assuming that the profligate spending and loose monetary policy doesn’t ignite a round of inflation like that of the 1970’s.  

What this savings really means is there will be an effort to forgo 200 billion dollars of medical care each year.  For hospitals, forgoing expansions and modernizations.  Forgo new investments in equipment.  And certainly, no acquisitions of technology to push into new treatments; since we can’t have even more cost with even newer medical techniques.

But, I don’t know how our hospitals are going to turn down nurses who want raises to cope with rising tax and inflation burdens.

For the pharmaceutical companies; new drugs cost a billions dollars or more to bring to market.  You can kiss drugs with limited applications goodbye, the so-called orphan drugs.  There have been incredible breakthroughs for myriads of diseases; but at a price.  People griping about these new medicines forget that many have replaced surgery or offered a treatment where heretofore there was none.  Welcome to the brave new world of none.  Most of these big drug companies have their fingers in the manufacture and distribution of generics.  I suspect that emphasizing generics rather than innovation will be the new business model for Barry O’s brave new world of single payer health care.

Insurance companies?  They just hired themselves out as the price enforcers.  They, not their governmental overlords, will take the heat for poor reimbursement rates and care denials.  All to keep our politicians accountability-free.  They’ll make a nice profit at being the fall guy.

And the doctors.  Well, you can get free care right now by walking into any emergency room.  It’s required by law.  You’ll also wait 12 hours to get seen.  Only, now the waiting will extend to every clinic and doctor’s office in the land.  

Ration.  That’s the real deal being cut between these health care players and the administration.  Protected turf in exchange for taking the fall for rationing.

 

Socialized Medicine; Stiffing and Snuffing

A few thoughts about Barry O’s plan to take us to universal health care nirvana.  It’s real expensive.  Now in a the-dog-ate-my-homework moment, we have even newer tax proposals to pay for the monstrosity.  

First the stiffing.  Medical care consumes about 14 to 18 percent of the GDP which works out to about 1.8 trillion dollars annually (these are rough figures).  Already 800 billions dollars are in some way tied up with governmental programs such as Medicare and the like.  So, the question is what to do about the one trillion dollars that still lie in the private sector.  But, the biggest dead beat in the medical system is the government; not the uninsured.  Which means that trillion dollars isn’t just lying around just waiting to be expropriated, banana republic style.  That trillion dollars is already tied up in propping up governmental programs.  

This money, the private sector money, already makes up for shortfalls in the form of cost shifting.  The practice of charging more in other areas to make up for shortfalls in governmental reimbursement.  Moreover, there are any of a number of unfunded governmental mandates regarding requirements of the rendering of care.  EMTALA (the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act) requires, regardless of ability to pay, legal status or citizenship, that hospitals provide emergency treatment regardless of ability to pay.  The law provides no mechanism for funding this mandate.  And, something like half of all emergency room presentations go uncompensated.  These costs are written off as bad debt by the hospitals.  Or, these costs are built into general costs and charges of the hospital to make up that shortfall.

And, as big a money loser EMTALA is, it really get expensive when it comes to trauma care where you can run through $20,000 worth of care in the first 2o minutes of presentation.  And, a lot of these folks aren’t just innocent bystanders.  Drunks with jaw fractures who were “just minding their own business” at the local bar.  Or, drunks, laced with other illicit drugs who happened to roll their cars in a motor vehicle accident.  Also, very likely not wearing seat belts.

The bottom line is that that trillion dollars in the private sector isn’t free and clear.  Huge chunks of the money are already accounted for and spent to keep Medicare and Medicaid from collapsing.  Trauma and emergency rooms services are, in essence a tax amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, given gratis but virtue of unfunded governmental mandates.

This trillion dollars is also what brings new innovation to medical care.  Demographically driven medicine, a large part what falls into public health, will no longer yield significant savings or new treatment horizons.  Epidemics of, say, cholera, are largely things of the past simple because we’ve already invested in sewers and municipal water systems.  Vaccines are now common place.  And, so on.  Health Maintenance Organizations (HMO’s) have been playing this worn out turn since the 1930’s without any measurable effect.  

In the same fashion, Obama’s proposal to create some governmental program to “honestly broker” treatment options.  He makes a hypothetical of say Minnesota doctors treating patients of 25 percent less than, say, Florida doctors.  But, these guidelines work except in exceptions.  Which happen just about every time you see a patient.  Moreover, Florida’s residents being, on average, older that those of Minnesota, will likely have sicker patients requiring more resources to obtain a similar outcome.  And, everyone would just be healthier if they would all just exercise, cut those trans-fats and stop sitting in front of computers blogging.  So, shall we have the health police banging on our doors every morning so we get out and exercise.  And, shutter every McDonald’s.  Maybe, in the name of health care savings those Florida residents should do their patriotic duty and just die (more below).

The real frontier is technology driven medicine.  This frontier is hard to predict in terms of breakthroughs; and these breakthroughs create new arenas for medical treatment.  They create more demand.  They create more cost.  Because people actually want this treatment because they want to live and live comfortably.  But, this area will be sucked dry because of the cost and in order to limit care (see, again, below).  MRI scanners have allowed more accurate diagnosis in a myriad of disorders.  Our small town of Casper, Wyoming has four or five such machines.  More that entire Canadian provinces.  But, accurate diagnosis leads to unanticipated demands in whole new arenas of treatment.  Socialism above all requires stasis and ossification.

Then, to, is the fact that much of the medical infrastructure comes from the private sector.  Whether a private doctor’s office or a major medical center.  Governmental medical programs have largely piggy-backed on the infrastructure.  In many respects, governmental medical programs have largely survived because these programs merely make use of capacity at the margins.  Economic medical decision making is first of all, based on the economics of private sector finances.  Only then do you figure out if a given service can stand, economically, on governmental reimbursement.  If new medical initiatives rested on reasonable profits from governmental medical programs, you’d see all sorts of medical construction in our inner cities.

Finally, of course, will be the stiffing of the doctors themselves.  It will be some sort of pressure that will evolve from government fiat and monosopy power as a single payer.  Surgeons and specialties that do procedures can better survive, to a point, because one can be reimbursed both the procedure and the visit.  But, a primary care doctor, without the benefit of procedures, is going to go out of business.  A grim reality even today as Medicare patients are having increasing difficulty finding doctors that will take Medicare.

But, while those “bad” doctors may be everyone’s favorite whipping boy, are you also going to cut reimbursements in the form of salary cuts to our nurses?

The bottom line is that trillion private sector dollars will become a recurrent cost annually.  It might inject some honesty into the system since the unfunded mandates will also become a formal governmental responsibility.  Therefore, each and every year, the federal government will need to raise one trillion extra dollars just to nationalize what we have.  New initiatives?  New coverages?  New innovations?  That’s going to cost extra.

Now the snuffing.  As in killing.  And, this will ultimately be the effect of rationing.  In some fashion, rationing of medical care will result in people dying.  And, on purpose for reasons outlined below. 

Can this really happen?  Well, yes, because is already is in a sub rosa fashion.  The great tobacco settlements were supposed to drive a stake in the heart of big tobacco.  And, those settlement monies were to educate the public to finally put an end to that filthy habit of smoking.  We’ll pass over the fact that humans have been smoking and fermenting just about every plant since time immemorial.  What really happened was that every state in this settlement became a knowing partner in the enterprise of tobacco use because of the tax revenues.  And, states, instead of taxing cigarettes out of existence, tax at a rate to maximize revenue.  Moreover, state treasury officials know that smoking usually kills the smoker of a nice clean heart attack at about age 60; thereby freeing the state of any expense for future state Medicare and Medicaid expenditures.  It’s a wonder that the Social Security Administration isn’t pushing to revitalize smoking habits.

Debates over state motorcycle helmet laws now revolve on the fact that lack of helmet wearing usually results in the motorcycle rider being killed outright.  A much cheaper out come that treating a helmet-wearing rider who survives but with severe, very expensive to treat injuries.

Europe’s experience with euthanasia has already crossed a number of ethical barriers.  Doctors increasingly make decisions out of greater loyalty ”gate-keeping” state medical resources than loyalty to a patient.  Elderly in Holland are afraid to go to the hospital over this very fact.  This fear serves as a great rationing tool since the hospital isn’t expending resources on that patient.  If that patient were to die, all the better, since dead patients are really cheap to treat.

A colleague tells me, that in New Zealand, cardiac surgeons don’t work very hard.  On purpose.  It can literally take months to get a heart operation.  You might even die in the interim.  More bottom line savings.

And, oh, did you know that approximately 50 bucks of Pentothal is a lot cheaper than 100,000 dollars of hospice care?

Rationing is particularly pernicious to American Exceptionalism and a governing philosophy that organizes around the concept of the maximization of individual liberty (the pursuit of happiness).  Yes, as a surgeon, I have participated in the agonizing decision on when to “pull the plug” on a hopeless ill, dying patient.  And, in doing so, have had to face the fact the in this particular case, any further efforts are simply futile.  But, this was a decision entirely made by private parties.  Done only after assuring ourselves that we left no stone unturned.  Done without the intrusion or pressure of outside parties with other agenda, read financial, forcing a decision.  This was a decision with me acting with an overarching philosophy that only the best interest of my patient matters in this decision.

One must understand the tension of medical economics and Judeo-Christian morality that plays in this issue; and how government sponsored rationing will tear down the latter.  In tearing down the latter, to spawn an attitude that runs contrary to the importance of the individual and individual rights.  Those individual rights that are central to this thing we call Western Civilization. 

Modern medicine operates at the margins.  As a volunteer manager of our mutual medical insurance plan, I note, in reviewing our financial data, that 20 percent of our members covered consume 80 percent of the resources (in the form of medical benefits paid out) and the other 80 percent consume on 20 percent of the resources.  In the case of Medicare, we find that your last year of life, your last hospital admission, will be the most expensive.  Some 30 to 50 percent of Medicare expenditures specifically fund these very expensive end-of-life events.  Note, by being on the margins that many of these patients are in no real position to defend themselves.  Their illnesses impair their ability to work with a concomitant income disadvantage.  They are individuals, who if they died, wouldn’t materially affect statistics such as longevity and infant birth rates; especially if you knew how to fudge those statistics.  If you count infant mortality rate as only term babies, the infant mortality rate for premature births never comes on the radar.  You’re only a step away from saving enormous bucks by letting those premies, just, go.  If you’re in the last year of life, on that last hospital admission, national longevity statistics aren’t going to materially change if, you, just, pull the plug.  There’s hundreds of millions of dollars on the line if you do.

On the other hand, there is the temptation to move  into post-Christian (? pre-Islamic) America and abandon the Ten Commandments and their requirement to honor our mothers and fathers.  Well, maybe the ten suggestions.  There is the temptation to abandon the concept that every human is indeed a unique individual, created by God in His own image.  There is temptation no longer respect a life time of work and contributions of our elders and give comfort  and respect in their old age; rather, to discard them with the old Chicago Machine greeting of “Yeah, but what have you done for me lately.”

There is a temptation to embrace your inner socialist and no longer regard each citizen of our republic as a resource and spark of creativity.  But, to regard people as so many parts of a machine that consume food, shelter and create a big carbon footprint.  Machine parts to be discarded and replaced as they are worn out.  It becomes tempting as a “gate-keeper” to dole out medical resources only to repair those “parts” that are still functioning and “worth” repairing.  It becomes tempting to, say, regard every retiree as useless dead weight, past prime and past repair, to be discarded since maintenance now far exceeds the replacement cost.  Especially if your butt isn’t on the line.

It is only that trillion dollars, in private hands, that will effectively enforce the precepts of the sanctity of the individual and stand firm against the financial temptations to cut ethical corners in the name of preserving the public’s” medical resources.

Why Not The Worst?

With Senator Spector jumping to the Democratic brand, we will have the legislative and executive branch firmly in the hands of the Democrats.  Unless, the Democratic leadership cannot trust it’s rank and file, the trillion dollar agenda that will beggar our grandchildren can not proceed unobstructed.  Won’t even be a need for the charade of “reconciliation” to push this agenda through.  And, most of all, Obama can shed the pretense that he is president and revert to this true calling as prime minister (or secretary general).  

Have it all!  Canadian-style single payer health care.  Cap and trade.  And, the next time Obama meets the king of Saudi Arabia, he needs not stop at a bow; go on, go all the way, the royal crotch was only another six inches away.  Chavez, Castro, Kim, Ahmadinejad, your reservation at the Lincoln Bedrooms awaits.

Spread the wealth?  Spread away.  Why stop at 90% AIG-style tax rates?  If you making $250K per year, you’re rich enough.  Everything above that belongs to the feds (and by extension ACORN).

And, we can all be greener than Kermit.  The folks out in Pennsylvania will now really have a reason to be bitter when our carbon-free future throws them all out into the unemployment line when their coal mines are shut down.  All they will have, then, is their guns and religion to cling to.

Torture “truth” commissions?  Why stop there?  Call up Robespierre and the Committee for Public Safety.  Why stop with some DOJ lawyers who nobody can remember?  How about Rove?  Heck, why not Cheney or even W?

Hyperbole?  Hopefully no, but stripping away some of the sarcasm, everything in this post has happened.  Obama did bow to a king.  Obama talked about more than cap and trade.  He talked about bankrupting new coal fired generation plants.  He talked about checking your tire pressure as an alternative to drilling for more oil.Pelosi is pushing for a “truth” commission.  

Ninty percent tax rate?  Such a thing existed from the 1930’s until the 1960’s.  The top marginal rate then remained at 70 percent until the Reagan tax cut of 1981.  The Obama, Reid, Pelosi trioka are just testing the waters.  They’re getting us used to the word “trillion.”  And, to banana republic economics; the ones that issue paper money that has the feel of Monopoly money.  First it was taxing away the AIG bonuses.  Again testing the waters to see if we’re ready for settling for the mediocracy of “free” health care in exchange for having everything over $250,000 taxed away since that’s rich enough.

But, there is a silver lining to all of this.  Now, Obama and the Democrats will be in complete, and I mean complete, ownership of this mess.  The high taxes, prolonged recession (?depression) and the hyperinflation.

 

 

The “Torture” Memo; Barry’s Monica Lewinsky

War and tortue should be subjects abhorrent to those who value the protections and benefits of a constitutional republic and the rights secured by the Bill of Rights.  We carefully parse the law to the nth degree in every capital punishment case.  It may take ten or more years to bring such a case to its conclusion with the execution of a criminal.  But, a single soldier with an automatic weapon or machine gun, a pilot releasing a cluster bomb, can kill more people in a mere instant than our criminal justice system will do in ten years of  executing criminals.

In like fashion, torture, or some enhanced interrogation technique, very rapidly crosses the line over the right to not self-incriminate.

It is why it is best to treat acts of war as such and not as criminal proceeding.  And, it is why it is best to conduct these acts of war far from our shores and our citizens.  There are some acts, forced by extreme necessity that need to be, in every respect, utterly circumscribed.

Our country is populated with millions of military veterans, all decent and honorable people, who would care not to reflect on some of their actions when in combat.  Actions made necessary by the desperation that is combat.

Yet, in this less than perfect world, evil people force otherwise peaceable people to undertake morally ambiguous actions.  Actions, regardless of the immediate circumstances, that good people will never be comfortable reflecting upon in more comfortable times.

 Further, in the hands of good people, these morally ambiguous actions are recognized as such.  Which is why there are only applied in the most extreme of circumstances.  The alleged “torture” of al Queda terrorists was not gratuitous sadism with the intent of coercing a “confession” for use in some propaganda show trial.  Rather, it was applied to specific persons with the reasonable expectation that they did indeed possess specific and critical information needed to stop further terror acts and thereby save lives of innocent people.  There simply is no moral equivalence between what the United States did with these interrogation techniques and the torture visited upon political prisoners in Stalin’s purges or Castro’s prisons.  Or, despite our humane treatment of prisoners of war in our custody, the torture visited on our POW’s in the hands of the Japanese, North Koreans or North Vietnamese.

Then, there are the specific factors of specific circumstances.  We’ve all, in taking Ethics 101 in college, debated the classic senario of a ticking atomic bomb in the middle of Manhattan, set to explode in one hour.  And, we debated the ethics of torturing a prisoner, who knows the whereabouts of said bomb.  Is it right to tortue?  To what degree?  Is it right to commit one atrocity to prevent an even greater atrocity?

I debated such in my own midnight dorm room bull sessions back in the late 1970’s.  Back when the nuclear club was indeed very exclusive and the senario of a terrorist organization capable of such a situation was indeed very hypotheticalal.  Today, this is no longer a hypotheticalal.  We have a death-cult ideology, that is Islam, that would do such a thing in a heart beat.  The death toll of 9/11 was only 3000 only because these terrorists could only commandeer civilian aircraft; not atom bombs.  Now, we have the Taliban making moves to entirely destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan and potentially gain excess to those very weapons. Millennials now with the means to really deliver.

If our Ethics 101 senario did indeed happen today (and, it’s very plausible),  would those charged with national security be morally obligated to even pull out every finger nail to find that bomb?  Or, would you be content to just inform that terrorist of his Miranda rights?

But, Obama, in his overweening sense of moral superiority and self-righteousness probably never gave the above the slightest thought.  That beyond the immediate bounds of the current debate on waterboarding, there is a bigger question to be answered.  That question is that there are times when good people must commit to morally ambiguous actions that they, in their worst nightmares, would never even dream of doing, because of pressing and real concerns that evil, even greater than their actions, must be stopped.  And, now people who were never directly in the maw of those front line decisions will, years later, second guess with the threat of criminal prosecutions.  

Additionally, along the lines of Monica Lewinsky, this controversy now becomes an issue that will so consume Washington as to consume Obama’s agenda.  Bill Clinton had an opportunity to create a durable center-left governing coalition.  But, Clinton along with his partisan fellow-travelers decided, in 1992, that the millennium arrived and decided to push as far left as possible.  And, that was before Clinton’s own proclivities intruded with his extra-curricular sexual appetites and escapades finally  ground down any agenda in the bonfire of the Lewinsky impeachment scandal.  

And, here is the “scandal” that will grind Obama’s agenda to a halt.  Releasing these so-called torture memos is an act of a narcissist so impressed with himself and his mission that he will sacrifice national security with a distraction of banana republic-style show trials.  It is yet another example as to Obama’s lack of executive experience and fitness to lead.  True executive experience would have informed Obama to pace and prioritize his agenda.  To build public confidence in his leadership by systematically building a record of accomplishment and then using the record to pitch further agendas to a public more confident and more reassured of his leadership capacity.  True leadership and executive experience would have also informed Obama that there are just some items that will distract you from the really big, important stuff.  There are items that you just let go; its just not worth it.  True leadership and executive experience means making choices and saying “no.”  

Getting through this economic meltdown should be his only priority.  He does that successfully, and he’s going to have the running room to put forth the rest of his agenda.

It is possible, at this late date, that if Obama gets in front of this problem and flat out says no to hearings, prosecutions, commissions or investigations that he could quell the firestorm he just touched off.  But, even then, there will be a residual of distrust.  As it stands, we have the makings of 41 GOP senate votes to make each and every filibuster now stand.  This issue, if not ended quickly and definitively, will indeed result in open warfare on the Senate floor with scorched parliamentary tactics that will freeze the entire Obama agenda.  Making, ultimately, Obama’s four years as president a mere asterisk as the first black president.  Even Senator Reid realizes that; which is why he’s trying to tamp down Speaker Pelosi’s “truth” commissions.  No, this is not (yet) a banana republic.  This is a constitutional republic of constrained powers.  Prime Minister Obama better start realizing that Alinsky is not a good governing role model.

 

 

Inanities of High Speed Rail

Barry O, prime minister of the world, is now going to solve our traffic jams with high speed rail.  The brilliance of the guy just doesn’t stop.  Here it is, the solution, heretofore hidden from the rest of us lesser mortals, until his superior intellect hits on the idea and makes it clear to rest of us.  But, somewhere along the way Obama missed why the railroads got out of the passenger business–and unloaded Amtrak on us.  And, why intraurban mass transit it a horrible money loser propped up only by tax subsidies.  

Let’s start with the logistics.  Mass transit, of any type, depends on a lot of people going to and from the same destination at about the same time.  This requires densely populated corridors or two terminuses that have a lot of like minded people–like minded in that they want to travel to and from these two terminuses.  

Moreover, one must account for the fact that you don’t just travel from train station to train station (or airport to airport for that matter), but you must come from your home or place of business and ultimately arrive at another such destination such as a hotel or another place of business.  So, you step off your high speed train and you still may be miles from your ultimate destination.  

From my own experience, if I can reach a particular destination in four hours by car, it’s probably faster to do that than take the train or plane.  Simply because the time spent getting to, through and out of an airport more than makes up for the time saved by the actual flying.  Also, once you get to your destination, you’re going to need a car anyway.  If you drove, you have one.  If you flew, that’s even more time waiting for the car rental bus to transport you to the far reaches of the airport to get said rental.

Interurban high speed rail has the same limitations at either terminus.  But, even at 150 miles per hour, said train is going to be about half as fast as the plane.

Which gets us to speed.  You’re going to have to build trackage parallel to the existing trackage.  The existing trackage is completely saturated with freight traffic.  More importantly, the current trackage cannot support rail trackage if excess of about 80 miles per hour; about what you can do on the interstate highway system.  The high speed trains that run in Europe and Japan run on special trackage that will actually support train speeds well in excess of 100 miles per hour.  In sum, Obama’s high speed rail will need a parallel rail system solely dedicated to these high speed trains.  

By the way, the cost of materials is about $100 per foot of track.  Then there’s the cost of labor and cost of the underlying right-of-way. Here as of 2003. One rail is going to run you about $20 per foot.  A standard 200 foot wide right of way works out to about 24 acres of land per mile.

The next limitation is that European rail solutions will not work here.  Naturally, Obama and his bi-coastal elites think anything European is naturally superior.  But, on the practical side, Europe is generally crowded and densely populated.  Therefore, you are going to have a lot of people filling the criteria of a lot of people going to the same places at the same time.  Moreover, Europe is smaller making distances traveled shorter.  The overall effect is shorter, more heavily travelled corridors making such high speed rail a consideration.  And, there are such corridors in the United States; the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington being the best example.  By some mysterious coincidence train service exists there.  With the Acela Express leading the was with an average speed of 80 mph; it being impossible to get the money or past the NIMBY’s to construct trackage for exclusive use by the Acela.  So kiss 150 mph speed good bye.

Here’s the map from the White House web site showing the rest of the high speed corridors “envisioned” for the future.  You find a lot of the trackage is going to go over a lot of empty land.  Take a look at the Houston/New Orleans route; a lot of that goes over swamp just like the current Interstate 10.  Then there’s the Texarkana/Little Rock corridor.  Wow, must be lots of folks who need to get to the Bill Clinton Library.  Oh, and there’s that Tulsa/Oklahoma City corridor.

The fact of the matter is that the US has an overall population density of less than 100 persons per square mile.  Far less than the population densities of Europe or Japan that have hundreds if not over a thousand persons per square mile.  Our transportation system is reliant on the car for that simple reason–population densities are too low to make mass transit viable except in some select urban corridors.  Highways are cheaper to construct and maintain.  Highways allow people to travel at will, thereby eliminating the need to try to schedule or run train schedules that would result in very expensive conveyances with only one or two passengers.  For the really long haul, it’s far cheaper to pave two miles of concrete at each end of the trip; they’re call runways.

Our transport system is the reflection of the efforts of thousands of civil engineers and tens of millions of the traveling public who already worked through all of the above.  Yet, in their supreme arrogance, Obama and his toadies seems to think they have hit on a solution that has somehow eluded the rest of us since the invention of the wheel.

The really sad thing is that all of the above is already apparent to Obama.  But, all Obama cares about is coming up with any excuse to stiff our great-grandchildren as much spending as that quick little mind between those big ears can gin up.

Farts and Breath; the Audacity of Global Warming

Let’s just put the concept to rest; that global warming is bad.  Long before the emergence of SUV’s the earth has warmed and cooled.  Probably secondarily to solar activity.  The biggest advances in human civilization occurred during periods of warming.  Longer growing seasons, more more land, further north, available for settling and cultivation and so on.  Here we see a case that some of greatest advances in civilization occurred during such periods of warm.  The Roman warming, from 300 B.C. to 400 A.D. coincided with the rise of Rome and the Pax Romana.  And, when earth starting cooling in 400 A.D. tribes from the north were pushed against the boundaries of Rome.  Rome fell and the dark ages commenced.  

In general, a rough pattern emerges.  Civilizational advances during times of warming and contractions during times of cooling.  Rome and the Pax Romana rose during the Roman warming only do fall with the onset of the dark ages in 400 A.D.  The Medieval warming from 900 A.D.  to 1300 A.D.  I would submit one of the factors that led to the Renaissance.  Now, since the end of the little Ice age since about 1850 is our current warming period with its contaminant advances in science, technology and prosperity.  

It all makes sense.  Cooling periods make less land available for food production and living.  Relative scarcity and crowding will lead, as it did, to famines and plagues.  And death.

So, given that some of these past warming periods greatly exceeded our current warming period, we have very little evidence that we have anything approaching a crisis.  In fact, the historical record would clearly show that warming periods produced untold benefit for the human race and cooling periods the reverse.  Of course, the bi-coastal elite trust-fund babies aren’t terribly worried that they will have to suffer the least privation that lesser humans will have to bear with the next cooling.

Let’s look at what the EPA now wants to regulate in the name of global warming–nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons.  These are gases released from volcanoes.  Go to Yellowstone National Park and smell the rotten egg smell around the geysers near Old Faithful.  Yes, sulfur compounds.  Naturally released from  volcanic activity that existed from time immemorial.  Long before an SUV ever graced the roads of Yellowstone NP.  (Lake Yellowstone is actually a super-volcano caldera.)  Maybe, in the name of global warming, Albert Gore needs to pave over Old Faithful.

And, the EPA wants to regulate methane and carbon dioxide.  The former is what we fart out and the latter what we breathe out.  We are going to regulate farts and breath.  

So, what we really have is a whole political movement based on fraud.  Not only is global warming not a problem, it historically has been times of some of the greatest advances in the human condition.  The warm that we now have is something to be welcomed and cherished; for hard times, dark and cold will come again.

The purpose of this fraud?  Global warming is the latest manifestation of a rapacious governing class, and their fellow travelers, to gin up a rationalization for even more power and revenue.  A rapaciousness so out of control that it will create any myth with only the thinnest veneer of “science” to create an excuse to regulate an newly discovered “health menace” and to impose an economy killing tax known as cap-and-trade.  Even if this regulation, at its core, is to regulate farts and breath.  Farts and breath.

 

 

Pirates; Now the Hard Part

The Easter Sunday rescue of the skipper, Richard Phillips,  of the SS Maersk Alabama was exactly how piracy should be handled.  My only criticism, outside allowances to tactical considerations of our SEALs on the spot, was the slowness in response.  The order, from Obama, of shooting only in the face of “imminent” harm, belies a fundamental mindset that these pirates are somehow entitled to due process.  Certainly, a brilliant Harvard lawyer, like Obama, should be aware of the fundamental legalities that were worked out by the ancient Romans that pirates operate outside any civilized norms and deserve not of the courtesies afforded to people who choose to subscribe to those civilized norms.  There is only one policy, one solution, to piracy–summary execution.  

But, though the outcome was positive–a failed piracy attempt, our crew alive and free and three dead pirates–Obama backed into this happy outcome.  His order of “imminent” harm gave away the game.  It was Obama, prime minister to the world, that crafted that order.  What Obama, president of the United States should have immediately recognized was that it was American sovereignty under attack, it was protections of the Bill of Rights for America’s citizens that were under attack.  It was these principles that were paramount and required immediate and muscular defense.  It is these principles that take precedence over even the lives of the crew.  Had this attack come from a governmental entity on the Horn of Africa, this would constitute an blatant act of war.  Along the Horn of Africa, Geneva Conventions don’t apply; these are non-uniformed combatants who don’t even deserve Gitmo.

And, so, we have a lot of luck that allowed a happy conclusion to l’affaire Alabama.  Obama still has the legacy of a robust Navy that actually had assets in the area that could be brought to bear rapidly.  Obama had the advantage that American individualism is still the norm and this allowed a successful repelling of the pirate takeover.  And, of course, was the brave actions of the skipper, Phillips, who was able to spare his crew and ship and move the venue to a lifeboat.  Finally, thanks to the Navy, Phillips was kept at sea which made his eventual rescue so much more easy.  

We also had the luck that this pirate takeover took the pirates by surprise since the usual script, a passive surrender by the crew, did not occur.

But, the ante is now raised.  Unless there is strong follow-up resulting in the repeated forceful repellings of pirates by American flagged and/or crewed ships, these pirates are going to specifically seek out American ships if for no other reason than to kill Americans in revenge.  The long term result is that the American military is going to need to more than double down in supressing piracy along the Horn of Africa.  This is going to include action at sea and direct military intervention against the pirate’s land bases.

The pirates lost nothing last Sunday.  The three pirates killed were bottom feeders in the pirate chain of command; completely expendable.  Nor, did last Sunday’s rescue, measurably dent the pirate operations; certainly not the profitability of these piracy operations.

Unless, the US Navy significantly ramps up its operations, there’s just too much money for last Sunday’s setback to serve as a deterrent.  Moreover, this money isn’t just buying a lot of cars, whores and booze for the pirate warlords.  A significant fraction of this money is making its way into the hands of Islamic terrorists.  These pirate warlords only exist at the sufferance of what passes for governmental authority in Somalia.  A sufferance purchased by cutting Islamic Imperialism in on the profits.

Which brings us to the final point.  Self defense.  Like something that fires lead; not those idiot devices like slippery foam that sounds like a project out of the Dangerous Book for Boys.  I suspect that part of the successful repelling of the pirates off of the Alabama was facilitated by a stray pistol or two in the duffels of the Alabama’s crew.  Oh yes, those things aren’t allowed by company policy so we’ll probably never know.  But, especially when its your butt on the line, gun restrictions and guns laws are largely observed in the breach.

Now, every American is now going to carry a particularly steep price on his head; those that aren’t killed outright when the next American flagship is successfully boarded.  Which means that our government is going to have to actually trust that individual Americans can defend themselves responsibly.  (A fact more than amply supported by our experiences with “shall-issue” concealed handgun permits.)  We are going to need to arm our merchant ships and our merchant marine.  A modern naval cruiser traveling at 35 knots (about 40 mph) is going to be unable to respond fast enough.  That means that this high seas criminality is going to have to be dealt with on a “retail” level.  That is, merchant crews, trained to spot a boarding and, with lethal force, repel such boardings.  The administration and State Department is going to have to insist that armed merchant ships and armed American merchantmen will be allowed access to foreign ports.

Also, handling piracy on an immediate level has a way of preventing these incidents from blowing up into major international crisises.  Imagine how much different the history of the last eight years would be if the pilots of the four 9/11 airliners were armed.  Everyone used to make a big deal about resisting a hijacking.  And, guns, heaven forfend!  We’d have airliners blowing up and crashing out of the sky!  Which was just what happened on 9/11.  In the same fashion, there would be no international incident with an American warship involved had the Maersk Alabama been armed.  Just the bodies of four dead pirates to be quietly kicked overboard.  

Obama better enjoy last Sunday’s victory.  It isn’t going to last long unless he’s willing to follow through.

 

 

 

The Foreign President

There was a reason our founding fathers posited a requirement in the US Constitution that the President of the United States be a  natural born citizen.  And, Obama proves the point.  Only by luck of his American citizen unwed mother getting knocked up  in Hawaii did Obama make the grade.  But, while technically a natural born US citizen, Obama has displayed all of the characteristics of a third-world cabinet minister (and I mean that comparison is a very negative sense); an EU or UN grandee.  Moreover, this is not an affectation, but an ingrained, reflexive characteristic  of a man who simply knows nothing else.

And, like the “bitter” comments, Obama’s bow to the king of Saudi Arabia probably wasn’t planned.  Or, planned in a manner to specifically offend American audiences.  Rather, it was an act that came to Obama naturally; an act of a third world cabinet minister showing the obeisance due to such a potentiate such as the king of Saudi Arabia.  Moreover, it was beyond the incompetence of his staff that failed to brief Obama; probably not even imagining that Obama would be so unschooled in such etiquette that Americans do not bow to anyone.

Tens of thousands of Americans lie dead, having taken up arms to defend that very point.  Starting with the dead that lay upon the Lexington Green in April 1775, we fought for a concept of liberty and equality that recognized that no one before God and before the institutions of our Republic stands above another.  To hold an office of public trust only, temporarily, as the first among peers.  But, never your superior.  For, in reality, the electorate is ultimately your boss.

But, Obama never grew up in that environment.  From the ages of six to ten, those first formative years as an elementary school student, were spent in Indonesia.  A Muslim country, with a Muslim father where the young Obama was listed on governmental records as a Muslim.  This was not the usual issue where the children of, say, military personnel, are schooled in American schools with a sense of America even in that foreign land.  An island of America thousands of miles from home.  Obama even attended a madrass during this period.  I doubt that the young Obama, though technically a natural born US citizen, in those first ten years of life had any sense of  being American.

And, so, this foreigner comes of age in America.  He is attracted to socialism which is a truly foreign concept to America and American exceptionalism.  Socialism arose in Europe in an environment of rigid social stratifications of royalty.  Socialism was the disaffected’s answer, the rabble rouser’s answer to overturn that rigid social stratification.  But, to overturn that rigid stratification with a new one with the once rabble rouser securely now occupying those upper tiers of that new system.  Merely a coup to displace the old power structure with a new equally authoritarian power structure.  One, in an egalitarian veneer, dispenses with such labels as king, duke or count and now replaces is with “minister of” or “president.”

So, our young, impressionable Obama seeks the company of vogue Marxist professors and aging radicals such as Ayers.  He seeks a political system, the Chicago machine, that functions like a third-world banana republic.  He seek religious solace from the like of Reverend Wright; who’s anti-semitism and anti-Americanism is the closest “Christian” theology to Islam.  

But, along the way, Obama missed out on why those thousands of American now lie dead on countless battlefields; Lexington, Concord, Antietim, Gettysburg, Shiloh, Cantigny, Chateau-Thierry, Belleau Wood, Normandy, Bastogne.  Obama missed out on the concept of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness as being gifts of God (not Allah).  He missed out on the fundamental concept, reinforced by the conceit of an Ivy League education, that government is a servant of the people to create a framework of order and law to allow each individual to achieve his best.  That it is the efforts of millions of individuals that define the state and not the state that defines the individual.

But, for all of his life, Obama lived outside that experience.  And, instead of an American, an equal, with the authority of the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights behind him, prime minister Obama subordinated the greatness that is America.  Subordinated the blood of thousands of Americans who made our founding documents more than just parchment and prostrated himself to a king.

 

Rick Wagoner, RIP

In some respects, getting canned is exactly what Wagoner deserved.  But, not for poor performance at GM.  Rather, for his failure to speak “truth to power” last year.  Truth to power, when it really counted.  Not, the some childish stunt by some crackpot liberal to embarrass a conservative politician; knowing that, for such rudeness, a well deserved punch in the face will not be forthcoming because of a raucous fourth estate.

And, Wagoner was in a position to do exactly that.  I would guess that whether Wagoner ever holds another job, he has accumulated enough wealth to more than comfortably support a sumptuous lifestyle.  With that economic underpinning, Wagoner was in a relatively invulnerable position to tell and tell off the solons of congress what the real problems for GM were.  Moreover, to tell Congress that many of these problems were made in Washington.  

Wagoner could have told Congress that GM’s problems stemmed from running a company for the purposes of de facto social security and medicare programs for the benefit of the UAW.  It also happens to make cars.  He could have told Congress that the CAFE standards were in place to preserve UAW jobs by forcing the manufacture of money-losing econoboxes, that no one wanted, in the US.  He could have told Congress that the CAFE standard business model was predicated on healthy sales of trucks, large cars and SUV’s to generate enough profit to offset the losses on the small cars.  He could have told Congress that anthromorphic global warming was a fraud, and a poor excuse for an economy killing tax called cap-and-trade.  He could have told Congress there was plentiful energy if bans on drilling off America’s coast lines and in ANWR were lifted.  If bans on shale oil extraction were abandoned.

Then, Wagoner could have spoken truth to his power and realized that he need to take the bull by the horns and taken GM to bankruptcy court.

But, Wagoner, being the good crony capitalist, played court jester and prostrated himself before the grandees of Congress and played to the fiction that these hypocritical blowhards actually knew something about running a business and about manufacturing cars.

The jester act was ridiculous.  He flew coach to the Washington hearing when it became known that he flew a corporate jet to the first hearing.  Never mind that jet junkets member of Congress avail themselves.  Or, never mind the veritable darkening of the skies with Hollywood’s private jets coming in for the Obama inaugural.  Never mind, that Wagoner, as CEO of an enterprise as large as GM owes his shareholders the most efficient use of his time; hence private jets.

Then the little joyride in the Chevy Volt with prominent members of Congress.  As if.  As if people with the power and clout of Senator Levin or Dodd are going to ever park their fat behinds in an overpriced econobox that will ultimately join the Trabant on the ash heap of automotive history.  Come on, a car that gets 40 miles between recharges.  And costs 40 grand.  

So, what did these prostrations get?  What did all the congressional butt kissing do (other than Barney loving it, euuu)?  Just another Obama signature throwing under the bus.  Nothing personal, Rick, just business, we needed someone to sacrifice on the altar of populism.  Just like those AIG employees.

The irony is that Wagoner actually has done a yeoman’s job in pulling GM back from the brink.  I very much suspect that even in bankruptcy court, any judge would have recognized Wagoner’s talents and work and probably kept him on for the restructuring.  In the arena of making cars, Wagoner was a star.  His failing was not really his.  Rather, it was coming up against problems and obstacles made in Washington; a UAW protected by CAFE standards, energy policies designed to jack up the price of gas.  Bankruptcy would have laid bare all of this Washington stupidity.

At least in bankruptcy court, Wagoner could have gone with his pride intact, knowing that managed GM with an honest appraisal of the realities that faced GM.

 

Notre Dame; Selling Out Jesus For The Messiah

Others have remarked on the gross inappropriateness of Obama giving the commencement speech at Notre Dame.  Here we have the most prominent and, in the eye of the American public, the most recognized Catholic institution in America showcasing the most pro-abortion, anti-life politician that’s come down the pike.  I would hazard that Norte Dame, as a Catholic institution, is more recognized as such than the Pope.

What ND President, The Reverend John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., a fully ordained priest of the Catholic Church, has given the most pro-abortion president ever a forum at the most premiere American Catholic institution.  And, with this forum, ND will hand Obama a Catholic imprimatur to speak out on moral issues, including abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research and birth control.  As pointed out by on either the American Spectator or Hugh Hewitt’s web site (I can’t exactly remember where) Obama, will now, on such occasions, use the cudgel of the antecedent phrase, “as I said at my speech at Notre Dame.”

But, there’s a deeper undercurrent here.  It’s been my impression that the American Catholic hierarchy has been in bed with the Democratic Party for a long time.  There’s an affinity that is probably only rivaled by the MSM.  And, what we’ve seen is a glossing over of the inconvenient subject of abortion; “social justice” in the form of high taxes and entitlement spending being a so much greater priority.  

I remember the late Cardinal Bernardin’s “seamless garment” of life.  This seamless garment turned out to be a litmus test consisting of a liberal wish list that included opposition to abortion.  But, it also included the “social justice” song and dance, opposition to any reasonable defense policy, opposition to the death penalty, and so on.  While on the face it did address a whole host of life and justice issues, it became, for a lot of liberal politicians a pass on abortion if you checked off on the rest of the agenda.  All, with a knowing wink from a lot of Catholic prelates.  And, that wasn’t to hard since this amounted to gutting defense policies and spending for uncontrolled entitlement spending.  Opposition to the killing of unborn life wasn’t enough.  To qualify for the Cardinal Bernardin club house, you had to buy the seamless garment; Democratic party style.

And, so, in the spirit (not Holy), of dialog, we have Notre Dame handing Obama a seamless garment to cover the ugliness of abortion on demand.  An abortion stance so extreme, that it would outlaw conscience provisions and overturn restrictions on partial birth abortions.  So now, Obama get his Catholic moral bona fides in the seamless garment club; publically bestowed by Notre Dame.  It’s otherwise called an “honorary degree.”

The American Catholic leadership better start treading with care because it may one day find itself on the ash heap of religious history along with the other gutted mainstream Protestant denominations.  As in the Episcopalian Catholic Church of America.

Country Club Democrats

Once upon the time there were the Country Club Republicans.  The monied old boy network of the right prep schools, ivy league universities followed by employment in the toniest of banks, brokerages and law firms.  And, membership in the right country clubs.  It could be pernicious since there were many practices of exclusion of those not WASP-ish enough from participation in the above venue.  This was back when Protestant meant something more than a transitional state to some “higher” spritial enlightment such as Gaia or Islam.  Even from the opportunity to buy a home in certain neighborhoods or communities was limited by “quota or point system dependent on your overall WASP bona fides.  And, this is above and beyond discrimination pointed at blacks.

I remember my mother telling me about an aquaitance that couldn’t find a home in the Chicago north shore suburbs because her name was mistaken to be Jewish.  I remember my childhood peditrician relating how lucky he was getting past the Jewish quota to get into medical school.

But, as pernicious as these things were, they were largely private sector affairs that had not the force of law (unlike Jim Crow) and, thanks to individual freedom, easily overcome within a generation or two.  There arose all sorts of mutual self-help organizations.  The founding of new medical schools and hospitals to specifically overcome such things as Jewish quotas.  And, there was just opportunity to amass wealth that would simply drown out WASP enclaves of privilege by creating all sorts of parallel universes.

But, now there’s a new country club and its called socialism.  What makes it particularly pernicious is that this has the force of law to enforce membership.  Socialism is merely the social ossification of royalty; just covered in the thin veneer of egalitarianism.  These country club Democrats are all very wealthy individuals, some so because of the unbroken prosperity of Reagan’s economic boom.  But, they know that they made it by upsetting the status quo.  In fact, every American fortune was made exactly that way.  Moreover, every American fortune shares the common dominator of bringing to the common man what was once reserved for the wealthy and privileged.  The bi-costal elite is populated with these types of individuals.  People who made it big and now are supporting a party that is diametrically opposed to the concept of wealth creation.

But, these same said plutocrats, want to shut the door behind them now that they made it.  Now that they rabble-roused their way to the top, they want to make sure that no one will do to them what they did to arrive at the top.  They, the once icky Joe-the-Plumbers, want to insure that there will be no future Joe-the-Plumbers joining them at their tony country clubs.

What to do?  Destroy the path that led them to success.  Nancy Pelosi’s 90% AIG tax is indeed a stalking horse.  This tax’s real purpose is to establish a method to cap economic attainment and success.  She and her elites can determine what each American may ultimately possess and how high they may rise.  And, hold the ability to determine who may so rise.  Pelosi, and her fellow travelers in the House and Senate leadership,  her fellow traveller in the Oval Office, are all already very wealthy individuals.  There taxes scheme miraculously leave their wealth untouched.  And, the captains of industry and finance, those who populate the Hamptons’ A-list social register are now seeing their firms bailed-out and their personal wealth largely untouched.  

But, any young whippersnapper is going to have his attainments capped at $250,000.  Or less.  Because you can bet that the need for control will slowly but surely ratchet down that $250,000 because, in reality, Democratic reality, $250,000 is really too rich.  And, in this manner, Country Club Socialism, we will have created a de jure system of social stratification that our Declaration of Independence overturned by rejecting the royalist paradigms Europe.  It is not the irritation of the nanny state, but this social stratification and ossification that makes this the Europeanization of America pernicious.

A Case For The Ninety Percent Tax

Throughout the last ten to fifteen years, the executives that led these many financial, brokerage and banking firms on Wall Street, were a wholly owned subsisdery of the Democratic Party.  Who actually ran the social networks in the politically correct swamps of the Hamptons?  And, what did all of this butt-kissing buy?  Another Obama-style throwing under the bus.  The latest being the 90 percent tax on the AIG bonuses.

Good.

Maybe, at last, some of these oh-so avant-garde execuctives can now understand that when you’re in the business of creating wealth, you have a job that diametrically opposed to the role of government, which, in its Democratic-party form, is to skim wealth to buy votes.  And, if all of these bribes over the years would tame the ravenous wolf that is the taxman, they hopefully now understand that the demand for these bribes will only grow.

The silver lining of this 90 percent tax is that it will chase away more private sector players.  Hopefully, we may actually see some in the government realize that the real way out of this current economic downturn is through economic growth.  And, that growth will only come from the private sector.  More importantly, our oh so clever solons who now run the executive and legislative branches of our government may begin to appreciate that the private sector is to be respected and not regarded a flock of sheep to be fleeced to fund their personal whims and agendas.  It may even come to pass that trendy conversation out in the Hamptons may even find such topics as rule of law, bill of attainder, ex post facto, and property rights as passing the politically correct muster.

Obama The Incompetent

Leadership involves, among other qualities, the ability to adapt to a variety of changing contiditions; sometimes radical and very rapid.  Yet, Obama has yet to truly understand the nature of the conditions facing him.  and, he’s refused to adapt to those changes.

Obama spent his life in the unprecedented prosperity of Reagan’s economic policies.  Indeed, at least for his adult life, he has known no other.  Like Obama, a huge proportion of the American population simply doesn’t know of real hardship since the last such era was in the Carter era of 1977 to 1981.  When Obama started his quest for the White House some two years ago, he based his campaign on the then operative paradigm of nearly 30 years of essentially unbroken prosperity.  Prosperity that for many Americans has been the only economic paradigm they’ve ever known.

Obama’s campaign game plan was to use the current discontent to get elected and then, in a socialist remake of America, “spread the wealth” by taking the economic gains of the last 30 years and distribute such to his friends and favored constituencies.  Then, last September, the bottom fell out and the wealth that Obama was to redistribute vanished.  Yet, true to his baby boomer roots, he tried to have it both ways–redistribute wealth that was no longer there and take on the task of economic recovery.  (I didn’t say that was realistic.)  

The issue now is that the economic crisis that guaranteed his election is the weather change that he, Obama, has not the executive or leadership experience to sense or appropriately adjust for these changes.  Real leadership would have called for a immediate reordering of his priorities to delay the rest of his agenda to focus fully on the current economic crisis.  Moreover, he had four months to plan and make those necessary changes to re-order his governing priorities with specific plans to address this economic downturn.  But, Obama’s obsession with using this downturn as a vehicle to create America’s socialist makeover.

The real irony is that focusing and solving this economic downturn would have accrued such goodwill and political capital that his socialist agenda, in the long term, would have been a so much simpler sell.  But, that necessary political capital is being destroyed faster than the plummeting dow averages.  But, this precisely is the incompetence and inexperience of our commander in chief.  He is so focused on socialist agenda that he has not the flexibility and foresight of a true leader, of real executive leadership, to modify his course of action.  Nor, does he have the vision or creativity to use adversity as opportunities to achieving goals by alternate paths.

Obama’s Ideology of Second Place

“We can’t drive our SUV’s and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times…and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.”

The pillars that stood behind Obama at his Denver nomination acceptance speech were not evocative of ancient Athens, where the Athenian hoplites stood shoulder to shoulder in their phalanx to stop the maw of the Persian Empire at Marathon and Plataea.  It is not evocative of the Roman Republic were Rome’s citizen-soldiers filled the ranks of Rome’s legions.

No, it is evocative of Imperial Rome.  With Barack, divine Caesar , will dispense largess to the masses from the public treasury.  It is evocative of Leni Riefenstahl.

The first is a quote given by Obama, on a campaign stop in May  19, 2008.  In Oregon.  This represents yet, perhaps more elegant, blame-America-first speech.  SUV, eating and heating our homes, all wrapped up in the cloak of environmental correctness.  Just three more examples of America’s baleful presence upon the earth.  

But, this too was a real campaign promise.  A promise to rein big bad America.  It render America subservient to the rest of the “world.”  To make sure that our domestic and foreign policies are “okay” with the rest of the world.  Our national sovereignty will check in with some “world government,” some UN “consensus.”  With Obama himself, who, by virtue of his high melanin content and third world name graces the Oval Office with this magical “world cred.”

Riding this economic crisis is an exercise to lower American expectations.  To have American’s accept lessened hopes and dreams.  To extinguish the concept of American exceptionalism.  To prepare Americans to accept the new age of mediocrity and dependence (ht; William Katz, Urgent Agenda).  Commentators continue to critique Obama’s economic plans as exactly the wrong prescription to restore prosperity.  And, that’s exactly the point.  This economic plan is to destroy the legacy of growth and hope for a better tomorrow; to replace that hope with the acceptance of a permanent second place.  To accept that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights must now subordinate to the will of “international” consensus.

Obama is a complete stranger to American exceptionalism.  He spend the first ten years of his life in the third world with a upbringing in the Muslim ideology (not religion).  An ideology that is a polar opposite to the defense of individual liberty; the centerpiece of Western Civilization.  And, when Obama came back to the US, his mind was well prepared to accept the ranting of Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers and every chic Marxist professor that he ran into.  Not America the great, but America the second place.

And, to arrive at that state, he needs to build an electoral coalition of 51 percent who will permanently accept second place.  A 51 percent who will forever depend on the government to fill it’s needs and accept it largess as a birthright.  A 51 percent who will exchange it’s real birthright, the one secured by the Bill of Rights, for a mess of pottage.  A 51 percent who will look to the government for the proper cues on all manner of morals and attitudes.  

And, above all, a 51 percent who will forever look upon the other 49 percent as permanent tax slaves. For, that productive 49 percent, the real water carriers (to use CNBC’s Santarelli’s terminology), are the new Kulaks who must have the fruits of their productivity expropriated for being the rapacious, productive louts that they truly are.

Mr. Obama’s Ivy League credentials indicate that the man has at least enough intelligence to at least understand the principles that undergird free market economics.  Yet, he chooses to proceed in precisely the opposite direction and pursues spending policies that will leave a legacy that will beggar our grandchildren’s children.  On purpose.  He does to create a society that will permanently accept lowered expectations.  To create an inverse, where the state defines the individual.  Not, which is the source of our greatness, where the individual and his individual efforts define the state.  His policies invite us to accept serfdom and build our huts next to the moat and castle of the state.  To accept what ever pittance Obama and his acolytes will dispense in exchange for obedience to the diktats from his royal, heated to 72 degrees, court.

And, for that pittance you will accept Obama and his acolytes as your betters; your philosopher kings.   Rules and laws are for other people.  Boy-wonder  Geithner doesn’t have to taxes.  And, Obama, regardless that we bad Americans have to ask the “world” for permission to as to what to drive, eat and set our thermostats, will eat $100 per pound wagyu steak, drive around in a limousine based on a Chevy 2500 pick-up truck chassis and set the Oval Office thermostat to 72 degrees.  Hypocrisy by our betters, is okay with Plato, in his Republic, since our betters, in engineering and directing our lives, are above the law.

And, so for the pittance of the cradle to grave socialism.  For the beggaring of our children.  For permanent diminution of our horizons and hopes, we shall worship at the altar of whatever fad or fancy our leaders deem important.  The latest such fad is the false religion of environmentalism. We are to ignore the man behind the curtain and worship the great Oz, who tells us, despite real scientific evidence to the contrary, that “global warming” is threatening our planet.  And, we will save the earth by “cap and trade.”   The “green” agenda of “renewable” energy is actually a Luddite agenda.  The first solar photovoltaic cell was invented in 1883.  Wind power and windmills have been around since the middle ages.  

The horseless carriage has been in existence for over a century.  There have been battery cars and steam cars and all sorts of novel methods of propulsion.  The Prius is nothing new; it’s fuel efficiency is more due to the fact it’s a small light car.  A Ford Pinto, an AMC Gremlin, a Renault LeCar, updated to look good in front of a Starbucks.  How radical, innovative, is a internal combustion engine mated to a generator?  Every modern railroad locomotive uses a diesel engine to run a generator that powers motors to drive the locomotive forward.  A diesel Prius on steel wheels.

The fact is that we burn hydrocarbons for transportation and electrical generation because it turns out to be the most efficient and most economical way to accomplish the task at hand.  Yet, somehow, our all-knowing leaders, under the beneficent smile of our President, will find us a new, carbon-free solution known only to them; solutions that somehow eluded eluded the thousands  upon thousands of engineers who ever worked in the automotive or power generation industries.  But, of course, we lesser folks do not have the booby prize bauble from Stockholm like our new Energy Secretary (the Nobel Prize now places you in the company of Jimmy Carter, Yasser Arafat and Albert Gore).

But, no matter, our car czar will dictate the car we will drive, if we are deemed deserving to rate personal transportation and allowed to buy such a conveyance.  But, second class will be acceptable so long as we get our allotments of free food, housing and health care.  As long as we do not dare to aspire to a life or lifestyle that would exceed whatever would be “OK” with the rest of the world.