100 Top Horror Movies 2009

Just in time for Halloween, the 2009 edition of the 100 Top Horror Movies of all time is out. See it here.

Great art can only truly be enjoyed by the old, because artistic sensibility is not innate, but learned, through a lifetime of study. The one exception is that genre of great art, the Horror Movie. Here, the artist depends upon the primal - and primeval - state of fear, and it is the young (and the young at heart) who are closest to this most basic ground of the human.

If you disagree, try getting a 6 year old to sit through Mozart's Don Giovanni. About five minutes into the performance, wake him up, and then take him to the greatest Horror Movie of all, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (but only a matinee; not if it's dark, never if it's dark). He will get it; boy, will he get it! As you exit the theatre, of course, a Social Services Swat Team will be waiting to take him away from you, proving that anyone working for Social Services is old, very old, to the point of senility.

A comment, however, on the list: Psycho #8? Come, come. There is no more influential horror film than Psycho, as even the website's own reviewer notes. He also states that "Psycho belongs on the classic shelf of not just the horror movie fan, but any fan of great film making (emphasis in original)." A grear horror film that is also a great film? This should have been a slam dunk, as they apparently say in the sports world.

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Most important, however, is what everyone misses watching this film after its original release. Psycho was a post-modern work before post-modernism was a gleam in Derrida's eye. Hitchcock brilliantly structured Psycho to defeat the movie-goers expectations at every turn, movie-goers who knew and loved Hitchcock's penchant for suspense, danger, and deft surprise endings. To surprise an audience educated as to his tricks, Hitchcock made a movie that was bigger than just the 1 hour, 49 minute run-time, that also included the advertising campaign, the leaked Hollywood rumors, and the unconscious buzz in the culture. All of this was carefully crafted to prepare the audience for a movie, a movie that would then be something completely different from what the movie-goer thought he was promised.

The kernel of Hitchcock's vision for Psycho was Janet Leigh. In the run-up to the premiere, the movie was promoted as Janet Leigh and Alfred Hitchcock, together for the first time! The proffered story was to be classic Hitchcock: Janet Leigh will play an ordinary law-abiding person, thrust by fate and accident into the role of a criminal and a fugitive.

But then, just 48 minutes into the movie, as the audience easily settles into the tension of Marion Crane, embezzler of $40,000.00, running from justice, Marion Crane is incomprehensibly murdered in the Bates Motel. And with her dies Janet Leigh, the great star, and the audience is left with .... what? What does all this mean? In Hollywood, the central star never dies at the beginning; they are the reason everybody has shown up in the first place!

And in the very next scene, it gets even worse for Ms. Leigh, and the audience. Norman Bates sinks not only Marion Crane's car into the swamps, but also the stolen $40,000.00. The entire set-up of the first 40 minutes of the movie, the sum and substance of Janet Leigh's entire role in the film, is gone, submerged forever in the fetid waters. From there, the audience knows exactly nothing about what will happen next, and that bewildered ignorance lasts right up to the final, ironic, comic monologue of Mrs. Bates, "....they'll see, and they'll know; I wouldn't even hurt a fly."

Brilliance, wrapped in Genius. That's what Psycho was, cinematic art rendered at its best.

So, Psycho is #1, that is clear, and I am glad we have settled that. The current #1, The Exorcist, then moves to a very solid #2, a position it ought to be very happy with. Wretching and vomiting don't usually carry a work of art to greatness.

Honduras Wins!

It looks like it's face saving time for Hillary Clinton and the State Department.

The AP reports an agreement has been reached between Honduras' interim government and ousted President, Mel Zelaya. AP reports the significance:

The agreement, if it holds, could represent a much-needed foreign policy victory for the United States, which dispatched a senior team of diplomats to coax both sides back to the table.

Let's see, Afghanistan dithering, Iranians and Norks nuking up, Israel-Palestinian impasse, Russian aggression, and Allied backstabbing on missile defense in Eastern Europe, all of these are signal failures of Administration foreign policy. So, forcing an agreement on a tiny, defenseless Honduras democracy is a "much-needed foreign policy victory for the United States?" Talk about lowering the bar.

Not to mention that this is no Administration victory. Honduras has consistently maintained that Mel Zelaya was legally impeached and an interim government appropriately installed pending already scheduled elections this November. This agreement, which Madam Secretary Clinton calls "historic," impliedly affirms the Honduran position, providing that upon the installation of the new government, all sanctions will be lifted and relations normalized with the U.S. The only "concessions" Honduras had to make on Mr. Zelaya was to agree to reinstate him if such is approved by the Honduran Congress. Since Mr. Zelaya's own party repeatedly and vehemently has denounced him, there is little likelihood that he will be reinstated. The result: point, set, and match to Honduran democracy.

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The State Department started this whole fracas because of a legal opinion of top State Department lawyer Harold Koh, purportedly concluding that the actions of the Honduran military in ousting Mr. Zelaya was illegal under Honduran law. To date, the State Department has refused to release this super-persuasive legal brief.

With the manifest capitulation of State under this agreement, it is clear that Mr. Koh's legal opinion was flawed, and as a result, State "stepped in it" at the beginning of the Honduran "crisis." Thereafter, instead of wiping off their shoes as the facts became clear, they rolled around in it for a few months before finally deciding to take a bath.

Those plucky people of Honduras. You gotta love 'em.

Click the title above for all posts on this topic.

What is Natural Law?

We have an interesting discussion over on the NewsReel Blog concerning the notion of Natural Law. For the Founders, Natural Law was a fundamental concept in forming this new country, but David Swindle says he has always had a hard time understanding this key idea. He states:

With “Natural Law” there’s nowhere to dig. With “Natural Law” it’s as though someone says, “Well that’s just the way it is” in answering an argument. It has a religious sensibility. Someone might as well be saying “It’s true because the Bible says so.” And because of that I have a hard time taking it seriously at an intellectual level.

He tells us that he is a former radical who came to conservatism late. I would suggest that his radical past might account for a good bit of his problem with Natural Law theory, although by saying that, I do not mean to sound unduly critical. I think we all suffer from the same cultural influences that brought out the radical in young Mr. Swindle, even those of us who never flirted with radicalism. And it is these all but unconscious influences that produce a certain cognitive dissonance when we try to understand ideas from 200 years ago.

Among these influences, the Western fact-value distinction has special relevance to the (mis)understanding of Natural Law. In its simplest formulation, the fact-value distinction tells us that we cannot reason from what is to what ought to be. Facts and values inhabit two entirely different categories of thought, each with its own set of assumptions and terms, and never the twain shall meet.

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As it has come down to us, though, the fact-value distinction carries a modernist skeptical twist: not only are facts and values distinct, but facts are empirical and rational (and good), whereas values are conceptual and irrational (and bad).

We see these assumptions playing out in our culture all the time, in ways large and small. Hidden behind Mr. Swindle's own quote above is the reflexive notion that Natural Law does not appear to derive from anything rationally intelligible. But that is because Natural Law is sub specie ethics and morality, and therefore within the realm of values, which we moderns are conditioned to regard with suspicion.

But this modernist twist of ours is itself a value-laden decision that facts are somehow more concrete than values, and begs the question of Natural Law. To recapture the truth of the Founding, understanding Natural Law is critical. To do so, we moderns must shuck ourselves of our prejudice against ethical and religious values, and step into 18th Century shoes.

Natural Law was based on the Aristotelian notion that the world could be understood on the basis of purpose or teleology. Dogs had a certain clearly discerned nature, that which defined it as a dog, as did other animals. And so did Man. Man was the rational animal, the animal whose distinctive teleology was to think and reason about the world around him. As Kurt Vonnegut put it in Cat's Cradle:

Tiger got to hunt, Bird got to fly, Man got to ask himself why, why, why?
Tiger got to sleep, Bird got to land, Man got to tell himself he understand.

Vonnegut's skepticism aside, there are two important assumptions in this Aristotelian notion: (1) that nature manifests order; and (2) that this order is discoverable and understandable by Man in his rational capacity. Natural Law carries these assumptions into the spheres of ethics and morality. Man's good is to be in an ordered and just society, and what that order and justice should be is both discoverable and understandable by Man in his rational capacity.

It is here that we modernists usually stop. As Pontius Pilate asked without expecting an answer, "What is truth?" so we ask, "What is order and justice?" and expect there will be no answer, too. As Mr. Swindle puts it, our experience is that "we all come to different conclusions on issues. Perfectly good, reasonable people come to polar opposite ideas on issues."

But, in fact, we do know what an ordered, just society is, in great part because our Founders showed what it is: a society based on liberty, the rule of law, and the consent of the governed. We also know a free society is more ordered and just than a non-free society because we saw the depredations inflicted on millions of people by totalitarian systems, and also the creeping dystopianism of the soft tyranny of nanny state socialism.

In all of these cases, what we are doing is discerning an order and justice in the very nature of things, which is exactly what Natural Law theory posits we can do as rational human beings. On this understanding, the problem of "good, reasonable people com[ing] to polar opposite ideas on issues" is simply a problem of education, which is precisely what Mr. Horowitz, Mr. Swindle, and many others in the conservative blogosphere are attempting to do, every day.

When confronted with an advocate of statist socialism, do Messrs. Horowitz and Swindle retreat into skepticism? Of course not. They pull out the history of the United States, the achievements of this free society over the last 200 years, the happiness of its citizens, the envy it receives from the world, and all sorts of other evidence that freedom works and socialism does not. What is this other than discerning and understanding proper order and justice in the world, just as Natural Law theory says we can?

It is true that many ethical and moral values underpinning Natural Law are also religious values. This should not be surprising. Catholic/Aquinian thinking posits that Christian truth is also rationally discernible in God's created world, not least because God the Creator was a loving, good God who would not "play dice with the Universe," as Einstein insisted. In fact, it was because of this overlap between faith and reason that the Founders (not all, but most) felt that strong religious institutions were essential to maintaining the moral virtue of the people so necessary to a free society. But that is a complex question for another day. For now, its only important to note that both faith and Natural Law reason end the same: the essentially just society is grounded in Freedom. In this sense, Natural Law is not a rational theory competing against religious faith, but more like an acceptable rationale developed for the irreligious among us.

That the ethical goodness of a free society is a concrete reality in the world, and that people can be educated about this reality is absolutely crucial to the notion of a free society. If such is not possible, then a government founded on freedom is not possible either. The Founders understood this, and rightly understood that what they were attempting was a grand "experiment" in self-government, an experiment that, thankfully for us, proved so incredibly, even outrageously, successful.

Onward Christian Soldiers

Ever since "fire and brimstone" preaching went out of favor in Christianity, the rate of increasing irrelevancy of the mainstream Churches to the broader culture has only been exceeded by the rate of the ever greater declines in membership. Apparently, however, these Churches have decided it's time to get off the sidelines.

Our esteemed mainstream Churches took a bold stand this week: Lutherans, Catholics, United Methodists, Presbyterians, and members of the United Church of Christ joined with the Islamic Society of North America and other "faith groups" in solidarity against ....... hate.

This would be fine if it was just another innocuous Church thing. However, in these degenerate spiritual times, leave it to our spiritual leaders to focus their shallow theological vision on not just hate, but Hate; specifically, Hate Speech. This particular category of speech is a pure invention of our contemporary culture, claiming that certain speech should be defined by the level or degree of hatred the speaker has towards the victim. This ties neatly into our current obsession with racism in society, and seems a good fit for other discrimination as well, like that against women, Muslims, Hispanics, Gays, and other groups to be named later by our cultural leaders. It certainly seems that bias against one or another of these groups can be described as hatred. Should speech in aid of that sort of bias be allowed?

Our spiritual leaders took a stand, and said no.

But they are taking a stand on quicksand.

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As commonly deployed, charges of Hate Speech devolve into nothing more than transparent attempts to outlaw certain political, cultural, and religious differences of opinion. The most common circumstance involves those who are anti-immigration. Never mind that their actual position is anti-illegal immigration, which ought to be uncontroversial in any nation pretending to a government of laws. Our cultural watchdogs insist on branding any such political position as Hatred of Hispanics. The Lutheran Church itself picks up this line, trotting out the usual suspects of Hatred on the Right, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, et al., and joining with others to petition the FCC to investigate these purveyors of Hate. Presumably, they want these people shut down, although they don't actually say that. But, for what other reason would you call down the investigatory powers of a powerful government agency on some of your fellow citizens?

To ascribe Hatred to a political position entails a truly amazing ability to read minds, as there is nothing in the anti-illegal immigration position per se that necessarily entails a visceral dislike of Hispanics. But, let's assume for a moment that our spiritual leaders have a special insight into these people's souls (souls being the prime brief of our Christian Churches), and find true Hatred there. Is supporting government suppression of Hate Speech really what Christian Churches ought to be about?

In a free society, the answer is a resounding no. Open debate is the sine qua non of a free society, and should be restricted on only the most narrow and concrete grounds. Personal emotional states are entirely too vague a criteria to support a rule of restraint on debate, not to mention that the presence or absence of a particular emotional state is speculative at best.

But on the grounds of self-preservation, Christian Churches ought to reject this sort of thing. Haven't they read any newspapers lately, for instance, about the attacks on the Mormon Church in California for opposing Gay marriage? The near-constant refrain was that Mormon's were perpetrating Hate against Gays, just for following the dictates of their religion and their conscience. If the mainstream Churches get what they want, how long will it be before the charge of Hate, along with legislation to back it up, will be extended against parishes and denominations that refuse, on religious grounds, to solemnize a gay marriage?

Not long. In my opinion, our Churches are not on a slippery slope with all of this trendy Hate stuff, but a sheer cliff.

Khrushchev famously said that capitalism would sell Communists the rope to hang Capitalists. With this foray into social policy, our mainstream Churches are penning the crimes upon which Christian orthodoxy - and freedom of religion and speech - will be charged, convicted, and sentenced.

Sez Who?

It's oft amazing to read some attack by the Left of the Right and realize that with very little editing, it can become an incisive critique of the Left.

Politico reports Media Matters (a "Democrat-leaning organization?") is distributing a Memo in which it slams Fox News as a "lethal 24/7 partisan political operation." Let's take just one paragraph of this Memo, swap Media Matters and Fox News, Conservative and Progressive, and see what we get. Changes are in all caps:

As our evidence demonstrates, MEDIA MATTERS has exhibited a consistent willingness to ignore any and all journalistic standards to pursue political ends. The failure to recognize MEDIA MATTERS for what it is enables IT to continue waging a massive PROGRESSIVE political campaign disguised as journalism.

I guess with the Left, it takes one partisan political operation to know one. Except in this case, the charge against Fox News is pure hackery disguised as journalism.

Pitchforks as Policy

Easy, I remember another instance that gave me pause about this Administration's competence.

It was right at the start, when the executive pay scandal first arose, and the President called in the major TARP recipient Banks to lecture them on reforming their compensation policies. At one point, the Bank CEO's offered that executive compensation was a complex affair, that the Bank's were competing for talent from around the world. And our President responded, "The public isn't buying that...My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."

There was a sense I had at the time that this was not an analysis of the American public's mood as much as a threat about what this Administration was capable of, a threat I thought quite ridiculous. Don't get me wrong; there was something cold blooded and chilling about the President's implication of public violence against the Banks, and I am sure the Bank CEO's took the message to heart. But I was also all but incredulous that the President thought that he had such power over the American public, and also that such banana republic type threats had any place in American politics.

In retrospect, it is even more clear that the President and his staff have a blind spot about themselves and their power, owing to the hubris you mentioned. They really believed, back in April of this year, that they could move the public in any way they wanted, even unto pitchfork waving mobs. They thought they could send ACORN out with its fake protesters, order up some demagogic headlines from the Major Media, inundate the Internet with shocked outrage from MoveOn.org, and the public would respond like little puppets to their manipulations.

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But American's are just not pitchfork kind of people. More than a 150 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville said something to the effect that Americans would enthusiastically congregate and applaud the latest public rabble rouser, only to quietly disperse when it appeared the speaker intended them to actually do something.

As you said, this Administration is clueless. It is clueless about the American character, about the American culture, and about how a President functions in our Republic. And it is clueless about these things because it is essentially parochial: this Administration thinks the customs of a political backwater like Chicago are universal truths.

Myth of Machiavellian Brilliance

The latest Obama Administration dust-up with Fox News is instructive. The Old and New Media is perplexed about the whole affair, primarily because they are unable to clarify just what the White House strategy is. What are the Obami's goals? What would constitute victory in this little war?

But these are the wrong questions. That the Fox News gambit is a loser for the White House is well-nigh irrefutable. Fox News is gaining viewership at the expense of the White House's allies in the Media, and at the same time, those allies are compelled by the last shreds of journalistic ethics they retain to come to Fox's defense. Additionally, among the larger electorate, the stark contrast between the truly important issues, like unemployment, Afghanistan, and a nuclear Iran, and the Administration's obsession with a news organization, further depresses the President's already plummeting poll numbers.

So, what is so instructive about the situation? It is another instance where the Administration reveals that it is clueless about how to govern the country. Take the latest incident in the Fox News war. The Obami make the new Pay Czar available for press interviews, but stipulate that Fox News will not be allowed to participate. Now, if it was the Administration's intention to marginalize Fox News, then the smart play would have been to make the Pay Czar available to specifically selected Media reps that would not include Fox News. Instead, the Obami offers the interviews to the White House press pool as a group, which has an agreement among all the participants that there will be equal access to White House events.

In other words, the Administration put their Media allies in a situation where they would have to come to Fox's aid and refuse the interviews. The result? A stunning rebuke of the White House from Major Media that heretofore has been nothing short of nauseatingly obsequious.

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That the Administration would put their own allies into such an untenable situation when there was a perfectly good alternative, indicates that this Administration is all but terminally amateurish.

Add this fiasco to the embarrassing failure to secure the Olympics for Chicago. There again, it was a failure that did not have to occur. Basic due diligence indicated that before sending the President with loud hoopla to Copenhagen, the Administration should send out a few Ambassadors to poll the Olympic committee members on Chicago's chances. That they didn't do even this minimal preparation bespeaks a naivete unprecedented in Presidential Administrations.

Other examples abound. The silly idea of having Doctors dress up in white coats for a White House photo op, (note to White House: Doctors now wear green fatigues instead of white coats); the stunning abandonment of missile defense without getting Russian concessions on Iranian sanctions; the decision to "put some daylight" between the US and Israel, thereby emboldening the hard-line Palestinians and dooming any chance whatsoever for peace talks; the attempt to defend the Administration's Afghanistan dithering by lying about the analytical and policy conclusions it had received from the Bush Administration (as if no one from the prior Administration would expose the lie); and the attacks on citizens protesting the Administration's policies.

And this only scratches the surface of the last few months. Early on this Administration decided to out-source to Congress the preparation of legislation on all of President Obama's most important objectives: the Stimulus, Cap and Trade, and Healthcare. Splintered, contentious, and beholden as it is to myriad interest groups, Congress is just not equipped to tackle hugely complex legislation like this without a strong Chief Executive leading the way. Instead, this Administration relegated the President to the role of Cheerleader in Chief, apparently thinking the President could thereby remain above the fray, unsullied by the nitty gritty of politics, and still get his major policy initiatives passed.

Unbelievable. Naivete and cluelessness, all in one Administration.

Part of the problem for the national Media commentariat is that it continues to believe the prime myth of this Administration, that it has a Machiavellian brilliance about it, moving public opinion where ever it wills. In fact, there is nothing brilliant about this Administration, Machiavellian or otherwise. It is just a bunch of typical Chicago politicians who have risen far beyond their capabilities.

But what's more, the Administration is stubbornly clueless about its own cluelessness. It believes in its non-existent brilliance, and thereby adds fatal hubris to its terminal ignorance.

There's a combination for you, hubris and ignorance. As a result, this country and the world are powder kegs waiting to explode, until we can get this Administration out of Washington and back to Chicago where it belongs.

Pay Czar

Evil Wall Street. Bailed out Bad Guys. And what's even worse, they all supported President Obama in the last election. That the Administration's Pay Czar should rule that Wall Street exec's should forfeit 90% of their compensation seems only just.

It's not as if the government doesn't have a rational basis for intervention like this into private businesses. These financial firms did accept billions of dollars of public moneys. Shouldn't the government have some input on how that money is spent? But let's look a little closer at this rationale.

Government largess always comes with strings attached, and appropriately so. But in a society of laws, any such conditions should be spelled out before hand. For instance, if an institution accepts tuition from a government student loan, it is explicit that such institution shall not discriminate against student applicants or employees on the basis of race, creed, and etc. By the same token, if you accept a tax deduction for your home interest payments, you are accepting the obligation to honestly report your actual qualifying interest payments.

However, after taking the interest deduction, if some bureaucrat demanded that you, say, house a homeless person, I think you might be a trifle outraged at such a confiscation of your property, no matter how good the cause might be. In this respect, what conditions did the government put on the bail-out funds to Wall Street? As they say these days, zip, zero, nada. What right then does the Administration have today to dictate compensation packages, ex post facto? In a nation of laws, no right whatsoever.

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Not to mention that the Administration has about zero expertise in the complicated field of executive compensation. Base salary coupled with incentive bonuses, frequently involving stock options in the firm, carries a long pedigree in the industry, and its unclear on what basis the Pay Czar deems them excessive, other than the economically illiterate contention that they are just "too large."

Which brings another problem with the Czar's diktat to Wall Street. Just what was the process that resulted in this decision? What facts and evidence were included, what industry, trade, and civic associations consulted, and what economic analysis and experts relied on in deriving this latest policy? We simply don't know, and the lack of transparency in the process behind this extraordinary new policy is unprecedented in my life time.

In truth, this move by the Administration is just the camel's nose of the extension of government into every nook and cranny of American citizens' lives. Rep. Barney Frank has already given notice of his desire to extend the concept into non-bail out industries.

Via email

The Roundup

Okay, I'm on the Roundup patrol this week because I am me and they are them, somebody has to do the heavy lifting, and, of course, I don't really have anything else to do right now.

Whenever the Republicans have a crucial job, like critiquing the Afghanistan policy of the dithering Obama Administration, they turn to their man of Ruthian proportions, if not of physical prowess, Dick Cheney. And like the Babe, the former Vice-President hit a home run last night in his speech on the Afghanistan war at the Center for Security Policy. To extend the baseball metaphor, little Rahm Emanuel, just up from a Chicago farm team, was sent out to the mound on the Sunday talk shows to defend current Administration policy, and lobbed a few jibes at the Bush Administration for handing off a disaster in Afghanistan with little help for the new Administration. Babe Cheney hit these soft, underhanded pitches from the foreign policy rookie out of the ballpark, branding him a bald-faced liar in the process.

Gallup's latest tracking polls indicate a Presidential drop in approval of Brobdingnagian proportions in the 3rd quarter of this year. It's the biggest drop in almost 60 years.

Perhaps the Pesident's poll problems stem from another setback on his signature Healthcare policy. Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid attempted to reduce the cost of the new Healthcare Bill by simply reassigning $250 billion dollars out of the proposed Healthcare Bill and into the already massive debt of Medicare/Medicaid. He lost the vote against a coalition of Republicans and a whopping 12 Democrats and 1 Independent. Hey, President Obama really is bringing us bi-partisanship, just like he promised!

Two young guns at National Review Online are taking aim at the important stuff. Mark Steyn posts in The Corner a report on the advantages of eating dogs, and Jonah Goldberg let's us know about three more Timewasters, here, here and here. I would have gotten this Roundup done sooner, but got caught up killing zombies.

Headlines You Won't Ever See

Obama Administration
Nixes Black Majority Rule

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In a stunning blow to Black aspirations, the Obama
Justice Department overturns the voter's decision
in majority Black community, Kinston, N.C., to have
elections without partisan party labels. Explained a
Justice Department spokesman,"We give out free
healthcare and walking around money, and they
want to eliminate Democrat labels on the ballot?" ---------------------------------------------------------

"Sheesh," he continued. "This makes us pine for the Bush
days when all we had to watch were the white voters."

Major media story here.

Political Football

Let's do the numbers: 20 years, 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. That's 15,000 hours of monologues by Rush Limbaugh that his detractors had available in their current campaign to brand him a racist and ban him from NFL ownership.

The result? Two totally fabricated quotes and one remark (ably summarized by our sports division here) Rush made as an ESPN commentator six years ago about the Media's favoritism of Donovan McNabb.

That's it. That's all they got.

This tells us what we already knew, that the Rush-is-a-racist meme of Liberals and the Major Media is based on nothing but partison political differences. If you are Leftwing and you hear Rush criticize the President, you hear a racist rant. If you are center-right like most of America, you hear a political opinion, nothing more and nothing less.

Differing political opinions are not divisive; they are the norm for a vibrant democracy like ours. Unless, that is, you are part of that fringe minority of our country who abhor anybody that disagrees with them.

In publicly denouncing Rush Limbaugh's bid for ownership, Roger Goodell short circuited the normal owner application process and used the bully pulpit of the office of the NFL Commissioner to move the League solidly in with the fringe Left of this country. As a result, the NFL is now politicized, just like the banks, auto industry, the arts, scientific research, and any and all other areas of civil society the Left can get its hands on.

I am sure Roger Goodell is basking in the warm glow of congratulations he is receiving from the glitterati of the Left for his work in hijacking America's Game for partison political purposes. He best enjoy it; the blowback from those who love football as an American apolitical institution is gonna be fierce.

The Sports Beat

In breaking news, Rush Limbaugh is being dropped from the ownership group seeking to buy the NFL franchise, the St. Louis Rams.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell weighed in on the matter yesterday referring to "divisive comments" Mr. Limbaugh made six years ago that Quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated by a media that wanted a black quarterback to succeed. In fact, Mr. Limbaugh's comment carried a certain plausibility, given that the sports media had been advocating incessantly for more black quarterbacks since the 1970's. Nevertheless, Mr Goodell maintained that Mr. Limbaugh was too controversial to be associated with the National Football League.

In other news, Reuters reports today that George Soros, the shadowy multi-billionaire who has been a major funder of Media Matters, Moveon.org, the Tides Foundation and other non-divisive organizations, including the non-divisive shock troops of the Left, SEIU and Acorn, is a major partner in the same ownership group that jettisoned Mr. Limbaugh. There has been no comment from Mr. Goodell on the Reuters report.

My source close to the Commissioner's office explains, "George Soros supports Obama and Mr. Goodell supports Obama, but none of this has anything to do with politics. The NFL ownership group is like a club, a family, and families do not favor anyone marrying in who is not socially acceptable. And in Obama's America today, George Soros is more than acceptable, and Rush is not. So don't write this up as in any way political."

I won't.

This is Ellie Longfellow on the sports beat.

A Big Stick

Multi-lateral diplomacy garners a Peace Prize for the Administration, but not Russian support for sanctions against Iran. Russia has informed Secretary Clinton that any sanctions would be "counterproductive." This should not be surprising given the years that Russia has blocked real sanctions in the Security Council of the U.N. It appears Russia is not very concerned about a nuclear armed Iran. But why not? Except for a few buffer states like Uzbekistan and the like, Russia well-nigh borders on this maniacal regime.

Come to think of it, China always blocked real sanctions against North Korea, apparently also unconcerned about that mad regime going nuclear right on its border. Why is it not concerned?

It's quite simple. Neither Russia or China fears nuclear powers on their borders because they know those little nuke states, with all their braggadocio, would never be so crazy as to attack them. Nor would Iran or the North Koreans use their nukes against anything of real interest to their large neighbors. The Iranians and the Norks know, without a doubt, that should they misstep, Russia and China would quickly, and mercilessly, respond.

That is, Russia and China hold the big stick, the military option, in full view, and even insane regimes recognize and respect them.

After the invasion of Iraq, we had that kind of respect.

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We had such a big, obvious stick that the other crazy in the Middle East, Qaddafy, quickly renounced terrorism and gave up all his nukes - to the Great Satan itself, the U.S. of A. This is what's called "peace through strength," a principal of world politics that has worked time and again in the long bloody history of mankind.

Our President, however, eschews the military option. Over the last few weeks this Administration has been invited to speculate on the possibility of a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, and it has done back-flips to avoid the subject.

Somebody needs to tell the President that the Nobel Committee does not take away Peace Prizes once awarded. Somebody also needs to remind him of the value of confrontation in negotiations, especially confrontation backed up with the threat of force.

Perhaps a stern lecture from some of his old community organizing buddies would do the trick.

Baucus Healthcare Bill

The Baucus Healthcare Bill passed the Senate Finance Committee today, with help from one Republican, Olympia Snowe of Maine.

The AP describes the Baucus Bill as "middle-of-the-road" legislation. Here is one quick summary of the negatives contained in this Bill:

It costs $829 billion in only six and one half years; it levies half a trillion in new taxes, penalties, and fees, all of which will be passed along to consumers; it contains the largest expansion ever of the fiscally troubled Medicaid program; it suffocates the popular Medicare Advantage program; and its so called “consumer protections” would so roil the nation’s health-insurance market that the cost of our health coverage (according to the Price Waterhouse analysis) would increase by thousands of dollars per year.

If this is the AP's idea of middle-of-the-road, then I see a multi-car pileup in the opposing lane in its future.

The Reagan Prize

Jeffrey Lord just nails it. The Ronald Wilson Reagan Peace Prize, to be awarded annually in Berlin, Germany, the very symbol of the triumph of Reagan's vision of peace through strength that enabled him to win the Cold War without firing a shot.

Mr. Lord's capsule take on the Peace Prize winners of the 20th Century is brilliant, putting the bloodiest century in man's history in crystal clear perspective. At every step of the way from the end of World War I until the invasion of Norway by Hitler's Germany, the Nobel Committee awarded Prizes to those persons whose policies failed again and again to stop the world's slide into the second Great War of the century. For example, the Nobel Committee sought in many of its awards to promote policies of disarmament and appeasement, in an apparent belief that this would calm the growing tensions between Nations. The result in the 1920's and 1930's was disarmament by the non-aggressive states and re-armament by the aggressive ones, and a corresponding increase in provocative actions by the latter leading finally to World War II, the very anti-thesis of the Peace the Nobel Committee ostensibly desired.

Peace, real peace, not just breathless aspiration, was only achieved this past century through the gritty work of those with the moral clarity to defend freedom and democracy and to back it up to the death if necessary. In this sense, "peace through strength" does not refer just to huge standing armies, armed with the best killing technology available, but to the real strength behind the armies, that of leaders who envision and aspire to freedom for all mankind. Because without freedom, peace is an illusion. Without freedom, peace is just the silence of the police state, the stillness of despair.

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Reagan had an inspiring vision of peace in which the peoples of the world retained their god-given right of self-determination, and exercised that right in peaceful competition where necessary, voluntary consensus and cooperation where possible, in a spirit of true respect for the rights of self-determination of all. But he coupled this vision with a willingness to embrace the cold fact that some did not share his vision of freedom, and indeed hated it. With these, steel nerved opposition was the only negotiating position, backed up with strength both moral and military, and the transparent and unapologetic willingness to use that strength.

The Bible tells us that by their fruits shall ye know them. Reagan's fruits proved his way was best, his way was the path to true peace, as did Winston Churchill before him and countless scores of other heroes of freedom who willingly laid down their lives for the greatest moral cause of mankind, freedom.

Given the bloody failures, over and over again, of the philosophies of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee and their ilk these last 100 years, it is time for a new standard to be raised, a standard that has actually shown that it works in producing real peace for the world. It's time for a Reagan Peace Prize.

Where can I contribute?

Re: Son of Stimulus

Ez, your post on the Son of Stimulus makes the implicit point that government just cannot create jobs of any significance.

Your in good company (besides present company, of course). Read this article at Reason.com and this publication at Mercatus.org, as well as this Wall Street Journal opinion piece here.

(h/t Veronique de Rugy)

On a related note, Economist Jagdish Bhagwati is tired of the tired, old anti-capitalist arguments within economics circles, and makes a grand rejoinder here. Would that his rejoinder could be both grand and final, but I suspect the corpse of anti-capitalism will rise like Zombies again. If you don't understand the metaphor just used, see film reenactments of real life Zombies here.

(h/t again, Veronique de Rugy)

Honduras

For all posts on this topic, click the title above.

EZ, the big question raised by your series of posts on the Honduran situation is, what on earth could the Obama Administration be thinking about in aligning itself with Hugo Chavez and his ilk against a functioning democracy in South America?

We have an answer. Apparently the President and Secretary of State are following a State Department legal brief by top State counsel Harold Koh which concludes the actions of the Honduran military were a coup in violation of Honduran law.

Mr. Koh must be some kind of persuasive, since the opinion that the military acted lawfully in accordance with the Constitution of Honduras is held and defended by leading DC lawyer and Honduras native Miguel Estrada, the Law Library of Congress, and a host of other mainstream critics and commentators, as well as the Honduran Congress, Supreme Court, Attorney General, Catholic Church and members of ousted President Zelaya's own party.

Since Mr. Koh is so persuasive, you would think the Administration would be eager to release his legal reasoning. However, you would be wrong; Mr. Koh and his legal analysis is being kept tightly under wraps, even from an inquiry by U.S. Senator Jim DeMint. Is it possible his radical background has colored his legal analysis? Most certainly, as no honest reading of the Honduran situation could find otherwise than that the military acted lawfully.

This makes the release of Mr. Koh's legal analysis even more important. It might very well highlight how easily President Obama and Madam Secretary Clinton are persuaded by leftwing analysis that can barely keeps its head above the waters of propaganda.

Reaching Leftward Across the Aisle

Lindsay Graham deemed it timely this weekend to come out four-square for Cap and Trade, a bill that is already buried deep in the ash-heap of legislative history.

Cap and trade is flawed science, flawed policy, and for Republicans, flawed politics. At a time when even the BBC is running balanced stories questioning the science of Global Warming, and Virginia, the purplest of States, seems poised to reject radical left policies in toto, Senator Graham's latest attempt to lurch the Republican Party hard left betrays a Biden-esque level of judgment and discernment.

Can't South Carolina do a little better than this for its Country?

Re: Rhetoric vs. Reality

Archie, in your recent post you wrote:

I have a dream and a vision: cold fusion, and a world without poverty, terror or strife of any kind.

Having now published my dream and vision for all the world to share, I intend to rest on my laurels ... and of course the $1 million or so I will receive with my Nobel Physics Prize in 2010.

One quibble: if a Prize is given for cold fusion, it will undoubtedly be a Chemistry breakthrough, not Physics.

Although, given the degenerating standards of the Nobel Committee, cold fusion could very well be placed in the Literature category, chemistry and physics being, you know, oppressive Western myths.

The Sports Beat

The suits from headquarters are smiling upon our little band for extending the franchise to the world of sports in our recent coverage of President Obama's failed Olympic bid.

Since Ezra last broke a sweat in 1972, Whit goes sweaty and pale from the exertion of watching ladies badminton, and Archie does not have the attention span to sit through four quarters of football, it looks like I will have to take the lead on sports coverage.

In today's news, the surprising selection of President Obama to win the Nobel Peace Prize has thrown the sports world into chaos. One of my sources close to those running the Bowl Championship Series for college football told me, "The Nobel Prize Committee has stunned everyone. We've always graded teams on actual wins and losses on the field. But if the new standard is to be the level of hope and desire of teams to win games, well, I don't see how the current standings won't be disrupted. Does USC or Florida want to win more than Urbana College of Dance? Jeez, it's not even a contest; they might be small and silly looking on the field in their little tutu's, but those dancers are fierce competitors.

"And this is true in every sport, pro, amateur and college," he continued with a slight quiver in his voice. "In theory, we won't even have to keep score anymore, just have a panel of judges vote on the intention, spirit, and determination of each team. Given what we've seen in the Olympics, you don't think we'll see a lot of politics in those decisions?"

My source paused at this point, and then quietly said, "I'm not sure I can live in a world like that."

This is Ellie Longfellow, on the sports beat.

Headlines You Won't Ever See

BATTLE OF COMMITTEES:
NOBEL PRIZE COMMITTEE DISSES
INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE
-------------------------------------------------------
In a pointed slap-down of a sister international forum,
the Nobel Committee awards the prestigious Peace Prize
to President Obama, just one week after the embarrassing
rejection by the IOC of the President's personal diplomacy
on behalf of his hometown Chicago's Olympic bid
---------------------------------------------------------
"What's this about?" asks one Member of the IOC.
"Their action was totally uncalled for. Who do they think
we are, Bush or something? "

Obama's Prize

Leave it to Iraq's version of Joe the Plumber to nicely sum up the import of the Nobel Committee awarding the Peace Prize to President Obama. From Reuters:

Issam al-Khazraji, a day laborer in Baghdad, said of Obama: "He doesn't deserve this prize. All these problems -- Iraq, Afghanistan -- have not been solved . . . man of 'change' hasn't changed anything yet."

The tone and tenor of his remarks makes it highly likely that the literal translation of the Arabic would substitute some form of "human excrement" for the phrase "anything yet."

Re: Rhetoric vs. Reality

I have a dream and a vision: cold fusion, and a world without poverty, terror or strife of any kind.

Having now published my dream and vision for all the world to share, I intend to rest on my laurels ... and of course the $1 million or so I will receive with my Nobel Physics Prize in 2010.

Rhetoric vs. Reality

It has just been announced that President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. We extend our congratulations to the President for this signal honor.

It must be said however that this honor ain't what it used to be. Consider the last two American recipients, Al Gore and Jimmy Carter. Mr. Gore spouted the world party line on global warming, complete with prophecies of doom and anguished concern for the future, while brazenly backing it all up with phony hockey stick data and irrelevant pictures of dying Polar Bears. Jimmy Carter talked and walked the humanitarian line while he used his international fame to become a leftish scold of the West in general and the United States in particular, the two greatest humanitarian forces of the last few hundred years, and to embrace and applaud some of the most repugnant and dangerous dictators and terrorists in the world.

In both cases, the Nobel Committee chose the recipients based on rhetoric rather than reality, ignorant hope rather than actual accomplishment.

The deadline for submissions of nominations for the Prize was February of this year, which means, absurdly, that President Obama had only been on the job for a mere 10 days when nominations were closed. Since that time, President Obama has stirred the world with great oratories of U.S. guilt and repentance, paeans of praise for a multilateral policy of diplomacy, with special emphasis on world institutions like the U.N., and a vision of a "nuclear free world." However, that the U.S. has made mistakes in the past does not imply guilt and makes Obama's repentance a hollow declaration; an obsessive regard for multilateral diplomacy and talking, talking, talking, as is unfolding with a murderous Iran, treats the real dangers in the world today as if they don't exist; and a vision of a nuclear free world is as mythical and vapid a hope as any Beauty Pageants breathless plea for "World Peace."

In other words, President Obama has accomplished precisely nothing and his empty rhetoric does not encourage us to believe he will accomplish anything in the future. The Nobel Peace Prize, once a laudatory idea, now stands somewhere between those ubiquitous keys to the city handed out to famous visitors to small towns and a P.T. Barnum promotional campaign.

I Cannot Read the Baucus Healthcare Bill

The Baucus Healthcare bill is out of committee and rushing towards the Senate floor. I'd like to read the whole thing, so you, Dear Reader, don't have to, but I just can't. Life is too short to spend it with my nose buried in the awful gaggle as comes out of our Congress these days.

I did begin to read the CBO scoring of the bill, but even that I couldn't finish. I got stuck on the very first page where it reports that the Baucus bill will cost $829 billion and reduce the deficit $81 billion. Excuse me? In what strange dimension does $829 billion worth of spending piled on top of our standard yearly budget deficits equal a positive $81 billion?

If the CBO is doing an honest analysis, and I think they are, then there is only one explanation and consequently no need to read the rest of the CBO report or the Baucus bill. The Baucus bill must, somewhere deep in its byzantine provisions, raise government receipts $910 billion through some combination of taxes and Medicare cuts.

And that's really all we need to know about this bill. Whatever the politicians say, the fact is that under this bill, American citizens are going to be soaked to the tune of $910 billion so that Washington will have a new toy to play with, 1/5th of the American economy. If that primary fact is kept in mind, then I think it is clear that the details of this abominable bill don't matter.

But there is another reason I cannot read this bill.

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Despite all the talk-talk in the Major Media and Washington, believe it or not, there is no Baucus bill. All esteemed Senator Max Baucus "passed" through his committee was a conceptual statement of what the bill will contain when it is actually written.

I'm not sure how you pass legislation that hasn't been written yet. Presumably the committee members voted on something that looked like this:

U.S. HEALTHCARE ACT

The major concepts of this Healthcare Act are as follows. As soon as practicable, but in no event earlier than we feel like it, these concepts shall be expanded into real, written legislation of no less than 1,500 single spaced pages, each page containing at least 10 clauses beginning with "Whereas" and 25 clauses beginning with "Now, Therefore."

1. This Healthcare Act shall be the only way anyone can get health insurance or medical care of any kind.
2. The medical services industry shall provide all medical services to any and all citizens upon demand as per the provisions of this Act.
3. No one shall use the term "Public Option" in connection with this Act or otherwise within the jurisdiction of the World, nor in any future jurisdiction as may be established (hereinafter "the Solar System").
4. This Healthcare Act shall not cost any more than $829 billion, unless it costs more.
5. This Healthcare Act shall reduce the public deficit $81 billion, unless it doesn't*.

*New taxes and medicare cuts in connection with this Act are itemized under footnote 1043 of Addendum XXXIV to this Act, the original and all copies of said Addendum to be kept in the wall-safe of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Senator Baucus tells us that he would like to put his bill in writing for everyone to read, but it would take "weeks" to do so. If that is so, it must mean that our government still does these things with secretaries, typewriters and stencil paper, and that's a shame. If Senator Baucus' office only had computers and word processing software, I am sure the work could be done much quicker.

I think I can say without controversy that our elected Representatives ought to only vote on legislation that is written and complete. That said, for us citizens, it really doesn't matter whether this bill is written before the vote in the Senate, written after the vote in the Senate, or carved into clay tablets and exhibited to the world from the slopes of Mt. Sinai. This bill, and the Congress for which it stands, are a travesty, an utter travesty.

Pirate Attack!

Pirates off the coast of Somali attacked a French Naval Warship yesterday, mistaking it for a commercial cargo ship. The French crew's response to the attack was delayed by an inability to locate the official white Surrender Flag. By the time the Captain jury-rigged a napkin on a pole, the pirates had returned to their dinghies and roared away into the night.

The French Warship pursued but was only able to catch one of the pirate vessels, at which time the Captain dutifully tendered his surrender to the perplexed Somalis.

Commenting on the mistaken boarding of a Naval Warship, a pirate spokesman said, "It was the eye patches; our men can't see anything at night with those things. I don't know why 19th century pirates ever started wearing them."

via email

The Brain Death of Conservatism

We have another entry into the "conservatism is in trouble" sweepstakes. I have already written here about this exhausting phenomenon in conservative history, but this particular submission departs from the others and offers, I think, much food for thought.

Not least because of its author. Steven Hayward is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an eminent historian of conservatism having just completed the 2nd volume of his excellent work on The Age of Reagan.

Mr. Hayward's point, made in an opinion piece on The Washington Post's Op/Ed page, is as follows:

During the glory days of the conservative movement, from its ascent in the 1960s and '70s to its success in Reagan's era, there was a balance between the intellectuals, such as Buckley or Milton Friedman, and the activists, such as Phyllis Schlafly or Paul Weyrich, the leader of the New Right. The conservative political movement, for all its infighting, has always drawn deeply from the conservative intellectual movement, and this mix of populism and elitism troubled neither side.

Today, however, the conservative movement has been thrown off balance, with the populists dominating and the intellectuals retreating and struggling to come up with new ideas.

It's important to note what Mr. Hayward is not saying here. He is not saying, as most of the shallower critics do, that conservatism is a moribund philosophy, irrelevant to these modern times. However, he is also not allying himself with those, like Peter Wehner, who advance a more sophisticated argument, that the rise of the so-called populists is bad for conservatism and conservative politics and they need to be replaced with people more like Buckley and Friedman.

For Mr. Hayward, the problem is not the populists and their influence over the movement, but that their influence is not balanced, as it used to be, by an equally strong cadre of conservative intellectuals. It was the synergy between the populists and the intellectuals that was so important to the success of conservatism in American politics, and that synergy now appears to be lost.

Mr. Hayward raises an interesting point, and you should read the whole article. However, I do not entirely agree with him.

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I have a minor quibble with his use of the term "populist." Strictly speaking, a populist is a government official, or one running for some government office, who influences and controls large numbers of the "common people" in furtherance of his political goals. As such, the only people he mentions who might arguably be populists are Phyllis Schlafly and Paul Weyrich. But neither one sought a political office per se, but only to lead political movements that would influence those in office.

Mr. Hayward, I think, intends by "populist" to mean "popular," as in people that are well known and influential in the public square.

This points us to the deeper problem with Mr. Hayward's thesis. In fact, its hard to place movement conservatism squarely in either the intellectual or the populist camp. No one is more central to the rise of conservatism than William Buckley, and certainly he moved easily in intellectual circles as the Editor, writer and public face of National Review, a magazine which employed some of the deepest intellects of the early conservative movement. But he was also a prize fighter in the public arena, taking on liberal orthodoxy in whatever media forum he could find, whether in his long-running Firing Line debate TV show, his nationally syndicated newspaper column, or as commentator for national TV networks. In short, he was a very well known public figure who commanded a large following over and above the regular readers of National Review, which is to say, he was a populist.

It also should be remembered that Milton Friedman enjoyed this same kind of dual citizenship as an intellectual (Nobel Prize winner) and populist (appearing on Phil Donohue, as well as PBS in his highly acclaimed series "Free to Choose").

I would submit that our current populists are simply heirs of Mr. Buckley's groundbreaking work in extending the conservative debate from traditional print media into the new media of TV. By its nature, the new media required that any participant establish some sort of personal national persona, and Mr. Buckley forged one of the most memorable and striking persona's of the post War era. In the last 20 years, Rush Limbaugh has done the same, and done it so well that he actually revived an entire spectrum of the non-print media, radio, that before him was considered moribund.

As for the "brains" of conservatism, you still have a robust National Review, The Weekly Standard, Commentary and a host of others, together with that team of talent at the Heritage Foundation and other think-tanks, all of whom are consulted regularly by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the rest, and in turn are promoted by them.

In other words, I don't see an absence of balance in conservatism, I see an extremely effective balance between those who have mastered the new media and those who do the hard intellectual work that supports conservatism's biggest stars.

The Afghanistan Debate

We have a nice debate in conservative circles over Afghanistan strategy going on between Andy McCarthy of NRO, Fred Kagan and others. Be sure and follow the links to the other posts.

In the current post, Andy says,

"A U.S. strategy built on the premise that mainstream Muslims will be won over to our side against their fellow Muslims in an Islamic country is built on wishful thinking. It's not a question of whether Muslims reject the takfiris' extremism. Muslims constantly fight amongst themselves, often with deadly force. The question is whether such infighting means they will prefer us. They won't — certainly not on a mass scale."

His point is that the counterinsurgency strategy proposed by General McChrystal assumes an essential difference between moderate and radical Islam, and that we can therefore gain the support of the moderates in our fight against the radicals. But the fact is, he explains, that neither moderates or radicals like us, and because this ill-will is an essential component of their common religion, they never will like us no matter what we do.

First, let me say how refreshing it is to follow a healthy debate between people with strongly held disagreements. No games, no tricks, no ad hominem to marginalize the opponent. This is the kind of thing "debate" in a free society is supposed to be, an honest attempt to persuade and let the chips fall where they may.

But I have to disagree with Mr. McCarthy. In the first place, everything he says about Afghanistan and Muslims could (and were) said about Iraqi muslims. And yet, in fact, the local indigenous Muslims did side with the U.S. and fight against the al Quaeda insurgency. Are the Shia and Sunni in Iraq not as loyal to the Koran as other Muslims? That, I think, would be a difficult argument to make.

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I think the key is in the title to his post: "If you don't get Islamic Ideology, you don't get the problem in Afghanistan." His point is not really about Islamic Ideology, but any Ideology. Ideologues of whatever stripe, religious or political, are simply not people you can work with very easily. The Iraqi's were Muslims but not ideologues; they were able to perceive their own self-interest and act accordingly, in spite of their religious instinct to hate the infidel Americans.

The whole point of a counterinsurgency strategy is not to win friends and convert the Muslim world to a consumerist Western democracy, but to convince a local population that siding with the infidels is in their own best interests. This worked in Iraq; whether it will work in Afghanistan only time will tell.

For my money, I think it will. In general, history shows that when an entire country is gripped by some ideology, it is not the majority of the people that are ideologues, but only a small group of leaders with inordinate power over the population (cross-reference: Iran). Counterinsurgency is designed to bypass the leadership and go directly to the people in the trenches, living and dying in the misery of war while trying to eak out a living for themselves and their families. Common people in these circumstances, whether Muslim, Christian, Atheist or Agnostic, just do not have the luxury to be as ideological as the ruling classes.

Son of Stimulus

Floating out there around the 15 million unemployed like a malevolent fog are the chattering voices of the political class ruminating over the need for another stimulus. The unemployed (and the employed) have a reason to be a bit anxious about this talk; the first $787 billion, passed with great fanfare in January, has done nothing for employment, unless you count those happy few working at Congressman John Murtha's Airport in Nowhere.

I know, I know, I am now expected to deride Big Government spending and corruption. However, the idea of 15 million of my fellow citizens out of work appalls me, and I think it is time to do something about it.

A $1 trillion stimulus? That's for pantywaists. We need much more than that, much more than the government - even one as big as the United States - can possibly spend. Where are we going to find such huge sums of money as we need? Well, the entire global economy is about $60 trillion. If we could just get 23% of the global economy, $14 trillion worth, to invest just a third of that money into America and American jobs, that would be almost $5 trillion right there.

How can we attract this money? Through a massive Public-Private partnership between the U.S. and the world. Our fearless leaders need to declare America a world "Jobs Zone," and slash regulations and other disincentives to entry into the American market. Free up our oil fields for drilling; super-streamline the approval process for nuclear power plants; fast-track new oil refineries; and rationalize our politicized securities regulation to attract venture capital and new IPO's, and reestablish America as the corporate capital of the world. Oh, and while we're at it, adopt a "strong dollar" approach at the Federal Reserve, to assure the world's capital that investing in America is not the same as investing in Zimbabwe. What will flow will be jobs, jobs and more jobs.

What, you don't think this will attract the world's capital to American shores? Well, since America's economy itself is 23% of the world's economy, that's really not important. America herself can fund all of this and more.

And the beauty of it all is that not one of the things I have mentioned - not one! - will involve the public expenditure of money by government. In fact, drilling for oil will produce massive additional revenues for cash strapped government of all levels, Federal and State, as will the new taxes being paid by all the formerly unemployed.

Jobs, jobs and more jobs, with no deficits! What a concept!

Re: Sports News

Whit, you are correct. However, conservative Jim Geraughty of The Campaign Spot blog on NRO makes an extremely good point that we should all be offended at the sheer disrepect showed our Predident by the corrupt pipsqueaks on the IOC. As he puts it, " I don't care if you guys [the IOC] decided after his pitch he was an arrogant blowhard whose promises come with expiration dates; he's our arrogant blowhard whose promises come with expiration dates. He deserves some @#% respect."

Read his great rant here: http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjM2ZWMyOGIwOWYwZDAwZDEzMGIwZWU5YWU1OTI1Mzg=

Re: Sports News

On a darker note, these things, rightly or wrongly, have consequences. That is why, whatever the situation, the personal involvement and presence of the President is always so carefully stage managed.

President Obama, with great fanfare, flew to Copenhagen on Airforce 1 to bring the Olympic Games to Chicago. It doesn't matter that such a junket was way below any conceivable priority of an American Presidency; he went and therefore put the Presidency's prestige on the table.

And he failed. As they say in sports, a loss is a loss is a loss, whatever the reasons. And the international community, especially those who have no love for our country, will take note and make their plans accordingly.

Via email

Re: Sports News

It's just been reported that the IOC has awarded the 2016 Games to Rio de Janeiro.

That's good. Instead of blaming the Copenhagen fiasco on Bush, the Obama Administration can now just blame it on Rio.

Via email

Sports News

In sports news, Chicago just lost its bid to host the 2016 Olympics. Surprisingly, despite President Obama throwing the prestige of the Presidency behind Chicago's bid by flying to Copenhagen personally to speak to the IOC, Chicago was eliminated in the first round of IOC votes. Three other cities remain under consideration.

Vice President Biden was heard to remark, "We finished just out of the running for the bronze? That's great! Considering that there are thousands of cities in the world, finishing 4th is a testament to the President's amazing charisma.

I can't wait to see what he does in negotiations with Iran."

Re: It's Morning in Blogland

Blog, blab, bleh. Whew. Okay, guys, you got the blog now. I'm taking the rest of the day off.

Paging the New York Times

The Weekly Standard Blog directs us to what might be the closest thing to a Victory in Iraq announcement that we will get from the current Administration.

Somebody needs to notify the mainstream media before they use up all their old Iraq copy from 2007 in their current reporting about Afghanistan.

It's Morning in Blogland

Hey, everybody, look alive. Our September hiatus just blipped on the radar screen of the media conglomerate that owns this blog. One of the junior suits called this week and failed to raise even an answering machine.

Tsk, tsk. You put Archie in charge for a while, and look what happens ...