Major Damage

OK, be forewarned: I am going to delve into some really politically incorrect stuff here, so if you're not up to truth and logic, stop now.

The Army "Major" who shot up Ft Hood has been all over the news this past week, as he should be. I assume most people understand that not all military officers are created equal. This guy was a psychiatrist who clearly went into the miltary to get his education paid for by you and me. The only way the military can attract medical professionals (and I know I'm stretching to put a psychiatrist in that category) is to offer them officer commissions. I have it on reliable authority that they go in as Captains, then automatically make Major within a few years, unless they first kill a bunch of people in a shooting rampage. This is a whole lot faster than your typical 2nd Lieutenant infantry line officer, who might be in 15 years before he makes Major, and who is doing the stuff the military is supposed to do: "killing people and breaking things" as Colin Powell famously said. You wouldn't want one of these medical wonders commanding a company, battalion, or brigade in combat.

And that's just the Army. In the Marines, we used to say that a Marine Captain was the equivalent of an Army General, but let's not go there right now.

I understand that the military is desperate for doctors, etc. Maybe that's why Obama is pushing this ill-advised health care proposal: if (God forbid) it were to somehow pass, doctors would be heading for the exits in droves, and the military would have an instant (and probably cheap) supply. But desperate or not, I guess this guy was pretty out front with his Moslem ideas, what with handing out Islamic propaganda and all; and weren't those security camera images of him prancing around the 7-11 in his white terrorist-like outfit lovely? Maybe he thought it was the 9-11. I assume this wasn't Halloween.

If you read my stuff regularly, you know that hindsight is anathema to me, but hello? I know we wasted a bunch of money educating this ungrateful idiot, and I know we probably really need psychiatrists in Iraq because (apparently) this generation of soldiers is less-able to deal with battlefield stress than were previous ones, but this guy was pretty close to a Trojan Horse, was he not? Guy is a Major of [choose one: a) Palestinian b) Jordanian extraction] in the US Army, is actively proselytizing for Islam, has apprarently been very vocal in his opposition to the war (which he has, also apparently, been very focused on avoiding serving in), including "counseling" returning soldiers on why the war is wrong, has consistently gotten sub-par performation evaluations, and is frolicking about in his Islam outfit (which I guess were his civvies) -- I mean, what could go wrong? This guy was clearly only interested in knowing how to take off and fly, and not how to land. He was a walking, talking IED. And the poor baby was complaining about being harrassed!

And now we're going to be treated to the spectacle of his "vigorous defense" apparently based upon post traumatic stress disorder. As has been pointed out by those paying attention, this joker managed to manipulate things so that he never saw combat, so how does he suffer from PTSD? Sounds like we have a new disorder: pre-combat stress disorder -- the very idea that he might see combat caused him to flip out. Wouldn't that be a fine precedent to set.

One problem we have created for ourselves is bribing people to go into the military for the wrong reasons; ie, to get an education, which applies in this case. I guaran-damn-tee you (that's how the Drill Instructors used to talk in the Marines -- makes me sound tough, huh) that the notion that they might end up in combat is buried in the fine print, while the "College Education" is in 72 pt type. I mean, remember those recruiting ads for the Army -- "be all you can be", which stressed self-actualization? I don't recall it being pointed out that one of the things you can be is dead.

It's like everything else since the 1960's: if we can't get something we want by legitimate means, we mortgage the future to buy it; in this case enticing soldiers to join with a pitch that is likely to get them to join for the wrong reasons, thus causing problems both with them and with recruiting later. I would submit that if there aren't enough volunteers to serve in the military for the right reasons
(you know, that "love of country" stuff), then we ought to just let the chips fall where they do and let people see the consequences of it. Screw it. It's exactly like the causes of the current economic mess: we paper over the shortcuts we took to get what we want, and forget about them until Gene Wilder emerges crying "It's Alive, ALLLIIIIIIVE!!".

Now, I understand that we apparently have thousands of Moslems serving in the US military, but here's the question: are we sufficiently desperate to make the recruiting goals that we are willing to risk the damage that a few of these types of guys can do? How many more of them, with fewer red flags than this guy, are out there right now? Remember the Moslem US soldier in Kuwait a few years ago who tossed a grenade into the officers' tent? There have been a number of other incidents, the details of which I don't have on hand at the moment, all with one common theme: they were committed by Moslems against the war. Toyota is now going to have its kimono sued off because one Toyota (masquerading as a Lexus so the Japanese could compete with the Germans), out of millions sold, managed to get the floor mat wedged under the accelerator, causing the car to hit what, for the occupants, was terminal velocity. It's not at all even clear that it was Toyota's fault, but it's going to cost them a fortune to defend. And the US military apparently can't do anything after repeated evidence of a problem?

Which brings me to the WW 2 Japanese Internment Camps: as anyone who has studied it knows, these camps were set up because, in the months leading up to 12/7/41, US cryptanalysts (for you Obama voters, these are code breakers, not ghouls who examine crypts) had broken the Japanese JN-25 (naval) and Purple (diplomatic) codes sufficiently to be pretty certain that the Japanese had been setting up cells on the West Coast to sabotage the high concentration of defense plants there. What? You didn't hear this from the media? The media who knows about as much about the military and military history as I do about brain surgery? My father was one of these guys (translator/code breaker), and I know whereof I speak . . . which I do elsewhere on this Blog.

In the bleak days of early 1942, when everything was going the Axis' way (you will recall that Rommel was still running all over North Africa, Manstein, Paulus, von Bock and the boys still looked pretty invincible in Russia, and Tojo, Yamamoto, and Nagumo were having their way with the ABDA Command in SE Asia -- I mean, nothing was going right for the Allies), and when Japan had just done the "impossible" by attacking Pearl Harbor, the niceities of individual consideration of the loyalties of individual Americans of Japanese descent (some of whom had been recruited for the above-mentioned sabotage rings) were subordinated to the goal of national survival, given the damage that even a few successful attacks could do. Italians and Germans were locked up on the East Coast too, but that's never discussed.

How much damage to military morale and recruiting do you think a few more such incidents will do? Don't you think that many soldiers and Marines are already looking askance at the Moslems in their midst? Maybe Mohammad, next to you in the foxhole, plans to shoot you next time you're alone together. How does that work for "unit cohesion"?

Now obviously we're not going to raid every mosque at prayer time (which seems to be about 5 times a day -- I mean, does anyone work? No wonder the standard of living in Arab countries is so low) and ship them off to Tule Lake; but it is a fact that there was not single known incident of Japanese-American sabotage during the War. It would have been difficult to convince US military intelligence of that in January 1942: the evidence was sufficiently compelling that it simply was not worth running the risk of what a few incidents could do to the defense effort. As with George Bush and Iraq, the correct pre-emptive action was taken based upon the preponderance of evidence and the clear penalty of being wrong, and both have paid the price with those who just don't understand this stuff.

What we are doing now, in the name of political correctness, is essentially appeasement -- can't be too firm or mean with the Moslems or we'll make them mad -- replace Moslem with Hitler and what late 1930's British Prime Minister does that
sound like? How much evidence, how many more actual events, do we need this time?

If Obama is willing to destroy the security and living standard of Americans for the dubious goal of universal health care, is the defense of the country not worth disrupting the lives of a comparative few?

A Few Thoughts on Afghanistan

It appears that we are at a crossroads of sorts in Afghanistan: do we commit more troops as the Obama-appointed commanding General McCrystal requests, or do we fold our tent and "advance to the rear" as we used to say in the Marines.

Once again, we are suffering from an excess of public opinion based upon a deficit of information. The information the public has about this war comes overwhelmingly thru the media who, as I have said many times, is wholly unequipped to report it. I, for one, would have a lot more faith in the information coming from Afghanistan/Iraq if it were coming from someone with even the slightest military background or knowledge; but, as far as I know, there is still not a single reporter over there who has seen the inside of a military uniform. I get into the reasons for this elsewhere on this Blog, but why does it matter?

Well, context, for one. I won't reiterate the list of problems caused by reporters reporting on subjects with which they are wholly unacquainted, or express once again my amazement that the entire US media could not find one single, solitary reporter with any military knowledge to report on what is (hello?) largely a military matter, when they seem to be able to find doctors to report on Swine Flu, money guys to report on the credit crisis, show-biz types to report on the crucial events going on in Tinseltown, exploding breast implants, etc. On the verge of violating my pledge not to reiterate it, I'll stop now.

But context: over this past weekend there were a couple of helicopter crashes in Afghanistan, which resulted in the deaths of, I believe, 14 Americans. This was reported as "the worst one-day casualty rate in over 4 years". In the narrow sense, I don't doubt that. On last night's news there were the predictable interviews conducted by militarily vacuous reporters. One I happened to see was with John Kerry, who was asked if Americans would continue to support the war with "these kinds of casualties" (or something like that). You'd have thought this was Tarawa. The reason, of course, that the media grades this war "on the curve" is that they have absolutely no perspective on how these casualties compare to prior wars. Can we just take a couple of steps back here?

The casualty rate in Afghanistan/Iraq is among the lowest in US history, and certainly the lowest for length and number of troops involved. While every war is different and the Taliban aren't exactly dug in on Monte (Al Akbar) Cassino or Sugarloaf, the casualties in this war have been very low by any historical standard, especially if one amortizes them over the length of it. That would probably be somewhat unfair, since this is a relatively low intensity conflict, probably most analogous to Viet Nam. OK fine: American deaths in Viet Nam were just shy of 60,000. Are we up to 5000 yet in this war, which has been going on longer than Viet Nam, and which is being fought by a volunteer military? If we get to the stage where the public is unwilling to accept casualties among those who volunteered to go in defense of the country, we won't have one.

And can we revisit for just a moment how we became involved in Afghanistan/Iraq (with overwhelming bi-partisan support)? Have that many Americans forgotten 9/11/01? Remember those planes? Remember who planned those attacks and where they were based? Right -- Al Qaeda, sheltered by the Taliban in Afghanistan. I know, I know -- it was all planned and carried out by Bush -- this is a problem with mass communications today: the internet gives voice to nutcases whose rants would not previously have gotten past the padding in their cells, and those not generally paying attention are easily swayed.

So we went in for the right reasons: to clean out Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and destroy Afghanistan as a viable base from which to plan future attacks. From that point of view, it seems to have worked. If there have been any other attacks, please let me know cuz I missed them.

Of course the long-term solution is to get the Afghan Army and economy up to speed, to where such activities are no longer so easy or attractive. Is there anyone out there who doesn't think that's been going on? OK, Nancy Pelosi probably doesn't, but the things Nancy Pelosi doesn't understand could fill a book. There are countless government-sponsored and private efforts throughout the country aimed at providing the younger generation an educational alternative to IED101. And countless schools set up to educate Afghan women for the first time, construction of infrastructure that we take for granted or are unaware of because the media simply doesn't report it, etc, etc.

I am as regretful as anyone over every single American death, but such efforts are the only viable way I can see to turn that country around. It will all be for naught if the US military closes shop and the country reverts to tribal warfare and return of Taliban rule. As I said, this war is most similar to Viet Nam among those the US has fought since its inception, and another similarity is that the media, through inept (or downright hostile) reporting, has largely turned the country against it. During the recent Presidential election, was it not the Obama supporters who were attacking Bush for not having paid enough attention to Afghanistan? Ah, but now that their Boy is in the White House and they're face-to-face with the reality of what commitment to Afghanistan means (more troops), those same air-heads are now calling for US withdrawal from it!

McCrystal is not the first general in history to request more troops. The most famous US example was George B McClellan who, once he had whipped the Army of the Potomac into shape following 2nd Bull Run, could not bring himself to use it, and was constantly badgering Lincoln for more troops. Lincoln finally fired him for inaction and eventually settled upon U S Grant, who was the opposite of McClellan in nearly every respect. Every American officer studies this as an example of the limits of Executive patience.

But the desire for more troops is only natural: if the impending battle/operation ends unsuccessfully, it is not the President or Congress who is going receive primary blame -- it's the commanding general on the spot. Ask Lucas at Anzio, Fredendall at Kasserine Pass, Burnside at Fredericksburg, or even Villeneuve at Trafalgar. It is the rare case where fewer troops are better than more and, at the very least, in the event of defeat, the general can point to his pre-battle request for reinforcements. The exception, of course, is the US Marines, with too many examples of battles won with obsolete equipment and against overwhelming odds to cite here, the best known being General Vandegrift and the boys at Guadalcanal. I was a lousy Marine, but am proud to have been one, nonetheless.

In any case, is not the Commanding General in the field best equipped to estimate his need for troops? The Commanding General that the current Commander in Chief Himself appointed? Hello? So it seems to me that this must be a choice between sending 40K more troops as McCrystal has requested, or pulling out. Surely even Obama wouldn't do anything as dumb as leaving an inadequate force there to serve as nothing so much as a target for RPG's and AK-47's.

One obvious problem we have is that Obama was elected by promising the clueless Left what He had to to get their votes. Now that many of those promises are proving unworkable (gee, what a surprise), those same voters are demonstrating continued cluelessness in not understanding why He hasn't kept them and why the nirvana Obama promised them has not materialized. He cannot afford to lose their support, and so is caught between alienating them further, and doing what is clearly in the interest of the country.

What message is Obama's current dithering sending to the enemy, if not that the US is nearing the end of it's willingness to continue, and they must hold out just a little longer for victory before moving back into the cave to plan new attacks? Unlike some other historians, I like FDR's declaration of "unconditional surrender" terms to the Axis at Casablanca, and his sticking with it, literally to the death.

I'm afraid we are still paying the price for having left Viet Nam without achieving a clear victory. Our enemies (foreign and domestic) know that, given enough perseverance, they can outlast the American public's will to continue; our friends always have that question in the back of their minds -- "should I ally with the US, and what happens when the US pulls out and I am left here with the enemy"; and those who are simply too clueless to understand that there is a price for freedom know that if they put up enough of a ruckus, they can defeat the interests of their own country. I'm sure Jane Fonda is on her way to a cave right now. Once she's arrived, can we just bulldoze the entrance?

Styrofoam Columns Set in Sand

or Why Obama is a One-Term President



Barack Obama was elected largely in reaction to the perceived inadequacies of George W Bush; in other words, He speaks well and gives people the Pablum that goes down easily: world peace, the rosy assumption that the rest of the world "is just like us", be nice to our enemies and they'll be nice in return (such as closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, unilateral disarmament, and disarming the Patriot Act), big government programs so no one has to worry about anything, government management of the country via appointed "Czars", curbing the perceived excesses of corporate management, an approach to appointments where affirmative action trumps ability -- in short, all things that most 6th graders would reflexively agree were good ideas. This is why 6th graders don't vote, but it pretty well describes the Obama voter -- the wide-eyed innocent who can't or hasn't thought through the long-term consequences of what Obama is pushing, with little understanding of how the world works or has worked in the past, or the arrogance to think that He can make it work for the first time in human history.

Obama cannot be re-elected without these people. When He finds (as He is now finding) that the fine-sounding pap He fed them to get elected runs afoul of the real world, and He cannot avoid going back on His campaign promises, these simple creatures will feel betrayed and will turn on Him, as many are now doing. I mean, didn't He say we'd be out of Iraq within some ridiculously short period of time only someone unfamiliar with reality would buy? And damn! Closing the Guantanamo prison has consequences that appear to have been too arcane for the Obama voter. And is it true that His government health insurance scheme won't go into effect until He has left office, thus letting Him lay at the door of His successor the inevitable chaos that will ensue?



As a side note, I love the use of Medicare as an example of how government health insurance has worked. Medicare is the single biggest reason health care costs are so high now. Do we punch another hole in the bottom of the boat to let out the water coming in thru the first one?


Those who had their eyes open during the campaign, who realized He was simply promising what he had to to obtain the votes of those who had no idea what was going on (and probably shouldn't be allowed to vote), will never vote for Him. As the next election draws nearer, Obama will be torn between doing what is clearly the right thing for the country, and saying and doing what will, once again, obtain the votes of those who still don't get it. If He chooses the latter, the disasterous consequences will, by then, be all too apparent. And for his starry -eyed worshippers, enough of those will have become alienated by His unfulfilled promises that he will lose.



There is precedent for this throughout US history: Thomas Jefferson was elected largely because John Adams was perceived as too tough on foreign policy, having almost brought the country to war with France in 1798. As Secretary of State under Adams, Jefferson has opposed any build-up of the navy as provocative and wasteful. In those days, the size of a nation's navy was indicative of it's foreign policy. Just so any Obama voters reading this will understand, building up the Air Force was not really an option at this point. So when the Tripolitan Pirates began attacking US merchant shipping in the Mediterranean (as you recall, the US had voluntarily given up the protection of the Royal Navy), and the pirates wouldn't be nice to us just because we were nice to them, the only effective response was naval (Commodore Bainbridge, Presley O'Bannon, and Stephen Decatur were sent "To the Shores of Tripoli" -- isn't there a song in there somewhere?). Little remembered is that the terms of release of the American seamen still required the payment of $60,000 each to the Dey of Algiers.



The Jefferson Administration had an isolationist undertone to it, and was certainly domestically focused (Louisiana Purchase, Lewis & Clark, etc). The weakness of the Jeffersonian Navy encouraged the impressment of American sailors by the navies of England and France during the first decade of the 19th Century, which led directly to the election of James Madison and American involvement in the Napoleonic Wars, known here as the War of 1812. In Jefferson's defense, the idea at the time was that if England declared war, the US could actually build a navy before the Royal one arrived. To disprove that, see White House burning at right.



But the underlying point is that the foreign policy weakness of the Jefferson navy led directly to US involvement in the War of 1812.



There are other examples of the downside of a weak President, or at least one who, to get elected, caters to the naivete of those with little understanding of how the world works. Remember Jimmy Carter? A very smart guy, but certainly the weakest US President in the 20th Century. The latter half of the 19th Century had some weak Presidents too, but small government was the norm then and the effects were masked.



Carter's approach to foreign policy was based upon the false premise that our enemies operated on the same paradigm that we do, and would honor the agreements we made with them. Also assumed was that if we are just nice to them, they will be nice to us -- hold hands in a circle, pass a joint around, sing a few stanzas of Kumbaya, and everything will be fine. Go ahead and give them what they want, because they've agreed to do what we asked. This is seen as nothing but weakness and stupidity by our enemies who, once they have what they want on this round, have no intention of honoring their end of the agreement, and this perceived weakness got us the Iran Hostage Crisis and Russian invasion of Afghanistan.



Clinton had some Carter in him, as demonstrated by the stupid "Framework Agreement" with North Korea and the equally dumb Kyoto Protocol, which was made even dumber by the implicit and, to be kind, highly dubious assumption that man is causing global warming (see Global Warming Thru the Ages on this Blog).



So Obama is a one term President because being a good speaker only gets you to first base. It's kind of like a Ponzi Scheme, so much in the news lately: it's all great in the beginning, but eventually the cumulative weight of the deceit upon which it is built, causes the whole thing to come crashing down.

More Democrat Hypocrisy

Well now, what have we here? I know it's a shock that the story behind the rush to fill Ted Kennedy's seat hasn't gotten much play in the Democrat-controlled national media, and I hate to sound like another strident voice out there, but honest to Pete, this is small even by Democrat standards:

In 1984, when Massachusetts Senator John Kerry was running for President, there was fear in some quarters that he might actually win. While those actually paying attention feared what a Kerry victory would mean for the country, the Left's biggest fear was that a Kerry victory would leave a Massachusetts Senate seat open. Why a problem? Because Massachusetts, in an uncharacteristic moment of sanity, had elected Republican Mitt Romney as governor, and the fear was that he would appoint [OMG] a Republican to fill the vacancy. So the Massachusetts legislature hurriedly passed a law that any Senate vacancy would be filled by a special election, which would take the power away from the [evil] Republican governor.

Fast forward to now: Massachusetts has returned to form and has a Democrat governor, Deval Patrick. Ted Kennedy expires 40 years late by means other than drowning, and having scandalously escaped spending that time locked up, by which probably the country, and certainly justice, would have been better-served. Oh Joy! Patrick can appoint a Democrat to fill Teddy's seat. But Shazzam! The law the Democrats passed for short-term expediency has now come back to bite them. Drat! I hate when that happens. And right when that vote might be crucial in the rush to shove this Health Care Debacle (or some other ill-considered legislation inimical to the interests of the country) down the public's throat! Can't possibly wait for an election.

Dear oh dear, what to do? Well, in the finest tradition of Massachusetts son Elbridge Gerry (after whose shenanigans the term Gerrymandering was named), the Democrat-controlled legislature is now cynically scrambling to re-manipulate the system, now that their previous cynical manipulation has backfired. They have now re-written the law they re-wrote when convenient before, allowing the governor to immediately fill the vacant Senate seat! I'll bet it comes out that one of them sells Liquid Paper to the State. Gilbert and Sullivan could have written a whole opera around this.

In my book, in the annals of State Legislature Scandals, this is right up there with the [Democrat] California State Legislature absconding with the State Lottery money that was supposed to fund the schools. Anyone have an example of when the Republicans have pulled a stunt like this?

Why Obama's In Trouble

As usual, I don't claim to be that smart or to have the whole answer, but this is sure part of it: I think Obama's has gotten where he is largely courtesy of a constituency that is either a) dumb, b) not paying attention, or c) seeking power on his coattails. I'm not going to say any more about it than that, but it sure is easier to win an election where you simply pander to the gullibilities of your constituency.

Those who win that way then face the dilemma that Obama now does: how do you back away from the clearly unworkable promises made to secure the votes of the aforementioned innocents, while avoiding the tantrums we're now witnessing, when you've already burned your bridges to those who saw thru your cynical campaign charade.

On the subject of dumb constituencies, I occasionally hear cited by race pimps the fact that, in the census of the ante-bellum South blacks were counted as 3/5th of a man. This is brought up to demonstrate to their gullible audience another way that blacks were "kept down". I may as well set this one straight right now (although anyone reading this probably already knows the story): the 3/5 ratio was not the product of racist white southerners trying to devalue blacks; on the contrary, it was devised by northerners at the Constitutional Convention, who were trying to reduce the power of southern plantation owners. In other words, blacks outnumbered whites in the ante-bellum South but, like non-property owners and women, could not vote. If blacks were counted the same as whites, southern states would be over-represented in Congress, giving the South disproportionate power . . . to, among other things, possibly admit more slave-holding states. See what happens when you're blinded by victimhood?

Used to be that only property owners could vote in this country. This was one of Alexander Hamilton's ideas, and its purpose was to combat the reasonably foreseeable situation where votes were obtained by promising the moon to those with little, at the expense of those who would have to pay for them. His idea, borne out by history, is that if everyone were allowed to vote, the majority Have-Nots would invariably vote themselves goodies at the expense of the Haves, ultimately bringing down the whole system. Is not the advent of social welfare programs beginning with FDR (tho with good reasons at the time) and expanded by LBJ (with considerably less justification) a manifestation of that?

Obama appears to love the sound of his own voice. When he speaks in public (I doubt he speaks to Michelle at dinner this way) he seems to be focused on how his words and voice will sound on the future version of "I Can Hear It Now" -- the whole carefully crafted phrase about taking the torch of freedom and "delivering it safely to a new generation" or the whole styrofoam-supported "This is our time, this is our moment" were recent good examples. If this guy thinks he's Lincoln, FDR, or even Reagan, he needs to realize that these guys had earned their way, and their words were backed by a long record of public service and accomplishment, which affects how their speeches were judged by history. You have got to earn your place thru accomplishment before your words are enter the pantheon of Presidential utterances, and Community Organizer followed by a few months as Senator doesn't get it. In other words, Warren Harding was a good looking guy who gave a good speech, but I don't hear them quoted all that often.

So why is Obama in trouble? Because now he's the President of the whole country, including people with whom his old, transparent tactics simply won't wash. Now he's got to answer to people who can actually figure out that government run health care insurance will lead to government intrusion into aspects of our lives, and to government health care deficits not apparent to those unwilling or unable to think about it. And he's got to answer to the people who will end up paying the bill for the societal and fiscal quagmire that this is guaranteed to produce. The smooth, melifluous voice, the dramatic turn of phrase, the skill with a teleprompter, do not fool those who have made it on their own, the type of people who have made this country the envy of the world, and who see the fruits of years of personal initiative and hard work about to be confiscated.

Alexander Hamilton, if you can come back (I can get you Shirley MacLane's number), this would be a good time. But don't tell her why you're coming back -- she's part of the problem.

The only good news in this whole thing is that it will limit the damage Obama can do to just one term.

Nobody Studies History: Part 1

The Left currently has its panties in a bunch over the Right's objections to Obama's national address to elementary school children. I guess Bush I gave a televised speech to schoolchildren in 1991 admonishing them to stay away from drugs and in school. I sure don't remember it but, in any event, that's a lot different than the way this one started out:


Obama's speech definitely wasn't conceived the way it's now being billed. Those that weren't paying attention may not realize that, as originally proposed, part of this speech was a homework assignment where the 4th grader was to write an essay on "how I can help President Obama". In other words, whatever Obama wants is, by definition good, and should be supported. These are elementary age kids, easily influnenced and indoctrinated, and without the capacity to understand where this leads. At best, this is the kind of thing that goes on in 3rd world countries, and comes from the Supreme Leader For Life. At worst, it harkens back to such as the Hitler Youth. The Lefties will scoff at this, as the mere mention of "Hitler" evokes a visceral, knee-jerk reaction, boosted by a general lack of information.

This is where the study of history comes in. I am not a fan of Hitler, on balance, and this is not about Hitler, so don't get me wrong; however, I am a fan of an objective, informed view of history, and the occasional lessons that can be learned from it. I would like to avoid in this country some of the bad stuff that occurred in Germany courtesy of Hitler.

The fact is that, thru most of the 1930's, Hitler was not considered such a bad guy. Given the dire straits Germany was in following Versailles, Hitler straightened things out pretty quickly beginning in 1932 -- built roads, re-built industry, got the economy going, and generally restored to the Germans a sense of national pride. In this environment, it was easy to build a cult of personality.

Those unschooled in the history of the period focus simply on the bad stuff, much of which they impute to this period from Hitler's later actions. If you don't want to take my word for it and think the world was united in its condemnation of Hitler, it's just not true. For a quick and dirty indication, name one country that boycotted the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Not one did. In fact, 12 more countries attended than was the case with the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.

One of the things one learns thru the study of history is that the crystal ball has yet to be perfected. Those who think it has will condemn Kimmel and Short at Pearl Harbor, Lee at Gettysburg, the Big Four at Versailles, Cornwallis at Yorktown, Paulus at Stalingrad, Nagumo at Midway, etc, for not making full use of it. The lesson here is that, once the unfavorable result is known, it is easy to find fault with the decisions that led to it, even tho they may have been the logical ones at the time. Same thing with Hitler: much of what Hitler was doing to re-build Germany during the Depression was similar to what FDR was doing in the US. Sure, there were signs of racism, but that was true all over the world. "Oh, but Mein Kampf laid it all out" -- yeah, yeah, yeah -- how many books detailing evil stuff have been written and never acted upon?

Notwithstanding their convenient post-defeat denials and the lionization of a few dissidents at the expense of perspective and context, the vast majority of Germans were wildly supportive of Hitler (at least until the War began turning in 1944), and membership in such as the Hitler Youth was a badge of honor. Germans were encouraged to pledge their loyalty to Hitler first, Deutschland second. The salute "Heil Hitler" was not by chance; note that it wasn't "Heil Deutschland". Obama and his supporters would do well to remember that Obama simply occupies, for now, the office of President. He is not the Office. There are many examples currently and throughout history of leaders who confused themselves with the office -- Mao Tse Tung, Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Emperor Hirohito, Vlad Dracula, etc. None of the countries they led are places the US should model itself on.

Back to Obama's address: when the "essay" thing came to light, the White House immediately revised the assignment to something like "why kids should stay in school", which no one could possibly dispute, right? Well, I could, but that's for later. The point is that the mainstream media, big Obama supporters and, by all on-air evidence, absolutely bereft of all but the most superficial knowledge of history, quickly buried the original agenda, and are spinning the current controversy to make conservatives look silly. Such as David Gergen actually pretend not to know "what the fuss is all about", and the news readers go right along.

Obama (and his supporters) would do well to remember that roughly half the country (the half that's paying attention) doesn't trust him. I mean seriously, when Nancy Pelosi is your Head Cheerleader, you've got problems. As I said during the election, Obama is an empty suit that speaks well. The Health Care thing has clearly demonstrated that Obama thinks that more government is the solution for society's ills. That approach is not what caused this country to become the envy of the world and that, in combination with what looks like an attempt to build an Obama personality cult beginning in 1st grade, has thankfully got the attention of those whose historical knowledge goes further back than the day they were born.

Health Care

Any of you that know me know that I am not an expert on most things, and certainly not on health care. I also don't find a lot of fault with what Obama has been doing domestically (internationally he's a little too close to Carteresque naivete for me), notwithstanding the continual rants of partisan talk show hosts and right-wingnuts who reflexively aren't going to like anything he does. But the threatened government take-over of health care is a problem, and I have a few thoughts from the trenches:


The Learning Channel has some interesting programs. Among them are ones that deal with people with different physical maladies (dwarfism, weird and uncommon deformities, etc). For whatever reason, a very high proportion of them are from either Great Britain, New Zealand, or Australia. How do I know this? By the accents. Anyone who watches these programs regularly and pays attention can't help but notice that part of the misery of the people with these issues is the inordinate wait they must endure for treatment. For example, one of the common risks associated with many forms of dwarfism is potentially fatal brain aneurisms. In order to assess the risk to any specific patient, an MRI must apparently be performed. However, one cannot obtain an MRI until one's condition has been officially diagnosed. So the parents of these children are kept waiting for years while the child could die any minute from an aneurism.

What do all these places have in common? Government-run health care, or at least government involvement in health care to the extent that it dominates the system. What else do they have in common? They're all waiting to fly to the United States to see an expert or to be treated. These experts are always in the US -- never in Britain, never in France, never in Germany. Here we see the real-world implications of letting bureaucratic bean counters make life and death medical decisions. The contrast with those patients in the United States is striking -- never is the issue raised that the child is waiting for anything due to any cause other than geography. I'm sure money must be an issue sometimes, but it's never cited. Normally I'm skeptical of anecdotal evidence such as this, but when it comes from such a lefty operation as TLC, you'd expect a case to be made for government-run health care simply via programming, if there was a case. I'm pretty sure no one connected with the program understands what an indictment of government-run health care it is.


Which brings us to cost. If you go back to the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson, which is when government meddling in all our lives took a quantum leap, you can trace the increase in health care costs directly to the passing of Medicare and similar government healthcare programs. Just as with $1000 toilets seats and $500 hammers, there is little sensitivity to cost on the part of the massive bureaucracy overseeing these programs. After all, they're spending other people's money -- those "other people" would be you, by the way. And once health care became sufficiently expensive due largely to cost insensitivity by this third party payor, everyone began to need health insurance. Now, unless you're destitute (or here illegally) and have nothing to lose, you must have health insurance lest some unforeseen medical problem leave you penniless.

So what is the proposed solution to the problem caused primarily by government meddling? Why, more government meddling, of course.

So let's look at the worst case scenario and assume this thing passes: do those pushing this not realize that, given all the things that are periodically rumored to have deliterious health effects (smoking, eating red meat, drinking iced tea, going in the sunshine, participating in sports, being alive), that it will not be long before the government is telling you what you can eat and do? "Mr Graham, you're over zee Government approved veight. You haf 90 days to bring your veight vivin Government Guidelinez or ve'll haf to vrefer zis to zee Veight Gestapo". I can just hear it now. Government-run health insurance is the avenue by which the Federal Government will invade every aspect of our lives.


And how is this system going to save money? One way is by capping doctors' salaries. Back to the TLC programs -- why is it that the world-renowned experts are always in the United States? Might it not be that the best and brightest of other countries either go into other fields or emigrate to the US where the opportunites are greater? This is socialism, pure and simple: rather than allow the free market set the value of various health care services, a necessary by-product being that medical care will be unequal as a function of economic status, reduce all care to some mediocre level so that it will be fair (albeit inferior) to everyone. Given that reducing cost is a primary goal and the thing is going to be run by the government, would this not be a good time to deny treatment to people here illegally? But noooooo. My understanding is that illegals will be welcomed along with those here legitimately.

Maybe, just maybe the health care system in the US, with all its warts, is as good as it gets. Again, I'm no expert, but I just have the feeling that many of those pushing this think we can have the benefits of government control over (theoretically reduced) costs without paying the price of long waits and diminished care. There's no free lunch. Where's Will Rogers when we need him.

So now Obama's poll numbers are plummeting, partially the normal descent from the initial orgasmic (largely brainless) euphoria over all he supposedly represents, but I'm sure also partially due to his pushing this boondoggle. He, of course, claims not to be concerned about it. Well now, ain't that interesting? When Bush's numbers plummeted and Bush said the same thing, Obama's reply was that Bush was out of touch with the American public and didn't care what they thought.

One of the pithier observations I've heard recently (and I can't recall who said it) was in response to Obama's comment that he wanted Obamacare to pay doctors on the quality of their work, not on the quantity; the comment was that it's a good thing for Obama that, in the recent Presidential election, the results were based upon the quantity of voters, not their quality. I love it.

"These Are Unusually Perilous Times"

Please. No, they are not.

Every generation thinks they live in unprecedentedly "perilous times". Remember the bucolic 1950's? Ozzie & Harriet, Mickey Mouse, Howdy Doody, Elvis, and all that innocence? That's not what people thought at the time! It was "head for the bomb shelter and duck and cover" 'cuz them Ruskies could be sending a nuclear bomb over any minute. Not to mention polio and a bunch of other disesases since eradicated. We now know that none of that happened, and so are free to daydream about only the good stuff.

And weren't the 1960's nostalgic and cute? The Beatles, Beach Boys, Rat Pack, and those innocent anti-war protestors in their tie-dyed outfits? Are you kidding me? A prevailing fear was of a Communist takeover instigated by those very protestors . . . some of whom were running the country in the 1990's and one of whom is buds with the current CIC. In retrospect, it was during this time that the country began to lose sight of what had made it the envy of the world. The rise of Conservatism and the Christian Right were largely a reaction to this -- conservatives retained the values that had made the country great, while liberals, ungrounded in anything that occurred before they were born and recently off the commune minus a bunch of brain cells, veered into all sorts of dead ends: experimental drugs, transcendentalism, pacifism, me-ism, elimination of poverty, pursuit of their idea of societal perfection, World Peace, and all sorts of other fruitless pursuits the futility of which, had they the least understanding of history, would have been apparent, and would have saved the rest of us all sorts of aggravation.

And the 1970's -- disco, leisure suits, hot pants, bell-bottoms, Malaise. Of course, at the time we weren't sure the country would survive Watergate, Nixion "expanding the war", the severe (at the time) recession of 1974-7, rampant inflation, 18% interest rates, and higher gas prices than today in constant dollars Actually, I wasn't sure we'd survive Carter or disco.

And the 1980's when the economy boomed, hair was big and inflation was small, and the Baby Boomers really came into their own. The Baby Boomers, who had been spoiled by their parents' attempt to give them the childhood the parents never had during the Depression, and who thought they were "special" and had everything figured out, with a sort of amoral "if it feels good, do it" mentality. Heck, the lefties spent the most of the decade worrying that Reagan was going to start WW 3, that is until it became clear even to them that his "negotiation thru strength" policy was a whole lot better than Carter's Group Hug one.

And, flipping the switch on the Way Back Machine, wouldn't it have been great to be alive during the Renaissance? Poets eating grapes and cooing to beautiful damsels by the River Bourne, Renaissance music echoing thru them stone cathedrals, knights slaying dragons and rescuing damsels from liscivious poets, Prince Henry the Navigator launching the Age of Exploration. Sure, and you were lucky to live to 40, the cities were like sewers (literally), wars were incessant, and 2% of the population had all the money -- chances are you'd have been living at a subsistence level. Remember that history, prior to the 19th Century, was written by and about the upper classes, largely because they were the only ones that could read and write, other than the occasional monk, lest you bring up Bede. There is very little in the surviving record that directly addresses the condition of the vast majority of people, so we tend to get a rosier picture than was reality.

Anyway, one big reason people think the "good old days" seem gooder than they were at the time, is because we now know how the "perilous times" in which they thought they lived turned out. The crystal ball still has not been perfected, so they didn't, and we don't.

At some point in the not-too-distant-future, these days will be the "good old" ones because we will know how the current economic mess and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan turned out, George W Bush will have replaced James K Polk among the Top 10 Presidents, Obama will be a distant and painful lesson in the dangers of naivete in the White House (kind of like Carter is now), and of the pursuit of societal perfection beyond the point of diminishing returns, and we'll have some new series of seemingly insoluable problems that make the current ones seem less serious.

Everyone's a Hero

Hero: a person of exceptional courage.

I'm as big a supporter of recognizing extraordinary deeds as anyone, and I understand the pressure to honor World War 2 veterans while they're still around to appreciate it. However, it sure can get out of hand.

In the news lately is a move afoot to give some sort of medal to the WASP's. Who were the WASP's? The Women's Airforce Service Pilots was an adjunct of the Army Air Corps during World War 2 which enlisted women to, basically, ferry newly completed planes from their place of manufacture to embarkation ports for shipment to the fighting fronts overseas. Occasionally it required such hazardous assignments as towing target drones, but this was duty only marginally more hazardous than working in a defense plant Stateside.

Reports in the press (who has little understanding of the subject) make it sound like these women were in combat and their heroic deeds have gone unrecognized due to sexism, George W Bush (isn't everything his fault?), or whatever. It kind of reminds me of stories about illegal aliens in the press -- moaning and wailing about how these poor "immigrants" (the fact that they're illegal is never pointed out) are discriminated against because they don't have health care, their unemployment rate is high, they're living 4 to a room, or whatever. Or the Japanese-American internment camps during World War 2 (see my article on this Blog below). The whole story is never told -- only that portion of it that makes the most sensational, heart-wrenching story.

But back to the WASP's: everyone can't be a hero, by definition, including by the definition above. "Exceptional courage" means the deeds were exceptional; ie, they were the exception, and therefore not the norm. Many people did their part during World War 2 -- in too many areas to list here. The danger we run by over-applying the term is what I call "label inflation": if the term "hero" is applied to too many people, it loses its meaning.

These days the press, most of whom, I'm sure, feeling collective guilt at not having served in the military when it was their time (think about it -- name one person in the mainstream press who has ever served in the military), apparently seek to assuage that guilt by conferring the term "hero" on anyone in the military. So what does this make guys like John Basilone, Jackson Pharris, Alvin York, or Walt Ehlers? With regard to the press, I do think that symtomatic of the problem is that I doubt any of them have ever heard of any of these guys. To help anyone in the press out, I've created links. Their pictures appear in order below:



So, please be selective when applying the term "hero" and handing out medals. The guy who took out a Company of maniacially charging Japanese at Guadalcanal, risked his life to go below during the Pearl Harbor attack and counter-flood the USS California so it wouldn't end up like USS Oklahoma, captured 132 proud members of the Wehrmacht, or scaled Pointe-du-Hoc at Normandy under German crossfire, respectively, don't need the true valor of their deeds diluted by conferring the term "Hero" on those who flew airplanes domestically.

Obama At Annapolis

Yesterday at the Naval Academy graduation, Obama said the following:

"I will only send you into harm's way when it is absolutely necessary, and with the strategy, the well-defined goals, the equipment and the support that you need to get the job done," the president told more than 1,000 graduates during a sun-splashed ceremony at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay.

Is that a fact. You're killin' me here, Mr President. This sort of pandering must have been insulting to those Midshipmen whose knowledge of US wars throughout our history no doubt far exceeds your own. I have a news flash: This is no longer the Presidential campaign, and your audience no longer consists solely of left-wing, obsequious lap dogs, but now contains people who actually know something about history (which is why they're not liberals).

NEWS FLASH: you fight the wars you must, when you must, with the military and supplies you have at the time. You don't know who your enemy is going to be, or what his capabilities will be, in time to re-configure the military appropriately before action is required. This is why the military is "always prepared to fight the last war". Obama's perfect world (where everyone has free health care, no one is living in poverty, ancient enemies are hugging) and where we get to pick when, where, and how we fight our wars simply has never, and will never, exist.

The only US wars I can think of where we were prepared going in were the Indian Wars throughout the 19th Century and the Spanish-American War. In both those cases the "enemy" was so overmatched that not much else mattered. But even in the Spanish-American war, the Spanish Mauser (magazine-fed, rapid-fire with smokeless powder) was a clearly superior weapon to the American single-shot Springfield Trapdoor using black powder, or even to the Krag-Jorgenson carried by Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders. Heck, we hadn't had a war since 1865 and we had plenty of time to tweak our troops, equipment, etc. And why hadn't anyone thought to build the Panama Canal beforehand, so the USS Oregon didn't have to steam all the way from Seattle and around the Cape to reach Cuba? But stuff happens: Maine blows up (Spanish didn't do it, as it turned out. We can talk about the wisdom of storing coal in enclosed spaces in a humid climate some other time), and Bang! We're at war.

"Strategy and well-defined goals"? Let's take the first war: The American Revolution. Heck, we didn't even have an army or navy when declaring war on the major superpower in the world at the time. Strategy? Who had time for strategy when every other musket took a different type of ammunition, the troops couldn't even march in formation (very important on the battlefield in those days), and there was not even an Army infrastructure? There was a shortage of everything from uniforms, transport, weapons, and trained troops. And other than independence (which half the country was against) we didn't have a goal or a plan as to how we were going to achieve it. In about a hundred years Helmuth von Moltke the Elder would state the universal truth that any military man would instantly recognize: "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy". So, even if you go in prepared and with what you think is clearly defined plan and goals, all are subject to rapid change when hostilities commence.

The Barbary Pirates (1802): Having recently voluntarily given up the protection of the Royal Navy, American merchant ships were now the fat targets of pirates operating out of North Africa. What does Obama think (if he's even familiar with it, which I doubt), we just sent a fleet over there with Johnny Depp acting as informant, and took care of it? Ask Commodore William Bainbridge how tough it was to fight oared pirate galleys within the confines of Tripoli Harbor with ocean-going warships like the 36-gun frigate Philadelphia. If Obama had been President, I'm sure we would have known this and taken a fleet of galleys. It took Stephen Decatur and a good chunk of the US naval strength at the time, along with Marine Lt Presley O'Bannon, who recruited some fierce Georgian warriors called Mameluks, to subdue the Dey of Algiers.

OK, I could go thru all the wars, but I'll spare you: 1812, the Civil War, World Wars 1 and 2, Korea, Viet Nam and, of course, the favorite of the uninformed Left: Iraq. In all cases we ran into unforeseeable situations for which our training, equipment, and strategy were inadequate. I wonder if Obama's ever heard of Tarawa, Pelilieu, Battle of Santa Cruz, Kasserine Pass, and I'm sure if Obama had been President during WW 2, we'd have been totally prepared for them Kamikaze's. Why, we'd have "up-armored" every ship in the 5th Fleet!

I'm sure Obama is the smartest President in American history, but the bottom line is that never in US history did we go into a war with "the strategy, the well-defined goals, the equipment and the support that you need to get the job done". We might have thought we did going in, but back to Moltke. And we always thought the war we were about to declare was "absolutely necessary". You don't get to pick the timing of your wars, which makes Obama's dream list just that. Only someone without an understanding of past wars would think it was possible to do as Obama promised the midshipmen. It must have been unsettling to them that their Commander in Chief was either so uninformed about history, or thought they were.

Global Warming (thru the ages)

I hate to waste time on this, but since it's currently fashionable to believe that man is causing global warming, I just can't help putting it to the "historical perspective" test. I am no scientist, and I'm not even going to get into the vested interests of a whole bunch of people who are riding the government gravy train "studying" this. All that aside, it fails the common sense test on several levels. There seem to be a lot of people who just take it as received wisdom without thinking about it -- same process that would lead one to vote for Obama in the last election, I suppose . . . probably many of the same people . . . but I digress. There is probably enough hot air on the subject coming out of Al Gore and those "experts" in Hollywood to have a measurable effect on the climate.

The whole thing reminds me of the Duke Lacrosse affair. The police zero in on the suspects, basically exclude all others, and find every piece of evidence that they did it. CO2 contributes to Global Warming, human activity emits CO2, ergo, man is responsible for Global Warming.

Straying into the science end of it about as far as I dare, it seems to me that the mistake the proponents of man-caused global warming are making (either honestly or because they figure they can slip it past most of us) is that the effect of carbon particulates emitted into the atmosphere is a logarithmic one; in other words (and this is just an example), if the amount of CO2 emitted doubled, the effect upon temperature might be 1/10th of 1%. Absent an understanding of this relationship, the average person would likely assume far more dire consequences.

But forget all that. As everyone knows, the Earth has warmed and cooled many times since at least 18,000 years ago. Take the Ice Age (please): had the Earth not warmed, thus ending the Ice Age, we'd still be in it. I know a lot of young people these days think history began the day they were born, so I should probably point out that the "carbon footprint" of human beings was pretty minimal 18,000 years ago. They were, along with other living things, breathing out (gasp) CO2, which I am sure comes as a shock to the Global Warming adherents; and there were, of course, those nasty fires used to barbecue Mastadon steaks and keep sabre tooth tigers away. And I'm sure Fred and Wilma were not as diligent as they might have been getting the Flintmobile smog checked -- they just took it for . . . granite.

Still with me after that one?

If anyone can help me understand how humans caused the end of the Ice Age, I'm listening. If not, must it not have been caused by something other than human activity? I mean, we have two choices here: human or not human (same choices we have with Al Gore). Maybe there are banner headlines chisled on stone tablets yet to be discovered screaming "Glaciers Retreat -- Lake Michigan Revealed!" with the sub-head: "Campfires and Baked Beans Banned".

Warming/cooling cycles seem to occur about every 1000 years, and the mechanisms that cause them are far from perfectly understood. The most recent cooling cycle began around 1100 AD, and is known today as the Little Ice Age. If William the Conqueror had understood this better, he might have waited to walk across the Channel. Temperatures reached their nadir in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Crops failed and wild animals invaded cities looking for food, including rats carrying Bubonic Plague. Even the Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus couldn't stand it, fired up their army and navy, put on the sunscreen and headed south, invading relatively toasty Europe. You will notice that I'm skipping all the cycles between 18,000 years ago and 1100 AD. If anyone has compelling evidence that humans caused any of the warming or cooling cycles in between, I'm sure the world would love to hear it.

So the cool period (and it was really a cool period -- a bunch of lovely castles were built, you had the Renaissance -- too cold for Da Vinci to go outside so he had to stay in painting and inventing -- you had all them neat little wars in Europe, Stradivari and Guarnieri unwittingly benefitting from centuries of cold weather in northern Italy that produced very dense wood that is now thought to account for the wonderful sound of their stringed instruments) . . . anyway, so the cool period that began around 1100 began turning around about 1850. Now, does anyone want to make the case that the Industrial Revolution had been spewing out pollution prior to 1850 on a scale sufficient to cause the onset of Global Warming? I'm listening.

You will notice, just based upon the cyclical evidence, that we're pretty close to the end of this warming cycle. This is why Al Gore rushed his book into print -- so he could take credit for Global Cooling if it's inevitable onset should happen to begin during his lifetime.

So I'm done with Global Warming just on that level. But, as an amateur historian, I have another problem with it. Throughout history, science has always thought they had more answers than, as it turned out, they actually did. There are too many examples to cite, but you couldn't have convinced Ptolemy that the Earth was not the center of the Universe and was not flat; Bubonic Plague was caused by "bad air" don'tchya know; the crossbow was such a terrible weapon that it would certainly end warfare; for over a thousand years "bloodletting" was standard medical treatment for all sorts of stuff; witches were blamed for all sorts of bad stuff whenever convenient; in the 19th Century travel faster than 30 mph would result in death and man would never fly; and the Maxim Gun (forerunner of the machine gun) would end warfare, since the crossbow, the arquebus, wheelock, and flintlock hadn't; and airplanes will never be able to sink capital ships . . . OK, only when they're anchored . . . at least until 12/10/41 when the Japanese proved otherwise off Malaysia . . . OK fine, capital ships don't stand a chance against airplanes; and the director of the US Patent Office famously recommended about 1900 that his office be abolished as everything that could be invented had been.

The point is that, at any point in human history, science is more advanced than at any time in the recorded past. I say "recorded" because a lot of stuff was lost from about 50 BC thru the Barbarian Invasions (it would have helped if Caesar hadn't burned the Library of Alexandria (thus creating more carbon emissions), but war is hell (that was W T Sherman, by the way, not Patton) -- rumor has it that Caesar had overdue books and big fines). There is, therefore, a natural tendency to think that we have more stuff figured out than, as we find out later, we actually did. After all, in 1855 the naval Parrott rifle is about as good as it gets, and them silly Romans were hurling stones! I'm sure the Europeans were happy when Columbus discovered that China was much closer than previously thought . . . but them "Chinese" didn't dress like Marco Polo's drawings, there wasn't a single Take-out, and the crew still had to do their own laundry. Obviously Columbus was Khanned. I got hundreds of 'em. I'll be here all week.

Given the Earth's history of warming and cooling continually over the past 18,000 or so years (at least), and given the unwarranted hubris of science thru the ages, what kind of arrogance must we now have to believe that we are suddenly the cause of something that has gone on since, oh I don't know, God said "Let there be light"? Let's even agree that CO2 emissions cause Global Warming. CO2 is emitted from all sorts of things and has been since the Big Bang.

So what? What's the harm in reducing our "carbon footprint", you may say. Well, if you don't mind a serious reduction in your standard of living while we chase imaginary solutions to insoluable "problems" that have been around since Adam & Eve, while Third World countries, not yet sufficiently self-absorbed and comfy that they can afford to cut their emissions (that would be China), spew out everything imaginable, I don't suppose there's any harm. Let jobs continue to be lost to China, with its lower production costs helped out by factories burning whatever makes the most economic sense; we can sit in our cave, smugly superior in the knowledge that we are better (albeit Stone Age) people.

Me, I'm going into the overcoat business.

California Propositions 1A thru 1F

It pains me to write this. My father, Cliff Graham, was one of the founders of the Palos Verdes School District, served on the School Board during the '60's and '70's, and I attended from kindergarten thru Rolling Hills High Class of '66. But like a lot of people, I've pretty much had it with the continual ballot measures to raise money, and here's why:


In 1984 the State Lottery was sold to the public as the panacea for school funding problems. The pitch was that the schools would get all that additional money, which could only be used for "educational purposes", meaning not for facilities. Everyone voted for it on that basis.

When it passed, the State Legislature immediately and cynically (and clearly contrary to the intent of the voters) removed the money that was then being spent on schools and replaced it with the Lottery income. Who knows where the former school funds went, but it wasn't to the schools. I'm sure this is a major reason there have been constant complaints about school facilities falling into disrepair since then -- none of that Lottery money could be used for upkeep, and the former money was spent elsewhere.


This kind of subversion of the will of the voters by their elected representatives should not happen in this country. The sleazy sleight of hand and arrogant disregard on the part of those entrusted to look out for our interests, will erode the voters' trust in the entire system. Every time there is a bond or other form of tax increase to solve some funding crisis with the schools (and it's always sold as a crisis), I can't help wondering what will actually happen to the money once it arrives in Sacramento. So you will pardon me (and apparently a majority of California voters) if I can't get too excited about voting for Propositions 1A thru 1F. I'm sure those in Sacramento will find a way to ignore any spending caps, pay caps, or other provisions put in there to make it attractive. They're going to have to regain the trust of the voters before asking them for more money.

A Non-Partisan View Of Partisanship

I'm sure everyone is as tired as I am of the climate of narrow partisanship that has existed in Washington since, it seems, sometime shortly after Clinton's first in-office affair. It just seems, even in the face of the serious issues we face today, that Congress cannot break out of the pattern of petty partisan bickering. The current poster child is the sorry excuse for a Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

First of all, it is clear from nearly all her public utterances that she views her job first and foremost as making the Republicans look as bad as possible. Like most people, my exposure to her is limited to what the media allows, but given their overwhelming left-lean, I assume we're seeing her at her best. It just seems like everything this woman says contains some petty dig at the other party, blaming them for everything from the Bubonic Plague to Global Warming. She is the female version of the back-alley thug. I also see no indication that she has the least comprehension of the current financial mess. I mean, this chick is dumber than dirt. I may have missed one, but all I have heard are the most general platitudes and barely coherent statements on the subject, uttered thru a Botox-induced mask. Heck, if they were looking for a hard-line partisan, why didn't they just put Rahm Emmanuel in -- at least he's more likely to grasp the important problems that face the country.

But let's be fair (stick with me here): in the days leading up to Gulf War II, the preponderance of evidence was that Saddam had WMD. I'm sorry, but if you didn't think so at the time, you probably also thought OJ was innocent. The potential consequences of continuing to be jerked around by Saddam were not pleasant, and everyone who saw the evidence agreed that something had to be done, and pretty soon. Since everything else had been tried during the 12 years since the first attempt, invasion to take out Saddam and find the WMD's was the last resort. Fast forward to 2005 and thru the last Presidential election, and the hindsight-filled, strident partisan carping was incessant, and completely illogical in view of the fact that nearly all Democrats had signed onto the War.

Fast forward again to today: when it became clear that the current financial mess had the potential to shove the economy over the cliff, pretty much everyone agreed that something, anything had to be done (if for no other reason than appearance), and the sooner the better. After all, those who had studied it knew that the Hands Off approach hadn't worked that well for Herbert Hoover. Not everyone agreed with the current President's approach but, like it or not, he won, and there was a general sense that the country couldn't afford partisan gridlock at this critical juncture. So, again like it or not, the Stimulus Package was passed. If nothing else, this gave people the sense that Washington was doing something to address what was threatening to be a catastrophe. Yes, no Republicans voted for it, but they also knew it would pass without them, so they got to make a statement without the risk.

Now what we have, it seems to me, is disingenuous partisan carping from the Right (both Republican Congressional leaders and major talk shows) complaining, completely out of context, that Obama's budget will drive the budget deficit to triple what it was under Bush, or whatever the distressing numbers are. OK, that may be true (my calculator doesn't have that many digits), but a huge portion of that is to finance an attempt to keep the country from sliding into another Great Depression, whether you agree with the approach or not. Sure, we don't have the money and yes, we're saddling our progeny with debt, but what are the alternatives? What will our children (yours -- I don't have any) think if we do nothing and leave them with an economic wasteland that could last decades? As I have profoundly pointed out before, none of us has a crystal ball, but in my humble, non-economist opinion, I'd rather see Washington doing something than nothing, if for no other reason than the sense of security it conveys, which might boost public confidence enough to get people to spend a little money, which is how we will be pulled out of this.

I wonder how much we could save by cutting off all benefits to illegal aliens, who have now apparently added Swine Flu to what they bring to the country? It would probably be a drop in the old bucket, but it sure would make a lot of sense. That, and channeling Draco for ideas to punish employers for hiring them, in my still humble opinion, is the answer. Border patrol is nice, but does anyone remember the Maginot Line? But that's a subject for another rant.