Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Happy New Year!

Well we had a nice little warm-up there over the last couple of months but the real game begins in a few short weeks. On January 20th we take the field for the battle of ideas and the real fight begins.

Should be fun...

As a better man than I once said... "Let's Roll!"

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Headline on Drudge...

"MAG: OBAMA COULD DECRIMINALIZE POT"

Really, dude? Is that what you think the first black President ought to be remembered for? Seriously. Look... on the brink of 2009, it ain't the white man holding down African-Americans... it's drugs holding down African-Americans. And that's a fact. Every single achievement gap that exists between white and black Americans can be traced back to narcotics... do you REALLY want Americans to look back and say the first African-American President spent his time trying to find ways to make it easier for people to do drugs?

There's another consideration as well. You've got a whole generation of young black Americans who have found a hero, somone to look up to, in our new President... an awful lot of our young people are going to look to Obama as an example of how they should live their lives. Is sending the message that smoking pot is somehow OK by Obama really the right thing to do for all those impressionable young people?

This an important moment Mr. President... maybe we should try to think a little bigger, huh?

UPDATE: And yes, I'm one of those old-fashioned dorks who thinks it's a bad idea for government to tacitly encourage drug use by proclaiming that Marijuana should not be illegal. Call me a prude if you must, but I know too many pot-smokers to ever be convinced that this is a good idea.

I would be happy to ignore Bill Ayers... if only he'd just go away.

But he won't. And since the New York Times happily gave him an opportunity to rewrite his own sordid terrorist history without comment or rebuttal, we should all try to pass along this rebuttal by the FBI informant who infiltrated Ayers' Weather Underground, which was rejected by the same New York Times editorial board. Send it to at least one person you know... maybe we'll eventually distribute it to the same number of people who read the original NYT op-ed (which gets easier and easier to do with each passing day and each new NYT cancellation).

Here's a taste:

"Billy goes on about how the Weather Underground came into existence because “peaceful protests had failed” and “after an accidental explosion killed three comrades.” The explosion of the townhouse in Greenwich Village was the result of a bomb factory which was preparing bombs containing roofing nails for use at a Fort Dix enlisted club. The inclusion of roofing nails can have but one purpose and that’s to injure or kill people. Prior to this event Bill’s wife, Bernardine Dorhn, placed a bomb of the same design at the Park Police Station in San Francisco and killed Officer McDonnell. Additionally, I was still inside the Weather Underground when the townhouse blew up and the commitment to sabotage and terrorism had already been established and the purpose was the overthrow of the United States government."

Lovely.

Monday, December 22, 2008

And... this is a good thing, how!?

"Forget Illinois: California is poised to be the top dog in Obama-era Washington.

With roughly a half-dozen Cabinet and key administrative appointees and a powerhouse congressional delegation led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, California is shaping up to be the new Texas, the alpha state whose cultural and policymaking influence was inescapable through most of the last eight years."


Let's review. California is on the brink of bankruptcy. We have open warfare between the legislature and our Governor. Businesses and citizens are fleeing the State in droves. Spending is up. Revenues are down. Our representatives are about to enact massive tax increases (which will only make things worse). Our public school system is among the worst in the nation. Criminal gangs run rampant across the State. Home values are in the tank and our Governor is about to force all State employees to take two days of unpaid vacation.

And these are the people we want running the Federal Government?

The only people should be happy about this news are Republicans planning on running for office in 2010 and beyond.

Biden Speaks!

This past weekend, Vice President Elect Joe Biden gave an interview to George Stephanopoulos in which he said the economy was in danger of "absolutely tanking" and that a big bold stimulus package of another $600 or $700 billion is needed. "There is no short run other than keeping the economy from absolutely tanking. That's the only short run."

The media's assessment of Biden's remarks? Yawn.

Back in September, on day one of what would become the financial crisis, John McCain gave a speech in which he said the "fundamentals of the US economy are strong." The media excoriated him for saying that. Yet, what he was saying was correct. The fundamentals of our economy - free market capitalism - are strong. The media further piled on that deregulation is what got us into this mess. No, actually regulation, in the form of the Community Reinvestment Act, helped get us into this mess. If it were not for deregulation, Bank of America could not have bought Countrywide, JP Morgan could not have bought Chase, and Wells Fargo could not have bought Wachovia. If those banks had failed, imagine what the financial situation would look like today? In free market capitalism, certain businesses fail. It's the law of averages but it is also necessary for the market to function. There are risks to free market capitalism and failure is one of them. There is also a spectacular upside to it as well. The banks that survive will emerge stronger from this situation and be smarter than before.

Now back to Joe Biden. Consumer confidence is at an all time low and VP Elect Biden thinks it's a good idea to go on national TV and say that the economy is in danger of "absolutely tanking." What not just tell people to buy soup, ammo, and batteries for the bomb shelter in the backyard? There is a reason Joe Biden could never be president and this weekend was a prime example. He's not presidential material. People make fun of President Bush because of his accent and malapropisms but Joe Biden is far worse as he doesn't think before he speaks. But because he speaks the "King's English" and is a Democrat, he gets a pass from the media.

One thing Barack Obama does extremely well is looking or sounding presidential. During the financial crisis, as John McCain was coming up with a new plan every day, Obama remained fairly silent and appeared collected. Now, he may not have had any answers to the unfolding crisis and he may simply be following Mark Twain's advice better to remain silent and be thought a fool rather than open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

That is clearly a lesson Joe Biden has not learned. For everyone's sanity, I think Obama needs to put the muzzle back on Joe.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

The Wizard of Oz is a rejection of big government nanny statism

The movie opens with four people who can't get their lives together all coming to the conclusion that each of them are missing some crucial element that would pull everything together... "A heart, A brain, A home... Da nerve" etc etc.

So together they embark on a long arduous journey to a far off capital city to ask the "Wizard" for help. This Wizard, by the way, seems a lot like an emperor to me, with subjects who are at once in awe of him and at the same time seem to fear him deeply. Our travelers eventually learn that the things they need cannot be given to them by some head of state... rather they must be found within themselves... indeed the entire journey was a waste of everyone's time, since each of the characters learns that they had whatever it was they sought all along.

To make matters worse, they are used by the very government they came to for help. They are promised exactly the help they seek if only they will perform a nearly impossible task, only to discover that when they return, task completed, this government never intended to help them in the first place.

And what about that Wizard... the head of state that so many seemed to fear and worship in equal measure... the man to whom so many had entrusted every last detail of their lives? Well he turned out to be just a man after all... and not a very impressive man at that. Those who have treated the election of Obama as the second coming would do well to remember that lesson.

Oh and by the way, those people who live in the Emerald City are a bunch of lazy welfare no-goodniks. "Ha Ha Ha. Ho Ho Ho. and a couple of Tra La Las... that's how we laugh the day away in the Merry Old Land of Oz"???

The only citizens who seem to have jobs are the barbers who cut the Lion's hair and that tower guard who, frankly, is about as intimidating as JM J. Bullock (must've been an Affirmative-Action hire, that one)... I don't think I'd want to live in a city where THAT guy is the first line of defense. Anyway, despite their apparent idleness, the citizens of the Emerald City dress in fancy clothes and live in a castle built of, well emerald... on the backs of taxpayers of Munchkinland no doubt!

And when they're threatened by the Wicked Witch do they proudly stand on the castle walls as one in defiance of tyranny? Well no, they all run screaming for cover... and it's up to an American teenager who weighs eighty pounds soaking wet with rocks in her pockets to waltz right into the Witch's lair and kill her when there is an entire army available back at the Emerald City that you would assume would be available for the job... The Emerald City is a lot like France in that respect (recall what was going on in Europe in 1939)... which sort of explains the effete Tower Guard, I suppose.

But I guess "ha ha ha, ho ho ho, and a couple of tra la las" is how the soldiers of Oz laugh the day away as well.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Who, exactly, do weapons laws protect...

So much of our gun debate is based on hypothetical examples, I thought I would pass along a real world example of the ways in which weapons laws, which are intended to protect law-abiding citizens from the criminal element in our society, actually wind up making us softer targets for those who would do us harm.

The story I'm about to tell concerns a knife, but replace the knife with a gun, and the story remains the same, and the ramifications do not change.

I carry a pocketknife... a little three-inch Spyderco blade. It freaks some people out in this town but as I always point out, it's a tool like any other. There's no difference between what I carry and a leatherman, except that my knife is also useful for personal defense.... though mostly I use it to cut up the apples I eat with my lunch.

Couple weeks ago I went to a hard rock show at a medium sized club. Now, hard rock crowds are notorious... perhaps no other music audience is MORE notorious, with the possible exception of Hip Hop crowds. Because of that, I have never been to a rock show where I was not frisked before being allowed to enter the venue.

On this night, I parked a couple hundred yards away from the venue, it was very cold, and I was catching up with a close friend I had not seen in a while, so when we got to the front door of the club, I suddenly realized... "oh crap, my knife is in my pocket!"

Almost at the same moment, the front door opened as someone came out and I noticed that there was no security presence and no one entering the show was being frisked.

So now I faced a pretty stark calculation. I don't know if carrying a weapon into a concert is illegal, per se, but it's definitely not the smart move... especially in a venue where people were likely to be drinking. The right thing to do was to walk all the way back to my car and lock the knife in my trunk.

But again, back to the fourth paragraph of this post... hard rock crowds are notorious for carrying weapons wherever they think they can get away with it. And here we were at a hard rock show where no one was checking to see if the people coming in to the show were carrying weapons or not. Anyone with a violent streak and a propensity towards criminal behaviour was probably not going through the same mental/moral calculation that I was, and if I got rid of the knife, there was a good chance I would be putting myself in a situation where one or more of the people in the venue would be carrying a weapon, while I would be totally unarmed. But even so, the reality was that the chances I would need a knife to defend myself at some point during this concert were extremely slim.

So I did the right thing, went back and put the knife in the car.

An hour later, I'm watching the show, having forgotten about the whole affair, and sure enough, a guy behind us starts getting angry and more than a little rowdy. On top of that, he and his buddy decided that there was something about my friend and me that they didn't like. He spent the next hour or so trying to escalate into a major confrontation with us. We spent just as much time and effort trying to de-escalate the confrontation. We moved around the venue, we ignored him, nothing seemed to work. What we had going for us was that he was drinking mixed drinks two at a time through a straw, and we knew that if we avoided him long enough, he would eventually get too drunk to do anything and break off his agressiveness... which is ultimately what happened.

But what if he hadn't been drinking so heavily? What if he had taken advantage of the fact that no security guard was checking the fans for weapons, and caried something in? What if he'd pulled a knife on me?

Interesting questions as I reflected on the fact that I had voluntarily disarmed myself hours earlier.

And that's the problem with weapons laws. Law-abiding citizens obey them because we follow the rules and do the right thing. Criminals do not because they are criminals. Talk about hypotheticals all you want, but at the end of the day, weapons laws create an unarmed population of law-abiding citizens that are a soft target for armed criminals who never had any intention of following the rules in the first place.

These are the fact of the case, and they are undisputed.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

I'm Verbally Rioting In The Streets

Well, I'm pissed but since I need to stay at work in order to collect my paycheck, I'm deciding to riot at my desk rather than in the streets.

To paraphrase former President Ronald Regan's line from his nomination acceptance speech at the 1984 RNC "I would say that state legislators spend money like drunken sailors on shore leave, but that would be unfair to drunken sailors."

What is going on in New York and California this week is just absolute madness. New York Governor David Paterson submitted a budget this week that raises or imposes 137 new fees and taxes. In the middle of an economic downturn, he's proposing to raise taxes. In California, the Democrats who are constantly thwarted by the minority GOP in the legislature when they attempt to raise taxes, are now proposing to go around the GOP and impose new taxes by calling them "fees." They are attempting to cut a budget deficit that could reach $41 billion in the the next 18 months.

This quote particularly galls me.

"I still believe in bipartisanship," Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said at a Capitol news conference. "But there is an even greater responsibility than practicing bipartisanship, and that is to govern. And that is what we intend to do here today."

Your answer to governing is to raise taxes? That's it?

How about you cut spending? Cut the state income tax rate. Cut the corporate income tax rate. You might even have to impose cuts to the state's workforce. Oh wait, employee unions are resisting and they donate to Democratic campaigns so that is off the table.

And among the taxes you intend to raise are the state sales tax, the gasoline tax, and add a 2.5% surcharge to everyone's state income tax bill. These are three taxes that will hit the poorest Californians the hardest. I could at least understand their argument if they wanted to raise the top income tax bracket of 10% on people making over $1 million. But 2.5% on everybody? Are you freaking crazy?!

Has Darrell Steinberg seen the latest figures about people leaving California? For the fourth year in a row, more people left the state than moved in.

And where did they move to? Arizona, Nevada, Washington, and Texas. I'd like to note for the record that all of those states have lower income taxes than California. Texas has no state income tax. Yet Texas is not struggling to balance their state budget.

In 1998, people in the top 20th percentile paid 56% of all taxes in California. I cannot find the most up to date figures for 2007 but I'd be willing to bet that the same top 20 percentile now pays a higher percentage, if we look at the federal tax data which shows that people in the top 20th percentile pay 80% of all federal taxes.

What is becoming clear to me, and probably to some other people in California, is that you cannot balance the budget on the backs of a few millionaires and immigrant labor. It doesn't work.

When the dot-com boom was happening, did the state put away money for a rainy day? No. It spent and spent and spent.

And I'm going to spread the blame around to California voters as well. They keep approving bonds issues for projects like a high speed rail system when the state is broke. For the record, I voted "no" on every single issue that asked me for money this year. We're broke. We can't afford it. Stop spending money.

You know what I want for Christmas? I would like the California Legislators to come up with a budget that does not require raising taxes in a recession.

However, I'm not holding my breath.

This Rick Warren thing is cracking me up...

So all the Dems are pissed that Obama has chosen Rick Warren to speak at the Innauguration because he supported California's Prop 8, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

Guys... Obama said he was against Gay Marriage every single time he was asked during the campaign. Why is this surprising?

Were you hoping he was flat-out lying to us?

If so, what else were you hoping he was lying about?

Hilarious.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

What aren't New Yorkers rioting in the streets?

Good question. I don't know the answer but I do know that there are a lot of big cities in America, mostly run by Democrats, that would LOVE to raise taxes... but they don't because they fear the rioting. Believe me when I say every big city Mayor in America is watching New York very carefully right now. If Bloomberg et all get away with this with little to no pain from the voters, we can all expect to see similar events in our own cities in the very near future.

UPDATE: Ahem

Saturday, December 13, 2008

New York Times discovers that Reaganomics works!

...sort of.

Conservatives have always done a poor job of framing a lot of our best arguments on the battlefield of public debate. Of course it certainly hasn't helped that we've had to filter those arguments through a mostly hostile media, but as Rumsfeld once said, you go to war with the Army you have, not the one you wish you had.

So before I get into the latest silliness from the NYT, let's take a minute to define Reaganomics, first. Ronald Reagan believed that if you reduce taxes and put more money back into the hands of the businesses and people who create/earn it in the first place, that this additional capital will become an engine of job creation.

As an example, let's say taxes are cut in such a way that an Insanely Rich Guy winds up with an extra ten million dollars in his pocket, and that he decides that he's going to use that ten million dollars to purchase a super yacht for cruising the Carribean.

Well someone has to build the yacht, someone has to make the materials that the yacht builder will use to build the yacht, someone has to broker the deal for the yacht to be sold, someone has to deliver the yacht to the buyer, and someone has to lease slip space so that Insanely Rich Guy has somewhere to park his yacht. By contrast, if the government had simply taken that ten million dollars instead, that money would have disappeared into the miasma of government waste. By letting Insanely Rich Guy keep the money, we have allowed him to start a project (the building of a super yacht) that could wind up employing a hell of a lot of people.

That's the essence of Reaganomics.

The Left, though, are not fans of this transaction. There is something unseemly about Insanely Rich Guy blowing a couple million on a luxury yacht he doesn't really need, no matter how many jobs he creates. And so they came up with a nasty little name that they use to denigrate the theory. They call it "Trickle Down Economics."

So, here we are in the middle of a nasty recession, and along comes the New York Times to take another little swipe at Reagan with a piece cleverly titled "Trickledown Downsizing." See, apparently, all the bad economic news means that those who service the rich are losing their jobs because the rich are cutting those service gigs first as they look to cut back on expenses to weather the downturn.

Here's the gist of the piece...

"IN September, Cathy DeVore, a real estate agent in Larchmont, N.Y., whose business has been at a standstill lately, began taking gradual steps to lay off her longtime nanny and housekeeper. Aware that the woman supports a son, a mother, and a niece in Dominica, and worried for their well-being, Mrs. DeVore wanted to make sure her employee found another source of income before losing her $500-a-week salary."

Here's the problem the Times creates for itself with this piece. The reason why they call it "Trickle Down" is because they don't believe that the jobs that are created by the wealthy pay a fair wage relative to how much the wealthy get to keep in the first place. See it's not fair to let Insanely Rich Guy keep ten million bucks, if the jobs he creates with that ten million bucks only pay 30 Grand.

But if it's a bad thing that this housekeeper is about to lose her job, then it follows that the job she's about to lose must be a worthwhile job, right?

And if this is an example of "Trickle Down Economics" costing this woman a good job, then it also follows that the reverse must be true. Jobs like this housekeeping gig are, by definition, made possible by a humming economy where the wealthy are spending profligately.

Put another way, when the rich have more money, people like Ms. DeVore's housekeeper get good jobs. There is simply no way to argue that downsizing can trickle down without ceding the point that prosperity trickles down as well.

But don't take my word for it. Dig deeper into the article and the New York Times makes the same exact point.

"In the New York area, where there is a high number of dual-career professionals and where workdays are notoriously long, the number of people filling in for them at home is also immense. Domestic Workers United, a nonprofit advocacy group, estimates there are more than 200,000 nannies, housekeepers, personal chefs and other domestic workers employed in the New York metropolitan area.

And as professionals recalibrate their spending because of job losses, salary or bonus cuts or just anxiety about the future, said Ai-jen Poo, an organizer at Domestic Workers United, “domestic workers’ wages are often the first thing that gets compromised.”

“Essentially, 10,000 jobs lost at Lehman Brothers means 10,000 domestic workers’ jobs that are in jeopardy,”."


So by the New York Times' own argument (made by way of Ai-Jen Poo), if people lose good jobs when the wealthy have less money to spend, then they also FIND good jobs when the wealthy are flush with cash.

Therefore, it follows logically, that if we want more Americans to find and keep good jobs, then we need to make sure that the rich have more money to spend....

The best way to make sure that Ms. Devore's suffering does not trickle down to her housekeeper is to cut Ms. Devore's taxes to make up for the loss of income her company is experiencing.

Right?

What am I missing here?

Friday, December 12, 2008

Huh!?

I used to really love Peggy Noonan's work, but we started to grow apart during this last election... I felt like in the last year she started to officially declare herself a part of that old fuddy-duddy conservative elite that has been such a barrier to the necessary evolution of our party.

A goofy sort of Huey Long-style populism has begun to infect Peggy's faction of the party (you hear it in Mike Huckabee's speeches too) and I find she's in this weird place now where, after 40 years of arguing otherwise, government has begun to seem like a good place to go looking for the solutions to everyday problems big and small. It's kind of hard to believe that Peggy was once a devoted disciple of the man who said the ten scariest words in the English language are "I'm from the Government and I'm here to help you."

Now, check out this paragraph from her current piece in the WSJ.

"People talk of the incoming administration's announced plans for infrastructure spending that will "save or create" 2.5 million jobs. Everything old is new again. I suspect public support for WPA-like endeavors will be high, and not only because of the promise of job creation. Not even only because people want something new, a sense of vigor and focus—a sense that there's a plan—from the federal government. There's also, I think, a sense that it would be good to do something as a nation, together, something like the old Mercury and Apollo space programs, something that draws people together. Something that is both literally and metaphorically concrete."

Look when people talk about job creation, they're not talking about jobs... they're talking about careers. The kind of long-term opportunities for the educated or the skilled that only the private sector can produce. No one, Obama included, jumps up and down when McDonald's announces they're adding 300 new fry cook positions to the nations' job rolls.

So why should I jump up and down because the President wants to create a bunch of jobs digging holes? This rush to start "infrastructure" projects will, at best, create temporary, ephemeral positions where Americans can spend six months or a year digging a hole and filling it with cement... just to say they did something other than sit on the couch and watch Oprah all day.

This is not what Americans should aspire to.

And to compare that to the Apollo Project is not just laughable, but represents a jaw-on-the-floor level of stupidity. The space race gave us amazing technologies and career opportunities that inspired a whole generation of Americans to get an edcuation and literally reach for the stars. It proved we are capable of miracles even if it had to be done as part of an emergency crash course... or perhaps pecisely because it DID have to be done that way.

All we're going to get from Obama's plan is a bunch of roads.

I've seen roads.

If you're looking for a grand national project, I find the idea of a new bridge from this side of a river to that side less than awe-inspiring...

How about we go to Mars? Now THAT would be something.

And then there's this head-dunker....

"For a generation we've been tapping on plastic keyboards, entering data into databases, inventing financial instruments that are abstract, complex and unconnected to any seeable reality. Fortunes were made in the ether, almost no one knows how; there's a sense that this was perhaps part of the problem. Workers tapped on keyboards and produced work they cannot see, touch or necessarily admire. They'd like to make their country better, and stronger, in a way they can see."

What!?!?

Ugh, come on grandma... I've heard this line before. "I had to walk to school, uphill, both ways."

Yeah right.

Look just because you look nostalgically back on the days when your Dad could kick the tires of the Buicks he built down at the factory and say "See that Peggy? I built that. That's man's work.", doesn't mean that's what I want out of my life.

You don't have to kick the tires of something tangible to be proud of your work.

And I don't need Obama to get me a job digging a ditch in order to feel like a productive American.

Krauthammer swinging for the fences

I normally don't advocate simply posting links here as there are plenty of better-read blogs that do the job better than we ever could... but I found this piece absolutely terrifying.

Who Knew?


Tom Daschle, instant comedy:

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Wanna see the dumbest sentence ever printed?

Here ya go...

"He's uncomfortable, for good reason, with people assuming that he named his project the Black List simply because he's African-American."

"I'm sorry but I find your story simply unbelieveable"

"Really?... which part?"

This part.

Obama said "I have never spoken to the Governor about this matter."

Look, I have no doubt, NONE, that Obama had nothing to do with this goofball plot to sell his Senate seat, but is he really asking me to believe that the Democratic President-Elect NEVER spoke to the Democratic Governor of his state about who would succeed him in the Senate.

Please.

Remember, it's not the crime that gets you, it's the cover up, and we've just been lied to by our next President.

Not a good start.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Why a vigilant press is not just desirable, but necessary

Look, I seriously doubt that this Illinois Governor thing is going to wind up being a major problem for Obama, but we've all known about crooked Tony Rezko (among other things) for six months and no one in the press ever seemed interested in digging down into these stories to see what else they might find.

I remarked on this very blog a few months ago that it would be much better for Obama to have these scandals hit the press in smaller increments while he was still a candidate than it would be for them to explode all at once in his first 100 days while he's trying to get a handle on a very tough job.

The press laid down on the job to avoid causing Obama some short-term pain... and now it looks like he's about to pay for that with a major long-term headache.

We may be about to find out whether or not my warning was prescient.

UPDATE: Here it comes.

UPDATE 2: Remember when the press busted McCain for supposedly not vetting Sarah Palin carefully enough?

UPDATE 3: Jonah Goldberg is so giddy about the unfolding scandal he doesn't know where to start, but he makes the same point I did in a fantastic paragraph that reads thusly:

"There’s the enormous I-should-have-had-a-V8! moment as the mainstream press collectively thwacks itself in the forehead, realizing it blew it again. The New York Times — which, according to Wall Street analysts, is weeks from holding editorial-board meetings in a refrigerator box — created the journalistic equivalent of CSI-Wasilla to study every follicle and fiber in Sarah Palin’s background, all the while treating Obama’s Chicago like one of those fairy-tale lands depicted in posters that adorn little girls’ bedroom walls. See there, Suzie? That’s a Pegasus. That’s a pink unicorn. And that’s a beautiful sunflower giving birth to a fully grown Barack Obama, the greatest president ever and the only man in history to be able to pick up manure from the clean end."

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Spotted on Craigslist, Chicago

For sale: one U.S. Senate seat.

Something tells me this isn't going to inspire a generation of terrible writers to put out books with titles like "Worse Than Watergate" and "Dude, Where's My Country?"

Monday, December 8, 2008

Tax payer bailout

As a Detroit native I know firsthand what the bankruptcy of the big 3 will do to my hometown. A city that is so close to getting back on its feet, thanks to the recent Super Bowl, newer baseball and football stadiums, and the end of Kwame Kilpatrick's reign, will take a serious hit in a state that already has the highest rate of unemployment in the country. That doesn't mean that I'm pro-bailout. But it doesn't really matter what I, or anyone really, thinks about the bailout, because it's going to happen. However, I wonder what would this economy would look like if Congress took numbers in the billions or trillions, as they're doing right now, and distributed it to the estimated 138 million taxpayers in the United States. Just for fun, let's say that Congress gets out a calculator as I just did, and realizes that if they gave each taxpayer $500,000 to stimulate the economy, they'd be "loaning" just over 6 trillion. Not much more than the total they've loaned to wall street plus the total to automakers.

What would happen to the economy if each of us got a $500,000 check? After paying off my student loans, medical bills, and credit card debt I'd still be left with about $480,000. I could snag up a foreclosed condo in the valley outside of LA with that. I could snag up 2-3 foreclosed houses in the midwest. Or I could continue to rent and start my own business. Maybe I'd blow it all on new a new car with some leftover for a new wardrobe. What would YOU do with your $500,000 bailout check?

However we spend the money it would do some serious stimulating to the economy. This taxpayer bailout is only a fantasy that I daydream about. Instead, I overdrafted on my checking account twice this month, racked up more credit card debt, and am getting "creative" with my Christmas gifts. Hope you guys like homemade candles.

BUSTED!!!... but no one cares

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

Let me be clear, I don't care that he did this (I've probably done similar things in my time) but I do care that those who claim to care whenever a Republican is involved, suddenly don't.

The NOW response is particularly shameful.

UPDATE: Dee Dee Meyers certainly cares. Good for her.

Friday, December 5, 2008

Dennis Miller, Mr. X, and following the money

Dennis Miller made an excellent point on his radio show last night... he paraphrased Donald Sutherland's Mr. X character from JFK and said if you want to know what's really important to the mainstream media, "follow the money."

The network news divisions have been flogging the Global Warming scare for ten years, but now that we're in a recession that's hitting media companies particularly hard, those same divisions have begun the inevitable layoffs.

So what part of NBC was hit with layoffs first?

The Weather Channel, including the entire staff of FORECAST EARTH... and right in the middle of Earth Week too...

You know, if we really were on the verge of the death of the planet, I would think these sorts of divisions would hold a place among the network news companies' most highly valued assets.

Guess not.

So can I go back to not worrying about Global Climate Change now? If a standardbearer of news delivery like NBC doesn't care anymore, why should I?

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Democrats Want President Obama Now!

It seems that Democrats in Congress want Barack Obama to be president already.

Democrats are growing impatient with President-elect Barack Obama's refusal to inject himself in the major economic crises confronting the country.

Obama has sidestepped some policy questions by saying there is only one president at a time. But the dodge is wearing thin.

"He's going to have to be more assertive than he's been," House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., told consumer advocates Thursday.

Frank, who has been dealing with both the bailout of the financial industry and a proposed rescue of Detroit automakers, said Obama needs to play a more significant role on economic issues.

"At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time," Frank said. "I'm afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have. He's got to remedy that situation."


Oh, that Barney Frank, what a jokester he is!

Actually, I’m being kind. I can think of another word that begins with the letter “j” and ends in “ss” that is a more apt description of Barney Frank.

This is the same Barney Frank whose shenanigans while on the House Banking Committee led to the Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac debacle that now has the taxpayers on the hook for billions.

The way Congressional Democrats are treating President Bush during the final days of his administration is shameful. Then again, it doesn’t surprise me since they’ve spent the first 7+ years of his administration treating him as if he doesn’t exist and is a mere inconvenience to their grand design of liberalism. Their contempt and disdain for him is matched only by their arrogance towards the common man whom they purport to want to help.

Will someone please send Congressional Democrats a book of manners? Or alternatively, a copy of the U.S. Constitution?

The last time I checked, President Bush leaves office on January 20, 2009. President Obama’s first term (and if he does a poor job, he will not have a second) ends on January 20, 2013 and not one day before that. I actually think President-Elect Obama, while not exactly staying out of the spotlight while building his cabinet, understands that the office of the Presidency is accorded respect and that when he is President, he’ll want to serve out his full term in office without being second-guessed by the incoming President-Elect. That’s why I believe Obama has not weighed in on certain issues.

Of course, the other reason that Obama hasn’t weighed in on issues might be that he has no solutions to them. But since I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt, I’ll reserve judgment until January 20th.

Wow, the recession is killing Hollywood.

Tons of Viacom layoffs coming plus... one of Hollywood's most well know trade papers might not survive past 2009!

Hollywood would be doing a lot better, I think, if they had spent the last 3 years making great movies instead of trying to make a point.

To borrow a joke from Glenn Reynolds...

They told me that if Barack Obama were elected, all the world's problems would suddenly melt away... and they were right!!!

NOTE: This joke works better if you have access to the print edition of The Hollywood Reporter because it features a better headline... "Upbeat Mood for Sundance"

Another dubious campaign promise, wisely jettisoned

I usually let a post cook in my head for a few days before I actually commit it to the Congress' board, and for the last few days I've been developing some thoughts on the "windfall profits tax" that both Obama and Hillary were so enamored of back in the halcyon days of 130 dollar oil.

Specifically, I thought it amusing that while certain politicians back then were demanding that certain American companies turn over excess profits to the government as, oh I don't know, punishment for providing a quality product that Amercians really wanted to buy, I guess... none of them are now willing to make the opposite argument that since those profits have evaporated, perhaps these companies are entitled to some kind of relief from their tax burden as compensation for hard times suffered.

After all how can it be that one action is fair and necessary, while the opposite action is not.

Well Obama isn't exactly saying that the oil companies deserve tax relief to make up for all the profits they're not making right now, but he is willing to forgoe the "windfall profits tax" for now... which isn't exactly a courageous position now that there are now windfall profits to tax, now is it? But I guess when it comes to The Great Redistributor", we're going to have to take our victories where we can get them.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Republican comeback in 2010?

So I'm looking over the results from the Senate runoff in Georgia and I find the results quite interesting. Saxby Chambliss only led his opponent by 3% in November during the general election, but absolutely DESTROYED him by 16 points this week.

Which means that without Democrats crushing the polls for Obama and voting D down the ticket, there is no mandate to replace Republicans with Democrats (at least not in Georgia)... the brand is not selling without the big man leading the charge.

If we can figure out how to frame, market, and sell our brand and present an effective counterpoint to what is sure to be a bull-in-a-china-shop approach to governance by Pelosi, Reid, et al... we could have a very Merry Christmas come 2010.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Well at least Sarah Palin got an entire wardrobe...

...and at only 5 times the price!

I guess the argument the press will make when they ignore this story is that Palin's wardrobe was bought with campaign money, and ostensibly, Obama is buying this ring with his own money. I can think of about a million reasons why this should be at least as juicy a news story as the Palin wardrobe "scandal"... unfortunately, I can also think of a million and one reasons why it won't be.

US Marine core rules for gunfighting

Found this while surfing the Intertubes last night and it made me laugh out loud, so I thought I'd share.

Weirdest Campaign Photo Op Ever.

Jim Martin with rappers T.I., Young Jeezy and Ludacris.



Uhhhhh ... dudes, you know two of those guys rap about selling drugs, one is connected to organized crime, and the other is about to go to prison on federal weapons charges ... right?

Saturday, November 29, 2008

What's your plan for the worst case scenario?

So I'm reading the roundup of this attack in Mumbai and most of the pundits seem to think that, having failed to get large weapons of mass destruction into the United States, that the Mumbai model is what we can expact to see in the next wave of terrorist attacks in the USA, should any materialize.

The model seems to be train a number of small attack units in the techniques of urban assault, infiltrate them into the target country, then the target city, and coordinate a series of simultaneous attacks in that city so that the local emergency repsonders are overwhelmed in a way that guarantees no substantive counter-attack can be mounted.

We know that our southern border is porous, and that along that border, automatic weapons and small explosives (like grenades) are plentiful and easy to acquire. We also know that the goal of any attack is to increase the amount of time between when the attack starts and when the first armed counter attack begins. This is why individual shooters often target locations where they do not expect their potential victims to be armed, like college campuses and malls... similarly, for any terrorist group, I would assume that if they want to inflict the maximum possible damage, they would plan to attack cities where the citizenry are prevented by local government from arming and defending themselves.

To me this means that cities with strong gun control laws and numerous "gun free zones" like Los Angeles, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and Chicago become the most likely targets. And given Los Angeles' proximity to that porous southern border... if you live in L.A., you pretty much have to consider yourself a prime target as of this past weekend.

So where does that leave us? Well here's the problem. I don't know about you, but my blackberry stops working if a stiff wind blows... imagine what would happen if a couple thousand people in one city all called for help at the same time.

Face it, if you're out in public and the bad guys start shooting... no one is coming to help you. You are very likely going to be on your own.

So what are you going to do about it?

I have an emergency plan... do you?

UPDATE: Mark Steyn agrees with my assessment, though he names New Orleans as a target due to inept city mangement. Not a bad guess, actually. The citizenry are more well-armed though. I still think Los Angeles provides the perfect mix of oppressive gun regulation, unarmed citizenry, and proximity to the spot where the bad guys will most likely enter the country.

Friday, November 28, 2008

The Cult of Obama; Part 456

Yesterday I got an e-mail from a friend I hadn't seen in a while. The e-mail looked exactly like one of the Evite e-mails I get about four times a day, so I didn't look at it that carefully, simply clicked on the link.

Imagine my surprise when I was re-directed, not to the Evite webpage, but to the website for Barack Obama.

Here's the text from the page I was sent to:

What's Next for America (Change is Coming)

Please join XXXX and XXXX at their open house event to discuss the issues that are most important to all of us and to learn what we can do to support President Obama's agenda to ensure the change we seek becomes a reality.

Food and refreshments will be served. Drop by anytime starting at 4:30pm on XXX. McCain voters and conservatives are most welcome!

This is an official BarackObama.com event. Yes We Can!


Now, these are very nice people, and I'm sure they mean well, but it's starting to feel like my friends all went out and became Scientologists. If you want to discuss politics with me, that's fine, but I'm not interested in being recruited.

This is all getting a little bit creepy.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Winning the Idea Wars

Following up on my colleague George M.F. Washington's post about winning the idea wars, I think it's important to support other publications and websites that offer conservative / libertarian solutions for today's problems. With that in mind, I just wanted to point out that The National Review is having their webathon to raise money for their website. I know that my day starts with a trip to their website and I find their writing thoughtful and insightful. If any of you feel the same way, feel free to donate. Every little bit helps.

Two wars?

Like many of you, I have spent some of this Thanksgiving holiday travelling. A couple of days ago I found myself standing in line at an airport newstand waiting to buy a bottle of water. There in front of me, while I waited, was a wall of news magazines, each one wondering, what the next week of news from Transition Obama might bring.

There is a lot of debate on the right these days about what needs to be done if we are to win back the White House in 2012. Everyone has a slightly different answer, but the one thing we all agree on is that we have to do a better job of shaping and selling our message. We can't continue to let the Democrats define the battlespace in which we will try to sell our ideas. We've already let them lay the responsibility for the financial crisis at our feet rather than at the feet of Congressional and Senate Democrats, and now we seem prepared to let them define the realities of our traditional strength... what we face in the ongoing war on terror.

Which is why I find it agravating to look at a wall of magazines all featuring the some version of this sentence...

"PRESIDENT OBAMA WILL INHERIT TWO WARS, A TANKING ECONOMY, AND A COSUMER CREDIT CRISIS..."

If we're going to fight to control the battlefield of ideas, let's start by fighting this lie. President Obama is not going to inherit two wars... he's inheriting ONE WAR, and it's the one he wanted.

The war in Iraq is won... you won't find one serious pundit who would disagree with that analysis. Thanks to George Bush, the only thing about Iraq that Obama will have to concern himself with, is how to manage the peaceful withdrawal of victorious American forces.

In Afghanistan, however, we are still at war. And it's THIS war, that Obama has wanted to fight all along. And he will get his chance. I hope he is successful, but I'm getting pretty tired of the beleagured press line that poor Obama is inheriting two wars he didn't start and never wanted, when he's been clear since day one that he would have abandoned the war we have now won, and doubled-down on the war we are currently losing.

Bush has left Obama with the exact war plan he has always said he wanted. So maybe it's time to drop the woe-is-me for poor Barack Obama line and let him do what he's argued he was uniquely qualified to do all along.

Pride in America

There's something that I've been thinking about since the election... it occurred to me on that Wednesday but I haven't been able to find the exact right words to express it. I still haven't totally figured it out, but I think it's an interesting observation and worth a mention, though I warn you, the exact wording might wind up being quite inelegant. Perhaps, in the comments, you guys can think of a way to say it better.

It seems to me that people who describe themselves as Conservatives/Republicans feel a certain way about their country, and that the way they feel about it has very little to do with who is actually running it. Democrats/Liberals, on the other hand, seem to base the way they feel about this country on who is the President. When someone they dislike, like Bush, is in the White House, they are much more likely to express disgust with America, or speak of a fear that the country they once loved no longer exists.

And I think it makes a lot of sense why this would be so... Conservatives tend to look towards themselves, their families, and other individual Americans for creative solutions to problems, while Liberals tend to see Government as the locus of all new ideas and ultimately, the solutions to all of society's crises.

For a Conservative, pride in America flows from a series of very intangible ideas and feelings about the meaning of freedom and liberty. While for a Liberal, pride in America seems to flow from directly from the perception of what Government is actively doing for its citizens at any given moment in time... so the things that make Liberals proud of America are very tangible things. What is the Government doing right now for Americans? and is it good or bad?

And so I can see why it might seem catastrophic when we elect a President who promises to cut taxes and promote policies which encourage Americans to solve the problems that plague them on their own, because it could seem like that kind of President might be abandoning the very thing that makes America great, the ability of its Government to engage in the lives of everyday Americans.

I think this is why you hear things like the famous Michelle Obama "I'm proud of my country for the first time" line, or the rash of high-profile Liberals who threatened to leave the country after Bush was elected... both times. Or comments like the one from Ralph Lauren who suggested that American had become a nation he did not recognize and disliked intensely but that Obama's election meant that the country he loved might be set to make a comeback...

Conversely, I haven't seen a lot of that kind of thing from the Right this time around. I see lots of introspection about how we failed to sell our message to the electorate, tons of discussion about what's next for us, and of course a lot of concern about what Obama's policies might mean for the continuing ascendancy of Government in our lives... but no one is threatening to leave. I still wear my American Flag lapel pin, I still put my hand over my heart for the National Anthem, I still thank soldiers for their service, and I still get a swell of pride every time I think about what it means to be an American.

The way I see it, there's a couple ways you can look at the election of Barack Obama. You can choose to see it as a miracle hail mary that turned America back from the brink of a dark and uncertain future, or you can see it as a logical extension of the things that have always been true about America, namely that it is the land of opportunity for all, regardless of race or creed... and pretty much the greatest nation on Earth.

So those're my thoughts.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

More on the silliness of Europe's patronizing tone...

I commented right after the election about how annoying the patronizing tone of Europe's reaction to the election of the first African-American US President had gotten... I think I said something like "remind me again how many black European heads of state there have been? oh right... that would be zero."

Anyway here's some more analysis about exactly how much more progressive things are for minorities here in the good ole U.S of A than they are in our former mother countries.

Bite me, Europe.

We're Through The Looking Glass Here, Mateys.

The real conspiracy uncovered:

Somali pirates to acquire Citibank.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

Working for Britain

I can't help but respond to Alexander M.F. Hamilton's post below. I'm not terribly surprised by this action. Having lived in Modern Britain for 2+ years and having seen the impact of the government's blatant and never-ending grabs for cash, nothing makes me more worried for the future of America than following in the footsteps of a country from which we voluntarily amputated ourselves from more than 200 years ago.

This great nation is founded on the idea that we can and will do it better/faster/cheaper for you. That involves people harnessing their imagination to provide a new service or applying an old product in a novel fashion. But they don't (or rarely) do it for free. People want to be rewarded for their hard work or applied genius, and over here in America you can make a good living doing that.

While living in the UK I was exposed to a wide cross-section of society: from nurses making nearly minimum wage, to life-long corporate employees, from highest-level physicians and also independent entrepreneurs. At this exact time last November, one of this last group expressed to me his disgust at the tax rates. He had long been involved with small businesses or startups in new markets, and was at the point where he wanted to branch out on his own. In his eyes, however, the government was putting up barriers to entry since if you wanted or expected to earn a decent living (~80k+/year), you could expect the government to take about 40% of that. There were some steps he outlined to mitigate the pre-tax earnings, but overall he deemed it not worth the effort of taking the plunge into his own gig thanks to these increases, unless he could forecast earning considerably more than the 80k rate. And with a new business, even if your market is well-defined, you can't take that for granted.

My entrepreneur friend considered this a perverse form of punishment. Instead of reveling in your new earnings from your successful business, you are instead worried about your tax obligations and the possibility you will be worse off than had you stayed in a job you hated, working for The Man.

232 years ago, taxation-creep led to Revolution. As a new generation wearies of the obligations placed upon them by a haughty, out-of-touch political class, will history repeat itself?

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Welcome to Britain.

From now until 7 months from now, you will be working for the government. You can keep the rest of what you make this year, for your hard work.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Oh no!!! "Report" says the era of American dominance is over!

Haven't we been hearing this song and dance for about a hundred years? Yawn.....

Voting "Present"

What's it look like when the President of the United States votes "present"?

Kinda like this.

"I can tell you flat out there will be no endorsement [by Mr. Obama] prior to January 20," said Senate Banking Committee Chariman Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut a day after his committee heard a combined appeal for billions of dollars in taxpayer help from the heads of General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co, and Chrysler LLC.

That's too bad, because I sure would like to know what our next President thinks we should do about this...

But I guess if I want to know what he thinks of the vital issues of the day, I'll just have to settle for his earth-shattering views on a college football playoff system, for now.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Anybody Need Some Free Wallpaper?

Awesome. A DC-area Cadillac dealer is giving away 100 shares of GM with every purchase of a new Caddy.

Act fast, the value of that offer is going to drop 25 percent by the time you drive out to the dealership.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Somali pirates

I'll just throw this out there...

So these Somali pirates seem to be targeting Sauid oil tankers (among other things)... meanwhile it just so happens that oil prices are in such a freefall that even emergency output cutbacks from OPEC (of which Saudi Arabia is a member) have not been able to stop them.

...and yet we know the Saudis are historically brutal on criminal behaviour, and still these tankers take to the seas one after the other without, apparently, heavily armed security details on board with orders to shoot on sight.

Oh and by the way... when the pirates siezed that huge Saudi oil tanker, oil prices briefly surged to almost 60 bucks a barrel.

I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

I'm...A...Cult...Of...Per...So...Nal...It-Tee....

Anyone who isn't aware of the vaguely creepy, Kim-Jung-Il-esque "Dear Leader" quality of Obamamania simply isn't paying close enough attention.

So if you're still not a believer, check in with the national sports media and the discussion of a college football playoff system.

I've been paying serious attention to college football for about 18 years, and in all that time, the fact that the college football championship is not always decided on the field has been a source of frustration for rabid sports fans every. single. fall.

But JUST for serious fans... that's it. No one else has ever cared.

The idea of a college football playoff system has been a conversation limited to sports talk radio and to dot-edu message board guy. The average person has just flat out never been interested. For a couple of months, some teams play some games, then we have some bowls games, a champion is announced, and that's that. Most people simply move on.

But then Barack Obama goes on 60 minutes and mentions that he'd like to see a playoff system in college football, and Ho-LEE Jesus... after 20 years of the entire concept being relegated to the backwoods of talk radio, it's suddenly the cure to everything that afflicts college sports. "Whoa whoa whoa... I know we have billions invested in this system, but Barack Obama has spoken... Barack OBAMA dammitt!!! Maybe we should consider this?"

Cracks me up.

By the way, it will never happen. The fact that we've been talking about how unfair the bowl system is since roughly two weeks before the goddamned season even started represents about 10 billion dollars of free advertising. Denholm and Long, who have a show on ESPN radio here in LA guestimated just this afternoon that in the Fall they spend roughly one hour of their entire three hour show discussing the ins-and-outs of the BCS system. You couldn't buy that kind of exposure even if you wanted to. There is no WAY the NCAA is going to give that up.

No. Way.

...Unless the cult of personality is even stronger than I think it is...

...

...Damn...

Victory in Iraq Day

November 22nd, 2008. Mark it in your calendar because you're going to have to remember it yourself every year... it's certainly not going to be a recurring headline on the cover of the New York Times.

Oh, OK, So Now Bin Laden Is Definitely Dead.

For how many years have we heard that George W. Bush "didn't do enough" to capture Bin Laden at Tora Bora, and was "distracted" by Iraq at that critical juncture?

But now that there's a new sherriff in town, Bin Laden is no big deal anymore, and going after him would be a "ghost hunt." In fact, he's probably dead.

Look, I've thought for years that Bin Laden has been dead. For a guy who is obsessed with projecting his image to the world, he sure has appeared pretty sporadically, and under dubious circumstances.

But why, now that there is a new president, is this thought given new credence?

Is it going to be cool for Obama to bomb Iran, too? It won't be a "false flag" operation?

Sunday, November 16, 2008

I Agree With Barack Obama!?

While I disagree with Barack Obama on just about every issue (taxes, Iraq war, health care, etc) and I did not vote for him (I went Libertarian this year), I am giving him the benefit of the doubt and taking him at his word to let him earn my faith in him as a leader. And he has now provided me with one issue where we do agree.

We both favor a playoff system for college football.

"If you've got a bunch of teams who play throughout the season, and many of them have one loss or two losses, there's no clear decisive winner," told "60 Minutes." "We should be creating a playoff system."

Now that's hope and change that I can believe in!

Saturday, November 15, 2008

An interesting pattern...

I was reading Instapundit today and came across some wording in one of the articles that Glenn Reynolds linked to that suddenly flipped a switch in my mind... I'm starting to see a pattern in the op-ed coverage of the Obama transition. Everyone is sifting through the scant tea leaves of his policy past trying to find some clue as to what, exactly, this guy intends to do.

Now again, it's possible, perhaps even likely, that President Obama will enact a string of legislative bits of genius the likes of which the world has never seen, but it strikes me again and again how little we know about this man we just elected our president.

Here's a few examples.

"I analyzed Obama’s record on gun rights during the campaign, concluding that he had not been consistent on the issue."

Now ultimately, the author comes to the conclusion that gun owners don't have much o fear from an Obama Presidency, but he also makes it clear that this conclusion is a leap of faith.

A similar sentiment is expressed in this piece on Obama and the drug war...

"Yet President-elect Barack Obama has retreated from his support for marijuana decriminalization, and his position on medical marijuana remains ambiguous. His reticence on these issues suggests he may disappoint those who hope the Obama administration will move drug policy in a less punitive, more tolerant direction."

And again, a leap of faith is the ultimate conclusion for that piece as well.

Rush Limbaugh has been playing a great piece of audiotape lately, as well. It's Tom Brokaw and Charlie Rose, right before the election, discussing how no one really knows Obama's worldview, and in particular, what he thinks about the future of US/China relations. Rush's comment was sort of genius "Gee Tom, if only there were some sort of investigative organization we could turn to for those answers..."

I've also read at least two articles (though I can't find them now so perhaps it's not fair to mention them) that used exactly the same wording... "It's difficult to know how this would affect President Obama's policy on..." And the reason it's difficult is because you often can't find a coherent explanation of what his policy on a given issue might actually be.

I also doubt the ACLU would feel that this kind of thing is necessary if they were sure he's their guy.

And then I can think of at least five foreign policy instances where he told the American people one thing, and then backchanneled the complete opposite policy position to the foreign nation in question... Poland and missle defense, Columbia and free trade, Canada and free trade, Iraq and troop withdrawal, and Israel and a divided Jerusalem.

I'm just sayin'.... when you get right down to it, we really have no idea what this man is planning to do. Again, no reason to panic until he actually does something, regardless, I'm getting a tingle somewhere, but it ain't up my leg, and it ain't an entirely pleasant sensation.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Well, It's Better Than Chuck Hagel ...

Looks like Obama is kicking around the idea of Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State.

Keep your friends close, your frenemies closer ...

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Pass legislation? Nah, let's just sue!

In all this debate about prop 8 in California, there's an important argument that's being missed, perhaps deliberately.

The framers of the Constitution, in one of many moments of brilliance, decided to leave much of the day-to-day business of making laws to the States. What's great about that is you get 50 individual experiments... 50 little petri dishes in which various solutions to the little problems that plague us all get attacked from 50 different directions until, ultimately, an optimal solution is found, and adopted at the federal level.

At least, that's the way it's supposed to happen.

The problem is that our legislators, both local and federal, have become pussies. See, the problem with being a legislator, is that every thing you do leaves a record on which you must eventually stand or fall. And lately, those legislators have been only too happy to avoid having to make potentially unpopular decisions by letting the major issues of the day be decided by a handful of judges.

The problem with that is, well it's simply not the function the courts were meant to perform. Laws are meant to be debated, crafted, and proposed by legislatures, not determined by 3 or 5 judges in a moment of judicial fiat... the courts are only supposed to get involved with the most egregious unresolved issues that the people, and their duly elected representatives, somehow allow to slip through the cracks.

Now along comes gay marriage, which was banned by the people of California by a 23% margin just a few shorts years ago, while a second ban just barely passed by a few percentage points only last week. The message is that there is a generational shift happening here that would make a bill legalizing the practice increasingly popular in a California that is set to see it's oldest and most rigid citizens begin to shuffle off this mortal coil over the next decade. Isn't there one courageous legislator in town willing to bet that shift happens sooner rather than later?

Now our governor has said he hopes the California Supreme Court overturns this latest ban... but to that I say, you are a girlie-man, Mr. Governor. I mean, if you feel that strongly about it, how about you propose a law? Get together with one or more state senators and pass something, for crissakes. Do your job!

But he won't, and you know why? Because supreme court judges are not elected, they don't have to worry that a challenger is going to stand across from them in a debate and demand that they explain to the people of the State why they voted this way or that way. So it's much easier for a legislator or cheif executive to sit back and let the courts decide than to get their hands dirty with a law that someone might hold them accountable for. Oh and by the way, Ah-nult has vetoed legislation to legalize marriage at least twice before... so it's a little disengenuous to claim that he hopes the courts will overturn the ban now, isn't it, when he could have legalized it, himself, years ago simply by signing a bill!?

At the very least, it doesn't make him look particularly courageous.

Anyway, the point is that we've come to a place in our society where we have allowed our legislators to abdicate their responsibility to enact legislation that reflects the desires of their constituencies, and allowed them to tranfer that responsiblity to the courts... and the problem wth that, is that judges are not accountable to the voters.

I'm not so sure this is a positive evolution in the annals of representative democracy.

What say you?

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!

Bill Whittle, one of the best political writers you've probably not heard of yet, has a new essay up which perfectly crystalizes what I've felt in the wake of John McCain's loss to Barack Obama.

Surprisingly, I've felt nothing but energized. And I don't think I'm the only one. I don't see a lot of woe-is-me belly button gazing out there at all. The best analogy I can come up with is that after being away for eight years, I've returned home to a piece of property I own to find that someone built a crack house on it, and now that crack house has burnt to the ground, the people who built it are dead or in jail, and I've just received a huge insurance payment with which to begin rebuilding.

They say with crisis comes opportunity... well doesn't it feel like the Republican party, which was, as of two weeks ago, old, stodgy and out of ideas, is suddenly young and vibrant again? We're not talking about a raft of candidates in their 70's anymore (leave that to the Democrats who are looking at Hillary versus Biden in 2016), we're talking about Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal and Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney... not a senior citizen among them.

Ever see the Denzel Washington movie GLORY? There's a great moment in the final climactic battle scene where our heroes are assaulting a Confederate fort and on the seawall, the initial attack begins to falter, the standard bearer is killed, and the flag falls to the sand. At that moment, the attack can go either way and the entire unit seems to hold its breath wondering what will happen. Will someone rally them to press the attack? Or will fear and doubt take over and begin a rout and retreat?

I won't reveal what happens in case you haven't seen the movie, but we are at that point now as Republicans, everyone seems to be holding their breath in anticipation, and the only action I can think to take is to pick that standard up off the sand and turn to all of you and shout "COME ON!!!"

There's simply nothing else to do. Defeat is not an option. And besides, I've got too much positive energy going right now to do anything but press the attack.

Who's with me!?

Secretary of Defense: Peaceniks Need Not Apply

The anti-war left is at it again. It's not enough that their man, Barack Obama, won the election. They want a say in who he selects as his Secretary of Defense also.

And who do they want? You can read the whole thing here. But here's an excerpt.

"Arms control advocates and anti-war activists are ratcheting up pressure on President-elect Barack Obama to dump Defense Secretary Robert Gates and replace him with a more strident anti-war voice."

So they want an anti-war voice to be Secretary of Defense. Boy do I think that is misguided and I'll tell you why. The Secretary of Defense is supposed to be looking out for America and keep her safe. That means that they have to be thinking about war and how to conduct it, even if it is only hypothetical. I want my Secretary of Defense to always be thinking about what would happen if we had to fight a particular war against a particular enemy. I want my Secretary of Defense to be thinking about aging nuclear warheads and what can be done to repair them. I want my Secretary of Defense to have a vast knowledge of history and conflicts and battle tactics. I want my Secretary of Defense to always be thinking about how to make the military more effective.

What I do not want is for my Secretary of Defense to be some peace loving, anti-war, let's all hug it out person who is afraid to go to war. I want my Secretary of Defense prepared to go to war, yet I hope we never have to call on him to actually go. And since Robert Gates has been brought on to be Secretary of Defense, the war in Iraq has turned around. I think it would be foolish to turn him loose now. In fact, it would say a lot to me about Barack Obama's judgement if he kept him around, at least for the next year or so.

As for those peace loving, anti-war, let's all hug it out people, send them to the State Department. They can mend fences overseas with countries that allegedly hate us.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

My Thoughts on Governor Palin

I want to start by saying that I am a fan of Governor Sarah Palin. I am one of those people who thinks that Sarah Palin has a bright future in politics outside of Alaska if she decides to pursue it. While I think that she probably didn't have enough experience with some of the issues that come up in a presidential campaign, I also saw that she was a quick learner. She more than held her own in the debate with Senator Biden, especially since she didn't have the luxury of having the media cover for any gaffes, like they did for him (e.g. France and the US kicked Hamas out of Syria? When?) Unfortunately, in today's business of "gotcha journalism" you have to figure out how to say the equivalent of "I don't know but I assure you that I will" without actually saying those words.

I also think the McCain campaign did her no favors, particularly in the national security/foreign policy area, by insisting that being commander in chief of the Alaskan National Guard gave her foreign policy experience. To me, it would have been better to point out that until Barack Obama made his European tour this summer, he hadn't met a foreign leader either. And if Barack Obama felt so sure of his foreign policy credentials, why did he feel the need to choose Senator Biden as his running mate, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee? Also, Harry Truman, Calvin Coolidge, and Teddy Roosevelt had limited foreign policy when they were Vice Presidents and they turned out okay.

But I digress and we could discuss the errors of the McCain campaign ad naseum but we will not do it in this post.

When I glanced at the "Today" show this morning, I caught a few moments of Matt Lauer's interview with Governor Sarah Palin and her family. The tone in the interview was much more respectful than what was shown towards her on the campaign trail. Now that the election is over, I suspect that the main stream media are feeling guilty for treating her badly and are trying to make some kind of amends. I think they know that they have lost credibility with half of the American people. I also think they know she is a ratings goldmine and they want those numbers, especially given how their viewership keeps eroding quarter after quarter.

The tone of the interview made me curious about Greta Van Susteren's interview with Governor Palin as well. So I went and watched all four parts of it here. I would urge you all to do the same.

One of the things that I took away from that interview is that Sarah Palin has thick skin. The media treatment of her was downright sexist and totally disgusting. We got a glimpse of that treatment during the Democratic primary when we witnessed how the media treated Hillary Clinton. But it was open season on Sarah Palin. I think if I had woken up every morning for the last nine weeks and read nothing but the worst lies and terrible stories that misrepresent my positions, not to mention the ad hominem attacks put out by bloggers, the main stream media, and bloggers working for the main stream media (Andrew Sullivan, I'm looking in your direction), I would have eventually gone postal on someone.

Governor Palin also made the point that if people wanted to know the truth about something, they could have asked her. Instead, the media would put out a story to misrepresent her position (e.g. that she slashed funding for unwed mothers) without bothering to correct it later (she actually increased funding by threefold rather than fivefold). I did notice this through out the campaign and that's when I firmly started to believe that the media had crossed a line. They were no longer interested in the facts or her record. They simply did not want anyone to stand in the way of Barack Obama's election.

Another example that the media ignored during the campaign, but one that I thought showed good judgement, was a bill she vetoed in Alaska that would have denied benefits to partners of gay state employees. Sarah Palin is against gay marriage but for civil unions. One would think that she would have signed the bill no questions asked, considering her personal stance. However, the question she asked the Attorney General when the bill came to her was 'is this constitutional?' It didn't matter whether she agreed with it or not, it mattered to her whether it was in violation of the Alaskan Constitution or not. This shows to me that she is less interested in pushing a personal agenda and more interested in governing according to the law.

Personally, I think if more politicians took that cue, we'd be a lot better off as a country. Then again, I think most politicians think that the US Constitution is something that can be championed when it supports their point of view or ignored when it conflicts with their point of view. It's nice to see Governor Palin isn't one of those people.

Reid VS. Lieberman VS. Obama

I think we'll learn a lot about Obama's intentions vis-a-vis his pledge to pursue a new era of bi-partisan politics by observing what happens to Joe Lieberman in the Senate over the next few weeks. Harry Reid wants to punish Lieberman for his support of McCain by stripping him of his senior committee chairmanship. But now I see reports that Obama would like for Lieberman to continue to caucus with the Democrats.

Seems to me that the best way to make that happen is to exert pressure on Reid to not exact his revenge on Lieberman, who, whatever you think of his politics, made a principled stand based on what he thought was right, and not what he thought was best for the party.

This is, allegedly, what Obama wants from his Administration and, indeed, from Americans in general. So I can think of no better way to lead by example than to honor Liebermen's choice, rather than punish him for it.

One way or the other, we're going to learn something here about what kind of President Obama intends to be... and we may also learn whether or not Tom MF Jefferson was right that Obama's biggest challenge may not be war, or the economy, but his own party's congressional leaders.

UPDATE: Apparently I'm not the only on thinking this way.

Monday, November 10, 2008

The Evolution of a Conservative

I don't remember all of the "how" of the evolution, but I do remember the "when."

I grew up surrounded by political contradictions. My parents were reformed hippies.. well on their way to becoming George W Bush voters, but in the late 70's still not totally past the idea of the principled protest vote. I remember them telling me they planned to vote for John Anderson in 1980 because he had pledged that he would never institute a draft. Well that made plenty of sense to me, I didn't want to get drafted either.

But at the same time, the first real exposure to politics I can remember was going to Washington in the dead of winter to see Reagan's first innagural parade. And I was fascinated. I was still young but my parents were political junkies and so Reagan was ALWAYS on our TV making speeches and debating, and being Reagan. And I loved him. What's not to love about a leader who can articulate what's special about America in ways even a ten-year-old can comprehend?

The second thing I remember was coming home from school one day and my dad telling me Reagan had been shot.

My brother and I both wrote him letters.

I can remember being surrounded by the vestiges of my parents' hippie past, and yet at the same time, listening to the things Reagan said about personal responsbility and limited government and keeping more of what you earn and thinking, even then, "this makes sense to me."

And yet I can also remember listening to him talk about the "Evil Empire" and knowing that while what he was saying about the evils of collectivism made a crazy kind of sense, that he had probably doomed us all to nuclear war the moment he walked away from the Soviets in Rekjavik.

Let's just say they were confusing times.

And still as I went off to college, I still didn't quite know what I was, politically. There was still quite a bit of me that would have voted for John Anderson, but there was a bigger part of me that believed what Reagan had told me about the free market. I could see that tax revenues did indeed rise with lower tax rates... just like he'd said they would. I loved that our athletes traveled the world and regularly beat those super-human products of collectivist engineering that we saw coming out of the oppressed nations of the Eastern bloc, and was horrified by the stories of men women and children shot down trying to reunite with families members who just happened to be on the wrong side of some random line in Berlin.

And so, in about 1989, still a year from the fall of that damned Wall... there I was in the lounge of my freshman year dormitory when a guy I'd only known for a couple of days strolled through on his way to somewhere else. I said "Hey Mike, where ya goin?" And he replied "To see PJ O'Rourke speak."

"Who the hell is that!?"

Mike laughed at me, "Oh he's hilarious, you have to come."

So I did. And an hour later I went right from the lecture hall to the bookstore and bought every PJ O'Rourke book I could find. After 16 years of confusing and contradictory messages, I'd finally found one that made sense. Over the years, I've come back to PJ over and over again because he always seems to be feeling exactly what I'm feeling about the state of the world and politics at any given moment.

So I suppose it's no surprise that PJ has written what resonates with me as the best post mortem on the 2008 election I have yet to read.

We Blew It.

Auto Industry Bailout: Just Say No

Well, it's not even the new year and Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi are at it again, telling everyone who will listen that the auto industry needs a bailout. Why does the auto industry need a bailout? Why can't they just be allowed to merge or file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization? Several airlines have gone in and out of bankruptcy since 9/11/01 and have reorganized themselves.

Could the Democrats motives be political? If the car companies file bankruptcy, bankruptcy judges have the power to rewrite onerous union contracts. Unions donate heavily to the Democratic party. I believe this is why the Democrats in Congress want to bail out the auto industry.

I also believe that the auto industry doesn't want to declare bankruptcy because they like their cushy management structure.

However, in my opinion, the American auto industry has failed to change with the times and should be forced to go bankrupt and reorganize themselves. If Honda and Toyota can make cars in America and be profitable, why can't American car companies do the same? Are Honda and Toyota that much smarter than Ford and GM?

Bloated union contracts are a part of the problem. The workers at Honda and Toyota are not organized. But unions are not solely to blame for the current state of the American auto industry. Onerous fuel standards imposed by Congress is another reason. And a lack of forward thinking seems to permeate the managerial ranks as well e.g. Honda and Toyota beat them to the market by years when it came to making a hybrid car.

Overall, I recognize that the American auto industry employes a lot of people and I do not wish to see those jobs go away. However, I think they have greater chance of saving them if they were forced to go bankrupt and reorganize into a more competitive company. As it stands now, a bailout will just continue to subsidize their current losing strategy.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Are we seriously talking about the Obama family dog?

The race is on. I'm taking a poll to see which name and breed you think the Obama family will choose for their soon-to-be pup. Here are the candidates:

1. Stalin the Siberian Husky
2. Chavez the Chihuahua
3. Marx the German Shepard
4. Putin the Samoyed

Send your vote now to: arepeopleseriouslytalkingaboutthedamndog@getalife.com

Bob Schieffer, Attack Dog

Well, not really. But I happened to watch FACE THE NATION for the first time in recent memory, and saw Schieffer interview Rahmn Emmanuel. It certainly wasn't a takedown interview -- not that I wouldn't necessarily want it to be -- but it was nice to see a journalist not simply accepting whatever answers Obama and his staff were giving. It's pretty clear that Emmanuel didn't want to show Obama's cards in the interview about the specifics of how Obama would "hit the ground running" w/r/t the economy.

That's fine. But Schieffer called him on it, and that's good. Particularly when we have four years of Softball with Chris Matthews to look forward to.


Watch CBS Videos Online

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Friday, November 7, 2008

Because man (and blog readers) cannot live by politics alone

I love westerns!

Why are they so damned awesome!? They're like pizza, even when they're bad, they're still pretty good. I think what appeals to us about Westerns is the way they strip away all those layers of stuff that separate modern humans from the realities of daily life and force characters to deal with things head on, and often all alone. Think about the lives we lead... has there ever been a more cushioned, protected, leisurely generation than we?

I don't say that as if it's a bad thing, in fact, I think this is what we've been striving for lo these 230 years... a peaceful easy existence where we are free to pursue life, liberty, and happiness in all the ways we, as individuals, see fit. The harsh realities of life on the Western Frontier are things to be regarded from afar, like exhibits in a museum... not to be longed for like a lost treasure. Life in the old West was cruel, difficult, and often tragically short... and even though it was crucial period in the building of our national character, we are well rid of it.

Now, of course, in modern America, every now and then, desperate problems DO enter into our lives... but we have doctors, and policemen, and soldiers to deal with things that get too crazy for us to handle individually. Not so much for Western heroes. Out on the frontier, law was what you made of it. There was a basic moral code that everyone instinctively understood... don't kill anyone unless it's in self defense, and keep your hands to yourself. Other than that, it was... well, it was the Wild West.

But of course bad men were drawn to the relative anarchy of the lawless frontier. And as energetic, ambitious Americans made their way west to seek their fortunes, the predators and parasites followed. A soldier, or a real man of the law might be a hundred miles away when trouble started, and so early Westerners had to learn to take care of themselves in a way that no modern American ever really has to.

I think John Wayne put the frontier philosophy best in his tour de force performance in THE SHOOTIST...

"I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted. I won't be laid a-hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them."

But to be fair, Wayne's character was a gunfighter, and was quite used to living that sort of life, and to backing up those words with decisive action when required. In HIGH NOON, however, Gary Cooper faces a different reality... the reality of what happens when that SHOOTIST philosophy runs smack dab into men who are more adept at killin' than you are, and who aren't interested in a "fair fight."

HIGH NOON is not about a gun fight, not really. HIGH NOON is a philosophical treatise on civic responsibility. Gary Cooper sends a man up for murder, and as a result, criminals far and wide get the message that law and order is here to stay in Cooper's town. Because of Cooper's sacrifice, putting his life on the line for his fellow townsfolk, women and children can once again walk the streets in peace. But a northern judge pardons the murderer who then comes back to town looking for revenge.

And yet Gary Cooper's life is not all that hangs in the balance... this is not just a battle over some long lost grudge... within this battle, and hundreds of others just like it across the West, hung the very fate of the Western frontier itself. Would it be a land of justice and peace in the best spirit of a fledgling Democracy? Or would it descend into lawlessness... on this day, one man, Gary Cooper, will have to answer that question, and not the US Army, or the President himself, can help him. That's what's great about these stories... within this structure, one single man can hold the future of the entire country in his hands.

Of course, I'm no screenwriter, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that Cooper's charcter's ex-girlfriend in the film puts it much more succinctly...

"Kane will be a dead man in half an hour and nobody's gonna do anything about it. And when he dies, this town dies too. I can feel it. I am all alone in the world. I have to make a living. So I'm going someplace else. That's all."

She knows the message Cooper's death will send back East... Cooper's friend Martin knows it too... he makes an impassioned speech to a Church congregation in which he talks about how the big money men back East are watching this town, trying to decide if they should invest money in their stores and factories... and tales of death and murder on the frontier will convince them to put their money into safer investments. Their town will die, and with it, the entire idea of "The West."

In other words, Cooper has a civic responsibility... or to quote last summer's box office champ TRANSFORMERS... "There can be no victory without sacrifice."

Hollywood development executives talk about these kinds of movies in terms of stakes... always asking the writers they work with to raise the stakes so that the audience will care about the story and engage itseif in the action that will determine how those stakes shake out. Harder to imagine bigger stakes, isn't it, than the very future of the entire western half of a developing nation?

It occurs to me that we have become a country that does not understand this simple reality anymore. Maybe that's why I like watching Westerns, because it reminds me of an America that people believed was worth fighting for. Now we expect wars to be over in a week and we don't want to see a single body bag on the news. Hell two soldiers wandered off during the bombing of Bosnia back in the 90's... WANDERED OFF mind you... they weren't captured, they weren't lost securing some beachhead or taking out some critical enemy position, they just got lost... and a local politician here in Southern California (where one of the men was from) named a particular day of the week in their honor.

Watch most modern action movies and you'll see these themes of honor, responsibility, and self-reliance hashed out over and over again. So desperate must we be to be tested as men, women, and Americans that we go to dark movie theatres on Friday and Saturday nights to watch made up men and women sacrifice for what's right. John McClane, Indiana Jones, Will Kane...

And it's not just westerns... a lot of modern cinema owes it's basic struture to westerns like HIGH NOON. Take DIE HARD as an example.

One man trapped in a skyscraper (or a small western town) facing overwhelming numbers of gunmen, who struggles to find even a single competent individual willing or able to help him. And in the same way that Gary Cooper assumes it will be a simple thing to deputize a handful of able-bodied men, but then spends an entire day going from Justice of the Peace, to Churches, to saloons looking for help and getting turned down at every location, John McLane turns to 911 dispatchers, cops, SWAT, even the FBI before realizing that if this thing is going to be stopped, he's going to have to do it alone.

They say DIE HARD created a new genre... for years, agents, producers, and executives pitched movies as "it's DIE HARD on a plane" or "it's DIE HARD at the zoo" or "it's DIE HARD at the petrified forest"... but was DIE HARD's structure really all the revolutionary?

Most good action movies and thrillers (hell even the bad ones) follow the same pattern. Think about THE FUGITIVE, THE BOURNE TRILOGY, UNDER SIEGE, CHAIN REACTION, and IN THE LINE OF FIRE... what must you do in order to make your hero into someone the audience can relate to? First you must take away his safety net... you must strip him bare. Now none of those movies I listed above do anything as overt as trapping their hero in a tall building... but that's not the only way to utterly isolate a human being.

In THE FUIGITIVE, Harrison Ford's Richard Kimble is a wealthy surgeon with the world at his fingertips, and so we must take that all away from him and set him out on his own in order to begin his journey... or IN THE LINE OF FIRE's Clint Eastwood is a Secret Service agent with 40 years of experience and an army of agents willing to die for him... but to make his character interesting, we must strip all that away and set him out in the wilderness... discredited and alone... only then do we get to see what he's really capable of.

Now I do not intend for this to be some neo-conservative "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" screed... though I certainly think that there's a lot to learn about our responsibilities with regard to Iraq and Afghanistan by watching HIGH NOON... rather, it's worth noting that the best Westerns are melancholy about sacrifice, rather than celebratory. When they come to the house of an old friend looking for any escape from the expert mercenaries tracking them to Hole-In-The-Wall, Butch and Sundance (populist, Robin-Hoodian heroes that they are) are told...

"You know, you should have let yourself get killed a long time ago when you had the chance. See, you may be the biggest thing that ever hit this area, but you're still two-bit outlaws. I never met a soul more affable than you, Butch, or faster than the Kid, but you're still nothing but two-bit outlaws on the dodge. It's over, don't you get that? Your time is over and you're gonna die bloody, and all you can do is choose where."

When Chico tells Vin in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN that his gun has gotten him everything he has, Vin replies soberly...

"Yeah, sure. Everything. After awhile you can call bartenders and faro dealers by their first name - maybe two hundred of 'em! Rented rooms you live in - five hundred! Meals you eat in hash houses - a thousand! Home - none! Wife - none! Kids... none! Prospects - zero. Suppose I left anything out?"

There is no victory without sacrifice...

Westerns are great because they break that equation down to its simplest, starkest terms... They strip away all the layers of law, bureaucracy, and authority that protect everyday Americans from the harsh realities of life and force us to face responsibility and consequence without filters and without safety nets.

Because that's really what we fear isn't it... being alone at the moment of truth? Hearing the sound of someone kicking your door in at 3 am and knowing that by the time the cops get there it will all be over? What would you do? Could you protect yourself? Your wife? Your kids? Fortunately most of us will never find out... but the reason why we love watching Chris and Vin turn a village of Farmers into the defenders of their own freedom to live and prosper as they see fit, is because it gives us faith and confidence in our own abilities to do those things for ourselves when and if the moment ever comes.

I've often said that if you really want to connect with an audience, figure out what they're afraid of, and hit them in the face with it. Sometimes that happens by accident... as it did when Steven Spielberg found out quite by accident that most humans have a fear of the things that hunt us in deep dark waters.

I think what keeps us coming back to westerns, action movies and thrillers is our basic fear that when the shit hits the fan... we won't be smart enough, or tough enough, or resourceful enough to make it on our own.

But Gary Cooper and Yul Brynner and Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne and Steve McQueen and James Coburn and Charlton Heston and Burt Lancaster and Paul Newman and William Holden give us hope that maybe, on the right day... we can be.