More Leftist Illogic

In the middle of last month, Willa Paskin, a blogger on the Slate.com blogs noted a series of German condom ads making their rounds, each featuring a sketch of a sperm made out to look like Adolph Hitler (I kid you not) Osama bin Laden or Mao Zedong, with the message, “Better wrap it up unless you want to bring evil into the world.”

Willa Paskin notes, “It's a dark take on procreation, informed by an everyday awareness that people can go really, really bad. Of course, people can go good as well, and I almost expect to see these images re-purposed for an anti-condom or pro-life campaign, with sperm made to look like Jesus, Abe Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr.”

I wouldn’t hold my breath for that, but the inanity of an ad like that not only highlights the incredible depth of German-guilt, but the woeful illogic of the Left period.

The Real Triumph of the Maersk Alabama Mission...

In the wake of the dramatic Seal Team rescue of the Maersk Alabama, the Somali pirates have vowed to “kill American sailors” whenever they come in contact with them.

It’s an empty threat.

But the far-Left had fought AGAINST our military war on terrorism on those very same grounds and on an equally empty threat, that America’s military actions against those nations that harbored and supported international terrorism would “make the terrorists angry and “make recruiting more jihadists easier.”

Why is it so easy to see that the Somali pirates threats are empty, while claiming to believe that military action against the nations that harbor and support jihadist terrorism are real?

It doesn’t make sense.

Although, that’s nothing new, NOTHING that emanates from the Left makes much sense at all.

BDS...ODS...RDS...It’s ALL the Same Pathology...

Bush Derangement Syndrome, Obama Derangement Syndrome and Rush Derangement Syndrome are all part of a singular and similar pathological approach to ideology, one that vilifies the other side as “evil” merely because of their views.

A group who has suffered discrimination, or abuse should FIRST and FOREMOST never wish to see anyone else discriminated against or abused. Those that seek to excuse their own bigotries through some perceived victim’s status generally have never actually suffered themselves. The FIRST thing a mistreated individual or group tends to do is to assure that the mechanism of that mistreatment is shut down and the second thing they generally do (IF they were actually victimized) to champion no one else ever being victimized as they were.

That’s why Conservatives, who’ve rightly railed against the staggering amount of BDS over the past eight years and RDS over the past two decades, MUST avoid the temptations of ODS.

Barack Obama’s genius has laid in being able to advance a Left-wing agenda under the banner of Moderation. He is politically astute and has surrounded himself with a gifted inner circle – Rahm Emanuel, his Chief-of-Staff is a consummate politician.

Merely opposing his every move is counterproductive.

In fact, team Obama has done some very UN-Liberal things these past three months, from defending and expanding the NSA surveillance program to increasing rendition, to upping the ante in Afghanistan.

What’s more, wailing about every policy, every decision amounts to “crying wolf” and that’s VERY counterproductive.

The MSM campaigned hard in favor of the Democrats and a majority of the people bought it. Those policies will have to FAIL before the people will demand a return to the Supply Side policies of Reaganism/Gingrichism that had created a quarter century of unprecedented and unrivaled prosperity.

Is Money Really the Root of ALL Evil?

Perhaps one of the best, or at the least, most noteworthy passages, in Atlas Shrugged is that of Francisco D’Anconia explaining to Bertram Scutter, who’d uttered the phrase “Money is the root of all evil...”, that money is merely a tool, a medium of peaceful exchange that could not exist without the productive efforts of others. “When you accept money in exchange for your efforts/labors, you do so only on the conviction that you will be able to exchange it for the products of the efforts of others. The trade, by means of money, is the code of men of good will. Money is rooted in the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his efforts...So long as men live together on Earth and need means of dealing with each other, the only substitute for money is the muzzle of a gun.”

That is an profound argument, inside a truly awesome book.

Obama’s Chrysler Bankruptcy Proposal Leaves Investors (the REAL Owners) Out in the Cold...

More than six months ago Larry Kudlow asked, “What happens to the taxpayer’s money if these bailed out Corporations go into bankruptcy anyway."

The terminally dumb, saw that as a “dumb question.”

Now, many of those terminally dumb folks are scrambling for answers.

In the Chrysler case, the banks holding much of the debt on Chrysler are TARP banks that the Obama administration was able to squeeze concessions out of, concessions as in, OWNERSHIP CONCESSIONS.”

The Obama plan would give the UAW a whopping 55% ownership stake in Chrysler, the U.S. government about a 20% stake, leaving 25% for Fiat...and the American investors and Chrysler’s creditors (a/k/a “the REAL owners of Chrysler”) out in the cold. The entire proposal violates basic American contract law.

The real fight may come when the fed tries to do the same with GM. There, the loan holders are NOT TARP banks and will not to easy to manipulate or bribe into surrendering either their ownership stake nor their repayment contracts.

As Kudlow astutely notes, “We are witnessing more spending, deficits, and debt-creation than anyone ever imagined. Bailout Nation has run amok. This started under Bush, but Obama is raising the stakes exponentially.

“The latest federal budget would double the debt in five years and triple it in ten. For some perspective, that debt level is higher than the combined debt levels generated under every president from George Washington to George W. Bush. According to the CBO, federal debt held by the public as a percentage of GDP under Obama is projected to rise to 82 percent in ten years. The budget deficit itself never drops below $670 billion and closes the period at $1.2 trillion. That’s nearly a 6 percent share of the economy.

“All of this will certainly lead to large tax-rate hikes that will rob incentive power from entrepreneurs, investors, and small-business owners. Just look at Britain, where the top tax rate has been raised to 50 percent from 40 percent. The Thatcher Revolution is being repealed over there. Unless current trends are reversed, the Reagan Revolution will be repealed over here.

“The Obama budget already will raise taxes on overseas corporate earnings and oil-and-gas companies at home. It will elevate taxes on capital gains and dividends for investors and will lift the top tax rate for successful earners. And more is coming.

“But this is the wrong direction for economic growth. Instead, business tax rates should be slashed — which, by the way, would repatriate corporate earnings for domestic investment. We need a capital-gains tax holiday. We should be flattening individual tax rates across-the-board. And all manner of loopholes and special-interest deductions should be repealed to broaden the taxable-income base.”

Kudlow also notes that “According to Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky, the $700 billion TARP program — which has ballooned to more than $3 trillion in spending, loans, and loan guarantees — is “inherently vulnerable to fraud, waste and abuse.” Barofsky already has opened 20 separate TARP-related criminal investigations and six audits into whether taxpayer dollars are being stolen or wasted.

"Rest assured that they are.

“Economic recovery is still likely in the second half of the year. And President Obama will claim victory for his big-spending policies. But the reality is much different. Massive Federal Reserve pump-priming is moving the economy from deep recession to some kind of recovery. Meanwhile, the combination of deficit spending and easy money increases the threat of stagflation.”

ABSOLUTELY...a repeat of Carter-like policies (and THESE are “Carter-like policies on steroids”) will inevitably deliver the SAME inevitable results.

New Haven and Disparate Impact...

The case of the “New Haven 20” will be heard by the Supreme Court this summer.

This case has been covered to death, but for good reason. At issue is the warped and dysfunctional canard called “disparate impact.”

Being unable to show where ANY standardized exam “discriminates” against ANY specific ethnic group, the pro-quota/pro-racial preference side has hidden behind an inanity called “disparate impact,” which purports that “any standard that disproportionately impacts” an ethnic group proves de facto discrimination.”

Under the standard of “disparate impact” the mentally handicapped SHOULD be given the allotted number of spots in Harvard Medical school, proportionate to their numbers in society.

The perversity of “disparate impact” is a legal fiction that has been tolerated by the courts to achieve certain goals that otherwise probably wouldn’t have been reached, but it’s come at such a high cost that today, few legal scholars still support or defend that policy.

Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom put the case in this perspective; “The case poses a familiar question: Which road will lead to the racial equality most American seek: racial quotas or color-blind, meritocratic standards?”

In a free society, based on individualism and private property rights (as America IS), there is only one possible answer – Meritocratic standards, whether the outcomes on such temporarily favor one group or another.

There is and never has been any such thing as a “discriminatory test.” Tests are designed to “discriminate”/discern between the most able the less able. So at issue, “disparate impact” proponents argue, “What real difference is there between the most able, say the top ten scorers and, say, number 16, or 17, or for that matter, number 42?

Another thorny issue in the case is whether, as the Thernstrom’s put it, “May a municipal employer disregard the results of a qualifying examination, which was carefully constructed to ensure race-neutrality, on the ground that the results of that examination yielded too many qualified applicants of one race and not enough of another?"

In answering that, the Thernstrom’s note that, "All applicants took the same test, and the result was the same for all because the test results were discarded and nobody was promoted," she argued. But change the race of the plaintiffs from white (plus one Hispanic) to black, and the obtuseness of her reasoning is apparent. If a disproportionately large numbers of blacks would have been promoted and the examination results were tossed out for that reason, it would have been an open-and-shut case of blatant racial discrimination.”

TWO of the best articles on this issue: http://adversity.net/newhavenfd/default.htm

AND

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124035774411441127.html#

Jack Kemp – RIP

Jack Kemp, the Buffalo Republican who ran as Bob Dole’s running mate in 1996 died Saturday (May 2nd, 2009) at the age of 73.

Kemp was a Moderate Republican and the architect of what became “The Ownership Society" an idea embraced by both Liberal Democratic and Liberal Republican idealists alike, though for different reasons.

Moderate Republicans like Dole, Kemp and the Bush’s all earnestly sought ways to decrease the homeownership gap that long existed between blacks and whites, in hopes that the responsibilities of homeownership would “create more responsible, goal-oriented, Conservative Americans across the board.”

The Republican vision was a noble, if naïve one, while the Liberal Democratic vision was somewhat more nefarious.

Stalwart Liberals like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd didn’t give a hoot about “closing the racial homeownership gap,” though if that mantra could be used to empower ever more government over banks and other lenders, THAT fit their view just fine.

Even before the Democrats took over Congress in 2006, Congressional Democrats sought to “work with G W Bush” on one of his favorite projects, expanding homeownership.

The result was the feds pressuring banks and mortgage lenders to relax their lending criteria and “sweetened” that deal by having Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac increase their share of the mortgage market from 24% to just under 51%...almost ALL of that increase coming in the form of these new, high-risk, subprime loans!

Then Freddie Mac packaged that bad debt as CMOs (Collateralized Mortgage Obligations), usually one of the safest bets in bygone times, and those CMOs and CDOs backed/insured by the AIG-inspired Credit Default Swap, triggered the current and ongoing global credit crisis.

One of Murphy’s Laws went, “When a politician gets an idea, he usually gets it wrong,” but since Reagan and Gingrich have largely proved that wrong, that law should probably be amended to, “When a LIBERAL gets an idea, he ALWAYS gets it wrong.”

For the record, Jack Kemp played no part in, nor seemed to approve of the 2005 – 2008 era of legalized “counterfeiting of credit.”

Kemp’s idea was an earnest one. It’s just that it came to be so very badly and in many instances (nefariously) implemented.