Obama Joins The Chess Club

In case you didn’t hear, our 44th president recently started showing the world his chess prowess.  Unfortunately,  it looks like he is starting out on about a 3rd grade level.

You ask – Chess???  What the heck are you talking about?  What I am talking about is the art of international diplomacy, the biggest, highest stakes chess match of all.

For an opening move, Obama decided to offer Russia a deal on backing off from our missile shield in Eastern Europe in return for help in keeping Iran away from long distance weapon development.  Grand Master Putin, through his sock puppet Medvedev, politely patted little Barry on the head and sent him back to the cafeteria.  You see, Russia was glad to see we might back down on the missile shield, but no “haggling” on any trade-offs from Moscow.

Then arrives UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the United States for the first visiting head of state visit for our new President.  No White House dinner, no joint press conference… he got the President of WhatIzItAstan treatment.  And when he left, Brown presented Obama a very thoughtful and significant gift, while Obama gave Brown a $39.95 Wall Mart DVD set that is not even in European format.

Last time I checked, the UK was our best and most reliable foreign policy ally.  Even W always had Britain on board when the elites were crying out for “consensus”.  It is hard to believe that the President would make such a judgment error by not doing everything in his power to keep our world best friend at the top of the heap.

Also, looking back to the campaign, Obama espoused some naive foreign policy ideas, mostly that “talk” was a magic cure-all for world crises.  You can talk and bluff all you want with feints and diversions in chess, however a good opponent will see the inherent strength of your position and act accordingly.

Unfortunately, America is down a queen and at least 2 other major pieces in the world chess game.  We are debt leveraged to the world, sitting on a gravely wounded banking system, and vastly dependent on foreign oil.  Unfortunately, Obama is busy sacrificing some more USA pieces for political expediency by planning to vastly reduce our military, which is about our last strategy crowbar.  Just the other day China was lecturing us about making sure we guarantee our debt to them.

I can imagine the back room at the Kremlin when Putin and the Boyz got Obama’s letter.  I guarantee they were laughing over their vodka.  You see, those guys are master level chess players, and they are looking across the table at a inexperienced player who has publicly taken positions of weakness and capitulation on the world stage.  And then they look at the board, and look for the usual USA strong position.  It’s missing.

We still don’t know how the President will handle a real foreign policy crisis – he may very well rise to the occasion like most who came before him.  But we are looking now like Washington will be doing the Hollywood thing,  and remake a classic horror flick from the 70’s:  “Carter Foreign Policy”.

Checkmate.

Witch Doctor Obama Stimulates The Volcano

“Didn’t you ever wonder if the witch doctors themselves thought dropping a virgin in the volcano would really bring good crops? I’m thinking they didn’t. But it kept them in their witch-doctor jobs and gave them a few final moments in private with the virgins. And that, boys and girls, is how government works.” –columnist Randall Hoven

I didn’t vote for Obama, and do not agree with 95% of his politics.  However, as an American I certainly want him to do well and have been trying to hold out hope that positive things will emerge from his administration.

However, I am truly disappointed in the ridiculous “stimulus” bill that he conspired with Congress to create.   We are throwing the proverbial virgin in the volcano – it has about the same chances of success.   The bill is almost entirely just usual Democratic big government stuff,  with the volume turned up to 11.  However, our President is running around talking about it in the language of bi-partisanship and completely exaggerating our present crisis.

Consider the real contents of our “stimulus”:

• Obama says he must have the bill within days or the end of the world is coming.  However, less than 50% of the money is spent in the next two years.
• Inside the bill are all kids of Democratic wish list items – creating a health care advisory panel to decide what treatments doctors “should” do, restrictions on salaries, restrictions on number of foreign guest workers, prohibitions on spending money at universities on buildings where “religious classes” are taught.
• There is pork galore – too much to even bother listing
• Most of the spending is simply increased funding to existing government programs, most with a liberal bent.
• The non partisan Congressional Budget Office is extremely skeptical this spending measure will stimulate the economy, and says over the long run it will hurt.
• Don’t get me started on the flaws in Keynsian economics that purports this whole stimulus thing is supposed to work.

All of this would be fine if Obama and the Congress had said “Well, we won the election, and we are going to implement big spending government along our tastes.”  Fine – I get that.  But Obama cloaks him self in apocalyptic rhetoric of  “will never escape this crisis if we don’t act now” and how we all need to pull together to save ourselves.

But why I am really teed off is because I know that Obama is smarter than this.  Obama knows that unemployment now (7.8%) is better even than the early 80s (world kept going) and ridiculously better than the Great Depression (25%).  He knows that there is no comparison.  But, he is ready and able to use the present climate of fear among the people to foist a blatant Trojan Horse that expands government beyond the tastes of most of our citizens, including some of his voters.  It is an absolutely cynical ploy from a very good politician.  So many in Congress and on Main Street are along for the ride due to Kissinger’s observation that “”The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.”  For those who believe in “Hope” and “Change” and that Obama rises above politics to be a true leader, blah, blah, I have bad preliminary news.  One month in he is big 0 for 1 in that department.

Want some evidence of the president’s complicity?  When pressed on the stimulus by the GOP and the 3 remaining Main Stream Media people who think it is OK to present balanced information, Obama has issued frustrated “We’ll we won!” justifications.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is the unadulterated truth.

The stimulus is a exercise in wishful thinking at best and deliberate deception at worst.  I love Governor Sanford of South Carolina’s quote -“We’re moving precipitously close to what I would call a savior-based economy.”   Well, I guess in that way Obama is living up to his campaign – he is giving hope, though he himself knows it is almost certainly false.   Sounds like a witch doctor to me.

Czars? Is this Russia?

I’m starting to feel like Chevy Chase.

Caddyshack is one of my top 5 favorite movies.  In an early scene,  Chevy tells the teenage caddy he doesn’t have to go to college because “This isn’t Russia… Is this Russia?… This isn’t Russia.”  I’m not so sure myself anymore.

Behold CNN quoting our new incoming administration where Joe Biden will be the “working family” expert, or as the author says, “he will be the working families czar, so to speak.”  So to speak???  I guess VP just isn’t good enough any more – gotta have some more oomph in the title.

Of course, W and the outgoing band of merry men were looking hard at creating a “car czar”.  Henry Paulson, ostensibly the treasury secretary, has been knighted as uber-powerful economy czar, thanks to the Democratic Congress and the Republican Administration.  Google gives 47,300 hits on “Henry Paulson Czar”.

First, the choice of language is awful.  Here is the definition of “czar”:

1.	an emperor or king.

2.	(often initial capital letter) the former emperor of Russia.

3.	an autocratic ruler or leader.

4.	any person exercising great authority or power in a particular field: a czar of industry

I am guessing we will be getting 1, 3, and 4 for cars, economy, and now I guess for Joe.  How far we have fallen where the word “czar” is tossed around in the same country where “inalienable rights”, “life liberty and pursuit of happiness”, and “republic” used to be the hallowed terms.

Beyond the language,  I have noted here in a previous post that putting the president or other government people directly in charge to run companies/industries/economies/fiefdoms is eating from the big 3 disaster government menu:  socialism, fascism, or communism.  Do you really think that the government czar appointed for cars would know what to do from a desk inside the beltway?  Somewhere is a US Post Office Czar who is appointed by the government.  He does a great job.   Oops.   Oh – but there is an IRS Commissioner… uh, oops again.  Oh- I’ve got it… Amtrak!  Or the D.C. government, created by Congress.  Egads.  I give up.   With all their faults, the management of the Big 3, banks, and other industries will know more about how to run their companies and produce what the market and people want and need.  If managers are bad (see before mentioned Big 3, banks, etc.) their companies will go bust. Then we get new managers who (a) are better and (b) are almost certain not to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors.

Another insidious language choice rears its head in the CNN article and I can’t let it go.  VP Biden will focus on “working families”.  I can tell you right now that Joe and Barack don’t have me in mind as a working family.  Their language is code for mostly Democratic constituencies – blue color, single parents, lower middle class.

There is nothing wrong with having some focus on the hourly working Americans, and they struggle during difficult economies and God bless them for it.  But the language choice of the left is very intentional to imply with a sledge-hammer that non blue color and upper middle class families are not “working”.    According to leftist dogma, the government “permits” those middle and upper middle class folks to keep some of their money by not taxing them at 100%.   Put another way, elves and unicorns poop income in their front yards while they drink lemonade in the hammock out back and make cell phone calls to arrange exploiting some 3rd world factories.

I am certain that Czar Joe thinks my building 2 businesses and now a third doesn’t count as “working.”  I can make a solid  argument that my efforts have created well over 100 jobs in the economy.  But since I pay lots of taxes, and happily married, conservative, and essentially self-employed, I don’t “work”.  And Joe – feel free to call my wife and kids and ask how much they saw me the first few years of business #1?

Look – I take no offense at all for the attention to Joe’s “working families” or efforts on their behalf.  As you can tell however, I take enormous offense at the class warfare overtones that those like me don’t really work.

Talk show maverick Neal Boortz has a thesis he hammers home often – you will never be a true success working just the minimum 40 hour work week.  Perhaps Boortz is wrong given the new world order – the class warfare rhetoric may become law here soon.  We’ll knock down those evil rich and business owners 5 pegs and give lots their money to those “working” families.  Problem is, just who will be employing all these workers?  Looks like the only choices left will be government czars or the handful of “non working” families who can still afford to pay anyone a salary.

The Real Truths about Global Warming

There are so many “facts” and “figures” and “experts” flying around the global warming issue that it is difficult for even scientifically trained people to make any sense of it.  I have been following and reading science since I was 7, when I obsessed over the NASA Voyager and Pioneer programs via a weekly mail newsletter.  I spend several hours a week keeping abreast of a very broad range of scientific topics.  As a geeky 9 year old in the 1970s, I kept a year long detailed weather record from my personal weather station and made my own forecasts.  Thus, I declare myself an expert, and speaketh the following truths:

#1 Enough carbon dioxide will warm the Earth

The mechanism behind the Global Warming scenario is fundamentally correct.  Pump enough CO2 into the atmosphere and we absolutely will warm the planet quite a bit.  How can I be so sure?  We have what is called an “existence proof” – the planet Venus.  It has so much CO2 and other greenhouse gasses its temperature exceeds 450C, way higher than would be expected based on its extra solar radiation as a closer planet to the sun.  We also have the moon, the same distance from the sun as us, with no atmosphere or greenhouse gas and a nighttime temperature of -153C.

Thus, as with many things, there is a real undeniable scientific fact at the bottom of the Warming pile.  But that fact is buried in fuzz.

#2 Nobody really knows how much CO2 it takes

Contrary to the “certainty” displayed by scientists, noone knows the formula for “X Increase in CO2″ –> “Y Temperature rise of Earth”.  All scientists have are computer models, which are just approximations of best guesses.  They also attempt to model a chaotic, non-linear, massive system – the earth’s climate.  Even worse, these models have hundreds of variables, many of which are poorly understood.

The chaotic system means that even one small variable can overrule the hundreds of others in many cases.  The complex non-linear nature means that the climate is NOT a solvable equation, or even good for modeling!  Increasing CO2 may well increase cloud cover, which acts as a negative feedback.  It also changes plants, which changes other things.  I actually do think that CO2 increase will change things – but those who claim to know what or how are standing on shifting sands.

#3 Everyone is wrong to cite a day, month, or year

This one absolutely gets my goat.  Both Global Warming False Priests and complete deniers are constantly saying “Oooh – look it was super hot in France last month” or “Gee – see it was snowing in Florida”, so global warming must / cannot-possibly be true.   The over-zealous global warming scientists completely shot themselves in the foot by attributing Katrina and the 2006 hurricane season to climate change.  Dead silence followed when 07 and 08 had almost historical lows in hurricanes.

Even the most aggressive models show about a 1 to 1.5C degree rise based on CO2 – Can you tell the difference between 50 and 52F?  No.  All of the climate change, real and imagined, is a STATISTICAL phenomenon, and cannot be noticed by people!  The number of cold days vs warm – all of that is noise – humans are just not equipped to pull out such subtle patterns by anecdote.

#4 Loud “Warming” scientists are bad scientists

It is unconscionable how the most vocal scientists claim that a “consensus” on global warming means that skeptics and dissenting scientists should be silenced/ridiculed/exiled.  Science is 100% about questioning the conventional wisdom.  Almost every major scientific advance was an overturning of what previous thinkers “knew” to be true.  Stifling alternative theories or data is propaganda, not science.

What is even crazier is that even the best case models by the Warmists don’ t come close to the testable hypotheses and experiments that used to be sacred to the scientific method.  Even if temperature goes up in period X while CO2 does, that is not necessarily causal.  The models do not make testable predictions, given the overwhelming number of other variables.  Einstein’s famous theory of relativity, which seemed like fantasy to most who first saw it, made exact predictions about all kinds of astronomical events. A crew took exacting measurements in a solar eclipse and validated his work. We can’t do that with the big W.

If you haven’t read  State Of Fear by the late scientist, doctor, and writer Michael Crichton, you should. It is a good fiction and completely destroys the premise used by the modern Cassandra’s panicking about warming. Crichton went to his grave dismayed by the sell out of science on this issue.

#5 Global Warming has been hijacked by the radical left

This is the big problem, and  has been chronicled by so many bloggers as to leave me with little to say.  The radical anti-capitalists and anti-Western society folks now can hide behind science in their quest to bring down everyone to their insecure level.  Governments can also hook the big bureaucracy wagon to Global Warming as a crisis that only the politicians can solve.  3rd world countries can demand ransom money as well.   This leads me to…

The Bottom Line….

Science is the big loser in all of this.  By politicizing this issue, scientists have lost enormous good will, and bred cynicism based on the prevalence of government funding of research.  And later, if there is a real danger to CO2 to our planet, wolf has been cried too loud by the petulant boy, and the future may not listen.

H. L. Mencken’s famous quote is

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed … by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Global Warming as a earth shattering Al Gore apocalyptic crisis is the biggest, baddest hobgoblin of all times.

Bluto and The Government Cookie Jar

Everyone is in a tizzy about the revelation that the governor of Illinois, Bluto Blutarsky (oops I mean Blagojevich), was trying to sell Obama’s vacant Senate seat like a white-hot Ferrari in the hood.  I essentially have had no reaction – only to wonder why anyone is surprised.  Its all about the way our government is setup – let me explain.

An enormous number of our fellow Americans view government as a spoils distribution system – local, state, and federal.    In many large cities, the minority-run city councils and mayors are brazen enough to declare their objective to hire mostly people of the same skin color to real or imaginary government jobs and to stack the deck in favor of their friends.  They do this in the belief that “the man” had been doing the same thing for years when he had the reigns of power.  Because there is a lot of truth to their belief about “the man”, its hard to outright condemn them, even though the practice is so transparently wrong.

Sometime in the early 90’s the City of Atlanta opened a new city hall in the pre everyone-has-a-cell-phone days.  The building had no pay phones.  Why you ask?  The rules said only minority owned contractors could do any business with the city.  It turned out there were no minority contractors who applied for the job – so no phones.  Maynard Jackson after his term as mayor was able to get leases on most of the prime restaurant spaces in Hartsfield Airport for he and his family from the city.  The last mayor of Atlanta Bill Campbell went to jail for accepting bribes.

Don’t get me wrong – this is not a racial or local issue – lets ask Senator Ted Stevens up in Alaska about the manual for selling influence for anything and everything.  Or observe right now a few bad-apple partisan election folks in lilly-white Minnesota trying anything to manufacture a win for Franken. I would be shocked if there isn’t at least some coin changing hands.

And what does Joe Six Pack want the government to do in DC?  Give him a job, bail out this, bail out that, guarantee the other thing.  Joe hates the idea of pork spending, but enthusiastically supports the slop green-backs from his Representative for a new Museum of Gray Burrowing Shrews in his little town.

So when Governor Bluto had one of the biggest spoils fall in his lap, it went on the block.   Yawn.  But you protest that the sacredness of the elective and democratic process is in play with the Senate seat, and my analogies to the spoils of power are incorrect.  Sorry – I don’t buy it.  The sacredness and purity of our government was lost when by apathy and ignorance we ceded them so much arbitrary authority.  There is no fundamental difference between selling the seat and the seat-holder selling decisions to lobbyist, PACs, or for his own power-lust.

That is the root problem  We have allowed government to control so much.  The idea of limited government, enshrined in our Constitution, is gone.  The American people have let that happen.  And when such huge financial and powerful decisions are thrust upon elected officials, the corruption and immorality will follow, unless we change the human race.  Think about today where perhaps 5 or so “moderate Republican” Senators may be pondering the  filibuster on the auto-bailout.  These folks may control the destiny, good or bad, of the car industry.  It shouldn’t be that way.

So, the absurdity in Illinois may be a juicy news story – but is just an inevitable consequence of the government that we have created.

Are You Smarter Than a President?

A fraternity brother of mine found himself surrounded by a spirited crowd including myself at a recent Georgia Tech tailgate.  It was the last game before the election, and the man in the middle had openly admitted he was voting for Obama.  For my crowd of guys from the 80s at Tech, Obama support is about as common as a purple unicorn.  I distinctly remember a poll giving Ronald Reagan a 90% approval rating during my time on campus.

Anyway, I challenged him for his reasons and he said basically “Obama is a very smart guy.  He can figure things out.”  He then said, “I’d love to vote for you if I could.”   As I am not ever running for president,  I cant help him.  But his thinking is interesting and very revealing.

A whole bus-load of folks I talked to during election season told me they vote for the smartest guy.  Political ideology takes a bit of a back seat.  Others said they dropped support from McCain because Palin’s smarts didn’t measure up.  But what got me was this one guy who would, even in jest, switch a vote from the most liberal Senator in the USA to a libertarian-conservative Republican like myself, because of intelligence.

Now of course I want a smart person to be president,  but I believe there are fallacies at play in the smart guy thinking.

Many view the President as the uber-CEO, having difficult and vexing situations flow across the desk all the time and using his genius to deliver answers worthy of the Delphic Oracle.  Wrong.  The president should be a leader and manager, and his values and principles are more important that the micro-managing machismo that Bill Clinton seemed to prefer.   A president with strong morals, good judgment, confidence, and who’s values mostly match mine can hire a cabinet full of the super smart people – that’s what I want.   Raw intelligence uncoupled from sound values, judgment, and humility  is a loose cannon, liable to churn out a pattern of decisions that will not inspire the people to follow.

And when did it become the job of the President to make all the decisions for the country anyway?  I would guess >80% of our citizens now believe that the President “runs” the economy.  Even conservative radio icons Rush and Hannity routinely propagate this fallacy.  Both Barack and John campaigned on their plan to run this and fix that and add the other.     Running the economy top down is communism.

The President-as-oracle seems to be more common with our friends on the left.  They believe these smart guys can fix and twist and turn the economy and world around better than the ordinary Joe.  But I have a better answer.  We have built a super-intelligence in this world with the equivalent horsepower of over a billion human brains.   It can process outrageous amounts of information simultaneously across the world, automatically adjust quickly to all but the most unexpected situations.  This super-AI has produced >95% of the wealth in the material world.  It is the free market, which no one controls, even the president.

I would guess that that a good bit of the left leaning folks overlap with open source and Wikipedia.  Both these very successful ventures show that the “wisdom of the crowds” is an amazing thing, and that you dont need an oracle for success.

I concede that Obama is a very bright guy- ho-hum.   I’ll take the collective wisdom of the individual American citizens interacting a billion times a day over Oracles and top down managers.

The Architect

Mr. Karl Rove is known world wide as “The Architect”.  He is credited with creating George W Bush out of whole Texas cloth and propelling him to the White House, even stopping by Florida to hang some chads and yell “Boo” at a line of voters in Palm Beach.

Well, I am no expert at presidential campaigns, and I of course wasn’t in the smoke filled ranch in 1999 when W began his quest for the Presidency.  But I will be kind and give Rove the benefit of the doubt that he was the guy who branded “compassionate conservatism” and ran the campaign that squeaked by the certainly less than ideal candidate Mr. Gore.  In thinking back though, I really cannot recall any significant issues discussed in the campaign of 2000, just words, just words.

But there is one momentous and historic achievement that I am certain where we should give Mr. Rove a truckload of credit.  That would be November 4, 2008.

Yes, W’s dismal approval rating and almost inept last few years in office certainly were a big part of Obama and the Democratic resurgence.  McCain, Palin, Barack, economic crisis – all ingredients in the stew.  But the man who set the dinner table was Karl Rove.  His strategy of creating a “permanent Republican majority (sic)” by pandering to the big government ethos was a disaster.  Rove’s arrogance and inside the beltway thinking led W by the nose down the Democrat-Lite corridors, and the Republican Congress of the early 2000s followed.  No Child Left Behind,  Prescription Drug Benefit, no budget vetoes…  How’d that work out for ya’ Karl?  Rove was the GOP strategist from 1999-2006, and given the fact there wasn’t a leader of any caliber in Congress the floor was all his and W’s for setting agendas.

People want a meaningful choice, and they want consistency.   And 45% of our county want Democrats, 45% want Republicans.  10% in the middle want whatever is cool at the moment.  Rove’s strategy made Republicans into mini-Democrats.  So Mark and Mary in the Middle in 2008 decided to vote for the brand name instead of the imitation.

So yes, Mr. Rove is an excellent architect.  He made the blueprints for the 3 headed Liberal fortress of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi.  Thanks Karl!  I guess we should of expected this from a guy who was a big admirer of the presidential work of Richard Nixon.