So that we shouldn't forget

I'm saving this, because it has now returned to the news.  I hope other parties see fit to remind the voters of it during the campaign.

Speaking of which, the campaign ought to be a systematic analysis of those policies and legislative initiatives proposed or enacted--not to mention the "executive orders."  Just saying--there is no lack of material here, a great deal of which simply is odious to most voters.  Let's remind them, politely but firmly.  We've got months to work on this and get it right.

No excuses for failure!

Stresses

When the history of these times is written, we may become aware of how close our republic has come to tyranny--the usurpation of private rights and dignities in favor of state manipulation.  The obsessive adherence of the current majority--may their hegemony be brief!--to the tools of bureaucracy, propaganda and economic disruption creates a pseudo-justification for an ultimately thuggish totalitarianism that cannot be sated.  I'm sure there are some in places of influence who work as the engineers of this process in the name of progressive, scientific humanitarianism.  What we see is the work of their amateurish, clumsy, uncentered, uncritical and often unwitting minions.  And seeing that is a good thing, for this insidious will to power must betray itself by its own contradictions.

As a Teacher, I like this...

...and as a parent, even better.
Dennis Prager on Self Esteem and Character.

A foolish consistency . . .

. . . is not necessarily the only sign of insanity. What about a foolish inconsistency, such as the President's conversion to viewing nuclear power as clean energy? Is this just blatant political opportunism, given his campaign comments about the danger of nuclear waste and the uncertainty about storing such material when it expires?

Lately, he's made such flip-flops on a number of issues, with stunning disingenuousness. Does no one in his circle recognize that this isn't a good sign. A general sign of sanity is not necessarily lockstep consistency, but simply lacking recognition that a thing and its opposite cannot be casually swapped like the blue tie or the striped tie is surely not healthy, either. Swapping ties is not a statement of political and intellectual character; reversing positions on issues that matter is such a statement. Either this gentleman and his clique are significantly lacking in principles, or they are suffering from some kind of delusion that reality is simply what is subject to the convenience of their definitions.

It's a little frightening, considering the power they wield.

Must-read: on the "catechism" of the leftist claque

Mr. Lowry's current piece on the seemingly intractable ideology of the true supporters of the President is right on target. Unlike them, he has a good ear for what others are saying. The "religion" of what I called "warmed-over Marxism" during the the campaign is beginning to be seen for what it is by pickup-truck driving average American voters. The President can own up to this, or he can continue to believe and recite the mantras (to mix the religious metaphors) that he artfully wove into his very deceptive campaign for office. I'm convinced "the programme" was there to be seen, but the electorate was encouraged by his demeanor and double-meanings, and was hungry for a cool-down of the frenetic political situation (abetted by both parties) that dogged the second GWB administration.

Never overlook ideology.

Janus? Is that you?

President Barack Obama signed a law that explicitly bans federal funding of any “research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death” only two days after he lifted President Bush’s executive order banning federal funding of stem cell research that requires the killing of new human embryos.

Goodness--words mean nothing with him. To adapt an O'Reilly-ism: is he the bloviator-in-chief?

He's got to be kidding.

"Things two years ago were not as good as we thought because there were a lot of underlying weaknesses in the economy. They're not as bad as we think they are now."

After spending two months telling us how dire things are, now he wants us to believe it's just hunky-dory, just like that? This demonstrates one of two things, or both: (a) he thinks the public are fools; (b) he has no clue what he's talking about. Take your pick.

By the way, the stock market, after moving further south in response to a series of words from the President and the Treasury Dude, has moved north for three days. Why? Bernanke spoke. It's apparently no harder than that.

One more thing: Mr. Geithner DOES look like the palest guy at the dude ranch--the one who needs a seat belt for his saddle.

Miscellaneous

**The new Time Magazine (3/2/09) has "Best Actress" Kate Winslet on the cover. Shall we speculate a little? Why the putative Excellent Actress and not also the Actor? I'm sure they have their editorial preferences. Here's one theory: The reason there isn't an Actor is that they'd have to put You-Know-Who on the cover, again. Is it possible they couldn't bring themselves to do it?

**Stupid question of the week: Will the Illinois senatorial/office-peddling scandals ever end?

Most humbly, a prediction

First, check out today's headlines from CNS news--

Obama’s Stimulus Will Cause 'Lower Wages' for American Workers, Says Congressional Budget Office

Only 23 Percent of Stimulus Will be Spent This Fiscal Year, Congressional Budget Office Finds

Now, to me this bailout doesn't sound like very sound policy for relief that will be noticeable any time soon. It seems that the more effective help will more likely come from (a) last year's bailout distribution for financial institutions and (b) separate bills now being targeted at financers and troubled home owners. So, what, aside from the tax cuts, is the stimulus package for?

My guess: the ambiguity and corruption in that bill signed Tuesday during Mr. Obama's junket to Denver will cause much of the funding to be tied up in litigation and subject to criminal probes for a decade. (Hopefully) some of the folks who stand to gain the most and who voted for it will lose their offices as a result.

Here's a link to the Congressional Budget Office report: CBO analysis.

A Presidents' Day Thought

Historian Richard Norton Smith: Great presidents not only speak to us--they speak for us.

Shame and more shame.

Shame on these people--specifically, the president and the congress. The stimulus the country needs should address priorities, not all this senseless growth of government spending. Here are the clear priorities: provide relief in the housing mortgage sector--people genuinely need some intervention here; get the banks lending again--otherwise, what was the original TARP for?; provide people with quick cash through a fast tax rebate and/or substantial tax cuts. These actions would be LESS COSTLY and far more effective than this "generational theft," as several parties have called it. The nation will be limping from this ineffective indebtedness for many years. Actually, if all they did was to help with the problematic mortgages--which were encouraged by the government in the first place--the neediest and hardest-hit would benefit directly, and the economy would start itself in short order. I hate to call people fools, but this train is heading for the cliff.

Moving on...

Some messages of encouragement and clarity on this day:

First, today's meditation passage on DGO is from St. Therese of Lisieux. Consider carefully what the Little Flower says about the search for the great soul, and the conditions for that search:

Dear Sister, how can you ask me if it is possible for you to love God as I love Him? ... My desires of martyrdom are nothing; they are not what give me the unlimited confidence that I feel in my heart. They are, to tell the truth, the spiritual riches that render one unjust, when one rests in them with complacence and when one believes they are something great... Ah! I really feel that... what pleases Him is that He sees me loving my littleness and my poverty, the blind hope that I have in His mercy .... That is my only treasure...

Oh, dear Sister, I beg you... understand that to love Jesus... the weaker one is, without desires or virtues, the more suited one is for the workings of this consuming and transforming Love. The desire alone to be a victim suffices, but we must consent to remain always poor and without strength, and this is the difficulty, for: "The truly poor in spirit, where do we find him? You must look for him from afar," said the psalmist. He does not say that you must look for him among great souls, but "from afar," that is to say in lowliness, in nothingness.

Ah! let us remain then very far from all that sparkles, let us love our littleness, let us love to feel nothing, then we shall be poor in spirit, and Jesus will come to look for us, and however far we may be, He will transform us in flames of love. Oh! How I would like to be able to make you understand what I feel! It is confidence, and nothing but confidence that must lead us to Love. Does not fear lead to Justice? (To the severe justice that people show to sinners but not the justice Jesus will have for those who love him.) Since we see the way, let us run together. Yes, I feel it, Jesus wills to give us the same graces; he wills to give us his Heaven gratuitously.

On a more overt political note, Plato writes in the Republic:

The city where those who are to rule are least anxious to be rulers is of necessity the best managed.

Finally, Victor Davis Hanson, in A War Like No Other, on the character of the most tragic of all conflicts, the Peloponnesian war:

Just think of it: a land versus a maritime power, the starkness of the Dorians contrasted with Ionian liberality. Oligarchy was pitted against democracy, practiced dearth set against ostentatious wealth. A rural hamlet dethroned a majestic imperial city; and a garrison state professed the cause of Greek autonomy abroad even as a humane imperialism killed the innocent.

No one foresaw such carnage in 431. Who believed that in just two years, the majestic Pericles would end up covered with pustules, grasping an amulet as he coughed out his life in the fevers of the plague? [Hanson then discusses the fates of other important figures....] Everything considered wisdom at the beginning of the war would be proven folly at its end.

Circumstances change. Leadership is the critical issue in the search for the better republic, and until great souls emerge the vision of the best polity will continue to take second place to economic revanchism and the moral cynicism that prefers selfish, short-sighted, agenda-driven convenience over the inalienable dignity of life itself.

"An entire orchard..."

Professor Hanson says that Mr. Obama's rebuttal of the newer news coverage of Rev. Wright's views about America, its corporate morality, its culture and its domestic and foreign policies as picking and choosing isolated, unrepresentative comments out of their homiletical context, is disingenous at best. Far from "cherry-picking," Hanson suggests that the media stumbled into "an entire orchard." Sadly, he's probably right. And the minister is probably not alone in his extremism. We know that the press have covered extreme fundamentalists of the general conservative bent who have bizarre views, too. The problem is that Mr. Obama tolerated a long exposure to these views and now is attempting a very inconsistent, self-contradictory denial of his awareness of these views. He did NOT look very good in the interview played on Fox News this morning. Today's New York Times has a long news piece covering the issue, too. I'd say Mr. Obama has to realize that his candidacy is now severely compromised. I'm a little sad, too, because he represented a new voice for the Democrats--something other than the same tired way of defending their party's positions, such as those are.

Apparently, a satisfied customer....

The reporting rules that banks have to live by betrayed him, mainly because he was a repeat customer. He must live with his conscience, his family, and his duty to do what is right by the people of New York. These all demand he resign. It's NOT a "private matter," as he said at his press conference--I'm not sure it would be even if no laws were broken. That sanctimonious attitude that he's always projected is now completely transparent. What we see through the veil ain't pretty.

Andy and Roger

Madame observed that if Roger had taken Andy's tone of voice, admitted some participation in taking the illicit chemicals, and moved on, Roger might be having a little less negative attention paid to him. She might be right. Is Roger's intransigence and seeming venality due to a profound arrogance or is it that he has truly been wronged by a lying, extortion-seeking former associate? Can the Congressional inquiry or investigative reporting get down to the facts on this? More to come, I guess.