A Simple Bit of Math

I don't post as much uninformed blather on policy ideas as I used to because:
1: There are others who do it better.
2: The topic depresses me because there are few options open to us and all are varying levels of grim.
3: There are those few people who can make informed posts on policy.

CDR Salamander is one of the latter and he has a math lesson for us all.

Jack made a good point last week over at USNIBlog,

Something’s gotta give. In 2009, the U.S. spent $187 billion (more than China’s defense budget) paying off interest on government debt.

He goes on.
It's short.
Read the whole thing.

In the late 19th early 20th century when other developing countries were going deep into debt for short term gain, Japan had a pretty simple defense strategy. 

"Rich nation=strong army" 

This was the slogan of all mainstream political parties there for something like 40 years. Men of great substance and ability like Eiichi Shibusawa were encouraged to be entrepreneurs and helped to bring Japan into the modern era.

Around the turn of the century Argentina developed a rather different policy... which I'll  paraphrase with all due malice as "hope and change". 

Argentina had many advantages over Japan, being an established republic that was on a par with the USA and only a little behind Europe technologically. 

Argentina has never recovered. 

Japan became a world power and was quite successful until they went off their trolley in the '30s. 

I see many parallels between then and now.
I do not like them.

The options we have now, as I said earlier, are quite limited. They will grow more limited as time passes. We MAY have until 2013-14 to regain steering, and turn the ship of state away from the  iceberg we are approaching. We are so close and our inertia is so great that we will suffer damage regardless, but as time passes our ability to meaningfully change course, even if we regain full helm control is steadily reduced, until oblivion is inevitable no mater what, so time is of the essence.

Of course, right now we don't have the bridge and have control  of only one engine room....so the only thing we can realistically do in the next two years is reduce our speed. 
That and review our counter flooding procedures.

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Anarchy

While I was in the hospital, this post on anarchy appeared over at Instapundit.  It began as a quick link to this very thoughtful piece by Wretchard. Read it all.

Now the reason I bother to link to this when its been on the high traffic blogs already is that it brought to mind this piece from theBlogprof....which contains, amongst much text,  video of Ted Rall on MSNBC urging his people to arm themselves for class struggle and making the usual paranoid rants and idiotic associations involving the Tea Party...you know, those scary people who pick up trash, rather than trash the town.

Then there was the snowplow-gate and then this warning that I found going through my tabs before closing down tonight, it warns about the likelihood of  European style municipal worker strikes.

If city workers did undermine the snow-clearing effort to protest budget cuts, they may have contributed to the death of a baby girl in Brooklyn, who waited with her 22-year-old mother nine hours for emergency crews to fight their way through the snow-covered streets. A Queens woman watched her elderly mother die as she waited three hours for an ambulance to arrive.

Americans better get used to this treatment.

 

And then this final tidbit. Francis Fox Piven, (Yes THAT Piven) calling for American leftist to please kill people and break things like their European counterparts.

I like the Tea Party even better all the time.

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How Civilizations Fall

Via Scott Lowther comes a speech given in Australia by Niall Ferguson on the collapse of Empires.

Really informative and not a little scary.

The speech is here and it actually begins at the 9 minute mark, and the facts and figures start around minute 23. It's about an hour and fifteen minutes long but well worth it.

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Our Situation....Explained

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The Fight

Rubio has pulled it off handily.

Rand Paul seems to have won big.

There is good liveblogging all over the place, I recommend CDR Salamander, The Anchoress, Pudding Central,  RS McCain, The Corner, and RCP. For the view from the other side you might want to drop in on Kos and the Huff puffies .

It isn't looking good for the Senate, but as I type this Republicans are looking at 60 or so pickups in the house.

UPDATE: Nikki Haley looks to have pulled it off, as have Tim Scott and Allen West. Damn wacist wipubwicanz...
Senate is now un-winable, but the house looks to be a bigger win than anticipated.

Defrost the pudding.

UPDATE: Good speech by Boehner. It is late I have 2 hours to sleep. Good night.

UPDATE NEXT DAY: Woah...
I hadn't seen the last bit of Boehners speech. It's still a very good, non-triumphal victory speech...just...damn.

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De-Registered?

When I got off work today, I went straight to my new polling location in Churchland. When I had changed my address and drivers license at the DMV, I was sure to change my voter registration info.

Alas I am not in the system.

I've voted in every election except a few uncontested midterm elections since 1988.

The poll watchers actually asked if I had changed my registration status at the DMV as this has been an issue today in this precinct.

Well, after some searching I was informed that I might still be on the rolls at my old polling place in Newport News, on the other side of the tunnel traffic I had just slogged through... The polling place that is actually walking distance from work.

Before I left I got specific instructions on where and how to register at the registrars office.... ...which is pretty self explanatory but so was the DMV. The pollwatchers were professional and helpful and, again mentioned that this had been an issue this morning. In fact two other people had the same issue before I left.

I'm discouraged, so I should jut blow the whole thing off, I mean it's not like one vote is going to matter....'sides this thing is in the bag...


NOT!

That's how 'they' GET YOU!

Besides, too many people have died to give us this right.

Too many still endure real peril to exercise this right ...

...for a grown American man to be defeated by traffic and a 40 minute drive.

However, as I've already missed my Tuesday class because of this fiasco and have been up 31 hours, I am going to get a nap first.

More to follow.

UPDATE: Well, I voted, but not in the election for MY congresscritter, but in the election for the CC representing my old precinct. I noted that of the 17 other people in this second polling place, 3 were off to the side with similar issues to myself, all involving DMV registration.

Although I was on the rolls in Newport News, my ID (with my current address) did raise some eyebrows and got me sidelined for a bit with paperwork and questions. This is not a bad thing of course. The pollworkers in Newport News like the ones in Portsmouth were patient and professional.

The pollworkers said it had been really busy for an off year election. The voter traffic seemed to be picking up quite a bit as I left, just over 30 minutes before the polls closed.

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Exams are Over

After a remarkably spread out 2 weeks of exams I did manage to get all "A"s and "B"s.
Oddly, I got docked 4 points on one for giving too comprehensive an answer.

Tomorrow is the election.
I think it is going to be more of a near run thing than is being hyped.

I have just gotten in and need to be to work in 4 hours...so I'm just gonna leave this here...

'Cause I'm a bad bad man.

Now vote.

more...

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The Extent of Tolerance Amongst the "Tolerant"

All the intertubes, the airwaves and the cablewaves are abuzz with talk about the firing of Juan Williams by NPR. I hadn't planned on commenting on it as pretty much EVERYONE already has, and the notion that NPR is hysterically PC is the definition of dog bites man.

If, by some chance, you are unaware of the Juan Williams story the Anchoress has it pretty much covered with a long post that includes about 60 hyperlinks and asks a question.

Schiller kind of makes me wonder if too many people aren’t in powerful positions these days because of their skills in lockstepping, rather than because of their smarts.

And I think the answer is yes, but more on that in a minute.

One reason this post is here is because of another very similar incident. Today, Elizabeth Moon, was disinvited from a con in Wisconsin. As it happens, it was the same con that was the subject of the post below...clicking on a related hyperlink is how I found out about this.

Like Williams, Moon is a lefty, (in fact she's a full metal Bush hater and she has said some pretty vile things about righties) and like Williams years of doing a pretty good job (she's a superb author) and having, I gather, a  majority of her views in agreement with the left brought no respite when she made a perfectly reasonable but politically incorrect statement , in her case a long thoughtful blog post,  that violated todays unwritten blasphemy laws. That is both made comments that did not sing the praises of Islam, absolve all practitioners of said religion of all responsibility for any unpleasantness and praise merciful Allah.
That is the unforgivable blasphemy.

Greg Gutfield sums this up very well here, pointing out that such obsequious kow-towing to Islamic rabble rousers not only encourages more of the same behavior but is tacitly Islamaphobic in and of itself.

But it gets worse...because neither of these incidents is really about self censorship out of fear, or respect. In fact, I think the defering to Islam issue, while a real issue, is a smokescreen in both these cases.

Both the bureaucrats at NPR and the staff at WisCon are using the Islamaphobia canard (and in both these cases it is truly an idiotic canard)  to mask the fact that they are working very hard to stifle all dissent against their worldview. In NPRs case they were by their own admission upset that Williams appeared on FOX as a ( dissenting ) analyst. The Islamic not phobia is just to cover their asses while they crack the whip and enforce their world view. Williams wasn't even really fired for having double plus ungood thoughts....he was fired for his associations.

Moon got disinvited from the con because the main thrust of her post was that people do not have unlimited entitlement. Even worse, she suggested people have a responsibility to comport themselves well and behave as good citizens. This flies in the face of the total entitlement worldview that I've observed in the upper reaches of fandom over the years. I have long observed that there are few people as tolerant as certain left leaning fans...so long as one is in complete agreement with them.

On their own neither of these incidents will be in any way lasting. Neither Williams nor Moon will suffer from this. Williams will likely go full time at Fox. Judging by this comment thread  Moon will have a weekend free from shrill condescending lectures by bitter, passive aggressive women whose con is an opportunity to lecture, badger and exert control over others and who go all to pieces if someone strays from leftist victim orthodoxy in the slightest.  I hope she enjoys the respite.

The reason these two incidents are worthy of comment is that political correctness is becoming an increasingly accepted bludgeon and cover for ideological purging and power plays. And it is working. It is working in part because, as the Anchoress suggests an increasing number of people are getting advanced in bureaucracies because of ideological purity rather than actual performance. While they may not have the broadest experience or the keenest mind these Parsons Wannabees can, in fact, be quite dangerous to ones career.

"Parsons was Winston's fellow employee at the Ministry of Truth. He was a fattish but active man of paralyzing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms—one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the thought police, the stability of the Party depended."

 1984 George Orwell
 
more...

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I am a Bad Bad Man

...because I laughed at this.

Hey, wait...don't look at me like that.
I also cried...
....'cause it brought back memories.

Like con-food poisoning.

...oh..and back boobs.
I worked on several cons in the 80's and 90's and boy howdy, how things have not changed.

H/T: Ace

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Why I am Not As Optimistic As Some

Those who have visited this blog since those long ago days when it was updated regularly know that  I lean a bit to the "right" on the political spectrum, and so one might think that I'd be absolutely giddy about the current political winds. However, I am actually rather concerned about the long game.

This upcoming election is looking good, but is not in the bag to the extent that some seem to think. For one thing our ground game sucks. This is partly because of the rights more individualist nature and the fact that our GOTV efforts are mostly voluntary, but also because rural and suburban areas pose much more challenging problems to any block captains than the urban areas that are the lefts places of power. 

More thoughts along these lines can be found here.

Still,  the signs bode generally well for November second. My big concern remains what comes after.

The challenges the nation faces are daunting.

The choices available to us are all unpleasant. Some things will have to be cut and most of those things are very near and dear to the people who have allowed themselves to become dependent on them.

The new congress will spend two years trying to set the nations fiscal policy on a sustainable path. That will involve cutting or eliminating a lot of programs, most of which are very popular and have strident and motivated constituencies.

Doing the correct thing fiscally will also involve reducing taxes to the edge of the Laffer Curve in an attempt to boost the economy....this will not punish the rich who invest and create the wealth and jobs, it will support them in these endeavors. Petty or desperate people who resent anyone who has more than them will be enraged by this.

...and the president will veto it all.

He will set himself up as the guardian of your entitlements...whoever you may be. He will be aided in putting forth this narrative by most of the press.

Nothing will get fixed. The nation will go farther into ruinous debt and the new congress will be blamed by the base who elected them for not doing what they promisied....which they will be unable to do if they can't override a veto.

It gets worse.
There is actual spending that needs desperately to be done. Thousands of dams built as public works projects during the depression are now past their design lives and menace untold Americans. Bridges and other infrastructure need to be repaired and replaced.

This was nearly all ignored in the first stimulus in favor of kickbacks, bike paths, blatant corruption and "shovel ready projects". Now the president is talking about a second stimulus to actually deal with these real problems.

Dealing with these issues is part of the legitimate and necessary function of government, so there is a very real possibility that the only thing the congress will get past Obamas veto will be infrastructure projects...that will be very necessary but will just add to the debt even more.

This could cause the Tea Partiers to either become unhinged and form a third party, or sit on their hands out of disgust in 2012, turning the whole thing over to the Dems again, who will then be basically unstopable before the nation turns into a really big version of Greece...but with no one to bail us out.... and then collapses utterly into a huge Hobbsian version of the Balkans after selling all of our mineral rights to the Chinese.

That would be bad....most can agree on this, but avoiding it will require that the tea party folks and the newly chastened Republican establishment work together and keep their eye on the ball.

 

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Hopefully a Pheidippides...and not a Cassandra

The Other McCain links to this speech by Daniel Hannan   which Hannan gave to the Cato Institute recently.

Just watch it. Especially if you don't "get" the tea parties...this Brit articulates the whole idea rather well.  

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The Mask Slips for A Moment.

Watermelons are not to be trusted.

More thoughts here, here, and here.

Final thoughts from Iowahawk....who does get to the heart of the matter.

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Thoughts On the Doom and End Times Copyright Bill

A few days ago this post appeared at Instapundit concerning the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act.

From the two relevant links, this seems to be a pretty dire piece of legislation indeed. Now the links are from Newsmax and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, so there might be a bit of unwarranted breathlessness. Still, with Leahy involved and this administrations attitude towards the press, it is easy to see where this could be a pretty bad thing, especially when a Google search of the title of the bill turns of a whole page of denunciations of the bill as thinly veiled censorship.

Of course it's not possible for any of us to read the damned thing and it's probably thousands of pages lon.....oh wait.

Colleen Doran has helpfully provided the full text of the bill here.

Read the whole thing.
It is short and to the point.

Before posting, I contacted an acquaintance who runs a hosting service for his thoughts. I had not gotten permission to use his name or quote him by the time I posted but the gist of his reaction is that this has some important caveats not found in other scarier legislation that's been proposed. For one thing punitive action is reserved for the specific SITE not the hosting service as is implied (and was the case in some other bills) . That is, one sketchy site setting up on mee.nu or Typepad doesn't risk shutting down the whole domain. That would suck.

Of course if one runs a torrent site or download blog, then one is not liking this bill.

Piracy has devastated the R1 anime market and scantillations are eating the manga market alive. With E-books, i-Tunes and the video equivalents being the future of entertainment something needs to be done.

There is a lot of hand-wringing over this this, however....

One of the few legitimate roles of government is punishing theft.
The internet, is by its nature interstate commerce.
Theft is not the same thing as free speech.
Punishing theft is not censorship.

This bill, like any other, could be abused, and twisted to be used in ways not intended. That sort of thing happens when the idiot notion of the law being a 'living document' is given respect rather than the contempt it deserves. However THAT problem is beyond the scope of any bill and beyond the ability of any bill to deal with.

This appears to be, as written, a pretty decent solution to a very real problem.

So...thoughts?
(asbestos boxers GET!)

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Still No Pictures

  I'm taking it easy today and tomorrow, mostly studying Japanese, and trying not to exacerbate my sunburn, which, as it peels on my bald head looks like mutant dandruff...or something and seems to be scaring people. The intertubes went out at the guest house so I'm again at the sublime geek heaven that is N-Cafe in Akihabara, where I took care of some online stuff for the university (and I took a few moments to kill some Zombjas)  I note that in seven days, I've been to Akihabara twice and haven' gone to any of the anime, CD or manga stores....hmmm.

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He's got to go

In my undergraduate, inactive enlisted puke opinion General McChrystal is largely right. However that can be said with the benefit of hindsight of McArthur as well and he (quite rightly) got sacked.

I can empathize with McChrystals frustration, but we frequently elect presidents who do not have a great deal of military experience, and ALL presidents face a steep learning curve when they assume the office as NO ONE is versed in everything and the bipolar levels of extreme delegation and hands on engagement necessary is startling to even the most experienced executives ( a group Obama is not a member of). It is the duty of the Military to serve the elected executive.

I am no fan of the current President but he IS  the President. He is the CinC, and a one of this nations soldiers does not air this sort of laundry unless one first resigns, or retires.

A friend once asked if I thought it would have been better to let McArthur slide given that the 6-10 million who might die in a war with china would be dwarfed by the 60-80 million who died in the late 50s and early 60s and the real possibility of ending the Cold War early. 
Of course not.
To allow that sort of insubordination is to open the way for a Caesar, something the founders greatly (and rightly) feared. We are fortunate to have an officer corps that is overwhelmingly professional, whose allegiance is to the nation and its Constitution, and who consider it a point of honor that they are guardians and not threats to our republic. This sort of talk can erode that quickly as happened in Rome and all to many times in our sister republics to the south. Occasionally this occurred for patriotic and principled reasons, but those good intentions almost always paved a short road to Hell.

Obama needs to fire McChrystal. It gives me no pleasure to say this but this situation is bigger than either of these men.

UPDATE: More here. Jerry Pournelle has some thoughts here and here CDR Salamander points out the short term  ramifications of NOT firing McChrystal.

Both the CINC and McChrystal will have lost face in a public manner and will be looked at as weaker; McChrystal will have more enemies in the Administration’s National Security Structure; McChrystal has shown support for your only significant Democrat rival, SECSTATE Clinton. Worst part again is the CINC will also lose face to much of the world - especially with our enemies. In most of their cultures, a General Officer saying such things would be shot or have an unfortunate helicopter accident. They will not view keeping McChrystal on as a signal that President Obama is a firm leader.

.
Read the whole thing. Seriously, do it now.

Note that as a bonus, if he fires McChrystal, Obama actually gets to be genuinely decisive.

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A Wee Bit of Good News

 Well, on the political front anyway.
Nikki Haley has won the Republican nomination for Governor of South Carolina. She won by an impressive margin too.

The whirlwind of racism, libel and slander that was thrown at Haley may well have been the death rattle of the putrid Palmetto State machine.....but only if she wins the general election.

UPDATE: It looks like Tim Scott has won too!

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School Days

No..not that one....no nice boat here. This is worse.

It seems that educrats have decided that friendship is at cross purposes to the education process.

......But increasingly, some educators and other professionals who work with children are asking a question that might surprise their parents: Should a child really have a best friend? .......

........But the classic best-friend bond — the two special pals who share secrets and exploits, who gravitate to each other on the playground and who head out the door together every day after school — signals potential trouble for school officials intent on discouraging anything that hints of exclusivity

Read the whole thing.

Good lord...

I am becoming increasingly convinced that a Masters in Education should be a disqualifier for teaching children and we should return to requiring a real masters degree, complemented with a certificate or associates in teaching. This would make it much easier to recruit  people who have had careers outside the education establishment into the teaching profession.The ED Masters degree certainly doesn't seem to be doing much to discourage utter detachment from humanity and its associated asshattery.

Remember that the myopic souless apparatchiks that came up with this God awful  paean to teh stupid and teh evil are likely not only equipped with lots of credentials from various schools of education, they are also most likely very difficult to fire due to the NEA and its minions.

Coincidentally, my new best friend is Harrison Bergeron.

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I'll Just Leave This Here

Hat tip: Neo

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Helen Thomas

She is gone.

Almost a shame. After all, It's rare indeed  to see someone whose face so closely matches their inner beauty.

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Making Life Easier for the Bears

The wrong kind of bears though.

more...

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