Barak Obama’s White House press secretary Robert Gibbs: “Even the toughest rules require reasonable exceptions.”
Oliver North’s secretary, Fawn Hall: “There are times when you have to go above the law.”
Jan 232009
Jan 232009
I found something to disagree with in Obama’s inaugural speech:
The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.
At least he didn’t say the important question was whether the government makes the trains run on time.
And he didn’t say the government had to do a good job at these things. It’s a pretty low bar for keeping government programs. All he said the government has to do is help. Even if these programs do a worse job than would be done without them, he says he plans to keep them. Well, most government programs do some good, somewhere, for someone. That’s what dog and pony shows are for — to show that the taxpayers that at least somebody, somewhere is benefiting.
But even if all his government programs would be wildly successful at these goals, they wouldn’t necessarily be good. A big government is a powerful government. Power corrupts, whether it’s power exercised on the streets of Iraq or at the local medical clinic. If there are no other countervailing institutions to wield power in competition with and in opposition to that of government, history tells us that we the people will suffer, even if the government provides us with well paying jobs and health care.
Jan 222009
Two things that made me laugh today:
1. This quote from P.J. O’Rourke:
In the language of politics there is only one translation for the phrase “hope and change,” to wit, “big, fat government.”
2. This item from Google News.
It made me wonder how CBS news knew this.
Was it learned at a news conference? “Mr. President, what did you do on your first morning in office.” “The first thing I did after breakfast was fix my gaze on national security.”
Or was it at an Oval Office photo op where he was photographed staring out the window? “What’s he doing?” “Shhh. He’s fixing his gaze on national security.”
Well, if you have nothing interesting to report, I suppose one can be reduced to writing cliches.
For more fun with the term, you can google for “fixes gaze.” You’ll find that even George Bush was capable of fixing his gaze, whatever it means.
CBS may have been embarrassed by its own headline, because the title is still there if you search Google News, but when you go to the actual link it now says something less silly. Trying to take away our fun, it looks like.
Jan 192009
What to do if you have a serious messiah complex, but the people don’t want to be saved, at least not by you?
For example, suppose you’re a lifeguard at the beach and you have a serious need to be a hero. There might be a kid who needs a rescue, but that’s not going to be enough. Like I said, you have a serious messiah complex.
You can find the biggest kid on the beach and order him to go rescue the kid in trouble, or else. Then go out and hold them both underwater a while. Then let go. If they still don’t want your help, push them under for a while longer.
Eventually they’ll accept your help, and then you’ll have an flock of adoring and grateful followers.
What if you don’t like getting wet? In that case you could become Treasury Secretary or Federal Reserve Chairman, and do basically the same thing to our country’s banks.
Welcome to the world of re-regulation. I expect we’ll be seeing a lot of heroes in the next few years.
Jan 192009
Here’s a clue: If you think everybody in the room shares your enthusiasm (or dismay) over the ascension of Obama to power, you need to talk less and listen more. If everyone actually does share your enthusiasm (or dismay) you need to be in a room with a more diverse group of people.
I’ve been in rooms with both oblivious types (pro- and anti-) in the past couple of days. I managed to keep my mouth shut and save it for my blog.
Jan 192009
Russell Roberts at Cafe Hayek is thinking of a giant wiki where we can keep track of all the trickles in the Democrats’ trickle-down stimulus plan.
Wouldn’t it be great to keep track of how long it takes the money to get spent, what actually happens on the ground and so on? There’s no way a reporter can follow it. Or an economist. So let’s use the wisdom of crowds, the many-eyeball approach.
Jan 192009
Karen Agness asks: Why Did UVa Cancel Classes Only This Time?
On Jan. 20, 2005, George Bush was sworn in as president of the United States. On Jan. 20, 2009, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States. The University of Virginia decided to suspend classes on only one of these important days. Can you guess which one? … Based on the actions of the UVa administration, George Bush’s Inauguration Day was somehow not “an educational moment” or an “exercise in democracy.” This explanation is suspect. Furthermore, neither Garson’s e-mail nor the official press release announcement that the suspension of class on Inauguration Day is a new policy that will be implemented well into the future regardless of whether a Republican or Democrat is elected.
I’ll be busy working during the inauguration ceremonies. I’ll be no more giddy about this inauguration than I have been about any other. I certainly hope there won’t be anything memorable about the day. With any luck, Obama’s supporters will be too busy celebrating to start the pogroms just yet.
The only time I watched an inauguration was in 1961, and that was because my teachers took the same approach as UVa.
I attended the District #3 school at Bazile Mills, Nebraska. The school, a frame two-room building that had been built in 1884, no longer exists, but I’ve marked its location on the above google map. The boundaries of the schoolyard are still visible, as they were in 1995 when I visited the area at the beginning of my first-ever multi-day bike ride.
I was in 7th grade that year. The teachers arranged for the entire population of the school, from grades 1 through 8 (if I remember correctly) to go to a neighbor’s house where we could watch the inauguration on television. I’m pretty sure it was the house at the location shown at the bottom of the route that I’ve marked. We all sat in the living room and watched. I’m not quite sure how we could have all fit in that house, so maybe I shouldn’t be so sure that the lower grades went, too.
I don’t remember much about it other than the walk to the house and all of us sitting on the floor of the living room. I do remember Robert Frost trying to read a poem. Well, there was the line about “Ask not what your country can do for you…”, which was a good one. The memory of that has been reinforced by many subsequent retellings.
I’m still angry that during the election campaign, our teacher told us that only one of us was thinking for ourselves. This was an eighth grade girl who supported Kennedy, while her parents favored Nixon. The rest of us favored whichever candidate our parents favored, and our teacher took that to mean none of us were thinking for ourselves. I credit that incident for saving me from becoming a typical 60s radical. I decided then and there that I was going to agree with my parents whenever I felt like it, and was not going to be obligated to rebel against them.
Anyway, it was obvious that our teacher (of whom I have otherwise fond recollections) favored Kennedy. I am pretty sure we would not have made a field trip to watch the election on TV if Nixon had won. We certainly would not have gone to that particular home to watch it.
I had favored Nixon during the election and just rolled my eyes at this display of “educational moments” and “exercise in democracy” or whatever terms were used at the time.
Some years later I was cheering for Nixon’s impeachment. Watergate turned me against him well before the 1972 election. (I say this because of all the people who say Watergate didn’t become an issue until after the 1972 election.) That was just the beginning of a string of impeachments that I favored. If Obama abuses his power the same way the Clintons did, I’ll be favoring his impeachment, too. But who knows. He could surprise us all. Maybe he’ll even give a good speech (as Kennedy did that day in 1961). If so, I’ll be able to read about it afterwards.
Jan 192009
I’m glad Star Parker said tax benefits instead of tax cuts:
His economic stimulus plan has large government expenditures to please Democrats and tax benefits to please Republicans.
Because if there is a single tax cut in Obama’s proposals, I haven’t yet heard about it. (And why any of it would please Republicans is a mystery to me.)
Jan 162009
The NY Times should have added “stimulus packages” to the list, just in case it isn’t clear to people that they’re the same sort of thing:
But Captain Sullenberger’s efforts, like twice checking the soaked cabin for stragglers before fleeing the sinking plane himself, emerged as singularly selfless leadership of a sort that seemed so removed from things like Ponzi schemes and subprime mortgages, corporate bailouts and deflected blame.
Jan 152009
I didn’t know Mexico ever had a president like Porfirio Díaz. I learned about him while reading “Bound in Twine : The history and ecology of the Henequen-Wheat complex for Mexico and the American and Canadian Plains, 1880-1950” by Sterling Evans (2007). On page 42 he links Diaz with 19th century positivism, Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, and private property. I presume there is more to learn about him from this book, but I get a rather different picture of him from Wikipedia. In any case, this is something I need to learn more about, especially as it relates to the communal land holdings of the native peoples.
Well, I barely know what to say other than to expose my ignorance of this bit of history, which I’m doing here as seems to be the proper thing to do in this age of blogs.
And that got me to thinking that blogs are a modern version of the “blab schools” like those that Abraham Lincoln attended. In those schools all students would recite their lessons out loud simultaneously, which made for a cacophonous educational experience. Now modern technology has increased the ability for all of us to blab at once about what we’re learning, even if it’s not very well digested knowledge.
Not that I’m complaining. My own elementary education was in one- and two-room schools. First and second grades were spent in a one-room school, complete with pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room, overlooking the Missouri River in central North Dakota. I have always appreciated that I was able to listen to the 7th and 8th grade boys at their lessons. It was certainly more interesting than our Dick and Jane. And here were these big kids who we thought would just as soon kill us little kids if they were even to recognize our existence, and they were discussing poetry and literature. It was the usual fare in American public schools of the time — things like Longfellow’s “Evangeline” and Edward Everett Hale’s “Man Without a Country.” But those big, tough kids were so earnest in their discussions. I don’t remember what they said, but I still remember the tone of their discussions, which didn’t at all match what I saw out on the playground. It was disconcerting, but also made me want to get to the point where I could learn the things they were learning.
Maybe I’m feeling a little bit of that now.