The Economic Asteroid Plan

The federal government failed to sort out a budget again, many months after the supposed due date, which was OCTOBER 2010. Just a little late now that it is April.

To budget or not to budget, that is the problem, it seems. It is way beyond WHEN.

I am already good and tired of the scare tactics by the leftists. They gave the same emotion-based proclamations over ObamaCare. Not surprisingly, these are the same "leaders" who in recents decades have always insisted on adding more and more government, Now they are insisting it will all be paid for with magic pixie dust or something. To the very brink, these folks had also insisted there was nothing wrong with certain federal financial programs, such as the CRA that allowed loans to the unemployed, and Fannie and Freddie, which were the nonsensical housing debt twins by the time 2008's economic fall happened. 

I'd like to see a real reason, not some emotion-charged twaddle that explains why a tightened budget shouldn't happen. Not just some 5% haircut that hurts education and the poor, but broad pay cuts (to put public employees on par with private!), nonessential program slimmings, defense project trimmings, etc. Barring that, how about a good reason -- emotion and threat-free -- why a shutdown should not happen, from leftists. 

Maybe I have it wrong, perhaps it is better to continue pretending that government is not too large and it is paid for, that the majority of citizens and our futures aren't getting a raw deal by the feds, that poor habits and waste are virtually gone from government, that loopy politicians and interest groups are not bent on further betraying the basic concepts of the republic. 

Yeah, it will aaaaall be OK so long as we keep putting off the tough trim-down. The US seems to be no longer the Eagle, instead the 500-lb man who refuses to see his doctor for a checkup. (You gonna eat that?) How very American and exceptional it is to pretend necessary decisions away! 

We can always hope an asteroid hits the planet and that solves the economic problems for us. Party till the planets bursts! 

jR

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Haiti's new president: Unexpected but understandable

Haiti's new president: Unexpected but understandable

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/04/05/haiti.martelly/

 

I have long hoped for something pleasantly short of a dictatorship, and lacking the brutality seen in Haiti in the 1980s and 1990s, with battles in the streets, and images of bodies of victims stacked like sacks of rice to get them off the streets.

 

CNN offered a nice little piece, by Moni Basu, on the newly decided president of Haiti, Michel Martelly, a political outsider (apparently) who was known for his music, not his politics. It is that is short enough to read in a few minutes that offers a picture of a man who might try to see change (while what kind of change is yet to be seen, as guns and money have spoken more effectively than words in Haiti for decades). Even if one is cynical of Martelly's outsider status, he is not a career politician, or a career con man (apparently).

 

I quote the end of that article, but the real quote is bolded, the money quote (literally). If we are going to help the unsophisticated masses improve their lot, trusting them with lots of money is not the way to go about it, but to help them to help themselves. And throwing money at them won't do that, much as throwing money at a child will not teach them to earn it for themselves. Active input, needed supplies and guidance are acts of hope, not money.  

... Haiti will go nowhere, he said, unless the people have a president they can trust, a president who is honest. He was that man, he insisted.

"I've been on the ground with them for 22 years. The people know me. I represent the light at the end of the tunnel."

But the man also had plans.

He said, for instance, that the $12 billion that was pledged by the international community for earthquake assistance should come in the form of infrastructure, not money, because Haitians don't know how to manage money.

"People are fed up here," he said. "They have no food, no education, no health care. What kind of place is it when a young girl will sell her body to buy a phone card?"

So what makes a man who made a name with dance music think he can change things in Haiti?

Martelly flashed his signature smile; the light glinted off his tet kale.

"Well," he said. "Look at what the politicians have done."

 

- jR (aka @AirFarceOne on Twitter)

Lone reporter put in storage closet during fundraiser with Biden, newspaper says

Want some reasons to fire Florida Sen. 'Lamppost' Bill Nelson and 'Crazy Uncle Joe' Biden in 2012? Here is one reason to add to the list. 

A pool reporter -- the only one chosen to attend and cover an event -- sipped on water, was given no food, and let out only for comments of Biden and Nelson, then led back to guarded confinement, during his assignment in Winter Park. There's some change to believe in, huh? The socioeconomic divide was never so pointed for one reporter as it was at a Winter Park, Fla., fundraiser.

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Link to Fox News piece:

Reporter Confined to Storage Closet During Fundraiser With Biden, Newspaper Says - FoxNews.com.

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Below, a more detailed piece from DRUDGE REPORT:

*** REPORTER CONFINED IN CLOSET DURING VEEP'S FUNDRAISER ***

Staffers with Vice President Joe Biden confined an Orlando Sentinel reporter in a closet this week to keep him from mingling with high-powered guests gathered for a Democratic fundraiser.

Reporter Scott Powers was the designated "pool reporter" for the vice president's Wednesday visit to the massive Winter Park, Fla., home of developer and philanthropist Alan Ginsburg. The veep hadn't arrived yet but most of the 150 guests (minimum $500 donation) had. They were busy noshing on caprese crostini with oven-dried mozzarella and basil, rosemary flatbread with grapes, honey and gorgonzola cheese, and bacon deviled eggs, before a lunch of grilled chicken Caesar and garden vegetable wraps.

Not so for Powers. A "low-level staffer" put Powers in a storage closet and then stood guard outside the door, Powers told the DRUDGE REPORT. "When I'd stick my head out, they'd say, 'Not yet. We'll let you know when you can come out.'"

And no crustini for Powers, either. He made do with a bottle of water to sip as he sat at a tiny makeshift desk, right next to a bag marked "consignment." Powers was closeted at about 11:30 a.m., held for about an hour and 15 minutes, came out for 35 minutes of remarks by Biden and Sen. Bill Nelson, Florida Democrat, and then returned to his jail for the remainder of the event.

Powers' phone didn't work in the closet, but his Blackberry did, so he fired a picture of his impromptu prison to his editors, who posted a short blog item on the lack of freedom of the press under the veep's control.

Powers didn't mention his confinement in either of his pool reports that day, saying only that "press coverage was limited to a single pool reporter, filing on behalf of all local media, who was allowed to listen to the remarks but not given an opportunity to talk with anyone at the event."

On Friday, Powers said, the home's owner [Ginsburg] called him. "He said he had no idea they'd put me in a closet and was very sorry. He said he was just following their lead and was extremely embarrassed by the whole thing."

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Impressive. Biden was embarrassed by questions from an Orlando ABC affiliate during the 2008 campaign. Perhaps he thinks the entire news body in Orlando is to blame for his looking glib and/or foolish during that interview. That, or it was good, old fashioned elitism at work. Maybe it was bitter elitism. Hmm. 

Libya: are cruise missiles hitting Tripoli going to stick the opportunist demagogue label onto Obama?

Libya, Obama, the US and it's allies

Ridding Libya of Qaddafi is now a sanctioned action of the United Nations. This is War #3 for the USA, some think. In fact, it is, but hardly anything -- yet -- like the other two wars.

I see and read that some citizens of the US are very upset that the POTUS hasn't brought every soldier home, as he vowed as part of his sparsely detailed package of mottos, vows and "I-isms" (all the "I'll" do this, and that, me-me-me prattle Obama so skillfully spewed) on the 2008 campaign trail, and instead, we have this Libya action.

I didn't realize that "bring the troops home" was the specific, open-ended campaign promise that Obama prognosticated which sold so many tickets to the Obama-Biden circus tent. But apparently, to some, this was the chief reason they voted for Obama, or against John McCain.

I thought it was far down the list below several others: Hope. Change. Closing Gitmo. Spreading the wealth and other hints of socialism. Government health care for all. Not being anything like W. A comical VP. I won't beat it to death by listing more.

Is the arrogant campaign bluster about bringing our military home, which was continued by a secretive White House, the false promise will break the far left's and less doleful believers/fools' devotion to Obama? I figure that, in some ways, he's been vastly and deeply educated by the job, and his ideas about leading have grown up, in spots. I figure people who believed in his fuzzy promises of hope and change will give up on him in their own time, as individuals. Or, they will continue to not pay much attention to the breadth and depth of our reality, as they had during the 2008 campaign. (To be clear, I know that not all who voted for Obama in 2008 bought the hype, they had their own reasons, even held their nose to vote, they were independents or moderates who didn't like McCain, or just wanted to shake any GW Bush leadership continuation.)

Yes, already some insist the action in Libya is a war like Afghanistan, Iraq. Not yet it isn't. The story from the White House is that this isn't to be another foreign war started by the US. It is more like a visit by the Orkin man. But with cruise missiles. Then, we are to play a background role to the others' efforts.

I didn't have to do a lot of study to see that it will require a lot of work to reset Libya, as in Iraq. Libya was run by a kook who created almost no infrastructure or industry and controlled everything centrally. The people there will not get beyond Qaddafi easily, as Iraq has still not gotten beyond the damage of the Ba'ath party extremist.

I'm sick of the USA being forced into a role as world police -- YES, forced, at times -- and would like to see other states take on the primary tasks. The US should be proud to be part of removing dictatorships and autocracies that wantonly kill their own citizens. How about some larger effort from others? For a change.

That would be change I can believe in. But I will have to see it before I can believe it.

I am very pleased that for once in a long while the United Nations made a decision and let its members take serious action (read: do more than place sanctions and post statements) before all-out, blood-spewing mayhem ensued. I have to credit Obama for holding out for those slowpokes. It was worth it. This time. It seems.

As for what is to come, I hope I am wrong about Libya being in serious collapse after Qaddafi is out. I hope it is not the long term commitment that Iraq and Afghanistan have been. I will believe that when I see it, too.

Those who think the US is a bumbling warmonger, or a faltering superpower: watch how very awkward things get without our total involvement in Libya. I have a suspicion that Britain and France will see some grief for trying to lend common Arabs a hand. I mean beyond the usual sky-is-falling cries and goofy demonstrations from modern, spoiled, First World liberals. There will be riots, vicious accusations, attacks on state buildings, probably more terrorist attacks that ruin innocents. Worldwide, there will be anger at the US for not doing what modern liberals, every type of anti-imperialist, and America-haters, claim nobody wants the US to do -- influence and police the whole planet. And try to insert our irritating idea of liberty and fairly clean, democratic elections.

On that, too, I hope I am wrong. But kooks were violent in France only because Sarkozy won the election when he first became PM. Having to maintain order in Libya will be a divisive event there. I hope hey are ready to control their home extremism.

- jR

Church attacks: A clash of extremists against all civility, or a clash of two civilizations?

The attack on a Coptic church in Egypt in January 2011 received a vocal response of disgust from Egypt's Muslims, it has been reported. It was not widely reported, though, in my purview, in the United States.

 

A writer on the site "Big Think" says that the response included the sons of Egypt's president attending church services, as a show of solidarity between Muslims and Christians in that nation.

 

The piece argues that the assault on the church, which follows ancient, regional practices, was committed by fringe extremists against what those extremists see as their enemies. It is not the soldiers of one civilization -- the Muslim World -- lashing out against an opposing civilization -- the Western World. A cliche-breaking fact from this particluar church attack is, Copts "represent a ... non-Western Christian tradition," the author points out.

 

So, it is Muslims against Christians, then? No, not so quick: This foul attack demonstrates well that it is not religion versus religion, but extremists against everyone else. (By the way, you can throw a few fundamentalist Islamic republic governments onto the extremist side, I wouldn't disagree. But not all Muslim states belong there.)

 

The problem, at least in the U.S., of Muslims seeming to be supportive of Muslim extremists, if only out of apathy, holds enough weight to beg for a vocal response from them, or at least some type of clear response (other than apathy and quiet). However, it is more important for Muslims (anyone, really, but I'm making a specific point here) to be sincere in whatever response they give to Islamic terrorist acts. Even if it the response were to speak out against the ineptness of news media for not covering the outrage of the majority of Muslims against Islamic violent extremists, at least that would be more than I am seeing. (If TV and radio personality Sean Hannity has the sense, as a renown conservative talker, to have Muslims and former Muslims on his radio show to discuss extremism, loudly and clearly, why can't the major networks and 24-hour news channels offer something more?)

 

In the case of Islamic extremism and in other problem areas, the wrong response by anyone is to marginalize or demonize an entire culture, faith, or ethnic group. That is, to call all Muslims a danger to America, or to call them all terrorists is obviously incorrect, and it is dangerous in itself. Such a calling out of a whole group is simple-minded, and if it is not expressed out of crass ignorance and/or fear, it is simply showing bigotry and prejudice, and it is being used for ill gains. What I am getting at is that informed marginalization is bigoted, and in some cases it is evil. Informed marginalization is what gave us the Nazi terror against Jews and other groups, in the 1930s and 1940s, as a prominent (and obvious) example. But informed or not, such marginalization is only worthy if it is indeed true.

 

The question of why Muslims do not assault the evil -- the evil that I and plenty others identify -- occuring in their midst does not have a perfect and conclusive answer. It is no simpler than the questions of how pedophiles manage to exist and thrive in a church community, or soldiers are able to commit the intentional murder of innocents. Life is bigger than simple answers when it comes to mass groups of people with a common thread, whether it is ethnicity, nationality, religion, or even a particular perversion.

 

With regard to Muslim reactions to Islamic extremism, I think the rational thing to do is to seek the Muslim response to these events. I don't mean to suggest that the media -- and citizens -- should make it their duty to pander to Muslims, but that Muslims deserve to have their feelings about Islamic extremism out in the open. Those of us who don't have opportunities to interact with Muslims of any stripe ought to know if what average Muslims think about Islamic extremism (and, yes, those who need to see it, the rabidly anti-Islamic types, certainly could use some evidence to calm their distaste).

 

All lands, faiths and peoples have yahoos, creeps and killers among them. The goal isn't to demonize the good because of the bad, but to push the good to get control of the bad. Otherwise, events such as September 11, and the attack on a Coptic church in Egypt in January 2011, will inspire the lowly, when they ought to engage the upstanding to push the lowly into a corner, and keep them there.

 

 

The Big Think article (click the title to read more):

 

The Crescent and the Cross

Robert de Neufville on January 8, 2011

... At first glance, Islamist attacks on Christians in the Middle East seem like more evidence for the enduring idea — [which was] first put forward by Samuel Huntington in 1993 — that we are witnessing a "clash of civilizations" between the Western and Islamic worlds. But the Copts—who represent a distinct, non-Western Christian tradition as old as Catholicism—defy easy classification into any broad "civilization." As I have argued before, part of the problem with the idea of a clash of civilizations is that it is difficult to divide the world neatly into different civilizations. Real conflicts have complex historical origins that don't necessarily fit with the simple story of clashing cultural identities. And fundamentalist violence in the Middle East is probably as much a product of the failure of Middle Eastern states as it is of any clash of fundamental worldviews.

There is, in any case, another side to tragedy in Alexandria. Amid concerns that there could be more attacks on Christmas Eve this year, thousands of Egyptian Muslims—including President Hosni Mubarak's two sons—attended Christmas Eve masses to ward off attacks by acting as "human shields." Egyptians across Facebook changed their profile to the image of a cross within a crescent, an old symbol of religious unity in Egypt. It is a useful reminder that fundamentalists do not speak for everyone and that, in spite of their differences, people with different religious and cultural backgrounds can come together in solidarity.

- jR (aka AirFarceOne on Twitter)