Quote of the Day
I am a kind of burr; I shall stick.
William Shakespeare
Final Reminder: Posts During/After the Blogger Outage May 10-13
There was an outage last Thursday afternoon through Friday noon during which my blog was unable for part of the time and my Wednesday post was dropped during recovery procedures. (Blogger unsuccessfully attempted to upgrade software late Tuesday, and as part of its recovery procedures it rolled back interim posts.) I reposted my Wednesday post early Friday afternoon, published my deferred Thursday post late Friday afternoon, and finally published my regular Friday post that evening. Since then, my daily publication has resumed its normal pattern. If you didn't read one of the posts, I invite you to click on the relevant hyperlink on the left side of the blog.
Lightning Round
- We hit the national debt limit of $14.3T. Treasury Secretary Geithner can technically defer the day of reckoning using accounting gimmicks like deferred pension payments (like Illinois Democrats and others have used).
- Donald Trump bows out of the GOP Presidential race. I was particularly unhappy writing a number of adverse commentaries over his use of the birther issue, threats of a China trade war, cowboy foreign policy, etc. I'm sure he saw his declining numbers to single-digit status, but he was still teasing with a visit to New Hampshire very recently.
- Congresswoman Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) in a wheelchair out of sight of the camera saw her husband Mark Kelly lift off with his colleagues on the final launch of Endeavor, the next-to-last space shuttle mission.
- Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, still in the first week of his official candidacy, which I believed was a stretch given his unfavorables and poor numbers in head-to-heads against Obama, is busy doing damage control after an unforced blunder on Sunday Talk Soup (below) dissing Ryan's innovative Medicare proposal--which has already passed a House vote. A GOP candidate for President running against his own US House--and giving the Democrats a huge propaganda weapon to use against Congressional Republicans--what was he thinking?
- Dick Morris indicates his own recent poll--which had Romney with a 2-point advantage over Huckabee (at 20% of the vote)--suggests Romney will get 30% of Huckabee's vote. Anyone who saved yesterday's post knows that I said (before tonight's Morris column): "I'll guesstimate that Romney gets a plurality of the Huck vote, say, a third". Not bad...
- Gallup is at Obama 46% with a continuing narrowing of net approval down to +2; Rasmussen has Obama slightly up to 49% and net disapproval of -1. Politico has Obama at 52%--interestingly, the same proportion of the vote in head to head matchups with both Romney and Pawlenty with only 2 points apart.
First International Solar-Powered Flight: Thumbs UP!
Very cool: the Swiss/private-sponsored Solar Impulse, an $88M project plane weighing less than a car at 1600 kilogram and powered by 12000 solar cells mounted on some 208-feet wing, flew 13 hours at an altitude of 12,400 ft. Okay, American inventors and NASA: the gauntlet has been thrown...
Background to this achievement:
The Controversy Preceding Speaker John Boehner's
Commencement Address At Catholic University Last Saturday
This commentary is after the event; I was aware of the kerfuffle because of Bill O'Reilly's talking point last Thursday (below). I have made repeated reference to my Catholic background, and I have little doubt that many of my former OLL college professors would be (or are) mortified by some of my political opinions. If the 75 or so progressive Catholic theologians signing a presumptuous, judgmental, morally self-superior letter against fellow Catholic US House Speaker John Boehner think other Catholics will let them get away with it, I'm not going anywhere, and I hit back twice as hard. This involves more than the professors' blatant intellectual dishonesty in caricaturing John Boehner's views and record, their superficial understanding of salient public policy and economic issues, and their judgmental, morally-outrageous hypocrisy in terming pro-life John Boehner as "anti-life" (John Boehner is a big boy and can and has spoken for himself):
Mr. Speaker, your voting record is at variance from one of the church’s most ancient moral teachings. From the apostles to the present, the magisterium of the church has insisted that those in power are morally obliged to preference the needs of the poor. Your record in support of legislation to address the desperate needs of the poor is among the worst in Congress. This fundamental concern should have great urgency for Catholic policy makers. Yet, even now, you work in opposition to it.
The theologians don't seem to understand or remember the Ten Commandments (they might reconsider numbers 8 (9 in other Judaic-Christian traditions) and 10). First of all, public policy that unduly fosters a dependence on others (government or charitable organization) prevents individual autonomy, moral and spiritual development and self-reliance, constituting moral hazard with unintended consequences. It is not only acceptable, as John Boehner does, to oppose morally corruptible policy--it is a moral imperative. Second, salvation is an individual, not collective responsibility. I am not judged based on the actions or inactions of other people, only that which is under my control. In fact, these theologians intentionally ignore:
Matthew 27:6 While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, 7 a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table. 8 When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. 9 “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”10 Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 11 The poor you will always have with you."
I am well-aware of other explanations, but I view this passage as fundamentally consistent with Christ's dictum not to judge others (because only God knows their motives). Jesus is definitely not indifferent on the plight of the poor. But the confounding of public policy with personal responsibility has no foundation from the evidence of the Gospels: after all, as I have written elsewhere, Jesus refused to be made king, He rebuked Simon Peter for raising a sword during the Passion, He acknowledged before Pilate His kingdom was not of this world, and He instructed others to give to Caesar what is Caesar's. Tell me, was Caesar ministering to the needs of the poor in Israel? Did Jesus say, as I'm sure Dickens' Scrooge would have liked, "The poor are Caesar's responsibility; we have paid our fair taxes. Pay no further attention to the poor you meet--your part is done; if you would like, flag down the nearest Roman administrator and point him in the direction where he can find the poor man." We don't hear Jesus constantly griping about the hated Romans; in fact, He cures the Centurion's servant; He picks a despised tax collector as a disciple. Despite the wealthy young man who would not shed his means to follow him, Jesus befriended those with wealth, one of whom made rooms available at the busiest time of the season, Passover and His body was placed in the tomb of a wealthy man. Jesus admits what others say about Him: "Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners" (Matthew 11:19).
The theologians make a number of false simplifying assumptions: social security and Medicare, for instance, have been around less than 80 years in American history; we did not have chaos before these New Deal and Great Society programs. Doctors often donated services for the elderly on limited income; churches often provided social programs, often far less costly than fully funded government programs, staffed by volunteers or modestly compensated personnel. You didn't wait for some impersonal public servant processing paperwork, but were served by people of faith whom truly cared for you on a personal basis. We can go on and discuss how, during the Bush Administration, the Democrats have constantly pushed to raise Medicaid, SCHIP and/or other programs beyond poverty levels, even as Bush and Republicans pointed out there were existing people within poverty benchmarks whom weren't enrolled. Why did the Democrats do this? It was purely political: once the middle-class are in the program, they have a vested interest in their entitlement: they've "earned" it, and it becomes almost impossible to rollback the program.
Plus, and this is another point the theologians completely miss: these programs are not very efficient--the actual payout of usable goods and services to authentically poor people is shockingly low. What's not efficient? Government bureaucracy; there's no real competition to keep compensation packages in line or to slash inefficiency out of operations. It has become predictable for progressive politicians to engage in deliberately misleading rhetoric: trimming social programs? The progressives don't talk about cutting program personnel including unnecessary management, merging offices, scaling back nonessential benefits, limiting benefit increases or tightening eligibility, etc.: it becomes an unconscionable and utterly false allegation that conservatives are trying to balance the checkbook on the backs of the poor. Money is fungible--the GOP sees itself as narrowing the focus on a program on whom need it the most. Generally speaking, the GOP isn't even talking about eliminating departments or programs, but a sense of shared sacrifice which everybody has to do given the fact that tax revenues have gone significantly down in a tough economy.
What the progressive theologians don't understand in their naive analysis of the status quo is that the national debt has increased roughly 40% during the Obama Presidency, and this is with another 20 months left in his term. We are overspending what we are collecting in revenues by over 50%. This is not "free" money: we are borrowing from future generations and the interest payments alone are skyrocketing: last year we spent nearly $200B--more than we spent on unemployment insurance. It is estimated within a decade of more than tripling to the amount we are now spending on national defense. We have nearly $50T in unfunded entitlement liabilities--nearly 25 years at current federal total revenues. Even if we confiscated ALL richer people income, the budget won't balance. If any private sector business had this kind of problem, they would be bankrupt and out of business. We need shared sacrifice in a time where nearly half of workers fail to pay a single penny towards operations of the federal government--the poor and the middle class. (At most they pay towards their retirement entitlements, which is a deferred benefit--and let me point out that some lower-income people make back over 3 times what they pay towards retirement. ) In fact, the current administration has cut less than $20B in over 2 years while accumulating a $4T deficit. That's less than 1%. Tell me, what individual or family spends over 150% of what they make and respond by cutting spending less than 1%? John Boehner tries to balance a budget and he's called "anti-life"?
Sunday Talk Soup
This week's feature segment will be indirect in that I thought American Spectator Ross Kaminsky's analysis of the Sunday morning news talk shows, "Sunday's [Presidential 2012] Disqualifiers" (i.e., libertarian Republican Ron Paul on Fox News Sunday and former GOP US House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Meet the Press), provided an interesting framework for discussion.
Kaminsky praises Ron Paul's salient (and correct) observation that liberals/progressives' use of the "General Welfare" clause as (my words) a blank check for unfettered federal legislative expansion with unchecked infringement on unenumerated individual rights (the Ninth Amendment) and/or state rights (the Tenth Amendment). What annoys Kaminsky is Ron Paul's rather flippant, provocative statements on foreign policy, e.g., Pakistan; Paul doesn't like the fact that Pakistan was not informed in advance about the UBL compound raid and then said our policy was meddling in Pakistan's internal affairs, aggravating a civil war. I'm not going to debate Pakistan's notorious ISI leaks or other duplicitous support or involvement with militants (e.g., in disputed Kashmir); the US made it clear in 2001 that UBL and other Al Qaeda operatives responsible for crimes against the US and their capture or killing was a matter of national self-defense and non-negotiable. Second, I refuse to accept Paul's unsupported hypothesis the US is responsible for Pakistan's internal problems; no doubt the US is the scapegoat for all of the world's problems in the opinion of many foreign citizens. I see that as an envious reflection to the US's economic and military prowess.
This is not the first time Ron Paul has made provocative statements on US foreign policy; he has basically suggested that 9/11 was the consequence of US meddling in that region. In many regards, I identify with Ron Paul and Gary Johnson in terms of streamlining our foreign relationships and alliances and stopping nation building. However, I did not like Obama's apology tour, and I don't think it's responsible leadership to validate anti-American propaganda. If I was President, I would say, this is spilled milk, even if I thought a predecessor made mistakes. I would say, where do we go from here? Here are my principles: we've had much of our military tied up in 2 small countries halfway across the world of dubious strategic importance. We have regional instabilities in our part of the world; we are being challenged for military and/or economic leadership by larger adversaries, namely Russia and China, with large numbers of nuclear weapons.
Then Kaminsky goes after Gingrich on a couple of points: the health plan mandate and the Ryan Medicare proposal (cf my lightning round above). There are some nuanced differences from how I would framed the discussion. The first observation I would make that Kaminsky didn't is that Gingrich said just a few weeks ago that he would have voted for the Ryan Medicare plan. Then on Sunday he's essentially saying it's too radical a change to the right. When did he decide it was a radical change--before or after he said he would support it? Did he realize it was radical before he said he would support it?
I do want to agree on one point with Gingrich--I do think he's correct on the point that Ryan's change is not conservative--in the sense that conservatives have risk aversion and we don't know the effects of Ryan's change. A conservative would more likely introduce incremental change and use available feedback to determine the next measured step. I would agree that converting Medicare into a premium support system versus government management of health expenses for senior citizens would not be a typical conservative change.
I'm increasingly frustrated that nobody is discussing a constant talking point I've stressed on this blog--LET INSURANCE BE INSURANCE. Kaminsky touches on the point slight when he talks about catastrophic health care expenses, which he points out from self-insuring individuals, are relatively rare in occurrence.
The big problem I see, besides the bizarre flip-flop that seemed a rift between a GOP contender and his Congressional leadership, is that Gingrich lost control of his message. We have roughly half the attorney generals in the courts on critical ObamaCare underpinnings--in particular, the individual mandate. So now David Gregory has gotten him to agree to the concept of a mandate, which the moderator links as a critical underpinning of both RomneyCare and ObamaCare, and now Gingrich is quibbling over the nature of the mandate--but he's arguing ObamaCare is radical left-wing change.
There's one thing that I, as a libertarian-conservative, am hearing--Gingrich seems to be saying government is the solution, not part of the problem. I'm hearing Gingrich agree with the concept that the free market of health care doesn't work and needs a government solution: why? Health services were reimbursed out of pocket a century ago, and Gingrich is saying we have to pay for a middleman between ourselves and our doctors; otherwise, we're deadbeats. He seems to think, rather presumptuously, without data, that well-to-do people paying for health services a la carte aren't paying their bills and insured patients are picking up their costs. I think for a man of ideas, Gingrich has lost control over his message.
In his response, Gingrich needed to frame his message regarding current constitutional challenges to the health care bill, connecting with existing GOP initiatives, explaining why ObamaCare is radical left-wing change (if he and ObamaCare both accept the concept of an individual mandate), and how his approach is better than Obama's (and Romney's, for that matter). In essence, he let David Gregory define him.
I don't see how Gingrich survives this. I've never been elected dog catcher, but Congressman Paul Ryan is revered by the party base, and the average viewer comes away from the talk show with the impression that Paul Ryan is as radical a conservative as Obama is a progressive/liberal. Cut from the same cloth, a mirror image of each other. Newt Gingrich, of course, is in the middle
Fukushima Nuclear Incident Update
The Hiroshima Syndrome blogger wrote the first of his thrice-weekly posts. He starts his post by speculating on why the reactor 2 roof didn't blow like the other 3 and also reports that the source of the hydrogen for the reactor 4 spent fuel pool explosion came from reactor 3. He notes that water level calibration will now be done for reactors 2 and 3 (following reactor 1). RPV temperatures and pressure continue to stabilize. Some businesses with international business are pressuring for a burial of the Daiichi plants, claiming the ongoing crisis is affecting business. He feels that the leaks for reactor 1 are by instrumentation or piping, not the reactor pressurized vessel.
Atomic Power Review notes:
- late Sunday: The blogger speculates that reactor 3 is increasingly unstable given 2 separate coolant insertion techniques. There is still some confusion in the media over the nature of shutdowns--which did occur at the time of the earthquake as discussed earlier.
Political Humor
"President Obama was just ranked 108th in a new list from Golf Digest of the top 150 golfers in the political world. But I hear he's improving. Last week in Pakistan, he shot two holes in one." –Jimmy Fallon
[Well, UBL's courier tried to shoot an eagle, but missed... (definition 2)]
"Have you seen these Republican presidential candidates [i.e., Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump]? The only one that hasn't had three wives is Mitt Romney — and he's the Mormon!" –Jay Leno
[At least we don't have to pay social security survivor benefits to UBL's 6 widows and 26 children...]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Chicago, "Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is?"
