Altruism

Altruism

Altruism is one thing. Forced altruism at the point of a gun is not altruism at all. It is an immoral theft of property. Considering that Medicare is 1960s ideas and technology that worked fine when most people did not live much past 65 and there were 6 taxpayers for each beneficiary, it worked. Now, with the prospect of two taxpayers to each person over 65 (that does not include the disabled) we need a new paradigm. People in power have lied and said that we on the right want these people to be sick and hungry and dead, but nothing could be further from the truth. We need a new paradigm. But so long as the leader of the congressional democrats approaches this issue by telling lies about seniors being forced to eat cat food, there can be no seriousness shown to the rhetoric from the left.

Political Labels

Political Labels

I think our politics are suffused with mostly meaningless labels. Not only are they not very descriptive, they are in flux. Labels like Progressive, Liberal, and Conservative not only drift their definitions, in these three labels (at least) they have come to mean quite the opposite over the last few decades. Ask me my politics and I might say, with all honesty, that I am a liberal, while liberals today would have been called collectivists (or socialists) only forty years ago. So, labels are a problem, which is where most of this "centrist" argument comes from. People think it is a nice way to describe themselves, while they fit quite nicely into one category or another, or they do not understand the underpinnings of their own political philosophy. One can easily start an argument with a person of the left merely by pointing out that Hitler and the Nazis were left wing. They do not want his company, even as they espouse much the same policy.

Then there is the matter of ideology, which is different from politics. Ideology in humans occupies the same brain structures as religion and the belief in God. The collectivist movement of the last half century has increased this tendency, in my view, as they have made the state more responsible for personal welfare. That results in irrational thought processes. For example, a person who believes that it is the duty of the state to provide minimum standards of living for everybody might tell everyone, even himself, that he is a centrist, or, my favorite bit of fraud, "socially liberal, fiscally conservative." My own wife self-describes that way. It is a lie, but we tend to forgive lies we tell to ourselves. You can not be fiscally conservative and espouse welfare or state sponsored health care. You are on very thin ice with social security, although there is a fiscally conservative way to change the social safety net. It is just that people do not want to seem mean or unsympathetic to the downtrodden. Not that one must be mean, but then he is not a fiscal conservative.

Campaign Finance Law and the First Amendment

Campaign Finance Law and the First Amendment

Few issues in recent times have more graphically shown how far the needs of the public diverge from the needs of the political class than the Supreme Court decision that came down this week in the Citizens United case, where it was decided that the first amendment means what it plainly says.

Without arguing the merits of the case, I would look to the actions and words of our political class in their objection to the ruling. It is clear that their concern is not any worry that too much money will be spent in future electoral campaigns - far from it. They have been on a juggernaut in recent decades to raise and spend ever more money, pretending to create legal restrictions to campaign contributions when in reality they have built loopholes into the law that are bigger than the original hole. (It has finally gotten to the point where Obama spent just short of a billion dollars getting himself elected, and nobody has figured out exactly how much soft money has actually been spent.

And look at who is complaining the loudest about special interest money in politics. The party of special interests and billionaires. Gates and Buffet, General Electric and General Motors, Unions and trial lawyers, all give their political cash almost exclusively to democrats. So excuse me if I am skeptical about their complaints over allowing these entities the legal ability to spend more. They fear the voices of those who have felt frozen out of the process, or at least inhibited in their spending. This decision frees the spending of the smallest voices, not the largest.

No, their main objection is who controls the money being spent on their campaigns. Elected officials have engineered provisions in election law that allow unlimited soft money, hard cash contributed by 527 organizations and other types of groups have been created that allow for ever more corporate (and other) cash. Endless daisy chains of political committees funnel money into the hands of campaigns. Think Political Action Committees, campaign committees, like DNC, DSCC, DCCC, Emily's List, and many others.

The new law as ir stands now is that these same entities which have been allowed to put money under the control of the campaigns, can now spend an unlimited amount of money under their own control. That is the only change wrought by the Citizens United decision. The restriction against "issue oriented" ads near the time of elections has been lifted. Books and websites can now be advertised right up to election day.

If I can get away from all the hyperventilating about the fall of democracy or some equally dire consequence of this decision, I wonder if it is really true that the new reality will result in even more money coming into the process. It appears that it is more likely to result in the same amount, or perhaps a little more. It is not obvious to me that corporations have been forced to hold back and are straining at the bit to spend more. In either event, more money or not, the net result seems sure to be that a larger percentage of the aggregate pool of campaign cash will be independently spent, by corporations and unions and other groups and types of combinations of people, speaking truth to power and making their concerns known, taking their argument directly to We the People.

If that's the way it works out, the biggest change from the status quo ante would be a diminution of the power of incumbency. New candidates with little or no party involvement, or perhaps a candidate who unsuccessfully sought the nomination of a party, will have easier access to promotion of his candidacy and ideas. However this works out, I feel that it shows the wisdom of the founders of our nation, who wrote the rulebook they way they did. The first amendment says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That is a beautiful statement. Incumbents, particularly democrats, find anathema in those words. Remember that the Citizens United case was about nothing more sinister than a producer of a documentary who wanted to run ads for it, and candidate Clinton felt that even that was going too far. Her side in the appeal told The Supremes that their restriction applied, even to books, yard signs, bumper stickers, and pamphlets. That was a reach too far for this Supreme Court, and as a result we have more of our constitution in effect, the way it was meant when it was written and ratified by the Thirteen Colonies. Hopefully this is a harbinger of things to come, and a reinvigoration of the intent of the founders.

Republicans for Sunstein

Republicans for Sunstein

Cass Sunstein was confirmed by the senate yesterday, He was targeted by certain conservatives, notably Glenn Beck and right leaning bloggers, for statements made in his 2004 book and elsewhere, which reveal a man who believes we need a new Bill of Rights, that animals need access to the courts, and a strong stance in favor of gun control. On the other hand, he was in favor of the appointment of now Chief Justice John Roberts, and he is generally of a free market disposition.

His new position as the guy in the White House who reviews federal regulations seems to keep him away from gun control, and his advocacy of new rights, including rights to a job and higher prices for farmers also seem to be beyond his new brief. In any event the key vote in the senate was the cloture vote, where the democrat side needed 60 votes. For your reference, here is a list of the republicans who foted in favor of Cass Sunstein.

Republicans voting for cloture:
Bennett (R-UT)
Collins (R-ME)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hatch (R-UT)
Lugar (R-IN)
Snowe (R-ME)
Voinovich (R-OH)

Character Traits Examined, But Whose?

Character Traits Examined, But Whose?

An interesting study has been reported recently, and it might surprise some people. A sample:

Interpersonal traits include glibness, superficial charm, a grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, and the manipulation of others. The affective traits include a lack of remorse and/or guilt, shallow affect, a lack of empathy, and failure to accept responsibility. The lifestyle behaviors include stimulation-seeking behavior, impulsivity, irresponsibility, parasitic orientation, and a lack of realistic life goals.

Who do you suppose this is about? Obama or Dillinger? Check this out:

What doesn't go unnoticed is the fact that some of the character traits exhibited by serial killers or criminals may be observed in many within the political arena. While not exhibiting physical violence, many political leaders display varying degrees of anger, feigned outrage and other behaviors. They also lack what most consider a "shame" mechanism. Quite simply, most serial killers and many professional politicians must mimic what they believe, are appropriate responses to situations they face such as sadness, empathy, sympathy, and other human responses to outside stimuli.

Zero base thinkers should take this analysis seriously. It may not surprise us, but seeing this in a peer reviewed study is definitely food for thought.

Health Insurance Reality

Health Insurance Reality

In my younger years I was in the insurance business for over a decade. What astonishes me (and others from that biz) is how most people, and all politicians, seem to have no idea what the reality of the health insurance fiasco is. All proposed "solutions" fail to come close to solving the problem.

The problem starts with having no limits on lawsuits. We all see the ambulance chasers on TV with their reprehensible commercials. But that is just the reason drugs and procedures cost so much. Another side, the good side, of the business is the free market in coverage. The reason our insurors cover expensive drugs and procedures that foreign health services do not is that if your carrier failed to cover the drug you need, you would switch your coverage to another company, and then become a walking PR nightmare for the company that denied you. So the freedom to move to another carrier is a big reason why American health insurance covers so much stuff that foreign services will not pay for. This also explains why well-off Canadians buy American major medical insurance.

But the dirty little secret in the business, the one that Tom Sowell just touched upon, is that many people, and all corporations, find coverage horrendously expensive, but find the money to pay it every month, somehow. Nationally, it runs almost one thousand dollars per month, per family. They find all sorts of ways to hide the cost, but that is what it costs. In some places it costs quite a bit more. Every state is different, since insurance law is exclusively state law. That is something Obama intends to fix (or destroy, depending on your point of view)

Now the government says they will cover "the uninsured" and they project the cost of covering them. But when they do that they ignore the funny little thing they always ignore, and that is, people will do what suits their interest. How many families who currently pay one thousand dollars a month for a family policy will move over to government care? How many corporations will find a way to end their employee plans (except for their executives) and opt for government care? At one thousand bucks per month, a lot.

As the numbers rise, and alternatives disappear, services will be cut, inevitably. Then they will do what the other countries have found expedient, and make private insurance illegal. At that point we are done. When I got sick in Florida and needed an MRI, I had it by the end of the day. My cousin in Montreal needed one also, and had to wait eleven weeks. Meanwhile, dogs and other pets could get MRIs, for cash, any Saturday. Why Saturday? Because, even with eleven week waiting lists, the MRI centers were shut down for the weekend. Higher wages on weekends in Canada and limited budgets, plus it is illegal to pay for your own medical care in Canada. Some veterinarians leased MRI centers on Saturdays, but it was illegal for them to take the very same pictures of human beings.

Government run health care will be a bigger disaster than anyone believes. Unmitigated, for real. Canada has been the relief valve of America. Once we are gone, le deluge.

Barney Frank Won't Answer

Barney Frank Won't Answer

Check out this example of how our leaders refuse to be held accountable. Frank refuses to even answer a question from this law student, Joel Pollack. He tries to abuse him instead.

Government Running Amok

Government Running Amok

Is there any limit to the reach of Obama's ambition to change the way we live? His proposals are so broadly cast, even breathtaking, that even reliable lefties are pulling to the side, trying to catch their breath.

The reliably left-of-center David Broder writes that “The size of the gambles that President Obama is taking every day is simply staggering” and adds that the agenda set forth in Obama's speech to congress is, in Broder's view "a dramatic reminder of the unbelievable stakes he has placed on the table in his first month in office, putting at risk the future well-being of the country and the Democratic Party's control of Washington.”

Obama talks the talk of fiscal restraint even as he sets into motion a $787 billion stimulus package, a $410 billion omnibus budget, and a $634 billion health care fund. He inherited, and promised to reduce, a budget deficit pegged at a half trillion dollars, yet what is it now? Even with Washington's legendary obfuscation techniques, it must be well north of two trillion by now. How will he pay for it? His tax increases on "the wealthy" are claimed to raise a mere 318 billion dollars over ten years, by reducing deductions on home interest and charitable deductions. What effect will this have on the levels of cash donated to food banks and other services that serve the poor?

Even power drunk democrats have to know that you can not pay for trillions of dollars of spending with one third of a trillion dollars. Do they think they can fool the electorate? Obama promised to not raise taxes on any American making under a quarter million dollars. What happens when we all feel the tax bite that will settle on us? Remember the rest of Obama's agenda? His "cap and trade" system will cause electric bills to skyrocket. Taxes on corporations will make everything we buy more expensive, and it will not all be invisible. Surcharges will be appearing on telephone and cable bills, taxi and bus rides, airline tickets will go through the roof, and on and on.

Overall, Obama showed a remarkable disdain for the truth in his speech, even for a politician. Not just getting the inventor of the automobile wrong, he larded his speech with lies and distortions throughout. That's not a good sign of what we can expect from him as this recession settles in.

Where will this all lead us? In two years we can guess at the electoral outcome, but I wonder what our nation will look like by then. I will never forget the picture of democrats, absolutely giddy with glee as Obama announced the breadth of his agenda Tuesday night. I wonder if they have gone mad, or is it that they have no shame? Their agenda has been bottled up since 1981 and the Reagan administration. Could it be that they have been anticipating this moment of power so long that they have taken leave of their senses? Only time will tell. As David Broder ends his piece, "When we elected Obama, we didn't know what a gambler we were getting."

Reality on Afghanistan

Reality on Afghanistan

I love Afghanistan and its people, I really do, but I love my own country more. We need to get realistic about what can and what can not be accomplished there. We are currently engaged in a conflict that we can not win, in fact we do not even know what victory might look like if we achieved it. We certainly have been offered no strategic vision of what the end game might be.

The ever reliable Ralph Peters describes the options we have before us in Afghanistan, and his suggestion of which to pursue, in today's USA Today. The options, as Peters sees them:

Ranked from best to worst, here are our four basic options going forward:

• Best. Instead of increasing the U.S. military "footprint," reduce our forces and those of NATO by two-thirds, maintaining a "mother ship" at Bagram Air Base and a few satellite bases from which special operations troops, aircraft and drones, and lean conventional forces would strike terrorists and support Afghan factions with whom we share common enemies. All resupply for our military could be done by air, if necessary.

Stop pretending Afghanistan's a real state. Freeze development efforts. Ignore the opium. Kill the fanatics.

• Good. Leave entirely. Strike terrorist targets from over the horizon and launch punitive raids when necessary. Instead of facing another Vietnam ourselves, let Afghanistan become a Vietnam for Iran and Pakistan. Rebuild our military at home, renewing our strategic capabilities.

• Poor. Continue to muddle through as is, accepting that achieving any meaningful change in Afghanistan is a generational commitment. Surge troops for specific missions, but not permanently.

• Worst. Augment our forces endlessly and increase aid in the absence of a strategy. Lie to ourselves that good things might just happen. Let U.S. troops and Afghans continue to die for empty rhetoric, while Pakistan decays into a vast terrorist refuge.

For the rest, read the whole thing. Note that Peters offers no advice to the president on how to accomplish this strategic realignment. Obama campaigned on ending the war in Iraq and beefing up the effort in Afghanistan. The Iraq occupation is resolving itself, but Afghanistan will offer the president no such easy option. The peace-at-any-cost crowd will be behind any military retrenchment, especially in Afghanistan. The left side of his party is already making noise about how he should pull out, so the republicans will make quite a noise if he appears to accede to their wishes. He would be accused of claiming to buttress our effort in Afghanistan as a campaign ploy that he finds disposable.

Obama is learning that campaign mode, where he could conform his message to his audience, does not work when in office, where any decision is clear for all to see. This is not an easy job, being president, and it will not get easier for him. Difficult choices must be made, but no matter what he does in Afghanistan, he will be wrong in the eyes of a tremendous number of Americans. But even doing nothing is a decision to be made. Whatever he does, it is better done sooner rather than later.

A great video from Fred Thompson, who might have made a good president. At the very least he would have given The Won more of a run for his money.

Anyway, watch the video. It is funny in a scary sort of way, and will provide food for thought.

More Reasons to Hate the Fraudulus Bill

More Reasons to Hate the Fraudulus Bill

The more we read, the more reasons we find to hate this monstrous bill. On Bloomberg today, Betsey McCaughey writes about one of the health provisions of the bill. This small piece of the proposed law places much of the pain we all will have to bear on the elderly. Give it a few years, and that will include me. The references to Tom Daschle in the piece refers to his book, that is apparently the genesis of this proposed provision. A sample:

Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.

Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).

The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.

Hidden Provisions

If the Obama administration’s economic stimulus bill passes the Senate in its current form, seniors in the U.S. will face similar rationing. Defenders of the system say that individuals benefit in younger years and sacrifice later.

The stimulus bill will affect every part of health care, from medical and nursing education, to how patients are treated and how much hospitals get paid. The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined (90-92, 174-177, 181).

Hiding health legislation in a stimulus bill is intentional. Daschle supported the Clinton administration’s health-care overhaul in 1994, and attributed its failure to debate and delay. A year ago, Daschle wrote that the next president should act quickly before critics mount an opposition. “If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it,” he said. “The issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.”

Read the whole thing.

Similarly, another piece of this puzzle rolls back Clinton's welfare reform, by removing the work requirement from AFDC payments. The New York Times especially likes this. This will return us to the day when government paid any woman who had a child out of wedlock, whether she had a job or not. I can well remember what the ghetto looked like back then. Why in the world would American blacks do not cry out for this provision to be left out is beyond my ken.

All we citizens can do is sign the online petition to stop the bill from passage. It is the least we can do, and we can all do it. If you have not already done so, do it now.

Next Up: Regulating Salaries

Next Up: Regulating Salaries

Barney "Blowhard" Frank has revealed his leftist zeal and intent to control the means of production. In a Financial Week article reports that:

Congress will consider legislation to extend some of the curbs on executive pay that now apply only to those banks receiving federal assistance, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said.

“There’s deeply rooted anger on the part of the average American,” the Massachusetts Democrat said at a Washington news conference today.

He said the compensation restrictions would apply to all financial institutions and might be extended to include all U.S. companies.

The provision will be part of a broader package that would likely give the Federal Reserve the authority to monitor systemic risk in the economy and to shut down financial institutions that face too much exposure, Mr. Frank said.

While restricting tax deductibility of salary over, say, a half million per year, which Geithner said at his confirmation hearing he might do for bailed out financial firms, might make higher salaries more expensive for companies, may force some sort of profit-based dividend compensation scheme for these firms, Barney wants to ban higher compensation for all financial firms, and beyond.

Barney pushed lending institutions into making more high risk loans, and thus helped to create the difficulties we are currently in, but he is apparently not satisfied. Now he wants to use the real or imagined power of "The Won" to really get down to micro-managing companies on an unprecedented scale."Hope and Change" may soon turn into "Fear and Loathing." Just you wait.

Our new president has boldly stated that "We won - I will trump you on this." Compare that with Ronald Reagan's Initial Actions Project: “The election was not a bestowal of political power, but a stewardship opportunity for us to reconsider and restructure the political agenda for the next two decades. The public has sanctioned the search for a new public philosophy to govern America.” In other words, "we're going to need to argue for our program."

Obama seems to feel that the argument is over. He may soon find that the argument has barely begun.

SCHIP Passes, Cigar Retailers Die

SCHIP Passes, Cigar Retailers Die

So our new president has violated another of his campaign promises. He promised to wait five days before signing any new legislation, so that We the People can review and comment. Another layer of the lies of "The One" has been revealed. Almost without notice, the cigar industry has been decimated.

Every cigar retailer must now pay tax on each cigar in inventory. Many smaller shops will be forced to close. This is without hope, but it is a significant change. The economy may be in trouble, but nowhere is it in more trouble than for families that depend on cigar sales as part of their income. The tax provision in the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) bill will have devastating, unintended consequences.

No family-owned cigar-related business will be able to sell enough at the increased price to remain open, and their employees will become unemployed. The brutal tax burdens from SCHIP will crush the small cigar businesses and the roll-your-own cigarette businesses. Thousands of American jobs in the myriad of support businesses such as tobacco growing, tobacco processing, package manufacturing, transportation and sales operations will be lost. Bush vetoed the last iteration of this travesty, but Obama has no such concerns for the family owned businesses that will be affected by this new tax.

Hope and change, here we come!

The Future of the Turkish State

The Future of the Turkish State

A little discussed linchpin of the Middle East is Turkey, a nation your reporter knows well and remembers fondly. Standing between the West and the East, with a government subject to the shrouded power of its military, Turkey is a beacon to the larger Muslim world. The balance in Turkey between the secularists and the Islamists allows this economic and military powerhouse to be allied with Israel while maintaining its street cred with the Arab masses.

George Freidman of Stratfor has a piece on the geopolitics of the Turkish situation, reprinted here with permission. Friedman's take on the situation differs, as always, from the conventional wisdom, but, as usual, it makes much more sense.


Erdogan's Outburst and the Future of the Turkish State
By George Friedman

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan exploded during a public discussion with Israeli President Shimon Peres at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week. Erdogan did not blow up at Peres, but rather at the moderator, Washington Post columnist and associate editor David Ignatius, whom Erdogan accused of giving more time to Peres. Afterward, Erdogan said, “I did not target at all in any way the Israeli people, President Peres or the Jewish people. I am a prime minister, a leader who has expressly stated that anti-Semitism is a crime against humanity.”

Nevertheless, the international press focused not on the finer points of Erdogan’s reasoning, but rather on his attacks on Israeli policy in Gaza and his angry exit, which many thought were directed at Peres and Israel. The confusion, we suspect, suited Erdogan quite well. Turkey is effectively an ally of Israel. Given this alliance, the recent events in Gaza put Erdogan in a difficult position. The Turkish prime minister needed to show his opposition to Israel’s policies to his followers in Turkey’s moderate Islamist community without alarming Turkey’s military that he was moving to rupture relations with Israel. Whether calculated or not, Erdogan’s explosion in Davos allowed him to appear to demonstrate vocal opposition to Israel — directly to Israel’s president, no le ss — without actually threatening ties with Israel.

It is important to understand the complexity of Erdogan’s political position. Ever since the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Turkey has had a secular government. The secularism of the government was guaranteed constitutionally by the military, whose role it was to protect the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk — the founder of modern, secular Turkey, who used the army as an instrument of nation-building. The Turkish public, in contrast, runs the gamut from ultrasecularists to radical Islamists.

Erdogan is an elected moderate Islamist. As such, he is held in suspicion by the army and severely circumscribed in how far he can go on religious matters. To his right politically are more hard-line Islamist parties, which are making inroads into Turkish public opinion. Erdogan must balance between these forces, avoiding the two extreme outcomes of military intervention and Islamist terrorism.

Meanwhile, from a geopolitical perspective, Turkey is always in an uncomfortable place. Asia Minor is the pivot of Eurasia. It is the land bridge between Asia and Europe, the northern frontier of the Arab world and the southern frontier of the Caucasus. Its influence spreads outward toward the Balkans, Russia, Central Asia, the Arab world and Iran. Alternatively, Turkey is the target of forces emanating from all of these directions. Add to this its control of the Bosporus, which makes Turkey the interface between the Mediterranean and Black Sea, and the complexity of Turkey’s position becomes clear: Turkey is always either under pressure from its neighbors or pressuring its neighbors. It is perpetually be ing drawn outward in multiple directions, even into the eastern Mediterranean.

Turkey has two different paths for dealing with its geopolitical challenge.
Secular Isolationism

From the army’s point of view, the Ottoman Empire was a disaster that entangled Turkey into the catastrophe of Word War I. One of Ataturk’s solutions involved not only contracting Turkey after the war, but containing it in such a way that it could not be drawn into the extreme risk of imperial adventure.

In World War II, both Axis and Allies wooed and subverted Turkey. But the country managed — with difficulty — to maintain neutrality, thereby avoiding another national catastrophe.

During the Cold War, Turkey’s position was equally difficult. Facing Soviet pressure from the north, the Turks had to ally themselves with the United States and NATO. Turkey possessed something the Soviets desperately wanted: the Bosporus, which would have given the Soviet navy unimpeded access to the Mediterranean. Naturally, the Turks could not do anything about their geography, nor could they cede the Bosporus to the Soviets without sacrificing their independence. But neither could they protect it by themselves. Thus, left with only the choice of NATO membership, the Turks joined the Western alliance.

There was a high degree of national unity on this subject. Whatever the ideologies involved, the Soviets were viewed as a direct threat to Turkey. Therefore, using NATO and the United States to help guarantee Turkish territorial integrity was ultimately something around which a consensus could form. NATO membership, of course, led to complications, as these things always do.

To counter the American relationship with Turkey (and with Iran, which also blocked Soviet southward movement), the Soviets developed a strategy of alliances — and subversion — of Arab countries. First Egypt, then Syria, Iraq and other countries came under Soviet influence between the 1950s and 1970s. Turkey found itself in a vise between the Soviets and Iraq and Syria. And with Egypt — with its Soviet weapons and advisers — also in the Soviet orbit, Turkey’s southern frontier was seriously threatened.

Turkey had two possible responses to this situation. One was to build up its military and economy to take advantage of its mountainous geography and deter attack. For this, Turkey needed the United States. The second option was to create cooperative relations with other countries in the region that were hostile to both the Soviets and the left-wing Arab regimes. The two countries that fit this bill were Israel and pre-1979 Iran under the shah. Iran tied down Iraq. Israel tied down Syria and Egypt. In effect, these two countries neutralized the threat of Soviet pressure from the south.

Thus was born the Turkish relationship with Israel. Both countries belonged to the American anti-Soviet alliance system and therefore had a general common interest in conditions in the eastern Mediterranean. Both countries also had a common interest in containing Syria. From the standpoint of the Turkish army, and therefore the Turkish government, a close collaboration with Israel made perfect sense.
Islamist Internationalism

There is a second vision of Turkey, however: that of Turkey as a Muslim power with responsibilities beyond guaranteeing its own national security. This viewpoint would of course break the country’s relationship with Israel and the United States. In some sense, this is a minor consideration now. Israel is no longer indispensable for Turkish national security, and Turkey has outgrown outright dependence on the United States. (These days, the United States needs Turkey more than Turkey needs the United States.)

Under this second vision, Turkey would extend its power outward in support of Muslims. This vision, if pursued to the full, would involve Turkey in the Balkans in support of Albanians and Bosnians, for example. It would also see Turkey extend its influence southward to help shape Arab regimes. And it would cause Turkey to become deeply involved in Central Asia, where it has natural ties and influence. Ultimately, this vision also would return Turkey to maritime power status, influencing events in North Africa. It is at its heart a very expansionist vision, and one that would require the active support of a military that, at present, is somewhat squeamish about leaving home.

Along with Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran and Egypt, Turkey is one of only five major powers in the Islamic world with enough economic and military potential to affect anything beyond their immediate neighbors. Indonesia and Pakistan are internally fragmented and struggling to hold together; their potential is largely bottled up. Iran is in a long-term confrontation with the United States and must use all of its strength in dealing with that relationship, limiting its options for expansion. Egypt is internally crippled by its regime and economy, and without significant internal evolutions it cannot project power.

Turkey, on the other hand, is now the world’s 17th-largest economy. It boasts a gross domestic product (GDP) that is larger than that of every other Muslim country, including Saudi Arabia; larger than that of every EU country other than Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands; and nearly five times larger than that of Israel. In per capita GDP, Turkey ranks much lower on the global scale, but national power — the total weight a country can bring to bear on the international system — frequently depends more on the total size of the economy than on per capita income. (Consider China, which has a per capita income less than half that of Turkey’s.) Turkey is surrounded by instability in the Arab world, in the Caucasus and in the Balkans. But it is the most stable and dynamic economy in its region and, after Israel, has the most effective armed forces.

On occasion, Turkey goes beyond its borders. It has, for example, moved into Iraq in a combined air-ground operation to attack units of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a Kurdish separatist group. But it is Turkey’s policy to avoid deep entanglements. From the Turkish Islamist point of view, however, a power of this magnitude under the control of an Islamist regime would be in a position to spread its influence dramatically. As mentioned, this is not what the army or the secularists want: They remember how the Ottoman Empire sapped Turkish strength, and they do not want a repeat.
Erdogan’s Challenge and Turkey’s Future

It is not fair to say that Turkey is a deeply divided society. Instead, Turkey has learned to blend discord. At the moment, Erdogan probably represents the center of the Turkish political spectrum. But he is stuck trying to balance three competing forces. The first is an economy that remains robust and is likely to grow further despite suffering setbacks (along with the rest of the world). The second is a capable military that does not want excessive foreign entanglements, and certainly not for religious reasons. And the third is an Islamist movement that wants to see Turkey as part of the Islamic world — and perhaps even the leader of that world.

Erdogan does not want to weaken the Turkish economy, and he sees radical Islamist ideas as endangering Turkey’s middle class. He wants to placate the army and keep it from acting politically. He also wants to placate the radical Islamists, who could draw the army out of the barracks, or worse, weaken the economy. Erdogan thus wants to keep business, the military and the religious sector happy simultaneously.

This is no easy task, and Erdogan was clearly furious at Israel for attacking Gaza and making that task harder. Turkey was crucial in developing the Israeli-Syrian dialogue. This means the wider world now views Turkey’s leadership as regionally engaged, something its risk-averse military is more than a little touchy about. Erdogan therefore saw Israel as endangering Turkey’s military-civilian power balance and squandering its tentative steps into the regional spotlight for what he considered a pointless operation in Gaza.

Still, Erdogan did not want to break with Israel. So he became furious with the moderator. Whether this was calculated or simply reflected his response to the situation he finds himself in is immaterial. The outburst allowed him to appear to break with Israel decisively without actually creating such a rupture. He thus deftly continued to walk his fine line.

The question is how long Erdogan can maintain the balance. The more chaotic the region around Turkey becomes and the stronger Turkey gets, the more irresistible will be the sheer geopolitical pressure on Turkey to fill the vacuum. Add to that an expansionist ideology — a Turkish Islamism — and a potent new force in the region could quickly emerge. The one thing that can restrain this process is Russia. If Moscow forces Georgia to submit and brings its forces back to the Turkish border in Armenia, the Turks will have to reorient their policy back to one of blocking the Russians. But regardless of what level Russian power returns to over the next few years, the longer-term growth of Turkish power is inevitable — and something that must be considered carefully.


For an alternate view of the event in Davos and what it means, check out Powerline's take on it.

Not Ready for Rushmore

Not Ready for Rushmore

The heady early days of the Obama administration are already coming to a close. In the beginning, there was "The One," and he was going to save us all. He ran for president presenting himself as a personality, more like Brittney Spears than Abraham Lincoln or JFK. But as he transitions from candidate to executive his cult of personality is losing members by the day, yet he is only two weeks into the actual job we hired him for.

Before he was inaugurated it was suggested that he be carved into Mount Rushmore, beside George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Teddy Roosevelt, or perhaps carve TR into a likeness of Obama. After all, went the story, he would certainly prove to be more important to that dead white guy.

OK, maybe those stories were exaggerated, or at least premature. But schools and streets have already been named after him, and Barack has become a very popular name for babies worldwide. All this over a man of little or no accomplishment, other than the mere fact of his election. That was no mean feat by itself, considering his meager beginnings, being the son of a Kenyan student and a young and apparently confused girl.

The sustaining power of the Obama euphoria is credited, in a piece by Peter Berkowitz in today's WSJ, to the obverse of Bush Derangement Syndrome, (BDS) in which:

At first glance, Bush hatred and Obama euphoria could not be more different. Hatred of Mr. Bush went well beyond the partisan broadsides typical of democratic politics. For years it disfigured its victims with open, indeed proud, loathing for the very manner in which Mr. Bush walked and talked. It compelled them to denounce the president and his policies as not merely foolish or wrong or contrary to the national interest, but as anathema to everything that made America great.

In contrast, the euphoria surrounding Mr. Obama's run for president conferred upon the candidate immunity from criticism despite his newness to national politics and lack of executive experience, and regardless of how empty his calls for change. At the same time, it inspired those in its grips, repeatedly bringing them tears of joy throughout the long election season. With Mr. Obama's victory in November and his inauguration last week, it suffused them with a sense that not only had the promise of America at last been redeemed but that the world could now be transfigured.

In fact, Bush hatred and Obama euphoria -- which tend to reveal more about those who feel them than the men at which they are directed -- are opposite sides of the same coin. Both represent the triumph of passion over reason.

Meanwhile, reality must intrude into the ruminations of those in thrall to this passion. Just as BDS will fade with time, Obama euphoria must yield to the facts and acts that are so much more persistent than campaign rhetoric. Indeed, Obama's poll numbers are already coming down to Earth. A mere two weeks in, two of the young president's top nominees have had to decline their designations, and Obama's "stimulus" plan has had to go back to the drawing board, as a less than compliant political class has revealed more than a little friction between Obama's leftist wish list and political reality.

In a campaign, it is possible to appear to be all things to all people. When faced with the realities and ambiguities of power, one must choose a side. Even in a political atmosphere as one-sided as obtained two weeks ago there are interests and proclivities that supersede mere love. Compromise in a political process can appear to some as indiscretion, or even betrayal. Not for nothing are awards for accomplishment made to wait for the aftermath. The president's poll numbers will continue to decline so long as fewer than one in five Americans approve of the way things are going. Obama himself has noted that he needs to succeed in banishing the economic storm we are sheltering from, or he could be facing a single term presidency. We shall see.

Stimulate This

Stimulate This

Now that the stimulus bill is moving into final form, details are leaking out. Since most of the money will not be spent until the second and third year, it is not really a stimulus bill. It is rather more a Trojan horse bill, since it will contain quite a few special passengers. In the words of the president's chief of staff, “Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste. They are opportunities to do big things.”

Now reports are beginning to emerge, and one of the most insidious little bombs is the "decoupling" provision for utility rates. What this means is there will be no further link between electric rates, say, and the amount of electricity you use. That means that, as we are forced (or choose) to use more efficient appliances and our electrical use goes down, the rates will go up to compensate. Then, when or if we buy electric vehicles, the rates will remain high. Or presumably we can ask our legislators (nicely) to pass a new law setting special rates for electrical vehicle use. But even that is dependent on the utilities installing new electric meters, so that the "special" use can be rated on the lower, politically correct rate for electric vehicles. But then the gasoline tax and road use taxes will be piled on the electric rates.

While we are on this subject of Obama "calling for forty million meters to be installed" it might be interesting to look into the Federal Energy Policy Act of 2005, which directed state utility commissions to install the new meters. But since Bush signed that legislation, Obama has "called" for exactly the same thing, so as to get the credit. "Utilities are planning to deploy more than 40 million smart meters throughout the country from 2007 through 2010, according to a report published by Federal Energy Regulatory Commission." But now that Obama wants it, and money has no real value any more, it is now for the government to pay for them, with their usual crack efficiency and timeliness.

This is pretty clear, we are getting screwed by this stimulus plan. It is the un-stimulus screw - no stimulation, no kisses, no lube.

If you have a head for details, or you think I'm kidding, you can read the report (.pdf) summarizing the bill. Not to worry, it is a mere 76 pages.

Our New Era of Responsibility

Our New Era of Responsibility

Our new president has proclaimed a "new era of responsibility" in his inaugural address. As Orwell defined Newspeak, the import of the words are exactly the opposite of what the words mean. Not to blame Barry for everything, since the situation predates Obama by decades.

Our nation's attempt to create an idiot proof society has cast us adrift from our moorings. We used to be a nation with a "can do" attitude. It was We the People who got things done, each of us, as well as all of us. Everyone believed they could make a difference, at the very least in our own lives. That valuable but not enough treasured ethic is dying, and almost dead. Our new president is going to accelerate the demise of the best of the American spirit.

This thesis is explored in today's Wall Street Journal by Philip K. Howard. A few quotes:

America achieved greatness as the can-do society. This is, after all, the country of Thomas Paine and barn raisings, of Grange halls and Google. Other countries shared, at least in part, our political freedoms, but America had something different -- a belief in the power of each individual. President Obama's clarion call of self-determination -- "Yes We Can" -- hearkens back to the core of our culture.

Americans don't feel free to reach inside themselves and make a difference. The growth of litigation and regulation has injected a paralyzing uncertainty into everyday choices. All around us are warnings and legal risks. The modern credo is not "Yes We Can" but "No You Can't." Our sense of powerlessness is pervasive. Those who deal with the public are the most discouraged. Most doctors say they wouldn't advise their children to go into medicine. Government service is seen as a bureaucratic morass, not a noble calling. Make a difference? You can't even show basic human kindness for fear of legal action. Teachers across America are instructed never to put an arm around a crying child.

The idea of freedom as personal power got pushed aside in recent decades by a new idea of freedom -- where the focus is on the rights of whoever might disagree. Daily life in America has been transformed. Ordinary choices -- by teachers, doctors, officials, managers, even volunteers -- are paralyzed by legal self-consciousness. Did you check the rules? Who will be responsible if there's an accident? A pediatrician in North Carolina noted that "I don't deal with patients the same way any more. You wouldn't want to say something off the cuff that might be used against you."

And so today we witness a high school coach being indicted for homicide for denying a player water for fifteen minutes.

All this law, we're told, is just the price of making sure society is in working order. But society is not working. Disorder disrupts learning all day long in many public schools -- the result in part, studies by NYU Professor Richard Arum found, of the rise of student rights. Health care is like a nervous breakdown in slow motion. Costs are out of control, yet the incentive for doctors is to order whatever tests the insurance will pay for. Taking risks is no longer the badge of courage, but reason enough to get sued. There's an epidemic of child obesity, but kids aren't allowed to take the normal risks of childhood. Broward County, Fla., has even banned running at recess.

So no little babies get hurted, all the others must stand around and become wimps. There is the other, related problem with the feminization of the American boys and men, but that is another, related problem. The radicals who want manly men to disappear use the courts to get their way in the schools.

The new legal order doesn't honor the individuality of human accomplishment. People accomplish things by focusing on the goal, and letting their instincts, mainly subconscious, try to get them there. "Amazingly few people," management guru Peter Drucker observed, "know how they get things done." Most things happen, the philosopher Michael Polanyi wrote, through "the usual process of trial and error by which we feel our way to success." Thomas Edison put it this way: "Nothing that's any good works by itself. You got to make the damn thing work."

Modern law pulls the rug out from under all those human powers and substitutes instead a debilitating self-consciousness. Teachers lose their authority, Prof. Arum found, because the overhang of law causes "hesitation, doubt and weakening of conviction." Skyrocketing health-care costs are impossible to contain as long as doctors go through the day thinking about how they will defend themselves if a sick person sues.

The overlay of law on daily choices destroys the human instinct needed to get things done. Bureaucracy can't teach. Rules don't make things happen. Accomplishment is personal. Anyone who has felt the pride of a job well done knows this.

But the "Hope and Change Express" promises us more rules, more bureaucracy, more destruction of personal responsibility and accomplishment. Less pride, more debt, more taxes.

When advancing the cause of freedom, law today is all proscription and no protection. There are no boundaries, just a moving mudbank comprised of accumulating bureaucracy and whatever claims people unilaterally choose to assert. People wade through law all day long. Any disagreement in the workplace, any accident, any incidental touching of a child, any sick person who gets sicker, any bad grade in school -- you name it. Law has poured into daily life.

That gets the flavor of the problem. I am not sure that I agree with Phil Howard's prescription for getting us out of this mess, but I know that we are under a desperate assault by rules and laws, and ultimately lawyers. Now that the Leftists, beholden, nay, in thrall to the lawyers, are in charge of at least two of our three branches of government, no matter that you believe we should to roll back the tide, we are certain to see the tide oncoming for quite a while.

But never be despondent! History shows that, in retrospect, everything works out for the best. The problem is, we may not live long enough to see things work out. So I have come around to the proposition that I hope for Obama's presidency to fail - to fail big, and to fail fast. Only by complete failure, and I am talking failure on the scale of a Carter, total, abject, undeniable failure, will the electorate come to understand that we need to throw all the bums out, and elect a new majority. Not an ideological majority, that would not be a zero base approach. What we need is to throw out the incumbents, whose minds and souls are poisoned from their well worn habits of taking from us and feeding their own.

Only a huge failure of our government can save us from that government. Think about it, discuss it. This is not going away by itself.

Intellectual?

Intellectual?

I have no idea where this "Obama is an intellectual" trope came from, but it is absolutely untrue. An intellectual is a person who exercises his creative and mental powers over all else. He writes, he may teach. He is surely not a pol. Let's get this trope off the table. A pol is a person who bends others to his will, his quest for power, not a man who convinces others with his ideas. Name a single new or unique idea our new leader has had, I dare you. Not an intellectual by a long shot.

While we are at it, how are we to know that this guy is so smart? I have not seen any testing on him that impresses me more than the work done to quantify the IQs of Bush and Kerry. If he is smarter than either of those, I have not seen any evidence of it - just unsubstantiated statements. And he clearly has no intellectual achievements to compare to Bill Clinton's.

Not that this means anything. Great leaders are men such as Reagan and FDR. Oliver Wendell Holmes admiringly and famously said of FDR that he had a "first rate attitude, second rate temperament." (Churchill said about the same thing substituting "attitude" for "temperament") Few would call Reagan a deep thinker, but his thinking had clarity. This nuanced thinking we get from pretenders like Kerry, and now maybe we will get much of the same from "The One," drives me to distraction. It may be possible that Obama is capable of clear thinking, but as Rush and others say, liberals will never tell you what they believe, because you would then reject them.

It is the liberal propensity to call republicans idiots. Remember, Kerry was supposed to be some sort of a genius too. Only when he lost did the Left admit that he was a dork who ran an incompetent campaign, and research revealed his IQ to be about the same as G.W.Bush's. They said that Clinton was a genius, but at least they had a leg to stand on with that one, Rhodes Scholar and all. But he did too much of his thinking with his little head. Then they called G.H.W.Bush an idiot and a tool, Reagan an idiot and a fool, but before that Carter was called a genius nuclear engineer! All he ever did in that line was to grease the machinery in a nuclear submarine, but to the leftist media in this country, they do not need much to get off and running. Leftist guys are smart, righties are dumb. Don't you get it? This is a universal truth of the Left. Read Trotsky or Goebbels.

No. I believe that the guy who becomes president is always the guy who is an absolute genius at utilizing the tools that exist to claim power over others. That makes them smart enough to be our rulers, that's all. Any claim to higher intelligence on broader matters requires evidence - evidence that is lacking on all our presidents since Jefferson, sadly.

I rather think that Obama is a pragmatist, and when his liberalism fails him, he will change horses rather than becoming irrelevant like Carter. Time will tell. We are in deep trouble if he is an intellectual, who has pondered and decided to go all ideological on us. If so, we might just have a revolution on our hands real soon. Remember, if one and a half percent had voted the other way, we would be making fun of president McCain right now. There is scant support for another bailout, government health care for everybody and much higher taxes. Keep piling it on, and we the people will push back come election day next.

Obama in Short

Obama in Short

It is clear that Minister Farrakhan and Pastor Wright detest America and white people. It's no secret that Wright and Farrakhan embrace beliefs that white people are devils and Jews are the scum of the earth. It is not a stretch to arrive at the conclusion that since Michelle Obama also embraces these ideals, that her husband shares these beliefs. To conclude anything different is to be looking through rose colored glasses.

What is tragic, is that in white (liberal) America's quest to try to rid itself of the guilt of racism they are embracing one of the scariest African American men ever to enter American politics. It is tragic because I think there are so many more promising black Americans who could no doubt leave a great historical legacy and blaze a path for others to follow. Barack? Not quite the same story. He may leave a historic legacy... and it will not be good.