RedStateEclectic

A Ship with the Engine Off

Notes Steven Kates, author of the best introduction to economics there is:

If even Chris Matthews is done with Obama, who’s left? You can even watch the video here but this is the text:

‘What part of the presidency does Obama like? He doesn’t like dealing with other politicians — that means his own cabinet, that means members of the congress, either party. He doesn’t particularly like the press…. He likes to write the speeches, likes to rewrite what Favreau and the others wrote for the first draft,’ Matthews said.

‘So what part does he like? He likes going on the road, campaigning, visiting businesses like he does every couple days somewhere in Ohio or somewhere,’ Matthews continued. ‘But what part does he like? He doesn’t like lobbying for the bills he cares about. He doesn’t like selling to the press. He doesn’t like giving orders or giving somebody the power to give orders. He doesn’t seem to like being an executive.’

On Tuesday’s program, Matthews similarly called Obama ‘a ship with the engine off.’

“A ship with the engine off.” He’s actually much worse than that and far more destructive but it will do for now.

The source.

Compare this with what Richard Epstein has to say (in the first 2 minutes of the below video) about his former colleague.

 

Against Political Biology

Lysenko, one of the masters of political biology.

Following up on my Scientists Not Interested in Science, find below a level-headed reminder of some facts of basic, depoliticised biology.

In his summary, Luboš Motl writes:

The basic theme of the [below] article is simple and most of us learned it as fifth-graders: CO₂ is primarily the plant food while its other implications for nature are negligible in comparison. Humanitarian organizations should work hard to help the mankind to increase the CO₂ concentration and it's surprising that virtually all of them are failing to do so.

Thus, ex-moonwalker Harrison Schmitt and physics professor Will Happer of Princeton argue:

Of all of the world's chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That's simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity.

The entire brief article.

Rand Paul At Howard University

While Marco Rubio was getting all dolled up for dinner with Obama, Rand Paul was speaking at a traditional black college, Howard University.   I haven't seen the speech yet but I did appreciate the recap that the Daily Caller posted.  Here's a taste:

One student asked about voting rights, wondering how (Paul) could say he was in favor of voting rights when he supported voter ID laws.

“I think if you liken using a license to using a literacy test, you demean the horror of” what happened during the Jim Crow era, Paul responded.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/04/10/rand-paul-at-howard-reject-caricature-of-gop/#ixzz2Q7CFfG1a

(Some of my friends at Ron Paul Forums are having a spontaneous RAND PAC money bomb! We'd love to have you join us for $20.16!)

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Courtesy of FreedomWorks, here's the whole video: 

 

The Great Deformation

In the below podcast, the always insightful David Stockman talks about some of the topics dealt with in his new book The Great Deformation.

 

See also here.

Eco-Theocracy

Image credit.

Theocracy: a system of government by priests claiming a divine commission

It looks as if we are being increasingly ruled by an eco-(hypocracy)-theocracy:

They represent a rapidly expanding, increasingly powerful government class that is determined to control what we eat, say, do and buy.

In the environmental arena, these would-be czars and czarinas want to regulate what kinds of energy we can produce and use, cars we can drive, and jobs and living standards we can have. They are the vanguard of a dangerous alliance of eco-imperialism and vulture environmentalism.

[...]

Driven by utopian, Deep Ecology and global governance ideologies, elected and unelected ruling elites pass laws, promulgate regulations and issue edicts, based on faulty to fraudulent science and unsupported proclamations about dangerous manmade global warming, resource depletion and sustainable development. They seek to radically and fundamentally transform the energy, economic and social fabric of our nation and world – in the name of “social justice” and “saving the planet.”

They operate with little or no transparency or debate, often with vague or minimal legislative or constitutional authority, and with virtually no accountability for the false pretexts they use to justify their intrusive actions, or the harm they cause to people and wildlife. Their attitudes and actions often reflect a callous disregard for environmental values and people’s property, civil rights, jobs, health and even lives.

Our courts give them almost limitless discretion to impose laws and regulations, select pseudo-scientific “facts” to justify them, and ignore both the imaginary benefits and substantive harm they cause. They allow and encourage sweetheart “sue and settle” legal actions between regulatory agencies and activist groups, capricious agency inaction on mineral leases and permits, and arbitrary bureaucratic waivers of endangered species and other environmental laws for gigantic wind and solar projects.

Make sure to read the entire article.

The Life and Death of Democracy...

...is the title of a book by John Keane that I am reading in substantial extracts, at the moment. It is an exceedingly well written, thoughtful and inspiring book.

I have never been an anarcho-capitalist, but as a user of the vast resources - articles and ebooks - available from the LvMI, I have been tempted into ignoring alternatives to the often simplistic and enclosed views of the Rothbardians, especially concerning the state, democracy, and a number of topics in the field of economics. 

Presently, I am looking into the issue of democracy, and have made this diary entry to encourage me to pursue the below intuition - and it turns out, Keane's book provides material that confirms the hunch:

Freedom and democracy form a tense relationship. Isonomia, equality before the law – that precursor and beginning of the rule of law – gives rise to a desire to further strengthen this firewall against tyrannical domination: democracy is added to it, as a means of controlling rulers and permitting a bloodless change of government.

Why is it that there seems to be a continuing affinity that ties together the rule of law, a comparatively high degree of personal and economic freedom, and democracy?

A vague suspicion: practises characteristic of the rule of law, personal and economic freedom are protected by a subset and intersecting set of rights equally requisite to maintain democracy. In order to keep democracy alive one mustn’t undermine these common rights. Though democracy may be popular because it opens up options to act in ways that can be directed against freedom, still continued effectiveness of democracy is wedded to the need to respect rights that lend a certain robustness to freedom, too.

 

Coolidge

Amity Shlaes just published a biography of Coolidge.

“When in 1929 the thirtieth president climbed onto a train at Union Station to head back home to Massachusetts after his sixty-seven months in office, the federal government was smaller than when he had become president in 1923.”  Why, you may ask, do we not know more of this man, this American leader?

The source.

 

See also Ships Not Shops, and Amity Shlaes on the Forgotten Man ...

Greenpeace Urging Obama To Ban Cats

Image credit.

No, no, not quite.

However, following up on Who Is Going to Kill Those Cats, I ask our readers to note:

The review estimates that if Keystone is not built, oil sands production will be only 0.4 to 0.6 percent less that if the pipeline is built, or less than 0.83 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent emissions annually. This difference equates to less than two hours of U.S. emissions, a negligible amount. Seventy-four million US housecats annually cause an estimated 196 times this emissions volume. Why isn’t Greenpeace urging President Obama to ban cats?

The full article.

See also The Cat in Me.

Elephants Remember….

Last night, I attended the Douglas County Republican Party Elephant Remembers Dinner with about 35 of my best liberty loving Republican friends.  

Coincidentally, the event fell on my husband’s 52nd birthday, and Omaha is about 1 1/2 hours away from our home.  So, even though my husband doesn’t often attend political functions with me, this happened to hit on a good weekend (no call), so I suggested he take the afternoon off, I’d get Grandma to come and stay with the kids, and we’d go to Omaha, spend the night (and then, on Saturday morning, we could go to Cabela’s in Omaha for the latest in sporting goods shopping—I think it was Cabela’s that convinced him that this would be a good idea).

Now my husband’s lunchtime getaway ended up being closer to a 3:30 departure from work (we were wanting to leave by 4 for Omaha), due to a baby delivery and some other things that had come up.  I had all of my things packed, but I hadn’t packed all of his clothes for Saturday, since I thought he’d be back in time to do so, so things got a little bit frantic as we were getting ready to depart after I’d picked kids up from school (Grandma was here by this time).  We were trying to get the last of the things together, and I specifically recall asking him, as he walked down the stairs from our bedroom, if he’d gotten the suitcase—and he said “yes, it’s down there already”…a comment which I took to mean “in the car.”

It was 3:50, I was saying goodbye to the kids, getting the last of my stuff together, and we were ready to go.  We got to Omaha, I went in to check in (same hotel where the event was taking place), and then he was going to pull the car around to the appropriate door and bring our luggage up so we could freshen up from the drive a bit before we headed to the dinner (fortunately, we’d put our suits on before we' left).

I ran into him, coming from the front desk, as he walked into the building.  I asked where the suitcase was… “I’ll see you in 3 hours” was his answer.  Long story short, we determined that in our rush, the suitcase had gotten as far as the garage, but not actually into the car.

After some discussion, I suggested that it made no sense for him to drive back home and get the suitcase—that we could just drive home after the event.  Ultimately, neither of those were palatable alternatives, and after the event, we ran to the 24 hour Walmart up the street, way over-dressed in our suits at 11:30 p.m., and each of us bought a pair of jeans, socks, t-shirts, underwear, deodorant and toothbrushes, so that we could wear something other than our suits to Cabela’s  this morning (again, we would have been terribly overdressed).  Oh, and we got the cheapest shoes we could find, too.

As for the event, there was a very nice turnout.  The Republican Liberty Caucus of Nebraska sponsored 4 tables—and was one of the Gold Sponsors of the event—the only organization to serve in that capacity, and right up there with U.S. Senators and other “big names” in GOP politics in the sponsorship list.  We had a lot of people coming to talk with us—including people who in the past that have run away from us (although there are still a few doing that).  We are, I think, moving the liberty ball down the field within the GOP.

The keynote speaker for the event was Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.  Now I have no idea where Governor Walker stands on issues of foreign policy, but I’m going to tell you that he was very impressive in his talk on issues of smaller government, state power over national power, free markets, etc.  And he’s a VERY impressive as a speaker—he connects well with the audience and has a certain charisma.  I am not easily impressed anymore, and tend to be a critical analyst of politicians (even ones I like), but I was impressed.

Could he be the next Reagan?  Yes, I know that many of my libertarian-anarchist friends have problems with Reagan, but in our system of government, someone who talks the talk and moves the ball in the right direction, even without scoring a goal, or even getting into the “red zone”, is far better than someone who always goes the wrong way.  Scott Walker may have a future in Republican politics, and while he wouldn’t be the ideal from the perspective of many of us, he might be one of the best among those who could potentially have some electoral success.  Keep an eye on him.

War - Spectator Sport for Western Consumers of Government Propaganda - Mali

Image credit.

The German caption translates into: Get ready for blind flying!! Yet again?

Killing people all over the world has become a sort of half thrilling, half boring pastime for the Western consumer of government propaganda (see also Panem et Circenses).

As a manoeuvre in self-importance, Western governments kill and create havoc in hapless foreign countries, carefully chosen for being the weakest and poorest in the world.

Who would risk, say, his job to safe a few lives in Mali? And if they kill one another, why should we not share in it, at least we bring the right values to the brawl.

The habit is so fashionable nowadays, i.e. politically correct, even the Germans put a toe in the pond.

It is the failure to understand that heavy handed intervention itself creates new problems has been the central failure of American policy makers ever since 9/11, witness the debacles in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan. Blowback is the intelligence term used to describe the development of a new and larger problem due to a military or political action that is not carefully considered.

In order to avoid making a mistake, Washington inevitably and automatically magnifies every hiccup internationally into a threat, mobilizing massive resources that lead to the proverbial flea being smashed with a sledge hammer. That there is some kind of existential threat resulting from international terrorism is pretty much a myth. There are lethal insurgencies and terrorist groups to be sure but most have strictly local agendas and nearly all are being hunted and hounded successfully by every police and intelligence agency in the world. Terrorists ready, willing, and, most important, able to travel to Europe or the United States and successfully undertake a terrorist action are few, which means that the United States alone is spending some hundreds of billions of dollars to counter at most a handful of extremists.

Which brings us to the alleged terrorist threat in Africa in general and to Mali in particular, which might well be considered a case study of how non-traditional military engagement driven by interventionist policies can develop willy-nilly when some bad choices are made. What kind of terrorist threat does Mali actually represent and how did the current situation come about?

Read on at the source.

See also:

The Fuzzy Image War ..., Libya - Is It the Oil? as well as The Sport of Facile Killing - A Democratic Pastime (note, to read the article by P.T. Bauer scroll downward until the advertisement is out of sight.)