A quick addition to an earlier post-
Johnny Carson has something to add to my post about lying politicians:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbWI9xIGba4
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Quotes For Today-
Alexis de Tocqueville was a French political philosopher and historian, best known for his two volumes, Democracy in America, published in 1835 and 1840. Reading his books today makes him seem like a prophet, but he simply understood that ideas have consequence. He understood the American political experiment and he understood how it could go wrong. Here are some quotes that seem especially relevant today:
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.
A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.
In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.
Time For the Invoice
So, what is the cost to each of us and our children for the spectacular job Bush and Obama have done prolonging, I mean, saving us from certain doom and destruction? A group from Stanford economists from the Hoover Institute lay out the numbers for us in the WSJ today. If it doesn’t frighten you then you are obviously one of our international readers (welcome to www.realitybatslast.com!)
The Magnitude of the Mess We’re In
9-18 Update by Bryce- Reading this column about the ‘Mess We’re In’ prompted two thoughts:
1. Who in their right mind would want to be the Captain as the USS Titanic tries to make it’s way forward through these waters? None of the problems enumerated in the article have easy solutions; just very painful and difficult ones. And if you are a conservative Captain, the press will be sabataging every move you make.
2. Republicans would be wise to avoid the Messianic thinking that swept Obama into power. Dear Leader cannot make these problems go away. Not Obama; not Romney. Turning this big ship around will take much more than the election of a new Captain. A new Captain is necessary, but certainly not sufficient.
And the Outsourcer of The Century Award Goes To…
President Barack Obama!
It is very intuitive that the spectacular deluge of regulations and taxes unleashed on US industry by the 44th President would be extremely detrimental to business and grind our economy to a near stop. The last time we saw a massive tax increase and regulatory takeover of the economy in the face of a recession was under Herbert Hoover in 1932. It would take the greatest war the world has ever seen to pull us out of the depression that resulted. If you need an illustration of how taxes and regulation hurt the economy, consider the following example from the med tech industry:
Lets say you are a running a small medical device company trying to survive in our so-called “free” country. It costs you between $35 million and $90 million to get a new device approved for use in the US. It also takes you between 5 and 10 years of R&D and regulatory to get FDA approval and there is well over a 75% chance that your company will fail along the way (run out of cash, the device doesn’t work, a test subject has a lawyer relative, etc). You watch as an unregulated low-cost internet industry takes over the VC community that used to fund medical technology ventures. Your life is one of regulatory and financing hell and your family hates you because there is a good chance that the next bump in the road will be the end of your company. The only humor in your life is a sad chuckle when you hear a delusional acquaintance say that it’s the NIH that actually ”invents” things. You stay focused on the supposed pot of gold that waits for you at the other end of the minefield you’ve chosen to navigate.
Now imagine if, in addition to your woes, the President and Democratic congress declare an all-out war on your industry. The FDA is given a “stonewall mandate” as internal whistleblowers are unleashed on the agency to root out any industry friendly regulators and blackball privileges are given to even low ranking officials. Taxes are promised to be raised 33% on investment capital which will not only drain the pool of financing you need, but steer it even further towards low-cost unregulated alternatives like a college programmer with a hot idea. Mid-tier med tech companies that might buy yours are run out of the nation or swallowed up by bigger companies because their small margins can’t take the special med tech tax in Obamacare (2.3% of revenues can look a lot more like 23% at the bottom line). That same Obamacare med tech tax (used as Chicago-style punishment to the industry for not supporting Obamacare) drains billions of dollars from the pot of gold (med tech acquisition budgets) that you and other small med tech companies look to for cashing out after all the hard work. Now you are competing with the other companies for a much smaller exit value, much like the animals in a nature special surrounding a small African watering hole during a drought… And then your elected representatives in government add “comparative effectiveness studies” to the list of things your diminished money supply will somehow have to pay for. These are studies that could stop most groups from compensating your technology, even if it somehow gets through the Obama FDA. You have to show that your technology is cost-effective… unlike nearly any technology right after launch before economies of scale can bring the price down! At what point do you fold up shop and/or leave the country?
Am I being overdramatic? Look around you. Pick up the paper. What do you see? And this is before the real regulations are slated to kick in…
Here is an example of one such company:
This next company obviously doesn’t have a lot of faith in what Obamacare will do for our markets. If only the CEO had a chance to talk to the president about it…
It is hard to imagine that this the same country of 20 or even 10 years ago. In my youth, there was a worry that the Russians would invade the US and replace freedom with socialism at the point of a gun. The man who brought down the Red Army warned us it would happen another way, and only take a generation to accomplish:
Selling Lies
Politicians often sell lies. That’s nothing new. But rather than becoming accustomed to it, I am increasingly angered by it. There was massive lying about Obamacare, constant lying about who pays “their fair share” of the cost of government, lying about the debt crisis, lying about how serious they are about truly dealing with it, lying about the real unemployment rate, etc.. We deserve better from this disgusting group of people whom we mysteriously call “leaders”.
For brazen, ‘in your face’, lying, the current attempt by the Obama Administration to claim that the Libyan violence was “not a reaction to U.S. policy or 9-11″ is hard to beat. U.N. Ambassador, Susan Rice, said yesterday that the Libyan military assault was “spontaneous” and “not a premeditated assault”.
Libyan President Mohammed el-Megarif said,
“The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous.”… [There is] “no doubt that this was preplanned, predetermined.”
Senator John McCain said,
“Most people don’t bring rocket-propelled grenades and heavy weapons to a demonstration,” he said. “That was an act of terror. And for anyone to disagree with that fundamental fact I think is really ignorant of the facts.”
A guard from the Libyan Embassy just reported that there was no protest at the Embassy on 9-11 until the 150 people making the military assault stormed onto the scene.
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One aspect of delusional foreign policy can be illustrated with the story of Grizzly Man, Timothy Treadwell. Timothy went to live with grizzlies in Alaska and to be their friend. Timothy said that he understood grizzlies and they understood him, and they were buddies. It was a sweet idea, like in second grade when you send a note saying, “I like you, do you like me”, and you just know you are going to get a reply, “Yes, I do”. Sing Kumbaya.
Timothy was killed and eaten by the grizzlies.
Only a Fool…
It has been said that, “Only a fool makes the same mistake twice”. Someone appears to be betting that there are a lot of fools:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZgQhnNRSuw
“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
And here he is again with a big shovel, shoveling it higher and deeper…
Some Good News…
The uproar in the Middle East is not a reaction to U.S. foreign policy at all. It’s about a movie nobody saw. That’s all. Not only that, the U.S. is super-vigilant around the date of September 11. You can rest assured about that. Jay Carney has the details here:
Updated 9-16: I found a little more evidence that the current violent demonstrations could not be about U.S. foreign policy. They just couldn’t be because we have a different approach now that is working:
Good Things Come…
Maybe? We hope?
Since the Republican primary debates, the race has been on among politicians and media pundits to define who and what Romney is. The one person to stay out of this frenzy has been… Romney. The country is itching to oust one of the worst presidents in modern memory, but can’t shake the feeling that it is pulling a card out of a magician’s deck. The consequences for Mitt could be losing the election. Kimberly Strassel lays it out eloquently in her WSJ column today:
Strassel: Mr. Romney, Trust Your Pants
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Today’s Links:
Beyond Bias… it’s propaganda. How the media are unpaid employees of the Whitehouse
Checking the Fact-checkers… Ann Coulter explains how lounging in bed is “work”.
A great Thomas Sowell column explains how, “Helping those who have been struck by unforeseeable misfortunes is fundamentally different from making dependency a way of life.”
Thomas Sowell explains how government intervention usually makes things worse.
Victor Davis Hansen explains how “We Seem to Have Learned Nothing from 9/11″.
Celebrating 9-11
Most of us remember the solidarity our country felt after our country was attacked on 9-11. We were not Republicans or Democrats, we were not blacks, browns or whites. We came together. We were Americans and our country had been brutally attacked with great loss of life. Our sorrow and sympathy were shared emotions. It was ‘us’ against ‘them’.
We also remember that there was celebration in parts of the world where America is hated. There was dancing in the streets. The death and destruction were cheered and speakers told the mobs that we had it coming.
It is worth knowing that there was at least one place inside this country that had a similar celebration. Really, there was. Here is an excerpt of what was happening in Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church just a few days after the attack, while the rest of us were supporting each other in solidarity and sadness.
In the extended video of this ‘sermon’, you can see the celebratory mood of the congregation. It could have been a scene from anywhere in the world where America is hated. The speaker told the mob we had it coming. The mob cheered. But it was in Chicago, in Obama’s church of 20 years and the speaker was Obama’s minister and mentor. Obama said Wright was like a father to him. Yes, we can see that.