Barack Obama And The "False Choice"

In Mr. Obama's inaugural address we find this statement:

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.

It's a stunning bit of vapidity: safety is one of our ideals.

And in Mr. Obama's speech regarding the use (and destruction) of human embryos for scientific inquiry, we find this statement:

But in recent years, when it comes to stem cell research, rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values. In this case, I believe the two are not inconsistent.

The stunning vapidity apparently never ends: No one in the Bush administration ever created the false choice described by Mr. Obama. For President Bush, science informed his ethics, and vice versa: It is science that shows us that life begins at conception, and it is our ethics that draws a clear moral line between the willful destruction of human life for unknown medical gains and research that is not so inhuman. Mr. Obama even acknowledged the "unknown" in his speech the day he repealed Bush's ban:

At this moment, the full promise of stem cell research remains UNKNOWN, and it should not be OVERSTATED. But scientists believe these tiny cells† MAY have the POTENTIAL to help us... [emphasis added]

Of course, lost in Mr. Obama's emptiness is the unavoidable fact that the Bush administration PERMITTED embryonic stem cell research to continue; President Bush only limited the number of embryonic lines that could be generated (and the administration funded stem cell research as well).

In other words, only Mr. Obama has created the false choice: the choice between his false-choice straw man and the actual facts. There was no false choice save the one in his own imagination.

A REAL FALSE CHOICE

Lastly, the capstone: Here is what Michelle Obama said of her husband on the campaign trail; this was meant to sell him to us as something special. Check out this skewed logic:

The first major decision he had to make in his life, after college - "Do I go to Wall Street and make money, or do I work for the people?" - Barack worked as a community organizer in some of the toughest neighborhoods on the south side of Chicago.

Here, finally, we have evidence of a legitimate False Choice. Mr. Obama's alleged quandary is utterly manufactured. He is alleged to be unbelievably bright, and yet apparently not quite bright enough to see his false either/or. For there is no evidence that a man going to "Wall Street" to "make money" does not "work for the people." In fact, a good case could be made that a Wall Street job is far better for "the people" than community organizing in Chicago. Regardless, the point is clear: Michelle and Barack Obama presented themselves as better people than those who they falsely believe don't "work for the people"; and if Ms. Obama's testimony regarding her husband is to be trusted, then she and her husband have either fallen prey to their own false choice, or they've pandered to the envious masses by giving themselves props concealed in a false choice: We are for the people, and our refusal to work on Wall Street -- though we could have! -- proves this.

And yet, somehow, as workers for the people who rejected the allure of Wall Street, they've still managed to become millionaires.

It is now quite clear, I should think, that a colossal false choice was made some time around November 4, 2008.

Perhaps this also makes clear why Mr. Obama looks with such disdain on those who've been more successful than he. Envy nearly always poses as social justice -- for the good "of the people." In fact, it seems perfectly obvious that the whole of Mr. Obama's economic policies rests upon his most fundamental false choice.

_________________

†In the third Obama quote above, I placed a †. I wanted to draw your attention to the Orwellian diminution Mr. Obama provides: he uses a reductionistic euphemism to distract you from the fact that these are HUMAN EMBRYOS that are being destroyed; that these cells are the very rudiments and foundations of each and every human life that has ever existed or ever will exist. Each of us IS one of these "tiny cells", and each of us WAS one of these "tiny cells." This "great man" believes the weakest among us are strictly here to serve those who happen to have the privilege of walking around, you know, the advantaged; the strong. The embryos in power.

And why DID he repeal the executive order? You know why. The answer is almost genomic: $.

Mr. Obama is so disturbing precisely because he has been presented as anything but.

Peace through dissent.

©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Is GOOGLE the Beast of the Apocalypse?

A few years ago I speculated here that we are all doing data-entry for Google. It seems I am not the only who thinks this way.

There is nothing more individual in the world than a book, an author, a publisher, and the value of a contract. The aging baby boomers now flacking the settlement don't seem to understand that PDF scanning (how Google and everyone else digitizes books) isn't rocket science; it's cheap and easy. Books will be digitized without Google. But the Google settlement sets in amber today's overhyped role of the Internet, ruled by that great and magnificent Oz -- Google.

Sound like hyperbole? Consider this: Under the settlement, every rights-owner in America is supposed to hand over all their private contract data, on every edition of every work they ever wrote -- and every excerpt permission ever granted to others -- at the peril of losing the money Google will be making on their backs. This is a massive burden on everyone in the book industry, making us all, in effect, Google's data-entry slaves.

Do read Lynn Chu's powerful and ominous essay, "Google's Book Settlement A Rip-off For Authors."

My Name Is Mr. President

[Originally posted on March 14, 2009, at Political Pundoetry.]

In the classroom beneath the stairs
Along the hallway near the doors
Stands the substitute teacher
And all hell has broken loose.
Despite the texting of bad news
He still lectures all with bland glares
He spins the globe in his hands
-- He’s proudest of foreign lands --
But the weary world turns its back
Wiping chalk dust from its shoes.

Listen up, pupils, open wide
Today I have restored science
To its rightful and lovely place

A spitball is launched from North Korea
China throws milk cartons at the blackboard
Over Persia soars a middle finger
And beneath the metallic ticking clock
Russia gives America an atomic wedgie.
“Marijuana, Tijuana!” shouts a
Blue-haired boy in oily Caracas jeans
“It was an inside job,” sneers the bitter jock
(With all due nine-eleven certainty)
And they all think they’re cleverly daring and edgy.

The substitute never strays from
His teleprompted lesson plan
Picked safe from a cool Blackberry
He lectures all without blinking
About old Churchill and the Brits
About climate change and stem cells
About the vices of earmarks
The vile voices of talk radio
And all the wrong ways of thinking
(Ignoring certain sleeper cells)

But the class cannot listen well
Mired in economic hell
They’d rather see the principle
Paid on irreducible debt
Than ever show interest
In their always tired mid-terms
Hopeless for the day’s closing bell.


©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Wonders Of Man Kind

[Originally posted on March 4, 2009, at Political Pundoetry.]

A little girl
Barely old enough to dress herself
Or to know evil
Is stolen from her bed

And then raped through the night and
The next day, and then is freed
To the grave, her bogeyman burying
Her alive to smother in muffled
Hope the monster has gone

The family panics, despairs, reels
Lists
Her name and face posted
Waved, distributed to Justice
Everywhere alert
But nothing from the President
The Supreme Court
The compassionate Congress

Someone posts a website
Find The Little Girl Dot Com
All Proceeds Go To The Tireless
Search, We Promise

And Justice finds out it is a fraud
The love of stolen charity

Beneath the posters
The have-you-seen-my-child pleas
Tacked to the board at Wal-Mart
Where no one stops
To look for anything
That doesn’t resemble a bargain
Beneath the Amber signs
Stapled to curbside poles
Holding phone lines full of
Chatter about anything else
From room to room

We hear that there are more
Important things that call us
To attention
Than the trivialities of
Gay marriage
Abortion
Government Spending
Bailouts of imbalanced
Budgets and Graspers
Taking credit for what
They do not deserve

But never, NEVER
Is the abduction of
Children, the rape and
Murder and Live-interment
Of little girls
The MOST IMPORTANT THING
Tell a gay marriage activist
That gay marriage is NOT important
Go ahead, I dare you
And you’ll see that Amber is not
A color anyone cares to see
But they’ll see red over your
Alleged homophobia

And they’ll see green if you bring up
Tax cuts
They’ll see red, white, blue if
You mention the expansion of
War in Afghanistan
They’ll see hate if you aver
Child abuse and abortion
Are interbred “If I could kill
You then why can’t I smack you now?”
The despised offspring of moral incest

They’ll see blue states if
You cede them control of the
Census
And if you don’t see black
The right way then
You’re the wrong color white
Ignoring The Highest Virtue
In All The Land

They’ll trump YOUR BIG ISSUE --
Whatever it is --
With Poverty, with The Increasing Gap
Between Rich and Poor– the be all and end all
Of Social Vices – rebuking your provincial
Greed, your millionaire capitalist indifference
To Ghettos and Slums
Forgetting the savior said
“The poor you’ll always
Have with you.”

But little girls and women
Are not always with us
Shackled, stolen, sent off
To sex camps and consigned
To the Holocaust of the porn
Industry, slaves in some tropical
Paradise for men swollen, turgid
With Cash
Or buried alive with a Teddy
Or Pooh Bear
Or given a necklace of blood or
Gripped by fingers smudging life
With casual forensic evidence

This is never important enough
To fill the President’s teleprompter
He’ll talk about $$$ and $$$
And more $$$
And never EVER mention that
ANOTHER little girl (or boy)
Has met the monster under the bed that
We dismiss with a kiss
It’s only a dream
I have a dream, Mommy
Mommy’s right here
The nightlight never
Bright enough


©Contratimes/2009. All rights reserved.

Every Knee Shall Bow

[Originally posted March 4, 2009 at Political Pundoetry.]

Barney Frankly requests more spending
Fearing the day his King will deny
The petition
On the Hill, they’re all Baracknophobic
Frightened into quiescence by
The Baracktagon;
By the eight-legged stimulus
Stool distended like the Octomom
More kits than teats
To suckle on the wet nurse of
The borrowing State
Re-distributing your hard-earned milk money
But Frank’s constityouwants know
How to shed Barackodile tears
To get their tireless way

Olbermann and Matthews
-- both
Manifestly Sclerotic Newsmen Beneath Contempt
Masking Sedition Naming Barack Caesar
Making Sure Nobody Brings Clarity to the
Obfuscating habits of their Zeit-christ --

Epitomize the News Bending Capacity of
Loyal subjects enamored of their
Own astonishing goodness --
A trickle-down-the-leg Barackonomics –
The best persons in the world!
True believers in their own profoundly Barackative
Thoughts (and Olbermann becomes
Obaman with much self-flattery)

There need not be Obambastic rhetoric
(They’ll say)
Or biting Czarcasm
In this error of change
In the Barackalypse of hope
(Despite the expanding fronts
In northwest Barackistan
And the redeploying of troops
Down to east Yeswecan)

(They’ll say)
Enjoy the Barackanalian orgy
Of spending
Ignore the Barackollapse of
Markets
All’s well that polls well
And it’s all just one big
Party in hell

(He’ll say)

“We shall restore science
to its rightful place”
Which means science will become
Obamastrology – guiding the nation
By the Hollywood Stars --
and Baracket Science -- the gaseous
Launching of fact toward Algoreisgon
(And we recoil in Algoreaphobia
Or
The fear of the vast space inside
Al Gore’s head)

And then no one will be left
To descry Hussein and who isn’t
(Except perhaps the Weatherman
Who talks of patriotism
But only puts on Ayres)

©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Enslaved By Compassion

These few clips from an article in the Wall Street Journal are rather humbling:

Giving alms to Africa remains one of the biggest ideas of our time -- millions march for it, governments are judged by it, celebrities proselytize the need for it. Calls for more aid to Africa are growing louder, with advocates pushing for doubling the roughly $50 billion of international assistance that already goes to Africa each year.

Yet evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that aid to Africa has made the poor poorer, and the growth slower. The insidious aid culture has left African countries more debt-laden, more inflation-prone, more vulnerable to the vagaries of the currency markets and more unattractive to higher-quality investment. It's increased the risk of civil conflict and unrest (the fact that over 60% of sub-Saharan Africa's population is under the age of 24 with few economic prospects is a cause for worry). Aid is an unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster. ...

Over the past 60 years at least $1 trillion of development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Yet real per-capita income today is lower than it was in the 1970s, and more than 50% of the population -- over 350 million people -- live on less than a dollar a day, a figure that has nearly doubled in two decades. ...

A constant stream of "free" money is a perfect way to keep an inefficient or simply bad government in power. As aid flows in, there is nothing more for the government to do -- it doesn't need to raise taxes, and as long as it pays the army, it doesn't have to take account of its disgruntled citizens. No matter that its citizens are disenfranchised (as with no taxation there can be no representation). All the government really needs to do is to court and cater to its foreign donors to stay in power.

Stuck in an aid world of no incentives, there is no reason for governments to seek other, better, more transparent ways of raising development finance (such as accessing the bond market, despite how hard that might be). The aid system encourages poor-country governments to pick up the phone and ask the donor agencies for next capital infusion. It is no wonder that across Africa, over 70% of the public purse comes from foreign aid.

"Taxpayer Money" Nonsense: Right Or Left, They're Confused About AIG

Whether coming from the right or from the left, from conservative talk radio or from liberal blogger land, you have heard some form of the following:

AIG has taken "taxpayer" money and given it away in ridiculous bonuses. Such avarice is unconscionable. American taxpayers have bailed out a company that deserved to fall into bankruptcy or receivership; this whole scandal is the rewarding of failure and incompetence. The American people now own 80 percent of AIG, and hence should be entitled to dictate how AIG is to spend taxpayers' hard-earned cash. America is sick of keeping such companies afloat, companies that flagrantly disregard the expectations of those who have come to their rescue.

With all due respect to the American "taxpayer," let me gently admit that I have never heard such abject lunacy. The whole world has indeed gone mad, losing both a sense of proportion and the rudiments of logic. Right-wing nutjobs believe that AIG should have just failed, that AIG had no right being bailed out by "taxpayers" in the first place. Left-wing moonbats rage at AIG's alleged greed and crass materialism, and denounce the distribution of "taxpayer" funds for unjustifiable compensation.

Please let me point out something so apparently ridiculous no one else is saying it: AIG -- and all its American employees -- are taxpayers! Over the years AIG has paid the US Treasury billions if not trillions of dollars in taxes; if anything, AIG, and companies like it, have been keeping the United States government afloat for decades. The common taxpayer, that man or woman who is not the owner of a massive Blue Chip company, is able to pay taxes to the Treasury -- the very taxes used to help struggling companies like AIG -- because he or she has earned money as an employee of a company like AIG: it's businesses that make taxation even possible. The American "taxpayer" is nowhere if someone is not generating wealth that creates the jobs that enable that "taxpayer" to pay taxes.

Moreover, AIG, being a taxpayer, also is a member of that taxpaying set that has paid for the bailout: AIG is also a shareholder in that "80 percent" of Americans who "own" AIG. In other words, AIG has bailed out itself, and it owns both public and private stock in its own company.

The shrill cry that AIG is somehow holding cash that is not its own but entirely someone else's is simply ludicrous. Yes, one can argue that AIG is holding some cash that belongs to the American people, but it is absurd to construe this bailout scenario as if AIG is neither a taxpayer nor essential to the viability of the Treasury and the American people. Lost, too, is the very real fact that Barack Obama is bailing out these companies in large part because he knows -- as all thinking Americans know -- that the government does not make wealth that is then returned in taxes: private business and industry provide the Capitol with capital, so to speak. All of Barack Obama's budgetary plans are contingent on thriving businesses: the bailouts are designed to stimulate the economy so the government can collect MORE revenue through taxes from businesses and employed citizens. This proves that economies and markets are not contingent on the state; the state is contingent on economies. The chicken and egg riddle is easily answered here: the state DOES NOT come first. Simple history proves this: the American government was not first established and then economies and wealth followed. The markets and economies of this continent were vibrant and potent, and hence provided the infrastructure upon which a government could be built. The American people, living freely, privately and in personal contract, produce the wealth of this country, the very wealth Washington seeks. Washington is the result and not the cause; Washington is the recipient and not the source of wealth.

So, in short, we have before us a strange, paradoxical riddle: AIG has bailed out itself. Thus, it should be allowed to do with its bonus money as it sees fit.

But listen to the Democrats rush toward punitive, confiscatory taxes to take back money they believe they "loaned." That rushing sound is the true sound of incompetence, failure -- and greed.

Amazing. And sick.

Peace through dissent.

[Addendum: It's time that the talking heads set, the talk radio set (including the "heavyweights" like El Rushmo), and the blogging set quit this insanity. (I have not heard Rush Limbaugh, Michael Graham, Jay Severin, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Greta Van Susteren, Laura Ingraham, or anyone else, get this right.) The common locutions, like "taxpayer money," "your hard-earned tax dollars" and "our money," need to stop. Such phrases and terms are fine for fomenting outrage and envy; they make for great radio ratings and political boilerplate. But they are intellectually embarrassing. Ayn Rand is screaming from her grave, and this despite the fact that she denied any afterlife. Seriously, this whole manufactured outrage over AIG is embarrassing enough to stir the atheistic dead.]



©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Contrabamadiction

Those nasty AIG bonuses have just stuck themselves in nearly everyone's craw. While I have no problem with them, countless others do. But the math is really interesting, and so is a glaring contradiction.

If we accept the numbers as given, we know that AIG has received $190,000,000,000 in government loans and has distributed $175,000,000† in bonuses. Hence, we can rightfully conclude that the total amount of money distributed as bonuses is less than one thousandth of that $190 billion, at .00092 or .092 percent. In strictly percentage terms, the amount given to employees in the form of bonuses is utterly trivial.

Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats (and a few Republicans) are fomenting outrage over this infinitesimal distribution of "taxpayer" money. But compare this current outrage to Mr. Obama's own defense of alleged pork in his stimulus bill; read what he said on February 3, 2009, in an interview with Katie Couric. Mr. Obama rebuffed critics who claimed his bill was filled with "pork":

So, what's happened, and this is what tends to happen in this town is people have plucked out this program or that program that doesn't look particularly stimulative, the contraceptives issue being a primary example. If you add all that stuff up, it accounts from less than 1 percent of the overall package. Now that doesn't mean that the package can't improve and that's what I said to the leadership last night, "Let's improve it. Let's make this a package that is big enough for the moment, and is really focused on the American people." But I also wanna make sure that people don't get some notion which I think has been systematically promoted out there that this is full of silly spending 'cause it's not.

In other words, Mr. Obama is content overlooking trivial amounts of "taxpayer" money used for porky or pet projects. But he is not so tolerant when someone else tries to get away with something similar, even if one factors in the very real fact that AIG IS A TAXPAYER! All AIG is doing is distributing its own tax money -- refunded in a set of loans -- to its employees (who will then be taxed on it). Yet Mr. Obama has a problem with that.

No doubt such absurd behavior by a government leader is precisely "what tends to happen in this town."


Peace through dissent.

†It is reported that the Connecticut attorney general has determined that the total amount of the bonuses is $218,000,000. But this hardly changes the math.
©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Bowling A Perfect Scorn

I left this comment on the Wall Street Journal's website in response to what seemed a rather dismissive editorial about Mr. Obama's "Special Olympics" gaffe:

It is self-evident that any president needs to safeguard the images of his or her most vulnerable constituents. Special Olympians are a particularly vulnerable set; the vast majority of Special Olympians are not capable of mounting much, if any, defense against ridicule. Moreover, it strikes me as particularly grotesque to lessen the severity of Mr. Obama's gaffe with comparisons to a Special Olympian who has bowled 5 perfect games. Those of us who have worked and lived with Special Olympians know that such a bowler is not the rule but rather the rare exception among the exceptional.

Lastly, Mr. Obama did not appear at all to struggle to find some funny analogue to his inadequacies as a bowler. My sense was that he had used this sort of locution before. It may have been meant as a joke, but, as Citizen in Chief, he has a responsibility to clip his tongue when tempted to mock -- or falsely self-identify with -- a group of Americans who struggle with some of life's simplest tasks. There are countless Special Olympians who would not only love to bowl a 129, they'd love to understand the significance of such a score. And they'd love to understand Mr. Obama's sense of humor -- and irony. But they can't. He should have apologized instantly, right then and there, in front of America and Mr. Leno.

Now THAT would have been a presidential moment, and a change.

One wonders whether Mr. Obama understands not only the value and import but the true vulnerability of the minority group he so glibly referenced in a joke. Imagine the outrage if a different occupant of the White House had identified himself with a minority group to which he or she did not belong.

Oh, that's right. That's different.

Peace through dissent.

©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Are We Yet Broken?

Americans who care about such things will recall what First Lady Michelle Obama said during her husband's presidential campaign:

[B]efore we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls - our souls are broken in this nation.

Ms. Obama made this very same announcement in my hometown. I stood less than 25 feet from her when she told a gathering of 100 people that "our souls are broken."

I just want to know three things, really. First, is Barack Obama's soul broken? If so, how? If not, then doesn't it follow that Michelle Obama was profoundly wrong? And is her soul broken?

Second, Ms. Obama proclaimed that BEFORE America works on its problems, "we have to fix our souls." Amazingly, her husband has been touted from sea to shining sea as the man who is getting things done; he's the man of action instantly making huge changes to our fallen land. Has he forgotten that the healing of souls needs to come first? That, at least, is what his wife said.

Third, I want to hear from the First Lady The World Has Been Waiting For exactly when she thinks our souls will no longer be broken. When, pray tell, will we be whole? And when will she grant us the absolution we so desperately seek?

Please, First Lady! Just a copper for a pauper!


Peace through dissent.

©2o09/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Do You Have A Problem With That?

AIG is under fire for distributing some of its cash "borrowed" from the US treasury in huge bonuses to its chief executives. Do you have a problem with that? I don't.

Of course, the neo-Marxists among us do have a problem; they are driven by implacable envy. Allow me to take a moment to show you how wrong they are for taking such umbrage with AIG's private decision to give bonuses. But first, this necessary admission: In strictly American terms, I am not a wealthy man, so I am not protecting any personal fortune in what follows.

1. AIG has been described over the past few days as being "kept afloat by the American taxpayer." The insinuation, of course, is that AIG should be more circumspect in its behavior: it should treat the American taxpayers' money with respect, distributing it equitably.
   
2. Since AIG is billions of dollars in the red, the distribution of bonuses and the bailout of AIG have both been described as "rewarding failure" or "rewarding incompetence."
3. Taking points 1 and 2 together, it is easy to note what is so readily and intentionally overlooked: Companies like AIG, GM, Chrysler, Ford, and all the truly big wealth producers (AIG does not actually fit this set directly), have been keeping the American government afloat for decades. The amount of tax revenue generated by these companies is astounding: the coffers of the US Treasury have been filled by these corporate giants, making America's governing successes possible. Moreover, these companies, who are now profoundly in the red, have been underwriting and rewarding incompetence and failure every time their corporations and employees pay their taxes: The American government -- even under Clinton -- is ALWAYS in the red; it is always living larger than life and beyond its means. The current administration is emblematic of corporate excess: the Obama administration is grotesque in its wastefulness and incompetence.
   
4. What is clear is nearly Reagan-esque in import: The government bailouts are an admission that tax cuts work. What do I mean? Each time the government dispenses money to a struggling industry or corporation, it is tacitly admitting that it does not need that money, at least at the moment. Hence, if it does not need that money, it need not have collected it. Giving corporations sweeping tax cuts would have the exact same effect on things as a loan, except for one thing: granting tax cuts precludes the government from attaching controls on business, whereas loans permit such attachments. In a very real sense then, tax cuts are actually a more effective stimulus than a loan since government loans necessarily require government spending -- bloat -- to "micromanage" the bailouts.
   
5. The Obama administration seems unable to understand the simple processes of taxation: If AIG takes $150,000,000 and disburses it to its top-tier executives as bonuses (for argument's sake let's say AIG's top ten workers), those bonuses will be taxed at a high rate. Though I am no accountant, it is clear that 10 people making $15,000,000 each will each pay -- at least -- $6 million in taxes. Hence, about $60,000,000 of the $150,000,000 will be immediately returned to the Treasury. However, if AIG DID NOT distribute this money and instead chose to purchase $150,000,000 in Swiss stationery and letterhead, we'd hear nothing about such a transaction -- even though NONE of that money would be recovered in tax revenue. Finally, if AIG chose to distribute $150,000,000 to all its lowest-paid workers, the part-timers and low-tiered full-timers in the lowliest service departments, it is likely that, since these folks pay NO income tax, that NONE of the $150,000,000 would be recovered by the Treasury.
6. Hence, it is clear that the hue and cry coming from the whiny Obama administration and Congress over the AIG bonuses is born of envy -- these folks themselves generate no wealth nor do they know how -- and incompetence. Plus, these are the folks who distribute annual raises to -- and provide the best health and retirement plans for -- themselves; AND they redirect federal funds to groups that support their "just causes."
7. And there is one more aspect of envy that is overlooked: the administration rebukes the excesses of those in the private sector largely to keep the envious eye away from themselves: Barack Obama is fabulously rich -- and will be when he leaves office (think of the speaking fees!) -- and yet he does not want his constituents to envy him: he's doing this work for them, after all. He's "giving back." Hence, he's entitled to his fortunes because they were "earned" nobly -- he became rich doing nice things, like his civic duty. Therefore, his wealth is purer, and hence is safe from censure. But don't envy him: Look at those guys over there. They make too much!

Peace through dissent.

©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

What Is Truth, Mr. Obama?

Ahh, the Truth. Remember the good old days, you know, the days of the Obama campaign when a new dawn of truth was imminent? Remember the rosy days when Mr. Obama's people would tell us that he understood that "words mean something"?

Maybe you don't. I sure don't. But I sure remember John McCain being lambasted -- by the media, by bloggers, and by Barack Obama -- for saying last year that the "fundamentals of the economy are sound...the workers of America are the fundamentals of the economy."

Mr. McCain was right, the fundamentals were sound. People were buying and selling; people were exchanging labor for goods; people were trading fairly and honorably nearly everywhere in America. Workers were doing what they do, as were buyers.

Of course, falling stocks, red ink, bankruptcies, foreclosures, bailouts: all these suggested, at least to the Omniscient Obama Campaign, that Mr. McCain was clearly doddering, slipping into sputtering senescence.

And then magic happened. Thus Sprach Obama last week:

If we are keeping focused on all the fundamentally sound aspects of our economy ... then we're going to get through this.

And what did his chief economic advisor say on "Meet the Press"?

Of course, the fundamentals (of the U.S.) economy are sound in the sense that the American workers are sound, we have a good capital stock, we have good technology.

Definitely a confederacy of dunces. These are the voices of doom and gloom: they adopted that strategy in the campaign season -- they NEEDED the economy to tank in order to control the narrative and the electorate's mood -- and now they need the economy to thrive so they can control the narrative and the electorate's mood. The most depressing voice in the American economy -- Obama's -- is utterly new, pressed into action to invigorate things.

And his new voice is John McCain's.


Peace through dissent.

©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Monstrous Conceptions

I recently read about a scientist who discovered a new method of creating human babies in a laboratory. He begins simply by putting a baby in a test tube and adding a few enzymes. A few days later, he pulls the baby out into the open air. Presto! A baby.

This new process is a huge advance. Up until now, scientists could only create babies in the lab by taking fully grown adults and jamming them into test tubes. It was a very arduous process, especially for those adults unfortunate enough to find themselves in such a tight spot.

Forgive the absurdity.

If human life does not begin at conception, then it seems reasonable to assume that scientists could begin life in the lab at some later stage in human development. But scientists can do no such thing. Hence, it is safe to conclude that human life begins at the instant of conception.

Barack Obama, the loftiest intellect to ever lead the free world, promised that he would "restore science to its rightful place." He also pronounced that his administration would be based on "facts." Hence, he will repeal Bush Administration restrictions on the use of human embryos for research. To Mr. Obama, killing is the first step toward a healthy worldview.

How wonderful! How lofty! How noble! How progressive!

The incredibly attenuated, truncated, amputated view of the world represented by Mr. Obama is utterly monstrous. The most current advances in the medical sciences -- advances that have made international news for months and months -- prove that embryonic stem cell research is nearly antiquated. Besides, such research is purely speculative: there is nothing certain about any of the alleged gains gleaned from the harvesting of human life. Sadly, Mr. Obama is remarkably consistent on investing in phantoms: He's pouring billions of dollars into technologies and energy sources that do not yet even exist; and he's pouring monies -- during times of alleged desperation -- into biological speculations that reduce the beneficiaries of the apparent benefits of zygotic mutilation to cannibalistic parasites. We create and kill other humans solely for our benefit ... and profit.

Clearly, Mr. Obama DOES believe in building a society and economy from the bottom upward, using, and abusing, the poorest and most vulnerable to boost those of us who have the privilege of maturity on our side.

Bottom (bloody) line: This is all about $$$. That's it. $$$ distributed among allies. By Dr. Barackenstein.

And you thought Barack Obama was about a better world.

(Please take one moment to reflect on the monsters loosed upon the world by science -- "restored to its rightful place." Imagine a world where no one but embryos ever dies. It isn't hard to do.)

Peace through dissent.

(The Wall Street Journal published this excellent challenge to Obama's bold claim that he has removed politics from science.)

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