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Saturday, July 11, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
Apologist in Chief
By John Steele Gordon
As far as I know, there is no word in English for the opposite of jingoist. But if there were, its entry in the dictionary would belong next to Barack Obama’s photograph. It seems he can’t set foot on foreign soil without apologizing for this country’s past sins and promising that it will sin no more under his leadership. In doing so, of course, he both disses his own country and praises himself by implication.
He apologized to the Arab Middle East in Cairo. He apologized for American carbon dioxide yesterday at the G-8 summit, managing to imply that it is somehow even more damaging to the environment than other people’s greenhouse gases. He has even apologized to the French for American arrogance and dismissiveness. That’s like some weekend duffer apologizing to Tiger Woods for occasionally playing golf.
If Obama has ever had a good word to say about America or any of this country’s myriad accomplishments (like, oh, leading the liberation France in 1944) and uncountable contributions to the betterment of humankind, I must have missed it.
Does he hate the country he leads? No, of course not. But Obama, like so many on the Left, is predisposed to see his country’s faults rather than its virtues, its failures rather than its triumphs. In this he reminds me of some parents. They love their children, they just expect perfection from them. Therefore praise is never called for and criticism is constant. Their children, unable to meet their parents’ unmeetable standards, have anxiety-ridden, unhappy childhoods. And later the parents — their children grown up and gone — wonder why the kids never come to see them.
I wonder whether this is an element in Obama’s falling popularity. America is not a jingoistic country. But it is a great and a good one and its people know it. Someone should tell the President.
As far as I know, there is no word in English for the opposite of jingoist. But if there were, its entry in the dictionary would belong next to Barack Obama’s photograph. It seems he can’t set foot on foreign soil without apologizing for this country’s past sins and promising that it will sin no more under his leadership. In doing so, of course, he both disses his own country and praises himself by implication.
He apologized to the Arab Middle East in Cairo. He apologized for American carbon dioxide yesterday at the G-8 summit, managing to imply that it is somehow even more damaging to the environment than other people’s greenhouse gases. He has even apologized to the French for American arrogance and dismissiveness. That’s like some weekend duffer apologizing to Tiger Woods for occasionally playing golf.
If Obama has ever had a good word to say about America or any of this country’s myriad accomplishments (like, oh, leading the liberation France in 1944) and uncountable contributions to the betterment of humankind, I must have missed it.
Does he hate the country he leads? No, of course not. But Obama, like so many on the Left, is predisposed to see his country’s faults rather than its virtues, its failures rather than its triumphs. In this he reminds me of some parents. They love their children, they just expect perfection from them. Therefore praise is never called for and criticism is constant. Their children, unable to meet their parents’ unmeetable standards, have anxiety-ridden, unhappy childhoods. And later the parents — their children grown up and gone — wonder why the kids never come to see them.
I wonder whether this is an element in Obama’s falling popularity. America is not a jingoistic country. But it is a great and a good one and its people know it. Someone should tell the President.
Socialism 100
This just in via email:
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked, and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan." All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade, so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.
As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. To their great surprise, they all failed, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked, and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan." All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade, so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.
As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. To their great surprise, they all failed, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg & Eugenics
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she was under the impression that legalizing abortion with the 1973 Roe. v. Wade case would eliminate undesirable members of the populace, or as she put it "Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of."
Continue reading here.
If you're not familiar with the term "Eugenics," start here (sit down first).
Continue reading here.
If you're not familiar with the term "Eugenics," start here (sit down first).
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Best Pickup Line Ever: "Want to go Geocaching?"
Seen on Reddit:
So I'm in the hallway of my apartment locking the door when the freaking hot girl from down the hall walks past and asks me what I'm up to. I tell her "not much, just getting ready for a Sunday afternoon drive to do some geocaching". Then she gets interested and tells me that she has heard of geocaching before and always wanted to try it out. A few more exchanges about the details and she still sounds interested. Out of nowhere (subconscious part of the brain I guess) I ask her if she wants to tag along, telling her that it shouldn't take more than 45mins-1hr. At this point I'm trying to comprehend what just came out of my mouth but I heard her say "sure, let me go get my sunglasses". Somehow I was able to calmly wait in the hall for the 30 seconds it took her to come back; sort of felt surreal at the time. We got downstairs and hopped in the car. Fortunately she tended to run the conversation so I didn't have to worry about coming up with things to say. After the 15 minute drive to the approximate location of the cache I handed her the GPS and told her that she was in charge. Definitely a premeditated decision because I knew that she would probably need instruction on how to read the GPS. It provided a great opportunity for me to talk/instruct on something that I knew. After 10 minutes of walking we got within a couple of yards of the cache and began searching for it. I found it under a chunk of tree bark and called her over before fully unveiling it. I signed the logbook and re-hid the box. We trekked back to the car and began to drive back. (should have done a tic search, damn) Conversation on the way back was a little bit less rigid and more relaxed. We pulled up to the apartment complex about 50 minutes after leaving. Then we walked up stairs and told I her that if she wanted to, I would probably be going out again next weekend, or that she could go running with me in the evenings if she liked running. She bit off on it, we're going running together tonight!
So I'm in the hallway of my apartment locking the door when the freaking hot girl from down the hall walks past and asks me what I'm up to. I tell her "not much, just getting ready for a Sunday afternoon drive to do some geocaching". Then she gets interested and tells me that she has heard of geocaching before and always wanted to try it out. A few more exchanges about the details and she still sounds interested. Out of nowhere (subconscious part of the brain I guess) I ask her if she wants to tag along, telling her that it shouldn't take more than 45mins-1hr. At this point I'm trying to comprehend what just came out of my mouth but I heard her say "sure, let me go get my sunglasses". Somehow I was able to calmly wait in the hall for the 30 seconds it took her to come back; sort of felt surreal at the time. We got downstairs and hopped in the car. Fortunately she tended to run the conversation so I didn't have to worry about coming up with things to say. After the 15 minute drive to the approximate location of the cache I handed her the GPS and told her that she was in charge. Definitely a premeditated decision because I knew that she would probably need instruction on how to read the GPS. It provided a great opportunity for me to talk/instruct on something that I knew. After 10 minutes of walking we got within a couple of yards of the cache and began searching for it. I found it under a chunk of tree bark and called her over before fully unveiling it. I signed the logbook and re-hid the box. We trekked back to the car and began to drive back. (should have done a tic search, damn) Conversation on the way back was a little bit less rigid and more relaxed. We pulled up to the apartment complex about 50 minutes after leaving. Then we walked up stairs and told I her that if she wanted to, I would probably be going out again next weekend, or that she could go running with me in the evenings if she liked running. She bit off on it, we're going running together tonight!
Monday, July 06, 2009
Special Commentary from United States Senator Jim DeMint
A few months ago, I was on CNN talking about the future of the Republican Party. As I always do, I predicted that we could certainly regain our national majority, if we first rally around our great, unifying principle of freedom. The anchor cut me off: “What the h--- does that mean? … Freedom?”
Anyone wondering why America is losing its freedom can find an answer in that question. After all, how can we preserve and defend freedom if we don’t even know what it is? To help remind Americans of our shared heritage of freedom and to rally them to reclaim that heritage for ourselves and our children, I wrote a book, out this week, called Saving Freedom: We Can Stop America’s Slide Toward Socialism.
Freedom is not a gift from government, but a right given to us by God. We believe that every human being is endowed with “certain unalienable Rights,” including “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” In 1787, our Founding Fathers met in Philadelphia to forge a new system of government, designed to “form a more perfect union” and guarantee Americans, in the words of Ronald Reagan, “the maximum of personal liberty consistent with order.”
Paramount among the reasons this system succeeded in America was our political and religious culture that accepted the inextricable connection between personal freedom and personal responsibility. It was understood that, for every question in life not answered by government, individuals, families, and neighborhoods must work out answers for themselves. The Founders knew that the natural order of things was for government to expand at the expense of personal liberty, so their Constitution was based on an implicit bargain – the less government does for you, the less government can do to you.
Today, our once-limited federal government has betrayed those founding principles. It tries to be all things to all people, yet despite its good intentions, government action usually does more harm than good. Look around: every system Washington touches – health care, education, energy, infrastructure, mortgage lending – quickly begins to break down. In some recent cases, including the automobile bankruptcies and the Wall Street bailouts, even the rule of law itself has been subordinated to the good intentions of politicians and bureaucrats. And yet government’s solution to the problems it causes is always … more government. To solve problems created by government’s role in our schools or health care, Congress now proposes a complete federal takeover of these systems!
What Washington refuses to understand is that government systems will always fail because they are not free. Private schools perform better than public schools. Private health insurance provides better care than government programs, and controls its own costs. And on and on. Without the competitive pressures and transparency of a free market, government agencies have no motivation to improve their services. After 10 years in Washington, I have concluded that both parties are slow to recognize this one simple fact: freedom works, and government doesn’t.
That’s why I wrote Saving Freedom. Washington simply will not change on its own. To change our politics, we first have to change our culture. We need to remember that freedom demands responsibility. We need to reject politicians who promise us something for nothing, and instead take back both our freedoms and the responsibilities that go with them. We must not only end our growing dependence on government; we must become independent in our own right.
Given the space and choices to make our own decisions, whether in education, health care, civil society, or in business – the American people will thrive, as they always have. But the political class in Washington will not easily return the power it has taken from us – we must take it back, in two ways.
First, we must remake America’s culture of responsibility: in our family life, in our communities, and in our businesses. We must prepare our nation for its rebirth of freedom, so that when government finally does begin to change, our culture and economy can hit the ground running.
And second, this cultural renewal must assert itself in the political arena. Elected politicians are only as unresponsive as their constituents allow. They know that every letter and email and phone call represents hundreds more just like them. They know that Big Government’s worst enemy is an informed citizenry, ready at the next election to punish anyone who infringes on our God-given and constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms. Get involved, and I promise – we will see results.
Freedom can be saved, but it can’t free itself. Like the patriots of Bunker Hill and Philadelphia, of Gettysburg and Normandy, our generation must now take up that banner for ourselves. Saving Freedom is never easy, but it’s always worth it. Please read Saving Freedom and join the fight!
Anyone wondering why America is losing its freedom can find an answer in that question. After all, how can we preserve and defend freedom if we don’t even know what it is? To help remind Americans of our shared heritage of freedom and to rally them to reclaim that heritage for ourselves and our children, I wrote a book, out this week, called Saving Freedom: We Can Stop America’s Slide Toward Socialism.
Freedom is not a gift from government, but a right given to us by God. We believe that every human being is endowed with “certain unalienable Rights,” including “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” In 1787, our Founding Fathers met in Philadelphia to forge a new system of government, designed to “form a more perfect union” and guarantee Americans, in the words of Ronald Reagan, “the maximum of personal liberty consistent with order.”
Paramount among the reasons this system succeeded in America was our political and religious culture that accepted the inextricable connection between personal freedom and personal responsibility. It was understood that, for every question in life not answered by government, individuals, families, and neighborhoods must work out answers for themselves. The Founders knew that the natural order of things was for government to expand at the expense of personal liberty, so their Constitution was based on an implicit bargain – the less government does for you, the less government can do to you.
Today, our once-limited federal government has betrayed those founding principles. It tries to be all things to all people, yet despite its good intentions, government action usually does more harm than good. Look around: every system Washington touches – health care, education, energy, infrastructure, mortgage lending – quickly begins to break down. In some recent cases, including the automobile bankruptcies and the Wall Street bailouts, even the rule of law itself has been subordinated to the good intentions of politicians and bureaucrats. And yet government’s solution to the problems it causes is always … more government. To solve problems created by government’s role in our schools or health care, Congress now proposes a complete federal takeover of these systems!
What Washington refuses to understand is that government systems will always fail because they are not free. Private schools perform better than public schools. Private health insurance provides better care than government programs, and controls its own costs. And on and on. Without the competitive pressures and transparency of a free market, government agencies have no motivation to improve their services. After 10 years in Washington, I have concluded that both parties are slow to recognize this one simple fact: freedom works, and government doesn’t.
That’s why I wrote Saving Freedom. Washington simply will not change on its own. To change our politics, we first have to change our culture. We need to remember that freedom demands responsibility. We need to reject politicians who promise us something for nothing, and instead take back both our freedoms and the responsibilities that go with them. We must not only end our growing dependence on government; we must become independent in our own right.
Given the space and choices to make our own decisions, whether in education, health care, civil society, or in business – the American people will thrive, as they always have. But the political class in Washington will not easily return the power it has taken from us – we must take it back, in two ways.
First, we must remake America’s culture of responsibility: in our family life, in our communities, and in our businesses. We must prepare our nation for its rebirth of freedom, so that when government finally does begin to change, our culture and economy can hit the ground running.
And second, this cultural renewal must assert itself in the political arena. Elected politicians are only as unresponsive as their constituents allow. They know that every letter and email and phone call represents hundreds more just like them. They know that Big Government’s worst enemy is an informed citizenry, ready at the next election to punish anyone who infringes on our God-given and constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms. Get involved, and I promise – we will see results.
Freedom can be saved, but it can’t free itself. Like the patriots of Bunker Hill and Philadelphia, of Gettysburg and Normandy, our generation must now take up that banner for ourselves. Saving Freedom is never easy, but it’s always worth it. Please read Saving Freedom and join the fight!
Friday, July 03, 2009
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Microsoft Can't Innovate to Save Their Lives
From Wired:
Kayak, the popular multi-airline airfare search engine, thinks Microsoft Bing’s new travel search engine looks so much like its own that it’s confusing Kayak users. The travel search company sent Microsoft a legal letter last week telling them to cut it out.
Continue reading here.
Monday, June 22, 2009
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