In my continuing experiment with low information living, I've developed various impressions and perhaps not surprisingly, see them being born out by the polls.

Obama on Iran, Obama on the budget, Obama on transforming the best medical system in the world into the bureaucratic equivalent of the post office.

Can you imaging my eyes rolling? The snear on my lips? The downward glance and involuntary head shake?

I was never an Obama fan, judging correctly that he was an intellectual and character light-weight, but I was tempted to engage in a kind of forced self-doubt about the outcomes. That flight-of-fancy has long since passed. Events had demonstrated the correctness of my original perception--Obama's admirable self-discipline and focus serve only his personal ambitions.

The self-delusion on Iran is so blatant, so "emperor-has-no-clothes", that media credulity leads me to compare it to fly-saucer cult suicide pacts and millennialist mountain-top anticipation of Christ's date-certain return.

The American people aren't buying it, just as they aren't buying the fiscal plan or the grand strategy of take-a-number medical care.

Ultimately the current state of affairs demonstrates the limits of media influence. You can tell lies all day long, but to have them believed, they have to be plausible.

The irony for Obama and his fans is that to be able to change the world, you must first understand it.

They clearly don't.

The be-medalled one on the right has never seen combat. The lapel-pinned one on the left, saluting like a pro, has never been in the military, but he has been a community organizer and commander-in-chief. He has views on lapel pins like the one he's wearing today at the D-Day celebrations:

Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security. I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest.

The veterans booed him because it is thought that Downing Street encouraged Sarkozy to not invite the Queen so that he could get another photo-op with Obama. The Obama obsession seems evidenced by the Prime Mentalist’s renaming of ‘Omaha beach’ to ‘Obama beach'

Gordon Brown is a dead man walking in British politics and it's possible that today will be the last straw for the cowardly, callow, careerists who have been running my country for the last 12 years, so that they finally defenestrate him.

Reporting on the Government's inadvertant release of confidential civilian nuclear programs, the New York Times hilariously interviews an expert in the field of mishandling Government secrets:

“These screw-ups happen,” said John M. Deutch, a former Director of Central Intelligence and deputy secretary of defense who is now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s going further than I would have gone but doesn’t look like a serious breach.” (emphasis added)

William Broad's piece, however, failed to mention John Deutch's credentials:

The Defense Department secrets that John M. Deutch, the former Pentagon official and director of central intelligence, kept on his unsecured home computer apparently did not fall into the wrong hands, the government said in a review made public today.

Of course to Mr. Deutch, his willful violation of National Security Laws is only a screw-up (that - 'whew' - doesn't go further than the release of civilian nuclear secrets). Lower ranking people in the Defense Department would have been prosecuted; Deutch got one of Bill Clinton's pre-emptive pardens.

Will the NYT next seek Sandy Berger's opinion on protecting secrets?

Click on London-SE1 for a tableau in front of Tower Bridge and St Paul's:

In the last few days the yield on US government debt has risen dramatically. Lenders are reluctant. Today the decline in the value of the dollar accelerates as gold, oil and Sterling surge up. The US has 4-8-12 more years of Harvard Law School economics to endure, whereas the UK government will be replaced within a year by the Conservatives. So while the credit agencies put the UK on credit watch with negative implications but re-affirm the US as triple-A, the markets realize that in the UK there's hope for change whereas in the US there's Hope and Change. Some difference.

I've queried America's credit worthiness for a while, eg "A trillion here, a trillion there..." , but I'm not as polite as the Chinese:

Another global financial crisis triggered by a loss of confidence in the dollar may be inevitable unless the U.S. saves more, said Yu Yongding, a former Chinese central bank adviser.

It’s “very natural” for the world to be concerned about the U.S. government’s spending and planned record fiscal deficit, Yu said in e-mailed comments yesterday relating to a visit to Beijing by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

The Obama administration aims to reduce the fiscal deficit to “roughly” 3 percent of gross domestic product from a projected 12.9 percent this year, Geithner reaffirmed today. The treasury secretary added that China’s investments in U.S. financial assets are very safe, and that the Obama administration is committed to a strong dollar.

It may be helpful if “Geithner can show us some arithmetic,” said Yu. “We need to know how the U.S. government can achieve this objective.”

The deficit is projected to reach $1.75 trillion in the year ending Sept. 30 from last year’s $455 billion shortfall, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Would Obama have been ok with this from Hillary Clinton?

"I would hope that a wise Latina white woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white mixed race male who hasn't lived that life."

Stack that with Sotomayor's perfunctory denial of equality under the law to whites in Ricci v. DeStefano and her tittering affirmation that policy is made in Appeal Courts and her leadership role in La Raza (The Race) and it seems that she's either a racist, a chauvinist or a pc hack or all of the above. Everyone knows that there's no way a conservative could overcome such a record to be appointed to The Supreme Court and no Senator who puts country before politics should approve this awful nomination.

Ironically liberals have their doubts too since no-one knows her view on Roe v. Wade. As a betting man I'm happy to take long odds against this nomination succeeding. Note that The Supreme Court will probably rule on Ricci v. Destefano before Senate hearings are complete. Whatever the ruling, it will include excoriating commentary upon the injustice of Sotomayor's judgement from judges who believe in equality before the law. Just one memorable phrase in that commentary can sink the nomination of this casual racist. Chief Justice Roberts was definitive in 2007:

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race

This per curiam opinion adopted in toto the reasoning of the District Court, without further elaboration or substantive comment, and thereby converted a lengthy, unpublished district court opinion, grappling with significant constitutional and statutory claims of first impression, into the law of this Circuit. It did so, moreover, in an opinion that lacks a clear statement of either the claims raised by the plaintiffs or the issues on appeal. Indeed, the opinion contains no reference whatsoever to the constitutional claims at he core of this case, and a casual reader of the opinion could be excused for wondering whether a learning disability played at least as much a role in this case as the alleged racial discrimination. This perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal.

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of gender is to stop discriminating on the basis of gender

Here's the pitch: English intellectual speaks nearly non-stop for half an hour - 15 minutes on Shakespeare, 15 minutes on stammering, also waves his arms. Lap it up:

I threw in the last clip as an afterthought. In it Miller, a famous atheist, draws from Dudley Moore a model of deep Intelligent Design.

Obama's Press Secretary tweaks the tail of a big bad wolf he thinks has the measure of:

“You're not going to find very many of these newspapers and truth within 25 words of each other,” Gibbs continued.

Gibbs didn't need to set this up. The UK Press now has a vested interest in contrasting the truth of their stories with the truth of his. He will lose.

UPDATE - from The Daily Telegraph's response:

Can you imagine Gibbs making these remarks about The New York Times or The Washington Post, or NBC, ABC or CBS? This would never happen. The British press, especially the Telegraph, has been singled out because they frequently publish articles critical of the Obama administration and are not afraid to take on the status quo in Washington. Increasingly, millions of Americans are turning to online UK news websites for cutting edge reports on American politics and U.S. foreign policy that the mainstream media refuses to cover in the States, especially if it is unflattering to the Obama White House.

Robert Gibbs' completely unwarranted rant against the British press is an absolute disgrace, and the President should disown his views. An unreserved apology by Gibbs is also in order.

For all its talk of "raising America's standing" in the world after the Bush years, the Obama administration is doing a spectacularly bad job of reaching out to its allies. Unfortunately this is the new face of America's public diplomacy, which will only serve to alienate public opinion across the Atlantic. Congratulations Gibbs - you've just made an enemy out of the entire British media, quite an achievement for the man in charge of selling the President's message.

Why doesn't the silliness of this proposal surprise me in the least?

President Obama's energy adviser has suggested all the world's roofs should be painted white as part of efforts to slow global warming.

Professor Steven Chu, the US Energy Secretary, said the unusual proposal would mean homes in hot countries would save energy and money on air conditioning by deflecting the sun's rays.

More pale surfaces could also slow global warming by reflecting heaKjt into space rather than allowing it to be absorbed by dark surfaces where it is trapped by greenhouse gases and increases temperatures.

This is Obama's science guy. Woe is us.

While every school child knows that light colors reflect light energy while dark colors absorb it, color itself is only a single factor, and not every a terribly important one, when it comes to heat absorption. The reality is that "black" asphalt doesn't have significantly different specific heat capacity than say granite, which isn't all that surprising since 90% of asphalt is mineral content--rock.

Are we going to paint all the rock white too?

The specific heat of asphalt is .92 Kj/Kg K (kiloJoules per Kilogram in Kelvins). Different types of asphalt have slightly different values. That's the same as clay, but less than brick (.100) and substantially less than dirt (1.26) and wet soil (1.5). Why is wet soil such a good heat sink? Because water is one of the best heat sinks we have, with a 4.187 specific heat value.

Now about how much of the earth's surface is covered by water?

Yeah.

An administration committed to policy informed by pseudo-science.

By now you've no doubt heard that Prop 8 was upheld 6-1 by the California Supreme Court, which held that the good people of California have a right to amend their constitution by the initiative process.

The Attorney General's argument (representing the GLBT interest) was essentially that a constitutional process could not be exercised if it conflicted with a prior judicial interpretation of the constitution--judicial interpretation trumps the actual constitution!

Its a pretty reasonable decision, meaning that it was politically safe. How was the Supreme Court going to tell Californians that their will was inferior to that of seven judges? Gays and Lesbians came away with a bone though--Prop 8 won't be applied retroactively, which means that all the marriages performed before Prop 8 are legal.

What's interesting though is why.

Prop 8 was drafted very narrowly by sticking to the definition of marriage rather than getting into the rights associated with it.

I've written that the GLBT made a huge mistake trying to ram this down the throats of Americans with a backdoor judicial process. The cudgel has been stripped from their hands and they are effectively back to a political process--one in which they've trashed the house and the parents are on their way back from the airport.

Having radicalized their own constituency to accept nothing less than full equality with heterosexuals, it could be very tough now to sell what was always a winning argument--gays and lesbians deserve companion rights, short of full equality with traditional marriage.

DanHan:

Socialists....emphasise motive over outcome.... the key thing, for Lefties, is to show that you're a caring person.

I've just been talking to a very clever man. He's called Thompson Ayodele, he's from Nigeria and he thinks that overseas aid is making African countries poorer.

Foreign aid, he suggests, isn't useless; it's actively harmful. It discourages enterprise, fosters dependency and bolsters corrupt regimes.

As Thompson puts it: "The British Treasury is empty. So you are going to be borrowing money in order to give it away. And the countries that get it will be poorer as a result". Yup: but at least we'll have shown everyone how nice we are.

From the underappreciated Robert A. Heinlein:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded- here and there, now and then- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.This is known as "bad luck.".

The Wallstreet Journal notes the recent evidence for this truism.

"Rich States, Poor States," published in March, shows that Americans are more sensitive to high taxes than ever before. The tax differential between low-tax and high-tax states is widening, meaning that a relocation from high-tax California or Ohio, to no-income tax Texas or Tennessee, is all the more financially profitable both in terms of lower tax bills and more job opportunities.

Updating some research from Richard Vedder of Ohio University, we found that from 1998 to 2007, more than 1,100 people every day including Sundays and holidays moved from the nine highest income-tax states such as California, New Jersey, New York and Ohio and relocated mostly to the nine tax-haven states with no income tax, including Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and Texas. We also found that over these same years the no-income tax states created 89% more jobs and had 32% faster personal income growth than their high-tax counterparts.

Did the greater prosperity in low-tax states happen by chance? Is it coincidence that the two highest tax-rate states in the nation, California and New York, have the biggest fiscal holes to repair? No. Dozens of academic studies -- old and new -- have found clear and irrefutable statistical evidence that high state and local taxes repel jobs and businesses.

Proving once again that you don't have to be an idiot to be a Democrat (or a Republican in name-only), but it helps.

The silliness has been repeated everywhere for generations, establishing a debilitating pattern. I had a recent visit from a friend from Ontario, Canada, who moved his business to Florida. He reminded me that when the New Democrat Party (orthodox socialist) took power in Ontario one of the humorous ironies was that the UAW, strong supporters of the NDP, discovered they were in fact the "rich" that needed soaking. Actual rich people had long left the province for friendlier tax climes, and between 1990 and 1995, the province sank into deep recession.

The absence of metaphorical milk cows never abates the left's appetite for social butter, so unsurprisingly, the crushing tax burden fell upon the middle class, many of whom are moving to Canada's friendlier tax clime--Alberta. In the end, what's left is a vast ocean of underachievers complaining of dwindling entitlements and paying ever-increasing taxes. Autoworkers became the new Kulaks (Ukrainian farmers who owned more than 24 acres of land "liquidated as a class" by Stalin...)

Fortunately, the bright-side of this sad state of affairs is that there will always be localities only too willing to extend the hand of friendship to talented people with assets...

Any good television show has a main plot and a side show, usually many side shows. Its not unusual that the side show is the more compelling aspect. You know that Dr. House is going to cure the patient by the end of the show, but you don't know if his team will quit, whether romance will develop with the fetching Dr. Cuddy, or whether his Vicodin addiction is going to destroy his life.

Similarly, the torture debate is no debate at all. Democrats have been outsourcing torture for generations, except for what they inflict directly on the American people. Torture works, which is why everyone uses it.

The big yawn notwithstanding, the side shows are mildly amusing. The harridan Speaker of the House is emphatically denying that she slept with the torturers, and no one with half a brain believes her. She's clammed up, while her critics pile on. Will Nancy resign? Will her colleagues throw her under the bus, ripping the covers off her raft of ethics problems? You can almost envision her on the steps of the Capitol, sun setting behind her, her brow-lifted, botox face illuminated by the funeral pyre of her career, vowing to never be poor again!

Oh right...she's provided well for her family at the Congressional trough. OK then, Raybans and a German-accented promise that "I'll be back..."

Second act...

Maureen Dowd get caught red-handed ripping off a blogger. Allahpundit describes the irony best.

In fact, the beauty of MoDo’s snafu is that not only does it show a major player in the media being led around by nutroots talking points, it involves her lifting stuff from a blog that’s actually called “Talking Points.” Glorious.

Out here in low-information voter land, what's getting through is that Pelosi is in trouble. Torture is left to the prejudices of the listener. Nobody with a job reads Dowd anyways...

Just got back from watching the new Star Trek movie. When someone gives you a budget of $200,000,000.00, it had better look like you spent the money, and so visually the movie is absolutely state-of-the-art for special effects (although I take issue with the lame ship phaser sound effects--toy-like comes to mind...).

Unfortunately, I got the impression that the writers were handed a "treatment" that said

1. Planet blows up
2. Spock meets Kirk, they don't get along at first, then become friends
3. Find a way to introduce other iconic characters
4. Find a role for Leonard Nimoy.
5. Three major space battles--work around them.
6. Make all the main characters misfits who triumph.

I suspect a lot of big budget movies get made this way.

Perhaps more interesting though was the Heinleinian political dynamic, where very bright, attractive people find they have no need for useless nonsense like experience, interpersonal skills and the indispensable taskmaster of failure. Success is destiny!

Caffeine for the mind--up now, crash later.

Still; its completely consistent with the risible socialist outlook of all the Star Trek series, where people are highly motivated to employ their intellectual and other gifts on behalf of "humanity" without credit or compensation. Bureacrat teat-suckers, power-obsessed politicians and apathetic entitlement slaves seemed to have gone extinct between the 21st and 23rd centuries.

This is what sex with prostitutes must feel like...

Finally: Al Bundy, President Obama, and I are in agreement - we prefer spicy mustard. The President is man enough to call it Dijon.

Meanwhile the left goes bananas.

Michael Savage is a lucky man. Not only does he have the publicity of being banned from the UK for being a right-wing talk-show host, but the politician who banned him is such an easy target. He should Google "Jacqui Smith expenses porno" to see how my tax pounds are spent.

I seem to have a lot of conversations like this in the past few months...

If Obama's proposal becomes law, the hard-hit companies would include tech bellwethers like Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. Each of those companies realized a benefit of more than $1 billion from lower foreign tax rates in their most recent fiscal years - an advantage that could lost if Obama is able to change the rules.

"It would be like an earthquake for high tech," said Carl Guardino, chief executive of Silicon Valley Leadership Group, an industry trade association. "On a Richter scale of 1 to 10, this would be a 12."

Collectively, HP, IBM, Cisco, Microsoft and Google lowered their tax bills by a combined $7.4 billion in their last fiscal years by taking advantage of lower tax rates outside the United States, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

Its notable that all of those companies, or at least their executives, were extremely supportive of Obama's campaign.

You elected him, now deal with it.

Read my previous post before perusing this one.

Ted Kennedy's ill health has prompted Vanity Fair to consider the matter of his succession, both political and in terms of the Kennedy patriarchy. Several articles have been written, conjecturing about who takes up the mantle, but VF has gone one better, folding the Kennedy personalities into the mix.

The commotion grew louder as more Kennedy-family retainers squeezed into the already overcrowded hospital suite to pay their respects to the ailing senator. “The elephant in the room was the notion of succession,” recalled one. “The question was: Who was in line to take over for Ted, not just, or necessarily, in his Senate seat but as head of the family? There were a lot of very strong characters in that hospital suite, and they are all fiercely competitive. Vicki is seen by all as an interloper, and she is deeply resented by Ted’s children and many of the nephews. Joe, who sees himself as the only serious heir apparent, particularly loathes her control over his uncle and hence the family. Joe inherited his father’s ruthless gene. He is nothing if not aggressive. And anybody who tries to get between him and Ted’s Senate chair is in for a fight.

“In addition, Joe has long resented Caroline, whom he views as haughty. Caroline is far and away the richest member of the clan. After all, she inherited money from her grandfather, her father, her mother, and her brother. Her fortune is a source of unbridled envy and a favorite subject of teasing by Joe and his brothers—a mild annoyance that Caroline sloughs off with an arch half-smile.

“But against the backdrop of Ted’s sudden deterioration, Caroline’s cousins are suddenly looking at her askance, apparently wondering if she is considering declaring herself the heir to Ted’s throne. And Joe is suspicious and envious of the way Ted fawns over Caroline. He doubtless worries about how much influence she has over him. The strangest thing was how Caroline, Joe, and Vicki avoided making eye contact with one another, as though the flying daggers would wound. There is no doubt that what Joe fears most is Ted surviving but being physically and mentally incapacitated. That would let Vicki rule in his name for God knows how long.”

Sounds like an episode of Dallas or Dynasty.

The reality is that with the death of Edward' Kennedy, the family's political dynasty is, if not at an end, at least greatly diminished and unlikely to rise to the kind of prominence its enjoyed over the past 50 years.

The children of the Kennedy brothers have profited from their relationship, but not added to the luster of the Kennedy name. Kathleen Townsend Kennedy is done, Joe Kennedy Jr. is fooling himself about his political prospects, even if he manages to succeed his uncle. We all of course now know that Caroline Kennedy doesn't have the chops for political office, even if she had the will.

“Rose pleaded, saying, ‘Mom, you are above this.’ That was a wake-up call. It jerked Caroline back to reality. What would her mother [Jackie] think of all this tabloid attention she was getting? Her mother wouldn’t have liked it. It was Caroline’s conversation with her children that tipped the balance. If Paterson had called and offered her the job an hour earlier, she would have accepted. But after that conversation she wouldn’t have taken the job if Paterson had come begging on his hands and knees. That’s when Caroline called Paterson and told him she was withdrawing her name.”

Too normal to play in the psychopath league--good for her.

The Kennedy's accepted the unlikely leadership of Ted Kennedy because he was literally the well-spring of their political possibilities. Obviously had John or Robert survived, he would have always lived in their shadow. With Ted gone, he no longer casts the shadow of Camelot, and the Kennedy's effectively become only one of the several minor political dynasties that survive to promulgate themselves in moderately successful fashion in the House, Senate and various State Assemblies (I'm thinking of the Udalls, who are one of the more successful family dynasties...).

The problem the Kennedy's have is two-fold--dwindling fortunes and dwindling anti-social tendancies. The family maniacs have either been imprisoned or offed themselves in high-risk activities, leaving their more sedate siblings unequipped to play in the big game.

Don't be too relieved though--there is always a new maniac running for office somewhere...

Having heard that Elizabeth Edwards was speaking out on her husband's condomless affair with a campaign bimbo, I browsed over to Time Magazine to read what she had to say.

I can't say I was shocked, but I was surprised that the left's lust for power was so extreme, that it would negate what has to be one of the worst betrayals and public humiliations in modern history.

It didn't occur to me that at a fancy hotel in New York, where he sat with a potential donor to his antipoverty work, he would be targeted by a woman who would confirm that the man at the table was John Edwards and then would wait for him outside the hotel hours later when he returned from a dinner, wait with the come-on line "You are so hot" and an idea that she should travel with him and make videos.

Do you see the implication here? It wasn't Edward's fault, it was the bimbo's. After a year of reflection, John is absolved of all responsibility.

Those with any fame or notoriety or power attract people for good reasons and bad. Some want to contribute and some want to take something away for themselves. They flatter and entreat, and it is engaging, even addictive. They look at our lives, which from the outside in particular are pictures of joy and plenty, and they want it for themselves.

I've known a lot of people who had to deal with infidelity, but none as humiliating and public as this. Not a one of them expressed this kind of magnanimity, especially not after a year. Psychologists specializing in infidelity will tell you that the possibility of reestablishing trust only begins to occur eighteen to twenty-four months afterwards--if at all.

The conclusion is obvious--Elizabeth is lying, which isn't particularly surprising in a political family like the Edwards. As I said, I wasn't shocked, but nevertheless surprised at the implications of this lie. The prospect of political power, no matter who distant, has such value for people like the Edwards that it trumps all others. Love and family, which for most people is the bedrock of their lives, are secondary considerations--even in a dying woman.

That scares the hell out of me.

What wouldn't Elizabeth Edwards do to get what she wants for her husband and herself?

I've got a book on my shelf called "On Killing" which analyzes in academic fashion the dynamics of killing. When I first read it, I was surprised at how difficult it is for the average person to kill someone. Militaries all over the world are actively managing psychopaths for maximum advantage because at the end of the day, you need people with this kind of extreme lack of empathy to kill the enemy.

Now imagine those people with political power.

Addendum: I had further thoughts after I published. When I was young, I used to watch hockey in an era where men of average size but superior skills were the stars of the sport. I had friends who had the talent to play professionally, but as we got into our twenties an interesting thing happened--my friends all ended up playing in Europe. The reason? Too small. The NHL had become yet another sport dominated by physical freaks of nature. Men of normal size were simply not competitive.

John and Elizabeth Edwards (among others...) are a fair indication that our political process has also become a freak league. Intelligence and talent are secondary to heaping quantities of dissocial personality disorder.

Normal people don't go into politics, and if they do, how long can they really endure such an environment? Maybe after we elect people, we should send them to psychiatric hospitals...

Pretty soon you're talking about real money:

"One time in the House of Representatives [a colleague] told me a story about a proposition that a teacher put to a boy. He said, ‘Johnny, a cat fell in a well 100 feet deep. Suppose that cat climbed up 1 foot and then fell back 2 feet. How long would it take the cat to get out of the well?'

"Johnny worked assiduously with his slate and slate pencil for quite a while, and then when the teacher came down and said, ‘How are you getting along?' Johnny said, ‘Teacher, if you give me another slate and a couple of slate pencils, I am pretty sure that in the next 30 minutes I can land that cat in hell.'

Looks like we'll be overshooting hell...

Video H/T Volokh