Great Job Brownie!

A second earthquake hit in the Western hemisphere this week. Scott Brown defeated Martha Coakley in the special election held to fill Ted Kennedy’s old seat in Massachusetts, denying the Democrats a filibuster proof Senate and throwing the drive for Obama’s centerpiece project –health care reform—into disarray. Obama apparently remains in denial and has simply asserted that he has lost touch with the American people because he focused too much on policymaking and not enough on communicating directly with the American people. Actually, it is the policies. He communicated directly to the American people on health care reform, and the more he spoke the less they liked it. The Democrats are also blaming Coakley for running a poor campaign. Again, they are misreading the smoke signals. This race had nothing to do with Coakley. It had a lot to do with halting the biggest expansion of government in a couple of generations and importation Chicago style politics to Washington. After New Jersey, Virginian, the failed attempt to get the Olympics to Chicago and the debacle in Copenhagen, and now the loss of Kennedy’s old seat, if O doesn’t take a good hard look in the mirror, he’ll be in real trouble in November. The Democrats have explanations and rationalizations—the town hall tea parties are a bunch of kooks, a bad campaign by Coakley, not enough communication by Obama. But these excuses hide a harder truth. The American people aren’t buying what you’re selling. This massive attempt to turn us into a European semi-socialist state is running into stiff headwinds. It’s not where we want to go.

Early last year, I wrote that I was strangely nostalgic for the Clinton years. That’s because Clinton really did listen. When he lost the midterms in ’94, he adjusted course and became a better president for it. In contrast, Obama thus far seems tone deaf.

A successful leader must listen to his constituents. Obama’s voters gave him the office and gave him an agenda—job growth and ending the war in Iraq. And Obama has said, “I don’t care what your agenda is, America. I have mine.”

Until he adjusts his priorities to the country’s, his administration will continue to be punished at the polls.

Real Hope and Real Audacity

Although young people turned out in droves to support Barack Obama last fall, there is one that didn’t jump on the bandwagon. She often is in the position of defending her conservative views in the face of both other students and teachers committed to bending her anti-collectivist views. Like Ann, she is appalled by the taxing and spending of the current administration and the tendency of team Obama to provide terrorists with the same protections as shoplifters. While her brother is going through his collegiate anarchy phase (which we hope will end soon), my daughter Hope has been steadfast in her beliefs that people that work hard should not have to fork half of it over to the government, that our tax dollars shouldn’t pay for abortions, and that she shouldn’t be responsible for the enormous debt our government is now incurring. Unlike most kids her age, she didn’t swoon when Obama spoke last fall. We call her “little Ann Coulter” and with her quick wit and blond hair, and her favorite line about the Obama administration is, “You know it’s bad when a 16 year old high school kid actually cares.” She understands it at a gut level, “It wouldn’t be fair if I studied really hard for a test and got a 100 when the kid next to me goofed off and got a 50 if the teacher gave 20 points of mine to the other kid so he could pass.” That is it in a nutshell. She gets it. With kids like her, there is hope for us.
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I’m glad 2009 is in the books. As the year opened, we were reeling from the financial meltdown of 2008 and we elected the most left leaning president in my lifetime, armed with a bulletproof Congress. It was so bad, that Chief Justice John Roberts couldn’t even get the oath of office administered correctly. That was probably the Freudian slip of the century.

I was probably one of a handful of conservatives that actually read The Audacity of Hope to see how this Obama chap really thinks about the world. After reading his election manifesto, I can only conclude that while teaching in Hyde Park, he must have actively avoided all contact with those folks in the economics department (who, by the way, earned their Nobel Prizes through demonstrated achievement).

In keeping with the theme of Audacity, here is my 2009 list of “I SIMPLY CAN’T BELIEVE THEY SAID [OR DID] THIS WITH A COMPLETELY STRAIGHT FACE.” I think you’ll agree that 2009 was a year of real audacity for both Democrats and Republicans. Here is my top 10 list of jaw-dropping comments [or actions] from our public officials this year. I have attempted to be bipartisan, but since the Dems are the party in power, they inevitably produced more opportunities.

1. “I don’t know---not having been there and not seeing all the facts… the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.” Barack Obama describing the arrest of Henry Louis Gates.

Hard to believe this is a quote from a Harvard trained lawyer, and even more astonishing when a few months later, he urges us “not to jump to conclusions” after Major Hasan commits mass murder at Fort Hood. Along with his Nobel, Obama may be in line for an Olympic medal in conclusion jumping with this one.

2. “The system worked.” Janet Napolitano after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to bring down a Northwest Airlines plane on Christmas Day.

This is technically true only if you consider alert, brave passengers to be part of the “system.”

3. Tom DeLay’s Dancing With the Stars Exhibition [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUqL3_uCD4Q]

Have you no dignity? This is what was helping to govern our country?

4. “This is why I have pledged that I will not sign a health insurance reform that adds even one dime to our deficit over the next decade. And I mean it. We have estimated that two-thirds of the cost of reform to bring health care security to every American can be paid for by reallocating money that is simply wasted in federal health care programs.” Barack Obama

Really? I stopped believing in Santa Claus over 40 years ago. Where do you even start with this whopper? He assumes that money is not fungible. The attack on waste and fraud has been attempted by Jimmy Carter, Al Gore and several others to no avail. Please don’t insult us. This is a big, expensive plan that will EXPLODE the deficit and we know it. But perhaps the most audacious part of this whole process was bribing recalcitrant members of their OWN PARTY with our money. This is taking the Chicago Way to a whole new level.

5. “The America I know and love is not one which my parents or my baby with Downs Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of ‘level of productivity in society’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.” Sarah Palin

Yes, Sarah, it would be evil. And you are correct to be wary that this is where the current proposal might eventually lead us. But this bill does not create ‘death panels’ and you are not helping the cause by hyperbolizing. Health care reform as written has plenty of evils. You don’t need to make anything up.

6. When asked about the bowling alley in the White House, Obama joked to Jay Leno that his score of 129 “was like the Special Olympics or something.”

After that crack, the left really has nothing to say about Republicans being mean-spirited or insensitive.

7. South Carolina governor Mark Sanford claiming to be hiking on the Appalachian Trial while having a tryst in Argentina and Tiger Woods claiming his wife tried to save him by bashing the window out of his SUV with a golf club.

C’mon guys. Haven’t you learned anything about career management after Bill Clinton and Eliot Spitzer?

8. Nomination of Van Jones as Green Jobs Czar.

Need anything be said about this one?

9. Obama’s decision to cave in to the Russians by deciding not to base missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic.

I thought Barack wanted to improve our image around the world. I’m not sure how throwing existing loyal friends under the bus accomplishes that.

10. And finally, the most audacious of them all--- Eric Holder’s decision to try KSM in New York in a civilian trial.

After years of excoriating the Bush Administration for helping Al Qaeda recruit because of its harsh treatment of their operatives, Holder decides that giving one of their top guys, and the guy that murdered 3,000 of our citizens a platform and a microphone just yards away from the site of his dastardly deed, along with a full complement of lawyers and full Constitutional protection. Perhaps he could go a step further and give him his own website and radio station. KSM’s reaction? He was overjoyed at the prospect of being able to explain himself. I guess this is the kind of decisionmaking you can expect from someone that blasted us as a “nation of cowards.” Someone make him watch the film “Glory”—please.

So, there you have it --- my 2009 list of Audaciousness. I can’t wait to see what they try to foist on us in 2010.

Rx for Capitalism

There were two significant ironies this week. The first was that I finished the last chapter of the biography of Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne C. Heller on the very same weekend that the Democrats stitched together the 60 votes in the Senate that were needed to pass President Obama’s Health Care Bill. Ayn Rand was the stalwart defender of capitalism, liberty and individualism in the 20th century and along with William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman ranks among the intellectual giants that fought against the evils of collectivism.
Rand was a Russian Jewish immigrant that saw firsthand the corruption of collectivism in Soviet Russia as she witnessed the destruction of her father’s livelihood at the hands of the Russians when they drove her father’s drugstore out of business twice. Today her seminal works, Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and Anthem sell very well. Rand had her flaws and Heller fairly raises them in her book. She was given to black and white thinking. She could be irascible and cut off friends and relatives that rubbed her the wrong way. She did not stay faithful to her spouse. Still, her value as a backbone of capitalist thinking cannot be underestimated. And this biography comes at a time when capitalism is under the most severe full frontal assault since the 1930’s. The Health Care Bill threatens almost 20% of our economy with a government takeover. The EPA with its December 7 pronouncement to regulate carbon emissions and international bureaucrats in Copenhagen are threatening our economy with impossible burdens in the name of preventing climate change. Capitalists are being punished through higher taxes and a verbal assaults from the Obama Administration with bankers being labeled as “fat cats” and insurance companies accused using “smoke and mirrors” to stop reform. It is almost as if an Ayn Rand novel is unfolding in real time before our very eyes, with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi starring as the bad guys.
The second irony is that it was Nebraska’s Senator Ben Nelson that caved in to give the Democrats a filibuster proof majority. This is Nebraska, the epicenter of self reliance, the same state that gave us Willa Cather, author of Oh Pioneers! This is the land that epitomizes rugged individualism. If Nebraska is responsible for handing over such a large chunk of our economy to the feds, is there any hope left?
Yes, Ayn Rand could be insufferable and doctrinaire at times, but we sorely need someone of her fortitude and intellectual reach today to defend capitalism and freedom.

Obama a Man of Science or the New Religion?

It’s just not that long ago that the Left was ranting over conservative Republicans supposed assault on science. The claim was that the Republican party had largely been taken over by fundamentalists and creationists. Some school districts were required to teach Darwinism side by side with creationist theory. Other groups attempted to get the National Parks to carry creationist literature in their bookstores. The Left fanned fears that Intelligent Design proponents were undermining hard science and over the last few years, several dust-ups occurred in which we were re-fighting the Scopes Trial.

While I am a conservative Catholic, I am a strong believer in science, the scientific method, hard analysis, and hypothesis testing to explain phenomenon in the natural world. Conservatives have gone off the rails attempting to supplant scientific knowledge with a fundamental biblical explanation of the natural world and a literal interpretation of the Bible. These people undermine our credibility as conservatives and they muddle the notions of traditional conservative values embodied in scripture with explanations and models for how the natural world was created and evolved.

True science involves continuous hypothesis testing and challenge to conventional wisdom. It involves constant reassessment and reinterpretation of data as new data becomes available and as old data is reexamined. All good scientists challenge conventional wisdom. Truly great scientists are not afraid of the challenge of others—indeed, an intellectually pure scientist is passionate about finding one thing—the truth and great scientists sometimes “eat their own children” and revise their own view of the world as new knowledge is gained.

The Left is correct to be concerned about fundamentalism thinking attempting to fence in science. They occupy two different realms (not necessarily incompatible with one another in my view) and they should stay that way.

But now the Left has adopted a religion of its own that it has deemed beyond the challenge of science and it is just as pernicious as the Creationists—Global Warming.

The science of Global Warming is difficult and complex. It involves interpreting data of thousands of years of history in which even without man’s influence, global temperature changes were subject to wide fluctuations. It involves teasing apart natural and potentially man made environmental changes. The questions are large and complicated. Is the globe getting warmer? Is this a normal cycle? Is it bad for everyone or just for some? Even so, can we do anything about it that will have real impact?

Al Gore, the great messiah of this religion, famously proclaimed that “the debate is over” in promoting his movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” That should have been the tipoff—for in science, the debate is never truly over.

And now the great arbiters of Global Warming, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), have been caught suppressing the work of scientists that present a challenge to the religion of the Left, and further were caught enhancing the effect of temperature change. This is important because the IPCC is highly influential and is the group of scientists that policymakers have been relying on to make their case that governments should exert greater control over CO2 emissions. The emails system of the IPCC was hacked into and these rather startling emails were exposed. The UK Telegraph called this the “worst scientific scandal of our generation.” This scandal has powerful implications for the discussions of the upcoming Copenhagen summit and the “Cap and Trade” bill under which will be asked to make enormous economic sacrifices for the new religion.

And what is the response from our new administration? Largely silence, which is odd on the eve of the Copenhagen Summit. John (Mr. Population Control) Holdren dismissed it as something that affected a small number of scientists. Barbara Boxer attempted to turn it around and attacked the hackers, calling it “email theftgate”. The mainstream media has mostly delegated it to about page 25.

This is an issue that has profound implications for our country, our economy and the relative power between the private and public sector and relationships between nations. In the end, its resolution will have much more international import than the Iraq War. The Left caterwauled that Bush Administration manipulated evidence over WMD to justify the invasion of Iraq (although there was no direct evidence of this). But here we have a smoking gun that shows that the “scientists” – the high priests of this religion-- have manipulated and suppressed evidence and yet our scientific president is silent.

Mr. President, the debate is not over. With this much at stake and so many open questions, it cannot be. If you truly are a proponent of science, you must express your outrage over this scandal. But I suspect you, like the others on the Left, simply wish to supplant the religion of the fundamentalist right with your own.

Half a Loaf

After over 90 days of agonizing, President Obama finally made his decision on Afghanistan this week. Over 3 months after General McChrystal asked for 40,000 troops to support his strategy to reverse the gains made by the Taliban, President Obama agreed to send ¾ of the requested troop levels. This is the first major decision by Barack Obama for which he will be held accountable, and, coincidentally, was made in about the same amount of time it took to pick the Obama family dog. We’ll see how he does when real events force Obama to make a decision in less than 90 days.
Is this a good decision or not? I have no way of knowing, but I am skeptical. McChrystal is on the ground and in the best position to know whether 40,000 is the right number. It may very well be that the job simply cannot be accomplished with 30,000 and we might as well pack up and go home. Often, the outcomes of these types of decisions are more like step functions. 40,000 may be the minimum needed to be successful.
But leaving that aside for a moment, announcing to the world that you plan we plan to exit in 2011 risks negating much of the benefit of the surge. We are fighting an enemy whose very strength is the ability to ebb and flow, disappear for long periods of time and then re-emerge. They have more tolerance for a long, drawn out affair than we do. If I were a Taliban leader, my message would be, “Akhmed, take a sabbatical for awhile. Go find a little fishing hold in Western Pakistan. We’ll see you in about 14 months and we can shoot a few Americans in the back as they are packing up.” So, by setting a goal of leaving rather than winning, it is more likely that we will have wasted blood and treasure and much of Afghanistan will be back in Taliban hands within 36 months.
I also find it highly ironic that Obama and the Dems fought Bush tooth and nail against the surge in Iraq, declared Iraq lost and we are now employing precisely the same strategy in Afghanistan.
Still, I have to give him some credit. Nearly a year in and Obama has yet to make a decision that leans hard against the left wing faithful. This is as close as he has come so far. With the Democrats almost certain to take a thumping in the midterm elections, Obama will need to get more comfortable with governing from somewhere closer to the middle. This is almost a certain result, even if we have to drag him kicking and screaming.

Condoms and Chocolate Milk

Some random thoughts and observations on the absurdities of living under modern liberalism from past week's news:

The nutrition Nazis at various school districts are banning chocolate milk from our schools, citing its high sugar content. The ACLU has been successful in getting condom distribution programs in many school districts. So our kids cannot buy a carton of chocolate milk for lunch at school but they can get condoms.

I’m not sure why Eric Holder thought that bringing KSM to New York for a civilian trial was such a dandy idea. New Yorkers are concerned that it will highlight the city as a terrorist target. It provides KSM with a pulpit from which to spew his hateful view of the world, and will be a terrific recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. Finally, this is a man whose life mission is to destroy the U.S. Why do we offer him the protections of our civilian legal system? Can Mr. Holder explain why this is the best possible option?

Last week, Obama implored us not to “rush to judgment” about Islamic fundamentalism’s role after Nidal Hasan brutally gunned down our soldier’s at Fort Hood. This is the same person that told us that he didn’t know what the facts were but that the Cambridge police acted stupidly when they arrested Henry Louis Gates. Again, Islamic terrorists get deferential treatment while the folks that are there to protect us are presumed guilty.

Months after General McChrystal asked for 40,000 more troops, we still don’t have an answer from our commander-in-chief on his troop request to prosecute the “necessary war.” In my business, not making a decision is making a decision. Is it me, or is there something inverted about an administration that is more decisive about limiting executive pay than winning a war?

Dick Durbin (D-IL) is tripping over himself trying to get the Gitmo detainees housed in Illinois because it will create jobs. That is about as crazy a rationale for exposing us to an increased security risk as I’ve ever heard.

The New York Times today carried the headline, “GM Shows Sign It Is Recovering Despite New Loss: White House is Pleased”. Doesn't the juxtaposition of those statements and the tone of them together sound weird to you? To my ear, it was eerily imperious. Perhaps the Times sees why the White House is pleased; we are ever closer to the Marxist utopia with the government owning the means of production.

Meanwhile, President Obama was caught on film bowing to Emporor Akihito in Japan. He was similarly seen bowing to the Saudi King last April. I’ve adjusted my expectations. At least he has not apologized for Hiroshima—yet.

The flu season is in full swing and we still don’t have enough H1N1 vaccine to go around. Just imagine the scathing editorials at the Times if this had been the case on George Bush’s watch.

Rocket Men

While it is true that liberty and limited government are values that are deeply ingrained in my being, there are problems that are appropriate for government to solve. Indeed, there are problems that only government can solve. The problem is that they are limited in scope and duration and there are so few models for success. In the current health care debate, for instance, an easy way to puncture the arguments of the left is simply to ask, “What is your model for success?” Amtrack? The US Postal Service? Public Housing? Public Education? The Department of Energy (founded by Jimmy Carter 30 years ago with the goal of getting us off oil)? If you use the terms and phrases “innovative, “creative,” “sense of urgency,” “results,” “dedicated professionals,” or “accountability” in connection with any of these endeavors, your friends will quietly sidle away from you at cocktail parties.

But one such resounding success was NASA’s Apollo project. I have just finished, the book “Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon” by Craig Nelson. It recounts the story of the first moonshot, one of the signature achievements of the United States and, really, of mankind in the 20th century. It represents one of the finest arguments against libertarians like me. The first moonwalk is perhaps the finest accomplishment of any government agency, ever, and will likely never be eclipsed.

The book takes us through the commitment of John F. Kennedy to land a man on the moon and safely return him by the end of the decade. This was a formidable goal, as the U.S. fell behind the Soviets as our Cold War adversaries successfully launched Sputnik and put the first man into space. Eventually, we scrambled to catch up and overcame numerous technological setbacks and the tragic fire of Apollo 1 to put Neil Armstrong on the moon in July of 1969. What struck me about the success of Apollo is that NASA behaved quite differently than most government bureaucracies—people worked with real passion and dedication, there was a real sense of urgency, problems were solved creatively, the entire program was fraught with risks. Yet, in many ways, NASA behaved more like a private, profit seeking enterprise than a lethargic leviathan that we see in most modern government agencies where risk taking and urgent problem solving and creativity give way to inflexible rules and procedures, indifferent staff, and the protection of certain select constituencies.

Take, for example, this quote from Rocket Men:

And that’s why they worked those sixteen hour days and eight day weeks…’those people were the reason that you could get almost anything done. There was never a paucity of ideas. Imagination was rampant, and most of it very good imagination on how to solve problems. And a group of people could get around the table, work together, and in a noncompetitive—it seemed noncompetitive, at least at the time—and the sum of the output of that table was far greater than just the individual parts that were there. It was really an exiting time to be involved. And that’s why Apollo 13 was saved. That’s why Apollo 11 landed at the time it did. It’s really why any of the in-flight emergencies were dealt with successfully, is because the people could get together and figure out how to solve the problem.’


When was the last time you heard those things said in connection with a government project? Sixteen hour days? Imagination? Ideas? Problem solving? The only time you typically see government workers or legislators working sixteen hour days is when they are attempting to jam through a big tax increase.

What made the Apollo program different and what lessons can be drawn from it?

First, there was a clear, measurable and unambiguous goal in mind-land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth. Goals such as ending poverty, advance the national, economic and energy security of the United States (DOE website) and other such goals are too broad, too quixotic, and, therefore, unachievable. Almost by definition, they perpetuate a bloated, aimless bureaucracy. Sometimes, it can be even worse. The Federal Reserve’s dual mission of creating maximum employment and stable prices is inherently conflictual. Apollo had a very discrete mission and it was easy to ascertain whether we had achieved it or not.

Second, the program involved technology and competition with an adversary that had at least some military aspects to it. The Apollo program had a sense of urgency to it because the Soviets were ahead of us in space exploration at the time. The Soviets launched a satellite first and put the first man in space. Our national pride was wounded, and indeed, some saw the Soviet conquest of space as the beginnings of an existential threat. We were powerfully motivated and directed to catch and surpass the Communist regime. In other words, as in the private sector, surpassing a competitor was an important aspect of the mission.

Third, and most importantly, the program did not involve a wealth transfer from one group to another. As a result, the program did not create a large constituency of entitlement holders and a large lobbying force. Sure, there were some direct and indirect financial beneficiaries, but it was not so large as to create an effort to grow an ever enlarging pool.

I highly recommend Rocket Men. It is a reminder of how rare it is that a government endeavor actually achieves what it sets out to accomplish.