Best (and Worst) of 2011

As 2011 closes, a summing up is a necessary compulsion for all commentators, just as the resolve to lose those 20 pounds. Last year, I limited my list to the best fiction and nonfiction books of the year, but this year, I thought I'd expand my list a bit beyond the literary.

• Best Nonfiction: Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne. There were several strong contenders in this category, including two great biographies of great American competitors: Endgame by Frank Brady, a masterful biography of the enigmatic Bobby Fischer and Wonder Girl by Don Van Patten, the captivating story about Babe Didrikson Zacharias, who may be America's greatest all time athlete. Empire of the Summer Moon, however, tops my list. It is about the Comanche tribe and the American West. It brings to life the difficulties of life on the frontier and the clash between the European settler and the warrior culture of the Comanche. The book dispels the mythical image of the Comanche as the "noble savage" and there are strong parallels between the Comanche and today's Islamic jihadists and the brutality of the conflict on the Plains.
  
  
• Best Fiction: State of Wonder by Ann Patchett. This was the best of a weak field this year. Patchett's book was part mystery, part science fiction, part autobiography. The book centers on the journey of Marina Singh, a scientist that travels to the Amazon jungle to attempt to find the cause of the sudden death of her lab partner. She confronts an uncivilized local tribe, the hostility of the jungle and a rogue scientist along the way. Patchett is at her best describing the stifling, buggy and remoteness of the Amazon jungle.

• Best Album: 21 by Adele. Adele blows the field away. Her rich, soulful, strong voice reminds me of a refined, trained and modern version of Janice Joplin. This woman sings from the heart and her hit "Rolling in the Deep" may be the best work I've heard in years.
  
  
• Best Film: Okay, I admit that I don't go to as many films as I should. But of the films I did get to see, "Of Gods and Men" was clearly the best. The film is based on a true incident that occurred in Algeria in 1996 where Islamic militants murdered several Christian monks. In the film, the monks, leading a quiet, Christian life in which they tried to help the local Islamic community (but did not try to convert them). The movie raises important questions of what it means to lead a good Christian life, the extent of Christian courage, and the clash between jihadism and Christianity.

• Best News of the Year: In 2011, we had a trifecta. Three bad actors were removed from the world stage-- Osama bin Laden (by the U.S. Navy Seals), Mohamar Gaddafi (by his own people), and Kim Jong Il (by God). Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are still around but 2011 put a good dent in the bad guys' starting lineup.

• Worst News of the Year: Tough call. We had the Euro crisis and the bankruptcy of MF Global (led by super-Democrat Jon Corzine, who proved that he could do to shareholders what he did to the taxpayers of New Jersey. The Obama Administration served up the downgrade of the credit rating of the U.S., Solyndra and Fast and Furious along with the hasty retreat from Iraq. But my vote goes to the Penn State scandal, in which an administration, much like the Catholic Church, permitted young people to be violated in the most despicable way.

• Best of America: Steve Jobs. The announcement of his death brought a tear to my eye. Jobs was an American icon and embodies what is best about this country. A self made man. A maverick. An entrepreneur. A paradigm buster. A quirky guy that would have failed in a large company. He rewrote rules and turned industries upside down. He took products that didn't exist and made them an indispensable part of the landscape. Probably the most creative mind since Thomas Edison (whose lightbulbs the liberals are trying to ban, by the way).

• Worst of America: Occupy Wall Street. Sure, no one was happy about the fact that some people had their wealth unjustly protected in the financial collapse by the government bailouts. That was an unfortunate by-product of keeping us from bread lines. However, the OWS crowd-- that gross, unhygenic, gaggle of rabble rousers wanted more than that. Their demands basically amounted to a bunch of free stuff--- free education, free health care, free this, free that. One of America's most famous slogans, "Give me liberty or give me death," gave way to "Where's mine?" and, like their British counterparts earlier this summer, disrupted the lives and businesses of many small entrepreneurs and shop owners. On full display for all to see was the ugly reality that the term "economic justice" is code word for "government guaranteed middle class lifestyle."

For all that, the economy showed slow but steady signs of improvement, no major international crises broke out (other than the "Arab Spring" and that has yet to play itself out), and Barney Frank announced his retirement. In the end, on balance, 2011 wasn't all bad at all.

Nice Shot, Mr. President

This blog has been critical of President Obama's administration since its beginning. His wrongheaded handling of the economy has contributed to a European style high unemployment, no growth economy. His inverted approach in foreign policy has emboldened our enemies (see recent Iranian moves to put warships off our coast) and left our friends, particularly Israel, adrift. After castigating the Bush administration for its handling of the post invasion phase of Iraq, we are now left wondering where 20,000 surface to air missles went after our participation in the Libyan civil war.

But I give credit where credit is due. Despite hand wringing and caterwauling from quarters, we bagged another big one. Drones took out Anwar al-Awlaki, the leader of al Qaeda in Yemen and the person from whom the "underwear bomber" and the Fort Hood killer drew their inspiration. This blog congratulates this administration for persevering despite his putative status as an American citizen. The message now is clear, almost Bushian, "No matter what jersey you wear, no matter where you are, no matter how hardened you think your security circles are, we will find you and we will turn you into a little charred spot in the road if you plot or encourage others to kill our citizens."

Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki, Atiya Abd al-Rahman (al Qaeda #2 guy). No hesitation. No long legal process. No appeals. No media circus. Just a buzz in the sky and a smoking hole in the road.

Nicely done.

Musings

*The Left has been blasting Rick Perry's affinity for evangelical Christianity. But did you notice that a short time after announcing his candidacy, Washington, D.C. was hit by an earthquake, and a hurricane is now bearing down on the capital. I'd be fidgity if I saw locusts starting to gather. Fortunately, Obama has no first born sons to worry about.

*My liberal friends are gloating and giving each other high fives over the fall of Libya, which they assert is a vindication of the wisdom and judgment of President Obama. Would someone remind them of the dangers of unfurling the "Mission Accomplished" banner too soon? And, by the way, I haven't seen any kudos bestowed on George W. Bush, for paving the way by incenting Qaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons program.

*The Left has attacked Rick Perry's "treasonous" remark about Bernanke and his attendance at a public prayer revival. Fair enough. But they needed to be reminded that in addition to the downgrade of U.S. debt on his watch, job creation under Obama would have been downgraded from "miserable" to "catastrophic" without Rick Perry's Texas.

*Can someone tell me where those Green Jobs are?

*Am I the only one to see the irony in President Obama's charge that the Tea Party Congresspeople are "ideologically rigid?"

*Has anyone ever actually heard President Obama use the word "liberty" in a speech?

*The EPA has put forward new regulations that will effectively shut down 20% of the nation's electrical capacity within a couple of years. In the interest of debt reduction and fairness, maybe we could reciprocate by shutting down 20% of the EPA. That, by the way, would take us to about 2007 levels at that bureaucracy.

Happy Birthday, Mr. President

Happy birthday, Mr. President. Welcome to the 50 plus club.

You must be pleased. You have, in a very short period of time, made a great deal of progress toward achieving your transformational goals.

I admit that I underestimated you (and George Soros). When you first came to office, I was underwhelmed by your achievements. No legislative accomplishments. No academic accomplishments. No business accomplishments. Just the an exotic background and the ability to deliver a silky smooth speech. You made them oooh and aaaah.

But you took over the steering wheel during a crisis---the most formidable financial crisis in a couple of generations. America was arrogant, you said. You believed in American exceptionalism, you said.....just like everyone else believes in their country's exceptionalism. America couldn't go it alone anymore. It needed to "spread it around," you said. In other words, become more like Europe.

Happy birthday. You must be pleased. In 2 1/2 years, you've gotten us there. Yesterday, our financial standing was downgraded from our pristine AAA rating, largely as a result of your accelleration of spending from 20 to 25% of GDP. You waged a war (ignoring the War Powers Act) against a tin pot dictator--a war by committee with your European allies. "Leading from behind," I think your staff called it. Months later, the tin pot dictator is still in power and your committee doesn't know what to do next. How European. And you took THE signature project of America, the single crowning achievement that demonstrated that government could do something right, a source of pride of a couple generations- manned space flight--and killed it like one would step on a bug. Instead of exploring new vistas and creatively thinking of new goals for NASA, you made multiculturalism a part of NASA's mission. Celebrate the math and science achievements of Islam, you said (notwithstanding the fact that Islam hasn't given us much of note since algebra).

No, President Obama. I did not think that you were capable of accomplishing so much in such a short period of time. Destroy America's credit rating. Demostrate collective impotence in warmaking. Turn one of America's most successful projects into a bureaucratic department of multicultural excellence.

The country that put man on the moon, turned back Hitler, stood up to Communism, that beacon of freedom, rugged individualism, where if one worked hard, showed initiative and got a little lucky could get rich is disappearing on your watch.

You will, no doubt, blame the Tea Party. "Intransigent," "Unsophisticated," "Irresponsible," "Jihadist," "Hostage Takers," is what the folks in your party called them.

They had the audacity to try to stop this runaway train. Perhaps they're too late.

We're now right there with Belgium.

Hope you and George enjoyed your cake.

The Miracle of Capitalism

Five or six years ago, I remember reading an article mourning the death of letter writing. The gist of the article was that cell phones had made communication via the written word obsolete. Not only were we losing the skill of communicating through the written word, we were in danger of losing a precious historical record since most historians compile information through digging through archives of letters. This important method of connecting with the past was in danger of being lost as the spoken word replaced the written word.

The other significant change in our modern society over the past century has been our mobility. A Couple of generations ago, we would have stayed in the same town as our parents and grandparents. Today, families scatter quickly. While our willingness and ability to move enhanced our ability to make a living, it also had a serious drawback. We became disconnected from family and friends. We became more urbanized and more alienated. The fictitious town of Mayberry still pulls at our emotions because most of us feel at least somewhat nostalgic for a time and place where we lived in a community in which people were close and knew each other for a long time. In our urban, fast-paced lives, we lack the comfort, stability and support that predictable relationships bring. Moreover, many of us are disconnected from our families that are often spread out over the country and sometimes over the globe. There is a basic human need to share old stories, and follow the progression of the people that have known us our entire lives. Many a Phd thesis has been written on this trend.

Enter social media (along with email, text messaging and Skype). In less than a decade, the information age has transformed our society and helped to assuage this longing in us. Facebook in particular has become a primary vehicle for meeting this basic human need. While Facebook has had its controvercies and its detractors, I believe that on balance, it has been a very positive force. Started as a social networking site at Harvard and then the entire Ivy League, Facebook has exploded from a site used primarily by high school and college kids to the population at large. I can attest that Facebook has enriched my life immeasurably.

I warily signed on about a year and a half ago, and pretty soon I was "friended" by family members (that has its own set of issues), old college friends, high school friends and, more recently, even grammar school friends. Some people post quite voluminously. Others are more sparing, but I enjoy quick little updates from these people. It has been fun to catch up on how my old friends have progressed in their careers, raised their kids and muddle through life. It's fun to get updates on the athletic careers of my niece and nephews, and hear about the latest setback from my friend that operates a small farm in the South.

One of the true joys of using Facebook in middle age is reconnecting with people that you hadn't thought about in years. One thing that became apparent quickly is that I really didn't appreciate some of these people as much as I do now. I don't know if it's because in my early contact their personalities were not fully formed or whether I was just not paying close enough attention. But it has become clear to me that I have come across some pretty remarkable people along the way. Facebook gives you a second shot to get to know them a little better.

About a year ago, I and several of my teammates organized a reunion of our college football team. In the 30 years since we played together, this formerly close-knit bunch had scattered into the wind. By using Facebook in addition to our own networking, we were able to track down all but a few people and organized a once in a lifetime event. We had people come in from all over the country (one even flew in from Indonesia) to eat, drink and tell old war stories with old teammates. It was pretty astonishing to see people pick up right where they left off 30 years ago. As a result, we are all in touch with each other more frequently now, get updates periodically and little groups of us occassionally get together for a lunch, a beer, or a ballgame. This all was facilitated in part by the advent of Facebook.

Recently, I reconnected with some classmates from my old Catholic grammar school, and they provided me with a stark reminder of why I remain highly ambivalent about Catholicism. Yes, all those stories about the harsh nuns with their rulers, paddles and wagging fingers were true and not exaggerated. Still, it was great fun to trade memories with people I had not seen in nearly 40 years, and hear about how they ended up. I was suprised by the number of people that connected with me that knew me when I was young and did stupid things, yet wanted to correspond with me anyway. Human beings have a great capacity for forgiveness and acceptance.

Of course membership in Facebook needs to be managed. It does have its annoyances. Some can't help but vomit their political views on a regular basis (I save that for my blog). I sometimes get requests to be "friended" by people I don't remember (or who I do not care to remember). Others use it solely as a worship wall for their children (o.k., I've been guilty of some of that, too). One woman even reminded me that I proposed to her when we were in 1st grade (she has no clue how luckey she got by turning me down). But on the whole, the influence of Facebook has been a hugely positive.

These connections have also nudged me to correspond with more people. I have several friends now that I exchange emails with on a regular basis. I have spoken with many people that do the same thing. So it seems that the art of letter writing has been reborn, albeit electronically in lieu of pen, ink, and the U.S. Postal Service. Query whether historians will be able to access these messages centuries from now so they can tell the story of what our society was like.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is said to be worth $13.5 billion (at age 27) and is in the top 100 billionaires in the world. He deserves to be. He is emblematic of the miracle of capitalism. He found a powerful human need.....the need to connect and be part of a community, and found a way to fill that need for millions of people at a reasonable price (essentially free). No government program brought this to us. No cabinet czar came up with the idea. No blue ribbon panel was involved in it. Just a kid in his dorm room. It's what capitalism is all about. It's certainly made my life richer.

He Really Did Say That

In a stunning statement in front of the House Small Business Committee, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said that taxes must be raised on small business so that "government would not have to shrink," and that ultimately such taxes would be good for growth. He held fast to this assertion even when confronted with the fact that small business creates most of the jobs in this country.


Any wonder why unemployment is still above 9% after two years of stimulus and Obamanomics.


I work with small businesses. I see their struggles up close and personal. In Illinois, they have been punished enough already. Over the past 4 years, small businesses have been savaged by recession, tough credit markets, and an explosion in the regulatory environment. Illinois, unlike New Jersey, chose not to ask for any sacrifice from its public sector unions that have a stranglehold on Illinois politicians, and, instead raised business and individual income taxes instead. Obamacare imposed new costs on businesses and promises even more costs and regulations. One CFO I spoke to told me, "We need a new plant, which I would expect would employ 250 people. But I'm just not going to do it yet. Not until the landscape changes."


And yet Geithner wants even more. After a 25% increase in government spending under the guise of stimulus (read "permanent growth"), he proposes to transfer yet more wealth from the private sector to the public sector, or else GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS WILL HAVE TO SHRINK.


Imagine that. Imagine a world with a smaller Department of Education, Department of Energy, or, even worse, a smaller EPA. All of these departments were granted whopping increases which set their baseline budgets even higher. Can anyone tell me succinctly what any of those departments will accomplish with any of those increases?


I can tell you what some of the businesses I work with will be able to do with those dollars if government doesn't confiscate them...... hire people, invest in new projects and new technologies, make promising acquisitions. In short, engage in those activities that create real wealth. Or simply retain an additional capital cushion so they won't have to go hat in hand to the bank.

The small businesses owners that have survived this tsunami have done so by making hard and sometimes painful decisions. And Mr. Geithner has determined that big government has better plans for those resources than they do.

Explain to me how that will be good for growth again, Mr. Geithner.

Bag Police

Evanston ("the city that cares too much") is in the middle of a burning controversy. The Eco-fascists are all in a tizzy over whether to tax or ban disposable grocery bags.

Now, you may remember that Evanston's unofficial motto came from a Chicago Tribune article about Evanston's treatment of the homeless. It appears that no other city in America was so welcoming to the homeless. The town of Evanston had more shelters and soup kitchens per capita and offered more generous benefits to the homeless than any other city in America. Pretty soon, word filtered out nationwide and within a fairly short period of time, indigents from all over the country were flocking to Evanston in defiance of Milton Friedman's admonition that there was no such thing as a free lunch. It seems that Evanston had created its own demand for goods and services for the homelessness, and it has become quite a little cottage industry in that town.

Well, the good, responsible folks in Evanston are at it again. I assumed that if we dutifully put our plastic and paper bags, glass bottles and used newspapers in the recycling bin, and wheeled it out to the curbside and paid the special fee for the recycling guy to pick it up, we would satisfied our responsible green duty. Apparently, this is not good enough for Evanstonians. Evanstonians want to ban disposable bag entirely or, at minimum, punish users by taxing them.

No one has really put forward an estimate of the magnitude of the problem. No data has been put forward to demonstrate that we are gagging on disposable bags. Nor has anyone quantified how many people are actually likely to comply and stuff dozens of little canvas bag in their trunks in the event of a spontaneous grocery trip. I suspect that there are a vast quantity of males in Evanston that are just like me, and, rather than displacing their golf bags in their trunks with eco-friendly canvas shopping bags, they will trundle up the road to Wilmette to do their shopping, thus increasing their carbon emissions, negating all the eco-benefits of this measure. In addition, if even 10% of Evanstonians pick up and shop elsewhere, this will represent a material decline in sales for most merchants, and that doesn't even take into account folks like me that don't live there but stop to pick up groceries when I pass through. And this says nothing about the job loss to the companies that supply paper and plastic bags, and the companies that supply things to the companies that supply things to companies that make paper and plastic bags.

But none of this matters to the liberal mind. They know what is good for all of us. Inconvenience, cost, job loss, and unintended consequences matter not to them (see, e.g. our policy on Ethanol). If disposable bags are banned, we don't even know what the real benefit will be, other than the liberals in Evanston will have satisfied themselves that they are being ecologically responsible, at least in their own minds.

None of this is to suggest that all environmental regulation is nonsense. But it needs to be sensible, and be supported by real cost/benefit analysis, with a real eye on unitended consequences. Moreover, regulations need to be reviewed periodically to determine whether the premises underlying the original analysis still holds. The eco-facsists conveniently overlook all of this and simply want to impose their will and take lifestyle choices away from us. Lightbulbs, toilet tanks, microwaves, grocery bags... no product choice is too small for them to demand a say over, and no measure of impracticality can dissuade them.

And, by the way, what in the world will liberal Cub fans be placing over their heads at Wrigley Field by the end of the season?