what if?

Remembering; Ten Years Later

Soon, it will be the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attack.  Here is one woman's story.

Ms. Manning says she grew up a tomboy in a New Jersey suburb—her mother was a homemaker and her father a business executive and a former Marine who fought in Korea. By September 2001, Ms. Manning was well along in a Wall Street career and had been married to her second husband, Greg, for 18 months; Tyler was 10½ months old. But the young marriage was already under strain as the couple clashed over Greg's plans to leave a good job on Wall Street and return to a career in journalism. Coincidentally, Greg was scheduled to be at a breakfast event at the Windows on the World restaurant in the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11 but skipped it to help a neighbor who had undergone a recent surgery.

As Ms. Manning recounts in "Unmeasured Strength," she has her own Good Samaritan that day when the planes hit. After she runs, in flames, out of the building lobby and throws herself on a patch of grass, a stranger covers her with his jacket to put out the fire. Agonizing minutes pass before he spots an ambulance and helps her inside. The ambulance takes her to St. Vincent's Hospital in lower Manhattan. Greg learns she is there and rushes to her side—soon proving himself the most steadfast of partners despite their earlier troubles.

Nearly mad with pain and anger, Ms. Manning remains conscious enough to discern that St. Vincent's doesn't have the resources she needs; she demands to be taken to Weill Cornell Medical Center's burn unit. The burns cover 82% of her body—which, she is told, works out to an 18% chance of survival—and she faces deadly threats from infection and other complications. Her existence soon becomes a haze of pain, skin grafts, surgeries and other treatments to clean and debride her wounds that are so invasive she must be put in a coma from which she doesn't fully wake for weeks.

Be Still My Heart

A serious fiscal conservative and small government guy on everything - including social issues!

How come, though, more voters don't get exposed to him?

According to the latest CNN/ORC survey, former two-term Gov. Gary Johnson (R-N.M.) is polling at 2 percent, neck-and-neck with pizza magnate Herman Cain and ahead of former Gov. John Huntsman (R-Utah) and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.).

Yet while Cain, Huntsman, and Santorum will mix it up with Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas), former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.), and Reps. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas) at the next GOP candidates debate on September 7, Johnson has been told to stay home once more. This latest exclusion has prompted writers at National Review, which isn't particularly amenable to Johnson's libertarian-leaning platform, and elsewhere to wonder what's going on with the selection process.

Is This The Onion?

In case you aren't familiar with it, The Onion is a fake news source chock full of humor.  Stories are based on real ones, but are silly, exaggerated and sarcastic.

Thus, when I read this a day or so ago in the New York Times, my first reaction was - this must be from The Onion!

Why not offer legal protections to the ugly, as we do with racial, ethnic and religious minorities, women and handicapped individuals?

No, not The Onion.  Read the whole thing, and you will see that this economics professor is utterly serious.

Yes; It's a Religion

The Altar of Recycling Correctness.

“Ziplocs are the biggest misstep,” said Julie Corbett, a mother in Oakland, Calif., whose two girls attend a school with an eco-friendly lunch policy. In school years past, she said, many a morning came unhinged when the girls were sent to school with disposable sandwich bags.

“That’s when the kids have meltdowns, because they don’t want to be shamed at school,” Ms. Corbett said. “It’s a big deal.”

A Bright Niche in the Economy

Things are looking up - so to speak.

 

Are You Now or Have You Ever Been....

When I first read this column in the New York Times by Bill Keller, I could barely believe my eyes.  Keller has a little "questionnaire" for presidential candidates (only Republican ones, of course) - with questions such as this one:

A recent article in The Texas Observer questioned your relationship with the New Apostolic Reformation, which advocates the belief that Christians and only Christians should hold dominion over earthly institutions.  A number of leaders of this movement were given prominent roles in the prayer event called the Response. Would you like to clarify your relationship with these leaders? Do you hope for their support in your campaign?

Am I the only one who was immediately struck by the similarity of Keller's inquisition, and the ones that Joseph McCarthy delivered in the 50's?  "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Christian religion?"

Of course, as more than a few have pointed out, this sort of religious testing would never ever be aimed at Democrats running for president.  But, they have kindly assisted in producing questionnaires for the left, such as this one for MN congressman Keith Ellison, who happens to be a Muslim.

One Man's Leadership

In April of 1968, this junior high student was living the trials and joys that face a sixteen year old inching toward adulthood.  Many of the specifics of that spring are blurred with the passage of time - but one event I well remember:  the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. 

My entire life, my parents taught me about equality and dignity of all - irrespective of race.  Yet, I knew that in 1960's Chicago - and 1960's America - equality of race was only a dream, and not a reality.  I knew that in my suburban school of almost 4,000 students, only a handful were black.  I knew that blacks had a tough (if not impossible) time getting well-paying and professional jobs.  I knew that, despite not in fact having Jim Crow, that my city was nevertheless mostly racially segregated.

Thus, Martin Luther King, Jr. was my hero.  I, like millions of others, was stirred by the cadence of his moving speeches, by the fierce truth of his words.  I hoped that his courage and dignity would change what I knew was so wrong with our world.

And then - in an instant - assassination stopped this amazing man.  When I heard of his death, my heart grew cold.  I, too, died a little inside. 

I am utterly convinced that without this man, without the efforts he made and without the inspiration he gave and the minds changed that he caused, the progress of blacks and race relations in this nation would be woefully worse than today.  Though efforts of many others contributed mightily to the positive achievements we've seen, without Martin Luther King, Jr., we cannot know what might have happened.  MLK, Jr.  was clearly the beacon of hope and faith.  Thus, although it has been a long time coming, the King memorial in Washington is both a remembrance and a model of instruction that deserves its place of honor.  Charles Krauthammer elaborates.

Greatest Line of the Week

Kinky Friedman nails it.

Obama has done for the economy what pantyhose did for foreplay.

And - as Glenn says - read the whole thing.

On The Job

Want to know why jobs are so tough to come by these days?  My friend and fellow Realtor Christopher Fountain explains.

The Obama administration is setting new workplace regulations to assist foreign workers who fill goat herding positions in the U.S. , including employee-paid cell phones and comfy beds.
 
These new special procedures issued by the Labor Department must be followed by employers who want to hire temporary agricultural foreign workers to perform sheep herding or goat herding activities.  It describes strict rules for sleeping quarters, lighting, food storage, bathing, laundry, cooking and new rules for the counters where food is prepared.
 
“A separate sleeping unit shall be provided for each person, except in a family arrangement,” says the rules signed by Jane Oates, assistant secretary for employment and training administration at the Labor Department.
 
“Such a unit shall include a comfortable bed, cot or bunk, with a clean mattress,” the rules state.
 
Diane Katz, a research fellow in regulatory policy at The Heritage Foundation, unearthed the policy in the "Federal Register​," the massive daily journal of proposed regulations that Washington bureaucrats publish every day.

Under the Obama Administration, the nanny state has imposed 75 new major regulations with annual costs of $38 billion.

Potential employers get served crap like this, roll their eyes - and possible jobs go bye-bye.

If you think that perhaps our nation is better served with handling their own goat herder rules and letting government get out of the way of personal freedom - then maybe you should consider voting in an administration that will allow this to happen in 2012!

 

Free to be Me

I came of age in the era of feminism.  Gloria Steinem, Betty Freidan - these were the women who told teenagers like me that we could do what we wanted with our lives.  No longer would our only options be nursing, teaching, the secretarial pool or "housewife".  Whatever our interests, whatever our passions - we could follow them.

Life really was transformed for women during these times.  Today, we see women in virtually all professions - sometimes exceeding men in employment.  The words "but you're a woman" really are no longer heard.

Yet, while I applaud these changes and am grateful that women no longer have five or six options in adulthood - then lower your voice - some viewpoints utterly appall me.  Like, for instance, those of this author.

I used to cycle to work through the Square des Batignolles, our local park in western Paris, and was always struck by the almost uniform ethnic segregation: mostly white toddlers chasing each other and their caregivers, brightly clad West African women chatting away on the benches rimming the sandpit. On those same benches on Sunday afternoons, I would socialize with other young, professional French mothers.

Here in Germany, the only adults populating playgrounds on any day of the week appeared to be mothers — often mothers with a university education who not long ago earned a respectable income.

Do read the entire column.  I find it repulsive on so many levels.

The Great Divide

In the world of liberals, conservatives and libertarians, there are great philosophical divides.  One of those separating Them from Us is the notion of who can best decide how to spend and allocate our resources.  Most conservatives and libertarians have an easy answer:  individuals can better make that decision.  For liberals?  Government Knows Best.

Here are two accomplished individuals who think that the left doesn't know what it's talking about.

First - Harvey Golub, former chairman and CEO of American Express.

Governments have an obligation to spend our tax money on programs that work. They fail at this fundamental task. Do we really need dozens of retraining programs with no measure of performance or results? Do we really need to spend money on solar panels, windmills and battery-operated cars when we have ample energy supplies in this country? Do we really need all the regulations that put an estimated $2 trillion burden on our economy by raising the price of things we buy? Do we really need subsidies for domestic sugar farmers and ethanol producers?

Why do we require that public projects pay above-market labor costs? Why do we spend billions on trains that no one will ride? Why do we keep post offices open in places no one lives? Why do we subsidize small airports in communities close to larger ones? Why do we pay government workers above-market rates and outlandish benefits? Do we really need an energy department or an education department at all?

Here's my message: Before you "ask" for more tax money from me and others, raise the $2.2 trillion you already collect each year more fairly and spend it more wisely. Then you'll need less of my money.

And, the eeeeeevil Charles Koch, mult-billionaire.

Much of what the government spends money on does more harm than good; this is particularly true over the past several years with the massive uncontrolled increase in government spending. I believe my business and non-profit investments are much more beneficial to societal well-being than sending more money to Washington.

Koch made a point that lies at the heart of modern conservatism: the individual will generally spend his own money more carefully and more wisely than the government would spend it. Therefore, once we have provided as efficiently as possible for the basic services that governments are instituted to provide, the less money we turn over to the government the better.

If I Were President

In the Sunday Review, the New York Times presented an intriguing piece entitled "If I Were President."    Non politicians were asked what they would do if they had the Big Job.

Here are my favorites.

Andrew Weil.

I’d tell the nation that I was powerless to control the war machine, Wall Street, big oil and the other interests that run the country, and I would urge Americans to form a new political party not beholden to them.

Geoffrey Canada.

I would have a “grown-up” talk with the American people, emphasizing that we are facing a crisis and solving it will require a spirit of shared sacrifice. Those of us who have benefited mightily from this country and made billions, as well as those who make the minimum wage, must all sacrifice.

The social contract that we have taken for granted must be updated given our tough economic challenges, and all of us must now pay our great country back — giving more than we anticipated just a year ago. Those who can give a lot must do so; those of more modest means must also do their part.

James Dyson.

I would get America back to what it does best: take risks. Or rather, the right type of risks. The United States was founded on brave, bold and untested inventions, not financial gambles. Real engineering, not endless economic engineering.

My solution: get rid of binary right and wrong answers. Experimentation is learning. Only through making mistakes do we find out what works, what to do differently and how to get better.  Box-ticking does not correlate with world winning. Certificates won’t beat global competition. Creativity will. Engineering and science will. Patents will. Let’s inspire children by giving them the freedom to get things wrong. By fostering an environment where learning through failure is celebrated, the United States can get back to ongoing success — making mistakes, making things.

All Hail King Obama

Are you getting a little tired of our president acting like a British monarch from the 17th century and Mari Antoinette, all rolled into one?  Me, too.  And Mark Steyn apparently, also.

Thousands Line Up for Jobs

As some "play through."

 

The Conundrum

More and more, I have the suspicion that the sort of individual who could best lead as our president is the sort of person who really does not wish to be president.  That person must be someone who ultimately is willing to do the extremely tough and demanding work - but does so out of obligation, devotion to country and need; not due to gigantic ego and desire for power.

Someone like one of these two men.

Ryan and Christie spoke for nearly an hour about the presidential race, according to four sources briefed on the conversation. The two men shared a central concern: The Republican field is not addressing the debt crisis with anything beyond platitudes.

Christie has echoed Ryan’s concerns. In February, he gave a tough speech at the American Enterprise Institute, chastising Republicans for their timidity on entitlement reform and spending. “Let me suggest to you that my children’s future and your children’s future is more important than some political strategy. .  .  . We need to say these things and we need to say them out loud. When we say we’re cutting spending, when we say everything is on the table, when we say we mean entitlement programs, we should be specific,” Christie lectured. “Here is the truth that no one is talking about: You’re going to have to raise the retirement age for Social Security. .  .  . We have to reform Medicare because it costs too much and it is going to bankrupt us. .  .  . And we have to fix Medicaid because it’s not only bankrupting the federal government, it’s bankrupting every state government. There you go. If we’re not honest about these things, on the state level about pensions and benefits and on the federal level about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, we are on the path to ruin.”

Although the two men have not been especially close personally, their conversation about the campaign was blunt, and they agreed on a central point: If these issues are to get the kind of attention they deserve, one of the two men will have to run. One source called it a de facto pact, but another described it as a more informal understanding. Christie told Ryan what he has (usually) told others: He does not want to run.

Moral Rot

It seems that some who read my blog think that I am an apologist for big business, Wall Street, and Republicans in general.

Not so.

Although I believe in free markets, the rights of private business to have autonomy and not labor under the weight of gargantuan regulation - and that I do think Republicans tend to value these principles more than many Democrats - this does not mean I write everyone a blank check.  Some of what is wrong today can be placed at the feet of how certain aspects of the business world have been run the last twenty years (or more) - and at both Republicans and Democrats for facilitating these changes for the worse.

William Cohen, former investment banker, explains.

Citizens of Free Nations

Sometimes I read fine columns, yet do not have the time to blog about them at that moment.  I email 'em to myself - then wait until a window of time opens.  Here is one of a few that I have saved.

Watching the streets of London and other British cities burn is painful for anyone who has visited that great nation. Abe has a fine post on how to explain what has unfolded in Great Britain during the last four  days. “There are parts of our society that are not just broken but frankly sick,” Prime Minister David Cameron said. “When we see children of 12 or 13 looting it’s clear there are things that are badly wrong in our society. There is a complete lack of responsibility in some parts of our society. People are allowed to feel the world owes them something and that their actions don’t have consequences.”

But what is happening in Great Britain has also happened, to one degree or another, in Greece, in France and in other European nations. One can sense a growing fear that what is occurring is not isolated but a deeper discontent afflicting the West.

I have written elsewhere that what is unfolding in nations throughout the West, including in America, are the predictable effects of increasing dependency on the state, which creates certain expectations and patterns of thought, including an entitlement mentality, and where every concession that has ever been gained is viewed as an unalienable right and therefore irreversible. This may also be the result of an increasingly large underclass out of which rises a tangle of pathologies.

But what may also be at play here is something else: the danger of democratic mediocrity and the erosion of understanding of what it means to be a citizen in a free nation, the de-linkage between rights and responsibilities, and the weakening of society’s allegiance to what is true and good.

Freedom does not mean "free lunch."  Too many of us believe that government "owes us."  Too many forget that they must contribute - and sometimes even sacrifice - to make society work.

Values matter; and not all values are created equal.  If we do not recognize these principles - and live by them - the lifestyle and freedoms that we have been privileged to enjoy will exist no more.

Sounds of Silence

For years, the left has been shrieking about the horrors of Israel and its people.  Why then, are leftists silent about this?

In Syria anti-government protesters have told reporters that President Bashar al-Assad’s police are using torture in an especially perverse way. It’s not for information gathering, since they can learn who opposes them by simply photographing demonstrators in the streets. Now they torture to terrify rebels by promising them a hideous death.

The police pick up men at random, keep them a few days, then return them to their families, the many signs of torture readable on their dead bodies. It’s not enough to kill demonstrators with tanks and snipers or have gunboats bombard the port of Latakia. The people are willing to face death. The police want them to fear torture as well.

Seventy such deaths in detention have recently been documented, 40 of them in the city of Homs, a centre of anti-Assad feeling.

Last Saturday about 40 people with anti-Assad banners held a peaceful demonstration outside the embassy of Syria in Ottawa. They all appeared to be Syrians, according to the Ottawa Citizen reporter. They were talking about the monstrous government that’s ruling their homeland and the attempts by pro-Assad operatives in Canada to intimidate them.

But on that occasion, where were all the Canadian-born experts on the Middle East, those vociferous and self-righteous moralists, who come out of the woodwork every time Israel appears to be in violation of some UN resolution or strikes back against an outrage like the killing of the bus passengers on Thursday near Eilat?

Where, during the Syrian protest, were the massed student armies from York University and Concordia and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education? Where were the legions of academics and trade unionists who are always ready to declare what policy should be followed by the wise and the virtuous? Where, for that matter, were Dykes and Trans People for Palestine, who make such a great noise in Toronto and whose website proudly declares they support everyone’s rights?

If you want to find out, read the whole thing.

 

 

 

 

Change

Candidate Barack Obama promised America change - and we got it.

Just before his election as president, Barack Obama declared that "we are five days from fundamentally transforming America." He has made good on that promise. Huge increases in federal spending—up 28% in just three years—were the beginning. Putting health care—17% of the American economy—under Washington's control was next. Government control of business is expanding too: 379 new government business rules were added in July alone, according to Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming. Federal government debt held by the public rose from $6 trillion (40% of GDP) in 2008 to $9 trillion (62%) in 2010, The Congressional Budget Office says it could reach 200% by 2037, if the economy doesn't collapse first.

I, and others with similar political philosophies still believe that our nation can get back on track.  To do so, however, we need change once again.  We need to return to the principles that made the U.S. great.  We need freedom to live our lives as we see fit.  We need to stop spending as if money could be magically printed forever (ahem).  We need to once again focus on the values that allowed us to grow:  personal responsibilty, hard work, creativity and ingenuity.

Recently I read a column that was critical of Governor Perry for changing his mind on some issue.  Frankly - irrespective of a politician's party, I applaud a politician for changing his mind when he realizes that the positions he had embraced were not working.  If President Obama were to experience a sea-change in his vision, then started to implement what will restore us to sanity - then I'd be his biggest supporter.

If not, then we need change once again.  A president who understands what makes America work - and will put our people back to work - must be elected.  Let's hope enough people appreciate this, come November 2012.

If We Acted Like the President