Saturday Sounds

Today's the anniversary of the Broadway premier of The Sound of Music, the success of which would lead to the later classic movie release.   The sounds of The Sound of Music have been a staple in our home for years, and I can remember when the oldest Musketeer was about three, he'd ask to watch it by saying "can we watch doe-a-deer?"

Still think we have the rule of law?

This summary of the status of Obamacare should dissuade you of that delusion.

If that's not enough, you can always read this, this, this, this, this or this.

Devolving into self-parody

First they design a healthcare system only a lawyer or a tax collector could love.  Then they unveil a website that can't handle even one-fifth of the traffic they claimed to expect.  And then the final straw: Americans find out many can't keep their current insurance, even if they want to.

What to do?

Why, advertise of course!  Spin it to win it!

And in those ads you'll find all you need to know about what your self-professed 'betters' think about the American electorate: juvenile, illiterate, slang-slinging and sexually out-of-control.

In defense of this administration, it's understandable why they would hold the citizenry in contempt.  After all, it did send them to the White House.  Twice.

Fortunately, it appears some people have their priorities straight.  Fortune favors the prepared.

E.T. phone home...

AKA "Road trip!"

What, exactly, are we remembering?

Twice a year, on Veteran's Day and Memorial Day, the airwaves and 'teh Interweebs' ring with homages to those who have served.  It is fitting to remember those, especially, who gave their lives in the defense of their homes and families.

But do we remember that far more often than not in America's history, that's not what really happened?  I would argue America has only fought three 'existential' wars, where national survival and/or character were at stake: the Revolution, the War of 1812 (AKA the Revolution, phase II), and the War Between the States.  This, of course, runs counter to every mainstream historical view out there, but I'm anything but alone in questioning the necessity and/or prudence of most the far-flung conflicts in which we've become involved.

Take World War I, for instance--the experience which spawned Veteran's Day as a commemoration.  Most scholars agree the events of 1914 were a tragic, careless tripping of dominoes that had been set in place over the preceding decades.  It was national pride and foolishness more than any true defensive necessity, that contrived to turn all of Europe into a slaughterhouse.  The bigger question on this side of the pond should be "why on Earth did the U.S. ever get involved?"  Consider:  In November 1916, Woodrow Wilson narrowly won reelection in no small part on the platform "he kept us out of war."  Five months later, the same man asked Congress to declare war on the Central Powers, and marshaled a huge propaganda apparatus to overcome the natural American neutrality which his own campaign had just played to!

What had changed?  Had Huns landed in the Hamptons?  Were Austrians besieging Annapolis?  No, the reality was that America's 'neutrality' had been anything but.  With a substantial stake in the Allied Powers' ability to win and repay their debts, it was almost inevitable that Doughboys would follow dollars into the hell of the Western Front.  When Germany made the fateful decision to counter American assistance to the Allies by unleashing the subs yet again, the U.S. found a plausible casus belli.

And what did this intervention accomplish?  Reinvigorated by the entrance of the US as an "Associated Power," the war-weary Allies ditched all thought of finding a settlement, and instead exacted humiliating revenge and post-war starvation upon Germany.  Once embroiled in Europe, the U.S. and its associates took a post-war detour into Russia, intervening just enough in the Russian Civil War to ensure lasting mistrust of the West, but not enough to keep the murderous Bolsheviks from consolidating power.  Thus were seeds of both the Second World War and the Cold War sown.

My point is simply this: more often than not, war, as Smedley Butler put it, "is a racket."  The high-sounding ideals which sell the public on support for the war often bear only the loosest of relations to the actual reasons for which the leadership of various nations contend.   Sometimes they bear no relation to the truth.  And tragically for America, virtually all of the sacrifices made by her citizens have been in wars of choice, not of necessity.

It is good that the recent call to arms over Syria foundered... but don't think that hasn't stopped the powers that be from looking for another rallying cry to distract from the growing consequences of their mismanagement and graft at home.  For Veteran's Day, let's not remember dress uniforms, parades and crisp formations.  Let's remember what happens to those formations when they're thrown into the man-made hell of war... and what becomes of those they leave behind.

Then let us not pick our battles, but instead only accept such cost when it is thrust upon us with no alternative.  THAT is the appropriate way to remember the fallen... by learning the lessons of history.   

Not by repeating them.

A watered-down cure

It never ceases to intrigue me how modern society attempts to pick through the social wreckage of the last couple generations and seek answers.  Often the prescriptions sound vaguely scriptural.  Too often they are Man's fallible pontifications that seek after wisdom while excluding reference to the Wise One.  A friend recently linked to this writing:

Over the last 100 or more years, women have understandably lost their trust in men in general. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Fragile-ego’d, self-seeking, solely cock-driven, permanently adolescent men have abused the planet on every level. The air, water, and soil are polluted, the animals violently killed, the children uneducated and the old people uncared for.
And it may sound radical to say this, but there has emerged a masculine edge in women, which has crept in during the past half a century. It is an edge that has, I believe, been born of a lack of trust in the males to deliver leadership and protection through service and wisdom. Women have been over-masculinising like mad to compensate for the essence of true maleness that’s so badly lacking in at least the last two generations of men, who have been addicted to profit and status.

Yes, the last century has seen a decline in the expectations of men (as so often demonstrated by their portrayal as idiots on the idiot box).  Yes, women have increasingly stepped into 'masculine roles,' sometimes as compensation for male failure to be responsible, and sometimes out of sheer rebellion against their own roles and responsibilities.  The writer of the excerpt above goes on to talk about how "awakening the feminine role in men" has only gone so far; that there needs to be a "deeper awakening of the male-within-the male."  I've never liked the whole "men and women both have masculine and feminine sides" paradigm.  Frankly, I believe that school has contributed to the rampant gender confusion that exists today.  But in that latter part, about the 'deeper awakening,' there is a whiff of sense. 

Consider these words, written two thousand years ago:

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.  He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

So many outside the church look at this as religious subjugation of women to some self-ordained patriarchy.  Far from it!  Not only did the Christian Church elevate the status of women in the First Century, A.D., it continued to elevate status for everyone, with the understanding that all bear the Imagio Dei.   The verses above aren't a license to rule... they're a charge to keep!  Any woman who submits to the leadership of her husband as she does to the Lord is promoting harmony within a household that is implicitly supposed to be run in a Christ-like manner for the good of all.  Any man who loves his wife in the sacrificial way Christ loved the church (reminder: He DIED for it...), is not going to abuse the responsibility he has been given to protect and provide for his family as it navigates through a shattered, fallen world. 

The article says women are looking for men who are 'trustworthy, loyal, devoted, dependable.'   I say that's merely a recognition (without saying so) that when men follow after Christ, women usually don't mind following after them.  When men provide the one thing women seek most -- unconditional, sacrificial love -- the men find in return that the woman in their life is far more likely to provide the one thing men seek most: respect.  And men who find that respect from their families are far less likely to feel the need to seek it through grasping, selfish behavior that so often has such destructive consequences.

Our society has never been perfect, but it once did a better job of seeking its meaning in Christ.  Would that we did so again!

Saturday Sounds

Just a reminder we're in the sesquicentennial of the Late Unpleasantness.  I've enjoyed this soundtrack for a few years now, and this song in particular.  May 'God have mercy,' indeed, and save us from our folly before there are more Judgment Days in this land...

lyrics here

Obfuscation by 'objectivity'

This is an interesting discussion between representatives of Old and New Journalism.  To see the New York Times representative still critique his competition by retreating to the self-proclaimed mantle of 'impartiality' is more than a little amusing:

Dear Glenn,

We come at journalism from different traditions. I’ve spent a life working at newspapers that put a premium on aggressive but impartial reporting, that expect reporters and editors to keep their opinions to themselves unless they relocate (as I have done) to the pages clearly identified as the home of opinion. You come from a more activist tradition — first as a lawyer, then as a blogger and columnist, and soon as part of a new, independent journalistic venture financed by the eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Your writing proceeds from a clearly stated point of view.

In a post on Reuters this summer, media critic Jack Shafer celebrated the tradition of partisan journalism — “From Tom Paine to Glenn Greenwald” — and contrasted it with what he called “the corporatist ideal.” He didn’t explain the phrase, but I don’t think he meant it in a nice way. Henry Farrell, who blogs for The Washington Post, wrote more recently that publications like The New York Times and The Guardian “have political relationships with governments, which make them nervous about publishing (and hence validating) certain kinds of information,” and he suggested that your new project with Omidyar would represent a welcome escape from such relationships. 

I will grant that the new voices out there like Greenwald do not attempt to hide their opinions and leanings.  One would hope, however, as their share of information gathering and influence increases, that they would continue to ensure they are as aggressive in presenting both sides of an issue as they are with 'activism.'  The two are often at odds.

But the real dynamic I want to address is this: does anyone still believe that the traditional, corporate-focused world of journalism is any less biased or partisan than independent voices like Greenwald?  If nothing else, the reportage over the last two administrations (Bush and Obama) should have put to rest forever the idea that mainstream journalism is anything else but a tool of the bipartisan, statist ruling elite.

I would much rather read someone who is open about their leanings, such that I can include that in my consideration of what they have to say, than to deal with the false pretenses of those who want to claim some moral high ground of 'objectivity' that they actually fail to occupy.

The simple truth is that the world of establishment journalism has, by claiming objectivity while practicing anything but, simply become a force for propaganda.  I harbor some concern about the damage that overzealous "writers in the tradition of Thomas Paine" can cause.  But just as Obamacare may have been a necessary nadir to get people to wake up to the foolishness of technocracy, such writers may be the necessary corrective to finally get people to demand more from their sources of information.

The ultimate low-information voters

Maybe I'm crazy, but if a voter casts a ballot for someone who's been dead for months, shouldn't there be a way to bar them from future voting since they're clearly not paying enough attention to be a proper participant in the process.....

SEATTLE - Two candidates in separate races in Washington state are both leading their opponents in Tuesday's elections. Should they both hold on for victory, do not expect any long acceptance speeches. Both candidates are currently dead. In the Seattle suburb of Des Moines, John Rosentangle won 71 percent of the vote over write-in candidates in the King County Water District 54. Rosentangle died last August of an illness. He was 63. In a city council race on the Washington coast in Aberdeen, John Erak, also dead, is leading Alan Richrod, very much alive, with 53 percent of the vote. The 81-year-old Erak was a former state representative and died in June shortly after announcing he was running to retain his seat. As of yesterday his lead was only 12 votes, and the results weren't final. Both men died after the filing period closed and their names could not be removed from ballots. Should both candidates win, they will still be dead.

...and we wonder why our government gets away with what it does...

The 10 commandments of government

These do seem to sum up the imperative nicely:

I Generally speaking, government always grows -- it never shrinks -- whether times are good or bad.

II In each area it purports to "assist", government attempts to replace individual decision-making with central planning.

III In order to implement its grand central plans and solidify its power, government must take from one citizen to give to another; this is, in effect, lawful theft.

IV No matter how many times central planning fails, the self-appointed masterminds in government assert that "this time is different" and that with only a few tweaks and more money, their delusional plans will succeed.

V Because it uses funds confiscated from taxpayers, self-restraint is no obstacle to government's ambitions.

VI Its fundamental misunderstanding of human nature notwithstanding, government must claim to grant "rights", which require it steal the labors of one citizen to give to another (such as food, shelter, employment, and health care).

VII No matter how widespread the harm it causes, government will never provide an honest and historical accounting -- a report card -- of its failures.

VIII As more individuals and families are harmed by the failures of central planning, government must find suitable scapegoats, must lie to do so, and therefore must also repress dissent.

IX In order to build its network of redistribution and grow a culture of dependency on its services, government must inevitably undermine the family unit, religion, and the notion of God-given rights in order to cow, bribe, or intimidate its citizens.

X As government grows ever more powerful, it must also become increasingly oppressive through compulsion and force. To do otherwise would mean government must shrink, and this it cannot do.


George Washington, smart guy that he was, provided a Cliff's Notes version over two centuries ago:
“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence – it is force.
Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and fearful master.”

Saturday Sounds

This is one calm, cool, collected and committed mama!  Bonus points for riffing off Alison Krauss!
We need many, many more mothers like this one!

Saturday Sounds

Unemployed Gollum seeks new work in Hollywood...

Guess I'm not the only one to notice...

...that lying seems to have become institutionally acceptable:

Can we at least agree that the American people deserve the truth? That governing ourselves requires getting accurate information from the people who we elect? That their function is to represent us? And that they have no right to lie or mislead? Opposing mendacity ought to be a no-brainer. What I see instead is a mainstreaming of the notion that it isn't a big deal for a political candidate, an elected official, or an appointee to lie or deliberately mislead...
Wouldn't America be better off if the fervor for truth and shaming of liars that characterizes our sex scandals was applied to surveillance, torture, kids killed by drones, landmark legislation affecting a fifth of the economy, and matters of similar import? It wouldn't keep politicians honest. But it would keep them more honest.

As any good recovery program will tell you, admiting you HAVE a problem is the first step. The question now is whether we have the will to do anything about it. Instead of individually seething about our loss of confidence in government, why aren't we collectively demanding the resignation of those who have broken their faith with us? Like the writer says: opposing mendacity ought to be a no-brainer. So should immediate demands for the ouster of anyone who engages in it.

Without consequences, there is no accountability.

Hmmm... do I still hear crickets chirping?

Letting liars linger

I'm becoming convinced the American body politic is sadomasochistic.  How else to explain its penchant for getting mad with how the government insults its intelligence, then going and reelecting the same charlatans over and over?  I just had to shake my head in disgust at the confluence of headlines I skimmed in my reading session today:

Exhibit A:

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) gave the clearest indication that proponents of comprehensive immigration reform may make their final--and strongest--push to get legislation passed next year after House Republicans make it through their primaries. 

This is classic cynical Republicanism: convince the rubes at home you're tough on border security, national defense, small government, etc, then once secure in office drop the pretense.  And McCain ought to know: he's a master of this RINO game.

The Old Guard GOP establishment realizes it has a serious insurgency in the form of the "Tea Party," whose supporters have largely awoken to this game.  That a sitting U.S. Senator can vocalize out loud in the press such an arrogant disregard for voter wishes (i.e. "we can't do what we want until we're safe from Tea Party challengers...") says a lot about the sorry state of our 'representative' system of governance.  Every GOP incumbent up for reelection this cycle should be roundly defeated in the primaries just on principle.

Exhibit B:

MSNBC's Ronan Farrow: "The Clintons Represent a Style of Honesty That the Public Craves Right Now"

Granted, this is MSNBC, home of the most rabid alternative universe reporting on cable TV, but still...
Obviously, they're beating the rush on welcoming the prospect of another presidential run by what Vox refers to as The Lizard Queen.  And that's their choice, of course.  But let's say they're even remotely correct, and America is now nostalgic for the days of Bill's finger wagging or parsing what the meaning of "is," is.  What does that say about the levels of misdirection and subterfuge today?

And finally, the main event:

President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it.   But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.  Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC News that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a "cancellation" letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don't meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience "sticker shock."

Over the course of two centuries, we've gone from a small, unobtrusive Federal government combined with a general public expectation of honesty and accountability, to an all-reaching Leviathan that everyone simply expects to play false with the public it allegedly serves.

... and 'they' call this progress?????

2014:  NO INCUMBENTS, PLEASE!

Devolution of power

I suspect there is much insight in this piece:

In these climax years of industrial technocratic society, two opposing forces shape the destiny of government: the desperate effort to control everything versus the decline of the ability to carry out that effort. The result will be the loss of legitimacy and the collapse of government from the highest levels, moving downward until the real power to make anything work re-sets at a feasible and appropriate level — probably very local. This dynamic is seen very clearly in three spectacles du jour: the “national security” (spying) mess, government-sponsored accounting fraud in finance, and the ObamaCare rollout.

 The Founders never intended for a unitary, all-powerful national government.  Though they may have disagreed in degree regarding its scope, all were in agreement that some matters were best left to State and local governance.  Today, however, our body politic has lost the temperament that allowed federalism to flourish.  EVERYTHING has to be a Federal matter, the best to enforce the "winning faction's" view on everybody.  Besides, as the Instapundit likes to point out, national-scale programs provide better opportunity for graft and corruption.

Both liberals and 'conservatives' claim to abhor this 'one size fits all' approach -- except, of course, when it suits their agenda.  For those who truly understand the concept of federalism, though, the answer is to stop looking for top-down solutions emanating from D.C.  Instead, look to local solutions to local problems... and then block Uncle Sam when he tries to "help."  Don't take his money, which is simply your money plus strings attached.  Seek to reduce his funding stream wherever possible.  Insist on freedom of local action, and brook no overlordship.

Freedom depends on it.

Now boarding...

Pardon the computer-driven delays...

Oh, and sorry about that 1000% increase in ticket prices!

How much of a disaster is Obamacare's rollout?  It's so bad, CBS offered a distraction by finally performing an act of journalism regarding Benghazi...

Quote of the Day

"The state derives its power from the consent of the governed. However, when the a majority of the governed derive their sustenance from the state, it becomes easy for the state to manufacture whatever consent it wishes."

-- via a commenter at ZeroHedge

Yeah, that's about right

On this day in history...

...in 1774, a community in Massachusetts begins flying a new flag:

On Oct. 21, 1774, the Taunton Sons of Liberty raised the first flag of opposition to British rule in the American Colonies. On that day, the Liberty and Union flag flew high above the Taunton Green, and now, almost 238 years to the day of that historic event, the flag was proudly raised above the Green once again...

After the public officials spoke, First Parish Church minister Rev. Christana Wille McKnight read the words of Rev. Caleb Barnum, the minister of First Parish Church in 1774, when the Liberty and Union flag was first raised over Taunton. As McKnight spoke, the flag ascended.

“Born to be free, we spurn the knaves who dare for us the chains of slavery to prepare,” Barnum’s words ended, as read by McKnight. “Steadfast in freedom’s cause, we’ll live and die unawed by statesmen, foes to tyranny. But if oppression brings us to our graves and marks us dead, she never shall mark us slaves.”

Many other flags began sprouting up around the colonies as it began to sink in there was no purpose in remaining English if they no longer enjoyed the "rights of Englishmen."  Even in those heady days, the flag above shows the priorities were in order: liberty was to come first, and union only in the service of that liberty. 

The tension between the two was never far from the surface, however.  Well before the tragedy of the 1860s, a President and Vice-President found themselves on opposite sides of the emphasis:

Never far from the surface, the concept of nullification emerged again in early 1830 in the famous Webster- Hayne Debate.  Later that spring, the president and vice president had a famous confrontation in front of a political gathering. Jackson, knowing of Calhoun’s support for nullification, stared at the Vice President and offered the toast, “Our Federal Union, it must be preserved.” Calhoun stood before the hushed audience and replied, “The Union, next to liberty, most dear.”

Nearly two centuries later, the need to keep these priorities in order is no less important.  As the residents of Taunton realized the futility of English identity without traditional English rights, so must we be vigilant, lest we remain Americans without the American birthright.

I can relate...

A new take on an old classic: