Krauthammer 12/19/08

The US House of Lords?

My take on Charles Krauthammer's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: While we always had some unqualified people in the U.S. Senate, the trend is getting worse. The problem with Caroline Kennedy's candidacy is not her lack of qualifications; it is her sense of entitlement. The campaign finance laws, favoring the rich, are partly to blame.

Quote:

Yes, the Founders were not democrats. They believed in aristocracy. But their idea was government by natural -- not inherited -- aristocracy, an aristocracy of "virtue and talents," as Jefferson put it.

My Views: Rich people can spend gobs of money while normal people have to scrounge for contributions in approved amounts. This is why Corzines, Rockefellers, and Kohls can just plop into office from nowhere. But this is just part of the problem.

Others parachute into office just using their celebrity or name recognition. Family connections, wealth, or celebrity may have been the path to political office in the past but this has become a trend in our time. It is a trend we should not encourage.

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Charles Krauthammer is a more establishment columnist. He came to punditry by way of psychiatry (at Massachussets General Hospital) via the New Republic Magazine. He appears on TV where you never see his wheelchair. Here's his Wiki bio.

He wrote a book which is pictured at the right. I am drawn by the substance and the thinking than any particular writing flair.

Kennedy and Palin

So Caroline Kennedy is gunning for US Senate? Why is nobody asking her about her qualifications? Never been elected to anything; never had to be responsible for any policy issue - ever. Should be a shoe-in for the Sarah Palin treatment, right?

Q. And what are your views on the Obama Doctrine, Ms. Kennedy? You don't know of any Obama Doctrine? Ah, ha! Gotcha!

But of course there are differences.

1. Ms. K is a Democrat.
2. She's connected with the establishment elite. Heck! She's in the inner circle of the EE!
3. Daddy was JFK.

As for Ms. Palin?

1. She's a Republican.
2. She's just a peasant woman from Alaska. The boonies.
3. She's one of those Christians. Those kind. Reads the Bible; believes it; devout. That kind.

So of course Caroline is going to get treated much differently that Sarah was. - The Royal Treatment.

Krauthammer 12/14/08

Obama Means Big Change

My take on Charles Krauthammer's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: Obama appears to be a centrist because on Foreign and on Economic Policies he will hold pat so that he can pursue radical expansion on Social Policies.

Quote:

A functioning financial system is a necessary condition for a successful Obama presidency. As in foreign policy, Obama wants experts and veterans to manage and pacify universes in which he has little experience and less personal commitment. Their job is to keep credit flowing and the world at bay so that Obama can address his real ambition: to effect a domestic transformation as grand and ambitious as Franklin Roosevelt's.

My Views: So what area is he going to concentrate on? Dr. K mentions Health Care. The other area Obama's talked about is hitting and hurting conservative talk radio. Partly what's so reasuring right now is that people don't really know what he's going to change.

One other problem with Dr. K's thesis in this essay is that his assertion of the Inside the Beltway belief that there's a mandate for dramatic government expansion. Yet, remember that before the crash in late September, McCain had actually pulled AHEAD of Obama in the polls. The dominent news was how Obama was unable to seal the deal. Then the financial industry crashed. A crash does not a mandate make.

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Charles Krauthammer is a more establishment columnist. I am drawn by the substance and the thinking than any particular writing flair.

He appears on TV where you never see his wheelchair.

Here's his Wiki bio.

He wrote a book which is pictured to the right.

Don’t Overlook This! 12/13/08

Editorial Judgements To Drive Google Searches

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Summary: Google executive this week announced that editorial decisions will be a major factor in determining search engine results. The computer algorithims will continue but adjustments will be made by Google staff.

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Source: The A Register.

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Why this is significant: What is the political bias of the staffers that will decide which sites top the searches? The world already has had reasons to question the bias of Google.

1. The contracts with Red China blocking sites the Communist Government wanted blocked.
2. The take-down of anti-Obama sites this year.
3. The political contributions made by the majority of Google executives and staff.

The public already has seen the effects of media bias in the old media. New media bias may just be transferring the 20th. century problems of filtered news to the 21st. century. New media, same problem. Only, with the power that new media has at its disposal, the problem of media bias affecting public opinion may be even worse in this new century than in the last.

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"Don't Overlook This!" are stories in the news that deserve more attention than they’ve received. These stories should have been the leading news items of their day. Their significance extends beyond just a particular geographical area and beyond just a particular news cycle.

Will 12/8/08

A Case Where "Fairness" IS Unfair

My take on George Will's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: Left wingers want to limit free speech on radio because it is too conservative and too influential.

Quote:

If reactionary liberals, unsatisfied with dominating the mainstream media, academia and Hollywood, were competitive on talk radio, they would be uninterested in reviving the fairness doctrine.

My Views: Ah, yes! That Fairness Doctrine. aka "The Hush Rush Bill". What has always really got me was the unprincipled hypocracy of it. Like Obama's tirade against Fox while ignoring the media's treatment of the Republicans. The most noteworthy thing about the upcoming fight is the proponent's utter lack of any philosophical view, just a partisan desire to censor conservative speech.

For the left, this is a partisan issue only; for the right, this is a national issue.

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George Will almost didn't make it as a syndicated columnist. His style was considered too erudite for a general audience.

Whatever one thinks of his views, read his work for use of language and for how he marshals facts and uses logic.

Here's his Wiki bio.

His latest book is at the right.

Krauthammer 12/5/08

Milestone in Bagdad
Map is from the CIA World Factbook.
My take on Charles Krauthammer's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: This week the Iraqi Parliament approved a military and strategic cooperation agreement with the United States.

Quote:

For the United States, this represents the single most important geopolitical advance in the region since Henry Kissinger turned Egypt from a Soviet client into an American ally.

My Views: This is the biggest, most important Middle East development since Henry Kissinger turned Egypt into a U.S. ally. Things could still go wrong in Iraq. Obama could pull out too soon. But Iraq now seems to become another Turkey: a beacon of democracy and moderation for the Muslim world.

The significant thing is not just the agreement itself, but how it was reached: the democratic means used by the Parliament.

For the left in the U.S., there is now a huge challenge. They've reacted emotionally and reflexively to Bush's Iraqi policy. Just stating an anti-Bush view has been enough to avoid the stigma to ignorance or stupidity. Now they will need more: their views must contain thinking.

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Charles Krauthammer is a more establishment columnist. I am drawn by the substance and the thinking than any particular writing flair.
He appears on TV where you never see his wheelchair.
Here's" his Wiki bio.

Will 12/4/07

Markets, Not Economists Will Help the Economy

My take on George Will's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: Government intervention in the economy has not had the results that liberals claim and such results as can be verified have often not been positive.

Quote:

Because the economy's job-creation is not quite as predictable as a solar eclipse, Obama, by promising 2.5 million jobs by 2011, is a bit more audacious than was Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee, who astonished King Arthur's court by commanding an eclipse that he knew was due. Still, because scores of millions of today's jobs will exist two years from now, who will be able to dispute a presidential claim that administration policies "saved" some portion of them?

My Views: If the nation's economists were so smart, then why did the September crash take everyone by surprise? Neither Obama, Bush, or McCain warned the nation in advance. The test of knowledge is prediction. A mathametician can predice that if you add 2 of something to 3 of something, you will end up with 5 somethings. A chemist can predict that if you combine the stuff in this beaker with the stuff in that beaker, you will have a blue liquid. You do, and that's what you get. This shows you that those guys know something. When do economists ever predict anything - especially something as major as what hit the country a few months ago?

Will's most telling point is the historical one that Reagan inherited an economy in 1981 that was worse than the one that Obama inherits today. With a philosophy that in opposite to that of Obama's today, the economy grew 6.3 million jobs in his first term. This is in line with the 1.5 million jobs per year the economy has grown since Eisenhower's first term began in 1953.

The private free enterprise system, not government control has historically grown the economy.

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George Will almost didn't make it as a syndicated columnist. His style was considered too erudite for a general audience.

Whatever one thinks of his views, read his work for use of language and for how he marshals facts and uses logic.

Here's his Wiki bio.

His latest book is at the right.