Rational Review

“There are those who believe that business is inherently corrupt — communists would be among those, and socialists. The very idea of striving to make a profit is treated by these people as morally objectionable. Of course, some even think medicine fits the bill, or military service. And there are animal rights advocates who believe the entire meat industry is morally base. For my money the one profession that has indeed become completely, utterly morally irredeemable is politics. Not that even this is necessarily the case — politics could be an upstanding profession in a genuinely free country where those practicing it did what the American Founders believed should be their task: to secure our rights, period. But that has never been the way most people in government viewed their job. Instead these days politicians are hired extortionists.” (05/13/08)

“Gotta love Walters’ remark about hygiene — which he appears to have taken almost verbatim from Above The Influence’s hateful propaganda film, Stoners In The Mist. Seriously though, it goes without saying that this so-called White House ‘report’ (I use the term euphemistically here, given that said ‘report’ is under five pages and consists mostly of bar charts rather than text) is much ado about nothing. In fact, the only newsworthy aspect of this supposed ’study’ is that the lapdog mainstream media gave it any coverage at all.” (05/14/08)

“I don’t know if Bob Barr will win the Libertarian Party nomination for President. And, if he does, I don’t know if this will be good for the libertarian movement — whatever that is. But assuming an Obama-McCain contest in November, a vote for Barr will: a) likely rally more disgruntled conservatives who can’t stand McCain and don’t want Obama either. Barr will give them a candidate closer to their values. McCain is Public Enemy #1, the world’s greatest threat to peace — and therefore to liberty and prosperity. He must be defeated. b) send a message to Obama that his program is unacceptable. The more politically weak Obama enters the White House, the less government can grow under him.” (05/13/08)

“NRO: Newt Gingrich told The Washington Times yesterday that ‘Bob Barr will make it marginally easier for Barack Obama to become president. That outcome threatens every libertarian value Barr professes to champion.’ Do you accept that argument? BARR: No. I have great respect for Newt. He’s a friend, and I’ve known him for many years and worked with him in the Congress. But I’d be running not as a Republican. Newt’s views are very much colored as an advocate only of the Republican party. My views go beyond, and my principles go beyond, simple adherence to a particular party. The reason that I have entered the race, the reason that I seek to be the Libertarian-party nominee, is to put forward an agenda for the American people of libertarian philosophy and libertarian principles that would seek to maximize individual liberty and minimize government power. That would be the purpose of my running.” (05/13/08)

“It is nearly impossible these days to escape the bullies who are set to run everyone’s life. I thought I would visit friends on the Central California Coast to get away from it all for a day but no such luck. No sooner did I settle in with my friends to drink a glass or two of some very fine wine from their and some other cellars, I encountered yet another horror story about the demise of private property rights in the United States of America. This time it isn’t the eminent domain bullies who have been popping up everywhere, insisting on misconstruing the Fifth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution as authorizing transfer of private property by government edict to preferred private concerns. (That is what the outrageous Supreme Court Ruling in 2005, Kelo v. City of New London Connecticut sanctioned.) This time the excuse is a legal fiction called ‘Smart Growth,’” whereby powerful politicians everywhere are forcibly imposing their vision of how people should live and use their own land.” (05/13/08)

“Bulletin to all nations: help! Tornadoes, typhoons and earthquakes batter the globe, while the U.S. is teetering into recession and paralyzed by a stupid war it can neither win nor quit. But somehow we are locked at the hip to Hillary Clinton, who won’t stop her manic tarantella until her party whirls into ruins, like the run-amuck carousel in Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Strangers on a Train.’ … It’s what Hillary’s campaigning has come to: a monotonous exercise in showboating solipsism, like Shirley MacLaine as the geriatric mother in ‘Postcards from the Edge,’ hijacking her daughter’s party and kicking up her heels to sing ‘I’m Still Here!’” (05/14/08)

“When a politician whoops up a really bad public policy, it’s reasonable to ask if said politician is cynical or just stupid. But this one’s a real puzzlement. We’ve seen enough of John McCain to know that he’s not stupid — willful sometimes, erratic for sure, too eager to insult conservatives, and taken to the odd flight of pique or narcissism. But he’s not stupid by a long shot. And for all his faults, he’s not notably cynical. At least for a politician. So how account for the execrable cap and trade policy McCain sprung on us from Portland, Oregon, Monday and which he says will save us from the dreaded carbon dioxide? (If you’re asking: ‘Carbon dioxide — isn’t that what makes the flowers grow and what baby’s breath is made of?’ Answer: yes.)” (05/14/08)

Interview with Tom Wolfe. Wolfe: “As far as the task of the writer, I feel it is to simply discover things that most people don’t know about or find a concept that pulls things together. I totally disagree with Orwell, who I admire. Orwell said, ‘I never wrote a decent word that wasn’t motivated by a deep political feeling.’ I have never written a decent word that was dominated by politics.” (05/13/08)

“When a stunt man falls from a skyscraper, it’s hard not to draw a short breath even if you know he’s going to land on a puffy air bag. Barack Obama lost West Virginia by 30 points, which looks like an enormous fall. Clinton was favored to win the state, but Obama is the all-but-named nominee. Shouldn’t that have prevented such a rout? Whether Obama suffered any damage will be determined by the behavior of the superdelegates in the next few days. Will any of them embrace Clinton after her victory? Right now, Obama’s cushion seems intact.” (05/13/08)

“Sometimes governments act so ridiculous that they clarify the true role of the state. Government chiefs claim they want to reduce environmental damage and promote energy conservation, but in practice, they punish people for doing this. A clear example came to light in a news article in the Los Angeles Times on May 6, 2008. A mechanic was using fuel made of fryer grease for his fleet of motor vehicles. Government’s response was to slap him with fines, paper work, and taxes.” (05/13/08)

“I lean toward the willing-collaborators explanation. Emergency room docs — and this was almost certainly in the emergency room — are, by and large (yes, I’m generalizing here in a big way), cowboy adrenaline junkies with minimal empathy. They don’t intimidate easily, and they don’t spend loads of time agonizing over moral quandaries. They’re also likely to laugh at cops who get in their faces. ‘Were you counting on anesthesia the next time a uniform shows up in my ER?’ is a not-unlikely rejoinder to any police officer who tries to get emergency room staffers to do what they don’t want to do. But either way, medical personnel, like the rest of us, are responsible for their actions. In the absence of guns at their heads, doctors and nurses must answer for the things they do — even if those things are performed at the request of state officials. You don’t get a moral get-out-of-jail-free card because the cops said ‘pretty please’ before you agreed to participate in a horrible civil rights violation.” (05/13/08)

“Meet Sharon Kruse, a 63-year-old widow from Dundee, Michigan, and the US Chamber of Commerce’s latest poster child. Last month, Kruse headlined a new video the chamber released at a press conference devoted to preserving big business’ use of binding mandatory arbitration clauses in consumer and employment contracts. That’s the small print that forces people to waive their right to sue in order to get a cell phone or medical care or even a job. Such clauses require any disputes to be heard by a private arbitrator, usually hired by the alleged wrongdoer. Consumer advocates and many congressional Democrats have blasted the clauses for forcing people to give up their constitutional rights in exchange for ordinary goods and services, a practice they find not just unfair but un-American. Kruse, though, believes otherwise.” [editor’s note: Note the sleight of hand here — an economic transaction which one is free to engage or not engage in, but one party setting terms suddenly transmutes into “force” - TLK] (05/12/08)

“The money men say it is over. The economists say it has just begun. And the politicians are loving every minute of it. Perhaps it all depends on what the meaning of the word ‘it’ is. To Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson ‘it’ is the credit crunch. ‘I am encouraged. I am feeling better about the markets. In terms of the capital markets, I believe we are closer to the end than the beginning. … The worst is likely to be behind us.’ Before you attribute that to the usual cheer-leading expected of a Treasury Secretary, consider the words of legendary investor Warren Buffett, ‘The worst of the crisis on Wall Street is over.’ What these money men have in mind is that the banking system is gradually deleveraging — writing down the rotten paper on and off its balance sheets, and replacing it with massive amounts of new, real capital.” (05/13/08)

“Poor Obama. No matter how much he tries to placate the Israel lobby, they just won’t take yes for an answer. The Lobby has been after him for months, trying to dig up ‘evidence’ that someone with the middle name of ‘Hussein’ is necessarily an enemy of Israel. The best they could come up with so far were the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s jeremiads, which didn’t have much of an effect at the polls, as the North Carolina and Indiana primary results — and subsequent national polls — attest. Yet Obama still keeps trying to appease the Lobby. He’s purged staff members who so much as looked cross-eyed at the Israelis, such as one poor adviser who meekly suggested that talking to Hamas might not be such a bad idea. He was out faster than you can say Mearsheimer and Walt.” (05/14/08)

“If GTA4 were a movie, it would have been directed by Martin Scorsese or David O. Russell, and we’d all be ooohing and aaahhing over its dark, ironic vision of immigrant life in a world at war with itself. But because Liberty City is a video game, where players are in the driver’s seat, so to speak, it freaks people out. Earlier installments of GTA inspired feminist and cultural-conservative outrage (you have the option to kill prostitutes!), and concern over moral turpitude from Hillary Clinton (you can beat cops to death! Or anybody!). And yet there are other video games out there, like the family-friendly role-playing game The Sims, where players can torture people to death in ways far more disturbing than those in GTA. I was just talking to a friend who told me gleefully how he’d taken one of his Sims characters, stuck him in a VR headset, and walled him into a room that only contained an espresso machine. The character kept drinking coffee and playing the headset, pissing in the corners of the room and crying until he died.” (05/07/08)

“In the second week in April, the world’s most elaborate kabuki theater, Washington, offered a stunning performance. America’s two consuls for Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan C. Crocker, gave Congress and the world their appreciation of the situation in that unhappy country. Senators and congressmen listened with rapt attention. The three presidential candidates, aka the three blind mice, postured and preened in the great men’s presence. The press hung on every word. Analysts and columnists parsed their meaning. As with theater, none of it was real. Both Crocker and Petraeus spoke of Iraq as if it were a state.” (05/05/08)

“One proposal is to create human stem cells using altered nuclear transfer (ANT). Championed by Stanford University bioethicist William Hurlbut, the technique is essentially the same as regular cloning except that it uses RNA interference to disable a single crucial gene so that the cloned entity cannot implant into a womb and thus cannot grow into a fully developed embryo. In ANT all of the genes involved would be human, even the one that has been deliberately broken. A number of prominent Roman Catholic thinkers recently endorsed ANT as a morally acceptable way to produce human embryonic stem cells. So whether or not an entity can house a human soul evidently depends on the timing of the operation of a single gene. Other theologians question this, asking why such a cloned entity should not be considered a defective human embryo deserving of same the moral solicitude owed to disabled adult human beings.” (05/13/08)

“Never mind the presidential race. The battle over who will control your health care is already taking place, under the radar, in Congress. In April, House Democrats passed legislation that would impose onerous and unnecessary reporting requirements on people with tax-free health savings accounts. As of January, more than 6 million Americans have HSA coverage. That includes nearly 640,000 Californians, or about 3 percent of all Californians under age 65. In some states, HSA plans cover nearly one in 10 people under 65. Current law requires HSA holders to document their withdrawals in the event of an IRS audit. The new legislation would require every HSA holder to document every HSA withdrawal, every time they file their taxes.” (05/13/08)

“In a perfect world, John McCain would have no chance of winning the 2008 presidential race. After all, in some key areas — Iraq, tax cuts — he represents a continuation of President Bush’s disastrous policies. But, surprise, he has done well in the general election polls pitting him against either Hillary or Obama. … Even a few of my Democrat friends have pronounced themselves OK with a McCain presidency. Frankly, I find this quite frustrating, and feel like asking aloud, ‘Aren’t people paying attention?’ There are several reasons why I couldn’t vote for McCain this fall.” (05/12/08)

“What can $100 million buy you in Congress? If you’re agribusiness, such money spent this past year on lobbying and campaign donations will harvest billions in farm subsidies and keep you in clover for another five years. Congress plans to renew the US agriculture law this week with no apologies for that fact that most of the subsidies will go to the wealthiest 10 percent of recipients and that a majority of this largess will enrich commercial farmers with an average income of $200,000. And the ultimate cost to each US household for this congressional cornucopia? About $320 a year in taxes and higher food prices — beyond the already inflated prices at supermarkets.” [editor’s note: Why crap like this continues unabated, while Presidential campaigns revolve around whose preacher is a bigger idiot … just boggles the mind - SAT] (05/14/08)