Biden Befuddled

Barbara West of WFTV in Orlando, Florida interviewed the presumptive next VP, Joe Biden over the week end.  See didn't soft ball it either.  She quoted Marx on taking from the able to give to the needy and asked whether that wasn't what Obama was advocating.  Joe's answer?  "Are you joking?  Is this a serious question?"  Clearly ill at ease at the sudden spike in the intellectual level in the room, Biden stumbled through the standard Democratic answer.  But her last question regarding the US becoming the next Sweden and Joe's answer are the highlight. The link is here

While this is bad enough, the Obama organization's blacklisting of WFTV until after the election is evil to the core.  It says, in effect, if you ask us the hard questions we won't talk to you.  Is this censorship? No. But it is close, and it indicates that the Obama organization is prepared to give an Emperor's thumbs down to anyone who crosses them.  Political censorship already exists in the McCain-Feingold legislation, and this move by Obama indicates his willingness to limit political speech if it doesn't conform to his idea of a "valid" question.

I do believe that we should be prepared for that possibility.

Does Anyone Share This Puzzlement?

I keep hearing about the catastrophe that would have happened had we not done all the things that we have done to stop the catastrophe from happening.  Has anybody out there heard anyone describe the might-have-been catastrophe that is worse than the one we have?

Reminds me of the joke about the guy who was throwing watermelon seeds out the window of the bus.  His seatmate asked him, "why?"  "To keep away the elephants," the man answered.  "But there aren't any elephants any where near here," answered the seatmate.   "See how well they work?" said the man.

Just so well have all the things government has done, is doing and will ever do actually worked.

The Immediate Range of the Moment

I suppose it is possible that someone reading this, if anyone is -- I really am writing for myself this time -- hasn't read Atlas Shrugged and doesn't know that there are passages that so mirror today's headlines that if I didn't reject the whole idea of fortune telling I would be inclined to count the text as prophecy.  

Really remarkable and worthy of note is that it is not prophecy  but a logical projection of what happens in a welfare state even without a John Galt to hurry the process along.

That the results of years of social and economic planning should come home to roost in an election year is something that a fiction writer would not make part of a plot on the grounds  of melodramatic overkill.  That we should be talking openly -- and  in the media, approvingly -- of the turn away from the current state of affairs (astonishingly to some, labelled "capitalism" by the media and economic pundits) to socialism.

Since it appears nearly certain that Obama will win the election,  there are good reasons to abstain from voting this year.  I, however,  believe that he should win by a landslide with the majority in the House and Senate riding on his coattails.   My reason is simple: he needs to feel that he has a mandate to destroy the economy.   Only with an overwhelming mandate will he do openly what every ounce of his being wants him to do -- destroy the good for being the good. 

I am not going to argue the case for this claim here today.   Today my purpose is to point out, before the election, that anything less than a mandate will bring Obama to the left middle.  This will give us time to continue the fight, of course, and that time must be weighed in the balance in making your decision. But I believe, given the underwhelming negative response to his ideas. that a "laboratory demonstration" is necessary if we are going to have a truly free country in the long run.

There is a single reason that I believe that the long run (and thus a mandate) is to be preferred -- the fact that this is a psycho-epistemological and ethical war.  Objectivists are fighting a war against an enemy of which most of the public -- and certainly not the mob of students that is so enthusiastically cheering for Obama -- is unaware.  As Tara Smith points out in her essay"The Menace Of Pragmatism" and as Yaron Brook reiterates in "The Resurgence of Big Government," the dominate philosophy in the US is now pragmatism combined with altruism.  She says:

"[P]ragmatism steadily convinces people that they do not need to take a strong action in order to oppose destructive ideologies.  It dampens the willingness to fight for spreading the belief that fights are never constructive."

If that isn't a description of the culture at work today, I can think of no better.

In addition, using Dr. Peikoff's DIM hypothesis, there are only mis-integrators and dis-integrators in leadership positions. 

In short, we need the time to educate and develop a culture that is psycho-epistemologically long range and ethically egotistical and we need time to produce a statesman that is thoroughly steeped in such a worldview.  Nothing could be worse,in my view, than Sarah Palin leading us into a future we do not understand and which they will not support past the first objection or the first claim that they are "extremists."  

Today's voter should get what he is asking for and everything that it implies in immediately graspable perceptual concrete terms.  

AF

Not to be Missed

This piece by Brandon Byrd at NoodleFood straighened out a lot of my thinking about Greenspan's tenure at the Fed and his often referenced connection to Objectivism.  In addition, Mr. Byrd presents a clear analysis of those who attack Rand without actually knowing what she said.

If your lover sends you letters of goodbye...

Does anyone reading this remember Johnny Ray's hit, named above?  

I've been sitting for long hours every day watching CNBC (Fox Business is not available on basic cable here and we can't afford the upgrade) with tears streaming down my face at "so much that had been possible" which is disappearing rapidly.  I had thought that I would live to see the day when the obvious value of Capitalism would have turned a corner in the publlic's conception of the world.

Obviously the pundits, the commentators, the members of the news media, -- f do not.  And the truth of Ayn Rand's insight into the nature of Capitalism and of compromise with conservatives and Libertarians is unfolding before our eyes.  Capitalism = Bush and McCain and (heaven help us) Palin.   The once Grand Old Party has become the home of folk-wisdom, envy, and power that mirrors the population at large in its willingness to sell its most cherished and important discovery - the nature and requirments of freedom - for a mess of potage.      

So my lover of 50 years is leaving and sending me daily messages of her progress.                                                                                                                                                                                                   And so I cry.                                                          

Where's the Beef?

Sent to CNBC

Show me the lack of money!  It has suddenly occurred to me to do what I wolud do if I were a detective  looking for evidence of the death of available money.

 

First I checked my own history history. When the brokers were trying to maintain the bubble that was making them rich, it was easy to get a loan.  In fact we didn't even have to try.  WE WERE CALLED.  Nobody doing that no more.

 

Now you have to qualify.  You have to call the bank (have you done that?) and ask them if they have money to lend. They will say yes...but you have to  qualify.

 

So here's a news directors assignment for you.  When you find those poor souls whose businesses are in danger of closing because they can't get any more credit ---- ask them how leveraged their business was when they started.  Had they saved enough to keep the business open for a year even if nobody came. Did their business plan include a detailed study of the market, the location and the demographics of the area where they were going to open?.  In other words should they have been granted a loan in the first place?

 

Before you discuss how dire the situation is find out why.

 

I expect to see the copy on my desk tomorrow morning.

 

AF

 

www.atlasfan.org

Weeding the Garden

It suddenly has occurred to me that all the banks in the area where I live are advertising that they have money to lend.  The problem is not the "liquidity of money" it's the lack of real productivity on the part of most of business --indeed most of the world. I don't have time to go into this in great detail today, but I wanted to make note of it here because it is important to know that what you are hearing is not true. 

What is true is pragmatism (See Tara Smith's insightful article in TOC's fall issue) and altruism (the people who are hurting are the people and businesses that should be) and the fact that the Democrat's and the politicos of both parties need to have an emergency to have anything to do.

I urge you to call your bank -- call five banks in your area -- and ask them if they have money to lend.  I will bet you any amount that they will say yes . . . IF you qualify.  In other words they are no longer calling you on the phone soliciting you with lines like "what would you say if I asked you if there were anyway you could use a little extra cash in your pocket right now?  That line assumes that there is nothing you have to do - no discriminatory qualifications you have to meet -- to re-fi your house and be a consumer and drive the economy.

There is a lot more to this story. But it will have to wait.

AF

The congress is the kind of doctor that we shouldn't trust

To CNBC

The metaphor that contrasts surgery and a patient with cancer with this monetary crisis and the government bailout is totally fallacious. The doctor knows what he is doing, he is doing it with the patients permission, is not doing something just to do something, has a valid scientific basis for it and, hopefully, is speaking plainly to his patient about the fact that this will change his life.  In other words, it's not more of the same poison.  The bailout is the same "pragmatic" range-of-the-moment poison that has caused this mess.  The nation needs to go cold turkey. Period.

Someone needs to tell this patient that the government is no longer going to get in their way or try to help with their problems.  Maybe we'd all grow up.

The doctor who is not willing to tell his patient that he is not doing healthy things is not worth the money he's paid.

Who do you Trust?

Sent to Power Lunch at CNBC

"Yes, the objections stem, in large part, from lack of trust in the banks.  But . . . WHY?  Why don't the people who, like my wife and I did, refinanced their houses with a sub-prime loan trust the banks?   A single sentence says it all.   The banks didn't deliver on the American Dream at little or no cost.  That's what was promised. It wasn't delivered.   The broker who wrote the paper on our house promised that all sorts of nice things would happen as a result of  lowering our interest rate, improving our credit score and thus be it possible to refinance the loan again in  about six months. Nothing like that happened.  When the ARM was about to kick in, we realized that we were not going to be able to pay the bill.  We were wise enough this time to look at the options and do what we should have done a year before.  We declared Bancruptcy, sold the house and moved to a much smaller apartment.  We took the hit.  And we did it with full knowledge of what we had done to cause our plight.  We knew we were lying about our income and ability to pay.  We were encouraged to do it.  BUT THAT DOESN"T EXHONERATE US! We let our emotions -- our desire to have our cake and eat it too -- override our ethics.  We wanted it. We wished for the life we wanted to live and that the loan would make possible, we thought.  That is why some people don't want money sent to wall sreet (i.e. the banks)...they want it sent to them.  

Ask them.  Offer them this plan.  The government will  find out what each person/family who can't pay their mortgage and has a sub prime loan how much they stll owe.  That amount plus 10% for the fact that the government let them down will be sent to them in the form of a direct deposit or a money order in the amount they need .  (Not serious please)

 

They have been taught that they have a right to stay in their homes, live the American Dream and to medical care. They have been told, even though everyone knows it is not so, that they are the driving force, with their unlimited desire for wealth and their pragmatic belief that anything is possible, behind the whole economy.  Now, when they really need it the govenment lets them down.  They already take taxes; now they want to take their home, just like the bank wants to.

 

Can you blame them for being a little mistrustful?