State of Nature

Rousseau argued that man is by nature good, and it's society that corrupts him. Rousseau was a romantic. Hobbes argued that the State of Nature is a "War of All Against All," where the only principles are force and fraud, and in which the life of man is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." He said that people then abandon any notion of individual rights and become willing to turn all power over to an absolute sovereign in return for the safety of themselves and their families.

Hobbes was a realist. The situation described below will not transition to Jeffersonian Democracy, but to some form of Strong Man Rule, in effect the reestablishment of the ancient African pattern of absolute monarchs with personal armies. This will likely occur through brutal competition as local warlords seek to expand their territories. What's required is somebody to amass enough brute force to declare and enforce martial law. The people will be grateful for that dictator, and who could blame them?

So much for "African liberation." Walter Bagehot had it right when he wrote that, to begin with, the quantity of politics is far more important than its quality. Another realist.

Byron

AFRICA’S FOREVER WARS:

What we are seeing is the decline of the classic African liberation movement and the proliferation of something else — something wilder, messier, more violent, and harder to wrap our heads around. If you’d like to call this war, fine. But what is spreading across Africa like a viral pandemic is actually just opportunistic, heavily armed banditry. My job as the New York Times’ East Africa bureau chief is to cover news and feature stories in 12 countries. But most of my time is spent immersed in these un-wars.

I’ve witnessed up close — often way too close — how combat has morphed from soldier vs. soldier (now a rarity in Africa) to soldier vs. civilian. Most of today’s African fighters are not rebels with a cause; they’re predators. That’s why we see stunning atrocities like eastern Congo’s rape epidemic, where armed groups in recent years have sexually assaulted hundreds of thousands of women, often so sadistically that the victims are left incontinent for life. What is the military or political objective of ramming an assault rifle inside a woman and pulling the trigger? Terror has become an end, not just a means.

Obama polling

I keep hearing that despite all President Clueless remains "personally popular."

With the fawning media, perhaps. Who else? (see below)

On the merits, his job approval should be near zero. What's there to approve of? Show me the list, somebody. The brightest spot, ironically, is military policy, which has been to leave Bush's policies in place, policies that Obama, Biden, Reid, and Pelosi all railed against and declared to be a failure when Bush was running things, more than once shamefully declaring Iraq to be "lost." But let's see how Obama's one innovation, withdrawal by timetable, works out.

Byron

Obama's fifth-quarter Gallup approval slips, among worst 3 of modern presidents

A new Gallup Poll just out finds Obama's fifth quarterly poll score (Jan. 20-April 19) to be 48.8% job approval, down from his fourth quarter approval of 50.8%. The average fifth quarterly score since Gallup began tracking it in 1945 is 54%.

But by far the best fifth-quarter presidential job approval in modern history was George W. Bush's 79.5%.

By this point in his presidency Bill Clinton had slipped to 52.1% approval en route to such a disastrous first midterm election that the Democratic Party lost control of both houses of Congress to the Republicans for the first time in four decades.

The Obama Effect

People know that something has gone wrong.

I thought the GOP blew their chance about as completely as it's possible to do, last time they had control in Washington. But the Obama-Pelosi-Reid team has left them in the dust and set a new standard altogether.

What's the dynamic that drives this kind of disastrous over-reaching? Maybe it's that when either party gains control, they think that (at last!) they have a mandate for their ideologically-drive wish list, and based on that perception of a mandate they go pedal to metal. They forget that this is a fundamentally centrist nation. When one party wins decisively it's always a matter of public disgust with the other party and the desire to throw those bums out. And that's about all it is. Achieving office because you're the lesser evil carries no mandate.

Since politicians never get any smarter, the only solution is Divided Government, which is merely another application of the idea of the Separation of Powers -- which is the single best idea anyone ever had when it comes to wise government.

Byron


Pew: Trust in government reaching new low

Pew Research has published a new survey of American attitudes towards government and “partisan rancor,” and the results don’t hold much promise for big-government politicians. Instead of finding Hope and Change in the expansion of government, more and more Americans want reform of the federal bureaucracy and its power and authority reduced, not expanded. The number of people who say they trust the government dropped to its lowest point in fifty years:

By almost every conceivable measure Americans are less positive and more critical of government these days. A new Pew Research Center survey finds a perfect storm of conditions associated with distrust of government — a dismal economy, an unhappy public, bitter partisan-based backlash, and epic discontent with Congress and elected officials.

Rather than an activist government to deal with the nation’s top problems, the public now wants government reformed and growing numbers want its power curtailed. With the exception of greater regulation of major financial institutions, there is less of an appetite for government solutions to the nation’s problems — including more government control over the economy — than there was when Barack Obama first took office.

Synergy

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/extramarital-sex-fuels-earthquakes-warns-iran-cleric/story-fn3dxity-1225854907773

' "Many women who dress inappropriately ... cause youths to go astray, taint their chastity and incite extramarital sex in society, which increases earthquakes," Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi told worshippers at overnight prayers in Tehran.'

The Sex Principle of Islamic Seismology was actually discovered by the Ayatollah -- peace be upon him -- one evening in his unmarried youth, when, while being entertained by a young lady named Sameeha ("The Generous") he observed that the earth did, indeed, move.

Clearly, Iran is in good hands, but we can benefit, also. The Ayatollah -- may he bathe peacefully in the blood of the infidel -- needs to get together with our Congressman Hank Johnson (DEMOCRAT-GA), who fears that population increase in Guam will cause the island to tip over and capsize.

From the astute analysis provided by the Ayatollah -- may his sword fall peacefully through the filthy dog neck of the unbeliever -- one immediately sees that the solution to the Guam problem is to stop the extramarital sex that's causing the population increase that, in turn, is threatening to capsize the island. And with the side benefit of decreasing the chances of earthquakes!

Has this got Nobel Prize written all over it, or what?

Byron

Splat

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

Down 7 points in 4 days:
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 27% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -15.

If the Strongly Approve/Disapproves actually vote this way, and the remaining 31% split 50/50, then it would be a 15-pt loss in the general election. I can't find the detailed breakdown, but it would be worse than that if the 31% split against Obama, which seems likely, and if those who want the incumbent administration tossed out are more likely to show up and vote, which also seems likely.

Obama needs an economic miracle, but where does that come from? His own policies seem designed to handicap economic growth, not stimulate it. Even improving growth numbers won't do it unless they're accompanied by significant decreases in unemployment. Nobody is expecting much of that, and all those temp Census hires being dumped back on the job market won't help a bit. Obama got big majorities among young voters, but now the unemployment problem is particularly acute for the young -- and beginning to appear chronic. There's no Unemployment Compensation for people trying to find their first job. Obama was very attractive to college students; he may be less so to those same voters if they are now unemployed or underemployed, doing fruitless job searches on the web from Mom's basement. Not the Change they were Hoping for.

As we go along, it will be interesting to follow the "Right Direction - Wrong Direction" poll numbers, and the pace of Congressional retirements. I suspect that plenty of Dems are already investigating their private sector options. Gotta jump while there are still some prime K Street lifeboats, etc., left to jump into. Last one out risks becoming, say, Commissioner of a Triple-A baseball league, or Bob Dole's replacement as pitchman for Viagra.

Byron

Goldman Sachs

Instapundit.com:

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: “It was inevitable that the government would go after one of the big investment banks for their conduct during the run up to the credit crisis. Someone must be thrown to the lions so that the polis are distracted from the role their government played in the fiasco.”

By its system of taxation, regulatory regimes, etc., Government creates the incentive structure within which firms operate.

Bad incentive structures eventually produce bad behavior. Film at eleven!

Somebody on the radio today was arguing that Wall Street changed in a fundamental way when the big investment houses stopped being partnerships, where the partners' personal fortunes depended on the firm's success. Instead, they are now publicly-traded, owned by stockholders, with management receiving astronomical pay and enormous bonuses, delivered on a seemingly non-contingent basis.

So instead of having their own money at risk, management gets incredibly rich by risking other people's money with little or no penalty for losing it, however irresponsibly. To that add competition, greed, and Government incentives that promote irresponsibility, as in the sub-prime mess, and you have what anybody should recognize as a fool-proof prescription for financial meltdown.

What I can't come up with is any even vaguely plausible scenario where that set of incentives could lead to anything but disaster, which of course it did. The complete disregard for common sense here is very discouraging.

Byron

Comedy gold

NYT: ObamaCare may have accidentally stripped Congress of health coverage

The perfect ending to a day that saw support for repealing O-Care reach a new high in Rasmussen (58 percent) and support for The One reach a new weekly low in Gallup (47 percent)...

Hilarious. Maybe they should have read the bill before they passed it.

Byron

FDR & New Deal

Did FDR End the Depression?
The economy took off after the postwar Congress cut taxes

Correct conclusion, but could be better argued. The comparison with Europe seems very telling. Sweden had recovered from the Great Depression by 1935, Germany did it by 1936, Britain in 1938. But, unfortunately for the Folsoms' argument, weren't those recoveries in every case due to Keynesian deficit spending by those governments? Yes, I think so -- government spending for massive rearmament programs in the case of Germany and then Britain. But experience clearly shows that tax cutting is the right move when the current baseline is already very high levels of government spending, huge deficits, and high taxes. That describes our situation at the end of WWII, and today; tax cuts worked then and they will work now. The government pump-priming Obama is fixated on is not working, and will not work, against a high spending-high deficits-high taxation baseline. In his commitment to government stimulus, Obama is just stuck on stupid.

Byron

Quick, call Ripley

PETER SUDERMAN: Chaos In The Massachusetts Health Care Market.

Want a preview of ObamaCare in action? Check out the Massachusetts insurance market—which earlier this week entered a state of ‘market chaos’ after Governor Deval Patrick denied a host of health insurance rate increases.

Posted at 2:24 pm by Glenn Reynolds

Let's do the rocket science:

Rate increases are denied by the state, to keep itself from going bankrupt. So insurers cut coverages and reimbursement rates, to keep their companies from going bankrupt. Doctors start to refuse patients in the state plan, to keep themselves from going bankrupt.

This inevitably leads to the destruction of the private health insurance market, a Federal takeover of health care funding, and a system of Federal mandates to make the whole mess appear to work -- for example, doctors being required to treat patients at the stipulated Government rate of reimbursement, and, of course, rationing in all its various forms.

The best and brightest will no longer look to a career in medicine, and the development of new drugs and medical devices will be crippled. That Alzheimer's cure you'd been hoping for? Forget it! (Sorry)

Obysmal refers to this as "improving access to quality health care." Socialism triumphs when it succeeds in making everybody equally bad off.

Well, not quite everybody. The rich will fly to Geneva for their health care, or to the new facilities that will spring up to serve them in Costa Rica and Bermuda -- and of course Congress will retain its own Cadillac system. The new system is for the Little People.

Byron

Priestly celibacy

Sooner or later, bad ideas take their toll. Priestly celibacy is another example of pious hope triumphing over experience and common sense. In past eras, common sense took the form of looking the other way when it came to priests having mistresses or visiting prostitutes. On the principle that "hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue," allowances were made for the fact that a human being charged with emulating Jesus was likely to fall off the wagon from time to time.

That can't be conceded in our elevated age, of course, so instead we have priests with an entirely new take on the idea of ministering to the young. Thus do the elderly ecclesiastics at the Vatican find themselves presiding over a moral and financial catastrophe, and aren't they doing a bang-up job so far.

Sometimes old ideas become new all over again. The famous early Christian theologian and scholar Origen (c. 185-254), following Matthew 19:12, castrated himself. If the Pope can't bring himself to countenance priestly marriage, then maybe OFS (Origen's Final Solution) could be revisited as the lesser-evil alternative to child molestation. More sopranos for the choir, too.

Byron


Below from Wikipedia:

Celibacy for priests is a discipline in the Roman Catholic Church, not a doctrine: in other words, a church regulation, but not an integral part of Church teaching. It is based upon the life of Christ and his celibate way of life. However the first pope, St. Peter, as well as many subsequent popes, bishops, and priests during the church's first 270 years were in fact married men, and often fathers...

New opposition appeared in connection with the Protestant Reformation...The Reformers made abolition of clerical continence and celibacy a key element in their reform. They denounced it as opposed to the New Testament recommendation that a cleric should be "the husband of one wife" (see on 1 Timothy 3:2–4 above), the declared right of the apostles to take around with them a believing Christian as a wife (1 Corinthians 9:5) and the admonition, "Marriage should be honoured by all" (Hebrews 13:4). They blamed it for widespread sexual misconduct among the clergy...

Because the rule of clerical celibacy is a law and not a doctrine, exceptions can be made, and it can, in principle, be changed at any time by the Pope. Nonetheless, both the present Pope, Benedict XVI, and his predecessor, spoke clearly of their understanding that the traditional practice is unlikely to change.

Underestimation

Instapundit:

UGH: Texas HHS chief: ObamaCare will cost our state almost 20 times Waxman’s estimate. Maybe we should subpoena Waxman to testify about his numbers under oath.

$27 billion, not $1.4 billion. I think this sets the new record, so far. Medicare only turned out to cost a little over 9 times the estimates. So far.

No wonder Obysmal is suddenly so eager to drill for oil. As realistic numbers continue to come in, I expect he'll announce a new program to dig for gold. The less said about interest rates and the bond markets, the better.

Having Henry Waxman testify would be OK, but only if it's not televised. Hours of looking up his flaring nostrils? By all that's holy, we need to consider the children.

Byron