The Virtue of Selfishness

Obama says about his plans to add to the tax burden:

John McCain and Sarah Palin they call this socialistic. You know I don’t know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness.

Since the left bloggers have been waging war on objectivism and Ayn Rand in particular, it makes sense that this would surface in Obama's speech. What it reveals is that despite his attempts to portray himself as a centrist, he is what he appears to be: a hard core radical leftist with a socialist philosophy of government and finance.

Obama says he can enrich the individual at the expense of other individuals but that is the oldest con after 'try it, you'll like it'. It only enriches the con man. When done to an eager mark, it is an act of confidence over arrogance. When done to a country simply wanting to be rid of confidence men, it is fraud against justice.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand -

The extreme objectivist position is that if a government gives to each according to needs and takes according to abilities, a society of incapable needy emerges. Experience shows that is too extreme. What happens is the needy move to the capable and unless the capable take more, they can't give more. This is called the 'free rider' dilemma in web communities. The response is usually to close the lists to real contributors with participation agreements for intellectual property that do not harm the commons but do not enable the commons to be pillaged.

Objectivism isn't wrong. Rand overromanticized her position but behaviorally, it is correct.

Selfishness isn't virtuous but neither is theft by a powerful minority in the name of an undiscriminated majority. It is the supreme confidence game which victimizes the poor and the rich simultaneously for the good of a few who are grabbing for wealth and power. In short, it is piracy, a very democratic institution, which, by the way, is why America is a republic.

Always A Woman

The gals at ABC, Claire and Katy, are discussing with their husbands why men like Sarah Palin. The comments are like those at Taplin's blog: men are obsessed by sex.

It's a cop out as explanations go. Men are obsessed about cars but they don't want them to run the country, just the track. Yes, NASCAR is a metaphor for life.

If a man's opinion about men's opinions counts, then I know why I like Palin:

She likes men. And she doesn't apologize for it.

She stands up to the media onslaught like a beauty queen and keeps smiling. Every day her media chops get better and yet her personality remains convivial and compassionate.

She is Caribou Barbie and you know what, that's a pretty good example to follow.

In other words, she's normal. After the slutarama starting with Madonna through Pink, or the hobnailed boots approach from Joy Behar, aka, Grandma Grumpy, it is attractive to see a woman act as if being a woman was a good thing but not a special thing.

Chalk it up to minority fatigue. Fifty years of majority-be-guilty has gotten very old.

Give us a woman we can love easily and we will love them forever.

Give us an ordeal and a deal is all it will ever be.

Palin represents something that angers a lot of women: a successful woman, standing proud, staying tough, and holding on to hers by rights without a fight.

When any of you can do that, you'll quit talking about womenomics and start running a country.

Palin may not be your cup of tea but she always a woman to me.

Original Inspiration

There is a text circulating among the Obama supporters that cause them to become weak kneed. It goes as follows:

Rosa sat, so Martin could walk

Martin walked so Barack could run

Barack is running so our children can fly

It is inspiring but not original. Here is the original from Flip Wilson:

"Before this church can do great things for God, it's gotta learn to crawl."

"Let it crawl, Rev" shouts the congregation, "Let it crawl."

"And when it's learned to crawl" the preacher continued, "it's gotta learn to walk."

"Let it walk," the congregation responds loudly, "Let it walk!"

Then, fixing them with his eye, the preacher shouted, "And when it's learned to walk, it's gotta run and we all know a church can't run without money!"

There is a momentary silence, then the congregation responds,

"Let it crawl, Rev, let it crawl!"

The Great Get Even

Some of the right wingers are comparing Obama to Chairman Mao. I don't agree.

What we are seeing is the immaturity of the current electorate in action. The Bush administration is like a starter marriage gone bad for two teen agers. Once they become spiteful, one will choose a new partner with the maximum potential to make the old partner mad. It doesn't matter if the new partner has glaring character flaws to any third party, the slicker the better because revenge is living well in the eye of the party out for revenge.

Obama is the Democrats introducing that revenge, the Great Get Even, to the American public and like a teen-ager out to settle scores, Americans are buying it. It will be six months before they realize just what a horrible mistake they have made. As an old song said, "We got married in a fever hotter than a pepper sprout"

Watch the entertainment as this new couple goes to battling the way they did in the Carter years, unless of course, Obama manages to get his civilian police corp established. Then it will be time to get a passport and get the hell out of Jackson.

The Swift Wind Turbine

For those of you interested in the greening of the planet, here is a wind turbine for the home. The Swift produces about 1.5kw at 35 decibels given average winds. So you mileage may vary and it isn't as inexpensive as some would like, but it is definitely a step in the right direction.

To make headway against our energy challenges, replacing a 19th century design grid that stores power by keeping it in cirulation on a nationwide system with small local grids that produce power close to the point of consumption is the key idea.

Localize. Localize. Localize.

Close the Barnyard Gate

First, Watergate, Whitewatergate, Travelgate, Cattlegate, Indonesiagate and now Troopergate and WardrobeGate.

Then there was the gate to summarize all of the Clinton gates: TailGate.

I think we've almost covered the barnyard with gates now and the animals are still getting out of the pens.

This should be the year we officially retire this meme. Let's call them scandals, high crimes and misdemenors so someone has to actually file a charge or indict before the innuendo consumes the news cycle for a week.

No video for this. Just a song.

Redistributing the Wealth

Barack Obama, in 2001:

You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil-rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay, but the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.

And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution — at least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [It] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

And that hasn’t shifted, and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil-rights movement was because the civil-rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.