No Pope Yet

Is he ready?

 

 

How great would that be?

Illinois, the State of Ponzi

Via Meadia writes this morning on the Illinois pension crisis:

Illinois’ pension troubles have just taken a criminal turn. The SEC hit the state with charges of securities fraud yesterday, claiming that Illinois repeatedly misled investors about the state of its pension programs over the past decade. Between 2005 and 2009, the state issued $2.2 billion dollars in bonds while claiming that its pension funds were adequately funded, neglecting to inform investors that many within the government believed the system was headed for collapse. Instead, the state used creative accounting tricks to disguise the extent of the problem. As the pensions sank deeper into their hole, the state was forced to become increasingly creative.
 

It's about time.   This is a nationwide scandal at every level of government, from counties up to the federal government.   We have made promises of future retirement and healthcare benefits to public employees that we cannot keep.   We can't afford it.   It will crush us.   And we've papered over those facts with rosy actuarial assumptions of future growth in the retirement plans' portfolios that the last 13 years of flat markets don't justify.   And meanwhile the same governments have been incurring debt with even more false promises that they will be able to pay it off.  

Illinois needs to be renamed The State of Ponzi.   But, then, that name might already be taken by California, or Rhode Island, or Maryland, or New Jersey.

P.S.  Note that the states in the most pension trouble are the bluest of the blue states.

The Ryan Budget

 

Paul Ryan's new budget, discussed here on NRO, puts the country on a path toward a balanced budget in ten years.   The editors of NRO call Ryan's budget a "broad vision for the fiscal future of the United States [and] an important step in the right direction if it were to become law."

Now, I love Paul Ryan.   I think he's a great public servant in the true sense of the term.   But, come on.   

Ten years?  

Between Fort Sumter and Appomattox was four years.   Between Pearl Harbor and the surrender on the U.S.S Missouri was less than that.   Between JFK's promise and Neil Armstrong's footprints was a little over eight years.  Heck, from John the Baptist to the Cross, Jesus Christ's ministry was only a little over three years!

But our best and brightest and boldest can't get us to a balanced budget inside of a decade?  Really? 

And what's really sad is that the same NRO article actually hints at a path that would balance the budget much sooner:

What Ryan’s budget does not contain, it should be emphasized, is spending cuts. The difference between Ryan’s balanced budget and Obama’s crippling deficits is this: Ryan proposes that federal spending be allowed to grow at 3.4 percent a year rather than the 5 percent rate it is expected to hit otherwise. That is the most important context for this debate: For a difference of 1.6 percentage points in the growth of federal spending, we get a balanced budget in ten years instead of a headlong rush into a debt crisis on the Greco-Spanish model.

If "only" allowing the budget to grow at 3.4 percent a year for the next ten years leads to a balanced budget, why not let it grow at only 1 or 2% and balance it sooner?   Indeed, if the nearly $4 trillion federal budget is scheduled to grow at 5% a year, or about $200 billion a year, why not say we're going to keep the same gargantuan federal spending we have now, which is a trillion or more dollars greater than it was only 5 years ago, until the budget is balanced in 4 or 5 years.   Would that really be so "painful" (as Obama says) that the American people couldn't survive?   Are we really so weak that only a $4 trillion government can save us?

 

The political class has utterly failed us if they can't even imagine a scenario where balancing the budget sooner than ten years is possible.    We've reached the point where W.B. Yeats is right:  the "best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

And what worries me, as the father of three, is "what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born."  
 

Ignorance of the Law

One of the principles of the law is that to be effective it must be published, so that citizens may know what it is they must conform their behavior to.   A secret law is no law at all.    Thus, for public laws, we rightly say that "ignorance of the law" is no excuse, because the citizen has had a reasonable opportunity to know what is expected of him, and to act accordingly.

A corollary to this is that a law, though published, that is too vague to be understood by a reasonable man, is null and void.   They call this Constitutional argument the "void for vagueness" argument.  Essentially, if a law is too vague to be understood and acted upon by citizens, it violates due process.

What then are we to make of this law?   How exactly are men supposed to conform their behavior to this?

These are the regulations promulgated thus far to implement Obamacare. Do you know what's in them? Does anyone? And, if not, do we still live under the rule of law? Or do we live at the mercy of a bureaucracy in Washington, that may order us about as it chooses?

Dark times.

Cardinal Collins: "This Isn't Politics"

Via the great new blog, Whispers in the Loggia, this is Cardinal Thomas Collins of Toronto reflecting on the papal conclave.   I love it when he bristles a little when, in responding to a question about whether he has a favorite, he says that they are going to pray about it, and  the reporter says he's being a politician.   Cardinal Collins says "this isn't politics, it really isn't, that's the way it's spun, but this is the choosing of the Vicar of Christ on Earth, it really is a prayerful thing."   He goes on to say that "a lot of the categories used to define such things [he undoubtedly means progressive or reformist or traditionalist or conservative] aren't really helpful."  

The bigness of Cardinal Collins as a man, the largeness of heart and soul, shines through.   The reporter is doing his job, and there's nothing wrong with that.   But the contrast is striking.   One man is thinking on a time horizon of a news cycle, the other on a time horizon of eternity.

The Falklands Principle

Argentina wants the Falkland Islands, which they call the Malvinas.   They have for a long time, and thirty or so years ago even tried to take them from the Brits.   But the actual people who live there want to stay as a British protectorate.   Today they voted overwhelmingly to remain under British rule, with something like 99.8% of the vote in a referendum affirming that desire.

The Obama Administration has studiously remained neutral in the Falklands/Malvinas dispute.   Just last year, at the "Summit of the Americas" in Cartagena, he confirmed his administration's neutrality (although mistakenly referring to the islands as the "Maldives," which is a different island group off the coast of India).  

Given today's vote, however, what would be the principled basis for remaining neutral?   America is a democracy.   We presumably believe in self-determination.   We supported the popular elections of leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.   John Kerry, Obama's new Secretary of State, has referred to the government of Iran as "elected."   So on what principle would Obama deny self-determination to the people of the Falkland Islands?

I can tell you what his "principle" would be.   His principle, which in my observation has governed much of his foreign policy, is that Western European civilizations are bad, and must be opposed regardless of the merits of their claims, and non-European cultures are good, and must be supported regardless of the demerits of their claims.  

I just don't think he'll admit it.  

George Weigel on the Path Forward for Catholicism

In a really interesting article today on the "micro-cultures" of papal conclaves over the past century, George Weigel appends this coda, which pretty much sums up where we're at as Catholics ca. 2013:

The fundamental direction of 21st-century Catholicism seems set: Whether the venue is Africa, Asia, Latin America, or the North Atlantic world, the Catholicism with a future is a robustly evangelical, dynamically orthodox Catholicism that invites the world into friendship with the Lord Jesus Christ, that defends the dignity of every human life and the “first freedom” of religious liberty for all, and that models a more humane way of life amidst the chill winds of postmodern nihilism and skepticism. The question that will begin to be answered when the white smoke goes up is whether that process of deep Catholic reform, in the service of profound conversion and renewed evangelical energy, will be accelerated by the new pope.

Weigel's new book Evangelical Catholicism is a must read.  

The Judgment of the Conclave

From Whispers in the Loggia, a great new blog about Catholicism from an evangelical (i.e., George Weigelian) perspective:

“Testor Christum Dominum, qui me iudicaturus est, me eum eligere, quem secundum Deum iudico eligi debere.”

“I call as my witness Christ the Lord who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one who before God I think should be elected.”

Now, imagine saying those words while looking up at The Last Judgment... and all that stands between you and it is the urn into which you’ll then place your ballot.

***

According to the schedule as I understand it, the Cardinals go into the Sistine Chapel for the balloting at 4:30 pm Rome time today, which would be 9:30 am Central.   So they are about to go in now.

Apparently Non-Catholics Want the Catholic Church to Move in a "New Direction"

Quinnipiac has a new poll out that purports to show that Catholics are leading the way on moving the country toward same-sex marriage:

American voter support for same-sex marriage is inching up and now stands at 47 – 43 percent, including 54 – 38 percent among Catholic voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

This compares to a 48 – 46 percent statistical tie among all voters on same-sex marriage December 5 and reverses the 55 – 36 percent opposition in a July, 2008, survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University. …

“Catholic voters are leading American voters toward support for same-sex marriage,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “Among all voters, there is almost no gender gap, but a big age gap. Voters 18 to 34 years old support same sex marriage 62 – 30 percent; voters 35 to 54 years old are divided 48 – 45 percent and voters over 55 are opposed 50 – 39 percent.["]

If you look deeper at the poll results, however, you find out that the poll doesn't really say what the pollsters say it says.    Of the Catholics surveyed, only 31% attend Mass every week, while 39% never attend or attend only a few times a year.   In the middle are another 12% who attend "almost" every week, and 18% who attend only "once or twice a month."

Look, this is simple.   If you (a) don't attend Mass, and (b) don't believe in the long-held and clearly-stated beliefs of the Church about sexual morality, including on marriage, contraception and abortion, you are not Catholic.   You may falsely call yourself Catholic out of some sort of odd sense that you are supposed to, or some ill-considered conception that it's an ethnicity of some sort, or out of habit, or because you think it's somehow "cool" and "edgy" to be a fallen-away Catholic.   But you are not Catholic.  

So why do pollsters persist in polling as "Catholics" people who obviously aren't?   Laziness.   Intellectual sloppiness.   And, more likely, a desire to push a particular agenda -- secular, liberal, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage.   Not by accident, if you go to the press release at Quinnipiac, you read the results under this headline:

American Catholics Support Same-Sex Marriage, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Catholics Want New Direction From Next Pope

Well, I want a new direction from the radical imams in Egypt and Iran and Pakistan and Saudia Arabia and across the Islamic world.   But, since I'm not Islamic, don't believe in Islam, don't practice Islam, don't attend prayers at my local mosque, etc., WHY SHOULD ANYONE GIVE A SHIT WHAT DIRECTION I THINK ISLAM SHOULD TAKE? The same is true with non-Catholics in America.   It's not an ethnicity.   It's a belief.   If you don't believe, get out and stop lying to pollsters about being Catholic.   No one should care what you think about the "direction" of the Church, or the choice of the next Pope.

The Party of Sin

This is a sour read to start the day on Sunday.   From investment guru Jim Rogers via Zero Hedge:

Throughout our history – any country’s history – the people who save their money and invest for their future are the ones that you build an economy, a society, and a nation on.

In America, many people saved their money, put it aside, and didn’t buy four or five houses with no job and no money down. They did what most people would consider the right thing, and what historically has been the right thing. But now, unfortunately, those people are being wiped out, because they are getting 0% return, or virtually no return, on their savings and their investments. We’re wiping them out at the expense of people who went deeply into debt, people who did what most people would consider the wrong thing at the expense of people who did the right thing. This, long-term, has terrible consequences for any nation, any society, any economy.

If you go back in history, you'll see what happened to the Germans when they wiped out their savings class in the 1920s. It didn’t lead to good things down the road for Germany. It didn’t lead to good things for Italy, which did the same thing. There were plenty of countries where it wiped out the people who saved and invested for their future. It’s usually a serious, political reaction, desperation in some cases, and looking for a savior and easy answers is usually what happens when you destroy the people who save and invest for the future.

Sounds awfully familiar.   The Democratic Party treats sloth and envy and sexual irresponsibility as virtues, hard work  and intelligent investment and personal responsibility and family values as vices.  When one of a great country's two main political parties essentially becomes the Party of Sin, we're in trouble.  

Girl of the Day - Cyd Charisse!

Today's birthday girl was an easy selection.   One of the truly great dancers during the classic era of movie musicals, Cyd Charisse held her own (and then some) with Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire in classics like Singin' in the Rain and The Band Wagon (one of my personal favorites).   Here she is with Astaire:

I Listen to George Weigel

If George Weigel tells me something about Catholicism or the Papal Conclave, I listen.   He's the E.F. Hutton of Catholic commentators.   So this commentary, prompted by the bad decision of the Vatican to stop American Cardinals from giving daily press conferences in which a man like Cardinal Dolan could do so much to explain Catholicism and the New Evangelization to the world, gets my attention:

What all of thus suggests is the imperative need for a dramatic reform of governance at the highest levels of the Catholic Church in the new pontificate. Italian curialists once said, and with good reason, "We know how to do this." Now, many of them manifestly don't. And when one adds to sheer incompetence and a marked inability to connect the dots between actions and consequences (or, in the case of the former pontiff's title and vesture, symbols and consequences) the reality of what a distinguished Italian academic described to me as an Italian "culture of corruption" seeping behind the Vatican walls under Secretary of State Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone's re-Italianization of the Roman Curia, it becomes clear that, as Italian Vaticanista Sandro Magister wrote recently, the new pope's First Hundred Days ought to see a massive housecleaning and the first steps toward building a new institutional culture in the Church's central bureaucracy, so that it becomes an instrument of the New Evangelization, not an impediment to it.

Plug for Hewitt and Hillsdale

Hugh Hewitt does a tremendous thing on his radio program every week.   Where so much of our media, even our political talk shows, is focused on the issues of the moment, and, too much, on the political gamesmanship involved, Hewitt pulls back once a week to take a very long view -- he speaks with Dr. Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College in Michigan about the great books.   The talks are both intellectual and accessible -- the conversation of educated men, or at least the way educated men used to converse.

This week's talk can be found here, with links to the podcasts, available for free.   In it, Hewitt and Arnn discuss the New Testatment Letters of Paul:

HH: Dr. Arnn, when we were talking last segment, and you were talking about the things that Paul had to accomplish, I was marveling to myself again at how the extraordinary just existence of the events, Jesus enters into the world at a particular time and place, and Paul enters immediately thereafter to provide the transition to the new world so that just the sequencing of events ought to give a non-believer pause, because none of this happens but for the miraculous intervention and the reality of Christ, and then the following on of Paul to establish, along with Peter, the working out of how this is going to grow. It’s really kind of remarkable, and it’s never happened to anybody else. 

LA: That’s is. It’s, you know, and it’s…they’re struggling. You know, these letters, by the way, you see, Paul writes these letters to people. They’re called letters, because they’re letters. You know, Dear Joe, Dear Philemon, Dear whoever I’m writing to. And many of the contentions, many of these subjects, I think it’s probably true to say most of these big, theological subjects that are made, that are raised by the phenomenon of Christ, are worked out in the letters of Paul in an argument through correspondence, because you say it’s this, and no, it’s got to be like this. That won’t work, right? And that’s a preview of what the great Christian synods and arguments have been about, and the work that was done to develop the creeds that are since early Christianity, still recited today in most Churches. So Paul is doing that work, and it’s an intellectual work. And of course, it’s more than that, too, because Paul’s body is on the line, just like Jesus’ was, and just like Peter’s eventually would be. Paul is stoned, he is arrested. Several of these letters, and several of the best of them, are written from prison. And sometimes, he goes on about that, this sounds to me like a little unmanly, like maybe he’s whining a bit, but most of the time, not like that. Most of the time, they’re simply sublime. And he counts the privilege of being there. And so he produces these writings. And you know, here’s another thing about it that I wish I were a better scholar. I studied Greek in graduate school, and I’ve not used it for 30 years, so I’m miserable. But not New Testament Greek, and so I can’t, I don’t really know how it works. My favorite translation is the King James translation, because it’s very beautiful. But Paul can be terribly awkward to read. And if you read it carefully, you can see what’s he’s saying. But Lord, why doesn’t he just say it, you ask yourself, and I don’t know for sure if that’s a translation problem. 

HH: But there are points where in Corinthians, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clinging symbol. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith that can move mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flame but I have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love it kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease. Where there are tongues, they will be stilled. Where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and prophecy in part. But when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror. Then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part. Then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain – faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. Is that not a perfect chapter? 

LA: Sometimes, I think God abandoned him to poor grammar and construction. But God talked to him often, too. It’s just lovely.

In prior weeks they have talked through the Old Testament and the Gospels.   Next week they are doing Herodotus and Thucydides.   You get the picture.  

I don't see why any high school shouldn't be having these sorts of classes routinely as part of a core curriculum.   Keeping the great books of the western world alive for future generations ought to be one of our generation's main goals.

Rand Paul

Rand Paul's filibuster yesterday on the nomination of John Brennan to be CIA Director did a number of things, all potentially good:

1. It thrust Senator Paul into the foreground as an attractive and smart new voice for Republicans.   The contrast with the dour and inarticulate John Boehner is stark.

2. It may have made him a candidate for President in 2016.   He would add a lot to the debates.

3. It focused attention on the lawlessness of the Obama administration.   The incipient tyranny of a regime that won't say that it rules out drone strikes against American citizens on American soil should be scary to everyone, left and right.

4. It highlighted the hypocrisy of the left, which castigated Bush for waterboarding, but has given Obama a pass for wholesale extrajudicial assassination by drone.

5. It gave Republicans a win, at least in terms of public perception, a win they sorely needed after months of seeming to lose every battle.

***

UPDATE:   Charles Krauthammer agrees with me.   Or vice-versa.

Mixed Message at ESPN

When you wake up early in a different time zone in a hotel by yourself, you tend to end up watching a lot of ESPN.   This morning I noticed a couple of interesting stories that were played essentially for laughs.

The first was an interview with the great South Carolina defensive end Jadaveon Clowney, who became famous last year for this hit against Michigan:




Now that is a great hit.  But aren't we now supposed to be talking about how football causes concussions and long-term brain injuries?   Yet we still celebrate the big hit.   I've probably seen this clip a hundred times on ESPN by now.  

The next clip was of a North American Hockey League "fight" where the players didnt' really want to get into it.



The ESPN announcers essentially ridiculed these guys (as they should) for not fighting each other.   But, again, aren't we supposed to be critical of the violence in sport, particularly unnecessary violence like hockey fights.   (I know that hockey purists would disagree and say that fighting is an important way the sport defuses potential violence.)   Don't boxers who fight with gloves get brain damages?   Wouldn't bare-knuckle hockey fighters suffer the same potential brain injuries?

I tend to think that adults assume risks for a variety of reasons -- to make a living the obvious one -- so I dont' criticize hard hits in football or fights in hockey or boxing.   But ESPN will undoubtedly air nineteen hours of specials over the next year about the dangers of brain injuries in sports.   They seem to want to have it both ways.

Girl of the Day - Annet Mahendru

On my new favorite show, The Americans, Annet Mahendru, a young Afghani model-actress, plays (not without irony given the 1980 invasion of her country by the USSR) a Russian girl employed by the Soviet embassy in Washington who gets turned by FBI counter-intelligence after she tries to ship hard currency in American dollars within VCRs in diplomatic pouches back to the Soviet Union.   (Note: also not without irony, since we no longer have either VCRs or hard currency... but that's another post.)

Anyway, I hope she doesn't get killed off in the series, for obvious reasons:

Quick Hits on Banana Republic America

The Regular Guy is in lovely (and warm) Phoenix while it snows back home, so today's blog will just be some quick hits from some of my favorite writers on the web. 

First, there's Walter Russell Mead writing about unemployable college graduates:

Employers are increasingly disappointed by the graduates available for hire, according to a survey conducted by The Chronicle and American Public Media’s Marketplace...

This is especially troubling considering both the soaring cost of bachelor’s degrees and the fact that they are a prerequisite for a large and still growing number of jobs. Employers prefer college graduates because, if it does nothing else, it serves as a signal of determination and staying power. But at $200,000 for four years at some schools, that is one incredibly expensive signal, especially if it isn’t also giving students other essential marketable skills....

More and more at Via Meadia, we’re coming to believe that separating young people from the world of work into their twenties is a terrible, crippling idea. Work is a natural aspect of a rich and satisfying life; the artificial environment in which so many young people live stunts their growth, limits the development of important character traits and skills, and artificially extends a kind of feckless adolescence that is neither ultimately satisfying or helpful.

 Exactly so.   College is increasingly not just a bad deal, but a species of consumer fraud.

***

Second, here's the great Thomas Sowell on President Obama's cynicism with regard to the sequester:

The Department of Homeland Security... released thousands of illegal aliens from prisons to save money — and create alarm.

The Federal Aviation Administration says it is planning to cut back on the number of air-traffic controllers, which would, at a minimum, create delays for airline passengers, in addition to fears about safety that can create more public alarm.

Republicans in the House of Representatives have offered to pass legislation giving President Obama the authority to pick and choose what gets cut — anywhere in the trillions of dollars of federal spending — rather than being hemmed in by the arbitrary provisions of the sequester.

This would minimize the damage done by budget cuts concentrated in limited areas, such as the Defense Department. But it serves Obama’s interest to maximize the damage and the public alarm because he can direct that alarm against Republicans.

President Obama has said that he would veto legislation to let him choose what to cut. That should tell us everything we need to know about the utter cynicism of this glib man.
 

 ***

Finally, there's the inimitable Victor Davis Hanson on American journalism ca. 2013:

Today's Washington journalists are like J. R. R. Tolkien’s ring wraiths, petty lords who wanted a few shiny golden Obama rings — only to end up as shrunken slaves to the One.

The Bob Woodward/Ron Fournier/Lanny Davis psychodrama is another small reminder that the Obama administration continues to assume that the press should be little more than a veritable Ministry of Truth. Its proper duty is to serve the White House and promote the progressive agenda of Barack Obama. Any were considered suspect who questioned whether those exalted ends should really be achieved by any means necessary — but they were so few and far between that it mattered little.

Woodward, Fournier, and Davis, in their surprise at the general paranoia of the Obama administration, must think that freelancing White House zealots are tarnishing the reputation of their president, who, given his own predilections, would otherwise not countenance such clumsy intimidation of journalists.

In fact, there are plenty of reasons to assume that Barack Obama has established the tenor and methodology of press relations from the very outset of his administration, characterized by expectations of unfailing support, coupled with a general vindictiveness toward his few critics among the press corps.

***

Hmmmm....an ignorant citizenry, a kleptocratic government addicted to borrowing from the future, a docile, state-run media.   Check, check, check.  

Yep, we're fast becoming a banana republic.  

Van Cliburn

What an awesome story.   From the WSJ:

Harvey Lavan Cliburn Jr., an American pianist of extraordinary gifts who set off seismic waves in the political landscape by winning the 1958 Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow at the height of the Cold War, has passed away at the age of 78. The cause was bone cancer. Cliburn, known among friends and admirers as "Van," died in his home in Fort Worth, Texas, where an international piano competition in his name celebrated its 50th anniversary last fall.

That competition, one of the most important in the world, is perhaps the most visible part of his legacy for today's generation of music lovers. However, few alive in 1958 could forget the dramatic impact of that Moscow event.

America was in the throes of a national state of anxiety over the Soviet Union's launch of its Sputnik space satellites. The Tchaikovsky Competition, designed to elevate the Communist nation even higher by proving Russian superiority in art as well as in science, featured a jury heavily weighted with Soviet musical greats, including pianists Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels, and composers Dmitri Kabalevsky and Aram Khachaturian. A Russian was supposed to win.

But when the 23-year-old American from Texas played Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff with soul-rending mastery, the audience—already charmed by Mr. Cliburn's warmth and homespun manner in his public appearances—went wild. It became impossible to award first place to anyone else; the jury, equally spellbound by his artistry, requested permission to give him the prize, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev granted official consent.

In that moment, political normality was shattered....

This would make a great movie.   Sort of like Amadeus meets The Right Stuff meets Rocky IV.

The Spanish Civil War - Past and Future

I'm reading Anthony Beevor's history of the Spanish Civil War.   It is a shocking story, well-told, of an explosion in violence in Spain "caused" (if that's the right word) by a set of issues that seemed to come to tipping points at the same moment in the 1930s -- the conflict between forces of traditionalism (the Church, the military, the large landowners) and modernity; class conflict between workers and the "bourgeoisie" and the few rich in a very poor country; and a long-term conflict over many centuries between a central government in Madrid and regional aspirations for autonomy of the Basque and Catalan-speaking peoples.   All were exacerbated by the world-wide Depression in the early 1930s, and the ratcheting up of political rhetoric between right and left, a tendency to demonize political opponents as apostates, and to sensationalize real and imagined atrocities for propaganda purposes, creating a cycle of vengeance.  

This sounds awfully familiar.   That's why reports like these are so scary:


Spain's jobless hits record 5 million in February

MADRID (AP) -- Spain now has a record five million people registered as unemployed as the country remains stuck in recession.

The Labor Ministry said Monday that the number of people on the unemployment list in February jumped by 59,444 compared with January, making for a total of 5.04 million.

Spain is battling to emerge from its second recession in just over three years with its economy still reeling from the collapse of the once-booming real estate sector.

The country's unemployment rate was at 26 percent at the end of the fourth quarter.

 

 

Young men without jobs tend to do bad things.   That's a very simple truism, but no less true for being so.   We ignore it at our peril in thinking about foreign policy (Egypt unemployment at 74% for people under 30), and we ignore it at our peril thinking about our inner cities (Detroit unemployment among black youths at 80% plus).  

 

 

Girl of the Day - Keri Russell and The Americans

I've started watching The Americans on FX, a new series about deep-cover Soviet spies posing as American suburbanites in 1981 as the Reagan administration takes office.   It's very good, although it plays the "moral equivalence" of America and Russia a little bit too much down the middle for my taste.  (Frankly, I'm still happy that they are just playing it down the middle and not using the series as a platform for typical Hollywood anti-Americanism.)

Anyway, Keri Russell plays the wife in an arranged marriage of Soviet spies who, despite her two very-American children and her comfortable suburban lifestyle, remains a committed socialist and Soviet patriot.   She's the more cold-blooded of the two spies, and an early story thread has her rejecting her husband's idea of defecting to America.   A dark and sexy role that has re-booted her career in an interesting way -- 180 degrees from the cute college student of Felicity.

George Weigel on the Papabili

George Weigel talks here about the men who might be Pope:

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Steyn Asks the Important Question

Mark Steyn, writing today in NRO:

Can you pierce the mists of time and go back all the way to the year 2007? Back then, federal spending was 40 percent lower than it is today. In a mere half-decade, has all that 40 percent gravy become so indispensable to the general welfare that not even a teensy-weensy sliver of it can be cut?

Steyn answers his own question in a great interview with Hugh Hewitt:

What’s crazy about this is that let’s pretend that the officials who are speaking on this, the cabinet secretaries who are coming out and telling us that the world will come to an end tomorrow, that the planes are going to be dropping from the skies, that our infants and seniors are going to be dying untended in hospitals, that your shower head is going to be blasting out fecal coliform on you in the morning, that all of this is going to be happening just for his hypothetical $40 billion dollars of so-called entirely phony sequestration cuts, now assuming they’re not just lying to us. They’re basically telling us that nothing can ever be done about Washington spending ever. If $40 billion of hypothetical cuts means that the planes are dropping from the skies, and Obama’s even cancelled the deployment of a carrier to the Gulf, you know, in other words, when the Iranians go nuclear, he’ll be able to say oh, I would have stopped that, but we were all tied up with the sequestration. Sequestration is what allowed the mullahs to go nuclear. If that’s true, nothing can ever be done about anything ever, and Washington might as well just close up and go home.
 

 Great stuff.

Jindal Proposes a New Theme: Government Greed

I hope this meme from Governor Bobby Jindal takes hold:

The Obama years will be remembered as the Era of Government Greed. There isn’t a problem President Obama thinks can’t be solved by more taxes and more spending. His solution is always to take more money out of the American economy and put it into the government.

"Government Greed" is just about perfect.   If I were a Republican advisor looking for a message, I would be running ads across the country noting that 7 out of 10 of the richest counties in America are surrounding the District of Columbia.   I'd list the details of government workers average salaries and retirement benefits and health plans and paid vacation days.  

Then I'd have the tag line:  "It's Us Against Them.   Don't Let Government Greed Steal Your Children's Future."

Connections

Be Breitbart

We need him.   Now, more than ever.

A Picture is Better Than a Thousand Words

Incoherence

Put aside the fact that the premise that Republicans caused the sequester is a lie, and refuted by none other than Bob Woodward of the Washington Post.   And put aside the triviality of claiming macroeconomic effects from a 2.4% cut in government spending (really just a limit on the growth of government spending).  This is just incoherent:

Obama warned that “every time that we get a piece of economic news” in the coming months, that “economic news could have been better” if not for Republicans’ failure to act. “None of this is necessary,” he continued. “It’s happening because of a choice that Republicans in Congress have made. They have allowed these cuts to happen” in order to prevent tax increases.

So, not putting tens of billions of dollars of government spending into the economy will cause the economy to tank, but taking tens of billions of dollars of taxes out of the economy would not only not cause the same tanking effect, but would somehow make the economy boom?

I've heard of Keynes.   I don't like him much, but I've heard of him.   This isn't Keynes.   I don't know what this is.

Oh, yes, I remember.... it's socialism/fascism -- the only good wealth is wealth that flows through the rent-seekers in government.  


***

By the way, the adjusted estimate for 4Q 2012 GDP growth is 0.1%.   That's slightly up from the first estimate in January of a decline of 0.1%.   But it's a steep falloff from the 3.1% estimated growth for 3Q 2012.

Couple that with this news from yesterday that personal incomes in January shrank by 3.6%, the largest drop in 20 years, and it sure looks like there's a double-dip recession coming, one that obviously started before the sequester.

Obama knows this, and he also knows that he can probably get a pass from most of the MSM on the risible notion that the sequester somehow caused a downturn that started before the sequester occurred.

He's the Lightworker!   Cause and effect mean nothing to him!

Girl of the Day - Joan Hackett

Joan Hackett was mostly a regular fixture as a guest on a number of TV shows through the 1960s and 1970s, but she was also the love interest of Charlton Heston in one of the greatest Westerns, Will Penny, in the late 1960s, in which Heston plays an aging cowhand who falls in love with a woman who, along with her son, has been deserted by her husband and left to squat in a remote cabin in dangerous territory.

Today's her birthday; she would have been 79. 

Maxine Waters and Large Numbers

Maxine Waters, the ranking Democrat on the House Finance Committee, was speaking yesterday about the effects of the sequester and said this:

Yesterday we did have Mr. Bernanke in our committee and he came to tell us what he’s doing with quantitative easing and that is trying to stimulate the economy with the bond purchases that he’s been doing because he’s trying to keep the interest rates low and jobs – and he said that if sequestration takes place, that’s going to be a great setback. We don’t need to be having something like sequestration that’s going to cause these jobs losses, over 170 million jobs that could be lost – and so he made it very clear he’s not opposed to cuts but cuts must be done over a long period of time and in a very planned way rather than this blunt cutting that will be done by sequestration. As you know in this committee we have all of HUD and HUD is responsible for so many programs that determine the quality of life for women and families. CBDG, a form of grant programs will be cut by $153 million dollars, these are grants that help with cities and children and low-income programs. We also will cut the Home Program by $52 million if sequestration takes place, Native American Housing grants by $34 million, House and Choice grants $113 million, Public Housing – mostly single women in Public Housing – another $304 million, and homelessness, everybody claims to be concerned with homelessness and the growing number of women and children who are out their homeless but look they will take a $99 million dollar hit and on and on and on. We are here today, one more time, talking about women and children and families and how we can protect our women, children, and families and have a decent quality of life – sequestration will set us back, all of the gains that we have made will be lost with sequestration. 

Others have pointed out the lunacy of the highlighted statement -- we only have about 143 million Americans working, and about 155 million Americans in the workforce, so her statement assumes that we would lose 109% of the workforce to a $42 billion cut out of a $4 trillion federal budget.   So I won't belabor that angle.   Waters later walked the misstatement back, saying that the sequester would cost only 750,000 jobs.

Now, of course, people can misspeak.   We are far too critical of public speakers (Dan Quayle, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin) who occasionally offer malapropisms.   And put aside the fact that the ones criticized are always on the right, while a Maxine Waters or Barack Obama will never suffer the routine belittling by the MSM that conservatives do.  

And, I'll even give Waters a pass on the idiocy of even estimating that 750,000 jobs will be "lost" by the sequester.   If they are government jobs, good.   But, even so, government estimates of job losses or job gains resulting from a particular level of spending are notoriously not worth the paper they're printed on.   (See "the stimulus" of 2009.)

But here's my problem:   this particular misstatement suggests a disconnection from reality... a disconnection from basic arithmetic.  How would you ever let that particular number spill out of your mouth as an adult?   170 million jobs lost?   Really?   How could you not immediately realize that you'd made a mistake?   How could those words stating that number not immediately appear wrong to you?   They make no sense.   We have only a bit more than 315 milloin Americans in total... how could you say out loud that some government program would have the effect of costing 55% of the population their jobs?   It's beyond a misstatement... it shows a fundamental inability to think in large numbers.

And the problem is:   our elected officials are required to think in large numbers every day by virtue of the federal government's debt and deficits and spending and taxing.

Let me put this bluntly:   what are the odds that Maxine Waters has any kind of arithmetical understanding of the actuarial assumptions that go into long-term estimates of the insolvency of Social Security and Medicare?   Very, very slim.   Yet that is the problem that is going to eat our nation over the next few decades.   And she may very well be the chair of the House Finance Committee in January 2015.

We're drowning under a tsunami and the people who could throw us a life preserver don't even know what makes things float.

Woodward, Obama, Sequestration, Strauss

The scandal du jour is apparently the inside baseball bickering between Bob Woodward, liberal lion of the Washington Post, and the Obama White House, over Woodward's article saying the sequestration was Obama's idea all along, and that he's lying now as he demagogues the issue.   The White House apparently "threatened" Woodward, telling him that he would "regret" having taken that position.

While I find it hard to sympathize much with Woodward, who has been a shill for liberalism for forty years, the incident is both instructive and scary.   This is a White House that views dissent as apostasy, disagreement as heresy.   Challenging Obama on facts becomes the greatest sin... it is the treason of saying aloud that the emperor has no clothes.   They will crush anyone who strays from the White House line.  

Increasingly we are living in a one-party state with the MSM as Pravda.

The episode reminds me of Leo Strauss' great essay, "Persecution and the Art of Writing." Strauss writes:

A large section of the people, probably the great majority of the younger generation, accepts the government-sponsored views as true, if not at once, at least after a time. How have they been convinced? And where does the time factor enter? They have not been convinced by compulsion, for compulsion does not produce conviction. It merely paves the way for conviction by silencing contradiction. What is called freedom of thought in a large number of cases amounts to -- and even for all practical purposes consists of -- the ability to choose between two or more different views presented by the small minority of people who are public speakers or writers. If this choice is prevented, the only kind of intellectual independence of which many people are capable is destroyed.

Strauss was writing in 1941, while the Nazi-Soviet Pact was the dominant fact of political life. Totalitarianism was in the ascendance.

Wonder what he'd say about the Obama White House?