RobertMcNickle.com

"Officially Authorized Customer-Hating Agents"

"There is a positive correlation between an organization’s former dominance and its present inability to cope with 21st-century change. As technology business consultant Nilofer Merchant has aptly put it, “The Web turns old industries on their head. Industries that have had monopolies or highly profitable duopolies are the ones most likely to be completely gutted when a more powerful, more efficient system comes along.” We need to hasten the inevitable arrival of that more efficient system on the doorstep of America’s most stubborn, foot-dragging, reactionary sector—government at the local, state, and especially federal levels, and its officially authorized customer-hating agents, the Democrats and Republicans."

From Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie on Reason.com.  That's my bold.  I like the "officially authorized customer-hating agents" part.   Sure sounds like the MVA or the post office here in Maryland to me.

They make the link between the failure of Kodak, part of the Kodak/Fujifilm duopoly, and the duopolies of the Republican and Democrat parties.  It's a long post, but well worth the read.

As Michael Ledeen says, "Faster Please!"

The Myth Of GOP Seriousness

A while back I quoted Mark Steyn regarding the lack of seriousness among the GOP candidates for President.  

Now Andy McCarthy levels a broadside at the current GOP leadership in Congress regarding our impending trip off the debt cliff at high speed.

"With debt rising about $4 billion per day and each citizen’s share nearing $50,000, frightened voters opted to give Republicans a second chance, electing them in historic numbers in the 2010 midterms. This was not because they suddenly loved Republicans. They didn’t — and don’t. It was because the GOP was the only available alternative. And it was because leaders such as McConnell and Boehner, affecting a chastened pose, promised that if given the opportunity, they’d slam on the brakes.

 Last summer, they had their big chance: Debt hit $14.3 trillion, the statutory ceiling — “ceiling” being Washingtonese for the point at which the money we’ve borrowed to pay the interest on prior loans for ever-expanding government spending no longer covers the tab because of the added interest on the new loans, necessitating more loans, resulting in more interest, triggering more — well, you get the idea. Now in control of the House and with near parity in the Senate, Republicans were in a position to stop the madness: to decline to authorize more borrowing and thus force spending cuts.

Instead, they did what they always do: They caved."

Read the whole thing.  This will be another election where I hold my nose and look the other way as I hit the button for the lesser of two evils.

For more on this, read Roger Kimball's post at PJ Media entitled "The Sucide Club."  Gee, I wonder who he is referring to.

I like Roger's comments regarding the term "liberal."  

"Further: It is an irony of language that those who congregate under the banner of liberalism more and more associate themselves with policies that are inimical to individual liberty and its great enabler, democratic capitalism, while conservatives, committed to free markets and policies that promote self-governance and individual initiative, should be denied the moral lubrication of that coveted term. Russell Kirk was right when he said that he was conservative because he was liberal, i.e., committed to ordered liberty and the fiscal responsibility that underwrites it. But Republicans, having largely ceded the rhetorical high ground to the Democrats, have lost access to such clarifying formulations."

Thoughts from me on this here.

"It's For The Children"

“We’re all very diverse, and that’s what makes us so strong, but religion should never play a part in what the laws of our state are, and that’s what we’re trying to convey to religious leaders who are opponents of the bill that believe that for some reason — for some reason — religion has some role to play in this, and quite frankly we believe that it doesn’t,” the first lady said. “We believe that this is a civil rights issue — very, very much strongly believe in that.”

That's Judge Katie O'Malley, the wife of Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, as quoted by the AP in the FNP today.  Judge O'Malley was speaking at the 24th National Conference on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equality in Baltimore, according to the FNP.

You know, I agree 100% with Mrs. O'Malley.

I would just flip it and say that "but religion the state should never play a part in what the laws of our state religion(s) are."  Then I would like to see her and her husband champion a bill in the Maryland General Assembly that removes all aspects of marriage from Maryland law. 

That ought to solve the problem.

Right On Rick

I am not much of a fan of any of the Republicans who are running for President, but in the debate last night, Rick Santorum hit the nail on the head when it comes to faith in God, freedom, and why America is different.

From the tail end of this post by Scott Johnson on Powerline-

"For the record, here was Santorum’s answer to the question about how his faith influences his politics:

SANTORUM: Faith is a very, very important part of my life, but it’s a very, very important part of this country.  The foundational documents of our country — everybody talks about the Constitution, very, very important.  But the Constitution is the “how” of America. It’s the operator’s manual.

The “why” of America, who we are as a people, is in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.”

The Constitution is there to do one thing: protect God-given rights. That’s what makes America different than every other country in the world. No other country in the world has its rights — rights based in God-given rights, not government-given rights.

And so when you say, well, faith has nothing to do with it, faith has everything to do with it. If rights come…(APPLAUSE)

If our president believes that rights come to us from the state, everything government gives you, it can take away. The role of the government is to protect rights that cannot be taken away.

And so the answer to that question is, I believe in faith and reason and approaching the problems of this country but understand where those rights come from, who we are as Americans and the foundational principles by which we have changed the world.

In my opinion, Romney beat Gingrich last night, but Romney wasn’t impressive last night. Santorum was."

That's my bold.  

I don't think the majority of Americans, at least under the age of 40 or so, understand this simple, but very powerful, concept.  We were born with the rights that Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams referred to in the Declaration.  We don't need the government to "give" us those rights.  We created the government to help protect those rights.  Anyone who says "the government/constitution gives me the right to......." simply has it backwards.

And if we let life in America really become "backwards", than we are no different than all the dictatorship/bananna republics so many of us fled to come here.

March for Life 2012

UPDATE January 26, 2012:  See below for new links to the text and audio recording of Monsignor Pope's homily.  Also, a link to the letter from the Pope's office.

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A group of kids from the Frederick and Washington County Catholic parishes attended the March for Life in DC yesterday.  We got up at "oh dark 30" and boarded 2 chartered buses for the ride to the Verizon Center and the Archdiocese of Washington's Youth Rally and Mass for Life.  

 

The Rally got underway around 730a with The Jacob and Matthew Band kicking off a rocking set of "hey kids, wake up and celebrate life" music.  They are a bunch of guys from LA infused with the Holy Spirit.  We were awake after a couple bars of their first song.

Following the Rosary, Mass began with the procession of several hundred Priests, Bishops and Cardinals, with Cardinal Wuerl as the Celebrant.  Cardinal Wuerl has a unique way of welcoming the kids and introducing the Bishops, who were standing behind him on the stage.  He asked the kids to show their support of and apprecieation for their Bishop as each is introduced.  It's a rowdy and loud process and a lot of fun.  This year there were 10,000 kids at the DC Armory also, and we watched as Cardinal DeNardo (the Celebrant at the Armory) introduced the Bishops there.

Next up was the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who read a letter expressing support for the kids, rally, Mass, and March from the office of Pope Benedict XVI.  Read the letter here.  Then we celebrated Mass.  

Every year I am inspired as I watch the Gospel reader read the Gospel (today it was from John 14:1-14) as Cardinal Wuerl, who is over the reader's left shoulder on the video screens, recites the words from memory.  

The homilist this year was Monsignor Charles Pope. who is the Pastor at Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian in Washington.  If you have never heard Monsignor Pope speak, I highly recommend it.  He has a lot of Spirit, to say the least.  He asked us to live lives of chastity, charity, courage, and to be consistent with these principles throughout our lives.  A very powerful message.  And it was a fun message, not a lecture.  Read Monsignor Pope's homily here, and listen to it here.

Visit the ADW Facebook page for the Rally here, lots of photos.

After Mass we walked down 7th Street, E Street, and finally 12th Street to the Mall, where we hung around waiting for the crowd to start moving before joining the March.  

This shot is looking west on Constitution as we walk up Capitol Hill.  I don't know how many people were there but that's a lot of people coming up the hill behind us, and we joined the March on the Mall pretty late.

It was a great day.  Most of the March crowd is young people, which bodes well for our future.  These kids believe that life is sacred.  We show that belief on this day each year.  We pray that God gives us the strength to live that belief every day of our lives.

The Death Of Honest History

I have often thought of working as a history teacher in my second life.  The need is greater then ever, but the frustrations one would encounter seem unsurmountable.

KC Johnson, who wrote extensively about the Duke lacrosse "rape" case, comments on the ruinous reign of race and gender historians-

"The study of U.S. history has transformed in the last two generations, with emphasis on staffing positions in race, class, or gender leading to dramatic declines in fields viewed as more "traditional," such as U.S. political, constitutional, diplomatic, and military history. And even those latter areas have been "re-visioned," in the word coined by an advocate of the transformation, Illinois history professor Mark Leff, to make their approach more accommodating to the dominant race/class/gender paradigm."

Read the whole thing.

UGH!

Smartest Guys In The World #3,976,490

What's the first step to getting out of debt?  Create a budget, according to the FTC.

"After saddling the country with as much new debt as the rest of the world combined in one year flat, one would think that Uncle Sam wouldn’t have the cojones to dish out debt advice to others. But one would be wrong. In an unwitting self-parody worthy of Froma Harrop on The Daily Show, the Federal Trade Commission has created a step-by-step web guide for Americans “Knee-Deep in Debt.”

The first step, says the agency, which represents a government that went over 800 days without passing a budget, is: create a budget! Get a “realistic assessment of how much money you take in and how much money you spend,” it lectures those in financial doo-doo, seemingly oblivious of the fact that its own bosses have promised $60 trillion to a $100 trillion more in entitlements than the country has money to pay for."

Read the whole thing from Shikha Dalmia at Reason.com.

Unbelievable.  Believable!

"Every Candidate Should Be Pro Life"

“...every candidate should be pro-life, and when they’re not, they should be challenged.”

Politics isn’t the only route for the pro-life movement, she says, though “every route is a good route. We should teach about it in schools. We should talk about it in the public square. We should challenge our public officials.”

Brian Bolduc writes on NRO about a conversation with Alveda King, a neice of MLK.  Read the whole thing.

And The Greatest Is Love

I know I'm late to the party, but for Dr. King-

I love watching The Edge work it playing this song.  Talk about a "wall of sound."

It seems to me that Dr. King was the exact opposite of President Obama.  Dr. King didn't want anybody to be treated differently, where President Obama wants all the "isms" to be treated differently.

All Race, All The Time

"This is going to be an ugly campaign. The Obama team will revert to race unceasingly, in cry-wolf fashion, and thus cheapen the currency with every charge. In turn, the more we will hear allegations of “racism,” the less people will pay attention to them. And so all the more frequently will such discounted slurs have to be repeated — sort of like pushing about wheelbarrows of Depression-era inflated German marks to purchase ever fewer commodities.

There will be many legacies of Barack Obama. Racial divisiveness is proving the most disturbing."

VDH, on NRO.

Get ready for some real ugly leading up to November 6, 2012.

Do Nothing Congress?

Please read this from Investors Business Daily before you vote in the primary and general elections this year.

Key point-

"Despite endless talk of spending cuts and fiscal restraint in Washington over the past year, lawmakers continued to act as though the government doesn't spend nearly enough.  

They introduced 874 bills in the House and Senate that would have boosted annual federal spending by more than $1 trillion if they'd all been signed into law, according to an analysis done for IBD by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.

In contrast, lawmakers offered up just 215 bills to cut spending last year that would have reduced federal outlays by about half a trillion had they all been signed into law."

That's my bold.

It really is time to "be the term limits" and "Dump the Incumbents."

Best Line Regarding "Peegate" So Far

From Jim Treacher at The Daily Caller:

"Let this be a lesson to everyone: If you want to pee on a dead terrorist, first wrap him in an American flag.Then Keith Olbermann, Eric Boehlert, and other leading lights of liberalism will cheer you on."

Where Have All The Workers Gone?

"In the 30 months since the recession officially ended, nearly 1 million people have dropped out of the labor force — they aren't working, and they aren't looking — according to data from Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the past two months, the labor force shrank by 170,000."

From this article on Investors.com.  The article goes on to say that if you adjust for the drop in workers, unemployment would be 11%, and if you count those working part time and looking for full time work, the rate would be 15.2%.

Smartest Guys In The World #3,976,489

"The transcripts, which are customarily released after five years, show that Fed leaders, armed with the best economic data available, had little idea of what was looming less than two years off."

From the WaPo story on the transcripts of Fed meetings held in 2006.  The transcripts are released 5 years after the meetings are held. Read the whole thing.

Unbelievable.  Believable.

A Slow, Then Fast Death

I hardly ever buy anything at Best Buy anymore.  Here's why.  It's still fun to go there, walk around, and physically see the stuff on display, but my shopping and purchasing experiences there, and at Amazon, are very similiar to Mr. Downes'.

GOP Just Not Serious

Hard to beat Mark Steyn's assessment-

"I see Terence Jeffrey and Andy McCarthy are having a disagreement about the correct response to a question on gay adoption. The correct response is to take an unconstitutional federally-funded supersized condom, roll it over George Stephanopoulos’ head, and say, 'That’s odd. I can no longer hear a word you’re saying. So let me throw in my two bits on impending multi-trillion-dollar ruin…'"

For more on what these debates should be, read Roger Simon's latest at PJ Media-

"Let’s put an end to the interlocutors. We don’t need media filters — left, right or center. I am not interested in Jane Pauley. I am not interested in Chris Wallace. I get to see plenty of them. I am not interested either in supposedly random questions chosen (by whom?) from Facebook or Twitter."

"I am interested in the candidates and what they have to say to each other — mano-a-mano — in the style of Lincoln and Douglas."

Amen.

Bad Idea

"We trust 20-year olds in the military to guide $100 million jets on carriers; in contrast, I find it dangerous to walk across a campus parking lot with 20-year-old students running through stop signs."

VDH in a post on Ricochet.com where he says cutting the military is a bad idea.  Bottom line-there are still plenty of bad guys out there.

Best Show To Be Cancelled

UPDATE January 2, 2012:

Firefly fans even help individual Americans protect their freedoms.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Firefly is one of the best shows ever to be on TV, and almost certainly the best show ever to be cancelled."

Instapundit linked to this today.  I couldn't agree more.  SyFy ran all 14 espidoes on Christmas, and I gotta admit, we watched more than one while visiting with the family.   Joss Whedon and the writers did a great job.  I am pretty sure that the crew of Serenity was "goramning" before the crew on Galatica was "fracking."

BTW, great pic of the cast on the Grand Rounds post.

"All Liberal All The Time"

What's wrong with Detroit, New Orleans, Europe, California, and I could add my home state of Maryland, Baltimore, DC, and many more.

Rush on the Greta show the other night, clipped by The Daily Caller.  He totally hits the nail on the head, as is the norm.

I would love to hear someone challenge the facts of this with a real discussion.  Not gonna happen.

Hexagon/Big Bird

This is way cool...

"Here's your mission, should you choose to accept it: build a camera that can take high-resolution photographs of the Earth from orbit and return them to the Central Intelligence Agency. There's only one catch: you don't get to use a computer or a single kilobyte of network bandwidth."

Read the whole story of how we photographed our enemies during the Cold War on film.