75th Anniversary of the Night of the Long Knives

The American Thinker has a great article on the 75th anniversary of Night of the Long Knives by Bruce Walker. Bruce reminds us that the goal of every totalitarian is always the same: power. No matter what ideology espoused, the goal is always the same, to acquire and maintain power.

The Night of the Long Knives was not an attack on the "socialism" in National Socialism, as it is so often suggested. Two weeks after the Night of the Long Knives, Graf von der Golz, Deputy Commissar in the Ministry of Economics in July `5, 1934 speech to businessmen said: "Any organization that represents the interests of the employer will be regarded as illegal and disbanded and the guilty parties will be prosecuted."[i]

and

As we watch our Leader's face everyone on television, his words as answers to every problem, and his inspectors general fired when they find malfeasance, his legislators asked to vote for bills they have not read, our media practically scripted in its treatment of him, is it not prudent to ask how little the lust for power has changed in the last seventy-five years?

Making Tradeoffs

It's getting crazy around here, what with guest coming in for the 4th of July weekend. Blogging will be light for a while, but when I get the chance, I will post a few things. I have a short window of opportunity right now, so I thought I would post Absolute Values and Growing Government published by the Townhall.com Staff yesterday. This was taken from a Townhall.com blogger named Andrew, who should be proud of some truly excellent writing.

Do you ever have one of those epiphanies where you just have to say "Huh"? I did yesterday, though because of the craziness going on now, I didn't have time to post about it. I had it when I read this Townhall.com piece. Go read the whole thing. A little taste though:

The truth is quite simple: All values are relative, and all are subject to a cost-benefit analysis. Though many arguments exist against this, and some may even sound plausible, a little bit of thought will show that, despite the seemingly plausible arguments, there really is no such thing as an absolute value.

I have expressed it differently. I have expressed the idea as worshipping the creation rather than the creator. Some of my readers are apparently agnostic or atheistic, and did not care for my formulation. This formulation should speak to them, then. It also expresses a conservative ideal of the golden mean.

For example, Life is precious, and we should not waste the great gift God has given us, and by extension we should not waste the lives of others. Thus self defense is an exception to the rule that you "shall not murder." Because the murderer has demonstrated by words and deeds his intention to kill, you have the right to defend yourself. Pacifism in the face of a murderous attack is just as wrong as initiating such an attack.

Peace is a good thing. With peace comes the prospect of prosperity, and in its absence, no prosperity is possible. Liberty is also a good, but some liberty must be surrendered to have peace. However, if too much liberty is demanded, peace is no longer possible for those who treasure their liberties. But the Declaration of Independence said it far better than your poorly endowed scribbler. The Continental Congress said:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Similarly, every person wants a clean environment, but at what cost? We in the United States have achieved a remarkably clean environment over the last 40 years. We have done so because we have been more prosperous than other countries. Less prosperous countries can simply not afford to put the amounts of money that we have into reducing the environmental effects of that prosperity. But we have come to the point of diminishing returns, and one has to weigh the costs of lost opportunity against the possible gains.

Frankly, I do not see the gains.

The environmental literature is littered with scare words. When you see someone say that this or that "might" cause a disaster, or "could" cause such and such to happen, it should send a red flag up in your mind to ask what are the actual probabilities of that undesirable thing happening.
For example, they say that if you smoke cigarettes, you "could" get lung cancer. To scare you further, they point out that smoking a pack a day doubles your risk. Wow, you better quit. But wait, what is the risk of getting lung cancer? Well, it turns out that the risk for a non-smoker is 7.5%, meaning that you have a 92.5% risk of dieing of something else. So, double that and if you smoke you have a 15% risk, meaning that you still have an 85% chance of dieing of something else. So, a smoker weighs the good of his life against the pleasure (a good) of smoking, and decides to take that risk. Now I am not defending smoking here, but pointing out a common way that society is buffaloed into spending money in support of Left wing causes.

So, what are we risking with Waxman Markey? Well here we are making a $9.4 trillion bet that "if" anthropogenic global warming exists, we will be able to cool the planet by hundredths of a degree in 2050. Does that look like a trade off you would make? After all, heating and cooling your home are goods, easy transportation is a good. Remember that there are no absolute goods, only relative values. Would you spend your hard earned money on a flim-flam scheme like this one? What opportunities might you be passing up in order to have this good? Is it worth it? I say it isn't.

Waxman-Markey: Porkulus Redux

Eternity Road has a post up by the Curmudgeon entitled simply Waxman-Markey. The Curmudgeon is Francis W. Poretto's alter ego.

There's no question that this bill will radically increase the price of electricity, and of every fuel other than uranium. Indeed, several of its backers have admitted that much -- and have touted it as a feature rather than a bug. The bill amounts to the largest and longest protracted tax measure in the history of the world. Just as bad is this: given the Obama Administration's hostility to expanded exploration for coal, oil, and natural gas, the supply of all the fuels that power American society is likely to decrease.

If this bill isn't somehow killed in the Senate, it will reduce America to a penurious, has-been power, whose citizens will swelter in the summer and shiver in the winter while paying a fortune for the privilege.

I have read estimates that electricity costs may increase by 90%, never mind transportation fuels. Summers get hot here. The day time high temperatures have ranged up to 100 degrees of late, with humidity to match. I remember Ohio winters when the day time high temperature did not get above zero. If your income is, say $20,000, does it become a struggle whether to cool the home or put food on the table? Can you afford to drive to your job even?

Let's look at energy independence, so beloved by the left as a campaign slogan. This bill will mean we will explore for, and extract less fuel than we do now here at home, and thus we will be importing more of our energy under a cap and trade regime than we are now. If they think we are being blackmailed into unnecessary wars in the middle east now, what will they think when we are being blackmailed into wars in more places because we have to import more fuel from around the globe. All this while the country has abundant fuel sitting in the ground.

Then there is the question of whether you are truly being "represented" in the Congress, or are these relatively wealthy men and women (a Congressman makes $174,000 plus benefits any one of us would love to have) are just in it for themselves? If your Congressman had to live under the same rules as you do, do you think they would pass this sort of economic travesty?
I have not heard the figures, but I would imagine substantial numbers of people called the Congressional hotline to voice their opposition to this bill. Why weren't their concerns taken into account? What was so urgent about this bill, that it could not wait until after the July 4th holiday? Would one more day of delay have made a difference in the global temperature 100 years from now? Really? And we know the Congressman who voted for this bill could not have read or understood it. There we 300 pages of changes to the bill that were included by the Rules Committee at 3:00 am that morning. They did not even have a single completed copy of the bill before voting on it. Where's the outrage?

This is another Porkulus Bill, passed in a hurry, in the middle of the night, before Congressmen took off for July 4th so they wouldn't have to face the anger of the electorate.

I think I need take a page from Francis Poretto, and create an alter ego for these little rants.

Inmates in Charge of the Asylum

So today we will see which Democrats value more: their own political skin, or paying back the environmentalists. I have a feeling I know the answer. Congress is not listening to or representing We the People anymore. They are not listening to facts. Instead, they seem to be in the thrall of the Gaia worshipers. The Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill appears likely to pass despite its huge cost, despite that fact that it will do almost nothing to solve the problem it nominally attempts to solve, despite the fact that we are in a recession, despite the fact that Europe has already tried it an shown it to be a dismal failure on every level.

First up is Michelle Malkin whose piece EPA's Game of Global Warming Hide and Seek in today's Townhall.com brings up some evidence EPA didn't want to hear:

The free market-based Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington (where I served as a journalism fellow in 1995) obtained a set of internal e-mails exposing Team Obama's willful and reckless disregard for data that undermine the illusion of "consensus." In March, Alan Carlin, a senior research analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, asked agency officials to distribute his analysis on the health effects of greenhouse gases. EPA has proposed a public health "endangerment finding" covering CO2 and five other gases that would trigger costly, extensive new regulations of motor vehicles. The open comment period on the ruling ended this week. But Carlin's study didn't fit the blame-human-activity narrative, so it didn't make the cut.

The role of the EPA should be as an honest broker. They should not be trying to fix the results by telling half the story. That is what advocates and activists do. It's fine for private activists, with an agenda and an axe to grind to tell only half the story. We expect it of them, and there are always counter voices to listen to and find the other half. But when an agency of the Executive branch silences legitimate voices because they have already made up their minds, facts be damned, it is We the People who end up paying dearly for their incompetence. Of course, this is not new territory for the EPA, but it is troubling none the less.

Next up is David Limbaugh's article Throw the Bums Out, also at Townhall.com today. David points out that in addition to not reading the 1,200 page bill before passing it, Congress has not done any other due diligence required before implementing such a monster:

...Doesn't it make sense that before enacting legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the purpose of reducing man-made global warming, Congress would investigate whether significant man-made global warming is occurring (as opposed to watching Al Gore's propaganda film and simply declaring, by fiat, that scientists have reached a consensus on the issue when they clearly have not)?

And if, after a thorough and balanced inquiry, they determine that it is occurring, shouldn't they next examine whether their proposed legislative remedy is likely to significantly ameliorate the problem?

But they not only have not conducted a bona fide examination of the man-made warming issue but also have not attempted to examine, in any remotely scientific way, how much their proposed bill would reduce global warming (assuming it exists to the extent they contend) or whether any such reductions would make any difference at all to humanity's short- or long-term health or happiness or anything else.

All of this would be outrageous enough if there were no economic costs associated with their proposal. But in fact, the costs would be astronomical and way beyond the calculations they are presenting -- fraudulently -- to the American people to stunt the opposition they'd encounter if the truth were revealed.

I frankly do not think we can likely stop this in the House. Maybe we can stop it in the Senate. I would suggest going off the grid, and living in your car, but with Government Motors "smart" cars, there isn't enough room for the reloading bench.

Update 6/27/09: As predicted, the House indeed passed the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill. Glenn Beck reported last evening that some big names appear ready to profit big time. Algore may become the first cap and trade billionaire (big surprise there.) Goldman-Sachs stands to gain, as well as AIG. These last two, being now arms of the Government through the bailout process, makes the whole rot smell most distasteful. And then there is GE, owner of NBC and MSNBC. That of course explains the cheerleading from the media we have been hearing. Keep in mind that all these guys hope to make a killing of our your now strained pocketbook. Every item you buy will have a small cap and trade tax attached, though it won't be listed as such. Once again Congress has picked winners and losers. Guess who has been chosen to play the chump?

The Tyrants and the Pretender

Finally, for today, there is this post from Eternity Road, entitled The Tyrants and the Pretender. The Curmudgeon says it all, and very well at that, so I will just quote a few graphs and let you savor the entire thing.

Obama, a social-fascist, has no interest in anyone's freedom. His drive is for power. He finds the sentiments of tyrants more to his taste than the aspirations of would-be-free men. He certainly prefers the company of tyrants; he's spent enough time trying to charm them. Perhaps he hopes to learn from them.

Your Curmudgeon imagines that the tyrants of the world -- the ones who don't trouble to conceal it, that is -- are secretly amused. Obama can't possibly rise to their estate; Americans are too well armed, and his support is too precarious. A bad-enough false move would precipitate a second American Revolution, which could end with his bullet-riddled corpse hanging from a balcony. Of the bad moves in prospect, perhaps three would be bad enough: government-managed health care; the Employee Free Choice Act, and the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill.

What might we who understand and love freedom do to hasten Obama's expulsion from the Oval Office, perhaps even from the country? Your Curmudgeon entertains the question every day. Do you, Gentle Readers? What possibilities have you been pondering? Bequeathing Air Force One to Iran, or perhaps to some unplumbed African hellhole, would be a tolerable cost, wouldn't you say?

"Only I am the president of the United States." -- Barack Hussein Obama, press conference, June 23, 2009.

Another Lautenburg Proposal

Classical Values has a great post on the Lautenburg proposal to deny guns to those on the "Terrorist Watch List." Thanks to Dave Hardy for pointing to it on his blog, Of Arms and the Law.

This is a horrible and unconstitutional abuse of government authority, by a man who simply hates the idea that the "little people" might defend themselves with a gun. The Terrorist Watch List has been controversial because you can apparently be placed on it by a bureaucrat without being convicted of any crime, you can not find out if you are on it or why, and there is no means to get your name cleared. Presumably, you could appear on the list because someone at TSA doesn't like you, and wants to harass you. Or, who knows, because you are a conservative blogger? Because I don't know the criterion for getting on the list, I can speculate all day about it. Nixon had his "Enemies List," but this is supposedly "official."

Now, let's also think about the practical effects of the proposal for a minute. Does anyone believe that a real terrorist is going to just walk into a gun store, select a Glock 19, fill out the paperwork, and carry it out of the store leaving a paper trail of the serial number, and empty casing, and the place where purchased? Anyone? Of course not. Like anyone bent on a criminal enterprise, they will obtain their weapons through the black market, or smuggle them into the country. They probably won't steal the weapons themselves because of the risk to the mission if caught. So who do you think this will affect? If you said the law abiding citizen, you are correct. Lautenberg is using the ruse of the current bogeyman, the terrorist (who by the way, is real) to craft a law to harass law abiding citizens who may feel the need of a gun, especially when police forces are being cut due to the economic climate.

Anyway, go read the who thing. The comments section is particularly amusing as well.

Cap and Trade Regulates the Essential Element of Life

Not especially well written, but certainly contains a lot of useful information, The Regulation of the Essential Elements of Life by Lonnie E. Schubert is in the American Thinker today. Schubert comes at it from a slightly different angle, but essentially it is the "giggle test" so extolled by my former boss. An example:

Please, the simple fact is that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is roughly in equilibrium with carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans. Carbon dioxide concentration will necessarily rise in the atmosphere as the average ocean temperature rises. To ensure I am clear, global warming causes a rise in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. The causation is the same in the laboratory. Again, think back to your freshman and sophomore physics labs. Carbon dioxide comes out of the carbonated beverage as it warms. If it is kept chilled, it retains much more of its carbonation. Solubility is inversely proportional to temperature for carbon dioxide in water. Colder oceans absorb more carbon dioxide removing it from the atmosphere. Warmer oceans will not hold the carbon dioxide, and atmospheric concentrations go up.

Perhaps it is nonintuitive that all of our fossil fuels came from carbon dioxide that was once in the air and was subsequently converted to biological material through photosynthesis. Our fossil fuels are simply carbon dioxide concentrated by solar energy and earth forces so we can easily use it now. It is simply unreasonable to suppose it to be catastrophic to place this carbon back into the atmosphere from whence it came.

As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

In other words, the Goofball Wormening proponents want you to believe them, and not your own lying eyes. A little known factoid included in the above article is that the increase in fossil fuel use can be attributed solely to the increase in population. Interestingly, with our population being so large, we experience dense traffic every day because most of us live in or around cities. We get a distorted view of how much fossil fuel is being used. But in the United States, only 6% of the land area is developed, meaning has buildings and such on it. In Illinois and Indiana several years ago, I traveled for miles on interstate highways without seeing an on coming car. Out west, there are roads where one could wait for days for another traveler to come by. I once read a statistic that if all the oil that was ever pumped were to be put in one spot, it would fill Lake Tahoe. I could go on, but you get the point.

The point is that the cry of Goofball Wormening has nothing to do with science, or common sense. Gaia is not mad at us, and will not punish us. Instead, this is a power grab by people who want to control our lives, to control how much and where we can travel, form where we can get goods and services, and so much more. In the process, they plan to profit mightily on our backs. Don't let them.

Update: One of the facts pointed out in the above article is that the percentage carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rises and falls in response to average temperature of the oceans. It is a lagging indicator; or the earth warms and then carbon dioxide rises. As the earth again cools, which it is doing now, carbon dioxide goes back down. So here's a prediction. If cap and trade is implemented, the earth, already cooling, will continue to cool, and CO2 will go down. This will be pointed to as showing the success of cap and trade. It will not be true, but "the people who care and are empathetic" will want to believe it because it shows their sacrifices have saved the planet. Once again, conservatives will be the bad guys for pointing out the facts. Conservatives will have no credibility because "the people who care and are empathetic" don't want to hear facts.