Well, we’re quickly running out of time.

In order to understand what’s going to happen in a few month’s, it’s important to know what dynamics shape midterm elections.  Sean Trende at RealClearPolitics has done an able service of outlining them:

• What is the economy like?
• What do voters think of the President and his agenda?
• What is the size of the majority (if the incumbent party has one) and how recently was it established?

For those keeping score at home, the worst-case scenario looks like this:

• The economy is in the toilet
• The President’s agenda was over-ambitions and very unpopular
• The incumbent party has recently acquired a large majority

If you’re thinking that worst-case scenario gives a pretty accurate description of what’s happening this year, you would be absolutely correct.  In truth, we have not seen the stars align in this way for any election in living memory.  By many counts 1932 would qualify, although if we dismiss 1932 then we would have to revisit the 19th century to find an environment as bad for the incumbent party as this year is.  In 1932, the Democrats rode Franklin Roosevelt’s wave to a 97-seat pickup in the House of Representatives, the closest any party has come to a triple-digit gain.

Could we see a similar defeat for the Democrats this year?  I have hesitated to say so publicly until now, but my opinion is an emphatic yes!.  One major caveat is that the Republicans will not be riding a resoundingly victorious presidential candidate into office.  Such presidential candidates have very real effects on the outcome of elections, for two (related) reasons:

1. A well-liked presidential candidate can serve to mask unpopular candidates beneath him because he is the focus of attention and his party label matters to voters.  In 2008, voters who were excited to elect Barack Obama also elected candidates whom in other years they would have rejected, like Alan Grayson or Al Franken.
2. The presidency is unique among American offices in its ability to set the agenda and produce change.  For that reason, even presidential elections involving an incumbent are often forward-looking in nature.  In contrast, Congress’s subordinate role in agenda-setting means midterm elections are by nature reactive to the record of the incumbent Congress.

Point (1) would seem to be a net negative for Republicans this year, while point (2) would be a net positive.  Notice, however, that the policy platform of the opposition nor their campaign cash nor their television presence has so far entered the debate.  This will prove a crucial point as the media gears up into full “horse race” mode in the fall.

In a midterm election, the views of the opposition mean little if nothing on the whole.  The views of individual candidates can certainly have an effect on those races, but distributed over roughly 450 federal races and countless state and local races nationwide, those effects will tend to even out.  Unless the challenger is particularly controversial or well-known for other reasons, the incumbent in races below the statewide level (governor and senator) will maintain a significant name recognition advantage all the way to Election Day more often than not.  Even today, with all the news about the elections, we see results like this:

• AZ-1: “Despite Representative Ann Kirkpatrick having 95 percent name ID (with a 42 to 37 percent favorable-unfavorable rating) compared to challenger Paul Gosar’s 46 percent (23 to 6 percent favorable), Gosar leads on the ballot by a 47 to 41 percent margin.”
• CA-11: “Despite Representative Jerry McNerney having 93 percent name ID (with a 41 to 34 percent favorable-unfavorable rating) compared to challenger David Harmer’s 47 percent (19 to 8 percent favorable), Harmer currently leads McNerney on the ballot by a razor-thin 45 to 44 percent margin.”
• CO-4: “Despite Representative Betsey Markey having 98 percent name ID (with a 37 to 50 percent favorable-unfavorable rating) compared to challenger Cory Gardner’s 57 percent (23 to 13 percent favorable), Gardner leads on the ballot by a 50 to 39 percent margin.”

First, these are truly horrific numbers for the Democrats, but notice how low the challengers’ recognition levels are compared to the incumbents’.  By Election Day, it will be a safe bet that more than 46% of voters in AZ-1 will know who Paul Gosar is, but it is also safe to say that percentage will likely be lower than 95%.  More importantly, if 95% of the district already knows who Ann Kirkpatrick is and still wants to vote for someone else, how much good will all the advertising money in the world do? Harry Reid will face this same problem, and this is why months of negative advertising against Sharron Angle have at best put him in a tie with her.  Finally, notice two of the three Democrats above are losing despite decent favorable ratings.  This is some of the first evidence I have seen that we will be in an anti-Democrat year rather than an anti-liberal year.

There is very little, other than some kind of positive personal event for Obama, that is going to change any of these dynamics in the next two months.  The economy is not bouncing back, and Obamacare is not going to become suddenly more popular.  For those who enjoy electoral history, you are most likely going to witness a slice of it in just a few months.

How to free the country from ObamaInsanity.

Can the American people, the governed which Obama has lost the consent of, afford to use stretched legal means, albeit extra legal means, to unseat the President who can’t say what he believes any more than OJ could admit to murder? We can’t afford not to.

The constitutional, political, social, economic and military ramifications of inaction are too dire; the carnage Obama leaves in his wake at every turn makes two years the equivalent of an eternity.

Really, the problems faced by America are the same problems faced by a number of Western countries (perhaps all of them bar Switzerland). The problem isn’t any particular political party or ideology but rather with the political class, along with their allies in the bureaucracies. They’re utterly indifferent to the will of the people because they’re able to buy enough support by bribing and threatening the uninformed, the indifferent, the apathetic and the cowardly with money and services taken from others. And we enable it by our acquiescence and cowardice.

“The ballot box won’t fix this. Not soon enough.

“A determined minority, prepared to stand together and demand change-and threaten real violence or crippling disruption if change isn’t forthcoming- just might.

The unforeseen consequences of such action could well turn out to be horrible. But not half as horrible as a slow descent into serfdom.” (KG, Comments, Eternity Road)

Last night, you heard the disjointed, disingenuous, downright ridiculous speech delivered by a President who can no longer make a case even for himself. The crooked Chicago politician who can’t remember pewing in a racist Trinity Church with a pastor who welcomed the terrorists on 9/11 with mellifluous tones of brotherhood is now suffering from thinking that’s crooked to the nth degree. You almost want to feel sorry for him. Almost.

One of his internal dilemmas: Obama has a huge rhetorical problem, one Hitler never had. One Stalin never had.

While the dynamically dastardly duo that I named, more evil than the double play combination of Aparicio and Fox was skilled, meant what they said, Obama is in the unenviable position at almost every turn of believing one thing and having to say another. This is the confusion and double talk so many try to wrap their minds around. He’s President of the wrong nation.

Guys, Obama’s inability to repeat the oath of office was the first major national clue that Obama doesn’t believe what he says. Like the eye moves to motion, the brain fights untruth. To the brain, it’s a dissonant note. To come unscathed out of ObamaMouth, “Preserve, protect and defend the constitution” didn’t stand a prayer.

Obama believes what Rich and Dowd and Olbermann believe. The destiny of Obama in his own mind is to transform America. He’s committed to kill every element of freedom, free enterprise and individual rights that formed this nation’s foundation more than two centuries ago. Looting our treasury in quantities of million dollar paybacks to supporters is disgraceful, not to mention criminal. Getting part of these monies are Hollywood allies who cast TV shows and movies to conform to ObamaWishes.

You couldn’t make up a script that anyone would buy and call it “The Obama Presidency.” William Morris would call it too unbelievable.

Unbelievably, Obama has succeeded in redistributing the wealth of America; just as he mistakenly let slip was his intention that day he walked up to the house of Joe the Plumber.

When Obama speaks off the cuff, truth has a habit of coming out. About little things like redistribution of wealth. About slightly larger things like Obama’s belief in the national destruction of the exceptional nation that leads the free world.

In a country that believes in the supreme law of the land Obama is the exception.

He doesn’t care about following court decisions he disagrees with because he doesn’t believe in the American rule of law. He’s a constitutional lawyer who doesn’t believe in the constitution. Is that pitiable irony lost on anyone? He mocked the Supreme Court during his State of the Union Speech. And lied about why he did it. Don’t you remember? For the first time ever, a congressman yelled, “lies” during the lying halls of congress speech. Have you forgotten when Alito mouthed, “untrue”? Now and then the truth does escape ObamaMouth, but when it does, it’s nasty; you can smell the stink a mile away. But most of the time Obama is curving the truth like an old Nolan Ryan roundhouse.

If Obama were to talk straight, he’d admit that every knee jerk ObamaReaction is to go against the will of the American people. If there’s 70% agreement in this country about most anything, “I’m a thirty percenter 100% of the time” an honest Obama would say. I can hear him sing like a canary.

Hail, hail the Victory Mosque, the whole socialist, marxist gang is here. Where?

In highly paid positions in the White House, carrying out Saul Alinsky dictims.

The Mosque fiasco is the perfect example of Obama letting something that’s inside him escape, like-to-many-baked-beans might cause gas to escape into a movie theatre seat. The result stinks. The American people smell the rottenness of the indecent mosque and Obama’s support of it. And they’re repelled by the odor of that ObamaTruth escaping. Some things, Obama just can’t hold in even though he ends up with egg on his face.

That campaign statement about Americans clinging to their guns and bibles is precisely what I’m talking about.

Consequently, when he’s giving a speech to the American people, the writing of it is as tortured as the delivery. Of course he’s emotionless when he speaks to us. It’s almost impossible to speak with passion about something you totally disagree with; don’t believe. Only the finest actors can pull it off. Or the best con artists.

Of course, electing Obama was a huge mistake. Like sending off a spacecraft with a defective o-ring. He’s like a guy who lies his way into the position of Pope without believing in Catholicism.

Okay, Ollie, another fine mess you’ve gotten us into. What do we do now to free the nation? I’m afraid that inaction isn’t an option.

It took Hitler twelve years to destroy Germany. Obama thinks he can bring the United States to its knees in four. If Obama were President in 1941, we’d have lost the war. If we can’t call a SWAT team to release a hostage nation, what do we do?

A super mole takes up residence in the White House. How to remove it is the question. At this point, I’ll even try the yellow pages. Maybe the Orkin Man is available.

Each of the three critical terms comes factory-equipped with both a "strict" meaning and a colloquial one.

First, recession:
Strict: Two or more successive quarters of economic contraction ("negative economic growth").
Colloquial: When your neighbor loses his job.

Second, depression:
Strict: A severe contraction of economic activity, characterized by a great reduction of available credit.
Colloquial: When you lose your job.

Third and last, inflation:
Strict: An increase in the money supply, especially one that considerably exceeds recent increases in overall productivity.
Colloquial: An overall increase in the price of common goods and services.

Of the three terms, inflation has recently been the one bandied about in hushed tones. Persons with even a modest knowledge of basic economics know that, without an expansion of the money supply, an overall increase in the prices of goods and services is impossible. We also know that the Bush TARP program and the Obamunist "stimulus" bill have caused the injection of a large amount of new currency and credit into our financial system. What's held back prices to this point has been the tightening of conditions for the granting of credit by most significant lending institutions, coupled to the reluctance of creditworthy borrowers to borrow at a time of politico-economic uncertainty.

But money has a way of expressing itself. There's little chance that the huge cash balances on the ledgers of our banks will lie still forever. For one thing, Washington is unlikely to permit it. For another, financial accounting regards cash-in-hand as a debit item, which must be laid against some corresponding obligation for the books to balance.

When those balances are transformed into loans or the purchase of securities, the standard inflationary process will kick off.

In the "closed" United States -- i.e., the U.S. financial system exclusive of any sources or sinks of money outside its borders -- the embryo of inflation forms when the Federal Reserve Bank purchases Treasury bills. Those purchases are paid for with newly created money. The Fed lists the T-bills purchased as an asset to offset the new money, formally balancing its own books. But the T-bills, which are obligations of the federal government, need not be retired; thus, there is no net effect on the federal debt.

In a "normal" economy, the new money will slowly work its way through the economic system, raising prices first on those goods that are first purchased with it, then on the second round of purchased goods, and so on. After a certain interval -- at this time, about eighteen months -- the effect will have pervaded the system; the overall price level will have increased by an amount corresponding to the increase in the volume of money. If no more new money were to enter the system, stability would prevail.

In a recessionary economy, where economic activity has contracted modestly for six months or more, the dynamic is somewhat different. First, if private citizens and institutions are aware that a contraction is ongoing -- and they usually are -- newly created money will tend to travel more slowly through the economy, and will be put to different uses. In particular, it will be used to a greater degree to retire debt and build up reserves. Thus, the effect on prices will be retarded. If the issuance of new money was politically motivated, a measure intended to "fight the recession," that will usually result in further issuances, as politicians are among the least patient people known to science.

The cumulative effect of repeated issuances of new money, however, is the depreciation of the currency unit -- the dollar -- which will ultimately reveal itself as the prices of goods and services rise in concert. This will cause an accelerating tendency to "flee to safety," abandoning dollar-denominated assets for other currencies or for hard assets such as gold, silver, or land. But hard assets are not productive; they generate no new economic activity. Thus, as the dollar weakens and ever more wealth seeks shelter, the recession will deepen, possibly enough to qualify as a depression.

In the "open" United States, which has access to sources of credit outside our borders, the matter is different only in being worse. By borrowing from foreign holders of dollars -- i.e., selling them T-bills -- Washington can seed an inflationary surge without needing to involve the Fed. That increases the national debt and the interest payments on it, thereby reducing the fraction of federal revenue available to fund ongoing activities and increasing Washington's incentive to borrow. The sole evidence that this has occurred is on the federal government's own balance sheets, which are of dubious integrity.

But credit is indispensable to a capitalist economy. Without willing lenders, there will be few or no new enterprises; even existing, long-established ones will find it difficult to operate. When governments have soaked up the greater part of the available credit, economic contraction becomes inevitable -- and is usually severe.

When Carter Administration official Alfred Kahn dared to warn Americans of the possibility of a depression, the White House directed him to cease to use the word. Ayn Rand probably rolled over in her grave at that. (Well, she would have, if she'd been dead at the time.) The terms we use to describe reality cannot change reality. They can, however, affect our attitudes toward that reality, which was precisely what the Carter Administration, which had increased the federal deficit sharply upon arriving in power, sought to avoid.

Carter and his policymakers were liberals and Keynesians. They believed they could moderate the nation's economic malaise by fiscal operations. They were wrong -- Keynesianism must be the most thoroughly refuted economic doctrine of all time -- but like hardened ideologues of all sorts, they persisted nonetheless, even into the teeth of 13% annual inflation and 20% interest rates. In a way, it was fortunate for us, for it brought us the Reagan Revolution and a (temporary) rationalization of federal fiscal policy. Federal revenues nearly doubled over the Reagan years, while price increases dropped to 2% to 3% per annum. That Congress persisted in overspending its budget bears not at all on the success of the Reaganauts' fiscal corrections, but was rather an exercise in Public Choice / special-interest political dynamics.

We have a second Jimmy Carter in the White House, less rational and more headlong than the first one. He's backed by even larger and more complaisant majorities than his predecessor. What's restraining us from a second round of Carterite fiscal and financial disasters is only the reluctance of lenders to lend and borrowers to borrow, owing to the murkiness of the foreseeable economic future.

Remember in November. ]]> 2010-09-01T11:55:00-05:00 http://www.eternityroad.info/index.php/weblog/4439/ Barack Hussein Obama is the super mole in the White House leading us down the superhighway of destruction. If the 25th Amendment can’t remove him, the voters will.

1. The Economy.

Things are bleak for the hospitality / vacation industry, at least in the Berkshires.

The hotel at which we stayed, which had never previously had any vacancies over a summer weekend, had a total of five guests -- at a 300-unit hotel. The restaurants at which we ate were equally depopulated. Nor were there many "foreign" license plates to be found at any of the tourist destinations we passed.

There was one spot of visible activity: the outlet mall. But even there, prices were being jacked downward almost too fast for the eye to follow. Merchants at the Berkshire Mall, a conventional shopping center, have very little traffic -- for a typical store, a couple of dozen walk-ins per day, with actual purchases in the single digits.

But this is the "Summer of Recovery," right? Right?

2. "Sister Cities."

Pittsfield, Massachusetts has apparently gone the way of Berkeley, California in adopting "sister cities." There were signs at all the roads into town enumerating those "sister cities" -- four in all -- which one must assume the Pittsfield city council regards as like-minded or like-charactered in significant ways:

• Ballina, County Mayo, Ireland
• Cava de' Tirreni, Italy
• Cheongju, South Korea
• Malpaisillo, Nicaragua

Berkeley adopts "sister cities" on the basis of political alignment (hard left, of course). On what basis Pittsfield chose its foreign siblings, I do not know. But judging from the proliferation of Priuses, Birkenstocks, and unshaved female legs, I have my surmises.

3. WiFi.

Contrary to what one might expect -- or hope -- wireless Internet access in hotels is not yet universal.

Our hotel is divided into three separate buildings. I was assured that the one in which we stayed had continuous, reliable WiFi. Well, that turned out not to be the case, at least in our rooms, where the connection was extremely slow and as unpredictable as the affections of a politician.

There was one spot in the building where access was continuous, fast, and reliable: a second-floor conference room that was unused throughout the weekend. However, that room was unlighted and un-air-conditioned, which made it less than pleasant for the purpose.

It was also the room we had to go to for our "complimentary Continental breakfast." More than coincidence?

4. Small Town Journalism.

The regional daily newspaper, the Berkshire Eagle, carries a small amount of national news, but mostly covers local developments. For example, the edition for Saturday paralleled a story on the collapse of American birth rates with a story about a single employee of a local concern who'd been fired, unjustly in his opinion, and was protesting the dismissal -- both front page, above-the fold.

There's something refreshing about that. Not every media organ aspires to national significance; not every newspaper relentlessly mimics the New York Times. When a paper's reporters must produce news items of importance to the daily lives of its proximate readers, those reporters must commit actual investigative journalism: they must look for what's happening, capture it in process or shortly thereafter, and relate the facts essentially without editing or "framing," so that the reader can grasp their relevance to him as a resident of the area.

A dear friend has written extensively about the faults and essential insufficiency of broadcast journalism: the sort of organ that attempts to cover all (and only) the biggest stories from around the world. I think he'd approve of the Berkshire Eagle. Its attitude toward journalism could spark a revival of interest in it...hopefully, among journalists.

5. Frame of Mind.

Monday morning, as we prepared to depart the Berkshires for Long Island, I realized a terrible thing: I had relaxed.

I was in a totally unsuitable frame of mind for returning to the hurly-burly of my job, my home, my animals, and my several pursuits. There was no way I could re-immerse myself in my usual life without first "gearing up." That would be like requiring a community organizer with no other job experience to undertake the responsibilities of president of the United States.

It weighed on me all through our drive south. When we stopped for a bite of lunch, I resolved to use the one and only technique available to get back into the required state of anxiety.

I let the C.S.O. drive the rest of the way.

Don't get me wrong: I love my wife. But she regards the highways as her personal property, and the laws of physics as suspensible by sheer willpower (hers, of course). To her, to leave ten feet between cars moving at 75 mph is wasteful; six or seven feet is more than sufficient. Of course, any speed below that is an affront to the gods of internal combustion. And so, after 100 miles of heart-in-mouth derring-do on high-speed roads populated by creatures from every page of the automotive bestiary, I found myself back on Long Island, blood pressure once again grazing four digits, and in need of a really big drink.

And how was your weekend? ]]> 2010-08-31T12:38:01-05:00 http://www.eternityroad.info/index.php/weblog/4437/

I would suggest that one of the main reasons so many liberals are in a flop-sweating, bowel-stewing panic over Fox News and the Tea Parties is that they understand such developments are a real threat to epistemic hegemony of liberalism that has been unraveling for the last decade and half. . . .

. . . Since 1950, “vital center” liberals, and of course leftists, have looked for every conceivable excuse to delegitimize conservative dissent and criticism. For decades, liberal elites abused their monopoly on the media and their near complete control of the commanding heights of the culture to attack not just conservative ideas, but conservative motives . . . . That effort is still under way in the arts, in academia and in the few remaining bastions of the “legacy media.”

. . . [L]iberals have grown more shrill and desperate in their efforts to delegitimize conservative ideas, new and old.

Liberal reaction to conservative argument heads south after the first two or three sentences.  Conservatives are racists, sexists, nativists, bigots, borderline paranoids, full-fledged paranoids, homophobes, or xenophobes.  You see it everywhere.

Mr. Goldberg is right. Liberals go straight to vitriol and personal attack because they’re desperate at the loss of the monopoly and unaccustomed to doing the work to refute the substance of conservative arguments.  The Supreme Court’s reversal of 140+ years of learning on the Commerce Clause was an atrocious betrayal and a lie from the word “The” on down.  Yet, since the New Deal, this betrayal has been lauded as wisdom incarnate and served up as the mother’s milk of the unitary state. 

Now conservatives have the outlets to proclaim leftist lies for what they are and leftists can do nothing to stop the threat to the foundation of their power.  They try to foist hate speech laws, PC codes, Fairness Doctrine II, and net neutrality on us. But their real agenda is plain. They are attacking free speech and will do all in their power to demonize their hated enemies on the right.

Leftist hostility to liberty is clear.

”The Conservative Bubble and Liberalism’s Cargo Cult.” By Jonah Goldberg, The American, 4/13/10. 

China surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest economy last quarter, capping the nation’s three- decade rise from Communist isolation to emerging superpower.

Japan’s nominal gross domestic product for the second quarter totaled $1.288 trillion, less than China’s $1.337 trillion, the Japanese Cabinet Office said today. Japan remained bigger in the first half of 2010, the government agency said. Japan’s annual GDP is $5.07 trillion, while China’s is more than $4.9 trillion.

However, a few observant souls pointed out something which should have been obvious—that in real terms China’s GDP is actually far higher than the nominal figure would suggest.  By other measures, China passed up Japan long ago.  When measured in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), China’s GDP is about twice as large—indicating that its currency trades on forex markets at about half its real value relative to the yen.  Compare the following data on nominal GDP vs. PPP GDP:

Nominal GDP

— European Union 16,447,259
1 United States 14,256,275
2 Japan 5,068,059
3 China 4,908,982
4 Germany 3,352,742
5 France 2,675,951
6 United Kingdom 2,183,607
7 Italy 2,118,264
8 Brazil 1,574,039
9 Spain 1,464,040
10 Canada 1,336,427
11 India 1,235,975
12 Russia 1,229,227
13 Australia 997,201
14 Mexico 874,903
15 South Korea 832,512
16 Netherlands 794,777
17 Turkey 615,329
18 Indonesia 539,377
19 Switzerland 494,622
20 Belgium 470,400

PPP GDP

— European Union 14,793,979
1 United States 14,256,275
2 China 8,765,240
3 Japan 4,159,432
4 India 3,526,124
5 Germany 2,806,266
6 United Kingdom 2,139,400
7 Russia 2,109,551
8 France 2,108,228
9 Brazil 2,013,186
10 Italy 1,740,123
11 Mexico 1,465,726
12 South Korea 1,364,148
13 Spain 1,360,605
14 Canada 1,281,064
15 Indonesia 962,471
16 Turkey 880,061
17 Australia 851,170
18 Iran 827,858
19 Taiwan 735,997
20 Poland 688,761

(My apologies on the table format.  Fran’s HTML editor hates me.)

Gentle Reader, which list looks more reasonable?

PPP looks at how much stuff a unit of currency would buy in a local economy, then compares that to the purchase price of the same stuff in another currency in a different economy.  Since theoretically (but of course not practically) all goods trade on an international market, they should have the same or very similar prices in every market—much like turning everything into a commodity money a la the old international gold standard that prevailed in the nineteenth century.  Notice the particularly glaring disparities of the highlighted countries, especially China and India.  All tend to be (amazingly!) competitive exporters. 

I also noticed this huge disparity when I was in China back in 2005.  The prices of goods did not remotely reflect the exchange rate, but were very consistent with one another relative to what I would expect to pay in America.  The exchange rate was (I think) about eight to one at that time, but goods were priced as if the rate were only about four to one. For example, a pound of grapes that might go for $1 here was only about 4 yuan instead of eight.

What a steal, right!  No wonder Chinese exports are so ‘competitive’—they’re being given away at half-price.  At fair valuation, they wouldn’t be competitive at all.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—the Chinese economy is not that competitive.  People not that close to the situation cannot comprehend the wastefulness and corruption that is endemic there.  China has had to rely on sleight of hand like this to keep it’s edge, and now that this scheme has exploded on it, the Chinese economy is out of luck.  It is said that China will start to wean itself off exports and start relying on domestic consumption, but nobody seems to want to ask the obvious questions—if it were that easy, why hasn’t it happened already, developing organically?  Why not do that all along if that were all there was to it?  Why did China need export markets to come out of revolutionary economic deep-freeze?

The obvious answer is that it didn’t because it can’t, and basketcases are basketcases for a reason.  People who don’t need crutches don’t use them, and nobody with any sense sees a guy in a wheelchair and expects him to leap up and run a marathon on command.  But then, I suppose that economics is not a subject to expect to see much good sense. 

I don’t care what the experts say, that country is going nowhere fast.  Barring total annihilation of the West, China will not surpass US GDP by 2030, and it may not even do it by the end of the century.  Here is an excellent (thought somewhat lengthy) article about Japanese-Chinese similarities, and what might happen to China going forward.  His analysis is not particularly Austrian—he attributes Asian bubble-blowing to built in subsidies that force manufacturing and industrial development at the expense of domestic consumers—but the outcome is not entirely different from an export mania created by currency manipulation.  In the end, the nation develops an established economy dependent on the distortions, and unable to function and develop once they’ve lost any meaningful effect.

Here’s a particularly interesting passage:

But for a long time the problem of misallocated investment, which was whispered about in Japan but not taken too seriously, didn’t seem to matter.  After all, as nearly everyone knew, Japan’s leaders were extremely smart, with a deep knowledge of the very special circumstances that made Japan different from other countries and not subject to “western” economic laws, with real control over the economy, with a strong grasp of history and penchant for long-term thinking, and most of all with a clear understanding of what was needed to fix Japan’s problems.

And look what a great job they had already done: by the early 1990s Japan had generated so much investment-driven growth that it had grown from 7% of global GDP in 1970 to 10% in 1980, and then surged to nearly 18% at its peak in the early 1990s. In about twenty years Japan’s share of global GDP was two-and-a-half times its initial share.  That is an extraordinary growth story and one that can only be explained as a function of a new kind of economic thinking, right?

But less than twenty years later, after a terribly long struggle to adjust to high debt levels and massive overinvestment, Japan is about to be overtaken by China with only 8% of global GDP.  Japan, in other words, has given back in less than two decades almost the entire GDP share it had taken in the two astonishing decades that preceded it (while during the same period the US has maintained its share).  What’s worse, it is hard to pick up a newspaper today and read about Japanese policymakers without getting the idea that they are a totally dysfunctional, narrowly ambitious, and not especially savvy lot, much like their US and European peers.  As Mortimer Snerd used to say, who woulda thunk it?

Don’t be fooled by the arguments of the brainwashed ‘capitalists’ touting repressive, backwards societies as models for Western policy and economic development, and don’t blindly accept whatever outcome the market produces as the honest-to-goodness ‘correct,’ most optimal arrangement.  There will never be anything approaching free markets or free trade so long as there are central banks and meddlesome governments to manipulate currencies and terms of trade.  As long as they exist, you can’t really trust the ‘market’ outcome.

It’s all a game. 

Man's widest-bandwidth sense is the sense of vision. It conveys more information per unit time, in absolute terms, than any of the other five. (Yes, there are five others; look it up.) Indeed, the consensus among anthropologists is that the brain expanded from its simian dimension of approximately 800 cubic centimeters to its sapient 1300 cc largely in response to our descent from the treetops to the plains -- to where sharp, focusable, reliable vision is the paramount survival necessity.

That tells you at once about one of the prices of vision: it requires massive processing power to make sense of the images. However, there are other prices, quite hefty ones, that we neglect at our peril.

Strictly speaking, vision is not a sense, but rather the consequence of the use of a sense. The eye reports to us continuously; whether we make use of its data stream is another matter. To see, you must look. You must be willing to look, and you must know how to look, and you must be ready to accept and interpret what you see.

There's another price of vision: you must choose to employ it and trust what it says to you. No sense whose reports are discarded with prejudice can reasonably be called an asset.

We guard our eyes rather carefully. We buttress their abilities with all manner of sophisticated devices. We speak of being struck blind as a terrible tragedy, one of the worst that can afflict a whole and healthy man. But many among us choose not to see what's before our eyes, for any of a number of reasons.

When you look at America, what do you see?

Do you see a nation in which men prosper best by coercion? Or do you see our abundance, generosity, and happiness as the fruits of cooperation and voluntary exchange? Do you see a nation whose commitment to individual liberty and responsibility has made it into the greatest force for good since Christ? Or do you see a nation filled with "bitter clingers" who have to be mastered and controlled for their own good? Do you see a nation in which ordinary men cannot be trusted with the means of self-defense? Or do you see a nation in which the ethic of personal responsibility burns so strongly that to deny a law abiding man the right to own weapons is an intolerable affront?

Do you see a people whose devotion to the Christian faith has been its principal strength through two and a half centuries, sixteen wars, and innumerable turmoils of every sort? Or do you see millions upon millions of superstitious ignoramuses who really ought to buy, read, and accept unquestioningly the antitheistic tracts of Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens, and forget all this "Son of God" and "Savior of Mankind" nonsense?

And whatever you see, what are you willing to bet on the soundness of your vision?

The next price of vision is the willingness to defend it. For there are few perceptions, however plain and unimpeachable they might seem, that have no adversaries.

If you have seen the system of voluntary cooperation and exchange we call capitalism as the fountainhead of our prosperity, and have pronounced your blessing upon it and its issue, in what fora and to what extent are you willing to stand by your vision? For he who refuses to defend the conclusions he's drawn from his vision will inevitably be led to disbelieve the vision itself. One cannot long sustain one's confidence in a mass of evidence if he recoils from defending its clear implications. He will find reasons to believe he's been misled, deceived, subjected to a mirage or a hallucination. If the vision persists despite his desire to wish it away, he will close his eyes, literally refusing to see.

Similarly, if you have seen, in whatever fashion, the truth and beauty of the Christian Covenant, proclaimed by Jesus of Nazareth and attested to by His Passion and Resurrection, but give way before the sneers of pseudo-sophisticates, for how long can you expect your Christianity to endure? Christ Himself told His Apostles, "If any man among you hath no sword, let him sell his cloak and buy one." He expected the assaults on His people, and knew they would be both severe and unceasing. He knew that a man unwilling to fight, and possibly die, in defense of his faith had no true claim to faith at all -- that in time, such a coward would deny Him and His dispensation as the price of an easier life among the scoffers.

This is one of the greatest of all prices of vision, for a sense deliberately stifled is a sense that will soon cease to operate at all.

Vision, though not interchangeable with visions, nevertheless is related to such phenomena. Many have been the visionaries of Western Civilization. Many have been the visionaries of Christendom. More often than not, the two were the same people.

Adam Smith was a cleric. John Locke was a devout Christian, who believed that the laws of nature, dictated by God at Creation, would infallibly punish a ruler who thought he could disregard them. Many of the Founders of this nation were deeply religious, even though they accepted the necessity of keeping men's consciences free of State intrusion.

Throughout American history, our greatest leaders have been devout Christians, who leaned visibly upon the Cross during their times of severest test. Measure the current president against that standard, if you dare.

Yesterday, there was a huge rally at the National Mall, organized and hosted by commentator Glenn Beck. Beck startled the huge crowd, now estimated to have been around 300,000 persons, by making an explicitly religious pitch to them. Without any hesitation or ambiguity, his speech to the throng was a call back to God.

There are those who disdain Glenn Beck for his emotionalism, which is unusual for a public figure in our time. Say what you will, the man lacks neither vision, nor strength of conviction, nor courage in the face of opposition. He proved it yesterday, and moved many thousands of Americans in the process.

Glenn Beck has paid the price of vision. He has looked, has seen, and has found within himself the fortitude to speak unflinchingly of what he's seen, despite the derision and condemnation of an adverse media and an implacable cultural foe. Of those who oppose his Constitutionalism and his exhortations to restoring its full meaning, it's unnecessary to speak. Yet even many who agree with his political positions have cringed before his unabashed Christianity and his willingness to proclaim it. But before a man with the courage of his convictions, no opposition, however large, is of any moment.

I am proud to stand with Glenn Beck, despite our stylistic divergences. I, too, have looked, and have seen. I have reached the same conclusions as he. And I will pay the price: I will put my back to his, for what it's worth, though all the rest of the world rage against us.

If we who love freedom really mean to take this country back from those busily sawing through its sinews, then to the sneering statists who strive for our subjugation, the cultural pseudosophisticates who seek to submerge us in the "little deaths," and the antitheists eager to strip us of the bastion of Christian faith, we can make no other response. There can be no other candid, sincere response.

May God bless and keep you all. ]]> 2010-08-29T18:42:00-05:00 http://www.eternityroad.info/index.php/weblog/4434/ It’s not just a battle for the sanctity of voting rights. Obama’s declared war on this nation.
August 27, 2010, Pajamas Media, J. Christian Adams

Outrage: Pentagon Grants Five States Waivers from MOVE Act
Protecting the rights of active duty military to have their vote counted is apparently not a priority for this administration.

Back to Rachel:

Folks, the subhead is an understatement. Every little thing and every big thing Eric Holder and Barack Obama can do to limit what they perceive as enemy vote and maximize friendly-to-Obama vote is being done. The article Adams has written bottom lines this fact. In a number of states, Obama has illegally found a way to likely eliminate the vote of front line fighting American soldiers. Think of it as one tactic in the war.

Stealing votes a la Al Franken’s dirty win in Minnesota is another.

ACORN like organizations corrupting the vote process nationally is another.

The Panthers initiating a legal process by intimidating voters in Philadelphia on election day last is simply another example of corrupt politicians opening fire on the sanctity of the constitutionally guaranteed honest election. The Panthers pulled the trigger, but Holder and Obama aimed the weapon. Yes, friends, union leaders in cahoots with the Black Panthers were in cahoots with the Obama people prior to election day.  Now Obama and his henchmen have gone in for the kill.

Not only won’t the enemies of America be satisfied till free and honest elections are a thing of the past, but they won’t rest till liberty of every stripe is torn from our cold dead fingers. ObamaCorruption is trying to overrun this nation with executive orders, legal chicanery, lies, deceit, bribes, assorted directives, illegal and quasi legal enactments; every bullet in his communist inspired arsenal tooled and fueled by an ungodly love of socialism/marxism and hate for the ideals of individual freedom, self reliance and free enterprise, the whole kit and kaboodle of exceptional American values on which this nation was founded.

The battle to capture the vote, of course, has really heated up out west where Obama is using the danger, death and destruction caused by porous borders in a corrupt attempt to force what amounts to amnesty for 10 million illegal aliens who Obama is certain would vote Democratic as soon as they became U.S. citizens.

Of course, it goes without saying that freedom is being attacked by the Obama administration on all fronts. With all the corporate and bank takeovers. American free enterprise is already a casualty of Obama’s unholy war. As you know all too well, the entire health care system is now undergoing a barrage of insane planned changes. Something as seemingly insignificant in the grand scheme of things as your employer contributions to the payment of your private health care is being taken prisoner, and will be taxed to death in short order. Something as crucial as your health care premiums (remember the lie Obama told about premiums not going up?) will be nuked, blown sky high so they’re no longer recognizable. The killing of insurance companies, one of Obama’s bogeymen and favorite whipping boys, is in the works. Obama’s longed for single payer system (socialized medicine) is on its way. Tons of costs piled on insurance companies by Obama mean impending death. Obama believes insurance companies are as expendable as any 75 year old white male who needs bypass surgery. Hello ObamaDeath panels, goodbye grandpa. Thanks to Obama, insurance companies, which will be replaced by hell on earth quality care, are on the road to destruction; they’ll soon be on the equivalent of the Bataan death march.

How about a short history refresher course to remind us what men with a totally warped hate for freedom, honesty and integrity flowing in their veins are capable of doing.

Remember Bataan? The infamous walk in the sun? It was a slightly less than 100 kilometer trek from Corregidor to Capas in the Philippines. 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war suffered unimaginable and wide-ranging physical abuse and murder committed by the armed forces of the Empire of Japan. Beheading, throat-cutting, and shooting were common causes of death, in addition to death by bayonet, rape, disembowelment, rifle-butt beating, and deliberate starvation or dehydration on the week-long continual march in the tropical heat. Falling down or inability to continue moving was tantamount to a death sentence, as was any degree of protest. For anything that gets in Obama’s way the little joke in his most inner circle is, “let’s play some Bataan traveling music for them.”

Does anyone doubt Obama’s plan to kill the insurance companies? Doubt he hates them like the Japanese hated their prisoners? Doubt he hates Sarah Palin with the same cruel venom that prevented Obama from criticizing “Family Guy” when it mocked Trig Palin for having Down Syndrome? Doubtless, Obama hates the U.S. Constitution along with the Supreme Court just as much; anything good, right and decent that gets in his way Obama laughingly calls for that “Bataan traveling music” so they be on their way.

As Obama stages daylight bombing raids on our economy, squandering trillions of taxpayer dollars that balloon our debt till it drives us over the cliff of bankruptcy, he issues overt and covert sneak attacks on our military preparedness. While Obama should be spending money on weapons to kill terrorists and defend this nation against other nations that want to kill us, he instead spends millions on lawyers to defend terrorists, even going so far as to try them under American civilian law in New York City, the site of 9/11. At the same time, America’s Presidential abomination does everything in his power to bring aid and comfort to those desirous of building a commemorative mosque, a sick, sordid, pathetic shrine to remember the brave terrorists who led the sneak attack on 9/11. Laughingly, families of terrorists call those who leaped to their death on that fateful day “American dive bombers”.

To ease the pain of terrorists whose favorite pastime is slaughtering Americans with sneak attacks, Obama has fired another howitzer at the American people.

The New York Post:

“Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri is a man with blood on his hands. A year before 9/11, the Saudi al Qaeda operative masterminded the bombing of the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole, killing 17 sailors as the vessel refueled in the Yemeni port of Aden. A Guantanamo tribunal was ready to arraign him last year, but since the Obama administration took office, it’s been a case of trial and error. No trial—plenty of error. As the 10th anniversary of the Oct. 12, 2000, attack looms, the White House has inexplicably frozen the prosecution. The Justice Department said this week that “no charges are either pending or contemplated with respect to al-Nashiri in the near future.”

REUTERS
USS Cole

And it’s not the first time the Obama White House has meddled with Nashiri’s case. Nashiri’s charges were held in abeyance for nine months last year as the Justice Department conducted a review of all cases against Guantanamo detainees. In the end, White House officials chose to discard years of careful legal work by the Navy’s JAG lawyers when they removed the 9/11 suspects’ cases from military jurisdiction and turned them over to the federal courts. But Nashiri’s case stayed where it was. Attorney General Eric Holder said last year that because the Cole bombing was an attack on the military, Nashiri’s trial should proceed in a military tribunal. Did it really take nine months to figure that out? It’s not apparent why the administration is delaying Nashiri’s trial now. What is clear is that the White House has called off any action until after the November elections, learning a lesson—the wrong lesson—from their troubles. “It’s politics at this point,” one military official told The Washington Post. Correction: It’s been politics from Day One, when Obama made a foolhardy promise to close Gitmo within a year of taking office. And it’s been politics ever since, as the administration has bumbled its way toward 9/11 trials, which now appear years away from even beginning. We’ve always been skeptical that you could use the “rule of law” to handle terrorism cases, a worry borne out by the administration’s fumbling so far. If this administration can’t figure out how to convict the monster behind the murder of 17 sailors, then let Nashiri simply rot in prison. Just don’t let him out.”

Another Rachel observation.

Obama doesn’t want to convict any terrorists. Hello. Your President isn’t on your side. Which is why everything the American people want done Obama doesn’t want to do. The same cannot be sweepingly said of any other United States President.

The reality can’t be denied any longer. Barack Obama became President under false pretenses. Piling up lie after lie about what you believe in and what you intend to do to America to me is a high crime. It’s like somebody being elected Pope who swears an oath on the bible but doesn’t believe in Catholicism. Obama’s a fraud of the highest order. He can’t defend the Constitution because he doesn’t believe in constitutional rights. He may be a constitutional lawyer. But that’s like a Japanese admiral prior to WW2 who studies at USC to gain knowledge of the enemy.

This constitutional lawyer doesn’t believe in the constitution. It’s irony of the highest order.

Maybe I’m just speaking for me, but I believe Obama has lost the consent of the governed because he’s no less than a national fraud. He’s a socialist/marxist actively working toward the downfall and destruction of the United States of America. The enormity of the reality isn’t lost on me. We have a United States President in office who hates and despises everything this country stands for: truth, justice, freedom, individual property rights, free enterprise. You name it. Obama hates it.

Thank goodness for the 25th amendment. Is it a stretch to think it covers this insane circumstance? Of course. But with the life of the nation on the line, there’s only one decision that can be reached.

We have a mole in the White House.

The 25th Amendment.
No guts. No country.

Tennis anyone?

1. Our Accommodations.

Good Saturday morning from Berkshire County, Massachusetts! And it is a good morning: the C.S.O. and I had a more or less pleasant drive here from Long Island, settled in satisfactorily at our hotel, ate a nice dinner yesterday evening at the Dakota, slept well, and have just enjoyed the “complimentary Continental breakfast,” replete with foods no European has ever seen on his breakfast table. We’ve planned our peregrinations for the day, I’ve confirmed our reservations for this evening’s repast and the Mass time at St. Ann’s tomorrow, and are looking forward to the rest of the weekend.

But best of all...indeed, dwarfing every other aspect of the trip so far:

We’ve eluded the Eject-A-Bed!

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow.

2. Ambivalences.

Upon perusing this morning’s edition of the Berkshire Eagle, a delightfully thin publication of relentlessly local focus, I noted that an old musical hero of mine, Tom Paxton, is scheduled to play at the Guthrie Center in Barrington this very evening. I was immediately overcome by that most terrible of tensions, reverence for an old and much beloved icon counterpoised against more recent memories and fears.

It’s been three years since the C.S.O. and I saw (and barely heard) Gordon Lightfoot. That concert was a melancholy affair for us; its memory lingers with me today. Lightfoot’s deterioration was so pronounced that there was no disguising it. The clash it made with our memories of the virile and powerful troubadour he’d been had us on the edge of tears throughout.

Yet, just last year, Tony Bennett, arguably the finest singer of his time and idiom, thrilled us with a concert to be remembered forever. The 83-year-old Bennett was living proof that time need not enfeeble all of us. To which of those poles would Paxton come nearer?

Ultimately, I decided against the concert. Paxton has become ever more political as he’s aged—hard-left, contemptuous of America, of freedom, and of capitalism—and if anything is more likely to spoil my enjoyment of a concert, I can’t imagine what it might be. And Paxton, after all, was the composer of this ditty, which he called “the voice of Nixon’s Silent Majority.”

I suppose we’ll just visit a few art galleries, have dinner, and call it a day.

3. The Dwindling.

According to the Berkshire Eagle, we’re steadily moving toward European rates of reproduction:

Forget the Dow and the GDP. Here’s the latest economic indicator: The U.S. birth rate has fallen to its lowest level in at least a century as many people apparently decided they couldn’t afford more mouths to feed.

The birth rate dropped for the second year in a row since the recession began in 2007. Births fell 2.6 percent last year even as the population grew, numbers released Friday by the National Center for Health Statistics show.

“It’s a good-sized decline for one year. Every month is showing a decline from the year before,” said Stephanie Ventura, the demographer who oversaw the report.

The birth rate, which takes into account changes in the population, fell to 13.5 births for every 1,000 people last year. That’s down from 14.3 in 2007 and way down from 30 in 1909, when it was common for people to have big families.

The situation is a striking turnabout from 2007, when more babies were born in the United States than any other year in the nation’s history. The recession began that fall, dragging down stocks, jobs and births.

“When the economy is bad and people are uncomfortable about their financial future, they tend to postpone having children. We saw that in the Great Depression the 1930s and we’re seeing that in the Great Recession today,” said Andrew Cherlin, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University.

“It could take a few years to turn this around,” he added.

That’s the sort of “insight” one must expect from the typical sociology professor. He probably hasn’t even heard of Mark Steyn’s America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. If he has, I doubt he’s read it.

Americans are slowly ceasing to breed for the same reason Europeans, Russians, and the Japanese have ceased to breed: We’ve become present-satisfaction obsessives who are losing confidence in our future. The laissez les bon temps roulez mindset that’s undone the “more advanced” welfare states is taking hold of us, too.

Our political course is integral to this development. With the rise of the Obamunists, we’ve passed a “knee” in our satisfactions-versus-investments curve and have begun to barrel downhill. The semiconscious conviction that there’s no point to working hard, or producing children who’ll enjoy a brighter future than the present in which we beget them, seizes ever more Americans and turns them away from the challenges and pleasures of family, of saving, and of belief in human advance.

Steyn posited that socialized medicine is the point of no return for that progression. Does that ring any alarm bells, Gentle Reader?

And to think I dragged the C.S.O. up here to get away from all this crap!