Throw the Bum Out

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the national media made a headline out of every niggling trip a corporate CEO took in the company jet. The flames of public outrage were stoked as one editorial after another demanded to know how they could be so audacious, so wasteful, so negligent of shareholders' interests, when the companies they were supposed to be running were bleeding red ink, reaching out to the government for bailouts, etc. etc. ad infinitum.

Remember the outcry to "throw the bums out?"

But when the entity is the United States government, and the irresponsible party is the president, and interests being betrayed are those of the citizens and taxpayers of the country, well, somehow, that's different.

Different in at least one way. If Obama had gotten drunk, stolen a tank and gone joyriding through the streets of Washington, DC, that might have been more egregious than the spectacle of Air Force One buzzing Lower Manhattan the other day. But not much else really comes close.

In one colossal blunder this president has made a mockery of the symbols of his office, a mockery of the American people, a mockery of sacredness of Ground Zero, a mockery of the memory of 9/11 and the people of New York, a laughingstock of the office of President of the United States before its citizens and before the world.

This story may be buried once somebody is fired, but it will never die. If abuse of corporate assets is cause to "throw the bums out," how much more is abuse of national assets?

Throw the bum out.

A[nother] New Day of Infamy

The last time an airliner flew so close to downtown Manhattan, it was “a New Day of Infamy” and “evil was unleashed upon the world.”

A New Day of Infamy

This time, irresponsibility of the worst kind was unleashed as the President's 747, Air Force One, in the company of a fighter jet escort, took a joyride down the Hudson River, zipped around the Statue of Liberty, and went on its merry way.

There was no warning to the people working in skyscrapers, and since there was no reason not to fear the worst, several buildings were evacuated. Lower Manhattan, you see, has learned to take the threat of wayward jets seriously.

Eventually, an excuse was disseminated through the national news media: it was a photo-op.

A what? The White House sends a 747 down the Hudson River with an F15 in tow and it’s a “photo-op?” For what?

Air Force One "buzzes" the Financial District

Anyone who’s ever been a parent, or who has ever been a child, knows an evasive answer when he hears it. “Junior, what were you doing tearing up the neighborhood in your car?” “Oh, ma, it was a photo-op.” Translation: “It was anything but a ‘photo-op,’ and don’t bother asking again.”

So it’s a safe bet that the American people, who own that jet and employ its staff, will never know for what purpose it was used on Monday, April 27, 2009, or why our peace was disturbed with such disregard for the eerie likeness it had to that morning on the New Day of Infamy, when evil was unleashed upon the world.

Whatever the truth is, it was a ridiculously irresponsible thing to do. We trust we aren’t the only ones left with an uneasy feeling in the gut when attempting to comprehend the depth of the void of sense in the highest office in the land that could have resulted in such a careless, irresponsible prank.

We can’t get the image of the President of the United States in his Panama Jack hat, smoking a joint, surrounded by floozies, taking the American people’s nice big jet out for the ultimate joyride. Even that's more plausible than a "photo-op." After all, Bill Clinton had his oval office, his cigar and his intern. Why should Obama be outdone?

Put on Your Overcoat

...and play Columbo for a moment. What is up with the Obama-Planned Parenthood-Nominal Catholic (Pelosi, Biden, Sebelius, et al) axis? What's the link here? We think the oh-so-clever Obama strategists (Axelrod, you magnificent bastard) have decided to charm every Catholic that can be charmed, buy the ones that can't, and ignore the rest. When the good detective rubs his chin and asks, "but who benefits?", it's clear that Planned Parenthood is the one cashing the biggest checks.

National Health Care, the obsession of Hillary Clinton (and therefore very on-the-plate of her lapdog, Barack Obama) that provides expanded taxpayer funding for abortions is something that Planned Parenthood must be drooling over. Perhaps even engineering. We don't doubt that their ominous boast of playing a "unique role in the Obama administration" is related to some such strategy. Unique indeed. When was the last time a corporation played any role in a presidential administration?

Even if, somehow, you remain "pro-choice," are you pro-choice about your president being in some corporation's pocket? You weren't when they were talking about "Halliburton."

We think these development suggest a strategy, and one that indicates unequivocally just how important it is to neutralize the significant Catholic presence in the marketplace in order to install abortion as a taxpayer-funded "right." A diabolical manipulation of the political system and an unthinkable abuse of executive power, no doubt. But also quite a revelation on the formidable essence of the Catholic vote, needing, as it apparently does, such top-priority containment by the Axis of Death.

We also think it likely that this strategy will backfire by uniting genuine Catholics in America and worldwide to finally insist upon the overthrow of the death-mandate in public policy.

Too Strange to Be Fiction

A few ideas that are still in the oven:

Virtual Village. A nation is many things, but viewed through the lens of a pragmatist, it can be reduced to a contract of sorts between people and government. A pragmatist will see obligors and obligees, even employer and employees. A really pragmatic pragmatist will see it less as a contract, which implies (and may even require) the free will of both parties to be validly entered into, than a master-slave relationship. After all, while it's nice to think in terms of liberty and other lofty ideals, the bottom line is that, if you live on earth, you belong to some nation or another.

And while few like to admit it, if you're compelled to pay taxes, you are a slave of sorts. You have a very long leash, granted, but ultimately, if the Man wants you, he knows where to find you and make your life miserable. Conditional liberty, at best.

The pragmatist -- you know, the visionary, assured problem solver so desperately sought in our troubled times -- will view people, ultimately, as tax revenue to some national (or, alluding to our point, "supranational") authority. It matters little to a pragmatist where within the borders of that authority you reside, or what you do with your time, so long as, come April 15, you're paid in full.

When the pragmatic essence of citizenship is stripped down to the tax authority/taxpayer relationship, the physical definition of nationhood ceases to be relevant.

Imagine, then, if inch by legislative inch, some sort of supranational authority is created to tax financial transactions executed on the Internet. All sorts of laudable and, well, pragmatic, sounding reasons can be conjured up to justify such a thing.

Now, in order to consider possible future outcomes, we have to invoke the principle of the "slippery slope," along with its cousin, the dictum that "absolute power corrupts absolutely" -- which we might rephrase thusly: "power corrupts in proportion to its absoluteness." With these time-tested principles in view, considering things like global financial "meltdowns," G20 resolutions to create a "supranational currency," and high-minded calls for "global solutions" and "New World Orders" might add a bit of feasibility to the context.

In light of the realities of these sentiments and the popular delusions that support them, we put on the table (before anybody else, we'll wager) the proposition that national citizenship, in its current form, will be subordinated to "supranational citizenship" -- a compulsive contractual relationship with that "supranational taxing authority."

"Impossible," you snort. "Democracy is on the march worldwide. 'Compulsive governments' are dictatorships and those are so 20th century! People will never part with national citizenship..." Well, there are lots of progressive minded people who'd be in favor some fun sounding experiment like "global citizenship." But there are lots more sane, responsible citizens who'd never countenance such a notion. It's OK, they don't have to. It can happen anyway, finally. And there are, as history rushes on, decreasing odds that it won't, in some fashion.

Think of national citizenship as your underwear, supranational citizenship as the suit you wear to work. You don't need to remove the former to put on the latter. A global taxing authority can be "put on" over your national one in the right political climate (one, say, that traffics in terms of "global solutions," "world presidents," and "global currencies") with the right economic justifications (world financial crises, for example). From there, with a little of the Slippery Slope and Power Dictum effect, you're a citizen of the world, for tax purposes! Sure, you're a citizen of your country, too, but so what? That's just a small part of the world.

So, you'll grant this as a possibility, but stop short of connecting it with "citizenship" and global authority. No worries. It needn't be explicit. It needn't be subjected to a referendum. Was the fact that you cannot conduct any business through any financial institution without disclosing your Social Security Number ever put to a referendum? You cannot even obtain a library card without it anymore.

The point is that absolute authority can be de facto. And it frequently is. No social security number, no bank account. If you start spouting off about your right to privacy and the fact that there is no explicit provision in the Social Security Act that requires you to disclose your unique personal identifier to anyone other than the federal government, the clerk at the library will call security to have you ushered out before you finish the sentence. You might even be hauled in on suspicion of being a "right wing extremist."

Put in these terms, it seems almost inevitable, doesn't it?

We live in very confused times. Not long ago, people were using the term "messiah" and the name "Barack Obama" in the same sentence. The press invoked images of "president of the world." There was a time, not too long before they did, when such blather would have been unthinkable, or about as thinkable as, say, gathering in a park and waiting for the Mother Ship to come for you. But it's not possible to rid the public mind of even that sort of delusion anymore. In times like these, it seems almost anything is possible, and little of it looks like fun.

Nor is to fun walk around thinking about stuff like this, but somebody's got to do it.

update: Zuckerberg proposes free internet for everyone on the planet

The Margaret Sanger Reader

[edit: the photos in this post seem to be understood to be fraudulent.]

Since the Federal government has increased the amount of our tax funding to Planned Parenthood from $337 million to $350 million annually, we thought your investment in that organization merited something more than the occasional soundbyte handpicked for you by public relations experts. So here's a quote by Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger, we found at NRO:

‘We want fewer and better children . . . and we cannot make the social life and the world-peace we are determined to make, with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict on us.”

That ghastly message appeared in the introduction to Margaret Sanger’s 1922 book, The Pivot of Civilization.

This begs the question, is world peace, in Sanger's mind, for the children or in spite of them? A rare bit of truth in advertising, nonetheless. What's more effective at ridding the world of "ill-bred" children than Planned Parenthood's cash cow, abortions? Oddly, we don't detect that a "woman's right" is of any moment in Ms. Sanger's vision, save, perhaps, as a means to its end.

Given President Barack Obama's curious (we're being charitable) carrying of Planned Parenthood's water and cashing of their checks, one can't help but wonder, is the goal of "fewer and better children" one the current administration shares?

Surely our readers have seen the endless media coverage of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton receiving Planned Parenthood's "Margaret Sanger Award," whereupon she declared that she is “really in awe” of the organization's founder. What's that? You haven't seen the media deluge? Perhaps it's because there was none. Our Google search found all of four references, each from a somehwat obscure Christian website. Apparently the role "conscience of the people" has been delegated by the legacy media to online upstarts.

We mused, in an earlier post, about the irony of the Secretary of State of America's First Black President exchanging gushing endorsements with Planned Parenthood, whose founder is depicted in this curious situation:

We thought this is the very sort of thing the media was empowered to expsose. We suspect that if some executive in the previous administration was being lauded by a group whose founder basked in the KKK salute, you'd hear about it.

Why didn't you hear about this?

Obama Saves Captain Phillips from Pirates!

The President is indeed a hero. While circling the globe building much needed unity among all nations, and restoring the almost-unrestorable reputation of the US at the same time, and while saving his country and the rest of the world from economic Armageddon, Obama managed to shoot three Somali pirates simultaneously at exactly the right moment, freeing Captain Richard Phillips.

Earlier news reports mistakenly identified Navy Seals as the recue heros, and Captain Phillips as a hero for his willingness to exchange his life for the safety of his ship and crew.

Asked how, given his peace-loving ways, he was able to make the difficult decision to take another human life, Obama responded: "That was difficult at first. As you know, I'm a praying man. You have probably seen pictures of me at various churches, at the Wailing Wall in The Holy Land, praying, praying, praying. So I did what the American people elected me to do: I prayed. As I was praying, Rahm came to me and said, 'Mr. President, I have a strategy: think of these as very late term unwanted pregnancies.' After that it was easy. I just thought of them as fetuses, and I chose to abort them! Rahm has signed off on this, so it's all legal."

A Primer on the Coming Global Currency

Having spent the last century teaching the rest of the world how to function in a civilized, productive economic order, and having enriched much of it by outsourcing container-loads of our productivity and going into massive hock [not hawk], is the US now about to be, in a moment of mortal weakness, relieved of its role as benefactor of the world?

The G20 has agreed to capitalize the IMF with $250 billion in SDR’s -- “special drawing rights” – a composite currency, prototyped by the Euro.

Details are by no means in abundance on this. If few things are more opaque and mysterious than derivatives, the IMF is one of them. Understood, if at all, only by initiates, one secret world is being invoked to remedy the faults of another. The media, as we will see, are spinning the story in real time. What hope is there of grasping this for us mere mortals? The best we can do is make educated guesses. To wit:

Think of the IMF (or some surrogate entity), in this capacity, as acting on behalf of the world as the Federal Reserve acts on behalf of the United States. And, please, by all means, don’t stop there: exercise your imagination and contemplate the implications for national sovereignty once a supranational body controls the purse strings. If you’d like an analogous situation to help you picture it, think of Citi, GM, and AIG on the dole and under federal control. The media jokes about the “Autocrat” in the White House, put in the driver’s seat, as it were, by federal bailouts to these businesses. Do you like having Obama running GM? You’ll love having some Eurocrat running your healthcare system, then.

Alarmist? What you will have, dear reader, is the lifeblood of a market economy -- credit -- being controlled by an entity that isn't subject to your constitution and, in fact, probably has been nursing a grudge about it for generations. Undoubtedly the US will have representation in such an entity. But representation isn't control. Perhaps it's right to be alarmist.

Think of a committee of foreigners deciding how much of the US debt gets refinanced by SDR’s, were the market to trash the dollar. How might that go? Probably about as well as any other smoky back room power-play, only instead of good old boys deciding the terms, a bunch of self-righteous UN types does it. National salary caps? International “rich” tax? Reparations for historical “wrongs?” Social engineering covenants? If that doesn’t scare you, then think about moral hazard writ global: everything for which Alan Greenspan has been excoriated on national television by the morons in congress, brought to you instead by a mealy-mouthed panzy from Brussels. To whom will the world turn for a bailout then? If aliens don’t exist, they will have to invent them, along with an intergalactic currency with an intergalactic central bank to refinance the debt. It is, after all, all about confidence. Which might be another way of saying, it’s a con.

But things can’t happen all at once. The media, during the G20 meetings, dutifully passed along its emissions, and dutifully back-pedaled and qualified its reporting once the reaction to said emissions was expressed in markets. First, from Russia, the call for a global currency. Then, as if on cue, a paper from the governor of China’s central bank, supporting the idea. Not long after this, Tim Geithner’s historical, drooling endorsements on the creation of SDR’s: “we’d love to see that.” Indeed.

By the time Giethner opened his mouth, the markets were getting the drift of the G20’s Big Idea. That single utterance was the straw that broke the camel’s back: it had such an immediate and destructive effect on the price of the dollar in foreign exchange markets (it dropped over 1% within moments) that he was forced immediately to recant. As things are currently being spun by the Financial Times, everyone misunderstood all this SDR talk; the G20 resolutions are “unlikely to threaten the dollar,” and nobody meant what we told you they said a couple weeks ago, especially Timothy Geithner.

We propose the following translation: “If the dollar crashes, the whole world goes to smash, so forget all that SDR stuff.” Meantime, of course, the IMF is capitalizing SDR’s, and we’re betting on seeing a drip of international debt financings denominated in them, just as if the SDR were a regular currency, and the IMF was its Central Bank.

Just a drip, at first, until the public mind has been made to forget the G20 comments; lest the natives get too restless. But the drip will turn into a stream, etc., as the world decides its has outgrown its need for the United States to be its big brother now that its heretofore bottomless, benevolent pockets have finally come up empty. It is painfully clear that the United States is bankrupt, and that future generations must be taxed to repay our massive outstanding debts.

This, naturally, concerns our debtors. The SDR is a clever shot at a fix: create a new, fiat currency and use it to support an economy as the dollar once did. The cost, of course, is the United States’ position of economic leadership in the world. Oh, we’ll still be the workhorse. We just won’t own all the stock. In this round of poker, we’ve folded, but the house may extend us some margin in order to make whole our competitors. Instead of the US working its way out as it always has, it’s being subsumed into a socialistic international financial order that will hinder its ability to be productive and will likely worsen our debt picture. Think of the tail wagging the dog. It’s a very sophisticated form of slavery, debt is.

Now that the world understands central banking, and a singular moment has come, it’s stepping up to seize it; now, while there are still international markets that function because of the status of the dollar as reserve currency -- now is the time to piggyback upon it and launch its international supplanter. “Global solutions are needed,” they say. “A new world order,” they cry. Even the president of the US thinks his country has seen its better days, and won’t shut up about “European leadership in the world.” About the only thing that can delay or interrupt this development is a disruption on par with a world war. Or, however unlikely, the holy wrath of the American people who, the last time we checked, were actually responsible for the decisions their government makes.

China and Russia are two elephants on the world stage that seem to be good and ready to hedge their reliance upon the dollar. From a purely academic viewpoint (which, unfortunately, is the viewpoint of many policymakers) hedging anything makes sense. It makes sense to hedge your portfolio if you’re investing. It’s not likely that selling a bit of one stock to buy another is going to cripple the future of that company. But a worldwide rejection of the US dollar will decimate US national sovereignty. And this is in the offing, just as the administration has announced historic cuts in its military budget.

You might as well put away your flaky novels, dear reader, ‘cause you’re living in the flakiest novel of them all: post-modern reality. Contrary to press releases claiming otherwise, this is the official launch of a global currency that will very likely supplant the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. You may not (or may) ever buy a cup of coffee with an “SDR,” but no matter – it’ll be at work behind the scenes, behind the dollar in your pocket.

Baseball Speaks

Apologies in advance, for I don't have time to polish this and am just going to lay it down as it comes to me. Not that "polishing" has ever helped...

Today I had my first iced-coffee of the season. That means spring is officially here, in my universe. The other sign is, of course, baseball. I find something new to love about baseball each and every season. And something new to disdain, like the ridiculous salaries these guys get. But it's mostly love -- and it's appropriate that Baseball is America's national sports pastime. It's deep and beautiful and quirky and accessible to everyman all at the same time; a game for the simple and the sage alike. This also makes it, somehow, quintissentially New York.

Today I was reading about some things Joba Chamberlain said when he was stopped for drunk driving last year. How do these unflattering videos find their way into the media, incidentally? Bored, meddling cops peddling them? I digress...

It occurred to me that baseball has a tradition of plain-spokenness. Think of Yogi Berra: "it ain't over 'til it's over." Has any mortal utterance ever been more unequivocally true?

Joba fell prostrate before the New York media for observing to a Nebraska State Trooper that "New Yorkers are rude and don't have manners." Can anyone argue that this is indeed true of most of the people one encounters in New York, even if they aren't all New Yorkers? How can a kid from Nebraska who just arrived here be expected to know the difference? You could add that most of the people here are self-absorbed, insecure, shallow, and a little on the dumb side, too. Everyone thinks it. They just won't say it.

Joba also remarked, probably in answer to a trooper's inquiry, that Yogi Berra "might not be as tall as the front of my car." Yogi acknowledges this, and even the most politically correct New Yorker realizes that spinning this into an offense is non-starter.

It is only natural that my thoughts would drift to John Rocker the way a line-drive drifts into the cowhide-clad paw of a shortstop. He was excommunicated for daring to utter that -- news flash -- gay people get AIDS, ride on subways, and, what' s more, he might not want to sit next to them. Is there anything factually inaccurate in this statement, and doesn't he have the right to not want to sit next to someone? Just about everyone you meet on the subway acts like they don't want to sit near anyone of any race, creed, color or taxonomy. But again, you just can't say it, because everyone knows that doing so is like putting sand in the social lubricant. Which is a nice way of saying, most people are afraid of getting their asses kicked.

Rocker's infamous and candid remarks in response to a reporter's question about whether he'd ever play for the Yankees -- surely there is tremendous satisfaction in simply being asked -- include citations of nasty things fans had said and done to him. The sorts of things only drunken suburbanites out for a Big Night at Yankees Stadium would find entertaining, if unprovoked. But if provoked, then all bets are off. A New Yorker who’s been goaded has much in common with a woman scorned.

Even Rocker himself said, essentially, "I'm a baseball player. Why would anyone care what I say?" Mull this over a bit. Some big lug from Macon, Georgia talks about his experiences in Gotham, the self-proclaimed Capitol of the Universe, and suddenly the very fabric of civilization itself hangs upon his every drawl. Who's simple and who's the sage here? Even a career ERA of 3.42 doesn't imbue one's non-baseball sentiments with as much moral force as say, the Pope has. Or vice versa.

And yet, according to AP, Bud Selig, who has presided over the most-asterisked -- the most dirty, drug-laden, unsportsmanlike and overpaid era in baseball history -- actually ordered Rocker to undergo psychological testing because...well, because some people are offended that he doesn't like them. This is what happens when you tell it like it is in New York. Somebody calls the thought police.

Is this world turned completely upside down or what? Selig can't police baseball, but he can imply a player has a mental illness for daring to speak his mind.

Yes, it is true: baseball is the perfect national sports pastime for America today; and baseball is quintissentially New York... in a "best of times/worst of times" sort of way. It's not their respective virtues that are shining through much any more.

Yet in the midst of this nonsense baseball remains magical. And so does New York. The game itself is so pure, so fascinating, so joyful. Nothing clears the air like the crack of a Louisville Slugger kissing a white, red-laced, leather-skinned hardball goodbye...going long....going deep...it's OUTTA HERE! The sport itself is so virtuous, such a product of unearthly genius, that - like America - it might just have within itself the miracle-mettle to survive the insanity that has recently visited it.

It's called a market, Einstein.

"We do need a methodology that can discover fair pricing for atypical assets, which will be held to maturity..."

Thus spake former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt, as reported recently by the New York Post.

With bright lights like this running the SEC, it's no wonder people like Bernard Madoff can carry on gigantic schemes for a decade without being detected -- depsite several promptings for the SEC to scrutinize him.

About those atypical assets: it's called a market, Mr. Pitt, something a securities and exchange regulator ought to be at least casually familiar with. Even if the assets themselves are held until maturity, they have components and/or proxies that are tradeable. Just ask the financial engineers about it.

Months ago, we proposed that the government invest in the infrastructure of exchanges, in order to bring a market value to the assets that seem to be ruining everyone's lives.

Instead of throwing money into a void, the administration could incentivize creativity in the formation of derivatives exchanges, and then cash out. We suggested that it would be a cleaner, more productive "intervention" -- and one they'd probably turn a profit on for the taxpayers (take a look at the values of exchanges that have gone public in the last decade), while upholding the foundations of world economies -- markets -- instead of replacing them by legislative fiat (i.e. the administration cutting deals with giant pools of capital in order to buy loans at a nickel on the dollar).

Perhaps after they have thrown a few trillion into the money pit they'll give it some thought. More likely it will take an administration that isn't a thinly veiled dictatorship to really get behind the concept of "markets," and the creativity of free people, the engine of all prosperity.

Obama outlines sweeping goal of nuclear-free world.

Only believe!

AP reports...

"PRAGUE – Declaring the future of mankind at stake, President Barack Obama on Sunday said all nations must strive to rid the world of nuclear arms and that the U.S. had a "moral responsibility" to lead because no other country has used one." Yadda yadda, blah blah blah.

If this is as effective as, say, "Gun Free Zones"' like the University of Virginia then you might want to start spending quality time with your loved ones.