harmonicminer

We get these lightning storms around here every now and then, but they don’t always get videoed.

Power Line – Why the silent treatment?

As Scott points out in the post immediately below, the news that President Obama tasked NASA head Bolden, as perhaps his foremost mission, with raising Muslim self-esteem is entirely absent from the New York Times and the Washington Post, as well as the nightly newscasts of ABC, NBC, and CBS. Why? Bill Otis argues, persuasively I think, that it’s because this news is potentially devastating to Obama:

The reason the MSM has the lid on NASA’s new “mission” to snuggle up to Islam (in between decapitations and floggings) is that it would be devastating to Obama if it became known. On the surface, the new NASA “mission” seems merely screwball, and thus a small story. But I think it’s a good deal more than that. It shows that Obama’s thinking is unrecognizable to the average person. It also shows that he’s unserious — frivolous, really — about something that made a generation of Baby Boomers take pride in their country. How many millions of people sat in their junior high auditoriums and watched the Alan Shepherd and John Glenn launches? How many millions more were up at midnight on July 20, 1969 to watch the first human being, an American, put his foot on the moon?

When the domestic roots of skepticism about America (and sometimes flat-out anti-Americanism) were being laid — in the 60’s assassinations, the Vietnam War, and the exposure of the country’s treatment of blacks — the one thing in which we all took pride was the space program. So for Obama, it’s now one thing that needs to be perverted. Making it a dumbed-down PR front for Islam is, in its way, a genius move for this purpose. But as the MSM recognizes by its silence, it’s a bridge too far.

A lot of people out there haven’t heard of “American exceptionalism,” or, if they have, aren’t too sure of what it means. But they have a good intuition for it: It is, among other things, but quite importantly, the excitement and pride they felt when America did something the human race had wanted to do since it looked up at the night sky. Space exploration took on added luster for our generation because it was so in keeping with the natural optimism, bravado and energy of our youth.

Under Obama, NASA has ended plans to go back to the moon, or go to Mars (something also underreported). Budgets are tight, you know. Time to hunker down and lower our sights. But we can do Muslim outreach.

This is a window on the kind of thinking Obama does. Were it widely known, it would be devastating: We will put away what has made the country a beacon, and act like the small, repentant ex-bully Obama takes us to be. Thus the rockets get mothballed as The Great Satan starts to make amends by printing comic books celebrating Arab contributions to trigonomety 4000 years ago, or whatever it was.

“You’ll be able to keep your own insurance” was the most important political lie of the last year. But NASA’s new mission is the most revealing truth. The MSM understands this, which is why it’s been so resolute in keeping it out of sight.

On Visit To Poland, Clinton Says Missile Shield ‘Not Directed At Russia’

The United States
and Poland have signed a revised agreement to deploy elements of a missile-defense system in Central Europe, overriding Russia’s objections.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton witnessed the signing of the deal today in the Polish city of Krakow, the second leg of her four-day trip to Ukraine, Poland, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia.

The revamped agreement takes into account changes brought in by U.S. President Barack Obama, who announced in September that Washington would drop the plans of his predecessor, George W. Bush, for a long-range system.

Instead, Obama’s plan envisages a short- and medium-range system to counter Iran’s ballistic missile program, as well as a small U.S. base in Poland.

Speaking at a joint news conference with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, Clinton said Washington remains deeply committed to Poland’s security and sovereignty.

“Today, by signing an amendment to the ballistic missile-defense agreement, we are reinforcing this commitment. The amendment will allow us to move forward with Polish participation in hosting elements of the phased adaptive approach to missile defense in Europe,” Clinton said. “It will help protect the Polish people and all of Europe — our allies and others — from evolving threats like that posed by Iran.”

Despite the initial dismay sparked in Poland by Obama’s decision to scrap the Bush-era missile plans, Sikorski insisted that his nation actually favors the new approach.

“When President Obama announced the new configuration of this sytem, we did say that we liked the new configuration better, but I think you didn’t believe us,” he said. “Now that we have signed the annex, I hope you do believe us.”

Of course, the Polish government would say nearly anything to get some kind of missile shield in place, and have little choice but to accept whatever Obama will offer. The Polish government knows that the rest of the world knows this. So, in a way, I think the comments just quoted should be read to mean, “Obama reneged, and has now come back half-way, and since this is far as he’s going to go, we’re going to make the best of it and not rock the boat.”

As usual, Obama is more interested in placating opponents (which, realistically, Russia has become) than supporting friends.  One wonders what Obama knows about the actual state of the Iran nuclear weapons program and missile delivery systems that he didn’t know when he canceled the missile defense program planned by Bush.  It’s hard to imagine what else would move him to make this half-concession, given that the American press has given him a complete pass on withdrawing from the Bush/Poland agreements to base missile defense there.

Guy Sorman predicts the End of the European Siesta?

The tragedy of Europe goes far beyond the case of Greece and only appears to be financial. The problem lies deeper: it extends to all member countries, or will eventually. It won’t be enough to put government budgets somewhat in order, to avoid a Greek bankruptcy, or to reassure the creditors of Spain and Portugal. Patching things up financially will not stop a contagion common to all of the European Union’s member countries, since all suffer from the same illness, though many would like to minimize its seriousness. The IMF, the Central European Bank, and the ministries all tell us: this is a financial and technical problem. We know how to proceed; this trouble will pass. We’ll provide a few loans and persuade the Germans to bring down government spending a bit. And then everything will be as before.

What a denial of reality. The truth is that the foundations of the European Union are incompatible with the way European states govern themselves. Let’s be clear: the European Union is based on a free market. It was so conceived in political philosophy and in economics, and the only possible way to govern it is in accordance with such economic freedom. Yet all the national governments, even those of the right, have in fact created gigantic welfare states inspired by socialist ideology.

The fact is that, at the origins of Europe, Jean Monnet, a Cognac entrepreneur with strong American connections, concluded that European governments had never succeeded and would never succeed in making Europe a zone of peace and prosperity. He thus replaced the diplomatic engine with an economic engine: free trade and the spirit of enterprise, he envisioned, would generate “concrete areas of solidarity” that would eliminate war and poverty. Three EU founders, all Christian democrats—Konrad Adenauer, Alcide De Gasperi, and Robert Schuman—ratified Monnet’s free-market intuition. These men shared a common moral and political understanding and a common economic analysis. All were suspicious of the statism then identified, for good historical reasons, with totalitarianism. The Commission of Brussels, and later the Central European Bank, were determined to keep faith with this original spirit of freedom in opposition to constant pressure from national governments to “socialize” Europe. The principle of free trade, which the Commission of Brussels constantly reinforced, roused Europe’s spirit of enterprise against various attempts at protectionism and national monopoly. (Often perceived in the U.S. as just another European super-bureaucracy, the Commission has been a consistent force for deregulation and competition.) The euro, moreover, was created to force states to balance their budgets, just as free-market monetary theory prescribed.

Unfortunately, the national governments thought it possible to reap the economic benefits of a free Europe and the electoral delights of socialism. By “socialism,” I mean the unlimited growth of the welfare state—the accumulation of entitlements and jobs protected by the state. This de facto socialism, this sedimentation of electoral promises and acquired rights, grew in Europe at a much faster rate than did the economy or the population. It could thus only be financed by loans, which seemed risk-free, since the euro appeared “strong.” The euro’s strength drove its holders into a frenzy: suddenly, anything could be bought on credit. The result was a remarkably homogeneous indebtedness in all the countries of Europe, on the order of 100 percent of national wealth—ranging between Germany’s 91 percent and the Greeks’ 133 percent (a relatively modest difference), all reflecting a common socialist drift. Germany, Greece, Spain, and France differ less in their levels of debt or modes of administration, which are in fact quite similar, than in their debtors’ capacities to repay. All European states are run socialist-style, in contradiction with the European Union’s free-market principles. Some will be more able than others to deal with defaults, but all have drifted off course.

How shall we explain this fatal drift? The true cause lies in ideology. Socialism dominates minds across Europe, whereas liberalism—which has retained its original free-market meaning in Europe—is under attack in the academy, in the media, and among intellectuals generally. In Europe, to support the market against the state, to recommend modesty on the part of the state, is taken for an “American” perversion. And socialist ideology is sufficiently engrained that it’s almost impossible for a non-suicidal politician to win election without promising still more public “solidarity” and still less individual risk. These welfare states, through their financial cost and the erosion of ethical responsibility that they foster, have smothered economic growth in Europe. We are the continent of decline, albeit decline with solidarity.

And now Greece’s bill has come due. It won’t be the last of its kind. What is to be done? We might perfectly well refuse to pay it—after all, why should French or German taxpayers of modest means pay taxes evaded by rich Greeks to finance Greek unions and the Greek military? But European finances are deeply interwoven: in reality, the euro owed by a Greek sits in a German or French bank. Whether or not non-Greeks rush to Greece’s aid would therefore change nothing; Europe’s failure will be collective. We thought we were citizens of independent nations, but we are instead a continent’s debtors. If Europeans don’t settle the Greek bill, then those of Portugal, Spain, and Italy will come due in quick succession, since a Greek bankruptcy would impact the euro’s value across the continent.

How can we escape such a tragedy? By buying time, by denying reality, by committing suicide—or by telling the truth. At this historic threshold, it’s hard to tell which of these scenarios will prevail. At the origins of Europe, Jean Monnet told the truth, and statesmen explained it to the various peoples of Europe. Today, it is not the Greek crisis that needs explaining, but the path that led to it. The long-term imperative is not the absorption of Greek or Spanish debt, but putting an end to the European strategy of decline. All things considered, we should thank the Greeks for waking us, however inadvertently, from our European siesta.

Mr. Sorman’s analysis is true as far as it goes, in pointing out the disconnect between the underlying assumptions of national politics (socialism) and the Common Market EURO system (a “free” market).  What he does not address is how the situation came about.

After WWII, Europeans had just suffered through two horrendous wars, of such unprecedented destructiveness as to be without parallel in human history.  The Europeans were shell-shocked, traumatized, terrified, numb and reeling, all at once.  Many had lost their faith in God, and all simply wanted the suffering and uncertainty to be over.  It’s understandable that they simply wanted to be taken care of by their national governments, and candidates who promised more from the government were the ones more likely to be elected.  Movement in the socialist direction was probably inevitable.

Europeans were like children traumatized by evil relatives, who snuck in by stealth and then brutally suppressed the parent’s ability to protect the children.  When the evil relatives had been neutralized, the children clung to the parents (who understandably made promises of future care) instead of soberly assessing the causes of the parent’s inability or unwillingness to protect the children in the first place.  The problem, of course, is that children aren’t really responsible for themselves, and are not particularly wise observers of their own situations.  They are easily fooled by promises, especially if the promises appear to be kept for a time.  They want to believe the best of their parents. 

They are likely to vote for the parent who promises a trip to Disneyland every week.

Make no mistake.  The socialist impulse is to see government as a parent, a benevolent overseer and protector, giver of good things to children. 

In the end, children must grow up.  And parents who overspend, and then perpetrate fraud in order to cover it up, are eventually caught, and may go to jail.  Either way, they won’t be able to keep the promises they made to the children forever.

Europe lost its faith, and Europeans simultaneously seem to have become children demanding limitless and permanent care from their (parental) governments.  Like nihilistic, cynical post-teen-agers who refuse to grow up and take care of themselves, who insist they can do what they want (including limitless sexual freedom divorced from childbearing and personal responsibility, since, after all, there is no God, and no real ground for morality or purpose), and require an “intervention” by those who actually care about them, Europeans are about to be subject to the tough love of the laws of economics and demographics. 

It’s going to be a hard lesson.

In the meantime, we have some pre-adolescents running the show in Washington D.C., who have admired their older cousins in Europe for some time, with their cool attitudes, worldly-wise airs, great parties, and big talk.  They are 12 yr old girls admiring Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.

It’s not a good influence. 

Where Best To Be Poor

Imagine you are an unborn spirit whom God has condemned to a life of poverty but has permitted to choose the nation in which to live. I’m betting that most any such condemned unborn spirit would choose the United States. Why? What has historically been defined as poverty, nationally or internationally, no longer exists in the U.S. Let’s look at it.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the 2009 poverty guideline was $22,000 for an urban four-person family. In 2009, having income less than that, 15 percent or 40 million Americans were classified as poor, but there’s something unique about those “poor” people not seen anywhere else in the world. Robert Rector, researcher at the Heritage Foundation, presents data collected from several government sources in a report titled “How Poor Are America’s Poor? Examining the ‘Plague’ of Poverty in America” (8/27/2007):

— Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage and a porch or patio.

— Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.

— Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded; two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.

— The typical poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)

— Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.

— Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.

— Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.

— Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.

What’s defined as poverty is misleading in another way. Official poverty measures count just family’s cash income. It ignores additional sources of support such as the earned-income tax credit, which is a cash rebate to low-income workers; it ignores Medicaid, housing allowances, food stamps and other federal and local government subsidies to the poor. According to a report by American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt, titled “Poor Statistics,” “In 2006, according to the annual Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey, reported purchases by the poorest fifth of American households were more than twice as high as reported incomes.” That additional money might represent earnings from unreported employment, illegal activities and unreported financial assistance. A proper measure of well-being is what a person consumes rather than his income. A huge gap has emerged between income and consumption at lower income levels.

Material poverty can be measured relatively or absolutely. An absolute measure would consist of some minimum quantity of goods and services deemed adequate for a baseline level of survival. Achieving that level means that poverty has been eliminated. However, if poverty is defined as, say, the lowest one-fifth of the income distribution, it is impossible to eliminate poverty. Everyone’s income could double, triple and quadruple, but there will always be the lowest one-fifth.

Yesterday’s material poverty is all but gone. In all too many cases, it has been replaced by a more debilitating kind of poverty — behavioral poverty or poverty of the spirit. This kind of poverty refers to conduct and values that prevent the development of healthy families, work ethic and self-sufficiency. The absence of these values virtually guarantees pathological lifestyles that include: drug and alcohol addiction, crime, violence, incarceration, illegitimacy, single-parent households, dependency and erosion of work ethic. Poverty of the spirit is a direct result of the perverse incentives created by some of our efforts to address material poverty.

Anyone can fall temporarily on hard times. If you STAY poor for a decade, you’re probably doing something wrong, absent some radical medical condition and the like. Multi-generational poverty in the USA is almost always a values problem. If you stay out of jail, finish high school, get married, stay married, don’t make babies till you’re married, and don’t get addicted, you will eventually be able to find work if you keep looking, and the factors that keep people poor for years, decades or generations will not tend to be true for you.

The federal government has done a lot to encourage bad behavior (the kind that keeps people poor), by creating incentives for it, and literally subsidizing it.

The Right to Choose – For Farmers in Haiti

The Monsanto Company is learning a valuable lesson in Haiti: no good deed goes unpunished at the hands of radical anti-corporate elements of Western society.

Like so many other concerned citizens, Monsanto responded to the tragic January 12 earthquake that further devastated this impoverished country. It worked for months with Haiti’s Agricultural Ministry to select seeds best suited to local climates, needs and practices, and to handle the donation so as to support, rather than undermine, the country’s agricultural and economic infrastructure.

From Monsanto’s extensive inventory, they jointly chose conventionally bred hybrid (not biotech / genetically modified / GM) varieties of field corn and seven vegetables: cabbage, carrots, eggplants, onions, tomatoes, spinach and melons. Instead of giving the seeds to farmers, the company worked with the USAID-funded WINNER program, to donate the seeds to stores owned and managed by Haitian farmer associations. The 475 tons of hybrid seeds will then be sold to many thousands of farmers at steep discounts, and all revenues will be reinvested in local agriculture.

Other companies and donors are providing fertilizers, insecticide and herbicides that will likewise be sold at a discount. The companies, Agricultural Ministry, farmers associations and other experts will also provide technical advice and assistance, much as the USDA’s Cooperative Extension System does, on how, when and whether to use the various hybrids, fertilizers, and weed and insect-control chemicals.

The goal is simple. Help get the country and its farmers back on their feet, improve farming practices, crop yields and nutrition levels, and increase incomes and living standards.

The reaction of anti-corporate activists was instantaneous, intense, perverse, patronizing and hypocritical. Monsanto wants to turn Haiti back into “a slave colony,” ranted Organic Consumers Association founder Ronnie Cummins. Hybrid and GM seeds will destroy our diversity, small-farmer agriculture and “what is left of our environment,” raged Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, leader of the Peasant Movement of Papaye.

Other self-anointed “peasant representatives” waded in. The seeds are genetically modified and “will exterminate our people.” Farmers won’t be able to afford the seeds or feed their children. The fertilizers are carcinogenic. Fungicides on the seeds are toxic poisons. “Seeds are the patrimony of humanity.” We support “food and seed sovereignty.” Traditional seeds and farming practices “provide stable employment” for the 70% of Haitians who are small farmers. And of course, “Down with Monsanto.”

Various U.S. churches and foundations chimbed in. “Spontaneous” protests were organized in several Haitian and American cities.

These would be the same people who banned DDT for environmental reasons, the proximate cause of 50 million malaria deaths since the ban was imposed.

Anti-capitalist environmentalism is not safe for children and other living things… except mosquitoes and agricultural parasites, of course.

Youths attack Jewish dance group in Germany: (Ah… it’s those “youths” again)

Arab youths threw stones at a Jewish dance group during a street festival in Hannover, injuring one dancer and forcing the group to cancel its performance, German police and dance officials said Thursday.

The teenagers also used a megaphone to shout anti-Semitic slurs during the attack Saturday, Hannover police spokesman Thorsten Schiewe said.

“I don’t remember such a dramatic attack in Germany in recent times,” said Michael Fuerst, the head of the Jewish community of the state of Lower Saxony.

Six suspects have been identified, five Arabic immigrants and one German, and police are looking for the other three, police said. The six range from nine to 19 years old and have been questioned by police.

Hannover prosecutors are investigating those involved on suspicion of incitement and causing serious bodily harm, prosecutor Irene Silinger said.

This would be an excellent topic for your Christian university’s Justice Week, don’t you think?

More details at the link above.

Sorry…  It came in email, and I couldn’t resist.

Is U.S. Edu-Rhetoric a Pipe Dream? A Teacher Wants to Know

Michele Kerr, a graduate of Stanford’s teacher education program and a guest author at NAS.org, has an admirable op-ed in the Washington Post today. In her piece, “The Right Way to Assess Teachers’ Performance,” she notes the backlash from teachers over being tested by student performance, as required by Obama’s Race to the Top program. She says she, and probably most teachers, would be willing to be evaluated based on students’ test scores, provided a few conditions are met. “Let’s negotiate,” she says.

Kerr proposes that:

1. Teachers be assessed based on only those students with 90 percent or higher attendance.
2. Teachers be allowed to remove disruptive students from their classroom on a day-to-day basis.
3. Students who don’t achieve “basic” proficiency in a state test be prohibited from moving forward to the next class in the progression.
4. Teachers be assessed on student improvement, not an absolute standard—the so-called value-added assessment.

“Accepting these reasonable conditions might reveal that common rhetorical goals for education (everyone goes to college, algebra for eighth-graders) are, to put it bluntly, impossible,” she asserts. “So we’ll either continue the status quo at a stalemate or the states will make the tests so easy that the standards are meaningless.”

I can’t disagree with the conditions the teacher wants to put on assessing her teaching performance. The problem, of course, is that in many urban school districts, this would mean that teachers would be getting assessed based on the performance of only about half of the students.

Therein lies the problem.  We have tolerated a huge decline in expectations, both in academic performance and behavior at school, while clinging to politically correct rhetoric.  We are now in a situation where any imaginable solution is going to be very painful. 

But not as painful as doing nothing, or doing something that is merely cosmetic.

Dominican University evacuated Wednesday after bomb threat

The River Forest Police Department has charged Saudi Arabian foreign exchange student Mohamed Mahdey S. Al Shria, 20, with disorderly conduct. Al Shria has been released on bond.

Police said that Al Shria was arrested yesterday at his host home on the 1200 block of Ashland in River Forest, and soon after they determined there was no credible threat to the school.

Dominican University evacuated its Priory campus about 2:30 p.m. yesterday after a student enrolled in a program renting space from the university allegedly threatened to blow up the school. The student had allegedly received a bad grade in a class.

OK. From now on, I’m giving all A’s.

River Forest police immediately identified and quickly arrested a Saudi Arabian foreign exchange student legally living in River Forest, who was enrolled in an English education program, ELS, that rents space on the campus.

Between 75 and 100 people were evacuated from the Priory campus at Harlem and Division, including four preschool classes from Dominican’s Goedert Center, ELS students and staff, as well as a handful of religious, and university faculty and staff, according to Dominican spokeswoman Kristin Peterson.

The Goedert Center’s students were moved across the street to Grace Lutheran School soon after the threat, and the center’s staff called students’ parents and asked them to pick up their students as soon as possible.

Police searched the school’s campus, as well as the student’s host house, but did not find any bombs or bomb-making materials. Because the suspect was not a native English speaker, police called the FBI for help translating Arabic.

I wonder if there is a general tendency for people from that part of the world to make bomb threats as an expression of more or less random discontent.

You know. Americans jokingly say they’re going to shoot each other, but Saudis say they’re going to blow you up.

I suppose that’s unfair. Although no more so than the caricatures that pass for observation of Americans in the middle eastern media.