Thinking

            Some years ago, when I was still working for a living, I happened to be gazing out the window one day when a friend came by and saw me through the open door of my office.  He was a sales manager based in Kansas City, so I didn't get to see him or him to see me very often.  He said in a loud voice, "Now I know what you do.  You think."  The comment was made half in jest, but I took it as a sincere compliment.  Because thinking is indeed what I did for a living.  It is what I've done all my life.  So this article is about thinking.

            What we do with our lives must be driven by thought, serious thought.  To drift aimlessly through life is pointless and likely unsatisfying.  So many young people push away from the shores of their formative years and embark on the vessel that will take them through adulthood without a destination in mind and, of course, no idea how to get there.  Without a thought to how they want to spend the rest of their lives, they are bound to drift aimlessly without the satisfaction of ever having accomplished anything of value.  Which brings me to education.
            The habit of serious thought begins in school, but more specifically in high school and even more so in college.  Education introduces students to the thoughts of others, be they related to science, history, the arts, religion, or philosophy.  It is by learning how others think that we learn how to think for ourselves.  Indeed, I've always maintained that the object of a school, in its purest Socratic meaning, is to teach students how to think.
            Once the habit of thinking has been formed, it must be pursued throughout life.  The writer Paul Theroux once said that when he is between books, he feels superfluous. Exactly right.  When one's mind is not engaged, it's as if one's life is suspended.  Now, you don't have to be an Aristotle or an Einstein to be a thinking person.  Technicians, craftsmen, builders, care givers, engineers, waiters,  clerks, homemakers, and even politicians think about the results they want to achieve and take pride in their accomplishments.  Thoughtful people can bring value to any walk of life, from the extraordinary to the mundane.
            I shake my head at the time wasted by today's kids who spend hours texting or playing video games, or staring vacuously at a big screen TV, when they could be reading  a good book or engaging their minds in so many other ways.  I look at these kids and ask myself: Whatever happened to intellectual curiosity?  But that's a topic for another day.

Munich and Geneva

            What possible justification do we have for legitimizing the Iranian regime?  Iran is the world's single biggest sponsor of international terrorism.  The list of its atrocities is too long to fit on this page.  Yet, we lift sanctions, free up $7 billion, and give the Iranians the right to continue enriching uranium.  The agreement signed in Geneva fails to cover centrifuge manufacturing and testing, weapons research and fabrication, and the expansion of Iran's ballistic missile program.  Iranians are dancing in the streets.  Why not?  They won.

            Chuck Hagel, masquerading as our Secretary of Defense, says "...the risk is very minimal for us in this,"  Try telling that to the Israelis who will be the first to be bombed out of existence once Iran has nuclear weapons.  In a conversation among friends the other day, the question was posed, "Will this agreement force Israel to act preemptively against Iran?"  The group answered unanimously, "Yes."  The next question was, "Will Obama come to Israel's aid?"  Once again the answer was a unanimous "No."
            Critics consider the Geneva agreement nothing less than abject surrender.  Worse, it is being compared to Chamberlain's disgraceful surrender of Austria in Munich.  "Peace in our time," crowed Chamberlain.   "It's always better to negotiate," echoes Obama.  Munich was followed by World War II.  What will follow Geneva?
            Not to worry.  The administration says sanctions can be re-imposed in six months.  When?  After Israel is reduced to ashes?  The Virginian-Pilot's editorial page on November 27 had the most appropriate cartoon.  It showed a clueless dolt trying to figure out how to unscramble an egg and put it back into the broken shell.  The egg was broken in Geneva.

Mendacity et al

            Mendacity, cynicism, hypocrisy.  These three words, in my opinion, characterize the Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Senate.

            Mendacity is the propensity to utter falsehoods, to hide the truth, to lie.  Not only did President Obama lie to the nation when he said people could keep their health plan, keep their doctors, and see reduced health costs, he repeated the lie over 30 times.  Presidential spokesperson Jay Carney, the man one congressman called a professional liar, defended the lie, as did a long list of Democrats in the Senate, including North Carolina's own prevaricator Kay Hagan. 
            And let's not forget the monstrous lie perpetrated by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in declaring that the loss of lives in Benghazi had been caused by a video, when they knew all along that it had been the result of a pre-planned terrorist attack.
            As for cynicism, what could be more cynical than Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats invoking the nuclear option to prevent filibusters, the only tool the minority had to stop Obama from stacking the courts with the most radical leftist judges?  Let's remember what Senator Obama said in opposition to Republicans changing this rule: "One day the Democrats will be in the majority again, and this rule change will be no fairer to a Republican minority than it is to a Democratic minority."  In 2005 Harry Reid himself said such a rule change would be an "assault on democracy."  Now that's cynicism.
            As for hypocrisy, we only have to recall the promise that the Obama administration would be the most transparent one in American history.  The obfuscation, stone-walling, and paranoid secrecy pervading the White House and the Justice Department are the very opposite of transparency.  Consider the lack of candor and co-operation in the investigations of Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the IRS scandal, and NSA surveillance.  Add to that the punishment and blacklisting of any insiders who dare to tell the truth; whistleblowers are routinely fired, but the guilty are sent on paid vacations.
            In spite of all the malfeasance, supporters claim it is all constitutional.  If it is, then I would have to agree with Charles Krauthammer who calls it "constitutional indecency."  Indecency, I was taught as a boy, is shameful.  Not in Washington.

                       

The Tyranny of Paternalism

            Paternalism, writes Charles Krauthammer, is one of the three pillars of ObamaCare, the other two being mendacity and subterfuge.  Of the three, I find paternalism the most odious.

            Those of us who are of a certain age remember "Father Knows Best," a TV series starring Robert Young.  The father played by Young was the very model of benevolent paternalism:  he was neither permissive nor harsh, yet he retained the kind of practical wisdom necessary for family problem solving. 
            There is another kind of paternalism, the kind embodied in ObamaCare.  This paternalism begins by denying the ability of others to make independent decisions and to be responsible for the consequences of their choices.  In response to the complaints from hundreds of thousands of people who have had their health insurance policies cancelled, President Obama and his spokesmen reply with a supercilious arrogance that drips with disdain for the very people they claim to help.   The message is clear: The policy you have is no good.  It is substandard.  You're obviously too ignorant to make an informed decision about your health care needs.   So we have something better for you.
            This is the kind of paternalism that was a pillar of Marxism and Leninism before ObamaCare arrogated it for his Progressive agenda.  It is the belief that government is the solution to all problems.  It is an echo of the authoritarianism against which Americans went to war with England and its king.  Plainly speaking, this paternalism is un-American.
            And now the people are angry.  They're angry because they can't keep their old insurance policies, because they can't keep their doctors, because their premiums and their deductibles are going through the roof.  And they're angry at the president who lied to them repeatedly about these things.  Americans don't like liars, especially the ones who treat them like ignorant fools.
            What?  Do I hear the rumblings of rebellion?  It may be time for Mr. Obama to read a little history about what Americans do when they feel the weight of tyranny pressing on their necks.

Tear It Down!

            As we approach the Promised Land of November 30th, we are told that the ObamaCare website might be only 80% ready, that the payment feature might not be ready at all, that glitches number in the hundreds and will need lots more Band Aids.  We won't know the full extent of the mess until the deadline is reached.  In the meantime, the sign-up disaster has given us a trove of words that reflect the richness of the English language.

            Some of the adjectives describing the failure of the website have been mild: elementary, dysfunctional, inexcusable, misbegotten, historic.  Some add a sense of doom: catastrophic, abysmal, stunning, astounding, disastrous.  Still more try to assign a dimension to the problem: colossal, epic, gargantuan, and galactic (my favorite).  The list goes on.
            The point is that we are at a loss for the one word that truly measures the impact of this government-engineered screw-up.  Some say that it dooms ObamaCare, because the young people counted on to sign up have been turned off by repeated failures to get on line or get answers to their questions; they hear that their information may not be secure and may expose them to the consequences of identity theft, and that their premiums and deductibles -- if only they could figure what they are --  will be prohibitively expensive.  As a result, few are enrolled and fewer still are actually making payments.
            Then we have the 5 million (or is it 8 million?) policy holders who have been notified that they are losing their coverage, not to mention the 50 million small business employees who may also soon be dumped unceremoniously onto the same uncovered snow bank.  In spite of the president's attempt -- legalities aside -- to apply a fix to this problem, there really is no fix possible without the cooperation of state insurance commissioners and the insurance companies themselves. Meanwhile, an increasingly incredulous public renders its opinion of our dissembling president with poll numbers that are sinking like a corpse with cement shoes.
            What even the left-leaning media is coming to realize is that this is a defining moment for progressives, maybe even for honestly compassionate liberals.  To borrow an image from the Reagan era, ObamaCare is becoming the Berlin Wall of American history.  The voices of the disillusioned and disenfranchised are only a rumble now, but they will soon erupt into a roar:  Tear It Down!

           

           

Ethanol and Other Follies

            Every time I stop at a gas station to fill up, I am reminded that good intentions come to naught when they clash with common sense. 

            Before I pull the nozzle I'm told that the fuel I'm about to pump contains 10% ethanol.   What a wonderful idea!  By replacing gasoline, ethanol reduces our dependence on foreign oil.  And, of course, burning less fossil fuels means less pollution.  Who could argue with that?
            Well, it so happens that this argument clashes with common sense reality, because it ignores the negative effects of ethanol.  First of all, the production of ethanol requires an increase in corn harvests, meaning that more land (5 million more acres so far) must be converted to this crop.  And where does this land come from?  From grasslands, from filled-in wetlands, and conservation lands.  And what else is needed?  Fertilizer.  Lots of it.  We're talking billions of pounds of nitrates that can filter into our streams, our rivers, and our aquifers. 
            But nitrates are not the only polluters occasioned by the thirst for ethanol.  You can't just put corn juice in your tank.  It has to be converted to a flammable liquid, just like oil needs to be refined into gasoline.  Where is that done?  In factories burning coal and polluting the air.
            What else?  It costs more to produce a gallon of ethanol than a gallon of gasoline.  And devoting so much land to growing corn for ethanol raises the price of all other corn products.
            Ethanol is not the only idea that our well-intentioned energy gurus have come up with that clashes with reality.  How about wind farms?  Is the little energy produced by wind turbines, whose tips can rotate up to 170 miles per hour, worth the lives of thousands of eagles and migrating birds?  How about insect-eating bats?  The Journal of BioScience estimates that in 2012 between 600,000 and 900,000 bats were killed by wind turbines.  Consider that one bat can consume between 600 and 1,000 mosquitoes and other insects in just one hour.  Could it be that flying insects, not humans, are the biggest beneficiaries of wind turbines?
            The United States government is moving full speed ahead to subsidize other renewable energy sources (biomass, thermal, hydro, etc.), but has not always been wise in choosing winners and losers.  The list of losers like Solyndra ($535 million lost), Spectrawatt ($500 million), First Solar ($1.46 billion), Sun Power ($1.2 billion), Fisker Automotive ($529 million), Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($700 million), Brightsource ($1.6 billion), and many others have proven again and again that investment in renewable energy is no slam dunk. 
            Some $80 billion of taxpayer money has been flushed down the renewable energy drain since Obama took office in 2009.  This is not to say that renewable energy has no future.  It does.  But it would be wise, I think, to consider the pros and cons of any project before pouring money into it.  The market, which uses its own money, is much better at that sort of thing than the government, which uses ours.  I doubt very much that the market would have picked $80 billion worth of losers or raped the land to produce more corn.  

Subsidies

            Forget about all the trouble ObamaCare is having with its website.   The fact is ObamaCare is bound to be a raging success.  The computer problems will be fixed eventually, and enrollments will come pouring in.  Sure there will other problems with people facing increased premiums and higher deductibles.  But it's all part of the plan.  You see, those who are calling ObamaCare a train wreck are ignoring the program's real goal: votes.  And, as we all know, votes equal power.  And unlimited power in the hands of government leads to tyranny.

            How will ObamaCare produce votes?  With one simple method called subsidies.  We've already heard that most people who have managed to get through the tangle of the ObamaCare website have learned that they are eligible for Medicaid.  Eligibility for Medicaid has been raised to 138% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL).  A family of four with an income of $31,155 or less can now get free medical care with Medicaid.  All these new Medicaid enrollees are sure to vote Democratic in gratitude.
            But what if you make more than 138% of the FPL?  Not to worry.  You can make up to 250% of the FPL (almost $59,000) and get a subsidy from the federal government to help pay for your increased premiums.  That's on a sliding scale, of course, but free money is free money.  Add these people to the list of likely Democratic voters.
            Incredibly, you can earn up to 400% of the FPL and get a subsidy from the government called an advance premium tax credit.   It's kind of hard to explain how it works, but the point is that just about anybody earning under $95,000 a year gets free money to offset the cost of health insurance under ObamaCare.  More grateful voters.
            Now, does President Obama and his Progressive entourage really care about the poor?  Nonsense.  When the president and his wife spend millions of taxpayer dollars on themselves every year to live like royalty, do they display any affinity for the poor?  On the contrary, the real object of Obama's ideology is to destroy capitalism and replace it with a Socialist form of government that redistributes wealth and creates an underclass of citizens dependent on government.  Grateful voters, all.
            ObamaCare , with control of one sixth of the economy, is the key to the Progressives' permanent takeover of this country.  The only way to stop ObamaCare is to defeat every politician who voted for it.  Otherwise, if you want a glimpse of the future, they're playing previews of coming attractions in Cuba.

           

Trust

            The words "In God We Trust" appear on the back of every bill in my wallet.  This reminds us that our Founders believed that we could rely on a higher power to watch over us.  Now, I'm sure our increasingly secular society would love to eliminate any reference to God, not just on our currency, but in every aspect of our daily lives.  But if we can't trust in God, who can we trust?

            The answer we get from the Progressives in this country Is...Government.  After all, government knows what's best for us.  The latest example of that Progressive dogma is ObamaCare.  The law and its thousands of pages of regulations smack of an arrogance that belittles everyone seeking a solution to health care.  You want a simple policy that covers only catastrophic illnesses?  Not good enough.  ObamaCare has something better for you.  Even though you're a childless single adult you still need pediatric dental coverage;  if you're 60 years old you still need maternity coverage.  It may cost you a lot more, but that's what fairness is all about.  A talk with someone in the Administration might go something like this:

            __ We know what's best for you. Trust us. 
            __ Wait a minute!  I thought the president said that if I liked my health plan, I could keep it, and that no one will take it away, no matter what.    
            __  He did say that, but he just forgot to add that your policy had to meet the standards set forth in the ObamaCare regulations.  Just a slight omission.
            __ And didn't he also say that I could keep my doctor? 
            __ True.  But some doctors are refusing to participate in the program.  So you might not be able to keep yours.  It's not your fault: it's your doctor's fault.
            __ But will my costs go down like the president promised?
            __ I believe you are being a little selfish about this.  We need you to pay more so that people with no insurance can get it for free with government subsidies.
            __ So was the president lying when he promised I could keep my health plan and my doctor, and that my costs would go down?
            __ Of course not.  He was in the middle of a re-election campaign and he didn't want people like you to get upset and not vote for him.  In politics there is no such thing as a lie.  It's just politics.
            __Oh, thank you.  You had me scared there for a minute.  So I can really trust the president?
            __You bet.
            __Good. 'Cause I really like his smile.  So where do I go to sign up?
            __ The president gave you an 800 number to call.  Just dial that number, and a nice person who knows what's best for you will help you.