Archives for February 2009

February 25, 2009 By Fausta

America invented everything?

My friend Maria, who grew up and lived in Eastern-Block Communist countries for the first 20+ years of her life, will tell you that one of the things propagandists were most adept in the olden days was to try to make you believe they invented every darn thing.

Back in 2006 a museum exhibition in Manchester, England was touted in an article on the “top 20 Muslim inventions”, which I briefly debunked in two posts.

So I find it bothersome when politicians resort to exaggerated claims on inventions. Why do they do it? Clearly the US is a technologically advanced country with no need for exaggeration. Yet in his speech last night, President Obama claimed

We invented solar technology, but we’ve fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in producing it.

and

I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.

As it turns out, the start of solar techonology was developed mostly by English and French individuals, and automobiles’ internal combustion engines were developed by several German individuals. It’s not a country who invents anything; it’s the individuals who do the work.

Marc Ambinder is bothered, too, by these claims:

Well, I’m a little bit irked by Obama’s claim for two reasons. First, it’s gratuitous, unappealing boosterism. Yes, America is great and its people are highly inventive. God bless America! But it just happens to be true that, in the case of solar technology and the automobile, the Europeans got there first. Claiming otherwise is both desperate and unnecessary, like copying homework in kindergarten. We should learn to settle for the atom bomb.

Second, as an argument for why we should we should continue to support certain technologies, Obama’s point is laughable. The value of technical innovation isn’t nationally contingent. In fact, one of the best things about technical innovation is that it’s so easy to steal: a great invention in Luxembourg is still a great invention in Cleveland. We should be investing in the technologies that are most useful or with which we have the most comparative advantage, not the ones that happen to come out Cleveland. Even if Cleveland is a great city with highly inventive people.

So please, speechwriters, check your facts, and when you need to bring forth an argument, skip the boosterism.

UPDATE
Jules Crittenden has more.

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February 25, 2009 By Fausta

Venezuela’s new Sigepol

Sigepol, Venezuela’s new technology platform which will audit Venezuelan police, will be the only system issuing credentials to security officers in the country, is being provided by…Cuba?

According to Noticias 24, Venezuelan interior minister Tareck El Aissami denied that Cuba was in charge of the operation.

As I pointed out in my Real Clear World article, Tarek el Aissami,

Mr. El – Aissami is a Venezuelan national of Syrian descent who, before becoming Minster of Interior and Justice, occupied the position of Deputy Interior Minister for Public Security. His father, Carlos Aissami, is the head of the Venezuelan branch of the Iraqi Baath political party. Before the invasion of Iraq, he held a press conference in which he described himself as a Taliban and called Osama Bin Laden, “the great Mujahedeen, Sheik Osama bin Laden.” Tarek’s great-uncle Shibli el-Aissami was a prominent ideologist and assistant to the party’s secretary general in Baghdad during the Saddam Hussein regime.

What does this mean to US-Latin American relations? Tune in today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern and find out.

Related links:
Miami Herald: Venezuela confirma colaboración de policía cubana
La Gaceta, Tucuman, Argentina: Niegan cubanos estén en nuevo sistema policial
ABC, Spain: Chávez viaja a Cuba tras su reelección indefinida

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February 24, 2009 By Fausta

Tuesday night tango

Adam Hoopengardner and Ciko Tanik dancing to Johnny Cash’s Personal Jesus

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February 24, 2009 By Fausta

Steele might withhold funding from Snow, Collins and Spector

Cavuto: “Will you, as RNC head, recommend no RNC funds being provided to help them?”
Steele: “Oh, yes, I`m always open to everything, baby, absolutely.”

Michael Steele Might Withhold RNC Funds From GOP Senators Who Backed Stimulus. Gateway Pundit has their photo:

defectors

UPDATE
Well, more spending to oppose coming right up:
House Democrats propose $410B spending bill
House bill to keep govt. running totals $410 billion, features thousands of pet projects

House Democrats unveiled a $410 billion spending bill on Monday to keep the government running through the end of the fiscal year, setting up the second political struggle over federal funds in less than a month with Republicans.

The measure includes thousands of earmarks, the pet projects favored by lawmakers but often criticized by the public in opinion polls. There was no official total of the bill’s earmarks, which accounted for at least $3.8 billion.

The legislation, which includes an increase of roughly 8 percent over spending in the last fiscal year, is expected to clear the House later in the week.

And,

It loosens restrictions on travel to Cuba, as well as the sale of food and medicine to the communist island-nation.

Don’t expect Cuba to be paying for any of their bills.

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February 24, 2009 By Fausta

Allen Stanford and US lawmakers

In today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern, Stanford and Firm Spent $7.2 Million on Lawmakers. How the resident of St. Croix and holder of dual US-Antigua citizenships Texan billionaire supported American politicians.

Chat’s open at 10:45AM, and if you can’t listen to the live podcast, it’s archived for your convenience.

February 24, 2009 By Fausta

The Lugar Report on Changing Cuba Policy

My latest article, The Lugar Report on Changing Cuba Policy is up at Real Clear World Blog, which is now named The Compass. Please read it and leave a comment.

UPDATE
A done deal? Congress easing restrictions on Cuba travel

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats controlling Congress are loosening restrictions on allowing people of Cuban descent to visit their relatives on the island.

A huge bill wrapping up last year’s budget would block enforcement of restrictions imposed by President Bush in 2004 on family travel to Cuba. The Bush rules limit family visits to once every three years for no more than 14 days. Travel spending is now capped at $50 per day.

Once signed by Obama, the legislation would allow Cuban-Americans to travel to Cuba once a year to visit relatives, spend up to $170 a day and visit for an unlimited duration.

The legislation would also expand the definition of family to include first cousins, aunts and uncles rather than parents, siblings and grandparents. That would allow many more people to travel to the island under the looser rules that apply to Cuban-Americans and legal immigrants.

The bill would also remove impediments imposed by Bush in 2005 that made it more difficult to finance sales of food and medicine to Cuba.

The bill is slated to pass the House this week and the Senate soon thereafter.

February 23, 2009 By Fausta

Santelli, and the housing troubles

Larry Kudlow interviews Rick Santelli:

Newsbusters has a transcript.

James Pethokoukis looks at why the White House attacked Santelli,

This may have been Santelli’s most important economic point: “You know, they’re pretty much of the notion that you can’t buy your way into prosperity, and if the multiplier that all of these Washington economists are selling us is over… that we never have to worry about the economy again. The government should spend a trillion dollars an hour because we’ll get 1.5 trillion back.” Of course, all this government spending doesn’t create prosperity. It merely transfers/steals prosperity from the future and brings it to the present to cushion the current downturn. Remember, here is what the Congressional Budget Office had to say about the stimulus spendathon:

In contrast to its positive near-term macroeconomic effects, the Senate legislation would reduce output slightly in the long run, CBO estimates, as would other similar proposals. The principal channel for this effect is that the legislation would result in an increase in government debt. To the extent that people hold their wealth in the form of government bonds rather than in a form that can be used to finance private investment, the increased government debt would tend to “crowd out” private investment—thus reducing the stock of private capital and the long-term potential output of the economy. … Including the effects of both crowding out of private investment (which would reduce output in the long run) and possibly productive government investment (which could increase output), CBO estimates that by 2019 the Senate legislation would reduce GDP by 0.1 percent to 0.3 percent on net.

This is a ruinous “one leg of a multi-legged stool” as the CNN reporter called it.

Again, no matter what’s done now, if the Community Reinvestment Act stays in the books, we’re still in for more of the same.

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February 23, 2009 By Fausta

America’s New Shrink?

I missed this article by Jonathan Alter until ShrinkWrapped brought it to my attention:
America’s New Shrink
Chin up, everyone. This president is well poised to bring us back from the brink.

In the article, Alter reaffirms his faith on Obama (emphasis added),

Because my take on Obama, based on conversations with him and his team stretching back more than four years and extending into the White House, is that he has a firm grasp of the psychological and substantive challenges of the presidency. Equally important, his 2008 campaign proved that he possesses a superior sense of timing. He knows that now is not the moment to cheerlead, not when the financial players are lying dazed on the field. There will be time for that, when the banks have been “restructured” (see, that sounds better than “nationalized”) and the credit starts flowing again.

The psychodynamics of the recession aren’t hard to fathom. The people need a vision. They need to see that the president is on their side (which is why he now spends a day a week on the road). And like seriously ill patients, they need a clear yet flexible action plan that takes them beyond blind optimism to well-founded hope.

I’m not a psychologist or psychiatrist, but I can read the language of faith when it’s put to use. As a college double major in marketing and economics, I also recognize a hard sell: notice how even the title exhorts us to “chin up” because the president will “bring us back from the brink”. Through our faith we will be healed.

Readers of this blog know that I have poked fun at the Messianic aspects of the Obama campaign. Now that the campaign is over and Obama’s descended from Olympus into office, we get the full propaganda treatment by a news magazine.

But ShrinkWrapped, who is a psychiatrist, looks at the Therapy Paradigms and Therapeutic Change, and the implications are dire:

In the first paradigm any action is divorced from talk, and thought. The patient is not expected to understand why he does what he does but is to take action under the authority and guidance of the wiser therapist. This kind of therapy risks making changes without appreciating the risks which will be the patient’s alone to bear.

Not coincidentally, this is the sort of “therapy” Oprah and her protege Dr. Phil bring to the TV screens every day. Oprah, after all, referred to Obama as “The One” on the campaign trail,

Now Oprah supposedly is looking for a house in Washington to be near Obama and was visiting the White House just last week. But I digress.

Alter refers to the current financial crisis as a “Reckoning”,

When the Reckoning came, nearly everyone started moving too far to the other extreme: no borrowing, just burrowing

again using the language of faith. We must believe,

because doing nothing amid adversity is not an option, at least not to Democrats.

However, responsible adults do not just “do” for the sake of doing. ShrinkWrapped explains why,

In the exploratory psychotherapies (Type 3) the goal is a complex two step procedure. One first attempts to as fully as possible understand one’s options and then take action, ie make behavioral changes, while bearing the risks and rewards of responsibility. Therapy without behavioral change risks turning into what has been derisively termed “mental masturbation” in which the patient and therapist talk and talk and talk and nothing ever changes. Talk can never be a substitute for action; it can be necessary as a prelude to action but talk without action is a choice for passivity in the face of life’s vicissitudes while action without talk risks unconsciously repeating the past patterns in disguise while surrendering one’s autonomy in the process.

“America’s New Shrink” doesn’t want the “stimulus” package under the microscope, hence the rush. And it’s not just the stimulus and the bailout, it’s also the omnibus bill and whatever else – possibly including record-high punitive taxes. All the while, the markets tank because investors are voting on the ruinous economic policies that are currently on the administration’s agenda.

As of the writing of this post the Dow is at 7149, down 217 points for the day.

UPDATE
JoshuaPundit looks at America’s New Shrink and sees Elmer Gantry.

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