"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

Thomas Jefferson
Sept. 23, 1800

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Lincoln's Fingerprint


This is really cool. From Science Daily:

Lydia Smith, a first-year psychology major from Granville, Ohio, was transcribing a letter written by Lincoln on Oct. 5, 1863, for a class project when she noticed a smudge that she suspected could be the 16th president’s thumbprint. Lincoln historians have confirmed the print.

A student at Miami University has discovered what experts say is a fingerprint belonging to Abraham Lincoln from nearly 150 years ago.

Salvation

After all the talk of politics and stimulus and bailout and deficits and rich vs. poor, it's easy to lose sight of what really can change the world for the better. It's not going to come from politicians, or pundits or a think-tank, as much as a free people need these things. The salvation of our country and our world will come from the souls of those who seek wisdom and find a way to pass what they find on to the future. Here's the last three stanzas of Alfred Lord Tennyson's The Poet. We need more of them.

And in her raiment's hem was traced in flame
WISDOM, a name to shake
All evil dreams of power--a sacred name. [5]
And when she spake,

Her words did gather thunder as they ran,
And as the lightning to the thunder
Which follows it, riving the spirit of man,
Making earth wonder,

So was their meaning to her words.
No sword
Of wrath her right arm whirl'd, [6]
But one poor poet's scroll, and with 'his' word
She shook the world.


New Constituent Services

Doug Bandow at the Cato Institute's blog has a post about a new kind of help being sought from elected officials. Seems that people who have been turned down for loans by banks that received federal bail-out money are asking their congress-critters to step in. Talk about the Law of Unintended Consequences rearing its ugly head. How long before this starts the ball rolling once again on the government forcing banks to loan money to people without the means to pay it back. And what bank wouldn't go along, knowing the taxpayers will subsidize their foolishness to the tune of billions of dollars.

We are heading at a scary clip toward nationalization of banks in this country. And it won't end there. Here's Mr. Bandow's conclusion:

On the one hand, this is outrageous. On the other hand, if the taxpayers have to support the banks, why shouldn’t the banks support the taxpayers? The logic is obvious even if the consequences are potentially catastrophic.

It won’t be easy to roll back the federal government’s leap into socialism American-style. But if we don’t halt the federal subsidy express, there might not be much real “free enterprise” left in America when we finish.

Those Who Don't Learn from History...

Sure it's a cliche, but it fits. The Obama administration is promising to follow up it's spending orgies with an attack on the nation's job producers and wealth makers. A Washington Post article explains the administration's plans to cut the budget deficit by two-thirds by the end of Obama's first (God help us) term. This is the exact recipe that led us into the Great Depression. Starving the private sector of capitol though increased taxes on business and capitol investment, especially at a time when there is no sense of restraint on the size, scope and expense of federal government will lead to massive private sector job loss.

It took a world war to drag us out of FDR's folly. What's going to do it this time?

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Another High School Fails The Hope-n-Change Test

What's become of our education system? First they refuse to name their school after Barack Obama, now we have high schoolers questioning the wisdom of the mortgage bail-out. From the Drudge Report:

Senior Syna Daudfar took some notes during the speech and was among the most vocally opposed to Obama's words.

At one point, when he talked about the costs of his stimulus plan, senior Maaike Albach and Daudfar looked at each other and said, "uh-oh."

"Overall I think it's a good idea, but he's not addressing the issues of the economic crisis," said Daudfar, a John McCain supporter who added he leans more toward being a moderate conservative. "The spending bill he just passed is just progressing the Democratic agenda rather than addressing the economic issues in the country."

Daudfar thinks Obama's plan is backward and deals with the "less important stuff" first. "Bailing out businesses" and "providing better regulatory systems for giving out money to businesses" should have been first, he said.

"If businesses can't afford to hire people, then people won't be able to work and pay off their mortgages," he said. "It's kind of like putting money into20a funnel." Albach, who is also a Republican, said Obama's plan sounds good but questioned how Obama can want to rely on "people's responsibility" when that is "what got us in this economic crisis in the first place."

"This puts us more into debt," said Albach, 18. "It's a horrible situation we're in."


One student even dressed special for the President's visit.

Senior Brandon Miller wore a shirt with the words, "Hitler gave great speeches, too" above a picture of Obama.

Miller said he had been an Obama supporter "because of his speeches," but after debating the issues in this class and looking more into Obama's policies, his vote was swayed toward McCain.

I hope he doesn't wear that to college next year. He'll be brought up on "hate speech" charges.


Tastes Like Chicken

I guess this shouldn't be funny, but it is. Courtesy of Fox News:

A bird suspected to be extinct was reportedly photographed for the first time in the Philippines, and then sold to a poultry market as food.

Worcester's buttonquail was known only through illustrations based on decades-old museum specimens until a television crew documented the live bird in the market before it was sold in January, NationalGeographic.com reported.

Scientists had suspected the bird, found only on the island of Luzon, to be extinct, according to NationalGeographic.com.

Wild Bird Club of the Philippines President Michael Lu, told the Agence France-Press news agency that it’s unfortunate that the locals aren't more conscious of the threatened wildlife around them.

"What if this was the last of its species?" he said.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Fun New Maps

The Civitas Institute, always reliable for some good number crunching, has come up with some cool little maps that show the relative partisanship of North Carolina Senate and House districts. You can see how far they lean towards the Democrats or Republicans and also what change there's been in those opinions over time.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Why Didn't We Ask This Guy First?


A UCLA geography professor thinks he's pinned down the location of Osama bin Laden. He used technology used to track endangered species to draw up an area of probability for Osama's hiding place. Scroll through the article for a look at the most likely building and, helpfully, its exact latitude and longitude.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Happy Presidents' Day

Here's an interesting discussion on National Review Online about who was our greatest President.

No one picked Obama? Racists!

Sunday, February 15, 2009

The "F" Word Rears It's Head

Michael Ledeen has a column pointing out that the bailout and economic stimulus are not heading us towards socialism. They are classic examples of Facism.

But that’s not socialism. Socialism rests on a firm theoretical bedrock: the abolition of private property. I haven’t heard anyone this side of Barney Frank calling for any such thing. What is happening now–and Newsweek is honest enough to say so down in the body of the article–is an expansion of the state’s role, an increase in public/private joint ventures and partnerships, and much more state regulation of business. Yes, it’s very “European,” and some of the Europeans even call it “social democracy,” but it isn’t.

It’s fascism. Nobody calls it by its proper name, for two basic reasons: first, because “fascism” has long since lost its actual, historical, content; it’s been a pure epithet for many decades. Lots of the people writing about current events like what Obama et. al. are doing, and wouldn’t want to stigmatize it with that “f” epithet.

Second, not one person in a thousand knows what fascist political economy was. Yet during the great economic crisis of the 1930s, fascism was widely regarded as a possible solution, indeed as the only acceptable solution to a spasm that had shaken the entire First World, and beyond. It was hailed as a “third way” between two failed systems (communism and capitalism), retaining the best of each. Private property was preserved, as the role of the state was expanded. This was necessary because the Great Depression was defined as a crisis “of the system,” not just a glitch “in the system.” And so Mussolini created the “Corporate State,” in which, in theory at least, the big national enterprises were entrusted to state ownership (or substantial state ownership) and of course state management. Some of the big “Corporations” lasted a very long time; indeed some have only very recently been privatized, and the state still holds important chunks–so-called “golden shares”–in some of them.