What's in a name?

After all, he's only been president for four months... and on the cover of Time magazine 220,874 times...

Someone might want to look into whether an impostor took President Obama's place during his trip to Russia.

In a release touting an agreement between Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev over how to craft a follow-up to the START arms reduction treaty, the White House claimed the document had been signed by one "Barak Obama."

Whoops.

Just think: aren't we fortunate that such detail-oriented administrators are seeking to redesign about 39% of our economy? As Glenn Reynolds would say, "the country's in the very best of hands..."

News Flash: Bird Flu Strikes Florida

...film at 11....

Gore, greenhouse gas and Godwin's Law

This is at least the second time I'm aware of that a major "Global Warming" acolyte has dragged Hitler into the discussion...

Al Gore today compared the battle against climate change with the struggle against the Nazis. The former US Vice President said the world lacked the political will to act and invoked the spirit of Winston Churchill by encouraging leaders to unite their nations to fight climate change...

Mr Gore admitted that it was difficult to persuade the public that the threat from climate change was as urgent as the threat from Nazi Germany.

Yeah, those blistering temperatures lately just don't rile people the way the Blitzkrieg did.

The Global Warming craze is another example of a "moral equivalent of war," a deal by which people are convinced to give up more power to the State in the name of solving some problem (most of them created by the State in the first place, or at least exacerbated by it). Once nuclear weapons made it more problematic to take advantage of the maxim "war is the health of the State," would-be national saviors had to find less potentially radioactive causes around which to scare and rally the masses.

Perhaps the planet is warming. Perhaps not. In either case, the extent to which human, versus cyclical natural factors is at play is more difficult to determine than the chicken-littlists would admit. No, they'd rather paint their skeptical cross-examiners as something less than moral:

By every measure, the U N 's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change raises the level of alarm. The fact of global warming is "unequivocal." The certainty of the human role is now somewhere over 90 percent. Which is about as certain as scientists ever get.

I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.

Germany has a law against denying the Holocaust... a sentiment I can understand but certainly not support. With such a precedent, it would not surprise me to eventually see attempts to ban questioning Anthropogenic Global Warming, Evolution, or even Obama's effectiveness.

Refusing your opponent the chance to rebut shows a lack of confidence, not moral righteousness. As it should be, Godwin's Law has long been recognized on the internet as the moment when an argument jumps the shark. We have a pretty full plate of issues. How about we agree encouraging renewable energy is a good thing for many reasons... but let's not get hysterical about climate change when the 'change' isn't exactly what's being touted.

Here's to you, Mr. Jefferson

Pretty good stuff... though I have to admit Reagan DID start the exponential rise in the debt (I think he was, on balance, a good President, but he wasn't the second coming of Washington some have made him out to be.)

Another BRIC in the wall

A number of observers have taken note of the rising influence of the "BRIC" nations: Brazil, Russia, India and China. These nations, while not fully developed in terms of a stable economy, represent great potential for influence on the world, especially in their respective regional areas (South America, Europe, South Asia and North Asia).

So it's noteworthy that India has now joined Russia and China in calling for diversification of reserves out of the dollar, and consideration of an alternative reserve currency for the world.

“The major part of Indian reserves are in dollars -- that is something that’s a problem for us,” Tendulkar, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, said in an interview today in Aix-en-Provence, France, where he was attending an economic conference.

Singh is preparing to join leaders from the Group of Eight industrialized nations -- the U.S., Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia -- at a summit in Italy next week which is due to tackle the global economy. China and Brazil will also send representative to the G-8 summit.

As the talks have neared, China and Russia have stepped up calls for a rethink of how global currency reserves are composed and managed, underlining a power shift to emerging markets from the developed nations that spawned the financial crisis.

“There should be a system to maintain the stability of the major reserve currencies,” Former Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan said in a speech in Beijing today, highlighting the nation’s concerns about a global financial system dominated by the dollar.

Fiscal and current-account deficits must be supervised as “your currency is likely to become my problem,” said Zeng, who is now the head of a research center under the government’s top economic planning agency. The People’s Bank of China said June 26 that the International Monetary Fund should manage more of members’ reserves.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has repeatedly called for creating a mix of regional reserve currencies as part of the drive to address the global financial crisis, while questioning the dollar’s future as a global reserve currency. Russia’s proposals for the Group of 20 major developed and developing nations summit in London in April included the creation of a supranational currency.

“We will resume” talks on the supranational currency proposal at the G-8 summit in L’Aquila on July 8-10, Medvedev aide Sergei Prikhodko told reporters in Moscow today.

Singh adviser Tendulkar said that big dollar holders face a “prisoner’s dilemma” in terms of managing their holdings. “That’s why I’m telling them to do this,” he said.

We won't be able to export the effects of our fiscal irresponsibility much longer...

Media hostage crisis, day 11

Since it's all Michael Jackson, all the time, I guess there's nothing to blog about. Not like there were thousands of people rallying against government gone amok or anything...

Mass Distraction indeed...

4th of July: about more than money

I suspect this reflects the sentiment of a lot of people. The economy's down, 1 out of 10 people are out of work, and it's bad news all around. Nothing to celebrate this 4th of July, right?

Wrong.

Even if the United States as we know it ceases to exist (no longer inconceivable), July 4, 1776 will always be worthy of remembrance. On that day, centuries of political thought (and not a little Biblical wisdom) were mixed into one of the most potent statements ever issued about human society:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

An explosive declaration, worthy of commemoration with fireworks. But consider how we've dampened the flame. Many no longer believe we were created by God, thus undermining the Declaration's very basis for the assertion of equal value (not, as some believe, equality of talent or result). Instead of being content to allow government to protect our right to pursue our own happiness, we expect it to provide our happiness, and even protect us from our own folly. And now, when a substantial number of citizens openly challenge the government's chosen courses of action, they are mocked, scorned and considered more than a little odd.

Just remember, mocking often masks fear. Those who rule us (and, it must be said, increasingly plunder us) know full well the power of the ideas written above. They are content to have the 4th memorialized with holiday sales, picnics and fireworks. Just don't look too closely at what all the fuss was about 233 years ago.

When all else is gone--the economy, our relative security and comfort, even the current lines on a map, these ideas will remain. They do not belong to the United States, even if they were first uttered there in such eloquent form. And if the United States does not act in a manner worthy of its birthright, that birthright will eventually pass to some other society that is willing to shoulder the individual burdens of keeping the flame of liberty alive.

Make no mistake: America is my home, and I wish it only the best. But if I must ever choose between the principles upon which it was founded, and the nation it has become, there is no doubt in my mind which will retain my loyalty and affection. Want to celebrate in a worthy manner? Do some reading. And some thinking. It just might Revolution-ize your point of view.