Why the Goose Might Get Cooked

If the people of this nation ever decide to kill the goose (capitalism) that has laid the golden eggs (American prosperity) it will be largely the result of two quite different influences. The first is the righteous anger provoked in people by the sheer greed and opulence flaunted by the modern captains of industry. Maureen Dowd gives voice to this execrable insensitivity in a recent New York Times column:

Despite losing $28.5 billion in the past 15 months and receiving $345 billion in government investments and guarantees the corporate Marie Antoinettes at Citigroup went through with plans to purchase a new $50 million corporate jet.

Real people are losing real jobs at Caterpillar, Home Depot and Sprint Nextel; these and other companies announced on Monday that they would cut more than 75,000 jobs in the U.S. and around the world, as consumer confidence and home prices swan-dived.

The former chief executive of Merrill Lynch, John Thain, handed out over $4 billion in bonuses as the failing firm was bought by Bank of America.

"If you don't pay your best people, you will destroy your franchise," Thain reasoned, "and they'll go elsewhere." So, these guys are rewarded by Thain with billions of dollars of investor's money for losing $15 billion in three months for their clients.

Meanwhile, Thain himself spent $1 million to renovate his office. Big-ticket items included curtains for $28,000, a pair of chairs for $87,000, fabric for a "Roman Shade" for $11,000, Regency chairs for $24,000, six wall sconces for $2,700, a $13,000 chandelier in the private dining room and six dining chairs for $37,000, a "custom coffee table" for $16,000, an antique commode "on legs" for $35,000, and a $1,400 "parchment waste can."

Socializing financial institutions and industries would be a terrible move, but the anger that causes people to no longer resist it is certainly understandable. The goose has brought it upon himself.

The other factor that will lead us to kill the goose is the fact that so many people in this country are the recipients of government largesse, and so few, relatively, provide it. When a large percentage of the population in a democracy really have nothing to lose by socializing the economy and much to gain they will eagerly favor more government largesse. What do they care if the people who have the wealth are squeezed if it means more benefits for themselves? Neither capitalism nor democracy will survive a large lower class comprised of poor, uneducated, unmotivated people living at the expense of those above them on the socio-economic ladder. The lower classes will always vote for those who'll provide more benefits and those who seek their votes will be only too willing to oblige them.

The GOP is looking for a Moses to lead them back to the political Promised Land. What they need is someone who has a plan for teaching the poor that they have a stake in capitalism and freedom and someone who can shame the corporate "Masters of the Universe," to use Tom Wolfe's phrase in Bonfire of the Vanities, into setting an example of frugality and modesty for the rest of the society which has bestowed such good fortune upon them.

RLC

Rush's Plan

Rush Limbaugh has a serious, and very interesting, plan to restart the American economy, and to underscore his seriousness he presents it in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. It's not only a genuine bipartisan compromise it's also a great empirical test of two conflicting philosophies on how best to deal with recessions. I suspect that it's going to attract a lot of attention from both the right and center left. A lot of honest people, not just among Republicans but also in the Democrat party, are dismayed by what they see as a welfare/pork barrel bill masquerading as an economic stimulus measure.

Here's the heart of Limbaugh's proposal:

Fifty-three percent of American voters voted for Barack Obama; 46% voted for John McCain, and 1% voted for wackos. Give that 1% to President Obama. Let's say the vote was 54% to 46%. As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with recessions, under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009: 54% of the $900 billion -- $486 billion -- will be spent on infrastructure and pork as defined by Mr. Obama and the Democrats; 46% -- $414 billion -- will be directed toward tax cuts, as determined by me.

Then we compare. We see which stimulus actually works. This is bipartisanship! It would satisfy the American people's wishes, as polls currently note; and it would also serve as a measurable test as to which approach best stimulates job growth.

I say, cut the U.S. corporate tax rate -- at 35%, among the highest of all industrialized nations -- in half. Suspend the capital gains tax for a year to incentivize new investment, after which it would be reimposed at 10%. Then get out of the way! Once Wall Street starts ticking up 500 points a day, the rest of the private sector will follow. There's no reason to tell the American people their future is bleak. There's no reason, as the administration is doing, to depress their hopes. There's no reason to insist that recovery can't happen quickly, because it can.

In this new era of responsibility, let's use both Keynesians and supply-siders to responsibly determine which theory best stimulates our economy -- and if elements of both work, so much the better. The American people are made up of Republicans, Democrats, independents and moderates, but our economy doesn't know the difference. This is about jobs now.

I'd prefer we cut the pork and transfer payments out of the bill altogether, but that's not going to happen with the Democrats in control of everything. So, why not give Rush's plan a go and settle the question for the next three generations of whether it's better to inflate the currency and throw money around like we're frantically bailing water out of a sinking boat or to cut tax rates and let businesses and private citizens kickstart the economy by creating more wealth.

RLC

Winter Irruption

This winter has seen a major irruption of several boreal species of birds into the northeastern United States. One such species that's being seen at backyard bird feeders everywhere this winter is the pine siskin:

The yellow on the wing is distinctive and helps to distinguish the siskin from a lot of other brown birds with streaked breasts. The siskin feeds primarily on nyjer seed.

Another more unusual bird that has been seen almost everywhere there are stands of spruce trees with healthy cone crops is the White-winged crossbill. The mandibles of this unusual bird are crossed rather than parallel. This allows it to peel away the hard bracts of conifer cones to extract the seeds that lie at their base. A crossbill will eat up to 3000 seeds a day, which requires an awful lot of work.

I was lucky enough to see about a half-dozen of these lovely creatures yesterday morning in some spruces along the Susquehanna river in York County, Pennsylvania.

RLC

Wars Without End

Our question for today, class, is a little complex so listen carefully: With which of the following conflicts are you most acquainted: The war in the Congo? The war in Sudan? The conflict in Somalia? The war in Sri Lanka? You're not really familiar with any of these, you say?

How about the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians? Ah, yes. Now that we've heard a lot about over the years, haven't we? My church denominational office regularly passes resolutions condemning Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians. The media feature it daily and prominently. It's the defining struggle of our times. The most egregious slaughters, one might think, have been spawned by this conflict.

But actually, no. According to an article at Strategy Page the truth is otherwise and the numbers are shocking. Consider these gruesome statistics:

Throughout the last decade over five million people have died in the Congo from the effects of war in the eastern part of that country.

Sudan has produced over 300,000 dead, millions of refugees, and a thriving slave trade.

Somalia has suffered 16,000 dead in the last two years and more than twice that in the last twenty years. The media, however, seem fascinated only with the pirates in the north who kill hardly anyone, except some of the thousands of the refugees they try to smuggle into Yemen when they aren't trying to kidnap passing merchant ships and fishing boats.

Perhaps the distinction of hosting the most ignored war in the world goes to the island nation of Sri Lanka where civil strife has killed over 80,000 in the last 25 years (and about 10,000 in the last year alone). India suffers over 2,000 dead a year from terrorists (mostly tribal and communist). Neighboring Pakistan has suffered 14,000 dead from Islamic terrorism in the past six years, and Afghanistan has lost that number in the last three years.

Let those numbers sink in for a moment. Now reflect upon this: In the last decade there have been about 7000 deaths in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. This is about one one thousandth the toll in the Congo alone. Yet it is this conflict which captures almost the entirety of media attention. In fact, President Obama has named a peace envoy, George Mitchell, to the Middle East, but no such envoy is packing his bags for Africa.

Given the horrific casualty toll in the rest of the world, and the relatively minor toll in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, why is it that the West - its churches, its media, its universities, and its governments are all so fixated on what's happening in Israel? Why does the West so assiduously ferret out every Israeli injustice, real and imagined, that can be trumpeted from the front pages of our newspapers and evening newscasts? Where are the demonstrations in our city streets and university campuses demanding a cessation to the wars and tyrannies besetting the longsuffering African and Sri Lankan people? Why does the West get so exercised about Israel, but can scarcely be bothered with horrific news from the Congo or Zimbabwe? Why do Palestinian Arabs matter more to people in the West than do black Sudanese and Congolese? Why do we hold Israelis to a far higher standard of behavior than we expect of black Africans, Arabs, and Muslims?

Just asking.

RLC

John Galt

A friend passes along what I take to be a fictional memo from an employer to his employees which reads as if it were written by John Galt. Galt, you may recall, was a mysterious character in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged who, worn out by a government that made it impossible for men to achieve their dreams, led a revolt of the nation's producers who collectively chose to just stop working rather than be exploited any longer by a parasitic government:

To my Valued Employees:

There have been some rumblings around the office about the future of this company, and more specifically, your job. As you know, the economy has changed for the worse and presents many challenges. However, the good news is this: The economy doesn't pose a threat to your job. What does threaten your job however, is the changing political landscape in this country.

However, let me tell you some little tidbits of fact which might help you decide what is in your best interests.

First, while it is easy to spew rhetoric that pits employers against employees, you have to understand that for every business owner there is a back story. This back story is often neglected and overshadowed by what you see and hear. Sure, you see me park my Mercedes outside. You've seen my big home at last year's Christmas party. I'm sure all these flashy symbols of luxury conjure up some idealized thoughts about my life.

However, what you don't see is the back story.

I started this company 28 years ago. At that time, I lived in a 300 square foot studio apartment for 3 years. My entire living apartment was converted into an office so I could put forth 100% effort into building a company, which by the way, would eventually employ you.

My diet consisted of Ramen Pride noodles because every dollar I spent went back into this company. I drove a rusty Toyota Corolla with a defective transmission. I didn't have time to date. I usually stayed home on weekends while my friends went out drinking and partying. In fact, I was married to my business -- hard work, discipline, and sacrifice.

Meanwhile, my friends got jobs. They worked 40 hours a week and made a modest $50K a year and spent every dime they earned. They drove flashy cars, lived in expensive homes, and wore fancy designer clothes. Instead of hitting the Nordstrom's for the latest hot fashion item, I was trolling through the discount store extracting any clothing item that didn't look like it was birthed in the 70's. My friends refinanced their mortgages and lived a life of luxury. I, however, did not. I put my time, my money, and my life into a business with a vision that eventually, some day, I, too, will be able to afford these luxuries my friends seemed to have.

So, while you physically arrive at the office at 9am, mentally check in at about noon, and then leave at 5pm, I don't. There is no "off" button for me. When you leave the office you are done, and you have a weekend all to yourself. I, unfortunately, do not have that freedom. I eat and breathe this company every minute of the day. There is no rest. There is no weekend. There is no happy hour. Every day this business is attached to my hip like a 1 year-old special-needs child. You, of course, only see the fruits of that labor - the nice house, the Mercedes, the vacations... you never realize the back story and the sacrifices I've made.

Now the economy is falling apart and I, the guy that made all the right decisions and saved his money, have to bail-out all the people who didn't. The people that overspent their paychecks suddenly feel entitled to the same luxuries that I earned and sacrificed a decade of my life for.

Yes, business ownership has its benefits, but the price I've paid is steep and not without wounds.

Unfortunately, the cost of running this business and employing you is starting to eclipse the threshold of marginal benefit, and let me tell you why:

I am being taxed to death and the government thinks I don't pay enough. I have state taxes, federal taxes, property taxes, sales and use taxes, payroll taxes, workers compensation taxes, unemployment taxes, taxes on taxes. I have to hire a tax man to manage all these taxes and then I have to pay more taxes for employing him. Government mandates and regulations, and all the accounting that goes with them, now occupy most of my time. On Oct 15th, I wrote a check to the U.S. Treasury for $288,000 for quarterly taxes. You know what my "stimulus" check was? Zero. Nada. Zilch.

The question I have is this: Who is stimulating the economy? Me, the guy who has provided 14 people good paying jobs and serves over 2,200,000 people per year with a flourishing business? Or, the single mother sitting at home pregnant with her fourth child waiting for her next welfare check? Obviously, government feels the latter is the economic stimulus of this country.

The fact is, if I deducted (Read: Stole) 50% of your paycheck you'd quit and you wouldn't work here. I mean, why should you? That's nuts. Who wants to get rewarded for only 50% of their hard work? Well, I agree, which is why your job is in jeopardy.

Here's what many of you don't understand ... to stimulate the economy you need to stimulate what runs the economy. Had suddenly government mandated that I didn't need to pay taxes, instead of depositing that $288,000 into the Washington black-hole, I would have spent it, hired more employees, and generated substantial economic growth. My employees would have enjoyed the wealth of that tax cut in the form of promotions and better salaries. But you can forget it now.

When you have a comatose man on the verge of death, you don't defibrillate his thumb thinking that will bring him back to life, do you? You defibrillate his heart. Business is at the heart of America and always has been. To restart it, you must stimulate it, not kill it. Suddenly, the power brokers in Washington believe the poor of America are the essential drivers of the American economic engine. Nothing could be further from the truth.

So where am I going with all this? It's quite simple.

If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, my reaction will be swift and simple. I will fire you. I will fire your co-workers. You can then plead with the government to pay for your mortgage, your SUV, and your child's future. Frankly, it won't be my problem anymore.

Then, I will close this company down, move to another country, and retire. You see, I'm done. I'm done with a country that penalizes the productive and gives to the unproductive. My motivation to work and to provide jobs will be destroyed, and with it, will be my citizenship.

So, if you lose your job, it won't be at the hands of the economy; it will be at the hands of a political hurricane that swept through this country, steam-rolled the constitution, and changed its landscape forever. If that happens, you can find me sitting on a beach, retired, and with no employees to worry about....

Your boss

A nation that punishes its producers and transfers their wealth to subsidize those who, for whatever reason, do not produce is a nation which will eventually and inevitably look a lot like Bulgaria in the 1950s. Somebody ought to forward this "memo" to President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

RLC

Four Fears

Fred Barnes writes in The Weekly Standard that there are four fears people have about President Obama which, though they might not be justified, are not unreasonable:

Barack Obama is the apostle of hope. But he also arouses the flipside of hope--fear. And while the fear he stirs may turn out to be unfounded, it's not irrational. People don't know who Obama really is or where his ideological center of gravity rests, to the extent it rests anywhere. He was a liberal in the Senate and the campaign, a centrist in the transition, and who knows what he'll be as president. He's elusive.

I count four separate fears. Whether he's a crypto-Marxist is not one of them. Neither is the absurd fear that he's secretly a Muslim, even a closet jihadist. Nor is the groundless claim Obama was actually born outside the United States and isn't really an American citizen. Forget all those. They're nonstarters.

Barnes goes on to discuss the fear that Obama doesn't know what he's talking about, is too much of a pushover, will be too much like Jimmy Carter on foreign policy, and lacks the resolve necessary to make unpopular decisions. Read the article to understand Barnes' reasoning for each of these. It's pretty good.

RLC

What's Hate Got to Do With It?

Mary Eberstadt, the author of that wonderful collection of epistles from a newly-minted atheist to her much admired superiors titled The Loser Letters, addresses herself to the question how someone like her, someone who's quite averse to our modern infatuation with gayness, might respond to charges that she must be a homophobic hater.

She suggests deflecting such allegations by emulating, of all people, vegetarians. Eberstadt offers this hypothetical response to someone who has accused her of being a hater simply because she finds homosexual conduct to be not just distasteful but morally wrong:

A borrowing of the vegetarian's vocabulary might go something like this. "No, of course I don't hate sex/fun/gay people/love - any more than a vegetarian, say, hates people who eat beef/chicken/pork. In fact, let's explore that analogy a little more, because then maybe you'll understand where I'm coming from. And just as vegetarians don't hate meat-eaters, I don't hate people who do things I don't, or things that I think are wrong. But that doesn't mean that the matter ends there or that I'm saying that these things are a matter of taste only. Like the vegetarian, I think there are serious reasons for my aversion to what other people do. These reasons are moral. They also have to do with health. In general, I think it would be a better world if people didn't do these things, again as the vegetarian thinks. But please understand that hatred has nothing to do with it. Reason and information and a desire not to do harm - these things do."

This response, as correct and honest as it is clever, is offered in a larger essay in the current First Things which itself is very much worth reading. Unfortunately, this issue is available only by subscription until April.

RLC

The Unstimulus

The Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank, analyzes the Obama stimulus plan which Congress is voting on today and finds much not to like. In the first place, they tell us, the plan would be incredibly costly to taxpayers.

For instance, after Congress appropriates the 2009 omnibus bill, they will have spent over $1.4 trillion in less than one month. It'll be the largest spending orgy in the history of the country. If the cost of it were spread equally over every family in the U.S. each family would owe $10,520. What's worse, though, is that although the bill is touted as an "economic stimulus" bill, much of it has nothing to do with stimulating the economy and a lot to do with lining the pockets of those who supported the Democrats in the last election.

In addition to the earlier automobile bailout, which was essentially a gift to the UAW, over $142 billion dollars is slated for education, nearly double the total outlays for the Department of Education in 2007, making good on promises made by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and candidate Obama to the NEA. Anyone who thinks that this windfall will actually result in kids learning more math and literature in school is deluding himself. Another $4.19 billion is provided for "neighborhood stabilization activities" which is code for organizations like ACORN which has been charged with widespread voter registration fraud in the last election, but which was instrumental in getting Democrats elected. The Democrats also tried to get several million dollars for birth control into the measure, which would have been a boon to Planned Parenthood, but Nancy Pelosi, apparently non-plussed by questions about exactly what it was she was trying to stimulate, decided to drop it.

In addition to these Blagojevich-like quid pro quos to Democratic constituencies there are a number of other provisions which may cause you to arch an eyebrow:

States that have squandered their own taxpayers' money and now find themselves unable to meet their medicaid obligations to their own citizens will receive from the rest of us an $87 billion dollar check to meet the shortfall. Taxpayers in Pennsylvania will be happy to know that they're paying the medicaid costs for people living in New York. The "stimulus" also gives the Department of Energy $35 billion dollars to work on such dubious projects as "green" alternative energy sources like windmills. The DOE's current annual budget is just under $24 billion. Billions more will be handed out as refundable tax credits to everyone who falls under a specified income level. This will include millions of people who never paid income taxes in the first place, which means it's not a tax refund at all, but a welfare payment, and its purpose is to buy the loyalty of a large number of voters to the Democratic party.

In addition, there are these items crucial, we are to believe, to the health of the national economy: Digital TV coupons ($650 million), government cars ($600 million), the National Endowment for the Arts ($50 million), repairs to National Mall ($200 million). This includes $21 million for sod so that on your next visit to the mall you can loll about in the grass and feel all tingly about how wisely your tax dollars are being spent by your beneficent congressional overlords.

But isn't all this spending going to create jobs, I hear you ask. Not according to House Tax Committee staff. Despite the promise by President Obama and Speaker Pelosi that three to four million new jobs will be created, the Committee has not been able to find even a single job that will be guaranteed to be created. Indeed, most of the money won't even be spent this year, so it's hard to see how this bill is a job generator.

If President Obama and the Democrats were really serious about creating jobs and getting the economy going - instead of just paying off the people who got them elected - they would simply lower as many taxes, both business and personal, as they could. This would immediately stimulate the economy by getting businesses investing and hiring and consumers spending. Unfortunately, the economic stimulus package is all about politics and power and not so much about jobs and prosperity.

Whatever happened to all that hope and change we were promised a couple of months ago?

President Obama has also promised us a transparent administration and Speaker of the House Pelosi has promised us the most ethical Congress ever. If they're serious about their rhetoric they could start to make good on their promises by declining to call this measure "economic stimulus" and calling it instead what it is: Political Payback. It's hard to see the difference between what the Democrats from Barack Obama on down are doing with this "stimulus" bill and what Rod Blagojevich got himself impeached for in Illinois.

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal has an excellent editorial on the spending bill in which they calculate that only 12 cents of every dollar can be reasonably expected to go to stimulus and job creation. Much of it is just welfare payments to the poor.

RLC

Burying the Tree of Life

Comes word that another one of the pillars of Darwin's theory is being quietly buried by investigators convinced that the evidence is against it. I say "another one" because it was only recently that a conference was held to essentially eulogize the demise of natural selection as a major player in evolutionary change. Now it turns out the whole idea of a progression of development from simple forms to more complex, a progression Darwin illustrated by a "tree of life," is being called into question.

It's beginning to appear that the relationships between living things have the appearance more of a web than of a tree. If this is so, what are the implications for evolutionary theory? Perhaps one is that the concept of distinct species is becoming even more difficult to define than it was previously. Here's an excerpt from the link:

Some researchers are also convinced that hybridisation has been a major driving force in animal evolution and that the process is ongoing. "It is really common," says James Mallet, an evolutionary biologist at University College London. "Ten per cent of all animals regularly hybridise with other species." This is especially true in rapidly evolving lineages with lots of recently diverged species - including our own. There is evidence that early modern humans hybridised with our extinct relatives, such as Homo erectus and the Neanderthals.

If early man could interbreed with H. erectus and Neanderthals then what is the basis for treating these as separate species from H. sapiens? A species just is a population of organisms which can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. H. erectus and Neanderthals may have looked different than H. sapiens, but that doesn't make them different species. The dozens of breeds of dogs all look very different from each other, but they're all the same species.

[I]t is clear that the Darwinian tree is no longer an adequate description of how evolution in general works. "If you don't have a tree of life, what does it mean for evolutionary biology?" asks Bapteste. "At first it's very scary... but in the past couple of years people have begun to free their minds." Both he and Doolittle are at pains to stress that downgrading the tree of life doesn't mean that the theory of evolution is wrong - just that evolution is not as tidy as we would like to believe. Some evolutionary relationships are tree-like; many others are not. "We should relax a bit on this," says Doolittle. "We understand evolution pretty well - it's just that it is more complex than Darwin imagined. The tree isn't the only pattern."

In fact, it's not even the main pattern which means that the grand story of Darwinism - molecules to man progression - a story that had been supported by molecular studies that once showed similarities and thus relationships between the proteins of certain organisms, is now obsolete. More recent studies reveal a more chaotic interplay of genetic relationships. Thus:

Others, however, don't think it is time to relax. Instead, they see the uprooting of the tree of life as the start of something bigger. "It's part of a revolutionary change in biology," says Dupr�. "Our standard model of evolution is under enormous pressure. We're clearly going to see evolution as much more about mergers and collaboration than change within isolated lineages."

Rose goes even further. "The tree of life is being politely buried, we all know that," he says. "What's less accepted is that our whole fundamental view of biology needs to change." Biology is vastly more complex than we thought, he says, and facing up to this complexity will be as scary as the conceptual upheavals physicists had to take on board in the early 20th century.

If he is right, the tree concept could become biology's equivalent of Newtonian mechanics: revolutionary and hugely successful in its time, but ultimately too simplistic to deal with the messy real world. "The tree of life was useful," says Bapteste. "It helped us to understand that evolution was real. But now we know more about evolution, it's time to move on."

This is certainly ironic. Most of the arguments people like Darwin and others made to persuade us that macroevolution (molecules to man evolution)occured are being discarded, replaced by other arguments which may eventually suffer the same fate. Yet the truth of macroevolution is not to be questioned:

Syvanen recently compared 2000 genes that are common to humans, frogs, sea squirts, sea urchins, fruit flies and nematodes. In theory, he should have been able to use the gene sequences to construct an evolutionary tree showing the relationships between the six animals.

He failed. The problem was that different genes told contradictory evolutionary stories. This was especially true of sea-squirt genes.

Conventionally, sea squirts - also known as tunicates - are lumped together with frogs, humans and other vertebrates in the phylum Chordata, but the genes were sending mixed signals. Some genes did indeed cluster within the chordates, but others indicated that tunicates should be placed with sea urchins, which aren't chordates. "Roughly 50 per cent of its genes have one evolutionary history and 50 per cent another," Syvanen says.

In other words, all those studies which showed close relationships between different taxa based on genetic similarities and differences are rendered useless by these findings. The famous comparison of humans to chimps based on so much shared genetic material really means little in terms of actual evolutionary relationships.

If the idea of a tree of life is obsolete then the idea of descent through modification will have to be reassessed as will the idea that some organisms are more "primitive," both in time and in structure, than others. This is why the scientists quoted above talk in terms of a "revolution" in biology. Much that was thought to be true is being turned inside out, and it will almost be as if biologists will have to start all over again to piece together their story of how life got to where it is today.

RLC

Cosmic Sucking Sound

Some NASA scientists studying galactic clusters have come across a very weird phenomenon. The galaxies they're studying appear to be rushing toward a spot in space much like air rushing toward, and out of, a pinhole in a balloon:

Sasha Kashlinsky, a senior staff scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has been studying how rebellious clusters of galaxies move against the backdrop of expanding space. He and colleagues have clocked galaxy clusters racing at up to 1000 kilometres per second - far faster than our best understanding of cosmology allows. Stranger still, every cluster seems to be rushing toward a small patch of sky between the constellations of Centaurus and Vela.

The implication of this is that these galaxies are pouring out of our universe through some sort of a rent in the cosmic horizon. They appear to be drawn by something beyond our space-time world. Is all the matter in our universe draining out? What, exactly, are these galaxies draining into? What sort of entity lies beyond the boundary of space and time?

No one knows. What we do know, what we seem to be learning anew with every fresh observation, is that the universe is a very strange place.

RLC

The Stock Boy and the Checkout Girl

A friend sent me this story which is evidently making the internet rounds. You may have read it before, but I hadn't, and it's especially pertinent this week:

In a supermarket, Kurtis the stock boy, was busily at work when a new voice came over the loud-speaker asking for a carry-out at register 4. Kurtis was almost finished, and wanted to get some fresh air, and decided to answer the call. As he approached the check-out stand a distant smile caught his eye, the new check-out girl was beautiful. She was an older woman (maybe 26, and he was only 22) and he fell in love.

Later that day, after his shift was over, he waited by the punch clock to find out her name. She came into the break room, smiled softly at him, took her card and punched out, then left. He looked at her card, BRENDA. He walked out only to see her start walking up the road. Next day, he waited outside as she left the supermarket, and offered her a ride home. He looked harmless enough, and she accepted. When he dropped her off, he asked if maybe he could see her again, outside of work. She simply said it wasn't possible.

He pressed, and she explained she had two children and couldn't afford a baby-sitter, so he offered to pay for the sitter. Reluctantly, she accepted his offer for a date for the following Saturday. On the appointed night he arrived at her door only to have her tell him that she was unable to go with him. The baby-sitter had called and canceled. To which Kurtis simply said, "Well, let's take the kids with us."

She tried to explain that taking the children was not an option, but again not taking no for an answer, he pressed. Finally Brenda brought him inside to meet her children. She had an older daughter who was just as cute as could be, Kurtis thought. Then Brenda brought out her son in a wheelchair. He was born a paraplegic with Down Syndrome.

Kurtis said to Brenda, "I still don't understand why the kids can't come with us." Brenda was amazed. Most men would run away from a woman with two kids, especially if one had disabilities - just like her first husband and father of her children had done. Kurtis was not ordinary - he had a different mindset.

That evening Kurtis and Brenda loaded up the kids and went to dinner and the movies. When her son needed anything Kurtis would take care of him. When he needed to use the restroom, he picked him up out of his wheelchair, took him to the men's room and brought him back. The kids loved Kurtis. At the end of the evening Brenda knew this was the man she was going to marry and spend the rest of her life with.

A year later, they were married and Kurtis adopted both of her children. Since then they've added two more kids.

So what happened to Kurtis the stock boy and Brenda the check-out girl? Well, Mr. & Mrs. Kurt Warner now live in Arizona , where he is currently employed as the quarterback of the National Football League Arizona Cardinals and has his Cardinals in the Super Bowl. It should be noted that he also quarterbacked the St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI. He has also been the NLF's Most Valuable Player twice and the Super Bowl's Most Valuable Player.

Warner's story almost makes me not mind that his Cardinals beat my Eagles last week.

RLC

Sloppy Mistake

It is almost universally agree that our financial crisis was caused in large part by, in Jonah Goldberg's words, "arrogant and greedy men who thought the rules didn't apply to them." It's also universally understood, if not appreciated, that in order to get out of the mess these men have put us in the Obama administration is going to make all of us pay more of our income in taxes. Meanwhile, the President is promising us high standards of public accountability, integrity and competence from him and his administration.

Very well, but who will be in charge of collecting those taxes? Who will be responsible for unfurling your fingers from around the last few dollars you've been saving for your child's education and ripping them from your grasp? None other than a man who is precisely the antithesis of everything Obama has promised us and who himself ducked paying almost $50,000 in taxes he owed up until the very moment he was to be nominated as Secretary of the Treasury.

President Obama pooh-poohed concerns that he was appointing a tax cheat to be the nation's chief tax collector, saying that Timothy Geithner's mistake was a common error. But it clearly wasn't a common error as Goldberg's column makes plain:

Timothy Geithner, President Obama's choice to be the next treasury secretary, quite clearly tried to defraud the government of tens of thousands in payroll taxes while working at the International Monetary Fund. The IMF does not withhold such taxes but does compensate American employees who must pay them out of pocket. Geithner took the compensation -- which involves considerable paperwork -- but then simply pocketed the money.

His explanations for his alleged oversight don't pass the smell test. When the IRS busted him for his mistakes in 2003 and 2004, he decided to take advantage of the statute of limitations and not pay the thousands of dollars he also failed to pay in 2001 and 2002. That is, until he was nominated to become treasury secretary.

Obama defends Geithner, saying that his was a "common mistake," that it is embarrassing but happens all the time. My National Review colleague Byron York reports that, at least according to the World Bank, Geithner's "mistakes" are actually quite rare. Indeed, it's almost impossible to believe that the man didn't know exactly what he was doing given that he would have had to sign documents, disregard warnings and all in all turn his brain off to make the same "mistake" year after year. And keep in mind, Geithner is supposed to run the IRS. So maybe sloppiness isn't that great a defense anyway.

Whether Geithner is dishonest, dumb, or just "sloppy" (sounds like the excuse Democrats made for Sandy Berger when he was caught with classified documents stuffed in his socks as he tried to smuggle them out of the National Archives) he should not be in charge of pulling us through the financial crisis. It is not to President Obama's credit that he's sticking by his appointment, nor does it do much to sustain our hope that Obama's not just another typical Chicago politican appointing foxes to guard the henhouse.

RLC

Profile in Pusillanimity

It is hard to find the words to describe the travesty of Western civilization that is the Netherlands. A former member of parliament is being put on trial because, almost alone among his countrymen, he has had the courage to sound the tocsin on the slow creep of Islam and Sharia Law across Dutch culture and society.

Geert Wilders made a short film last year titled Fitna (which can be viewed here)in which he documents the nature of the religion which seeks to engulf the world, and for the crime of telling the truth about Islam in this film he's being prosecuted in Amsterdam on charges of incitement to hatred and discrimination against Muslims. This is as absurd as it is craven. Bruce Bawer writes about the Dutch self-abasement in a fine article in City Journal:

But Wilders - who for years now has lived under 24 hour armed guard - would not be gagged. Thus the disgraceful decision to put him on trial. In Dutch Muslim schools and mosques, incendiary rhetoric about the Netherlands, America, Jews, gays, democracy, and sexual equality is routine; a generation of Dutch Muslims are being brought up with toxic attitudes toward the society in which they live. And no one is ever prosecuted for any of this. Instead, a court in the Netherlands - a nation once famous for being an oasis of free speech - has now decided to prosecute a member of the national legislature for speaking his mind. By doing so, it proves exactly what Wilders has argued all along: that fear and "sensitivity" to a religion of submission are destroying Dutch freedom.

Bawer recounts the history of other Dutch heroes and victims of Islamic terror in the Netherlands - Pym Fortuyn, Theo van Gogh, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali - and how each was silenced. His column will be an eye-opener to those who take for granted their freedom of speech. It's a must read. While you're at it watch Fitna.

RLC

Sweatshops

I have from time to time found myself in conversations with friends who argue that free trade with nations who have no laws protecting laborers, particularly children, actually encourages the exploitation of poor people abroad who find themselves working in sweatshops for pennies a day under awful conditions. My reply has been that the alternative is that without this meager employment these people will simply starve, which is, they would probably judge, a somewhat more awful condition.

When people are living at the subsistence level a few pennies a day is a Godsend, and even though their working conditions are ghastly the poor are certainly better off slaving in these manufaturing shops than not working at all.

Now comes a piece by Nicholas Kristoff in the New York Times which makes essentially the same point:

Before Barack Obama and his team act on their talk about "labor standards," I'd like to offer them a tour of the vast garbage dump here in Phnom Penh. This is a Dante-like vision of hell. It's a mountain of festering refuse, a half-hour hike across, emitting clouds of smoke from subterranean fires.

The miasma of toxic stink leaves you gasping, breezes batter you with filth, and even the rats look forlorn. Then the smoke parts and you come across a child ambling barefoot, searching for old plastic cups that recyclers will buy for five cents a pound. Many families actually live in shacks on this smoking garbage.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don't exploit enough.

Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.

President Obama wants to demand that countries with whom we do business enact child labor laws and other regulations that would in effect eliminate sweatshops, but like so many well-meaning measures it has tragic unintended consequences. Such laws would make many foreign businesses unprofitable and uncompetitive and force them to lay off workers. Where would these workers go? In many places around the world they'd go to the dumps and try their luck at scavenging. This is why Kristoff thinks that so far from trying to eliminate sweatshops we should be encouraging them.

If the Obama administration has its way they will actually increase, not alleviate, poverty and suffering in the poorest nations of the world. The irony is that people here want so much to do something to help the poor that they often don't give much thought to the actual impact their good intentions have on the people they want to help. One might have thought that our experuience over the last forty five years with the "War on Poverty" would have taught us better. Solutions that make us feel good are often the most counterproductive and fraught with unintended consequences.

If you're skeptical you really should read the whole essay and make it a point to watch the accompanying video.

RLC

How to Close Down Gitmo

Steven Hayward at No Left Turns has an idea that would in one stroke solve several problems that vex the left. First, our political port-siders want us to close down Gitmo. Second, they want us to either bring the detainees to trial or let them go. Third, they want us to end the embargo on Cuba. Hayward writes:

It appears already that the Obama Administration is going to have its hands full figuring out how to close down Guantanamo. Since no Congressperson wants a detainee sent to their district, and many countries of origin of these fine world citizens won't take them back, why don't we just cut a hole in the fence and set them loose in Fidel's island paradise? It would be a nice first step in lifting our obsolete embargo.

It would also make Fidel happy to have such rabid America-haters among his citizenry. This really is a grand idea, although it's not true, unfortunately, that no congressperson is willing to have detainees sent to their district. John "bribe me later" Murtha recently allowed as how he'd be happy to have them brought to his district in Pennsylvania. Of course, since he believes his constituents are largely just a bunch of racists, maybe bloodthirsty killers would fit right in.

The state slogan "You've got a friend in Pennsylvania" apparently applies even to terrorists, at least as long as John Murtha's in Congress.

RLC

It's Gillibrand

New York Governor David Paterson, a liberal Democrat, mind you, has picked Representative Kirsten Gillibrand to fill the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton. Gillibrand is a Democrat also, of course, but she's much more conservative than Clinton and indeed more conservative than most New York Democrats. She supports gun rights (she's endorsed by the NRA), opposes gay marriage, and opposes the TARP bailout. Consequently, many Democrats are quite angry with Paterson's selection.

Oddly, Gillibrand was heavily promoted by the very liberal New York senior senator Charles Schumer, who apparently thought that a conservative Democrat has the best chance of winning reelection in 2010 in New York.

We take our glimmers of hope where we can find them.

RLC

Aftermath

Strategy Page offers this post-operational assessment of the Israeli incursion into Gaza:

Hamas thought they were invulnerable to Israeli attack. By placing so many of their military and government facilities in densely populated residential neighborhoods, they believed any Israeli bombing or shelling would cause high, and politically unacceptable, civilian losses. But the Israelis used surprise, more precision than expected, and innovations like calling civilians in the target area and telling them to get out before the bombs hit nearby. As a result, most of the 1,300 Palestinian dead were Hamas personnel, and nearly all the damaged structures were those used by Hamas.

The Palestinians cranked up the spin machine anyway, and accused the Israelis of war crimes and genocide. But Israel responded with a media campaign featuring aerial videos of Hamas fighters setting up mortars and rockets next to schools and residential neighborhoods. This didn't stop the usual alliance of leftists, anti-Semites and Islamic radicals from calling Israel names, but the mud didn't stick nearly as much as in the past.

What dismayed Hamas the most was Israel finding the location of their officials. Even before the ceasefire took effect on the 18th, Hamas death squads were rounding up the usual suspects (members of rival Fatah, and anyone else unlucky enough to be a suspect) for torture and execution. The UN did not pay much attention to this, as it has been going on for over two years in Gaza. In that time, over 400 Fatah members have been killed by Hamas death squads, and many more Fatah (and any other Hamas rivals) tortured, wounded or jailed. Hamas apparently didn't realize that there were other ways to get target locations, besides informants on the ground. All they understood was informants...But the bombings continued.

Israel believes it has destroyed 60 percent of the 200 or so smuggling tunnels that bring weapons (particularly long range rockets for attacks on Israeli civilians) into Gaza. Israel wants Israeli or American sensors and technicians prowling the Egyptian border to detect all the tunnels, and for Egyptian border guards to destroy them. Hamas opposes this (as do many Egyptian officials, especially the ones who benefit from the bribes of the tunnel operators).

Ultimately, Hamas found that hiding their senior leadership in hospitals or orphanages offered the best protection from Israeli attack. Weapons and key items of military equipment could also be stored there. Hamas apparently exercised some restraint in the degree to which they took over these institutions for military purposes. Someone in Hamas began doing the math, and realized that, at a certain point, a hospital full of weapons and Hamas personnel stopped being a hospital to Israeli commanders, and became a prime target.

Israel believes that Hamas had about 3,000 rockets in late December, and that during the 22 day campaign, about 700 of those rockets were fired in the general direction of Israel, while Israeli air (mostly) and ground forces destroyed another 1,300. That leaves Hamas with about 1,000 rockets, and dozens of functioning smuggling tunnels to Egypt through which components for replacement rockets can be moved.

Hamas claimed that Israeli bombs and troops did $1.9 billion worth of damage. It was probably closer to a few hundred million dollars. There were only about a thousand smart bombs used, and many of these were small ones (like the new U.S. 250 pound SDB, which Israel recently received). Hamas claimed that 5,000 homes were destroyed (and 20,000 damaged), along with 16 government buildings and 20 mosques. There are about 147,000 buildings in Gaza. Israel may take another media shot at Hamas by releasing photos of what was actually destroyed, and let Hamas try to dance away from their lies. But that may not be necessary, as Hamas is already the growing target for ridicule in the Arab world. If Israel was trying to get Hamas exposed as a bunch of tyrants, genocidal liars and blowhards, they seem to have succeeded ....

Pray for the longsuffering Palestinian people who will be subjected to the same terror a year or so from now as their "leaders" rearm and prepare for yet another series of rocket attacks on Israel.

RLC

Smoking and Cancer

Studies in Massachusetts have found that smoking is responsible for more cancers than just cancers of the lung. In fact, according to this article in Science News 70% of all cancer deaths are smoking-related:

"This study provides support for the growing understanding among researchers that smoking is a cause of many more cancer deaths besides lung cancer," said lead author Bruce Leistikow, a UC Davis associate adjunct professor of public health sciences. "The full impacts of tobacco smoke, including secondhand smoke, have been overlooked in the rush to examine such potential cancer factors as diet and environmental contaminants. As it turns out, much of the answer was probably smoking all along."

I don't question this report, but the results seem at odds with my own personal experience. As I reflect on all the people I have known over the years who have had cancer, and the number is in the double digits, I can't think of a single one who was a smoker. It would be interesting to hear what our readers think about this. How many of the people you know who have had cancer of any kind were smokers?

RLC

Consolation Prize

Jonah Goldberg observes that just as the demise of communism was a blessing that nevertheless dissolved the glue that had long united conservatives so too might Obama's election be an event that deprives the left of one of its most powerful unifying themes - racism in America:

He has voiced an admirable disdain for the notion that academic excellence is nothing more than "acting white." His famous Father's Day speech in 2008 showed that Obama was willing to lend his voice to the effort to fight black illegitimacy and absentee fatherhood.

This puts Obama behind the two most important ingredients for black success, at least according to most conservatives: a rededication to the importance of education at an individual level, and the restoration of the black nuclear family.

At a more political level, a black president surely undermines the argument that American racism is so endemic that a system of racial quotas must remain a permanent fixture of the political and legal landscape.

Obama is most frequently compared to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. But he also has compared himself to Ronald Reagan, saying he'd like to be a similarly transformative leader, albeit from a different ideological perspective. Only time will tell how successful he will be on that front.

But the analogy may be apt in ways that he and his supporters may not fully appreciate. By hastening the end of the Cold War, Reagan took away the defining cause of the conservative movement. The right had other issues, to be sure. But anti-communism was the coalitional glue. And while principled conservatives were happy to trade a live campaign issue for a dead Soviet Union, the damage to conservative cohesion was real.

If Obama lives up to the dreams of his supporters in writing a new, post-racial chapter for America, he will have at once done more for America than any Democratic president in generations. But he also will have cut the knot holding much of the left together. As an American and as a conservative, I certainly hope that's the case. He's already made a good start of it just by getting elected.

Goldberg observes elsewhere in the same essay that Obama wasn't his first choice for president, but even so, proof that this nation has surmounted its legacy of racism isn't a bad consolation prize. Neither, I might add, is depriving the left of one of the several clubs it uses to beat Americans over the head.

Obama's election makes racism a much less plausible card to play in any of the many venues in which people are fond of playing it. It will, for example, make it much harder for the race hustlers like Al Sharpton to use white racism as an excuse for black failure.

RLC

Do Your Job

Gilbert Meilander at First Things discusses a book by noted academic Stanley Fish titled Save the World on Your Own Time. In the book Fish argues that the attempts by teachers and college professors to make students into "good people" is misguided and in any event impossible:

...the book's entire polemical edge (and the point of its central second chapter, titled "Do Your Job") depends on the assumption that many college and university teachers are all too eager to use their classrooms for "partisan purposes." Rather than taking up ideas and arguments as objects for analysis, they offer them as "candidates for allegiance." Rather than doing what academics are trained to do-"passing on knowledge and conferring skills"-they commit themselves (with the full support of broad claims in the mission statements of their institutions) to turning students into people who are sensitive, tolerant, creative, and good (though, of course, globally minded) citizens.

In short, they seem to be in the business of offering a "character transplant" to students who thought they had "signed on for something more modest, to wit, a course of instruction."

What we can do in the classroom is, roughly, what Fish says we can (and should) attempt: impart knowledge and develop skills needed to analyze ideas. We can give training in critical reflection about how different individuals and traditions have proposed that we should live. We can, on our good days or good semesters, produce students who think more clearly, critically, and reflectively about such questions. And, if we've really done well, we may even produce students who realize that critical thought is by no means the whole of the moral life. It is what can be done in the classroom, what a college professor might be trained to do if he attempts not to save the world but to do his job.

If you're a teacher, or hoping to be a teacher, or have a child who is a student, this would be a good essay to read in its entirety.

RLC