Mrs Random Jottings suggests reading...

Charlene trecommends this post by Lexington Green, I Think I See What Glenn Beck is Doing:

The Glenn Beck rally is confusing people.

Why?

He is aiming far beyond what most people consider to be the goalposts.

Using Boyd's continuum for war: Material, Intellectual, Moral.

Analogously for political change: Elections, Institutions, Culture.

Beck sees correctly that the Conservative movement had only limited success because it was good at level 1, for a while, weak on level 2, and barely touched level 3. Talk Radio and the Tea Party are level 3 phenomena, popular outbreaks, which are blowing back into politics.

Someone who asks what the rally has to do with the 2010 election is missing the point.

Beck is building solidarity and cultural confidence in America, its Constitution, its military heritage, its freedom. This is a vision that is despised by the people who have long held the commanding heights of the culture. But is obviously alive and kicking...

She listens to Beck now and then (I've almost never heard hm) and says he's always like this, a cultural-moral-historical guy. And, "He's a bit of a rabble-rouser, but he's our rabble rouser."

And this I liked:

...Ronald Reagan said we would not defeat Communism, we would transcend it.

Beck is aiming to have America do the same thing to its decaying class of Overlords, transcend them.

Beck is prepping the battlefield for a generation-long battle.

He is that very American thing: A practical visionary..

No middle ground...

Hugh Hewitt is dead right on the need for Republicans to move with decisive speed when (we hope) we win the House

...But it will be uniquely John Boehner's job to general the effort, and John Boehner's moment. If he can impress upon his House colleagues the absolute need for speed and for firm but civil insistence on the key priorities --huge spending cuts, extending the Bush tax cuts and the suspension of key Obamacare mandates as a prelude to comprehensive repeal and replacement-- then he will have done his job even if the Senate and/or the president's veto frustrates the agenda in whole or part.

The key will be to move expeditiously to pass out of the House a budget, all of the appropriations bills and the tax cut legislation that embodies the agenda. The GOP must be seen to be implementing quickly --in a matter of weeks actually-- what the fall campaign ahead is premised on.

If this happens, there will be a mighty collision with the president and his party. That collision cannot be avoided and it should not be postponed. If the country delivers a rebuke to the Democrats in November and a mandate to the Republicans, that statement cannot be frittered away with a long, drawn-out dance around the illusion that there is some middle ground to be found on any of these issues...

Inertial navigation....

Hale Adams wrote in a comment to my neo-Gnosticism post...

...I think this ties in neatly with my periodic rants on "political Taylorism". Taylorism, as properly applied to the production of goods, resulted in such astounding success that we no longer truly want for any material thing.

Being as how it's hard to argue with success, Taylor's principles have been applied improperly to other realms of human activity. I've ranted about its application to politics and society— it's what we call "Progressivism"— but it shows up in religious matters as well, as the "neo-gnosticism" in your post. Rather than stick with the tried-and-true Judeo-Christian beliefs about human nature, too many people go with new-fangled ideas promoted by "experts"...

You are exactly right. And we see the same thing in many other areas. We constantly hear that "science" or "research" or "experts" or "psychology" tell us things about how to live. But how we are to know with certainty whether we can trust them? That's never explained.

More broadly, this is all part of the problem of inertial navigation. Which is, you can't navigate inertially unless you can occasionally refer to fixed landmarks outside your own system. Apollo missions could not depend on their own instruments and computers alone to get them to the moon or back. The astronauts took sightings on stars, with sextants, and made course corrections. Today's ships and planes get fixes from satellites, and adjust course accordingly. (When I was young they still used sextants. And the satellites must themselves be calibrated by reference to the stars, or to fixed points on Earth.)

Taylorism is proper to use for something like industrial production, because we can stand outside and measure and criticize the results, and because the goal is pretty much defined. (One of my own heroes, Peter Drucker, pointed out some of the flaws of managing people purely by efficiency. The ugly labor relations of the US auto industry are an example, and one that has led to very inefficient results.)

But if we are adjusting ourselves, guiding ourselves, then how do we stand outside and judge the results? And make course corrections? We can't, unless we have some sort of fixed reference points outside ourselves to navigate by.

Neo-Gnosticism...

From Tom Wright's essay, Decoding The Da Vinci Code:

...Let me sum up this lecture in the following way. The Da Vinci Code is a symptom of something much bigger, a lightning rod which has throbbed with the electricity of the postmodern western world.

One of the basic fault lines in the contemporary Western world is the line between neo-Gnosticism on the one hand and the challenge of Jesus on the other. Please note that, despite strenuous attempts to make this line coincide with the current sharp left-right polarization of American culture and politics, it simply doesn't. Nor, for that matter, does it coincide with the polarizations of British or European culture either. So what is this real, deep polarization which runs through our world?

Neo-Gnosticism is the philosophy that invites you to search deep inside yourself and discover some exciting things by which you must then live. It is the philosophy which declares that the only real moral imperative is that you should then be true to what you find when you engage in that deep inward search. But this is not a religion of redemption. It is not at all a Jewish vision of the covenant God who sets free the helpless slaves. It appeals, on the contrary, to the pride that says "I'm really quite an exciting person, deep down, whatever I may look like outwardly" — the theme of half the cheap movies and novels in today's world. It appeals to the stimulus of that ever-deeper navel-gazing ("finding out who I really am") which is the subject of a million self-help books, and the home-made validation of a thousand ethical confusions. It corresponds, in other words, to what a great many people in our world want to believe and want to do, rather than to the hard and bracing challenge of the very Jewish gospel of Jesus. It appears to legitimate precisely that sort of religion which a large swathe of America and a fair chunk of Europe yearns for: a free-for-all, do-it-yourself spirituality, with a strong though ineffective agenda of social protest against the powers that be, and an I'm-OK-you're-OK attitude on all matters religious and ethical. At least, with one exception: You can have any sort of spirituality you like (Zen, labyrinths, Tai Chi) as long as it isn't orthodox Christianity.

By contrast, the challenge of Jesus, in the 21st century as in the first, is that we should look away from ourselves and get on board with the project the one true God launched at creation and re-launched with Jesus himself. The authentic Christian gospel, which is good news about something that has happened as a result of which the world is a different place — this gospel demands that we submit to Jesus as Lord and allow all other allegiances, loves and self-discoveries to be realigned in that light. God's project, and God's gospel, are rooted in solid history as opposed to Gnostic fantasy and its modern equivalents. Genuine Christianity is to be expressed in self-giving love and radical holiness, not self-cosseting self-discovery. And it lives by, and looks for the completion of, the new world in which God will put all things to rights and wipe away all tears from all eyes; in which all knees will bow at the name of Jesus, not because he had a secret love-child, not because he was a teacher of recondite wisdom, not because he showed us how we could get in touch with the hidden feminine, but because he died as the fulfillment of the Scriptural story of God's people and rose as the fulfillment of the world-redeeming purposes of the same creator God; and because, in that death and resurrection, we discover him to be the one at whose name every knee shall indeed bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, confessing Jesus Christ as Lord to the glory of God the Father....

Deflation may be the new normal...

The Futurist: The Techno-Sponge:

...Most high-tech companies have a business model that incorporates a sort of 'bizarro force' that is completely the opposite of what old-economy companies operate under: The price of the products sold by a high-tech company decreases over time. Any other company will manage inventory, pricing, and forecasts under an assumption of inflationary price increases, but a technology company exists under the reality that all inventory depreciates very quickly (at over 10% per quarter in many cases), and that price drops will shrink revenues unless unit sales rise enough to offset it (and assuming that enough unit inventory was even produced). This results in the constant pressure to create new and improved products every few months just to occupy prime price points, without which revenues would plunge within just a year. Yet, high-tech companies have built hugely profitable businesses around these peculiar challenges, and at least 8 such US companies have market capitalizations over $100 Billion. 6 of those 8 are headquartered in Silicon Valley.

Now, here is the point to ponder: We have never had a significant technology sector while also facing the fears (warranted or otherwise) of high inflation. When high inflation vanished in 1982, the technology sector was too tiny to be considered a significant contributor to macroeconomic statistics. In an environment of high inflation combined with a large technology industry, however, major consumer retail pricepoints, such as $99.99 or $199.99, become more affordable. The same also applies to enterprise-class customers. Thus, demand creeps upwards even as cost to produce the products goes down on the same Impact of Computing curve. This allows a technology company the ability to postpone price drops and expand margins, or to sell more volume at the same nominal dollar price. Hence, higher inflation causes the revenues and/or margins of technology companies to rise, which means their earnings-per-share certainly surges.

So what we are seeing is the gigantic amount of liquidity created by the Federal Reserve is instead cycling through technology companies and increasing their earnings. The products they sell, in turn, increase productivity and promptly push inflation back down. Every uptick in inflation merely guarantees its own pushback, and the 1.5% of GDP that mops up all the liquidity and creates this form of 'good' deflation can be termed as the 'Techno-Sponge'. So how much liquidity can the Techno-Sponge absorb before saturation?

At this point, if the US prints another $1 Trillion, that will still merely halt deflation, and there will be no hint of inflation at all. It would take a full $2 Trillion to saturate the techno-sponge, and temporarily push consumer inflation to even the less-than-terrifying level of 4% while also generating substantial jumps in productivity and tech company earnings. In fact, the demographics of the US, with baby boomers reaching their geriatric years, are highly deflationary (and this is the bad type of deflation), so the US would have to print another $1 Trillion every year for the next 10 years just to offset demographic deflation, and keep the techno-sponge saturated...

Listen to a wise man...

Listen to the Maha Rushi, brothers and sisters. He speaks pearls.

Leftists use embarrassment as a weapon. They paint those they fear as embarrassingly stupid or "not polished," or crap like that, and in our desire to appear "sophisticated" people buy it. They did it to Palin from the instant she walked onstage, and they are doing it to Sharron Angle right this minute.

(Here's a transcript of Rush's remarks.)

This one brought a tear to my eye...

Jeez, remember what it was like to have a real President! You know, one of those right-wing extremists who is pro-American...

Sorry guys, there's no "there" there...

I'm just doodling here. Nothing important...

Dems urge Obama to take a stand - John F. Harris and James Hohmann - POLITICO.com:

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs's recent complaint about the ingratitude of the "professional left" is a small symptom of a larger problem for President Barack Obama: He has left wide swaths of the Democratic Party uncertain of his core beliefs. [I doubt if the swaths have any more "core" than Barry Obama does.]

In interviews, a variety of political activists, operatives and commentators from across the party's ideological spectrum presented similar descriptions of Obama's predicament: By declining to speak clearly and often about his larger philosophy — and insisting that his actions are guided not by ideology but a results-oriented "pragmatism" [It would be harder to say a sillier thing. You can't avoid the deep questions by being "results-oriented," because you must decide first which results you favor. Which is something your philosophy must ultimately say.]— he has bred confusion and disappointment among his allies, and left his agenda and motives vulnerable to distortion by his enemies. [Ha ha. Couldn't happen to a more deserving Party. ]

The president's reluctance to be a Democratic version of Ronald Reagan, who spoke without apology about his vaulting ideological ambitions, has produced an odd turn of events: Obama has been the most activist domestic president in decades, but the philosophy behind his legislative achievements remains muddy in the eyes of many supporters and skeptics alike. There is not yet such a thing as "Obamism." [Sure there is, that's what Obama believes when he looks in the mirror]

The ability to transcend ideological divides and unite disparate parts of the electorate was a signal strength of his candidacy in 2008. [Only because his campaign was a total lie.] But that has given way to widespread — if often contradictory — complaints about his agenda (too radical or too cautious?) and the political tactics (too partisan or too conflict averse?) he uses to pursue it.

At first blush, it is a mystery: How could a political leader preside over nearly $1 trillion dollars in stimulus and other spending, and pass overhauls of the health care and financial services sectors, but still leave many of his own supporters uncertain of his larger aims? [They are not sure of their own "larger aims." ]

"He hasn't sought, I think, to bring coherence to the achievements of the last 20 months," said former Democratic senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart, adding that "it would not hurt" to do so soon. [Uh, did Gary Hart ever bring any coherence to Gary Hart?] ...

You've probably already seen this chart...

... of "Deficits with and without Iraq War." Either way it is damning for Dems, but especially it demolishes the Democrat claim that our fiscal problems can be blamed on the Iraq Campaign. Or on the the Bush tax cuts...

The chart is from a great piece in American Thinker by Randall Hoven, Iraq: The War That Broke Us -- Not. A quote:

...Just for grins, use the above chart to dissect Christopher Hayes' statement that our current and future deficits are caused by "three things: the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush tax cuts and the recession."

Two of those three things -- the wars and tax cuts -- were in effect from 2003 through 2007. Do you see alarming deficits or trends from 2003 through 2007 in the above chart? No. In fact, the trend through 2007 is shrinking deficits. What you see is a significant upward tick in 2008, and then an explosion in 2009. Now, what might have happened between 2007 and 2008, and then 2009?

Democrats taking over both houses of Congress, and then the presidency, was what happened. Republicans wrote the budgets for the fiscal years through 2007. Congressional Democrats wrote the budgets for FY 2008 and on. When the Democrats also took over the White House, they immediately passed an $814-billion "stimulus." (The $814 billion figure is from the same CBO report as the Iraq War costs. See sources at end of article.)...

Zap!

I've been subjected lately to far more waffling vagueness and equivocation than my heart can easily endure, so this dose of bluntness was refreshing. (This isn't, of course up to the sermonizing standards of the Ordo Praedicatorum, our dear Dominicans, but Franciscans are often worth listening to.)

(Thanks to Patrick Madrid)

St. Augustine: "Concerning those things, then, which are known to God, unknown to us, we judge our neighbors at our peril. Of this the Lord has said, Judge not. But concerning things which are open and public evils, we may and ought to judge and correct, but still with charity and love, hating not the man, but the sin, detesting not the sick man, but the disease.

Random Sunday quote...

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!
    --Archbishop Raymond Burke

Outrageous!

This is just a bit of ammo to keep in your locker, if you happen to be one of those who are accused of being bigots or denying constitutional rights by opposing the Ground Zero Mosque...

TThe ground zero mosque and the Restoring Honor rally:

...When news broke that Glenn Beck would be hosting a "Restoring Honor" rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, that Sarah Palin was slated to speak and that the rally would take place on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have A Dream" speech, the cry of outrage from the Left was immediate. Keith Olbermann was so distressed by the news that he invited uber-liberal talk radio personality Bill Press to weigh in on the matter:

"Unbelievable isn't it? [When] I first heard about this – from you, by the way – you know I was just outraged that the park service would even consider giving Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin a permit to hold a political rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, that sacred shrine, on this historic date. . . . Clearly – I don't care what he says – he chose that site, on that day, to kind of supplant Dr. Martin Luther King's 'I Have A Dream' speech with his message, whatever it is."

So, not only is Mr. Press outraged by Beck's presumption and insensitivity, he openly suggests that the government should prevent him from doing so! In one fell swoop Mr. Press commits a constitutional double-whammy, assaulting not only Beck's right to speech but his right to assemble. And how did Olbermann respond? Did he "speak out" against this diatribe with solemn recitations of Holocaust poetry and a condemnation of Press's "stoking of enmity" against Beck and Palin? Why, of course not. Instead of defending Beck's constitutional rights, Olbermann chooses instead to focus on rectitude, even going so far to suggest that Beck rally will be a "racist desecration" of Dr. King's memory....

In this case we have an American "sacred space" defined by both place and time. The equivalent to the mosque might be if Beck had reserved the time annually for the next 20 years!

Good prose is tough-minded and pungent...

Which is why Leftists can't write any more. (see: "Journolist." Borrrring. Boring people!)

A tweet by Sarah...

Who hijacked term:"feminist"?A cackle of rads who want 2 crucify other women w/whom they disagree on a singular issue; it's ironic (& passé)

"Cackle of rads!" I love it. She's a poet.

Update: Hilarious (to the happy few who still read). This Lefty at TPM doesn't get the reference (and I'm sure he thinks he's smarter than Sarah, and than you and me)...

If you don't know what phrases like "cackle of rads" derive from, click on the book image..

Wising up...

Public Policy Polling: Obama on the Trail:

Illinois voters say they would be negatively influenced if a candidate was endorsed by Barack Obama. And if his support isn't an asset in his home state it's hard to imagine where it is....

My position on the 2008 election has always been that what is important is not that people make mistakes, but whether they learn from them. So items like this one I find very interestin'.

The important thing about Obama is not the guy himself, but that he was a stealth candidate. His skin color and moderate stances on the campaign trail were a big lie. He's a white left-wing academic elitist.

For about 50 years Americans have not wanted to elect northern liberal Democrat senators president. Democrat southern governors yes, northern senators no. Obama was slipped in by slight-of-hand. My guess is that it will be another 50 years before we make that mistake again...

AHEAD STOP

Charlene and I really liked this XKCD...