THE NEED FOR SPEED . . .

Its really hard to tell, but I think Cheney is taking nourishment.

Full Cleveland!

I generally drive fairly fast - mostly because it feels better to do so, and adds a little sport to what might otherwise be a tedious thing. I'm also a little rough with steering & accelerating - a carryover from flying. (We had to teach young pilots to horse the aircraft around - being too smooth and predictable is dangerous and it puts your wingman to sleep.)

The idea of "saving time" perplexes me. None of us really knows how much of that commodity that we have or really need. Focusing entirely on its purposeful use is a bit strange - in a world in which so much energy is devoted to various evils, it is almost praiseworthy to do something useless.

I guess I'm glad to learn that Bernie will occasionally take a step or two towards a deserving Republican. Their alternatives, the "progressive" gang that can't shoot straight, has certainly taken to the avid consumption of its own propaganda. What will they do when they learn that most others have already discovered that their emperor really has no clothes?

Anyway, I'm glad to encounter you again and learn that you are well. How's Vancouver??

We're having a drought here in California. It appears to me to be a cyclic thing with a period of about 20 years. We won a large contract with EPA and I'm opening an office in the Bay Area and practicing sucking up to complacent bureaucrats - I find that harder to do now.

Yes. They have him on 100 cc of zulu warrior placenta.

Well, hi George. I"m out the door right now but will respond a bit later. Lovely to see you.

When I lived near Stockton I had a Porsche Boxter. I loved that sucker, and while it wsnt the fastest model out of the Box, it got me around real good.
If I hd a meeting in SF in the morning and we got done up at Folsom, after supper Id do the I-5 hustle South to the city and could keep up with the vettes no sweat.

There's a fine example of why I like you, george (though I'd drop the 'almost' and go with 'often'). I'm far more wary of people who are serious than those who aren't.


Cough...sputter. This cliche is not improved through its use by a movement which is comprised of a cadre of nudists.


Actually, I'm in Campbell River on the east side of Vancouver Island. Great salmon fishing but I don't fish so who cares. Smallish place which isn't really my preference but otherwise my circumstances are agreeable. I've taken over my twin's garage and have built up a small woodworking shop, have rebuilt his deck and fencing and have just finished tearing off and replacing a lot of the house's cedar siding along with a full repaint. Rented a Genie lift to do the high bits and I'd never piloted one before so that was fun. One might presume the things good for peeping but the new drone tech is really much superior.


I wasn't going to mention your new Pope but now that you advance his qualifications, I ought to reveal that I'm a fan too.

We share a wariness for 'serious' people. My understanding of history is that most of the great evils inflicted on humanity were done by various tyrants who were sure they (often alone) knew what was good for everyone else and in pursuit of that lovely goal were quite willing to force everyone to do it. This, of course was all done with the usual careless disregard for side effects and the basic, enduring elements of human nature. Lenin had his "elimination of the irreconcilables" and Obama has his "Why can't we just all go along with it?" Both are tyrants, and even Lenin tried persuasion before descending to murder and extermination. Freedom is much better.

In the continuing contest between the progressive designers of "solutions" to human behavior and "systems" for our reform , together with the drones who carryout their designs , versus the crooks and ordinary folks acting in pursuit of their self interest, I will bet on the crooks and self-interest every time.

I don't think you are being either fair or accurate in styling Hans Christian Andersen's wonderful story about the Emperors New Clothes as a cliche. Certainly the recent results delivered by our current emperor's new designs fully justify the reference. Apart from the amazing and depressing credulity of the self-appointed elites, it has been truly comic.

The place on Vancouver Island sounds delightful. I hope you continue to enjoy it. I once took a ship into Esquimalt just West of Victoria. Lovely place and all those polite Canadians.

this sort of comment always makes me giggle

in Canadian politics, progressive means PC



and who are the PC's?



http://www.gunzburger.com/ProgConsCanada.htm

they are our very own progressive conservative parties ... of Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick etc etc



they were renamed federally after a merger with the former Reform party, but if you say progressive in a political conversation with anyone over 30, they know you're talking about conservatives



the same kind of giggle results when a US poster talks about their dislike of all things PC. yeah, me too


well, not completely

I'm actually a fan of quite a few of the old Red Tory platforms from back in the day - socially liberal, fiscally conservative

what we see of tico and finn here is pretty much classic Red Tory - they'd have been great PC candidates

__________

A canajun reading georgeob's posts would wonder why he's constantly putting down conservatives.

I don't know if you've noticed but movement conservatism seems to have presumed ownership of the singular possible/valid/legitimate definitions of the terms "freedom" and "liberty".

For example, where some dynamic profit-yielding enterprise is left unconstrained by the larger community from dumping lead or mercury in the rivers of the community where they operate, then "freedom" is realized. On the other hand, where the community, through some or any organizational structure, lays constraints upon such an enterprise in order to protect the health of the community's members, then "freedom" is thwarted and "liberty" falls under the thumb of coercive force.


As another example, where the community, through some or any organizational structure, allows women to obtain an abortion that they personally desire or which permits two males or two females to freely marry, and where that organizational structure refuses to facilitate the implementation of coercive means to disallow these personal choices because a particular segment within the community does not approve, then the "freedom" of that segment in the community is threatened.

That is a dose of self-serving bullshit.

What is "movement conservatism"? Is this the counterpart of movement progressives who see only authoritarian, government administered programs as viable solutions to issues that concern them?

Human nature and behavior are far, far more complex than the programs and methodologies of the self-appointed organizers of our lives who seek to perfect the behaviors of others through their "brilliant designs". These self-appointed elites continually reveal that even their best designs fail to deal with the inevitable side effects and consequences of their plans. The several ongoing comedies attending our current government attest to this notion every day.

Human intolerance is also far more pervasive than those ("progressives") who seek to organize our lives are often willing to admit. They too are subject to the impulse just as are their favorite targets for criticism. Significantly their prejudices inevitably become imbedded in their designs. Freedom is indeed better.

I'm not aware that the freedom of a woman to get an abortion is a significant current issue in the country. We do see issues about it's regulation and limitations on the process, but we see that in virtually every area of our lives, from getting a driver's license to (lately) an insurance policy for health care. However the freedom of those who, for personal or moral reasons have no wish to be associated with abortions certainly is a current issue. I believe they should have the same freedom to pursue their values as does a woman seeking an abortion. Perhaps you don't.

Environmental law does indeed limit the freedom of corporations and individual persons to spoil or contaminate the environment. Much of this is a good and worthwhile limitation on our freedom - just as are most of our laws limiting behavior harmful too others. However, a lot of it is ineffective and wasteful, perpetuated only by the self-serving momentum of the bureaucracies and institutions that feed off the process. I have a lot of significant, direct experience in this area.

In all of these areas we make value judgments - through our democratic political process - about the trade-offs involved. The founding principles of this country, as expressed in our basic law include the notions that significant public good is required to justify the limit of freedom; that some of these freedoms cannot be violated; that the powers of central government are strictly defined and limited, while those of state & local government is more fundamental and far-reaching. I believe that these are the current underlying political issues in the country today and serious people can and do disagree about how they are applied. Indeed some of the basic principles of the Progressive movement in this country appear to many to violate them.

The problem is in distinguishing between freedom and license. For example, one is free to pursue profit, at least up to the point at which it hurts others. Past that point, it's a matter of license, and not freedom. The sub-prime mortgage scam is an excellent example of license rather than freedom, and the consequences of the collapse of that phony paper market affected millions of people, perhaps billions world-wide, all for the sake of the scammers who dreamed it up, and got their money and got out before the collapse.

Far too often, conservatives bleat about freedom when in fact, an accurate description would be, "don't bother me, i'm fleecing the rubes."

I have no argument with you there. However both sides contribute their own elements of hypocrisy and denial to the argument.

Just as with the Savings & Loan financial collapse of 20+ years ago, the sub prime mortgage collapse was also fed by unforeseen side effects of Federal mandates for loans to favored groups and minorities and in favored sections of cities and states. Both were well-intended, but both were quickly corrupted by both the intended beneficiaries and those who served and profited from them. The Federal bailout for Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac has far exceeded what was given to banks and far less of it has been paid back.

Capitalism is indeed more subject to cyclic reversals than are heavily regulated economies. However, on average it produces far more efficient and effective allocation of resources and far better average results. The hell of it comes in trying to find a reliable middle ground.

Human nature and behavior remain far more complex and adaptable than the systems designed by the well-intended perfecters of human affairs. In the continuing battle between (even "enlightened") bureaucratic regulators and the crooks and ordinary people pursuing their self-interest, I'll bet on the latter every time.

Hi george
Perhaps I mistake the tone of your last few posts to me but they seem a tad angry. If you have some unexpected negative response to mennonites with tattoos, be assured I'm innocent on both counts. But In any case, "movement conservatism" is not my terminology nor does it arise from somewhere on the left. It's origins lie within the conservative community itself http://bit.ly/WTi81F I readily admit that describing the creature's murky boundaries is not easy but denying the creature itself simply will not do. It is a thing (via Goldwater and John Birch and Reagan and Oral Roberts and Rush Limbaugh and Clarence Thomas and Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz) and you are, to some degree, part of it. Let's simplify and define the thing as Hayek + Jesus-Who-Never-Touched-Himself + Buy Gold Now + Professors have bad breath + I'm in chains.

As to my suggestion or assertion that movement conservatism claims ownership of the singular legitimate claim to proper understanding of "freedom", your posts look to be themselves evidence of this assertion. Your way liberates. My way oppresses. It has the structure of an axiom, so self-evident one wonders why it needs mentioning at all. Except, of course, to a liberal who is intellectually beyond redemption. Then you feel obliged to make the case out of...manners? Perhaps as a function of obligation arising from class empathy and Christian charity?

But the thing is, you may have something here. I am a liberal, Indeed, I'm so liberal that communists envy me. And I have the opposite of a quarrel with you that humans, alone or in community, are complex and varied (thanks be to allah). No vision of social organization can match the carnival reality of us. So I say, yes, women should vote too and gays should marry and colored people ought to be able to get married to white people too (it was only about 1970 when interracial marriages were legal in California) and Buddhists ought to be as equal as Christians. Movement conservatism has been rather shy regarding "freedom" and "liberty" for some among us. Actual people, that is.

You and Set had a good brief talk. You allowed the devil his place in the details. Well, yeah.

I'd like to think we could get on, differences not withstanding. I hope that, to draw an analogy, if I were a young hippy as I once was and arrived at your front door as your daughter's date for the evening, that you would not (in the mode of movement conservatism) shoot me there on your front porch. With a shotgun. In the face.

I'm too old for fairy tales, O'George, and that crapola about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is just that. The S & L crisis was caused by a number of factors, prominent among which was lax or even non-existent banking regulation, when regulators allowed the S & L's to effectively run huge Ponzi schemes in the hope of propping them up in face of enormous payouts they'd have to make now that inflation had dropped to a reasonable level. Even in the short term, everyone would have been better off (except perhaps George H W Bush's son, Neil Bush, at Silverado S & L--he could not have given himself any more loans) if the regulators would simply have started shutting them down.

The S & L crisis was not caused by regulation, it was a failure of regulation. I was not impressed with your appeal to stereotypes suggesting that we have choice between classic Russian Marxism and laissez faire capitalism. (Let the crooks go about the dastardly deeds, and maybe some of it will trickle down to us!) The simple allegation of laissez faire capitalism is a fairy tale all by itself.

I don't know about you but If it weren't for regulations, I would nt be making the livelihood that
I am. Regulations, although always spiked and "hated" by certain sides of the aisle, have resulted in entirely new lines of products,services, and breakthroughs that have resulted in some really good returns on equity.

Ive been long term investor in "proppant" sand media and GAC technology .Its taken off in the last 20 years as fairly valuable commodities thanks originally to Clean Water regs and TSCA .

This false dilemma is pervasive in modern conservative rhetoric. It's a staple at NRO in columns and in comments, for example. One might conclude that not a single nation in what we commonly term 'the free world' exists at all. Including America.

One might also conclude that there exists in the world a bunch of happy national examples where citizens are relatively free, generally prosperous, healthy and reasonably contented and which reject a social safety net, reject regulation of corporate activities and refuse invitations to redistribute wealth through progressive taxation systems. "See! Look right here!" folks in the modern right ought to be able to say, "Here's the real world evidence that our model is just jim-dandy". They ought to be able to say that.

No anger intended. I've become perplexed and frustrated with the complacent credulity and excuse-making of the media and the strange self-imposed silences of people who I believe know better , about the all-too-evident failures of the current administration and its deliberate efforts to sow discord; prevent compromise; and project their own narrow-mindedness on their opponents. There's an Orwellian quality to it all that disturbs me.

We have witnessed an interesting combination of the stunning incompetence of the progressive elites relative to the lofty promises of public good they have made, along with a strange and worrisome capacity to get (or at least seek) political advantage from the very chaos they have sown. It worries me. I'm very confident we'll see a decisive shift in the electorate in the next two elections, but a great deal of damage can be done in the interim.

The result is I focus on these essentials and express my reactions very directly. The stuff in your earlier post was indeed a lot of bullshit in my view. That doesn't mean I don't find you to be an engaging and interesting person - If that was the case I would have simply ignored your post. Same goes with Setanta - we rarely agree, but I like him and enjoy his discourse..

The contemporary acceptance of homosexuals is a cultural phenomenon far more than a political one, and I think you know that. Indeed even our sainted President didn't "evolve" to contemporary views until very recently. The relative suppression of homosexuals a few generations ago was every bit as much a liberal/left political phenominon as it was one of the Republican right. Essentially the same is true today, though there is political division on the legal status of marriage. Our society and political establishment do indeed have an interest in marriage, mostly involving the status of children and the national interest in the upbringing of the next generation. These are legitimate issues that don't involve the non acceptance of homosexuals for who/what they are. We see a good deal of evidence suggesting some pervasive breakdowns in some segments of society in this area and serious people can disagree about these aspects of marriage law without being intolerant of homosexuals. This is a fairly common straw man you and others throw up on these matters. It should be beneath you.

Overall I believe there is ample evidence in the public discourse today that the intolerance of the progressive elites currently in power is at least the equal of their opposition, and this reveals the greater depth of their hypocrisy.

Apart for the drought things are going well for us here. I attended the funeral of my wingman from my last squadron in Savannah two weeks ago and will go to Washington for the wedding of a nephew late next week: life goes on. Elise will leave afterward to take a couple of granddaughters to Paris and Berlin ( a reenactment of trips she fondly remembers with her own grandmother) while I work on opening a new office and operation here in the Bay Area. The company just finished a so-so year, but things look more promising ahead. The summer encampment up on the Russian River was delightful as usual, and I'm looking forward to more. I'm working out regularly, though one knee is showing signs of resenting it.

In view weeks I'll do my semi annual meetings with our business partners up in Calgary who are making a killing supporting the tar sands extraction industry in Alberta. Canada is an interesting mix of relative contradictions compared to the U.S. Weak central government and powerful provinces. Very well-developed raw capitalist enterprises, with a surprisingly thin veneer of socialist overlay . The regulatory burdens on industry there are nothing in comparison to what we face here. Calgary also has the largest concentration of pissed off Hindi taxi drivers I've ever seen.

Your descriptions of your current life on Vancouver Island sound very good to me, and it appears you are approaching it all with your usual verve, energy and irony. That's good - these are the essential components of sanity and happiness.

I didn't write that Fannie May and Feddy Mac "caused" the banking collapse. Instead I wrote they were important contributors and facilitators to the processes that created it, as were some well-intended laws mandating mortgage loans to people who lacked the likely ability to pay for them. I'm to old for your selective, self-serving misinterpretation of my words and the straw man you used in a facetious argument.

You are being narrowly categorical and prejudicial in characterizing the financial crisis as exclusively the result of the failure of regulation. On what facial or historical basis can you assert that better regulation could reliably prevent such problems. What better regulation??? regulators routinely fail to anticipate some of the direct effects of their actions and nearly all of the side effects. That is the central lesson of their history. Your assertion here is at best unrealistic and at worst provably wrong.

I didn't either use stereotypes or suggest that we must choose between polar extremes. On the contrary I noted the contradictions associated with both and the uncertainty and risk attended to the creation of any synthesis. Do you have a better idea?

Finding fault is easy if one is selective enough, but it is not a particularly good way to elevate the dialogue. You are just looking of an argument .... again.

Well I do pretty well making a livelihood out of more or less the same body of rules as well. However, as we both know, some of them are well-conceived and well executed, while many are poorly put together and routinely either badly implemented or, worse, abused by others for purposes not originally intended. (The Endangered Species Act is a prime example)