Today is the 13th anniversary, by the way, of California voters approving the use of medicinal marijuana by passing Prop. 215. Yet some authorities still resist establishing safe and legal distribution methods.

Post from: Orange Punch

Also Josef Joffe (Die Zeit) remembers what a surprise it was to the best sorts, Foreign Policy magazine has a photo gallery full of iconic images, Christian Caryl thinks the usual suspects get too much credit, and Paul Hollander (who grew up in communist Hungary) reflects muses on the “murderous idealism” that was one of communism’s underpinnings.

Post from: Orange Punch

On the face of it that seems to be a constructive criticism. But it mostly misses the point.

It was folks like the Soviet commissars and their infamous five-year plans dictated from on high who “knew” how to set things up in advance. And in every case it resulted in economic failure, dismal lives lacking of deprivation and, let’s not forget, death via starvation and more direct means. Such are the prices when we expect an elite to “know” how to construct an economy from the top down.

Our former colleague, Steve Greenhut, makes this point in a column Sunday in the Register. But we’ll give you a peek in the meantime. We don’t know exactly how to make the state’s water system work. But we don’t have to.

What we do know is that a gaggle of self-anointed “experts” sitting in conference rooms in Sacramento don’t know either. Yet they presume to dictate to us what’s best for everyone. Poppycock. Sounds a bit like those commissars, no?

What we do know is that unfettered by government interference, the private market has through self-interest, competition and trial and error found solutions to just about every one of the challenges mankind’s faced. And virtually none of those who ultimately arrived at solutions “knew” precisely what would work going in. But they were allowed (unrestrained by government know-it-alls) to invest their time and money and seek what is profitable and workable.

So, we don’t need to offer an alternative to the state’s top-down government-planned, government-run, government-regulated, taxpayer-funded “solution” to California’s water problems. If we get government out of the way, real people advancing their own interests will come up with what works.

The choices are pretty stark, actually. Trust big government to know it all (ala Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, et al), or trust in human ingenuity and self-interest. History’s a pretty good test. The Soviet Union failed miserably. American capitalism has given us the most prosperous and beneficial lifestyle the world’s ever known. No contest.

As Steve does Sunday, we recommend skeptics read “I, pencil.” It’ll be a lesson worth learning.

RELATED POSTS:

Post from: Orange Punch

Post from: Orange Punch

Unemployment is likely to sack consumer confidence further, and consumer spending is still about 70% of GDP. We might or might not suffer the “lost decade” Japan suffered, but we’re in for a long, tough road.

Post from: Orange Punch

Apparently we weren’t the only ones who thought it’d be better to let the people who directly benefit from newly flowing water foot the bill, rather than the state’s general fund. As reported first by Californiascapitol.com blog, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer already had warned against tapping the general fund for water infrastructure.

“…further increasing the general fund’s debt burden, especially in the next three difficult budgets, would require cutting even deeper into crucial services already reeling from billions of dollars in reductions,” Lockyer warned in his 2009 Debt Affordability Report. It wasn’t exactly a minor point in his report. As CaliforniasCapitol.com blog noted, it was in the fifth paragraph.

Oh well. What’s another $600 million a year devoted to debt out of the state budget? How much could that hurt?

Well, already $6 billion a year from the general fund is used to pay off existing debts and with already issued bonds and that will increase to $12 billion in seven years. Lockyear says debt payment - without counting the $600 million annual increase for 30 years to be approved on next year’s ballot - will amount to 10.5 percent of the budget by 2016-17.

That means more than a dime of every dollar the state spends must be spent on paying off its credit card. Annually. Didn’t someone campaign on a promise to cut up those credit cards?

RELATED POSTS:

Post from: Orange Punch

Post from: Orange Punch

Post from: Orange Punch

Post from: Orange Punch

As the Washington Post reports today:

“Is this really the time to talk about the threat of climate change?

“Now, some groups have actually muted their alarms about wildfires, shrinking glaciers, and rising seas. Not because they’ve stopped caring about them — but because they’re trying to win over people who might care more about a climate bill’s non-environmental side benefits, like ‘green’ jobs and reduced oil imports.

“Smaller environmental groups, however, say this is the wrong moment to ease up on the scare, since that might send the signal that a weaker bill is acceptable.”

Well, isn’t it refreshing to see free and open debate on something as important as which is the best way to con the public into going along with Draconian regulations, horrendous taxes and emission reductions that will roll our economy back to the horse-and-buggy days, literally?

We like the way this is developing, actually. It began with desk-pounding demands by frothing zealots that we choke off that horrid CO2 before it roasts us! We only have - what was it? 10 years? - but now less than a month, according to some.

Then some of the zealots pealed off and began a more subtle approach, even trying to claim the losses in economic productivity would be offset by gains in green jobs, whatever they are. (Anyone got one of those? Anyone got one that isn’t subsidized by someone else’s taxes?)

And then global warming morphed into “climate change,” we believe for the obvious reason it wasn’t warming any more.

Now this. A squabble within the family. Can’t we all just get along?

Gee, just wait ’til the squabbling factions get a load of Pappa Al’s latest backtracking. No telling what new strategy will emerge in light of that. Maybe they should just resort to honesty and admit they want us to look like 1912 America. But then they’d have to turn in their iPods.

RELATED POSTS:

Post from: Orange Punch

Post from: Orange Punch

Post from: Orange Punch

“a belief in man-made climate change … is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief” akin to religion, said a British court.

There you have it. As a consequence, British employers are advised by court edict that “This judgment means a company must not discriminate against someone because of their deeply-held environmental convictions. So no more jokes about the office hippy at the sustainable water-cooler then,” reports Rowena Mason in the UK Telegraph.

Now about that tithing…

RELATED POSTS:

Post from: Orange Punch

Post from: Orange Punch

Anyway, here’s David Weigel on NY 23, Nate Silver on various races, conservative Ed Morrissey spinning, Chris Lawrence expressing NY 23 skepticism, AmConMag’s Daniel Larison feeling pretty good, TNR’s Richard Just finding a silver lining, Ben Smith suggesting NY 23 was more locals-vs.-outsiders than anything else, James Joyner being cautious in his optimism, while Josh Marshal hopes the GOP nominates a crop of Hoffmans.

The imbroglio in NY 23 is being spun by some as a conservative victory, but even aside from the fact that it leads to one more Democrat in Congress, it’s hard for me to see it that way. Conservatives did discredit the “establishment” pro-choice-pro-gay choice of the county chairmen, but they couldn’t make Doug Hoffman — I saw him briefly on TV the other night — an attractive candidate. There’s a fine line between healthy debate over the future of the party (I refuse to acquiesce in the notion that a political party has a “soul”) and ripping it apart. Given that tea-partiers and the like have about a dozen moderate Republicans in their sights, it could turn into a bloodbath Democrats will be tickled to watch from the sidelines.

Post from: Orange Punch

An old buddy, Bob Knight, sums it up pretty well:

“The Democrats are going for broke, which means we’ll all be broke if this is not stopped. The Affordable Health Care for America Act is so comprehensive that it even micromanages restaurant menus and vending machines. That’s a clear signal that this is not about health care. It’s about whether the people of the United States will allow power-mad Washington politicians to plunge us into the kind of top-down socialism that is strangling Western Europe and has devastated economies and destroyed freedom wherever it is imposed.

“President Obama promised ‘transparency’ and that any bill would be written in public. That was a lie. This monstrosity was hatched behind closed doors.”

That’s pretty harsh reality. There’s more:

“Obama further promised that his health care initiative would not ‘add a dime to the federal deficit,’ which he has already tripled since taking office. It was another lie. No one can honestly believe that a gargantuan takeover of the nation’s $2.5 trillion health care industry will save taxpayers money. No government program results in savings. Each one grows exponentially; creates dependent constituencies that lobby for yet more tax dollars; and empowers bureaucrats for whom mission failure ensures more staff, more money, and more power. There is simply no governing restraint such as a profit motive or anxious stockholders. The voters? Surely you jest. They are far, far away and kept in check by a compliant leftist media. At least, so far.

Post from: Orange Punch

In this blog (see below) yesterday we repeated something from James Taranto’s Best of the Web blog about President Obama. It turns out Taranto got it wrong. So, consequently so did we.

We publish his correction here (and hope he’s got that right):

Homer Nods In yesterday’s lead item, we erred in stating that Norma Desmond is in the White House. That is to say, the setup for that punch line turned out to be based on false information. NewsBusters.org reports that White House press secretary Robert Gibbs did not say President Obama had watched an HBO special on his campaign instead of election returns Tuesday night. - James Taranto, Best of the Web, Wall Street Journal

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Original post follows:

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

We know it takes an ego larger than the standard issue to be a politician. All those cameras, reporters with notepads, babies to be kissed, hands to shake. Ya gotta love it. We think the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto has put his finger on particular revealing evidence for this truism.

“Good Lord, we’ve gone and put Norma Desmond in the White House,” Taranto writes in today’s Best of the Web.

“How so?” you might ask.

Flash back to that cinema classic, Sunset Boulevard. Recall the main character? Norma Desmond, the ever so self-absorbed big star from a bygone era.

Her classic line when Joe Gillis encounters her told it all. The exchange went like this:

Joe Gillis: “You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big. “

Norma Desmond: “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”

Taranto relates what happened at the White House Tuesday night where President Obama issued a statement saying he wasn’t going to comment on, or even watch on TV, the election returns that resulted in Democratic losses in Virginia and New Jersey.

“Man,” writes Taranto, “is he ever focusing on himself! NewsBusters.org reports on what he was doing last night when he was ignoring the election returns:”

“During the 10AM ET hour of America’s Newsroom on Fox News Channel, fill-in co-host Martha Maccallum told viewers what President Obama watched on election night while Democrats suffered big losses in New Jersey and Virginia: ‘Robert Gibbs said, well, he was actually watching, you know, the HBO special about his year-long campaign and how it all went’.”

Yep. The president preferred to watch a film about his own halcyon days rather than be brought down to earth by the less-than-inspiring real-time election results of men he “supported.” Even though just the other day he had said that a loss in New Jersey would be an embarrassment to the White House. (Maybe if you don’t look, it’s less embarrassing.)

Democrats losing? As Norma might have put it: “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”

Cue the press corps.

RELATED POSTS:

Post from: Orange Punch

I’m not upset about this. Extraordinary rendition, like the use of torture, is unworthy of the America I know and love. Even if it’s the Italians doing this, the U.S. govt. deserves to have its nose rubbed in it.

Post from: Orange Punch

Imagine this. At a time of political turmoil, a charismatic, telegenic new leader arrives virtually out of nowhere. He offers a message of hope and reconciliation based on compromise and promises to marshal technology for a better future that will include universal health care.

The news media swoons in admiration — one simpering anchorman even shouts at a reporter who asks a tough question: “Why don’t you show some respect?!!” The public is likewise smitten, except for a few nut cases who circulate batty rumors on the Internet about the leader’s origins and intentions. The leader, undismayed, offers assurances that are soothing, if also just a tiny bit condescending: “Embracing change is never easy.”

So, does that sound like anyone you know? Oh, wait — did I mention the leader is secretly a totalitarian space lizard who’s come here to eat us?

I think I saw perhaps one episode of the original V back in the 1980s, and I hadn’t planned to watch this one. But maybe I’ll take a gander.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the Slate article rlh referenced in comments, which argues that it isn’t subliminal anti-Obama agitprop because it’s too incoherent to have much of a theme.

Post from: Orange Punch

What’s fascinating, however, was the response to the anniversary in Iran. Nov. 4 is important in Iran for other reasons as well — it’s the day in 1964 that the Shah exiled Ayatollah Khomeini and the day in 1978 the Shah’s minions attacked campus protesters, killing scores of young people. The government planned a celebration of the embassy takeover, but despite elaborate preparation, was unable to control large-scale anti-regime demonstrations by pretty much the same people who poured into the streets after the tainted election in June. Instead of chanting “death to America” or “death to the Great Satan,” they chanted slogans like “death to the dictator” or even “death to no-one,” and clashed with police (well, Revolutionary Guards) repeatedly. At least one moderate cleric, who supported it at the time, apologized for the embassy hostage-taking. Thirty years after the embassy takeover, having inflicted repression at home and supported terrorism abroad, the Iranian regime, while still firmly in power, appears to be in the early stages of a crisis of legitimacy.

It is almost impossible to predict how this struggle will play out. Despite Ahmadinejad’s bluster and clownishness, the mullahs who really run things are pragmatic and shrewd, determined to hold onto power and so far successful at doing so, including sometimes moderating their repressive tendencies to avoid a more effective outburst from the growing opposition movement. But today’s events demonstrate that there is widespread discontent with the regime, discontent that the regime is unable to control effectively.

It would be nice if the 31st anniversary saw either a new regime in power or a regime that had reached an accommodation with the mostly young protesters and become a more “normal” country that allows a certain amount of dissent and negotiates with those who are discontented. But you won’t catch me predicting it.

Post from: Orange Punch