Ratify the New START Treaty

I have to agree with Robert Kagan's take on GOP opposition to the new START treaty we negotiated with Russia. In his article, he points out while the GOP has some reasonable concerns over how the administration's "reset" has been conducted at the expense of our European allies, he also notes the proposed cuts are modest, and Republican Presidents in the past have always embraced sweeping cuts in nuclear arms. He additionally points out:

As to the treaty's virtues, there is little doubt that its negotiations improved the mood of relations between Moscow and Washington. This has had some payoff, both in Moscow's behavior and in the administration's. One suspects the administration has moved in a tougher direction on other issues partly because it has the treaty in hand. Successful cooperation with Russia on one front has allowed it to press Russia harder on others. The administration already seems to be trying to reset the "reset," paying greater attention to worried Europeans and protesting Russia's continued occupation of Georgia. Would defeat of the treaty help Russia's neighbors? I doubt it. Those who want to fix problems with the reset should focus more intently on those problems. New START is not one of them.

Senators have an obligation to block a treaty that they believe may damage the national interest. And Democrats certainly have no right to lecture Republicans about supporting the president, since many of them just voted against his funding request for Afghanistan.

But on this issue, Republicans can and should take the high ground and set a better standard. The treaty has its problems -- in verification, where the Russians seem never to be entirely trustworthy, as well as in counting mechanisms -- and so did the treaties negotiated by the two Bush administrations. But New START is not so badly flawed as to warrant rejection.

The Russians have been more cooperative with Iranian sanctions lately most likely because our relations have improved.  Pres Medvedev also wants more western investment to help modernize the Russian economy and is being somewhat pragmatic here in relations with the US.  There's a reason why this week after visiting the White House that he proceeded to Silicon Valley. There are plenty of policy issues for the GOP to oppose the Obama administration on; this isn't one of them.

About Those Tax Cuts

One has to question the political wisdom of the Obama administration's decision to let the Bush tax cuts expire on those making over $200,000 annually. While our exploding deficit will probably require a combination of entitlement reform (cutting spending) and raising taxes in the future, letting the tax cuts expire this year while the recovery has stalled and we're still hovering around 10% unemployment will impede growth in the short term. The Obama administration may be resigned to large GOP gains in the midterm election, and will probably use the tax cut issue as a foil against the GOP who they'll charge as hypocrites for posturing as deficit hawks, and chanting forever more it's a return to the failed policies of Bush.  However, it's a double-edge sword for the administration if the tax raises hurt the economic recovery, which in all likelihood, they will. And the GOP can always comeback by not appropriating funds for Obamacare if they win the House.

Bernake recently told Congress he supported more short term stimulus for the economy, saying these tax cuts would be a way to help strengthen the recovery, although he qualified they needed to be offset. While Greenspan is in favor of letting the cuts expire in order to tackle the deficit, he also admits it will probably slow growth. A CNBC article notes that analysts at Deutche Bank believe letting the tax cuts expire will hurt economic growth quite a bit:

Deutsche said the drag on gross domestic product should they lapse could be as much as 1.5 percent, with the more likely impact at 1.1 percent.

The impact would be worse, the analysts said, if Congress fails to fix the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was enacted in 1969 to make sure rich people pay taxes but was never indexed for inflation, and thus is now hitting middle-income workers.

"In a worst-case scenario, allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire and failing to fix the AMT could result in (1.5 percent) of fiscal drag in 2011 on top of the 1 percent fiscal drag we expect to occur as the Obama fiscal stimulus package unwinds," Deutsche said in a note to clients. "If the recovery remains soft/tentative through early next year, this additional drag could be enough to push the economy to a stalling point."

This on the heels of a AP survey of economists who believe the GDP will grow weakly at less than 3% for the remainder of the year, and unemployment will be unchanged. Economists say the economy has to grow at least 5% a year for unemployment to come down 1 percentage point.  As AP notes, consumer spending is still tepid; raising taxes on high earners isn't going to give it a shot in the arm. And as the Bloomberg article points out, Bernake doesn't have much room left to maneuver in monetary policy; the federal funds rate is already at 0.25%.

Further, the raises in marginal tax rates will hurt many small businesses who fall within the top two rates, as noted by Americans For Tax Reform. While liberal think tanks like the Tax Policy Center like to tout that only a small percentage of small businesses make over $200,000, they don't like to mention that these are the small businesses that employ the most people.  Industry standards for small businesses in some sectors of the economy like manufacturing and mining employ up to 500 people. Moreover, most small businesses are organized as either a sole proprietorship or as a pass through entity for tax purposes. That means while the dollar amount of profit may sound high as reported to the IRS, it is often split among ownership and then taxed at personal rates. Much profit is also reinvested back into business for purchasing new equipment, advertising, more hires, etc.  Finally, profit from one good year can ride out a bad year (like the current one) and prevent forcing business owners into layoffs.

Harvard Economics Professor Greg Mankiw has written a thoughtful article that examines whether  government spending or tax cuts would be more effective in stimulating the recovery.  Some major points:

1) Research shows that broad cuts in marginal rates are a better stimulus for the economy than government spending. One study showed they were 4x as potent as government spending.

2) A stimulus needs to be injected quickly in the economy. Government spending often goes through so much bureaucratic red tape before it actually is spent, and is often allocated inefficiently. Tax cuts can be felt immediately by small business owners (a sector that accounts for the majority of job creation) who will allocate the returns more efficiently.

3) Not all tax cuts are created equal. While Obama's stimulus plan had some tax cuts and tax credits, narrowly targeted cuts like, for example, providing tax credits to businesses who make new hires are difficult to implement. Some industries like construction are so far below their baseline of employees to be eligible for tax credits, that it will not offer them any additional incentive to hire new employees. It may even cause existing businesses to layoff employees and instead contract services out to new startups to be eligible for the credit. The lesson here is that tax cuts should be implemented broadly, at marginal rates.

The bottom line is that while taxes will eventually have to go up to cover the deficit, it would be sensible to take a pause and delay the expiration of the Bush tax rates until the recovery is more solid. Democratic Sen Bayh explains why this is his position with Larry Kudlow. The money quote is around 4:45 where Bayh specifically rejects class warfare rhetoric and points out we're all in this together.

The Intellectual Vanity of The Left

Hear of Dr Steven Chu, the Energy Secretary in the Obama administration who won the Nobel Prize in Physics? Nothing wrong with that at all, but this American Thinker article by James Lewis titled Put Some Harvard SmartCream on That, points out how the Obama administration confuses education with actual wisdom:

The weirdness is that during the months of oil gushing from the BP leak, Obama and his spokesnoid Robert Gibbs kept reminding the world that Dr. Chu has a Nobel Prize. That plus five bucks will buy you a Starbucks French Roast on the Gulf Coast, right where you can watch the sunset reflecting off the oil slick. It's really pretty, and as some Obamanoid was saying the other day, if Louisiasans were smart, they would turn it into a tourist attraction. Fortunately, it looks like the oil leak has been plugged, and all that oil will be metabolized by the ocean in due course.

But the Leftist superstition about Harvard SmartCream will keep haunting us for years. The reason is that no matter what the emergency may be, the instinct of this White House is to apply the same panacea. Put some SmartCream on that, and it'll be fixed. Or at least it will look as if we are Doing Something.

Obama's adoring fans seem to share the superstitious belief that intelligence is a kind of oil slick that you just discover in places like Harvard and Yale. Take a problem, any problem -- global warming,  the U.S. economy, race, and gender-baiting -- and smear it liberally with SmartCream from Larry Summers or Elena Kagan -- and behold! The answer pops out, just like that. It's amazing. For you, it's only $ 9.95, 'cause I like your face. Can't you see Obama selling that line on an informercial with his great photogenic smile? 

Janet Daley over at the Telegraph examines how this intellectual vanity has bred class resentment where the highly educated are aligned with the poor against the middle class.  She knows this because it's a depressingly familiar development in British politics:

America, in other words, has discovered bourgeois guilt. A country without a hereditary nobility has embraced noblesse oblige. Now, there is nothing inherently strange or perverse about people who lead successful, secure lives feeling a sense of responsibility toward those who are disadvantaged. What is peculiar in American terms is that this sentiment is taking on precisely the pseudo-aristocratic tone of disdain for the aspiring, struggling middle class that is such a familiar part of the British scene.

Liberal politics is now – over there as much as here – a form of social snobbery. To express concern about mass immigration, or reservations about the Obama healthcare plan, is unacceptable in bien-pensant circles because this is simply not the way educated people are supposed to think. It follows that those who do think (and talk) this way are small-minded bigots, rednecks, oiks, or whatever your local code word is for "not the right sort".

The petit bourgeois virtues of thrift, ambition and self-reliance – which are essential for anyone attempting to escape from poverty under his own steam – have long been derided in Britain as tokens of a downmarket upbringing. But not long ago in America they were considered, even among the highly educated, to be the quintessential national virtues, because even well-off professionals had probably had parents or grandparents who were once penniless immigrants. Nobody dismissed "ambition" as a form of gaucherie: the opposite of having ambition was being a bum, a good-for-nothing who would waste the opportunities that the new country offered for self-improvement.

But now the British Lefties who – like so many Jane Austen heroines looking down on those "in trade" – used to dismiss Margaret Thatcher as "a grocer's daughter", have their counterparts in the US, where virtually everybody's family started poor. Our "white van man" is their Tea Party activist, and the insult war is getting very vicious. It is becoming commonplace now for liberals in the US to label the Tea Party movement as racist, the most damaging insult of all in respectable American life. 

So the Democrats, who once represented the interests of ferociously self-respecting blue-collar America, are now seen – under their highly educated president, who wholeheartedly embraces the orthodoxy of the liberal salon – as having abandoned their traditional following. Which is precisely what Labour did here when it turned its back on what used to be called "the respectable working class" because of its embarrassing resentments and "prejudices" against welfare claimants, immigrants, and anti-social youths. Bizarrely, among people who see themselves as profoundly empathetic, there was an utter failure to understand why the spirit of benevolent understanding and tolerance did not flourish among those whose daily lives were directly affected by a mass influx of foreign workers, or local delinquency, or a welfare system that rewarded inertia.

Conservatives know this social and intellectual snobbery well--they've borne the brunt of the condescension from the Left.  Reagan? They called him an amiable dunce.  President Bush 41? Remember that snarky comment, it's the economy stupid?  VP Quayle? He was harangued by the media and chattering classes for weeks when he suggested what many suspected was true: that perhaps we should not celebrate voluntary single motherhood where men are mere accessories to a women's self fulfillment and therefore disposal as fathers, despite what was portrayed by Murphy Brown.  President Bush 43? His Harvard degree was granted because of his family connections but as Jacob Weisberg from Slate declared, he was a dimwit.

There's even more vitriol hurled if one is conservative and from the working or middle class.  Joe the Plumber's personal life was investigated illegally by government officials to dig up any dirty laundry to immediately discredit him because he somehow got then candidate Obama to admit that yes, he wanted to spread your wealth. Witness the intellectual rape and wilding of Sarah Palin where she's turned into a bimbo and sexual object.  Somehow sympathetic to the Tea Party? One must be dubbed racist, because the NAACP says so.

It's an old tired tactic from the Left. It's easier to denigrate someone personally to discredit their ideas rather than debate the ideas themselves.  Not all Democrats are ensconced in their ideological cocoons from the electoral impact of their condescension.  VP Joe Biden, who Democrats constantly remind us rode the subway to Congress and is therefore, bona-fide working class, has swung into damage control. Here he is on ABCNEWS saying that he and President do not think the Tea Party is a racist organization.

A word of advice for the Left: someone once said, I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.  Those words were uttered by none other than Socrates.

Christopher Hitchens and Prayer

After reportedly being diagnosed with esophageal cancer, famous atheist and intellectual Christopher Hitchens is asked in this interview by Hugh Hewitt how he feels about believers praying for his recovery:

HH: The number of people I’m sure who are praying for you, including people who come up to me and ask me to tell you that, people like Joseph Timothy Cook, how are you responding to them, given your famous atheism?

CH: Well look, I mean, I think that prayer and holy water, and things like that are all fine. They don’t do any good, but they don’t necessarily do any harm. It’s touching to be thought of in that way. It makes up for those who tell me that I’ve got my just desserts. It’s, I’m afraid to say it’s almost as well-founded an idea. I mean, I don’t, they don’t know whether prayer will work, and they don’t know whether I’ve come by this because I’m a sinner.

HH: Oh, I...has anyone actually said that to you?

CH: Yeah, oh yes.

HH: Oh, my gosh. Forgive them. Well…

CH: Well, I mean, I don’t mind. It doesn’t hurt me. But for the same reason, I wish it was more consoling. But I have to say there’s some extremely nice people, including people known to you, have said that I’m in their prayers, and I can only say that I’m touched by the thought. [emphasis added]

Is Obama A Socialist?

The Corner  points out that the majority of likely voters describe Obama as a socialist in a new poll from Democracy Corps, James Carville's outfit:

• When LV were asked what words or phrases describe Obama they responded in the following way:
• Too liberal (describes well/does not describe well):  57 / 38
• A big spender (describes well/does not describe well): 62 / 38
• A socialist (describes well/does not describe well):  55 / 39

The sample size was 1,001 2008 voters.  When including Independents that lean Democrat, 47% of those polled described themselves as a Democrat while 43% described themselves as Republican. 

61% of likely voters say the country is on the wrong track versus 31% that say it's on the right track.  Total approval rate of Obama is 45% while 51% disapprove.

So the description of Obama as a socialist is not a fringe or Tea Party "extremist" opinion as often described by liberals and media pundits.

So is Obama a socialist?  The term "socialist" conjures up specific connotations in many American minds.  Socialism is often reduced to Marxism or Leninism.  As Johan Goldberg notes in this debate with David Frum on whether Obama is a socialist, Americans go into Cold War mode hearing the term.  Goldberg correctly notes Americans will "flip the safety off our rifles" to fight some mysterious bogeyman who will come to our house in the middle of the night and confiscate all our private property, or worse--throw us in some sort of gulag.

In Goldberg's Commentary piece, What Kind of Socialist is Barack Obama?, he describes socialism as being much broader than just Marxism, and notes it exists in many different forms:

As mentioned above, one of the key liberal techniques for fending off accusations of socialism, and discrediting those who make the charge, is to equate Marxism with socialism and then insist (often correctly) that since liberals aren’t Marxists, anyone who says liberals are socialists is a fool or a partisan ideologue. But socialism preceded Marxism, and socialism has survived Marxism, in part because Marxism was subjected to a real-world test for nearly a century and failed on an epic scale. Soviet revolutionaries did not engage in Fabian incrementalism; they got their country and their empire and their worldwide movement, and they worked their will without opposition.

The contribution Marxism made to the socialism from which it arose was to offer a pseudo-scientific gloss to the ill-defined urges and impulses of those who despised the rising system of capitalism and the growing middle class to which it gave birth. Because Marxism was taken seriously as an economic theory for so long, it gave socialism an empirical patina that it otherwise lacked. But at its core, socialism remains a rationalization for a fundamentally tribal and premodern understanding of economics.

Indeed, the economic aspect of socialism was itself something of an afterthought. The French Revolution was the birthplace of socialism, yet the unjust distribution of economic resources was not then its immediate concern. “Whereas the core issue for the Americans in 1776 was political legitimacy,” Muravchik writes, “for the French in 1789 it was social status.” Overturning the privileges of the aristocracy drove the French quest for égalité. To that end, the French Revolutionaries actually championed the imperative of private property for all citizens. Even the constitution of 1793, which Muravchik calls “the formal expression of the most extreme phase of the Revolution,” held private property to be sacrosanct.

It was the revolutionary rabble-rouser Francois-Noël Babeuf who first asserted in 1794 that true equality would be impossible without the abolition of private property. The pursuit of private wealth was simply the means of replacing one aristocracy with another, he argued. The true promised land required abolishing such distinctions, inherited or earned. Babeuf’s “Conspiracy of Equals”—a precursor to Lenin’s revolutionary avant-garde—sought to “remove from every individual the hope of ever becoming richer, or more powerful, or more distinguished by his intelligence.” The goal, according to the Manifesto of the Equals, was the “disappearance of boundary-marks, hedges, walls, door locks, disputes, trials, thefts, murders, all crimes, courts, prisons, gallows, penalties, envy, jealousy, insatiability, pride, deception, duplicity, in short, all vices.” To fill that void, “the great principle of equality, or universal fraternity would become the sole religion of the peoples.” Say what you will about such an agenda, it is certainly not focused on empirical economic theory.

Yet because the popular connotations of socialism persist, it's not polite in American politics to label someone a socialist, even if it's accurate.  For if you're around liberals, someone will inevitable bring up the specter of McCarthyism. But McCarthyism is non sequiter; while there are plenty of demagogues throughout the political spectrum, conservatives like Goldberg are not asking socialists to testify in front of Congress on their loyalty to the US, nor are they calling on them to step down from public office (see self-declared democratic socialist Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders), nor are they advocating these political parties be banned (the key distinction being made between those who seek a violent overthrow of the US government, aka revolution, and those who reject such an approach, which describes most socialists today as I will outline below). Moreover, the international context has changed since the days of McCarthy; we're no longer locked in a Cold War with the evil empire.

Obama is not a traditional Marxist-Leninist. Both men advocated revolution of the working class to overthrow the bourgeoisie. In 1899, a debate was ignited among socialists and communists that would later lead to a split between them.  Edward Bernstein, a colleague of Fredrich Engels, published  Evolutionary Socialism.  His critique of The Communist Manifesto lead social democrats to discuss the possibility of a gradual transformation of capitalism into socialism through democratic means rather than through the communist method of revolution. The formal break eventually lead to the establishment of Socialist International, which convened in 1951 to sign the Frankfurt Declaration of Principles. These principles repudiate Communism as establishing a single party dictatorship. Socialist International sees itself as being a tradition of democratic socialists, in order to achieve a social democracy.


Obama is rather, in the spectrum of a social democrat or a democratic socialist. Academics will quibble over the difference between the two movements, and there are variances  depending on the politics of the country one resides in, but they both generally reject the use of violence and revolution to overthrow the capitalist system.  They instead, prefer gradual and incrementalist reforms of the capitalist economy. Where the differences arise is that some social democrats and democratic socialists acknowledge the necessary existence of capitalism as a utilitarian model to determine consumer demand for goods.   While this position stirs controversy with some more orthodox members, Socialist International lists as its principles under the section Economic Democracy:

3. Socialist planning can be achieved by various means. The structure of the country concerned must decide the extent of public ownership and the forms of planning to apply.
4. Public ownership can take the form of the nationalisation of existing private concerns, municipal or regional enterprise, consumers’ or producers’ cooperatives.
These various forms of public ownership should be regarded not as ends in themselves but as means of controlling basic industries and services on which the economic life and welfare of the community depend, of rationalising inefficient industries or of preventing private monopolies and cartels from exploiting the public.
5. Socialist planning does not presuppose public ownership of all the means of production. It is compatible with the existence of private ownership in important fields, for instance in agriculture, handicraft, retail trade and small and middle-sized industries. The state must prevent private owners from abusing their powers. It can and should assist them to contribute towards increased production and well-being within the framework of a planned economy. [emphasis added]
6. Trade unions and organisations of producers and consumers are necessary elements in a democratic society; they should never be allowed to degenerate into the tools of a central bureaucracy or into a rigid corporative system. Such economic organisations should participate in shaping general economic policy without usurping the constitutional prerogatives of parliament.
7. Socialist planning does not mean that all economic decisions are placed in the hands of the Government or central authorities. Economic power should be decentralised wherever this is compatible with the aims of planning.
8. All citizens should prevent the development of bureaucracy in public and private industry by taking part in the process of production through their organisations or by individual initiative. The workers must be associated democratically with the direction of their industry.

In Europe, the socialist label is hardly shocking; it's seen as an accurate acknowledgment of one's political views.  Indeed, many social democratic parties in Europe belong to the Socialist International. Its declaration of principles include:

10. The Socialist International was founded a hundred years ago in order to coordinate the worldwide struggle of democratic socialist movements for social justice, human dignity and democracy. It brought together parties and organisations from different traditions which shared a common goal: democratic socialism. Throughout their history, socialist, social democratic and labour parties have stood for the same values and principles.

11. Today the Socialist International combines its traditional struggle for freedom, justice and solidarity with a deep commitment to peace, the protection of the environment, and the development of the South. All these issues require common answers. To this end, the Socialist International seeks the support of all those who share its values and commitment. 
   

Its website lists its members to include the social democratic parties of Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Switzerland, and Estonia.  Labor party members come from countries like Great Britain, Ireland, Israel, Poland, Norway, and the Netherlands.  And of course, you have the socialist parties of France, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, and Democratic Socialists of the USA.  One only need to browse its website to see the photos of many prominent European and British politicians and heads of state at its conferences.

Social Democrat party platforms in Europe typically include a nationalized or heavily government regulated health care system, major redistribution of income, free universal education, and a significant role of labor groups in society to achieve common ownership of goods or at least heavily influence on the means of production.  The latter are all in line with Obama's stated goals in his own words: he seeks redistribution of income for the purposes of "spreading the wealth";  he is a professed proponent of a single payer health care system; he envisions a large role for labor unions in American society to "leverage" against businesses. He's already made the federal government the sole lender of college  loans when he signed the health care bill.  The National Journal in 2007  shows Obama's voting record as a US Senator is to the left of socialist Senator Bernie Sanders.  This is not to say any garden-variety American liberal is a socialist, or those that seek to regulate the market are socialists, or that is one supports a safety net in society that makes them a socialist either.  But if one seeks to emulate social democracies in Europe such as the Scandinavian states, then one in heavily in line with current socialist positions and ideology.


So it is in this mold I describe Obama as a socialist. It's not surprising he surrounds himself with socialists like Carol Browner, Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, once a member of Socialist International, or Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, who described himself as a communist. Other far left folks in his administration also include the new head of Center for Medicare and Medicaid, Dr Berwick, who said he loved the British NHS and believes excellent health care by definition, is redistribution from the rich to the poor. Then there's his Science Czar, John Holdren, who once advocated for coercive measures of sterilization to curb world population growth. He also advocated for a Planetary Regime to redistribute all natural resources, and allocate population growth limits to different countries. Then you have the State Department's legal advisor Harold Koh, who adheres to the law theory of transnationalism. Simply put, a transnationalist seeks to import international law into the American legal system to override domestic law. And the list goes on.

Many see political gain from using the term "socialist" to describe Obama. Yet there is a long history of socialists and communists in the American intellectual tradition, from Eugene V. Debs who ran for President five times, to Margaret Sanger who advocated for women to have access to birth control, to union founders Mother Jones and Daniel de Leon, civil rights activist William Du Bois, Helen Keller who was deaf and blind yet still advocated for women's birth control and trade unionism, and novelists Upton Sinclair, Jack London, and Sinclair Lewis.  And in recognizing this history, conservatives should not throw out the term socialist to shut down debate. Clearly, some ideas from socialists have became integrated in the American political fabric.  Instead, conservatives should discuss socialism as a starting point to clarify one's orientation so they can debate them transparently in the open.  Driving socialists underground makes it much more difficult to debate them in the marketplace of ideas where voters can decide on the merits of a social democracy, a capitalist society, or a mixed economy like the one we currently have. If conservatives are confident their philosophy is the correct one, they should not be afraid of the debate.

Sunday Reflections

 Dans Le Lit, By Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1893

At the Musee d'Orsay

Tearing Down American Exceptionalism: It's NASA's Turn

The 4th of July is a uniquely American holiday.  It's more than just celebrating our independence; it's about the historic character of this country aspiring to higher ideals.  So it was quite a stunner to finish up the quintessential American holiday by reading that NASA will not only no longer focus on space exploration, but instead, as described by NASA administrator, Charles Bolden, Pres Obama has asked him to focus on three things:

"When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering," Bolden said in the interview.

Bolden went on further:

He said the United States is not going to travel beyond low-Earth orbit on its own and that no country is going to make it to Mars without international help. 

The WH has stood by his comments.  Bolden is already catching flak from the former administrator of NASA, Michael Goodwin:

NASA ... represents the best of America. Its purpose is not to inspire Muslims or any other cultural entity," Michael Griffin, who served as NASA administrator during the latter half of the Bush administration, told FoxNews.com....

Griffin said Tuesday that collaboration with other countries, including Muslim nations, is welcome and should be encouraged -- but that it would be a mistake to prioritize that over NASA's "fundamental mission" of space exploration

. 

"If by doing great things, people are inspired, well then that's wonderful," Griffin said. "If you get it in the wrong order ... it becomes an empty shell." 

Griffin added: "That is exactly what is in danger of happening." 

He also said that while welcome, Muslim-nation cooperation is not vital for U.S. advancements in space exploration. 

"There is no technology they have that we need," Griffin said.

Obama's thinking is symptomatic of postmodern multiculturalism.  Multiculturalism
originated from the progressive movement on the Left, and has ideological similarities to socialism.  Socialism started as a way to level the economic playing field for different classes in society.  When the brutalities of socialism in the USSR and China came to light, it largely fell out of favor. However, committed leftists latched onto multiculturalism, a relativistic philosophy that carried to its logical conclusion, is anti-reason.  Antonio Gramsci, a committed Italian Communist, observed that the failure of socialist revolutionary fervour to take root among the proletariat was due largely to western cultural hegemony.  This cultural unity lent itself to support the capitalist status-quo, since the majority of the population adopted the same systematic beliefs, norms and values. Only by attacking this hegemony could socialism finally prevail.  How would this western-centric ideological hegemony be countered?  Enter multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism seeks to level the playing field between cultures by pretending there is nothing uniquely superior or special about any one nation-state or civilization (definitely not western civilization, which is seen as racist).  Instead, each society should accept many cultures that retain their own cultural autonomy, in contrast to assimilation and social integration.  As if redistribution of income isn't enough, Obama seeks to amazingly, socially engineer the choice of participants in space exploration. This goes beyond the more benign multiculturalist goal of celebrating a particular group's scientific achievements.  NASA will no longer represent rugged American individualism in exploration--it must now be a collectivist effort.  Not only is he attempting to change the individualistic ethos of American culture through what's seen as a unique American institution of NASA, he also seeks how to allocate space exploration by swearing off any US space exploration outside low earth orbit UNLESS other countries can participate in it so we do not make them feel inferior.  This politicizes science and impedes its progress by seeking buy-in from the collective, which often results in the lowest common denominator in thinking.  This is a consequence of socialism and multiculturalism:  these ideologies specifically penalize success whether in the workplace, or in celebrating a culture's achievements.     

It's a fatal utopian vision that belongs to the no-borders crowd; multiculturalists and socialists believe the nation-state is just a stepping stone that will eventually be overcome to a more perfect, collectivist society.  Marxists like Eric Hobsbawm seek to deny any useful identity  to the nation-state, instead describing it as a social abstraction. The nation-state is simply an "imagined community" the elites found useful to construct given their historical circumstances at the time.  While there are historical accuracies within Hobsbawm's description, such reductionist thinking is quite destructive.  It ultimately undermines the strengths of a civilization, recognizing little value in its very existence.  And in this light, the idea of independent frontiersmen of American history, the pioneers, explorers, and yes, astronauts, are outdated.  One must instead succumb to the stifling conformity of an ideological mantra that repeats everyone, all cultures, are equal in condition, no matter what experience may tell one otherwise, or whatever the consequences.  Space as the final frontier, be damned.

NYers Say No To Mosque Near Ground Zero

It's not even close:

New York City voters oppose 52 - 31 percent a proposal by a Muslim group to build a mosque and cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Another 17 percent are undecided.

Opinions about the proposed mosque range from 46 - 36 percent support among Manhattan voters to 73 - 14 percent opposition in Staten Island, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.

Opposition to the mosque is 56 - 31 percent among white voters, 45 - 34 percent among black voters and 60 - 19 percent among Hispanic voters. Opposition among religious groups is 66 - 22 percent among Jews, 66 - 24 percent among white Catholics and 46 - 36 percent among white Protestants.

Opposition cuts across both parties, although Republicans are more likely to be opposed than Democrats. The majority of Independents are opposed.  Don't count on the so-called elites to reverse course.

Happy 4th of July!

Christopher Hitchens Has Cancer

It's esophageal cancer.   Hotair hunted down the info in the Merek handbook, and it shows survival rates don't look so hot:

Because esophageal cancer usually is not diagnosed until the disease has spread, the death rate is high. Fewer than 5% of people survive more than 5 years. Many die within a year of noticing the first symptoms. Because nearly all cases of esophageal cancer are fatal, the doctor’s main objective is to control symptoms, especially pain and the inability to swallow, which can be very frightening to the person and loved ones (see Death and Dying: Difficulty Swallowing).

Truly saddening news. Hitchens has a towering intellect, and personality to match.  I thoroughly enjoying reading his articles and watching his debates.  I sincerely hope he beats the odds. Here's a CNN video from last year where he displays his characteristic flair, where he defends free speech during the Danish Mohammad cartoon controversy.

Where's My Recovery?

Well there's not much economic good news for the Obama administration. The economic recovery seems to be fizzling. As the AP notes:  

Unemployment claims are up, home sales are plunging without government incentives and manufacturing growth is slowing.

No surprise there. As this WSJ oped points out, the market hates uncertainty. And with an exploding deficit, the expectation that Obamacare will cost much more than projected, the anticipation of tax hikes to deal with our entitlement binge, and the dangling of cap and tax legislation, there's much to be uncertain about if you are a small business owner.  And as such, consumer confidence has cratered.

The House, feeling the voter ire on government spending in the polls, has refused to pass a budget this year. Richard Rahn, economist and senior fellow at Cato, vents from the Washington Times on this:

"Irresponsible" refers to Congress and the Obama administration - and here's why. For thousands of years, businesses, organizations, governments and even individuals have relied on a basic tool to make sure they do not spend or borrow more than they can service - it is called a budget. Yet, for the first time since 1974, when the current rules were put into effect, the U.S. House of Representatives does not intend to pass a budget resolution. The main purpose of the budget resolution is to set discretionary spending caps for the coming fiscal year.

Without a budget resolution, members of Congress are, in essence, able to spend as much money as they wish, subject only to the limitation of getting half plus one of the other members to go along with the spending proposal. The budget procedure was put in place to make sure members of Congress would not spend money as irresponsibly as many teenagers might if they were given unlimited credit cards. If teenagers were in charge of the federal budget, we might end up with a $1.5 trillion deficit this year. Ah, but we are going to have a $1.5 trillion deficit this year - and who's in charge?

In the face of the unprecedented congressional spending binge, President Obama has been asking Congress to spend even more. Not content with actively promoting the eventual bankruptcy of the United States, Mr. Obama is urging foreign leaders also to increase their government spending - which is truly bizarre. Look at the facts. All of the major European countries have been increasing government spending and deficits at unsustainable rates. The talk for the past couple of months has been about which countries would follow Greece in going over the financial cliff. Responsible economists, financial leaders and, most important, the markets have been telling European leaders they must cut government spending. Over the past couple of weeks, a number of those leaders have responsibly and courageously come forth with real spending-reduction programs. Britain's new government, despite being a coalition government, has proposed a 25 percent cut in most government departments. Can you imagine the howls from Congress and the U.S. news media if a U.S. president proposed even a 5 percent cut, though a far larger one is needed?

Now that legislation extending unemployment benefits has failed to pass in the Senate, MaxedoutMama comments on the absurdity that passes for our politics:

Last but not quite least, the fruits of the housing tax credit (due to be extended by your witless Cr_tt_r any day now) are worth looking at. We paid a great deal to book a lot sales far more quickly than otherwise, but anyone who looks at the pending home sales report is going to realize that it was a very expensive (and elitist) exercise in "Let's Pretend". Nationally SA sales dropped 30% on the month and 15.9% on the year. The more money we spend to try to prop up home sales the worse it gets. We might as well quit and take our licking now.

The irony and the tragedy of yanking extended unemployment benefits with unemployment around 10% while giving thousand of dollars a pop to people who were either going to buy anyway or really can't afford to buy and will most likely default is beyond belief.

One of the reasons the average person doesn't want to hear "stimulus" any more is because stimulus has been very badly spent. The housing tax credit in particular is an exercise in witless, very expensive legislation. The results are as predictable as the results of cutting off benefits to unemployed.

I am beginning to feel like I got drunk and woke up in a S&M club. I want out. [emphasis added].

All I can say to that is, Amen.