Hennessy's View

Well, at least communism’s brightest symbol:  piles of mattresses.

In this case, Obama’s politburo wants to buy and crush new cars and trucks.  Yes, GM and Chrysler and Ford can produce all the cars and trucks they want.  Since the public won’t buy them, the government will—and crush them.  Crush them.  I kid you not.  This from Gateway Pundit:

Democrats want to include a new car crushing plan in the "stimulus" bill where the government would buy new cars and trucks that obtain less than 18 mpg and crush them

In case you’re wondering about he mattresses, Ronald Reagan liked to tell the story of a Russian mattress factory.  The central planners in Moscow gave the plant manager a higher quota every year.  By the 1980s, the quota was so high that the quality of the mattresses became abysmal.  The plant’s allotment of raw materials was the same or lower than it had been in 1970.  The output, then, became smaller, thinner, and will less of everything.  In other words, it was junk wrapped in cotton.

Since no one would use these mattresses and since the factory produced more mattresses each year than Muscovites could consume in a century, and since the factory was denied a request for a truck, the plant manager had no choice but to stack the mattresses in the streets surrounding the factory.

It was amidst these 10-story piles of decaying mattresses on a cold Moscow day in November that Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov presented to the mattress factory manager a medal to commemorate his 20 years of meeting quota. 

Liberals will never understand the irony, of course, and conservatives will never understand why liberals love over-production so long as the government is the producer or director.  Waste is waste.  In fact, waste is a sin—the sin from which liberals absolve themselves in advance. 

Peggy Noonan, one of American’s best writers when conservatism is in the minority, brilliantly dissects the Democrat pork-barrel bill in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.   She missed the car crushing provision.  But in a bill written by Democrats, for Democrats, and of Democrats with no input from the other side, there is more crap than one human could possibly digest.

Tell your Senator—D or R—to stay away from Obama’s first piece of legislation.  The new president is a long way from ready for the office he now occupies. 

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The GDP might have contracted 5.4 percent annualized in 4Q08, but the AGW industry contracted about 50 percent in one week:

Hansen’s Boss:  James Hansen, AGW’s Father of Lies, received an insulting, public rebuke from his old boss at NASA.  In essence, Dr. John Theon of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, accused of Hansen of violating basic scientific principles, NASA’s scientific methodologies and policies, and of embarrassing the agency with his anti-scientific screeds on global warming.  Theon’s emails portray Hansen has a fraudulent liar.  (Where have you heard that before?")

More Scientists Turn Skeptics:  The parade of scientists who doubt Hansen, Gore, and the whole AGW theory never ends.  This week the world’s foremost authority on scientific forecasting, Dr. J. Scott Armstrong, declared that the IPCC’s global warming documents have no basis in science and violate 72 specific principle of scientific forecasting.  As the founder of the largest forecaster certification body, Armstrong effectively pronounced the IPCC invalid.

Arctic Gulls in Massachusetts:  Arctic gulls returned to Massachusetts for the first time in over 100 years, validating AGW-monger fears that climate change would alter the migratory patterns of animals.  Unfortunately for the AGW people, this migration change came about because the earth is getting cold, fast. 

Gore Effect:  Al Gore testified before the Senate in Washington.  The weather cooperated.  Snow and ice and record low temperatures blanketed the Eastern half of the United States. 

The job of conservatism is not to attempt science, but to look for political bias in purportedly scientific claims.  The AGW hysterics are based exclusively on political goals:  the elimination of human freedom.  Don’t let them win.

Don’t be afraid to challenge your friends and co-workers to repeat the lies they hear from James Hansen and Al Gore and Michael Mann.  Your friends might not have the educational advantages you’ve had—perhaps advanced degrees in prestigious universities destroyed their critical thinking skills.  It’s up to us to help them.

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January 28, 2009, could go down as the day conservatives regained their focus.

What the FOCA?:  Some enterprising pro-lifers desiring limited government launched the “What the FOCA?” website.  The site kicks some of the 1973-style slogans from the Right to Life movement, updating themes and memes for 2009.  A great idea, long overdue.  Visit often and donate generously if fighting rampant abortion is one of your action focuses.

A (Republican) House United:  Every member of the Republican House Caucus voted against Obama’s Crap Sandwich.  The bill passed, of course, with all but 11 Democrats voting Aye.  But the real story is that the consequences of this pile of Number Two land squarely on The One and his Girl Friday, Nancy “Blend the Babies” Pelosi.  Remember this in 2010.

In 1981, many, many Democrats crossed the aisle and voted for Reagan’s tax cuts.  They knew that the strategy would work.  Most were old enough to remember that Jack Kennedy did the same thing with success in 1963.  Later, when Democrats tried to distance themselves from that vote, Reagan gently reminded the voters that Dick Gephardt and his colleagues rose in support of Reagan’s first two budgets.  They may share in their success, but they cannot say they opposed the bills.

When the economy tanks after a 3-4 month break (as I’ve been predicting since October), the GOP can say, “we told you so.” 

What’s More Conservative Than an Onion?: The answer is, of course, The Endive.  This ingenious and hilarious new satire site equals The Onion in quality and surpasses in originality.  Sid Bridge, editor-in-chief, exemplifies Zen Conservatism by focusing on a single goal:  pillory liberals with laughter.  Bookmark The Endive and email your friends.  This will become THE satire site of the Obama administration.

CNN Ends Pretense of Objectivity:  CNN is selling a sickening, sycophant T-Shirt with prominent banner ad.  I honestly cannot believe that they have stooped to this.  I defy anyone to argue that a wholly partisan press benefits a free country.  I’m thinking of blocking cnn.com on my home firewall to prevent my kids from reading this crap.  Anyone else up for it?

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The Democrat National Congressional Committee has launched an online petition calling for sanctamony directed at radio giant Rush Limbaugh.  

Why not me?  I wrote “ I, for one, hope his presidency is a miserable failure but that the country somehow survives” before Limbaugh spoke similar sentiments.   I started the Campaign to Hope Obama Fails; Rush is a Johnny-come-lately.  A fair-weather fan.  He’s probably a big Steeler fan all of a sudden, too.  

The next the Democrats feel the need to decry divisiveness, please send them to me.  I need the traffic.

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In 2005, I blogged about the fact that expert consensus is usually wrong.  For instance:

• More than half of the studies published in medical journals are later proven wrong.  
• Most experts predicted that oil prices would continue to rise to $200 a barrel as recently as last August, but gas prices have fallen more than 50 percent since.  I based my prediction of oil in the $30s on the simple fact that the experts agreed we’d never see oil below $100.  
• Global warming experts agreed in 1998 that temperatures would continue to rise at an increasing rate year over year, but global temperatures have fallen most of the period since that “consensus.” 

Expert Fallibility Is Nothing New

John K. Galbraith once observed that experts are those who are asked, not those who know.  In “Nearer, My God,” William F. Buckley recounted this experience from Firing Line.  Buckley took part in forum with The Economist’s ”futurist.”  That magazine’s founder had developed the practice of devoting one entire issue every 10 years to the expert opinions on what would be the top news stories of the coming decade:

To prepare himself for the assignment (said our guest), he had gone over the futurist issues of the past hundred years and learned that there was only this constant:  the predicted concerns of the next decade turned out in no case–not ever–to be the actual concerns of the ensuing decade.

While some will attempt to argue, there’s no use.  Experts are usually wrong, and experts speaking in unison tend to be more wrong than individuals.  That settled, we can move on.  

Conservatives Trust God and People

One key–if not the key–distinction between conservatism and liberalism is in whom each philosophy places its trust.  Conservatives trust in God and the common man; liberals trust small groups of experts.  The Soviet Union confined virtually all decisions in the hands of the central committee, the Supreme Soviet, and the politburo.  Same for China and Cuba.  Same for the rest of the Soviet Bloc in slightly varying degrees and under slightly different titles.  The United States, on the other hand, until about the midway point of the 20th century, muddled through on the genius of the masses.  We relied on the theory that educated men acting in intelligent self-interest would conduct their affairs prudently, resulting in a good society with a healthy economy.  While the New Deal drew us closer to the Soviet model, we remained mostly a society governed by the first 300 names in the Boston telephone book until . . . now.

Obama Is Dangerous

Those who voted for Barack Obama and a Democrat Congress may or may not understand the philosophical earthquake they triggered.  America is now on a course toward central planning, and with it, piles of unwanted mattresses stacked beside factories praised for meeting their ever increasing quota of mattresses.  Demand be damned.

Stop Spending Money

Those who wish to stop this malignancy’s metastasizing need to deny the central committee their participation.  Stop buying.  Horde your money, food, and power.  Live a bit more austerely.  

If the stimulus fails to stimulate–and they have a bad track record of late–the experiment in an American soviet will fail.  

So rage against the political machine Obama now readies.  Keep cash.  Don’t borrow.  Don’t buy that which is not necessary for sustenance.  Deny the collectivist Zamboni its fuel, and you will kill the Zamboni in its tracks. 

You have nothing to lose but your extras, and they are not necessary.

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