Today’s obfuscation headline: “Social Security and Medicare Could Run Out Sooner Than Expected” The Social Security Board of Trustees issued their report yesterday stating “Social Security’s retirement and disability programs have enough funds to cover the next 20 years”. (last year they said “24 years”) Really…until 2033? Whew! Just the thing to make young folks
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Social Security & Medicare Obfuscation
It’s about to get hot in Washington, D.C. — and that’s not just because we’re getting closer to the start of pool season. With lawmakers returning from their Easter break to tackle the FY 2013 budget, the fight over our nation’s fiscal future is entering the next round.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a man who knew as much about real evil as the fictional kind, wrote of a realization he had during his internment in the Soviet gulag: “Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts.” This insight made him well fitted for Christianity and anti-Communism. Stieg Larsson, the late Swedish author of the blockbuster The Girl Who… mystery novels, on the other hand, was a lifelong Communist, and so (one assumes) missed that memo. Communism has always been a Manichean creed, dividing good and evil along broad, neat lines, a habit that came in handy when they wished to annihilate people without all the bother of actually proving legal cases against them. Having at last finished reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest , the final book of the trilogy (I’d have read it sooner if the greedy capitalist publishers hadn’t delayed the mass market paperback forever), I feel qualified to draw some vapid (not to mention envious) conclusions about them all. Communists like Larsson (one assumes, or presumes) have been faced with a crisis of faith ever since the 1980s. Larsson himself, judging from textual evidence in these books, seems to have substituted gender for class theory as a moral guide. I made a note as I read — “There are no bad females in this book.” That doesn’t hold true entirely for the series, I’ll admit. I recall at least one bad female in the first book, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo , but she was both rich and a Nazi, and so probably constitutes a special case. In general, it appears, if one were to line up all humanity, women on the left and men on the right, Larsson would have drawn the line between good and evil somewhere east of center. One of the characters in this book says, “When it comes down to it, this story is not primarily about spies and secret government agencies; it’s about violence against women, and the men who enable it.” The Swedish title of the first book of the series actually translates, “Men Who Hate Women.” (This present book, in case you’re wondering, goes by something meaning, more or less, “The Castle in the Air that Exploded” in Sweden.) The idea of the woman warrior is a constant refrain. Each section of the book begins with a meditation on various accounts of women warriors in history (many of them legendary). Lisbeth Salander, the “Girl” of the titles, although a tiny, waif-like individual, is an expert at unarmed combat, and kicks serious butt above her weight class. This time, however, she spends most of the book confined to a hospital bed, and does her fighting with her mind (no mean weapon). So in her place Larsson introduces a tall, athletic, Amazon-like female cop (who predictably falls immediately into bed with Mikael Blomkvist, the chief male character) to demonstrate female physical equality. This leads me, in my wrongheaded way, to ponder the consistent inconsistency of doctrinaire feminists, whose operating principle seems to be that women need lots and lots of protections from the state, but that men had better not presume to protect them. (I suppose I ought to take a few column inches at some point here to mention the plot, rather than just detailing my fascinating insights into it. This book reveals, at last, that the horrors of Lisbeth’s abusive childhood, of which we learned in the previous books, were not the fault of the Swedish welfare state which raised her [I rather liked that idea, but it turns out it's wrong], but of a secret conspiracy within the Swedish state security apparatus. More on that later.) Stalin is supposed to have said that one death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic. Communist writers ever since have found inspiration in this principle, hiding the millions of victims of twentieth century Communist violence effectively behind the much more compelling figures of one or a few selected victims — often of McCarthyism or the Hollywood Black List — brought up close to the camera lens. Lisbeth Salander is the Girl Who Hid the Real Victims in these books. In The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest , the true villains (we learn this early on, so it’s not a spoiler) are a small, invisible group within the security system — a conspiracy of old Cold Warriors. Anti-Communists are, it goes without saying, paranoid. This development came as no great surprise, I suppose, but it was a disappointment. Larsson had done a creditable job of keeping political balance up to that point. I suppose it was too much to ask that he go the whole way without striking a blow for the True Faith. Don’t take all this to mean that I didn’t enjoy The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest , or the series as a whole. I found it great entertainment. Larsson excelled at creating vibrant, fascinating characters, and at building suspense. He had a magical gift. And, as with all magicians, it’s important to keep your eye on what the left hand is doing.
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The Girl Who Hid the Real Victims
This has been an extraordinarily difficult primary season for many conservatives, me among them. Against what is probably the weakest incumbent president since Herbert Hoover, we have managed to field an array of candidates worse than those we had in 2008 and perhaps worse than those competing for the nomination at our low point of 1996. Our best candidate, Texas Governor Rick Perry, was torpedoed by a lack of preparation on his part. Sure the patent dishonesty of Michele Bachmann’s Tardasil nonsense had an impact as well as the demagoguing of a state educational issue as a soft-on-immigration stance but let’s not excuse the fact that these attacks should have been anticipated by anyone participating in a GOP primary. For some months I have held the view that conservatives could very well be better served by a President Obama opposed by a Republican Congress than a President Romney working in concert with a decidedly un-conservative Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The events of the past few weeks have convinced me I was wrong. We are one election away from entering the death spiral to status as a Third World kleptocracy and I believe Governor Mitt Romney, for all his manifest faults, is the best man left standing to prevent that from happening. To be clear, my endorsement and support of Romney is a function of the actions of President Obama rather than any eighty-leven point plan Romney’s campaign staff has devised to technocrat our way out of a philosophical and moral morass because our fiscal difficulties are merely the symptoms of the true problem. I developed misgivings about my original strategy in January when Obama made patently illegal recess appointments. These misgivings have increased day by day as the EPA has essentially declared the coal industry illegal, religious liberty has been tossed under the bus in favor of consequence-free sexual gratification, Egypt and Libya have been turned over to either al-Qaeda or its sympathizers, billions of dollars have disappeared into the wallets of Obama donors in the guise of “green energy”, and our European allies have heard Obama tell a fellow kleptocrat that their security is up for grabs in a second Obama term. None of these actions could have been prevented by a GOP Congress that could not override a presidential veto and there are no circumstances I foresee that gets us to that number of seats in the House and Senate. In the final analysis, the president controls the regulatory agencies and the policy making apparatus of the United States. A determined president can do pretty much what he will so long as he commands at least 35 votes in the United States Senate and the Congress is unwilling to impeach. I’d feel a lot more comfortable with Governor Romney if I actually had a sense that he believed in anything. I don’t have that feeling and there is nothing in the man’s record that indicates he values principle over expediency. I don’t think bailing out the Salt Lake City Games by digging deep into Uncle Sugar’s pockets demonstrates very much skill, I find his record at Bain nauseating, and the disarray he inflicted upon the Massachusetts GOP gives me pause for the fate of the GOP under a Romney presidency. On the other hand I have no doubt that the Romney’s will restore a dignity and grace to the White House and the Office of the President that has been trashed by the gauche, nouveau riche, and monumentally entitled Obamas, both the Mom-jeans, weenie-armed Barack and the hulking, hectoring Michelle. In that way the situation will be similar for Governor Romney as it was for George Bush when the Clampetts departed. I think the Justice Department will again to begin to resemble a place where “justice” is a concern rather than peddling guns to Mexican narcotraficantes, arresting various Walter-Mittyesque groups as terrorists, and engaging in race-baiting of the worst sort. I don’t think the nation’s GPS system will be hamstrung to make a campaign donor very wealthy. We won’t be “investing” in solar panels and other cutesy technologies that have little demonstrable value. The Department of Defense will not be used as some sort of social laboratory to test out the latest academic theories. I will no longer fear for any of our basic rights. In particular, Ann Romney would be a stellar first lady. This was a difficult choice as I find a lot to like in both Newt Gingrich, whom I have met, and Rick Santorum, whom I have not. Mr. Gingrich, in particular, embodies the enthusiasm for tomorrow that has long been a quintessentially American trademark. Mr. Santorum has demonstrated that morality matters to the electorate and it should not be shunted to the side in either the Fall campaign or in governance. Unfortunately, both men have flaws that have convinced me they cannot win in November and that if they did win they would be ineffectual. The purpose of this is to not enumerate those flaws beyond the point of saying I have concluded that they outweigh any advantage either man brings to the table. In closing I wish to acknowledge the surprise this endorsement is sure to cause some RedState readers. For the past four years I’ve been very critical of Governor Romney and I continue to stand by those criticisms (read above if you have any doubts). Significantly for blogging in his support, I continue to find his supporters, with the possible exception of those I’ve yet to encounter, to be among the most ignorant, dishonest advocates of any candidate, anywhere, anytime possessing a blindness to facts and a subservience that borders on cult-like. I intend to continue to ban them at the slightest opportunity. So after much soul searching I’ve decided to climb up on the roof, snuggle in beside Seamus, and enjoy the ride.
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Mitt Romney For President
Requiescat in pace. Via Security Clearance: . . .The story of Spc. Dennis Weichel of the Rhode Island National Guard bears telling. The official Pentagon news release says he died “from injuries suffered in a noncombat related incident.” But there is much more to the story. Weichel, 29, of Providence, died saving the life of
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Army Spc. Dennis P. Weichel Dies Saving Afghan Girl
