Keeping Up With “The Outrages Perpetrated by the Obama Administration………..

……..has stirred Scott W. Johnson to work up a sweat to write the following article at PowerLine, “Abolish the FCC.”

“It’s hard to keep up with the outrages perpetrated by the Obama administration, the lame duck Congress, and the Obamaite federal agencies. Our freedom is under assault on many fronts, but this one deserves special attention.

Since Congress declined to adopt the Orwellian “net neutrality” legislation, the FCC stepped into the breach. It’s another example of the usurpation of constitutional government by the administrative state.

John Fund calls out the FCC in “The net neutrality coup,” and David Harsyani proposes that we “Abolish the FCC.” Michelle Malkin holds that net neutrality is the Obamacare of the Web. Senator DeMint is not amused.

Richard Epstein applies the law-and-economics perspective to the underlying issue of policy. Professor Epstein concludes that the “operation [of the Internet] is too important to be left to the FCC, whose record of consistent failure in regulation starts with its control over radio in 1912 and continues to this present day. The rise of an alternative technology is the best way to break the current FCC monopoly. Unfortunately, the FCC knows that as well, which is why it won’t stay on the sideline.”

Comment:  Barack Hussein Obama is working a soft shoe  ”Hugo Chavez” shuffle  in Washington toward authoritarian rule.    I suppose one can add up about a dozen hard core Marxist-to-Leftwing  Communist-socialist of some sort of authoritarian order activists which he has picked to enter  his administration to “Liberalize”  the nation.  The goal, of course, is forced equality dictated by the College “Educated” Lefty. 

“All Power to the Czars” the Obamaphiles will soon be advertizing…..and how ironic the ‘Czars’ part is.

I wonder when they will start rounding up the shop keepers.

---

Dennis Prager’s “What do Men Want?” (It’s a Very Good Read for All Ages!)

Every Wednesday at the Dennis Prager Radio show listeners are treated to the Male-Female hour.  The treatment is excellent, but in my case I think I am glad that I didn’t know as much  about women then….50 plus years ago….as I do now, so much of it from reflection of personal experience.   What is so important for me, personally, is that this interruption of Dennis’ regular political and cultural information hours, is priceless in confirming what over the years I have understood about the human male, correctly,  and understood about the human female combatively.   Below is Dennis’ understanding of what Men want.   Next week, we are told, Dennis will present his  “What women want”.

“It is said that the one question about men and women that even the great Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, could not answer was: What do women want?

Whether or not Freud actually said that is irrelevant. The very popularity of the anecdote testifies to one incontrovertible fact: A lot of men don’t know the answer.

It is probably fair to say that a lot of women also don’t know the answer. If they did, all they would have to do is tell men. That would solve the riddle — and make most men and women very happy.

So, to the extent that this is a great riddle, it is so because most members of both sexes seem not to know the answer.

Adding support to the widespread belief that what women want is close to unknowable is the underlying presumption that just about everybody knows what men want.

The number of truly funny Internet jokes that describe what women want as complex and what men want as simple is a testament to how widespread these assumptions about the two sexes are. Three examples illustrate this:

The first example is the one that begins: “How To Impress a Woman.”

Listed beneath that heading is this: “Compliment her, respect her, honor her, cuddle her, kiss her, caress her, love her, stroke her, tease her, comfort her, protect her, hug her, hold her, spend money on her, wine and dine her, buy things for her, listen to her, care for her, stand by her, support her, hold her, go to the ends of the Earth for her.”

That long list is followed by: “How To Impress a Man.”

And listed beneath is this: “Show up naked. Bring food.”

The second Internet example:

“Q: What is the difference between men and women?

A: A woman wants one man to satisfy her every need. A man wants every woman to satisfy his one need.”

And a third Internet example shows a box divided into two parts.

Under the part labeled “Women” are 40 dials and knobs.

Under the part labeled “Men” is one switch, marked “On-Off.”

As with most generalizations, there is much truth to these.

Nevertheless, I take issue with both presumptions — that what women want is a riddle that would stump the Sphinx and that what men want is so easy it could be written on the back of a postage stamp.

In fact, I believe that both are relatively simple to answer (though neither is simple to achieve).

What does a man most want?

Answer: He most wants to be admired by the woman he loves.

One proof is that the most devastating thing a woman can do to her man is to hold him in contempt. That is so devastating to a marriage that, over time, it is often more toxic than an affair. I am fairly certain that more marriages survive an affair, as difficult as that is, than contempt. Of course, this goes in both directions, but when a woman shows contempt toward her man, his very manhood is called into question.

My father and mother were married 69 years. As my brother and I have heard countless times, “She put me on a pedestal” was the quality my father most often cited in describing what a wonderful wife my mother was. She admired him, and to him, that was everything. On the other hand, in describing her love for my father over all those years, my mother never once said, “He put me on a pedestal” (despite the fact that he constantly praised her). Rather, she always spoke of what a “great man” he was, how “brilliant,” etc. Of course, this is just one example, but I think it applies to the majority of men and women.

The obvious upshot of this thesis is that in order to gain a woman’s love, a man must make — and keep — himself admirable.

Boys know this instinctively. Studies that have observed boys and young men reveal how much harder they work at anything — sports comes immediately to mind — when they know girls are watching them.

That is why many single men in our society (often erroneously but understandably) place so much emphasis on what car they drive: They want to impress women. Yet, men couldn’t care less what car a woman drives. In fact, for most men, a woman arriving on a first date in a relatively inexpensive car renders her more desirable than if she showed up in an expensive luxury car — unless the man is looking to be supported by a woman. But few women are attracted to a man they know in advance they will have to support.

So, although the Internet jokes are right about men wanting sex, it isn’t sex men most want from their woman. They want to be admired — and sex is one manifestation of a woman’s admiration for her man. When a man is regularly denied sex, in his eyes that means that his wife does not hold him in high esteem. Worse, he actually feels humiliated as a man. That, not the sex per se, is why regular denial devastates a man.

So, then, if what a man most wants is to be admired by his woman, what is it that a woman most wants?

That is the subject of the next column.

But here’s a hint. If we begin with the assumption that men and women are made to bond with one another, what she most wants must be in some way related to what he most wants.

As we shall see, it is.”

Comment:  What happens in a culture when the woman is programmed to be placed on a pedestal by her husband and others?

Warning:  Listening to Dennis’ Radio Show during Christmas season, one is liable to hear among the most repulsive noises ever past off as music.  Such noises may be offensive to your ear and memory.  

How Does the Left View America’s Decline at Home and Abroad?

“Back to Normalcy” is the title of this article by a Yale professor writing at the New Republic of the left:

“Professor Paul Kennedy gives us a refined view of  “nut cases” in the news from one of hundreds of corners of the academic Left……all avoiding criticism in any words bent toward the Marxist Left.    

America is rotting because its core is sick.   The culture is under attack by the Left, its anarchists and  its atheists and their allies abroad.    It has lost its identity becoming vulnerable to the Kennedys of one Party politics in the American classroom. 

Mr. Kennedy makes no mention of the cultural miasma whereever the Marist Left has been peddled by its paperboys in the American media and academy.

“Where on earth is the United States headed? Has it lost its way? Is the Obama effect, which initially promised to halt the souring of its global image, over? More seriously, is it in some sort of terminal decline? Has it joined the long historical list of number one powers that rose to the top, and then, as Rudyard Kipling outlined it, just slowly fell downhill: “Lo, all our pomp of yesterday / At one with Nineveh and Tyre”? Has it met its match in Afghanistan? And has its obsession with the ill-defined war on terrorism obscured attention to the steady, and really much more serious, rise of China to the center of the world’s stage? Will the dollar fall and fall, like the pound sterling from the 1940s to the 1970s?

It is easy to say “yes” to all those questions, and there are many in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and in the United States itself, who do so. But there is another way to think about America’s current position in today’s mightily complicated world, and it goes like this: All that is happening, really, is that the United States is slowly and naturally losing its abnormal status in the international system and returning to being one of the most prominent players in the small club of great powers. Things are not going badly wrong, and it is not as if America as becoming a flawed and impotent giant. Instead, things are just coming back to normal. 

 

How would this more reassuring argument go? Well, we might start with a historical comparison. In about 1850, as the historian Eric Hobsbawm points out in his great work Industry and Empire, the small island-state of Britain produced perhaps two-thirds of the world’s coal, half its iron, five-sevenths of its steel, and half of its commercial cotton cloth. This extraordinary position was indeed abnormal; that is, it could not last forever. And as soon as countries with bigger populations and resources (Germany, the United States, Russia, Japan) organized themselves along British lines, it was natural that they would produce a larger share of world product and take a larger share of world power and thus cut Britain’s share back down to a more normal condition. This is a story which economic and political historians take for granted. It is about the tides of history and the shifts of power that occur when productive strength moves from one part of the world to another. It’s actually a sensible way of thinking about history over the long term.

So why should we not look at America, and America’s present and future condition, in the same calm way? It is of course a much broader and more populous country than Britain was and is, and possesses far more natural resources, but the long-term trajectory is roughly the same. After 1890, the United States had slowly overtaken the British Empire as the world’s number one by borrowing critical technologies (the steam engine, the railway, the textile factory), and then adding on its own contributions in chemical and electrical industries, and blazing the way in automobile and aircraft and computer hardware/software production. It was assisted by the good fortune of its geographic distance from any other great power (as Britain was by its insularity), and by the damage done elsewhere by World Wars I and II (as Britain was by the damage done elsewhere by the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars). By 1945, therefore, America possessed around half of the world’s GNP, an amazing share, but no less than Britain’s a century earlier when it held most of the world’s steam engines. But it was a special historical moment in both cases. When other countries began to play catch-up, these high shares of world power would decline. 

In the American case, we might tease out this argument by returning to a point made almost 20 years ago by the Harvard scholar Joseph Nye, that America’s strength and influence in world affairs was like a sturdy three-legged stool; that is, the nation’s unchallenged place rested upon the mutually reinforcing legs of soft power, economic power, and military power. In all three dimensions, Nye suggested, the United States was comfortably ahead of any other competitor. Global shares of relative strength were being diffused, perhaps, but in no way enough to shake America’s dominant role.

How does this assessment look today? Of the three legs to Nye’s stool, soft power—the capacity to persuade other nations to do what America would like—looks the shakiest. This is not a measure of strength that can be computed statistically, like steel output or defense spending, so subjective impressions enter into the debate. Nevertheless, would anyone dispute the contention that America’s ability to influence other states (such as Brazil, Russia, China, India) has declined during the past two decades? When Nye wrote, he pointed to the significance of popular culture (Hollywood, blue jeans), the dominance of the English language, the increasing standardization of U.S. business (from chain hotels to accounting rules), and the spread of democracy, all as signs of America’s influence.

Those were interesting thoughts, but we have since seen that radical students from Ankara to Amsterdam can still wear blue jeans but demonstrate against the United States, and that it is quite possible that a totally free voting system in (say) Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and China would lead to parliamentary majorities highly critical of Washington’s policies. The Pew Foundation’s regular poll of global opinion suggests diminishing approval of America, despite a short-term upward blip in favor of Obama. Soft power comes and goes very fast.

As to the weakening of the second leg of the stool, America’s relative economic and foreign-currency heft, well, a person would have had to have been blind and deaf not to observe its obvious deterioration in recent years. If anything surprises me, it is how fast and how large the relative weakening has been: A truly competitive great power should not have its trade deficits widening so fast, nor its federal, state, and municipal deficits ballooning at such a pace, literally, into the trillions of dollars. It is unsustainable, although that fact has been obscured by the thousands of American economists and investment advisers who emit positive noises to their clients and who themselves simply cannot think strategically. The collective folly of portfolio advisers is compounded by the current congressional baying for China’s currency to get stronger and stronger and stronger. Is that what the United States really wants—to get relatively weaker? At a certain stage in the past 500-year history of currencies and power, the Dutch guilder hustled the Spanish escudo off the scene; then the pound sterling hustled the guilder (and franc and mark) off the scene; then the dollar hustled the pound off the scene. What is Washington risking as it presses for a stronger Chinese currency? My apprehension is that it risks a much stronger Chinese political influence in the world.

America’s military strengths are, by contrast, still remarkable; at least this one leg of the stool is sturdy. But how sturdy? Well, almost half of the world’s current defense expenditures come from the United States, so it is not surprising that it possesses a gigantic aircraft carrier Navy, a substantial Army and Marine Corps that can be deployed all over the globe, an ultra high-tech Air Force, and logistical and intelligence-gathering facilities that have no equal. This is the strongest leg of the three. But it is not going unchallenged, and in several regards.

The first is in the rise of irregular or “asymmetrical” warfare by non-state actors. Anyone who has seen the recent award-winning movie The Hurt Locker, about the U.S. Army’s uncomfortable and bloody experiences in Iraq, will know what this means. It means that the narrow streets of Fallujah, or, even more, the high passes of the Helmand mountains, equalize the struggle; high-tech doesn’t quite work against a suicide bomber or a cunningly placed road mine. General Patton’s style of warfare just doesn’t succeed when you are no longer running your tanks through Lorraine but creeping, damaged and wincing, through the Khyber Pass. Sophisticated drones are, actually, stupid. They help avoid making the commitment to winning on the ground, and they will eventually lose.

Secondly, there is the emergence, along the historical pattern of the rise and fall of the great powers, of new challenger nations that are pushing into America’s post-1945 geopolitical space. Putin’s Russia is clawing back its historic zones of control and, frankly, there seems little that Washington can do if Belarus or a kicking-and-screaming Latvia is reabsorbed by the Kremlin. India is intent on making the term “Indian Ocean” not just a geographic expression; in ten or 20 years’ time, if its plans are fulfilled, it will be in control. Which is rather comforting, because it will thwart China’s purposeful though clumsy efforts to acquire much-needed African mineral supplies. But China, in its turn, and through its very new and sophisticated weapons systems (disruptive electronic warfare, silent submarines, sea-skimming missiles), may soon possess the capacity to push the U.S. Navy away from China’s shores. Like it or not, America is going to be squeezed out of Asia.

Overall, and provided the gradual reduction of America’s extensive footprint across Asia can occur through mutual agreements and uninterrupted economic links, that may not be a bad thing. Few, if any, Asian governments want the United States to pull out now, or abruptly, but most assume it will cease to be such a prominent player in the decades to come. Why not start that discussion now, or begin a rethink? American hopes of reshaping Asia sometimes look curiously like former British hopes of reshaping the Middle East. Don’t go there.

Finally, and most serious of all, there is America’s dangerous and growing reliance upon other governments to fund its own national deficits. Military strength cannot rest upon pillars of sand; it cannot be reliant, not forever, upon foreign lenders. The president, in his increasingly lonely White House, and the increasingly ineffective Congress, seem unable to get a harsh but decent fiscal package together. And now, the Tea Party nutcases are demanding a tax-cut-and-spend policy that would make the famous Mad Hatter’s tea party itself look rather rational.

This is not a way to run a country, and especially not the American nation that, despite its flaws, is the world’s mainstay. This is worrying for its neighbors, its many friends and allies; it is worrying for even those states, like India and Brazil, that are going to assume a larger role in world affairs in the years to come. We should all be careful to wish away a reasonably benign American hegemony; we might regret its going.

But the ebb and tides of history will take away that hegemony, as surely as autumn replaces the high summer months with fruit rather than flower. America’s global position is at present strong, serious, and very large. But it is still, frankly, abnormal. It will come down a ratchet or two more.

It will return from being an oversized world power to being a big nation, but one which needs to be listened to, and one which, for the next stretch, is the only country that can supply powerful heft to places in trouble. It will still be really important, but less so than it was. That isn’t a bad thing. It will be more normal.

Paul Kennedy is a professor of history and director of international security studies at Yale University. He is the author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. This article ran in the December 30, 2010, issue of the magazine.”

Comment:  Know the Marxist fronts!   Know the tyranny which Leftist Professor Paul Kennedy proposes.  Know what America is and what it should be.    Are democracy’s  enemies already in the White House? 

Accused Traitor and Thief, Bradley Manning, ‘Lonely’ Again! Seeks More Warmth and Comfort

Do readers recognize the name, Bradley Manning, yet?  He is the  Gay PFC in the  U.S. Army who recently made a name for himself  by satisfying his loneliness by getting ‘even’ with the  ’straight’ America he blames, by opening the highway for Julian Assange’s  Wikileaks semis  to drive into America’s private life.   Allegedly he is alledged to have done this treason.   (The Marxist Gay Left might claim that all of this is a CIA-FBI plot to blacken the gayworld, except it seems PFC Manning is proud of his activities while in military service.

The following article was found at HotAir:

“My goal of trying to focus on more positive, happy thoughts and keep my blood pressure down during the holidays this year officially collapsed this weekend. Why, you ask? Because I’ve finally read one – too – many – imbecilic articles on the “horrible” conditions under which PFC Bradley Manning – of Wikileaks fame – is being held at Quantico.

I should point out up front that while I do not claim credentials as any sort of expert on this subject, I’m not approaching the story from complete ignorance. During six years in the United States Navy I not only experienced a wide variety of conditions seen by those in service, but did a T.A.D. stint with the Military Police where I supervised prisoners and became familiar with confinement facilities both on shore and at sea. And I’m here to tell you that some of these self-styled human rights experts and legal analysts have probably been smoking something which the authorities would also frown upon.

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that PFC Manning may very well have done something which could amount to treason during a time of war, let’s look at some of the “shameful” conditions the young man is enduring.

His cell is approximately six feet wide and twelve feet in length.

I’m sorry… did you say twelve feet long? Not only is that bigger than the cells in the brig on every ship I was on, but the task force admiral’s stateroom on the flag bridge of our carrier wasn’t twelve feet long. This guy is staying in the military equivalent of the Ritz-Carlton, if only terms of floor space. Oh… and he’s in jail, remember?

I would also remind Private Manning that if his release of classified information results in even a single soldier, marine, sailor, airman or civilian dying because of his actions they will be staying in a considerably smaller space. It’s called a coffin.

He is allowed to watch television during the day. The television stations are limited to the basic local stations. His access to the television ranges from 1 to 3 hours on weekdays to 3 to 6 hours on weekends.

Wait… what?

He’s watching TV for up to six hours per day on the weekends? Well, you’ve certainly got me there, particularly if you are limiting him to basic cable. I mean, sure, the guy may have betrayed the nation he took an oath to protect, but that’s no reason to make him miss the next season of Nurse Jackie, you cruel animals.

At 5:00 a.m. he is woken up (on weekends, he is allowed to sleep until 7:00 a.m.). Under the rules for the confinement facility, he is not allowed to sleep at anytime between 5:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. If he attempts to sleep during those hours, he will be made to sit up or stand by the guards.

You’re only letting the poor bastard sleep for nine hours a night? I’m trying to remember the last time my family actually let me sleep for nine straight hours.

Must. Not. Smash. Keyboard. Or. Face.

From 7:00 p.m. to 9:20 p.m., he is given correspondence time. He is given access to a pen and paper. He is allowed to write letters to family, friends, and his attorneys. Each night, during his correspondence time, he is allowed to take a 15 to 20 minute shower.

On weekends and holidays, he is allowed to have approved visitors see him from 12:00 to 3:00 p.m.

He is only allowed to have one book or one magazine at any given time to read in his cell. The book or magazine is taken away from him at the end of the day before he goes to sleep.

I’m sorry… is this solitary confinement or Club Med?

He is prevented from exercising in his cell. He does receive one hour of “exercise” outside of his cell daily. He is taken to an empty room and only allowed to walk.

Yes, that’s very sad. But guess what? You’re in jail for what effectively amounts to treason. This is not a spa. We’re very sorry if the tennis courts aren’t located conveniently close to your cell.

There are plenty of jails right here in the United States where conditions are tougher than this, and those are for civilians with their full slate of rights. (For those not familiar, when you enlist in the U.S. military you actually surrender a number of your constitutional rights and fall under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. If you’re not used to it you might not like it. But that’s the way it is.)

And while we’re on the subject, forget American jails. Try spending some time in a jail in Mexico. Or Turkey. Or China.

For all you out there spending your nights wringing your hands over the confinement conditions of Private Manning, here’s a holiday suggestion. Why don’t you contact the U.S.O. and see if you can do something to brighten the days of service members who didn’t sell out their nation? Trust me, you’ll feel better about yourself after you do.”

(article was attributed to Jazz Shaw)

“Peaceful Islam” on the March! Democrat Muslim Ellison Wants an America without Borders

“Look on the bright side. At least we have a Democrat talking about God in American policy. Of course, it’s Rep. Keith Ellison, who here prays for borders to become “irrelevant.” In this clip from The Blaze from a June 2010 speech to the Network of Spiritual Progressives Conference, Ellison posits that military strength doesn’t make for safe borders, but that policies of “equity, generosity, and engagement” provide security”:

For a closer look at Democrat Representative to Congress from Minneapolis, Minnesota, please click on the following:

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/12/22/video-dem-rep-wants-borders-to-become-an-irrelevancy/

Follow Rep. Ellison closely.   Check out for yourself as often as you can if he is trustworthy as a “PeaceLoving Islamist, if there were not borders of any kind whatsoever, and he were in charge of our lives!!!

Thanks go to Ed Morrissey at HotAir for keeping Americans  posted on the up-to-date wisdoms emanating from Peace-loving Representative Keith Ellison elected by the Leftwing  establishment in Minneapolis, Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District.

Costly Obamacare Fails to Include the Costlier Attorneys’ Cuts

Americans should never forget that the world of the American lawyer is paved with Democrat Party largesse. 

Isn’t it about time the American court systems  are  freed of judges totally restricted to pools where these pests swim? 

The following is from Reason:

“A lawyer friend once joked to me that every time the government passed a regulation based around the word “reasonable,” it meant full employment for another class of lawyers. Between the FCC—which earlier today gave itself the right to determine what counts as “unreasonable” network management on the Internet—and a new rule governing health insurance rate increases released by the Department of Health and Human Services, the government put a lot of lawyers to work today. As The New York Times reports:

The new health care law, signed in March by President Obama, calls for the annual review of “unreasonable increases in premiums for health insurance coverage.” The law did not define unreasonable.

But HHS did! If a health insurer proposes a rate hike of more than 10 percent, the rate review process kicks in. That doesn’t mean, however, that there’s a bright line to determine what counts as unreasonable.

Under the new regulation, a federal health official said, “we are not setting an absolute numerical standard for whether a rate is unreasonable.” Instead, the proposed rule lays out factors to be considered. It says that a rate increase will be considered unreasonable if it is excessive, unjustified or “unfairly discriminatory.

A rate increase is defined as excessive if it “causes the premium charged for the health insurance coverage to be unreasonably high in relation to the benefits provided.”

In addition, under the rules, the assumptions used in calculating a rate increase must be based on “substantial evidence.”

Thanks to this clarifying list of descriptors, it’s all makes sense now: A rate hike is unreasonable if it’s excessive. It’s excessive if it’s “unreasonably high.” If you’re worried that this sounds circular, then let me suggest that you hop on the Gravitron, start spinning, and let me know when you can’t tell which way is up.

Whatever. HHS might as well have just declared that “they’re unreasonable when they’re too damn high, and that’s whenever we say so. The end!” These regulatory definitions are all spin, and they’re all mostly worthless; evidence becomes “substantial” whenever HHS says it does, based on whatever it wants: legal criteria, regulatory intuition, coin-toss, or the winner of a three-out-of-five Twister tournament.

Earlier this year, when a group of state insurance commissioners was putting together recommendations to HHS for a different regulations, one of them noted its potential impact and said very earnestly that “we don’t want to drive companies out of business by being arbitrary.”

That’s a nice sentiment, but it’s more than a little clueless: When writing guidelines for essentially discretionary rules like those we saw today, the entire regulatory process is arbitrary. There’s no reason that insurers should be forced to spend some specific percentage of their premium revenue on clinical expenses, no correct definition for what counts as a clinical expense or an administrative expense, and no matter how many unpleasant-sounding adjectives you pack into your regulatory definition book, no non-arbitrary way to determine which rate hikes are unreasonable.”