The Saga of Idiot Obama Continues....(Barf Alert!)

Obama is an idiot and clearly the most unqualified individual ever elected president of these United States, an idiot who was elected by 52% of the American population better known as the Idiocracy. I think Robert Heinlein was on to something when he suggested to limit the vote and the right to hold office to veterans of military service. The election of Obama proves the theory that when you allow idiots to vote they will elect a fellow idiot.

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1. "I Screwed Up" Well, that was quick. I was certain that President Obama would eventually overreach his mandate and provoke a backlash that would undermine his presidency. I didn't expect that he would do it within a month, before he has even managed to pass his first major piece of legislation, nor did I dare to hope that Obama's worst problems would be completely self-inflicted.

Before the inauguration, the Obama transition team received a lot of praise for how smooth, professional, and competent it was. You're not going to hear that any more. Obama has already dropped two cabinet nominees because of tax problems. A third nominee with tax problems, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, was confirmed—but he just caused the market to crash during his first major policy speech

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Now Connecticut Senator Judd Gregg—one of three Republicans nominated to Obama's cabinet, and the second man considered for Commerce Secretary, after Bill Richardson had to drop out because of an ethics scandal—has withdrawn his nomination citing "irresolvable conflicts" with Obama. Those conflicts were an attempt at a political takeover of the 2010 census (see item #2 below) and the stimulus bill.

As Jim Geraghty notes, this will make Senator Gregg a powerful critic of the pork-barrel stimulus, perhaps causing the three moderate Republicans who compromised on that bill to change their minds before the final vote on the version that came out of the House-Senate conference committee. After all, when Obama nominated Gregg, he cited the fact that:

Judd is famous—or infamous, depending on your perspective—on Capitol Hill for his strict fiscal discipline. It's not that he enjoys saying "no"—although if it's directed at your bill you might feel that way—it's that he shares my deep-seated commitment to guaranteeing that our children inherit a future they can afford.

That sounds like a good argument against Obama's spending stimulus.

The article below describes how great an embarrassment this latest episode is to the new administration, but over at NRO Peter Wehner has the best one-liner. Referring to Obama's somewhat vulgar explanation for the Tom Daschle fiasco, Wehner concludes: "'I screwed up' may become a bi-weekly confession."

By the time the fifth or sixth major mistake piles up in less than a month, it creates a lasting first impression of Obama as a bumbling chief executive—which is something America can never afford to have.

"Breaking: Gregg Withdraws at Commerce," Ed Morrissey, Hot Air, February 12 Judd Gregg has withdrawn from his nomination as Commerce Secretary. [T]his makes the third Cabinet appointment from Barack Obama to fail, and the second one at Commerce. Tom Daschle withdrew at HHS over his tax evasion, and Bill Richardson preceded Gregg as Commerce Secretary-designate before withdrawing over a pay-for-play corruption scandal in New Mexico….

This is an embarrassment for Obama and might imperil the stimulus package, if Gregg has any influence over the waverers. The decision to strip him of authority over the census looks like the last straw, however—as it should have been.

Barack Obama will take another big hit to his transition, but the man who really deserves the obloquy this time is Rahm Emanuel. The census ploy was a transparent attempt to hijack the data for political purposes, and pulling that stunt after Gregg's appointment made Gregg look like a political eunuch. It was classic overreach, and it's classic Emanuel.

Now he's embarrassed himself, made his boss look impotent, and managed at the same time to damage Obama's most critical piece of domestic policy legislation. If Gregg hits the media circuit to criticize Porkulus, his credibility as an Obama appointee will create a lot of heat on other Republicans and even a few Democrats to stop the runaway train of this bill and force it back into debate….

According to the AP, no one in the Obama administration saw this coming…. Gregg apparently got so incensed that he didn't bother to apprise them, or the people he did tell didn't get the word to the media-relations folks. What a breakdown, and an embarrassment as well.

2. The Census Power-Grab I caught the story below earlier this week, and I was pondering how significant it was when the withdrawal of Judd Gregg's nomination for Secretary of Commerce (see item #1 above) suddenly threw this issue into the top headlines.

The article below is a pretty thorough description of the Obama administration's attempt to take control of the 2010 Census, requiring that the census-takers report, not to the Commerce Secretary as is usual, but directly to the president. Why? Obama wanted to force the use of a dubious statistical method to fudge the Census numbers in a way that would benefit Democrats in the drawing of congressional districts.

The article ends with a former Census director's advice to Judd Gregg: "He will look neutered, with oversight of the most important function of his department over the next two years shipped over to the West Wing. If I were him, I wouldn't take the job unless I had that changed." It looks like Gregg took this advice. And by exposing this issue to intense public scrutiny, Gregg may well have blocked Obama's political power-grab.

"Why Obama Wants to Control the Census," John Fund, Wall Street Journal, February 11 President Obama said in his inaugural address that he planned to "restore science to its rightful place" in government. That's a worthy goal. But statisticians at the Commerce Department didn't think it would mean having the director of next year's Census report directly to the White House rather than to the Commerce secretary, as is customary. "There's only one reason to have that high level of White House involvement," a career professional at the Census Bureau tells me. "And it's called politics, not science."

Anything that threatens the integrity of the Census has profound implications. Not only is it the basis for congressional redistricting, it provides the raw data by which government spending is allocated on everything from roads to schools. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also uses the Census to prepare the economic data that so much of business relies upon. "If the original numbers aren't as hard as possible, the uses they're put to get fuzzier and fuzzier," says Bruce Chapman, who was director of the Census in the 1980s.

Mr. Chapman worries about a revival of the effort led by minority groups after the 2000 Census to adjust the totals for states and cities using statistical sampling and computer models. In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Department of Commerce v. U.S. House that sampling could not be used to reapportion congressional seats. But it left open the possibility that sampling could be used to redraw political boundaries within the states….

In theory, statisticians can identify general numbers of people missed in a head count. But it cannot then place those abstract "missing people" into specific neighborhoods, let alone blocks….
"The real issue is who directs the Census, the pros or the pols," says Mr. Chapman. "You would think an administration that's thumping its chest about respecting science would show a little respect for scientists in the statistical field." He worries that a Census director reporting to a hyperpartisan such as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel increases the chances of a presidential order that would override the consensus of statisticians.

3. Bailouts Are for Losers The left's attempt to revive itself is unraveling a little faster than we could have hoped. The article below, for example, describes growing resistance to a centerpiece of leftist populism: caps on pay for CEOs.

Note especially that the attempt to impose these caps may end up being one of the "poison pills" that could cause banks to withdraw from the TARP bailout scheme, ensuring that only the saddest of the sad sacks will be desperate enough to submit to Uncle Sam's control.

The result would be precisely what the Treasury Department wanted to evade. If healthy banks start refusing to take federal funds, then a bank's decision to participate in TARP would be regarded by the market as an admission of insolvency, causing an immediate run on any bank that joins the program.

And that's just as it should be, because bailouts are for losers.

"Lawmakers Goal to Cap Executive Pay Meets Resistance," Tomoeh Murakami Tse, Washington Post, February 12 Congressional efforts to impose stringent restrictions on executive compensation appeared to be evaporating yesterday as House and Senate negotiators worked to fine-tune the compromise stimulus bill.

Provisions to impose a penalty on banks that paid hefty bonuses and to cap pay at $400,000 for all employees at firms applying for additional government funds did not survive the compromise, sources said….

Several compensation analysts said yesterday that many of the measures that were in the Senate bill would have faced legal hurdles because they applied retroactively to banks that received government funds under rules agreed to last fall when Congress passed the Troubled Assets Relief Program's capital repurchase plan.

"It was not part of the original agreement," said Laura Thatcher, head of the executive compensation practice at Alston & Bird. "If they're going to retroactively change playing rules, it would seem to me that, in fairness, they would have to give the institutions an opportunity to back out of the deal altogether."

4. The "Savior-Based Economy" The most fundamental reason to believe that the current turn to the Left might be temporary is that America is still a nation of individualists, who will reject the policies of Barack Obama and congressional Democrats once they get a sense for what they really mean.

The article below may seem to be an example for the opposite conclusion, since it describes the throngs who come to Barack Obama's public events seeking a savior who will give them handouts. But as more of these stories begin to emerge, consider the backlash from the larger number of Americans who are disgusted by the gang of leeches attaching themselves Obama's cause—and outraged at the fact that it is the blood of responsible, self-supporting Americans that is being sucked into Obama's spending stimulus.

That backlash is already finding its voice, in a good Michelle Malkin column and in the even better column below from the Boston Herald's Michael Graham. Best of all is the fact that it is Republican governor Mark Sanford—a man to watch—who has given the best name to this attitude of dependence: he called it a "savior-based economy."

It's interesting, though, that "savior-based" should be used as a term of derision—by religious conservatives, who believe in their own form of "savior-based" morality.

"Hapless Have Hands Out," Michael Graham, Boston Herald, February 12 I have seen the future of the American economy, and it's waiting for a handout in Fort Myers, Fla.

On Tuesday, America got to watch as proud members of the new Obama Nation lined up at a town hall microphone to ask not what they could do for our country, but what our new president was going to do for them.

One woman wanted President Barack Obama to do something about the waiting list for public housing in Florida…. Another Obama supporter wanted to know what the president's stimulus plan was going to do for those who don't like their jobs at McDonald's….

Still another young man was upset that when he lost his $3,000-a-month job, he got a mere $1,100 a month in unemployment. That can't be right, he insisted. Shouldn't the government make up the difference? "How—if you go from making $3,000 a year, a month, to $1,100 a month—how are you able to take care of your families," he asked the president. "Why can't we have that to be automatic?"

Yeah, why not get as much money for staying home as you do for going to work? And why do I have to pay this stupid mortgage every month, too?...

It's not that I lack sympathy for struggling American families. How can you not feel for a woman like Henrietta Hughes, who told Obama she was living in a truck and just wanted "a kitchen and a bathroom"? But people who worked and saved for their homes also have to ask "why?" Why can't she do what so many of us have done when bad times have come before—find a way to get by?

Like most middle-class Americans, I've been broke. I've lived for a time with just the cash in my pocket and the clothes that fit in the back of my crappy, second-hand car. Plenty of us have. But at no point did it ever occur to me to drive to a political rally and demand that some pol pay my bills, give me a house or find me a job.

5. Darwin's Achievement Charles Darwin has been one of my intellectual heroes ever since I first read On the Origin of Species twenty years ago. What impressed me was not the content of his theory of evolution by natural selection; I was already very familiar with evolution before I read the book. It was his method, which is something you cannot fully appreciate except by reading Darwin directly.

Darwin stands in my mind as the quintessential example of the inductive thinker, marshalling a vast scope and variety of concrete observations to make a spectacular, grand-scale integration that unified an entire science. He provided a kind of model or gold standard for valid thinking, which has had a very strong influence on me ever since.

Wednesday was the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, and I thought the article below did a good job of describing some of what was intellectually unique and admirable about him.

I would also like to point out what I think is a little-noted reason why Darwin is important to the context and possibly the development of Objectivism. When asked about Darwin, Ayn Rand said that she had no opinion on the scientific validity of his theory. Yet I suspect that she was indirectly influenced by him in one respect. Darwin fully established a biological perspective on human life—the view of man as a biological entity engaged in the task of sustaining life.

This same outlook strikes me as a unique and important aspect of Ayn Rand's approach to ethics. She began her ethics (most notably in her article "The Objectivist Ethics") by placing man in a continuum with the other animals—differentiated by his possession of a rational mind—and then asking the question a biologist would ask of any other living being: what is his means of survival?

A rational, scientific perspective on human life and on man's place in nature is the great gift Darwin gave us, and Ayn Rand made full use of that achievement.

"The Origin of Darwin," Olivia Judson, New York Times, February 11 Unlike many members of the human species, Darwin makes an easy hero. His achievements were prodigious; his science, meticulous. His work transformed our understanding of the planet and of ourselves.

At the same time, he was a humane, gentle, decent man, a loving husband and father, and a loyal friend. Judging by his letters, he was also sometimes quite funny. He was, in other words, one of those rare beings, as likeable as he was impressive….

He practiced a kind of ideal, dream-like science. He examined the minutiae of nature—shells of barnacles, pistils of flowers—but worked on grand themes. He corresponded with lofty men of learning, but also with farmers and pigeon breeders. He observed, questioned, experimented, constantly testing his ideas.

Could plants from the mainland colonize a newly formed island? If so, they would need a way to get there. Could they survive in the ocean? To find out, he immersed seeds in salt water for weeks, then planted them to see how many could sprout. He reported, for example, that "an asparagus plant with ripe berries floated for 23 days, when dried it floated for 85 days, and the seeds afterwards germinated." The Atlantic current moved at 33 nautical miles a day; he figured that would take a seed more than 1,300 miles in 42 days. Yes, seeds could travel by sea.

He published important work on subjects as diverse as the biology of carnivorous plants, barnacles, earthworms and the formation of coral reefs. He wrote a travelogue, "The Voyage of the Beagle," that was an immediate best seller and remains a classic of its kind. And as if that was not enough, he discovered two major forces in evolution—natural selection and sexual selection—and wrote three radical scientific masterpieces, "On the Origin of Species" (1859), "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex" (1871), and "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals" (1872).

The "Origin," of course, is what he is best known for. This volume, colossal in scope yet minutely detailed, laid the foundations of modern biology….

Still more impressive: he was not afraid to apply his ideas to humans.