http://www.mlgoodell.webs.com

After years of research, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control announced a medical breakthrough today. “We’ve known for years that, if caught early enough, liberalism can be treated,” observed Dr. M. D. Medici, who headed up the CDC’S Fiscal Sanity project. “The problem was how to identify a liberal in time.”

Citing the recent election of President Barack H. Obama, (D-Chi), Medici explained, “Some of the markers were there, but they weren’t always evident, thanks to a phenomenon known as Media Shield Syndrome. Naturally, you can’t force someone to undergo treatment, and by the time we were able to clearly identify the symptoms, the patient was already infected with  liberalism, and his brain was ravaged by full-blown Liberalism Induced Fiscal Insanity Syndrome, or LIFIS. It’s tragic, really,” Medici sighed. “I liked this patient. He was a good father, real smart, you know,  though not always able to explain things simply enough for angry white people to understand. Plus he had the sweetest fadeaway jumper. From 12 to 15 feet, he was lights out.”

However, with the development of this highly effective screening method, researchers are confident that liberalism can be detected early and treated at a far lower cost than that associated with LIFIS. Medici described this new diagnostic tool as the direct result of recent health care legislation. “Obamacare gave us a dramatic new understanding of Fiscal Insanity, which allowed us to develop this potentially lifesaving process.”

The diagnostic process is remarkably simple, consisting of a single question: If the top marginal income tax rate in 2010 is 35%, and the top marginal rate in 2011 is 35%, how would you describe the situation? If you answered “It is a tax cut,” then you are almost certainly a liberal. You should get treatment immediately before you succumb to full-blown LIFIS.

Along with calling the refusal to raise taxes a tax cut, other early warning signs of LIFIS include referring to the “cost” of not raising taxes, and warning that not raising taxes “will increase the deficit by $370 billion each year.” In fact, as most research scientists (and Walmart cashiers) understand, the refusal to raise taxes can only increase a deficit if expenditures were scheduled to increase by a like amount. As Dr. Medici observed, “If you don’t want to increase the deficit next year, don’t increase spending. If you want to reduce the deficit, reduce spending. It’s frightfully simple.”

Long regarded as one of the major vectors for LIFIS, “The New York Times” revealed yet another symptom of LIFIS in last Sunday’s “Week in Review” section. In a feature titled “By the Numbers,”  LIFIS victim David Leonhardt pointed out that “Extending the Bush tax cuts on income above $250,000" will cost $60 billion a year. Naturally, to the LIFIS sufferer, this “tax cost” will increase the deficit. How does this occur? Simple. Leonhardt explains by asking, “What else might that $60 billion buy?”

Quite a bit as it turns out. Among other things, if we were to raise taxes on Upper-Middle Class people we could triple federal funding for medical research, provide universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, launch a national infrastructure program to repair and upgrade roads, bridges, mass transit, water systems and levees. Or we could double spending for clean-energy research, or provide free college, including room and board, for about half of all students.

There are other things we could spend that $60 billion windfall on, though Leonhardt failed to mention them, no doubt due to space constraints caused by falling ad revenue. They include providing every TSA agent with a lifetime subscription to Penthouse Magazine, printing high-quality bogus Social Security cards and Passports for every illegal alien in the United States, converting more than 47% of existing railroad lines into bicycle trails, or buying new Tesla Roadsters for more than half-a-million Californians.

Worthwhile projects all, no doubt, except for one problem. That money doesn’t exist, and that shopping list is the main reason why taxes must not be raised, on the rich, the super rich, Wall Street Big Whigs or even plumbers from Ohio. It would be one thing if our taxes were being increased to eliminate the deficit, or even to reduce the National Debt, but it wouldn’t be used for that. It would be spent. It would be used to increase the size of an already burgeoning government. It would be a biological Weapon of Mass Self-destruction, used to spread the scourge of LIFIS throughout the land.

http://www.mlgoodell.webs.com

It’s never a good thing to pity the President, yet it was hard not to while watching his press conference yesterday. The gist of his comments seemed to be his hope that Republicans had finally learned their lesson. Maybe now, after this historic repudiation of the Democrat Party and its leadership, Republicans will stop throwing up road blocks and will start doing what they’re told.

The President’s narcissistic disorder was on prominent display yesterday. According to Obama, there were only two reasons the Democrats were repudiated by virtually the entire adult population of the country.

    1. Obama hadn’t fixed the economy fast enough, and
    2. He didn’t do a good enough job telling the public what a great job he was doing.

Oh well, maybe the Indian people will “get” him better than we will. The size of Obama’s entourage, (in excess of 2,000 friends and family, along with a navy flotilla of more than 30 ships) should go down well in a country whose cinema consists of frequent over-the-top musical production numbers featuring hundreds of happily gyrating dancers and singers.

The American people, for some bizarre reason, are still bitterly clinging to guns and holding their hands over their ears to avoid their Presidents “facts and science.”  They didn’t “throw the bums out” because they were afraid, they voted them out because they were angry. They were angry at a Congress who tried to force unpopular programs down their throats. They were disgusted with a system allowing or even encouraging legislators to vote for bills they hadn’t read, to approve laws which hadn’t yet been written.

Most of all they were furious at their President who based his campaign on lies and proceeded, from Day One, to rub the public’s face in his deceit. He ran as a “post-partisan” paradigm shift. Instead, he was the progeny of bare-knuckled Chicago politics. He ran as a post-racial unifier, and attempted to pack his cabinet with some of the ugliest racialist advocates ever to rise to the surface of the Washingtonian septic field.

The President says the last thing the American people want is to refight the battles of the past two years. He is dead wrong. That is exactly what the American people want to do. They want to repeal the travesties imposed upon them, and they want their representatives to find some way of coming together to find solutions to the problems which government ought to address, while keeping their hands off matters which are none of their business. They want this process to be deliberate, sound, open and above board. In other words, they want the new Republican majority to keep the President’s promises.

That should be the GOP’s objective. Putative Speaker of the House John Boehner should call upon the President and his party to listen to the American people. He should ask them to agree to repeal Obamacare, and to sit down together and attempt, in a truly bipartisan manner, to find solutions to the truly pressing issues many Americans confront when dealing with health care. Rather than revamp the entire system, they should look for ways to streamline the government’s role in health care, and to bend the cost curve downward.

They should ask the President to cooperate with their noble objective. If he does, they should build upon the opportunity to work together and address other issues. They should go back to the drawing board and come up with a new, responsible, workable financial reform package. They should cooperate on developing an energy policy which addresses issues existing today, on this planet, not those in some speculative future, floating around in the giant padded room of Al Gore’s brain.

If Obama is willing to work with Republicans, if he is willing to grow, and to learn how to be an effective leader, how to truly be an American President, the GOP should be eager to work with him. They should, even if this increases Obama’s chances for reelection. If Obama does manage to grow up in office, if he can begin to approach greatness, then it would be in the country’s interest for him to be reelected.

The last time Republicans were ascendant in the House of Representatives, they mutated from a governing party to a bloc whose sole objective was the retention of power. They lost their way and were roundly rejected by the American people. They were cast into the wilderness. The only reason they aren’t still wandering there is the Democrats misread their mandate. They weren’t elected because they were Democrats, they were elected because they weren’t Republicans. It is the same this year. The American people have given Republicans a reprieve, solely because they aren’t Democrats. The GOP had better heed the public this time. There are no third acts in American politics.

An honest, sincere and consistent, proactive call for bipartisanship can be a winning policy for Republicans. The problem with Obama’s sense of bipartisanship is it was synonymous with Republican surrender. That has to change. If Obama and the remaining Democrat leaders are willing to play along, we can accomplish genuine reform. If they aren’t, Republicans still have a mandate, which is to repeal Obamacare. If the President vetoes their repeal, the proper response is to call again, to beg, to plead, for a bipartisan response to the public’s needs. Then they decline to fund the program.

The key here is to constantly plead for genuine bipartisanship, so that the blame for inevitable gridlock is assigned where it is due, on the President and the remnants of his party. This is a formula for a sweeping victory in 2012. Plus it has the added advantage of being the right thing to do.

http://www.mlgoodell.webs.com

Last week, while reading Jonathan Alter’s hilarious parody of liberalism in the New York Times Book Review, I was struck anew by the elitist, dismissive tone liberals project  when discussing Conservatives. When, I wondered, did liberals, or progressives as they prefer to be called whenever they are about to have their electoral posteriors handed to them, stop being advocates of the common man, and start being so arrogant and intolerant?

As  I pondered liberals’ tendency to dismiss the pursuits of most of their fellow Americans, to sneer at their culinary choices, scoff at their entertainment venues, mock their beverage selections and howl derisively at the stores they choose to patronize, I grew more convinced that I must be a liberal.

I am a snob. If I am in a bar with nothing but Bud Light and Miller on tap, I won’t drink beer. I won’t order wine from a carte which doesn’t feature vintages. I will not drink wine that has been advertised on television, nor am I likely to visit a restaurant similarly promoted.

I would much rather attend a Detroit Symphony Orchestra concert than one by Kid Rock (or did, before they went on strike). I abhor television. It stultifies the mind. I don’t care who will be the next American Idol, Survivor, Bachelor or Bachelorette. I would rather read. I have been caught listening to thirteenth century church music while doing so.  I would rather watch a film than take in a movie, and I prefer one that will make me think over one which will make me laugh.

I do not understand NASCAR. I have never been in a Walmart, but I still believe the typical shopper is so fat that if she gains just one more ounce, her stretch pants will vaporize.

I don’t hunt. I never have. I have no desire to do so, though I do enjoy walking in the woods. I recycle. I compost. I drive a Hybrid. I ride my bike and support Rail-Trails. My favorite sport is professional cycling.

I feel uncomfortable around men who work with their hands. I never served in the military, and often find it hard to think of what to say in the company of veterans.

I usually think I’m the smartest guy in the room, and that anyone who disagrees with me just hasn’t thought things through.

Basically, I’m an elitist and a snob. I’m arrogant. I look down my nose at most people. I am, without question, a liberal. So why am I voting a straight Republican ticket tomorrow? All I can figure out is, it’s like Obama says, I’m hard-wired to ignore “facts and science and argument” when I’m scared. Yeah, that must be it.

http://www.mlgoodell.webs.com

President Barack Obama had another one of those “Whoops” moments over the weekend, where he dropped his guard and spoke honestly. It was in the same vein as his “spread the wealth around” remark to Joe the Plumber, or his “they cling to their guns and religion” slur at a West Coast fundraiser. It helped us understand why he is surgically attached to a TelePrompter.

The latest moment of clarity came at a fundraiser outside Boston, hosted by a group of doctors shopping for influence. While trying to explain why the Democrat party is headed for a near-historic electoral repudiation next month, Obama chalked it up to post traumatic stress disorder. “And so part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time,” he blathered, “is because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared.”

A brief glance at that sentence structure is enough to show that somebody in that room was definitely scared.  But it isn’t necessarily the voters. A more detailed examination captures the true reason for the national repudiation of the Hope and Change double agent. Our President labors under the delusion that there is only one true ideological God, and Obama is His prophet.

Can there be a contest between two differing world views? Not in Obama’s opinion. On the one hand there are facts, science and logic. On the other, fear and ignorance. In Obamaworld the only mistake he has made is the failure to communicate with the public. If he had, if he had gone out and made a speech or two, or flown around the country hosting town hall meeting with selected acolytes, if he had gone on “The View,” for instance, then people wouldn’t be panicking right now. They wouldn’t be susceptible to false claims perpetrated by shadowy “millionaires and billionaires” from foreign countries who are buying American votes even as we speak.

It is always fun to watch the most elitist President since John F. Kennedy play the populist card. It brings one to tears to watch the one time Favorite Son of Wall Street blaming Wall Street for the looming upsurge in Democrat Congressional unemployment. So called Wall Street Fat Cats were once content to rub shoulders with the smooth, glib, lanky Obama. He was one of them. He went to the right schools, he spoke the right language, only lapsing into Negro dialect when he wanted to, (as Harry Reid once put it). He winked and nodded, accepted their checks and assured them by manner if not actually word, that they shouldn’t worry about the angry words he tossed to the Flyover State  Neanderthals. He was one of them.

Then, suddenly, he wasn’t. After the election American businesses discovered the President actually did believe profits were evil. They learned that the only companies Obama liked were ones that lost money. And those he bought. Suddenly giving checks to Obama, or Reid, or Nancy Pelosi looked like a worse investment than credit default obligations and subprime mortgages. Once they stopped financing him, Obama realized it was dangerous for them to be involved in politics.

The curiously reticent Obama, at least in his eyes, discovered that the only Democrats referring to his impressive string of legislative achievements were those who voted against them. So many Democrats claim they voted against the legislation, and “Stood up to Nancy Pelosi,” it’s hard to imagine anything got done. Would that that were true.

Now, heading down the home stretch, the only thing Obama can think to say, other than to call the electorate idiots, is to raise the specter of unnamed, secretive foreigners plotting to steal the election out from under the American people. This is such a desperate, and patently false ploy, that it illustrates the intellectual bankruptcy of the Democrat leadership. They promised months ago that this election would get ugly, and financed researchers to unearth any dirt they could find on Republican candidates. The pickings have been slim, limited mainly to things said and done in high school and college. Not that they haven’t hesitated to sling whatever mud they have found.

It seems only a matter of time before the Democrats borrow from that classic smear campaign. Soon Obama will announce, in his sonorous tones, that Sean Bielat’s sister is a thespian and once performed the act for money, or that Joe Miller once paid for the services of a horticulturalist. He might announce that in elementary school Ron Johnson emulated older boys on the playground, and that his parents allowed him to masticate in their presence. And did you know Mario Rubio once tried to interest a 13-year-old girl in philately?

The list could go on and on. The important thing to remember is the politics of personal destruction is a strange strategy to take for a President who believes he has a monopoly on facts, science and logic.

http://www.mlgoodell.webs.com

The Giant Pander is an Endangered Species. It is rarely found in captivity, but is known to prowl the halls of Congress, devouring blue dogs. While primarily a land animal, negotiating the steep, fog-shrouded hills of her natural habitat, and nearby pricey vineyards, the Giant Pander frequently flies back and forth across the country, for no apparent reason, often with two or three generations of offspring in tow.

The Giant Pander is distinguished by designer pants suits, and a tasteful silk scarf to conceal the wattles on her 70-year-old neck. She can be identified by the psychotic little titter she makes when announcing the passage of massive, bankrupting bills that no one wants or understands. The way to know a Giant Pander is lying is to watch her lips. If they are moving, she is.

The Giant Pander announced yesterday that as soon as Democrat Congressional candidates finish getting their butts kicked, they will return to Congress to pass a measure giving $250 to 58 million Social Security recipients. No, this isn’t a Stimulus bill. This is a fairness bill. Why do we need to add $15 billion to a deficit already worthy of a Greek tragedy (or even a Greek budget)? Because for the second consecutive year, there will be no Cost of Living Adjustment, or COLA, for Social Security recipients. Why is there no COLA? Because the Consumer Price Index, used to determine whether there is a need for cost of living adjustments, has not increased. According to the CPI, prices remain below the level they reached in 2008.

If the Giant Pander had the interests of her country at heart, she would explain to retirees that Social Security is not their personal, limitless ATM. She would explain to them what the CPI represents, and why that determines cost of living adjustments. She would help them understand that they do not deserve a raise in their allowance every time the price of Depends ticks up down at The Villages Stop and Shop.

Instead, the Giant Pander urges passage of a $15 billion dollar bribe. The Giant Pander believes Social Security recipients are so greedy, and so venal that they’ll pocket $250 cash, and vote as they’re told to. No doubt some of them are, but there are enough of them who realize the Giant Pander and the rest of her ilk are spending their children and grandchildren’s futures on a feeding frenzy binge which would make even a French civil servant blush.

That is why the Giant Pander is an Endangered Species. Let us hope, come November 2, the American people will put her out of her misery.

http://www.mlgoodell.webs.com

Those who have been following the 9/11 Mosque controversy from the beginning are already aware of the multiple name changes the project has undergone. The project began life as a behemoth mosque called Cordoba House, until its developers learned there are actually a few Americans with a sense of history. Cordoba, those enlightened few reminded us, or at least the few of us who were paying attention, was the site of a massive mosque, built atop the ruins of a church, which marked the onset of the Muslim conquest of Spain.

Apparently sensitive to the public’s feelings, or chagrined that the blatancy of their mission statement had “come home to roost,” the developers redubbed the project Park51. Not only does Park51 have a trendy and innocuous ring, it is also more suggestive of the large community center for all faiths which the erstwhile behemoth mosque became, at least in the shadowy developers’ brochures.

Now that the project has gained the imprimatur of none other than Barack Hussein Obama (D-Chi) himself, perhaps the developers should consider rechristening the mosque once more. One possible name is Chamberlain House, after Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain, as those, again, few historically literate Americans know, was considered for nearly seven decades, to be the greatest appeaser in the history of the world. Back in 1939 Chamberlain cut a deal with Hitler whereby England and France would abrogate their commitment to Czechoslovakia’s sovereignty in exchange for Adolph Hitler’s assurance that that was all the lebensraum his people needed.

Not a bad deal. Betray one small country, and “Peace is at Hand.” Well, we all know how that turned out. Okay, most of us know how that turned out. Some of us, okay, one of us, who apparently never got the news about the collapse of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression pact, still thinks of Chamberlain as a hero. In fact, it seems he swept into office committed to a foreign policy so docile as to make Neville look like a warmonger. Then, after eighteen months of knee-jerk appeasement, or perhaps knee-jerk knee-bending might be more appropriate, the American President chose the occasion of a religious ceremony marking the end of his daily fast to embrace the principle that monuments celebrating  the slaughter of American on American soil are to be encouraged in the name of tolerance.

For that is what the 9/11 Mosque represents. The American people don’t need their President to lecture them on what America stands for. They know instinctively what America stands for, and it is most emphatically not allowing our enemies to dance on our sons and daughters’ graves. Americans, by a 3-to-1 margin, know instinctively that the 9/11 Mosque is wrong. They understand that while we are not at war with Islam, the people waging war against us are doing it in the name of Islam. The American people have no trouble with that sort of nuance, unlike their President who is terrified that “the Muslim World” will be offended if he tells the truth.

Americans are so adamant in their opposition to the 9/11 Mosque that one has to wonder what kind of advice Obama is getting. Having  foisted statist policies on the public to the extent that much of the nation is in political rebellion, he had to know that taking such a position was tantamount to throwing gasoline on the fire. Did no one inform him? Or are all Obama’s aides and advisors still telling him how manly his new wardrobe makes him look?

Or is there another explanation? Is it possible that Obama knew his remarks were political suicide, but having been indoctrinated from an early age to believe that Americans are always wrong, when confronted with a position on which 70% of Americans agree, he couldn’t help but take the other side.

We have already seen this arrogance in action, as Obama has patiently explained, over and over the benefits that will accrue from the implementation of Obamacare, or financial reform, or increased fuel consumption taxes, or deficits soaring to the stratosphere. The fact that each time he opens his mouth more people oppose his policies only proves their stupidity. If 70% are opposed to a monument to Muslim conquest in New York, why, it must be a good thing, a necessary thing, just the thing to get behind.

On the one hand, you have the President telling the people that building the 9/11 Mosque is the essence of being an American. On the other hand, you have the vast majority of Americans who know instinctively that the project is a calculated affront, an act of appallingly bad taste and poor judgment. That the President doesn’t get that last bit shouldn’t come as too great of a surprise. After all, he recently appeared on “The View.”

http://www.mlgoodell.webs.com

Seeking to turn control of Detroit’s Public Schools over to the Mayor, a group called Change for Better Schools presented the Detroit City Council with petitions containing 30,704 signatures. The petitions sought to place the advisory question on the November ballot. Even if it passed, the State Legislature would have to vote to remove the elected School Board. Still, the City Council turned them down.

As many people know, Detroit’s public schools are in sole possession of first place in the National Education Association’s much-ballyhooed Race to the Bottom initiative to transform American education. With a graduation rate generously ascribed as being around 25%, Detroit’s Public Schools System is justifiably proud of its track record in training Detroit students to become wards of the state.

Despite such impressive achievements in the classroom, the DPS has struggled over the years to manage its fiscal affairs. Though the system was rife with looting by suppliers and employers, it was difficult to figure out how serious the problem was because their financial records were a mess. Apparently the DPS made a practice of hiring its own graduates. The financial situation was so disastrous that even the state’s Democratic administration had to step in.

The Governor appointed Robert Bobb to bring some order to the fiscal train wreck. In a tremendous show of support, a grateful School Board immediately sued to stop Bobb’s reforms. Things have gone from bad to worse since then, which is what prompted Change for Better Schools to seek a way to get the School Board’s mitts off the district.

Fortunately, the Detroit City Council denied the reformers’ request. They had the wisdom to realize in these difficult economic times, it would be foolish to eliminate jobs, especially jobs like seats on the DPS Board of Education. Without the board, they no doubt reasoned, where would people like Otis Mathis III and Reverend David Murray get work?

Not long ago,  “The Detroit News” released emails which demonstrated Mathis’ um, shall we say casual acquaintance with the English language. To some, being functionally illiterate would be enough to disqualify a person from serving on a School Board. Not so the DPS. Mathis was elected board President. At least he was until last month, when he was forced to resign after he unzipped his pants and fondled himself during a meeting with the (female) Superintendent.

Apparently that was too much, even for DPS Board members. Or at least, for most of them. Mathis tried to renege on his resignation after a fellow board member, Reverend David Murray, (ahem), rose to his defense, claiming Mathis was  “a young man; maybe he didn’t know it was offensive to her.”  Mathis was 55, the same age as Murray.

Of course, Reverend Murray is a piece of work himself. He is not a minister. He had his name legally  changed to Reverend so he could be listed as Reverend on the ballot. This means a lot to voters in a culture where the church is the only institution not completely broken. Even more impressive than his name, is the fact that two years ago the state’s Childrens Protective Service removed all six of Murray’s children from his home amid allegations of abuse, neglect and domestic violence. At a subsequent hearing Murray lost custody of his children, including four foster children. Fortunately, he was reelected to the board the following year.

 The Detroit City Council showed good judgment in preserving the School Board. There aren’t a lot of good jobs left in Detroit, even for stellar individuals like Murray and Mathis. Why cut off any opportunity for advancement?

http://www.mlgoodell.webs.com
Transocean should have called their drilling rig Deepwater Hubris, not Deepwater Horizon, because hubris is the primary cause of this ongoing environmental disaster. In fact, the main lesson to be learned from this is that hubris is always dangerous, but hubris a mile below the surface of the sea is disastrous.

Hubris is defined as supreme overconfidence, even arrogance, especially as it relates to one’s ability or competence. This description can be applied to everyone involved in this environmental debacle, from BP executives to Transocean rig managers, to the hapless men and women of the Minerals Management Service, whose sloth, complacency  and incompetent give new meaning to the cliche, “Good enough for government work.”

It defies belief that BP, behind schedule and over budget, would seek to cap the well with untried methods, using equipment that violated its own company safety standards. It is hard to conceive of why Transocean employees, after insisting to BP executives that their instructions were hazardous and wouldn’t work, would go ahead and follow them. The only part that actually makes sense is that government regulators, once informed that BP was having trouble controlling the well, would sign off on delaying the mandatory blowout preventer tests for two weeks.

Hindsight certainly has its merits, but it is hard to believe how complacent everybody involved was in dealing with an activity fraught with hazard, and carrying unfathomable consequences in the event of failure. The fact is, nobody considered failure an option. We’ve heard so much about the amazing improvements in drilling technology over the years, and it is beyond dispute. The idea of drilling a two-mile deep well, starting from a point a mile below the surface of the sea is mind-boggling. It is an amazing feat of engineering.

What no one ever talked about was the fact that there have been absolutely no advances made in procedures to cap an underwater gusher. None. The strategies employed by BP are the same as those attempted during the Iztoq gusher more than 30 years ago. They didn’t work then, and, until recently, they hadn’t worked this time. And that is shocking. The hubris that allowed every principal player to convince him or herself that the technological advances had rendered remediation superfluous is the reason the Gulf Coast is coated with oil today.

While I am not accustomed to endorsing President Barack Obama’s decisions, I must agree with the six-month moratorium he imposed on deepwater drilling. If anything, it didn’t go far enough. Rather than just a six-month period, deepwater drilling should be banned unless and until oil companies, drillers and other interested parties can come up with an effective, foolproof and verifiable means of capping a well. They need to consider worst case scenarios, and come up with solutions. The solutions must be demonstrated, through computer modeling and practical drills, to be effective, not most of the time, but every time.

These disasters may only come about every 30 years or so, but if it takes 30 years to recover from one, that leaves no grounds for complacency. The fact is, the world is going to be fueling its economy with oil for the foreseeable future, and oil companies are going to have to find it in progressively more inhospitable environments. Accidents will continue to happen, it’s only human nature, so it only makes sense to have the means to clean them up on hand and ready to go. To do otherwise opens the door to Nemesis.

http://www.mlgoodell.webs.com

Like most Americans, what I crave more than anything--more even than a big, thick, juicy hamburger smothered in cheese, bacon and onions, and a double order of fries, and a triple extra large coke–is celebrity. It doesn’t have to be permanent, just a fleeting brush with the paparazzi would be enough. Now when I say celebrity, I don’t mean fame. At least, not the kind of fame which comes from mastery of a particular art or craft. Rather, speaking as a typical American, the celebrity I seek is the kind of unearned celebrity which comes from television.

Unfortunately, having not been blessed with the gift of enthusiastic self-abasement, the venue best suited to celebrity formation, that of Reality TV, is beyond my means. As much as I’d like to eat bugs on a desert island, get verbally abused by Donald Trump, or dance with Hollywood chefs, I just can’t bring myself to jump up and down and shout “Me, me, me!”

So it was that I turned from appearing on Reality TV shows to developing them. I’ve kicked around a few ideas, but none of them really got any traction until I came up with P*mp My Bride (c2010 by Michael Goodell). This is the real deal. It is a virtual montage of all the most offensive, off-putting and demeaning shows on TV, in other words, to borrow the Hollywood lexicon, it is All New, TV Land’s next smash hit!

The idea works like this: recruit ten repulsive couples willing to expose their marriage planning to public ridicule. While not mandatory, sporting mullets can’t hurt candidates’ chances, especially for the brides-to-be. Being grossly overweight is a plus, as are bad skin, bad teeth, and fashion felonies stretched over generally grotesque body shapes. Over the course of the season the women will be reshaped, reformed, run through the wringer, totally made over and forced into shape. Get the idea? You take the best parts of Biggest Loser, Total Make Over, Bridezilla, True Housewives of Wherever, and pack them into one show.

Add to this derivative mishmash a sinister touch of The Bachelor. The entire proceedings are watched over by a shadowy underworld figure, maybe a Mexican drug lord, a Goldman Sachs Derivatives Trader, or even a Greek Public Employee Benefits Manager, who sits in a booth high above the stage, a la Deal or no Deal.

Unlike most Reality TV shows, no one gets “voted off the island.” For the big finale, all ten couples are still in the running. In fact, they all get married in a group ceremony, maybe with the United Nations General Secretary officiating. Afterward, the ten brides present themselves to the shadowy underworld figure. He selects his favorite, and after paying the lucky groom $1,000,000 for the privilege, spends the wedding night with her.

It’s a great idea. It has hit written all over it. Any producers interested in discussing Rights and Licenses, please email michaellgoodell@gmail.com.

http://www.mlgoodell.webs.com

Ronald Reagan always liked to say “The most terrifying nine words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” If Reagan were still alive, he might agree that there is an even more frightening phrase is “Senate Democrats introduced a comprehensive reform bill today.”

From health care to financial reform, from the environment to immigration, the Party of Government reflexively over reaches. There are many issues and problems confronting Americans and their society. Some are serious. Some are critical. Instead of solving problems, the Party of Government seeks to impose and enforce solutions regardless of the people’s will. The solutions must be dramatic in design, comprehensive in scope, and above all else, they must expand the role of government.

The best way to expand the role of government is through comprehensive reform. There is no better example than “Health Care Reform,” which under the guise of addressing runaway costs, brought virtually the entire health care industry under government control. With hundreds of new commissions, committees and boards, all staffed by new public employees, the table has been set for the federal government to consume individual choice in that most personal of matters, our own health.

It isn’t just the big issues which the Party of Government uses to extend control. In fact, every single occurrence in daily life is viewed as an opportunity to expand the scope and reach of government. Take for example the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. That it is an environmental disaster is beyond doubt. It is also tragic, and its effects will be felt for decades to come. What was the reflexive response of the Party of Government? To expand the government.

Oil drilling safety standards are regulated and enforced by the Minerals Management Service, what the “Wall Street Journal” calls “a small division of” the Department of Interior. This small division has 1,700 employees, including 60 safety inspectors. The Obama Administration wants to expand the number of inspectors to 300, and to divide the MMS into two departments. In other words, an oil spill is the perfect excuse for hiring more government employees.

In addition to ensuring the safety of oil drilling, the MMS collects royalties from oil and gas companies. The rationale for splitting those functions is what can be called the Enron Syndrome. Major accounting firms once offered both audit and consulting services to the same corporations. Since consulting brought in more revenues, accountants faced pressure to accept corporate numbers, no matter how fanciful they might have been, rather than run the risk of losing the consulting contract. The thinking here is that MMS inspectors are pressured to go easy on safety inspections rather than risk the revenues from oil and gas leases.

There are two problems with this theory. First, even if an oil company is angry at an inspector’s refusal to approve substandard safety equipment, if it wants to drill offshore or on public land, it has to lease that area from the federal government. They can’t take their business elsewhere. The second flaw with this reasoning is these are public employees. It doesn’t matter how much lease money they collect, they get paid the same amount. In fact, if they could figure out a way to alienate potential bidders, they would, because that would mean there would be less paperwork to process, thereby leaving them more time for organizing Oil Drilling Safety Conferences in Reykjavik, St. Moritz or Las Vegas.

What’s even more ridiculous about this knee jerk expansionism is the blowout didn’t happen because there weren’t enough inspectors, or because the inspectors were afraid of alienating British Petroleum. It happened because inspectors didn’t do their job, or even worse, didn’t know what their job entailed. An MMS official, Jason Matthews, told a Senate hearing that prospective drillers are required to submit proof to the agency that their blowout preventers are big enough to sever and seal a pipe during an emergency. However, an MMS drilling engineer named Frank Patton, who approved BP’s drilling permit, had no idea that he was supposed to determine whether the safety measures were actually capable of functioning. “I have never been told to look for that,” he said.

This is how Party of Government math works. Take a department with 60 safety inspectors who are either unwilling or incapable of learning what their job requires. Add one environmental disaster directly connected to the inspectors’ failure to do their job. Conclusion: quintuple the size of their department.

Maybe a better solution would be to require the 60 inspectors to do their job. Or possibly, take a look at their computers. Maybe they’ve been spending more time visiting pornographic chat rooms with SEC investigators than they have been visiting oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

http://www.mlgoodell.webs.com

http://www.mlgoodell.webs.com

Once upon a time there were two ways to answer the question. According to Realists, the Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend while idealists maintained the Enemy of my Enemy remains my Enemy. Now, under Barack Obama’s Presidency, we have a new approach, the Enemy of my Enemy is a Threat to National Security. At least that’s the case when it comes to Israel.

How else to understand Obama’s remarks last week that Mideast peace represented  “a vital national security interest” because fighting between Israel and its neighbors “ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.” Aside from the fact that no American soldiers have bled on Israeli battlefields, there is some merit in this view. Clearly, the world, no less than the region,  would benefit from a peaceful resolution to the conflict. The problem arises from a not so subtle shift in American attitudes toward Israel.

American Presidents always pressure Israel to make sacrifices in the interest of peace. They do this because, for the most part, only Israel is willing to make the necessary gestures. They expect Israel to participate in the charade that peace is actually achievable. But Obama has changed the story line. No longer are the Palestinians willing to make peace as soon as we figure out the magic formula.  Today it is Israeli intransigence which stands in the way of a peace agreement.

This shift in American policy probably owes more to Obama’s arrogance than any specific poison he may have inherited from his anti-Semitic spiritual mentor. Betraying a woeful ignorance of recent history as well as overweening hubris, Obama presumed it would be easy to achieve peace between Israel and her Arab rivals. After all, this was a man whose very presence causes sea levels to stabilize and enables the planet to start healing itself. With achievements like this on his resume, how hard would it be to resolve that formerly intractable conflict?

Very hard indeed, it turns out. Obama’s contribution to the process betrayed his bias. Under American pressure, the Israeli President has publicly accepted a two state solution, and substantially curtailed settlement construction. In return, the Palestinians refuse to participate even in indirect talks (previously known as shuttle diplomacy). Far from resolving the conflict, Obama’s bumbling has set the peace process back by decades.

In keeping the “Chicago way of politics,” Obama’s response has been to vilify yet another ally. Israel, once considered an ally, is no longer even the Enemy of our Enemy. It is now a threat to our national security. That nation stands on the brink of American-sanctioned destruction.

In fact, Obama might dispute the underlying premise, that Israel is the Enemy of our Enemy, because that would presuppose that Israel’s enemy, radical Islam, is in fact our enemy. While most rational observers would unhesitatingly concur that radical Islam is our enemy, there is little other than the occasional boiler-plate sop to foreign policy realists to suggest that Obama actually believes this to be the case.

Beginning with his making obeisance to the Muslim world from a pulpit in Cairo, through his panegyrics to the “Islamic Republic of Iran” during his annual celebration of the Persian festival of Nowruz, the American President  has gone out of his way to flatter the most frenzied elements of radical Islam. He wants to be friends with a brutally repressive regime. He finds common ground with theocratic dictators who believe earthquakes are caused by immodestly dressed women.

Obama can’t bring himself to condemn thugs who beat freedom seeking children to death, but he can publicly insult and scold a democratically elected leader who neglected to halt a bureaucratic licensing process during an American blowhard’s visit to his capital. He is willing to toss Israel under the bus in order to appease Iran, and America’s few remaining allies are beginning to wonder, as French President Nicolas Sarkozy did so famously last fall, in what sort of fantasy world the American President dwells.

http://www.mlgoodell.webs.com
Once upon a time Ian McEwan was a writer of enormous promise. His titles alone carried greater complexity and depth of meaning than most other writers’ entire novels did. Consider the triple meanings intertwined in A Child in Time and Black Dogs, or the sinister double meaning of The Comfort of Strangers and The Innocent.

McEwan was a member of that rare breed, a legitimately literary writer who enjoyed a degree of financial success. This was no doubt in part because so many of his novels were turned into films. If they were more likely to play before partially filled art film theaters than jam-packed cineplexes, they still represented greater exposure than most writers of his sophistication and nuance could hope to achieve.

That McEwan’s career as a writer began to run off the rails about the time of his greatest commercial success and popular acclaim, which is to say with the publication of Atonement, is perhaps nothing more than an indictment of popular tastes, or a cautionary tale for other writers of the price one pays for clutching too boldly at the brass ring.

Saturday followed Atonement, which betrayed McEwan as a writer bereft of ideas. With that book, his obligatory post 9/11 book, which has slammed so many writers face first against the brick wall of overdrawn symbolism, he reduced the worldwide clash of cultures to a brutally simplistic, symbolic depiction of the United States as a slack-jawed, sadistic British street thug. It was even more painful to read than Atonement, which was merely a much-admired author stubbing his toe. With Saturday, I found myself despising the author.

When he published On Chesil Beach, it seemed the last shreds of McEwan’s supple, elastic mind were ripped along with the rest of the bodice implicit in the novel’s subject matter. It was the first of McEwan’s books I didn’t read.

Upon reading a favorable review of his latest, Solar, which purported to be a satire of academia, with special focus on the scientific community, and the sort of political maneuvering and game playing highlighted by the recent spate of climate change emails, I thought perhaps I would give him one last chance.

Sadly, Solar has little to recommend it. As satire it falls flat. The writing is stale, perfunctory. The protagonist, Michael Beard, is a wholly unlikable character, selfish and self-absorbed, utterly bereft of moral cognition or ethical compunction. McEwan guides Beard along a paint-by-number path, the multiple telegraphed turnings treated with such authorial glee that the reader begins to suspect the author believes the reader will never suspect such clever devices. That might be true if McEwan could induce the sort of reader who considers Dan Brown complex to buy this novel.

As the novel plods to its contrived denouement, the reader is left to speculate which of the climaxes will prove fatal. Will it be the ex-con Beard had framed for the murder of his ex-wife’s lover a decade before? Will it be the Climate Control Center exacting vengeance because Beard stole his award winning and lucrative solar energy theory from work his ex-wife’s lover was doing at the time he died? Will it be Beard’s own bloated, morbidly obese body that does the trick? It really doesn’t matter which of McEwan’s little tricks does the deed, the reader, if he has stuck it out this far, is only still here because he wants to see the hero die.

Raymond Chandler once wrote, “Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say.” He could have been writing about Ian McEwan.

http://www.mlgoodell.webs.com

As the dust and smoke begins to clear from his historic legislative achievement, President Barack Obama (D-Finland Station) is enjoying the sort of hosannas appropriate to an avatar of change. Sunday morning talk show wags stroke their chins sagaciously and intone about Obama’s “coming of age,” his “growing comfortable with the exercise of power,” his courage in wagering his Presidency on the passage of “health care reform.”

Revitalized, Obama has gone from victory to victory, moving full speed ahead on his mission to unalterably transform the United States and her citizens. Refusing to go back to the table, Obama pushed ahead in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles to force the bill(s) through Congress. Resorting to bribery, cheating, threats and outright lies, he got his way, and then he got underway. He nationalized student loans.

Under the guise of postpartisanship, (which, if Samuel Johnson were around today, he would rightly identify as the last refuge of the scoundrel), he opened up new offshore regions to geologic exploration (with drilling for oil viewed as a possibility around the time the national debt eclipses 100% of GDP). In exchange for this gesture, a handful of Republican Senators are expected to roll over on some version of cap and trade.

Not content with domestic policy, the suddenly refreshed President launched a foreign policy blitz not seen since the heyday of Jimmy Carter. He instructed his Secretary of State to side with Argentina against our once close ally, Great Britain, over the Falkland Islands. He achieved a breakthrough arms limitation treaty with Russia. (Don’t worry about the details, the important thing is he got it done). He set a new deadline for Iran to come clean on its nuclear weapons program, or face economic sanctions. If they don’t comply, the international community is confident Obama will respond forcefully and immediately by setting a new, really, really serious deadline for compliance.

Finally, and most impressive of all, Obama achieved the first significant breakthrough in the mideast peace process since Anwar Sadat recognized Israel. He seized upon a diplomatic misstep to drive a wedge between Israel and the United States. With public and private insults, the Obama administration let the Israelis know in no uncertain terms that our patience is growing short. They need to make peace with the Palestinians. Right now. And if they don’t, well, they will be on their own.

It has been an amazing flurry of activity, all brought on by the passage of that fatal mishmash of pork and paybacks, favors and back room deals masquerading as reform. Democrats are fond of comparing “health care reform” to Medicare and Social Security, despite the fact that those two entitlements are going broke. They have already saddled the American people with $100 trillion of unfunded liabilities. On top of this travesty the new health care law will cost untold trillions more.

There will be new taxes, huge new expenditures, a vast increase in the size of the federal government and the size of its work force. And nothing will be done to rein in the cost of medical care. Despite having begun his presidency with the enthusiastic support of the vast majority of Americans, and having huge majorities in both houses, Obama, who seemingly could have achieved anything during his honeymoon, chose instead to outsource health care legislation to the left wing of his party.

It took him fifteen months, but he finally got it passed. He got it passed at the expense of his popularity, and that of his party. It cost him the respect of the majority of Americans. His focus, even obsession with this travesty of a bill, meant that the economy continued to languish, much to the dismay and injury of the ten to twenty percent of American workers unable to find work.

None of that matters to Obama. He was elected to be a transformative President, and a transformative President he will be. If that transformation involves destroying the American economy and reducing  the world’s greatest superpower to the status of, say, Argentina, so be it. From where Obama sits, and according to the beliefs of his closest advisors and lifelong philosophical guides, the destruction of American is not necessarily a bad thing. These are all people who honestly believe American power is the most dangerous threat to world peace. They believe that American exceptionalism is the biggest obstacle to an effective international community.

Obama is offering the world America on a silver platter. He is the Dr. Kervorkian of the American Dream.

http://www.mlgoodell.webs.com

When Barack Obama entered the White House promising the most open, transparent administration ever, little did we know that was the only promise he would keep. Yet, at least as far as “health care reform” is concerned, that is exactly what he has done.

Take, for example, Obama’s recent speech, launching his latest full court press for passing any of the several behemoths called health care reform bills, also known as the legislative equivalent of Vietnam. In the speech, delivered, if memory serves, before a supportive audience of preschoolers (hey, you find adulation where you can), Obama bragged, “I’ve read this, every word,” and then went on to unleash a string of, uh, factually challenged statements. If we take him at his word, either he is incapable of comprehending the written word, or he was lying.

The two most glaring veracic shortfalls were 1) his assertion that people’s health insurance premiums would drop, and 2) that the bill would reduce the deficit by one trillion dollars in the first decade. As Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan has so patiently explained, the CBO scoring of the bill, while itself of questionable value, states that health insurance premiums would rise under the bill, and that the bill would reduce the deficit by $132 billion. That latter figure is, of course, based on six years of expenditures cover by ten years of revenues, and is therefore, yet another howler.

Now, what are we to make of this? Given that Obama’s preferred biography depicts him as the smartest kid in every classroom in which he found himself, it is hard to believe that he couldn’t understand what he read. What then is the only conclusion we can reach?

Here is another example. Although Nancy Pelosi is technically not part of the Obama administration, her status as America’s left-wing dominatrix allows her to wield a whip hand at the White House, and so can be seen as representing the administration on this matter. Nancy, more honest than most, has too much honor to pretend she has read every word of any of the pastiches assembled by no doubt drunken Senate and House aides. Instead, as she announced during her part of the latest full court press, a speech delivered, if memory serves, before an assembly of transgendered San Francisco Police Officers, she gave the most compelling reason yet for passing that bill. “We need to pass the bill,” she quaveringly declared, “so you can find out what’s in it.”

And that is exactly the problem most Americans have with this bill. They want to know what’s in it before it passes. It’s not the devil who lurks in these details, it is the bankruptcy of America. Obamaniacs are confident that the bill, once passed, by hook or crook, will prove popular because a majority of people favor many of its provisions. Which is true. Whenever I hear Obama or any of his fellow snake oil vendors listing the many benefits, I think they should add, “But wait, there’s more.”

There is more, a lot more, and that’s what the people don’t want. They don’t want a government takeover of the medical industry. They don’t want a massive entitlement destined to make the rapidly collapsing entitlements of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid look like prudent investments. To suggest people should be happy with this bill because it contains some things they support is like going to the dentist and being asked if you want novocaine. You no doubt will say yes. The dentist nods, grabs a large pair of shears and starts to cut off your ear. You, naturally recoil in horror, crying “What are you doing?” The dentist responds, “I thought you said you wanted novocaine. Well, cutting off your ear is included in the novocaine treatment.”

The majority of the American people are well aware of the deleterious consequences of Obamacare. That’s why they oppose it. The leftist Democrats currently running this country (into the ground) aren’t interested in the public’s opinions. They know better than the public. That is why they are willing to do anything, to lie, cheat, steal and bribe, to force this bill down the public’s throat.

They make no effort to conceal their machinations, which is why, when it comes to transparency, Obama has kept his word.