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Pat Robertson is a Pig

Posted by Bob Culwell on Wednesday, January 13, 2010 8:59:17 PM
The headline really says it all, but I'll expand a bit.
 
The entire civilized world has been deeply saddened and moved by the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti yesterday.  The plight of the unfortunates there has evoked desires to send help from nearly every quarter.
 
But not from the founder of the 700 Club.
 
No, Pat Robertson has assured his listeners that God sent the earthquake to punish the people of Haiti for actions of long-dead residents of the island.  On his television show, Pat tells his listeners that, ". . . a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it, they were under the heel of the French, uh, you know, Napoleon the third and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the devil, they said, we will serve you, if you get us free from the French, true story. And so the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' And they kicked the French out, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free, and ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other, desperately poor."  God has sent the earthquake to punish the Haitians for this sin of those long dead.
 
Now, setting aside for a moment Pat's obvious lack of any knowledge of history, economics, and logic inherent in his latest moronic pronouncement, let's examine what that statement says about his concept of theology.
 
Let's just, for the fun of it, stipulate that Pat has it right this time.  God is punishing the people of Haiti because their ancestors desired freedom from colonial rule.  OK.  Everybody got that?  Good.  That being the case, all who believe in God and desire to see His will done must refrain from helping the people of Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake.  Since their suffering is not just being allowed by God, but directed by God, those helping the Haitians will be interfering with God's plan to harm the people of Haiti.  So, the Christian thing to do is to join Pat Robertson in pointing and laughing. 
 
And why should the colonial Haitians have angered God by seeking freedom from European colonialists?  Is God only angered by Haitians who seek to throw off the chains of a foreign monarch, or would he also be angered by, oh, I don't know . . . let's say a group of white people who maybe didn't want to answer to George III, either?  Got an answer for that, Pat?  Huh?  You giant douchebag.
 
Let's go a bit further down this road, Pat.  What is God's remedy for the people of Haiti?  Do they need to reinstate French rule on the country?  Suppose the French don't want to take control of Haiti?  The French have enough problems trying to govern their own country.  It is reasonable to suppose that the French will not be that anxious to assume command of a country in the shape Haiti is in.  I suppose anybody who ever finds themselves with the misfortune of being born in that country just must accept that God will just kick him in the nuts repeatedly every day of his life. 
 
If this were the first, heck even the 100th time, that Pat said something so monumentally stupid, it might be possible to just shake your head in astounded silence as he spewed his perversion of the Christian faith.  But it is time, it is past time, for all of us who call ourselves Christians, Americans, Republicans, and Conservatives to denounce--in no uncertain terms--the disgusting ideas this man espouses in the name of Christianity. 
 
For those of you that need a refresher, in 1991, he announced that Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Methodists "harbor the spirit of the Antichrist."  Not some Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Methodists, mind you--all of them. 

In 1985, he claimed that he had steered, through his prayers, the path of Hurricane Gloria away from his ministry's headquarters.  Hurricane Gloria did slam into the US coast and cost billions of dollars of damage to those reasons.  One could wonder why, if God has given Pat the gift of steering hurricanes, why he didn't steer it away from the coast entirely.  Perhaps some of the victims' ancestors had sought deliverance from the tyranny of Great Britain . . . or slavery. 

Pat has also been critical of American opposition to former Liberian President Charles Taylor.  Taylor, who has been indicted for war crimes, is suspected of ties to al Queda by harboring the bombers of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.  Why, oh why, would a man of God ally himself so closely with an al Queda supporter.  I don't know, but it could have something to do with Pat's $8,000,000.00 investment in a Liberian gold mine.  Pat didn't mention that on any of his telecasts, so it's up to the rest of us to mention it.  All those old ladies who tried to buy a little piece of salvation by mailing their social security checks to Pat, I'm sure, knew that the money was going to fund a gold mine whose subsidies would indirectly fund the murder of Americans in the name of promoting Islam. 

Similarly, his involvement with the butcherous leader of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko, seems puzzling when one considers that Pat claims to be a Christian.  The Commonwealth of Virginia recommended criminal prosecution of Pat in 1999 after it found that he had solicited donations to help transport Rwandan refugees to Zaire--what Pat called "Operation Blessing".  Pat's minions poured money into the operation.  However, the money was used to move diamond-mining equipment that Pat and Sese Seko owned.  The Commonwealth's Attorney General, unfortunately, declined to prosecute Pat for his deception.  Perhaps because his largest campaign contributor was . . . you guessed it. 
 
Pat Robertson has consistantly shown himself to operate well outside the boundaries of common sense, basic decency, and the Christian faith.  Every good Christian--and American--should line up and take turns kicking his a-s-s.  Pat's perversion of the faith must be condemned or it is condoned.
 
Pat Robertson is a pig.
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Spendthrift in recession

Posted by Bob Culwell on Tuesday, December 29, 2009 9:42:12 PM
It is an old saw that a politician is somebody who asks what you want, while an economist is somebody who asks what you want most.  The last year has demonstrated that the Congressional majority and the White House are populated with nothing but politicians.
 
While reality continues to hurtle down the tracks at the United States, the Obama administration champions dangerous causes--and finds willing accomplices over at Capitol Hill.  Ultimately, the American voters are responsible for the coming troubles, but the results of the last election cannot excuse the winners from the dangerous course they have laid out.
 
In the midst of recession, the plan is to increase tax rates on the American worker--and employer.  This tack is needed, in part, because of the reckless spending Washington embarked on in the last year.  A stimulus package that spectacularly failed to achieve a single stated objective is to be followed by a health-care endeavor that will explode costs and leave many of the uninsured without coverage. 
 
This is where it would be helpful to have more economists in our midst.  The American voters turned to President Obama for many reasons, but one of the recurring themes of his campaign was that he would provide a great number of benefits to the hoi polloi while making "the rich" pay for them.  There would be no costs to the beneficiaries.  The health care plan will not even add to the deficit, the administration and it's congressional allies assure us--as if that is a consideration at all for the power brokers.
 
It is true that the Congressional Budget Office's assessment of the health care bill came to the conclusion that the plan was "deficit nuetral".  However, the CBO report relies on a factor that should scream to even a casual observer that nobody believes it.  Taxes are to be collected immediately for the plan, but no benefits paid out for four years.  The CBO assessment looks only at the first ten years of the plan.  That means that the report assumes that the plan will cost as much in the first six years benefits are paid out as tax receipts for ten years.  What happens in year 11?  In every successive year, the deficit will grow without end--unless we are to assume that costs will fall to zero from year 11-14.  That will not happen.
 
What will happen is that, when deficits begin to pile up, the government will blame America's wealthy, whatever private insurance companies remain, corporations, and--naturally--talk radio.
 
Democrats point to Medicare as an example of an enormously popular federal entitlement as an inspiration for the dream of government-administered health care.  Medicare is in hopeless debt.  It will be bankrupt sometime in the next decade.  At that point, the federal government will be faced with no good options--end the program (won't happen), cut budgets to all other federal programs to divert money to Medicare (won't happen), increase tax rates on the wealthiest Americans to an economy ruining 75% or more (unlikely), or continue the irresponsible and unsustainable deficit spending under the rationale that "somebody else" will take care of it (Bingo!).  The date where the entire economy collapses will be not far off when that happens. 
 
Now, Barack Obama wants to add to this train wreck and it is supposed to have no affect on the economy. 
 
Americans desperately need to wake up and move the government away from the policies that are moving us down the road to catastrophe.  Instead, the American voter seems to be inclined to give the politicians a push to get to that point quicker.
 
If only more time was spent on studying economics in school, this President--who fancies himself a new Lincoln--would find it more difficult to fool all of the people all of the time.
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Scoreboard

Posted by Bob Culwell on Sunday, December 20, 2009 10:41:30 PM
A scant 12 months ago, Barack Obama was about to take office amid a sense of euphoria that the problems of the past were about to be handled as a responsible, intelligent, cultured man was about to assume the mantle of power.  A cursory look at the administration's record, though, shows one that has failed to meet expectations spectacularly.   All administrations arrive in Washington amid great optimism and apple-cheeked enthusiasm to tackle the problems before them.   

When previous administrations have run up against the reality that campaigning is different than governing, there has usually been an attempt to make the best of compromises with the other party and the nations of the world.  The Obama administration, though, just decided to stay in campaign mode.  You're not happy with how project "A" turned out?  Well, did you know that George Bush left a real mess?  There's just no way to move forward because of that dumb ol' George Bush!  From listening to this White House, it would be easy to suppose that this administration is the first one in the history of the Republic to inherit difficulties from the previous one.  I have scoured the history books, but can find no record of Dwight Eisenhower whining and sniveling about the problems left over from the Truman administration.

What, then, was the promise of the Obama administration just a year ago, then?  Well, for one thing, we were assured that he would restore respect for America in the eyes of the world.  A cursory glance at the newspapers from around the globe will show that the President flamed out on that one.  Not only is he regularly ridiculed in the pages of papers in the lands of American enemies--as one would expect, but he's been lampooned in the pages of the London Times and Le Monde.  His clumsy inattention to basic protocol among heads of state has provided a lot of grist for the mill in London and Paris. 

He did "win" a Nobel Peace Prize, but much of the glow came off that event when he ordered thousands of troops to Afghanistan--making it clear that, no matter what he says, American combat forces will be deployed for far longer than anybody hoped.  He also has antagonized our German friends by leaning on them to send troops as well.  The belief, from the words he uttered on the campaign trail, was that American forces would be winding down--and only winding down--combat operations on his watch. 

The President called for a stimulus package in order to keep unemployment below 8.5%.  In fact, he assured Congress that, unless the package was approved immediately, there would be no way to keep unemployment below that figure.  Congress immediately approved it and unemployment jumped above 10%--just as anybody with even a cursory knowledge of markets and history could have told him would happen.  Now, after three "stimulus" efforts in the last few years that have done much damage to the economy--but no good--he is urging a fourth stimulus package.  Naturally, Congress must approve it at once or something really terrible will happen. 

Candidate Obama spoke of the need to close the prison at GuantanamoBay.  His pronouncements on the evils of the place were greeted with the cheers one would expect for truly Solomonic statements.  Holding people without charge for indeterminate periods of time is clearly wicked and unbecoming a civilized country.  His followers anxiously awaited the closing of the prison.  Alas, they are still waiting, and have grown uneasy with the administrations claims in court that the President has the power to hold certain people without charge for indeterminate periods of time.  On the plus side, he has assured the public that some of the men held there will be brought to New York for trial.  Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much point since the Attorney General has made clear that it will be impossible for the accused to be acquitted.  Nobody in the administration has explained how an exercise in forgone conclusions can be deemed a "trial", but perhaps that's just one of those new meanings for the word we'll all have to get used to.  Amnesty International criticized the administration's latest plan to move all the inmates to a vacant federal facility in Illinois.  The spokesman for the group asserted, correctly, that all the Obama administration was doing was changing the prison's ZIP code. 

Now we come to health care reform.  Ah, yes!  The administration would enact a plan to lower costs for everybody while extending coverage to the uninsured.  Assurances by the economically literate that such a plan would be impossible were shrugged off.  Obama's followers enthusiastically embraced the idea that they would receive this wonderful new benefit and "somebody else" would pay for it.  Now, the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget agree that the plan would raise costs and fail to cover the uninsured.  However, it is vital that we pass it as quickly as possible.  Don't even read the bill.  Just vote yes.  It's very important and all hopey-changey.

This President's efforts are failing to meet expectations in a way unmatched in the last half-century.  Despite a HUGE majority in both houses of Congress and incessant cheerleading from his friends in the dominant liberal mass media, he is not getting what he promised he would and his approval ratings are rapidly declining.  Americans do not often fire their Presidents.  In three years, they will have that question put to them.  Perhaps his calls to hurry and do everything quickly stem from well-founded fears that his days in the White House are dwindling faster than anybody thought.

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Political Science

Posted by Bob Culwell on Tuesday, December 15, 2009 11:32:28 PM
The world's radical environmentalists have descended upon Copenhagen to tsk-tsk about the prospect of the world's poor seeking a better life for themselves.  For the past several days, the attendees have discussed policies which will, if adopted, will impose draconian measures on every nation's economy.  Many of the conferees have demonstrated their concern for the environment by arriving on private jets--which then had to be parked in Sweden as the Copenhagen airport didn't have space for them all.  Limousines have been delivered to the Danish capital to deal with the demands of the environmentalists for the plush comfort of the automobiles which the Copenhagen supply could not meet.  Unfortunately for the environmentalists in the city, the hypocricy of their pollution of the Danish skies while demanding the rest of us drastically curtail our own energy use is the least embarrasing matter for the movement in recent weeks.  The "science" behind the church of environmentalism has been laid bare for the world to see, and their high priest, Al Gore, has made the situation woraw by demonstrating just how little he understands about basic science, ethics, and elementary logic.
 
When the e-mails from the science department at East Anglia came to light, they rent the veil separating the people of the world from the ivory tower "scientists" who keep imploring that the science is "settled" on the issue of anthropogenic global warming and that mankind must listen to them--without questioning anything (no time for that)--or face certain doom.  The picture that emerged is one of a group of bullies conspiring on the appropriate punishment for any of their brethren who would dare to question--or give a platform to any who question--the conclusions of the cabal at East Anglia.  The men of East Anglia are the intellectual descendents of the inquisitors who tried Galileo in 1633.  Their intolerance of heresy against the church is congruent with the earlier group.
 
Meanwhile, Gore--the man Newsweek recently dubbed "The Thinking Man's Thinking Man" moved quickly to distract attention from the shame of Anglia with his trademark bumbling and confusion of facts.  His initial response was to assert--falsely--and thrice--that the e-mails from East Anglia were ten-years old.  It is unclear what, precisely, would be better about abusing scientists 11 years ago rather than, say, eight, but the most recent e-mails date from November. 
 
2009.
 
When asked about the e-mails, the former vice-president said, "To paraphrase Shakespeare, it's sound and fury signifying nothing.  I haven't read all the e-mails, but the most recent one is more than 10 years old.  These private exchanges between these scientists do not, in any way, cause any question about the scientific consensus."  The problems with Gore's analysis are myriad, but his words do make all those D's on his college report card understandable.  First of all, and far from most importantly, he is not paraphrasing Shakespeare, but quoting him.  The difference between quoting and paraphrasing is the sort of thing most American students master by the third grade.  He then explains that--even though he hasn't read the e-mails--he KNOWS that not one of them is less than ten years old.  Now, anybody with a room temperature IQ knows that one cannot say what a document says or does not say without reading it.  Not Prince Albert, though.  He can tell, without reading an e-mail, what it says and how old it is.  Finally, much of the "science" that Gore and his lackeys wish man to embrace cites climate data from more than ten years ago.  Why should anybody pay attention to the data they offer up to show the globe is imperiled when temperatures from earlier than 2000 is offered?  I have a feeling there is no answer to the question, but it would be interesting to hear Mr. Gore's take on that.
 
The former vice-president also went on The Tonight Show to overstate his climate data by a factor of about a thousand.  In discussing his ideas about geothermal energy, he told Conan O'Brien, ". . . two kilometers or so down in most places are these incredibly hot rocks, 'cause the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot . . . "  The consensus of the scientific community is that the temperature at the core of the earth is several thousand degrees.  So, we have another absurd claim from the man most identified with the science behind radical environmentalism.  Now, to be fair, there are objects in the universe that scientists believe have a core temperature of several million degrees.
 
They're called stars.
 
A few days later, John Derbyshire analyzed Gore's assertion in the pages of National Review.  Derbyshire explains that two kilometers or so down--the depth Gore talked about--temperatures could be harnessed to heat a home, but not much more.  Interestingly, Gore does not choose to heat his own home with this wonder fuel--although former President Bush does heat his Crawford ranch geothermally.
 
To cap off radical environmentalism's Golden Sombrero, Gore traveled to Copenhagen to address the summit where he asserted, "Some of the models suggest to Dr. [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years." 
 
Dr. Maslowski, when asked about Gore's invoking his name in the speech moved to distance himself from the prediction.  "It's unclear to me how this figure was arrived at.  I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this."
 
The church of environmentalism has had as bad a few weeks as any church in immediate memory.  The high priests have been caught squelching dissent, inventing data, misunderstanding elementary priciples, and falsely attaching scientists names to the church's lunatic claims in an effort to prop up the crumbling facade and preserve the illusion that this movement has anything at all to do with science.
 
The radical environmentalist movement is not about science any more than Al Gore's disjointed ramblings have any relation to what thinking men would consider thinking.  The movement is driven by the old enemies of capitalism who fled the ship of Soviet-style command economies after the collision with the iceberg that was the 1980s.  Petr Beckmann coined the term "Watermelons" to describe these green on the outside, but red on the inside, activists who are motivated by nothing but the hatred of capitalism.
 
Traditional environmentalists, in the mode of Barry Goldwater, must work to take back the movement from these hijackers who do great harm to all who would seek to treat nature respectfully and with an eye to preserving beauty.  If concern for the environment is allowed to be associated only with the the Goreacle and his followers, it will make it impossible for responsible concern for the planet to be drowned out.  The hour is late, but not too late, for those who desire responsible use of the planet to take back the hijacked movement of environmentalism.
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Dickens-ian Economics

Posted by Bob Culwell on Sunday, December 13, 2009 2:10:33 PM
The Christmas season is in full swing, which means that there will be innumerable references to some aspect of A Christmas Carol and Ebeneezer Scrooge's transformative experience.  Seemingly every American above the age of six knows the story of the miserable miser who cares only for money until he is shown the error of his ways and turns his back on his earlier life.  It's a heartwarming story through which people are taught the evil of pursuing wealth.
 
The problem with the story is that it teaches harmful lessons which contribute to the general economic illiteracy of the population.
 
Scrooge is certainly imbued with a number of unsavory characteristics--both in his appearance and manner.  However, the lessons of the evils of pursuing wealth are wholly misplaced.  Dickens' story teaches that Scrooge is harming the society in the manner he runs his business.  His desire for profit crosses into avarice and denys money to others who "need" it more--such as Bob Crachit. 
 
What is left poorly addressed, though, is what Scrooge does do with the funds available to him.  He lends them to people who then, presumably, use the money to buy homes, open and expand businesses (creating paying jobs for employees), and other activities which create wealth and spread it to others. 
 
By keeping his office's overhead low, Scrooge has more money available to lend.  Much is made of the meager salary paid to Crachit and the insufficient heat thrown into the office.  No mention is made of the leg-iron that holds Crachit to his desk, though.  Obviously, if he is not imprisioned at the job, he would seek employment from others if he really was worth more.  Employees seek to sell their skills to the bidder who offers the best compensation package.  If what Scrooge offers is so far below market value for Crachit's talents, then it is Crachit--not Scrooge--who is denying more compensation to the employee. 
 
Scrooge is further derided for resisting people who interrupt his business to beg for funds for their favored charities.  No mention is made in the text of whether the men seeking donations made an appointment.  If they have an appointment, either they misrepresented what they desired to discuss or Scrooge has sought to waste their time and his with a pointless meeting (not likely given Scrooge's other personality traits).  More likely is that the men have simply walked into his office to solicit donations.  But what is so intolerable about Scrooge's response?  Most companies have policies that expressly prohibit solicitation in the office, so the practice is widely accepted.
 
The irony of the way Dickens presented Scrooge lies in the circumstances surrounding the story's publication.  Reeling financially from the disappointing sales of Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens was offored a lump-sum payment by the publishers, London's Chapman and Hall.  Instead, Dickens negotiated a compensation package that would bring him a percentage of the profits.  Unfortunately for the author, higher than anticipated production costs yielded only about a fifth of the 1,000 pounds he had hoped to clear on the story.  So, why did Charles Dickens pursue the plan of the percentage of profits rather than the lump-sum?
 
Easy.  He thought he'd make more money that way.
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The President at Oslo

Posted by Bob Culwell on Saturday, December 12, 2009 11:37:23 AM
Barack Obama--sadly, not the most absurd Nobel laureate in history--accepted his prize for speechmaking this week.  In accepting the award, he attempted--as is his wont--to appeal to everybody and, predictably, pleased almost nobody. 
 
The President, at times, sounded like his predecessor when he spoke of the presence of evil in the world and remarked, "To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism--it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason."  If the administration would handle foreign policy from those principles he sounded, the momentum for a second term--the primary goal of any first-term President--would likely become unstoppable.  Of course, these parts of his speech at Oslo gave great discomfort to his base and his hosts.
 
However, this President's words and actions elsewhere in the last year suggest that he simply sounded firm about nations' need to exert force in the face of evil in an attempt to satisfy some of his once solid, but now squishy supporters back home.  Politico's Ben Smith reports this week that 44% of Americans now say they prefer George W Bush to the current president.  It is hardly unusual for Presidents to become more popular once they leave office, but given the amount of energy the Obama administration has expended in fixing the blame for absolutely everything on President Bush, such results portend trouble for next year's mid-term elections, and beyond.  Perhaps the President's words in Oslo are meant to recapture his wavering support?  Undoubtedly.  The President mimicked the language of a responsible statesman, but his actions belie the words.
 
The irony of awarding a peace prize to the President Obama is that his actions and words since taking office have, if history is a guide, made the prospect of peace less likely in the world than it was before January 20.  When a friend of Hugo Chavez defies the country's constitution and is legally and constitutionally removed from office, the administration demands that the people of that country dissolve the legal government and accept the tyrant.  When people in Iran--the nation most responsible for international terrorism--protest the results of a suspicious elections, the President initially throws his support behind the mullahs who are ordering the imprisonment and violent putdowns of the citizens so that a manifestly dangerous and hostile government can continue its hold on the imprisioned people of that nation and headlong rush toward the inevitable result of a nuclear Iran.  The President desperately wants--at seemingly any cost--to see a significant reduction in America's deterrent forces--despite the historical evidence that a weakened deterrence invites attack.  In an effort to get an arms reduction treaty with Russia, the President accepts demands that the America and NATO abandon plans for a missile shield in Europe.  That last was particularly puzzling since it did not yield the treaty the President for which the President hoped, yet angered America's steadfast friends in Poland and the Czech Republic who are now left without the American defense that had been promised them.
 
Democrats are fond of ridiculing the idea that conciliation in the face of evil invites violence.  The way to deal with difficult situations is to just sit and listen to our enemies and look for things to give them to satisfy them.  That policy has been tried many times in history, and has yielded war. 
 
Neville Chamberlain's errors were hardly unique to him.  Many politicians, including George W Bush, have repeated mistakes that unfortunate leader made on the eve of the bloodiest war of the last century.  Recall that President Bush said that he looked Putin in the eye and knew he was a man America could work with.  That language approximates what Chamberlain said about the great threat to peace he embraced.  President Obama now seeks to duplicate other Chamberlain mistakes as Oslo applauds the reckless endangerment of the world.
 
The comparisons to Chamberlain are unfair because, at least, Neville Chamberlain lacked the historic model to show him exactly what his idiocy would yield.  The current ones who rush the world to unspeakable war have no such cover.
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Congress Unchecked

Posted by Bob Culwell on Thursday, December 10, 2009 9:03:36 PM
In 1905, Theodore Roosevelt--who never failed to view himself as arbiter for every area of American's lives--summoned the Presidents of Yale, Harvard, and Princeton to a meeting to discuss a pressing issue.  The violence of college football had caused nearly twenty player deaths that season.  The message sent to the college presidents was clear--reform the rules or risk the prospect of the government considering the legality of the game.  The message was received and the nation's football-playing colleges responded by forming, in February 1906, the Intercollegiate Athletics Association of the United States to oversee the game.  Four years later, the creation was re-christened the NCAA.
 
Now, the federal government is, once again, threatening to intervene if college football does not bend to its will.  TR's intrusion into the game can be pardoned since lives were being lost--clearly entering into an area of concern for the federal government.  Today, the scourge that must be stopped is the uniquiely American, but paradoxically profoundly un-American, Bowl Championship Series (BCS).
 
For eleven years, the BCS has been the raison d'etre for the college football season.  When it was born, fans seemed to support it because it replaced the earlier system where the nation's top teams avoided facing each other at the end of the season.  Too often, the "champion" was unclear--frustrating American sports fans' desire to see the game's heavyweights settle the issue on the field.  The BCS promised to always match the first and second-ranked teams for one game to determine the champion.  The problem is that the system's flaws prevent it from doing that. 
 
For one thing, it is a rare season where it is clear that only two teams could vie for the championship.  This year, the matchup has been predestined for months.  On the evening of January 7, in Pasadena, California, the Alabama Crimson Tide will meet the Texas Longhorns for the right to claim the mythical national championship.  If only it were that simple.  Several other schools feel their teams are, at least, as good as the two who will meet and are disappointed that they have been denied an opportunity to prove it on the field.  There must be a playoff among the top teams to determine a champion. 
 
Congress has heard the cries of the affected constituencies and moved to end this charade.  This week a House Energy and Commerce subcommitte approved, on a voice vote, a bill sponsored by Rep. Joe King (R-TX) that would enjoin the NCAA from billing any contest as a national championship game "or make a similar representation" unless that game is the culmination of a playoff--such as the month-long March Madness the NCAA will sponsor in the spring.
 
So far, the Senate has not adopted a version of the bill, although Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has made known his desire to see the BCS done away with by the Justice Department's antitrust division.  One can assume that Sen. Hatch would be delighted to sponsor the legislation if it makes it out of the House. 
 
The President has been on record that he believes a playoff should replace the BCS, and would be expected to sign such a measure into law if it arrives on his desk.
 
Only one member of the committe voted "no" on the measure.  John Barrow (D-GA) declared, "With all due respect, I really think we have more important things to spend our time on."  Rep. Barrow has done the correct thing, but for the wrong reason.  The problem is not that there are more important issues--which can be said about everything.  The problem is that the federal government is granted no right to intervene in the question of college football's champion. 
 
The Constitution limits the powers of the federal government.  Too many seem to believe that the government's powers are only limited insofar as Americans have not concocted tortured interpretations of the Constitution to allow what is prohibited.  The commerce clause is routinely abused to permit the federal government to exercise power unintended by the authors for whatever reason strikes the fancy of some interest group. 
 
As the limits of federal power have slowly eroded in the minds of many Americans, the idea of the government involving itself in every corner of life seems not as troubling as it should.  
 
Americans need to resist ideas like this one and begin demonstrating that they desire certain areas of life to be free from Congressional hearings and governmental oversight.  There is a perfectly good, conservative solution to the problem of the BCS--don't watch the game.  That's called "voting with your feet".  If the fans really do disapprove of the system strongly enough, the game will change in order to win back the advertising dollars lost when TV ratings plummet.  Maybe if Americans demonstrate their ability to take care of some of these issues, Congress will realize that it isn't such a bad thing to excuse itself from some other areas.
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The Party of No

Posted by Bob Culwell on Wednesday, December 09, 2009 10:56:31 PM
Democrats have spent a great deal of time during the past year dismissing congressional Republicans as the "Party of No".  Implicit in this criticism is that Republicans have no ideas and are simply knee-jerk gainsayers to all the ideas offered by the administration and the majority party.  This tactic is easily defeated, but too many who oppose the ruinous proposals of the Democrats fail to meet the criticism head on.
 
First of all, it is simply inaccurate to assert that Republicans simply say no to everything.  When you hear "the Party of No" tag dragged out, try suggesting the expansion of vouchers to allow parents to take their tax dollars to the school of their choosing and see which side screams "No!"  The primary function of the opposition is to oppose.  If they fail to do that, they fail the people they represent. 
 
Additionally, the idea that "no" is some sort of terrible word is erroneous.  No is a perfectly respectable word--both in and out of the political arena.  Just try raising a child without using the word.  Try running a business without using the word.  No is the right answer quite often, and conservatives and Republicans should embrace that idea.  The first five words of the Bill of Rights make clear that the litany to follow will represent the American people standing in the path of the federal government and firmly saying, "No."
 
Like all marorities, the current one seeks to overstate the degree to which it is preferred and cow the minority into meekly accepting what is proposed.  Republicans can, and should, support their friends on the other side of the aisle when they have a good idea.  However, they must never fail to boldly oppose that which they believe will do more harm than good--no matter how many seats the Democrats have.
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