LAWYER JOKE

Yes, it’s an old one – but a friend just sent it to me and what the hell, tain’t a bad joke:

The madam opened the brothel door to see a rather dignified, well-dressed good looking man in his late 40s or early 50s.

    “May I help you?” she asked.

    “I want to see Valerie,” the man replied.

    ”Sir, Valerie is one of our most expensive ladies. Perhaps you would prefer someone else,” said the madam.

     “No. I must see Valerie,” was the man’s reply.

      Just then, Valerie appeared and announced to the man that she charged $1,000 a visit.

     Without hesitation, the man pulled out ten one-hundred dollar bills, gave them to Valerie, and they went upstairs.

      After an hour, the man calmly left.

      The next night, the same man appeared again, demanding to see Valerie.

      Valerie explained that none had ever come back two nights in a row--too expensive--and there were no discounts. The price was still $1,000. Again the man pulled out the money, gave it to Valerie and they went upstairs. After an hour, he left.

      The following night the man was there again. Everyone was astounded that he had come for the third consecutive night, but he paid Valerie and they went upstairs.

      After their session, Valerie questioned the man. “No one has ever been with me three nights in a row. Where are you from?” she asked.

      The man replied, “South Carolina.” “Really” she said. “I have family in South Carolina.”

      “I know,” the man said. “Your father died, and I am your sister’s attorney. She asked me to give you your $3,000 inheritance.”

    The moral of the story is that there are three things in life that are certain:

  1. Death

  2. Taxes

  3. Being screwed by a lawyer

There’s ethics . . . and then there’s LEGAL ethics.

 

THE DEMOCRATIC WING OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: STILL THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

John Podhoretz, lamenting the fact that the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party failed to achieve enough votes to filibuster Samuel Alito, posted a gem yesterday:

I know it was too much to hope that the filibuster against Samuel Alito would pass, thereby causing the very public self-destruction of the profoundly anti-intellectual, drippingly partisan and egregiously ill-conceived effort to deny this unimpeachably qualified jurist his rightful place on the Supreme Court. I knew, yes indeed I knew, but still the pain lingers. However, I will always have those indelible moments--Biden’s 14-minute-long question, Teddy Kennedy reading a parodic article from the conservative magazine at Princeton as though it had been written in all seriousness, Barack Obama saying the filibuster was a stupid idea and then voting for it, and, of course, John Kerry vowing to block the nomination from the Davos ski slopes. These are my Kodak moments, ones I will cherish, with Paul Anka’s voice accompanying the mental slide show: “The laughter and [Mrs. Alito’s] tears/The shadows of misty yesteryears...”

I hadn’t though of Paul Anka in years. Hmmmmmm . . .

 

THE STRUGGLE HAS TO BE ACKNOWLEDGED, AND THE BATTLE HAS TO BE FOUGHT

The Belmont Club has a good reminder up for backsliders such as myself and the rest of the human race. He takes us back to Genesis while contemplating the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and discussing radical Islam in Europe attempting to intimidate individuals and groups engaging in free speech:

Those of us who are used to leftist ritual, whether they be invitations to listen [to] the Vagina Monologues, offers to sniff at the sacred Chocolate Factory or worship at the altar of infant sacrifice; we the people who have become inured to Robert Mapplethorpe and Piss Christ have come to accept the existence of evil as the necessary consequence of freedom.

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden;

and there he put the man whom he had formed.
And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow

every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food;
the tree of life also in the midst of the garden,

and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

But with that acceptance comes the unceasing struggle to stand on the side of angels when one might cross to the devils. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom in more ways than one, and its principal battlefield is the human heart. We can tolerate the presence of evil in our midst only if we are prepared to cleave to the good. There was a time [when] this foolish and ugly religion of the Left could have been laughed to scorn; but no longer. We have our Garden still, though we can hardly see it for the weeds.

The heart. The “liberal” heart.

How many times must one be slapped in the face by folks who presume they (and they alone) have a heart, or champion policies that even contemplate the heart?

Eternal vigilance; thank you, Wretchard.

 

POLITICAL CONSULTANTS AREN’T NECESSARILY THE SMARTEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending a non-partisan training session on campaigning. Some of the ins and outs of that kind of work, etc. One session was taught by a political consultant who claimed (and his website documents the claim) that he has done successful work with Republican clients. Curiously, he has a picture of himself with Al Franken on the website. I guess that’s some kind of joke, but I can’t be sure. This consultant tried to personalize his presentation, liberally sprinkling his lecture with asides that made it clear he loved Bill Clinton. For me, though, that wasn’t a big deal or a big problem. But he did truly cross the line in my humble opinion during one particular part of the presentation and on our solicited feeback form, I let him know about it.

He, of course, in a subsequent e-mail to all attendees who wanted the slideshow utilized in the presentation, gave a generic review of the feedback and, of course, mentioned my critique. Here are the relevant portions of his response with my bracketed thoughts in rebuttal:

One person [Uhhh, that person – of course – was me] did not like my assessment/comments about Karl Rove and suggested and my other persona observations. [No, I don’t know exactly what the hell he meant there at the end but . . . I suggested, or tried to suggest, that he be professional and savvy enough to refrain from personal observations on current, contemporary political issues – especially when it involves a critique of the master political consultant of today] No apologies here.  I have never been one to drink the Kool-aid [so, now I’m not a rational thinker but, instead, drinking the Kool-Aid?] just because it was mixed by a Republican. [I might suggest to Mr. “Brilliant” that Karl Rove (at least, in this context) is not simply “a” Republican]  And to all of the rest of you, I would encourage you to be skeptical of those who suggest you should drink it just because it’s Republican Red. [Just because it was Republican Red? This is one presumptuous and perhaps paternalistic MoFo] We need more people in politics who stand for good ideas as opposed to people who blindly [damn, now I’m blind too – I just love humble consultants, they’re just so damn endearing, you know?] following party “leaders” (be they Democrat or Republican) just because they said so. [Need I mention his apparently complete ignorance of the methodical Republican march toward majority governance in America? Or his questionable assertion that Karl Rove hasn’t offered, and isn’t now offering, the party good ideas? Hang on now, because here comes the kicker] (And I stand by my assertion that Karl Rove is wrong. [envy, perhaps?] November’s elections will be determined based on kitchen-table type issues such as education, jobs opportunities, and the economy, not terrorism and security.  The administration would like the election to be determined on terrorism and security because those are currently the only two issues Republicans and the Bush administration poll well on).  [Here’s my question: this man works for Republican candidates? If I recall correctly, he indicated that he worked for Rudy Giuliani up in New York, among others. Curious. Curious as hell. The only two issues the Bush Administration AND Republicans poll well on – terrorism and security? Oh really? And what, pray tell, are Democrats (Congressional or otherwise) polling well on? Further, what are the two most important issues confronting national politicians, if not terrorism and security?]

I don’t know – maybe it’s just me. But in the aftermath of that training session, the news is full of dread about the serious threat posed by the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and now here comes Hamas (a terrorist organization heavily subsidized by Iran) winning the election, outright, to run the Palestinian territories.

Terrorism and security – just a ploy by that dumb Karl Rove and those conniving Republicans?

In a situation like this just one word comes to mind, whether one is a premier consultant or not: idiot.

 

COMMON DAMN SENSE FROM RICHARD POSNER

Thanks to Tigerhawk for this prompt to Richard Posner in The New Republic:

Law in the United States is not a Platonic abstraction but a flexible tool of social policy. In analyzing all but the simplest legal questions, one is well advised to begin by asking what social policies are at stake.

Posner was discussing the weird level of discussion on the FISA / warrantless wiretapping “debate” in this country:

Ronald Dworkin, the distinguished legal philosopher and constitutional theorist, wrote in The New York Review of Books in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks that “we cannot allow our Constitution and our shared sense of decency to become a suicide pact.” He would doubtless have said the same thing about fisa. If you approach legal issues in that spirit rather than in the spirit of ruat caelum fiat iusticia (let the heavens fall so long as justice is done), you will want to know how close to suicide a particular legal interpretation will bring you before you decide whether to embrace it. The legal critics of the surveillance program have not done this, and the defenders have for the most part been content to play on the critics’ turf.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

I highly doubt if the ads come election time will be content to play on that turf. Oh no, the guns will be blazing around that time and Democrats will have earned every bit of incoming fire they get.

 

JAMES FREY, MEET TEDDY ROOSEVELT: OPRAH PLEASE TAKE NOTE

Armed Liberal at Winds of Change, addressing the cluelessness of the Democratic Wing of his Democratic Party, directs their attention to an 1894 piece in The Atlantic by that wealthy Harvard man – Teddy Roosevelt:

For educated men of weak fibre, there lies a real danger in that species of literary work which appeals to their cultivated senses because of its scholarly and pleasant tone, but which enjoins as the proper attitude to assume in public life one of mere criticism and negation; which teaches the adoption toward public men and public affairs of that sneering tone which so surely denotes a mean and small mind. If a man does not have belief and enthusiasm, the chances are small indeed that he will ever do a man's work in the world …

There it is. So, so many educated men of weak fiber these days who deem themselves too smart for . . . everything, even the truth (hello, Oprah – see here, here, here, and here but most especially, see here).

And the women know it.

It’s just that there are so many mothers, daughters, sisters and aunt’s conflicted about how we got here and how we get out of this predicament.

Suggestion: start with a mirror. We men must do likewise. After that, value actions more than feelings and support responsibilities more than rights.

 

PACIFIST, AS PUNK ASS SURRENDER MONKEY

Jeff Goldstein, while taking down a perpetrating poser at the L. A. Times named Joel Stein hiding behind his “honesty,” provides an on-point refutation of (1) those not supporting the troops, as well as (2) those supposedly supporting the troops but actively opposing the war effort in Iraq:

So while Stein is boisterously “honest” in his opening salvo—”I DON’T SUPPORT THE TROOPS”—what he is not telling you directly is that he doesn’t support those of you who do support the troops (be it a sincere support, or trailer park jingoism fueled by Budweiser pony-keg patriotism), nor does he support those of you who, like him, don’t support the troops, but pretend that you do simply to be a “good citizen.” Because in fact, the position Stein takes, when he says that supporting the troops “is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken,” is that his own sense of preening moral rectitude is only ethical position to assume in a democracy whose elected leaders have chosen, in the national interest, to fight for the security of the nation, be it at home or abroad.

Pacificism, as noted Rethuglican neocon war profiteer George Orwell famously wrote of another conflict, is “objectively pro-Fascist.” And a few weeks after 911, the late Michael Kelly added to Orwell’s thoughts some necessary updating of the context.  From “Evil masquerading as goodness” (Sept 27 2001):

Pacifists see themselves as obviously on the side of a higher morality, and there is a surface appeal to this notion, even for those who dismiss pacifism as hopelessly naive. The pacifists’ argument is rooted entirely in this appeal: Two wrongs don’t make a right; violence only begets more violence.

There can be truth in the pacifists’ claim to the moral high ground, notably in the case of a war that is waged for manifestly evil purposes. So, for instance, a German citizen who declined to fight for the Nazi cause could be seen (although not likely by his family and friends) as occupying the moral position. But in the situation where one’s nation has been attacked--a situation such as we are now in--pacifism is, inescapably and profoundly, immoral. Indeed, in the case of this specific situation, pacifism is on the side of the murderers, and it is on the side of letting them murder again.

In 1942, George Orwell wrote, in Partisan Review, this of Great Britain’s pacifists:

“Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me.’”

England’s pacifists howled, but Orwell’s logic was implacable. The Nazis wished the British to not fight. If the British did not fight, the Nazis would conquer Britain. The British pacifists also wished the British to not fight. The British pacifists, therefore, were on the side of a Nazi victory over Britain. They were objectively pro-Fascist.

An essentially identical logic obtains now. Organized terrorist groups have attacked America. These groups wish the Americans to not fight. The American pacifists wish the Americans to not fight. If the Americans do not fight, the terrorists will attack America again. And now we know such attacks can kill many thousands of Americans. The American pacifists, therefore, are on the side of future mass murders of Americans. They are objectively pro-terrorist.

There is no way out of this reasoning. No honest person can pretend that the groups that attacked America will, if let alone, not attack again. Nor can any honest person say that this attack is not at least reasonably likely to kill thousands upon thousands of innocent people. To not fight in this instance is to let the attackers live to attack and murder again; to be a pacifist in this instance is to accept and, in practice, support this outcome.

Evil masquerading as goodness – Michael Kelly nailed it.

 

WHY I AM A REPUBLICAN

[1] I believe in the “ownership society” and the importance of re-inculcating that spirit into Americans, in general, and African Americans, in particular; [2] I believe in effecting change through participation in the recognized and historical political parties; [3] I support the President in his approach to the War For Freedom, also known as the Global War on Terrorism, completely and unequivocally; and [4] I concur with the Republican philosophy that the free enterprise system developed in America and our encouragement of individual initiative and incentive have given this nation an economic system second to none.

“Dependence [on welfare],” said FDR in 1935, “induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole our relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.”

The creation of wealth tends to do the opposite. It tends to build up the human spirit and strengthen the national fiber. The unintended consequences of the war on poverty (primarily brought about, in my opinion, because the concept of “rights” was divorced from the concept of “responsibilities”) have collectively wreaked havoc upon the African American community. These actions have turned a “can-do” people (African Americans) into a folk who have systematically accepted a “can’t do” attitude.

I see the Republican Party as acknowledging the historical fact of these unintended consequences and actively attempting to rectify those mistakes. I want to be part of that process.

 

MAKING SENSE OUT OF NONSENSE, AT HOME AND ABROAD

Imitating an Army Ranger while operating as a pundit, Victor Davs Hanson leads the way:

The United States is engaged in the most radical and dangerous gambit in the Middle East since the end of the Ottoman Empire. Established powers are not often inclined to tamper with the status quo abroad, and so do not support the weaker and disenfranchised. They usually prefer to prop up whoever ensures order and stability. But after September 11, the old safe way was seen as dangerous, and the new dangerous way as ultimately more safe.

America not merely reversed its own past practice of supporting autocrats who pumped oil and kept Communists out, at least in the Middle East; but in staying on after the removal of Saddam Hussein—so unlike post-Soviet Afghanistan, Lebanon of 1983, or Mogadishu in 1993—it spent billions of dollars and hundreds of lives to give birth to democracy.

That last paragraph is a fact, and it’s proving remarkably hard for the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party to come to terms with. It has proven to be equally difficult for their international compatriots to do, as well.

Hanson documents the lay of the land in his piece and I compile some of his thoughts here as twelve points that, in my mind, call into question our “loyal” opposition:

1.                 The supposedly idealistic Left charged that we were bellicose and imperialistic — as if being on the side of the purple-fingered Iraqi voter was not preferable to being on the side of the terrorist and insurrectionist, who masked his fascism with national rhetoric

2.                 The realist Right was aghast that profits and the balance of power were lost in the equation

3.                 The isolationists felt we were either doing Israel’s bidding, wasting lives and money on hopeless tribesmen, or fattening the government to administer a new empire.

4.                 The above-listed alternative views were predicated on the 24-hour pulse of the battlefield, to be instantly modified, retracted, or amplified when events suggested dramatic improvement or disheartening setback.

5.                 The exasperated public is told that we had too few troops in postwar Iraq, but have too many now.

6.                 Although cognizant that the Europeans were virtually unanimous that we were attempting to do the impossible in Iraq and were certainly doomed to failure, Monday Morning Strategists nevertheless understood that we wanted to be as inconspicuous as possible, so as not injure Arab sensitivities or create perpetual dependency – but the enemy proved to be a collection of worthy adversaries and we ended up needing an unfortunately high profile just to put down insurrectionists. That demonstration of flexible strength is somehow portrayed, now, as ineptitude or weakness.

7.                 On the State Department side, Jay Garner is critiqued as too much the military man; Paul Bremmer too little.

8.                 Prewar forecasts warned a worried public that we might lose 3,000-5,000 soldiers just in removing Saddam. Three years later, we have removed him and sponsored a democracy to boot, and at far less than those feared numbers. But we react as if we had faced unexpected numbers of casualties.

9.                 Despite documented evidence mandating the opposite finding, we are nevertheless assured that there was no tie between Saddam and terrorists. Those who suggest there were lines of support are caricatured as liars and Bush propagandists.

10.             Still dismissive of the flypaper strategy, we are asked to believe that the al Qaedists whom Iraqis and Americans kill each day in Iraq largely joined up because we removed Saddam Hussein.

11.             Still free from an assault 52 months after 9/11, censors assure us that our safety has nothing to do with the Patriot Act, nothing to do with wiretaps, nothing to do with killing thousands of terrorists abroad in Afghanistan and Iraq, and nothing to do with creating democratic Afghan and Iraqi security forces who daily hunt down jihdadists far from America’s shores.

12.             Critics of the War in Iraq are trapped into a view that can countenance only one narrative that says the American effort is reducible to this: an initial mistake was made far worse by ideologues, leading to a hopeless situation that only makes the U.S. appear foolish and impotent, while ruining the military, creating a police state at home, and emptying the treasury.

Hanson responds to these points with some cognitively dissonant facts. He says “these same critics surely don’t want Saddam Hussein back in power,” and I concede that as true for most of them. Hanson notes that “[t]hey concede that after three successful elections, Iraq just might be the first truly democratic society in the history of the Middle East. And they privately acknowledge that the reputations of Osama bin Laden and Al Zarqawi are on the wane.” Given these facts, quite naturally, Hanson is left to ask, “How was that possible when almost everyone fouled up?”

He answers with some great points that address the unseriousness of the opposition, here and abroad, via their apparent talking points that cannot be subjected to contextual analysis:

Point One (for Americans): My own flawless three-week removal of Saddam Hussein was ruined by your error-prone postwar peace.

Point Two (for Middle Easterners): We are for democracy—unless you Americans help us obtain it.

Point Three (for Europeans): We are privately for and publicly against what you do.

Point Four (for everyone else): When angry at either the United States (or yourself,) just blame the Jews in America, and Israel abroad.

Sometimes in these crazy times, that is all you need to know.

That’s the script.

 

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

Another American deserving of great honor is Alexander Hamilton and I thought Mackubin Owens did a great job doing just that in this piece, Vigilance and Responsibility:

This past week (January 11) marked the 251st anniversary of the birth of Alexander Hamilton, whom Richard Brookhiser described as the greatest of the Founders except for George Washington. Hamilton’s detractors, beginning with Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams did not deny his greatness, but feared his motives. They described him as a lover of monarchy whose goal was to corrupt the republican virtue of the American people by means of his economic schemes. Since then, many writers, reflecting the view of his contemporary adversaries, have depicted Hamilton as the "prince of darkness" in a Manichean struggle with Thomas Jefferson for the soul of the American republic or as a "militarist," a Caesar or a Bonaparte, bent on tyranny at home and conquest abroad.

But the struggle between Hamilton and Jefferson was not between bad and good, vice and virtue, or darkness and light, but between responsibility and vigilance, two virtues necessary to sustain republican government. And what many describe as Hamilton’s militarism was really strategic sobriety, the essence of which is the recognition that one must prepare not only for the expected, but also for the unexpected. Hope is not a realistic strategy.

Let us recollect, that peace or war, will not always be left to our options.…To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude, that the fiery and destructive passions of war, reign in the human breast, with much more powerful sway, than the mild and beneficial sentiments of peace; and, that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.

Strategic sobriety is a mode of thought that republics require as much as any other regime. Unfortunately, it is one that republics all too often discourage.

Ain’t that the truth. I’m still waiting for a serious return to “context” in the study of American History and World History, too. Owens likened vigilance to a proper level of jealousy, noting that Jefferson said:

"it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind those whom we are obliged to trust with power."

Here is the contrast, clearly seen by Hamilton back in the day:

Responsibility is the statesmanlike virtue necessary to moderate the excesses of political jealousy, thereby permitting limited government to fulfill its purposes. Thus in Federalist 23, Hamilton wrote that those responsible for the nation’s defense must be granted all of the powers necessary to achieve that end. Responsibility is the virtue necessary to govern and to preserve the republic from harm, both external and internal. The dangers of foreign and civil war taught Hamilton that liberty and power are not always adversaries. The "vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty."

This debate is alive and well today, as civil libertarians speak in terms of vigilance while the administration and its defenders stress responsibility in the face of an alien threat, a vast, foreign-based conspiracy that seeks to destroy the United States and kill its citizens. Today, as in his own time, it is certain that Hamilton would stress the importance of responsibility, believing that while we should always be vigilant when it comes to the Constitution and our civil rights, a prudent assessment of the threat created by terrorism tilts the balance toward responsibility.

Yes.

Responsibility.

He then touches another fact seemingly lost on the present generation; America was known as a “model republic” at our inception because we were absolutely unique among governments on Earth – and in many ways, we still are:

It was Machiavelli who suggested that security required republics to transform themselves into empires, as Rome had done. Hamilton agreed, but unlike Machiavelli, he sought to achieve this transformation by consent rather than force or fraud. Hamilton believed that such a republican empire, in the form of a powerful, indissoluble Union, would keep war at a distance, thus avoiding the militarization that had led to the downfall of earlier free governments.

Unlike Jefferson, Hamilton assumed that force ruled relations among nations in the New World as well as in the Old. Nonetheless, he expected that if America could survive as an independent nation, consent would replace force in the New World. In the meantime, the volatile and uncertain geopolitical situation required that America take the steps necessary to defend its rights and honor. These included the establishment of credit and a national bank, the encouragement of manufactures, and the creation of an expansible standing army and an ocean-going navy.

Owens wrote that Hamilton firmly believed that the Constitution could not be used as an instrument in its own destruction. That, naturally, means a strong Chief Executive is mandatory. He quotes Hamilton in Federalist #70:

There is an idea, which is not without its advocates, that a vigorous Executive is inconsistent with the genius of republican government. The enlightened wellwishers to this species of government must at best hope that the supposition is destitute of foundation, since they can never admit its truth without at the same time admitting the condemnation of their own principles. Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.

That, of course, has tremendous application today. Which is why we’re fortunate as hell to have George W. Bush in the Presidency and not Al Damn Gore. Having an able Chief Executive during a time of way is imperative:

During the Civil War, Lincoln took his bearings from Hamilton on the need for broad executive power in times other emergency. As he argued in an 1863 letter, certain actions that are unconstitutional in the absence of rebellion or invasion become constitutional when those conditions exists—in other words, "that the Constitution is not in its application in all respects the same in cases of rebellion or invasion involving the public safety, as it is in times of profound peace and public security."

In the current debate over presidential powers in the war on terror, Hamilton would come down on the side of those who argue that Congress can pass no law that restricts the president’s inherent constitutional power. He would also reject the idea that a judge has the authority to render the president—the constitutional officer responsible for security—powerless.

In conclusion, Owens added that:

Some have suggested that Hamilton was a militaristic state-builder along the lines of Frederick the Great or Bismarck. In fact he was an 18th century liberal who never lost sight of the necessity to remain within the bounds established by the Constitution. "Let us not establish a tyranny," he wrote in 1798. "Energy is a very different thing from violence." He recognized that war is the great destroyer of free government, unleashing the accidents and passions that undermine liberty, and that liberty is endangered by too little as well as too much power. His goal was to establish a republican regime both fit for war and safe for liberty.

By creating the institutions that minimize the inevitable tension between the necessities of war and the requirements of free government, the Founders bequeathed to the United States the unprecedented ability to wage war while still preserving liberty. As Walling points out, "More than anyone of his time, [Hamilton] envisioned and set in process the chain of events that would enable the United States to lead the free world against twentieth-century regimes far more militaristic and dangerous to the rights of man than Revolutionary France."

Without the institutions that Hamilton was instrumental in creating and the strategic sobriety that he taught, the United States would be hard pressed to defend its interests in a dangerous world while maintaining liberty at home. Just ask Thucydides. Happy birthday, Mr. Hamilton.

An American original – born in this hemisphere but outside the continental United States, definite in his belief we were not Europeans, practical and visionary but not utopian – an early version of an All-American.

 

INTERESTING INVESTING TIP

The Opinionated Bastard comes forth with this tidbit that naturally caught a neophyte like me completely “unawares,” so to speak:

Personally, I think the S&P500 is broken. I mean look, the S&P500 is supposed to be a proxy for the market as a whole, right? Now before we had computers, that made sense. And when the S&P500 came out, there weren't 7,000 stocks in the market, so looking at just the top 500 made sense. But now that we do have computers, why settle for a “proxy for the market” when you can have the “whole market” by investing in the Wilshire 5000 index?

Most of the S&P500 index investors are missing the point that all the efficient market guys used the S&P500 to replace the market because they didn't want to have to calculate a total market index. Well, Wilshire/Dow Jones has done that work now. In fact, I'm writing a paper on what Marketocracy is doing, and I'm going to have to use the W5000 instead of the S&P500 because the index has drifted so far away.

I think its time to fire Standard & Poors. In theory, Standard & Poors supposed to be adding value by doing the following: