After the Arizona shootings, cries for civility were all the rage. Now that left-wingers are emoting, their cries for this is not so much. In my blogging, I ran across a neat quote from Otto von Bismark, the Chancellor of Germany in the 19th. century:

Be polite; write diplomatically; even in a declaration of war observes the rules of politeness.

- Otto von Bismark

More about Otto von Bismark.

Picture (cc by-sa 3.0) by SPBer.

from History Moments

http://historymoment.blogspot.com/

Did you ever notice that in almost every great war in history, France has been involved in some way? Here’s an example: Julius Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul.

Summary: Julius Caesar conquered Gaul (the Roman’s term for the lands now France). His legions also raided into Brittania (England) and crossed the Rhine River (into Germany.

Background: Barbarians from north of the Alps had raided the Italian peninsula for centuries. By the middle of the 1st. century bc, Rome had expanded it’s holdings up to the mountain range. The area east of the range was falling under Roman control. In Rome, Julius Caesar had formed an alliance with Pompey and Crassus. Caesar’s part of the empire was north Italy (Cisalpine Gaul) and that part beyond the mountains that Rome controlled (Transalpine Gaul).

Meanwhile, barbarians in the German area were invading Gaul. A tribe allies with Rome asked Caesar for help.

Major Players:
. 1) France:Tribes of Gaul, facing invasions from other barbarian tribes from Germany and from the Romans

. 2) Other Countries:Rome, which by this time had become the major power in the lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Germanic and Swiss tribes from the German area, and the Celtic tribes in Britannia.

. 3) The Leaders:Julius Caesar, heavily in debt and needing conquests for money and glory to further his political position in Rome. Vercingtorix, who lead all the Gallic tribes in a rebellion against the Roman conquerors and gave Caesar his most desperate fight at Alesia.

Narrative: Caesar crossed the Alps and defeated the Germanic barbarian invasion of Gaul or 58 bc. In 57 bc, he defeated the most important of the Gallic tribes in the Belgium area. The other important tribes submitted to Rome and Caesar announced that Gaul was conquered. An unprecedented 15 day celebration was voted in Rome.

Revolts of various tribes and actions against the Germanic tribes occupied the middle period of the war. He conquered southwestern Gaul in 56 bc. In 55 bc, he answered raids from Germany by building a bridge across the Rhine in a matter of days, marching his army across it and devastating the area beyond. In 54 bc he crossed the Channel and raided Britannia. The following year, he crossed the Rhine again. With both the Britains and the Germans cowed, he and Rome both felt that Gaul was good and conquered and free from external troublemaking.

Vercingtorix struck in 53 bc, bring the war to its final and its most desperate phase. All Gaul rebelled against Rome. Caesar was defeated at the town that is the modern Clermont, besieged Vercingtorix in Alesia but was surrounded himself. Only the superior engineering skills and superior discipline saved the Roman army. When Vercingtorix’s forces inside Caesar’s lines were starved out, the Gallic War was at last over but for the mopping up.

Pictured is Vercingetorix’s surrender to Caesar after the Siege of Alesia in 52 BC.

Aftermath: Caesar wrote memoirs of the wars. These books ranks among the best military literature of history. Afterwards, he led portions of his army back into Italy where he crossed the Rubicon River in 49 and began the Roman Civil War. Gaul remained a Roman Province until the fall of the empire.

Caesar’s Commentaries
Wikipedia

History Moments

http://historymoment.blogspot.com/

Exciting new policies for taxpayers who are about to get hit with tax liens or have already been hit with one.

• The tax owed the IRS is now $10,000 instead of $5,000.
• It will be a lot easier to get a lien removed. In fact, one may get it removed by getting a direct withdrawel agreement with the IRS, after a probationary period. (This makes so much sense one wonders why the IRS have not been doing this all along!)
• Small businesses with $25,000 in unpaid taxes can now get an installment agreement over 24 months. Earlier threshold was $10,000. At least this is a step in the right direction. One still wonders why businesses cannot get agreements based on projected ability to pay.
• On the Offers in Compromise front, taxpayers with incomes < $100,000 are eligible (versus < $50,000 earlier). Tax liability must be < $50,000 (versus < $25,000 before).

Many people may have just given up. They now have some hope of getting out of their tax debt.

More info from the IRS.

http://cpafinance.blogspot.com/2011/03/new-irs-policies-on-tax-liens.html

The Obama Administration admitted today that 1/2 trillion dollars of the Health Care Budget has been double counted. The money is being applied to Medicare and to expenses at the same time.

Would that we could all do that. I’ve got $50. I want to pay my $50 utility bill and I want to drop $50 at the local tavern. Why cannot I just take that $50 in money and spend it in both places at the same time? After all, Obama does it – and he even tacks a few zeros on it, too!

http://poljournal.blogspot.com/

The Foreign Policy Institute has developed a wonderful briefing book on world affairs. You can read it online here for free. Just click the link.

Anybody who wants to learn about foreign policy ought to read this book. It is filled with wonderful articles about every area of the world from many of our country’s leading thinkers.

My own highlights:
Decline is a Choice, Charles Krauthammer
FPI Fact Sheet: The case for a fully resourced counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan
Iran Outlook: Grim, John R. Bolton, National Review
A Road Map for Asian-Pacific Security, Gary J. Schmitt, American Enterprise Institute
Center Stage for the 21st Century, Robert D. Kaplan, Foreign Affairs
Open Letter to President Obama on Central Europe, Multiple Authors,The Foreign Policy Initiative
The Colombian Miracle, Max Boot and Richard Bennet, The Weekly Standard
Pirates, Then and Now, Max Boot, Foreign Affairs
Obama and Gates Gut the Military, Thomas Donnelly and Gary Schmitt, Wall Street Journal

These are just a few among the many wonderful articles in this book. Must read! (And it’s free!!!)

The Political Journal

My take on Charles Krauthammer’s latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: Once parties rotate from opposition to governing, their sense of responsibility changes. They must face realities.

Quote:

In this case, the antiwar party has followed the Bush endgame to a T in Iraq and has doubled down in Afghanistan. And there is no general restiveness (at least over this).

My Views: Macaulay in his History of England talks about this. When a party gains power, its perspective changes. Realities that it had previously dismissed, now have to be faced. Assumptions that some things could be dealt with in some kind of dismissive manner, now have to be faced realistically. For example, they cannot just make a speech about making nice and expect adversaries to reciprocate. When the adversaries do not (think Iran), the guys new to power must face facts.

Then there’s the stigma of failure. Failure not to just pass bills but failure for one’s own policies to achieve the expected results. In short, the party that previously opposed now must face the areas where they were wrong.

This was true for Jefferson when he ousted the Federalists; it is true for Obama today. Tomorrow, it will be true for the Republicans, too.

Republican’s Senate Leader

Born: February 20, 1942. Age: 68 years old.

College: 1967 – University of Louisville, honors. Student
Body President, Student Bar Ass’n President.

Intern: 1967 John Sherman Cooper, U.S. Senator.

Legislative Assistant: Senator Marlowe Cook.

Deputy Attorney General: in Ford Administration.

County Admin: 1978 – 1984 top political office of Jefferson County (which includes Louisville.

1984 – Present: U.S. Senator from Kentucky.

Only major Senator to oppose campaign finance reform on Constitutional grounds.

Republican Whip: 2003 – 2007; Republican Leader 2007 – present.

Married: Elaine Chao, Secretary of Labor under George W. Bush.

The Political Journal – http://poljournal.blogspot.com/

If I could do my own health care bill, here’s what it would have:

1) Lawsuit costs lowered. Limiting the scope of lawsuits would have an impact beyond just the costs insurance companies have to pass on to doctors (who pass those on to consumers). It would lower

.. a)health insurance costs because less medical care costs the less the insurer has to pay – and the less premiums they would need from consumers.
Defensive medicine (i.e. the extra treatment doctors/nurses have to do to cover their butts in case they are sued.)

.. b) Legal fees. Even when patients win lawsuits, you know who wins really, don’t you? The lawyers, of course.

2) More medical schools to address the doctor/nurse shortage in America. We’ve been covering that through our immigration policies but every doctor we steal from the rest of the world means that someone out there has to do without. There’s plenty of Americans who want to be health professionals, who would be good at it, but there’s no place for them because our nation’s medical schools are so limited. That’s the bottleneck.

We can build more – lots more – but that costs money. Spending health care money on doctors and nurses instead of lawyers and bureaucrats is a spending program we can understand. It puts our health care priorities right.

It will also ultimately address doctor fees. – Law of supply and demand: shortages drives prices up; abundance drives them down.

3) Insurance portability across state lines. Maybe the Department of Commerce will have to do some regulating but the ease on the insurance pressure on a mobile America will be worth it.

Now for something really, really radical . . . (Drumroll!)

4) Start New Health Insurance Companies. Why not? This is something those limosine liberals could easily do. Obama wants to give the insurance companies some “competition”. he calls their profits “obscene”. Then just reducing profit margins to the “spectacular” level so they can produce more generous insurance provisions would quickly transform the industry. – And they wouldn’t have to worry about Republicans, filibusters, or even Senate reconciliation provisions.

Icing on the cake (listen up Charles Rangell, Christopher Dodd, et al) you can make yourselves a whole pile of money, to boot! – Of course, this last presumes that Obama’s rhetoric against the insurance companies were true.

- Alright, so 3 out of 4 ideas isn’t such a bad batting average!

www.jacklemoine.com

Obama’s policy is most notable for the lack of his visibility in it. One gets the sense that his officials came up with it and he just went along, if indeed he gave any attention to it at all.

One has to wonder about a “Progressive Movement” that just wishes the entire Space Age would just go away. “Hope and Change” for space policy seems to have become “give up and stay the same”.

The one big advancement (no not the Mars manned landing – that’s just a mirage) is the commitment to encourage commercial space launches. – But to what purpose? What is the goal here?

More information: Space Policy Institute.

www.jacklemoine.com

I watched most of the summit Thursday.  Obvious points:

1)  Obama wasn’t really looking for agreement.  It was just an act.  Else, why would he try to refute every single one of the Republican statements, no matter how sincere, and trivialize the statements of even the most senior R leaders?

2)  The most egregious D statements he let pass without comment.

3)  He wound up the meeting with D only speakers, cutting the Republican leaders out of any role in ending the meeting.

This meeting was run to make O and his Democrats look good and R’s look bad.

www.jacklemoine.com