The Humorlessness Of The American Mommy
Genocide got you down, ladies? No, turns out it's just a Motrin commercial sending American mommies into a rage:
One of the outraged mommies responds, speaking a lot, not saying much of anything (do we think she actually knows why she's mad?):
More mad mommies here, plus sickening soundtrack:
Why Terrorists Hate Mumbai
There was a moving op-ed in The New York Times by Suketu Mehta, an NYU journalism prof and author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
MY bleeding city. My poor great bleeding heart of a city. Why do they go after Mumbai? There's something about this island-state that appalls religious extremists, Hindus and Muslims alike. Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness.Mumbai is all about dhandha, or transaction. From the street food vendor squatting on a sidewalk, fiercely guarding his little business, to the tycoons and their dreams of acquiring Hollywood, this city understands money and has no guilt about the getting and spending of it. I once asked a Muslim man living in a shack without indoor plumbing what kept him in the city. "Mumbai is a golden songbird," he said. It flies quick and sly, and you'll have to work hard to catch it, but if you do, a fabulous fortune will open up for you. The executives who congregated in the Taj Mahal hotel were chasing this golden songbird. The terrorists want to kill the songbird.
Just as cinema is a mass dream of the audience, Mumbai is a mass dream of the peoples of South Asia. Bollywood movies are the most popular form of entertainment across the subcontinent. Through them, every Pakistani and Bangladeshi is familiar with the wedding-cake architecture of the Taj and the arc of the Gateway of India, symbols of the city that gives the industry its name. It is no wonder that one of the first things the Taliban did upon entering Kabul was to shut down the Bollywood video rental stores. The Taliban also banned, wouldn't you know it, the keeping of songbirds.
Bollywood dream-makers are shaken. "I am ashamed to say this," Amitabh Bachchan, superstar of a hundred action movies, wrote on his blog. "As the events of the terror attack unfolded in front of me, I did something for the first time and one that I had hoped never ever to be in a situation to do. Before retiring for the night, I pulled out my licensed .32 revolver, loaded it and put it under my pillow."
Mumbai is a "soft target," the terrorism analysts say. Anybody can walk into the hotels, the hospitals, the train stations, and start spraying with a machine gun. Where are the metal detectors, the random bag checks? In Mumbai, it's impossible to control the crowd. In other cities, if there's an explosion, people run away from it. In Mumbai, people run toward it -- to help. Greater Mumbai takes in a million new residents a year. This is the problem, say the nativists. The city is just too hospitable. You let them in, and they break your heart.
In the Bombay I grew up in, your religion was a personal eccentricity, like a hairstyle. In my school, you were denominated by which cricketer or Bollywood star you worshiped, not which prophet. In today's Mumbai, things have changed. Hindu and Muslim demagogues want the mobs to come out again in the streets, and slaughter one another in the name of God. They want India and Pakistan to go to war. They want Indian Muslims to be expelled. They want India to get out of Kashmir. They want mosques torn down. They want temples bombed.
He feels the answer is to go to Mumbai. I don't know what the answer is. To any of it.
As for Muslims, is it really hard for them to say: we unequivocally condemn the murders in Mumbai? Yep. Turns out it is. At least for a bunch of them whose thoughts are collected here.
And then there was this, by Paul Sheehan, in the Sydney Morning Herald:
The Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel was built on a slight, when Jamsetji Tata was turned away from Watson's Hotel because he was not a white man. Last Wednesday the four Pakistani murderers who entered the hotel's ornate lobby were also motivated by a slight, but theirs was a burning, murderous sense of grievance. Their motives were pathetic - envy and resentment - masquerading as religious fire.They murdered indiscriminately. They killed staff members and guests, Indians and foreigners, men and women, young and old, Muslim and Hindu. They killed at least 200 people at last count. Two of the gunmen started the killing at the nearby Leopold Cafe (where my wife and I dined last year, on the advice of our Qantas crew, while staying at the magnificent Taj Mahal Palace) before jogging the short distance to the hotel to join two other gunmen inside the hotel.
...This was a stateless crime by a stateless enemy that draws its inspiration from the numerous exhortations in the Koran to wage war on infidels and expand Islam by conquest. It was no accident that the date was November 26, the American national holiday of Thanksgiving, and that the terrorists were looking to capture and kill Americans. Jihad's goal is to defeat or cower the great satan, America, thus removing the main obstacle to the march of Islam.
It was no accident that one of last week's targets was a Jewish centre, the local headquarters of an ultra-Orthodox movement, even though Jews have only a tiny presence in Mumbai. Anti-Semitism has a conspicuous place in the Koran and is a central element of the new jihadist movement.
It was no accident that all or most of the murderers were Pakistani, not Indian Muslims. Ever since India and Pakistan were partitioned by the British government in 1947, Pakistan has fallen further behind its great rival.
While India has maintained 60 years of relatively stable, pluralist democracy and has recently emerged as an economic powerhouse, Pakistan's per capita wealth ranks a dismal 166th among the world's nations. Pakistan's politics has gone through 20 national emergencies in the past 60 years. Members of the Pakistani diaspora in Britain were responsible for the co-ordinated mass murders on the London Underground on July 7, 2005, and have been involved in numerous terrorist plots in Britain.
Pakistan has become a central battlefield of global jihad. Should the military government fall, a small nuclear arsenal would fall with it. Yet the centre has refused to fold in Pakistan, with militant Islam repeatedly rebuffed in national elections.
This latest massacre was an attempt to break the uneasy detente between India and Pakistan, and between Hindus and Muslims inside India. As of today, it has been a failure, and must continue to be treated as one.
I read somewhere, that the manager of the hotel, whose family was murdered in the attacks, insists on staying on to rebuild the hotel.
Who's Ruder, Liberals Or Conservatives?
Theodore Dalrymple writes on City Journal:
The Sunday before the American election, the Observer in London published an assessment of President Bush's legacy by several well-known American writers. One of them, Tobias Wolff, wrote: "When I see someone being rude to a waiter, or blocking the road in a Ford Expedition, or yakking loudly on a cell phone in a crowded elevator, I naturally assume they voted for George W. Bush."
Of course, I don't consider Bush a conservative. Not by a long shot. He's a religious conservative, but not the fiscal conservative (like me) that he professes to be.
Dalrymple thinks liberals are ruder:
Is there, in fact, a connection between being a conservative and having the selfish thoughtlessness (of the kind with which we are all familiar) that Wolff describes?My guess is that there is no such connection, but rather the reverse. Modern conservatives tend to see the locus of appropriate moral concern more in personal behavior than in social structure (I am not here concerned with whether they are right or wrong). They believe in personal responsibility rather than causation by abstract social forces. They do not believe in entitlement, their own or anyone else's, or in an indefinite extension of rights. They do not believe in perfection, and they think that even improvement usually comes at a cost.
Modern liberals, by contrast, tend to focus their moral concern more distantly from themselves, on the more abstract political and economic sphere. For example, the personal sexual code does not concern or worry them much unless it is restrictive. They believe that bad behavior finds its origin in social forces rather than in man's soul. They believe in everyone's entitlements, which are never met quite sufficiently and need to be extended endlessly. For them, the perfect society will result in perfect people.
But, what about those of us who are neither? People like me who are fiscally conservative but otherwise pretty libertarian? I even call myself a "personal responsibilitarian," and I'm just completing a book which I hope will, in addition to giving people some laughs, de-rudify our immediate world at least a little.
Also, I find Dalrymple's talk of a "soul" as the origin of bad behavior quaint. Evidence points to us having evolved mechanisms for what we consider morality -- reciprocal altruism, cheater detection, and such. And some people seem genetically predispositioned for "bad behavior," just as, per Sonja Lyubomirsky's book The How of Happiness
I do have to admit, I have rarely encountered such rude people as I have at the Whole Foods in Santa Monica (capital of liberalism in America, if there is one). The Santa Monica Trader Joe's isn't much better. Of course, in both places, the people who work there are pretty lovely. It's just the customers who make it ugly.
So...who do you think is ruder? Or is it a little more complex than that?
P.S. Tobias Wolff is wrong -- at least about the perpetrators of rudeness to waiters and cell phone yakking that I see. As for the Expeditions, no, they aren't usually the vehicle of liberals. The assholes out here cut you off in Priuses. One did it to me yesterday, in fact. And just a guess (based on the Obama sticker on the back)...but I think he might be a libbie.
Save A Dollar, Lose Your Humanity
Police are searching for the people who trampled the Wal-Mart worker to death. Colleen Long writes for AP:
Police said about 2,000 people were gathered outside the Wal-Mart doors before its 5 a.m. opening at a mall about 20 miles east of Manhattan. The impatient crowd knocked the employee, identified by police as Jdimytai Damour, to the ground as he opened the doors, leaving a metal portion of the frame crumpled like an accordion."This crowd was out of control," Fleming said. He described the scene as "utter chaos," and said the store didn't have enough security.
Dozens of store employees trying to fight their way out to help Damour were also getting trampled by the crowd, Fleming said. Shoppers stepped over the man on the ground and streamed into the store.
Damour, 34, of Queens, was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead around 6 a.m., police said. The exact cause of death has not been determined.
A 28-year-old pregnant woman was taken to a hospital, where she and the baby were reported to be OK, said police Sgt. Anthony Repalone.
Kimberly Cribbs, who witnessed the stampede, said shoppers were acting like "savages."
"When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling 'I've been on line since yesterday morning,'" she said. "They kept shopping."
The guy's name again -- Jdimytai Damour. He was 34. From The New York Times, from a story by Robert D. McFadden and Angela Macropoulos:
Mr. Damour, who lived in Queens, went into the store sometime during the night to stock shelves and perform maintenance work.On Friday night, Mr. Damour's father, Ogera Charles, 67, said his son had spent Thursday evening having Thanksgiving dinner at a half sister's house in Queens before going directly to work. Mr. Charles said his son, known as Jimmy, was raised in Queens by his mother and worked at various stores in the area after graduating from high school.
Mr. Charles said he had not seen his son in three months, and heard about his death about 7 a.m. Friday, when a friend of Mr. Damour's called him at home. He arrived at Franklin Hospital Medical Center an hour later to identify the body. Mr. Charles said he was angry that no one from Wal-Mart had contacted him or had explained how his son had died. Maria Damour, Mr. Damour's mother, was in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, but was on her way back to the United States, Mr. Charles said.
I just don't understand the buying frenzy; the way Christmas is now largely a holiday celebrating binge-buying. It seems to be the antithesis of what people tell me Christianity is supposed to be about.
A newspaper asked me the other day what I wanted for Christmas. I had no idea. I have everything I want. I thought and thought and finally came up with something -- the last two volumes of the Oxford version of the Historical Dictionary of America Slang, P-S and T-Z (which don't actually exist yet, and may never exist, because they don't have funding to finish them).
As for my Christmas shopping, it's a very, very short list: the great people who work for me (my editorial assistant, my editor at Creators, and my bookkeeper), and the two kids next door. I got this yesterday without trampling anything more than a couple of piece of paper on my office floor -- on Woot, for $8.99 plus shipping -- a grand total of $13.99 -- for my neighbor's darling son. He'll love it. 
And yeah, I'll get something for Gregg, but I get him stuff whether or not it's Christmas, when I see something he'd like or he needs, like booster batteries from Woot so he's never without power for his iPhone. I just like giving people I care about presents, and find the scheduled sense of obligation to do that on this holiday annoying.
And while I'll get really nice, more expensive things to recognize the great people who work for me -- I use Christmas as an opportunity for that (although I also get my assistant things, like a book, when I see things she'd appreciate, and get a bag of Ristretto for her whenever I order some) -- I don't understand why my Woot level of spending isn't enough for people in general.
Can't people change the way they spend? Make a plate of cookies instead of going further into debt? Agree to turn the clock back to some mythical time, before my lifetime, before it got ugly?
Help Amy With Her Homework
I've got double deadlines, plus the last section of my book due, and scientists have yet come up with a way for me to clone myself.
In case any of you are bored and not in the mood to go trample others in retail establishments, I could use a little help (stuff for the beginning of one column and the end of another).
The things I need:
1. Short protest statements, especially the silly ones; i.e., "the people, united, will never be defeated." Another example would be "Speak truth to power." The stuff people put on signs and bumper stickers and shout out at protest marches.
2. I also need ways people protest. I already have hunger strikes and the girl sitting in a tree. And self-immolation and public nudity.
3. I also need advertising lines for romantic stuff; stuff like "A diamond is forever" and "When you care enough to send the very best..." If you are inclined to toss me a few of these, please say what they're advertising. And if you know of any particularly noteworthy ads or commercials playing on romance, those would be helpful, too.
And no, there's no fence-painting involved, just my deep gratitude for your help, and for maybe chipping a few minutes off my work clock. Humor writing is hell, and takes forever.
Just Let The White Guys Suffer And Die
If you think the U.S. has cornered the market on hateful multi-culti think, think again. From a Canwest News Service story by Joanne Laucius, cystic fibrosis is "too white" for a bunch of Ottawa students to raise funds for.
(Of course, they're not only hateful, they're stupid, since, as a CF Foundation executive in the article notes, "CF is diagnosed just as often among girls as boys, although the health of girls deteriorates more rapidly" ..."It is commonly considered an illness that affects Caucasians, but that includes people from the Middle East, South America, North Africa and the Indian subcontinent.")
Laucius writes:
OTTAWA - The Carleton University Students' Association has voted to drop a cystic fibrosis charity as the beneficiary of its annual Shinearama fundraiser, supporting a motion that argued the disease is not "inclusive" enough.Cystic fibrosis "has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men" said the motion read Monday night to student councillors, who voted almost unanimously in favour of it. The decision caused heated reaction and left at least one member of council calling for a new vote.
Every year near the beginning of fall classes, during university orientation for new arrivals, students fan out across the city and seek donations from passersby. According to the motion, "all orientees and volunteers should feel like their fundraising efforts will serve their (sic) diverse communities."
Nick Bergamini, a third-year journalism student on the student council, said he was the only elected councillor present to vote against the motion. The decision is an example of campus political correctness gone too far, he said.
"They're not doctors. They're playing politics with this," said Bergamini. "I think they see this, in their own twisted way, as a win for diversity. I see it as a loss for people with cystic fibrosis."
The Shinearama fundraiser is carried out by students at about 65 colleges and universities across Canada. It has raised money for the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation for almost 50 years and Carleton has been participating for at least 25.
During orientation week this year, Carleton students, who have raised about $1 million over the years, raised about $20,000, said foundation chief executive Cathleen Morrison, who was surprised and dismayed by the student association decision.
...One of the councillors who voted in favour of switching the charity said Monday night that the information provided to the panel prior to the vote was factually incorrect, and he will be seeking support from other members to hold an emergency meeting to reconsider their decision. "After seeing all the reaction today, I definitely think it should be revisited and reconsidered," said Michael Monks, who represents Carleton's business students for the student council.
Um, even if it did benefit white guys, you can't figure out on your own that this is an evil position to take? How would it fly if you stopped supporting breast cancer research because it really only affects women?
Thanks, Jerry and Robert
How Islam Advances The World
First, here's yet another advance from the Israelis, who manage to do quite a bit of science when they aren't focusing on guarding against being driven into the sea by Muslims. Judy Segal writes for the Jerusalem Post that a team of applied physicists at Tel Aviv University have developed a way to weld wounds shut with a laser:
The team was led by Prof. Abraham Katzir, who found a way to maintain laser heat at the correct temperature so that the incision is sealed to minimize the risk of infection and scars and speed healing.Katzir says the development is "a groundbreaking medical technology" and could also be used quickly and easily by medics on the battlefield and at road accidents, as well as by plastic surgeons and other surgical specialists.
Katzir is the son of the late Prof. Aharon Katzir, the world-famous biophysicist who was murdered in the 1972 Japanese Red Army terror attack at Lod Airport; he is the nephew of Israel's fourth president, 92-year-old Prof. Ephraim Katzir.
I always wonder whether the cure for cancer or other terrible diseases died in The Holocaust. I mean, beyond the inhumanity of genocide of anyone, what moron kills Jews, with the Asians, the science nerds of the species? And no, it's not that others don't invent things or come up with cures, just that the Jews do disproportionate to their number in the population.
As for what Islam's given us, correct me if I'm wrong, I think there really hasn't been a significant scientific advancement from the Muslim world for 1,000 years. Here's the latest from an Islamic scientist; in fact, from a Hamas scientist, just down the block from the team welding skin together in Tel Aviv:
An Islamic scientist claim Islam's prophet Muhammad revealed the cure for AIDS, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute.Hamas TV scientist Ahmad Al-Muzain says Bayer, the German drug giant that developed aspirin, got its treatment for AIDS from "Prophet Muahmmad's Hadith About the Wings of Flies."
Al-Muzain, a Palestinian expert on "Quranic science," said during a program aired on Al-Aqsa Television Sept. 19 that the German company only confirmed what already had been revealed by Muhammad. (Video is here.)
"The prophet Muhammad said, 'If a fly falls into your drink, you should dip it in the drink, and then dispose of the fly - because one of its wings bears a disease, and the other bears the cure.'" Al-Muzain is quoted saying.
Hadith are oral traditions of the words and deeds of Muhammad.
"This hadith was included in the Al-Bukhari collection," Al-Musain said. "This hadith makes it absolutely clear that the Prophet Muhammad confirmed a clear scientific fact: If a fly falls into a vessel - before a person drinks from this vessel, he should dip the fly in his drink, before disposing of it. Then he should drink the beverage, because it won't do him any harm. Why? Because one of the fly's wings bears the disease, and the other one bears the cure."
The scientist said, "In Germany, the church paid a very large sum of money to two scientists to disprove this hadith. Since this hadith appears in the Al-Bukhari collection, we cannot claim that it is unreliable or anything, and so they thought that if they could prove that this hadith contradicts science, they would be dealing a devastating blow to Islam."
Al-Muzain continued, "The scientists took samples from the wings of flies, and began to examine them, analyze them, and take samples from their surface, in order to expose what existed on each wing. The devastating result constituted a slap in the face. The truth was devastating, and it backfired on them. The two scientists reached an astounding conclusion. They said that on one of its wings, the fly carries a huge amount of different types of bacteria, which adhere to it when it lands on rotting pieces of food that it eats. As for the other wing, Allah has given the fly the great ability to carry antidotes to these microbes."
Then he said Bayer "learned about this study, it derived great benefit from it. It established biological breeding farms, where they raised flies and extracted antibiotics from their wings - the strongest antibiotics in the whole world."
"This antibiotic was made into a course of five pills, which is given to the patients, and it is used - believe it or not, my brothers - to treat AIDS patients. ... How did they discover it? From this hadith," he said.
Invent something (other than a bomb vest to blow other Muslims and the rest of us up) and you might get to do something in the press other than crow about how "the church" stole Mohammed's wacky ass ideas.
Realistically, of course, that's not going to happen. Islam, of course, is totally opposed to the sort of thinking (rational though, for example) that would promote scientific discovery, and busy, busy, busy trying to institute Sharia law in the west so as to drag the rest of us back to the dark ages.
Broken Windows Pieced Back Together
I've always felt, intuitively, that it was right -- the broken windows theory of the spread of crime. That's the theory, by George L. Kelling at Rutgers and James Q. Wilson at Harvard, that, for example, broken windows left unrepaired will lead to more broken windows and worse. Ron Bailey writes in reason of recent research that seems to debunk the debunkers of the theory:
The idea behind the broken windows theory is that if people look around and see other people violating norms, they will tend to violate them as well. In the 1980s and 1990s, city governments and police departments stepped up their enforcement measures against petty crimes, such as painting graffiti, panhandling, littering, and subway fare jumping. The hope was that by minimizing public disorder, the police would help communities create crime-deterrent environments. Most of the evidence for the value of this kind of policing is based on studies of what happened to crime rates once police began to crack down on incivilities. In recent years, some analyses have questioned the broken windows theory as a strategy for effective policing.Now, a new study (additional online info here) published in Science provides some strong experimental backing for the broken windows theory. Dutch researchers from the University of Groningen, led by social scientist Kees Keizer. conducted six experiments to see if signs of disorder would encourage people to engage in norm violation themselves. The short answer: Yes.
In the first study, the setting was an alley in Groningen near a shopping district that is commonly used to park bicycles. A prominent sign in the alley prohibits graffiti. The researchers used rubber bands to attach flyers to the handlebars of each bike wishing shoppers a happy holiday from a non-existent sportswear store. The researchers monitored what the bikers did with the flyers when the wall in the alley was free of graffiti and when it was covered with it. The result: only 33 percent littered when the alley was graffiti free whereas 69 percent did when graffiti was present.
In a second study, the researchers set up a temporary fence closing off the main entrance to a car park. But they left a 20-inch gap in the fence with two signs posted in the immediate vicinity--one sign forbade locking bicycles to the fence and the other prohibited the use of the closed entrance and directed people to another entrance about 200 yards away. When four bikes were parked but not locked to the fence, only 27 percent of people stepped through the gap to go to their cars. When the bikes were locked to the fence, 82 percent walked through the prohibited gap.
...The researchers report, "We found that when people observe that others violated a certain social norm or legitimate rule, they are more likely to violate even other norms or rules, which causes disorder to spread."
As a fairly frequent visitor to New York, I can attest that much of the city has been transformed in the past two decades. My old block in the East Village is now graffiti free and lined with trees, shops, and restaurants. How much credit to give to policing based on the insights of the broken window theory for lower crime rates is controversial, but this new study shows that the theory deserves some. As the Dutch researchers conclude: "There is a clear message for policy makers and police officers: Early disorder diagnosis and intervention are of vital importance when fighting the spread of disorder."
Remove The Oxy
And you've got an ordinary moron (with a cult following), spewing the popular multi-culti view that we're "terrorists," too. Deepak Chopra speaks:
Chopra: Because it's an oxymoron. It's an oxymoron, Larry, a war on war, a war on terrorism.You know, terrorists call mechanized death from 35,000 feet above sea level with a press of a button also terror. We don't call it that, because our soldiers are wearing uniforms. They don't see what is happening, and innocent people are being killed. So, you know, terror is a term that you apply to the other.
King: Thanks, Deepak Chopra, as always, extraordinarily enlightening.
Yeah, I always forget what the idiot the guy is until I see or hear him the next time.
The Obamas Exercise School Choice
I'm with Jonah Goldberg, who feels the Obamas are doing the right thing by sending their children to the best possible school for them. You just don't sacrifice your children's education to make a political point. He continues with the problems of public school education; in this case, in Washington, D.C.:
Michelle Rhee, D.C.'s heroic school chancellor, in her 17 months on the job has already made meaningful improvements. But that's grading on an enormous curve. The Post recently reported that on observing a bad teacher in a classroom, Rhee complained to the principal. "Would you put your grandchild in that class?" she asked."If that's the standard," replied the defensive principal, "we don't have any effective teachers in my school."
So if Obama and other politicians don't want to send their kids to schools where even the principals have such views, that's no scandal. The scandal is that these politicians tolerate such awful schools at all. For anyone.
The main reason politicians adopt a policy of malign neglect: teachers unions, arguably the single worst mainstream institution in our country today. No group has a stronger or better organized stranglehold on a political party than they do. No group is more committed to putting ideological blather and self-interest before the public good.
Rhee has been pushing a new contract that would provide merit pay to successful teachers. The system is voluntary: Individual teachers can stay in the current system that rewards mere seniority or opt to join a parallel system that pays for superior performance. Many talented teachers would love the opportunity.
Alas, the national teachers unions insist that linking pay to results is an outrageous attack on the integrity of public schools. They have insisted that D.C. teachers not even be allowed to vote on the contract.
The Democratic Party continues to tolerate this sort of thing because public school teachers continue to be reliably liberal voters. And their unions cut big checks.
Obama, however, bragged about being different during his campaign. He declared himself independent from teachers unions and boasted his support for Rhee. But his recent appointment of Stanford professor -- and teachers union apologist -- Linda Darling-Hammond to head his education transition team is seen by many as a sign that reformers like Rhee can expect little support from the new White House.
And where are the Republicans? Well, if you want a good example of why hypocrisy isn't the worst thing in the world, just look at the GOP. Because the party supports school-choice vouchers, it's simply out of the debate. School choice has much to recommend it. But it's no silver bullet, and vouchers will never gain full acceptance in rich suburbs.
School choice does immunize Republicans from the charge of hypocrisy, however. So rich Republicans can send their kids to ritzy private schools without fear of violating their principles. Good for them. Unfortunately, their principled insulation also makes them largely irrelevant to a debate in which people like Rhee could use all the help they can get.
Wait - Medical Devices Have To Work Before The F.D.A. Approves Them?
Picky, picky. Do you really care that that stent the cardiologist is putting in your heart is safe and effective? Let's hope not, vis a vis this Gardiner Harris story for The New York Times on apparent misconduct at the F.D.A:
WASHINGTON -- Top federal health officials engaged in "serious misconduct" by ignoring concerns of scientists at the Food and Drug Administration and approving for sale unsafe or ineffective medical devices, the scientists have written in a letter to Congress....The letter says that the scientists have documentary evidence that senior agency managers "corrupted the scientific review of medical devices" by ordering experts to change their opinions and conclusions in violation of the law.
Dr. von Eschenbach asked William McConagha, the agency's assistant commissioner for integrity and accountability, to investigate the accusations, the letter states. Mr. McConagha characterized the documentary evidence supporting the accusations as "compelling" and sufficient to justify disciplinary actions, it says.
Mr. McConagha may have recommended the removal of certain agency managers, Mr. Dingell and Mr. Stupak said.
...The letter further says that Congress should consider reforming a process in which, the scientists say, the F.D.A. agrees to approve complex medical devices on the basis of little evidence of effectiveness.
Same NYT journo here, writing of more sleaze in medicine; this time, a "renowned child psychiatrist," Dr. Joseph Biederman, who apparently pushed Johnson & Johnson to fund a research center whose goal was "to move forward the commercial goals of J&J":
The documents also show that the company prepared a draft summary of a study that Dr. Biederman, of Harvard, was said to have written.Dr. Biederman's work helped to fuel a fortyfold increase from 1994 to 2003 in the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder and a rapid rise in the use of powerful, risky and expensive antipsychotic medicines in children.
Although many of his studies are small and often financed by drug makers, Dr. Biederman has had a vast influence on the field largely because of his position at one of the most prestigious medical institutions.
Johnson & Johnson makes a popular antipsychotic medicine called Risperdal, or risperidone. More than a quarter of its use is in children and adolescents.
Last week, a panel of federal drug experts said that medicines like Risperdal were being used too cavalierly in children and that regulators must do more to warn doctors of their substantial risks. Other popular antipsychotic medicines, also referred to as neuroleptics, are Zyprexa, made by Eli Lilly; Seroquel, made by AstraZeneca; Geodon, made by Pfizer; and Abilify, made by Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Thousands of parents have sued AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson, claiming that their children were injured after taking the medicines; they also claim that the companies minimized the risks of the drugs.
I just had an acquaintance return from a trip from Cambodia with some kind of gastrointestinal ailment. He's been very sick since July, but he couldn't get his doctor to okay a colonoscopy, which he obviously needed. Instead -- unbelievably -- the doctor removed his gall bladder. Based, apparently, on a guess. He was too upset or too bashful to talk much about this, but eventually got the colonoscopy he really needed, got diagnosed based on it, and is on medication for apparent parasites.
This guy is not some dumb naif, either, but people, even the most intelligent people, are often at the mercy of the medical profession. I'm not one of those advising people to forego western medicine for the advice of some gray-skinned hippie in the healthfood store (as if there's no profit motive in that industry!). But, a doctor's advice should always be approached with skepticism. A pity that most people aren't that equipped to have it or exercise it in any meaningful way.
Fuld Of It
The marriage of CEO Richard Fuld to Lehman Brothers is best described as "for richer and for richer." While workaday Lehman employees lost everything, Fuld has walked away with hundreds of millions. Here's the shocking video. What's really shocking to me (though not surprising) is the fact that none of these multi-mega-millionaires whose companies are tanking or have tanked have offered to personally give back to their employees.
via Drudge
Tolerance: You Show Us Yours And We'll Show You Ours
From MEMRITV, the day-to-day realities of the Muslim world. First, there's Kuwaiti Islamist Sa'd Al-'Inzi, who reports that, "according to Islamic law, a homosexual should be thrown from a tall building."
Next, there's British Islamist Kamal Al-Hilbawi, who debates liberal Nabil Yassin on whether Israeli children should be considered legitimate military targets.
And I don't believe the Israeli math problem Hilbawi brings up -- not for a minute. Israelis do not rejoice at Arab deaths; quite the contrary. While there are bloodthirsty exceptions, Israelis see fighting the Arabs as a grim necessity, necessary for their survival, and the death of a human being as a tragedy. The scumbag should be asked to present the text.
Meanwhile, Yassin says:
We need to be realistic. For 1,400 years, we've been speaking in the name of Islam, while concealing the facts of reality. There is a movement among the clerics - and I don't believe in clerics, because there is not supposed to be any clergy in Islam... There is a group of clerics, or religious jurisprudents, who fuel the phenomenon of religious violence, provide religious justifications [for terrorism], and allow people to go to Paradise and marry the black-eyed virgins, by killing themselves and others, some of whom are Muslims.
Paranoid Parenting
Coddled children make for helpless adults. And it seems we're raising a generation of them. Frank Furedi on "growing tendency to extend adult supervision into every aspect of children's lives" on Spiked:
It was apparent that 'outdoors' had become a no-go area for many youngsters, and that the majority of parents did not even allow their offspring to walk to school on their own.The idea that children were too vulnerable to be allowed to take risks had already become entrenched. Many readers of my book shared with me their hope that the regime of child protection would gradually give way to more relaxed and balanced attitudes. Little did they suspect that paranoia towards the safety of children was about to expand even further and encompass even children's experiences that it had hitherto not touched.
Who would have imagined that British children would be prevented from pursuing the age-old custom of conkering? Many adults were rightly shocked and bemused when a few local authorities introduced a new policy of 'tree management': a euphemism for preventing children from climbing on chestnut trees or playing with conkers. More than any other bans introduced in subsequent years, the attempt to discourage children from playing with chestnuts symbolised the relentless drive to diminish young people's experience of the outdoors. At the time, many people sneered at the busybodies who decided that children were not fit to go near conkers. Today, however, when local authorities chop the branches off horse chestnut trees to save children from this terrible danger there is barely a murmur of protest.
In recent years, banning children from activities that appear remotely adventurous has become an institution of British political life. It seems that kids are so feeble that we must protect them from everything. Earlier this month, a teacher informed me that children in her school are actively discouraged from running around or playing ball games during break time. Her rationale for promoting this anti-activity ethos was that 'someone could easily get hurt'.
Traditional children's games are disappearing because experts claim that they are too dangerous. Some primary schools have banned tag during break time, while some have got rid of contact sports. In January 2007, Burnham Grammar School banned impromptu football in order to prevent young people being hit by stray balls. The headteachers argued that pupils were 'kicking balls quite hard at each other'. In February 2007, St John's primary near Lincoln banned games like kiss chase and tag because staff felt that such activities were too rough.
He includes this with his piece:
CHERYL'S STORYWe were so excited to be taking our baby son swimming for the first time. We picked a quiet, midweek morning to take him to our local swimming pool because we didn't want him to be scared by lots of commotion and splashing on his first venture into the water.
The children's pool was totally empty that morning so we had the place to ourselves. Our son, Frank, took to the water like a fish and he splashed and played joyfully. I grabbed my camera to take a snap of him playing, but before I had pressed the button, a lifeguard was by my side warning me that I was not allowed to take photographs in the pool area.
I was incredulous. I tried to dismiss him with a joke; after all there were no other children in the water, the photo was just to be of my husband and son playing and splashing together. He insisted, and the more he told me that it was 'just the policy', the angrier I became. He told me that we would all be asked to leave if we did not observe this regulation.
I was indignant. How dare they prevent me from capturing this precious memory? I wanted to take the photo anyway, but my husband pointed out that we would ruin Frank's first swim by doing so and he would not be allowed to come to the pool in the future. We left feeling slightly unclean. What harm did they think we would do with a photograph of our child's first swim?
Furedi's book: Paranoid Parenting: Why Ignoring the Experts May Be Best for Your Child
When The Going Gets Tough
The dumb get dumber. Ruth La Ferla writes for The New York Times that an increasing number of people seem to be consulting psychics:
ON a good day last summer, Thomas Taccetta, a stock trader, might have checked his financial charts before plotting the day's investments. Today he is likely to check in with his psychic as well. "I'll play the broadest index, the S.&P. 500," Mr. Taccetta said, "and if she tells me she is getting a negative view, I will sell."Since September, when the Dow collapsed, Mr. Taccetta, who trades for his own portfolio in Boca Raton, Fla., has talked with his psychic about once a month, roughly twice as often as a year ago. "There is no rhyme or reason to the way the market is trading," he said. "When conditions are this volatile, consulting a psychic can be as good a strategy as any other."
Closing your yes, clicking your heels together three times, and pointing at several options is cheaper.
The steep prices charged by practitioners of divination do not seem to have deterred many of the financially fretful. Ms. Hartman, the Los Angeles psychic, said her Internet traffic has picked up substantially, from about 30 visitors a day to more than 200. She charges from $150 for a 30-minute telephone reading to $500 for 90 minutes of "intuitive counseling." In what is perhaps a sign of the times, the $70 moss-scented prosperity candle offered on her Web site has become her best seller, she said.
Smells like prosperity for her. Smells like something else to me.
Mr. McFaul checks in with his psychic when he is stumped for answers about where his business, and his competition, might be headed. "I'm a big believer that you really don't dismiss any opinion," he said.
How about I charge you $200 to let you read Lucy's ass fur?
P.S. If psychics are such seers, how come I got a message from Tori Hartman's PR lady in my e-mail yesterday?
Dear Amy Alkon,Los Angeles psychic, Tori Hartman, was one of four psychics featured in yesterday's New York Times Sunday Style section. Read the article titled, Love, Jobs and 401(k)s by Ruth La Ferla, at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/fashion/23psychic.html.
Tori is available for interviews and welcomes invitations from networks and press. Her message is one of empowering people to use their own intuition to make decisions, especially in these shifting economic times.
Tori's approach is friendly and easy-going. To view a video clip of her, please visit www.ToriHartman.com by clicking from anywhere on this email, call (323) 230-9265 PST or email Kristen@ToriHartman.com.
Best regards,
Kristen Butler
Creative Director
I mean, it doesn't take a seer to know what I think of psychics and the like. You just have to read my blog, which you can do entirely free of charge. If, however, you want to order a really expensive bullshit scented candle, please e-mail me and I'll see what I can do.
P.S. My message is one of "empowering people to use their own rationality to make decisions."
The Key To The Con
Fascinating piece over at Psychology Today, a magazine rejuvenated and turned into in an exciting, science-based read by my friend Kaja Perina. Neuroeconomist Paul J. Zak, director of the Claremont Center for Neuroeconomics Studies, blogs about his experience getting conned in high school with "The Pigeon Drop." That's when somebody uses something that appears to be of value (but which really isn't) to get you to turn over something of actual value -- usually money -- because you think you're getting something for nothing or something for very little. (THOMAS is his wacky-ass name for oxytocin, which anthropologist Helen Fisher nicknamed "the cuddle chemical.") Basically, Zak says there's more than greed at work in becoming a mark for this con:
The key to a con is not that you trust the conman, but that he shows he trusts you. Conmen ply their trade by appearing fragile or needing help, by seeming vulnerable. Because of THOMAS, the human brain makes us feel good when we help others--this is the basis for attachment to family and friends and cooperation with strangers. "I need your help" is a potent stimulus for action.Let's break down the THOMAS hooks that caused me to get conned. The first hook was the desire to help the man get this nice gift to his undoubtedly sweet wife. He needed my help. The second was the man who wanted to give the necklace back but who was late for his interview. If only I could help him get that job. My THOMAS was in high-gear, urging me to reciprocate the trust I had been shown and help these people. Only then does greed kick in. Hey, I can help both men, make a wife happy, and walk away with $100-what a deal! Yes, suspend all suspicion and give up the cash. Cons often work better when a confederate poses as an innocent bystander who "just wants to help." We are social creatures after all, and we often do what others think we should do.
Here's Michael Shermer testing "The Pigeon Drop" with a professional con man:
Oh, and while we're on cons, here's one bajillions of people get suckered by -- astrology. I'm amazed when people ask me my "sign," as if it has some relevance. My sign? No parking, street cleaning. And frankly, my crankiness in my response surely tells you much more about me than knowing when and where I was born.
Phil Plait, on the Bad Astronomy blog explains why it's idiotic to believe in astrology. Longish piece, summed up here:
* There is no force, known or unknown, that could possibly affect us here on Earth the way astrologers claim. Known forces weaken too fast, letting one source utterly dominate (the Moon for gravity, the Sun for electromagnetism). An unknown force would allow asteroids and extrasolar planets to totally overwhelm the nearby planets.* Astrologers tend to rely on our ability to remember hits and forget misses. Even an accurate prediction may be simple chance.
* Study after study has shown that claims and predictions made by astrologers have no merit. They are indistinguishable from chance, which means astrologers cannot claim to have some ability to predict your life's path.
* There is harm, real harm, in astrology. It weakens further people's ability to rationally look at the world, an ability we need now more than ever.
Conclusion
Astrology is wrong.See? Told you I'd repeat it. That was one astrological prediction you could actually count on.
For a really substantive take on why belief in astrology is dumb, here's Ivan Kelly's The Concepts of Modern Astrology: a Critique.
Paternity Fraud: Yet Another Innocent Man Ruined
Terrible story -- yet another man who lost everything because the courts don't care who's the father as long as somebody's paying, and because they don't punish the horrible women who game the system, knowing they can suck men who haven't fathered their children for child support simply by lying and saying they're the fathers. From The Patriot-News, a story by Pete Shellem -- and read the whole thing; it's stunning what this poor guy has been through:
When Walter Andre Sharpe Jr. signed for a certified letter from Dauphin County Domestic Relations in 2001, he didn't know he was signing on for a seven-year nightmare.Since then, the Philadelphia man has been thrown in jail four times, lost his job, become estranged from his four children and spent more than $12,000 to support the child of another man.
It finally stopped in May 2007 when a judge reversed a finding that he was the father.
But the same judge has since ruled that Sharpe is not entitled to any compensation, not even the money he was forced to pay to support the child.
Sharpe's attorney, Tabetha Tanner, said the county Domestic Relations office "stole" Sharpe's identity by exchanging his date of birth, address and Social Security number for that of the father.
The agency fought Sharpe's attempts to have DNA testing and said it determined he was the father "after reasonable investigation."
Yet it took The Patriot-News less than an hour to track down the real father, Andre Sharpe, who said the girl that Walter Sharpe has been paying support for has been living with him for the last four years.
But in court papers, Domestic Relations blamed Walter Sharpe, a former trash collector, for not filing the proper motions in court to "disestablish paternity."
"What type of investigation were they doing if you can track this guy down in less than eight hours?" Walter Sharpe asked. "It just pisses me off. I tried my best to clear myself of this case, and it fell on deaf ears. It's like I'm guilty until proven innocent. I'm just another man crying, 'I don't know this person. I don't have their kid.' It's a routine they're just used to."
Again, my question is, where are the feminists? If you're for fair treatment and against discrimination, you're for it and against it no matter what the sex of the person being treated unfairly and discriminated against.
via Deja Pseu
A Somali Pirate Speaks
Interviewed by Xan Rice and Abdiqani Hassan in The Guardian:
We give priority to ships from Europe because we get bigger ransoms. To get their attention we shoot near the ship. If it does not stop we use a rope ladder to get on board. We count the crew and find out their nationalities. After checking the cargo we ask the captain to phone the owner and say that have seized the ship and will keep it until the ransom is paid.We make friends with the hostages, telling them that we only want money, not to kill them. Sometimes we even eat rice, fish, pasta with them. When the money is delivered to our ship we count the dollars and let the hostages go.
Then our friends come to welcome us back in Eyl and we go to Garowe in Land Cruisers. We split the money. For example, if we get $1.8m, we would send $380,000 to the investment man who gives us cash to fund the missions, and then divide the rest between us.
Our community thinks we are pirates getting illegal money. But we consider ourselves heroes running away from poverty. We don't see the hijacking as a criminal act but as a road tax because we have no central government to control our sea. With foreign warships now on patrol we have difficulties.
But we are getting new boats and weapons. We will not stop until we have a central government that can control our sea.
Greek sea captain Panayiotis Tzanetakos gives the view from his side to The Guardian's Helena Smith:
'No seaman has ever seen anything like this. It's a war zone out there and, put simply, the situation is out of control. They've got weapons, RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades], you name it, and it's not like before when they'd come on board and rob you. These days they hijack ships, take the entire crew hostage and demand huge ransoms. It's very primitive and very frightening....'When they attack you - and so far the Ellivita has been lucky - the game is up quickly. In five to 10 minutes the pirates surround you in speedboats; then using ladders they board the vessel and from that moment there's nothing you can do. They're the ones with the weapons and they've taken the crew hostage.
'We're mariners not military men and our job is not to use guns against other people. But I also think we have reached a point where to protect ships we have to have security teams, or weapons, on board. Right now it seems it really does seem as if it can't get any worse. But crews are also concerned that the next thing we'll be seeing are deaths, people being shot by pirates demanding ransoms.'
From IslamWatch, Mumin Salih writes:
Even though the pirates are Muslims who start their operations by saying Allahu Akbar and end it by saying Alhamdulillah, it is remarkable that no one refers to them as Muslims. Of course, it would be offensive to associate Islam with terrorism or piracy. The irony is that the Somalis find it offensive to call them anything other than Muslims who follow the footsteps of their prophet. What these Muslims are doing is an exact replica to Islams' most celebrated battle- the battle of Badr except that Mohammed practiced his jihad in the desert while his followers are practicing it in the seas.
Now, the Islamists are upset -- the pirates have taken a ship from a Muslim country, and it's only okay to for Muslims to go after non-Muslims. Uh-oh! From one of the comments on Jihadwatch:
And this is clear Kufr (Kufr Bawah) as the Saudi Permanent Committee (al-Lajnah ad-Da'imah) for Ifta' have themselves said in one of their Fatawa: "Whoever does not distinguish between the Jews and the Christians and the other infidels and between the Muslims except by nationality, and makes all of their rulings equal, then he is a kafir."
Mohammed Atta Commemorative Statue In Central Park
Or perhaps we should commemorate Charles Manson or Pol Pot? Most disgustingly, as Say Anything blogs, they've thrown up a statue to totalitarian mass murderer Che Guevara in Central Park. Picture at the link.
Here's Johann Hari in The Independent on the absolutely horrible man they're lauding:
When Che and Fidel Castro's guerrilla army seized power in Cuba, he was immediately - and to his delight - put in charge of the firing squads. He instituted a system of 'trials' that lasted just a few hours, with himself as sole judge. They invariably ended with the low-level functionaries of the Batista regime being lined up and shot. Che's public declarations from that time are blunt. "All right, it is dictatorship," he shouted at one point. "It's criminal to think of the needs of the individual." He even banned Santa Claus, saying he was an "American imperialist import."The friend who had travelled with Che on the famous motorcycle journeys, David Mitrani, was shocked when they met up in Havana after the revolution. He could not understand how Che's compassionate response to poverty all those years ago had led him to announce he now wanted to become an " effective, violent, selective, and cold killing machine".
Che's fanaticism reached its peak in October 1963, when he seriously advocated a course of action that would immediately end life on earth. Che had implored the Soviet Union to place nuclear missiles on Cuba. He knew the US would interpret this as an act of aggression and probably retaliate with nuclear weapons - but he said that "the people [of Cuba] you see today tell you that even if they should disappear from the face if the earth because an atomic war is unleashed in their names... they will feel completely happy and fulfilled" knowing the revolution had inspired people for a while. Che did not say how he knew the Cuban people would be delighted to die of radiation sickness, their hair burning on their heads and their skin slopping from their faces.
The Soviet Union followed Che's advice - and the world came closer to nuclear annihilation than at any point before or since. On the American side, maniacs like General Curtis LeMay implored Jack Kennedy to nuke Moscow immediately. On the Soviet side, Che Guevara played exactly the same role. He urged Khrushchev to launch a nuclear strike, now, against US cities. For the rest of his life, he declared that if his finger had been on the button, he would have pushed it. When Khrushchev backed down and literally saved the world, Che was furious at the "betrayal". If Che's recommendations had been followed, you would not be reading this newspaper now.
None of these facts are seriously disputed by historians; they are simply skidded over by Che's defenders, who stick to romantic generalities about how he stood for "honesty" and "revolution". But Che Guevara is not a free-floating icon of rebellion. He was an actual person who supported an actual system of tyranny, one that murdered millions more actual people.
No Way On Holder For Atty. General
Thanks, but we'll take the attorney general who's for freedom of speech. Here's a quote from Barack Obama's current candidate, Eric Holder, in the wake of Columbine:
The court has really struck down every government effort to try to regulate it. We tried with regard to pornography. It is gonna be a difficult thing, but it seems to me that if we can come up with reasonable restrictions, reasonable regulations in how people interact on the Internet, that is something that the Supreme Court and the courts ought to favorably look at. - May 28, 1999 NPR Morning Edition
A reasonable restriction on the Internet is the same as one in actual life: make or send death threats and you'll be prosecuted.
via Jihadwatch
Scare-ah Brightman
Tinkerbell as the world's tiniest dominatrix -- or is it the other way around?
Denmark Of Sanity
Denmark's National Council for Children is proposing doing the right thing -- banning childhood genital mutilation -- of boys. From Child's Rights Information Network:
Denmark's National Council for Children has recommended the legislation of a law banning circumcision of boys under the age of 15."Circumcision is the irreversible damage to a child's body before he is given the chance to object," the National Council for Children argued.
The proposal may be on its way to parliament after intense discussions by MPs over the past week, reports Kristeligt Dagblad newspaper.
Although circumcision of girls was outlawed in response to the practice being common among immigrants from some Muslim countries, boys may still be circumcised if a certified physician is present.
Jewish traditions calls for the circumcision of newborn boys, and many Muslims and Christians support the practice as well. But both the Ethics Council and the National Council for Children have recently criticised the practice, stating that a boy should be able to decide for himself if he wants the procedure performed when he reaches the age of 15 - the legal age in Denmark for a child to have sole jurisdiction over his own body.
Now, if your child, for some medical reason, needs to have part of his genitals removed, have at it. But, HIV can be prevented with condoms, and if you're having some guy hack off part of your child's body because of your primitive religious practices, well, you really have no right.
You Can't Force Somebody To Do Business Your Way
Or, rather, you shouldn't be allowed to. While I am totally behind gay marriage and equal rights for gays, nobody has a right to make a dating service do it their way. There was a lawsuit in New Jersey against eHarmony for not offering their dating service for gays. Gays and lesbians aren't, I believe, prohibited from signing up -- they just don't offer gay-partner matching, which is eHarmony's right. Nathan Koppel and Shira Ovide write for the WSJ:
The settlement stemmed from a complaint, filed with the New Jersey attorney general's office by a gay match seeker in 2005, that eHarmony had violated his rights under the state's discrimination law by not offering a same-sex dating service. In 2007, the attorney general found probable cause that eHarmony had violated the state's Law Against Discrimination.As part of the agreement, the Pasadena, Calif.-based company will develop and market Compatible Partners, a Web dating service for same-sex couples, and will allow the site's first 10,000 users to register free. EHarmony will also pay $50,000 to the attorney general's office and $5,000 to the man who first brought the case.
In a statement Wednesday, eHarmony denied violating discrimination law and said its business had been based on years of researching opposite-sex marriages to understand what makes such couples compatible.
When they were starting out, they gave me a free trial of their service, which I was entirely unimpressed with. The matches they proposed for me were just wildly wrong for me -- perhaps because I'm not at all their target customer or perhaps because the idea that they have an corner on the market on compatibility is just a marketing gimmick.
I actually think your best bet is knowing yourself and your values and using any site which provides you with a search engine to narrow down your choices. Now, maybe their site has changed, but for me, height is very important, and I don't think I was able to choose on that basis as I was on Matchmaker.com.
Oh, and I also think it's best to write yourself a profile that puts off people who aren't the kind of people you aren't looking for; in my case, if you believe in god, date elsewhere. Also, I was looking for a guy who "thinks for a living and cares about making a difference in the world."
But, back to the suit, my pal, GayPatriot, who is, you guessed it, gay, makes a great point:
I guess maybe I should sue to make sure they provide services for Jews. And while I'm at it, maybe we'll have a Christian sue Jdate, "The Leading Jewish Singles Network."This is nothing more than a nuisance lawsuit. He just felt hurt because a website offered dating services for heterosexuals, but not for him. His plea for equality has succeeded. With the help of the New Jersey Attorney General, he forced eHarmony to settle.* It will now offer a companion site for same-sex matches.
eHarmony has now lost its freedom to offer the kind of dating services its founder wished to provide. Commenting on a similar suit well over a year ago, I wrote:
The issue here is freedom. It's a shame that in their zeal to root out all discrimination (or perceived discrimination), some gay activists seek to undermine the freedom of others. Their freedom to speak as they will, to associate with whom they choose and to seek romance with the types of people with whom they hope to find intimacy.Just as eHarmony should be free to focus on heterosexual romance, so should gay.com be free to promote gay relationships.
What is it which so upsets this man about a service which caters to heterosexuals? So what? We don't see straight people trying to gain access to services which cater to those seeking same-sex relationships.
A Tip About Banks From Somebody In The Know
Can't reveal my source, but this person's been right in their other predictions in the past year. Here's what the person says:
Be prepared for a new wave of bank takeovers in the next couple months. The stock prices are being hammered because the true values of the banks are being revealed.Side note:
I feel our government is encouraging the consolidation in order to prepare for global currencies. We might see the Amero in our lifetime.
We live in historically unique times. The individual freedom experiment we have enjoyed may be drawing to a close.
Oh, and the person added:
History ALWAYS repeats itself. Now it's 300 channels and rebate checks.
Newt Has A Better Idea
Gingrich on Obama-fare in the WSJ:
Mr. Obama's tax plan includes creating or expanding nine or more federal income tax credits mostly focused on low- and moderate-income earners, with an estimated cost of $1.3 trillion over 10 years. These tax credits are provided for certain social purposes, such as child care, health care, education, housing and retirement. Buried amid these is Mr. Obama's purported tax cut for the middle class.For the bottom 40% of income earners, who pay no federal income taxes on net today, these refundable income tax credits will not reduce tax liability but instead result in new checks from the federal government for the targeted social purposes. That's not a tax cut. It's welfare.
These tax credits will do little or nothing to promote economic growth because they do not reduce marginal tax rates -- the rate on the next dollar of income -- to provide powerful, meaningful incentives for productive activities such as investment, entrepreneurship and work. A tax credit is effectively a cash grant that can only affect incentives up to the amount of the grant. Indeed, such tax credits would likely reduce economic growth because the credits are phased out as income rises, and so effectively impose higher marginal tax rates over those income levels.
For a real middle-class tax cut, we should cut the 25% income tax rate that now applies to single workers earning $32,550 to $78,850, and married couples earning $65,100 to $131,450. We should reduce that rate down to the 15% rate paid by workers below these income levels. That would, in effect, establish a flat-rate tax of 15% for close to 90% of American workers.
Marginal tax rates for middle-income families in the 25% tax bracket are too high. Add in effective payroll tax rates of 15% and state income taxes, and these workers are laboring under marginal tax rates of close to 50%. No wonder middle-income wage growth has slowed sharply. Reducing the marginal tax rates for these middle-income earners would lead to income increases for middle-income workers, just as reducing excessive marginal tax rates for higher-income workers did, going all the way back to the Kennedy tax cuts of the 1960s.
This 40% cut in middle-class income tax rates would provide a powerful boost to the economy, greatly expanding incentives for savings, investment and work. This would be much more effective than Mr. Obama's tax plan with it's $1.3 trillion in redistributive tax credits, as well as yet another so-called stimulus package based on another $300 billion or more in increased government spending.
...We could add to this alternative tax proposal an increase in the personal exemption from $3,500 to $7,000. The package would then cut taxes for all taxpayers, including those in the lower tax brackets. Of course, reducing the top income tax rates of 28%, 33% and 35%, capital gains tax rates, and the excessive 35% corporate tax rate, would boost the economy even more. But these are the "hate" rates imposed on those who liberals think are too productive, work too hard, and earn too much. Liberals deride these taxpayers as corporate fat cats and "the rich."
And please focus on this part: " with an estimated cost of $1.3 trillion over 10 years." If you think Obama-fare is free, think again. I call it "givernment," and I think people who are all elated about Obama as president don't understand that they'll be paying (unless, of course, they're one of those people who'll be getting a handout without paying anything in). How about we all keep our money and they earn theirs?
And let's not kid ourselves, the Republicans aren't the party of small government, either. As I've been saying for years, the current guy in the White House is the biggest Big Democrat since FDR.
The first politician with smarts and potential I've heard in a long time is a congressman who spoke at Reason's 40th anniversary weekend, Arizona Republican Jeff Flake. Naturally, it seems the Republicans have ostracized him for his position on earmarks -- he's against them, and tries to expose them...even, what a meanie, some jerk's $150,000 earmark to fix the plumbing in Italian restaurants. Hello? It's welfare whether you give it to a bunch of lower-rung taxpayers or an Italian restaurant owner, and I'm damn sick of it.
Beggars Can't Be Coach Flyers
Or even first class flyers. Nope, our Big Three aspiring welfare queens flew to Washington to beg for our money on private jets. Estimated cost for the flight, $20,000 -- versus about $800 for a first class ticket and around $300 for a coach ticket from Detroit to D.C. (per ABC News, which reported the story). From ABC:
(Ford CEO) Mulally made his case Tuesday before the committee saying he's cut expenses, laid-off workers and closed 17 plants."We have also reduced our work force by 51,000 employees in the past three years," Mulally said.
Yet Ford continues to operate a fleet of eight private jets for its executives. Just Tuesday, one jet was taking Ford brass to Los Angeles, another on a trip to Nebraska, and of course Mulally needed to fly to Washington to testify. He did not address questions following the hearing.
"Now's not the time to do that sort of thing," said John McElroy of the television program "Autoline Detroit."
"Now's the time to be humble and show that you're sharing equally in the sacrifice," McElroy said.
GM and Ford say that it is a corporate decision to have their CEOs fly on private jets and that is non-negotiable, even as the companies say they are running out of cash.
Private jet travel is perhaps the greatest perk of all for CEOs, who say it allows them to travel more efficiently and safely, even in a recession.
AIG, despite the $150 billion bailout, still operates a fleet of corporate jets. The company says it has put two out of its seven jets up for sale and is reviewing the use of others. Though there are no such plans by GM or Ford.
"It appears that the senior management of the automakers simply don't get it," said Schatz.
Ya think?
via Consumerist
The Problem With The UAW
Mitt Romney spells it out in a piece for the New York Times -- the extra burden autoworker pay and benefits add to an American car:
That extra burden is estimated to be more than $2,000 per car. Think what that means: Ford, for example, needs to cut $2,000 worth of features and quality out of its Taurus to compete with Toyota's Avalon. Of course the Avalon feels like a better product -- it has $2,000 more put into it. Considering this disadvantage, Detroit has done a remarkable job of designing and engineering its cars. But if this cost penalty persists, any bailout will only delay the inevitable.
By the way, I've seen the added cost of autoworker pension and health care listed as $1,400 or $1,500 in the past. He may be adding on salary here, but, unfortunately, isn't made to disclose where he got the number; it's just stuck in there and left unverified. (Thanks, New York Times!)
I was for the McCain healthcare plan -- to untie health care from the workplace. It's an excellent idea, and Obama should adopt it.
The Privacy Line
What you don't owe the person you're in a relationship with, from the Advice Goddess column I just posted, It's The Belittle Things...:
You actually were honest with your boyfriend -- you told him you "didn't want to tell all." That should've been that. Being in a relationship doesn't mean signing away your right to privacy. Anything short of "My last three boyfriends are buried in the backyard" or "I have these weird red bumps all over my girlparts" is information you don't owe anybody. While guys will get curious, an emotionally healthy boyfriend doesn't demand to know who, how many, how often, and how well your being double-jointed worked out for you and the last dude.As for what sheer numbers say, your sexual history could look like a line for free tickets to Coldplay; it's your ethics that predict whether you'll cheat.
Comments on this entry are open at this link.
Why Don't We Use What We Learned From The Savings And Loan Crisis?
Nicole Gelinas writes at City Journal about an alternative to the government (i.e., us taxpayers) paying full price for a bunch of crap in a bailout:
William Seidman headed the FDIC in the eighties and later, as head of the federal Resolution Trust Corporation, handled the S&L aftermath. During that crisis, the U.S. government closed down failed S&L institutions and had to sell off their holdings. These holdings consisted of $600 billion in diverse assets, including office buildings, hotels, golf courses, and apartment complexes. "There was no real market" for such assets, Seidman said at Monday's conference. "We decided we had to create a market. We said, we're going to start selling these properties at whatever price we could get."And what did the private owners of similar assets do when the feds started their initial sales? They howled. "You can imagine the reception: 'You're driving the market down,'" Seidman said mildly. Many of the critics were on Capitol Hill. "Congress asked us to keep the assets for five years to get prices up. I said if I'm sitting here just waiting to sell my assets . . . the price isn't going to go up." Selling at distressed prices initially was "the only way you could get it done. We began to sell." Investors who bought assets at rock-bottom prices found--through their own diligence, asset management, and early resales--that there was real value there, which encouraged investors to purchase more of the assets, increasing demand and raising the prices at future sales. Within a year, the market had begun to recover, with many formerly distressed properties approaching 70 percent of their original values.
My Concern: Will Qualified People Dominate The Cabinet?
Will the new Secretary of the Interior have ovaries? I couldn't care less. Which is as it should be. But, Lisa Lerer writes for Politico of women still seeking "equality" by demanding preferential treatment:
'I agree with those who are concerned that it would have been nice to see more women,' said Kim Gandy.Early indications that men might dominate the hierarchy of Obama administration have women's groups worried, even as a growing chorus of advisers reportedly pushes Hillary Rodham Clinton for secretary of state.
"There's definitely been a reaction to the few groups that have been named so far," said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women. "I agree with those who are concerned that it would have been nice to see more women."
Women's rights advocates acknowledge it's still early in the transition process, but they say early staff picks and the lists of rumored Cabinet nominees send the wrong signal.
What "wrong signal"? That they are trying not to discriminate based on sex? That they might hire a white guy if he happens to be the best black/native American, disabled woman for the job?
And then there's this, from later in the piece:
Last week, Linda Basch, president of the National Council for Research on Women, wrote an open letter to Obama urging the president-elect to consider gender equality when making appointments.
I urge Obama to do the same. Again, by hiring the very best person for the job.
Single Mother + NYC = Free Apartment
Heather MacDonald has a great idea, writing in the New York Post of how New York might make single welfare motherhood a little less attractive:
This year, New York will spend a mind-boggling $433 million to provide free housing for families claiming homelessness, virtually all headed by single mothers. That's on top of the nearly $200 million the city spends on "homelessness prevention"- cash grants and lawyers' fees for fighting eviction suits. No other US city offers this entitlement.To put that $433 million in perspective, it's nearly a third of the $1.5 billion in spending cuts that Bloomberg proposed last week and almost twice as much as the cost of the $400 dollar property-tax rebate that the mayor wants to eliminate. That property-tax rebate - costing $256 million annually - helps hundreds of thousands of hard-working New Yorkers. The $433 million for the "homeless" family-housing program goes to a mere 8,800 families, or .34 percent of the city population. On average, those 8,800 families cost taxpayers $31,000 annually per family. Yet the mayor says that the city can't afford a $400 property-tax rebate for working households.
Are these alleged homeless families really homeless? Here's a test. After a hurricane or other natural disaster wipes out people's homes, the Red Cross opens emergency shelters for the newly homeless - dormitory-like facilities that people who otherwise would have no roof over their head gratefully accept before they move on to the assistance of family and friends. Such group accommodations aren't what the city means by "homeless-family housing," however. Homeless-family housing in New York consists of a free private apartment with kitchen and bath, in which the average single mother stays nearly a year.
If single mothers claiming homelessness were offered Red Cross-type group accommodations, rather than their own apartment, the number of families trying to enter the system would drop precipitously, as would the length of stay. Many young women claiming homelessness have alternatives to free city housing, such as continuing to live with their own single mothers or moving in with friends. Those alternative accommodations are undoubtedly crowded and less than ideal. But a less-than-ideal housing arrangement isn't the same thing as no housing at all.
Traditionally, the stigma attached to illegitimacy and the need to rely on a disapproving family for support discouraged women from having out-of-wedlock children. Take away the stigma - as the welfare-rights revolution did - and provide housing and a monthly check clear of any unpleasant family negotiations, and you will see illegitimacy skyrocket. The city has socialized the costs of irresponsible behavior, thus encouraging more of it.
One of the commenters there, "Shefali," who says she volunteers at a homeless center and is involved in an adult literacy program, echoes my feelings:
What I don't understand - why do single women who have no source of income have kids? I read some case studies, and apparently in many inner city areas, when a girl reaches a certain age and wants her own place, she gets pregnant because then welfare will give her just enough to do that. But by subsidizing this behavior, are we really helping these women? If they didn't have the hand-out waiting for them, maybe they wouldn't have those babies that the taxpayer then has to take care of.
GM Should've Gotten Out Of The Car Biz Long Ago
At least the American car biz. NYU Finance prof David Yermack has a smart piece in the WSJ, noting that Roger Smith, the subject of Michael Moore's take-down, "Roger and Me," was actually a pretty insightful businessman -- one who "understood all too well that GM shouldn't continue investing in its failing automobile business." Yermack writes:
Mr. Smith made big investments in information technology and satellite communications, acquiring Electronic Data Systems in 1984 for $2.5 billion and Hughes Aircraft in 1985 for $5.2 billion. Mr. Smith's successors divested those businesses at huge profits -- EDS was taken public in 1996 for more than $27 billion, and Hughes, renamed DirecTV, went public in 2003 for more than $23 billion....In 1993, the legendary economist Michael Jensen gave his presidential address to the American Finance Association. Mr. Jensen's presentation included a ranking of which U.S. companies had made the most money-losing investments during the decade of the 1980s. The top two companies on his list were General Motors and Ford, which between them had destroyed $110 billion in capital between 1980 and 1990, according to Mr. Jensen's calculations.
I was a student in Mr. Jensen's business-school class around that time, and one day he put those rankings on the board and shouted "J'accuse!" He wanted his students to understand that when a company makes money-losing investments, the cost falls upon all of society. Investment capital represents our limited stock of national savings, and when companies spend it badly, our future well-being is compromised. Mr. Jensen made his presentation more than 15 years ago, and even then it seemed obvious that the right strategy for GM would be to exit the car business, because many other companies made better vehicles at lower cost.
Roger Smith, who retired as chairman in 1990, seemed to understand that all too well, and so did Chrysler's management, which happily sold their company to Daimler Benz for $30.5 billion in 1998. That deal, one of the savviest corporate divestitures ever, ended very badly for Daimler, which essentially paid Cerberus a few billion dollars (by agreeing to retain pension liabilities) to take Chrysler off its hands in 2007.
Over the past decade, the capital destruction by GM has been breathtaking, on a greater scale than documented by Mr. Jensen for the 1980s. GM has invested $310 billion in its business between 1998 and 2007. The total depreciation of GM's physical plant during this period was $128 billion, meaning that a net $182 billion of society's capital has been pumped into GM over the past decade -- a waste of about $1.5 billion per month of national savings. The story at Ford has not been as adverse but is still disheartening, as Ford has invested $155 billion and consumed $8 billion net of depreciation since 1998.
As a society, we have very little to show for this $465 billion. At the end of 1998, GM's market capitalization was $46 billion and Ford's was $71 billion. Today both firms have negligible value, with share prices in the low single digits. Both are facing imminent bankruptcy and delisting from the major stock exchanges. Along with management, the companies' unions and even their regulators in Washington may have their own culpability, a topic that merits its own separate discussion. Yet one can only imagine how the $465 billion could have been used better -- for instance, GM and Ford could have closed their own facilities and acquired all of the shares of Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Volkswagen.
The implications of this story for Washington policy makers are obvious. Investing in the major auto companies today would be throwing good money after bad.
This gives me an idea. If we're going to invest taxpayer dollars, let's do it in the most profitable ways possible. GM? No way. American Express? Maybe. But for $3.5 billion in taxpayer dollars, we should own your ass. "Membership has its privileges"? Okay. Lemme know when we can all line up to get ours. Oh yeah, and all those mansions we're about to buy? Timeshare, baby! Providing you're not on the Obama government as "givernment" plan, where you pay no taxes but get money back, you should get access to timeshare a mansion rescued from foreclosure with taxpayer dollars. What's that? What about the residents? Well, they can stay there as many days a year as they've paid for. Fair is fair!
No, No, No, No, No...
Click here.
"Using Our Democracy To Topple Our Democracy"
Brigitte Gabriel, founder of ACT for America and American Congress for Truth exposes the hate lit being used in Muslim mosques in America, and how Muslims plan to topple our democracy from within.
Gabriel's book: They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It
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Americans don't want to believe in this about Islam and Muslims -- it's antithetical to the way we've been taught to see our society, as a melting pot where all views are accepted. But, for that to work, people have to want to "melt," not melt, beat, blow up, or behead the rest of us into their primitive way of life.
Fetus First
Radwaste pointed me to a great piece over at Discover magazine's Bad Astronomy blog, the question of when is a human human?
Bad Astronomy blogger Phil Plait writes about Colorado's Prop 48 (which, thankfully, did not pass) to amend the Colorado Constitution to define a person as an legal entity at the moment a human sperm fertilizes an egg!
Prop 48 is ridiculous for any number of legal reasons. For example, if a woman who is pregnant for a day has a few drinks which cause damage to the embryo, can she be charged with reckless endangerment? What if she takes medicine that saves her but endangers the embryo? If I drive a pregnant woman around, can I use the HOV 3 lanes?There are other vital issues, like how granting civil rights to a collection of cells takes away many civil rights of women, and the huge increase in governmental involvement this would mean in people's lives. These are important to be sure, but not the point I want to make here. Also, these are age-old arguments, and in fact I can see where intelligent people can come down on opposite sides of them.
The real point is, Prop 48 isn't about science, and it's not even about legal issues. It's about religion. This proposition is obviously based solely on religious beliefs; there is little reason outside of that to even bring the argument up that a fertilized egg is entitled to rights as a human being. It is only the belief that the human soul enters the cell at that moment that this is an issue at all.
Proposition 48 is religion trying to create legislation, pure and simple.
And it's based on flawed reasoning. Try this thought experiment: you're walking down the street, and you see a building on fire. You enter it to help anyone out, and see it's a lab. On one side is a five-year-old boy, and the other is a petri dish clearly labeled as having a dozen fertilized eggs in it. You only have time to rescue the boy or the eggs. What do you do?
I would argue that it would be, ironically, an inhuman act to rescue the dish. Yet, according to the law if Prop 48 passes, you would have just chosen to let 12 human beings die to save one.
To me, those cells are just that: cells. There is nothing there that makes them human other than their DNA and their potential to grow.
Phil Plait, like me, points out that no one can say in any definitive way that a human becomes human at any particular point. In his words, we are trying to define something that's "fundamentally undefinable."
Simply put, we don't know when a human becomes human. And guess what: You don't get to legislate my behavior or anybody else's based on "we don't know."
The Money Hole
How best to dispose of your tax dollars.
via Mises
Please Don't Clip Your Nails In Public
Especially not in a place that serves food.
It makes my stomach lining try to jump out of my body and run away screaming.
Do I really need to tell you this? What was your momma doing with the sailors when she was supposed to be teaching you how to behave?
Why Bail Out Banks And Not GM?
Jim Manzi gives a very clear explanation over at NRO (read the whole thing at the link):
What would it mean to have GM go bankrupt? A change in ownership and a renegotiation of contracts.The factories, computers, office space, intellectual property and so forth that are now owned by GM would not disappear; they would basically become the property of GM's creditors. These creditors would sell the assets to the highest bidder. Assuming there is economic value to be created by continuing to operate the company as a business, private equity or strategic investors would buy the assets, shut down some plants, fire some union and exempt workers, and probably use the leverage of bankruptcy court to get a better deal from the unions. The current employees and creditors would be better off if you and I were forced by the federal government to prevent this by paying money to the corporate entity named General Motors, to then be paid to these employees and creditors. Of course, you and I would be worse off in this situation. On balance, if you believe that markets are more efficient allocators of capital than Congress is, the population of the United States would, on the whole, be worse off.
Is this fair to the people who work at GM and will now have a deal changed after the fact? Well, when people sold parts to GM on credit, or employees (individually or via union negotiations) entered into labor contracts with GM, they undertook counterparty risk. That is, they were taking, in part, a bet about whether GM would actually be able to pay them what they are owed. This is also true for pension payments, which are simply deferred compensation, as much as it is for deferred payments on credit terms for parts. To act now as if they should be protected from this risk is to treat them as children.
...We are bailing out parts of the finance industry because it is good for us, not because it is good for the finance industry. This ultimate public backstop is why it is appropriate and prudent to regulate parts of the finance industry to avoid collapses that threaten the whole economy.
Isn't it important that we maintain an industrial base as a matter of national security? Yes, but that is not the same thing as saying that the current management of GM needs to continue to have operational control of these assets, or that current employment levels are appropriate, or that current union contracts need to be maintained.
GM CEO Rick Wagoner's compensation package last year? $15.7 million dollars, up 64 percent from last year, said CNN's Randy Kaye. "He now says the company is willing to place limits on executive salaries," she added. Awww, aren't you touched?
Of course, I'd like to see a free market solution for all: live by the gamble, go under by the gamble. If we do have to bail out the bankers, I'd like to see the bankers "give back." Come on, banker boys and girls -- do the right thing. Pitch your salary and your Mercedes and your house in the Hamptons to those of us who are getting sucked dry for your mistakes. You got greedy and fucked up? You pay for it.
The Truth Will Keep You From The Grave Of Your Fallen Soldier Son
A Vietnam vet whose son was killed in the Al Qaeda attack on the U.S.S. Cole has been banned by U.S. military officials from visiting his son's grave due to decals on his car like the Islamic star and crescent with "We Died/They Rejoiced" -- which is the truth. The story is here, at JihadWatch.
It's Dangerous To Elect A Rock Star
Tuesday night, I had dinner with two old friends, one of whom came to the U.S. from Cuba at the age of 14. There's somebody who understands the dangers of getting behind a leader as a personality, for the nebulous hope of having "hope." He said people were behind Castro like they are Obama, dancing in the streets. He then said the thing that separates us from all those places where they cheer the ruler is not the man but "the system" -- meaning, I think, democracy, The Constitution, the stuff that puts checks on the rock star thing.
Palin Hoax
Martin was right. I shouldn't have posted the Palin Fox News video sourced only from a "McCain campaign worker." It was a hoax, and the two who perpetuated it are absolutely vile and I hope Palin sues them down to their jockey shorts. I don't think she will, and I think being victimized this way will increase her standing considerably in the long run. This sort of thing is the antithesis of behavior promoting democracy and anybody who hires these two scumbags will not only not get my dollar but will likely get my boycott of the rest of their products.
Oh, and Governor Palin...I'm sorry.
Very Expensive Markets
Free markets? Ha. The Republican party, led by the biggest Big Democrat we've had in office since FDR, has made a mockery of the free market. Matt Welch writes for reason, on the magazine's 40th anniversary:
If you want to know when this country's political class, even those hailing from the allegedly pro-market Republican Party, lost faith in the single greatest economic organizing principle ever devised by mankind, look no further than the following six terse sentences from Bush's decidedly unpresidential speech: "I'm a strong believer in free enterprise. So my natural instinct is to oppose government intervention. I believe companies that make bad decisions should be allowed to go out of business. Under normal circumstances, I would have followed this course. But these are not normal circumstances. The market is not functioning properly." Italics mine, to highlight the favored lament of reluctant central planners everywhere.Bush's laundry list of horror was not predictive; it was conditional. We could avoid the cruel fate of "a long and painful recession" if and only if Congress agreed right now to allocate around $700 billion more in money it doesn't have so the Federal Reserve could use powers it never previously contemplated to buy up huge swaths of "toxic" mortgage-related financial instruments no bank currently wanted to sell (except to the government, at a premium above the market price). The details weren't important; as House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said at the start of bailout negotiations, "We don't have a choice now of debating whether this is a good or a bad thing." The elite opinion leaders in Washington and New York were nearly unanimous in their contention that only deeply irresponsible "nihilists" (in New York Times columnist David Brooks' phrase) and the "lunatic fringe" of "wing nuts" and "zealots" (The Washington Post's Dana Milbank) failed to recognize the urgent need for massive yet vague reregulation. "The fine points of financial reform can wait," The Washington Post's editorial board thundered. "For Congress, the immediate task is to avert economic disaster."
...When a Republican administration arbitrarily (and "temporarily") bans short selling just one decade after Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir bin Mohamad was globally (and deservedly) mocked for blaming his country's self-inflicted woes on "speculators," when a Republican presidential nominee unleashes retrograde attacks against the "casino culture" of Wall Street "greed," and when a Democratic Congress holds nearly daily hearings suggesting any number of "windfall profits" taxes and forced reductions in private-sector CEO pay, that sound you hear is a fragile consensus shattering and a warning bell clanging in the night.
After the collapse of communism and the attendant discrediting of Marxian economic models, the industrialized world more or less settled on democratic capitalism as the best available option for countries to grow and prosper (see "The Libertarian Moment," page 62). Old Europe slashed government involvement in industry, New Europe rode mass privatization to massive growth, East Asian countries went from emergingmarket "tigers" to full-fledged market economies, and China used markets to yank hundreds of millions up from poverty. One could perhaps be forgiven for thinking the 20th century's great economic argument had been settled.
Well, no more.
In June I read what I thought I'd never see again: a mainstream column, by a mainstream columnist (The Washington Post's David Ignatius), arguing against the effects of airline deregulation, one of the most liberating government acts of the last four decades (see "40 Years of Free Minds and Free Markets," page 28). When reregulation is suddenly on the table even for an industry where market forces have cut prices in half while doubling the customer base, it's time to get back to first principles and fight like hell to secure victories we'd long thought won.
I'm hoping the Libertarian party takes a sane pill and puts up a candidate who actually seems electable and/or the Republican party stops being the party of handouts, bailouts and fundanutters and starts being the party they claim to be: the party of fiscal conservatism and small government.
Small government? Ha. At the moment, that's what we call city hall in Wasilla. As we're passing the hat to bail out American Express. American Fucking Express.
The new message of America: Fail big. You'll be worth billions -- in other people's money.
A New Kind Of Capitalism
Ted Turner on Lou Dobbs on the bailouts. And okay, I think he's kinda wacky on a lot of issues, but I'm with him on this one -- not treating businessmen like nursery schoolers (Whoops! You gambled and failed? Olly olly oxen free!):
DOBBS: Why would you not want to bail out an industry that's essential to national security, that has directly and indirectly employment impact of several millions?TURNER: They've been so stupid. I mean, I knew 10 years ago that they were going to go broke, building those big cars. They needed to read the news. If they would have watched CNN about what was happening to oil supplies, they would have realized that they needed to start building small cars.
DOBBS: Ted, I'm not going to argue that they haven't made stupid mistakes. But you know what?
TURNER: And they are so far in the hole that, you know, AIG, didn't we just give them another $40 billion? And it's only been 60 days that we gave them the last $100 billion, right?
DOBBS: You know, those burn rates get out of control.
(CROSSTALK)
TURNER: That's exactly right. And the auto industry is in a big, deep hole. If we're going to spend some money, let's put up windmills and solar panels with that money, and rebuild our electricity grid and prepare for the future, instead of pouring money down into a rat hole that's associated with the past.
DOBBS: What about...
TURNER: Big cars are a thing of the past. Gone.
DOBBS: Well, I mean, come on, I mean, they're -- Detroit, I'm not going to sit here and defend Detroit for a bunch of mistakes, but the fact is, they are coming out with all sorts of cars that are going to be electric, they're hybrid, they're flex fuel... TURNER: Why didn't they do it 20 years ago?
DOBBS: Well, you know, the same reason...
TURNER: They say that. They haven't -- they don't have a legitimate hybrid yet, and they don't -- and they don't have an electric car that works either.
DOBBS: The problem with talking to me, Ted, is I go back, too. And I remember when you needed a little financial help.
TURNER: And I don't want to see the auto industry -- I'm just mad as hell, like you remember the Peter Finch character in "Network..."
DOBBS: You bet.
TURNER: ... who said, throw the windows open, and say I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to underwrite losing companies anymore.
CNN, we struggled. We sweated every payroll for 20 years, but we never went to the government and asked for any money.
DOBBS: No, but you had to get some help from your partners.
(CROSSTALK)
TURNER: I know, but our partners...
DOBBS: That's a bailout of a kind.
TURNER: That -- it wasn't a bailout, it was an investment in the free enterprise system. It was a capitalist system, not a socialistic...
Thomas Friedman writes in The New York Times:
Last September, I was in a hotel room watching CNBC early one morning. They were interviewing Bob Nardelli, the C.E.O. of Chrysler, and he was explaining why the auto industry, at that time, needed $25 billion in loan guarantees. It wasn't a bailout, he said. It was a way to enable the car companies to retool for innovation. I could not help but shout back at the TV screen: "We have to subsidize Detroit so that it will innovate? What business were you people in other than innovation?" If we give you another $25 billion, will you also do accounting?
If we taxpayers are going to be forced to bail out these big companies (lest, I'm told, our economy go totally under), these big companies should now belong to us taxpayers. And what's with keeping on the assholes who ran them into the ground? And what's with letting them keep the mansions and Mercedes they earned doing it? We have to pay? Make them pay, too. Bigtime. We'll be over to collect the big car and the big house and the big private jet they got as their rewards for decades of bad business decisions. And the same goes for the UAW for their part in all of this.
England Is Over
Maybe not at this minute, but in my lifetime. And they're not the only ones. Here's hate cleric Omar Bakri spreading "the religion of peace" by videolink. Tom Savage writes in the UK Daily Star:
He was introduced to the crowd by his UK spokesman Anjem Choudary, the former head of banned fanatics group al-Muhajiroun.Choudary, who had booked the council-run room in Tower Hamlets for the event, told the gathering that taking over the UK was their "duty".
He said: "It is our religious obligation to prepare ourselves both physically and mentally and rise up against Muslim oppression and take what is rightfully ours.
"We will not rest until the flag of Allah and the flag of Islam is raised above 10 Downing Street."
He said there were only two types of proper Muslims - those in jail and those who would shortly be in jail.
He added: "We need to submit to the will of Allah."
As the crowd of 250 Muslims chanted pro-Allah phrases, Choudary tried to link up to Bakri, 50, by video link.
The technology failed and only Bakri's voice could be heard but his message of hate was unaffected.
He raged: "Do not obey British law. We must fight and die for Islam."
He also praised Osama bin Laden for being a "warrior" and told the crowd to ignore man-made rules.
Here's the word from Down Under, in a story by Cindy Wockner and Gareth Trickey in the Herald Sun:
EXECUTED Bali bomber Imam Samudra has urged from the grave that his Muslim brothers should educate their children and grandchildren to become terrorists and killers of "kaffirs" (non-Muslims).The chilling words are from the last will of Samudra, released in his home village in West Java where he was buried in a furious frenzy at the weekend.
Lacking any remorse or guilt, Samudra urged his fellow Muslims to fill their lives with the murder of non-believers, saying the title of terrorist was holier than that of Ulama or Muslim scholar.
He says: "For you who have committed yourself to fight against kaffir dogs, remember the war is not over."
He calls on others to fill their lives with murder of non-Muslims.
"Isn't it Allah who has ordered us to kill them all, just like they have killed us and our family? Have a desire to become the slaughterer of kaffir people. Educate your children and grandchildren to become terrorists and slaughterers of all Kaffir people."
The mistake is referring to Islam as "the religion of peace" rather than "the religion of pieces," as in, many tiny flecks of skin and bone, which you'll be reduced to after somebody blows your ass up in the name of Allah.
The solution? I don't know. The Muslims are able to use Western freedoms to their advantage, when, in their countries of origin, they'd likely be murdered pronto if the tables were even slightly turned -- if, say, they were Christians simply trying to practice their faith.
You got any ideas on what to do?
Who's A Journalist?
Sewell Chan blogs on NYTimes.com, of a case filed by my good friend David Wallis and two other journalists against the NYPD after they were suddenly denied press credentials. Wallis, who's a stand-up guy among stand-up guys, is a freelance journalist who's written for obscure outlets like The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post. He was also behind the terrific book, Killed Cartoons: Casualties from the War on Free Expression
In the ever-shifting media landscape of 2008, who, exactly, is a journalist?That question is at the heart of a lawsuit filed against the Police Department on Wednesday on behalf of three men -- Rafael Martínez Alequin, Ralph E. Smith and David Wallis -- who say that they were unfairly denied press passes because they work for online or nontraditional news outlets.
The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, asserts that the three men were denied press credentials in 2007 "with little explanation or opportunity for appeal," and that the system for issuing press credentials is "inconsistent and constitutionally flawed."
...The Police Department issues two kinds of credentials: working press cards, for a "full-time employee of a news-gathering organization covering spot or breaking news on a regular basis such as robbery scenes, fires, homicides, train wrecks, bombings, plane crashes, where there are established police or fire lines at the scene," and press identification cards, for journalists who are "employed by a legitimate news organization" but who do "not normally cover spot or breaking news events." (The language is from the city's official rules and regulations.)
The working press card ostensibly allows the journalist to cross police lines at emergencies and at nonemergency public events, like parades and demonstrations; the press identification card is "issued as a courtesy" but does not carry such privileges. Each card must be renewed annually.
...According to the lawsuit, Mr. Wallis had a press identification card from 1994 until August 2007, when his petition to renew the card was denied without explanation.
Mr. Smith is published of The Guardian Chronicle, a Web site for black law enforcement workers. He has been a public information officer for the city's Correction Department since 1988, and had a press credential from 1996 until January 2007, when he application to renew the credential was denied. Despite several attempts to get a written explanation for the denial, Mr. Smith has not received one, the suit says.
The case of Mr. Martínez Alequin, a longtime City Hall gadfly, has already been chronicled in the press. He published The Brooklyn Free Press from 1983 to 2001, when he ceased publication after the death of his wife. Then he launched an online publication, The New York City Free Press, in 2003, and began a related blog, Your Free Press, in 2007. He had a working press card from 1986 to 2000 and again from 2005 to 2006.
In May 2007, his application to renew it was denied, and from April to June of that year, the suit says, he was barred from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's news conferences in the Blue Room at City Hall because he lacked a press credential. Mr. Martínez Alequin has been a frequent critic of the mayor; he has since been allowed to attend news conference, but has not been called upon to ask questions.
Congress Did Some Good This Fall
Thanks to Congressman Steve Cohen, Congress has voted through a bill he spearheaded to end the benefits of "libel tourism," Roy Greenslade writes for The Guardian:
In a spare half-hour while discussing bailing out American capitalism, the US House of Representatives recently voted through an extraordinary bill with far-reaching implications for Britain's courts. Yet it has received no publicity here and few of Britain's lawyers even know of its existence.By amending the legal code three weeks ago in order to prohibit the recognition and enforcement of foreign defamation judgments in the US, politicians sealed off America's newspaper and book publishers from libel tourism - the use of British libel laws by non-nationals to sue foreign-owned publications such as books, newspapers and magazines that are distributed in Britain, even if only a few copies are involved.
Britain's libel laws are widely considered to be among the most severe on publishers - and have been used by people from around the world, and increasingly by Hollywood celebrities, because American defamation laws give publications much greater license.
Steve Cohen, the congressman who drew up the new US legislation, believes it will prevent the exploitation of defamation laws in Britain and other countries that lack the broad protections guaranteed by the US first amendment.
His measure is hugely popular in the States. It was passed unanimously, enjoying cross-party support and will now go to the Senate for ratification; it was applauded by the Association of American Publishers, the country's principal book publishing trade body, and greeted enthusiastically by the New York Times on behalf of the newspaper industry. It "strikes an important blow for free expression", said a leading article, which noted that people have been getting around America's "high bar on libel lawsuits" by "bringing lawsuits in Britain where libel protections are notoriously weak".
...In 2004, the Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz launched a libel action against Rachel Ehrenfeld, the author of a book entitled Funding Evil, Updated: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It
, which alleged that Mahfouz financed al-Qaida in the years leading up to 9/11, a claim that Mahfouz strenuously denied.
Even though the book was not published in Britain, a British court agreed to hear the case because some copies were sold online. Ehrenfeld did not appear to defend it, and Mahfouz was awarded substantial damages.
Ehrenfeld then sued Mahfouz in New York to obtain a declaration that the judgment would not be enforced in the US because her book was not defamatory under US law.
That suit was dismissed and, in response to this judgment, the New York state legislature passed the libel terrorism protection act.
...Mark Stephens ... represented Ehrenfeld and advised her not to fight the Mahfouz action in London, predicting that she would lose even if she appeared. He welcomes the new American law. "It means that libel tourists will not be able to use their wealth and power against people who cannot afford to defend themselves in Britain," he says. "It should be the case that people should sue in the jurisdiction where an alleged libel is published."
Not such good news from the Senate. Via Library Journal, the Senate failed to consider it, and it will have to wait until the next Congress is seated.
Here's Deborah Lipstadt's NYT op-ed about libel tourism, written with Emory law prof Michael Broyde about Ehrenfeld's case:
Until this case came along, American authors and publishers thought that unless their books were actually published in Britain, they would not be subject to its rather draconian libel laws, which put the burden of proof on the defendant rather than the plaintiff as American laws do, and greatly restrict what information writers can present as evidence in their defense. Now it appears that wealthy and powerful people who object to a book can simply find a country with sympathetic laws, have a book shipped there and sue.
Here's the story of the case Lipstadt was forced to fight -- which she won -- against Holocaust denier David Irving.
How Al Sharpton Lost His Cred
It happened on November 4th. With his went Jesse Jackson's and Reverend Wright's. Juan Williams writes for the WSJ about what Obama's victory means for racial politics:
The Jesse Jacksons, Al Sharptons and Rev. Jeremiah Wrights remain. But their influence and power fade to a form of nostalgia in a world of larger political agendas, such as a common American vision of setting the nation on a steady economic course and dealing with terrorists. The market has irrevocably shrunk for Sharpton-style tirades against "the man" and "the system." The emphasis on racial threats and extortion-like demands -- all aimed at maximizing white guilt as leverage for getting government and corporate money -- has lost its moment. How does anyone waste time on racial fantasies like reparations for slavery when there is a black man who earned his way into the White House?Make no mistake, there is still discrimination against people of color in America. And inside black America, there is still disproportionate poverty, school dropouts, criminal activity, incarceration and single motherhood. But with the example of Mr. Obama's achievements, from Harvard Law to the state legislature, U.S. Senate and the White House, the focus of discussion now is how the child of even the most oppressed of racial minorities can maximize his or her strengths and overcome negative stereotypes through achievement.
The onus now falls on individuals to take advantage of opportunities. That begins with keeping families together and taking responsibility for the twisted "gangsta" culture that celebrates jail time instead of schooling. With Mr. Obama as the head of government, discussion of racial problems now comes in the form of pragmatic discourse for how to best give all Americans opportunty, for example, how to improve schools.
The change in black politics has been slowly coming with the growing black middle-class. It now accelerates with Mr. Obama's victory. As King said at the end of the 1965 march for voting rights in Alabama -- when he reached the state capitol in Montgomery -- the result of black political participation is a "society that can live with its conscience." There are no quick solutions, he added, but no matter how difficult or frustrating there will be success because "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice."
Sharia Finance: Jihad With Money
There's a takeover in progress on Wall Street, but all the greedy fools are smiling big because they don't understand or care what they're helping lay the foundation for:
Alyssa A. Lappen, a senior fellow at the American Center for Democracy, sums up the problems with Sharia Finance:
Among the perils of shari'a finance, according to a January analysis by Moody's Investors Service are: A central role in investment decisions for shari'a scholars who are actually Islamic clerics; investors being forced to accept weak positions; short track records of major investors; multiple complex asset types; risky interest rates and new ventures; plus a lack of transparency combined with corporate management and risk control in the hosting Third World countries.Like other financial rating agencies, Moody's currently profits from assessing Islamic financial instruments.
But it missed the biggest risk of all---the ideological risks of shari'a, or Islamic law. Even Islamic banking promotions admit that the industry's documentation is not standardized, its inter-creditor agreements can be complex and it frequently employs off-balance sheet financing.
Moreover, shari'a regulations override commercial decisions. Citibank, for example, launched Saudi American Bank (SAB) in Jeddah and its Riyadh branch in 1955 and 1966 respectively, apparently without considering business risks under shari'a. The Saudis abruptly seized SAB in 1980, denied Citi all future profits, and ordered the bank to train Saudi staffers. Why? Because under shari'a, the bank was judged insufficiently Muslim.
Secular laws alone don't govern shari'a finance. Although a 20th century Muslim Brotherhood (MB) invention, it cannot be severed from the body of Islamic statutes that Mohammed initiated and caliphs, scholars and jurists developed over 1,400 years.
Alex Alexiev, vice president for research at the Center for Security Policy, explains the problems with Sharia law and Sharia finance in greater detail in a FrontPage interview with Jamie Glazov.
Oh yeah, when they talk about Islamic "charities," they may not mean what you think they mean. Rachel Ehrenfeld's follows the donations:
To be sure, there is no shortage in oil billionaires in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. According to Forbes Magazine 2006 list of the World's Richest People, Saudi and Gulf billionaires are worth at least $134 billion. Muslim billionaires in Egypt, Turkey and Lebanon are worth additional $29.4 billion. This is not taking into account Muslim billionaires and millionaires in Asia and elsewhere. Moreover, the oil boom in the Middle East generated at least 300,000, new wealthy millionaires in the region.According to the Department of Energy, Saudi Arabia is estimated to gain $154 billion in oil revenues in 2006, alone, and has at least $110 billion in foreign assets.
Yet, despite all this wealth, Muslim charities do not focus on alleviating the suffering of millions of poor Muslims and provide for their economic development the way the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) does. Instead, Muslim charities, led by the Saudis, continue to pour billions into madrassas to spread Wahhabism and hatred of the West around the globe - and not only in the Muslim world.
Testifying before the House International Relations Committee on June 29, 2006, Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer stated, "Saudi Arabia has become a leading financier of the Islamic takeover of Somalia." And in the Middle East, Saudi and Gulf cash, smuggled into Gaza under the watchful eyes of the Egyptians, helped Hamas pay the salaries of at least 130, 000 employees of the Palestinian Authority, according to Middle Eastern sources. And more money is coming. On July 5, The Arab League announced in Cairo the transfer of $50 million to the West Bank and Gaza, and $15 million to pay for (something a wee bit screwed up in their text here) o Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and to employees and diplomats in Palestinian embassies and Palestinian representative. In addition, the U.S. "good ally," Saudi Arabia, "also provided $50 million." This is at the time that President George W. Bush, declared: "In order for there to be peace, Hamas must be dismantled."
...Last month, CAIR announced that it was "launching a massive $50 million media campaign involving television, radio, and newspapers as part of its five-year program to create a better understanding of Islam and Muslims in the U.S." Following their Saudi paymaster's lead, CAIR now orchestrates a media offensive demanding that President Bush come to Hamas's rescue and condemn Israel.
Clearly, the idea that the $50 million CAIR spends to promote Hamas' culture of death can instead help millions of Muslims to live better, just did not cross Awad's mind.
Frank Gaffney bats cleanup:
Earlier this year, David Yerushalmi, a litigator specializing in securities law and an expert on Shariah, produced a riveting legal memorandum (soon to appear in the University of Utah Law Review) examining the civil and criminal exposure inherent in Shariah-Compliant Finance (http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/Modules/NewsManager/Center%20publication%20PDFs/Shairias%20Black%20Box%20(D%20Yerushalmi).pdf). His conclusion: banks and investment houses offering SCF products may be enabling or engaging in the following: racketeering, antitrust activity, securities fraud, consumer fraud and/or material support for terror.What makes Shariah-Compliant Finance even more dangerous than subprime is that, in its effort to legitimize and institutionalize Shariah in America, it is advancing a criminal conspiracy whose purpose is the violent overthrow of the United States Constitution and government in favor of Islamic rule. That would make it sedition.
For these reasons, we should be especially wary of the purported silver lining to the current Wall Street crisis: the infusion of vast quantities of petrodollars, primarily from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' Saudi Arabia and other Islamist nations in the Persian Gulf. It is bad enough that these putative rescuers of our subprime-fueled liquidity debacle are buying up engines of our capital markets for pennies on the dollar. Worse yet, they are, in the process, putting themselves in a position to promote Shariah-Compliant Finance and the seditious theo-political agenda it serves.
Download Yerushalmi's paper here (free).
ACT video via JihadWatch
Charity Begins At Home
In my little sister's kitchen, for example. She called a bunch of organizations that use volunteers and nobody would call her back, and then, when she finally got someone on the phone, she found that they had these long, pain-in-the-ass orientations (for her to be trained to do what she already does in her work).
So...she just thought about her interests, and about what people need. She takes these many-mile walks every day for exercise, and she likes to putter around the kitchen, so she started making sandwiches and handing them out to hungry people along the way.
It's like my neighbor, who voted in the morning, but was going to bake cookies and bring them to people standing in line on election night (her daughter got sick, so she had to stay home). You can do stuff for people in need without government funding. A good many people actually do.
I'm finishing my book now, and I could use some stories like this -- either personal or from the news. (If you post links, please only post one per comment and post a second comment about 30 seconds later to post a second link, and so on. Spam filter. Sorry.) And if you want to e-mail me -- adviceamy at a o l dot com.
Islam's Public Enemy Number One
"I do not want to live low, nor do I want to be killed," says Father Zakaria Botros, Islamic apostate, and, according to Al Qaeda, one of the most "wanted infidels" in the world:
The death cult known as Islam knows what to do with guys like the affable Father Botros: murder him for leaving the faith, of course!
Don't believe me? Here it is right here. Yes, they're discussing why it's good and right to murder apostates right there on the Internet like they're instructing people in how to roast a chicken:
If a Muslim apostatizes and meets the conditions of apostasy - i.e., he is of sound mind, an adult and does that of his own free will - then his blood may be shed with impunity. He is to be executed by the Muslim ruler or by his deputy - such as the qaadi or judge, and he is not to not be washed (after death, in preparation for burial), the funeral prayer is not to be offered for him and he is not to be buried with the Muslims.The evidence that the apostate is to be executed is the words of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him): "Whoever changes his religion, execute him." (Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 2794). What is meant by religion here is Islam (i.e., whoever changes from Islam to another religion).
... And the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) has commanded us to execute the apostate as in the hadeeth quoted above: "Whoever changes his religion, execute him."
It may need some time for you to be convinced about this matter, and for you to think about it. Perhaps you think that if a person follows the truth and enters into it and embraces the one true religion which Allaah has enjoined, then we allow him to leave it quite easily whenever he wants and to utter the words of kufr (disbelief) that put him outside of Islam, so he can reject Allaah, His Messenger, His Books and His religion, and there is no punishment as deterrent, how will that affect him and others who enter the religion?
Do you not see that this would make the one true religion, that everyone should follow, like a shop or store which a person can enter when he wants and leave when he wants, and it may encourage others to forsake the truth.
Ah, yes, If you can't beat 'em, beat 'em to death -- or better yet, just lop off their heads. Or, if you're up for some sport, maybe do what they did to this 13-year-old rape victim.
Now, those of you who know Muslims, a little survey/test: ask them if they know about this directive to murder apostates and what they think of it. And if they think it's horrible, backward, evil, etc., ask them whether they speak out against it. And, if not, why not?
Wishing Father Botros long life -- although I can't say I'm optimistic for the guy.
When Being An Outsider Makes You A Better Insider
Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker on the rise of a short Jew on Wall Street -- a guy who went to P.S. 13, not Dartmouth:
Sidney Weinberg was born in 1891, one of eleven children of Pincus Weinberg, a struggling Polish-born liquor wholesaler and bootlegger in Brooklyn. Sidney was short, a "Kewpie doll," as the New Yorker writer E. J. Kahn, Jr., described him, "in constant danger of being swallowed whole by executive-size chairs." He pronounced his name "Wine-boig." He left school at fifteen. He had scars on his back from knife fights in his preteen days, when he sold evening newspapers at the Hamilton Avenue terminus of the Manhattan-Brooklyn ferry.At sixteen, he made a visit to Wall Street, keeping an eye out for a "nice-looking, tall building," as he later recalled. He picked 43 Exchange Place, where he started at the top floor and worked his way down, asking at every office, "Want a boy?" By the end of the day, he had reached the third-floor offices of a small brokerage house. There were no openings. He returned to the brokerage house the next morning. He lied that he was told to come back, and bluffed himself into a job assisting the janitor, for three dollars a week. The small brokerage house was Goldman Sachs.
From that point, Charles Ellis tells us in a new book, The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs
, Weinberg's rise was inexorable. Early on, he was asked to carry a flagpole on the trolley uptown to the Sachs family's town house. The door was opened by Paul Sachs, the grandson of the firm's founder, and Sachs took a shine to him. Weinberg was soon promoted to the mailroom, which he promptly reorganized. Sachs sent him to Browne's Business College, in Brooklyn, to learn penmanship. By 1925, the firm had bought him a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. By 1927, he had made partner. By 1930, he was a senior partner, and for the next thirty-nine years--until his death, in 1969--Weinberg was Goldman Sachs, turning it from a floundering, mid-tier partnership into the premier investment bank in the world.
The rags-to-riches story--that staple of American biography--has over the years been given two very different interpretations. The nineteenth-century version stressed the value of compensating for disadvantage. If you wanted to end up on top, the thinking went, it was better to start at the bottom, because it was there that you learned the discipline and motivation essential for success. "New York merchants preferred to hire country boys, on the theory that they worked harder, and were more resolute, obedient, and cheerful than native New Yorkers," Irvin G. Wyllie wrote in his 1954 study "The Self-Made Man in America." Andrew Carnegie, whose personal history was the defining self-made-man narrative of the nineteenth century, insisted that there was an advantage to being "cradled, nursed and reared in the stimulating school of poverty." According to Carnegie, "It is not from the sons of the millionaire or the noble that the world receives its teachers, its martyrs, its inventors, its statesmen, its poets, or even its men of affairs. It is from the cottage of the poor that all these spring."
Today, that interpretation has been reversed. Success is seen as a matter of capitalizing on socioeconomic advantage, not compensating for disadvantage. The mechanisms of social mobility--scholarships, affirmative action, housing vouchers, Head Start--all involve attempts to convert the poor from chronic outsiders to insiders, to rescue them from what is assumed to be a hopeless state. Nowadays, we don't learn from poverty, we escape from poverty, and a book like Ellis's history of Goldman Sachs is an almost perfect case study of how we have come to believe social mobility operates.
...Nor did he try to pretend that he was an insider. He did the opposite. "You'll have to make that plainer," he would say. "I'm just a dumb, uneducated kid from Brooklyn." He bought a modest house in Scarsdale in the nineteen-twenties, and lived there the rest of his life. He took the subway. He may have worked closely with the White House, but this was the Roosevelt White House, in the nineteen-thirties, at a time when none of the Old Guard on Wall Street were New Dealers. Weinberg would talk about his public school as if it were Princeton, and as a joke he would buy up Phi Beta Kappa keys from pawnshops and hand them out to visitors like party favors. His savvy was such that Roosevelt wanted to make him Ambassador to the Soviet Union, and his grasp of the intricacies of Wall Street was so shrewd that his phone never stopped ringing. But as often as he could he reminded his peers that he was from the other side of the tracks.
At one board meeting, Ellis writes, "a long presentation was being made that was overloaded with dull, detailed statistics. Number after number was read off. When the droning presenter finally paused for breath, Weinberg jumped up, waving his papers in mock triumph, to call out 'Bingo!' " The immigrant's best strategy, in the famous adage, is to think Yiddish and dress British. Weinberg thought British and dressed Yiddish.
Why did that strategy work? This is the great mystery of Weinberg's career, and it's hard to escape the conclusion that Carnegie was on to something: there are times when being an outsider is precisely what makes you a good insider. It's not difficult to imagine, for example, that the head of Continental Can liked the fact that Weinberg was from nothing, in the same way that New York City employers preferred country boys to city boys. That C.E.O. dwelled in a world with lots of people who went to Yale and then to Wall Street; he knew that some of them were good at what they did and some of them were just well connected, and separating the able from the incompetent wasn't always easy. Weinberg made it out of Brooklyn; how could he not be good?
Gladwell writes later in the piece about CEOs who've overcome adversity; specifically, dyslexia.
I have ADHD. I don't consider it a "disorder," merely a different sort of brain function than most people apparently have. Certain things that are very easy for other people aren't so easy for me. Organization, for example.
When I talk to the kids at University High (inner-city kids who are bused to the school in West L.A.), I show them two pictures, before and after. The after shot is me at the LA Times Festival of books, moderating a panel with four authors. The before shot is that morning. While most moderators probably take a few minutes to type up a neatly organized list of questions to ask their panels, I have a harder time with that sort of thing. I wrote up probably six dozen questions, all mixed up on about eight or 10 pages, and then printed them on typing paper, highlighted some of them, and cut them all up. I then put them on my rug and started arranging them and taping them together.
I show the kids this shot to show them I'm not so great -- in fact, I kind of suck at things that most people find really easy -- I just work harder than a lot of other people, and work until I get what I'm doing to the point where (I think) it's better than the questions of the people it comes easy for. Also, I feel a pretty great sense of accomplishment from that, and I don't think that's unimportant.
One more bit from Gladwell's piece:
Twenty years later, Weinberg had his greatest score, handling the initial public offering for Ford Motor Company, which was founded, of course, by that odious anti-Semite Henry Ford. Did taking the business prick Weinberg's conscience? Maybe so. But he probably realized that the unstated premise behind the idea that the Jews control all the banks is that Jews are really good bankers. The first was a stereotype that oppressed; the second was a stereotype that, if you were smart about it, you could use to win a few clients. If you're trying to build an empire, you work with what you have.
Looking For Stories
This is for the last chapter of my book. I'm looking for stories where one person's act of generosity or kindness or bravery led lots of other people to pitch in and act generously. Ideally, these would be news stories, but other stories would be okay as well.
If you have links, as always (to get around the spam-eating software), please post one per comment. If you have another link, post a separate comment, and please wait about 30 seconds before you do. Thanks!
P.S. If you'd rather, feel free to e-mail them to me at adviceamy at a o l dot com.
Who's Got The Duck Lips?
Stars, then and now, by Elizabeth Snead in the LA Times. (Click on the "next photo" link over the picture.)
Those plastic surgeons are busy!
Change For Hope?
Matthew Parris writes in the Times of London about Obama the rock star:
When half of mankind seems lifted by hope, nothing looks meaner than to disparage the dream. But what is this Obama mania? The world did not change for ever on Tuesday. No messiah has come among us. Miracles have not become possible. There is no new dawn. Calm down dear, it's only a US presidential election...."The election of Obama is when the old world ended and the new world began," I read in the Australian Daily Telegraph. Kenyans look to Mr Obama for the President-elect's special attention. Gays note that he specially mentioned us in his victory speech.
So many alliances strengthened! So many special places in his heart! But why beat about the bush? Oprah Winfrey doesn't. "This is the most meaningful thing that has ever happened," she gasps.
Useless, I know, to argue with infatuation, but I'll ask anyway: will we never learn?
Why, when we've been disappointed so often, do we fall for it every time with leaders? Here we have a handsome, dashing and intelligent man, a man with generous instincts and a silver tongue; but a man with no distinctive plan for government that he has seen fit to share with us; a daring opportunist; somebody we may one day judge as a sort of Tony Blair with brains. And here we go again, all over again, hook, line and sinker.
How quickly we forget that politics is not another world, where the laws of nature can be suspended and magic is possible. Circumstances constrain and events can be very compelling, and "Yes we can" is no gravity-defying abracadabra. It's when a leader has to move from "Yes we can" to "No you can't" that he is tested.
...There is no limit to the adoration of the potential fan club for an individual who - in myth or reality - can present a welcoming, receptive but essentially blank face with warmth, with charm, and perhaps a little guile too. Be that face and tremendous power will be transmitted through you, for you will be reflecting - back upon those who sent them - a million prayers.
But answering them is quite another thing.
How Much Of A Part Did Race Play In The Race?
People worried that Obama wouldn't get elected because he was black. Is it possible that's partly why he was elected?
I will say that I think it's pretty amazing that, just decades after blacks and whites were drinking out of separate drinking fountains, that we have a black family in the White House. But, just as I don't "vote my vagina" (vote for a candidate simply because she's a woman), I'm also not going to vote for a candidate because of his or her skin color.
Shelby Steele feels similarly and has an interesting take in the LA Times on those who vote racially -- by voting "post-racially":
When whites -- especially today's younger generation -- proudly support Obama for his post-racialism, they unwittingly embrace race as their primary motivation. They think and act racially, not post-racially. The point is that a post-racial society is a bargainer's ploy: It seduces whites with a vision of their racial innocence precisely to coerce them into acting out of a racial motivation. A real post-racialist could not be bargained with and would not care about displaying or documenting his racial innocence. Such a person would evaluate Obama politically rather than culturally.Certainly things other than bargaining account for Obama's victory. He was a talented campaigner. He was reassuringly articulate on many issues -- a quality that Americans now long for in a president. And, in these last weeks, he was clearly pushed over the top by the economic terrors that beset the nation. But it was the peculiar cultural manipulation of racial bargaining that brought him to the political dance. It inflated him as a candidate, and it may well inflate him as a president.
There is nothing to suggest that Obama will lead America into true post-racialism. His campaign style revealed a tweaker of the status quo, not a revolutionary. Culturally and racially, he is likely to leave America pretty much where he found her.
But what about black Americans? Won't an Obama presidency at last lead us across a centuries-old gulf of alienation into the recognition that America really is our country? Might this milestone not infuse black America with a new American nationalism? And wouldn't this be revolutionary in itself? Like most Americans, I would love to see an Obama presidency nudge things in this direction. But the larger reality is the profound disparity between black and white Americans that will persist even under the glow of an Obama presidency. The black illegitimacy rate remains at 70%. Blacks did worse on the SAT in 2000 than in 1990. Fifty-five percent of all federal prisoners are black, though we are only 13% of the population. The academic achievement gap between blacks and whites persists even for the black middle class. All this disparity will continue to accuse blacks of inferiority and whites of racism -- thus refueling our racial politics -- despite the level of melanin in the president's skin.
The torture of racial conflict in America periodically spits up a new faith that idealism can help us "overcome" -- America's favorite racial word. If we can just have the right inspiration, a heroic role model, a symbolism of hope, a new sense of possibility. It is an American cultural habit to endure our racial tensions by periodically alighting on little islands of fresh hope and idealism. But true reform, like the civil rights victories of the '60s, never happens until people become exhausted with their suffering. Then they don't care who the president is.
Presidents follow the culture; they don't lead it. I hope for a competent president.
Who Do You Kiss?
This is a question for you all about e-mail protocol, but especially for women, since it's the rare guy who signs his e-mail xoxox to anybody but his mom, his kids, or his girlfriend.
When do you xx or xox someone?
Who do you xx or xox?
When is it weird when somebody xx or xoxes you or doesn't?
Any pet peeves with people's e-mail signature protocol?
What Is A Moderate Muslim?
People talk about "moderate Muslims," but are really quite unclear as to what that means. Robert Spencer clarifies with a list. Moderate muslims are people who:
1. Acknowledge the existence of and repudiate the traditional Islamic imperative, taught by all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence that Muslims recognize as orthodox, to impose Islamic law upon non-Muslims, whether by force or by stealth.2. Renounce any intention, now or in the future, to replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic law.
3. Clarify, and call upon other Muslims in America to clarify, what is meant by the words "terrorism" and innocent" in Muslim condemnations of terrorism, so that it is clear that what is being condemned is the murder of American and other non-combatants by Muslims acting in the name of Islamic jihad.
4. Repudiate the idea that Muslims have a divine mandate to force, when possible, Jews, Christians, and other "People of the Book" to pay a special religion-based tax from which Muslims are exempt (Qur'an 9:29).
5. Call upon Muslims in America to institute comprehensive, honest, and transparent programs in mosques and Islamic schools, teaching the virtues of the non-establishment of religion, and teaching directly against Islamic supremacism and the idea that Muslims must fight against Jews and Christians until they "feel themselves subdued" (Qur'an 9:29).
6. Call upon Muslims in America to institute comprehensive, honest, and transparent programs in mosques and Islamic schools, teaching against honor killing, and against the idea--which is enshrined in Islamic law--that a parent faces no penalty for killing his or her own child (see 'Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2).
7. Call upon Muslims worldwide, including in Saudi Arabia, to end all institutionalized discrimination against and harassment of non-Muslims, and to allow churches and other houses of worship to be built in majority-Muslim countries with an ease comparable to that with which mosques are currently built in Western countries.
8. Repudiate the idea that a Muslim who renounces Islam and adopts any other faith or no faith at all should be killed--as is the teaching of Muhammad and all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence--and call upon Muslim groups in America to teach the freedom of conscience as a God-given right in American mosques and Islamic schools.
9. Call upon Muslims in America and worldwide to drop the traditional and authoritative Islamic prohibition of marriage between non-Muslim men and Muslim women, and to repudiate and teach against the idea of divinely sanctioned wife-beating (Qur'an 4:34).
10. Condemn Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist organizations, and the Islamic Republic of Iran for its continuing the barbaric practice of stoning people to death. Call upon Muslim groups to teach against stoning as a punishment for adultery or anything else in American mosques and Islamic schools.
Me, For Example
You, too, I'm guessing. Both answers to "Who isn't getting a 'bailout' these days?" David Cho, Peter Whoriskey and Neil Irwin write in the WaPo:
The federal government is preparing to take tens of billions of dollars in ownership stakes in an array of companies outside the banking sector, dramatically widening the scope of the Treasury Department's rescue effort beyond the $250 billion set aside for traditional financial firms, government and industry officials said.Treasury officials are finalizing the new program, which could ultimately involve hundreds of billions of the $700 billion rescue package, though the initiative is unlikely to be announced until the end of next week at the earliest.
...Since the announcement of the program to inject capital into banks, a number of industries, including automakers, insurers and specialty lenders for small businesses have approached the Treasury with hat in hand. Some have been turned away because they are not banks and thus not eligible for capital.
The new initiative would make it easier for the Treasury to aid a wider variety of firms if their troubles put the wider financial system at risk, government and industry officials said. These companies would still have to be financial firms that fall under federal regulators.
Several companies, including GMAC, an auto financing company, and CapitalSource, a commercial lender in Bethesda, are seeking ways to restructure themselves as banks or thrifts, which entails submitting to much tighter federal regulation. If other firms follow suit, the trend would vastly expand government oversight into a variety of industries.
I second what a commenter wrote at Reason, where I found the link -- "So now everyone gets a bailout. I just threw up a little in my mouth."
Again, economics not being my area of expertise, I can't say whether treating companies like this is a capitalist society, not a socialist one, and letting them go under, would lead to people on bread lines, but it sure makes me angry to bail all the people out -- and that we're all feeling the repercussions of people who made big financial gambles and are now the equivalent of cufflinked, mansion-dwelling welfare mothers.
Bin Laden: Tickle Him Really Rigorously?
Alice Walker is suddenly an unelected, self-appointed advisor to our head of state. She's got a problem with the agressive way the president-elect referred to what he plans to do to that much-misunderstood chief terrorist, Osama Bin Laden. Here's the disturbing headline of her piece for the Times of London:
"Mind your language, Mr President-elect -- Saying you are planning to kill someone is repellent to civilised people - and could easily play to racial stereotyping."
Oh. Please.
Madame word nanny continues -- most presumptuously:
I have sent out a request that Barack Obama, or Michelle Obama, get in touch with me. While waiting for a response (and imagining how busy they must be), I decided to write down my thoughts. After watching the debates between Mr Obama and John McCain, something has leapt out at me. It has now leapt out twice, and I would like to avoid having it appear a third time. It is Mr Obama's statement that, when he is President, he (the US) will pursue al-Qaeda in the hills of Pakistan, find Osama bin Laden and "kill" him. Though I understand that Mr Obama wishes to show himself as "strong", even "tough", this is problematic on ethical, moral, and practical levels.I am not saying the same thing Mr McCain said, about walking and speaking softly and carrying a big stick. We know that during Mr McCain's service to the country there have been countless people assassinated, bombed, disappeared and in other ways destroyed, if not by him directly, then by the system of government that he serves. No, this is about something else: the language we use in leading, and why.
Each time Mr Obama has said "we will kill" Osama bin Laden I have felt a testing of my confidence in his moral leadership. And I support him, and demonstrated that support, to the very limits of my finances and my strength. Could it be that, like millions of children around the globe, who are taught "Thou shalt not kill", I am reacting with disappointment and shock to someone blatantly declaring their intention to kill a specific person?
...There is also the black man factor. For many, finally getting to know a black man in all his glory is the high point of their education as American citizens. However, there lingers in the collective psyche a very carefully planted fear of same; that he is vicious, that he is mean, that he is... a killer. This, I think, is not to be shrugged off; even if, by now, much of the planet knows who most of the serious killers are.
I don't know if I can fully express my disgust at this. If Obama's presidency is governed behind the scenes by the armies of the P.C. we're in more trouble than I thought.
Let me just say, I have a problem with capital punishment, but not a problem in the world with Obama saying something other than that we will "tickle," or "have a wee chat with" the guy behind so much murder in the world in the name of Islam, which happens to be totalitarianism masquerading as religion. We are at war with this murderer and what happens in war is that people get killed.
And while I have not "sent out a request that Barack Obama, or Michelle Obama, get in touch with me," I will put out my own message here: Kill the guy and I promise to do a little jig in the spot where I'm standing when I find out.
The Do-It-Yourself Tax Hike
Stephen Moore points out in the WSJ that Barack Obama was free to do the "virtuous" thing and pay more taxes:
My colleague Kim Strassel has reported on a voluntary federal fund for liberals who want to contribute more taxes than they owe -- but, alas, almost none do. The annual collections are less than 0.1% of all tax collections. As Ryan Ellis of the American Shareholders Association asks: "What's the difference between Obama and the big corporations who 'cheat' the government by taking advantage of what the tax code affords them?"Mr. Ellis's group has reviewed Mr. Obama's tax returns for the past eight years. The Illinois Senator has dutifully paid his taxes in full. But in no year did Mr. Obama make extra tax payments to help reduce the deficit or fund all the spending programs he favors. If Mr. Obama's tax plan had been in place over the past 12 years, he would have had to pay $250,727 more in federal taxes over this period.
Why not call for those who'd like to donate to do so? The president-elect clearly has power to motivate people. Perhaps people would feel better if they got their names on little plaques on the results of their donations. (I'm serious.)
Agonizing (Yawn) Choices
I got this press release the other day:
Re: SoCal Resident Gives Up Car To Get a Home LoanHi Alkon, it's Evan Sneider from LeaseTrader, hope you're having a good day. I've got an interesting customer experience in the LA area that deals with the current economic slowdown. I thought you might be able to use in a story you're planning. With the GDP numbers coming out yesterday, they point toward a recession and is a problem everyone is getting ready to face.
I recently had a conversation with one of our customers in the Los Angeles area. She is in the market to purchase a home within the next few months. With the slow economy and credit crunch affecting every lender, she decided to get rid of her expensive car lease, and consolidate cars with her husband. They decided to position themselves with less liability in order to safely secure a home loan. Her husband is driving a motorcycle for financial issues and their joint car is for chauffeuring children around. This will allow them to put down more money on their next home purchase.
She is more than happy to talk about her situation if a reporter wanted to talk to her about it.
My response:
Um...or they could just rent. We all make choices. I rent a house and drive to the grocery store instead of riding my bicycle. Perhaps I'm not getting it. Is this supposed to be some agonizing, Solomonic choice?
(I forgot to sign my e-mail "Alkon," like "Hi Alkon." Smooth, Evan!)
Africa Is A Continent?
NAFTA? Is that a competitor of Huggies? So glad Sarah Palin knows energy policy! From Fox News, there's this:
UPDATE: I'M SORRY
Martin was right. I shouldn't have posted the Palin Fox News video sourced only from a "McCain campaign worker." It was a hoax, and the two who perpetuated it are absolutely vile and I hope Palin sues them down to their jockey shorts. I don't think she will, and I think being victimized this way will increase her standing considerably in the long run. This sort of thing is the antithesis of behavior promoting democracy and anybody who hires these two scumbags will not only not get my dollar but will likely get my boycott of the rest of their products.
President Obama
Your thoughts on the election?
Reason's Matt Welch on why McCain lost, quoting McCain fretting in his 2002 memoir that he didn't know whether he could remain principled if ever his personal ambition to become president became achievable:
The rich are indeed very different than you and me; rich politicians like McCain even more so. But how many grown-ups do you know who honestly don't know whether they would hold onto their principles if they got within shouting distance of a lifelong goal? That's not the worry of a settled man who automatically puts "country first"; it's the anxiety of an aging adolescent who knows too well the potential weakness of his knees.The John McCain that the national press fell in love with (literally) back in 1999-2000 was a John McCain who knew he was going to lose to George W. Bush. The man was openly referring to Bush and the Repblican establishment that overwhelmingly backed the 41st president's son as "the Death Star," in a Republican primary. He called Christian conservatives "agents of intolerance," made speech-stifling (and GOP activist-handcuffing) campaign finance reform his central theme, and thundered against the "false front" of "national prosperity." Non-Republican reporters (including yours truly) might have eaten it up at the time, but it was a strategy designed explicitly for failure, and maybe a little longshot fun.
...Above all, McCain campaigned on a promise to "always tell the truth," to avoid "pandering," and to elevate the tone of political discourse. "'Judge all candidates,' I asked [voters], 'by the example we set; by the way we conduct our campaigns; by the way we personally practice politics.'" In 2008, many former McCain supporters have judged him precisely on those criteria, and switched their support to Barack Obama.
Should we care that a politician has so profoundly changed his positions and tactics in an effort to actually win this time around? For me, part of the answer lies within that startling quote above: "[I] wondered if I would have the guts to protect my integrity."
Note how McCain almost sounds like a helpless bystander in that mini-sentence. It's as if campaign politics were a filthy river at flood tide; dip a toe and you're off in the muck. This helps explain both why McCain started getting swept off to "crazy base land" three years ago, and why his apologists in the media could still manage to absolve him of guilt for doing so. It's not the Great Man, they cried, it's that tawdry party beneath him.
But such apologia wears its fatal flaw on its sleeve. You can't be a Great Man on one hand and an unwitting victim on the other.
The tone and results of the McCain campaign cannot be blamed on conflicting advisers, or "crazy base" Republicans yanking their standard-bearer hither and yon. The man who has run such a lackluster, unconvincing, and uninspiring race in 2008 is the exact same guy who seemed so hopelessly interesting in 2000. The only difference is, this time he thought he could win.
I think he had something else going against him, too: the fact that people are looking for "change" without knowing exactly what change will be in store. I am no fan of "givernment," a word somebody accidentally posted here yesterday, meaning to write "government," but something both McCain and Obama practice: the difference being in who they hand your money over to; McCain, to the rich, and Obama, to everybody else.
As for the creep from Memphis who posted something about how I was ugly and should suck monkey ass for voting for Bob Barr in California, and all those other people who posted less rude but still irritating remarks about how my vote was the end of the world as we know it (in how many languages do I need to say "I don't live in a swing state"?) note the point spread between red and blue in this state. Yep, 61 percent of California for Obama. Boy, that was close!
And I'm still waiting for word on why Sarah Palin is qualified. I mean, beyond comments huffing, "You go ahead and keep saying she isn't!" (Maybe, in between caring for all her children while governing Alaska, she'll be able to study up in time for 2012.)
The California Gay Marriage Ban
It's just shameful, and I'll tell you why it passed: Because people behind it spread the lie that children would be forced to learn about gay marriage in school. Bullshit. School isn't about teaching about marriage, not even straight marriage.
(My opinion that this is why it passed is based on what I've heard from a number of teachers I've spoken to, all of whom told me that parents said, "I don't want my child to be taught about gay marriage" -- showing that the campaign of lies worked, and those lobbying against this bill were unprepared for what they were up against.)
For those who don't know, this means writing into the California constitution that marriage is between a man and a woman -- limiting it to all the heterosexuals who are, in large numbers, already doing such a good job of screwing theirs up.
I'm for equal rights for all people, no matter what sex they prefer to have sex with, and think it's just disgusting that people who surely go around talking about what Jesus would do spread the lies that got this amendment passed.
To all my gay and lesbian friends, and gays and lesbians in general, I'm so sorry so many religious people are such fuckers.
To all the people behind this bill, go meet a gay parent or two. You'll find they're not running around West Hollywood in leather pants with the butt circles cut out. They're just as boring as straight parents. You're telling their kids their parents are second-class citizens, only deserving of partial rights. Fuck you.
The Emperor's Blue Clothes
Jim Fedako writes on the Mises blog about presidential power -- now suddenly in Democratic hands. Whoopsy!
It's election eve and Hannity and the other Republican talking heads have finally awakened to the outstretched arms of monster they created - the imperial president qua emperor.Ironically, it was not that many months ago that Hannity and others cheered the increased power being consolidated in the White House. Now that monster is about to turn on them.
It's A Fucking Struggle
Even the hookers are feeling screwed these days. From an LA Times story by Ashley Powers, featuring some rather long-in-the-tooth prostitutes at a Nevada brothel:
Amy, 58, once bought a $32,000 Toyota Tacoma in cash; now her $1,200 mortgage saps her dwindling pay. Some weeks, she could make more flipping burgers than flirting under a made-up name. Marisol's daughters think she works at a resort; she struggles to keep up the ruse. It now takes months, not weeks, to bring $5,000 back to Southern California."Marisol," one of her regulars tells her, "it costs me in gas what it takes for me to spend a half-hour with you."
Tonight, she tries lingering at the dimly lighted bar that's decorated with red Christmas lights and smells of hot dogs and beans. Wearing a shimmering strapless top, Marisol sips cheap champagne and tries to seduce travelers, some with thick guts and most with thin wallets. After 20 minutes, she gives up.
Signs of the economic free fall have cropped up in many of Nevada's 25 or so legal brothels. The Mustang Ranch, for example, has a steady stream of customers, but the number of women vying for work has soared. Even a 74-year-old applied. This summer, the Shady Lady gave $50 gas cards to those who spent $300. The Moonlite Bunny Ranch offered extras to customers paying with their economic stimulus checks.
Here, 180 miles west of Salt Lake City, near the junction of Interstate 80 and Highway 93, Donna's Ranch has seen its business plummet nearly 20%. More than three-quarters of its customers are long-haul truckers, and high fuel and food prices have drained them of "play money," owner Geoff Arnold says. That cuts into pay for his 10-member staff and the "working girls."
...From 2006 to 2007, the brothel's revenue climbed 7.6%, to about $1 million. This year, Arnold expects to make about $200,000 less. Closing that gap is tricky: Brothel advertising is legal, but billboards and bus ads risk upsetting neighbors. So the bordello sponsors a soccer team in Boise and a rodeo in Wells. It also bought lights for the high school football field and gave local motels pens, which boast that Donna's is "Your Biggest Bang for the Buck."
Arnold's staff clips coupons to slash the $3,300 monthly grocery bill. He brainstorms other cost-cutting measures. He owns 33 acres in Wells -- enough room, by his calculation, for five to 10 cows that could feed his workers.
"That's what we've come to," he says, chuckling at the idea. "Donna's Ranch could be a real ranch."
Who Are You Voting For, And Why?
Post your candidates and your thinking below.
Vote For The People, Not The Chickens, In California
As for this proposition to give every chicken a condo instead of a crowded cage, I feel for the chickens, I really do. But, I've had several people tell me they've either lost their jobs or are, in the case of one friend's husband, getting their hours at work cut by a third. These are people in the middle class, and they'll be struggling, but think about people who are poor and really struggling already. The last thing they need is happier California chickens and more expensive food.
As the LA Times "No on Prop 2" editorial said:
"According to a University of California Agricultural Issues Center report, cage-free eggs are about 20% more expensive to produce and cost about 25% more to buy. There is a growing demand, but it is still small -- about 5% of all eggs nationally are produced by cage-free hens. So California eggs would become more expensive, and many consumers would simply buy the cheaper eggs laid by hens living in cramped conditions in neighboring states or in Mexico. As a result, we fear the result of Proposition 2's passage would not be better treatment of hens but merely the export of their mistreatment. We recommend a no vote."
Also, in general, California is like one of those ladies who spends every month to the max and pays back the minimum on her credit card, and this has to stop. I recommend voting against every one of the proposals -- all of which are all bad, wrong, and boondoggles -- except the redistricting and veteran's housing.
How Manny Klausner And Mike Rappaport Are Voting
Manny sent me this post from Randy Barnett over at Volokh:
Manny Klausner is a founder of Reason Magazine, stalwart supporter of the Federalist Society, and libertarian lawyer extraordinaire. ... Here is Manny's explanation of how he will vote this year:I don't see any good reason for libertarians to vote for either Obama or McCain if they live in a nonbattleground state that doesn't look like a cliffhanger on the eve of the election.Not voting at all is always respectable for libertarians, but not surprisingly, it isn't always applauded by others: for a hilarious take on this, see here.
Above all, it seems to me that the WORST move is to vote for a statist candidate who may win the election -- which in my view implicates the voter in the bad policies pursued by the candidate once they take office. To me, the only exception to this is a close election where your vote arguably could be decisive, so that voting for the lesser of the evils may be appropriate.
As for me, I'm voting for Bob Barr in California, where Obama will win by at least 500,000 votes if the election is close.
The incremental value of a vote for Barr as an explicit protest of the war on drugs is a major reason for me to vote for the LP candidate. Primarily because of this, and for other reasons as well, I've consistently voted for the LP candidate for president since I voted for John Hospers in 1972.
On the other hand, I'm encouraging those who live in battleground states that still look close on election day to vote for McCain, as the lesser of the evils. As Tom Sowell has said, he's voting for McCain because he prefers "disaster to catastrophe." From another perspective, Burt Prelutsky recently wrote, "Obama doesn't have a single friend, associate or religious mentor, who isn't the sort of creep that most of us would cross the street to avoid."
Given Obama's credentials as a far left ideologue who adroitly camouflages his radical anticapitalist views, if the Democrats win the presidency and control of both houses of Congress -- and particularly if Iran develops a nuclear bomb -- I share Tom Sowell's concerns that we may reach "the point of no return."
No doubt we all agree that these are horrendous times for libertarians.
University of San Diego law prof Mike Rappaport over at The Right Coast was going to write in a candidate but is now going for McCain. An excerpt:
First, the financial collapse means that lots of new legislation will be passed and the Democrats are likely to pass pretty bad stuff in this area. Second, and more importantly, even if the Democrats do a bad job and the economy does badly, the voters might not blame them now. Things might get so bad that voters might just cling to their government, especially if it is good at speaking to them and reassuring them. Moreover, voters might place the blame on the prior administration, saying that the Obama administration had merely inherited the problems.I have reluctantly concluded that I should vote for McCain. It is an awful pill to swallow. I don't particularly like the man, and really dislike his policies. But that is how bad things have gotten. So, on Tuesday, I will "pull the lever" for McCain.
The Lies Behind California's Prop 8 -- The Homophobia Prop
Terrific editorial in the Sunday LA Times about the disgusting lies used as scare tactics to get people to vote for Prop 8; i.e., to vote against people who desire same-sex partners having the same rights as people who desire opposite-sex partners, and all because a bunch of religious nutters find it doesn't work with their particular brand of primitive, evidence-free belief in the Imaginary Friend. Here's an excerpt, but read the whole thing at the link:
The campaign promoting Proposition 8, which proposes to amend the state Constitution to ban same-sex marriages, has masterfully misdirected its audience, California voters. Look at the first-graders in San Francisco, attending their lesbian teacher's wedding! Look at Catholic Charities, halting its adoption services in Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage is legal! Look at the church that lost its tax exemption over gay marriage! Look at anything except what Proposition 8 is actually about: a group of people who are trying to impose on the state their belief that homosexuality is immoral and that gays and lesbians are not entitled to be treated equally under the law.That truth would never sell in tolerant, live-and-let-live California, and so it has been hidden behind a series of misleading half-truths. Once the sleight of hand is revealed, though, the campaign's illusions fall away.
Take the story of Catholic Charities. The service arm of the Roman Catholic Church closed its adoption program in Massachusetts not because of the state's gay marriage law but because of a gay anti-discrimination law passed many years earlier. In fact, the charity had voluntarily placed older foster children in gay and lesbian households -- among those most willing to take hard-to-place children -- until the church hierarchy was alerted and demanded that adoptions conform to the church's religious teaching, which was in conflict with state law. The Proposition 8 campaign, funded in large part by Mormons who were urged to do so by their church, does not mention that the Mormon church's adoption arm in Massachusetts is still operating, even though it does not place children in gay and lesbian households.
How can this be? It's a matter of public accountability, not infringement on religion. Catholic Charities acted as a state contractor, receiving state and federal money to find homes for special-needs children who were wards of the state, and it faced the loss of public funding if it did not comply with the anti-discrimination law. In contrast, LDS (for Latter-day Saints) Family Services runs a private adoption service without public funding. Its work, and its ability to follow its religious teachings, have not been altered.
That San Francisco field trip? The children who attended the wedding had their parents' signed permission, as law requires. A year ago, with the same permission, they could have traveled to their teacher's domestic-partnership ceremony. Proposition 8 does not change the rules about what children are exposed to in school. The state Education Code does not allow schools to teach comprehensive sex education -- which includes instruction about marriage -- to children whose parents object.
...Religions and their believers are free to define marriage as they please; they are free to consider homosexuality a sin. But they are not free to impose their definitions of morality on the state. Proposition 8 proponents know this, which is why they have misdirected the debate with highly colored illusions about homosexuals trying to take away the rights of religious Californians. Since May, when the state Supreme Court overturned a proposed ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional, more than 16,000 devoted gay and lesbian couples have celebrated the creation of stable, loving households, of equal legal stature with other households. Their happiness in no way diminishes the rights or happiness of others.
Californians must cast a clear eye on Proposition 8's real intentions. It seeks to change the state Constitution in a rare and terrible way, to impose a single moral belief on everyone and to deprive a targeted group of people of civil rights that are now guaranteed. This is something that no Californian, of any religious belief, should accept. Vote no to the bigotry of Proposition 8.
By the way, the best way to "save" marriage is to forget trying to deny rights to gays and lesbians and start working on convincing married straight people to stop running around on each other and getting divorced.
Could This Woman Demonstrate Less Understanding Of Our Government?
Sure she could. Just give her a little more time to open her mouth. I was a bit stymied about blogging this because Palin's statement was so incoherent:
ABC News' Steven Portnoy reports: In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by "attacks" from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.
"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."
However she feels about the way her story has been told in the press, Palin told WMAL she is not discouraged.
"It's sort of perplexing to me, because I'm a practical person and plainspoken also, but just cutting to the chase and calling things like I see them, just like most Americans. But this has not left a bitter taste in my mouth, the bitter shots taken by the mainstream media and by some of the elitism there in Washington," Palin said.
Elitism! Elitism! Ding, ding, ding! The woman's good at slinging around those buzzwords! Here, for anyone who doesn't have my handy-dandy Cato Institute mini-Constitution, is the text of the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Ms. Palin...do you notice any Congressional initiatives to stop your free speech...or simply people who, like you, are exercising their First Amendment rights? The First Amendment does not exist to protect you from criticism. If somebody libels or slanders you, presenting non-facts as facts, you are free to sue them, as is your opponent if/when it happens to him.
Like so many of the Obama fanatics (the ones who aren't voting for him simply because he's cool and attractive, looks good on a poster, and isn't George Bush), she seems to be looking for more government intervention; in fact, she seems to be suggesting a fascism-tinged need to shut down press criticism.
Word to Palin: The opinion that our next president shouldn't be a guy who pals around with the likes of Ayers happens to be one I share. But you, madam, seem to have less knowledge of our laws and government than a pothead who flunked my high school government class. Okay, to be fair, you're probably about on par with that guy. But, I believe he's working in a 7-Eleven in Livonia, Michigan, not running for Vice-President.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the idiocy, uh, aisle, fellow grasping opportunist Obama is against gay marriage but for it in California. Huh? Pander hard, dude!
Obama told MTV he believes marriage is "between a man and a woman" and that he is "not in favor of gay marriage."At the same time, Obama reiterated his opposition to Proposition 8, the California ballot measure which would eliminate a right to same-sex marriage that the state's Supreme Court recently recognized.
"I've stated my opposition to this. I think it's unnecessary," Obama told MTV. "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage. But when you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that's not what America's about."
And people wonder why I voted for Bob Barr. At least my hypocritical loser of a candidate has no chance of getting elected.
I Voted -- Against The Status Quo
California is already going solidly socialist for Obama, and I'm so disgusted by him, his socialist opponent McCain and his rashly chosen, unqualified V.P., that I voted early last week for that execrable loser, the "Libertarian"-for-20-minutes Bob Barr.
I did it as a protest vote, as a way of saying I'm one of a growing number of people who thinks we need a third party in this country, and because I'm for libertarian values more than I am the values of the hand-your-money-to-the-poor, government-as-nanny Democrats, or the hand-your-money-to-the-rich religious nutter Republicans.
Make no mistake: Barr disgusts me, and I'm even more disgusted that, in of all years, the idiot Libertarians didn't get their shit together enough to put up a candidate who at least has the charisma of Palin or Obama. And who is a real libertarian, not just somebody who hitched his broken down wagon to the party as his apparently last resort.
Jack Shafer at Slate pretty much sums up how I feel about Bob Barr:
I've continued to punch Libertarian on my ballot because no other candidate or political party comes close to reflecting my political views of limited government, free markets, civil liberties, and noninterventionist foreign policy.This year the party put up as its candidate a former Republican House member from Georgia, Bob Barr. As Libertarian candidates go, he's a chowderhead's chowderhead.
He continues with the bad news here:
Raffi Khatchadourian's profile of Barr in this week's New Yorker depicts him--accurately, I think--as no more Libertarian than your standard Newt Gingrich clone. Barr, Khatchadourian reports, is against the legalization of such illicit drugs as crack and heroin. Khatchadourian continues:[Barr] wrote the Defense of Marriage Act, voted for a constitutional amendment outlawing flag desecration, and even tried to legislate against Wiccan soldiers who wanted to practice their faith while in the service. A churchgoing Methodist, Barr rarely invoked religion when discussing policy with his aides, but he told constituents that "God's hand" was guiding his votes.Some libertarian.
There's more bad Barr news. A Cato Institute blog item, reviewing Barr's House votes from 1995 to 2003, tags him an enemy of free trade. In 2003, Reason magazine called Barr "one of the most conservative members of Congress." In his defense, Barr told Newsweek that was then and this is now. He's grown! Since being voted out of Congress, he's laundered his hard-right résumé with a consultancy at the American Civil Liberties Union. He has stated his regrets for having voting for the Patriot Act.
Who is the real Bob Barr? When he was an unrepentant hard-right Republican, he did have notes of libertarianism to him. But in his libertarian rebranding, he can't quite mask his old, musky self. He's a fraud.
...He gets my vote not because he'd be a good president. He wouldn't. He gets my vote not because he has a chance of becoming a president. He doesn't. And I didn't vote for him because he represents my views. He doesn't. I voted for Barr because he happens to stand adjacent to a set of values I cherish and that I've gotten into the habit of resubscribing to every four years--peace, prosperity, and liberty.
By the way, in yet another act of bureacratic stupidity, it was very unclear as to how much postage you have to put on your vote-by-mail ballot (a much better name than the "absentee ballot," as I'm not absent; I just prefer not to spend half an hour in line and perhaps encounter problems with the voting machines).
I guessed, based on the oversized envelope, that the amount was 59 cents, but the story the LA Times did on vote-by-mail included everything but that item (I guess they fired all the adequate reporters), and when I wrote to an editor there proposing doing a wee piece on this I never got an e-mail back. Nor did anyone from the election commission write back. Yeah, patriotism! The right to vote, if you can guess the right postage!
In other voting news, I also voted against almost all the California proposals, which are bad, wrong, and big boondoggles. The exceptions: the poorly written proposal for the veterans housing bond at the end of the ballot, which I voted for (Prop 12, I believe), and the very good proposal for redistricting (Prop 11).
And finally, in what happens overall in this election, as in all elections, I wish for a Republican president and a Democratic Congress, or a Democratic President and a Republican Congress. Anything that will prevent the person in the highest office from getting much of anything done. Sad, but true. I'm awaiting a candidate for president I can vote for without needing an airsickness bag in close proximity.
Here's my very sharp friend Jill Stewart on some of the proposals. For example, she writes about the veteran's bond proposal I voted for:
Providing for veteran's home loans, it is the sole bond measure that will be paid back by its recipients, the veterans, not taxpayers.
Ayres On Cinema Obama
Love LA-based Times of London correspondent Chris Ayres' review of the Obama-mercial. At least the Brits know schmaltz when they see it. At least a few Brits, anyway. Here's an excerpt from Ayers' piece:
This was Obamaland, where everything is safe and warm, where Big Brobama loves you and keeps the evil profit-doers at bay. You, too, could go to Obamaland, went the subtext, just so long as you voted for the man with the "D" next to his name. But in case Americans didn't realise what was at stake, Obama set out to demonstrate what a God-forsaken, economically devastated shell of a nation they now live in. So we cut to a harried mother named Rebecca, from North Kansas City, Missouri, who complained that her husband Brian, who works at a tyre plant, has to stand up all day, even though he has a dicky knee. We were treated to a glimpse of Brian slumped on his sofa, looking fed up. He had planned to have surgery in June, said Rebecca, but because of the rising cost of living he couldn't afford it. We then saw Rebecca rationing the food in her fridge, balancing her cheque book, and driving her humungous SUV in the moonlight.From this purgatory we emerged again into the comforting fuzzy goodness of Obamaland. "We measure the strength of our country not by the number of billionaires we have," he boomed, "but by whether a waitress who lives on tips can take the day off to look after a sick kid without being laid off."
Then we were back in the wasteland of He Who Must Not Be Named -- the dark wizard Bush (whose dead half-brother, McCain, has been exhumed to carry on his dastardly work). This time we were in Sardinia, Ohio, with an elderly African-American woman named Juanita who needs 12 different medications each day for rheumatoid arthritis. Her husband Larry lost his health insurance when he retired, so he took out a loan to pay for the pills, and now, at the age of 72, he has been forced to work as a salesman at Wal-Mart. We saw him putting on his name-pin with an expression of sadness and contempt.
Then Obama brought up his dead mother. It was enough to make you pine for the wit and intelligence of a Sarah Palin debate. I had hoped for goosebumps and that swollen feeling you get in your chest when you know that something good might happen. But instead I just felt downbeat; not only because of America's obvious problems but also because of Obama's willingness to exploit them so mawkishly.
Republicans have always used fear to their advantage. Now it seems that the Democrats are just as skilled with self-pity. It's a measure of just how poorly McCain has run his campaign that Americans seem to be buying it.
More here from ToL correspondent Tim Reid on Barack Obama laying plans to deaden expectation after an election victory -- if it does indeed go to the socialist with the D by his name instead of the one with the R by his name:
Barack Obama's senior advisers have drawn up plans to lower expectations for his presidency if he wins next week's election, amid concerns that many of his euphoric supporters are harbouring unrealistic hopes of what he can achieve.The sudden financial crisis and the prospect of a deep and painful recession have increased the urgency inside the Obama team to bring people down to earth, after a campaign in which his soaring rhetoric and promises of "hope" and "change" are now confronted with the reality of a stricken economy.
One senior adviser told The Times that the first few weeks of the transition, immediately after the election, were critical, "so there's not a vast mood swing from exhilaration and euphoria to despair".
Thanks, but I'm already pretty low, after a good look at the names on my ballot. 200 million people and these losers are all we can muster? The best is the headscarfed Cynthia McKinney, stating her allegiance to the Al-Jazeera crowd...on Al-Jazeera. It's frightening to think people considered sane adults vote for this person.
McKinney via Kate Coe
Pranking Palin
Note the name of the advisor, Johnny Halliday.
We've Come Almost Full Circle
Back in the 60s, it was "question authority" and "never trust anyone over 30." In 2008, the prevailing thinking seems to be "relinquish authority," and "let government do it," along with blind trust that government is good and will do "it" right -- whatever myriad things "it" may be.
At what point will the believers have their naivete yanked? And what happens then? Do people start thinking instead of looking for "hope" and "change" from their big, overpromising Federal nanny?
And, let's fantasize that people come to recognize what an error it is to hand over control to the government. This thing doesn't exactly have a tight turning radius. Will it be possible to turn things back? And, if so, what will it take?
Reading, Writing, And "Reeducation"
America's little aspiring Stalin, Bill Ayers, had big plans. Bob Owens details it on PJM:
When Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn led the domestic terrorist group Weather Underground in 1969, a chance meeting led Army veteran Larry Grathwohl into joining the group. Grathwohl served as a courier, running messages between the group's leadership (called the "Weather Bureau") and individual cells that were to carry out attacks.Grathwohl was also an informant for the FBI.
In an interview from the 1982 documentary No Place To Hide that recently surfaced, Grathwohl discussed what the Weathermen intended to do after overthrowing the U.S. government, including what they would do with those Americans who [1] refused to embrace communism.
I asked, "Well what is going to happen to those people we can't reeducate, that are diehard capitalists?" And the reply was that they'd have to be eliminated.And when I pursued this further, they estimated they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these reeducation centers.
And when I say "eliminate," I mean "kill."
Twenty-five million people.
I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people.
And they were dead serious.
Twenty-six years later, I caught up with Larry Grathwohl, and asked him about the Weathermen, their leaders then and now, and what he thinks about the relationship between Bill Ayers and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Pajamas Media: You stated in your interview in No Place to Hide that you wanted us to "imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people." A lot of people have now had the opportunity to listen to you, and contemplate the horrors these people planned. Can you recall who these people are by name, and who the ringleaders of this plan were?
Larry Grathwohl: Conversations regarding this occurred in Cincinnati, Detroit, Flint, and Buffalo. Participants included Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Mark Rudd, Linda Evans, Jeff Jones, and many others.
...Pajamas Media: Scattered news accounts on the Internet note that you were instrumental in foiling Weather Underground attacks in February of 1970, in Detroit. The Weathermen built two bombs targeting the Detroit Police Officers' Association (DPOA) building and the 13th Precinct. Were the goals of these attacks symbolic property damage as were some other Weathermen attacks, or were these targets selected to kill police officers?
Larry Grathwohl: The instructions I received from Billy Ayers was that the bombs to be used in Detroit must have shrapnel (fence staples, specifically) and fire potential (propane bottles). The intention was to kill police officers.
Pajamas Media: One of the Detroit bombs was to be placed on the side of the DPOA building, and the blast was likely to cause damage to the adjacent Red Barn Restaurant, which had mostly African-American customers. Who ordered the attack, and what did he say when you told him that innocent civilians would be killed?
Larry Grathwohl: When I objected to Billy Ayers that more innocent people would be killed in the restaurant, he replied, "Innocent people have to die in a revolution." Billy also acknowledged during a criticism session in Buffalo that Bernadine placed the bomb at the Park Police Station which resulted in the death of Police Officer McDonnell.
Pajamas Media: Bill Ayers came out of hiding around 1980, became an college professor, and has served on numerous boards and foundations. Do you think he's changed in his radicalism?
Larry Grathwohl: Has Billy changed? I hardly think so.
Pajamas Media: If conditions permitted, do you think Ayers would still engage in violence to further a political agenda?
Larry Grathwohl: He has acknowledged his support of anti-American groups and stated he felt that the Weathermen hadn't done enough.
Pajamas Media: Do you consider Bill Ayers an attempted mass murderer?
Larry Grathwohl: I'm not certain Billy is a mass murder; his ego just wants him to be in charge. Note that Billy never does anything that involves risk. He has no problem allowing his women to do the evil task, Diane Oughton and even Bernardine, but never him. As for what he might do, hasn't he said he doesn't rule out the possibility of future bombings? [Ayers said he didn't "want to discount the possibility" in this [2] New York Times article from September 11, 2001. -- Ed.]
A quote from a Politico piece by Ben Smith on the Obama/Ayers connection:
As Bloomberg News reported recently, Obama and Ayers have crossed paths repeatedly in the last decade. In 1997, Obama cited Ayers' critique of the juvenile justice system in a Chicago Tribune article on what prominent Chicagoans were reading. He and Ayers served together on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago for three years starting in 1999. In 2001, Ayers also gave $200 to Obama's state Senate reelection campaign.Many details of the 1995 meeting are shrouded by time and by Obama's and Ayers' refusals to discuss it.
The exact date is not known, but it was in the second half of 1995, before Palmer's decision -- late in her losing congressional primary against Jesse Jackson Jr. -- to jump back into the special election for her state Senate seat. (Her decision produced a rift between her and Obama, who was able to get her thrown off the ballot on technical grounds.)
"That's too long ago -- that's ancient history," Palmer said, when asked of the meeting.
Dr. Young and another guest, Maria Warren, described it similarly: as an introduction to Hyde Park liberals of the handpicked successor to Palmer, a well-regarded figure on the left.
"When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the living room of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn," Warren wrote on her blog in 2005. "They were launching him -- introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread."
Yep, total strangers. Sure sounds like it.
Asking For Change
Obama's aunt, who's in the US illegally, and living in publicly funded housing, doesn't have to ask Obama to pay for her (the socialists always freeest with other people's money). That's because the taxpayers are subsidizing this Kenyan lady's existence, and when there are many, many citizens waiting for public housing. Via AP/MSNBC:
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama's aunt, a Kenyan woman who has been quietly living in public housing in Boston, is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her request for asylum four years ago, The Associated Press has learned.Zeituni Onyango, 56, referred to as "Aunti Zeituni" in Obama's memoir, was instructed to leave the United States by a U.S. immigration judge who denied her asylum request, a person familiar with the matter told the AP late Friday. This person spoke on condition of anonymity because no one was authorized to discuss Onyango's case.
...WASHINGTON - Barack Obama's aunt, a Kenyan woman who has been quietly living in public housing in Boston, is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her request for asylum four years ago, The Associated Press has learned.
Zeituni Onyango, 56, referred to as "Aunti Zeituni" in Obama's memoir, was instructed to leave the United States by a U.S. immigration judge who denied her asylum request, a person familiar with the matter told the AP late Friday. This person spoke on condition of anonymity because no one was authorized to discuss Onyango's case.
I'm wondering how she worked for the Housing Authority if she is not a citizen. And I'm wondering if she's getting other taxpayer handouts. No news organization seems to have figured that out. Also, I was under the impression that it's illegal for non-citizens to contribute to political campaigns in the U.S. Am I wrong?
Finally, here's Steyn on the contradictions of personal and policy:
In his Wednesday night infomercial, Obama declared that his "fundamental belief" was that "I am my brother's keeper." Back in Kenya, his brother lives in a shack on 12 bucks a year. If Barack is his brother's keeper, why couldn't he send him a $10 bill and nearly double the guy's income? The reality is that Barack Obama assumes the government should be his brother's keeper, and his aunt's keeper. Why be surprised by that? For 20 years in Illinois, Obama has marinated in the swamps of the Chicago political machine and the campus radicalism of William Ayers and Rashid Khalidi. In such a world, the redistributive urge is more or less a minimum entry qualification.
