Your Mommy Can't Be Your Mommy And Your Best Friend
It's not a good sign (nor a surprising one), the report in the WSJ that teens these days seem to like their parents. Amy Chozick writes:
After she is caught stealing designer sunglasses, Hanna, a popular blond teen on the new TV series "Pretty Little Liars," shares a heartfelt moment with her understanding and fashionable single mother. The two agree to put the shoplifting incident behind them.Informing the scene is a new insight that is reshaping the way Hollywood portrays the modern family: Teens like their parents.
For decades, TV has depicted teens as angst-ridden and rebellious, and parents as out-of-touch and unhip. Then network executives realized that popular shows that tapped into the defiant-youth subculture were losing viewers. Now, teen shows tend to be more like ABC Family's "Pretty Little Liars," an emotional drama premiering in June about teens caught up in the disappearance of a popular classmate.
...Market research documenting the shift has influenced new programming at the ABC Family network, owned by Walt Disney Co. In a study of more than 2,000 children conducted by Experian Simmons, a unit of Experian PLC, 75% of 12- to 17-year-olds said they get along with their parents, and 72% said they like spending time with their families. In a June 2007 study, 93% of teens said they had a good relationship with their mothers--an estimated 15 to 20 percentage points higher than two decades ago, according to Frank N. Magid Associates.
...Born in the 1990s, teens today are part of the generation marketers call "millennials," raised with the modern parenting style that emphasizes coddling over curfews, says Susan Newman, a social psychologist and author. "We're a culture of 'yes' parents, and we've done a lot of hovering and smothering that's brought us closer to our children."
These are the original "helicopter parents," adults in their 30s and 40s who are excessively involved in their children's lives. These parents tend to avoid exerting parental control, try to stay connected through technology, and share interests like fashion, music and television with their kids, researchers say. They may wear the same J. Crew styles as their teens, buy the same drinks at Starbucks, and go to yoga or a sushi bar together. They are tolerant of racy content on TV, preferring to watch it with their teens and discuss it later, rather than let the kids find it on their own.
Whether not spanking kids or rewarding them when they lose a soccer game, "society has essentially realigned itself to cherish the child," says Jack MacKenzie, president of the Millennial Strategy Program at Frank N. Magid Associates. "Is it any wonder kids love parents who treat them that way?"
...
The Toughest Immigration Laws In North America
Those would be Mexico's. J. Michael Waller writes at HumanEvents that under Mexican law, it's a felony to be an illegal alien in Mexico --punishable by more than a year in prison:
The law also ensures that:•immigration authorities have a record of each foreign visitor;
•foreign visitors do not violate their visa status;
•foreign visitors are banned from interfering in the country's internal politics;
•foreign visitors who enter under false pretenses are imprisoned or deported;
•foreign visitors violating the terms of their entry are imprisoned or deported;
•those who aid in illegal immigration will be sent to prison.Who could disagree with such a law? It makes perfect sense. The Mexican constitution strictly defines the rights of citizens -- and the denial of many fundamental rights to non-citizens, illegal and illegal. Under the constitution, the Ley General de Población, or General Law on Population, spells out specifically the country's immigration policy.
It is an interesting law -- and one that should cause us all to ask, Why is our great southern neighbor pushing us to water down our own immigration laws and policies, when its own immigration restrictions are the toughest on the continent?
Thanks, Martin!
First Of All, It Isn't The Hamburger
It's the bun. And the fries and the shake and the Coke, and anything else with sugar or flour. That's the stuff that causes the insulin secretion that puts on fat.
I'm 46 and pretty thin, and I eat bacon cheese Angus burgers when I go to McDonald's. No bun. Yum!
Please get the word out to the nannying dumbasses in Santa Clara county who have banned McDonald's Happy Meal toys. Yes, the meals are a little less happy, reports the Telegraph:
Officials in the county of Santa Clara, in the heart of technology centre Silicon Valley south of San Francisco, have voted to enact the ban to fight an "obesity epidemic" sweeping California and the United States."This ordinance prevents restaurants from preying on children's love of toys to peddle high-calorie, high-fat, high-sodium kids meals," said Ken Yeager, the county supervisor behind the ban.
There is a solution to this sort of thing. It's called parents. Mine said no to me about so many things I just didn't bother to keep asking for stuff I knew wouldn't fly.
Blog on why low carb diets work, via @DrEades, is here.
"Sailer's Law Of Female Journalism"
I've been thinking about beauty, and how irate some women get at the notion that they need to look after their looks, and do the best with what they have, as a requirement for getting and keeping a man. I was reminded of Steve Sailer's Law:
The most heartfelt articles by female journalists tend to be demands that social values be overturned in order that, Come the Revolution, the journalist herself will be considered hotter-looking.
Or, stated another way, Sailer writes:
As I've mentioned before, a remarkable fraction of female journalistic output, at least the most heartfelt stuff, consists of demands for society to change so that that particular female journalist would be considered hotter looking.
Welcome To Jilt-Blogging
The New York Daily News headline?
Self-help guru Karen Salmansohn sues rich bookie who she claims got her pregnant then dumped her
Jose Martinez writes for the NYDN:
The author of "How To Be Happy, Dammit" is suing the wealthy Long Island man who she says wooed her, then left her pregnant - and most unhappy.Karen Salmansohn accuses married big shot Mitchell Leff of leaving piles of unpaid medical bills after he bankrolled $28,000 in fertility treatments and pledged to start a family with her.
"I may be a self-help expert, but I'm not a psychic," Salmansohn, 49, said. "It was a great surprise that he broke his emotional and financial commitment."
Best line from the article, in the vein of Prince Charles wanting to come back as Camilla's tampon:
Earlier, the suit says, Leff had told Salmansohn, "I wish aliens would come down and remove my wife so I could marry you right away."
Salmansohn revenge-blogs it for the HuffPo -- here and here.
49 and setting out to have a baby, and with a still-married dude? Genius.
There Will Never Be Peace
Peace between Israel and the Palestinians is impossible, blogs SonOfHamas:
Declaring an independent Palestinian State may bring a temporary truce, but there can never be peace as long as there is Islam.A diplomatic solution like statehood is too broad a brushstroke to bring peace. So are military and economic solutions. Because the problem is not political, cultural, or economic. And it's not a logistical problem. Israel's wall will not protect it from Palestinian suicide bombers any more than China's wall protected it from the Mongols.
Let's go even further. Let's say that a miracle happens and the PA and Hamas become unified, and other insurmountable obstacles are surmounted. Will this bring peace to the Middle East?
Not as far as 1.6 billion Muslims are concerned. Not only is the land of Israel itself an Islamic trust, but it is also home to Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third most holy site after Mecca and Medina, as well as many other holy sites, including the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron where tradition holds that Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekeh, Jacob and Leah and Joseph are buried. The global Muslim community will never rest until it regains control over these sites.
The so-called "Palestinian Problem" is first of all a theological problem but ultimately an individual problem.
It is a theological problem because the god of the Qur'an demands nothing short of an Islamic world and the death or subjugation of every infidel (non-Muslim). It is a theological problem because the god of the Qur'an claims sole ownership of Israel and considers its Jewish inhabitants to be "pigs" and "monkeys."
The biggest obstacle to the peace process was when Palestinians allowed their cause to be Islamized. And until Islam is removed from the equation, the problem will remain an unassailable Gordian Knot.
The blog Son of Hamas appears to be by the author of the book of the same name, Mosab Hassan Yousef. From FoxNews:
He was born the son of one of the most influential leaders of the militant Hamas organization in the West Bank and grew up in a strict Islamic family.Now, at 30 years old, he attends an evangelical Christian church, Barabbas Road in San Diego, Calif. He renounced his Muslim faith, left his family behind in Ramallah and is seeking asylum in the United States.
He reveals on the blog that his family has disowned him -- he says they had to to protect themselves:
So what have I gotten out of writing a bestseller?The U.S. government has rejected my plea for political asylum, saying that I was connected with a terrorist organization, even though I was never a member of Hamas. I can never become a citizen, and if I leave the country, I cannot return.
Because I became a Christian and helped to save Israeli and Palestinian lives, I am condemned to death by the Qur'an and its god, making it the duty of every good Muslim to kill me.
By going public, I put the lives of my mother, brothers and sisters at extreme risk. They still live in the West Bank, which is ruled by the Fatah faction of the PLO. Fatah hates Hamas because it killed many of its members in Gaza after the 2006 elections. What if Fatah members, afraid that I will reveal more secrets about them, go out of control and start shooting at my parents' house?
Even Christians in the Middle East are tainted because of me. Now, every Muslim will accuse them of collaborating with Israel, threatening their lives.
At the same time, everywhere I go people try to discredit me and the book. They call me liar and anti-Semite. They say I made things up to make myself look big and important, even after my Shin Bet handler has said publicly that, when he read the book, he was amazed at how I downplayed my involvement and how few of our operations I included.
People accuse me of writing the book to get rich. But I am not rich. Just think for a moment: is there any amount of money that is worth stabbing your own family, friends and culture in the back? Bringing down a death sentence on your head? Living as a fugitive? Every day, I have to deal with all of these consequences alone, working under unbelievable pressure, trying hard to keep a smile on my face during the interviews.
I have lost all and gained little, not even the assurance that the book will do any good.
I am not looking for your pity or sympathy. But I do need some support. I need you to understand how much it really cost to write this book. I am making myself transparent and vulnerable so that maybe you can pray and help me deal with my guilt and frustration, loneliness and discouragement.
His book is here: Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices
Waxman Forced To Pull Wax Out Of Ears On CPSIA
Overlawyered's Walter Olson has just been a hero about blogging the disastrous CPSIA. Chances are, far fewer people would know about it, but for his efforts. Here's his latest:
Readers of this site will recall that as reports rolled in last year of the calamitous effects of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, the Congressional leadership, and in particular key lawmaker Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) steadfastly refused to hold hearings or in general acknowledge that the law was causing systematic ill effects of any sort.As resale outlets across the nation swept harmless winter coats from their shelves or stopped dealing in kids' goods entirely; as librarians warned that whole collections of pre-1985 books would need to be either put through prohibitively expensive testing or simply discarded; as makers, importers and sellers of perfectly harmless apparel, school supplies, furniture, musical instruments and other children's items puzzled over ruinously high testing costs and bans on common materials like brass; as smaller, craft-oriented producers began folding, leaving the market to be served by the largest mass-production toymakers and retailers (many of which had supported the legislation); as the kids' motor vehicle industry, including makers and sellers of dirtbikes and mini-ATVs, found itself transformed overnight into outlaws; even as all this unfolded, Henry Waxman and his counterparts on the Senate side kept the lid clamped down tight on any Capitol Hill airing of such woes.
...In recent months, without of course admitting any error whatsoever, representatives of Waxman's office have been quietly floating amendments intended to correct some of CPSIA's most blatantly impractical elements. The fixes would be likely to help in some specific areas where opposition has been vocal and influential, such as children's books and mini-vehicles, while affording much less relief, or none at all, to many others trying to cope with the law. At the same time, Waxman's staff has been demanding that "business" (conceived as if it were some monolithic group) gratefully sign off on the fix as acceptable and perhaps even accept new provisions that would increase CPSIA burdens.
There will be a hearing tomorrow on a proposed legislative fix. Links within the piece are live at Walter's site.
The Hugest Little Girl I've Ever Met
She's Joey King, the darling and charismatic young star of the upcoming movie, "Ramona and Beezus," based on the books by Beverly Cleary.
She really carries the movie, has lovely, supportive parents and family, and even managed to inspire the kids who came my interview of her at LA Times Festival of Books.
She even sent me a thank you tweet this morning:
@JoeyLittleKing @amyalkon You are the coolest interviewer. I had the best time with you on stage, you are sweet, pretty, and fun!!
A class act, and I don't think she's even four feet tall.
Tom Matlack, from The Good Man Project, blogged our Sunday morning session, "Do The Right Thing." Sandy Banks moderated and the other panelist was Antwone Fisher. An excerpt from Matlack's blog item:
I talked about how I had been CFO of a large media conglomerate by the time I was 30, had taken that company public and sold it for $2 billion 90 days later, only to be kicked out the house the very next day by my wife for being a drunk and a cheat. How I had sat in a church parking lot, 14 years ago now, and called my mom to explain how I had gone from the front page of the Wall Street Journal to having no place to go and worrying that I would never see my two baby children again. I told the audience how it was during that conversation that I realized how little I understood about doing the right thing, and about being a man or a husband or a father.What ensued was a fascinating discussion among two men and two women, two Caucasians and two African-Americans about what it means to do the right thing in 2010, and about the warning signs of Tiger and Jesse James and all the rest. And just how much we each need to reach out to the next generation of boys and girls to have that conversation with them.
The session I moderated the day before, "All The Single Ladies", is chronicled here by Casey Chan. An excerpt:
Then Alkon brings up Lori Gottlieb's controversial book Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. All three panelists heavily criticized Gottlieb for her antiquated take on relationships and dating. Applause erupts after Klausner suggests "Marry Him" is perpetuating the myth that women panic and embrace the idea of settling the closer they get to turning 40.
Apparently, Lori Gottlieb wrote my panelists some growly e-mails. A review of Gottlieb's book is here. My blog item on Gottlieb's Atlantic piece is here.
photo by Gregg Sutter
How Worried Should The "South Park" Creators Be?
"Very," writes Ayaan Hirsi Ali in The Wall Street Journal, about the posting on RevolutionMuslim.com by Muslim convert Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee warning that their murder by Muslims is likely:
In essence, Mr. Amrikee's posting is an informal fatwa. Here's how it works:There is a basic principle in Islamic scripture--unknown to most not-so-observant Muslims and most non-Muslims--called "commanding right and forbidding wrong." It obligates Muslim males to police behavior seen to be wrong and personally deal out the appropriate punishment as stated in scripture. In its mildest form, devout people give friendly advice to abstain from wrongdoing. Less mild is the practice whereby Afghan men feel empowered to beat women who are not veiled.
By publicizing the supposed sins of Messrs. Stone and Parker, Mr. Amrikee undoubtedly believes he is fulfilling his duty to command right and forbid wrong. His message is not just an opinion. It will appeal to like-minded individuals who, even though they are a minority, are a large and random enough group to carry out the divine punishment. The best illustration of this was demonstrated by the Somali man who broke into Mr. Westergaard's home in January carrying an axe and a knife.
Any Muslim, male or female, who knows about the "offense" may decide to perform the duty of killing those who insult the prophet. So what can be done to help Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone?
...Following the example of Jon Stewart, who used the first segment of his April 22 show to defend "South Park," producers, actors, writers, musicians and other entertainers could lead such an effort.
Another idea is to do stories of Muhammad where his image is shown as much as possible. These stories do not have to be negative or insulting, they just need to spread the risk. The aim is to confront hypersensitive Muslims with more targets than they can possibly contend with.
Another important advantage of such a campaign is to accustom Muslims to the kind of treatment that the followers of other religions have long been used to. After the "South Park" episode in question there was no threatening response from Buddhists, Christians and Jews--to say nothing of Tom Cruise and Barbra Streisand fans--all of whom had far more reason to be offended than Muslims.
Islamists seek to replace the rule of law with that of commanding right and forbidding wrong. With over a billion and a half people calling Muhammad their moral guide, it is imperative that we examine the consequences of his guidance, starting with the notion that those who depict his image or criticize his teachings should be punished.
Linkie Love
Somebody must've linked to my blog item asking whether it breaks down along gender lines, how people pay when out in a group, because there are lots of new comments that keep coming in. The link is here.
FOTC
That's Friend Of The Corps -- in a shirt a Marine colonel who reads me in the Stars and Stripes sent me from Afghanistan:
And yes, I think it goes rather well with the evening dress skirt I wore to the LA Times Festival of Books. I like to wear evening wear as daywear every day. Dress for a party and a party just might come to you.
P.S. Consider this my contribution to boobquake day. Do be sure to make your own, ladies.
photo by Gregg Sutter
Welch On The VAT
Matt Welch lays it out in the New York Post:
The only reason VAT is even on the table right now is that bureaucrats like VAT enthusiast Nancy Pelosi have an appetite for spending that far outpaces Americans' willingness to cough up their hard-earned dough. Every statehouse and city council across the land is literally out of money, and turning to the only people who can print the stuff: Washington.The federal government spent $3.5 trillion last year while taking in just $2.1 trillion, producing a deficit-to-Gross Domestic Product ratio of 10%, a level not seen since World War II. By contrast, the European Union requires member countries to keep deficits at 3% of GDP. If America was in Europe, we'd be Greece.
What's worse for us is that we've pretty much given up trying to address the root problem, which is the decade long spending binge initiated by George W. Bush and then tripled down on by Barack Obama. The VAT isn't a way to streamline a complicated tax code; it's a new spigot to flood money into the pockets of teachers who can't be fired, and securities regulators who can't get enough porn.
The grand irony here is that the very continent we're scrambling to emulate has been moving aggressively in the opposite direction on taxes and economic policy.
While the US keeps corporate taxes frozen near 40%, EU countries have slashed them down to an average of around 25%. Top marginal income tax rates, which in the US are 35%, are under 25% all across the former East Bloc.
As the share of government spending in health care has been steadily increasing in the US, it has been inching downward in Europe. While first Bush and then Obama pushed through massive new public entitlements, governments from Stockholm to Rome have been grappling with real private reform.
Though conservatives especially like to sneer at the democratic socialism of Old Europe, it is precisely those cheese-eaters in France and Vikings up north who have been leading the world in privatization these last two decades, selling off everything from airports to sewage companies.
Do The Right Thing
Just don't force other people to pay for it:
"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all." - Frédéric Bastiat
Did People Think The Guy Was Drunk?
How do you leave a man lying bleeding out on the sidewalk?
Cheap And Glossy
Deals on magazines
Today And Yesterday At LA Times Festival Of Books
I'll soon be weaponizing my eyelashes for yet another day at LA Times Festival of Books.
Today is the panel on my book -- at 10:30 a.m., moderated by the LA Times' Sandy Banks, and with Antwone Fisher and Tom Matlack. I'll be signing books after the session (they're on sale there...at an economy-friendly $16.95!)
Carla Hall very sweetly came to my panel yesterday and mentioned it in her piece about the Festival for the paper:
Moderator and advice columnist Amy Alkon merely announced the title of comedy writer Julie Klausner's book, "I Don't Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters, and Other Guys I've Dated" -- and drew applause from an audience of delighted women and somewhat amused men.
"My book is about how terrible it is to be in your 20s ... dating guys who were faux-sensitive," said Klausner, the first of the three to explain her book.
"Mine is about cooking for the guys Julie went out with," said Giulia Melucci, who penned "I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti: A Memoir of Good Food and Bad Boyfriends."
Sascha Rothchild, author of "How to Get Divorced by 30," went last: "Uh, mine is about marrying one of the guys that Julie --" The audience erupted in howls before she could continue.
Later today (at 1:30), I'll be interviewing the darling young actress Joey King, who played Ramona the pest in the super-cute kids movie Beezus and Ramona, based on the Beverly Cleary books I read when I was a kid.
I recommend the movie to anyone who has kids, but Gregg came with me to the screening, and I now owe him 25 war movie dates, starting with the uncut version of The Sorrow and the Pity
Why A VAT Would Soon Make For One Big, Huge Company
Tim Cavanaugh, in reason, quotes from a 1972 Murray Rothbard piece:
But the VAT is in many ways far worse than a sales tax, apart from its hidden and clandestine nature. In the first place, the VAT advocates claim that since each firm and stage of production will pay in proportion to its "value added" to production, there will be no misallocation effects along the way.But this ignores the fact that every business firm will be burdened by the cost of innumerable record keeping and collection for the government. The result will be an inexorable push of the business system toward "vertical mergers" and the reduction of competition.
Suppose, for example, that a crude-oil producer adds the value of $1,000, and that an oil refiner adds another $1,000, and suppose for simplicity that the VAT is 10 percent. Theoretically, it should make no difference if the firms are separate or "integrated"; in the former case, each firm would pay $100 to the government; in the latter, the integrated firm would pay $200. But since this comforting theory ignores the substantial costs of record keeping and the collection, in practice if the crude-oil firm and the oil refiner were integrated into one firm, making only one payment, their costs would be lower...
Hence, vertical mergers will be induced by the VAT, after which the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice would begin to clamor that the free market is producing "monopoly" and that the merger must be broken by government fiat.
The costs of record keeping and payment pose another grave problem for the market economy. Obviously, small firms are less able to bear these costs than big ones, and so the VAT will be a powerful burden on small business, and hamper it gravely in the competitive struggle. It is no wonder that some big businesses look with favor on the VAT!
It's like the CPSIA (Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act), the idiocy of which was documented so well by Walter Olson. Here's one example of how that worked out:
Kitty Boyce worked for 18 years to build her resale shop, The Kids Closet, located in Rochester, IL, into a well-known resale shop. With its colorful signage, brightly decorated interior and whimsical whale logo, The Kids Closet built its reputation on offering customers quality second-hand children's products at great values.Shortly after being voted the "Number One Place to Shop Resale" by the Illinois Times, Kitty announced that because of CPSIA she was converting her store to sell predominately teen and adult clothing, home accessories and furniture, and changing its name to Remarkable Resale. The loss of revenue in her shop due to the changes in inventory forced her to lay off several employees.
"CPSIA has been devastating for us," said Kitty. "We just decided to get rid of all the toys and furniture. It's just not worth the risk."
While the Consumer Product Safety Commission has temporarily stayed requirements for testing and certifying products, all resale shops still must comply with the new lead and phthalate standards. Realistically, resale shops cannot be 100 percent certain that the used items meet the new requirements.
Due to the over-reaching law, Kitty Boyce's dedicated attempts to provide children and families with reasonably priced, gently used baby equipment, furniture and toys have been shut down. For Kitty and others, the risk of enforcement action by state attorneys general or private groups is too great. The result is that during one of the worst economies in decades, resale shops around the country are avoiding selling winter clothing for kids and other children's products.
How TV For Kids Has Changed
Jonathan V. Last writes for the WSJ that the men on kids shows tend to be either aged, and thus harmless, or young and effete:
And this isn't to say that the guys on kids' shows should walk and talk like Charles Bronson. But it wouldn't hurt if, every once in a while, there was a character as traditionally masculine as, say, Gen. David Petraeus. Or to lower the bar even further, if there were male figures who resemble run-of-the-mill young fathers: a 32-year-old who looks butch enough to hold down a job, enjoy baseball and occasionally change the oil in his sensible family sedan."Bob the Builder" isn't a real man either, though I mean this in the literal, not the pejorative, sense. But that doesn't matter, because he teaches kids a different set of values. A stop-motion animated import from British television, Bob is a construction worker who teams up with various anthropomorphic vehicles--a dump truck named "Muck," a concrete mixer named "Dizzy"--to solve problems and build things.
For the most part, "Bob the Builder" is about normal kids' stuff: teamwork, conflict resolution, taking turns and the like. The show isn't overtly political--Bob's catchphrase, "Yes we can!" predates the Obama campaign. Instead, it peddles a slightly hectoring brand of environmentalism. Ever since Bob discovered his inner environmental conscience, he's been teaching kids about believing in recycling and being kind to Mother Gaia. "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" has become another one of the show's catchphrases. That's fine so far as it goes--aside from those evil Republicans, who doesn't love the planet?
But it's a little rich having Bob indoctrinate children about "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" while simultaneously prompting these children to beg their parents for plastic Bob the Builder trucks, and latex Bob the Builder balls, and plush Bob the Builder dolls. All of which are manufactured in far-away lands and shipped to our fair shores by the carbon-gobbling container-shipful. Bob the Builder is like one of those evangelists who lectures on the virtues of living green before hopping onto a private jet and flying back to his mansion in Nashville.
Happy Earth Day, Bike-riding Stooge!
From This Is fyf:
Citing security concerns that bikes might be secret pipe bombs, NYPD officers clipped the locks of hundreds of bikes along Houston Street this morning in preparation for President Obama's speech at Cooper Union. The bikes were unceremoniously put in the back of the truck. There was no prior notification of the bikes needing to be cleared along the route by NYPD and onlookers were not given information as to what would become of the bikes.
They can now be retrieved at the Seventh Precinct. No word on who's paying for the sawed-through $100 bike locks, any damage from bikes being thrown together on a truck, or how the police will match bikes to their legit owners.
via Simple Justice
A Toaster Cozy For Your Butt Crack
Now, maybe your toaster is so hideous to you that you feel compelled to cover it with some sort of crocheted duck thingie. If so, you are weird, troubled, and have too much time on your hands, and, P.S., I don't mean "weird" and "troubled" in a nice way. And then, let's just hope you don't expand your decorative horizons even further, like some are. NumberSix writes:
Amy,I guess with the recent vajazzling trend, it was only a matter of time before someone moseyed around to the other side. Introducing the Backtacular, a "gluteal cleft patch."
I think the ladies over at the Slaves to Fashion blog said it best:
"Call me crazy, but I think if you're aware of your pants slipping so much that they expose the top of your bum every time you bend over, you need a new pair of pants, not a sticker!"Amen. Slaves to Fashion blog item is here.
Visit and bask in the ridiculousness.
Three Reasons Pot Should Be Legalized
By Nick Gillespie at reason.tv:
What's To Come In France And The UK Under Islam
The UK and France and other European countries have many Muslim immigrants and a much smaller population than we do in the US. In my lifetime, it's likely, with the Muslim birth rate, that these countries will go overwhelmingly Muslim. And here, as Xan Rice writes in the Guardian, is the sort of thing the remaining non-Muslims have to look forward to:
A majority of radio stations in southern and central Somalia today stopped playing music and jingles, to comply with a ban by Islamist militants.Hizbul Islam, one of the two main insurgent forces in Somalia, issued the order on 3 April, saying music broadcasts violated Islamic principles. It gave FM radio stations - the main form of news and entertainment in the country - 10 days to comply or be shut down.
Islamic groups have previously outlawed music in some areas under their control, along with beards, football, movies, women's beauty salons and bras. The latest ban on all tunes - including those used in commercials - appears to be the most widely applied yet, and indicative of the rebels' ability to instil fear.
In the capital, Mogadishu, where there are 16 FM radio stations, only the government-controlled Radio Mogadishu, which is protected by African Union peacekeepers, and the UN-funded Radio Bar-Kulan, whose studio is in Nairobi, resisted the order.
"I've listened to three of my regular stations today, and there's no music at all," said Abdulkadir Khalif, a Mogadishu resident. "There's not even a jingle."
Instead, some stations used birdsong or vehicle noises to introduce programmes. One of the broadcasters aired "a recording from a warzone" to signal the start of the news, as an ironic gesture, Khalif said.
A note on my header about the "remaining non-Muslims": the Quran commands the death or conversion of the infidel, so there may not be anybody non-Muslim; at least, not openly so.
In related primitivity, women wearing revealing clothes are to blame for earthquakes, according to an Iranian cleric. Join in Monday in the boobquake to prove him wrong.
Like Shifting Your Credit Card Balance To Another Card
About GM crowing that they've repaid their government loan/handout, not so fast. Manny Klausner e-mailed me this link from Senator Chuck Grassley, about how GM is using other TARP funds to "repay" the loans:
"It looks like the announcement is really just an elaborate TARP money shuffle," Grassley said. "The repayment dollars haven't come from GM selling cars but, instead, from a TARP escrow account at the Treasury Department."Grassley said his concern is based upon the most recently quarterly report from the Special Inspector General for TARP. Mr. Neil Barofsky testified before the Finance Committee this week and stated that the funds GM is using to repay its TARP debt are not coming from GM earnings.
Grassley said it's a matter of the Treasury Department being straightforward with taxpayers about its management of the $700 billion taxpayer funded TARP program. Click here to read (a PDF of) Grassley's letter of inquiry to Secretary Timothy Geithner.
Fairy Tales For Grownups
Stossel quotes Michael Medved on some of the myths people believe about capitalism:
Myth No. 3: Government is more fair and reliable than business."Remember the last time you went into Starbucks, and then remember the last time you went into the DMV to get your license," Medved said. "Where did you get better treated? And it's not because the barista is some kind of idealist or humanitarian. She wants a tip. She wants you to come back to the Starbucks ... ."
But the left doesn't get it.
"This is the suspicion of the profit motive -- the idea that if somebody is selflessly serving me, they're going to treat me better than somebody who wants to make a buck," Medved said. But "(i)f you think about it in your own life, if somebody is benefiting from his interaction with you ... it's a far more reliable kind of interaction than someone who comes and says I'm in this only for you."
Having Sex With Little Girls Is Okay Under Islam
What is the appropriate age for having sex the first time? The Prophet Mohammed is the model, says Dr. Ahmad Al-Mu'bi. Al-Mu'bi continues, saying that Mohammed took Aisha to be his wife when she was 6, but only had sex with her when she was 9. "We consider the Prophet Mohammed to be our model."
Here's Phyllis Chesler on the sexual abuse of boys that's rife in the Muslim world.
Got A Problem?
I could use a few more interesting ones right now: questions to answer for my column, that is, related to love, dating, sex, and relationships.
I have a bunch -- they always come in -- but I could use some smart, interesting ones now (especially shorter questions).
In the interesting question department, people lately have been asking me about issues in the media -- Tiger Woods' cheating, why Bullock would get together with a guy like Jesse James -- and stuff about women with mustaches, etc. I like these questions -- they're more interesting than the stuff I have right now; mainly women whose problems stem from the fact that they think having a boyfriend/husband is a shortcut to having a you. And, on the other side, there are the wimpy men who stare at girls they like for two years straight instead of duct-taping on a set of balls and asking the women out.
Please send questions -- or ask your friends to send questions -- to adviceamy at AOL dot com. Many thanks!
Muslims Threaten To Kill South Park Creators
Make fun of Judaism or Christianity and Jews and Christians will be...annoyed...maybe even angry. (Remember "Piss Christ?" Christians got pretty pissed off about it, but nobody murdered the artist or blew up any museums.)
If, on the other hand, you make a joke or show a cartoon about Islam (or show Mohammed in a bear suit, as South Park did), you're rather likely to be murdered or spend the rest of your life in hiding.
Here's a fantastic CNN report that actually gets into the realities of Islam and what a mismatch it is in our free, democratic society:
These scumbags at RevolutionMuslim.com (from Google cache, since site is down) published where the South Park creators live and work, and put up a post subtly encouraging Muslims to murder them like they murdered Theo Van Gogh.
There's even a picture on their site of poor dead Van Gogh lying on the ground with the knife the Muslim who murdered him for Allah left sticking out of this chest. The caption with the photo:
"Theo Van Gogh - Have Matt Stone And Trey Parker Forgotten This?"
Another post reads:
We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show. This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.
Sick, primitive fuckers.
A comment from "Em" on Entertainment Weekly about the episode:
Bob, as a newcomer, you probably don't know that Southpark is not respectful of ANY religion, or at least, it shouldn't be. Priests walk around with little boys on leashes, Jesus has done some bad things to a US flag and then Pres. Bush, killed people, etc. The theme song for the Joesph Smith episode was 'Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.' Budda was sniffing coke last night for peeps sake! That's the whole point of the episode, the creators are showing the INCREDIBLE hypocracy surrounding islam/mohammed in a culture built around free speech/free expression. However, that's limited now due to 'fear' that 'something' might happen. Overall, incredible episode... I was rolling on the floor with the line 'Release the Kiken!'
"We're commanded to terrorize the disbelievers," the RevolutionMuslim.com scumbag says about Muslims, right out of the Quran...as I've said again and again.
When will people realize Islam isn't like other religions, but is a totalitarian system masquerading as a religion? The Quran commands Muslims to convert or kill the infidel, and install The New Caliphate around the globe.
Yoohoo...did I wake any of you?
Please post this cartoon everywhere, per Ayaan Hirsi Ali's suggestion.
Rooting For The Government To Fail
I'm with reason's Radley Balko:
I don't promote government failure, I expect it. And my expectations are met fairly often. What I promote is the idea that more people share my expectations, so fewer people are harmed by government failure, and so we can stop this slide toward increasingly large portions of our lives being subject to the whims, interests, and prejudices of politicians.I will concede that there's a problem, here. In the private sector failure leads to obsolescence (unless you happen to work for a portion of the private sector that politicians think should be preserved in spite of failure). When government fails, people like Dinauer and, well, the government claim it's a sign that we need more government. It's not that government did a poor job, or is a poor mechanism for addressing that particular problem, it's that there just wasn't enough government. Of course, the same people will point to what they call government success as, also, a good argument for more government.
It's a nifty trick. The right does it with national security. The fact that we haven't had a major terrorist attack since September 11, 2001 proves that the Bush administration's heavy-handed, high-security approach to fighting terrorism worked! But if we had suffered another attack, the same people would have been arguing that we need to surrender more of our civil liberties to the security state. Two sides. Same coin.
I just don't understand how so many grown adults can be so naive as to think they can rely on government as their protector.
The Swine Flu Panic Of 2009
From Der Spiegel, on the hysteria over the pandemic that wasn't:
On the WHO Web site, the answer to the question "What is a pandemic?" included mention of "an enormous number of deaths and cases of the disease" -- until May 4, 2009. That was when a CNN reporter pointed out the discrepancy between this description and the generally mild course of the swine flu. The language was promptly removed.Apparently German infectious disease experts also misunderstood the official WHO definition of phase 6. An influenza epidemic, according to Germany's national pandemic plan -- updated in 2007 -- is "a long-lasting, international situation involving substantial loss...and causing such lasting damage as to jeopardize or destroy the livelihood of large numbers of people."
The situation on June 11, 2009 did not correspond with these descriptions. Critics were already asking derisively whether the WHO had any plans to declare the latest outbreak of the common cold a pandemic. "Sometimes some of us think that WHO stands for World Hysteria Organization," says Richard Schabas, the former chief medical officer for Canada's Ontario Province.
Burn, Baby, Burn
An excerpt from a write-up of a recent conference on metabolism by Laura Dolson:
I was fascinated by the description of a very tightly-controlled series of studies done by Diane Stadler, focusing on the affects of diet on appetite hormones such as leptin, ghrelin, etc. The researchers meticulously figured out exactly how many calories the participants needed to eat to maintain their weight, provided food, and carefully measured what was not eaten. Some interesting observations: People on the low-carb diet spontaneously reduced their calorie intake by 30-40%, while those on the DASH diet (which was higher in protein than baseline, and also high in (complex) carbs) reduced their intake by about half that amount. And their appetite hormones (although there were some interesting variations) seemed to be consistent with this change.
If I eat bacon (three strips) and eggs (heavily buttered cheese omelette) for breakfast, I can go without eating until early afternoon. If I ate something lowfat and high-carb, it would be Breakfast-time II shortly after Breakfast-time I.
Thanks, Sharon!
More Taxes Or More Jobs, Pick One
Ted Balaker from reason on the idiots who think you can just bleed businesses and bleed businesses without them leaving the state:
Affirmative Action Policing
If activists supposedly defending the interests of New York's black and Hispanic residents have their way, more black and Hispanic people will die, wrote Heather Mac Donald in the New York Post:
NYPD critics ignore the crime decline and focus instead on the alleged racial disparities in police stops: Blacks were 55 percent of all stop subjects, though they are 24 percent of the city's population. Whites were 10 percent of all stops, and 35 percent of the population. Therefore, argue such lawsuit factories as the Center for Constitutional Rights, the department is illegally profiling minorities on the basis of their race. (The center is suing the NYPD over its stop policy.)This argument suppresses the most important factor in determining what police do: fight crime. It is victims' experience of crime that drives police deployment and tactics. And those victims are found overwhelmingly in minority neighborhoods, preyed upon by local residents.
According to police reports filed by victims of violent crime, blacks committed 66 percent of all violent crimes in the first half of 2009 -- and 80 percent of all shootings. Together, blacks and Hispanics committed 98 percent of all shootings. Blacks committed nearly 70 percent of all robberies.
Whites, by contrast, committed 5 percent of all violent crimes in the first half of 2009. They committed 1.8 percent of all shootings, and less than 5 percent of all robberies.
Residents just want to be protected -- in fact, they're begging the police for protection at community meetings in Harlem and Bed-Stuy. Whoops. That doesn't work out so well for the police:
If a grandmother in a South Bronx housing project asks the police to break up the drug dealing in her building's lobby that is terrifying her and other law-abiding tenants, officers will likely question the youths hanging out there. Those stops are not based on race; they are not "racial profiling." They are generated by a citizen request for protection. Nevertheless, they will be counted against the NYPD by the profiling activists.Multiply such stops hundreds of times a day, and you get the disparities that the Center for Constitutional Rights claims are the result of police bias.
Critics such as New York Times columnist Bob Herbert also charge that the percentage of stops that conclude with an arrest or summons -- 12 percent -- shows that the NYPD is abusing its authority. These self-styled policing sages never say what a "proper" stop-to-arrest ratio should be -- 40 percent? 80 percent?
How To Look Tough In A 1,900-lb. Two-Seater Hybrid?
(My 2004 Honda Insight.) Aftermarket missiles!
For more laughs, here are some hilarious vandalized ads, via @KateC. And no, in case you're wondering, I don't approve of vandalism, but they're already vandalized, and some are really funny.
You've Got Money?
Legit site. Search for your unclaimed funds here, at missingmoney.com. I once got a couple hundred dollars owed me for a TV appearance by looking up my name. Look up your name, look up those of your friends!
Let us know how you made out!
PS Not all states are included. Here's California. You can also look up your individual state (i.e., Google "unclaimed funds, California," and the state website will pop up).
Separate Checks
It seems the requests for separate checks tend to separate along gender lines. A reader e-mails:
I waited tables all through my twenties, when I started getting "real jobs." Much to my chagrin and disappontment, I am now, at 43, back to waiting tables. To be good at it requires a certain set of skills, mostly having to do with organization and social grace. All of these things came back to me practically overnight.So did the memories/stereotypes of different kinds of customers. I am writing to see if you have insight or an educated guess on one of these oh-so-true stereotypes. If a group of men comes in to have lunch and maybe a beer, odds are pretty good that one of those men will pick up the tab. But, (ask any ten servers and this will be confirmed) if a group of women comes in, they will almost always ask for separate checks. It's always cause for comment among the waitstaff if a group of women doesn't ask for separate checks.
So, any ideas on why this is?
Anybody? Everybody?
Hollywood's Thumbs Down On Fake Hooters
The line between porn star and movie or TV star got smudged out for a while, with Hollywood stars going under the knife for big fake boobs, but the tide may be turning on that. Sara Stewart writes for the NYPost:
Recently, a casting notice seeking extras for the fourth installment of "Pirates of the Caribbean" specified that actresses "must have real breasts. Do not submit if you have implants." It went on to explain that there would be a "show and tell" boob-veracity test that involved, among other things, running."I think the 'Pirates' story is indicative of a larger trend in Hollywood," says one female casting agent who's been working on movies and TV shows for nearly two decades. She asked to remain anonymous. "Large implants, in my opinion, take the projects and the actors to a sleazier level," she says. "They become a joke."
"I do see a trend of bodies going more natural," agrees agent Megan Foley, who has cast more than 3,000 commercials and, most recently, a James Brolin film.
"About 10 years ago, I worked on 'Blow' with Ted Demme, and [no implants] was the main requirement for the girls. And trust me, back then, it was a tall order!"
Danny Roth is another casting agent on the no-boob-job bandwagon. One of his latest films, "Open House," opens at Tribeca next week, featuring an "implant-free" cast including Anna Paquin, Rachel Blanchard and Tricia Helfer (best known as the hot blonde from "Battlestar Galactica").
"If you're talented, let your talent speak for you," says Roth, who has offices in New York and LA.
"Rachel, our lead, has definitely relied just on talent," he says. "She's not well-endowed.
"Personally," Roth adds, "I think implants are indicative of something else, potentially. Insecurity, or that they're taking advice from people they shouldn't be taking advice from."
While boob jobs have enjoyed a long heyday -- the American Society of Plastic Surgeons reports the number of breast augmentations in the US increased 657 percent from 1992 to 2003 -- their numbers are slowing.
The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery reported an 11 percent drop in breast augmentations from 2007 to 2008, and a further 2 percent drop in 2009.
In 2008, there were 355,671 boob jobs performed in the US -- but there were also 40,000 implant removals.
I wouldn't steer you wrong, ladies -- my column, Girls Just Wanna Have Funbags:
To your credit, you aren't hoping to achieve "balance" by having a couple of bowling balls inserted. No, you're thinking more along the lines of "Zen and the Art of Bolting Two Tennis Balls to Your Chest."It's understandable, after weight training and Weight Watcher-ing yourself down to where you can wear a bikini instead of using it for an eye shield, that you'd like to fill it with "nice boobs." According to hundreds of comments from men on my blog and elsewhere, those are probably the ones you have, even if they are on the small side. The consensus? Bought breasts tend to feel hard and unnatural, and (eeuw!) a bit cold to the touch. Sure, some guys love big honkers so much, they don't mind if they're fake. And, even guys who don't like fake'uns will tell you they can look pretty boobtacular in a sweater. But, when they're naked or peeking out from triangles of Lycra, they tend to look freaky and make guys wonder what's wrong with you that you felt compelled to hire somebody to slit you open and insert sandwich baggies of salt water or silicone.
How much time, exactly, do you spend in a bikini? Got a day job traveling to convention centers and sitting on top of cars? Is your workstation a greased pole? Keep in mind that all surgery has risks. Just ask the Argentinean model who went under the knife to get a little extra junk in the trunk. Oh, sorry -- you can't because, in the words of her friend Robert Piazza, she's a woman who "had everything" but "lost her life to have a slightly firmer behind."
You're unlikely to die getting a little more junk in the top bunk, but you may suffer complications like a buildup of scar tissue, which can cause painful tissue contraction and -- whoops! -- deformed breasts. Mmmm, sexy! And then, like toupees and car tires, implants eventually need to be replaced. Maybe every 10 years; maybe more often if you're one of the lucky ones who springs a leak. (Are we having funbags yet?)
The rest of the column is at the link just above.
"Cash For Caulkers" Is On Its Way
From the WSJ, this companion bill to "cash for clunkers" just cleared the House energy committee, 30 to 17, and a similar victory is expected in the Senate:
Remarkably enough, Democrats count among their leading economic successes "cash for clunkers," the $3 billion program that paid consumers to buy a new car if they destroyed an old one. Should we be concerned that now the White House wants a reprise for houses?No, Congress won't be paying people if they bulldoze their homes, though it probably would have been cheaper than the cost of foreclosure mitigation. But under the new $6 billion "cash for caulkers" proposal, Americans will get rebates up to half their project costs for efficiency upgrades like insulating the attic, retrofitting the furnace or installing new windows. President Obama said in March that these subsidies will "jumpstart job creation while making our economy stronger," which is what he says about everything.
Essentially, cash for caulkers is a federally sponsored sale at the local Home Depot or Lowe's through 2011, at least for those products and services that the government has decided are environmentally correct. But this subsidy won't add to the net national wealth, since it merely transfers money from one taxpayer's pocket to another's, in return for something the second might have bought anyway. Or the taxpayer might have spent or invested his money more productively if the government weren't channelling scarce resources into politically approved uses.
LA Times Festival Of Books
Hope you'll come see me moderate panels and talk about my book, Saturday and Sunday, April 24 and 25, on the UCLA campus. Tickets are free, available through Ticketmaster for a nominal processing fee. Details here.
Saturday, I moderate this panel:
3:00 PM
Memoir: All the Single Ladies
PANEL CODE: 1114
Moderator: Ms. Amy Alkon
Ms. Julie Klausner
Ms. Giulia Melucci
Ms. Sascha Rothchild
I'm not sure how I'm going to focus the session (all I get is the title), so feel free to make suggestions. What kind of stuff would you like to hear? Basically, these three women have written humorous memoirs about their bad relationships with men.
Sunday morning, I talk about my book, I See Rude People: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society
10:30 AM
Do the Right Thing: Life Lessons for Today
PANEL CODE: 2111
Moderator: Ms. Sandy Banks
Ms. Amy Alkon
Mr. Antwone Fisher
Mr. Tom Matlack
I'll be signing books afterward outside the hall.
And then, Sunday afternoon, I do an interview on the ETC. Stage:
1:30 PM
Walden Media presents Ramona & Beezus actress Joey King interviewed by Amy Alkon
I'm really excited to be a part of this again, especially since I'm there with my book this year. Come on out!
A Very American Car
Hitting Kids To Teach That Hitting Is Wrong
That's my favorite ridiculous justification by parents who spank their kid.
Alice Park writes in Time of a new 2,500-child study on spanking, suggesting that children who are spanked frequently at age 3 are more likely to be aggressive at age 5:
"The odds of a child being more aggressive at age 5 if he had been spanked more than twice in the month before the study began increased by 50%," says Taylor. And because her group also accounted for varying levels of natural aggression in children, the researchers are confident that "it's not just that children who are more aggressive are more likely to be spanked."What the study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, shows is that outside of the most obvious factors that may influence violent behavior in children, spanking remains a strong predictor. "This study controls for the most common risk factors that people tend to think of as being associated with aggression," says Singer. "This adds more credence, more data and more strength to the argument against using corporal punishment."
Among the mothers who were studied, nearly half (45.6%) reported no spanking in the previous month; 27.9% reported spanking once or twice; and 26.5% reported spanking more than twice. Compared with children who were not hit, those who were spanked were more likely to be defiant, demand immediate satisfaction of their wants and needs, get frustrated easily, have temper tantrums and lash out physically against others.
The reason for that, says Singer, may be that spanking instills fear rather than understanding. Even if a child were to stop his screaming tantrum when spanked, that doesn't mean he understands why he shouldn't be acting out in the first place. What's more, spanking models aggressive behavior as a solution to problems.
For children to understand what and why they have done something wrong, it may take repeated efforts on the parent's part, using time-outs - a strategy that typically involves denying the child any attention, praise or interaction with parents for a specified period of time (that is, the parents ignore the child). These quiet times force children to calm down and learn to think about their emotions, rather than acting out on them blindly.
Spanking may stop a child from misbehaving in the short term, but it becomes less and less effective with repeated use, according to the AAP; it also makes discipline more difficult as the child gets older and outgrows spanking. As the latest study shows, investing the time early on to teach a child why his behavior is wrong may translate to a more self-aware and in-control youngster in the long run.
Thanks, NumberSix
Yet Another Waste Of The President's Time
First, it was passing the massive health care "reform" instead of dealing with the economy, now it's giving all to striking an Israeli-Palestinian deal, as if it would somehow rally Arab states into preventing Iran from getting nukes and persuade our enemies elsewhere that they misjudged America, writes Joel Mowbray at the Wash Times:
This is absurd. Arab dictators already want to stop Iran, as they fear the political dominance the mullahs would achieve across the region should they acquire nukes. As for Islamic extremists battling our soldiers, it's patently naive to think a peace deal would persuade them to lay down their arms.U.S. support for Israel is mere pretext for calculated flare-ups of violence in the battlefield or on the Arab street, but the underlying reasons for hatred of America have little, if anything, to do with the Jewish state.
Mr. Obama's Middle East domino theory is also flawed because peace is not possible in the short term. As close as experts now say a deal was during the Clinton administration, the only end result from those negotiations was Palestinian terrorism.
Israel gave ground repeatedly over the course of various negotiations in the Clinton era. Palestinians achieved most of their realistic goals - all of Gaza, 95 percent of the West Bank and half of Jerusalem - yet Yasser Arafat walked away at Camp David in 2000. Months later, he launched an unprecedented terror campaign he called the "second intifada."
In the intervening decade, matters have become worse. A "two-state" solution seems impossible, simply because it would have to be three states to account for Hamas' control over Gaza. Some recent media accounts have reported that Hamas would accept Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas negotiating on its behalf. Perhaps, but a four-day blood-soaked coup in Gaza three years ago suggests otherwise.
Hamas is far from the only stumbling block, however. Palestinian society has become increasingly radicalized, not just by Hamas propaganda, but also because of the handiwork of Mr. Abbas' supposedly moderate Fatah. Mr. Obama would be well-advised to comb through the Web site of the invaluable Palestinian Media Watch, which has documented hundreds of examples of violent Islamic indoctrination from both Hamas and Fatah.
Simply put, ordinary Palestinians are not ready to accept peaceful coexistence with a Jewish state of Israel. Various polls over the years have shown clear majority support for rocket attacks and suicide bombings, and those who disagree publicly do so on strategic - not moral - grounds.
Is a society where no one speaks out against the depravity of brainwashing its children to become mass murderers ready to embrace peace?
Here, from Palestinian Media Watch, are those sweet Palestinian children indoctrinated to believe that blowing oneself (and a bunch of other people) up for Allah is preferable to living:
Where There's A Skil...
Markdowns on powertools
(Glad they had it. Figured out the headline first, then looked for the tools to make it work!)
Advice Goddess Free Swim
You pick the topics, but one link per comment or comments will get kicked to spam folder. I'll post blog items later on Sunday.
Black Tea
Tea party racism?
Here's Krauthammer's take:
They represent a philosophy. It's libertarian. It has three ideas. It's against high taxes, against the intrusiveness of government, and in a larger sense it's kind of a constitutionalist idea. There really is this notion of liberty and that somehow expansion of government especially since liberals have taken over in the Senate and White House has pushed the taxes higher, the reach, and the power and the extent of government. And it's a betrayal of the American social contract. These people oppose America becoming a social democracy like Europe, and they like the traditional idea of the more independence and less good government coddling and cradling of the population.
UPDATE: From the WaPo, Robert McCartney writes that Tea Partiers are more "wacky mavericks" than extremist threat:
Although shrinking government is their primary goal, many conceded that the country should keep Medicare and even Social Security. None was clamoring for civil disobedience, much less armed revolt."Someone said in the Revolutionary War, they fired bullets. This time, we're firing politicians," said Clinton Lee, 28, a wedding photographer from Tampa wearing a Thomas Jefferson T-shirt.
The rally, estimated in the tens of thousands, also displayed a wacky, irreverent spirit that I found endearing. I can't help but smile when paunchy small-business owners aged 50 and older don three-cornered hats and hoist rattlesnake flags in exercising their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble.
Buttons proclaimed "IRS: I Represent Satan" and "Obama: He makes you long for Jimmy Carter."
The mix of kookiness and mistrust of authority reminded me of anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in which I participated four decades ago in the same spot. (Participants were appalled when I made the comparison. They hastened to say they weren't modern-day hippies.)
At the protest, I mostly ignored the speakers so I could probe what the participants wanted and how they viewed the world. I interviewed 19, picked at random, in three hours.
I found that I agreed heartily with the tea partiers on what is perhaps their single biggest concern: that America's swelling government debt seriously threatens our long-term prosperity.
Is there anybody here who can disagree with that?
Anti-Rudeness Ninja Me
John Hawkins' I SEE RUDE PEOPLE interview with me here.
Eek! A Man Might Have A Sexual Fantasy About You!
Hysterical feminist Amanda Marcotte finds yet another reason to be horrified about men and male sexuality, and this time, it's men ogling regular women's Facebook photos! Marcotte writes on The Daily Beast:
On the other hand, there's an undeniable ick factor to the idea of men getting off to pictures you posted for your friends to platonically peruse. No one wants to think of their male friends (or worse, their coworkers or bosses) projecting them into sex fantasies.
Me? I'm fine with it, and completely flattered that a Marine officer in Afghanistan is sending me a Friend of the Corps (FOTC) tank top. I'm going to have Gregg take a photo of me in it so I can e-mail it to the guy.
As my dad once told me, "Worry if they stop looking."
Other People's Money
In Massachusetts, all those people who vote for other people to pay more taxes get a chance to do it themselves. Get the chance. This doesn't mean they take it. Howie Carr writes for the Boston Herald:
You're always lecturing the rest of us how taxes are an investment in the future, the price we pay for civilization, etc., etc. But when given the option of personally paying your fair share, hey, come back here, you pony-tailed trust-fund recipient you.Put your hands up and step away from the Prius - slowly. What about the children?
As the deadline for filing 2009 state income taxes nears, once again the Beautiful People of Massachusetts are proving that while they enjoy talking the talk, walking the walk is another thing altogether.
We have a two-tier income tax in this state, you know. You have the option of paying either at the standard rate of 5.3 percent, or at the old, higher 5.85 percent rate.
As of Wednesday, here are this years numbers, according to the state DOR:
Of 1,840,000 state tax filers, exactly 931 have opted to pay taxes at the higher rate. That works out to one-twentieth of one percent. Think of it this way: In 2000, only 60 percent of the Massachusetts electorate voted to cut the income tax, but a decade later 99.95 percent of the population has decided to take advantage of the tax cut a lot of them claimed they didn't want or need.
The moonbat motto is: Do as I say, not as I do. Consider the charitable deductions (or lack thereof) of the most sanctimonious liberal politicians: Obama, Biden, Kerry. They throw around quarters - their own, anyway - like they were manhole covers. But they would gladly give you the shirt off somebody else's back.
Things The Japanese Put In Their Mouths
Who Pays?
Financial advisor Mike Donahue writes in the WSJ that he mowed lawns as a kid, shoveled snow, had a paper route, sold sandwiches, and cut up dead trees to sell firewood. He graduated in '83, then worked for commissions, putting in many 60 to 70-hour work weeks. He says the first 20 years were tough, but it's starting to pay off -- and now he's being taxed like crazy:
Why then does the government feel so entitled to take my money and give it to others? Why should I have to carry so many people on my back? Call me cruel. I don't care. I give to whom I choose--but since so much is confiscated (and wasted in the process) I have little left I wish to give.During the 1990 recession I could have qualified for state and federal assistance, but my wife and I managed to get by as she worked nights while we juggled our infant daughter between us. It was hard. However, it never occurred to us to take from others to subsidize our shortage. It's not our way.
Life is hard. You learn when you fail and you make changes when things hurt. Why then is the liberal agenda trying to make sure nobody feels any pain? And why does the government feel so entitled to steal from many in order to give it to others. What has happened to personal responsibility and accountability?
My patience and pocketbook are reaching the breaking point. I am not for equal outcomes regardless of effort. I'm tired of being the mule. Maybe I will quit and live on the dole for awhile. I probably even have enough health issues to join the one in seven adults categorized as disabled. I've been poor and I'm not afraid to go back.
Remember it was social mobility that made America great--the ability to earn and get ahead. If Congress continues to buy votes at the expense of social mobility we will no longer be a great nation. The truly rich will stay that way but many "Henrys" (high earners, not rich yet) like me will quit. We may be only a small percentage of the population but we pay a large portion of the taxes and employ many. If you take the incentives away you will lose Henrys.
Amy On The Filter
Debating KABC host Leo Terrell on NBC/LA's Fred Roggin's "The Filter." Here's the first vid (with an unfortunate freeze-frame on the front!):
And here's the second:
And here's the Palin speaking engagement contract. Really standard speaking engagement stuff -- probably pretty much their boilerplate for all their speakers.
As I said on the show, why straws? No, this isn't a request like having all the green M&Ms removed. If you're wearing lipstick and would like it to remain on your lips, you use a straw when you're drinking. I do it when I'm on any TV show -- and usually the makeup artist has a bunch so you won't mess up your lipstick. Standard stuff.
And why bent straws? Because...straight up and down straws fall into the bottle and are thus...useless for anything more than frustrating the hell out of you!
Frugal Gratitude
Up to 50% off Mother's Day Gifts
Many Gloveables
Look What The Catty Dragged In
Sigourney Weaver says Kathryn Bigelow only won the Oscar because she has knockers. Ben Leach writes in the Telegraph/UK:
In an interview with a Brazilian news website, Weaver said the Academy's choice of best director was motivated by the fact that a woman had never won the prize. "Jim didn't have breasts, and I think that was the reason," Weaver told Folha Online. "He should have taken home that Oscar," she said.Avatar was beaten by The Hurt Locker at this year's Oscars. The film was directed by Cameron's ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow.
Here's a review of Bigelow's breasts from Rotten Tomatoes:
The Hurt Locker is a riveting, suspenseful portrait of the courage under fire of the military's most unrecognized heroes: the technicians of the bomb squad, who volunteer to challenge the odds and...Visionary director Kathryn Bigelow brings together groundbreaking realistic action and intimate human drama in a gripping film...
Individual critics say about Bigelow's breasts:
"It's the best war movie since Full Metal Jacket." -J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader"The Hurt Locker is a spellbinding war film by Kathryn Bigelow, a master of stories about men and women who choose to be in physical danger." -Roger Ebert
You know what they say...
TWO NIPPLES UP!
Parental Rights For Dads
Sounds redundant, huh? Tragically, it's anything but.
John Wyatt's girlfriend gave birth to their baby, but he was told no such baby existed -- and later found out that the baby was put up for adoption by her mother, 20-year-old Emily Colleen Fahland, a George Mason University Student.
That's Emily Colleen Fahland. Guilty of robbing the father of his parental rights.
Virginia officials say they lack the authority to follow a judge's order awarding the father, 20-year-old Wyatt, custody of the baby. The judge even cited a federal kidnapping statute in ordering the state to retrieve the baby from Utah.
Fathers' rights aren't worth much in Utah, it seems. Certainly not fathers from other states, and never mind that the father of a child should have parental rights over that child, and consent over whether that child is passed on for adoption to another couple.
Jerry Markon writes in the WaPo:
"My daughter is being held hostage," says Wyatt, now 21, a D.C. nightclub worker who has never seen Emma. "She was kidnapped and cradle-robbed from me, and I'm baffled that nothing has been done."The case, which has become the talk of the nation's close-knit circle of adoption lawyers since the Wyatts appeared on the "Dr. Phil" show, is the latest to spotlight Utah adoption laws that experts say are unusually tough on unmarried fathers. Lawyers cite at least 10 recent cases in which babies were taken to or born in Utah and adopted without an out-of-state father's consent.
In one case, the Utah Supreme Court last year ruled in favor of an unwed Wyoming mother who falsely told the father she miscarried, traveled to Utah to deliver the baby girl and put her up for adoption. "Utah risks becoming a magnet for those seeking to unfairly cut off opportunities for biological fathers to assert their rights to connection with their children," Chief Justice Christine Durham wrote in dissent.
Joan Hollinger, a University of California at Berkeley professor and a leading authority on adoption law, called Utah's decisions in the Baby Emma case "outrageous" because Wyatt filed for custody in Virginia just eight days after Emma's birth. Utah laws and court decisions, she said, "make it virtually impossible for an out-of-state father to prevent the adoption of an out-of-wedlock child when the mother is determined to go forward."
And then there's this:
"She did not feel she could give the baby what the baby needed," Gustafson said. "And she didn't think John could either."
Now, thanks to reading volumes of research on the outcomes from single parenting versus intact families, I am very much against single parenting. That said, you don't get to just decide to take away a baby from his father. You just don't.
Well, actually, you do at the moment, but it's completely, utterly, terribly wrong.
Vile. Simply vile.
Going Out To Playdate
Kids used to go out and play ("Be back by dinner!"). Now, kids are driven to playdates. Question: What's the earliest year this started to be common with regular people (those not living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan)?
The Words To Go With The Pictures
Richard Metzger, who did the wonderful Dangerous Minds interview with me for Sky TV/UK, just posted the interview he did with me for LA Times Brand X.
You can buy my book, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE here, at a discount (only $11.53!).
UPDATE: BBC radio/Essex interview is up now, too. The producer says...go to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/radio/bbc_radio_essex/, click on "midmorning," and scroll through until you hit the 2:00 point. It will be available at about 1 PM UK time today, and it will be online for seven days.
You Don't Need A Senator To Fight This Battle
A Senator, says MSNBC.com, is going to "fight" the carry-on bag fee at Spirit airlines. Sorry, but aren't there enough legitimate problems that he's supposed to deal with on citizens' behalf?
Not surprisingly, the Senator is a familiar whineypants:
ALBANY, N.Y. - U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer said Sunday he's trying to get the federal government to prohibit airlines from charging a fee for carry-on baggage, calling it a "slap in the face to travelers."The New York Democrat is making a personal plea to the Treasury Department to rule that carry-on bags are a necessity for travel, which would make them exempt from a separate fee outside the ticket price.
"Airline passengers have always had the right to bring a carry-on bag without having to worry about getting nickeled and dimed by an airline company," Schumer said. "This latest fee is a slap in the face to travelers."
I sure don't want to pay a fee for a carry-on bag. (And I take a reasonable-sized carry-on -- pretty much a big purse, not one of those bags you could fit a dead body of a full-grown man into.) But, thanks, I'm a big girl, and I'll fight that "slap in the face" myself by continuing to never fly on Spirit Airlines.
From The Onion: American Airlines To Charge Fees To Non-Passengers:
"Watching television last night cost me $250," said Baltimore resident Michael Peterson, one of many Americans now forced to pay high airline costs for folding their laundry and going to the ophthalmologist. "It's ridiculous, but what can you do? I guess that's just the price of not flying these days.""American Airlines charged me for cleaning out my attic," said 74-year-old Samantha Pratt, a New Jersey resident who has not left the state since 2005. "Sure, I didn't have to wait in any long lines, or go through invasive security searches, and I got to clean out my attic, which is something I've been wanting to do for weeks, but come on now."
In response to American's move, other airlines have begun offering more competitive rates. United this week unveiled a new $99 "spend the weekend quietly reading indoors" offer, while Southwest is introducing a $125 round-trip fare for those walking to their corner store for some groceries.
Don't Steal From A Computer Sci Guy
He tracks RUDE PEOPLE, too. Great little story of a geek in the UK who was robbed and went after the thieves right from his desk chair:
By now it's probably about 17:30, so I resign myself to the crap of cancelling my cards, calling my mobile to confirm it wasn't available and calling the police who would arrive within an hour or so. Whilst wallowing in my own feelings of "oh crap, I need to replace shit, why didn't I get around to purchasing insurance yet?", I begin to think about whether I actually did set up some remote "wipe your phone when nicked" software. After hunting down the site and remembering my "PIN" (not a bloody password, and no email correspondence of course!), we begin to get somewhere.Turns out that WaveSecure is actually a damned fine piece of software. Once we got past the login, I was presented with a lovely screen saying "Your phone is LOCKED". Interesting, we could be onto something here! Lets send them a message, I want all my stuff back not just the phone. Oh, what's that option? Track?
What Is A Libertarian?
First of five by Stossel. Loved P.J. O'Rourke's bit about his paycheck, and how much got sucked away, and how it transformed him from socialist to libertarian.
Here's part two. Don't we need regulation to protect us? Wendy McElroy, who I respect lots, is one of the guests. She ran away from home at 16, and lived on the streets for a number of years, and she's still anti-handoutism (by government, that is, because it causes perpetual dependence).
Deroy Murdoch brings up a great point -- we don't just have charity for the elderly infirm -- anybody and everybody old gets government aid in this country...often or typically far in excess of what they paid in.
Here's three. On America's "nation-building" -- or as Cato's David Boaz puts it, it's US-provided military "welfare" for other countries...countries that can afford to defend themselves...but hey, as long as we're willing to do it:
Next, the culture wars, gay marriage, immigration, in four. He quotes Milton Friedman, on how you can't have open borders in a welfare state. Stossel adds that you can't have them when terrorists want to come in and kill us:
Here's five, with the guests taking questions:
More on Hong Kong's flat tax here.
Was He On A Different Date Than You Were...Or What?
The perfect man, the perfect date...the imperfect return phone call...as in...none. I just posted my Advice Goddess column, Moment of "Poof!" An excerpt:
You want to believe "This is love!" not "This is yet another guy who wants to get some while his girlfriend's on business in Boston." But, because of a common human cognitive error called "confirmation bias," you're prone to pay attention to stuff that suggests "We're meant for each other!" and ignore stuff that suggests he's thinking "For about five-and-a-half hours."The human brain is a shifty little critter. Some evolutionary psychologists believe early humans would've been paralyzed by a clear picture of harsh (sometimes saber-toothed) reality, so we evolved the ability to shut down information-processing accuracy in the face of scary or ugly. So, you take in information -- wow, funny guy...nice Mercedes!...hmmm, 11 a.m. and he smells like gin. Your brain arranges the positive stuff in lit glass showcases in the front of your consciousness and dumps what you don't want to know behind boxes in some dusty storeroom...leaving you shocked when you finally hear "those three little words," and they're "That's All, Folks!"
Beyond your brain's tendency to say "Gee, that's depressing. I think I'll believe this instead!" if you're like many women, finding love isn't enough; you need a great story behind it: "We were childhood sweethearts, then we never saw each other again -- until that day in the Peace Corps when we literally bumped into each other in the jungle." When your story's something like "He 'winked' at me on AmishMatch.com," and especially if you're on the lonely/desperate side, it's tempting to fab it up with "Love at first sight! We just knew!" As opposed to "We found lots to like but thought we'd get to know each other before calling it more than a consistently good time."
The rest of the column -- and comments -- are live here.
Some Like It Wet
Unusual fetish in an Advice Goddess column I just posted:
My boyfriend has a strange fetish: He gets very turned on seeing me in soaking wet blue jeans and likes me to wear them in the tub. My sister says I should dump him and find someone normal. However, he treats me great and sex is great...just add water.--Drenched
My answer -- and comments -- at this link.
There Are Helicopter Mommies, Then There Are Blackhawk Helicopter Mommies
And it isn't just little kiddies who get the overprotecting, it's kiddies in their 20s.
A woman in her early 20s commented on DrRobynSilverman.com about her hovermommy:
My sister and I are treated like 13 year olds. When we go out our mother calls us every 30 minutes to check up on us. Recently I had 96 missed calls on my cell when I didn't reply.
Colorado Springs Goes Libertarian
Leslie Eaton writes in the WSJ that volunteers are filling in where there are shortfalls:
"Let's start cutting stupid programs that cost taxpayers a pot of money," says Tim Austin, a 48-year-old former home builder now looking for a new line of work. "It's so bullying and disrespectful to take money from one man's pocket and put it in another's."Such sentiments, which might draw cheers at a tea-party rally, are pretty much a mainstream view here in the state's second-largest city, the birthplace of Colorado's small-government movement.
Almost a decade ago, voters imposed strict limits on how much the city government can spend. Last November they turned thumbs down on a property-tax increase, despite warnings from city officials about a projected $28 million shortfall requiring at least a 10% cut in an already shrunken budget.
And so, faced with dwindling revenues, intransigent voters and widespread distrust of government, this city of 400,000 has embarked on a grand experiment: It is trying to get volunteers and the private sector to provide services the city can no longer afford.
Taxi drivers have been recruited to serve as a second set of eyes for stretched police patrols. Residents can pay $100 a year to adopt a street light. Volunteers are organizing to empty the garbage cans in 128 neighborhood parks. The city is asking private swimming programs to operate its pools, and one of the city's four community centers soon will be run by a church.
...Many people here say the proper role of government should be limited to paving streets, paying police and firefighters and, if there's money left over, frills like parks. Those are, in fact, the only projects for which Colorado Springs voters have been willing to approve tax increases in recent years.
Unlike in California, where the dillhole voters said, sure, put billions and billions toward a high-speed train (that can't run at very high speeds -- 80 mph is projected) from LA to San Francisco, and never mind worrying about where that money might come from.
Is there no one alive in this state who can still do basic math? It's really quite simple: DON'T SPEND MORE THAN YOU HAVE!
The Summers Of Our Discontent
From the WSJ, Lawrence Summers versus the Senate Democrats on jobless benefits:
"The second way government assistance programs contribute to long-term unemployment is by providing an incentive, and the means, not to work. Each unemployed person has a 'reservation wage'--the minimum wage he or she insists on getting before accepting a job. Unemployment insurance and other social assistance programs increase [the] reservation wage, causing an unemployed person to remain unemployed longer."Any guess who wrote that? Milton Friedman, perhaps. Simon Legree? Sorry.
Full credit goes to Lawrence H. Summers, the current White House economic adviser, who wrote those sensible words in his chapter on "Unemployment" in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, first published in 1999.
Mr. Summers should give a tutorial to the U.S. Senate, which is debating whether to extend unemployment benefits for the fourth time since the recession began in early 2008. The bill pushed by Democrats would extend jobless payments to 99 weeks, or nearly two full years, at a cost of between $7 billion and $10 billion. As Mr. Summers suggests, rarely has there been a clearer case of false policy compassion.
WSJ commenter Jerry Fischer writes:
I know someone who does this.He wants at least $15 per hour, and has been lying around collecting unemployment for nine months. He's at the point where he no longer looks for work, just checks the mailbox for money.
If these people were forced to get out and DO something productive, this recession would improve faster.
As it is, I and everyone else who struggles at our work to survive are forced to "spread" the money to this new dependency.
WSJ commenter Henry Grimmelsman writes:
I know of one guy whose wife got let go from a job that paid substantially less than his. She has been drawing unemployment for over a year, "looking" for a job in the most halfhearted way possible (since you technically need to be looking to draw unemployment). Why so halfhearted? Because the family doesn't have to pay for daycare anymore, they come out ahead with the benefit. She will be on the dole as long as they keep extending it or at least until her kids are school age.Another thing I don't have firsthand knowledge of but I'm sure is happening: people collecting benefits and working for cash under the table. It has to be going on. There are just too many unemployed in the building trades that can easily be handymen or start cutting grass. The more the welfare state grows, the bigger the underground economy. Just ask Greece's or Italy's tax collectors.
Different Strokes
Gotta love this. I got an e-mail from a girl worried that her boyfriend of two years has been looking at porn and hooking up with other women while out of town. Yes, she's worried he's been unethical. And how did she find this out? Snooping on his web searches, of course!
My question to her:
What were you doing looking at his web searches? Why would you think you deserve an ethical man if you are unethical? Doesn't that seem to be an imbalance?
I then asked her:
Why are you with him (what qualities in him do you admire, or did you not really think about that)?
She came up with one: "he is kind, caring type."
Translation: "I really didn't think about that."
"Multicultural Dogma Fetters Advancement"
Sowell gets it -- on IBD:
Multiculturalism enshrines the sins and grievances approach -- and paints the poor into a corner, where they can nurse their resentments, instead of advancing their skills and their prospects. The beneficiaries are politicians and race hustlers.
"The Paris Of The Midwest"
That's what Gregg says they used to call Detroit. See "The Ruins of Detroit" by French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre (different from Gregg's friend Lowell Boileau's "The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit"). Here's an absolutely sad and stunning series of their photographs.
They have a soon-to-be-published book, too: Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre: The Ruins of Detroit
Urbanophile (via @walterolson) sneers at the "ruin porn," and presents "numerous intact neighborhoods ranging from working class to upscale." (More like a few houses in neighborhoods that aren't war zones.)
I hated the suburbs where I grew up, but the city of Detroit used to be beautiful. My grandma worked selling gloves at the magnificent downtown J.L. Hudson store -- the one you see being knocked down in the photo on the front page of Lowell's site. Now, when you drive along the river from the Renaissance Center to the Roostertail (we went there for a wedding), you see that the buildings lining what should be primo riverfront property are a bunch of parking garages.
Urbanophile omitted mention of houses that were going for $120K a few years back that are now going for $20K, and left out pictures of the morgue, where Charlie LeDuff wrote for the Detroit News, the unclaimed bodies are stacked up like cord wood: 215 as Christmas rolled around.
Justice Can Be Sooo Expensive!
Connecticut bishops are fighting against a sex abuse bill that would remove the statute of limitations. From CNN, Jamie Guzzardo writes:
Under current Connecticut law, sexual abuse victims have 30 years past their 18th birthday to file a lawsuit. The proposed change to the law would rescind that statute of limitations.The proposed change to the law would put "all Church institutions, including your parish, at risk," says the letter, which was signed by Connecticut's three Roman Catholic bishops.
They sure don't want all those collection plate dollars to be going to those kids who, you know, maybe had their lives ruined after being molested by priests.
Welcome to the vast multinational business that is the church. Really not much different from other capitalist enterprises, except that they don't have to pay any taxes in the U.S., and then,of course, there are the funny outfits and the way they cover up all the kiddie diddling and go right on with their business.
Devil'$ Pact
@JimCarrey tweeted about Tiger Woods' wife:
"No wife is blind enough to miss that much infidelity," he wrote. "Elin had 2 b a willing participant on the ride 4 whatever reason. kids/lifestyle."
A quote from my Tiger column, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Drag":
People are speculating that Tiger has a "sex addiction," when all the ordinary guy can usually be accused of is a porn addiction. What separates the sex addicts from the porn addicts? Being rich enough to get the girls in 3-D....Is there a lesson in this? There is, for the ladies. Women who marry rich, powerful men should recognize that there's a strong temptation for those men to cheat -- especially during the horndog 20s and early 30s. Women can ignore this if they want, or tell themselves their love will make the difference. Or, they can decide the homes, the cars, the yachts, and annual trips to the cheating husband section of the diamond mine are compensation enough.
Maybe It's Crazier To Be Calm About Big Government
From the WSJ, a quote from Congressional Quarterly columnist Craig Crawford on the tea party movement:
Their argument is more mainstream than their methods. These so-called tea partiers get branded as loonies because in some cases their rage seems irrational. But if you sift through to the core of their claim it is not the fringe craziness so often portrayed. Growth of government, whether led by Republicans or Democrats, is on a march like nothing in our recent history. . . . These days our government is most definitely leaning toward collectivism, and I will be fascinated to see how we react in November.
Unlimited Calls Or Texting
Been on a date with somebody where that person kept texting or answering cell phone calls (of a non-urgent nature)? What happened, and what did you do?
The Glamour President
Virginia Postrel writes for The Weekly Standard:
After C-SPAN reran a 1999 BookNotes interview about my first book, I received an email from a disappointed viewer. He was chagrined to hear that I was editing a website called DeepGlamour instead of writing "more serious nonfiction." Glamour, he implied, is a trivial subject, unworthy of consideration by people who watch, much less appear on, C-SPAN.To which I have two words of response: Barack Obama. In an era of tell-all memoirs, ubiquitous paparazzi, and reality-show exhibitionism, glamour may seem absent from Hollywood. But Obama demonstrates that its magic still exists. What a glamorous candidate he was--less a person than a persona, an idealized, self-contained figure onto whom audiences projected their own dreams, a Garbo-like "impassive receptacle of passionate hopes and impossible expectations," in the words of Time's Joe Klein. The campaign's iconography employed classically glamorous themes, with its stylized portraits of the candidate gazing into the distance and its logo of a road stretching toward the horizon. Now, of course, Obama is experiencing glamour's downside: the disillusionment that sets in when imagination meets reality. Hence James Lileks's recent quip about another contemporary object of glamour, "The Apple tablet is the Barack Obama of technology. It's whatever you want it to be, until you actually get it."
As critics who denounce movies that "glamorize violence" or "glamorize smoking" understand, glamour is much more than style. It is a potent tool of persuasion, a form of nonverbal rhetoric that heightens and focuses desire, particularly the longing for transformation (an ideal self) and escape (in a new setting). Glamour is all about hope and change. It lifts us out of everyday experience and makes our desires seem attainable. Depending on the audience, that feeling may provide momentary pleasure or life-altering inspiration.
via Nancy Rommelmann
How Obamacare, The Prelude, Is Working In Massachusetts
C. MacLeod Fuller writes on AmericanThinker.com of a few key points from a WSJ article:
- Massachusetts' "insurance regulators have concluded the reason [that state's] premiums are the highest in the nation is the underlying cost of health care, not the supposed industry abuses" imagined by President Obama and Governor Patrick.- The unsurprising fact that because Massachusetts' universal healthcare mandate prohibits exclusion for pre-existing conditions, people simply "wait until they're about to incur major medical expenses before buying insurance and transfer the costs to everyone else."
- Once the medical emergency has passed, short-term enrollees drop their coverage - because they know they can demand "insurance" the next time they want it.
- Blue Cross Blue Shield reported "short-term customers ... ran up costs more than four times the average" and dropped coverage "within three months." Harvard Pilgrim's experience with such hit-and-run enrollees is that they remained with the plan "fewer than five months and on average incurred costs about 600% higher."
Of course, when their next medical stubbed toe happens, such short-term "purchasers" will return. Under ObamaCare, Massachusetts foreshadows the future of all 50 states - with a socialist-inspired financial vengeance.
After the Mass governor refused to allow rate hikes, three major for-profit insurers in the state simply stopped selling policies.
Good Reading For Doormats
Who'd like to retire from being walked on.
The Nice Girl Syndrome: Stop Being Manipulated and Abused and Start Standing Up for Yourself
Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl - A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship
No More Mr. Nice Guy!
The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem
Finally, there's my book, I See Rude People: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society
Men Make Passes At Women With Mustaches?
An irate feminist reader wrote (in response to a question I answered about a friend with a female friend who now has a mustache):
My girlfriends with facial hair have no problem getting dates, and that is because they are confident and beautiful women.
(Yeah, right. That she has multiple friends with mustachios, and they "have no problem getting dates.")
How many of you guys would date a woman with a mustache?
Parenting For Dollars
Bloomberg plays it like the urban poor in New York City are parallel to the rural poor in Mexico, and then, in a really ugly bit of social re-engineering, pays them to do the things generally considered required of a parent or a child, like seeing to it that one's child shows up at school. Of course, it's not grinding rural conditions like those in Mexico that keep the poor poor in American cities, but unwed motherhood and children without daddies. Heather Mac Donald gets it, writing at City Journal:
Randomly selected low-income parents of elementary- and middle-school students in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan are paid $25 each month that their child has a 95 percent school attendance record; high school students with a low-income parent in the program receive $50 a month for a similar attendance rate. Elementary- and middle-school students who make progress on annual academic tests net their parents $300 and $350, respectively. High school students get $600 each year that they accumulate 11 course credits (the bare minimum to stay on track to graduate) and another $600 for each New York State Regents exam that they pass. Parents are paid $25 for attending a parent-teacher conference or discussing their child's test results with a teacher; they receive $50 for getting their child a library card. Taking advantage of taxpayer-subsidized Medicaid services, such as free medical checkups, brings a $200 annual windfall; simply maintaining free Medicaid insurance earns the recipient $20 a month. Working full-time earns an additional $150 a month beyond the existing salary. Seeking education and training while working at least ten hours a week could net a parent $3,000 over three years.The hubris behind this menu of bribes is breathtaking. Working on the premise that American society didn't sufficiently reward self-discipline, effort, and achievement, the Family Rewards architects decided that they needed to correct the inadequate signals that the economy and the culture sent to the poor. "The Opportunity NYC-Family Rewards program enabled us to make it worthwhile for families to change their lifestyles to make investments in their futures," explained New York Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs at a recent press conference. But of course it's already worthwhile for families to "make investments in their futures"; the United States still ranks as the world's primary land of opportunity. The problem is that the poor don't respond to incentives that are already abundantly present. Nevertheless, convinced of their own superior capacities to engineer sound social signals, the program's planners arbitrarily made up a schedule of payments that would induce a welfare mother, for example, to make sure that her child went to school every day. Is monthly school attendance worth $25 or $100? Is a single Regents exam worth $600 or $1,200? Ordinarily, markets set prices for true economic exchanges. These were pseudo-economic transactions, however--a fake superstructure imposed on top of noneconomic moral obligations and behaviors that ordinarily bring their own intrinsic reward. Pricing such obligations required a bunch of elite professionals to try to imagine how many shiny baubles they needed to dangle in front of the poor to get them to rouse themselves, a creepy Skinnerian activity demeaning to both the social technicians and their subjects.
...The families that earned the most money were the most functional: the parents had higher rates of marriage, full-time work, and education, and lower rates of welfare receipt.
Heather, like me, understands the importance of dads and intact families:
Family Rewards has cost $33.8 million so far. That amount could have been far better spent on a campaign to educate teenagers and parents about the essential role of fathers. It is by no means clear, of course, that external intervention can change the norms around child-rearing in the inner city. But it is worth a try. At least such a campaign would not undermine fundamental social values.
Gotta Love Their Priorities
Well, if you're a pedophile priest, that is. From a Newsweek story on celibacy in the Catholic church, Lisa Miller writes:
Indeed, Benedict holds celibacy so high that last year he excommunicated a Zambian priest, the Rev. Luciano Anzanga Mbewe, for being married. Mbewe now heads a breakaway sect of married Catholic priests in Uganda called the Catholic Apostolic National Church, according to The New York Times. "The creation of the splinter church underscored the increasingly vexing problem of enforcing celibacy for Roman Catholic priests in Africa, which has the world's fastest-growing Catholic population but where there have been several cases of priests living openly with women and fathering children," the Times wrote. One wonders at the priorities of a man who failed to defrock a priest in Wisconsin who molested hundreds of children but acted so decisively in the case of one who married a consenting adult.
Suck It Up, Taxpayers!
Guess who's probably going to be paying for autoworker pensions? Into the billions. From a Stephen Manning AP story:
But if GM and Chrysler falter and are forced to terminate their pensions, the government's Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation insurance program would have to absorb $14.5 billion worth of company obligations to workers.GM has roughly 702,000 people covered under its pension plans for hourly and salaried employees. Chrysler's collection of plans covers about 254,000 retirees and employees.
Greg Martin, a spokesman for GM, said the company "continues to believe our pension plans are adequately funded to meet current obligations." Chrysler said in a statement that "we fully expect to meet our obligations to our customers, business partners, employees, retirees and to the U.S. and Canadian taxpayers."
The auto industry's deep struggles with falling auto sales and high legacy costs like health care and retirement benefits have wreaked havoc with company pension plans.
In January 2009, the PBGC estimated that automakers, parts suppliers and other companies in the industry had combined underfunded pension liabilities of $77 billion. The GAO estimated that GM's plan was $13.6 billion underfunded in 2009, while Chrysler's pension was $3.4 billion short.
She Doesn't Hate Men, She Just, Ummm...
Some woman e-mailed me this week. She really loves my column except for all those times she thinks it's formulaic crap. And so on!
In a message dated 4/3/10 2:44:46 PM, denise (last name deleted) writes:Hello,
I've written to you before - maybe I have too much time on my hands. I really like your column and your honesty with people. But sometimes you write these formulaic responses that make me want to scream. The truth is, Amy, that our society allows men to get away with being incredible assholes while blaming the women for not being hard to get. Some of the women that write you to are such obvious doormats that it is excrutiating. But what is really interesting is that no matter what an asshole a guy is, he usually winds up with someone else relatively quickly and painlessly. The women sit around blaming themselves for not playing the right bullshit games to make the guy "work to get her." Sleeping with someone fast is usally a bad thing to do - you just have to know why you're doing it if you do it and understand you may feel hurt afterward. I wouldn't do that and expect the guy to have a relationship with me. But I understand other things too. I'm a very pretty woman with a successful job. Still, I've been with men who make me feel like shit - I didn't do anything to cause this!!! They were assholes. And I left. So what? If I pick up the check and happen to be out with a man (date or no date) it means what? Sometimes it's awkward to know what to do. Men don't always pay anymore. I've heard that it is considered rude not to offer. But now I'm thinking that if I pay, the men think I'm not special enough and they can treat me badly or they don't have to try hard enough to get me. Did it ever occur to you that I don't want them or that maybe they aren't good enough for me! Why is it always the woman's fault. Sometimes an asshole is just an asshole and there is no need to analyze it. Men get away with bad behavior. No matter how good looking and hot they are and no matter how lonely I get, I will not put up with that. I dated a guy who I was incredibly attracted to - he had great taste, was funny and everything but also a narcissitic pig. I probably misspelled that! I called me fat when I wear a size 4 - said my ass was fat. it isn't! I run and I'm very fit. Why would he do this to me? It was NOT me. I think he was like this because he has gotten away with being like this. Another girlfriend will always be around the corner. Some girl to fuck. Isn't dating great?
What a lot of bullshit.
Hmmm...so, she's shocked and angry that a narcissistic jerk turns out to be a narcissistic jerk? I write back:
Some men and some women are assholes. If you learn to identify assholes quickly, you're less likely to waste time on them. You dated a guy you refer to as a "narcissistic pig," then are shocked angry that he revealed himself to be...a narcissistic pig.It isn't men alone who get away with bad behavior. It's people who date people who put up with it. I don't. That meant I was alone for the better part of eight years, but met a great boyfriend, who I've been with for the past seven. He's a great person, and it meant a lot to me to have a great person, so I would go on one date with a guy, and if I found him lacking, it was on to the next. High standards, that's the price you pay.
And yes, you do have to not throw yourself at a guy to remain attractive. Sometimes it's confusing, whether to pay, etc. This is reality, and if you are too upset by it, your choice is to not date at all.
You seem filled with rage, and rage at men. I'm guessing this isn't exactly a secret to guys you date, and could be giving you some problems. Just a guess. Otherwise, I don't really see anything for me to answer here. If you write back, please copy this entire e-mail into your reply.
Denise writes back:
Do you think I KNEW he was a narcissitic pig when I started dating him? Why do you think I stopped? Amy, you're fabulous, but you're just a little too smug. Best to you. I'm done here.
(But, of course, we know she's not.) I write back:
I only know what people tell me. I wasn't given a timeline here.Furthermore, is it really that hard to identify narcissists? I know immediately when I talk to one. Nathaniel Branden, the self-esteem expert, once told me that people will tell you what they're all about -- if you're willing to listen.
One of the things that makes me attractive to men is that I'm not filled with rage against men in general because of a bad experience (or 10) with others. I blame myself for choosing poorly and see how I erred and how to choose better in the future.
Denise is on the warpath:
In a message dated 4/6/10 8:21:14 AM, denise writes:And speaking of narcissists? no wonder you don't have any trouble! You are one! Otherwise, you clearly give yourself too much credit. Anyone with high self esteem doesn't act like you. You seem to thrive on cutting other people down. Especially women. Seems like you've got issues with women. I didn't ask to be told by a complete jerk that my ass was fat. I'm gorgeous. and THIN. I don't take my anger out on everyone else - but this person hurt me and it was really horrible. Afraid to be hurt? Sure. What a mistake anyone makes writing to you. You take a single thought and blow it out of proportion. Then use it as fodder to tell everyone how "together" and "fabulous" you are. What a joke. Seems like I let myself get duped again.
You're a fraud.
I write back:
If you think I "thrive on cutting people down," why would you write me? You say you've read my column before. Actually, I think the answer to your problems -- and I mean this sincerely, not as a dig, is here.You've got all sorts of irrational shoulds and musts in your thinking, and it's probably making you pretty miserable. Some people are bad apples. If a bad apple says you have a big butt, and you don't, you shrug your shoulders and try to choose more wisely and faster the next time. Branden has a book, The Art of Living Consciously, where he discusses how to do that in detail.
I don't recall telling people how "together and fabulous" I am. In fact, I try to be funny, and there's nothing less funny than being together. Which I'm not. I have ADHD, I can't remember if I put on deodorant five seconds after I put on deodorant, and my home decor is best described as "recently ransacked."
Ellis would ask you why it's HORRIBLE that a guy said some nasty things about you. He'd call this "awfulizing." You'd surely prefer that the awful things weren't said, but it isn't horrible, terrible, and the end of the world that they were said, and the fact that they were said won't cause you to disintegrate and blow away.
You do use interesting language in the end. That you "let yourself" get duped. You appear to be a passive victim in various areas of your life instead of taking responsibility for who and what you draw into it. Best,-Amy Alkon
Including me.
Naturally, she kept going and going and going (nutbags always have the most energy), but you get the idea.
She doesn't seem to get that you can only control your behavior, not other people's, and in the words of Epictetus, "It is not events that disturb us but the views we take of them."
The "No Gays" Prom
Unbelievably ugly. Neil Broverman writes for Advocate.com that a lesbian high school student was sent to a "fake prom" while the rest of the class partied elsewhere:
McMillen tells The Advocate that a parent-organized prom happened behind her back -- she and her date were sent to a Friday night event at a country club in Fulton, Miss., that attracted only five other students. Her school principal and teachers served as chaperones, but clearly there wasn't much to keep an eye on."They had two proms and I was only invited to one of them," McMillen says. "The one that I went to had seven people there, and everyone went to the other one I wasn't invited to."
More on the initial case here.
Gay Parents Are Just As Boring As Straight Ones
ESPN writer and columnist LZ Granderson writes for CNN:
On most mornings, my better half wakes up around 5:30, throws on some sweats and heads to the gym before work.About a half hour later, I wake up my 13-year-old son, go downstairs to the kitchen to make his breakfast and pack his lunch. Once he's out the door, I brew some coffee and get to work.
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the "gay lifestyle" -- run for your heterosexual lives.
I understand opponents of gay rights must highlight differences in order to maintain the "us against them" tension that's paramount to their arguments. But this notion that sexual orientation comes with a different and pre-ordained way of life -- as if we're all ordering the No. 3 at a drive thru -- only highlights how irrational groups such as Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the American Family Association and others like them are in this whole debate.
Pro-marriage organizations try to stop two consenting adults from marrying. Pro-family groups try to stop stable couples wanting children from adopting unloved orphans.
And somehow, me doing something like going to the grocery store threatens the very fabric of society, as Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern spewed. She says "the homosexual agenda is destroying this nation" and "homosexuality is more of a threat than terrorism." I'm not sure what her idea of a gay lifestyle might be, but with a growing teenager, buying and cooking food dominates my day-to-day.
We're just as diverse, intolerant, upstanding and tragic as our straight counterparts.
--LZ GrandersonI don't worship Barbra Streisand, I don't watch any TV show with the word "Housewives" in its title and I love fishing, beer and Madonna. But more important, I'm just a father trying to keep my son away from drugs, get him into college and have a little money left over for retirement. I'm no sociologist but I'm pretty sure those concerns are not exclusive to gay people.
Genius In Government
Rep. Hank Johnson, a Democrat from Georgia, fears Guam may capsize:
via Robert W.
Illegal Immigrant Health Care
Michael Vitez writes for the Philly Inquirer about "dumping" -- a family leaving an illegal immigrant relative in a U.S. hospital, and not intending to come get him or her.
Mrs. Kim is 4-foot-8, speaks no English, and has been in America, illegally, for a decade. She has arthritic knees and can no longer stand. She needs a nursing home. But none will take her.Because of her illegal status, she is ineligible for Medicaid, which pays the bill for two out of every three nursing-home residents. Without Medicaid, and with no means of her own, she became Abington's problem.
Covering illegal immigrants was a red-hot issue during the health-care debate. When President Obama vowed to Congress that "the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally," Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina yelled, "You lie."
The final bill provides no remedy for Mrs. Kim.
On March 12, after 80 days, the charges - the sticker price that few pay - were $444,208.63. The true cost of her care, said Louis Incognito, Abington's reimbursement director, was $1,200 a day - $96,000, and rising.
Expose Your "Inner Racist!"
That's what the "whiteness workshop" at a feminist bookstore in Toronto is intended to help you do. Johnathan Kay writes for the National Post (and be sure you read the whole piece):
The instructor set the tone, describing an episode in which she'd lectured a colleague of colour about his job. "When I realized what I was doing, I approached him afterward and apologized," she told the class. "I said to him. 'I'm so sorry! I'm unloading so much whiteness on you right now.' "Another woman described her torment when a friend asked her to give a presentation about media arts to a group of black students -- an exercise that would have made a spectacle of her white privilege. "Should I say yes? Or is it my responsibility to say no?" she said. "But then [my friend] may say, 'I want you to do it -- because you have a particular approach ...'
"But wait! Could it be that the reason I have that 'particular approach' is that I've been raised to think that I could have that particular approach, that I have the ability, that I am able to access education in a particular way? All these things are in my head, in my heart, not really knowing how to respond. On the other hand, I also recognize that the person asking me has the agency to decide that I'm the right person ... so I say yes! ... But then I'm still thinking 'I don't know if I did the right thing.' I still struggle with this all the time ..."
...I felt sympathy for just about everyone in that class. In private conversation, they all seemed like good-hearted, intelligent people. But like communist die-hards confessing their counter-revolutionary thought-crimes at a Soviet workers' council, or devout Catholics on their knees in the confessional, they also seemed utterly consumed by their sin, regarding their pallor as a sort of moral leprosy. I came to see them as Lady Macbeths in reverse -- cursing skin with nary a "damn'd spot." Even basic communication with friends and fellow activists, I observed, was a plodding agony of self-censorship, in which every syllable was scrutinized for subconscious racist connotations as it was leaving their mouths.
Check out the story about the guy's nanny, how they thought of her as part of the family. Friends of mine say that about their older white woman nanny. Do we have an "ist" to tack on that, too, or could we just accept that they're really fond of her?
Government Meddling Begins At Conception
If you're a Brit, and you can't have a child, you also can't pay a surrogate in any substantial way to carry one for you. Denis Campbell writes for the Guardian that the high court in the UK could refuse to recognize as parents couples who pay "disproportionate" fees to surrogate mothers overseas:
We paid the embryologist $60,000, though that included the harvesting of the donor's eggs, the IVF and the transfer of the embryos into the surrogate. It was $40,000 for the surrogate and $10,000 for the egg donor, plus $10,000 to the agency, who supplied the donor and the surrogate. Then there was $10,000 for our lawyer, $5,000 for the medical and psychological screening and another $5,000 for medication for both the donor and the surrogate, to ensure they were in cycle at the same time."Bringing Harriet into the UK nine months later was incredibly difficult, though, and we engaged lawyers to help us. She had to come in as an immigrant on a US passport on a six-month tourist visa. When we later filled in a form to get her British citizenship, we put 'not known' in the section headed 'mother'. She now has dual nationality and is legally ours under Californian law. If we do apply, it could be an issue that we paid well over the 'reasonable expenses' limit - that is, we paid a fee. That's illegal in this country, but allowed under Californian law.
"We shouldn't have to seek a parental order. She was conceived and born in California as our child, and her birth certificate says who her parents are, so the courts here should respect Californian law.
Having to apply for a parental order, where there'd be an assessment of Harriet's welfare and Colin would have to prove that he's no danger to her, is an inequity. Anybody else can go out, get drunk, get pregnant, bring up a child appallingly and face no intervention or legal barriers.
I resent people saying that British couples who resort to surrogacy are buying babies abroad. We didn't buy Harriet: she's not picked off a shelf. She's not a 'designer baby'.
We had our own child and had a great team to help us. All we did was rent a woman to carry her. We paid for the services of an embryologist and an incubator who walks and makes good babies - but we didn't buy a baby. She's my daughter biologically, and she's our baby.
A lot of heterosexual couples in the UK spend a lot of money having many cycles of IVF at £5,000 a time - is that not buying a baby?"
Let me get this straight: People are willing to pay to have somebody carry their baby, and other people need the money and want to be paid to carry it, but this will not be allowed? If they're fit parents, what's the problem?
Meet Uncle Sugar
The notion of saving states from themselves, by Megan McArdle in The Atlantic:
If the feds bail out these states, they're assuming an ongoing obligation--and encouraging other states to let their fiscal problems get as big as possible, so Uncle Sugar will have to pay off. Leaving aside any ideological questions about robbing Peter to pay Paul, and the proper size of government, the federal government simply cannot afford to take on all these new obligations--and if it did, its ability to borrow money would rapidly become unsustainable.Sure, there's nothing wrong with giving states temporary assistance to keep the recession from hitting too hard--but we're approaching the point where that's not really what we're talking about. We're talking about letting states make big promises without bothering to find sustainable sources of revenue with which to pay for them. That's not something the federal government can afford to encourage.
California, especially, has huge pension problems, and union prison guard problems, and all the boondoggles dimwitted voters voted for, like the "high speed" train up the coast. Los Angeles alone is in serious trouble -- and is projected to run out of money on May 5.
via Instapundit
What A Smattering Of Jerks Says About Hordes Of Angry Americans
Not a whole hell of a lot. Rudeness, as I write in my book, is the human condition. It spans party lines, and then some. So, it's not surprising that some people in the Tea Party movement apparently behaved badly. This is what people do -- no matter what their political persuasion.
Many Democrats, of course, are making that the point -- demonizing the whole movement as racist and all the other ists that go along. But, as Juan Williams rightly points out in the WSJ, the Tea Party anger reflects mainstream concerns:
Yet opposition to health-care reform from the tea party is not based on racism but self-interest. The older, whiter segment of the American demographic was at the heart of opposition to the president's health-care proposal because they feared cuts in their Medicare benefits or taxes hikes eroding their income.Tea party activists are surprisingly mainstream when it comes to their grievances about politics. They fit right in with most American voters who tell pollsters the country has been headed in the wrong direction under both Presidents Bush and Obama. A Pew poll in early March found 71% of Americans "dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country today." Republicans and Democrats in Congress have low ratings --23% and 31% approval respectively, according to Pew.
A Fox poll in February found that 59% say they don't trust the federal government. A CNN poll the same month reported results that suggest 56% are well beyond mere mistrust: They agree that the federal government is "so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens."
Tea party style discontent appears also to be an accurate representation of voter unhappiness--across political and racial lines--with banks and financial institutions. Pew reports finding 48% saying they are "angry" over the government bailout for institutions that "made poor financial decisions." Overall, Pew found 68% of Americans view these big-money institutions unfavorably.
...The politician at the top of the totem pole right now is Barack Obama. He is black. But the relevant point to critics white and black is not his skin color but the persistent high unemployment rate and the government's focus on Wall Street bailouts and health-care reform.
I'm a fiscal conservative, who'd like to see somebody in government who thinks it's sensible not to just keep tacking trillions in debt on our trillions in debt. Is this a wildly radical and uncommon view? Am I "a hater" for suggesting such a thing?
Pssst! Welcome, Value Added Tax!
UPDATE: 41 percent of Tea Partiers are Democrats or Independents, says the LA Times, per a Gallup poll.
How The Police Can Steal Your Car
Civil asset forfeiture -- how police can take your property away, even if you aren't convicted of a crime:
via Overlawyered
How Lucky We Are, Even When Things Suck Here
I'm a sap. I often tear up a little coming back through Customs, because I am so grateful to be American.
Sure, I'm pretty worried lately with the way we've sold our financial soul to the Chinese, and about all the other vastly fiscally idiotic stuff going on and that's gone on in recent years. I also recall reading books about Russia as a girl, and thinking how great it was nobody asked us for our "papers." There's a change for you.
Still, with everything we have to worry and complain about, if you talk to somebody who immigrated here from somewhere else, you get a sense of just how great we all still have it.
Susan R. Barry, a Mt. Holyoke professor, posts on Psych Today of a student who did well in her classes but quibbled about all her grades. This annoyed Barry -- until she read the student's dental school essay -- a story of how she came to be where she is:
W. was born the youngest of six children to a desperately poor family in Viet Nam. When she was 9 years old, her parents put her and her 16-year-old sister on a boat to travel to Hong Kong and a better life. There were some adults on the boat but no other family members. At one point the boat broke down in Chinese waters, but some kind fishermen helped fix the motor. They made it to Hong Kong ten days before Hong Kong closed its borders to Vietnamese refugees.W. spent two years in the refugee camp, sleeping on a tarp on the ground. She was embarrassed for her sister, now with the body of a mature woman, for the two of them were still wearing the same clothes that they wore when they left Viet Nam. To mend her sister's clothes, W broke off a piece of barbed wire from the fence surrounding the refugee camp and fashioned it into a needle. She then unwound some threads from her sleeping tarp and, with her makeshift needle, patched her sister's clothes. (At this point in the essay, I looked up and asked W. how she knew to do this, and she said, simply, that she was good with her hands.)
W. had always had bad gums and teeth and assumed that the accompanying chronic pain was something that everyone felt. At the refugee camp, she saw a dentist who pulled out the bad teeth and gave her the tools to take care of her mouth and gums. This was a revelation to W. - that she could go through life without mouth pain.
Meanwhile representatives from several countries interviewed W. and her sister and finally the United States allowed W. and her sister to immigrate. They arrived in a US city where a small community of other Vietnamese helped them set up their own apartment. W.'s sister got a job as a manicurist while W. went to high school and worked after school in a dentist's office. Ten years after they left Viet Nam, W. and her sister brought their parents to this country.
Now I understood why W had argued over every test point and grade. She had had to fight for everything she received in her life. Needless to say, I wrote W. the best letter of recommendation I could write. She was admitted to every dental school that she applied to. Since that time, I've lost track of W., but I have no doubt that she is somewhere in the world providing exceptional dental care to those who can least afford it.
Magazines, Twofer
Two Years For The Price Of One
Cheap Bastards, Inc.
I could have an intern, but I never have. Don't believe in it.
Either you're a high school kid observing my work for a day, in which case I won't pay you, but I'll buy you lunch while you're here, or you work for me, in which case I'll pay you and buy you lunch and mentor you/help you with your writing. It's a very different sort of thinking from that of many companies.
Steven Greenhouse writes for The New York Times that the government is cracking down on some of the employers using interns for free labor. He interviewed Nancy J. Leppink, the acting director of the Labor Department's wage and hour division:
Ms. Leppink said many employers failed to pay even though their internships did not comply with the six federal legal criteria that must be satisfied for internships to be unpaid. Among those criteria are that the internship should be similar to the training given in a vocational school or academic institution, that the intern does not displace regular paid workers and that the employer "derives no immediate advantage" from the intern's activities -- in other words, it's largely a benevolent contribution to the intern..."We've had cases where unpaid interns really were displacing workers and where they weren't being supervised in an educational capacity," said Bob Estabrook, spokesman for Oregon's labor department. His department recently handled complaints involving two individuals at a solar panel company who received $3,350 in back pay after claiming that they were wrongly treated as unpaid interns.
Many students said they had held internships that involved noneducational menial work. To be sure, many internships involve some unskilled work, but when the jobs are mostly drudgery, regulators say, it is clearly illegal not to pay interns.
One Ivy League student said she spent an unpaid three-month internship at a magazine packaging and shipping 20 or 40 apparel samples a day back to fashion houses that had provided them for photo shoots.
At Little Airplane, a Manhattan children's film company, an N.Y.U. student who hoped to work in animation during her unpaid internship said she was instead assigned to the facilities department and ordered to wipe the door handles each day to minimize the spread of swine flu.
Tone Thyne, a senior producer at Little Airplane, said its internships were usually highly educational and often led to good jobs.
Note to people and companies with "interns" -- because you can pay somebody nothing doesn't mean you should.
And P.S. As I pointed out to Patrick below, who was apparently under the mistaken impression that I have had an intern, the above high school student example was hypothetical.
I never have had any high school student come observe my work for a day, but I offered this to a girl from Uni High who was interested. If this happened, it would be only for a day, and I'd buy the kid a free lunch to be nice and look at any writing he or she wanted me to. Their observation would be for their benefit only, not mine. There would be no work required of them.
Meet Betty White
Friend of John Steinbeck. From WMFU's Beware of the Blog:
Betty White is universally loved. Best known for her work on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls, she has been in show business for over sixty years. But what is it that made Betty White so famous in the first place? A recent blitz of cliché-laden profiles aggrandize about Betty's enduring television career, but rarely do they delve into detail.Betty White was a ubiquitous show business personality long before she ever played Sue Ann Nivens or Rose Nylund. As the most prolific female of nineteen fifties television, she was consistently attacked by newspaper critics. Open war was declared on White who, with her safe exuberant demeanor, was said to represent everything that was wrong with the medium. During that first decade of television she was often dismissed as too perky, too saccharine - even vacant.
In real life she was anything but. Those critics would have been shocked to learn that she was closest of friends with John Steinbeck. Betty White was more than just a sitcom star, singer, game show panelist and television producer. She was the first woman to host a daytime talk show. She helped a struggling film student, the very un-saccharine Sam Peckinpah, obtain his first job. Twenty years later she discovered a small town weatherman she thought had potential named David Letterman. With a starring role on a program that aired five and a half-hours a day, six days a week, for four consecutive years, and all that has come since, it is arguable that she has spent more time on television than anyone else alive.
This is the early Betty White.
via @colbycosh
Slo-Pitch, Fast To Sue
I don't play baseball, because I find it boring, because they don't let you play it in high-heeled black boots, and because I'm afraid of being hit by the ball.
That last bit didn't stop a guy in Canada named George Black. He played, he got hit by the ball, and now he's suing. Paul Waldie writes in the Globe and Mail:
It's a baseball player's worst nightmare - losing a ball in the sun.Most players duck and curse their bad luck for not making the catch, but not George Black. He sued for $1.5-million. And so far he's winning.
Mr. Black was playing third base in a men's slo-pitch recreational game in Hamilton on May 19, 2004, when the batter hit a line drive right at him during the eighth inning. Mr. Black, a long-time player, lost sight of the ball in the setting sun.
"It hit me in my index finger and my middle finger, crushing the index finger and fracturing the middle finger," he recalled. "It cut me in my eyebrow for 20 stitches, and then it drove my glasses into my face and now my eye is traumatized so the right pupil is much larger than the left."
Mr. Black filed a lawsuit, but not against the batter or any other player. He sued the owner of the diamond, steel giant ArcelorMittal Dofasco.
Mr. Black alleged Dofasco should have erected a sun screen at the diamond to protect players. The company considered putting a screen there months earlier but failed to do so, he added.
He also alleged the company failed to inspect the diamond or "warn [Mr. Black] of the dangers of the sun at the particular time of day."
"Players are not trained nor experts in knowing the safety precautions," Mr. Black alleged in his suit. "There have been no instructions in avoiding the sun. There were no instructions that the players are to cease playing when the sun is at a level that will interfere with their eyes."
Oh, bite me. Life is dangerous. Sometimes a truck rams through your living room while you're watching TV in your chair. Do you sue the chair manufacturer for failing to build an easy chair with air bags and a cow-catcher?
via Walter Olson
Magazines, Cheap
$10 or less
So, somebody bought Popular Science
(I'm working pretty much day and night on both my column and the beginnings of two new books -- one of which has a bit of a learning curve, but I'm managing!)
Federal Menu Mandates
Ed Morrissey finds out how health care "reform" affects businesses. Let's just say menus are going to get very, very, very long.
UPDATE: Somebody asked me if I'm for government making restaurants post their inspection rating, like they do in California. I'm not.
I know from friends who have worked in restaurants, many or most do things you really would rather not know about. Including the "A" places.
Worked in a restaurant? Got any ick stories (like Jim P.'s -- about how they kept the gravy for five days and just skimmed off the mold on top)? Post 'em here.
Out Of The Ashes
Do natural disasters, earthquakes, or wars stimulate an economy and create growth? Did World War II get the US out of the Great Depression? People think so, but Frederic Bastiat explained why such thinking is fallacious.
P.S. Stay with the video. It's short and ultimately worth watching.
via Walter Olson
Why The Flat Tax Is The Fair Tax
Cato's Dan Mitchell lays it out:
More from Mitchell here:
There are two big hurdles that must be overcome to achieve tax reform. The first obstacle is that the class-warfare crowd wants the tax code to penalize success with high tax rates. That issue is addressed in the video in a couple of ways. I explain that fairness should be defined as treating all people equally, and I also point out that upper-income taxpayers are far more likely to benefit from all the deductions, credits, exemptions, preferences, and other loopholes in the tax code. The second obstacle, which is more of an inside-the-beltway issue, is that the current tax system is very rewarding for the iron triangle of lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats (or maybe iron rectangle if we include the tax preparation industry). There are tens of thousands of people who make very generous salaries precisely because the tax code is a playground for corrupt deal making. A flat tax for these folks would be like kryptonite for Superman. But more than two dozen nations around the world have implemented a flat tax, so hope springs eternal.
The Problem Of Too Much Government
For all the people who aren't troubled by overregulation: Just because certain laws aren't usually enforced doesn't mean they can't or won't be.
Brian Walsh and Hans von Spakovsky write at Heritage.org of the dangers from the punishment provisions of health "reform":
The idea of imprisoning or fining Americans who don't knuckle under to an unprecedented government mandate to purchase a particular insurance product should outrage anyone who believes in the exceptional promises and opportunities afforded by our basic American freedoms. The idea isn't progressive but highly regressive, the equivalent of reinstituting debtors' prisons, a punishment Americans eliminated 160 years ago.Of course, the prospect of winding up in prison for failing to maintain government-mandated insurance may be of no personal concern to the president or members of Congress. They each receive a Cadillac version of health-care coverage funded by those same American taxpayers who, in the reformers' vision, will be federal criminals if they have the audacity to make their own decisions about medical insurance.
If the public's objections to this provision grow loud enough, we will undoubtedly be told that criminal prosecution will be used only against really bad actors. But that same reasoning was used to justify the law that sent inventor and entrepreneur Krister Evertson to federal prison for nearly two years. Evertson testified in July at a bipartisan House hearing investigating the overcriminalization of conduct in America.
In May 2004, FBI agents driving a black Suburban and wearing SWAT gear ran Evertson off the road near his mother's home in Wasilla, Alaska. When Evertson was face down on the pavement with automatic weapons trained on him, an FBI agent told him he was being arrested because he hadn't put a federally mandated sticker on a UPS package.
A jury in federal court in Alaska acquitted Evertson, but the feds weren't finished. They reached into their bag of over 4,500 federal crimes and found another ridiculous crime they could use to prosecute him: supposedly "abandoning" hazardous waste (actually storing, in appropriate containers, valuable materials he was using for the clean-fuel technology he was developing). A second jury convicted him, and he spent 21 months in an Oregon federal prison.
Many of the Americans who will surely ignore the government health-insurance mandate may not wind up in prison. But if noncompliance becomes too widespread, any one of us could become the example the feds prosecute to make sure the iron hand of the new Washington is clearly visible to other potential "criminals."
This is Chicago-style hardball, backed by the full power and resources of the U.S. government. It illustrates both Obamacare supporters' view of the appropriate uses of governmental power and the lengths to which they are willing to go to force us to do what they believe is best. It is a view unbefitting a free people.
As for the constitutionality of Obamacare, David Kopel writes at Volokh.com:
Some parts of Obamacare, such as the calorie labeling requirement for restaurant chains, appear to be solidly within the scope of existing precedents. (At least based on the discussion I've heard thus far.)In contrast, the individual mandate to purchase health insurance is not. It "is unprecedented in our jurisprudence." Romer v. Evans (1996). It is possible to make arguments for extensions of cases such as Wickard, Raich, and Sonzinsky in support of the mandate. However, such arguments are a plea for extending those cases, not for merely applying them. For example, an application of Wickard/Raich might be a law against a person manufacturing her own medicine at home, rather than purchasing the medicine through the federally-controlled market.
No prior case stands for the proposition that Congress may use the interstate commerce power to order persons to buy a particular product, or may use the tax power to punish people for choosing not to purchase a particular product. I can imagine a judicial opinion that builds on the foundation of Wickard, Raich, and Sonzinsky, and extends those cases much further, in order to uphold the mandate. The Court might do so, but the Court would be doing much more than merely applying precedent.
Life Without An Afterlife
Pretty good column by Alabama college student and atheist Peter Sloan. A few excerpts:
"Why are you an atheist?"I am an atheist because I think there is no good evidence that suggests God exists, and a lot of evidence that suggests he does not. I think the best way to form beliefs about the world is through experimentation, observation and logical interpretation of data--the process called science, not through deference to authority and reference to an ancient mythological text. If strong evidence for God's existence is ever discovered, I will change my beliefs.
"How can you be sure God does not exist?"
I cannot. But I also cannot be sure that I am not surrounded by invisible, magic unicorns right now, or that I am not actually living in the Matrix. We do not have to be completely certain of something to believe it. We just need good evidence.
"How did the universe begin?"
I do not know. But I do know that "God did it" is not a good answer. After all, who created God? If you can say God does not have a creator, then why not say the same about the universe? The sciences of physics and cosmology are working toward a real, testable answer to this question. Theology is not.
Oh, and P.S. He writes this:
When my heart stops beating, and my lungs stop breathing, and my brain stops thinking, I will be gone forever.
That seems likely, and I operate on that principle, but he doesn't actually know that for sure -- but, likewise, nobody else has evidence that you go to heaven, hell, or get 72 elderly nuns (presumably, virgins) at any point after you die.
Amy On "The Filter"
It's NBC's Fred Roggin's "The Filter," to which I'm a regular weekly contributor (although we've been off for about a month).
The truth is, I find it really, really hard to watch myself on TV (usually I have to have Gregg here or on the phone watching while I watch), but one of the great girls who works at the Starbucks I like best e-mailed me to give me the thumbs up, plus my friend and fellow Filter contributor Ruth Waytz, did, too (Gregg was sleeping!).
So...here goes...here I am debating KABC radio host, lawyer Leo Terrell:
How Life Works (Without Padding)
Or rather, how life used to work, back when I was a kid who rode into a parked car while reading on my bicycle. Note to self back then: "Hey, stupid, don't do that again!"
ThinkBannedThoughts blogs about how the state, these days, is "protecting" kids by denuding the playgrounds:
I was admiring the VERY TALL twisty slide in the center of the playground when the director of the school mentioned that they might have to take it down this year. The platform is 8 inches too tall for a preschool setting according to the new state safety regulations.The slide has been there for ten years. Not one parent has ever complained and no children have been injured, but that doesn't matter. Then came the worse news, the small merry-go-round which has been part of the school since it opened 25 years ago is also under attack by the state. Merry go rounds are also inappropriate for preschool aged children.
For this one the director was fighting back. She'd had all the parents, and all the former parents, and all the hopeful incoming parents write to the state asking them to reconsider. After all the merry-go-round was as old as the school and again, in all those 25 years it had never been the subject of a single parent complaint or serious child injury.
Let's take a quick poll here - raise your hand if you got to slide on tall steep slides as a child.
OK, good, looks like most of you.
Now raise your hand if you got to use a merry-go-round when you were a kid.
Again, most of you.
Raise your hand if you suffered a serious injury because of one of these objects. Now, keep your hand up if it was because you were doing something delightfully dangerous and a little stupid on it. I didn't see any hands go down there. Last one, keep your hand up if you learned from this accident and were a little more careful the next time you tried that same slightly stupid trick...
Just when you think our government's the stupidest, there's the UK, pulling up in the lead.
A pet shop owner has been fined and forced to undergo electronic monitoring for selling a goldfish to a 14-year-old -- get this, in a pet shop sting! (The law prohibits selling to anyone under 16. Yes, this is a law.)
preschool via Free Range Kids
Public Sector Employees Are Breaking Us
Public sector pensions are breaking California and other states. Check out my favorite example, former LAPD chief Bernard Parks, pulling down $22K in MONTHLY police retirement benefits, in addition to his $178,789 annual city councilman salary.
One of my closest friends is a cop, and I value what cops do, but $264,000 a year in taxpayer-paid pension funds? And when not only Los Angeles but California is struggling under so much debt that the whole state is about to break off and fall into the Pacific Ocean?
Nuh-uh. Something needs to be done.
Meanwhile, here's Nick Gillespie on reason.tv with more on how public sector employees are cleaning up:
Here, from the WSJ, is the difference between public and private sector employees:
It turns out there really is growing inequality in America. It's the 45% premium in pay and benefits that government workers receive over the poor saps who create wealth in the private economy.And the gap is growing. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), from 1998 to 2008 public employee compensation grew by 28.6%, compared with 19.3% for private workers. In the recession year of 2009, with almost no inflation and record budget deficits, more than half the states awarded pay raises to their employees. Even as deficits in state capitals widen and are forcing cuts in services, few politicians are willing to eliminate these pay inequities that enrich the few who wield political power.
Let's walk through the math. In 2008 almost half of all state and local government expenditures, or an estimated $1.1 trillion, went toward the pay and benefits of public workers. According to the BLS, in 2009 the average state or local public employee received $39.66 in total compensation per hour versus $27.42 for private workers. This means that for every $1 in pay and benefits a private employee earned, a state or local government worker received $1.45.
The BLS study breaks down where that 45% premium comes from. It turns out that public employees earn salaries that are about one-third higher on average than what is provided to private workers per hour worked. But the real windfall for government workers is in benefits. Those are 70% higher than what standard private employers offer, as shown in the nearby table. Government health benefits are twice as generous as what workers employed by private employees earn. By the way, nearly this entire benefits gap is accounted for by unionized public employees. Nonunion public employees are paid roughly what private workers receive.
What if government workers earned the average of what private workers earn? States and localities would save $339 billion a year from their more than $2.1 trillion budgets. These savings are larger than the combined estimated deficits for 2010 and 2011 of every state in America.
