Jungle Love
Reading Meaning Into Short Skirts And High Heels
Sometimes a skimpy dress is just a skimpy dress, not a sign that women are letting themselves be diminished by men. Lisa Belkin hyperventilates in The New York Times:
AT Duke University last fall, members of the Sigma Nu fraternity e-mailed 300 of their female classmates about an off-campus Halloween party. "Hey Ladies," the invitation leered, complete with a misspelling, "Whether your dressing up as a slutty nurse, a slutty doctor, a slutty schoolgirl or just a total slut, we invite you..."Yes, there was outrage: in the form of fliers plastered around the Duke campus reprinting the offending e-mail and asking, "Is this why you came to Duke?" And there was official indignation: The recently formed Greek Women's Initiative will be tackling the subject of gender relations.
But a less-noted fact remains: hundreds of Duke women went to that Halloween party and many dressed as they had been asked.
As parents around the country send their children to campuses for the start of another academic year, what are we to make of the fact that lessons of equality, respect and self-worth have been heard when it comes to the classroom, but lost somewhere on the way to the clubs? Why has the pendulum swung back to a feeling that sexualization of women is fun and funny rather than insulting and uncomfortable? Why are so many women O.K. with that?
Um, because they realize how ridiculous it is to be horrified by the idea of trying to look sexy for men, and how ludicrous it is to make this out to be some kind of thought crime and sign of complicity on the part of women with our supposed oppressors.
From my piece for Psychology Today, "The Truth About Beauty":
There are certain practical realities of existence that most of us accept. If you want to catch a bear, you don't load the trap with a copy of Catch-22--not unless you rub it with a considerable quantity of raw hamburger. If you want to snag a fish, you can't just slap the water with your hand and yell, "Jump on my hook, already!" Yet, if you're a woman who wants to land a man, there's this notion that you should be able to go around looking like Ernest Borgnine: If you're "beautiful on the inside," that's all that should count. Right. And I should have a flying car and a mansion in Bel Air with servants and a moat.Welcome to Uglytopia--the world reimagined as a place where it's the content of a woman's character, not her pushup bra, that puts her on the cover of Maxim. It just doesn't seem fair to us that some people come into life with certain advantages--whether it's a movie star chin or a multimillion-dollar shipbuilding inheritance. Maybe we need affirmative action for ugly people; make George Clooney rotate in some homely women between all his gorgeous girlfriends. While we wish things were different, we'd best accept the ugly reality: No man will turn his head to ogle a woman because she looks like the type to buy a turkey sandwich for a homeless man or read to the blind.
Where are the tears on Belkin's part for the barrista boys who can't get the girls the guy in the Lamborghini can? I wrote about that in my PT piece, too:
Yet, while feminist journalists deforest North America publishing articles urging women to bow out of the beauty arms race and "Learn to love that woman in the mirror!", nobody gets into the ridiculous position of advising men to "Learn to love that unemployed guy sprawled on the couch!"
Speaking of bullshit, Belkin manages to tuck in an old bullshit rape stat at the end:
What the performers onstage that night saw as ribald fun, she wrote, was at the root of statistics like "one in four women will be sexually assaulted on a college campus."
Here's Christina Hoff Sommers on the "rape crisis" on college campuses:
Has date rape in fact reached critical proportions on the college campus? Having heard about an outbreak of rape at Columbia University, Peter Hellman of New York magazine decided to do a story about it.[43] To his surprise, he found that campus police logs showed no evidence of it whatsoever. Only two rapes were reported to the Columbia campus police in 1990, and in both cases, charges were dropped for lack of evidence. Hellman checked the figures at other campuses and found that in 1990 fewer than one thousand rapes were reported to campus security on college campuses in the entire country.[44] That works out to fewer than one-half of one rape per campus. Yet despite the existence of a rape crisis center at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital two blocks from Columbia University, campus feminists pressured the administration into installing an expensive rape crisis center inside the university. Peter Hellman describes a typical night at the center in February 1992: "On a recent Saturday night, a shift of three peer counselors sat in the Rape Crisis Center-one a backup to the other two. . . . Nobody called; nobody came. As if in a firehouse, the three women sat alertly and waited for disaster to strike. It was easy to forget these were the fading hours of the eve of Valentine's Day."[45]In The Morning After, Katie Roiphe describes the elaborate measures taken to prevent sexual assaults at Princeton. Blue lights have been installed around the campus, freshman women are issued whistles at orientation. There are marches, rape counseling sessions, emergency telephones. But as Roiphe tells it, Princeton is a very safe town, and whenever she walked across a deserted golf course to get to classes, she was more afraid of the wild geese than of a rapist. Roiphe reports that between 1982 and 1993 only two rapes were reported to the campus police. And, when it comes to violent attacks in general, male students are actually more likely to be the victims. Roiphe sees the campus rape crisis movement as a phenomenon of privilege: these young women have had it all, and when they find out that the world can be dangerous and unpredictable, they are outraged:
Many of these girls [in rape marches] came to Princeton from Milton and Exeter. Many of their lives have been full of summers in Nantucket and horseback-riding lessons. These are women who have grown up expecting fairness, consideration, and politeness.[46]
I wrote about the bullshit rape stats here.
All The President's Illegals
No wonder President Obama doesn't seem very interested in enforcing our immigration laws. Yet another relative of his has turned out to be an illegal alien. A drunk-driving illegal alien. Dave Wedge and Laurel J. Sweet write for the Boston Herald:
President Obama's accused drunken-driving uncle -- who was busted after a near collision with a Framingham cop -- has had a valid Social Security number for at least 19 years, despite being an illegal immigrant ordered to be deported back to Kenya, the Herald has learned.The president's 67-year-old uncle, Obama Onyango, has had a valid Massachusetts driver's license and Social Security number since at least 1992, said Registry of Motor Vehicles spokesman Michael Verseckes.
Onyango, whose sister, Zeituni Onyango, made headlines when it was revealed she was an illegal immigrant living in public housing in South Boston, was wobbly legged, "slurring" and had "red and glassy eyes" when he was pulled over at 7 p.m. Wednesday on Waverly Street in Framingham.
..Onyango was ordered held without bail on a federal immigration warrant after his arraignment Thursday in Framingham District Court. Court papers show he was the subject of a previous deportation order. He was being held in the Plymouth House of Correction last night.
Mike Rogers, a spokesman for Cleveland immigration attorney Margaret Wong, who is representing Onyango, said he "wouldn't know how" Onyango obtained a Social Security number.
Couldn't he even hazard a guess? I mean, the choices are: 1. He bought it on the black market. 2. Somebody else bought it on the black market and gave it to him. 3. He woke up one morning and found that it had appeared out of nowhere during the night on the pillow next to him.
Here's a guy who's president, who has to know his family members are here illegally. His attitude is clear: Laws are for thee and thy relations, and not for me and mine!
Blowout
"This was not the first inflatable vixen that led Togergta astray."
From Jonathan Turley's post, "Ohio Man Arrested After Romp With Raft":
Tobergta has been convicted several times for public indecency, including a 2002 incident involving sex with a four-foot inflatable Halloween pumpkin.
From a story about the man's previous arrest on WLWT:
Relatives told News 5 that Tobergta has mental problems and was being helped by Butler County Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, but he was dropped because he had too many arrests."They tell us he can't get help until he has a felony ... strange way to get the help," one relative, who did not want to be identified, told News 5's Courtis Fuller.
The relative said locking him up is not the answer."If you have someone who has a mental problem (and) you lock them up, turning them loose don't do nothing. Turn them loose, what do you expect them to do?" he said.
Stupid Was On Sale This Week In Florida
From New York Magazine's Daily Intel, a Florida pastor doesn't get why atheists aren't registered like sex offenders:
Meet Michael Stahl, otherwise known as "Pastor Mike." Stahl lives in Miramar, Florida, and leads an online church called Living Water Church, which we think is a fancy way of saying he hangs out a lot in a Christian-themed chat room.
Stahl explained his proposal for a national registry for atheists patterned after the sex-offender registry:
Now, many (especially the atheists), may ask "Why do this, what's the purpose?" Duhhh, Mr. Atheist for the same purpose many States put the names and photos of convicted sex offenders and other ex-felons on the I-Net -- to INFORM the public! I mean, in the City of Miramar, Florida, where I live, the population is approx. 109,000. My family and I would sure like to know how many of those 109,000 are ADMITTED atheists! Perhaps we may actually know some. In which case we could begin to witness to them and warn them of the dangers of atheism. Or perhaps they are radical atheists, whose hearts are as hard as Pharaoh's, in that case, if they are business owners, we would encourage all our Christian friends, as well as the various churches and their congregations NOT to patronize them as we would only be "feeding" Satan.Frankly, I don't see why anyone would oppose this idea -- including the atheists themselves (unless of course, they're actually ashamed of their atheist religion, and would prefer to stay in the 'closet.').
The Duh Factor: Paying People Not To Work Keeps Them Out Of Work
The Obama administration has accidentally hired an economist who's spoken some economic sense. The WSJ ran an editorial on Alan Krueger, the new chief economist of The White House (chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers), and jobless benefits:
As early as next week the President is expected to call for another extension of unemployment insurance benefits, which are currently available for 99 weeks, or nearly two years. Here is what Mr. Krueger wrote in a study with Bruce D. Meyer for the National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper series in 2002:"This chapter examines the labor supply effects of social insurance programs. . . . The empirical work on unemployment insurance (UI) and workers' compensation (WC) insurance finds that the programs tend to increase the length of time employees spend out of work."
The authors found that the incentive effects of unemployment insurance on recipients to delay finding a job are not insignificant and that "the estimates of the elasticities of lost work time that incorporate both the incidence and duration of claims are close to 1.0 for unemployment insurance."
For people who didn't attend Princeton, this means that paying people not to work increases the incentive not to work and thus tends to encourage longer periods of joblessness. This sounds closer to what critics of endless jobless benefits have been saying than to the White House policy line.
As a self-employed person who has nothing but her own savings to rely on, it is absolutely shocking to me that we give 99 weeks of unemployment payouts to people.
Cato's Dan Mitchell on Kruger's appointment:
Why Do You Hate The Tea Party?
Crid made a comment on this entry the other day:
I don't understand lefties who make weirdly dismissive jokes about the Tea Party. They never actually cite what fault they find in TP reckoning.
So everybody -- now's your chance. What do you hate (or like or love) about the Tea Party?
Do The Write Thing
Scumbag bureaucrat sneers that a woman deserves the parking ticket an officer wrote her while she was trying to pay the complicated parking machines...some 40 feet from her car. Video here.
via LA Observed
Amazing, The Things A Man With "End Stage Emphysema" Can Do
James Farkus Cohan, who claims to have end-stage emphysema, has filed at least 161 lawsuits against small businesses, claiming that they've violated his rights under the Americans With Disabilities Act.
LA's ABC 7 reporter Marc Brown caught up with Cohan on a hike with his dogs -- without a wheelchair, walker, or oxygen tank -- and looking pretty sprightly:
via LAObserved
Hurricane In The United States Of Handoutica
We've gotten so used to handing out welfare to the wealthy and "the too big to fail" (GM, etc.) that it probably seems normal to people that we taxpayers will just suck it up and pay when wealthy people's beachfront property gets destroyed.
You live by the beach? How about you have insurance in case the water rises -- insurance you pay for, that is, not the Uncle Sam/other people's money-funded kind?
Anne Applebaum wrote about this for the WaPo in 2005:
...Many people build houses along the water because it makes economic sense to do so. Houses or apartments with ocean views command higher prices. Beachfront property owners can demand higher rents. Beachside businesses -- casinos, hotels, restaurants -- spin money. And, best of all, the risks of owning beachfront property -- risks from floods, hurricanes and erosion -- are covered by other people. Federally subsidized flood insurance programs and state-subsidized beach "re-nourishment" programs ensure that taxpayers -- rich, poor, local, national -- pay for damage to property built close to the water....In 2003 approximately 153 million people lived in U.S. coastal counties, an increase of 33 million people since 1980. By 2008, 7 million more will probably have moved there, too.
As a result of this success, beach developers tend to be disproportionately wealthy and politically influential, and therefore unusually good at fighting zoning laws and grabbing subsidies. Even after Hurricane Andrew forced Florida to establish stricter building codes, the owners of hot Florida Panhandle real estate managed to get a raft of exemptions for their region. One North Carolina beach community, Emerald Isle, has collected millions of dollars in state and federal money to combat erosion -- even though some 80 percent of Emerald Isle's new artificial beach is privately owned and inaccessible to the public, which paid for it.
...The pattern doesn't hold across the country, away from the ocean: Entire towns happily moved uphill after catastrophic flooding in the Midwest in the 1990s, when the government paid them to leave. But with a few exceptions, coastal victims of hurricanes and floods have not only refused to move inland, they've also used post-disaster government funding to build more and higher buildings, with fewer restrictions then ever before.
To reverse this trend, politicians would have to do a lot more than write checks and come up with neat new names for old housing programs. Instead, they would have to force coastal property owners to pay the real cost of the risk they incur by building in dangerous places. They would not only have to stop subsidizing flood insurance, they also would have to require developers to pay heavier taxes and higher insurance premiums. They would have to alter incentives in order to encourage building farther inland. They would have to enforce stricter building codes. In barrier islands and other truly unstable places, zoning laws should prevent any new construction at all.
Such proposals would, of course, be the kiss of death for almost any politician. After all, they go against two important American principles: property owners' right to build what they want, and the government's obligation to bail them out afterward.
The government's obligation? Let's call a mark a mark. That's we taxpayers she's talking about, and thanks, but we taxpayers have had enough of paying for other people's investments gone waterlogged.
There's a Spanish proverb I learned from Nathaniel Branden: "Take what you need but pay for it." I think that should be the deal in the case of anybody who wants to live on the beach. Your home gets destroyed, well, that's awful, and I'm very sorry, but don't come crying to the rest of us for rebuild funds.
Know The TSA "Officers" Groping Your Children
Via @mpetrie98, here's one -- David Ralph Anderson, 61, arrested on a warrant charging six counts of lewdness with a child (a girl younger than 14, the piece says). Via the Elko Daily Free Press, Jared DuBach writes:
According to Elko Justice Court records, the victim told investigators that on seven to 10 occasions between 2010 and this year, Anderson allegedly taught the victim about various sexual acts and had sexual contact in the form of touching each other's genitals.Investigators reported Anderson also told the girl to sleep in his bed and taught her to say various vulgar words associated with body parts and sexual activities.
In addition, the girl stated he would rub lotion all over her body, placed his hand up her shirt to touch her breasts, had her watch pornographic films with him, encouraged her to consume alcohol and would French kiss her.
A friend who's a police officer texted me about the sex part touching of the TSA body gropes, bringing up a good point: "If it doesn't qualify as sexual battery, why don't men search women?"
For A Moment, I Was Sure It Was "The Onion"
Affirmative action for ugly people? Yep. Daniel S. Hamermesh, author of the soon-to-be-published book, "Beauty Pays," is actually suggesting that, writing in The New York Times:
Why not offer legal protections to the ugly, as we do with racial, ethnic and religious minorities, women and handicapped individuals?We actually already do offer such protections in a few places, including in some jurisdictions in California, and in the District of Columbia, where discriminatory treatment based on looks in hiring, promotions, housing and other areas is prohibited. Ugliness could be protected generally in the United States by small extensions of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Ugly people could be allowed to seek help from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and other agencies in overcoming the effects of discrimination. We could even have affirmative-action programs for the ugly.
It gets really good when he gets into figuring out who's ugly:
For purposes of administering a law, we surely could agree on who is truly ugly, perhaps the worst-looking 1 or 2 percent of the population. The difficulties in classification are little greater than those faced in deciding who qualifies for protection on grounds of disabilities that limit the activities of daily life, as shown by conflicting decisions in numerous legal cases involving obesity.There are other possible objections. "Ugliness" is not a personal trait that many people choose to embrace; those whom we classify as protected might not be willing to admit that they are ugly. But with the chance of obtaining extra pay and promotions amounting to $230,000 in lost lifetime earnings, there's a large enough incentive to do so.
His idea of how this plays out:
We face a trade-off: ignore a deserving group of citizens, or help them but limit help available for other groups.
I am consistently amazed by adult, grownup people who think that the answer to making life "fair" -- as if it can be made fair -- is to take money out of one person's pocket and hand it to another.
Let's this to the next step. I am not an NBA-quality basketball player. In fact, if there were a bet that I could make a basket, I would urge every one of you to bet against me.
Of course, what this means, Hamermesh-style, is that I should get a lifetime of basketball camp scholarships and various other handouts because...well, because I'm no Kobe. (In fact, as basketball acumen goes, if Kobe has a blind great aunt who's on her deathbed, I'm no Kobe's blind great aunt who's on her deathbed.)
"Childhood Is In Crisis"!
Ridiculous "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"-style piece in The New York Times, with lots of huffing and puffing by Joel Bakan, author of "Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children."
Bakan writes of how a "child saving" movement emerged in the 19th century, combating "widespread child abuse" in mines, mills and factories. (I'm guessing he means "combating child labor.") But now -- gasp! -- we are failing to protect children from TV and video games and other horrible corporate-caused ills:
A clash between these two newly created legal entities -- children and corporations -- was, perhaps, inevitable. Century-of-the-child reformers sought to resolve conflicts in favor of children. But over the last 30 years there has been a dramatic reversal: corporate interests now prevail. Deregulation, privatization, weak enforcement of existing regulations and legal and political resistance to new regulations have eroded our ability, as a society, to protect children.Childhood obesity mounts as junk food purveyors bombard children with advertising, even at school. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study reports that children spend more hours engaging with various electronic media -- TV, games, videos and other online entertainments -- than they spend in school. Much of what children watch involves violent, sexual imagery, and yet children's media remain largely unregulated. Attempts to curb excesses -- like California's ban on the sale or rental of violent video games to minors -- have been struck down by courts as free speech violations.
So, a peek at an ad for Fruit Loops we now equate with child labor? We're going to equate keeping children out of mines with not letting them play video games?
Sure, there's regulation needed -- of the parental kind. And I don't mean the in loco parentis kind, by government, but actual controlling of children with a stern look or stern words from Mommy, Daddy, and maybe Grandma and Grandpa.
By the way, big corporations "targeted" children when I was a kid, too. Unfortunately, I found it rather hard to see all the commercials for these cereals and things because I was not allowed to watch TV.
And unfortunately, as much as I would have liked to have Fruit Loops and Count Chocula cereal instead of that boring and tasteless rice puff stuff my mother bought, I was six and did not have a checking account and I couldn't make it to the grocery store on my tricycle.
Butthole Senators
It's the latest in legislative overexposure!
Puerto Rican Senator Roberto Arango one-upped wiener-tweeter Weiner by posting pictures of his poop chute on a gay website. Perez Hilton posts:
Really, Puerto Rican Senator Roberto Arango takes the cake!Not only did he allegedly upload the pictures you see above, there's another one from the same alleged Grindr account showcasing a BIG OLE BUTTHOLE bent over!
When confronted about the scandal, the man actually said:
You know I've been losing weight. As I shed that weight, I've been taking pictures. I don't remember taking this particular picture but I'm not gonna say I didn't take it. I'd tell you if I remembered taking the picture but I don't.
His Weiner'y, weaselly attempt to distance himself from the anus shots has a sort of baby birdy seeking its mother desperation to it:
"Are you mymotherbutthole? Are you?!"
The most troubling thing in both of these cases is that these people were both elected to very high office, yet can't quite process that being a public official and posting your naked lower extremities online do not mix.
"Sex And The Economy"
@Instapundit tweeted this link:
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Sex In Restaurant Bathrooms On Rise... http://bit.ly/qeFnm1
Hotel rooms are pricey!
Gov-onomics
Inspired by a comment by Lobster, here's finance writer and radio host Dave Ramsey with a household analogy of government spending (in other words, he's making like the government is an American household):
If their household income was $55,000 per year, they'd actually be spending $96,500--$41,500 more than they made! That means they're spending 175% of their annual income! So, in 2011 they'd add $41,500 of debt to their current credit card debt of $366,000!What's the first step to get out of debt? Stop overspending! But that means a family that is used to spending $96,500 a year has to learn how to live on $55,000. That's a tough pill to swallow. Those kinds of spending cuts seriously hurt, but it's the only way out of debt for John Q. Public.
If I ever got a call from a family that was spending $41,500 more than they made every year, you would definitely expect me to yell at them for their dumb behavior, right? Kids, no more McDonald's four times a week. Snacks come from the grocery store now. And we're not going to the movies for a while, so break out the board games and TV Guide. This family has a problem, so it's time to amputate the lifestyle!
It works the same way for the government. You can't borrow your way out of debt, whether you're a typical American family or the entire U.S. government. At some point, you've got to say, "Enough is enough!" and make the hard cuts necessary to win over the long haul.
Penn Jillette On The Difference Between Atheist And Agnostic
From Carolla's podcast:
via @alanocu
Hey, Health Care Providers: Do What The Government Says, And Then They'll Turn Around And Sue Ya
Peter Suderman writes at reason that Obamacare was supposed to restrain the growth of health spending by encouraging medical providers to find better ways to coordinate the delivery of health care:
Highly integrated provider networks, encouraged and regulated by the federal government, would help make health care cheaper and better at the same time.With the law's incentives in place, some providers are indeed working on mergers intended to help coordinate care. But it turns out that in some cases, they're running into resistance... from the federal government, in the form of Federal Trade Commission antitrust action. That's what's happening in Toledo, Ohio, where a hospital merger is taking heat from the FTC's antitrust enforcers. The New York Times looks at the latest round of docs-vs.-the-FTC and reports that ongoing legal battles illustrate "the risks that arise when competing health care providers try to collaborate, as they are racing to do all over the country, in part because of incentives built into the new health law."
What are those risks? For providers, it's that one arm of federal government will take them to court for following through on the collaboration incentives offered by another part of the federal government. For patients, it's that, despite the Obama administration's argument that coordinated care would make health care cheaper, integrated health networks afford providers new market power that in some cases can actually drive prices up.
More on the ridiculous government push-me/pull-you at the link.
The Pantybomber Wants Out
It's pretty simple, pussycat. You try to blow up a plane for Allah, we're going to cage your ass. Tresa Baldas writes in the Freep:
The so-called underwear bombing suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, charged with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas 2009, has a new request: Let me out of here.In a court filing Thursday, Abdulmutallab asked a federal judge to release him from prison, claiming he's being "unjustly detained" by the American government.
"(A)ll Muslims should only be ruled by the law of the Quran," Abdulmutallab wrote.
In a separate, handwritten court filing, the Nigerian national also wrote that "excessive force" was used to restrain him Wednesday after he assaulted several officers from his cell "in defense of Muhammad."
On the bright side, you aren't in prison in a Muslim country! Saudi Arabia, for example:
Torture, beatings, and other abuses of prisoners are committed regularly by both the Mutawwa'in and officials in the Ministry of Interior. Additionally, at least one person was killed recently by the Mutawwa'in for a very minor religious violation. Other executions during the year 2000 were for crimes ranging from "deviant sexual behavior" to sorcery, and were carried out by stoning, beheading, or firing squad; additionally, some prisoners were punished by amputations or the loss of an eye. Prisoners are sometimes held for long periods of time without charge or trial.
I Am A Trashpicker
Check out the two cool lamps I found when I saw some stuff piled up on a trash can as I was leaving my writing cafe last night.
Wonderfully bizarre. And they were rewired and work fine. I'm buying clip-on lampshades for them on eBay.
Steve Jobs: How To Live Before You Die
Steve Jobs commencement address at Stanford in 2005. Text of his talk here:
Here's Vic Gundotra from Google, who got a call from Steve Jobs on a Sunday -- about the second "O" in the Google logo not being the right yellow:
"I've been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I'm not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn't have the right yellow gradient. It's just wrong and I'm going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?"Of course this was okay with me. A few minutes later on that Sunday I received an email from Steve with the subject "Icon Ambulance". The email directed me to work with Greg Christie to fix the icon.
Since I was 11 years old and fell in love with an Apple II, I have dozens of stories to tell about Apple products. They have been a part of my life for decades. Even when I worked for 15 years for Bill Gates at Microsoft, I had a huge admiration for Steve and what Apple had produced.
But in the end, when I think about leadership, passion and attention to detail, I think back to the call I received from Steve Jobs on a Sunday morning in January. It was a lesson I'll never forget. CEOs should care about details. Even shades of yellow. On a Sunday.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak changed my life in enormous ways, and when I first heard that Jobs was sick, I wrote him a letter to tell him so.
I got my first Mac in 1985 from the University of Michigan student discount program and I've had Macs consistently ever since. Apple computers made it fun and easy to write. For years and years.
And I even got my boyfriend at the Apple computer store, at the iPod display. Gregg credits our relationship to "Steve Jobs' retail strategy."
I like how the guy has lived. And I like the advice he gives at the end of his talk. Very wise advice:
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Warren Buffet Was Just Kidding!
American Thinker's Karin McQuillan writes:
Warren Buffet isn't serious when he says, please, tax me more. He was asked by CNBC reporter Rebecca Quick in 2007 why he shelters his fortune in tax-exempt foundations instead of giving it to the government, as he exhorts others to do. Buffet replied, "I think that on balance the Gates Foundation, my daughter's foundation, my two sons' foundations will do a better job with lower administrative costs and better selection of beneficiaries than the government." In other words, he thinks he has better ideas for how to spend his dollars than the government, and would do a better job of it, too.Mr. Buffet, we all feel that way.
...Mr. Buffet has nothing serious to say about fixing our economy either. He used the New York Times to hector America's wealthiest about paying more taxes, but he didn't crunch any numbers to show how doing so would solve our nation's problems. Like Obama, he did not make a specific proposal on how much the rich should pay, or compare the supposed revenue increase to our national debt. No numbers from an investor? He isn't serious.
The notion that we can tax our way out of this hole we continue to dig is completely ridiculous.
McQuillan continues:
Obama is serious about the joys and benefits of class warfare to promote his own reelection. Mr. Buffet enjoys promoting false solutions that bolster his sense of moral superiority. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are sleepless tonight, worrying about how they will pay their rent, their mortgage, their car payments. Where will they find a job?Senator Marco Rubio got to the heart of the matter: how does a single one of the Democratic tax increases help us create jobs and grow our economy?
If you have no answer to that question, you are not a serious man, and you do not deserve to be our president.
And, P.S., Let's not kid ourselves: The Republicans were there with big shovels, digging our national financial grave, right beside the Democrats.
Saturday Reading
Moving story by Mike Lacey in the Phoenix New Times about a diabetic woman who died in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jail after being denied medical treatment.
Jason Zaragoza writes for altweeklies.com that the Association for Women in Communications has awarded Lacey their 2011 Clarion Award for newspaper feature writing for the story.
Told through the use of distinct sections that featured the first-person voices of numerous witnesses, Lacey's story, inspired by the structure of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, was a departure from ordinary newspaper storytelling. Through extensive interviews and deposition testimony, the article illustrated how [Maricopa County Sheriff Joe] Arpaio's indifference to the suffering of inmates had permeated the jail to the point that diabetics and others with medical conditions were routinely denied humane treatment.
An excerpt from the story:
Jennylee Braillard, daughter (2010 interviews)
"Just about my first memory of my mom was the Minnie Mouse costume she made me at Gold Bar, which is where you can hook up your trailer just outside Monroe, Washington."I won first place that Halloween. My prize was a six-pack of root beer."
As Jennylee speaks, her own infant daughter, Kaylynn, coos and looks around, a bow tied to her little, full-moon head.
"My mom was always happy. She was nurturing, caring. She was my mom."
Her mother's ashes sit in a container in Jennylee's home in west Phoenix. The dust is such a small amount inside a little vessel; you'd hardly believe that someone's remains could amount to so little.
It is a fact that Deborah Braillard did not always make good choices.
She died an agonizing death in a diabetic coma that would wring the life out of her over three weeks that seemed without end.
The bigger truth is that she was hurried on her way.
Deborah Braillard's passing is never far from Jennylee's thoughts; after all, she watched the worst of it.
"I was terrified to open the plastic bag with her ashes. I put mom in a big jewelry box. I think about taking her back to Gold Bar. That's where my grandmother and great grandmother are buried. It's been in the family forever. There are nature trails there . . .
"But I worry if something happens to my uncle who lives there [what would happen to Mom]."
Ain't No Thang But A Little Old Giant Explosion Right In His Face
The only things hotter than any fire are usually the firemen fighting it. Simone Wilson posts on LAWeekly.com about some of LA's particularly badass firefighters:
Fire Captain Jaime Moore, audibly proud, explains the circumstances of firefighter versus exploding car to NBC Los Angeles today:"As you can see in the video, he didn't event flinch. He took a step back and continued fighting the fire."
Amy's Got A Brand New Head(er)
I'm hoping the new masthead is showing up for all of you. I think my browser had the old one cached, so I didn't know Gregg put up the new one on Wednesday afternoon (in between ducking gunfire in Detroit).
Gregg will soon make a couple other small changes -- putting the nav links above the masthead, for example, and sticking a Little Shiva masthead credit somewhere on the page. Otherwise, the blog will look and feel mostly the same.
This new masthead is by my very talented friend Little Shiva, last seen around these blog parts frightening the French -- security guards at Centre Georges Pompidou art museum in Paris. Here's her self-portrait:
She's very talented, very reliable, very smart and conceptual, and a lot of fun...should you be interested not just in hiring her but in going to Belgium to hang out with her, which I wish I could.
I actually tried to get my publisher to hire her to do my book cover, but they wouldn't buy my original idea (attack of the 50-foot Amy, pulling rude cell phoners out of Starbucks), because they worried that people would think I looked too "psycho ex-girlfriend." Sigh.
*If you can't see the new masthead, try clearing your cache.
President Empty Podium
Mort Zuckerman, not exactly a Buckleyan Republican, lays it all out in the WSJ about President Obama:
The rising impatience with the leadership of President Obama was epitomized on Aug. 8 in the middle of one of the now-habitual Wall Street roller coasters. His speech on the economy was 53 minutes late. What showed on TV screens was an empty White House podium, an image suggestive of the absence of leadership. When the president did speak, the best he could come up with was "We've always been and always will be a triple-A country." The market's response was a Bronx cheer, a drop of another 300 points.Mr. Obama seems unable to get a firm grip on the toughest issue facing his presidency and the country--the economy. He now asserts he is going to "pivot" to jobs. Now we pivot to jobs? When there are already 25 million Americans who are either unemployed or cannot find full-time work? Does this president not appreciate what is going on?
Fewer Americans are working full-time today than when Mr. Obama took office. We have lost over 900,000 full-time jobs in the last four months alone, and long-term unemployment is at a post-World War II high. The public's faith in his ability to deal with the economy has plunged.
...It is no surprise that many have begun to doubt the president's leadership qualities. J.P. Morgan calls it the "competency crisis."
...Many voters who supported him are no longer elated by the historic novelty of his candidacy and presidency. They hoped for a president who would be effective. Remember "Yes We Can"? Now many of his sharpest critics are his former supporters. Witness Bill Broyles, a one-time admirer who recently wrote in Newsweek that "Americans aren't inspired by well-meaning weakness." The president who first inspired with great speeches on red and blue America now seems to lack the ability to communicate any sense of resolve for a program, or any realization of the urgency of what might befall us.
He's the same guy he ever was...the guy who kept voting "present" in the Senate. Unfortunately, you don't get that option in The White House -- determined as the President seems to be to try to take it.
Hopey Blamey
Our national debt has increased $4 TRILLION under Obama, and naturally, he isn't taking responsibility; he's pointing fingers backward. Mark Knoller writes at CBSnews.com:
The national debt increased $4.9 trillion during the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush. The debt now is rising at a pace to surpass that amount during Mr. Obama's four-year term.Mr. Obama blames policies inherited from his predecessor's administration for the soaring debt. He singles out:
"two wars we didn't pay for" "a prescription drug program for seniors...we didn't pay for." "tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 that were not paid for." CBSNews.com special report: America's debt battleHe goes on to blame the recession, and its resulting decrease in tax revenue on businesses, for making fewer sales, and more employees being laid off. He says the recession also resulted in more government spending due to increased unemployment insurance payments, subsidies to farms and funding of infrastructure programs that were part of his stimulus program.
At the first town hall meeting of his Midwestern bus trip last week, Mr. Obama told an audience in Minnesota that "the debt problem is real and the deficit problem is real."
But he also called in "a manageable problem."
How? By paying people to dig big holes -- or maybe their own graves so they can be buried alive and avoid collecting Social Security?
Interest In Old Airplanes = Security Threat?
Another from the "flying the paranoid skies" file, from a post on Consumerist. A guy (folk singer Vance Gilbert) is on a United flight reading books about old planes and they turn the plane around and shove him off to talk to some officers about it. Chris Morran at Consumerist posts a copy of his letter to United. An excerpt:
Now, I am a musician by trade and an amateur aviation historian, studying mostly European transport aircraft between WW 1 and WW 2, and some after. I was on my way to two different music festivals. When I travel I delve into reading about this era of aviation. I had taken out and was reading a book of Polish Aircraft circa 1946 and I was also looking at views of an Italian aircraft from 1921.I think you see where this is going...
The plane went all the way out to the take-off point, in the queue for take-off. All the while I noticed a lot of phone pinging back and forth between the flight attendants. The young woman flight attendant was also crouched next to and conversing seriously to a dead-heading pilot about 4 seats up on the other side. The plane then proceeded to turn around and head all the way back to the gate. Once at the gate, the jet bridge was positioned. The Captain announced, "We have a minor issue, and we will continue our departure once it's resolved." He left the aircraft.
After about 5-10 minutes, 2 Mass State Policemen, 1 or 2 TSA Agents... come down the aisle and motion me to get off of the plane. I do not remember if they called me by name. We stepped out into the breezeway where one of the State policemen asked how I was doing that day.
I replied, "Sir, I think you're going to tell me I could be doing much better..."
Policeman: "Did you have a problem with your bag earlier?"
Me: "No sir, not at all. The flight attendant wanted it secured elsewhere other than behind my feet, and I opted to put it under the seat in front of me. It's my wallet, even though there's only 30 bucks in it..."
Policeman: "Sir, were you looking at a book of airplanes?"
Me: "Yes sir I was. I'm a musician for money, but for fun I study old aircraft and build models of them, and the book I was reading was of Polish Aircraft from 1946."
Policeman: "Would you please go get that book so that i can see it?"
I go back onto the plane -- all eyes are on me like I was a common criminal. Total humiliation part 2.
After a couple of minutes he says, "Why, this is all Snoopy Red Baron stuff..."
Me: "Yes sir, actually the triplane you see is Italian, from 1921 a little after World War 1...."
Policeman: "No problem here then, you can go on back on to the plane, sorry to inconvenience you....and have a nice flight."
We were now at least, after re-queuing, over an hour late. No one looked me in the eye, flight attendants, passengers. I missed my next connection, and had to cancel that portion of the flight... rent a car ($270) plus fuel ($30) to my work (lost 1/2 wages = $100), and I was afraid to read for the next two flights...
What's my take-away from this experience as a taxpayer, United Airlines patron, Black Man, teacher, mentor, American? I was brokenhearted and speechless as I overheard my friend's wife try to explain to her kids what happened and what he and I were talking about over dinner. They never did get why.
Vance Gilbert, on his site, unfortunately plays the (ridiculous) race card, calling this "racial profiling," when there's no evidence of that. (Vance, you need permalinks!)
Commentland: Welcome To Human Nature
A commenter left this remark on the entry "Birth Fathers Getting Babies Adopted Out From Under Them In Utah":
I have come to realize that there is no more a false belief than- "women are sugar and spice and everything nice"
My response:
Well, how silly. Welcome to HUMAN nature.Every man also isn't all "snakes and snails and puppy dog's tails."
Then again, I know this, because I don't get my information about humanity from Mother Goose.
The truth is, a lot of people are jerks, and a lot of people are pretty awful. But, if you have a desire to see who somebody is -- who they really are -- except in the cases of some clever and talented sociopaths, you probably can.
The problem is, a lot of people go in with their eyes wide shut, and hope things turn out okay, and when they don't, the blame pointing finger goes everywhere but in their own direction. That's when words like "feminazi" or "all men are assholes come out," when the truth is, the asshole was the person who leapt into a relationship with their eyes shut.
Quoteland
Dunno if this quote actually came from John Adams, and don't much care. It's right on, even if some Joe Forwarder made it up and emailed it to 67,894 of his closest friends:
"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt."--John Adams, 1826
Birth Fathers Getting Babies Adopted Out From Under Them In Utah
NumberSix spotted this and wrote:
I saw this on the NBC Nightly News earlier tonight and was properly horrified. Apparently Utah's laws on fathers' rights are making it a haven for women who want to give babies up for adoption without the agreement of the fathers.This kind of consent by default is much like how men in California "accept" financial responsibility for kids that aren't even theirs. In this case, fathers who want to raise the children have twenty days from notification to dispute the adoption.
The man in the video was sent a text message from his girlfriend, who contacted an adoption agency in Utah without telling him, saying she was giving the baby up for adoption. She did not tell him when she went into labor. He had twenty days from that text to file for paternal rights to the baby. That sounds nice and official, right? By the time he knew his baby was in Salt Lake City with an adoptive family, the deadline had expired.
The other man in the video had a girlfriend who lied about having a miscarriage, then later called him to say the baby was going to be born in Utah. A deadline he didn't even know he had was already looming. I thought you'd be interested in this sort of inversion of paternity fraud and how Utah is screwing men who want to raise their children. The local government doesn't seem to want to do much about it, either.
The short video is here. There is also a longer Dateline special here.
Mansions For Jesus (Moses And Allah)
Laura Sanders writes for the WSJ that clergy members are allowed to buy or live in multiple homes tax-free:
The U.S. Tax Court ruled that Phil Driscoll, an ordained minister and Grammy Award-winning trumpeter who went to prison for tax evasion, didn't owe federal income taxes on $408,638 provided to him by his ministry to buy a second home on a lake near Cleveland, Tenn.Under a provision of the tax code known as the parsonage allowance, first passed in 1921, an ordained clergy member may live tax-free in a home owned by his or her religious organization or receive a tax-free annual payment to buy or rent a home if the congregation approves.
The Tax Court ruling, made final in March, extends the parsonage allowance to an unlimited number of homes, which may be owned either by the religious organization or the clergy member.
In a 7-6 ruling, a panel of Tax Court judges sided with Mr. Driscoll's argument that the word "home" is equivalent to "homes," just as "child" is interpreted to mean "children" elsewhere in the tax code.
What crap.
According to the report, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, who lead Kenneth Copeland Ministries in Fort Worth, Texas, live in an 18,280 square-foot lakefront parsonage on 25 acres. The report said county officials valued the church-owned property at $6.2 million in 2008.David Middlebrook, a lawyer for Mr. Copeland, says the house is "a wholly owned and appreciating asset of Kenneth Copeland Ministries....The ownership and operation of the parsonage is completely in accordance with IRS rules and regulations."
Mr. Driscoll, who won the Tax Court ruling, leads Mighty Horn Ministries of Greensboro, Ga., which had income of more than $6 million from 2005 to 2009, according to tax filings.
Mighty Horn, indeed. A far cry from the poor parson of literature, and while avoiding the taxes the rest of us pay.
From a comment below the WSJ piece:
Chris Petruzzi replied:
As a tax professor, I am surprised to read this. In addition to their housing allowance, many clergy receive untaxed educational benefits and tax deferred retirement plans. The housing allowance lets clergy who own a home with a mortgage exclude the housing allowance AND simultaneously deduct the mortgage interest as an itemized deduction. Lay taxpayers do not receive comparable benefits.
Somehow, I don't think this is what "the free exercise of religion" is supposed to mean -- pastors living for free while the rest of us pay taxes on our living quarters, and pick up whatever isn't being paid for theirs, thanks to their tax breaks.
Another comment noted that one religious organization had their CFO qualify to be a pastor so he could get the housing break, too.
Two more comments from below the piece:
Pat Galbraith wrote:
Has anybody noticed that we do not have a tax code? We have 66,000 pages of exception, exemption, reward preferred constituency, social engineering code. I can imagine that everything is exempt or taxed depending on what page you read or who reads that page. And you have to know what and where. Not even the IRS can, or will, tell you. When this thing was hatched a century ago, it was a simple system that affected few. Today, it is a (?) that affects everyone the way the governments wants (think controls you) them affected.It's no secret that I'm a FairTax supporter. Repeal the 16th Amendment and ALL other Federal taxes on anyone or anything for any reason. Substitute an end user consumption tax on services and new goods. Except for a "prebate", so that no one would pay taxes up to the poverty level, there would be no exceptions and no exemptions. If the Reverend buys a new Cadillac, he pays the tax. If the Parish buys him a new Cadillac, same tax. If they choose to buy him a good used Cadillac - it's used, no tax.
The problem with our tax "code" is the power. That is what has to be reined in.
And:
Duncan McLellan wrote:
As "clergy" (not making mid six-figures like the subject of the article, but making enough not to be part of the 50% that pay no Federal Income Taxes), I am still baffled by the tax laws that govern my calling/profession. We can opt out of Social Security and Medicare. We can write off 55% of our gross income as "housing." We can also write off mileage for shut-in calls, hospital calls, even golf outings with parishoners... even the adult beverages we consume at the 19th hole. (I don't; many do.) Some of these deductions are standard fare, but I am aware that there are certain provisions for men of the cloth. As a man of the cloth, I can't for the life of me understand why. This is just one more example of how broken our tax "code" (appropriately named) has become. It makes no sense to be able to double-dip write-offs for housing allowances and multiple mortgages just because you tell people about Jesus.
More here.
Ear Joy: In Memory Of Songwriter Jerry Lieber
Via reason, terrific clip frrom the award-winning documentary, "Playing For Change: Peace Through Music," of the Lieber and Stoller song, "Stand By Me":
Jesse Walker writes at the reason link above:
Say goodnight to the co-author, with Mike Stoller, of some of the best pop songs of the mid-20th century. Leiber and Stoller wrote music for Elvis, the Drifters, the Everly Brothers, and hundreds of other musicians, not to mention every lazy filmmaker who has used the song "Searchin'" to score a scene of a search.
When Fiscal Conservatism Is Also Fiscal Handoutism
Dough is for donate! Nicholas Confessore and Michael Luo write in The New York Times about generous Rick Perry donors who get generous state aid for their businesses and projects:
Two years ago, John McHale, an entrepreneur from Austin, Tex., who has given millions of dollars to Democratic candidates and causes, did something very unusual for him: he wrote a $50,000 check to a Republican candidate, Rick Perry, then seeking a third full term as governor of Texas. In September 2010, he did it again, catapulting himself into the top ranks of Mr. Perry's donors.Mr. McHale, a Perry spokesman said after the initial donation, "understands Governor Perry's leadership has made Texas a good place to do business."
Including, it turned out, for Mr. McHale's business interests and partners. In May 2010 an economic development fund administered by the governor's office handed $3 million to G-Con, a pharmaceutical start-up that Mr. McHale helped get off the ground. At least two other executives with connections to the firm had also given Mr. Perry tens of thousands of dollars.
Mr. Perry leapt into the Republican presidential primary this month preceded by his reputation as a thoroughbred fund-raiser. But a review of Mr. Perry's years in office reveals that one of his most potent fund-raising tools is the very government he heads.
'Pay-to-play culture'
Over three terms in office, Mr. Perry's administration has doled out grants, tax breaks, contracts and appointments to hundreds of his most generous supporters and their businesses. And they have helped Mr. Perry raise more money than any politician in Texas history, donations that have periodically raised eyebrows but, thanks to loose campaign finance laws and a business-friendly political culture dominated in recent years by Republicans, have only fueled Mr. Perry's ascent."Texas politics does have this amazing pay-to-play culture," said Harold Cook, a Democratic political consultant.
Here's Cody Willard on Marketwatch on "Rick Perry loves big government and other true political stories."
Starting Small
A guy named Jason Frisch posted a comment on the WSJ with this line in it:
Besides barry loves the lawyer money almost as much as progressive money.
My comment in response:
I am no fan of this president, nor was I a fan of the last one (a pretend conservative and pretend Small Government guy who lost the veto stamp under his desk early in his presidency).But, calling the president "barry" is like leading with a Hitler joke -- you've lost the argument for immaturity before you've even hit your points.
There's No Phere There
Finally, somebody's come out with an article about the bullshit claims about pheromones. As I've noted before, we lack solid evidence that humans have a working vomeronasal organ, the thingie that would be required to process pheromones and email off little messages to the brain. On Slate, Randi Hutter Epstein goes further in clearing up the ever-present scent of bullshit about pheromones in magazines everywhere:
Last year, Cosmopolitan--another go-to source for medically oriented dating strategies--suggested you go panty-free so that the "odors in your pheromones--that natural chemical you emit that attracts men--may more easily waft into the air to be picked up subliminally by the primitive part of his brain."If only it were so. Pheromones, in scientific parlance, are aromatic chemicals emitted by one member of a species that affect another member of the same species, either by altering its hormones or by compelling it to change its behavior. When they work, they are truly bewitching. For instance, when a female silkworm moth wants to get her guy, she sprays a chemical called bombykol from her abdominal gland and her targeted male transforms into a sex slave, trailing the scent until he mounts her. It's an enviable feat. Still, it's a big leap to extrapolate from bugs to people--or even to lab mice, for that matter. No scientific study has ever proven conclusively that mammals have pheromones.
...the few human studies on the topic have tried to determine whether male volunteers wearing surgical masks coated with lab-made copulins were more aroused by photos of women than were volunteers wearing placebo-coated masks. They weren't.
The other so-called human pheromone that shows up in body care products is androstenedione, a chemical found in sweat. Androstenedione has been making the media rounds for years. Initial research in the early 1990s suggested that women were aroused by its musky smell, but later studies complicated that notion. One famous study from 1995--in which women were asked to sniff a bunch of sweaty T-shirts and choose the one they found most appealing--suggested that it wasn't the chemical itself that attracted women, but the way it mixed with a man's genes. (The women tended to choose T-shirts from men whose immune systems were most different from their own, suggesting that humans have an innate smell-based system to avoid mating with siblings.)
In 2007, astrostenedione's reputation as a scientific seduction tool should have crumbled even further: That's when Andreas Keller, a geneticist at Rockefeller University, discovered (subscription required) that, depending on the particular variation of the olfactory gene OR7D4 you possess, you may find androstenedione pleasantly floral, you may find it utterly repulsive, or you may not be able to smell it at all.
A true human pheromone would have universal appeal across the species. But the latest research on olfaction hints that our smell systems are much more individualized than we ever imagined. Scientists now estimate that humans have roughly 350 working olfactory genes, which may vary from person to person. Considering that spread, the idea of a truly effective bottled aphrodisiac seems silly--or as Rachel Herz, a Brown University psychologist and author of The Scent of Desire, calls it, a "commercial fantasy."
The Shores Of Tripoli
Damien McElroy surveys post-Gaddafi Libya for the Telegraph/UK:
Mohammad al-Bari, a former Libyan ambassador to Switzerland, had ventured out to a street corner after his nephew in America called to ask him to pick up some souvenirs. He had three large-calibre brass bullet casings in his hands.Mr Bari, who retired in the 2007, said the uprising against Col Gaddafi was long overdue. "I had seen this coming. It should have happened in the 1980s but Gaddafi had the security to prevent it. I met him several times and he has a very cruel heart. He could hang on even as the people's anger rose and rose."
As the battles rolled only Green Square, now popularly known as Martyrs Square, had a morning after feeling. Shreds of Gaddafi posters blew in the wind. A few hardy spectators who had not ventured out the night before stood in its Italianate colonnades.
They were free spoken in their condemnation of Col Gaddafi. "Game over," said Abdullah Mohammad, a retired banker. "Its 99 per cent over but whatever happens he's finished."Two weeks ago men and women spoke in riddles when asked about the situation facing the country. Now every circumstance offered an opportunity to condemn the man who been the revolutionary "guide" of the nation since 1969.
...A rebel flag hung over the space that Col Gaddafi sat under to take the salute at the military parade to mark his September 1 coup.
The idea that Col Gaddafi was trapped underground was also rich with irony, he said.
"He called us rats, accused us of using drugs and being fanatical Muslims. Now he is underground scurrying for his life and we, the good people, are going to do our best to build a modern country open to the world."
We'll see. Modern or Muslim Brotherhood? Predictions?
*The title of this blog post comes from the song, which comes from the war -- the U.S. versus the Barbary Pirates:
The First Barbary War (1801-5), also known as the Barbary Coast War or the Tripolitan War, was the first of two wars fought between the United States and the North African Berber Muslim states known collectively as the Barbary States. These included the quasi-independent Sultanates in the middle and western coastal regions of North Africa--what is now Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.
Obama's War Against Secret Ballots: Privacy Doesn't Serve The Politician
Clint Bolick writes at IBD about the Obama admin's pressure for open voting ("card check") to replace the secret balloting to decide whether to unionize:
The Obama administration has fired its opening salvo against a cornerstone of democracy: the right to secret ballot.Last fall, voters in four states voted overwhelmingly to amend their constitutions to protect the right of workers to vote by secret ballot in deciding whether or not to form unions. That right has been enshrined in federal law for 75 years but is threatened by bills pending in Congress.
Nonetheless, the Obama National Labor Relations Board has filed a lawsuit against Arizona seeking to halt its protection of the right to secret ballot. Federal law governs labor relations, the NLRB asserts, and states cannot provide greater security for worker rights.
Why is the Obama administration taking such a profoundly anti-democratic position? The answer is simple: It's pay-off time for the massive labor union support Barack Obama received in the 2008 election.
I Think, Therefore I Zip
Scooter, Santa Monica.
Have You ENRICHED Your Kid Today?
Samantha Bee writes in the WSJ:
I am a child of the 1970s. What that means, in short, is that my childhood summer vacations were spent languishing in front of the TV watching Phil Donahue and eating Boo Berry until my skin turned purple. Nobody cared if I read. Nobody cared if I wore sunscreen, or pants. I was like a house cat; my parents barely even knew if I was still living with them or whether I had moved in with the old lady down the street who would put out a bowl of food for me. In the '70s, parenting was like a combination of intense crate-training and rumspringa, so I would typically spend June through September burnt to a crisp and wandering listlessly around the city, verging on scurvy.Thus, this emphasis on summer enrichment activities and exercise and fresh air and learning today feels unfamiliar to me. What ever happened to letting kids' IQs backslide for three months, all the way back to March? I can't be the only one who wants to sit on a lawn chair parked in a kiddie pool all day while my children gently splash me with cool water, can I? I mean, isn't it good for the brain to "cocoon" or something, to spin itself into some kind of intellectual chrysalis--to "hibernate" for a few months so that it can get hungry again and mate in the fall? That is a proven fact from a scientific study that I just conducted in my brain. (I know, it's practically unbelievable that I have had no formal training in science.)
...I just don't have any more energy to dig in and renovate my children into super-intelligent reading cyborgs for the first day of school. I can't do any more rainy day activities with dry oatmeal in a cardboard box. I simply will not sing the "Fruit Salad Salsa" even one more time; if the children can't get behind Neil Young that's their problem until school starts up again. And my stern warnings have become completely senseless; "I'm warning you--if you don't eat all your Gummy Worms you're not getting any Sour Patch Kids! I am tired of wasting all this good candy!"
Frankly, from now until September the only learning we will be engaging in will be movie-based. I plan to let them watch "Star Wars," and will continue to play it in a constant loop until they can imaginatively explain to me what it might feel like to "make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs." It's all I can do to stave off the pandemonium that could be.
The End Of Civilization
Kim Kardashian: Her father was O.J.'s lawyer, and then she made a porn tape. She has over nine million followers on Twitter, and now she's just sold her wedding photos for $1.5 million.
(Used to be you'd have to jump a motorcycle over a bunch of large objects to be famous.)
The Islamists, A Decade After 9/11
George Jonas writes in Canada's National Post that the Islamists still have the upper hand:
As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, the Islamist enemy, far from being annihilated or discredited, let alone ground into the dust, is alive and kicking. Some of its heads have been cut off, including one named Osama bin Laden that stuck out its hideous neck more than the others, but like the monster Hydra of Greek mythology, Islamism continues to grow new ones. Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists managed to launch other urban attacks after 9/11 in London, Madrid, Moscow and Mumbai, even if on a smaller scale. The Taliban hasn't only fought the Western coalition to a standstill in Afghanistan, but seems on the verge of taking the country over again. Nation-building, a hit in post-war Japan, Italy and (West) Germany, is a flop in Mesopotamia and the Hindu Kush.As we reach the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, terrorists seem to have the upper hand. They make us practise defensive stripping at airports from Brussels to Seattle. Far from retreating, the Islamists are boldly developing nuclear capability in Iran, a country they own, while manoeuvring to take over countries that already have nuclear weapons, such as Pakistan, or strong military traditions, such as Turkey.
If this isn't enough of a witch's brew, add a dash of the unfathomable "Arab Spring" that may yet result in the replacement of nasty tyrants with even nastier ones who despise us in addition to despising their own people; then throw in a feeble democracy flopping about like a fish on dry land in Iraq, and that's what the West has to show for 10 years of continuous warfare, thousands of casualties and a ballast of billions about to capsize the world's economy.
With this track record, far from being able to export our institutions, our previously exported institutions are losing their grip. As the American commentator Clifford D. May has observed, the Islamists of ostensibly Westernized Turkey are "positioning Turkey as a contender for leadership of the Muslim world, making it both an ally and a rival of Arabs and Persians eager for the same role."
Ten years of war after 9/11 has made us sponsors of a competition among would-be Caliphs. As impresarios of resurgent Islam, we're doing a great job.
Commenter "Archie Bunker" points out below the piece:
You did not mention a very important point, which made news headlines a few days ago. An international poll just recently conducted found that the majority of the world's Muslims do not believe that Muslims were responsible for 911. They believe that Israel and the US government set the whole thing up as part of a secret war against Islam. If this does not indicate a serious problem, I don't know what does. We have a vast global population of brain-washed, ignorant people who think like sheep, and who would like to see Israel and its biggest supporter, America, destroyed in order to see Islam become the dominant power in the world. Iran is actively developing nuclear weapons. One nuclear bomb on Israel would be a total catastrophe for the world. Even if Iran was destroyed in retaliation, they would have fulfilled Ayotollah Khomeni's famous saying, "Better that Iran become a smoking ruin if it advances the cause of Islam around the world." These are the insane enemies we face.
"Appetizing Vaginas": Oh, The Promises For Muslim Men In Heaven
Wacky shit isn't the half of it (subtitles seem to have been done by a drunk person):
PlancksConstant writes that he is an atheist but muses that he might be tempted to go Muslim on the slight chance that their version of the afterlife is true.
Of course, he says he'd only do it if he didn't have to do all the other "Muslimy things," like wife-beating, adulterer-stoning, unbeliever-beheading, etc.
About those promises about what Muslims will encounter in Paradise, he writes:
Now some modern Islamic scholars try to squirm away from the 72 virgin view of the Islamic after-life by explaining that the word houri actually means white-raisins not virgin maidens. Now I know that white raisins 1400 years ago might have been a real delight, but I ask you, do you really believe Mohammed thought he could persuade his soldiers to die in Jihad with an enticement of white raisins?To counter that ridiculous notion, consider Abu al-Fadl 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr, Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (1445-1505 AD), an Egyptian writer, religious scholar, juristic expert and teacher whose works deal with a wide variety of subjects in Islamic theology [Wikipedia]. This is how he saw Paradise:
Each time we sleep with a Houri we find her virgin. Besides, the penis of the Elected never softens. The erection is eternal; the sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious and out of this world and were you to experience it in this world you would faint. Each chosen one [i.e. Muslim] will marry seventy [sic] houris, besides the women he married on earth, and all will have appetizing vaginas.Hmmm, appetizing vaginas - I will never be able to see a sign for cleaning Persian carpets without thinking about that passage.
Points For Honesty!
Do You Long To Be A Puppet Master?
Robert Heinlein quote:
"Political tags -- such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth -- are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort."
via Instapundit
I See Rude Tweeple
What compels people to reach out and slug someone?
A guy fake-named George Halas, tweeting under @bearswin11, tweeted this to Gary Shandling:
@bearswin11 @GarryShandling You are so dull and boring! Your tweets are as entertaining as watching a dog crap in a park. (cont) tl.gd/chkdb4
You find somebody unfunny? Unfollow them.
Of course, it's always easier to take potshots at some famous person if you do it in some dead guy's name instead of your own. As I wrote in I See Rude People:
In the early days of blogs, I sometimes would comment anonymously, but I stopped. It's just too easy to tuck in a low blow. These days, if I'm going to comment on a blog or website, I do it in my own full name. If I won't say something to a person's face, I won't say it about them on the Web.I do understand that not everybody is as free as I am to slap their name on their opinions, perhaps due to a job or family situation. If, for some reason, you aren't able to post comments in your real name, first and last, can't you at least post as if you are?
Benevolence Without Benefit: Why Benevolence Can Backfire
Kyle Smith reviews the late philosopher David Stove's book for The New York Post. Stove calls benevolence "the heroin of the enlightened":
Stove, an Australian whose posthumously published works have gained increasing notice in recent years, is the author of "Whats Wrong with Benevolence: Happiness, Private Property, and the Limits of Enlightenment." Released for the first time, this book-length essay is his final major work. "The whole of economic history since 1789," he writes, "testifies that, the more extravagantly you indulge your benevolence, the more extravagant still will your next indulgence of it need to be."Stove took his own life in 1994 while suffering from terminal cancer, so he never considered Barack Obama. But if he were alive today he would place Obama in the camp of those political thinkers driven by Enlightenment notions about benevolence -- John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, even Karl Marx. All of these men -- and even, Stove argues, Joseph Stalin -- thirsted to improve the lot of humanity. "Stalin had certain false beliefs, of course, about what would increase human happiness, especially the belief that community of property would bring about an immense increase of happiness," Stove writes, "but then, as we have seen, this belief had been shared for nearly two hundred years by very many of the most Enlightened and benevolent people of Europe. (It still is.)"
What's wrong with benevolence? Nothing, in most cases. Those who help their neighbor rightly take satisfaction in it. But Stove says that when three factors are present, benevolence starts to look scary. These factors are universality (I want to save the world), disinterestedness (I stand to gain nothing as I save the world) and externality (I make no demands that those I help change their attitude or behavior; I simply propose to change circumstances such as how much money or access to health care they have).
...Just as virtue is its own reward, Enlightenment benevolence is its own payoff; no successful result ever needs to be shown. And if benevolence does the opposite of what it is supposed to do, that evidence is simply ignored
Understanding Evolution
Great little short narrated by Carl Sagan that explains the details:
American Hikers Convicted In Iran: Should Have Known Better
They were sentenced to eight years -- two of which they've already served. Background here.
They most likely aren't spies, and most likely were just hiking.
But, like the nitwit journalists who got captured by the North Koreans, they were playing with fire.
If you know anything about countries like Iran and North Korea, you know that they don't play fair, and the notion that something like this could happen is not at all wild thinking.
Come on, people: Hike the Appalachian trail, not the one near the border of a country with a nutbag dictator.
And just wondering: How many millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on the North Korean affair and this one?
Asshole Of The Day
Grammar nut writes me about my reply to his previous email:
Thank you for your prompt response. I shall not rectify your errors therein.
I wrote him in response to an email he sent me criticizing the use of "on" in a headline over my column in a daily paper. I responded that copyeditors write the headlines in daily papers, and I had nothing to do with it.
Meanwhile, the guy writes in bold red type with black and yellow highlighting -- not exactly easy on the eyes. When I wrote him that although I didn't write the headline, I generally go with what's colloquial over what's perfectly correct.
I quoted Elmore Leonard from his "10 Rules of Writing":
"If proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go."
The guy wrote back (again, in bold, red type with black and yellow highlighting where I've boldfaced bits of words, and with no paragraph separations between sentences in this block of text):
Thank you for your prompt response. I shall not rectify your errors therein; however, Leonard's completely-wrong assertion disproves itself because, of course, contextually, the verb is not, "may", but, "might"! "May" indicates permission; the contextually-requisite, "might", indicates possibility! Consider the comprehensive difference between a judge telling a defendant that, "You may leave the courtroom" -- thereby giving him permission to do so -- and, "You might leave the courtroom" -- indicating that there is a possibility of leaving if the defendant fulfills certain conditions and/or is deemed, "innocent"! Continually-Comprehensively-Correctly, Dr. (NAME REMOVED, along with his embarrassing, self-aggrandizing nickname for himself)
I sense that he's an old guy and I feel a little sorry for anybody who has such an apparent need to be superior that they send out emails like this or even think of correcting somebody's email and sending it back to them.
By the way, my copy editor, Super Dave (my nickname for him) knows every grammar rule there is, but he also knows that I want to be readable. A correction from Super Dave notes what would be right, but often notes that I'll probably want to go with the colloquial...which I usually do.
Again, I write to be read. I'm not 20 and insecure, so I don't need to have perfect grammar -- if imperfect grammar seems to be more readable or have better rhythm. For example, I'll often use "if" when I know "whether" is correct. "If" sometimes just sounds better.
And I'm not going to write you an email in bold red type with weird highlighting, because it's going to be hard on the eye, and I care about whether you're going to find it easy to read.
UPDATE: It gets better! The guy wrote back and corrected the response I dashed off to him. Here's a screenshot of his email:
This was my pre-correction response to him:
You've got to be a lot of fun at a dinner party. And Leonard writes collloquially, to be readable, not to show off his grammar. My copy editor, Super Dave (my nickname for him) knows every grammar rule there is, but he also knows that I want to be readable. You criticized me for something and then when you learned from me that a copy editor wrote the headline, wrote nothing about that in response. No "Sorry, didn't know that," nothing. Your rigidity and smugness in hammering people with grammar rules is similar to how I behaved in my early 20s (because I was insecure). And you continue to write in red, in bold, despite the fact that I mentioned that it is hard to read." I shall not rectify your errors therein;"
A person who copyedits an email...or even thinks of it...is a person who has a desperate need to show superiority over other people, which is a trait that often comes from narcissistic personality disorder.
Sad that you're a grown adult who feels the need to do this.
Everybody Hates Ron Paul
Tom Knighton blogs at United Liberty about why:
The truth is that Paul doesn't fit neatly into anyone's box. The left doesn't love him because he has ideas about gold, killing the Fed, and free markets in general. The right doesn't like him because he wants to legalize drugs and end the wars. He's not on anyone's Christmas card list if you look at things from a right/left standpoint.However, most people aren't left or right. They're something else.
The media is shutting Paul out because they don't see him as a viable candidate. Of course, it's not really their place to determine who is a viable candidate, now is it? That's for the American people to decide.
As I tweeted while listening to the debates, he sounds like the old man with the long white beard and the big wooden staff muttering outside the coffee shop. Other than that, he's extremely presidential and should have no problem getting elected.
Oh, and post three words about Ron Paul and six people will tweet you that he's a Jew-hater, Israel-hater, blah blah blah blah. He calls for an end to ALL foreign aid, which I'm all for, and for letting the Israelis and the Arabs solve their own problems.
The Republican Jewish Congress was upset about this stuff below, writes J.J. Goldberg in the Jewish Daily Forward:
The RJC statement itemizes four specific statements and actions by Paul to back up its claim of hostility to Israel: He "likened Israel's defensive blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza to 'a concentration camp'" ("Imus in the Morning" interview, 6/3/2010); "proposed an amendment to unilaterally cancel U.S. assistance to Israel" (Politico, 2/16/11); "was one of just 8 House members to vote against sanctions on Iran" (Govtrack.us rollcall report, 6/24/2010)); and he "published newsletters that included 'rants against the Israeli lobby'" (CNN interview, 1/8/2008). The newsletters appeared in the 1990s between stints in Congress.
Goldberg clarifies Paul's positions in his piece at the link above.
Roger Simon doesn't quite get Ron Paul, but he writes at Politico that he understands when a guy is getting shafted, and Paul is getting shafted:
As The Daily Beast put it: "The new top tier of Bachmann, Perry, and Romney -- created by Bachmann's Iowa straw poll win, Perry's entry into the race and Romney's lead so far in many national and state polls -- has unleashed torrents of talk about the reshaped race."Paul's name was not mentioned in this piece nor in many others. A Wall Street Journal editorial Monday magnanimously granted Paul's showing in the straw poll a parenthetical dismissal: "(Libertarian Ron Paul, who has no chance to win the nomination, finished a close second.)"
But "close" does not fully describe Paul's second-place finish. Paul lost to Bachmann by nine-tenths of one percentage point, or 152 votes out of 16,892 cast.
If it had been an election, such a result would almost certainly have triggered a recount. It was not an election, however, and that is my point. Straw polls are supposed to tell us, like a straw tossed into the air, which way the wind is blowing.
And any fair assessment of Ames, therefore, would have said the winds of the Republican Party are blowing toward both Bachmann and Paul.
Glib Is A No Go If You're President
President Obama got all cute with an Illinois farmer at a town hall meeting who said he was worried about about "more rules and regulations" (on things like dust, noise, and water runoff) that he'd heard would negatively affect his business.
MJ Lee writes on Politico:
The president, on day three of his Midwest bus tour, replied: "If you hear something is happening, but it hasn't happened, don't always believe what you hear."When the room broke into soft laughter, the president added, "No -- and I'm serious about that."
Saying that "folks in Washington" like to get "all ginned up" about things that aren't necessarily happening ("Look what's comin' down the pipe!"), Obama's advice was simple: "Contact USDA."
"Talk to them directly. Find out what it is that you're concerned about," Obama told the man. "My suspicion is, a lot of times, they're going to be able to answer your questions and it will turn out that some of your fears are unfounded."
Call Uncle Sam. Sensible advice, but perhaps the president has forgotten just how difficult it can be for ordinary citizens to get answers from the government.
When this POLITICO reporter decided to take the president's advice and call the USDA for an answer to the Atkinson town hall attendee's question, I found myself in a bureaucratic equivalent of hot potato -- getting bounced from the feds to Illinois state agriculture officials to the state farm bureau.
Rundown of the calls at the link.
Memo to Obama: Bureaucracy doesn't melt like butter for those of us who aren't sitting in the Oval Office while someone dials our calls for us.
On a related note, here, from Evil HR Lady Suzanne Lucas, are laws that could be eliminated to increase jobs.
"G" Is For "Genius"
Those who have it are probably not going to go to work for the "G" is for "Government."
Now, unless somebody was pulling a Wi-funny at just the time this Columbine killer wanna-be was working out his plot to off his schoolmates, it seems some geniuses in the employ of the FBI may have named their surveillance van's Wifi network...no, not "Achmed's Carpet Cleaning," but "FBI SURVEILLANCE VAN."
Adrian Chien of Gawker blogged:
17-year-old Florida resident Jared Cano was arrested Tuesday for attempting to blow up his high school. It's a generally disturbing story, but one bizarre detail in particular made my hair stand on end. Two days before he was arrested Cano posted on his Facebook that his friend had tried to connect to a wireless network and spied a wifi network named "FBI_SURVEILLANCE_VAN."
Yard Sale By Cancer Victim Shut Down By City
Susannah Kim writes for ABC that Salem, Oregon shut down the yard sale of a woman selling her personal belongings to pay her medical bills, and told her she could be liable for a $380 fine or jail time:
The reason? A city ordinance limits a home to hosting a yard sale three times a year, as first reported by ABC affiliate KATU.Jan Cline, 64, said she did not know such a law existed. She thought she was being unobtrusive by hosting the yard sale in the backyard, but a city code enforcement officer on Monday came to inform her that a neighbor had complained and she was breaking the law.
Cline, who was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer on July 1, has been unable to run her two businesses, an educational toy company and a limousine service. But after being devastated by the diagnosis of the disease, which can be terminal, she thought a yard sale would temporarily help her pay for medical bills and house payments while she is a near-invalid. Meanwhile she is staying in the home of a friend to avoid walking up and down her stairway.
..."I'm not a drug dealer. I'm not parking broken cars on the street," Cline said. "I'm a business woman who contributes to the society without trying to take money from anybody. You're telling me I can't sell my own belongings in someone's own private backyard."
Cline said she is looking forward to surviving the "aggressive" treatment she is undergoing so she can get back to work and have an income. She said doctors have told her she has a 93 percent chance of remission when the treatment ends in late October, and she could stay in remission for five to 15 years.
What Is Strategy?
Another smart column by Virginia Postrel on Bloomberg, reporting on "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters," a new book by Richard P. Rumelt, a strategy professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management:
Strategy is not what many people think it is. It is not a fill-in-the-blanks mission statement blathering about how XYZ Corp. will ethically serve its stakeholders by implementing best-in-class integrated sustainable practices to grow as a global leader while maximizing shareholder value. Such bafflegab is "Dilbert"-fodder that generates cynicism and contempt. It is, at best, a big waste of time.Neither is strategy a declaration that the ABC Co. will increase sales by 20 percent a year for the next five years, with a profit margin of at least 20 percent. Strategy is not the resolve to hunker down and try harder -- what Kenichi Ohmae of McKinsey criticized in a 1989 Harvard Business Review article as "do more better." Effort is not strategy. Neither are financial projections. And neither are wishes.
A strategy "is a way of dealing with a high-stakes challenge," Rumelt told me in an interview. "It's a way around the obstacles or problems in a difficult situation."
Every good strategy, he writes, includes what he calls the kernel: a "diagnosis" of the challenge ("What's going on here?"), a "guiding policy" for dealing with that challenge (the core idea often called a strategy), and a set of "coherent actions" to carry out that policy (the implementation).For his friend Stephanie's corner grocery, Rumelt writes, the diagnosis was competition from a large 24-hour supermarket, the guiding policy was "to serve the busy professional who has little time to cook," and the coherent actions included stocking more prepared meals and opening an extra checkout stand at 5:00 p.m.
This strategy not only told Stephanie what to do but what she had to stop doing. Selling more prepared meals meant taking space away from the munchies for her many student customers. To focus labor expenses on the peak times for her professional customers, she closed earlier, meaning no sales from late-night study breaks. "Strategy is scarcity's child and to have a strategy, rather than vague aspirations, is to choose one path and eschew others," writes Rumelt.
The Wiener's Circle
"If it weren't for all the yelling, they'd just be working at a hot dog stand." Hot dog with verbal abuse (NSFW if your workplace doesn't allow words like "bitch" and "motherfucker"):
via @MLeeWelch @busblog
No, No They Don't
Another annoying piece in the LA Times on how we should give handouts to illegals -- instead of just deporting them, as any other country would do. (Except maybe Mexico, where being an illegal alien will get you jail time.)
There's an op-ed by Elena T. Reigadas, "Legal or not, these students deserve a chance: Those of us who work in higher education see firsthand the predicament of our undocumented students." She writes:
The majority of my undocumented students were brought to this country as young children. They played no part in their parents' decision to immigrate to the United States. They are what psychologist Celia Falicov calls "reluctant immigrants." Some were so young when they immigrated that they believed that they were born here. Many do not discover this hidden aspect of their identity until high school or later. Many don't speak their native languages; others are bilingual and speak flawless English.
Unfortunate, but we shouldn't reward illegal immigration with citizenship and prizes.
I want to be able to tell the next student who comes to my office to reveal his or her secret identity that there is no need to close the door, and that the dream of citizenship will soon be a reality. Offering a clear path to the legalization of our undocumented students is no longer just a political issue; it is also about individual human rights and the best use of our human capital for the benefit of society as a whole.
How is this fair to people who have come here legally and gone through the stress of applying for citizenship, green cards, and the like? I'm for allowing talented people into the country, but you shouldn't get citizenship because you broke the law and you've been here. (A sort of citizenship squatter's rights.)
Two comments on the LA Times' site that echo what I wrote above:
Beast_SPQR at 7:19 AM August 19, 2011Dear Elena,
I came here legally, I do not appreciate you suggesting that those who didn't bother to wait should get priority over those who are trying to do it the right way.
No other country on this planet has such weak immigration laws and enforcement.
Beast_SPQR at 7:11 AM August 19, 2011Dear Elena,
I want you to mentor me, since you mentor your students, let me tell you my story...
I came here legally, I followed the rules, and did what was asked of me. I didn't break any laws, learned English, and EARNED my citizenship.Can you tell me why, these people, should be allowed to jump of all of those in line, who want to do it the right way ?
I also want you to tell me, what should happen to those who aren't considered "the best and brightest"? Will they be deported ? Will they remain illegal ?
I, like MILLIONS of others before me, were legalized the right way, and I do not appreciate you trying to pull the rug from underneath me.
By the way - no is undocumented. Documents are EARNED, and getting passed our Border Patrol nor is overstaying a Visa the criteria for those documents.
Milton Friedman noted that we can't have open immigration in a welfare state. How many of these students do you think squeezed out a legal American, and how many do you think got financial aid using a fake Social Security number and fake documents?
Hierarchy Of Knees
Knees locked together, that is. Commenter Lizzie (commenting on another commenter's "Sex is not essential" below my column Booty Rest), nails it:
I'm curious; how many men have you ever heard utter those words?
How Groupon Is Bad For Small Businesses
Corey Pein writes for Willamette Week about how Groupon worked for Ethan Powell and Tobias Hogan, two restaurant workers who opened a seafood place called EaT in Portland:
Groupon sells vouchers for deep discounts at restaurants, stores, spas and countless other businesses. The businesses agree to honor the vouchers--and risk losing money on the deal--hoping to draw new customers.Groupon sent out tens of thousands of "daily deals" by email offering $25 worth of seafood at EaT for anyone willing to pay Groupon $12 for a voucher.
Within hours, Groupon had sold 1,544 of the EaT vouchers. And Powell and Hogan were committed to serving that many meals, each at a big discount, in hopes they could attract far more business.
Indeed, they were swamped. "We probably made money," Powell says. "And we still wouldn't do it again because it was such a nightmare."
"It was," Hogan adds, "absolutely horrible."
Swarms of first-time customers (most of whom never came back again) crowded out, undercut and alienated their regulars who were paying full price. Servers got stiffed on tips. Powell even had a Groupon thrown in his face by a customer after he declined to let the man redeem the same gift certificate twice.
For everyone else, Groupon worked exactly as planned--the diners got a great deal, and Groupon (which often pockets half of the voucher's price) walked away with an estimated $9,200 for doing little more than sending out emails. In all, Groupon is on track to collect $2 million from Portland businesses this year, based on WW's estimate of Groupon's likely share of its Portland business.
UPDATE: From Gawker, "Groupon Is Kinda Insolvent."
"Never Letcha Go": Cavanaugh On The NYT And Keynes
And how The New York Times clings like a kid to a dirty, one-eyed teddy bear to the notion that Keynesian ec works. Tim Cavanaugh writes in reason:
In a business column, It's a Wonderful Life star James Stewart compares 2011 with 1938, briefly debating whether Depression-era stimulus saved the economy or would have saved the economy if it were larger. Stewart ultimately decides that Franklin Roosevelt's spending cuts (prompted, naturally, by "strident calls" from Republican dead-enders) doomed a nascent recovery. Humorously, Stewart quotes disgraced former CEA head Christina Romer's two-year-old warning against "the urge to declare victory"--leaving readers to puzzle over what economic policy from 2009 could possibly have been considered a victory....And in a front-page "News Analysis" (praise Allah we can still count on those!), reporter Jackie Calmes warns that despite the "boasts of Republicans" who may or may not have mildly slowed the growth of federal spending during the debt-ceiling compromise, "well-known economists, financial analysts and corporate leaders, including some Republicans...are expressing increasing alarm about Washington's new austerity." Not to be outdone by Stewart's citation of the career-dead Romer, Calmes brings in an actual corpse: cadaverous former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, whose panicked, catastrophic response to 2008's years-overdue financial correction should have disqualified him from commenting on anything more complicated than the Peterson Field Guide to Birds.
...At no point did anybody ask the questions the rest of us have had to contend with for more than three years now:
Is it possible that the choice between budget-balancing and job creation is a false choice?
Does government actually create jobs?
Is there any reason to believe at least $2 trillion in fiscal stimulus and $2.9 trillion in monetary stimulus since 2008 have made a positive difference in the economy--especially considering that most economic indicators are worse than the worst-case scenarios that were made public when those spending decisions were approved?
How does a deal that contains no actual cuts, adds to an existing $14 trillion pile of public debt, and preserves spending for cowboy poetry qualify as an "austerity" budget?
And how many times can the Keynesian consensus fail the test of outcomes before it goes away for good?
Andy Dick Forgot To Call For Howard Stern's Beheading And Tongue-Removal
There's a death threat out from the Muslim world against David Letterman, but here in civilization, upset assholes just spew anti-Semitic slurs -- they don't call for their Dark Ages brethren to go hack out the tongue of the person who's offended them.
Take Andy Dick. Jake Weinraub writes at The Wrap that Dick (aptly named!) called Howard Stern a "shallow, money-grubbing Jew," "a big fat hook nose," and "miserly":
Dick claims he still hasn't been paid for "The S*** Show," a program he has hosted for several years on Stern's Sirius Radio channel, Howard 101, starting in 2006"For two years I did the show and never got paid," the comedian complained.
Stern shot back after a caller informed him of Dick's rant, saying that Dick's career has been dotted with antisemitism.
"So good, Andy's true colors come out. I'm not surprised by it, I'm used to it. It's just typical," Stern said.
"Andy's run out of friends," Stern added. "You're not getting paid a dime because your show sucks, ass-wipe ... Stop blaming the world for your problems Make yourself valuable, stop looking for the handouts [instead of] waiting for the Jew to give [you] a job."
Dick is no stranger to prejudice -- the comedian was forced to apologize for using the N-word during a 2006 comedy show in Los Angeles.
James Hibberd writes on InsideTV/EW.com about the death threat against Letterman:
According to the SITE Intelligence Group, a private company that tracks extremist websites, a commenter called on Muslims to kill the CBS late-night host after taking offense at a joke made on the program. A poster calling himself Umar al-Basrawi wrote: "Is there not amongst you a Sayyid Nosair al-Masri (may Allah release him) to cut the tongue of this lowly Jew and shut it forever. Just as Sayyid (may Allah release him) did with the Jew Kahane."...Letterman (who, by the way, is not Jewish) apparently mocked the death of accused terrorist leader Ilyas Kashmiri, who was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Pakistan in June. The poster said Letterman put a hand to his neck and demonstrated the "way of slaughter." "He showed his evil nature and deep hatred for Islam and Muslims, and said that Ilyas Kashmiri was killed and he joined bin Laden," he wrote. "We ask Allah to paralyze his tongue and grant the sincere monotheists his neck."
Here's Letterman's Top 10: Signs Al Qaeda Is Running Out Of Money, like "4. Reducing afterlife payment to 71 virgins":
Richard Landes explains Islam's honor-shame culture in the Telegraph/UK:
In an honour culture, it is legitimate, expected, even required to shed blood for the sake of honour, to save face, to redeem the dishonoured face. Public criticism is an assault on the very "face" of the person criticised. Thus, people in such cultures are careful to be "polite"; and a genuinely free press is impossible, no matter what the laws proclaim.Modernity, however, is based on a free public discussion, on civility rather than politeness, but the benefits of this public self-criticism - sharp learning curves, advances in science and technology, economic development, democracy - make that pain worthwhile.
But such a system represents a crucible of humiliation for alpha males, especially those who believe that the social order depends on the honour of ruling elite, like the anti-Dreyfusards around 1900, ready to sacrifice a single man for the honour of Army and Church.
This is particularly true for Islamic religious culture. In Dar al Islam, a Muslim's contradiction/criticism of Islam was punishable by death, a fortiori did this hold true for infidels. Modernity has been a Nakba (psychological catastrophe) for Islam, and Islam in all its variegated currents has yet to successfully negotiate these demands of modernity.
On the contrary, the loudest voices in contemporary Islam reject vehemently the kind of self-criticism modernity requires. Criticism constitutes an unbearable assault on the manhood of Muslims.Indeed, global Jihad and the apocalyptic prophets who nourish it with genocidal rhetoric, represent a particularly virulent form of abreactive modernity, in which the powers of modern society (especially technology) are turned to the task of destroying a modern culture of public, free debate about what is fair.
Secularism demands more maturity, it requires that religions be civil, that they not use force (the state) to impose their beliefs on others. Religious communities have to give up their need to be visibly superior as a sign of being right/true. This involves high levels of both self-confidence and tolerance for public contradiction.
More on Landes' blog:
Contemporary manifestations of Islamic revival tend to handle the infidel "other" poorly. Whether religiously motivated (Islamist locales like Gaza), or culturally (tribal/religious locales like Iraq), minorities are physically imperiled throughout the world where Muslims are the majority. This includes expanding enclaves in Europe, the famous zones urbaines sensibles, where the state's writ no longer runs.Thus, Islam's - Muslims - relationship with the "other" (kufr, infidel, lit. one who covers [the truth]), is the great problem to resolve in this coming generation, and at the heart of that problem lies the ability of Muslims to tolerate criticism from outsiders.
We in the modern (and post-modern) West, who first forged these remarkable rules of self-restraint and created so rich, so variegated, so tolerant a culture, have a right to demand that Islam renounce these principles of coercion, certainly those who live in and benefit from the civil polities we have created. Indeed, if we treasure these values of tolerance, and freedom, and generosity towards the "other," we owe it to ourselves and to the Muslims in our midst, to make this demand. Anything else, including the fantasy that this is not a problem, is cultural suicide.
And yet, so far, we are doing very badly. The West has not figured out how to deal with this problem. In part this is because we avoid it. The proverbial "thin skin" of Muslims to any kind of criticism is proverbial - especially Arab Muslims, to whom modernity has dealt the most painful Nakba, that of Zionism. Much diplomacy, and much public and even academic discourse tacitly acknowledges and tries to find ways to accommodate that cultural reality, to avoid confrontation. When Western positive-sum principles meets Arab zero-sum principles - we do everything we can to "get to yes," win-win, while they have no problem playing by rules in which they can only win, if we lose - we most often lose (Oslo "Peace" Process).
In the last decade (the aughts, '00s) this has gotten much worse: the Muslim public voice has become far more, indeed aggressively, demanding in ways that even in the '90s would have been considered unthinkable; and the Western response has become increasingly dedicated to placating these demands for "respect." In the bruising encounter of Islam with modern demands for public tolerance and public self-criticism, the behavior of the self-identified "progressive" "left" - traditionally the bastion of stinging public criticism of abuse of power, misogyny and belligerence - has been overwhelmingly placatory. Repeatedly they step in - sometimes very aggressively - to prevent anyone (fellow infidels) from saying something that might bruise Muslims feelings. Indeed, they seem more worried about "us" provoking Muslim violence than about exploring the sources Muslim violence. And often they attack those defending democratic principles with a shrill and contemptuous tone that they would never dream of using with Muslims.
Christine O'Donnell Walks Off Piers Morgan
Claimed it was "rude" of him to ask her about gay marriage. Hilarious.
This woman has the demeanor and smarts of an 11-year-old. Depressing that she actually made some headway in politics. Of any kind.
Newsflash: Naive witch lady, you don't get to direct the agenda on TV. You consider yourself lucky that you're well-known enough enough of a whack job to get on to flog your book.
P.S. The Republican Women's Club (where she claimed to have a competing engagement) has a slightly smaller audience than CNN.
Your Religion, On Your Land, Is None Of My Business
I'm an atheist, but I'm also a strong supporter of the First Amendment, and very much of the mind that I don't have the right to tell you what to do on your land, even if I don't think much of the symbol you're putting up.
A New Jersey township is telling a Patrick Racaniello he can't have a cross on his front lawn (he actually stuck it on a tree in front of his house).
Religious expression is a right we're granted under the Constitution, and the Constitution is far more important to protect than the eyes of those who might not agree with the sentiment expressed by the cross (which is what, "Yay, Jesus!"?)
Richard Khavkine writes for the Religion News Service:
Livingston Township officials say Racaniello's display, which he intended as a celebration of Lent, violated an ordinance that generally prohibits postings on a structure, including a tree, "calculated to attract the attention of the public."Advised of the ordinance, Racaniello removed the cross. But he then built a second, much larger cross that he planted on his property just within the township's 10-foot right of way. Racaniello, again facing fines, took down that cross, too.
He also contacted the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, a coalition of conservative Christian lawyers. The alliance told the township it may take the matter to court if officials don't allow Racaniello to put the cross wherever he wants on his property.
"We believe this is private property, and therefore he has a right to engage in this expression," Jonathan Scruggs, a lawyer for the alliance, said in an interview. "We believe that either cross is protected by the First Amendment."
The judicial outcome of this conflict between an Essex County town and an Arizona legal group, scholars say, could go a long way to determine the reach of a 2000 federal land-use law intended to protect religious expression.
I'm not for religion, but if you are for it, I'm all for your religious expression.
The Dependency Culture
This British woman got pregnant as a teenager, and has never worked.
Where's Wendy?
Gregg's friend and mine, Wendy Calhoun, puts on a series at Writers Guild, "Writing In Color." The last one we went to, for "Justified," with Wendy on the panel, was really good, and we went again Tuesday night -- to the same place the thing had taken place before, the Writers Guild Theater on Doheny.
They had a big buffet dinner last time, after the event, and this time it was before. I got us some plates of food, and we ate, and then we kept noticing that Wendy wasn't there, which was odd, since it was her event.
We also noticed that there didn't seem to be a whole lot of "writers of color" there, which seemed odd. Just to confirm that we were there on the right night, I finally asked a woman standing near us if she was there for the "Writing In Color" series. She said, no, it was "Bible Study For Entertainment Professionals."
"You're kidding, right?" I said to her. (How did she know exactly how to mess with big ole atheist me?)
Actually, it was exactly the event. Wendy's event was at the Writers Guild building on Third and Fairfax, and we apparently weren't the only ones who'd made this mistake. Live here long enough, and you start to feel you can just skip reading the invite very closely; you know where to go.
We got to the actual event not long after it started, but it was kind of hilarious: We'd already had dinner and validated free parking.
And in case you don't believe me, here's the evidence:
Other People's Money
Bankrupting America: Can you tell the real government spending from the fake?
Also by the same people, a parody of the "Honey Badger Don't Care" video, "Crazy Washington Honey Badgers":
"Talk about bad-ass...take me shopping!"
via Hot Air
"A Nose Permanently Yoked To The Grindstone..."
Is a nose that's correctly smelling this economy. I write seven days a week; partly because I'm motivated, but also because I need to in this economy, and in light of what's happened to the economy for newspaper writers and writers in general.
I had a vacation -- one week, when Gregg took me to France -- in November. Other than that, if it's Saturday or Sunday, you'll find me at the computer, writing away. Some nitwit, Eric Weiner, writes in the LA Times that we "should" have mandated vacations. In Weiner's words:
Each year we work more and enjoy fewer vacation days than most other industrialized nations.Europeans, by contrast, take their vacations very seriously, as anyone who has ever tried to reach someone, anyone, in Paris in August knows. All European workers are entitled to at least four weeks' vacation. In some countries, like Finland, six weeks is the norm. Europe has brought us plenty of bad ideas -- fascism and man-purses spring to mind -- but les vacances is not one of them.
What about American exceptionalism, you say? Yes, we are exceptional -- exceptionally bad at relaxing, even when we know it is good for us. The U.S., along with Nepal, Suriname and Guyana, is one of only a handful of nations whose workers are not legally guaranteed a minimum number of days off. But our vacation deficit is largely self-inflicted. A recent survey by Expedia, the travel booking company, found that only 38% of Americans use all of their allotted vacation time, leaving an average of three days on the table each year.
This endless toil comes at a price. Time spent at the office -- or, worse, commuting -- is time not available for the activities that researchers consistently find make us happier: communing with family and friends, exercising, enjoying a fine meal, listening to music. A nose permanently yoked to the grindstone is a nose that is unable to smell the flowers or anything else.
His nose forgot to smell the socialist economy in France. And forgot to mention that Europe is going broke, thanks, in large part, to their high-tax/handout economy. A friend of mine in France is out of a job, but when he had one, he paid 65 percent of his income in taxes. Somebody has to pay for those worker months off! It's just not the people who are taking them.
The nitwit continues:
"You would have had the idea that we were calling for the end of the Western civilization," says John de Graaf, founder of Take Back Your Time, an advocacy group fighting for a law that would require employers to give workers a minimum number of paid vacation days.I sympathize with De Graaf but fear he is doomed to fail. Congress can't get the nation's financial house in order. It's not about to mandate vacation time. No, this is something best left to the private sector.
Right. The one that's being taxed and regulated out of business.
Silence Equals Death
But, don't think free speech is so free.
David Michaels tells the story at ThePumpHandle:
In December 2006, the New York Times published a blistering article by reporter Alex Berenson alleging that Lilly withheld from the public information that Zyprexa use increased risk of weight gain and diabetes. The Times article was based on confidential materials released by Dr. David Egilman, who was an expert witness in Zyprexa litigation. Lilly requested that Judge Jack Weinstein order those who have the papers released by Dr. Egilman to return them to the manufacturer and stop disseminating them. Judge Weinstein ruled that Dr. Egilman must return the papers to Eli Lilly, but the jurist made no effort to stop others from disseminating copies of the papers.
Egilman, Clinical Associate Professor at Brown University's Department of Community Health (and public health hero), paid a big price -- $100,000 (and way more than that legal fees) -- to expose what he knew about Zyprexa. He blogs about it here -- "The Truth Is Not Free":
All that is needed for the forces of evil to succeed is for enough good people to remain silent. - Edmund BurkeThe consequences of silence can be devastating. My father spent WWII in a German concentration camp largely as a consequence of silence. In response to the Holocaust, which was facilitated by the silence of a nation, I have devoted much of my professional career to studying and reporting the effects of silence on public health.
Last December, I was subpoenaed for copies of internal documents that I acquired as a consulting witness in litigation against the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. I released all of the documents I had, which made their way to The New York Times and became the basis for four major articles. After the Times stories ran, 30 states subpoenaed documents detailing Lilly's sales, marketing and promotional practices for Zyprexa as part of civil investigations under state consumer protection laws.
I recently reached a settlement with Lilly and agreed to pay the company $100,000. I admitted responsibility for violating the protective order that kept Lilly's documents secret. I admitted that the documents I leaked did not tell the full story about Zyprexa. I did not, however, admit that Lilly's "story" of the drug is based on fact, nor did I admit to any illegal conduct. And notably, although Lilly claims that the stories that ran in the Times did not accurately reflect its marketing practices or its knowledge of Zyprexa's side effects, Lilly has refused to release documents that it claims paint a different picture. Even today, Lilly fights in court to keep those documents secret from the public.
...The silence of Eli Lilly & Company and their doctors about the hazards of Oraflex, a drug they knew caused fatal liver failure, resulted in unnecessary deaths of American patients. Once again, litigation revealed the truth. Lilly pleaded guilty to 25 criminal charges of failing to inform the United States government about adverse reactions to Oraflex and mislabeling the drug.
...When I graduated from medical school, I took an oath to protect the public health. That oath supersedes all other agreements, including those that prevent me from protecting public health by releasing information. My obligation to the health and safety of others is the same as that of a physician who informs the police about a patient who has "in confidence" threatened injury on another. My obligation is the same as that of a pediatrician who "violates" confidentiality to report possible child abuse to the police.
If Lilly has "secret" documents that indicate that its drugs are safe or that their marketing practices were appropriate, they have the right to release them and it is in their interest to do so. Their silence is deafening.
Silence can injure and kill. For public health, the sound of silence is the funeral dirge. I have not and will never play that tune.
All that is needed for the forces of evil to succeed is for enough good people to remain silent.
Egilman is a hero. Imagine all the ruined lives -- and the lives he saved.
Someone I trust, who knows Egilman and me, emailed me. This person, who needs to remain anonymous, wrote:
He told me the cost of defending himself against prosecution was actually more than the settlement, $150,000, so his total monetary cost was $250,000.investigation grew out of his work on Neurontin.
He has access to internal Merck e-mails from 1997 showing the company knew that Vioxx increased cardiovascular risk, two years before the drug was approved (it was withdrawn in 2004 for that reason, after the published data made that conclusion undeniable, although even the earliest trials showed elevated risks). According to some figures, in the 5 years it was on market they made about $11,000,000,000 and paid out under $5,000,000,000 in settlements for the thousands of deaths and heart attacks it caused.
He clarified:
The part I'm not sourced about is the exact profit for Merck and Vioxx (the company doesn't exactly advertise such info), the $11,000,000,000 below being a ballpark guesstimate by outsiders based on what is available.After 6 years delay (every year delay generates interest and investment earnings on the fine money) looks like the FDA fine to Merck is about $950 million...which sounds huge to laypeople until you stack it up against their multibillion dollar profit - and the fine is fully deductible as a business expense! So they might end up with only 5+ billion instead of 6 billion profit.
The New York Times' articles on Zyprexa include this one by Alex Berenson from 2006:
The drug maker Eli Lilly has engaged in a decade-long effort to play down the health risks of Zyprexa, its best-selling medication for schizophrenia, according to hundreds of internal Lilly documents and e-mail messages among top company managers.The documents, given to The Times by a lawyer representing mentally ill patients, show that Lilly executives kept important information from doctors about Zyprexa's links to obesity and its tendency to raise blood sugar -- both known risk factors for diabetes.
Lilly's own published data, which it told its sales representatives to play down in conversations with doctors, has shown that 30 percent of patients taking Zyprexa gain 22 pounds or more after a year on the drug, and some patients have reported gaining 100 pounds or more. But Lilly was concerned that Zyprexa's sales would be hurt if the company was more forthright about the fact that the drug might cause unmanageable weight gain or diabetes, according to the documents, which cover the period 1995 to 2004.
David Michaels, at ThePumpHandle, asks the key questions:
At the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP), we've been following the controversy about the release of the Zyprexa papers with great interest, since it addresses one of our favorite topics: Sequestered Science. What are the Consequences of Undisclosed Knowledge?In October, 2004, we held a conference on this topic, and the Sequestered Science papers are published in the latest issue of the prestigious journal Law and Contemporary Problems.
At that meeting, we wrestled with the question of whether courts should allow information vital to protecting the public's heath to be hidden from the public as part of a settlement. In many instances, attorneys representing both the plaintiffs and the defendants prefer to seal documents. The defendants may avoid public embarrassment and further suits; the plaintiffs (and their attorneys) get larger monetary awards by agreeing.
The drug maker Lilly has paid $1.2 billion to more than 28,000 individuals who claimed they developed diabetes or other diseases from taking the anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa. The attorneys on both sides, those representing Eli Lilly and those suing the drug manufacturer, agreed to seal the studies and other documents that supported these claims. Does the public's right to this information trump the right of the parties to the litigation to secrecy?
What do you think? What would you think if you were one of the people who developed diabetes or other diseases while taking Zyprexa?
Old Naked Dude Has A Problem With Me
People who go around naked seem so sensitive about it. I could almost see the angry flecks of spittle between this guy's sentences in the email he sent me about my column "The Full-Of-It Monty". Here's the question:
My boyfriend of two years isn't overtly weird; he's actually a really nice, normal guy, but he has this "hobby" of going for walks totally naked. We live in Vermont, where this is actually legal. I tell him that women find this upsetting, but he is really turned on by being seen naked by them and has no intention of stopping. Also, he can't get aroused with me unless he's been on one of his walks. He says that when he doesn't have a girlfriend, he masturbates while walking, but because he has me, he doesn't. Should his nudism bother me? It really doesn't, but I wonder if it should.
--Naked Dude's Girlfriend
An excerpt from my answer:
I'm always kind of amazed when people write me about how their partner's "really great" -- except for this one little thing. Your boyfriend, for instance, is "a really nice, normal guy" except for how he's a sex offender. "Dinner's almost ready, hon," you call to him. "I won't be long," he calls back. "Just taking a quick walk around the block to go scare a few little girls with my wang."Sure, people should do what pleases them sexually -- if they're doing it with other consenting adults. Leaving the house without a blindfold shouldn't be considered a form of consent. Most of Vermont is clothing-optional. (One town passed a law against it, and I'm guessing there are signs reading "no pants, no shoes, no service.") But because it's legal to take your meat out for a bobble in front of the ice cream store doesn't mean it's right to force other people to look at it. On a lesser note, the same goes for nosepicking, which is legal in Canada, the 50 states, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Also, what's legal in Vermont is nudism (going naked), not lewdism (going naked with a sexual intent), which is why the latter comes with a maximum of five fully clothed years in a Vermont prison.
Problem is, it seems like ole Bob got angry and emailed me about how much I suck without actually reading the column.
Here goes, from Bob, an old naked guy in New York State:
Rarely have I seen a more toxic diatribe of miss-information then when I read your 'advice' to a woman who is obviously so dense or immature that she would resort to requesting "---how should I feel --" from a total stranger and much less, one who hasn't a clue about the subject matter.
If everyone was to believe you, all nudists would be considered pedophiles and perverts, with their sexuality running rampant, copulating with everything in sight as they walked down Main Street on a Sunday morning.
You are so far from the truth, I question my own common sense in taking the time to even address you. I am 68 years old and have lead a modified nudist lifestyle since I was 26; meaning I live in a normal clothed world except when I am alone in private or with like minded friends.
Assuming by the tone of her letter, the writer is young. All she asked was "Should his nudism bother me?" She said nothing about where he took his walks. She said "women find this upsetting". She said nothing about little girls. You did.. She said nothing about little old ladies. You did.. And she said nothing about anything sexually, but you did.. You must be on a first name basis with Howard Stern.
If you ever took a moment to investigate the subject matter, you would quickly learn that nudism has more to do with Spiritualism - not sexuality. It has to do with comfort, not perversion. It has to do with a clean mind as well as a clean body, not slithering out of back allies with nothing but a raincoat on. That is not the lifestyle nor intention of a nudist.
I go for a walk in the nude nearly every morning. I do most of my outdoor chores naked. I don't walk around sexually stimulated. Instead I feel one with nature and with God.. I live in a rural wooded area and there is no one to 'show off' to, even if I wanted. It is not my intent nor is it the intent of real nudists.When I lived by the ocean, I use to always take a walk and a swim in the nude. On occasion, if someone was to pass, there was always - repeat - always pleasant greetings exchanged and not people running away screaming in horror.
Finally, I know many families who have raised their children in a nudist lifestyle and guess what? Never in over 40 years of being around these people, have I ever heard of one drug addict, or alcoholic. I've never heard of any of those kids being bailed out of jail by their parents or dropping out of school.
But I could fill another two pages with names of great scientists, intellectuals, professors, philosophers, ministers, noted writers, poets, painters and just plain nice people who enjoy the nudist lifestyle at their leisure.
You would serve your readers better Miss Alkon, to do some homework before attempting to giving guidance in the guise of primitive Jewish - Christian prejudices and condemnation.
Actually, Bob, I'm an atheist, but I really, really don't want to see your wang.
Israeli Soldiers Refuse To Let A Pregnant Palestinian Woman Pass
And a good thing that is, because the evil woman was wearing a bomb and was apparently planning to blow up the Israeli hospital that had previously treated her:
Yes, the Israelis offer compassionate care to those who are committed to murdering them all.
Meet The Art Police
It seems the Long Beach chief of police is an art critic. He also has some rather creative ideas about the First Amendment. (It seems he likes to nip that old thing in the bud.)
Via Jay J. Hector, Greggory Moore writes in the Long Beach Post:
Police Chief Jim McDonnell has confirmed that detaining photographers for taking pictures "with no apparent esthetic value" is within Long Beach Police Department policy."If an officer sees someone taking pictures of something like a refinery," says McDonnell, "it is incumbent upon the officer to make contact with the individual." McDonnell went on to say that whether said contact becomes detainment depends on the circumstances the officer encounters.
McDonnell says that while there is no police training specific to determining whether a photographer's subject has "apparent esthetic value," officers make such judgments "based on their overall training and experience" and will generally approach photographers not engaging in "regular tourist behavior."
This policy apparently falls under the rubric of compiling Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) as outlined in the Los Angeles Police Department's Special Order No. 11, a March 2008 statement of the LAPD's "policy ... to make every effort to accurately and appropriately gather, record and analyze information, of a criminal or non-criminal nature, that could indicate activity or intentions related to either foreign or domestic terrorism."
Among the non-criminal behaviors "which shall be reported on a SAR" are the usage of binoculars and cameras (presumably when observing a building, although this is not specified), asking about an establishment's hours of operation, taking pictures or video footage "with no apparent esthetic value," and taking notes.
Don't say I didn't tell you so: "Security" is no longer just the excuse at the airport for ripping our Constitutional rights away from us. People in positions of authority have been watching all of you at the airports, so docile as you were groped by the screeners or forced through a nudiescanner that Napolitano lied and said was tested to be safe. They saw that if you were so compliant -- so polite and civil, even -- about giving up your Fourth Amendment rights, they'd be taking some more rights from you and seeing how that went.
I particularly like this one from the list of suspicious activities from the LAPD doc linked above: "Asking about an establishment's hours of operation." Well, criminal me! I confess: I am guilty of this suspicious activity -- twice in two days. Yes, twice, I needed to know when the local library was open so I could pick up books I had on hold.
You know what they say: Allahu Bookbar!
By the way, half the things on that list -- like measuring distances between buildings -- are things location scouts do. This is not Peoria. The town is lousy with them.
Here's another: "In possession of, or solicits, VIP Appearance or Travel Schedules." Talked to a guy today at Starbucks who photographs celebrities for a living. He did the Aimee Mann concert last night. I would imagine that he had to "solicit" her appearance schedule in order to show the hell up on time. (I'm sure he's under strict orders from al-Zawahiri to get some really nice closeups.)
Here's another: "Acquires or attempts to acquire uniforms without a legitimate
cause (service personnel, government uniforms, etc.)." Does that count if the police officer uniform you get for the costume party has a really, really short skirt?
The ridiculous thing is, the cops where I live don't even know the damn noise laws. They're really going to figure out who a terrorist is?
How Dumbass Crazy Is The Drug War?
Christopher Sherman writes for the AP that Mexicans with money are flying instead of driving to Texas to avoid being slaughtered on the highway:
As the drug cartels battled for control of lucrative routes into the U.S., those straightforward 2½-hour sprints along an empty highway became white-knuckled affairs that weighed lives against entertainment. For Mexicans with resources, flying has become a popular option....One woman who lives in Mission, Texas, but asked not to be identified because her parents remain in Mexico, said she used GID Express in December for a flight home to Tampico, about a 5 ½-hour drive south of Brownsville.
For a while she and her parents made visits by bus. But then mass graves were discovered near San Fernando, along the route from Tampico to the border. Word spread that many of the victims had been pulled from buses.
"We stopped driving maybe a year ago," she said.
Notice anybody dying over crates of Budweiser?
You will notice some "collateral damage" up across the other border. A Minnesota woman, 66-year-old Janet Goodin, was crossing from the U.S. into Canada when a Canadian Border Service nimrod did a "routine search" of her van, tested an old bottle of motor oil, and told her the test was positive for heroin.
She told him it was "not possible, it's leftover oil," according to a story in the Star Tribune. Randy Furst writes:
Goodin was arrested, handcuffed and taken to jail, where she was strip-searched. The motor oil was sent to a Canadian federal laboratory, which eventually determined there was no heroin in it. After 12 days behind bars, Goodin was released.Goodin's case has been seized upon by critics who question the reliability of field drug-test kits, which are used widely by law enforcement.
"She is what you call collateral damage in the drug war," said former FBI special agent Frederic Whitehurst, a North Carolina attorney and forensic consultant with a Ph.D. in analytic chemistry, who has publicly raised concerns about field drug-test kits. "When you run the tests, you run into all sorts of problems from overzealous cops."
Give police power and they'll take it.
Radio Amy: Toll Me What You Think
Gregg and I are working...no...let's be honest here...GREGG is working on pulling together the technical details on a live (and later podcasted) Internet call-in radio show for me. First of all, how many of you would want to listen to that, and second, would it matter if the call-in number is toll-free or not? It costs more for a toll-free number, and I'm of the mind that maybe most people have free long-distance...but I thought I'd ask.
This will be advice on love, dating, sex, relationships, and rude people. (I don't want to call it "manners," because then I'll get questions about which fork to use, and I really couldn't care less which fork you use, providing you don't stab the person next to you in the eye with it.)
Also, if we do a test show (the show will be on a Sunday night) would some of you be our call-ins (if you're around)?
RonPaulodamus
Ron Paul's predictions come true -- predictions about the housing market and more from back in 2001 and 2002:
As I wrote to the commenter who sent this to me...if only he didn't come off, when he talks, like the nutty guy with the long white beard and big wooden staff muttering outside the coffeehouse.
How Big Government Led To The Riots
Steyn writes in the OC Reg:
The London rioters are the children of dependency, the progeny of Big Government: they have been marinated in "stimulus" their entire lives. There is literally nothing you can't get Her Majesty's Government to pay for. From page 205 of my book:"A man of 21 with learning disabilities has been granted taxpayers' money to fly to Amsterdam and have sex with a prostitute."Hey, why not? "He's planning to do more than just have his end away," explained his social worker. "Refusing to offer him this service would be a violation of his human rights."
Why do they need a Dutch hooker? Just another hardworking foreigner doing the jobs Britons won't do? Given the reputation of English womanhood, you'd have thought this would be the one gig that wouldn't have to be outsourced overseas.
While the British Treasury is busy writing checks to Amsterdam prostitutes, one-fifth of children are raised in homes in which no adult works - in which the weekday ritual of rising, dressing and leaving for gainful employment is entirely unknown. One-tenth of the adult population has done not a day's work since Tony Blair took office on May 1, 1997.
If you were born into such a household, you've been comprehensively "stimulated" into the dead-eyed zombies staggering about the streets this past week: pathetic inarticulate subhumans unable even to grunt the minimal monosyllables to BBC interviewers desperate to appease their pathologies. C'mon, we're not asking much: just a word or two about how it's all the fault of government "cuts" like the leftie columnists argue. And yet even that is beyond these baying beasts. The great-grandparents of these brutes stood alone against a Fascist Europe in that dark year after the fall of France in 1940. Their grandparents were raised in one of the most peaceful and crime-free nations on the planet. Were those Englishmen of the mid-20th century to be magically transplanted to London today, they'd assume they were in some fantastical remote galaxy.
Fly Like An Eagle: Larry Hagman On Psychedelics
Andrew Goldman interviews him for The New York Times:
I gather you've tried pretty much every drug, including mescaline, which you ate on an Indian reservation. Well, I was in a hut with about 10 young Indian boys. I took this stuff and got real sick, but after a while that passed, and I looked down and I had bird's claws, bird's feet and fur instead of feathers. I thought, Well, golly, this is interesting. I flew around the hut, and then I flew through the wall and flew around the reservation and came back. It was a heavy-duty spiritual thing. I wouldn't particularly want to do it again, but it was a wonderful experience.Hold on, so you actually think you turned into a bird?
I'm sure it was an out-of-body experience, but at the time I did. And I enjoyed flying too.The problem with psychedelic drugs is that you feel as if you've unlocked the mysteries of the universe, but after the trip is done you can't remember what you learned.
Oh, God, no. I remembered almost everything afterward. It comes into play in your permanent psyche. For me, they gave me great compassion and a love of everything.
What's Wrong With Paperless Tickets
Ticketmaster and sports venues want to use a new ticketing technology called restrictive paperless tickets to limit what buyers can do with their tickets. From FanFreedom.org:
10 Ways Restrictive Paperless Tickets Are Bad for Fans1. No More Gifts: Restrictive paperless tickets are tied to your credit card and photo ID, so you can't give them away to friends or family as a gift, or even at the last minute if you cannot attend a game or a show.
2. Ticket Holders Lose Everything: Some restrictive paperless tickets cannot be transferred or resold at all. So if you are thinking of buying tickets to the concert in advance, better make sure your kids don't plan to get sick or your boss isn't thinking of sending you an important business trip.
3. Minimum Pricing on Resale: If fans are allowed to resell their tickets, teams, venues and ticket companies often set a minimum resale price that is close to or at face-value. Good luck selling those rainy day Mets or Cavs tickets for face value.
4. Bye Bye Cheap Tickets: Have you been enjoying cheap tickets sold by season-ticket holders? Kiss those great bargains good-bye. No more $1 NBA or MLB tickets.
5. Snooze You Lose: Do you have a job that stops you from sitting at the computer at 10am when tickets go on sale? Then you're out of luck. Thanks to restrictive paperless tickets, there will be no way to get tickets to sold-out shows.
6. Don't Be Late! Buyers of restrictive paperless tickets must enter the game or concert together. So if one of your party is late, everyone waits outside. Imagine how much fun that will be in Minnesota in February or Florida in July.
7. More Waiting. More Lines: Paperless tickets cause delays at the door as credit cards and photo IDs get checked. And the lines are especially slow when folks have forgotten to bring the credit card they used to purchase their tickets - though the arguments can be entertaining.
8. More Fees, Less Convenience: If you are allowed to sell your ticket, Ticketmaster and other ticket agencies will be happy to charge even more fees for the convenience of transferring your ticket - even when you transfer it for free.
9. Monopoly: With restrictive paperless tickets, Ticketmaster could dominate ticketing even more than it does already. Are you ready for higher prices, more fees and poorer service?
10. No Thanks for the Memories: Remember when you treasured the ticket stubs from your first concert or ballgame - or perhaps you still collect ticket stubs today? Better print out your confirmation email, because that's the only keepsake you'll get from paperless tickets.
Well, the last one's stretching it. People are reading books on iPads and Kindles, and unless you have an author take to your electronics with a sharpie, the author sig's going to be a little hard to get. There goes the market for autographed first editions!
The Skinny On The Muslim Brotherhood
Terrific reportage at Pajamas by Michael J. Totten. An excerpt:
"Is there a model of governance that exists somewhere in the world that the Muslim Brotherhood wants to emulate here?" I said."Some of them went to Turkey to learn from that model," he said. "But the Egyptian youth who would otherwise be similar to the youth in Turkey's Islamist party have been expelled from the Brotherhood here. They were seen as being too non-religious."
"Turkey's AKP isn't religious enough for the Brotherhood?" I said.
"The Brothers think of the AKP as liberal and they don't want that here," he said. "They've expelled the liberal Islamists from the group."
I could only assume then that Gaza is what Egypt's Brotherhood has in mind, or maybe a Sunni Arab version of what Persian Shia Islamists have built in Iran.
"I would like for the Muslim Brotherhood to be more like Hamas," Adel said.
That stopped me cold. "You want the Brotherhood to be like Hamas?" I said.
"Yes," he said. "Because Hamas is more liberal. The Brotherhood here no longer has any liberal members. Hamas is more willing to cooperate with other movements than the Muslim Brotherhood is."
"I want to make sure I understand what you're saying," I said. "Your view is that Hamas represent liberal Islamism."
"Not that they're liberal," he said, "but they have members who are. They have a liberal Islamist element. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has chosen to expel its liberal Islamists. The Brotherhood thinks dealing with anyone who is a former member, someone who was expelled or who resigned, or someone from other movements and parties, is like dealing with an infidel."
Craigslint
Couch is taken, but there's more!
Against Gay Marriage, But All For Gay Prostitutes!
From the HuffPo, yet another guy against gay rights turns out to be a closeted gay against gay rights:
An Indiana Republican state lawmaker is under scrutiny after reportedly arranging to meet a young man online and allegedly exposing himself when the pair subsequently met in person, according to the Indianapolis Star.
They quote an AP report:
The Indianapolis Star reported that emails suggest Republican Rep. Phillip Hinkle arranged to pay Kameryn Gibson up to $140 for "for a really good time." The paper published emails between Hinkle and Gibson detailing a plan for them to meet at a downtown Indianapolis hotel.The Star reported Hinkle didn't contest the emails but said he was "aware of a shakedown taking place."
And here's a quote from the Evansville Courier & Press:
According to emails from the young man's family, Hinkle responded to a Craigslist advertisement from an 18-year-old man seeking a "sugga daddy," and met the man in a hotel room. The emails were given to The Indianapolis Star and reported Friday.Hinkle, who is 64 and was first elected in 2000, voted this spring for a constitutional gay marriage ban. Several years ago he also was the House sponsor of the measure that created Indiana's "In God We Trust" license plates.
...The man Hinkle reportedly met is Kameryn Gibson. When Gibson learned of Hinkle's status as a state lawmaker, the two were already in a JW Marriott hotel room. Gibson told the newspaper he'd told Hinkle he wanted to leave, but Hinkle tried to stop him.
The lawmaker dropped his towel to expose himself and grabbed the man's rear end, Gibson said.
Later, Gibson said, Hinkle offered Gibson his iPad, his BlackBerry and $100 to keep Gibson from speaking with police and media.
("In God We Trust." Others will be offered cash and technology to keep their mouths shut.)
In California, it was Senator Roy Ashburn, a fierce opposer of gay rights, who got caught with a rent boy in his state vehicle after leaving a gay nightclub. DUI, too!
The Welfare State Must Die
This doesn't mean we're going to leave widows and orphans to starve in the streets (unless we keep going as we are -- and then we'll all be starving in the streets), but enough with the entire country with its hand out. And that includes you, General Motors.
Janet Daley writes at the Telegraph/UK:
We have arrived at the endgame of what was an untenable doctrine: to pay for the kind of entitlements that populations have been led to expect by their politicians, the wealth-creating sector has to be taxed to a degree that makes it almost impossible for it to create the wealth that is needed to pay for the entitlements that populations have been led to expect, etc, etc....We have been pretending - with ever more manic protestations - that this could go on for ever. Even when it became clear that European state pensions (and the US social security system) were gigantic Ponzi schemes in which the present beneficiaries were spending the money of the current generation of contributors, and that health provision was creating impossible demands on tax revenue, and that benefit dependency was becoming a substitute for wealth-creating employment, the lesson would not be learnt. We have been living on tick and wishful thinking.
...So what are the most important truths we should be addressing if we are to avert - or survive - the looming catastrophe? Raising retirement ages across Europe (not just in Greece) is imperative, as is raising thresholds for out-of-work benefit entitlements.
Lowering the tax burden for both wealth-creators and consumers is essential. In Britain, finding private sources of revenue for health care is a matter of urgency.
A general correction of the imbalance between wealth production and wealth redistribution is now a matter of basic necessity, not ideological preference.
The hardest obstacle to overcome will be the idea that anyone who challenges the prevailing consensus of the past 50 years is irrational and irresponsible. That is what is being said about the Tea Partiers. In fact, what is irrational and irresponsible is the assumption that we can go on as we are.
Oopsycare!
Neil Munro writes on The Daily Caller of what is either a big fat Obamacare sneaky or, more charitably, a huge mistake -- the fact that cost estimates seem to hide an understatement of $50 billion a year:
Federal payments required by President Barack Obama's health care law are being understated by as much as $50 billion per year because official budget forecasts ignore the cost of insuring many employees' spouses and children, according to a new analysis. The result could cost the U.S. Treasury hundreds of billions of dollars during the first ten years of the new health care law's implementation."The Congressional Budget Office has never done a cost-estimate of this [because] they were expressly told to do their modeling on single [person] coverage," said Richard Burkhauser in a telephone interview Monday. Burkhauser is an economist who teaches in Cornell University's department of policy analysis and management. On Monday the National Bureau of Economic Research published a working paper on the subject that Burkhauser co-authored with colleagues from Cornell and Indiana University.
Employees and employers can use the rules to their own advantage, he said. "A very large number of workers" will be able to apply for federal subsidies, "dramatically increasing the cost" of the law, he said.
Oh, and by the way, the 10-year total would be $500 billion. (A pity we can't all start working eight days a week to pay for this.)
Great-Grandpa's Hot Rod
Vroom...cough, cough...vroom.
A Man And His Elevator Shoes
I posted recently on whether a man who's short should consider lifts (or maybe elevator shoes) and the comments were pretty much against it.
The thing is, women tend to prefer taller men, and it seems tall men often do better in the workplace. (We've never had a really short U.S. President.)
Perhaps it'll help to take this out of the abstract. Here's a photo of a guy before and after the elevator shoes:
Here's a video of the same guy:
Here's an online store that sells elevator shoes.
Women get breast implants and wear makeup and Spanx. Are we demanding the same standard for all?
You Just Can't Beat That Irradiated Meat
Craig Goldwyn writes at HuffPo about contaminated meat and keeping it from getting that way:
Here's an urban legend I have to debunk: Happy go lucky pasture grazed free range all natural organic hand raised house-pet poultry that sleep in the same bed as the farmer are perfectly capable of being contaminated by microbes as they scratch in the dirt and eat worms in their spacious resort-like coops. I am really tired of hearing that happy chickens are safe chickens. Safer, maybe. Safe? Nope.Want another myth exploded? I don't care how well you know and respect your butcher. She may be running an absolutely pristine operation splashing disinfectant on everything in sight including the cash register, but the contamination likely happened before she ever got the meat. It probably happened in the slaughterhouse.
You see, animals poop anywhere and whenever they want. They just can't be potty trained. Bacteria in their guts get on the grass they eat. It gets on their hides. It gets in the water they drink. And then, even if they are not sent to the Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) where crowding is a lovely way to spread contamination, even if they are sent to a humane slaughterhouse where they are sung Mozart Lieder by off-duty opera divas and massaged by Temple Grandin herself, their carcasses have to be cut into chunks, and occasionally a knife comes in contact with fecal matter on the hides or in the guts, occasionally some spills on the floor, and then, oops, it gets on the steaks.
...The only way to be certain that every piece meat leaves the slaughterhouse sterile is irradiation. That's right, bathe the meat in electron beams, X-rays or gamma rays. BAM! as Emeril would say. No more microbes. So far research has shown no damage to the food, and only minor losses of vitamins, far less than when cooked, and no risk to humans. So far.
If your trusted grocer is sold contaminated meat and grinds it in the morning, it can contaminate the grinder and all the meat ground that day. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, knowing your butcher and having her daughter baby sit for you is not a guarantee of safety.
Dr. Robert Taux of an icky division (let's just leave it at that) of the CDC tells PBS that he supports the irradiation of meat:
I think irradiation of ground beef and of other high-risk meats is going to be a really important public health tool, just like the pasteurization of milk has been. The irradiation process that's used for meats does not induce any radioactivity in the meat. It doesn't introduce any important changes in the meat at all, except that it kills the bacteria that might be present. So I'm not concerned about the safety of the meat after it's been irradiated.
via Dr. Eades
"Proofiness" And The Pay Gap
Sure, there's discrimination against women in the work force -- just as there's discrimination against men. But, the pay gap isn't necessarily discrimination, and it won't go away -- ever -- writes Kay Hymowitz on City Journal on the notion that women earn only 75 cents on the dollar every man earns:
It is a huge discrepancy. It's also an exquisite example of what journalist Charles Seife has dubbed "proofiness." Proofiness is the use of misleading statistics to confirm what you already believe....Right after graduation, men and women had nearly identical earnings and working hours. Over the next ten years, however, women fell way behind. Survey questions revealed three reasons for this. First and least important, men had taken more finance courses and received better grades in those courses, while women had taken more marketing classes. Second, women had more career interruptions. Third and most important, mothers worked fewer hours. "The careers of MBA mothers slow down substantially within a few years of first birth," the authors wrote. Though 90 percent of women were employed full-time and year-round immediately following graduation, that was the case with only 80 percent five years out, 70 percent nine years out, and 62 percent ten or more years out--and only about half of women with children were working full-time ten years after graduation. By contrast, almost all the male grads were working full-time and year-round. Furthermore, MBA mothers, especially those with higher-earning spouses, "actively chose" family-friendly workplaces that would allow them to avoid long hours, even if it meant lowering their chances to climb the greasy pole.
In other words, these female MBAs bought tickets for what is commonly called the "mommy track." A little over 20 years ago, the Harvard Business Review published an article by Felice Schwartz proposing that businesses make room for the many, though not all, women who would want to trade some ambition and earnings for more flexibility and time with their children. Dismissed as the "mommy track," the idea was reviled by those who worried that it gave employers permission to discriminate and that it encouraged women to downsize their aspirations.
...But as Virginia Postrel noted in a recent Wall Street Journal article, Schwartz had it right. When working mothers can, they tend to spend less time at work. That explains all those female pharmacists looking for reduced hours. It explains why female lawyers are twice as likely as men to go into public-interest law, in which hours are less brutal than in the partner track at Sullivan & Cromwell. Female medical students tell researchers that they're choosing not to become surgeons because of "lifestyle issues," which seems to be a euphemism for wanting more time with the kids. Thirty-three percent of female pediatricians are part-timers--and that's not because they want more time to play golf.
If hiring a woman can be a huge cost savings over hiring a man, why would anyone ever hire a man?
When Kids Have To Be The Protectors
This really, really shouldn't be your life when you're a kid. I have to go to bed now, but if my writing's going well, I'll try to post in the morning from Dr. Barbara Oakley's book, "Cold-Blooded Kindness," on the sort of person who lets him or herself be battered.
Rioting Scum In England
They destroyed this man's store -- took even the light fixtures. Video at the link.
Here's a bit from a story in The Guardian:
When another group finished ransacking a pawnbroker's and started cleaning out a local fashion boutique, an angry young black woman berated one of them. "You're taking the piss, man. That woman hand-stitches everything, she's built that shop up from nothing. It's like stealing from your mum."A girl holding a looted wedding dress smiled sheepishly, stuck for anything to say.
I have great respect for people who build things, and despise people who tear and burn things down. Their only mark they can leave on the world is destruction.
Brendan O'Neill gets it right at The Drum:
...The idea that being poor somehow leads directly to becoming a looter simply doesn't stand up. Why, for example, have the slightly older generations in the same poor parts of Britain, those in their 20s or 30s who live in not dissimilar conditions to the youth, not gone out and burnt things down? There have been poor people in Britain for a very long time, but they have not reacted to their poverty by wrecking their own neighbourhoods. Instead they joined collective groups, or agitated for work, or pooled their resources and helped each other out, or got on their bikes, moved somewhere else and looked for work there....The pitying left-wingers who long to hug these put-upon working-class folk need to bear in mind that no matter how poor people are, no matter how lacking in advantage, they are still moral agents capable of making choices between right and wrong, between forging ahead with their lives or lashing out against their neighbourhoods. The claim that their poverty makes them violent is more outrageous than the right-wing law'n'order lobby's claim that they are just "thugs" - at least the law lobby recognises the rioters' capacity to make moral decisions; the leftish lobby just depicts them as the inevitably messed-up end-products of Bad Experiences.
It comes down to this:
They share an infantilised view of themselves and of the world around them, believing that others, primarily the state, should take care of them. So where the student rioters were effectively pleading with the state to support them financially into their early adult lives, the urban rioters are likewise largely dependent on welfarism. What both sides seem to lack is self-respect, moral resourcefulness, social wherewithal.This is very different from the radical protests of the past. Modern-day rioting, of both the posh and poor varieties, is not motivated by a desire to exercise autonomy, by a striving to live independently and experimentally, but rather by a belief that one should always be looked after and cared for and cooed over.
Thanks, Martin, for the O'Neill link
Man With Breast Cancer? You're Screwed.
Caroline May posts on The Daily Caller that "Disease does not discriminate, but apparently Medicaid coverage does":
A 26-year-old South Carolina tile-layer has found himself with breast cancer and out of luck for one reason: He is a man. While breast cancer affects an estimated 2,000 American males annually, Medicaid does not cover treatment of the disease in men.Raymond Johnson does not make enough money to afford the five-figure price of the treatment his cancer will require. Charleston Cancer Center patient advocate Susan Appelbaum is working to help Johnson navigate the difficult path to coverage.
"We've talked about an appeal, but the Medicaid office didn't really seem to think it would change the law, by filing an appeal," Appelbaum told TheDC. "Somehow we need to find a way to add an addendum to the law or change the law altogether to include men."
..."We are again urging CMS [the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services] to reconsider," the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement. "It's a very clear example of how overly rigid federal regulations don't serve the interests of the people we're supposed to be helping."
People who want government to control every aspect of their lives are naive. Bureaucracy comes in the shape of a hammer, and doesn't allow for reason and fairness to take precedence over ridiculous and unfair rules.
If You're Against Recreational Drug Use, There's A Good Chance You're Against Recreational Sex
In a survey Robert Kurzban and some colleagues administered to a thousand people, the two seemed to go together -- attitudes about drug use and attitudes about casual sex. He blogs at Psychology Today about the correlation they found that predicts being for or against legalizing pot:
You might think it's all about personality, and ask about their "openness to new experiences" or some such. You could go the religious route, and ask about how often they go to religious services...But here's the best one: "Is sex without love OK?"
If they answer yes, it is OK, then you can predict with a certain degree of accuracy that they will be in favor of legalizing pot. If they answer no, then, obviously the reverse.
We asked a whole battery of survey questions, and out of all of the items we asked, this question was the best predictor of people's stated views on the morality and legality of recreational drugs.
We did not, I should say, ask people just any old questions. We used questions that different theories say should relate to views on drugs. And, of course, we used questions that our own theory predicted should be related to views on drugs.
So, there's the question. Why should the same people who think sex without love is OK be the ones who also favor the legalization of marijuana? Or, put the other way, why do people who think sex without love isn't OK oppose recreational drug use?
Remember in your answer to this question, you can't go back to the Color Theory of Morality, that it's political views that are causing both: you can't guess someone's views on drugs from their political views as well as you can from the question about sex.
So, is could opposition to drugs really be all about sex? And if so, why?
A lot of people manage to successfully buy drugs online using a recreational and prescription drugs list from A-Z as a guide.
When The Readers Write Smarter Than The Writers At The WaPo
Once again, if you want to see sense in the WaPo, read the letters to the editor about the pieces by the lame-cases hired by the paper. Here, via Cafe Hayek, is one from Donald J. Boudreaux:
Eugene Robinson blames the S&P's downgrading of Uncle Sam's credit on the protracted refusal (until the very end) by Uncle Sam - a licentious borrower - to borrow even more ("A downgrade's GOP fingerprints," August 9). Mr. Robinson scolds, "If you threaten not to pay your bills, people will - and should - take you seriously."Why is the first remotely serious effort in ages to oblige government not to borrow beyond a certain limit portrayed as fiscal imprudence?
Asked differently, why would creditors be spooked by a debtor's 'threat' to honor his vow to keep his debt from growing? Creditors, it seems, would applaud the keeping of such a vow.
The downgrade is far more plausibly a consequence of Uncle Sam breaking that vow - and doing so in a way that reveals his cowardly refusal, at the end of the day, to address his addiction to spending greater and greater sums of money now and passing the bills on to taxpayers later.
Hmm, if it's the same Donald J. Boudreaux, he's no slouch. Pity they have Eugene Robinson, not Donald Boudreaux writing pieces on the economy for the paper.
Where Should Charity Come From?
Tad DeHaven posts at Cato on charity and the Federal Government, recalling James Madison's contention that "Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government":
"The Father of the Constitution" wasn't being cold-hearted when he took this position during a 1794 debate in the House of Representatives over federal aid to refugees. Rather, he was merely recognizing that "the government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects." Charity just wasn't one of the specified objects. Of course, future politicians decided otherwise.Today, most young Americans grow up in federally subsidized schools offering federally subsidized meals. They are inculcated to view the federal government as a benevolent caregiver that exists to provide Americans with housing, food, health care, and even income (to name just a few). Madison's unfortunately quaint notion that the federal government isn't supposed to be engaged in "charitable" activities would probably leave them dumbfounded.
I single out children because this week a private charity that I am involved with, the Purple Feet Foundation, is giving select inner-city sixth graders an opportunity to take hold of their futures now. Instead of promoting dependency, these kids will spend the week engaged in educational activities that will hopefully inspire them to utilize their individual talents to succeed in life. The Foundation does not seek, nor will it accept, taxpayer money. I believe this sets a good example for these kids.
Those of us who desire the limited federal government that Madison envisioned are often accused of being uncaring about those who are in need. In fact, the opposite is the truth: we recognize that government programs are wasteful, ineffective, and counterproductive to the aims that they are trying to achieve.
Consider Bastiat's words:
"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."
We've gotten so reliant on government providing all that we don't realize that we can provide...just little old us. My friend Lawyer Tom, who's done well for himself, started a program downtown with a few of his successful buddies to feed the homeless.
I write in I See Rude People of a program I started -- WIT: What It Takes, to demystifying "making it" for inner city kids:
Once a month, I go to a Los Angeles high school and talk for a couple hours to try give the students a sense of what's possible, even for kids who don't come from privilege, if they're willing to work hard. I don't have Federal funding -- or any funding. It's not even a formal program, just me and a teacher who doesn't seem to mind me bugging her to schedule me in to speak to classes.
Here's another excerpt from the book, of what a regular commenter here, Robert Werner, did after a friend of his bought a new computer just before Christmas:
She asked him what she could do with the "perfectly good" one, only a few years old, that she was replacing. Werner thought about it, and advertised it on Craigslist, offering it free to a charitable organization, somebody who couldn't afford a computer, or to needy kids.Within 24 hours, nearly 50 people responded. Of these, he felt nine were truly in need -- which left him with a problem. He couldn't leave the other eight in the lurch. On his blog, Pelausa.blogspot.com, he published a call for people to donate their old computers, and got five. A few weeks later, the Vancouver Courier and BCTV did stories on his project, and within a few days, 800 offers had poured in, and people were dropping off computers at his apartment round the clock. Werner and his friends, neighbors, and colleagues worked like crazy to refurbish them, his mom stuck a big red ribbon around each one, and he and a friend spent Christmas driving around delivering them.
One of these computers went to Tanya and Radu Sitar, Romanian emigrants who'd arrived in Vancouver just two months before with their two young twins and little beyond the clothes on their backs. Their computer allowed them to apply for jobs online, to stay in touch with their families in Romania, and helped them get to know their new country and culture. After getting the computer, Tanya told a TV news reporter about Werner and his team, "I can't...I can't...thank them...probably I will never find a way to thank them, but I know there is a god."
Werner realized there were many people lacking the means to buy a computer, and many people and companies with computer equipment to donate; they just needed to be connected. He turned his little Christmas project into the all-volunteer BC Digital Divide (BCDigitalDivide.org), taking in three-to-five-year-old computers, refurbishing them, and giving them out to needy families. Werner, who had a fulltime software consulting business and a new company in the works, couldn't maintain the level of involvement he had over the holidays, so he put the word out for volunteers. Up popped Bruce Steven, the Mr. Fix-it of the Vancouver School Board, and Bob Rogers, a 70-something retired BC Tel employee. These two now do the bulk of the work, but countless others, including Werner, pitch in as well.
Werner marvels at the difference the donated computers have made in people's lives. Tanya Sitar used the computer her family got to land a job as a teacher's aid. A few months later, the Sitars were able to afford a new computer of their own so they gave the donated computer to a newly arrived family from Romania. Werner was thrilled. "As you can see, one small act of kindness inspires another, which inspires another, and so on. Too many people wait for others or the government to reach out that first time, when they themselves fully have it within their power to do a lot on their own."
Word: "Viral" Isn't Always Good
Probably the worst rap video ever. Via Gawker:
55-Year-Old Casino Exec Releases One of the Worst Rap Videos Ever
By day, Allen Samuels is a popular casino host in Atlantic City. By night? He's A. Samuels, the illest fledgling rapper in the game, son!
Always good to observe that you are not black if you are not, indeed, black.
Where Are All The Anti-War Protesters?
Is war only bad when a Republican is behind it? Ira Stoll writes at reason:
The Obama administration is on pace to have more American soldiers killed in casualties related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than the George W. Bush administration did in its first term....In a phone interview, the national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, which organized some of the largest antiwar protests during the Bush administration, Michael McPhearson, said part of the explanation is political partisanship. A lot of the antiwar protesters, he said, were Democrats. "Once Obama got into office, they kind of demobilized themselves," he said.
"Because he's a Democrat, they don't want to oppose him in the same way as they opposed Bush," said Mr. McPhearson, who is also a former executive director of Veterans for Peace, and who said he voted for President Obama in 2008. "The politics of it allows him more breathing room when it comes to the wars."
Mr. McPhearson says antiwar protests of the sort that drew hundreds of thousands of people during the George W. Bush administration now draw 20,000 at best. He said his group's strategy now is to emphasize the cost of the wars and the Pentagon amid Washington's focus on trimming the deficit.
Nancy Wake, Ladylike Nazi-Killer
Tony Rennell writes at The Daily Mail of the extraordinary Nancy Wake, who just died. The headline:
Blisteringly sexy, she killed Nazis with her bare hands and had a 5 million-franc bounty on her head. As she dies at 98, the extraordinary story of the real Charlotte Gray
An excerpt from the piece:
She stares into the camera with a coquettish half-smile and an unflinching come-hither look. The eyebrows are plucked, the lips full, the long auburn hair a classic 1940s style, falling onto the shoulders of her khaki uniform.She could easily have been one of the sassy songbirds who brightened up World War II. But this was the face of Nancy Wake, one of that conflict's bravest underground fighters against the Germans in France -- and certainly the most stylish.
A male comrade-in-arms in the French Resistance summed her up as: 'The most feminine woman I know, until the fighting starts. And then she is like five men.' She lived up to both parts of that compliment.
...In one mini-battle, her car was strafed by German fighter planes but she crawled out of the wreck, hanging onto her prized possessions -- a jar of face cream, a packet of tea and a satin cushion. When the roads were too dangerous to travel by car, she cycled more than 300 miles in three days to find a working radio set to contact London.
via Kate Coe
Dark, Handsome, And Tall -- With A Little Help From His Lifts
Women, across cultures, are typically attracted to men who are taller than they are. Some women will date and marry shorter men, although it seems to help greatly if a man makes up for what he lacks in height by having piles of money and a private jet.
My question: What if a guy's the perfect man -- minus three four inches (in height, ya gutterbrains)?
What if he makes up for some of that with lifts in his shoes?
And let's say he would always wear those lifts, except at the beach and in bed.
Would you be able to overlook the actual height difference if he made himself taller in that way? Would it be a turnoff?
Medicare Is Fiscally Medi-scarey
At Cato, David Boaz links to a letter in the WaPo from Dale Everett of Ashburn, Virginia on what's wrong with both Medicare and Social Security:
At 80, I am a "poster boy" for what is wrong with Medicare and Social Security. I worked full time from 1950 until 1993, when I retired. I paid the maximum amount annually required by law. My payment from Social Security in 1993 was $1,170 per month, and it now exceeds $1,500. I paid $47,377 into the fund and have so far received more than $288,000 from it.As for Medicare I paid $14,350 into the fund from 1966 to 1993. I have been very healthy but had cancer several years ago and a craniotomy five years ago. The costs of those exceeded $1 million. Even minor surgery would far exceed what I paid to the fund.
Please tell me how such a system can be sustained. Both programs need to be overhauled now. No one should believe that he has paid for and earned the right to such payments.
The letter is in response to a letter from Mary Ann Carmody, of Washington, who doesn't seem quite as sharp on the math as Dale Everett:
What's wrong with using Medicare to keep the heart of someone over 65 "tickin' "? Did we not work for our retirement nest eggs? Are we not careful of how many pleasure trips we take? Do we not give generously of our time and money to our churches and to victims of disasters in New Orleans, Haiti and Somalia?Bring on the dialogue, but don't paint with one brush those of us over 65 who spend our money carefully as enjoying "middle-class welfare."
Her letter was in response to this Robert J. Samuelson op-ed (with the trite headline), "Why are we in this debt fix? It's the elderly, stupid":
True, some elderly live hand-to-mouth; many more are comfortable, and some are wealthy. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports the following for Medicare beneficiaries in 2010: 25 percent had savings and retirement accounts averaging $207,000 or more; among homeowners (four-fifths of those 65 and older), three-quarters had equity in their houses averaging $132,000; about 25 percent had incomes exceeding $47,000 (that's for individuals, and couples would be higher).The essential budget question is how much we allow federal spending on the elderly to crowd out other national priorities. All else is subordinate. Yet, our "leaders" don't debate this question with candor or intelligence. We have a generation of politicians cowed and controlled by AARP. We need to ask how much today's programs constitute a genuine "safety net" to protect the vulnerable (which is good) and how much they simply subsidize retirees' private pleasures.
Congress Takes A Brief Break From Drooling Idiocy
They somehow came to their senses long enough to exempt children's books from the lead testing law mandated by the ridiculous Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA).
But, before we get to the kids' books, here's one example of the results of the CPSIA idiocy, and how bad law has big, grubby, overreaching paws:
Yes, you read that correctly: ATVs and motorcycles designed to meet the size and performance needs of young riders ages 6 to 12 became "banned hazardous substances" under the new law.Because lead must be ingested in order to be a health risk, the small amounts of lead that are embedded in metal parts, like the frame and the battery terminals to enhance the safety and functionality of these components, pose no risk to kids.
While not one case of lead poisoning can be documented from children riding youth model ATVs, the Consumer Product Safety Commission's own data shows that more than 90 percent of youth injuries and fatalities occur on larger, adult-size vehicles.
In fact, the CPSC, the ATV industry, safety advocates and parents all agree that it's critical to keep youth riders off adult-sized ATVs, and have cooperated for years to educate ATV riders that children should ride only ATVs that are the correct size for them.
...Kids aren't licking or eating their ATVs, but they just might ride adult-sized ATVs thanks to this ban.
But, finally -- a little CPSIA relief, as posted in School Library Journal:
By a one-sided vote of 421-2, the House of Representatives passed an amendment to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) that excludes "ordinary" children's books and learning materials from being tested for lead content. And the Senate quickly followed suit in a voice vote, sending the bill on to President Obama to sign into law....If Congress had not approved the recent amendment, libraries would have been required to restrict access to their children's book collections.
As in, restrict access to exclude children. To exclude children!
Meanwhile, thanks to ludicrous rules about toy testing under the CPSIA, my neighbor can no longer sell the children's games she made to help her family make ends meet in a screwed economy. It would cost her not $4,000 per game as I thought (for testing each of the four games), but $8,000 to have both the fabric "board" and the game pieces tested for each...so a total of $32,000, which is probably about $30,000 more than she would have made selling all of the games (if they weren't piled up in a box in her garage).
Meanwhile, my neighbor is so "green" I'm surprised she doesn't personally grow leaves, these games are made of organic cotton, dyed with vegetable dyes, and include little wooden pieces. That's wood from trees, not wood from lead mines, where it's apparently sometimes known to be found in large, wooded groves!
via Lenore Skenazy
Watery Thinking
From his blog archives, Chris Kresser posts at The Healthy Skeptic on the benefits of full-fat milk and how ridiculous it is that schools serve milk that probably has the fat and nutritional equivalent of the white water in the can you use to clean paintbrushes. First, he excerpts this from the Weston A. Price foundation Journal (more at the link):
Full-fat milk has pretty much disappeared from the public schools--not just in the US, but also in New Zealand, Australia and the UK. In most schools, children have a choice of watery reduced-fat milk or sugar-laden chocolate milk, based on the misconception that the butterfat in whole milk will cause heart disease later in life. So it's a bit embarrassing when a study comes along showing that whole-fat milk products may help women conceive.
Kresser's commentary:
This is a perfect example of how mainstream dogma gets in the way of clear thinking. The study unambiguously showed the superiority of whole fat milk products for helping a woman to become pregnant. Yet the author of the study advises women to "switch back to low fat dairy foods" once she becomes pregnant! So, according to this twisted logic, the nutrients in whole fat milk that helped the woman to conceive in the first place will somehow suddenly be harmful to her and her fetus during pregnancy? Isn't it far more reasonable to assume that those same nutrients that increased the women's fertility will also support the growth and development of the fetus? In fact, there is plenty of research that supports this common-sense view....Will lowfat milk served in schools not only make our children infertile, but also fatter? That's the conclusion from a 2006 Swedish study which looked at 230 families in Goteborg, Sweden.
A woman who follows me on Twitter tweeted me something today about how she likes the calorie counts chain restaurants have been forced to post (the result of more ridiculous overlegislation). This was a follow-up to her tweet blaming fast-food restaurants for fat people.
Well, I eat fast food. In fact, Gregg once had to talk me into going to a fancy restaurant for dinner one Saturday night instead of going to In-N-Out. How do I stay slim? Easy. I order the double-double (with cheese and grilled onions) protein-style, as in two burgers, two slices of cheese, greasy onions...and no bun. And I order no fries, no Coke, no shake -- and drink nothing but water with my burger. (Diet sodas are filled with creepy chemicals and there's some indication that their sweet taste may provoke the insulin reaction that puts on fat.)
This leads me to the crux of staying slim and healthy for probably most people. I'll put it in terms of Gary Taubes' findings from the evidence: that it's carbohydrates -- sugar, flour, starchy vegetables like potatoes, juice -- that cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat. Cut carbs, and unless you're a biological weirdo or your system is already seriously broken, and you'll probably drop pounds like stones off a truck...and maybe even find yourself dropping some other health problems to boot. (Hashimoto's even, if you're lucky.)
What's With People Expecting Total Strangers To Work For Them For Free?
Got this letter in my email:
Dear Amy,Thanks for taking the time to read this email.
I'm a communications professional based in New York City. I was recently contacted by a recruiter from a company called Boardroom, based in Stamford CT. After doing some research, I saw that you wrote a short piece on your website after having positive experiences with the company's CEO, Martin Edelston.
Would it be possible for you to share with me a reference at the company? I'm not familiar with Bottom Line Publications (which is owned by Boardroom) but from what I can ascertain their business model is primarily direct marketing with a negative billing component. I'm trying to learn as much about the organization as possible before moving forward.
If at all possible, it would be great to have your take on the overall quality of the organization's publications as well.
Any help that you are able to provide is much appreciated. Again, thanks for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.
What kind of person gives a total stranger a reference?
Meanwhile, I criticized Edelston in I See Rude People because his company woke me up twice with telemarketing calls, but I also wrote that I appreciated that he paid me for taking my time (and was kind of cute about it) when I invoiced him, as I do to telemarketers. (He also mailed me a book, a t-shirt, and later, some dirty jokes!)
UPDATE: He writes back to clarify (referencing what I explained above, in brief):
Dear Amy,To be clear, I did not mean a professional reference. I was trying to determine if this was a credible company. Based on your comments below it seems they are not.
Since you are a public figure, I thought you might have had some professional interaction with them in the past. My apologies if this came across the wrong way.
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I appreciate.
Best,
I wrote back that I wrote nothing substantive "below."
Sometimes, people move way too fast and furious in the Internet world.
We all get way too much email these days, and have plenty to deal with from friends, family and our own business interests. It's always kind of amazing when people expect other people to do their research for them. (Google: It's everywhere you want to be.)
What About Gary Johnson?
The former New Mexico governor and candidate for President is getting cut out of the debates and national conversation, but Daniel Hannan has written about him in the British press. Hannan writes in the Telegraph/UK:
Gary Johnson's philosophy is easily summarized. He thinks the state is far too big. He wants to balance the federal budget - not 20 years from now, but immediately - and has identified the requisite spending cuts. He understands that an adventurist foreign policy, as well as being expensive, diminishes domestic liberty: that there is a contradiction, in Russell Kirk's phrase, between an American Republic and an American Empire. Accordingly, he was against the attacks on Iraq and Libya and, though he supported the overthrow of the Taliban, he opposed the elaboration and prolongation of the US mission in Afghanistan.Gary Johnson is a libertarian on social issues, grasping that the American constitution rests tacitly on tolerance, privacy and equality before the law (see above clip). He was unusual among Republicans in strenuously resisting the various erosions of civil liberties carried out under the guise of anti-terrorism legislation. He sees the "war on drugs" as a misapplication of state power. In short, he believes in personal freedom, states' rights and the US Constitution.
(As governor) he took the view that there should be as few laws as possible, and vetoed more legislation during his term than the other 49 state governors put together. He cut taxes 14 times and never raised them once. Result? A budget surplus and an economic boom. During Gary Johnson's gubernatorial term, 1,200 state jobs were axed, but 20,000 private sector jobs were created. And here's the best bit: he was handsomely re-elected, despite a two-to-one Democrat majority.
What's not to like? Well, besides the way he's being ignored by the press?
A City That Isn't Broken
Sandy Springs, GA -- a fiscally accountable city that outsourced almost everything...at half the price they would have paid if government were running things. Via reason.tv:
(Doesn't that woman seem Thatcher-esque? We should try to have her cloned.)
Back to the details of Sandy Springs, they say in the video that they have police, but "no pension storm on the horizon."
The assumption that we should be paying huge sums of money in pensions to government employees after retirement really needs to be rethought. Your thinking on that? What is fair, considering how police officers and firemen have dangerous jobs? Or should that even be taken into account?
The Man Who Wasn't There
Now they're noticing that Obama was just "present" for pretty much his entire career? (That's how he voted in the Senate 130 times.) Leslie Bennetts writes for The Daily Beast:
In his New York Times Sunday Review essay "What Happened to Obama?" Emory University psychology professor Drew Westen summed up the president's lack of experience with devastating succinctness."Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he occasionally, as a state senator in Illinois, voted 'present' on difficult issues," wrote Westen, author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.
The presidential scholar Matthew Dickinson went even further with a blog post under the headline "Run, Hillary, Run!" on Presidential Power. "She did warn you," Dickinson reminded his readers.
"Remember that 3 a.m. phone call? Remember the warning about the rose-colored petals falling from the sky? Remember about learning on the job? Sure you do. Doesn't a part of you, deep down, realize she was right?" wrote Dickinson, a political-science professor at Middlebury College. "If I heard it once this last week, I heard it a thousand times: You were duped by Obama's rhetoric--the whole 'hopey-changey' thing. And you wanted to be part of history, too--to help break down the ultimate racial barrier. That's OK. We were all young once. But now it's time to elect someone who can play hardball, who understands how to be ruthless, who will be a real...uh...tough negotiator in office. There won't be any debate about Hillary's, er, 'man-package.'"
Among Clinton fans, particularly older women, the language was frequently far more caustic. "Obama has no spine and no balls," said a 67-year-old New Yorker.
The Revolution Will Be Televised
The Houston Press headline on Richard Connolly's blog item says it all:
If You're Going to Falsely Tell Cops a Guy Sexually Assaulted You, Don't Get Caught on Camera Announcing Your Plans
A cell phone video camera may be your best way of proving your lack of guilt -- or others' violation of your rights, in the case of the TSA.
Remember, in some cases, you're going to be assumed guilty until proven innocent. Hit "record" whenever you think there's a question (but check your state's laws on what can be recorded without turning preventing the crime of false accusation by another into a crime by you).
Of course, the result of revealing that you've committed a crime by secretly recording somebody is probably going to be preferable to sitting in jail on rape charges. Sad that it comes down to that.
via Instapundit
Thoughts From The "Little People" On The U.S. Credit Downgrade
The national mood is bleak. Here's a scoop of it from Boston. Donna Goodison reports in the Boston Herald:
"I'm very concerned. I have countless patients who can't afford their medication," said Concord cardiologist Terrence Hack. "In 1991, I made five times what I make today. I'm as borrowed as I can be on the practice."...Robin Marciello already lost half of her 401(k) savings in 2008, at the height of the Great Recession.
"I was a little slow getting out," said the 58-year-old from Wilmington, who's since taken a more conservative investment stance. "I'm glad the other half is in the money market. It might be low-interest, but at least it's not minus."
...South Boston architect Ted Touloukian also is taking a long-term view after S&P lowered the country's long-term rating and the Dow fell more than 500 points the day before.
"I'm young, so I'm not so concerned in the short term, but in the long term, you want to know how it's going to play out," Touloukian, 42, said. "It's not like my dad, who is 75 and not too happy about what's going on. He called me and said, 'Damn, I got hit.' "
MassCynic writes in the BH comments:
Both of my children have left the US for countries with more opportunity, real jobs, and a better way of life. When I survey the landscape and look back on what this once great country has become and is becoming, I wish them nothing but good fortune in their new homes. Their ancestral family in the US would be shocked and appalled at what we have become. My Dad (WW II), Uncle (WW II, Korea) and Grandfather (WW I, WWII) are all resting in peace, not having to watch this wreckage and degradation. Very, very sad.
Popeye writes:
We still have enough money to pay Auntie Zeitune's rent and her welfare check. So, how broke can we be?
From a comment by FireInFramingham:
The real headline is that we have borrowed 100% of GDP.
via Instapundit
Thank You, And Condolences
Tragically, per the AP, 31 special ops troops -- most, Navy SEALs from the elite unit that took out Bin Laden, were killed when their helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan. The Taliban claimed responsibility.
Yochi Dreazen writes for National Journal:
The deadly crash of a U.S. helicopter in eastern Afghanistan earlier today will fuel the growing questions about the Obama administration's handling of the long war--and the public's nagging sense, evident in recent polls, that the conflict is simply not worth its enormous human and financial cost....The rapidly rising U.S. death toll in Afghanistan--paired with a lack of discernible military progress there--is raising new questions about President Obama's war policy. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama accused then-President George W. Bush of shortchanging the Afghan war effort in favor of the Iraq War and promised to significantly boost U.S. troop levels if elected. Since taking office, Obama has more than tripled the number of American forces in Afghanistan, including a surge of 33,000 U.S. reinforcements last year.
Obama administration officials defended the unpopular Afghan surge by arguing it was essential to eradicating the lingering al-Qaeda presence in the country. After the killing of Osama bin Laden, by contrast, a senior administration official told reporters that that the U.S. hadn't "seen a terrorist threat emanating from Afghanistan for the past seven or eight years," seemingly undercutting the main White House justification for the war's escalation.
Brian Doherty wrote in reason in March of 2010:
Undoubtedly, Afghanistan presents fertile ground for any number of future "victories," complete with casualty figures higher for Them than for Us (and with the civilian Them somewhere in the middle).But none of this means that the end goal of establishing internal security, crippling the insurgency, and guarranteeing that no one will ever plot wickedness against the U.S. from the Afghanistan area will be reached, or could be reached, minus an eternal American occupation.
Domestic and foreign policy foolishness dovetail in Afghanistan. Among all the other dubious things we are trying to accomplish in this tribally-torn land--whose younger generation has known pretty much nothing but internecine strife--is the elimination of poppy and opium production, which as much as 35 percent of the country is likely involved in. We'll probably never learn just how much peace and prosperity we could bring to this troubled land simply by letting them grow that which the world seems to most want from them. How much peace and prosperity we can bring with 100,000 troops, we will alas find out.
We The Sheeple...
In the WSJ, stand-up comedian Demetri Martin tells a story of seeing a knife on a plane in "The White-Haired 'Terrorist' in Seat 8B." An 80-something lady on the plane takes out a pocket-knife and starts cutting stories out of the newspaper:
I can't believe what I'm seeing--she is using a knife inside an airplane! It's like seeing a unicorn. In our era, you rarely even see a plastic knife on a plane, let alone a pocketknife. People in wheelchairs get strip-searched at security, but somehow this lady coasted right on through.So now she's cutting with the knife, and nobody's noticing except for me--I just happen to have a perfect view of her slicing up the newspaper. Then a male flight attendant walks by carrying a bunch of cups to the front of the plane, and out of the corner of his eye he sees the knife.
It's like a cartoon--he does this big double take. The flight attendant doesn't say anything, but I watch him keep going to the front of the plane, and he gets on the phone--that little secret phone at the front of the plane. I'm riveted, watching his body language as he's telling the pilot there's a knife on board.
I check back in with the old lady, and the thing is, she knows that he's seen her. She snaps the knife closed and hands it across to her husband and says, Hide it!
Ridiculously, the flight attendant ends up taking it from them.
On WSJ.com, commenter William L. Gorman writes that he thinks "it is correct for the flight attendant to confiscate the knife":
"If the penknife would have been found at the security check point it would have been confiscated."
My response to his comment:
Yes, and this is completely ridiculous. Do we really think anyone is going to bring down a plane now with a pen-knife or a box-cutter?Too many Americans now are at their best as sheep-like rule followers. Our country was started by people who were opposed to blind obedience to authority. Oh, how disappointingly far we've fallen.
Madame Tomato
Photo by Emily Tarr, Paris, from a street market there. She says this woman is a country girl, very friendly.
Postrel: Obama's Lost His Glamour
Virginia Postrel has a smart piece on Bloomberg about how Obama came off during the campaign versus his now-obvious charisma deficit, and how he's become "just another pol, derided by his supporters as well as his opponents."
Referring to how Warren Bennis of the University of Southern California and Andy Zelleke of Harvard praised Obama about his charisma during the campaign, Postrel writes:
There was only one problem. Obama wasn't charismatic. He was glamorous -- powerfully, persuasively, seductively so. His glamour worked as well on Bennis and Zelleke as it did on voters.What's the difference? Charisma moves the audience to share a leader's vision. Glamour, on the other hand, inspires the audience to project its own desires onto the leader (or movie star or tropical resort or new car): to see in the glamorous object a symbol of escape and transformation that makes the ideal feel attainable. The meaning of glamour, in other words, lies entirely in the audience's mind.
That was certainly true of Obama as a candidate. He attracted supporters who not only disagreed with his stated positions but, what is much rarer, believed that he did, too. On issues such as same-sex marriage and free trade, the supporters projected their own views onto him and assumed he was just saying what other, less discerning voters wanted to hear.
Even well-informed observers couldn't decide whether Obama was a full-blown leftist or a market-oriented centrist. "Barack has become a kind of human Rorschach test," his friend Cassandra Butts told Rolling Stone early in the campaign. "People see in him what they want to see."
TSA Bozos Seize Pregnant Woman's Insulin
If this doesn't tell you everything you need to know about the kind of bozos supposedly maintaining security at our airports, I don't know what will. From an AOL Travel post, here's what the TSA genius at Denver International told the woman:
"He's like, 'Well, you're a risk.' I'm like, 'Excuse me?' And he's like, 'This is a risk ... I can't tell you why again. But this is at risk for explosives,'" she told ABC 7 - this despite the fact she had a doctor's note and had correctly labeled the medication.She was, however, able to get through security with a bottle of nail polish, hair spray bottles and syringes.
Her husband, Aaron Nieman, talked to ABC 7 and said, "It made me feel upset and made me feel somewhat helpless."
It's risky to respect people's rights -- their Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure...as well as their right to live through a plane flight -- because every time you do, it makes it a little harder to yank their rights away the next time.
Of course, insulin is specifically permitted by the Transportation Simpletons Authority, but why let that stop an "officer" from putting a pregnant woman's health at risk?
Would You Date Somebody Who's Living With Their Parents?
Just wondering!
(And no, I'm not talking about a person who has a big house and has taken their folks in. I'm talking about an adult who's moved into their old bedroom or down in the basement.)
Turn-off? No big deal? Depends on certain factors?
Your thoughts? (And please say whether you're a man or a woman and tell your general age range, if that applies.)
More Rudeness: Is It The Economy Or Are People Just Jerks?
I came to the conclusion in I See Rude People (based on British anthropologist Robin Dunbar's work) that we're rude because we live in societies too big for our brains.
Dr. Helen wonders on Pajamas Media whether the uptick in rudeness, observed by people polled by Rasmussen Reports, is connected to the Obama economy? (76 percent of the Americans polled feel people are becoming ruder.) She blogs:
I wonder how much of the free-floating hostility is a reaction to the horrific economy, even for those who voted for the current administration. Maybe, the policies that are driving this country into the ground are also causing bad and hostile driving. Or maybe it's something else.Anyone else notice an increase in hostile driving or other hostility in the air recently? What do you attribute the anger to?
Rasmussen Reports speculate that it's technology and cell phones making people ruder. I dispense with that rather facile conclusion in my book, in the section "Meet Homo Barbarus":
I call it "the 'Verizon made 'em do it!' defense" -- blaming the recent surge in rudeness on recent advances in technology like cell phones, the Internet, and mobile sound systems that shake the foundation of your house whenever some jackass in a tricked-out Lincoln Navigator turns his radio on in your zip code.Technology isn't to blame. It just allows rudeness to be spread further, faster, and to a wider audience. The unfortunate truth is, rudeness is the human condition. We modern humans are a bunch of grabby, self-involved jerks, same as generations and generations of humans before us. It's just that there are suddenly fewer constraints on our grabby, self-involved jerkhood than ever before.
Half of my solution -- punishing the rude, in another excerpt from my book:
What good is knowing that we're living in societies way too big for our brains if there's really no reasonable way to change that? I mean, what are we going to do, ship 99.999 percent of New York City back to Poland or Cleveland or Potsdam or wherever they or their ancestors came from, then prohibit the people still left from interacting with more than 150 people -- ever?Although we can't physically recreate a society more in tune with our psychological limitations, the good news is, we can artificially recreate it. What we have to do is mimic the psychological effect the small town/small tribe environment has on people behaving badly -- how the possibility of being caught, shamed, and losing status or getting booted from the fold dissuades people from getting their rude on. And again, while social exile today isn't the death sentence it would have been back in the Stone Age, our genes are still playing and replaying the same old tune in our heads: "It's hard out there alone in the savannah, dude!"
Ironically, the road back to the civility of the 150-person village goes straight through the global village. It takes only the Internet and one pissed-off person with a cell phone camera to strip some willful jerk of the protections of obscurity. The pissed-off person posts the photo on their site or one of the many jerk-exposing sites cropping up, and with a little linkie-love from a few bloggers and maybe a news story or two, the perp gets his (or hers).
My other solution? Being mindful that we live in societies too big for our brains and going out of our way to treat strangers like neighbors (doing small kindnesses for people you don't know -- as well as people you know). I wrote about this in my LA Times op-ed, titled by them "Rude Awakening":
It's also important to expand your concept of "neighbor" to anyone in your vicinity that you can act neighborly to. Not long ago, I saw a car stopped on my street in a place cars don't normally stop. "Everything OK?" I called to the 70ish man at the wheel.In an Irish accent, he said, "Actually, we're lost." He and his wife were looking for the freeway, which was several miles and several turns behind them. I was running late for an appointment, but I gave them quick directions. The man thanked me, but he looked confused.
"One sec!" I said. I ran to my car, pulled out a pen and paper and wrote the directions down. It was no big deal, but then again, it was.
A minute or two of generosity of spirit is probably all it takes to leave people with a lasting good impression of Los Angeles, and more important, it just might compel them to pass on a little goodwill to the people they encounter -- to spread the nice instead of the mean.
A Teacher Talks Sense On The Minnesota Teacher/Student Facebook, Etc. Contact Ban
Details here, at The Atlantic Wire, by Ujala Sehgal:
According to Missouri Senate Bill 54, just signed by state Governor Jay Nixon, any social networking is prohibited between teachers and students. This includes not only Facebook, but any social network "that is exclusive and allows for private communication," according to Springfield, Mo., ABC affiliate KSPR.How did this measure come about? Mashable notes that "inappropriate contact between students and teachers is at the root of the legislation," which is "designed to protect children from sexual misconduct by teachers, compelling school districts to adopt written policies between teachers and students on electronic media, social networking and other forms of communication."
Idiots. Parents need to monitor their children's lives to make sure their kids aren't getting into everything. Having the state legislate like this -- using legislation as a hammer, and even banning contact between former students and teachers is not only ridiculous, but seems an obvious violation of an adult former student's right to associate with whom they want.
Here's a teacher's voice on this (from the comments below the Atlantic piece):
I am a social sciences teacher in a 1 to 1 high school in Iowa. I have a few issues with this bill, even though I feel the end result- cutting down on inappropriate relationships- is what we all want.A couple of points. First, quoting from the bill:
"Teachers also cannot have a nonwork-related website that allows exclusive access with a current or former student".
1.) The whole "former student" thing kind of seems
hard to enforce, for example:-If a student at 18 years old wants to friend that second grade teacher who really helped him out when feeling bad, he and the teacher are breaking the law?
-In smaller communities it is not uncommon to be family friends with teachers and their families. How are they going to police this? Seems like it gives law enforcement the discretion to go after thousands of teachers if they so choose.
- There is a lot of potential for a "Salem Witch hunt" situation persecuting great teachers without due process, wasted tax dollars having to track thousands of instances, and a big brother (your rights mean nothing) government mentality.
2.) Our school prides itself as being a premier 21st century learning environment, and we use all the tools we can to deliver quality instruction to our students. There are teachers that do indeed use tools like twitter effectively in the classroom to engage students who ten years ago would have slipped between the cracks.
Teaching is changing.
Our students already use these tools in their daily lives, and wouldn't it be a shame if effective, creative teachers were dissuaded from teaching in a state because of a culture that does not value their skills?3.) The "Amy Hestir Protection Act" was inspired by a woman who was abused in 7th grade by a teacher. She is now 40 years old. How many social networking sites were around some 30 years ago? Not to ever belittle her courageous struggle overcoming years of pain, but ask yourself: Would this law have protected Amy thirty years ago? Absolutely not. So what are legislators trying to achieve by enacting such a
law?I'll tell you what they have achieved. Making Missouri a state where education is not embracing the future, by limiting tools and resources. Making Missouri a state where great teachers become paranoid and feel undervalued in society. And finally, making Missouri a state where I and thousands of like minded creative teachers will never work.
"The Right To Life, Liberty And Free Cell Phone Minutes..."
I seem to remember the Declaration of Independence reading slightly differently, but I must be wrong because Abby W. Schachter writes in the New York Post that free cell phones are now a new "civil right" of Pennsylvanians on public assistance:
Recently, a federal government program called the Universal Service Fund came to the Keystone State and some residents are thrilled because it means they can enjoy 250 minutes a month and a handset for free, just because they don't have the money to pay for it. Through Assurance Wireless and SafeLink from Tracfone Wireless these folks get to reach out and touch someone while the cost of their service is paid for by everyone else. You see, the telecommunications companies are funding the Universal Service Fund to the tune of $4 billion a year because the feds said they have to and in order to recoup their money, the companies turn around and hike their fees to paying customers. But those of use paying for the free service for the poor, should be happy about this infuriating situation, says Gary Carter, manager of national partnerships for Assurance, because "the program is about peace of mind." Free cell service means "one less bill that someone has to pay, so they can pay their rent or for day care...it is a right to have peace of mind," Cater explained.
I would have more peace of mind if I had a cook, a maid, and a driver. Fork over, taxpayers!
I have a few friends who don't have cell phones (which is annoying if they're running late), and one friend who has the prepaid sort. He only uses it in emergencies -- almost never. Is he cut off from all of his friends? Of course not. He meets us for drinks and talks to us face to face, with nary a piece of technology coming between us.
It's All About Funneling Your Money Into The City's Coffers
Andrew Blankenstein writes at the LA Times that LA traffic officers are suing the city because their supervisors berated and punished them for not meeting ticketing quotas:
Ten Los Angeles motor officers have sued the city alleging that their supervisors retaliated against them for resisting traffic-ticket quotas.Attorney Matthew S. McNicholas said the officers would present evidence "that certain officers were prevented from taking their selected vacation despite being more senior officers and were denied overtime."
Officers who failed to meet daily and weekly ticket quotas were regularly berated in a small room known as the "room of doom," he said.
He added that "when one officer began detailing the quota enforcement in the daily log, he was immediately reprimanded and interrogated by supervisors and that this represented a pattern of ongoing conduct."
...In April, a jury awarded a pair of LAPD officers -- also assigned to West Traffic Division -- $2 million after determining that supervisors had retaliated against the officers for complaining about alleged traffic-ticket quotas.
Howard Chan and David Benioff, both veteran motorcycle officers, sued the department in 2009, alleging that they had been punished with bogus performance reviews, threats of reassignment and other forms of harassment after objecting to demands from commanding officers that they write a certain number of tickets each day, according to the civil action.
That case dated back to late 2006, when command of the traffic division was handed over to Capt. Nancy Lauer. Chan and Benioff alleged in their lawsuit that Lauer and her sergeants and lieutenants made it clear to officers that they were expected to write at least 18 tickets each day. The number of tickets an officer wrote was recorded on their performance evaluation, the suit alleged.
Best way to pay that $2 million? Up the cost of parking tickets! Maybe from $65 for a no parking/street cleaning ticket to $165.
Excerpt from the comment I left on the LAT story:
Next time you get a parking ticket, note how much it is. The city and state and country are going broke thanks to Big Government, and we all voted it in. (And hey, somebody's got to pay for Villaraigosa's junkets -- why not you with your broken tail light, Bub?)
Advice Goddess Free Swim
Found myself a little under the weather on Wednesday (I should be fine by Thursday morning!) so I have to go to bed without any blog items. Put on your red wig and post what you want to talk about. One link per comment or your comment will be eaten by my spam filter. Want to post a second link? Post a second comment. I should be fine in the morning, and I will post more blog items then.
NEVER "Trust The Guardians To Exercise Their Discretion"
Again, the problem of how laws can be abused, which is why overlegislation is dangerous to our rights and freedom. Scott H. Greenfield blogs at Simple Justice:
When the Indiana Supreme Court decided that Brenda Moore had indeed committed the crime of being drunk in public by riding shotgun in a car drive by her sober friend, a thousand public service announcements about designated drivers turned sour. Orin Kerr succinctly explained the deal:A drunken passenger in a car that is pulled over for a traffic violation is guilty of public intoxication, on the ground that "established precedent has long recognized that a person in a vehicle stopped along a highway is in a public place for purposes of the public intoxication statute."...It happens, on occasion, that a person will be drunk in a place other than their home. And this, according to the Indiana Supremes, constitutes a crime, even if only a B misdemeanor. As crazy as this decision seems, certain commenters to Orin's post noted that this is something of a time honored tradition in Indiana (and perhaps elsewhere). In one comment, "Kilroy" wrote:
As a former deputy prosecutor in Indiana, I saw many arrests for PI for passengers in cars. These were usually the result of people either being rude and belligerent or just a lack of other options since officer had a drunk driver to arrest and couldn't find a ride home for the drunk passenger. I never had a problem with the arrest and felt that charges fit; however, I never entered a single conviction for a drunk passenger. Something called prosecutorial discretion was always used.
Scott continues and gets to the dangerous part, part of the title of this post:
Apart from the silliness of the law, that a person in a car is in public, or that a person who has engage in no conduct beyond sitting in a seat in a drunken condition, are engage in a crime, there is a far more nefarious solution to the use of bad law:Trust the guardians to exercise their discretion.
No, thanks. I don't think we want to trust that a prosecutor is not an asshole or that bullshit charges won't be used to reel in a person isn't guilty of anything meaningful at all, but whom a prosecutor decides to charge for some reason.
I sometimes walk home (four blocks) from a bar in my neighborhood after having a drink. Lots of people walk to this bar. If I've had two glasses of wine instead of one (I'm a lightweight) and I haven't had any food, I could legally be arrested and charged with public drunkenness under this law. Do we really want that possibility in our society? Don't say it won't happen. If the laws exist, it can happen.
And while we're at it, why should it be a crime if you walk down the sidewalk drinking a beer? (Assuming you aren't breaking windows and threatening other pedestrians while doing it?)
Must We Litigate Everything?
Overlawyered's Walter Olson blogged about a man who was upset that the Santa Rosa Hilton he stayed at charged him 75 cents for a newspaper he thought was free. Naturally, he filed a federal class-action lawsuit instead of just telling the hotel to take it off his bill, and being watchful about it the next time!
SF Chron article on the case here, by Henry K. Lee:
"He did not request a newspaper and assumed it had been placed there by hotel staff," said the suit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Harmon didn't realize until later that a 75-cent charge for the paper had been added to his bill.Harmon accused Hilton of deliberately hiding the newspaper charge by describing the fee in an "extremely small font which is difficult to notice or read" on the sleeve of the room card.
The suit noted that newspaper readership and circulation has drastically declined over the past several decades and that most hotel guests probably aren't reading the paper anyway. The wasted papers are an "offensive waste of precious resources and energy," said the suit, which also said that "deforestation caused by paper production is a matter of concern and worry in this state, country and worldwide."
Untrue! John Tierney explained in The New York Times:
Yes, a lot of trees have been cut down to make today's newspaper. But even more trees will probably be planted in their place. America's supply of timber has been increasing for decades, and the nation's forests have three times more wood today than in 1920. "We're not running out of wood, so why do we worry so much about recycling paper?" asks Jerry Taylor, the director of natural resource studies at the Cato Institute. "Paper is an agricultural product, made from trees grown specifically for paper production. Acting to conserve trees by recycling paper is like acting to conserve cornstalks by cutting back on corn consumption."
My comment on Overlawyered about going from zero to ginormous lawsuit:
Must we litigate everything? A guy at a liquor store in Long Beach charged me 50 cents without telling me because I used my VISA. I noticed that the bill was high and he then said it was 50 cents extra because I used a credit card. I told him I knew that was against the credit card company's merchant agreement, and told him to give me my 50 cents back or I'd report him to VISA. He did. I left. No lawsuit. Case closed!
Vile
The House Judiciary Committee just approved a bill (H.R. 1981) requiring Internet service providers to spy on their users and retain 12 months of data -- data that could be used to identify where you surf and what you post online. From the Electronic Frontier Foundation, quoting their Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston:
The data retention mandate in this bill would treat every Internet user like a criminal and threaten the online privacy and free speech rights of every American, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have recognized. Requiring Internet companies to redesign and reconfigure their systems to facilitate government surveillance of Americans' expressive activities is simply un-American. Such a scheme would be as objectionable to our Founders as the requiring of licenses for printing presses or the banning of anonymous pamphlets. Today's vote is therefore very disappointing, but we are especially thankful to GOP Representatives Sensenbrenner, Issa and Chaffetz, who chose principle over party-line in opposing this dangerous tech mandate. We hope that bipartisan opposition will grow as the bill makes its way to the House floor and more lawmakers are educated about this anti-privacy, anti-free speech, anti-innovation proposal.
Every time we let our rights be grabbed without a peep it makes it that much easier to take a big fistful of them the next time. Speak up, sheeple!
UPDATE: To make it a little easier for you to speak up, here's the link to get your Congressperson's (or Congressturd's) email address, and a letter by 2Wolves1Sheep:
I am writing in strong opposition to HR 1981 ("Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011″) due to its provision mandating that Internet Service Providers maintain 12 months of personal information, including browsing and posting activity.This bill that you co-sponsored is a direct assault on my right to privacy. In your admirable zeal to protect children, you have discarded the right to privacy for millions of Americans, and this is shameful.
I am certain that children can be protected without invasive, big brother monitoring of the activities of law-abiding citizens. I hope that when this bill comes to the floor you will support amendments to strike that provision from the bill. If not, it looks like I will need to count on other peoples' representatives to look out for me and my rights.
It's so easy. I just sent this message above to my nitwit of a representative, the just-elected Janice Hahn. Click and send! Click and send! In the age of the Internet, it's easy to make your voice heard. Speak out to defend our rights...now...today!
Bloodthirsty 4-Year-Old Killer
That's how the kid seems -- until you see the uncut footage play at the end:
From the writeup on YouTube:
CBS Television Station WBBM in Chicago is being criticized for airing a misleading the video of a 4-year old boy saying he wanted a gun. The boy made the comment, after being asked loaded questions by a freelance photographer, because he wanted to be a police officer.The Society of Professional Journalists says the decision to edit the video "reveals a lack of understanding of the very basic tenets of journalism."
I'm guessing they understand them quite well, and ignored them forthwith.
Truly vile.
TSA Sign, Denver: The Sign Of Rights Being Trampled
A friend told me about this sign at Denver International, and photographed it for me at my request when she next flew:
The vagueness of "verbal abuse" helps put a further chill on free speech, which makes it easier for the TSA to trample our Fourth Amendment rights.
If travelers don't know what they could be arrested for, maybe speaking up at all will seem too risky -- even as government lackeys are sexually violating us and sending us like herds of sheep through the scanners that Napolitano misled the public about, claiming they'd been tested and proven safe. Of course, that wasn't the case. (Hi there, cancer!)
I must say, I do like the suggestion on the sign that we give the TSA "officers" "the respect they deserve." A personal hero of mine does this best: extending both middle fingers as he's groped.
Barack To The Future
Seattle PI's Sue Lani Madsen quotes the President from his Senatorial days:
"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America 's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, "the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."-Senator Barack H. Obama, March 2006
We sure the hell do. The voters need to stop voting in the Barack Obamas and ficus-tree-smart Janice Hahns of the world (she's my new Congressidiot -- spoke to her on the phone once and found her even dumber and less able to carry on a debate than she's been made out to be in the local press).
The Stuff Of Childhood Is Now Criminal
The problem with having laws against everything is that they can be applied without sense being applied to the situation...as they were in this case.
It's a pretty common experience in childhood to see an abandoned baby bird or a hurt bird and to try to nurse it back to health.
Here's a story out of Fredericksburg, VA, of the consequences these days of doing that sort of thing. Kristin Fisher writes at WUSA9 that a baby woodpecker was about to be eaten by the family cat, and Skylar Capo, an 11-year-old aspiring vet, sprang into action:
Skylar couldn't find the woodpecker's mother, so she brought it to her own mother, Alison Capo, who agreed to take it home."She was just going to take care of it for a day or two, make sure it was safe and uninjured, and then she was going to let it go," said Capo.
But on the drive home, the Capo family stopped at this Lowes and they brought the bird inside because of the heat. That's when they were confronted by a woman from the Department of Fish and Wildlife.
"She was really nervous. She was shaking. Then she pulled out a badge," said Capo.
The problem was that the woodpecker is a protected species under the Federal Migratory Bird Act. Therefore, it's illegal to take or transport a baby woodpecker. The Capo's say they had no idea.
They let the bird go, but...
...Two weeks later, that same woman from the Department of Fish and Wildlife showed up at the Capo's front door. This time, Capo says she was accompanied by a state trooper. Alison Capo was cited for unlawfully taking a migratory bird and now she's been slapped with a $535 fine.
The Execution Must Be Televised
I'm not for capital punishment -- because I don't think we have a right to take a life, except in self-defense, and because mistakes are too often made, and innocent people are sometimes executed.
But, if we are going to kill people, we shouldn't avert our eyes. In The New York Times, Zachary B. Shemtob and David Lat argue that executions should be televised:
EARLIER this month, Georgia conducted its third execution this year. This would have passed relatively unnoticed if not for a controversy surrounding its videotaping. Lawyers for the condemned inmate, Andrew Grant DeYoung, had persuaded a judge to allow the recording of his last moments as part of an effort to obtain evidence on whether lethal injection caused unnecessary suffering.Though he argued for videotaping, one of Mr. DeYoung's defense lawyers, Brian Kammer, spoke out against releasing the footage to the public. "It's a horrible thing that Andrew DeYoung had to go through," Mr. Kammer said, "and it's not for the public to see that."
We respectfully disagree. Executions in the United States ought to be made public.
Right now, executions are generally open only to the press and a few select witnesses. For the rest of us, the vague contours are provided in the morning paper. Yet a functioning democracy demands maximum accountability and transparency. As long as executions remain behind closed doors, those are impossible. The people should have the right to see what is being done in their name and with their tax dollars.
This is particularly relevant given the current debate on whether specific methods of lethal injection constitute cruel and unusual punishment and therefore violate the Constitution.
...A democracy demands a citizenry as informed as possible about the costs and benefits of society's ultimate punishment.
They fail to bring up one of the first things that occurred to me as I began reading their piece -- whether televised executions would lead to people committing horrific crimes in order to have a famously horrific death.
Pajamas Tweetia
I liked this tweet:
@TheSmallgGay The pathetic little bloggers, the losers who only have internet radio shows, the nobodies with the phone cameras will save this nation.
True? False?
Why The Free Market And Not The Fair Market
Excerpt from a 1992 Milton Friedman column:
The modern tendency to substitute "fair" for "free" reveals how far we have moved from the initial conception of the Founding Fathers. They viewed government as policeman and umpire. They sought to establish a framework within which individuals could pursue their own objectives in their own way, separately or through voluntary cooperation, provided only that they did not interfere with the freedom of others to do likewise.The modern conception is very different. Government has become Big Brother. Its function has become to protect the citizen, not merely from his fellows, but from himself, whether he wants to be protected or not. Government is not simply an umpire but an active participant, entering into every nook and cranny of social and economic activity. All this, in order to promote the high-minded goals of "fairness," "justice," "equality."
Does this not constitute progress? A move toward a more humane society? Quite the contrary. When "fairness" replaces "freedom," all our liberties are in danger. In Walden, Thoreau says: "If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." That is the way I feel when I hear my "servants" in Washington assuring me of the "fairness" of their edicts.
There is no objective standard of "fairness." "Fairness" is strictly in the eye of the beholder. If speech must be fair, then it cannot also be free; someone must decide what is fair. A radio station is not free to transmit unfair speech -- as judged by the bureaucrats at the Federal Communications Commission. If the printed press were subject to a comparable "fairness doctrine," it would have to be controlled by a government bureau and our vaunted free press would soon become a historical curiosity.
...Is then the search for "fairness" all a mistake? Not at all. There is a real role for fairness, but that role is in constructing general rules and adjudicating disputes about the rules, not in determining the outcome of our separate activities. That is the sense in which we speak of a "fair" game and "fair" umpire. If we applied the present doctrine of "fairness" to a football game, the referee would be required after each play to move the ball backward or forward enough to make sure that the game ended in a draw!
The Pretend Thing Called "The Debt Ceiling"
Raising the ceiling in a house takes some serious construction work. Not so for the USA's "debt ceiling, which seems to be made of a thin layer of red, white and blue chiffon. Tom Rowan writes at American Thinker:
Apparently, the "debt ceiling's" only purpose is to remind law makers when it is time to borrow more money. Raising the "debt ceiling" has occurred 74 times since 1962. Since 1962, the "debt ceiling" has capped the amount government can legally borrow exactly zero times. It just keeps being raised as government's appetite expands into all our individual lives.The government is now so big it tells us how much water our toilets can have. The government tells us how much water our showers can clean us with. The government tells us we pollute the air every time we exhale. The government tells us our kids are fat. The government tells us how much energy we are allowed to harvest. The government tells us which light bulbs to buy. The government has grown and grown since 1962 and your money has not satiated its hunger yet.
...Reasonable people from both parties have developed the "debt ceiling" and its caps. If the "debt ceiling" is a rational and reasonable law then how come we do not hear any voices advocating that we just follow the law and stop spending more than we take in? Perhaps following and enforcing the law is just some zany extreme position people should no longer expect from their elective government.
The sane position, we are told by our government servants, is to re-jigger the law when it suits the suits in Washington, making the very concept of a debt ceiling inapplicable. The only people benefitting from these backroom deals are the establishment politicians. They become millionaires and the people they "serve" get stuck with the construction costs of raising the roof.
"I've Never Met A Happy Wimp"
Michael Van Osch writes on The Good Men Project about lessons from his late mentor, " Donald "Moe" Targosz, "an ex-pro football player, English teacher, winning football coach, businessman, husband and father, not to mention an avid ice-fisherman":
But above all, when you met him, you knew immediately that this was a real man. You knew because he lived every day by his principles--principles backed by beliefs that simply couldn't be shaken by the winds of folly, fad, and social pressure.
About the above line and lesson from Targosz, "I've never met a happy wimp," Osch writes:
Though you may laugh, as I did, upon hearing it for the first time, let it sink in and take root, and you may realize that this one simple statement actually says it all. It may not sound like Shakespeare, but like a single line from the Bard, it conveys a wealth of knowledge.What at first may seem to be mere bravado, upon inspection becomes the most succinct way of saying that if you want to be happy in your life, then it is up to you. It is up to you to:
- Stand up for that in which you believe
- Go after what you want out of life
- Refuse to settle
- Respect yourself and others
- Keep your word
- Refuse to compromise your principles and values for anything
- Overcome fear and be open to new people and ideas
- Dream big and take risks as a part of your life
- Continuously move out of your comfort zone to find and live your calling.
The War Against The First Amendment
Public processes, including police actions, should be under scrutiny. But, here's yet another man who was stopped from videotaping -- and was beaten by police for videotaping their actions: