Advice Goddess Radio: Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET -- Fred Hahn On Science-Based Fitness: How To Be Healthier Than A Marathon-Runner With Only 15 Minutes Of Exercise
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
Tonight a very special guest: Exercise trainer and rehab expert Fred Hahn on why slow-speed strength training, for just a few minutes a week, will make you healthier than a marathon runner. (He will lay out fascinating and solid evidence throughout the show.)
Listen live at this link at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/10/01/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Fred is co-author, with Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades, whom I greatly respect, of The Slow Burn Fitness Revolution: The Slow-Motion Exercise That Will Change Your Body In 30 Minutes A Week.
He will debunk all the myths most of us hold about exercise and fitness, and leave you with a plan for exercise that will strengthen your heart and bones and increase your metabolism, and will only eat 12-15 minutes of your week.
We'll also be touching on Strong Kids, Healthy Kids, his book for how you can get your kids fit through slow-burn.
This is a not-to-be-missed show. This method of exercise has improved my health and my life and I'm hoping you'll follow my lead.
UPDATE: Fred's site -- seriousstrength.com. I haven't done a session with him, but I will invest in an hour with him to find out how to do right all the things I'm sure I'm doing wrong when I'm in NYC, where his gym is. You can hear on the show what a good guy he is -- this was one of the most important shows I've done for the positive impact I think it will make on so many people's lives.
And don't miss last week's show with dietary researcher Dr. Jeff Volek. He lays out the science behind why you should declare your independence from dietary carbohydrates -- sugar, flour, starchy vegetables like potatoes, apple juice -- that cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat.
Dr. Michael Eades calls Dr. Volek's book (co-authored with Dr. Stephen Phinney) "the best low-carb book in print."
Listen or download the podcast at this link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/09/24/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes.
Something I've Long Suggested: That A Marriage License Be More Like A Driver's License -- Renewable
Now, it's in the NYT, in a piece by Matt Richtel. An excerpt:
Last year, several lawmakers in Mexico City proposed the creation of short-term, renewable marriage contracts with terms as brief as two years. The idea was to own up to the reality that marriages fail about half the time.Is marriage headed for an overhaul? A fundamental rethinking? Is it due for one?
When the Mexican legislators proposed their idea, which was not passed, the archdiocese there called it "absurd" and said it was anathema to the nature of marriage. I decided to put the questions to a different group: the people who study marriage and divorce. I was motivated not just by trend lines but, as a child of divorce, by ghosts.
I asked whether society should consider something like a 20-year marriage contract, my own modest proposal that, as in the one from Mexico, acknowledges the harsh truth that nearly half of marriages in the United States end in divorce and many others are miserable. The rough idea: two people, two decades, enough time to have and raise children if that's your thing; a new status quo, a ceremony with a shelf life, till awhile do us part.
But despite having proposed it, whimsically, as a journalistic expedition, I found myself surprised and even unnerved by the extent to which some experts I spoke with say there is a need to rethink an institution that so often fails.
...Kenneth P. Altshuler, the president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, the divorce-attorney trade group, said such contracts were neither so absurd nor impractical as they might sound. He thinks they could address some of the financial costs associated with divorce, which he estimates at hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
If you become a parent, because of the damage divorce does to kids, you need to stay together while your kids are growing up (at least until they go away to college, or are that age). But, beyond people who have kids growing up, why should we keep worshipping forever?
Why I Live In Southern California
Saturday night. Just another typical night in my neighborhood.
Gregg calls to let me know he's parked, and is coming down the sidewalk with grocery bags, and to open the gate.
I do, and there are two people coming down the sidewalk. Gregg is walking behind an older man.
As the man comes closer, I see he has a parrot on his shoulder.
I say to the bird, "Hi, birdy!" and he says hello back, and I let Gregg in the gate.
More Fiscally Conservative Than Romney; More Socially Liberal Than Obama
Meet Gary Johnson -- the one candidate you could vote for without holding your nose.
TSA Worker: Theft From Luggage "Commonplace"
From ABC News -- "It was so easy" to steal that one day he walked out of a checkpoint with a Nintendo Wii in his hand, says a convicted TSA worker who admits to stealing more than $800K of passengers' stuff in the four years he worked for the agency:
Here, a TSA worker is caught after he took home a passenger's iPad. Megan Chuchmach, Randy Kreider, and Brian Ross write on ABCNews.com:
In the latest apparent case of what have been hundreds of thefts by TSA officers of passenger belongings, an iPad left behind at a security checkpoint in the Orlando airport was tracked as it moved 30 miles to the home of the TSA officer last seen handling it.Confronted two weeks later by ABC News, the TSA officer, Andy Ramirez, at first denied having the missing iPad, but ultimately turned it over after blaming his wife for taking it from the airport.
The iPad was one of ten purposely left behind at TSA checkpoints at major airports with a history of theft by government screeners, as part of an ABC News investigation into the TSA's ongoing problem with theft from passengers.
It seems the people who should be groped at airports are those leaving the building with all of our shit.
via @mpetrie98 and Maggie_McNeill
Torture Délicieuse
A Paris-dwelling American friend of mine subscribes to a pâtisseries email list. Surprisingly, she still looks like a woman with a nice little waistline, and not Elsie the Cow. Here's one from today's email: 
In case you happen to be in Paris, hop on over to the 17th arrondissement for one of these.
Chocolatier Charpentier - Didier Fourreau
87 rue de Courcelles
75017 Paris
01 47 63 93 05
Métro Courcelles
Fermé le dimanche (that means closed on Sundays)
Into The Future, While Racing Back To The Dark Ages
Cairo-dwelling anthropologist (specializing in the South Sudan) and former foreign correspondent Carol Berger returns to Alexandria, Egypt. Very interesting piece in LA Review of Books. A bit from it:
At the Elite Restaurant, a young woman sits alone in the next booth. She is talking on a cellphone and chain smoking; a glass of beer sits before her. But even she is wearing the hijab.
Watery Bacon And Hydrogenated Everything
Much of the food sold in most grocery stores is utter crap.
Michael S. Rozeff posts at Lew Rockwell:
Ever since inflation took off in the 1960s, the food has gone downhill. That's not the only cause of it, but it's one cause. The food companies have tried to hold prices down by cheapening the food and cutting down the quantities. They've eliminated many good ingredients and substituted drek. There are foods today that I wouldn't feed to a dog.Many bacon makers have watered the bacon. Water is a cheap ingredient! When you fry it, the water comes out and so does some white guk. I made bacon from the age of 10, and I can tell you for sure that this stuff isn't cutting it. The meat itself? Forget it! They've bred the fat out of pork, beef and now lamb and with it went the flavor, the juiciness, and the tenderness. If you watch the food shows on tv, the cooks are constantly adding everything under the sun to the meats in an effort to create something that tastes halfway decent.
If you're buying food sold in packages that aren't just shrink-wrapped unadultered food, there's a good chance you're buying things that are unhealthy -- and not just because of the sugar and flour-based carbs in many packaged foods.
Hydrogenated oils are particularly bad for you.
Obama White House Now Admits Attack In Libya Premeditated
@andersoncooper tweeted:
US Defense Secretary now says terrorists "planned" #Benghazi attack. What's behind evolution of public statements by admin?
Jake Tapper has the details:
Tapper's written report here:
Panetta today said that the attack that killed four Americans on the anniversary of 9/11 was not only carried out by terrorists -- it was pre-meditated."As we determined the details of what took place there and how that attack took place," Panetta told reporters, "it became clear that there were terrorists who had planned that attack."
The White House first suggested the attack was spontaneous -- the result of an anti-Muslim video that incited mobs throughout the region.
...White House officials acknowledge that assessments have changed over time as intelligence has been confirmed, but they insist that no information was given in bad faith and there was no attempt to downplay the attack.
But sources told ABC News that intelligence officials on the ground immediately suspected the attack was not tied to the movie at all. The attackers knew Ambassador Stevens had been trying to flee -- to a so-called safe house half a mile away. That building was hit with insurgent mortars -- suggesting the terrorists knew what they were doing.
From The Daily Beast, Eli Lake reports:
Within 24 hours of the 9-11 anniversary attack on the United States consulate in Benghazi, U.S. intelligence agencies had strong indications al Qaeda-affiliated operatives were behind the attack, and had even pinpointed the location of one of those attackers. Three separate U.S. intelligence officials who spoke to The Daily Beast said the early information was enough to show that the attack was planned and the work of al Qaeda affiliates operating in Eastern Libya.Nonetheless, it took until late last week for the White House and the administration to formally acknowledge that the Benghazi assault was a terrorist attack. On Sunday, Obama adviser Robert Gibbs explained the evolving narrative as a function of new information coming in quickly on the attacks. "We learned more information every single day about what happened," Gibbs said on Fox News. "Nobody wants to get to the bottom of this faster than we do."
From Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, Obama UN Ambassador Susan Rice was trying to sell the tale that the attack -- which cost four American lives, including US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens -- was just a spontaneous demonstration that "spun out of control." She worked hard to sell the administration's claim that the violence was all about the video, "The Innocence of Muslims."
Morrissey wrote (all the way back on September 16 -- at the above link):
The betrayal of the supposedly "safe house" also tends to support Magariaf's assertion. An angry mob wouldn't have organized well enough for that kind of pursuit and intelligence, unless the Libyan security forces in the know simply and "spontaneously" decided to throw in with the mob, which is possible but pretty unlikely. The coordination and purposeful strategy in play shows premeditation and planning, and that means it's not just an angry mob that spontaneously "spun out of control."Maybe someone should ask the State Department to explain the difference in conclusions. Oh, that's right, that part of the US government has declared itself immune from public scrutiny. Bummer. Because if this attack wasn't the "spontaneous" event that "spun out of control" that Rice insists it was, then State and the White House have a lot to answer for on their preparations and security decisions for the anniversary of 9/11 in a part of Libya well known to be haven to radical Islamist terror networks -- including al-Qaeda.
Moving Piece On The Woman "Sons Of Anarchy" Actor Is Suspected Of Murdering
My friend Taylor Negron has a beautiful piece up at xojane about the life of the woman, Catherine Davis, 81, that Johnny Lewis is suspected of murdering. An excerpt:
Her name is Catherine Davis. And she is a Hollywood legend. A near saint.And a kind and loving mother to so many, including me.
A writer, artist and entrepreneur, the media later explained her as an "elderly 81-year-old woman." This could maybe be used to describe her bones.
Cathy Davis was a woman of astounding energy and clear-minded self-creation. The house she rented to accused killer Johnny Lewis -- and to me, Parker Posey, Thomas Jane, Chris Parnell, Paula Poundstone, and so many others -- was known to us as the "Writer's Villa." It is located in an affluent part of Los Feliz and was built in 1927 to resemble a Villa in Spain or Italy. The original bathrooms of Malibu tile still exist, reflected by the beveled mirrors in the medicine cabinet. Hand-painted pink. Turquoise and lemon yellow ceramic tiles are inlaid in the sunny staircase that is at the center of the house leading to a carved door that is always open.
Born into humble roots in Texas, Cathy made sure she got into UCLA and there flourished in that atmosphere of 1950s Los Angeles where endless possibilities and vacant lots and a lot of handiwork led to a dream fulfilled.
Marrying and having a baby, Catherine moved into what clearly was a dream house on that gentle hill. The marriage dissolved and the feminist movement took hold and Cathy became what I always called a "Sesame Street feminist." Bold and colorful, simple, direct. Easy. She understood how to flatter men, but was never taken hostage. These were the women who raised my generation -- equal pay for equal work. Independent with the smarts on their sleeves. This quintessentially modern California lady living life on her own terms, armed with only a stack of Sunset Magazines and 100-watt smile.
The ad I answered in The LA Times when I was in my early twenties, read "rooms to rent in Villa." I went there to see. At this point I was making money from acting in movies and needed to settle down and start thinking about buying my own home.
"Well," Cathy said in her pert Texas twinch, "you're in the right place. I am a real estate agent, and we will find you something you will love."
I liked that she used the royal "we." Hollywood is usually more about "me" than "we." I knew nothing about mortgages or equity.
"Your job is to be an artist, to tell jokes," she told me.
I made Cathy laugh intensely. That is the greatest gift of all that I treasure.
When we make others laugh, the tension grinds away, and the moment is balanced. The "me" becomes a "we."
Those of us, that fraternity that lived at the Villa, understoond that. They were the sum of our parts.
I took the room on the right upstairs with a large rounded fireplace and a view of succulents hemmed by aromatic sumac bushes. These native plants give off a slight aroma like gasoline. Clean and startling. Over time, I would move in and out of the Villa while Cathy looked around for my first home. She was quick to tell me I was home and that it was "my room ... always."
The door was always open, and soon I found that my boyhood friend Val Kilmer was living in one of the rooms, and there we had parties with serious actors like George Clooney and his then wife Talia Balsam. Paula Poundstone lived there.
Over time, I stayed in every room in the house and became a part of that household, made up of equally eccentric types that came to Lowey Road to stay while in artistic transit or retreat. Cathy was always catering meals for us from local restaurants and long after I moved out, I would attend these long dinners on her flagstone terrace where you would meet Dutch movie stars or violin soloists from Japan. Actors and writers put their best face forward as Cathy demonstrated to them that their dreams were not far from reach.
Raising Diabetes
Uh, that is, raising money to combat diabetes.
That's what some Walgreens' employees intended to do with their bake sale, not quite understanding that sugar consumption leads to the disease.
Well, not necessarily -- if you're not consuming mountains of the stuff.
I will eat a single chocolate chip cookie about once a month at an event I go to. And I eat dessert -- a scoop of chocolate gelato or a tiny dark chocolate candy bar -- about once every two weeks. But, otherwise, I consume zero sugar or flour.
The problem is really "nutritionists," far too many doctors, the AMA, and the government (including the president's wife), preaching bad science -- the myth that one should eat a high-carb, low-fat diet...a very unhealthy diet to eat.
As I've written here countless times before, per Gary Taubes' "Why We Get Fat," it is carbohydrates -- sugar, flour, starchy vegetables like potatoes, apple juice -- that cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat.
If you know that, and generally avoid these items, you can pick up the very occasional bake sale item and have it just be a treat, not one more step toward your sentence to an early and painful death.
Via Consumerist
That Mean, Bad For Civil Liberties George W. Obama
All those people who touted Barack Obama as the great black hope for something better for civil liberties got a surprise -- if they truly were looking for something better for civil liberties and not just something not George Bush.
I don't see a whole lot of squealing about Obama's awful record on civil liberties.
Jonathan Turley writes about "Innocence of Muslims'" filmmaker Nakoula's arrest for probation violations (which could land him in jail for three years):
Given the calls for his arrest and even execution by Muslim allies, the arrest raises obvious concerns that the Administration is again defending free speech while quietly moving to punish those who cause religious strife.From my experience as a criminal defense attorney, the violations described in a case of his kind rarely warrant the 4-month term demanded for Nakoula Basseley Nakoula. In addition, the federal authorities insisted on his being jailed as a flight risk, though it is unclear why that is the case and why he could not be given an electronic bracelet.
Magistrate Judge Suzanne H. Segal found that Nakoula exhibited a "lengthy pattern of deception" and posed "some danger to the community." I can see the basis for the first conclusion but not the evidence of a danger to the community. My concern is that the response to his film -- which is a protected act of free speech -- was weighed in the balance of such a decision. Nakoula is accused of eight charges of probation violation including making false statements to authorities about the film. He reportedly admitted that he wrote the film but authorities insist that he did not fully explain his role.
The U.S. Attorney suggested that he might charge Nakoula with making false statements about the film -- charges that would seem an obvious act of retaliation by the Administration.
...The immediate scrutiny left many with the impression that the Obama Administration wanted to show Arab allies that the filmmaker was under arrest while professing a commitment to free speech.
The End Of Free Checking (Brought To You By Your Government)
From The Week:
Why do banks need more revenue?
New government regulations and a struggling economy have eaten into bank profits. President Obama's 2010 overhaul of the financial system, which is meant to protect consumers from bad banking practices, curbed the ability of banks to charge customers overdraft fees. Major banks have tried to offset the losses in numerous ways, most prominently by trying to charge customers for using their debit cards, which was met with a severe public backlash.How much does a checking account cost now?
Bankrate found that customers on average had to keep a minimum of $723 in their accounts to avoid a fee, which is up 23 percent from the previous year. The average monthly fee for a non-interest checking account is $5.48, up 25 percent from 2011. Bank of America, for example, is planning to charge certain customers between $9 and $25 to keep a checking account. Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase are considering similar measures.How can customers avoid paying a fee?
Bankrate advises bank customers to set up direct deposit, which banks sometimes accept as a substitute for a fee or a minimum balance. However, that doesn't help people who work part time. In those cases, Bankrate recommends moving to a bank or credit union with free checking. Analysts note that 70 percent of large credit unions still offer free checking accounts.
Yoohoo, Christians, Did You Forget To Riot?
Ayman Mohyeldin writes for NBC News that a Muslim cleric in Cairo ripped up and burned copies of the New Testament at a protest in front of the American Embassy:
Ahmed Mohammed Mahmoud Abdallah, also known as Sheikh Abu Islam, is part owner of a private ultra-conservative Islamic TV station known as Al Uma and was participating in demonstrations against a U.S.-made movie denigrating the Prophet Muhammad that swept the Muslim world in the last month.Egypt's General Prosecutor accused Abu Islam and his son, the channel's executive director, of insulting religion - in this case Christianity.
The case is a rare example of the country's often-criticized blasphemy laws being used against someone who allegedly insulted a religion that is not Islam. That trial is scheduled to begin September 30.
Obama: "I Haven't Raised Taxes" (Fingers Crossed!)
Michael F. Cannon and Jonathan H. Adler write at NRO that the IRS has gone rogue:
A president who says "I haven't raised taxes" has authorized his Internal Revenue Service (to) issue a "final rule" that will illegally tax some 12 million individuals, plus large employers, in as many as 40 states beginning in 2014. Oklahoma's attorney general has asked a federal court to block this rule. Members of Congress have introduced legislation in both the House and the Senate to quash it.At first glance, it might not seem that the IRS is up to anything nefarious. The rule in question concerns the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's tax credits, not the law's tax increases. The tax credits are intended to offset the cost of insurance premiums for low- and middle-income workers.
For many Americans, however, those tax credits are like an anchor disguised as a life vest. The mere fact that a taxpayer is eligible for a tax credit can trigger tax liabilities against both the taxpayer (under the act's "individual mandate") and her employer (under the "employer mandate"). In 2016, these tax credits will trigger a tax of $2,085 on many families of four earning as little as $24,000. An employer with 100 workers could face a tax of $140,000 if even one of his workers is eligible for a tax credit.
So it is significant that the PPACA explicitly and repeatedly restricts eligibility for tax credits to people who purchase health insurance "through an Exchange [i.e., government agency] established by the state" in which they live. That means that under the statute Congress enacted, a state can block those hefty taxes simply by declining to create an exchange. The PPACA directs the federal government to create an exchange in any state that declines to create one itself, and Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius estimates she may have to do so in as many as 30 states. (Some experts put the number closer to 40.) However, because the statute withholds tax credits in federal exchanges, the creation of a federal exchange does not trigger tax liabilities. By our count, as many as 12 million low- and middle-income Americans would be exempt from those taxes, including 250,000 Oklahomans.
It is here that the IRS has gone rogue. The agency has announced that, despite the clear statutory language restricting tax credits to exchanges established by states, it will issue tax credits through federal exchanges. One can see why Oklahoma and the rest might be upset: By offering tax credits in states that opt not to create exchanges, the IRS is imposing taxes where Congress did not authorize them. This IRS rule will tax those 12 million low- and middle-income Americans, including 250,000 Oklahomans, contrary to the express language of the PPACA.
Defenders of the rule claim that Congress intended the tax credits to be available in all exchanges. But is that true?
It may come as a surprise to supporters of the PPACA, as it did to us, but all the evidence that has surfaced to date shows that Congress restricted and, yes, intended to restrict tax credits to state-created exchanges. What the IRS is doing is illegal.
They explain why at the link.
Great News: Blood Test For Cancer
From Science Daily, a blood test developed by Kansas State University researchers accurately detects early stages of breast and lung cancer in humans:
In less than an hour, the test can detect breast cancer and non-small lung cancer -- the most common type of lung cancer -- before symptoms like coughing and weight loss start. The researchers anticipate testing for the early stages of pancreatic cancer shortly.The test was developed by Stefan Bossmann, professor of chemistry, and Deryl Troyer, professor of anatomy and physiology. Both are also researchers affiliated with Kansas State University's Johnson Cancer Research Center and the University of Kansas Cancer Center. Gary Gadbury, professor of statistics at Kansas State University, helped analyze the data from tests with lung and breast cancer patients.
..."The problem, though, is that nobody knows they're in stage 1," Bossmann said. "There is often not a red flag to warn that something is wrong. Meanwhile, the person is losing critical time."
The test developed by Kansas State University's Bossmann and Troyer works by detecting increased enzyme activity in the body. Iron nanoparticles coated with amino acids and a dye are introduced to small amounts of blood or urine from a patient. The amino acids and dye interact with enzymes in the patient's urine or blood sample. Each type of cancer produces a specific enzyme pattern, or signature, that can be identified by doctors.
Pittsburgh Vigilante Crosswalk Painter
I love when citizens take it into their own hands to remedy what dumb and bloated city bureaucracies won't. Diana Nelson Jones writes in the Post-Gazette:
Originally reported on the Polish Hill Civic Association's Blogski, this do-it-yourself solution to a traffic problem is illegal, but some residents are delighted that if the city wouldn't help slow down vehicles, someone did. The civic association reports that intersection is "one of the problem spots ... where residents have been suffering the impact of speeding and careless drivers for years."The civic association has formally requested that the city paint crosswalks at that intersection and reports on its blog -- blogski.phcapgh.org -- that while it "didn't initiate this action and doesn't know who did, we share the concern that motivated it."
Alexis Miller, president of the civic association, said the group has been "voicing concerns on behalf of the community for over a year. The response from the city was that it doesn't have the means to paint crosswalks at every four-way stop intersection and that it prioritizes based on pedestrian traffic," she said.
Pedestrian volume at Melwood and Finland apparently isn't high enough to merit crosswalks.
"One success we have had was to get stop signs at Gold Way and Denver Street, behind Pittsburgh Filmmakers, after a serious accident in May. Gold Way becomes Melwood, and it is so narrow and a lot of people who live on that street have had their cars hit and mirrors taken off," Ms. Miller said.
"The fact that people painted the crosswalks themselves says more than I can say," she added. "People are willing to take action into their own hands. The city said that it would be removed."
From the Stamford Advocate:
Public Works director Rob Kaczorowski said crews were planning to install larger stop signs and paint crosswalks in a few weeks. City officials had previously twice denied requests for crosswalks since 2009, claiming there wasn't enough pedestrian traffic to warrant them, before repeated requests from residents changed their mind.Kaczorowski said he's never seen anyone take crosswalk painting into their own hands in his 32 years with the city.
"It's kind of crazy to do something like that," he said. "The person who did that would be part of the liability if there's an accident there."
But resident Mary Hughes said the vigilante with a paintbrush is characteristic of the cramped neighborhood known for its narrow streets and homey, working-class ethic. "Polish Hill people are unique," Hughes said. "I'm proud of this neighborhood, of people who don't hesitate to do what's right."
An Indiana crosswalk painter was jailed for his vigilante act of making his neighborhood safer.
TSA Turns Air Travel Into Civil Liberties-Free Nursery School
They do this with ridiculous "freeze" drills in airports -- even past the "security" checkpoint. Via Shannon, InforWars has the tail of one on tape:
Watch how all the travelers, sheeplike, and probably fearing arrest by these unskilled workers given power over the rest of us, just do as they say without question or movement.
As I wrote in my op-ed on the TSA, and as they echo in the InfoWars text, this is obedience training for the American public, to make us docile as we have their rights yanked from us.
Paul Joseph Watson writes at InfoWars:
The video shows the final 24 seconds of a 2 minute period during which travelers were ordered to "freeze" by TSA workers and were not allowed to move.One TSA screener is heard to say, "stay right where you are," at a man who is walking through the airport, as the other static travelers look on in bewilderment.
According to the You Tube user responsible for uploading the clip, "This video was shot within the "secure" area of the terminal, BEYOND the security gate."
"Note that the TSA "guard" is offering no explanation, only giving harsh threats and orders to stay still. Note that there was NO event or threat taking place of any kind," he adds.
As we have previously highlighted, the "freeze" policy, which has been experienced by numerous travelers across the country, is known as Code Bravo Sierra or simply Code Bravo by the TSA.
New York Times columnist Joe Sharkey described how he was caught up in the policy on two separate occasions last year while traveling through airports in Atlanta and Los Angeles.
When Sharkey failed to obey a TSA screener who shouted "freeze," he was assailed by another traveler who "growled" at him, "You're supposed to freeze!" as other passengers complied with the bizarre demand. Sharkey later discovered that the TSA had no power to force travelers to comply with the command.
"Passengers are not required to 'freeze' in place like statues," TSA spokeswoman Kristin Lee admitted.
"It was clear to me that travelers believed they were required to stop and stand motionless -- even those who had cleared security and were merely within shouting distance of the checkpoint. Officers seemed to reinforce that impression, too," writes Sharkey.
Government-Instigated Terrorism
Via BoingBoing, in Rolling Stone, Sabrina Rubin Erdely writes about five young stoners who joined the Occupy movement looking to make a radical statement -- maybe with stink bombs or spray paint.
They ended up trying to do it with explosives, thanks to the government "manufacturing threatening events," (in the words of a former FBI counterterrorism agent who has since joined the ACLU):
Nothing was destined to blow up that night, as it turns out, because the entire plot was actually an elaborate federal sting operation. The case against the Cleveland Five, in fact, exposes not just a deeply misguided element of the Occupy movement, but also a shadowy side of the federal government. It's hardly surprising that the FBI decided to infiltrate Occupy; given the movement's challenge of the status quo and its hectic patchwork of factions - including ones touting subversive agendas - the feds worried it could become a terrorist breeding ground. Since 9/11, the federal Joint Terrorism Task Force has been charged with preventing further terrorist attacks. But anticipating and disrupting terrorist plots require both aggressive investigative techniques and a staggering level of collaboration and resources; to pull together the Cleveland case alone, the FBI coordinated with 23 different agencies. The hope, of course, is that the results make it all worthwhile: The plot is detected and heroically foiled, the evildoers arrested, and the American public sleeps easier. The problem is that in many cases, the government has determined that the best way to capture terrorists is simply to invent them in the first place."The government has a responsibility to prevent harm," says former FBI counterterrorism agent Michael German, now the senior policy counsel for the ACLU. "What they're doing instead is manufacturing threatening events."
That's just how it went down in Cleveland, where the defendants started out as disoriented young men wrestling with alienation, identity issues and your typical bucket of adolescent angst. They were malleable, ripe for some outside influence to coax them onto a new path. That catalyst could have come in the form of a friend, a family member or a cause. Instead, the government sent an informant.
And not just any informant, but a smooth-talking ex-con - an incorrigible lawbreaker who racked up even more criminal charges while on the federal payroll. From the start, the government snitch nurtured the boys' destructive daydreams, egging them on every step of the way, giving them the encouragement and tools to turn their Fight Club-tinged tough talk into reality. To follow the evolution of the bombing plot under the informant's tutelage is to watch five young men get a giant federal-assisted upgrade from rebellious idealists to terrorist boogeymen. This process looks a lot like what used to be called entrapment.
The TSA's Mission Creep
Virginia Postrel is exactly right in her assessment of the TSA's mission creep.
She blogged the NYT story by Michael S. Schmidt and Eric Lichtblau about racial profiling at Boston's Logan airport. No, they aren't targeting potential terrorists but blacks and Hispanics, especially those Miami-bound. An excerpt from the NYT piece:
At a meeting last month with T.S.A. officials, officers at Logan provided written complaints about profiling from 32 officers, some of whom wrote anonymously. Officers said managers' demands for high numbers of stops, searches and criminal referrals had led co-workers to target minorities in the belief that those stops were more likely to yield drugs, outstanding arrest warrants or immigration problems.The practice has become so prevalent, some officers said, that Massachusetts State Police officials have asked why minority members appear to make up an overwhelming number of the cases that the airport refers to them.
"The behavior detection program is no longer a behavior-based program, but it is a racial profiling program," one officer wrote in an anonymous complaint obtained by The Times.
Postrel is right on with her remark about these civil liberties-violating searches:
The TSA has no business looking for drugs, outstanding arrest warrants, or immigration problems unless it has serious reason to believe that the person involved poses a serious threat to air safety. If it is going to serve as an extension of every other sort of law enforcement, then its searches should be subject to the same requirements for probable cause, which would allow almost everyone to travel without submitting to TSA examination.
A few wise points from the comments at the NYT:
jbaker, saint louis: There are a number of people who believe that if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide, but with our expansive criminal code on any given day anyone could have violated the law. Just how many of our rights are we required to surrender on the altars of safety and security?wsschaillcom, florida: As many of us have suspected for some time, the TSA is not in the business of protecting us from terrorists but rather of trying to catch drug users and other common criminals. It's 'stop and frisk' on a national scale.
via Instapundit
"Innocence Of Muslims"...Made By Muslims?
Walid Shoebat writes at FrontPage:
Court documents reveal that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the producer of the movie Innocence of Muslims, partnered in a scheme with Eiad Salameh, my first cousin. Eiad is a Muslim terror supporter and is not an Egyptian Copt.He comes from Beit Sahour, Bethlehem and is well known by the FBI and the Arab community as a conduit for Middle Easterners who can obtain authentic, legitimate identifications, from passports to credit cards including many nationalities. He then places these identifications in the hands of dubious characters to use for fraudulent purposes.
In fact, I revealed Eiad Salameh way before this whole fiasco erupted--in 2008, and the first knowledge of Eiad and Nakoula was revealed on September 14, 2012 by the Smoking Gun, which provided court documents that prove these two connected in 2009 in a major financial scheme.
The narrative that circulates in the media fails to answer crucial questions behind the mystery of this film.
For example, to date, no one has stepped forward or can confirm for certain that whoever holds an identity by the name of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, is even that man. He, after all, held several identifications, including Muslim names. He could have easily presented a valid I.D. when he was arrested, yet he was likely not the man in that I.D.
Such a claim isn't easily dismissed; if an Egyptian by the name of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula is blamed for angering over a billion Muslims, it would not be that difficult to find the entire family in Egypt, including brothers, cousins, aunts, siblings, wife, wives, ex-wives, mistresses, pet names and all. Especially since Egypt sparked all the riots that spanned over 30 some nations.
In the Middle East you are known by your clan, yet Egypt cannot produce this man's family and background?
Besides this, why would Nakoula, who claims to be a religious Coptic activist, have extensive connections with Eiad, a man who I know hates Copts and is well-known to be the best schemer the Middle East has produced and has contacts with terror networks?
More at the link.
Where In The World Is...?
Jimmy Hoffa, the Carmen Sandiego of mob lore, has turned up yet again.
"We Are All Blasphemers": Greg Lukianoff's Response To Eric Posner
Eric Posner is the law prof whose disgusting Slate piece about how we should have less free speech I blogged this morning.
I explained:
Of course, the problem isn't free speech; it's the violence-commanding totalitarian system (pretending to be a religion) known as Islam.We speak freely in America and say all sorts of offensive things -- about Jews, Christians, and Kim Kardashian's butt. Jews, Christians, and Kim Kardashian do not go around sodomizing and murdering foreign ambassadors in response. Or anyone.
Now, Greg Lukianoff, the First Amendment Lawyer who is president of FIRE -- the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education -- which defends people on college campuses whos civil liberties are violated, has written a response to Posner's on the Huff Po. An excerpt:
For those of us who work in First Amendment law, Posner relies on pretty tired arguments that I plan to address piece by piece in upcoming posts. But before I get too entangled in the details of what was so wrong about Professor Posner had to say, it's important to take a step back and realize why punishing a citizen for offending a religion is so dangerous.As I alluded to earlier, at our founding, the United States understood that nothing can more savagely divide people than a government that is allowed to pick a side in a battle of faith and to punish you for what you believe. In this case, it can be hard to see the value in that YouTube video and Posner claims it has none. But what the video is essentially saying is that "I don't think what your faith believes is true or even worthy of respect."
Now, saying that may seem like a harsh sentiment in our comfortable society, but we are quick to forget that all of us hold beliefs that are rejections of sacred cows of the past, present, or future. If you reject that women are unclean once a month, eat pork or beef, don't believe in the harm of "graven images," or think intervening angels are either real or a superstition, you are running afoul of some religious doctrine.
The brilliance of our system is that we placed freedom of speech, the free exercise of religion, and the freedom from established religion in the same clause. In one sentence, the Bill of Rights attempted to eliminate some of the most consistent reasons for particularly brutal bloodshed in human history.
It was a huge victory for genuine multiculturalism, diversity, religious tolerance, and pluralism. It is not generally considered a problem that everyone in our country does not agree on matters of faith. But if we start punishing people in the United States because they've offended the beliefs of people of other faiths, we will have put the United States government in the role of enforcer of a religious norm. Worse still, we will have put the United States government in the position of essentially encouraging violent reactions to speech by promising to punish blasphemers if, but only if, true believers are willing to actually get violent.
This is an obscene incentive that promises only more violence.
No one should be more concerned about the rise of blasphemy laws in the United States than American Muslims. This fact was powerfully brought home to me by a student who came up to me after a speech I gave at Indiana University. He said he was extremely excited and in agreement with nearly everything I had to say about defending free speech on college campuses, but thought that surely we could agree that blasphemy should be punished.
By blasphemy, he meant speech that was offensive to Islam. I was floored by his belief that blasphemy could function as some small, manageable exception to our national guarantee of freedom of expression and belief.
When it comes down to it, the right to express your religious views or the right to have no religious views at all is the first freedom. In a sense, it even precedes the founding of our country because the compromises that led to the end of the religious wars in Europe necessarily included the ancient ancestor of what we know today as the right of private conscience.
But there was another reason why I was so stunned by this Muslim student's asking for blasphemy laws. He didn't seem to understand that America is a majority Christian country, and therefore not believing that Jesus is the son of God and instead believing that Mohammed is Allah's prophet is textbook blasphemy by majority standards.
...It's become easy for American academics, elites and contrarians to scoff at the universal values of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom from imposed beliefs. But while America may be almost alone as a nation in being relatively purist about these doctrines, this does not mean we are wrong. A nation and even a world where it's safe for people to believe as they choose--or not to believe at all--is one worth aspiring towards.
Please pre-order Greg's inspiring and beautifully written book, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate
PETA Members Should Opt Out Of Treatments Discovered By Lab Animal Experimentation
Since humans may die or die much sooner thanks to PETA's efforts to stop not just wasteful and hurtful treatment of animals in lab conditions, but all use, they should protest in a truly meaningful way -- by refusing treatment that came about through animal experimentation.
This post was inspired by a blog item by Edyta Zeilinska on The Scientist about FedEx and UPS and shipment of lab animals:
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) announced last week that two major carriers in the United States, FedEx and UPS, confirmed that they will not ship mammals for laboratory use, and restrict the shipment of some non-mammalian organisms. Neither UPS nor FedEx are major players the lab-animal shipping business, but the move does restrict the options for researchers and could limit the operations of small companies, such as Florida-based Xenopus Express, which relies on UPS to ship its laboratory-grade frogs....Charles Hewett, the executive vice-president and chief operating officer at the Jackson Laboratory, voiced his concern that such decisions are short-sighted. "[It's] troubling that the corporate leaderships of UPS, FedEx, and others yield to the pressure of a small minority who overlook the importance of what [animal research does] for preventing, curing and treating human disease," he told Nature.
Shall We Take Up A Collection To Ship Eric Posner To His Dream State Of Saudi Arabia?
The bio bit below his disgusting Slate piece:
Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, is a co-author of The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic and Climate Change Justice.
His piece on Slate is headlined "The World Doesn't Love the First Amendment: The vile anti-Muslim video shows that the U.S. overvalues free speech."
Of course, the problem isn't free speech; it's the violence-commanding totalitarian system (pretending to be a religion) known as Islam.
We speak freely in America and say all sorts of offensive things -- about Jews, Christians, and Kim Kardashian's butt. Jews, Christians, and Kim Kardashian do not go around sodomizing and murdering foreign ambassadors in response. Or anyone.
Posner writes, most obscenely (but we permit that, too, in this country -- as we should):
Muslims need to grow a thick skin, the thinking goes, as believers in the West have done over the centuries. Perhaps they will even learn what it means to live in a free society, and adopt something like the First Amendment in their own countries.But there is another possible response. This is that Americans need to learn that the rest of the world--and not just Muslims--see no sense in the First Amendment. Even other Western nations take a more circumspect position on freedom of expression than we do, realizing that often free speech must yield to other values and the need for order. Our own history suggests that they might have a point.
No, it does not. Our history, as he rightly points out -- and as I just learned from reading an advance copy of Greg Lukianoff's terrific book, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate
Posner continues:
Despite its 18th-century constitutional provenance, the First Amendment did not play a significant role in U.S. law until the second half of the 20th century. The First Amendment did not protect anarchists, socialists, Communists, pacifists, and various other dissenters when the U.S. government cracked down on them, as it regularly did during times of war and stress.
And then he joins hands with the murderers and looters:
And so combining the liberal view that government should not interfere with political discourse, and the conservative view that government should not interfere with commerce, we end up with the bizarre principle that U.S. foreign policy interests cannot justify any restrictions on speech whatsoever. Instead, only the profit-maximizing interests of a private American corporation can. Try explaining that to the protesters in Cairo or Islamabad.
This is for the so-called "moderate" Muslims in these countries to do -- but of course, they cannot, because they will be slaughtered.
And again, the real problem is that there may be "moderate Muslims," but there is no such thing as "moderate Islam." It commands the slaughter of the infidel and the installing of The New Caliphate around the globe -- and a big wave bye-bye to all the silly Western values like equal rights for women, a right to not be hung for being gay, and our very precious and very healthy right to free speech.
The Answer To Speech You Dislike Is More Speech
Not shouting down or covering up others' speech, as Muslim activist Mona Eltahawy did in the New York City subway.
The more eloquent you become, the better a champion you are of your cause, as the late Christopher Hitchens was for every cause he supported. At a lit fest dinner in Italy, he told me that he debated so well because he would make it a point to be able to argue the other side's beliefs better than they could.
Appropriately, the most recent book of his work that's been published is Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens
The Best Correction -- From Chelsea Clinton "Vogue" Profile
Via Greg Lukianoff. Loved this.
Prepping Kids To Give Up Their Privacy
We do it with adults with the TSA, and we like to start kids early in learning to kowtow to authority. A 12-year-old Pennsylvania girl wanted to play sports at her middle school and join the scrapbooking club. Mary Pilon writes in the NYT:
One day she took home a permission slip. It said that to participate in the club or any school sport, she would have to consent to drug testing."They were asking a 12-year-old to pee in a cup," Kathy Kiederer said. "I have a problem with that. They're violating her right to privacy over scrapbooking? Sports?"
...The Kiederers, whose two daughters are now in high school, are plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Delaware Valley School District, with the daughters identified only by their first initials, A. and M. The parents said that mandatory drug testing was unnecessary and that it infringed on their daughters' rights. (For privacy reasons, they asked that their daughters' first names not be published.)
A lawyer for the school district declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
...Drug testing for high school athletes, which has been around for years, was deemed constitutional in a 1995 United States Supreme Court ruling. Some districts have expanded their drug-testing programs in recent years to include middle school students.
In 2003, the Department of Education started a program that offered federal money for drug testing in grades 6 through 12, and the last of the grants will be closed out this fall. The program, following the outlines of the Supreme Court decision, allowed testing for students who participated in school activities, or whose parents chose to enroll them.
...Despite the Supreme Court ruling in 1995, some districts have been challenged in lower courts.
The American Civil Liberties Union won a settlement last year relying on California's stricter state privacy laws that prevented the schools from conducting random drug testing for students in nonathletic activities absent a reasonable ground for suspicion. The district, in Redding, Calif., discontinued its program as part of the settlement.
Paranoia About Leaving Kids Alone -- For 10 Minutes In A Suburban Parking Lot
Either the woman is from Ontario, California or Ontario, Canada. Neither is exactly the environment in which they shot "The Wire."
A mother was waiting for a pizza with her kids out in the parking lot in her car, and a man approached her to ask "Is that your car out there," blogs Lenore Skenazy at Free Range Kids:
I looked out to the parking lot. Yes, it was my car, and I told the man that. I was worried. Was my 8-year-old son trying to hotwire it, or was it shaking with the kids fighting in the backseat? Was the radio blaring? I could see the car from the window, but it was far enough away that I couldn't spot the kids inside of it. "So those are your kids?" he asked.His tone was not kind. I wasn't too surprised though. A few weeks ago I accidentally dropped my daughter off at the wrong soccer field and left her to her own devices to figure it out when I realized my mistake. On that occasion I was "advised" to call for help to locate my "missing" daughter. I figured a 13 year old could handle that and more, and walked away from the "adviser," securing my place as the world's worst soccer mom.
The man went on. "Wow. You're ballsy. And braver than I am, to leave your kids out there alone."
I honestly couldn't think of anything to say. I'm parked in a suburban Ontario shopping mall parking lot. It's not a war zone, or the back alley behind a jail for pedophiles. What exactly was going to happen?
He said nothing else to me while we waited for our food, but stared at my kids in their perilous situation the whole time. I guess he figured his eyes would keep them safe when I was clearly uninterested in doing so.
When I got home, I checked online to find the stranger abdication rates for our area .I began to understand why the man was so concerned.
It turns out that there have been zero child abductions in our town of nearly 75,000 people in the last 5 years (and likely before; I have lived here almost 40 years and recall no others).
When you look at these statistics, you must conclude that the man is right! Of course we must live in fear! It is our duty to shame those who dare leave their children unattended for 10 minutes in a pizza shop parking lot! We must never leave our children's sight! Especially considering there have been no stranger abductions here in the past.
A commenter wrote:
I wonder where the author looked up the statistics? I live in Brampton Ontario which will be awarded the WHO's International Safe Community designation for the next 5 years (this is the second time Brampton was been awarded this!). Not a day goes by where someone tells me it's not safe outside for children, they might get abducted! If abductions are the norm in an "International Safe Community" then I can't imagine the horror that exists beyond my city's borders.
Howard Stern's Guy Talks To Obama Voters
I learned a lot from this:
So...Obama is a Mormon and Paul Ryan is running with him for VP. And that McCain/Palin ticket -- it's still hot.
Via @AHMalcolm
Kids Are Going Hungry And Undernourished On Government Eats
At SouthCoastToday, Natalie Sherman reports on the new "nutrition" standards imposed on schools via the federal "Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act," championed by Michelle Obama. It should be called the "Unhealthy, Leave Kids Hungry And Undernourished Act." Sherman writes:
That law states that milk with more sugar than nonfat or 1 percent white milk may not be served a la carte starting in August 2013.The rules, which apply to schools across the state, also reduce the amount of protein served to high schoolers, and increase servings of fruit and vegetables -- going so far as to specify how many servings of green vegetables, legumes, and red/orange vegetables should be consumed each week.
"We're only doing what we're supposed to do," said Voc-Tech Superintendent Linda Enos. "It wasn't a choice that we had."
The changes are especially hard at the elementary school level, where hummus and black bean salad have been a tough sell, said Nancy Carvalho, director of food services for the New Bedford Public Schools, adding that bowls of chili served Wednesday to comply with the legume specifications were "not a very good decision."
..."How do they expect us to go through the day and work hard when they give us smaller portions and we're hungry?" said Ashley Chaneco, 13, of New Bedford.
Per Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories," it is carbohydrates -- sugar, flour, starchy vegetables like potatoes, apple juice -- that cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat.
Per cardiologist Dr. William Davis' "Wheat Belly," wheat is the single worst thing you can eat and there's no such thing as "healthy whole grains."
Per dietary researcher Dr. Jeff Volek, it's practically criminal to feed children skim milk.
And here's Dr. Michael Eades with a very interesting blog post on our Paleo past.
This lunch program is not based in science. But, hey, why should that keep us from shoving it at growing kids?
Bready When You Are
Great old postcard I saw on somebody's Facebook page (sorry, can't remember whose). I collect these -- the weirder, the better. I made this one into a thank you note and sent it to friends who had us to their party.
Follow The Money
Per @WalterOlson, three people injured in the Colorado theatre massacre in July are suing the theatre owners over supposedly inadequate security, reports the BBC:
Cinemark USA "failed to provide for the safety and security of its theatre and its patrons," the lawsuit says.Measures "would likely have prevented or deterred the gunman from accomplishing his planned assault on the theatre's patrons", it says.
..."Although the theatre was showing a midnight premiere of the movie and was expecting large crowds of people to attend the midnight showing, no security personnel were present for that showing," the lawsuit says.
Prosecutors say that Mr Holmes bought a ticket to the film before leaving through an exit door and propping it open to return later to open fire, armed with several weapons.
Security guards aren't former members of the Mossad, and I don't see a lot of them who carry guns. When they do, it's probably unlikely they go through enough training and target practice to be very good shots. What were they going to in response to this heavily armed, heavily armored guy, yell, "Stop, you meanie?!"
Is "Illegal Immigrant" "Inflammatory, Imprecise, And ... Inaccurate"?
That's what Jose Antonia Vargas writes in TIME:
Add that to the list of questions I am repeatedly asked since publicly disclosing my undocumented immigrant status in the summer of 2011. Calling undocumented people "illegal immigrants" -- or worse, "illegal aliens," as Mitt Romney did in front of a largely Latino audience last week -- has become such standard practice for politicians and the media, from Bill O'Reilly to the New York Times, that people of all political persuasions do not think twice about doing it, too.But describing an immigrant as "illegal" is legally inaccurate. Being in the country without proper documents is a civil offense, not a criminal one. (Underscoring this reality, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority opinion on SB 1070, Arizona's controversial immigration law: "As a general rule, it is not a crime for a movable alien to remain in the United States.") In a country that believes in due process of the law, calling an immigrant "illegal" is akin to calling a defendant awaiting trial a "criminal." The term "illegal" is also imprecise. For many undocumented people -- there are 11 million in the U.S. and most have immediate family members who are American citizens, either by birth or naturalization -- their immigration status is fluid and, depending on individual circumstances, can be adjusted.
When journalists, who are supposed to seek neutrality and fairness, use the term, they are politicizing an already political issue. (How can using "illegal immigrant" be considered neutral, for example, when Republican strategist Frank Luntz encouraged using term in a 2005 memo to tie undocumented people with criminality?) And the term dehumanizes and marginalizes the people it seeks to describe. Think of it this way: In what other contexts do we call someone illegal? If someone is driving a car at 14, we say "underage driver," not "illegal" driver." If someone is driving under influence, we call them a "drunk driver," not an "illegal driver." Put another way, how would you feel if you -- or your family members or friends -- were referred to as "illegal"?
Well, since those friends of mine who emigrated here from other countries went through hell to do it legally, having to go through long and awful processes in a couple cases, that would really suck.
I looked up "illegal" in the Apple dictionary (on my computer):
illegal |i(l)ˈlēgəl| adjectivecontrary to or forbidden by law, esp. criminal law: illegal drugs.
noun
an illegal immigrant.
And yes, it really does give that example.
It is illegal to cross our borders and enter this country without permission. Thus, it seems correct to call someone who does so an "illegal immigrant."
This differentiates them from people who follow the law -- i.e., legal immigrants.
We don't call people illegal hijackers, illegal home-invaders or illegal muggers because there are no legal hijackers, home-invaders or muggers.
Also, a commenter at TIME, Talendria, points out that the only violation of our laws usually isn't just at the border crossing:
When people use the term "illegal," they're typically not referring to a visitor who overstayed his visa accidentally or on purpose. They're referring to people who willfully engaged in illicit activity to sneak into the United States, obtain a job, and benefit from social services because they knew they weren't eligible under the existing immigration laws.While I'm not an expert in criminal law, I'm guessing all of the following activities are illegal to some extent:
--forging documents
--buying forged documents
--using forged documents to obtain a job
--driving without a valid license
--driving without insuranceThere are additional activities which may not be strictly illegal but are still harmful:
--enrolling non-citizens in public schools
--taking advantage of social services meant for citizens (food, housing, health care)
--taxing the legal system (police call-outs, court appearances, prison)I think people cling to the term "illegal" even though they know it sounds uncharitable because they're offended by the blatant disregard for our laws and the apparent lack of concern for the social and economic consequences of breaking those laws.
I personally would love to find a way to resolve this problem to everyone's satisfaction, but you've drawn your line in the sand so far to the left that it's difficult to find any common ground.
P.S. It's a felony in Mexico to be an illegal immigrant. (I don't speak Spanish, but I'm guessing they don't use a frilly, P.C. term for it, either.)
Smartphones Go On Vacation But They Don't Always Come Back
Bob Arno on Barcelona pickpockets and the smartphones flying off cafe tables right under the noses of the owners:
The thieves are nonchalant and diabolical, and I'm going to show you how the steal is done. The perps we just filmed practiced a refined version of the pickpocket's postcard trick. For cover, they used just a flimsy sheet of paper with an illegible scrawl on it--and they did it one-handed...
Bambi Vincent and Bob Arno's Theft First Aid doc to download, print, and fill out before taking a vacation.
Advice Goddess Radio, "Best Of" Replay: Dietary Researcher Dr. Jeff Volek On The Science Behind Low-Carbing
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
Because I have been working day and night finishing a book chapter, Gregg convinced me to take tonight off -- which doesn't mean there will be no show; he's just replaying one of the ones that a number of people have told me helped them change their diet and their lives for the better.
In it, dietary researcher Dr. Jeff Volek lays out the science behind why you should declare your independence from dietary carbohydrates -- sugar, flour, starchy vegetables like potatoes, apple juice -- that cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat.
Dr. Michael Eades calls Dr. Volek's book (co-authored with Dr. Stephen Phinney) "the best low-carb book in print."
The show will come on at the regular time -- 7pm Pacific, 10 pm Eastern -- and can be heard at this link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/09/24/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And join me next week as I get back to live shows with a very important show on the science that shows you can work out only 12-15 minutes a week, and be healthier (with stronger heart, increased metabolism and stronger bones) than all those people spending hours hours and killing their joints running marathons.
And don't miss last week's show with psychiatrist and business coach Dr. Mark Goulston, explaining how to give your relationship a tune-up: How to fix a relationship that's faltering or even downright combative, and how to make an okay or pretty good relationship wonderful.
He's a really wise guy -- and comes at all of this from an extremely realistic point of view on love, couples, and human nature.
His book we discussed is The 6 Secrets of a Lasting Relationship: How to Fall in Love Again--and Stay There. The 6 or 8 (or whatever) in a book title is a publishing convention designed to sell books, but what sold me on this book are the gems throughout. That's what we'll be discussing on this show, so I hope you'll join us.
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/09/17/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes.
"It Was Either The Drive-Bys Or The Rabbis"
From an excerpt of the Matthew Garrahan interview in the Financial Times of the Black Eyed Peas' Will.i.am, reprinted at azcentral.com:
The "I Gotta Feeling" hitmaker can understand why people trapped in poverty find it hard to get out because of the ''psychological'' influences around them.He explained: ''There's a family of influences that dictate behavior. In the ghetto, there's a liquor store, a check-cashing place and a motel. What that tells you psychologically is, get a check, cash it. Take a couple of steps. But some liquor and get drunk, go home and get kicked out of your house. And here's a place to sleep along the way.
''If you live in a good neighborhood, you drive home and there's a bank. There's grocery stores and big houses - but no motels. What that tells you psychologically is you protect your money and buy good things for your family to eat in your nice big house. So it's a different system.''
As soon as he could afford to, he moved his family, switching east Los Angeles for a Jewish area in the San Fernando Valley. "I moved my mom, cousins, my uncles and my grandma. I moved them to the Valley to be near the rabbis. It was either drive-bys or rabbis. I picked the rabbis."
It's Supposed To Be A Melting Pot
There's a letter to Romney from "a Latina," Ailen J. Arreaza, in Creative Loafing Charlotte. It starts out like this:
Dear Mr. Romney,
As a Cuban-American, I'm anxiously awaiting the day when a person of Latino heritage takes the oath of office for president of the United States.
I dream of a time when a salsa band plays at the inaugural ball, plantains are a staple in the White House kitchen, and the first family's children speak Spanish at home...
Can you imagine that in France anybody would suggest that it would be a good thing if the first family's children would "speak Polish at home"?
My family came here and learned the language pronto. It was part of becoming American, which they valued greatly.
And I do think it's important for kids to learn languages other than their native tongue -- but that's not what she's talking about.
Steyn On Bowing To The Muslim Mob
Great piece. Mark Steyn writes at NRO:
The official line -- that the slaughter of American officials was some sort of improvised movie review that got a little out of hand -- is now in the process of modification to something bearing a less patently absurd relationship to what actually happened. That should not make any more forgivable the grotesque damage that the administration has done to the bedrock principle of civilized society: freedom of speech.The more that U.S.-government officials talk about the so-called film Innocence of Muslims (which is actually merely a YouTube trailer) the more they confirm the mob's belief that works of "art" are the proper responsibility of government. Obama and Clinton are currently starring as the Siskel & Ebert of Pakistani TV, giving two thumbs down to Innocence of Muslims in hopes that it will dissuade local moviegoers from giving two heads off to consular officials. "The United States government had absolutely nothing to do with this video," says Hillary Clinton. "We absolutely reject its content, and message." "We reject the efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others," adds Barack Obama. There follows the official State Department seal of the U.S. embassy in Islamabad.
Fellow government-funded film critics call Innocence of Muslims "hateful and offensive" (Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations) and "reprehensible and disgusting" (Jay Carney, White House press secretary). General Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and senior Pentagon adviser to Variety, has taken to telephoning personally those few movie fans who claim to enjoy the film. He called up Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who apparently thinks Innocence of Muslims is the perfect date movie, to tell him the official position of the United States military is they'd be grateful if he could ease up on the five-star reviews.
...What other entertainments have senior U.S. officials reviewed lately? Last year Hillary Clinton went to see the Broadway musical Book of Mormon. "We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others"? The Book of Mormon's big showstopper is "Hasa Diga Eebowai" which apparently translates as "F*** you, God." The U.S. secretary of state stood and cheered.
Why does Secretary Clinton regard "F*** you, God" as a fun toe-tapper for all the family but "F*** you, Allah" as "disgusting and reprehensible"? The obvious answer is that, if you sing the latter, you'll find a far more motivated crowd waiting for you at the stage door. So the "leader of the free world" and "the most powerful man in the world" (to revive two cobwebbed phrases nobody seems to apply to the president of the United States anymore) is telling the planet that the way to ensure your beliefs command his "respect" is to be willing to burn and bomb and kill. You Mormons need to get with the program.
Rand Paul About TSA: "Is This The Pose Of A Free Man?"
From a NYT blog post by Juliet Lapidos, that's the perfect thing to say to the TSA as you're "assuming the position" of a common criminal. I missed this piece from earlier in September:
On the Sunday before the Republican convention, Senator Rand Paul ranted against his least favorite government bureaucracy: The Transportation Security Administration. Addressing a crowd at the University of South Florida, he mimicked the backscatter-machine stance (arms up in the air, legs apart) and asked "Is this the pose of a free man?"...Mr. Paul's vendetta against the TSA has some merit. Nearly 11 years since its establishment, there's plenty of evidence that the TSA is inefficient, and if not ineffective, at least less effective than it should be.
The House Subcommittee on Transportation Security released a report on Monday that calls TSA operations "in many cases costly, counterintuitive, and poorly executed."
...Echoing security experts such as Bruce Schneier, the report says the TSA "maintains a reactive approach to security." After the attempted bombing of American Airlines Flight 63 in December 2001, the TSA required passengers to remove their shoes at checkpoints. After the discovery of the liquid explosives plot in Great Britain in August 2006, the TSA banned liquids and gels. And so on. The report notes, dryly, that "once a procedure is put in place, it is almost never removed." Airport security is a game of catch-up, and it seems the TSA rarely considers whether new technology obviates the need for annoying and intrusive restrictions.
While the TSA insists on confiscating lighters, it's oddly slow to enforce protocols that actually make sense. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Congress instructed TSA agents to vet foreign flight students. They do; but there's a hitch. The Government Accountability Office said in July that "this vetting does not occur until after the foreign national has obtained flight training."
The TSA seems like a caricature of a wasteful bureaucracy, spending astounding amounts of money even during a sluggish economic recovery.
•The TSA employs roughly 62,000 people, including 47,000 screeners, at a cost of more than $3 billion a year in payroll, compensation and benefits. But "there does not appear to be a correlation between TSA's staffing model and the number of travelers that need to be screened." The TSA workforce is larger now than it was in 2005 despite a "net decrease in the number of people traveling" domestically.
From the comments there:
Our screeners are composed of a workforce that includes individuals like a member of my extended family. ---A person who did not graduate high school, has a severe problem with alcohol, personality problems, and in all probability, psych issues. Yet this person was hired & employed as a screener in one of the nation's busiest airports. It's time to get serious about making our air traffic safer or stop wasting billions of dollars on the window dressing/charade that passes for security in our airports.
More:
All TSA has done in 10 years is to stop idiot gun-nuts who "forgot" to take their handgun out of their bag and stop me from carrying on my terrorist Swiss army knife with its one-inch blade and half-inch scissors. Oh, and a half-empty bottle of aloe vera.What a huge waste of time and taxpayer money TSA is.
More:
On a recent trip I was shuttling from the rental car return to the terminal when the driver began to chat about her other job as a TSA inspector. Am I the only one who finds it jarring that TSA positions require the same level of expertise as driving a shuttle bus? My husband wasn't a bit surprised.
Another -- great point:
There are thousands of venues in which a machine gun could have killed hundreds--security lines outside airports, at Disneyland, at malls and sports stadiums, high schools, and on and on.There is no reason that a terrorist has to get on an airplane in order to kill and maim and terrify. They could do the same damage on subway cars or classrooms. They could buy their weapons and ammunition legally and create major events on a weekly basis. They could stand on freeway overpasses.
In fact these things *have* happened, just not by terrorists. Therefore, we can safely conclude that there are no terrorists planning to do it. If there were, they would not have lain quiet for 11 years.
Another -- also right on:
The article is based on the premise that the role of TSA is to keep us safe. It appears to me that the real goal is to purchase extremely expensive equipment from politically connected companies. It seems to be accomplishing that mission quite effectively.
And very important:
Just a gentle reminder since many of us, including you, have forgotten our civics class lessons: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
More on that:
Because you want to get on an airplane, suddenly all of your constitutional rights are suspended and you are presumed guilty until proven innocent.
The Collected Bastiat
Mises Institute put this book together -- Bastiat Collection Pocket Edition
The world has always needed this: a gigantic collection of Bastiat's greatest work in a single, super-handy pocket edition, at a ridiculously affordable price. All of the best essays by this giant of liberty are here, 1000 plus pages of it, but in a compact package that it is still easy to read. In fact, it is a joy to hold and even more to read because the text just jumps off the page.Putting this together was a challenge but one we accepted because many people said that our two-volume hardback, though beautiful, was too costly and cumbersome. For some collectors, this was great, but what about students and people who read on the subway, or on lunch break, or just want to throw the book into an overnight bag for a quick trip somewhere?
We can't be more pleased at the result. This is the Bastiat Collection that the world has needed.
Do We Really Want The Girlymen We're Asking Men To Be?
Gregg cooks for me (because I'd otherwise subsist on a diet of frozen Costco hamburgers, as writing till I drop is my priority). But he is a big, guy from Detroit, with all the man-ness conveys.
I was looking for him at a party recently, on a friend's sprawling ranch, and described him just like that - "A big guy from Detroit in a black hat and a white shirt," and of the maybe 70 people there, the couple I said that to found him with ease. Maybe that doesn't convey "man" to you, but to me, it's the antithesis of the apron-wearing, dooragged house-husband.
There have been articles recently about men taking over the housework and child-rearing while women bring home the bacon, and for quite some time, about how women want ment to be all gooey and emotional (in an Oprah's couch "let's talk about our feelings" kind of way).
Or, do we?
Are we turning men into sissies we don't respect by getting them to give us what we say we want?
Related: The piece that inspired this blog item -- a Good Men Project piece by Mark Greene, "The Dark Side of Women's Requests of Progressive Men." (I always want to put "progressive" in quotes.)
The Religion Of Permanent Offense
Pat Condell's latest:
Here's A Free Speech Shocker
The UN head is against it, except when a person is saying or writing nice things! For a good purpose! (And the UN, the body where the worst human rights violators sit on the Human Rights Council, gets to decide?)
Vincent Carroll writes in the Denver Post:
"Freedoms of expression should be and must be guaranteed and protected," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, according to Reuters, in what sounded like a good start in addressing the "Innocence of Muslims" furor. But he quickly revealed he didn't mean it. It turns out that free speech should be protected only when it is "used for common justice, common purpose" -- and of course you know who gets to define those terms."When some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others' values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected in such a way," Ban continued.
"My position is that freedom of expression, while it is a fundamental right and privilege, should not be abused by such people, by such a disgraceful and shameful act."
...It is also yet another reminder to those in the United States, beginning at the top reaches of the administration, who seem reluctant to offer an unqualified defense of free expression, even when it is admittedly offensive. When they blame violence on free speech, they play into the hands of those who don't believe in free speech in the first place.
Again, Christians were pretty, uh, pissed, over the photo of Jesus suspended in urine that was "Piss Christ," but they didn't go murder and sodomize and ambassador over it.
via @ariarmstrong
How To Stop Facebook From Tracking You
Samantha Felix writes at Business Insider/Yahoo Finance:
Most people don't realize that Facebook can continue to monitor their internet activity, even if they are no longer logged into the site.Using "Facebook Connect," and other social plug-ins, Facebook is able to set up a cookie on any site that has a "Like" or "share" button, giving Facebook access to a startling amount of user information. Technically, the purpose of these plug-ins is to authenticate users, but it still has the ability to collect personal information such as the IP address of your computer, browsing data, outside login information, phone numbers, etc.
The cookie, known as the "datr" cookie, has been a controversial topic for the past year. Using this cookie, among other things, Facebook knows what you have read on a web page even if you did not click the "like" button. As the Wall Street Journal reported, "for this to work, a person only needs to have logged into Facebook or Twitter once in the past month. The sites will continue to collect browsing data, even if the person closes their browser or turns off their computers."
To help users control how and when their information is tracked and distributed, companies such as Abine and Ghostery have developed tools that allow users to block Facebook social plug-ins, cookies, and other trackers.
As Business Insider previously reported, Abine's DNT+ tool is a FREE add-on that monitors, tracks, and allows users to block any trackers and requests that may be following their internet activity. It is compatible with MAC or PC for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer. It is currently able to block more than 600 trackers, and automatically updates to catch new trackers.
More: 10 Things Online Data Collectors Won't Say.
Advice Goddess Free Swim
You pick the topics -- please just post only one or two links per comment. (Otherwise your comment will be eaten by my anti-spam software.)
Will post more blog items Saturday morning!
Do It Yourself -- Cheaper
Up to 40% off DIY essentials at Amazon
Amazon has finally fixed the "Powered by Amazon" button in Amy's Mall (although I haven't had a moment to fix the text that says it's still broken). So, to buy something that's not linked here, just go through this link
And thank you -- really, truly appreciate all the purchases that you all send my way.
Creep Avoidance: Subtle Harassment
I was at my fave cafe, polishing a chapter I just finished yesterday. This should have made for a nice day, and it did -- until this creepy guy came into the cafe.
He started staring at me and wouldn't stop. I don't think he has the hots for me; I think he wants to be creepy as a way of lashing out at people. I think he was doing this as a form of harassment. (He's done it to other women, too.)
I am nobody's victim, and signaled him and then told him to stop staring, which usually works. (This doesn't happen to me often, but it happens to me sometimes. And I'm not talking about a guy who glances at you because he might be into you but a guy who creepily sets his eyeballs on you and then bolts them in place.)
He kept it up, and kept it up.
I didn't want to let him chase me out of a place I love, but I finally felt it was six of one/half-a-dozen of the other if I just sat there feeling uncomfortable, so I left.
I hope he's not violent but I really know nothing about him, though I've seen him around town for 15 years and had a similar run-in with him before. Again, I'm nobody's victim, and I speak up when somebody tries to walk on me -- if even with their eyeballs for the apparent purpose of making me uncomfortable.
I did speak to someone at the cafe, but I don't want to make public what was said to me, since I didn't ask permission to publish it.
But, without the knowledge of that response, do you think I acted wisely or would you have taken another approach?
And let me say that this is a difficult form of harassment, since it's not very visible and it's inaudible, and thus not very evident. But, to do something that you know makes somebody uncomfortable, simply to make them uncomfortable, is very much a form of harassment.
Personalized Medicine Is The Future
Unfortunately, that's not the direction Obamacare is headed. John Goodman writes at Forbes:
ObamaCare's entire approach to cost control is premised on the idea that we are all alike. And if we aren't alike, everything they are doing doesn't make sense.
Electing Obamney (Welfare Is Still Welfare When It Goes To The Wildly Rich)
Nick Gillespie blogs at reason.com on Romney's -- not just Obama's! -- limited understanding of dependency. He quotes Tim Carney in the Wash Ex, whom he says "dings Mitt Romney for parroting 'the mistaken liberal view that the growth of government mostly redistributes wealth downward'":
Romney was correct that a portion of America backs President Obama because they "are dependent upon government" and "believe that they are entitled." We even know these dependents' names: Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, General Electric boss Jeff Immelt, Pfizer lobbying chief Sally Sussman, Solyndra investor George Kaiser and millionaire lobbyist Tony Podesta, to list a few.In the last few years of bailouts, stimulus, Obamacare and government expansion in general, we have seen median income fall and corporate profits soar. Industries are consolidating as the big get bigger while the little guys shut down.
When government controls more money, those with the best lobbyists pocket most of it. The five largest banks hold a share of U.S. assets 30 percent larger today than in 2006. Also, as Obama has expanded export subsidies, 75 percent of the Export-Import Bank's loan-guarantee dollars in the past three years have subsidized Boeing sales.
Romney, however, wasn't talking about corporate welfare queens. He was talking about the 47 percent of the population that pays no federal income tax.
Think about Romney's perverse logic here: He disparaged people as "dependent" for not owing income taxes. Many of these people are retired and living off the life savings they earned. A family of four earning $40,000 could owe zero federal income tax even without tax credits.
Keeping your own money isn't being "dependent on government." Sure, Obama speaks as if it were, lambasting the GOP for "giving" tax cuts to the wrong people. But Republicans are supposed to distinguish between government giving you something and government leaving you alone.
Republicans, unfortunately, are no enemies to crony capitalism.
We're way overdue for a viable independent candidate with a rational economic policy.
Procrastin: A New And Nonexistent Drug
Gregg saw the title for my radio show -- "Dr. Lenora Yuen, Procrastin." and thought "Procrastin" sounded like a drug. (Actually, Blogtalk Radio just doesn't allow you many letters in a title.)
In lieu of a drug to eliminate it, you can listen to my radio show with Yuen -- and watch this video, via Gawker.
Something that's been of enormous help to me in keeping me on task in writing is a free alarm clock/stopwatch/timer for Mac by Robbie Hanson. (I sent him a $10 donation, which I think is nice to do if you use somebody's software, even if they make it available free.)
I set the timer for an hour and then I am not allowed to do anything in that hour but write. This means, when I have a line or a paragraph that's not working out, I can't do what I used to -- check my email, blog comments, go on Twitter. And that means that I work out problems by sticking at them, get more work done, and feel better about myself. And I'm ultimately much more productive and with much less emotional strife and self-loathing. (A side-effect of writing, at least until you get it all punched up and crunchy.)
What "Tolerance" Means
Michael J. Totten writes at City Journal about "The Terrorists' Veto," how individual citizens who speak critically of Islam put themselves at risk from murderous thugs obeying Quranic commands to slaughter "the infidel":
Dutch politician Ahmed Aboutaleb, British writer and occasional City Journal contributor Ibn Warraq, and Italian journalist Magdi Allam all have bodyguards or have had to go into hiding. They're liberal Arabs who live in the West, but non-Arabs are just as frequently targeted. A would-be assassin attacked Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard in his own house with an axe. An international terrorist cell went after Swedish artist Lars Vilks. French writer Caroline Fourest and French philosophy professor Robert Redeker joined the ranks of those under guard, and Seattle Weekly cartoonist Molly Norris also went into hiding. She had to enter the FBI's witness-protection program after Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki (whom the United States later vaporized with a Predator drone) placed her on one of his hit lists. These names are but a sample. Berman's list is more inclusive, but not exhaustive.Terrorists and state sponsors of terrorism have been going after apostates and blasphemers for years. But the Egyptian government, supposedly an ally of the United States, just filed international arrest warrants for eight American citizens allegedly involved in the now-notorious video. All are currently in the United States, so unless they're kidnapped, there's no chance they'll ever see the inside of an Egyptian courtroom. But the prosecutor's office in Cairo says they may receive the death penalty if they're convicted. And who can say that death squads will never go after them, Rushdie style, if they're convicted in absentia or even beforehand?
Six months ago in the New Republic, Berman reviewed a book by Paul Marshall and Nina Shea called Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide
. It makes for sobering reading. Islamist murder and intimidation campaigns against apostates and blasphemers are so widespread and common nowadays that the authors managed to write 448 pages about them and only cover 20 countries. Religious minorities are the principal victims, but so are liberals, free-thinkers, and humanists from every religious community. "Our survey," they write, "shows that in Muslim-majority countries and areas, restrictions on freedom of religion and expression, based on prohibitions of blasphemy, apostasy, and 'insulting Islam,' are pervasive, thwart freedom, and cause suffering to millions of people."
Berman wrote that, in light of the recent and current civil wars and election results in the Middle East, this worldwide campaign "is about to make a gigantic and intimidating lurch forward, beyond anything we have so far seen."
He was right. And it's here.
Wendy Thomson On TSA: How Do You Spread Your Legs If You Don't Have Two Feet To Stand On?
Moving, compelling blog post at TSANewsBlog by Wendy Thomson, who has an artificial leg, and who gave up her lucrative job in order to stop being molested with regularity by the TSA -- which is what their "searches" are.
The text (with her personal statement) comes from her speech to the Aviation Security Advisory Committed, which held its second public meeting September 18. She also attended the May meeting. Some highlights from this one -- a meeting mostly composed of subcommittee reports:
- A recommendation to engage more dogs, and private dogs, to screen cargo. Apparently this idea has been piloted for several years. The subcommittee for this area is recommending "acceleration of the approval process." (How many years do they need?)- A recommendation to standardize cargo security requirements so that manufacturers don't need a "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium" approach to shipping cargo.
- A gnashing of teeth that general aviation airports, which were authorized a grant by Congress to do such things as install lighting and closed-circuit TV about three years ago, actually get the money to do something.
The Passenger Advocacy Subcommittee, which holds the most interest to many of us, had nothing substantial in the way of recommendations. They stated that they should by next year.
The man responsible for running this meeting told me that he had many requests for public comment; he had to turn people away. The Aviation Security Advisory Committee allows only four people to speak at one of these meetings. I was one of those people. Someone else was apparently waylaid by the floods, tornado warnings, and power outages that plagued the area. Joining me were Douglass Kidd, Executive Director of the National Association of Airline Passengers, and Hilary Waldron, private citizen.
An excerpt from her speech:
I have an artificial leg. I have joint replacements. I have metal plates. I am cyborg. I used to fly a lot - in my original comments you can tally the 21 airports I have used, many more than once, between 2001 and October 2010. Those dozens upon dozens of flights introduced me to being stripped down to my pantyhose while screeners were asking themselves whether they would require me to get totally naked, all while we were in a makeshift lean-to in Concourse A. I have had hands down my pants. I have had my breasts checked after the MMW screener called out "check her thigh." I spent 2-1/2 hours in Dallas once insisting that TSA agents could check only what alarmed. Dressed in a similar fashion as I am today, I finally turned and left after the TSA insisted they needed to check my breasts because my right knee-to-ankle set off the metal detector.I have been so groped and molested in so many ways that I am now properly traumatized. I was actually going to take my leg off at this point and set it up here on the dais, but I am hoping that such an extreme level of theatrics will not be required to garner your attention. I actually did that for several years: before I had these metal plates and joints I figured out that if I merely took this leg off and placed it on the conveyor belt I was not harassed. Leg on: breast and butt fondle, hand swabs, the whole nine yards. Leg off: none of the above. So now I'm thinking that I would need to take this leg off and hop on over to the AIT machine, stand there like a total criminal as the machine tried to figure out what to do when there is someone who doesn't have two feet to spread their legs.
Spread their legs? Think about that phrase for a minute. Totally disgusting.
I cannot even think of traveling by air without losing sleep before and after. I become so enraged with the humiliation and egregious violation of my personal space and body that I have been known to pace all night. Now, being that I travel by train, ship, and car, I still lie awake crafting my response if I were to encounter the TSA at a train station.
I will tell you now that I will not submit. I will not consent. Exactly how I do that is still being formulated. I have walked away from flights before. I will walk away in all cases. And if it comes to me not being able to take any public transportation at all without being physically assaulted, I will see the TSA in court.
I have been attacked twice in my life. One resulted in broken furniture and blood splattered on my bedroom walls. I cope with those experiences by controlling who, when, and how anyone touches me. This is my body. I decide who touches me. I decide who sees me naked. I do not grant that privilege to any of you, nor any of your employees. The coercion and duress caused by TSA current policies and procedures have made me avoid them at all costs. And I mean all costs -- such as my former $250K-per-year career.
Should this be what we allow our country to become? If you are not speaking up, you are complicit.
Obscene LA Times Op-Ed: "Innocence Of Muslims Doesn't Meet Free-Speech Test"
Sarah Chayes writes in the LA Times that the "Innocence of Muslims" trailer doesn't meet the free-speech test; that it's like yelling fire in a crowded theater:
In one of the most famous 1st Amendment cases in U.S. history, Schenck vs. United States, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. established that the right to free speech in the United States is not unlimited. "The most stringent protection," he wrote on behalf of a unanimous court, "would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic."...The current standard for restricting speech -- or punishing it after it has in fact caused violence -- was laid out in the 1969 case Brandenburg vs. Ohio. Under the narrower guidelines, only speech that has the intent and the likelihood of inciting imminent violence or lawbreaking can be limited.
But, what's the standard here? There are all sorts of films all over YouTube and in the media in general that are offensive to Jews, Christians, and others.
Did you see Christians riot and murder over Serrano's "Piss Christ"?
It's Islam that's the problem, not free speech.
(Of course, Sarah Chayes worked in government -- from her bio: "Sarah Chayes, former special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is a resident associate at the Carnegie Endowment and a contributing writer to Opinion."
The LA Times wouldn't publish my op-ed on the TSA [they instead sat on it for two separate weeks] -- but clearly, the anti-civil-liberties stuff is very attractive to them.)
"It Became Necessary To Destroy The Village To Make It More Inclusive"
Great line from Overlawyered's @WalterOlson, who tweeted this post on his blog about father/daughter dances that have been cancelled in Rhode Island.
From CBS Boston, via AP, father-daughter dances and mother-son ballgames are over in Rhode Island, thanks to an ACLU letter of complaint:
Schools Superintendent Judith Lundsten told school organizations in an August letter that district attorneys found that while federal gender discrimination laws exempt such events, Rhode Island's law does not.ACLU Executive Director Steven Brown says the complaint came from a single mother whose daughter was precluded from attending the father-daughter dance.
In real life, all people are not always included. I didn't go to church or get to be in the Boy Scouts. I didn't weep about this. I accepted that all things are not for all people, which made me more realistic and probably a little less narcissistic.
What I did love is doing stuff with my dad, like when he'd take my sisters and me to his office with him on Saturday. We'd just color or read and then go out to lunch at McDonald's or Red Barn (an old Detroit chicken chain, if I'm remembering correctly).
Women (widows excepted) who want their children to go to father-daughter dances should be careful about who they make babies with.
If Enlightenment Values Are Too Upsetting To You, Stay In Tents Back In The Desert
Charlie Hebdo, a French publication, has made use of freedom of expression to publish cartoons mocking Mohammed and Islam.
The last time they did this, their offices were firebombed.
Who is reponsible for any violence that happens? No, not Charlie Hebdo or those who are behind it.
Nicholas Vinocur writes for Reuters:
The editor of French magazine Charlie Hebdo has said that when his magazine ridiculed the Prophet Mohammad on Wednesday by portraying him naked in cartoons, he and his organization were not responsible for fuelling the anger of Muslims around the world who are already incensed by a video depicting him as a lecherous fool. The editor, Stephane Charbonnier, also known as Charb, rejected criticism. "We have the impression that it's officially allowed for Charlie Hebdo to attack the Catholic far-right but we cannot poke fun at fundamental Islamists," he said."It shows the climate. Everyone is driven by fear, and that is exactly what this small handful of extremists who do not represent anyone want: to make everyone afraid, to shut us all in a cave," he told Reuters.
"Muhammad isn't sacred to me," he said in an interview at the weekly's offices on the northeast edge of Paris. "I don't blame Muslims for not laughing at our drawings. I live under French law; I don't live under Koranic law."
Charbonnier said he had no regrets and felt no responsibility for any violence.
"I'm not the one going into the streets with stones and Kalashnikovs," he said. "We've had 1,000 issues and only three problems, all after front pages about radical Islam."
Blog item, Google-translated from the French, via Crid, with the cartoons poking fun of Islam and Mohammed at the bottom.
If you blog, do as I've done and share some of these cartoons. Refuse to knuckle under to primitive thuggery meant to make all of us too afraid to avail ourselves of the free expression that is a fundamental part of free, modern, Western societies. 
We cannot give into terrorists or the religion of terrorism otherwise known as "the religion of peace," which is really not a religion at all but a totalitarian system driven by a book, to be taken literally as the word of god, that commands the death or conversion of "the infidel," and the installation of The New Caliphate around the globe.
Sound like a good idea to you? Or you think maybe we should hang on to our free speech and other rights and not give in to the demands of terrorists riding planes and clutching iPhones?
A Rational Study Of Islam With Dr. Bill Warner
I've been reading about Islam since 9/11, and I can see that the guy really knows his stuff, like about the different parts of the Quran, the peaceful part (the Mecca Quran) and the later violence-commanding part (the Medina Quran).
When Mohammed was in Mecca, he didn't have power or many followers, and thus talked all sorts of peaceful, interfaith-y talk. Later, in the Medina part of the Quran, he'd gained power and manifested as the narcissistic, raping, mass-murdering, greedy looter that he really was.
The later, violence-commanding portion of the Quran, the Medina portion, abrogates the earlier, more peaceful passages, meaning it takes precedence.
So, when somebody points to early, peaceful passages from the Quran, as if they mean something, you should know they're actually worthless, thanks to the bloodthirsty passages commanding death to kuffirs (dirty infidels -- which would be us).
For Mohammed, as Warner puts it, "Religion was a failure. Peace was a failure. Jihad was a success."
Moderate Islam is the Islam of Mecca -- the Islam abrogated by the later Medina Islam: Political, terrorist Islam. Watch and understand:
The Cloying Mommy-centricism Of Politics
A friend mentioned this to me, how both sides engage in mommy-pandering, and then sent me this email:
Until I saw this (Gale Holland piece) I thought I was the only one who was offended by all the mommyness coming from both sides. Except one FB friend, a journalist who posted that she was sick of the mommy-centric-ness of the tone of politics these days. I'm so over it. No one is speaking to me, you or millions of others.
(Those of us who aren't mommies, that is.)
Gale Holland wrote about this in the Los Angeles Times:
First up was Ann Romney, who told the Republican National Convention, "I want to talk to you about that love so deep only a mother can fathom it -- the love we have for our children and our children's children."Only a mother? How presumptuous. What about siblings, or lifelong friends? There's no meter on love, anyway. Who's to say how much another person feels?
Romney went on to list things that women have to "work a little harder" at to hold the world together.
"I'm not sure if men really understand this, but I don't think there's a woman in America who really expects her life to be easy," she said. " .... And that's fine. We don't want easy."
Why not? Because then we'd have to stop complaining?
Ann Romney's was undoubtedly a shrewd political message, because if it's one thing that unites mothers on the left and right, it's complaining how hard it is. One of my childless friends said she's heard so many maternal litanies of woe, she assumes motherhood must be ghastly.
..."I'd call and try to offer support. But every mom knows that doesn't help get the homework done ....," Romney said. "I knew without question, that her job as a mom was a lot more important than mine." So who was passing on the values, Mr. and Mrs. Romney? Perhaps a teacher, pastor -- or just life itself -- also helped shape your children. Anyway, making a living is pretty important when you're raising a family.
I expected the mom pandering from the GOP, the family values party. But then Michelle Obama got into the act.
"At the end of the day, my most important title is still 'mom-in-chief,'" she said in her convention speech.
Mom is sweet when my kids say it, condescending from anyone else. It's not a title, it's an endearment, or it should be.
It's the mommy-lympics, right and left.
Remember: We aren't electing Michelle Obama or Ann Romney -- we're electing the substandard candidates for president they're married to.
Mom Goes To Jail For Letting Her Kids Play Outside
Jennifer Bauer writes at KPRC that a mom was arrested for child endangerment for letting her kids ride their motorized scooters around their cul de sac:
LA PORTE, Texas - A stay-at-home mom from La Porte has filed a lawsuit against the city's police department, an unknown officer and one of her neighbors.Tammy Cooper said she was wrongly accused of endangering her children and was even forced to spend the night in jail, all because she let her kids play outside.
She said her children, ages 9 and 6, were riding their motorized scooters in the cul-de-sac where they live while she watched from a lawn chair in her front yard just a few feet away.
"I was out there the entire time," Cooper said. "I never left that lawn chair the entire time."
Cooper said a little while later, a La Porte police car pulled up in front of her home.
"I went out there to see what he was here for and he said, 'Ma'am, we're here for you.' I said, 'Oh really? Why?' He proceeded to tell me he had received a call from one of my neighbors that my kids were riding their scooters unsupervised.
Cooper said she was handcuffed, put in the back of a police car and forced to spend the night in jail.
"Orange jumpsuit, in a cell, slammed the door, for 18 hours," Cooper said.
The charges against her were eventually dropped but she still describes the ordeal as humiliating and said her children were even questioned by police and terrified.
There's video at the link.
The reporting in both the video and web piece is pretty lame, so just a guess on my part -- I'm wondering if the neighbor was bothered by noise from the scooters and made the complaint to get the noise down or get revenge.
via Glenn Reynolds
In Case You Didn't Believe It The Last 26 Times I Posted About This
Via Dr. Steven Platek, Dr. Johnny Bowden writes at the HuffPo about the myth that exercise makes you thinner. He's reviewing the Timothy Caufield book, The Cure for Everything: Untangling Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness, and Happiness
In general, and in the long run, as Caulfield notes, "The data simply does not support the use of exercise as a primary tool for getting thin." Here's Caulfield quoting Todd Miller, professor in the Department of Exercise Science at George Washington University: "People don't understand that it is very difficult to exercise enough to lose weight. If that is why you are doing it, you are going to fail".The idea that exercise causes weight loss is firmly embedded in our national consciousness, and is accepted as a basic truth even by people who don't exercise. One reason is the widely-accepted theory that weight loss is all about calories.
According to the theory, weight loss is all about calories in, calories out. (There are more than a few problems with this hugely out-of-date oversimplification, but let's just go with it for a minute.) Since exercise burns calories, it stands to reason that all things being equal, exercise should cause weight loss. After all, if you burn more calories than you take in, you'll lose weight, and since you burn "a ton" of calories during exercise, the pounds should just melt off.
Good luck with that.
For one thing, you don't burn a ton of calories during exercise, unless you're Michael Phelps. Fact is, you only burn about 300 calories a half-hour, if that -- a calorie "deficit" that is almost immediately wiped out by a couple of Gatorades, let alone one mocha low-fat latte or a "low-fat bran muffin." (Don't believe for a minute the calorie readouts on the exercise machines at your gym -- those manufacturers have an interest in overstating the calorie number, making you think you're burning a ton of calories by using their devices.)
Problem number two is the phrase "all things being equal." They're not. The calorie math works great if you eat the same amount of food but increase the number of calories you "burn," creating a calorie deficit. But most people don't. Mounting evidence suggests that exercise makes us hungry and that we wind up eating more extra calories in response to that hunger than we "burn up" doing the exercise that made us hungry in the first place.
Caulfield calls out those among us -- you know who you are, my friends -- who are fond of saying things like "I work out so I can eat what I want." Umm... not so much. As trainers are fond of saying, "You can't out-train a bad diet." Knocking out 300-600 calories on the stairclimber doesn't begin to "compensate" for a supersized fries and a medium shake, nor even the most modest dish at El Torito or Olive Garden. So sure, working out may allow you to "eat whatever you want" if whatever you want to eat is limited to meat and broccoli. But if you think that hour in aerobics class bought you a free pass at the all-you-can-eat pasta station at the Bellagio buffet, you're delusional.
I credit my body to bacon consumption and the fact that I sit on my ass weeping over a keyboard much of the day.
Okay, truth be told, I also exercise -- I do "Slow-Burn Fitness" for a short time every week, since evidence shows that lifting very heavy weights, very slowly, until your muscles give way strengthens your bones and heart and increases your metabolism (per the book the Drs. Eades wrote with trainer Fred Hahn).
Here's a link: The Slow Burn Fitness Revolution: The Slow Motion Exercise That Will Change Your Body in 30 Minutes a Week
Bowden's thoughts on exercise? You should do it:
I think exercise is the greatest anti-aging activity on the planet. And the data are clear: Exercise can help with depression, lower the risk for heart disease and cancer, and reduce the risk and complications of diabetes. It can even grow new brain cells.
And here's a link to Gary Taubes' 2007 piece in NY Magazine that I've linked to previously: "The Scientist and the Stairmaster: Why most of us believe that exercise makes us thinner--and why we're wrong."
Need Stories Of Romantic Revenge
I'm writing a chapter now for my next book and I can't use a story I have on romantic revenge -- a story about a guy breaking it off with his fiance and the horrible thing she did in response.
I need true stories of relationship revenge -- not apocryphal ones that have come to you in an Internet forward. These need to be something that happened by or to someone you know. I won't name names or anything -- this will just be a story of "A woman did this..." or "A guy did this...", but it should be something awful.
You can still post juicy tales you've heard from a friend of a friend of a friend, but please just identify them as such.
Does The Choice To Remain Childless Remain Taboo?
I tweeted to @SorayaRoberts about her article on Slate on bra issues. (I couldn't leave a comment on Slate -- Twitter sign-in was screwed-up.)
My tweet about the ridiculous slew of comments -- particularly one comment -- at Slate, under her piece:
Couldn't believe idiot sniveling re female "privilege" in response to yr piece. Sign-in w/Twitter broken. Best bras=Empreinte
She tweeted back:
nothing shocks me anymore after reading the comments to this piece and my child-free article ;)
Had to see that one. She sent me the link.
So, here's an excerpt from Soraya Roberts' "I Don't Want To Have Children: I'm not even sure I have a biological clock.":
Sometimes I'm not even sure I have a biological clock. The only time I envy parents is when they are in their 30s, had their kids in their 20s, and are that much closer to getting them out of the house. Is that normal? To want kids just to see them leave? Because with all the thirtysomething mommies who blog (Heather B. Armstrong, Kelly Oxford, Julie Robichaux, et al. ), the sudden thirtysomething celeb baby boom (Sienna Miller, Jessica Simpson, Drew Barrymore, et al.), and the general mommy talk around the over-30s, it's hard not to feel like not wanting kids at my age is a handicap (just ask Jennifer Westfeldt or Zooey Deschanel).When one of my friends' 5-year-olds recently asked me why I didn't have any kids, I told her honestly that I didn't know what to do with them. "You just take care of us," she said, six words that made me understand why J.D. Salinger was so smitten with children. But considering it has taken me 32 years to understand how to take care of myself, perhaps someone over 5 could take a moment to understand why I might need more than just vague references to a ticking clock to decide whether I can give my life over to taking care of someone else.
...I might have children. I might, like Madonna, get pregnant at 38 by my Cuban personal trainer or I might decide to adopt children at 50 like Diane Keaton, because I feel the grim reaper breathing down my neck. Or I might not.
What probably won't change is the fact that I don't consider babies a miracle any more than I consider a seed growing into a tree particularly miraculous. So how are you a real woman if you don't give birth? All I can say is that I've never particularly defined myself by my gender, nor did I feel the urge to do so once I turned 30. What did happen to me at 30 was that I gradually started to settle down, though not in the traditional sense of the term--by becoming pregnant or putting a down payment on a mortgage or even getting married.
For me, settling down is located in my head (for the Buddhists among you, this is called mindfulness). It meant realizing that I wanted to share my days with my long-distance boyfriend without Skype as an intermediary; that I wanted to stop responding so impulsively to everything; that I didn't want to keep working on a website in New York despite how much it helped my career, because I actually wanted to write, not rewrite.
"Some people are just fecund with their minds," my mom said.And, lucky for us, there is no ticking clock on that.
Personally, I don't long for kids, I've never longed for them, and I couldn't imagine giving my life over (in the way a good parent does) to take care of one. I've just shrugged off all the comments over the years about how I was being "selfish" and how I was "missing out." And yes, that's exactly how I feel when I'm sitting at my favorite cafe and these parents who are recent regulars come in with their life-eating, loud and uncontrollable brat.
What I really love is reading, and thinking, and posting here, writing my book, being with friends I find special and exciting, talking to friends and strangers, and not having to stop because little Buster needs his diaper changed or little Berthina (Codina? I guess that would be more name-now) is throwing her very first iPhone across the room.
That said, I imagine it's harder for some who care more what people think about their childlessness.
A commenter at Slate, Margaret Ganong, age 55, writes about her experience:
At one of many going-away parties, the wife of one of my colleagues in the philosophy department, after asking if I had children or planned to, blurted out a version of what my mother had said years before, telling me that having children was essential because it opened one up to a world of opportunities one would otherwise not have.What stands out in my mind from this conversation was this woman's anger. At the time, I couldn't figure out why my decision not to have kids made her so angry, why she insisted so stridently that I was wrong not to want them. I wasn't angry with her for wanting and having them, after all.
What I learned, from this and other conversations on the subject with women who are parents, is that it is usually quite difficult to explain your decision not to have children to those who have chosen to do so without offending them in some unspoken but very deep and palpable way.
I believe this is partly because many of them are secretly envious of the child-free and also--perhaps more importantly--see the child-free person as a repudiation of their own life choice and, worse, as a sign of "non-envy." Imitation is the highest form of flattery and the surest sign of envy.
My child-free state was like a mirror that did not reflect their image. I gradually learned to provide nonanswers to questions pertaining to children and parenthood. (It is interesting to note, from my own experience, that men rarely if ever asked me about children and my lack of them.)
Digitized Health Records: Hype For Change
Stephen Soumerai and Ross Koppel write in the WSJ that a comprehensive evaluation of digital medical records systems has show that the savings promised by the government and info-tech vendors are little more than hype:
In two years, hundreds of thousands of American physicians and thousands of hospitals that fail to buy and install costly health-care information technologies--such as digital records for prescriptions and patient histories--will face penalties through reduced Medicare and Medicaid payments. At the same time, the government expects to pay out tens of billions of dollars in subsidies and incentives to providers who install these technology programs.Since 2009, almost a third of health providers, a group that ranges from small private practices to huge hospitals--have installed at least some "health IT" technology. It wasn't cheap. For a major hospital, a full suite of technology products can cost $150 million to $200 million. Implementation--linking and integrating systems, training, data entry and the like--can raise the total bill to $1 billion.
But the software--sold by hundreds of health IT firms--is generally clunky, frustrating, user-unfriendly and inefficient. For instance, a doctor looking for a patient's current medications might have to click and scroll through many different screens to find that essential information. Depending on where and when information on a patient's prescriptions were entered, the complete list of medications may only be found across five different screens.
...With a few isolated exceptions, the preponderance of evidence shows that the systems had not improved health or saved money. For instance, various studies found the percentage of alerts overridden by doctors--because they knew that the alerted drug interactions were in fact harmless--ranging from 50% to 97%.
...But by the time these health-care providers find out that the promised cost savings are an illusion, it will be too late. Having spent hundreds of millions on the technology, they won't be able to afford to throw it out like a defective toaster.
The push to standardize care and the control that comes from digitizing to a government standard is particularly scary. What happens when the computer won't let you have a medication your doctor feels you need? Do you just go without?
The Party Of Pretend Small Government Wants To Fork Over To Farmers
From the WSJ, some Republicans are trying to resurrect a spending boondoggle. Republican leadership checked their watches and realized it's an election year (they're all pretend small governmenters, too -- they're just better at timing their pandering):
Congressional inaction has it merits, and this week's case in point is the $957 billion farm bill stuck in the House. Taxpayers should hope that Republicans keep this boondoggle buried.With Congress back for a few weeks, Democrats are pressuring Speaker John Boehner to hold a vote on this five-year farm spending reauthorization, which passed the House Agriculture Committee in July. The farm lobby piled on last week, with a "Farm Bill Now!" rally outside the Capitol, at which even some Republicans, including South Dakota's Kristi Noem, blasted her leadership for inaction.
The media judgment is that Mr. Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor don't want a vote that will highlight infighting between farm-state and Tea Party Republicans, but that misses the bigger point. What the GOP leadership understands--even if Mrs. Noem is pretending otherwise--is that locking in five years of sky-high farm bill dollars before a bigger debate over spending and taxes would be political and fiscal folly.
The best remarks are in the comments at the WSJ.
Peter Venetoklis (with a beagle as his icon) wrote:
"Some Republicans try resurrect a spending boondoggle"Some Republicans still don't get that the nation is broke, busted, tapped, bankrupt. This is the same crowd that spend like drunken sailors during the Bush years, and lost their majorities as a reward. Why don't they learn from the error of their past?
There is a nascent small government movement in the nation. I think its path to success must be from within one of the parties. The Democrats have gone all-in on rampant spending, so it'd have to be the GOP that gets "fixed." Repubs who support things like the Farm Bill only stand in the way of that. If they are your congresspeople, vote them out.
Roy McKay replied:
Rubio supports sugar subsidies.
Dorothy Myers replied:
NO on all subsidies. No subsidies for oil, mohair, sugar, corn for ethanol, nothing. Until the Republicans understand this, there can be no correction of the corruption that exists brought to D.C. by lobbyists. Vote no on this Farm Bill. I'll be checking, and I will vote against any Congress critter who votes for subsidies.
Nicholas Spynda wrote:
If you want to stop an heroin addict you need to lock him in a room with no heroin. Politicians are similar, we need to take away their (public) money as they will simply spend all they can get their hands on (Rep, Dem, Ind).
Unfortunately, I'm starting to think this country will have to go into a total fiscal collapse before the "Duh!" light pops on in people's heads and they start refusing to elect the addicts.
A Girl And Her Fan
Maximum cool.
Southern California has been one giant pizza oven the last few days, but Lucy's not about to let that cramp her style.
Islam: Salman Rushie Gets A Price Bump
It seems even the "Religion of Peace" (which commands Muslims to slaughter any Muslim or "infidel" who insults Mohammed) is affected by inflation.
The Iranian foundation (!) -- to quote Nick Gillespie -- that manages the fatwa against Rushdie has recently upped its reward for the murder of the "Satanic Verses" author by $500,000.
Gillespie writes at reason:
The book was published in 1988 and its Japanese translator was killed in an attack.Reason interviewed Rushdie back in 2005. Here are some excerpts worth thinking about:
The idea of universal rights--the idea of rights that are universal to all people because they correspond to our natures as human beings, not to where we live or what our cultural background is--is an incredibly important one. This belief is being challenged by apostles of cultural relativism who refuse to accept that such rights exist. If you look at those who employ this idea, it turns out to be Robert Mugabe, the leaders of China, the leaders of Singapore, the Taliban, Ayatollah Khomeini. It is a dangerous belief that everything is relative and therefore these people should be allowed to kill because it's their culture to kill.I think we live in a bad age for the free speech argument. Many of us have internalized the censorship argument, which is that it is better to shut people up than to let them say things that we don't like. This is a dangerous slippery slope, because people of good intentions and high principles can see censorship as a way of advancing their cause and not as a terrible mistake. Yet bad ideas don't cease to exist by not being expressed. They fester and become more powerful....
Rushdie has said "The Innocence of Muslims" is an "idiotic...piece of garbage" but called the protests against it "an ugly reaction that needs to be named as such."
I do not quite understand the need to pass aesthetic judgment on a work before making a free speech argument, but that seems to be a minority opinion. Does anyone else find it puzzling, though? It's almost as if Theo van Gogh, murdered by an Islamist nut job in the streets of Amsterdam in 2004, would have deserved his stabbing death if the production values of "Submission" had been a bit lower.
How To Celebrate The Constitution
I suggest you start by considering how wildly different -- and utterly horrible -- your life would be without it.
There's an editiorial in the LA Times on the little-known "Constitution Day," September 17, "Constitution Day: Let's all celebrate."
Yes, celebrate the Constitution -- but also deplore how Americans have become so complacent about our rights. I think we have become so physically comfortable that we just can't be bothered to care about our civil liberties, to notice how they are rapidly being eroded in this country, to make a peep when they are violated as we travel by plane.
My comment at the LAT site on the piece:
Celebrate (and defend) the Constitution by defending it -- by not politely allowing your Fourth Amendment rights to be violated when you go through the airport, and by taking steps to protest this.You celebrate the Constitution by using your free speech and supporting organizations that support it, like theFIRE.org, which defends free speech violations on campuses (free of charge for those violated, no matter their politics or beliefs), and Institute for Justice (IJ.org), which defends the civil liberties of people who can't afford a defense in off-campus situations.
And when you see someone's civil liberties being violated, speak up on their behalf. Videotape what's happening to them, write about it, make it heard.
We have become exceptionally complacent in this country about our rights -- and as Friedrich Hayek cautioned, "It is seldom that any Liberty is lost all at once."
Obscene Justice Department Bullying: Suing A Bank For Prudent Lending
You'd think you'd want a bank to discriminate based on color -- the color of a person's money. Is it green and are there bushels of it, and are bushels more of it likely to come in? That's the person I'd want to give a housing loan to, and that's apparently how California-based Luther Burbank savings operated.
And that's a no-go with our "Justice" Department, which has sued the bank for not loaning to buyers who weren't well-qualified. From the WSJ:
In a complaint filed Wednesday and settled the same day, Justice claimed that California-based Luther Burbank Savings violated the 1968 Fair Housing Act and 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act by setting a policy that had a "disparate impact" on minorities. Between 2006 and mid-2011, 5.2% of Luther's single-family residential mortgage loans went to African-Americans and Hispanics, compared to an average of 41.7% for other lenders in the area. The complaint doesn't cite evidence of intentional discrimination because there wasn't any.Luther Burbank might not have been in this business were it not for government. The bank was largely focused on multi-family mortgages until its regulator, the former Office of Thrift Supervision, asked the lender to diversify its portfolio in the mid-2000s. Luther Burbank then hired a team to do "nontraditional" loans such as interest-only or option adjustable-rate mortgages that the bank would keep on its own books. Yes, this is the same stuff that eventually blew up the housing market.
Luther Burbank wasn't a fly-by-night operator that marketed those loans to any and all. The bank insisted on a minimum $400,000 loan amount and made loans with an average 680 FICO score and 67% loan-to-value. Over the period that Justice examined, Luther Burbank foreclosed on a mere 11 borrowers out of 629 loans outstanding--a loss ratio of 1.75%. In a normal world, Luther Burbank would get a medal from regulators for its risk management, having chosen borrowers even at the height of the housing mania who could meet their monthly payments.
But Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez has a different priority: He wants banks to meet lending quotas to minorities--regardless of whether those borrowers can afford the loans. Many minority borrowers have low incomes that make them riskier lending bets. Is that a bank's fault?
Unfortunately, Luther Burbank had to settle to avoid costly litigation fees. They admitted no guilt and have agreed to lower their minimum loan to $20K, commit $2 million to a "special financing program" for "qualified buyers," give payouts to local community groups, and fund "consumer education programs."
Who needs the mob for extortion when our government does such a fantastic job of it, while flying under the moniker of "Justice"?
How Does Anyone Who Passed Their Third-Grade Math Test Not Get This?
We're spending far more than we have. Way, way, way, way, way more. And then some. This is a problem. Possibly one that will lead to our country's demise, and some pretty horrific times on the way.
The WSJ lays out the national debt situation in an op-ed by George P. Shultz, Michael J. Boskin, John F. Cogan, Allan H. Meltzer and John B. Taylor, all now senior fellows at Stanford's Hoover Institution. It's rightly titled -- "The Magnitude of the Mess We're In":
Did you know that annual spending by the federal government now exceeds the 2007 level by about $1 trillion? With a slow economy, revenues are little changed. The result is an unprecedented string of federal budget deficits, $1.4 trillion in 2009, $1.3 trillion in 2010, $1.3 trillion in 2011, and another $1.2 trillion on the way this year. The four-year increase in borrowing amounts to $55,000 per U.S. household.The amount of debt is one thing. The burden of interest payments is another. The Treasury now has a preponderance of its debt issued in very short-term durations, to take advantage of low short-term interest rates. It must frequently refinance this debt which, when added to the current deficit, means Treasury must raise $4 trillion this year alone. So the debt burden will explode when interest rates go up.
The government has to get the money to finance its spending by taxing or borrowing. While it might be tempting to conclude that we can just tax upper-income people, did you know that the U.S. income tax system is already very progressive? The top 1% pay 37% of all income taxes and 50% pay none.
Did you know that, during the last fiscal year, around three-quarters of the deficit was financed by the Federal Reserve?
More on all the fishiness of the Federal Reserve at the link. And despite the vast depth of the hole we've let politicians dig us into, all we can do is put in a purchase order for more shovels.
The issue is not merely how much we spend, but how wisely, how effectively. Did you know that the federal government had 46 separate job-training programs? Yet a 47th for green jobs was added, and the success rate was so poor that the Department of Labor inspector general said it should be shut down. We need to get much better results from current programs, serving a more carefully targeted set of people with more effective programs that increase their opportunities.Did you know that funding for federal regulatory agencies and their employment levels are at all-time highs? In 2010, the number of Federal Register pages devoted to proposed new rules broke its previous all-time record for the second consecutive year. It's up by 25% compared to 2008. These regulations alone will impose large costs and create heightened uncertainty for business and especially small business.
This is all bad enough, but where we are headed is even worse.
President Obama's budget will raise the federal debt-to-GDP ratio to 80.4% in two years, about double its level at the end of 2008, and a larger percentage point increase than Greece from the end of 2008 to the beginning of this year.
I think the details laid out in this article show very well how utterly awful it was that Obama was focused on forcing his health care agenda on us as our economy burned -- and continues to burn.
Which Came First, The Horse Or The Egg?
My answer is always "bacon."
Advice Goddess Radio: 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET -- Dr. Mark Goulston, Fixing Faltering Relationships And Making Okay Relationships Wonderful
Advice Goddess Radio -- "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research.
Psychiatrist and business coach Dr. Mark Goulston will be my guest tonight, explaining how to give your relationship a tune-up: How to fix a relationship that's faltering or even downright combative, and how to make an okay or pretty good relationship wonderful.
He's a really wise guy -- and comes at all of this from an extremely realistic point of view on love, couples, and human nature.
His book we'll be discussing is The 6 Secrets of a Lasting Relationship: How to Fall in Love Again--and Stay There. The 6 or 8 (or whatever) in a book title is a publishing convention designed to sell books, but what sold me on this book are the gems throughout. That's what we'll be discussing on this show, so I hope you'll join us.
Listen live at 7pm Pacific and 7pm Eastern at this link or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/09/17/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And don't miss last week's show with psychologist Lenora Yuen, Ph.D., on curing your habit of procrastination. She talks about why you procrastinate and how to stop NOW.
Yuen is the co-creator of the first procrastination treatment group in the country, along with the co-author of her excellent, research-driven book, Procrastination
Just prepping for and doing this show with her has already helped me -- substantially.
Listen online or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/09/10/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Listen to all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, with podcasts available afterward, at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon.
What They're Wearing In Space For The Fall Season
A photo of American astronaut Sunita Williams in the latest in NASA-wear, posted by Andrew Malcolm at IBD.
A bit about Williams:
Williams holds the out-of-this-world records for most space flight time, most spacewalks and longest spacewalking time by a female. She's an Ohio native, born to Indian and Slovenian parents, and celebrates her 47th birthday in space on Wednesday. She's a Navy officer and married to a police officer in Oregon.
Uncle Sam Is Uncle Checkbook, Rebuilding Foreign Mosques
From WSBTV, their investigation found that the State Department is sending millions of dollars to rebuild mosques overseas:
The Channel 2 Action News investigation found a 1,300-year-old Egyptian mosque that was almost flooded by contaminated sewer water that is one of many ancient Cairo mosques and churches that were saved from destruction by the U.S. taxpayers.This is part of a $770 million program to rebuild Cairo's sewer system, paid for by the U.S. State Department's USAID program.
"We are spending money we don't have. This is all on a gigantic credit card right now," said Jared Thomas, a taxpayer advocate.
Millions more dollars have been sent to places like Cyprus. The State Department displays before and after pictures of mosques refurbished with U.S. tax dollars.
"I think it is very hard to explain to the American taxpayer right now whose having an extraordinary time paying bills and making ends meet that this is why we took this out of your paycheck, so we can fund this," said Thomas.
The State Department declined a Channel 2 Action News request for an interview. We wanted to ask why are we using tax dollars to refurbish religious buildings overseas. The State Department did send Channel Two Action News an e-mail saying that they are fighting Islamic extremism by building relationships with Islamic leaders.
Egyptian-American human rights activist Nonie Darwish told Channel 2 Action News anchor Justin Farmer that trying to buy respect in the Middle East only shows our weakness.
From everything I know about Islam, having studied it since 9/11, this is absolutely correct.
Here's the video:
District Attorneys And Collection Agents: A Partnership In Sleaze
District attorneys across the country are renting out their stationery to debt collectors, writes Jessica Silver-Greenberg in The New York Times:
The letters are sent by the thousands to people across the country who have written bad checks, threatening them with jail if they do not pay up.They bear the seal and signature of the local district attorney's office. But there is a catch: the letters are from debt-collection companies, which the prosecutors allow to use their letterhead. In return, the companies try to collect not only the unpaid check, but also high fees from debtors for a class on budgeting and financial responsibility, some of which goes back to the district attorneys' offices.
...Debt collectors have come under fire for illegally menacing people behind on their bills with threats of jail. What makes this approach unusual is that the ultimatum comes with the imprimatur of law enforcement itself -- though it is made before any prosecutor has determined a crime has been committed.
Prosecutors say that the partnerships allow them to focus on more serious crimes, and that the letters are sent only to check writers who ignore merchants' demands for payment. The district attorneys receive a payment from the firms or a small part of the fees collected.
"The companies are returning thousands of dollars to merchants that is not coming at taxpayer expense," said Ken Ryken, deputy district attorney with Alameda County.
Consumer lawyers have challenged the debt collectors in courts across the United States, claiming that they lack the authority to threaten prosecution or to ask for fees for classes when no district attorney has reviewed the facts of the cases. The district attorneys are essentially renting out their stationery, the lawyers say, allowing the companies to give the impression that failure to respond could lead to charges, when it rarely does.
Read Ms. Yartz' story at the link. Sure, prosecute people who are fraud artists, but government stationery shouldn't be used to scare people who used some bad math or forgot they didn't have enough money in their checking account to write a $47.95 check to Walmart.
Car Talk
Amazon
Amazon has finally fixed the "Powered by Amazon" button in Amy's Mall (although I haven't had a moment to fix the text that says it's still broken). So, to buy something that's not linked here, just go through this link
And thank you -- really, truly appreciate all the purchases that you all send my way.
This Is Your Government On Horse Tranquilizers
Great headline over at reason on a story horrifying to anyone who cares at all for civil liberties. The Nick Gillespie piece is headered:
Forget the Happy Ending, Mr. Ed: Woman Would Face 20 Years in Jail for Unlicensed Horse Massages
He continues:
The libertarian public-interest law firm Institute for Justice reports on one of the most insane, inane, and profane prosecutions in all-time memory.
From IJ:
Massage a horse, go to jail.
That's the absurd fate Karen Hough could face if she wants to continue her business in Nebraska. A certified instructor, Karen has been massaging horses for years. Massaging a horse is believed to deliver many health benefits, including relieving tension, improving circulation, and alleviating muscle fatigue.
Earlier this year, she applied for a license in equine massage but was told only veterinarians can become licensed. A 2007 memo from Nebraska's Board of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery asserted that "no health professional other than licensed veterinarians and licensed veterinary technicians may perform services/therapies on animals." This means Karen would need to spend thousands of dollars and seven years of her life just to acquire a government permission slip to do what she's been doing for years.
A few weeks later, she received a letter from Nebraska's Department of Health and Human Services ordering her to "cease and desist" from the "unlicensed practice of veterinary medicine." In Nebraska, continuing to operate a business without a license after getting a cease and desist letter is a Class III felony. So Karen could face up to 20 years in prison and pay a $25,000 fine. By comparison, that's the same penalty for manslaughter in the Cornhusker State.
What's worse, under Nebraska state law, she can't even give out advice on how to massage horses: "They told me I couldn't give massages for money; I couldn't do it for free and I couldn't even tell friends how to do it. That last one really got to me. To me, that is restricting my free speech." Of course, by using occupational licensing, the board can restrict who gets to massage horses, rubbing out the competition.
Fortunately for Karen, State Sen. Tyson Larson has proposed a bill that would instead require 100 hours of training to obtain a license in equine massage. People can climb on and ride a horse without any training and that's certainly more stressful to a horse than getting a massage. While 100 hours still seems a bit excessive, it's certainly a step in the right direction. Hopefully more legislators will join Sen. Larson and say "neigh" to this cartel.
Back in 2009, the Institute for Justice successfully defended Mercedes Clemens' right to massage horses in Maryland. Maryland's Board of Chiropractic Examiners had forced Clemens to stop massaging her equestrian clients. But in a win for economic liberty (and good old-fashioned horse sense) the Board's actions were ruled illegal. Now Clemens can earn an honest living free from burdensome regulation.
The Stupidest Post Ever By Will Saletan
Found via a tweet by @joshgreenman:
Will Saletan convinces the rioters to relax (if they read Slate and are susceptible to, you know, reason).
The ridiculousness starts with the lead-in:
Dear Muslims, Christians, Hindus, and Jews,You're living in the age of the Internet. Your religion will be mocked, and the mockery will find its way to you. Get over it.
If you don't, what's happening this week will happen again and again. A couple of idiots with a video camera and an Internet connection will trigger riots across the globe. They'll bait you into killing one another.
Come on, why be "inclusive"?
I tease a Christian friend about believing in god. He teases me about not believing in god.
I mock the ridiculousness of circumcision with some regularity.
I have no fear that some Schlomo Glickstein and his mob of yeshiva students are going to drag me out of my house, rape me, and murder me for it.
Islam COMMANDS the death of those who mock Islam, Allah, or Mohammed, be they infidels or Muslims. (And the death of infidels in general, along with the installation of The New Caliphate around the globe. And you can probably guess that TNC won't be democratic or very nice to women, gays, or those not worshipping Allah.)
Saletan continues:
The hatred and bloodshed will go on until you stop taking the bait. Mockery of your prophet on a computer with an Internet address somewhere in the world can no longer be your master. Nor can the puppet clerics who tell you to respond with violence. Lay down your stones and your anger. Go home and pray. God is too great to be troubled by the insults of fools. Follow Him.
Ridiculous. The violence won't go away until the last Quran disappears from earth. The violence is built into in the religion.
Anyone who starts looking deeper than those COEXIST! bumper stickers will find that. As former Daily Kos blogger Eric Allen Bell did.
More from Bell here.
Philly Developer Beautifies Unsightly Vacant Lot; City Threatens Legal Action
Chris Morran writes at Consumerist that a Philadelphia developer got sick of the trash- and broken glass-strewn lot next door (before and after photos at the link). He says he spent $20K cleaning it up. The new lot has a bench, nice gravel, expensive potted plants and a nice wooden picnic table that seats a bunch of people.
Of course, the city wants to go after him for trespassing. Maybe even fine him.
After he decided to spend his own money and time having 40 tons of debris removed from that same lot, the city claims he's a trespasser."They don't like nice things," the man tells the Philadelphia Daily News. "For a private developer to create a garden, it's a question of who gets credit. To do it without their blessing, you're basically insulting them."
But a rep for the city's Office of Housing and Community Development tells the paper, "Like any property owner, [the authority] does not permit unauthorized access to or alteration of its property. This is both on principle (no property owner knowingly allows trespassing) and to limit taxpayer liability."
In August, the developer went to the Redevelopment Authority to complain about the lot and offered to clean it up. The city told him not to, but he just couldn't stand it anymore.
"Finally out of frustration, I said, 'I'm going to clean it,' and that's when I rustled every possible feather there," he tells the News.
Since then, the city has threatened legal action against him, though it has not actually issued a citation.
"They said we need to return it to the condition we found it in immediately," he claims.
One area resident doesn't understand why the city is so upset about the lot, which has gone unsold for years.
"They liked it filled with garbage and broken glass?" she asks.
Even better photos at the Philly Daily News link.
UPDATE: Another view and copy of the letter from the city at Philly Law Blog.
Why Did The Chicken Cross The Moat?
Feel free to speculate or post wildly.
Women Get Free Preventive Care, Men Get To Go Pee Up A Rope
Robert Franklin posts at Fathers & Families:
The Affordable Care Act mandates well woman exams, including a variety of preventive screenings, for all women completely free of charge, no deductibles, no co-pays. But it does nothing of the kind for men. Whatever we may think we need in the way of preventive care, we pay for; the ACA leaves us on our own. When it comes to preventive care, the ACA rations our preventive care according to our ability to pay, but requires providers to screen women at no cost.That struck me and the other signers of the petition as (a) sexist and (b) bad policy. After all, doesn't effective preventive care for men save the healthcare system money in the long term the same as it does for women? Of course it does, so, since the ACA is so much about keeping costs down that it's part of the law's name, why not go all in? Why not include men's preventive care along with women's? And that of course is in addition to the fact that, as a matter of morality, fairness and justice, men and women should receive equal treatment by public policy. Men contribute far more to tax revenues than do women, so why does the ACA short men?
For as long as it continues to do so, he has an idea:
Just tell 'em you identify as a woman.That's right, our fearless reader informs us that the Department of Health and Human Services recently sent a letter to the National Center for Lesbian Rights confirming that the ACA prohibits discrimination "based on gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity..." In short, the ACA has been interpreted by the DHHS as prohibiting discrimination against lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgendered people. Of course transgendering is a process that includes a pre-operative period.
So the fix is simple; when you go to the doctor to be screened for various possible male-only maladies and conditions, just tell them you identify as a woman and are in the first stage of re-orientation. According to DHHS rules, they have to screen you for free. You don't even have to wear a dress.
Admittedly, if you do this too often, the doctor might begin to question your commitment to the transgendering process. But not to worry, by then the Obama Administration will have discovered the error of its ways, changed the law to include men in its protections, and all will be well in this best of all possible worlds.
The Man Who's Yet Another Murder Statistic Thanks To Islam
Islam commands Muslims to convert or kill the infidel and install The New Caliphate around the globe. It is a totalitarian system masquerading as a religion, and under its auspices, good men like this man are brutally murdered.
For those who have been reading extensively on Islam, as I have, since 9/11, you too know that an infidel is dehumanized, under Islam, even before he is sodomized and murdered for Allah.
We Don't Need Civil Liberties To Protect Your Right To Watch "My Fair Lady"
We need them to protect your right to watch somebody's fair lady doing something naked and nasty and maybe even seriously sick. The Republicans bleat about how they're the party of small government -- which they aren't. And which they certainly aren't the moment some consenting adult gets naked in a video -- which is their right...as it is their right to sell that video to other consenting adults.
Susannah Breslin writes at Forbes:
According to Patrick Trueman, who ran the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section at the Department of Justice under President Reagan and President George H. W. Bush and who now runs Morality in Media, an anti-porn organization, Romney intends to launch a war on porn.In a meeting with Alex Wong, Romney's foreign and legal policy director, Trueman says Wong told him, "Romney is sincere about this. He's convinced this has now had a terrible effect on society, and he will enforce the law."
And that means pornographers like Stagliano could become targets once again.
"I don't really want to go to jail," Stagliano says. "I've got a two-year-old son. And I have a daughter, as well. I don't think she'd like that either."
In 2007, Romney swore that if he were elected president, he would put a porn filter on every computer.
As Stagliano, a Libertarian who plans to vote for Gary Johnson, sees it, an administration that seeks to legislate its constituents' morality is the real threat.
"My morality would be based on, as long as you don't harm somebody, anything should be permitted," Stagliano tells me. "The government can't solve our problems."
As Trueman sees it, porn is a scourge, and the current status is "pandemic."
"When I was at the Department of Justice, we were vigorously prosecuting this, and the reason why is because people were demanding it," he recalls.
Today, porn is ubiquitous, and "The nature of today's pornographers have changed," Trueman says. "What you've got are the white collar pornographers. These companies know there's hundreds of millions to be made."
X-rated content has proved lucrative for big businesses like hotel chains not typically associated with porn. In his bid for the presidential seat, Romney resigned from the board of the Marriott hotel chain, with which he has close ties, and Marriott has announced its intention to phase out adult content.
Trueman believes porn is eroding the very fiber that holds America together: ruining marriages, altering brains, breaking down inhibitions.
He can believe that if he wants, but it is not his right to stop consenting adults from making, selling, or buying it.
Democrats: Unable To Distinguish Between Defending Rights And Soliciting Subsidies
Jacob Sullum posts at reason:
Sandra Fluke's claim to fame, aside from provoking Rush Limbaugh's misogynistic ire, is that she chose to attend Georgetown Law School, knowing full well that the Catholic university's student health plan did not cover birth control, and then demanded that the policy be changed, under force of law, as a matter of "reproductive justice." Although Fluke could have picked a different school, she told The Washington Post last February, "I decided I was absolutely not willing to compromise the quality of my education in exchange for my health care."Fluke's sense of entitlement and her casual resort to the use of force made her an ideal speaker for last week's Democratic National Convention, where she was joined by many others who believe justice requires that they receive whatever they want (including automaker bailouts and cheap student loans), even if other people have to pay for it. This mentality is so pervasive among Democrats that they seem unable to distinguish between defending rights and soliciting subsidies.
The 2012 Democratic platform includes 1,400 words on "Protecting Rights and Freedoms." Among the alleged rights that the Democrats promise to defend: freedom from "discrimination in the workplace and other settings," "paycheck fairness" for women, "job-protected leave for specified family and medical reasons," "evidence-based and age-appropriate sex education," government subsidies for Planned Parenthood, and taxpayer-supported health care, including "free access" to "prenatal screenings, mammograms, cervical cancer screening, breast-feeding supports, and contraception." These items all amount to promises of other people's money or demands that they be compelled to enter into contracts they would otherwise eschew.
I value health care, including mammograms, cervical cancer screening, and contraception, which is why I have paid for health insurance and any cost for these things beyond my deductible out of my own pocket since my early 20s.
Nerds' Ink
Librarian tattoos.
via @brainpicker
Mute Pointers
Help me out:
In online dating, do guys find "winks" from women as stupid as many (most?) women find winks from men?
Details on your thoughts would be appreciated.
Another Day, Another Asinine Post On Jezebel
A blogger there named Doug Barry suggests that you "Express Your Outrage About the Gender Pay Gap with These Pithy E-Cards."
And there is a gender pay gap.
Dr. Carol Tavris, whom I recently had on my radio show, writes in the WSJ:
In 2010, young American women had a median income higher than that of their male peers in 1,997 out of 2,000 metropolitan regions.
Oopsy...was that the wrong pay gap?
When women do make less money, there are usually reasons:
--Women tend not to negotiate for higher pay the way men do.
--Women take time off to raise children and make children their priority.
For example, from this Kay Hymowitz piece on City Journal:
Let's begin by unpacking that 75-cent statistic, which actually varies from 75 to about 81, depending on the year and the study. The figure is based on the average earnings of full-time, year-round (FTYR) workers, usually defined as those who work 35 hours a week or more.But consider the mischief contained in that "or more." It makes the full-time category embrace everyone from a clerk who arrives at her desk at 9 AM and leaves promptly at 4 PM to a trial lawyer who eats dinner four nights a week--and lunch on weekends--at his desk. I assume, in this case, that the clerk is a woman and the lawyer a man for the simple reason that--and here is an average that proofers rarely mention--full-time men work more hours than full-time women do. In 2007, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 27 percent of male full-time workers had workweeks of 41 or more hours, compared with 15 percent of female full-time workers; meanwhile, just 4 percent of full-time men worked 35 to 39 hours a week, while 12 percent of women did. Since FTYR men work more than FTYR women do, it shouldn't be surprising that the men, on average, earn more.
...But proofers often make the claim that women earn less than men doing the exact same job. They can't possibly know that. The Labor Department's occupational categories can be so large that a woman could drive a truck through them. Among "physicians and surgeons," for example, women make only 64.2 percent of what men make. Outrageous, right? Not if you consider that there are dozens of specialties in medicine: some, like cardiac surgery, require years of extra training, grueling hours, and life-and-death procedures; others, like pediatrics, are less demanding and consequently less highly rewarded. Only 16 percent of surgeons, but a full 50 percent of pediatricians, are women. So the statement that female doctors make only 64.2 percent of what men make is really on the order of a tautology, much like saying that a surgeon working 50 hours a week makes significantly more than a pediatrician working 37.
And, really, as I've heard said before, if you can get a woman for 77 percent of the salary you'd have to pay a man, wow...who'd ever hire anyone male (save for all those dirty and risky jobs that women tend not to want)?
Oh, yeah -- and the e-cards are here.
Predictably, like Jezebel, they're tired, working too hard, and unfunny.
The 9/11 Attacks On Embassies Weren't About A Movie
Caroline Glick posts at CarolineGlick.com:
The attack in Libya was well planned and executed. It wasn't about a spontaneous protest against some ridiculous internet movie of Muhammad. The assailants came armed to the teeth, with among other things, RPG 7s. They knew that the US Ambassador was in Benghazi rather than Tripoli. They knew how to track his movements, and were able to strike against him after he and his colleagues left the consulate building and tried to flee in a car. As Israel Channel 2's Arab Affairs Correspondent Ehud Yaari noted this evening, you don't often see well trained terrorists participating in protests of movies.Then there is the attack in Cairo. They were led by Mohammad Zawahiri - Ayman Zawahiri's brother. According the Thomas Josclyn in the Weekly Standard, the US media has been idiotically presenting him as some sort of moderate despite the fact that in an interview with Al Jazeerah he said said, "We in al Qaeda..."
Egypt's US supported Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi recently released Zawahiri from Egyptian prison. The same Barack Obama who has no time in his schedule to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu next week in New York, is scheduled to meet Morsi.
The Egyptian government has not condemned the attack on the US Embassy in Cairo. But Morsi is demanding that the US government prosecute the film's creator.
You may be wondering how some movie no one's heard of has caused such a hullabaloo. Well, as it turns out, the film was screened on an Egyptian Salafist television channel. Obviously the Salafists -- many of whom, like Zawahiri were released from prison by Morsi, wanted to stir up anti-US violence on the eve of 9/11. So if the film is responsible for the violence, a finger needs to be pointed to its chief distributor -- Al Qaida's Egyptian friends and members.
Jay-Z No Supporter Of Occupy Wall Street
From the NY Daily News, Rich Shapiro writes that Jay-Z found their message a mess:
"I don't know what the fight is about. What do we want? Do you know?"Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, transformed himself from a poverty-stricken crack dealer to a multimillionaire music mogul and co-owner of the Brooklyn Nets.
He said Occupy Wall Street's blanket demonization of the rich is un-American.
"I think all those things need to really declare themselves a bit more clearly because when you just say that 'the 1 percent is that,' that's not true," he said.
"Yeah, the 1 percent that's robbing people, and deceiving people, these fixed mortgages and all these things, and then taking their home away from them, that's criminal, that's bad.
"Not being an entrepreneur. This is free enterprise. This is what America is built on."
I Yam What I Yam
If you're female, you'll be called "bitch" (even) when you firmly, politely refuse to let others take advantage.
Announcement: I'm a bitch.
The 9/11 Boatlift: Evacuating A Half Million People From Lower Manhattan
From an email from a friend:
500,000 people evacuated in 9 hours. When the people fleeing the collapse hit the seawall, the men and women who work the water saw their fellow Americans in need and came full throttle.
They came on their own, they organized on their own and they achieved on their own.
The largest sea evacuation in history - larger than the evacuation (339,000) at Dunkirk in WWII which took 9 days. These boats evacuated a half a million people in less than 9 hours.
A Kid's Breakfast Is Supposed To Be Provided By His Parents
Not the taxpayer next door. But, in Boston, it isn't just poor kids who get a taxpayer-funded free breakfast. Now, it's all kids who do. Welcome to the continual creep forward of The Handout State. Christine McConville writes in the Boston Herald:
"Some parents don't have time to make breakfast, and some kids don't know how to make breakfast for themselves," said Amalia Whetstone, 9, a fourth-grader at the Josiah Quincy Elementary School in Chinatown."And if you go to school hungry, that's what's on your mind," added her dad, Kevin Whetstone of East Boston.
The program builds on a plan that provides free breakfast, lunches and even snacks to students whose families meet certain income restrictions.
This year, though, breakfasts are provided to every student, but not everyone has to eat it.
Parents who don't have time to feed their children need to get their priorities in order. Or perhaps sign their children over to a responsible adult who can take care of them.
And on a dietary science note, of course, government-supplied "health" food is anything but.
Yesterday's meal consisted of a whole grain cereal and milk, graham crackers and a fresh peach.
The above breakfast was a blood sugar nightmare -- priming them for diabetes and other ill health later in life...taxpayer-paid!
As cardiologist Dr. William Davis lays out in his book, Wheat Belly, there's no such thing as "healthy whole grains." And wheat is the single worst thing you can eat. Here he is explaining that on my radio show.
What nobody seems to explain to me to any satisfaction is why it would ever be good or ethical to forcibly extract money from one to pay for the choices of another.
If your children are starving, I would contribute money to feed them -- but ask that there would be constraints placed on you, assuming you are able-bodied, like that you need to work in exchange for that money.
If your children are not starving, why should anyone else ever pay for them, except as a gift they choose to give?
@WalterOlson
Why It's So Easy For School Unions To Hold The Public Up
No competition. Andrew J. Coulson puts the striking Chicago teachers in perspective at Cato. Nobody's surprised that they're striking just as kids are supposed to be starting school:
Wouldn't you be a lot more shocked if you logged on to Amazon.com and were greeted by the message that its site was down due to an employee walkout? Or if you took the kids to the movies to see the latest cartoon extravaganza and found picketing ticket-takers? What is it about public schools--and other government enterprises, for that matter--that have made their unions so much more dominant than those in the private sector? [Two thirds of the public school workforce is unionized compared to about 7 percent in the private sector].Competitors. Or, rather, the lack of them. Private sector workers can only demand so much from their companies before the demands become self-defeating. Get a pension package that's too cushy, a salary that's too far above the market rate, and the employer will have to pass those costs on to customers. And if those higher prices aren't accompanied by correspondingly better quality, customers will simply go elsewhere--hurting the employees who asked for more than the market would bear.
And there's the problem with public schooling: there's no "elsewhere." If you don't like the way your local school district is run, there isn't a competing school district vying to provide your kids with a better education at a lower cost. You've got no place else to go, and unions know this. So they can ask for more employees to be hired, better pensions or health benefits, and they can demand that their compensation not depend on their performance. And there's very little that parents and taxpayers can do about it.
This is why unions are the single greatest enemy of school choice and charter schools. Competition kills their bargaining power -- which is a polite way to say it'll be hard for them to hold the public hostage if there are other options.
Judge Posner On Pot Laws: "Absurd"
Larry Bodine blogs at Lawyers.com that respected federal judge Richard A. Posner, who's considered a legal conservative, called for the elimination of criminal laws against pot in a lecture at Illinois' Elmhurst college:
"I don't think we should have a fraction of the drug laws that we have. I think it's really absurd to be criminalizing possession or use or distribution of marijuana," he said. "I can't see any difference between that and cigarettes." The audience gave him a round of applause...."But also I'm skeptical about the other drug laws," Judge Posner added. "The notion of using the criminal law as the primary means of dealing with a problem of addiction, of misuse, of ingesting dangerous drugs -- I don't think that's sensible at all."
He said drug laws are "responsible for a high percentage of our prisoners. And these punishments are often very, very severe. It's all very expensive." Judge Posner has pointed out that legalizing marijuana and other drugs would save federal, state and local governments $41.3 billion per year.
He said drug laws are, "...a waste of a lot of high quality legal minds, and it's also a waste of people's lives who could be as least moderately productive with having to spend year after year in prison. That is a serious problem."
Posner's entire speech is on YouTube.
Islam: The Religion Of Immaturity And Death
Regarding the murder of the American Ambassador to Libya as revenge for an American film's portrayal of Mohammed, while Christianity preaches turning the other cheek, Islam preaches death to the insulting.
That sounds horrible, and we'd like it to not be so. But, it is so. Which is why it so often happens -- at the mere site of a cartoon or the slightest criticism of Mohammed for, say, marrying Aisha when she was 6 and then having sex with her when she was 9.
From an Islamic scholar, Shaykh Munajjid:
The scholars are unanimously agreed that a Muslim who insults the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) becomes a kaafir and an apostate who is to be executed....With regard to the Sunnah, Abu Dawood (4362) narrated from 'Ali that a Jewish woman used to insult the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and say bad things about him, so a man strangled her until she died, and the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) ruled that no blood money was due in this case.
...This hadeeth clearly indicates that it was permissible to kill that woman because she used to insult the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him).
Note to those who think Islam is just a slightly different flavor of religion from Judaism, Christianity, and Buddhism, it's anything but.
More on how the murder of those who insult Islam, desecrate the Quran, or commit other acts of blasphemy is commanded by Islam.
I'm an atheist, but I can get behind the Jesus stuff. Jesus talked about feeding the poor and such. Here's the kind of guy Mohammed was.
MetaFilter - The Original 9/11 Thread, Plus Father's Note, Dropped From 84th Floor Of WTC
Via @SteveSilberman tweet:
The Net responds to the unimaginable.
Link to the posts is here. Note the link (no longer working) to "Palestinians in West Bank celebrate attacks on U.S."
Another commenter posts:
Palestinians dancing in the street, celebrating. Regardless of your world view, cheering this is barbaric.
And this is heartbreaking -- via @PaulHsieh -- a father and husband's note, which was given to the family 10 years later, changing their account of what happened to him at the WTC. From the Stamford Advocate, John Breunig writes a story that must have been hard to report (I'm tearing up just posting this):
STAMFORD, Conn. -- The note is just five words and two numbers.Randy Scott scrawled these five words and two numbers on a piece of paper on Sept. 11, 2001, while at work at Euro Brokers Inc. in the World Trade Center.
But if a picture is worth a thousand words, these five words and two numbers have changed the picture completely for Scott's family. Family members refer to it simply as "the note." The note that floated from the 84th floor of Two World Trade Center to chaotic streets below, and was tenderly preserved as it traveled from hand to hand and through time to reach them.
Denise Scott learned of her husband's message in August 2011, just weeks before the calendar marked a decade since he died in the World Trade Center's collapse.
For those 10 years, his family members believed he likely died instantly when United Airlines Flight 175 flew into the tower at 9:03 a.m., near the floors containing Euro Brokers offices.
...Randy Scott's daughters fought tears as his message again triggered new mental images.
In a steady tone, their mother explained the power of the note. "You don't want them to suffer. They're trapped in a burning building. It's just an unspeakable horror. And then you get this 10 years later. It just changes everything."
"84th floor
West Office
12 people trapped"
It is not these words alone that change the narrative of Randy Scott's final moments. The other content on the note is a dark spot, about the size of a thumbprint. It is Randy's blood, and the clue that eventually enabled the medical examiner's office to trace the source of the note through DNA tests and deliver it to his family a decade after he apparently tossed it from the 84th floor.
"Even from space, this view of 9/11 cries out," writes Andrew Malcolm, posting a NASA shot.
And Popehat has a post I appreciated on 10 things he'd like his kids to learn from 9/11.
Victim Of Violent Rape Re-Violated By The TSA
On FlyerTalk.com, bishop1847 left this post:
A pat down that ended my wife up in the ERMy wife and I had a horrific experience traveling out of FLL yesterday.
Five years ago, she was violently sexually assaulted by three men and was threatened with death. She made it, and tried to bury it for three years. After nightmares, flashbacks, and cutting she told me everything two years ago, and since then has been seeing professional counseling and taking medication. The incident happened in FL, but we now live elsewhere.
We were back in FL due to a death in the family - whenever we're there, she's always on edge (understandably). The security checkpoint had a backscatter and a metal detector active. I always opt-out, and unfortunately I was chosen to go through the metal detector instead of her. My wife was sent towards the backscatter, and told the TSO she didn't want to go through that. I then overheard the TSO graphically describing that "they will need to touch your privates..." (I know TSOs routinely scare people into going through the nude-o-scopes.) That just about did it for my wife, and she started shaking, sweating, and ended up going through the backscatter.
And then they discovered an "anomaly" in her bra, so she needed to be patted down on her breasts. This freaked her out even more. She asked for a private room and for me to be there, and it was obvious that this pissed off the female assist TSO. As she started shaking and sobbing in the room as the TSO began to touch her breasts, I gently touched her arm. Big mistake - the TSO yelled that I couldn't touch her and that I'd need to go through screening again.
I was furious, but my wife wanted to just get out of the checkpoint and to our gate. She popped some pills and was hoping it would all go away... But it didn't. Once we got to our home airport, she vomited in the bathroom and asked me to take her to the ER. Last night she checked into our local hospital, and they're wanting to transfer her to a psychiatric ward for a few days until she stabilizes.
Is this worth it? Had she been permitted to go through the metal detector, she would have been fine. But the language of the TSOs and lack of sympathy towards anyone with mental health issues is repulsive. Every mental health professional we've talked to despises what the TSA is doing.
Do rape victims or other people suffering with PTSD have any rights, or is it the usual "if you don't like it, don't fly!" bull?
What's sick is that there seems to be no one the TSA needs to answer to. Members of the Senate and the House have complained and hearings have been held and it's rights violations as usual at airports every day -- and with not a single terrorist found by them.
I'm reading an advance copy of Greg Lukianoff's terrific book, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate,
We have become far too complacent about our civil liberties.
Imagine our Founding Fathers putting up with these violations of our bodies and constitutional rights? Do you think they would have smiled and gave the TSA thug the go-ahead to violate their balls, and in the name of "security"?
Bush White House Ignored CIA Warnings Of Al Qaeda Attack
Kurt Eichenwald writes in the NYT that the Bush White House went deaf to multiple CIA warnings about an imminent Al Qaeda attack:
The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that "a group presently in the United States" was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be "imminent," although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives' suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.
In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.
"The U.S. is not the target of a disinformation campaign by Usama Bin Laden," the daily brief of June 29 read, using the government's transliteration of Bin Laden's first name. Going on for more than a page, the document recited much of the evidence, including an interview that month with a Middle Eastern journalist in which Bin Laden aides warned of a coming attack, as well as competitive pressures that the terrorist leader was feeling, given the number of Islamists being recruited for the separatist Russian region of Chechnya.
And the C.I.A. repeated the warnings in the briefs that followed. Operatives connected to Bin Laden, one reported on June 29, expected the planned near-term attacks to have "dramatic consequences," including major casualties. On July 1, the brief stated that the operation had been delayed, but "will occur soon." Some of the briefs again reminded Mr. Bush that the attack timing was flexible, and that, despite any perceived delay, the planned assault was on track.
Yet, the White House failed to take significant action. Officials at the Counterterrorism Center of the C.I.A. grew apoplectic. On July 9, at a meeting of the counterterrorism group, one official suggested that the staff put in for a transfer so that somebody else would be responsible when the attack took place, two people who were there told me in interviews.
This is what happens when we elect presidents we'd like to have a beer with.
McArdle On The Edu-Bubble
And its coming burst. Megan McArdle writes in The Daily Beast:
The price of a McDonald's hamburger has risen from 85 cents in 1995 to about a dollar today. The average price of all goods and services has risen about 50 percent. But the price of a college education has nearly doubled in that time. Is the education that today's students are getting twice as good? Are new workers twice as smart? Have they become somehow massively more expensive to educate?Perhaps a bit. Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economics professor who heads the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, notes that while we may have replaced millions of filing clerks and payroll assistants with computers, it still takes one professor to teach a class. But he also notes that "we've been slow to adopt new technology because we don't want to. We like getting up in front of 25 people. It's more fun, but it's also damnably expensive."
Vedder adds, "I look at the data, and I see college costs rising faster than inflation up to the mid-1980s by 1 percent a year. Now I see them rising 3 to 4 percent a year over inflation. What has happened? The federal government has started dropping money out of airplanes." Aid has increased, subsidized loans have become available, and "the universities have gotten the money." Economist Bryan Caplan, who is writing a book about education, agrees: "It's a giant waste of resources that will continue as long as the subsidies continue."
Promotional literature for colleges and student loans often speaks of debt as an "investment in yourself." But an investment is supposed to generate income to pay off the loans. More than half of all recent graduates are unemployed or in jobs that do not require a degree, and the amount of student-loan debt carried by households has more than quintupled since 1999. These graduates were told that a diploma was all they needed to succeed, but it won't even get them out of the spare bedroom at Mom and Dad's. For many, the most tangible result of their four years is the loan payments, which now average hundreds of dollars a month on loan balances in the tens of thousands.
Does college still make sense? Did it for you?
Obamacare In A Single Sentence
This lady, per IBD's Andrew Malcolm, who sent me the link, is a motor scooter-riding doctor, Army vet and entrepreneur who's running for Illinois State Senate, but ends up being kind of a comedian (though she demurs at saying the "eff word"):
Barbara Beller's website.
TSA: More Power Than Congress
Sommer Gentry blogs at TSANewsBlog about the FOIA request by governmentattic.org, answered by the TSA after a year's delay, that shook loose 200 pages of complaints from November and December 2010 about patdowns. These included a number of letters from members of Congress and congressional committees. The best is this one from Rep. Michael Conway of Texas:
To put it mildly, the contact that [my constitutuent] was forced to endure would have been criminal if the agent touching her did not have a badge. Unfortunately, given the recent deluge of news stories, it is clear that story is not an isolated incident or a lapse of judgment by a single individual. Rather, this new screening procedure is official policy, handed down from you and your employees at TSA.We are facing a pernicious enemy who seeks to terrorize Americans, this is not in question. However, the policy that the Transportation Security Administration has implemented is hated by almost all who come into contact with it because it is degrading and offensive to those who are subject to it.
We cannot protect the public by humiliating them. I believe that there are other options available to keep the public safe and focus our limited resources on those who would do us harm.
The American public deserve better than this. They deserve an adult conversation on the dangers to the flying public, the efficacy of screening procedures, and the ability for the government to keep all people safe at all times. Our rights and liberties are not a product of some rule handed down by the TSA administrator, nor even are they granted to us by our Constitution; they are the embodiment of our humanity and an endowment from God. We ought to be a bit more forthright and cautious before we sacrifice them on the altar of homeland security.
I would appreciate if your office would extend an apology to [my constituent] for the treatment she endured because of the policies that your office approved. As well, I would like a full accounting of the rationale behind the enhanced pat down procedures and an explanation of how the new rules keep the flying public safer.
And Gentry is right on:
What's most striking about these letters is how utterly impotent even Congress has been to stop the molesting - these letters were written 18 months ago, yet the TSA is still grabbing and groping and grinding the genitals of thousands of travelers every day.A staffer told me recently that every single member of Congress continues to hear complaints about the TSA. I'll admit it: seeing that even members of Congress, under a deluge of phone calls and letters from their constitutuents, can't stop TSA Administrator John Pistole from ordering his underlings to sexually abuse innocent people makes me feel hopeless.
How exactly did one man declare himself above the Administrative Procedures Act, above the Americans with Disabilities Act, beyond the reach of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, invulnerable to Congressional oversight, and immune to prosecution for all the children molested at his orders? Can nothing stop this monster?
You Think You Get To Choose Who Rents Your D.C. Apartment? Think Again.
The District of Columbia has anti-discrimination gotchas at every turn, writes landlord Douglas Hsiao on the Washington Post. (The best is the bit where his property manager advises against meeting the prospective tenants.):
So when I had a group of three young professional women who wanted to rent the apartment a few years ago, I was surprised to learn from my property manager that I couldn't turn them away. In fact, I was told that I should score them as stronger candidates because they had three incomes to cover the rent. The only thing that prevented them from becoming tenants was that, as a condition of their offer to take the apartment, they wanted to put up a wall to convert the living room into another sleeping area. I could legally say no to that structural change, and to my relief they decided that they didn't want the apartment after all.Another tenant who once applied for the apartment was unemployed. Easy case: no job, no apartment. Not so fast. The potential tenant's father was willing to co-sign the lease, and he had a large and enviable income. Even so, I still think that a landlord has a good reason to turn the renter away, since the actual resident of the apartment doesn't have sufficient income of her own to afford the rent. All things being equal, I would prefer a person with a job over one who does not.
I got my hand slapped for that one by my property manager.
Under D.C. law, you are not allowed to discriminate based on the renter's "source of income." Who knew? It's to protect the Section 8 program, which provides housing vouchers to low income residents. Because I worked for a Legal Services housing clinic in Boston during college, I know something about Section 8 and how valuable it is to tenants and landlords alike. (Federal guaranty? Yes, please!) But the wording of this D.C. law protects not only those low income families from discrimination but also the trust fund baby with unlimited parental backing or the bookmaker who doesn't want to say where he got the money for his Porsche.
And finally, this: I asked my property manager whether we could meet with potential tenants and interview them. She told me that, as a general rule, she does not like to meet any potential tenants. Why? Because if you never meet them, you cannot be accused of discriminating against them. It would be funny if it were not so Kafkaesque.
Between a dues-paying member of the D.C. bar and a property manager with decades of experience managing properties, we cannot agree on what the housing discrimination law means. While I fully appreciate the rules my property manager maintains to protect me from illegal conduct, this protection comes at a price, by shutting down the normal ways that people engage with one another. And there's no reward for testing the law, no matter how much it may defy common sense.
via @WalterOlson
This Election Season Takes Dirty To A Whole New Level
The election of 1800, that is. From Reason.TV:
Advice Goddess Radio: 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET -- Dr. Lenora Yuen On Procrastination
Advice Goddess Radio -- "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research.
Are you a procrastinator? My guest this week is psychologist Lenora Yuen, Ph.D., here to help you cure your habit of procrastination. She'll talk about why you procrastinate and how to stop NOW.
Yuen is the co-creator of the first procrastination treatment group in the country, along with the co-author of her excellent, research-driven book, Procrastination
There's much wisdom in this book -- just in prepping for the show, I've recognized some of my bad habits, and I've started taking small steps to change them. You can do the same (with your own bad habits!). You're sure to get some very wise insight and tips for real and very positive change from the show.
Listen live at 7pm Pacific and 7pm Eastern at this link or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/09/10/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And don't miss last week's show with clinical psychologist Harriet Lerner, Ph.D., with simple rules for minimizing conflict to make for happier relationships.
Lerner is the author of the much-lauded best-seller, The Dance of Anger.
In her current book, which we discussed on the show, Marriage Rules 
Listen online or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/09/03/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Listen to all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, with podcasts available afterward, at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon.
Eating Prius: "The Organic Fable"
Roger Cohen writes in the NYT about the recent news -- via a Stanford study -- that organic produce has no more nutritive value than the regular stuff that doesn't cost so much:
An effective form of premium branding rather than a science, a slogan rather than better nutrition, "organic" has oozed over the menus, markets and malls of the world's upscale neighborhood at a remarkable pace....Stanford University concluded, after examining four decades of research, that fruits and vegetables labeled organic are, on average, no more nutritious than their cheaper conventional counterparts. The study also found that organic meats offered no obvious health advantages. And it found that organic food was not less likely to be contaminated by dangerous bacteria like E.coli.
I do have to say that when I did eat apples, for example, an organic apple would be more likely to be tasty instead of tasteless and mealy. Maybe this has something to do with the scale of the farms of organic versus Big Ag?
Cohen didn't mention the pesticide finding the NYT's Kenneth Chang writes about here:
Conventional fruits and vegetables did have more pesticide residue, but the levels were almost always under the allowed safety limits, the scientists said. The Environmental Protection Agency sets the limits at levels that it says do not harm humans.
Unfortunately, I don't trust government assessments. The government also told you that you should eat a high-carb, low-fat diet -- precisely the diet that makes you fat and diabetic.
I've also learned (based in evidence, though I don't have the original links) that there's more health value to butter from pastured, grass-fed cows. And I eat Omega-3 eggs. And I also eat organic Lacinato kale from Trader Joe's because it tastes better than the non-organic kale.
But, mostly I eat non-organic vegetables because they're cheaper, and cheaper matters a great deal now.
Where do you draw the organic/non-organic line?
Pothead Parenting
Mark Wolfe writes in the NYT that pot (for which he has a prescription and eats in brownies) makes him a more loving and attentive father. He's describing what he says a "typical weekday evening exchange" with his oldest daughter once looked like:
Child: Daddy, can you show me how to make a Q?Father: (sipping bourbon and soda, not looking up from iPad) Just make a circle and put a little squiggle at the bottom.
Child: No, show me!
Father: Sweetie, not now, O.K.? Daddy's tired.
It's different now:
Child: Daddy, can you show me how to make a Q?
Father: (getting down on the floor) Here, I'll hold your hand while you hold the pen and we'll make one together. There! We made a Q! Isn't it fantastic?
Child: Thanks, Daddy!
Father: Don't you just love the shape of this pen?
Perhaps this isn't surprising. As anyone who inhaled during college can attest, cannabis enhances the ability to perceive beauty, complexity and novelty in otherwise mundane things (grout patterns in your bathroom floor, the Grateful Dead, Doritos), while simultaneously locking you into a prolonged state of rapt attention. You not only notice the subtle color variations in your cat's fur, you stare at them in loving awe for 20 solid minutes.
I submit that this can be enormously salutary to the parent-toddler relationship. Beyond food, shelter and clothing, what do small children need most from their parents? Sustained, loving, participatory attention. Thank you, Doctor.
No doubt some of you are tut-tutting that I should use meditation or yoga or Zen mindfulness to achieve this. Point taken, and if I had a full-time staff of cooks and nannies, I'm sure I'd give all that a whirl. But the reality is that my wife and I are raising multiple tots on modest incomes in a small space in a very expensive city. No time for Tantra.
And I'm not suggesting that all stressed-out fathers should just get baked. You might even get a ticket for it in some states. And let's not forget the health risks, which are rumored to possibly exist. I've heard that even a small amount of marijuana can impair short-term memory function. It might also affect short-term memory function.
But for me, at least, the benefits clearly outweigh the risks. I find the time I spend with my children to be qualitatively different and simply more fun when I take my medicine (always in private, never in front of them, never too much). I am able to become a kid again, to see things through my daughters' eyes and experience, if I'm lucky, the wonder of each new game, each new object and sound, as they do.
The Problem With Older Men's Sperm
Judith Shulevitz writes in The New York Times:
A woman is born with all the eggs she'll ever carry. By the time a man turns 40, on the other hand, his gonad cells will have divided 610 times to make spermatozoa. By the time he's in his 50s, that number goes up to 840. Each time those cells copy themselves, mistakes may appear in the DNA chain. Some researchers now think that a percentage of those mistakes reflects not just random mutations but experience-based epigenetic markings that insinuate themselves from sperm to fetus and influence brain development. Another theory holds that aging gonad cells are more error-prone because the parts of the DNA that should have spotted and repaired any mistakes have been epigenetically tamped down. In any case, we now know that the children of older fathers show more signs of schizophrenia, autism and bipolar disorder than children of younger ones.In a meta-analysis of a population study of more than a million people published last year, Christina Hultman of the Karolinska Institute of Sweden concluded that children of men older than 50 were 2.2 times as likely to have autism as children of 29-year-olds, even after the study had factored out mothers' ages and known risk factors for autism. By the time the men passed 55, the risk doubled to 4.4 times that of 29-year-olds. Can the aging of the parent population explain the apparent spike in autism cases? A study published last month in Nature that used whole-genome sequencing on 78 Icelandic families made the strongest case to date that as fathers age, mutations in their sperm spike dramatically. Some of the mutations found by the researchers in Reykjavik have been linked to autism and schizophrenia in children.
In his Washington Heights laboratory at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, Jay Gingrich, a professor of psychobiology, compares the pups of young male mice (3 months old or so) to those of old male mice (12 to 14 months old). The differences between the pups, he told me, weren't "earth-shattering" -- they weighed about the same and there weren't big gaps in their early development. But discrepancies appeared when the mice grew up. The adult offspring of the older fathers had less adventuresome personalities; they also reacted to loud noises in unusual ways that paralleled reactions evinced by schizophrenics who heard similar sounds.
Still, Dr. Gingrich said, "the differences were subtle" until he decided to pool the data on their behavior and graph it on a bell curve. A "vast majority" of the children of the older mice were "completely normal," he said, which meant their score fell under the upside-down parabola of the curve. The real differences came at the tails or skinny ends of the bell curve. There was about a sixfold increase in likelihood that one of the "abnormal outliers," mice with cognitive or behavioral handicaps, "would come from an older father." Conversely, the super-high-performing mice were about six times more likely to come from a younger father. "I'm an inherently skeptical person," Dr. Gingrich told me, but he was impressed by these results.
Your Wallet And Your Feet Will Thank You
Save on shoes and more at this link at Amazon
NOTE: Amazon's link above is wrong and goes nowhere. I've emailed them to get the new link. Grrr. Might they, you know, CHECK before emailing a link to THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of Amazon Associates? Guess not!
This does work, however: Amazon Outlet Fall Sales
Amazon has finally fixed the "Powered by Amazon" button in Amy's Mall (although I haven't had a moment to fix the text that says it's still broken). So, to buy something that's not linked here, just go through this link
And thank you -- really, truly appreciate all the purchases that you all send my way.
Abuse Of Government Office To Try To Silence Free Speech
Walter Olson blogs at Overlawyered that Maryland Assemblyman Emmett C. Burns wrote a letter asking that the owner of the Baltimore Ravens take steps to silence the free speech of one of his players. Burns is against same-sex marriage and player Brendon Ayanbadejo spoke out in favor of it.
Shocking abuse of office to try to quash somebody's speech.
Disgusting that he did this on his legislative stationery.
Walter links to Eugene Volokh commenting on this:
This seems to be a pretty inappropriate thing for a legislator, speaking in a way that stresses his role as legislator, to say to a private employer. There is no express threat of retaliation here, but such letters to private businesspeople -- who often have to deal with legislature on various regulatory issues -- tend to carry something of an implied threat, especially when they stress the author's legislative position.
Walter points out in a comment on his post:
I would not so quickly conclude that "as a single member of a state legislature, Burns has no power to do anything." It's true that Burns doesn't appear to have introduced much notable legislation, and also true that M&T Stadium isn't in his district. On the other hand, he sits on the Economic Matters Committee and its business regulation subcommittee, in which capacity it would not be surprising if he could do things like put holds on emergency bills. As a member of the majority party he also is in a position to have close logrolling dealings with other members. When a demand letter on legislative stationery like this arrives at a regulated business I think the reaction is often something other than, "What a laugh, there's no way he can lay a glove on us."
Related -- from Deadspin, Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe's response to Burns -- "They Won't Magically Turn You Into A Lustful Cockmonster." An excerpt:
1. As I suspect you have not read the Constitution, I would like to remind you that the very first, the VERY FIRST Amendment in this founding document deals with the freedom of speech, particularly the abridgment of said freedom. By using your position as an elected official (when referring to your constituents so as to implicitly threaten the Ravens organization) to state that the Ravens should "inhibit such expressions from your employees," more specifically Brendon Ayanbadejo, not only are you clearly violating the First Amendment, you also come across as a narcissistic fromunda stain. What on earth would possess you to be so mind-boggingly stupid? It baffles me that a man such as yourself, a man who relies on that same First Amendment to pursue your own religious studies without fear of persecution from the state, could somehow justify stifling another person's right to speech. To call that hypocritical would be to do a disservice to the word. Mindfucking obscenely hypocritical starts to approach it a little bit.2. "Many of your fans are opposed to such a view and feel it has no place in a sport that is strictly for pride, entertainment, and excitement." Holy fucking shitballs. Did you seriously just say that, as someone who's "deeply involved in government task forces on the legacy of slavery in Maryland"? Have you not heard of Kenny Washington? Jackie Robinson? As recently as 1962 the NFL still had segregation, which was only done away with by brave athletes and coaches daring to speak their mind and do the right thing, and you're going to say that political views have "no place in a sport"? I can't even begin to fathom the cognitive dissonance that must be coursing through your rapidly addled mind right now; the mental gymnastics your brain has to tortuously contort itself through to make such a preposterous statement are surely worthy of an Olympic gold medal (the Russian judge gives you a 10 for "beautiful oppressionism").
I love this guy Kluwe!
Obama: "We Will Never Be At War With Islam..."
From his speech on the anniversary of 9/11.
A question: What if Islam is at war with us?
The Quran contains at least 109 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule. Some are quite graphic, with commands to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding. Muslims who do not join the fight are called 'hypocrites' and warned that Allah will send them to Hell if they do not join the slaughter.Unlike nearly all of the Old Testament verses of violence, the verses of violence in the Quran are mostly open-ended, meaning that they are not restrained by the historical context of the surrounding text. They are part of the eternal, unchanging word of Allah, and just as relevant or subjective as anything else in the Quran.
Most of today's Muslims exercise a personal choice to interpret their holy book's many calls to violence according to what their own moral preconceptions find justificable. Apologists cater to their preferences with tenuous arguments that gloss over historical fact and generally do not stand up to scrutiny. Still, it is important to note that the problem is not bad people, but bad ideology.
Unfortunately, there are very few verses of tolerance and peace to abrogate or even balance out the many that call for nonbelievers to be fought and subdued until they either accept humiliation, convert to Islam, or are killed. Muhammad's own martial legacy - and that of his companions - along with the remarkable stress on violence found in the Quran have produced a trail of blood and tears across world history.
Advice Goddess Free Swim
Started feeling a little peaked Friday night -- going to bed.
So you pick the topics -- please just post only one or two links per comment. (Otherwise your comment will be eaten by my anti-spam software.)
I'm sure I'll feel better in the morning. Will post more then.
Small Favors Department: Police Drones Shouldn't Be Armed, Police Chiefs Say
I borrowed the title of this blog post from Overlawyered's @WalterOlson, who tweeted the link to the Kevin Johnson USA Today piece, "Police chiefs urge limits on use of drones":
The nation's largest consortium of police officials is calling for the limited use of unmanned drones in local law enforcement operations and urging that the controversial aircraft -- now popular weapons on international battlefields -- not be armed....Only a handful of police agencies, including the Mesa County, Colo., Sheriff's Department, are currently using unmanned aircraft. But Don Roby, chairman of the IACP's aviation committee, said an increasing number of departments are considering unmanned aircraft for such things as search and rescue operations, traffic accident scene mapping and some surveillance activities.
...In cases in which a drone is to be used to collect evidence that would likely "intrude upon reasonable expectations of privacy," the IACP's new guidelines recommend that police secure search warrants prior to launching the vehicle.
On the question of arming drones, however, the IACP issued its most emphatic recommendation:
"Equipping the aircraft with weapons of any type is strongly discouraged. Given the current state of the technology, the ability to effectively deploy weapons from a small UA (un-manned aircraft) is doubtful ... (and) public acceptance of airborne use of force is likewise doubtful and could result in unnecessary community resistance to the program."
Not to worry. Americans are mostly watching TV, sleeping, or nodding politely at TSA checkpoints while their rights are being yanked from them.
Morons In California State Assembly Haven't Heard Of U.S Constitution
Specifically, the part about the right to free speech.
They've passed a resolution that calls for universities to crack down on criticism of Israel. Jonathan Turley writes:
Passed by a voice vote, the resolution includes language that equates criticism of Israeli policies and actions as "anti-Semitism." While the resolutions original purpose is laudatory and does include clear expression of anti-Semitism, its drafters decided to include criticism of Israel and its human rights record in a measure that at a minimum chills free speech by professor and students alike. Drafted by Republican Linda Halderman, there was no hearing or debate allowed on the resolution. Just a voice vote.It should be kept in mind that this is a non-binding resolution and, as such, has little coercive impact on universities. However, as public institutions, these schools are likely to take such a resolution as a guideline for the future to avoid the animus and possible retaliatory measures from the legislature. It describes anti-Semitism that should "not be tolerated in the classroom or on campus, and that no public resources be allowed to be used for anti-Semitic or intolerant agitation."
...Such anti-Semitism includes speech accusing Israel of "crimes against humanity"; "language or behavior [that] demonizes and delegitimizes Israel"; claims that Israel engages in forms of "ethnic cleansing"; statements portraying Israel as a "racist" or "apartheid" state; statements "applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation;" "actions of student groups that encourage support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah"; and "Student and faculty-sponsored boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns against Israel." These are some of the cited examples that are then the basis for the resolution to encourage universities to take further steps to protect Jewish students from such speech.
This makes criticism of Israel the same as a hatred for the Jewish people and human rights activists (and various United Nations figures) bigots.
I'm an atheist now, but I grew up Jewish and I fully support your right to make bigoted remarks about me, Jews, Israel and anything else you want to make bigoted remarks about. I am, of course, still free to debate your remarks -- which is how a free society and our society is supposed to work, thanks to our brilliant, beautiful Constitution.
The notion of thought crimes -- especially "hate crimes" -- is especially disturbing, and I wish we'd do away with it. It crosses a dangerous line.
It is essential that we use our free speech and that we fight violations of it, because every time there's a chill on free speech, it makes it easier and easier for free speech violations in the future.
This is one reason I find it so important to support theFIRE.org, which defends civil liberties on campus -- in turn, showing students that they can and must stand up for our rights, and instructing them on what those rights are and how they should play out in our lives and public institutions.
Saint Obama Wants To Be Your Daddy
I think Matt Welch, at reason, has it right:
President Barack Obama didn't give a particularly good acceptance speech Thursday night, but for the thousands in the arena it didn't matter one bit. They were here to see him more than listen to him, to communicate their love to him (often by bursting forth with "I LOVE YOU!!"s) more than hear about his plans for the next four years. The last five minutes of the speech was a festival of hollering back, of responding not to Obama's frequently inaudible remarks but to the rising timbre of his voice. I think it's impossible to understand the ongoing appeal of this odd and embattled president without grappling with the notion that he is an essentially religious figure....The Democrats are selling themselves in 2012 as the party that simply cares more. They feel your pain, only this time it's not a snicker-worthy campaign ploy from a slick southern politician; it's a governing creed. Simply by virtue of being more empathetic, they will produce better policies and outcomes, particularly those that affect the identity groups within the Democratic coalition: women, Hispanics, blacks, the gay and lesbian community.
...Because Democrats care more about education, education outcomes will be better; there was precious little discussion of policy toward those ends. "Government has a role in this," Obama said last night, "But teachers must inspire; principals must lead; parents must instill a thirst for learning, and students-you gotta do the work." Well okay then!
Democrats might yet win by exploiting the Caring Gap. Certainly having the Republican Party to compete against helps. But for those of us voters who want government to be neither mom nor dad, and who like to keep our religious experiences separate from the exertion of public policy, a depressing reality has been reinforced thise week: The two major parties are incapable of treating you like an adult. Meanwhile, they are demanding-and sometimes receiving-a devotion that borders on the unhealthy.
From The DNC: Ban Corporate Profits!
Or at least seriously limit them, people say.
Peter Schiff went undercover at the DNC as somebody in favor of banning corporate profits. Here's what people told him:
Love the lady who said she'd support anything Obama wants to do. Scarrrry!
If You Need A Ladies-Focused Steakery To Feel "Empowered"...
You have things wrong with you that lunch and a fashion show can't fix.
Eva Longoria plans to open a Las Vegas steakhouse for women called (ugh!) "SHe," writes Tiffany Hsu in the LA Times:
The former star of "Desperate Housewives" is closing her restaurant Beso and nightclub Eve in Las Vegas, and reopening the space as a haven for the ladies, complete with small plates and a catwalk for fashion shows. But men will still be welcome....SHe is scheduled to open New Year's Eve in the Crystals shopping space at the CityCenter. A news release envisions the eatery as "an updated interpretation of the gilded age when wealth and excessive opulence ruled America's upper-class combined with a modern version of art deco to create a feeling of empowerment, especially for female guests."
Korean Farty-que
Farting baby doll all the rage in South Korea.
Proof The TSA Is About Retaliation And Obedience Training For The American Public
TSA hires are unskilled workers, slightly trained, who would never have worked their way to a position of power over other people, but who have power over the people who, in many other workplaces, would likely have had power over them.
The apparent personal egotistical missions of many of them dovetail with what I wrote in my op-ed about the TSA that I believe to be the government mission -- obedience training for the American public so we'll be polite and docile in the face of having our rights taken from us.
A woman shows, with her cellphone audio, that it's indeed about power grabs and not about security. She was singled out for a "drink test" at the gate (where they stick some wick in your drink to "make sure" it's not explosive) and drank her water rather than letting them test it. She was kept from boarding her plane because of it!
The TSA thug made it clear that their keeping her off her plane was "retaliatory," that it was as he said, "About (her) attitude..." not about keeping people safe.
Via Lisa Simeone at TSANewsBlog, the text below the video the woman posted on September 1, 2012:
This was inside the terminal at the Houston airport. I was not allowed to board a plane (even though I had already been through airport security) because I drank my water instead of letting the TSA "test" it. The TSA agent finally admitted that it wasn't because they thought I was a security risk-it was because they were mad at me!I was able to get on the very next flight out of houston-and even managed an upgrade! (thanks United)
Sorry for crappy phone video-but the audio is what I wanted to post.
I know this is not really news (it seems like the TSA is retaliating all the time against people), but it was a little satisfying to get that statement on video.
Is this the country we want to be living in? Is this what our Founding Fathers risked their lives for and gave everything to?
Bra-Free Expression Is Still Free Expression
Love this case out of New York, written up by Jacob Gershman in the WSJ:
The answer may seem obvious, but it has attorneys in Albany arguing: How is a ballerina different from a pole dancer?New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals, will hear arguments on Wednesday in a case pitting the state's Department of Taxation and Finance against a strip club called Nite Moves that is situated about 15 minutes from the state Capitol.
The issue: whether the club's $11 cover charge and $20, three-minute lap dances are subject to an 8% sales tax.
The seven-judge panel is being asked to interpret an obscure part of the state tax code that exempts sales-tax charges for "dramatic or musical art performances." The state wants the court to prevent strip clubs from using the same sales-tax exemption as the New York City Ballet.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office is representing the tax department. While noting that some "pole tricks" are "difficult to perform," state attorneys wrote in a court brief that some Nite Moves dancers "have no prior dance experience at all and simply learn moves from other dancers during slow shifts over time."
Such a dancer isn't "engaged in a genuine choreographic dance performance when she removes her clothing," the brief said. "In fact," it added, "some patrons paid the admission fee simply to come in and enjoy a conversation with the dancers."
Representing Nite Moves is Andrew McCullough, an Albany native who is one of the nation's premier attorneys for adult-themed businesses. The tax man, he said, is behaving too much like a dance critic.
"If they've spent hours and hours practicing and learning this stuff, and if they can flip around and do amazing moves, why aren't they choreographed dance performers?" Mr. McCullough said.
"Under their code," said the club's CFO Stephen Dick, "Eric Clapton, who didn't go to school to learn guitar, his performances would be taxable."
via ifeminists
Circumcision: Orthodox Rabbis Refuse To Stop Circumcisers From Sucking Little Boys' Penises
It's not enough to engage in the backward and medically unnecessary practice of hacking off a piece of an infant boy's penis; ultra-Orthodox Jews have a ritual called metzitzah b'peh, in which the person performing the circumcision sucks the boy's penis to stop the bleeding. Katie Moisse writes at ABC:
At least 11 New York infants are thought to have contracted herpes from the practice, two of whom died and two of whom have irreversible brain damage, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.But rabbis insist 5,000-year-old ritual is safe, and say they refuse to tell parents there are any health risks.
...The Department of Health argues parents should be informed of the risks before making a decision. Since 2004, it has received "multiple complaints from parents who were not aware that direct oral suction was going to be performed as part of their sons' circumcisions," according to a public notice.
The law would require mohels to explain the oral suction procedure and its risks, including the possible transmission of herpes simplex virus, and have parents sign a waiver.
The rabbis say that if a proposed law requiring parental consent for having the circumciser suck their little boy's penis they will defy it.
Hitchens was right: Religion poisons everything.
And just to be clear: I'm not for banning all circumcision (though I think it's the height of idiocy). If you, as a person who can speak and consent, wants an man to cut off a piece of your penis and then suck your penis to stop the bleeding, be my guest!
Performing medically unnecessary surgery on an infant who can neither give nor deny consent, and then putting that infant at risk of disease or death by letting a man suck his penis? No.
Oh, and P.S. In New York, somebody wanted me to write a documentary on women who wrestle men for money, and I learned from the ladies that some of the best customers of prostitutes are Orthodox Jews.
Holier than thee and me? I don't think so.
More infected with Herpes and more? Perhaps.
Related: Researcher Brian David Earp at The Creativity Post on "The AAP Report on Circumcision: Bad Science + Bad Ethics = Bad Medicine."
Both Democrats And Republicans Have Been Transporting Us
(To hell in a handbasket, that is.)
But, metaphors aside, what is the TSA doing at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions?
They're supposed to be the Transportation "Security" Administration.
(Italics added for accuracy.)
Bob Livingston posts at Personal Liberty:
"This illustrates how the TSA's presence at public events which have nothing to do with transportation is becoming normalized as the federal agency's bloated budget greases the skids for thousands upon thousands of unannounced checkpoints across the country," wrote Paul Joseph Watson.The TSA was also present at a Paul Ryan event in Florida.
In case you're wondering, the party of civil liberties in this country is -- neither the Democrats nor the Republicans.
via @mpetrie98
Civilization Is Over: Woman Potty-Training Toddlers At Table In Restaurant
This way tops the photo I have in I See Rude People of the woman changing her baby at the center table in chi-chi Paris patisserie Ladurée.
CBS Las Vegas has the story of a woman in Lehi, Utah, who brought potties to the table, sat them on the chairs, and pulled down her tots' pants and had them do their potty business while dining:
Kimberly Decker posted on her blog this week a photo of a toddler sitting on a potty training toilet at the Thanksgiving Point Deli in Lehi....Decker explained how she initially thought the "seats" the kids were sitting in were booster seats. She was stunned when she realized they were actually toilets.
"She had to undo the jumpsuits, and take them all the way down so they were completely nude, with the jumpsuits down to their ankles just eating their chicken nuggets, sitting on little toddler potties," Decker explained to KSL-TV.
She posted the picture on Facebook, but was taken down by the social media site after the photo went viral.
Erica Brown, a spokeswoman for Thanksgiving Point Deli, told the station that they received several complaints over the incident.
"I think state and local health codes were probably an issue, as well as just social norms," Brown told KSL.
The identities of the mother and children have not been revealed.
That's what we really need and a shot of the mother -- mugshot style. As I wrote in I See Rude People, now that we live in these vast strangerhoods, we need to use technology to impose the constraints (like shaming) that we would have had on bad behavior in the small tribes we evolved in.
Drink Testing At The Gate: TSA Comes Up With New Way To Waste Taxpayer Dollars
Via Lisa Simeone, Paul Joseph Watson writes at InfoWars:
A video clip shot yesterday at Columbus Ohio Airport illustrates how the Transportation Security Administration has dreamed up a bizarre new way to waste time and taxpayer dollars - by testing drinks purchased by travelers for explosives inside the airport long after they have already passed security.
Watson continues:
As we have previously highlighted, the drinks policy was recently introduced with virtually no explanation from the TSA whatsoever. The much vaunted 2006 liquid bomb plot on which this nonsense is all based completely collapsed in court and was revealed to be farcical at best.Experts have savaged rules relating to liquids being carried through security as pointless and unnecessary and yet they still remain in place six years later, with ludicrous cases routinely popping up of mothers having to drink their own breast milk or even pump it into empty bottles.
But this new rule applies to drinks purchased within the airport after travelers have already passed airport security, items that have presumably already had to pass some form of security check to be brought inside the airport in the first place.
The drinks testing farce has been accompanied by other harebrained TSA schemes which have virtually nothing to do with genuine security and everything to do with subjecting the public to intimidation and obedience training.
The federal agency recently brought in a similarly asinine new policy in which travelers are ordered to "freeze" on command by TSA screeners while passing through security - for no apparent reason other than to check they will obey orders without question.
"The Government Is The Only Thing We All Belong To"
I'm not a "belonger," thanks, and good government, and the safest government, is the government focused on defending our liberties and leaving us alone.
@Popehat said it so well, in a tweet:
Whoever didn't see how the "belong to" line would be used is just a fucking moron.
Here's the line from the DNC Video:
Good government is restrained government:
"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity."--Thomas Jefferson
Obama, The Lost CEO
Rich Karlgaard writes at Forbes of a NYT story by Jodi Kantor -- that "might have killed President Obama's re-election hopes."
The story: "The Competitor in Chief -- Obama Plays To Win, In Politics and Everything Else." Karlgaard calls it "devastating" as it explores two flaws in Obamas leadership:
1. How he vastly overrates his capabilities:But even those loyal to Mr. Obama say that his quest for excellence can bleed into cockiness and that he tends to overestimate his capabilities. The cloistered nature of the White House amplifies those tendencies, said Matthew Dowd, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, adding that the same thing happened to his former boss. "There's a reinforcing quality," he said, a tendency for presidents to think, I'm the best at this.2. How he spends extraordinary amounts of time and energy to compete in -- trivialities.
For someone dealing with the world's weightiest matters, Mr. Obama spends surprising energy perfecting even less consequential pursuits. He has played golf 104 times since becoming president, according to Mark Knoller of CBS News, who monitors his outings, and he asks superior players for tips that have helped lower his scores. He decompresses with card games on Air Force One, but players who do not concentrate risk a reprimand ("You're not playing, you're just gambling," he once told Arun Chaudhary, his former videographer).His idea of birthday relaxation is competing in an Olympic-style athletic tournament with friends, keeping close score. The 2009 version ended with a bowling event. Guess who won, despite his history of embarrassingly low scores? The president, it turned out, had been practicing in the White House alley.
Kantor's piece is full of examples of Obama's odd need to dominate his peers in everything from bowling, cards, golf, basketball, and golf (104 times in his presidency). Bear in mind, Obama doesn't just robustly compete. The leader of the free world spends many hours practicing these trivial pursuits behind the scenes. Combine this weirdly wasted time with a consistent overestimation of his capabilities...
...Kantor's portrait of Obama is stunning. It paints a picture of a CEO who is unfocused and lost.
via Christopher Buckley
The Big Net
From the WSJ, one out of every seven people in this country is on food stamps. The boom started with the party of pretend small government, the GOP:
The food-stamp boom began with the George W. Bush Republicans, who expanded benefits in the appalling 2002 farm bill.But the supercharger was a 2008 bill out of the Pelosi Congress that goosed eligibility and rebranded the program as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, to reduce the stigma of being on the dole. Then there was the 2009 stimulus, which expanded the program again.
Liberals argued then and still do that food stamps are one of the most effective ways the government can juice the economy. Really, they claim to believe this. The USDA's Economic Research Service estimates that food stamps have a "multiplier" of 1.79, meaning that every dollar in transfer payments boosts gross domestic product by $1.79. So why not have the feds put everyone on food stamps for three squares a day and really get the economy cooking?
The Romney camp won't say this because they'll be accused of being cruel, but having one in every seven Americans dependent on food stamps is not a sign of compassion. It is a sign of economic failure. Recall Paul Ryan's great line from the GOP convention about "the best this Administration offers--a dull, adventureless journey from one entitlement to the next, a government-planned life, a country where everything is free but us."
There used to be a sense of shame in being "on public assistance," which is a polite way of saying "There goes your neighbor to his job to work to support you."
Business Is Risky
A pundit goes nutbags on national TV, bellowing, "It's being poor which is risky!"
The video of her outburst is auto-playing (without clicking on it), so I'll link to it rather than embedding it. (I hate when I go to a site and loud audio starts playing, so I won't do it to you.) Here's the link.
Nick Sorrentino at Against Crony Capitalism writes:
Hate to tell you, but many entrepreneurs start off poor. Many never make it out of poverty and end in bankruptcy. The business owner is subject to the whims of the market, and now the whims of the regulators, which can be worse.The business owner makes payroll. He holds inventory. She leverages her home. The business owner puts his or her name, and stomach on the line.
He gives two examples from his family. Here's one:
I have an uncle and aunt who built a successful furniture business out of a back shed using my uncle's dad's old tools. They started in Lynchburg Virginia with not very much but eventually built a factory in Norfolk becoming one of the very few furniture companies left in the Commonwealth. They employ at least 50 people and have become a leader in high quality furniture. They have seen plenty of rough times but have persevered. This should be celebrated, not derided. Neither my uncle or aunt went to college it must be noted....Tell these guys what they achieved wasn't a risky endeavor. They are the American dream. They not only created wealth for themselves, they created wealth for their employees and the other businesses which do business with them. This is America.
But the attitude expressed below is the same which was expressed in President Obama's now infamous "You didn't build that" speech. (And spare me the misquote nonsense, that is just spin, he meant what he said.)
There is a deep resentment of success, and frankly the work ethic which long drove this country. There is a resentment of "bourgeois" sensibilities. With is tendency toward property rights, and individual freedom.
New York City: Everything Is Now Illegal
David Kramer posts at Lew Rockwell that that he used to enjoy a coffee from the espresso machine in the lounges of the cigar stores he patronized in New York City. Not any more:
After almost nine years, I decided to give cigars a try again. I noticed that the espresso/cappuccino/coffee machine in the first store I revisited was shut down. I was puzzled, so I asked the owner of the store why he no longer offered free coffee. The reason he no longer offered free coffee is because the Nazis of Nazi York City have decided that in order to serve any sort of food or beverage in an establishment, the store has to have a permit. The catch, of course, is that here in Nazi York City you cannot smoke in an eating or drinking (e.g., bar, nightclub) establishment. In other words, if a cigar store serves any sort of food or beverage (even though it's FREE), it can no longer allow smoking in the store!!
I do have to add that calling anyone "Nazi" or "Nazis" who is not putting other humans in the oven and such is always ridiculous.
Every Mom Is Crazy Mom These Days
Lenore Skenazy writes in the WSJ about how the psycho parent is the new normal:
As yellow buses start heading back to school, you might notice some of them being trailed by a little line of cars. Predators? Pervs?Nope. Parents.
"I was talking to a bunch of parents and found out they all follow the bus for the first week or so," one mother told me the other day. "I sat there thinking that I was a really bad mom because that thought had never even occurred to me!"
Although I am officially the World's Worst Mom--I even have a TV show with that name--the thought had never occurred to me, either. But apparently it's becoming par for the course as the line gradually blurs between shipping a child off to school and shipping a child off to 'Nam.
...If you have followed any of the other parenting tips out there, that first day of school won't really be your child's first, because that would be too overwhelming. "Change can be scary," says the website Care.com. "When possible, help to familiarize your child with a new school and teachers. Drive the bus route, tour the building or classroom, locate lockers and cubbies." Heck, why not just move in for a few weeks in July?
Another site suggests that you have your child practice eating a sack lunch to make sure there are no last-minute snags. Still another tells you to have a picnic on the school playground, lest the sheer unfamiliarity of this particular patch of asphalt throw your child for a loop. But my favorite advice-nugget says to ask your child's teacher for photos of the kids who will be in the class. "Then cut out and laminate each picture so your child can learn names and become comfortable with each new friend while playing in the comfort of home."
What kind of sick country have we become that these behaviors are not simply cause for a mental health evaluation for the parent?
Dog Shaming
Great link forwarded to me by Lucy's bitch (aka Gregg, who is otherwise nobody's bitch). Gregg has been referred to as "Detroit-ornery," has hung out with the cops at a homicide scene with three cut-up bodies, and was even once called "apocalyptic and threatening" by a New York Times editor. (They wanted to change Elmore's prose. Not happenin'.)
But, yes, Gregg is man-putty in three-pound Lucy's tiny furry paws, and she is very, very clear on who's boss. She is beautifully behaved when I am the only one there, but when Gregg is there, and especially when she's alone with Gregg, she owns the show. She makes him walk her at 3 a.m. and she once even pooped in his suitcase -- a Federal offense in Amy's dog terms.
Yes, for Gregg, Lucy is pretty much kryptonite on four legs.
Who Here Can Afford To Retire At 70 -- Or Ever?
It's my own fault for picking such a dumb profession (which didn't seem so dumb until newspapers started tanking). My deal with myself was that I didn't really care about being rich, but that I would work hard and be middle class.
These days, I'm not only working seven days a week ("as if chased by coyotes" is my latest line about that), but I realized recently that I will probably never be able to retire. (Good thing I enjoy what I do!)
I think it was commenter Pirate Jo or Purple Pen who mentioned something similar here the other day that led me to that realization.
From the WSJ, David Wessel has a piece, "When Working Until 70 Isn't Enough":
We've all heard the admonitions that with life spans growing longer, retiring at age 65 may not be economically possible, either for individuals or for the society as a whole.But here's some discouraging news from the Employee Benefit Research Institute: For about one-third of working-age households (those between ages 30 and 59 in 2007), working until age 70 won't enough to provide adequate income in retirement.
"It would be comforting from a public policy standpoint to assume that merely working to age 70 would be a panacea to the significant challenges of assuring retirement income adequacy, but this may be a particularly risky strategy, especially for the vulnerable group of low-income workers," said Jack VanDerhei, research director of EBRI, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research outfit.
Mobile DNA Testing "Sparks Concerns"
It seems like such a great thing to me -- an RV cruising around New York City with the words "Who's Your Daddy" splashed across it. It's a mobile DNA-gathering facility. After blood samples are taken, they are set out to test paternity (and other biological connections) to a lab certified by the AABB as well as the New York State Department of Health.
This means men won't be on the hook for children who aren't theirs and children will be able to learn their parentage. Who could complain about such a thing? Well, in this Reuters story by Lily Kuo, there's Susan Crockin, a lawyer who teaches at Georgetown Law Center and specializes in reproductive technology.
First she raises red flags about the reliability of the testing. But, again, the Winnebago cruising New York and offering on-the-spot DNA testing sends out to a certified lab.
Next, there's this:
"The bigger question is what do we do with this information. Why are we looking for it and what do we think it means?" Crockin said.
Again, it means men won't be patsies and have no choice but to pay for children who aren't theirs. It means men won't discover that they've been tricked into raising a child who isn't theirs.
Crockin said individuals, especially children, should have the advice of trained genetic counselors before and at the time of receiving the results of the DNA match.Others say the promotion and presence of these DNA testing clinics and methods could devalue past family relationships when new biological connections are discovered.
"As this (industry) evolves it will create... a social expectation that, despite a past relationship between a social father and a child, DNA is everything," said David Bishai, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Yes, there can be tough situations, and some men have a feeling that the kids they're told are theirs really aren't, but would really rather not know.
For those who wish to know, however, there should be easy access to the truth.
What could be wrong with that?
via lenona
Our Government Has Become An Entitlements Machine
Nicholas Eberstadt writes in the WSJ about the expansion of the handout state -- oh, and before you start looking to the usual suspects, the Democrats, entitlement spending was roughly 8% higher in Republican admins.
(As I've said here before, the Republicans, in reality, are the party of slightly less ginormous government -- and a lot of talk about how wonderful they are and how evil the Democrats are for being for entitlements.):
The American republic has endured for well over two centuries, but over the past 50 years, the apparatus of American governance has undergone a radical transformation. In some basic respects--its scale, its preoccupations, even many of its purposes--the U.S. government today would be scarcely recognizable to Franklin D. Roosevelt, much less to Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson.What is monumentally new about the American state today is the vast empire of entitlement payments that it protects, manages and finances. ... As a day-to-day operation, it devotes more attention and resources to the public transfer of money, goods and services to individual citizens than to any other objective, spending more than for all other ends combined.
...In 1960, U.S. government transfers to individuals totaled about $24 billion in current dollars, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. By 2010 that total was almost 100 times as large. Even after adjusting for inflation and population growth, entitlement transfers to individuals have grown 727% over the past half-century, rising at an average rate of about 4% a year.In 2010 alone, government at all levels oversaw a transfer of over $2.2 trillion in money, goods and services. The burden of these entitlements came to slightly more than $7,200 for every person in America. Scaled against a notional family of four, the average entitlements burden for that year alone approached $29,000.
A half-century of unfettered expansion of entitlement outlays has completely inverted the priorities, structure and functions of federal administration as these were understood by all previous generations. Until 1960 the accepted task of the federal government, in keeping with its constitutional charge, was governing. The overwhelming share of federal expenditures was allocated to some limited public services and infrastructure investments and to defending the republic against enemies foreign and domestic.
...The proud self-reliance that struck Alexis de Tocqueville in his visit to the U.S. in the early 1830s extended to personal finances. The American "individualism" about which he wrote did not exclude social cooperation--the young nation was a hotbed of civic associations and voluntary organizations. But in an environment bursting with opportunity, American men and women viewed themselves as accountable for their own situation through their own achievements--a novel outlook at that time, markedly different from the prevailing attitudes of the Old World (or at least the Continent).
...As Americans opt to reward themselves ever more lavishly with entitlement benefits, the question of how to pay for these government transfers inescapably comes to the fore. ... The taker mentality has thus ineluctably gravitated toward taking from a pool of citizens who can offer no resistance to such schemes: the unborn descendants of today's entitlement-seeking population.
Those who think of this as merely robbing from the rich to pay for the middle class and the poor are wrong. He's right -- it's robbing from unborn babies. This is really what American independence has come to?
Yeah, right, crack another beer and turn up the TV.
Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. This piece was excerpted from "A Nation of Takers: America's Entitlement Epidemic," forthcoming from the Templeton Press in October (not yet on Amazon). His piece ran as a debate or response (hard to tell which) with a piece in the WSJ by William A. Galston, "Are Entitlements Corrupting Us? No -- They're Part of the Civic Compact."
via @rogerkimball
A Coconut A Day Keeps The Dentist Away?
Well, not quite a coconut, but there's been a promising finding about coconut oil. From the BBC, the news that enzyme-treated coconut oil attacks the bacteria behind tooth decay, and could be used in dental care products:
Scientists found that coconut oil which had been treated with enzymes stopped the growth of Streptococcus bacteria - a major cause of tooth decay.Tooth decay affects 60% to 90% of children in industralised countries.
Speaking at the Society for General Microbiology's conference, the Irish researchers say that coconut oil also attacks the yeast which causes thrush.
The research team from the Athlone Institute of Technology in Ireland tested the impact of coconut oil, vegetable oil and olive oil in their natural states and when treated with enzymes, in a process similar to digestion.
The oils were then tested against Streptococcus bacteria which are common inhabitants of the mouth.
Only the enzyme-modified coconut oil showed an ability to inhibit the growth of most strains of the bacteria.
It also attacked Streptococcus mutans, an acid-producing bacterium which is a major cause of tooth decay.
Advice Goddess Radio: 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET -- Dr. Harriet Lerner
Advice Goddess Radio -- "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research.
My guest this week is clinical psychologist Harriet Lerner, Ph.D., with simple rules for minimizing conflict to make for happier relationships.
Lerner is the author of the much-lauded best-seller, The Dance of Anger.
In her current book, which we'll be discussing on the show, Marriage Rules
Listen live at 7pm Pacific and 7pm Eastern at this link or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/09/03/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And don't miss last week's show with social psychologist Dr. Carol Tavris, talking about how we deceive ourselves in the face of mistakes or errors in judgment we've made. We do this in order to prop up our self-worth -- but end up making an even greater mess of our lives, relationships, and social relationships.
As we discussed on the show, understanding cognitive dissonance and the self-justification we use to mop up after it is the best way to avoid behaving in ways that are dumb, painful and even morally wrong.
Her book, co-authored with Dr. Elliot Aronson, is one of my favorites: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
Listen online or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/08/27/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Listen to all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, with podcasts available afterward, at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon
How Closing Your Eyes And Hoping She's Fair Ends Up Working Out
Check out this comment on the NYT Mag piece about female breadwinners taking over for men who've lost their jobs:
Joe Schmoe, Brooklyn:I wonder how many men in their thirties are in my position. I have a solid, stable job in a particular profession that pays just a modest salary. It's enough to support my wife and one child, but only just barely since I live in the tri-state area amidst what seems to be an endless array of finance charlatans or public workers who feed at the trough (in other words I am a modestly paid private sector worker).
I pay all the major bills. My wife has grown up with the attitude that women are perfectly the professional equals of men and that she should work instead of staying home with our young child, who is of daycare age. Fine. I don't have a problem with that. However, she gets paid a mere pittance that barely covers the daycare.
She feels in no way compelled to help out with the major bills (rent, car, power, food). We're supposedly "equals" and yet I, the man of the house, is still expected to pony up the entirety of our living expenses, just like men of old were. She barely even recognizes this, much less thanks me for my efforts in handling every aspect of our finances.
It's frustrating for me because she wants to have her cake (working for a living despite it being cost ineffective) and eat her cake too (have me pay for basically everything). The hypocrisy is rather staggering and it's something we often fight about. What's most irritating is that she doesn't consider being "equal" in our relationship to subsume the realm of living expenses.
You don't go from being a woman who is giving and values fairness to being this woman. She always was this kind of woman -- he just didn't look hard enough, probably because he wanted to see what he wanted to see.
So often, people blame their partner's bad character for their relationship woes. I see that a lot from people who write to me.
You actually have to make fairness and other important qualities must-haves for being in a relationship with somebody, look hard to see whether those qualities actually there, and be honest (and be outta there) if they're not.
I'm Against Gropers Of Sleeping Strangers, But For Reasonable Sentencing
Brutal murderers will come and go while Bawer Aksal is in prison, if he's convicted and the judge gives him the max for (what turns out to be a Federal offense) groping a woman on a plane -- life in prison.
Aksal is a pig -- or rather, an alleged pig -- but there shouldn't even be the possibility of taking away somebody's freedom for life for an offense like this.
Rande Iaboni writes on CNN.com that he was indicted Thursday for allegedly sexually abusing a woman who was asleep on an airplane:
According to the indictment, he was seated next to a woman in a window seat on a United Airlines flight from Phoenix to Newark."While the plane was in the air, the woman -- who did not know Aksal -- fell asleep with a jacket across her legs. She awoke to find Aksal's hands inside her shirt and shorts as he asked her to kiss him," according to a news release from the District Attorney's Office in New Jersey.
The federal government has exclusive jurisdiction over all sexual abuse cases that occur on American airplane flights, as such events are outside the jurisdiction of any state. If convicted, Aksal faces a maximum penalty of life in prison and a $250,000 fine, the news release said.
The reason to protest abusive sentencing, even for pigs?
Because it's the right thing to do.
Because we need to take taking away a person's freedom very seriously.
Because we'll have to pay for people like this to live out their lives in prison.
And because the next victim of unreasonable sentencing could be you or me.
via Andrea Kuszewski
Barack Obama: Unions' Butt Boy
In the WashTimes, Mark Mix writes:
In his book "The Audacity of Hope," then-candidate Barack Obama, when talking about his relationship with Big Labor union officials, wrote: "I owe those unions. When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away. I don't consider this corrupting in any way."Fours year later, it's become clear he did a lot more than just call them. Countless giveaways to organized labor have ensured that Washington union bosses owe the president and will spend more than a billion dollars to ensure President Obama's return to the White House.
You see, the largest special interest in the upcoming elections is Big Labor. Every year, union officials collect more than $14 billion from hardworking Americans, many of whom want nothing to do with unions. Union officials routinely funnel union dues and mandatory fees from nonunion workers into political campaigns aimed at defending or expanding their already extensive special privileges.
One of the worst unions is the New York City teachers' union. Tracy Oppenheimer writes for reason:
"The teachers union in New York City got together with the NAACP and sued to essentially kick charter schools out of buildings," says Bob Bowdon, founder of education reform homepage Choice Media TV.
More from the NY Post:
Abusive, criminal or just plain incompetent teachers can all rest easy: In this city, their jobs are perfectly safe.And too bad for the kids in the schools.
That's the bitter lesson from The Post's reports this week about teachers who slap kids, booze it up in class, steal from the government or just can't teach -- but still manage to hang on to their jobs.
For that, thank the city's stacked teachers-union rules, which make it incredibly hard to fire teachers, no matter how lousy.
And from a previous blog item I posted, referring to former LA Mayor Richard Riordan who spoke at a Reason Foundation school choice night:
I think it was Riordan who said that schools are now designed to serve adults -- teachers! -- not students. And really, the whole deal is about power and money for the union, not even about teachers.
It's Really Those Young Sluts Molesting The Poor Priests!
Meredith Bennett-Smith, on the Huff Po, has a piece on Father Benedict Groeschel, an American friar, telling the National Catholic Register that teens seduce priests in some sex abuse cases:
Groeschel was asked about his work with the very conservative Friars of the Renewal, a breakaway order he founded 25 years ago. The conversation took an interesting turn, however, when the editor asked about the 78-year-old's work with sexual abuse perpetrators."People have this picture in their minds of a person planning to -- a psychopath," Groeschel said. "But that's not the case. Suppose you have a man having a nervous breakdown, and a youngster comes after him. A lot of the cases, the youngster -- 14, 16, 18 -- is the seducer."
Pressed for clarification, the New York State-based religious leader explained that kids looking for father figures might be drawn to priests to fill an emotional hole in their lives.
And quite a few of those priests have been quite obliging about filling some kids' holes -- how nice!
It gets better:
I'm inclined to think, on [a priest's] first offense, they should not go to jail because their intention was not committing a crime."
Who is Groeschel?
Groeschel is an influential voice in the American Dioceses and continues to maintain a high-profile in the church, writing several books and appearing weekly on a religious television network.The priest received a doctorate in psychology from Columbia University in 1971 and now lives in Larchment, N.Y., where he assists with Trinity Retreat, a center for prayer and study for the clergy he founded.
Trinity House stirred controversy in 2006 when the press learned that New York priests credibly accused of sexually abusing children, but not legally convicted, had the option of a life-long close supervision program that began with a stay at the retreat.
(National Catholic Register has since taken down the interview and creepy slimebag Groeschel has apologized for his comments [ie, for getting in trouble in their wake]).
The video:
Due Process In Milwaukee? Go Screw Yourself
Due process is "the legal requirement that the state must respect all of the legal rights that are owed to a person."
Bruce Vielmetti of the Journal Sentinel writes about how it was of little concern in an arrest in Milwaukee, and in the subsequent court appearances:
Some people who beat a ticket in Milwaukee Municipal Court might do a little victory dance.Geoff Davidian appealed.
Davidian wanted his day in court to explore what he contends was a mishandling of a traffic accident involving a police officer and Davidian's attempts to report it. He wanted a trial, where the police officer would have to testify. Instead, a judge dismissed the case.
"What am I trying to accomplish?" Davidian said. "To have cops not stop a reporter with a camera, and to make this judge think before he does that kind of thing again."
It all started more than a year ago when Davidian was ticketed for resisting or obstructing, after he tried to videotape the arrest of a woman he says was wrongly struck by a Milwaukee police cruiser exiting an alley.
Unsuccessful in having the case reactivated, Davidian returned to Municipal Court last week with fliers about his experience, warning others headed inside to not let themselves be rushed or bullied.
Davidian says he discovered a whole lot of things he didn't like about the court during his foray through the system. He says Judge Phillip Chavez refused to allow him to record his own proceeding, wouldn't allow Davidian's chosen counsel to appear on his behalf, and didn't notify him when he denied Davidian's appeal.
His biggest surprise, he said, was having a substitute judge who's not even a lawyer appear one day to dismiss the case, while ordering no record be made.
Davidian is soliciting input from others who have similar experiences at an email address he created just for that purpose: stop-chavez-tyranny@milwaukeepress.net.
Every time you hear of abuses like this, it's a sign our country is headed in a dangerous direction, and each of these abuses paves the way for further abuses. If you know people in Milwaukee, please send them this link and Davidian's email address.
More about Davidian:
Davidian, 68, is a former Milwaukee Journal reporter who now works as a freelance journalist and runs Milwaukee Press, his own news site. He says he got a tip about a traffic crash April 5, 2011, involving a Milwaukee police officer and went to the scene near the main post office. He says a squad car came out of an alley without yielding the right of way and struck a passing car, but police ticketed the other driver for not having a license. While he was videotaping, he said, an officer came over and broke his camera, then gave him a $189 ticket.
On his site, Davidian covers the story of ruling in favor of a family whose dog was shot by a Cookville police officer, along with other stories of police and court abuse.
via Instapundit
No Logic In Drug Policy-Making
Cory Doctorow reprints his review of Brit David Nutt's Drugs Without the Hot Air
He begins and ends the book with a look at the irrationality of our present drug policy, recounting a call he had with then-Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who was furious that he'd compared horseback riding harms to the harms from taking MDMA. Smith says that "you can't compare harms from a legal activity with an illegal activity." When Nutt asks why not, she says, "because one is illegal." When he asks why it is illegal, she says, "Because it is harmful." So he asks, "Don't we need to compare harms to determine if it should be illegal?" And Smith reiterates, "you can't compare harms from a legal activity with an illegal activity." Lather, rinse, repeat, and you'll get our current drugs-policy disaster.Nutt has been talking about harm reduction and evidence-based policy for drugs policy for years, and he often frames the question by pointing out that alcohol is a terrible killer of addicts and the people around them, and a disaster for society. But if he was to synthesize a drug that produced an identical high to alcohol, without producing any of the harms, it would almost certainly be banned and those involved in producing, selling and taking it would be criminalised. We ban drugs because they are harmful and we know they are harmful because they are banned. Drugs that we don't ban -- tobacco, alcohol -- are "harmful" too, but not in the same way as the drugs that are banned, and we can tell that they are different because they haven't been banned.
...There's also a sense of the awful, tragic loss to society arising from the criminalization of promising drugs. A chapter called "Should Scientists Take LSD?" surveys the literature preceding the evidence-free banning of LSD, and the astounding therapeutic benefits hinted at in the literature.
The book closes with the War on Drugs, and the worlds' governments own frank assessments of the unmitigated disaster created by Richard Nixon's idiotic decision 40 years ago. Nutt analyzes the fact that policymakers know that the War on Drugs is worse than the drugs themselves (by a long shot), but are politically incapable of doing anything about it, not least because politicians on all sides stand poised to condemn their opponents for being "soft on drugs."
Boy Toys For Sale
Sorry, ladies, I mean toys for boys (and girls) who like to fix cars. At Amazon
Amazon has finally fixed the "Powered by Amazon" button in Amy's Mall (although I haven't had a moment to fix the text that says it's still broken). So, to buy something that's not linked here, just go through this link
And thank you -- really, truly appreciate all the purchases that you all send my way.
