I Love Depressive French Voiceovers
"Henri 4, L'Haunting":
How Big Sugar Kept Scientists From Asking "Does Sugar Kill?"
Investigative science journalist Gary Taubes writes with Cristin Kearns Couzens at Mother Jones about how the sugar industry used Big Tobacco-style tactics to ensure that government agencies would dismiss troubling health claims against their products:
...This decades-long effort to stack the scientific deck is why, today, the USDA's dietary guidelines [21] only speak of sugar in vague generalities. ("Reduce the intake of calories from solid fats and added sugars.") It's why the FDA insists that sugar is "generally recognized as safe [22]" despite considerable evidence suggesting otherwise. It's why some scientists' urgent calls for regulation of sugary products have been dead on arrival, and it's why--absent any federal leadership--New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg felt compelled to propose a ban on oversized sugary drinks [23] that passed in September.In fact, a growing body of research suggests that sugar and its nearly chemically identical cousin, HFCS, may very well cause diseases that kill hundreds of thousands of Americans every year, and that these chronic conditions would be far less prevalent if we significantly dialed back our consumption of added sugars. Robert Lustig, a leading authority on pediatric obesity at the University of California-San Francisco (whose arguments Gary explored in a 2011 New York Times Magazine cover story [24]), made this case last February in the prestigious journal Nature. In an article titled "The Toxic Truth About Sugar, [25]" Lustig and two colleagues observed that sucrose and HFCS are addictive in much the same way as cigarettes and alcohol, and that overconsumption of them is driving worldwide epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes (the type associated with obesity). Sugar-related diseases are costing America around $150 billion a year, the authors estimated.
Taubes' next book is on sugar. Read his last book, Why We Get Fat. What Taubes found the evidence shows: It is carbs -- sugar, flour, starchy vegetables like potatoes, apple juice -- that cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat.
via @erbbrian
Why Other Drivers In California Seem Blind
Probably because they are. The California DMV issued a legally blind man a license -- even after he disclosed his blindness, and without giving him a driving test, as required.
Luckily, 72-year-old Mark Overland had voluntarily given up driving and was just testing the system.
Check out how the driving test went, from Steve Lopez in the LA Times:
Overland gave up driving 15 years ago because of his deteriorating vision. But he kept renewing his license by mail for the sake of having a valid ID. Five years ago, when he got a license renewal form, he noticed a portion that asked if he had any visual impairment that would affect his driving."I checked off 'yes.'"
The next line asked what that might be, and Overland wrote "retinitis pigmentosa." That's a progressive condition in which peripheral vision is lost. Overland has a narrow tunnel of vision, and can see pretty well within that field. But anything to the right or left, up or down, is lost to him. He was more than a little surprised then to get his license in the mail a couple of weeks later.
When Overland got his latest renewal notice a month ago, it instructed him to go to a DMV office for a written test and eye exam. He was curious to see what would happen if he didn't mention his disability, so he went to the DMV on Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica, with his daughter Courtney doing the driving. Overland thought briefly about entering the office with his white cane, but decided against it, and Courtney instead served as his guide.
Overland was called to the counter by a clerk and told to read the eye chart on the back wall.
"I'm looking around, and I can't find it because it's not in my line of vision," Overland said.
He located it quickly enough and was able to read most of the letters, but not all of them. The clerk then had him peer into a machine for another eye test. Overland began to read, but Courtney watched the clerk scrunch his face and ask her Dad:
"Sir, what are you reading?"
Overland was looking at something other than the eye chart, which he hadn't yet located. Redirecting his line of vision, he found the chart and did well enough to pass. He later aced the written test, left the building at his daughter's side, and his new license arrived in the mail two weeks later.
Love that you don't even have to bribe anyone to beat the system.
Love all the people who are reliant on the system to work and don't understand that this sort of thing probably happens as often as people are frustrated by bureaucracy -- and usually not to people who know better than to drive.
Voting For The Same Mold Candidate?
I think Obama is worse than Romney, and a disaster economically, but I think they're both dismal and disastrous, and this little Libertarian National Committee layout lays out why.
As Howard Owens said on Facebook, this "summarizes nicely the stark fact that there is no difference between Obama and Romney."
People say a vote for Gary Johnson is a wasted vote. (I live in California, which will go strongly for Obama, so my state is one of the exceptions.) But, is a Gary Johnson vote elsewhere really wasted? Or does it send a message for the next election that we can't have more of the same, and get more people moving into the Independent/libertarian category?
Of course, it would help greatly if the Libertarians would run somebody who doesn't have all the charisma of grout (sorry, Gary!) or doesn't seem like your crazy old uncle on a good day and, on a bad day, like the guy outside the coffee shop with the white beard and the wooden staff who's always bellowing about something.
Disney Hall Film Shoot Bullies And Their Rent-A-Cop Enablers
Free speech rights are only for those who pay for them? Nuh-uh. 
Kevin Roderick posts at LA Observed:
Have you seen this car? Veteran LA journalist Steve Devol was out early Sunday morning to shoot some dawn photos around Walt Disney Hall. A film crew was there too, shooting this little car on Grand Avenue in front of the hall. Devol says he would have been happy to just shoot the building. But then the crew tried to bully him, and had a guard threaten arrest if he kept taking pictures. So he posted pics of the car and the guys to Flickr.
Devol writes (with the message above the URL, "The weird car they didn't want me to photograph. Too bad. It's in public. Deal."
Film crews and their Rent-a-Cops using public streets and buildings should understand that other members of the public, including amateur photographers, still have a 1st Amendment right to shoot in public places too! If you try to bully people with idle threats of arrest you only annoy those of us who know their rights, who then stick around to gum up your shoot. You want privacy? Shoot in a studio or a lot. The streets belong to everyone. Share this set link if you agree.
All violations of our free speech rights (including freedom of the press and general freedom of expression) must be defended at all times (whenever they are violated) -- or they will erode more than they already have.
No Teachers, Just Tablets; Ethiopian Kids Teach Themselves
David Talbot writes at MIT Technology Review.com about an experiment by the One Laptop Per Child organization:
Earlier this year, OLPC workers dropped off closed boxes containing the tablets, taped shut, with no instruction. "I thought the kids would play with the boxes. Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, found the on-off switch ... powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child, per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five months, they had hacked Android," Negroponte said. "Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera, and they figured out the camera, and had hacked Android."
Loved this:
After several months, the kids in both villages were still heavily engaged in using and recharging the machines, and had been observed reciting the "alphabet song," and even spelling words. One boy, exposed to literacy games with animal pictures, opened up a paint program and wrote the word "Lion."
More:
Elaborating later on Negroponte's hacking comment, Ed McNierney, OLPC's chief technology officer, said that the kids had gotten around OLPC's effort to freeze desktop settings. "The kids had completely customized the desktop--so every kids' tablet looked different. We had installed software to prevent them from doing that," McNierney said. "And the fact they worked around it was clearly the kind of creativity, the kind of inquiry, the kind of discovery that we think is essential to learning.""If they can learn to read, then they can read to learn," Negroponte said (see "Emtech Preview: Another Way to Think About Learning").
In an interview after his talk, Negroponte said that while the early results are promising, reaching conclusions about whether children could learn to read this way would require more time. "If it gets funded, it would need to continue for another a year and a half to two years to come to a conclusion that the scientific community would accept," Negroponte said. "We'd have to start with a new village and make a clean start."
Accessory To Savings: Up To 50 Percent Off
...On shoes, luggage, and accessories (like sunglasses) at Amazon
Southern California: The Land Of Political Maturity
Another fine Phil Miller photo:
(In case you can't see it, there's a little tape over the "i" -- it's supposed to be "Bui.")
Big Government Grows Spokes And Handlebars
Santa Monica has palm trees, sunshine and bike lanes all over the place. Do we really need government to pay to encourage people to bike?
Ridiculous puff piece in the LA Times by a guy named Matt Stevens who, like so many, credulously accepts the need for government to reach into every area of our lives with its big, greasy, taxpayer-funded hand.
I mean, really -- just check out the headline:
Santa Monica Bike Center pushes pedaling for commuters: City program aims to get commuters out of their cars by letting them test-ride a bike for two weeks, for free, to see if they like the experience.
From the piece:
By the time Barry Balmat showed up at the Santa Monica Bike Center, he had already compiled a laundry list of reasons why biking to work might not work.The Santa Monica resident lived just two miles from his office, but the thought of pedaling just feet from passing cars without a shell of protection was "a little anxiety inducing," he said. Then there was the question of how exactly to make left turn. And he wasn't sure whether he'd need to shower.
But the bike center's offer of a free, well-equipped bike for two weeks was simply too good to pass up. And like so many of the program's guinea pigs, Balmat said his worries faded after only a few days on the streets.
"I got to the point where I didn't really worry at all," Balmat said. Now he's looking to buy a commuter bike of his own.
That's the idea behind the Santa Monica Bike Center's bike-commuter program. With the nation's largest bike-parking facility in one of the country's most traffic-clogged areas, Santa Monica officials hope that five loaner bicycles bought for just $3,500 can accelerate a national trend.
Of course, they had to buy $700 bikes.
And of course, there's a "good" excuse for buying them:
Bike advocates say the push began when riders formed Santa Monica Spoke in 2009, becoming the first local chapter of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition. A year later, the city adopted a planning document that called for increased emphasis on bicycling to address traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions, among other goals.
But, again, they've built bike lanes everywhere. Must they really use the big hand of government to open the wallet filled with our dollars and put people on bikes?
Check this out:
Although only about a dozen riders have checked out bikes, the Santa Monica program has attracted a variety of clients. Some, like Balmat, commuted to work and loved getting the exercise. Others used the bikes to ride to the library and the grocery store. One experienced rider used the commuter bike for a more comfortable ride at CicLAvia.Most of the bike borrowers said they are now contemplating buying their own. Brad Edwards, general manager of Helen's Cycles, which operates a store in Santa Monica, said he's seen a surge in the sale of commuter bikes, both because of the center's program and because of a general movement toward cycling in the city over the last three years.
Here's some crappy advocacy reporting from Matt Stevens. Only about a dozen riders have checked out bikes, but Brad Edwards says he's seen a surge in the sale of commuter bikes because of the program? It sounds like he was asked a leading question and gave a tactful answer rather than a true one.
Oh, and for the record, I have a bike. I biked all over New York (often in high heels with rubber soles), but that was a different time -- a before-cell-phones time.
What happens when people who ride bikes in these bike lanes get picked off by some texting asshole and end up quadriplegic? Will the program buy them a special expensive wheelchair they can use to cruise the bike lanes?
Checking In: The Experience Of 40-Something Women Doing Online Dating
I'm writing about this now, and I want to know what it's like to be a 40-something woman doing online dating.
Are you getting hit on a lot by geezers?
Are you getting dates but not so much second dates?
How hot are you (if you don't mind me asking) and how do you think this plays into it?
Are pay vs. free sites different?
And feel free to post the experiences of women you know.
Basically, I think it's often unrealistic and disappointing for women who aren't younger and hot to do online dating. Not always -- I know people meet and marry off online dating sites. But, what's the experience in general?
Do tell!
"Loyalty" Programs Ruin Shopping And Spam Us Senseless
I can't talk to the cashier at Rite Aid because he's too busy asking me if I'd like to join their "loyalty" program, give to some cause, or some other upsell.
This does not make me like Rite Aid; it makes me remember to go to some other drugstore when I can.
Roger Kay writes at Forbes about the spam sent by these loyalty programs:
This is mail from folks who in theory want me to do business with them again. I don't know why they think this method works. They're only offering discounts on the things they're trying to move (and that I don't want, which is why they're making the extra effort). Ever see a loyalty program for milk or eggs? I thought not.But what I detect at work here is not the store clerks, who are merely executing the will of their paymasters, nor even the company bosses, who in any event are fairly hapless themselves, having gotten where they are mostly by luck of birth and a few fortuitous school choices. No. Behind this all is a newly hatched tribe of social media advisors who tell these paranoid and barely competent managers that if they don't catch up on all the latest practices, they'll be left in the dust by their competition.
So, we can thank the charlatans of the social era for convincing companies that do retail business that they must persist in this insane, invasive behavior. This group includes not only the professional advisors, but also the merchants of such services, and their vehicles, companies like Google, Yahoo, Salesforce.com, Amazon, and Microsoft. Any ordinary shopkeeper could see that this scheme is not a good way to build customer loyalty. All it does is alienate the very people it is trying to attract.
But because the bosses are afraid of being left behind, they all do it. Never mind that it makes no sense.
Back to the victims, us. What is happening to us is that all these different slices of our profiles are slowly converging to form our "information objects," our digital descriptions. As I've said before, "Information objects associated with you only grow; they never shrink." This vast invasion of privacy is happening quietly and for the most part beneath our notice.
And finally a word of sympathy for the clerks who must carry out these ghastly duties. Despite their brittle smiles, they really don't mean us any harm. They are just trying to keep their jobs, please their superiors, and help their companies make money.
Thomas Peterffy, Immigrant, On What's Wrong With Socialism
I saw this ad he paid to have run on CNN -- personally -- which isn't such a big deal financially because he's a poor Hungarian emigrant to the US-turned billionaire:
More about him from the descrip with the video:
Thomas Peterffy grew up in socialist Hungary. Despite the fact that he could not speak English when he immigrated to the United States in 1956, Thomas fulfilled the American dream. With hard work and dedication, he started a business that today employs thousands of people. In the 1970s, Thomas bought a seat on the American Stock Exchange. He played a key role in developing the electronic trading of securities and is the founder of Interactive Brokers, an online discount brokerage firm with offices all over the world.
Sneakymove Against The Electoral College By Jerry Brown
Check this out -- from CBSLA:
SACRAMENTO (CBS/AP) -- Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a bill that would award all of California's 55 Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote in presidential elections.The movement by a group called National Popular Vote aims to prevent a repeat of 2000, when Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote but Republican George W. Bush won the electoral vote. The group's proposed changes would ensure the winner of the national popular vote becomes president.
With Brown's signature Monday, California became the eighth state to sign on, giving the effort 132 of the 270 electoral votes it needs to take effect.
Meerkat Moments
Gregg and I have been watching "Meerkats 3D" on Netflix. They are addictive little creatures.
More -- they have Meerkat insurance commercials:
Beats the gecko we have over here in the US.
And there's even a Hitler version:
Starve The Little Buggers! (Govt's "Healthy" Approach For Poor Children)
Calorie caps on school lunches are not so good for the kiddies. Michelle Obama is a well-meaning but misguided dietary advisor unintentionally starving children through her utterly non-evidence based thinking on what makes people fat.
Via @overlawyered, Bettina Elias Siegel blogs a note from a schoolteacher worried about the effect on impoverished kids:
These are children who may not eat an evening meal at home and may not get more than one meal a day on weekends, if that. Some parents are unable (for various reasons) to get their children to school on time for the free breakfast, which is also severely limited in choice, so these children face true hunger every day.When the children go through the lunch line they are allowed the following choices: 1 entree which is a choice between 2 hot items, or a ham or turkey sandwich with cheese and lettuce on a dry bun, a peanut butter and jelly (prepackaged) sandwich,or occasionally a spicy chicken wrap, a cup of low-fat plain yogurt parfait with grapes and granola topping, or a 2-cup portion salad (usually a chef salad with a smattering of chopped lunchmeat or a chicken Caesar salad). Condiments are iffy but usually available.
There is a choice of up to 2 vegetables, usually one hot vegetable choice and maybe a cold vegetable, such as sliced cucumbers or a very small (1/2 cup?) romaine lettuce salad with 1 or 2 cucumber slices and a wedge of tomato.
There is a choice of 2 fruits. If the child chooses a half-pint juice that is considered one fruit choice. There are usually two whole fruits, such as apples and quartered oranges, and canned fruits such as unsweetened applesauce or diced pears in water. If they choose the yogurt parfait for their entree and a juice they are not allowed another fruit but may choose a vegetable (most don't).
The children get their entree, a vegetable (most usually skip the vegetable -- though I highly encourage it and try to set a good example even when the vegetables are tasteless, unseasoned, and overcooked, which is nearly always), and a juice and a fruit.
Just this week I have had four of my 6-year olds in tears over lunch on more than one occasion. Two were crying inconsolably because they were not allowed to get a juice and 2 fruits and they were very hungry. They eventually confessed that they hadn't eaten anything since lunch the day before. I keep healthy snacks in the classroom in open containers that they are free to take whenever they choose but even at age 6 pride keeps some from admitting their hunger. The other two children were crying because they didn't care for any of the choices for entree or vegetable and they weren't allowed to substitute an extra fruit so they knew they would stay hungry. I bought some extra fruits on my tray and gave it to them when we were seated, along with my juice. We are not allowed to "share" food by state law but I am a maverick and make sure kids get what they want as far as I am able. I also pay if any of my kids' parents forget or are unable to pay for lunch. None of my kids will ever go hungry while in my care!
Also, see Dr. Emily Deans' terrific piece on how fat feeds the brain, "Your Brain On Ketones." Thanks to Emily, when I'm in the thick of my deadline, nearing the end, I sometimes eat a half pat of Kerry Gold butter. Perhaps it's confirmation bias, but it seems to prevent a feeling I have of my brain being on fire.
Just Another Made-Up Trend Story? (That Guys No Longer Fight For Their Friendships.)
The truth is, I think, that sometimes friendships do fizzle out. They aren't always to be fought for. Sometimes, there's some disagreement and you admit what you didn't want to admit before -- that you think the person is a huge fuckhead, but they were in your life so long that you never could admit it.
Ben Schrank writes in the NYT about his breakup, at age 40, with a lifelong friend:
There was no cinematic blowup: it just evaporated. I believe I disappointed or annoyed or let Dan down in some way, and he chose to end the friendship rather than to confront me. Dan and I haven't spoken for over a year, save a cool encounter at that same mutual friend's holiday party. I understand. I've done the same thing with other guys.Men no longer know how to fight. Don't get me wrong -- we know how to confront strangers when they cut in line at the butcher's or block the door on the subway. What we don't know how to do is have the kind of unpleasant talks that articulate feelings to real friends when those friends ignore our wives at a dinner, or don't think to call us when we are fired. Instead, we either shrug off the slight or end the friendship.
How did we get to this shifty, uncomfortable place from the feel-good 1970s, when the recalibration of gender roles forced men to form groups (the most famous depiction is in Leonard Michaels's novel "The Men's Club") to learn how to be friends -- not 1950s-style buddies, but real friends who were actually able to talk to one another?
After his divorce, my dad joined such a men's group and shared a brownstone with Larry Sconzo, another divorced guy with children, and they split the baby-sitting. Those new support systems were encouraged. Think of Steve Martin and Charles Grodin in "The Lonely Guy" or Woody Allen's Isaac and his best friend Yale in "Manhattan."
But in the decades since, American male friendship has staggered backward to Judd Apatow bros and the friendship porn of "I Love You, Man." (Real men would never say those things.) This culture celebrates female BFFs (Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. Stella and Gwyneth. Oprah and Gayle), but where are the HuffPo slide shows for their male counterparts? Guys get the directive to have friends (because is there anything creepier than a friendless guy?) but in a world where fisticuffs are out of favor, there's no playbook to guide us when slights ruin a night out.
...So after conflict, men split up. This is because the highest premium is placed on a man's sovereignty, and his ability to be aggressive. Men must be strong to be accepted by society, an expectation that runs counter to the need to get along.
Actually, I think guys have a healthier approach to conflict -- as I wrote about here, in my column "Apocalypse Meow":
Imagine if Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, communicated like so many other women tend to. Forget the direct approach. She'd roll her eyes behind some prime minister's back, burn sage after he leaves, and make the Joint Chiefs hold hands and chant, "Shine white light on our borders and restore our protective womb of national security!"Men and women approach conflict in very different ways. Men have an easier time being direct because they evolved to be the competitors of the species and see trying to top one another as a normal part of life. If the guys were bugged by a guy in their group, one of them would probably just blurt out, "You're being a dick. Be less of a dick."
Women, on the other hand, evolved to be the cooperators, nurturers, and empathizers of the species, prizing group bondedness and keeping the peace. This sounds so much nicer than how the menfolk do things but actually leads to ugly indirect aggression like dirty looks, spiteful gossip, and shunning. Though it's best not to go around breaking one another's noses over who has the cutest shoes, women often end up festering with nastiness, while guys can sometimes sock each other and then go off and have a beer.
Is Sniffing A Search? Canine Search Case To Supreme Court
Wendy McElroy posts at Future of Freedom foundation on Florida v. Jardines and Florida v. Harris, scheduled to be heard by the United States Supreme Court on Wednesday, October 31:
The cases pivot on whether the use of police dogs to detect illegal drugs violates the Fourth Amendment privacy rights of the person being sniffed.K-9 units are commonplace across America. (K-9 is shorthand for "canine.") Police dogs are used to pursue suspects, to locate victims, and to detect banned goods like bombs or cocaine. A detection dog "alerts" his handler either by sitting down or by barking. The dogs are trained intensively to identify specific odors; the police handlers receive special instruction as well.
In the field, the handler uses the dog's alert as probable cause to conduct a search. (Probable cause is a reasonable belief based on sufficient facts.) But does the sniffing constitute a search in the first place? If it does, then probable cause must exist before the sniffing itself is allowed under the Constitution.
The Fourth Amendment provides,
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.Florida v. Jardines involves a 2006 arrest. The police received an unverified and anonymous tip that Joelis Jardines was growing marijuana in his home. After the police surveilled the house and witnessed no activity, a handler took his detection dog up to the front door, where the dog alerted to a drug odor. Thereafter, a detective went to the front door and claimed to smell marijuana. On that basis, a warrant was obtained, and Jardines was arrested. But Jardines has sought to have the evidence against him suppressed on the grounds it had been obtained through an illegal search.
Florida v. Harris involves a 2006 traffic stop for expired tags. The officer noticed the driver, Clayton Harris, was nervous and had an open beer in his truck. When Harris refused to consent to a search of his vehicle, a detection dog did a "free air sniff" and alerted to drugs. In the ensuing search, the officer discovered over 200 pseudoephedrine pills and other precursors of methamphetamine. Interestingly, the dog had not been trained to detect pseudoephedrine. Charged with the intent to manufacture meth, Harris sought to suppress the evidence, but he was denied.
Two aspects of these cases are worth examining closely. First, does the sniff of a dog constitute either a search or a probable cause for one? Second, how reliable are the alerts given by detection dogs?
From Institute for Justice, which has filed an amicus brief in the Harris case, "Upcoming Dog-Sniffing Cases Raise Serious Civil Forfeiture Concerns":
Increasingly ... police have been using drug-sniffing dogs to establish probable cause to seize, and ultimately keep through civil forfeiture, cash, cars and other property on the grounds that the property may be linked to a drug crime."Using a police dog alert as the sole justification to search and seize private property violates constitutional guarantees," said IJ Attorney Darpana Sheth, who authored the Institute for Justice's amicus brief in the Florida v. Harris case, which will be heard on October 31, 2012, before the U.S. Supreme Court. "First, numerous studies, including a recent one by the University of California-Davis, have shown that drug-sniffing dogs are unreliable because, all too often, they are alerting due to cues from their handler or residual odors, rather than the actual presence of drugs. Second, police dog handlers work in departments that are often funded through forfeiture funds, giving them a direct financial incentive to 'police for profit' rather than pursue the neutral administration of justice. These are two serious concerns the Court should not ignore as it hears this case."
Advice Goddess Radio -- Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Dr. Stanton Peele On The Personal Responsibility Approach To Overcoming Addictions, Bad Habits
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
Addiction treatment specialist Dr. Stanton Peele will lay out his groundbreaking thinking on the personal responsibility approach to addiction and kicking everyday bad habits.
Peele will talk about how to fight addiction without a 12-step program. He'll also bust many of the myths many people hold about addiction -- as well as the excuses they cling to for why they can't overcome their self-defeating, destructive behaviors. He'll offer practical thinking and steps for change.
We'll be discussing unhealthy love and relationships as well as substance addiction and more minor and common bad habits.
Peele wrote a really fantastic book, co-authored with Archie Brodsky, called Love and Addiction, and more recently, and also very wise, the book, 7 Tools To Beat Addiction, which we'll be discussing on the show. He blogs at Psychology Today and The Huffington Post.
Listen live at this link at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/10/29/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And don't miss last week's show with a rare non-scientist, Maggie Arana, for whom I made an exception (in the kind of guests I have) because I think her book has tremendous value.
Her book, which she co-authored with Julienne Davis, is Stop Calling Him Honey...and start having Sex! How Changing Your Everyday Habits Will Make You Hot For Each Other All Over Again.
She and her co-author talked to hundreds of men and women, over a period of several years, and figured out the bad habits people get into that kill their sex lives and transform them from lovers to roommates.
Maggie details all of that on the show, and I promise you, listening to this show will help you mend your ways...all the way to a hotter sex life.
(Or, if you aren't in a relationship, she'll help you avoid killing your sex life once you get one!)
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/10/22/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, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes.
Just Have As Many As Your Womb Can Pump Out! Someone Else Will Pay
Tanya Gold, who, from time to time, pops up in a link below some story I'm reading, reminds me almost every time that she has all the sense of a bent thumbtack.
This time, she's squawking in The Guardian about a recommendation to limit welfare payments to two children per family (or two per single mother getting knocked up by any old bloke at the bar):
This week Iain Duncan Smith, who deports himself with the grave charity of Jane Eyre's Mr Brocklehurst doing harm to do good, suggested limiting child benefit to the first two children if the parents are unemployed. If you work, his idea goes, you are helped; if you don't, you are punished, even as hundreds chase every job. To support this dull demonisation of poverty, he conjured the usual monsters, so voters might forget he is actually attacking them. Out came the nightmare visions of millions of feckless parents having children out of spite, which entirely ignores the truth that the poor, when in work, work harder than anyone, for fewer rewards....The details, of course, are vague. I would be surprised if a woman pregnant with triplets was encouraged to abort the third, with Jeremy Hunt and his 12-week fantasies sitting primly at the Department of Health. Will a woman who is employed when she conceives keep her benefits if she is fired before she gives birth? Full-time jobs are rare and shrinking - where will they draw the line? Almost all new jobs are part-time and insecure - what will happen? Does it even matter? Children, like criminals, don't vote.
The aim here is surely not to starve children, and although the direct aim is apparently to save money, not paying people to have children they can't support might stop more than a few of them from doing it.
Deadbeat Kids With Student Loans
Parents who co-signed for their kids' student loans are having some unhappy days, writes Kelly Greene in the WSJ:
Cyndee Marcoux already was stretched thin, thanks to the $80,000 in student loans she racked up after getting divorced and going back to school a decade ago. Her breaking point came in 2010, when her daughter defaulted on student-loan payments of her own.That's because Ms. Marcoux, a 53-year-old library administrator in Seekonk, Mass., co-signed for about $55,000 of her daughter's loans. When the daughter was unable to keep making payments, Ms. Marcoux was on the hook--a burden that forced her to reshuffle her entire life. To scrape up the extra $550 a month she owed, she sold her house, then took a second job registering emergency-room patients on the weekend overnight shift. "You work your whole life and never pay a bill late," says Ms. Marcoux. "You don't ever think your kid isn't going to pay."
After years of facing all sorts of financial pressures they never expected, from adult kids moving back home to their own parents needing help to retire, empty nest parents are struggling with a new headache. Thinking it was only natural to want to help children and grandchildren, many co-signed student loans. Now, they're becoming the latest victims of the nation's mounting problem with student-loan debt, which surpassed the $1 trillion mark last year.
At a growing rate, young graduates who are either out of work or who didn't land high-paying jobs find themselves unable to pay their loans. When primary borrowers stop paying, co-signers are expected to pick up the tab--and soon find themselves fending off debt collectors. "People are confused about what it means to co-sign, and their ongoing obligation," says Deanne Loonin, director of the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project at the National Consumer Law Center, a consumer-advocacy group in Boston. "When they come to understand that they are equally liable, the regrets set in."
Antony Davies and James R. Harrigan in US News on the education bubble:
Just as the government sought to engineer people into houses, it now seeks to engineer them into higher education. Congress established Sallie Mae in 1972 to encourage banks to loan more money for college. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 allowed the government to loan money directly to students. The following year the Taxpayer Relief Act extended tax breaks to student loan borrowers. Predictably, the Federal Reserve kept interest rates at historically low levels, making college loans cheaper.And the price of a college education soared--just as one would expect from a market flooded with cheap money. By law, lenders cannot even deny Stafford and Perkins loans (types of federal student loans) based on the borrower's credit or employment status. What other reason is there to deny a loan? And just as home buyers took out loans to speculate on houses they could never hope to afford, students are taking out loans to cover educations they often cannot complete and which often do not hold value in the market even when completed. Government meddling has again separated profit from risk. Universities get to keep the tuition profits while taxpayers are forced to shoulder the risk of students not paying back their loans.
Once again government has created the conditions for wholesale failure, and failure is upon us.
From 1976 to 2010, the prices of all commodities rose 280 percent. The price of homes rose 400 percent. Private education? A whopping 1,000 percent.
In the end, this bubble will be worse than the last. Even when homeowners got hopelessly behind on their mortgages, two options helped. First, they could declare bankruptcy and free themselves of their crippling debt; second, they could sell their houses to pay down most of their loans.
Students don't have either of these options. It's illegal to absolve student loan debt through bankruptcy, and you can't sell back an education.
The simple fact of the matter should be obvious by now: Government created this mess, in both instances, by forcing the market to provide loans it would not have granted otherwise. As is its custom, government did by force what no private lender would have ever done by choice. This is the breeding ground for bubbles, and this one will burst just as they all do. As with the last bubble, politicians will blame the "greed" of the marketplace. How many more bubbles must we endure before we realize that the problem isn't greed and it isn't markets? The problem is government interference.
No Charity For Non-Muslims: They're Going To Hell Anyway!
Andrew Malcolm posted President Obama's hailing of the Hajj (to Mecca) and Eid al-Adha. This passage from the President caught my attention:
Throughout the year, Muslims join members of many faiths in serving those suffering from hunger, disease, and conflict. Muslim communities will continue this practice as they celebrate Eid by distributing food and charity to those in need.Such acts of compassion underscore the shared values of the Abrahamic religions and people of all faiths.
Um, not quite-iepoo.
From thereligionofpeace.com:
Question: Why aren't there any international Muslim charities that attend to the needs non-Muslim victims?Summary Answer:
Muslims are not commanded to assist non-Muslims. To do so is a waste of money, because they are going to Hell anyway. The Quran and Hadith command that money flow either between Muslims or from non-Muslims to Muslims (the jizya in Quran 9:29).Neither has the Islamic community ever been particularly keen on disaster relief, even for Muslim victims. This is because the Quran teaches that the disasters which befall communities are a punishment from Allah.
A few examples from the many at the link:
Reliance of the Traveller (Sharia) - "It is not permissible to give zakat (charity) to a non-Muslim." The same text goes on to list the legitimate targets of charity, which include "those fighting for Allah, meaning people engaged in Islamic military operations." This is based on verse 9:60 from the Quran ("in the cause of Allah"). See also 9:41.
Numerous hadith also mention giving to the poor (within the Muslim community). This is the zakat, or almsgiving, that has become one of the "five pillars" of Islam.
al-Tabarani, Hasan - "The most beloved of deeds according to Allah the Mighty, the Magnificent, is that you bring happiness to a fellow Muslim, or relieve him of distress, or pay off his debt or stave away hunger from him."
al-Tabari 8:40 - "Aisha, the Mother of the Faithful, was asked, 'How did the Messenger of Allah behave?' She replied, 'His eye did not weep for anyone." In real life, Muhammad was not a compassionate man.
Additional Notes:
It is common for Western multiculturalists to project their own values onto others. If Western religion instills virtues such as kindness and universal charity, then surely Islam must do the same... shouldn't it?Not really.
The number of verses in the Quran that define and advocate virtue is far less than those promoting hate and violence. Likewise, historical accounts of Muhammad acting or speaking in a manner consistent with Judeo-Christian values are so scarce that Islamic scholars have had to explicitly authorize the dissemination of hadith outside the boundaries of acceptable reliability: "Mildly weak hadith can be freely used to establish the virtues of deeds." (Islam Online)
In fact, Islam discourages universal charity, particularly for disaster relief. Muhammad routinely used natural disaster as a threat to compel others to believe in his claim to be a prophet. The Quran specifically says that earthquake and famine are sent by Allah as punishment for the sin of the people (usually unbelief). There is no theological basis for helping those whom Allah is trying to hurt.
Much of what is given today ($1725 or 2.5% of an increase in wealth) funds mosque operations or groups like CAIR, and never finds its way to "the poor." A 2011 audit of one of Canada's top Islamic charities (run by ISNA, no less) found that less than 25% of the "poor tax" actually found its way to the needy. The vast majority of zakat funds went to mosque maintenance, private Muslim businesses and even perks to the family members of charity officials.
Charity is technically an important part of Islam, but this does not mean that the word is defined in the same way in which Westerners usually understand it. In Christianity, for example, charity means giving to your fellow man in need. In Islam, it distinctly means giving either to support holy war or to a fellow Muslim - and generally only through the mandated poor tax (zakat) which is precisely calculated. As Robert Spencer puts it, "Islam makes a distinction between believers and unbelievers that overrides any obligation to general benevolence."
Terrorist Supporters And Enablers Given Red Carpet To White House
Steve Emerson and John Rossomando report for IPT (the Investigative Project on Terrorism, a non-profit research group founded by Emerson in 2005):
A year-long investigation by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) has found that scores of known radical Islamists made hundreds of visits to the Obama White House, meeting with top administration officials.Court documents and other records have identified many of these visitors as belonging to groups serving as fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and other Islamic militant organizations.
The IPT made the discovery combing through millions of White House visitor log entries. IPT compared the visitors' names with lists of known radical Islamists. Among the visitors were officials representing groups which have:
•Been designated by the Department of Justice as unindicted co-conspirators in terrorist trials; Extolled Islamic terrorist groups including Hamas and Hizballah;•Obstructed terrorist investigations by instructing their followers not to cooperate with law enforcement;
•Promoted the incendiary conspiratorial allegation that the United States is engaged in a "war against Islam"-- a leading tool in recruiting Muslims to carry out acts of terror;
•Repeatedly claimed that many of the Islamic terrorists convicted since 9-11 were framed by the U.S government as part of an anti-Muslim profiling campaign.
Much more at the link.
A Feminist Halloween, Or How To Suck All Of The Fun Out Of Life
Yes, go as the ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft, as the author suggests. It's a great way to avoid male attention, save for those suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, aka lost balls in high weeds, who are staring wistfully into the punchbowl.
It is possible that this writer is trying (but failing) to be funny. I hope she is.
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett writes for -- yes -- the "Vagenda"! at The Guardian about how awful it is that women wear sexy Halloween costumes.
The piece is headlined "Dressing up for Halloween: a feminist's guide: Sexy nurse, sexy devil, sexy bunny - what's going on with costumes? Don't be scared to wear things over your underwear." An excerpt:
Halloween has become an excuse for women to shed the clothing in favour of sexy costumes, most of which are either shop bought roleplay ensembles such as sexy nurse, sexy maid, sexy devil, sexy bunny... (ad infinitum) or an outfit comprised simply of knickers, bra and animal ears. Classy.As someone who has always found Halloween preferable to Christmas (which always involves far too much drama) I can but welcome this video, which essentially says: enough is enough. Indeed, I have noted that Halloween costume standards are slipping. Looking back at my joyful childhood memories of 31 October, I cannot help but give a wistful sigh for the days where the whole point of dressing up was to make yourself look as disgusting and scary as possible. Oh, how I long for those innocent days.
...The underwear thing is becoming more and more common, and it really has to stop. Yeah I know, "choice feminism", right? The freedom to dress like a stripper completely independently of any patriachial or societal or cultural influences (because that happens so often) is, like, so important but then so is not looking like a complete try-hard fool during the best holiday of the year. In light of that, I refuse to buy into the notion that this video is "slut-shaming". My friend slut-shamed me two years ago the day after the Halloween I dressed up as a sexy cat (I blame scant resources and peer pressure), in the form of a scathing Facebook post which read simply: "I am so embarrassed for you right now." And I'm glad she did it, because by doing so she has put all the childish joy back into my love for Halloween. No longer do I feel like I have to get my baps out and look hot for men. Instead, I can do the Thriller dance while dressed like a giant sanitary towel. Hurrah for feminism.
The video:
I always try to dress sexy, though not with my underwear on the outside; just in form-fitting clothing.
But, hey, this sounds like a real pleaser. Dress up, as our Vag friend suggests, as:
The ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft Difficulty factor: 10 (for other people) Sexy Factor: 5 Expense: Moderate (18th-century period costume, flour) Scare factor: MediumEnglish feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty
She's back from beyond the grave and she's vindicating her rights, bitch. Going to a Halloween party as the first ever feminist may sound a little obscure, but everyone apart from those in the know will just think you're an old fashioned ghost. This means that you'll have to say the words "I'm the ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft" at least 286 times, but you'll also look really clever and not at all pretentious, somewhat like the guy at my university who went to a party dressed as the Dutch tilt. Having to explain to everyone what your costume is puts you on another level of cool. I once went to a "P" party as "postmodernism", so I know what I'm talking about. People will love you, I promise.
I'd like to see more women dress like slutty witches more days of the year, but that's just me.
Court To Hear Case About Our Bully Government And The No-Fly List
Helen Jung writes in The Oregonian:
A lawsuit against the FBI over the constitutionality of the no-fly list is set to proceed in U.S. District Court in Portland.The no-fly list lawsuit ... challenges the government for barring U.S. citizens from flying without giving evidence or reasons for their exclusion.
Remember when this used to be America we lived in -- back before it became some English-speaking Russian state?
Growing up, I read a bunch of novels about Russia. I used to think it was so great that I lived in a country where nobody demanded your "papers" unless they had reason to believe you'd committed a crime.
Welcome to Moscow. Please leave your rights and any wet umbrellas at the door.
TSA: They Haven't Found A Single Terrorist; They Have To Crow About Something
For all the kajillions spent by the TSA, for all the balls groped, the grannies humiliated, the terminally ill people disrespected, and the children made to cry while being molested by uniformed thugs...the number of terrorists the unskilled workers of the TSA have caught? Exactly NONE.
Consequently, all they can do to justify sucking our taxpayer dollars out of us and violating us at the airport is thump their chests about stuff like this:
@TSABlogTeam
#TSA Week in Review: 42 #Firearms Discovered This Week at TSA Checkpoints (38 Loaded) #travel http://1.usa.gov/RSevR1
My tweet in response:
@amyalkon
.@TSABlogTeam Firearms discovered? So what -- unless one was a giant rocket-launcher. Cockpit doors are reinforced. TSA = "security theater"
From the Bruce Schneier link (on "security theater") just above, from his debate with former TSA administrator Kip Hawley:
He wants us to trust that a 400-ml bottle of liquid is dangerous, but transferring it to four 100-ml bottles magically makes it safe. He wants us to trust that the butter knives given to first-class passengers are nevertheless too dangerous to be taken through a security checkpoint. He wants us to trust the no-fly list: 21,000 people so dangerous they're not allowed to fly, yet so innocent they can't be arrested. He wants us to trust that the deployment of expensive full-body scanners has nothing to do with the fact that the former secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, lobbies for one of the companies that makes them. He wants us to trust that there's a reason to confiscate a cupcake (Las Vegas), a 3-inch plastic toy gun (London Gatwick), a purse with an embroidered gun on it (Norfolk, VA), a T-shirt with a picture of a gun on it (London Heathrow) and a plastic lightsaber that's really a flashlight with a long cone on top (Dallas/Fort Worth).At this point, we don't trust America's TSA, Britain's Department for Transport, or airport security in general. We don't believe they're acting in the best interests of passengers. We suspect their actions are the result of politicians and government appointees making decisions based on their concerns about the security of their own careers if they don't act tough on terror, and capitulating to public demands that "something must be done".
Never mind that the letters don't match; TSA is clearly short for "Civil liberties-violating, vagina-groping losers on the taxpayer dole."
Is Military Officerhood Incompatible With Single Parenthood?
Is that really a question anyone needs to ask?
A single mom has been dismissed from the Air Force, losing her commission as lieutenant and being told she has to pay back her $92K scholarship, after hiding her pregnancy. From CNN.com, Kathleen Johnston and Kyung Lah write:
Weeks before being commissioned as a military officer, Edmonds discovered that she was pregnant.That was before she says she learned the Air Force forbid single parents from enlisting. The reason for the policy, according to Air Force officials, is that the demands of deployment and military service put strain on family life and even more so for single parents.
The Air Force accused Edmonds of committing fraud, ejected her from its ranks and revoked her $92,000 scholarship. Her case is currently under review.
Edmonds' mother, Karen, a military wife for 25 years, said deployments are tough on all service members and their families, married or not. If her daughter were to deploy, Karen Edmonds said, her grandson would be well cared for by an extended family that includes the child's father and both sets of grandparents.
Edmonds' mother said she believes the policy discriminates against single women and encourages pregnant single women to abort their pregnancies.
"The Air Force is making an assumption that single parents cannot provide adequately for their children if deployed," Edmonds' mother said. "That's what burns me up."
After she was "dis-enrolled" from the Air Force -- the military term for the separation from service -- Edmonds appealed to the Air Force and her congressman, Rep. Paul Ryan, now the Republican nominee for vice president. The Air Force rejected her initial appeal but said this week that her case is now being reviewed at the highest levels. Edmonds has also hired a military attorney, Daniel Conway.
Edmonds, her family and her attorney claim that the Air Force is encouraging its members to give up their children, through either adoption or abortion, a position they say was revealed in a comment from an Air Force colonel.
In a letter responding to Ryan's inquiry on Edmonds' case, Col. Kelly L. Goggins wrote, "If Ms. Edmonds had reported her pregnancy she would have been placed on medical recheck status until she gave birth. At that time she would have been been able to commission if she were not a single parent, for example, if she were married, or had given the child up for adoption."
First of all, this -- "If her daughter were to deploy, Karen Edmonds said, her grandson would be well cared for by an extended family that includes the child's father and both sets of grandparents" -- seems to be a horrible situation for a kid. (Hey, baby, mommy will be disappearing for a year or two...or maybe forever, because she could be killed by a mortar round or an insurgent.) But, the Air Force is not the Department of Whether You Are A Crappy-As-Fuck Parent, although, per the apparent service members or people family with service that I quoted below, we could speculate that they don't like to leave orphans.
It also seems possible -- even likely -- that a single parent would need to ask for special dispensation at times.
And this was the reason given for her dismissal:
Citing a contract she signed in 2007 when she enrolled in ROTC at age 18, the Air Force said she committed a fraud by not reporting a change in her medical condition, as indicated in the contract.
A commenter, burkas, at CNN writes:
Most "direct-to-commission" i.e., straight high school-college-officer, programs preclude DEPENDENTS (so yes, men who have a wife/kid are also excluded). Now, certain programs, like the Marine Corps' MECEP can commission prior-enlisted Marines with wives and kids, as they bring enlisted experience to the officer ranks. But for your standard ROTC and definitely the Service Academies, they tell you on day one that you cannot have dependents.There are probably a dozen cases across the military like this every year. But she wanted to save her career, so she's hitting up the media for public outcry. All I can say is, if you break the rules because you don't know them, you DO NOT need to lead men and women into harm's way.
Another commenter, NovusCaesar, adds:
Also, ROTC cadets can have children. So can OCS candidates. Only academy cadets are prohibited. That is not the issue. The issue is that she is a single mother (and this would affect single dads as well) and has a dependent. If she got married the issue would be solved. If she gave custody to her parents the issue would be solved. I have known soldiers who did this and kept the kids. The issue is that a soldier cannot have a dependent who is relies soley on them when they are deployable.She screwed up but there were remedies. She chose not to do the one most others do in her case. Get married or sign the kids over to your parents.
via Insufficient Poison
My Kind Of Presidential Endorsements
Via Manny Klausner, reason's writers and editors lay out their votes. For example:
Shikha Dalmia
1. Which presidential candidate are you voting for and why?
Gary Johnson. He is a pragmatic libertarian who offers a principled alternative to the statism of the right (that would outlaw same-sex marriage and abortion; criminalize drugs; erect barriers to keep willing foreign workers away from willing Americans, etc.) and the statism of the left (that would enact crade-to-grave entitlements; confiscate wealth rather than curb spending to avoid going off the fiscal cliff etc.). Johnson is one of those rare libertarians who could operationalize his ideological vision into something resembling a governing philosophy. He cut spending in New Mexico, no small feat in a predominantly Democratic state. He won't engage in politically futile fights on idiosyncratic libertarian causes such as moving to a gold standard or abolishing the fed (laudable though those goals might be). He seems to regard liberty not necessarily as a goal or a cause, but a tool to advance sound public policy whether it is to prevent overseas entanglements or economy-busting regulations at home.
Nick Gillespie
1. Which presidential candidate are you voting for and why? Gary Johnson. The two-term former governor of New Mexico is the first presidential candidate for whom I am totally comfortable voting. He won't win, but I hope he has a strong enough showing to make people want to learn more about limited government.2a. Between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, who do you think would be worse regarding economic freedom, including things such as industrial policy, free trade, regulation, and taxes?
Obama, but not by as much as most people might think.2b. Between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, who do you think would be worse regarding social freedom issues such as gay marriage, free speech, school choice, and reproductive rights?
Romney, though the president's ability to affect these issues much is relatively minor.
Manny Klausner
1. Which presidential candidate are you voting for and why? I'm enthusiastically voting for Gary Johnson, because I take liberty seriously, and I live in California - a non-battleground state that Obama will likely win by more than 1,000,000 votes. To me, the worst choice would be to vote for Obama based on his disastrous performance to date, and his disrespect for liberty and the rule of law. He is a proponent of unconstrained government in virtually every sphere of life. However, I'm urging people to vote for Romney if they live in a battleground state, if it's a cliffhanger on the eve of the election.4. Apart from the presidency, what do you think is the most important race or ballot initiative being decided this fall?
Prop 30 in California - if passed, this massive tax increase would dangerously accelerate the decline of California.5. Reason's libertarian motto is "Free Minds and Free Markets." In contemporary America, is that notion a real possibility or a pipe dream (in 100 words or less)?
It's attainable, but it's a major struggle - and we have to play the long game. However, this is a turning-point election, and a second Obama term would be devastating.
Matt Welch
1. Which presidential candidate are you voting for and why? Gary Johnson, because he reflects my views more than any presidential candidate I've ever had the chance to vote for, because I know and like him personally (weird!), and because I am voting in a state (New York) that will certainly favor Barack Obama. The president richly deserves to be fired, for his economic mismanagement, his lying, and his ass-covering, speech-constricting response to the Benghazi attacks, but my vote cannot impact that. It is important to me that the preference for limited government be expressed by (at minimum!) a third-place showing on election day.2a. Between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, who do you think would be worse regarding economic freedom, including things such as industrial policy, free trade, regulation, and taxes?
The only scenario under which I can imagine Romney being any worse than Obama on economic freedom is if we were in multiple costly new wars on the day that borrowing costs spiked up. Though Romney has campaigned against Medicare cuts and for boosting military spending, he is still rhetorically in a much different place than the Keynesian in Chief, and most importantly so is his political party. I have at least some hope that the limited-government grassroots will apply much more pressure to keep their man in line than the anti-war/pro-civil liberties left has placed on Obama.2b. Between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, who do you think would be worse regarding social freedom issues such as gay marriage, free speech, school choice, and reproductive rights?
An edge to the incumbent, with caveats. Obama wins big on legal abortion rights (though it's unclear to me how much practical difference on that issue there would end up being). Romney is better on school choice, but I'm not sure how much difference that will make. Obama has been lousy on free speech and drug enforcement, but is there much to suggest that Romney is better? Dems are better with gays, Repubs are better with guns. Both disrespect individuals once in power. It's a big, messy category.2c. Between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, who do you think would be worse regarding foreign policy, military interventions, and the global war on terror (including domestic restrictions on civil liberties)?
Romney has sketched out a more interventionist, more chest-thumping posture than Obama's already significant buttinskyism. He has shown zero interest that I've seen in curtailing any of Obama's civil liberties abuses. Neither party seems capable of rallying around the concept of imperial pruning, let alone pullback, and as long as that's the case, I'm afraid we're creating the conditions for an eventual unplanned, chaotic retreat. While Obama deserves to be punished for his interventionism and civil liberties degradations, Romney has done nothing to earn that particular protest vote.
The Power Of Delaying Gratification
Alex Lickerman, MD, writes at Creativity Post, about Walter Mischel's marshmallow studies and impulse control. An excerpt:
Mischel placed two marshmallows side by side in front of a different group of children to whom he explained, as in the previous study, that eating the first before he returned to the room would mean they couldn't eat the second.He then instructed one group of them to imagine when he stepped out of the room how much marshmallows are like clouds: round, white, and puffy. (He instructed a control group, in contrast, to imagine how sweet and chewy and soft they were.)
A third group he instructed to visualize the crunchiness and saltiness of pretzels. Perhaps not surprisingly, the children who visualized the qualities of the marshmallows that were unrelated to eating them (that is, the way in which they were similar to clouds) waited almost three times longer than children who were instructed to visualize how delicious the marshmallows would taste.
Most intriguing, however, was that picturing the pleasure of eating pretzels produced the longest delay in gratification of all. Apparently, imagining the pleasure they'd feel from indulging in an unavailable temptation distracted the children even more than cognitively restructuring the way they thought about the temptation before them.
In other words, one of the most effective ways to distract ourselves from a tempting pleasure we don't want to indulge is by focusing on another pleasure. So the next time you find yourself confronted with a temptation--whether a piece of cake, a drink of alcohol, or a psychoactive drug--don't employ willpower to resist it.
Send your attention somewhere else by imagining a different pleasure not immediately available to you. For if you can successfully turn your attention elsewhere until the temptation is removed from your environment or you remove yourself, the odds that you'll give in to your impulse will decrease more than with almost any other intervention you can try.
LA City Council Morons Strike Again: Time To Kill Pet Stores!
Yes, now the LA City Council has come up with a "kill policy" for pet stores, voting 12-2 to approve an ordinance to make Los Angeles the first city in America to ban pet stores from selling non-rescue animals -- in other words, dogs, cats, and rabbits obtained from commercial breeders. From the LAT:
The ordinance, which the City Council voted 12-2 to approve, targets puppy mills and is designed to cut down on the tens of thousands of animals euthanized each year in city shelters.Under the law, individuals will still be allowed to buy directly from breeders, and pet stores will be allowed to sell animals that come from shelters, humane societies and registered rescue groups. Stores found to be selling animals from breeders may face misdemeanor charges and a first-time penalty of $250.
Animal rights activists hailed L.A.'s approval of the ban as a signal to other large cities to follow suit. Irvine, Hermosa Beach and West Hollywood are among the more than 30 cities across the United States and Canada that have passed similar measures in recent years, according to Elizabeth Oreck, who has been leading the legislative effort on behalf of Best Friends Animal Society.
L.A.'s ban also sends a message, she said, to breeders who frequently cut corners to keep costs low at the expense of the animals.
"They're inbred, they're overbred, they're irresponsibly bred," Oreck said.
But pet shop owners complained the ordinance is misguided and unfair.
"It's just making us suffer," said Candice Ro, whose family has been selling small dogs, including Yorkshire Terriers and English Bulldogs, at its Koreatown pet shop for 11 years.
...The ban was championed by Councilman Paul Koretz, a longtime supporter of animal rights who said lawmakers have a duty to stick up for animals who "cannot speak for themselves."
Lawmakers have gotten in the habit of sticking their greasy fingers into our lives every orifice and it's time they got back to what their job should be -- keeping the peace, filling the potholes, and seeing that our civil liberties aren't violated.
And in the comments, let's talk about all the ways this ridiculous ordinance will backfire.
Milton Friedman On The Role Of Government In A Free Society
Versus a "free lunch" society:
John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty":
The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to someone else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." -- John Stuart Mill, Essay on Liberty (Library of Liberal Arts edition, p.13)More from Mill:
Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant -- society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it -- its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs as protection against political despotism. -- On Liberty, The Library of Liberal Arts edition, p.7.
Stealing An Election: Voter Fraud Discovered In Virginia, Florida
It's the antithesis of democracy-promoting behavior -- engaging in voter fraud.
Mike Lillis writes at The Hill:
Patrick Moran, the son of Virginia Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) and the field director for his father's reelection bid, resigned abruptly Wednesday after a video linked him to voter fraud.The video -- released earlier in the day by Project Veritas, a conservative organization headed by the Republican activist James O'Keefe -- revealed that the younger Moran had weighed options for helping an undercover operative cast votes on behalf of 100 people who allegedly weren't planning to vote.
"There will be a lot of voter protection, so, if they just have, you know, the utility bill or bank statement -- bank statement would obviously be tough ... but faking a utility bill would be easy enough," Moran says, apparently referring to options for getting around Virginia's voter ID laws.
This guy, on the Republican side, was arrested last week for it. Brad Friedman writes for Salon on October 19:
The man arrested today was 23-year-old Colin Small of Phoenixville, Pa. As it turns out, he does not only work for the Virginia Republican Party. According to an online profile, he appears to be working for the Republican National Committee and, prior to that, served as an Intern for Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., in the U.S. House of Representatives.Joseph Tanfani at the Los Angeles Times is reporting that Small was "working as a supervisor as part of a registration operation in eight swing states financed by the Republican National Committee."
He was first hired, says Tanfani, by Strategic Allied Consulting, the firm owned by the disgraced GOP operative and paid Mitt Romney political consultant Nathan Sproul. Even before this year's registration fraud scandal, which began with Strategic in Florida, Sproul's companies have long been accused of, though never charged with, destroying Democratic voter registrations in election after election and state after state, going back to at least 2004. Despite that, Sproul was hired by the Bush/Cheney campaign in 2004, by the McCain/Palin Campaign in 2008, and by Romney during the Republican Primary cycle.
Sproul's company, Strategic Allied Consulting, was hired by the RNC in August for more than $3 million, reportedly as its sole voter registration company this cycle. His company was said to have been fired by the RNC and five different battleground state Republican parties several weeks ago, after fraudulent voter registrations began to emerge across Florida. Some of those questionable applications included address changes for existing voters, such that Florida election officials told the BRAD BLOG they worry voters could find themselves disenfranchised come Election Day. In Florida, as in many states, provisional ballots cast at precincts other than where voters are officially registered will not be counted. So changing the addresses on voter registrations without voters' knowledge is a serious crime with potentially very serious consequences.
More on voter fraud in Florida from the LAT's Joseph Tanfani, Matea Gold and Melanie Mason:
WASHINGTON -- Election officials in at least 11 Florida counties have uncovered potentially fraudulent voter registration forms submitted on behalf of the state GOP, a debacle that has punctured a hole in the Republican National Committee's get-out-the-vote operation less than six weeks before election day.By Friday, elections supervisors had found dozens of forms turned in by the party that had wrong birthdays or spellings of names that didn't match signatures. In other cases, multiple forms were filled out in the same handwriting. One voter in Palm Beach County was registered to an address that is a Land Rover dealership.
"It was that flagrant," said Ann W. Bodenstein, the elections supervisor in Santa Rosa County, where officials found 100 problematic applications -- including one for a dead voter. "In no way did they look genuine."
The controversy comes at an odd time for the GOP. Republican lawmakers across the country have proposed or enacted tough voter ID laws, arguing the legislation is needed to combat voter fraud. Democrats are battling the laws in the courts and say they are designed to discourage Democratic constituencies, such as African Americans, from voting.
The Florida GOP had contracted out its registration efforts to a newly formed company called Strategic Allied Consulting. The RNC had urged party organizations in seven swing states to hire the firm, directing at least $3.1 million in payments to it.
The RNC and its state affiliates hastily cut ties with Strategic Allied Consulting when the first questionable forms were discovered in Palm Beach County. On Thursday, the Republican Party of Florida, which paid at least $1.3 million for the voter registration work, filed a complaint of voter fraud against the firm. And the state Division of Elections turned over the problematic forms to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Strategic Allied is run by an Arizona-based consultant and Republican Party activist named Nathan Sproul, who has been dogged by charges in the past that his employees destroyed Democratic registration forms. No charges were ever filed. But his reputation is such that Sproul said RNC officials requested that he set up a new firm so the party would not be publicly linked to the past allegations. The firm was set up at a Virginia address, and Sproul does not show up on the corporate paperwork.
Sean Spicer, an RNC spokesman, disputed Sproul's contention. "To my knowledge, no one requested that," he said.
Assisted Suicide May Prolong Lives
If I get some horrible disease, like one that's mind-eating, I've thought about how I'll have to wait as long as possible to off myself, but without waiting so long that I'm too cuckoo to do it. It's a problem.
From The Economist:
The prospect of the loss of autonomy, of dignity and of the ability to enjoy life are the main reasons cited by those wanting assisted suicide. Having the option of assisted suicide means that terminally ill people can wait before choosing to end their lives. That may have been what happened to Gloria Taylor, a Canadian assisted-suicide campaigner with Lou Gehrig's disease (a degenerative illness). After winning a landmark court case four months ago that gave her a "personal exemption" to seek a doctor's help to commit suicide at the time of her choosing, she died earlier this month--from natural causes.
via Secular Right
Don't Just Be Pointing A Finger At The Democrats
I say it often -- that the Republicans are just the party of slightly less ginormous government. Nicholas Gelinas makes a related point at City Journal, in "The Problem with 'Four Sore Years': Mitt Romney should acknowledge that our economic problems span presidential administrations":
Voters know that things weren't hunky-dory before, only to fall apart without warning when President Obama came along. Americans remember 2008. They remember people lining up around the block at an IndyMac bank branch in California until a white-as-a-ghost President Bush assured them that the government would protect their hard-earned savings. They remember a panicked Congress's first voting not to bail out the banks and then veering in the other direction as the stock market plummeted. They remember watching as the economy shed hundreds of thousands of jobs each month, while the White House and Congress, as well as the GOP's standard-bearer, John McCain, remained utterly helpless. And then voters elected Obama.Romney may look as though he is playing too fast and loose with the facts when he repeatedly dates our woes back to early 2009. Voters know full well that home prices peaked in 2006. They experienced it. They knew full well that they had been living on borrowed money--money many of them took every few years out of the ever-rising equity in their homes. They knew that they had to stop, that stopping would be hard, and that recovery would take a while--and they knew all of this before Wall Street and Washington did. So when Obama concedes that "we've gone through a tough four years," Americans may appreciate this unvarnished empathy.
...Romney should have acknowledged that Bush messed up badly on the economy. He could have credibly added, then, that Obama took these grievous problems and made them worse. The 2009 stimulus was a chance to make massive investments to overhaul our Depression-era infrastructure. Obama didn't do it. The crisis was a chance for state and local governments to fix their impossible pension and health-benefit promises to public-sector workers. Obama instead sent them cash to pretend that the problem didn't exist for a few more years. The crisis was a chance to put in place real financial-industry reforms to make sure that what happened in 2008 never happened again. Obama didn't do that, either.
TSA: Protecting Your Daughter's Private Parts Now "Disorderly Conduct"
Disgustingly, airport civil liberties heroine Andrea Abbott, one of too few to stand up to the TSA, was convicted of "disorderly conduct" for exercising her free speech rights -- berating TSA thugs at the Nashville airport for trying to grope her teenage daughter for "security" purposes, and then refusing to be groped herself.
Barry Leibowitz writes at CBSnews:
It took jurors about four hours Tuesday to convict 42-year-old Andrea Abbott for the July confrontation. She was sentenced to a year's probation.Abbott had faced up to 30 days in jail and a $50 fine, according to CBS affiliate WTVF.
Transportation Security Administration Officer Karen King testified that before the pat-down, Abbott yelled in her face that she didn't want anyone "touching her daughter's crotch."Abbott eventually allowed her then-14-year-old daughter to undergo the pat-down, but then she refused one for herself and was arrested.
Lisa Simeone posts at TSANewsBlog:
Even though, as you can see in (the) video, Abbott wasn't being disorderly -- on the contrary, multiple TSA agents and an airport cop bullied her -- still, she was handcuffed, arrested, charged, and jailed.
Economics Lessons From The Obits
Chris Edwards posts at Cato on the death of "Albert Ueltschi, 'who founded aviation-training company FlightSafety in 1951 [and] expanded it into an international powerhouse.'" Quoting a Bloomberg obit:
As pilot of Pan American's first corporate plane . . . Ueltschi hit upon the idea of opening a testing and training center for the booming aviation industry in the 1950s.That company today is FlightSafety International Inc., which bills itself as the world's leading aviation-training company, teaching pilots, aviation mechanics, flight attendants, dispatchers and others each year.
...After graduating from high school in 1934, he opened a hamburger stand and used the proceeds to take flying lessons. A year later he borrowed $3,500 to buy an open-cockpit bi-wing airplane, the Waco 10, and made it his next business venture. "I took people up for a dollar a hop, gave lessons, and even put on air shows."
...[I]n 1951, Ueltschi borrowed $15,000 by mortgaging his house and opened FlightSafety at LaGuardia's Marine Air Terminal.
Edwards has it just right:
In subsequent years, Mr. Ueltschi worked his tail off juggling two jobs and building what would become a multibillion part of the U.S. economy. The government did not build FlightSafety. Nor did the government build the thousands of other firms and industries that comprise the bulk of the U.S. economy, such as the electric guitar industry, as I discuss here.To revive the economy, we need fewer central planners like Ben Bernanke and more decentralized business-builders like Albert Ueltschi. We need more firms like FlightSafety and less like Solyndra. Both candidates for president are promising to create jobs, but what we really need is for the government to get out of way of the people who create companies and industries.
How To Have The Entire World See You Naked
Jay J. Hector sent me a link from CBS/DC about a finding from a British study that claims that the vast majority of home porn ends up online:
WASHINGTON (CBS DC) - The vast majority of homemade pornography and private images on personal computers ends up on public websites called "parasites."Eighty-eight percent of homemade pornography, including videos and still images, finds its way onto porn sites, often without the owners' knowledge, a new study from Britain's Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has found.
The study analyzed more than 12,000 sexually explicit images uploaded by young people and found that the great majority of images had been stolen and published to what the organization calls, "parasite" websites.
These "parasites," which are exclusively designed for hosting sexual images featuring young subjects, allegedly obtain their material from anywhere they can get it: lost or stolen cellphones, hacked private accounts on Photobucket, Flickr, or Facebook, or from chat sites and Tumblr, a blogging platform notorious for the amount of explicit self-published content by high school and college-age students.
"We need young people to realize that once an image or a video has gone online, they may never be able to remove it entirely," Susie Hargreaves, CEO of the Internet Watch Foundation, told the Guardian newspaper in London. "Once an image has been copied on to a parasite website, it will no longer suffice to simply remove the image from the online account."
If you don't take the naked pix, they can't see your bits. Problem solved. Do what you want, but don't let them photograph you. And hope there are no cameras hidden in the cross-eyed teddy bear.
Out Of This World Eggs, As Heard By Gregg
Gregg heard on NPR how to make the most fabulous eggs. I can't find the link but he told me how to do it, and these eggs are a world away from the yellow and white rubbery children's toy of a mess you get even in nice restaurants.
Use a well-seasoned, small cast-iron frying pan.
Start with the pan cold and just grease it (like you would a cookie sheet) with butter. With the pan still cold, you crack the eggs into it. I pierce the yolks so the thing will end up flat so I can put cheese on top. You may choose to scramble or go sunny.
Next, turn on the heat. VERY LOW.
Next, be patient.
Let the eggs cook. If you want an omelette, apply cheese at the last minute and fold over.
Try not to gobble down your handiwork too fast.
Really good.
Bye-bye, rubber eggs!
The Truth About Lilly Ledbetter
Victoria Toensing straightens things out in the WSJ:
President Obama makes much of his concern for women's rights, particularly regarding equal pay, but he seems not to be aware that for nearly half a century we have enjoyed the protection of two laws requiring equal pay. The 1963 Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act combined to settle the matter in law.Mr. Obama brags that the 2009 Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act bestowed equal-pay rights for women. The act, he has said, "is a big step toward making sure every worker," male and female, "receives equal pay for equal work." No, it was a teensy step. It merely changed how the statute of limitations is calculated.
That Arab Spring Isn't Quite Springy Enough
The Reuters headline: "Egypt TV host gets jail term for insulting president."
From a tweet:
@davidharsanyi impossible. because, democracy. rt @dmataconis Egypt TV host gets jail term for insulting president
Democracy does seem to be one of those things we just can't seem to buy, no matter how hard we try.
P.S. Egyptian President Morsi participated in a prayer service calling for the annhilation of all Jews, Israel, and their supporters.
Civilization seems impossible to buy as well, no matter how many iPods get sold in Islamic countries.
The Messianic Presidency
Gene Healy writes in the WashEx about the cult of the presidency:
As I explain in my new ebook, "False Idol," "No federal chief executive in recent memory has done as much as the 'Yes We Can' president to stir Americans' longing for presidential salvation; nor has any recent president done quite as much to enhance the presidency's dominance over American life."In an important new article for Newsweek, "President Obama's Executive Power Grab," Andrew Romano and Daniel Klaidman note that Obama has "expand[ed] his domestic authority in ways that his predecessor never did." Frustrated by congressional resistance to his agenda, he's pursued "government by waiver," reshaping welfare, education and immigration law via royal dispensations and decrees.
"Obama is drafting a playbook for future presidents to deploy in response: How to Get What You Want Even If Congress Won't Give It to You," Romano and Klaidman write. The result is an "extraconstitutional arms race of sorts: a new normal that habitually circumvents the legislative process envisioned by the Framers."
Alas, there's no presidential "man on horseback" ready to ride in and restore normalcy. Presidential messianism infects the Romney camp, as well. On the stump and in his campaign ads, Gov. Romney insists that this is "an election to save the soul of America." In a recent speech at the Virginia Military Institute, he made clear that his ambitions went well beyond preserving the Constitution and faithfully executing the laws: "It is the responsibility of our president to use America's great power to shape history," he told the cadets.
In Romney's answers to an executive-power questionnaire late last year, he suggested that the president has great power indeed: He could launch a war without Congress, order the assassination of American citizens via drone-strike and use the U.S. military to arrest American citizens on American soil.
Most Of My Debate Tweets
That is, save for the comments about how the moderator seemed to be in an intermittent coma. They're in reverse order. LA Convention Center comment near the bottom was a big fave on Twitter. Comment on any or all or on the debate in general below:
•"We have an opportunity to have real leadership." Gary Johnson will be on the ballot?
•(Obama, I think, said this -- my response follows.) "...Folks at the top don't have to play by the same rules as you do." You mean, the system we have?
•TSA: Get it in YOUR private marketplace. @hhavrilesky "Get it in the private marketplace" #moresexytalk
•In response to comment by Obama about Romney and overseas business:
Obama rewards companies that will go out of business here.
•"Clean energy technology" = closet crony capitalism.
•Obama talking about the free market? Hilarious. Accordingly, I'll be giving a primer on NASCAR following the debate.
•It's up to the individual to decide whether to make a price/quality tradeoff. Not the individual's govt.
•Government creates government jobs. Dig a hole, fill a hole. Get a ginormous pension.
•Not sure if this was a response to a Romneyism or an Obamaism:
We're going to "insist"? By stamping our feet and telling China to not be such big meanies?
•It isn't our job to bribe countries into democracy or nicey-nicey treatment of women. Also, it doesn't work.
•People with nothing amusing or incisive to tweet seem to think calling Romney "Mittens" makes up for that.
•Obama now talks jobs? He's had four years. Too busy with Obamacare.
•We should not be in Afghanistan! They are mean to schoolgirls and that sucks, but this is not our job to manage.
•They're "perfectly responsible for defending their own country"? Hilarious. Still, not our job.
•We can tickle Pakistan and maybe that will help.
•Obama's track record: Ignoring the U.S. economy.
•In the administration's defense, "Bibi" is Biden's favoritest word.
•Quick! Somebody wake Bob Schieffer!
•Sanctions worked so well against Cuba. They capitulated in, like, 20 minutes!
•The best idea was by @KenLayne a few years back - move Israel to Baja. (Everyone remaining in the Middle East can then kill each other uninterrupted.)
•Obama is being a condescending asshole. (I think this was about the subs.)
•We project having power overseas economically -- by not being China's bitch.
•Our likelihood of bringing democracy to a backward, Islamic state is slightly slimmer than my replacing Kobe on the Lakers.
•We spend more on military because we're in a world of places we don't belong, like in Afghanistan.
•Mitt translation: We are going to cut a tiny amount of our spending, which is a tiny bit more than my opponent will cut.
•Our education policy: Bend over for the teachers' union and pray for lube.
•Romney didn't do himself any favors with that one. (I almost thought he'd add a "nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah!")
•O-translate: "Making sure we have an exploding education bubble."
•Yeah, Obama is Netanyahu's BFF.
•"President to be silent..." Petty bullshit. (Romney went all meangirl about something.)
•Nobody's talked about civil liberties in these debates.
•America's role in the world? How about retiring from being the world's policeman and fixing the broken UN? PS We're broke.
•Our debt IS the biggest national security threat we face. Of course, Gary Johnson would be the answer there.
•We are "organizing entrepreneurship conferences with the Egyptians"? Hello? Are we the LA Convention Center?
•You don't overturn the Muslim Brotherhood by holding a series of TED talks. Also, not our job.
•It's been nation-dismantling here at home. (About some somebody's crack about nation-building.)
Who Gets Lance Armstrong's Titles?
Jay J. Hector sent me this -- a comment from a photo site:
From a comment to the Reuters article:"...But who do we give the tour wins to then? For example lets look at 2005, the last year he won. Do we give the win to Ivan Basso even though he was banned for doping in 2006? Or do we go to third place with Jan Ulrich? Oh nope we can't as he was already stripped of that third place for doping. Well certainly fourth place Francisco Mancebo will win, except that he was caught in 2006 as well. So how about Vinokourov? Whoops forgot about his 2007 doping. So did Levi Leipheimer (then 6th) win his first Tour de France? Nope guess not he was in the same scandal as Lance. So down to seventh and Michael Rasmussen, but they caught him in 2007. Eighth place then? Did Cadel Evans win well before we thought he did in 2011? I guess he did. Let's hope he stays clean because Floyd Landis (already stripped of a victory in 2006) is next followed by 5 more guys linked to doping. All I'm saying is that we are running out of clean cyclists."
Scam Your Dog
Smart product I saw somebody had purchased (thank you!) via Amazon: Chicken Pill Pockets
Muddern Times, Muddern Communication
Emailed message sent to me Sunday -- arrived 24-plus hrs later, "via the LG Nitro™ HD, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone."
Memo to sender: Next time, forget AT&T; send a note on a mule.
Charlie Chaplin vs. technology:
Diversity Training For Government
KateC writes:
You know what would be awesome? If the US Congress, the Supreme Court, the Ivy League and the NYT were as diverse as the lines at Costco.
Should You Be Able To Go Around Masked In Public?
Colin Moynihan writes in The New York Times that a law banning masks worn by three or more people in public is being challenged in New York after masked demonstrators were arrested at a Russian Consulate protest in support of Pussy Riot:
Many in the crowd that day in August wore the same sort of brightly colored balaclavas worn by the women in the band.The choice of apparel led to the arrest of some demonstrators, who were charged with disorderly conduct and with violating an arcane provision in the loitering law that makes it unlawful for three or more people to wear masks in public.
Now, a lawyer for three women arrested that day says he is preparing to challenge the constitutionality of the law, which he argues should not apply to peaceful protesters.
"We believe this law is overly broad," the lawyer, Norman Siegel, said recently. "Political protest is a quintessential freedom of expression."
Mr. Siegel said his arguments would differ from those used in previous challenges. Instead of stating that his clients needed to hide their identities with masks because the ideas they were spreading are controversial, he said, he will assert that the masks themselves were integral to the message the three women were communicating.
The ban on masks in New York State dates to 1845, when it was adopted in response to events in the Hudson Valley, where local tenant farmers disguised as American Indians had attacked and killed landlords. The law includes exceptions for masquerade parties and similar events.
The police have periodically used the law during political demonstrations. In 2002, for instance, commanders said they would enforce the law during protests that accompanied meetings of the World Economic Forum in Manhattan. Over the past year, the police have regularly cited the mask law while arresting participants in gatherings and marches connected to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The law has been litigated several times over the past decade or so, with state courts, federal courts and appeals panels seesawing back and forth over whether it can be fairly applied.
Plants Are Growing! Five Houses From A School!
Marc Randazza posts about a pot bust in Henderson, Nevada, "Grow House Busted: Children Saved(?)":
He quotes KLAS:
The house is five houses down from a school."We act upon every tip that we get. It makes us feel good that we are getting a steady amount of tips every night," Lt. Laz Chavez of Metro Police said. "We have a lot of children that walk by this house to go to and from the school, and that just goes to show the disregard that these criminals that put together these grow houses."
Police said the house posed a danger to the residents living near by and to a school just a half block away.
Marc puts it right in perspective:
Because, umm, you know... plants growing in a house... that, ummm, yeah, that shit is dangerous.The mere suggestion that marijuana inside a house poses a threat to children walking by is just asinine. It shows the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the war on drugs. If you really need to stoop to that level of lying, that level of bullshit, then you should turn in your badge and go be a Wal-Mart greeter, because it displays that you suffer from either a complete lack of intelligence or a complete lack of integrity. Nobody should be walking around on the street with a gun and a badge who lacks in either of those categories.
Do your job, if you must, and you lack the courage to actually stand up for what is right.
But stop fucking lying.
Islam Is Killing Europe
Compelling anonymous post on Reddit from a Belgian about how Islam is ruining Europe, "Islam is not a religion like any other, here's why":
We have many different religions, and many different cultures here in Belgium. None of them posed a big problem, but Islam really is an exception.What I have learned is that Islam is not a religion like any other. Let me explain: Most religions and most cultures are compatible with Belgian culture and law, and just fit in. Islam however, is not just a religion as how we here define "religion". Islam is a whole package. Islam contains a political system, economic system, justice, education, culture and religion.
When Muslims come to Europe to live their lives, this creates impact.
We have Police here who's job is to make sure that the citizens follow the law. People with Islamic roots are showing some kind of immunity against the police. They show this in how they behave towards the police, by not accepting the police as an authority. They literally say and admit that Allah, the Islamic God, is the only authority.
Every week there are cases of violence against police and it always shows the same pattern: 1 Muslim gets arrested, and then suddenly a group of sometimes up to 50 Muslims gather and attack the police. This has happened so many times that the police has decided to no longer patrol certain neighborhoods, because their authority is no longer accepted there so they are just outnumbered by the ( Islamic ) civilians. I'm not speculating about the future here, this is the reality here today in 2012.
...The number of hate crimes against homosexuals is increasing every year. It started a few years back with taunting and attacking homosexual persons around areas with gay bars. Since last year, the first murders of gays have happened, by Muslims. No provocation, just hate crimes, hate against gays. The gay community is aware of areas in Belgium where they are no longer safe simply because they are gay. This wasn't the case 10 years ago. Then there are the increasing reports of honor killings. Just recently, a 22 year old Belgian bared the child of her 19 year old Islamic ex-boyfriend. The family of this Muslim had arranged a wife and a marriage for him, and this child would bring a shame on the whole family. That's why he and his nephew have killed this young 22 year old girl, to save the honor of the family.
I hope I'm getting my point across here. Although Islam is being defined as a religion, it is not just that. Islam is much more, it's a whole package, it's a culture, it's an entire social system.
And it's impacting with another system. It's not impacting with Christianity, it's impacting with the Western world. We can see it slowly unfolding here in Europe. Slowly but certain.
Let me stress out that Muslims are more attached to their Islamic system, than the European people are attached to the Western system. This is because the Islamic system has a God as the authority, which is a more powerful psychological motivation, than the European people who just have the government as the authority. Muslims are therefore not showing as much indulgence as other Europeans, resulting in an increasing amount of rights for Muslims and a decreasing amount of rights for Europeans.
Other cultures and religions have had no problem with fitting in. But Islam is not just a religion. It's something different.
When "Freedom of Religion" was written in the Belgian law, it wasn't meant for something like Islam. This is the mistake and the problem that we are facing. And at this moment nobody knows how to deal with it.
We should reconsider defining Islam as "just a religion"
The Religion Of Pieces
From a 2006 Pew Global Attitudes Project poll:
26% of younger Muslims in America believe suicide bombings are justified.
35% of young Muslims in Britain believe suicide bombings are justified (24% overall).
42% of young Muslims in France believe suicide bombings are justified (35% overall).
22% of young Muslims in Germany believe suicide bombings are justified.(13% overall).
29% of young Muslims in Spain believe suicide bombings are justified.(25% overall).
Shoe Sail
$20 off a $100 purchase; $50 off a $200 purchase...at this link at Amazon
Advice Goddess Radio: Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Stop Calling Him Honey...And Start Having Sex
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
This week's guest is a rare non-scientist, Maggie Arana, but I'm making an exception because I think her book has tremendous value.
Her book, which she co-authored with Julienne Davis, is Stop Calling Him Honey...and start having Sex! How Changing Your Everyday Habits Will Make You Hot For Each Other All Over Again.
She and her co-author talked to hundreds of men and women, over a period of several years, and figured out the bad habits people get into that kill their sex lives and transform them from lovers to roommates.
Maggie will detail all of that on the show, and I promise you, listening to this show will help you mend your ways...all the way to a hotter sex life.
(Or, if you aren't in a relationship, she'll help you avoid killing your sex life once you get one!)
Listen live at this link at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/10/22/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And don't miss last week's show with journalist Paul Tough, author of the terrific book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character
It turns out that we (and educators) have clung to numerous myths about how intelligence and success and how to develop successful, hardworking, and ultimately happy kids who will carry those qualities into adulthood.
I don't usually have journalists on my show, but this is a meticulously reported and exhaustively researched book that shows that the qualities that matter most in flourishing in school and life are things like "grit," curiosity, and character -- which breaks down into skills like perseverence, conscientiousness, and self-control.
On the show, Tough talks about the techniques that researchers, doctors, teachers and school administrators have learned fail kids and what it takes to help kids build the character it takes to succeed.
This is a not-to-be-missed hour for anyone who has kids or anyone interested in the latest research on intelligence, creativity and success.
Listen at this link or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/10/15/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, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes.
Because I'm The School Administrator, That's Why!
Never mind teaching kids critical thinking skills. With the way our civil liberties are constantly being eroded, with nary a peep out of most people, they won't need them -- just the notion that you're supposed to blindly obey.
This link is from Marc Randazza, the wonderful First Amendment lawyer who defended me against TSA thug Thedala Magee. She's the one who tried to get $500K out of me, thinking she'd not only run her hands all over my titties and my hoohoo (and never mind the entire lack of evidence that I was plotting anything beyond boarding a plane), but put a chill on my First Amendment rights, too.
Back to the current story...a bunch of boys in Anderson, Indiana, found some topless photos of a teacher on the school iPads. Randazza writes that they...
...did what any 13 year old boys would do in that situation. They turned the iPad over to the administration so that other students wouldn't see the photos. Wait, what...?Alright, these may be the most honorable 13 year olds on the planet. So, of course, Highland Middle School recognized this and gave the boys the credit they deserved for not circulating their teacher's naked chest all over the school.
Actually, no. One of the students was given a warning. Two were suspended. And the fourth was expelled.
Highland Middle School is defending the punishment, claiming that the students violated its technology policy. However, the school won't explain how. While the school tries to figure out what, exactly, these kids did wrong, the rest of the country can be thankful that they don't live in Anderson, Indiana.
The video:
Look Into The Crystal Ball That Is Canadian Health Care
Doug Giles, who has experienced both Canadian and American health care, writes at Clash Daily about what happens when you transition from a Free-Market to a Government-Administered system.
There is a loss of responsiveness and flexibility. If a private business owner is losing money on every transaction, he will adjust prices to cover costs -- or, introduce additional services with a better profit margin to offset losses. When losing market share to a competitor, he will innovate: improve his product, equipment, services or pricing, to better attract the customers. His drive to succeed will indirectly benefit the public. The best and most successful operations will expand, offering greater service to more people in more locations....The obvious objection (heard frequently here) is that profit-based systems are run by (gasp!) businessmen. And we've seen enough movies to know that businessmen are cold-hearted, steel-eyed, tight-fisted cutthroats who generally sell out their mothers for a nickel -- right?
...But the potential for damage in the private sector is limited by this: customers can go elsewhere, unresponsive operators will eventually close shop. But when public-sector agencies run out of money, they ask the government (read: taxpayer) for more money. Management errors are invariably perpetuated and magnified.
Still on the topic of money, if Obama achieves that one-payer model, remember this: If health care dollars are drawn from the same pool that every other government project fights over, you politicize health care. Period.
This is why, in Canada, abortions and gender reassignment are covered, but physiotherapy and routine eye exams are not. This is also why we lack hospital beds, especially long-term beds while we spend big on pet projects like wind farms. Cynics might call this a passive version of the much-discussed "death panels".
By shifting health care to a government service, hospitals and clinics are forced to fight for a piece of that same pie that infrastructure, law enforcement, education, environmental impact statements, welfare, and free needles for addicts (but not Diabetics) and all the rest battle over.
The whole "free" thing is a misnomer, too. (1) We're paying more and more each year for fewer and fewer available services, but we don't see that because it's buried among our other taxes. Health care and education costs are always the two largest expenses for a province. Forget things like PET scans, (where Ontario only funds 6 scans / 10,000 people / year.) Now we are gradually losing access to things like X-rays (2) and MRI, which can be arbitrarily deemed by a bureaucrat to be "medically unnecessary", and bouncing the bill back to the doctor. Will that affect care? Diagnosis? How could it not?
via @mpetrie98
The Naive Notion That Government Will Protect You
Get a fire extinguisher, because government regulators could stop Anthelios
Europeans had been using it for eons. And nobody, you know, burst into flame or anything. But that wasn't good enough for our FDA.
Meanwhile, Banana Boat had no problem selling a sunscreen that could catch you on fire. They've since reported the issue to the FDA and voluntarily recalled the stuff -- a message which may or may not get to all the people who smoke big cigars while applying sunblock.
A Peep Show By Any Other Name
A TSA-flavored tweet from Kgreen @unfunnymeme:
"The scanner co is named Rapiscan? Seriously? What, was Pedofrisk taken?"
Sunday Video Posting: The Islamic Takeover Of Europe
People pooh-pooh this...less and less, especially if they are European and living in Europe. An Israeli filmmaker infiltrates in Islamic Europe:
"Do you have a Swedish ID?" he asks a Muslim woman.
"Yes, but I do not recognize it," she says.
Muslim neighborhoods are dangerous no-go zones.
A woman (at around 12 minutes in in the video) is angry that Sweden won't let her son in from Iraq, and says that if something happens to him there, she will "burn everything" in Sweden.
Lovely.
I Want My Own Elf
Men Without Hats -- music video for their 1982 hit, "The Safety Dance":
From a tweet by @beautyscientist:
Safety Dance - It was bonkers when it came out. Still doesn't make sense.
Freedom Of Syndicated TV Reruns
Loved this quote -- especially because of the sources (the actor and the particular show).
"Everyone gets to work their mouth; that's the American way." --Abe Vigoda on "The Rockford Files"
Gregg has been watching "The Rockford Files" episodes while scanning thousands of documents for a project he's doing for Elmore. He has a real soft spot for old TV and just quoted this when I came out (of the cafe where I'm writing) and got on the phone with him.
You're Probably A Drunk, And I Should Be Asking Gregg To Drive Me To Rehab
At least according to the dumbasses at the Center for Disease Control.
Nicole Ciandella writes at Open Market that if you've had 12 alcoholic drinks in the past year, the CDC considers you a "regular drinker." If you're a woman and you've had an average of more than one drink a day, the CDC considers you a heavy drinker. (For men it's two drinks).
I might just consider you French.
I drink about a glass of wine a day. Sometimes, two! I'll often have a glass around 6 p.m. to extend my work day. (Wow, imagine that, a productive sot!)
Then I'll go a day without drinking anything -- usually because I've forgotten to have wine.
I never drive drunk. (I think it's horrible to do that.)
But the notion that you're a heavy drinker...no, let's go to the truly ridiculous one...that you're a "regular drinker" if you've had 12 drinks in the past year...
This is my mother. My parents typically have a bottle of rot (aka Manischewitz) in their refrigerator. (They were leaders in the screwtop wine biz!) And my mother, who only drinks at Jewish holidays and when they say the blessing over the wine at the temple they belong to but otherwise doesn't drink and is pretty ascetic...is now up for the female role in Barfly?
Nicole gets it right:
What's the point of federal health and safety standards that few people will take seriously? When agencies like the CDC are over-cautious and over-stringent, they undermine their authority. And never mind their statistics! The CDC says 50.9% of Americans are regular drinkers--but given what the agency considers "regular," that statistic is fairly meaningless.
"Hi, my name's Amy and I'm an alcoholic: I sometimes have a glass of wine with dinner..."
via @WalterOlson
McWhorter On Obama's "Blaccent"
John McWhorter writes at TNR on "The Perpetual Failure to Understand Obama's Double Consciousness":
There's nothing at all surprising in the fact that the President talks, worships, and even thinks in different ways depending on who he's around....Most black Americans have two ways of talking: around black people, what linguists call Black English, and standard English around others. The two bleed into one another to an extent: most black people have a dusting of "blaccent" when speaking standard, and few even in their most unbuttoned moments speak purely Black English. However, the oscillation between the poles is constant.
This is what Obama, as a black American man, does.
I've also noticed Hillary Clinton going hick.
McWhorter is writing in response to Obama's 2007 speech lauding the racist Reverend Wright:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Here's Wright going after the Italians, among others, for "looking down their garlic noses...":
Our Greasy Elected Officials
In LA, like in Washington, they vote in all sorts of boondogglery we can't afford and then look around for somebody to pay for it. From Mark Lacter at LA Observed:
City Council President Herb Wesson has taken it upon himself to remove a proposed tax increase on parking lot operators that would have been on next March's ballot. The increase, from 10 percent to 15 percent, would have generated an extra $40 million or so per year - not insubstantial considering the deficit hole that the city faces. But after lobbying by parking lot operators, who implausibly argued that their customers would balk at paying a little more and instead drive to lots in nearby cities (you mean I'd park my car in Beverly Hills and walk to a restaurant in L.A.?), Wesson put the proposal into a file folder.
Here's just one reason why they're so hard up for cash.
Capitalism Is Beautiful
See here.
Feel free to post other awesomeness that capitalism makes or made possible.
Two links per comment at most, or your comment will get eaten and I will cry.
Or something like that.
via @joshgreenman
$51 Million In Stimulus Dollars Didn't Stimulate Them To Ship A Single Battery
Treacher blogs at The Daily Caller that there's so little to do at LG Chem, a $300 million lithium ion battery plant (intended to make batteries for the Chevy Volt), that workers spend hours playing cards and board games and watching movies.
Grateness
Do you express gratitude to your partner? For little things? For just the big things? At all?
And vice versa?
Online Ed Banned In Minnesota
Time marches on, but the world gets stupider and stupider. Will Oremus blogs at Slate:
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the state has decided to crack down on free education, notifying California-based startup Coursera that it is not allowed to offer its online courses to the state's residents. Coursera, founded by Stanford computer science professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, partners with top-tier universities around the world to offer certain classes online for free to anyone who wants to take them. You know, unless they happen to be from Minnesota.A policy analyst for the state's Office of Higher Education told The Chronicle that Minnesota is simply enforcing a longstanding state law requiring colleges to get the government's permission to offer instruction within its borders. She couldn't say whether other online education startups like edX and Udacity were also told to stay out.
As the Chronicle notes, with admirable restraint, "It's unclear how the law could be enforced when the content is freely available on the Web." And keep in mind, Coursera isn't offering degrees--just free classes.
Minor TV Tragedy
So sad -- the fabulously evil "Tuco" from Breaking Bad
P.S. If you're going to watch "Breaking Bad," you have to start at the beginning.
P.P.S. The fly episode made me want to hurt someone, but the rest were basically great. (I'm actually just hostile, not violent.)
"Eye Of The Sparrow" -- Bad Lip-Reading (In Case You Haven't Seen It)
Lehrer is my favorite. Love the voice:
via @DrEades
What Went Down In Benghazi And Why It Matters
At Big Peace, former Navy SEAL Team Six's Chuck Pfarrer writes:
It is now known that on the evening of September 11, 2012, Ambassador Christopher Stevens conducted a scheduled meeting with a Turkish diplomat. At approximately 8:30 PM, the ambassador saw his visitor out the gate. There were no protesters in front of the consulate then, nor did any of the survivors of the attack report the presence of demonstrators prior to the initial assault. Videotapes recovered from the compound show, at least partially, what happened.At 9:40 PM, rocket propelled grenades and automatic weapons tore into the front of the compound. Inside the consulate, American security personnel immediately contacted the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, as well as the State Department Crisis Desk in Washington, informing both locations that they were under attack. Per standing orders, Ambassador Stevens and diplomat Sean Smith were placed in a safe room in the ambassador's residence. Within minutes, an outbuilding housing a Libyan security force was on fire, and the militiamen assigned to protect the compound had melted away into the night.
Incoming RPG and machine gun fire became so heavy that the security officers were forced to retreat and barricade themselves into a command center adjacent to the Ambassador's residence. Now holed up in separate buildings, the Americans were surrounded. The situation would rapidly go from bad to worse. The consulate summoned a U.S. quick reaction force stationed in a security compound across town. Accompanied by sixty Libyan security guards, four American agents set out in an armored SUV to break the siege. Before they could reach the compound, terrorists had forced their way into both of the consulate's residential buildings. Failing to break through the locked grate work that protected Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith, the assaulters splashed diesel fuel and set the building on fire. Smoke and flames rapidly filled the residence.
American and Libyan security personnel were eventually able to fight their way in and establish a shaky perimeter. Crawling on hands and knees, rescuers entered the smoke-clogged building in an attempt to reach Stevens and Smith. The Ambassador's body could not be located. Sean Smith's was discovered and dragged from the flames--but he was unresponsive and succumbed to smoke inhalation on scene. Under increasingly heavy gunfire, the Americans were forced to abandon the effort to recover the remaining bodies.
...In the days following the attack, the White House put forward a story that was incompletely informed, if not disingenuous. That the White House deliberately misstated the circumstances surrounding the death of four American citizens is simply too shameful to consider. The September 11th assault on the Benghazi consulate is the single worst attack on an American diplomatic post since the Tehran embassy siege in 1979. The American people deserve a full and open investigation into the murder of Ambassador Stevens. They deserve also to know about the gallant actions of the brave Americans who tried to meet this terrorist attack with woefully inadequate resources.
It took eleven years, but an Al Qaeda affiliated terror group had finally succeeded in a 9/11 anniversary attack. Benghazi matters -- both for what happened on that terrible night and what happened afterwards.
Here's the guy who reportedly was a ringleader in the attack -- enjoying himself at a luxury hotel, in the presence of journalists. Check out where we're trying to buy democracy from the David D. Kirkpatrick NYT piece:
He also said he opposed democracy as a contradiction with Islamic law, and he called those who supported secular constitutions "apostates," using the terminology Islamist radicals apply to fellow Muslims who are said to disqualify themselves from the faith by collaborating with corrupt governments....Mr. Abu Khattala acknowledged that Libya was already a thoroughly Muslim country. There are almost no Libyans of any other religion, alcohol is banned, polygamy is legal and most women wear some form of Islamic head-covering. But all of that still fell short, he said, and he contended that when Libya returned to Islamic law, the justice and prosperity of Islam's golden age would return.
The Latest Invented Political Controversy
Tagg Romney (who you'd think would have been way too old to be caught up in the weird-ass kid-name trend) said something SHOCKING the other night.
(Shocking only to people who like to demonize the other side as WORSE THAN ADOLF HITLER! BUT WITHOUT THE FUNNY LITTLE MUSTACHE.)
Tagg's words that have been lighting up blogs and Twitter. He said he wanted to...
"...jump out of (his) seat and ... rush down to the debate stage and take a swing at him..."
("Him" being the President.)
(His emotion expressed here being pretty much what anybody thinks when their kid, parent, spouse, or close friend is under some perceivedly unfair attack.)
Tagg continued:
"But you know you can't do that because, well first because there's a lot of Secret Service between you and him, but also because this is the nature of the process, they're going to do everything they can do to try to make my dad into someone he's not. We signed up for it. We've gotta kinda sit there and take our punches and then send them right back the other way."
Yawn.
Sarah Silverman's dad's defense of her, after some Orthodox rabbi attacked her in one of those "open letter" dealies, was much more entertaining:
Hey *sshole: Daughter #1 is a rabbi. Not by your standards. She's reform. How dare she, a lowly woman think god wants her to be a rabbi, created from a mere rib. Her hubby, three times nominated for a nobel peace prize was listed by the Jerusalem Post as the 49th most influential jew in the world built the worlds largest solar field in israel. By the way, Sarah was also on the list. I missed your name. Oldest granddaughter is serving in the Israel Defense Forces. I'm sure you also served. Oh I forgot the orthodox don't do that. You don't f*ck with my family.
I Don't Maintain A Phone Line To Make Sleazy Politicians' Sales Efforts Cheaper
The FTC is holding a robocalls summit:
The Federal Trade Commission will host a one-day public event on Thursday, October 18, 2012 to develop solutions to the rapid rise in illegal robocalls.The Summit will include a report on the current state of the robocall technology and the industry, along with a discussion of the laws surrounding the use of robocalls. This will be followed by an exploration of potential technological solutions to the problem of illegal robocalls, including panels on caller-ID spoofing and call authentication technology, data mining and anomaly detection, and call-blocking technology.
I saw a tweet about the summit from anti-robocalling activist @SDakin and wrote the FTC this email (upon getting a robocall from California sleazebag legislator Henry Waxman, who thinks nothing of breaking state robocalling laws -- details below -- to make his re-election costs cheaper):
Sleazy politicians left a giant loophole in the TCPA -- allowing themselves to make robocalls to voters.I just got a robocall from Henry Waxman -- illegal in California, due to his lack of a live person (per CA law) to introduce the call. Yes, here we have a man trying to be re-elected lawmaker by ILLEGALLY harassing California voters in their homes.
A call from a politician or about an issue is no less interruptive than a telemarketing call.
It hijacks a phone line we pay for and steals our time.
We don't maintain phone lines so we can let our calls go to voicemail or so we can make politicians' marketing efforts cheaper.
We maintain them so we can hear from friends, family, and people of interest to us.
Kill the exemptions to the telemarketing law -- now.
Do not enable sleazy politicians in stealing our time and use of our phone lines.
Typical Federal Government -- nothing works. From the FTC's Facebook page today (yes, the FTC has a Facebook page):
Good morning. If you are joining us for our Robocall Summit, we are experiencing audio issues. You can watch the webcast here with closed captioning: http://bit.ly/VaRgWX. You can call-in to hear the summit as well. In the U.S., please call (866) 286-9705. Internationally please call (904) 486-9014. Host is Bruce Jennings. Confirmation number is 268781. More details posted on our website. Thank you for your patience!
PS When politicians call you at home, or have their recorded messages phone you, interrupting your life, it seems clear they think it's okay to invade people's home lives. So, what is there to do but find their home number, if possible (try Zabasearch.com) and call them at home and chew them out. I've done this on a number of occasions and it's extremely satisfying.
All The Wrong Politicians Understand Our Debt Problem
Mark Steyn writes at NRO of a politician who gets it:
"How long can a government with a $16,000 trillion foreign debt remain a world power?" he asked at a press conference.Romney? Ryan?
Er, no. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Coined A New Term: Me! Me! Me!-mail
It describes off-topic, time-wasting email from people promoting stuff.
As a PR jerk selling stuff for babies wrote me, "I realize this isn't the kind of stuff you normally cover..." (but I thought nothing of wasting your time in hopes of making a buck).
Anti-Free Speech Workaround: Just Call Speech You Dislike "Bullying"
It happened recently with criticism of a newscaster's weight in the USA.
About Canadian attempts to stop speech, Joanne Jacobs writes:
Politicians are trying to suppress political speech by calling it "bullying," charges Hans Bader. He's got a doozy of an example from Canada: Ontario Education Minister Laurel Broten says Catholic schools can't tell students abortion is wrong because anti-abortion speech is "misogyny," which is banned by Bill 13, the anti-bullying law.
Bader's entire piece is here, at Open Market.
The Truth About The Islamic Supremacist Movement, AKA "The Arab Spring"
Robert Spencer goes all realism on Obama's ass at PJM:
The Qur'an and Islamic law direct Muslims to wage war against and subjugate the "People of the Book" (cf. Qur'an 9:29)-that is, primarily Jews and Christians-not if they behave badly by supporting Israel or Middle Eastern dictators, but simply because they are not Muslims.But the White House and State Department not only do not acknowledge this fact-they have done all they can to deny and obfuscate it. The one cardinal proposition that accepted analysts must repeat is that the present conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims have absolutely nothing to do with Islam; indeed, Obama administration officials are expressly forbidden to link Islam with terrorism, as if Islamic terrorists weren't busy linking the two on a daily basis. The errors of analysis and wrong decisions that cost lives all follow from this initial false premise.
About six months ago a State Department official contacted me privately and told me about State employees who had been assigned to study the life of Muhammad, with an eye toward putting together a positive portrayal of the prophet of Islam that would presumably win more Muslim hearts and minds by going out with the United States government's seal of approval. The officials who began studying the earliest Muslim sources about Muhammad, however, were astonished as they came face-to-face not with a seventh-century Gandhi, but with a figure of war and rapine who appeared to justify the worst allegations of the "Islamophobes" that the Obama administration has so roundly excoriated. Needless to say, the puff piece on Muhammad did not appear.
This disconnect from reality was reminiscent of what is said about State during the Iranian Revolution: that while the Ayatollah Khomeini was bringing about the toppling of the shah and the establishment of the Islamic Republic, only one of his books could be found anywhere in the State Department, and no one had read it. No one thought the rantings of an obscure fanatic who for years had been exiled to far-off France were important.
This was the willful blindness that killed Chris Stevens, and is the real scandal of Benghazi. The politically correct fantasies that characterize the Washington establishment's views on Islam and jihad not only make for bad policy; they also kill. Clearly what happened in Benghazi was part of a coordinated, carefully planned series of jihad attacks-in all the controversy over what the White House knew and didn't know, it has also been forgotten that jihadis stormed the U.S. embassy in Cairo on the same day. That raises the question: What did the Muslim Brotherhood know, and when did it know it? And the related question: Why is the Obama administration continuing to cultivate warm relations (and shower money upon) the Morsi regime in Egypt, without undertaking even the most cursory investigation into the possibility of its involvement in those attacks?
From the beginning of the "Arab Spring," I said repeatedly that it was not a democracy movement as the Western press and the White House were claiming, but an Islamic supremacist takeover that would result in the creation of Sharia states far more hostile to the U.S. and Israel than the Arab nationalist regimes they were supplanting. This assessment was greeted with the usual scorn, but Benghazi shows who was right and who was wrong and how desperately the foreign policy establishment in Washington needs a very thorough housecleaning.
Luckily, Terrorists Are Often Credulous Morons
From the HuffPo, a story about the Bangladeshi dipshit, Quazi Nafis, who wanted to blow up the Federal Reserve building in Manhattan (and was probably encouraged to do so in what was termed an "FBI sting"):
Agents grabbed the 21-year-old Nafis - armed with a cellphone he believed was rigged as a detonator - after he made several attempts to blow up the bomb inside a vehicle parked next to the Federal Reserve, the complaint said.Authorities emphasized that the plot never posed an actual risk. However, they claimed the case demonstrated the value of using sting operations to neutralize young extremists eager to harm Americans.
You mean, as opposed to hiring unskilled workers to grope your granny's hoohoo at the airport?
More from the piece:
Prosecutors say Nafis traveled to the U.S. in January to carry out an attack. In July, he contacted a confidential informant, telling him he wanted to form a terror cell, the criminal complaint said. Nafis was living in Queens.In further conversations, authorities said Nafis proposed several spots for his attack, including the New York Stock Exchange - and that in a written letter taking responsibility for the Federal Reserve job he was about to carry out, he said he wanted to "destroy America." Other communications took place through Facebook, the complaint said.
Moron. Want to go places, emulate America.
Quiz: What word isn't mentioned in the story? Islam, of course!
(No, he doesn't want to destroy us for our greasy French fries.)
The Guy Running For President Like He Hasn't Been President These Past Four Years
At reason, Nick Gillespie noted what I did during the debate -- how much the guy talked like he wanted to get into the office of President. Like he hasn't been there mucking things up for four years. Gillespie writes:
The way he talked about George W. Bush and the various situations he faced upon moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, you'd think he just called up to the bigs for the playoffs or something. He invokes the years since 2009 as if he just came back from vacationing off-planet. Does anyone else remember all the crowing that went on after Obama's "historic" first year in office? This is a president who basically was able to get everything he wanted - stimulus, healthcare, the sorts of military actions he wanted, a free-hand in surveilling enemies here and abroad, and more - and he has still reaped a whirlwind when it comes to a vaguely decent economy and America's standing in the world. Indeed, the Dems took a "shellacking" (his term) in the 2010 mid-term elections because of his legislative record, not in spite of it. By his own litmus tests - especially the unemployment rate - he's been a huge and undeniable failure. When it comes to foreign policy, does anyone really believe he's done more than drive down U.S. standing from the already-low place that his predecessor left it? And when it comes to a variety of other issues - ranging from executive power to raiding medical marijuana joints in states where they're legal to immigration - he's simply been godawful.The strongest case against re-electing Obama remains the one that Clint Eastwood made during his empty chair performance: Bam might be a good guy, but he hasn't gotten the job done, and so it's time to let him go. The strongest case for re-electing Obama shared the stage with him last night. Mitt Romney bungled questions on the Benghazi attack and follow-up (there's no doubt that the administration dissembled in the aftermath of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, which itself showcased inexcusable misjudgments in State Department security priorities) and he totally whiffed on issues such as gun control and immigration. Indeed, his signature flip-flopping was very much in evidence as he tried tacking away from clear positions (hey governor, maybe the reason gun crime and violence is way down is because virtually all states liberalized their gun laws and the Supreme Court started upholding the Second Amendment) toward some sort of mushy "centrism." Romney has more private-sector experience than Obama (who has exactly zero), but whatever free-enterprise bona fides he carried in his pockets stayed there in favor of rants against cheap Chinese imports and pledges to bring back manufacturing jobs (because nothing says first-world economy more than assembly lines, right?). Simply put, he doesn't inspire confidence that he would be a particularly effective and level-headed leader when it comes to domestic or foreign policy.
Legalized Stealing By The Police: Never Mind Probable Cause
Don't think the police can't take your money or property just because you've committed no crime. Here's the Institute for Justice:
Worried about our civil liberties? If not, how long have you been in a coma?
IJ's amicus brief for Clayton Harris is here.
More from an email from IJ:
Police are increasingly using drug-detection dogs to establish probable cause that results in the seizure and ultimate forfeiture of cash, cars and other property on the grounds that the property is somehow linked to a drug crime. Numerous studies show, however, that there is a significant risk that the dog's "alert" is due to cues from its handler or residual odors, rather than the actual presence of drugs.On October 31, 2012, in Florida v. Harris, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on what evidence, if any, the government must introduce to establish the reliability of drug-detection dogs. In a criminal case involving the constitutionality of a search under the 4th Amendment, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that because it is the government's burden to prove probable cause when conducting a warrantless search, it must introduce objective evidence of the reliability of the drug-detection dog, just as it is required to do when relying on confidential informants to establish probable cause.
Although this case is in the criminal context, it provided a great opportunity for the Institute for Justice to submit a "friend of the court" brief, bringing the abuses of civil forfeiture to the attention of the High Court.
Under the rules of civil forfeiture, police may seize property based on what is known as "probable cause" that the property is tied to criminal activity. Under certain federal and state statutes, police can even subject the property to forfeiture based only on that showing of probable cause.
Consequently, if a positive dog alert, by itself, is all that is required to establish probable cause, law enforcement will be able to forfeit property such as cash and cars based merely on the roadside "testimony" of a barking dog.
Indeed, there are numerous instances in which the police have sought to forfeit cash merely because a dog alerted to the money even though there was no other evidence of criminal wrongdoing. IJ filed a brief in this case to urge the Court to stop this abuse of government power.
How "Pre-Existing Conditions" Killed Our Health Care System
It's just shocking to hear that we overturned our entire health care system to help those people who can't buy insurance because of "pre-existing" conditions -- only to see very few of them actually avail themselves of it.
John C. Goodman writes in the WSJ:
The Affordable Care Act established a federally funded risk pool--the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan--that allows individuals with such disqualifying conditions to buy a policy for the same premium a healthy person would pay. About 82,000 people have signed up as of July 31, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's statehealthfacts.org.That is not a misprint. Out of a population of more than 300 million, some 82,000 have the problem that was cited as the principal reason for spending $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years and in the process turning the entire health-care system upside down.
The risk pool surely comes as welcome relief to those who need it. A lot of them are really sick and are running up expensive medical bills. But the three-year cost is about $5 billion, as budgeted in the Affordable Care Act--a tiny fraction of the law's overall burden. Nevertheless, the federal risk pool will be closed down in 2014, when ObamaCare will begin prohibiting insurance companies from charging premiums based on the health conditions of applicants.
...When insurers are forced to charge the same premium to all applicants, regardless of expected health-care costs, prices will be wrong for everyone--and both buyers and sellers of health-care policies will have perverse incentives.
On the buyer's side, healthy people who are overcharged will underinsure, buying less coverage than they otherwise would. They may even decide to go without insurance, since the ObamaCare penalties for being uninsured are weak and people can always buy a policy after they get sick. People with expensive health problems will overinsure, buying more generous coverage than they otherwise would.
Where does this all lead?
In a few years ... the brokers will likely leave the market altogether and many employers will drop their coverage. Along the way, the federal government will put enormous pressure on insurers to keep their costs down. Then you will be on your own, facing a system that has no interest in spending money on you.
Who Won The Debate?
Gary Johnson, for being the least boring candidate there.
Ken White tweeted something along the lines of what I was thinking all night:
@Popehat I'm really disappointed that neither candidate had an opportunity to evade questions on civil liberties or the War on Drugs.
They both pandered themselves senseless. Obama mentioned his daughters so often, I thought one of them was going to come out and do a striptease.
He also dipped deep into what Mickey Kaus has now termed "estrocentrism," by talking about fair treatment of women in the workplace...while...whoopsy, paying women who work in The White House far less than men.
Favorite Romney pander: "My dad was born in Mexico."
Yeah, right. "Pablo Romney."
Other immigration-related funny by KABC's John Phillips:
@Johnnydontlike Obama to Lorraine: "I can relate....Donald Trump wants to deport me too."
P.S. The "binders full of women" jokes were over about five minutes after he said it -- exhausted on Twitter by everyone not in a coma. Save your typing fingers.
Meet The Republicrat
Voting for Obamney? Here are few thoughts that are getting lost in all the partisan sniping:
Brat Air
Is that uncharitable of me? I do hope this happens, having practically gotten split ends from the shrill screaming of a brat on a plane on more than one recent occasion.
Shannon Howell sent this link -- a "concept airline," from a Fox report:
California-based design consultancy RKS recently unveiled cAir, its concept for an airline that caters to overwhelmed parents and bored, fussy kids. As is, cAir would offer services like an on-board rent-a-toy service, pull-down soundproof compartments and seating that allows family members to face each other.The concept airline would also have children's food menus and on-board play zones. Another perk would be the availability of a shuttle service with child-safe seating and convenient stroller and luggage storage.
Sound too good to be true? Remember that cAir is a concept, so its future is not set in stone.
I'd like to fly the adults-only ghetto, thanks.
Yeah, I know, your children are far better behaved than some drunk you sat next to in 1972. But, I doubt he screamed so shrilly that your eardrums were challenged for much of the flight.
And of course, since this airline will serve only some, not all, parents flying with children, it wouldn't solve the problem of bratty children in flight...but a girl can dream.
Move The Deer Crossing Signs
Hilarious. A lady asks for help getting deer crossing signs moved to lower traffic areas. "Why are we encouraging deer to cross at the Interstate? That's a high-traffic area."
(This had to be a planned call -- but it's still funny.)
Government's Always Broken
I had to mail something to Gary in Canada. He's doing great, and has a roof these days -- and is creating some incredible and wildly beautiful art that he sent me in a huge portfolio. He hopes to be back in the USA within the month.
Here's one of his old pieces: 
At the end of my writing day, I took a break and trotted off to my local post office, where there were two brand new pens on chains on the console where you wait in line. Both pens were inkless.
Luckily, I travel with a handbag you could fit a small child in, and maybe a dog, too, so I had my own pen, and was able to fill in the bit I'd forgotten on the customs form.
Then, I got to the counter. Again they were out of 10¢ stamps and postcard stamps -- both of which I'm running low on because they never have them when I'm there.
Some other guy needed...some kind of form. They were out of them.
Now, this is the Post Office, not the fresh fruit market. I expect them to stock very few items: Stamps. Stamps. Required mailing forms. Required mailing forms.
Fail!
All I can think of: Can't wait for Obamacare!
We Didn't Need Bank Bailouts
John Tamny writes at Forbes about how Amazon and Walmart rose up in a tight credit market to provide lines of credit for small business clientele who were struggling due to the inability to get loans elsewhere:
Back in the summer of 2010, with its small-business clientele suffering from tighter than normal credit, Walmart's Sam's Club subsidiary announced its willingness to provide its customers with $25,000 lines of credit. Walmart has for years tried to get into banking, absurd regulations about new entrants arguably kept it from purchasing some of the insolvent banks in '08, but even without a banking charter, Walmart was able offer up credit at a time when banks weren't able to.Much the same is occurring now at Amazon.com. Traditional banks remain careful about lending, but Amazon, flush with cash, is eagerly substituting for the banks. Through its Amazon Capital Services subsidiary, Amazon is helping the sellers on its website to access credit that is in short supply at the moment from banks.
Getting into specifics, the Wall Street Journal recently reported on Lisa Zerr, owner of Yankee Toy Box, and her urgent need to secure credit in order to upgrade her inventory ahead of the holiday shopping season. Yankee Toy Box does a lot of business on Amazon, and she's since borrowed from Capital Services $38,000 in July, and then $13,000 last month.
It should be stressed that Amazon is one of myriad companies that uses its balance sheet to provide banking services to customers. Not a traditional bank, it acts as a bank, and is a substitute for a limping sector.
Amazon's story naturally exposes as fraudulent the hysterical assertions made by politicians, Fed Chairman Bernanke, and numerous members of the commentariat who said absent bank bailouts in '08, the economy would disappear. They were wrong then, and they're wrong now.
As for the monetary mystics out there who write column after column about how the Fed's payment of interest on [bank] reserves (IOR) is keeping lending abnormally tight, the Amazon story similarly exposes them as incorrect. Indeed, while it's certainly true that the Fed should not be paying banks for the dollar reserves it's attempted to force on them through quantitative easing, the simple truth is that even if IOR were the reason for banks being tight (it's not), substitute lenders would, could and are filling the breach.
He notes that insolvent banks should have been allowed to go bankrupt in 2008, and the Walmarts and Amazons and banks that were careful lenders would have risen up to fill the void.
via @againstcronycap
Our Right To Be Offensive
Wendy Kaminer writes at Spiked-Online.com about the brouhaha surrounding a viewer's email to a Wisconsin newscaster:
'We need to teach our children to be kind, not critical.' So said a Wisconsin newscaster, Jennifer Livingston, in a viral video of her extended, on-air response to an email from a viewer who chastised her for being obese. I disagree. I'd say we should teach children to be critical without being gratuitously unkind. But I am a critic, after all, and in Livingston's eyes, probably a bully. While boasting of her 'thick skin' and claiming not to have been harmed by his message, Livingston labelled the viewer who commented on her weight a 'bully', to the applause and agreement of multitudes.Yet his offending email was unquestionably civil (even grammatical) and neither mocking nor threatening in tone. Instead, it seemed a presumptuous, misguided effort at constructive criticism. 'Obesity is one of the worst choices a person can make and one of the most dangerous habits to maintain', the viewer concluded. 'I leave you this note hoping that you'll reconsider your responsibility as a local public personality to present and promote a healthy lifestyle.'
How does this qualify as bullying? It doesn't seek to torment or publicly humiliate Livingston. (Her husband made the email public, with a posting on his Facebook page.) It doesn't exploit a power differential. In fact, as a newscaster, with media access and a built-in audience, Livingston held the power in this 'relationship', and she used it to engage in name-calling and public shaming. Her critic simply pointed out what she acknowledged is a fact: she is obese. He offered an irritating, unsolicited opinion, suggesting that obesity made her a poor role model. In a private message, he suggested that she was setting a 'bad example' to young female viewers. So, in public, she made a bad example of him.
Her public sided with her, not surprisingly. I bet her critic received some nasty emails from anti-bullying crusaders, while Livingston received 'truly inspiring' support. 'Hundreds and hundreds of people have taken the time out of their day to not only lift my spirits, but take a stance that attacks like this are not okay', she gushed. 'That man's words mean nothing to me', she added, unconvincingly. Why, then, did she bother refuting them?
Kaminer's ending is right on:
But if viciousness is a problem, uncritical niceness is not the solution, for children or adults. Condemn criticism categorically, and you condemn thinking.
Here's the video of the newscaster's remarks about the email:
And from the HuffPo link:
The viewer who sent her the email, Kenneth Krause, gave a statement to "Today" standing by his original comments. "Considering Jennifer Livingston's fortuitous position in the community, I hope she will finally take advantage of a rare and golden opportunity to influence the health and psychological well-being of Coulee region children by transforming herself for all of her viewers to see over the next year," he wrote.
Breast Cancer "Awareness"
Virginia Postrel made the point -- is anyone not "aware" of breast cancer?
Lung cancer, not breast cancer, is the big killer of women -- and doesn't discriminate against men, either.
A comment I made on Respectful Insolence in 2007:
When somebody asked my late friend Cathy Seipp whether she had breast cancer (seeing that she had chemo-head), she'd say, "I wish!"And she'd point out that the survival rate of breast cancer was "the un-survival rate" of lung cancer.
And no, she didn't smoke or live or work with smokers.
Best Beauty Prods According To Beauty Editors
Shop beauty editors' picks at Amazon
A product I found -- eye cream -- that's usually expensive but that I found an inexpensive version of through one of those Allure or other beauty editors' surveys on best cheap beauty products is Total Effects Eye Cream
Freedom Of Speech Is For Assholes
The First Amendment is basically the amendment for the defense of bigmouthed assholes, and that is an absolutely beautiful thing.
The Tsunami, Not The Government, Saved General Motors
Interesting Hans Bader piece at OpenMarket.org:
General Motors never would have recovered as it did if not for the massive Japanese earthquake and Tsunami that devastated its rivals, such as Toyota. The tsunami so crippled Toyota that GM could regain market share despite the Obama administration leaving GM's uncompetitive, inefficient work rules and high labor costs largely intact.General Motors also benefited from another factor that has often been overlooked: the massive Thai floods in 2011, which inundated and shut down Japanese car-parts factories in Thailand for many months, crippling Japanese automakers' global supply chains. On Dec. 8, Toyota "cut its profit forecast by more than half after Thailand's worst floods in almost 70 years disrupted output of Camry and Prius vehicles." The World Bank estimates the floods did $45 billion in damage to the Thai economy and left half its factories under water for substantial periods. By harming Japanese automakers, the Thai floods gave a huge boost to their competitor, General Motors, enabling it to survive despite the Obama administration's costly coddling of the UAW union in the bailout, which threatens the automaker with future losses in the billions.
GM also benefited from good luck -- primarily the huge safety issues and recalls that befell Toyota in 2010. This helped GM and Ford move forward at a time when overall auto sales were rising rapidly. As The New York Times noted in March 2010 "Toyota Motor, estimating that it lost 18,000 sales in the United States last month while its chief competitors enjoyed big gains, introduced incentives Tuesday as it tried to restore consumers' confidence in its vehicles after three big recalls," as the company "acknowledged that the recalls had hurt Toyota's ability to attract new buyers." Toyota rebounded after it turned out its vehicles were safe, and that crashes of Toyota vehicles were the result of driver error, except for one crash that resulted from a dealer improperly installing a floor mat.
For a brief time, natural disasters so damaged the Japanese automakers that GM once again became the world's number one automaker. But when the Japanese companies recovered, Toyota once again surpassed GM as the world's biggest automaker.
Luckily for Toyota, it's back to bad business as usual at GM. More about this in Hans' piece.
The TSA Molestation Files: Violating Dana Loesch
From Wizbang:
The TSA has groped again.Conservative radio host and Breitbart Editor, Dana Loesch, was treated to an 'enhanced screening' where the TSA agents repeatedly pressed down on her -- around her vagina. No, this isn't a joke and with all the things going on in this country at the moment and an election on our doorstep, the TSA with its mind-boggling breaches of our liberties had taken a backseat. Not anymore.
I have kept my readers informed of TSA activities via this blog and my Morning Links. Those stories were horrifying, yet even I admit to compartmentalizing them. These events had happened to people I did not know and so I set them aside after being angry for a bit about it.
Hearing the escalating stories Dana has posted about her encounters with the TSA made me pretty angry; this last event really made me angry. I've had the honor of meeting Dana Loesch and her husband, Chris. They are two of the coolest people ever and handled my 'Boo Radley' moment meeting them better than I did. The two of them are good people, folks just like you and me. What happened to Dana with the TSA this time, and in the past, should not have happened to her... or to any of us.
Loesch took to Twitter and relayed this latest TSA attack in pretty frank detail for the 140 character limit and yes, I consider these 'pat downs' to be attacks. Here is just one of her tweets:
TSA said I was covered in explosives, took me to a private room and touched my vagina. So how was your day? -- Dana Loesch (@DLoesch)
Video and details from Dana (below the video) at the link.
A Thought On The Drug War
Making painkillers hard for chronic pain sufferers to get because others abuse them is like burning down your house because you have ants. (Or, as somebody corrected me when I tweeted this on Sunday, because you may have ants.)
A Year In Blasphemy: An Important Post By Popehat That Also Includes The Words "Monkey Crotch"
Popehat's Ken White, a guy who's too funny to be a lawyer and former prosecutor, but is both anyway, has a great post up about recent calls to diminish free speech in this country, basically because we might offend violent Muslims with our blasphemy.
He takes a at how the nations of the world have treated blasphemy during the previous year. An excerpt (links are live at Popehat's site):
I confined my search to posts and articles about accusations of blasphemy. Therefore this list does not cover the the related concept of apostasy, which can lead to your execution (and the imprisonment of even the lawyers defending you) under the competing values of some countries that punish blasphemy. I also didn't pick up stories about people being punished for "sorcery" or "witchcraft" -- usually by decapitation -- even though I see that as part of the culture that demands anti-blasphemy laws. Finally, I didn't address cases involving the far broader category of "hate speech" -- I eschewed prosecutions for speech disrespecting groups in favor of prosecutions for speech disrespecting religions and religious figures.Without further ado, I give you a year in blasphemy.
October 2011:
In the United States, "Underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab pleaded guilty on the second day of his trial for attempting to blow up a plane carrying 300 people. He explained that if the United States continues "to persist and promote the blasphemy of Muhammad and the prophets," it risks "a great calamity ... through the hands of the mujahedeen soon."
In Pakistan, a young Christian woman charged with blasphemy after a dispute with Muslim women in her village was beaten in prison by her guard.
Also in Pakistan, a man sentenced to a month in prison for blaspheming the family of Mohammed found his sentence increased to three years by an appellate court.
In Egypt, a man was sentenced to three years at hard labor for mocking Islam on Facebook.
And at the bottom, the upshot -- yay! -- by Ken:
That Was The Year That WasThere you have it -- a year of what Eric Posner might call "other values and the need for order," a year of what Anthea Butler might call incidents of people being "inflamed," a year of what Garrett Epps might say are different understandings of freedom and different views of the "essence" of free speech, a year of the competing "international norms" referred to by Professor Peter Spiro. These are the values to which we, as Americans, are invited to yield.
I think not.
As the Posners and Butlers and Eppses and Spiros of the nation have begun to speak in the wake of Benghazi, others have refuted them. Some have pointed out a truth illustrated by this year of blasphemy: anti-blasphemy laws are a tool for religious majorities to suppress religious minorities, and a mechanism for the more powerful to oppress the relatively powerless, and tend to be used in a lawless manner resembling modern witch hunts. That is the norm we are asked to embrace.
It is right and fit that any nation be prepared to examine its own values, and evaluate competing ones. But I feel no qualms whatsoever at rejecting the competing values embodied in that year of blasphemy. Instead, I will stand by the values embodied in the modern interpretation of the First Amendment. When others advocate that America ease protections for free expression to ease international relations or to protect feelings and sensibilities or to move towards some imagined international consensus or to achieve "progress," I will point to this year and ask: do you truly grasp what values you are promoting, and what values you are abandoning?
The Muslim Victim Industrial Complex
The Islamic psyche is basically that of an offended 8-year-old. (Say anything critical about their prophet or religion and they'll behead your insulting ass!) Robin Shepherd writes on TheCommentator.com of the response -- full-on denial of well-documented reality -- by Muslims listening to a talk to international journalists by Tim Marshall, Sky's Foreign Affairs Editior:
(Quoting Marshall) "...during the lecture [] I used the phrase, 'Muslims killing Muslims'. It was the response to this statement which took away my breath. I accept that the phrase might be construed as provocative and that few people would say 'Christians killing Christians'; but it was a statement of fact nonetheless."Among the audience of about 30 people from all over the world, was a young woman from south Asia. She stood up and said: 'I cannot let you say that. Muslims kill Muslims'. I replied that we were all journalists and hopefully could discuss things in a rational manner, giving a few examples of how the Taliban were killing people in Pakistan and how hundreds of Pakistani Shia Muslims die in sectarian murders every year.
"At this she turned red and almost shouted: 'How dare you talk about my religion. I do not talk about yours!'"
A man from an Arab country then interjected in her support: "'I also cannot allow you to say this. Muslims do not kill Muslims.'"
It is a sobering illustration of something I have also witnessed at first hand. Marshall was being confronted with one of the defining features of modern Muslim political culture -- the victim complex. It is never their fault. The Muslim is always the victim, never the oppressor. Oppression is always the preserve of someone else. Guilt lies elsewhere.
...When it came to a discussion of events in Egypt, a British Member of the European Parliament stood up from the audience to raise the plight of Coptic Christians, dozens of whom have been murdered by Islamist extremists since the overthrow of Mubarak. He made his point fairly and reasonably, more in sorrow than in anger.
The response from two Arab ladies sitting next to me on the front row was nothing short of furious. I cannot vouch for the precise words after so many months but, near as damn it, this is what one of them stood up to say: "It is shocking and disgraceful that such slurs on the Arab people can be aired publicly at such a prestigious event." The other said that the MEP should effectively be ashamed of himself merely for having raised the subject at all.
Above all else, it is important to note that Marshall's example and my own (I could provide many more; I presume he could too) are not drawn from encounters with the poorly educated or with people who would count as extremists by almost anyone's definition of that slippery term. This is the Arab and Muslim world's political intelligentsia.
He notes that this response explains a lot about why there are such monumental problems in efforts to get Palestinians to sign a peace deal with Israel...and on and on.
Here are Muslims protesting Western values outside Google's offices in London.
Perhaps they should not live in the West if its values are so troubling to them? Oh -- whoops -- they are commanded by their totalitarian system (masquerading as a religion) to overthrow democracies and instill The New Caliphate around the globe.
If and when that happens, women will have the rights of furniture and gays and apostates will be slaughtered like they are in Muslim majority countries, as commanded by Islam. Can't wait for Allah!
via @PatCondell
Met "A Great Broad" At A Party On Saturday Night
Gregg was in Detroit this weekend, but that's what he would have called her, had he met her. (It's a compliment, in case anybody is new to Gregg-speak.)
It was Saturday night, the annual LAObserved party on the roof of Formosa.
Patt The Hat (formally known as LA Times columnist Patt Morrison) brought her friend Cari Beauchamp, a fellow Paris-o-phile to whom I spent some time talking.
Beauchamp is a fourth generation Californian and a Vanity Fair writer and Hollywood historian who wrote a book I'm looking forward to reading -- Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood
Frances Marion was one of the early screenwriters in Hollywood, and Cari told me she has more movies to her credit than only one other person -- William Shakespeare. More on her and Beauchamp's book from the Amazon writeup:
Cari Beauchamp masterfully combines biography with social and cultural history to examine the lives of Frances Marion and her many female colleagues who shaped filmmaking from 1912 through the 1940s. Frances Marion was Hollywood's highest paid screenwriter--male or female--for almost three decades, wrote almost 200 produced films and won Academy Awards for writing "The Big House" and "The Champ."
Beauchamp is now working on a comprehensive biography of Gloria Swanson.
Advice Goddess Radio: Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Paul Tough on How Children Succeed
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
This week's guest is journalist Paul Tough, author of the terrific book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character
It turns out that we (and educators) have clung to numerous myths about how intelligence and success and how to develop successful, hardworking, and ultimately happy kids who will carry those qualities into adulthood.
I don't usually have journalists on my show, but this is a meticulously reported and exhaustively researched book that shows that the qualities that matter most in flourishing in school and life are things like "grit," curiosity, and character -- which breaks down into skills like perseverence, conscientiousness, and self-control.
On the show, Tough will talk about the techniques that researchers, doctors, teachers and school administrators have learned fail kids and what it takes to help kids build the character it takes to succeed.
This is a not-to-be-missed hour for anyone who has kids or anyone interested in the latest research on intelligence, creativity and success.
Listen live at this link at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/10/15/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And don't miss last week's show with clinical psychologist Dr. Sue Johnson, Ph.D., on how understanding the emotional underpinnings of relationships can help you save or vastly improve your relationship. Dr. Johnson has done groundbreaking, research-driven work in this area, endorsed by marriage researcher Dr. John Gottman, whose rigorous research and thinking on relationships I greatly respect.
Her book: Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/10/08/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, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes.
Woman's First Amendment Right Violated By Cops
She sees them stopping two young men while riding by on her bike, says "Fuck the police" and gives them the finger -- and they arrest her for it. She said they threw her in jail for 23 hours, some of which she spent in solitary confinement. She says that the cops said children heard what she sad, and gave as the reason for arresting her:
Well, I don't think the Constitution has a listener exemption, and also, Cohen v. California, 1971, the "Fuck the Draft" case, which went to the Supreme Court. From Oyez.org:
(Justice) Harlan recognized that "one man's vulgarity is another's lyric." In doing so, the Court protected two elements of speech: the emotive (the expression of emotion) and the cognitive (the expression of ideas).
Many of the watch commanders (the sergeant or lieutenant in charge of the station for a shift) at the precinct near me can barely sound out the noise laws. And I'm talking about a really complex law (I'm joking on the complexity) that is supposed to protect my neighbors and me and residents in general -- one that says that a commercial business within 500 feet of residences can have no amplified sound at any time.
That sound ambiguous and Chaucerian to you? It means that if the business plays a thumping beat that residents can hear in their beds from blocks away, that is illegal. (Personally, I don't care if people have orgies and light themselves on fire as long as it doesn't keep me from sleeping.)
But, back to the Constitution, a more complex document, I think cops around the country need to read and study it, because there's a near constant violation of people's rights -- especially their First Amendment rights -- by the police these days. Maybe those with reading comprehension skills some of the watch commanders at my precinct can have a special children's version of the Constitution -- like the Schoolhouse Rock spots -- that teaches them that no, "Fuck people's rights," isn't the way to go.
This was probably my introduction to government:
How Far Will Americans Let The TSA Go?
Complacent Americans already let unskilled government workers grope their balls and vaginas, entirely sans probable cause, in order to complete normal business travel or fly off to see Granny.
Recently, they started "testing" drinks at the gate -- drinks purchased in the terminal! (Is it their fault they're too busy checking some Alzheimer's patient's diaper to be concerned with the food deliveries to the airport?)
Gordan Runyan writes at FreedomOutpost about a poll InfoWars is preparing:
In light of increasingly egregious evidence of TSA abuse, Infowars has commissioned a professional polling agency to gauge the American public's perception of what exactly constitutes crossing-the-line behavior on behalf of the TSA, and to learn to what extent Americans are willing to give up their dignity and personal freedoms if told it was for the greater good. One question that we'll definitely ask is if Americans would be willing to submit to anal cavity probes. [Emphasis added.]
via @mpetrie98
The Reverse Brain Drain
Sam Gustin writes at TIME that we have an exodus of highly skilled immigrants from this country, and it's a problem:
United States policymakers are failing to address the departure from this country of tens of thousands of talented immigrants -- including engineers, doctors, lawyers and teachers. These highly-skilled workers are leaving the U.S. because they can't obtain permanent residency here. Outdated immigration laws and regulations, bureaucratic delays and partisan bickering have created a Kafka-esque situation where the U.S. is inexplicably telling the smartest immigrants to go home. In the midst of a hotly contested presidential race in which immigration is a key issue, forget about actual immigration reform anytime soon. As per usual, U.S. politicians are all talk, but no action.America's "immigrant exodus," as described by author Vivek Wadhwa, should be very alarming for a country built on the backs and minds of immigrants.
...As a result of this "reverse brain drain," as Wadhwa and his colleagues called it in earlier research on this topic, highly skilled workers and professionals are increasingly looking to other global markets to locate their businesses. "We're seeing a boom in technology entrepreneurship in India, China, and even Russia, because the U.S. won't let people stay here," Wadhwa told TIME. "Their first choice is to be here. They came here, they're working here, they want to stay here, but we won't give them visas."
This is a very bad trend for the U.S., especially at a time when we need to encourage and cultivate entrepreneurship and job creation at home. The toxic U.S. political climate -- partisan bickering, congressional inaction, and bureaucratic inertia -- have only worsened the problem. Both political parties are to blame -- and the over-arching debate over undocumented immigrant amnesty has all but ruled out progress during an election year. "Both the Democrats and the Republicans agree that we want the entrepreneurs, the scientists, the doctors, the researchers," says Wadhwa. "Everyone agrees that we want these people to stay. But there's a stalemate on the issue of amnesty for illegal workers."
"The Democrats won't let any legislation pass unless it solves the problem of the illegals," Wadhwa adds. "The Republicans won't let any legislation pass if it solves the problem of the illegals. It's a quagmire, because they refuse to agree with each other. It's two sides fighting each other mindlessly." Wadhwa says the United States Congress should pass a law reforming our immigration system that allows the most talented immigrant entrepreneurs, engineers, lawyers, doctors to gain U.S. citizenship. Until then, our cash-strapped education system is simply going to train these people, before we send them back home.
via @GaryShapiro @RichardFlorida
My Kinda Drone
Best dick joke in the comments wins absolutely nothing whatsoever, but we'll probably think you were cooler than we did yesterday.
Boo!
Shop kids' Halloween stuff at Amazon.
"Why Should Someone Have To Look A Certain Way...?"
Because that's the job at a "breastaurant" where servers are hotties in tiny kilts. Jennifer Rogers is complaining that she was denied a job at one for size reasons -- because she's too chunky to fit into the skirt.
From ABC News, David Schepp writes:
Jennifer Rogers (above, left) is among those who alleges that she was denied a job because she didn't have the right body type. Rogers applied at the Tilted Kilt Pub and Eatery in Palm Desert, Calif., but was rejected from job as a "Kilt Girl" when the restaurant's mandated "uniform" didn't fit, Rogers told KESQ in Palm Springs."Because the skirt was a size too small, they said that I could not work there," Rogers told the TV station. "I couldn't wear the uniform."
The restaurant, which is soon to reopen after a being closed for a year and a half, is one of 65 pubs with locations in 22 states and Canada. The Bakersfield Californian described the chain's theme as "a sports bar and restaurant that's sort of Hooters with a Scottish twist."
Waitresses for the Tempe, Ariz.-based chain are known as "Kilt Girls," and applicants for the position must "adhere to the established guidelines" and "maintain a costume fit, as detailed in the appearance guidelines." (The site also features a monthly Kilt Girl, photographed wearing a bikini as well as "current hobbies and goals" and "favorite pub menu item.")
The listing for jobs at the Palm Desert store noted, "We are entertainers first and servers second." But Rogers was simply looking for job, and questions why applicants have to look a certain way. "It's not fair," she said.
Everyone is not, as she says on the video "perfect the way they are." Not for a job like this.
There are other restaurants where you can be a big girl and waitress. She should get a job at one of them.
"Text Against Terror": Cutely Named Government Busywork
On the taxpayer dime, of course.
It's yet another worthless government program with a catchy name (you have to give all the overpaid government workers a reason to collect their paychecks, ya know).
Okay, so let's say you see a guy in a "Camp Bin Laden" T-shirt carrying a nuclear warhead in his truck. You're really going to pull your car over and tap out a little message with your finger? Assuming this even does happen -- unlikely -- wouldn't you, if you have an IQ above your age, dial 9-fucking-one-one?
Whole lot faster than texting "i 1/2 seen terrirsts," which your phone will promptly auto-correct into "i 1/2 turkey sandwich."
Oh yeah...and the story, from Judicial Watch (via @Drudge):
The U.S. government has blown nearly $6 million on an experimental "anti-terrorism" program in New Jersey that encourages the public to send tips via text message from their cellular phones.Since it was launched in mid-2011, the federally-funded "Text Against Terror" project has produced no credible tips, according to a local newspaper report that reveals the feds have poured $5.8 million into the initiative. Police in New Jersey claim 307 tips have been texted so far and that includes people "testing the system."
Of the 307 text messages, 71 "referred to something regarding homeland security," according to the New Jersey police chief quoted in the story. The majority of the 71 texts were investigated, the chief says, and "eliminated as a cause for concern." In other words, the costly program, funded with a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) public awareness grant, is a cash cow that's accomplished nothing.
The taxpayer dollars have paid for advertising time on local radio and television as well as fliers and ads on buses and trains. Other expenses include reserving a domain for unlimited texting capability. In a "rare instance" when a tip has required a follow-up, the New Jersey police chief says a state Joint Terrorism Task Force is available to get the job done. It includes state police, New Jersey's transit and port authority police and the FBI.
News of this disturbing waste of public funds for an ineffective homeland security program comes on the heels of a U.S. Senate report blasting a huge post-9/11 counterterrorism program that's received north of $300 million but hasn't provided any useful intelligence. Even scarier is that DHS has covered up the mess from both Congress and the public, according to the bi-partisan investigators who conducted the lengthy probe.
Next, they'll be probing our rectums in the name of stopping terrorism -- and we'll be funding that, too.
Despite the fact that we're all paying for this, I did find the bit about people "testing the system" amusing. (This means drunk dudes calling and ordering pizza and strippers.)
Why Don't Banks Face Criminal Charges Instead Of Civil Fines?
Nick Sorrentino makes good points at AgainstCronyCapitalism in reviewing John A. Allison's The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why Pure Capitalism is the World Economy’s Only Hope
Allison ... explains (about the FDIC) that many start-up banks, funded initially by friends and family of bankers, which then often offer relatively generous rates on certificates of deposit, would never happen (along with the failure of these highly leveraged banks on occasion) if it were not for the FDIC. Allison argues that no one would put their money in a highly leveraged startup bank without the backstop of the FDIC.Some would argue that this is a good thing. That it spurs the growth of smaller banks.
But Allison argues, and I agree with him, that the FDIC encourages recklessness by some banks, which then encourages even banks which would prefer to business in a conservative manor to go further out in terms of yield on cds and loan underwriting. This increases instability in the entire system.
Add in things like the Community Reinvestment Act, and the Patriot Act, Sarbanes Oxley, and now Dodd-Frank, and one has a bouillabaisse of bad banking practices codified by law.
Yet, for all this oversight, for all this regulation, the banks which act badly (and more importantly the leadership of these banks) just continue on. They pay civil fines when they are caught. But God forbid any bankers go to jail.
A good case in point is Wells Fargo. The government argues that Wells committed widespread FHA Insurance fraud in the early to mid 2000s. But guess what? No one is going to go to jail. After millions of dollars stolen from the US taxpayer Wells Fargo will pay a fine. A speeding ticket. The cost of doing business.
Now a guy who holds up a liquor store for $100 might go away for life, but $100 million? Fuggetaboutit. We're all on the same side right? The feds will wrap some C-suite knuckles and life will go on. The leadership won't even have to pay anything out of pocket, the banks have insurance for that.
Nobody's Mom
You know you're an un-mom when you see a photo of somebody's ultrasound posted on Facebook and you aren't sure at first whether it's a picture of a baby or a tornado.
Going Outside While Black Or Latino And Living In NYC
It is so important that we have and use our right to record the police. In some jurisdictions, there have been prosecutions for this under "wiretapping" laws. From New York City, here's a recording of a stop-and-frisk that shows shocking abuse by the police:
Via Lisa Simeone, Ross Tuttle and Erin Schneider write at The Nation:
Exclusive audio obtained by The Nation of a stop-and-frisk carried out by the New York Police Department freshly reveals the discriminatory and unprofessional way in which this controversial policy is being implemented on the city's streets.On June 3, 2011, three plainclothes New York City Police officers stopped a Harlem teenager named Alvin, and two of the officers questioned and frisked him while the third remained in their unmarked car. Alvin secretly captured the interaction on his cell phone, and the resulting audio is one of the only known recordings of stop-and-frisk in action.
In the course of the two-minute recording, the officers give no legally valid reason for the stop, use racially charged language, and threaten Alvin with violence. Early in the stop, one of the officers asks, "You want me to smack you?" When Alvin asks why he is being threatened with arrest, the other officer responds, "For being a fucking mutt." Later in the stop, while holding Alvin's arm behind his back, the first officer says, "Dude, I'm gonna break your fuckin' arm, then I'm gonna punch you in the fuckin' face."
"He grabbed me by my bookbag and he started pushing me down. So I'm going backwards like down the hill and he just kept pushing me, pushing me, it looked like he we was going to hit me," Alvin recounts. "I felt like they was trying to make me resist or fight back."
Alvin's treatment at the hands of the officers may be disturbing but it is not uncommon. According to their own stop-and-frisk data, the NYPD stops more than 1,800 New Yorkers a day. A New York Times analysis recently determined that more than 20 percent of those stops involve the use of force. And these are only the numbers that the Department records. Anecdotal evidence suggests both figures are much higher.
Law prof Jonathan Turley blogs:
There is no indication by the NYPD of any punishment for the officers, though it generally takes public pressure to force departments to act on such YouTube videos. It is yet another example of how important these videos have become to deterring police abuse despite the efforts by prosecutors like Anita Alvarez in Chicago to arrest citizens recording officers.For a prior column, click here. As discussed in prior columns and blogs, police across the country have been arresting citizens who film them -- a clear abuse of their rights and an effort to prevent citizens from creating incriminating videotapes increasingly used against police.
This trend has continued (here) despite court rulings in favor of citizens.
Politicians have done little to reaffirm the rights of citizens in these cases and officers are rarely subject to discipline for such arrests.
Charting The Presidency: Obama's "Dismal Failure On Jobs," Pictured
Via Crid, a post by Dan Mitchell laying out job creation levels by various presidents -- Obama barely makes it onto the chart, with just a tiny sliver at the bottom. And even Jimmy Carter made it on the chart.
Mitchell writes about Obama:
He promised unemployment would never climb above 8 percent if Congress squandered $800 billion on a Keynesian stimulus scheme.Well, Congress said yes and the results have not been pretty. And every month we get new numbers to show us that the Administration's policies have failed. It's like Chinese water torture for the White House.
The numbers released this morning from the Department of Labor don't change the narrative. The Republican and Democratic spin-doctors obviously will spit out their talking points, but here's a visual put together by Political Math that trumps all the political maneuvering. If you're wondering where Obama is, look at the lower left portion of the image.
The Wars On Civil Liberties, But By More Palatable Names
"The Drug War" and the "War On Terror" sound good. Ominous. Protective. Important.
They have to, or we would be less likely to give up our civil liberties so easily.
But, the government has no business whatsoever telling you what plants you may or may not consume. This should be your right as a person. What they can do, and what I support, is stopping you from, say, flying a bi-plane into somebody's roof while high off your ass.
The government also has no business ever searching a citizen without probable cause -- without reasonable suspicion that citizen has committed or will commit a crime.
The fact that you need to take a plane to a conference or a concert or wherever does not constitute probable cause. Not unless there's evidence that it's an al Qaeda conference.
But, these days Americans give up their civil liberties like they're being asked the time.
To probably a whole lot of people, this doesn't seem dangerous -- but it is. The more we give up civil liberties, the more that can be taken from us.
Why Higher Ed Is So Stratospherically Priced
From the WSJ:
In Wednesday night's Massachusetts debate, GOP Senator Scott Brown had the audacity to suggest that more taxpayer subsidies for college education may simply transfer wealth to colleges--and their faculty.The fun began when Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren, a law professor at Harvard, attacked Mr. Brown for voting against the umpteenth Senate bill to expand student-loan subsidies. According to the New York Times, Mr. Brown responded that "she makes $350,000 to teach one course" and received a no-interest loan from Harvard. This, he added, is "one of the driving forces behind the high costs of education."
Rising federal subsidies have allowed colleges to raise their prices, pocketing the increased aid that is allegedly intended to help students.
Jim Lehrer As An Angry Schoolmarm
Moderating the shit out of the debate:
via @JeffreyGoldberg
Singing In The Rain
No need to go all uglyfoot just because it's raining.
Here are some stylish Nomad
I thought of them because it was raining when I was getting dressed on Thursday morning, so I used the opportunity to wear the kitten-heeled Tamara Henriques rain-boots I got at the Santa Monica Salvation Army. (Unfortunately, they don't have them at Amazon.) 
For Even More Levity Than The Unintentionally Hilarious Joe Biden
Ken Layne, who accidentally invented live-blogging, and Choire Sicha, are liveblogging the debate at The Awl. Oh, on a self-promotional note, I will also probably be tweeting immature and snarly remarks at @amyalkon.
Newsweek or maybe TIME put up some anemic post about their liveblogging. Lots of outlets are. Yawn.
Sorry, kittens, Layne's already got you beat before it even starts with the funniest post about live-blogging the debate (links within are live at the link):
When Joe Biden andZombie Ayn RandPaul Ryan begin their televised debate Thursday night, hundreds of professional media employees will be "liveblogging" the proceedings for hundreds of topical websites, from the New York Times to (maybe?) PerezHilton.com. Millions of otherwise sane humans will turn on the television and then frantically reload the websites of their favorite bloggers while simultaneously making their own jokes on Twitter, Facebook and probably in the comments of the aforementioned websites. After digesting and processing thousands of one-liners and spot reactions and weird jokes about the candidates' genitalia, the now-informed electorate will "pick the best candidate," which is a fake Big Bird account on Twitter.The founding fathers, obviously, had exactly this process in mind when they made slavery legal. But political liveblogging did not actually begin with Thomas Jefferson's giant reptilian tongue lolling around his bound, metal-bikini-clad slave girls. It is a more recent invention--and if I can be believed, then liveblogging as we know it was my accidental invention, three presidential elections ago, all because my employer (a liberal media outlet published by a conservative tycoon's namesake endowment) didn't foresee a reason to procure press credentials for my coverage of the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. Credentials for the Democratic convention in Los Angeles should be enough, right? It wasn't like George W. Bush was going to defeat Al Gore.
And so, on a terrible rainy evening in a motel at the very edge of Philadelphia, I had no choice but to use the new "Blogger" software on my personal website to write a frequently updated, timestamped collection of cheap jokes and ill-informed instant analysis and then post this disjointed mess on my own "web log," because of course Annenberg's Online Journalism Review published its web articles on a strict twice-a-week schedule.
The Idiocy Of Teaching Kids "Stranger Danger"
Great points in this column by Lisa Gibalerio on Belmont Patch, noting that we adults violate the rule on a daily basis, talking about the weather to the cashier, talking to dog owners about how cute their puppy is -- while telling kids not to talk to strangers.
Gavin de Becker, author of Protecting the Gift, argues that "stranger danger" is a dangerous maxim for several reasons. Most importantly, the "Never Talk to Strangers" message implies that strangers may harm you, but people you know will not. Abuse statistics make it clear that the opposite is far more often true: it is the known entity in a child's life who often inflicts the harm - the coach, the step-uncle, etc.
"The list of violently inclined predatory criminals defeated because a parent told his/her child not to talk to strangers isn't long enough to be called a list at all." said de Becker.
De Becker instead strongly encourages parents to instruct their children to approach strangers in controlled situations. I have followed his advice and regularly requested, when my kids were little, that they approach strangers to find out the time, or to learn when a park closes, or where the nearest ice cream shop is. De Becker advises that both adults and children need to hone instincts around detecting real versus perceived dangers.
In other words, it is not "strangers" per se who are the real issue, but strangeness. We need to be attentive to that which makes us feel uncomfortable. And one accessible way to obtain a sense of who is trustworthy, in this vast world of strangers, is by interacting with all kinds of people and developing a sense of intuition. De Becker posits that kids who are more comfortable interacting with strangers are less likely to be victims than children taught never to talk to strangers.
The other problem with "stranger danger" education is that it's not effective in achieving its goal. According to Ken Wooden, author of Child Lures
, children who receive "stranger danger" education are just as likely to inappropriately interact with strangers than children who do not receive the education.
In fact, there is an episode of Oprah that demonstrates this exact point. The show's producer approached various kids in a park to solicit their help in finding his lost puppy. It took the average child just 35 seconds to eagerly follow this "stranger" out of the park in search of Fido. The mothers, who watched in horror as their kids skipped away, insisted to Oprah that their children had been taught to never do exactly what they had just done.
...Ironically, when kids are small, it is usually a stranger who is most often a great help in reuniting lost children with frantic parents, should they become separated.
Bottom-line: we should teach our kids to discern a dangerous stranger from an innocuous stranger. We should teach our kids that sometimes people they know intend harm. We should teach kids to pay attention to a gut feeling when something feels wrong. And we should come up with a better name for this kind of education than "stranger danger."
via @freerangekids
Diversity Drivel
University of Texas/Austin president Bill Powers argues for affirmative action in the WSJ:
Diversity isn't only acceptable but desirable in all aspects of life, especially education. In my 38 years in the classroom, I often have seen how a diverse classroom enriches discussion, provides valuable insights and offers a deeper learning experience. After all, how can a homogenous environment prepare students to be effective citizens of a diverse world?
Of course, he's talking about diverse skin colors, but the black kids I grew up with (all of whom seemed to come from wealthier backgrounds than mine) weren't exactly the suburban equivalent of foreign exchange students from Africa. Quite the contrary.
Hans Bader at OpenMarket puts this well:
In practice, the use of race to promote "diversity" is based on racial stereotypes about people of different races and the stereotyped assumption people of different races think differently. Taken to its logical extreme, it leads to the proliferation of "diversity trainers" who promote offensive racial stereotypes.For example, Glenn Singleton, a wealthy "diversity" trainer, has claimed that "white talk" is "impersonal, intellectual, verbal" and "task-oriented," while "color commentary" is "emotional." If a white person said this, it would rightly be regarded as a ridiculous, racist stereotype that relegates black people to inferior status.
...Commentary has focused on whether the University of Texas' racial preferences in admissions violate the Constitution's equal protection clause. Often overlooked is they violate the plain language of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. 2000d, which prohibits use of race by institutions that receive federal funds.
Title VI provides that "No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." Texas' racial preferences also violate 42 U.S.C. 1981, which prohibits racial discrimination in contracts.
You want diverse? Admit financially disadvantaged people of whatever color -- or rather, take their disadvantage into account in the admissions process.
Of course, what's really missing on campuses -- per Greg Lukianoff's excellent Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate
Heavy Meddle: California Regulators Try To Kill Ride-Sharing
Matthew Yglesias writes on Slate:
Sidecar, a Bay Area "ride sharing" service that connects people who'd like to go somewhere with people who'd like to get some gas money from passengers, has raised $10 million in VC funding despite getting hit with a cease-and-desist order. At the moment the legal dispute is (inevitable) over whether Sidecar is illegal because it "did not have the proper permits and authority to operate a car service" or whether "because the company merely provides the communication tools to connect drivers and riders, it is legal."As with Uber and its various legal issues, the real question is whether it should be illegal.
For a long time now, basically every jurisdiction in the United States has had a policy of promoting car ownership via subjecting personal vehicles to a much lower regulatory standard than alternative means of getting around. You can buy a van if you want to. And getting a license to drive a van is pretty easy. But getting a permit to drive a van around town giving rides to people in exchange for money is extremely difficult, if not impossible. Then alongside this thicket of artificial scarcity of cabs and bans on fixed-route intracity bus and van operation, most American cities offer some desultory publicly owned mass transit operations. But the overall idea is pretty clear--everyone should own a car and drive it around almost all the time, while rich tourists or visiting businessmen grab the occasional cab from the airport.
From the NYT, how state regulators are trying to shut ridesharing down:
Despite the new money, which will help the company expand beyond its home base in the Bay Area and double its staff from 20 to 40, the company still has to contend with state regulators in California who are trying to shut it down.Mr. Paul said that the California Public Utilities Commission, which handles public transportation issues, was mischaracterizing the way the company operates. The commission maintainedin its order in August that Sidecar did not have the proper permits and authority to operate a car service. Mr. Paul says that because the company merely provides the communication tools to connect drivers and riders, it is legal. In addition, he said, payment is optional and donation-based.
"We're simply letting the community organize its own transportation," Mr. Paul said.
In a blog post, Sidecar said it was talking to the commission and would continue to operate as it did so.
Sidecar isn't the only start-up wrestling with regulators over the legality of its services. Other ride-sharing companies, including Lyft and Tickengo, recently received cease-and-desist orders from the state of California. In addition, Uber, a start-up that lets people summon a car service or taxi through a mobile application, has been grappling with taxi lobbyists and officials pushing back against the company and its expansion across the country.
If I choose to ride with you, it's the government's business why?
Govt. Workers On Foreign Soil: "Are All Of Our People Sitting Ducks?"
Shep Smith and Rick Nelson on Libya and the ONE American security guard we had for the our Ambassador to Libya:
Mother Of Slain State Dept. Official Being Stonewalled By Obama Admin
Obama, Hillary, and Joe Biden all promised her information about what happened to her son in the attack on the American Embassy in Libya on September 11. Nothing still. Except, that is, for "outright lies" from Susan Rice and the rest -- blaming "The Innocence of Muslims," for example
The "Spiritual" Are Often The Least "Evolved"
On Sunday, I open this email (I've removed the name of the sender) and glance at the contents:
Hi Amy, I am interested in being a guest on your radio show. I am a published author, spiritual teacher, motivational speaker, life and wellness coach, and authority on alternative medicine and transpersonal psychology. You can read a synopsis of my new book here: URL removed.
You can read my bio here: URL removed.
If you are interested in possibly having me as a guest I'll be happy to email you a complimentary PDF copy of my new book.
Thank you for considering my request.
Very gratefully,
NAME REMOVED
Sounds like woo -- entirely wrong for me and for a show called "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
Still, the guy wrote me personally, so I decide to click the link and see in order to write something brief but at least slightly substantive back.
I think it's nice, if somebody's taken the time to send me a personal email, to send them some sort of reply. I do miss some emails people send me, but I really do try to respond to all of them (and not miss any requests for advice).
Grrr. His site doesn't come up. Neither link works.
So, I Google his name and find "astrology" as one of his pursuits. (He might as well have advertised himself to be an expert in "ridiculous, bullshit that there's no evidence for," but I put it more politely than that in my email back to him.)
I write:
On Oct 7, 2012, at 2:39 PM, Amy Alkon wrote:Thanks - your site isn't coming up but I googled you and you seem to be into astrology and other non-science-based stuff, which is the opposite of the focus of my show.
Best wishes, -Amy
I get this back:
Hi Amy,Thank you for your reply.
There's nothing wrong with my site. It is fine. Was on the day you were trying to go there.
Secondly, I am not "in to astrology" as your egoic mind has so filthily and demeaningly projected upon me. I have actually studied the subject in great depth for 24 years. How many years have you put into the study?
Thirdly, I am all about science: Your pre-programmed "non-science" filter makes you appear to me as if you are a robot, and nothing more. If you accepted my gracious request to read a free book that has an entire chapter devoted to theoretical physics, you would be open to learning that...
but apparently you are not.
Fourthly, there is nothing "best wishes" about your email. You are obviously denigrating me because of your "expert and educated" opinions on something you know nothing about.
Know this: you are in a dying field.
Again, all part of the, your, egoic mind.
NAME REMOVED
Yes, my "egoic mind." (Who talks this way?!)
Regarding the "free" copy of his self-published book, I asked a dear friend, a biographer, to print out all 300 or 400 pages of his last book manuscript when he wanted my comments on it before it went to his publisher. He mailed me the pages. Probably cost him 10 or 15 bucks.
I didn't do this because I'm a mean person who likes to cost her friends money but because I'm staring into a computer screen all day.
That said, I, too, like to send PDFs to people if I can to save money. Some people will want a hard copy. No problem! I send one to them -- instead of angry email.
I was compelled to dash off a reply to the guy:
Classy reply.Because something is free does not make it of value to me. I get many free books every week -- mailed to me by publishers. Some of them are on-topic for me; many are not.
Rather than simply deleting your email, in hopes of letting you know that it's a waste of time to email me further, I politely told you that I do not cover astrology and other non-science-based topics.
Phil Plait has the topic covered quite well: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/astrology.html
And I signed "best wishes," because, until you wrote me back a nasty email, I wished you the best.
Now I just wish you weren't such a jerk.
Go away wishes, -Amy Alkon>
My friend Terry wanted me to call my column "Amy Alkon, Opinionated Bitch," but I worried that it would keep me out of papers. Still, I'm proud to be a bitch, when called for, which is why I don't go around calling myself "spiritual" -- which would make me hurl all over my shoes.
But, speaking of bitches, here's the "spiritual" guy's response:
On the defensive from the get go.No, "non-topics don't apply" because your pain-body (conventional psychology doesn't even acknowledge this) is addicted to pain, and suffering.
"Mailed to me by publishers" is a very lame excuse.
"In hopes of letting me know" is your ego's attempt at reparing itself and making itself "anew." Nothing more.
There is nothing polite about you. You are crude to the bone.
Again, you are defensive. What are you defending?
A jerk? You wish I were. But guess what? You are nothing but a mirror my my Self.
--NAME WITHHELD
Oh, snap.
Love that this guy tosses around terms like "compassion," "divine selves," "the sacred feminine," "evolved," and "kundalini awakening" in his work.
I'm reminded of my sister (who has spent some time "new age"-adjacent) telling me that some of these "new age" people who profess to be "spiritual," etc., are some of the biggest, most hostile buttholes out there.
I decide to end things on a civil note:
A suggestion: When people don't want what you do, don't write them back and argue with them about it.It's one reason it's good to hire a PR person -- so you don't take rejections so personally.
I don't believe in astrology. Hearing that is an indication that you should move on, not write me that I have ego issues, etc.
-Amy Alkon
He sends me yet another email!
BTW: did you even bother going to my website???Not only don't you believe in astrology, you don't "believe" in anything. Why? Because you are open to no-thing.
And what does that make you? Umm...A robot?
Maybe I just haven't had my kundalini awakening.
"The Innocence Of Muslims"? Try "The Guilt Of Terrorists"
It seems the State Department has now pulled back on yet another one of their claims -- the convenient one that the murderous Muslims who slaughtered Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were motivated by the amateurishly made YouTube trailer. From the HuffPo:
The deadly September attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya was not precipitated by an anti-American protest, as had originally been reported, the State Department disclosed Tuesday night. According to reports from ABC and the Associated Press, the State Department now acknowledges that "gunfire and explosions near the front gate" were the first signs of danger precipitating the attacks that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.This revelation stands in contrast to the story originally reported by the Obama administration and others, who claimed that a protest against the anti-Islam film "The Innocence of Muslims" outside the American consulate was co-opted by violent extremists.
See the chronology of the attack at the link.
Arrogance
Obama apparently took time out of debate prep to visit the Hoover Dam the day before his face-to-face with Romney.
Unemployment Figures: Somebody's Come Down With A Stats Infection
Jack Welch writes in the WSJ, "I Was Right About That Strange Jobs Report: The economy would need to be growing at breakneck speed for unemployment to drop to 7.8% from 8.3% in the course of two months."
How did they come up with these figures?
Well, they pulled them out of the area that the colonoscopy thingie goes up, obviously.
People are not rushing out to spend money, far as anyone can see or report; they're trying to figure out how to get that bag of discounted beans a little discountier. In Welch's words:
Let's get real. The unemployment data reported each month are gathered over a one-week period by census workers, by phone in 70% of the cases, and the rest through home visits. In sum, they try to contact 60,000 households, asking a list of questions and recording the responses.Some questions allow for unambiguous answers, but others less so. For instance, the range for part-time work falls between one hour and 34 hours a week. So, if an out-of-work accountant tells a census worker, "I got one baby-sitting job this week just to cover my kid's bus fare, but I haven't been able to find anything else," that could be recorded as being employed part-time.
...Bottom line: To suggest that the input to the BLS data-collection system is precise and bias-free is--well, let's just say, overstated.
(BLS is Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
Even if the BLS had a perfect process, the context surrounding the 7.8% figure still bears serious skepticism. Consider the following:In August, the labor-force participation rate in the U.S. dropped to 63.5%, the lowest since September 1981. By definition, fewer people in the workforce leads to better unemployment numbers. That's why the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1% in August from 8.3% in July.
Meanwhile, we're told in the BLS report that in the months of August and September, federal, state and local governments added 602,000 workers to their payrolls, the largest two-month increase in more than 20 years. And the BLS tells us that, overall, 873,000 workers were added in September, the largest one-month increase since 1983, during the booming Reagan recovery.
These three statistics--the labor-force participation rate, the growth in government workers, and overall job growth, all multidecade records achieved over the past two months--have to raise some eyebrows.
...The reality is the economy is experiencing a weak recovery. Everything points to that, particularly the overall employment level, which is 143 million people today, compared with 146 million people in 2007.
Note the increase in government workers. We have people employed by the state, hoovering up citizens' autonomy and their tax dollars for the state, regulating everyone to death (all the better to justify their jobs), and making it harder and harder to open or run a business.
Ultimately, we'll have about five people -- five very weary entrepreneurs -- that we put through numerous business-crushing hoops while expecting them to feed, clothe, and house the rest of the country.
Welcome to the United States of Freeloadia.
You Know What They Say...Empty Suit, Empty Shoes
Photo by Phil Miller.
TSA's Pink Gloves, Breast Cancer, And Pinksploitation
Lisa Simeone is right on with this at TSANewsBlog:
"It's always better to be sexually assaulted with pretty colors, don't you think?"
They're for National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. A lot of people like to see all these corporations and entities "pinking up."
BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin (@xeni), who has breast cancer and has courageously and movingly tweeted about what she's gone through, calls this "pinksploitation."
Some of her tweets on this are here.
More from today:
@xeni
For those of us with breast cancer, #pinknausea says: "Aww. You're dying, isn't that adorable?"@xeni
#Pinknausea is what you get when you combine condescending sexism with a lack of empathy, and ignorance around a fatal disease.@xeni
Don't talk pink to me.@xeni
The response to breast cancer should be more like response to AIDS in the 90s. Righteous fucking anger. Truth. This disease kills people.@xeni
Breast cancer is a disease, not an accessory, as @davidkroll said. #PinkNausea@xeni
Breast cancer is fear. Mutilation. Loss. Torture. pinksploitation transforms in public mind into a cute cartoon that clowns & kittens get.@xeni
Point of sale at a Vons Starbucks just prompted "WOULD YOU LIKE TO MAKE A DONATION TO BREAST CANCER?" Thanks, I donated a breast already.
End The Electoral College
Jonathan Turley writes in an USA Today op-ed about "our continued inexplicable use of the Electoral College":
In the U.S., presidents are not elected by the people but by 538 "electors" who award blocks of votes on a state-by-state basis. The result is that presidents can be -- and have been -- elected with fewer votes than their opponents. Indeed, various presidents have taken office with less than 50% of the vote. The question is whether a president should be elected by a majority of voters of at least one free country before he can call himself the leader of the free world.The Electoral College is a relic of a time when the Framers believed that average people could not be trusted with selecting a president, at least not entirely. This was consistent with a general view of the dangers of direct voting systems. Until 1913, U.S. senators were elected not by their constituents but by the state legislators. When we finally got rid of that provision with the 17th Amendment, we failed to change its sister provision in Article II on the indirect election of presidents.
...The greatest irony of the Electoral College is that it does precisely the opposite of what the Framers intended: Rather than encouraging presidential candidates to take small states seriously, it results in turning most states into near total irrelevancies. With our two-party monopoly on power in the United States, candidates spend little time, if any, in states that are clearly going to go for the other party -- or even for their own party. Thus, there is little reason for President Obama to go to Utah or for Mitt Romney to go to Vermont. The result is that elections are dominated by swing states while campaigns become dominated by the issues affecting those states.
...The reason that the Electoral College is still with us is that it is a critical protection for the two-party monopoly on power in the USA. The Democrats and Republicans effectively keep presidential candidates of the opposing party out of their states -- deterring the expenditure of time and money in organizing these states.
Paternity Fraud Didn't Pay In Tennessee
From Insurance Journal:
The Tennessee Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a man who was misled into thinking he was a father and ordered the child's mother to reimburse him more than $25,000 for child support, medical expenses and insurance premiums he had paid.In a unanimous ruling, the court said Tennessee law allows a former spouse to pursue a fraud claim against a mother who intentionally misrepresented the identity of a child's biological father.
...The decision overturned an appellate court decision that had said state law didn't allow Craig to collect damages equal to support he had paid for the child.
Men are denied the most basic rights in these cases. It's time this changes in every state.
via ifeminists
One YMCA, Five Different Dressing Rooms
Lenore Skenazy at Free Range Kids on predator paranoia. She recently toured the new Y near her and found, to her surprise, that it had five different dressing rooms -- one for men, one for women, one for boys, one for girls, and a family dressing room:
What a waste of space! Then there was a large sign above the men's dressing room that read, "No one under 18 allowed in this dressing room." Perhaps the women's dressing room had the same sign above it but I didn't notice. Either way, is this ridiculous or what?!Goodness gracious, back in the 1960s, the city swimming pool I just about lived at as a youngster had a large OPEN area in each dressing room where both children and adults got dressed. So boys could be naked and men could be naked in front of each other....eeegads! Same with the showers. It was the same setup in the women/girls' locker room. Let me emphasize here folks that no kid was scarred for life from seeing a grown man's genitals! That type of concern was unimaginable back then. No one cared or was shocked at who they saw with their clothes completely off because it was a DRESSING room, for crying out loud!
Now I can understand the family dressing room concept because a 5-year-old girl, for example, who is accompanied by only her father might be too young to be on her own in the girls' dressing room BUT might be a bit too old for the boys' dressing room so a family dressing room solves that dilemma. But separate dressing rooms for all children under 18, and adults, is taking paranoia to a new level in MY opinion.
Rube Cokeberg
It's a commercial of sorts but I love the machine they built.
Don't Drink And Design
Miss Sixty accident in the shape of a jacket, seen on eBay.
Islam Requires Moral Reform, Not Political Reform
Daniel Greenfield writes at the Gatestone Institute:
Obama had advocated political reform for Egypt as early as his first anti-war speech in 2002. Ten years later the ashes of the Arab Spring are fluttering over American embassies and consulates. Mitt Romney has proposed economic reform instead of political reform as his prescription for change, but it is not likely that reforming Muslim economies will work any better than reforming their governments did.As in the fable of the blind men and the elephant, each of our blind doctors steps up to feel the ten-ton elephant of Muslim violence and offers his proposed philosophical cure. The blindness of the doctors is in their Western preconceptions which prevent them from seeing the huge beast as anything but a conglomerate of familiar parts. One of the blind doctors sees a lack of democracy and another sees a lack of free enterprise, and they prescribe what they think is lacking in the Muslim world.
Their false sense of familiarity with the Muslim world, akin to the linguistic false friends that deceive us into thinking that a familiar foreign word is the counterpart of a word in our own language, leads them to see the East as the West with a few missing spots that need to be filled in. But the Muslim world cannot be fixed by attempting to graft on a few Western institutions; if it were that easy then British and French colonialism would have already fixed the Middle East.
The Muslim world is not in need of political reform; or rather it has no ability to make any meaningful use of such reforms. Trying to cut open the Muslim world to insert some tubes of democracy inside it is as futile and destructive as trying to run 13th Century England by the legal and moral standards of 21st Century England. The results would have been much the same as those of the equivalent modern attempts in the Muslim world.
What the Muslim world needs is moral reform, not political reform. Without moral reform, political reform empowers the people to be at their worst while they take refuge in the magical thinking that justice will come from an Islamic order, rather than from accountable government and common ethics.
Moral reform is not a problem that can be solved on a timetable or seen through a microscope. It cannot be exported by armies or achieved through social media protests. The Muslim world's problems cannot be solved by Western professionals promoting reform or integration. They can only be solved by Muslims taking moral responsibility for their own behavior.
Your Right To Resell Your Stuff May Be In Jeopardy
Via Jay J. Hector, Jennifer Waters writes at Marketwatch that the first-sale doctrine in copyright law is being challenged in a case scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court. This doctrine allows you to buy and sell things like books, art work, CDs, DVDs and an old desk without getting permission from the copyright holders on these items:
Under the doctrine, which the Supreme Court has recognized since 1908, you can resell your stuff without worry because the copyright holder only had control over the first sale.Put simply, though Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has the copyright on the iPhone and Mark Owen has it on the book "No Easy Day," you can still sell your copies to whomever you please whenever you want without retribution.
That's being challenged now for products that are made abroad, and if the Supreme Court upholds an appellate court ruling, it would mean that the copyright holders of anything you own that has been made in China, Japan or Europe, for example, would have to give you permission to sell it.
...The case stems from Supap Kirtsaeng's college experience. A native of Thailand, Kirtsaeng came to America in 1997 to study at Cornell University. When he discovered that his textbooks, produced by Wiley, were substantially cheaper to buy in Thailand than they were in Ithaca, N.Y., he rallied his Thai relatives to buy the books and ship them to him in the United States.
He then sold them on eBay, making upward of $1.2 million, according to court documents.
Wiley, which admitted that it charged less for books sold abroad than it did in the United States, sued him for copyright infringement. Kirtsaeng countered with the first-sale doctrine.
In August 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a lower court's ruling that anything that was manufactured overseas is not subject to the first-sale principle. Only American-made products or "copies manufactured domestically" were.
"That's a non-free-market capitalistic idea for something that's pretty fundamental to our modern economy," Ammori commented.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on the case on Oct. 29.
Both Ammori and Band worry that a decision in favor of the lower court would lead to some strange, even absurd consequences. For example, it could become an incentive for manufacturers to have everything produced overseas because they would be able to control every resale.
Wiley is acting like a bully and should either change its pricing overseas or suck it up when an enterprising college student realizes he can put himself not only through college but into a mansion and a yacht by reselling their textbooks.
Furthermore, say this law is passed. Are we now going to have cops going around to garage sales to see if somebody's got an old ELO CD for sale?
More on the case on SCOTUSBlog:
Issue: How do Section 602(a)(1) of the Copyright Act, which prohibits the importation of a work without the authority of the copyright's owner, and Section 109(a) of the Copyright Act, which allows the owner of a copy "lawfully made under this title" to sell or otherwise dispose of the copy without the copyright owner's permission, apply to a copy that was made and legally acquired abroad and then imported into the United States?
The Downside Of Affirmative Action: Racial Preferences Hurt Those They're Intended To Help
Richard Sander, a law professor at UCLA, and Stuart Taylor Jr., a journalist and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, are of the mind that schools are hurting those they're trying to help when they admit unqualified minorities. They write in the LAT:
In recent years, scholars have started to do careful empirical research on whether preferences actually help their intended recipients. When the dispute shifts from "is it fair?" to "does it work?" -- thus changing the focus from ideology to evidence -- open-minded people can make progress toward consensus.Much of this new research is on the idea of "mismatch" -- on what happens after a student is admitted to a school for which he or she is only marginally qualified. (It is common for colleges to accept black applicants with SAT scores several hundred points below those generally required for Asian or white applicants.) In general, however, studies have found that students tend to learn less if they are surrounded by peers with much stronger academic preparation.
Some 40% of black students entering college, for example, say they expect to major in science or engineering. But when they get to schools where most of the other students are better prepared -- with much higher SAT scores and more rigorous high school course work -- the chance of failure is high. Although some racial preference recipients rise to the challenge and perform better than ever, research finds that most tend to be overwhelmed and move to easier majors.
These are serious concerns. A raft of recent studies has found that students often fail to thrive if they are admitted to colleges for which they're far less prepared than their fellow students, and this holds true whether the preferences under which they were admitted were based on race (as are most very large preferences) or any other factor. Students admitted to schools under such programs are 30% to 40% less likely to get science degrees; they are twice as likely to fail the bar exam after law school; and they are likely to have less social interaction across racial lines.
These numbers are not comparing preference recipients with their better-qualified peers; they are comparing preference students with otherwise similar students who go to very good but less elite schools where they are better matched.
Another Reason Not To Fear Bacon
I've written about this before -- the nitrate/nitrite myth. Chris Kresser takes it on on his blog:
The belief that nitrates and nitrates cause serious health problems has been entrenched in popular consciousness and media....In fact, the study that originally connected nitrates with cancer risk and caused the scare in the first place has since been discredited after being subjected to a peer review. There have been major reviews of the scientific literature that found no link between nitrates or nitrites and human cancers, or even evidence to suggest that they may be carcinogenic. Further, recent research suggests that nitrates and nitrites may not only be harmless, they may be beneficial, especially for immunity and heart health.
...It may surprise you to learn that the vast majority of nitrate/nitrite exposure comes not from food, but from endogenous sources within the body. (1) In fact, nitrites are produced by your own body in greater amounts than can be obtained from food, and salivary nitrite accounts for 70-90% of our total nitrite exposure. In other words, your spit contains far more nitrites than anything you could ever eat.
When it comes to food, vegetables are the primary source of nitrites. On average, about 93% of nitrites we get from food come from vegetables. It may shock you to learn that one serving of arugula, two servings of butter lettuce, and four servings of celery or beets all have more nitrite than 467 hot dogs. (2) And your own saliva has more nitrites than all of them! So before you eliminate cured meats from your diet, you might want to address your celery intake. And try not to swallow so frequently.
All humor aside, there's no reason to fear nitrites in your food, or saliva. Recent evidence suggests that nitrites are beneficial for immune and cardiovascular function; they are being studied as a potential treatment for hypertension, heart attacks, sickle cell and circulatory disorders. Even if nitrites were harmful, cured meats are not a significant source, as the USDA only allows 120 parts per million in hot dogs and bacon. Also, during the curing process, most of the nitrite forms nitric oxide, which binds to iron and gives hot dogs and bacon their characteristic pink color. Afterwards, the amount of nitrite left is only about 10 parts per million.
And if you think you can avoid nitrates and nitrites by eating so-called "nitrite- and nitrate-free" hot dogs and bacon, don't be fooled. These products use "natural" sources of the same chemical like celery and beet juice and sea salt, and are no more free from nitrates and nitrites than standard cured meats. In fact, they may even contain more nitrates and nitrites when cured using "natural" preservatives.
Advice Goddess Radio: Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Dr. Sue Johnson On The Emotional Underpinnings Of Love -- The Simple, Research-Driven Key To Making Love Stay
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
My guest tonight is clinical psychologist Dr. Sue Johnson, Ph.D., on how understanding the emotional underpinnings of relationships can help you save or vastly improve your relationship. Dr. Johnson has done groundbreaking, research-driven work in this area, endorsed by marriage researcher Dr. John Gottman, whose rigorous research and thinking on relationships I greatly respect.
Her book: Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love
Listen live at this link at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/10/08/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And don't miss last week's show with 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 lays out fascinating and solid evidence throughout the show.)
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 debunks all the myths most of us hold about exercise and fitness, and leaves 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.
At the end of the show, we also touch 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.
Listen live at this link or download:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/10/01/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.
Who Should Pay? Anybody But The Pregnant Woman
Alissa Quart writes in the NYT about the difficulties for pregnant women in getting hired (about why women hide their pregnancies while looking for a job):
Of course, employers can be put in a bind when workers take maternity time, and keeping a pregnant woman on the payroll can be an economic drag, especially if companies offer decent paid leaves. We might want to consider easing the burden on employers by offering a tax credit.But the most important reason to end discrimination against pregnant women has to do with what kind of society we want to live in. We can admit that pregnant workers may be less profitable employees than nonpregnant workers in the short term, yet choose to value aspects of life beyond economic productivity.
You can feel free to value them, but for a person running a business, let's take the example of a pregnant woman who is single and will be raising the kid herself. That woman is likely to leaving at 4 and having all sorts of non-work stuff to deal with at work -- far more than someone who isn't the primary parent or who isn't a parent at all (especially).
Highest Ranking Member Of House Science Committee: Evolution, Embryology, Big Bang Theory Are "Lies Straight From The Pit Of Hell"
Congressman Paul Broun, an MD, said so at a banquet at Liberty Baptist Church (more here at the HuffPo). He believes the earth is 9,000 years old and was created in six days:
Broun also said believes the Bible is the best source of public policy. (Will he be advocating slaughtering his neighbors for adultery and for wearing two different fabrics?)
Of course, there's no evidence there's either a heaven or a hell.
There's no place for religion in government or for primitive nutbags like this -- although he's unfortunately running for reelection unopposed, according to the AP. (I also don't support creating public policy based on the contents of The Wizard of Oz.)
Hungry People Suck
Eric Bever, the mayor of Costa Mesa, California has an idea he thinks will solve their homeless problem -- shut down the soup kitchens!
Via CBSLosAngeles:
My belief is that if we manage to put the soup kitchen out of business that will go a long way to addressing the attractiveness in our city that's creating a huge negative impact," Eric Bever said.According to Bever, the "negative impact" is homeless people who like Costa Mesa because of services that offer food to less fortunate individuals.
Clients at Someone Cares Soup Kitchen and the non-profit Share Our Selves were stunned by the controversial comments.
"It's very hard to come here. I've been a very self-sufficient person my entire life," said a tearful Mary Raphael. "When I need some help, I'm told I'm trash? It's not a very kind thought."
via @Drudge
Columbus Sailed The Ocean Shoe
Up to 60 percent off in Columbus Day shoe savings at Amazon
Rear Window
I am charmed by my boyfriend who takes pictures of my butt when I am unaware. This was from last night, while I was getting something out of my purse to clean off his hat before we went in to a monthly writer dinner we go to.
Notice To TV Show Creators
We hate when you do shows about the backstory. Also, the fly episode of Breaking Bad was extremely irritating.
Lost Old Lady
Sad thing in Santa Monica from the other day -- a tiny elderly Japanese woman was tottering down street toward me, tightly clutching her purse to her body, looking afraid.
I smiled gently at her and she came over to me, said something I didn't understand (probably in Japanese), touched my pants and said something about them (they were glittery linen) and then scurried away.
I think she might've had dementia, but I didn't know what to do. (It wouldn't do to chase her.) So I called the Santa Monica Police Department, described her and said she was disoriented and afraid, and maybe has dementia or something ailing her, and thought somebody might be looking for her. They said they'd send a car.
Why Did The Tofu Cross The Road
To get to the other chicken.
Free Speech Doesn't Exist In Islamic Countries -- Or Counties
Christians attacked by Muslims in Dearborn June 26th:
Things really get violent after the 9 minute mark. Muslim adults stand idly by as their thuggish children throw bottles and other objects at the Christians. After a reported 30 minutes of Muslims assaulting the Christians, a police officer (perhaps a captain) arrives to tell the Christians "You're a danger to safety the safety now." He tells them that they don't have the manpower to protect them.
The reason "someone could get hurt" is that the Muslims there are acting violently in response to speech, not that the Christians are speaking, telling them "stuff that enrages them," in the police officer's words. They have some signs they're holding -- with Christian messages on them. I'm not a Christian, but I fully defend their right to say whatever they wish about their religion.
Has this police officer even HEARD of the Constitution? If Muslims are likely get violent when others speak freely, they should pay for extra policing for their festival due to their tendency toward violence.
Great line from one of the Christians to the cop denying him his free speech rights and telling him that he's "a danger to the public safety."
The guy responds, "I would assume 200 angry Muslim children throwing bottles would be more of a threat than a few guys with signs."
The cop tells them that if they don't leave -- those merely speaking -- that they will be cited for disorderly conduct, rewarding the violent for their violence.
Two cops couldn't be spared to protect the men trying to exercise their free speech rights, but they managed to find 14 to stop them (to kick them out of the festival).
Later, when the Christians are driving away from the festival, the police pull them over -- 12 officers do! (They never showed what the stop was for.)
It's the thug's veto, using violence.
UK Atheist Campus Group Forced To Remove "Blasphemous Pineapple"
Jonathan Turley writes that the Reading University atheist group was forced to leave a school fair over a pineapple bearing the name Mohammed in their stall to "encourage discussion about blasphemy, religion, and liberty," per a Huff Po/UK post by Lucy Sheriff:
"We wanted to celebrate the fact that we live in a country in which free speech is protected, and where it is lawful to call a pineapple by whatever name one chooses," a society spokesperson said....A struggle ensued, wherein the pineapple was seized, but shortly returned to the owners, where it was re-christened Jesus.
According to the RAHS, a small group of students then gathered around the table and forcefully removed the pineapple's name tag. The society was then "forced to leave the venue", accompanied by security staff.
The society has voiced its disappointment at the chain of events, saying: "Our intent in displaying a pineapple labelled 'Mohammed' was to draw attention to cases where religion has been used to limit freedom of expression and other fundamental rights."
Turley writes:
Nick Cook, vice-president of student activities at Reading University, insisted that the act of censorship was justified in order to guarantee "all students feel welcome and included in all of our activities."It was the classic confrontation between free speech and discrimination laws. The interesting thing is that religious organizations are increasingly being accused of violating discriminatory views, as discussed in this column. Would Muslim or Christian groups be barred for discussing view of homosexuality as a sin or, in some groups, professing the divine basis for limiting rights of women? This was clearly designed to be a provocative display and quickly led to a confrontation with what was described as five Muslim students. One approach is to say that the society could have raised the issue of blasphemy without the insulting display. Yet, the society wanted to show that what is blasphemous to some is a joke to others. What do you think?
The answer to speech you don't like or even find offensive is more speech, not shutting others up.
A Sizable Bust -- Of Daisies
Canadian drug cops have the American ones beat in stoopid. Michael Platt writes in the Calgary Sun that the "significant" outdoor bust in Lethbridge was mainly significant in how what they found and uprooted was not pot but 1,624 daisies:
It's blooming embarrassing, is what it is.The best part: police still won't admit the plants they seized in what was supposedly the biggest outdoor marijuana bust in Lethbridge history are plain old flowers -- daisies, to be precise.
All police will concede at this point is the 1,624 plants torn from a suburban Lethbridge garden on July 30 isn't marijuana, as first claimed after a phalanx of police marched in and starting plucking.
"This is a significant bust, given the size of this operation," is how a senior officer put it at the time, while proudly displaying garbage bags full of the dastardly daises.
That same officer, Staff Sergeant Wes Houston, now admits the plant haul was a mistake.
"In any investigation, police count public safety as our top priority -- our decision to seize the plants was made with the best information we had at the time," said Houston, leader of CFSEU-Lethbridge.
Public safety? Because some pothead might injure himself falling out of a beanbag chair while reaching for another brownie?
via Mike Riggs at reason
The Ugly Truths About Obamacare
Heather R. Higgins and Hadley Heath write in the WSJ:
• Americans know that ObamaCare requires insurance companies to allow families to keep adult children up to age 26 on their parents' policy. They are less likely to know that the provision increased the average family premium--even for families that didn't add adult dependents--by $150-$450 in 2011.• The average family's health-insurance premiums are already up $1,300.
• Young workers who buy their own insurance will see a 19%-30% increase in premiums as a result of ObamaCare.
• Remember the 700,000 people whom the Congressional Budget Office predicted would make use of ObamaCare's federal high-risk program? Just 78,000 people have enrolled. As a result, each person in the program costs taxpayers millions of allocated dollars. Americans, when they hear this, know instinctively that there must be a better way to address the problem.
• ObamaCare was sold as the solution to covering the 47 million uninsured in America, but 10 years after the law is implemented, 30 million Americans will still be uninsured. What problem, exactly, is ObamaCare solving again?
• Americans are also generally familiar with Medicaid's problems, among them the refusal by many doctors to accept Medicaid patients. What most people don't know is that approximately 10 million of those who gain insurance under ObamaCare will just be dumped into the already cash-strapped Medicaid system.
How It Should Be: What Divides Us And What Brings Us Together
Ken White at Popehat is defending Patrick Frey (Patterico) pro bono.
One Nadia Naffe has filed a vexatious federal suit against Patrick and his wife in retaliation for Patrick's exercise of his rights under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The estimable and formidable Ron Coleman, who blogs at Likelihood of Confusion, will be lead counsel, and is also acting pro bono.As a Deputy District Attorney, Mr. Frey is a professional adversary. As a blogger, he is substantially to the right of me, and though I respect his abilities and his honesty, I disagree with him more often than not. But I am honored to have the opportunity to serve him in defense of crucial free speech principles in the face of an abusive and politically motivated lawsuit.
There's a huge amount of nastiness about who's "team" is better, D or R, and even dehumanizing of people who have political beliefs we don't share. The people I respect the most are those who don't do this, and especially, those -- like Lisa Simeone and Popehat -- who can come together with those they disagree with politically to defend our civil liberties and fight those who violate them.
I have an immense debt of gratitude to Sicilian-American civil liberties bulldog Marc Randazza, who defended me against the TSA worker who tried to violate not only my Fourth Amendment rights and my vagina, but my First Amendment rights in the wake of that.
Liquor Stores Are In The Business Of Selling Liquor
Not keeping your Indian reservation dry.
A Federal judge has dismissed a case by a the Ogala Sioux tribe that blamed beer sellers and manufacturers for chronic alcoholism on their reservation. From the BBC:
Judge John Gerrard said there was "little question" that sales in a bordering Nebraska town had contributed significantly to the problem.But he said federal courts did not have the jurisdiction to hold brewers or stores responsible.
..The lawsuit alleged that the stores and beer makers had knowingly allowed alcohol sales to residents of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which has banned alcohol since 1832, fully aware it would be smuggled to drink or resell.
The Oglala also argued that the beer distributors supplied the White Clay, Nebraska stores with "volumes of beer far in excess of an amount that could be sold in compliance with the laws of the state of Nebraska".
The four White Clay beer stores named in the suit sold the equivalent of 4.3 million 12oz (0.34 litre) cans last year.
The Nebraska town, which is next to the reservation, has a population of only about a dozen residents.
It's still not the liquor stores' job -- nor is it the manufacturers' -- to act in lieu of self-control by those living on the reservation, or to act in lieu of whatever policing the reservation could and should have done if they wanted to keep alcohol off the reservation.
via ifeminists
How To Send Your Mom To Jail
Drink beer in the basement at 16.
Via Overlawyered, Debra Cassens Weiss posts at ABA Journal that more states are enacting "social host laws," and parents are facing jail time for their kids' drinking parties -- even if nobody gets hurt:
A Massachusetts mother was sent to jail in May because of teen drinking at her home. In Warwick, R.I., former school board member and cheerleading coach Terri Serra is on trial as the result of her daughter's homecoming party. Four boys were injured in a car accident afterwards. Serra has testified she fell asleep watching a movie and was unaware of the drinking in her backyard. She could be sentenced to up to six months in jail if she is found guilty.Serra's lawyer, Robert Mann of Providence, plans to challenge the constitutionality of the social host law, the Westerly Sun reports. The law, which penalizes adults who permit underage drinking, is vague in its definition of "permit," he argues.
It Is Not A University's Job To Squash Free Speech
The Feds are investigating charges of anti-semitism at UC Berkeley. Disgusting -- that they're "investigating" free speech, that is. I'm disgusted by anti-semitic speech, but I celebrate and defend people's right to voice it. From the LA Times.
The federal government is investigating charges that UC Berkeley officials fomented a hostile campus climate for Jewish students by failing to sufficiently tamp down anti-Israel protests.The U.S. Department of Education's civil rights office confirmed this week that it has launched an investigation into the charges, first filed in July by two recent Berkeley graduates. They complained that an annual "Apartheid Week" in February featuring protests against Israel's treatment of Palestinians was one of several campus events that have stoked anti-Semitic hate speech.
By failing to curb such activities, the university is presenting "a disturbing echo of incitement, intimidation, harassment and violence carried out under the Nazi regime and those of its allies in Europe against Jewish students and scholars ... during the turbulent years leading up to and including the Holocaust," the complaint alleges.
University spokesman Dan Mogulof rejected the allegations Wednesday, saying the campus protests were constitutionally protected speech and that officials had made extensive efforts to maintain a safe and inclusive climate. Among other things, he said, the university has set up a website for anonymous complaints, dispatched teams of students and administrators to monitor the campus climate and provided funding for Jewish and Muslim students to promote dialogue and coexistance.
He said U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg recognized the university's actions last year in dismissing a complaint with similar allegations filed by the same students. A campus poll showed that 80% of Jewish students said they felt respected on campus, about the same proportion as Muslims, Mogulof said.
There are many times in my life that I have not felt respected. Even times I've felt hated -- and anti-semitically hated. If that hatred did not include violence or harm to or marring of private property (like when "Dirty Jew" was written on our garage door in shaving cream), it was free speech.
Again, the answer to speech you dislike is more speech.
Religion Of Peacers Burn Buddhist Temples And Homes
Islam, over and over, shows itself to be a religion of violence, intolerance, and hate, with Muslims acting in violent, intolerant, hateful ways -- as commanded by the Quran. The AP reports that thousands of Bangladeshi Muslims responded to a photo of a burned Quran posted on Facebook, using it as impetus to set fires to at least 10 Buddhist temples and 40 homes:
The rioters blamed the photo on a local Buddhist boy, though it was not immediately clear if the boy actually posted the photo.Bangladesh's popular English-language Daily Star newspaper quoted the boy as saying that the photo was mistakenly tagged on his Facebook profile. The newspaper reported that soon after the violence broke out, the boy's Facebook account was closed and police escorted him and his mother to safety.
Joinul Bari, chief government administrator in Cox's Bazar district, said authorities detained the boy's parents and were investigating.
Buddhists make up less than 1 percent of Muslim-majority Bangladesh's 150 million people.
Any country with a Muslim majority is a dangerous place to be for anyone non-Muslim who'd like to retain their life and any civil liberties.
Who Won The First Presidential Debate?
Gary Johnson, of course.
I tweeted a bunch of stuff. Here's a retweet:
@amyalkon
And Lincoln-Douglas @dankennedy_nu Not fair to say Lehrer is too old. He was just as bad moderating Bush-Gore in 2000. #debate
Best tweet/retweet by somebodies else:
@mleewelch
RT @Heminator That wasn't a debate so much as Mitt Romney just took Obama for a cross country drive strapped to the roof of his car.
Debate transcript.
How Doctors Get Rid Of Massive Insurance Paperwork Requirements
Easy! They just stop taking patients who'll pay with insurance. Not sure how that would work in the less well-heeled parts of the country, but "cash only!" is working just dandy for some docs in Manhattan. Roni Caryn Rabin writes for the NYT:
Though data on private practices is scanty, a new survey of 13,575 doctors from around the country by The Physicians Foundation found that over the next one to three years, more than 50 percent plan to take steps that reduce patient access to their services, and nearly 7 percent plan to switch to cash-only or concierge practices, in which patients pay an annual fee or retainer in addition to other fees.When doctors stop taking regular insurance or drop a health plan, patients are free to take their business elsewhere. If they have health plans that cover out-of-network expenses, these patients may be reimbursed for fees they pay in cash, but probably not for the entire sum.
The cash-upfront trend raises an uncomfortable question. Can the Affordable Care Act, intended to widen access to health care, succeed by expanding insurance coverage if primary-care doctors are walking away from insurance?
"If all it means is that doctors who serve the wealthy are figuring out ways to avoid the hassles of insurance, I'm not sure it's a public policy problem," said Marsha Gold, a senior fellow at Mathematica Policy Research in Washington and an expert on health care financing. "The real problem comes in if it really restricts the choices people have and makes it worse than it is now. We don't really have the data to know."
The country is already facing a shortage of physicians, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. By 2025, the nation will have 100,000 fewer doctors than needed, according to the association. With fewer medical students choosing to go into primary care, shortages in this area are expected to become especially acute.
Physicians are increasingly feeling shortchanged by insurance companies, said Dr. Bob Hughes, an otolaryngologist in Saratoga Springs who is president of the Medical Society of the State of New York. "Insurance companies do not negotiate with physicians. It's all take-it-or-leave-it contracts," he said.
Loved this comment on the NYT's site:
gssss, Cleveland TNYou know I find it very interesting that patients feel that they should not have to pay for healthcare often citing the "greedy" physician as the issue.
Joe Biden Can Always, Always Be Counted On To Stick Hoof In Mouth
He made yet another oopsy while talking about Mitt Romney in Charlotte -- and managed to do a rare, reality-based review of the Obama-conomy. In Biden's words:
"How they can justify, how they can justify raising taxes on the middle class that has been buried the last four years?"
And from the WSJ:
Mr. Biden deserves gratitude for having the courage to break the Obama campaign's code of silence on the economy. You're supposed to talk about the economy before Mr. Obama was President and after his re-election. But none dare discuss the four years during his Presidency.
How Insurers Size You Up -- And Leave You High And Dry
(Or low and flooded and without flood insurance.)
And what you can do about it.
Free CLUE report on insurance claim history, employment history, or resident history per the law (one free per 12-month period, via LexisNexis).
via Jay J. Hector, who knows a thing or two about insurance
Cutting Back Wheat 80 Or 90 Percent Doesn't Give You MOST Of The Benefits
Important post by Dr. William Davis, author of Wheat Belly.
He writes on his blog:
Let me explain. If you cut back on sugar by 90%, you obtain 90% of the benefits, right? 90% less weight gain, 90% less insulin provocation, 90% less dental cavities, etc. Simple arithemetic.But, as with many things in this wheat-distorted world, that simple arithmetic does not hold with cutting back on wheat. Instead, a bizarre calculus of metabolic distortions apply because of several long-lasting effects of modern semi-dwarf wheat.
...2) Small LDL particles that cause heart disease are triggered for 10 or more days at a time
Large, relatively benign LDL particles persist for 24-48 hours after formation, cleared by the liver promptly. Small LDL particles, triggered to extravagant degrees by the amylopectin A of wheat, persist for an unusually long period, much longer than the larger LDL particles. Once triggered, the human liver does not recognize unnatural small LDL particles, causing them to persist for an abnormally long time and allowing prolonged and repetitive interactions with the wall of arteries to create atherosclerosis (leading to coronary heart disease, heart attacks, stents, bypass surgery, as well as your hospital to boast about its record number of heart attacks treated)....4) Glycation is forever
Recall from the discussion in Wheat Belly that, whenever blood glucose ranges above 90 mg/dl (5 nmol/L), glucose-modification of long-lived proteins in the body, or glycation, proceeds at an accelerated rate: the higher the blood glucose, the greater the quantity of glycation.It means, for instance, that you have, say, a Snickers bar and experience a blood glucose of 134 mg/dl and glycation occurs in the proteins of the lenses of your eyes (cataracts), the proteins in the cartilage of knees and hips (brittle cartilage, arthritis), the proteins in the cells lining arteries (stiff arteries, hypertension, atherosclerosis), and structural tissue of the skin (wrinkles, "liver" spots of aging). Have two slices of whole wheat bread as a ham sandwich and blood sugar peaks at 170 mg/dl (a very typical blood sugar after wheat consumption) and glycation develops at a greater rate. Glycation in long-lived proteins is irreversible-the effect cannot be undone: cataracts do not reverse, bone-on-bone arthritis does not regenerate, wrinkles do not unwrinkle. For all practical purposes, once you glycate, you glycate for good.
Listen to Davis on my radio show:
Advice Goddess Radio: Cardiologist Dr. William Davis on why wheat is the single worst thing you can eat. (There's no such thing as "healthy whole grains.")http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/08/13/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Censorship Is Thuggery: This Weekend's Free-Speech Defending Moment
The answer to speech you dislike is more speech -- not covering up, silencing, or ripping down the offending speech.
On Saturday, I was working on my book at a cafe where a woman was having a book-signing, advertised with a poster of her book cover on a few doors and windows of the cafe. (That's her on the cover.)
An Orthodox Jew with a gray beard came into the cafe and began taking one of her posters down -- this one in the photograph.
On my way back from the bathroom, I saw him trying to pick off one of the pieces of tape and then just start to slowly rip the thing (causing the small rip in the upper right-hand corner before I stopped him).
When I realized what he was trying to do, I put my hand over her poster to protect it so he couldn't continue.
"That's the author's poster," I said. "You don't get to stop somebody's speech."
He said it had to come down because there was a swastika on it.
Understanding that he saw the poster's existence as an attack on Jews, I explained that it wasn't hate speech; it was a historical novel about the Holocaust. (An icon that represents the time is the swastika -- which was why it was on its cover.)
But, frankly, while I wanted to reassure him that it wasn't a symbol of hate, as used, even if it had been, that doesn't mean an offended Jew or anyone gets to tear it down.
I explained that the answer to speech you are against is more speech. Picketing bookstores that sell books with swastikas on the covers, for example.
He was having none of this.
He snarled at me to "grow up."
Mature. And extremely short-sighted.
This country has a Constitution -- and a First Amendment that gives us the right to free speech.
That incredible document is also what allows this man to practice his religion freely in this country -- unlike in states like Iran, where they control speech and religion and jail or slaughter people who speak unapproved speech or practice unapproved religions.
I'd make the same point about the correct way to criticize speech to Muslim activist Mona Eltahawy, who spray-painted over speech she objects to about Islam in the New York City subway:
Stopping another person's speech is thuggery. Whether you believe you are on the "side of angels" doesn't change that a whit.
For an inspiring and very interesting read on how surprisingly endangered free speech is in this country, pre-order the soon-to-be-published Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate
And if you're interested in the book in the poster above, it's Forbidden Symphony
Her book is a true-life-inspired fictional account of a Jewish conductor from Berlin who escaped the Holocaust in Germany as one of reportedly 25,000 Jewish refugees who went to Shanghai, where visas were not required of the Jews.
This Morning's Boyfriendism
Gregg and I were on the phone talking about his "look." He said, "I look disheveled in an employed sort of way, perhaps."
Single Page, Please!
Thank you, Farhad Manjoo, for telling these idiot web publishers to stop making us click page after page. On Slate, his piece, "Stop Pagination Now: Why websites should not make you click and click and click for the full story."
Hilariously, in the original, you have to click to get to the last two lines of the piece, but I've given you the "single page" version."
An excerpt:
Slate's editorial guidelines call for articles to be split into multiple pages once they hit the 1,000-word mark, so I have to keep this brief: Splitting articles and photo galleries into multiple pages is evil. It should stop.Pagination is one of the worst design and usability sins on the Web, the kind of obvious no-no that should have gone out with blinky text, dancing cat animations, and autoplaying music. It shows constant, quiet contempt for people who should be any news site's highest priority--folks who want to read articles all the way to the end.
Pagination persists because splitting a single-page article into two pages can, in theory, yield twice as many opportunities to display ads--though in practice it doesn't because lots of readers never bother to click past the first page. The practice has become so ubiquitous that it's numbed many publications and readers into thinking that multipage design is how the Web has always been, and how it should be.
Neither is true: The Web's earliest news sites didn't paginate, and the practice grew up only over the past decade, in response to pressure from the ad industry. It doesn't have to be this way--some of the Web's most forward-thinking and successful publications, including BuzzFeed and the Verge, have eschewed pagination, and they're better off for it.
So would we all be: Pageview juicing is a myopic strategy. In the long run, unfriendly design isn't going to help Websites win new adherents, and winning new readers is the whole point of being a Website. I bet that if all news sites switched to single-page articles--and BuzzFeed-style scrolling galleries instead of multipage slideshows--they'd experience short-term pain followed by long-term gain. Their articles would get shared more widely and, thus, win more loyal, regular visitors for the publication. In fact, pagination is so horrible that I suspect eradicating it from the Web might also lead to bigger breakthroughs--it would almost certainly solve the Iran nuclear crisis and eliminate the fiscal cliff--but I don't want to make any promises.
Jerry Brown To Comcast: Lie, Dammit!
Comcast crosses its fingers and pretends it isn't leaving California because of all the costs and regulations that make business impossible or at least impossibly pricey. Allysia Finley writes in the WSJ:
California businesses operate under hundreds of regulations, but some rules aren't on the books. To wit, thou shalt not speak ill of the state.Last week, Philadelphia-based Comcast announced that it was moving 1,000 call-center jobs in the East Bay and Sacramento regions to Oregon, Washington and Colorado because of the "high cost of doing business in California." At least that was their story until pols in Sacramento notified them that they were out of line. Comcast's lobbying arm in Sacramento within hours retracted its statement, declaring "the reports carried in the media earlier today attributing Comcast's decision . . . are incorrect."
Oh, really? In fact, the new statement noted, the real reason is that "as more of our customers are taking advantage of self help tools such as handling their service requirements on line, we no longer need as many call centers as in the past." So the company is closing three of its West Division call centers, all of which happen to be in California. Hmmm.
Meanwhile Democratic state Senate President Darrell Steinberg demanded that the company "reconsider their actions," and Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown's jobs advisor Mike Rossi issued a statement regretting that "Comcast's announcement to eliminate jobs in California inaccurately placed blame on the state, but I am pleased to see the executives at Comcast taking responsibility and correcting the statement."
IKEA Saudi Arabia: "Scrubbing The Bathroom Got A Whole New Meaning"
Martha C. White wrote that in her NBC News piece on the IKEA Catalog, which scrubbed women from all the pictures in its Saudi Arabian version:
In one picture of a family in a bathroom, the mother standing at the sink with her son was removed. Even one of the retailer's own designers, Clara Gausch, was erased from a photo featuring four of the brand's designers.Sweden's trade minister Ewa Björling told the newspaper Metro the vanishing women were a "sad example" of gender inequality in Saudi Arabia, where women aren't allowed to drive and must be covered in public.
In a statement to the BBC, the company said "excluding women from the Saudi Arabian version of the catalogue is in conflict with the Ikea Group values."
Women are made to cover most of their bodies in Saudi Arabia ("purdah"). Since the woman in the photo looked like a person and not a large stump covered by a bedsheet, this makes her a no-go for the Saudis. In other backwardness, women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to drive and must be accompanied out of the house by a male guardian. Kind of like you wouldn't just let your dog roam free.
TSA: Even Small, Peanutbuttery Rights Violations Count
Stephanie Lambert had her peanutbutter confiscated by the unskilled workers manning a TSA checkpoint. She filled out a form and got $3.99 back from the US Treasury Department, writes Bob Sullivan at Red Tape at NBC.
Lambert was traveling with her husband, a 6-month-old and a 2-year-old on an ungodly early flight in June, and arrived at the airport about 5 a.m. She was flying from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh, and she needed the usual bag of distractions and food to keep her kids -- and other passengers -- sane during the trip. But, she says, her efforts to ensure a smooth flight were foiled when a TSA agent with a bad attitude singled out her family for additional screening. After the usual pat-downs and questions, discussion centered on the jar of peanut butter."He just really fixated on the peanut butter and a jar of apple sauce I had," she said. "I keep saying, 'It's not a liquid; it's pureed apples,' but we go went around and around. He also screened my husband multiple times. I asked to speak to the terminal manager, but he never arrived. ... We were there 30 minutes."
Eventually, the screener let the apple sauce (and the jelly) go, but he drew the line on the peanut butter.
Sullivan doesn't say what the size was -- whether it was the permitted size -- but let's not get caught up in meaningless minutiae. Does anyone, anyone, think a person is going to bring down a plane with a jar of Skippy?
"Rules are rules," some commenters on the site are saying. Rules need to be questioned -- always -- and especially when they are enabling the constant daily violation of Americans' right to not be searched and have their possessions seized sans probable cause.
Brilliant Foreign MIT Students, Go Home!
That's what we, through the lobbyist-loving losers we elect to the House and Senate, keep telling brilliant and highly talented foreign students. Gordon Crovitz writes in the WSJ:
Here's a sampling of the immigration bills Washington has failed to pass: the Stopping Trained in America Ph.D.s from Leaving the Economy Act; the Advanced Degree Visa Bill; the Startup Act; the Immigration Driving Entrepreneurship in America Act; and the Benefits to Research and American Innovation through Nationality Statutes Act.The most recent was the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Jobs Act, proposed by Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, a Republican. The bill made it to a vote, but under a procedure requiring two-thirds approval. The vote fell short, 257-158, with almost all Republicans in favor as well as 30 Democrats. The bill would have substituted visas for graduates from qualifying universities in the hard sciences for the current program awarding visas in a lottery system that limits the number granted for each country, discriminating against applicants from populous nations such as China and India. "Unfortunately, the Democrats voted today to send the best and brightest foreign graduates back home to work for our global competitors," Rep. Smith said.
There's no debate about the importance of skilled immigrants. Between 1995 and 2005, foreign-born and technically trained entrepreneurs founded half the firms in Silicon Valley.
Graduates in scientific and technical fields can stay in the U.S. for 29 months under a program called Optional Practical Training. Then they can apply for one of 65,000 three- to six-year H-1B visas or one of 20,000 visas for advanced degree holders, including in nontechnical fields. This year the quota for H-1B visas was filled in less than three months.
Even if someone gets one of these visas, he eventually needs to apply for a green card, of which 140,000 are granted each year, fewer than 10% for work-based applicants. The majority are for applicants who have family members in the U.S. These applicants should be admitted under other programs.
In the meantime, countries including Australia, Britain, Canada, Ireland, Israel and Singapore have adopted policies in recent years to lure talented emigrants. The governments are hoping to beat the U.S. at its historic comparative advantage in attracting and assimilating people from around the world.
Instead of offering amnesty to anybody who crawled over the border more than 20 minutes ago (and funding their health care, schooling, and jailing), we should be selective about whom we give the privilege of staying and working in and maybe becoming a citizen of this country.
Do you think we'd be better off with more short-order cooks or more software engineers?
You Can't Buy Democracy
The Obama administration pledged $1 billion in assistance to Egypt to "bolster its transition to democracy after the overthrow last year of the former president, Hosni Mubarak," writes Steven Lee Meyers in the NYT. Now they want to give them an emergency cash infusion of $450 million (as part of the $1 billion):
An influential Republican lawmaker, Representative Kay Granger of Texas, immediately announced that she would use her position as chairwoman of the House appropriations subcommittee overseeing foreign aid to block the distribution of the money. She said the American relationship with Egypt "has never been under more scrutiny" than it is in the wake of the election of President Mohamed Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood."I am not convinced of the urgent need for this assistance and I cannot support it at this time," Ms. Granger said in a statement that her office issued even before the administration announced the package.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking at a meeting of the Group of 8 nations in New York, said on Friday that the world needed to do more to support the governments that have emerged from the Arab Spring uprisings, including those in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.
"The recent riots and protests throughout the region have brought the challenge of transition into sharp relief," Mrs. Clinton said, without mentioning the assistance to Egypt specifically. "Extremists are clearly determined to hijack these wars and revolutions to further their agendas and ideology, so our partnership must empower those who would see their nations emerge as true democracies."
Because our meddling has worked so well in Iran, Iraq, and the rest of these countries.
And check this out:
The $1 billion in aid, announced by Mr. Obama in May 2011, was initially intended to relieve Egypt's debts to the United States, though negotiations stalled during the country's turbulent transition from military rule to the election of Mr. Morsi this summer.
We're giving them money...because they have yet to pay back money they owe us?
Who does this -- who does not have an IQ lower than the drinking age?
Psst, I bet there are 450,000 potholes in Los Angeles.
UPDATE: Turley blogs, "2000 Dead in Afghanistan":
Despite Obama's promise of the withdrawal of U.S. forces, American, NATO and allied troops are still dying in Afghanistan at a rate of one a day. We are years into Obama term and we still have thousands of troops in a country where we are widely viewed as enemies and continue to spend billions as our own cities and states shutdown basic public programs for lack of money.
The Drug War Claims Another: Police Raid On The Wrong House
The cost of stopping people from getting high, and the ensuing cost of stopping drug peddlers, is too great.
Vicki Brown writes at ABCNews.com that a 61-year-old man was shot by police in yet another drug raid on the wrong house. Oopsy!
Police admitted their mistake, saying faulty information from a drug informant contributed to the death of John Adams Wednesday night. They intended to raid the home next door.The two officers, 25-year-old Kyle Shedran and 24-year-old Greg Day, were placed on administrative leave with pay.
"They need to get rid of those men, boys with toys," said Adams' 70-year-old widow, Loraine.
John Adams was watching television when his wife heard pounding on the door. Police claim they identified themselves and wore police jackets. Loraine Adams said she had no indication the men were police.
"I thought it was a home invasion. I said 'Baby, get your gun!," she said, sitting amid friends and relatives gathered at her home to cook and prepare for Sunday's funeral.
..."We did the best surveillance we could do, and a mistake was made," Lebanon Police Chief Billy Weeks said. "It's a very severe mistake, a costly mistake. It makes us look at our own policies and procedures to make sure this never occurs again." He said, however, the two policemen were not at fault.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is investigating. NAACP officials said they are monitoring the case. Adams was black. The two policemen are white.
Isn't it likely the gun was the key element here?
And the fact that armed men broke into an apparently law-abiding citizen's house. That citizen isn't going to think, "They're here for the drugs," but "They're here to steal my stuff and maybe maim or murder my wife and me."
A commenter on the site, MeatwadGets, writes:
The raids in the middle of the night are due to the high costs of having two cops sit and watch until the "suspect" leaves the home. It is too boring as well for the cowboys. It is a cost-benefit bean counter Chief that is at fault in each and every one of these murders.Before the illegal war on some drugs happened, how often did cops break into homes? NEVER!
They claim they break in fast to "prevent the drugs from being flushed", well we can recover them if they did flush them...they don't travel very far down the pipe with one flush. [snip]
The fact is, all prohibitions should be in the history books. Our Constitution demands the end to any prohibition of any "intoxicant" as the ninth amendment says. "The enumeration in the constitution of certain rights (21st -intoxicant, liquors), shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Bill Of Rights: All intoxicants are our legal right on the Federal level, do not allow the States to deny them any further. So, why do they continue this illegal war on US? The banks launder the cash, the cops get over time pay...corruption in other words keeps this illegal war alive and the Citizens dead.
Islam: You Can Hit Your Wife But You Should Avoid Doing It With A Shoe
Via Martin, from MuslimsofCalgary.ca, there's the advice to avoid "hitting her with a shoe, etc." from "How to Make Your Wife Happy" -- a summary of a book by Sheikh Mohammed Abdelhaleem Hamed:
One wonders what the "etc." is -- a fireplace poker? A brick?
Here's the text on "Correcting Her Mistakes":
Correcting her Mistakes - First, implicit and explicit advice several times.
- Then by turning your back to her in bed (displaying your feelings). Note that this does not include leaving the bedroom to another room, leaving the house to another place, or not talking with her.
- The last solution is lightly hitting (when allowable) her. In this case, the husband should consider the following:
a) He should know that sunnah is to avoid beating as the Prophet PBUH never beat a woman or a servant.
b) He should do it only in extreme cases of disobedience, e.g. refusing intercourse without cause frequently, constantly not praying on time, leaving the house for long periods of time without permission nor refusing to tell him where she had been, etc.
c) It should not be done except after having turned from her bed and discussing the matter with her as mentioned in Qur`an.
d) He should not hit her hard injuring her, or hit her on her face or on sensitive parts of her body.
e) He should avoid shaming her such as by hitting her with a shoe, etc.
Note the bit on "leaving the house without permission." Women are possessions in Islam, and do not have autonomy or freedom.
Copy of the page is here, in case the original gets scrubbed.
More on wife-beating here. And P.S. Mohammed DID beat his wives -- and advocate wife-beating. For example:
Abu Dawud (2141) - "Iyas bin 'Abd Allah bin Abi Dhubab reported the Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) as saying: Do not beat Allah's handmaidens, but when 'Umar came to the Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) and said: Women have become emboldened towards their husbands, he (the Prophet) gave permission to beat them."At first, Muhammad forbade men from beating their wives, but he rescinded this once it was reported that women were becoming emboldened toward their husbands. Beatings are sometimes necessary to keep women in their place.
