Staples "Easy Rebates" Seem Designed To Make It Easy To Screw Over The Customer
I only buy paper when it's on some sort of big promo.
For example, there was this New Year's promo at Staples, making a $49 box of paper $19.99, after rebate.
That "after rebate" bit is the key part.
I've had ridiculous problems with Staples in the recent past, but I have an account with them and "rewards" and I saw this promo and decided to give them another chance. Bad idea (although I tempered it by taking a screen shot of the promotion, just in case).
First of all, instead of sending you a check like they used to, Staples sends you a pre-paid VISA card. You end up not knowing how much is on it and letting the $2 and change or so left go to waste, like I did the last time. This pisses me off. (This does not create customer goodwill, in other words -- when I'd see that card in my wallet I'd think about being screwed over by Staples, if in a small way.)
Next, rebates seem designed to keep the customer and the promised money separated. For example, when you order something online with a rebate attached -- one called an "easy" rebate -- it isn't unreasonable to think that the rebate would go through automatically. Nopers.
I realized this morning -- almost two months later -- that I'd never gotten my rebate card. Grrr. I called Staples and it turns out that you have to read the order -- down to the bottom of the order -- where it tells you that you must submit the rebate online to get the card.
Now, I'm sure busy businesspeople other than me don't see that and don't think about the $30 card they never got. Win-win for Staples! They use this complexity to make a customer pay the full price instead of the promised promotional price, while probably getting a slew of customers to order based on the promised savings.
In my case, after waking up at 5 a.m. to work on my book (which I do daily -- only way I'll make my deadline, sigh), the bug entered my brain around 8:15 a.m. that I'd been screwed. Well, I need to have a certain mental calm to write, so there was nothing to do but to get this out of the way. So, I got online, got on the phone to the wrong department ("rewards!" instead of "easy rebates!") then got to the right department, only to have the woman's phone line go all weird. I called back again and the guy told me I had to submit a rebate even though I'd ordered online.
Again, in order to know this, you have to open the email about your order, and not only look at the charges but scroll down to a message on the bottom telling you that you have to submit a rebate request online.
Easy Rebate(s) available: Submit your rebate online at www.stapleseasyrebates.com.
I submitted mine today (they give you until March 4 -- probably in case you figure it out like I did). After I did, I was still furious at how they seem to design this system to screw people, and wrote this blog post to get it out of my system before going back to my book- and column-writing.
I'm going to look into other office supply places to order from in the future. Anybody have a preference of office supply sources with promos on paper from time to time?
Related: Meg Marco from Consumerist on rebates:
Rebates are a huge point of controversy. We tend to be against them because they are designed to screw you, the consumer, out of money.
And at Wise Bread, Andrea Karim writes:
The idea behind a rebate is that if the company can make it as hard as possible for you to claim your money back in a reasonable amount of time, eventually you will give up, and they will keep the full price that you paid for whatever it was that you bought. This works really well - rebate redemption rates are very, very low.
Nice way to keep up the customer goodwill Staples. See that fluttering? That's me waving goodbye to your company.
Exclusive Video Of Bob Woodward Reaction To White House
Via NY Daily News opinion editor @JoshGreenman:
Is Employment A Human Right?
Richard A. Epstein writes at Hoover.org:
Risa Kaufman, the Director of the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute, ... claims that "the United States' failure to enact meaningful protections enabling workers to accommodate the demands of work and family is not only out of step with countries around the world, but it is also counter to international human rights standards."This "failure" is also a huge relief. Bad as our own national employment situation is, it would be far worse if the United States acted in line with those misguided countries throughout the world that now endure unemployment rates that touch or exceed, as in the case of Spain, 25 percent precisely because they seek to secure this phalanx of workplace protections as a matter of public law.
To be sure, innovative employers may adopt some types of worker protections to keep able women employees in the workforce, whether in the form of child-care benefits, flex time or split positions. But it is one thing for a particular employer to adopt these policies, and quite another for a heavy-handed political entity to impose them on employers who think that these purported benefits are not in line with their best business interests.
In these cases, employers' unwillingness to offer these protections is well-nigh conclusive evidence that the cost of the disputed benefits package exceeds the gains for his or her employee. If the situation were otherwise, the benefit would be included, as is routinely the case with the thousands of perks that particular employers offer to all or some of their employees. What explanation other than market demand could explain why so many employers offer benefits packages that go far beyond international minimums or local law?
The situation reverses when such benefits packages are required as a matter of law. At this point, firms divide themselves into two categories. Those that would have provided the benefit anyway will continue to do so. But they will do so less efficiently than before, as they will lose the power of self-correction and must incur the oft-heavy compliance costs to satisfy the prying eyes of government regulators. Wages will fall as compliance costs rise and the two sides are left with the unhappy task of dividing a shrunken pie in order to implement what Kaufman calls these "widely accepted human rights norms."
via @overlawyered
How To Break Out Of The Female Entrepreneur Trap
Dr. Shelley Prevost, co-founder of Lamp Post Group, a venture incubator in Chattanooga, Tennessee, writes:
Instead of talking, let's start acting.Here's the profile of a female entrepreneur that I want to work with:
•She's never attended a women's symposium.
•She doesn't do panels as the "token female," not because she's against this well-meaning exploitation, but because she's just too damn busy.
•She's hustling, recruiting people, building things, creating a movement.
•Her urgency is palpable. She takes little thrill in small talk, walks fast, and thinks big.
I had a meeting this week with one of our female founders. She is the type of female entrepreneur that I just described. She isn't interested in talking about being a "female founder" because it isn't important to her. She's building a business and a team. She's landing multi-million dollar contracts. She's focused on her family and her kids. She has clear goals and is uncompromising in seeing them met. And she's equally passionate about bringing other good people along with her. As decisive as she is collaborative, she is creating huge momentum around herself and her start-up.
And here's why so many women get paid less -- because they're nice, compliant girls who don't ask for more. Who are afraid to ask for more.
Yeah, it's a tough job market. A a job generally doesn't go away because you try to negotiate your salary, unless you tell them you want $6 million as a post-doc, in which case you'll seem kinda nuts.
And for the record, I have never referred to myself or identified as a "female" anything, except on forms at the doctor's office, etc.
via @RealEvilHRLady
Clueless In D.C.
That's the new Twitter movie about Obamacare starring Donna Brazile.
Draw Linky
I used to love seeing those correspondence art courses in comic books.
Eva Mendes Sex Tape
Not exactly what you were expecting, I'm sure.
The White House Goes All Joan Crawford On Bob Woodward
You'll "regret doing this," Woodward claims a "very senior person" at the White House warned him in an email (in the wake of Woodward's criticisms of Obama's behavior in regard to the looming sequester). Brett LoGiurato writes at BredRed.com:
Earlier today on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Woodward ripped into Obama in what has become an ongoing feud between the veteran Washington Post journalist and the White House. Woodward said Obama was showing a "kind of madness I haven't seen in a long time" for a decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf because of budget concerns.The Defense Department said in early February that it would not deploy the U.S.S. Harry Truman to the Persian Gulf, citing budget concerns relating to the looming cuts known as the sequester.
"Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying, 'Oh, by the way, I can't do this because of some budget document?'" Woodward said on MSNBC.
"Or George W. Bush saying, 'You know, I'm not going to invade Iraq because I can't get the aircraft carriers I need?'" Or even Bill Clinton saying, 'You know, I'm not going to attack Saddam Hussein's intelligence headquarters,' ... because of some budget document?"
Privacy Is Dead. Or Is It? Or Should It Be?
The right to privacy is, in one sense, the right to control what information gets dispensed about you.
The right to privacy also involves the right to be left alone -- to not have the government tell you how you're allowed to have sex, for example -- but I'm more interested in privacy in terms of information leakage, as I'm writing on this subject now.
It's so easy to violate people's privacy (if even by posting pictures they appear in on Facebook without their permission) now that there's an assumption that it's just the way things are; deal with it.
What are your experiences in recent years with privacy and violations of your privacy or that of others?
(Feel free to post any other thoughts or feelings related to privacy.)
Urban Nature-Walk
A book: The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification
And semi-related -- a book about escaped punctuation marks (excess quotation marks on the loose): The Book of Unnecessary Quotation Marks: A Celebration of Creative Punctuation
Civil Liberties: How To Respond To Department Of Homeland Security Thugs Stopping You On Highway
Via @RadleyBalko -- DHS checkpoint refusals by people who know their rights. These people are responding when DHS thugs ask them, sans probable cause, whether they're U.S. citizens, and tell them to pull over:
I respect these citizens in the video so much for having the guts to stand their ground when they are in the fact of warrantless, unconstitutional thuggery:
"Am I free to go? Am I free to go?"
"Am I being detained? Am I being detained?"
Pull over to be searched? "No. No, thank you."
Hello, Felon! Yes, You
Your romantic gestures are probably just as criminal as this vile scumbag's.
Yes, via @TedFrank, Erika Pesantes writes in the Sun Sentinel about a man arrested for the horrible crime of releasing helium balloons to delight his girlfriend:
Anthony Brasfield saw romance when he released a dozen heart-shaped balloons into the sky over Dania Beach with his sweetie. A Florida Highway Patrol trooper saw a felony.Brasfield, 40, and his girlfriend, Shaquina Baxter, were in the parking lot of the Motel 6 on Dania Beach Boulevard when he released the shiny red and silver mylar balloons and watched them float away Sunday morning.
Also watching the romantic gesture: an FHP trooper, who instead noted probable cause for an environmental crime.
Brasfield was charged with polluting to harm humans, animals, plants, etc. under the Florida Air and Water Pollution Control Act.
Big Sequester? The Big Mac Extra Value Meal Story
Love this post by John Hinderaker on Powerline Blog uses a Big Mac analogy to show what draconian cuts the sequester will involve:
Out of a $3.55 trillion federal budget-well, no, the federal government doesn't have a budget, that is just an estimate of FY 2013 spending-$44 billion is a pittance....In March 2011, during an earlier round of budget hysteria when the federal government was contemplating cutting spending by a mere $6 billion, I analogized that minimal cut to going on a diet by not eating an entire Big Mac meal. A Big Mac Extra Value meal consists of a Big Mac, a large order of french fries, and a medium soda. I calculated that cutting $6 billion out of the federal budget at that time would be equivalent to ordering a Big Mac Extra Value Meal and eating the entire Big Mac, drinking the entire medium-sized Coke, and eating 86 out of 87 french fries. If you took the 87th french fry and bit off two-thirds of it, leaving behind one-third of the last fry, that would equal the ostensibly horrific cut of $6 billion out of the federal budget.
Would you like one-third of a fry with that?
via @TedFrank
Branson: Give People The Freedom Of Where To Work
I haven't seen the woman who works for me part-time for about two years. We work over Skype -- voice and text, speaking and sending documents.
This means she can live far away, spend not a dime on gas to get to my place, and waste not a moment getting dressed or driving, saving her probably three hours a day.
She has integrity, and we have established what I guess you could call Skype manners, like letting each other know when we're getting up (when we're working separately), so one person isn't Skype-texting the other and wondering why they aren't responding.
I think it's amazing to be able to work this way -- and to do my weekly radio show over Skype with a gaming headseat, Internet radio, and Gregg producing either from his place or one of Elmore Leonard's upstairs bedrooms.
Virgin head Richard Branson can't believe the backwardness of Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer telling employees who work remotely that they'll have to relocate to Yahoo! facilities. He says:
This seems a backwards step in an age when remote working is easier and more effective than ever.
He explains:
If you provide the right technology to keep in touch, maintain regular communication and get the right balance between remote and office working, people will be motivated to work responsibly, quickly and with high quality.Working life isn't 9-5 any more. The world is connected. Companies that do not embrace this are missing a trick.
And also, he notes:
To successfully work with other people, you have to trust each other. A big part of this is trusting people to get their work done wherever they are, without supervision. It is the art of delegation, which has served Virgin and many other companies well over the years.We like to give people the freedom to work where they want, safe in the knowledge that they have the drive and expertise to perform excellently, whether they at their desk or in their kitchen. Yours truly has never worked out of an office, and never will.
I do understand a need to build a corporate culture, and maybe that's her intent, but this will probably lose her some valuable employees.
I'm wondering whether she eventually intends to allow people to work from home -- or elsewhere.
UPDATED, via @Instapundit, Marcus Wohlson writes at WIRED:
"I think Marissa Mayer is way too smart for this to be the ultimate resolution of whatever challenge they're facing," says Tony Schwartz, the founder and CEO of The Energy Project, a consultancy to Fortune 100 companies that advocates for a more flexible workplace culture.Schwartz calls the centuries-old practice of companies trading money for workers' time outdated, since time spent working doesn't accurately reflect the real value that worker is or isn't generating. He argues instead for a system based on autonomy and accountability, in which companies set clear goals for employees, who then have wide leeway to reach those goals in whatever way works best for them.
Under such a goal-oriented approach, an all-or-nothing policy on working from home doesn't really make sense. The issue isn't so much the effect working from home versus the office has on performance and productivity. It's the irrationality of trying to enforce uniformity when different goals might require different ways of working. Schwartz isn't alone in that assessment.
"Requiring everyone to be in fixed places at fixed times can promote rigidity and still not guarantee that teams work well together or produce high levels of innovation," Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a Harvard Business School Professor who specializes in corporate culture and innovation, told Wired in an email.
Bagel And Links
Schmeary.
Why You Must Protect Your Children From The Harm Of TSA Gropings
If I had a child, I would not fly or I would go to jail to protect my child from being groped. I am stunned at people standing by as their children are groped by TSA thugs in the name of security -- a meaningless puppet show by unskilled workers that pretends that we catch terrorists by performing "bad touch" on a sobbing 6-year-old.
An important blog item about this was posted on TSA News Blog in April, but it's important to have a second look at it. Richard Walbaum writes:
A parent or guardian of a child does not have the right to allow anyone to touch a child's private parts, unless it's for the child's benefit such as during a medical exam. This is because such touching is recognized as harmful. All states have passed laws against it. Children themselves are not even allowed to give consent for such acts. If I don't have the right to commit an illegal act (harm my child), I don't have the right to allow someone else to do it; I cannot give consent, direct or implied.You should protect your children from the TSA because it causes them harm. Men and women complain that they feel violated; could a child feel any less? And will it leave permanent scars? If the TSA doesn't let you and your child fly, your only recourse is to file a complaint and sue (it's a civic duty) for violation of your child's rights to safety and travel.
We must continue to put pressure on the theory that the TSA can do anything it wants to us, even harm us in order to "protect" us. Otherwise, proctology exams and Taser bracelets are in our future.
When our country was founded, the choice between freedom and protection was made in favor of freedom and secured by the Fourth Amendment. But the courts made a "special needs" exception for airline security.
...We need to make it clear to the courts that groping of children or adults is not acceptable, which is why we (that means you) need to hammer the courts with lawsuits until they change the practice.
Filing a lawsuit is, of course, expensive. If you can't afford the time and cost, at least you can file a complaint with the District Attorney in the airport's county. For those who do have the resources to go all the way, you now have a legal theory.
I think it's important to protect our children at airports, and while we're at it, to redefine the level of intrusion we're willing to accept. I provide more information on how to deal with the TSA, as well as how to disobey unjust laws, at my website.
Walbaum's book: The LAWFUL Remedy to Tyranny: How You Lost Your Rights, and How You Can Get Them Back
L'Hote: "Bullshit Social Climber Faux-Antiracism
L'Hote blogs that deejay and Internet personality" Jay Smooth was lecturing Radley Balko on Balko's attitude toward "people of color." (It was in a tweet about The Onion's tweet about Oscar nominee, 9-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis.)
"L'Hote" writes:
I laughed out loud. It's like God decided, "I'm going to create the perfect possible example of cultural liberalism's preference for feelings over material conditions."Jay Smooth makes videos on the Internet. So he's got that going for him. Radley Balko, meanwhile, has gotten actual black people out of actual jail. He has worked tirelessly against police abuse and corruption, the drug war, and mass incarceration, and specifically the mass incarceration of young black men. He's been cited in court cases where innocent people were freed. His journalism-- you know, the kind where you go out into the world and find out facts in order to create change, rather than sit in front of a webcam and use tired slang-- has helped to create material change in the world. That matters. You know what doesn't matter? Tweets about how offended you are by something. Your tweets do nothing. They accomplish nothing, make nothing happen. They do less than nothing: they are nothing that you mistake for something, and thus make it harder to actual apprise the actual situation. Let's check the percentages, please.
If you're a white person who thinks that "Jay Smooth" has the right to lecture Radley Balko about race in America, you care more about your social positioning than about the material conditions of the nonwhite people you claim to be speaking for. Period. But then that's true of white, web-enabled social liberalism in general: it is fodder for the endless cultural and social status competitions of the people undertaking it, and not for the productive purpose of ending racism, or sexism, or homophobia, or other ills. Online social liberalism is a cul de sac.
The joke here is that I think Balko is an asshole, and his economic politics a horror show. And while I doubt he's ever spent a spare moment thinking about me, I'm certain he'd find me an even bigger asshole than I find him. I hope he never gets what he wants economically. But none of that that matters in this context. You know why? Because getting people out of fucking jail transcends petty personal bullshit.
Taxation Without Representation Didn't Go Well Back In The 1760s And '70s, Either
Ira Stoll points out in the NY Sun that Obama's drive for tax hikes on the rich is taxation without representation, and that isn't fair:
It's one thing for a group of individuals to associate themselves voluntarily and tax themselves to fund common services. But the more steeply progressive the tax code gets, and the greater share of taxation that is borne by a small, high-income minority, the more our tax system starts to look like what got Samuel Adams and company so riled up against George III and Parliament back in the 1760s and 1770s.Just as the British voted to fund their government by increasing taxes on the colonists rather than themselves, so the Americans who earn less than President Obama's definition of rich voted to fund their government services by increasing income taxes on the rich rather than on themselves. One may object that the rich have plenty of representation by way of lobbyists, campaign contributions, and independent expenditures, and that a lot of the senators and congressmen are rich themselves. But we still have a one-person, one-vote system.
Somebody I read yesterday suggested that if the rich have to pay more they should get a greater vote -- or all the vote -- in policy in this country. I don't want that, and I think few people would. So the answer is the unwise and untenable "bleed everybody dry!" or cutting the ridiculous and wasteful government spending...which most or a great deal of government spending probably is.
An then, as Peter Suderman tweeted yesterday from a NYT link:
@petersuderman
"...entitlement spending, which poses the biggest long-term challenge to the federal budget, accounts for only a sliver of the cuts."
via @MUGGER1955
How Pickpockets Work
In Dutch, but needs no translation.
Linkin, Nebraska
The land of off-topic links.
How People Define Infidelity
My pals, evolutionary psychologists Daniel J. Kruger, Maryanne L. Fisher, Sarah L. Strout, and three of their colleagues just published a study in the open-source journal Evolutionary Psychology on what people consider cheating. It's titled "Was that Cheating? Perceptions Vary by Sex, Attachment Anxiety, and Behavior."
(By the way, I'm working on a question for my column from a guy who claims to think it's cheating when his wife has a male doctor perform a test on her.)
There's a writeup in the HuffPost that lays out a few of their findings, based on a survey given to 456 students in intro psych courses at two different universities, in which they were asked to rate 27 different behaviors on a scale from 1 to 100 in terms of what was cheating. (Zero is no cheating at all.):
Not surprisingly, sexual intercourse was given an average of 97.7 on the scale, and oral sex followed closely behind with 96.8. Below, some other interesting findings:•Kissing on the lips: 88.7
•E-mailing pictures of themselves naked: 88.2
•Texting erotic messages: 82.6
•Sleeping in the same bed: 68.4
•Holding hands: 63.2
•Forming a deep emotional bond: 52.4
•Sitting in lap: 52.2
•Going out to dinner: 41.4
•Sharing secrets: 36.5
•Hugging for more than 10 seconds: 34.5Researchers also looked at how the person's level of relationship insecurity factored into how they viewed certain cheating behaviors. Those who were not secure in their relationships, also known as attachment anxious, tended to consider social behaviors more indicative of cheating. Those who were trying to avoid a committed relationship, known as attachment avoidant, tended to rate sexual and erotic behaviors as being less indicative of infidelity.
About those attachement-anxious partners, the researchers write:
Anxious individuals tend to overestimate relationship threats and underestimate their partner's commitment to the existing relationship (Collins, 1996). In ambiguous situations, anxious individuals are more likely to perceive partners as insensitive and to suspect relationship problems that may or may not exist....Those with greater sensitivity to relationship threats may be more likely to identify ambiguous behaviors as cheating.
Listen to my radio shows about adult attachment with neuroscientist Dr. Amir Levine and Canadian psychologist Dr. Sue Johnson.
"Secure attachment" isn't just for kids -- it can save or vastly improve your relationship, and you can change or moderate your style of attachment if you understand what it is.
The Beard Hunter: Last Night's Oscars
What is it in Hollywood that suddenly compelled all the leading men to dump the Cary Grant look for the Grizzly Adams? Clooney, Cooper, Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugh Jackman, Joaquin Phoenix, and Russell Crowe all looked like they were ready for a day's hunting in the back woods.
Bloomberg: The Rich People's Mayor
We occasionally went out for pizza at Little Caesar's near us when I was a kid (with Girl Scouts or some group), and we'd get pitchers of drinks because it's cheaper.
We otherwise rarely had sweetened drinks -- not because there was a meddling mayor in Farmington Hills, Michigan when I grew up, but because my mother didn't allow us to drink them.
Well, if you're out with your family at a pizzeria in New York City, ordering a pitcher of Sprite with your pizza is now a Nanny Bloomberg no-no. You'll be forced to buy individual cups of soda. Pricey! But, there's a great solution -- stay home!
Brad Hamilton and Susan Edelman write in The New York Post that Bloomberg's soda ban prohibits 2-liter soda with your pizza and some nightclub mixers, and violators will be fined $200:
Typically, a pizzeria charges $3 for a 2-liter bottle of Coke. But under the ban, customers would have to buy six 12-ounce cans at a total cost of $7.50 to get an equivalent amount of soda."I really feel bad for the customers," said Lupe Balbuena of World Pie in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.
Domino's on First Avenue and 74th Street on the Upper East Side is doing away with its most popular drink sizes: the 20-ounce and 2-liter bottles.
"We're getting in 16-ounce bottles -- and that's all we're going to sell," a worker said.
He said the smaller bottles will generate more revenue for the restaurant but cost consumers more.
It will also trash more plastic into the environment.
..."It's ludicrous," said Robert Bookman, a lawyer for the New York City Hospitality Alliance. "It's a sealed bottle of soda you can buy in the supermarket. Why can't they deliver what you can get in the supermarket?"
...Dallas BBQ at 1265 Third Ave. will retire its 60-ounce pitchers and 20-ounce glasses, manager Daisy Reyes said.
"We have to buy new glasses," she said. "We're in the process."
And if you're looking for a night of bottle service at a Manhattan hot spot, be warned: Spending $300 on a bottle of vodka no longer entitles you to a full complement of mixers.
Tragic Potential Result Of The Sequester
It's horrible. Lawmakers might be forced to fly commercial.
Emily Heil writes at the WaPo's In the Loop:
Here's what might be the most powerful incentive yet for members of Congress to come up with a deal to avert the sequester: the head of the Air Force today warned that the spending cuts that will go into effect March 1 could cause the military to eliminate those lovely miljet flights that lawmakers enjoy.Members of Congress adore flying on Air Force jets, particularly for overseas trips -- there are no security lines, check-in is a breeze, the service couldn't be better, and it's business class-only.
But if the government-wide cuts aren't thwarted and the military has to pinch pennies, lawmakers might have to kiss those perks goodbye, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley told the crowd at the Air Force Association's winter conference in Orlando, Fla., we're told.
More in the jetting in The WSJ.
Nancy Pelosi, in particular, has been fond of mil-jet travel -- for herself and her various children and their spouses, and her grandchildren, reports Doug Link at Director Blue.
The screen shots of requests for the jet travel at the Director Blue link say they're for "official business." What official business could Nancy Pelosi's GRANDCHILDREN have in Washington?
Oh, and P.S., also from Doug Ross:
Military flights cost between $5,000 and $20,000 per hour to operate. The Speaker and her passengers routinely reimburse the Air Force $120 to $400 for each flight.Since Nancy Pelosi took over as Speaker in 2006, she's rung up millions in military travel expenses to commute between San Francisco and Washington.
Loop link via @instapundit
The Linkacademy Awards
Starring Rene Zellweger...carsick...or something, and leading men who used to look like movie stars who now look like Grizzly Adams. Also, Russell Crowe had to sing and Anne Hathaway's nipples won an Oscar. (She came up with them to claim it.)
Lightning Deals In Computers And Accessories
Today only, at Amazon
Oscar Night Replay -- 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.
OSCAR NIGHT REPLAY -- FROM MY "BEST OF" SHOWS:
Addiction treatment specialist Dr. Stanton Peele lays out his groundbreaking thinking on the personal responsibility approach to addiction and kicking everyday bad habits.
Peele talks 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 discuss 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 at this link at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/02/25/dr-stanton-peele-overcome-your-addiction
And don't miss last week's show on the power of logical thinking, and how you can be more powerful by improving yours.
My guest is bioethics and philosophy of science lecturer Dr. Christopher DiCarlo, and his book is How to Become a Really Good Pain in the Ass: A Critical Thinker's Guide to Asking the Right Questions
This show is for anyone who wants to improve their critical thinking skills or who needs to learn the basics. I absolutely loved prepping for it, because it always helps me to be reminded of what I need to do to ditch my biases and hone my reasoning -- and persuading -- skills.
Listen here at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/02/18/dr-christopher-dicarlo-improve-your-critical-thinking
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.
Adam Kokesh Asks TSA Agents: "How Many Terrorists Has The TSA Caught?"
Via @reasonpolicy:
The answer, of course:
NONE.
Of course, none of these TSA workers are either smart enough or honest enough to reply with that answer.
Also, check out the TSA workers he's interviewing. They seem like sharp tacks to you? These are the people "protecting" us from...getting through the airport ungroped.
Kokesh tells one TSA worker who wants to know who's asking that he's asking as a taxpayer.
"As a taxpayer, we not gonna answer you," the TSA guy says to him.
The intimidation tactic by the mustachioed TSA worker is particularly disgusting. Here's a citizen wanting to know how our tax dollars are being spent, and that's cause for intimidation -- not answers.
Don't Forget The TSA Is The T$A: A Gargantuan Waste Of American Tax Dollars
Tweeted:
@latimes
Travelers should expect flight delays if federal budget cuts kick in http://lati.ms/hYGmN
My reply:
@amyalkon
.@latimes The giant waste that is the "suspect every American" TSA should be disbanded and our civil liberties restored. Would save plenty.
It's Supposed To Be "Public Service," Not "Public! Serve Me!"
Via @Drudge, meet the government's (nearly) million-dollar employee and the boondoggle-a-thon he's running. Tori Richards and Earl Glynn write at Colorado Watchdog:
If you live outside Colorado, you probably haven't heard of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory - NREL for short. It's the place where solar panels, windmills and corn are deemed the energy source of the future and companies who support such endeavors are courted.It's also the place where highly paid staff decide how to spend hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars.
And the public pays those decision-makers well: NREL's top executive, Dr. Dan Arvizu, makes close to a million dollars per year. His two top lieutenants rake in more than half a million each and nine others make more than $350,000 a year.
And check out the kind of raises they get:
Dan Arvizu, Alliance president and NREL director
2010: $928,0692009: $691,570
2008: $652,159
Bobi Garrett, NREL senior vice president of Outreach, Planning and Analysis
2010: $524,226.2009: $398,022
William Glover, NREL deputy lab director and CEO (retired)
2010: $557,5712009: $407,361
2008: $315,465
Catherine Porto, NREL senior vice president
2010: $406,3392009: $223,553
How did Henry Ford even manage to get out of bed in the morning without government dollars?
Let's Be Clear On Which Part Is Disabled
I have a few friends who ride (or rode
For some reason very few people can encounter two people, one of whom is in a wheelchair, without deciding subliminally that the wheelchair one is not relevant.Disabled seems to equate with appendage or disappeared, and anyway unaware and incompetent.
For instance, Yvonne [her friend in a wheelchair] takes her mobile phone in for repair because the charger is loose. The salesperson turns to me and not her to explain the problem.
Once, three of us sat down for lunch and only two menus were produced. Yvonne didn't get one.
She takes none of this stuff lying down.
''Excuse me, but it is my phone. Who are you talking to?''
''Excuse me, but I am intelligent and I can read.''
I feel sorry for the unwitting offenders. They mean no harm but they do so much.
''It is so humiliating,'' says Yvonne and I know it is, because I get a whiff of it when the opposite happens. If we meet someone who knows Yvonne, but not me, it is I who become invisible and she is like the queen on her throne...
...Always speak to the wheelchair person first unless it is absolutely clear that the business is exclusively to do with the walking one, and acknowledge both walker and wheeled as you would any other people.
This might seem obvious, but I know that without the privilege of being Yvonne's friend I would have had no idea how important it is to know it.
via @simondumenco
Art Linkielater
I'm actually too young to really know who that is. I could Google him, but I'd rather see all your inappropriate and off-topic links.
Elmore Leonard: "The Next Pope, A Cool Black Nun"
That above was the headline -- "The Next Pope, A Cool Black Nun" -- but somebody at the NYT apparently had a case of the PC something-or-others, and now Elmore's fun op-ed piece is titled something he NEVER would have approved, "For Pope: A Dude Like Dad." Bleh.
An excerpt from Elmore's piece -- which, thankfully, didn't get deballed like the headline:
WHEN I was a boy, around the time Pope Pius XI died, in 1939, I remember my dad saying he could be the next pope if he got the votes. He said there were no rules saying the pope had to come out of the cardinal pool, or be a bishop or priest of some kind; he only had to be a Catholic -- male, of course -- of good standing in the church, to be elected.My mother, Flora, normally a kind soul, would tell Elmore Sr., "Shush, you could never in the world be the pope." It was the only subject I remember them arguing about.
I grew up Catholic, went to Mass every day in grade school and high school; was taught by the Jesuits; spent two and a half years in the Navy during the war; returned, and was graduated from another Jesuit school, the University of Detroit. I even taught catechism in the '60s, although I just told stories for the most part.
My dad might have been qualified to be pope. He worked for General Motors.
...The Vatican is an old boys' club. Tradition going all the way back to Peter says it's a man's job. But wouldn't a woman, one who isn't the least bit timid, be interesting in the role? Like a cool black nun who comes to the throne after 30 years doing God's work with little recognition. She'd be the first pope in heels. Maybe from the Franciscan Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary, in Harlem -- the real Sister Act. Get a singing, swinging sister to jazz up St. Peter's Basilica. I guarantee people would tune in.
P.S. You can still see Elmore's title in the URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/opinion/sunday/the-next-pope-a-cool-black-nun.html?_r=0
And here's a copy with a slightly different version of the "cool black nun" from the NYT online from last night: 
Probably fears by those at the NYT of being racist or being called racist were behind this change, but the ridiculous thing is, what really reflects racial bias is having a group of people who, by virtue of their race, we aren't allowed to joke about or even comment on (at least, not in a very out-there way).
Hollywood Loves Its Government Handouts (In Between Weeping For The Fate Of The Poor)
Glenn Reynolds writes in the WSJ of Hollywood's sweetheart deal from government:
At the Democratic National Convention last year, actress Eva Longoria called for higher taxes on America's rich. Her take: "The Eva Longoria who worked at Wendy's flipping burgers--she needed a tax break. But the Eva Longoria who works on movie sets does not."Actually, nowadays an Eva Longoria who flipped burgers would probably qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit and get a check from the government rather than pay taxes. It's the movie set where she works these days that may well be getting the tax break.
With campaign season over, you're not likely to hear stars bringing up taxes at this weekend's Academy Awards show. But the tax man ought to come out and take a bow anyway. Of the nine "Best Picture" nominees in 2012, for example, five were filmed on location in states where the production company received financial incentives, including "The Help" (in Mississippi) and "Moneyball" (in California). Virginia gave $3.5 million to this year's Oscar-nominated "Lincoln."
Such state incentives are widespread, and often substantial, but they don't do much to attract jobs. About $1.5 billion in tax credits and exemptions, grants, waived fees and other financial inducements went to the film industry in 2010, according to data analyzed by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Politicians like to offer this largess because they get photo-ops with celebrities, but the economic payoff is minuscule. George Mason University's Adam Thierer has called this "a growing cronyism fiasco" and noted that the number of states involved skyrocketed to 45 in 2009 from five in 2002.
...The $1.5 billion in subsidies that states provide, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "would have paid for the salaries of 23,500 middle school teachers, 26,600 firefighters, and 22,800 police patrol officers." Or it could have gone to cut taxes on small businesses, which, as Ms. Longoria noted in her DNC speech, produce two out of three jobs in the economy.
In her words: "It's the suburban dad who realizes his neighborhood needs a dry cleaner. It's the Latina nurse whose block needs a health clinic--and she knows she's the one to open it! It's the high school sophomore who is building Facebook's FB -0.56% competitor. They are the entrepreneurs driving the American economy."
And they are the people who aren't receiving the kind of special tax treatment that states dole out to Hollywood.
Paid Family Leave: Perhaps Those Taking Leave To Care For Children Should Be The Ones Paying?
Why should a company pick up the cost of motherhood or one's care for a sick relative? Perhaps if you decide to become a parent, you should stash money away so you can afford to take time off, and the same goes if you have relatives for whom you are the sole source of care.
Tara Siegel Bernard writes in The New York Times, "In Paid Family Leave, U.S. Trails Most of the Globe":
There I was, on the day my six months of maternity leave had ended, pushing my son's stroller with one hand, clutching a jumbo box of 174 diapers with the other, doing my best to navigate through piles of slushy snow.It was time for his first day of day care, my time at home over in a blink.
Still, I knew I was relatively fortunate. The first eight weeks of my leave were paid, and I had tacked on another three weeks of paid vacation. Plus, my employer permits workers to take up to six months of unpaid leave.
A large majority of new parents in this country are not so lucky. It is no secret that when it comes to paid parental leave, the United States is among the least generous in the world, ranking down with the handful of countries that don't offer any paid leave at all, among them Liberia, Suriname and Papua New Guinea.
The American situation hasn't materially improved since the landmark Family and Medical Leave Act was signed into law 20 years ago this month by President Clinton. The law requires larger employers and public agencies to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave -- as well as continuation of health benefits -- for the birth or adoption of a child, or to care for an opposite-sex spouse, a parent or a child who has fallen ill (or to deal with your own health problem).
But about 40 percent of workers fall through the cracks because the law only requires many companies with 50 or more employees to comply. To get the benefit, employees must also have worked for the company for at least a year and logged 1,250 hours within the last 12 months. And lots of people simply cannot afford to take unpaid leave.
And what of companies that can't afford to support your choices or your sick relatives? And notice that gay people, in 20-year committed relationships, say, are not included in the Family and Medical Leave Act if their longterm partner gets sick.
Mary Todd Linkin
Toss in a few for Mrs. Abe...
Sale On Shoesies -- The Designer Kind
And designer handbags, too. And sunglasses and men's wallets. Up to 70% off at Amazon
(Hint, search for your size, and "price: low-to-high" to find the biggest deals.)
Intellectual Property Laws Run Amok
It's now illegal to "unlock" your cellular phone. Yale Law Fellow, columnist and policy expert Derek Khanna writes at BoingBoing:
On January 26, 2013, it became illegal to unlock new phones. Unlocking is a technique to alter the settings on your phone to let you use it with compatible cellular networks operated by other carriers. Doing so now could place you in legal liability: up to 5 years in jail and a $500,000 fine. This is a violation of our property rights. It makes you wonder: if you can't alter the settings on your phone, do you even own it?This is just one clear example of intellectual property laws run amok: the underlying law was created to protect copyright, but it's being applied in a situation that no legislator expected when they voted for the bill in 1998. It's a clear example of crony capitalism, where a few companies asked for the law to be changed to their pecuniary benefit--despite the invasion of our property rights, its impact upon consumers, and its impact upon the overall market. The decision created even higher thresholds to entry for new market participants, which hinders competition and leads to less innovation.
When the Librarian of Congress (who had previously provided exceptions allowing this activity) spoke out on this issue on October 28, 2012, Congress refused to act. When that ruling went into effect, months later on January 26, 2013, Congress refused to act. On January 27, 2013, I published an article in the Atlantic, The Most ridiculous law of 2013 (So Far): It is Now a Crime to Unlock Your Smartphone, which brought more attention to this issue and was read by more than a million people. Despite this attention, Congress refused to act. At the time, I called their failure to address this issue a 'dereliction of duty.'
The SOPA generation sparked a White House petition to allow cellphone unlocking and Sina Khanifar and I advocated heavily on this issue over the past three weeks (Sina created the petition). During that time, Public Knowledge's question on this issue was submitted for President Obama in the Google Plus Hangout. It was one of the most popular questions submitted. Rep. Defazo, Vint Cerf, and the National College Republicans all tweeted in favor of the petition. And yesterday, on February 21, 2013, at around 7:37 AM EST, the 100,000 signature threshold was crossed on the petition, thereby meeting the threshold required for the White House to provide a formal response.
I propose that the post-SOPA protest coalition take this issue on forcefully, and encourage Congress to pass a bill that codifies permanent exemptions to the DMCA:
Dear Congress,Please remove these items from your DMCA contraband list (both for developing the technology, selling and using the technology):
• Technology for unlocking and jail-breaking (currently allowed for iPhone, not allowed for iPad).
• Adaptability technology for the blind to have e-books aloud (currently subject to triennial review by the Librarian of Congress - it's legal to use the technology but illegal to develop or sell).
• Technology to back-up our own DVD's and Blue-Ray discs for personal use (current law makes this illegal and injunctions have even been used to shut down websites discussing this technology).
Signed,
The people
Sign here by Feburary 23.
Teachers Without Judgment
They tell the kids they're going to Disneyland, showing them an elaborate presentation, and then tell them -- when they were "screaming with joy" -- that hah, hah...they'd be going to a local bowling alley instead.
If you are this lacking in wisdom -- and empathy -- you should not be leading classes at the school; you should be pushing a mop around it.
The Science On Getting Rid Of Your Warts
A dead cat in the cemetery works as...not at all...as duct tape or any other known measure, reports Mark Crislip at Science-Based Medicine.
The natural history for warts is to go away. ... 2/3 will go away in two years. So if you get two years of colonics you can credit the colonic with the resolution of the warts.
Too Big And Rich To Not Be On Taxpayer Welfare
I'm just loving the logic as of late for why banks are made of the Tefloniest Teflon. The latest is from Bloomberg, with the question, "Why Should Taxpayers Give Big Banks $83 Billion a Year?" They explain:
So what if we told you that, by our calculations, the largest U.S. banks aren't really profitable at all? What if the billions of dollars they allegedly earn for their shareholders were almost entirely a gift from U.S. taxpayers?...Let's start with a bit of background. Banks have a powerful incentive to get big and unwieldy. The larger they are, the more disastrous their failure would be and the more certain they can be of a government bailout in an emergency. The result is an implicit subsidy: The banks that are potentially the most dangerous can borrow at lower rates, because creditors perceive them as too big to fail.
Lately, economists have tried to pin down exactly how much the subsidy lowers big banks' borrowing costs. In one relatively thorough effort, two researchers -- Kenichi Ueda of the International Monetary Fund and Beatrice Weder di Mauro of the University of Mainz -- put the number at about 0.8 percentage point. The discount applies to all their liabilities, including bonds and customer deposits.
Small as it might sound, 0.8 percentage point makes a big difference. Multiplied by the total liabilities of the 10 largest U.S. banks by assets, it amounts to a taxpayer subsidy of $83 billion a year. To put the figure in perspective, it's tantamount to the government giving the banks about 3 cents of every tax dollar collected.
...Neither bank executives nor shareholders have much incentive to change the situation. On the contrary, the financial industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars every election cycle on campaign donations and lobbying, much of which is aimed at maintaining the subsidy. The result is a bloated financial sector and recurring credit gluts. Left unchecked, the superbanks could ultimately require bailouts that exceed the government's resources.
They say regulators can help by paring down the subsidy. I'm not going to hold my breath. You?
Abe Linksin
Penny for your links! (Only, it's an imaginary penny. Batteries not included.)
Newest Pre-Orders On DVD And BluRay
At Amazon
Husband Asks Wife: Please, No Doctors Of The Opposite Sex
I got an email from a guy who's extremely upset that his wife, who is having some gynecological procedure performed, won't request a female doctor.
He considers this a breach of marital intimacy, having a male doctor doing this.
You?
How American Health Care Killed His Father
Businessman David Goldhill gave some thought to his father's possibly or even probably preventable death in a hospital from hospital-acquired infections. He wrote in The Atlantic in 2009 that "health insurance isn't health care" -- although that's how we now see it:
About a week after my father's death, The New Yorker ran an article by Atul Gawande profiling the efforts of Dr. Peter Pronovost to reduce the incidence of fatal hospital-borne infections. Pronovost's solution? A simple checklist of ICU protocols governing physician hand-washing and other basic sterilization procedures. Hospitals implementing Pronovost's checklist had enjoyed almost instantaneous success, reducing hospital-infection rates by two-thirds within the first three months of its adoption. But many physicians rejected the checklist as an unnecessary and belittling bureaucratic intrusion, and many hospital executives were reluctant to push it on them. The story chronicled Pronovost's travels around the country as he struggled to persuade hospitals to embrace his reform.It was a heroic story, but to me, it was also deeply unsettling. How was it possible that Pronovost needed to beg hospitals to adopt an essentially cost-free idea that saved so many lives? Here's an industry that loudly protests the high cost of liability insurance and the injustice of our tort system and yet needs extensive lobbying to embrace a simple technique to save up to 100,000 people.
...Indeed, I suspect that our collective search for villains--for someone to blame--has distracted us and our political leaders from addressing the fundamental causes of our nation's health-care crisis. All of the actors in health care--from doctors to insurers to pharmaceutical companies--work in a heavily regulated, massively subsidized industry full of structural distortions. They all want to serve patients well. But they also all behave rationally in response to the economic incentives those distortions create. Accidentally, but relentlessly, America has built a health-care system with incentives that inexorably generate terrible and perverse results. Incentives that emphasize health care over any other aspect of health and well-being. That emphasize treatment over prevention. That disguise true costs. That favor complexity, and discourage transparent competition based on price or quality. That result in a generational pyramid scheme rather than sustainable financing. And that--most important--remove consumers from our irreplaceable role as the ultimate ensurer of value.
These are the impersonal forces, I've come to believe, that explain why things have gone so badly wrong in health care, producing the national dilemma of runaway costs and poorly covered millions. The problems I've explored in the past year hardly count as breakthrough discoveries--health-care experts undoubtedly view all of them as old news. But some experts, it seems, have come to see many of these problems as inevitable in any health-care system--as conditions to be patched up, papered over, or worked around, but not problems to be solved.
That's the premise behind today's incremental approach to health-care reform. Though details of the legislation are still being negotiated, its principles are a reprise of previous reforms--addressing access to health care by expanding government aid to those without adequate insurance, while attempting to control rising costs through centrally administered initiatives. Some of the ideas now on the table may well be sensible in the context of our current system. But fundamentally, the "comprehensive" reform being contemplated merely cements in place the current system--insurance-based, employment-centered, administratively complex. It addresses the underlying causes of our health-care crisis only obliquely, if at all; indeed, by extending the current system to more people, it will likely increase the ultimate cost of true reform.
I'm a Democrat, and have long been concerned about America's lack of a health safety net. But based on my own work experience, I also believe that unless we fix the problems at the foundation of our health system--largely problems of incentives--our reforms won't do much good, and may do harm. To achieve maximum coverage at acceptable cost with acceptable quality, health care will need to become subject to the same forces that have boosted efficiency and value throughout the economy. We will need to reduce, rather than expand, the role of insurance; focus the government's role exclusively on things that only government can do (protect the poor, cover us against true catastrophe, enforce safety standards, and ensure provider competition); overcome our addiction to Ponzi-scheme financing, hidden subsidies, manipulated prices, and undisclosed results; and rely more on ourselves, the consumers, as the ultimate guarantors of good service, reasonable prices, and sensible trade-offs between health-care spending and spending on all the other good things money can buy.
These ideas stand well outside the emerging political consensus about reform.
The cost of his father's care:
$636,687.75Ten days after my father's death, the hospital sent my mother a copy of the bill for his five-week stay: $636,687.75. He was charged $11,590 per night for his ICU room; $7,407 per night for a semiprivate room before he was moved to the ICU; $145,432 for drugs; $41,696 for respiratory services. Even the most casual effort to compare these prices to marginal costs or to the costs of off-the-shelf components demonstrates the absurdity of these numbers, but why should my mother care? Her share of the bill was only $992; the balance, undoubtedly at some huge discount, was paid by Medicare.
Wasn't this an extraordinary benefit, a windfall return on American citizenship? Or at least some small relief for a distraught widow?
Not really. You can feel grateful for the protection currently offered by Medicare (or by private insurance) only if you don't realize how much you truly spend to fund this system over your lifetime, and if you believe you're getting good care in return.
...Before we further remove ourselves as direct consumers of health care--with all of our beneficial influence on quality, service, and price--let me ask you to consider one more question. Imagine my father's hospital had to present the bill for his "care" not to a government bureaucracy, but to my grieving mother. Do you really believe that the hospital--forced to face the victim of its poor-quality service, forced to collect the bill from the real customer--wouldn't have figured out how to make its doctors wash their hands?
Via Walter Russell Mead, who writes:
Our employer-based insurance system makes this problem worse. When your employeer pays your premiums, you become even more ignorant about just how much health care is costing you. Goldhill calculates that health care will cost an average 23 year old at least $1.8 million over the course of his or her lifetime. But we often don't realize how high this number is, because employers pay it. Much of that $1.8 million could go back into our paychecks if health care were cheaper, but because the cost of care is hidden, most of us don't know what we're losing out on.Goldhill argues that to fix our system, we need to start paying for it just like we pay for other areas of life that have both routine small costs and rare massive expenses. His proposal is to restrict the scope of insurance coverage to truly catastrophic costs--rare, unpredictable, serious illnesses--and to pay for all other care out of pocket. This would still give people the chance to pay for very expensive treatments through insurance, while giving them more information about the true costs of routine care. Putting consumers in the driver's seat in this way would revolutionize health care just as it has revolutionized many other industries.
George Will: Solitary Confinement Is Torture
George Will observes that the "tens of thousands" of inmates in American prisons being kept in protracted solitary confinement "probably violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition of 'cruel and unusual punishments'":
Noting that half of all prison suicides are committed by prisoners held in isolation, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) has prompted an independent assessment of solitary confinement in federal prisons. State prisons are equally vulnerable to Eighth Amendment challenges concerning whether inmates are subjected to "substantial risk of serious harm."...Clearly, solitary confinement involves much more than the isolation of incorrigibly violent individuals for the protection of other inmates or prison personnel.
Federal law on torture prohibits conduct "specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering." And "severe" physical pain is not limited to "excruciating or agonizing" pain, or pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily functions, or even death." The severe mental suffering from prolonged solitary confinement puts the confined at risk of brain impairment.
Supermax prisons isolate inmates from social contact. Often prisoners are in their cells, sometimes smaller than 8 by 12 feet, 23 hours a day, released only for a shower or exercise in a small fenced-in outdoor space. Isolation changes the way the brain works, often making individuals more impulsive, less able to control themselves. The mental pain of solitary confinement is crippling: Brain studies reveal durable impairments and abnormalities in individuals denied social interaction. Plainly put, prisoners often lose their minds.
And if you're thinking, "Who cares about prisoners' rights"? Consider this:
Solitary confinement costs, on average, three times as much per inmate as in normal prisons. And remember: Most persons now in solitary confinement will someday be back on America's streets, some of them rendered psychotic by what are called correctional institutions.
More on this here and here and here.
Telemarketing, Political Marketing Calls, And Survey Calls Are Invasions Of Privacy
As I wrote in I See Rude People, Nobody has a right to use a phone line you pay for to hijack your time and invade your home.
I've lately been reading on privacy lately, and it occurs to me that these calls are a violation of our "right to be left alone," as articulated by Brandeis and Warren in their 1890 Harvard Law Review article.
I am for free speech. If you want to stand in a public square and communicate any of the information that time-thieving asswads convey in these calls, it is your right to do it.
It is not your right to call my home, interrupt my work flow, interrupt my nap, or simply, as Crid once put it, make a device I pay the bill on make "a shrill noise."
My home, little termite-eaten rental shack that it is, is my castle. And just because you can find my phone number, and you have the morality of a thief, that doesn't mean my time is your time or my monthly payments to the phone company should be made, even in the smallest way, for your benefit.
Just because people are used to it doesn't change what this type of calling is -- as EPIC put it, "commercial use of [citizens'] communications devices."
Unless you specifically opt in to being called by these time-thieves, there is no way they have any right to disturb your life.
Erdogan's Turkey: 17,000 New Mosques Built -- Not One School
That's since Erdogan took power, and during his 10 years of leadership. Weasel Zippers writes, "The Islamization of Turkey nearing completion."
via PP
Links Of Bratwurst
The eatest link.
I Would Recommend Using Some Type Of Sanding Tool
"Free" is not always what it seems to be.
It is very cool that Tweezerman
And you really can't argue with labor provided to you free, but I'm wondering why it takes "4-6 weeks" to sharpen. Are they doing it with their thoughts?
Or...do they think you'll maybe get fed up with your monobrow -- which I do not have, thanks! -- and buy a new pair while you're waiting?
Dear Amy AlkonWe have received the implement(s) you sent for sharpening and/or repair order XXXXX. We will send you a notification when your implement(s) are ready to mailed back to you in approximately 4-6 weeks.
You can learn more at http://www.tweezerman.com/sharpening-and-repair/.
Thank you.
Tweezerman Sharpening & Repair Department
When, in your experience, is "free" not so free?
The iChild: The Tethered Kid
A quote from Sherry Turkle's Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
The tethered child does not have the experience of being alone with only him- or herself to count on. For example, there used to be a point for an urban child, an important moment, when there was a first time to navigate the city alone. It was a rite of passage that communicated to children that they were on their own and responsible. If they were frightened, they had to experience those feelings. The cell phone buffers this moment.
Some People Should Not Breed
"23 Tips For Parents Taking Selfies," from Benny Johnson at BuzzFeed.
There Is No "Comic Relief Act" That Makes It Illegal To Crack Jokes At TSA Grope Station
At TSA News Blog, Lisa Simeone notes that the First Amendment has not been suspended so the hamburger clerks working airport "security" can call actual cops to throw you in jail for joking that that's a "bomb in your pants," etc.:
It is simply false to claim that someone is violating a law if he/she makes a joke -- about bombs or anything else -- at the airport security checkpoint. I repeat: it's false.There is no law prohibiting you from cracking a joke. In fact, there's something called the First Amendment that you may have heard of. It prohibits the government from infringing on your right to freedom of speech.
Of course, that doesn't stop the blue-shirted crusaders from telling you you're breaking the law, or from calling the cops, who should know better but who usually side with the thuglets, as they did in the recent case of Frank Hannibal. Which is why Hannibal is suing and will almost surely win -- if his case ever even goes to court, which it probably won't because the TSA and the cops will settle because they know they're wrong.
But here we go again with those pesky facts (from a Jonathan Turley USA Today column):
Across the country, travelers are greeted with signs and announcements at airports warning them not to make jokes about bombs or weapons. It has become commonly known that making such jokes is a federal offense. It isn't. There is no Comic Relief Act that makes joking a violation of the U.S. Code. It is an urban legend intentionally created by threatening arrests and twisting existing laws. Even actual prosecutions are rare. In the meantime, there is not a single case of a terrorist warming up his victims with a lead-in joke.
Turley continues:
Government websites such as the TSA's expressly warn that "jokes ... are not tolerated" and "can result in criminal or civil penalties." However, federal law prohibits giving false information "willfully and maliciously, or with reckless disregard for the safety of human life." This is an anti-hoax -- not an anti-joke -- law designed to punish people who want to cause panic with false reports. Most joke cases involve people who clearly indicate at the time that they are joking....Ironically, news media reports of such abuses only reinforce the urban mythology -- sending the message that even obvious jokes can be grounds for arbitrary arrest. Even when proven unlawful, the arrests deter citizens by threatening them with the loss of money and time in court.
It is time to tell the public the truth about airport jokes. If we are going to criminalize bad humor, we should have the good sense of passing a law first.
"Cutting" Government Costs
David A. Fahrenthold writes in the WaPo about the 2011 Federal Bullshit (uh, Budget) Cuts:
The Transportation Department got credit for "cutting" a $280 million tunnel that had been canceled six months earlier. It also "cut" a $375,000 road project that had been created by a legislative typo, on a road that did not exist.At the Census Bureau, officials got credit for a whopping $6 billion cut, simply for obeying the calendar. They promised not to hold the expensive 2010 census again in 2011.
Today, an examination of 12 of the largest cuts shows that, thanks in part to these gimmicks, federal agencies absorbed $23 billion in reductions without losing a single employee.
"Many of the cuts we put in were smoke and mirrors," said Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), a hard-line conservative now in his second term. "That's the lesson from April 2011: that when Washington says it cuts spending, it doesn't mean the same thing that normal people mean."
Now the failures of that 2011 bill have come back to haunt the leaders who crafted it. Disillusionment with that bill has persuaded many conservatives to reject a line-by-line, program-by-program approach to cutting the budget.
Instead, many have embraced the sequester, a looming $85 billion across-the-board cut set to take effect March 1. Obama and GOP leaders have said they don't like the idea: the sequester is a "dumb cut," in Washington parlance, which would cut the government's best ideas along with its worst without regard to merit.
But at least, conservatives say, you can trust that this one is for real.
"There has been a shift in resolve. They have been burned in these fictional cuts. And so the sequester is like real cuts," said Chris Chocola, a former congressman who now heads the Club for Growth, a conservative advocacy group. "So I think that there is a willingness to say, 'We've really got to cut stuff, and [the cuts] have got to be real."
What Color Is My Porn-I-Chute
Porn star bra size, race, weight, and hair color averages -- need-to-know, huh?!
Linked Out
Here...
Your 14-Year-Old Daughter Is Probably A Child Pornographer
The teen years are the years of acting like you removed your brain and left it under your bed. Not for all teens (I know, not for your teen), but for a lot of them.
They do some seriously dumb things, and then they do some things that are just kinda bad judgment. For example, when a girl sends naked pictures of her titties to that boyfriend she thinks she will be with FOREVER (translation: until he breaks up with her on Tuesday and makes out with Ashley behind the bleachers).
It turns out that in Massachusetts, your daughter is a sex offender if she does such a thing. In fact, because there is apparently no actual crime in Massachusetts, the Assistant District Attorney there may have state troopers focus their efforts on that terrible criminal, your daughter. Clarence Fanto writes in The Berkshire Eagle:
The perils of "sexting" -- sending sexually explicit messages and photographs by cellphone -- include potential criminal prosecution, according to Berkshire Second Assistant District Attorney Robert W. Kinzer III.As the head of the DA's computer crime unit, which includes several state troopers, Kinzer cited "kids, young adults, even adults who think it is a good idea to take nude or semi-nude photos of themselves on their cellphones and send them to other people via text message."
..."When you send that text message, you have disseminated child pornography" and when it is shared and shown to others, they are in possession of child pornography, [Kinzer] pointed out.
"We do not have any exceptions in our law for kids who are really in love, for girls who wanted to do it and for guys who promised they wouldn't share it, or for two kids who are dating," Kinzer said. "A nude photo of [a minor's] exposed genitalia is child pornography."
..."I'm done telling what the law is," Kinzer said. "When they start sharing photos like this, we are going to start charging people with the manufacturing, dissemination and possession of child pornography, and they're going to go to court.
"They're going to face [prosecution], probably not jail time unless they've got bad records. But that's OK. They'll just be put on probation and they'll get to register as a sex offender, and that's a great box to check off on any job application," he continued. "You're going to lose jobs and relationships, and you'll spend the rest of your life as a registered sex offender."
Pledging to ruin young lives on the taxpayer dime! You go, Kinzer!
via @IAMMGraham
Way To Help The Wimmins Become Gainfully Employed, Duke U!
I love this blog, mostly because of the comments of all of you. And I could live off the proceeds -- if it were the year 1614. But, really blogging -- feminist blogging -- as a way to make those college dollars pay off? How out-of-your-mind high do you have to be to think that's a good idea? (Or is this just for those "smash the state!" type feminists who grew up in the best parts of Beverly Hills and Chappaqua?)
Katie J.M. Baker blogs at Jezebel, "Duke University Will Train Feminist Bloggers":
Duke University's Women's Center is launching a new media activism program called Write(H)ers that will help "create a community of feminist-oriented writers," according to the Duke Chronicle: program members will participate in personal blogging and workshops with professional journalists (including Jill Filipovic, Heather Havrilesky, Rebecca Traister, and former Jezebel writer Irin Carmon) and write at least three blog posts over the course of the semester.We'll save the snarky bloggery comments re: output (three blog posts a semester?!?) because this is awesome news for the 22 women and 1 dude who got into the program.
"This will be such a positive experience because it gives me a small window into the perspectives of several women involved in fields that still deal with huge gender disparities," said senior Nathan Nye, the aforementioned lone male student. "I am fascinated by how women are portrayed [by the media] and how different this portrayal is from the women I've known my entire life."
Oh, hurl.
And the title: "Write(H)ers"? Seriously?
From the bitch section, uh, comments, on Jezzie:
transanon
I don't understand how Jill Filipovic is going to teach feminist blogging, given her blog's famously inadequate moderation and her very narrow perspective. She doesn't have the ability to write well about people of color or people who aren't (upper-)middle class, and I've called her out multiple times on her lack of understanding of "how to write about queer and trans people 101" (like her insistence on calling gay people "gays"), only to be shrugged off with incoherent attempts at snark.
Rich Man, Poor Man, And The Departure Of Gerard Depardieu
A quote from the interesting Lauren Collins New Yorker story on Depardieu's "decision to establish residency in Néchin, a Belgian village of two thousand souls, and nearly as many beet fields, in order to escape a seventy-five-per-cent tax that the French government had promised to impose on income exceeding a million euros":
Americans insist that the poor do better; the French insist that the rich do worse.
The French approach really works -- if you can put impenetrable steel walls around every border.
Gateway Links
Lead us astray.
TSA Horror: They Assault, Traumatize Three-Year-Old In Wheelchair
At one point, she wails, "I don't wanna go to Disney World." The TSA are taking away far, far too much from us, and those who go through the process without complaint, enable it to continue.
Deborah Newell blogs at TSANewsBlog (link may change due to correction of spelling error in their headline):
Not only is this little girl so obviously terrified to the point of crying out loud, and desperately upset that her comfort toy -- her stuffed animal -- is being taken away, she is distraught that her parents' attempts to protect her are being summarily ignored. Imagine how frightening that must be. If indeed the child "alarmed," the screeners could have resolved the matter by allowing one of the cleared parents to carry her through the metal detector in their arms while they checked her wheelchair for hidden bombs, machetes, or fusilage-piercing grenade launchers.What will it take for the American public to recognize how wrong this is, all of it, and demand that our so-called leaders put an end to it? Why are citizens not carrying out a full-on economic boycott of the airlines, for all non-essential travel, if need be? What will it take, if not the unconstitutional persecution of a little child in a wheelchair?
Autoeroticism: Automotive Mash Notes
I don't just leave scolding notes for the ill-mannered, really I don't!
I sometimes leave a nice note when I can tell somebody's parked considerately, like a little thank you Post-It with a smileyface if they've taken care to move up in the two-spot space on a street near my house so another car can park there). (Parking is scarce in my neighborhood these days.)
Anyway, I think smart cars are just the cutest. (Gregg once took a picture of me hugging one in Beverly Hills, though we can't find the photo.)
A little white smart was parked across the street from my house on Sunday afternoon. I wish I'd kept a copy of the hot pink note I typed out and stuck on their windshield. It said, "My Honda Insight (across the street) wants to date your Smart Car." (There was a line below that but I can't remember it.)
I LOVE that the smart owner (who must live in the neighborhood) played along. Here's the note he or she sent back: 
UPDATE: I just left a response on my windshield (and, yes, I am aware that my car is screaming "Wash me!").
Automobile Surveillance: When Black Boxes In Cars Become The Norm
Security expert Bruce Schneier, in a blog item about the New York Times Tesla review brouhaha, takes note of the data collection:
Read the article to see what they logged: power consumption, speed, ambient temperature, control settings, location, and so on.The stakes are high here. Broder and the New York Times are concerned about their journalistic integrity, which affects their brand. And Tesla Motors wants to sell cars.
The implication is that Tesla Motors only does this for media test drives, but it gives you an idea of the sort of things that will be collected once automobile black boxes become the norm. We're used to airplane black boxes, which only collected a small amount of data from the minutes just before an incident. But that was back when data was expensive. Now that it's cheap, expect black boxes to collect everything all the time. And once it's collected, it'll be used. By auto manufacturers, by insurance companies, by car rental companies, by marketers. The list will be long.
But as we're learning from this particular back-and-forth between Broder and Tesla Motors, even intense electronic surveillance of the actions of a person in an enclosed space did not succeed in providing an unambiguous record of what happened. To know that, the car company would have had to have someone in the car with the journalist.
This will increasingly be a problem as we are judged by our data. And in most cases, neither side will spend this sort of effort trying to figure out what really happened.
Commenter "Winter" at Schneier's site notes:
"We have already seen that prosecutors have been known to withhold from trial, information that might prevent a defendant from being found guilty."We already see what happens then in Russia.
Everybody in Russia drives around with a dashcam to use the recordings as evidence against police, state prosecution, and insurance companies.
So, if they collect data, about us, we can collect even more data about ourselves to defend ourselves.
Whether this is actually a "Good Thing" (tm) is a different matter.
My insurance company gives me a discount for driving fewer than 2,500 miles a year. (I have a 2004 Honda Insight hybrid with about 21,000 miles on it.) Right now, I just mail them an account of my mileage. How long before they use the cookie of cheaper insurance to convince people to stick some sort of device in their car? (And this may not be possible in a cost-effective way in older cars -- but who wants to bet on how long it will take insurance company lobbyists to get Washington sleaze-o-crats to make this a reality in every new car?)
Muslim Cleric: Use Government Aid To Fund Muslim Holy War
Robert Johnson reports on British Muslim cleric Anjem Choundary, who has been secretly recorded (by reporters from two British newspapers) telling Muslims how to receive government assistance they can use to fund a Muslim holy war:
Calling it a "Jihadi Allowance," cleric Anjem Choundary, 45, has four kids, brings in £25,000, or just under $39,000 U.S. in benefits himself, and says that this is the way it is supposed to work according to Islamic law.Recorded by both the U.K. Sun and Telegraph, Choundary says:
"We are on Jihad Seekers Allowance, we take the Jizya (protection money paid to Muslims by non-Muslims) which is ours anyway."The normal situation is to take money from the [non-Muslims] isn't it? So this is the normal situation."
"They give us the money. You work, give us the money. Allah Akbar, we take the money. Hopefully there is no one from the DSS (Department of Social Security) listening."
"Ah, but you see people will say you are not working. But the normal situation is for you to take money from the Kuffar (non-Muslim) So we take Jihad Seeker's Allowance."
Choudray goes on in a separate videos to mock English workers performing 9 to 5 jobs, and tells followers that some of the most famous Islamic figures worked only one or two days a week.
"The rest of the year they were busy with jihad [holy war] and things like that," he says, according to The Telegraph. "People will say, 'Ah, but you are not working.'"
"But the normal situation is for you to take money from the kuffar [non-believers]."
The video:
Everything People Dislike Or Disagree With Is Now "Bullying"
Smart blog item by Popehat on how "bullying" has now been stretched out to mean any expression or social position we dislike or disagree with and any sharp criticism of a person or position:
As educators have become more aware of bullying -- and as the media has made it a hot topic -- opportunists have adopted the term in a crass attempt to delegitimize expression they oppose.You can see this on all sides of the political spectrum. Try Googling "conservative bullying" or "liberal bullying" and see what I mean. "Bullying" is relentlessly pressed as a term meaning "vigorous advocacy I don't like."
...("Bully" is by no means the only term so abused to mean whatever people want it to mean on a given day. When some men start a #whyIneedmasculinism hashtag on Twitter and some (including me) troll it, it's "awesome"; when, a few days later, some people troll the #tellafeministthankyou hashtag on Twitter, it's "harassing".)
The abusers of the term "bully" -- the bully-bullies, if you will -- seem unconcerned with how the misuse of the term makes them look. Conservative Ben Shapiro writes a whole book about how mean liberals bully decent conservatives and therefore silence them, perhaps not recognizing that this makes conservatives sound weak and unsuitable for leadership and their values milky, not recognizing that this accepts my least favorite trope that criticism is censorship. ... When Shapiro calls Piers Morgan a bully on guns, he doesn't mean that Morgan tracks down gun owners and dunks their head in the toilet. He means that Morgan uses blunt, condescending, belittling, and frequently stupid language to disagree with people who have chosen to enter into the gun control debate. That's not bullying.
...I approve of protecting the weak from the strong. I approve of calling out people who pick on strangers who are minding their own business and who didn't enter a debate. But I don't like the unprincipled overuse of "bullying" for several reasons. I don't like it because it shifts focus from issues to personalities. I don't like it because it changes our focus from substance to quarrels over substance. I don't like it because I think it encourages the trend of feckless, unconstitutional speech codes, and encourages the state to apply those codes too broadly. I don't like it because it encourages the unprincipled to pursue legal theories like "cyberbullying" when they mean "I acted badly and now a bunch of people are writing about me acting badly." I don't like it because I think it encourages the censorious mindset rather than the appetite for more speech. I don't like it because it encourages a posture of weakness over a posture of strength. But perhaps most of all, I don't like the overuse of "bullying" because it diminishes and degrades the word for petty political purposes to the detriment of actual victims of real bullying.
Sensible Thinking On Immigration From Immigrant Eugene Volokh
As @WalterOlson tweeted, "advocates of liberty can't afford to ignore the future-polity angle."
Constitutional scholar, law professor, and small "l" libertarian Eugene Volokh blogs at Volokh.com:
I sometimes pose for my liberal friends a stylized thought experiment. Say that they live in a country of 3 million people (the size of New Zealand) where 55% of the citizens are pro-choice and 45% are pro-life (1.65 million vs. 1.35 million). Now the country is facing an influx of 1 million devoutly Catholic immigrants, who are 90% pro-life. If these immigrants are let in and become citizens, the balance will flip to 2.25 million pro-life to 1.75 million pro-choice (56% to 44% pro-choice); and what my friends might see as their fundamental human right to abortion may well vanish, perfectly peacefully and democratically.It's unlikely that any constitutional protection will stand in the way: Even constitutions can be amended, and new judges can be appointed. Nor can one rely on "education" or "assimilation" -- what if the immigrants simply conclude that their views on abortion are just better than the domestic majority's? I think many of the current residents may rightly say "We have nothing against Catholics; but we don't want our rights changed by the arrival of people who have a different perspective on the world than we do."
Letting in immigrants means letting in your future rulers. It may be selfish to worry about that, but it's foolish not to. For America today, that's actually not that much of a concern, because we're a huge nation whose culture is already so mixed (for which I'm grateful) that even millions of immigrants won't affect it all that greatly, at least for quite a while. But for many smaller and more homogeneous countries, extra immigration means a fundamental change in what the country is all about, and perhaps what the citizens' lives and liberties will be like. And even for America, the influx of millions of new citizens -- both the potentially legalized current illegal immigrants and the many others who are likely to come in the wake of the legalization -- can affect the society and the political system in considerable ways. It seems to me eminently sensible to be concerned about the illegal immigrants who may well change (in some measure) your country even if your ancestors were themselves illegal immigrants who changed the country as it once was.
via @WalterOlson
Impolite Company
Have a tea cake and a shot of whiskey, and post your coarse and vulgar links. Please.
Backing Up For Less
No, not your car.
In Amazon's deals on electronics there are considerable savings on Seagate Backup Drives
There's up to 40% off SD cards
There's up to 60% off select musical instruments
Save 60% on a Polk Audio wireless speaker
And here are even more Presidents' Day savings in electronics
Advice Goddess Radio: 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET -- Dr. Christopher DiCarlo -- Improve Your Critical Thinking Skills And Live More Effectively And Persuasively Ever After
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research.
My show tonight is on the power of logical thinking, and how you can be more powerful by improving yours.
My guest tonight is bioethics and philosophy of science lecturer Dr. Christopher DiCarlo, and his book is How to Become a Really Good Pain in the Ass: A Critical Thinker's Guide to Asking the Right Questions
This show is for anyone who wants to improve their critical thinking skills or who needs to learn the basics. I absolutely loved prepping for it, because it always helps me to be reminded of what I need to do to ditch my biases and hone my reasoning -- and persuading -- skills.
Listen here at 7pm Pacific and 10pm Eastern at this link or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/02/18/dr-christopher-dicarlo-improve-your-critical-thinking
Don't miss last week's show on how can actually improve your mating intelligence -- and your ability to meet, date, and have sex and relationships with partners you want.
My guests were evolutionary psychologists Dr. Glenn Geher and Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, and their book is Mating Intelligence Unleashed: The Role of the Mind in Sex, Dating, and Love
Listen at this link or download the podcast (or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher):
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/02/11/drs-glenn-geher-scott-barry-kaufman-on-mating-intelligence-1
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 or Stitcher.
Proud Of His Humility
Andrew Sullivan blogs about a pretty sickening blog item by disgusting Church coverupper of child molestation, Cardinal Mahony. Boohoo, people are mean to him -- but he'll survive.
Government As Giant Cash Cow With Endless Milk Doesn't Pay Out As Expected
Bunny posted this link in the comments, to a WaPo story by N.C. Aizenman, "Funds run low for health insurance in state 'high-risk pools'":
Tens of thousands of Americans who cannot get health insurance because of preexisting medical problems will be blocked from a program designed to help them because funding is running low.Obama administration officials said Friday that the state-based "high-risk pools" set up under the 2010 health-care law will be closed to new applicants as soon as Saturday and no later than March 2, depending on the state.
But they stressed that coverage for about 100,000 people who are now enrolled in the high-risk pools will not be affected.
"We're being very careful stewards of the money that has been appropriated to us and we wanted to balance our desire to maximize the number of people who can gain from this program while making sure people who are in the program have coverage," said Gary Cohen, director of the Department of Health and Human Services' Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight. "This was the most prudent step for us to take at this point in time."
The program, which was launched in summer 2010, was always intended as a temporary bridge for the uninsured. But it was supposed to last until 2014. At that point, the health-care law will bar insurers from rejecting or otherwise discriminating against people who are already sick, enabling such people to buy plans through the private market.
From the start, analysts questioned whether the $5 billion that Congress appropriated for the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan -- as the program is called -- was sufficient.
Initial fears that as many as 375,000 sick people would swamp the pools and bankrupt them by 2012 did not pan out. This is largely because, even though the pools must charge premiums comparable to those for healthy people, the plans sold through them are often expensive.
But it was also because the pools are open only to people who have gone without insurance for at least six months. The result is that, while only about 135,000 people have gotten coverage at some point, they are proving far more costly to insure than predicted.
The Shape Of Things That Are Here
Christopher Buckley quoted H.G. Wells:
"Never before have so few been in a position to make fools, maniacs or criminals of so many."
--HG Wells, The Shape of Things to Come.
Congress Won't Rein In The TSA; Maybe Kansas Or Maryland Will
Lisa Simeone blogs at TSANewsBlog that Kansas is joining a list of 11 states that have tried to rein in the thuggish and pointless gropers of the TSA:
Kansas is joining a list of states that are trying to curb the abuses and crimes of the TSA, since it's apparent that Congress isn't going to do it.Kansas State Representative Brett Hildabrand and 20 of his colleagues have introduced legislation that would make it illegal for the TSA to do what's already illegal if anyone else does it -- paw your genitals without your permission.
Maryland is another state that's trying. Simeone blogs:
In Maryland's case, Delegate Glenn Glass has proposed HB 1111. It prohibits:a specified public servant, while acting under color of the public servant's office or employment, from intentionally subjecting another person to mistreatment or to arrest, detention, search, seizure, dispossession, assessment, or lien that the public servant knows is unlawful, intentionally denying or impeding another person in the exercise or enjoyment of a right, privilege, power, or immunity, knowing that the conduct of the public servant is unlawful, or intentionally subjecting another person to sexual harassment; etc.The legislation defines sexual harassment in this case as:
intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly touching the anus, sexual organ, buttocks, or breast of the other person, including touching through clothing; or causing physical contact with the other person when the public servant knows or should reasonably believe that the other person will regard the contact as offensive or provocative.A TSA agent violating this law could be charged with a misedemeanor, punishable by no more than a year in prison, or a fine of no more than $4,000, or both.
The problem, notes Simeone:
Even if this legislation passes, the first time it's challenged in court, it'll go down. Administrative search doctrine will be invoked.Still, it can't be a bad thing in the long run. Proposed legislation like this at least raises awareness, which is always necessary in a battle, especially since so many people around the country still don't know -- or don't want to believe -- what's going on in American airports, and which is spreading to all other types of transportation as well.
It also provides a baseline for further, more refined legislation down the line.
Advice Goddess Free Swim
You pick the topics. Two links, at most, per comment, or your comment will be eaten by my spam thang. Want to post three links? Post two comments.
I'll post more blog items in the morning.
A little tired! But, productive!
Shocking News: Women Fake Orgasms
The paper:
Evidence to Suggest that Copulatory Vocalizations in Women Are Not a Reflexive Consequence of Orgasm
More evidence:
(The end line -- from the older lady -- is the best.)
An Elephant Is Not A Good Choice For Watch Repairer
Jennifer Rubin, at the WaPo, points out that big government -- specifically the federal government -- is a ginormous and brutish force not well-suited to doing anything with a level of detail. For example, preschool programs:
President Obama's State of the Union address offers a fine example of the liberal adage that if something is a good idea, the government must do it -- specifically, the federal government must do it. This overlooks several inescapable facts: We are out of money; the government doesn't have any particular expertise to do certain things (e.g. pick successful green-energy companies); and the federal government often adds an extra level of bureaucracy and cost to what will be run by state or local authorities.Take preschool. Here, we're not certain it is even a good idea. The results from years of Head Start have been abysmal and, while a number of state programs are more promising, data on them is sketchy.
...What the federal government would be doing (in taking over preschooling) is alleviating the states of a key responsibility: the obligation to set priorities. Are public-employee pensions more valuable than universal preschool? Are electric trains to nowhere more important than universal preschool? If states would start making some hard choices (or even some pretty easy ones), they'd then have the dedicated revenue stream from their own taxpayers to do things they think are good ideas and they can administer in ways they have found effective.
Now, all of this said, one of the primary reasons for entitlement reform (aside from the going-broke part) is to correct our over-shifting of government benefits from the young to the old. So let's ask a different question: Is giving Warren Buffett free health care more important than spending money on universal preschool? If the president would ever relinquish his fantasy that we can keep Medicare and Social Security exactly the way they are, we'd have more money to think about human capital development, early childhood education, etc. Some of those still might be better done at the state level. But I would submit we cannot begin to have that discussion about federal vs. state control until we stop the entitlement beast from swallowing the entire federal budget.
This is precisely why liberals should be the first ones demanding entitlement reform, especially means-testing. If we don't do that, we'll not have the money (as we now don't) for all the things they think are good ideas and they can show are best done by the federal government. Obama never wants to make those "hard choices," as he says. But in the real world, lawmakers and voters must.
"Rate Shock" -- The Term For What Young Obama Voters Will Feel In Response To Paying For All The Old People
I blogged about this recently (and, P.S., I voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson in this election and Libertarian Bob Barr in the election before that, so don't blame me for this crap).
N.C. Aizenman writes in the WaPo about what all those starry-eyed young Obama voters will have surprising them in the near future:
Many young, healthy Americans could soon see a jump in their health-insurance costs, and insurance companies are saying: It's not our fault.The nation's insurers are engaged in an all-out, last-ditch effort to shield themselves from blame for what they predict will be rate increases on new policies they must unveil this spring to comply with President Obama's health-care law.
Insurers point to several reasons that premiums will rise. They will soon be required to offer more-comprehensive coverage than many currently provide. Also, their costs will increase because they will be barred from rejecting the sick, and they will no longer be allowed to charge older customers sharply higher premiums than younger ones.
Contrary to how President Obama speaks, young'uns, all that free money has to come from somewhere -- in this case, out of your pocket and your paycheck from working two and a half jobs.
Hey, all is not lost. You could always work three jobs!
Muslim Cleric: If We Didn't Slaughter Apostates, There Would Be No Islam
According to this cleric, if they didn't keep people from leaving the Islamic religion with the fear of being murdered, there would be no Muslims today.
In other words, if one of the tenets of Islam wasn't the barbaric slaughter of apostates, there would be 3,000 innocent World Trade Center workers and visitors still alive today.
Electronic Presidents
President's Day deals in electronics at Amazon
Gregg couldn't hear me on my antique Jawbone earbud, and wanted to get me a new one, and I looked up reviews, and the new Jawbone (ERA) was either the top-rated or one of the top two.
I found one on Amazon that comes in something called "bulk packaging" -- maybe not as cute a box as it normally comes in, but it was fine, with the directions and all the stuff. And it was about half price -- $59.99 instead of $120. And it is AWESOME: Great sound, truly smart features, like that you can just tap it twice with your finger to take a call or hang up, and all these smart little details like how it plugs in (with a micro USB that's included) on a short cord from the adapter so it stands up like a little tree...
Anyway, here's the link: Jawbone Era Bluetooth Headset - Midnight - Universal Packaging
Terrifying Police Stop: He "Fit The Description"
Lisa Simeone sent me this blog item about a terrifying police stop a man experienced:
My name is James Cooper aka (Coop), last week I was driving down MacArthur in Oklahoma City at 12 midnight to pick up my brother-in law from work, as I passed a police car traveling in the opposite direction, he suddenly made a u-turn and got right behind me (I was doing 39mph on a 40mph street, all of my lights and blinkers were operating correctly, my tag and insurance were up to date, and I had my seat belt on). Having been in this situation numerous times throughout my life, I casually grabbed my license and insurance and prepared myself to be pulled over, little did I know this wouldn't be like the other times.The officer told me to put my hands out the car (I did), then told me to exit the vehicle (I did), when I got out I now saw 4 police cars and 6 officers in defensive stances with 3 AR-15 assault rifles pointed at me, followed by 3 hand guns, I was told to walk backwards without looking back and I was handcuffed and placed in a squad car.
One of the cops who was holding the AR15 was a rookie and the thought of me tripping and falling or a sudden loud noise scaring one of those men has woke me up out of my sleep 3 times so far.
I was released 30min later with no tickets, no warnings, but the air conditioning port in the back seat was ripped off and broken (they were searching for drugs or weapons).
My name is James Cooper, I am a husband, father, poet, writer, law-abiding citizen and I was racially profiled and my property was broken. IF...one of those officers made a mistake and shot me....do you REALLY think they would have admitted it? Or would this man with no criminal record and who has never owned or much less held a gun in his life, have been branded a criminal who shot at those officers, who then only used deadly force to protect themselves?
My name is James Cooper and somehow I can't shake the feeling that I was spared another mans fate...
Disliking Somebody's Politics Is No Reason To Throw Out Critical Thinking
I have a blog item for today excerpting Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone piece about the "Justice" Department ignoring HSBC's money laundering for terrorists (or, as Jack Blum, an attorney and former Senate investigator put it, for violating "every goddamn law in the book").
Here's a disappointing comment left on that blog item:
Matt Taibbi's a socialist who wants to regulate free enterprise out of business. Libertarians believe his scribblings at their peril. Get with the program, Amy.
My response:
This is a really common and really disappointing thing people do now -- lazily attacking somebody's politics instead of the substance of their piece.This is small-mindedness in action.
Feel free to dispute anything and everything in the piece with supported arguments.
The only "program" to "get with" should be recognizing that people whose politics you disagree with, or whom you otherwise disagree with, may have valuable things to say.
Recognizing our biases is one of the foundations of thinking logically and critically -- the subject of my radio show this weekend with Dr. Christopher DiCarlo.
Criminalizing Absolutely Everything: Especially Whistleblowing
GOP Indiana state Senator Travis Holdman wants to make journalists' and whistleblowers' undercover videos at businesses a crime. Jonathan Turley blogs:
Notably, torts already protect companies from trespass, even against news organizations....The new law in Indiana would make such videos a crime and allow a second such violation to be charged as a Class A misdemeanor, punishable with up to a $5,000 fine. Holdman truly found a home with industry lobbyists and portrayed animal rights whistleblowers and journalists as nothing more than "vigilantes" and refused to even acknowledge that they are either working to protect animals or inform the public: "We don't need vigilantes out entering people's private property, industrial operation, factory or farm, doing things surreptitiously ... for no other reason than to annoy and harass."
Strangely, he cited a story of a farmer in his district as the reason for the bill. The farmer reported that someone making a delivery had taken a picture of his phone. But then nothing happened. No embarrassment, no publication, no record that it occurred. However, that was enough for Holdman, he claims, to try to criminalize the work of journalists and whistleblowers.
What is particularly astonishing is that the Committee heard from a spokesman for Rose Acre Farms, which complained that it lost business after the Humane Society of the United States posted a video showing shocking conditions at their facilities. That would seem to be an excellent reason to support such whistleblowers but the Senators sat in open concern and shock for the company. There were no doubt gasps as Joe Miller, Rose Acre's general counsel, recounted that 50 customers indicated that they might not want to do business with such a company and "that would have devastated our business."
Thank God there are Travis Holdmans out there to protect such companies threatened by the exposure of animal abuse.
Too Big To Jail: Why The Government Isn't Prosecuting HSBC
We're tough on crime in Granny's diaper at the airport. It's the actual crimes -- the ginormous ones -- that the government, through the so-called Justice Department, lets slide.
Matt Taibbi writes in Rolling Stone:
The bank literally got away with murder - well, aiding and abetting it, anyway.For at least half a decade, the storied British colonial banking power helped to wash hundreds of millions of dollars for drug mobs, including Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel, suspected in tens of thousands of murders just in the past 10 years - people so totally evil, jokes former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, that "they make the guys on Wall Street look good." The bank also moved money for organizations linked to Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, and for Russian gangsters; helped countries like Iran, the Sudan and North Korea evade sanctions; and, in between helping murderers and terrorists and rogue states, aided countless common tax cheats in hiding their cash.
"They violated every goddamn law in the book," says Jack Blum, an attorney and former Senate investigator who headed a major bribery investigation against Lockheed in the 1970s that led to the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. "They took every imaginable form of illegal and illicit business."
That nobody from the bank went to jail or paid a dollar in individual fines is nothing new in this era of financial crisis. What is different about this settlement is that the Justice Department, for the first time, admitted why it decided to go soft on this particular kind of criminal. It was worried that anything more than a wrist slap for HSBC might undermine the world economy. "Had the U.S. authorities decided to press criminal charges," said Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer at a press conference to announce the settlement, "HSBC would almost certainly have lost its banking license in the U.S., the future of the institution would have been under threat and the entire banking system would have been destabilized."
It was the dawn of a new era. In the years just after 9/11, even being breathed on by a suspected terrorist could land you in extralegal detention for the rest of your life. But now, when you're Too Big to Jail, you can cop to laundering terrorist cash and violating the Trading With the Enemy Act, and not only will you not be prosecuted for it, but the government will go out of its way to make sure you won't lose your license. Some on the Hill put it to me this way: OK, fine, no jail time, but they can't even pull their charter? Are you kidding?
More on the Sinaloa Cartel from John J. Walters in reason:
...The Sinaloa Cartel (is) a brutal drug-trafficking operation headquartered in Western Mexico that rakes in about $3 billion each year. The influence of the cartel is so toxic that it is blamed for rising homicide rates in Chicago--and it could easily be blamed for significant violence elsewhere. The Sinaloa Cartel operates in 17 states in Mexico and in cities across North America, especially along the border.
It is impossible to know how many people have died at the hands of the Sinaloa Cartel, but as one of Mexico's major cartels, it is certain that they have claimed their fair share of the 50,000 victims since 2006 in Mexico alone.
Eat The Grandchildren!
Geoffrey Canada, Stanley Druckenmiller and Kevin Warsh -- a Democrat, an independent and a Republican agree: Government spending levels are unsustainable and that old people are parasiting off their grandchildren. They write in the WSJ:
Government spending levels are unsustainable. Higher taxes, however advisable or not, fail to come close to solving the problem. Discretionary spending must be reduced but without harming the safety net for our most vulnerable, or sacrificing future growth (e.g., research and education). Defense andhomeland security spending should not be immune to reductions. Most consequentially, the growth in spending on entitlement programs--Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare--must be curbed.These truths are not born of some zeal for austerity or unkindness, but of arithmetic. The growing debt burden threatens to crush the next generation of Americans.
Coming out of the most recent elections, no consensus emerged either to reform the welfare state or to pay for it. And too many politicians appear unwilling to level with Americans about the challenges and choices confronting the United States. The failure to be forthright on fiscal policy is doing grievous harm to the country's long-term growth prospects. And the greatest casualties will be young Americans of all stripes who want--and need--an opportunity to succeed.
Three main infirmities plague Washington and constitute a clear and present danger to the prospects for the next generation.
First, the country's existing entitlement programs are not just unaffordable, they are also profoundly unfair to those who are taking their first steps in search of opportunity. Social Security is one example. According to Social Security actuaries, the generational theft runs deep. Young people now entering the workforce will actually lose 4.2% of their total lifetime wages because of their participation in Social Security. A typical third-grader will get back (in present value terms) only 75 cents for every dollar he contributes to Social Security over his lifetime. Meanwhile, many seniors with greater means nearing retirement age will pocket a handsome profit. Health-care spending through Medicare represents an even less equitable story.
The government has an obligation, of course, to support needy seniors. But this pension system is ripe for common-sense reforms, including changing eligibility ages and benefit structures for those with greater means, ridding the Social Security disability program of pervasive fraud, and removing disincentives for those who would rather work in their later years.
More about our dismal fiscal future here, from Mercatus.
The Mummy's Coarse
A sarcophagus of tastelessness.
A Santa Hater Of A Different Season: Banning Valentine's Day At A Preschool
This pre-school administrator at a Jewish preschool banned Valentine's Day at the school -- but not for religious reasons.
Judy Callahan writes at Zocalo that she sent out an e-mail that said the following:
St. Valentine's Day is next week and we hope your family celebrates it or not as your custom. However, at school we ignore it as we do not tell children they must love everyone. You need to respect people and treat them kindly, but love is not something we feel indiscriminately. So, please no valentines for the class.
She explains:
Let me first state that I have no religious objections to the holiday. Yes, I know about the Valentine's Day Massacre against the Jews in 1349, but that's only thanks to Google. I don't think people passing out candy hearts or going out to dinner have massacres on their mind. My immediate family happily exchanges valentines, and we firmly believe that candy offered as an expression of love is calorie-free.But preschool is a different story. The children at our school range in age from 2 to 5. Two-year-olds are just beginning to understand that other people have feelings. It is not obvious to a young child that just because it hurts when someone hits you, the inverse also holds true. We spend a great deal of time teaching our children that other people have feelings and that everyone at our school has a right to be safe. For our youngest students, this means using words and not hitting or biting. For older students, it means understanding that words can also hurt. You can express anger, but there are appropriate and inappropriate words you can use. Our 4-year-old "superheroes" sometimes have trouble understanding that yelling "I am going to shoot you" or "I am going to kill you" might not be the best way to get a point across. Indeed, they have no real concept of what these words mean.
At the same time, we all know that not everyone you encounter is someone you need to love. Kids know this, in part because they already have some classmates they don't love. Maybe a classmate is interested in different things, or plays too rough, or says things that hurt your feelings, or just doesn't behave like someone with whom you'd choose to spend time. We have the same feelings about fellow adults, so why should we impose different standards on our children? Sure, we want our children to give everyone a chance and to treat everyone with respect. But we also want them to be careful about whom they love and to understand that making a commitment of love is a very serious thing. Encouraging children to say "I love you" to everyone does not lay the groundwork for critical thinking about future relationships.
Agree? Disagree?
We Keep Electing Idiots Who Are Strangers To The Constitution
Jonathan Turley writes of a George legislator -- yes, a guy elected lawmaker -- who responded to the parodying of his image by seeking to criminalize Photoshopping photos of people's images:
Rep. Earnest Smith has a curious understanding of the First Amendment. Smith is upset that someone photoshopped his picture by placing his head on the body of a porn star. He has responded by seeking to make such photoshopping a crime and insisting that "No one has a right to make fun of anyone. It's not a First Amendment right." That is news to many of us.The photoshop stunt was the work of Georgia Politics Unfiltered blogger Andre Walker who noted that "I cannot believe Rep. Earnest Smith thinks I'm insulting him by putting his head on the body of a well-built porn star."
It is Smith's understanding of free speech rather than aesthetics that concern me. His new misdemeanor crime would apply to the alteration of any photograph that "causes an unknowing person wrongfully to be identified as the person in an obscene depiction."
...there are already avenues in torts, including defamation and appropriation of name or likeness, that can be used for valid injuries. Of course, parody is often treated as an exception and the first amendment can bar the use of torts by public officials in some cases. In New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), the Supreme Court held public officials to a higher standard for a myriad of reasons, including "a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials."
From the Daily Mail story at the link above, maybe the guy should be thanking the blogger:
"By the way, I cannot believe Representative Earnest Smith thinks I'm insulting him by putting his head on the body of a well-built porn star."
The other co-sponsor of the bill is another idiot who needs remedial lessons in what's in the Constitution -- a Democrat named Pam Dickerson who also had her photo photoshopped.
If Smith, and co-sponsor Pam Dickerson, have their way then such an action would result in a $1,000 fine.Their proposed law would be broken when any "person commits defamation when he or she causes an unknowing person wrongfully to be identified as the person in an obscene depiction."
Here's Smith's photo. If I were Smith, I'd 1. Laugh. 2. Think I look kinda hot.
The Racism-Based Origins Of The Minimum Wage
Jason L. Riley writes in the WSJ:
There is something sadly ironic about watching the nation's first black president call for an increase in the federal minimum wage during his State of the Union address Tuesday.Minimum-wage laws date to the 1930s, and supporters in Congress at the time were explicit about using them to stop blacks from displacing whites in the labor force by working for less money. Milton Friedman regarded the minimum wage as "one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books."
When you artificially increase the cost of labor, you wind up with surplus labor, which takes the form of unemployment. Younger and less-experienced workers--a disproportionate number of whom are black--are more likely to be priced out of the labor force when the cost of hiring someone goes up. Prior to the passage of minimum-wage laws--and in an era of open and rampant racial discrimination in the U.S.--the unemployment rate for black men was much lower than it is now and similar to that of whites in the same age group.
He's talking about the Davis-Bacon Act from the 30s to keep blacks out of the construction industry and other industries where they were displacing white by working for less money. In the WSJ, Jason Riley writes, from the autobiography of James Mason economist Walter Williams:
Alabama Rep. Clayton Allgood fretted about contractors with "cheap colored labor . . . of the sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country."
She Stopped Stealing From The Smithsonian During Ramadan
Aw, how heart-warming -- if it's true. A Muslim employee who stole nearly a million dollars from the Smithsonian parking lot where she worked apparently took time off from disrespecting her employer and taxpayers to show respect for Islam. That is, unless prosecutors just took her word for it. (The article says they "accepted her assertion that she did not steal during the Muslim holy days of Ramadan.") From the AP/Fox:
Freweyni Mebrahtu, 46, of Sterling, was sentenced to two years and three months in prison.When charges were announced last year, authorities said they believed the losses exceeded $400,000 but were unsure of the exact amount.
At Friday's hearing, Mebrahtu admitted she alone stole $895,000 over a three-year period.
She said she did so at the urging of supervisors with parking contractor PMI, who demanded two-thirds of the money Mebrahtu took in.
Going into Friday's hearing, authorities had estimated that Mebrahtu stole nearly $1.2 million, based on length of employment and how much she typically stole each month. But prosecutors accepted her assertion that she did not steal during the Muslim holy days of Ramadan, and revised the loss attributable to Mebrahtu to $895,000.
...PMI officials did not return calls seeking comment Friday.
PMI continues to serve as the Smithsonian's parking contractor at Udvar-Hazy Center, said museum spokeswoman Claire Brown. The contract expires in April, and Brown said the museum will review at that time whether to select a new vendor.
From TheReligionOfPeace.com on the permissibility of theft from the "infidels":
Muslims may not steal from each other. In fact, Muhammad had people's hands cut off for that. But the same is not true of unbelievers. Property rights for them exist only at the discretion of their Muslim rulers. Non-submissive infidels frequently had their property stolen from them by Muhammad's warriors, which sometimes included wives and children....After being chased out of Mecca, Muhammad and his small band of followers sought refuge in Medina, where he was accepted as a mediator between disparate factions. In order to make ends meet, he raided caravans carrying goods from Syria to merchants in Mecca, taking what he wanted and killing or capturing whoever resisted. Aside from establishing the rule that stealing from non-Muslims is permissible, Muhammad's raids also laid a firm foundation for Islamic terrorism.
...Anwar al-Awlaki, a cleric born and raised in the United States and once held up as an example of moderate Islam, instructs his followers not to steal for the sake of self-enrichment, but rather for the cause of Jihad:
"The reasoning behind comparing booty to hunting and wood gathering is because the property which exists in the hands of the disbelievers is not considered to be rightfully theirs in our Islamic shari'ah because of their disbelief and when Islam does give them the right to own it, it is an exception to the rule such as in the case of ahl al-dhimma after they pay jizyah. This is why our scholars say that Allah has called booty as "fai'" which means "to return", so they say that the property of the disbelievers that doesn't belong to them has "returned" to the believer: its "rightful owner."
The justification for stealing from infidels is that they are "at war" against Islam, and any place that is not a Muslim country is considered to be so.
From Wikipedia:
Dar al-Harb (Arabic: دار الحرب "house of war"; also referred to as Dar al-Garb "house of the West" in later Ottoman sources; a person from "Dar al-Harb" is a "harbi" (Arabic:حربي)) is a term classically referring to those countries where the Muslim law is not in force, in the matter of worship and the protection of the faithful and Dhimmis.
Miniature Golf Coarse
Delightfully nasty off-topic links here.
Marco Rubio's Water Lunge
As Garance Franke-Ruta blogged at TheAtlantic.com:
Marco Rubio's mid-speech lunge for an awkwardly placed bottle of water during his Republican Party response to the State of the Union immediately became the break-out moment of his remarks Tuesday night.
As somebody who used to be wildly nervous when speaking publicly, I feel sorry for the guy. Anxiety causes dry-mouth -- I think, from hyperventilating.
I'm guessing he got to the point of desperation -- where he realized he was going to start squeaking and cracking -- and thought the tradeoff (the lunge) was worth it.
But, from the "let's give him flop sweat!" lighting to the water lunge, let's just say Rubio didn't come off like the next Cary Grant during that speech.
My Quote To CNN About Tweeting During Speeches From The House Or Senate Floor
CNN's Dan Merica called me Tuesday morning to ask for my thoughts. Here's some of what I told him about Senators or Congressman tweeting during the State of the Union address and other speeches:
Just because something is unobtrusive, doesn't mean it should be allowed, says Amy Alkon, a nationally syndicated columnist and author of "I See Rude People.""It is really rude," Alkon said emphatically. "Even if someone is outright boring, if your job is to pay attention to them, it is rude to be engaged in your phone or your other device."
Alkon said she understands that everyone else is doing it, but that doesn't make it acceptable.
"If people would just put themselves in the shoes of the people up there," Alkon concluded. "Imagine giving a speech and you look at them and see that not a person there is engaged in what you are saying. That is not an easy thing."
Raising The Minimum Wage To $9 And The Unintended Consequences Of Good Intentions
Two interesting pieces on the minimum wage.
One is by Elizabeth Scalia, "The Paradoxical Meanness of the Minimum Wage," referencing Tyree Johnson of Chicago, who's worked for 20 years at McDonalds, and is earning $8.25 an hour:
I don't know how anyone can accept an idea that a man who has worked faithfully and industriously for 20 years, at any job, should still be making minimum wage.
(The Bloomberg story at the link below explains how this has come to be in Johnson's case -- changing franchisees at his workplaces, etc. It is possible to do as the other Johnson did at McDonald's -- the CEO -- who worked his way up to his current position from being a store employee.)
Scalia continues:
When I got my first job, as a department store cashier, I made $2.10 an hour. After 30 days, I got a "raise" to $2.30 and a year later I was making either $3.40 or $3.50 an hour. Had I remained with the store, it is unlikely I would ever have gotten rich (or made "enough" money; I am still waiting for that day) but certainly had I remained there for 20 years I would have -- like most of the Department Managers, who were promoted from within -- seen my responsibilities rise and my wage, as well. Such managers may not have been rich, but they managed to own homes and raise families on what they made.To keep a loyal, well-trained and dependable employee at minimum wage -- the same wage paid to unskilled workers newly hired -- is pretty unconscionable. The job itself might not be "worth" $15 or $18 an hour, but the intangibles that such an employee brings to the job (dependability; knowledge of policy/procedure; demonstrated sense of responsibility; did I mention dependability) should be worth $12.50 an hour or so, shouldn't it?
Last April, the HHS Mandate-rejecting Hobby Lobby store chain -- citing its Christian sensibilities -- voluntarily bumped up their minimum wage scale for their employees -- $13 per hour for full-timers, and $9 for part-time. They've done that for the past four years.
In so doing, Hobby Lobby exhibits a tendency to broad-mindedness that goes missing within our minimum wage policies, and exposes a paradox inherent therein: by dictating what the minimum wage must be, we have trained business owners to a somewhat narrow, reactionary way of thinking. Prior to minimum wage laws, a smart employer knew that he could not keep good employees without paying them their worth. Once employers were told what they "must" pay, however, it created a baseline that mentally (and perhaps emotionally) narrowed, rather than broadened an employers sense of what wage was fair or deserved. In fact "fair" and "deserved" went out the window. If all a businessman (or woman) had to do was make sure a minimum wage was being paid, what did fairness or merit have to do with anything?
And that sort of thinking, born of the good-intentions of our own government -- is how we get to the reality of a 20-year employee making $8.25 an hour, and having to live a pretty hardscrabble life.
Scalia linked to this Leslie Patton story at Bloomberg, "McDonald's $8.25 Man and $8.75 Million CEO Shows Pay Gap."
The problem with raising the minimum wage? Steve Chapman writes in a 2009 piece at reason:
If you're a minimum wage employee, your job will pay more, but only if it still exists. These days, most companies are scrutinizing every position on the payroll to make sure it's worth the cost. Raise the toll, and some employees will find they are no longer valuable enough to make the cut....Even proponents of the increase understand the tradeoff. Otherwise they would demand an even bigger hike. If you can force employers to pay higher wages without reducing employment, why set the minimum at $7.25 an hour? Why not $17.25? Why not $37.25?
The suspension of disbelief required to support the minimum wage will only take you so far. It's impossible to deny that if it were illegal to pay someone less than a mere $36 an hour, a lot of jobs would vanish. But a small dose of poison is still poison, and in this case it's being administered to a patient who is already ill.
Supporters make a virtue of bad timing by claiming the change will provide a stimulus exactly when the economy needs it. The liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington insists that a minimum wage increase "would not only benefit low-income working families, but it would also provide a boost to consumer spending and the broader economy."
Not likely. Companies, unlike the government, can't create cash at will. Any money they give to workers has to be obtained by cutting jobs, reducing employee benefits, or slashing other expenses that happen to be someone's income. Net stimulus: zero.
Obama: Eat The Young!
Are you a non-elderly person who voted for Obama? Gee, thanks, from this Gary Johnson voter. And remember to thank yourself when your insurance skyrockets because you're paying for all the old people's health insurance to be not-too-much-more than yours.
Nick Gillespie writes at reason:
Over at Buzzfeed, Ben Smith notes one of the most obvious ways that Obama is tossing young people overboard. Come January 2014, their insurance premiums are going to go up. That's because part of health-care reform stipulates tighter limits on the spread of premiums between older and younger people. Current law holds that insurers on average can't charge insurance premiums for old people that are more than five times what they charge younger people. Under Obamacare, that allowable limit is being squeezed to 3-to-1, the result being that older folks will see dramatic drops in costs and younger people will experience major hikes.courtesy Pew ResearchThat's just the tip of the iceberg. When it comes to the big old-age entitlement plans and their effects on today's youngsters, there are two points to keep in mind. First off, Social Security and Medicare are massive in cost and they go to all seniors, regardless of demonstrated need. This, despite the fact that they are regularly defended as programs that are the only thing standing between old people and poverty. Yet as a group, households headed by someone over 65 years old are doing far better than households headed by someone under 35 years old.
Second, despite the rhetoric that surrounds Medicare and Social Security, these are not self-funding programs similar to retirement and insurance accounts; individuals don't own them and they can't borrow against them or will them to heirs. Instead, old-age entitlements represent a major transfer from the relatively young and poor to the relatively old and wealthy. The payroll taxes that go into Medicare cover only about one-third of the costs; co-pays and some supplemental premiums bring that total up to around 50 percent of the program's costs. The rest comes out of general tax funds.
courtesy Mercatus CenterTheoretically, payroll taxes collected over the years are supposed to cover all costs related to Social Security, but in an age where the ratio of workers paying in to beneficiaries taking out is shrinking, those days are numbered (in fact, Social Security no longer can cover current benefits out of current taxes but is drawing down its trust funds). As important, the official government position - upheld by the Supreme Court - is that no citizen has a right to any Social Security benefits. So it's not a pension plan or even a forced savings plan. It's simply a way that the federal government gets money out of workers to give to retirees - even those who don't need it to make ends meet.
Here's another tough chew: Since 2010, the overwhelming majority of people retiring on Social Security will get less money in benefits than they paid in as payroll taxes (this calculation by Urban Institute analysts assumes 2 percent real returns on payroll taxes and 2 percent real increases in benefit values). In other words, the government is forcing most of us to pay into a system that skims 16.4 percent of every dollar of wages up to about $110,000 and will pay us a negative return.
A quote from Ben Smith's Buzzfeed piece:
And while one of ObamaCare's earliest provisions was a boon to the young, allowing them to stay on their parents' insurance through the age of 26, what follows may come as an unpleasant surprise to many of the president's supporters. The provisions required to make any kind of health insurance plan work -- not just ObamaCare, but really any plan of its sort -- require healthy young people to pay more in health insurance than they consume in services, while the elderly (saved by Sarah "Death Panels" Palin from any serious attempt to ration expensive and often futile end-of-life care) consume far more than they pay in. There is always a push and pull, however, and this year will be spent laying plans to shift the burden further toward the young.State and federal officials and the health-care industry are currently preparing to implement two specific ObamaCare provisions taking effect on Jan. 1, 2014, acting on this politically perverse principle of shifting resources from your supporters to your opponents. The first is the individual mandate, which aims to force the young, childless, and healthy -- "Young Invincibles," as they are said to think of themselves -- to buy health insurance, even if they think (and even perhaps make a rational, if risky, bet) that they don't need it.
The second is a lesser-known policy to limit the practices of charging different premiums to different ages, known as age-rating. Many states currently set a limit on this difference, often mandating that an old person shouldn't pay a premium more than five times a younger person's, even if she's expected to use more than five times as much health care. The ObamaCare provision kicking in next Jan. 1 would reduce that ratio to three-to-one, essentially limiting what the elderly pay in part by forcing young people to carry a larger share of the total cost of national health care.
New Government, Same As The Old Government
The Libertarian Party on the latest blather out of the latest occupant of The White House (as well as Republican blather that followed):
In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama proposes policies that make things worse for the economy and worse for Americans:•Higher government spending,
•More dangerously-high government. debt,
•Continued meddling in needless, costly foreign conflicts,
•More rules and regulations,
•Higher taxes,
•And more assaults on our freedom.Despite whatever response Republican politicians serve up, their proposals -- and their votes -- do the same thing: Preserve and grow Big Government.
The Republicans say they want "limited government." Limited to what? A $3.8 trillion federal budget? A nearly $5 trillion budget?
Look at the Republican budget plan crafted by Congressman Ryan. That's what Democrats and Republicans are planning to raise spending to over the next 10 years. "Limited?"
Democratic and Republican politicians are planning to raise the debt from today's $16-and-a-half TRILLION -- to over $20 Trillion dollars. "Limited?"
...The Libertarian Party says: Stop over-spending. Stop borrowing. NEVER raise the debt ceiling. Balance the budget -- not in 10 years. NOW. Just like families and businesses must do every day.
Then keep cutting -- until we have a small, constitutional government that is truly limited to protecting our lives, liberty and property -- and no more.
Less money for politicians -- and more in the productive, private sector -- is good for the economy. American workers and taxpayers will have more jobs, higher take-home pay and more savings.
Big Government Democrats and Republicans will try to scare you into believing they'd have to cut essential services. That's a lie. They're spending double what Democratic President Bill Clinton spent in the year 2000.
...The greatest power you have to stop Big Government -- is your vote.
When you sit out the vote, or worse, when you vote for Big Government Democrats or Republicans, it empowers and emboldens them. What do you get? More Big Government.
When you vote small government, you're changing the game. When you vote for small-government-Libertarian candidates, you're throwing down the gauntlet. You're demanding a stop to high taxes, bailouts and obscene government debt. You make small government, low taxes, low government spending, more jobs, and more freedom possible.
Remember when Ma Bell was the only game in town for telephones and telephone service? Cell phone technology had already been invented, yet we were stuck for decades with big, clunky rotary-dialed phones.
When we took away Ma Bell's government-granted monopoly, we got portable phones, cell phones, smart phones, mobile tablets, and hundreds of new features. Real competition breeds progress.
Democrats and Republicans want a monopoly on elections, just like Ma Bell. They want you to believe your only choice is a Democrat or a Republican who will deliver clunky, wasteful, high-tax, high-debt, war-waging, freedom-fading, job-killing Big Government.
But you have a choice. You can vote Libertarian.
The Den Of Inappropriate Remarks
They will be fed and clothed here and given small chores.
Unbelievable Unwarranted Search Without Consent
If you aren't convinced we are becoming a police state, watch this video. What was she being stopped for, suspicion of hiking?
The woman denies consent to the search repeatedly. Her denial is ignored.
Law prof Jonathan Turley comments:
This video of a San Bernardino police officer circling and confronting a woman hiking in the desert has raised the anger of many about the increasing intrusion of police surveillance and operations. The officer lands his helicopter and confronts the woman without any evidence of reasonable suspicion, let alone probable cause.The video shows the officer circling over the woman and shining its light at her. He then confronts her and demands to know what she is doing. She is polite and friendly, explaining "just exploring and picking up rocks." The officer then demands her ID, which she does not have, and takes down her name and date of birth. He then makes her wait while he runs her name through the police computer. The only explanation the officer gives the woman for being detained is that "We're investigating something right now." It is not clear why that investigation would involve checking to see if there was anything he could arrest her on.
Even after she is cleared, the officer demands to know if she has any weapons and tells her "don't put your hands in your pockets." He then searches her without a scintilla of reasonable suspicion.
My comment on YouTube about reporting police misconduct:
You can report this and the report will be investigated by his superiors. The complaint will go in his record and stay there -- at the very least. Please do report it. Call the Sheriff's department there. I just interviewed a police sergeant about this. Report, report, report police misconduct!
Walter Olson: "Great Moments In Blame-Shifting"
You could say that again. And again. And again. 21 times, in fact.
That's the number of neighborhood residents a coked-up ex-con's relatives are suing -- those residents who jointly maintain a private road.
The ex-con is now dead -- he tried to outrun the cops in a high-speed chase, and it didn't go well.
Per Walter Olson at Overlawyered:
He smashed his car into two trees on a one-lane dead-end private road, instantly killing himself and a passenger. Now the estate of his passenger (who was also on drugs) is suing 21 local residents who jointly maintain the private road, saying they should have kept it clear of trees and did not provide adequate signage.
What would adequate signage be, "Coked-up ex-cons on police chases should not drive at high speeds down this road"?
"Don't get in cars with coked-up assholes"?
Your sign suggestion below.
Dog As The Cops' Witness
Jacob Sullum has a piece in this month's reason about how cops use dogs to manufacture probable cause, "This Dog Can Send You to Jail":
"He asked me to step out and come back to his car," Burns says, "and that's when I noticed the dog in the back seat, a yellowish Lab. I explained that I hadn't been drinking and my getting on the shoulder of the road was strictly from the wind. He said that he was going to write me a warning, and I said, 'OK, that's fine.' He asked me if I had any drugs in the car. I said, 'No, sir, I don't do drugs, and I don't associate with people who do.' He asked me would I mind if he searched my vehicle, and I said, 'Well, yes, I would mind if you searched my vehicle.' "But thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, the deputy did not have to take no for an answer. In the 2005 case Illinois v. Caballes, the Court declared that "the use of a well-trained narcotics-detection dog...during a lawful traffic stop generally does not implicate legitimate privacy interests." So the deputy was free to walk his dog around Burns' truck. "He got out with this dog and went around the car, two or three times," Burns says. "He came back and said the dog had 'passively alerted' on my vehicle." Burns, who is familiar with drug-detecting dogs from his work as an M.P. at Edwards Air Force Base in the 1970s, was puzzled. Properly trained police dogs are supposed to indicate the presence of drugs with a clear, objectively verifiable signal, such as sitting down in front of an odor's source or scratching at it. Yet "the dog never sat down, the dog never scratched, the dog never did anything that would indicate to me that it thought there was something in there."
...The foundational text of the courts' canine cult is U.S. v. Place, a 1983 decision involving an airport search that found a kilogram of cocaine in a suitcase to which a dog had alerted. The Supreme Court unanimously concluded that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) violated the Fourth Amendment by keeping the bag for 90 minutes before presenting it to a dog. But instead of stopping there, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in a majority opinion joined by five of her colleagues, gratuitously ventured into an issue that had not been addressed by the parties to the case and did not need to be resolved for the Court to decide whether the seizure and search were legal. O'Connor opined that "a 'canine sniff' by a well-trained narcotics detection dog...discloses only the presence or absence of narcotics" and "does not expose noncontraband items that otherwise would remain hidden from public view." Because of this specificity, O'Connor concluded, "exposure of respondent's luggage, which was located in a public place, to a trained canine...did not constitute a 'search' within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment."
Two decades later, when the Court extended this principle to cars in Caballes, dissenting Justice David Souter noted that O'Connor's conclusion "rests not only upon the limited nature of the intrusion, but on a further premise that experience has shown to be untenable, the assumption that trained sniffing dogs do not err." In reality, Souter said, "the infallible dog...is a creature of legal fiction." Souter cited examples of dogs accepted as reliable by courts that had error rates of up to 38 percent. He added that "dogs in artificial testing situations return false positives anywhere from 12.5 to 60 percent of the time."
If anything, Souter gave drug-sniffing dogs too much credit. A 2011 Chicago Tribune analysis of data from suburban police departments found that vehicle searches justified by a dog's alert failed to turn up drugs or drug paraphernalia 56 percent of the time. In 1979 six police dogs at two public schools in Highland, Indiana, alerted to 50 students, only 17 of whom possessed contraband (marijuana, drug paraphernalia, and cans of beer), meaning the false positive rate was 66 percent. Looking at the performance of an Illinois state police K-9 team during an 11-month period in 2007 and 2008, Huffington Post reporter Radley Balko found that the dog sniffed 252 vehicles and alerted 136 times, but 74 percent of the searches triggered by those alerts did not find measurable amounts of illegal drugs.
Linkin Park
Park 'em here.
"Lincoln Brutalized The Country And Shredded The Constitution"
The Tenth Amendment Center sent me a press release made up of excerpts from Lincoln Unmasked
Up until Lincoln's war, the states assumed they had the right to leave the Union, and, in fact, they did have that right. Neither the 1777 Articles of Confederation nor the 1789 U.S. Constitution prohibited secession.Slavery was not the reason for the War Between the States. Lincoln had other motives when he provoked the Confederacy into firing on federal tax collectors at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, which he used as an excuse to launch a full scale, horrific war. No one had been killed or injured at Fort Sumter, incidentally. Lincoln wanted to prevent secession at whatever cost because his primary goal was retaining the tax revenue from the Southern States. This conflicted with the hypocritical political rhetoric he directed at President Polk, when he said to Congress, "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government...."
If the Southern states had seceded, their low taxes would have siphoned European trade from the North. Lincoln believed in increasing a nation's wealth by government regulation and tax subsidies for the country's commercial interests. He was what economists call a mercantilist.
Slaves were not important to Lincoln except as propaganda. Lincoln considered them intellectually inferior to Caucasians and wanted to relocate them to Central America. When told repeatedly that slaves said they preferred to remain in the South, Lincoln was mystified and put his relocation plan on hold.
He stated, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery." As to why he had Southern ports blocked in 1861, he remarked, "The collection of the revenue cannot be effectually executed" in the states that had seceded.
After numerous federal defeats, federal forces finally had a victory, and only then did Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which was both an act of war and propaganda.
The cost of holding the "Union" together by military force was horrendous. Recently, research published in the journal Civil War History by SUNY--Binghamton professor J. David Hacker revised the death toll upward from 620,000 to 750,000 or even as high as 850,000.
The damage Lincoln caused to the Constitution was equally harsh. He gutted the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, imprisoning thousands of northerners, shutting down dozens of newspapers, locking up the Maryland legislature and issuing an arrest warrant for the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He steamrolled over anyone who opposed his policies, citing his war powers.
Did Lincoln "save the Union"? His use of military force against the peaceful secession of Southern states destroyed the Union that was a voluntary association of States that delegated limited, enumerated powers to the federal government.
Vidal's book is a novel, but from the Amazon reviews, Robert Moore writes:
LINCOLN is in essence exceptionally accurate history encapsulated in the form of a novel. I have read a spate of books on Lincoln and the Civil War and I was almost never able to fault his scholarship. In a note following the conclusion of the novel he indicates that the manuscript was seen--and corrected--by no less an authority on Lincoln than David Herbert Donald, who is arguably the supreme authority on Lincoln of this age.
Catholics Should Stop Worrying About Gays Being "Immoral" And Worry About Church Officials
Some woman on Twitter has been going on about how homosexuality is "immoral." Because the Bible says so, she says. Not good enough as a reason. Why does SHE find it immoral, I asked (because "Butt sex is icky!" perhaps)? She had no answer.
Well, Catholics should be a little less concerned with how other people have sex so they can devote their time to how sleazy the people running their church are -- and have been throughout history. (Hey, thanks, for sheltering Nazi war criminals! After the Pope just sat by and watched out his window as the Jews of Italy were sent off to their death.)
The LA Times reported yesterday that Cardinal Mahony used money paid by loved ones of the dead for cemetery upkeep to pay to the settlement of molestation victims. Harriet Ryan writes:
Pressed to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars to settle clergy sex abuse lawsuits, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony turned to one group of Catholics whose faith could not be shaken: the dead.Under his leadership in 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles quietly appropriated $115 million from a cemetery maintenance fund and used it to help pay a landmark settlement with molestation victims.
The church did not inform relatives of the deceased that it had taken the money, which amounted to 88% of the fund. Families of those buried in church-owned cemeteries and interred in its mausoleums have contributed to a dedicated account for the perpetual care of graves, crypts and grounds since the 1890s.
Mahony and other church officials also did not mention the cemetery fund in numerous public statements about how the archdiocese planned to cover the $660-million abuse settlement. In detailed presentations to parish groups, the cardinal and his aides said they had cashed in substantial investments to pay the settlement, but they did not disclose that the main asset liquidated was cemetery money.
Force The Music: Parked Cars Playing Loud Music Near Houses
What is it that compels people to sit outside other people's houses in their convertible playing music with a thumping beat?
On Saturday, I was trying to take a nap -- in the back of my house, in my bedroom, with all the doors and windows shut, and while wearing noise-cancelling headphones.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP, went the beat. In my pillow.
And it kept going.
I hoped and hoped the person might drive away, but after 10 minutes of him sitting there -- in the redzone, in his Porsche, treating everyone on my block to his music -- I got up out of bed, found shoes, and finally went out.
I asked better than I sometimes do (more productively than showing my rage at people's inconsideration, that is) -- calmly (and somewhat wearily) just stated the facts: That I was in my back bedroom, trying to take a nap with noise-cancelling headphones on and I could still hear the beat from his car.
At least this guy apologized, turned off his radio and then left -- unlike others who have told me I should "move to Nebraska!" if I don't like it.
Yeah, sure, I could give up living in a place I'm happy (save for when it's rude asshole-infested), leave my friends, and go to great trouble and expense to move to someplace with cornfields all around...
...But wouldn't it just be easier for the person broadcasting music from their car to be considerate? Consider that we might not be interested in their choice of soundtrack thumping into our lives?
Actually, nobody has a right to pipe their music into your home and your life. In fact, it's actually illegal in LA for your music to be audible outside your car (when it's on a roadway) 50 feet away.
As I point out in I See Rude People, rude people are stealing from us. Those rude people who shove their music into your home are stealing stealing your attention, your sleep, your peace of mind, and your peaceful enjoyment of your home, and are maybe even having some small negative effect on your health, as noise pollution has been shown to do.
The DEA Wants To Use A $37 Pot Sale To Legally Steal A $1.5 Million Building
Yet another disgusting asset seizure gambit by the Drug War bloodsuckers known as the DEA. Nick Schou writes in the OC Weekly of a couple whose Anaheim building was used for a $37 pot sale to an undercover scumbag (aka undercover cop violating people's civil liberties) and its result:
On Dec. 2, 2011, an undercover officer posing as a patient with a legitimate doctor's recommendation for cannabis--something required of all entrants to the collective--"purchased 4.2 net grams of marijuana for $37."The investigation ended there, but the single sale--and a sale it was, since most pot goes for $50 or $60 per eighth of an ounce--was enough evidence for the DEA to argue that the otherwise-harmless computer engineer and dentist should lose their retirement-investment property. On Aug. 20, 2012, the agency filed its lawsuit. According to the landlord, he immediately ordered ReLeaf to leave the building, serving it with a three-day eviction notice; the club complied and left posthaste.
The landlord then sent certified letters to both the feds and the city of Anaheim, notifying them of his actions and requesting the government not seize his property. "I had no idea the tenant may allegedly be engaged in illegal activities at this location," he wrote. "I hope we do not have to go through legal procedures to . . . lift the lis pendens [pending lawsuits] filed against my property. My intent is to save the judge's valuable time, court time and taxpayers' money being used unjustly."
But the DEA refused to save time or money and drop the case, a fact that seemed to surprise the federal judge handling the case, U.S. District Court Judge Andrew J. Guilford. In a Dec. 3, 2012, hearing, Guilford repeatedly referred to inconsistencies in the federal government's policy on marijuana--first signaling (via the Ogden memo) that it wasn't going after medical-marijuana clubs, then cracking down and sending threatening letters to landlords. He even wondered aloud if President Obama would change his mind about marijuana again, after the DEA had already seized the building at issue in the case.
TSA Reimburses Fraction Of Stolen Goods That Disappear
Clearly, the worst security risk is from those keeping us "safe."
When HTML Freezes Over
We'll need some tasteless links to warm ourselves by.
Advice Goddess Radio: 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET -- Dr. Glenn Geher, Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, Increasing Your Mating Intelligence
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research.
You can actually improve your mating intelligence -- and your ability to meet, date, and have sex and relationships with partners you want.
My guests tonight are evolutionary psychologists Dr. Glenn Geher and Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, and their book is Mating Intelligence Unleashed: The Role of the Mind in Sex, Dating, and Love
•What the research shows men and women really want (which is sometimes different from what they think they want).
•How a "nice guy" can make himself more appealing to women.
•When in a woman's cycle she looks the hottest (and perhaps the best time to schedule a hot date).
•The physical traits of a guy who probably shouldn't waste his time trying to get casual sex.
•What qualities and behaviors in both partners help keep a relationship alive.
Listen here at 7pm Pacific and 10pm Eastern at this link or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/02/11/drs-glenn-geher-scott-barry-kaufman-on-mating-intelligence-1
Don't miss last week's show with social psychologist Dr. Carol Tavris, talking about common ways we make errors in reasoning and judgment that mess up our lives, and how to avoid them.
Her terrific book, co-authored with Dr. Elliot Aronson, is one of my favorites: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/02/04/dr-carol-tavris-how-to-admit-mistakes-instead-of-contin
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 or Stitcher.
Taking The Time To Make People Feel Good
This is a link to a moving letter from his late mom's doctor posted on Reddit.
It really takes so little of your time to do a whole lot for another person.
I try to recognize whenever people are meaningful to me or help me by taking the time to write and tell them or to tell them if they're friends (without it being too sappy).
By the way, per research on appreciation and gratitude, which we discussed on my recent radio show with Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, you're both personally happier by being grateful and you seem to improve your friendships and relationships measurably, both by expressing appreciation in your own head and to the other person. I like Facebook for this reason -- I see my friends' pictures and posts and appreciate them.
A small recent story about appreciating someone from my bank who made a difference in my life:
A woman in the fraud division of my bank stuck her neck out to get me a provisional credit of the money that had been taken from my account just a day after I asked. (I did make the case that I'd stopped the fraud through my intervention, but she still didn't have to do that. Could have been all "business as usual.") The standard wait to get the money credited back is seven to 15 business days -- which is not good when your rent is due on the first of the month, and when you believe your landlord is owed it exactly then.
When I saw just a day later that I had the money in my account (the "provisional" will go away since I didn't authorize the withdrawal by some outfit called LuckyMoney.com, which sends money to the Philippines), I wrote the woman a thank you note and faxed a copy to the bank president.
A line from my letter to her:
This really means a lot, and I bet a lot of other people have been benefited by the way you think and do your job.
It takes very little to make somebody feel good. Even a postcard with a couple lines thanking them. (I buy vintage postcards in big lots on eBay for that purpose. Crime writer Elmore Leonard, whom my boyfriend works for, once got once of these and loved it -- said it looked like it had gotten lost in the mail for 75 years.)
Any Reason To Suspend Our Rights: Suspicionless Seizures Of Electronics Near US Borders
David Kravets posts at Wired:
The Department of Homeland Security's civil rights watchdog has concluded that travelers along the nation's borders may have their electronics seized and the contents of those devices examined for any reason whatsoever -- all in the name of national security.The DHS, which secures the nation's border, in 2009 announced that it would conduct a "Civil Liberties Impact Assessment" of its suspicionless search-and-seizure policy pertaining to electronic devices "within 120 days." More than three years later, the DHS office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties published a two-page executive summary of its findings.
"We also conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits," the executive summary said.
That Constitution...it's so ANNOYING.
Also from Kravets' post:
By the way, the government contends the Fourth-Amendment-Free Zone stretches 100 miles inland from the nation's actual border.
A comment from a guy calling himself Tom Berry at WIRED:
It's one thing to be searched crossing the border. Its another to claim a 100 mile "Fourth Amendment Exclusion Zone" My answer is to simply refuse to hand over electronics unless they have a warrant and be sure to record the incident if possible. I never imagined when I was 20 years old than in 30 years the United States would be sliding toward a Orwellian quasi- totalitarian state.
Check the map to see if you're living in a Constitution-free zone.
via Jay J. Hector
Parsing "Islam" Versus "Islamists"
David Solway explains at PJMedia what I've explained over and over here -- often to no avail, as people cling to a "COEXIST!" model that doesn't actually exist vis a vis what Islam actually is:
This "bad Islam," apparently, is the product of a grievous misinterpretation of the primary documents and historical lore on the part of those who have "hijacked" the faith. It is not really Islam.But the point is, as Anjem Choudary, head of the radical al-Muhajiroun ("the immigrants") movement in Britain, assures us, the division between moderates and extremists is a "classification [that] does not exist in Islam." Similarly, after the recent terrorist attack on a BP natural gas plant in Algeria, costing 81 lives, one of the perpetrators announced: "We've come in the name of Islam, to teach the Americans what Islam is." And they have the liturgy and consecrations with them. As Robert Spencer comments, "mainstream media coverage has followed the usual patterns, downplaying or ignoring outright what the attackers said about what they were hoping to accomplish, since these statements lead to questions about Islam that they would prefer not be asked."
Spencer properly grants that "Muslims exist who may not believe or act upon these teachings," but, regrettably, such teachings are neither cancelled nor mitigated by revisionary fancies, saccharine acquittals and exemptions, or quixotic sallies into the realm of pseudo-scholarly annotation. Despite the dreamy and well-intentioned futility of glossing the unassimilable, these rules and precepts remain in force as textual ammunition for jihad. To suggest otherwise is to serve up the sort of political tapioca we expect from John Brennan of Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, who cannot bring himself to see jihad as anything but a holy struggle for spiritual purity.
Former Islamic zealot Ibn Warraq in Why I Am Not a Muslim has also emphasized that fundamentalist Islam is Islam and rebuked Western intellectuals and apologists for fudging the difference, an act of conceptual amalgamation which he regards as nothing less than shameful. "Western scholars and Islamicists have totally failed in their duties as intellectuals," he charges, "They have betrayed their calling by abandoning their critical faculties when it comes to Islam." In his view, the term "Islamic fundamentalism" is a tautology and functions primarily as a "useful and face-saving device for those unable to confront the fact that Islam itself, and not just something we call 'Islamic fundamentalism,' is incompatible with democracy." To claim that the spate of Islamic-sponsored mayhem and upheaval has nothing to do with genuine Islam is not only counterfactual but wilfully astigmatic, if not perverse.
via @instapundit
Finally, A Cure For Hipster
If only.
UPDATED: Even more hilarious -- Hipster Disney Princesses:
via @xeni
Linka Binka Bottle Of Ink
The cork fell out...
Details On LAPD Shooting Of Newspaper Carriers -- And Neighborhood Houses
Joel Rubin, Angel Jennings and Andrew Blankstein write in the Los Angeles Times that the women were victims of "a tragic misinterpretation" by officers working under "incredible tension," per LAPD Chief Charlie Beck.
So, an electric blue Tacoma pickup gets shot up -- and no report that the officers gave any warning -- because they were looking for a gray Nissan Titan? Oh, wait -- it was near the house of a high-ranking LAPD officer. Well, for sure, shoot first, ask questions later!
And it wasn't just the occupants of the truck who could have been killed.
Law enforcement sources told The Times that at least seven officers opened fire. On Friday, the street was pockmarked with bullet holes in cars, trees, garage doors and roofs. Residents said they wanted to know what happened."How do you mistake two Hispanic women, one who is 71, for a large black male?" said Richard Goo, 62, who counted five bullet holes in the entryway to his house.
Glen T. Jonas, the attorney representing the women, said the police officers gave "no commands, no instructions and no opportunity to surrender" before opening fire. He described a terrifying encounter in which the pair were in the early part of their delivery route through several South Bay communities. Hernandez was in the back seat handing papers to her daughter, who was driving. Carranza would briefly slow the truck to throw papers on driveways and front walks.
As bullets tore through the cabin, the two women "covered their faces and huddled down," Jonas said. "They felt like it was going on forever."
Hernandez was shot twice in her back and is expected to recover. Her daughter escaped with only minor wounds from broken glass.
"Even Powerball Winnings End After 20 Years": Ending Permanent Alimony
Geoff Williams writes at USNews of permanent alimony -- one couple paying for the partner they've divorced for the rest of that person's natural life, as long as that person only lives with or date somebody else instead of remarrying:
Even opponents of permanent alimony agree that there are sometimes good reasons for a spouse to receive permanent alimony (e.g., they have a disability preventing them from working). In other cases, however, when the recipient is healthy and college-educated, it can seem as if fate has smiled upon one person, who now has something akin to lottery winnings for life, and scorned the other as an unlucky soul who now must pay for the mistake of marrying the wrong person for the rest of their life.Even Powerball winnings end after 20 years, while permanent alimony continues through one's retirement--although the amount paid can be reduced by the courts. Consequently, a number of senior citizens find themselves giving up a chunk of their Social Security check to a spouse who is receiving the same amount of Social Security, plus the alimony.
The permanent alimony trap can be especially maddening for someone like Jane Carter, 43, who is using a pseudonym so she can more freely discuss her husband's case, which will soon be hashed out in court. Her husband separated from his first wife in 2003 and was ordered by the courts to pay his ex-spouse $90,000 a year (not including child support). They divorced in 2005 and eventually the amount was lowered to $81,000 a year. So far, Carter's husband has paid his ex-wife $800,000 in alimony, and while his monthly alimony payment used to be 30 percent of his income, with the economy the way it's been, 57 percent of his income now goes to his ex-wife.
Unless Carter wins the court's favor, there's seemingly no end in sight. In fact, she says her husband's ex-wife is now after her money. "I have a small nest egg for my 11-year-old son, and her lawyer is trying to find out how much I have for that nest egg because we're in the midst of a modification proceeding," says Carter.
A Reasoned Take On Bad Cops And Dorner's Accusations
Ken, a former criminal defense attorney who blogs at Popehat notes that there are good, bad, and indifferent cops -- just like in any profession. About police misconduct, he writes:
I believe it happens more than it is reported, I believe it is generally excused by law enforcement culture and ignored by most political figures, and I believe it is generally treated by the media as an it-bleeds-so-it-leads spectacle rather than a problem that undermines the foundations of our social compact.But I don't automatically believe that every accusation of police misconduct is true. I particularly don't believe it's true just because a disturbed murderer claims it.
That's why I am mystified and perturbed by the reaction in some quarters to the rampage by former LAPD Officer Christopher Dorner. I see, in various locations, people suggesting that Dorner was pushed into his rampage by police corruption, that he's vindicating wrongs done to him, that he speaks truth about police corruption, that he's exposing something.
This is shocking.
Dorner claims that he reported police abuse and was fired for it. I don't know if that's true or not. It could be. It would not surprise me. I'm sure it has happened before and will happen again. Cops abuse citizens. Cops lie. The system -- prosecutors, courts, law enforcement administration, police unions, even the media -- cover for it.
But it's madness to take the word of a madman uncritically.
Dorner murdered the child of a (real or imagined) enemy and that child's fiance. His manifesto threatens the families of people he hates. His manifesto rambles about not just police abuse he alleges, but about wrongs done to him in elementary and high school.
Bawdy Odor
Stink it up here.
Discounted Jools And Stuff For Valentine's Day
Up to 70 percent off sparkly stones, etc., at Amazon
Flowers and chocolates
All discounts good through Feb 14. Even if you aren't buying stuff for somebody for Valentine's Day.
Personally, I could care less about the holiday -- but only if I lost brain function and the existence of it were erased from my brain entirely. The way I see it, the day to celebrate your love is every odd Sunday through Friday.
Eek, Bank Fraud Ate My Brain: On Ricki Lake Today
Depending on where you are, might not be too late to catch it. It's on in LA at 3 pm. I'm discussing I See Rude People and get into some stuff on relationships, too.
Fear Of Spending Money
There's a difference between being frugal and being tight with a dollar -- which can really end up costing you.
Sometimes, it makes sense to spend money on things that aren't necessities -- like a vacation. Especially if you have money, which this guy somebody wrote to me about does -- a guy who's well-off but cheap.
It's easy to instantly dislike a person for this, but you can maybe look at them more, ahem, charitably, if you evoke some sympathy for them by recognizing that their approach to money probably comes from fear.
What are your experiences with people like this? Have you ever convinced a cheap person to be less tight with a dollar?
LAPD: Shoot First, Ask Questions Later
I was going to say, "What is this, the Wild West?" to title this post, but apparently, in the real "Wild West," people didn't go around gunning each other down like they do in the movies.
But, here in modern-day LA, cops on the hunt for fugitive Christopher Dorner shot up the truck of two women delivering newspapers. Tracy Connor writes for NBC News:
They were in the wrong car at the wrong time.Two women who were delivering newspapers in Torrance, Calif., early Thursday were shot by jittery Los Angeles police officers who mistakenly thought cop-hunting fugitive Christopher Dorner might be in their vehicle, NBCLosAngeles.com reported.
One was shot once and the other twice; both were were expected to survive.
They had their lights off -- as polite newspaper deliverers often do, so as not to wake the citizenry at 5 am or so:
Hours earlier, the fired cop had allegedly ambushed officers in two other cities, killing one of them.Across the region, cops on high alert were on the lookout for Dorner's dark-colored Nissan truck. In the predawn dark, they saw a blue pickup rolling through the streets with no headlights on.
It's unclear what happened next, but LAPD Chief Charlie Beck confirmed the officers fired on the vehicle, hitting the two occupants. He said it was a tragic case of "mistaken identity."
Less than a half-hour later, cops fired on another vehicle in Torrance, just two blocks away from the first scene, NBCLosAngeles.com reported. No one was injured in that vehicle, which was similar to Dorner's truck, police said.
It can be terribly dangerous to be a police officer, and I'm sympathetic to that and grateful to those who do "protect and defend" us. But, that is part of the job and cops can't just go off blowing people away. They have loudspeakers on their cars -- they could say, "This is the police. You in the blue truck: Come out with your hands up..."
New Mandate: Never Question Authority
Nick Sorrentino blogs at Against Crony Capitalism that there was a time that the Left in this country, especially, would question authority. "What happened?" he asks:
For instance, yesterday Chris Rock, once an irreverent comedian, told America to "listen" to its "Dad." By which he meant president Obama. He also said that the President was our boss.Our Boss? Listen to Dad? This is still America, right?
Don't question authority. Follow authority. Do what you are told. So what if this president has given himself the authority to assassinate US citizens. Don't question. Obey.
Daniel Henninger at the WSJ also wants to know where America's spirit of rebellion went, and calls for some "artisanal" government:
Years back, a popular notion among liberal thinkers was something called "imperial overstretch." This was the idea that America's far-flung foreign-policy commitments could bankrupt the country. Mr. Obama believes this, and before Chuck Hagel started talking the other day, he was supposed to explain it. In his State of the Union speech next Tuesday, Mr. Obama will say again that Washington, after Iraq and Afghanistan, needs to "invest" at home. But isn't the federalization of pretty much everything in a diverse country like the U.S. just another exercise in imperial overstretch?In their own lives, the men and women of the left are all about keeping things simple. Back in the '70s, they were early adopters of E.F. Schumacher's "Small Is Beautiful." Today the watchwords are "handcrafted" and "artisanal." How about some artisanal government?
My Country, Police State Of Thee...
Wendy McElroy writes at TDVMedia of America's slide into a police state:
A police state is generally defined as a totalitarian government that exerts extreme and pervasive social, political and economic control over peaceful citizens. Ayn Rand called it "the ultimate inversion...the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission."There are various ways to measure where a nation sits on the police-state axis.
One way is to compare what you see in America with the following standard description of a police state. A police state maintains its control through the pervasive surveillance of peaceful citizenry, through a vast number of laws with draconian enforcement, and by converting rights into privileges that can be withheld - for example, the ability to travel. Typically, there is a special police force, such as a Stasi, that operates with no transparency and few restraints. The special police do not address violent crime; instead, they exert social control and enforce the law whatever the law may be.
This describes America. Surveillance of daily life has soared; even the Supreme Court has consistently expanded the "right" of police to perform warrantless searches. A vast array of laws now dictate the minutia of life, from what you may not eat to the light bulbs you may not use as well products you must buy (e.g. health care insurance). On one day in January alone, Obama issued 23 executive orders to start the process of gun control. Enforcement is becoming every more draconian, with police departments pursuing militarization of their procedures and attitudes. A special police force called the Department of Homeland Security has spearheaded this military zeal; the DHS functions without transparency or accountability. Travel, formerly a right, is now a privilege granted by government agents at their whim.
Does the foregoing describe a free society or a police state?
She gets how 9/11 has become the ticket for politicians and post-government profiteers like Michael Chertoff to "walk past the traditional protections of liberty that restrain the state":
The war on terror is an engineered hysteria. In its wake, the institutions of America have changed. Public ones have swelled in size and appetite; private ones have retreated. Some of the changes are so glaring that people noticed immediately. It is difficult not to notice the militarization of law enforcement when your children are lined up at airports and touched by uniformed strangers in a manner that would be called child molestation elsewhere. But the dehumanizing process is accepted in the name of security.The foregoing scratches the surface of "how" a society becomes a total state. It does not explain the "why." Why do Americans who pride themselves on rugged individualism stand by and watch the triumph of totalitarianism?
One reason is because the behavior encouraged by institutions (such as obedience) tends to become character traits not only of individuals but also of society itself. And, so, society becomes closed rather than open; insensitive to brutality by authorities, and afraid of dissent. Rewarded by the authorities for doing so, people even come to spy on their neighbors as a civic duty of which they are proud.
Another common reason: people do not or prefer not to notice. Because they wake up in their own homes, eat the same breakfast cereal, work at the same job, they have a sense that everything is normal. They do not notice that the legal structure and other institutions that guarded their freedoms are going, going, gone. People who are accustomed to liberty can be blithely unaware of how important mechanisms like rule of law or due process are to their freedom and true safety. The daily erosion of freedom is far less real to them than their daily routines.
The difference between America and a communist regime lay in its institutional protection of the individual against the state. That difference no longer exists.
10 Mostly Passive-Aggressive Notes
At Mashable. The last one was nice -- and great.
This Muslim Girl Is In Jail So Her Family Won't Murder Her
Under Islam, a parent is permitted to kill their offspring -- which actually happens with some frequency:
Links Luther
Super Bad.
The Right To Free Tweets
I made lunch and turned on the Brennan hearings on CNN while I was heating things. Two of my tweets:
@amyalkon
CodePink protesters stand up and shout, raise signs protesting Brennan as recess begins in Brennan hearings. (Just seen on CNN coverage.)@amyalkon
Whether or not you agree with CodePink, free speech and dissent is a good thing - despite what citizen sheep will tell you.
TSA's Arbitrary Policies Can Be Fun!
Try the TSA Statement Generator! Here's mine: 
I found this when Lisa Simeone at TSA News cross-posted a blog item from the creator of the Statement Generator, Taking Sense Away:
Almost any TSA screener will tell you (in hushed tones, at least) that one of the more frustrating aspects of the day-to-day rigmarole is having to field questions from smart passengers who demand to know what kind of sense this or that TSA policy makes.Trying to explain to a little old man, for instance, why the tiny blade on his Leatherman multi-tool warrants the entire multi-tool being confiscated, while, right next to him, a 300-pound muscle-bound man fresh out of prison gets to keep his pair of scissors, a lighter, his toothbrush, along with all the other shank-making tools he'd just spent 10 years mastering in the penitentiary.
Then you have TSA headquarters, telling the public one minute that anyone could be a threat at the airport, regardless of age, size, shape, color, or creed-- even kids, because "terrorists are not above using children" to carry out attacks (which was why kids had to get inside full body radiation scanners for the first year of the backscatter machines, we were told)-- and the next minute saying that people who even appear to be sort of young will no longer be touched. (The next thing you know, the TSA will claim the existence of intelligence regarding a team of pygmy ninjas plotting to exploit the TSA's 12-and-under policy in order to rain terror from the skies-- kids will be asked to spend 5 minutes with a Child-Certified Behavior Detection Officer at the new TSA Checkpoint Playpen™.)
Then we went from all passengers having to receive equal screening--there was no telling what form a terrorist could take, after all--to an elite stratum of society being largely excused from security theater, providing they had given enough money to the airlines. Because hey, it's not like there's any possibility that a perfectly upstanding frequent-flying U.S. citizen with a clean skin could suddenly snap and decide that he wanted to, oh, say, fly a plane into a building, or anything.
Terrorists don't "snap." It's called Jihad -- slaughtering nonbelievers in Allah -- and it's called for by Islam. The way to find them is with targeted intelligence work by trained intelligence officers, not by searching granny's hoohoo and everyone else's right before they board planes.
You Don't Get To Mandate Unnecessary Medical Interventions, No Matter How Opposed You Are To Abortion
Michigan Republicans have introduced a bill requiring women to get a transvaginal ultrasound before getting an abortion, writes Sahil Kapur at TPM:
The legislation introduced Tuesday in the state House ensures the "performance of a diagnostic ultrasound examination of the fetus at least two hours before an abortion is performed" and requires her to sign a consent form prior to the abortion. The bill was introduced by state Rep. Joel Johnson (R) and cosponsored by 22 fellow lawmakers.
I have to sign a consent form before they clean my teeth at the dentist, let alone get medical care, but these forms are for the practitioner's protection, and put out by them voluntarily, not by the state.
Katie Carey, a spokeswoman for Michigan's House Democratic Leader Tim Greimel, categorically said the bill would mandate transvaginal ultrasounds for women before an abortion."This is an unnecessary and unwarranted intrusion into the health decisions of women," Greimel told TPM in a statement. "This is yet another example of the Republican obsession with overregulating people's private lives."
The bill requires the use of ultrasound equipment "providing the most visibly clear image of the gross anatomical development of the fetus and the most audible fetal heartbeat." As a practical matter, that requires transvaginal ultrasounds, said Donna Crane, the policy director of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
"It does lay bare that the real motive is to make abortion providers continue to acquire more and more and more equipment before they're even eligible to perform an abortion," Crane told TPM. "They're trying to make it harder for doctors to do their jobs."
While the ultrasound is currently optional in Michigan, the proposed legislation would make it mandatory. After the ultrasound is conducted, women would have the option to obtain more information if they want it, Frederick said. Women would also have the option of declining to see the ultrasound images.
An ultrasound also costs money and adds cost to the abortion -- costs which legislators do not have the right to impose.
You're the bullshit party of small government if you want big government whenever it suits your principles.
I think abortion is creepy, but I think it should be legal -- and performed as early as possible in a pregnancy.
Meet Big Milk
The Washington Times has an editorial on "beverage socialism" (love that term!), and how government protectionism of big milk producers is "a raw deal for consumers":
Last month, the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry discovered that the Fresh Markets grocery chain committed the crime of having a sale on milk. As part of a promotional deal, the retailer advertised a gallon of milk for $2.99, which falls below the government-mandated markup of 6 percent above invoice and shipping price."They can sell it 6 percent over cost all day long. It's when they sell it below cost that it becomes a problem," State Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner Mike Strain told the Baton Rouge Advocate. The government forced the store to end the promotion and raise prices.
Fans of big government who think regulations are there to "help the consumer" ought to take notice. Milk manipulation has been in place since the New Deal, when the dairy industry and government regulators began their collusion.
Cheese, butter, and dry milk prices are also guaranteed by the government.
...The power of Big Milk has been on full display with a number of small farms and cooperatives being forced to close by order of government regulators.
...The notion of small family farms being closed at the point of a gun for the crime of selling milk from a cow is not the sort of thing that should happen in a free country. While actions are being taken in the name of food safety, the price-fixing mechanisms suggest this is a sop to the milk industry.
Related -- Cato's Trevor Burrus writes at HuffPo:
Filled milk (which still exists) is easily canned and transported, and because it doesn't need to be refrigerated, it was particularly appealing to poorer consumers without refrigerators.It was not appealing to the dairy industry, however, which mobilized stop to the harmless and useful product. They petitioned Congress to ban filled milk, arguing incorrectly that filled milk lacked vitamins, was fraudulent, and that it did harm to a vital national industry. In the spirit of Lochner, the dairy industry even appealed to the racism of members of Congress. In the words of one contemporary Congressman, "The superiority of the white race is due at least to some extent on the fact that it is a milk-consuming race."
Meet The New Bush; Same As The Old Bush
Silly naifs -- did you vote for Barack Obama thinking he'd be a different kind of politician?
Well, to be fair -- he is. He goes further.
From the WSJ:
President Obama has been lucky in many ways, but no more so than in not having a Senator Barack Obama to assail his use of Presidential war powers. For surely Senator Obama would now be denouncing the ways that President Obama has embraced the unilateral, even pre-emptive powers that George W. Bush used in prosecuting the war against al Qaeda.The latest example is the leak to NBC News of a Justice Department "white paper" that summarizes the legal justification for using drones to kill al Qaeda operatives, including American citizens. The white paper summarizes a more detailed legal explanation from Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that remains classified--again, like the habits of the supposedly too secretive Bush Administration.
You may recall that Mr. Obama and Eric Holder, before he became Attorney General, denounced the OLC memos that explained why waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation" techniques were legal. Once he became Attorney General, Mr. Holder ostentatiously made four of those memos public on April 16, 2009, along with plenty of moral preening about how the new Administration had banned that sort of barbarism.
Yes, this crowd doesn't arrest and interrogate suspected terrorists. It merely blows them away with missiles from the sky.
Ariel St. Germaine comments at the WSJ:
Anyone who is not in a trance can see the US is being conditioned to accept police state tactics, decisions, and outcomes and it is accelerating. If liberals thought Bush was a fascist, Obama should keep them awake at night. Make no mistake: the charm, the smile, the hypnotic cadence of his speech is all just the tinsel to deflect attention from the hideousness beneath. He is Caligula 2.0 with a Twitter account.
UPDATE -- a tweet:
@Popehat
So I says, I says to her, "Why SHOULDN'T the people responsible for the Post Office decide who gets ganked by drone strikes?"
And All The Little Minds Remained Locked Shut
Eric Allen Bell posts about Islam and Loonwatch.com at the Daily Kos, supporting his reasoning in both the post and the comments, and persuading no one. (The facts don't matter in the face of what people prefer to believe.) An excerpt (including the bold-facing he did in his original):
Let me just come right out by saying that the vast majority of the estimated 1.67 billion Muslims around the world are clearly not terrorists. The newly coined term "Islamophobia" describes an irrational fear of Islam. But for LoonWatch.com any criticism of the Koran or of violent Jihad - even those criticisms that might have some legitimacy to them - even of radical Islam, are branded as Islamophobia and anyone who dares to raise questions about the nearly constant acts of Jihad going on increasingly around the world today is labeled a "Loon" - thus the title of their blog, LoonWatch.com.It seems that Loonwatch is pretty much exclusively concerned with exposing the perceived enemies of Islam, including a compulsive and obsessive tit for tat over anything that Robert Spencer, of JihadWatch.com had to say. Unlike Pamela Geller or that nut in Florida who was preoccupied with burning the Koran, Spencer, whom I don't see eye to eye with either (I feel he might also be religiously motivated), presents himself in a rather rational, sober and scholarly fashion and I might add that neither he nor the other "Loons" have bombs strapped to them - only words. Something we cannot say for so many, many defenders of Islam.
Anyone can take a short stroll through YouTube and find numerous videos translated into English of Islamic clerics from many parts of the world calling for the death of all Jews, the Islamic takeover of the world, applauding the actions of Islamic terrorists and defending the practice of beating women, forcing young girls to marry grown men and promoting the most radical forms of Sharia (Islamic) Law. Surely Loonwatch.com has noticed this, but they have nothing to say on the subject - only criticism and attacks on anyone who dare suggest that within the Islamic world there might be room for improvement.
The comments section is one long, steady refusal to take anything he says in, no matter how well he supports it.
You've Got Tail! (Looks Like The Color Of Getting Caught By Your Wife With Your Girlfriend)
Photos by Phil Miller:
Post your guess on the tale in the comments.
TSA: Government-Employed Goon Squad At Logan Harasses Disabled Man
It's been a rough morning -- discovered I'd been a victim of fraud (caught in time...pain in the ass, ate my prime writing hours, but I'll get the money back).
So, I'm a little slim on the blog items today, but I will point you to this this detailed and compelling post by Lisa Simeone about the disgusting and shocking (though not surprising) treatment of a disabled man by TSA thugs at Boston Logan.
Being A Boy Is Now Cause For Suspension
Boys tend to like to play with transportation toys and toy weapons, from swords to guns to laser guns and beyond. Well, that'll get you suspended from second grade, boys. Like a 7-year-old boy suspended from his elementary school for using an imaginary grenade on the playground.
Mike Krumboltz writes at Yahoo! News:
Second-grader Alex Evans pretended to throw a grenade into a box full of, in his words, "pretend evil forces.""I pretended the box, there's something shaking in it, and I go pshhh," Alex explained.
Unfortunately for Alex, his exploits (heroic as they were) went against Mary Blair Elementary School rules. Those rules include no fighting (real or pretend) and no weapons (real or pretend).
Alex's mom commented that she doesn't think the rule is practical. "Honestly I don't think the rule is very realistic for kids this age," Mandie Watkins said.
...Alex is just as perplexed as his mom. "I was trying to save people and I just can't believe I got dispended," he told Fox 31.
A Whole Bunch Of Tacky And Vulgar Links
Line 'em up!
From Whom Are We In More Danger At Airports, John Or Jane Q. Citizen, Or TSA Workers?
A man who, by the sound of it, has serious mental problems apparently had no problem passing the screening to become a TSA worker. Lisa Simeone blogs at TSANewsBlog:
TSA screener Christopher Wilkie would seem to be a walking time bomb.The 43-year-old was arraigned in court yesterday in Connecticut for allegedly hitting his 75-year-old mother. This came a day after he was charged with a different crime -- harassing and threatening his psychiatrist. Wilkie is a TSA agent at JFK International Airport in New York.
Even A Picture Of A Gun Now Cause For High School Suspension
Breathe loudly and you might be suspended from high school these days -- which hurts your ability to learn and get good grades for college, and is a violation of your civil liberties.
The latest outrageous booting from school comes in Arizona, where Daniel McClaine, Jr. was suspended for having a photo of an AK-47 as a laptop background.
Law prof Jonathan Turley writes:
A teacher noticed the picture on his school-issued computer. It shows an AK-47 on top of a flag. He was immediately suspended for three days under a policy that prohibits "sending or displaying offensive messages or pictures" and prohibits access, sending, creating or forwarding pictures that are considered "harassing, threatening, or illegal."The problem is that many people do not consider a picture of a gun to be threatening or harassing. It happens to be an object that the Supreme Court in Heller said was protected as an individual right under the Second Amendment. Of course, it could be argued, pornography is protected under the first amendment but restricted in terms of persons and places where it can be seen. Yet, the image of a gun alone is not viewed by many Americans as threatening as opposed to protective or patriotic. The school's position appears to be that any picture of a gun is inherently an image of violence. There are a variety of images that may be read differently by students from pictures of Obama to protest pictures of torture or pictures of whaling. Likewise, there are pictures like the Iwo Jima memorial or revolutionary images that involve guns. The question is whether such a policy is intentionally vague to allow arbitrary or absolute regulation of this form of speech.
Crime Scene Detective Just Can't Take It Anymore -- Until He Can
Disgusting example of yet another public employee hoovering up disability dollars -- and then going right back into what supposedly gave him his supposed disability. Mark Lagerkvist writes at reason of former cops collecting hefty lifetime pensions thanks to bogus disability claims:
Timothy Carroll retired at age 33. He claimed he was "totally and permanently" disabled by the trauma of seeing dead bodies while working as a sheriff's officer in Morris County, New Jersey."I suffer from crime scene flashbacks and hallucinations due to all the years I served as a crime scene detective," stated Carroll in his disability application.
The real shock is Carroll then started a business that cleans up gory crime scenes, a New Jersey Watchdog investigation found. Yet the state continues to pay him a disability pension for life, a sum that could total $1 million or more.
Carroll's company, Tragic Solutions LLC of Linden, N.J., specializes in removing human residue from "bloody and/or messy" scenes, including "murder, suicide, accidental, natural and decomposing deaths," according to its website. He formed the business with Thomas Rohling, another former Morris sheriff's officer who draws a state disability pension.
"I really don't want to comment on this," Carroll told NBC 4 New York, New Jersey Watchdog's partner on the investigation.
The Latest "Meat Kills!" Study
Tom D. Naughton does a detailed and terrific job tearing it apart. An excerpt:
Q: Did the researchers control their variables?A: Not really, no. In the full text of the study, the researchers admit that the participants are not a representative sample of the British adult population. In fact, both the vegetarians and non-vegetarians in the study population had lower-than-usual rates of heart disease. Then there's this little issue:
Risk factors such as hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes may be mediating factors through which vegetarianism affects the risk of IHD; therefore, the analyses were not adjusted for these variables.
In other words, since we believe meat-eating causes hypertension, hyperlipidemia and diabetes, we didn't adjust for any of them. When I read that sentence, I scoured the study to see if rates of diabetes were reported. Yup ... and the non-vegetarians (let's just call them meat-eaters from here on) had more than double the rate of diabetes.
Now ... since diabetics are three times more likely to die of heart disease than non-diabetics, do you think maybe we have a confounding variable here? If you believe eating meat causes diabetes (as the vegetarian researcher probably does), then yes, you could choose to ignore that as a variable. But if you believe diabetes is caused by excess sugar consumption, you can't.
Since clinical studies have shown that low-carb, meaty diets can control and often reverse diabetes, I seriously doubt eating meat causes diabetes. So what we're likely seeing here is that the vegetarians consume less sugar than the meat-eaters - once again, comparing health-conscious people to the population as a whole.
The upshot:
In other words, We'd like more funding so we can keep torturing the data until it tells us that eating meat will kill you.Go enjoy your steak.
via @AnnChildersMD
Cervical Collar As Travel Pillow
There was an article in the WSJ by Nancy Keates about travel pillows, with expensive (and supposedly brilliant choices) that all seemed ugly and borderline-helpful, if at all. The best option was in the comments section with the piece. A reader named Bruce Quinn wrote:
I live in California and frequently work on the East Coast. That means I either fly from 3 pm (pacific) to 10 or 11 pm (eastern) or take a red eye flight. The usual "C" shaped pillows sold in airports don't do anything for me. I use a regular foam/velcro neck brace which costs $10-15. The term of art is "cervical collar" - foam with a velcro closure. Carried by some drug stores or easily available from that giant mail order site that begins with "A" and sounds like a river. It's what you use for a "sprained neck" but keep your head up for sleeping on night flights. It's a fraction of the cost of any specialized doo-dad (as reviewed here) and works just great for me. Embarassment factor - well, the lights are off and I'm asleep. Don't forget to add foam ear plugs and an eye mask.
From The New York Times, in an article about gifts for the frugal traveler, Seth Kugel writes:
When I wrote in September about the science of sleeping in planes -- and in particular, how hard it was to sleep sitting up because your brain can't fully rest when it's charged with keeping your head from flopping over -- several readers suggested a foam cervical collar, the kind you see on people with whiplash. I tried out the one pictured, not on a plane but on a nonreclining chair in my apartment, and had a really great nap. Of course, there was no one climbing over me to go to the lavatory, but that's another problem.
I love the goofy picture of the $12.99 collar they show at Amazon
(They linked to the "firm" one, so that's what I got, in small, for $10 plus, I think, $5 shipping.)
If you can afford it, I'd also add what Santa Gregg got me -- the gift of silence: Bose
UPDATE: A few years into being with Gregg, he showed me this pillow in the SkyMall catalogue -- which I bought.
I reminded him of that this morning, and how he refused to sit next to me if I ever used it.
Gregg corrected me: "I didn't refuse to sit with you; I refused to get on the plane with you."
Saudi Cleric Calls For Burkas For Babies
The little sluts should cover themselves up.
Robert Spencer posts about it at JihadWatch, explaining:
This is no surprise. After all, another Saudi sheikh, Dr. Ahmad Al-Mu'bi, said in 2008: "There is no minimal age for entering marriage. You can have a marriage contract even with a one-year-old girl." If a one-year-old girl can be married, a one-year-old girl can be an object of desire. And if a one-year-old girl can be an object of desire, then it is her responsibility to cover up.
Why can you have a marriage contract (in Islam) with a baby? Well, because, in Islam, everything the looting, mass-murdering, pedophile Mohammed did is to be emulated, and he married Aisha when she was 6 and had sex with her at 9.
Not exactly the Jesus, huh? I'm an atheist, but I can get very much behind "Turn the other cheek" and "Feed the poor!"
Questionable Taste
Consider this its guest room.
Has Word Of The Streisand Effect Not Reached The White House?
From Wikipedia:
The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet....It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose attempt in 2003 to suppress photographs of her residence inadvertently generated further publicity.
There was a photo of Obama apparently skeet shooting -- a photo which the White House forbade messing with:
The photograph may not be manipulated in any way...
Predictably, for anyone who knows of The Streisand Effect, there probably has yet to be a photo of Obama that has been so messed with.
My personal favorite, from a Facebook friend's feed: 
The Sick Life In Muslim Majority Countries: Brutally Murder Your Child; Pay A Fine
A Saudi cleric murdered his daughter -- and per Islam, no biggie, because wives and children are seen as a man's possessions, not humans with rights. Wee bit of jail time for the guy. But, again, it's his daughter, so under Islam, he's allowed to slaughter her, providing he pays a bit of blood money afterward. From Al Gorezeera:
A Saudi cleric who raped his five-year-old daughter and tortured her to death has been sentenced to pay "blood money" to the mother after having served a short jail term, activists have said.Fayhan al-Ghamdi, an Islamic cleric and regular guest on Islamic television networks, confessed to having used cables and a cane to inflict the injuries, activists from the group Women to Drive said in a statement on Saturday.
Lamia was admitted to hospital on December 25, 2011 with multiple injuries, including a crushed skull, broken ribs and left arm, extensive bruising and burns, the activists said.
They said the father had doubted his daughter Lama's virginity and had her checked up by a medic.
She died last October.
Randa al-Kaleeb, a social worker from the hospital where Lama was admitted, said the girl's back was broken and that she had been raped "everywhere", according to the group.
According to the victim's mother, hospital staff told her that her "child's rectum had been torn open and the abuser had attempted to burn it closed."
The activists said that the judge had ruled the prosecution could only seek "blood money and the time the defendant had served in prison since Lama's death suffices as punishment."
From Robert Spencer at JihadWatch:
It is no accident or coincidence that Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.
Why is horrific violence such a huge part of Islam? Well, consider the source -- the man Muslims consider their prophet; the man their religion demands they emulate in word and deed:
Sahi Muslim No. 4206: "A woman came to the prophet and asked for purification by seeking punishment. He told her to go away and seek God's forgiveness. She persisted four times and admitted she was pregnant. He told her to wait until she had given birth. Then he said that the Muslim community should wait until she had weaned her child. When the day arrived for the child to take solid food, Muhammad handed the child over to the community. And when he had given command over her and she was put in a hole up to her breast, he ordered the people to stone her. Khalid b. al-Walid came forward with a stone which he threw at her head, and when the blood spurted on her face he cursed her."
Now, for sure, Christians have done some awful things in the name of their religion, but as I've said before, I can get behind all that "turn the other cheek" and "feed the poor" stuff Jesus was all about.
What kind of sick belief system is it that reveres a "prophet" who behaves like this guy did in the text above?
Why The TSA Is Really About Getting You Used To Giving Up Your Rights
(While raking in mega-bucks for the connected and keeping the jobless rate a little less dismal.)
Christopher Elliott writes in a Nat Geo column about something I've written about before -- that the way to find terrorists is through targeted intelligence by highly trained intelligence officers. In other words, putting resources and manpower toward people there's reason to suspect are terrorists -- and long before they hit any building or airport:
Critics say there's no causal relationship between a TSA with a sprawling mandate and the absence of a terrorist attack. Fred Cate, a law professor at Indiana University, says screeners are conducting the law-enforcement equivalent of a clumsy police dragnet. "They're throwing something at the wall to see if it sticks." He and others are troubled that the random roadside checkpoints and the intermittent security screenings at subway and train stations could become permanent. Groups such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center are taking a lead in advocating limits to what they view as an expansive TSA. The center is suing the federal government on the decision to deploy body scanners and to ensure the right of the public to have its views heard.The consequences of going too far in either direction could be serious. We have to carefully balance security against privacy; otherwise we risk becoming a show-me-your-papers-please nation with troubling echoes of other closed societies. "Governments good and bad have always cited national security, the prevention of terrorism, and the defense of freedom as their excuses for surveillance and control of people's movements," says Edward Hasbrouck, a privacy advocate who is one of the leading voices against TSA overreach. "But we can't defend freedom by adopting measures that prevent us from exercising the rights we profess to believe in."
Has the TSA prevented one or more terrorist attacks? That's unanswerable. But I think the price has been high. And I fear that the cost could rise, just to make us feel safe when we travel. We need to order up just enough security as is necessary--and no more.
Previous attempts to define and limit the TSA have failed, despite a blistering 2012 congressional report that recommended downsizing and privatizing parts of the TSA, and several bills designed to contain the agency's reach. TSA reform didn't register as an election-year concern, and neither candidate took a meaningful stance on the issue. Obviously, no political party wants to be the first to reexamine the security apparatus created more than a decade ago, and risk the political repercussions if there's another 9/11-style attack.
Fellow travelers, let's call for one sensible step: Revise the TSA's mission statement to limit its activity to air transportation. After all, we have local and state police, highway patrols, Customs and Border Protection, and, if necessary, the National Guard to protect roads, bridges, railways, and the occasional Super Bowl game. Adding a single word--"air"--to its mission would end its controversial VIPR program. One word would put the TSA's enormous budget into perspective, allowing lawmakers to ask--and answer--the question: How much do we want to spend on aviation security? I'm willing to bet it would be significantly less than the $7.4 billion Americans currently pay for the TSA.
Related: Burgess Everett writes at Politico that Rand Paul is planning to refile legislation to scale back the TSA:
The Kentucky Republican said in an interview that he plans to refile legislation that would drastically scale back the Transportation Security Administration's reach by privatizing security screening operations at airports and creating a series of passenger protections....One bill would have ended the TSA screening operation and required airports to select companies from the private sector to do screening -- a growing practice already used at a handful of airports, though one dealt a blow after Sacramento's airport recently reversed its steps toward privatization. The other bill would have allowed some people to opt out of pat-downs, required distribution of a list of fliers' rights and vastly expanded an expedited screening program for frequent fliers, a movement also embraced by new House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas).
Let's explore this again: We're really going to stop a terrorist plot by having unskilled workers grope their genitals minutes before they board a plane? It is extremely dangerous to give up our constitutional rights -- and it is even more tragic that we are doing so in exchange for the security equivalent of a puppet show.
Mali: Islam Didn't Destroy All The Manuscripts
Lydia Polgreen writes at The New York Times:
TIMBUKTU, Mali -- When the moment of danger came, Ali Imam Ben Essayouti knew just what to do. The delicate, unbound parchment manuscripts in the 14th-century mosque he leads had already survived hundreds of years in the storied city of Timbuktu. He was not about to allow its latest invaders, Tuareg nationalist rebels and Islamic extremists from across the region, to destroy them now.So he gingerly bundled the 8,000 volumes in sackcloth, carefully stacked them in crates, then quietly moved them to a bunker in an undisclosed location.
"These manuscripts, they are not just for us in Timbuktu," Mr. Essayouti said. "They belong to all of humanity. It is our duty to save them."
The residents of Timbuktu suffered grievously under Islamic militant rule. Almost all of life's pleasures, even the seemingly innocent ones like listening to music and dancing, were forbidden. With the arrival of French and Malian troops here on Jan. 28, life is slowly returning to normal.
Anestos Canelides, at Gates of Vienna, explains why Muslims destroy others' art, places of worship, and culture in a post about the Muslim devastation of India:
It is still clear that the main objective of radical Muslims in destroying Hindu temples was laid out by the examples of their Prophet Muhammad. For pious Muslim these temples are not only full of idols or false gods, but are an affront to the Unity of God -- after all, there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.Islam is not only a religion but it is a political system which does not tolerate rule by the infidel kuffar, let alone Hindu idolaters. Until the day comes when Islam is reformed, as Christianity has been, there will be no peace between radical Muslims and the non-Muslim population of India. The bombing of Hindu temples and other property will likely continue even if Kashmir gains independence from India.
Radical Islam only respects strength and courage. This fact is supported by Spero Vyronis in Medieval Historiography. In his book he states that during the First Crusade the only virtue that Arabs respected the Franks (French) for was their courage. This can be no less true for the government of India and, yes, the USA as well.
If we do not learn from history then we will never be able to deal with the Islamic threat. Respect will only come from the Muslim world by carrying a bigger stick.
Batty Taste
This is the place...
I Am Now Officially Ruined For Coffeeshop Coffee -- And I Didn't Buy A $16,000 Espresso Machine With A Footman To Assist
Gregg bought me both the $25.95 AeroPress
And the most important detail: I now make about the best cup of coffee I have ever tasted (even in fine restaurants in Paris, New York, and LA) -- and with speed and ease.
The Aeropress looks like a junior high science project, and I love that about it, too. 
The AeroPress getting started directions are not the greatest. (I couldn't figure out how to get the two tubes apart -- you unscrew counterclockwise, which wasn't in directions). But after you get the two tubes apart, you just unscrew the cap on the bottom of one of the cylinders (the black cap with the little holes), slip a little paper filter in there (they come with), and make your coffee as directed.
I put in two scoops of coffee (fine-ground), put water up to three mark on the cylinder, and then come out with a double espresso. I fill the 3/4 of the rest (of my big 16-oz cup) with water, and it's still very strong coffee (and I like mine break-a-tooth black). I froth a little over a quarter cup of milk and then pour it into the top. (Detailed directions on how to use the AeroPress at the Amazon link.)
Oh, and actually, still coming out around $100, I have the $30 Aroma
REPLAY: Advice Goddess Radio: 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET -- Dr. Carol Tavris, How To Admit Mistakes Instead Of Continuing To Make Them
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research.
Word has it there's some big sporting event on tonight, so I'm replaying one of my "best of" shows.
My guest is social psychologist Dr. Carol Tavris, talking about common ways we make errors in reasoning and judgment that mess up our lives, and how to avoid them.
Her terrific book, co-authored with Dr. Elliot Aronson, is one of my favorites: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
Listen here at 7pm Pacific and 7pm Eastern at this link or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/02/04/dr-carol-tavris-how-to-admit-mistakes-instead-of-contin
Don't miss last week's show with Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky--Happiness Myths And The Science For Being Happier.
Dr. Lyubomirsky, one of the most rigorous researchers whose work I follow, has a terrific new book out, The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does
It turns out that we are very poor predictors of what makes us happy or unhappy, and it doesn't help that we've been stuck with a lot of cultural myths about what things and situations should and shouldn't. On this show, which will focus mainly on relationships, Lyubomirsky lays out the realities shown in the research and also give us simple, practical ways to be happier -- and practical thinking on how to assess when that's just not possible and it's time to get out.
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/01/28/dr-sonja-lyubomirsky-happiness-mythssci-for-being-happier
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 or Stitcher.
Shag Or Persian?
Hilarious tweet from @stephenfry (on "fresh and disturbing revelations" about Lance Armstrong).
Ethically Disabled Drivers
One of every 10 drivers in California has a disabled placard. David Goldstein of CBS2 Los Angeles did an investigative report on this, talking to people he found working out vigorously on treadmills and other workout machines at a chichi LA gym -- after getting out of their cars they hung the disabled tags on.
From the news story with the video:
To qualify for placards, drivers must have a medical professional certify they have substantial impaired mobility, lung or cardiovascular disease or severe vision problems, according to the DMV.A hidden camera caught one woman place her placard in the rear view mirror of her Range Rover before taking a spin class - several days in a row.
According to DMV records, the woman has been disabled for over a decade.
"You've had the placard since 1999. Do you have a disability or are you just using it to park for free?" Goldstein asked.
"I obviously have a disability," the woman said.
When asked to explain her disability, the woman responded, "There's laws regarding privacy matters."
An internationally-renowned fitness expert, Karen Voight, was also spotted using a disabled placard. She teaches a stretching class at the health club.
"You have a disability?" Goldstein asked.
"Well, my knee is unable to do a lot of things, and I was told by the doctor to be off of it as often as I can," Voight responded.
"Even though you're teaching a class here twice a week?" Goldstein said.
"But I don't. What I teach is a rehab class," she said.
The health club simply labels the class as "stretching.
Young kids were also seen weight-lifting and playing basketball -- their car uses a placard linked to a 77-year-old man.
What this means for truly disabled people -- the sort who roll out of wheelchair vans instead of skipping out of cute convertibles -- is that they sometimes can't find a space because of all the bullshit disabled taking them.
Or, as the woman in the wheelchair in the piece points out, a person like her with real disability may be put through danger and hardship by needing to park far away.
It's reprehensible and I hope the people who have these tags because they got the right doctor to wink-wink that they needed them know deep down what scummy people they are and hate themselves for it.
Oh, and as the report points out, disabled status, once granted, doesn't expire. The placards are automatically renewed, year after year after year.
And finally, as a commenter -- "Mr Law Abider" -- noted at the CBS site:
The real question is why people with the placards need to park at meters for free? What part of their disability requires free parking? What, they can't reach up to put money in the meter? I thought the idea behind the placards was to give people with a disability a parking spot closer to a building....and those with vans, enough room to get a wheel chair in and out. But why free parking? Do away with that and I think a majority of your problems will go away.
Which brings us back to fitness trainer Karen Voigt (Ohhhh, her knees. She can teach stretching, but can't wallllk...oh, it's so hard). The truth is, there's a garage where just about every spot is close to the elevator at that chi-chi gym, Sports Club LA.
I do not work out at a gym or that gym, but David Rensin, my friend and literary conscience, takes me to lunch there about once every six months.
The thing is, you have to PAY to park at that gym's garage, and people with handicapped placards get to park free at meters.
I emailed Karen Voight: karen@karenvoight.com:
Subj: being cheap is not a true disability - saving parking $ at Sports Club LA's garageMy friend takes me to Sports Club LA for lunch every six months.
The truth is, no space in that garage is far from the elevator.
In fact, it looks like you walked further than you would have if you'd parked at ANY space in the garage to get to your meter.
Hmmm...could it be that you get to park at meters for free, and it costs MONEY to park in that garage?
Give This Dog A New Tweet
Loved this:
@HideousTerrier
I'm not licking you because I love you. I am licking you to decide whether you taste good enough to feed upon after you die in bed.
The War On Drugs Is Also A War On Research On Drugs
An excerpt from an LA Times editorial:
For a muscular agency that combats vicious drug criminals, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration acts like a terrified and obstinate toddler when it comes to basic science. For years, the DEA and the National Institute for Drug Abuse have made it all but impossible to develop a robust body of research on the medical uses of marijuana.A pro-marijuana group lost its legal battle this week when a federal appellate court ruled that marijuana would remain a Schedule I drug, defined as having no accepted medical value and a high potential for abuse. The court deferred to the judgment of federal authorities, quoting the DEA's statement that "the effectiveness of a drug must be established in well-controlled, well-designed, well-conducted and well-documented scientific studies.... To date, such studies have not been performed."
But guess who bears responsibility for this level of ignorance? The DEA itself, which through its ultra-tight restrictions on marijuana has made it nearly impossible for researchers to obtain the drug for study, and the National Institute for Drug Abuse, which controls the availability of the tiny quantity of research-grade marijuana that is federally approved for production.
The few, smaller studies conducted so far suggest marijuana has promise as a medicine, but they're far from conclusive. The National Cancer Institute and the Institute of Medicine support further research.
Nitwit Mom Thinks Parenting Is About Making "A Political Stance"
Stephanie Kaloi writes at The Good Men Project about the girly way she's been dressing her 4-year-old son:
I have spent most of my son's nearly four years on the planet scouring thrift stores and online shops for fun, colorful, and bright clothing. It's been easy to meander back and forth between boy's and girl's departments as, for the most part, a lot of the clothes could work on a boy or girl.Granted, my son has worn his fair share of puff sleeves and rainbows, but MOST of his clothing has been boy-leaning, with a dash of glitter on a sleeve.
...My desire to dress my son in bright colors that could work for a boy or girl is half a political stance and half a frustration with how despondently boring I find most boy's clothing.
Truly horrifying is the pink sweatshirt with big hearts all over it (in a photo at the link) that she thought would be a great political experiment for her son to wear.
The kid is now apparently trying to wear little boy clothes:
Right now, my kid is wearing an Angry Birds pajama shirt and owl-covered tights under plaid pants, and that outfit is awesome. It's colorful and fun, but it's also a little more boy-friendly than clothing he's donned in the past.I suppose this is all part of realizing my kid is getting older, but there's a real part of me that mourns the loss of freedom in clothing, however temporary it may be.
Whose "freedom" would that be?
Notice the absence of any mention of Daddy?
Shockingly, Boxed Pizza Is Not Kale
What kind of dim bulb buys boxed frozen pizzas thinking they're health food?
Ken Stone writes at La Mesa Patch about a mom's $5 million lawsuit targeting "toxic" frozen pizzas sold locally:
Katie Simpson bought frozen pizzas about five times in the past year, including a California Pizza Kitchen Personal Pizza Barbeque Chicken and the same maker's Crispy Thin Crust Pizza Signature Pepperoni.But when she learned they contained trans fat--an ingredient linked to heart disease, diabetes and cancer--she felt as if she were sold poison.
That's the argument being made in a $5 million federal class-action lawsuit that claims Nestle--makers of DiGiorno, Stouffer's and California Pizza Kitchen frozen pizzas --is "placing profits over public health" by failing to remove trans fat.
When she LEARNED they contained trans fat? I mean, was this a closely guarded secret? Or, wait...
The article reads:
The suit targets partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, or PHVO, which it says is the main source of trans fat in the American diet and "used in dangerous quantities in the Nestle Trans Fat Pizzas."
"Partially hydrogenated vegetable oil" is a thing you see on the ingredients lists of products.
Might this have been -- dare I say it? -- on the INGREDIENTS LIST printed on the package?
My mom decided that all sorts of things other people ate were unhealthy. So, she did this amazing thing -- read the ingredients list on products and bought a lot of the foods we ate at the health food store.
Yes, personal responsibility. That's what people use to have before they just closed their eyes, bought a product and then sued the fuck out of the company that produced it.
Oh, and hilariously, Katie Simpson apparently has no problem feeding her kids the flour that causes their blood sugar to rise and that cardiologist William Davis, in Wheat Belly, shows leads to numerous health detriments.
Or, wait -- will she next be suing the "amber waves of grain"?
RELATED: The health benefits of lard, by Dr. Mary Dan Eades.
Fundroid: Cool Projection On A Building In Berlin
I love cute robots. I wish I had one.
I Ride With Rude People: What Are The Worst Things People Do On Public Transportation?
I'm writing that section of my next book now and need your help. Post your thoughts in the comments below -- and any solutions you've come up with.
Here's one from my notes:
It's public transportation, not a public restroom.
Do not pick your teeth, pick your nose, clip your fingernails -- or worse -- your toenails.
The $10K Undergrad Degree
Arthur C. Brooks, now prez of the American Enterprise Institute, did this in 1994 (and maybe it's somewhat more or quite a bit more now), but he had to be creative about getting an affordable education -- so he was. As would I have been if my parents weren't paying my then-reasonable in-state tuition for three years at the University of Michigan, where they'd both gone.
I almost quit school, but realized people have a prejudice against people who don't graduate, so I finished at NYU -- did one year there -- and wrote my way to a scholarship to pay for some of it, and worked nights and weekends to pay my living expenses in New York.
Had my parents not paid, I might have done what I advise kids who come from poor families to do (when I talk at a school) -- go to a good community college like Santa Monica college for two years, gotten great grades (which I always have, or at least good grades, because I'm a nerd) and then transferred to a better, four-year school.
Brooks writes in The New York Times of his more radical and more creative solution for keeping college costs down:
Fortunately, there was a solution -- an institution called Thomas Edison State College in Trenton, N.J. This is a virtual college with no residence requirements. It banks credits acquired through inexpensive correspondence courses from any accredited college or university in America.I took classes by mail from the University of Washington, the University of Wyoming, and other schools with the lowest-priced correspondence courses I could find. My degree required the same number of credits and type of classes that any student at a traditional university would take. I took the same exams (proctored at local libraries and graded by graduate students) as in-person students. But I never met a teacher, never sat in a classroom, and to this day have never laid eyes on my beloved alma mater.
And the whole degree, including the third-hand books and a sticker for the car, cost me about $10,000 in today's dollars.
Now living back in the United States, I followed the 10K-B.A. with a 5K-M.A. at a local university while working full time, and then endured the standard penury of being a full-time doctoral fellow in a residential Ph.D. program. The final tally for a guy in his 30s supporting a family: three degrees, zero debt.
Did I earn a worthless degree? Hardly. My undergraduate years may have been bereft of frissons, but I wound up with a career as a tenured professor at Syracuse University, a traditional university. I am now the president of a Washington research organization.
Not surprisingly, my college experience has occasionally been the target of ridicule. It is true that I am no Harvard Man. But I can say with full confidence that my 10K-B.A. is what made higher education possible for me, and it changed the course of my life. More people should have this opportunity, in a society that is suffering from falling economic and social mobility.
The 10K-B.A. is exactly the kind of innovation we would expect in an industry that is showing every indication of a bubble that is about to burst, as Thomas K. Lindsay of the Texas Public Policy Foundation shows in a new report titled, "Anatomy of a Revolution? The Rise of the $10,000 Bachelor's Degree." When tuition skyrockets and returns on education stagnate, we can expect a flight to value, especially by people who can least afford to ride the bubble, and who have no choice but to make a cost-effective college investment.
In the end, however, the case for the 10K-B.A. is primarily moral, not financial. The entrepreneurs who see a way for millions to go to college affordably are the ones who understand the American dream. That dream is the opportunity to build a life through earned success. That starts with education.
Of course, what makes college much more expensive now is the college loan craziness. The more government is willing to shell out in wild loans, the more wildly colleges jack up their prices -- and the salaries of their administrators. Who isn't getting the bucks? A good many of the teachers.
Law And Order, Your Tax Dollars, And Your Right To Own, Smoke, And Sell Plants
A quote from an article by Ashley Portero at IBTimes on how drug offenses are filling up Federal prisons -- more than violent crimes:
Statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation reveal more people were arrested for marijuana possession than all violent crimes combined in 2011.
More:
Since 1998, individuals arrested for drug crimes have constituted the largest portion of federal prison admissions, followed closely by those arrested for immigration and weapons-related offenses. Meanwhile, the CRS reports there has been a significant drop off in the number of inmates entering prison for violent or property-related crimes, which only made up about 4 percent and 11 percent of prison admissions in 2010.A huge portion of those drug offenders are arrested for marijuana offenses, even though the substance - now legal in 18 states for medicinal use- has become increasingly mainstream.
So, instead of your tax dollars going to fund stopping muggers, murderers, rapists, they're prosecuting and jailing potheads.
Oh, and by the way, also from the piece:
Federal prisoners do not have the ability to receive parole, when correctional authorities release low-risk inmates into community supervision for the remainder of their sentences.Inmates sentenced after November 1, 1987 are no longer eligible for parole, meaning every offender sentenced since then must serve the entirety of his or her sentence. As a result, there have not been enough prisoners released to make way for new inmates as federal sentencing rates ballooned in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Couple Could Face 60 Days In Jail For Saving Baby Deer
They should have just let it die, apparently. The Indiana Department of Natural Resources went after them -- wanting to euthanize the deer, saying she might be dangerous. From ABC News:
Jeff and Jennifer Counceller ... rescued an injured fawn and nursed it back to health at their Connersville, Ind., home. The couple now faces the possibility of jail time and fines after state officials charged them with a misdemeanor for harboring the animal.Jeff Counceller, a police officer in Connersville, and his wife were charged with unlawful possession of a deer, a misdemeanor that punished to its fullest extent could put the Councellers in jail for up to 60 days and cost them up to $2,000 in fines.
The couple rescued the deer more than two years ago after finding it on their neighbor's porch. The Councellers said the deer had sustained injuries, and they wanted to nurse it back to health.
"I could feel all of the open wounds all along her back side and she wouldn't stand up," Jennifer Counceller told ABC News.
They brought the deer home and named her Little Orphan Dani.
...On the day Dani was to be put down, the Councellers said she inexplicably escaped from their backyard. Even though Dani disappeared back into the wild, the Councellers' legal problems didn't go with the fawn.
The Indiana Department of Natural Resources said it couldn't comment on pending litigation but that it did discourage people from taking in injured wildlife. This case could go to court next month, and if charges aren't dropped, it will be left for a jury to decide whether the Councellers broke the law.
Big government scores again!
Crass Stains
And other off-topic links.
