Man With Tourette Syndrome Kept Off Flight After Saying "Bomb" (A Lot)
ABC News' David Kerley, Mosheh Gains and Ben Krolowitz report that a man with Tourette syndrome wasn't allowed to board his flight because a Jet Blue pilot heard him say the word "bomb" -- about 100 times.
Right -- like a terrorist is going to say one of the words known to get you yanked out of your travel path. And not just once -- hundreds of times.
No, we don't use actual sense in assessing a situation like this. We don't talk to the person and find out why he might be doing this. As the ABC story reported:
Those with Tourette syndrome often can't control verbal tics. Doyle, who constantly watched coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings, said he arrived at the airport worried about what he was going to say.
More from the piece:
After Doyle was not allowed on the flight, his friend stayed with him, missing their 18th century battle reenactment in Puerto Rico, which they had planned for two years....JetBlue said, "After further investigation, the situation was deemed innocuous" and offered Doyle a round trip ticket, but there is no guarantee he will be able to board another flight.
While the situation was frustrating for Petteway and Doyle, it shows a country still at a heightened state of alert two weeks after the twin bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
No, it shows a country at a heightened state of irrational and stupid.
James Rhodes: "Find What You Love And Let It Kill You"
My writing ethos is basically how James Rhodes goes about music -- according to the quote above from Bukowski -- and I'm not the least bit regretful or sorry for that.
In addition to my column and radio show, each of which I approach in a pretty intense way, my book is due June 30. I slave to get the science right, and clear, and make it something worthwhile, and what that takes is, for the last few months, not leaving the house, barely seeing my friends, and the support of my boyfriend, who is very sweet and kind to me and brings me mail and groceries.
As the subhead to Rhodes' piece in the Guardian goes, "My life as a concert pianist can be frustrating, lonely, demoralising and exhausting. But is it worth it? Yes, without a shadow of a doubt."
What people do have to do is make decisions about their lives -- whether to live a more "balanced" life; whether they want kids and a job and more job security than the "what you love" jobs tend to provide.
You really just have to choose instead of just going along.
The Latest In School Hysteria: Bulletproof Whiteboards
Here's some nitwittery -- a school is buying bulletproof whiteboards as a defense against gun attacks. Brian Shane writes via USA Today:
In direct response to the deadly school shooting in Newtown, Conn., a Maryland armor manufacturer has developed a handheld white board for classrooms that can stop a bullet from a handgun fired at point-blank range."It's something I don't think any American can tolerate anymore, and we're in a position to do something about it," said George Tunis, CEO and chairman of Pocomoke City-based Hardwire. "I was like -- all right, let's take everything we got, see what we can throw at this problem, figure out an innovative solution."
The 18-by-20-inch, 3.75-pound white boards are meant to slip unobtrusively into the classroom as a teaching tool while being large enough to cover the head and torso. Each has three rubberized handles on the back, handy for a teacher to carry. In an emergency, the user can slip a forearm inside the handles, and it becomes a shield.
Tunis called the white boards a last line of defense for teachers and students against attackers with handguns, one meant to buy them time -- or to avert tragedy -- before police arrive. Hardwire also offers a 10-by-13-inch ballistic clipboard with a white board surface.
Jonathan Turley writes:
The boards are $109 a pop as opposed to normal white boards that cost as little as $23.
In a gun battle, do you want a handgun at your disposal or a whiteboard in your hand?
The odds of a school shooting taking place, per PsychLawJournal:
The chances of any particular K-12 school in the United States experiencing a shooting incident in any given year is approximately 1 in 53,925.Breaking the numbers down a little further reveals the following statistics:
The chances of a school shooting taking place in a US high school in any given year: 1 in 21,000.
The chances of a school shooting taking place in a US elementary or middle school in any given year: 1 in 141,463. (data for the number of elementary and middle schools is not separated by agencies keeping track of such numbers)
Please note, this is not a scientific study. I relied on publicly available numbers and a probability statistic calculation that is simple enough to be taught to middle school students. It is obviously much more complicated than I have presented it to be--there are a number of factors that would need to be examined prior to claiming that 1 in 53,925 is wholly accurate. And, not every shooting incident is as horrendous as the one in Newtown, Connecticut. In some shootings, only the shooter died. In other incidents, no one was killed. But, in each incident, at least one gun was fired in a school.
Also keep in mind, your chances of dying in a car crash in 2013 is approximately 1 in 7775, which is about the same as your chances of dying due to any type of gun violence in the next year.
Clearly, we need whiteboards in cars!
Teeth Whitening Without A License
Since I drink coffee like the coffee bean is going extinct, I whiten my teeth whenever I have a few uncaffeinated minutes. This has not caused me to go into a coma or had other horrible side effects. I simply put some whitening stuff into some plastic models of my teeth and put them on for 20 minutes or however long I have.
Well, it turns out that the teeth whitening biz is the latest to get shut down by restrictions meant to help dentists keep the business all their own and the prices high. The Institute for Justice filed a 2011 lawsuit over this. An excerpt from their site:
Dentists routinely charge four times more than non-dentists for teeth-whitening services similar to those Lisa offered. Rather than try to compete by lowering prices or improving their services, the dental cartel is using government power to put their competition out of business.The U.S. Constitution protects the right to earn an honest living free from unreasonable regulations designed solely to benefit special interests. That's why on November 16, 2011, the Institute for Justice teamed up with Lisa and teeth-whitening entrepreneurs Steve Barraco and Tasos Kariofyllis, owners of Smile Bright, to file a federal constitutional lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut to vindicate their right to earn an honest living.
With Connecticut's unemployment rate at nearly nine percent, this case raises a constitutional question of vital importance: May the government prohibit entrepreneurs from selling safe, over-the-counter products that people use at home every day just to protect a group of politically connected insiders from honest competition?
In the WSJ, IJ's Angela C. Erickson and Paul Sherman write that dozens of states have now passed laws or applied existing ones to shut entrepreneurs out of the teeth whitening biz -- an activity plenty of consumers engage in themselves, at home:
Of the 97 complaints about non-dentist teeth whitening provided to the institute from 17 state agencies, only four came from consumers. All four alleged reversible side effects, like gum inflammation and tooth sensitivity. Academic dental research shows that such side effects are common to all forms of teeth whitening, wherever it is done.The remaining 93 complaints came from dentists, hygienists, dental boards, associations and anonymous individuals. They didn't allege harm to consumers as a result of commercial on-site whitening. The complaint was that entrepreneurs offering teeth-whitening services are practicing dentistry without a license.
As a result of these unlicensed-practice complaints and pressure from licensed dentists and associations, at least 30 states have taken action against non-dentist teeth-whitening businesses. Some of the states have passed new laws or regulations to ban them from the trade. Others have simply reinterpreted existing laws against the unlicensed practice of dentistry.
These restrictions hurt business owners and consumers. For Keith Westphal, who runs a teeth-whitening location in North Carolina, it means that he is prohibited from expanding his business into Alabama, which outlaws non-dentist teeth whitening. That means fewer job opportunities for Alabamans and higher prices for consumers. The only winners are licensed dentists, some of whom charge six times as much as entrepreneurs like Mr. Westphal for their teeth-whitening services.
What's the solution? First, state dental boards--whose business ought to be protecting public health, not stifling healthy competition--should resist calls by the dental industry to expand the scope of licensed dentistry to include teeth whitening. State boards should halt ad hoc regulatory efforts to shut down teeth-whitening businesses.
The "Affordable Care Act" Will Be Anything But Affordable For Many
Daniel Kessler writes in the WSJ that it appears that 30 to 40 million Americans will be damaged in some way by the "Affordable" Care Act -- more than one in 10 Americans:
According to consultants from Oliver Wyman (who wrote on the issue in the January issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries), around six million of the 19 million people with individual health policies are going to have to pay more--and this even after accounting for the government subsidies offered under the law. For example, single adults age 21-29 earning 300% to 400% of the federal poverty level will be hit with an increase of 46% even after premium assistance from tax credits.Determining the number of individuals who will be harmed by changes to the small-group insurance market is harder. According to the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services, around 30 million Americans work in firms with fewer than 50 employees, and so are potentially affected by the small-group "reforms" imposed by ObamaCare.
Around nine million of these people, plus six million family members, are covered by employers who do not self-insure. The premium increases for this group will be less on average than those for people in the individual market but will still be substantial. According to analyses conducted by the insurer WellPoint for 11 states, small-group premiums are expected to increase by 13%-23% on average.
This average masks big differences. While some firms (primarily those that employ older or sicker workers) will see premium decreases due to community rating, firms with younger, healthier workers will see very large increases: 89% in Missouri, 91% in Indiana and 101% in Nevada.
Linkin, Nebraska
The capital of today's bad taste-o-rama.
Advice Goddess Radio, Tonite, 6-7pm PT, 9-10 ET -- Carlin Flora on Friendfluence
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio -- "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research.
Tonight's show is on why friendships matter more now than ever, the ways friends can make us better people, and how to have more satisfying friendships and ditch the dark ones.
My guest is Carlin Flora, the fantastic editor I worked with at Psychology Today, and her book is Friendfluence: The Surprising Ways Friends Make Us Who We Are
She's one of the few non-scientists to appear on my show, but her book is research-driven and I found her to be very solid on science, and this should be a compelling show.
Listen at 6 pm Pacific and 9 pm Eastern at this link or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/04/30/carlin-flora-friendfluence
And don't miss last week's show with psychologist Jeremy Dean on how to control your habits instead of letting them control you. Dean is founder of the popular website PsyBlog and is the author of Making Habits, Breaking Habits: Why We Do Things, Why We Don't, and How to Make Any Change Stick
We are convinced that we are the boss of us -- that we do the things we do because they make sense, because we've got goals, because we make smart choices. Often, that's far from the case. But, by understanding how habits are formed, why we develop them, and what our biases are, we can use habit-forming to our benefit and have some chance of stopping the habits holding us back.
Listen online or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/04/22/jeremy-dean-form-good-habits-ditch-bad-make-change-stick
Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, with podcasts available afterward, at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon, or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
Relationship As Sex Buffet?
Even Nena O'Neill, the late co-author of the 1970s book, Open Marriage
The problem, as O'Neill wrote in The Marriage Premise
"Sexual fidelity is not just a vow in marriage or a moral or religious belief, but a need associated with our deepest emotions and our quest for emotional security."
For good advice for those who think an open relationship might be for them, listen to my radio show with Dossie Easton and read her excellent book, The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures
Another good book is Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships
"Tear Down This Icon"
Jennifer Rubin writes in the WaPo that the GOP has to get over Ronald Reagan:
The old guard has become convinced that Reagan's solutions to the problems of his time were the essence of conservatism -- not simply conservative ideas appropriate for that era.Today's Republican Party, however, faces legions of voters and candidates who came of age politically after Reagan's eight years in office. An entire generation recalls him vaguely as a genial, optimistic president who stood up for America in the Cold War.
The Republican Party can remain a Ronald Reagan historical society, or it can try to endure as a force in national politics. But it can't do both. The choice matters greatly, for there is no guarantee that the GOP will retain its ability to win national elections or that conservatism has a future as a national governing philosophy.
The Republican Party may survive, but only if its politicians, activists, donors and intellectuals rethink modern conservatism and find new issues to defend and new arguments with which to defend them. The public face of the GOP can no longer be aging, ill-tempered Reaganites such as John McCain and Jim DeMint but must give way to a diverse, media-savvy generation that understands the America we actually live in. Only then can the essence of conservatism -- the promotion of personal liberty -- survive, and the GOP along with it.
Creepy, Stupid, And Awful: The Government Wants Lenders To Guess The Race Of Car Loan Applicants
I must have slacked off in reading the Declaration of Independence -- the part where it talks about the right to "life, liberty, and a brand new car."
According to a WSJ piece, car and truck loans were not among the contributors to the 2008 financial crisis and pose no "systemic" risk to the financial system. Yet, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created by the Dodd-Frank Act to correct and prevent the causes of the 2008 crisis, wants to change the way car loans are made.
John Campbell writes at the WSJ that the agency wants financial institutions to guess the race, ethnicity and gender (based on an applicant's name and address) of a person applying for a car loan:
Put bluntly, they want lenders to profile you.It sounds bizarre. But during a conference call on March 21 to congressional offices explaining how auto lenders were supposed to comply with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (as outlined in CFPB's Bulletin 2013-02), agency staff advised us that they would recommend that financial institutions use "proxies to give probabilities of the race, ethnicity and gender of borrowers" to guess if an applicant falls into a protected class, or not, for the purpose of setting interest rates. In other words, they would like lenders to use stereotypes associated with your name and location in order to monitor compliance with equal-opportunity requirements.
Does that mean a person named Jefferson who lives in the Bronx is to be presumed an African-American, but not a Jefferson in Wichita? Is Taylor Rosenstein living in Miami a woman or a man? He or she must certainly be Jewish, right?
What I just wrote is absurd and looks offensive. But it is exactly what the CFPB's advice would effectively require.
Under this scheme, banks and finance companies would employ highly questionable methods to presume the race and gender of each applicant and assess whether the interest rates they offer are discriminatory.
This guidance is not just stupid, it is incredibly offensive and contrary to standards of fairness and equality upon which our society is based. One can only imagine the legal and other costs it would entail if lenders tried to put it into practice.
The auto industry is one of the economy's bright spots right now. There is no need to knock it off track by diverting resources toward fixing a problem that doesn't exist, resources that might otherwise be used to make credit more available for consumers who want to buy a car. The percentage of consumer complaints on car loans was and continues to be very low, especially when compared with home loans.
Tweetback, Mommy Jihadist
A tweet:
@joshtpm
Seeming more likely that Tamerlan was radicalized in part by him and his mother just being awful people http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/tsarnaev-mother-turned-toward-radicalism.php ... via @TPM
My response:
@amyalkon
@joshtpm @TPM Interestingly, when Quakers go bad, they don't seem to blow a bunch of other people up.
People twist themselves into little knots trying to avoid admitting that this might be related to, you know, Islam, and all those commands to slaughter the infidel, which a rather sizable number of Muslims seem to take seriously.
UPDATE: (In response to Crid, below)
More here:
Aside from pursuing mass murder plots against innocent populations in every corner of the planet, Islamic terrorists have one other thing in common:They credit their motivation and success to religion.
Islam isn't hijacked by extremists - it is what sustains them. This distinguishes Islamic terrorism from mere criminal activity, and it is part of what makes Islam so very, very different from other religions.
Many people would prefer to bury their heads in the sand or look for ways to recast Islamic terror to fit their own political agenda, but the fact is that violent Muslims are quite explicit about the religious certainty that compels and justifies their actions.
The teachings and early history of Islam that explain the violence are discussed elsewhere on this site. Here we just want to show that, as far as Islamic terrorists are concerned, their acts are done specifically in the name of Allah and for the cause of Islam and Islamic rule... across the globe.
"Turn the other cheek" it's not.
Boston As An Excuse For Everything: The TSA Backpedal On The Small Knives They Were Going To Allow On Planes
Mary Forgione writes in the LA Times about the TSA's announcement that they'd delay allowing passengers to carry small knives on planes, of course failing to cover how ridiculous the ban is in the first place:
Rep. Janice Hahn (D-San Pedro) opposed the policy change and hadn't heard about Pistole's decision. "My only hope is that they are reconsidering this bad policy and, maybe in light of what we've experienced last week with the Boston bombings, they realize we're still under threat, bad people still want to hurt and kill Americans, and this is really not the time to go backward in safety policy," Hahn said.
Janice Hahn once again confirms what so many of us already know -- that she has all the intellect of a hairbrush.
The problem with knives was that, prior to 9/11, we thought hijackers wanted a bag of money and a trip to Bolivia. We didn't realize that hijackers would go on suicide missions. We recognize that now and cockpit doors have been reinforced.
Also, many, many items can be turned into weapons. I have a metal comb I could file to a point with a nail file in probably a couple of minutes in the restroom.
The real danger is giving up our civil liberties in the name of "security" -- the security puppet show which the TSA is providing. A pity our billions in security dollars are spent to such a great extent at airports, treating every single American who takes a plane as a plausible suspect ("Show me your diaper, Granny!") while we let possible terrorists we have tips on from Russia back into the country so we can ignore them until they blow Americans' legs off at the Boston Marathon.
Of course, credulous members of the media don't help matters.
Linkateria
Try the jello. It won't kill you. Okay, it might kill you, but it could be a fun ride.
"Tomorrow, Tomorrow..." (My Regular Sunday Radio Show Will Tape On Monday, This Week Only)
This show will be about a topic of increasing importance -- friendships and the influence of friends -- vis a vis the way we live now, often far from families and often moving frequently.
I'll post more about it tomorrow, but the time is Monday, 6-7 p.m., Pacific and 9-10 p.m., Eastern. Here's the link to the live show (live at 6 p.m. Pacific and available in podcast after 7 p.m., Pacific).
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/04/30/carlin-flora-friendfluence
Welcome To Hysteriaville: Fifth-Grader Suspended For Bringing Swiss Army Knife To Overnight Nature Camp
At The Daily Caller, Eric Owens writes:
A fifth-grader in Cupertino, California was suspended and threatened with expulsion for bringing a small Swiss Army knife on a school-sponsored, science-oriented camping trip.In early April, Braden Bandermann's class set off on Garden Gate Elementary School's annual, week-long pilgrimage for fifth-graders to the Marin Headlands, just north of San Francisco.
Before leaving, Braden did what any Silicon Valley 10-year-old faced with the perils of nature might do: He packed his trusty Swiss Army knife. As any camper knows, the multi-tool device is nothing if not versatile. Braden's particular model contains a can opener, tweezers, a toothpick, a nail file, a tiny pair of scissors and a small blade.
The little blade landed the boy in big trouble.
"They called me," explained Tony Bandermann, Braden's father. "They said, 'You have to come and get him. He has a weapon. He needs to be suspended or possibly expelled.'"
How many kajillions of kids have had Swiss Army knives and never hurt or murdered anyone with them? I like this kid for packing his. He's the kid I want in my tent, because he's got the tool.
Once again, it's "zero sense" policies taking over.
A confession: I have a hot-pink, deluxe Swiss Army knife I bought at Duty Free way back when. Amazingly, I have never used to to knife anyone or anything but a dry Italian sausage.
via KateC
Dr. Pretentious, I Presume?
I'm a little late to the dance on this one -- meant to blog it Friday for Saturday -- but what's with Jill Biden going by "Dr. Biden"?
Because I've heard her referred to that way, I always thought she was a doctor -- the kind with a stethoscope.
It turns out she's just a person with a doctorate (in "educational leadership").
Which is taking an honorific and making it an asshole-rific.
Now, when I write to a professor I don't already know, I write, "Dear Dr. SoAndSo," because that's polite.
But, to a person, every single professor I think I've ever written to writes back and signs their name -- "Tamar" or "Roy" or whatever -- freeing me up to write back accordingly.
What kind of insecure person needs to do this? What kind of insecure person married to the Vice-President of the United States? And how did nobody in her inner circle -- including her husband -- not try to tell her she was being an ass?
Linkalicious
Feed me.
Islamic Morality
Americans, and most Westerners assume, like I used to (before I started studying about Islam) that Islam is just another religion -- as I've said before, strawberry-flavored belief to Judaism's chocolate and Christianity's vanilla.
It is not.
Now, of course, most Muslims don't engage in the evil that Islam demands, but that doesn't change the fact that Islam demands all sorts of evil from its followers, and that there are quite a few who carry this evil out.
Gregory M. Davis explains here with a bit about how, under Islam, Mohammed is to be seen (and emulated without question) -- and what a hideous person Mohammed actually was:
Because Muhammad is himself the measuring stick of morality, his actions are not judged according to an independent moral standard but rather establish what the standard for Muslims properly is.
Volume 7, Book 62, Number 88; Narrated Ursa: The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death).Volume 8, Book 82, Number 795; Narrated Anas: The Prophet cut off the hands and feet of the men belonging to the tribe of Uraina and did not cauterise (their bleeding limbs) till they died.
Volume 2, Book 23, Number 413; Narrated Abdullah bin Umar: The Jews {of Medina} brought to the Prophet a man and a woman from amongst them who have committed (adultery) illegal sexual intercourse. He ordered both of them to be stoned (to death), near the place of offering the funeral prayers beside the mosque.
Volume 9, Book 84, Number 57; Narrated Ikrima: Some Zanadiqa (atheists) were brought to Ali {the fourth Caliph} and he burnt them. The news of this event, reached Ibn 'Abbas who said, "If I had been in his place, I would not have burnt them, as Allah's Apostle forbade it, saying, "Do not punish anybody with Allah's punishment (fire)." I would have killed them according to the statement of Allah's Apostle, "Whoever changes his Islamic religion, then kill him."
Volume 1, Book 2, Number 25; Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah's Apostle was asked, "What is the best deed?" He replied, "To believe in Allah and His Apostle (Muhammad). The questioner then asked, "What is the next (in goodness)?" He replied, "To participate in Jihad (religious fighting) in Allah's Cause."
In Islam, there is no "natural" sense of morality or justice that transcends the specific examples and injunctions outlined in the Quran and the Sunnah. Because Muhammad is considered Allah's final prophet and the Quran the eternal, unalterable words of Allah himself, there is also no evolving morality that permits the modification or integration of Islamic morality with that from other sources. The entire Islamic moral universe devolves solely from the life and teachings of Muhammad.
Here's a bit on jihad:
The author of the 'Majma' al-Anhar fi Sharh Multaqal-Abhar', in describing the rules of jihad according to the Hanafi School, said: 'Jihad linguistically means to exert one's utmost effort in word and action; in the Sharee'ah {Sharia -- Islamic law} it is the fighting of the unbelievers, and involves all possible efforts that are necessary to dismantle the power of the enemies of Islam including beating them, plundering their wealth, destroying their places of worship and smashing their idols. This means that jihad is to strive to the utmost to ensure the strength of Islam by such means as fighting those who fight you and the dhimmies {non-Muslims living under Islamic rule} (if they violate any of the terms of the treaty) and the apostates (who are the worst of unbelievers, for they disbelieved after they have affirmed their belief).It is fard (obligatory) on us to fight with the enemies. The Imam must send a military expedition to the Dar-al-Harb {House of War -- the non-Muslim world} every year at least once or twice, and the people must support him in this. If some of the people fulfill the obligation, the remainder are released from the obligation. If this fard kifayah (communal obligation) cannot be fulfilled by that group, then the responsibility lies with the closest adjacent group, and then the closest after that etc., and if the fard kifayah cannot be fulfilled except by all the people, it then becomes a fard 'ayn (individual obligation), like prayer on everyone of the people.
You've Got Jail!
Here's an excerpt from one of this week's many fine letters I get from the incarcerated -- and yes, it's worth making out the words in his scrawled text, starting with "Amy..." 
The man does have big...dreams! (Why let being in prison ruin your sense of entitlement?)
Government Will Use And Abuse You. (Do You Still Think Government Is There To Protect You?)
Here, from the WSJ, was the FAA plotting against citizens for the FAA's benefit vis a vis the sequester furloughs:
"The FAA management has stated in meetings that they need to make the furloughs as hard as possible for the public so that they understand how serious it is."Strategies include encouraging union workers to take the same furlough day to increase congestion. "I am disgusted with everything that I see since the sequester took place," another FAA employee wrote. "Whether in HQ or at the field level it is clear that our management has no intention of managing anything. The only effort that I see is geared towards generating fear and demonstrating failure."
From another WSJ editorial:
Remember when the sequester's spending cuts were going to incite mass uprisings for higher taxes? Instead, Senate Democrats and the White House blinked, not least because the FAA's transparent political strategy was to use incompetent government as a bludgeon on behalf of bigger government. The American public waiting in departure lounges figured this out, which is presumably why the political capitulation is so total.The FAA's all-hands furloughs managed to convert a less than 4% FAA budget cut into a 10% air-traffic control cut that would delay 40% of flights. The 6,700 flights that the FAA threatened to force off schedule every day is twice as many delays as the single worst travel day of 2012.
The Democratic surrender has non-elected liberals in full revolt, claiming Washington somehow bowed to wealthy business travellers--as if the 99% don't save for vacations and two million people aren't in the air every day. Their advice is that the White House should have let the delays mount until Congress also agreed to turn off the entire sequester for low-income housing grants, Meals on Wheels and everything else.
Let us hope for the sake of the poor that other bureaucracies are managing the modest sequester cuts more responsibly than the FAA. But the larger point is that from the beginning the FAA's delays were deliberate and avoidable. The FAA has ample legal discretion to protect core services but chose instead to maximize disruption. It is a sign of the FAA's institutional culture of failure that it can't even sabotage itself successfully.
via @WalterOlson
Jenny McCarthy And Andrew Wakefield Kill Another Baby
First fatal case of pertussis (whooping cough) in decades in Orange County, Florida. Story from WFTV:
Whooping cough, also called pertussis, and other diseases are making comebacks, because so many parents are deciding not to vaccinate their kids."It's really unfortunate. We're saddened to hear that an infant died of something like this," said Dain Weister with the Florida Department of Health in Orange County.
Officials said the family chose not to vaccinate their child. Some parents are choosing not to fully vaccinate their children because they worry there is a link between the vaccinations and autism.
"A lot of people may not know (that) even the person who did that study admitted that study was flawed," Weister said.
Health officials said that has caused vaccinations to drop and the number of cases of measles, pertussis and other preventable diseases to go up.
via @radleybalko
Carjack Victim's Harrowing Night With Boston Jihadis
From Boston.com, Eric Moskowitz writes about the carjacking of the 26-year-old entrepreneur from China:
Danny described 90 harrowing minutes, first with the younger brother following in a second car, then with both brothers in the Mercedes, where they openly discussed driving to New York, though Danny could not make out if they were planning another attack. Throughout the ordeal, he did as they asked while silently analyzing every threatened command, every overheard snatch of dialogue for clues about where and when they might kill him."Death is so close to me," Danny recalled thinking. His life had until that moment seemed ascendant, from a province in central China to graduate school at Northeastern University to a Kendall Square start-up.
"I don't want to die," he thought. "I have a lot of dreams that haven't come true yet."
After a zigzagging trek through Brighton, Watertown, and back to Cambridge, Danny would seize his chance for escape at the Shell Station on Memorial Drive, his break turning on two words -- "cash only" -- that had rarely seemed so welcome.
When the younger brother, Dzhokhar, was forced to go inside the Shell Food Mart to pay, older brother Tamerlan put his gun in the door pocket to fiddle with a navigation device -- letting his guard down briefly after a night on the run. Danny then did what he had been rehearsing in his head. In a flash, he unbuckled his seat belt, opened the door, stepped through, slammed it behind, and sprinted off at an angle that would be a hard shot for any marksman.
"F---!" he heard Tamerlan say, feeling the rush of a near-miss grab at his back, but the man did not follow. Danny reached the haven of a Mobil station across the street, seeking cover in the supply room, shouting for the clerk to call 911.
His quick-thinking escape, authorities say, allowed police to swiftly track down the Mercedes, abating a possible attack by the brothers on New York City and precipitating a wild shootout in Watertown that would seriously wound one officer, kill Tamerlan, and leave a severely injured Dzhokhar hiding in the neighborhood. He was caught the following night, ending a harrowing week across Greater Boston.
via KateC
Link Stew
Mystery meet.
Deep Discounts On Open Box Shoes
At Amazon
Click your size on the left so it'll only show you ones that fit you.
There are some amazing deals in there!
Everybody's A Farmer When Saying So Nets You $50K Of Other People's Taxpayer Dollars
Sharon LaFraniere writes in The New York Times of the Pigford scandal, where people claimed farm loan bias to get the $50K of taxpayer money, and never mind that they'd never farmed:
Ever since the Clinton administration agreed in 1999 to make $50,000 payments to thousands of black farmers, the Hispanics and women had been clamoring in courtrooms and in Congress for the same deal. They argued, as the African-Americans had, that biased federal loan officers had systematically thwarted their attempts to borrow money to farm.But a succession of courts -- and finally the Supreme Court -- had rebuffed their pleas. Instead of an army of potential claimants, the government faced just 91 plaintiffs. Those cases, the government lawyers figured, could be dispatched at limited cost.
They were wrong.
On the heels of the Supreme Court's ruling, interviews and records show, the Obama administration's political appointees at the Justice and Agriculture Departments engineered a stunning turnabout: they committed $1.33 billion to compensate not just the 91 plaintiffs but thousands of Hispanic and female farmers who had never claimed bias in court.
The deal, several current and former government officials said, was fashioned in White House meetings despite the vehement objections -- until now undisclosed -- of career lawyers and agency officials who had argued that there was no credible evidence of widespread discrimination. What is more, some protested, the template for the deal -- the $50,000 payouts to black farmers -- had proved a magnet for fraud.
The details are disgusting:
The true dimensions of the problem are impossible to gauge. The Agriculture Department insists that the names and addresses of claimants are protected under privacy provisions. But department data released in response to a Freedom of Information request by The Times are telling. The data cover 15,601 African-Americans who filed successful claims and were paid before 2009.In 16 ZIP codes in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and North Carolina, the number of successful claimants exceeded the total number of farms operated by people of any race in 1997, the year the lawsuit was filed. Those applicants received nearly $100 million.
In Maple Hill, a struggling town in southeastern North Carolina, the number of people paid was nearly four times the total number of farms. More than one in nine African-American adults there received checks. In Little Rock, Ark., a confidential list of payments shows, 10 members of one extended family collected a total of $500,000, and dozens of other successful claimants shared addresses, phone numbers or close family connections.
Thirty percent of all payments, totaling $290 million, went to predominantly urban counties -- a phenomenon that supporters of the settlement say reflects black farmers' migration during the 15 years covered by the lawsuit. Only 11 percent, or $107 million, went to what the Agriculture Department classifies as "completely rural" counties.
A fraud hot line to the Agriculture Department's inspector general rang off the hook. The office referred 503 cases involving 2,089 individuals to the F.B.I.
The F.B.I. opened 60 criminal investigations, a spokesman said, but prosecutors abandoned all but a few for reasons including a lack of evidence or proof of criminal intent. Former federal officials said the bar for a successful claim was so low that it was almost impossible to show criminality.
Your Health May Soon Be Lots Of People's Business
I've long argued that health care should be untied from the workplace -- especially since few people stay in the same workplace for very long these days.
I've paid monthly, independently, for my own health insurance since I was in my 20s.
It is utterly unconnected to my employment (which happens to be freelance), except as the price shoots through the roof when I have to pay for all those people who gambled and went without health care and then got sick and now want to get in at low rates.
Paul Hsieh writes at Forbes that Obamacare is turning your boss into Big Brother:
Recently, the CVS Caremark Corporation began requiring employees to disclose personal health information (including weight, blood pressure, and body fat levels) or else pay an annual $600 fine. Workers must make this information available to the company's employee "Wellness Program" and sign a form stating that they're doing so voluntarily.CVS argues this will help workers "take more responsibility for improving their health." At one level, this makes a certain sense. Because the company is paying for their employees' health insurance, they naturally prefer healthier workers. But at a deeper level, CVS' action demonstrates a growing problem with our current system of employer-provided health insurance. If our bosses must pay for our health care, they will inevitably seek greater control over our lifestyles.
Although most Americans take it for granted that they receive health insurance through the workplace, this is an artifact of federal tax rules from World War II. When the U.S. government imposed wartime wage controls, employers could no longer compete for workers by offering higher salaries. Instead, they competed by offering more generous fringe benefits such as health insurance. In 1943, the IRS ruled that employees did not have to pay tax on health benefits provided by employers; in 1954, the IRS made this permanent.
The federal government thus distorted the health insurance market in favor of employer-based plans. If a company paid $100 for health insurance with pre-tax dollars, the employee enjoyed the full benefit. But if the employee received that $100 as salary, he could only purchase $50-70 of insurance after taxes. Over time, this tax disparity helped employer-based health insurance dominate the private insurance market. In 2008, over 90% of non-elderly Americans with private insurance received it through their workplace.
Hence, government policy artificially injects the employer into the relationship between a patient and the health insurance system. Normally, what a worker ate or whether he smoked at home would be of no concern to his boss (unless it affected job performance). But U.S. government policy makes it the employer's business.
To make matters worse, ObamaCare reinforces this status quo. ObamaCare requires large employers to offer health insurance to workers (or else pay a penalty). As a result, more people are discussing how best to link employment to healthy behavior. For example, the New England Journal of Medicine recently featured a pair of high-profile editorials debating the merits of allowing companies to discriminate against smokers, "for their own good."
Read his whole piece over at Forbes.
via @ariarmstrong
Hah, Hah, Hah, Police Brutality
Here, on a shirt. Some Denver cops think this is funny.
via Lisa Simeone
Fascist Workplace Phonics
Via Jim P.
For a funny and fascinating grammar podcast (by David Yontz, who makes me look like less of an ass every week by copyediting my column), check out Stop!... Grammar Time.
What I love about Dave (beyond my gratitude to him for catching all my mess-ups) is that he isn't a grammar fundamentalist. He gets that I sometimes will use the wrong words or, to borrow from Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing
Nonie Darwish Tells The Truth About Islam
Darwish, who grew up Muslim but came to reject Islam for the violence and hate it demands, writes at Gatestone Institute:
Many moderate Muslims have been insisting that the Boston bombings have "nothing to do with Islam." They deny there is a problem for apostates fleeing Islam, and do nothing about their arrest, the threats against them or their murder. At least 5,000 reported honor killings happen annually in the name of Allah, but moderate Muslims insist that, too, has nothing to do with Islam, and is a hold-over tribal custom, despite the Sura and verses that are used to justify it [Qur'an (18:65-81], and not only speak out against the practice, but go as far as to threaten those who expose it. Moderate Muslims also have nothing to say to the hundreds of Islamic clerics who curse non-Muslims and encourage jihad from the pulpits of mosques.Where are the articles by moderate Muslims condemning the prominent Muslims who beg Allah to strike infidels with cancer and disease? The holiest mosques of Mecca blast curses at Jews and Christians over microphones -- "Till they pray for death and do not receive it" -- and supplicate Allah to make the lives of Christians and Jews "hostage to misery; drape them with endless despair, unrelenting pain and unremitting ailment; fill their lives with sorrow and pain and end their lives in humiliation and oppression."
No true practicing Muslim, moderate or not, has openly condemned such prayers to pilgrims in Mecca or has named the sheikhs who urge these brutalities. But the majority of moderate Muslims are quick to blame American foreign policy and Israel. If America cooperates with Islamic dictators, Muslims accuse America of empowering dictators; if America removes a Saddam Hussein to give Muslims a chance for freedom, they accuse the US of interfering in their internal affairs.
The day Usama Bin Laden was killed, a friend called from Egypt to say that everyone was in mourning, sad over Bin Laden's death. Does such a response to the death of a terrorist stem from moderate Islam, radical Islam, or Islam?
Porkulus Pays Off -- For The Connected
From a WashEx editorial:
It's more than a little disheartening when the chief executive officer of one of America's most storied Fortune 500 corporations is "comfortable" with the fact that his company created a mere 10 jobs with a $25 million grant under President Obama's economic stimulus program in 2010. The CEO in question is Honeywell's David Cote, and the stimulus grant involved came from the Department of Energy to advance Obama's green energy agenda. The funds were to be used by Honeywell's UOP subsidiary to build a biofuels technology demonstration plant in Oahu, Hawaii, supposedly creating 85 construction jobs and 40 permanent positions in each succeeding year.The Energy Department further envisioned a facility producing biomass fuels "on a commercial scale ... with the potential to create approximately 800 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs, including in biomass production."
...The problem now is that it appears to be all but impossible to determine whether those rosy projections will come to pass. An April 2012 news report by Honolulu Civil Beat, a trade publication, quoted James Rekoske, Honeywell UOP's vice president for renewable energy, saying only "about 10 jobs" had been created at that point. (The Energy Department refused to provide Civil Beat with a copy of Honeywell's grant application.)
Imagine that lack of accountability in any other venue -- if investors (taxpayers, in this case, who aren't so much investors as victims of a massive mugging) were told to just shove it.
Being "The Heavy" Is Called "Parenting"
Nathan Graziano writes at Good Men Project about how he's unable to do what my parents did -- make it very clear who was the parent and who was the child and reinforce it whenever we "forgot."
I believe this is what helped me grow up to be somebody who makes her deadlines and pays her taxes and is generally personally responsible.
I also believe his approach is how you raise an entitled brat.
An excerpt from his piece about how he sleeps on the couch because his 8-year-old sleeps in his spot in the marital bed:
Around midnight, I'll wake and sluggishly stumble up the stairs to my bedroom, undress in the dark, and attempt to slip into bed.But I can't. There's already a dude sleeping in my spot.
The dude is my 8 year-old son sprawled out beside his mother, his small mouth open as he enjoys his slumber on my side of the bed.
"Shit," I'll mutter as I make my way back, blanket in hand, to the couch.
... My wife and I never would have guessed that our experiment in co-sleeping could come to this, and it is something that we no longer talk about in the company of friends. Our son's refusal to sleep in his own bed is something that makes us feel inadequate as parents. And it is something that makes me, as the father, feel small and impotent.Before we had our daughter, who is two years older than our son, we researched the concept of co-sleeping, and the experiment worked brilliantly the first time. My wife was able to nurse both our children without getting up, it promoted a closeness we still share with kids, and thankfully, SIDS was averted. And before she turned two-years old, my daughter effortlessly made the move into her own bed.
My son, however, remains strung to his mother, which makes an air-tight case for Freud's antiquated theories. Now he's eight years old, we are no longer sleeping with a baby between us.
While we've talked to his pediatrician and read up on possible solutions, it boils down to the same singular suggestion: we need to be consistent and keep putting him back in his bed. But we both have to wake up early for work; and in this long and anguished war of attrition, the boy inexhaustibly keeps coming back to our bed, pushing me to the couch.
Meanwhile, I have pinned the problem on myself. I'm the father, and I should take care of the situation, lay down the law and tell the boy, "No more."
But I don't. I've never been good at being The Heavy.
This has got to be great for a couple's sex life -- and for the wife's respect for the husband. (I'm guessing his passiveness orientation plays out in other arenas as well.)
Lawmakers: We'll Pass Obamacare To Find Out What's In It And Then Exempt Ourselves From Parts Of It
Shockingly, lawmakers and their aides want a different standard of healthcare and health cost than they're forcing on the rest of us -- they're trying to exempt themselves from some of the "Affordable Care Act," write John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman at Politico:
There is concern in some quarters that the provision requiring lawmakers and staffers to join the exchanges, if it isn't revised, could lead to a "brain drain" on Capitol Hill, as several sources close to the talks put it.The problem stems from whether members and aides set to enter the exchanges would have their health insurance premiums subsidized by their employer -- in this case, the federal government. If not, aides and lawmakers in both parties fear that staffers -- especially low-paid junior aides -- could be hit with thousands of dollars in new health care costs, prompting them to seek jobs elsewhere. Older, more senior staffers could also retire or jump to the private sector rather than face a big financial penalty.
Plus, lawmakers -- especially those with long careers in public service and smaller bank accounts -- are also concerned about the hit to their own wallets.
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) is worried about the provision. The No. 2 House Democrat has personally raised the issue with Boehner and other party leaders, sources said.
"Mr. Hoyer is looking at this policy, like all other policies in the Affordable Care Act, to ensure they're being implemented in a way that's workable for everyone, including members and staff," said Katie Grant, Hoyer's communications director.
Several proposals have been submitted to the Office of Personnel Management, which will administer the benefits. One proposal exempts lawmakers and aides; the other exempts aides alone.
Hilariously, somebody in the comments at Politico seems to have just woken up. "Simple" writes:
If they exempt themselves, this will no longer be a legitimate government.
It Really Is The Little Things
I had a shitburger of a day on Wednesday. It's the day after my deadline, and this week was particularly crazy (because I had to do extensive prep for my LA Times Festival Of Books panel on Sunday in addition to writing my book and column).
My head was foggy and I worked a lot of hours (not as productively as I would have liked) and then I got a migraine -- an hour and a half before the time I'd promised to be on a friend's radio show pilot for an hour. He had a studio booked and people calling in to talk to him and me and I couldn't let him down. I headed the migraine off with coconut oil and a double nap, did the radio show, and then had a foggy, unproductive rest of the day.
Bleh.
Well, because I've been writing like mad to get the book done by my deadline, and not leaving the house, Gregg brought me some groceries before he left for Detroit.
Wednesday night, we talked on the phone when he got back from his boss' house and he mentioned something about chocolate. He'd bought me a little French chocolate bar but I ate it Tuesday night.
He made some crack about having hidden another one in my house -- and then told me where to find it!
It was on top of my kitchen door molding. I had to get on a stool to reach it.
This was the perfect thing -- in the perfect way. (I love surprises.)
He said he'd just known I'd need it and had hidden it up there when he brought in my groceries.
Women clamor for diamonds and those other supposedly romantic gifts. I think diamonds are stupid, and I also think a little, very thoughtful, fun gift like this is what really shows that a person cares about you.
What's a little thing the person in your life has done for you that was actually a big thing?
Patterico: "It's A Real Head Scratcher"
Blogger Patterico wins for this week's (and maybe this month's) best blog headline:
Man Slashes Rabbi's Throat While Screaming "Allahu Akbar" -- Police Trying to Determine Motive
An excerpt from Patterico's blog item:
Gendarme!!! Look over here!Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor's office, said the two victims had been wearing Jewish skullcaps, and the attacker was detained after a chase through the synagogue. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which monitors anti-Semitic incidents worldwide, said in a statement that the assailant screamed "Allah-u-Akbar" -- or "God is great" -- during the attack.I do believe we have . . . A CLEW!!! Alert Hercule Poirot!
To be fair, it is possible Presbyterianism was at root here.
Perhaps Animals Rights Activists Could Volunteer To Take The Place Of The Mice
Anne Jolis writes in the WSJ of an attack on the lab of Michela Matteoli, a 52-year-old researcher and professor of medical pharmacology at the University of Milan. Mice were taken, mixed up with their cage cards removed so they couldn't be identified, and let loose to run scared through the lab:
On the phone from her lab, the Yale-educated Ph.D. describes the tantalizing goal of drugs that might arrest neuron destruction in Alzheimer's patients, or avoid the synaptic dysfunctions apparent in autism. That's what Ms. Matteoli and her colleagues had been working toward, anyway, before their lab was destroyed by activists last weekend.They were targeted because their work, like just about every other medical advance and effort of our time, involves mice. Hundreds of small, cute, furry mice, which in this case had been genetically modified for protein mutations meant to model, as Ms. Matteoli puts it, "what goes wrong in the synapse."
...She adds that "something like 20-25 different mouse lines have been really completely trashed." Ms. Matteoli estimates it will take "more or less" a year to rebuild the colony she had been working with.
..."We're always trying to find ways to avoid or reduce the use of animals," Ms. Matteoli says. "I can study the molecular mechanism in the protein involved in a synapse, I can try to study the structure, do some work with cell cultures--but at a certain point I need to see what happens in a living being when a protein is missing, to try to correct the defect using a drug or a specific treatment. Otherwise the research will not go on, how can it proceed?"
I suggest an open call to activists who might volunteer to take the place of the mice. "No!" laughs Ms. Matteoli. I press the case: Could there be some synaptic pathology involved in radical animal-rights militancy? Some misfiring loop, preventing the mind from accepting that societies will never care more about mice than they do about people?
Gran Linkorino
Clint trap.
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Problem With LA County Condoms-In-Porn Mandate: Leaving Los Angeles Doesn't Require A Dangerous Prison Escape
Dumbasses who propose measures like the one to require porn actors to wear condoms, and the dumb voters who vote them in, forget some important considerations, like that Los Angeles isn't a walled metropolis that makes it impossible for residents and businesses to leave.
From the LA Times, the rather hilariously named (especially for this story) David Horsey writes:
The new law in Los Angeles County requiring actors in pornographic films to wear condoms seems merely to have pushed the smutty movie industry into the quiet residential areas of unincorporated Ventura County. The lesson? Passing a law to banish unhealthy behavior does not necessarily solve a problem, it just kicks it to another place or directly into a courtroom....When 57% of L.A. County voters approved the condom mandate in the November election, they had the good intention of preventing transmission of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. However, the law is being contested in U.S. District Court by Vivid Entertainment, one of the biggest producers of adult movies.
...Some of the "adult" film auteurs are not waiting for the court's decision. They have moved production from the San Fernando Valley, long the home of the celluloid sex business, to neighboring Ventura County, where residents have been registering complaints about strange sights and sounds in neighboring homes.
"It's really disturbing," Tim Gray, a 56-year-old father of four, told the Los Angeles Times. "We were eating dinner and we heard these loud sounds outside, like something really bad had happened. I went outside and heard, well, the typical sounds you'd hear in a porn movie. It was echoing all over the neighborhood."
Ventura County officials are now proposing their own condom requirement, hoping that will get the pornographers to keep on traveling to the next county.
Morons.
Another idiotic move of a similar nature -- proposing an increase on taxes for building supplies in LA County. Solution: Builders bypass LA businesses and buy their building supplies in Pasadena.
Are The Airport Genital Gropers Smarter Than An FBI Agent?
From the WSJ, revelations about the Keystone FBI agents in the wake of the Boston jihad:
Over the weekend, the FBI confirmed what first emerged from press interviews with the mother of the Tsarnaev brothers: In March 2011, the bureau received a tip from the Russians that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was "a follower of radical Islam" and questioned him and his family members. The FBI says its investigation turned up nothing and the Russians didn't reply to a request for additional information.The FBI also says it didn't know Tamerlan Tsarnaev spent months in 2012 in Dagestan, a restive Muslim region in southern Russia next to Chechnya. A senior FBI official told some Members of Congress his name and date of birth were incorrectly entered--by the CIA, in one account--into a database that checks flight manifests against a list of potential terrorists. Another report said the airline made the spelling mistake.
This Keystone Cops routine gets worse. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Tuesday said that her department's "system pinged when he was leaving" the U.S. So DHS knew that Tamerlan Tsarnaev--who had been put on the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, or TECS--was headed back to Russia, but the FBI and CIA didn't. DHS didn't tell anyone else, apparently.
Tamerlan's return to the U.S. last summer failed to "ping" at DHS. His listing on TECS had lapsed, since the FBI had closed his file. Tamerlan's return to Russia should at least have extended his stay on the watch list. The Patriot Act and other policy changes after 9/11 were meant to prevent this kind of cock-up. One arm of America's intelligence and law enforcement apparatus is supposed to know what the other arm is doing.
Perhaps we should be firing all the TSA gropenclerks at airports who would otherwise be working at Denny's and Dress Barn and putting at least a little of the TSA billions and billions into hiring a few FBI agents who have the actual intelligence and competence to go along with the job in intelligence.
Do you really think your government will protect you? From the LA Times' Brian Bennett:
In a telephone interview, Jimmy Gurule, a Notre Dame law professor, a former federal prosecutor and former undersecretary for enforcement at the U.S. Treasury Department, questioned why Tamerlan Tsarnaev wasn't interviewed by customs officials when he reentered the United States after the six-month stay in Russia last year."Why wasn't he pulled aside and questioned when he came back?" Gurule asked. "It seems to me that any false or misleading answers would have certainly triggered closer scrutiny. It might have led to a [surveillance] warrant to tap his phone. In my view, if he was under that kind of scrutiny it would have made it much more difficult for him to pull this off."
Gurule also questioned how a single misspelling on an airline manifest could mean the FBI is not notified about a suspected radical traveling abroad.
"Is it that easy to evade detection?" he asked. "Just one letter that's misspelled and the system breaks down and we can't track him? What about his passport number or his date of birth?"
Well, in our defense, we did buy the TSA workers many spiffy new uniforms.
And here's what happens when we spend billions treating every American who flies like a suspect -- per a Reuters story by Mark Hosenball:
The name of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was listed on the U.S. government's highly classified central database of people it views as potential terrorists. But the list is so vast that this did not mean authorities automatically kept close tabs on him, sources close to the bombing investigation said on Tuesday.
A good thing we feel up my breasts every time I go to an evolutionary psychology conference, because there's often evidence posted on my blog and social networking sites of my intentions...like that I hope to interview certain anthropologists and evolutionary psychology professors. (With a tape recorder, not a pressure-cooker filled with nails and ball bearings.)
So, yes, we keep close tabs on the genitals of every American who flies -- because that's great security theater, watching people get their genitals touched by people who'd otherwise be working as pizza clerks. Who cares about the actual security we can't see?
"Good Thing This Is Canada!"
Walter Olson at Cato on coffee cup warnings for morons with litigious leanings. (Photo at link.)
Ted Frank's mythbusting post on the Stella Liebeck case at Overlawyered:
Thirteen courts have reported opinions looking at product-liability/failure-to-warn claims alleging that coffee was "unreasonably dangerous" and the provider was thus liable when the plaintiff spilled coffee on him- or herself. Twelve courts correctly threw the case out. Another trial court in New Mexico, however, didn't, and became a national icon when the jury claimed that Stella Liebeck deserved $2.9 million in compensatory and punitive damages because McDonald's dared to sell the 79-year-old hot 170-degree coffee.The case is ludicrous on its face, as a matter of law and as a matter of common sense.
...The tort system is meant to deter wrongdoing; the mistake of the left is the increasingly successful attempt to make the main purpose compensating the injured, and redistributing wealth from wealthier bystanders tangentially related to the victim who haven't done anything wrong. The tort system is a remarkably inefficient means of performing this task, which is why litigation reform is needed.
Stupid Terrorists: The Tsarnaevs And The Boston Bombings
John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart write at Slate about what the Boston bombers had in common with most would-be terrorists, calling them "hapless, disorganized, and irrational":
In describing the "adversary," the case studies far more commonly use words like incompetent, ineffective, unintelligent, idiotic, ignorant, inadequate, unorganized, misguided, muddled, amateurish, dopey, unrealistic, moronic, irrational, foolish, and gullible. Many of the cases suggest that there is little exaggeration in the 2010 film, Four Lions, the impressive dark comedy about a band of hapless home-grown British terrorists.Amazingly, the Boston perpetrators apparently thought they could somehow get away with their deed even though they chose to set their bombs off at the most-photographed spot on the planet at the time. Moreover, although they were not prepared to die with their bombs, they do not seem to have had anything that could be considered a coherent plan of escape. This rather bizarre inability to think about the aftermath of the planned deed is quite typical in the case studies. (Also commonly found: an inability to explain how killing a few random people would advance their cause.)
As for why the brothers did this, turn to the CNN piece by Jake Tapper and Matt Smith:
Preliminary interviews with Tsarnaev indicate the two brothers fit the classification of self-radicalized jihadists, the source said. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, wounded and held in a Boston hospital, has said his brother -- who was killed early Friday -- wanted to defend Islam from attack, according to the source.The government source cautioned that the interviews were preliminary, and that Tsarnaev's account needs to be checked out and followed up on by investigators.
Defend Islam from -- an 8-year-old boy who wanted to go to school the day after the Marathon, but ended up dead?
Quakerism doesn't need "defending" from "attack" because nobody fears Quakers. That's because they don't have a violent ideology that calls for -- and comes through on with some frequency -- the violent death of those who aren't Quakers. Quakerism also doesn't call for the stoning of gays and rape victims, or anybody else, nor do they hijack planes and murder 3,000 office workers in lower Manhattan, so it's kind of hard to get in any kind of tizzy about the Quakers.
A noteworthy question and answer from the comments on Jihadwatch:
Writes Gregory M. Davis : d. Could an Islamic "Reformation" pacify Islam?
Response by Paul Hoffman:
As should be plain to anyone who has examined the Islamic sources, to take the violence out of Islam would require it to jettison two things: the Quran as the word of Allah and Muhammad as Allah's prophet. In other words, to pacify Islam would require its transformation into something that it is not. The Western Christian Reformation, that is often used as an example, was an attempt (successful or not) to recover the essence of Christianity, namely, the example and teachings of Christ and the Apostles. Trying to get back to the example of Muhammad would have very different consequences. Indeed, one may say that Islam is today going through its "Reformation" with the increasing jihadist activity around the globe. Today, Muslims of the Salafi ("early generations") school are doing exactly that in focusing on the life of Muhammad and his early successors.
Mohammed was a violent, thieving, child-molesting, woman-raping, mass-murdering thug -- and advocates violence, murder, rape, and other such niceties.
Compare to Jesus.
Yeah. Problem.
And a description of the difference between the Bible and the Quran and Christianity and Islam by a commenter calling him or herself "awake":
The Bible, consisting of the old and the new, are testaments weitten by men, though many take it as the literal word of God. There does not exist in those texts, eternal mandates to physically discriminate against unbelievers of those texts. Sure, there is a warning of eternal damnation in unbelieving, but the historical application of violence was interpreted and actualized by men, not explicitly contained in the doctrine.The same cannot be said of Islam. Its foundational lie, which allowed for its inception is that the Qur'an is divine, allowing a cheap semi-plagiaristic re-write of Judaism and Christianity. It also afforded Muslims, and specifically Muhammad, a divine moral authority over all others.
...If one tries or even suggests that Islam be reformed, or is reformable, it is a direct affront to Allah. It also belies that the Islamic doctrine is not divine or immutable, essentially destroying the foundation of Islam's supposed validity.
This cannot happen. An overwhelming majority of the Muslim populace of all stripes of piety must adhere to. Any meaningful reformation of Islam de facto destroys Islam.
Blowing Up The Country That Feeds You
Tamerlan Tsarnaev got Massachusetts welfare benefits, reports Chris Cassidy in the Boston Herald:
The state's Executive Office of Health and Human Services said those benefits ended in 2012 when the couple stopped meeting income eligibility limits. Russell Tsarnaev's attorney has claimed Katherine -- who had converted to Islam -- was working up to 80 hours a week as a home health aide while Tsarnaev stayed at home.
Somebody's got to pay the rent while Daddy's planning to blow the legs off Americans.
In addition, both of Tsarnaev's parents received benefits, and accused brother bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan were recipients through their parents when they were younger, according to the state.The news raises questions over whether Tsarnaev financed his radicalization on taxpayer money.
Diaperless Babies, Dropping Their Pee And Poo Where They May
It's weird. The mommies in the most elite communities are the quickest to shun the most basic benefits of civilization, like the diaper.
Yes, there's now a trend to let your baby go diaperless -- everywhere -- dropping human feces as if those are little bits of gold the rest of us will joy to find. (Do these mommies walk around with pooper scoopers? What about when it's messy?)
Anemona Hartcollis writes for The New York Times:
When Jada Shapiro decided to raise her daughter from birth without diapers, for the most part, not everyone was amused. Ms. Shapiro scattered little bowls around the house to catch her daughter's offerings, and her sister insisted that she use a big, dark marker to mark the bowls so that they could never find their way back to the kitchen."My sister wasn't a huge fan," she said on Thursday.
But "elimination communication," as the diaper-free method of child-rearing is called, is finding an audience in the hipper precincts of New York City.
Ms. Shapiro, who is a doula, a birth and child-rearing coach, says it is practically now a job qualification to at least be able to offer diaper-free training as an option to clients. Caribou Baby, an "eco-friendly maternity, baby and lifestyle store" on the border of artsy Greenpoint and Williamsburg, has been drawing capacity crowds to its diaper-free "Meetups," where parents exchange tips like how to get a baby to urinate on the street between parked cars.
Parents are drawn to the method as a way of preserving the environment from the ravages of disposable diapers, as well as reducing the laundering of cloth diapers and preventing diaper rash. Many of them like the thought that they are rediscovering an ancient practice used in other cultures, though they tend to gloss over the fact that many of those cultures had never heard of Pampers. But mostly, they say, they like feeling more in touch with their babies' most intimate functions.
"I think for a lot of parents, the motivation is just to be more in tune with what their kids' needs are," Adriane Stare, proprietor of Caribou Baby and herself a diaper-free mother, said on Thursday, about a week after holding her most recent meetup.
...Still, even the most ardent practitioners observe some limits. "I don't think you can walk down Fifth Avenue and just let your baby poop on the sidewalk," she said.
Um, if you let your child go diaperless, how do you stop this?
Also, an observation -- It's conspicuous consumption [also costly signaling in anthropology] taken to the poop level. (A sign that Mom is rich and "elite" enough so she can afford to watch baby every minute -- or hire some nanny to do it.)
Fascinating book on costly signaling: The Handicap Principle: A Missing Piece of Darwin's Puzzle
"Single Mother By Choice" Complains That Airplane Travel Hasn't Recreated Itself For Her
I was dismayed to see this piece was by Rachel Simmons, whom I'd asked on my radio show to discuss her smart book, Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls
When I invited her, her assistant wrote me back, saying she'd just had a baby and the late hour on the East Coast didn't work for her. (This was before we'd started shifting around the showtime to accommodate guests in time zones other than mine.)
Anyway, Simmons, dismayingly, has a two-page snivel in the Washington Post about how awful it is that airlines haven't rejiggered their planes and airport bathrooms haven't been redesigned to accommodate women like her...that is, women who choose to have a child solo and then, apparently, decided that they shouldn't have to change their lives a whit afterward.
Disgustingly, she talks about changing a baby in her airplane seat and -- eeuw, really disgusting -- on the galley floor.
Of course, she doesn't mention the baby's howls that other passengers surely have to endure.
Here's an excerpt from Simmons' piece, "How do you change a diaper at 30,000 feet?" -- about taking her 9-week-old daughter on planes (yes, 9 weeks old):
Thirty thousand feet up, I was learning that air travel is one of the most inhospitable experiences for mothers with small children, especially moms who travel for work. Gone are the days when I would stride onto a plane in heels, with headphones and a cute handbag, en route to speaking engagements around the country to advise parents on how to raise more assertive daughters. As an author and educator, I flew several times a month before I became a mother. Today, as I have cut back on my work travel, the frequent-flier perks that would make my life easier as a traveling mom have evaporated.Now, after I chide my audiences of helicopter parents to stop worrying about their girls' every social hiccup, I return to an airplane that pretends my kid doesn't exist.
...I am trying to heed Sheryl Sandberg's call to "lean in" by not scaling back on my career now that I'm a mother. But as Sandberg says, the most important choice a woman can make is the person who will be her partner. It's a little harder to lean in without a partner to help with child-care duties. I am a single mother by choice, and like millions of women doing it alone, there is no second lap to lay a baby on for an in-flight diaper change.
In the past year, several airlines have ended the pre-boarding customarily offered to families. Before a recent flight from Hartford to Dallas, I watched two dozen men in suits cruise down the elite passengers' red carpet. I stood to the side, carrying a 20-pound baby, an overstuffed diaper bag and a breast pump while pushing a stroller.
The world I have entered as a traveling mother is filled with indignities I never noticed before giving birth. I knew that motherhood wasn't the focus of many second-wave feminists eager to get women a seat in the boardroom. But if the personal is political, then so are poopy diapers at 30,000 feet.
I still nurse my now-11-month-old daughter, which means I have to pump milk when she stays home with her nanny or my mom, who visits once a month from Rockville to help out. There are no private places to use an electric pump in airports, unless you buy an expensive day pass to an airline lounge or sit on the sticky floor of a "family friendly" restroom with an electrical outlet. (I have done both.)
When I mutter about my problems to other frequent-flying parents, they tell me to change the baby on the seat.
Yes, that's exactly what I want to sit down in on my next flight -- a little bit of leftover diarrhea from entitlemommy's previous flight.
You do not, DO NOT, get to change your baby -- exposing other passengers to poo -- while in an airplane seat. No. No. No. No. No.
Oh, and as for the complaint about the outlets, has she not heard of this obscure invention, the extension cord?
There's a Spanish proverb: "Take what you want, but pay for it."
If you, selfishly, decide to bring up a baby all by yourself, your lifestyle will need to change to accommodate that.
Links Luther
Superbad.
Left, Right, And Civil Libertarian: Why Ken White Put Aside His Politics To Defend Patterico
I so love attorney Ken White (aka blogger Popehat) for this -- for taking the case of a person he disagrees with politically because free speech is the right thing to support. An excerpt from his blog post on his defense of Patrick Fry, who blogs as Patterico:
There are many people out there who support free speech, so long as it's free speech they agree with. That's not really supporting free speech. It's nice that people on the right supported Patrick's free speech -- I wish they all supported vigorous political speech from the left as well. I would also have been happier if more people on the left supported Patrick -- or, at least, treated the stark free speech issues presented in the case seriously. I didn't defend Patrick because I always, or usually, or even often agree with him. He's to the right of me politically, and a prosecutor (and therefore reliably wrong on criminal justice issues), and I often disagree with him. I defended him because the First Amendment that lets him speak freely lets me speak as well. I defended him because malicious, frivolous, and politically motivated lawsuits aimed at censorship make it a little more dangerous for each of us to speak. I defended him pro bono because frivolous lawsuits can effectively censor people even when they eventually fail, because the expenses of lawsuits can be ruinous.
Judging Himself Not To Be Above The Rules
I loved this story from last week about a Michigan judge who fined himself for disrupting his own hearing when his cellphone rang. Via the AP:
The Sentinel-Standard of Ionia and MLive.com report Judge Raymond Voet has a posted policy at Ionia County 64A District Court. It states that electronic devices causing a disturbance during court sessions will result in the owner being cited with contempt.On Friday afternoon, during a prosecutor's closing argument during a jury trial, Voet's new smartphone began to emit sounds requesting phone voice commands.
The judge, who says he thinks he may have bumped the phone, fined himself $25.
(If only people would hand out money to the rest of us when they hijack our attention with the inanities they bellow into their phones in public.)
via @Overlawyered
A Tale Of Two Suspects, One Of Whom Is Me: Our Whacked "Security" Priorities
Where would you put our security dollars and attention? Two options -- first, the needle in the haystack approach: putting billions upon billions of dollars into treating every single American who takes a plane as a meaningful suspect. And second, there's targeted intelligence work based on evidence that somebody seems likely to be plotting terrorist act.
Let's look at two potential suspects and how we treat such people currently and have treated them:
Suspect Number One: Detroit-born-and raised Amy Alkon, 49, an outspoken atheist who blogs critically about Islam (for commanding the slaughter of gays, apostates, and rape victims, and for calling for the death or conversion of the infidel -- a demand which many of its adherents take seriously enough to slaughter countless people who are not Muslim or not Muslim enough for their liking).
Suspect Number One's Political Belief System: Alkon is an outspoken libertarian. She believes that people should not be allowed to harm others by hurting them physically or taking their rightful property away from them and that protecting them from those harms should be the role of government.
Recent Domestic Travel By Suspect Number One (Alkon): Trip to New York to appear on Anderson Cooper Live TV show and second trip to New York to attend National Book Foundation awards gala. At neither of these events did she get weapons training, although on the second trip, she did report that her new book editor treated her and her literary agent to a very nice lunch.
Recent Foreign Travel: Alkon was taken by her boyfriend (NAME REDACTED) to Paris. Credit card receipts show that she bought large quantities of French sunblock, which has been known to keep women from looking like old bags by preventing the sun's aging effects.
Security Approach To Suspect Number One: Unskilled workers will treat Suspect Number One (Alkon) the same every single American who ever has to fly somewhere -- as if there is reasonable evidence she will blow up the plane, even though not a shred of it exists.
Security In Action: In Suspect Number One's case, this entails stopping her at the airport every time she flies so workers who would otherwise be employed at Denny's or Dress Barn can touch her breasts and vagina to make sure they aren't armed, and feel up her hair (in case she's hiding a block of C-4 under her bangs).
Suspect Number Two: Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26. Tsarnaev, a radical Muslim, was born and raised in Chechnya, one of the world's fiercest provinces. An LA Times story linked below describes Tsarnaev "as intense and given to occasional outbursts." (To be fair: Alkon, too, could be described that way, and sometimes can be heard saying, "Well, that's very rude!" to people shouting on cell phones in public places.)
To fill in a bit more of the profile, we'll turn to that LA Times piece. Andrew Tangel and Ashley Powers write about Suspect Number Two (Tamerlan Tsarnaev) in the LA Times:
Deceased Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was identified by a foreign government as a "follower of radical Islam and a strong believer" whose personality had changed drastically in just a year, according to the FBI.As investigators considered possible motives for Monday's fatal bombings, U.S. authorities acknowledged that an unnamed government had contacted the FBI to say the 26-year-old ethnic Chechen "had changed drastically" since 2010 and was preparing to leave the United States "to join unspecified underground groups," according to an official statement from the FBI.
U.S. officials have not named the foreign nation, but it is presumed to be Russia. Tsarnaev traveled there in 2012 and stayed for six months.
...According to the FBI, the foreign government had requested information on the older brother, and the agency responded by checking U.S. government databases for information on "derogatory" telephone communications, online promotion of radical activity, associations with other persons of interest, travel history and plans, and education history. The FBI also interviewed the suspect and family members and found no terrorism activity, the agency said.
"The FBI requested but did not receive more specific or additional information from the foreign government," the statement read.
Apparently, when they heard nothing, they just said, "Mkay -- no problemo. We'll just ignore the guy."
I've argued over and over that what we need is security based on probable cause -- reasonable suspicion that somebody is up to something criminal -- to defend ourselves against terrorism. We need highly trained investigators -- those with enough of a brain to not let a guy like this be on his way, unwatched, because some Russian forgot to write back because he had too much vodka at lunch.
In short, those tens of billions we are spending on treating granny like she has a warhead in her diaper, well, that's a lovely security puppet show and one that is meaningless in terms of actual security.
We will never catch every plotter, but we'd catch a lot more of them if the vagina gropers at our airports were unemployed and we spent even a fraction of the TSA money on hiring actually intelligent intelligent officers and having them do what the Constitution allows: Use probable cause to root out probable suspects.
In other words, focus on a few people who we have reason to believe could be Muslim radicals, as opposed to children with MS and Beyonce.
Think The Police State Will Protect You?
How wildly naive of you. Daniel McAdams blogs at Lew Rockwell:
The police state did not catch the suspect. The borg did not catch the suspect. Martial law did not catch the suspect. People forced to stay in their homes did not catch the suspect. Warrantless searches did not catch the suspect.Like the government's initial failure (or worse) to identify and apprehend the suspects before the bombing, the government also failed in its military assault on an entire city.
Let us never forget that Dzhokar Tsarnaev was discovered by a private citizen, who happened to go out and check on his boat (i.e. violating the lockdown order of the cops), see a body inside of it, and call the cops. In other words, the police state achieved nothing but the psychological conditioning of the population: when we, the state, decide any particular event is important enough, you will lose every single right including possibly the right to life if you resist.
UPDATE: The citizen didn't violate the lockdown order. He went out after it. Sorry -- I was tired when I posted this (after Los Angeles Times Festival of Books panel) and should have paid closer attention.
How Political Correctness Mandates In Government Foil Us From Catching Jihadists
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey writes in the WSJ:
For starters, you can worry about how the High-Value Interrogation Group, or HIG, will do its work. That unit was finally put in place by the FBI after so-called underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up the airplane in which he was traveling as it flew over Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009 and was advised of his Miranda rights. The CIA interrogation program that might have handled the interview had by then been dismantled by President Obama.At the behest of such Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups as the Council on American Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America, and other self-proclaimed spokesmen for American Muslims, the FBI has bowdlerized its training materials to exclude references to militant Islamism. Does this delicacy infect the FBI's interrogation group as well?
Will we see another performance like the Army's after-action report following Maj. Nidal Hasan's rampage at Fort Hood in November 2009, preceded by his shout "allahu akhbar"--a report that spoke nothing of militant Islam but referred to the incident as "workplace violence"? If tone is set at the top, recall that the Army chief of staff at the time said the most tragic result of Fort Hood would be if it interfered with the Army's diversity program.
Cool Hand Link
Starring Paul Gnu Man.
Advice Goddess Radio ("Best Of" Rerun), Tonite, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET -- Psychologist Jeremy Dean -- How To Control Your Habits Instead Of Letting Your Habits Control You
Advice Goddess Radio -- "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
*Book Festival Weekend "Best Of" Rerun (because I'm moderating a panel of authors at LA Times Festival of Books today).
Psychologist Jeremy Dean, founder of the popular website PsyBlog, is the author of Making Habits, Breaking Habits: Why We Do Things, Why We Don't, and How to Make Any Change Stick
We are convinced that we are the boss of us -- that we do the things we do because they make sense, because we've got goals, because we make smart choices. Often, that's far from the case. But, by understanding how habits are formed, why we develop them, and what our biases are, we can use habit-forming to our benefit and have some chance of stopping the habits holding us back.
Listen at 7pm Pacific and 10 pm Eastern at this link or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/04/22/jeremy-dean-form-good-habits-ditch-bad-make-change-stick
And don't miss last week's show with psychologist Tamar Chansky, Ph.D., a leading expert on anxiety disorders, who has written a very helpful and down-to-earth book on understanding and conquering anxiety, Freeing Yourself from Anxiety: 4 Simple Steps to Overcome Worry and Create the Life You Want
On this show, Chansky offers you numerous substantive, practical tips for keeping anxiety for taking over your thoughts and your life, emphasizing the use of reason.
Listen online or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/04/15/dr-tamar-e-chansky-freeing-yourself-from-anxiety
Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, with podcasts available afterward, at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon, or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
Miranda, Schmiranda
Lisa Simeone, one of my colleagues at TSA News Blog, where they cross-post my TSA posts, put it so well in an email this morning:
It's very simple: if they can do it to him, they can do it to you. That's how it works. Always. Everywhere. Throughout history. I don't understand why people don't get this. (And if you think it's going to stop here, I have a bridge to sell you. "Oh, but I don't have to worry! I never do anything wrong! I'm not a criminal!" Anyone who believes that needs to go back to 5th grade civics.)
Emily Bazelon on this on Slate. Orin Kerr at Volokh.
The Monroe Doctorine
Cybill Shepherd on Marilyn Monroe:
She had curves in places other women don't even have places.
Ass, Meet Gear: The Motivating Power Of Deadlines
Phyllis Korkki writes in The New York Times about the power of a deadline in motivating, quoting Dan Ariely:
People respond well to deadlines because meeting them provides a distinct feeling of having achieved something within a time frame. "It's a good way to keep score," Professor Ariely said.It is possible to motivate yourself, he said, by announcing a deadline to others -- perhaps on Facebook or on Twitter. Not meeting the deadline would then feel like breaking a promise, he said: "It does say something about your character."
People ask me whether I get "writer's block." Um, no. I just write, even when I feel really stupid and untalented as I type every word. As Susan Shapiro's uncle, Jonathan Fast, told her, "Plumbers don't get plumber's block." (As a writer, same as a plumber, you just need to sit down and get to work.)
For that, I use a timer, and make myself work an hour before I check email, etc. By doing that, I typically get in "flow" -- where you lose yourself in your work -- or I at least set myself up with enough "pre-work" to get myself into a flow state the next day.
Korskki also includes this bit:
THIS column, for example, is nowhere near as good as it was as a vague idea in my mind's eye. There's so much more I wanted to cover, including the etymology of the word "deadline." (O.K., I'll throw it in: It was formerly "a boundary around a military prison beyond which a prisoner could not venture without risk of being shot by the guards," according to Dictionary.com.)I wanted to discuss the link between death and deadlines, and whether death awareness affects people at work, a topic that has been explored by Prof. Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
But I ran out of time, and that's the point. This column -- inferior though it is to what I had imagined -- is done, and it's done because I had a deadline.
When I'm in trouble, I triage -- figure out what's most dire and attend to that, and then go back and pretty up the rest if there's time left, assuming I can't get time to stretch like cheap Lycra.
Advice Goddess Free Swim
You pick the topics. Crazy days Saturday and another one on Sunday. I'll post more when I can.
P.S. One link per comment or my spam filter will eat your post.
Dudley Doo-Doo Right
Next best thing to posting human-shaming photos (of dog walkers who leave "gifts" behind) for polite dog pooping.
DogShaming.com for photos of naughty dogs.
How Democrats Are Exactly Like Republicans, And Vice Versa
Nick Sorrentino puts it perfectly at Against Crony Capitalism:
The GOP has consistently embraced crony capitalism, just like their Democrat brethren. The Republicans like weapons systems, the Dems like welfare programs. But both parties pick and choose. The object for both clubs is to separate tax dollars from the taxpayers to benefit those who will help a particular politician most. Many in Washington can't even imagine Washington DC working in a different way.
Sorrentino links to the words of Marco Rubio at Real Clear Politics:
I think we have a growing problem in this country that too many people have forgotten what the true sense of prosperity is....And let me tell you who I blame for that first and foremost. I blame that primarily, quite frankly, on decisions made by the Republican Party in the past to embrace crony capitalism and corporate welfare as conservatism, when, in fact, that's not what we're about. We are about upward mobility. We're about the true free enterprise system. We're not about big companies being able to use the federal government to create rules and regulations that make it harder on their competitors.
And I also think that while we've had multiple candidates in the past that have campaigned as limited-government conservatives, it's of course until it's their government program that they're trying to protect or what have you. So I don't think necessarily Republicans have always governed as the limited-government movement and the result is you see this kind of confusion in the American electorate about what the source of prosperity is. We have to do a better job of explaining to all Americans that free enterprise is the only way to consistently create the kind of growth and opportunity that America's always been identified with.
Will You Park Next To Me Until The End Of Time?
I loved this -- an email from a reader, Beth Heinrich, about how her husband proposed. I find the parking lot proposal really romantic -- more so than the planned proposal on horseback:
I wanted to share my proposal experience. My now husband, had a romantic day planned. We were going horseback riding at a local stable that had access to sand dunes and the beach. He was going to propose on the ride.The day did not go as planned. His car broke down and he had to spend the day fixing it and the money that was going to be spent on the ride went to parts.
He is usually a pretty even tempered guy so I couldn't understand why he was so upset by the change in plans. We were both college students driving old cars so we often spent our weekends working on one car or another. I found out why later in the day as we drove to the store.
He got out of the car in the parking lot, got down on one knee and proposed. He explained about the original plan. It would have been very romantic. But I will never forget the one I got. The Love behind it was the important bit.
I always wonder about the big fancy proposals that make the news. If it fits in with the couple's life great, but to make it a big deal for the sake of a big deal raises a big red flag to me.
Our engagement matched our life. We got our ride later and had a wonderful time. Thirty years later we are still together. We have had our ups and downs and we have handled them the same way we did the day we got engaged. With humor and flexibility.
Don't Want To Disappoint needs to make sure that he and his lady have the love bit and the actual proposal is a piece of cake. If he wants to do something special think of something that reflects their relationship.
--Beth Heinrich
Thanks for reminding me
City Of Boston Bent Over For Radical Islam
The video:
Feel free to post links about the Boston Marathon bombings and related news reports and opinions here. One link per comment, please, so your comment doesn't go to spam.
Alert For Morons In US Put Out By Czech Embassy
An excerpt from a press release they found it necessary to post after idiots lacking the most rudimentary notions of history and geography went wild on Twitter:
"The Czech Republic and Chechnya are two very different entities..."
Uncle Of Suspected Boston Bombers Speaks
From DallasNews, Todd Robberson says the uncle says "exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment." The video.
UPDATE: (Sorry -- scumbags at NDN Digital Media made this video play every time somebody opened this site. I've turned it into a link alone, much as I'd like to take this down entirely.)
Robberson writes:
I want Ruslan Tsarni to run for office or something. I can't ever remember someone of such humble roots emerging from complete obscurity to stand in front of the national media, speaking live to the nation, and speaking with such clarity, forcefulness and conviction.The uncle of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnayev, the two prime suspects in the Boston bombings declared in no uncertain terms: "Of course we are ashamed!" These two young men, his nephews, are "losers" who come from a loser family that was unable to assimilate after receiving asylum in this country sometime around 2005-2006. Tsarni's brother, the father of the bombers, apparently couldn't find a job. Nor could the boys.
Whatever the cause of their bitterness, they apparently chose to lash out at America, the country that hosted them and gave them shelter from the many troubles facing their homeland, including a radical Islamist separatist movement that opposes Chechnya's absorption into Russia. Instead of being grateful to America for the opportunities this country offered them, they apparently chose to explode bombs and kill innocents who had nothing to do with the two young men's problems.
Picture Of The Century: Hijacked Car Had "COEXIST" Bumper Sticker
Via @iowahawkblog - photo here.
Discuss.
Boston Police, FIRE, EMS Live Audio Feed
Here. Feel free to post more links. One per comment (so your comment won't go to spam).
Live video feed. Same live feed for mobile devices. Ugh, the younger one's guidance counselor just called him a "goofy, fun-loving guy."
More.
Timeline of the hunt for the suspects.
Ugh -- father of still-alive suspect calls him "a true angel."
Boston Bomber -- World View Listed As "Islam" On Social Media
Via Jihadwatch. From the Chechen, legally US-dwelling bomber Tsarnaev's social media page, which can still be accessed here.
From Mother Jones, the 26-year-old brother had a YouTube page with fundamentalist Islamic views:
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26 year-old brother of the second Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, had a YouTube page where he posted religious videos, including a video of Feiz Mohammad, a fundamentalist Australian Muslim preacher who rails against the evils of Harry Potter. Among those videos is one dedicated to the prophecy of the Black Banners of Khurasan which is embraced by Islamic extremists--particularly Al Qaeda. The videos posted on what appears to be Tsarnaev's YouTube page may shed light on the motivations for the attack on the Boston Marathon. The prophecy states that an invincible army will come from the region of "Khurasan," a large portion of territory in central Asia."This is a major hadith (reported saying of the prophet Muhammad) that jihadis use, it is essentially an end-time prophecy," says Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy "This is definitely important in Al Qaeda's ideology."
From thereligionofpeace.com: "Does the Quran really contain dozens of verses promoting violence?"
The Quran contains at least 109 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule. Some are quite graphic, with commands to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding. Muslims who do not join the fight are called 'hypocrites' and warned that Allah will send them to Hell if they do not join the slaughter.Unlike nearly all of the Old Testament verses of violence, the verses of violence in the Quran are mostly open-ended, meaning that they are not restrained by the historical context of the surrounding text. They are part of the eternal, unchanging word of Allah, and just as relevant or subjective as anything else in the Quran.
Most of today's Muslims exercise a personal choice to interpret their holy book's many calls to violence according to what their own moral preconceptions find justificable. Apologists cater to their preferences with tenuous arguments that gloss over historical fact and generally do not stand up to scrutiny. Still, it is important to note that the problem is not bad people, but bad ideology.
Unfortunately, there are very few verses of tolerance and peace to abrogate or even balance out the many that call for nonbelievers to be fought and subdued until they either accept humiliation, convert to Islam, or are killed. Muhammad's own martial legacy - and that of his companions - along with the remarkable stress on violence found in the Quran have produced a trail of blood and tears across world history.
More:
Other than the fact that Muslims haven't killed every non-Muslim under their domain, there is very little else that they can point to as proof that theirs is a peaceful, tolerant religion. Where Islam is dominant (as in the Middle East and Pakistan) religious minorities suffer brutal persecution with little resistance. Where Islam is in the minority (as in Thailand, the Philippines and Europe) there is the threat of violence if Muslim demands are not met. Either situation seems to provide a justification for religious terrorism, which is persistent and endemic to Islamic fundamentalism.
The reasons are obvious and begin with the Quran. Few verses of Islam's most sacred text can be construed to fit the contemporary virtues of religious tolerance and universal brotherhood. Those that do are earlier "Meccan" verses which are obviously abrogated by later ones. This is why Muslim apologists speak of the "risks" of trying to interpret the Quran without their "assistance" - even while claiming that it is a perfect book.
Far from being mere history or theological construct, the violent verses of the Quran have played a key role in very real massacre and genocide. This includes the brutal slaughter of tens of millions of Hindus for five centuries beginning around 1000 AD with Mahmud of Ghazni's bloody conquest. Both he and the later Tamerlane (Islam's Genghis Khan) slaughtered an untold number merely for defending their temples from destruction. Buddhism was very nearly wiped off the Indian subcontinent. Judaism and Christianity met the same fate (albeit more slowly) in areas conquered by Muslim armies, including the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Europe, including today's Turkey. Zoroastrianism, the ancient religion of a proud Persian people is despised by Muslims and barely survives in modern Iran.
So ingrained is violence in the religion that Islam has never really stopped being at war, either with other religions or with itself.
Muhammad was a military leader, laying siege to towns, massacring the men, raping their women, enslaving their children, and taking the property of others as his own. On several occasions he rejected offers of surrender from the besieged inhabitants and even butchered captives. He actually inspired his followers to battle when they did not feel it was right to fight, promising them slaves and booty if they did and threatening them with Hell if they did not. Muhammad allowed his men to rape traumatized women captured in battle, usually on the very day their husbands and family members were slaughtered.
Do We Want European "Cuddle Capitalism"?
An excerpt from Becoming Europe, by Samuel Gregg:
To put the point in somewhat dramatic terms:Do Americans want to embrace modern European economic culture? Do they want to live in a set of economic expectations and arrangements that routinely prioritizes economic security over economic liberty; in which the state annually consumes close to 50 percent of gross domestic product; where the ultimate economic resource (i.e., human beings) is aging and declining in numbers; where extensive regulation is the norm; and perhaps above all, where economic incentives lie not in hard work, economic creativity, and a willingness to take risks, but rather in access to political power?
Or do Americans want to embrace the opposite? Do they want to live in an economy in which economic entrepreneurship is rewarded; where the government's economic responsibilities are confined to a number of important but limited functions; and where the stress is upon economic liberty, rather than remorseless efforts to equalize economic outcomes through state action?That is the choice increasingly facing America: a form of "cuddle capitalism"--the European social model--presided over by an allpervasive European-like political class and associated insider groups wielding bureaucratic power; or, alternatively, a dynamic market economy that takes liberty seriously and understands that government intervention in the economy must and can be limited. As we will see, the decision is not as simple as it might seem. Among other things, it involves trade-offs, the prioritization of different values, differences about ends and means, and fundamental disagreements about the nature and functions of government.
The debate about which road to take is not a new one. Its origins go back to Europe's Middle Ages. There is, however, nothing like a crisis to focus the mind. And this, many would say, is precisely what happened in 2008, when the United States entered a period of economic instability of such severity that it is known today as the Great Recession.
A comment: I would call that economic "security," what the Europeans have.
@ActonInstitute
Gary Taubes: What Really Makes Us Fat -- Calories Or Carbohydrates?
An essay by Gary Taubes from BMJ. A summary:
The history of obesity research is a history of two competing hypotheses. Gary Taubes argues that the wrong hypothesis won out and that it is this hypothesis, along with substandard science, that has exacerbated the obesity crisis and the related chronic diseases. If we are to make any progress, he says, we have to look again at what really makes us fat.
An excerpt:
Calories or carbohydratesAttempts to blame the obesity epidemics worldwide on increased availability of calories typically ignore the fact that these increases are largely carbohydrates and those carbohydrates are largely sugars--sucrose or high fructose corn syrup. And so these observations shed no light on whether it's total calories to blame or the carbohydrate calories. Nor do they shed light on the more fundamental question of whether people or populations get fat because they're eating more, or eat more because the macronutrient composition of their diets is promoting fat accumulation--increased lipogenesis or decreased lipolysis, in effect, driving an increase in appetite.
The same is true for bariatric surgery, which is now acknowledged to be a remarkably effective means of inducing long term weight loss. But does weight loss occur after surgery because of the rearrangement of the gastrointestinal tract resulting in hormonal effects that minimise appetite or directly minimise fat accumulation? Does it occur because the patient reduces total calories consumed after surgery or reduces carbohydrate calories and, specifically, refined grains and sugars? The observation that bariatric surgery works doesn't answer these questions.
As Erich Grafe noted about the lipophilia hypothesis 80 years ago, it "presupposes overnutrition." If a patient is getting heavier, they must be taking in more energy than they expend. With the energy balance hypothesis, overnutrition is causal; with lipophilia, it's compensatory, a response to the hormonally driven fat accumulation. Either way, it has to exist while an individual is gaining weight. And, by the same token, undernutrition or negative energy balance has to exist if an individual is losing weight.
Sugary beverages are another example of how these different hypotheses lead to different conclusions that are relevant to solving the obesity epidemics worldwide. The conventional wisdom has it that sugary beverages are merely empty calories that we consume in excess, although it is possible that the metabolism of fructose (a key carbohydrate component that makes these sugars sweet) in the liver somehow circumvents leptin signalling, leading us to consume these beverages and their calories even when we're not and shouldn't be hungry. The hormonal or regulatory hypothesis also focuses on the metabolism of fructose in the liver, but rather than leptin it uses evidence suggesting that fructose metabolism can induce insulin resistance, leading in turn to raised insulin levels and trapping fat in fat cells--increasing, in effect, lipophilia.
Taubes' excellent books are Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat. (The latter is an easier read for people who don't read tons of science.)
Bringing Up Linky
Who's got my leopard?
Scandals, Cheap!
Oh, sorry -- that's women's sandals, up to 50 percent off, at Amazon
There Are Valley Girls And There Are Alley Girls
Meet the little trash mermaid.
Crony Capitalism In Taxi Rules Outlawed In Milwaukee
Wonderful, wonderful Institute for Justice, which defends the civil liberties of people who otherwise couldn't afford legal representation, has won another case.
The video:
About the case:
Milwaukee, WI--In a resounding victory for economic liberty, today Judge Jane Carroll of the Milwaukee Circuit Court struck down the city's taxicab law that outlawed competition in the taxi market. The law, implemented by the city in 1991, caused the price of a taxi permit to rise from $85 to over $150,000. Judge Carroll ruled from the bench shortly after listening to arguments in a lawsuit brought by three local taxi drivers and the Institute for Justice (IJ), the national law firm for liberty."Thanks to today's victory, the city's 20-year taxi monopoly is broken," said IJ Attorney Anthony Sanders. IJ filed suit against the city in September 2011 on behalf of three local taxi drivers. "The court found that in 1991 the city purposely created an unconstitutional taxi system where only the privileged few would benefit and competition would be outlawed."
Judge Carroll found that both of the arguments the city provided for the law were illegitimate. The city argued that officials did not want to hold an annual meeting on the issue of taxicabs. But the judge ruled that public servants cannot write laws that simply save themselves from the trouble of going to a meeting. The city also argued that limited competition would make taxi owners more professional. Judge Carroll rejected that argument as well, saying that all the city did was provide a windfall for those who happened to have cabs in 1991.
One of the taxi owners who testified in support of the law in 1991 said his business would be worth more without having to face competition, and with the law in place he could profit enough to retire some place warm. But today Judge Carroll said that the government cannot pass laws simply to help politically favored businessmen retire to Florida.
"Today's ruling is a textbook example of judicial engagement," said IJ attorney Katelynn McBride. "The judge looked at the facts of this case and rejected the city's bogus arguments, revealing the real reason this law was passed: to protect the politically powerful at the expense of everyone else. The judge ruled that economic protectionism is not a constitutional use of government power."
..."I now believe in the American judicial system," said Milwaukee taxi driver and IJ client Ghaleb Ibrahim. "During the course of this lawsuit, I was fired because the owner of my cab did not like me standing up for my rights. Thanks to today's ruling, I now have the freedom to own my own taxicab. That's exactly what I'm going to do."
Woman Originally From UK Tries To Work Legally In USA: No Dice
Sophie Cole writes at FoxNews about being denied the H1B (non-immigrant) visa she applied for (she explained that it was an H1B visa on a friend's Facebook feed):
It's been my dream for years to immigrate to the United States. Originally from the United Kingdom, I was attracted to America's embrace of freedom, capitalism, and proud traditions of liberty sorely lacking in my native country. I wanted to defend those liberties in America. Like other immigrants, I do a job that most Americans don't want to - defend the Constitution.Recently, however, I found out that my American Dream is over. I will shortly have to leave the land I love and return to the United Kingdom.
What happened that put me in this position?
The Department of Labor (DOL) ruled that the American non-profit that wanted to hire me cannot.
I was offered a staff attorney position at a Washington, D.C. non-profit committed to advancing right to work laws. I went to university here and then law school at William and Mary and have called Virginia home for years
...I have no opportunity to appeal. There is no possibility to re-file for the visa because the government grants so few every year that they ran out weeks ago.
But my experience is just a microcosm of America's disastrous immigration system. There is no immigration line. There is no Ellis Island. I can't go down to the local post office and apply for a green card. I have lived here legally--studying and working hard--but under the law there is no way for me to stay .
I don't want a hand out. I'll gladly sign a piece of paper saying that I am ineligible for welfare, Social Security, and Medicare. I've always paid taxes, bought insurance, and played by all of the rules. I've never committed a crime nor do I intend to. All I want is a chance to legally live, work, and defend the Constitution of my country.
Highly-skilled immigrants have been voiceless in the debate over immigration reform. Illegal immigrants wanting legalization, immigration enforcement hawks, and guest workers have sucked all of the air out of the room.
Sophie Cole wrote on the friend's feed:
The non-profit who filed the visa on behalf of me proved, under rigorous demands, that no American is available to do that job. There is no one else in the DC metro area who is a licensed attorney and who cares about worker freedom to fill that position.
It seems a bit unbelievable, considering what you read about people being desperate for jobs, that she was the only candidate for this position. But should we allow talented others from other countries to work in this country -- if they agree to not apply for benefits?
via @walterolson
Bratton: We Can't Prevent Every Act Of Terror. What We Can Do...
Wise words in the WSJ by former LAPD Chief William Bratton -- words consistent with continuing to live in a free and democratic society:
Public-safety officials recognized that any public site, especially those with civic or economic symbolism, could be targeted for a spectacular act of terrorism. As far as we've come since 9/11, however, it is an impossible dream to think we can prevent every act of terror. That is a goal worth striving for, but some plots won't be deterred or foiled. So it was in Boston this week.The primary task for law enforcement after such an attack is to identify the perpetrator(s), apprehend them, and examine whether this attack was a one-off or the first in a series. The longer it takes to identify perpetrators, the higher public fear will remain and the more thinly police resources will be spread. Terrorists often quickly claim credit for their attacks, but in many ways it is more diabolical for them to stay quiet, stoking public uncertainty and dissipating resources.
...The past few days have also vindicated the sort of heightened preparedness emphasized by security and health officials since 9/11. Controlling crowds and directing traffic remain priorities for Boston police on the day of the marathon, but they have also drilled to prepare for much more. The police tent by the finish line has gotten bigger over the years. Whereas it was once equipped mainly to deal with exhausted and dehydrated runners, it now hosts a wide range of personnel ready to activate various contingency plans, including responding to a terrorist attack--how to deploy emergency-medical technicians, where to arrange the ingress and egress of ambulances, etc. Then there was the senior doctor from Massachusetts General Hospital who noted that his team was prepared for the gruesome injuries they encountered because they received training recently from Israeli doctors experienced with terrorist bombings.
Such preparedness is so important because a democratic society simply cannot secure all venues and events at all times. There is no ability to cordon off a whole marathon route and treat miles of urban streets with the degree of security at, say, a baseball stadium. It is impossible to secure everything. There will always be vulnerabilities along a 26-mile route, and police will always have to make decisions about how to deploy their finite resources.
Schneier: "Refuse to be terrorized." (We've done a poor job of this at airports. Let's see if we can prevent ourselves from becoming a society that, in its every arena, gives up its freedoms for "security.")
And ridiculously, from Kathleen Parker: "The challenge isn't only to prevent the next act of terror. It is to avoid becoming accustomed to the horror."
Jay Mohr: It's "gun culture"!
Yoohoo, Jay, perhaps you missed the blanket of news reports on how nail- and ball bearing-loaded pressure cookers were used?
The obvious answer: Ban pot roast!
Legislator On Gay Marriage Bill In New Zealand
The guy makes a lot of sense. Also, he's amusing.
Linkfellas
Funny how?
Language Arts: Today's German Lesson
There's a hilarious German word for everything. "Lederhosen," for example. Much of it sounds like enema sex.
Language To Use To Get Me To Do Absolutely Anything
Said by boyfriend yesterday evening:
"Just sit your TINY ASS down."
Women really aren't that hard to figure out, are we?
Um, White Males Don't Have A Collective Ideology
Some white men are Democrats, some are Republicans, some are Wiccans, some are vegans, and some don't really identify as anything in particular at all. All of those groups have different points of view and missions -- whether it's "Don't eat the bunnies!" or for some Republicans, "Abortion is murder, and P.S. so is birth control."
To make that a little clearer, white men, collectively, do not have a collective ideology of "Slay people! People not like us!"
I'm writing this in response to a ridiculous piece in Salon by David Sirota, "Let's hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American," subheaded, "There is a double standard: White terrorists are dealt with as lone wolves, Islamists are existential threats."
Um, there's a reason white terrorists are dealt with as lone wolves -- because they are, or if they aren't, their "wolf" packs are small and not representive of all white men or even large groups of them.
I have been reading extensively in and about Islam since 9/11. While many Muslims have no idea what the Quran actually says (how utterly evil what it calls for is) and are no more murderous than my snoring Yorkshire terrier, the problem is with what the Quran actually does call for: the death or conversion of "the infidel," and for Muslims to achieve this through violent jihad. (As another post I'll put up soon notes, it is a lie that jihad, as dictated by the Quran, is some inner struggle. The references to use of weapons make that clear.)
Islam also commands other things I find problematic, like the slaughter of gays and apostates and the stoning of women for "adultery" (which is sometimes what they end up calling rape). All of these things actually happen in Muslim majority countries, unlike the ridiculous stuff in the Bible. (When's the last time Joe Catholic ran over the lady next door because she cheated on her husband?)
To ignore what Islam commands -- and which not all, but too many Muslims actually do take seriously -- isn't helpful, and especially not as a way to shoehorn the words "white privilege" into a story about the bombs in Boston.
Here's an excerpt from Sirota's idiocy:
As we now move into the official Political Aftermath period of the Boston bombing -- the period that will determine the long-term legislative fallout of the atrocity -- the dynamics of privilege will undoubtedly influence the nation's collective reaction to the attacks. That's because privilege tends to determine: 1.) which groups are -- and are not -- collectively denigrated or targeted for the unlawful actions of individuals; and 2.) how big and politically game-changing the overall reaction ends up being.This has been most obvious in the context of recent mass shootings. In those awful episodes, a religious or ethnic minority group lacking such privilege would likely be collectively slandered and/or targeted with surveillance or profiling (or worse) if some of its individuals comprised most of the mass shooters. However, white male privilege means white men are not collectively denigrated/targeted for those shootings -- even though most come at the hands of white dudes.
Likewise, in the context of terrorist attacks, such privilege means white non-Islamic terrorists are typically portrayed not as representative of whole groups or ideologies, but as "lone wolf" threats to be dealt with as isolated law enforcement matters. Meanwhile, non-white or developing-world terrorism suspects are often reflexively portrayed as representative of larger conspiracies, ideologies and religions that must be dealt with as systemic threats -- the kind potentially requiring everything from law enforcement action to military operations to civil liberties legislation to foreign policy shifts.
"White privilege is knowing that even if the bomber turns out to be white, no one will call for your group to be profiled as terrorists as a result, subjected to special screening or threatened with deportation," writes author Tim Wise. "White privilege is knowing that if this bomber turns out to be white, the United States government will not bomb whatever corn field or mountain town or stale suburb from which said bomber came, just to ensure that others like him or her don't get any ideas. And if he turns out to be a member of the Irish Republican Army we won't bomb Dublin. And if he's an Italian-American Catholic we won't bomb the Vatican."
What Passes For Justice On College Campuses These Days
Horrifying story in the WSJ by Judith Grossman of what's become of justice on college campuses, thanks to a government directive.
I've written about this here before, but this is her son's horror story. He is a senior at a small liberal arts college on the East Coast, and was charged by an ex-girlfriend with alleged acts of "nonconsensual sex" that supposedly took place during their relationship, a few years earlier.
Grossman writes:
I am a feminist. I have marched at the barricades, subscribed to Ms. magazine, and knocked on many a door in support of progressive candidates committed to women's rights. Until a month ago, I would have expressed unqualified support for Title IX and for the Violence Against Women Act.
And then this:
It began with a text of desperation. "CALL ME. URGENT. NOW."That was how my son informed me that not only had charges been brought against him but that he was ordered to appear to answer these allegations in a matter of days. There was no preliminary inquiry on the part of anyone at the school into these accusations about behavior alleged to have taken place a few years earlier, no consideration of the possibility that jealousy or revenge might be motivating a spurned young ex-lover to lash out. Worst of all, my son would not be afforded a presumption of innocence.
In fact, Title IX, that so-called guarantor of equality between the sexes on college campuses, and as applied by a recent directive from the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, has obliterated the presumption of innocence that is so foundational to our traditions of justice. On today's college campuses, neither "beyond a reasonable doubt," nor even the lesser "by clear and convincing evidence" standard of proof is required to establish guilt of sexual misconduct.
These safeguards of due process have, by order of the federal government, been replaced by what is known as "a preponderance of the evidence." What this means, in plain English, is that all my son's accuser needed to establish before a campus tribunal is that the allegations were "more likely than not" to have occurred by a margin of proof that can be as slim as 50.1% to 49.9%.
How does this campus tribunal proceed to evaluate the accusations? Upon what evidence is it able to make a judgment?
The frightening answer is that like the proverbial 800-pound gorilla, the tribunal does pretty much whatever it wants, showing scant regard for fundamental fairness, due process of law, and the well-established rules and procedures that have evolved under the Constitution for citizens' protection. Who knew that American college students are required to surrender the Bill of Rights at the campus gates?
...I fear that in the current climate the goal of "women's rights," with the compliance of politically motivated government policy and the tacit complicity of college administrators, runs the risk of grounding our most cherished institutions in a veritable snake pit of injustice--not unlike the very injustices the movement itself has for so long sought to correct. Unbridled feminist orthodoxy is no more the answer than are attitudes and policies that victimize the victim.
From campus civil liberties defenders, theFIRE.org:
"The rights of all Americans can be secured only through the establishment of fair processes and with a consciousness that all are equal in the eyes of the law. Yet on many campuses, the unfortunate accused face "kangaroo courts" without fair procedures, in which the political viewpoint of the "judges" greatly affects the outcomes of trials. The accused are often charged with no specific offense, given no right to face their accusers, and sentenced with no regard for fairness or consistency. The FIRE cases listed below illustrate our fight for fundamental fairness on our nation's campuses. This generation of students must come to know that justice means more than merely the enforcement of the will of the powerful and the suppression of the views of the powerless."
Free Speech In Turkey? A Wee Comment Supporting It From US Ambassador? Nopers.
Via @ClaireBerlinski and @AChristieMiller, who tweeted this:
Bizarre comment by US Ambo Ricciardone on the #FazilSay conviction.
Excerpt from Hurriyet link above:
Reactions continued to grow yesterday after a Turkish court convicted world-renowned pianist Fazıl Say with a 10-month suspended prison sentence for blasphemy on April 15.The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu said the verdict showed that democracy in Turkey was under threat.
"If you are going to jail our artists, encourage the judiciary in that way. If you are going to abuse the justice system - which does not really exist - I am sad to say that democracy in this country is at stake," Kılıçdaroğlu said at his party's weekly group meeting April 16.
...Say was convicted for "insulting the religious beliefs held by a section of the society" in tweets and retweets posted on his account in April 2012.
The tweets including a couplet attributed to 12th century poet, mathematician and philosopher Omer Khayyam: "You say its rivers will flow in wine. Is the Garden of Eden a drinking house? You say you will give two houris to each Muslim. Is the Garden of Eden a whorehouse?"
Say also tweeted the following observation: "I don't know whether you have noticed or not but wherever there is a stupid person or a thief, they are believers in God. Is this a paradox?"
Our ambassador's remark? Support free speech? Nope -- just this bizarreness:
In an interview with the Hürriyet Daily News in Ankara following the court's decision, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Francis Ricciardone merely said that his brother, David Ricciardone, who is a Supreme Court Judge in Massachusetts, had remarked to him: "A very bad piano player hit the wrong key."
Well, Except When Our Imams Are Supporting Terror
A headline on HuffPo, from a piece by Shahien Nasripour:
Boston's Largest Mosque: 'We're Bostonians -- We Mourn With The City'
And then there's this:
"Imam Abdullah Faaruuq ... calls convicted al-Qaeda member who attempted to fire on U.S. soldiers 'brave,' condemns soldiers as 'kafirs.'"
From Jihadwatch:
...well-known religious leaders with connections to Massachusetts political and civic leadership were involved in this campaign. Among them was Imam Abdullah Faaruuq, then the Muslim Chaplain at Northeastern University and a frequent preacher at the largest mosque in the Northeast, the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center.
More about the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center from Militant Islam Monitor:
The ISB was founded by Abdulrahman Alamoudi. He is currently serving 23 years in prison on terrorism charges.An original trustee of the ISB, Yusuf Qaradawi, is the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is a global Islamist organization and a key source of worldwide Islamic extremism.
Current ISB President Osama Kandil was a director of Taibeh International- a Muslim Charity designated as a terrorist entity by the US Government in 2004.
Jamal Badawi, a recently appointed Trustee of the ISBCC, was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of a Muslim charity, The Holy Land Foundation. [1] The Holy Land Foundation trial recently resulted in federal convictions for the illegal distribution of money to Hamas; a designated terrorist organization.
The ISBCC is now controlled by the radical Muslim American Society (MAS). U.S. federal prosecutors have identified the MAS as 'the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America".[2]
The majority of the funding for the center's construction came from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf States. Saudi Arabia practices Wahhbisim, an extreme brand of Islam that promotes a return to Islamic orthodoxy as taught by the 7th century prophet Mohammed.
The ISB has attempted to hide the identity of its true leadership by rotating trustees and board members. They falsely state that a new local board assumed control of the center from the prior mostly overseas based trustees. When the ISB became too controversial, the leadership re-branded the ISB into the (MAS)Muslim American Society's Boston Branch.
In addition to these hard facts, a recent speaker invited to give a talk at the ISB's Cambridge Center, is also very troubling. The speaker, Sheikh Yasir Qadhi had previously denied the Holocaust, claimed that Jews want to destroy Muslims, and called all non-Muslims a "spiritually filthy substance" whose lives and property hold no value. This audio of some of his talks can be heard on www.hatefreeamerica.org.
A sura in the Quran (2:190) commanding jihad is here:
By abandoning Jihad (may Allah protect us from that) Islam is destroyed and the Muslims fall into an inferior position; their honour is lost, their lands are stolen, their rule and authority vanish. Jihad is an obligatory duty in Islam on every Muslim, and he who tries to escape from this duty, or does not in his innermost heart wish to fulfil this duty, dies with one of the qualities of a hypocrite.
A book to explain how Muslims are radicalized: The Islamist: Why I Became an Islamic Fundamentalist, What I Saw Inside, and Why I Left
The Links Of Wrath
Tom, Tom Joad? That you, Tom Joad?
Marc Randazza: How To Defeat Terrorism
Wise words from Marc J. Randazza, the First Amendment lawyer who came to my rescue and wiped the floor with the TSA worker and her lawyer (when they demanded $500K from me because I dared use my First Amendment rights to complain about the violation of my Fourth Amendment rights as well as my private parts).
Randazza on what we can do -- on a personal level, each of us:
You know how you defeat "terrorism"? You refuse to be "terrorized," and it turns "terrorism" into simple "crime."Be empathetic. Be angry. But don't be afraid.
"Angel" Protected Her? (But Didn't Care About All Those Hurt Or Dead People?)
Headline:
Boston Marathon bombings: Runner feels 'angel' kept her, family out of harm's way
An excerpt from the Sporting News story:
Demi Knight Clark, a 36-year-old from South Carolina, believed she had an angel running with her Monday in the Boston Marathon.She was just a few feet from the finish line when two explosive devices detonated. She probably would have been closer to the blasts that killed three and injured more than 140 if not for the fact her husband and two young daughters were in the VIP bleachers on the other side of the road.
You can understand people's relief at not being among the hurt in Boston, but once again, people attribute their not getting hit to some mystical force -- which suggests that the angel thought about all those people who were hit and killed, "Fuck you, you're not worth saving."
The people who say things like this -- and who believe things like this -- never think about that.
The truth: You ran a little slow or a little fast and you were randomly not in the line of fire.
The guy who lost his legs was running, at least in part, to earn money for charity, apparently. (I read that somewhere.) Did the "angels" think, "Asshole!" Or do we think he was just horribly, horribly unlucky?
Keeping Perspective Vis A Vis The Tragic Events In Boston
The terrorists do "win" if we give up the things that make us America instead of a repressive Orwellian dictatorship. Ron Bailey writes in reason:
First, condolences to those who have lost parents, friends, and children to the Boston marathon explosions and let us hope for the speedy and full recovery of those injured.Second, don't be terrorized; do not surrender one iota more of liberty to the national security state. Keep in mind that your chances of being harmed by a terrorist attack are vanishingly small. I offer some calculations from my 2006 column, "Don't Be Terrorized."
An excerpt from that column:
But how afraid should Americans be of terrorist attacks? Not very, as some quick comparisons with other risks that we regularly run in our daily lives indicate....What about your chances of dying in an airplane crash? A one-year risk of one in 400,000 and one in 5,000 lifetime risk. What about walking across the street? A one-year risk of one in 48,500 and a lifetime risk of one in 625. Drowning? A one-year risk of one in 88,000 and a one in 1100 lifetime risk. In a fire? About the same risk as drowning. Murder? A one-year risk of one in 16,500 and a lifetime risk of one in 210. What about falling? Essentially the same as being murdered. And the proverbial being struck by lightning? A one-year risk of one in 6.2 million and a lifetime risk of one in 80,000.
...So how do these common risks compare to your risk of dying in a terrorist attack? To try to calculate those odds realistically, Michael Rothschild, a former business professor at the University of Wisconsin, worked out a couple of plausible scenarios. For example, he figured that if terrorists were to destroy entirely one of America's 40,000 shopping malls per week, your chances of being there at the wrong time would be about one in one million or more. Rothschild also estimated that if terrorists hijacked and crashed one of America's 18,000 commercial flights per week that your chance of being on the crashed plane would be one in 135,000.
He points out that we "ultimately vanquish terrorism when we refuse to be terrorized. Catch the culprit(s) and punish them."
"Rent-Seeking" Isn't About The Landlord Coming Down To See Where Your Check Is
It's a term that's been in the news lately, and I had to look it up and I thought you might like to know, too.
From EconLib.org, per David R. Henderson, it describes...
...people's lobbying of government to give them special privileges. A much better term is "privilege seeking."
Boston Marathon Heartbreak Headline: "So Many People Without Legs"
From The New York Times' Tim Rohan, quoting a runner:
"These runners just finished and they don't have legs now," said Roupen Bastajian, 35, a Rhode Island state trooper and a former Marine. "So many of them. There are so many people without legs. It's all blood. There's blood everywhere. You got bones, fragments. It's disgusting."Had Mr. Bastajian run a few strides slower, as he did in 2011, he might have been among the dozens of victims injured in Monday's bomb blasts. Instead, he was among the runners treating other runners, a makeshift emergency medical service of exhausted athletes.
"We put tourniquets on," Mr. Bastajian said. "I tied at least five, six legs with tourniquets."
About the guy -- "Jeff" -- who was seen in some photos having lost both his legs, from Reddit.
Links, Links, Links
It was a too-much-news day.
Horrible: Explosions Rock Boston Marathon
Terrorism, not surprisingly, is expected to be behind them. Story at NPR.
Boston Globe video -- horrifying -- is here.
Via NPR:
Update at 4:57 p.m. ET. Third Explosion:Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis said during a televised news briefing that a third explosion happend at the JFK Library.
Update at 4:09 p.m. ET. At Least 2 Dead:The Boston Police Department reports on twitter that at least 2 people are dead and 23 people have been injured.
Update at 3:58 p.m. ET. Counter Terrorism Officials On The Scene:NPR's Dina Temple Raston reports that the FBI has sent counter terrorism officials to the scene.
The NPR link will have further updates as they come in.
UPDATE: Photographer's eyewitness account.
How To Read Through The Science Hype In Newspapers
Many newspapers either move over general interest reporters (Hello, LA Times!) to science reporting or have sloppy reporters (Gina Kolata and Jane Brody at The New York Times) who err in their thinking and reporting with great regularity. Unfortunately, that's hard for the average reader to see -- and many tend to give these reporters more respect than they deserve, simply because they're writing for a major media source.
Well, there's an excellent piece in Forbes by a medical reporter I hadn't read (or maybe noticed that much) before but now have respect for, Larry Husten. An exerpt from his piece, "Is Red Meat A Fish Story? Why You Should Never Believe Health Headlines":
Don't believe the the hype! That's the cardinal rule to obey when reading health news. "Breakthroughs" and "cures" are rare, and should always be viewed with caution and skepticism.This week was a great example. Last Sunday, the New York Times, the major networks, and a host of other media outlets (including this one) reported on a paper in Nature Medicine about the discovery of a novel and potentially significant pathway linking red meat to heart disease. Briefly, the research suggested that carnitine, which is found naturally in high concentrations in red meat, can lead to atherosclerosis when it is converted by gut bacteria to a chemical called TMAO. Almost immediately I received a lot of comment from experts who raised serious questions about the research. Then today, a separate study was published with an entirely different perspective on carnitine. Although the two studies don't directly contradict each other, they suggest that the real truth about carnitine is likely to be quite complex and will never be adequately summarized in a headline.
...First let me address the problems with the original paper. As several critics were quick to point out (and as I should have reported originally), a key assumption of the original paper- that eating red meat can in fact cause atherosclerosis- has never been demonstrated with scientific rigor and is actually the subject of intense controversy. I asked Stanley Hazen, the senior author of the Nature Medicine paper, about this. He admitted that "in truth, we did not examine this," though he pointed to several lines of evidence linking carnitine to heart disease.
Second, the Nature Medicine paper did not mention a key fact that could dramatically change one's interpretation of the research. The Nature Medicine paper claims that red meat leads to atherosclerosis through the conversion of carnitine to TMAO. But the paper didn't mention that fish- which almost everyone thinks of as being heart healthy- often have very high levels of TMAO. I asked Hazen about this and whether he had measured TMAO levels in fish. He didn't say whether he had measured TMAO in fish, but agreed that "some forms of fish that have very high levels of TMAO," such as deep sea fish in Arctic waters, which use TMAO as anti-freeze and "and have extraordinarily high TMAO" levels.
Do read the whole thing at the link.
via @ChrisKresser
Stef Willen: "Mapquest Directions To Hipsterville"
Hilarious.
Evil HR Lady On The Financial Costs Of "Mommy Track"
I posted on this the other day -- here -- and tweeted my post to Suzanne Lucas, aka Evil HR Lady, whose thinking on workplace issues I like a lot.
She said she had a post in the pipeline on this as well, and put it up today at CBSNews.com.
Here's an excerpt -- explaining why it sometimes pays for a woman to take a job that doesn't cover or barely covers her childcare costs. Like me, she points out that it's an investment:
Let's say you're a dragon trainer earning $35,000 per year. You determine that with all the taxes, commuting costs, wardrobe (fireproof clothing is expensive) and day care costs, your total take-home pay comes to less than $5,000 a year. Since that only works out to be a couple of dollars an hour in pay, you and your spouse decide it makes financial sense for you to stay home.Except that in five years, when the little darling (or probably longer, since the average woman has two children) is in school, you go back into the dragon business and discover that your former coworkers are now making significantly more than $35,000 a year. They have five more years of experience than you do, have received promotions, additional training and some are now managing the position you once had. You can't jump in where they are. And, most likely, you won't even be able to get the job you had when you left the work force years earlier. Why? Your skills are out of date.
So when you do get a job -- which isn't easy because you're competing against not only experienced people, but also the people who are straight out of school and whose training is fresh -- you likely will have to start a lower salary level than below where you left.
And you have to work back up to the original position, as your former coworkers are forging ahead. While it made financial sense, because of the high cost of day care, to stay at home during those early years, it turns out that your income will lag behind your former peers -- perhaps until the day you retire. While you would have only had an extra $25,000 in total take home pay by working those five years, you could end up earning hundreds of thousands of dollars less than your counterparts over the remainder of your working years.
...If you want to stay home with your children because it is the right thing for your family, then by all means stay home with your children. However, if you are only making that choice because it makes "economic sense" due to the high cost of day care, consider that your choice may not actually make economic sense. Instead, paying for day care could be an investment that makes it possible to maximize your future earnings, just like college. The key is to make your choices with as much information as possible, not just based on what your take home pay is today.
The Other Double Standard
Smart Cathy Young piece in reason,"Obama's Sexist Double Standard: What the Kamala Harris controversy reveals about about sexism and the left":
This looks like startlingly neo-Victorian paternalism: mild suggestive remarks, not directed at an individual woman or at women in general, are presumed so offensive to women as to warrant swift retribution. Of course, no one who has worked in a mixed-sex environment seriously believes that women don't make sexual jokes or comments in work settings. But that's where the double standard comes in: unlike the Victorian lady, the modern feminist who demands such protections needn't shun bawdy humor herself. Richards has made male anatomy jokes on her Twitter feed, which she uses professionally. When men make them, though, it's apparently a female-excluding assertion of male privilege.The logic here is similar to that of the outcry over Obama's "gaffe": since our culture has a history of demeaning women by reducing them to sex objects, the slightest whiff of sexuality or sexual speech in the workplace disempowers women and creates a hostile environment. But this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of female fragility: women cannot be accepted as equals if their special sensitivities require constant protection--whether those sensitivities are seen as the product of nature or culture. What's more, taboos and double standards inevitably invite backlash.
Both of these much-ados-about-nothing also reinforce the worst stereotypes of feminists: as humorless, speech-policing puritans intent on keeping men on a tight leash. Feminists may sneer at men who think it's their sacred right to tell penis jokes in a professional environment; but how many women would be pleased to find themselves pilloried for "inappropriate" banter within the earshot of an offended male? When did stripping the workplace of all personal, friendly, even frivolous interaction--particularly in an age of increasing work-life overlap--become progressive?
A hundred years ago, anarchist feminist Emma Goldman famously said that she did not want to be part of any revolution that would not allow dancing. Likewise, not only men but quite a few women women want no part of a feminist revolution if it bans innocent compliments and silly off-color jokes.
Men give each other shit. If you can't fit in -- if you're too uncomfortable in a world where that happens, there are professions where teasing and questionable language are off-limits: the old familiar ladies' ghetto of schoolteaching, for example.
More and more, I see what Young describes -- women with foul mouths (and Twitter feeds) who turn into The Language Police over the slightest, maybe-questionable remark made by a man.
Can't we all find our funny bone about these things?
You really aren't equal if you need humor cops.
Logic Lightweight Scalia Weighs In On Gays And What's Moral
It's never a good idea to think with your emotions -- especially publicly, and especially if you're a Supreme Court Justice. But irrationality, when driven by religion, makes people feel all squishy and righteous inside, and their thinking machinery blows a fuse.
Duncan Hosie, a Princeton freshman who is gay spoke out when Antonin Scalia spoke at the school, asking him about language he'd used in past decisions on gay rights, language that Hosie, "as a gay man, found extraordinarily offensive." A quote from Hosie's op-ed in the LA Times:
In my question, I quoted from two of Scalia's opinions (both of them dissents). One passage came from the case of Romer vs. Evans, which involved a Colorado statute banning laws that recognized gay people as a protected class. Scalia wrote: "I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible -- murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals -- and could exhibit even 'animus' toward such conduct. Surely that is the only sort of 'animus' at issue here: moral disapproval of homosexual conduct."I asked if he had come to regret that language. He hadn't. In response to my question, he posed two questions of his own: "If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against these other things?"
I hadn't really expected Scalia to apologize for his language. He has been remarkably consistent over his judicial career. Still, I had hoped, and continue to hope, that my question might lead Scalia to think about the language he uses in the soon-to-be-decided cases of U.S. vs. Windsor and Hollingsworth vs. Perry, which will determine the fates, respectively, of the federal Defense of Marriage Act and California's Proposition 8. I know from personal experience that poisonous language like Scalia's can be devastatingly hurtful.
Regarding "moral disapproval" of murder or cruelty to animals, there is a victim here. In gay marriage, two people have decided to make a lifetime commitment to be there for each other. This is immoral? Or...something we should encourage more of.
As for homosexuality being "immoral," again, there's no victim here -- just two consenting people.
Because your particular evidence-free belief system stands against that isn't reason to name-call.
The Third Link
(Pour me a Harry Lime Rickey.)
Advice Goddess Radio, Tonite, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET -- Dr. Tamar E. Chansky, Freeing Yourself From Anxiety
Advice Goddess Radio -- "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
This week's show will offer you numerous substantive, practical tips for keeping anxiety for taking over your thoughts and your life, emphasizing the use of reason.
My guest is psychologist Tamar Chansky, Ph.D., a leading expert on anxiety disorders, who has written a very helpful and down-to-earth book on understanding and conquering anxiety, Freeing Yourself from Anxiety: 4 Simple Steps to Overcome Worry and Create the Life You Want
Listen live at 7pm Pacific and 10 pm Eastern at this link or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/04/15/dr-tamar-e-chansky-freeing-yourself-from-anxiety
And don't miss last week's show with Loren Cordain, Ph.D., a leading expert on the Paleolithic diet and a professor in the Department of Health & Exercise Science at Colorado State University.
Dr. Cordain's book, co-authored with endurance coach Joe Friel, MS, is The Paleo Diet for Athletes: The Ancient Nutritional Formula for Peak Athletic Performance.
Listen online or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/04/08/dr-loren-cordain-paleo-diet-for-athletes
Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, with podcasts available afterward, at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon, or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
Should Your Waiter Be Paid A Living Wage (With Salary And Tips, Combined)?
People will argue that a job should pay what the market will offer. And some of these people think nothing of tipping 10 percent or less, perhaps because the waiter forgot to bring them their catsup. Yes, that's imperfect service, but does your boss dock you $50 when you mess up a little in a presentation because you didn't sleep well the night before? You'll ultimately get fired if you provide really bad "service" at your job, as will a waiter.
I leave 20 percent for a waiter as my standard -- as my base. A waiter pretty much has to stand in front of me and spit in my food for me to dock him (or her). I don't think a waiter is entitled to buy a mansion just because he serves people who have them. But I believe in paying people at least the minimum hourly rate of what it takes to get by month to month. You?
(This may mean a waiter has to round out his waiting hours with another job to make 40 hours a week -- per the MIT figures below -- but at least paying a living wage per a 40-hour work week.)
I'm not talking about some waiter who's a real jerk, who stands outside smoking pot when he should be serving you, but somebody who does an adequate job -- same as a lot of people do at their jobs.
Also, if we don't tip the waiter who serves us at Applebee's enough to live on (when combined with their sub-mininum wage that businesses are allowed to pay tipped employees), the waiter may get others to pick up the slack in state-supplied benefits like a food stamp card.
(See MIT's living wage calculator here, and the LA County rate of $11.37 an hour for a single person and $23.53 for a single person and a child.)
Again, I'm not talking about a "living-in-Bel Air" wage. The LA County living wage for a single person, for example, allows for $943 for housing, which can maybe get you a roommate situation or a studio in somebody's garage in a bad neighborhood.
Also allotted in the LA County number (for a single person) $285 for transportation, $142 for medical care, and $242 for food.
Where do you come out on this?
Should we at least pay people who work a wage they can live on? (And let me make this clear: I'm not talking about state-mandated wages; I'm talking about voluntarily paying, say, 20 percent, which is increasingly the norm, or at least 15 percent as a base.)
Or (forgetting the laws on minimum wage for a moment), if waiters will work for, say, 50 cents because the job market gets so terrible, is it okay to pay them that?
Racism Or Policy For All? The US Air/Black Men In Hoodies Racism Story Not What It Seemed To Be
Two young black men were told to change out of their jeans, baseball caps and hoodies before boarding the First Class section of a US Air flight. They claimed racist discrimination, because other passengers -- a white guy and an Asian guy -- were allowed to fly in First wearing jeans and hoodies.
But, whoops -- turns out the two black guys were flying on buddy passes (free, airline employee tickets). It also turns out there's a dress code that comes with such First Class employee freebies. First, though, here's the Alternet story and another more detailed one in The Daily Mail. And here's the link to the federal discrimination lawsuit the guys have filed -- apparently because they were held to the rules on buddy passes.
More here, at DemocraticUnderground.com. Some of the comments:
Merlot: Those were employee buddy passes, right? They don't have dress codes for revenue (paying) passengers, only employees or friends and family of employees riding on passes.
babylonsister: UPDATE - 4:00 PM: US Airways spokesperson Andrew Christie tells AlterNet, "We welcome customers of all ethnicities and backgrounds and do not tolerate discrimination of any kind. We take these allegations seriously." Christie added, "Initial indications are that these pass-riders were traveling on non-revenue tickets as part of our employee travel program. All employees and pass-riders are expected to comply with the policies associated with this travel privilege."The airline was within their rights, period. Most non-revenue pass-riders do have to abide by a strict dress code. I was the wife of an airline employee and got booted into the back of the plane several years ago because I had shoes on where just the tips of my toes showed. They can be very strict, or not at all, depending on the gate agent; it's at their discretion. But there is a dress code I tried to abide by because I knew they were doing me a favor.
If you're a paying customer, all bets are off as they're entitled to wear what they want; THEY are paying for the privilege.
trumad: I have a friend who works for you United. I have flown with him on buddy passes and there is most certainly a dress code.No biggie for me---it's free....basically slacks and a button shirt.
Now---I also fly quite a bit and have status with Delta that pushed me into First Class all the time. Hell I wear shorts and tee shirts...no problem... that's because I pay the price---it aint free.
TSA Genius Sounds Alarm When Man Calls His Sandwich "The Bomb"
Yes, these people contend their presence in airports is to keep us more secure, not just to obedience train us to give up our rights quietly.
Lisa Simeone blogs at TSANewsBlog:
Jason Michael Cruz learned the hard way about the brainiacs populating the TSA.Cruz was detained and missed his flight because a TSA clerk overheard him talking about a sandwich that was "the bomb."
Before all the TSA apologists come crawling out of the woodwork, let me ask you something: do you think that if a person were actually planning to bomb something, that that person would talk about it so openly and cavalierly?
...Do you really think Acme Terrorists, Inc. are going around blithely talking about bombs within earshot of everyone else? Really??
The TSA clerk probably got a merit badge for her quick thinking in reporting the Scary Terroristy Threat to a supervisor, and that supervisor probably got promoted. Meanwhile, Cruz missed his flight.
Investing In One's Career
Many times, I've done things that do not really pay -- in hopes that they will pay later.
I've been doing my radio show for over a year and a half now, for which we pay $40 a month. Yes, PAY. And I read and annotate, beyond my regular science reading, and take about 8-10 pages of notes on a science book a week.
I do this because I think this will eventually pay -- and frankly, it has, by making me far more comfortable when I'm on TV or doing other media, and better at radio than I've ever been.
On a related note, there's a letter about the cost of things in The New York Times -- specifically whether a woman should work when her individual salary doesn't justify the cost of child care, and I think it's right on:
Tax Disincentives for Working MomsThe attitudes described in "How the I.R.S. Hurts Mothers," by Lilian V. Faulhaber (Op-Ed, April 4), are precisely those that keep women from "leaning in." The notion that a wife should not go back to work if her individual salary does not justify the expense of child care is wrongheaded.
When my husband and I were starting our careers and family, I was making less than he was, but we did not calculate whether it made economic sense for both of us to work based on my salary alone. We recognized that the expense of child care was an investment in both of our careers, and one that would enable us jointly to achieve a certain level of income and support our family. The result: We both invested in our future by working. Eventually, my annual income exceeded his.
If women take themselves off the career track based on whether, early in their careers, child care costs eat up a significant portion of the family's income, they will never achieve income parity or career success.
AMY SABRIN
Washington, April 4, 2013
Update On Gay Man Arrested For Trying To Stay With His Sick, Hospitalized Partner
This man isn't allowed to marry the person he loves, but he made a seriously strong showing of "for better or for worse."
And all those documents people sniff that gays and lesbians can file to preserve their rights -- did nothing of the kind.
New details, from Roger Gorley's daughter, about his removal by the police for refusing to leave his sick partner. Cavan Sieczkowski writes at HuffPo:
Roger Gorley was handcuffed and forcibly removed from Research Medical Center in Kansas City, Mo., on Tuesday after he refused to leave his partner, Allen, who was receiving treatment for severe depression. Roger told Fox station WDAF that the hospital is guilty of discrimination. However, Research Medical Center denies the accusation, saying Roger was "disruptive and belligerent" and had to be escorted from the premises, according to a statement obtained by The Huffington Post.But according to Amanda Brown, the 26-year-old daughter of Roger, there is much more to the story than hospital officials are letting on.
Speaking with John Aravosis of America Blog, the woman said Allen's brother, Lee, didn't want Roger at the hospital. Lee confronted Roger in front of a nurse, and the nurse allegedly had Roger removed, even though Allen had said he wanted his partner there.
Roger and Allen, who have been together for five years, are in a civil union and make medical decisions for each other through Power of Attorney.
"Lee was being more crazy than my dad, he was the one who was yelling," Brown said.
Still, the nurse -- who supposedly was aware of Roger and Allen's status -- "directed her comments to Roger, 'You need to leave the room.' My dad said, 'No, this is my husband, I'm going to stay with him," Brown added.
Shortly after, the police arrived.
They forcibly and violently removed Gorley.
And people say marriage rights aren't necessary for gays.
More from Gorley's daughter here:
My father, Roger Gorley, and his husband, Allen Mansell have been married for nearly 5 years. They have shared a home together, purchased cars together, have all of their investments, and any other paperwork taken care of to be considered a real marriage under the law. In the state of Missouri civil unions are not recognized but many same-sex couples go ahead and follow through with the paperwork and register it with the state so they can be recognized as a significant life partner to the other person in moments such as these and especially after the death of their loved one. My fathers did this. They did all of the paperwork so something like what I'm about to tell you happened would never happen to them.Allen has suffered from a variety of illnesses over his life but one in particular is severe depression. He has been dealing with this for over 20 years and has done an amazing job at it. He has seen a psychiatrist regularly, maintained a well-paying job with the government, taken care of not only himself but his family members, and after making a big move from San Francisco back home to Lee's Summit, MO he found the love of his life, Roger Gorley.
...After I pack up the house, my daughter, and arrange plans for someone to come and get her at the hospital because I have no idea how long I will need to be there we arrive all at the same time to see Allen received by the nursing staff and my Dad, Roger Gorley, follows him in along with Lee, Allen's brother. This is when things started to get ugly.
Roger immediately rushed to Allen's side, grabbed his hand, and reassured him everything will be ok. He will handle everything. He is in good hands and they will be going home as soon as possible. His brother Lee decided to say similar things but to also add in that he will not allow Roger to make these decisions and he will make sure everything is ok. Well that ignited the fire in my father that had been swelling up inside of him. He said, "No you won't! This is my husband. I know what he wants and needs. You are never around. You need to leave."
The nurse had had enough at this point and asked my father to leave. He gave her a surprised look back and said "No I'm staying with my husband." She responded with "I know who you two are. You need to leave." My father took this as she had treated Allen before, knew who my father was to him, and was making the decision that they didn't have the right to one another as husband and husband. So instead of checking the file to see his power of attorney in his medical chart (they each have one for each other) she immediately called the police and had my father forcibly removed.
...It took 3 hours to process him through the system and get him bailed out of jail. A $600 fine for disorderly conduct and trespassing and has a restraining order against him from the hospital saying he is not allowed to step foot back on the hospital grounds even to see his husband.
If anyone remembers back in 2010 when Obama made the new law across the board that same sex couples will be given the same rights as heterosexual ones when it came to visitation rights in the hospital you will know that this restraining order has no grounds and is completely illegal for the hospital to do. But as of right now my father is not allowed to see his partner in the hospital who wants nothing more than to hold his partners hand and tell him everything will be ok.
...Please contact Amanda Brown at 913-710-5665 for more information on the story as it develops. Roger Gorley and Allen Mansell request that you respect their need for privacy and understand that in the end the only thing they want is equal rights under the law. The same protections and allowances that heterosexual couples receive. We both know that if this had been a man and his wife this would not have happened the way it did.
The Good, The Bad, And The Linkly
Soundtrack by Ennio Morricone.
Dolls Of The World Of "Everything Is Racist"
Apparently, there's a backlash against the (very pretty) Mexican version of Mattel's "Dolls of the World" as "racist."
Apparently, the problem is that the Mexican doll includes a passport -- just as all the rest do.
From Huffington Post:
Bloggers including Laura Martinez have protested the inclusion of a passport at all, suggesting that making special reference to the doll's documentation is offensive.On Cafemom's The Stir, blogger Adriana Velez called the entire set a "missed opportunity" to teach about real cultural diversity.
Complaining that the Mexican doll's costume was not only old-fashioned, but also inaccurate, she suggested alternative accessories like "a white blouse with colorful embroidery and a woven shawl."
"[A]ll girls deserve dolls that enlighten them, not that talk down to them with this half-assed ethnic tourism," she wrote, adding that a hairless dog -- or even a Mexican bass guitar -- would have been a more appropriate prop than a Chihuahua.
...National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts chairman Felix Sanchez sounded off more generally to Fox News Latino about the "dated" images projected by the dolls.
In an online announcement last June, when Mattel relaunched a group of the Dolls of the World principal designer Linda Kyaw noted that she had never been to Mexico when she designed the Mexican doll.
Responding to complaints on Twitter, the company wrote: "Mexico Barbie is 1 of 100 Barbie Dolls of the World. Current dolls wear a country-inspired outfit & have a passport & animal."
Mattel says they consulted the Mexican Embassy on the design for the doll and the inclusion of the chihuahua -- in case anyone is looking for the right place to target their blame. Racists! Racists!
P.S. Where are the howls of protest that, unlike Malibu Barbie, all women who live in Malibu are not blonde and tanned?
That Old Blood Libel Magic Is Here To Stay
A quote from an Egyptian university's website:
Cultural Committee [of] the Department of Libraries and Documents [at] Beni Suef University invites you to attend a seminar entitled (the mystery of hiding blood of the Jews).
Lovely, huh?! (Personally, I hide my blood in my veins. Storing it in Mason jars is messy and inconvenient.)
More here:
Arab officials have also resorted to blood libels.King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, for example, said that Jews "have a certain day on which they mix the blood of non-Jews into their bread and eat it. It happened that two years ago, while I was in Paris on a visit, that the police discovered five murdered children. Their blood had been drained, and it turned out that some Jews had murdered them in order to take their blood and mix it with the bread that they eat on this day."
A screenshot: 
Breast Case Scenario
"Victim recalls assailant's breasts, little else."
via @radleybalko
Passing Boyfriendisms: Planning A Visit To Tech Support Hell
Gregg, who, poor thing, has to make a tech support call today about something to do with his boss' website not backing up, said to me this morning:
"I think all the tech support from all the companies in the world is coming from a single hut in the Philippines. Makes you long for India."
Electronic Pickpocketing: RFID And Credit Card Cloning
The video -- about RFID in credit cards, debit cards, and passports, and how easy it is to read and clone your information. (The guy turns a hotel room key into a credit card -- with some lady's number.):
Linkton Abbey
What would Maggie Smith do?
A Desk In The Life
Technically, this is the ledge around my desk, but the look of my desk is pretty consistent with the look of the ledge. (I move Paper Mountain when there's serious danger of an avalanche, as there will be soon.)
That pile is printouts from about three chapters of my next book (and studies that went into them). There are two other piles on the other side of the ledge -- one about three feet high on a wooden chair. The other is the overflow on the floor.
No, I am not a friend to trees, but if I were, I'd be a shitty read.
P.S. I just got my first royalty check from I See Rude People: One Woman's Battle To Beat Some Manners Into Impolite Society. It was about the most exciting thing I've ever gotten in the mail.
Thanks to all of you who bought copies, and for all of you who have yet to, it's only $11.32, brand new, with Amazon's discount at the link above. (New copies or Kindle books go against my advance, and help me keep writing...and eating!)
Unintended Consequences: Bloomberg's Proposed Big Soda Ban Likely To Backfire
Melissa Healy reports in the LA Times -- well, "reports," not bothering to name the researchers or link to the journal:
New research shows that prompting beverage makers to sell sodas in smaller packages and bundle them as a single unit actually encourages consumers to buy more soda -- and gulp down more calories -- than they would have consumed without the ban.Not only would thirsty people drink more, but circumventing the big-drink ban by offering consumers bundles of smaller drinks also would mean more revenue for the beverage purveyors, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE. The sales boost would probably offset the added cost of producing more cups, lids and straws to hold those extra drinks, the researchers found.
The results reveal "a potential unintended consequence that may need to be considered in future policymaking," wrote the study authors, psychologists from UC San Diego.
The findings come a month after a New York judge struck down a bid by New York City's health department to halt the sale of super-sized soft drinks at restaurants, movie theaters and sports venues across the city, calling the proposed measure "arbitrary and capricious.
Study, by Brent M. Wilson, Stephanie Stolarz-Fantino, Edmund Fantino, is here: Wilson BM, Stolarz-Fantino S, Fantino E (2013). "Regulating the Way to Obesity: Unintended Consequences of Limiting Sugary Drink Sizes." PLoS ONE 8(4): e61081. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0061081
Lying Wife Falsely Accuses Husband Of Beating Her
He had to prove he was not guilty -- and did.
Light Bulb Law Was Policy Profiteering
Thank goodness GE has bajillions of lobbying dollars, or we'd still be allowed to buy the lightbulbs we want. (I, of course, bought over 100 incandescents, and plan to sell them like drugs on the street corner if times get really tough.)
Timothy P. Carney blogs at WashEx that if GE couldn't keep companies out of the ordinary lightbulb market, well, they'd just work to get ordinary lightbulbs outlawed:
A few companies -- Sylvania and GE -- dominated the incandescent bulb market, yet incandescents stayed cheap. Why? Because there were very few barriers to entry. The technology was a century old. The materials were basic (glass, tungsten, an inert gas, a metal base), and the manufacturing process was pretty easy to automate. So if GE and Sylvania tried to jack up its prices, someone else could jump into the market, undercut them and probably win Wal-Mart's business....So, where to find barriers to entry? Maybe higher-tech bulbs? LEDs, CFLs, or other bulbs that offer longer life and greater efficiency. GE, Osram, and Sylvania jumped into those high-tech bulbs, got some patents. R&D expenses, higher manufacturing costs, proprietary information -- these created barriers to entry and allowed heftier profit margins.
But what if you made a super-efficient long-life bulb -- and nobody wanted it? What if you couldn't convince consumers that these bulbs were good for them? Well, that's when you thank your lucky stars that you are GE, with the largest lobbying budget of any company in America.
You "heavily back" legislation that will "effectively outlaw ... the traditional incandescent light bulb." Now all consumers are forced to play in the world where you have greater barriers to entry, and thus bigger profit margins.
And pssst:
GE makes its CFLs in China, clearly with lower labor costs. So, the Economist is right: The law didn't create hardships for the firms -- only for their employers and customers.
The Big Linkbowski
""That rug really tied the room together."
Read, Read, Read, Read, Read
Select books, 50 percent off at Amazon
P.S. You can change any that say "auto-renewal" to not do that in Amazon's subscription manager after you pay.
The College Pottymouth Police
A 30-year-old college student said "fuck" in conversation with another student outside the classroom and it nearly ruined his life, thanks to a communications! teacher who finds freedom of speech (of the sort not fit for tea with the queen) not quite to her liking.
FIRE -- the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education -- to the rescue!
In 2010, Isaac Rosenbloom was a student at Hinds Community College in Mississippi. He was disappointed to receive a grade of "74" on an exam, and after class ended he walked outside and complained to a fellow student, "This grade is going to fuck up my entire GPA."After overhearing the comment, Rosenbloom's professor, Barbara Pyle, berated him for cursing and threatened to send him to detention. Says Rosenbloom, "I countered with, 'I'm 30 years old. This is college. There is no detention.'"
Rosenbloom didn't get detention, but the husband and father of two children received something worse: Administrators booted him from Pyle's class. The punishment jeopardized his financial aid eligibility and could have derailed Rosenbloom's plans to become a paramedic.
Then FIRE got involved.
"If it wasn't for FIRE," says Rosenbloom, "I wouldn't have a career. I would be delivering pizzas instead of saving lives."
Video by my friend Ted Balaker
Backfire: City-Mandated Charges For Shopping Bags
Boyfriend is irate that West Hollywood has mandated a charge for shopping bags at groceries and other stores. (It's now 10 cents for a paper bag.)
"They want you to use those filthy recyclable bags," he said. "The guy behind the cash register has to touch those?" Disgusting.
Boyfriend now drives out of WeHo to do his food shopping, across the border to stores located in the city of Los Angeles. (It really isn't even out of his way.) Problem solved -- for everybody but those who own a WeHo food business. Good job, meddling, overlegislative idiots!
Strangers On A Linktrain
Will you follow through with your end of the bargain?
I Strongly Support Gay Rights And Same-Sex Marriage. I Don't Support Forcing Anyone To Do Business With Anyone
There's a case in Seattle now, where the state attorney general filed a claim against a florist claiming that her refusal to provide flower arrangements for a gay couple's wedding -- which disgusts and saddens me -- amounted to discrimination.
And it does amount to discrimination -- discrimination on the part of a person who is religious, and that should be permitted as part of living in a free country. You should likewise be able to refuse me service because I grew up Jewish, or because I'm an atheist, or because you don't like my writing or my red hair.
Lornet Turnbull writes in the Seattle Times:
The state's suit against Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene's Flowers and Gifts, came just days after the Attorney General's Office wrote to ask that Stutzman reconsider her position and agree to comply with the state's anti-discrimination laws."Under the Consumer Protection Act, it is unlawful to discriminate against customers on the basis of sexual orientation," Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement. "If a business provides a product or service to opposite-sex couples for their weddings, then it must provide same-sex couples the same product or service."
JD Bristol, attorney for Arlene's, said his client has many customers and employees who are gay and the claim that she is "discriminating on the basis on sexual orientation is nonsense."
"This is about gay marriage, it's not about a person being gay," Bristol said. "She has a conscientious objection to homosexual marriage, not homosexuality. It violates her conscience."
The suit stems from a March 1 incident in which Robert Ingersoll went to Arlene's to purchase flowers for his upcoming wedding. Stutzman refused him service, citing her "relationship with Jesus Christ."
Disgustingly, there's this:
The state is seeking $2,000 in penalties and a permanent injunction requiring the florist to comply with state laws.
Comply by violating her conscience.
A comment from the site responding to a tired argument -- one that neglects the fact that Jim Crow Laws were state laws, state-instituted discrimination by segregation and voter disenfranchisement:
This is like keeping blacks from the lunch counter. Once you are in business, DO NOT DISCRIMINATE.I am black and if someone refused service to me, that's their loss I'll take my money and go elsewhere. If a florist has a problem with your lifestyle, take your money and give it to someone who doesn't care.
Oh, and this isn't a gay marriage issue -- as another commenter points out, it's due to the state's "anti-discrimination" laws.
IRS Follows In Footsteps Of TSA Success In Crumpling Up Constitution
Fourth Amendment right not to be searched without a warrant? Pfffft! The IRS' attitude: "We don't need no stinkin' warrants." And "All your email are belong to us."
Declan McCullagh blogs at CNET:
The Internal Revenue Service doesn't believe it needs a search warrant to read your e-mail.
Newly disclosed documents prepared by IRS lawyers say that Americans enjoy "generally no privacy" in their e-mail, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and similar online communications -- meaning that they can be perused without obtaining a search warrant signed by a judge.
That places the IRS at odds with a growing sentiment among many judges and legislators who believe that Americans' e-mail messages should be protected from warrantless search and seizure. They say e-mail should be protected by the same Fourth Amendment privacy standards that require search warrants for hard drives in someone's home, or a physical letter in a filing cabinet.
Nathan Wessler, a staff attorney at the ACLU's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, blogs, "The IRS Owes the American Public an Explanation--and a Warrant Requirement":
Let's hope you never end up on the wrong end of an IRS criminal tax investigation. But if you do, you should be able to trust that the IRS will obey the Fourth Amendment when it seeks the contents of your private emails. Until now, that hasn't been the case. The IRS should let the American public know whether it obtains warrants across the board when accessing people's email. And even more important, the IRS should formally amend its policies to require its agents to obtain warrants when seeking the contents of emails, without regard to their age.
Bush Was Actually Spendier
The notion that the Republicans are the party of small government and not (usually) the party of slightly less ginormous government is punctured by Cato's Chris Edwards in a blog item, "Obama's Budget: Spending Too High, But Bush Was Worse":
President Barack Obama's new budget proposes to spend $3.78 trillion in 2014, which would be 27 percent higher than spending in 2008. President Obama believes in expansive government, and he is proposing a range of new programs, including subsidies for infrastructure, preschool, and mental health care.However, total federal outlays increased substantially faster under President George W. Bush than they have under Obama so far. It is true that Obama's spending ambitions have been restrained by House Republicans. But looking at the raw data, it appears that the last Republican president was more profligate than the current Democratic one.
True fiscal conservatives (who aren't just Republican dittoheads) are Independents, because the Republicans suck pretty close to as much -- and sometimes more -- than the Democrats.
See DownsizingGovernment.org, a site managed by Edwards and Tad DeHaven. Check out "Republican Freshmen Protect Big Government," for example.
NYC Councilman Vallone: Enemy Of Unauthorized People In Costume
The idiot hasn't realized that one tenth of New York City is in costume at all times. Or maybe he has.
I love what Mary Katharine Ham calls him at Hot Air -- the "greatest enemy of Muppets":
New York City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. introduced legislation Tuesday that would either ban or introduce tight regulations on costumed characters in New York City...Vallone told CBSNewYork.com that he had introduced two separate bills to combat the problems with costumed characters.
One bill would require registration, as well as a permission slip proving that the character involved has been licensed, for anyone appearing as a costumed character. The other bill would go farther to ban costumed characters outright.
"Clearly, the situation can't continue to exist the way it does, and the laws we already have don't deal with the situation," said Vallone, a Democrat from the 22nd District.
Hey, turd-for-brains, the answer to everything that could possibly make life momentarily unpleasant for someone isn't passing a law against it.
Heard of the First Amendment? It's a thingie we have to protect freedom of expression.
If I want to dye a toilet seat cover blue and go out as the Cookie Monster -- as did a man who was arrested in New York on Sunday after allegedly shoving a 2-year-old boy -- that is my constitutionally protected right.
There are laws to protect against battery already. Do we really need laws against:
1. People who batter others while wearing sequined evening gowns.
2. People who batter others while wearing t-shirts that need laundering.
3. People who batter others while dressed up as giant figures from publicly-funded TV shows.
Yes, says constitutionally-challenged Vallone:
"Clearly, the situation can't continue to exist the way it does, and the laws we already have don't deal with the situation," said Vallone, a Democrat from the 22nd District.The most recent alleged shoving incident with the man in the Cookie Monster costume - Osvaldo Quiroz-Lopez, 33, of Queens - was just the tip of the iceberg, Vallone said.
"We've had an anti-Semitic Elmo. We've had a groping Mario. And now we have a shoving monster," Vallone said.
If the idiots on the New York City Council are as idiotic as the idiots on the LA City Council, I predict this will pass. In which case, I encourage all defenders of the Constitution to do their part and go to Times Square wearing a big furry head so they can be arrested for illegal wearing of funny outfits.
via Christopher Buckley
TSA Worker: But Hawaii Is A Foreign Country!
Luckily for us, the TSA is just a security puppet show, not real security. (We took care of actual security by reinforcing cockpit doors and by coming to understand that there are people out there who think bringing down an airline for Allah will get them 72 virgins.)
Meaningful security is the sort done by trained intelligence officers, using probable cause to root out plots -- not by waiting until people get to the airport and having unskilled workers feel up their genitals.
Well, reinforcing what most of us who have looked into the dead eyes of a TSA worker already know, there's this posting from FlyerTalk, by "RedWingsFan" :
Hawaii is not a state according to the TSA agentI just went through the TSA expedited line at O'Hare. I handed my boarding pass and driver's license to the TSA agent -she's like we don't accept foreign driver's licenses. I informed the agent that Hawaii is a state. She's was adamant that it was a foreign country. Calls her supervisor over and proceeds to ask him if Hawaii was a state or not. He's like yes! And rolls his eyes!
Where do the Feds find these employees ?!
Free Advice For Pet Owners? Give It And The Government'll Cut Ya
Check out this Institute for Justice video about a retired vet the Texas government is trying to stop from giving free advice.
(There's a law making it illegal to give veterinary advice unless the vet has examined the pet at least once.)
Dr. Ron Hines, the vet giving the free advice, can't do that, because people are putting in requests for him from all around the globe, via the Internet.
More about the Institute for Justice case to help him:
Can the government silence and shut down licensed professionals for giving advice online?This Institute for Justice lawsuit involves free speech and Internet freedom while centering on one of the most important unresolved issues in First Amendment law: When does occupational licensing trump the First Amendment? The outcome will have widespread implications for medicine, law, psychology, investment advice, and many other occupations that often involve nothing but speech in the form of advice. The facts make it an ideal lawsuit for eventual consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Dr. Ron Hines is a highly regarded licensed veterinarian who's never had any complaints against him. Being a disabled and retired senior citizen, the Internet allows him to remain productive in his golden years. Yet he's been fined and shut down for giving advice on the Internet, often for free, to people around the planet who have no other access to veterinary care for their animals.
Beach Blanket Linko
Bye-bye, Annette...
Great Rates On Magazine Subscriptions
Most seem to be about $5 for a year!! at Amazon
Library Ducks
I had to pick up a book at the library, and a few delinquents were loitering in the parking lot. 
Aline Invasions
Hah--got a request seeking people for "TV Project profiling people who prep for Aline Invasions." (Yes, women in flared skirts can be terrifying.)
The Other Kind Of Gay Marriage
Bret Stephens writes at the WSJ:
As conservatives debate the subject of gay marriage, maybe they should pause to consider their view about the other kind of gay marriage.You know the one: He works mind-boggling hours and only comes home once his wife is sure to be asleep. He beams at the sight of an old college buddy. Two years into the marriage, she starts murmuring to her closest friend that he just isn't very interested in her, that way. Five years later he starts acting out in odd ways when he drinks. And he drinks a lot.
The correct term for this kind of thing is "mixed-orientation marriage." Human needs and desires and conveniences being what they are, sometimes these marriages serve some mutually agreed purpose. So it was between Cole Porter and Linda Lee Thomas, Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West. The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of, as someone once said.
Still, I'll go out on a limb and wager that, nine times out of 10, we're talking about a human tragedy, or rather two tragedies, his and hers. That is what happens when deceit and self-deception are the foundation of any relationship, marriage most of all. Now and again, the private tragedy becomes a full-blown public catastrophe. As in: Larry Craig, Jim McGreevey, Ted Haggard, you know the list.
So--are conservatives for this kind of marriage? Would they, for themselves, choose to share their life, and their bed, with someone toward whom they never had and never will feel a physical attraction?
...I have a crazy theory; see if you agree. It's that gay people generally want to lead lives of conventional respectability. So much so, in fact, that many are prepared to suppress their sexual nature to lead such lives. The desire for respectability is commendable; the deception it involves is not. To avoid deception, you can try to change the person's nature. Good luck with that. Or you can modify a social institution so that gay people can have what the rest of us take for granted: The chance to find love and respectability in the same person.
via @stevesilberman
They're Stupider In Wooster
I loved this quote from a guy just outside Wooster who shot a bear in his yard and is now in trouble for it. The story is from CBS Boston, via a reason blog item by J.D. Tuccille, "Man Faces Charges After Defending Himself from a Bear in His Own Yard":
"They got me set up now like I'm some kind of murderer. And then the environmental guy told me 'You should have called me instead of shooting it.' What was I going to do, say 'Mister Bear would excuse me please while I go make a phone call?'"
Undocumented Immigrants And Unkeyed Entrants
Two letters in the LA Times nailing those who favor PC lingo, in reply to the story, "Can people be illegal?".
Here's the first:
The term "illegal" applies to a process such as immigration, not to a person. The term "undocumented" suggests that the migrants merely overlooked some paperwork on the way in rather than deliberately violated immigration law. In fact, they are documented in their home countries.That this serious violation of U.S. sovereignty is considered an administrative offense rather than a criminal act further clouds the issue.
All said, the most accurate term would be "immigration violator."
--Howard Hurlbut, Redlands
Here's the second:
I hear that illegal immigrants prefer to call themselves "undocumented." This is political correctness gone mad. These people have no right to prefer anything. I suggest a few more politically correct terms:Burglar: unkeyed entrant.
Drunk driving: roadworthiness challenged.
Embezzler: Accountancy artist.
--Richard P. Ahearn, West Covina
Silence Of The Links
These are a few of my fava-rite things...
Coupons In Home And Kitchen
Save at checkout at Amazon
Everybody Likes To People-Watch
Doggie, Santa Monica. 
A Boy And His Battered Stolen VW Beetle: A Heartwarming Tale Of Interwebbiness
Via Jay J. Hector. The story.
50 Things Many Women Should Say "Screw This!" To Doing
Annabelle Gurwitch sent me a right-on piece she wrote for the HuffPo, "A To-Don't List" -- a response piece to an extremely annoying piece by a woman named Shelley Emling, titled 50 Things Every Woman Should Know How To Do By 50.
Annabelle writes:
Yesterday, a friend forwarded me the HuffPost "50 Things Every Woman Should Know by 50" list. It reads like a To Do list for maturity, but I would argue it's more like a To Don't list.At first glance, the items on the list seem reasonable, but by the time I got to "No. 13: Sew," I wondered if this list had been beamed into the Internet from 1957.
...Here's one that will now top my To Don't List:
Don't "No. 31. Apply makeup w/out a mirror."
Red alert, red alert! Don't try this unless you're a pro, and even then, maybe not...
...Don't "No: 10. Do their own taxes."
If you're working on No. 48, you would probably be better off having a professional prepare your taxes. I did this once. I tried to prepare my own taxes in 1989. I am still working on that return.
...Don't "No. 28. Tell off at least one person who deserves it."
If you're anything like me, that menopausal hormone rollercoaster can turn you into a raving maniac. Depending upon what day it is, what constitutes "deserving" is a slippery slope -- some days, anyone breathing in my ZIP code might count as "deserving." One of the things I am most proud of at this point in my life is my ability to resist telling people off. For example, just this week I was handed a small flyer by a pimply, overweight, 30-something-year-old guy sporting shorts and a T-shirt and flip-flops outside a health food store. "Thanks," I say and look down and see it reads: Hi, I'm David. I'd love to tell you about Herbal Life Supplements. I handed it back with a smile. "You're missing an opportunity to learn something," doughy man retorts. "That's okay," I said and walked away...
...Don't "No. 26. Whip up a signature dish that's not spaghetti or meatloaf."
This one is too old-timey-time for my taste, like "No. 13: Sew." I also have to wonder if these two would make a 50 Things list for men? Maybe not. I don't have a signature dish. Not everyone is cut out for kitchen duty. Isn't that something feminism freed us from? Or did third wave feminism return our aprons (I can't keep up with it)? A few years back, I chronicled my disastrous attempt to make what was going to become my signature dish, a brisket, on NPR. It only took me 17 hours. It did taste delicious, but my shoe would have tasted good after a 17-hour marinate and slow cooking...
...Don't "No. 5 Change a tire." I'm against it.
Some of the best advice I've read on effectively using your time in both business and your personal life is to recognize your strengths are and learn to delegate to others. At this age, I can confidently say automobile repair isn't my bailiwick. I recommend membership in AAA, it's the most value you can get for $48 in your lifetime. Sometimes the AAA guys are very cute, which is just an added bonus.
I'm with her. I emailed her:
When my boyfriend's friend asked whether I could fix a flat tire, I said, "Of course I can! I whip out my wallet and dial AAA."I find that being accomplished in a wide variety of things often means that you are not very accomplished in one single thing.
I used to be an extremely competent person. Now, I'm just a writer. I don't cook; I heat. I don't sew. I think about taking things to a tailor. But I'm writing at the top of my game and I love, love, love this book I'm writing -- which has also been terribly hard to write.
I'm reminded of this conversation I had with an old man at Staples the other day, who railed against everyone rushing around these days. Even I -- girl talking to him at Staples -- was rush-rush, set on high-velocity, he complained. I was rushing home to write my book, I told him. This is a good thing.
Orwellspeak Is TSA Language
That stuff they lift from your carry-on and your luggage (because your contact lens solution, not in a baggie, could be a bomb) they call "Voluntarily Abandoned Property."
The blogger at MinuteMenNews writes:
I am a simple man and believe words mean things.When the TSA tells you to leave something you own behind or you can't get on the plane, that's not exactly "voluntary" in my book. Kind of sounds like blackmail, but that's just me. When I'm told if I don't leave it, I can't get on the plane, I wouldn't consider myself "abandoning" that item because you usually abandon something you don't want.
It was my "property" but after I "voluntarily abandon" it, where exactly does it go? Well, according to TSA Management Directive No. 200.52,
"VAP deposited in collection bins shall not be recovered by, and will not be returned to, passengers. Upon voluntary abandonment of the prohibited item, the item immediately becomes the property of the Federal Government."
Tutlinkhamun
Mummy Dearest...
Advice Goddess Radio, earlier tonite, 6-7pm PT, 9-10pm ET -- Dr. Loren Cordain, The Paleo Diet For Working Out
Advice Goddess Radio -- "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
*Show is an hour earlier this week -- 6-7pm Pacific Time, to accommodate my guest's schedule.
Very exciting show this week with Loren Cordain, Ph.D., a leading expert on the Paleolithic diet and a professor in the Department of Health & Exercise Science at Colorado State University.
Dr. Cordain will bust numerous myths about how to eat for optimal workouts and lay out what the science says about how to eat before, during, and after a workout and why.
This show will have essential information for intense athletes, the focus of Cordain's book featured below, and for people who work out regularly and want improve their performance and health.
Dr. Cordain's book, co-authored with endurance coach Joe Friel, MS, is The Paleo Diet for Athletes: The Ancient Nutritional Formula for Peak Athletic Performance.
Listen live at 7pm Pacific and 7pm Eastern at this link or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/04/08/dr-loren-cordain-paleo-diet-for-athletes
And don't miss last week's show with psychologist Lenora Yuen, Ph.D., helping you cure your habit of procrastination. She'll talk about why you procrastinate and how to stop NOW.
Yuen is the co-creator of the first procrastination treatment group in the country, along with the co-author of her excellent, research-driven book, Procrastination
There's much wisdom in this book -- just in prepping for the show, I've recognized some of my bad habits, and I've started taking small steps to change them. You can do the same (with your own bad habits!). You're sure to get some very wise insight and tips for real and very positive change from the show.
Listen online or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/04/01/dr-lenora-yuen-procrastination
Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, with podcasts available afterward, at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon, or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
A Legal Immigrant's Story
The looking the other way at border-jumping and the amnesty for illegal immigrants is unfair to those like this woman and her family, who waited their turn. Ying Ma, at Fox News, tells the story of her family's struggle to emigrate from China, and adds:
We did not believe that we should show up here illegally, and then once we were here long enough, demand that America grant us legal status or even citizenship-- simply because we were already here and too many others have come here illegally just like us.We could not have known that we would have a U.S. president who likes to dole out government goodies to win an election, even when one of those goodies include is the precious commodity of the right to live and work in the United States.
We could not have expected that the Republican Party would fold like a cheap deck of cards as soon as they saw the cost of not engaging in the same type of racial pandering and political giveaway.
We certainly did not think that we were entitled to the generosity and kindness of the American people, who simply do not have the stomach to break up families and deport millions of people who had violated U.S. laws.
Obama's Bullshit Salary Giveback
Dana Milbank lays out the absurdity in the WaPo:
The White House announced that Obama, "to share in the sacrifice being made by public servants," would return 5 percent of his salary to the Treasury. The gesture, matched by several Cabinet members, was meant to be roughly the same percentage by which domestic agencies are being cut. But the amount -- $20,000 of his $400,000 salary -- is so little for a man made wealthy by his political fame that it comes across as patronizing.Obama and his wife reported income of $8 million in his first three years in office, largely from royalties on his memoirs, which were best-sellers because of his political fame. And the Obamas will soon go from rich to filthy rich. Bill Clinton earned $89 million in speaking fees in his first 11 years out of the White House, according to an analysis of disclosures done last year by CNN. Clinton received an average of $189,000 per appearance -- a record that Obama will be in a good position to match after his presidency ends.
For a man worth millions and soon to be worth tens of millions of dollars, $20,000 is not much of a sacrifice.
Incredible Story: Man Falsely Accused Of Rape Exonerated
Story by by Joel Grover and Chris Henao of NBC Los Angeles:
View more videos at: http://nbclosangeles.com.
A hidden camera confession helped exonerate Brian Banks, a former Long Beach high school football star, after he served five years in prison for a rape he did not commit.In an exclusive interview with the NBC4 I-Team, Private Investigator Freddie Parish divulged how he pulled off the stunning confession that freed the 6-foot-2, 239-pound linebacker who was being courted by top schools, including the University of Southern California, when accusations were brought against him 10 years ago.
Last year, Banks called Parish, who runs Vantage Point Investigations, asking for his help. The former football star had received a friend request on Facebook from his accuser Wanetta Gibson, who told Banks she wanted to "let bygones be bygones."
That's so much easier when you've gotten a $1.5 million dollar settlement from the school district, as she did, than when your football career was derailed by a girl falsely accusing you of rape, sending you to prison for five years.
No word on what, if anything, will be done to this horrible girl.
I think those who falsely accuse another of a crime, and can be substantively proven to have done so, should at least serve the time their accusee did or would have, and should have to spend their life or a good bit of it paying that person restitution.
In this case, this girl should be working to repay California taxpayers as well. Should she have another free moment until she does?
More on the case at Fox News' Kelly's Court:
Former prosecutor Mark Eiglarsh said he sees no reason why Gibson is not being prosecuted, arguing she has made it harder for legitimate rape victims to receive justice."The climate that she creates now is much bigger than just this one individual. Other rape victims may hesitate to come forward because now what this creates is an environment where 'well we don't know, could be another fake one, could be another Duke lacrosse situation.' Damn her for doing what she did. She should be taken into custody," he said.
Defense attorney David Wohl pointed out that Banks does not want to cooperate with authorities to allow for Gibson to be prosecuted. He said that Gibson would likely only face a misdemeanor anyway, and if prosecuted, would probably claim that she was not being truthful in the hidden camera video.
Linkzapoppin'
I think there was a gorilla...
Run, Rabbit, Run
For your last chance to save $20 off $100 on running shoes at Amazon
Enter the promo code RUNSHOES at checkout for the discount.
(I love these secret messages.)
I Hear Rude People's Dogs
Yes, leave your dog in your parked car to howl across from houses. Great for your dog and great for residents. Your convenience is of our paramount interest.
And All The Panties Remained Unwadded (When Obama Called Men "Good Looking")
Kamala Harris, California's latest idiot Attorney General, for whom I absolutely did not vote, is very pretty. Hot, in some photos.
Obama was taken to task by both liberals and conservatives for...gasp...paying her a compliment on her looks -- calling her, along with "brilliant" and "dedicated," "by far, the best looking attorney general." Which I think she surely has to be.
Where were all these panty-wadded types when the President was mentioning men's looks? From NYMag.com, Dan Amira writes:
Introducing HUD secretary Shaun Donovan last February, Obama declared, "There he is, the good-looking guy in the front here."At a speech last March, Obama pointed out his secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, by calling him "a good-looking guy."
A couple of months ago, Obama gave a shout-out to the "outstanding Secretary of the Navy," Ray Mabus. "There he is right there -- the good-looking guy over at the end."
Obama even extended his favorite compliment to the Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins. "I have to say all of you look pretty good without your playoff beards," Obama said during a White House ceremony. "They're pretty good-looking guys without all that."
In short, Obama is an equal-opportunity flatterer, not a shallow, sexist pig. Calling people "good-looking" -- men, women, Penguins -- is just something he does. It's almost a tic at this point. He doesn't mean anything by it.
However, these remarks do not occur in a vacuum. That the accomplishments of women are routinely undermined by men who have trouble focusing on anything beyond physical attractiveness is universally understood. As Irin Carmon writes in Salon today, "For every shirtless shot of Obama, there are probably 500,000 think pieces about the relative elasticity of Hillary Clinton's skin."
The fact remains, women and men are appraised differently, thanks to our evolved psychology.
Making this a thought crime -- or a big deal at all -- or training people that they aren't allowed to say somebody hot is hot, is an utterly ridiculous pretense. Women get jobs and get in doors because of their looks -- as do men. (Tall men, for example, seem to do better in the workplace, according to studies looking at height and success.) Pretending somebody isn't hot or keeping mum about that doesn't change it.
And since when is a compliment an insult?
Doesn't only considering it an insult when it's made to women show who the real sexists are?
I'm now 49 years old. Last night, at a monthly dinner I go to, somebody told me I have beautiful skin. I lapped it up like a cat on a bowl of cream.
TSA's Pre-Check Increases The Cost To Taxpayers From $11.21 Per Screening To $1,121 Per Passenger
Excellent piece by TSA News Blog's numbers guy, Bill Fisher, on the "some animals are more equal than others" TSA "Pre-Check" program, which comes at considerable cost to those of us who haven't paid in hopes of having our rights a little less violated:
With 644 lanes in operation, Pre-Check reduces the number of lanes available to regular fliers by 8%, leaving 593 lanes for regular customers. In terms of inefficiency, the Pre Check lanes process roughly 33,000 of the 45.7 million passengers passing through security in an average month, or less than 1% (0.07%) of all travelers. There are 548 million passengers per year going through these airports. Pre-Check has handled 7.5 million passengers in 19 months, or 32,895 a month.The most unconscionable example of the TSA's "some animals are more equal than others" policy is the Pre-Check in Las Vegas. In keeping with that city's reputation for pandering to the wealthy and the TSA's policy of class discrimination, the sole Pre-Check lane in Las Vegas is exclusively for use by First Class passengers.
...Since the Pre-Check lanes have the same operating cost in terms of equipment and staff but process less than 1% of passengers, Pre-Check increases the cost 100 times per screening compared to a standard security lane. This means that for every 100 passengers screened at regular checkpoint lanes, only one is screened in the Pre-Check lane. So rather than an average distributed cost of $11.21 per screening, the Pre-Check cost to taxpayers soars to $1,121 per passenger.
In terms of inconvenience, the reduced volume in Pre-Check lanes shunts regular travelers to the remaining lines. In the case of LAX, 3 of the maximum available 32 lanes (9.3% of the lanes) are limited to Pre-Check passengers. If only 75% of the lanes are available (24 lanes), that percentage increases to 12.5 % being unavailable to regular customers. This will add over 8,000 people to each lane each year when three-quarters of all lanes are open.
Nationwide, the TSA elite lanes remove 51 lanes from an optimistic estimate of 662 in operation, leaving only 611 to handle the 542 million regular passengers each year, increasing the load on the remaining lanes by 60,000 passengers each. This is further aggravated by disproportionate use by travelers: there are ample field reports of the Pre-Check lines at smaller airports going virtually empty.
It is becoming increasingly evident that this program is an attempt to undo some of the damage done by TSA Administrator John Pistole with his unpopular scanning and pat-down policies. The TSA is trying to create the illusion of progress without delivering a tangible benefit to travelers.
Funny Spam: Um, The Column Is Neither Doric Nor Ionic
Spam subject line: "Request for columns." The email:
Hello Sir/Madam
My name is John Gillan Working with William & Son Ltd and I do understand that you Handle some Columns. If you do sell them email me with the Model that you have With Sizes and their prices range On each. I will also like to know if you do accept Credit Card as a form of payment. Thank you
Link Story
Links are always having to say you're sorry -- that is, if they're any fun.
Cheep, Cheep, Cheaper!
It's the chirp of the Spring Outlet sale at Amazon
Phone Bill Itemization: I'm A Little Pissed To Be Paying Monthly For The Spanish-American War
I need to have a land-line for when I appear by phone on radio shows.
Scott Wilson wrote in the LA Times in 2012 about five fees that phone companies charge. Here's one:
Federal excise tax. In 1898, Congress placed this 3% tax on phone bills "temporarily" to help pay for the Spanish-American War. It was repealed or expired three times over the last century, but each time it was reinstated by Congress. After court challenges, it was eliminated in 2006 on long distance and cellphone service, yet remains on local land-line bills.
"Temporary" taxes rarely are.
And another that pisses me off -- from the scumbag phone company:
Regulatory Cost Recovery and carrier cost recovery fee. Despite their official-sounding descriptions, these are not taxes or required by the government. The money goes to your phone company. "These are additional charges which are essentially a way to hide rate increases," said Christopher White, chairman of the telecommunication committee with the National Assn. of State Utility Consumer Advocates.
TSA Dullards Allow Man On Plane Without Security Check
The best is, after he was turned away for a lack of ID and boarding pass, they watched him slip through the airport's secure area with his badge (he's a Delta employee) but waited 45 minutes to call Port Authority Cops.
(This isn't to say I think we're in real danger from behavior like this or that the TSA's job is anything more than a security puppet show.)
From the New York Post, Philip Messing and Bill Sanderson write:
Marcelino Aponte, 31, had a reservation on Delta Flight 2159 from Kennedy to Orlando last night.But Aponte had no boarding pass and no proper ID, and Transportation Security Administration screeners turned him away at a security barrier.
So Aponte -- a Delta employee -- used his special work ID to make his way to the plane via the airport's secure areas, said law enforcement sources.
A security guard and another witness watched as Aponte tried to pass through a secure doorway in Delta's Terminal 2. They noted that Aponte was carrying a small Louis Vuitton duffel bag with him.
Moments later, a TSA agent watched as Aponte tried to cleared another door, by swiping his airport work ID and then entering a PIN number onto a keypad.
Somehow, the agent lost track of Aponte.
And TSA officials waited until 45 minutes after Aponte's security breach to call Port Authority cops.
Police were finally alerted at 7:20 p.m. -- 18 minutes before his flight was scheduled to take off.
It wasn't enough time for cops to locate the suspect. The next thing anyone knew, the Orlando-bound Boeing 737 had left the airport with Aponte strapped in to seat 3B.
Aponte never cleared airport metal detectors, and his hand baggage was never searched, said sources.
Cops picked him up when his plane got to Orlando -- two and a half hours later.
via Jacquie T
Rude Vegans Ask For Custom Order And Whine That They Have To Pay For It
The story, from The Inquisitor, about how the guy brings, as my friend Joe Wahler put it, 12 cents worth of pasta, and expects a big discount for it:
Yet when Jack and Toby headed to Monticello with their 100% wholegrain pasta over the weekend, they were charged the full price of $24 and weren't allowed to use a $50 coupon.Cue vegan outrage. Jack immediately stormed to the New Jersey Star-Ledger, which promptly wrote a 1,300-word story about Litsky's experience, complete with a solemn-looking Jack clutching his pasta. Speaking to Star-Ledger reporter Karin Price Mueller, the out-of-pocket vegan said:
"[The owner] said, 'You come here on a Saturday night and order a custom meal. I have to charge you extra.' I said, 'But you've already set the precedent where you charged me a lot less than that on several occasions,' and she said that was the old manager's decision and this was the new price."
Here's the special instructions card they give the restaurant.
Restaurants are set up to make certain meals. If they have to stop and read a recipe for some new meal and cut up a bunch of ingredients they may not be using as part of the meals they make, this is not nothing.
I would ask for a substitution for fries when I used to get the happy hour flank steak at a restaurant near me. I'd pay a dollar or two extra for the caesar salad substitution -- without complaint.
If you don't want to pay the price of eating out, which includes the atmosphere and their way of doing things, or their charge for customization, easy solution: STAY HOME.
Oh, and if you want to be healthy, eat meat and cut out carbs. Veganism is wildly unhealthy, especially because you cannot get the B vitamins you need just from supplementation, and because meat is the perfect food for the human body, with the perfect proportions of nutrients.
What Color Is Your Lifeguard?
I nearly drowned as a kid. We were at Sleeping Bear Dunes in MIchigan, and I went out into the lake and there was a drop-off. A teenaged girl saw that I couldn't swim and yanked me out. She happened to be white. All that mattered was that she was right there and did what it took to get me out.
If you're a black kid and you're drowning in the middle of the pool, do you really care what color the lifeguard is or do you just care whether the person can blast across the pool to save you?
In Phoenix, they're trying to recruit minorities -- blacks and Latinos to be lifeguards -- and never mind whether they can swim all that well. From NPR, Jude Joffe-Block writes:
After noticing that most of the lifeguards at the public pools used by Latino and African-American kids were white, the Phoenix aquatics department decided to try to recruit minorities.More than 90 percent of the students at Alhambra High are black, Latino or Asian. On a recruiting effort there over the winter, the city's Melissa Boyle tells students she's not looking for strong swimmers. Like many under-resourced schools, Alhambra doesn't have a swim team.
"We will work with you in your swimming abilities," Boyle says.
Boyle's colleague Kelly Martinez takes on the delicate task of explaining the scenario the city is trying to correct.
"The kids in the pool are all either Hispanic or black or whatever, and every lifeguard is white," she says, "and we don't like that. The kids don't relate; there's language issues."
Martinez turns to a Latina student next to her. "Do you speak Spanish?" she asks. "We need more lifeguards who can speak Spanish."
Really? Really? Pointing and jumping up and down when somebody's in distress will cause a white lifeguard to go back to his or her reading?
And if there are "language issues" with the kids, isn't that another problem that should be addressed? You aren't going to do too well in this country if you don't speak solid English.
Rick Moran at PJMedia has a counterpoint:
You don't need to be a strong swimmer to lifeguard at a municpal pool.
via Martin
Virginia Is For Blow Job Bans
Virginia Attorney General (and busybody pervo) Ken Cuccinelli, who's probably running as the GOP candidate for governor in the state, wants to preserve Virginia's "crimes against nature" law that bans both oral and anal sex. (It makes either a Class 6 felony.)
Lawrence Of Linkrabia
Starring Dorothy Camel...
I Lurn A Lot From The LA Times
Screenshot from last night from story posted on the front page of their website: 
Turley On Aaron Swartz Case: Government Shouldn't Get To Keep Secrets So Their Perpetrators Won't Be Unpopular
Jonathan Turley blogs about the US Attorney Office's disgusting fight to keep secret the names of the prosecutors in the Aaron Swartz case:
The Justice Department was once all too eager to announce its prosecution of Aaron Swartz and issue press releases on how they piled on additional counts against him. However, after Swartz committed suicide in response to its unrelenting prosecution, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz and the Justice Department now want to keep the names of prosecutors in the case a secret so that they will not be held accountable for the abusive case. The Justice Department routinely holds press conferences in which prosecutors crowd stages to take credit for indictments. However, when a prosecution is denounced globally as excessive and cruel, the Justice Department wants to prevent the public from knowing the identities of the prosecutors responsible....Of course, despite the insistence by Holder that this prosecutor was a model of prosecutorial discretion and professionalism, they want to hide the names of those model prosecutors. Since they are pledging to continue such prosecutions, they will presumably hide the identities of prosecutors in future cases in the Administration's continued campaign against citizens.
U.S. Attorney's Office spokeswoman Christina Sterling stated that "Our argument against it is that not only does it have an effect on the people involved in the case, but there's also sometimes a residual effect." This is not an effort to redact personal information like telephone numbers and addresses, which is standard. It is an effort to remove the names of the prosecutors which are historically part of the public access to trials and court records. Such moves would further insulate the Justice Department from accountability for misconduct. It would also further a trend toward greater and greater secrecy in trials from the names of witnesses or alleged victims to types of evidence. Yet, Defendants are fully exposed to public review and scrutiny.
His source -- an Eric Smith Boston Herald story.
New Adventures In Gross
The "lip window" body modification.
Next fad: Window into your small intestine. (Pssst! All the world should not be a zoo/aquarium!)
When You Can't Afford To Buy, The Answer Is Renting, Not Having The Government Lower The Standards For Buying
Cathy Reisenwitz has a piece at Reason.org on the Obama administration's inability to learn a lesson -- or rather, on the Obama admin's push to make home loans available to people with weaker credit:
The Obama administration is concerned that even in the midst of the housing market's recovery, many young people and people with bad credit can't borrow money to buy homes. Yes, this sounds eerily similar to the policies that helped create the housing bubble in the first place. And yes, while ensuring that homes loans are available to all borrowers is a well-intentioned plan to help low-income families, it will likely hurt them.This is a bad policy idea for at least three reasons:
First, it's important to note that the administration is only promising to bail out banks, not borrowers. These loans would be going to people who probably don't qualify for a standard mortgage and may struggle to make their payments. As a result, many of the borrowers are likely to default. If they do, they'd suffer financial losses and damaged credit ratings that could haunt their families for years to come. Meanwhile, if the loans go bad, the bank executives receive bailout checks.
Second, subsidizing things makes them more expensive. In looking at the Obama administration's previous mortgage programs, Reason's Anthony Randazzo noted there was "clearly visible bump in the [price of housing] starting in March 2009 when a number of the programs to help housing started to kick in, including low interest rates and the first-time homebuyers credit." Guaranteeing home loans encourages low-income individuals to take out bigger loans for the same amount of house. This in turn makes their coming defaults even more ruinous than they would have been in an unsubsidized market.
Third, buying a house limits labor mobility, or the ability to pack up and move when you need a new job. Labor mobility is especially important to low-income, low-skill individuals.
What's wrong with renting? Many low-income or young people would actually be better off with the flexibility that renting brings.
I rent.
I can't afford to buy -- and couldn't back when all the dimwits were getting the crazyloans.
Perhaps a better message for the President to be putting out is that people shouldn't live beyond their means.
Then again, the entire country is "living" beyond its means, and the idiot voters keep re-electing the pandering politicians who keep digging us in deeper and deeper.
Got children? Grandchildren? What a lovely mess we're leaving them.
via @reasonpolicy
Cenk Uygur: Ronald Reagan Wasn't The Conservative You Thought He Was
Uygur, on MSNBC, contends Reagan not only couldn't get elected as a Republican today, but couldn't get elected as a Democrat:
Pretty In Link
Starring Molly Linkwald...
All The World's An Art Museum
Biarritz, France, taken by a friend of mine. 
Today's The Day: Redfern and Pradhan vs. TSA Thuggery
Robert Taylor writes at policymic of the appeal brought by Jeffrey Redfern and Anant Pradhan, who were Harvard law students when they started on this action in 2010:
On April 3, the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals will hear an appeal for a lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) filed by two Harvard law students in 2010 claiming that their Fourth Amendment rights were violated by "nude body scanners" and "enhanced pat-downs."A victory on the side of the two students, Jeffrey Redfern and Anant Pradhan, would definitely be a win for civil liberties and the Bill of Rights. But even if, however, the lawsuits are struck down, this case will help continue to highlight and expose one of the most pervasive institutions of government abuse that exists in America.
...While some may defend the TSA as supposedly "necessary" for security and many others may acquiesce to their civil liberties violations to go along with the crowd and not raise a fuss, the TSA is truly one of the most vivid examples of the cold, cruel nature of government power. Every time I have had the unfortunate experience of waiting in an airport (and now, even taking the train or bus), I see Orwell's nightmares staring back at me: the latex gloves, the hideous uniforms, the omnipresent voice-overs, the sheep-like lines, the arrogance of undeserved authority. It truly is the purgatory of the national-security state.
...The growth of TSA also exemplifies a point made by economist Robert Higgs. Higgs, in his classic work, Crisis and Leviathan, describes what he calls a "ratchet effect" that perpetuates the costs and increases in government power. Whenever there is a crisis, real or imagined, the government claims new authority, creates agencies, and taxes and transfers wealth. After the crisis is over, the authority may shrink a bit, but never is reduced to the extent that it was before.
...That's why this Wednesday's appeal hearing is so important. Not because it will turn the Department of Homeland Security's lights off the next day (though one can hope!), but because at the very least it will add to the growing lists of public grievances that are piling up against the TSA, giving Americans fewer and fewer excuses to stay silent in the face of abusive state power.
How Hard Is It To Get Boxcutters Past The TSA?
This guy realized he'd left his in his carry-on, and with about five brain cells, figured out how to get it past the security puppet show. Christopher Elliott blogs at TSANewsBlog:
Andy deLivron says he's no threat to aviation security. But he flies with box cutters in his checked luggage -- the same weapon used by the 9/11 terrorists. And he recently packed the sharp tools in the wrong suitcase.By the time deLivron, a sales manager from Pottersville, NY, realized the box cutters had been misplaced in his carry-on bag, it was too late. He was already past the TSA screening area at Dallas Love Field and boarding his flight to Orlando, where he planned to catch a connecting flight to Albany, NY.
DeLivron missed his connection and had to spend the night in Orlando.
"But now I had a problem toss the knife or try to get it home in my carry-on bag," he says. "I decided if I could place the knife on edge in my carryon it would be highly likely that security would miss it again. Sure, enough I was right. My carryon went right on through in Orlando."
Yes, you read correctly. TSA agents missed a box cutter in his carry-on luggage. Twice in a day.
Elliott continues:
If there's a consensus among security experts, it's that the meaningful screening takes place long before you arrive at the airport, and that's where the failures of 9/11 happened...The faster the agency assigned to protect America's transportation systems returns to a common-sense screening approach, the better off all travelers will be. And by "common sense" I mean decommissioning the hated full-body scanners, banning "enhanced" pat-downs, retraining agents in the basics of customer service, allowing all passengers to leave their shoes on and travel with liquids, and using metal detectors as a primary screening method.
The heavy lifting of airport security should take place long before you arrive at the terminal. That's where your name should be vetted and compared against a list of known terrorists. That's where they'll catch the next hijacker.
Obamacare Will Make Health Care More Expensive For A Lot Of People
Andrew Malcolm posts at IBD:
Remember how since-demoted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said we'd have to pass the massive ObamaCare health law to find out what's in it?Well, now three years later that's happening and a lot of people are not liking what they see.
Remember how ObamaCare was going to save you money?
Not going to happen. Premiums are going up, some by as much as 100%. And a new study by the nonpartisan Society of Actuaries finds that on average insurers will have to pay 32% more for claims under ObamaCare.
Remember how ObamaCare was going to cover more than 44 million uninsured Americans?
Not going to happen. As the immense law and its 86-inch tall stack of new regulations roll out, millions of Americans will remain uncovered, even if the troubled, challenged law works flawlessly, which it hasn't. And won't. The latest Congressional Budget Office estimate is that even with full implementation, more than 30 million Americans will remain uncovered by the so-called Affordable Care Act.
Remember how ObamaCare was not going to add "one single dime" to costs?
Not going to happen. The Congressional Budget Office estimates ObamaCare will add $1,300,000,000,000.10 to the costs of the nation's healthcare. Obama masks this with new taxes, of course, and shuffling monies around within government programs, including cuts to Medicare.
More at the link.
Here's Richard Kirsch in HuffPo on health care for low-wage workers like fast food workers, many of whom are likely to pay a fine and stay uninsured:
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Wendy's lowered its estimate of the cost of Obamacare for each of its restaurants by 80 percent, from $25,000 a store to $5,000. The hamburger chain figured that many of its full-time employees, who will be offered health insurance through the company, will turn down the coverage because, as the Journal reported, "they can get insurance through Medicaid or a family member, or because they prefer to pay the penalty for not having coverage." That penalty starts at $95 a year, although it will go up to $695 by 2016.Wendy's isn't alone. Several other fast food chains have come up with similar estimates. One example is Popeye's, which figures that since only 5 percent of its employees have signed up for the high deductible plan now offered at a price of only $2.50 a week, few workers will choose to pay an estimated $25 a week for the improved coverage it will offer under Obamacare.
Government Motors
The Chevy Volt -- taxpayer-funded rolling crap:
via @AHMalcolm
Avoiding The Cyprus Bank Account Hoovering: Some More Equal Than Other$
From ZeroHedge:
List Released With 132 Names Who Pulled Cyprus Deposits Ahead Of "Confiscation Day"
More:
First it was disclosed that Russians had been pulling their money, then it was suggested the president himself had made sure some €21 million of his family's money was parked safely in London, then we showed a massive surge in Cyprus deposit outflows in February, and now the latest news is that a list of 132 companies and individuals has emerged who withdrew their €-denominated deposits in the two weeks from March 1 to March 15, among which the previously noted company Loutsios & Sons which is alleged to have ties with the current Cypriot president Anastasiadis.
Screenshots of the list at the link.
The Linkfather
This is the URL we've chosen.
Food Trucks: Who Protects The People Who Want Fast Lunch?
Via Old RPM Daddy, Tim Carney writes in the Wash Ex about new regulations in DC that will protect brick-and-mortar restaurants from food truck competition:
Most of downtown D.C., according to the Food Truck Association of Metropolitan Washington, would be off-limits to food trucks under new regulations proposed by the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. The Golden Triangle would be sacred ground, not to be soiled by the unclean tires of mobile vendors, except for those fortunate few smiled upon by the whimsical gods of the DCRA.The rules would designate a few food truck parking spots around prime locations such as George Washington University, Farragut Square and the Verizon Center. These spots would be awarded by lottery once a month to a handful of trucks, and all other trucks would be prohibited from coming within 500 feet of these zones. The proposed regs would also prohibit trucks from parking anywhere that lacks 10 feet of "unobstructed sidewalk."
Why should there be any limit -- besides the number of legal parking spots -- on how many trucks can line up on either side of Farragut Square? The clear reason is restraining competition. Jim Doherty, owner of the Washington Deli, said of food truck proliferation, "If they don't stop it, they're going to be everywhere. ... There's so little barrier to entry."
Barriers to entry are a great way to protect incumbent businesses and thus allow for higher profit margins, but you wouldn't think politicians would actually put value on protecting the restaurants from competition. In D.C., though, the politicians do.
Over at Wash Ex, commenter Doug Wenzel notes that it's the money, not the principle:
I love food trucks, but put yourselves in the position of a city. If they cater more to food trucks they are destroying the revenue base of the city itself. Plus, it's way easier to enforce regulations and financially audit a restaurant than to keep up with a food truck that is usually a cash business with no payroll employees - only owner-operators.So food trucks challenge both the ability of the bureaucracy to impose and maintain complex and costly regulatory requirements on restaurants that justify the size of the bureaucracy, and also threaten their funding source. Of course, the city will have two choices - decrease requirements and costs for restaurants, or increase them for food trucks. Is it so surprising they choose the latter?
ACLU: Seeking Judgment On Whether Govt's Secret No-Fly List Violates Due Process
Kevin Gosztola posts at Firedog Lake:
In a what the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) considers a "first of its kind" lawsuit, the ACLU has filed a motion seeking a ruling from a federal district court in Oregon on the constitutionality of the United States government's secret No-Fly list. The ACLU argues the list violates citizens' Fifth Amendment right to due process.The ACLU represents fifteen citizens and lawful residents, who were prohibited from flying to and from the United States. They were not informed of why they were being put on the list and were given no chance to clear their names.
...Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, told Firedoglake, "It is a modest and fundamentally important question, which is, when the government puts you on a secret black list and bans you from exercising a right that you otherwise have, what are the procedures it is obligated to provide?"
Currently, the government claims its "Glomar policy of refusing to confirm or any information" is "adequate." However, the ACLU believes all of the government's arguments in support of this secret blacklist fail.
"In context after context, courts have held that Americans must have some notice and some hearing before they are deprived of their liberties," Shamsi declared. "That very basic fundamental position is what we are seeking to vindicate here, which is that once people have been put on the No-Fly list by the government they have a right to a notice of the fact that they are on the list, a statement of reasons why they are on the list and a hearing to contest their placement and to have the opportunity to get off the list."
Confessions Of A Guy Who Peeps At Women Getting Groped By The TSA
He didn't want to be identified by name. He says he's just a guy who travels who reads my site.
I saw that you care about privacy and probably want to know that this happens. I travel a lot and it is boring to just wait at the gate.
And here's what he wrote:
Confession of a TSA Peeper
The youngest women are the best when they raise their arms. You don't get much effect from the older ones. But the young women, barefoot, down to a blouse, no belt, yes. They raise their arms and up goes the blouse. You get some skin and maybe a navel. Most important, up go the breasts.
The women are trapped, really. Once in, arms up, they can't move. It's even better when they do move, because it messes up the machine and I get to see the pat down. The pat down! But it's still very good when they don't move a muscle. One second, two, three, sometimes seven or eight! There she stands. Venus with arms intact, a museum piece.
If I could, I'd raise my own arms in praise of this TSA show, woman after woman in parade. First they strip a little, and then they take their turn, arms up and legs out. Or I imagine my own arms up, palms against her palms, a double high-five.
A few terminals at a few airports are the best. They actually have chairs and tables on one side of the machines or the other. I can sip a drink or pretend I'm looking at my phone. Once in a while I do snap a photo or take video. You get to know which women will be the best, and you know exactly where they will be standing and how much zoom to use. For obvious reasons a white or light cream color top shows the most curves and shapes. I can't believe so many women don't remember that they will be on display. Maybe they do...sometimes they smile!
You might think the best terminals are the ones that have the chairs on the free side, where you don't even need a ticket, but there are too many people around except early in the morning or late at night, and you usually can't get a good look at the pat downs. The best ones have a restaurant on the ticket side, right in front, and nobody is surprised if you stay seated for a while.
I do feel a little guilty when it's a girl, maybe 16, and I'm still looking. But the TSA is not just looking at the outside of her clothes, they're seeing everything, and in the pat down they are feeling it, too. In comparison I'm not even seeing as much as the video security cameras. They are watching the whole time, but I don't stare for more than a few seconds at once. And they are recording a lot more than I am.
This is the result of our giving up our rights so politely and easily. If every person made a scene like I do over our being searched without probable cause do you think the TSA would still exist?
All The President's Links
The fog came in in a Richard Nixon mask...
(Yes, somehow Carl Sandburg got lost on the way to the theater, Mrs. Lincoln.)
Reeves, Dunderheadedly: "Libertarians Might Want A World Without Moral Judgments"
Richard V. Reeves, now a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, doesn't get it -- publicly -- in a New York Times op-ed.
HIs quote:
Libertarians might want a world without moral judgments...
Libertarians don't want government judgments -- government telling us what we can and cannot do, except where someone's violating the rights of other people.
Libertarians are not against "moral judgments" (quite the contrary). In fact, libertarians make some of the strongest "moral judgments" -- especially for the rights many other people give away willy-nilly.
And, frankly, to be a libertarian, you need to be a thinker, and I don't remember ever talking to a libertarian who didn't have a set of "moral judgments."
Libertarians just tend not to subscribe to the sort of nonthink that many do, like the notions that drugs and prostitution should be illegal. In other words, they object to the notion that the government can tell you what plants or chemicals you can put in your body, what you're allowed to do with your brain, and whether consenting adults can trade money for services.
And finally, regarding the subject of his op-ed, shaming teen pregnancy, I'm all for it -- just not by government or paid for with taxpayer dollars.
Modest April Fool's Day Proposal On Closing Gender Gaps, By Jesse Marczyk
New Mexico State University ev psych post-doc Jesse Marczyk posts at Psychology Today about how "large numbers of women who are otherwise qualified and eager for the jobs they are denied by society":
One good for instance would be the field of construction, where the workforce is almost entirely male. Faced with such a clear gender gap, one can only be left gasping, wondering what steps our government and society are taking to remedy such obvious sexism. It's not like women are too incapable or incompetent to build houses, after all.Women's worries don't end with the field of construction, however: similar gender gaps are seen in fields like plumbing, lumberjacking, and firefighting. As we know that the sexes are born completely equivalent to one another in terms of their physical potentials and psychological interests and motivations, these gender gaps can clearly only be the result of sexist socialization. Dismantling the sexist social constructs of our culture - constructs which were clearly created by men in the first place - is required if we ever hope to see the 50/50 split between men and women who are willing and able to fix your septic tank that we've all been dreaming about.
Take Your Ethics All The Way, Dude
The New York Times had this letter to The Ethicist:
I'm a biologist with a federal agency. My family owns land in northeast Pennsylvania. A portion is owned outright by my mother, who has entered into a contract with a natural-gas company to allow drilling on the property. Royalties from the gas extraction allow her to live comfortably in retirement. My mother made the arrangements for the gas drilling without my support. I'm not in favor of increasing fossil-fuel dependence. In light of the anticipated royalties, my mother was advised by her lawyer to establish a corporate partnership with my brother and me, for liability protection. This would mean a portion of the royalties will be mine. If I intend to work on any future climate-change projects professionally, should I decline the partnership with my mother? If I do not support natural-gas drilling, is that another reason to decline the partnership? And is this decision different from eventually inheriting money related to drilling? RICHARD, WASHINGTON
David Binko, Bronx, NY, had this reply -- which I loved:
Richard of Washington may also consider not driving a car, heating his home or cooking on a gas range. Also eating out at restaurants that use gas to cook their food. Perhaps not taking the bus because it uses natural gas. Show some backbone Richard and just say no.
For An Entrepreneur, A Bad Boss Isn't A Bad Thing
Inspiring piece by Monte Burk Mark Cuban in Forbes about how bad bosses helped Mark Cuban down the road to success. An excerpt:
Being fired from that job was the determining factor in my business life. I decided then and there to start my own company. I didn't have that much to lose, and it was something that I knew I had to do. I was 25. I went back to that guy with the $15,000 job and told him that I didn't have the money at the time, but if he let me keep this job and the money, I would do the work and it would help me start my own company. He said, "Sure."I started a company called Micro-Solutions. I was a PC consultant, and I sold software and did training and configured computers. I wrote my own programs. I immersed myself in the PC industry and studied Microsoft and Lotus and watched what the smartest people did to make things work. I remember one day I had to drive to Austin for some PC part, to a place called PCs Limited. The place was run by this kid who was younger than I was. We sat down and talked for a few hours. I was really impressed by him. I remember telling him, "Dude, I think we're both going places." That "dude" was Michael Dell.
via @briandaitken
The Government Wants To Jail You
Jay J. Hector sent me the link to a compelling story in WIRED, Brendan I. Koerner's piece on Alfred Anaya, who installed primo secret compartments in cars -- and was imprisoned for it, though he apparently had nothing to do with smuggling drugs:
A common hacker refrain is that technology is always morally neutral. The culture's libertarian ethos holds that creators shouldn't be faulted if someone uses their gadget or hunk of code to cause harm; the people who build things are under no obligation to meddle in the affairs of the adults who consume their wares.But Alfred Anaya's case makes clear that the government rejects that permissive worldview. The technically savvy are on notice that they must be very careful about whom they deal with, since calculated ignorance of illegal activity is not an acceptable excuse. But at what point does a failure to be nosy edge into criminal conduct? In light of what happened to Anaya, that question is nearly impossible to answer.
"What's troubling a lot of people is that this conviction seems to impose a new sort of liability on people that create state-of-the-art technology," says Branden Bell, an attorney in Olathe, Kansas, who is handling Anaya's appeal. "The logic goes that because he suspected his customers of doing something, he had a duty to ask. But that is a duty that is written nowhere in the law."
The challenge for anyone who creates technology is to guess when, exactly, they should turn their back on paying customers. Take, for example, a manufacturer of robot kits for hobbyists. If someone uses those robots to patrol a smuggling route or help protect a meth lab so that traffickers can better evade law enforcement, how will prosecutors determine whether the company acted criminally? If it accepted payment in crumpled $20 bills and thus should have known it was dealing with gangsters? If the customer picked up the merchandise in an overly flashy car? The law offers scant guidance, but prosecutors have tremendous leeway to pursue conspiracy charges whenever they see fit. And as 3-D printers enable the unfettered production of sophisticated objects, those prosecutors will be tempted to make examples out of people who are careless about their clients.
Anaya can attest to the great sorrows of becoming such an example. When I visited him at the Victorville Federal Correctional Complex, on the sun-cooked edge of California's Mojave Desert, he was still coming to grips with the desolation of prison life. His ex-wife, Aimee Basham, with whom he recently reconciled, brings the family to visit at least once a month. But Anaya is anguished by the prison's restrictions on personal contact with his children; he can scarcely believe that his youngest son will never again sit on his lap. And he bemoans the financial disaster that has befallen his family in his absence--ING Direct foreclosed on the house, and his other creditors are hounding Basham for tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills.
Above all, Anaya seems baffled that he will likely spend the next two decades in prison for doing something that isn't specifically forbidden by federal law. "If it takes me never building another compartment again for me to get out of here, that's what I'm willing to do," he says. "But I think I should be able to."
He's in prison for over 24 years, sans possibility of parole -- for building some secret compartments, supposedly. But really, it seems, for not bending over when the feds said so.
Don't think you can't be imprisoned if they really want to do it.
The Seven-Year Link
Blow my skirt up...
