How Much Will Obamacare Cost Me? A Handy-Dandy Calculator
Try this handy-dandy calculator developed by Kaiser, hosted by NPR, on a post by Scott Hensley.
The calculator is live at the link, but here's a screenshot.
If you post here anonymously and don't mind revealing your rate, please do.
via @Lifehacker
The Government's "Damaged Brand"
That's how law prof Glenn Harlan Reynolds put it in a USA Today op-ed.
On the one hand, I think this is good -- that the IRS scandal and other government malfeasance have led to people being less likely to naively believe, well, "We're the government, and we're here to help."
The problem, as Glenn notes, is the fact that government wrongdoing isn't punished and people, per polls, mostly don't feel it will be:
Believing that government officials break the law is one thing; believing that they face no consequences when they're caught and it becomes public is another. Not only is this a sort of "broken windows" signal to other bureaucrats -- hey, you can break the law and get away with it -- but it's particularly damaging where the IRS is concerned.America's tax system, despite the feared IRS audit, is fundamentally based on voluntary compliance. If everyone starts cheating, there aren't enough IRS agents to make a dent. Beyond taxes, that's true regarding compliance with the law in general. Moral legitimacy is what makes honest people obey the law even when they can get away with breaking it. Undermine that and you get a country like, say, Italy, where tax evasion is a national sport.
The Best Advertising Money Can't Buy -- And The Kind That Could Get You Sent To Jail
Bradley A. Smith writes in the WSJ about Oprah's campaign contribution to Barack Obama -- her endorsement -- was worth more than a million votes in the 2008 primary, "more than the difference between then-Sen. Obama and his main rival, Hillary Clinton":
Chances are you've never heard of Shaun McCutcheon, who hopes to have a fraction of Oprah's influence on elections. Mr. McCutcheon faces one problem: The federal government could jail him for five years if he implements his plan. So he has taken his case to court, and on Oct. 8 the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in McCutcheon v. FEC. This case could be as important to campaign-finance law as Citizens United v. FEC, which in 2010 restored the rights of corporations and unions to engage in political speech.Mr. McCutcheon owns a company that designs and builds electrical systems for projects such as clean coal-liquefaction. His financial success has allowed the longtime Republican activist to use his money to support GOP candidates.
Under federal law, however, Mr. McCutcheon is limited to a maximum contribution of $2,600 to a candidate in any election. The ostensible reason for this limit is to prevent candidates from being "corrupted" by large campaign contributions. The law also limits him to contributing a total of $48,600 to candidates in any two-year election cycle, meaning that he can only contribute the $2,600 maximum in 18 races. With at least 60 U.S. House races and 15 Senate races expected to be competitive in 2014, Mr. McCutcheon can give the maximum contribution in fewer than one-quarter of those races.
Mr. McCutcheon is willing to live with the $2,600 limit on contributions to any one candidate. But his case presents the Supreme Court with a simple question: If his $2,600 contribution would not "corrupt" the first 18 candidates he supports, why would it "corrupt" the 19th and 20th?
Many small-change supporters of a candidate can band together to support that candidate with bigger bucks.
Instead of trying to curtail speech, people should be thinking of creative ways to increase theirs.
FBI Report On The Minutes Of A Muslim Brotherhood Meeting In USA
Lovely, respectful stuff.
Tarek Fatah writes on his blog:
In the 2008 Texas Terror Trial on the Holy Land Foundation where all the accused were found guilty on all charges, the U.S. Justice Dept entered an FBI document about the secret meeting of the Muslim Brotherhood in the US in the 1991 to plan the infiltration of Islamists into various facest of American life to promote the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood.
He has the whole thing on his blog (18 pages).
Here's a bit that stood out for me:
Link, Link, Link
More, more, more...
Save On Safety
From my Amazon reports -- thank you to whomever bought this LifeHammer The Original Emergency Hammer (Orange)
Thanks to everyone who shops through my Amazon links. So appreciate every purchase you make, and every one helps support this blog and keep my lights on.
To buy something I haven't linked to, use this: Amy's Amazon search link.
If 14 more purchases are made today (because it's the end of the month), I will reach 7 percent (in terms of the amount they give me).
Advice Goddess Radio, "Best-Of" Replay, Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Dr. Tamar E. Chansky, Freeing Yourself From Anxiety
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research.
*"Best-of" replay this week because my revisions on my next book are due shortly and I'm working day and night on them!
This week's show will offer you numerous substantive, practical tips for keeping anxiety from 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 at this link from 7-8 pm Pacific, 10-11 pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/09/30/dr-tamar-e-chansky-freeing-yourself-from-anxiety
Don't miss last week's show on living happily single. Noted sociologist Dr. Eric Klinenberg discusses why remaining unmarried and living alone have increasing appeal and what the problems of living solo tend to be -- and how we might solve them.
We'll touch both on living solo as a younger person (whether romantically single or "living apart together" with a partner), and how we can live alone as we age.
Dr. Klineberg's book is Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone.
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/09/23/dr-eric-klinenberg-howwhy-living-alone-can-make-you-happy
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
Detroit Plays Santa To City Workers For Years And Obama Brings Around Our Money To Clean Up
Via Instapundit, Megan McArdle writes about Detroit's pension situation at Bloomberg:
I'm rarely speechless, but I'm having trouble putting my emotions into words after reading the latest report on the Detroit pension situation. Now, I admit it: I'm kind of naïve. Usually when I see an underfunded pension, I think to myself "poor pensioners -- undone by a combination of stupid tax rules, volatile stock markets and mismanagement by trustees who tried to restore depleted fund assets with an investment approach you might call 'desperate optimism'." Thus, I was not entirely prepared for the new revelations about the Detroit trustees' custom of handing out annual holiday "bonuses" to workers, retirees and the City of Detroit. Between 1985 and 2008, they handed out roughly $1 billion this way. Had they been invested, one estimate says those funds would be worth almost $2 billion today -- or more than half the current shortfall in the funds.These "bonuses" were used to lower the contribution the city was required to make, to give retirees a little something extra around Christmas time, and to fund individual savings accounts that workers are offered along with their pensions. In 2009, when the financial markets were completely frozen and the automakers were shotgunning through the bankruptcy courts, the pension trust paid 7.5 percent interest into those accounts -- which is about 7.5 percent more than they would have gotten at a bank. This while the pension funds were busy losing about a quarter of their value.
Obama, writes Conn Carroll at WashEx, is coming around with $200 million in bailout funds. From U.S. taxpayer dollars:
Specifically, the Free Press reports Detroit will get:-$65 million in Community Development Block Grant funding
-$100 million in federal transit grants
-$25 million to hire firefighters and purchase firefighting equipment
All of these are waste-ridden programs that should have been eliminated years ago (here is Cato on CDBG, Heritage on transit programs and Heritage on fire grants).
Is there a shortage of firemen in Detroit? I know police response time is...well, don't have a home invasion and expect them to get there today. Or maybe tomorrow. I do know Detroit firehouses had a toiletpaper shortage last year.
The Government Can Seize $35K Of Your Money With Little Warning
Institute for Justice has taken the case of Detroit area grocery store owner Tarik (Terry) Dehko. Eric D. Lawrence writes in the Detroit Free Press that the IRS seized more than $35K from his bank account:
Dehko was not charged with a crime, but the IRS, according to court records, claims he violated federal law with the type of cash deposits he made into the store's bank account, which the government drained in January.Dehko and his daughter, Sandy Thomas, who works part time at the store -- Schott's Market on East 14 Mile -- have filed suit in federal court Wednesday in an attempt to get the case before a judge. They want their money returned, and they want to stop similar actions in the future.
Dehko, 69, who came to the U.S. from Baghdad, Iraq, in 1970, calls the U.S. the land of opportunity, but he does not understand how the government can seize his money without warning and, according to him, without cause.
...According to the court filings, the IRS claims Dehko skirted rules that deposits greater than $10,000 be reported by making many smaller deposits. Larry Salzman, an attorney with the Arlington, Va.-based Institute for Justice, which is working on Dehko's behalf, said the deposits were often in the $9,000 range, but that Dehko made regular deposits in those amounts because his insurance policy will not cover him for loss or theft of more than $10,000 in cash in the store.
Dehko said a federal agent came to his store in January and told him his funds were being seized, and Dehko has been fighting ever since. Dehko noted that the government offered to settle with him, but the offer was for 20% of what was seized, so he rejected it. The court filings note that the IRS had found no violations during an audit of Dehko's books in April 2012.
Does Your Kid Have A Fake Nut Allergy?
Or is the real problem a need to feel special? On his parent or parents' part?
Found a link on Karen De Coster's blog to a Joel Stein LA Times piece from 2009 that she said surely "had him on the receiving end of thousands of hate mails":
Your kid doesn't have an allergy to nuts. Your kid has a parent who needs to feel special. Your kid also spends recess running and screaming, "No! Stop! Don't rub my head with peanut butter!"Yes, a tiny number of kids have severe peanut allergies that cause anaphylactic shock, and all their teachers should be warned, handed EpiPens and given a really expensive gift at Christmas. But unless you're a character on "Heroes," genes don't mutate fast enough to have caused an 18% increase in childhood food allergies between 1997 and 2007. And genes certainly don't cause 25% of parents to believe that their kids have food allergies, when 4% do. Yuppiedom does.
More from Stein's piece:
Peanut allergies are only an issue in rich, lefty communities."We don't see this problem much in African American or poor communities. So there's something going on here. We don't see them in Ecuador and Guatemala," Christakis said.
A study of Jews of similar demographics and genetics in Britain and Israel found that British kids were 10 times more likely to have peanut allergies than Israelis. That's probably because Israeli kids have other things to be afraid of. I would like to see a study that measures one's increased likelihood of peanut allergies if you're an American kid named Oliver, Aidan, Spencer or Finn.
Parents may think they are doing their kids a favor by testing them and being hyper-vigilant about monitoring what they eat, but it's not cool to freak kids out. Only 20% of kids who get a positive allergy test result need treatment. And a 2003 study showed that kids who were told they were allergic to peanuts had more anxiety and felt more physically restricted than if they had diabetes. "It's anxiety-producing to imagine that having a snack in kindergarten could be deadly," Christakis said. Remember, this is a demographic so easily panicked that, equipped with only circles and dots, it invented an inoculation to cooties.
Hostess Linkies
Creamy filling here.
Public Sector Jobs Shouldn't Be A Way To Get Rich Off The Rest Of Us
Roger Covalt writes at Flash Report about the bloated salaries of some top government bureaucrats and coaches (in state schools, for example), suggesting that their salaries be no more than whatever the governor of the state is paid:
It seems that the people that allowed such salaries have forgotten that the taxpayer, for the most part, pay for these salaries. These salaries, for the most part, come with a defined retirement benefit....If the agency wants to pay their employee more, then the funding sources should be non-taxpayer based. They could be paid by foundations, or for coaches, ticket sales incentives.
Some might say that the only way to bring in talented people and to keep them is to pay them well. Fine, but when you look at the long term picture, can we really afford such salaries? If agencies want to pay such salaries, let them find outside sources. Government needs to realize that they are the public sector and NOT the private sector. The taxpayer should not be forced to pay these huge salaries which they have very little say to.
I will use Janet Napolitano as an example. She supposedly will be making a base of $570,000/year heading the UC system. Governor Brown makes $165,000/yr (December 2012). Under my proposal, the UC system would have to find outside sources of $335,000/yr to fund the rest of her salary (Also I must ask, making that much money, why does she need a car allowance and a house? Her salary should be enough to pay for her housing and car).
Really, there needs to be a massive rethinking of these entitlements.
Our City Councilturds also get a car, and they are allowed to just crumple up any parking tickets they get. At any time.
No, no, no, no, no. Enough.
If they actually had to pay them, maybe a street cleaning violation (forgetting to wake up and move your car on street cleaning day) would still be $25 instead of $70. Sure, punish us for our failing to move our cars, but not to the degree where you're eating up what some people make in an entire day, and in a bad economy.
via @reasonpolicy
Here's Some Ugly: It's "Racist" To Be Mad Somebody Hit Your Neighbor's Car
Late last night, some chickie trying to park who couldn't drive or wasn't that interested in doing it all that well hits my neighbor's bumper -- hard enough that it made a sound -- and I hear this and come out. I climb up on my fence and look over.
I then see her hit it again, more lightly, apparently, since I didn't hear it the second time. When she gets out of her car, I tell her, over my fence, that I'm going to take her plate number and give it to my neighbor she hit in case her car turns out to be damaged in daylight.
Well, some guy comes from across the street (where he was apparently waiting for her, probably so they could go to the bar) and starts yelling at me for being "racist."
Racist? Because I was mad somebody hit a car? Is there a race involved in that? What race, the race car bumpers are?
Then this creep refers to me as "white lady!" I couldn't tell what race he was, but I'm assuming from his calling me "racist" and "white lady" that he must have been black...probably light-skinned black, because he just looked like a kind of short asshole in hipsternerd glasses to me. Of indeterminate color. Beige, at best.
Meanwhile, it's this guy who's turning this into anything about race. But calling me "racist" while doing it.
The car-hitting woman was had long brown straight hair and skin that didn't look black but maybe she was a light-skinned black woman. Frankly, until the guy said something, I would have told you she was white -- but only if somebody said, "Do you remember the skin color of the woman?"
What kind of creepy piece of trash turns your being upset at somebody bumping a car into a something about race?
The deal is this: I don't care what color you are if you do damage to cars in my neighborhood. If you damage a car and I can be a conduit to you paying green to the neighbor who owns it, I will.
I still can't tell you what color these people were. Actually, yes I can -- brown -- the color of assholes.
At 103, The Guy's Still Eating Out
Loved this story in the NYT. Corey Kilgannon writes:
It never fails, Harry Rosen said on Wednesday evening as he enjoyed another fine meal by himself in another top-rated Manhattan restaurant."Maybe because I'm eating alone at my age, people at other tables start conversations," he said.
Yes, he tells them, he lives alone, in a modest studio apartment on West 57th Street in Manhattan, and he always eats dinner out, always orders the fish.
"They always ask my age, and I often lie and tell them I'm 90," he said. "If I tell them my real age, it becomes the whole subject of conversation and makes it look like I'm looking for attention, which I'm not."
Mr. Rosen is 103 but he doesn't look a day over 90. His mother died at 53 and his father at 70, but he says he feels fine and has had no major operations or health problems.
"I read in a newspaper column a long time ago that the key to a long life is sleeping on your back, so I always did that," said Mr. Rosen, who often finds that his bill has been paid by those friendly diners. Not that he needs it. He made a bundle with his office supply company and is spending it -- $100 a night, on average -- on dinners out.
Much of his work involved wooing clients over lunch and dinner, so after retiring a few years back because of hearing loss, he continued to put on a fine work suit every afternoon, grab his satchel, and head out to hail a yellow cab to one of his favorite restaurants. Café Boulud perhaps, on East 76th Street, or Boulud Sud near Lincoln Center, or Avra Estiatorio on East 48th Street.
"I haven't eaten dinner home in many years," said Mr. Rosen, who tried singles groups and other activities after his wife of 70 years, Lillian, died five years ago, when she was 95.
But nothing brought him the comfort of a fine restaurant.
"It's my therapy, it lifts my spirits," he said Wednesday evening while examining the menu with a magnifying glass at David Burke Townhouse on East 61st Street.
He recently had a six-month fling with a 90-year-old lady, but it didn't work out.
via @ravisomalya
NSA Creeps Snooped On Their Love Interests
I know that Gregg, upon meeting me, used LexisNexis to look me up. We never discussed this; I just know that now, knowing Gregg. (He likes to know what he's getting into.)
Assuming he did that, that's fair game -- publicly available information from news articles.
What's not fair game is when government employees use their agency's snoop power to poke around in the lives of their love interests.
Evan Perez writes at CNN.com:
The National Security Agency's internal watchdog detailed a dozen instances in the past decade in which its employees intentionally misused the agency's surveillance power, in some cases to snoop on their love interests.A letter from the NSA's inspector general responding to a request by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, lists the dozen incidents where the NSA's foreign intelligence collection systems were abused. The letter also says there are two additional incidents now under investigation and another allegation pending that may require an investigation.
At least six of the incidents were referred to the Justice Department for possible prosecution or additional action; none appear to have resulted in charges.
...In one case, detailed by the NSA's watchdog, a civilian intelligence employee assigned overseas was found to have used the NSA's signals intelligence collection system to listen to the phone conversations on nine phone numbers belonging to foreign women from 1998 to 2003 without any valid reason. The signals intelligence system is used to spy on foreign targets for national security reasons.
...The case began because a woman, a foreign national employed by the U.S. government, told another employee she suspected the man with whom she was in a sexual relationship was listening to her calls. The employee who misused the NSA's systems also incidentally collected the communications of a U.S. resident on two occasions, a move that requires a court warrant.
The NSA's vast surveillance powers are under fire after the disclosure of internal documents by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Intelligence officials have sought to defend the NSA's surveillance activities by saying the agency doesn't misuse its authority.
And my hair isn't red and I sub for Kobe on the Lakers.
What Have You Done For Me Linkly?
A Janet Jackson original. Nipple view upon request.
Social Not Working?
One brother does the work to meet women in "real life," becomes friends with them, and then eventually friends them on Facebook.
The other brother just comes along and friends all the first brother's hot women friends.
Fair? Unfair? Just how social networking works?
Wonder Why Tuition Is So High?
One reason? Because schools are not just schools, but theme parks. Here's a pool at the University of Northern Iowa -- the photo of which was put into a presentation by Purdue, support for their argument for keeping up with the educational perk Joneses.
Via the WaPo, from a story by Dylan Matthews on how a bachelor's degree could cost $10K -- total.
Everybody's Obese, And Obese People Read, Too
Lori L. Smith, who calls herself "generously proportioned librarian" argues in favor of remodeling and refurnishing libraries to fit how enormous so many Americans now are.
A few excerpts from her article, "Is Your Library Plus-Size Friendly," from American Libraries Magazine:
RestroomsObese people need as much hip room as possible on both sides of the toilet, so in regular stalls the toilet should be placed in the center of the stall rather than off to one side. The toilet paper dispenser should ideally be placed about 12-18 inches in front of the toilet rather than right beside it.
The taller toilet in the handicapped stall may be easier for obese people to rise from, and the rails may be helpful as well, so many will use that stall. Commonly, there's also more space surrounding the toilet in the handicapped stall.
When selecting a toilet, an oblong shape is a better choice than those that are smaller and rounder. Large people are not only large from side to side but front to back as well.
Health and safety
In addition to health issues such as arthritis and heart disease, many obese people perspire more easily and therefore may face the possibility of becoming dehydrated. I personally can work up a sweat by just standing still for an extended period of time. To encourage proper hydration, make sure you have water fountains and that those fountains function properly.
Are your stepstools labeled with weight limits? That sort of information may be vital to an overweight patron trying to decide between retrieving a book himself or asking for assistance. It may also become a liability for the library if the patron were to take a spill.
If an obese person (or anyone else for that matter) on an upper-level floor experiences a health emergency and has to be removed from your library on a stretcher, are your public elevators large enough to simultaneously accommodate both the stretcher and the health care personnel? If not, you may need to consider putting procedures in place that would allow emergency personnel to use your freight elevator.
Signage
For obese patrons (and others) who have trouble walking, it would be helpful to post key phone numbers around the building so they can use their cellphones to request assistance. Posting QR codes leading to pertinent information on the library's website may also be beneficial.
Looking ahead
The obesity epidemic is unlikely to go away anytime soon. In the meantime, libraries should continue their long tradition of offering a warm, welcoming space to people of all ages, races, shapes, and sizes.
If Lori flipped through a few of the books there, she'd see pictures of people in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. There might have been a plump person or two in the pictures.
Now the ratio is reversed. In fact, when I was at the Atlanta airport this summer, I counted, and probably every 20th person was morbidly obese. Like 300, 400, 500 pounds.
The "obesity epidemic" was caused by doctors, government and the AMA, among others, shoving advice on the public that was not based in good science. This advice told them to cut out meat and fat and eat a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet: precisely the diet that makes many people fat and diabetic.
Sugary and starchy carbs cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat. (See Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories" or the easier-to-read "Why We Get Fat.") And here's an example I've posted before: What happens when you eat largely like we used to eat, including fat and meat, but without starchy carbs.
Librarian lady needs to do herself some readin'!
Your Bike Has Been Stolen By The NYPD In The Name Of National Security
Only they see no reason to inform you of that. You're just supposed to...guess!
Oh, and it was just...borrowed...removed...really.
And never mind notifying you that you shouldn't park it on 7th and 53rd because the goofy guy known as the Vice President was coming to glad-hand New York's biggest Nanny, Mayor Bloomberg.
The video of the doorman, Richard Martinez, who took Steven Arthur's bike into safekeeping:
From John Del Signore at Gothamist:
As Martinez explains, he told police and the Secret Service that although he didn't know the bike owner (Arthur) personally, he's seen him lock the bike there frequently and knows what he looks like. So they let him take the bike based on his promise to return it to its rightful owner. Hey, he looks trustworthy! Done and done."This is crazy," Arthur says. "The NYPD said three bicycles had been taken to their precinct the day before. When I arrived that morning just before 9 a.m, there was no NYPD, no tent, and no fencing on 53rd Street, so I thought I was cleared. The doormen said the fencing only went up around 4:30 p.m. - 5 p.m. that afternoon when I was still in the office."
An officer who answered the phone at the Midtown North precinct declined to comment, and the NYPD press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The "contact" page on the Vice President's website doesn't work.
via @notjessewalker
Linkamundo
Linkadillas, please.
Guido Barilla, Pasta Company Head: "Gays ... Can Go Eat Another Brand"
Guido Barilla, the head of the pasta company bearing his name, said on the radio in Italy on Wednesday:
"I would never do an advert with a homosexual family...if the gays don't like it they can go an eat another brand."
He doesn't have to do an advert with any particular family but from LGBTQNation, here's more:
"For us the concept of the sacred family remains one of the fundamental values of the company," he said, according to a report in The Independent.Barilla went further, attacking gay parents and adoption.
"I have no respect for adoption by gay families because this concerns a person who is not able to choose," he said.
Gay rights group Equality Italia said Barilla's comments were an "offensive provocation" and called for a boycott of the company's pasta, sauces and snacks.
"We accept his invitation to not eat his pasta," said Aurelio Mancuso, president of Equality Italia.
The thing is, research by Judith Stacey and Tim Bednarz, among others, has shown that children of gay parents are not harmed psychologically.
What seems to matter for children is an intact family, whether the parents are mommy and daddy or daddy and daddy.
And unless you're living in a cave and cave-schooling your children, your children are going to have opposite sex role models.
The other thing, besides an intact family, that matters? Whether your children are loved.
How Stadiums Should Be Paid For: By The Season Ticket Holders, Not The Public
Stadiums should be paid for, not by public financing (by taxing everybody, including people like me who would pay money to stay out of the stadium), but by charging some of the people who use it, season ticket holders, a fee -- a "personal seat license."
And if stadiums are publicly financed, hey, where's the public's share of the profits?
An Ike Brannon piece in the publication "Regulation," linked from Cato.
Actual Hope For Change If Obamacare Falters Or Fails? Probably Not
There's an Daniel Henninger op-ed in the WSJ that sees some actual hope for change -- away from the entitlement state:
As its Oct. 1 implementation date arrives, ObamaCare is the biggest bet that American liberalism has made in 80 years on its foundational beliefs. This thing called "ObamaCare" carries on its back all the justifications, hopes and dreams of the entitlement state. The chance is at hand to let its political underpinnings collapse, perhaps permanently.If ObamaCare fails, or seriously falters, the entitlement state will suffer a historic loss of credibility with the American people. It will finally be vulnerable to challenge and fundamental change.
As Larry Elder said today on the radio, once people have some program they don't want to give it up.
Bureaucracy protects bureaucracy.
I think Henninger is dreaming.
But here are some details from his piece. What do you think?
The public's dislike of ObamaCare isn't growing with every new poll for reasons of philosophical attachment to notions of liberty and choice. Fear of ObamaCare is growing because a cascade of news suggests that ObamaCare is an impending catastrophe.Big labor unions and smaller franchise restaurant owners want out. UPS dropped coverage for employed spouses. Corporations such as Walgreens and IBM IBM -0.26% are transferring employees or retirees into private insurance exchanges. Because of ObamaCare, the Cleveland Clinic has announced early retirements for staff and possible layoffs. The federal government this week made public its estimate of premium costs for the federal health-care exchanges. It is a morass, revealing the law's underappreciated operational complexity.
But ObamaCare's Achilles' heel is technology. The software glitches are going to drive people insane.
Creating really large software for institutions is hard. Creating big software that can communicate across unrelated institutions is unimaginably hard. ObamaCare's software has to communicate--accurately--across a mind-boggling array of institutions: HHS, the IRS, Medicare, the state-run exchanges, and a whole galaxy of private insurers' and employers' software systems.
Recalling Rep. Thomas's 1999 remark about Medicare setting prices for 3,000 counties, there is already mispricing of ObamaCare's insurance policies inside the exchanges set up in the states.
The odds of ObamaCare's eventual self-collapse look stronger every day. After that happens, then what? Try truly universal health insurance? Not bloody likely if the aghast U.S. public has any say.
Links
Today only, plain brown wrapper.
Romney's Son And Wife Adopt A Baby -- But There's A Problem
He's black.
This is a problem? Apparently it is.
Why is this a problem?
It's a problem, per Independent Journal Review, for hateful "progressives" who've decided that the Romneys are following "the Hollywood fever -- adopting a black baby."
Yes, disgustingly, this mainly seems to be a left-centered bile thing.
A particularly ugly tweet from a black guy:
@BlakCharles
Mitt Romney copped that little negro baby about 15 years too late
Another black guy:
@GavinYatesLIVES
Mitt Romney adopted a grandchild? So he bought a black baby and went to his daughters house like "Here. It needs to be walked and fed daily"
Another black guy:
@PBS_Impulse9
Mitt Romney grandson learning how to wash dishes and change bed sheets as we speak
How utterly. Disgustingly. Ugly.
One wonders if all of these guys have adopted babies -- black, white, or any color?
As for the black babies, there are countless babies born to single black mothers -- an enormously high birth rate for babies born daddyless in the black community. There are also drug-addicted single black mothers and others equally ill-fit to be parents.
Back to the Romneys: The Romneys' son and wife are going to give this very cute kid a loving home. I love that they didn't care that he's chocolate and they're vanilla.
My friends adopted a Korean baby and he's beautiful, too. They're Jews. This means...?
Well, what I do know about their kid is that he has a happy little life and he's loved.
There Isn't Right. There Isn't Left. There's Just Power.
Sure, there are a few differences between the Democrats and the Republicans, between the right and the left. But they have much more in common, like greed, overweening self-interest, and a commitment to crony capitalism.
At Against Crony Capitalism, Nick Sorrentino explains:
What is fascism?Basically it is the government working in partnership with the corporate establishment to secure political power (for government) and profits and power (for businesses).
Basically what we have now is a soft fascist system, crony capitalism. It's only soft in the sense that the Gestapo for the most part is not breaking down doors willy nilly (though there are exceptions to this, and more and more). Soft fascism becomes very hard when it comes down on you or your business, but it is not Hitler's fascism, yet.
Interestingly our special brand of fascism is being driven in large part (but by no means solely) by people who would reject the "fascist" term out of hand. Not just because it is a pejorative in modern America, but because they honestly believe that their political ideology has nothing to do with fascism and is in fact counter to it.There is a whole group of people in this country who associate themselves with what has been called the American "Left" who exhibit all the tendencies of fascism but honestly believe they can't be fascists because "fascism" is an ideology of the "Right."
The overarching problem here is the dated definition of what is "Right" and what is "Left." There used to be some sense to the shorthand, but now it makes little sense at all. In this old way of looking at the world the battle is between 2 clubs seeking the power of the state defined by their own style. The Dems want to expand social programs, the Republicans want to expand the Military Industrial Complex and farm subsidies.
Though the Republicans have appropriated "small government" language for decades, the debate during the modern political era has never really been about more government versus less government. Despite what we have been told our entire lives, the real debate instead has always been about the style of government. Fundamentally modern American politics has been about which constituencies get to leverage the state apparatus for their benefit. So it's understandable that the neo-fascists, the soft fascists, are confused about their own ideology. They are still thinking in 20th Century terms.
He quotes a Drudge tweet that explains it: "It's now Authoritarian vs. Libertarian..."
And he has a great end to his piece but go read it all:
Human progress is (measured by me anyway) is the degree to which the average person can live free of coercion, to the degree he or she can realize their specific potential, the degree to which those who would steal in the name of the king, the lord, or the state are minimized in everyday life. People should be free. This is the great hope for humanity. Free minds. Free prices. Human dignity. Free markets. Freedom, true freedom, to do as one wishes so long as one does not harm others. The opportunity to actualize one's potential (and not to do it at the detriment of someone else.) Truly to lift the collective level of human consciousness.Those who would stifle the movement toward freedom, those who would stifle an open source society, those who fight the decentralization of systems and the empowerment of individuals are the reactionaries, not the advocates of small government.
Call them the hipster fascists. We all knew them in college. They were the ones enforcing the speech codes, and complaining about oppression when they themselves came from privilege. The kids who wore the Che Guevara shirts without irony. The kids who invariably ended up on the student council.
I don't know about you but I had enough of these people in college. I am not keen on letting them run our society any further into the statist ground.
Lunk
Gorilla us up some links.
All The President's Math
This is just wild -- in a horrible way -- that the leader of the free world, the President of the United States of America, has this, well, pothead's view of the debt ceiling. (Vodkapundit pointed out that he had to be seriously high on dope to say this.)
The President on how "raising the debt ceiling ... does not increase our debt":
"Now, this debt ceiling -- I just want to remind people in case you haven't been keeping up -- raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt; it does not somehow promote profligacy. All it does is it says you got to pay the bills that you've already racked up, Congress. It's a basic function of making sure that the full faith and credit of the United States is preserved."Obama went on to suggest that "the average person" mistakenly thinks that raising the debt ceiling means the U.S. is racking up more debt:
"It's always a tough vote because the average person thinks raising the debt ceiling must mean that we're running up our debt, so people don't like to vote on it, and, typically, there's some gamesmanship in terms of making the President's party shoulder the burden of raising the -- taking the vote."
V-Pundit translates for the non-tokers in the audience:
So a stoned person might get it in their heads that raising the debt limit doesn't actually incur any debt because... the debt, it's already there man. It's already there! And the debt becomes this thing in your mind, this huge concept you can't quite wrap your brain around, because it's already there. Don't you see? Congress already did it already. Whoa.
Did you vote for this man? Do you at least kick yourself several times a day or at least a week?
What's With The Kind Of Person Who Writes This Expecting An Answer?
I'm an advice columnist and will typically answer letters on love, dating, sex, and relationships even if they won't make my column. I do this for free, and people who have a little respect for that (or at least a little common sense) do their best to be coherent. Not this guy. Got this email last night:
So I saw your style of writing and like it. I can't say I'd typically write in this nature but what the fuck, so I'm this guy that tried to live the American dream to find it's not all that. After many ok years I separated our family. I found the soon to be ex hmm non supportive to the understood mechanics of our marriage. 4 kids later... All adopted with biological influences not understood at the acquisition it's clear some ppl can bite off more than can chew. Hmm feeling in Colorado the potential sting of dissolution of marriage, translating to high alimony I'm chilling by not jumping too fast. Hmm got serious differences like naturally high testosterone vs here equally charged estrogen, hmm and her clinging to faith that did nothing tangible but propagate wasted self realization I'm realizing how messed up I am. Moslow's law of hierarchy makes more emotional sense at this 5 seconds. That is I feel like I am in complete survival mode. The kids are all messed up emotionally not able to take a serious effort to stand on their own feet any thing of importance. And the point of my message I have some basic beliefs a guy can sincerely validate a girl and vice versa and I think I want that. And all the while the kids flounder in the lost American dream influenced by our modern culture. My job is good and I'm thinking wtf am I doing writing this, but I seemed to have zero problem writing lots of potential women on match.com or POF with out great results. So why not get shredded by an expert. Never was racist or chauvinist but still trying to figure out does all this rat race make sense. Again just surviving barely but did like your direct writing style.Sent from my iPad2
Hint: If your email to me reads at all like the nonsense paragraphs they throw together to mock up a brochure, there's something wrong.
It gets better. The guy writes back. Three times:
First -- On Sep 23, 2013 9:09 PM, DELETED wrote:
Your ego has the best of you... Clearly
Second -- On Sep 23, 2013 9:13 PM, DELETED wrote:
And there really was no question. I am getting a pulse on people's ability to be human... Clearly you don't appear to be, with you overrated ego at least in your mind. No reply is needed. Sincerely
And third:
And as my old pappy used to say 'go pound sand in your ass' it did not make sense at the time, but I think it's fitting for the moment.
All of this in reply to this response I sent him initially. I could have just ignored his email, but that seems unkind. Also, I'm amazed at the entitlement (or level of drunkenness) of a person who writes an incoherent piles of words like that above to a total stranger in hopes of getting free advice.
My initial response to him:
Sorry, but you need to write clearly and in complete words and sentences (that actually make sense) for me to answer your question. We're not 12-year-old BFFs texting each other. I do this for free, answering questions whether or not they'll make my column, simply to be nice. People who write at least need to be respectful enough of that to make their questions comprehensible.
And finally, my response to his three emails:
Wow.You send a total stranger an incoherent message, expecting them to muddle through it and give you advice, free of charge, and then use the fact that they ask you to respect their time by writing clearly to deem them lacking in humanity?
Okay, here's the advice: 1. Fix whatever causes you to have such a sense of entitlement before you try to date. 2. Don't make assumptions about people based on little information. 3. Don't be such an asshole.
Especially number three.
Link Coat
Soothes and relieves.
How Does Your Romantic Partner Embarrass You?
Duke psych prof Mark Leary tells the WSJ's Elizabeth Bernstein that there are four kinds of embarrassment:
Spousal embarrassment falls into four distinct categories, Dr. Leary says. The most simple is secondhand, or "empathic," embarrassment--what you feel when your partner does something unintentionally embarrassing, like trip on a stair or knock over a glass of water. Sadly, this is probably the least common type of spousal embarrassment, Dr. Leary says."Reflective" embarrassment is what you feel when your spouse does something you find humiliating. Think of the wife who gets angry and raises her voice in a restaurant, or the husband who tells an inappropriate joke. "Our big worry is that people will think we had to sink pretty low to put up with this clown," Dr. Leary says.
"One sided" embarrassment is when you are mortified, but your partner isn't--such as when he or she insists on break-dancing at the family wedding. Not surprisingly, this type of embarrassment often leads to conflict. The partner whose behavior has been questioned may deny he or she did anything wrong. Dr. Leary says the attitude can be summarized as, "I don't know why you think that I embarrassed you. The lamp shade I wore on my head was funny."
Finally, there is "targeted" embarrassment, when one spouse, intentionally or not, directly embarrasses the other. It can be as simple as telling a story that your partner thinks should remain private (Ms. Phillips's specialty). Typically, in this scenario, everything seems fine until the couple gets home--and one person finds out the other is furious.
Your spouse or partner's specialty?
A Helpful Decade-Finder
How you know it isn't 1993:
You see that you've got new email & you're relieved to find that it's all from Arafat's wife and African despots trying to get their fortune to the West.
Words, Words, Words!
From an Andrew Malcolm tweet via @DrEades:
@AHMalcolm
Good reminder: Declaration of Independence 1,322 words US Constitution 7,794 words. Govt Regs on sale of cabbage 26,911 words (Ron Paul)
Lyrics to this blog item by Lerner and Loewe. Here's Julie Andrews performing it on Ed Sullivan.
D-Link
Route the hilarious and scandalous here.
Advice Goddess Radio, "Best-Of" Replay, Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Dr. Eric Klinenberg, How & Why Living Alone Can Make You Happy
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research.
*"Best-of" replay this week -- a show I loved -- because my corrections on my next book are due shortly and I'm working day and night on them.
On tonight's show, noted sociologist Dr. Eric Klinenberg will discuss why remaining unmarried and living alone have increasing appeal and what the problems of living solo tend to be -- and how we might solve them.
We'll touch both on living solo as a younger person (whether romantically single or "living apart together" with a partner), and how we can live alone as we age.
Dr. Klineberg's book is Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone.
Listen at this link from 7-8 pm Pacific, 10-11 pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
Don't miss last week's show with former Wall Streeter and current Cambridge neuroscience fellow John Coates on how science-based risk taking empowers success.
There's something major missing in our understanding of how we succeed, and that's the biological side of things.
That's what my guest, John Coates, provides -- fascinating biological nuances that explain how to approach risk, manage stress, use our gut feelings, and optimize ourselves to achieve even the loftiest goals.
Coates is now a senior research fellow in neuroscience and finance at the University of Cambridge, but he came to that after a very successful career on Wall Street where he ran the trading desk at Deutsche bank. His terrific book is "The Hour Between Dog And Wolf: How risk-taking transforms us, body and mind."
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/09/15/john-coates-how-science-based-risk-taking-empowers-success
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
It Doesn't Quite Seem Fair To Use The Term "Dogged"
To describe your dog's playing with a cat toy
Aida is my tiny Chinese Crested and an all-day source of amusement.
(If only it took this little to entertain humans.)
Some Republican Lawmakers Got The Biggest "Food Stamps" Of All
Can we stop pretending that the Republican party is the party of small government and removing entitlements? Well, sure, Republicans are sometimes for removing entitlements -- when the entitlements aren't going directly to them.
Andrew Kaczynski writes at Buzzfeed that some Republican lawmakers who voted to cut food stamps personally received large farm subsidies for their family farms:
Several of the House Republicans who voted Thursday for a bill that slashed billions of dollars from the food stamp program personally received large farm subsidies for family farms. The bill cutting the food stamp program narrowly passed on a mostly party line 217 to 210 vote.During the food stamp debate, GOP Rep. Stephen Fincher, who received thousands in farm subsidies, responded to a Democratic Congressman during the debate over the cuts by quoting the bible, saying "the one who is unwilling to work shall not eat."
Fincher himself has received his own large share of government money. From 1999 to 2012, Stephen & Lynn Fincher Farms received $3,483,824 in agriculture subsidies. Last year he took in $70,574 alone.
Another Republican congresswoman who voted to make cuts to the food stamp program was Rep. Vicky Hartzler of Missouri. Her farm received more than $800,000 in Department of Agriculture subsidies from 1995-2012. In 2001, her farm received $135,482 in subsidies.
Absolutely disgusting. And lawmaking as usual. For both parties. But the Democrats don't pretend to have problems with the taxpayer-funded teat.
Raise A Princess? Don't Be Shocked When She Grows Up To Be A Princess
This week's "Modern Love" in The New York Times is by Judith Gille, a woman who reports that her daughter not only arrived home from her first year in college but her boyfriend moved in with her. They "didn't consult" her, she writes.
The story goes on in that general direction:
The two of them were so enamored of each other, I didn't have the heart to separate them. I assumed they'd soon grow bored with seeing each other every day and he'd go home. This didn't happen.The biggest problem was that my daughter and her boyfriend brought with them a level of messiness I had grown unaccustomed to. They shed clothing like dogs shed fur, peppering the apartment with sweatshirts, T-shirts and underwear. They preferred my shower to hers and soon the drain was clogged with hair.
While I was out of town on business, they moved into my bedroom, too; I have a king-size bed and they found it roomier. They produced mounds of laundry, garbage and recycling. The water and electricity bills both shot up.
My daughter loves cooking and decided that her summer job was to teach her boyfriend to cook. Unfortunately, their enthusiasm didn't extend to cleaning up. I'd arrive home from work to dirty dishes and half-filled pots and pans on the stove. The kitchen floor would be sticky, the stovetop spattered with oil and the oven bottom crusty with burned food.
When I asked if the boyfriend might help out a little by doing dishes or taking out the compost, my daughter said, "He's phobic about getting his hands dirty."
"I'm sure that works well for him," I replied.
Weeks passed as the lovebirds languished in my apartment. I'd leave for work at 10:30 a.m. and return at 7 p.m. to find them exactly where I had left them: sprawled on the couch watching reruns of "Monk." The only way I could tell they had even moved was that the food I had bought for dinner was gone and the kitchen was a mess.
Her mom had it right.
She continues:
Two things my mother was very good at were making her values clear and establishing boundaries. You knew what was expected of you and how far you could go. She demanded our respect.When my children were small, I had no trouble setting limits. But as they grew to be adults (or emerging adults), I grew overly permissive. But one day my daughter and the boyfriend pushed me too far, and I learned that establishing clear boundaries is good for everyone, including our adult children.
I arrived home from work one night, hungry and tired, and found the boyfriend's car in my parking place when I pulled into the garage.
"Just go park on the street," my daughter said when I called her to ask why his car was in my spot. As I searched for a place to park on Seattle's crowded streets, I got angrier by the minute. Finally I found a spot, but it was a mile away.
I thought the walk home might cool me down. It didn't. I took the stairs in lieu of the elevator, hoping the five flights might calm me. They didn't. I threw open the door to the apartment and tripped over a pair of size-12 Nikes as I stormed into my daughter's room. The two of them were in bed, half naked, watching a movie on her laptop.
"What's up, dog?" the boyfriend asked cheerfully. "How was your day?"
"I'm not your dog!" I screamed. "Don't ever call me that or park in my spot again."
"It's not your spot," my daughter said.
"As long as I'm the one paying for it, it is!" I hollered. "If you want to pay for it, then we'll talk."
Blown away by my rage, the boyfriend gathered his clothes, put on his Nikes and went home. Later that night, I sat down my glowering daughter and outlined the rules of engagement: The boyfriend was welcome to stay over, but only one or two nights a week. They were to clean up after themselves. My bathroom and bedroom were off limits, and he was never to park in my spot again.
From that point forward, our joint tenancy went fairly smoothly.
You don't help a kid by letting her live sloppy.
This isn't "permissive" parenting; it's failed parenting -- taking the easy way out.
My neighbor is pretty crunchy granola in guiding how they live -- they have no paper towel in their house; their kids probably only learned what Ziploc bags are upon going to school, and I'm pretty sure they wash their foil. (I'm not putting her down for conserving; it's just a bit much for me.)
What I do respect her for immensely is how does things right in giving the kids boundaries -- as does her husband. It can be hard. It's no fun having to be the hammer. But I see the results and I really admire her for them. I think she's made it possible for these kids to function in society -- to be employed, to be somebody's partner, to have a life that isn't a mess.
Looking back, my parents, who could be silly-strict on things some times, did the same, and I'm ultimately grateful for it. (I do still wish I'd been allowed to go to Rocky Horror in high school.)
I think Dr. Alan Kazdin, psychiatrist, psychologist, Yale prof, and the head of the Yale Parenting Institute, said this on my radio show -- that parents should be authority figures but not authoritarian. My parents went to far in the authoritarian direction, and I know having a dog is loads easier than having a kid, but I see how authority rather than authoritarianism works: Being firm, consistent, and immediate with punishment and rewards.
My puppy, Aida, a tiny Chinese Crested (a breed known for its stubbornness), was only born on May 11, 2013, and I can tell her to "Stay!" and she will stay -- for five minutes, even -- or until I signal her that it's okay to go.
(If only that worked with infant children!)
Why a Summer as a Chambermaid Can Be More Valuable Than an Internship
Sometimes the long and winding track has more to offer than the supposed fast track.
Susan Dominus writes in The New York Times of a summer she spent retyping index cards as an intern at a prestigious literary magazine. That was her freshman year. The next summer, she got a job at a Maine resort as a chambermaid:
The job would never do me any favors on a résumé, I knew, but I was desperate to avoid another summer spent under fluorescent light in an office. At some point during the summer I mentioned to the woman who ran (and still owns) the resort, Jane Orans, that I wanted to be a writer. The next day, she walked me to a small cabin, in need of some repair, that no one else would use that summer."You want to be a writer?" she said. "Go ahead, write." Then she left. My work cleaning toilets and changing sheets ended by 11:30 most mornings, and there were many afternoons I spent in that cabin, figuring out what it was I might want to do with a blank page.
Some other things happened that summer. I befriended the assistant pastry chef, a young woman my age who grew up to be a dean at Columbia Journalism School, someone who has been one of my closest friends and professional confidants over the years. Because another friend I made there, the cabin boy, read the paper every day, I picked up that habit for the first time in my life.
Also, that summer, no fewer than three women whose cabins I cleaned happened to be reading "Nora," by Brenda Maddox, a biography of the wife of James Joyce. I am not proud to admit that I did an inexcusably bad job on their cabins while I made my way through probably a third of the book, fascinated by the story, the language. When I got back to school, I signed up for every Joyce seminar I could take, classes that were the best hours of my four years there: intimidating and exhausting but exhilarating.
There's also a message here that there's a lot to be found in unexpected places -- if you just look.
I think also it's important to be in a spirit that allows you to find people and experiences of value.
What's always helped me, I think, is an interest in people and a love of connecting with people. Gregg jokes about how I'll talk to pretty much everyone (at least anyone who doesn't seem to be putting out "keepaway" vibes), saying that I could "do 20 minutes with a parking meter."
Once, at Trader Joe's, we were supposed to be picking up stuff fast and heading out. Gregg, who finds talking to strangers a welcome alternative to being mugged, sent me to go get some item and I saw him passing the aisle I was in -- just as I was hugging the manager. He just rolled his eyes, shook his head, laughed to himself, and pushed the cart on.
Linkwell
Dip somebody's pigtail in.
Researcher Peter Gray: Schools Are For Showing Off, Not For Learning
Trying and failing at something is not in the cards.
Peter Gray, whom you can hear on my radio show, has a blog post up at Psychology Today that is right on:
Suppose you are a student in a high school or college course and a magic fairy offers you the following choice: (1) You will learn the material in the course well, but will get a low grade (a D). Or (2) you will not learn the material at all, but will get a high grade (an A). Which would you choose? Be honest.Nearly all students (except for a few rebels), would unhesitatingly choose Alternative 2. Students are rational beings. They know that school is about grades, not learning. If they ever need to know the material they can always learn it on their own, in a far more efficient way than they can at school. On the other hand, they can never erase that awful D. It would be stupid to choose Alternative 1. By the time they have reached high school, all students know that.
Schools are for showing off, not for learning. When we enroll our children in school, we enroll them into a never ending series of contests--to see who is best, who can get the highest grades, the highest scores on standardized tests, win the most honors, make it into the most advanced placement classes, get into the best colleges. We see those grades and hoops jumped through as measures not only of our children, but also of ourselves as parents. We find ways, subtly or not so subtly, to brag about them to our friends and relatives.
All this has nothing to do with learning, and, really, we all know it. We rarely even bother to think about what our children are actually learning in school; we only care about the grades. We, the parents, maybe even more than our kids, think it would be stupid for our kids to choose Alternative 1 over Alternative 2. We would forbid them from making that choice, if we could.
Gray points out that if schools were for learning (rather than for showing off) they'd be designed quite differently:
They would be places where people could follow their own interests, learn what they wanted to learn, try out various career paths, prepare themselves for the futures that they wanted. Everyone would be doing different things, at different times, so there would be no basis for comparison. People would learn to read when they wanted to learn to read, and we would help them do it if they wanted help. The focus would be on cooperation, not on competition. That's what occurs at certain democratic schools, which are for learning, not for showing off, and such schools have proven remarkably effective.
This may sound like a bunch of softie crap, but it's not. Gray has studied schools like this, including the Sudbury School he sent his own son to, and has found the students better prepared for college and life than students who've gone to traditional schools.
.via @sbkaufman
Busted In Middle School -- For Midol
LA Times Pressman blogger Ed Padgett sent me a link to his blog item about his granddaughter's day in middle school today -- Ramona Middle School -- where they like to make sure they treat kids like criminals really early.
He blogs that the La Verne Police Department paid a visit to the school with a drug-sniffing dog in tow, and came into her class:
After introducing himself and the dog and explaining what they were about to do, the dog went to work sniffing the thirteen and fourteen year olds back packs, seeking illegal drugs of any type.Unfortunately for my granddaughter, the dog starting acting oddly when it came upon her back pack, so without requesting permission, the officer began searching through her things, and hit pay dirt.
Yes the officer pulled prepackaged pills from her back pack and asked her "what is this?" And she explained it was used to stop back pain and cramps. Then he asked, in front of all of her classmates "do you really need this?" Is it really his business to ask?
As we waste billions to combat drugs, the war on drugs was lost many years ago.
Here's what was discovered in her backpack: 
How absolutely appalling that we care more about an officer making a drug score than about a person's -- including a teenage person's -- right to privacy.
Again, the officer to the girl: "Do you really need this?"
I'll put it less politely than Ed did:
What fucking business is it of yours?
Dr. Zeus
From Pat Condell:
Q: Prove God doesn't exist.A: That's a tough one. Show me how it's done by proving Zeus and Apollo don't exist, and I'll use your method.
Slinky
You bring the linkies; I'll bring the stairs.
A Person Can Get Really Crabby About The Limits Of Other People's Money
North Dakota state representative Josh Boschee, a Democrat from Fargo, decided to try and live on a food stamps budget in order to better understand "the experiences of North Dakotans who access SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) as a way to feed themselves and their family."
SayAnythingBlog notes:
In his first post on the challenge he describes buying $29.45 worth of groceries to last him for the seven days of his challenge. But limiting himself to just $30 (he admits to going about $0.50 over) in groceries is a bit of a fallacy. You see, SNAP isn't intended to pay for all of a person's food. That's why "supplemental" is right there in the title of the program.Nobody is expected to live exclusively on $30/week in groceries. But here's the funny thing: It's actually possible to do it, though it's not very pleasant as Boschee himself attests:
It took approximately 50 minutes to place and replace $29.45 worth of food in my cart to sustain the seven day challenge. I left the store crabby from the process of shopping on a restricted budget and frustrated as I reflected on the fact that this was a way of life for thousands of North Dakotans.Rep. Boschee seems to think it's some great injustice that some citizens have to spend time considering the price of the food they're buying, and fitting it within a budget. But that's ludicrous. I don't know what sort of a privileged life Rep. Boschee leads, but my family and I budget our food purchases every month, and while we don't operate on a food stamps budget, we aren't in a position to be spendthrifts either.
Wait, The NFL Is A Tax-Exempt Organization?
Ira Boudway writes at Bloomberg:
Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn introduced a bill yesterday that would strip the National Football League of its tax-exempt status. The PRO Sports Act proposed by the Republican lawmaker would prohibit professional sports organizations with annual revenue of more than $10 million from filing as nonprofit organizations. In addition to the NFL, the bill would also change the status of the National Hockey League, golf's PGA Tour, and the ATP World Tour in tennis, among other professional sports groups.Wondering how an organization charging $2,600 for Super Bowl tickets qualifies for tax exemptions in the first place? It's a good question. The NFL qualifies as a 501(c)(6), a nonprofit category that includes chambers of commerce, trade groups, real estate boards, and a handful of other sports leagues. The National Basketball Association is a for-profit organization, and Major League Baseball gave up its exempt status in 2007.
When Congress granted an antitrust exemption in 1966 that allowed the NFL to merge with the AFL, lawmakers added "professional football leagues" to the statute to ensure the new league would qualify. So while the NFL's 32 teams bring in a combined $9.5 billion in annual revenue, the league office calls itself a "trade association promoting interests of its 32 member clubs." This is a bit like McDonald's (MCD) calling itself a trade association promoting the interests of its 14,000 U.S. restaurants. The key difference is that the NFL distributes all its revenue back to the teams--after covering expenses such as rent, officiating crews, and Commissioner Roger Goodell's $30 million salary.
"Tax earmarks are essentially tax increases for everyone who doesn't receive the benefit," Coburn said in his press release proposing to tax America's most popular sport.
via @Old Whig
CA's Prop 65 Has Turned Into Abusive Lawsuit Bonanza For Lawyers
Prop 65 says there has to be a warning label on a product if one of numerous common chemicals (800 of them) is in use in the product, and lawyers have gone after Chuck Firth, inventor of the Durascoop kitty litter picker-upper.
FacesOfLawsuitAbuse.org posts:
"Failure to label has created a cottage industry of lawsuits ... and the lawsuit over this may put Chuck Firth out of business."Under Prop 65, the plastic handle on Chuck's Durascoop needed a warning label. So, lawyers filed lawsuits that may have the impact of forcing Chuck to shut his doors, taking the popular Durascoop off the market for good.
UPDATE: More on the idiocy of Prop 65. (That nickel in your pocket -- as in, that five cent piece -- why doesn't it have a warning label on it?)
The Law Of Unintended Consequences: Home Health Companion Version
It is bizarre to me that we have so many elected officials in power who cannot think two steps ahead. Or even one. Or even squint off into the distance to look at the likely effects of some new ruling or piece of legislation.
The latest is a U.S. Department of Labor rule requiring that time-and-a-half overtime be paid to at-home attendants who put in more than 40 hours a week caring for a disabled or elderly person.
Walter Olson explains the rule and the ramifications at Cato:
Many home health aides provide live-in services, and overnight and weekend hours could result in their receiving substantial amounts of overtime pay," notes Steve Miller at the Society for Human Resource Management. Families employing such attendants will also be required to keep records of time worked. There are a few narrow, hard-to-use exceptions. The rule also brings attendants under minimum wage laws, but it's the overtime provision that has raised the most fear.This is a terrible rule. The fear and anger it has stirred is coming not just from commercial employment agencies, as some careless media accounts might leave you to think, but above all from elderly and disabled persons and their families and loved ones, who know that home attendant services are often the only alternative to institutional or nursing home care.
...Don't assume that companions themselves will benefit, even assuming they manage to stay employed. Many will simply see their hours cut back. (Cutting employees' hours as an adaptation to new law? Who could have seen that coming in the era of ObamaCare?) So instead of 12 hours x 6 days at one home spent playing gin rummy between client naps and making sure no health emergency is gathering, the work week will be reshuffled to constitute, say, 36-hour weeks for two different clients, resulting in twice the commuting and job search hassle, twice the handoffs to other attendants (always a time of elevated safety risk, as the medical world has learned to its regret before) and, for the disabled person, twice the number of unfamiliar faces cycling through the house.
If Congress can muster the will to stand up to the backers of the plan - notably unions, organized employment lawyers, and cause groups in the liberal foundation orbit - it could still move to block the rules before the effective date of January 2015.
The Ridiculousness Of Employer-Based Healthcare
It's especially ridiculous now in an era when people might stay in a job a year or two and few stay in a single job throughout their career. This means you lose your health insurance every time you leave a job -- if you even can leave a job.
The dipshitted giant mistake that is Obamacare has not fixed this. Of course, why should we expect it to be sensible when our elected sellouts just voted for or against it along party lines. It could have had the White Supremacist theme song written in and few would have been the wiser.
Here, at NPR, from Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson, is the story of how "accidents of history" created our health system.
Blink
Was it The Bionic Woman who had the super eyesight?
Saying No To Those Who Impose
Some people have a hard time saying no to requests made of them, and the users of the world have a special radar to help them spot these people.
Saying no -- and feeling comfortable about it -- starts with saying no. Just doing it, even when it makes you feel like you want to shrivel up on the spot so you can blow away fast.
I'm adding a little to a section of my book and I could use some examples of some really rude attempts (or successful attempts) to impose on you or others -- that is, if you're up for giving them! (...hilarious as it would be if 26 people just posted "No!" in the comments here -- and yes, I am totally kidding on that.)
For example, here's a very LA one: Somebody you know comes to your town and doesn't rent a car and asks you to drive them to "a couple of appointments." Because your time is free and a taxi or a rent-a-car costs money.
Do You Feel Sorry For This Congressman, Suffering On Only $172K A Year?
Jeff Simon writes in the WaPo:
Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) lamented in a closed-door meeting Wednesday that his staff can get rich as lobbyists while he is "stuck here making $172,000," according to the National Review Online.NRO's Jonathan Strong reports that Gingrey said that staff may not make a lot of money on Capitol Hill, "but in a few years they can just go to K Street and make $500,000 a year. Meanwhile I'm stuck here making $172,000."
During the meeting, Republicans discussed a proposal to exempt lawmakers and their staff from a new law requiring them to participate in federal health-care exchanges.
Gingrey and other lawmakers expressed concern about the financial toll the new law would take on them on their staffs.
Wow, just like regular people.
Gingrey, per the NRO piece, has a net worth of at least $3 million. To his credit, he is trying to end the subsidy.
Gunbucks
Loved this tweet:
@iowahawkblog
Got kicked out of a gun shop for open-carrying a Starbucks.
Starbucks' CEO Howard Schultz' "Leave Your Guns at Home" open letter to customers here. And as Julie Jargon notes in the WSJ, he isn't banning guns; he's asking that customers not bring them into Starbucks outlets.
Obama Re-election Campaign Aides: I See White People
At the WashEx, Byron York writes about Richard Wolffe's new book, The Message: The Reselling of President Obama
In April 2012, the Obama re-election campaign posted a photo of a staff meeting on its Tumblr account. The aides in the picture were young, casually dressed, and enthusiastic -- and nearly all white. The campaign took heat on the Internet for a remarkable lack of diversity, particularly since the staff was working to re-elect the first black president in U.S. history.Now, a new book filled with inside information from the campaign reports that top Obama aides were also taking heat from key donors and supporters.
...Wolffe writes that influential black supporters were unhappy with the lack of black aides in top campaign roles. The supporters were so unhappy that they forced the campaign to search for African-Americans to fill senior roles in the effort. After months of searching, the campaign found exactly one.
That person was Broderick Johnson, a former lobbyist and personal friend of the president.
The lack of black staffers, both in senior and lower-down roles, proved embarrassing for the campaign, Wolffe writes. For example, with no blacks to supervise ads targeting African-American audiences, the results could be remarkably off-key. When the campaign produced its first black radio ad, one aide recalled to Wolffe, "It was like something out of Soul Train from the 1970s." With funk music behind it, the ad played sound bites from Obama speeches followed by a chorus singing "We've got yo' back!"
via @instapundit
Braveheart-Inspired Snow Report
If only we had a guy like this in LA instead of the pairs of tits with a blonde-bobblehead attached -- and I'm mostly talking about the men.
via @nypost
kniL
!sdrawkcab knihT
Awakened From A Doggie-Nap
Aida, my Chinese Crested, sometimes sits with her front paws crossed, very lady-doggie-like. It only looks like that here, but I love when that happens and have to catch a photo.
Absolutely Remarkable Research On Getting Through To People In Vegetative State
Minimally conscious people respond to attention commands in fMRI scanner. Via CTVNews Canada. Video here. Absolutely worth watching.
The paper on this -- accessible through DropBox.
via @comadork
Stephen Hawking Backs Assisted Suicide: "We Don't Let Animals Suffer, So Why Humans?"
Hawking himself has motor neuron disease.
From the Telegraph/UK, Claire Duffin writes:
In an interview he said he believed those who helped loved ones die should escape prosecution if they were suffering from a terminal illness and in pain.It is a criminal offence in the UK to encourage or assist someone to take their own life but guidance, issued by the Department of Public Prosecutions in 2010, makes it clear that friends or family members are unlikely to be prosecuted for assisting a loved one's suicide.
However, campaigners have called for greater clarity in the law.
Prof Hawking said: "I think those who have a terminal illness and are in great pain should have the right to choose to end their own life and those that help them should be free from prosecution."
"But there must be safeguards that the person concerned genuinely wants to end their life and they are not being pressurised into it or have it done without their knowledge and consent, as would have been the case with me," he added, referring to an incident in 1985 when he was placed on a life support machine.
It followed a bout of pneumonia and his first wife, Jane Hawking, was given the option to switch of the machine.
But she refused and insisted he was flown back to Cambridge from Geneva where he recovered and went on to complete his popular science book, A Brief History Of Time, which sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.
Should Special Ed Kids Be Mainstreamed?
Miriam Kurtzig Freedman looks at the impact upon non-disabled kids when special ed kids are mainstreamed into regular classrooms.
On the one hand, this may help kids see people with disabilities as people and have some compassion for them. Or...maybe these kids are treated cruelly in some of these classrooms and are unable to fight back against the higher-functioning. I don't know. I don't have kids. You tell me.
And tell me what you think the impact is on learning -- for the special ed kids, for the regular kids, and for any gifted kids.
Freedman writes in the WSJ about the $80 billion to $110 billion program that is special ed:
Look into the research on inclusion and you will find that this policy is generally based on notions of civil rights and social justice, not on "best education practices" for all students. The effectiveness of inclusion for students with disabilities varies--some groups and individual students benefit; others don't. This is one reason why inclusion remains controversial in some segments of the disability community.Very little work has been done to establish how inclusion affects regular students--whether they are average, English-language learners, advanced, poor or homeless. Studies seem to support the social benefits of mainstreaming for children with disabilities and possibly for regular-education students, but what about the effect on their academic progress?
Teachers may tell you (privately) that inclusion often leads them to slow down and simplify classroom teaching. Yet the system is entrenched and politically correct. Many parents remain silent. Some quietly remove their kids from public schools.
Can this be anything but very bad for America? Our schools thrive only with a diverse student population and engaged parents--not with the departure of those who choose to leave.
None of this is about being anti- or pro-special or regular education. The purpose is to focus on fairness and equity for all students in the nation's classrooms. That goal can only be achieved by encouraging many more people, especially parents and educators, to come forward with their views and experiences. The time for that robust, inclusive and frank national discussion is now.
Your thoughts and experiences?
via @overlawyered
We're Supposed To Rely On Private Companies To Keep Govt. From Violating The Constitution?
Siobhan Gorman and Brent Kendall write in the WSJ that no telecom company has ever challenged the government's orders to turn over records in the NSA's phone snooping program, according to the (normally secret) FISA court opinion released on Tuesday:
The phone program was developed under a provision of the Patriot Act that allows the NSA, through the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to collect business records "relevant to an authorized investigation." The NSA determined that nearly all U.S. phone-call records were "relevant" to terrorism investigations because it needed all the calls in order to determine with whom suspects were communicating.The records, called "metadata," include phone numbers people dialed and where they were calling from. The content of the calls isn't obtained under this program.
...Civil libertarians said the secret court's opinion showed the court is too deferential to the government. "The opinion only confirms the folly of entrusting Americans' privacy rights to a court that meets in secret and hears argument only from the government," said American Civil Liberties Union Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer.
The order finds that the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure don't apply to business records, such as phone-call logs. According to a 1979 Supreme Court decision in Smith v. Maryland, which has set a precedent for more than 30 years, there is no expectation of privacy with regard to phone records.
The order also explains the legal reasoning that finds virtually all American phone records to be relevant to the NSA's hunt for terrorists. It says these data meet "the standard for relevant" because "it is necessary to obtain the bulk collection of a telephone company's metadata to determine those connections between known and unknown international terrorist operatives."
The TSA also claims it's necessarily to violate your civil liberties. How many terrorists have they found? Make a big "O" with your fingers. That's how many.
The notion that this needle in a meta-data haystack has not been shown to work, and the government's word that they are only collecting "meta-data" -- the phone numbers people were calling and called from -- is not reassuring.
As others have pointed out, you can know a lot about whether a person has a drug habit or is having an affair or any number of other bits of information that you can use against them. And even if you don't use the information against them, our right to privacy is a precious right. It is for each of us to control and not for the government to take away from citizens who have not committed crimes.
Poo-Pourri: How To Make Your Big Skunky Turds Smell Like A Florist's Shop
I'm serious. I saw an ad for this stuff -- Poo-Pourri X-Large 8 oz bottle Original Scent bathroom toilet air freshner odor masking spray
As the girl said in the commercial, this product gets a higher rating on Amazon than the iPhone 5. (If you eat low-carb, it's probably not necessary, but for all you carbers, well, if you share a toilet with other humans, they'll probably be very grateful to you for buying this.)
Watch this -- it's truly hilarious:
Hang Your Links Coats Here
Meeee-yow!
Think Jihadist
Religious primitives living in the Dark Ages in the year 2013 still manage to take advantage of The Enlightenment and the ensuing inventions made possible in free Western society.
Take the iPad. Syrian rebels are using it to aim mortars. ("There's an app for that!")
Hey, guys, there's a lot about our culture besides our bits and bytes that has merits, like how men in our society don't own women like they're goats and how homosexuals get to go to school and work and live their lives instead of being hung in the town square.
Unfortunately, in a society like ours, skills like yours -- slaughtering the defenseless -- will only come in handy if you can get a job in a hamburger factory.
California Agents Go "To Catch A Predator" On Unlicensed Home Repair, Lawncare Workers
It's a home improvement sting! Painting and landscaping without a license!
And check out what the video shows takes to become a licensed landscaper in California -- $400 for a license plus practically a college degree in landscaping.
Sorry, you need a license to cut grass why? And yes, this means your kid, who wanted to mow lawns to earn extra money, is a perp, not a hard-working young person, looking to save for college or a car to get him to his job during the school year.
Ted Balaker puts this in sharp perspective at reason:
California suffers from one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation and the state is under court order to release 10,000 inmates, yet state agents are jailing people who manage to find home-improvement work. After placing ads on Craigslist, California State License Board investigators go undercover posing as homeowners, when landscapers, painters, and other contractors show up, the agents give them the "To Catch a Predator" treatment.CSLB recently announced that agents from the Statewide Investigative Fraud Team (otherwise known by the tough-sounding acronym SWIFT) had completed operation "California Blitz." SWIFTers busted 79 perps for contracting without a license, and if convicted, they could face $5,000 in fines and up to six months in jail. Fifty-two face additional fines for illegal advertising, and thirteen may be charged with requesting an excessive down payment, which can result in 60 days in jail and/or up to $10,000 in fines. SWIFT routinely conducts large-scale sting operations and proudly posts footage of the busts online. And since California is the nation's second-most extensively and onerously licensed state (as noted by an Institute for Justice report), agents always have plenty of targets.
"CSLB and its partners in law enforcement are serious about enforcing California's consumer protection laws," says says CSLB Registrar Steve Sands. "Unlicensed, illegal activity that puts homeowners at risk and legitimate contractors at a competitive disadvantage will not be tolerated."
Ted's video:
Criminals, Especially Murderers, Aren't Deterred By Rules: Navy Yard Was A Gun-Free Zone
How naive is it to make a rule that a place is a "gun-free" zone and then expect that to be obeyed by people who would do others harm?
This is not adult thinking.
Judson Phillips writes in the Wash Times:
Why in God's name do we make our military people so vulnerable that they have to rely on the DC police today?Confusion swirled around the shootings at the Washington Naval Yard today. Was it one gunman or was it several? How did this gunman or gunmen get access to a secured military facility? How did one rifle and possibly one shotgun get onto a secured military facility?
The United States Navy is one of the most powerful military organizations in the world. The Navy's arsenal could wipe most nations off the face of the earth. It was the Navy that killed Osama Bin Laden.
So why was one of our most important Naval facilities so vulnerable?
It is because it was made a gun free zone.Like Washington D.C., one of the crime capitols of America, the Washington Navy Yard was a gun free zone. Translation: It was a target rich environment.
Libertarian Open Carry Protester Vs. Six Police Officers
If you're a law enforcement officer, shouldn't you know the law?
It's been my experience that many cops are pretty clueless not only about local ordinances but what it says in the Constitution.
These Rochester, Michigan cops are an illustration of the latter form of ignorance.
From the YouTube description:
Every Friday we go out and exercise our right to free assembly and protest the government. We call it #ForLibertyFridays. Usually we gather on a street corner during rush hour traffic and waive signs and flags. Some of us open carry rifles and side arms too. We have never had any problems whatsoever from the police or Sherriff, who have always known the laws, and only treated us with respect.Today I decided just to stay in-front of my house in Rochester Hills instead of our usual location. I was outside with my rifle and my Gadsden "don't tread of me" flag how I usually do. After about 15 minutes of doing this was when the first officer (and the 5 other cars right after) rolled up on me, and demanded that I put my rifle down and walk over to him. The he began yelling on the loudspeaker "not to point the gun at him", when I absolutely certainly did not and it facing the ground. I stood there until he told me not to create a "Bad Situation" and unholstered his weapon. I felt threatened and didn't want to risk this cop who probably watches too many crime shows to shoot me in the back. I laid my gun down on the ground, while showing my him hands (one hand holding my smartphone) and then walked towards him. He then ordered another officer to seize my rifle that I had set on the ground.
I am a 2nd year law student and can run circles around him in the law and criminal procedure. This was an assault on me, my property, and my peace. In Lake Orion, myself and others do the EXACT same thing and literally have OC Sherriffs saluting us.
I was assaulted, detained, and my property was seized. And what crime did he suspect me of? He couldn't quite think of one ... Maybe it was for lawfully exercising my constitutionally protected God-given right to keep and bear arms, while holding the flag of our founding fathers on my lawn that I mow every 2 weeks? In reality this entire encounter was about 45 minutes ... The video is shortened for the sake of time.
Whether or not you personally approve of the guy standing out with his gun, you can see that the cops behaved in violation of not only the Constitution but basic principles of fairness -- like when the cop told him to lay his gun down on the city side of the grass in the neighborhood and then said he could take it because it was on city property.
Welcome to Clusterfuck policing!
via Liberty Crier
Democrat Legislators Fight Dirty To Keep Their Special Snowflake Obamacare Privilege
Health care laws are for the little people -- not legislators and their staff. Certainly not.
Democrat and Republican legislators alike are pressing to keep the exemption from Obamacare for themselves and their staffs.
Senator David Vitter, a Repugblican who's returned to the Senate after a scandal involving high-priced prostitutes, fought against the exemption.
And now, Democrats are fighting dirty against him. As Jonathan Turley writes:
While there is a definite appeal to Vitter's view that the Congress should live under the same law applicable to average citizens, there may be some legitimate argument that I am missing. What should be clear is that some Democrats reacted in worse possible way. Politico is reporting that it has legislation drafted by Democrats that would eliminate health care benefits for lawmakers where there is "probable cause" to believe they patronized prostitutes. If true, this is really a sophomoric act of retaliation. Politico is reporting that this is not a joke but something actually raised as a meeting of Democratic members.Apparently even Republicans are mad at Vitter for exposing the hypocrisy of Congress imposing a law on the country while (yet again) creating an exception for itself. The law actually has language barring exceptions, but the Obama Administration issued an order during the August recess to require the Office of Personnel Management to retain the subsidy for members and their staffs.
Even if you believe Congress should be able spare itself from having to get insurance like other Americans, this alleged proposal (and other retaliatory measure directed at Senators supporting Vitter) would set a new low for Congress.
And that certainly is a feat.
Draw Linky
Remember those old ads in comic books?
Amazing Stress Relief Technique (For Those Not Wearing Mascara)
On my radio show last night, my guest was former Wall Street trader and current Cambridge neuroscience research fellow John Coates, talking about how science-based risk-taking empowers success.
He put out extremely helpful information for how to not only manage stress but train yourself to be better at dealing with it -- toughening yourself psychologically the way you can toughen yourself physically.
This is a passage from his terrific book, The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: How Risk-Taking Transforms Us, Body and Mind. (This is some of the clearest science writing you'll find -- the book is a joy to read.) 
Another piece of terrific and terrifically clear science writing I'm reading now is the book Epigenetics: How Environment Shapes Our Genes
Juice: It Does A Body Bad
Which has more sugar, Tropicana's Farmstand juice or a Coke? Fooducate post via Dr. @YoniFreedhoff tweet.
How The TSA Is Used To Violate Your Constitutional Rights Outside The Airport, Too
Did you think searches without probable cause would stop at the airport door?
If so, you have seriously naive ideas about bureaucracy and power.
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution protects us against "unreasonable searches," sans "probable cause" -- reasonable suspicion we've committed a crime.
Police officers can't search us unless they have probable cause.
But the TSA can search us without it -- and do. And not just at airports.
As Freedom To Travel USA emailed me:
Essentially, the police now can use the TSA do do searches which are ILLEGAL FOR POLICE and then anything found from those searches can be used to prosecute one criminally. There is no 4th amendment when they carve out "no 4th amendment zones" for travel. If you don't submit to a coercive search, you are not allowed to travel.
FTT also sent this link by Heather Asiyanbi at Mount Pleasant-Sturvetant Patch, "High-Visibility Transit Checks Help Deter Potential Problems."
"Deter potential problems," like the problem the police have when the Constitution stands between them and digging through your possessions and feeling your coochie.
The caption on the photo with the article:
An Amtrak passenger has his bag searched Wednesday by an agent with the Transportation Security Administration.
From the article:
Rooney and his TSA agents were at the Sturtevant Amtrak depot Wednesday to perform random checks of passenger bags and carry-ons as part of Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR). This is the seventh year the agency has worked with Sturtevant police, and Chief Sean Marschke said the partnership is going well."Local police are necessary because the TSA doesn't have law enforcement authority so if any contraband is discovered, we take custody of those items," he said. "This is a great example of how federal and local jurisdictions can work well together."
And finding and reporting that you have reefer helps against terrorism how?
California Passes Minimum Wage Hike To $10/Hour
Cheryl K. Chumley writes in The Wash Times:
Some cities in California, such as San Francisco, already offered more than the minimum $8 demanded by state law. The bill was passed legislators on a party-line vote, with the Chamber of Commerce calling it out as an economic drain."We have tagged it as a job killer, given the increased costs businesses will be faced with," said Jennifer Barrera, a spokeswoman for the Chamber, prior to the legislators' vote, AP reported.
Gov. Jerry Brown still has to sign the minimum wage measure for it to take effect, but he's already stated his support.
Your thoughts, predictions?
Linkaliciousness
Much like bacon, but with an http in front.
Advice Goddess Radio, Today's Show: John Coates On How Science-Based Risk-Taking Empowers Success
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
There's something major missing in our understanding of how we succeed, and that's the biological side of things.
That's what my guest tonight, John Coates, provides -- fascinating biological nuances that explain how to approach risk, manage stress, use our gut feelings, and optimize ourselves to achieve even the loftiest goals.
Coates is now a senior research fellow in neuroscience and finance at the University of Cambridge, but he came to that after a very successful career on Wall Street where he ran the trading desk at Deutsche bank. His terrific book is "The Hour Between Dog And Wolf: How risk-taking transforms us, body and mind."
Listen now (we taped the show at 1pm today because my guest is in the U.K.) and find out how you can train yourself to manage stress rather than being crushed by it and actually toughen yourself both mentally and physically so you can be at your fittest to reach your goals.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/09/15/john-coates-how-science-based-risk-taking-empowers-success
Don't miss last week's show on making more effective choices by using "deep rationality."
Decisions that we make that seem stupid can actually make a lot of evolutionary sense, meaning that they would have made sense in the ancestral world; they just don't make sense in the world in which we now live.
Unfortunately, we can't just tell our genes, "Hey, it's 2013! There are no hungry tigers roaming the streets of Baltimore and, by the way, my girlfriend's on The Pill."
But, my guest, evolutionary psychologist, psychologist and marketing professor Dr. Vladas Griskevicius, gives us the background to make wiser choices in the future by helping us understand the ways we can be primed to act against our modern interests.
His fascinating book, co-authored with Dr. Douglas Kenrick, is "The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think."
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/09/09/dr-v-griskevicius-make-wiser-choices-via-deep-rationality
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
The Tyranny Of Cute
It takes a lot to say no to this face. 
GOP Special Snowflakes Working On Sweetheart Obamacare Deal For Themselves, Their Staffers
Classic example of crony capitalism, as Nick Sorrentino puts it at Against Crony Capitalism:
Obamacare is not good enough for Congress and their staffs. It is however good enough for you.
From Ginger Gibson and Burgess Everett at Politico:
There will be heavy pressure on Republican senators to back a bill that Vitter says kills "a Washington exemption from Obamacare." But the amendment would also directly hit the pockets of members of Congress and Capitol Hill aides. Plus, few bosses want to be forced into a vote that will effectively reduce the take-home pay for their entire staff.Sources said that multiple Republican offices have reached out to Democrats to ensure that either the amendment doesn't get a vote or that if it does, it fails.
Scumbags.
Good News -- For Messy Me
The epicenter of Amy -- my desk and the immediate environment:
MESSY or tidy -- which is better?Historically, the evidence has favored the tidy camp. Cleanliness, as the proverb says, is next to godliness. The anthropologist Mary Douglas noted almost 50 years ago a connection between clean, open spaces and moral righteousness. More recently, psychologists have shown that the scent of citrus cleaning products is enough to raise people's ethical standards and promote trust. Conversely, in another study, people were found to associate chaotic wilderness with death.
But if messiness is so bad, why do so many people tolerate, and even embrace, it?
Not long ago, two of my colleagues and I speculated that messiness, like tidiness, might serve a purpose. Since tidiness has been associated with upholding societal standards, we predicted that just being around tidiness would elicit a desire for convention. We also predicted the opposite: that being around messiness would lead people away from convention, in favor of new directions.
We conducted some experiments to test these intuitions, and as we reported in last month's issue of the journal Psychological Science, our hunches were borne out.
I'm not consciously messy; I just am not conscious about being neater, except when I force myself to do it. I'll make myself pick up and deal with, say, 25 items.
ADHD is probably a part of it. I can hyper-focus on interesting details; it can actually be overwhelming to me to deal with a lot of little mundane ones.
If I could afford it, I'd have someone create a filing system for me and then spend every day following me around with a shovel.
Your organizational style -- or lack thereof?
via @social_brains
Living Apart Together: Works For Us!
There's a piece in The New York Times by Constance Rosenbloom about the way Gregg, my boyfriend of almost 11 years, and I live -- 13 miles apart:
A common reason couples live under separate roofs is that they've always done it that way, making the arrangement less a conscious decision than confirmation of the status quo, as it was for Michael Kenny, 62, a lawyer with Citigroup, and Ingrid Doyle, the woman with whom he shares his life. They met in an unlikely setting -- the dentist's office. She was a hygienist, he was a patient, and they've been a couple since shortly after their first date in 2000, albeit rooted to separate and stylistically opposite habitats.His is a rent-stabilized two-bedroom in a rehabilitated tenement on West 116th Street in South Harlem, his home since 1997, for which he pays under $2,000 a month. Much of the furniture is vintage golden oak dating back to his undergraduate years at Brown.
"Because let's face it," Mr. Kenny said, "I'm an old dog."
Ms. Doyle, who is about a decade younger, lives more elegantly in a seven-room prewar co-op on West 143rd Street in northwest Harlem that she bought 20 years ago for $25,000. Her space is wreathed with 11 windows, and includes such amenities as a dining room and the outline of a fireplace discovered during a recent renovation.
"It wasn't really a decision," Mr. Kenny said of the arrangement. Both he and Ms. Doyle have grown children from previous marriages who are sometimes in residence. "Plus we're not newlyweds," he said. "We're grown adults."
Despite different addresses, their lives overlap with an easy rhythm. They vacation together. They see each other most evenings, with him usually staying at her place, the tidier of the two. And although some couples who live this way worry about a loss of daily intimacy -- the unexpected hug or the soothing words after a bad dream, Ms. Doyle has no reservations about their lifestyle. "It's hard to think of downsides," she said. "Sometimes I miss him, but he's just a $7 taxi ride away."
He, in turn, walks the 30 blocks to her place or jumps on the subway. And his reservations are minimal. "I miss the casual comfort of being around someone," Mr. Kenny said. "But I've lived alone for so many years, I think changing would be hard. I have my ways, my possessions. It's the old saw, that strong fences make good neighbors. A door that can close makes for a good relationship."
The idea of a couple living under separate roofs can still raise eyebrows, which is why many two-roof couples remain skittish about going public about their situation. They worry about losing a killer apartment or simply jinxing a good thing. Some are loath to admit to being party to such an arrangement, afraid that it might signal that a relationship isn't serious.
People do assume that -- but who cares? We're happy, and when Gregg comes through the door, I'm always excited to see him. I don't think you're likely to feel that way when a person is there all the time.
Oh, and on a side note, take notice of how these people who live in "rent-stabilized" apartments never leave them. This means younger people who come to the city end up living in expensive hellholes.
RELATED: My radio show with Dr. Eric Klinenberg, who was mentioned in the NYT piece.
Linking Up
Hook us up with some links.
Inka Binka Bottle Of Stinka In The Workplace
Somebody stinks in the workplace -- wears horrible perfume or cologne. Worse yet, they don't just spray it on; they seem to swim laps in the stuff before they get to the office.
It could cause an ongoing work conflict to talk directly to the person about this, so do you write them an anonymous note, pleading allergies? (Of course, you would have to cover your tracks -- have somebody else write it and mail it to them so it can't be traced to you.)
Part two of this question: What if the problem is B.O.?
Your opinions -- for or against -- on the anonymous note option?
Attack Of The Little Old Ladies
This seems to be real -- and it's hilarious. The description from K2radio.com:
This guy is leaving a voicemail for his boss when he witnesses a minor traffic accident. A fellow by the name of Michael Childs, said that he was the one who left the voicemail message, that the clip was genuine, and that the accident described took place about six years ago in Athens, Texas, while he was working as a construction manager for Jack in the Box.
Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" Has Turned To "Let's Move Some Urine"
Nick Gillespie argues in TIME for phasing out the Office of the First Lady (just after the current First Lady came out with some utterly unscientific crap about drinking more water...the follow-up to her advice, not based in science, on how to eat):
Consider this: The country's leading health-and-nutrition buttinsky has not just one but two Ivy League diplomas and earned over a quarter-of-a-million dollars back in 2006, before the Great Recession destroyed the hopes and dreams of entire generations, including those not yet born. Now she makes no salary at all and provides diet-and-exercise information that doesn't even require a GED.I speak of course of First Lady Michelle Obama, whose bold new initiative aims to get Americans to drink more...water. "Water is so basic," Mrs. Obama told residents of Wisconsin's Watertown (a coincidence, I'm sure). "And because it is so plentiful, sometimes we just forget about it amid all the ads we watch on television and all the messages we receive every day about what to eat and drink....The truth is, water just gets drowned out."
Screw "Let's Move," Mrs. Obama's previous crusade, which was designed to make us exercise. Now it's time for "Let's Drink." But only water. Even in this economy - and despite ubiquitous government surveillance, constant rumors of war, and the slim but real possibility that any of us might accidentally show up on her husband's secret kill list.
Can we please make it stop? And by it, I don't just mean Mrs. Obama's seemingly non-stop nagging and noodging about our weight. (In 2010, she transformed the South Lawn into a fitness boot camp for the White House Easter Egg Roll.)
And I don't just mean her high-profile faux pas, such as when she showed up to dish out food to the homeless while sporting a pair of $540 sneakers. Or her pricey Christmas displays whose extravagance calls to mind both Marie Antoinette and Nancy Reagan.
No, I mean the entire Office of the First Lady, which consists of about two dozen people whose salaries are paid for by taxpayers. Isn't there a budget crisis going on? Money is supposed to be so tight at the federal level that White House tours have been canceled and the president is down to employing just two (count 'em) calligraphers. And yet we can afford a publicly subsidized entourage for the First Lady?
It's not simply a question of money, of course. And it's certainly not a question of gender, either. Who can imagine what fresh horrors await the American public if and when Sarah Palin or Hillary Clinton gain the Oval Office? Could official "Let's Snowmobile!" or "Let's Kegel!" crusades be far off if Todd Palin or Bill Clinton become First Dude?
The Truth (About Islam) May Set You Freer Than You'd Like
As I've written here before, I used to believe Islam was just another religion. Just a slightly different flavor from Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, etc.
I've been reading about Islam since 9/11, and I've gotten pretty informed about it, and I have to say, I'm shocked about what it's really about. For example, one of the things I know is that the peaceful, "let's all get along" bits earlier in the Quran are "abrogated" by the later, violence-demanding passages. People who aren't informed about Islam don't know this and point to them -- as do some Muslims who are either uninformed about how Islam and the Quran work, and as do other Muslims who want to pretend their religion is a religion of peace, when it is anything but.
Well, this Florida public servant, Palm Beach County Administrator Bob Weisman, to my knowledge, was absolutely correct in what he said about Islam on his Facebook post, but the county, disgustingly, is deciding whether or not to discipline him, according to The Blaze's Oliver Darcy.
That post:
"Never forget. There is no such thing as radical Islam. All Islam is radical. There may be Muslims who don't practice their religion, much like others. The Quran is a book that preaches hate," the message said, according to WPTV.Weisman said that if Jamason were not a "merit system employee who is protected by State law from arbitrary termination" he may have been fired by now.
"If he was an at-will employee, for which I do have more discretion, I would be considering his termination today for the ignorance of his comments and that they are hurtful to part of our community," Weisman told WPTV.
It's so disgusting -- what's hurtful to the world at large is the fact that the Quran is to be taken literally and unquestioningly as the word of god, and that so many people adhere to the absolutely evil things it (and the Hadith, etc.) command.
Linkies
Plink. Plink. Plink. Plink.
The Crime Against Brie In America
Brie has been government-ized out of taste. Forest Wickman writes at Slate:
In 1985, the FDA, fearing dangerous bacteria, began to require that all cheeses be pasteurized or at least aged for 60 days before they're imported. Since the Brie of Talleyrand and Charlemagne was always an unpasteurized cheese that would spoil if aged for so long--and since good bacteria were considered necessary to make a proper Brie--the law effectively outlawed true Brie from the United States.
Making the stuff you can get bland white cheesecrap.
Many people want their cheese pasteurized. I am not one of them.
But I often can't buy the cheese I want -- Brie or otherwise -- because the government won't let people who want to sell it to me sell it to me, a willing buyer.
Nick Gillespie on the idiotic FDA ban against Mimolette, which, by the way, I'd also buy -- if my government would let me.
Dungeon Mistress Moi
Some dude writes me for advice and, as I often do, I write back requesting more information. He writes me back and opens with this (kind of a dipshitted response to somebody you're looking for free advice from):
"Holy shit, take control much?"
Apparently, this was in response to a bit (activated from a macro) that I throw in at the end of an email (when I need more information):
Please answer all my questions, don't change the header, and copy this entire e-mail into your reply. Thanks, -Amy
Annoyingly, people will often write "advice" as the subject line, and I'll change it to "girl who has a crush on her cat," or whatever, so I can identify it when it comes back. (I get more than a few pieces of mail.)
It's also irritating as hell when somebody writes back without any reference to or copy of their original question, as if this is 1993, and I spend my days waiting for somebody somewhere to send me a single email, and not 2013 -- a time when we're all deluged.
When I asked the guy what "Holy shit, take control much?" was about, here's what he said:
To me, perhaps not to anyone else, your tone is more medieval dungeon master and less female. Most girls with normal hormone levels and no extra chromosomes would write that sentence something like this: 'Thanks for your interesting inquiry and I hope you won't mind answering my additional questions which will help me respond better. Please leave the header as is and copy this email with your reply. I look forward to hearing further from you. Best regards, Amy
Ok, I get it, your column is very funny and often rude as hell, which I enjoy. I get that you are all biz, really smart and busy. My suggested reply is probably far too girly and wimpy. But for a no-effort paste-up response it has all the charm of a bull in Pamplona. Just sayin...
He copies my bit in below:
Please answer all my questions, don't change the header, and copy this entire e-mail into your reply. Thanks, -AmyAnd then he writes:
YES Ma'am!
Gotta love a guy who suggests you must have a dick because you didn't lay on a bunch of bullshit in asking him to making easier for you to meet his needs for free.
TSA Thug Arrested For Threat Against LAX Was The Same One Who Slut-Shamed Mark Frauenfelder's Daughter
The TSA can't even vet their own employees. It turns out that the TSA thug who slut-shamed BoingBoing blogger Mark Frauenfelder's 15-year-old daughter, telling her to "cover yourself," is the same guy who made the threat against LAX.
There's now more on the story.
Taking Sense Away blogs:
It turns out the man at the heart of the Cover Up Scandal is named Nna Alpha Onuoha, a 29-year-old ex-TSA screener (finally) who was employed with the TSA for 7 years. He very quickly graduated from slut shaming to terror-raining. The TSA (owing, no doubt, to the cumbersome bureaucratic red tape that makes it difficult for any TSA employee to be fired after they have passed their 2-year probationary period) was unable to terminate Onuoha back in June, despite the fact that Onuoha proved himself to be an unstable and questionable character on the global scale, when news of his offhanded request to a 15-year-old-girl made news around the world. He was only suspended. But apparently, Onuoha ended up doing the TSA's job for them by offering his resignation, and then did the terrorists' job for them, by offering terror, former-TSA style.Turns out Onuoha wrote a letter to the 15-year-old-girl's father just a couple of months after the slut shaming incident, which said, among other things:
"Do not expect another 9/11. What will unfold on this day and on the days ahead will be greater than 9/11."
Never forget, indeed! Hmm. The above statement sounds vaguely familiar, somehow. Wait a minute. Isn't that the sort of thing that the TSA is supposed to be saving us from?
And then, just last Tuesday, he caused parts of LAX to be shut down by phoning in bomb threats:
"A man believed to be Onuoha made two phone calls to TSA saying certain airport terminals should be evacuated. During one call, the man told an employee he would 'be watching' to see if authorities evacuated the terminals as instructed."
Get this -- these TSA thugs are supposed to be protecting us and they can't even weed out their own ranks when they see that an employee is unstable.
These are the people sticking their fingers all over our bodies. These hideous pigs earning money to violate us.
Please, when you're at the airport, when you're through security and you see TSA thugs, tell them what vile scumbags they are for earning a living violating the rest of us.
Nobody who is making a living doing an administrative end run around the Constitution, as the useless TSA gropings and other searches are, should have an easy time of it.
Also, on a side note, how able to catch terrorists are these TSA losers if one of their veterans -- of seven years -- can't even rub the brain cells together to figure out that Mark Frauenfelder is exactly the wrong person to turn into your pen pal to receive your rantings.
Linkletoes
Stoop lively.
Hurl Power
Word now functioning as a powerful emetic for me: "authentic."
Somebody (Mona somebody?) on Twitter -- no longer can find that Tweet -- also mentioned "artisanal."
A bit poking fun at that almost made it into my column this week.
Words on your "most hated" list?
EEOC Bulldozering Means Genuine Victims Of Discrimination May Get Their Cases Thrown Out With All The Rest
Federal judges keep tossing the EEOC and its lawsuits out of court. From the WSJ:
The Obama Administration's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has made no secret of its willingness to invent new antidiscrimination law. So let's hear it for the courts, which have delivered some stinging rebukes recently to the agency's extralegal crusades.Start with EEOC v. CRST Van Expedited, in which the agency accused the Iowa trucking company of sexual harassment against women and a "sexually hostile working environment." Last month, after six years of litigation, U.S. district judge Linda Reade dismissed the case and awarded $4.7 million in attorney's fees and out-of-pocket expenses to CRST--one of the biggest sanctions in the agency's history.
Pity it wasn't a larger fine. According to Judge Reade, the agency dragged its feet on depositions, didn't properly investigate the individual claims and failed to conciliate with CRST before suing. The latter is especially worrisome, since the EEOC is legally mandated to arbitrate antidiscrimination claims first and sue as a last resort. The EEOC says it's considering its "next steps" in the case.
Pre-suit procedures also came under scrutiny in EEOC v. Bloomberg, in which the agency accused the media company of "demoting and reducing the pay" of 35 women "after they announced their pregnancies and after they took maternity leave." Yet a prior class-action lawsuit had been dismissed after the court discovered Bloomberg pays pregnant women relatively more than other employees who took similarly long leaves of absence, and that it doesn't reduce their responsibilities.
On Monday, U.S. district judge Loretta Preska of New York dismissed the case (with the exception of a single litigant) and explained that the government must investigate individual claims of discrimination before suing, as if that's something that should require explaining.
Oh, The Plague Of Illegal, Unregulated Dinner Parties!
Radley Balko put this so perfectly in his tweet:
@radleybalko
Reporter astonished that New Yorkers invite people into their homes for dinner without notifying the local politburo.
Scott Shackford's reason headline:
New York City Overwhelmed by Scourge of Illegal, Underground Dinner Parties
He quotes a silly CBS2 bit of sweepswhoring:
The diners are a mix of New Yorkers and tourists. CBS 2's undercover cameras captured one experience -- eight people who didn't know each other eating a meal in a stranger's home.That hostess, Naama Shafi, writes about food but is not a chef. [Reporter Tamara] Leitner found her through a website, which connects amateur foodies and professional chefs in 20 different countries with people who want unique dining experiences.
Clandestine dinner parties like the one Leitner attended have become more common in New York City. And insiders told Leitner they are completely unregulated.
Shackford again:
Undercover cameras, y'all. If you've watched enough local news you should be able to hear the slight alarm in the reporter's voice in your head when she uses words like "stranger's home" and "completely unregulated." But I encourage you to watch the whole thing. It gets both funnier but also infinitely maddening when they bring in a consulting firm made up of retired health inspectors who now make a living advising restaurants on how to comply with the regulations they used to enforce. They weigh in on the illegality of the whole thing, and then the reporter returns to tell Shafi how illegal it is that she's having dinner parties. She could be fined $2,000.
As a commenter on the CBS site noted:
Good thing Jesus didn't host The Last Supper in New York.
How lovely -- eight people, some of the tourists and strangers, come together in a person's home for dinner.
This is a terrible economy. If you want to go to an unregulated meal in someone's home, that should be your business.
Oh, and P.S. I want to go to one of these the next time we're in New York. (Gregg's horror at having to talk to strangers who aren't U.S. Marshals, librarians, or little old ladies will probably prevent that, but I'll probably do it when I'm there on my own, with a friend, if I have time.)
Weird Tweet From Some Lady
My tweet of a link to a blog item with my headline and some chickie's panties-bunched response: 
Do feel free to speculate what her issue actually is.
She tweeted this next.
Does she think I'm a fan of Putin? I was actually just commenting on how he squeezed Obama like a ripe pimple -- and how pathetic it is that Obama is so ripe for the squeezing.
(There's a metaphor for you, lady!)
How Come It's Called "Sexual Assault" Until You Get To The Airport?
Lisa Simeone spotted stories in her local paper of a series of sexual assaults -- women being grabbed and groped while walking or running alone on bucolic paths in a suburb between D.C. and Baltimore called Columbia.
Lisa writes at TSA News Blog:
The police and the newspaper explicitly use the terms "groped" and "sexual assault." I can't help but wonder why behavior in one place constitutes sexual assault but the same behavior in another place doesn't. Obviously I'm talking about the airport.The TSA routinely grabs and gropes people. Yet those of us who accurately and correctly describe that behavior as sexual assault -- and we have documented thousands of accounts of it -- are dismissed and ridiculed. "What's the big deal?" the naysayers sneer. "So somebody's touching your body. So what? They're not hurting you. Get over it!"
Perhaps we should tell those four women in Columbia the same thing.
Putin Clobbers Obama With A Rolled-Up, Wet New York Times
Putin writes in a NYT op-ed:
It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America's long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan "you're either with us or against us."But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes.
No matter how targeted the strikes or how sophisticated the weapons, civilian casualties are inevitable, including the elderly and children, whom the strikes are meant to protect.
The world reacts by asking: if you cannot count on international law, then you must find other ways to ensure your security. Thus a growing number of countries seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction. This is logical: if you have the bomb, no one will touch you. We are left with talk of the need to strengthen nonproliferation, when in reality this is being eroded.
We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.
Yes, this is the Russian president lecturing us this way. The Russian president.
A comment at the NYT site:
asm123, PhoenixIt was nice to read some logic and reason from the leader of the free world. If only Obama could at least attempt to emulate him he wouldn't be making such an embarrassment of himself as he is.
Putin On The Ritz
Like a strangely compelling cat toy.
via @thegarance
Do You Have An Innie Or An Outlet?
There are big savings at the Fall Outlet Event at Amazon
And if you use this link, you can buy other things at Amazon, and I'll get a kickback, which costs you nothing but helps support my blogging. Every purchase is much-appreciated.
P.S. I'm drooling -- over this Badgley Mischka Peep-Toe Pump
The Man Who Saw It Coming: Rick Rescorla Predicted 9/11 And Saved Thousands Of Lives
Morgan Stanley security director Rick Rescorla's story on 9/11 -- and before:
Where Were You On 9/11?
I had just woken up and I got an Instant Message from Mark Ebner (we were both on AOL in those days), telling me to turn on the TV.
The unbelievable horror was happening in my old neighborhood in New York. I lived in Tribeca, at Greenwich and Canal -- an out-of-the-way part of downtown Manhattan, a couple blocks from the water. I used to use the World Trade Center to figure out which way was home when I was uptown, and I'd cut through there all the time on the way to Century 21 discount store.
I loved New York and loved the people, especially the native New Yorkers. The tough guy with the thick New York accent will be the one to stop and help you pick up all your books and papers when you drop them on the street.
I love where I live now, but New York City was the first place that ever felt like home, and I look at the skyline now, and the missing WTC, and think of those people who were murdered because they got to work on time.
(The husband of a dear friend of mine is only alive today because she had an early production meeting for a documentary and he had to take the kids to school.)
*Yes, I know this post has the wrong date on it. Tired girl, bad dates happen!
RELATED: The 9/11 suicide photograph, from Esquire. Feel free to post related links, one per comment, so you don't go to my spam folder.
Terrorists "Hated Us For Our Freedom" -- We Do The Job On It Ourselves
Who needs terrorists to decimate us?
Bob Barr writes at TownHall:
The prevailing wisdom from the September 11th terror attacks was that we were targets because the terrorists "hated us for our freedom." In the days and weeks following the attack, as we struggled to regain our footing, we made a collective vow as a nation to not permit our enemies to destroy the principles that made America the leader of the free world.Yet, in a dark irony, in the decade since the 9/11 attacks, U.S. citizens have witnessed one of the greatest assaults on the Constitution and American freedom since the founding of our nation. These attacks came not from al-Qaeda or some other foreign enemy, but from our own government. We forgot that enemies of freedom are not always abroad.
Revelations of unprecedented abuses of power have rocked the Obama Administration; springing not only from the usual suspects - the IRS, the TSA and the NSA - but from other agencies normally viewed as more benign bureaucracies, such as Health and Human Services and the Securities and Exchange Commission. And it is not only the Fourth Amendment that has been undercut deeply by these abuses of power; but other, less-known but equally important constitutional provisions, such as the right to contract and to petition the government. The list is indeed long.
Yet it is perhaps the revelations about the National Security Agency's massive domestic surveillance program that are and should be most troubling to us all; for they touch us all, and in ways we scarcely can imagine - or which George Orwell in his worst nightmare could hardly have dreamed.
Many citizens suspected such privacy abuses were occurring even before Edward Snowden's recent revelations. However, the extent and brazenness of NSA's actions as revealed by Snowden, is breathtaking. For example, not only do we now know the NSA has been routinely eavesdropping on untold billions of electronic communications by average, law-abiding citizens; but that the super-secret agency has undermined lawful efforts by concerned citizens to protect their communications by employing encryption.
For years, privacy advocates including myself have argued we are swiftly approaching a pivotal moment in American history - the point at which the rule of law breaks down and the very concept of "civil liberties" -- not just the rights themselves - becomes meaningless.
Sigh...of course I had to date my posts wrong today. It's September 11, 2013, as I'm posting this. Can't re-date everything now -- will screw up the links.
A quote from Marc J. Randazza:
"We surrendered everything we once stood for out of fear and stupidity."
And my thoughts:
I think Americans have become weak due to the amazing physical comforts we have. I'm all for those physical comforts, but not for getting so uncomfortable with any sort of discomfort that we aren't willing to make a peep or take any sort of action to preserve our rights. People should read the Constitution and Bill of Rights. They are absolutely incredible and incredibly beautiful documents that made this country, for quite some time, a place with rights and freedoms not found anywhere else. It is absolutely astonishing to me that people just stand by with their thumbs up their ass as the Constitution is crumpled up in various arenas of our lives.
The TSA: We Hire The Unstable So You Won't Have To
From CBS/LA:
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) -- The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating some type of threat made against Los Angeles International Airport Tuesday night.The FBI confirmed that the situation involves a former Transportation Security Administration employee.
How are your funparts? Cootchie-coo!
UPDATE from The Daily Mail:
A security screener at Los Angeles International Airport has been taken into custody after quitting his job and making threats that led officials to clear and search terminals at the airport, the FBI said in a statement Wednesday.Nna Alpha Onuoha, 29, was arrested shortly before midnight on Tuesday in Riverside, California, and he remains in custody on suspicion of making threats pending additional investigation.
A search of his otherwise empty apartment in suburban Inglewood turned up a note containing unspecified threats that cited Wednesday's Sept. 11 anniversary. Additional details of the contents of the letter were not immediately provided.
Photo of the guy from Michael Linder report. This guy look like he could keep anything or anyone "secure"?
UPDATE: Wow -- via Lisa Simeone -- this is the guy who "slut-shamed" Mark Frauenfelder's 15-year-old daughter (Mark of BoingBoing).
Obamacare Fraud Comin' Right Up!
Too often government works as a convenient way to funnel payoffs to voters. I suspect that the reason for the inability to assess who should get Obamacare subsidies is partially due to incompetence and partially due to the push to give handouts.
From the WSJ:
Every politician claims to hate fraud in government, and the House of Representatives will have a chance to prove it Wednesday when it votes to close a gigantic hole for potential abuse in the Affordable Care Act.The Health and Human Services Department announced in July that it won't verify individual eligibility for the tens of billions in insurance subsidies the law will dole out. Americans are supposed to receive those subsidies based on income and only if their employer doesn't provide federally approved health benefits. But until 2015 the rule will be: Come on in, the subsidy is fine.
HHS will let applicants "self attest" that they are legally eligible. No further questions asked. The new ObamaCare exchanges will also be taking applicants' word on their projected household income. It seems that what it calls "operational barriers" continue to prevent HHS from checking applications against IRS income data.
The Administration argues that the fear of later HHS audits will keep applicants honest, though the threat of such checks has hardly prevented other fraud. The Treasury Inspector General estimates that 21% to 25% of Earned Income Tax Credits go to people who aren't eligible. An equivalent rate of fraud in ObamaCare could mean $250 billion in bad payments in a decade. And does HHS really plan to claw back overpayments from individual exchange participants?
Democrats have paid lip service to the risk of fraud, and in July the Senate Appropriations Committee included in an HHS spending bill a "sense of the Senate" provision that the Obama Administration "should verify annual household or individual income prior to making available premium tax credits" under the law. That nonbinding resolution and 50 cents will get you 50 cents. Republican Senators Tom Coburn (Oklahoma) and John Boozman (Arkansas) have introduced binding legislation, which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid won't let come up for a vote.
A disgusting enabling of fraud.
Linker Is Quinker
Put yours here.
Saying No To A Prolonged And Possibly Painful And Gruesome Death
Katy Butler writes in the WSJ that her mother died shortly before her 85th birthday, sleeping in her own bed until the night before the end came:
She was lucid and conscious to the end. She avoided what most fear and many ultimately suffer: dying mute, unconscious and "plugged into machines" in intensive care; or feeling the electric jolt of a cardiac defibrillator during a futile cardiopulmonary resuscitation; or dying demented in a nursing home. She died well because she was willing to die too soon rather than too late....Why don't we die the way we say we want to die? In part because we say we want good deaths but act as if we won't die at all. In part because advanced lifesaving technologies have erased the once-bright line between saving a life and prolonging a dying.
...In the early spring of 2009, I discovered that my mother, then 84, could no longer walk around Wesleyan's indoor athletic "cage" without catching her breath. She had developed two perilously stiff and leaky heart valves. In a pounding rainstorm, I drove her to Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, a pioneer in heart-valve replacement surgery for the very old. The surgeon told her that if she survived surgery, she could live to be 90. Without it, she had a 50-50 chance of dying within two years. My mother weighed the surgery's real and often underplayed risks of stroke and dementia. Then she said no.
...my mother's "heart-failure management" nurse urged me to get her to reconsider. Aside from her heart, the nurse said, my mother was healthy and full of life. Torn, I called my mother's internist. "I know your mother well enough, and I respect her," he said. "She doesn't want to risk a surgery that could leave her debilitated or bound for a nursing home. I think I would advise the same decision if it was my Mom."
I called my mother and said, "Are you sure? The surgeon said you could live to be 90."
"I don't want to live to be 90," she said.
"I'm going to miss you," I said, weeping. "You are not only my mother. You are my friend."
That day I stopped pressuring my mother to live forever and began urging her doctors to do less rather than more. A generation of middle-aged sons and daughters are facing this dilemma, in an era when advanced medical technologies hold out the illusion that death can be perfectly controlled and timed.
Yes, Some Cultures Really Are Better Than Others
Mohammed married Aisha when she was 6 and had sex with her when she was 9, and under Islam, he is to be emulated.
That's how you get to horrors like this one. Sara C. Nelson writes for HuffPo/UK:
An eight-year-old Yemeni girl has died of internal sexual injuries after spending her wedding night with a husband five times her age.The girl, identified as Rawan, is believed to have suffered tearing of her genitals and a uterine rupture, Kuwaiti daily newspaper Al Watan reports.
It says Kuwaiti activists have called for action against the man, who is 40, as well as the girl's family for allowing the marriage.
The girl died in the tribal area of Hardh in northwestern Yemen, which borders Saudi Arabia.
Gulf News quotes blogger Angry Man as posting the husband is "an animal who deserved to be punished severely for his crime."
"All those who supported such a crime should also be punished," he added.
Al Bawaba reports over a quarter of young girls in Yemen are married before the age of 15.
It points the country passed a law in February 2009 setting the minimum age of marriage at 17, but that it was repealed after conservative lawmakers declared it "un-Islamic."
Verses, fatwas, etc., confirming Islam's allowing child brides are here.
Linkie
Binkie, bottle of inkie...cork fell out and you stinkie.
How Rude Are We Lately?
What's the rudest thing you've seen or heard of lately?
Motorcycle Cop Photographed Texting While Driving
Texting with both hands, that is. Photo at link.
How To Turn A Big Mug Of A Guy Into A Worrywort
Gregg's Achilles heel is the tiny dog -- or any dog -- and its care, feeding, and happiness.
KateC got my puppy, Aida, a laser pointer toy for cats
I told Gregg about Kate's gift.
Gregg, worried daddy voice: What if it makes her mentally ill?
Hah.
This is a man who has stood around at murder scenes with chopped up, burnt bodies in the basement and ate one of the man's mini Snickers one of the detectives handed him.
Gasp! "Potentially Lethal" Swiss Army Knives Taken On Flight
Let's get real. You can kill somebody with a pencil, your bandana, or perhaps your glare (if their brats on the plane are underparented enough).
There's a bit of hysteria (in the Daily Mail -- so there's that) about "major security claims" being raised after...oh, gasp!...a "reporter boarded a British Airways flight to London carrying five knives -- bought in a flight-side airport duty free shop -- with blades longer than those used by the 9/11 hijackers."
Yes, we're talking little Swiss Army knives, the sort that I'm now forced to carry in my checked bag so I can cut my salami at my destination. (Allahu Akbar!)
Um, what made 9/11 possible is our lack of understanding of Islam -- that it commands its followers to convert or kill the infidel and install The New Caliphate around the globe. Before 9/11, as I've said before, we thought hijackers wanted a bag of money and a trip to Bolivia.
Now we have reinforced cockpit doors and passengers who know to yell, "Let's roll" and give some hijacker ass a beat-down.
Hey, Daily Mail, if you're going to manufacture a story, try for a little more plausibility.
And hey, DHS fuckwads who have yanked away American's Fourth Amendment rights simply because they need to, oh, fly to see grandma, all you're providing is a government pension for yourself -- not anything resembling security. And you're earning money for violating others' rights and sexparts.
If you TSA workers were street hookers, I'd respect you lots more, because at least then the gropings would be consensual and not a sign that we're now using the Constitution to line the hamster cage.
Unsustainable Trend: Nearly Half Of U.S. Births Paid For By Medicaid
My dad had such quaint ideas -- not to get married or have children until he'd saved up a chunk of money and had built up his business to the point where he had a good income coming in. (And we're talking about solidly middle class money -- the kind you used to make if you just worked hard every day and then spent the weekend mowing the lawn and cleaning out the rain gutters.)
Well, Matthew Mientka writes at Medical Daily:
A new analysis of federal health data shows that Medicaid paid for nearly half of all births in the United States in 2010, a rate that continues to increase.The federal health care program covered 48 percent of the 3.8 million births that year, jumping from 40 percent in 2008, say researchers from the George Washington University School of Public Health. In only two years, the government entitlement covered 90,000 more women giving birth, as states expand the federal-state health coverage plan.
"As states expand coverage, low-income women of childbearing age will be able to obtain more continuous coverage before and between pregnancies," lead investigator Anne Markus, an associate professor of health policy at the university, said in a statement. Markus and her colleagues said the study would help other researchers assess changes to America's health care system brought by the Affordable Care Act of 2010, also known as Obamacare.
"Now, for the first time, researchers will have a comprehensive baseline that will help them determine how increased access to services might change pregnancies and ultimately birth outcomes," Markus said.
Well, it's kind of like my fine dining outcomes. If other people are paying for me to go to fancy restaurants, hell, I'm all over that.
If, on the other hand, I have to pay, well, I have a microwave and a frying pan, and I guess I'll have to fire both up and see what isn't expired that's in the refrigerator.
via @reasonpolicy
Linkage
Postage.
Advice Goddess Radio, LIVE, Tonight, 7-8 pm PT: Dr. Vladas Griskevicius On Making More Effective Choices By Using "Deep Rationality"
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
Decisions that we make that seem stupid can actually make a lot of evolutionary sense, meaning that they would have made sense in the ancestral world; they just don't make sense in the world in which we now live.
Unfortunately, we can't just tell our genes, "Hey, it's 2013! There are no hungry tigers roaming the streets of Baltimore and, by the way, my girlfriend's on The Pill."
But, my guest tonight, evolutionary psychologist, psychologist and marketing professor Dr. Vladas Griskevicius, is going to give us the background to make wiser choices in the future by helping us understand the ways we can be primed to act against our modern interests.
His fascinating book, co-authored with Dr. Douglas Kenrick, is "The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think."
Listen at this link at 7-8 p.m. Pacific, 10-11 p.m. Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/09/09/dr-v-griskevicius-make-wiser-choices-via-deep-rationality
Don't miss last week's show with probably the best person out there on how to get your kids to behave.
It turns out some of the ways parents think they'll get their kids to behave -- by berating, threatening, and punishing -- are actually the least effective.
My guest, Yale University psychology professor, Dr. Alan E. Kazdin, who is also director of the Yale Parenting Center, has a parenting template that is not only effective at changing behavior in children, it does it by cutting out the screaming, yelling, and threatening.
Dr. Kazdin has written a fantastic and highly practical book, "The Everyday Parenting Toolkit: The Kazdin Method for easy, step-by-step, lasting change for you and your child." Join us for an incredibly effective, science-based rethink on how to parent kids into behaving the way you want -- with a minimum of stress and unhappiness for you and your kids.
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/09/01/dr-alan-e-kazdin-get-kids-to-behave-without-stress
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
A Man Can Be Too Clever For His Own Good
Me, concerned for boyfriend's health: "Honey, you need to exercise today for 10 minutes."
Boyfriend: "I am. I'm talking to you. I'm exercising restraint."
Maybe You Can Live Fully Without Something Horrible Happening To You First
I try to live my life as if I'd been in a terrible car crash. By that I mean, there are those people who say, "I wasn't really living, and then I got in that car crash, and then figured out that I'd better seize the moment and not waste life." I thought, Why not live that way without the car crash?
Pico Iyar writes in The New York Times about "The Value of Suffering":
Occasionally, it's true, I'll meet someone -- call him myself -- who makes the same mistake again and again, heedless of what friends and sense tell him, unable even to listen to himself. Then he crashes his car, or suffers a heart attack, and suddenly calamity works on him like an alarm clock; by packing a punch that no gentler means can summon, suffering breaks him open and moves him to change his ways.
This bit below relates to how we adapt very quickly to both good and bad things that happen to us:
Occasionally, too, I'll see that suffering can be in the eye of the beholder, our ignorant projection. The quadriplegic asks you not to extend sympathy to her; she's happy, even if her form of pain is more visible than yours. The man on the street in Calcutta, India, or Port-au-Prince, Haiti, overturns all our simple notions about the relation of terrible conditions to cheerfulness and energy and asks whether we haven't just brought our ideas of poverty with us.But does that change all the many times when suffering leaves us with no seeming benefit at all, and only a resentment of those who tell us to look on the bright side and count our blessings and recall that time heals all wounds (when we know it doesn't)? None of us expects life to be easy; Job merely wants an explanation for his constant unease. To live, as Nietzsche (and Roberta Flack) had it, is to suffer; to survive is to make sense of the suffering.
This is wise:
MY neighbors in Japan live in a culture that is based, at some invisible level, on the Buddhist precepts that Issa knew: that suffering is reality, even if unhappiness need not be our response to it. This makes for what comes across to us as uncomplaining hard work, stoicism and a constant sense of the ways difficulty binds us together -- as Britain knew during the blitz, and other cultures at moments of stress, though doubly acute in a culture based on the idea of interdependence, whereby the suffering of one is the suffering of everyone."I'll do my best!" and "I'll stick it out!" and "It can't be helped" are the phrases you hear every hour in Japan; when a tsunami claimed thousands of lives north of Tokyo two years ago, I heard much more lamentation and panic in California than among the people I know around Kyoto. My neighbors aren't formal philosophers, but much in the texture of the lives they're used to -- the national worship of things falling away in autumn, the blaze of cherry blossoms followed by their very quick departure, the Issa-like poems on which they're schooled -- speaks for an old culture's training in saying goodbye to things and putting delight and beauty within a frame. Death undoes us less, sometimes, than the hope that it will never come.
We, in America as of late especially, tend to expect things to be easy. Our lives are so physically comfortable that we really aren't used to discomfort at all. People often expect getting a romantic partner to just happen because they want one or for ambitions to be realized without much of a fuss.
To teach kids that life is hard and filled with setbacks and that failure is okay and a great teacher seems wise. But to also convey to kids -- and people -- that life isn't to be wasted, is an important thing. But maybe it just isn't something some people can truly get until something horrible happens.
Schneier: We Need A Special Prosecutor
Security expert Bruce Schneier blogs about the NSA's disgusting warrantless spying on U.S. citizens:
It's time to start cleaning up this mess. We need a special prosecutor, one not tied to the military, the corporations complicit in these programs, or the current political leadership, whether Democrat or Republican. This prosecutor needs free rein to go through the NSA's files and discover the full extent of what the agency is doing, as well as enough technical staff who have the capability to understand it. He needs the power to subpoena government officials and take their sworn testimony. He needs the ability to bring criminal indictments where appropriate. And, of course, he needs the requisite security clearance to see it all.We also need something like South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where both government and corporate employees can come forward and tell their stories about NSA eavesdropping without fear of reprisal.
Yes, this will overturn the paradigm of keeping everything the NSA does secret, but Snowden and the reporters he's shared documents with have already done that. The secrets are going to come out, and the journalists doing the outing are not going to be sympathetic to the NSA. If the agency were smart, it'd realize that the best thing it could do would be to get ahead of the leaks.
The result needs to be a public report about the NSA's abuses, detailed enough that public watchdog groups can be convinced that everything is known. Only then can our country go about cleaning up the mess: shutting down programs, reforming the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act system, and reforming surveillance law to make it absolutely clear that even the NSA cannot eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant.
Comparisons are springing up between today's NSA and the FBI of the 1950s and 1960s, and between NSA Director Keith Alexander and J. Edgar Hoover. We never managed to rein in Hoover's FBI -- it took his death for change to occur. I don't think we'll get so lucky with the NSA. While Alexander has enormous personal power, much of his power comes from the institution he leads. When he is replaced, that institution will remain.
Trust is essential for society to function. Without it, conspiracy theories naturally take hold. Even worse, without it we fail as a country and as a culture. It's time to reinstitute the ideals of democracy: The government works for the people, open government is the best way to protect against government abuse, and a government keeping secrets from its people is a rare exception, not the norm.
The Biology Of Depression: How To Treat It Depends On Your Brain
Nobel Prize winner Eric R. Kandel has a fascinating article in The New York Times, noting how depressed people's brains vary:
Helen Mayberg, at Emory University, and other scientists used brain-scanning techniques to identify several components of this circuit, two of which are particularly important.One is Area 25 (the subcallosal cingulate region), which mediates our unconscious and motor responses to emotional stress; the other is the right anterior insula, a region where self-awareness and interpersonal experience come together.
These two regions connect to the hypothalamus, which plays a role in basic functions like sleep, appetite and libido, and to three other important regions of the brain: the amygdala, which evaluates emotional salience; the hippocampus, which is concerned with memory; and the prefrontal cortex, which is the seat of executive function and self-esteem. All of these regions can be disturbed in depressive illnesses.
In a recent study of people with depression, Professor Mayberg gave each person one of two types of treatment: cognitive behavioral therapy, a form of psychotherapy that trains people to view their feelings in more positive terms, or an antidepressant medication. She found that people who started with below-average baseline activity in the right anterior insula responded well to cognitive behavioral therapy, but not to the antidepressant. People with above-average activity responded to the antidepressant, but not to cognitive behavioral therapy. Thus, Professor Mayberg found that she could predict a depressed person's response to specific treatments from the baseline activity in the right anterior insula.
These results show us four very important things about the biology of mental disorders. First, the neural circuits disturbed by psychiatric disorders are likely to be very complex.
Second, we can identify specific, measurable markers of a mental disorder, and those biomarkers can predict the outcome of two different treatments: psychotherapy and medication.
Third, psychotherapy is a biological treatment, a brain therapy. It produces lasting, detectable physical changes in our brain, much as learning does.
And fourth, the effects of psychotherapy can be studied empirically. Aaron Beck, who pioneered the use of cognitive behavioral therapy, long insisted that psychotherapy has an empirical basis, that it is a science. Other forms of psychotherapy have been slower to move in this direction, in part because a number of psychotherapists believed that human behavior is too difficult to study in scientific terms.
Here's George A. Eby on a little-explored apparent cure for some forms of depression. I found this through yet another excellent post by psychiatrist Emily Deans. More from her here at Psychology Today.
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Today's Lesson: Dogs Can Fly
Aida, my tiny Chinese Crested, just did one of those action-adventure movie leaps from my desk chair to my plate of bacon on my desk. She was caught in the act before she could engage in the extremely criminal act of separating a girl and her morning's bacon. 
A Perfect University Response To Offensive Student Speech
This, per Popehat, came in the wake of student body president Malachi Rudololph's "obnoxious series of tweets about 'Chinese people.'"
And Popehat posts:
What's somewhat remarkable is the response of the Ball State administration:The university will not be taking any disciplinary action regarding Randolph."His remarks are not a violation of any university policy or law," said Tony Proudfoot, a university spokesperson. "He is likely to find, however, that such remarks do have unintended social consequences beyond formal actions from the university."
Exactly.
As Popehat continues about Randolf's tweets:
They were protected by the First Amendment. It's pitch-perfect for the administration to note that such dipshittery is not punished by the university, but addressed by the marketplace of ideas.
There should be more of this -- because even asshole-ish speech is protected by the First Amendment, and because the fine people at FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) could probably use a vacation.
(Syracuse University needs to go to Ball State and take notes.)
"Toddlers Don't Read Labels"
Their parents, however, should be doing it.
Now, my neighbors' third child is an intrepid little thing. He basically spends his day energized about finding trouble to get into. Does this mean he is constantly getting into trouble? No, it means that my neighbor, who is a very good parent, as is her husband, is constantly exhausted. (Her other two kids and I and her husband, who works fulltime, try to help when and how we can.)
Here's a letter to the editor of the WSJ about Buckballs by an upset doctor:
Mr. Ahmari's interview understates the risk of Mr. Zucker's product and makes him look like a victim of regulatory overreach. This only tells one side of the story.After Buckyballs and other high-powered magnets came on the market, hundreds of children swallowed them, resulting in emergency-room visits, general anesthesia, endoscopies and in many cases surgery. The products' labeling was ineffective because toddlers don't read labels.
Our society of pediatric gastroenterologists got tired of seeing kids injured by this very dangerous, hazardous toy and requested the Consumer Product Safety Commission take action. Responsible companies and retailers recalled the product; Mr. Zucker didn't until much later.
Do I feel sorry that Mr. Zucker's offices have moved from fancy digs in Soho to a "dusty corner of Brooklyn"? Well, unlike many of the children injured by high-powered magnets, at least he still has all of his intestine.
Athos Bousvaros, M.D., MPH, Boston Children's Hospital
The essential bit:
Our society of pediatric gastroenterologists got tired of seeing kids injured by this very dangerous, hazardous toy and requested the Consumer Product Safety Commission take action.
Well, it's so much easier to ask the government to do something about it than to ask people to parent their children -- which involves keeping them away from small, dangerous non-food items they can swallow.
I came to this link via @walterolson, who wrote about BuckyBalls here and here. (Love the great Buckyballs poster with the analogy about how, based on the CPSC's logic, coconuts should be banned.)
Further posters in the series compare the risks of other familiar consumer products, namely hot dogs, stairs, and beds, each associated with significant numbers of fatalities and emergency room injuries.
I Don't Eat Fruit, I Sure Wouldn't Drink Fruit Juice, And I'd Have A Chocolate Chip Cookie Before I Had A Smoothie
Finally, some are waking up to how unhealthy smoothies and fruit juices are. From an article in The Guardian by Sarah Bosley:
Fruit juices and smoothies represent a new risk to our health because of the amount of sugar the apparently healthy drinks contain, warn the US scientists who blew the whistle on corn syrup in soft drinks a decade ago.Barry Popkin and George Bray pointed the finger at high fructose corn syrup in soft drinks in 2004, causing a huge headache for the big manufacturers, including Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
"Smoothies and fruit juice are the new danger," said Popkin, a distinguished professor at the department of nutrition at the University of North Carolina, in an interview with the Guardian.
He added: "It's kind of the next step in the evolution of the battle. And it's a really big part of it because in every country they've been replacing soft drinks with fruit juice and smoothies as the new healthy beverage. So you will find that Coke and Pepsi have bought dozens [of fruit juice companies] around the globe."
In the UK, Coca-Cola owns Innocent smoothies while PepsiCo has Tropicana. Launching Tropicana smoothies in 2008, Pepsi's sales pitch was that the drink would help the nation to reach its five a day fruit and vegetable target. "Smoothies are one of the easiest ways to boost daily fruit intake as each 250ml portion contains the equivalent of 2 fruit portions," it said at the time.
However, Popkin says the five a day advice needs to change. Drink vegetable juice, he says, but not fruit juice. "Think of eating one orange or two and getting filled," he said. "Now think of drinking a smoothie with six oranges and two hours later it does not affect how much you eat. The entire literature shows that we feel full from drinking beverages like smoothies but it does not affect our overall food intake, whereas eating an orange does. So pulped-up smoothies do nothing good for us but do give us the same amount of sugar as four to six oranges or a large coke. It is deceiving."
You're Never Too Young To Be Dunned By The Tax Man
Idaho State Tax Commission reportedly investigated 12-year-old boy for not paying sales tax on his fruit stand. From the Idaho Reporter:
According to reports from the Associated Press and the Idaho State Journal, located in Pocatello, the son of Jason Weeks wanted to purchase a motorcycle, so Weeks encouraged his son to earn money to pay for it.According to the Idaho State Journal, that's when Weeks' son began selling raspberries from a stand on Yellowstone Avenue in Pocatello, near a Red Wing shoe store location. The boy's entrepreneurial ambition eventually led to a confrontation from an official with the Idaho State Tax Commission demanding 6 percent of the sales revenues. Idaho's current sales tax rate is 6 percent.
"We should be encouraging young people to become productive," Thayn said in his letter to the commission. While noting his suspicion that there must be "something missing" from the story that would justify employees of the commission spending time investigating the child, Thayn added that "what it tells me, is that there are too many employees at the tax commission. I would certainly like to know some solution to this situation so that it does not happen again."
Liz Rodosovich, spokesperson for the commission, defended the commission's action as merely enforcing state law. "The Tax Commission is charged with enforcing Idaho law, which states that retail sales are taxable," she told IdahoReporter.com when contacted. "The law doesn't discriminate between sellers."
Rodosovich declined to offer specific details about the incident involving the boy from Pocatello, except to note that the state government employee involved in the incident works for the tax commission's collections division, and is not an official tax auditor. "To put things in perspective, there are currently about 55,000 seller's permit holders in Idaho and another 9,000 temporary seller's permits are issued annually," she said. "These sellers collect tax from the buyer separately from the sales price, and then pass the tax on to the state."
via @reasonpolicy
TSA: America's Gropingest Arrested IN DFW Parking Pass Sting
TSA thugs at DFW have been arrested in a police sting involving stolen parking passes, posts NBCDFW. Scott Gordon writes:
Sources familiar with the probe said it started several months ago with an undercover investigation by the airport's Department of Public Safety.Investigators found an American Airlines worker had stolen 100 parking passes for employee parking lots and recruited TSA officers to sell the passes to co-workers for $100 apiece, the sources said.
One person who was aware of the investigation said as many as 20 TSA officers are suspected of selling or buying the passes. Another person said the number was closer to 40.
Bill Fisher posts in the comments:
There were four TSA screeners arrested for crimes in the last six weeks including three arrested for sex crimes. The arrests in July and August included TSA Manager Shane Hinkle charged with sexual abuse of co-worker, TSA screener, Larry Kobielnik, for sexual assault and attempted rape in Florida, Massachusetts screener Miguel Quinones for having child pornography and screener Tracy Leanne Owens for stealing cash from a bag in Honolulu.There have been 117 TSA workers arrested in the last 30 months including 20 arrested for sex crimes including 16 involving children, over 32 for theft, 12 for smuggling contraband through security and one for murder. Having criminals staffing checkpoints doesn't keep anyone safe.
This agency is a national disgrace and is endangers more people than it protects
If the TSA can't hire those who won't use their jobs for criminal enterprise, we're trusting their repurposed hamburger clerks to provide (rights-violating) "security" why?
Thanks, Bob!
Online Dating: Embarrassing Info About You Online
Do you mention it to online dates? What if it's rantings about you by a crazy person?
Young People Pay The Price On Obamacare
Matt Kibbe writes at Politico:
I think we struck a nerve. Judging from the left's hysterical overreaction to FreedomWorks' "Burn Your Obamacare Card" campaign, this oppressive transfer of wealth from young Americans to the elderly appears to be the Achilles Heel of the new, insanely authoritarian progressive movement.The biggest weakness in President Obama's controversial health-care scheme is the individual mandate, an incredibly regressive tax imposed on young healthy people that forces them to buy health-insurance plans that they can't afford and don't need, or pay a fine.
With all of the new federal add-ons, insurance-company lobbyists insisted on a coercive means of forcing young people to cross-subsidize the benefits of older, wealthier patients. Imagine being able to force new customers to overpay for your product. What a deal! Call it the Obamacare Industrial Complex.
Why would progressives flak for such an affront to the cause of social justice?
Without overcharging young people, the Obamacare exchanges set to begin on Oct. 1 simply won't work. Neither will the Obamacare-compliant mandated insurance packages being offered by private companies.
And this is what the new left, Democrats, and progressives are foisting onto already overburdened youth. When did the American left decide that it was cool to subsidize The Man on the backs of millennials struggling with student-loan debt and a job recession that never ends?
I disagree that the young don't need insurance. I got my own (which I've had ever since) right after I stopped working for a big company in my early 20s. You can hit your head and get brain damage or get hit by a car or get cancer.
This does suggest you might want to get simply catastrophic care and not get insurance to pay for doctor visits.
Bruce Schneier: Take Back The Internet!
Security expert Schneier writes in The Guardian that The NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract and that engineers built the internet - and now they have to fix it:
Government and industry have betrayed the internet, and us.By subverting the internet at every level to make it a vast, multi-layered and robust surveillance platform, the NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. The companies that build and manage our internet infrastructure, the companies that create and sell us our hardware and software, or the companies that host our data: we can no longer trust them to be ethical internet stewards.
This is not the internet the world needs, or the internet its creators envisioned. We need to take it back.
And by we, I mean the engineering community.
Yes, this is primarily a political problem, a policy matter that requires political intervention.
But this is also an engineering problem, and there are several things engineers can - and should - do.
One, we should expose. If you do not have a security clearance, and if you have not received a National Security Letter, you are not bound by a federal confidentially requirements or a gag order. If you have been contacted by the NSA to subvert a product or protocol, you need to come forward with your story. Your employer obligations don't cover illegal or unethical activity. If you work with classified data and are truly brave, expose what you know. We need whistleblowers.
We need to know how exactly how the NSA and other agencies are subverting routers, switches, the internet backbone, encryption technologies and cloud systems. I already have five stories from people like you, and I've just started collecting. I want 50. There's safety in numbers, and this form of civil disobedience is the moral thing to do.
Two, we can design. We need to figure out how to re-engineer the internet to prevent this kind of wholesale spying. We need new techniques to prevent communications intermediaries from leaking private information.
I just love how he ends the piece. There are so few people who seem to care about our rights these days:
To the engineers, I say this: we built the internet, and some of us have helped to subvert it. Now, those of us who love liberty have to fix it.
Obamacare May Be Identitytheftcare
In the WSJ about the people who are going to be "navigating" their way through your sensitive medical and financial information:
The Affordable Care Act is paying for "navigators," or non-government groups that received federal dollars in August to help people figure out and enroll for subsidies. That such a program even exists explains a lot about the complexity of the new entitlement.The navigators were supposed to cost $54 million, but the Health and Human Services Department dipped into a "wellness" slush fund to bump that up by 24% to $67 million. The money will flow to groups like Planned Parenthood, the National Urban League and other community organizers.
HHS regulations don't require background checks for the navigators but do say they must obey security and privacy requirements, without defining what the requirements will be. Since the navigators will tap into sensitive medical and financial information about individuals, more than a dozen state attorneys general are alarmed about the potential for fraud and identity theft.
Got A Land Line?
I only have one because I need it for radio shows. Better sound -- they always want you to be on one, if possible. I haven't gotten VOIP because it will go out with your cable if that goes out.
Jeffrey Sparshott writes for the WSJ:
About one-third of U.S. households have ditched landline phones, driven by younger Americans relying on their cellphones, new Census Bureau data showed Thursday.Just under 71% of households had landlines in 2011, down from a little more than 96% 15 years ago. Cellphone ownership reached 89%, up from about 36% in 1998, the first year the survey asked about the devices.
The youngest households are abandoning landlines in droves. About two-thirds of households led by people ages 15 to 29 relied only on cellphones in 2011, compared with 28% for the broader population.
Linkamation
How the sausages are linked. (Or, better yet, how the wurst was won.)
No, A Porn Audition Is Not On Today's Agenda
She swears she can deep-throat her Nylabone. 
It Clearly Wasn't So Much About Being Anti-War As It Was About Being Anti-Bush
Code Pink has a problem -- basically, what if they threw a protest and nobody came? Or very, very few people, compared to the turnout they used to get.
Jacqueline Klimas writes at The Washington Times:
Anti-war protesters are objecting to military action in Syria, but their efforts pale compared to the crowds that came out against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- and Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the women's anti-war group Code Pink, blames the Democrats."We've been protesting Obama's foreign policy for years now, but we can't get the same numbers because the people who would've been yelling and screaming about this stuff under Bush are quiet under Obama," she said.
Code Pink has seen a decrease in membership and, as a result, isn't able to plan as many events across the country. Ms. Benjamin also said they are getting less attention from reporters, which means less visibility.
"We're smaller. We lost a lot of people who didn't like us criticizing Obama. But we still got our feistiness," Ms. Benjamin told The Washington Times as she waited outside Wednesday's House hearing, where administration officials made the case for striking Syria.
Ms. Benjamin and fellow Code Pink members arrived to stand in line outside the House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting room just before 10 a.m., securing a spot that allowed them to take prime seats behind Secretary of State John F. Kerry.
During the testimony, some of the group's members held up their hands with their palms colored red, symbolizing that the blood of Syrians would be on America's hands if it gets involved in the civil war, Ms. Benjamin said. Another protester had pink tape across her mouth.
...She said she expected better of President Obama and that it "feels terrible" to have to protest against a member of the Democratic Party.
Wildly naive.
TSA: The Government Is Now Selling Your Rights Back To You
That's along the lines of the Gawker headline, but actually, having your rights would mean not being searched at all at airports without probable cause.
The blog item, by Gabrielle Bluestone, is about TSA's PreCheck:
The TSA announced today that they will be accepting payments to give you back your basic rights in airports -- if passengers pay to sign up for the TSA Precheck program, they can keep their shoes, belts and jackets on, leave laptops in their cases, and not have to remove liquids and gels from carry-ons.The $85 pizzo also requires fingerprinting, and will be available in 100 airports by the end of the year. The program had previously been limited to frequent flier members from "select airlines."
Hope For Change
Obama is basically George Bush with a tan.
Why Such A Minimal Minimum Wage?
Love the question Caroline Baum asks (don't hyperventilate -- tongue in cheek) at Bloomberg:
The next time someone tells you that the U.S. needs to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, ask him what's so special about $15. Why not raise it to $50, or $100, and make everyone rich?
You're willing to pay $106 for a Big Mac, aren't you?
via @ScrewedByState
Stop Kidding Yourself That We Live In A Free Country
If you think that, you need to get something for that horrible sleep disorder.
At reason, a piece by J.D. Tuccille:
Through its Hemisphere Project, the DEA partners with AT&T to trawl through 26 years (and counting) of stored phone data to identify repeating patterns of calls that can identify people even if they frequently change anonymous "burner" phones. That call you make to your bookie every Saturday? Yeah. That's a give-away, no matter if you make it from different numbers. As Reason's Matt Welch remarked after the report's publication, it "should put to rest the debate over whether we live in a free country. We don't." He's right, though after the headlines of recent months (and the years before) it's not clear that the matter should still be a subject of debate.Why do records of phone calls matter? As the ACLU's Catherine Crump notes, "While people may dispose of their phones, it's much harder for people to change their lives. If Alice calls Bob twice a day and Carol every Sunday, Alice is likely to do that even if she switches phones. By analyzing calling patterns within the database, it's possible to identify Alice's new phone." Tracking and recording the patterns of our lives is deeply revealing about who we are and how we live.
The Hemisphere database is searchable only through the issuance of a subpoena--an "administrative subpoena" that the DEA issues itself. If you're thinking that's not much of a safeguard, you're probably in good company. At least, the feds seem to believe the public at large would find the program off-putting to the public at large. "All requestors are instructed to never refer to Hemisphere in any official document," a slide given to the Times says. The program was revealed almost incidentally in the course of a lawsuit over federal infiltration of antiwar groups.
Imagine that. Yet another vast and creepy spy program is revealed in the course of a legal challenge to intrusive government targeting of peaceful political activists. That rabbit hole goes deep.
Linkalicious
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Coase On Understanding Polluting
There's a terrific interview by Thomas W. Hazlett of Nobel-winning economist Ronald Coase, who died recently. It's from a 1997 issue of reason, and is great at explaining Coase's thinking -- on rights, resources, and regulation.
For example, Coase on "the pollution problem":
The pollution problem is always seen as someone who was doing something bad that has to be stopped. To me, pollution is doing something bad and good. People don't pollute because they like polluting. They do it because it's a cheaper way of producing something else. The cheaper way of producing something else is the good; the loss in value that you get from the pollution is the bad. You've got to compare the two. That's the way to look at it. It isn't the way that people today look at it. They think zero pollution is the best situation.
More from Coase:
Reason: Though you are now known as a leading free market economist, you started your intellectual career as a socialist. Why and when did your political views change?Coase: They changed gradually. What was most important was the work I did on the economics of public utilities at the London School of Economics. I studied the results of municipal operation of utilities and the effects of nationalization, particularly in the post office. This led to grave doubts about nationalization. It didn't produce the results people said it did. My views have always been driven by factual investigations. I've never started off--this is perhaps why I'm not a libertarian--with the idea that a human being has certain rights. I ask, "What are the rights which produce certain results?" I'm thinking in terms of production, the lives of people, standard of living, and so on. It has always been a factual business with me. I discovered that municipal operation didn't work as well as people said it would, and nationalization did not either.
Reason: You said you're not a libertarian. What do you consider your politics to be?
Coase: I really don't know. I don't reject any policy without considering what its results are. If someone says there's going to be regulation, I don't say that regulation will be bad. Let's see. What we discover is that most regulation does produce, or has produced in recent times, a worse result. But I wouldn't like to say that all regulation would have this effect because one can think of circumstances in which it doesn't.
Reason: Can you give us an example of what you consider to be a good regulation and then an example of what you consider to be a not-so-good regulation?
Coase: This is a very interesting question because one can't give an answer to it. When I was editor of The Journal of Law and Economics, we published a whole series of studies of regulation and its effects. Almost all the studies--perhaps all the studies--suggested that the results of regulation had been bad, that the prices were higher, that the product was worse adapted to the needs of consumers, than it otherwise would have been. I was not willing to accept the view that all regulation was bound to produce these results. Therefore, what was my explanation for the results we had? I argued that the most probable explanation was that the government now operates on such a massive scale that it had reached the stage of what economists call negative marginal returns. Anything additional it does, it messes up. But that doesn't mean that if we reduce the size of government considerably, we wouldn't find then that there were some activities it did well. Until we reduce the size of government, we won't know what they are.
Hairy Pits
Or to spell it more like a name, Harry Pitts sounds like a character in a buddy movie, but I'm actually wondering about body hair on women -- leg and underarm hair.
Guys, is this a turnoff to you, or do you just prefer the smooth-shaven look?
Ladies, your thoughts?
Here are some thoughts on that (below). And let me say that I hate the term "gender," and while some behaviors are socially driven, much of what is said to be "socially constructed" comes straight out of our biology.
Body hair removal is a widespread phenomenon among American women. It is considered feminine, hygienic, and attractive, where non-removal of body hair is considered masculine, unclean, and ugly. These socially constructed truths are pushed on adolescents, who are particularly vulnerable to influence. This ideal of a hairless woman continues in women's minds through adulthood, where the ritual of body hair is continued, although it is unpleasant, and many intimate partners do not have a strong dislike for body hair. The culturally constructed definition of gender is hard to overcome, or even question, for most women. "Gender is, in the first place, a social fact" (Kessler), and it is a social fact that influences every aspect of women's lives in American society. A woman who does not remove her body hair can be construed as being part of the unacceptable model discussed by Cheung. "The unacceptable model is unacceptable because he cannot be controlled by whites. The acceptable model is acceptable because he is tractable. There is racist hate and racist love" (236). A woman who does not present herself as tractable and cooperative to the norms of patriarchal society is refusing to bow to a definition of femininity that she does not agree with. She is refusing sexist love. 
And men, who conform to what women want by, oh, showering daily, shaving their faces, and getting haircuts are...?
Somebody Needs To Reintroduce Parenting
Via Old RPM Daddy, Natalie Paris writes at the Telegraph UK that Etihad Airways is introducing 300 nannies "to assist families and help children behave during long-haul flights."
Sorry, but parenting needs to start long before the flight.
From the piece:
Acting as an extra pair of hands for put-upon parents, it is hoped the nannies will keep little ones amused while on board a plane.Tricks up the orange-aproned nannies' sleeves include face painting, puppets, magic tricks and origami. According to the airline, the nannies can help with entertaining children and settling them before bed, but will not be able to take children to the bathroom or off their parents' hands entirely. For older children there are quizzes and tours of the galley.
For children who act out, I suggest tours of their own living room by the babysitter, not plane flights.
Immigration Loopholes You Could Drive A Space Shuttle Through
A tweet from a Kaus named Mickey:
@kausmickey
That new Obama executive amnesty covers, not just illegal immig. parents, but nannies as well. UWS in his pocket now
From the piece by Jessica Vaughan at CIS:
This directive is a pretextual and thinly veiled order to ICE agents not to arrest, charge, process, look at, or otherwise bother illegal aliens who claim to take care of someone.Here's who qualifies:
1) primary caretakers of minor children, without regard to the dependent's citizenship; 2) parents and legal guardians who have a direct interest in a family court proceeding involving child welfare proceedings in the United States and; 3) parents or legal guardians whose minor children are U.S. citizens (USCs) or lawful permanent residents (LPRs).There are several pages devoted to spelling out how ICE field office personnel must make sure that detained aliens are allowed to attend family court proceedings and have their children visit them in detention. All well and good for the very few detained aliens who find themselves in that difficult predicament. But as with DACA, because the policy is so open-ended, the result will be that anyone claiming to be a caregiver will be immune from enforcement.
Linklinklinklinklink
Don't break the chain or your big toe will fall off and be carried off by a lizard.
Worth Seeing Again: TSA Thuggery On A Woman Who Doesn't Want Her Breast Milk X-Rayed
Even a cop tells her to play along with them (despite the fact that her request is within the parameters of what's supposed to be okay) or he'll be forced to arrest her. The power-mad Phoenix TSA thugs were apparently waiting for her and looking to have her arrested because she didn't kowtow to them on her previous visit to the Phoenix airport and allow her breast milk -- considered a "medical liquid" and exempt from X-raying -- to be X-rayed.
It is absolutely disgusting that she is contained in this glass box "jail" -- as is everything else that happens to her in this video.
This is not the America we signed up for.
But too few people care or ever protest, so this is the America we're becoming.
Watch the whole video and you'll see that this is about the TSA thuggos wanting to "win," and not about security. (If you've seen it before, speed through between the title cards.)
The State Shouldn't Be Able To Force You To Do Business
If it's against your religion.
Now, I'm a staunch supporter of gay rights, including gay marriage, and think it's awful that gays and lesbians have not had the same marital rights -- to marry the one consenting adult they love -- that straight people have.
I'm also an atheist.
But in addition, I understand that this country was founded to be a place where civil liberties are protected.
And there's an act in New Mexico -- the so-called "New Mexico Human Rights Act" -- that violates people's civil liberties. It "prohibits a public accommodation from refusing to offer its services to a person based on that person's sexual orientation."
At NRO, Sterling Beard writes about a case of a photography business that refused to photograph a gay wedding:
Justice Richard C. Bosson, writing in concurrence, said that the case "provokes reflection on what this nation is all about, its promise of fairness, liberty, equality of opportunity, and justice." In addition, the case "teaches that at some point in our lives all of us must compromise, if only a little, to accommodate the contrasting values of others. A multicultural, pluralistic society, one of our nation's strengths, demands no less."The owners of Elane Photography, Jonathan and Elaine Huguenin, "are free to think, to say, to believe, as they wish" Bosson wrote. Nevertheless, in the "world of the marketplace, of commerce, of public accommodation, the Huguenins have to channel their conduct, not their beliefs, so as to leave space for other Americans who believe something different."
Their beliefs -- Christian. I'm guessing those beliefs are a far cry from what Jesus would have suggested, but I defend what should be their right to turn away any customer they don't want to serve on the basis of their religion -- or for any other reason.
Even if the person they want to turn away is me.
The government, yes, should provide equal accommodation to all citizens. Private businesses, however, should not be forced into it.
New Mexico Human Rights Act fact sheet is here.
via ifeminists
Obamacare And The Economy
Ira Stoll writes at reason:
The clearest explanation of the effect of Obamacare on employment that I have seen recently comes in a paper by a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, Casey B. Mulligan, recently released by the National Bureau of Economic Research. He writes that the Affordable Care Act, along with other expansions in safety net programs, has created "a massive 17 percent reduction in the reward to working." As a result, he says, "it is unlikely that labor market activity will return even near to its pre-recession levels as long as the ACA's work disincentives remain in place."Much of the discussion about the effect of Obamacare on the job market has focused on the behavior of employers. One of Professor Mulligan's contributions is to consider the incentive effect on employees, or would-be employees.
He offers the example of a person comparing a 29-hour-a-week job without employer-sponsored health insurance with a 40-hour-a-week job that includes employer-sponsored health insurance. Given the subsidies that the federal government provides for health insurance under Obamacare, the person ends up with more money, and the same amount of health insurance, by taking the part-time job.
"Moving from-full-time employment to part-time employment can trigger generous assistance with health insurance and out-of-pocket expenses that can offset much of the income lost to reduced work hours," he writes. "Under the ACA, it will not be extraordinary for people to be able to have more disposable income from a part-time position than from a full-time one."
As Professor Mulligan's paper puts it, Obamacare's provisions combined "raise marginal tax rates in 2015 by 10 percentage points of total compensation, on average, for about half of the nonelderly adult population and zero percentage points for the rest." Professor Mulligan describes the results as "startling," which may be understating it.
Now, one might object that these calculations are so complex that no American who is not a TurboTax programmer or a certified public accountant, or both, will be able to figure them out clearly enough to make a decision on whether to work full-time or part-time based on them. Perhaps. But families making decisions about, say, whether a spouse goes to work full time or stays home with the children have a way of being surprisingly sophisticated about such matters.
Not to worry! We'll sell your grandchildren to China to pay off the interest on the national debt.
Linklubber
Ahoy! (Which was how Alexander Graham Bell had hoped people would answer the phone.)
We Have No Business Striking Syria
Doug Bandow writes at Cato:
The United States faces no serious military threats today, yet is constantly at war. Syria is the latest target.Traditionally Washington did not look for wars to fight. The government's duty was to protect the American people from conflict.
Measured on this scale there is no cause for intervening in the Syrian imbroglio. The regime has little capacity to harm the U.S. or resist the overwhelming retaliation that would occur in response to any attack. Syria's chemical weapons have little more utility than high explosives and nothing close to the killing capacity of America's many nuclear weapons.
The possibility of radical Islamist insurgents gaining control over territory is more worrisome, but is most likely in the event of U.S. intervention against the Assad government.
About the chemical weapons:
Assume, however, that the Assad regime used chemical weapons. The best U.S. response would be no response. First, President Barack Obama has no legal authority to strike Syria, absent an imminent threat, without congressional approval.Second, the use of chemical weapons does not justify war. Syria is not a party to the claimed "international consensus" against chemical weapons, having never joined the Chemical Weapons Convention. Although classed as a weapon of mass destruction, chemical agents are difficult to deploy and not uniquely deadly. At least 99 percent of the battlefield deaths in World War I were caused by other means.
The last argument for war is credibility. If the president doesn't back up his threat, who will take him seriously in the future? It's a fair contention, except that American presidents routinely make threats on which they don't make good.
McNuggets Rampage
Customer at drive-in window: "I'm going to eat your fucking face...and I'm going to digest it!"
"Don't make me assume my ultimate form!" (Um...institutionalized?)
I should add, via @fusionaddict, that this is fake audio stripped in. Hilarious, too.
The story, via Aliyah Shahid in the New York Daily News (from back on August 11, 2010, though the actual incident took place on New Year's Day):
An Ohio woman wasn't lovin' it when a Toledo McDonald's ran out of McNuggets.Images from a security video released this week shows Melodi Dushane, 24, punching two employees and smashing a drive-through window after finding out Chicken McNuggets weren't being served during breakfast time.
The nugget-loving woman, who said she was drunk at the time, was sentenced to 60 days behind bars last month. She also had to pay McDonald's the cost of replacing the broken window.
via Detroit bud, Karen De Coster
Note To Dim College Administrators: A "House Of Cards" Isn't The Best Association
Presumably, a student considering Johns Hopkins is going to be literate and used to communicating and getting information in, you know, words printed on a page.
Presumably.
But a regular commenter here sent a photo of a packet his daughter got from Johns Hopkins -- as he put it, "a set of slotted cards you can shuffle, flip around, and assemble into little houses."
He added, "I'm not sure what Johns Hopkins was going for with this ad, and my daughter was unimpressed, even if neither of us brought up the obvious point of an expensive school setting its potential students up with a house of cards."
Why not just make it a motto? "Johns Hopkins: A shaky foundation on which to build the rest of your life!"
Your Saturday Morning Cartoon
Okay, so it's Monday. Quibble, quibble.
This is one of my favorites, by Fleischer, "The Cobweb Hotel":
Ruh-roh!
Advice Goddess Radio, LIVE - SPECIAL EARLIER TIME - Sun, 1-2pm PT: Yale Parenting Center's Dr. Alan E. Kazdin On Getting Kids To Behave Without Stress
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
It turns out some of the ways parents think they'll get their kids to behave -- by berating, threatening, and punishing -- are actually the least effective.
My guest tonight, Yale University psychology professor, Dr. Alan E. Kazdin, who is also director of the Yale Parenting Center, has a parenting template that is not only effective at changing behavior in children, it does it by cutting out the screaming, yelling, and threatening.
Dr. Kazdin has written a fantastic and highly practical book, "The Everyday Parenting Toolkit: The Kazdin Method for easy, step-by-step, lasting change for you and your child." Join us for an incredibly effective, science-based rethink on how to parent kids into behaving the way you want -- with a minimum of stress and unhappiness for you and your kids.
Listen at this link at 1-2 p.m. Pacific, 4-5 p.m. Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/09/01/dr-alan-e-kazdin-get-kids-to-behave-without-stress
Don't miss last week's show on twins research, which unlocks the answers to numerous questions we all have about human nature:
•How much do our genes determine who we are?
•Can we shift our environment to make the best of the genes we have?
•Where do our personalities come from?
•Why are some sisters so different from one another?
•How much does having rotten parents affect your chances for success?
•Why do some abused children grow up to be criminals and why do some become productive individuals?
My very special guest, twins researcher Dr. Nancy Segal, uses her studies of twins to figure out the rest of us -- such as how much we, on average, are shaped by our environment and how much by our genes.
She's the author of four books on twins, which can be found on her website, drnancysegaltwins.org. Join us tonight as she tells fascinating stories about twins and what her research on twins has to tell us about how we come to be the people we are.
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/08/26/twins-researcher-dr-nancy-segal-on-nature-vs-nurture
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
Candidate Obama Talked So Pretty About The Constitution And Military Strikes
Via Glenn Greenwald, when running for office in 2008, Obama told the Boston Globe's Charlie Savage:
"The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
Greenwald notes:
Given that not even the most ardent interventionists for Syria contend that the bombing is necessary for US national security, how can a military attack on Syria without Congressional approval possibly be reconciled with that position? When the same issue arose with Obama's war in Libya in the absence of Congressional approval (indeed, after Congress expressly rejected its authorization), State Department adviser Harold Koh was forced to repudiate Obama's own words and say he was wrong back then. Who will play that role this time? As is so often the case, there is a much starker debate between candidate Obama and President Obama than there is between the leadership of both political parties in Washington.
Gratuitous Destruction By Cops Searching A Home
Anybody seeing a pattern? Police abuse of power in traffic stops, searches, and on so many other occasions?
Via @RadleyBalko, the state police destroyed a woman's home searching for her estranged husband -- who wasn't even there. Stunning photo at the link.
This seems like revenge destruction more than anything else.
Matt Miller writes at Pennlive:
Michelle Thompson tells a horror story in a lawsuit she has filed in Dauphin County Court more than a year after a heavily-armed state police Special Emergency Response Team raided her Hummelstown-area home.The police aren't the heroes of her account.
They are the villains, destructive ones at that.
There is no doubt that the SERT team left Thompson's Handshue Drive house in ruins after the May 2012 raid. The physical evidence was there after the team, which was searching for Thompson's estranged husband, Gerald, packed up and left empty-handed.
At issue in Thompson's lawsuit is the matter of justification.
Thompson claims police had no reason to attack her house, blast it full of holes, ram it with an armored vehicle and fill it with noxious gas, especially since she had readily agreed to allow officers to enter the home and look for Gerry.
She even left the front door open. And she contends that police should have realized that Gerry - who was being sought on solicitation to perjury, obstruction of law and witness intimidation charges - wasn't at the house because his lawyer, Roger Laguna, had told them that her husband was in Maryland.
Laguna, a former police officer, said Wednesday that he's still appalled by what happened. It was just gratuitous, unnecessary destruction, he said.
"As a cop I participated in many searches. I've kicked many doors open," he said. "But that was nothing like this."
...Immediately after the raid a state police spokeswoman told PennLive that officers acted as they did because Michelle Thompson had been uncooperative. Police had to ensure that they weren't walking into an ambush, the spokeswoman said.
...A restoration firm told Thompson it would cost $70,000 just to repair the exterior damage, and that the gas-polluted interior would have to be gutted.
Need To Remove That Peeling Toenail Polish? Your Privacy Must Be Violated
Pharmacies are now demanding people show ID to buy nail polish remover and be limited in how many bottles they can purchase, because the stuff can be used to make meth.
A fucking piece of tubing can be used to make meth. As can a glass beaker. As can a spoon.
Aren't our civil liberties worth more than catching a few meth makers?
This is a cat and mouse game for law enforcement, and whether people are making, taking, and selling meth has little effect on the average citizen.
But we are allowing our most mundane transactions to be turned into violations of our civil liberties.
Few of us ever complain.
And once laws are made, they don't get unmade; they don't get repealed.
Are you satisfied with the direction this country is going?
James Howard Kunstler: The Ghastly Tragedy Of The Suburbs
Great TED talk, and I sure agree that suburbia is a catastrophic failure and an awful and alienating place to be. Also, he's darkly funny and I always appreciate that:
via my darkly funny younger sister
