Buttery Spread

Jeff Goldstein shows that Islamic fundamentalists have no possible response to this free-market discovery: "Smart Balance Spread has introduced a new microwave popping corn with NO trans-fats and NO hydrogenated oils -- and an Omega 3 blend that may in fact REDUCE cholesterol "

Which is sad, because this IS a delicious, buttery-tasting popcorn that literally cleans your arteries while you enjoy its tasty crunchy cornbuttery goodness we’re talking about—versus, like, mandatory prayer, sand, and chicks rolled in burlap like scratching posts. So, y’know—you might not wanna put all your eggs in that “rebuilding the Caliphate” basket just yet, holy warriors.

China, Google, Democracy

I was going to link to this TCS article from James V. DeLong because he echoes several of my themes. And I have been badly outnumbered in the blogosphere of late.

And given this Chinese view, what should Google do? Google should do what Google does, which is search engines. Google is not a Chinese leader, and it is not the role or duty of Google to tell China how to rule itself, or to tell the Chinese leader dedicated to the betterment of the people how to act, even when what the Chinese government does goes against the grain of American views of free speech.

In the end, search engines, even truncated ones, will contribute to the economic and political development of China, as Hazlett noted. The working out of this story will be one of the great tales of human history, for tragedy or triumph, depending on how it goes.

From an economic point of view, the whole U.S. is turning into a massive anti-commons, where everyone has veto power over every form of productive investment. It has shut down much of its manufacturing and extractive industries. A good symbol is that is a nation with an energy crisis that cannot even find a spot to build a refinery or an LNG terminal. It is now turning on even such innocuous industries as Wal-Mart, for heaven's sake!
[...]
Far from a model, the U.S. may be running on the fumes of its human capital of gifted and entrepreneurial people, but is far from clear that current trends will allow for the continuing replenishment of this class. And the nation is pinning a lot on high-tech, since it seems bent on suppressing other forms of economic activity.

It is NOT a Sharansky-esque philosophy and as such it falls roughly on my ears. But it is a serious pro-freedom view that answers the concerns of Fareed Zakaria and others who believe in freedom and self-rule while fearing their possible consequences.

Good stuff.

Finally

The nearly year long odessey of endless Supreme Court yammering is over.

Justice Alito is now the 110th Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

I for one eagerly await the continued strip searches of 8 year old girls, the addition of boys to the list, coathanger abortions and warrantless phone tapping.

Let's throw in checking my library withdrawls too.

Who appreciates capatalism?

The Wall Street Journal Ed Page (paid link, sorry!) quotes an interesting survey and concludes "No wonder Mao isn't smiling."

In a poll conducted for the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes between June and August last year, fully 74% of Chinese citizens said they agreed with the statement "the free enterprise system and free market economy is the best system on which to base the future of the world." The Philippines, at 73%, and the U.S., at 71%, were second and third. The poll, which surveyed 20,791 people in 20 countries, seems like a pretty good snapshot of current sentiment, as such things go.

Remarkable, isn't it, that residents of the Middle Kingdom have maintained their appreciation of the benefits of free enterprise through six decades of oppression and economic backwardness imposed by their Communist cadres? Then again, for a culture in which common New Year's greetings include "I wish you happiness and many riches" and "may you make great profits," should we be surprised? Most Hong Kong residents are spending the current Chinese New Year holiday politely distributing packets of crisp new cash to friends and family. They have to earn this gift cash somehow.

Less encouraging in the Maryland survey was the response of Europeans, who could use a dollop of capitalism given the sclerotic state of their older economies. Fully half of the French disagreed that capitalism is the best way forward. Italians and Spaniards were more supportive of Adam Smith's ideals, with 59% and 63%, respectively, voting for free markets.

The Eurosclerocis is indeed disturbing. With India and China advancing, most countries will now be able to ignore Europe as a major market and allow it to fade away into a dystopia with elderly Europeans and unassimilated Muslims.

Cheap Oil!

Joining the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the People's Republic of Philadelphia will be receiving oil from Venezuela courtesy of Hugo Chavez.

Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-Philly) was a part of the negotiations.

Congressman Chaka Fattah today announced a new program that will offer deeply discounted home heating oil to low and modest income residents in Philadelphia and surrounding counties.

The program, which the Congressman brokered with CITGO and Citizens Energy Corp. of Boston as partners, will be available to residents who have exhausted their benefit under the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program for this heating season.

The government of Venezuela, which owns CITGO through its national oil company, will make 5 million gallons of heating oil available for 60 percent of the retail price. Up to 200 gallons of oil will be available to each eligible resident.

“We have developed an extraordinary partnership involving the public sector, the private sector and the nonprofit sector,” said Congressman Fattah. “It will produce real help in the depths of the winter heating season for tens of thousands of people in Philadelphia and the nearby counties.”

The public sector involves the Congressman’s office and the government of Venezuela, which has provided the oil through CITGO, a century-old U.S. petroleum company owned by the Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA.

Though I'm sure there are homes in Philadelphia that are oil heated, I thought the vast majority were heated with natural gas, courtesy of the city owned Philadelphia Gas Works.

And an obligatory link to the left.

When do you know your President is in bed with oil executives?

...How about when leaders of other Countries start sending places like Philadlphia foreign aid, in the form of oil to heat the homes of poor people?

A taste of the comments.

I think this is brilliant- shows up Bush, provides real relief and I like a man who consorts with old-school Latin American Socialists.

The Recreation Crisis

John Merline at TCS has a contrarian view of the soi disant health care crisis. He posits that a 362% increase in health care expenditures is not a sign of runaway costs as much as it is a sign of a wealthy populace choosing to devote its discretionary income toward quality of life. Look at all these crises (Spending increase, 1984 to 2004, courtesy of the Bureau of Economic Analysis);

Telecommuting

It appears that it has been almost three years since I linked to an article from Walter Russell Mead. A self-described Democrat, Yalie, and college professor whom I truly admire.

This week, he writes in the Weekly Standard (free link) about Ice Cream and Spinach. Political parties have to offer some amount of good for you but less fun "Spinach," to accomplish long term goals, but to get elected, they must combine it with "ice cream" that voters want now. Mead suggests that the current GOP is providing large doses of wartime spinach, and he suggests some ice cream for the Republicans. Each is, in his estimation. conservative in principle.

The first is one of Silence's favorites: telecommuting/telecom infrastructure.

For New Yorkers, transit strikes aren't the only hazard. Since 9/11 we have lived in a city that knows what catastrophe is. Last summer's terror attacks on the London transit system reminded us that even attacks on a much smaller scale can paralyze a major metropolitan area.

The point is that promoting telecommuting is good civil defense. Whether a disaster is manmade like a terror attack or natural like a bird flu pandemic, it's important to insulate the American economy as far as possible from the ensuing disruption.

Something like 44 million Americans now telecommute at least part time. Working with state and local governments and with business leaders, the federal government should encourage public and private enterprises to develop emergency plans that would allow as many workers as possible to work from their homes or from nearby satellite work sites during an emergency--and develop plans to protect the country's telecommunications infrastructure as well. More than half the American workforce now has jobs that can be done from home at least in part; if public and private employers put emergency plans in place, we can significantly degrade the ability of terrorists to disrupt our lives.

Hardening the telecom infrastructure and requiring enterprises to develop emergency telecommuting plans and the computer and software capacity to make them work wherever feasible would cost money, but it is something the federal government should support, and by the standards of the Homeland Security budget, the investments would be modest.
[...]
Listen to the ice cream truck. Encouraging more employers to offer more employees more opportunities to telecommute accomplishes several popular things.

I don't want to be stingy sharing these benefits with my fellow Americans, but I don't know why Federal involvement is necessary. My company saves office space and depreciation on furniture, and gets me at a lower salary than some previous positions because the arrangement is favorable to me. Infrastructure? I have my choice of DSL or cable internet (I have Comcast(r)) and my company has Juniper Networks's SSL VPN (very cool!).

Silence and Johngalt used to work at this place and know it's not a spendthrift organization -- yet all of this is in place without government assistance.

His second idea is a very conservative reduction in paperwork and transaction viscosity in real estate transactions. No argument there.

His third is the least conservative. He wants the government to enter the education business and provide certifications to compete with private colleges. This is conservative in a Charlotte Simmons, down-with-Ward-Churchill way, but reeks of nationalizing higher education to me.

His basic point is valid. Americans are forced to endure wartime sacrifices and cede powers to the executive. Tax reform is off the table, tax cuts are unlikely. The President needs to have a little butter brickle in the SOTU tomorrow night.

Speechifying

Speechwriting web pages are usually pretty lame.

But here's a good one.

Tip to smedley log

Bush Polling

I'm not a big fan of polling. But it's always an easy news story and generally blog fodder.

Fifty percent (50%) of American adults approve of the way George W. Bush is performing his role as President. Forty-nine percent (49%) disapprove.
The President earns approval from 82% of Republicans, 25% of Democrats, and 41% of those not affiliated with either major political party.

I heard this last night radio news.

The line? "Bush prepares for State of the Union, as polls show his approval rating down 12 points from a year ago."

Heh.

Going too Far

When will insanity stop?

Police in Tampa, Fla. are now using colored targets on their shooting ranges because they fear the traditional black silhouettes on a white background might be sending a racist message, reports the Tampa Tribune.

Tampa police spokeswoman Laura McElroy, whose agency switched to "Smurf Blue" silhouette targets from black ones two years ago, said: "Nowadays, you can never be too sensitive."

I expect some sort of a backlash from the Smurf-American community now.

The Government You Deserve

There's an old saying that you get the government you deserve. It sounds like there's some buyers' remorse in the formerly "occupied" areas of the nascent Palistinean nation.

A slew of jokes circulating among Palestinians following Hamas' landslide election victory reflects concerns that the fundamentalist group will impose Islamic law and social codes across the West Bank and Gaza.

As one goes, all police stations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been ordered shut because all complaints must now be filed directly to God.

Invoking God and Islamic tradition is the mainstay of all the quips that have been spreading by word of mouth and mobile phone text messages in the past few days.

Until elections Wednesday, Hamas' goal of installing an Islamic state in the West Bank, Gaza — and Israel — was held in check by the ruling Fatah, which had no religious program.

Where is their capital?

What is their currency?

Outside of victimhood, is there some sort of unique culture?

I would expect that the United States cuts off it's funding of the PA's government. Since we pay 25% of the UN's budget as well, I would expect that some of that would be cut. Can we expect the same from the EU?

Additionally, I would posit that the change in government is just going to result in continued status quo. There will still be suicide bombers. There will still be hemming and hawwing about the situation. Someone will skim all the money off the top and get rich while the regular people will continue to live in squalor. Yes, Fatah was inept at running the "country," and that won't change overnight.

Continued Googling

"Tiananmen Square" in a free country...

vs

"Tiananmen Square" in an oppressed one.

Google Flogging

Market Cap: 128.12B
P/E (ttm): 96.03
EPS (ttm): 4.51

Discuss Among Yourselves.

Review Corner

A comedy this week. Any political overtones were way too subtle for me.

But I really enjoyed "The Man" with Eugene Levy and Samuel L. Jackson. You know the script: two opposites are drawn together by chance in a cop "buddy" picture and hilarity ensues. Yet this one is well done and you must confess -- you can't get much more opposite than these two.

A good rental, jk gives it pi stars.

More Google Flogging

"Falun Gong" at the American Google.

"Falun Gong" at the Red Chinese Google.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Iconoclast? Or complete Git?

Forty-five entries in Pajamas Media's China Syndrome as I write this. That's 42 admonitions to Google, calls for boycotts, divestiture and general net opprobrium -- and three suggestion for ways to circumvent censorship.

I'm not nearly cool or popular enough for PJM, but I wish one person would take up my mantel. I do realize that I may disagree with every one in the world because I am wrong, but I still think they are missing several things.

1) As mentioned too many times by me before, Google as a corporation has a fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders. Having ZERO presence in the fastest growing market in the world is not an option.

2) More information will be better to Chinese Internet users than less information.

3) The comparisons between rejecting government calls for porn queries and its Chinese policy is specious. Acceding to government inquiries could reduce profits (shareholder value again) and whether you agree or not, it seems easy to imagine serious opposition to the DoJ request. The Chinese fiat (small f, not a car) is a positive to valuation. The comparison only serves those who use it to flog Google.

The last guy. I'll turn out the lights when I leave.

Happy Valentine's Day

Ala at Blonde Sagacity, shares the heartwarming Valentine's Day story of a little Jewish girl who want's to send a Valentine to Osama Bin Laden.

New Look?

As threatrened, I played around with a redesign of the blog.

Check it out

Comments?

Groovy, Baby!

I am guilty of derisively dismissing a lot of boomer liberals as being stuck in the 60's. It is particularly easy living in Boulder County.

Arnold Kling suggests that many of today's leftists are stick in the Conventional Wisdom of 1968, which he defines as:

• Anti-Communism was a greater menace than Communism.


• The planet could not possibly support the population increases that would take place by the end of the twentieth century.


• Conservatives stood in the way of progress for minorities.


• Government programs were the best way to lift people out of poverty.


• What underdeveloped countries needed were large capital investments, financed by foreign aid from the rich countries.


• Inflation was a cost-push phenomenon, requiring government intervention in wage and price setting.

Google Unwhacking

I thought that I was the only guy on the Internet who did not want to do shock & awe on Google headquarters. I may be, but VodkaPundit has some comments that bolster my case. Stephen Green points out that they are ultimately hurting their own competitiveness.

In a high-tech economy, the free flow of information defines how competitive a people can be. Less freedom, lower competitiveness. There's more to it than that, however. More information means less opacity, and that means more corruption. This, in turn again, means lower competitiveness.

China is trying to compete in the high-tech economy, while crippling the tools that make such competition possible.

I don't mean to say that you shouldn't be mad at Google. I am, and will be so long as they continue with such repugnant business practices. And don't get me wrong – having Google, even a restricted version, will in some small way prolong China's dictatorship. And the Chinese people will suffer, by losing what could have been a sharp weapon in their fight for freedom.

But it's not the end of the world, either.

Chinese New Year

I'm a frequent flier, and have been in some cramped conditions... but this has never crossed my mind.

Sales have soared ahead of the holiday as travelers prepare for long trips home aboard trains so crowded that even the toilets are jammed with people, newspapers said Tuesday. Supermarkets report diaper sales have risen 50 percent since Jan. 14.

The problem arises from the need to sell twice as many tickets as there are train seats. Those without seats must find some place -- any place -- to put themselves, including in toilets.

Here's a question: Will the Google News's Chinese version report on this news? Depends, I guess.

Alito Filibuster

Drudge and CNN both are flashing that former Presidential candidate Senator John Kerry is going to initiate a filibuster.

A link off of Google News confirms it.

Confirmed this info. Kerry's office says he is initiating a filibuster
. . . of the SCOTUS nomination of Alito. His office is rounding up support now.
I have confirmed this with John Kerry's office staff.

What remains to be seen is how the Gang of 14 will act.

By filibustering Alito, Kerry is definately pandering for the angry left vote.

Not Just for SPAM anymore

Virginia Postrel and I know Bayesian filters for their implementations in SPAM avoidance. She links to an article that discusses its promise in clinical trials.

Not many ideas of 18th-century Presbyterian ministers attract the interest of the pharmaceutical industry. But the works of Rev. Thomas Bayes have improved greatly with age. The paper that made his name was published in 1763 (two years after his death), where he proposed a method to decide the likelihood of an event while taking into account one's prior knowledge of what might occur. This idea bounced around through the mathematical literature for the next century or two, but it fell out of favor in the 1930s with the advent of the statistical methods that have been used ever since. For decades, no one heard very much about Bayesian statistics at all. One reason for this was they're much more computationally demanding, which was a real handicap until fairly recently.

Hat-tip: Don’t call her “Ginny…”

Byrd to Vote Yea

My brother-in-law just called with the news that WV Senator Robert Byrd will vote to confirm Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. He decried the politicization of the confirmation process and said that it should be about integrity and qualifications.

I hate to spoil the moment, but he will be facing reelection this year in a state that is getting redder by the minute. There may be some politics, but there is more honor. His history in the august body paid off here. Bravo Senator Byrd!

New Sheriff in Town

President Bush reminded Ford & GM that President Carter is writing poetry, building houses and comforting tyrants -- and that he will not be as quick to bail either firm out as our 39thpresident did for Chrysler. "I have been very reluctant -- I'm mindful of the past where at one point in time, a predecessor of mine was faced with that same dilemma," he said. "I would hope I wouldn't be asked to make that decision."

This from a WSJ (News Page) report of an Oval office interview, where the president was cool to the idea of intervention.

Asked if the government should take any pre-emptive action, he said: "I think it's very important for the market to function." He suggested he felt optimistic about the companies' prospects.

The auto industry's struggles could become a big political issue in this year's midterm elections and beyond, especially in Midwestern states such as Michigan and Ohio, where much of the industry's manufacturing base is located. Ford and GM plan to cut at least 60,000 jobs over the next few years, and the fallout could ripple across the auto-supply industry as well, whether or not the companies ever seek bankruptcy protection. While resisting a bailout could cost Republicans support among some voters, it also would serve to shore up their support among those who favor free-market solutions.

Rather than shovel money at the failed business models of the two firms, this president will use their difficulties as a springboard to push market-based reforms of health care. Life is good.

Google Capitulates

Ian at Banana Oil is closer to Chinese Google than I am, but he wonders whether anybody at the hypervalued company has read Sun Tzu:

Abject surrender is not the way to foster cultural change for the better.

And don't think for a moment that this will be regarded as a move of strength or integrity. The Chinese will not respect you for this. Read The Art of War. They won, and got you to give them the victory on a silver platter. You are now the Communist government's bitch, whether you know it or not.

Way to go, guys.

But both Google and Microsoft have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders that must supersede a company's desire to change the world. I'd say the same to Ben & Jerry.

In the case of China, I have to think the more information the merrier. The more people on even a bowdlerized Internet, the better chance that the benefits of freedom -- if not Falun Gong movements -- will be understood.

Firefly Season 2

This will warm JK's heart. Sci-fi nerds are lobbying hard for Firefly Season 2 UPDATE: Sorry, I had to add the button -- jk

Scandal Rocks DC

Via email...

All of the evidence is not in, but it appears that Secretary of State Rice may have slept with Senator Ted Kennedy. Will send details when they become available; all we have now is this photo.

Long-tail casualty

Christopher Orr at TNR bemoans the loss of what he calls the B+ movie; you know, a decent film that does not aspire to blockbuster status. I've always sensed this. I'm not a film buff in any sense of the word, but I saw Burt Lancaster in "Come Back Little Sheba" and thought how that movie could never ever be made today. It has a literary feel, solid acting from Lancaster and Shirley Booth, (spoiler!) and an unsettling and unhappy ending. Orr:

There was a time when Hollywood excelled at producing such solid but unexceptional fare--Westerns are the classic example--but no longer. These days, almost every movie needs to have a special hook, a tease, something that will make it new and different and (in theory) better. No one wants a base hit; it's all about swinging for the bleachers.

The reason is clear enough. Back in the late 1940s, when Randolph Scott was making three or four cowboy movies a year, two-thirds of Americans went to the movies during any given week. They didn't need a reason; it was just part of the routine, and as long as the film was moderately diverting they generally felt they got their money's worth. But TV watching has been gradually replacing film attendance for decades, and today, with our ever-expanding array of at-home alternatives (satellite, DVD, pay-per-view, TiVo), just 10 percent of us go to the movies each week. If we weren't actively lured with the promise of something fresh and remarkable--a more radical twist (the lady detective is also the serial killer!), wilder stunt (two helicopters collide in the Lincoln Tunnel!), or bigger star (Russell Crowe as Stephen Hawking!)--we might not go at all.

Jay Leno Again

It is pretty much the apogee of lazy-ass blogging to paste in Jay Leno routines two weeks in a row, but there are some good ones in here. And the Tonight Show is way past my bedtime.

The government is still analyzing Osama bin Laden's latest tape. On his most recent release he called Bush a liar and said that he was just after oil. It's the usual stuff we have heard before. Like at the Golden Globes. ... On the tape, bin Laden has three demands: That we pull our troops out of Iraq, that we pull the troops out of Afghanistan, and he wants to see actual stars on "Dancing With the Stars." ... New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is being criticized for saying that God wants New Orleans to be a chocolate city and that the hurricanes were because God was mad at us. The good news, he was nominated for the Pat Robertson Lifetime Achievement Award. ... Here's your government at work. This week, the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a recall for thousands of Christmas lights that they say may pose a risk of electric shock. They're recalling Christmas lights. Good timing. What is it, January now? You think this is maybe where the ex-head of FEMA wound up? ... The "National Inquirer" has reported that Ted Kennedy has a 21-year-old secret love child. Is that really the most accurate term, "love child"? Isn't "drunken fling child" a bit more like it? ... Senator Kennedy wasn't available for comment on the love child—he was overseeing a hearing on ethics. ... NBC has cancelled the "West Wing." That's when you know things are bad—when even fictional Democrats aren't doing well. Can't even get elected on TV anymore.

Screw Stare Decisis

Judge Alito's recommendation from the Judicial Committee was given today 10-8, and his nomination now heads to the Senate for likely confirmation.

Justice Alito will no doubt vote differently from Justice O'Connor and overturn very soon, the worst Supreme Court decision of my lifetime. I can hardly contain my enthusiasm.

Roe who? I am talking about McConnell v. FEC., where the court determined that First Amendment rights apply only to Illinois Nazis (man, I hate Illinois Nazis) and child pornographers. Those of us who care about the direction of the country and its polity will have to live under McCain-Feingold.

A case is perhaps headed to SCOTUS in time for the next election :Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC that could curb McConnell or give the Roberts Court a chance to revisit it. The WSJ Ed Page sez:

A far better result would be for the Supreme Court to use this as an opportunity to revisit McConnell altogether. There is some hope that this could happen. Let's not forget that the deciding vote to uphold McCain-Feingold came from Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who may now have heard her last case. Judge Sam Alito is likely to replace her soon, and his track record suggests he is more sympathetic to free-speech arguments.

Meanwhile, Congress might want to bear all this in mind as it attempts to atone for its own recent ethical lapses by enacting lobbying "reform." The practical effect of any such legislation will be to further curtail political free speech, restricting the rights of citizens to petition their government. If this case shows anything, it's that there is no such thing as "good" restrictions on free speech.

Mrs. Sheehan Heads South

BOTW runs the Political Diary today as Mr. Taranto is off. For what it's worth, I really enjoyed Political Diary and pleaded with the good folks at Dow Jones to make it web based. Alas, you can only get it by email and their systems are extremely unreliable. I cancelled some time ago.

Today, Latin America reporter Mary Anastasia O'Grady highlights the inconsistencies in Cindy Sheehan's "Peace Activism" and her decision to attend a possibly violent, anti-globalization moonbat fest in Caracas:

Indeed, the Sheehan tour to Caracas belongs in the "you-can't-make-it-up" category: A bitterly outspoken American citizen who has made a career of lambasting her president, she travels abroad to celebrate with a dictator who has thrown his own critics out of work and even put them in prison, stripped the press of its freedom, destroyed property rights and militarized the government. His political supporters are known to be armed and dangerous and many Venezuelans in poor neighborhoods have reported that they are afraid to dissent from the Chavez agenda. Venezuela's arms build-up is frightening his neighbors and threatening regional stability.

We're glad Ms. Sheehan has the freedom to travel abroad. Many of Chavez's critics are denied that right, as are the critics of Castro. But she shouldn't wonder why, when she opens her mouth in the U.S., nobody takes her seriously.

Shape Up With Sam's Club

I'm NOT a Wal*Mart basher. I am a Sam's Club member and I defend the colossus from my "folk Marxist"* friends frequently.

But I have to laugh at this week's email circular. January is National Fitness Month, so we are told to "Shape Up With Sam's Club!"

Put down the bratwurst and potato salad buddy, it's time to get fit -- and Sam's Club is here to help with these invigorating selections:

• NFL Tailgate Toss beanbag football game (Mistakenly, the advice to consult a physician before trying this activity seems to have been omitted...)


• A Treadmill


• a weight machine


• a 61" HiDef TV (burn some calories draggin' that in from the truck, boy!)


• 42" plasma HDTV


• 50" Dell(r) plasma HDTV


• digital camera, computer, &c. No more exercise gear...

Folk Marxism

Arnold Kling provides some valuable phrases to better categorize ideas and beliefs that we encounter frequently.

His piece on TCS suggested that we have internalized the writings of John Locke (folk Lockeism) and Karl Marx (folk Marxism).

Folk Marxism looks at political economy as a struggle pitting the oppressors against the oppressed. Of course, for Marx, the oppressors were the owners of capital and the oppressed were the workers. But folk Marxism is not limited by this economic classification scheme. All sorts of other issues are viewed through the lens of oppressors and oppressed. Folk Marxists see Israelis as oppressors and Palestinians as oppressed. They see white males as oppressors and minorities and females as oppressed. They see corporations as oppressors and individuals as oppressed. They see America as on oppressor and other countries as oppressed.

I believe that folk Marxism helps to explain the pride and joy that many people felt when Maryland passed its anti-Walmart law. They think of Walmart as an oppressor, and they think of other businesses and Walmart workers as the oppressed. The mainstream media share this folk Marxism, as they reported the Maryland law as a "victory for labor."

Wonderfalls

I bought the DVD to Wonderfalls last year after Tim Minear of Angel & Firefly fame recommended them to Professor Reynolds at Instapundit. The topic has resurfaced on Insty, and a quick search shows that I have not discussed them.

My wife and I really enjoyed the show. When she got her video iPod, it was the first thing she wanted ripped. Fox, in its infinite wisdom, cancelled the show and there are 13 episodes on the DVD. I wouldn't say that it's as good as Angel or Firefly, but it is still better than anything else out there. I would not hesitate to recommend it.

The long tail of TV is here. You don't have to watch what they schedule for you. (By the way Silence, I have been watching Veronica Mars on your recommendation. It's pretty good but it has not captured my heart.)

Notes from the plantation...

The junior senator from New York is unsurprisingly chastised from the WSJ Ed Page today. Shelby Steele lets her have it for pandering to a black audience on MLK Day.

When political pandering goes awry, it calls you a name. On an emotional level, many blacks will hear Hillary's remark as follows: "I say Republicans run the House like a plantation because I am speaking to Negroes--the wretched of the earth, a slave people--who will surely know all about plantations." Is this a tin ear or a Freudian slip, blacks will wonder? Does she really see us as she projects us--as a people so backward that our support can be won with a simple plantation reference, and the implication that Republicans are racist? Quite possibly so, since no apology has been forthcoming.

More surprising is a brief TNR "Notebook" piece:

When the Daily News asked on Tuesday night if she regretted the comment, she said, "Absolutely not. As I have said many times before, Congress is run in a top-down way." The last time we checked, an overly hierarchic corporate management style was not the biggest abomination of slave plantations, but perhaps congressmen have been separated from their families, chained together, forced to work for tobacco farmers, and publicly bought and sold during those mysterious closed-door sessions. And Clinton has been fond of the plantation metaphor for a while now: In a November 2004 interview on CNN, she said, "[T]hey're running the House of Representatives like a fiefdom, with Tom DeLay ... in charge of the plantation." Plantation, fiefdom: We see a rhetorical style developing here. Why doesn't she reach out to Jews, who've sometimes been wary of her, by comparing GOP K Street's intimidation tactics to pogroms in the Pale? And, come to think of it, why haven't any intrepid Democratic candidates seized the opportunity to describe Jack Abramoff's hustling of Indian gaming tribes as a "Trail of Tears"? Oh--because most of them have better taste, that's why.

This is a smackdown from a friendly corner -- not a good sign.

Review Corner

I'm in hormonal confusion today. My wife has purchased the BBC adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice" and we are following the romantic and personal trials of the five sisters. 'Tis a lovely literary repast which does speak to the pedant in me. To compensate, I will watch the football playoffs.

It has been a most meritorious drive, Mister Darcy. But as it remains third and long after that willful and obstreperous holding call, I daresay if Coach Shanahan does not implement the draw, or send Mister Plummer onto the bootleg, I shall be most aggrieved!

Free Markets

	Or, "When I was a boy..." I hate to play the Methuselah of digital storage, but bad things happen when you stop being filled with wonder. I have discussed, twice, the lack of competition in education and the advances free markets have wrought in other fields. I wanted to share my latest purchase with you (we have a few veterans of the storage industry with this blog). I just bought an LG 1GB, USB disk drive. It weighs less than the nail clippers in the photo. I bought it at Sam's Club for $60.
The first programs I wrote were stored to paper tape on a teletype. The teletype connected to a PDP-8 at Colorado School of Mines over an acoustic modem. I remember very little Fortran IV, but I remember the failures of paper tape. I found a spec for paper tape on the Internet. The ECMA spec from 1965 dictates that the holes shall be 2.540 mm apart, therefore a "gig" of paper tape will be 1024 * 1024 * 1024 * .00254 = 2727304.2 m (1630.9 miles). The spec also dictates that no roll of paper tape shall exceed 190mm in diameter, and that the recommended core is 50-52mm. And "The reel must be tightly wound in such a way as to ensure that a coil which has an outer diameter of 190 mm and an inner diameter of 52 mm shall contain at least 225 m of tape." So each roll can contain 88682 bytes, and a gig of paper tape on spec will constitute 12,121 rolls. Throwing caution to the wind, and putting the entire gigabyte on a single roll with a 52mm core, the roll will be 18.6 meters wide. This progress marks less than thirty years, from my sophomore year of high school in 1976 to today. What would 30 years of competition and innovation in education have brought?

TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH!

Am I beating a dead (hybrid) horse? Perhaps but I am pretty grouchy with the Hybrid phenom.

Richard Burr at The Daily Standard, points out the insanity of tax cuts for the rich hybrid owners. This is germane in my house. I have been invited by some liberal relatives to a meeting with CO-1 Rep. Dianna DeGette to lobby for heightened fuel efficiency standards. Said relatives have a Honda Hybrid which I always thought was a status symbol for their friends. Burr agrees:

SO, HYBRIDS have become the environmental equivalent of driving an Escalade or Mustang. Who cares if they deliver on their promises as long as they make a social statement?

Taxpayers should. The federal government subsidizes hybrid fashion statements with tax breaks that benefit the rich. The average household income of a Civic hybrid owner ranges between $65,000 to $85,000 a year; it's more than $100,000 for the owner of an Accord. The median income of a Toyota Prius owner is $92,000; for a Highlander SUV owner $121,000; and for a luxury Lexus SUV owner it's over $200,000.

This year the government will offer tax credits for hybrid purchases ranging up to $3,400, with owners getting a dollar-for-dollar benefit on their tax forms. This beats last year's $2,000 tax deduction, which amounted up to a $700 benefit, depending on the driver's tax bracket.

HYBRIDS ARE ALSO failing to pay for themselves in gas savings. A study by the car-buying website Edmunds.com calculates gasoline would have to cost $5.60 a gallon over five years for a Ford Escape hybrid to break even with the costs of driving a non-hybrid vehicle. The break-even number was $9.60 a gallon for a Honda Civic hybrid.

Book Report

My librarian niece sends me this alleged book report from an alleged student who was allegedly assigned to read both "Titanic" and "My Life, by Bill Clinton."

To save paper, he wrote one report to compare them:

Titanic: $29.99 Clinton: $29.99

Titanic: Over 3 hours to read
Clinton: Over 3 hours to read

Titanic: The story of Jack and Rose, their forbidden love, and subsequent catastrophe.
Clinton: The story of Bill and Monica, their forbidden love, and subsequent catastrophe.

Titanic: Jack is a starving artist.
Clinton: Bill is a bulls**t artist.

Titanic: In one scene, Jack enjoys a good cigar.
Clinton: Ditto for Bill.

Titanic: During ordeal, Rose's dress gets ruined.
Clinton: Ditto for Monica.

Titanic: Jack teaches Rose to spit.
Clinton: Let's not go there.

Titanic: Rose gets to keep her jewelry.
Clinton: Monica's forced to return her gifts.

Titanic: Rose remembers Jack for the rest of her life.
Clinton: Clinton doesn't remember Jack.

Titanic: Rose goes down on a vessel full of seamen.
Clinton: Monica...ooh, let's not go there, either.

Titanic: Jack surrenders to an icy death.
Clinton: Bill goes home to Hilary...basically the same thing.

Wild Hair

I've admitted before to a capriciousness in blogging.

I have recently installed MoveableType Version 3.x for a commercial site, and am thinking that it's time to update this Model T blog. At the same time, I thought I would revisit the design. I was pretty impressed with Andrew Sullivan's new site on Time. The dark type on white is an easier read than his old (and our) reverse design.

Please feel free to leave suggestions on design, blogroll, look and feel, whatever.

Goin' to the Candidates' Debate

The Wall Street Journal has provided a real service by opening its Editorial page to each candidate for Majority Leader:

• John Boehner, "Keep Politics Kosher"


• John Shadegg, "The Spirit of 1994"


• Roy Blunt, "The Party of Limited Government"

WASHINGTON--As readers of this page know all too well, excessive government regulation, taxation and spending strangle economic growth as frequently as runaway litigation and soaring health-care and energy costs do. What politicians say about these issues does not matter much, but what we do about them does. I'm proud of what House Republicans have accomplished on this front over the last several years, but I know that much remains to be done.

Kyoto Bad

ThreeSources readers will be shocked, shocked, to learn that European nations are "all mouth and no trousers (as the brits say)" when it comes to treaties. In this instance, it is Kyoto.

President Bush garnered howls from the "International Community," environmentalists, and his domestic political enemies when he admitted that the US was not going to sign (the 0-95 vote in Al Gore's Senate was deemed inconclusive).

Yet the WSJ Ed Page reports that the US is doing much better than the signatory countries in reducing the rate of growth of CO2:

Let's go to the latest numbers from the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen. Most European countries have seen an increase in greenhouse gas emissions since signing Kyoto with great fanfare in 1997. No fewer than 13 out of the 15 original EU signatories are on track to miss their 2010 emissions targets -- by as much as 33 percentage points, in the case of Spain.

Or consider Denmark, home of the EU's environmental watchdog. Rather than reduce levels by 21% as the accord stipulates, Denmark has so far notched a 6.3% increase in emissions since 1990, the base year used in Kyoto. The likely gap between its Kyoto commitment and its emissions levels projected for 2010 is 25.2 percentage points.

The U.S. dropped its signature from Kyoto because arbitrary emissions targets are both pointless and economically damaging. No proof exists that lower emissions reduce global warming. The idea that human activity influences climate change one way or another is far from proven, given the overwhelming role nature itself plays in atmospheric changes. And if the warming trend of recent decades continues -- by no means a certainty -- it might well be a boon to humanity.

The nonsense that passes for debate at U.N. gabfests isn't news. But it is newsworthy that Kyoto's arbitrary targets were mainly cant. Countries that reduce those emissions potentially damaging to health or property do so by investing in cleaner technology. That is possible because of policies that promote economic growth and business investment. Unhampered by Kyoto targets, America's economy is more nimble and better able to adapt to changing technology. We knew Kyoto was bad for the global economy. It turns out it's bad for the environment as well.

UPDATE: Here are links to the postings in mdmhvonpa's comments: Kyoto, American Style and Northeast US Kyoto Redux. The first has a table on all developed countries.

Badonkadonk

Occasionally there's some discussion of Jazz music on these pages but I've gotta say that anyone who doesn't listen to country music is missing out on some serious "flyover country philosophy lessons." Take the latest release from Trace Adkins, for example. (Links include sound clips) In 4:01 he explains the subtleties of male motivation in virtually all of life's endeavors, boiling it all down to a single word: badonkadonk.

Now Honey, you can't blame her

For what 'er mama gave her

It ain't right to hate her

For workin' that money-maker

Band shuts down at two

But we're hangin' out till three

We hate to see her go

But love to watch her leave

With that honky tonk badonkadonk

Keepin' perfect rhythm

Make ya wanna swing along

Got it goin' on

Like Donkey Kong

And whoo-wee

Shut my mouth, slap your grandma

There outta be a law

Get the Sheriff on the phone

Lord have mercy, how's she even get them britches on

With that honky tonk badonkadonk

(Ooh, that's what I'm talkin' bout right there, honey)

Pure poetry (except for finding nothing better to rhyme with "goin' on" than "donkey kong.") Trace integrates the individual rational components of this and the other two verses thusly:

That's it, right there boys; that's why we do what we do. It ain't for the money; it ain't for the glory; it ain't for the free whiskey; it's for the badonkadonk.

I can make some more recommendations as well. Off the top of my head...

Songs About Me (same album)
Welcome to Hell (Trace Adkins, Greatest Hits Vol. 1)
The Taliban Song (Toby Keith, Shock'n Y'all)

Real. American. Glorious.

Jay Leno

A buddy emails this from Jay Leno:

Senator Ted Kennedy announced that he and his dog Splash are writing a children's book. Is Splash the best name for Ted Kennedy's dog? Isn't that a bit like Jack Abramoff naming his dog Bribe? ... Have you watched any of these confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito? Senators are given thirty minutes to question the guy: thirty minutes exactly. Senator Joe Biden's question took 23 1/2 minutes. And Alito is smart. He's brilliant. Do you know what he said? "I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?" ... Ted Kennedy got pretty contentious, after he pointed out that Alito once belonged to a club that didn't allow women, it was discovered that Senator Kennedy also once belonged to a club that wouldn't allow women. Of course, with Kennedy those were club rules in place purely for the safety of women. ... Ted Kennedy questioned Judge Alito's integrity when Alito was at Princeton. As you may know, Kennedy was kicked out of Harvard for cheating. So when it comes to questionable integrity in college he knows what he is talking about. ... As you know, Governor Schwarzenegger was caught riding around on his motorcycle without a motorcycle license. I just hope this doesn't encourage other people in California to drive without a proper license. You'd hate to see something like that catch on here.

Carnival of the Clueless

My "Good Taste" - A Children's guide to Politics post from earlier in the week made it up on to the "Carnival of the Clueless."
It didn't make because I'm clueless, but because Senator Kennedy's (D-Beefeater) dog's name is Splash.

Which is either clueless or incredibly sensitive.

Go check out the rest!

Happy TriCentennial, Ben!

Ben Franklin was born 300 years ago today. I blogged about a new book, but there are several articles today celebrating Silence's hero:

The American Apostle of Thrift, by David Blankenhorn at The Daily Standard

B Franklin, Moralist, by Timothy Lehmann at The Daily Standard

Better Than Well Said, by Pete DuPont at OpinionJournal.com

Revolutionary and Conservative, by Christopher Hitchens at the Wall Street Journal.

Since that last link is paid, I'll excerpt (holler if you want it via email)

In how many dimensions can one observe this figure, on his tercentenary? Unlike most philosophers, he was also an eminently practical man, schooled at first in the most charming and useful of trades -- that of a printer -- but wise in the ways of business and some distance ahead of his time in matters of science. If he did not exactly discover electricity, he did establish beyond doubt that it was a principle at work in the natural universe. And for him, discovery of this kind was intuitively linked to the possibility of the useful: for the lightening of the human load and, more important, the enlightening of the human mind.

Unlike most revolutionaries, he was a conservative. He did not, for example, join Benjamin Rush and Thomas Paine in the Anti-Slavery Society until quite late in his life. I think it may have been John Maynard Keynes who observed that conservatives often make very effective revolutionaries, in that they have tried to make the existing system work and have come to understand very clearly why it must be changed. Benjamin Franklin offered to pay the damages of the Boston Tea Party. If the British authorities had not treated him in such an arrogant and underhanded manner, and had not had such a paltry idea of the man with whom they had to deal, he would very probably have negotiated a brilliant settlement of the outstanding disputes between the colonies and the motherland. This was certainly his wish. But as it was, his full talent as a diplomat was only disclosed when he became the first and best envoy of the American Revolution. (He never lived to see the full effect of the French one.)

One ought, also, to remember his physical courage and his readiness to take risks. He very nearly died on a hazardous expedition to French Canada during the fighting in 1776, and repeatedly stood the danger of first-hand experiments with lightning, which on at least one occasion could have cut his life extremely short. His insouciance about all this must bear some relationship to his dry and highly developed sense of humor. The Founding Fathers were not to be renowned for their joke-cracking capacities: One may page through Thomas Jefferson's elegant correspondence and yet become dispirited by the want of a jest. You can never be sure exactly when Franklin is joking: In the "Autobiography" he boasts with Abramoff-like glee that he both recommended an increase in paper money to the Pennsylvania Legislature and then eagerly received the contract to print it. But in any crisis of seriousness, Franklin was also the main man. He was drafted onto the committee that drew up the Declaration (and may well have been the one who imposed the ringing term "self-evident," as against the more pompous "sacred and undeniable" in its crucial opening stave.) When George Washington's horse bore him into Philadelphia for the grueling meeting that would eventually evolve the United States Constitution, it was at Franklin's front door that the president necessarily made his first stop.

Agog at Kos & Co...

Senator Lieberman's former communications director, Dan Gerstein, pens a guest editorial in today's Wall Street Journal (paid link, sorry!) He says the left-wing blogosphere is "agog" that the Democrats were not more vicious, truculent, or obstructive.

He feels, contrarily, that they did real damage to their selves and the party's standing with moderates.

And that's the heart of the problem with our party and its angry activist base. It's not so much that we're living in a parallel universe, but that we have dueling conceptions of what's mainstream, especially on abortion and other values-based issues, and our side is losing. We think that if we simply call someone conservative, anti-choice and anti-civil rights, that's enough to scare people to our side. But that tired dogma won't hunt in today's electorate, which is far more independent-thinking and complex in its views on values than our side presumes.

That point was driven home in an incontrovertible analysis of the 2004 election results by Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck. They found that the American polity has undergone a great shaking out, where conservatives now vote almost universally for Republicans and liberals for Democrats, and that Republicans have won the presidency twice in a row because they're doing a better job of pulling moderates/independents their way -- in particular married women and white Catholics who are uncomfortable with the Democrats on values issues. Judging from the dreadful tack our party took in the Alito process, it's clear that we haven't yet internalized these political realities -- most likely because our anger at George Bush continues to blind us to them. Many Democrats just don't want to acknowledge that he's president and is going to pick conservative justices -- let alone that the two we got, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, are about as good as we could hope for.

This episode shows we don't have any leader in power who will tell our base that we're not going to become a majority party again by telling the majority they're out of the mainstream. We do badly need leaders with courage -- the courage, that is, to push our party (to borrow a phrase) to move on, to accept that we can't win with the same lame ideological arguments in post-9/11 America, and that we must develop an alternative affirmative agenda that shows we can keep the country safer, make the economy stronger, and govern straighter than the ethically challenged Republicans. Then we can worry about picking the nominees instead of fighting them.

I Rebuke Thee II

I await the Bush Administration's public rebuking of New Orleans's mayor Ray Nagin. After all, a precident has been set.

Mayor Ray Nagin suggested Monday that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and other storms were a sign that "God is mad at America" and at black communities, too, for tearing themselves apart with violence and political infighting.

"Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it's destroyed and put stress on this country," Nagin, who is black, said as he and other city leaders marked Martin Luther King Day.

"Surely he doesn't approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America also. We're not taking care of ourselves.

At the time, the most powerful man in the blogosphere, JK, commented...

Republicans are held accountable for the craziest of their membership; Democrats are not even held responsible for the head of the Party.

More realistically, we'll hear the following from the Democrats...

Cookies for Troops!

Silence's daughter is selling girl scout cookies -- and you can have them shipped to the troops in Iraq.

Cool idea -- enabling the young ladies to pry money out of the patriotic Atkins crowd. If you don't have a closer relative, email jk [at] threesources [dot] com and I will help you hook the troops up with some Samoas and Trefoils...

Shad-egg, Shad-egg!

I started that chant yesterday. All three contenders for Rep DeLay's Leader position were on FOXNews Sunday. FOX -- not the NYTimes -- put charts on the screen of filthy Abramoff-related lucre gained by Reps. Blunt and Boehner. Shadegg was not clean as a whistle, but he was magnitudes off the other contenders and it is unlikely that anybody has zero to hide (this was all legal, folks).

Today, Stephen Moore writes in the WSJ Ed Page (free link) that conservatives do have a candidate, and he concludes that the GOP will be in grave danger of losing its majority status if they fail to heed his message.

Still, it is Mr. Shadegg who is unquestionably the primary change agent in this field. He wants the party, in effect, to make a declaration of independence from pork spending and the government-for-sale corruption that has become its abiding image. "The American people are with us on our substantive policy agenda and our Reaganite values, but are becoming repulsed by our behavior," he told me. With a truthful message like that, don't expect him to corral any votes from the Old Bull Republicans or the College of Cardinals appropriators who have turned pork into haute cuisine of late.

UPDATE: Should also point out that Shadegg has been endorsed by Larry Kudlow and National Review