July 14, 2010
Quote of the Day
"Better the worst Stalinist terror," he declares, "than the most liberal capitalist democracy." If Stalinism was indeed a negative development, it was because it was too capitalistic: "Stalinist ‘totalitarianism" was the capitalist logic of self-propelling productivity liberated from its capitalist form, which is why it failed: Stalinism was the symptom of capitalism." -- Slavoj Zizek considered "an academic rock star" by the New York Times.
July 8, 2010
I should leave more often.
Unless I am badly misreading this Daily Beast post, the Aspen glitterati were treated to a denunciation of administration policies including a call "'for radical fiscal reform to restore the incentives for work and remove the incentives for idleness.' [Dashing Brit Niall Ferguson] praised 'really radical reform of the sort that, for example, Paul Ryan has outlined in his wonderful ‘Roadmap’ for radical, root-and-branch reform not only of the tax system but of the entitlement system' and 'unleash entrepreneurial innovation.'"
“Depressing, but fantastic,” Streisand told me afterward, rendering her verdict on the session. "So exciting. Wonderful!"Brolin's assessment: "Mind-blowing."
Three Rabbis. Paul Ryan and Barbra Streisand walk into a bar...
Hat-tip: Instapundit
UPDATE: he professor's first name is Niall, not Niel (since corrected). ThreeSources regrets any inconvenience.
Only an intellect as muddled as Barbara Streisand's could use the adjectives "depressing" and "exciting" to describe the same thing, and in the same breath.
What we see in the linked article is two things: Liberal elitists coming to grips with just exactly what it means for the masses to live off the spoils of the rich, for they are the rich; and establishment (white) leftists lamenting that their "golden goose fleecing system" is being wrecked by the impatient "social justice" folks who really do believe that Ayn Rand's "Starnesville" can work if it is just big enough to encompass the whole country. Problem is, none of them ever read Atlas Shrugged in the first place.
But ... a glimmer of hope was found. Michael Splinter gave a clue as to how America's corporate tax rates may one day have to come down. It's called, competition. "Our corporate tax rate, on a worldwide competitive basis, is just not competitive. Taiwan is lowering their rate to 20 to 15 percent in order to stay competitive with Singapore. These countries have made it their job to attract industry." One of these days, some really smart politician will float this idea in a campaign as a jobs strategy. 'Tis better to be lucky than intelligent, especially if you're a politician. But the rest of us will still be the beneficiaries. (Until the cycle repeats.)
Posted by: johngalt at July 8, 2010 2:44 PMMind-blowing? Mind-blowing??
This must be a good example of like minded people only discussing ideas with like minded people and never realizing there are uh other ideas out there. Ideas that have some common sense in them.
All together: "People... people who need people..."
The Refugee has long maintained that if you want to see employment explode, eliminate the corporate income tax entirely. Art Laffer has an interesting piece in today's WSJ that basically says the same thing, though he goes even further than The Refugee in advocating a complete tax holiday. Read the non-subscription version here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704862404575351301788376276.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Limbaugh covered this story on his show today. He echoed my analysis that these rich people suddenly see their accumulated wealth on the Administration's menu. He also made a connection I never considered, but that makes perfect sense in retrospect. All of these people offering sudden criticism of Obama are who we once recognized as Bill Clinton's base. The thought is that the Clinton's are gradually, piece by piece, orchestrating a Democrat party mutiny against their own incumbent president. Hard to argue against it.
Posted by: johngalt at July 9, 2010 1:29 AMI just love a good conspiracy theory!
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at July 9, 2010 9:06 AMI'm an Occam's Razor guy myself, but I will point out that überClintonista James Carville releases a poll today that does not reflect well on the President.
Posted by: jk at July 9, 2010 1:10 PMJune 25, 2010
Headline of the Day
Not gonna beat this for a few days:
Media Rushes To The Defense Of Nobel Prize-Winning Sex Poodle
Jezebel, hat-tip: Insty
June 23, 2010
Dept. of Redundancy Department
KGW.com: The Multnomah County District Attorney's Office confirmed on Wednesday that the DA's office was briefed by Portland Police in late 2006 and January 2007 on allegations brought by an attorney representing a woman who alleged unwanted sexual contact by Al Gore.Is the word "unwanted" really necessary? Eeeeuuuh!
June 9, 2010
Facebook Escapades
And no, I am not involved. Two friends-of-friends who both work at my company got each other's FB credentials yesterday and started making gag posts in each other's names.
"I Love X," says X posing as Y, "not as a colleague but more in a Brokeback Mountain way!" Well, the bidding is on and things got worse from there until...
Until Y gets on X's account and "likes" the Sarah Palin PAC Page. This is a bridge too far. Nukes were used. Their friends are ROFLTAO but the belligerents realize it's got to stop.
Friends, that is the Second Congressional district of Colorado in a nutshell.
Better metaphor: welcome to the world of California's newly-minted Proposition 14, resulting in open primaries. Democrats can vote in the Republican primary to pick who their guy gets to run against, and vice-versa. It's like two guys creating mischief with each other's Facebook status messages, but with a more potent flavor of mischief.
"Operation Chaos" on steroids, I say.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at June 9, 2010 4:32 PMI have wondered about that. My nephew moved from Michigan and was pretty upset when he was unable to vote in the (Democratic) primary in 2008.
To be honest, Keith, I am not sure that voters in general are that strategic. Or that wise -- do I consider a Democrat able to pick the less electable Republican six months before the election?
On the other hand I'm disturbed that the State of California can dictate a political party's rules. I think parties are distinctly evil unless you consider them private corporations.
I've got two words for you: John McCain. Blessed by the MSM and lobbied for by them in the primary as "the most reasonable Republican," and assisted in a number of states by party-crossers to knock out more conservative candidates.
I've also heard at least one pundit wondering how that would apply at the national level, and 2008 turned out to be a runoff between Hillary! and Obama after multiple Republican candidates split the vote on their side.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at June 9, 2010 5:55 PMJK once blogged Michael Barone's 'Hard America, Soft America.' Facebook is the embodiment of Soft America.
Posted by: johngalt at June 10, 2010 4:34 PMMister Zuckerberg has much to answer for, but I don't know that you can blame him.
Perhaps I make too much of an unscientific cross section, but FB and 3Src are frequently opened in adjacent browser tabs (wsj.com generally chaperones...) and it us like coming out of the Finnish Sauna into the icy sea.
Just a reminder -- if CO-2 vote totals do not suffice -- that we are the exotic critters in the cages.
June 5, 2010
That's Right, Ringo's the Libertarian...
Aw jeez, Paul -- I know that'll play well back home, but a) President Bush was married to a librarian and b) those who bother to look beyond the Guardian saw that he was a voracious and serious reader.
I'm thinking we get a big bonfire and we invite conservatives to come and through their Beatles records in. It'll be great -- we'll film it in Black and White!
Ironic a slam about intelligence coming from McCartney, he being the genius who married Heather Mills.
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at June 5, 2010 7:27 PMMay 3, 2010
Facebook of the Day
No, I won't torture everyday. But I'd like to dedicate this to any Randians out there. This is, you'll not be surprised, the same person who confuses President Obama with Buddha.
From the "What can it hurt?" department: There is apparently a valve that is stuck open on the Deep Horizon oil well and is causing the spill... Here's the plan to use the collective power of our minds to stop this spill: Everyone please visualize the valve getting unstuck and stopping the spill.
Visualize.
"Randian base here. Come in... come in..."
Yes, we know that a segment of the population is made up of complete idiots.
"Those who deny the existence of reason cannot be swayed by it. They cannot help you. Leave them alone." -Rand
As an Objectivist I tend to avoid these people until they find their way into the world of the thinking people. As an avowed optomist I believe that most of them can do so, if they want to. As a realist I advocate fiercely for Constitional protections of the individual and against further movement in the direction of democracy.
Posted by: johngalt at May 4, 2010 3:03 PMThere are things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, not dreamt of in man's philosophies.
I bring up the Bard because I like the line, but -- without opening up a forum -- I have just come off a very thoughtful email exchange with a good friend. Said friend compares Ms. Visualize's actions to prayer, which said friend fervently supports.
I found myself a little surprised to be taking up the Randian side (Juliet Kilo, read you, over!). A rather fundamental difference of looking at the world between two who agree on much.
May 1, 2010
These People Have Jobs and Mortgages
Just a reminder what we're up against. Here's a Facebook thread:
[Some guy I don't know]: Buddha once said that hatred is never ended by hatred but by love, and understanding is never ended by an argument but by tact, and diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic desire to see the other person’s point of view.[A woman I used to work with]: Sounds kinda like Obama's way of doing things...
[Buddha Guy]: YOUR Killing me!! LOL
[Obama lady]: I'm totally serious. He's tactful, diplomatic and conciliatory even in debate. I can only guess at his desire to see other points of view, but given his demeanor, I think we should give him the benefit of the doubt on this one.
[Buddha Guy]: So he tactfully, or was in conciliatory, rammed his health care down our throats, knowing that the vast majority of Americans wanted a reasonable approach. I wonder how Buda felt about being taken from behind by those in power??
[Obama lady]: You mean when Congress passed the bill (full of regurgitated Republican ideas) by due legislative process? Yes.
No, I am not diving in now way, no how! I just wanted to share it with you.
Jeez, it might be easier just to resort to name-calling. I see your point though. I wouldn't bother either.
Posted by: johngalt at May 1, 2010 3:31 PMI'm waiting for the "Yo Mama Lady" to confab with Buddy Guy.
Posted by: Sugarchuck at May 1, 2010 9:55 PMI think that would be better suited to Twitter, sc...
It's just funny. I mean you can like the President's policies if you are wired that way, and you can admire aspects of his biography or demeanor. I don't get it but I can see it.
Yet to suggest that he is the post partisan figure he suggested in the campaign means you really are not paying attention. I think his serious supporters have all moved on to non-messianic aspects of his Presidency.
The other Facebook wave is a host of people joining LET'S STOP BLAMING OBAMA FOR EVERYTHING BUSH DID.
Some tough sledding ahead my friends, a good year or not, tough sledding.
Posted by: jk at May 2, 2010 10:52 AMDo you now understand why I say "liberals deserve no mercy"? They want "tolerance" and "respect" when it comes to voting or otherwise deciding how to redistribute or otherwise control my property, which necessitates them being intolerant and disrespectful of my rights to my property and my mind.
I'm hardly a Republican, but even I'm getting sick of this "regurgitated Republican ideas" BS. To call that a strawman is an understatement.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at May 2, 2010 4:31 PMApril 27, 2010
Hating the Haters
I love this stuff.
Liberals calling Freedom Works to express their displeasure with the GEICO guy getting fired.
Warning: Language is rather salty.
Yeah, the language is a little rough -- but you have to admit they make some good, substantive, intellectual comments...
Posted by: jk at April 27, 2010 11:46 AMApril 17, 2010
The Making of Electoral Landslides
A new book published this month explains how four wealthy progressives transformed Colorado politics from red to blue in a single election cycle. The Blueprint by Rob Witwer and Adam Schrager describes the targeted use of massive amounts of cash in close races to essentially buy Colorado politics for the Democrats. If they're smart, Republicans will adopt much of this winning strategy.
I haven't read the book but one or both authors appeared on two different Denver radio shows today. In the morning Rob Witwer was on the Rosen show and both authors were interviewed by KHOW's Craig Silverman in the afternoon. A critical concession mentioned in both venues was agreement by the monied donors from the very beginning that they would not bicker with each other over policy differences. Instead, they all agreed that their solitary goal was election of Democrat candidates.
I'm not sure it's that simple for Republicans. After all, we have McCain and his merry band of big-government do-gooders to be wary of. But I do think the advice is useful when it comes to the fiscal/social conservative divide.
March 12, 2010
International Club for Meddling with Local Government
One of moderator Amy Oliver's questions at last night's CO-4 GOP debate was about an international organization called the International Council on Local Environmental Initiatives, or ICLEI. They've changed their name to ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability.
Apparently they encourage local governments to impose environmental regulations all over the world. They describe "members" as "the strongest allies of ICLEI by contributing a yearly membership fee, but also by hosting ICLEI offices, financing events or contributing staff time to projects and activities." That would be staff time of the local governments they work for, paid by local tax dollars.
The online membership directory is unavailable: "Please accept our apologies. We are presently working to update our membership information pages. This page will be available again shortly."
They do, however, list the 1124 local governments these members come from. They include:
Arvada, Aspen, Boulder, Breckenridge, Carbondale, Denver, Durango, Ft. Collins, Frisco, Golden, Gunnison County, La Plata County, LAFAYETTE, Loveland, Manitou Springs, San Miguel County, and Westminster in Colorado.
Haverford Township, Lower Makefield, Meadville, Montgomery Township, Mt. Lebanon, Narberth, Nether Providence Township, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Radnor, Upper Dublin Township, and West Chester in Pennysylvania.
Find your town. Complain to your city council. I DON'T WANT MY TAX DOLLARS, IN THE FORM OF STAFF TIME, SPENT ON ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM.
February 28, 2010
Humanity's Hope
Really.
They're models for good living.
I trained as a biologist and to my eye, they look organic. Squatter cities are also unexpectedly green. They have maximum density—1m people per square mile in some areas of Mumbai—and have minimum energy and material use. People get around by foot, bicycle, rickshaw, or the universal shared taxi.
Three cheers for abject poverty.
Something we should aspire to, and something our better would be glad to give us.
Green, dysentery, no, not goin' there...
I'm going to steal your post as a segue. I wanted to post something on Milton Friedman, Chile, and Haiti.
I got to thinking about these stickers. Some folks (ac's slum worshippers no doubt) plaster D.C. with stickers that say "Milton Friedman Proud Father of Global Misery."
Well, Port-au-Prince Haiti was largely spared Friedman's brand of misery. And a 7-ish magnitude earthquake killed 200,000 people.
Chile had enough "Chicago Boys" prosperity that an 8-ish quake killed 200 [sad update 700+] instead of 200,000. On one level this is not fair -- the epicenter of the quake was not in a heavily populated area.
But we're talking about a four magnitude difference in the death toll, when the quake was more than twice as strong (I heard five times the energy).
January 5, 2010
Whole Foods: Bad for the Planet!
You think I won't link to Mother Jones? Y'think? You dare me?
Kate Sheppard asks Is Whole Foods Bad for the Planet?
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has probably brought more people to organic foods than anyone else in the United States. And many of the folks shopping at his markets undoubtedly consider themselves to be environmentally aware. They might even believe that by purchasing their groceries at Whole Foods outlets they are doing their part to help the planet. But certainly many of them would probably be startled to learn of of [sic] Mackey's position on climate change: he's a global warming denier.
If only a reliable media outlet had predicted this disaster...
To be fair, I think Whole Foods is bad for the planet because they promote organic farming which threatens animal habitat and fair trade coffee which impoverishes the poorest farmers to subsidize middle-class (well, less poor) farmers. But those don't seem to be the faults that Mother Jones has in mind.
But are the subsidized organic farms any different than America's large corporate farms? I was under the impression that the obscenity passed every other year (euphemistically titled a "farm bill") was not so discriminatory.
Posted by: T. Greer at January 5, 2010 10:09 PMDecember 11, 2009
Eat a Cold Potato in the Dark Day!
I try not to get angry, but...
DENVER — Dozens of Colorado businesses are turning off their lights from noon to 1 p.m. Friday as part of an initiative to conserve energy.
It's called Lights Out Lunch. Residents who pledge to turn off their lights too can get discounts from participating restaurants and a chance to win prizes.
The initiative is by Xcel Energy, the Governor's Energy Office and the city and county of Denver.
Colorado Restaurant Association President and CEO Pete Meersman says research shows restaurants use more than five times more energy per square foot than other commercial buildings.
We froze in the dark for tens of thousands of years. Y'all want to climb back in the cave, be my guest! The stupidity of local government is no surprise, but how is the utility, Xcel Energy, caught up in this? Will the restaurants do a hunger strike day?
Turn off one's lights for "a chance to win prizes." It's Privations for Prizes!
Gee, maybe one of the prizes is one of those bitchin' little solar-powered book lights.
Posted by: johngalt at December 11, 2009 11:05 PMAs for why the power company is "caught up in this" remember that they are regulated by the Public Utilities Commission. It's for the same reason that insurance companies initially "supported" health-care reform. If they don't play the game, or at least pretend to, there will be hell to pay at the hands of our "protectors" in the government.
Posted by: johngalt at December 11, 2009 11:09 PMWouldn't it be better to have a "brown bag" day when all restaurants shut down? Surely the energy needed to keep all those ovens, grills and dish washing equipment working far exceeds the energy used for a few office lights. Think how much energy a cold ham sandwich would save!
Do you supposed the restaurant association is really interested in being "green" or is this perhaps cynical opportunism to increase business? Not that I blame them.
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at December 13, 2009 6:33 PMOctober 22, 2009
Mom Always Liked Penn Best!
This story really disturbed me.
I follow PennSays on Twitter and meant to post a recommendation to it last week. Penn does short videos (kind of a cheap imitation of the virtual coffeehouse, really...) that are the closest thing to a vblog that I've ever seen. Jillette is an interesting and likeable guy, and the videos are fun to watch.
Except this one from last week. I found it very sad. While I am still ambivalent on Beck fandom, Penn is 100% right and Tommy Smothers is 100% wrong. "If Hitler has a show, would you go on?" Asinine.
Instapundit linked this morning and I watched it again. Reynolds suggests it's a good excuse not to have idols -- not a bad takeaway.
But the segue machine really kicked in when Don Surber (another awesome Twitter followee) piled on:
Tommy Smothers yelled at Penn Jillette for appearing on a TV show?That’s like Chong yelling at you for having a bong.
God, I am old.
I remember when the Smothers Brothers were for free speech.
I guess the only speech Tommy Smothers supports now is yelling at people he disagrees with.
Isn't yelling at people you don't agree with the basic principal of free speech? Or have I been misled by what we call commentary on cable TV?
Posted by: Silence Dogood at October 24, 2009 11:49 PMI can't take the temperature of that comment closely enough to respond. But for the benefit of the young'uns, let me recap:
Tommy Smothers was denied his First and Fifth Amendment rights when his show was taken off the air by government censors, who likely objected to his politics as much as language or "adult situations." Many rallied to their cause and their careers and reputations -- if not their show -- were restored.
Now, Mister Smothers seems too quick to want to take away the voice of someone with whom he disagrees. And ready to deny Mister Jillette his voice. As Mister Surber scored it, that's evil.
Posted by: jk at October 25, 2009 7:01 PMOctober 1, 2009
That Speech Thingy Is Soooo Rude!
Facebook freind says "[Friend's Name Here] wonders why some people have to be so rude..."
Third commenter says:
I agree. Don't know what your complaint is but I saw an impeach obama sticker today and totally wanted to take a baseball bat to the guys truck! Not to fuel your fire. :)
Friend replies:
Infuriating, isn't it? To be stuck with Bush and all of his truly heinous crimes for 8 years and now hear this?!? Boggles the mind...
Then admits it was not about politics at all but a friend of friend's disapprobation.
Laugh, cry, or grab the baseball bat?
Barack Obama deserves EVERYONE'S respect because he is the President of the United States and was chosen by the voters, but Chimpmeister Bush could be dissed because he was the reincarnation of Hitler. Riiiiight.
And let's not even talk about the rudeness of government coercion and theft.
What would happen if conservatives DID start using the tactic of the left: violence?
Posted by: johngalt at October 2, 2009 4:17 PMNancy Pelosi would cry.
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at October 5, 2009 3:49 PMSeptember 16, 2009
About the latest ACORN Video
So yeah.... James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles took their underage illegal immigrant hooker show on the road and struck gold in San Bernadino.
They found a name dropping psycho who killed her husband AND had hooking experience.
Anyway... the woman is crazy, and she's a name dropping bullshitter. I dont buy her assertion she talks to Senator Boxer.... But the shooting of the husband and laying the groundwork, that's pretty scary... and will be determined soon enough.
Awesomely, you know this isn't the last of ACORN on the West Coast. There will be more.
She'll kill you, ac -- don't think she hasn't done it before!
Posted by: jk at September 16, 2009 10:40 AMAs it turns out, she didn't kill her husband(s)... but she was willing to defraud the IRS.
... and they hate that.
Posted by: AlexC at September 16, 2009 12:52 PMAugust 26, 2009
Female, Veg Friendly, Woman of Color Wanted
@mkhammer says this may be the best no-parody ad evah. You, too, can move into a $930 progressive group house:
THE CURRENT HOUSEMATES
There are four males and one female currently living in the house. Two of the people in the house are people of color. There is one couple. We are two vegetarians, three omnivores. We rotate Sunday night cook nights where we make a vegetarian dinner for everyone in the house. We like hanging out with each other occasionally but also do our own thing. We come from all different backgrounds, both culturally and geographically, and are interesting in maintaining and expanding that diversity with the new roommate.FUTURE HOUSEMATE
Preferred roommate is a woman of color who is vegetarian friendly (but meat eaters are OK; veg friendly just means respectful of vegetarians). However, people of all walks of life will be considered if they seem like a good fit. We are especially seeking someone who has experienced and understands the pitfalls of group house life, and has ideas for making it a great place for themselves and others. More than anything else we want clear healthy communicators - keeping each other in touch with what's going on in our lives and our heads, and general upkeep of the house. We'd like to keep it a clean house but sometimes succeed at that more than other times.
I'd like to see the reality show where Ted Nugent goes in for an interview.
Posted by: johngalt at August 27, 2009 12:06 AMYup, sign up Michelle Branch and the buffalo head and I'm in!
Posted by: jk at August 27, 2009 11:58 AMBy my count, there are nine places in that ad where you could insert the line "not that there's anything wrong with that!" and not damage the flow on the message.
Show of hands: how many of you were mentally fisking that as you read it? For instance - "keeping each other in touch with what's going on in our lives and our heads," and some occasional light vacuuming, and run the bong through the dishwasher once a week or so...
Posted by: Keith at August 27, 2009 12:41 PMJuly 1, 2009
Birds of a Feather
Even if you've already seen this one you'll appreciate it again:
Indeed. If you aren't already familiar, here is the real story on the "military coup" in Honduras.
The WSJ Ed Page did a nice piece as well.
Posted by: jk at July 1, 2009 12:51 PMExcellent. It's refreshing to see major sources pointing out that this was not a real coup, but the removal of a proto-dictator. What does it tell you when Chavez and the UN insist that someone be returned to power?
Billy Hollis at QandO has been publishing stuff from his friend in Honduras. Must-read.
So now you know, when U.S. and AFP news talk about "protestors" battling with police, whose side the protestors are actually on. And think about what will happen if Zelaya returns. He'll virtually flood the streets with the blood of his opponents, making Robespierre look like Mother Theresa.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at July 1, 2009 1:40 PM'nother good cartoon
Posted by: jk at July 1, 2009 2:07 PMApril 8, 2009
End of the World, Chapter LXXIV
A Facebook friend links to this article and sez "As another person who spent a few years abroad (and having lived in less than stable housing during the early years) I think this is an observation well worth sharing. Thanks for putting it out there Mer :)"
Just a grim reminder that somebody wrote this, somebody published it (well, on a website) and somebody thought enough of it to share with her Facebook friends. Merciful Frikken' Frozen Zeus on a Stick! "Letting the Joneses Win:"
First, find an empty glass bottle and a stick. Next, place the bottle on an empty stretch of dirt—if you can find one wedged in between all the concrete. Invite the group to roll the bottle around with the stick, pass it with their feet or run around with it for a few minutes. Then observe their responses.Will they invent new games with their bottle and stick? Smile with delight? Giggle with glee?
I predict not.
But in parts of the Third World with few resources and even less income, I have watched boys play with Coca-Cola bottles for an entire hour. And they didn't feel at all deprived. Resourceful to the core, they could have fun and be creative with lots of things we wouldn't even consider in the West.
Why? Possibly because American advertising had never told them that a bottle is boring.
Words fail.
Hmm. I will admit that I am having trouble understanding your disgust with this article. I trust that you are not confusing criticism of a specific culture's advertising norms (or perhaps more accurately, what a specific culture defines as living the good life) with criticism of advertising, living a good life, or capitalism as a whole. So what is the problem? Why would you see that American children don't play with bottles? How come you never see children playing "kick the can" anymore? Why is there such a need to have so much junk we really don't use?
This author has given their hypothesis; let us hear yours.
The real fun begins when they discover that it's more fun to spin it than kick it.
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at April 8, 2009 11:45 PMTold'ja the world was ending -- they've got tg!
My trouble is that the article is opposed to modernity and individual choice. Children today choose the Wii over a stick and a Coke bottle because they can. No advertiser that I know of ever spent a lot of money telling kids that a bottle is boring. They may have suggested that an X-Box 360 is exciting.
Ms. Whitmore is upset that her sensibilities are not honored but seems unwilling to offer reciprocal understanding. We have an affluent society based on our freedom. Whitmore, and my work friend who linked, and a large portion of the population of Boulder, are apologetic for our success and I am not.
When a society becomes affluent, many will choose to spend money on their personal appearance. I wouldn't spend ten cents or ten minutes on a tanning bed or elective cosmetic surgery. And, when nobody is looking, I question the values of those that do. But I do not seek to take away their choice or belittle their decision as slavery to advertising. That is important to other people; no doubt they'd be uncomfortable at the price tag on some of my guitars.
Any "disgust" flows from my inference that she wants to take us back to the caves. I should give her props that she actually plans to live in the cave herself -- most of her ideological companions want to live in a VP-Gore-sized mansion and have the rest of us strike up a relationship with flint.
But in the end, she wants the American child to embrace the stick and Coke bottle; I want to get the African child iPods and laptops.
Posted by: jk at April 9, 2009 11:43 AMI've been really busy and haven't had time to get involved in comments, but I'll take the time here.
"But I do not seek to take away their choice or belittle their decision as slavery to advertising."
Exactly right. People are (mostly) free to spend money on what they want, so it's hardly a gilded cage with advertisers as our masters. Isn't it wonderful that we're wealthy enough to waste things like we do? This is what Meredith will never understand. No doubt she agrees with Drew Barrymore that it's "awesome" to defecate in the woods like a wild animal. Americans have worked too hard, innovated for too long, to let ignoramuses like her bring us back 250 years. And I've personally come too far to let my future children have to "make do" with bottles and sticks.
To give you an idea, my mother's family grew up so poor that she had to live with relatives, for whom she drew and heated bathwater every morning. And only one generation later, I have vastly more wealth than all my mother's cousins ever had, combined. None had the ability to fly across the Philippines in an hour or so, let alone listen to any of thousands of songs upon command. How much more will my children have?
On the flip side, what if we started redistributing our wealth by giving iPods to Third World children? Like the efforts to give out laptops, the devices would often be more useful as doorstops or as something to sell for cold cash. So these things must come not as sudden gifts, but because these poor countries grow wealthier and can later choose to buy what they want. Again, a liberal like Meredith won't understand this. Wealth by itself is not and should never be the end goal. In the end, it's freedom that is the only target, because only through freedom can people achieve true wealth. But liberals reverse cause and effect, pursuing (redistributing) wealth in a perverted idea that it makes people "free."
"You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your Government." - Patrick Henry
One of the most humbling events of my life was watching a man on the streets of Cebu City for a few moments as our taxi waited at a traffic light. As he collected scrap cardboard from a compost heap, tying them up with a plastic cord he probably similarly salvaged, his little girl entertained herself by jumping around on the sidewalk. What if some American stranger had bought her a doll, or given her candy? That would help, but what about the more pressing need of making sure she has enough to eat? Think of the "MASH" episode where Charles initially got angry with the orphanage director, who'd sold Charles' Christmas gift of chocolate on the black market. Instead of one night of pleasure, it meant one month of food.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at April 9, 2009 2:12 PMWe're on the same page, Perry. Let me clarify: I don't want to donate iPods and laptops to Africa, I want to bring honest government, freedom, and trade to Africa so that they can buy these items for themselves.
My grandmother was born into a Willa Cather-esque existence in 19th Century South Dakota. Her daughter married my Dad who was a penniless jazz musician but ended up with an Ad Agency and 40 people working for him. I have always chuckled that I, as a middle class schlub, live a lifestyle that he would have envied. I couldn't afford the house I grew up in, but my parents rarely ate out or traveled for pleasure. They never went to Europe, while their grandchildren all went before graduating high school.
Posted by: jk at April 9, 2009 3:33 PMFebruary 22, 2009
"Where's their answer to this?"
A number of ideas over the past weeks have come together for me this morning-
In response to the letter I sent to my Senators opposing H.R. 1 a beloved cousin emailed me, "I’m not saying I disagree or agree with you when I ask this question…. But what would you suggest? I don’t really know what the right answer is at this point…"
The first line of my reply to her was, "Well, on numerous occasions in the past we've cut tax rates in an attempt to spur economic growth and every time that's been done the economy improved and net tax receipts increased, despite the lower rate of taxation."
Then the shamulus bill passed and a number of Republican governors, upon seeing the fine print, began suggesting they'd refuse the federal handouts. "Republican governors, as the last bastion of capitalist political power in this country, should implement a capitalist plan for job creation - eliminate the corporate income tax" I thought. By doing this in one or more states there would be a side-by-side comparison of capitalism versus government bailouts that would be difficult to ignore on the key statistics of job growth and state GDP growth.
But I wondered which states have a Republican governor AND a corporate income tax that could be axed?
This morning Tim Pawlenty and Mark Sanford appeared on Fox News Sunday with Ed Rendell and Jennifer Granholm to discuss the "stimulus" bill. Among other things, Sanford called The Big O's foreclosure plan "a horrible idea." Last week Sanford suggested that his state might "turn down stimulus money" from the feds. In that L.A. Times story real estate agent Joyce Rivas claimed to have voted for Sanford twice but was angered by his "threat." Rivas asked, "For starters, where's their answer to this?"
In a quick search I found that Governor Sanford proposed, last December, elimination of the 5% South Carolina corporate income tax.
Lawmakers and observers said eliminating corporate income tax is an interesting idea, but want to hear more details.(...)
South Carolina could join four other states, Nevada, South Dakota, Washington and Wyoming, with no corporate income tax, Sanford said. South Carolina collects about $300 million in corporate income taxes annually, far less than sales and individual income tax collections.
“We’ve got to get away from this piecemeal approach to jobs incentives,” Sanford said in a written statement. “We believe a better approach would be to simply lower the overall tax rate for corporations, so that we’re not only giving companies a good deal when they decide to locate here but we’re giving them a reason to stay and expand.”
There you are, Ms. Rivas. That is our answer.
For reference: Tax Foundation's 'State Business Tax Climate Index Rankings' Maryland... ouch!
I watched that show as well. Let me just say "Sanford for God!!!"
I have heard for years about how impressive (and telegenic) Governor Granholm is. "Don't amend the Constitution for President Aahnold," they said, "it will backfire and you'll get Democratic President Granholm." Watching her today, I don't think either of them should start measuring drapes. (For the record, I would support an amendment allowing a naturalized citizen to be President and for the record my naturalized-citizen wife would not. There you go.)
You can see where these former industrial giants of states get the "former" though I confess to liking Gov. Rendell's style. Gov. Granholm will gladly take her money and South Carolina's and yours and yours and yours and yours.
...and another thing!
This humble little blog has mentioned several things that would be wildly more effective and far more conducive to liberty. Holidays on cap-gains taxes, elimination of the corporate cap gains tax, increased immigration and the payroll tax holiday would all be wildly stimulative. None would grow government's size and influence.
Posted by: jk at February 22, 2009 7:19 PM...but whadda WE know. We're just "the people."
Posted by: johngalt at February 22, 2009 11:31 PMOctober 26, 2008
Weather Underground: Kill the "die hard capitalists"
From LGF: Bill Ayers' Terrorist Group Discussed Genocide of Americans (includes video)
Quoting Larry Grathwohl, an FBI informant and member of the Weather Underground, in a 1982 documentary on the group:
"I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people.And they were dead serious."
I wonder if McPalin's last week of TV ads will include anything from this list. Though I suspect it may require pictures of Obama and Ayers building pipe bombs together to get through to some people.
Hat tip: Blog brother Cyrano
Population planning, from abortion to forced sterilization, has always been part of the liberal/collectivist agenda.
"In order to stabilize world populations, we must eliminate three hundred and fifty thousand people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it's just as bad not to say it." No one batted an eye when Jacques Cousteau said this completely contemptuous thing.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at October 26, 2008 2:23 PMJuly 16, 2008
New Communist Manifesto
There's a problem with Reagan's bloodless victory in the Cold War - all of the communists were free to go elsewhere and carry on their life's work. Their latest manifesto (that I'm aware of) is called: Agenda 21.
To wit: The 27 Principles of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development.
A few examples:
Principle 1 -"Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature."
And all other rights not hereby enumerated are at risk.
Principle 2 -
"States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental and developmental policies, and the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction."
Global Warming anyone?
Principle 3 -
"The right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations."
Natural resources (fossil fuels) must be left in the ground for use by future generations. And future generations must leave it for those that follow them. And so on.
(I'm not sure I can take much more of this.)
Principle 4 -
"In order to achieve sustainable development, environmental protection shall constitute an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in isolation from it."
Thou shalt not create buildings which trample a single plant or insect.
(Let's skip ahead a bit.)
Principle 15 -
"In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation."
"Don't know where were goin' but there's no use bein' late!"
Principle 20 -
Women have a vital role in environmental management and development. Their full participation is therefore essential to achieve sustainable development.
Perhaps women deserve government salaries for living sustainably (i.e. without engaging in commerce.)
Principle 24 -
"Warfare is inherently destructive of sustainable development. States shall therefore respect international law providing protection for the environment in times of armed conflict and cooperate in its further development, as necessary."
"Hey Joe, where you goin' with that grenade in your hand?" Did you get an EIS first?
Principle 25 -
"Peace, development and environmental protection are interdependent and indivisible."
Aw shucks, ain't that nice?
Principle 26 -
"States shall resolve all their environmental disputes peacefully and by appropriate means in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations."
Kumbaya.
Principle 27 -
"States and people shall cooperate in good faith and in a spirit of partnership in the fulfilment of the principles embodied in this Declaration and in the further development of international law in the field of sustainable development."
Thus shall it be. Amen.
Think none of this will ever effect you? My brother learned differently when he applied for a building permit in Boulder County.
Sustainability in Land Use in Boulder County
What is sustainability? (Notice that Boulder County now has a second web presence, in the .org domain.) Oy.
And how is your brother's sweatshop assault weapons facility coming along? I think it's a great idea.
Love this from the Boulder site:
But a truly "sustainable" community goes far beyond basic energy efficiency and pollution reduction. A sustainable community provides for all the needs of its inhabitants (including people, animals and habitats). This includes protecting open spaces, natural habitats and landscapes; ensuring access to basic human needs such as food, housing and health care; encouraging an active community involvement in social, political and community activities; and providing the every-day services that make daily tasks possible - services such as maintaining transportation routes and ensuring fair, accurate, democratic elections.
Who needs life, liberty, and the pursuit of happines when you got all that?
Posted by: jk at July 16, 2008 5:14 PM
As to your main point, the problem is not the bloodless destruction of Communism, Jay Nordlinger at National Review has frequently said that the problem is that there was no Nuremberg. There should have been war crime trials and a few folks hung.
Posted by: jk at July 16, 2008 5:18 PMDon't you wish for the days when we ostracized communists at home, and shot (at) them abroad?
Good thing you didn't go through the whole thing. Onion is blocked at work, and I would have vomited had I read them all.
"shall therefore respect international law providing protection for the environment in times of armed conflict"
IOW words, scorched earth for me, but not for thee!
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at July 17, 2008 8:48 AMNow you know why I'm a Boulder refugee.
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at July 17, 2008 2:31 PMThis helps everyone else understand BR, but I already knew. I'm a Boulder refugee myself, now living in Weld County after 17 years (plus 4 more years of college) living in not just the county, but the city of Boulder.
With a Longmont mailing address my brother held out longer than we did, but he'll be next.
Posted by: johngalt at July 17, 2008 3:26 PMMay 17, 2008
Quote of the Day
Instapundit links to a San Diego Christian leader who wants to organize a boycott of Starbucks over its new (old) logo. "According to Mr. Dice, the new image 'has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute. Need I say more? It's extremely poor taste, and the company might as well call themselves Slutbucks.'"
Commenters on the Amazon Al Dente blog point out that it is the original logo, that the slut is actually a mermaid, et cetera. But this comment really hit home:
Vile Starbucks Siren, wafting forth her burnt caffeine aroma, luring poor hipsters to their overpriced doom.
UPDATE: This Internet Thingy might really take off. Here's an informative history of the Starbucks logo.
October 3, 2007
Former President Raises Voice
President James Earl Carter has a reputation as a pacifist, but the Wall Street Journal reports that he shouted during an "Elders" publicity stunt and feel good patrol diplomatic visit to Darfur.
KABKABIYA, Sudan -- Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter got in a shouting match Wednesday with Sudanese security services who blocked him from a town in Darfur where he was trying to meet representatives of ethnic African refugees from the ongoing conflict.
[...]
U.N. officials told Mr. Carter's entourage that the Sudanese state police could bar his way. "Let's go, or somebody is going to get shot," said one U.N. official, as an increasingly tense crowd gathered. Billionaire businessman Richard Branson and Graca Machel, the wife of former South African President Nelson Mandela, tried to ease Mr. Carter's frustration as his U.S. secret service security urged him to climb into a car and leave. "I'll tell President Bashir about this," Mr. Carter said, referring to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.
A friend of ThreeSources sends a free link to a Yahoo/AP story on this, and suggests "The obvious lesson is that Carter and symbolism, along with .50, might get you a cup of coffee. Marines will get you results."
This is an evil thought, but ExPres Carter could have done A LOT for the oppressed people of Darfur by getting shot.
Posted by: mdmhvonpa at October 3, 2007 11:53 AMSimilarly, I was thinking "Too bad it didn't happen to him."
Benefits: we won't have Jimmy Carter to listen to anymore, and it'll give us an excuse to go in and kick Sudanese Muslim ass.
Cons: can anyone think of any? We won't have Jimmy Carter to kick around anymore, but he's getting awfully tiring.
Evil thoughts? Damn right.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at October 3, 2007 1:42 PMSeptember 11, 2007
Off-Grid Living
For lunch in her modest apartment, Madeline Nelson tossed a salad made with shaved carrots and lettuce she dug out of a Whole Foods dumpster. She flavored the dressing with miso powder she found in a trash bag on a curb in Chinatown. She baked bread made with yeast plucked from the garbage of a Middle Eastern grocery store.Nelson is a former corporate executive who can afford to dine at four-star restaurants. But she prefers turning garbage into gourmet meals without spending a cent.
In the country I grew up in, if Ms Nelson had kids, they would take away them away. Now she's celebrated.
Freeganism was born out of environmental justice and anti-globalization movements dating to the 1980s. The concept was inspired in part by groups like "Food Not Bombs," an international organization that feeds the homeless with surplus food that's often donated by businesses.Freegans are often college-educated people from middle-class families.
Adam Weissman, whose New York group Freegan.info has been around for about four years, lives with his father, a pediatrician, and mother, a teacher. The 29-year-old is unemployed by choice, taking care of his elderly grandparents daily and working odd jobs when he needs to. The rest of his time is spent furthering the freegan cause, he said, which is "about opting out of capitalism in any way that we can."
I work with a guy, still very liberal, who lived on a commune in the Seattle area in the seventies.
They tried this. It's not new.
I'm not quite sure why Marty left but "not really working out" seems to be a plausable reason.
Read the whole, sad sad thing.
More transparency: this is what life is like if you "opt out of capitalism."
Posted by: jk at September 11, 2007 3:34 PM... by living off of it's refuse.
One of the quotes from captions... "She concedes that she was somewhat surprised once when she did not not get sick after eating salmon retrieved from a trash container."
Perhaps it's a miracle... a sign from Our Lady of Perpetual Squalor.
Posted by: AlexC at September 11, 2007 3:41 PMI had written a while back on starving Kenyans refusing food out of pride, and Freegans' misguided economics.
http://eidelblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/beggars-being-choosers.html
Putting aside the safety issues (never mind garbage cans, if something's left on the street corner, you can bet it's for a goddamn good reason!), for most of us, it's just not economically practical to search for hours to find scraps of food. It's better to spend those hours actually working, then go to the grocery store that helps minimize our search costs.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at September 12, 2007 10:22 AMI'll try and play JohnGalt here (he's probably on a cattle drive or something). It's a philosophy problem.
This is what happens when you give up your individual interests to pursue a nebulous public good. This woman has a college education and had a decent career. She allowed herself to believe that this is somehow better for the planet.
Where jg would likely not join me, is that I would point out that the world is really much better off having her work and create wealth and innovation. Let the professional trash removal crew do the job; they have a distinct comparative advantage.
I would join you in that assessment, JK: The "world" is much better off when every individual refuses to give up his individual interests.
I wasn't on a cattle drive yesterday. I was on sick leave. Damn salmon.
Posted by: johngalt at September 12, 2007 2:57 PMThe Salmon Moussssssse! Gets 'em everytime.
Posted by: jk at September 12, 2007 3:52 PMSeptember 10, 2007
More Transparency
Don Luskin links to The World Without Us website. Be sure to watch the animation that shows how, in 370 years or so, nature can completely reclaim your house. What an improvement.
I appreciate these people sharing their true goals. A good friend who is both a moonbat and an honest interlocutor, sends a link to George Carlin's take on global warming: in a nutshell, "Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked."
The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.
For my part, you can put me down as pro-people. I'm willing to go on a limb.
August 20, 2007
Bill Maher, Profile in Courage
Jonathan Last at Galley Slaves is extremely impressed. It seems that Bill Maher is releasing a movie called "Religious," next Easter. And Maher is going to risk Hollywood ostracism by actually criticizing religion. I hope he does not crack under the pressure. Last says “This is why we have artists--to speak truth to the powerful."
Anyway, Maher had this to say about the movie, "We talked to everybody. We went everywhere. We went to every place where there is religion. We went to Vatican City. We went to Jerusalem. We went to Salt Lake City. And I think I’ve insulted everybody!"Christians, check. Jews, check. Mormons, check. Yup, that's everybody! There's no other important religious group worth mentioning that maybe deserves some fun-poking and that might react badly to being ridiculed. And thank goodness the film will be released around Easter and not some other holy period.
Nobody has seen the movie yet. And maybe Maher really is an equal-opportunity offender. But if he is, I'll be pretty surprised. After all, why go after a religion where offended believers really might kill you when you can get the same thrill beating up on people who never push back.
For some time, I've wanted to organize a "Koran Pooper Scooper Day": when you walk your dog, bring a copy of the Koran and rip out a few pages as necessary. Personally, I'd love having a fatwa issued against me, but there would probably be a big backlash against me at my job. Not that any of my superiors are saying I can't express myself privately on my own time, but publicity may follow me to the office and interfere with my work.
Remember, some guy named Jesus offended a whole bunch of Sanhedrin, Pharisees and scribes. Considering the political power they wielded, they were more like mullahs.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at August 21, 2007 1:50 PMJuly 7, 2007
A Toast to Liberals
No, not Mises-Hayek-Friedman liberals. Real, progressive, Paul Wellstone, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale liberals -- are they all from Minnesota?
First, an atta-boy to Garrison Keillor. Lileks tells us:
In other old news: <keillorvoice> It’s the birthday of the Prairie Home Companion. </keillorvoice> The first live broadcast of this Minnesota institution happened today in 1974, and buzz.mn extends its congrats to Garrison Keillor and all the folks at PHC for thirty-three years of keeping the traditions of old radio alive.
I listened to Keillor every Saturday until the 104th Congress was seated and I could no longer stand his cruel and unfunny political chatter. But he remains a singular talent. I watched the Prairie Home Companion Movie during a visit with Sugarchuck. It was good, but I watched a July 4th show on PBS that I found even more entertaining than the fictional portrayal (oddly enough, Meryl Streep starred in both). There's never been anything like it before of since.
Boulder is full of bumper stickers that their owners think to be the height of comedy. They're all sanctimonious and are almost entirely unamusing. A good friend has a Volvo (natch!) with "God is NOT a Republican!" But last week,. I saw a funny bumper sticker. On the back of a Subaru Forrester (double natch!):
"I'll be post-feminist in the post-patriarchy!"
Can't say I'd agree with this young woman's view of life and society, but I at least got a good laugh.
"Post-patriarchy." That's when Hillary Clinton of the mommy party becomes president and tries to make the government EVERYBODY'S mommy. Right?
If that happens I predict that all of the government's patriarchal "life partners" (i.e. taxpayers) will seek a divorce. Failing that they'll quit their jobs and become "deadbeat patriarchs."
July 2, 2007
Quote of the Day
We're plagued with an every-man-for-himself attitude. That attitude may have been good in helping us build this country and helping us become the innovators that we are. But we won't make it through the 21st century intact as a great country if we don't adopt a different ethos that says we're all in the same boat. We sink or swim together. We have to help each other. -- Michael Moore, interviewed in US News and World ReportHat-tip: Don Luskin
I'm not going to say a word. I just post this for your enjoyment.
UPDATE: Austan Goolsbee reviews Sicko in Slate. This very bright economist is advising Senator Obama. Hat-tip: Greg Mankiw, who is advising Gov. Romney. When somebody hires Art Laffer, let me know.
Were I in the same boat as Michael Moore, I'd be afraid that he'd eat me. Or make us capsize. The latter is the more appropriate analogy, because it's disgusting slobs like him, and their I-don't-give-a-**** attitude that the rest of us should pay for their poor lifestyles. Such slugs expect the rest of us to share the costs of health care equally, when it's their morbid gluttony that makes them a burden on us.
By the way, after losing 35 pounds, I'm stronger and in better shape than in my teens, when I was 30 pounds lighter than now. My heart rate went from 70-80 per minute to the low 60s. Some might consider 70s to be normal, but it's too high for a decent level of fitness. Also, think about it: a heart that pumps less but more efficiently won't give out after only 60 years. All this because I chose to give a damn about my own health. My friend Jackie Passey was right all along: fat is a choice.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at July 2, 2007 4:39 PM"Plagued?" Psh-awwww.
Perry, Michael Moore would ask the government to make your heart help pump his blood if he thought there was a way to do so.
Posted by: johngalt at July 3, 2007 3:02 PMWe are "plagued" Michael, with an every-other-man-is-for-me attitude. Now you tell me, who is the selfish one?
Posted by: johngalt at July 3, 2007 3:17 PMApril 16, 2007
501c3s
On this dark day (well tomorrow) where does your tax dollar go?
Talk about an abused law. It's bad enough that all these execrable groups are tax free, it also puts the government in charge of deciding who's good and good not.
Steve Forbes was on Kudlow the other night calling for a flat tax of 17% with a family of four's first 45,000 being exempt. I was weeping as I thought of the economic explosion that would ignite in this country.
As Silence would say, only 535 reasons we won't do it...
Actually, Senator Arlen Specter (i'm not really a fan).... is introducing a 20% flat tax.
Posted by: AlexC at April 17, 2007 5:50 PMOkay, 534. Sadly, I cannot imagine the Senior Senator from Pennsylvania would vote for a Senatorial-power-reducing flat tax if it were poised to succeed.
Posted by: jk at April 17, 2007 6:17 PMAs JG notes below, a flat, "percentage," tax is not a flat tax. Nor is it a fair tax. It is, I must admit, a big improvement on the current situation.
Why don't we have more proposals out there for consumption based taxation. Think how much the government could save by eliminating the IRS.
Posted by: dagny at April 18, 2007 10:24 AMConsumption based taxation is far and away my first choice, but I think that you need to repeal the 16th Amendment. lest you end up with a British-style hybrid.
Removing Congressional power and social engineering from the tax code is so daunting a challenge, I will take it in any form. Consumption tax is the best idea but the hardest to get. The appeal of Forbes’s suggestion was that it is explainable, defensible (the exemption blunts regressivity concerns) and could be put in place by a single Congress that rode to power on the idea.
November 27, 2006
Kerry Without The Humor
I watched Rep. Rangel yesterday on Fox News Sunday and my jaw dropped to the floor. He said the exact same thing Senator Kerry did in his "botched joke." Nobody made too big a deal of it and my mind went on to other things.
Taranto hit it today; Hot-air has the video up; and Instapundit linked to the Hot-Air post. I don't know, does anybody care that an incoming committee chair said this:
If a young fella has an option of having a decent career or joining the army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq.
or
No young, bright individual wants to fight just because of a bonus and just because of educational benefits.
I hope that's true, Congressman. The ones I have had the privilege of meeting do it for far more important reasons, and it frightens me that you do not understand.
The last humorous thing Kerry did was order a cheesesteak w/ Swiss Cheese at Pat's Steaks in '04!
Posted by: TrekMedic251 at November 28, 2006 11:06 PMNovember 26, 2006
They Wuz Robbed!
Rove's operatives at Diebold were unable to steal a Congressional majority, but a Democratic Club in Pennsylvania (where else?) felt the stinging bite of crime last week. Dr. Rick at The American Check-Up reports:
According to Bethlehem police, thieves ransacked the Edgeboro Democratic Club, 1427 Marvine St., after kicking a hole in a side door between 4 p.m. Thursday and 6 p.m. Monday. Once inside, police said, they stole a round beer clock, 12 to 14 whiskey bottles, two cases of assorted beer, two speakers, a stereo, a touch-screen video game, 11/2 kegs of beer, a case of malt liquor and 500 packs of cigarettes.
Malt Liquor and cigarettes, No wonder we lost. Doctor Rick wonders "what else would you expect the local Dems to have? Hookers?" I wonder what might have been taken that they perhaps did not mention to the police.
In related news, I am considering changing parties.
Why in the world would the Dems need 10,000 cigarettes on hand? It's not like any one or 10 people could smoke those quickly.
Were they buying votes? Crazier things have happened.
Posted by: AlexC at November 26, 2006 11:17 PMIf I know the dems, I'd think they were trying to influence the Native American vote. Not that I'm saying that Native Americans drink and smoke alot. Maybe it was the Italian vote ....
Posted by: mdmhvonpa at November 27, 2006 1:06 PMNovember 17, 2006
Senator Edwards and the PS3
I was gonna link to this, but I didn't have the right hook.
Wal-Mart issued a press release this afternoon saying that an aide to John Edwards, the former Democratic vice presidential candidate and North Carolina senator, contacted a Wal-Mart store in Raleigh, N.C., in search of a Sony PlayStation3 “on behalf of the senator’s family.” The coveted game console, available in limited quantities, goes on sale at midnight tonight.The giant retailer noted the irony, given Edwards’s participation Wednesday in a conference call organized by Wal-Mart critic WakeUpWalMart.com. During the call, Edwards criticized Wal-Mart’s employment practices and recounted how his son had taken to task another student for buying shoes at Wal-Mart. WakeUpWalMart.com and other union-backed groups have pilloried the retailer’s employment practices at several events recently.
ThreeSources friend Sugarchuck rides to my rescue. "Two Americas," says sc in an email, "the one where people wait their turn in line and play by the rules and the second where fat cat trial lawyers try to use influence and power to jump to the front of the line and get theirs while the regular guy waits."
November 9, 2006
Yeah, Death Camps!
- In January 2006 HomeSec awarded a $385 million contract to Kellogg, Brown and Root, the subsidiary of Halliburton Co., to build "temporary detention and processing capabilities"--internment camps--"in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."
The question, asks Progressive magazine editor Ruth Conniff, "is what is the government planning to do with mass roundups of people?" After all, Bush and other Republican leaders have spent five years calling Democrats and others who disagree with them traitors and terrorists. Following so much hateful rhetoric, you can't blame liberals for wondering whether they too are about to be declared "enemy combatants." They're not paranoid; they're just paying attention.
And Now, Martial Law
About a week ago some left-wing bloggers began circulating rumors that Bush had secretly signed something called the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" that "allows the president to declare a 'public emergency' and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to 'suppress public disorder.'" I couldn't find the text of the law at the time, formerly H.R. 5122, or a reliable media account, so I decided not to report on it.
I can now confirm the bloggers' account. Bush signed the JWDAA hours after the MCA, in a furtive closed-door White House ceremony. There is, buried deep down in Title V, Subtitle B, Part II, Section 525(a) of the JWDAA, a coup. The Bush Administration has quietly stolen the National Guard away from the states.
Just a reminder that winning an election doesn't make the undo the insanity.
November 4, 2006
GOTV 3
Here's how not to write a get out the vote letter.
First, advice to blog readers.
- I attach a letter I have distributed to the voters in my division. Feel free to duplicate it.
With that in mind, let's get to the letter.
- Election Day is Tuesday, November 7, 2008. Voting in our division will be at the Fleisher Art Memorial located at 719 Catharine Street. Polls are open from 7:00am- 8:00 pm.
This is an extremely important election and it is crucial that we all come out and vote. Ed Rendell, Bob Brady and Babbette Joseph are all running for reelection and deserve our support.
Voting date. Check. Sort of.
Voting Place. Check.
Candidates. Check. Well... except her name is Babette Josephs.
Office they're running for? I have no idea.
Oh, we forgot Bob Casey, he's running for something.
Well, Bob Casey is mentioned twice. That's a lot right?
Wrong.
Because Rick Santorum is mentioned 11 times.
After saying vote for Bob Casey, they enumerate the reasons for voting AGAINST Rick Santorum. Apparently, they are legion.
The post is titled "Vote Against Hate", but I fail to see anything but for Santorum.
Anyway... this is not the best part.
That's this part.
- Santorum is a right wing zealot who will be defeated but only if we all turn out and vote on November 8, 2006.
and
- REMEMBER TO VOTE FOR BOB CASEY AND AGAINST RICK SANTORUM NOVEMBER 8, 2006
Emphasis added.
This blogger distributed the letter to voters in his precinct. Let's hope he got them all. ;)
If the Democrats lose in Philadelphia, it's 'cause they did it to themselves.
I got the EXACT same letter for my voting poll location.
Except I'm up in the 34th Ward and they want me to vote for Bob Brady, (PA-01).
Why bother? He ran unopposed in the primary and he's unopposed now. That means he already has the job.
Dumbasses!
Posted by: TrekMedic251 at November 5, 2006 1:17 PMWow. I can't believe that you have come out as pro-hate.
Posted by: jk at November 5, 2006 1:26 PMThe real question here is, who's dumber: Democrat voters or Democrat candidates and their operatives? It looks like a dead heat from Palm Beach county.
Posted by: johngalt at November 6, 2006 2:57 PMNovember 3, 2006
Academia and Halloween
Wonderful.
From the Ivory Towers.
- University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann threw her annual Halloween costume party at her home Tuesday night. Among the guests was Saad Saadi, who came dressed as a suicide bomber, complete with plastic dynamite strapped to his chest and a toy automatic rifle. Worse, Gutmann posed with Saadi!
An obvious question: would Gutmann have posed with a guest--or even allowed him into her house--if he'd dressed as Adolf Hitler or a Nazi SS officer? A KKK member?
Follow the link for pictures.
I dunno, maybe it’s my turn to defend the tower inhabitants. The guy has MidEastern features. He's in college. He came dressed as a terrorist. All the things wrong with academia, I have to say this doesn't bother me very much.
I'll concede the point of a double standard but the terrorist is topical and relevant. A Nazi or a Klansman or a Senior Senator from West Virginia would be importune but irrelevant.
JK has a point that the costumes (there was more than one) were topical, but they were certainly in bad taste. The interesting observation being made is that they're not in bad taste to ALL Americans, only to those who think the enemy is a danger to us. Not coincidentally, a vast majority of people on college campii are not in that camp.
Last week's episode of the CBS (of all places) soldier drama "The Unit" included some scenes of an army wife interacting with war protesters. I'll blog it shortly, but the relevant passage was when she was asked by a dirty hippie, "What side are you on?" She replied, "I'm on the American side."
Posted by: johngalt at November 4, 2006 12:15 PMOctober 31, 2006
Supporting the Troops
Don't forget, these guys support the troops.
Update: Signs of a meltdown?
John Kerry, supporting the troops since 1970!
Posted by: jk at October 31, 2006 2:19 PMA Kerry press release: "Washington – Senator John Kerry issued the following statement in response to White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, assorted right wing nut-jobs, and right wing talk show hosts desperately distorting Kerry’s comments about President Bush to divert attention from their disastrous record"
Fair to point out that AlexC is neither Tony Snow nor a talk show host.
Posted by: jk at October 31, 2006 4:10 PMI prefer "digital brownshirt", just ask Al.
http://lileks.com/bleats/archive/04/0604/062504.html
Posted by: AlexC at October 31, 2006 8:09 PMOctober 18, 2006
Chevy Truck Ad
It's not just me. In a previous life I was a VP (that stands for Boss's kid) of an advertising agency. I won't say that makes me an intelligent critic of advertising but it did teach me to look past entertainment value and try to judge its efficacy.
The Chevy Silverado ad with John Mellencamp makes me stop to watch it every time -- just to see if it's really that bad.
Seth Stevenson thinks it is. Writing for Slate Magazine, he gives it a "D" (I'd've gone for D+).
This ad makes me—and, judging by my e-mail, some of you—very angry. It's not OK to use images of Rosa Parks, MLK, the Vietnam War, the Katrina disaster, and 9/11 to sell pickup trucks. It's wrong. These images demand a little reverence and quiet contemplation. They are not meant to be backed with a crappy music track and then mushed together in a glib swirl of emotion tied to a product launch. Please, Chevy, have a modicum of shame next time.I should probably leave it at that (the poor ad is just trying to sell trucks, after all, in its own muddle-headed way). But this isn't your basic flag-waving car commercial. It mixes patriotic images with some heart-rending, shameful episodes from our past. And the ambiguity is furthered by the presence of John Mellencamp—a guy who, in a different incarnation, used to make semipolitical statements about the dark side of the American dream. A guy who wrote an open letter in 2003 arguing that the Iraq war was "solidifying our image as the globe's leading bully" and wondering why President Bush hadn't been "recalled" yet. Mellencamp once sang the line, "Ain't that America" with a decidedly bitter tinge. Now he sings the remarkably similar line, "This is our country," and it's hard not to wonder what he means by it.
So it's me, and Stevenson, and Jonathan Last at Galley Slaves.
Stevenson goes on to compare it to President Carter's Malaise speech and ends with this:
Automotive blog Jalopnik reports that an early version of the ad included footage of a nuclear mushroom cloud. Well, that would have brightened things up. I wonder if they could squeeze in the Rodney King beating and the Abu Ghraib photos, too.
Edgy. I give them the D+ for edgy. This could be a series, next the Dixie Chicks then Neil Young.
Anybody have Cat Steven's cell phone number? I lost his old one when he changed his name and got barred from US flights.
Posted by: mdmhvonpa at October 19, 2006 9:44 AMWhy would you want to call him? Aren't his phones tapped?
Posted by: AlexC at October 19, 2006 4:40 PMOctober 10, 2006
Babs
Barbara Streisand speaks truth to power, I guess.
- There was Streisand, enduring a smattering of very loud jeers as she and "George Bush" _ a celebrity impersonator _ muddled through a skit that portrayed the president as a bumbling idiot.
Though most of the crowd offered polite applause during the slightly humorous routine, it got a bit too long, especially for a few in the audience who just wanted to hear Streisand sing like she had been doing for the past hour.
"Come on, be polite!" the well-known liberal implored during the sketch as she and "Bush" exchanged zingers. But one heckler wouldn't let up. And finally, Streisand let him have it.
"Shut the (expletive) up!" Streisand bellowed, drawing wild applause. "Shut up if you can't take a joke!"
With that one F-word, the jeers ended. And the message was delivered _ no one gets away with trying to upstage Barbra Streisand, especially not in her hometown.
Once the outburst (which Streisand later apologized for) was over, Streisand noted that "the artist's role is to disturb," and delivered a message of tolerance before launching into a serenely beautiful rendition of "Somewhere." That put the focus back on what the audience came for _ her voice, one of the greatest female instruments of her generation.
If her role is to disturb, I for one eagerly anticipate the skit featuring witty repartee with Mohammed.
No one listens to Babs..... Or the Baldwins.
Posted by: Rick Tennesen at October 10, 2006 1:27 PMIf her role is to disturb, I hope she graced the audience with "Sam, You Made the Pants Too Long"
Posted by: jk at October 10, 2006 1:27 PMGive her the Ditzy Chicks treatment!
Posted by: TrekMedic251 at October 12, 2006 10:50 PMOctober 8, 2006
Perspective
I saw this tonight...
- Michael Steele, the Republican candidate for Senate in Maryland is not exactly a conservative's ideal candidate. But he is as an African-American running in a very blue Northeast state, his battle is uphill, so we can't expect our ideal in this race.
What would you call me?
An idiot at the least, perhaps ill-syntaxed.
No matter what, it really begs the question of what the ideal would be. A white guy?
At which point I'm a bigot, or really really really clumsy with English.
Anyway, here's what it really said.
- Harold Ford, Jr., the Democratic candidate for Senate in Tennessee is not exactly a progressive's ideal candidate. But he is as an African-American running in a very Red Southern state, his battle is uphill, so we can't expect our ideal in this race.
On the front page of DailyKos, it's ok. They're liberals.
Nothing to see here.
OK,..then what does that make Lynn Swann up here in PA?
He's a black conservative in a VERY red state with two big blue blotches on the edges.
Seems black voters ARE color-blind, because Fast Eddie Rendell, the D incumbent, is killing Swann by 20+ points in the polls.
Posted by: TrekMedic251 at October 9, 2006 9:35 PMAugust 23, 2006
Risky Business
A Hollywood celebrity is actually, financially punished for moonbatism. Mirabile dictu!
The Wall Street Journal (Kind of like E!, but with a conservative editorial page) reports Sumner Redstone Gives Tom Cruise His Walking Papers
In an unusually public rebuke, Viacom Inc. Chairman Sumner Redstone said that his company's movie studio, Paramount Pictures, plans to end its 14-year relationship with the 44-year-old Mr. Cruise and his film-production company. In an interview, Mr. Redstone, who is 83, was clear about the reason: Mr. Cruise's public antics and incessant stumping for personal causes, notably Scientology, have become intolerable and have been a drag on ticket sales for films like "Mission: Impossible III.""It's nothing to do with his acting ability, he's a terrific actor," said Mr. Redstone. "But we don't think that someone who effectuates creative suicide and costs the company revenue should be on the lot."
As a consequence, Paramount will not renew the expensive deal that has made the studio home to Cruise/Wagner Productions, the company Mr. Cruise owns with partner Paula Wagner. That deal in recent years paid Mr. Cruise and Ms. Wagner up to $10 million a year to develop films and operate an office on the Paramount lot. Mr. Cruise's representatives had indicated in recent weeks that the star might be willing to discuss a less-lucrative deal to stay at the studio. But now they are parting ways.
It seems "His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount."
You can take on the US Military, Christians, and the concept of freedom. But don't -- DON'T -- mess with South Park.
I believe the proper term is "moon-battery."
Moon-battery.
Posted by: AlexC at August 23, 2006 1:33 PMSurprised MS Word didn't suggest that, thanks.
Posted by: jk at August 23, 2006 3:27 PMAugust 18, 2006
The Carter Years
My post yesterday was meant to remind people that the effects of elected bodies last longer than their terms.
President Carter served one term between 1977 and 1981. I trace a lot of terrorism back to his decision to not seriously pursue the Iranians who took American hostages.
Is it me, or are the Carter Years back? Grab your 8-tracks and start up the Pacer. Our 39th President himself made news yesterday with Arabist prattle and partisan attacks on the current Administration.
Jimmy Carter says he's concerned that Arab hatred of the United States will only continue to grow given the Bush administration's support for what he calls Israel's "unjustified attack" on Lebanese civilians.Then Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, whom he appointed, made what appears to be a patently political rebuke of the NSA surveillance program (Carter's people have a freakin' gift for timing, don't they?)Carter tells Germany's Der Spiegel: "I don't think Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon."
Now Andrew Young, Carter's UN Ambassador and civil rights icon is stepping down from a position because he made racial remarks. The Wall Street Journal News Page reports that "Civil-rights leader Andrew Young, who was hired to help Wal-Mart Stores Inc. improve its public image, said early Friday he was stepping down from his position as head of an outside support group amid criticism for remarks seen as racially offensive."
When asked about whether Wal*Mart should be faulted for pushing local retailers out, Young had a reply which does not come from the Wal*Mart PR playbook:
"Well, I think they should; they ran the 'mom and pop' stores out of my neighborhood," the paper quoted Mr. Young as saying. "But you see, those are the people who have been overcharging us, selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs; very few black people own these stores."
I don't think he's out of a gig for long. The DNC will hire him to come up to Sausalito, Westchester county and the Hamptons to blast Wal*Mart. He'll probably get a raise.
All this from a single term. Just say no to a Democratic 110th.
UPDATE: I changed the link on the Judge Taylor Item to a free WSJ Editorial that better captures my accusation of partisanship. The editorial makes the point I've been crying to hear somebody else say about the NSA surveillance:
Judge Taylor sees an analogy here, but she manages to forget or overlook that no one is being denied his liberty and no evidence is being brought in criminal proceedings based on what the NSA might learn through listening to al Qaeda communications. The wiretapping program is an intelligence operation, not a law-enforcement proceeding.
That's the biggest argument in favor of the program (well, until 8/10).
I have a dream in which every American, without regard to the color of his skin, can overcharge his brothers and sisters and sell stale bread, bad meat, and wilted vegetables!
Posted by: jk at August 18, 2006 8:31 PMAugust 11, 2006
Smoke 'em if you got 'em
I quit smoking about 15 years ago. Unlike poor President Johnson, I lost the cravings over the course of several years. I could even have an occasional one (in Ireland, everybody smokes) but I am a cured man. That is, until I read Clay Risen's column in TNR online.
Now I think it may be my duty to take it up. Risen is upset at people who call themselves liberal and advance a liberal agenda (We're talking Humphrey liberals here, not von Mises), yet, gasp-cough-cough, smoke! Not only do they contribute to pollution and give their money to evil tobacco companies, but they express solidarity with bete noir Ayn Rand!
Among Ayn Rand's stranger quirks was her insistence that smoking was not just a right, but a moral obligation. To her, the burning cigarette was nothing less than the physical embodiment of the individual spirit: "When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind--and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression," she wrote in her propaganda tract-cum-novel Atlas Shrugged.Such quasi-mysticism may sound strange coming from the self-appointed doyenne of reason (or not, given Rand's hard-core nicotine addiction). But, especially in light of the health and environmental evidence against smoking, Rand's position makes a certain amount of sense: What better way to give the world the finger than to light one up? What better way to assert your complete independence from society--and your utter disdain for people who assert otherwise--than to sacrifice your own long-term health and that of your neighbors for a moment of self-gratification?
This is why it is striking to find so many liberals who smoke. Is there anything more hypocritical than someone who avers a commitment to the public good, who values personal sacrifice in service of society, who declaims the noxious influence of big business in America, who preaches environmental protection--all while puffing away?
These people are such scolds. They decry Puritanism, but they want to bring back the stocks for smokers, and SUV drivers, and Wal*Mart shoppers, and people who don't listen to NPR.
For Rand, while the personal consequences of smoking proved ultimately compelling (she gave up once she developed lung cancer), it's highly unlikely that the environmental or public health arguments would have mattered much; after all, under her philosophy of radical selfishness, her desires were absolute trumps over any construction of the "greater good."One would expect a liberal to see things much differently. A liberal would hold that the public good is a compelling, though rarely absolute, interest against his own needs and wants--less against his needs, more so against his wants. The less urgent the need or want, the more compelling the public good. For example, a liberal would recognize that he needs to get from home to work, and may likely have no other choice but to drive. Given that driving a car puts strain on the environment, this is a necessary compromise of a public good in favor of a personal need. But he would also recognize that he has several options in meeting that need--should he drive the hybrid he knows emits less pollution or the SUV he really wants? Should he carpool, even though he'd rather spend time in the car alone? In each case the former is better for the public good, while the latter meets his wants at the expense of the public good. The more willing he is to make these sorts of concessions to the public good, the more in line he is with liberal principles.
This says a lot more about Mr. Risen than it says about Ms. Rand.
This Risen is an angry young man, isn't he? The contemporary resurgence of Rand's ideas must really be getting under his skin.
Though the Atlas Shrugged quote is accurate, Rand considered smoking emblematic of man's dominion over nature, not a "moral obligation." This was in 1957 mind you, long before objective scientific evidence of smoking's health consequences was known. "Lung cancer?" What's he smoking? Rand died of heart failure. (I know, I know, not enough tofu.) http://www.nndb.com/people/097/000030007/
Here's the real outrage, though: Attributing her mere "desires" as absolute trumps over the "greater good" evidencing her philosophy of "radical selfishness." What RATIONAL selfishness holds is that every man is an end in himself and is morally free to choose his own course in life so long as he refrains from the initiation of force against other men. (What could be more liberal, Clay?)
This essay is black and white proof that Ann Coulter is right: These people are religious followers of the deity called "public good." Rand and I? Atheists.
P.S. Thanks for the hanging curveball, JK.
Posted by: johngalt at August 12, 2006 6:02 PMWasn't sure you'd swing. I remember your being very anti-smoking.
The Ayn Rand Biographical FAQ says "A few authors, apparently careless with their research, have stated that Rand died of lung cancer. Rand was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1974, but she underwent surgery, which she reported to be "a complete success." She also stopped smoking at this time. There is no evidence that she experienced any recurrence of the cancer or that it was directly involved in her death, which did not come until 1982."
http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/bio/biofaq.html#Q6.10
I was a smoker when I read Atlas Shrugged and I remember that quote vividly. I completely agree with your interpretation. It's about having such complete control of fire that you carry it in your hand when uncontrolled fire had bedeviled man for millennia.
Kudos for the research, friend. I could find nothing about it in my brief attempt.
As for my opposition to smoking, your memory is correct. I still revulse at the smell of cigarette smoke (cigars are a different matter) but I've learned that the right of private property trumps my personal preferences. As long as I'm free to avoid an establishment, 'tis the owner's right to choose smoking or non.
So there you have it: Two deeply held and principled beliefs coexisting. Ain't it a beautiful thing this consistent, integrated philosophy!
Posted by: johngalt at August 13, 2006 1:41 PMJuly 25, 2006
Life Imitates "Night Court"
(Apologies to James Taranto for the headline...)
There was a great line in the old TV show "Night Court." Ambitious lawyer Dan Fielding (John Larroquette), hears discussion of the Nobel Peace Prize. He says "I'd kill for one of those."
Fast forward a couple decades, and life has caught up:
Peace prize winner 'could kill' BushRight now, I would love to kill George Bush." Her young audience at the Brisbane City Hall clapped and cheered.
"I don't know how I ever got a Nobel Peace Prize, because when I see children die the anger in me is just beyond belief. It's our duty as human beings, whatever age we are, to become the protectors of human life."
Hat-tip Everyday Economist
July 12, 2006
Beyond Lileks
I think James Lileks is one of the greatest writers of our time. I have a bunch of his books and I've given many away for gifts. His "screedy" stuff rings with joy. He displays an easy patriotism to which I relate.
But even the great man comes up short today. His Bleat becomes a takedown of Joel Stein's Eek! A flag on my lawn! in the Los Angeles Times. Lileks is in good form:
That’s the key line, right there. Not because he admits to looking down on people who put up a flag on the Fourth; that’s hardly unusual in the thin moist demographic stratum he occupies. It’s not that they don’t like the flag, necessarily, and it’s not that they don’t enjoy the Fourth, but put the two together and people might get the wrong idea. No, what amused me was the sight of a writer who’d burrowed so far up the aperture of his warm narcissistic cocoon he has no idea how he comes across. I have liberal friends who fly flags without apology or worry, because they’re Americans, because it’s the Fourth, because they love their country, and because they don’t believe that trinity is the property of the other side. Which it isn’t. When it comes to struggling to get the flag on the pole just right, we’re all in this together. But to Mr. Stein, these are people to be looked down upon. Places deserving of a sniff and a snort. Cringe, O Banner-deck’d exurb jingo-huts, at the withering Looking Down Upon, exacted with bone-dry scorn by a professional thinkerator.
But when you read the original column, you get the feeling James went too easy on him.
Stein is "in a tizzy" because a Realtor has -- sit down for this -- put a small American Flag on his lawn. The subhead asks "When a realtor sticks the Stars and Stripes in your front yard, do you trash it or stash it?"
So the reason I didn't want to put a flag outside wasn't because I disapprove of our international policies. It was because I didn't want to associate myself with the other people who put them up, and with their unquestioning, tribal, us-versus-them, arrogant mentality. Though I love being American, I don't want to proclaim it as the sole basis of my identity.Flying it proudly is not an option for Joel Stein. Eek. He's in a tizzy. poor chap.
June 18, 2006
I thought Sen. Frist bothered me
I cannot get this out of my mind.
James Waterton at Samizdata posts on the Weirdest father-daughter relationship ever. Being an Aussie, he has possibly never been to Arkansas, but the post refers to a serial Kos commenter by the handle of CheChe (I do not make this stuff up!).
CheChe takes the Kos Cause of Disapprobation for the day and puts it, MadLibs style, into the following tender parental anecdote:
I don't think I've ever seen such a look of misery and dejection on the face of my daughter as I just did a moment ago.I sat down with her on the sofa and (as calmly as I could) tried to explain to her why the Senate Republicans want to drain the treasury in order to give every American a $100 check. I tried to keep my voice steady, but it became increasingly difficult - the rage and feelings of helplessness were just too much. I think my daughter could tell something was wrong. I found myself at such a loss for words - nothing made any sense; nothing makes sense anymore. I finally had to admit, "Honey, I just don't know - I don't know what's going on in this country anymore..."
When I finished her lower lip started to tremble and her eyes began to fill with tears, "Daddy" she said, "why are the Republicans doing this to the country?" Well, that was it for me: I finally fell apart. She just fell into my arms and we both began sobbing for several minutes.
Always the daughter, always a new apogee in misery and dejection:
I don't think I've ever seen such a look of misery and dejection on the face of my daughter as I just did a moment ago. She just couldn't understand why the President would be spying on everyone. "Even my Grandma?" she asked pitifully. [...] When I finished her lower lip started to tremble and her eyes began to fill with tears, "Daddy" she said, "why are the Republicans doing this to the country?" Well, that was it for me: I finally fell apart. She just fell into my arms and we both began sobbing for several minutes.
Poor kid!
I don't think I've ever seen such a look of misery and dejection on the face of my daughter as I just did a moment ago. She just couldn't understand why the President would be going to Iraq when so many things are wrong in this country. "Doesn’t Mr. Bush care about us anymore?" she asked pitifully.
Reading this post, I don't think my wife has ever seen such a look of misery and dejection as...
May 31, 2006
Philosophy of the Nuge
ln an interview, Ted Nugent made some funny comments. (Warning! Coarse language!!)
I confess to a grudging respect for the system by which he governs his land, though I’m not sure I’d like to see his reign extended to the state of Michigan.“What do these deer think when they see you coming?” I ask him. “Here comes the nice guy who puts out our dinner? Or, there’s the man that shot my brother?”
“I don’t think they’re capable of either of those thoughts, you Limey assh*le. They’re only interested in three things: the best place to eat, having sex and how quickly they can run away. Much like the French.”
“You wrote a song called ‘Dog Eat Dog’. You see the world like that. But we’re not dogs - that’s the trouble.”
“Remember the movie Old Yeller? Everybody loved him. He brought us our slippers. We gave him cookies. But when Old Yeller gets rabies, you shoot him in the f*cking head. It’s that simple.”
HT: LGF
April 10, 2006
The State of the Left
Jonah Goldberg at NRO thinks that the riots in France are telling for what they're rioting about: "These rabid rebels smashing their way through people and property alike, shouting revolutionary slogans and playing Robespierre in a FCUK hoodie are demanding . . . continued job security with paid vacations. Gone are the days of tearing down the system. Now is the time to burn a car for better dental benefits."
In typical Jonah fashion, he is funny with an underlying message. The Republicans may have atrophied as a governing power in the previous ten years (cf. ThreeSources blog), but the left always seems to be fighting to not tamper with Social Security (1935) or not change the Great Society (1965). Goldberg points out that it's now the left who have stolen his old boss's mantra and are "standing athwart history yelling stop!"
The smartest and most passionate thinkers of American liberalism are more actuary than revolutionary. Scan the pages of The New Republic or The American Prospect and you will learn that the sunny uplands of history can be reached not by sticking it to the man but by expanding the earned income tax credit and jiggling around some obscure provision of Medicare Part B. They're the rebels with a clause.
I suppose they have big ideas over at "The Nation." But the mainstream left and Democratic party and the left-of0center think tanks seem a little thin on the ideas side.
The rest of this article is worthy of discussion as well. He discusses a new book from Charles Murray called "In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State." He's going to replace welfare with a direct payment to every American. I'm gonna have to think about that one, but the point is that an idea is out there.
UPDATE: The statist left wins in France: WSJ:
PARIS – French President Jacques Chirac scrapped a controversial labor-contract law aimed at boosting youth employment, in a major about-face following weeks of strikes and mass protests by students and workers.
March 31, 2006
Faster Please.
How about this idea from Ronald Aronson at the Nation?
The Left Needs More Socialism
- It's time to break a taboo and place the word "socialism" across the top of the page in a major American progressive magazine. Time for the left to stop repressing the side of ourselves that the right finds most objectionable. Until we thumb our noses at the Democratic pols who have been calling the shots and reassert the very ideas they say are unthinkable, we will keep stumbling around in the dark corners of American politics, wondering how we lost our souls--and how to find them again.
I can hear tongues clucking the conventional wisdom that the "S" word is the kiss of death for any American political initiative. Since the collapse of Communism, hasn't "socialism"--even the democratic kind--reeked of everything obsolete and discredited? Isn't it sheer absurdity to ask today's mainstream to pay attention to this nineteenth-century idea? Didn't Tony Blair reshape "New Labour" into a force capable of winning an unprecedented string of victories in Britain only by first defeating socialism and socialists in his party? And for a generation haven't we on the American left declared socialist ideology irrelevant time and again in the process of shaping our feminist, antiwar, progay, antiracist, multicultural, ecological and community-oriented identities?
Doggies! I don't want to step on anybody's "feminist, antiwar, progay, antiracist, multicultural, ecological and community-oriented identit[y]," but let me offer a positive reflection.
One of my favorite articles in many moons is Michael Strong's call for divorce of leftism from liberalism (See my D-I-V-O-R-C-E post at http://www.threesources.com/archives/002456.html)
How about a realignment? Let the Socialists all get together and make their best pitch for collectivism -- I'll take that argument any day of the week. Then let a few responsible "liberals" abandon leftism and socialism to join me in the fight for classical liberalism.
March 30, 2006
Howdy!
Hello Comrades! Ooops! Hello fellow bloggers. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Trip Segars. I was invited to participate by JK with whom I've worked and played hockey with in the past. JohnGalt is another ex-Mambo King (our hockey team). I'm exposing my true identity as insurance - if I am ever so foolish as to run for office, I'm hoping that I will be confronted with my posts here and forced to withdraw from the Political Correctness Czar contest. I'm forty-one, have a six year old son, and am divorced but getting married in June. I work as a software developer.
My moniker is LatteSipper because latte-sipping, Volvo-driving, sushi-eating liberal takes too long to type. I'm a liberal (if you haven't figured it out yet) and wonder why the richest nation in the world chooses a military budget that dwarfs that of the rest of the world yet trails much of the developed world in areas such as poverty and infant mortality. I do believe that government can be used as a tool to improve the general quality of life and standard of living, but agree with Silence Dogood that many of our social programs are inefficient or don't produce results at all. The same could be said of our military expenditures, agriculture subsidies, tax loopholes; the list goes on and on. I do not, however, believe that simply shrinking the government is the answer. I think a new approach is called for, one that involves evaluation of what our collective, national priorities are and evaluating which investments, if any, move us towards our goals. It would require wiping the slate clean and starting anew, with no guarantees for any special interest groups, neither welfare mothers, retirees, farmers, CEOs, defense contractors or our elected representatives. Perhaps I am flailing at windmills, but I am not yet so pessimistic or cynical to believe that things can't change for the better.
I've come here on JK's recommendation looking for good discussion and hoping to challenge my beliefs and broaden my understanding ... and to find out if Dick Cheney really is a baby-eating cyborg. Cheers!
Nope. Can't wait. The "richest nation in the world" is the richest precisely because we have allowed individuals to prosper unimpeded for most of our history.
There is a clear, Constitutional purview to defend ourselves collectively. Military spending, by free people with votes to choose the level of support for a civilian-headed military is a very good thing. Protecting our way of life is a very good thing.
These nations we trail in your stats all seem to be full of people trying everything to get here -- nothing is more popular than American poverty. The infant mortality stat is the most specious and bogus argument since boasts of Castro’s free health care. Our rate is higher because we attempt to save sub-two pound infants who are months premature as a standard practice. Those who exceed us all inflate their numbers by allowing more babies to die. If you don't try to save it, it doesn't go against your average. I have never once struck out in a major league baseball game. Ever.
The trouble with your government spending for good is that government has no money. They spend our money and, with microscopic exceptions, we can always spend it better.
I suddenly feel less outnumbered, a great big welcome from me LatteSipper!
Posted by: Silence Dogood at March 30, 2006 6:31 PMI knew the hospitality wouldn't last for long! ;) I agree with you and your smaller government brethren, defending our nation and way of life is a legitimate use of our money. My issue is with a defense budget that's more tuned to exerting our will, i.e. getting our way any where on the globe than it is in defending our country. My bad on poverty and infant mortality - I forgot that other countries lie about those things and we don't.
Posted by: LatteSipper at March 30, 2006 6:43 PMHow about LSVDSEL instead? Seriously though, I look forward to many opportunities to tell you just how and why you're wrong that I always had to pass up because I couldn't afford to spend an entire day in debate.
I'll lay off the criticism of your misty eyed idealism for now, but one bit of advice seems apropos in response to your sarcastic "I forgot that other countries lie about those things and we don't" comment. If you never acknowledge when the other guy has made a point he'll just judge you a bore and quit trying to engage you. Here's where that clean slate thing comes in! (Others may find this advice amusing coming from me but hey, I've done it! At least once or twice!)
Congratulations on the pending nuptials. The second time was the charm for me, as I hope it is for you.
Posted by: johngalt at March 31, 2006 12:39 AMI was gonna suggest "Volvo." We're all coffee fanatics around here I don't about others but I'm a big sushi fan. But yes, I think you're the only one who'd be caught dead in a Volvo!
Posted by: jk at March 31, 2006 9:30 AMAs long as you don't like Uni....
Posted by: AlexC at March 31, 2006 12:28 PMFebruary 27, 2006
Bereft of Ideas
I'm gonna beat up on a good friend who is a committed liberal. He keeps me on his e-mail list, which has some intelligent commentary and interesting articles from time to time.
Today, it was a poem called "Make the pie higher" assembled entirely from supposed W malapropisms (click "Continue..." if you really want to read it).
It struck me that "his side" has had several important victories this week, He could have sent me a link to the Fukuyama piece in the NYTimes, he could have sent me a link to Bill Buckley's article which claims the war is lost, he could have pointed to the Dubai port contretemps to highlight GOP rifts and signal what FOXNews commentators called "creeping lame-duckism," et cetera, et cetera...
Instead they have made the discovery -- five years into his presidency -- that the President is not a skilled orator, and ask the question whether this might indicate a lack of intelligence.
Just one guy who is not a moonbat but runs with them from time to time. But I think it shows the lack of seriousness from their camp. Even when the president is in real political difficulties, they come out blasting with 3rd-grade humor.
MAKE THE PIE HIGHER
I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
And potential mental losses.
Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet
Become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being
And the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope,
Where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!
Pass this on.
Help cure mad cowboy disease in the next election!
February 26, 2006
Self-Immolation
Everytime I read DailyKos, I have to ask myself why I do it.
- This is an interesting take on the world situation.
- NEW YORK - The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Saturday that the world body is hobbled "by bad management, by sex and corruption" and a lack of confidence in its ability to carry out missions....
"We find an organization that is deeply troubled by bad management, by sex and corruption and by a growing lack of confidence in its ability to carry out missions that are given to them," Bolton told an audience at a Columbia Law School symposium held by the Federalist Society, a conservative law organization.
What is the bizarre preoccupation these guys have with sex? Really? Sex is one of the UN's primary problems? I'd think it might have something to do with the fact that the world's greatest power refuses to participate in a meaningful way in any international effort or to recognize international law or the Geneva Conventions or to sign onto critical international treaties. But maybe that's just me.
Well, I cant hold being completely uninformed against someone. Hint: It's the molestations of boys and girls in Africa by blue helmeted men. ABCNews
But then it gets worse.
- In the comments, TPaine suggests that Bolton was referring to sex crimes by U.N. personnel in the Congo. If this is what Bolton was talking about, the story is even worse. Equating these heinous crimes with bureaucratic mismanagement is dismissive and offensive. What's more, rape isn't sex. It's violent crime.
Ok. so it's corrected, yet that makes it worse?
Worse because why exactly?
Bolton is not equating them, he's listing them.
Oy.
February 10, 2006
Getting to the bottom of that Plame thing..
Yawn. I really cannot take any more of the Fitzgerald case. But it has heated up again as Fitzgerald tries to get a frightened Libby to rat on superiors. Yahoo/AP thinks it might be working.
I cannot dive back into the muck today, but I did want to share some indignation from the Senior Senator of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:
"These charges, if true, represent a new low in the already sordid case of partisan interests being placed above national security," Kennedy said. "The vice president's vindictiveness in defending the misguided war in Iraq is obvious. If he used classified information to defend it, he should be prepared to take full responsibility."
I hope you all read that aloud in your best Ted Kennedy voice.
Make sure you slur your voice, and soften the "r"
"These chaaaages, if true.... (HIC)....."
Posted by: AlexC at February 10, 2006 12:00 PMSave those unused R's, you'll need them to say idear!
Posted by: jk at February 10, 2006 12:12 PMTexas stole them.
Example...
"Yall's shirt is dirty! Put it in the warsh!"
February 6, 2006
Freegans
Kojinshugi has a link to the new craze all the cool kids will pursue this year: Freeganism, or getting your free vegan food out of the dumpster so you don't support any of those evil corporations. Sam is rather hard on the movement, daring to point out that this only works because they are living in a rich society with surplus food, else they would have to "grow their own garbage." He confronts his new countrymen who claim that there is hunger in Canada and does a nice riff on what these people say they want:
We've already tried a system where everyone gets a 'fair' share of the pie. It's called communism, and it doesn't work for the blindingly obvious reason that if given the choice between $1000 a month for mountain-climbing or yodeling which takes 0 years of education, and $1000 a month for 12 years of medical training preceding the grueling and high-responsibility profession of trauma surgeon, most everyone will pick the former, and we end up with a society full of yodeling paraplegics.
Peter Boyles (whose name is not supposed to be uttered on these pages) interviewed a Freegan on his radio show this morning. The guy lives "at home" with "his family," which we found meant his grandparents and his dad. For breakfast he had "not much in the way of breakfast, just a cup of tea." The tea came from a supermarket dumpster - Christmas seasonal tea, you see. They had to pitch it when the calendar flipped over. And the hot water came, "straight from the tap." Riiight. Piping hot, no "discarded electricity" or "out of date natural gas" was required to bring the "hey, look at this shit that just comes out of this pipe for free!" water to the required temperature for brewing.
Hell, why doesn't he just plug grandpa's Prius into the perpetual motion machine some dumbass threw in the trash and drive around the country trying to find out just where in the hell his mother and sisters went, anyway?
Freddie frackin' freeloader Freegan needs some quality time in "hard America."
Posted by: johngalt at February 7, 2006 11:21 PM1) Heh! I nominate this for best ThreeSources comment ever.
2) No, Voldemort Boyles can be named, I was just name-dropping.
3) I was in a band with a guy who loved "tap water coffee:" instant out of the "H." Yum.
January 24, 2006
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.
January 4, 2006
Call Jesse Jackson!
I cannot imagine how people can equate requiring a photo ID for voting with poll-tax-style disenfranchisement. A vote stolen by fraud is as much of a theft as stopping another from voting. You need an ID to board a plane or buy beer.
Well, much as I have celebrated TNR as a responsible voice from the other side, today's web article by John B. Judis is insane. Ballot Blocks: The Republican Bid to Suppress Minority Turnout.
Republicans have been working hard to nullify Democratic support from blacks and Hispanics. But instead of promoting programs that might appeal to these voters, they are trying to pass legislation that, while ostensibly aimed at reducing voting fraud, is in fact intended to depress turnout among minorities.Over the last 14 months, Republicans have backed bills and initiatives in Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Indiana, Wisconsin, South Dakota, and Ohio that would require voters to present special kinds of identification at polling places or in order to register. These sorts of requirements inordinately affect black and Hispanic (and in South Dakota, Native American) voters who are less likely than whites to have government-issue photo IDs. And the Bush administration isn't just looking the other way as these efforts unfold. It's actively aiding and abetting them.
Imagine! The executive branch actively trying to reduce voter fraud!
All the diatribes are in there: no DMV offices in Atlanta, a $20 fee, percent of drivers' licenses by ethnicity.
Voter fraud is a huge problem in this country and the race card is played against any effort to fix it. Maybe we should just go to purple fingers...
In Pa, a card for the purposes of voting would be free, yet they complain. http://youngphillypolitics.com/node/489
The bill passed both the house and senate and awaits the Dem governor's veto.
Posted by: AlexC at January 4, 2006 7:30 PMDecember 21, 2005
Not in MY name!
A couple years ago, I signed a "Not In My Name" petition under the name "Hadda V Shininoz" (as in Rudolph...)
Taranto put me up to it. It was juvenile. I'm not proud. But it did get me on the email list. I don't browse MoveOn.org or read Kos or read The Nation, but my semi-monthly emails from "Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience" keep my ties to the moonbat community alive. I know you can see all of this stuff you want on the net, but I thought I would share my mail today.
You're welcome!
They are raising $50,000 for a war crimes trial, because "These Commission hearings will make a profound difference on today’s political terrain, where all too often Bush’s actions are viewed as blunders, not crimes, and the full scope of his administration’s criminality is obscured. Please contribute immediately and contact your friends to contribute. Mail checks made out to “Not In Our Name” to..."
Dear friends and signers of the Not In Our Name statements of conscience,Each passing day brings new charges of high crimes committed by the Bush administration and highlights the timeliness and importance of the Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity by the Bush Administration (www.bushcommission.org). They underscore the urgency for our concluding session on January 20-22 at The Riverside Church and Columbia University Law School in New York which can profoundly recast the terms of debate about Bush and his administration throughout society.
Are their actions “mistakes” born of “faulty intelligence” and legitimate responses to real threats -- or are they crimes against humanity consciously committed?
There is a moral imperative to make this determination and this cannot happen without $50,000 to assemble and present the witnesses (including Iraqis) and documentary evidence that will make the case.
In the face of daily exposures of grave crimes -- from torture, rendition and illegal detentions; to escalating bombings, the use of white phosphorous, the destruction of whole cities, and ongoing torture in Iraq; to the destruction and abandonment of New Orleans; and now to illegal spying in the U.S. -- the Bush response has been more lies, more threats, and more arrogant declarations that it will continue to wage war, torture, and spy as it sees fit. Meanwhile, no effective opposition has been mounted to these intolerable outrages through official or government channels.
This extreme situation demands that we work -- and donate! -- so the Commission can fully realize it’s aim to compel a national debate on whether the administration of George W. Bush actually is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The basic budget for this final session is $50,000, not counting the video and printing of the reports. So we need your immediate help. We are not bashful about asking for money, because we know, as you also know, that money is what it takes to make a serious impact in society.
To see the visual impact of the first session of the Commission’s hearings, go to www.deepdishtv.org/bushcommission for a 12 min video. This video is also available in DVD format as a fundraiser for the Commission for $25.
These Commission hearings will make a profound difference on today’s political terrain, where all too often Bush’s actions are viewed as blunders, not crimes, and the full scope of his administration’s criminality is obscured. Please contribute immediately and contact your friends to contribute. Mail checks made out to “Not In Our Name” to Not In Out Name, 305 West Broadway, #199, New York, NY 10013. Or contribute on line right now at www.nion.us/NSOC/sign.htm.
November 7, 2005
Good Clean Fun
Some folks have differing concepts of "fun." A friend suggests this Naomi Wolf column in The Guardian saying that "[he] 'd forgotten how much fun it is to read left wing wacko stuff."
On planet Naomi, Al Gore looks really good in earth tomes and the Washington Press Corps has been on its knees to W, and, and, well just dig it:
We Americans are like recovering addicts after a four-year benderIn the US comic strip, Peanuts, there is a little boy who is always followed by a cloud of dust. Wherever he goes, his cloud follows him. George Bush can't shake his personal cloud. The until recently eerily untouchable president has now lost his mojo. The man to whom the entire US press corps has been on its knees for four years is finally in the doghouse.
It is almost a cartoon of karma. First, hurricane Katrina hit - and the sight of black and brown bodies floating in what had been the streets of a US city, of babies crying for water, of old people shrouded in their wheelchairs seemed to rip right through the collective fantasy of US goodness and infallibility constructed by Dick Cheney and his cabal and hyped by a crotch-strapped Bush in a flightsuit.
Not reading The Guardian enough, I had not noticed how bad things had gotten around here, but Ms. Wolf wouldn't lie, would she?
They could not have had more fortunate timing. During an era when US prestige abroad had already been declining, when US schools were turning out subliterates, when the US economy was being crippled by competition from harder-working south-east Asians and Chinese, Americans - and especially American men - were feeling the sinking self-regard characteristic of those losing prestige in once-great empires in decline.Bush, Cheney and Rove changed all that with their myth making post-9/11. Suddenly those feminists were no longer so threatening: we still needed tough men in firefighter suits to protect the less powerful. Suddenly American men could feel potent at the sight of a statue of a tyrant toppling in a public square, could vicariously inhale the discourse about "liberating the Middle East" and "spreading democracy", could put a yellow "Support the Troops" sticker on their SUVs and forget the spiking mortgage, the downsizing of good-paying white-collar jobs, the increasing obstreperousness of their women.
'course, I feel pretty potent in my crotch-strapped flight suit with my FDNY T-shirt on, even as I watch the bodies wash up the street -- but fear not, Wolf thinks that a rekindled democracy will save us just like Alabama in the 60s:
I don't see Cheney being shamed into dropping his Halliburton cronies now carving up Iraq. But I do see a renewed citizen interest in wind power, in driving petrol-electric hybrid cars, in reading about the short lives of the war dead - who, only six months ago, were spirited home away from the cameras in their body bags, when protest was considered unseemly. Today on the AOL homepage there is a headline about Bush being jeered by a foreign leader: that story would never have made it out of the land of blogs six months ago.
[...]
Bush will never recover his swagger in our eyes: he was our dealer. What remains to be seen is whether we will turn again to the next good drug to come along, with the next charismatic pusher - or whether Katrina's real legacy will lead us to do the hard work of reclaiming a civil society rooted in reality. My bet is on the latter.
And they say there's no optimism on the left...
"Obstreperousness?" My "woman" isn't obstreperous. Is yours?
Oh, she must mean this from http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/parody.guest.html
"We're Fierce! We're Feminists! And We're in Your Face!"
(Sorry, I can't link to the audio bite since it's "members only" and I aren't one.)
Posted by: johngalt at November 8, 2005 2:33 PMObstreperous: if this were a Buffy episode, I would stare at Ms. Wolf and say "project much?"
Posted by: jk at November 8, 2005 3:23 PMOctober 28, 2005
Scooter Goin' Down?
Tucker Carlson has opened about every show this week by breathlessly intoning a new development in l’Affaire Plame courtesy of the NYTimes. Being on live at 11 gives him a head start that is interesting, he can be first to discuss "tomorrow's" Times.
Oddly enough, none of these leaks (on a leak investigation) have seemed to be real stories with any legs.
Last night's was that Scooter Libby was to be indicted for perjury but not for outing Valerie Plame. The headline I see today is the superior "Rove Not Expected to be Indicted Today."
So, two years and $22 million (starting to sound like a 90's Democrat) and Fitzgerald may drop the hammer on a Vice President's Chief-of-staff -- not for outing a CIA operative -- but for lying about it.
I'm not the only one who thinks this is sad, Jason at G e n e r a t i o n W h y ? agrees.
Just one problem... the corruption conspiracy never existed. And the indictment that's expected today will show that... or rather the lack of any indictment for revealing an undercover agent's identity will show it. Sure, the Left is likely to cheer gleefully when an indictment comes down today against Scooter Libby, but the absence of an indictment for actually outing an undercover agent will reveal that this was never a story to begin with.
We still, of course, are punditing on punditry of speculation of anonymous leaks. Carlson thinks there has to be some hidden bomb in there somewhere, that this cannot be all there is.
Can it?
Hat-tip: Insty
The more interesting question to me is if there are no indictments did we waste $22 million? I am especially looking forward to the pundits views on this. Tempting as it is to say yes, you are in effect saying that something should be found. The sticky wicket here is that I am sure Fitzgerald (and others before him) felt pressure to come up with something, something for the $22 million. This begs the question of whether just appointing a special prosecutor pre-judges the case really both against the subjects and the prosecutor themselves. If a failure to bring an indictment is a failure of the investigation and of the special prosecutor themselves then you have biased the outcome from the start.
Posted by: Silence Dogood at October 28, 2005 1:03 PMThe special prosecutor is a bad idea but certainly tempting to political opponents.
Judge Starr has been maligned (rightly i some instances) but his tenure brought down a sitting Governor and resulted in many indictments. Fitzgerald seems to be coming up short.
Silence makes a very good point: Does the mere appointment of a special prosecutor NECESSITATE an indictment of some sort?
Senator Schmucky Chumer of NY said on O'Reilly last night that "the only explanation" for why Libby would lie about something that wasn't a crime is that there really was a crime (a conspiracy to damage Plame and Wilson) and he's thrown himself on his sword to protect higher ups.
I'll posit another possible explanation for what, by all accounts, seems a stupid mistake on Scooter's part. Being beltway insiders, the administration realized the axiom that Silence just enlightened us about from the very beginning, and Scooter volunteered to be the fall guy.
It's at least as plausable as Chumer's "there really was a crime" hypothesis.
Posted by: johngalt at October 29, 2005 10:44 AMJust this once, jg, have a little pity on the Senior Senator from New York. Not only is he overshadowed every day by the dadgummed JUNIOR Senator form New York, but he is also feeling the disappointment not unlike “a dagger in his heart.”
The anti-W camp pinned their hopes on the Fitzgerald star and all they get is Scooter. Poor Senator Schumer…
October 10, 2005
Electric Guitars
I signed up for a Dave Barry email from the Miami Herald, like I don't get enough email.
But I do like Dave Barry, and I think that all the ThreeSources cats would dig today's "classic" rerun of a 1998 column: Guys and electric guitars go together
At some point or another, almost every guy wants an electric guitar. It would not surprise me to learn that, late at night, in the Vatican, the pope picks one up and plays ''Hang On, Sloopy.'' Electric guitars exert a strong appeal for guys, because they combine two critical elements:1. A guitar.
2. Electricity.Taken separately, these elements have little intrinsic value. But combined, they have an almost magical effect: They enable a mediocre guitar player, or even a bad guitar player, to play WAY louder.
Geopolitics, Brother Dave tells us, is just like a band:
As a member of that band, my artistic dream was essentially the same dream that inspired legendary musicians such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and The Dave Clark Five: The dream of getting a bigger amplifier. This was important because of the musical dynamics of a rock band, which are very similar to the political dynamics of the Asian subcontinent. Let's say that India is the drummer, and Pakistan is the lead guitar player. There is always tension between these two instruments, because they both want to be the loudest.Let's say that, in this band, they start out roughly equal, but then, one day, India goes out and gets larger drumsticks. Pakistan is naturally threatened and responds by buying a more-powerful amplifier. Then India, seeking to regain superiority, buys even LARGER drumsticks, and maybe a cowbell. At this point, the bass player (China) feels it has no choice but to escalate, and pretty soon the band is so loud that merely by tuning up it can kill whales swimming thousands of miles away. (In a selfless effort to avoid this kind of tragedy, [our band] almost never tuned up.)
Good stuff.
August 31, 2005
Kill This Meme Early
I see this getting out of hand. Like President GHW Bush's amazement seeing the supermarket scanner, it will soon be accepted as fact that hurricane Katrina is the result of "global warming." It is already being promoted as such by the Independant, Boston Globe and some others.
Jim Glassman makes a trenchant case for nipping this in the bud, but it ain't gonna be easy.
My daughter, her husband and their little baby managed to get out of the city ahead of the flood on Sunday, driving 14 hours into Texas with the few belongings they could stuff into their car. They have no idea what has become of their house and their possessions, not to mention their friends, their pets, their jobs, their way of life.
Tragedies happen, and my daughter and her family are happy just to be alive. Their losses and those of hundreds of thousands of other innocents deserve mourning, prayer and respect.
That is why the response of environmental extremists fills me with what only can be called disgust. They have decided to exploit the death and devastation to win support for the failed Kyoto Protocol, which requires massive cutbacks in energy use to reduce, by a few tenths of a degree, surface warming projected 100 years from now.
Katrina has nothing to do with global warming. Nothing. It has everything to do with the immense forces of nature that have been unleashed many, many times before and the inability of humans, even the most brilliant engineers, to tame these forces.
Giant hurricanes are rare, but they are not new. And they are not increasing. To the contrary. Just go to the website of the National Hurricane Center and check out a table that lists hurricanes by category and decade. The peak for major hurricanes (categories 3,4,5) came in the decades of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, when such storms averaged 9 per year. In the 1960s, there were 6 such storms; in the 1970s, 4; in the 1980s, 5; in the 1990s, 5; and for 2001-04, there were 3. Category 4 and 5 storms were also more prevalent in the past than they are now. As for Category 5 storms, there have been only three since the 1850s: in the decades of the 1930s, 1960s and 1990s.
Kudos to the New York Times (I love typing that phrase!) for this bit of honest reporting:
"Because hurricanes form over warm ocean water, it is easy to assume that the recent rise in their number and ferocity is because of global warming. But that is not the case, scientists say. Instead, the severity of hurricane seasons changes with cycles of temperatures of several decades in the Atlantic Ocean. The recent onslaught 'is very much natural,' said William M. Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who issues forecasts for the hurricane season.'"
'Course, the NYTimes is just another corporate organ, hopelessly in the pocket of the Bush Administration -- of course they'd say that.
UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg writes, in The Corner:
I've decided that every nice, cool, breezy day which happens to come along until the day I die, I'm going to credit global warming. Absent other data, it makes exactly as much sense to blame weather we don't like on global warming as it does to credit global warming for the weather we do like."What a lovely day, thank goodness for fossil fuels!"
Good post, but I'll take issue with the line, "the inability of humans, even the most brilliant engineers, to tame these forces."
If this refers to engineers not being "brilliant" enough to create massive levees that are fully financed by bake sales, then I'd agree. The reason the Big Easy flooded is that the single line of levees that protect the city from hurricanes was designed to withstand a category 3 hurricane, but no more. Why on earth would this be, given that we could have built it stronger? For the same reason building codes require 110 mph wind resistance, but not 120. The line has to be drawn somewhere.
Now in the case of hurricanes and a major American city, one might make the case that the potential loss is so great that the levee should be designed for the strongest hurricane ever known. And that back-up levees be built as was done in Holland. And that federal subsidization of these projects is warranted, given that the savings to federally subsidized flood insurance and FEMA obligations would offset it.
But when the decision was made to build them, in 1927 so far as I can tell, America was far less wealthy. Judging from recent history of federal involvement with natural disasters, I suspect that New Orleans is about to get that new, triple-layer category 5 levee system.
Posted by: johngalt at August 31, 2005 9:38 PMAs well it should. If they are going to rebuild they should do it right. I also have to wonder about the local building codes when viewing the photos of piles of sticks where houses used to be. If they were 1930's era houses that would be one thing, but these are new communities, golf course communities, upper middle class communities, etc. Hopefully local building codes will change as they did in Florida a few years ago.
Ok, now stick the Liberal label on me while I berate big business for a moment. I have to wonder about the large nationwide home builders who build the same house all across the country. I realize the cost benefit from this, but somewhere there has to be allowance for local conditions. If they led the way on this they might have fewer headaches with building codes in the future. Just as you don't build masonry in earthquake areas or wood roof homes in fire areas, construction in hurricane prone areas should have their own set of requirements. I think I am with johngalt on this engineering wise, at some point it does become cost prohibitive to design structures for every conceivable disaster, but I do believe we have the knowledge and capability to do better. Currently the only differences between a $100,000 house and a $1,000,000 house are the countertops and the plating on the faucets. Now before JK gets on my case about free markets and the demands of consumers consider what the options really are, take a mass produced house or build a custom one. Custom builders don't exist much in the sub million range and even then they don't really offer anything different than the mass producers other than custom floor plans. A few years back I was looking into buying a lot and building a house. I wanted to use some modern components like structural insulated panels. Reviews and estimates consistently put the construction cost at about 15% higher than tradition stick building. As I found out though, that was if you could find a builder who had worked with these panels or was willing to start.
Posted by: Silence Dogood at September 1, 2005 3:09 PMWe have strayed a little fron Global Warming, gents, but I'm in.
I guess I will take the big-biz side of mationwide home builders up to a point (as Evelyn Waugh would say).
On the one hand, the one-sixe-fits-all structures have allowed millions of Americans to own their own home, which I see as an unalloyed good.
The other side just needs a little Virginia-Postrelizing. Consumers are demanding different styles in these homes, and it would be a short step to incorporating modern materials and regional weather protections in the final house.
On the levees, it seems obvious that state of teh art structures will be built and that no more hurricanes will ever go by there...
Posted by: jk at September 2, 2005 3:29 PMAugust 28, 2005
Crawford Media Circus
Al Sharpton has arrived in Crawford, and is praying with Cindy Sheehan
The Crawford circus may be over. The hurricane will absorb media focus until labor day. Then it's back to Washington and a more substantive news cycle.
Intersting to see how the Sheehan and antiwar folks will do back in Washington. It will be tough to compete for air time and will be tougher to hide the far-left A.N.S.W.E.R. types.
Posted by: jk at August 29, 2005 10:53 AMOperation Yellow Elephant
Operation Yellow Elephant a blog who main goal seems to be to harrass College and Young Republicans into enlisting has targeted the Montgomery County YRs, an organization to which I belong.
They note on their website, "It's their war. Why aren't they fighting it?" They encourage readers to send emails to the young (lowercase Y) Republicans.
Some choice quotes...
- First up, Sarah Holcome [sic], a real looker who works with Senator Rick Santorum (R-Canine) in the Philadelphia office. She's the Chairman, and as such probably has more balls than the rest of the lot.
And...
- And then there's Avedis Boornazian, who looks far too much like an ARAB (gasp!) to be in this group. OK, maybe an Armenian. Likely he is a good Christian, don't you think? How else could he rise to the leadership position of Treasurer?
Must be some of that famous liberal compassion on display there.
Of note, the former Secretary of the MontcoYRs is "former" because he's currently a JAG, serving in Iraq. The previous Chairman was in 1991's Desert Storm.
As to the tired "chicken hawk" argument. I think it's the last refuge of those that have no other argument.
Potential answers to this group:
"You've never been in Saddam's torture chambers! What give you the right to deny their liberation?"
"You're not the President, what gives you the right to question what he does?"
"You want to send someone else out to fight crime? How about you go be a cop!"
"Don't like oil prices? Go drill for your own!"
"Don't like the current foreign policy? Go run for office! Or get you guy elected!"
Basically anything in the form "You want someone to do X for you, go do X yourself!" will work.
Yawn. Is their campaign harrassment? Nah. It's free speech, and their time, I suppose. It's more indicative of their desperation than anything else.
Since they are targetting those who may have political aspirations, or those who are politically involved do they really want more politicians with military service? Maybe they want ONLY politicians with military service? The list of politicians who have led Americans to war is long, and contains both Democrats and Republicans, some of them civilians. Surely they're not criticizing them as well.
I wonder if they're also going to target Young Democrat groups in states whose Senators and Reps voted for the Iraq war. New York comes to mind.
I'll quote NRO's Rich Lowry.
- The chicken-hawk argument is nakedly partisan. During the Kosovo war waged by Bill Clinton and supported by Democrats in 1999, a cry didn’t go up from the Left that no one could support the war unless they were willing to strap themselves into B-2 bombers for the 33-hour ride from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to Belgrade and back to degrade Serbian infrastructure.
And to answer you... No. I haven't served. And you're not a high school teacher, so you can't comment on the quality of algebra education. Go be a teacher!
That's how mature it is, thanks for playing.
Where can we sign up to get a liberal blog writing hateful things about us? That'd be fun: "J.K. is extremely attractive but believes in a Neanderthal economics that is considered too right wing to be taught at Bob Jones U..."
Posted by: jk at August 30, 2005 9:07 PMAugust 25, 2005
Okay, then, in MY name
I am on the Not In Our Name mailing list. A couple of years ago, James Taranto pointed out that people were signing their petitions with silly names, so I signed as Hadda V. Shinynoz (it was close to Christmas as I recall).
I have enjoyed the emails. They are infrequent, and remind me with whom we are dealing out there. They're waaaay left, but not much further out than some of my family and friends.
Today's features calls to support Mrs. Sheehan, buying an ad in the Waco Tribune-Herald, Upcoming events, call to volunteer in the Statement of Conscience National Office...and this item:
2. Responses to the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes
Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration.Work is progressing on the Commission. Our goal is to continue to build
on the impact of the Not In Our Name statements and the World Tribunal
on Iraq by holding a court of inquiry that will both frame and fuel a
discussion that is urgently needed in this country: Is the
administration of George W. Bush guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity?Check for updates on our web site - there's a special section for the
Commission http://www.nion.us/commission.htmSome responses we have received:
*****
8/19/05
I wholeheartedly support the public holding a public inquiry and public
trial. If the government stops representing us then we must represent
ourselves. Bush claims to act in our name. We have a right to say NO! I
hope the trial will be televised on C-Span!
PAH, Houghton, MI
*****
8/1705
Thank you so much for making it possible to voice my outrage at the
stupidity, ignorance, lies, intolerance and barbarism of the Bush regime.
Regime-change is necessary: in Washington! You're right, that he did
get the popular vote does not legitimate his acts. It does question the
validity of democracy in the US. Enclosed please find my contribution.
Sincerely, PH, Paris, France ( & LA, CA)
*****
8/18/05
Frankly, I think President Bush should be impeached for his constant
lying to the American people and for a war based on lies.
BW, Westport, CT
*****
8/18/05
Thank you for the excellent Statement of Conscience and for planning
the Commission of Inquiry. These provide a solid foundation for taking
action in these repressive times and re-energize us. Enclosed is a check
for $100.00. In solidarity, AG, Oakland, CA
Click "Continue Reading..." if you'd like to see the complete email
Subject: From the Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience
To:
From: "Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience"
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 14:34:10 -0500
E-Message from NION SOC: August 23, 2005
1. Support Cindy Sheehan! Dubya does not speak in our name! Donate to
the publication of the Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience in
Crawford, Texas.
2. Responses to the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes
Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration.
3. Upcoming events:
-- National Organizers Conference Sept 3-5 NYC World Can't Wait -
Drive out the Bush Regime! Mobilize for November 2nd.
-- Join the Not In Our Name Project on September 24 in Washington, DC
to End the War on Iraq. Check out the new Not In Our Name Project
merchandise annex
4. From the Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience National Office:
-- Volunteer to work in the Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience
National Office
-- New on the Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience web site
*********************
1. Support Cindy Sheehan! Dubya does not speak in our name! Donate to
the publication of the Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience in
Crawford
Cindy's Sheehan's face off with G. W. Bush at Crawford, Texas, has
become a lightning rod as millions around the country have organized
support for the mother whose son, a US soldier, was killed in Iraq in April
2004. Millions around the country have demonstrated their support.
Others have arrived at Crawford to join the encampment.
To join in the support of Cindy's stand, the Not In Our Name Statement
of Conscience will be published in the Waco Tribune-Herald (circulation
40,000) midweek. A half page ad costs just under $5000.00. Your
contribution can be made at: www.nion.us/NSOC/sign.htm or mail to: Not In Our
Name Statement of Conscience, 305 West Broadway, #199, NY, NY 10013.
Support Cindy:
-- Read a first hand report from Crawford Texas on the Drive out the
Bush Regime web site World Can't Wait and on our web site
http://www.nion.us
-- Visit www.meetwithcindy.org
-- Send emails of support to contact@gsfp.org
-- Write letters to the editor of your local paper
Cindy was also a participant in the Not in Our Name sponsored Military
Voices Against Endless War (http://www.notinourname.net/mv/) event
held Memorial Day weekend. The audio of her presentation, as well as a
back stage video interview, is available online at the link above.
2. Responses to the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes
Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration.
Work is progressing on the Commission. Our goal is to continue to build
on the impact of the Not In Our Name statements and the World Tribunal
on Iraq by holding a court of inquiry that will both frame and fuel a
discussion that is urgently needed in this country: Is the
administration of George W. Bush guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity?
Check for updates on our web site - there's a special section for the
Commission http://www.nion.us/commission.htm
Some responses we have received:
*****
8/19/05
I wholeheartedly support the public holding a public inquiry and public
trial. If the government stops representing us then we must represent
ourselves. Bush claims to act in our name. We have a right to say NO! I
hope the trial will be televised on C-Span!
PAH, Houghton, MI
*****
8/1705
Thank you so much for making it possible to voice my outrage at the
stupidity, ignorance, lies, intolerance and barbarism of the Bush regime.
Regime-change is necessary: in Washington! You're right, that he did
get the popular vote does not legitimate his acts. It does question the
validity of democracy in the US. Enclosed please find my contribution.
Sincerely, PH, Paris, France ( & LA, CA)
*****
8/18/05
Frankly, I think President Bush should be impeached for his constant
lying to the American people and for a war based on lies.
BW, Westport, CT
*****
8/18/05
Thank you for the excellent Statement of Conscience and for planning
the Commission of Inquiry. These provide a solid foundation for taking
action in these repressive times and re-energize us. Enclosed is a check
for $100.00. In solidarity, AG, Oakland, CA
3. Up coming events:
Below are some upcoming events. The Not In Our Name Statement of
Conscience informs its list of events and campaigns in the spirit of the
content of our statements.
-- National Organizers Conference Sept 3-5 NYC World Can't Wait -
Drive out the Bush Regime! Mobilize for November 2nd.
Where: The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, 208
W. 13th St. New York City, NY
Register: 347.693.3319 conference@worldcantwait.org,
More info: www.worldcantwait.org, $25-100 fee
Come be part of developing and organizing the mass outpouring needed to
Drive out the Bush Regime. Be part of putting together the
organization, plans, and structure needed to do this. Download the flyer at:
www.worldcantwait.org
Public Forum: Why & How to drive out the Bush Regime. Initiators of
the World Can't Wait call. Saturday September 3, 6pm 208 W. 13th Street,
NYC. For info: 347.963.3319
-- Join the Not In Our Name Project on September 24 in Washington, DC
to End the War on Iraq
Where: Washington, DC
On the East Coast: If you are in the NYC area, join the Not In Our Name
Project bus going down to DC. Call Not in Our Name NYC to reserve your
seats at 212-760-1722. Consider purchasing a ticket for someone who
cannot afford to pay. Tickets are only $35 each, $20 for students/low
income.
Check out the new Not In Our Name Project merchandise annex. Let people
know that we say: Not In Our Name.
http://www.notinourname.net/store/index.html
4. From the Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience National Office:
-- Make a difference in the world. Volunteer with the Not In
Our Name Statement of Conscience (NION SOC) national office. People have
written to us about how much it meant to see the statement published -
how it put words to their feelings as well as a sense of not being
alone. Help publish, distribute and otherwise make good the words of the
statement. You don't need to live in New York city to volunteer. Write:
janet@nion.us
-- Check out what's new on the Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience
web site. Additions to the issues page
(http://www.nion.us/NSOC/issues.htm) with new articles (including a
letter from Eve Ensler about the June 2005 World Tribunal on Iraq in
Istanbul), blogs, links
Not in Our Name Statement of Conscience
305 West Broadway #199, New York, NY 10013 info@nion.us
Donate at www.nion.us/NSOC/sign.htm
www.nion.us
Change Subscription:
http://ezinedirector.com/subscriber/member_profile/?skid=25608576
Cancel Subscription:
http://sub.ezinedirector.net/?fa=r&id=25608576&c=964698168
Another reminder that we're witnessing a real-life struggle amongst the people of the world, between 'Atlas Shrugged' and 'Animal Farm.'
It's almost as if there's a Marxist shadow government of the U.S. in exile - on America's college campuses.
Posted by: johngalt at August 25, 2005 3:04 PMI fear the book is "Ecotopia" by Ernest Callenbach (I actually read this piece of drivel when I was young...)
Posted by: jk at August 25, 2005 9:22 PMAugust 22, 2005
Unemployed claims drop by one
Joan Baez now has something to do, she is going to Crawford.
I love the AP headline: "Folk Singer Supports Anti-War Protesters." As we all know, without folk songs, there would be no peace. Getting somebody of the stature of Ms. Baez is certainly a coup for the other side. Now they've got Joan Baez and Senator Chuck Hagel.
"No Folk, No Peace" or is it "Know Folk, Know Peace"?
The answer would be blowing in the wind...
Posted by: jk at August 22, 2005 6:22 PMAugust 18, 2005
Last Word om Mrs. Sheehan
-- matches my first, so I will attempt to make these posts bookends, and let this August contretemps die like a parched and dehydrated flower -- or photojournalist -- in the Crawford sun.
Much as I enjoy pointing out the far left and anti-Semitic nature of her outbursts, the best argument consists of saying "fine, let's listen to all the families."
The WSJ Ed Page brings a good one and posts it on the free site: "She Does Not Speak For Me."
Although we all walk the same sad road of sorrow and agony, we walk it as individuals with all the refreshing uniqueness of our own thoughts shaped in large measure by the life and death of our own fallen hero. Over the past few days I have reached out to other parents and loved ones of fallen heroes in an attempt to find out their reactions to all the attention Mrs. Sheehan has attracted. What emerges from those conversations is an empathy for Mrs. Sheehan's suffering but a fundamental disagreement with her politics.
The author is Ronald R. Griffin, who also lost a son in Iraq. He goes on to enumerate other families, whom they lost, an their opinions on the mission. As Maureen Dowd would say, they have "ultimate moral authority."
And this goes to the explanation JK sought for why a man who hates anti-war activists would drive over the crosses they erected "memorializing fallen soldiers." Of these reported 800 crosses that, reportedly, have the names of other fallen Iraq war soldiers on them, how many of those families have consented to the use of their fallen hero's name in this political theatre? Isn't this the quintessential case of "not in my name?"
Make no mistake, those crosses are not there to "memorialize" the fallen heroes whose names adorn them. They are there as an attempt to confiscate the moral support of those honored dead for this despicable and dishonorable traitorous travesty we know of as "Cindy's fight" or some other such euphemism.
Posted by: johngalt at August 18, 2005 3:22 PMAugust 17, 2005
The First Cindy Sheehan?
Christopher Hitchens pens a nice piece on l'affaire Sheehan. As with all of his stuff it's worth a read.
But I was drawn by a link buried within to President Lincoln's letter to Mrs. Bixby. I'm a Lincoln aficionado, and during the first Gulf War, a Boulder Bank, mirabile dictu, published it as an ad in Lincoln's own hand. I cut it out and pasted it to my office door for months. I love the language:
Dear Madam,I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
Abraham Lincoln
I followed Hitchens's link to read it again and was devastated by the commentary on the site which carries it. It seems that:
- Mrs. Bixby lost two sons, not five -- and one of the others lived by deserting!
- Mrs. Bixby was a CSA sympathizer -- and destroyed Lincoln's letter
- President Lincoln may not have even written it: "many scholars believe it was actually written John Hay, one of President Lincoln's secretaries"
Whew. Next time, Mr. Valence, go with the legend!
Hitchens misses the parallel, but I wonder if Mrs. Bixby isn't the moral and intellectual great-godmother to Mrs. Sheehan? Is not history repeating itself as farce this August in Crawford?
Denver radio jock Peter Boyles argues that Bush should just meet with the woman and take whatever heat she can manage to dish out. If he were to do so in private, as he does with every other personal meeting, I'm thinking it's not a bad idea.
The biggest argument against is the precedent it sets, but of the 1800 soldiers killed in Iraq how many have leftist mothers? Maybe two dozen? And of those, how many are willing to subject themselves to the thought-control of Michael Moore et. al.? Not enough to worry about.
Posted by: johngalt at August 17, 2005 3:36 PMJG comes out for appeasement? I'm stunned!
I guess my problem is that an audience with the Chief Executive is a privilege that Mrs. Sheehan does not really deserve as she has made it abundantly clear what she would say.
Probably, if you roll back the clock and have W agree the first day, just to show compassion, that would have been good.
Posted by: jk at August 17, 2005 4:04 PMI'm with JK. The President met her once, and in fact kissed her.
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45800
I worked to get him elected, and I didn't even a card!
(My 2 year old daughter got a "hand written" letter somehow though)
Posted by: AlexC at August 17, 2005 9:01 PMAugust 16, 2005
Talkin' Trash!
I'm a recycling skeptic, which is heterodoxy -- nay heresy -- in Boulder County, Colorado.
My problem is economic. Recycling has had more than 30 years of advantageous publicity, regulation and taxation. In that time, it has not established itself as a viable enterprise.
Recycling costs more than traditional waste disposal. I paid extra for several years to have two trash trucks come to my home and for the privilege of digging through my own trash to sort it. And, my personal favorite, washing the items headed for recycling so they did not smell or attract bugs. What war did we lose that we have to wash our trash?
Goods manufactured from recycled materials are more expensive and inferior. There was always a loud undercurrent of people in our Boulder-based company to use recycled paper and soy inks for company brochures and datasheets. They cost more and they don't look as good, but...
But what? If these procedures and processes cannot establish themselves in 30 years with huge moral and economic subsidies, then they are bad ideas. If it were better to make paper out of old paper (I cancelled my extra money for recycling when I changed my WSJ subscription to online and cancelled the local daily) then it would pay for itself.
They say it's cheaper to recycle an aluminum can, and there actually is a market for the scrap, but do they consider the energy burned by the extra trucks? The hot water to wash them? The productivity loss of sorting?
Glenn links to a New York Times piece that captures the other side of the equation. While recycling has been failing, good ol' landfilling has been getting more productive, more efficient and concomitantly cheaper.
The thesis of the NYTimes piece is that there's a glut of landfill capacity.
At $35 a ton, the 330 million tons buried nationally cost $11.6 billion. (Actual prices are typically lower than gate rates.) Had rates merely kept pace with inflation, disposal in dumps would average $39 a ton, or a collective $12.9 billion a year. And the annual cost would be $16.5 billion had prices, as widely predicted years ago based on an expected shortage, hit $50 a ton.Dennis Pantano, chief operating officer at Regus Industries, a regional waste company based in West Seneca, N.Y., and a former executive at a national waste company, said he had expected "at least $45 to $50" by now. Instead, he said, "In Ohio we're still beating our heads against each other to get $18, $20 a ton - $25 in western New York. It really hasn't gone up in 10 years. That's obviously because of capacity."
Follow the money. The weekly trash truck may not feel as planet-saving as loading your old pizza cartons into the Saab, but costs do not lie.
August 15, 2005
Motor City Blues
So, how is life in the #1 liberal city in the nation?
Umm, a little less than perfect...
There are more than 12,000 abandoned homes in the Detroit area, a byproduct of decades of layoffs at the city's auto plants and white flight to the suburbs. And despite scores of attempts by government and civic leaders to set the city straight, the automobile capitol of the world seems trapped in a vicious cycle of urban decay.Detroit has lost more than half its population since its heyday in the 1950's. The people who remain are mostly black -- 83 percent -- and mostly working class, with 30 percent of the population living below the poverty line according to the US Census Bureau.
Hat-tip: PoliPundit via Power Line Blog News (on which I am officially addicted)
Governor Granholm: why don't you set up downtown Detroit as a (State) tax free zone. You have tried every loopy idea on the left -- see what business would prosper.
This has been proposed for Washington D.C. (#4) before and could be executed by an act of Congress.
Posted by: jk at August 15, 2005 4:59 PMAugust 12, 2005
Mrs. Sheehan
A friend emails that the right's attacks on Mrs. Sheehan could easily backfire and that t’affaire Sheehan is somewhat predictable: an angry mother, the approbation of her friends on the left, the thrill of publicity and righteous indignation...
I agree with the premise but support -- and once again proffer -- RESPECTFUL contradiction of her pronouncements.
Taranto hits it just right today. Linking to a transcription of one of her speeches. She says some abhorrent stuff:
I'm gonna tell them, "You get that evil maniac [the president] out here, cuz a Gold Star Mother, somebody who's blood is on his hands, has some questions for him."And I'm gonna say, "OK, listen here, George. #1, you quit, and I demand, every time you get out there and say you're going to continue the killing in Iraq to honor the fallen heroes by continuing the mission; you say, except Casey Sheehan.' "
"And you say except for all the members of Goldstar Families for Peace' cuz we think not one drop of blood should be spilled in our families' names. You quit doing that. You don't have my permission."
And I'm gonna say, "And you tell me, what the noble cause is that my son died for." And if he even starts to say freedom and democracy' I'm gonna say, bullshit.
You tell me the truth. You tell me that my son died for oil. You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich. You tell me my son died to spread the cancer of Pax Americana, imperialism in the Middle East. You tell me that, you don't tell me my son died for freedom and democracy.
Cuz, we're not freer. You're taking away our freedoms. The Iraqi people aren't freer, they're much worse off than before you meddled in their country.
You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine.
(massive round of applause)
And if you think I won't say bullshit to the President, I say move on, cuz I'll say what's on my mind.
My friend suggests this is a good time for the right to pull the shades and move on.
He might be right (this person tends to be), but then you just let her define the agenda and say whatever she wants without fear of contradiction.
I don't want to see Ann Coulter and Michael Savage beat up a Gold Star Mom, that point is taken. But so far, I have been pleased with what I have seen.
I do not believe this woman is setting an agenda, although she may wish to. Her arguments/positions, the Bush bashing and the anti-Americanism were part of the national discourse long before her son lost his life and we will be agruing them long after her fifteen minutes have expired. Any condemnation of this woman reflects poorly on those of us who support the war effort and dishonors her son's memory, and it fuels the moveon.org money machine. The pitting of letters from pro-war mothers who have lost children, against this woman is particulary tawdry and somewhat voyeuristic.
Mrs. Sheehan has sacrificed much and if she chooses to be exploited by the moveon.org types (or if she chooses to exploit them, whichever it may be) it is her business. The principles she raises are best debated in another forum, leaving us for now with a woman who needs our consoling, our prayers and the freedom to express her grief as she sees fit. There is a high road here, a road universally scorned by the left; we, on the right, should take it.
Thoughtful words. I will try.
When the truth is completely misrepresented, and it is implied that the President never saw her (her initial reaction was positive), I cannot let it sit still. There are too many lies here that might be absorbed into the consciousness like "Bush pere was amazed at the sight of a supermarket scanner." I can't leave it be.
John Podhoretz is on SC's side:
Cindy Sheehan's makeshift protest camp near the president's ranch in Crawford is a brilliant piece of political theater, and it's beginning to make people say things they almost surely know they shouldn't say about a grieving mother, but just can't quite help themselves. One blogger over at redstate.org used a term relating to prostitution to describe her, and Fred Barnes -- one of the nicest men on earth -- called her a "kook" on Fox. By allowing her to get their goat in this fashion, Mrs. Sheehan and her friends are getting exactly what they want, which is a cultural confrontation between a mother who lost a son in Iraq and some pundits (like me) who don't seem to have her moral authority.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_08_07_corner-archive.asp#072945
August 6, 2005
Go Eliot!
No, not Thomas Sterns, but rather NYAG Eliot Spitzer.
It seems that he is taking a break from harassing honest businesspeople to investigate the possibility a real crime was committed in the unusual-appearing funding for Air America.
August 6, 2005 -- State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer yesterday opened an investigation into the Bronx social-services agency that made $875,000 in bizarre loans to Air America radio, The Post has learned."We are looking into it in consultation with the city's Department of Investigation," Spitzer spokesman Darren Dopp revealed.
The highly unusual loans to the left-wing radio network were made by the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club — which was visited by one of Spitzer's investigators yesterday, officials said.
Dopp said Spitzer's probe is examining "the conduct of the board of [the] charitable not-for-profit organization. The question is: Was their action appropriate?"
Spitzer has jurisdiction because his office oversees charities in the state.
This will be an interesting case, as the AG will have to risk offending his future funding base versus a comprehensive investigation -- which the Post and bloggers will no doubt pursue.
July 13, 2005
TNR does Che Guevara
TNR, bless their pea-pickin' liberal hearts, does a great service to the world with The Killing Machine. The article gives a realistic look at the faults and failures of Che Guevara, first enjoying the ironic capitalist enterprise that Che-wear has become.
It is not surprising that Guevara's contemporary followers, his new post-communist admirers, also delude themselves by clinging to a myth--except the young Argentines who have come up with an expression that rhymes perfectly in Spanish: "Tengo una remera del Che y no sé por qué," or "I have a Che T-shirt and I don't know why."
Carlos Santana, one of my favorite guitar players in my youth, was shown at the Oscars wearing a Che image and a crucifix. Paquito d'Rivera (a favorite of mine now) had the decency to call him on it:
Which brings us back to Carlos Santana and his chic Che gear. In an open letter published in El Nuevo Herald on March 31 of this year, the great jazz musician Paquito D'Rivera castigated Santana for his costume at the Oscars, and added: "One of those Cubans [at La Cabaña] was my cousin Bebo, who was imprisoned there precisely for being a Christian. He recounts to me with infinite bitterness how he could hear from his cell in the early hours of dawn the executions, without trial or process of law, of the many who died shouting, 'Long live Christ the King!'"
I think this article might reach some of the right readership in TNR. The people that need to learn this aren't reading National Review.
Guevara’s brutality and violent nature is detailed, with emphasis on misogynist and racist elements that should rightful disturb the Left's Che-heads.
His stint as head of the National Bank, during which he printed bills signed "Che," has been summarized by his deputy, Ernesto Betancourt: "[He] was ignorant of the most elementary economic principles." Guevara's powers of perception regarding the world economy were famously expressed in 1961, at a hemispheric conference in Uruguay, where he predicted a 10 percent rate of growth for Cuba "without the slightest fear," and, by 1980, a per capita income greater than that of "the U.S. today." In fact, by 1997, the thirtieth anniversary of his death, Cubans were dieting on a ration of five pounds of rice and one pound of beans per month; four ounces of meat twice a year; four ounces of soybean paste per week; and four eggs per month.
(But they have universal health care.) Even Guevara's efficacy in guerrilla warfare is questioned.
LLosa ends with an unfavorable comparison to a real revolutionary.
n the last few decades of the nineteenth century, Argentina had the second-highest growth rate in the world. By the 1890s, the real income of Argentine workers was greater than that of Swiss, German, and French workers. By 1928, that country had the twelfth-highest per capita GDP in the world. That achievement, which later generations would ruin, was in large measure due to Juan Bautista Alberdi.Like Guevara, Alberdi liked to travel: he walked through the pampas and deserts from north to south at the age of fourteen, all the way to Buenos Aires. Like Guevara, Alberdi opposed a tyrant, Juan Manuel Rosas. Like Guevara, Alberdi got a chance to influence a revolutionary leader in power--Justo José de Urquiza, who toppled Rosas in 1852. And like Guevara, Alberdi represented the new government on world tours, and died abroad. But unlike the old and new darling of the left, Alberdi never killed a fly. His book, Bases y puntos de partida para la organización de la República Argentina, was the foundation of the Constitution of 1853 that limited government, opened trade, encouraged immigration, and secured property rights, thereby inaugurating a seventy-year period of astonishing prosperity. He did not meddle in the affairs of other nations, opposing his country's war against Paraguay. His likeness does not adorn Mike Tyson's abdomen.
UPDATE: Hahahaha, here's a link to Che-Mart!
Nah, they'll just blame all the bad things attributed to Che on Karl Rove: "What other plausible explanation could there be? Come on, you'd have to be an idiot to miss the connection!"
Posted by: johngalt at July 13, 2005 4:31 PMJune 23, 2005
ROVE Should Resign
Stop! It hurts! Stop!
Democrats now say that Karl Rove's remarks are beyond the pale -- and that he must Apologize or Resign
WASHINGTON - Democrats said Thursday that White House adviser Karl Rove should either apologize or resign for accusing liberals of wanting "therapy and understanding" for the Sept. 11 attackers, escalating partisan rancor that threatens to consume Washington.
I think AlexC should resign for putting that hateful picture up!
Rove is a genius.
"Elected by the people" Durbin dick-steps... Democrats don't call for anything, Republican reaction is *grumble grumble* maybe resign your seniority.... censure.....
Unelected White House staff does something similar (note he said liberals, not Democrats), and it's 110 decibles.
Looks pretty funny to me.
Posted by: AlexC at June 24, 2005 2:16 AMOh... would a compassionate head tilt along with my apology suffice?
Posted by: AlexC at June 24, 2005 2:20 AMMarch 25, 2005
Right On!
Tenured CU Professor Ward Churchill should not be fired for saying stupid things, that's his job.
But somebody should look at what an incredible academic lightweight he is. And it looks like they are.
UC Chancellor Phil DiStefano has released the University of Colorado's report on its review of the Ward Churchill situation several days early. The report was originally scheduled for release on Monday, March 28. DiStefano stated that "Because of extensive public interest, I felt it was important to release it as soon after completion as possible." Bottom line: Ward Churchill will not be fired for his 9/11 comments, but will be investigated for issues concerning his research. He will not be investigated on issues concerning his teaching. He will be investigated for issues concerning his Indian ethnicity, because he portrayed that ethnicity as being integral to his scholarly research.
This week's National Review has a cover story of VDH devastating academia. I cannot help but feel we have not heard the last, that Wolfe's book and l-affaire Ward Churchill have got a lot of people rethinking education.
I say welcome to celebrity Dr. Churchill! With the good, publicity and speaking engagement fees comes the bad, folks poking around in your life and digging up skeletons. Live by the sword, die by the sword, this is the most fitting punishment.
Posted by: Silence Dogood at March 29, 2005 11:06 AMI respectfully disagree that this development is "Right on." As I said on February 6 (http://www.threesources.com/archives/001403.html) Ward Churchill's statements and writings are criminal and morally wrong. Absolutely so.
I'm coming to the conclusion that the CU "inquiry" by its Standing Committee on Research Misconduct is intended from the very start to be a smokescreen.
First, the interim chancellor completely dismissed the treasonous or otherwise illegal statements and writings of Churchill from any evaluation. He did this on the grounds that the only exception to First Amendment protection is, "advocacy of concrete or imminent violent action, as opposed to political hyperbole or advocacy and teaching of illegal violent action as an abstract principle." But how many angels are dancing on the head of that pin?
Article III. Section. 3. of the US Constitution states: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." I don't see the words "concrete" or "imminent" anywhere. Do you? "Giving them Aid and Comfort" through "advocacy and teaching of illegal violent action as an abstract principle" is most certainly treasonous. Both in the intent of the Founders and as an objective fact.
Second, he referred this matter of "henhouse security" to the "foxes" on the Standing Committee. "Please, please don't throw me in that there briar patch brer fox!"
The strategy of the University administration is compartmentalize, delay, obfuscate, delay some more, and capitulate. Mark my words.
Posted by: johngalt at March 29, 2005 3:19 PMI would have to disagree with John Galt on the meaning and intent of Article III Section 3. I believe that the founders did expressly intend to limit treason to physical acts of outright war or material support of such. They did not want the sweeping definition of Mother England that included speech and writings. These folks had just been through a major act of treason and I believe they so valued and intended to protect speech and writings that they limited the definition of treason in our Constitution. The time of 1760-1780 could be thought of as the first coming of American blogging when the pamphleteers of the time took to writing and publishing on their own outside the major gazettes or MSM of the day. Hence my resurrection of Silence Dogood in honor of Ben Franklin, one of the first "bloggers".
Posted by: Silence Dogood at March 30, 2005 10:55 AMFirst, for future reference, it's "Johngalt" not "John Galt." The latter refers to a fictional character. (And a copyrighted one at that.)
I do agree with you Silence regarding basic interpretation of Treason in the Constitution. But let us remember the context in this case: We are not talking about a man on the street, or even an executive of a private or publicly held company. We are discussing the "advocacy and teaching" of a government official at a government sanctioned university, which thus confers the sanction of the state upon those teachings. While the Constitution's punishment for Treason (something about a noose?) must certainly be reserved for those who commit said offense materially (which, it can be argued, Churchill has done and has actually bragged about doing) the lesser sanction of removal from office is certainly a valid consequence of Treason "as an abstract principle."
Posted by: johngalt at March 30, 2005 3:58 PMMarch 23, 2005
ANWR Boycott
The left, the left, the mad, whacko left. There's little they love more than a boycott. It doesn't matter that they tend to be wildly ineffective, impossible to trace and chock full o' unintended consequences.
I got an email from my buddy (I offered to help her set up her own blog) with "something simple we all can do." That is, follow every drop of oil from ANWR through refining and refuse it at the pump.
Well, no, that would be a lot of work -- so, what you can do is sign an online petition that you will boycott the gas stations affiliated with the companies who are drilling:
If you want to inform BP, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell that you will boycott their gas stations unless they pledge not to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (see the text of your message below), just click reply and send. [Boilerplate language on if you are not a member]Imagine if millions and millions of us, young and old, progressives and conservatives, make it clear to these companies that they stand to lose big-time if they drill for oil in the wildlife refuge. Polls show that most Americans are on our side. Let's walk our talk.
Yeah, you walk the talk, brothers and sisters.
Arrrrgh! Do any of these effing knuckleheads know that gasoline is fungible?
A drop of gasoline that enters the national pipeline system can exit it anywhere at anytime to any one who contributed into the system!
A gallon of ARCO gas is the same as Phillips 66 is the same BP Amoco's etc.
It's all the same!
The local distributors just add their own special additives to make it distinct.
Idiots!
Posted by: AlexC at March 23, 2005 3:30 PMArrrggh! Alex still angry.
Are they going to boycott all of those gas stations with those signs? There are a lot of independant franchisers who don't make but a few cents per gallon (make more on soda and snacks inside).
Perhaps they will focus on the just the corporately owned stations, who (at the today's prices) could weather a boycott storm for a long long time.
Glad you're angry. It is so stupid it gets me mad as well.
I presume that the oil companies all know that these idiots will sign a petition but very few will change their buying patterns and those who do won't affect sales much if at all. These guys are used to being the demons, I trust.
Look at the bright side. It is better to keep such people busy with this agenda -- imagine the trouble they'd cause by doing something useful
Let's start an online petition to stop online petitions. This is something simple we can all do, pledge to not support online petitions.
Posted by: Silence Dogood at March 24, 2005 7:00 PMGot a good chuckle from your comment, Silence. But I have readily signed petitions supporting the troops, celebrating Reagan's birthday, and most recently supporting up-down votes on W's judicial nominations.
A funny aside, I joined a WSJ-Best-of-the-web drive to sign Not in Our Name petitons with silly names. Now I get NION email sent to: Hadda V. Shinynose....
Posted by: jk at March 25, 2005 1:22 PMWhich reminds me.. senior year in HS I was newspaper editor. One issue he had a byline by "Heywood Jablomey." Never did figure out who put that in there, ;) but it was our last issue.
Posted by: AlexC at March 25, 2005 4:11 PMMarch 2, 2005
"There's always hope that this might not work!"
Most Three Sources readers probably also tune in to WSJ's Best of the Web every weekday, but for those who don't (and also because this is just so damn fun) I have to call attention to Taranto's journaling (thanks to TiVo) of last night's episode of Jon Stewart's 'The Daily Show' on Comedy Central.
Stewart was interviewing former Clinton aide Nancy Soderberg who was there to promote her book 'The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might.' You'll want to read the whole thing, but here are some astonishing excerpts:
Soderberg: Well, I think, you know, as a Democrat, you don't want anything nice to happen to the Republicans, and you don't want them to have progress. But as an American, you hope good things would happen. I think the way to look at it is, they can't credit for every good thing that happens, but they need to be able to manage it. I think what's happening in Lebanon is great, but it's not necessarily directly related to the fact that we went into Iraq militarily.Stewart: He's [George W. Bush] gonna be a great--pretty soon, Republicans are gonna be like, "Reagan was nothing compared to this guy." Like, my kid's gonna go to a high school named after him, I just know it.
Soderberg: Well, there's still Iran and North Korea, don't forget. There's hope for the rest of us.
Stewart: [crossing fingers] Iran and North Korea, that's true, that is true [audience laughter].
(...)
Soderberg: There's always hope that this might not work.
So there you have it. A published Democrat apparatchik admits that freedom is indeed on the march, that it is likely unstoppable, and that there's a good chance our military invasion of Iraq was the catalyst. She used the half-empty terms to describe the situation, but this is the essence of what she said. Having said all that though, she concludes "There's always hope that this might not work." Ah, "progressives."
Taranto's analysis of the episode is excellent. Be sure to check it out at the bottom of the piece.
Yes, keep that flame of hope alive -- things could still be really, really bad!
Posted by: jk at March 2, 2005 6:31 PMFebruary 28, 2005
Ward Churchill: Principle vs. Principal
Belmont Club links to a Denver Post story about The University of Colorado's latest attempt to extricate itself from the Churchill contretemps. (Whoa doggies -- that's a bad sentence!)
But the good perfesser has his principles. He is making a brave stand for free speech and the values of anti-capitalism. And he will not be bought, er, cheaply:
University of Colorado officials are considering offering Ward Churchill an early retirement package that could end an increasingly uncomfortable standoff with the controversial professor. ... David Lane, Churchill's attorney, said he has not been contacted about a buyout offer. But, he said, while his primary focus is on protecting Churchill's constitutional right to speak out, he would be willing to listen to a university proposal. "If they offer $10 million, I would think about it. If they offer him $10, I wouldn't," Lane said.
I wish I could really believe that Churchill is an outlier. My guess is that a large portion, if not a majority, of liberal arts instructors at major universities hold similar thoughts. I hope most of them hold more academic credentials but don't guess that they hold wiser opinions.
Being a drop-out feels pretty good this week, perhaps I am just enjoying the sour grapes.
UPDATE: Maybe CU can save a million or two if they can fire him for plagiarism.
"liberal" arts - it's right there in the name.
Posted by: Silence Dogood at February 28, 2005 11:50 AMI wasn't aware that one of CU's liberal "arts" programs was "Original Works by Photocopier." Ward obviously received an "A" and not just because the instructor approved of his politics.
Posted by: johngalt at February 28, 2005 4:00 PMFebruary 24, 2005
Reason-based Progressives
When I read Jonathan Chait's TNR piece I knew I had to blog it. My first thought was "this is the craziest thing I have ever seen, I have to show everybody how wacko these folks are!"
And I still think they is.
Then reading AlexC's excellent post on Social Security and basic Democratic intransigence, I was tempted to add this as a comment.
But it needs its own post and what I hope will develop into its own comment thread. TNR is not "The Nation;" they are partisan but they are thoughtful. So hear it is. Folks really believe this to be true.
The Cliff Note version is that God comes down (see, we already lost JohnGalt) and tells one political party that the other one is right. Chait is well balanced in his summaries and descriptions, but the thesis is that the thoughtful lefties all say "it's a fair cop!" and turn Conservative ---- but those ideological right wing moonbats, boy...
Now imagine the opposite were to happen. God appears in order to affirm liberal precepts: Current tax levels barely affect economic incentives, social programs provide tremendous economic security at modest cost to growth, and most regulations achieve their intended effects without producing undue distortions. Would economic conservatives likewise abandon their views? Some certainly would, but a great many would not. Economic conservatism, unlike liberalism, would survive having all its empirical underpinnings knocked out from beneath it.And not because conservatives are necessarily more stubborn. (Indeed, on an individual level, liberals may well be just as stubborn as conservatives.) Rather, conservatism, unlike liberalism, overlays a deeper set of philosophical principles. Conservatives believe that big government impinges upon freedom. They may also believe that big government imposes large costs on the economy. But, for a true conservative, whatever ends they think smaller government may bring about--greater prosperity, economic mobility for the non-rich--are almost beside the point. As Milton Friedman wrote, "[F]reedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself."
I'm no less a partisan hack than Chait (and, yes, he's a much better writer) but I would have little difficulty asserting the exact opposite. The left is driven by ideology and the right wants to optimize growth and have the trains run on time.
My example would be globalization. It has brought untold wealth and diversity to rich and poor, but the left fights it because it doesn't measure up to their standards of fairness.
February 17, 2005
Sit Down Before Reading This
In policy terms, Kerry probably had a more serious democratization agenda than Bush. But, rhetorically, he never matched Bush's grandeur.I sent this quote to James Taranto at Best of The Web (did I mention the two times that I was in BOTW? 1 2 Oh. I did?) and said "I don't know which part is funnier."
Kerry's audacious plan to democratize the Middle East? I somehow missed that one, Peter. And I never, never, never, thought even Beinart would say about a Democrat "rhetorically, he never matched Bush's grandeur." (Nuke-uh-ler...)
As usual, Beinart makes other good points in his piece but I wonder if this isn't a fundamental shift in the left. They don't plan to misunderestimate the President. I wonder if we won't see a grudging respect.
Kerry and the rest of the Dems appear to be relieved that the election season is over and they no longer have to pretend that the President's strategy wasn't working. They're now free to argue, "It's about time he did what I proposed all along!"
Posted by: johngalt at February 18, 2005 3:34 PMFebruary 16, 2005
The Social Security Fight
Pete du Pont (I supported his brief Presidential bid way back when...) nails it in his OpinionJournal piece today. The solidarity seen in opposition to President Bush's Social Security reform is philosophical:
Ultimately the argument isn't about investment accounts, or stocks or bonds or "gambling" or "insecurity." It is about socialism versus individualism, about Attlee's social justice and Hillary's common good and Chomsky's economic solidarity. AARP CEO William Novelli is in favor of allowing the government to invest Social Security surplus funds in the stock market, but against allowing individuals to do so--exactly the socialist argument, that government should control the distribution of the nation's wealth.When you increase an individual's wealth, he becomes less dependent on government, and his attitude towards government changes. Socialists can't allow that, for it erodes their fundamental principle that social justice can only be achieved when important segments of the economy are under government control.
And that is why today's very liberal Democratic Party is so vehemently arguing against personal ownership of Social Security market accounts. The government's Social Security system is socialism's last redoubt, and must be preserved at all costs.
Along the way, he points out that the AFL-CIO, AARP and government employees all use the type of plan W is proposing, even as they fight it.
I'll go further and point out that they have a lot to lose. Much of the government control agenda has been repudiated of late; Social Security remains one of the few popular forms of coercion. Any individualization would severely damage the progressives' agenda.
Yep, Federal employees and federal non-profit employees have been under Social Security since 1984. See http://www.ssa.gov/history/1983amend.html for the whole text of the law. It includes:
Covers under Social Security the following groups: (1) Federal employees hired on or after January 1, 1984; (2) current employees of the legislative branch not participating in the Civil Service Retirement System on December 31, 1983; and (3) all Members of Congress, the President and the Vice-President, Federal judges, and other executive-level political appointees of the Federal Government, effective January 1, 1984.
Once again this administration is doing a masterful job of linking together unrelated things like Iraq and the 9/11 terrorists. Now it is private accounts and fixing Social Security. Like some kind of cross between hypnosis and a Pavlov's dog experiment Bush is out stumping for his proposal talking about the looming Social Security shortfall in one breath and his private accounts in the other. It will probably work if he continues to say both in every speech. Do a poll about 6 months from now and I bet 50% of the respondents will indicate that having private accounts will fix the monetary shortfall in SS. The subtle sleight of hand and quiet whispers about changes to the benefit calculator and increases to the FICA tax cap thread lazily through your mind, never quite reaching your consciousness - you are feeling sleepy, very sleepy.
Posted by: Silence Dogood at February 17, 2005 10:10 AMSome clarifications for my pal Silence:
My analogy is not a loan to invest, it is a loan to pay off an unrecorded obligation, such as parents loaning a child money for a car or a down payment on a home. Said child might restructure the mortgage and repay. Like financing the transition costs, this seems to increase d e b t on paper, but doesn't change in reality.
I think that lower income workers will benefit the most from providing Social Security as a heritable asset. A surviving spouse or child could use the money to finance a new business or buy a home. Perhaps the very act of accumulating wealth would inspire more thrift and a predilection to savings (bringing us full circle to the claim that that's exactly what some opponents would not appreciate...)
Yup, the market goes up and down. But the private accounts take advantage of dollar averaging. If you always buy $100 of stock a month, you buy more stock when it's cheaper.
In the last decade before retirement, you should move to bonds and fixed securities, so even if you retire in a trough, you are okay.
Lastly, I love your point about this being for those not born yet. You're not expecting your grandma to navigate this complexity when she can't program her VCR, you're offering choice to your grandchildren, who will learn to read on a flexible LCD laptop.
So much to respond to here...
Good catch on the change to add federal employees to Social Security. (Although pre-1983 employees are grandfathered out.)
Silence has implied that a little bit of socialism is a good thing, while too much or none at all is bad. He's also said he agrees with "the concept of moving toward a privatized plan" but he is "very concerned about the specifics of the changeover from the current plan. Basically will it be managed in an equitable fashion for all involved?"
By "equitable" I'll take your meaning as fair, rather than equal, which would in fact make you a "hard core socialist." So how do you determine a "fair" management of a plan that extracts an indeterminate amount of tax from every honest and productive citizen and in turn promises to repay him some arbitrary and ever increasing amount starting at some arbitrary date and continuing for the rest of his indeterminate life regardless of the amount of tax revenues available to make good on that promise? Fair to whom? The promissor? The promissee? How about whoever is trying to be a producer at the time? When is fairness for him taken into account?
Most frightening of all Silence's comments is this: "I generally find that trying to identify the underlying philosophical reasons for disagreement not all that helpful in coming to a compromise. I am more interested in how the system gets changed than why."
Politicians seek compromise. Rational men seek correct outcomes. If you have no philosophical base then you have no way to judge what is correct. Doing something without regard for the "why" is like a million monkeys banging away on typewriters - a result is achieved but it has no value.
Posted by: johngalt at February 18, 2005 3:29 PMYes, equitable as in fair, not equal. You make some very good points however about the difficulty in doing that. They bring to my mind another set of items that is incorrectly becoming linked together, private savings accounts as proposed by President Bush, 401K plans and Social Security. As they would say on Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the others. In many respects SS has more in common with life insurance than private investments. The system is not designed to provide an equal payout to all participants, in fact it, like life insurance, counts on the fact that some participants will live longer, and some shorter lives. By not providing inheritable value it counts on using excess from some participants to pay for others. While not "fair" one only has to look at the difference in premiums on a whole life policy versus a term life policy to get an idea of how much more we would have to pay for that kind of coverage. As to JK's point that even poor people would benefit from and be more empowered by personal savings that assumes that the person has the capability to save at all, something than many at the poverty level do not. For those the current system is better as it removes the risk of running out of money if they should live longer, a risk that increases as the size of the savings diminishes.
As for frightening John Galt, I suspect that our utopias are not that different. I am however a hard core pragmatist. By this I mean that although my ideal would be for each of us to pay our own way and all to do that effectively I understand that the reality is that there are those who will not due to things within and those beyond their control. I also understand reality to be that we as a society have made a choice to provide for those folks in some way. I just look at the issue starting from where we currently are, not where I feel we should be. From there I look to what I think is a realistic improvement toward my ideal. I don't think this in any way diminishes my convictions.
Posted by: Silence Dogood at February 22, 2005 3:13 PMGotta get the last word before this falls off the page...
Silence, I said "I think that lower income workers will benefit the most from providing Social Security as a heritable asset. A surviving spouse or child could use the money to finance a new business or buy a home."
Exactly the case that these people are having a tough time saving (25% payroll taxes don't help, but that's another story). The government is, with a private account, forcing them to save. This strikes me as a better alternative than just taking money away from them and it giving it to rich old people.
Posted by: jk at February 22, 2005 4:29 PMProvided they are "lucky" enough to die before their money runs out.
Posted by: Silence Dogood at February 22, 2005 5:44 PMFebruary 10, 2005
Competence
Bret Stephens of the WSJ Ed Page says he was there in Davos and was an eyewitness to Easongate.
His short piece is worth a read as a balanced view from someone who was actually there. He doesn't call for Jordan's head but he closes with a good point:
And that was it--the discussion moved on. I'll leave it others to draw their own verdicts, but here's mine: Whether with malice aforethought or not, Mr. Jordan made a defamatory innuendo. Defamatory innuendo--rather than outright allegation--is the vehicle of mainstream media bias. Had Mr. Jordan's innuendo gone unchallenged, it would have served as further proof to the Davos elite of the depths of American perfidy. Mr. Jordan deserves some credit for retracting the substance of his remark, and some forgiveness for trying to weasel his way out of a bad situation of his own making. Whether CNN wants its news division led by a man who can't be trusted to sit on a panel and field softball questions is another matter.
The more I read on the Ward Churchill story, the more I get the same feeling. How did this academic lightweight become a tenured professor and department chair at CU?
Neither of them should be fired for their stupid and false comments, but clearly, neither has earned his rank.
The evidence is mounting that the university faculty and administration made this academic lightweight a tenured professor precisely BECAUSE of his stupid and false comments.
Eason said what he wanted to believe until he realized he had zero evidence. If Eason did not operate in a system where accountability still matters then he would have done what Churchill did. Hold a rally to thump his chest and scream that he gets to be right if he wants to, and nobody can do anything about it because he's not answerable to anyone.
I hear the radio talking heads say that it doesn't matter that Churchill preaches violence and victimhood because "five years from now these kids will be driving BMWs and going to church like the rest of adult America." This is in large measure true (except the church goin'). But what ideals will each one hold in his heart, buttressed by his mind which was taught not to think, but to believe in the doctrines of his "dear old professor?"
One such ideal is that "Americans deserve to be killed for their exceptionalism." What do you suppose that does to one's desire to become exceptional?
Posted by: johngalt at February 11, 2005 3:21 PMTwixt Ward Churchill and Tom Wolfe, I would really attempt to talk most people out of a traditional undergrad program at a large, State University.
You can call it sour grapes from a dropout, but I would advise a young person to try a small specialty school. If not a Hillsdale or Pepperdine, or one of the religious schools in National Review (sorry, johngalt!), to at least pick a small school on the basis of their willingness to allow independent thought.
JK, I'm afraid you should have ended your first sentence at "program." You endorse "one of the religious schools in National Review" but consider this from a National Review editorial:
http://www.nationalreview.com/lopez/lopez200502151017.asp
"Father Kevin William Wildes, the school's president, goes into the usual knee-jerk free-expression and diversity muck in his letter — "Loyola University, like any university, is committed to the free expression of ideas and the rigors of debate."
(...)
"Father, your religious order teaches about right and wrong, right? I know it used to, anyway."
(...)
"Phew — Loyola might not endorse statutory rape. Maybe Catholic Loyola does stand for something besides an open door to whatever pop culture or special-interest groups say it has to let in. That's some maybe, though. One that the 27 other U.S. Catholic colleges and universities (according to the Cardinal Newman Society) who also had VM on campus this year ought to ponder."
February 7, 2005
Mr. Leader
George Will has done yeoman work on Social Security reform. He uses his trademark historical erudition to deflate the arguments of those who oppose assetization.
In his Newsweek column, he voices a belief of mine: Progressives, by not trusting, understanding, or believing in capital markets demonstrate themselves unfit to lead. Will whacks the four most visible Democrats: Gov. Howard Dean, Senator Ted Kennedy, Senator Barabara Boxer, and...
The fourth, and most important, is Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who seems determined to earn the description Teddy Roosevelt applied to President John Tyler—"a politician of monumental littleness."
[...]
Reid's hyperbole suggests that Deanspeak is contagious. In Reid's televised "response" to the president's State of the Union address—written before the address—he disparaged the idea of voluntary personal retirement accounts funded by portions of individuals' Social Security taxes as "Social Security roulette." This is the crux of the Democrats' argument against Bush's plan: Equities markets are terribly risky—indeed, are as irrational and risky as roulette. Think about that.Roulette is a game without any element of skill. By comparing the investment of some Social Security funds in stocks and bonds to gambling on roulette, Reid is saying that the risks and rewards of America's capital markets, which are the foundation of the nation's economic rationality and prosperity, are as random as the caroms of the ball in a roulette wheel. This, from a national leader, is amazing.
Amazing, indeed. Our capital markets are superseded only by liberty itself as the growth engine of our prosperity.
These people want to lead us through the forest at night, but they do not believe in light.
Hat-tip: WSJ Political Diary
I think that the Government will provide only very conservative funds and that fees will be negotiated to be very low and possibly the same across all investments. I am actually concerned that the government will not provide enough in the way of an aggressive growth fund that might be good for younger workers. I do not believe that any of Mort's discovered ignorances would affect any of the workers in a private Social Security Plan (though they would in the SSSP, jk is arguing Silence for more gub'mint control...)
I'll take you at your word that Republicans did indeed ignore Democratic calls for reform, though I suspect that Democrats just wanted to raise taxes, thereby increasing the SS Surplus that they were able to spend on domestic programs. Sorry if I am selling them short, I'd love to be corrected.
As to specific merits of the SSSP, I appreciate the move toward self-sufficiency, it just seems to me pretty close to the ideas of the Bush plan, lacking only the Federal oversight that people are not putting all their retirement on "red 13."
The phrase "government will...provide" twice plus two calls for government control. Ok you imposter, what have you done with the real JK! If you are the real JK, what was the plot of Buffy episode 3, season 2? Ok, I kid, but who would have imagined you calling for government control to keep investors from being foolish? (Nanny state anyone?) I see your point of course, trying to head off a bailout down the road. Where I differ from President Bush's plan (as I understand it, and I admit my understanding is entirely questionable) is in the funding of the current system. Bush's plan would pull money out of the current funding to allow the private accounts. We currently pay out over 90% (and rising) of what we take in and the "surplus" actually consists of treasury notes, or money that has already been borrowed to pay for other programs, so how is this not borrowing money to invest? I.e. the money I get to invest and thus don't pay into Social Security will have to be borrowed by the government to pay for current benefits. Without changes to benefits like retirement age or adjustments to the cost of living increases Bush's plan doesn't alleviate the fiscal problem either. I think his plan actually does include the aforementioned benefit cuts. (or "benefit adjustments" as Republicans might like to call it) These will have the real effect on solvency, the privatization seems thrown in on top as a nice smoke screen. Perhaps I am too harsh and his plan like mine is a method to slowly move dependency away from government paid retirement, but with the immediate cut to money taken in to allow for private accounts, how does this not accelerate the depletion of the surplus?
Posted by: Silence Dogood at February 11, 2005 11:48 AMSilence said, "My basic concept with the SSSP is to slowly move people's dependence away from the government for their retirement." I think you've also admitted that this is the essential goal of the Bush plan as well. But then you lament the gradual shift of current FICA taxes toward independence because... it threatens the government's ability to provide for people's retirement. If you want to go for a swim then you've got to get in the water. Whether you start by dipping your toe or by jumping, either way you gotta get wet.
In order for you and the rest of the Bush plan critics to feel comfortable with it, you first have to come to grips with your very first statement on the matter: "Privatized gain, socialized loss." Until you concede that a man is entitled to everything he earns and nothing that his neighbor has then you'll chase your tail incessantly trying to have it both ways. Unless you enjoy that sort of thing, eventually you have to choose sides. One is right and the other is wrong, but at least you'll know which side of campus to hang out on!
Posted by: johngalt at February 11, 2005 3:07 PMTrue enough John Galt, and I at less then half way through my paying in stage am ready to take the plunge. But what of those who have finished or nearly finished paying in? Cut their benefits right now? Some how the adjustment has to be made on both ends so that the money coming in equals the money going out. Perhaps this could be some sort of incrementally adjusting system where for those already retired the benefit stays the same and for those not yet retired the benefit and the withholding are lowered by an amount based on years until you start collecting. (Here is where I need to concede the details to folks with more economics knowledge than myself.)
You are also correct about chasing our tails with the privatized gain, socialized loss, but my reading of political reality is that the bailout will be inevitable, either directly or through things like emergency medical care. This is what prompted my description of Social Security taxes as being akin to dues to belong to our society.
Posted by: Silence Dogood at February 11, 2005 4:41 PMSeason Two, Episode Three was "School Hard," most notable for Spike's attendance at Parent Teacher night and his meeting of Joyce (Buffy's mom). Good episode...
silence, I'd remove government control of Social Security in a heartbeat. But I am the pragmatist around here. That's not gonna happen, so I will try for the most viable reforms that provide personal responsibility. I think the most viable is a Thrift Savings Plan style system that would provide a limited selection of low fee conservative funds.
You recognize (as few Democratic Senators seem to) that we are trading unfunded liabilities for secured liabilities, that part of it should not be the big deal that it is. I am completely in favor of reducing benefits pari passu with investment into private accounts. I think it is fair and freedom-enhancing. I would do as much of this as was politically feasible. And, as a pragmatist, I will take a lot less than I wanted in hopes that a small step now could be expanded later when younger workers are demanding more..
Lastly, I would certainly honor the promise made to those who have paid in. I think you and I still have time to do a little better with a partially privatized plan, but I would give every worker 50 and over a choice of the original deal into which they have been (if only metaphorically) paying.
A condition of giving "every worker 50 and over a choice of the original deal into which they have been paying" is that said "deal" must not enslave every worker 49 and under to their elders. THIS is what is really "broken" in Social Security: its moral basis.
Silence desires that "for those already retired the benefit stays the same" but the current program inexplicably links the inflation adjustment of current benefits to wage growth, which is HIGHER than inflation. For those benefits to "stay the same" then the indexing basis must be corrected as Bush has proposed.
Posted by: johngalt at February 13, 2005 1:40 PMFebruary 5, 2005
The Janitor was Otherwise Engaged
James Taranto at OpinionJournal - Best of the Web spots an interesting tale from the world of academia. A seminar is given at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, by Amy Nell of Concordia College. The description includes:
In November 2004, Osama Bin Laden released a tape giving his recipe for a healthy nation. This seminar would dissect his message and use audience participation in doing so. Discussion points would include counterterrorism methods, the possibility of peace, empathy etc. The aim of this seminar would be to help understand the position of Osama Bin Laden as presented in the video and explore in what ways the origins of terrorism are to be found, not in some foreign citizen, but in the actions we take out of fear, hate and retribution.
Save you a seat? The funny part is that a little Internet search allows Taranto to find that Ms. Nell's position at Concordia is that of photographer for the school newspaper.
It has been suggested that the newest Tom Wolfe book "I Am Charlotte Simmons" might start to turn some away from the classic idea of higher education. The book is of course fictional but it's not, which is Wolfe's gift as a novelist. I don't have kids but I would have to ask if this were what I am saving money to provide? Is this what my child is working for?
The big contretemps in Boulder this week is the cancellation of Ward Churchill's speech in New York and efforts to fire him from the University.
Professor Glenn sez that firing Churchill is too far and risks academic freedom to fire a tenured professor.
It may be too much, even for a dorky idiot as Churchill (there's a phrase I never thought I'd write) but I think that the tenure system and general protections afforded professors is exactly what has tarnished the franchise of academe. Another CU prof told a friend that the female students he was coarsely harassing could complain all they wanted -- he, as a tenured professor was untouchable. As Taranto says, "Great Moments in Higher Education..."
If these professors are damaging the franchise, they should not be permitted to hide under the protection of tenure.
There is very little alternative market for parents or undergraduates, but at what point does one balk from a Charlotte Simmons experience and opt for a small private, religious or specialty school?
January 19, 2005
The Dumbest Idea
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I am always happy to meet a progressive who pays attention, has a grasp of issues and can define his or her intellectual philosophy. I went to lunch with an old friend who fits that bill. Unfortunately, in catching up we had little time for politics. Now that I have established some credibility for managing opposition, I want to rant a moment on a "protest" that is so insanely stupid that it makes me angry. Once again, the Naderites of this great nation are declaring "Don't Spend a Dime Day." This time, it is to protest the war and is set to coincide with Inauguration Day. "On 'Not One Damn Dime Day' those who oppose what is happening in our name in Iraq can speak up with a 24-hour national boycott of all forms of consumer spending." |
Funny, it seems that we just had an opportunity to speak. It was called an election. And those who opposed the war and consumerism could vote for Mr. Ralph Nader. And, about nobody did -- give or take some. The same folks are now dreaming of empty Wal*Marts, and a whole nation saying "What Happened?" On what level is this not insane? All these people are going to heat their home, eat food, burn gas, and consume normally. They are just choosing not to replenish on that day. Even if effective, they wouldn't influence any suppliers, all of whom certainly look at weekly, monthly and quarterly sales. So, they have nothing to win. They can't really make a point. Their only choice is to lose: be even more ineffectual than in the election. And there's where we can help. I am going to gas up both my cars, eat every meal out, and my lovely wife is planning to join me downtown for a shopping trip, right in the belly of the beast, Boulder Colorado. Some have suggested wearing a dollar ribbon. Instructions for "rolling your own" can be found at http://www.gfps.k12.mt.us/lewisandclark/dollarribbon.html If you want a more cogent critique of "Not One Dime Day," let me recommend Tech Central Station. You mention the five freedoms our country was founded on, and I agree with them if you are counting those freedoms as found in the First Amendment-although I count six. If you mean the freedoms as enumerated by FDR, there were four, and, of course, he looked "forward to a world founded upon" them. I pause to note none of these freedoms existed in Iraq before the U.S. liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein. Now they are beginning to. Thursday -- TiVo the Inauguration and shop 'till you drop! Our very democracy may depend on it! | |
Between mollie's birthday in Minnesota (HAPPY BIRTHDAY!) and my wife's new Nintendo DS(r) I think the ThreeSources blog team is doing its part!
Posted by: jk at January 20, 2005 8:05 PMTivo it so I don't miss the suprise ending?
Posted by: Silence Dogood at January 21, 2005 11:27 AM