Thursday, January 17. 2008
A photo of midtown Park Avenue today, just north of Grand Central Station before the snow started, on my way to the Waldorf to meet Dr. Bliss for lunch at the Bull & Bear, and to catch an interesting talk or two from the sachems at the American Psychoanalytic Annual Meeting, including Drs. Otto Kernberg and Roy Schafer (the former whom I respect enormously, and the latter whom I have a deep gratitute and appreciation for, which I was pleased to have the chance to tell the old fellow today). One hopeful sign for the economy: No bankers jumping out of windows, as far as I could see, and no disturbing blood spots on the sidewalks to upset the gentle and largely genteel Psychoanalysts who were gathered from across the globe to try to add to their understanding of the human soul. 
 This fallacy site defines this fallacy as simply: "The appeal to pity takes place when an arguer tries to get people to accept a conclusion by making them feel sorry for someone."
Classic example: The boy who killed his parents pleads for mercy from the judge on the grounds of being an orphan. Of course, pity is just one of the emotions which can be manipulated in order to attempt to overwhelm reason and to score points. While a member of Congress from his home state of Tennessee, Davy Crockett is believed to have given a successful speech refuting an appeal to pity, regarding a Congressional appropriation of money to a widow: "Mr. Speaker -- I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the Government was in arrears to him. This Government can owe no debts but for services rendered, and at a stipulated price. If it is a debt, how much is it? Has it been audited, and the amount due ascertained? If it is a debt, this is not the place to present it for payment, or to have its merits examined. If it is a debt, we owe more than we can ever hope to pay, for we owe the widow of every soldier who fought in the war of 1812 precisely the same amount. There is a woman in my neighborhood, the widow of as gallant a man as ever shouldered a musket. He fell in battle. She is as good in every respect as this lady, and is as poor. She is earning her daily bread by her daily labor, and if I were to introduce a bill to appropriate five or ten thousand dollars for her benefit, I should be laughed at, and my bill would not get five votes in this House. There are thousands of widows in the country just such as the one I have spoken of; but we never hear of any of these large debts to them. Sir, this is no debt. The Government did not owe it to the deceased when he was alive; it could not contract it after he died. I do not wish to be rude, but I must be plain. Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks." That is one heck of a good argument - and an argument for the restraint of government as well. Crockett had the good sense to eliminate the tone of cold-hearted rationality with his offer at the end. More about the speech and its aftermath here. Interesting fellow, Crockett. He was elected twice to Congress, then defeated twice, after which he said "I told the people of my district that I would serve them as faithfully as I had done; but if not ... you may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas." Which he did, and was killed by the Mexican Army while defending the Alamo in 1836. Image: David Crockett (1786-1836)
Bruce Kesler of Democracy Project was kind enough to send some readings a while ago explaining how poverty has been dealt with by the US government. I forgot to post them at the time, probably intending to write more about it: 1. The Safety Net Delivers. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 2. The Effects of Government Taxes and Transfers on Income and Poverty. US Census Bureau 3. Federal Transfer Payments to Low-income Households Tops $17,000. The Tax Foundation
Some of the expected prices of American furniture and folk art in a Christie's auction today and tomorrow are astonishing. Still, I thought our readers might be most interested in the values of the old decoys in that auction. 
The hen merganser above is expected to fetch between $200-250,000. Another hen merganser in the auction is expected to fetch up to $500,000. In the NY Sun's piece on the auction, they note: Americana doesn't have to be made from precious metal or come with a society pedigree. Christie's will be auctioning hand-carved duck decoys this week with several estimated in the $500,000 range. What makes carved birds so pricey? "It's the confluence of two collecting categories — hunters and folk-art collectors coming together and competing over the same material," the head of Christie's Americana department, Margot Rosenberg, said. Twenty years ago, a similar phenomenon took place with weather vanes. "Weather vanes was the old story," Ms. Rosenberg said. "This is the new story. At auction, a bird has yet to break a million, but one will soon."
It's time for everybody to check Grandpa's barns and sheds for old decoys.
"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."
"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."
All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl. "All Along the Watchtower," off 1967's John Wesley Harding, and performed by Bob over 1,400 times since then, making it his most-played song. Jimi Hendrix's cover is the best-known, eclipsing the original, but the song has been covered by dozens upon dozens of acts, including U2 and the Dave Matthews Band. Below: the original, a mid-90s rock reinterpretation ala Hendrix, and one of Jimi's own performances.
 I will be off duty for a couple of days for a bit of a hunt - a wild goose chase for a couple of days in the snow and wintr'y weather.
Speaking of killing, look what PETA does. Natural born killers? As much as I love rail, the nation's massive "investment" in it is not producing dividends. Coyote. If you ask me (and nobody does), this country does not need one more road on my nickel. Nor, apparently, does it need one more rail. Perhaps we're done with basic transportation for now. Illegals moving north to avoid enforcement. Wizbang Via Mankiw, Anna Schwartz dings the Fed. And yes, a feckless Fed did cause the Great Depression. The "market failure" meme was a scapegoat, but the Leftys did get some mileage out of it, and still do. If you have not read about this already, the story of the NYT's public editor's assault on Bill Kristol is hard to believe. They clearly have no idea about how lucky they are to have him, but I still think they should hire Mark Steyn. When they hire Steyn, I will renew...maybe. The truth about those famous Vietnam photos. Neoneo. Thanks for that piece, Neo, and for the series it is a part of. You put plenty of work into that series, to our benefit. And speaking of MSM propaganda, the NYT used nine reporters to produce this utterly dishonest smear of American veterans. How can they bear to look at themselves in the mirror? No clothes? Or an empty suit? Why Hillary, despite celebrity status, is an empty pantsuit. I think this is accurate. Why Mayor Menino doesn't want low-cost medical clinics - because they aren't run by the government. Who is he to decide where I get help? I'll go to the darn veterinarian, who is my pal, if I want to. From a Betsy quote on college admissions craziness: As for the remainder of the tuition--that portion not covered by student aid--it must then be provided by the parents, who work overtime in America's marvelous market economy so their children can spend four years in the care of college professors who despise the market economy and the bourgeois buffoons who work in it overtime so they can send their kids to college, where, coincidentally, the kids will acquire a degree that does next to nothing to prepare them for working in the market economy.
Jackie Robinson was VP of the Chock Full o' Nuts coffee company, whose chain of luncheonettes in NYC were as well-known from the 20s through the 60s as MacDonalds is today. Note the prices. And note the piece of Scotch tape holding up the Dodger's banner - for those few who might not recognize the great man. 
Wednesday, January 16. 2008
Quoted from Prof. Deneen's Let the Good Times Mold: Observing the people seeking accelerated intoxication and wandering in herds looking this way and that hoping to see actual outbreaks of ecstasy, I couldn't help but be struck by the forlornness of the appearance of revelry, the desperation that underlie the efforts to appear joyous, the unexceptionalness of the now-unremarkable female ululations and the wholly predictable male whoops. The celebration seemed more a set of expected and dutiful going through motions, all actual meaning of the original purpose of the celebration lost to the unbroken hedonism of our culture and, more importantly, the overarching disbelief in any actual "structure" that could sustain genuine outbreaks of "anti-structure." A mockery instead of a celebration, a self-consciously mimiced charade rather than an outbreak of overturned or reversed roles, in a concentrated form my encounter with Bourbon Street over the weekend helped me to understand better my dissatisfaction for much of what passes for apparent celebration in our culture.
Bad loans discussed vigorously by Michelle. Who is to blame if you take out a fraudulent loan, or a loan you doubt you can pay off? Sovereign funds from the Middle East might help rescue Citibank's liquidity, but they will extract a heavy price for that investment. If you gamble, you're on your own. When you win, you win. When you lose, don't come crying to me. And please don't claim that you are a victim because you didn't read the terms of the loan. Basic literacy is assumed in financial transactions, as is the assumption of risk. As we can see, your lender also assumes his share of risk. But don't listen to me. I think the stock market is a gambling enterprise unless you have a 20-year time horizon. Blue Chip US stocks have not moved an inch in 8 years - other than downwards recently.
 Vanderbilt researchers, studying mice, claim that aggression can be as emotionally rewarding as food or sex.
“We learned from these experiments that an individual will intentionally seek out an aggressive encounter solely because they experience a rewarding sensation from it,” Kennedy said. “This shows for the first time that aggression, on its own, is motivating, and that the well-known positive reinforcer dopamine plays a critical role.”
I cannot speak about mice, but every psychiatrist - and every person - knows that this is a fact for human beings. Freud, who thought harder about these things than most people, found it necessary to hypothesize a "death instinct": "an urge inherent in all organic life to restore an earlier state of things" (SE 18:36). It is a drive towards destruction. He could not make sense of human behavior and human thoughts without it. Indeed, Freud mocked critics of that instinct theory as “…little children [who] do not like it when there is talk of the human inclination to ‘badness’…”. The trick to a sane life is to keep all of these "instincts" on a tight-enough leash that they do not senselessly destroy one's life. Ideally, our conscience does that job for us, to help maintain our self-respect, if not the respect of others.
They're not illegal guns, they're "undocumented firearms." h/t, Ace
 Landsberg on free trade in the NYT, a quote:
Bullying and protectionism have a lot in common. They both use force (either directly or through the power of the law) to enrich someone else at your involuntary expense. If you’re forced to pay $20 an hour to an American for goods you could have bought from a Mexican for $5 an hour, you’re being extorted. When a free trade agreement allows you to buy from the Mexican after all, rejoice in your liberation — even if Mr. McCain, Mr. Romney and the rest of the presidential candidates don’t want you to.
It has always struck me as contradictory that the Left, with its internationalist bent bred of Marx's "international socialism," contains so much in the way of a nationalist-protectionist bias (although Clinton did not have this bias - to his credit). I guess it's really just pandering to the unions and to the resentful - and to hell with the consumers. As Landsberg notes, everybody benefits from free trade of goods or labor, whether it's town to town, state to state, or country to country.
Sounds like a fun class. Tyler Cowen. I don't know whether I'd rather take the class or teach it but, were I teaching it, I would include Bleak House on my reading list.
 Witches useful to police in Kenya.
Steve Jobs' keynote speech, summarized. Without a doubt, Apple=Gizmos. No comment on Michigan. All of this micro-punditry is hot air. Shelby Steele explains why Obama is correct about Iran. Not saying that I agree, but Steele makes an intelligent case. Children who need parents - not pills. Daily Mail Does anybody believe this? Asthma and diet. Smells like junk science to me. "Everything you need to know about how Hillary would govern." Sisu. Viking explains it all, about the Hillary campaign. Indeed, Hitchins has it right - one quote: In the New Hampshire primary in 1992, she knowingly lied about her husband’s uncontainable sex life and put him eternally in her debt. This is now thought of, and referred to in print, purely as a smart move on her part. In the Iowa caucuses of 2008, he returns the favor by telling a huge lie about his own record on the war in Iraq, falsely asserting that he was opposed to the intervention from the very start. This is thought of, and referred to in print, as purely a tactical mistake on his part: trying too hard to help the spouse. The happy couple has now united on an equally mendacious account of what they thought about Iraq and when they thought it. What would it take to break this cheap little spell and make us wake up and inquire what on earth we are doing when we make the Clinton family drama—yet again—a central part of our own politics?
If lightning never strikes twice in the same place, I guess we're safe up here in Yankeeland. The end is near for everybody else, though. Is it true that Columbus brought syphilis to the old world? Nifong files for bankruptcy Yglesias critiques Goldberg's book. Atlantic Not dead yet. Fred's raising $ "Please do not let this person near policy formulation again." Tigerhawk. Yes - she is the return of Bella Abzug. Also piling on this wacko lady, Attack Machine. Rush exasperated but "on fire." The Corner. More exasperation from Dr. Sanity: What has the Republican Party come to? With all the socialism-lite being bandied about here in Michigan; all the empty promises glibly being made--how are these guys any different from the feckless Democrats who got us into this economic mess to begin with?
Where is the candidate who will proudly stand up for the free market? Who will say that too much government is the problem and that the solution is to do away with government regulation that is stifling economic freedom in Michigan and elsewhere?
Tuesday, January 15. 2008
“It’s the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his papers for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. HE is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, they don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.” C.S. Lewis (h/t, New England Repub)
From Politico, Nancy Pelosi has changed the menu: The processed cheese has been replaced with brie. The Jell-O has made way for raspberry kiwi tarts and mini-lemon blueberry trifles. Meatloaf has moved over for mahi mahi and buns have been shunted aside in favor of baguettes.
A revolution is afoot at the deli counters, grills and salad bars of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Read the whole thing. Sounds to me like they changed from boy food to girl food.
 Insty found these quotes from a CBS News report on Fred Thompson discussing religion:
Mixing theology and social issues on the campaign trail is rare for Fred Thompson, but he discussed it today answering a question from a member of the audience. A woman asked him if he would “as a Christian, as a conservative” continue President Bush’s programs to combat global AIDS. “Christ didn’t tell us to go to the government and pass a bill to get some of these social problems dealt with. He told us to do it,” Thompson said. “The government has its role, but we need to keep firmly in mind the role of the government, and the role of us as individuals and as Christians on the other.” He received a round of applause for his answer, and went on to expand on the role of government in fighting AIDS and other diseases.
Some of the comments under the CBS News piece are good, including: Fred actually understand federalism and the proper role of the government. This is really going to confuse the media.
We have been avoiding adding any verbiage to the racial dimensions of these primaries. In general, we hate the subject of race. However, a piece by Sykes at Am. Thinker - Barack Obama's Race Problem: White Liberals - nails the condescension of the liberal elites and of the lefty bien pensants. (thanks, Reader). A quote: In the wake of Clinton's New Hampshire victory much of the punditocracy seems to be surprised by the sudden resurgence of race as a central factor in the presidential race. They shouldn't be. Democrats, after all, are a party shaped and obsessed with identity and grievance politics, so the clash between sensitivities of race and gender will inevitably be magnified. Who is more offended? Women or Blacks? In New Hampshire it was women, who protectively rallied around an emotional Hillary Clinton who has been unfairly beaten up by the boys. Now the focus is turning to the sensitivities of African Americans, who are offended by the subtle racial digs of the Clinton campaign. The political backlash of "denigrating women," is being replaced by a backlash against "denigrating African American."
and Deep down, guilty white liberals feel guilty about other people's attitudes and behavior, not their own. To the contrary they are smugly certain of their own racial virtue; in fact, (they will tell themselves) they care so deeply about black people that they feel an obligation to protect them from an unenlightened electorate. Don't be surprised if many white liberals end up voting against Obama, while telling themselves they are doing it because they are so supportive of minority aspirations. That's Obama's racial problem.
Update: Just found another worthwhile bit on the subject from David Brooks in the NYT today - The Identity Trap. A quote: All the rhetorical devices that have been a staple of identity politics are now being exploited by the Clinton and Obama campaigns against each other. They are competing to play the victim. They are both accusing each other of insensitivity. They are both deliberately misinterpreting each other’s comments in order to somehow imply that the other is morally retrograde. All the habits of verbal thuggery that have long been used against critics of affirmative action, like Ward Churchill and Thomas Sowell, and critics of the radical feminism, like Christina Hoff Summers, are now being turned inward by the Democratic front-runners.
Mr.  Robin Page. From The Telegraph: Mr Page, 64, a farmer, conservationist, columnist for The Daily Telegraph, and the chairman of the Countryside Restoration Trust, became the focus of police attention after his comments at a country fair in September 2002. He claims that in order to gain the attention of listeners at the gathering in Frampton-upon-Severn, Glos, he started in a "light-hearted fashion". His opening remark was: "If you are a black, vegetarian, Muslim, asylum-seeking, one-legged lesbian lorry driver, I want the same rights as you."
Mr. Page was later arrested for a hate crime, but eventually vindicated - and compensated. The story was linked by a disgusted Mr. Free Market in a piece on "white flight" from the cities, in England.
 Are we at the end of small government conservatism? The end? When did it begin?
Another letter to the NYT that will not get published. Powerline Why is Mayor Menino going after low-cost medical clinics? Tim Blair diagnosed with abdominal cancer. God bless, and good luck, Tim. Remembering Bernie Goetz. Never Yet Melted notes: The Goetz shooting was an intolerable assertion of individualism, one potentially capable of effectively politically challenging the principle of the state’s monopoly of force. Thus, from the statist perspective of the left, it was the Goetz self defense incident, not the crime level, which constituted the nadir of history for New York City.
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