Wednesday, September 17. 2008
Ritalin use in universities. A quote: In 2003, six million American schoolchildren–about 15%–took methlphenidate (Ritalin) alone. Methylphenidate has replaced Prozac as the drug defining an entire cohort...
Here's Helmand Province. Here's Michael Yon's Death in the Corn, Part 1, if you haven't read it yet. He is going to be in Afghanistan for quite a while, it would seem, and deserves our grateful support for his remarkable reporting - and for his courage. Photo below is from Part 2. I want this guy on my side. 
From the US Department of Homeland Security Leadership Journal, Sept. 16, 2008: Last week, the nation marked the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in solemn fashion, focusing on memorials and reflection, rather than on point scoring. Too bad Richard Clarke couldn’t manage to do the same. Clarke, the official in charge of antiterrorism efforts before 9/11, commemorated the anniversary of the attacks by publishing a finger-pointing screed in U.S. News and World Report. Clarke’s argument went something like the following: Here we are, seven years after 9/11. We haven’t been attacked. But we could be. Al Qaeda still exists, Bin Laden remains at large, and terrorists still commit terrorism. We’re backsliding, and no safer now then we were then. On the home front, our borders are still porous, we’re still not screening people, and security grants are too much about pork and not enough about real risk. Clarke is mostly wrong. In fact, we are safer today than we were seven years ago. We haven’t been attacked since 9/11 in part because we have destroyed al Qaeda’s headquarters, enhanced our intelligence assets across the globe, captured and killed terrorists on nearly every continent, and partnered with our allies on information sharing and other security-related efforts. Today, al Qaeda no longer has a state sponsor. Contrary to Clarke’s claims, most of its original leadership has been captured or killed. It is losing in Iraq -- thanks to the surge and to the Awakening movement among the Sunni tribes--and its savage attacks on innocents have reduced its popularity there and across the Muslim world. Muslim scholars and clerics are increasingly condemning its beliefs and behavior as a desecration of Islam. This progress has come because we abandoned the practice of treating terrorism solely as a criminal matter – exactly the kind of September 10 policy that Clarke celebrates in his article. Closer to home, the Department of Homeland Security has made clear progress that belies Clarke’s claims. At the border that Clarke thinks is so porous, DHS has built hundreds of miles of fence and will double the size of the Border Patrol. We’ve also deployed fingerprint-based screening and radiation portal monitors at all of our border entry points. To protect against a repeat attack, DHS has built nearly two dozen layers of security into our aviation system, and it has developed comprehensive security plans for other critical infrastructure. Clarke claims that the executive branch has proved incapable of managing new terrorism programs to success. Tell that to US-VISIT – a massive government IT project that compares fingerprints of travelers to a database of millions and does it in 30 seconds for officials all across the country and the world. We got it up and running from scratch, despite the doubters. And it’s so successful that we’re expanding it to collect all ten prints and to compare them to prints found in terrorist safe houses around the world. We’ve done all that since Dick Clarke left government – and without a word of support from him. Despite his claims of backsliding, it’s DHS that has been battling complacency, and Clarke who seems to have been sitting on the sidelines. We’re the ones who’ve been fighting for the carefully targeted, risk-based homeland security grants he favors. It’s Congress that has added billions and made them less risk-based. Has Clarke criticized Congress or praised DHS for our risk based approach? If so, I missed it. On our southern border, DHS’s fence-building and increased border enforcement have been hampered by local NIMBY (“not-in-my-backyard”) forces and advocates for illegal immigration. Did Dick Clarke speak out against them? Not so I’ve noticed. To secure our northern border, we’re implementing tougher document standards, and we were ready to require all travelers to produce a passport or passport-equivalent by the end of this year. Where was Dick Clarke when Congress decided to push back that deadline to mid-2009? I don’t remember an op-ed then complaining about how porous this would make our Canadian border. Clarke says that terrorists who look European have been trained by al Qaeda and may have European Union passports and clean identities unknown to intelligence agencies. He thinks such people could enter the United States almost as easily as did the 9/11 hijackers. It’s indeed true that during Dick Clarke’s tenure, Europeans could come to the US without any opportunity to screen them before they were in the air. As of this January, though, no foreign travelers other than Canadians will be able to come to the US without supplying -- in advance -- the information we need to screen them. At last, we’ll have the time and information we need to investigate risky travelers (and to prepare a rude surprise for terrorists who try this route). That’s all happened since Dick Clarke left government, and without any support from him. There’s no question that Dick Clarke contributed to strengthening our national security, but his recent assertions are not only incorrect, they disrespect the work of many national security professionals he once called colleagues. That is indeed unfortunate. Stewart Baker Assistant Secretary for Policy
 AIG was too big to fail, but Jonah Goldberg wonders.
WSJ: The resilience of American finance Conservatism=racism and sexism From The Hill, with my comments in parentheses: Pelosi (D-Calif.) ripped President Bush’s “mismanagement” of the economy and a lack of regulation that led to the current situation. (How does a President manage a free-market economy?)
“I think the American people have had it with this situation where the middle-income people in our country are not protected from the ramifications of the risk-taking and the greed of these financial institutions,” Pelosi told MSNBC. (Multi-millionaire Pelosi means people hate to lose money in the markets)
When asked whether the Democrats “deserve some responsibility” regarding the economic crisis, Pelosi responded: “No.” (Bush does, Congress doesn't. Right.)
Afghanistan is getting bumpy, and the Petraeus approach doesn't work there. Bitch Magazine wants your help. How about a government rescue? Hayward at Weekly Standard thinks Palin could be a Truman. A quote: The establishment is affronted by the idea that an ordinary hockey mom--a mere citizen--might be just as capable of running the country as a long-time member of the Council on Foreign Relations. This closed-shop attitude is exactly what both Jefferson and Adams set themselves against; they wanted a republic where talent and public spirit would find easy access to the establishment.
Re-posted, from The Barrister.
Our editor asked me to do a little piece on wellies, as hunting season and wellie season is arriving - snow, slush, mud and muck. I have gone through many pairs from many makers, and I own many pairs now - more than I will ever need. They will probably bury me in one of those pairs, but not soon, one would hope.
Wellies are, of course, Wellingtons, named after the Duke of Wellington who was copying Hessian military boots. Only later did the term refer to rubber, rather than leather, muck boots. History of wellies here. (We have been corrected on one detail - that Wellies were invented by Aigle in 1853, not Hunter in 1858.)
Different sorts of wellies are made for gardening, walking in the rain, European hunting, and American hunting. Ladies look great in them. I am mainly interested in the rugged, uglier varieties which are suitable to northern climes where mud, snow, slush, muck, streams, and marshy areas abound.
Much as I may admire and love the idea of the venerable LL Bean Maine Hunting boot, I tend to return to my rubber boots for all-purpose hunting, wet hiking, snow, marsh work, bird watching, and barn-work: they make you feel that you can go through almost anything. Over the years, the material has improved, and so has the design, so that they are more comfortable, and grip your heel much better so they don't pull off in muck and leave you waving a socked foot helplessly in the air like an idiot.
There are several considerations with rubber boots. (Continued below)
Continue reading "Boots and Wellies Update"
Tuesday, September 16. 2008
I wondered whether conservatives and right-liberals understand left-liberals better than they are understood in return because many of them used to be left-liberals. Peter Risdon, via Thompson. So true. True of most of us here at Maggie's.
Re the subprime mortgage mess, from the intro to an essay by Nassim Nicholas Taleb on the limits of statistics: Statistical and applied probabilistic knowledge is the core of knowledge; statistics is what tells you if something is true, false, or merely anecdotal; it is the "logic of science"; it is the instrument of risk-taking; it is the applied tools of epistemology; you can't be a modern intellectual and not think probabilistically—but... let's not be suckers. The problem is much more complicated than it seems to the casual, mechanistic user who picked it up in graduate school. Statistics can fool you. In fact it is fooling your government right now. It can even bankrupt the system (let's face it: use of probabilistic methods for the estimation of risks did just blow up the banking system).
His (somewhat technical) essay is here.
Prior was an itinerant folk artist from Maine. Some of his work here. This is The Burnish Sisters, 1854: 
 Farms aren't really farms anymore, are they? They have become meat, egg, and milk factories.
California's Proposition 2 seeks to regulate the confinement of these factory animals.
Many businesses fail every day, and that's the way it ought to be. Otherwise, we would still have buggy whip factories in New York City. In Capitalism, failure is not a dirty word. In fact, failures reveal the success of the way things work. While McCain and Obama seek to grab news space by blaming someone or something for the Wall Street business failures, I do not. Businesses come and go, from bait shops to corner lunchrooms to investment banks to car manufacturers. I feel badly for folks who lose their jobs, but otherwise I feel good about the creative destruction that Capitalism provides space for. Business is all about calculated risk: in the end, what profit rewards is risk, regardless of the product. These investment banks were gambling to stay alive in a changing world, and made bad bets. Competition is what hones businesses - and they eventually fall if they cannot keep up or adapt - or behave imprudently, or encounter bad luck. I deal with many business people in my work, and it is my conclusion that the biggest obstacle to business creation, and thus capital creation and job creation and wealth creation, is the government. Note that the biggest screw-ups of the year, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were government agencies. So much for government's role in the financial industry: it inevitably becomes politicized, mediocratized, and corrupted - as with any government involvement in any industry. Few people in government could figure out how to run a candy shop, much less a complex enterprise. Otherwise, they'd be doing it. Related: Tyler Cowen on how regulation made the problems worse. Also on how the hedge funds manage risk better than the investment banks. Also related: How the Dems supported the sub-prime fiasco. Follow the money. And the banks were all too eager to play that game - as long as there were buyers for the junk. A game of musical chairs, as in all bubbles.
VDH on Obamamania - the insane kind Moonbattery on Sarah Palin: ...she is the Anti-Obama: not some slick package disguising a bogus ideology, but a real person. The reason establishment journalists in their condescending phoniness hate her with such sputtering ferocity is that she is us, miraculously poised to dethrone the elite. So much for the Democrat pose of representing the people.
Related, Powerline has a good summary of how the NYT has abused its authority in its coverage of the candidates Related, from an Insty reader: Even here on the UWS you find people who are wavering or are going with McCain. Not the therapists or the ones who read The Nation, and hardly a majority, but plenty of level-headed professionals and so forth. Now extrapolate that phenomenon to the white ethnic (and Oriental) 'hoods in the outer boroughs, then further out to the construction worker, cop, and fireman types on Long Island, Rockland County, etc. Then look at the historical voting patterns of upstate. In play? Closer than anyone thinks, that's for sure.
If Obama loses the election, will it be blamed on racism or on the stupidity of the voters? Of course, it could be something else: Might it not also be true that Barack Obama’s brand of effete, "Democratic" and "elitist" politics just doesn’t sell with the same intensity on America’s first Western frontier as it seems to do on the two coasts and among those in less independent states who look government first for an answer to their hardships? Al Gore’s sure didn’t and John Kerry’s didn’t either. Organization and lectures from self-righteous and indignant Ohio politicians notwithstanding, perhaps Ohioans just don’t like politicians who are taken with the idea that they are better suited than the people to decide what the people ought to do.
Related: Jules discusses the old Beer Factor McCain responds to the reports of Obama's secret undermining our policy in Iraq. We will see whether this is true. Obama abandons his hope and change, decides on a partisan attack approach. Kaus: Outrage at McCain is a loser's game Biden: Vote for Obama because he's black! Does that mean we should vote for Biden because he's white? Obama second largest beneficiary of Fannie and Freddie funds Mark Steyn refers back to his June post. A quote from it: "'Heal the planet'? Is this guy nuts?" To be honest I prefer a republic whose citizenry can muster no greater enthusiasm for their candidate than "stilted cheers" to one in which the crowd wants to hoist the nominee onto their shoulders for promising to lower ocean levels within his first term. As for coming together "to remake this great nation," if it's so great, why do we have to remake it? A few months back, just after the New Hampshire primary, a Canadian reader of mine – John Gross of Quebec – sent me an all-purpose stump speech for the 2008 campaign: "My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it."
Monday, September 15. 2008
h/t, Theo 
Best, clearest summary I have seen yet. The article basically claims that the investment banks are an obsolete business model.
I posed the question yesterday here, If you were a black Conservative. Today, a thoughtful black Lefty, Randall Kennedy, discusses the hopes of black Americans.
I am always out to lunch when it comes to pop culture. I had to look up what a MILF was after that SNL Palin-Clinton skit.
While the democratization of Capitalism via the huge increase in investing by the general public over the past 30 years is a wonderful thing, there is also a downside. The downside is that people complain when they lose, and expect the government to do something about it - or to prevent it. They want to privatize gain but socialize risk. Related: How Fannie and Freddie co-opted the politicians. As Rush says re F and F, where are the investigations? The special prosecutors?
“Zoom!" What was that? That was your life, mate. Oh, that was quick, do I get another? Sorry, that's your lot. Basil Fawlty, as quoted by Gagdad Bob in a piece on the 10th Commandment
 Finish your peas? Who ever made up the idea that vegetables are "healthy," anyway? There's no medical evidence for that at all. Now, too many vegetables shrink your brain. Soup, wine, meat, potatoes and bread is what people need. And pie. OK, maybe an occasional apple, or veggie sauteed in olive oil and garlic - but only for the taste.
Will Obama be scrutinized next? Don't hold your breath. Big-taxer Charlie Rangel in more tax ethics messes. Typical Lib: wants you to pay the taxes, not him. Other WS firms getting the jitters. Ike uncovers Civil War ship in Alabama The War on Poverty is won, and it's over. How UC rigs its admissions process. Their last plan gave them too many Vietnamese. How to master Photoshop in one week. h/t, Insty Brits agree to Sharia law courts. They are insane, suicidal, and pathetically weak. Is Obama an effete pencil-necked weakling? Classical. Or, as John Brummett puts it: Barack Obama has turned into Michael Dukakis, John Kerry and Al Gore. Sarah Palin has turned into Ronald Reagan. C of E apologizes to... Darwin! I'm sure Chuck is grateful. Save the New York Sun! The NYT is deeply concerned about Todd Palin's influence on Sarah. That's funny, they endorsed Hillary. Is the NYT fooling anybody? Why feminists hate Sarah Palin. WSJ. Right. Modern feminism isn't about women's freedom, it's about advancing Socialism. The movement was hijacked. What do Community Organizers do? Tiger. It's not a real job, that's for sure. The Obama story you aren't hearing on the news. The MSM has his back. Related: Obama tried to slow exit of troops from Iraq. Jill Greenberg: Sick or sociopathic? Or both? Seems to have neither integrity nor conscience.
Indeed they are, and they don't mind putting their cards on the table. Quite a remarkable development, really. And the further they go with this, the more they have at stake and the more outlandish their behavior. However, the Repubs are used to this headwind. They have dealt with it since that "dumb, inarticulate" Eisenhower ran against "smart, sophisticated" Adlai Stevenson. Stevenson had a metrosexual taste in ties, like Obama. What's that about?
Robert Samuelson, in Getting Real about Health Care: It's not about coverage. It's about cost, begins: Whoever wins should put health care at the top of his agenda. But the central problem is not improving coverage. It's controlling costs. In 1960, health care accounted for $1 of every $20 spent in the U.S. economy; now that's $1 of every $6, and the Congressional Budget Office projects that it could be $1 of every $4 by 2025. Ponder that: a quarter of the U.S. economy devoted to health care. Would we be better off? Probably not. Countless studies have shown that many diagnostic tests, surgeries and medical devices are either ineffective or unneeded. "More expensive care," notes CBO director Peter Orszag, "does not always mean better care."
Read the whole thing. Of course, the only way to control costs is to limit services. HMOs do that, and people rebel. Besides freedom, what do American people value more than their health (well, plus their guns and Bibles)?
Sunday, September 14. 2008
 From Insty:
ERIC S. RAYMOND: Timing the Entitlements Crash. "The fundamental problem is that income-transfer programs (and the interest service on the debt purchased to keep them running) are spending wealth in higher volumes than the economy can actually generate, and demand for that spending is rising faster than the economy is growing. Thus, raising tax rates is no longer a way out, if it ever was." Remember, if something can't go on forever, then it won't.
Mainstream? This is truly ugly, and desperate. Sarah is bad for your mental health. How to cover a Palin rally. McCain's campaign and the OODA loop Paglia and David Thompson on Palin. If you like Michigan's economy, you'll love Obama's. Obama's big blunder. Does the idea of American exceptionalism sum up this election? The economy pessimists are driven by politics, not facts What's the oldest item in this campaign? Obama's ideas Mankiw: How come so many libs don't give to charity Sowell begins his The Vision of the Left thus: Conservatives, as well as liberals, would undoubtedly be happier living in the kind of world envisioned by the left.
Read the whole thing.
Dylan's Visions of Johanna is one of his many masterpieces, in my opinion. You cannot really absorb the flavor of the song unless you have lived in NYC, used the subways, and lived in non-comfortable quarters and old lofts where the heat pipes cough. The version on Blonde on Blonde is excellent. This is an acoustic live performance from 1966, just audio. The remarkable late-night lyrics are here.
“Wine, sex and baths ruin our bodies, but they are the stuff of life - wine, sex and baths.” The whole piece is here. h/t, Flares 
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