Saturday, February 14. 2009
 "Academia outraged" by crucifixes at Boston College
The future for designer babies
A possible relation between Alzheimer's and herpes simplex
Did Obama lie about Caterpillar?
Did you catch that Atlantic swimmer hoax?
Dark comets threaten the earth
How many of our banks are insolvent? Related: Bank recovery stalls on donations to Congress
How Krugman distorts numbers for Dem agenda. It's only blogs that ever call him on it.
Is this a failed presidency already?
Bill Clinton wants more "fairness" on the radio. How come nobody talks about "fairness" on TV?
Photo: A Theo Valentine
Friday, February 13. 2009
But it passed. No Repubs on board, and 7 Dems against it. We just got screwed, big time. It will take a while for us to find out how badly we got screwed, since nobody has read the thing yet.
As he said, Ayn Rand, call your office.
 Let's say you get your hands on a fascinating 100+ year-old Caucasian rug (like the 3x5 Kuba/Shirvan in the photo), and do not want to destroy it and its history by having it walked on, cat-scratched or dog-chewed or dog-peed. (They were made for bare feet, and all Caucasian rugs were rather small.)
Well, you can hang it like a tapestry - like the work of art which it is, and focus on the details and patterns that you would cease to notice if you put it on the floor.
Rug Rat likes these wall hangers.
I have heard employers and managers commonly remark that "so and so doesn't have the DNA for this job." It's well-known by now that many, if not most, temperaments, talents, personality traits and tendencies have a genetic foundation. With overdetermined things like political attitudes, one might expect those foundations to be obscured by life experience, education, and personal growth.
But they aren't, entirely. Wilson discusses in City Journal. A side point he makes, which I feel is well-taken, in reference to Adorno's famous study of the authoritarian personality and Bouchard's further work on the topic. He says:
In his study of identical twins reared apart, Bouchard concludes that right-wing authoritarianism is, to a large degree, inherited—but he says nothing about the Left. This omission is puzzling, since as Bouchard was studying twins at the University of Minnesota, he was regularly attacked by left-wing students outraged by the idea that any traits might be inherited. A few students even threatened to kill him. When I pointed this out to him, he suggested, in good humor, that I was a troublemaker.
Yet if you ask who in this country has prevented people from speaking on college campuses, it is overwhelmingly leftists. If you ask who storms the streets and shatters the windows of Starbucks coffee shops to protest the World Trade Organization, it is overwhelmingly leftists. If you ask who produces campus codes that infringe on free speech, it is overwhelmingly leftists. If you ask who invaded the classroom of my late colleague Richard Herrnstein and tried to prevent him from teaching, it was overwhelmingly leftists.
He gets it. I never understood the equation of "Right" with Libertarian/Conservatism either. His essay, The DNA of Politics, here.
It is curious how Darwin, evolution, and inheritance is ignored by the rabid Lefties. Unless God is involved. The wacko Left is ever on the march.
 I recently noticed somebody at Samizdata refer to the "client class," but I cannot find the link right now. It is a useful phrase. It refers to those directly or indirectly employed or supported by government (ie their neighbor).
From my perspective, we will watch this client class grow, while those who feed that class diminishes. I am not convinced that this is a good long-term plan, because most of us gave up on Santa a while ago. Last Christmas, for example. I am still waiting and hoping for my pretty pony.
Who will be productive and produce the wealth to pay these bills? The Tooth Fairy?
Our sense of entitlement to an easy life - decadence - will be death to us and to the American can-do spirit. We currently seem to have a "You Can't Do" government and a growing "Can't Do" population. Not good. Weak. Can I say "flaccid"? Not the American "Yankee Doodle, keep it up".
Who the heck do people expect to take care of them? Me? My shoulders are not broad enough to carry that load, but I do carry my own. Plus I pay my taxes (unlike many Dems, apparently. And I give generously to my charities).
One month into a failed Presidency. I did think it was odd that the Admin. had no economic plan, and ceded it all to the Dem House sandbox. Why was there no realistic plan, and just a mix of every Dem Congressman's junk pile?
Big stimulus money for warmists only. The warming biz is hot. No doubt there is plenty of pressure and incentive to come up with the wanted results. Even absent-minded professors know on what side their bread is buttered. They like to eat too, and the grant money they can bring in is their bread and butter. The grants pay their salaries.
Sullivan declares that the GOP has declared war on Obama. I think it is the other way around. When you say "F-you, we won," you aren't being collegial. When you grab the Census, you aren't even being civilized: it's a Chavez-like, Chicago-style power grab. I think the WH is planning to crush the GOP for the next 10 years. Who is using projection here? Me or Sullivan? We viewed the Dem handling of the pork and federal power-grab of the so-called stimulus as a declaration of war.
Read Ray Dalio's 4-page piece in Barron's, if you haven't (we linked a couple of days ago). His macro view, while depressing, makes a lot of sense: It's a D-process. He likes gold right now.
Re the national debt chart we posted this morning: If China is buying all of our federal paper, does that mean that they will own us?
General reminder: When you have the time, it's always worthwhile to see what TimesWatch has to say.
Reagan said "The closest thing we will ever see to eternal life on this earth is a government program." The gummint racket ratchet has no reverse setting. Why the cost estimates of the stimulus are way off. Does anybody imagine that any of these hundreds of new "programs" will ever be cut or dropped when things settle down? I think we taxpayers are being rolled and scammed within an inch of our lives - if not more.
 I found the comments on this CNN Judd Gregg story quite revealing. Man, there is a lot of anger and paranoia out there.
Frederick Kagan: Afghanistan is not Vietnam
Did he or did he not run on a redistribute the wealth platform?
San Francisco: Still insane
Via Mankiw, budget deficits. This will be a big problem for us:
From Sipp:
The people who say they are qualified to micromanage the affairs of the world and everybody and everything in it can't do arithmetic well enough to be a successful bank teller, and can't figure out whether to put an apostrophe in it is.
I've broken ground on many substantial construction projects. We used to paint a shovel to look like it was made of gold, and the bankers and politicians would turn a shovel load of dirt and have their picture taken. Then we'd mount the shovel on a board with an inscription and present it as a keepsake. We used to fashion a box and fill it with sand for the participants, as it was unlikely anyone involved would be capable of turning even one spadeful of real soil from the site.
It's the greatest metaphor possible for today's Zeitgeist. People completely unaware of how anything actually gets done or paid for using an instrument fraudulently tarted up to look valuable to perform a meaningless operation in order to be given credit by the media for everything.
Thursday, February 12. 2009
It's the birthday of Charles Darwin. I'd like to highlight this very observant fellow's most original work, The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animal.
That book has been a gold mine for students of human behavior, and is the foundation of sociobiology.
Finally, it's OK to make jokes about Obama
Bernard Goldberg and the slobbering love affair between Obama and the press
They will not go after that lady whose video we posted last night the way they went after Joe the Plumber/
The press conference: The questioners were pre-picked
The true cost of the stimulus. By the way, the bill is 1473 pages, and the Repubs aren't allowed to read it. The handling of this bill - the largest spending bill in US history - has been a declaration of war on the Repubs.
How Reagan's team built its economic plan
Kondracke: Rush was right about stimulus
Will the stock market recover?
Ten worst cities in the US
NYC's rent control: Insane
Via Town Hall:
In his classic book, "The Conservative Mind," Russell Kirk established his "canons of conservatism," which on Wikipedia, Russello (2004) has abbreviated as follows:
- A belief in a transcendent order, which Kirk described variously as based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law;
- An affection for the "variety and mystery" of human existence;
- A conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize "natural" distinctions;
- A belief that property and freedom are closely linked;
- A faith in custom, convention, and prescription, and
- A recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence.
Bob with the Dean Martin classic. Not sure when this was done. Good photos:
 They removed E-Verify from the "stimulus" bill. Now you can hire all the illegals you want.
The savior-based economy. Michelle.
All expenses paid. Obama orders Palestinian immigration.
No Wilders, but look at the creeps England does allow in. And they want to ban the flag. Why don't they all just get it over with and shoot themselves. Oh, they can't. They gave away their guns.
You are going to pay for this so-called stimulus for a long time. Enjoy it, suckers.
Hollywood's Che Chic
" '[Senate Democrats] don’t know everything that’s in the bill,' said a laughing Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Ways and Committee."
From a Politico post on the deal. What does Rangel care? He doesn't seem to pay his taxes, and he has gotten rather rich as a Congressman.
The laughter is what ticks me off.
The NYT notes that, by living standards, a $50,000 income in Houston provides the same material comforts as $130,000 in the NY metropolitan area. Here's why it's difficult to lead a prosperous life on $500,000 in Manhattan.
Wednesday, February 11. 2009
Remember the lady during the campaign who said Obama will give me free gas for my car and a free house? Well, here's Ms. "I love you Barack." Good grief. It's government-as-parent, or as spouse. Her Grandma should slap her for this self-administered humiliation:
By Bruce Kesler -
 A friend whose relatives valiantly served in US forces in World War II, and lost relatives in combat and concentration camps, credits me with similar heroism for volunteering to serve in the Marine Corps in Vietnam. She said to me recently that she thought of me when she saw the movie Defiance, which I had not yet seen, that I would have been one of those partisans fighting back against the Nazis and locals exterminating the Jews in the Byelorussia where my family came from and the film takes place.
I replied that she gives me too much credit. There is a big difference between my experience and theirs. I was trained by and part of an elite armed service of the most powerful nation on earth. They found themselves running into the forest alone or in a small group, most untrained and devoid of experience in the harsh decisions of survival or war, and fought back against the overwhelmingly powerful occupying Nazis and their local collaborators.
I told my friend that I have asked myself often over the years whether I would or could have had the sense and guts to do what they did, still with no firm answer.
I’ve now seen Defiance, and still am little closer to that personal answer, but a few other questions are answered.
None of us really know what we’ll do under stress or threat until we do, despite whatever our self-image or the guesses we may make. However, experience tells us that being prepared in attitude and training is essential to rising to any challenge, and qualified, decisive, courageous leadership acting with integrity is essential to cohering in an effective organization. Otherwise, we are subject to the whims and follies of others, sometimes fortunately well but often not. When our very lives are at stake, or even our or our children’s financial security, standing around awaiting someone else’s choice of our fate is less likely to be practical.
Relatively few American Jews of my generation chose to serve in our armed forces, and most have adopted near-pacifist attitudes. Many are even conflicted about our brethren in Israel taking the measures necessary in the jaws of survival threats.
Hopefully, as if hope were enough, American Jews will not have to make those decisions for themselves, as did those in Defiance. But, to believe in or counsel being ill-prepared or weak-kneed or effete for those Jews who do have to make those life-saving decisions is dangerously suicidal. To engage in wishful thinking or to evade training or service here in the US is just as dangerous in being unschooled and unprepared for those training to or attacking us as Americans or Jews.
For a discussion of the existential decisions and consequences in the film Defiance, I recommend this review. Then don’t miss seeing the movie.
I will stick to my decision to avoid pathological labelling of those with whom I disagree. BUT I can never stop wondering that it is that causes people to become passive in the face of a threat to one's way of life - assuming it is meaningful. This is surely abnormal, because our species could never have survived with a "roll over and give up" instinct.
In recent history, we have seen those who were reluctant to stand up to the Japanese, the Germans, the Russian Soviet empire, the North Vietnamese/Chinese - and now the Moslem assault, in its various forms, on the West. I did a post about Better Red Than Dead in the past, but I cannot find it in our archives.
Is it a psychological issue (eg masochism, which implies a sexual excitement in being dominated - or an enacted suicidal impulse), is it plain cowardice, is it a kind of hatred for one's own culture or nation? Or is it really just a unicorn and rainbow dreaminess about life (which I tend to view as a psychological defence based in denial of the hard and often cruel reality that people pursue their interests)? I have seem much of the latter, especially in women and in young men who haven't really worked yet. Cases in point:
Brits to Pakistanis: Please don't hurt us
David Thompson: Assume the position
 At AVI. He begins:
For women of the 1930s, emotional stability, dependable character and ambition ranked as the top three characteristics they wanted in a man. Attraction and love didn't come in until No. 5. Today, women, like men, put love at the top of the list, with dependability and emotional stability rounding out the top three characteristics in Mr. Right.
Read the whole thing. It would appear that people have become more romantic in their hopes and dreams.
Stimulus undoes Clinton's welfare reform. Seems like a big deal to me.
"Hell these are Marines. Men like them held Guadalcanal and took Iwo Jima, Baghdad ain't shit."
Major General John F. Kelly to a reporter who asked him if he ever contemplated defeat (h/t, Blackfive)
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Newsweek: 
Scientist: