Tuesday, February 9. 2010
 The Harvard Psychedelic Club: Did LSD really kill the 1950s?
Is it a tragedy for languages to be lost?
Re the Trapp family, here's a good chronology
Pajamas: Hard truths about the immigration debate
At Volokh: What is the EU all about? I think it's about a bureaucratic empire and unelected mandarins who know what is best for the little people
Please, no! Coming together on a climate bill
Pam Geller destroys Reagan Jr
Thinking about John Jay of Rye and Katonah, NY
Day 386 of Chicago-style politics. Related, even Newsweek is worried (h/t, Dino)
George Will: Charting our way to solvency
The Antitrust Exemption For Health Insurers: Meaningful Or Not?
Will Wilkerson uses the quote below as a take-off point to try to understand the Progressive's view of the Constitution:
The majority in Citizens United believe that the U.S. Constitution establishes a government of limited and defined powers. They asked: “Does the Constitution give government the power to prohibit speech by corporations (and others)?” The First Amendment indicated the government did not have that power.
The critics of the Citizens United decision assume the Constitution created a government of plenary powers with limited exceptions. They recognize that free speech for individuals is one such exception.
The short post is Two Conceptions of Government Power.
Of course, we tend to think that the Constitution already resolved these issues. Furthermore, we view government as an interest group itself - or assemblage of interest groups (the political classes, those dependent on government for jobs or money, etc etc) with unique powers (such as police powers) rather than as a purely benign and altruistic expression of "the will of the people."
Monday, February 8. 2010
From Ben Stein's piece of the above title:
What would my ancestors from the 15th century, probably one day away from starvation each day, have thought about their descendant living in a home with palm trees and a swimming pool and another with a view of the Pacific Ocean? What would they have thought of me being able to appear on a little lighted box so millions of people could see me at once?
What would they have thought of the fact that my father, also their descendant, closely advised presidents of a land they never knew of but that would become the most powerful, most glorious place in the history of man?
I even think of my grandfather, my father’s father, who came here as a fatherless boy and served for many years as a U.S. Army cavalryman. Not in a plane or on a tank, but on a horse . . . What would he think of the fact that his little boy, my father, who helped out with the bills by delivering newspapers in Detroit and Schenectady, would have the ear of world leaders?
What would he, who was unemployed during most of the Great Depression, think of me swimming endlessly in my pool under starry skies as my dogs slumber on the lounges?
I think of the specific luck of Ben Stein to be in America, but I also think of the luck of every American just to be in America.
Jay Cost at RCP with America is not Ungovernable. A quote:
The solution the country ultimately settled on had five important features: checks and balances so that the branches would police one another; a large republic so that majority sentiment was fleeting and not intensely felt; a Senate where the states would be equal; enumerated congressional powers to limit the scope of governmental authority; and the Bill of Rights to offer extra protection against the government.
The end result was a government that is powerful, but not infinitely so. Additionally, it is schizophrenic. It can do great things when it is of a single mind - but quite often it is not of one mind. So, to govern, our leaders need to build a broad consensus. When there is no such consensus, the most likely outcome is that the government will do nothing.
The President's two major initiatives - cap-and-trade and health care - have failed because there was not a broad consensus to enact them. Our system is heavily biased against such proposals. That's a good thing.
Yes, it is a good thing. And, in general, government doing nothing is a good thing.
President Obama epitomizes Abba Eban’s summation of the Palestinians, never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Palestinians insist on destroying Israel, regardless of concessions, declining steps that improve relations, repeating bromides that fail to meet facts. President Obama, likewise, insists on a total upheaval of modern health care, regardless of compromises, declining widely supported incremental steps, repeating support for the various Democrat health care bills whose details are overwhelmingly rejected by Americans.
Instead of cooperating for widely supported steps to improve health care, President Obama called for a televised half-day “summit” in which Republicans are supposed to take as their starting point the Democrats’ health care bills, instead of starting from scratch with Republican proposals. The New York Times labels it a “gambit” in the first paragraph of its report. Then,
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said in a statement that he welcomed the bipartisan meeting on health care and called on the president to begin the dialogue “by shelving the current health spending bill.”
“The fact is Senate Republicans held hundreds of town halls and met with their constituents across the country last year on the need for health care reform, outlining ideas for the step-by-step approach that Americans have asked for,” Mr. McConnell said. “And we know there are a number of issues with bipartisan support that we can start with when the 2,700-page bill is put on the shelf.”
When asked by Ms. Couric if he would agree to discard the bill and start over, the president said he would not. The starting point, aides said, would be with the proposals that passed the House and Senate.
Obama insists on 1967 or 1947 lines despite “facts on the ground” a la Palestinians, instead of working together. Indeed, as Senators Grassley and Snowe found when trying to work together, the Democrats my-way-or-the-highway forced them to take the high way, the Democrats taking the low way.
I outlined last Friday, in a 711 word op-ed in the San Diego Union-Tribune, ten separable, incremental steps to health care improvements. They don’t require thousands of tiny type pages of imposed, centralized, statist regulations like the Democrats’ schemes. They don’t require throwing out the baby with the bath water. They build on what successfully exists, which most Americans are satisfied with. Most Americans agree with these steps. They are not partisan. Indeed, they contain many elements of Democrat preferences. There are other such steps that a true summit could address.
Instead, Obama wants a campaign-mode, one-sided event, never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Jules Crittendon adds an "ouch" and then some to Obama's "reality TV."
Highly recommended and hilarious: Pat Condell on the Saudis, human rights - and England. Pithy, as always.
Form Rick Moran:
There are few human beings on planet earth more annoying than Deepak Chopra, the touchy-feely, New Age Guru whose fetid, gooey, and completely banal nostrums regarding health and healing have reached a new low in the history of civilized thought.
But, Rick, remember that he has gotten fabulously rich from his banal nostrums. So maybe he's not a complete idiot. Maybe he is our P.T. Barnum.
 I cannot keep up with the uncovering of the global warming scam. Now it's Africagate. Where is Fearmonger-in-Chief Al Gore hiding?
And even more! Now we have Alaska Glaciergate as a companion piece to Himalayan Glaciergate. Related at Driscoll: The global warming guerillas. A quote:
Journalists are wont to moan that the slow death of newspapers will mean a disastrous loss of investigative reporting. The web is all very well, they say, but who will pay for the tenacious sniffing newshounds to flush out the real story? ‘Climategate’ proves the opposite to be true. It was amateur bloggers who scented the exaggerations, distortions and corruptions in the climate establishment; whereas newspaper reporters, even after the scandal broke, played poodle to their sources.
Where is Big Oil? Not in the US
How about Mitch Daniels?
The t-shirt story at Powerline: But Enough About Me. What Do You Think About Me? (By the way, the lady did have medicalinsurance.)
A joke: Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island. (h/t, Jules). Legal Insurrection (of RI) has a new mission.
Am Thinker: Desperate Times and Left-Wing Psy-Ops
$ and politics:
The House Democrats' campaign operation has a significant cash advantage over its Republican counterpart: $16.6 million to $2.7 million. And incumbents are fund-raising in anticipation of competitive contests. Florida's Mr. Grayson said Wednesday that his $861,000 fourth-quarter haul was more than any other Democratic candidate's.
From Fracking the Academic Left:
I've spent decades trying to teach college students, and I think I can say after all these years that I've never succeeded in educating anyone. Not even one. Occasionally education has been seen to happen in my classes, or at least I would like to believe so. But education always comes from within. Students bring their eagerness to learn with them; you can't make them educated any more than a parent can "grow" a child. People aren't carrots. You can't "grow" them.
Sex Week at Yale
Sunday, February 7. 2010
 I love this quote from Reagan (if you didn't hear, this weekend would have been his 99th birthday). Borrowed from Moonbattery:
Right now ... I'm looking down on a busy city at rush hour. The streets below are twin ribbons of sparkling red and white.
I wonder about the people in those cars, who they are, what they do, what they are thinking about as they head for the warmth of home and family. Come to think of it, I've met them - oh, maybe not those particular individuals, but still I feel I know them. Some of our social planners refer to them as "the masses" which only proves they don't know them. I've been privileged to meet people all over this land in the special kind of way you meet them when you are campaigning. They are not "the masses," or as the elitists would have it - "the common man." They are very uncommon. Individuals each with his or her own hopes and dreams, plans and problems, and the kind of quiet courage that makes this whole country run better than just about any other place on earth.
January 27, 1978
I do not know how many of Lorenzo di Medici's country villas are extant, but he helped design a few of them, one of which was an architectural inspiration for Palladio.
This one, sitting on the hills overlooking Florence, was built by Cosimo for his second grandson Giovanni, and came into Lorenzo's hands after his brother was assassinated by a cabal which included the Pope. It became one of Lorenzo's favorite hangouts with his philosopher, artist, and poet pals (and girlfriends).
(By the way, we recommend staying in Fiesole when visiting Florence, and it's just a 15-minute bus ride down the hill. November and May are good months.)
Is wearing fraudulent medals of valor just a harmless pick-up line?
Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University's law school who is not involved in the two cases, said the Stolen Valor Act raises constitutional questions because it bans bragging or exaggerating about yourself."Half the pickup lines in bars across the country could be criminalized under that concept," he said.
The AP reports that defense attorneys in two Stolen Valor prosecutions are challenging the constitutionality of the Stolen Valor Act, passed unanimously in the US Senate and by acclamation in the House in late 2006. They say, the AP reports, “the First Amendment protects almost all speech that doesn't hurt someone else. Neither man has been accused by prosecutors of seeking financial gain for himself.” In rebuttal, “Craig Missakian, a federal prosecutor in the California case, said deliberate lies are not protected. He said that the Constitution gives Congress the authority to raise and support an army and that this includes, by extension, ‘protecting the worth and value of these medals.’ ”
First Amendment scholars may find this case "interesting," but it means more than an item of interest to those affected.
A noted First Amendment defender, law professor Eugene Volokh filed an amicus brief, in which his draft says, although “the [Supreme] Court has never articulated a clear rule for which knowingly false statements of fact are constitutionally protected and which are not,”
… But though the Stolen Valor Act does treat some false statements differently from others, it appears to fit within one of the exceptions to the R.A.V. principle: “the nature of the content discrimination is such that there is no realistic possibility that official suppression of ideas is afoot.” Id. at 390. False claims of military honors are not limited to any particular viewpoints, or even particular topics of debate. They can equally be raised by people who are anti-war, who are pro-war, or who are just trying to get themselves elected to an office that is entirely unrelated to the military.
CONCLUSION
For these reasons, the Stolen Valor Act, if read to apply only to knowingly false representations, is likely facially constitutional.
I spoke with BJ Burkett, whose book Stolen Valor led to the 2006 Act. Burkett says, as does the federal prosecutor above,“The decorations are part and parcel of the Constitution creating the military, and anything that denigrates that weakens the Constitution.” In an age where strict respect for the Constitution is chancy, that argument may not hold. But, the fraud statutes are not challenged, at least where fraudulent gain is involved, and specific frauds do have additional prohibitions. Further, false claims that demonstrably cause harm to others are upheld, from “yelling fire in a crowded theater” to falsely claiming not to carry H.I.V. and infecting a bar pick-up.
So, where does that leave the constitutional issue in the Stolen Valor challenges? Many liberals and conservatives should be in a quandary. Many liberals support “hate crime” and “hate speech” laws when aimed at designated groupings. Many conservatives oppose restrictions on “freedom of speech.” On the other hands, veterans in general, and medals of valor recipients in particular, are a grouping that earned elevated respect, and free speech is constitutionally limited when causing demonstrable harm.
So, is there demonstrable harm in falsely claiming medals of valor?
It is clear that almost all veterans and medals of valor recipients, along with a unanimous Congress, believe there is, which should be prosecuted. It is clear that such frauds gain honors they do not deserve. Indeed, many also materially gain, in direct benefits and prestige used to further their careers. For example, there are more claimants at the VA to being POWs, who receive a medal, than were. Taxpayers are harmed, as well as other vets who are placed on lower priority.
This is not a right to burn the flag, our nation’s flag not being specifically mentioned in the Constitution, and not analogous in that burning a symbol may hurt patriots’ feelings but falsely claiming medals of valor directly contravenes the sole lawful authority of the DOD to issue them.
It is important to note here that the reluctance of the DOD to create a comprehensive database of legitimate medals of valor recipients is inexcusable. (I wrote about it here.)
Burkett hopes that the prominence of this challenge may lead to the DOD getting its act together, and to raising the penalty from a misdemeanor to a felony. Look at this gay clown claiming unearned medals of valor to support "gay rights."
A friend was enthusing about (Habanos) Romeo y Julietas the other day. He views them as the best brand. Photo is their medium strength 42 ring gauge Corona - a good "starter cigar." Now that cigar appreciation is no longer the yuppie fad that it had been for a while, it's OK to enjoy them again.
A reader referred us to a Weisberg post at Slate, subtitled Blame the childish, ignorant American public—not politicians—for our political and economic crisis.
I don't know what he means by "political crisis." The essay does seem to reinforce our post yesterday about liberal condescension. However, does he have a point or not, here?
Sixty percent of Americans want stricter regulations of financial institutions. But nearly the same proportion says we're suffering from too much regulation on business. That kind of illogic—or, if you prefer, susceptibility to rhetorical manipulation—is what locks the status quo in place.
At the root of this kind of self-contradiction is our historical, nationally characterological ambivalence about government. We want Washington and the states to fix all of our problems now. At the same time, we want government to shrink, spend less, and reduce our taxes. We dislike government in the abstract: According to CNN, 67 percent of people favor balancing the budget even when the country is in a recession or a war, which is madness. But we love government in the particular: Even larger majorities oppose the kind of spending cuts that would reduce projected deficits, let alone eliminate them.
Let me put the hypothetical question this way: What Federal programs would you cut or eliminate (in addition to the Federal Dept of Education) which affect you or your family personally?
Luke 5:1-11
5:1 Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God,
5:2 he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets.
5:3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.
5:4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch."
5:5 Simon answered, "Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets."
5:6 When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break.
5:7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.
5:8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!"
5:9 For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken;
5:10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who are partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people."
5:11 When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.
Saturday, February 6. 2010
A 15 mpg clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year uses 800 gallons of gas a year. A 25 mpg vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year uses 480 gallons a year.
So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce US gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year. They claim 700,000 clunkers were turned-in, so that's 224 million gallons saved per year. That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil. 5 million barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption.
More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $70 per barrel costs about $350 million dollars. So, the government paid $3 billion of our tax dollars to save $350 million. We spent $8.57 for every dollar we saved.
I'm pretty sure they will do a great job with our health care, though.
In the (now, sadly, defunct) New York Sun:
Given the nearly total absence of fanfare, you could be excused for not knowing that this was the quincentenary of Andrea Palladio's birth. Generally it is a kind of condescension to treat the great cultural figures of the past as though, in some sense, they were, or needed to be, our contemporaries. And yet a respectable case could be made that, of all the architects who lived before the 20th century, few were as influential as Palladio (1508-80) or came closer, in the arc of their reputation, to being what we would now call a "starchitect."
Read the whole thing.
Here's Wiki on Palladio. Below is a photo of Villa Capra, aka Villa Rotunda, in Vicenza.
A quickie for dessert? Restaurant bathroom trysts.
I guess amore is sometimes just overwhelmingly urgent, like diarrhea. Been there, but never when fully sober. I remember in the 70s when the only thing going on in restaurant bathrooms was people doing lines of coke with rolled-up $100 bills.
It is performed standing up, I assume, like the coke.
Rightly or wrongly, they used to call these people "not college material." h/t Capt. Capitalism who thinks these things should have been learned in High School. I'd say Grade School. Readin, ritin, and rithmatic, right?
Who are the Tea Partiers? THEY ARE STARVING CANNIBAL MARTIANS WHO HAVE COME FOR YOUR CHILDREN AND PETS!!!!
Related: Tom Tancredo acts like a total jerk. Not funny, Tom.
The maybe coming Iranian Revolution. I hope they go for it.
Vanderleun: "Scientists said" is becoming the numero uno phrase that gripes my ass.
Krauthammer: The Electorate vs. Obama's Agenda
Why Antagonize China? The revitalization of Asian capitalism is the most important positive event in the world in the last 30 years.
Jules on Brown:
Whether Scott Brown realizes it or not, his future is not entirely in his hands. Their are people out there who have plans for him, and this has all the makings of an epic ride that doesn’t necessarily end well for him. Hang on. Remember that thing about getting a dog if you want a friend in DC.
Insty:
WAIT, I THOUGHT CALLING PEOPLE SOCIALISTS WAS A “SMEAR.” Gallup: Majority of Dems View Socialism Positively.
Related: A Stroll Down Extremism’s Memory Lane.
In response to a question asking Democratic Party delegates whether they felt George W. Bush was legitimately elected in 2000, fully 91% of respondents said he wasn’t. The poll also noted the response rate of self-identified Dems overall, 78% of whom thought Bush’s 2000 election was illegitimate (question 56).
Just for perspective.
Obama Reverses on Bankers. Like it or not...
First India throws the IPCC overboard - now the Netherlands. Oh, and now China. It's difficult to keep up. England, too:
Despite active measures by the BBC and the liberal Guardian newspaper to suppress climategate revelations, other media outlets like the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, and the TimesOnline have picked up the slack and have run story after story about the fraud, the bad science, and the shameful actions of scientists in trying to suppress opposing viewpoints.
The Economist: Neither the president nor Congress shows any sign of knowing how to tackle the deficit. Related from VDH: Is Greece our future?
However much people may want global warming (the warmists want it for their narrative and for their grant $, and people like me because we think it would be good for humans), the scientists worry: Signs of Damage to Public Trust in Climate Findings
Obama picks campaigning over leading
 Story by Alexander in the WaPo. One quote:
...even with Democratic fortunes on the wane, leading liberals insist that they have almost nothing to learn from conservatives. Many Democrats describe their troubles simply as a PR challenge, a combination of conservative misinformation -- as when Obama charges that critics of health-care reform are peddling fake fears of a "Bolshevik plot" -- and the country's failure to grasp great liberal accomplishments. "We were so busy just getting stuff done . . . that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are," the president told ABC's George Stephanopoulos in a recent interview. The benighted public is either uncomprehending or deliberately misinformed (by conservatives).
This condescension is part of a liberal tradition that for generations has impoverished American debates over the economy, society and the functions of government -- and threatens to do so again today, when dialogue would be more valuable than ever.
Liberals have dismissed conservative thinking for decades, a tendency encapsulated by Lionel Trilling's 1950 remark that conservatives do not "express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas." During the 1950s and '60s, liberals trivialized the nascent conservative movement. Prominent studies and journalistic accounts of right-wing politics at the time stressed paranoia, intolerance and insecurity, rendering conservative thought more a psychiatric disorder than a rival.
Read the whole thing. For many, we think, Liberalism is a matter of social fashion; conformist, self-congratulatory, conspicuously virtuous and "open-minded" (not that I think it is virtuous or open-minded at all - how many Liberals check out Maggie's for fresh views on things?). It says that they aren't rubes, but rather "caring," sophisticated, and bien pensant. Part of the crowd, acceptable. Nice.
I don't think that we Maggie's Farmers are morons or uncaring even though we do like our guns and our Bibles and our Constitution and our ceegars...and lots of other things.
I also think that the condescension often passes over into raw hate, as Dr. Bliss discussed recently. Related, see Liberal Hate Speech at Am. Thinker.
Photo is Lionel Trilling, a neurotic Liberal who also had interesting things to say about literature.
Pastures of Plenty
It's a mighty hard row that my poor hands have hoed
My poor feet have traveled a hot dusty road
Out of your Dust Bowl and Westward we rolled
And your deserts was hot and your mountains was cold
I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes
I slept on the ground in the light of the moon
On the edge of the city you'll see us and then
We come with the dust and we go with the wind
California, Arizona, I harvest your crops
Well it's North up to Oregon to gather your hops
Dig the beets from your ground, cut the grapes from your vine
To set on your table your light sparkling wine
Green pastures of plenty from dry desert ground
From the Grand Coulee Dam where the waters run down
Every state in the Union us migrants have been
We'll work in this fight and we'll fight till we win
It's always we rambled, that river and I
All along your green valley, I will work till I die
My land I'll defend with my life if it be
Cause my pastures of plenty must always be free.
You can listen to Guthrie singing the song below. Photo on top is Guthrie in 1946.
Friday, February 5. 2010
 We have found her travel books - "Exceptional Places to Stay" - to be spot on, especially if you seek local color and prefer to avoid the international hotel chains.
|
