Thursday, March 11. 2010
Don't let the opposition define you. Am. Thinker
Wednesday, March 10. 2010
Robert Iger, CEO of Walt Disney Company since 2005, plays hard to get what he wants.
Case #1: Not Child Friendly
The New York Times reports today that under pressure from Disney The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood was evicted from the Judge Baker childrens mental health center in Boston that housed and sponsored it for a decade. The Harvard Medical School professor who oversaw the Campaign, psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint, also co-wrote books with Bill Cosby.
The campaign had for years fought Disney’s marketing of the Baby Einstein videos — short videos filled with colors, nature pictures, music and puppets — as educational; it contended that there was no evidence that babies learned anything. Indeed, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time for children under 2.
After the campaign filed a Federal Trade Commission complaint, Disney dropped the word “educational” from its marketing. But that was not enough for campaign officials. They forwarded their research to lawyers who threatened a class-action suit, prompting Disney to offer refunds of $15.99 for up to four Baby Einstein DVDs per household.
Barely two weeks after the story of the refunds appeared, Dr. Poussaint said, he and Dr. Linn were called before the Baker center’s executive board.
Dr. Poussaint wrote the board:
“You told me that the mission of C.C.F.C. — to protect children from harmful exploitation by corporate marketers — is not in line with the Judge Baker mission. Indeed, we were told that we could no longer criticize any corporations, even if they were exploiting children.”…
“It’s really chilling, that any corporation, and particularly one marketing itself as child friendly, would lean on a children’s center,” said Dr. Lynn, a psychiatry instructor at Harvard Medical School. “And it’s heartbreaking that a children’s center would cave in.”
Case #2: Democrat Friendly Exceeds Shareholder Friendly
Disney CEO Robert Iger is known for his support and funding of Democrat politicians and causes. For example, his 2009 political contributions counted by Open Secrets include $25,000 each to the Democratic Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees, a $1000 to Walt Disney World’s Florida-home Republican governor and US Senate primary contender Charlie Crist, then another $14,600 to Democrat Senators.
Iger and Disney have refused to respond to why Disney refuses to sell the distribution rights or to re-air its subsidiary ABC-TV’s docudrama The Path To 9/11. The National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project, a Disney shareholder, has been speaking out at Disney shareholder meetings, including today’s, “warning Disney shareholders that CEO Robert Iger's progressive political bias puts investors at risk.”
"Iger's rejection of several offers to sell the distribution rights of the ABC-TV docudrama, The Path to 9/11, is a sign that his personal political views are affecting business decisions," said Free Enterprise Project director Dr. Tom Borelli, who has raised the issue personally with Iger at past shareholder meetings.
Big Hollywood offered more background.
A $30+ million project that aired without sponsors on two September nights in 2006, The Path to 9/11 dramatized the historical thread that connected the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Islamic attacks on American interests throughout the ‘90s, and the terrorism of that fateful morning in 2001.
Prior to its premiere, the producers at ABC were so proud of the impending project that they had high hopes of airing Path every 9/11 anniversary and showing it in schools across this country as an engaging educational tool – until an accusation of “conservative bias” (horrors!) on the part of the filmmakers quickly spun into liberal hysteria that the project was actually a “well-honed propaganda operation” on the part of a secretive, right-wing network-within-a-network….
Clinton administration alumni, fearing the miniseries would highlight their flaccid response to the growing threat of Islamic extremism and tarnish their political legacy, pulled out all the stops to suppress it. The show very nearly wasn’t aired at all – Robert Iger and Disney were pressured by the Senate Democratic leadership, led by Harry Reid – it hasn’t aired since, and today you cannot even obtain it on DVD.
And why not? Disney President and CEO Robert Iger explains without elaboration that it’s a “business decision.” Oh, well then, case closed. Not only does he refuse to re-air The Path to 9/11 or release a DVD, but he has no intention of even selling the DVD rights to another company. I’m no financial wizard, but I can recognize that, as business decisions go, willfully taking a $30+ million bath on your product when there is a vast audience hungry for it and distributors making offers, is not one of the more lucrative marketing strategies I’ve ever heard of.
Case #3: Lining Own Pockets at Others' Expense
Disney is a leading member of the US travel association’s lobby group, Discover America, that spent millions of dollars to pass its Travel Promotion Act, that was finally recently approved by the Congress and signed by President Obama. It will charge a $10 fee to travelers to the US that will go into a fund to promote tourism to the US. I was on the trail of its misrepresentations, starting in 2007. Tim Carney, muckraker at the Washington Examiner, joined in. Then, in February 2008, Jeff Birnbaum at the Washington Post wrote a 6,746 word expose Mickey Goes To Washington: Lobbyists for America’s richest mouse set out to persuade Congress to scare up $200 million to promote U.S. tourist destinations. In my summary post, which links to my earlier posts on this money-grab by the $1-trillion US tourism industry, I wrote:
The points I’ve been driving home are all there: The statistics Discover America ignores about the strong recovery of post-9/11 international tourism; The cynical marketing by Geoff Freeman, Discover America’s PR specialist; The “inside-beltway” lobbying that swells our federal expenditures and enriches lobbyists and Congressional staff’s future job prospects.
Exposed, the bill stalled until the Democrat Congressional sweep of 2008.
Foreign visitors will surely be thrilled by the added fee. Disney and its travel industry cohorts certainly are at getting others to pay for its own self-promotion efforts.
Isn't that how it works when you go to Disney Land?
We recently posted a link to a homey discussion about how God speaks to us. But here's Gagdad Bob:
God's speech (happily) shatters all human containers for the same reason that a three dimensional sphere shatters a piece of paper.
Male or female? A test to see how you think. h/t, Attack Machine. (Somebody send this to Larry Summers...)
While you take the test, here's this:
:
Back before they had these
they had these:
 White House invents organic Easter eggs. It's about time. Chickens never could figure it out how to produce organic eggs. Sunny-side up or over easy with those recycled wooden government eggs?
Detroit Farms? Makes sense to me.
Cool Baltic shipwrecks. Would love to see the ancient ones.
The NYT as partisan hypocritical hacks, # 3487. h/t, Tiger
Dartmouth's Rob Portman looking good in Ohio
California's College Dreamers - When will students figure out the politicians have sold them out?
Obama Is Late to the Party
Does Government Have To Do Everything? Darn good question. Simple answer: No. We The People aren't morons. In fact, we're the Boss. We create the money that they spend.
Pathetic: Climategate: George Monbiot despairs of the AGW cause – 'There goes my life's work' . Yes, burned up in global warming.
White Trash Barbie. h/t, Vandy
Bob Dylan: Jewish Messiah? Sorry. Just one darn good songwriter and song and dance man.
Fish photo via theo
I hear the Redwings and Grackles croaking and gurgling in the morning, on their way to their breeding marshes further north. The White-Throated Sparrows have begun with their spring song, and, at the same time, I see that my Juncos have left for their breeding grounds on the tundra. The White-Throateds will be leaving now too. See ya next winter, God willing, little fellows.
Redwings:
"I suspect that nationalism became unfashionable not because of Germany, but because it interfered with the spread of communism."
AVI. Germany was sort-of racially imperialistic, not nationalistic in the usual sense. Like Jihad, had they a modern army. We here at Maggie's prefer nationalism, federalism, and localism. Whatever is closest to the real people who pay the tax bills. No "New World Order," thank you. We fear centralism because we know those statist folks are crafty but aren't wise, and that they have their own interests in mind. Our Florentine hero Niccolo understood all that very well.
Shamefully stolen from our pal Surber:
See Dick Morris: The Democrats' Pickett's Charge. And there is more: Obama pushes senators for climate bill. My solution? Add Thorazine to the water in the the Capitol.
"There is no reason to fly through a thunderstorm in peacetime."
Sign over Squadron Ops Desk at Davis-Montham AFB, AZ. Lots more here.
America's great export: Rocket science finance, layers of abstractions and computer modeling, and shadow banking. One quote:
What is shadow banking? It is one of a handful of terms — structured finance is a more technical one, ghostly economics a more evocative one — used to describe the infrastructure of debt finance that provided the conduits for capital from around the world to flow into the American housing sector. It is best understood as a technological innovation amalgamating computing power and probabilistic modeling to vastly expand the various world markets in debt securities. The late journalist Mark Pittman, in an authoritative 2008 report for Bloomberg, called it “the biggest U.S. export business of the twenty-first century”...
Related, how our government does rocket science finance - minus the rocket science.
Tuesday, March 9. 2010
 Image: The American air is getting cleaner.
Gun-free zones: Shooting fish in a barrel
Brit governments putting microchips in garbage cans. h/t. How do the people put up with that crap? Well, The Englishman doesn't.
Stimulants increase learning and learning speed. h/t Insty. Every college kid knows that.
Poll: Young Adults Turn Toward GOP. Change!
Diane Ravitch discouraged by education reform. Schools should be entirely run by and for localities, not by the Feds and not by the unions. That's how reform can happen. The famous Albert Shanker quote: "When schoolkids get union cards is when we'll worry about their interests." Something like that.
Effects of CO2 are logarithmic, not linear. That's High School math. Is it part of the computer models?
Feminists: College gals should drink, Yes means No, and campus rape definitions. I thought the feminists said all hetero sex was rape.
Don't hold your breath for The New World Order
Bucknell: You cannot debate the 2009 Dem stimulus package. Too controversial for college?
 Florida, sugar, government and the Everglades: The corporate State
Not predicted by the models: South Pole cooling, ice increasing
Doc:
...if I am ever told I have to see every patient who wants to see me and the government determines both the appropriate treatment and the fee I can charge, I will retire and find another way to make a living. (Maybe I will be so disturbed by the changes in my profession that I would need to go on Disability?)
WHT?
This exciting new project is aimed at increasing public awareness of the links between climate change, poverty and child rights, and engaging ...
Good grief. Those are some crazy links!
The Census: "My race is human"
Doug Hoffman is back! He'll win.
John says the O is an ignoramus about insurance costs. Maybe he is, or maybe it simply does not serve the narrative to mention the reality that if coverages are mandated, costs increase.
Evil, evil Drudge. Do not look at his site!
Are we allowed to have two per day? Previous one was from Lenin, this from Nancy Pelosi on health care:
“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
Vladimir Lenin: “Socialized Medicine is the Keystone to the Arch of the Socialist State.”
Of course it is. With it, they control your very life. For your own good. I mean, for the "Greater Good," or for "Society." Whoever they are. Never met them.
 Joseph Schumpeter ominously speculated that as capitalism succeeded, democracies in time would come to expect its end (wealth) but reject its means (free-market competition). He worried that because of the inequality and creative destruction it brings, capitalism would provoke a kind of adverse reaction. A popular call would arise for government to plan market outcomes according to some utopian view of society's good, and this democratically guided central planning would inevitably slow economic growth. Schumpeter predicted, in turn, that if economic expansion faltered, individual liberty would be directly imperiled or quietly ceded by citizens resigned to having their diminished economic position protected by the state.
We hear more voices these days yearning for a benevolent autocracy, including the creepy Thomas Friedman. The whole terrific essay, Can Democracy Survive Capitalism?, at Claremont Review.
Photo: Kim Jong-il, beloved, benevolent, altruistic autocrat who understands everything and who only cares about what is best for his people
 Alas, the man's name does a disservice to the brilliant Florentine Renaissance political scientist and student of human nature that he was.
However, I did not know that he wrote comedy on the side. Another Renaissance Man, as it were.
I like his face: shrewd and discerning, but ready to laugh.
"Princes and governments are far more dangerous than the other elements within society.”
- Niccolo Machiavelli
The Dems and the O are always about talking and negotiating endlessly with other countries, and never drawing a line. But with their fellow Americans, 'The time for talk is over.'
Thus an accommodating attitude towards enemies, and a warlike attitude towards Americans.
It suppose that is change.
"It's not that some people need more sleep than others, it's that some people sleep faster than others."
Peter DeVries
 Cover image via Jonah
You like him; how can you tell if a guy likes you back? h/t Linkiest
Harvard Law Prof Bill Stuntz Talks of His Impending Death, Faith
No Tweeting: Last year, a San Francisco Superior Court judge dismissed 600 potential jurors after several acknowledged going online to research the criminal case before them
Pinkerton:
Sen. Lautenberg voted for the Senate proposal that would have denied him the free choice that probably saved his life.
Euroland: Coming Soon: Gravity to be Legislated!
3 good reheated ones at Thompson
Twit is legend in his own mind: Friedman Aflame - The Times columnist’s mind melts fact and reason into nonsense. Can we say "narratives"?
Gore: Organized Campaign Behind Climate Skeptics. Yes, and Maggie's Farm is the well-funded HQ of the cabal.
Believes in NBC-driven media: NBC’s Chuck Todd Blasts “Drudge Driven Journalism”
Surber's Good v. Evil
Riehl: The Traveling ObamaCare Salvation Show
You know what America needs now? A brutal political battle over amnesty
Geert Wilders speaks in London
Green jobs scam
Via Q&O:
Mr Obama benefited in his campaign from an idiotic level of idolatry, in which most of the media participated with an astonishing suspension of cynicism.
Indeed.
Rep opposes school choice for his constituents. Does he oppose school choice for the Obama girls?
"He says he opposes an increase in charter schools, even though many of his constituents seem to want more of them, because he believes they have allowed the mayor and the schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, to abdicate their responsibility to improve Harlem’s regular elementary schools, which have shrunk as more parents have chosen charters."
Steyn on the Oscars:
It was fun when Marlon Brando had his award picked up by Sachem Littlefeather, Apache Indian and President of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee, protesting about the treatment of Indians by Hollywood. It was even better when she turned out to be Maria Cruz, struggling actress and Miss American Vampire of 1970. It was touching, in 1977, when Debby Boone sang `You Light Up My Life’ backed by a chorus of 11 children from the John Tracy Clinic for the Deaf interpreting the lyric in sign language. It was even more poignant when it subsequently emerged that they were just regular Equity kids pretending to be deaf and that the signing was complete gibberish. Ah, happy days.
Monday, March 8. 2010
A not uncommon, non-migratory yardbird in New England. Info here. This male Cardinal from my place today:
Two posts about Marxism on Maggie's in two days! That's a record. And now for a third:
The Left in the Western World, such as it is, remains Marxist at core. I have read and studied Marx, as has Mead. They have some worthwhile and interesting insights into psychology, sociology, and human nature.
The problem is their reductionism. The rare people in the modern world with fresh new insights - eg Freud, Marx and Engels, Adam Smith, Burke, etc. often find their notions reduced to simplistic, reductionistic equations which they might not have anticipated.
Re Marx and Engels, every human is, in part, Homo economicus. But only in part. Humans are also Homo spirito, Homo ludens, Homo conflictus, Homo everything. That's why freedom is so important, if we accept our Western idea of the uniqueness and, almost, sanctity (not almost, if one has religion) of the individual.
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Proof that Maggie's is a Centrist website: 