Friday, September 10. 2010
That's Mead, on America in autumn, 2010. A quote:
Fall has always struck me as the most American of seasons. This isn’t just about football and the world series. Fall is the Puritan time: we are less interested in gathering rosebuds than in storing up nuts; winter is coming and we need to prepare. Enough of the lazy consumerism of summer; it is almost with relief that Americans roll up their sleeves for the start of a new working year.
This particular rentrée does not, however, find the country in good spirits. According to the Real Clear Politics average, more than 61% of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. With unemployment at 9.6% and underemployment double that, almost one out of five Americans who want full-time jobs can’t get them. Trillions of dollars in home equity and stock market value has disappeared since 2007, while the federal debt has skyrocketed. China and India are growing blazingly fast; even Germany is growing faster than the United States these days.
Thursday, September 9. 2010
 - Jacobson says:
...when I think of Obama's pathological obsession with the top 2% of the population, I think of someone in an ideological death grip. And he is dragging the rest of us down with him.
The O admin hates people like me, professionals and small businessmen. They want to rape us to pay for crap we do not want and yet guys like Obama and other limo Libs have far more money in the bank than I have. I spend most of what I make, after paying my taxes and feeding my pension. (Not happy about that, but that's the way my otherwise wonderful life is right now.)
- Via TigerHawk's storm tab dump:
Ross Douthat pens another excellent column in yesterday’s New York Times. He observes that “obsessing about the paranoia of the masses is often a way for American elites to gloss over their own, entirely nonsymbolic failures.” For example, “Today, establishment liberals would much rather fret about the insanity of the Republican base than reckon with the unpopularity of Barack Obama’s domestic program.”
Yup. Douthat's column is well-worth reading for a number of the points that it makes about paranoia in American politics.
Sorry about the above link - the greedy capitalist pigs at the NYT want you to pay for reading Douthat's piece. Pay for Douthat? Gimme a break.
- A fine Krugman bash at American Thinker: Public Nuisance at the New York Times. Does anybody take Krugman seriously anymore?
- Cooley in Forbes: Why framing the wrong problem killed the summer of recovery.
- How is insulting your readers a good business plan? The dead tree press has killed itself by condescending to their readers, as if journalists were some sacred font of wisdom and virtue.
- Obama Underwrites Irresponsibility — Again. It's about housing prices. I oppose the mortgage interest deduction, myself. Get rid of that and all the other government distortions of the housing market, and find out what houses are really worth. What's wrong with renting, anyway? Everybody with a mortgage is essentially renting from a bank, albeit usually in a heavily-leveraged and risky manner arranged such that you take the risk, and the bank gets paid (normally).
Politicians of all stripes hate free markets, because free markets aren't political. Free markets are just the expression of the free choices of free people. In daily life, free markets are more of an expression of a free people than is voting. Government interference with markets distorts values and pricing, mainly to buy votes so politicians can keep their easy jobs and perks and egos. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
 Kudlow: The business of America is business
James K. Glassman in the Wall Street Journal: “Subsidy as a Way of Life”
Victor Hanson on Multiculturalism
Health Insurers Plan Hikes Rate Increases Are Blamed on Health-Care Overhaul; White House Questions Logic
Golly gee, there's weather outside. Revkin discovers weather, feels worried. I know how he feels: There never used to be weather, and now there is. Take a Valium, and it will be fine.
Stossel: Entrepreneurs Under Attack
Obama vs. Boehner . America yawns.
“Party of Limbaugh is Polling Great”
I agree that rules are often confusing: Letters Show Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) Steered CBC Scholarship Money Directly to Her Grandsons
“The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us” says Castro. And Roger Simon wonders whether Fidel is Jewish.
The textbook bubble.
The Obama economy
AVI: A new way of thinking about Liberalism
Ace: Are You Ready For The Chris Christie Fall Tour? I am.
Vanderleun: An Open Letter to Democrats Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Was Not Enuf
NYPD Top Cop: Planned Koran Burning Is "Dangerous" Rude, foolish, and provocative as heck to ignorant, grievance-seeking people who have no clue about American freedoms. As with the mosque, being legal doesn't make it right.
Speaking of our constabulary, Chaos After Cop Dares Shoot Drunken Knife-Wielding Reconquistador. Yes, the guy needed a hug instead.
Obama Writes His Thesis Statement. Same old...
Gotta love the nerve of these jerks: Harry Reid: "I had nothing to do with" bad economy. In my view, there is little government can do to help a free-market economy, but much it can do to damage it. Its efforts to "help" are usually efforts to undo their damage by adding new layers of damage.
Wednesday, September 8. 2010
A freebie for Conservatives:
"Do you want a representative from (here), or do you want a representative from San Francisco? ... because my opponent has voted with Nancy Pelosi (x %) of the time. I want to represent you, not the people of San Francisco."
Above via Legal Ins. Not seen in MA. The "9 mm inside" is cool, but a 9 isn't really all that daunting to me.
A deer hit my car. Both are dead, but we'll eat the deer.
Climate: New study slashes estimate of icecap loss
Reason: The Ruling Class - Scenes from the class struggle on the American right
Overlawyered: A round-up of legal craziness
Underfunded govt pensions: We are altering the deal...
The Schools Scandal:
American spending on public education, adjusted for inflation, has more than doubled over the last three decades. What did taxpayers get for their money?
The average math and reading scores of American 17-year-olds have not improved since the early 1970s, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress long-term trend assessment.
If the polls are reliable, it seems that Chávez will be tested on September 26.
Driscoll: ‘Something Weird Happens When Presidencies Go Wrong’
Reb: SOROSIS: A Disease of the Mind
What's wrong with Pax Americana?
Are Heat Records Due To CO2? Ooops, No New Hot Record Temps In Last 30+ Years
I want my MTV: Europe goes on strike
Tuesday, September 7. 2010
The New York Daily News editorial today is titled "Academically incorrect: Brooklyn College book choice makes a mockery of education."
This comes in reaction to my blog posts (here, here and here), which the New York Post, New York Times, and many other blogs have also featured.
Today's New York Daily News editorial:
The faculty at Brooklyn College chooses one book each year that will be required reading for nearly all incoming freshmen. This year's choice, "How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America," has generated controversy.
Up front and for the record: President Karen Gould and her professorial force are free to assign whatever works they choose - even if academic excellence takes second place to offering students an unchallenging, feel-good bonding experience.
But that freedom comes with the responsibility to provide inquiring minds with the straight goods about the literature they've been ordered to read. Here, by all the evidence, Brooklyn College has failed.
"How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?" was written by Moustafa Bayoumi, an English professor at the school. The book is a collection of seven profiles of Arab-American youths living in Brooklyn after 9/11. Each is a victim in one way or another.
Akram works in his family's East Flatbush bodega, which one resident boycotts because "they support Bin Laden"; Rasha and her family are roused from bed and held in detention as suspected terrorists, then released; Sami, a Marine, deploys to Iraq, where fellow soldiers call him a terrorist because of his background.
College officials say the book is in line with previous selections, such as Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes." In their telling, the reading is meant to mirror the diversity of the student body, particularly its immigrant experience.
But to treat Bayoumi's book as nothing more than an anthology of coming-to-America stories is supremely false advertising. This is not a memoir, but a polemic.
Bayoumi chose the profiles to support his argument that social attitudes have combined with the effects of U.S. foreign policy to deprive Muslims and Arab-Americans of civil rights, with the effects felt most severely by the young.
Had he chosen to tell stories of seven other Arab-Americans, people who immigrated from, say, Lebanon or Syria and followed well-trodden paths to success, he could have just as easily titled his book, "How Does it Feel to Live in the Land of Opportunity?"
Bayoumi sees America more darkly. In the book's afterword, he writes that "Muslims and Arabs are scrutinized for sedition at every turn," that Arab-American life includes "substantial government surveillance and repression," that "today, everyone - immigrant and citizen, activist and spectator - has become vulnerable," that "spies and government informants have penetrated Muslim-American communities" and that "torture has been normalized into American culture."
In sum, he asserts, "What we are currently living through is the slow creep of imperial high-handedness into the rest of American society, performed in the name of national security and facilitated through the growth of racist policies."
Bayoumi can hold these views if he likes. And Brooklyn College students would be well-served by rigorous debate over their merits. But that's not about to take place. College officials say that the contents of Bayoumi's afterward are not part of the conversation.
Continue reading "NY Daily News Editorial: Brooklyn College Academically Incorrect Mockery"
Monday, September 6. 2010
For Labor Day, Steyn on Sixteen Tons
Big labor's big betrayal
George Will on the global warming industry. h/t Q&O
Dems run away from health care
Swing Sets Banned to Ward Off Lawyer Swarms
It Isn't Just Lost Jobs—It's the Lost Jobs Machine
The UN: “Reaffirming the central role of the United Nations in global governance.”
Soros Launches Frontal Assault Against Tea Party
Jackie Evancho can sing. Wow.
A bumper sticker insurrection
Der Spiegel lectures America:
The Obama administration and the Federal Reserve want to fix the United States economy by spending more money. But while that approach might work for Europe, it is risky for the US. The nation would be better off embracing traditional American values like self-reliance and small government.
Sunday, September 5. 2010
 Fake 'Tea Party' off Michigan ballot
Re the mosque: Many Things Are Legal, But Are They Right?
There are many, many social constructs that are created to keep things humming along. There are many unspoken rules that we abide by because, well, respect and deference make for better human relations.
Legalism in relationships usually ends up with a punch in the face. Score-keeping and a blind adherence to following the rules at the greater cost of violating principles like decency, kindness and love are looked on with scorn because well, people don't like other people to be jerks.
Well said. We often speak about codes of conduct here. Civil behavior is more important than the laws, most of the time.
Rare Color Film of Japanese WWII Surrender Discovered
The Summer of Recovery Ends: Epic Fail Fall Begins
The polarizing president
The rug lies. Woops. That Theodore Parker did have a way with words. Even Lincoln stole from him.
Mao's Great Famine, 1958-62. A big secret.
Let's go after the Gypsies. Hitler did, I believe. Fairly harmless thieving drunks with violins, aren't they all? Gypsies will never bring down a civilization.
Just as we predicted here, hurricane Earl was a big hyped-up nothing. What a beautiful, cool, and sunny long weekend we are having, including Friday.
Saturday, September 4. 2010
Friday, September 3. 2010
Have a good weekend, readers. I am off to Maine for the weekend, but it might not be boating weather. Here's one cheerful note: If this keeps up, no one's going to trust any scientists.
A new collection of HL Mencken: Prejudices
A dog day camp seems like a great idea.
Dino:
It isn’t rocket science to fix the economy — heck, we could do it ourselves if given the opportunity. But this crew hasn’t operated a lemonade stand amongst the lot of them. Help!!!!!!!!!
GOP Quandary: Is It Better Off if the House Stays Blue? Probably so, but not better for the country.
This GM IPO is pure politics. As was the GM takeover.
The bliss of an 18-month, paid, Swedish paternity leave. What sort of job could accommodate this stuff?
Gunman inspired by Sarah Palin Tea Party Al Gore
Time magazine at Surber:
Again and again throughout the piece by Michael Scherer of Time magazine, Obama comes across as an intransigent fool who will not adapt to the changes in the political reality.
From Michael Scherer of Time magazine: “For someone who so carefully read the political mood as a candidate, Obama has been unexpectedly passive at moments as President. Whereas other Democrats had hoped to spend the late summer talking about two things — jobs and the unpopularity of many Republican policies — the White House has been distracted by a string of unrelated issues, from immigration reform to a mishandled dismissal of a longtime USDA official to the furor over the proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero.”
His downfall began last summer when he gave his last prime-time press conference on health insurance (groan).
Thursday, September 2. 2010
Guy seems to know everything, and has a pleasant demeanor. Good for the jet-lagged and for insomniacs. Doug McIntyre's Red Eye Radio. 1 AM to 6 AM Eastern, on 770 in the NYC area.
Looks like hurricane Earl is just going to brush past the Northeast, but might hit Cape Cod. I like hurricanes. All you have to do with them is to be sensible and a bit humble.
Confessions of a Psychopharmacologist
Bedbug update
Prager: When Good People Do Bad Things
Driscoll: The Couric-Rich Model of the Five Stages of MSM Grief
Van Morrison turned 65 this week
Redecorating the Oval Office
No, Mr. Matthews, we do not dislike Obama: We disagree with his views. Ace puts it this way: Boy Howdy, I Can't Tell You How Wonderful It Is to See A Black Man With a Wife and a Steady Paycheck!
CATO: Reforming Indigent Defense - How Free Market Principles Can Help to Fix a Broken System. I have a better idea: let's nationalize the broken, wasteful, unfair and ridiculously expensive American legal system.
Dear Patients: Vote to Repeal ObamaCare
Paul Ryan: Obamanomics Has Failed
Wednesday, September 1. 2010
When even the New York Times recognizes criticism of a leftist attempt to indoctrinate students with an Arab-American victimism and anti-American book, the sole one distributed by the college to incoming students and also a reading in the required English course, we’ve surely stirred up something that resonates with many.
The NYTs article, Brooklyn College Furor Is More Heated Online, is largely dismissive of the issue as a blogosphere thing and attributes it, as does the college’s Dean involved in the selection, as “unfolding a bit like the debate over the planned Islamic community center in downtown Manhattan: much of the intensity seems far afield, while the response in the neighborhood itself is more muted.”
The reporter phoned me a few minutes before posting her report, but I was out, and she hasn’t returned my return call to her. (UPDATE 7:18AM Pacific: The reporter emailed me this morning. I replied that she seems to have attributed a quote from Prof. Bayoumi to me, and she just corrected the syntax in the article to make it clear. She, also, added to her article Prof. Bayoumi's defense of the Gaza Flotilla. Sincere thanks. I, also, noted to her that "I understand that you phoned others earlier, but you are the reporter so you determine the priorities of contacts." The reporter replies that she was on the subway and did not get my phone call back to her.)
The Comments at the NYT are, as one would expect there, mostly dismissive. There is one, however, that deserves wider attention:
As an American of Syrian descent I have never, nor has any member of my very large, noisy, opinionated, dark skinned, prominent nosed, extended family, EVER been discriminated against in this country. My children are extremely proud of their Middle-Eastern roots and very rich culture of food and family, generosity and hospitality. Mr. Bayoumi is confusing discrimination with the healthy practice in the US of dialogue tinged with a bit of mistrust – based on the undeniable fact that we were attacked on 9/11 by radical Arab Islamists. The US invites open dialogue – which can sometimes become very heated. Mr Bayoumi should be familiar with participating in heated arguments – which are practiced intensely in all of the Arab households that I have lived in or visited. Arab immigrants have to ride the current wave of mistrust and anger that the proposed Mosque has stirred up. Arabs also have to check their tendency to want people to accommodate them without giving anything in return – something called a compromise. We aren’t the first group of immigrants to have to deal with animosity from US groups who were here first and we will not be the last. Think of it as an initiation to a fraternity; if you tough it out it will pay off handsomely. Mr. Bayoumi, if Middle-Eastern voices have been censored in this country prove it.
After the New York Daily News reported the issue, and Professor Emeritus in History at the City University of New York, Ron Radosh, wrote about it in the New York Post, the New York Times, I guess, had to ride to the rescue of leftist hogwash.
P.S.: Many of the Commenters at the New York Times article assert that it is up to the students to find an alternative point of view or facts. A current student at Brooklyn College replies at the New York Times with the reality. (Below the fold, with the remainder of this post.)
Continue reading "New York Times Reports (Sorta) On Brooklyn College’s Indoctrination Book (UPDATES)"
Tuesday, August 31. 2010
Guy made a foolish mistake. He should have stayed home, down under, where the people live upside-down.
I think the prosecutors are reaching, but that is what prosecutors do in the US. Big cases are their scorecards, and the heck with justice, fairness, or reasonableness. Beware of ambitious prosecutors.
(Note: I do not play online poker, but I have been known to play a game or two with friends. The stock market is the real online gambling, imo. It is legal.)
Neo: Skilled workers wanted
VDH: The Sources of American Anger - Barack Obama, the great healer, is proving to be the most divisive president since Richard Nixon.
Sowell: ObamaCare’s Deadly Consequences
Headline: Glenn Beck is a poo-poo head
GOP Takes Unprecedented 10-Point Lead on Generic Ballot. But Volokh wonders: Repub win good for Obama's career?
Althouse thinks about our Kesler piece, and the meaning of life. And AVI thinks about regrets in life. The longer you live, the more regrets you accumulate.
George Will: Major Gaps in Education Achievement Between Whites, Blacks
Now, from the Educational Testing Service, comes a report about "The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped," written by Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley. It examines the "startling" fact that most of the progress in closing the gap in reading and mathematics occurred in the 1970s and '80s. This means "progress generally halted for those born around the mid-1960s, a time when landmark legislative victories heralded an end to racial discrimination."
Hmmm. As I recall, anti-discrimination is not the only thing that was happening then.
Barack Obama's plan to nationalize the fishing industry
Isn't it sexist (and racist) to say that cutting the size of government is sexist and racist? I mean, isn't it biased and demeaning to people of gender and color to assume that they must be dependent on others?
“It Was Certainly a Dry Run”: Two Muslims Arrested in Amsterdam After Flight from Chicago
Monday, August 30. 2010
1. The WaPo is sad because the EU is failing in its collectivist goals.
It does not sadden me, because I view the EU as just one more misbegotten attempt to create a European empire. The Romans started it, and people have been trying ever since, whether with armies or with ink. This motley crew will never see eye to eye.
2. The Aussie election is still up in the air. Hey, you upside-down folks - we do care.
From Mead on The Greening of Godzilla:
...on issues the public follows closely, the scientific consensus keeps changing. Margarine was introduced as the healthy alternative to butter; now experts tell us that the transfats in many types of margarine are the worst things you can eat. Should you eat no fat or the right fat? All carbs, no carbs or good carbs? How much vitamin E should you take? How much sun should you get? How much fish oil should you swallow? How should you divide your time between aerobic and non-aerobic exercise? On these and many other subjects, expert opinion keeps changing. Perhaps the current consensus will last; quite possibly, it won’t — but the experts can’t tell you what will happen.
Nobody trusts experts to be right, except those with no scientific education at all. Furthermore, real experts are humble about things.
I mean totally. Look at this: Waiting for Mr. Obama. They must inhabit a separate reality:
Two doofuses:
Cannibalism is for nutrition. But what about flavor?
Friends Disagree Lots
Cubbing in Virginia
On Fermat's Last Theorem:
..there is Andrew Wiles, the frail knight who for seven lonely years pursues the proof that has ensorcelled him since childhood. He announces the proof to the world, is featured on the front page of the New York Times and in People Magazine, he has the respect and admiration of his colleagues and then he discovers the proof is wrong. He works another year trying to fix it but every time he patches one area another fault line opens up. Even speaking of it now you can see and hear his utter despair. It is not too much to imagine that he was on the verge of a breakdown.
Theo: Completely honest first date
WSJ Editorial on the Democrats’ Attack on For-Profit Colleges
Death by Power Point
It was an old-fashioned tent revival meeting
Hewitt: Where The GOP Goes Next: The Need for Speed
Hurricane Katrina and the race card: 5 years later
Via Protein:
Touring American campuses in the mid-1970s, Norman Macrae of The Economist was shocked “to hear so many supposedly left-wing young Americans who still thought they were expressing an entirely new and progressive philosophy as they mouthed the same prejudices as Trollope’s 19th century Tory squires: attacking any further expansion of industry and commerce as impossibly vulgar, because ecologically unfair to their pheasants and wild ducks.”
Neither the failure of the environmental apocalypse to arrive nor the steady improvement in environmental conditions over the last 40 years has dampened the ardor of those eager to make hair shirts for others to wear.
WSJ: The Death of Conservatism Was Greatly Exaggerated
WSJ: Spreading Hayek, Spurning Keynes
Prepare for war between taxpayers and public employee unions
Blair: The latest green $ scam
Vanderleun: Tolerance Does Not Require Approval
Frank Rich’s Tea Party Lies
Commentary: He Really Doesn’t Want to Be Commander In Chief
Image on top, h/t Moonbattery. We juxtaposed before Drudge, but after Moonbattery.
Sunday, August 29. 2010
MLK was a life-long Republican. The Dems hijacked him and twisted his message. I do not know how they did that, but I do know why they did that.
Also, The Media's Racist
I see nothing post-racial happening these days. I wish I could say I did. I see more racism charges flying around than I have seen in 30 years. Readers know that I am sick of the topic of race, and hate the concept. Your character, culture, and manner of living, on the other hand, are of interest to me...assuming I have any interest in you at all. I am of the Imus view of people: "What do you bring to the table? Ya got sumthin today, or ya got nuthin?"
 Hooters and fat waitresses. But lots of guys like Rubenesque figures, don't they? (Venus at a Mirror, c. 1614)
Did anybody see this movie? Enemy at the Gates.
Are Standardized Tests Biased Against Students Who Don't Give A Shit?
AVI ponders confessing the sins of others
Surber on Beck's rally.
Related: Make Believe Media: WaPo Claims Al Sharpton Brings Thousands to DC
Chris Matthews: Who Stole America? What???
Was Benjamin Whorf partly right? Does Your Language Shape How You Think?
Has Gov Schwartzenegger found his inner Christie? Too late. The guy was all hat, no cattle and no cojones.
Blair home number nine. What's that all about? Ans: Lefties love money.
At NRO:
In addition to a big stimulus program, Obama ran on the idea of heaping new taxes on upper-income taxpayers, including those small businesses that he says (correctly) are critical to the recovery. Congress did nothing. And so as 2011 creeps over the horizon, so too does a massive tax hike on middle-class families, upper-income workers, small businesses, savers, family farms, and on and on. Having done nothing about this tax cut for the last nearly two years, all these prospective tax-hike victims can only assume that Congress intends to hit them with the full tax hike from allowing the 2001 and 2003 tax relief to expire.
The tax hike itself is bad enough, falling as it will on a stuttering economy. But the bigger issue is still confidence.
USA Today trying to figure out how to survive
Rick Moran: The O is American enough
Shut down the federal Dept of Education. It's not a federal responsibility, duty, or power - whatever the Bushes thought.
American Muslim leaders are not instilling confidence
Has the MSM lost confrol of the Leftist narrative?
Tax fuel to be green. Then raise taxes to help the fuel-poor so they can use more fuel. It all makes perfect sense.
Saturday, August 28. 2010
The Borderline Sociopathic Book for Boys. Example #1:
Ride a bicycle without a helmet. You heard me. And no spandex spangled with lavender and chrome yellow blotches and French words. You'll wear canvas shoes, too. You will not have anything with you that people with helmets refer to as "hydration." Eventually, you can get a blast of rubber-tasting hot water from a garden hose.
More on books: Van der Leun's 330 Word Guide to Writing Book Proposals. I wish I had read that before I wrote my book.
Guarding Your Heart in Marriage
Legal Ins: And These People Want To Run Your Health Care / Update - And Your Kids' Education. With another wonderfully common-sense Christie vid. The guy is a genius.
Steve Forbes on Obama: “He Thinks He Will Change America From a Greedy Nation to a Quiet Socialist Nation That Knows Its Place in the World” (Video)
David Brooks says we should be more like Germany
Am Thinker: President Obama's Compulsive Appeasement Disorder
J Post: Back to basics on Israel’s security
Friday, August 27. 2010
I just updated my will and trust and, with heavy heart, cut out what was a significant bequest to my alma mater, Brooklyn College.
What caused the disinheritance is that all incoming freshmen and transfer students are given a copy of a book to read, and no other, to create their “common experience.” This same book is one of the readings in their required English course. The author is a radical pro-Palestinian professor there.
When I attended in the 1960s, Brooklyn College – then rated one of the tops in the country -- was, like most campuses, quite liberal. But, there was no official policy to inculcate students with a political viewpoint. Now there is. That is unacceptable.
Continue reading "I Just Disinherited My Alma Mater"
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