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Enjoy, all of you - 11 April 2010
Apr. 12th, 2010 12:59 amHappy, happy, joy, joy! And Sunday, too. For those seeking some interesting reading on the anniversary of a very important affair, did you know that the first copyright act was passed 300 years ago today, as “An Act For The Encouragement of Learning”? We’ve gone a long way since that intent...
To burst your optimistic bubbles swiftly, however, we present a series of fifteen graphs that show just how bad things have gotten between the wealthy top and the poor bottom in America. Despite that information, there are some that would have you believe that those at the top are not greedy oppressors and should not be required to pay more taxes, because the people on the bottom are being lazy, demanding, and are making choices on how they spend their money, or eat, or exercise, including foregoing insurance. Thus, the poor shouldn’t be rewarded for making poor decisions by having the rich pay for their health and medical care, and insurers and the rich shouldn’t be demonized for being rich when the poor, and especially those illegal immigrants, are making bad choices for themselves. If only we emphasised Personal Responsibility (in the form of I Got Mine, Frak You), then we would make better choices, and for the truly unfortunate, there would be plenty of private charity.
A 12 year-old girl died from intercourse-related internal bleeding three days after she was married off to a man twice her age. Perhaps in our earlier times, a girl of 12 would be ready and developed for those tasks, but these days, this is not the case. Marrying children off to older people, often for the reasons of getting their financial burden off of the house, says we have a long way to go in establishing the kind of world where people truly are free to live a full life without having to worry about major events bankrupting them. Worse, according to the mother of the child and evidence in the police and medical reports, the bride was raped when it came to the marriage bed.
That said, perhaps in some small glimmer of hope, there are still plenty of people who think the Westboro Baptist Church are not the people to emulate. And a teenager in Los Angeles with a mother in jail, a dead father, and no permanent home has been accepted for admission at the United States Millitary Academy at West Point. The village has raised their child well.
In the world today, the Polish President and several high-ranking officials died in a plane crash in Russia on Saturday. It appears the cause of the crash is currently pilot error.
More pirates, same result - six captured off the Horn of Africa after they attempted to engage a United States naval warship.
Domestically, the bodies last of the missing miners in the Upper Big Branch mine explosion have been found, raising the death toll to 29. Based on their safety record, Massey Energy, the corporation that owns the mine, probably has some responsibility for the explosion and the death toll. The investigation begins on Monday. As Mr. Cline points out, life has always been a cheap commodity for corporations, and they actively lobby to continue keeping it that way. After all, capitalism and The Market (A.P.T.I.N) know that labor costs have to be held down if profits are to be made. It’s why you hear lots of screaming about jobs being lost every time the minimum wage goes up or certain benefits are required - it’s increasing the cost of labor, and many corporations thrive on the premise that workers come cheap and that they can be easily replaced in case they get uppity about wages or safety.
Two annoucements of retirement in the last few days - Justice John Paul Stevens said he would step down at the end of the Court’s current session, meaning for the second time in his presidency, President Obama gets to go through the joys of nomination against an opposition that insists that anyone with even the slightest hint of liberalism or anti-corporatism is unacceptable and a following party that believes the Court leans too far to the right as it is/ To illustrate the previous point, Mr. Hume suggests that Supreme Court nominees get more liberal as time goes by, citing the previous and current positions of the justices nominated by past Republican presidents, without even batting an eye at the prospect that what is considered conservative these days is significantly farther to the right than what it was when those justices were nominated.
The other retirement was of Congressman Bart Stupak of Michigan, most recently famous for his attemtps to derail the health care bill because he thought it was insufficiently stringent against abortion. Considering the goal he was elected for achieved, Congressman Stupak leaves open a Democratic seat in Michigan, which is a very Janus type of state in terms of political affiliations. the retirement of Congressman Stupak cheers the tea pertiers, who believe they had something to do with it, and lets them turn their attention to other incumbents they don't like.
Elsewhere in the country, Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke sounded a warning that the current trajectory of debt is unacceptable for the nation, and that higher taxes or changes to entitlements would have to happen to stave off debt-induced difficulties.
Finally, Humboldt County, California, may find that its economy of marijuana sufferes with the legalization of the drug, as wholesale prices go down with a legal and increased supply.
Opinions open today with attempted Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee expressing his disapproval of RNC chairman Michael Steele, likely presidential rival Mitt Romney, and made a comparison that allowing homosexuals to marry would be like allowing incest, polygamy, or widespread drug usage. He couched his anti-homosexual rhetoric in the container that allowing homosexuals to marry or adopt and repealing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy is social experimentation, and that military personnel and children are not appropriate test beds for such experiments.
On the matter of racial and ethnic relations in the country, Ms. Rabinowitz says that American Muslims have not been the victim of anything, even in the Concept War climate, and to think they've been attacked or are victims of terror is nonsense - after all, there are plenty of Muslims in America who go around committing violence, and nobody in America went on a lynch-mob style hunt, so clearly they have nothing to feel victimized about. Ms. Rabinowitz might have had better success going for the “mountain out of a molehill” argument instead of the “media made a story that wasn’t there” angle. There, she could have at least roped in another group of people that conservatives think are making up the idea they’re oppressed - homosexuals. I’m very glad retribution on a national scale didn’t happen, that is, unless you count the paranoa about suspicious-looking people, the detention without trial, the animosity, the continued tying together of Islam and terrorism in the public consciousness, and so forth. No, there wasn’t a physical act of attacking, but to claim that tiny amounts to nothing happened is to put blinders on history.
Mr. Elder has what he thinks are better responses for Chairman Steele about whether black people have a narrower margin of error in politics - specifically, “When Democrats do things like sex scandals and money spent at strip clubs, it isn’t news, but when Republicans do, it’s all over the place”, “We’re in a catch-22 - if we stay true to principles, we’re called scolds, and if we try to make the tent bigger, we’re called hypocrites”, and “Republicans have minorities, which totally destroys the Democratic Party's plan of making minoirites feel like victims and promising reparations. They’re the racists, not us.” Mr. Elder’s advice is to dodge the question asked, for the most part, and go into a tirade about how unfair it is to be a Republican these days. Y’know, whining, the thing he says losers do. That said, if, say, the Republicans didn’t tout themselves as the Family Values Party, didn’t espouse principles that make wealthy white people more wealthy, and put forward a lot more diverse cast in their political candidates, he might have an argument. The GOP would also have to actually do something about reining in the worst impulses and expressions of their Tea Party base, and stop the rather stupid policy of opposing just about everything that comes their way because there’s a Democrat suggesting it.
Following on his earlier columns (linked to in an earlier entry) Mr. Sowell returns with his “Race and Politics” series - Part III is about how race-related remarks over time have had a kernel of truth for their space-time coordinate based on the civilization someone was in, so Europeans are more successful now because they were conquered by Rome and Rome gave them letters, and that blacks now are more successful in the United States than in Africa because of the civilizing influence that their white overlords gave them in the past. Mr. Sowell has the un-enviable position of appearing to say that “X is poor/stupid/whatever because he’s black” is false, but “X is poor/stupid/whatever because he’s black and lived in Africa all his life” is true. Not too soon after, Part IV corrects us - there are either real differences based on race and culture, he says, or we get stuck in a trap of believing that there's always an oppressor and an oppressed. Thus, the premise above is false. Mr Sowell is saying, “X is poor/stupid/whatever because he’s black, and black culture is inferior.” The only solution, according to Mr. Sowell, is to leave one’s own culture behind and learn the dominant one, because that’s the only way to advance and be prosperous. What we’re doing, with our insistence on multicultralism, says he, is fostering resentment of the dominant cultures by the inferior ones, creating an environment where it’s cool and encouraged to be poor/stupid/whatever because it’s part of one’s heritage.
I can kind of obliquely see the point he’s trying to make, one where it seems like entertainment figures and criminals (and sometimes they’re the same person) are the people who rise to prominence in minority culture, which can’t be good for the lifeblood of those in that minority as a whole. Unfortunately, what he ends up making is an argument better suited for colonialists of the last century - savages everywhere but the dominant culture, and so the only way any one of them will succeed is to adapt the dominant culture. Forcibly, if need be, although I think Mr. Sowell is convinced that once shown the error of their cultural ways, adaptation will be swift by those who realize their culture is truly inferior. I feel like saying stupid, stupid, rat creature, but I’m wondering if I’m just misinterpreting him, because it seems very odd for someone to be saying this in a syndicated column...
In other realms, Mr. Henninger is pessimistic about unemployment, and thinks America's youth will not be as content as Europe's are about high unemployment rates and slow economic growth.
Mr. Krauthammer expresses doomsday designs at the new nuclear posture, believing that the disarmament push of the last quarter-century is what has been fueling Iran and North Korea, that our allies will start becoming proliferators themselves because the U.S. won’t go nuking anyone who attacks if they’re in according with the NPT, and that the U.S. is going toward a policy of no first use and letting the nuclear arsenal die and stop being the superawesomedoupleplusgood deterrent against more world wars and major conflicts that it has been in the past. Because, you know, the U.S. doesn’t still have enough stuff to blow up the planet many times over, and several other weapons, military forces, and other technologies deployable in case of an alliance being called in. Yes, even in response to a biological or chemical attack. We want to know hy Mr. Krauthammer suddenly believes other nation will go stupid and use their WMDs, when ther’s just as much MAD (although, in most cases, not much on the mutual assurance, actually) facing them if they do now as there was then. (Don’t believe me? Think about how quickly Iraq and Afghanistan devolved into asymmetrical warfare, and how much the U.S. is deliberately trying not to raze infrastructure and salt the earth behind it.)
To burst your optimistic bubbles swiftly, however, we present a series of fifteen graphs that show just how bad things have gotten between the wealthy top and the poor bottom in America. Despite that information, there are some that would have you believe that those at the top are not greedy oppressors and should not be required to pay more taxes, because the people on the bottom are being lazy, demanding, and are making choices on how they spend their money, or eat, or exercise, including foregoing insurance. Thus, the poor shouldn’t be rewarded for making poor decisions by having the rich pay for their health and medical care, and insurers and the rich shouldn’t be demonized for being rich when the poor, and especially those illegal immigrants, are making bad choices for themselves. If only we emphasised Personal Responsibility (in the form of I Got Mine, Frak You), then we would make better choices, and for the truly unfortunate, there would be plenty of private charity.
A 12 year-old girl died from intercourse-related internal bleeding three days after she was married off to a man twice her age. Perhaps in our earlier times, a girl of 12 would be ready and developed for those tasks, but these days, this is not the case. Marrying children off to older people, often for the reasons of getting their financial burden off of the house, says we have a long way to go in establishing the kind of world where people truly are free to live a full life without having to worry about major events bankrupting them. Worse, according to the mother of the child and evidence in the police and medical reports, the bride was raped when it came to the marriage bed.
That said, perhaps in some small glimmer of hope, there are still plenty of people who think the Westboro Baptist Church are not the people to emulate. And a teenager in Los Angeles with a mother in jail, a dead father, and no permanent home has been accepted for admission at the United States Millitary Academy at West Point. The village has raised their child well.
In the world today, the Polish President and several high-ranking officials died in a plane crash in Russia on Saturday. It appears the cause of the crash is currently pilot error.
More pirates, same result - six captured off the Horn of Africa after they attempted to engage a United States naval warship.
Domestically, the bodies last of the missing miners in the Upper Big Branch mine explosion have been found, raising the death toll to 29. Based on their safety record, Massey Energy, the corporation that owns the mine, probably has some responsibility for the explosion and the death toll. The investigation begins on Monday. As Mr. Cline points out, life has always been a cheap commodity for corporations, and they actively lobby to continue keeping it that way. After all, capitalism and The Market (A.P.T.I.N) know that labor costs have to be held down if profits are to be made. It’s why you hear lots of screaming about jobs being lost every time the minimum wage goes up or certain benefits are required - it’s increasing the cost of labor, and many corporations thrive on the premise that workers come cheap and that they can be easily replaced in case they get uppity about wages or safety.
Two annoucements of retirement in the last few days - Justice John Paul Stevens said he would step down at the end of the Court’s current session, meaning for the second time in his presidency, President Obama gets to go through the joys of nomination against an opposition that insists that anyone with even the slightest hint of liberalism or anti-corporatism is unacceptable and a following party that believes the Court leans too far to the right as it is/ To illustrate the previous point, Mr. Hume suggests that Supreme Court nominees get more liberal as time goes by, citing the previous and current positions of the justices nominated by past Republican presidents, without even batting an eye at the prospect that what is considered conservative these days is significantly farther to the right than what it was when those justices were nominated.
The other retirement was of Congressman Bart Stupak of Michigan, most recently famous for his attemtps to derail the health care bill because he thought it was insufficiently stringent against abortion. Considering the goal he was elected for achieved, Congressman Stupak leaves open a Democratic seat in Michigan, which is a very Janus type of state in terms of political affiliations. the retirement of Congressman Stupak cheers the tea pertiers, who believe they had something to do with it, and lets them turn their attention to other incumbents they don't like.
Elsewhere in the country, Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke sounded a warning that the current trajectory of debt is unacceptable for the nation, and that higher taxes or changes to entitlements would have to happen to stave off debt-induced difficulties.
Finally, Humboldt County, California, may find that its economy of marijuana sufferes with the legalization of the drug, as wholesale prices go down with a legal and increased supply.
Opinions open today with attempted Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee expressing his disapproval of RNC chairman Michael Steele, likely presidential rival Mitt Romney, and made a comparison that allowing homosexuals to marry would be like allowing incest, polygamy, or widespread drug usage. He couched his anti-homosexual rhetoric in the container that allowing homosexuals to marry or adopt and repealing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy is social experimentation, and that military personnel and children are not appropriate test beds for such experiments.
On the matter of racial and ethnic relations in the country, Ms. Rabinowitz says that American Muslims have not been the victim of anything, even in the Concept War climate, and to think they've been attacked or are victims of terror is nonsense - after all, there are plenty of Muslims in America who go around committing violence, and nobody in America went on a lynch-mob style hunt, so clearly they have nothing to feel victimized about. Ms. Rabinowitz might have had better success going for the “mountain out of a molehill” argument instead of the “media made a story that wasn’t there” angle. There, she could have at least roped in another group of people that conservatives think are making up the idea they’re oppressed - homosexuals. I’m very glad retribution on a national scale didn’t happen, that is, unless you count the paranoa about suspicious-looking people, the detention without trial, the animosity, the continued tying together of Islam and terrorism in the public consciousness, and so forth. No, there wasn’t a physical act of attacking, but to claim that tiny amounts to nothing happened is to put blinders on history.
Mr. Elder has what he thinks are better responses for Chairman Steele about whether black people have a narrower margin of error in politics - specifically, “When Democrats do things like sex scandals and money spent at strip clubs, it isn’t news, but when Republicans do, it’s all over the place”, “We’re in a catch-22 - if we stay true to principles, we’re called scolds, and if we try to make the tent bigger, we’re called hypocrites”, and “Republicans have minorities, which totally destroys the Democratic Party's plan of making minoirites feel like victims and promising reparations. They’re the racists, not us.” Mr. Elder’s advice is to dodge the question asked, for the most part, and go into a tirade about how unfair it is to be a Republican these days. Y’know, whining, the thing he says losers do. That said, if, say, the Republicans didn’t tout themselves as the Family Values Party, didn’t espouse principles that make wealthy white people more wealthy, and put forward a lot more diverse cast in their political candidates, he might have an argument. The GOP would also have to actually do something about reining in the worst impulses and expressions of their Tea Party base, and stop the rather stupid policy of opposing just about everything that comes their way because there’s a Democrat suggesting it.
Following on his earlier columns (linked to in an earlier entry) Mr. Sowell returns with his “Race and Politics” series - Part III is about how race-related remarks over time have had a kernel of truth for their space-time coordinate based on the civilization someone was in, so Europeans are more successful now because they were conquered by Rome and Rome gave them letters, and that blacks now are more successful in the United States than in Africa because of the civilizing influence that their white overlords gave them in the past. Mr. Sowell has the un-enviable position of appearing to say that “X is poor/stupid/whatever because he’s black” is false, but “X is poor/stupid/whatever because he’s black and lived in Africa all his life” is true. Not too soon after, Part IV corrects us - there are either real differences based on race and culture, he says, or we get stuck in a trap of believing that there's always an oppressor and an oppressed. Thus, the premise above is false. Mr Sowell is saying, “X is poor/stupid/whatever because he’s black, and black culture is inferior.” The only solution, according to Mr. Sowell, is to leave one’s own culture behind and learn the dominant one, because that’s the only way to advance and be prosperous. What we’re doing, with our insistence on multicultralism, says he, is fostering resentment of the dominant cultures by the inferior ones, creating an environment where it’s cool and encouraged to be poor/stupid/whatever because it’s part of one’s heritage.
I can kind of obliquely see the point he’s trying to make, one where it seems like entertainment figures and criminals (and sometimes they’re the same person) are the people who rise to prominence in minority culture, which can’t be good for the lifeblood of those in that minority as a whole. Unfortunately, what he ends up making is an argument better suited for colonialists of the last century - savages everywhere but the dominant culture, and so the only way any one of them will succeed is to adapt the dominant culture. Forcibly, if need be, although I think Mr. Sowell is convinced that once shown the error of their cultural ways, adaptation will be swift by those who realize their culture is truly inferior. I feel like saying stupid, stupid, rat creature, but I’m wondering if I’m just misinterpreting him, because it seems very odd for someone to be saying this in a syndicated column...
In other realms, Mr. Henninger is pessimistic about unemployment, and thinks America's youth will not be as content as Europe's are about high unemployment rates and slow economic growth.
Mr. Krauthammer expresses doomsday designs at the new nuclear posture, believing that the disarmament push of the last quarter-century is what has been fueling Iran and North Korea, that our allies will start becoming proliferators themselves because the U.S. won’t go nuking anyone who attacks if they’re in according with the NPT, and that the U.S. is going toward a policy of no first use and letting the nuclear arsenal die and stop being the superawesomedoupleplusgood deterrent against more world wars and major conflicts that it has been in the past. Because, you know, the U.S. doesn’t still have enough stuff to blow up the planet many times over, and several other weapons, military forces, and other technologies deployable in case of an alliance being called in. Yes, even in response to a biological or chemical attack. We want to know hy Mr. Krauthammer suddenly believes other nation will go stupid and use their WMDs, when ther’s just as much MAD (although, in most cases, not much on the mutual assurance, actually) facing them if they do now as there was then. (Don’t believe me? Think about how quickly Iraq and Afghanistan devolved into asymmetrical warfare, and how much the U.S. is deliberately trying not to raze infrastructure and salt the earth behind it.)
