PoorYoricRants

amazing story of the Joplin, MO tornado

2011-09-26T14:49:00.001-05:00

and the convenience store clerk who saved more than 20 people.

interesting...

2011-09-26T08:45:00.001-05:00

hang ups maybe not so bad

2011-08-30T13:46:00.001-05:00

Original located here. (but the link wasn't working I think due to high volume, so I copied the entire article from google's cached copy)

Being 'hung up' about sex isn't so horrible

One of the chief objections to Christianity is that it meddles in people's personal lives. This is a curious objection, in some ways. Christianity has fairly little to say about food or drink, except to advocate moderation. And very little to say about clothing, except that modesty is appropriate. It's silent on computers and automobiles. And it generally advocates discipline couched in love where children are concerned.

What its detractors mean often comes down to this: 'Christianity has something to say about sex, and we don't like it one bit.' Typically, one hears that Christians are prudes and spoiled-sports, ranging across the earth, shutting down sexual pleasure wherever we locate it. Of course, higher birth rates among evangelical Protestants and Catholics seem to suggest either a staggering number of virgin births, or a tendency to, well, you know.

If we're hung up on sex as Christians, we're certainly no more so than a world filled with sexual images and activities. However, I think the world at large is less 'hung-up' than heedless and selfish when it comes to the thing it seems to value above all else.

I could delve into STD's and their terrible effects. But I think on some level few people really care. It's like your parents telling you about terrible car crash injuries when you drive. 'Sure, but not me!'

However, there's more than STD's to show us why we should be more careful in our valuation of sex. I read an article online recently. It was an advice column for young singles. A woman wrote about her concern that a young man whom she had met (and promptly taken to bed), had not called her for several days after their initial meeting . The columnist was aghast that she was so uptight. As if, after sleeping together, she shouldn't expect anything at all in terms of connection. Sex as a kind of post-modern handshake.

Not surprising. The idea that one can simply have a casual, sexual relationship with no emotional connection or support is a common theme in movies and television. Actress Mila Kunis, of the movie 'Friends with Benefits,' was asked if she thought such a relationship was possible. Her answer was insightful: 'It's like communism; good in theory, but in execution it fails.'

Despite the 'theory' society clings to, there has been fascinating research on the emotional and chemical connections that result from sex. Still, our society continues to treat it as a thing with no repercussion and precious little value.

I agree that the Church down the ages has sometimes done a poor job teaching about sex and sexuality. Many young people were taught nothing at all about sex, except that it was wicked. That was to their detriment and the shame of their parents and clergy. Odd teaching, since the Bible is full of sex, and not just warnings about it.

But far worse, the world at large was, and is, mindless about sex. If the church is too careful, it is only because sex is too important to be handled poorly. Sex not only produces us, as it were. It connects us. It not only connects us, it chemically addicts us to one another for good reasons.

Sex is a thing of enormous power. It has brought down kingdoms (and governorships, more close to home). It has united powerful families. Sex has caused murders and assassinations, sealed marriages and ended them. It has led to children and to the murder of children through abortion. It has given us literature and sculpture, both elevated and base. It has given us beautiful love stories and terrible song lyrics.

But it is no trifle. If the Church has been 'hung up,' the world has been reckless and irresponsible The Church has at least tried to teach us that sex has consequences more grave and wonderful than the physical, while the world has tried to teach us that it is a worthless thing, devalued and diminished once the conquest and pleasure have passed.

Some may call this right-wing, conservative clap-trap. But an epidemic of depression and anxiety in young men and women testify to the pain of connections made and broken. The markers of the dead, lost to HIV, also disagree. And generations of young, poor children with no fathers and scarcely any mothers all testify to the misuse and abuse of one of the most wonderful, and powerful, forces in the world.

Maybe it's not so bad to be 'hung-up' after all.

this is

2011-08-26T16:05:00.001-05:00

awesome

Good stuff

2011-08-07T21:20:00.000-05:00

:-)

An evening at Valleyfair

2011-07-11T23:35:00.001-05:00

Valleyfair 7/11

A couple of days late ...

2011-07-06T13:29:00.001-05:00

But here's a blog post worth musing over in the wake of Independence Day.
Sorry for the delay, but I was blissfully away from the interweb on Monday.
It was liberating and that seemed appropriate.

Bruce eulogizes Clarence

2011-06-30T00:11:00.001-05:00

"This could be the start of something big."

Hard to imagine one without the other ...

Climate change

2011-06-20T15:30:00.001-05:00

Waning interest in face of economic difficulties and new data reporting intrigue.

Pitchers

2011-06-18T13:38:00.000-05:00

College education cost\benefit analysis

2011-05-24T16:18:00.001-05:00

Interesting points.

TIM CARNEY: In which I give in to Obama’s Nixonian demands on what the medi...

2011-05-19T10:43:00.001-05:00

"...Obama doesn't act presidential. Presidents act presidential not because they're stuffy or out-of-touch, but because experience shows that when you don't act presidential, it often winds up handing opponents a club to beat you with. Obama might know this if he had had significant experience in national politics before running for President, but he didn't."

Sent to you by tom via Google Reader:

TIM CARNEY: In which I give in to Obama’s Nixonian demands on what the media should cover. Relat…

via Instapundit by Glenn Reynolds on 5/19/11

TIM CARNEY: In which I give in to Obama's Nixonian demands on what the media should cover.

Related: White House Snub Makes Boston Herald Gleeful. "Talk about handing your opponents a club to beat you with. . . . How foolish of the White House to play that game — and how dumb of the White House to get beaten at it."

As I have pointed out repeatedly, Obama doesn't act presidential. Presidents act presidential not because they're stuffy or out-of-touch, but because experience shows that when you don't act presidential, it often winds up handing opponents a club to beat you with. Obama might know this if he had had significant experience in national politics before running for President, but he didn't. His staff, alas, is taking its cues from him, instead of remedying his deficiencies.

Things you can do from here:

Subscribe to Instapundit using Google Reader
Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

I guess I have to give them credit

2011-04-22T10:24:00.000-05:00

for not pretending to be unbiased ... but it's hard not to laugh at this:
http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page

Finally, a 'trustworthy encyclopedia'.

Romneycare a big bust

2011-04-12T11:04:00.001-05:00

... as a political policy, Romneycare is nearly unparalleled in Republican history. It has destroyed one front-runner's presidential hopes (Romney's) and helped undermine an entire presidency. For, as Barack Obama's supporters keep reminding us, Romneycare was the precursor to Obamacare.

Link.

English school principal announces zero tolerance for mismatched socks

2011-04-10T12:53:00.001-05:00

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/LkiivuMV6RA/english-school-princ.html

Disturbing Doings in Wisconsin

2011-03-31T13:39:00.001-05:00

The union-led effort is an outgrowth of a boycott campaign by the Wisconsin Professional Police Association and other unions in which M&I Bank and Kwik Trip were targeted because either the companies themselves or their executives supported Gov. Scott Walker's budget initiatives.

From here.

What exactly does it mean when the police boycott your business?
Nothing good, I think.
And that's why police unions seem like a bad idea to me.

At the cemetery

2011-03-22T19:02:00.001-05:00

The sun was warm on our faces and shoulders. Old men in crisp uniforms moved deliberately or stood respectfully. My grandfather's children, my Mom and her brother and sister, sat with their spouses under the blue velvet funeral home tent. Two of the veterans ceremoniously unfolded a flag and held it as if over a casket, although there was no casket, only a slate gray urn holding Granddaddy's ashes.
When all was ready, an ancient marine, leaning on a cane, spoke with practiced eloquence of the nation's gratitude and of debts owed to its young men sent to foreign lands to fight for liberty. His voice was strong and his Appalachian accent made a kind of music of his speech.
A military chaplain prayed briefly and then warned us about the salute that would follow. Rifle shots echoed among the hills. Into the silence that followed poured the sound of Taps played on trumpet and bagpipes. The song was beautiful and haunting and perfect.
The two soldiers holding the flag refolded it and presented it to my Uncle. The marine who had spoken first turned the remainder of the service over to the ministers who spoke of dust and ashes and loss and peace.
And then it was over.
People stood for a moment and then gradually mingled and wandered and more gradually made their ways to cars and trucks and then away.

Heinlein says

2011-03-12T00:44:00.001-06:00

Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.

Greatest time-suck

2011-02-11T22:25:00.001-06:00

of all time.

"Forget Mandarin, Latin is the key to success"

2011-02-10T21:32:00.001-06:00

"No doubt some people will persist in questioning the usefulness of Latin. For these skeptics I have a two-word answer: Mark Zuckerberg. The 26-year-old founder of Facebook studied Classics at Phillips Exeter Academy and listed Latin as one of the languages he spoke on his Harvard application. So keen is he on the subject, he once quoted lines from the Aeneid during a Facebook product conference and now regards Latin as one of the keys to his success. Just how successful is he? According to Forbes magazine, he's worth $6.9 billion. If that isn't a useful skill, I don't know what is. "
Read the rest.

Chris Christie

2011-01-27T11:30:00.000-06:00

Speaking the hard truth.

How Many Real Rubes Were There?

2011-01-20T22:10:00.001-06:00

Good question.

British backing away from nationalised health care

2011-01-18T11:31:00.001-06:00

AS WE MOVE TOWARD THE BRITISH MODEL, THE BRITISH MOVE AWAY: UK Government Plans Major Health Care Reform. "The British leader, whose Conservative Party heads the country's coalition government, said he would save money and cut red tape by giving control over management to family practitioners rather than bureaucrats, and allow private companies, charities and social enterprises to bid for contracts within the public health service." Is there a lesson here?

from Instapundit

Really?

2011-01-15T23:12:00.002-06:00

even the most inaccurate and excessive rhetoric on the left these days doesn't invoke violence

Scroll down to the pictures collected here, and try to tell me that with a straight face.

Or do what I did and google "Anti-bush signs" and then "Anti-obama signs" and compare the results. One search returns - to my mind, at least - much more violent imagery. Judge for yourself.

Looking back on movies of 2010

2011-01-03T08:55:00.001-06:00

Good stuff.

If You Did Not Cry, You Are Made of Stone: The end of Toy Story 3

Obama wallet

2010-12-29T10:18:00.001-06:00

This is funny.

blog has sent you a link

2010-12-27T21:44:00.001-06:00

blog thought you'd be interested in the following article at Reason
Magazine:

Easy Money For College Can Mess You Up, Man.
http://reason.com/blog/2010/12/27/the-higher-ed-bubble-plus-kath

Michael Moore banned in Cuba

2010-12-18T13:33:00.001-06:00

His movie, Sicko, supposedly depicted the superior medical system available under the Communist government of Cuba as opposed to the deficiencies of the capitalist system in the United States.

So a little ironic that his movie won't be shown in Cuba.

Castro's government apparently went on to ban the film because, the leaked cable claims, it "knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them." …

The info is from Wikileaks. The story from The Guardian

...the only way a Cuban can get access to the hospital [depicted in Moore's movie] is through a bribe or contacts inside the hospital administration. "Cubans are reportedly very resentful that the best hospital in Havana is 'off-limits' to them," the memo reveals.

Yep, that sounds like a Communist model. Politics - who you know - determines who receives the best care.

By its fruit, the tree is known.

2010-12-16T11:04:00.001-06:00

Great discussion of Communism vs. Nazism at Instapundit.
One excerpt:

I'll repeat: The difference between Communists and Nazis is mostly PR, and the PR is better because more journalists and academics were communists than Nazis.
And reader Michael Ravine notes what Robert Heinlein said about communism: "I regard it as Red fascism, distinguishable from black and brown fascism by differences of no importance to me nor to its victims."

Some Communist apologists appear and are rebuked.

If California is the future of the nation ...

2010-12-15T14:59:00.001-06:00

It doesn't look good.

Here's an anecdotal analysis from a longtime Californian.

It's a longer piece but it reads well. One bit I'll excerpt (but it's worth reading all)

Fresno's California State University campus is embroiled in controversy over the student body president's announcing that he is an illegal alien, with all the requisite protests in favor of the DREAM Act. I won't comment on the legislation per se, but again only note the anomaly. I taught at CSUF for 21 years. I think it fair to say that the predominant theme of the Chicano and Latin American Studies program's sizable curriculum was a fuzzy American culpability. By that I mean that students in those classes heard of the sins of America more often than its attractions. In my home town, Mexican flag decals on car windows are far more common than their American counterparts.
I note this because hundreds of students here illegally are now terrified of being deported to Mexico. I can understand that, given the chaos in Mexico and their own long residency in the United States. But here is what still confuses me: If one were to consider the classes that deal with Mexico at the university, or the visible displays of national chauvinism, then one might conclude that Mexico is a far more attractive and moral place than the United States.
So there is a surreal nature to these protests: something like, "Please do not send me back to the culture I nostalgically praise; please let me stay in the culture that I ignore or deprecate." I think the DREAM Act protestors might have been far more successful in winning public opinion had they stopped blaming the U.S. for suggesting that they might have to leave at some point, and instead explained why, in fact, they want to stay. What it is about America that makes a youth of 21 go on a hunger strike or demonstrate to be allowed to remain in this country rather than return to the place of his birth?

Young entrepreneur help desk

2010-12-14T13:02:00.001-06:00

Help for young adults who want to start a business. Started by a film school grad who lived it.

quote o' day

2010-12-08T09:44:00.001-06:00

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.
Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional?, 1993
(1930 - )

Trip to the USS Ronald Reagan

2010-11-23T14:53:00.001-06:00

Interesting account of a civilian's visit to an active aircraft carrier. Lots of pictures.

Three blind mice and a picture pirate

2010-11-11T21:55:00.001-06:00

Happy Last Week. :-)

Putting the Brakes on Bush nostalgia

2010-11-09T22:31:00.001-06:00

Have to agree with this.

His candor, decency, self-effacement, and clear love of country stand in stark contrast to the current antagonist-in-chief at the White House

BUT (and yes, that's a BIG BUT)

The problem, of course, is that Bush nostalgia is indelibly marred by his disastrous domestic policy legacy of big government, big spending, and betrayal of core fiscal principles — the very impetus for the Tea Party movement upon which he now heaps glowing praise.

I never loved GWB, but I found him presidential and I always felt that his heart was in the right place. I know many (MANY) will disagree, but that was my impression, and I continue to feel that way.
I tried, after he was inaugurated, to like President Obama. I remember hoping as I watched the swearing in that he would govern more or less as he campaigned, that is as more of a moderate than his history suggested was his inclination. I was disappointed.
Regardless, Bush was a disaster on the domestic front and only looks at all moderate by comparison with his successor.

Deep analysis of the current political climate

2010-10-20T10:38:00.001-05:00

From here.

AMERICANS: "So, the economy is pretty bad and there's high employment. You think you can do something about that?"
DEMOCRATS AND OBAMA: "We can spend a trillion dollars we don't have on pork and stuff."
AMERICANS: "No … that's not what we want. We'd really like you not to do that."

DEMOCRATS: "You're stupid. We're doing it anyway."
AMERICANS: "That's not going to help us get jobs!"
DEMOCRATS: "Sure it will; millions of them … though they may be invisible. You'll have to trust us they exist. And guess what else we'll do: We'll create a giant new government program to take over health care."
AMERICANS: "That has nothing to do with jobs!"
DEMOCRATS: "We don't care about that anymore. We really want a giant new health care program. We're sure you'll love it."
AMERICANS: "Don't pass that bill. You hear me? Absolutely do not pass that bill."

DEMOCRATS: "Believe me; you'll love it. It has … well, I don't know what exactly is in the bill, but we're sure it's great."
AMERICANS: "Listen to me: DO. NOT. PASS. THAT. BILL."
DEMOCRATS: "You're not the boss of me! We're doing it anyway!"

AMERICANS: "Look what you did! Now the economy is way worse, we're even deeper in debt, and we have a bunch of new laws we don't want!"
DEMOCRATS: "You're racist."
AMERICANS: "Wha … How is that racist?"
DEMOCRATS: "Now you're getting violent! Stop being violent and racist, you ignorant hillbillies! And remember to vote Democrat in November."

Interesting analysis of Obamacare

2010-10-13T09:14:00.001-05:00

This is old, but I hadn't seen it before. A retired constitutional lawyer read one of the early drafts of Obamacare and commented. Some of it's more than a little scary.
I'm not sure how much of what he read was in the bill that was passed, but it's scary enough that it was ever proposed.
Take a look.

What's happening to the American dream ...

2010-10-06T10:40:00.001-05:00

One problem illustrated.

Invitation to view tom's Picasa Web Album - 2010 State Fair

2010-10-03T12:49:00.001-05:00

You are invited to view tom's photo album: 2010 State Fair

2010 State Fair

Sep 5, 2010
by tom

View Album
Play slideshow

Message from tom:

Pix from the State Fair

If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=tomclements&target=ALBUM&id=5523834228479480625&authkey=Gv1sRgCJv9qtuiv6Lu7gE&invite=COXHy8YJ&feat=email

To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account.

heh

2010-09-30T12:30:00.001-05:00

Lifted straight from Instapundit:

"This week, President Obama called for the hiring of 10,000 new teachers to beef up math and science achievement. Meanwhile, in America, Earth, Sol-System, public school employment has grown 10 times faster than enrollment for 40 years (see chart), while achievement at the end of high school has stagnated in math and declined in science (see other chart).

Either the president is badly misinformed about our education system or he thinks that promising to hire another 10,000 teachers union members is politically advantageous–in which case he would seem to be badly misinformed about the present political climate. Or he lives in an alternate universe in which Kirk and Spock have facial hair and government monopolies are efficient. It's hard to say."

(original piece here.)

Stoicism - an old idea is new again

2010-09-21T13:06:00.001-05:00

A new book argues that some ancient Greek philosophers were onto something with their ideas about seeking

a life of "tranquility," meaning a life free of "anger, anxiety, fear, grief, and envy."

For everyone who complains

2010-09-16T10:49:00.001-05:00

that Bush should have been more on the hot seat for the expansion of government under his watch: "Point taken."

On the other hand, throughout most of Bush's presidencies I just kept telling myself - "Thank heavens Gore(Kerry) didn't win."

I think that would have been worse.

And it doesn't mean that Obama should get a pass for going exponential on the path that Bush went down.

James Lileks from this date in 2003

2010-09-11T14:00:00.001-05:00

It's worth reading ...

You'll shoot your eye out,

2010-09-09T22:44:00.001-05:00

kid.

The facts about effective learning.

2010-09-08T09:04:00.001-05:00

Essentially - mix it up.

For instance, many study skills courses insist that students find a specific place, a study room or a quiet corner of the library, to take their work. The research finds just the opposite.

and

Varying the type of material studied in a single sitting — alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and speaking in a new language — seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain than does concentrating on just one skill at a time. Musicians have known this for years, and their practice sessions often include a mix of scales, musical pieces and rhythmic work. Many athletes, too, routinely mix their workouts with strength, speed and skill drills.

Also, different "learning styles"? False.

"Student traits and teaching styles surely interact; so do personalities and at-home rules. The trouble is, no one can predict how."

and

"The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing," the researchers concluded.

Do Americans hate Muslims?

2010-09-06T17:06:00.001-05:00

Actions speak louder than words ...

Bedbugs, mosquitoes, political correctness and insecticides

2010-08-02T10:13:00.001-05:00

New Yorkers have annoying bedbugs; Africans have deadly mosquitoes.

Where are these angels?

2010-07-28T14:53:00.001-05:00

Milton Friedman on the Phil Donahue show from 1979.
Fantastic discussion of basic economics and why free markets work. I especially like the way Friedman punctures everyone of Donahue's anti-capitalist assumptions.
One thing that strikes me is how much time Friedman is given to talk. I don't watch much TV - at least not many talk shows - but my perception is that a guest today never gets so much time to speak and develop ideas without being talked over or interrupted by the host(s).

The ruling class ...

2010-07-21T11:00:00.001-05:00

Demublican or Reprocrat - makes no never mind if you're the right people.
The Tea Party is a reaction to this more than anything - the idea that our representatives don't.

When pollsters ask the American people whether they are likely to vote Republican or Democrat in the next presidential election, Republicans win growing pluralities. But whenever pollsters add the preferences "undecided," "none of the above," or "tea party," these win handily, the Democrats come in second, and the Republicans trail far behind. That is because while most of the voters who call themselves Democrats say that Democratic officials represent them well, only a fourth of the voters who identify themselves as Republicans tell pollsters that Republican officeholders represent them well. Hence officeholders, Democrats and Republicans, gladden the hearts of some one-third of the electorate -- most Democratic voters, plus a few Republicans. This means that Democratic politicians are the ruling class's prime legitimate representatives and that because Republican politicians are supported by only a fourth of their voters while the rest vote for them reluctantly, most are aspirants for a junior role in the ruling class. In short, the ruling class has a party, the Democrats. But some two-thirds of Americans -- a few Democratic voters, most Republican voters, and all independents -- lack a vehicle in electoral politics.

This is a terrific piece.

ya think?

2010-07-13T12:15:00.001-05:00

It does seem that the President was inadequately vetted pre-election. So we're doing the vetting now, instead, which is somewhat more expensive.

indeed

That explains it ...

2010-07-12T14:10:00.001-05:00

illegally voting felons MAYBE put Franken over the top.

Going to Hell in a handbasket

2010-07-08T12:22:00.001-05:00

Or ... maybe not.

When I was a student, in the 1970s, the world was coming to an end. The adults told me so. They said the population explosion was unstoppable, mass famine was imminent, a cancer epidemic caused by chemicals in the environment was beginning, the Sahara desert was advancing by a mile a year, the ice age was retuning, oil was running out, air pollution was choking us and nuclear winter would finish us off.

...

I began to pay attention and a few years ago I started to research a book on the subject. I was astounded by what I discovered. Global per capita income, corrected for inflation, had trebled in my lifetime, life expectancy had increased by one third, child mortality had fallen by two-thirds, the population growth rate had halved. More people had got out of poverty than in all of human history before. When I was born, 36% of Americans had air conditioning. Today 79% of Americans below the poverty line had air conditioning. The emissions of pollutants from a car were down by 98%. The time you had to work on the average wage to buy an hour of artificial light to read by was down from 8 seconds to half a second.
Not only are human beings wealthier, they are also healthier, wiser, happier, more tolerant, less violent, more equal. Check it out - the data is clear. Yet if anything the pessimists had only grown more certain, shrill and apocalyptic. We were facing the `end of nature', the `coming anarchy', a `stolen future', our `final century' and a climate catastrophe. Why, I began to wonder did the failure of previous predictions have so little impact on this litany?

Atlas still shrugging

2010-07-07T10:17:00.001-05:00

National Academy of Sciences (State Science Institute?) publishes a list of Skeptical Authors on Climate Science in connection with an article that claims that 97 - 98% of climate scientists are in agreement on Global Warming - based on published research.
One of the scientists on the naughty list takes issue and points out that the IPCC actively suppressed contradictory research from being published while also falsifying their own evidence.

Plato got it ...

2010-06-29T22:58:00.000-05:00

"The price good men pay for indifference to publiuc affairs is to be ruled by evil men."

Nice to know

2010-06-29T21:56:00.001-05:00

who's running things.

Interesting stuff

2010-06-23T22:40:00.001-05:00

about memory and how it works.

and another piece from the same site about how opinions are formed.

Malice and Incompetence

2010-06-22T23:59:00.001-05:00

from Jerry Pournelle. Says he (I'm paraphrasing):

President Obama is and always has been a liberal socialist.
Probably this doesn't make him malicious.
It does put him in direct conflict with the US Constitution which generally emphasizes individual (and state's) rights over collectivism.
The upcoming election will be very important.

Despite strong (decent, at least) showing in the World Cup

2010-06-22T23:25:00.001-05:00

Some expect U.S. men's soccer to decline going forward due to the shrinking number of NCAA Division I Men's soccer programs.
I guess time will tell.
My impression is that soccer is still a growing sport in the U.S. and skilled, passionate players don't necessarily have to go to college (particularly Division I schools) to wind up playing professionally somewhere. As anyone who watches the World Cup knows, it doesn't matter where a person plays professionally when it comes to fielding national teams.

Uh-oh

2010-06-13T21:55:00.001-05:00

I just got an email from the UN Secretary General that I have an overdue payment ... I better get right on that.

You know what they say about learning from history ...

2010-06-09T00:18:00.001-05:00

Walter Russell Mead discusses the role that peace activists and appeasers played in creating political environments that led to genocides and pogroms in the 20th century.

Fortunately the destructive doves weren't able to fool FDR about the Nazis. "You can't turn a tiger into a kitten by stroking it," he once said — but the pious nincompoops and delusional intellectuals were persuasive enough here and abroad so that France, Britain and the United States were unable to step while Hitler was still weak and prevent World War Two by enforcing the peace.

Had these people wised up and supported moderate programs of rearmament in the early 1930s and insisted that the western democracies take a stand against Hitler early on, there would have been no Nuremberg Laws, no Holocaust, no mass terror bombings of European cities, no Stalinist occupation of central Europe — and no Cold War.

Morally of course this was nowhere near as bad as what the Nazis and Communists did. The peaceniks didn't will the slaughter of millions of innocent people: out of ignorance and conceit they merely created the conditions which let it happen. But while the peace movement wasn't as evil as the dictators, the dictators could never have achieved their goals without their sanctimonious and timorous enablers in the western world.

It is just not true, historically speaking, that 'peace movements' lead to peace or, for that matter, support policies that will bring peace. More often than not, the opposite is true. Winston Churchill was a grizzled old British imperialist of the worst kind, but if Britain had listened to him instead of to its peace campaigners in the 1930s there most likely would never have been either a World War Two or Cold War.

You don't get peace just by talking about it and wishing for it.

Hopefully we're not doomed to repeat this lesson.

quote for the day

2010-06-03T07:50:00.001-05:00

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote,"Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people."

If I were ever in a position

2010-06-01T14:35:00.001-05:00

to fund a multi-billion dollar foundation, I hope that I wouldn't name it after myself ...

A parent's

2010-06-01T13:09:00.001-05:00

nightmare

When math gets scary ...

2010-05-24T09:29:00.001-05:00

The problem facing the Western world isn't very difficult to figure out: we've spent tomorrow today, and we can never earn enough tomorrow to pay for what we've already burned through. When you're spending four trillion dollars but only raising two trillion in revenue (the Obama model), you've no intention of paying it off, and the rest of the world knows it. In Greece, the arithmetic is starker. To prop up unsustainable welfare states, most of the Western world isn't "printing money" but instead printing credit cards and pre-approving our unborn grandchildren. That would be a dodgy proposition at the best of times. But in the Mediterranean those grandchildren are never going to be born. As I pointed out in my bestselling hate crime America Alone four years ago, Greece has one of the lowest fertility rates on the planet—1.3 children per couple, which places it in the "lowest-low" demographic category from which no society has recovered and, according to the UN, 178th out of 195 countries. In practical terms, it means 100 grandparents have 42 grandkids. Greek public sector employees are entitled not only to 14 monthly paycheques per annum during their "working" lives, but also 14 monthly retirement cheques per annum till death. Who's going to be around to pay for that?

from Mark Steyn

Another shocker

2010-05-21T07:35:00.001-05:00

"Spain admits that the green economy as sold to Obama is a disaster."

from here

What he said ...

2010-05-20T12:18:00.000-05:00

here

I particularly like this bit:

I think it's very cool that we have a black president and that a black child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the emancipation proclamation. I just wish the black president was Condi Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom and the individual and less in an all-knowing government.

When the election results were in, the one thing I was happy about was that the stranger (a black man) I spoke to at Burger King several months before turned out to be wrong when he told me he didn't think this country was ready to elect a black man president. I hoped we would finally be able to start getting past identity politics. I haven't seen much evidence that that's happened, yet.

Unexpectedly ... you keep using that word ...

2010-05-20T09:21:00.001-05:00

A report on weekly jobless claims showed the number of people filing for first-time unemployment benefits rose unexpectedly by 25,000 to 471,000 last week.

from here.

Seriously, though, why are the numbers always 'unexpectedly' bad.

I mean, I expect it.

Who doesn't?

And why does anyone continue to care about their 'analysis' if it's always wrong?

What's going on with the police?

2010-05-17T10:57:00.001-05:00

POLICE: MORE MILITARIZED THAN THE MILITARY? Radley Balko has a letter from a military officer:

I am a US Army officer, currently serving in Afghanistan. My first thought on reading this story is this: Most American police SWAT teams probably have fewer restrictions on conducting forced entry raids than do US forces in Afghanistan.

For our troops over here to conduct any kind of forced entry, day or night, they have to meet one of two conditions: have a bad guy (or guys) inside actively shooting at them; or obtain permission from a 2-star general, who must be convinced by available intelligence (evidence) that the person or persons they're after is present at the location, and that it's too dangerous to try less coercive methods. The general can be pretty tough to convince, too. (I'm a staff liason, and one of my jobs is to present these briefings to obtain the required permission.)

Generally, our troops, including the special ops guys, use what we call "cordon and knock": they set up a perimeter around the target location to keep people from moving in or out,and then announce their presence and give the target an opportunity to surrender. In the majority of cases, even if the perimeter is established at night, the call out or knock on the gate doesn't happen until after the sun comes up.

Oh, and all of the bad guys we're going after are closely tied to killing and maiming people.
What might be amazing to American cops is that the vast majority of our targets surrender when called out.

I don't have a clear picture of the resources available to most police departments, but even so, I don't see any reason why they can't use similar methods.

Quite different from using door-busting tactics to serve warrants on nonviolent drug offenders. Of course, one difference is that we care about winning the hearts and minds of people in Afghanistan . . . .

another post shamelessly lifted from Instapundit

Why government should be small....

2010-05-17T00:06:00.001-05:00

BUT REMEMBER, THE SOLUTION TO EVERY PROBLEM IS MORE REGULATION: "The federal agency responsible for ensuring that the Deepwater Horizon was operating safely before it exploded last month fell well short of its own policy that the rig be inspected at least once per month, an Associated Press investigation shows. In fact, the agency's inspection frequency on the Deepwater Horizon fell dramatically over the past five years, according to federal Minerals Management Service records. . . . In fact, last year MMS awarded the rig an award for its safety history."

from Instapundit

Global Green Meltdown Gains Momentum

2010-05-15T11:43:00.001-05:00

About time.

We trust the experts less and less, but they keep coming to us for money.

In this atmosphere, the fight for a massive global treaty to fight climate change that involves annual payments of $100 billion and more to (mostly) corrupt and incompetent governments in developing countries that make Greece look as tidy as Sweden has no chance.

see rest here

Why should all of our Supreme Court justices be from two schools?

2010-05-13T11:09:00.001-05:00

What's so special about Harvard and Yale?

Seems to fly in the face of anything resembling intellectual diversity ...

Bureaucracy and Tyranny

2010-05-13T11:07:00.001-05:00

The Founding Fathers well described "swarms of officers sent hither to harass the people." It is worth pondering how bureaucracy may have inside it a tyranny trying to get out.

read the rest, it's short.

Why aren't Communists more closely associated with Nazis?

2010-05-13T10:41:00.001-05:00

"In the world's collective consciousness, the word "Nazi" is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis' ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history."

Read the rest ...

The holocaust killed 6 million Jews, and is rightly reviled as one of the most horrifying tragedies in the history of mankind.

Where, then, is the outrage for the 150 million killed by Communists? Why do they get a pass? How is Nazism's racial genocide worse than the ideological genocide of Communists the world over?

We would be wise to remember where Communism tends to end up and to be suspicious of those who look kindly on it.

Afghan opium trade

2010-05-13T00:26:00.001-05:00

Just ran across this old article on the opium trade in Afghanistan and was struck by a couple of quotes:

"When I have water and roads provided to me, I will stop growing poppies."

and

"I don't want my children to be in this trade and I hope that some day the world will help us. Only then can we stop the opium trade."

I don't especially care if they grow opium or not, but I love how it's not their fault. If only 'the world' would give them water and roads they'd find a new line of work. Can't decide if they've been coached on those answers or if they were born with the entitlement gene.

So, do you really have to go to Harvard or Yale to be President?

2010-05-12T22:15:00.001-05:00

I'd think most people would respond, "Of course not!" But the numbers are hard to ignore ...

April deficit bigger than expected.

2010-05-12T21:00:00.000-05:00

"Bigger than expected" seems to be a theme these days. This time they were off by 30 billion with a B. The actual deficit was nearly 60% higher than analyst estimates. That's a significant amount to be off by.

Story here.

Just Wrong

2010-05-11T14:29:00.001-05:00

Mojave Desert War Memorial stolen.

The new lawless administration, same as (worse than) the last lawless administration

2010-05-10T12:39:00.001-05:00

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF I VOTED FOR MCCAIN, we'd get an Attorney General who'd want to curtail Miranda rights. And they were right!

Attorney General Eric Holder said that Congress should "give serious consideration" to updating the Miranda warning which requires law enforcement officials to inform suspects of their rights – including the right to remain silent.

In an interview on "This Week," Holder said that the U.S. needs to exam whether the current rules regarding Miranda warnings give law enforcement agents the "necessary flexibility" when dealing with terrorism cases.

Ah, remember all that talk about the "lawless Bush Administration" trampling civil rights, and the fierce moral urgency of change? Well, if you believed that stuff when they were peddling it. . . hey, rube!

from Instapundit

Hmm. This explains a lot

2010-05-05T15:12:00.001-05:00

a 1999 study by psychologist Robert Feldman at the University of Massachusetts showed that the most popular kids were also the most effective liars.

and then, I'm guessing, they went into politics ...

From this article on the Top 10 Secrets of Effective Liars. Arm yourself for tonight's news and the upcoming elections. :-)

Timeline of evolution of life on Earth

2010-04-30T11:32:00.001-05:00

Kind of cool.

Tea Party vs. Central planning

2010-04-26T08:02:00.001-05:00

Here's what the TP itself really fears, in an inchoate way that for most of its members doesn't rise to the level of clear understanding, but is still intuitively very powerful: the US is embracing central planning as a governing theory, as fast as our legislative processes will allow. . . . Central planning has two primary flaws, when compared with economic freedom: it misallocates resources, and it magnifies the impact of corruption. I could write a decent-sized book explaining both of those mechanisms, but because I've never been busier in my life than I have been these past few weeks, I'll cut to the conclusion.

The endpoint of central planning, if not outright failure, is a much deeper and more intractable division of society into haves and have-nots. After promising a better world for everyone, the progressives will end up creating a society that is more polarized than ever. . . . And we're already seeing everywhere, from David Brooks to Noam Chomsky, the signs of how the elites will have to deal with the polarization: by loudly proclaiming in their captive media that the have-nots are stupid and, eventually, evil.

from here, via this.

Healthcare to look forward to ...

2010-04-25T22:56:00.001-05:00

Great Moments in Socialized Medicine
"Doctors repeatedly mistook a teenage girl's cancer for migraines--spotting three tumours only after her father refused to leave the hospital until she had a CT scan," London's Daily Mail reports:

Danica Maxwell, 14, said she felt like 'a nuisance' and 'just another kid with a migraine who was making a fuss' when she was seen at the West Cumberland Hospital, in Whitehaven, Cumbria.

When she was eventually operated on she was told she would have died had the cancer gone unnoticed any longer.

The tumours removed from her body were deemed so unusual they were sent to America for analysis.

Danica's tumors ended up at Princeton University, where former Enron adviser Paul Krugman produced the following analysis: "In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We've all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false."

from here.

Parent of an autistic child treats with medical marijuana

2010-04-20T12:50:00.001-05:00

Interesting

Obama now micro-managing hospitals ...

2010-04-16T10:54:00.001-05:00

Obama extends hospital visit rights to partners of gays

To be clear - I think a person's life partner should certainly have visitation rights. I just don't think the President of the United States should be making that call. How is it the government's business or responsibility?

I wish I could believe this was actually true

2010-04-15T09:17:00.001-05:00

Libertarian sentiment has finally gone mainstream.

A movement that said that people should do whatever they wanted as long as it didn't hurt anyone else couldn't compete during the culture wars that began in the 1960s.

But after two wars, a $12 trillion debt, a financial crisis and the most politically tone-deaf president in modern history, Americans may have finally given up on big government.

Heh

2010-04-09T12:40:00.001-05:00

Besides, the notion that an obscure teacher of constitutional law could be catapulted to one of the highest offices in the land is absurd on its face.

What is a libertarian?

2010-04-07T17:07:00.001-05:00

See here

It appears that when government sets out to solve a problem, not only does it violate our freedom, it also accomplishes the opposite of what it set out to do.

In this particular case, the author is discussing the government mission to 'help the poor'. Welfare programs do not help the poor. At least they don't help them to not be poor anymore. Rather they encourage them to become ever more dependent on the government.

This is not very helpful to the poor, but it is very helpful to the politicians who continue the programs and expand them to more and more people.

Politics ...

2010-04-07T16:46:00.001-05:00

The Purposes of Political Combat -

How is it that Obama can fail to see that changes of the magnitude he is seeking would compel those who believe that those changes are dangerous—who honestly believe that they are bad for the country and whose belief is grounded in powerful ideas about how society should be ordered—to marshal their forces to do whatever is in their power to prevent them from taking place? And that it would be wise not to dismiss or belittle the energy and resolve of the opposition, but rather to take their full measure and plan accordingly?

This has been frustrating to me as well. I get accused of being contrary and partisan because I disagree fundamentally with the current government's approach to governing. They believe government should be large and have expansive power and responsibility. I believe government should be small with limited power and responsibility. These are fundamentally opposite views. I don't disagree with them because they're Democrats (or Republicans in a lot of cases), I disagree with them because I think they are wrong, whoever they are.

The Aurora Borealis ... from the other side

2010-04-05T16:29:00.001-05:00

A picture from a Japanese astronaut on the International Space station.

NASA climate data not reliable, per NASA

2010-03-30T22:24:00.000-05:00

Full article here.

Global warming critics call this a crucial blow to advocates' arguments that minor flaws in the "Climate-gate" data are unimportant, since all the major data sets arrive at the same conclusion -- that the Earth is getting warmer. But there's a good reason for that, the skeptics say: They all use the same data.

"There is far too much overlap among the surface temperature data sets to assert with a straight face that they independently verify each other's results," says James M. Taylor, senior fellow of environment policy at The Heartland Institute.

Media treatment of Tea Party

2010-03-26T14:36:00.001-05:00

We Report, You Obey: The MSM's Dirty Tea Party Fetish
Angry or furious? Threatening or deeply, deeply sinister? From their angry pickup trucks to their extreme extremities, Mainstream Media News anchor Andrew Klavan delivers a hard-hitting, objective report on America's angry tea party of anger.

:-) - A video report from PJTV

House of Anger? Please.

2010-03-25T22:46:00.001-05:00

The original article.

My take below

Unfairly or not, the defining images of opposition to health care reform may end up being those rage-filled partisans with spittle on their lips. Whether the outbursts came from inside Congress — the "baby killer" shout of Rep. Randy Neugebauer, and his colleagues who cheered on hecklers — or outside, where protesters hurled vile names against elected representatives, they are powerful and lasting scenes of a democracy gasping for dignity.

Since the media will largely control the 'defining images', this likely will be true to a great extent. As an adjunct of the Democrat party, most of the media will happily replay the clips that make the oppostion look 'rage-filled' and buffoonish. Similarly rabid protestors of the Iraq war were potrayed as simply exercising their rights in what was obviously a righteous cause.

Most of these vignettes are isolated incidents — a few crazies going off in a vein-popping binge. But the Republican Party now has taken some of the worst elements of Tea Party anger and incorporated them into its own identity. They are ticked off, red-faced, frothing — and these are the men in suits.

The accounts I've read of people who've actually attended Tea Party events describe orderly, polite protests - nothing 'red-faced' or 'frothing' about it. I'm sure there are crazies who show up, as there are crazies on the other side who don't represent most of the left. The tea party's views are mostly libertarian and - from what I've read - they've avoided affiliating with any existing party. They're not happy with pretty much any of the current crop of legislators. Bush was no proponent of smaller, less-intrusive government.
Here's an interesting commentary on an article discussing the supposed threats to Democrat lawmakers.

... as the party of the hissy fit, Republicans are playing with fire.

And Democrats should know as that's more often their role. (Low hanging fruit. Couldn't resist)

On Monday morning, most Americans awoke with some relief that the epic battle was over. Then, they tried to figure out what health care overhaul would mean to them. They found out that insurance companies would no longer be allowed to drop people if they get sick. They saw that older children could stay on their insurance through age 26. And the elderly, the most consistent voting block, discovered that the new law would gradually end a prescription drug donut hole that causes many of them to cut their pills in half to get through a month.

Saul Alinsky wrote a book - Rules for Radicals. Rule number 12: "pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."This administration seems fond of Saul and his rules. In this case the target is insurance companies. The first step to a single payer health system is to get rid of the insurance companies. If insurance companies are required to cover people with existing conditions then why would anyone buy insurance before they became sick? That goes against the whole theory of insurance. Would anyone expect their auto insurance to cover them for an accident they had before they obtained coverage? Doesn't that sound silly?

No death panels. No socialized public option. No forcing people to change doctors or providers. And the most contentious part of the new law — requiring nearly everyone to get health coverage or pay a fine — does not kick in until 2014.

The fine will be pointless unless it is more than the cost of the insurance. I guess we'll see, but I'm guessing that won't be the case. And that 2014 date is interesting - that's when the requirements kick in, but the taxes start right away. That was the only way they could massage the numbers from the CBO to make it look like the plan isn't going to bankrupt the country.

But it's always better to be building something than destroying it.

That's just a silly statement.

Having welcomed Tea Party rage into their home, and vowing repeal, the Republicans have made a dangerous bargain. First, they are tying their fate to a fringe, one that includes a small faction of overt racists and unstable people. The Quinnipiac poll this week found only 13 percent of Americans say they are part of the Tea Party movement.

Again with a misportrayal of the Tea Party as being about rage. And here's one thought on the supposed racist faction of the Tea Party movement. There probably are racists among Tea Partiers but there are probably more in the Democrat party - or have we forgotten our President's long-time pastor Reverend Wright.
And let's not be too quick to dismiss that 13 percent who are 'part of the Tea Party movement'. Since this is a movement that's just about a year old, 13 percent doesn't seem too shabby. I'd consider it pretty impressive. I mean I'm not 'part of the Tea Party movement' but I feel a lot more affinity for them than either of the dominant parties.

It was the ancient Greeks who gave us a sense of what Republicans will be living with under this pact with rage. Many people are afraid of the dark, the saying goes. But the real tragedy is those who are afraid of the light.

Hmmm. A 'pact with rage' - really?
And I guess we'll see when and how brightly the light shines on the details of the new healthcare plan. Considering the administrations past aversion to transparency, I'm not expecting much.

Not likely, but makes sense to me ...

2010-03-25T14:40:00.001-05:00

From my inbox...

An idea whose time has come

For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they didn't pay into Social Security, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform that is being considered...in all of its forms. Somehow, that doesn't seem logical. We do not have an elite that is above the law. I truly don't care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving must stop. This is a good way to do that. It is an idea whose time has come.

Have each person contact a minimum of Twenty people on their Address list, in turn ask each of those to do likewise.

In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one proposal that really should be passed around.

Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution

"Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States."

You are one of my 20.

Things Ann Althouse likes about President Obama

2010-03-08T21:39:00.001-06:00

Funny.

From an email forward ...

2010-03-01T17:04:00.002-06:00

I'm Sick of "Inherited"

The Washington Post babbled again today about Obama inheriting a huge deficit from Bush, blah blah blah. Amazingly enough, a lot of people swallow this nonsense.

So once more, I'll try a short civics lesson.

Budgets do not get approved by the White House. They are passed only by CONGRESS and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party. They controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011. In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush belatedly got tough on spending increases. For FY 2009, though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets.

And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009.

Let's remember what the deficits looked like during that period:

If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for those budgets. If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.

In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is I inherited a deficit that I voted for and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th.

Idaho resident responds to NYT article pimping sad stereotypes

2010-02-16T14:47:00.001-06:00

Funny stuff.

This sounds right to me

2010-02-16T10:20:00.001-06:00

... all the fraud, critical "lost" data, suppression of criticism and so on doesn't prove that there's no global warming — people can lie about things that, nonetheless, turn out to be true — but it has to induce a certain degree of skepticism. So what should we do?

Nothing. At least, in my opinion, we should continue to try to minimize the use of fossil fuels regardless. Burning coal and oil is filthy, and they're more valuable as chemical feedstocks anyway. We should be building nuclear plants and pursuing efficiencies in the shorter term, while working on better solar (including orbital solar), wind, etc. power supplies for the longer term.

I agree. Cap and trade is a bunch of crap with primarily political goals.

But I'm all for taking care of the environment and burning less oil. I was an early adopter of compact fluorescents - because I believed the hype that they would save me money in the long run. Now I'm switching back to incandescents and waiting for LED lights to get cheaper. The fluorescents never lasted as long as they claimed - some of them I replaced as often as I would have an incandescent and for a lot more money. And now of course we find out they have mercury in them which will now be going into our landfills.

I'm interested in solar, too, but again mostly I'm waiting for it to get cheaper.

And of course, I don't think the government needs to be driving this stuff. Let the markets sort it out.

A plague on both your houses

2010-02-11T12:05:00.001-06:00

voters not happy with Dems or GOP.

Sounds about right to me.

Have a little salt with this ...

2010-02-10T09:41:00.001-06:00

This was forwarded to me from my friend Craig. I thought it was interesting but kind of long. I definitely agree with it that lawyers are more part of our problems than likely bringers of solutions. I suspect there are plenty of lawyers among Republicans and some non-lawyers among Democrat politicians, but I haven't looked into it.

The Democratic Party has become the Lawyers Party. Barack Obama is a lawyer. Michelle Obama is a lawyer. Hillary Clinton is a lawyer. Bill Clinton is a lawyer. John Edwards is a lawyer. Elizabeth Edwards is a lawyer. Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate). Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school. Look at leaders of the Democrat Party in Congress: Harry Reid is a lawyer.. Nancy Pelosi is a lawyer.

The Republican Party is different. President Bush is a businessman. Vice President Cheney is a businessman. The leaders of the Republican Revolution: Newt Gingrich was a history professor. Tom Delay was an exterminator. Dick Armey was an economist. House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastic manufacturer. The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon. Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer? Gerald Ford, who left office 31 years ago and who barely won the Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against Ronald Reagan in 1976.

The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work, who are often the targets of lawyers. The Democrat Party is made up of lawyers. Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, like Bush and Cheney, or who heal the sick, like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history, like Gingrich.

The Lawyers Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America .. And, so we have seen the procession of official enemies, in the eyes of the Lawyers Party, grow.

Against whom do Hillary and Obama rail? Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers, and anyone producing anything of value in our nation.

This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers. Lawyers solve problems by successfully representing their clients, in this case the American people. Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers always parse language to favor their side.

Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine. But it is an awful way to govern a great nation. When politicians as lawyers begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life becomes all-consuming. Some Americans become adverse parties of our very government. We are not all litigants in some vast social class-action suit. We are citizens of a republic that promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers.

Today, we are drowning in laws; we are contorted by judicial decisions; we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives. America has a place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and unchecked. When the most important decision for our next president is whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and the law in America is too big. When lawyers use criminal prosecution as a continuation of politics by other means, as happened in the lynching of Scooter Libby and Tom Delay, then the power of lawyers in America is too great. When House Democrats sue America in order to hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning todo to us, then the role of litigation in America has become crushing.

We cannot expect the Lawyers Party to provide real change, realreform or real hope in America Most Americans know that a republic in whichevery major government action must be blessed by nine unelected judges isnot what Washington intended in 1789. Most Americans grasp that we cannotfight a war when ACLU lawsuits snap at the heels of our defenders. MostAmericans intuit that more lawyers and judges will not restore decliningmoral values or spark the spirit of enterprise in our economy.

Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American society and business. Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by hard work. Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse.

The United States has 5% of the worlds population and 66% of the worlds lawyers! Tort (Legal) reform legislation has been introduced in congress several times in the last several years to limit punitive damages in ridiculous lawsuits such as spilling hot coffee on yourself and suing the establishment that sold it to you and also to limit punitive damages in huge medical malpractice lawsuits. This legislation has continually been blocked from even being voted on by the Democrat Party. When you see that 97% of the political contributions from the American Trial Lawyers Association goes to the Democrat Party, then you realize who is responsible for our medical and product costs being so high!

The system is working as designed.

2010-02-08T16:26:00.001-06:00

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.

from here.