Yeah, We Know How You Feel

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Installing The New Caliphate In America A Little Faster
In the U.K., "Asian" is a P.C. code word that often means Muslim. Political scientist Dr. Farzana Shaikh, an Associate Fellow of the Asia Programme at Chatham House in London, has the bright idea that the globe be turned into America's 51st state, so everybody can vote in U.S. elections. Nice try, Farzana. Here's what Farzana wrote:

Given that we live in a uni-polar world, where the United States effectively controls the lives of billions across the globe.

With President Barack Obama having reiterated, in his inaugural address, America's readiness to lead the world, I think it is time the international community was given a say in choosing its head.

By enabling peoples of the world to elect both their own leaders and the leader of the United States, I believe it would help establish a balance with American voters, who have until now enjoyed the privilege of deciding both the fate of their own country and the future of others.

This guy who commented below made me sick:

In the 2004 US Election, I did exactly that. As a US citizen, I made my vote in that presidential election available to the citizens of Malaysia, my adopted home.

The way I did this was to start an online poll allowing people to vote their will. Over 80,000 people voted. I then committed to vote in the actual US vote for whichever candidate the Malaysian voting public favoured. It wasn't Bush. In future, similarly internationally minded US citizens might consider joining their votes and forming a sort of voting bloc to represent the hopes and wishes of the international community outside of fortress America.

Erik Fearn, KL, Malaysia

Hey, Erik, since you're voting Malaysia's interest, and not America's, how about you give up your U.S. citizenship? I believe this is Erik's website.

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Congress Orders Up A Beatrix Potter Bonfire
Did you ever lick a book as a child? Tear a page out and eat it? Then eat all the rest of the other pages? I loved books as a child, but I digested them the metaphorical way. And a good thing that was, too, because, back then, we didn't have the Federal government at the ready to order booksellers and libraries to ditch pre-1985 children's books like we do now...get this...in hopes of protecting the children.

Overlawyered's Walter Olson, one of the few voices of reason on this, writes for City Journal of the cost to children who read from the ridiculous law, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, passed in a panic last summer in a panic over lead in toys from China:

At any rate, CPSIA's major provisions went into effect on February 10. The day before, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) published guidelines telling thrift stores, as well as other resellers and distributors of used goods, what they could safely keep selling and what they should consider rejecting or subjecting to (expensive) lead testing. Confirming earlier reports, the document advised that only "ordinary" children's books (that is, made entirely of paper, with no toylike plastic or metal elements) printed after 1985 could be placed in the safe category. Older books were pointedly left off the safe list; the commission did allow an exception for vintage collectibles whose age, price, or rarity suggested that they would most likely be used by adult collectors, rather than given to children.

Since the law became effective the very next day, there was no time to waste in putting this advice into practice. A commenter at Etsy, the large handicrafts and vintage-goods site, observed how things worked at one store:

I just came back from my local thrift store with tears in my eyes! I watched as boxes and boxes of children's books were thrown into the garbage! Today was the deadline and I just can't believe it! Every book they had on the shelves prior to 1985 was destroyed! I managed to grab a 1967 edition of "The Outsiders" from the top of the box, but so many!

People who deal in children's books for a livelihood now face unpleasant choices. Valorie Jacobsen of Clinton, Wisconsin, who owns a small used-book store and has sold over the Internet since 1995, commented at my blog, Overlawyered: "Our bookstore is the sole means of income for our family, and we currently have over 7,000 books catalogued. In our children's department, 35 percent of our picture books and 65 percent of our chapter books were printed before 1985." Jacobsen has contacted the CPSC and her congressional representatives for guidance, but to no avail. "We cannot simply discard a wealth of our culture's nineteenth and twentieth children's literature over this," she writes. She remains defiant, if wary: "I was willing to resist the censorship of 1984 and the Fire Department of Fahrenheit 451 long before I became a bookseller, so I'd love to run a black market in quality children's books--but at the same time it's not like the CPSC has never destroyed a small, harmless company before."

...A further question is what to do about public libraries, which daily expose children under 12 to pre-1985 editions of Anne of Green Gables, Beatrix Potter, Baden-Powell's scouting guides, and other deadly hazards. The blogger Design Loft carefully examines some of the costs of CPSIA-proofing pre-1985 library holdings; they are, not surprisingly, utterly prohibitive. The American Library Association spent months warning about the law's implications, but its concerns fell on deaf ears in Congress (which, in this week's stimulus bill, refused to consider an amendment by Republican senator Jim DeMint to reform CPSIA). The ALA now apparently intends to take the position that the law does not apply to libraries unless it hears otherwise. One can hardly blame it for this stance, but it's far from clear that it will prevail. For one thing, the law bans the "distribution" of forbidden items, whether or not for profit. In addition, most libraries regularly raise money through book sales, and will now need to consider excluding older children's titles from those sales. One CPSC commissioner, Thomas Moore, has already called for libraries to "sequester" some undefinedly large fraction of pre-1985 books until more is known about their risks.

The risk? The risk is that children will not read these books, really valuable books that made me love reading and set me on the path to becoming a writer.

Walter wisely closes with this:

Whatever the future of new media may hold, ours will be a poorer world if we begin to lose (or "sequester" from children) the millions of books published before our own era. They serve as a path into history, literature, and imagination for kids everywhere. They link the generations by enabling parents to pass on the stories and discoveries in which they delighted as children. Their illustrations open up worlds far removed from what kids are likely to see on the video or TV screen. Could we really be on the verge of losing all of this? And if this is what government protection of our kids means, shouldn't we be thinking instead about protecting our kids from the government?

UPDATE: As Walter Olson posted in the comments below, Snopes is WRONG. His blog item on that is here.

MORE from Walter here.

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Amy On Dr. Helen TV: New! Answering Viewer Mail
PJTV has the latest segment of Dr. Helen's chat with me up now -- here.

 

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Little Red Corvette
A candy apple a day...

I think it's a '66 Mercedes.

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Bristol Palin For Trojans
Sarah Palin's daughter, now a teen mommy, calls abstinence only education what it is -- a crock:

(CNN) -- In her first interview since giving birth, the teenage daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said having a child is not "glamorous," and that telling young people to be abstinent is "not realistic at all."

Bristol Palin says "everyone should just wait 10 years" to have a baby, rather than when you're young.

"It's just, like, I'm not living for myself anymore. It's, like, for another person, so it's different," Bristol Palin told Fox News' Greta Van Susteren. "And just you're up all night. And it's not glamorous at all," she said. "Like, your whole priorities change after having a baby."

The 18-year-old, who gave birth in late December, said she is being helped tremendously by her mother, grandmother, cousins and other family members. She is engaged to teen father Levi Johnston, who is now working for his father and trying to complete school, but said she wishes that she waited another 10 years to have a baby.

It was "harder than labor" telling her parents she was pregnant.

"Well, we were sitting on the couch, my best friend and Levi, and we had my parents come and sit on the couch, too. And we had my sisters go upstairs," Bristol said. "And we just sat them down, and I just -- I couldn't even say it. I was just sick to my stomach.

"And so finally, my best friend just, like, blurted it out. And it was just, like -- I don't even remember it because it was just, like, something I don't want to remember."

Todd and Sarah Palin were "scared just because I have to -- I had to grow up a lot faster than they ever would have imagined," Bristol said.

Her parents insisted that she and her boyfriend hash out a "game plan" immediately. And now her parents and relatives are all pitching in to help take care of the child, particularly when Bristol is at school during the day.

Van Susteren was delicate with the teenager but pointedly asked if "contraception is an issue here."

"Is that something that you were just lazy about or not interested, or do you have philosophical or religious opposition to it," Van Susteren asked.

Bristol quickly answered that she didn't want to get into specifics. The best option is abstinence, the teen said, but added that she didn't think that was "realistic."

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The "Gentle" Muslim Beheader
Along the lines of those accounts from the astonished next-door neighbors of serial killers, who always say stuff like "But, he always tended the roses so beautifully!", MSNBC posts the AP's ridiculous take on the Muslim-American barbarian who beheaded his wife:

'Never heard him raise his voice'
"I've never heard him raise his voice," said Paul Moskal, who became friendly with the couple while he was chief counsel for the FBI in Buffalo. Moskal would answer questions in forums aired on Bridges TV that were intended to improve understanding between Muslim-Americans and law enforcement.

"His personal life kind of betrayed what he tried to portray publicly," Moskal said.

On Feb. 12, Hassan went to a police station and told officers his wife was dead at the TV studio.

"We found her laying in the hallway the offices were off of," Benz said. Aasiya Hassan's head was near her body.

"I don't know if (the method of death) does mean anything," said the chief, who would not discuss what weapon may have been used. "We certainly want to investigate anything that has any kind of merit. It's not a normal thing you would see."

...NOW condemns prosecutors
The New York president of the National Organization for Women, Marcia Pappas, condemned prosecutors for referring to the death as an apparent case of domestic violence.

"This was, apparently, a terroristic version of 'honor killing,'" a statement from NOW said.

Nadia Shahram, who teaches family law and Islam at the University at Buffalo Law School, explained honor killing as a practice still accepted among fanatical Muslim men who feel betrayed by their wives.

"If a woman breaks the law which the husband or father has placed for the wife or daughter, honor killing has been justified," said Shahram, who was a regular panelist on a law show produced by Bridges TV. "It happens all the time. It's been practiced in countries such as Pakistan and in India."

Acquaintances said Mo Hassan was not overtly religious -- co-workers did not see him pray, for instance. But he seemed to adhere to many traditional practices.

Nancy Sanders, the television station's news director for 2 1/2 years, remembers him asking her to move her feet during her job interview so he would not see her legs. She was wearing a skirt and stockings.

He also would not let women enter his office unless his wife was there, and he blocked the station from airing a story about the first Muslim woman to win the title of Miss England in 2005, Sanders said.

Acquaintances said Aasiya Hassan was trained as an architect. Sanders described her as obedient to her husband, and that she wore a traditional hijab for a time but later stopped without explanation.

Read this bit again: "Aasiya Hassan's head was near her body." Yeah, he's gentle, all right.

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The Overselling Of Love
I just posted another one of my Advice Goddess columns. An excerpt:

Love is so oversold in our culture; it's supposed to be "all you need," "the answer," "forever." Just saying you have it is supposed to shut everybody up: "Sure, he beats me a little. But, I love him!" Well, okay then! As for this guy, what exactly do you love...the way he puts on his girlfriend-canceling headphones and stares deep into the television set whenever you talk about saving your relationship?

Comments are live at this link.

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Cheesecake For The Hungry
In Striptease - Part 6: The Last Hurrah? my good friend Nancy Rommelmann takes it off for the Oregon Food Bank.

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Tastes Like Chicken

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What Geert Would've Said
Had Geert Wilders been allowed into the U.K. to speak to Parliament -- instead of being stopped at Heathrow because he speaks the truth about the violent totalitarian system that is Islam -- here's an excerpt of what they would've heard:

Today, I come before you to warn of another great threat. It is called Islam. It poses as a religion, but its goals are very worldly: world domination, holy war, sharia law, the end of the separation of church and state, the end of democracy. It is not a religion, it is a political ideology. It demands your respect, but has no respect for you.

There might be moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam. Islam will never change, because it is built on two rocks that are forever, two fundamental beliefs that will never change, and will never go away. First, there is Quran, Allah's personal word, uncreated, forever, with orders that need to be fulfilled regardless of place or time. And second, there is al-insal al-kamil, the perfect man, Muhammad the role model, whose deeds are to be imitated by all Muslims. And since Muhammad was a warlord and a conqueror we know what to expect.

Islam means submission, so there cannot be any mistake about it's goal. That's a given. The question is whether the British people, with its glorious past, is longing for that submission.

We see Islam taking off in the West at an incredible speed. The United Kingdom has seen a rapid growth of the number of Muslims. Over the last ten years, the Muslim population has grown ten times as fast as the rest of society. This has put an enormous pressure on society. Thanks to British politicians who have forgotten about Winston Churchill, the English now have taken the path of least resistance. They give up. They give in.

Thank you very much for letting me into the country. I received a letter from the Secretary of State for the Home Department, kindly disinviting me. I would threaten community relations, and therefore public security in the UK, the letter stated.

For a moment I feared that I would be refused entrance. But I was confident the British government would never sacrifice free speech because of fear of Islam. Britannia rules the waves, and Islam will never rule Britain, so I was confident the Border Agency would let me through. And after all, you have invited stranger creatures than me. Two years ago the House of Commons welcomed Mahmoud Suliman Ahmed Abu Rideh, linked to Al Qaeda. He was invited to Westminster by Lord Ahmed, who met him at Regent's Park mosque three weeks before. Mr. Rideh, suspected of being a money man for terror groups, was given a SECURITY sticker for his Parliamentary visit.

Well, if you let in this man, than an elected politician from a fellow EU country surely is welcome here too. By letting me speak today you show that Mr Churchill's spirit is still very much alive. And you prove that the European Union truly is working; the free movement of persons is still one of the pillars of the European project.

But there is still much work to be done. Britain seems to have become a country ruled by fear. A country where civil servants cancel Christmas celebrations to please Muslims. A country where Sharia Courts are part of the legal system. A country where Islamic organizations asked to stop the commemoration of the Holocaust. A country where a primary school cancels a Christmas nativity play because it interfered with an Islamic festival. A country where a school removes the words Christmas and Easter from their calendar so as not to offend Muslims. A country where a teacher punishes two students for refusing to pray to Allah as part of their religious education class. A country where elected members of a town council are told not to eat during daylight hours in town hall meetings during the Ramadan. A country that excels in its hatred of Israel, still the only democracy in the Middle-East. A country whose capitol is becoming 'Londonistan.'

I would not qualify myself as a free man. Four and a half years ago I lost my freedom. I am under guard permanently, courtesy to those who prefer violence to debate. But for the leftist fan club of Islam, that is not enough. They started a legal procedure against me. Three weeks ago the Amsterdam Court of Appeals ordered my criminal prosecution for making Fitna and for my views on Islam. I committed what George Orwell called a 'thought crime.'

You might have seen my name on Fitna's credit role, but I am not really responsible for that movie. It was made for me. It was actually produced by Muslim extremists, the Quran and Islam itself. If Fitna is considered 'hate speech,' then how would the Court qualify the Quran, with all its calls for violence, and hatred against women and Jews?

Mr. Churchill himself compared the Quran to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. Well, I did exactly the same, and that is what they are prosecuting me for.

I wonder if the UK ever put Mr. Churchill on trail.

The Court's decision and the letter I received form the Secretary of State for the Home Department are two major victories for all those who detest freedom of speech. They are doing Islam's dirty work. Sharia by proxy. The differences between Saudi Arabia and Jordan on one hand, and Holland and Britain are blurring. Europe is now on the fast track of becoming Eurabia. That is apparently the price we have to pay for the project of mass immigration, and the multicultural project.

Ladies and gentlemen, the dearest of our many freedoms is under attack. In Europe, freedom of speech is no longer a given. What we once considered a natural component of our existence is now something we again have to fight for. That is what is at stake. Whether or not I end up in jail is not the most pressing issue. The question is: Will free speech be put behind bars?

We have to defend freedom of speech.

For the generation of my parents the word 'London' is synonymous with hope and freedom. When my country was occupied by the national-socialists the BBC offered a daily glimpse of hope, in the darkness of Nazi tyranny. Millions of my country men listened to it, illegally. The words 'This Is London' were a symbol for a better world coming soon. If only the British and Canadian and American soldiers were here.

What will be transmitted forty years from now? Will it still be 'This Is London'? Or will it be 'this is Londonistan'? Will it bring us hope, or will it signal the values of Mecca and Medina? Will Britain offer submission or perseverance? Freedom or slavery?

The choice is ours.

Ladies and gentlemen,

We will never apologize for being free. We will never give in. We will never surrender.

Freedom must prevail, and freedom will prevail.

Thank you very much.

Geert Wilders MP
Chairman, Party for Freedom (PVV)
The Netherlands

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Even The Tax Cut-Friendly Have Keynesian Leanings
There's a really smart piece by Robert P. Murphy on the Mises Institute blog about how many of the well-intentioned media people opposing the so-called "stimulus" plan have actually "fallen into the Keynesian trap:

Rather than the politicians spending nearly a trillion dollars, they argue, it would provide much more stimulus if the government gave massive tax cuts. This would "put money back in the pockets of average Americans" and they would go to the mall and "get that money into circulation and boost the economy."

...By justifying tax cuts on the grounds that the taxpayers will go out and spend the money, these critics actually concede the entire case. After all, why take a chance on those fickle taxpayers, who might selfishly decide to pay down some debt or to stick the extra cash under the mattress? If buying stuff is the way to promote recovery, then nobody can top the DC politicians.

Consumers Don't Cause Recessions

The biggest mistake in the "let taxpayers spend the money" argument is that it buys into the Keynesian notion that recessions are due to a sudden bout of squeamishness on the part of consumers.

...To hear some crude versions of Keynesian thinking, you would get the impression that businesses are in trouble because Americans all of a sudden just decided that they didn't like steak and they didn't enjoy plasma screen TVs.

Of course that's not what happened. Instead, what happened is that American consumers decided they weren't prepared to spend as much on these nonessential items. To prove that our recession isn't due to a lack of consumption desire per se, imagine that car dealerships announced they would sell each vehicle on the lot for $1. Or, those trying to sell their homes and finding "no buyers" could charge $10 for each property. Does anyone doubt that these firesales would unload all the excess inventory in a matter of hours?

And finally:

Why Tax Cuts Are Better Than Government Spending

...In conclusion, the critics of the nearly trillion-dollar "stimulus" plan are certainly correct to call for tax cuts rather than more government spending. However, many of these critics couch their justifications in ways that actually prove the superiority of government spending. A correct analysis shows that it is better to let taxpayers keep more of their money, even if they use 100% of the savings to pay down debt. There is nothing magical about consumption spending, and in fact it was overconsumption that got us into the present mess.

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Dumb Teens Outdone By Dumb Adults In Charge
Teens are getting stuck with the kiddie pornographer label and forced to register as sex offenders for "sexting," sending nude cell phone photos around. Okay, bad judgment, but shouldn't bad judgment be punished by a call from the principal's office to mom and dad and some days writing out the Gettysburg address on the blackboard? Dalia Lithwick writes on Slate:

The real problem with criminalizing teen sexting as a form of child pornography is that the great majority of these kids are not predators and have no intention of producing or purveying kiddie porn. They think they're being brash and sexy, in the manner of brash, sexy Americans everywhere: by being undressed. And while some of the reaction to the sexting epidemic reflects legitimate concerns about children as sex objects, some highlights pernicious legal stereotypes and fallacies. A recent New York Times article about online harassment, for instance, quotes the Family Violence Prevention Fund, a nonprofit domestic violence awareness group, saying that the sending of nude pictures, even if done voluntarily, constitutes "digital dating violence." But is one in five teens truly participating in an act of violence?

Many other experts insist the sexting trend hurts teen girls more than boys, fretting that they feel "pressured" to take and send naked photos. Yet the girls in the Pennsylvania case were charged with "manufacturing, disseminating or possessing child pornography" while the boys were merely charged with possession. This disparity seems increasingly common. If we are worried about the poor girls pressured into exposing themselves, why are we treating them more harshly than the boys?

In a thoughtful essay in the American Prospect Online, Judith Levine, author of Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex
examines the dangers lurking online for children and concludes that the harms of old-fashioned online bullying--the sort of teasing and ostracism that led Megan Meier to kill herself after being tormented on MySpace--far outweigh the dangers of online sexual material. Judging from the sexting prosecutions in Pennsylvania and Ohio last year, it's clear the criminal justice system is too blunt an instrument to resolve a problem that reflects more about the volatile combination of teens and technology than some national cyber-crime spree. Parents need to remind their teens that a dumb moment can last a lifetime in cyberspace. Judges and prosecutors need to understand that a lifetime of cyber-humiliation shouldn't be grounds for a very real and possibly lifelong criminal record.

An excerpt from Levine's essay:

Enter the law -- and the injuries of otherwise harmless teenage sexual shenanigans begin. The effects of the ever-stricter sex-crimes laws, which punish ever-younger offenders, are tragic for juveniles. A child pornography conviction -- which could come from sending a racy photo of yourself or receiving said photo from a girlfriend or boyfriend -- carries far heavier penalties than most hands-on sexual offenses. Even if a juvenile sees no lock-up time, he or she will be forced to register as a sex offender for 10 years or more. The federal Adam Walsh Child Protection Act of 2007 requires that sex offenders as young as 14 register.

As documented in such reports as Human Rights Watch's "No Easy Answers: Sex Offender Laws in the U.S." and "Registering Harm: How Sex Offense Registries Fail Youth and Communities" from the Justice Policy Institute, conviction and punishment for a sex crime (a term that includes nonviolent offenses such as consensual teen sex, flashing, and patronizing a prostitute) effectively squashes a minor's chances of getting a college scholarship, serving in the military, securing a good job, finding decent housing, and, in many cases, moving forward with hope or happiness.

The sexual dangers to youth, online or off, may be less than we think. Yet adults routinely conflate friendly sex play with hurtful online behavior. "Teaching Teenagers About Harassment," recent piece in The New York Times, swings between descriptions of consensual photo-swapping and incessant, aggressive texting and Facebook or MySpace rumor-and insult-mongering as if these were similarly motivated -- and equally harmful. It quotes the San Francisco-based Family Violence Prevention Fund, which calls sending nude photos "whether it is done under pressure or not" an element of "digital dating violence."

...A better-educated interlocutor, NPR's "On the Media" host Brooke Gladstone, defaulted to the same assumption in an interview with one of the Harvard Internet task force members, Family Online Safety Institute CEO Stephen Balkam. What lessons could be drawn from the study's findings? Gladstone asked. "What can be and what should be done to protect kids?"

"There's no silver bullet that's going to solve this issue," Balkam replied. But "far more cooperation has got to happen between law enforcement, industry, the academic community, and we need to understand far better the psychological issues that are at play here."

It's unclear from this exchange what Gladstone believes kids need to be protected from or what issue Balkam is solving. But neither of them came to the logical conclusion of the Harvard study: that we should back off, moderate our fears, and stop thinking of youthful sexual expression as a criminal matter. Still, Balkam wants to call in the cops.

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Did Your State Get Its Fair Share Of Porkulus?
A question from Powerline. Here are all the states, and here's mine. Note the new kitchens we're buying in Alameda ("Replace kitchen, bath cabinets and counters in all the 186 units of the Independence Plaza") And then there's the "vintage lighting" we're buying for the city of Alameda. Somebody likes Alameda. And why is nobody painting my house?

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"Woman Misses Flight, Seems Slightly Annoyed"
The headline, on Consumerist, where I found this, was just too perfect to change. Hilarious. Amazingly, nobody takes her into custody, although they kinda try.

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Almost Sculpture
That's one way to look at it. And then there's the reality: You, whomever you are, left your trash on the table for the next person.

Hey, Trash Leaver...did you mistake Starbucks for Lutece? Think a little man in a red jacket and bow tie would collect your crumpled up bag when he came around with the table scraper? Next time, walk your lumpy ass over to the trash can and throw your wrapper away. And a question: Did your mother raise you to be a thoughtless slob, or did you get that way all by your lonesome?

For intentionally artistic trash, check out my friend Little Shiva's site, The Visible Trash Society. You'll see the Mercedes Pens, a use for all those old Tab cans you've been hanging onto, a place for your tired bones, some of Little Shiva's designs, and a trashy yet classy wedding gown by Judith Selby-Lang.

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$5 Billion A Year, Just In California
That's a little under what it costs the rest of us California taxpayers for illegal immigrants every year. George Skelton itemizes in the LA Times:

* There were 2.8 million illegal immigrants living in California in 2006, the last year for which there are relatively good figures, according to the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. That represented about 8% of the state's population and roughly a quarter of the nation's illegal immigrants. About 90% of California's illegal immigrants were from Latin America; 65% from Mexico.

* There are roughly 19,000 illegal immigrants in state prisons, representing 11% of all inmates. That's costing $970 million during the current fiscal year. The feds kick in a measly $111 million, leaving the state with an $859 million tab.

* Schools are the toughest to calculate. Administrators don't ask kids about citizenship status. Anyway, many children of illegal immigrants were born in this country and automatically became U.S. citizens.

If you figure that the children of illegal immigrants attending K-12 schools approximates the proportion of illegal immigrants in the population, the bill currently comes to roughly $4 billion. Most is state money; some local property taxes.

* Illegal immigrants aren't entitled to welfare, called CalWORKs. But their citizen children are. Roughly 190,000 kids are receiving welfare checks that pass through their parents. The cost: about $500 million, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office.

Schwarzenegger has proposed removing these children from the welfare rolls after five years. It's part of a broader proposal to also boot off, after five years, the children of U.S. citizens who aren't meeting federal work requirements. There'd be a combined savings of $522 million.

* The state is spending $775 million on Medi-Cal healthcare for illegal immigrants, according to the legislative analyst. Of that, $642 million goes into direct benefits. Practically all the rest is paid to counties to administer the program. The feds generally match the state dollar-for-dollar on mandatory programs.

So-called emergency services are the biggest state cost: $536 million. Prenatal care is $59 million. Not counted in the overall total is the cost of baby delivery -- $108 million -- because the newborns aren't illegal immigrants.

The state also pays $47 million for programs that Washington does not require: Non-emergency care (breast and cervical cancer treatment), $25 million; long-term nursing home care, $19 million; abortions, $3 million.

Schwarzenegger has proposed requiring illegal immigrants to requalify every month for Medi-Cal benefits, except pregnancy-related emergencies.

There also are other taxpayer costs -- especially through local governments -- but those are the biggies for the state.

I'd like to see immigration laws enforced, and the Constitution re-amended to bar citizenship to anybody but children of U.S. citizens. At least one of a child's parents should be a citizen for him or her to qualify. I'd also like immigration to be decided based on what people can do for this country. Beyond those we grant asylum (for legit reasons, please), let's have highly skilled technical workers, not another 5,000 dishwashers.

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The Plans For Global Islamic Takeover
"The Third Jihad" -- home-grown Islamic terrorism, with caught-on-tape "moderate Muslims" advocating some really creepy shit.

"Islam as a civilization alternative" is just one of the points in a Muslim Brotherhood document the FBI got their hands on. This plot to infiltrate America comes from within, with the plotters planning to turn it into a Muslim country. Their goal is dispensing with all the rights and freedoms we hold dear, turning our society into a society as primitive as most of them in the Middle East -- "human rights disasters." And most chilling, at the end of the film, watch the sick fucks who are raising their children to martyr themselves, murdering people in the name of, uh, "the religion of peace."

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Happy Alone
A woman makes the case for not marrying or spawning. It works for her, yet, of course, commenters try to bring her over to the other side. Kate Mulvey wonders why should marriage plus kids equal happiness, writing in the Times of London on "the joys of being a spinster":

Kate, a married friend, said to me in that kindly patronising tone reserved for mad old women and naughty children: "Don't you think it's time you stopped running around like a middle-aged teenager and tied the knot before it's too late?"

"Too late for what?" I thought - a lifetime membership of Ikea and a man who is going to turn from Mr Perfect into Mr Sulk/Unfaithful/Slob within two years.

The truth is, while wedded bliss is great for some women, there are those of us who are not cut out to find a man, marry and reproduce. I am 43, unmarried, without a child and I am not crying myself to sleep.

Why should I? This is not the 19th century: I am not going to freeze to death in a workhouse. Nor is it the 20th century: I am not going to write an angsty desperate-to-be-married Bridget Jones-style diary or worry about the biological time bomb.

Welcome to the world of the Post- Modern Spinster. Sane and still in demand, the PMS has chosen her go-it-alone existence. She is part of a sisterhood that has forgone the traditional markers of conventional happiness - marriage, children - in favour of life on her terms.

It is not strictly a question of not finding Mr Right. I have been proposed to three times. I have been in a couple of long-term relationships. Each time the M-word has cropped up, I get the heebie-jeebies. I just don't have the marrying gene. It is not that I have anything against finding the man, it is the notion of the domesticity of settling down that makes me uncomfortable. The idea of jostling together, the never-ending compromises, the hours spent considering the needs of the family - ferrying kids to and from parties or having to wake at 5am because your husband has an important meeting in Paris - doesn't sound like fun.

And a lot of women, like me, are waking up to the idea that there is an alternative to the constraints of marriage and the drudgery of bringing up children. Over the past ten years the numbers of women who have decided to opt out of the family game have risen. According to statistics, 50 per cent of educated, professional women are unmarried and childless and, of those, two thirds have elected to be so.

For me, this doesn't mean not having a man in my life -- it just means constructing a relationship so it works for me (not marrying, not living together, not reproducing) rather than so it conforms to how it's supposed to work. I think more and more people are doing this, or feeling open to it.

No, commitment isn't for everyone, and what's wrong with that? Just try to figure that out fast so other people don't get hurt. And frankly, I meet plenty of men and a few women who say they'd be thrilled to have a relationship setup like mine. I think of it as romantic realism. And I find it a lot more fun and romantic and lasting than the romantic fantasy.

*

Welcome To The Same Old Deal
Dominic Lawson, in the Times of London, critiques the leaky lifeboat we're about to jump into -- yet again:

President Barack Obama declared last week that "if we don't act immediately, our nation will sink into a crisis that at some point we may be unable to reverse". As The Economist commented, with some alarm: "The notion that [America] might never recover was previously entertained only by bearded survivalists stockpiling beans and ammunition in remote log cabins."

Obama's dire assessment was on the surface the more surprising - wasn't he supposed to be the great uplifter of the national mood, in the spirit of Franklin D Roosevelt's "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"? It seems all the odder because Obama has explicitly drawn on folk memories of FDR's New Deal, telling television viewers to "keep in mind that in 1932, 1933 the unemployment rate was 25%".

Obama is probably right to assume that those same memories have it that the massive state interventionism of the New Deal triumphantly restored America to full employment. That's why he felt comfortable in asserting, on the eve of the launch of a $2 trillion (or so) injection of taxpayers' money, "There is no disagreement that we need . . . a recovery plan that will help to jump-start the economy."

He might, therefore, have been surprised to see an advertisement in the national papers, signed by more than 200 eminent economists, which declared: "With all due respect, Mr President, that is not true. Notwithstanding reports that all economists are now Keynesians . . . we the undersigned do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance. More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s." The sorry facts bear this out. The unemployment rate in the US was still 19% in 1939. Over the following four years the number of unemployed workers declined dramatically, by more than 7m. This had a very particular reason: the number of men in military service rose by 8.6m.

You might say that it is always possible to find 200 economists to disagree with anything, but in fact the practitioners of the dismal science are genuinely divided on this one. When the US Journal of Economic History polled economists on the proposition that "Taken as a whole, government policies of the New Deal served to lengthen and deepen the Great Depression", 49% agreed. These would be the ones who might have recalled the damning remark of FDR's own Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau. In 1939 he confided: "We have tried spending money . . . it does not work . . . we have just as much unemployment . . . and an enormous debt to boot."

The trouble, 70 years on, is that America's debt is already enormous, even before Obama's "jump-start" has begun to hoover up the taxpayers' trillions.

*

Go To The Behead Of The Class
Muzzammil Hassan wanted to portray Muslims in a more positive light, so he launched Bridges TV in 2004. And then, in 2009, he was charged with the beheading of his pretty young wife. Gene Warner writes in the Buffalo News:

The killing apparently occurred some time late Thursday afternoon. Detectives still are looking for the murder weapon.

"Obviously, this is the worst form of domestic violence possible," Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III said today.

Authorities say Aasiya Hassan recently had filed for divorce from her husband.

"She had an order of protection that had him out of the home as of Friday the 6th [of February]," Benz said.

Muzzammil Hassan was arraigned before Village Justice Deborah Chimes and sent to the Erie County Holding Center.

Oh, and while beheading isn't on the list of Islamic solutions to the problem of disobedient wives, don't forget that Islam justifies, even supports, wife-beating. From JihadWatch, posted by Robert Spencer:

...The permission to beat one's wife is rooted in the Islamic holy book, the Qur'an, and Islamic tradition.

The Qur'an says: "Men shall take full care of women with the bounties which God has bestowed more abundantly on the former than on the latter, and with what they may spend out of their possessions. And the righteous women are the truly devout ones, who guard the intimacy which God has [ordained to be] guarded. And as for those women whose ill-will you have reason to fear, admonish them [first]; then leave them alone in bed; then beat them..." (4:34)

The Islamic prophet Muhammad was once told that "women have become emboldened towards their husbands," whereupon he "gave permission to beat them" (Sunan Abu Dawud, book 11, no. 2141). He was unhappy with the women who complained, not with their husbands who beat them.

*

Stop Littering Now
A true crime reporter takes on the Nadya Suleman story -- who should, and will, pay. A few points from the end of the piece:

So what do you think will come out of this case? Mind you, I hate the government having to butt into so many things that should be a personal choice, but when taxpayers end up paying for those personal choices, I feel we deserve a say in things.

1. I believe that the fertility clinic "guidelines" which are in no way legally binding will be passed into law, giving real consequences to doctors who implant so many embryos into women, and especially into unstable women with no source of income other than taxpayers. That doctor needs to determine well before a pregnancy occurs just who is paying for the birth and support of a resulting baby.

2. If you are too disabled to work, you are no doubt too disabled to carry a baby. A singleton birth is tough enough if you have a bad back, and heck, if you didn't have a bad back prior to pregnancy you will afterwards! Worker's compensation will find a way to disqualify injured workers from TTD payments if they get pregnant while on TTD. Yes, it is a bit "big brotherish" but well within their rights to deny treatment if the injured worker goes against a physician's advice. What physician in his or her right mind would advocate a gravely disabled woman risk her life by carrying multiple fetuses?

3. If Nadya Suleman is indeed collecting Social Security Disability for herself, no doubt the Social Security Administration will make things more difficult for legitimately injured people who absolutely cannot work.

4. Kaiser hospital had plenty of time to transfer Nadya Suleman and her gravid uterus to a county hospital. But I believe the hospital saw what they thought could be great PR and also knew it would be able to bill the state for the cost of hospitalization of Nadya Suleman and the eight babies. Because the hospital had time to transfer her to a public hospital that is by law required to take medically indigent patients, the state of California should not give Kaiser Whittier a dime in reimbursement.

What laws would you like to see put on the books to prevent cases like this happening again, and what should the consequences be for Nadya Suleman, Kaiser Whittier or Dr. Kamrava? Notice I didn't even go into what is presumed to have been plastic surgery to make Suleman look more like another famous child collector, Angelina Jolie, who can afford to birth and adopt as many children as she wishes, at no cost to California taxpayers, or talk about Suleman's perfectly-manicured nails that are clearly visible during the NBC interviews.

via Kate Coe

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The U.K. Is Islam's Poodle
Over and over again, Muslims intimidate Western people into silence, and citizens in the U.K. and elsewhere just blink like sheep in response. The same is true of elected officials in the U.K. and elsewhere who should be defending Western Enlightenment values -- like free speech -- against their attack by Muslims.

"They caved in like a bunch of spineless pussies." --Pat Condell on what the British government did when one Muslim MP (Lord Nazir Ahmed) allegedly threatened to mobilize thousands of Muslims if the courageous, truth-telling Dutch legislator, Geert Wilders, was allowed into the U.K. (Ahmed later denied it.) Here's the video.

See Geert Wilders' film about the reality of "the religion of peace" here.

And here's the word from somebody who disagrees with him, Daniel Hannan, in the Telegraph:

Now for what it's worth, I think Wilders is a nasty piece of work. Having begun with an eminently reasonable point of view - that Islamism should not be allowed to prejudice civic liberties - he has ended up being every bit as authoritarian as the people he criticises. Read his demand for the Koran to be banned: this is not a measured critique from a politician concerned about tolerance and freedom; it's a foul-mouthed rant from someone deliberately courting controversy.

But being obnoxious is not a criminal offence. Crassness is not the same thing as incitement. To find someone guilty of incitement, you need to show that they, you know, incited someone. If I were to say: "There are too many Archenlanders in Narnia, they're taking our jobs and they're dissing our talking beasts", I would be guilty of discourtesy, but not of incitement. For incitement, you'd need me to say: "Right, let's go and throw some of these Archies into Winding Arrow River: who's with me?"

Wilders has never done this. Some of the Islamist preachers he is criticising, mutatis mutandis, have. And yet, as Douglas Murray points out, despite Labour's repeated promises, hardly any hate-peddlers have been deported or denied access to Britain. Our judges, happy enough to bar Wilders, can usually be relied on to overturn the deportation orders of jihadi enthusiasts.

*

Only A Guy Sucking Off The Teat Of Mother Church Would Say This
That losing your job is good for you. From the Times of London, from a story by Ruth Gledhill, about the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres:

"Sometimes, people seem to be relieved to get off the treadmill and to be given an opportunity to reconsider what they really want out of life. One of the great implications of this turbulence for us is to re-boot our sense of what a truly flourishing human life consists of. The 'CrackBerry' culture is dangerously addictive and switching off from it is notoriously difficult," he said.

...At least one church in the City has had a poor take-up for its redundancy counselling sessions, however. An evangelical church has had almost no attendees at its lunchtime workshops on the recession. A lay member at the church speculated that this was because redundancy carries a stigma, and that in any case those who had been sacked were back at home with their wives and families in the stockbroker belt.

Or maybe because it's not helpful to be around asshats who think like this guy, while living as close as one possibly can to the way they did when Mummy and Daddy were supporting them.

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Why Valentine's Day Makes Me Hurl, Web-Televised
I join Dr. Helen again on PJTV for a Valentine's Day segment on why I call the day "our national day of insincerity." And more. Watch here.

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When Free Speech Is A Threat To National Security
I can be a little insulting to believers -- of all stripes -- because I find it silly and childish to insist, sans evidence, that there's a big man in the sky, and then that he happens to give a shit about whether you kept the extra change the cashier gave you back.

A friend who comes to my writing cafe was laughing with me today about a woman she knows who talks about "The Parking God," and "parking karma." This woman makes people in her car observe a moment of silence when they're having trouble parking (as if this will cause a white light to beam down and disintegrate a parked car, leaving them a space). Yes, this woman is a grown adult.

I pointed out that there's genocide going on in Darfur, but this woman believes the Big Guy In The Sky is going to ignore all the people there dying horribly so she won't be late to her dinner reservation. Right. If that's really how god works, well, god is an asshole.

I can say stuff like that still because I live in America, and I'm not planning any trips to London in the near future. Courageous Geert Wilders wasn't so lucky (and note that we use the word "courageous" about anyone speaking out against Islam, since the religion of peacers have a tendency to be murderous little fuckers).

Here's the story from the Daily Mail, about how he was invited to speak to Parliament and then turned away after British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith learned that he was planning to show Fitna, his film which (duh!) links the Koran to terrorism:

Mr Wilders, 45, was classed as someone considered likely to incite hatred and his visit a threat to 'community harmony and therefore public security'.

He was seized by border guards after his aircraft touched down, and questioned for more than an hour before flying back to the Netherlands.

As he left he vowed to keep trying to come to Britain and revealed that he is going to Italy and the U.S. in the coming weeks to screen his film, which sparked violent protests around the Muslim world last year.

He said: 'I am not a terrorist, but I am being treated like one. I did not come here for attention, I came to make a point about freedom of speech.

'Even if you do not like me, if you do not agree with my views, in the name of freedom of speech I should be allowed to hold a debate with others on those views.

'This just shows the Islamification of the UK.'

...He has urged the Dutch government to ban the Koran and warned of a 'tsunami' of Islam swamping the Netherlands.

His 17-minute documentary features verses from the Koran - which it brands a 'fascist book' - alongside images of the 9/11 and 7/7 terrorist attacks.

It equates Islam's holy text with violence and ends with a call to Muslims to remove 'hate-preaching' verses.

It emerged that Mr Wilders, who is facing prosecution in the Netherlands for incitement to hatred and discrimination, visited Britain in December and met with no opposition.

Since the Quran incites violence, and Muslims are instructed to take it literally, perhaps he's right about banning it as...well, an incitement to violence. I mean, Theo Van Gogh wasn't accosted by a man who threw a tulip at him and ran.

Oh, and courtesy of the Daily Mail, a couple of the free-speaking fellows the U.K. has seen fit to let in:

FIREBRAND CLERIC
Egyptian-born Muslim cleric Yusuf Al-Qaradawi

Visited London in 2004 at the invitation of Ken Livingstone, then the city's mayor, who considered him a 'progressive force for change'.

Egyptian-born spiritual leader of Muslim Brotherhood, which embraces the Hamas organisation that controls Gaza.

Has justified suicide bombing, which he calls martyrdom, and the killing of Israeli women and children, on the grounds that they are 'militarised'.

ANTI-SEMITIC AGITATOR
Ibrahim Moussawi, editor of the newspaper Al-Intiqad

Propagandist for Hezbollah cleared to enter the country by Jacqui Smith in November, despite fierce Tory objections.

He is the head of a TV station that routinely describes suicide bombers as 'martyrs' and which has broadcast a 30-part series on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-semitic forgery produced in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century that pretends to present a Jewish conspiracy for world takeover.

Moussawi is alleged to have said that Jews are 'a lesion on the forehead of history'.

*

What's Wrong With Your Head?
There's a relatively new genre of books I just love, about our cognitive biases and blunders, and how, by recognizing them, we might be able to avoid succumbing to common human irrationalities. Dan Ariely's terrific book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, is one of them. I've been trying to find a way to use that in a column.

And I did reference Tavris and Aronson's Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) in "Slug Burns." Here's a bit from that column:

Yeah, you were dumb. But, you had help. It seems our brains are wired for self-justification. In Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson explain that most people, when confronted with evidence that their beliefs or actions are harmful, immoral, or stupid, "do not change their point of view or course of action but justify it even more tenaciously." Recognizing that you have this tendency is the best way to avoid succumbing to it -- along with forcing yourself to be ruthlessly honest about what you're doing and why you're doing it. Admitting your mistakes should keep you from marrying them, tempting as it must be when a man gets down on one knee, holds out a twist-tie with a chunk of rock candy glued to it, and says, "Hey, Babe, how'dja like to take over my weekly allowance payment from Mom?"

A few days ago, I got another in this genre that looks absolutely fantastic (and I don't say that about many books): It's Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein. If we can understand the ways we're likely to trip up, maybe we can avoid them. And these books all help. I've just read a few chapters today in Nudge, but I really recommend it, and the concept of "libertarian paternalism" it turns on.

The authors explain libertarian paternalism here in an op-ed in the LA Times:

If, all things considered, you think the arrangement of food ought to nudge kids toward what's best for them, then we welcome you to our new movement: libertarian paternalism. We are keenly aware that both those words are weighted down by stereotypes from popular culture and politics. Why combine two often reviled and seemingly contradictory concepts? The reason is that if the terms are properly understood, both concepts reflect common sense. They are far more attractive together than alone -- and taken together, they point the way to a whole new approach to the role of government.

The libertarian aspect of the approach lies in the straightforward insistence that, in general, people should be free to do what they like. They should be permitted to opt out of arrangements they dislike, and even make a mess of their lives if they want to. The paternalistic aspect acknowledges that it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier and better.

Private and public institutions have many opportunities to provide free choice while also taking real steps to improve people's lives.

* If we want to increase savings by workers, we could ask employers to adopt this simple strategy: Instead of asking workers to elect to participate in a 401(k) plan, assume they want to participate and enroll them automatically unless they specifically choose otherwise.

* If we want to increase the supply of transplant organs in the United States, we could presume that people want to donate, rather than treating nondonation as the default. A study by social scientists Eric Johnson and Dan Goldstein showed that "presumed consent" could save thousands of lives annually.

* If we want to increase charitable giving, we might give people the opportunity to join a "Give More Tomorrow" plan, in which some percentage of their future wage increases are automatically given to charities of their choice.

* If we want to respond to the recent problems in the mortgage market, and do something about credit cards and loans in general, we might design disclosure policies that ensure consumers can see exactly what they are paying and make easy comparisons among the possible options.

We find ourselves these days mired in political battles that pit laissez faire capitalism, with its reliance on unrestricted free markets, against heavily regulated capitalism, which favors government mandates and bans in an effort to ensure "good" outcomes. But this opposition is false and misleading. Any system of free markets will include some kind of choice architecture, and that means libertarian paternalism can offer a real "third way" around the battleground.

The most important social goals are often best achieved not through mandates and bans but with gentle nudges. In countless domains, applying libertarian paternalism offers the most promising alternative to the tired skirmishing in the increasingly unproductive fight between the left and the right.

*

Ann Coulter Suggests Smoking Children Instead Of Cigarettes
Well, not exactly; in fact, not at all, but I'm guessing many people will assume she's always got something horrible to say instead of actually reading her to see if she says something that makes sense. Here she is on single motherhood:

It's been weeks since the last one, so on Sunday, The New York Times Magazine featured yet another cheery, upbeat article on single mothers. As with all its other promotional pieces on single motherhood over the years, the Times followed a specific formula to make this social disaster sound normal, blameless and harmless -- even brave.

These single motherhood advertisements include lots of conclusory statements to the effect that this is simply the way things are -- so get used to it, bourgeois America! "(A)n increasing number of unmarried mothers," the article explained, "look a lot more like Fran McElhill and Nancy Clark -- they are college-educated, and they are in their 30s, 40s and 50s."

Why isn't the number of smokers treated as a fait accompli that the rest of us just have to accept? Smoking causes a lot less damage and the harm befalls the person who chooses to smoke, not innocent children.

...If a pregnant woman smokes or drinks, we blame her. But if a woman decides to have a fatherless child, we praise her as brave -- even though the outcome for the child is much worse.

Thus, the Times writes warmly of single mothers, always including an innocent explanation: "Many of these women followed a similar and familiar pattern in having their first child: They planned to marry, found they hadn't by their 30s, looked some more and then decided to have a child without a husband." At which point, a stork showed up with their babies.

So apparently, single motherhood could happen to anyone!

How about: These smokers followed a similar and familiar pattern, they planned never to start smoking, found themselves working long nights at the law firm and then decided to have a cigarette to stay alert.

Then there is the Times' reversal of cause and effect, which manages to exonerate the single mother while turning her into a victim: "The biggest reason that children born to unmarried mothers tend to have problems -- they're more likely to drop out of school and commit crimes -- is that they tend to grow up poor."

First, the reason the children "tend to grow up poor" is that their mothers considered it unnecessary to have a primary bread-earner in the family.

Second, the Times simply made up the fact that poverty, rather than single motherhood, causes anti-social behavior in children. Poverty doesn't cause crime -- single mothers do. If poverty caused crime, how did we get Bernie Madoff?

Studies -- including one by the liberal Progressive Policy Institute -- have shown that controlling for factors such as poverty and socioeconomic status, single motherhood accounts for the entire difference in black and white crime rates.

The truth is, we all pay for smokers in health care and other costs. But, she's right about the celebration of single motherhood -- which, frankly, doesn't come cheap for the rest of us either, considering we're about funding the 14 daddyless children of a single welfare mother whose cracked-in-the-head whim told her it would be okay to have a (second) litter.

*

Children Need More Than Food (Stamps)
They need daddies. And that's what the nutbag Nadya Sulemon is denying hers -- along with the more successful outcomes of children from intact families. Here, from CNN:

In recent television interviews, Suleman has rejected suggestions that she might not be able to care adequately for all 14 of her children.

"I'm providing myself to my children," Nadya Suleman told NBC in her first interview. "I'm loving them unconditionally, accepting them unconditionally, everything I do. I'll stop my life for them and be present with them and hold them and be with them. And how many parents do that?"

Suleman said she plans to go back to college to pursue a degree in counseling, NBC reported.

Um...how's that going to work? Going to leave the 14 kids (including one autistic child) home and just cross your fingers that they don't open up a meth lab in the garage?

She also said all 14 children have the same biological father, a sperm donor whom she described as a friend.

Joann Killeen, a spokeswoman for Suleman, has told CNN that she is being deluged with media offers, but disputed any suggestions that Suleman may have had a monetary incentive for having so many children.

Killeen, told CNN's "Larry King Live" that Suleman "has no plans on being a welfare mom and really wants to look at every opportunity that she can to make sure she can provide financially for the 14 children she's responsible for now."

Suleman's publicist did say that Suleman gets $490 every month in food stamps.

Unfortunately, there's no such thing as father stamps.

*

Hellman On Wheels
From A Hitchens piece on Salon:

LATE IN HER LIFE, Lillian Hellman was onstage at some campus event and was asked why she had never endorsed gay liberation. Leaning over her cane and peering at the back of the hall through heavy dark glasses, she replied in raspy but lapidary form that "the forms of fucking do not require my endorsement."

*

How To Make A Hamas Hero?
By French filmmaker Pierre Rehov:

An interview with Rehov by Jamie Glazov on FrontPage.com:

FP: One of your especially powerful clips is How to Make a Hamas Hero. Some viewers have complained about the humorist touch of this clip. Tell us why you did it with humor.

Rehov: First of all, it doesn't matter how dangerous and evil Hamas is; their organization, when it comes down to it, is a despicable joke. They started a war. They brought misery and demolition to themselves, to their people. They faced a very civilized enemy, who tried to minimize collateral damages. They would have been crushed, exterminated, had they faced the Russian, Chinese, or even Jordanian army. Instead, Israel demolished most of their infrastructures, and stopped the war when it decided to. And we had to watch those obscurantist losers, parading down the rubbles of Gaza and claiming victory. That reminded me of Saddam Hussein's spokesperson who was still claiming an Iraqi major victory while the US troops had already taken all of Baghdad, including Saddam's palace. This is pathetic.

I was inspired by Mel Brook's The Producers and Charlie Chaplin's The Dictator. People want to laugh. It is healthy. What better way than to use the techniques of comedy to expose evil?

*

How To Save The Suburbs
In an interview with Infrastructurist.com, Brookings Institution scholar Christopher Leinberger says it's all about walkable communities. Excerpts from it below:

Last year people were talking about high energy prices as the one of the prime causes of suburban collapse. But gas is back under $2 a gallon.
Energy prices have nothing to do with it. I said that at the time. They can accelerate the process, but what drives it is the shift in consumer preferences. Gen Xers and Millennials want a lifestyle closer to Friends and Seinfeld (that is, walkable and urban) than to Tony Soprano (low density and suburban). It's not that nobody wants Tony Soprano. About 50 percent of Americans actually do want that configuration. But if we've built 80 percent of our housing that way, that's the definition of oversupply. The other 50 percent of Americans want walkable urban arrangements and yet that's just 20 percent of the housing stock. That's called pent-up demand. So the market is just responding.

How can a suburb save itself?
It can adapt. The Washington DC metro area is a useful model. A year ago I came out with a survey for Brookings looking at walkable urban places in the top 30 metro regions. DC was at the top on a per captia basis.

What's the lesson?
This structural trend is about the transformation of the suburbs into something else. I've been doing some research looking at the price premiums on a per-square-foot basis for walkable communities. They get a price premium between 40 and 200 percent. I've also been looking at what I call the "penumbra." A walkable place is typically 50 to 500 acres in size. The penumbra, that area around it, can be even bigger.

Almost like micro suburbs.
Yes. These places are still suburban but they are within walking distance of the walkable places. This "penumbra" is seeing premiums of 20 to 80 percent over the rest of the market.

But it's tough to compare a brownstone in Brooklyn to the some house in the Antelope Valley made of particle board and paint.
There will be losers. And, yes, this is junk we're putting up now. What's the life expectancy particle board and plywood under even the best of circumstances?

So you have a suburb full of flimsy houses in the middle of nowhere, with no incentive for upkeep. That's an ugly situation.
Exactly. It fails. Good lord, I'm a great amateur student of ancient cities. At some point they're just going to collapse upon themselves and blow away -- unless there is some massive redevelopment agency steps in.

In very practical terms, how do towns get on the right side of this multi-decade imbalance between supply and demand?
You need to get the right infrastructure in. Doing so is a three-step process. First, is getting a transit connection that can anchor a walkable urban core. Second, is putting in overlay zoning districts around the train stations that will allow for much greater density and mixed use development. We're talking about a hundred, two hundred, three hundred acres. The third step is to get in place an entity to manage the thing, which generally takes the form of a non-profit business improvement district. These things are very complex, but we know how to do it now. We didn't 50 years ago, but we do now.

That's a tight plan.
And we have hundreds of examples of it working.

Here's Leinberger in The Atlantic on "The Next Slum." The subhead: "The subprime crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. Fundamental changes in American life may turn today's McMansions into tomorrow's tenements."

I grew up in the islolation of suburbia, and I was miserable. I also find it quite ugly, with all the cheaply constructed new houses, or all the overdone imitation colonials and the like. All my adult life, I've gravitated toward cities, and I've always lived in neighborhoods where I could walk or ride my bike a few blocks to stores, restaurants, and the shoemaker. A big part of it is living in a place where I feel it's a neighborhood, where I know my neighbors and see people I know walking and biking around and patronizing businesses I go to with frequency. Suburbia is a giant land of strangers, and I really hate it.

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Withering In A Bed
The Catholic church respects life -- except when it's bad for P.R. or might cost the church a lot of money (in the cases of pedophile priests they protected and moved around, and never mind what that did to the kiddies).

But, become a vegetable for 17 years, like a girl in Italy, and the Vatican's got your back. Not that you'd want them too (at least, in this girl's case, her parents say she wouldn't have wanted to be kept alive with such measures). From the AP, the girl, now a 38-year-old woman, died on Monday as the religious nutters fought in the Italian Parliament to keep her alive:

Englaro's doctors had said her condition was irreversible. Late last year, her father won a decade-long court battle to allow her feeding tube to be removed, saying that was her wish. In line with the high court ruling, medical workers on Friday began suspending her food and water.

But Italy's center-right government, backed by the Vatican, had pressed to keep her alive, racing against time to pass legislation prohibiting food and water from being suspended for patients who depend on them.

Senators who had just begun debating the bill observed a minute of silence Monday night when the news of her death was read out in the Senate chamber.

Government officials vowed to pass the legislation even though it was too late to save Englaro.

"I hope the Senate can proceed on the established calendar so that this sacrifice wasn't completely in vain," Health Minister Maurizio Sacconi told the Senate minutes after the death was announced.

...Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said he hoped that Englaro's case would become a point of reference for reflection about how to accompany "the weakest in the necessary respect for the right to life."

My life is what I'm engaged in now, as I'm writing, thinking, eating, laughing, and chasing my dog around the house. You respect my life by pulling the plug if I become a human turnip.

Luckily, because I don't believe without evidence in anything, I don't waste a single moment worshipping The Imaginary Friend. Not wasting a moment of my time here, if I can help it, that's respecting life. It helps that I don't believe, without evidence, that I'll someday go to "a better place." Based on the available evidence, it seems that I'll eventually just become dinner for worms. Ideally, later rather than sooner -- unless I end up like this poor Italian chick. And again, if that happens, locate plug. Pull. Thank you.

thanks, luj

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Sneaking In National Health Care
Via the WSJ, here's one of the little turkeys in the fine print of the stimulus package.

Both the House and Senate stimulus bills include about $20 billion in incentive payments (mainly through Medicare and Medicaid) to encourage the digitization of medical records. Fair enough. But one of the reasons only an estimated 17% to 29% of doctors use health IT is because there are still many technical issues to work out. Different systems must be compatible so doctors can communicate with each other, coordinate care and share information -- and they don't want to invest in a platform that could become as obsolete as HD-DVD.

Democrats have decided that the way to jump this gap is for government simply to pick the next Blu-Ray. Instead of building on a voluntary public-private standard-setting body created by the Bush Administration, the stimulus bill codifies it as a federal office and gives it broad new powers if private companies are not "substantially and adequately" meeting the needs of doctors and hospitals. The health IT outfit will soon be deciding which platforms are up to code and shutting down competitors.

This will certainly muffle innovation, given that high-school dropouts have been known to scam U.S. health bureaucrats out of millions of dollars that should be preventable with off-the-shelf auditing software. Anyway, what's the rush? Democrats give the game away by mandating that most medical providers who aren't linked into the government-approved health information network after 2016 will start to be penalized. Their real political goal is to make a down payment on national health care.

Why do we never learn? Why are people so naive as to think government will save them and make things better? Government involvement in business is the land of buying $1,000 doorknobs, as one of the guys -- a former non-commissioned army officer who works at the coffeehouse I go to -- told me about his experience in the armed services.

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Defending Capitalism
Inspiring remarks from Milton Friedman (on Phil Donahue):

Some of the transcript is below -- but not Friedman's clever response on the question of greed. For that, watch the tape.

Donahue: "When you see around the globe the mal-distribution of wealth, the desperate plight of millions of people in undeveloped countries ... when you see the greed and the concentration of power, do you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed is a good idea?"

Friedman: "The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the auto industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about, the only cases in recorded history are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worst off, it's exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. The record of history is absolutely crystal clear: that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system."

via Reason

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How They Pay For Free Health Care In Canada
They pay for it in time, sometimes dying before they ever get it. Nadeem Esmail writes in the WSJ that nationalized health care will cost us pain and suffering:

When individuals bear no direct responsibility for paying for their care, as in Canada, that care is rationed by waiting.

Canadians often wait months or even years for necessary care. For some, the status quo has become so dire that they have turned to the courts for recourse. Several cases currently before provincial courts provide studies in what Americans could expect from government-run health insurance.

In Ontario, Lindsay McCreith was suffering from headaches and seizures yet faced a four and a half month wait for an MRI scan in January of 2006. Deciding that the wait was untenable, Mr. McCreith did what a lot of Canadians do: He went south, and paid for an MRI scan across the border in Buffalo. The MRI revealed a malignant brain tumor.

Ontario's government system still refused to provide timely treatment, offering instead a months-long wait for surgery. In the end, Mr. McCreith returned to Buffalo and paid for surgery that may have saved his life. He's challenging Ontario's government-run monopoly health-insurance system, claiming it violates the right to life and security of the person guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

...On the other side of the country in Alberta, Bill Murray waited in pain for more than a year to see a specialist for his arthritic hip. The specialist recommended a "Birmingham" hip resurfacing surgery (a state-of-the-art procedure that gives better results than basic hip replacement) as the best medical option. But government bureaucrats determined that Mr. Murray, who was 57, was "too old" to enjoy the benefits of this procedure and said no. In the end, he was also denied the opportunity to pay for the procedure himself in Alberta. He's heading to court claiming a violation of Charter rights as well.

These constitutional challenges, along with one launched in British Columbia last month, share a common goal: to win Canadians the freedom to spend their own money to protect themselves from the inadequacies of the government health-insurance system.

As Mr. Esmail writes, let's hope Barack Obama learns from Canada's mistakes -- before he makes them ours.

Of course, there's a different standard of care for politicians. Senators and Congressmen might vote differently if they were ordinary people subject to prole-care. As WSJ commenter Zoltan Lapsly writes about how it works up across the border:

Anytime any senior politician in Canada gets sick, they run for the border. When Robert Bourassa (Premier of that medical utopia of Quebec) had cancer, he was at the Mayo clinic more often than the National Assembly. I think when the people who run the place opt out (because they can) it says more than any debate ever could. I doubt Steven Harper would be joining the 16 month waiting list in Ottowa if he needed a PET scan. He'd be at Sloan Kettering faster than you can say "substandard healthcare".

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Don't Forget Whose Dollars Are Doing The Stimulating
In the WSJ, 1992 Nobel econ laureate Gary S. Becker and econ prof Kevin M. Murphy remind us:

4) There are no free lunches in spending, public or private.

The increased federal debt caused by this stimulus package has to be paid for eventually by higher taxes on households and businesses. Higher income and business taxes generally discourage effort and investments, and result in a larger social burden than the actual level of the tax revenue needed to finance the greater debt. The burden from higher taxes down the road has to be deducted both from any short-term stimulus provided by the spending program, and from its long-run effects on the economy.

...Our own view is that the short-term stimulus from the legislation before Congress will be smaller per dollar spent than is expected by many others because the package tries to combine short-term stimulus with long-term benefits to the economy. Unfortunately, short-term and long-term gains are in considerable conflict with each other. Moreover, it is very hard to spend wisely large sums in short periods of time. Nor can one ever forget that spending is not free, and ultimately it has to be financed by higher taxes.

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TARP: Now Protecting Jobs In Brazil!
The American taxpayer is now providing a nice boost to Brazil, thanks to the TARP payment we made to one of the Big Three welfare mothers, uh, automakers. Russ Dalen writes for the Latin-American Herald Trib:

SAO PAULO -- General Motors plans to invest $1 billion in Brazil to avoid the kind of problems the U.S. automaker is facing in its home market, said the beleaguered car maker.

According to the president of GM Brazil-Mercosur, Jaime Ardila, the funding will come from the package of financial aid that the manufacturer will receive from the U.S. government and will be used to "complete the renovation of the line of products up to 2012."

...For Ardila, the injection in Brazil's automobile sector of 8 billion reais ($3.51 billion) recently announced by the federal and state governments of Sao Paulo "has already begun to revive sales," which fell by 12% in October.

Warms the cockles of my heart -- which is great, because pretty soon I'm going to have to keep warm by burning all the letters from American newspapers letting me know they'll soon be closing their doors.

via Robert W

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Paper Or Plastic?
Will you buy Amazon's new Kindle 2? (P.S. You can read my blog on it via Newstex.)

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Why I Told AFTRA I'm A Disabled Black Woman
We're told that race shouldn't be taken into account in hiring and in other arenas, yet we see endless examples to the contrary, like mandated affirmative action and journalism fellowships that are reserved for minorities.

I resent that the back of the income statement I send back to AFTRA (the radio/TV union) every year asks what sex and race I am and whether I'm disabled. Since I'm with Martin Luther King that we should judge people by the content of their character -- meaning race and the rest isn't supposed to matter -- I filled out their survey accordingly.

I was reminded of that when I spotted a piece by Heather MacDonald in the WSJ about charitable organizations that are being told to meet "diversity targets":

The idea that foundations should view the world through the trivializing lens of identity politics dates back to the 1980s, when some liberal foundations, including the Ford Foundation, started asking groups seeking grants to report the race and sex of their staff and board members. But today, politicians are getting into the act. This latest diversity push began in 2005, when the Greenlining Institute, a "multiethnic advocacy group" in Berkeley, Calif., started pumping out studies claiming that foundations were ignoring "communities of color." (This despite the fact that in California, 39% of large foundations' grants primarily benefit minorities, according to the Foundation Center, a respected research body.) Greenlining's definition of helping a community of color: bestowing foundation grants on a nonprofit whose staff and board are at least 50% minority. In other words, the Greenlining effort is purely a jobs racket. The racial composition of a nonprofit's staff and board has exactly zero relation to whether it is actually helping minorities. Agronomists supported by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations helped wipe out famine in Southeast Asia by developing high-yield cereal crops; pressure to diversify their labs would have hindered their research, not advanced it.

...Nevertheless, Greenlining's crusade leaped into the political arena. The California Assembly passed a bill in January 2008 that would have required all California foundations with assets of over $250 million to report not just the race and sex of their grantees' board and staff members, but the race and sex of their own board and staff members as well. Note again the patent shakedown effort. The racial and sexual composition of a foundation is also irrelevant to whether it is helping minorities--except, of course, for those quota hires who end up in cushy foundation jobs. In the late 1920s, Julius Rosenwald, an early president of Sears, Roebuck, used his foundation to build 5,000 schools for rural blacks in the South, somehow managing to do so without a 50% minority board.

...The new, foundation-funded Diversity in Philanthropy Project is spending approximately $2.2 million promoting hiring quotas at foundations, in order to make diversity an "essential consideration in funders' day-to-day strategic decisions and actions." Just to put that number in perspective, it recently cost $1 million for the Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University to decode all the genes of a leukemia victim. Which enterprise is of greater value to humanity? The smart money is on the cancer research--but according to the Diversity in Philanthropy Project, if the genome lab didn't contain underrepresented minorities, funders should have thought twice about supporting it.

...The diversity campaign is oblivious to the complex power of ideas in the world. Those who would direct philanthropy into preconceived channels think that they already know the answers to the world's problems and need only to appropriate the funding for those answers. But no one can predict how ideas will play out in practice or who will be their beneficiaries. The public good is best served by giving maximum freedom to the creative spirit.

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The Wrong Answer To "D'you Mind Keeping It Down A Little, Sir?"
A guy at the table two feet from my neighbor's and mine at Starbucks is on the phone. "D'you mind keeping it down a little, sir?" I ask. "I'm hearing all about your personal business."

"It's not personal business, lady, it's business."

Oh, well, okay then. Keep on yakking!

Actually, I think he knew he was rude, because he went outside. Glaring at me the whole time while he treated the birds hopping around the sidewalk around to his business-business.

...

SATURDAY NIGHT, I went to the wedding reception of my very good friend Brian and a woman he fell in love with 30 years ago during the summer they were both interns in Washington.

He was giving a little talk about how they met -- when from the back of the room, voices cut in. Two male guests -- at a rather small, intimate gathering -- thought this would be an appropriate time to talk biz or something. And not in whispers, either.

From about 15 feet away, I turned around and, trying to maintain a friendly but firm demeanor, gave them the hand signal for "keep it down, guys!"

Brian continued his talk and then -- beep!...beep!...beep!...beep! -- one of the guys was working his BlackBerry while the other looked at whatever he was doing on the screen.

What -- 10 p.m. Saturday night in Los Angeles, and he had some urgent business that couldn't wait?

I again turned and gave them the "keep it down" gesture, coupled with a head shake and a really dirty look.

Later, when they were leaving, I said something -- about how inappropriate they were, considering what they were interrupting, and said they might think again before repeating their behavior in the future.

One guy, with his angry little wife, said, "Get a life!" and hurried down the stairs. Hey, brilliant retort, dude! (I always wonder if people who say that feel like they've really scored after they do.)

Either he or the other guy blamed the noise on the kids. But, it wasn't the kids -- I'd turned around and saw and heard the two guys talking, and heard the stupid BlackBerry or whatever.

A bigger man would've responded to me with "You know, we weren't really thinking about it, but you've got a point." But, no. He was kinda tall, but apparently, quite tiny.

I've really, really had it with all these wireless rudesters. I only wish I had the phone numbers of the mothers of these two, because I'd hesitate not a second in calling them and telling them what fine young men they raised.

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Online Dating -- How Old Willya Go?
Here's another opportunity to help me with my homework. How old are you, and how old is the oldest you'll look for in online dating? Specifically, in your searches, what's the age cutoff for you?

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The Dividing Line Is Ink?
My friend Mr. Stuart once told me about a funny tattoo he saw -- an anatomically correct heart with "Mom" drawn through it. I thought that was pretty funny, but I'm somebody who would never get a tattoo. It's just not the kind of thing I'd do, or would have done, even in my 20s. And say I'd gotten one in my 20s. I was still rollerskating then. What, I'd get a little skate on my shoulder, and at 44 and at 84, it would still be there?

I just got an e-mail from a guy who can't bring himself to date women with tattoos. He thinks there's a certain type of girl who'd get a tattoo, and maybe he's right. Is there a dividing line?

If you're a girl with a tattoo, please fill us in on why you got it.

If you're a girl who wouldn't get one, please tell why.

And if you're a guy, would you date a girl with a tattoo? Do you prefer girls without them?

What's your general impression of tattoos? And what's your impression of women, especially, who get them?

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Drinking In Europe
A New York Times comments section on the blog item "Why (and How) I Drink," by Paul Clarke, had some European perspective. Vive la difference, at least in the alcohol consumption arena. The Europeans who commented were raised as I was -- offered "tastes" of alcohol by parents, with alcohol seen as no big deal; a part of life. Here are a few of their remarks:

Growing up in Italy, where the stigma on alcohol is (or was) non-existent and where drinking age kicks in just after breast feeding stops, I remember many high-school parties which ended with bottles of booze (gasp!) still sealed and untouched on the tables. There was simply no need to guzzle it up since we all came from families where alcohol was an available, normal and unremarkable part of daily life. True responsibility comes from knowledge and familiarity, and this applies to pretty much anything.
-- Paolo

Here's Ted:

I live in Europe, and it is clear that children are much better socialized with alcohol here than I was when growing up in the US. Wine is seen as an accessary to a meal, not as a means to dull one's pains or loossen one's lips. Alchohol is not the forbidden fruit that in the US drives 14 and 15 year olds to binge drink, attempting to accelerate their ascension to adulthood. Kids can legally drink beer and wine in bars from 16, and most slip in when they are as young as 14. Rarely have I come across a drunk teenager. Of course, in Switzerland, kids can't drive until they are 21, and its costs an arm and a league to get a license (that's one way to avoid the lethal mix of alcohol and cars so prevalent in the US).

I often notice with envy the couple at the next table in a restaurant who order an expensive bottle of wine, drink half and leave the rest on the table when they depart the restaurant. Unfortunately, if its me, I paid for it and I'm going to get my money's worth whether I need the extra 2 glasses or not!

I think on this score, the Europeans have the Americans beat-to avoid making alcohol the forbidden fruit, available only to "adults", and letting kids sip diluted wine with meals with the family seems to work much better than prohibition (either the 1920′'s variety or the modern version) which is the guiding principle in most US households
-- Ted

Here's Carol:

I, too, grew up in Europe (Spain.) There is one aspect of the Spanish attitude on alcohol that no one else has mentioned in their descriptions of European moderation.

In Spain -- at least the Spain of 1960-1975 -- there were no liquor laws. Children were taught to drink wine at the family table. If you had the money, you could buy the alcohol, regardless of age.

However, anyone boorish enough to actually get drunk was ostracized. Seriously ostracized by the society. At one of the many parties my father's job required my mother to organize, one gentleman became inebriated. He was taken home by a fellow party member. Everyone else offered profuse apologies to my mother. Everyone was ashamed that such a breach of common decency had occurred. The next day, gifts of apology came pouring in to my mother -- flowers, candies, household items.

On the other hand, abstention was accepted without comment. The flip side of the code was that those who could not "hold" their liquor should abstain. There was no shame in it.

More than any laws, social pressure changes behavior. It is not enough that we applaud the moderation approach to teaching children to drink. We must also underscore our disapproval of immoderate drinking. Not just parents, but all of us.
-- Carol

And then there's the USA:

I remember being a Protestant at a Catholic High School in a Mormon State (Utah), and it seemed the kids who at parties were on a mission to get blitzed fastest were the Mormon kids. I think it was because, as the author pointed out, they didn't have proper drinking skills modeled for them. While the rest of us just saw it as a drink, not a drug or form of rebellion. -- Dave

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Leaving Iran
A moving Modern Love column by by Susan Sajadi in The New York Times. I don't want to ruin the ending, so I'm not going to excerpt it.

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Our Risk, Their Gain
A letter to the ed in the WSJ points out a wee problem with the notion that those on Wall Street are practicing capitalism:

Salary Caps Instead of Dunce Caps for Financial Execs

You imply (" 'Idiots' Indeed," Review & Outlook, Jan. 31) that limits on the outsized pay packages of Wall Street executives would somehow cause capitalists to go on strike. The problem with your characterization is that there are precious few capitalists on Wall Street. Capitalists are people who put their own capital at risk and who succeed or fail as their ventures prosper or die. As evidenced by the compensations in financial firms, this hardly applies to the executives in question, since they profited more than handsomely even as they ran their firms into the ground. What these individuals have done is to enrich themselves while putting shareholders, investors and increasingly, taxpayers at risk. There are many characterizations for this type of individual. Capitalist is not one of them.

Klaus Chavanne
LaGrangeville, N.Y.

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The Great Repression
Niall Ferguson in the LA Times on the Keynesian pipe dream (more on Keynesian econ here):

There is something desperate about the way economists are clinging to their dogeared copies of Keynes' "General Theory." Uneasily aware that their discipline almost entirely failed to anticipate the current crisis, they seem to be regressing to macroeconomic childhood, clutching the Keynesian "multiplier effect" -- which holds that a dollar spent by the government begets more than a dollar's worth of additional economic output -- like an old teddy bear.

Critique of Keynes here. Oh, and anyone who thinks spending big bucks on government programs is the solution to our problems should stop spending so much time hanging out with The White Rabbit and do a little more visiting here in the real world.

Scott Niederjohn, in the Sheyboygan Press, seems to have it right:

Choosing The 'Right' Projects

Among the most basic concepts in economics is the importance of choosing alternatives where the benefits exceed the costs. Projects undertaken by the private sector cannot escape this straightforward rule; generally leading to efficient allocations of capital. However, government projects are not subject to such a test -- leaving little reason to think governments will be successful at choosing the best projects to undertake. In fact, given the hurried nature in which these decisions will have to be made, it's likely many of the choices will be wasteful pork barrel projects chosen for their political, rather than economic, benefits. If bridge-to-nowhere-style infrastructure projects are funded, we can expect the multiplier estimated by the Obama team to be too high.

Overestimating 'Employment Effect'

The Obama economics team estimates that this stimulus package will create or save more than 3.7 million jobs. Such a result requires that the spending programs in the stimulus package primarily target and utilize unemployed workers. More likely -- particularly in areas like health and energy -- jobs will simply move from one productive activity to another in response to the new government spending. Creating projects that specifically target the skills and abilities of the unemployed is a nearly impossible task; suggesting that the net job creation from the plan may be significantly lower than advertised. Further, if more valuable private sector economic activity is crowded out by this massive incursion of government spending, the job creation from the plan may be negligible.

Not Addressing Cause Of The Crisis

This financial crisis arose primarily because homeowners took on too much debt and banks allowed them to do it. Why, then, would the solution to the crisis be for our government to spend too much and take on too much debt itself? At its core, our economic problems today stem from tight credit conditions. Banks and financial institutions are holding toxic debt; financial institutions don't trust each other and have become risk averse, causing banks to hoard reserves and not make loans -- bringing the economy to its knees. Increased government spending does nothing to address the root causes of this problem.

In addition to the aforementioned reasons to give pause, government borrowing -- the source of the stimulus money -- ultimately must be paid back. If government borrowing is excessive, at some point we will encounter a mix of high inflation, higher interest rates, higher taxes and dollar devaluation.

Let's hope President Obama's economic stimulus plan works. It seems likely to have some positive impact in the short run. Yet it's unlikely that government spending is the fix the economy really needs to recover in the long run.

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I Have An Above-Average Number Of Feet
In The New York Times, Barry Gewen reviews a book on stats abuse, The Numbers Game, The Commonsense Guide to Understanding Numbers in the News, in Politics, and in Life, by Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot:

It's hard to resist a book that tells you that most people have more than the average number of feet. Or that researchers have found that Republicans enjoy sex more than Democrats do. Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot delight in bringing such facts to our attention -- and then in explaining them away.

Because of amputations, birth defects and the like, the average number of feet per person across the human population is slightly fewer than two.

...Most of us, Mr. Blastland and Mr. Dilnot observe, expect numbers to do too much. We like their precision and want to believe that statistics can tell us all we need to know about the world. But precision comes at a price: before you can count something, you have to define what it is you're counting, and often that's not as simple as it sounds.

Unemployment statistics, for example, conceal a host of decisions. How much can someone work and still be considered unemployed? How hard does a person have to be looking for a job? The Thatcher government changed the definition of "unemployed" either 23 or 27 times. ("There is some disagreement" about the precise number, the authors blandly write.)

Sampling is another headache. Most of the numbers we need involve populations too big to count one by one. As a result, we sample. But no matter how sophisticated the statistical techniques, they are still prone to error. Any American has only to think back to the polls during last year's primary season.

And that's with communicative human beings. Mr. Blastland and Mr. Dilnot describe Britain's efforts to count its hedgehog population (the National Hedgehog Survey) because of worries that this shy animal was in decline. They also discuss the Herculean -- but gravely important -- task of counting the fish in the sea.

"Uncertainty is a fact of life," they say, even if it's a given of human nature to look for meaning where there isn't any (see under: religion). They devote an entire chapter to chance to explain why the public sometimes sees a pattern where there is no such thing.

In 2003 the villagers of Wishaw, England, convinced that a recent rise in the incidence of cancer in their area was caused by a nearby cellphone tower, proceeded to lynch the tower, or, more accurately, pull it down in the dead of night.

What the villagers didn't know, the authors say, is that "cancer clusters" occur naturally, just as a coin tossed 30 times will probably produce at least one sequence of four heads or four tails. Tattoo this on your arm: a pattern doesn't always mean a plan. Throw some rice in the air and you will most likely see patterns in the way it lands.

Statisticians even have a name for the phenomenon: it's called the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. "The alleged sharpshooter," the authors write, "takes numerous shots at a barn (actually, he's a terrible shot -- that's why it's a fallacy), then draws his bull's-eye afterward, around the holes that cluster."

Actually, I read that first in a story about WWII, which, if I recall correctly, didn't take place in Texas. But, their book sounds pretty good and pretty necessary.

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Harry Reid Is A Human Hemorrhage
That's how big a bleeding idiot he is. Senate Majority Leader Reid says paying income tax is voluntary. "Our system is a voluntary system." A Jan Helfeld interview:

via Apple

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Wafa Speaks Again
"The status of women is an inevitable outcome of Islamic teachings," says the courageous Wafa Sultan, speaking out about how women are property, and sanctioned abusees under Islam.

"Islam allowed men to marry infants in order to justify Muhammad's marriage to Aisha," she continues, and she's telling the truth. Where are all the human rights organizations, the feminists, protesting against the vile practices of Islam? Where is the United Nations? Oh, right -- too busy protesting about the Israelis defending themselves against the attacks from Gaza.

More about Sultan here. And here's what happens to little girls under Islam. Note that there's no mention of the word behind it, "Islam." From a story in Time by Vivienne Walt:

In a dimly lit corner of a Paris bar a delighted young divorcée describes in a soft voice how she spent the day throwing snowballs for the first time in her life. That is not remarkable. This is: Nujood Ali is just 10 years old -- and was, until recently, the youngest known divorced person in the world.

Slender with thick hair and a shy smile, Ali made headlines in Yemen last April when she walked out on a man more than three times her age, to whom her father had married her off. It was an act driven by terror and despair. (See the top 10 crime stories of 2008.)

Nujood's ordeal began last February, when the family gathered to celebrate her wedding to a motorcycle deliveryman in his 30s. She first set eyes on the groom when she took her marriage vows. After spending her wedding night with her parents and 15 brothers and sisters, Nujood was taken by her new husband to his family village, where, she says, he beat and raped her every night. After two nightmarish months he allowed her to visit her parents, who rebuffed her pleas to end the marriage.

Nujood finally found her moment to escape one day, when her mother gave her a few pennies and sent her out to buy bread. Instead she took a bus to the center of the capital, Sanaa -- a city of 3 million people -- where she hailed a taxi and asked to be taken to the courthouse. She had never been inside a courtroom but had once seen one on television, she says, and knew it was a place where people went for help. There she sat silently on a bench, uncertain as to what to do, while crowds of people scurried past, scarcely glancing at the quiet child. It was only once the courthouse emptied during the lunch recess that the judge noticed her and asked why she was there. "I came for a divorce," she told him. Horrified, he took her to his house to play with his 8-year-old daughter, and granted the divorce two days later.

Commenter Charles Weatherly at the LAT blog lays out how Islam sanctions such barbarism:

Michelle, you asked:

"what man in his right mind finds a 10 year old as a suitable wife?"

The answer: Muhammad, the founder of Islam.

Muhammad's favorite wife, A'isha, was only 6 years old when Muhammad married her.

Here are the verses from Islamic scripture detailing the marriage:

(Sunan of Abu Dawud, Volume 2, Verse 2116)
"A'isha said, 'The Apostle of Allah married me when I was seven years old. He had intercourse with me when I was 9 years old.'"

(Sahih Bukhari, Voume 7, Verse 65)
"Narrated A'isha that the prophet wrote the marriage contract with her when she was six years old and he consummated the marriage when she was nine years old."

(Sahih Muslim, Volume 8, Verse 3311)
"A'isha reported that Allah's Apostle married her when she was six years old, and she was taken to his house as a bride when she was nine (bride meaning sexually active), and her dolls were with her."

Yes, you read that right, "her dolls were with her".

How can a modern, Muslim man marry a 10 year old? As the saying goes in the Muslim community, "if it's good enough for Muhammad, then it's good enough for me."

(Willie Nelson)
"Mama's, don't let your babies grow up to be Muslim child brides."

Charles Weatherly,
Santa Barbara, California

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Solitary Confinement
Muslim women are reduced to a pair of eyes, like a prisoner in solitary confinement, by their burkhas. And why? Religious reasons? Nope, says a Canadian Muslim. Tarek Fatah lifts the veil on the veil in the Calgary Herald:

Barely a week goes by when my religion Islam does not face a fresh round of scrutiny. If it is not a suicide bomber blowing himself up in an Iraqi mosque screaming "Allahu akbar," it is news that an Imam in Malaysia has declared the practice of Yoga sinful.

If it is not a Toronto imam defending suicide bombing on TVO, a Muslim woman writes a column in a Canadian daily, advocating the introduction of sharia in Canada.

But the one topic that rears its head in almost predictable cycles is the subject of a Muslim woman's supposed Islamic attire.

Whether it is swimming pools or polling booths there is no escape from the repeated controversies surrounding the face mask, better known as the niqab or burka.

The latest incarnation of the niqab controversy surfaced this week when a Toronto judge ordered a Muslim woman to take off her niqab when she testified in a case of sexual assault.

The woman invoked Islam as the reason why she wanted to give testimony while wearing a face mask. She told the judge, "It's a respect issue, one of modesty," adding Islam considers her niqab as her "honour."

Her explanations were rejected by the judge who determined that the woman's "religious belief" was not that strong and that in his opinion the woman was asking to wear the niqab as "a matter of comfort."

But all of these arguments are premised on the acceptance of the myth that a face mask for women is Islamic religious attire.

Humbug.

There is no requirement in Islam for Muslim women to cover their face.

The niqab is the epitome of male control over women.

It is a product of Saudi Arabia and its distortion of Islam to suit its Wahabbi agenda, which is creeping into Canada.

If there is any doubt that the niqab is not required by Islam, take at look at the holiest place for Muslims -- the grand mosque in Mecca, the Ka'aba. For over 1,400 years Muslim men and women have prayed in what we believe is the House of God and for all these centuries woman have been explicitly forbidden from covering their faces.

via Robert W

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More Fine Investigative Work From The Chicago Tribune
But, what's Chicago Trib reporter Kevin Pang investigating, what it's like to be an purposeless asshole?

While, in Tribuneland, the Los Angeles Times is fast shrinking into the Los Angeles newsletter, and while the Morning Call, which runs my column, is in bankruptcy proceedings along with all the rest (no telling if and when I'll ever get paid), in Chicago, Pang is eating five free breakfasts at Denny's and writing about it for the Chicago Trib. Double points to anyone who can figure out why. Here's an excerpt from the end of his dull and pointless piece (every single section of it reads like below -- he's no literary stylist and nothing happens):

Grand Slam No. 5 Oak Park, 8:57 a.m. In three hours, my mood has changed from joyful to blinding rage. My stomach aches, and my esophagus is lined with a shellac of grease in need of scraping out..

This Denny's has never been this full. The wait is half an hour, the manager says. The 60 or so people in line are too loud.

Twenty eight minutes later, I am sitting in the far back corner. I don't even say a word to the waiter; I simply release a series of guttural sounds and labored finger points. I resort to tomato juice and eggs-over-hard.

Another 10 minutes later, I stare at a plate that has lost its thrill, that magic. I poke aimlessly with the fork--is it weird to have a moral objection to breakfast sausage? Just as I take my third bite, a woman at the next table flings her arms, striking the glass of tomato juice, its contents cross-haired at my new pair of jeans. Red, viscous liquid spills all over. Now might be an appropriate time to throw in the white flag of surrender.

It is over, 345 grams of fat and more than 4,100 calories later (though I didn't finish it all). Many have braved long lines to eat free what ordinarily would have cost $6.

This is America. kpang@tribune.com

Hey, Kevin...fuck you.

Some people just want something free, but a lot of people are out of jobs and a free breakfast is a big deal to them. I called my neighbor, whose husband lost her job, to tell her about the breakfast, but she said the line was too long -- maybe, just maybe, because some jerk like you thought it would be hilarious to write a dull, wit-free story about eating five breakfasts at Denny's.

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I Don't Go There, But You Might Want To
I'm a confirmed travel priss. The only time I wear a backpack is to carry my computer from the hotel to the coffeeshop.

Bob Downes, who runs my column in Northern Michigan, in the Northern Express, and is one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet, travels in a slightly different style than I do. If you are the backpacking sort, check out (and I hope, buy) his book, Planet Backpacker -- Across Europe on a Mountain Bike & Backpacking on Through Egypt, India & Southeast Asia - Around the World.

From Amazon reviewer Allan Nahajewski:

From the title, you might think this is a book about backpacking. It's more than that. It's about following your dreams.

Bob Downes wanted to travel around the world. And that's what he did. And because he can write so well, we can relive the journey with him from the comforts of our favorite reading spot.

This is a book that I will give to my grandson. He is in kindergarten and he wants to an adventurer when he grows up.

This book should also be on the required reading list for people who are in the process of reinventing themselves. Bob Downes has reinvented himself many times over -- as a newspaper publisher, a triathlete, a singer in a rock band, a world traveler and now an author. This book provides insights into the kind of thinking that makes successful reinvention possible.

This is not a "what I had for breakfast" travel diary. The candid daily reports from internet cafes around the world capture both the ups and downs of globetrotting. The reports also include splashes of history and philosophy and just enough detail to bring the people, places and on-the-road encounters to life.

Add it all up and you have an informative, inspiring, page-turning travel journal. Highly recommended for life adventurers of any kind.

Hmmm, a review like could inspire a girl to leave a hotel. Well, in my case, for a better hotel, but if you buy Bob's book, please feel free to leave your thoughts about it here.

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Face-ism
"To some readers, black columnists all look alike," is the headline on Eric Deggens sillyish whine in the St. Pete Times, in which he seems to pretend not to have hurt feelings (see the ending). He flirts with reporting -- really just remembering reporting he apparently did in the past -- but that's about it. An excerpt:

I still recall the time I snapped in a New Jersey newsroom after the fifth time somebody called by the name of another black man who worked there (didn't help that we were the only black males not wearing a janitor's uniform among journalists in the main office).

In November 2000, two of the St. Petersburg Times' best columnists, Elijah Gosier and Bill Maxwell, wrote eloquent, sometimes painful essays on how they were often mistaken for each other by readers. I particularly loved the headline: "Invisible Men."

Maxwell connected such slights back to a moment when he was nearly shot and arrested by police in a case of mistaken identity. Gosier told a funny story about a reader in a grocery store trying to butter him up by saying "that Elijah guy, they need to get rid of him."

More than eight years later, only the names have changed.

The first time I wrote about this, a dozen years ago, I spoke with an expert on cross-racial identification who told me the way memory works contributes to the problem.

We may store the names of several unfamiliar people in our minds. These names may be united by a common image, making it easy to blurt out the wrong word. We also learn how to distinguish between faces by comparing features to the first face we learned as a child; usually, that face belongs to someone from our race, making cross-racial identification difficult.

Reminds me of the time I congratulated a white co-worker on his new job, only to discover I'd confused him with another guy named Josh who was leaving the company.

Karmic payback or racism in reverse? Maybe it was just a sign to be careful about reading too much into honest mistakes, lest you wind up repeating the same screw-up, possibly for the same reason.

That's all I'm saying.

Luckily, the Straight Dope dude at the Chicago Reader (who happens to be an old white man) has done some of Deggens homework for him (the link to which I posted in the St. Pete Times in the comments below Deggens' story, but my comment seems to have been deleted or left unpublished). Here's a quick excerpt:

While I despair of distilling 30 years of complex and often contradictory research into a sentence or two, there's reason to believe that both subjective and objective factors figure into the widespread impression that people of other races look alike. One study found that, when describing faces, Europeans tend to mention hair color, length, and texture as well as eye color--characteristics in which Europeans show wide variation--while Africans single out hair position, eye size, and the appearance of the eyebrows, chin, and ears. In other words, when identifying faces, we tend to look for the features in which our own race shows the most variation--which means that people of a race that shows less variation in those features can be hard for us to tell apart.

White people have hair that comes in distinctively different colors and textures. Black people have hair with far less variety. I think that's a big part of it.

Here's his earlier column on this, from a girl asking the question, "How come there seems to be a greater range of variation in the hair color and texture and eye color of Caucasians than in the other three or four races? Caucasian hair goes from practically white to black; eye color, too, can vary from pale blue to black":

Finally, whatever may be said for Caucasians, all major races show substantial variation in coloration, largely because of adaptation to local conditions. For instance, it's generally conceded that skin pigmentation acts as a filter for the sun's ultraviolet rays, and it's possible to plot out a sort of gradient called a "cline" showing that the closer you get to the equator, whether it's in Africa, Europe, or Asia, the darker the characteristic skin color of the locals. Something similar may conceivably apply to eye or hair color.

Still, that doesn't explain why there are no blond, blue-eyed Eskimos. Here's where the theories come in. The least controversial is that Caucasians are the most thoroughly "hybridized" of the major races--that is, they've had the most additions to their gene pool as a result of invasions, migration, slave trade, and so on.

People rarely mistake me for other people because there aren't a whole lot of people who look like me. If lots of people had red hair and very light skin, whether exactly my color or not, more people would mistake me for other columnists and other people.

Just last week, I saw a black girl walking down my street and thought she was a friend of mine. She had a similar style of dress, had braids about the length of my friend, hair very close in color, a similarly shaped face, and a similar skin tone. Also, my friend used to live next door, so it seemed reasonable she'd be in the neighborhood.

When the girl got closer, I saw she had different features from my friend, but from 20 feet off, I was almost sure it was her. The girl didn't seem to take it as some form of race-based insult; we had a nice little chat and I suggested she visit my friend's store. Just like I did a few months ago with a blonde woman who mistook for another blonde woman who lives a couple blocks away. She didn't seem offended, either.

Here's a comment from an entry on Cognitive Daily:

Just on a personal note, I grew up knowing very few white people (primarily teachers) and didn't have a white peer until I was in third grade. I can distinctly remember having a hard time telling white people apart.

On a -itwouldbefunnyifitwasn'tsosad- note, I have a memory of being in 7th grade and playing school basketball against a team of white kids. My team was entirely black and asian. We had the hardest time figuring out who we were guarding and had to keep peering around the back at their numbers. Later I heard their coach on the bench yelling at one of his kids for not playing defense and the kid complaining that we all looked alike. I still remember thinking "We don't look alike, YOU look alike."

Hmmm...maybe it's only a big deal if you're instructed to believe it's a big deal? Whatever color you happen to be.

P.S. If you have red hair, avoid unmasked bank robbery as a career.

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Suicide Bombers Have Less Fun
An interesting comment from JanK in Copenhagen, on The Binge Drinking Age, a post about college presidents who were campaigning against the 21-year-old drinking age:

When I was young, I believed that our cultures were a rather close, but as I have explained on my blog, there is a huge difference when it comes to alcohol. Here in Denmark youth can purchase alcohol on their own once they turn 16. The state gives them a ID-card so they can prove their age in shops. Also parents introduce their child to alcohol during the confirmation as it has been a tradition for more than 200 years. We can see that this approach save lives. The youth are very aware of the dangers once they can drive a car and as result of this we have very few cases of DUI if you compare it to the US.

Our biggest problem right now are youth who choose not to drink for religious reasons. Due to their decision they are kept out of our social circles because they are a potential threat. If you ask your service men in Iraq if they ever have seen a drunk suicide bomber their answer would be no. We don't like to be blown to pieces either so we stay away from sober youth and right now it is also the same circle who are conducting drive-by shootings in Copenhagen. Some of this fraction who don't to be violent choose to enter our continuation schools called "efterskole" in Denmark - schools we use instead of juvenile detention centers voluntary. They cannot cope with freedom and the right to choose their path in life. I simply don't understand why a state can have a social host law and such a high agelimit for alcohol consumption when we knows what makes our country safe.

JanK explains "social hosting laws" in the linked blog item above:

What an odd thing - social hosting laws I was surfing around when I discovered this term.

Apparently parents can be punished for serving alcohol in their own home to minors, which is defined as people aged below 21. People who are allowed to drive, to be a soldier in a war but no to drink.

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Three's A Crowd
That's when kids make for marital misery, contrary to the traditional thinking that they strengthen a marriage. Stephanie Coontz, of the Council for Contemporary Families, writes in The New York Times of research by UC Berkeley researchers Philip and Carolyn Cowan, that parses the details:

The Cowans found that the average drop in marital satisfaction was almost entirely accounted for by the couples who slid into being parents, disagreed over it or were ambivalent about it. Couples who planned or equally welcomed the conception were likely to maintain or even increase their marital satisfaction after the child was born.

Marital quality also tends to decline when parents backslide into more traditional gender roles. Once a child arrives, lack of paid parental leave often leads the wife to quit her job and the husband to work more. This produces discontent on both sides. The wife resents her husband's lack of involvement in child care and housework. The husband resents his wife's ingratitude for the long hours he works to support the family.

When the Cowans designed programs to help couples resolve these differences, they had fewer conflicts and higher marital quality. And the children did better socially and academically because their parents were happier.

But keeping a marriage vibrant is a never-ending job. Deciding together to have a child and sharing in child-rearing do not immunize a marriage. Indeed, collaborative couples can face other problems. They often embark on such an intense style of parenting that they end up paying less attention to each other.

Parents today spend much more time with their children than they did 40 years ago. The sociologists Suzanne Bianchi, John Robinson and Melissa Milkie report that married mothers in 2000 spent 20 percent more time with their children than in 1965. Married fathers spent more than twice as much time.

A study by John Sandberg and Sandra Hofferth at the University of Michigan showed that by 1997 children in two-parent families were getting six more hours a week with Mom and four more hours with Dad than in 1981. And these increases occurred even as more mothers entered the labor force.

Couples found some of these extra hours by cutting back on time spent in activities where children were not present -- when they were alone as a couple, visiting with friends and kin, or involved in clubs. But in the long run, shortchanging such adult-oriented activities for the sake of the children is not good for a marriage. Indeed, the researcher Ellen Galinsky has found that most children don't want to spend as much time with their parents as parents assume; they just want their parents to be more relaxed when they are together.

I wrote about over-parenting (which is also a form of underparenting) here:

You're supposed to be your kids' mom, not their full-time birthday clown. This means meeting their needs, as opposed to falling prey to their ransom demands; i.e., "Send in the chopper and the cupcakes or I'll scream my lungs out until spring!" If you're keeling over from reading "Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb" 40 times, it's because you didn't say no 39 times. "No" is also the correct response when besieged with requests for a chunky peanut butter sandwich with all the chunkies removed. But, children can be such finicky eaters! Correction: American children can be such finicky eaters, because their parents tend to confuse parenting with working room service at a five-star hotel. In France, on the other hand, the kids' meal is whatever the parents are eating; brains, livers, kidneys and all. And while the kids can pick out bits they don't like, their choice is clear: eat or starve.

Saying no to your kids will not turn them into meth-smoking, liquor store-robbing carjackers. Actually, throwing up a few boundaries might even serve to prevent this -- and less dire but extremely annoying outcomes (just what society needs, another 35-year-old snot who was denied nothing during childhood). Kids need to feel loved and secure -- and that doesn't take hours of mommy-and-me Lego. In fact, psychologist Judith Rich Harris writes that "anthropological data suggest...there may be something a little unnatural about adults playing with children." Anthropologist David F. Lancy notes that, beyond Western society, one "rarely" sees it. Regarding this apparent lack of a parental instinct for parent-child play, Harris writes, "This implies that children do not require play with an adult in order to develop normally."

I know, I know, that's not what The Cult Of The Child tells you -- when its proponents aren't too busy checking Amazon to see whether anybody's published "The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective Children." The reality is, your family is better served by a stay-at-home mother than a stay-at-home martyr. Take the advice of the late British pediatrician Donald Winnicott, and avoid trying to be the perfect mother -- micromanaging your little darlings' every move ("Harvard or bust!") -- and just be a "good enough mother." Your kids can entertain themselves -- and will, if you suggest they do. Likewise, forget going for the Good Housekeeping Seal and just resolve to keep the health department from sealing up your house. Your kitchen counters don't need to be operating-room sterile. Just see to it that nothing walks across your lasagna.

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Christian Bale, The Remix
By RevoLucian.

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Dreher On Newspapers And Democracy
I've said it over and over, that you can't maintain a democracy (or keep a check on corruption) without strong newspapers (or without any or many newspapers). Rod Dreher writes about this in the Dallas Morning News blog (the blog of a paper that dropped my column for financial reasons):

Everybody has a theory about what newspaper management ought to be doing, and how if management just did what they would do, we wouldn't be in this mess. Or rather, they used to have a theory. But you know, if you're even halfway paying attention to the newspaper business, you see that everybody's in serious trouble, no matter what they do. Among my political and cultural tribe, there's a general feeling that newspapers are too liberal for their audience, and have turned off readers by their politics, and their cultural politics. No doubt there's some truth to that, but how then do you account for the fact that liberal newspapers serving liberal cities are in as much trouble as anybody else?

...I don't know where our industry is going, but I really do believe that as go newspapers, so goes democracy. That doesn't mean we'll lose the vote, understand. It does mean that it will be easier than ever for our votes to be manipulated. I remember once having a frustrating conversation with a friend whose husband was serving overseas in a war zone. She never read the newspaper, and kind of prided herself on keeping her mind free of all the unpleasant stuff in its pages. I tried to explain to her that the stuff that ends up in the newspaper is stuff that directly affects her life -- that, for example, the war debates that went on in Washington, which she didn't follow in the paper because she didn't read the paper, resulted eventually in her husband being sent into a war zone.

The conversation was frustrating to me because she didn't get it, and wasn't going to get it. She, an educated person, had decided that newspapers were irrelevant to her life, and that was that. I don't have conversations like that anymore, because I see that of the vanishing number of people who think it important to keep up with the news in the first place, more and more of them get their news from online. And as more newspapers dwindle and fold, who do they think is going to go to the sewer board meeting and write a reliable account of what happened, so they can get it in whatever medium? If you didn't have Kent Fischer and Tawnell Hobbs to go to DISD board meetings, and to pore through public records trying to keep public school officials honest, who would?

Oh, by the way, nonprofit investigative unit ProPublica dropped the story on Bank of America, and how all their California consumer banking customers, and possibly all their consumer banking customers, are in substantial danger of identity theft, thanks to the "security" practices of the bank.

I looked at the LA Times and noticed that all the investigative reporters I would've pitched it to (Ornstein, Weber, Miller and Sack) were gone. So, I Googled Ornstein and Weber, who'd gone to ProPublica, and pitched the story to ProPropublica's managing editor, former Oregonian editor Stephen Engelberg, driving downtown to meet with him on my deadline night and show him all my documents when he flew into town for a few hours for a meeting at the LA Times. They had a reporter named Mosi Secret covering it -- a California-based story -- from his ass in a chair across the country. When I asked him how it was going, he kept complaining to me that he couldn't get tellers in California to talk to him, and gave that has the reason they were dropping the story. Yeah, right. They're going to spill all to a total stranger who calls them on the phone and tells them to trust him.

via Romenesko

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Quantum Of Ethics
Hans A. von Spakovsky writes in The Weekly Standard that Secretary of Labor nom Hilda Solis' breach of House ethics rules may disqualify her from serving:

A seemingly innocuous letter sent to the Clerk of the House of Representatives last Thursday by President Obama's Secretary of Labor nominee Hilda Solis raises serious and troubling legal questions about her nomination and apparent violation of House ethics rules. Not only was she involved with a private organization that was lobbying her fellow legislators on a bill that she has cosponsored, but she apparently kept her involvement secret and failed to reveal a clear conflict of interest.

Solis was a co-sponsor in 2007 of the so-called "Employee Free Choice Act," the card check legislation that would effectively eliminate the secret ballot and destroy the ability of employees to make an anonymous decision (without fear of retribution) on whether they want to join a union. She was also a co-sponsor of the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act, legislation that would force states to allow public safety officers to form unions. At the same time, however, Solis was a board member of a pro-union organization, American Rights at Work, that has been lobbying Congress on both of these bills.

According to a letter filed by Solis with the House Clerk on January 29, 2009, she was not just a director of the ARW, along with fellow travelers like David Bonior, Julian Bond, and John Sweeney, she was actually the treasurer. In other words, she is the official legally charged with the fiduciary duty of approving and signing off on all spending by the organization. And to make matters worse, she did not reveal to her colleagues in the House of Representatives that membership on her financial disclosure forms, which may constitute a separate ethical violation.

Card check legislation has been ignored by just about everybody but Kaus, and it's something that needs to be disputed and quashed.

And here's one more sign that Obama's a politician, not the next Jesus, from CNN:

President Barack Obama on Tuesday admitted he made a mistake in handling the nomination of Tom Daschle as his health and human services secretary, saying Daschle's tax problems sent a message that the politically powerful are treated differently from average people.

Daschle, the former Democratic leader in the U.S. Senate, withdrew earlier Tuesday as news that he failed to pay some taxes in the past continued to stir opposition on Capitol Hill.

"I think I screwed up," Obama said in a wide-ranging interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper.

"And I take responsibility for it and we're going to make sure we fix it so it doesn't happen again."

But, will Obama allow his auntie to be deported?

A national group is calling on President Barack Obama to deport his aunt, an illegal immigrant who was living in Boston.

The Americans for Legal Immigration PAC filed an arrest request with Immigration and Customs Enforcement Monday and issued a public demand for Obama to deport Zeituni Onyango.

...Onyango is currently living in Ohio and has vowed to fight against being deported. Four years ago, an immigration judge instructed her to leave the country after her request for asylum from her native Kenya was rejected.

"President Obama has promised the American public that his administration will honor the principles of open government, the Constitution and the Rule of Law," said William Gheen of ALIPAC. "Obama must either deport his aunt or destroy his own credibility by showing her favoritism."

auntie link via Drudge

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The Electorate Is An Ass
In November, I voted for poor people eating and California egg farmers. The majority of Californians voted for the chickens; that is, making California egg farmers give them nice roomy living spaces. From the Opinion LA blog at the LA Times:

Now that the egg farmers in California have to work on keeping their hens out of battery cages, who's going to work on having financially beset consumers buy the cage-free eggs?

The Humane Society of the United States, the force behind Proposition 2, says it will. If you're one of the vast majority of voters who supported the measure, you'll remember that it gave California farmers several years to get rid of their battery cages, where chickens were packed in so tightly they couldn't turn around. What the measure didn't do was require anyone to actually buy all those cage-free eggs. Now the Humane Society says it will "work with consumers and retailers to promote a robust market for compliant California egg producers."

It's an interesting time for such a sales scheme. Families that already have given up most of their discretionary expenditures because of their shrinking wallets--gardeners, house cleaners, dinners out--find that one of the few areas where they can still cut is food. The mortgage is the mortgage, it's not coming down in size. Neither is the life-insurance premium or, unless you live in the dark, the utility bill. The food budget has more flexibility--less meat, more mac and cheese--so fewer people are reaching for the $3.25-a-dozen organic, cage-free eggs, and more are waiting for the supermarket to have the regular ones, produced from the misery of hens, on sale for 99 cents a dozen. Eggs keep fairly well, so you can even stock up.

One possibility under consideration is legislation that would require that all eggs sold in California be cage-free. That would have been a fairer way to write the proposition. The vote might have gone differently if voters realized they were actually going to have to pay for their decision, and if they were willing to pay the extra money, fine. It also would have encouraged egg producers from outside the state to treat their chickens differently, to get a piece of the California market. But is this a time for jacking up the price of one of the cheapest sources of high-quality protein?

So, the idiots who wrote the law screwed up. I'm against it all around, but because they didn't require that all eggs SOLD in California to comply, just California egg farmers, all it does is put a pox on California eggs.

And by the way, yes, I think it would be lovely if every chicken on a chicken farm has a one-bedroom apartment with a big patch of grass, and a color TV, but I care more that a friend of mine, whose husband lost her job, will be able to afford to make her children scrambled eggs. (P.S. She used to buy those cage-free, happy chicken eggs just a month ago, before the ax came down.)

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Time For The Palestinians To Cut The Crap
An Arab journalist tells the Palestinians it's time to give up jihad against Israel and get a life. Former New York Times Mideast correspondent Youssef M. Ibrahim, writes in The Jewish World Review:

Dear Palestinian Arab brethren: The war with Israel is over. You have lost. Surrender and negotiate to secure a future for your children. We, your Arab brothers, may say until we are blue in the face that we stand by you, but the wise among you and most of us know that we are moving on, away from the tired old idea of the Palestinian Arab cause and the "eternal struggle" with Israel. Dear friends, you and your leaders have wasted three generations trying to fight for Palestine, but the truth is the Palestine you could have had in 1948 is much bigger than the one you could have had in 1967, which in turn is much bigger than what you may have to settle for now or in another 10 years.

Struggle means less land and more misery and utter loneliness. At the moment, brothers, you would be lucky to secure a semblance of a state in that Gaza Strip into which you have all crowded, and a small part of the West Bank of the Jordan. It isn't going to get better. Time is running out even for this much land, so here are some facts, figures, and sound advice, friends.

You hold keys, which you drag out for television interviews, to houses that do not exist or are inhabited by Israelis who have no intention of leaving Jaffa, Haifa , Tel Aviv, or West Jerusalem. You shoot old guns at modern Israeli tanks and American-made fighter jets, doing virtually no harm to Israel while bringing the wrath of its mighty army down upon you. You fire ridiculously inept Kassam rockets that cause little destruction and delude yourselves into thinking this is a war of liberation.

Your government, your social institutions, your schools, and your economy are all in ruins. Your young people are growing up illiterate, ill, and bent on rites of death and suicide, while you, in effect, are living on the kindness of foreigners, including America and the United Nations. Every day your officials must beg for your daily bread, dependent on relief trucks that carry food and medicine into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, while your criminal Muslim fundamentalist Hamas government continues to fan the flames of a war it can neither fight nor hope to win.

In other words, brothers, you are down, out, and alone in a burnt-out landscape that is shrinking by the day. What kind of struggle is this? Is it worth waging at all? More important, what kind of miserable future does it portend for your children, the fourth or fifth generation of the Arab world's have-nots? We, your Arab brothers, have moved on.

Those of us who have oil money are busy accumulating wealth and building housing, luxury developments, state-of-the-art universities and schools, and new highways and byways. Those of us who share borders with Israel, such as Egypt and Jordan, have signed a peace treaty with it and are not going to war for you any time soon. Those of us who are far away, in places like North Africa and Iraq, frankly could not care less about what happens to you.

Only Syria continues to feed your fantasies that someday it will join you in liberating Palestine, even though a huge chunk of its territory, the entire Golan Heights, was taken by Israel in 1967 and annexed. The Syrians, my friends, will gladly fight down to the last Palestinian Arab. Before you got stuck with this Hamas crowd, another cheating, conniving, leader of yours, Yasser Arafat, sold you a rotten bill of goods - more pain, greater corruption, and millions stolen by his relatives--while your children played in the sewers of Gaza.

The war is over. Why not let a new future begin?

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What Presidents Do
Via The Week magazine, a quote compiled from a piece by Rutgers poly sci prof Ross K. Baker in USA Today, dispelling American naivete about what gets ordered up from The Oval Office:

...A chorus of angry voices has pressed aggressively for criminal charges to be brought against former president George W. Bush, former vice president Dick Cheney and members of the intelligence community thought guilty of constitutional violations or of practicing or sanctioning torture.

...It should also be recalled that President Kennedy ordered the assassination of a foreign leader, Vietnam's Ngo Dinh Diem, and Ronald Reagan defied an act of Congress by illegally supplying arms to the anti-communists in Nicaragua.

...The "sainted" FDR, so lovingly memorialized in Washington, sent thousands of his fellow Americans into captivity after Pearl Harbor because of their Japanese ancestry.

...Yet there were no serious campaigns to put these presidents on trial.

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Dr. Helen Needs Questions To Ask Me On The Air
Dr. Helen reminded me about our upcoming pre-Valentine's Day show, on which we'll be discussing relationship issues and problems, and any Valentine's Day stuff you want to bring up. (In case you're wondering, I'm not a big fan of the day, and refer to it as "our national day of insincerity," when people who treat each other like crap year round buy each other chocolates and flowers to make up for it.) Dr. Helen writes:

Amy, They put up a post for us to solicit questions for our show at PJM--I am going to link it so my readers can go there and ask questions. Here it is:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/an-advice-goddess-valentine-on-pjtv/

If you have a question concerning your relationship (or lack of one) or any other pressing concern about love, sex or marriage, please leave it in the comments or if you want more privacy, email me ataskdrhelen@hotmail.com We will read some of them on the air and answer them during a segment.

As always, you can e-mail questions you'd like to get a written response from me on to adviceamy at a o l dot com. And feel free to e-mail me ones you send to the show to get a personal answer via e-mail. Of course, you will remain anonymous.

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Olympic Star Drinks A Beer, Loses Everything
It's just ridiculous, the furor over 23-year-old swimming star Michael Phelps getting caught with his snout in a bong. "What will the children think?!" people gasp. Um, perhaps the truth -- that just like many people can drink a beer from time to time and not mow down little children in their cars or end up in the gutter with missing teeth and burned out nostrils from snorting meth, so it goes with pot. Here's some of the hysteria from the Times of London, from a story by Kevin Eason:

A mixture of shock and disbelief swept the United States yesterday as the nation woke up to an abject apology from the man it had hailed as its greatest Olympic athlete. Michael Phelps was a hero and role model for millions but now his career will be stained forever by claims that he smoked drugs.

The world's greatest swimmer was forced to say sorry after a British tabloid newspaper showed a picture of him appearing to smoke marijuana through a glass pipe, known as a bong, at a student party just weeks after creating history at the Beijing Olympic Games. In a spellbinding week, Phelps had won a record eight gold medals and turned himself into a $100 million superstar.

But his reputation is in tatters...

Oh. Please. Because of the ridiculousness of the drug war, of what we ban and what we don't. People drink martinis and go play chicken with their lives and others in their cars. People smoke pot and lie down and scarf food and listen to music. Really not a problem unless the music's loud and you're their upstairs neighbor.

Next, here's an excerpt from a great letter by Radley Balko, "A Letter I'd Like To See (But Won't)" -- as if by Phelps:

Dear America,

I take it back. I don't apologize.

Because you know what? It's none of your goddamned business. I work my ass off 10 months per year. It's that hard work that gave you all those gooey feelings of patriotism last summer. If during my brief window of down time I want to relax, enjoy myself, and partake of a substance that's a hell of a lot less bad for me than alcohol, tobacco, or, frankly, most of the prescription drugs most of you are taking, well, you can spare me the lecture.

...Here's a crazy thought: If I can smoke a little dope and go on to win 14 Olympic gold medals, maybe pot smokers aren't doomed to lives of couch surfing and video games, as our moronic government would have us believe. In fact, the list of successful pot smokers includes not just world class athletes like me, Howard, Williams, and others, it includes Nobel Prize winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, the last three U.S. presidents, several Supreme Court justices, and luminaries and success stories from all sectors of business and the arts, sciences, and humanities.

So go ahead. Ban me from the next Olympics. Yank my endorsement deals. Stick your collective noses in the air and get all indignant on me. While you're at it, keep arresting cancer and AIDS patients who dare to smoke the stuff because it deadens their pain, or enables them to eat. Keep sending in goon squads to kick down doors and shoot little old ladies, maim innocent toddlers, handcuff elderly post-polio patients to their beds at gunpoint, and slaughter the family pet.

Tell you what. I'll make you a deal. I'll apologize for smoking pot when every politician who ever did drugs and then voted to uphold or strengthen the drug laws marches his ass off to the nearest federal prison to serve out the sentence he wants to impose on everyone else for committing the same crimes he committed. I'll apologize when the sons, daughters, and nephews of powerful politicians who get caught possessing or dealing drugs in the frat house or prep school get the same treatment as the no-name, probably black kid caught on the corner or the front stoop doing the same thing.

Until then, I for one will have none of it. I smoked pot. I liked it. I'll probably do it again. I refuse to apologize for it, because by apologizing I help perpetuate this stupid lie, this idea that what someone puts into his own body on his own time is any of the government's damned business. Or any of yours. I'm not going to bend over and allow myself to be propaganda for this wasteful, ridiculous, immoral war.

*

What Happened To The Economy?
I asked in the comments on a post for somebody in the know to lay out an overview, and Bret sent me here, to A Brief History, and "A new concept: reward good behavior." An excerpt, but read the whole thing at the link for the details:

The current housing collapse and associated financial meltdown were the consequences of a bubble. There has been considerable analysis of how this happened. We had low interest rates, a government program to increase home ownership and a delusion that housing prices could only go up. In addition to those mechanisms, we had a drive for high yields and resulting extreme leverage in the financial services industry. Something similar to this occurred in Orange County, California in 1994 when the county Treasurer got caught in a classic short squeeze while investing in bonds and their options. He was betting on an arbitrage between short and longer terms rates. When rates rose, his investments fell in value. Unfortunately for the County, the investments were highly leveraged and the fall in value triggered what in effect was a margin call.

...More generally, the subprime market tapped a tranche of the American public that did not typically have anything to do with Wall Street. Lenders were making loans to people who, based on their credit ratings, were less creditworthy than 71 percent of the population. Eisman knew some of these people. One day, his housekeeper, a South American woman, told him that she was planning to buy a townhouse in Queens. "The price was absurd, and they were giving her a low-down-payment option-ARM," says Eisman, who talked her into taking out a conventional fixed-rate mortgage. Next, the baby nurse he'd hired back in 1997 to take care of his newborn twin daughters phoned him. "She was this lovely woman from Jamaica," he says. "One day she calls me and says she and her sister own five townhouses in Queens. I said, 'How did that happen?'?" It happened because after they bought the first one and its value rose, the lenders came and suggested they refinance and take out $250,000, which they used to buy another one. Then the price of that one rose too, and they repeated the experiment. "By the time they were done," Eisman says, "they owned five of them, the market was falling, and they couldn't make any of the payments."

But that wasn't the end of it.

Moses actually flew down to Miami and wandered around neighborhoods built with subprime loans to see how bad things were. "He'd call me and say, 'Oh my God, this is a calamity here,'?" recalls Eisman. All that was required for the BBB bonds to go to zero was for the default rate on the underlying loans to reach 14 percent. Eisman thought that, in certain sections of the country, it would go far, far higher.

Thus, the financial paper based on the mortgages far exceeded the amount of the purported assets backing them. Well, that collapse has occurred.

...The country faces three major economic problems: (1) making liquid the troubled housing debt that is clogging up the books; (2) stabilizing home prices; and (3) improving household cash flow. Each can be more easily achieved by rewarding virtue than by continuing down the current path.

The government should offer the option of a new mortgage to everyone now holding one, be it from a Government Sponsored Enterprise like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a bank, or a mortgage broker. The principal amount would be the same as the existing mortgage. If the home-owner had two mortgages or a home equity line, they could all be rolled together into one new 30-year fixed rate mortgage. The new mortgages should have a substantially lower interest rate than existing mortgages. I suggest 4 percent, but the rate could be slightly higher without affecting the program.

This is a bit like the proposal McCain made during the campaign with one big exception. It would be offered to homeowners who are NOT in danger of foreclosure. It would be offered to everyone but with one significant provision. It would be a "recourse loan." You would have to repay it even if your house sold for less than the amount of the loan. Recourse loans were common when I bought my first home. It never occurred to me that I could walk away from the home. The other provision would be that the loan would be assumable, another feature of mortgages 40 years ago.

...What is the benefit of such a program ?

Given the risk-averse nature of current markets and the lack of any real information, it is likely that the market price of the mortgage pool is well below the actual likely outcome. But no one knows for sure. As a consequence, Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) and Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) are clogging up the financial system.

Under the refinancing option, this problem goes away. The world is divided into two sets of homeowners: those who think they will repay and those who don't. Those who think they will repay take the new government mortgage. The old mortgage is repaid. All of the MBS and CDOs in the system therefore face immediate full-dollar repayment of all the "good" loans in the mortgage pool. Everything that is left can pretty much be written down to pennies on the dollar. The uncertainty regarding securities pricing is gone. Banks and the financial markets know with a good deal of precision what each security is worth. In fact, they are handed a series of checks for the bulk of the true value of the security as the wave of refinancing works its way through the system. Thus, not only is the uncertainty removed, but the entire financial system is liquefied.

Thus the mortgage market is divided into two groups; those who will stay in their homes and who will repay their mortgages, and those who will not. The first group has a low default rate, the second is probably worthless. It doesn't solve the problem of all the Credit Default Swaps floating out there but they are lost anyway. The market can resume to function. It sounds to me like a good idea.

*

Is Islamic Law "Islamophobic"?
On an entry on DhimmiWatch, Canadian woman held against her will in Saudi Arabia by her husband -- "under Saudi law, she is his property" Robert Spencer asks a very good question:

I've often noted that Islamic law relegates women to the status of commodities, and have been called "Islamophobic" as a result. But in this story, we're told that "under Saudi law, she is his property because she is the mother of his children." And Saudi law, of course, strictly adheres to the norms of Islamic Sharia. Does that mean that Islamic law is "Islamophobic"?

Here's the story from CanWest news service:

MONTREAL -- A high-level representative of the federal government has met with Nathalie Morin, a 24-year-old Quebec woman who claims she is being held against her will in Saudi Arabia.

Deepak Obhrai, parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, met with Morin and her Saudi husband, Abdallah Ramthi Al-Bishi, in Saudi Arabia on Dec. 22 to mediate in the couple's dispute, a Foreign Affairs spokesperson told Canwest News Service last night.

He could not say what the next step might be. Ottawa has said in the past that Canadians in Saudi Arabia are subject to its laws. Morin met Al-Bishi in Montreal when she was 17 and when he was a Concordia University student...

Morin's mother has said her daughter is unable to leave because, under Saudi law, she is his property because she is the mother of his children.

And people wonder why I worry about the spread of Islam. Enter a Muslim country as a woman, and there's a good chance you've suddenly relegated your rights to those of a suitcase. Check the luggage tag to see who owns you.

*

14 Children, All On Welfare (Stop Smiling Already, Doctors)
Gotta love the shit-eating grins on the faces of the doctors. Wake up, nitwits. This isn't a happy occasion -- not for the children of this single welfare mother and not for the rest of us.

It took 46 doctors and staff members at Kaiser to deliver this obviously unfit mother's second litter of children -- octuplets. (Now I see why my Kaiser premium is so high, despite the fact that I'm almost never sick and rarely use my medical care.)

Meanwhile, the lady clearly needs mental health care, not the fertility treatments she got. Philip Sherwell writes for The Telegraph:

Miss (Nadya) Suleman and her children live with her parents in the Los Angeles suburb of Whittier and even her long-suffering mother sounded exasperated with her daughter's fixation on surrounding herself with children. "I wish she would have become a kindergarten teacher," she said.

She also said that she disapproved of the decision by her divorced daughter, whose former husband is not the father of any of the children.

"It can't go on any longer," she told Associated Press. "She's got six children and no husband. I was brought up the traditional way."

There were frozen embryos left over after her previous pregnancies and her daughter did not want them destroyed so she decided to have more children. Her mother and doctors have said the woman was told she had the option to abort some of the embryos and, later, the fetuses, but she refused.

Allison Frickert, a friend Miss Suleman, said the mother-of-14 was not seeking potential fame or financial benefit. "There was no overriding situation, other than having more children to love," she said. "Her whole life, she couldn't wait to be a mom. That was her No 1 goal."

She once told another neighbour that she wanted 12 children. "She told me that all of her kids were through in vitro, and I said 'Gosh, how can you afford that and go to school [college] at the same time?'" Yolanda Garcia told the Long Beach Press-Telegram. "And she said it's because she got paid for it."

It was also reported that all 14 children are from the same donor, a neighbour, who unsuccessfully asked her to stop using his sperm after he got married recently.

An ethical debate is raging in America about why so many embryos were implanted in a woman aged under 35, particularly if the doctor or clinic involved knew that she already had six children. She only started to attend the Kaiser Permanente clinic, where the children were born, when she was three months pregnant and her mother said she does not know where the IVF procedure was performed.

Incredibly, MSNBC (video here) reports that one of the six children she already had is autistic:

'How can you afford that'

Yolanda Garcia, 49, of Whittier, said she helped care for the mother's autistic son three years ago.

"From what I could tell back then, she was pretty happy with herself, saying she liked having kids and she wanted 12 kids in all," Garcia told the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

"She told me that all of her kids were through in vitro, and I said 'Gosh, how can you afford that and go to school at the same time?"' she added. "And she said it's because she got paid for it."

Garcia said she did not ask for details.

The mother holds a 2006 degree in child and adolescent development from California State University, Fullerton, and as late as last spring she was studying for a master's degree in counseling, college spokeswoman Paula Selleck told the Press-Telegram.

Her fertility doctor has not been identified. Her mother told the Los Angeles Times all the children came from the same sperm donor but she declined to identify him.

If child services doesn't step in immediately, something is terribly wrong.

By the way, do you know how much we taxpayers are likely paying for the autistic one alone? Saw a friend of mine last night who has an autistic child. He's four. She told me that she and her husband have spend $300K on their child so far, and they're careful to provide financially for his future, throughout his life. They don't expect the rest of us to do it for them.

via Kate Coe

*

Reading Comprehension Is Beautiful
Here at godlessharlotnet, we think Steven Waldman the editor-in-chief behind Beliefnet, needs to work on his reading comprehension (also, it's disturbing to see his personal editorial standards in action).

I'm guessing he's one of those who drank the feminist Kool-Aid about how horrible it is that women would make an effort to look attractive for men -- instead of letting their armpit hair grow until it can be corn-rowed and otherwise letting the "real" them hang out.

Here's his post, "Vogue's Visual Lying" (ignore his contention that Miller's head was stuck on somebody else's body and read on below):

Waldman writes:

Fashion magazines lie every time they manipulate photographs to make people seem something they're not.

Apparently, Vogue took Siena Miller's head and stuck it on someone else's body (presumably because Miller's actual body was so grotesque)

We're now at the point that even the most beautiful women in the world are deemed not quite perfect enough.

Is this a victimless crime? I don't think so. Each girl or woman who models themselves after ever-more unrealistic notions of beauty -- and dislike themselves when they don't reach that standard -- suffer from these lies. And each boy or man who thinks that that's what women are supposed to look like, and back themselves into loneliness through their own warped notions of female beauty, suffer from these lies.

The guy's entire blog item is based on an error -- probably based on feminism-driven, knee-jerk hatred of Vogue. I left a comment there, that's essentially this:

Here's the actual quote from the article in his link: "They then took one photo of her face and super-imposed it on a separate picture of her body." Her body, not somebody else's body.

I just did something like this for a comp which incorporates a shot of me. Why? Because the body looked better in one photo and the head looked better in another. Thanks to Photoshop, you can mix and match. This isn't sinister or horrible, it's pretty cool.

Also, what's with posting the bit about Miller's actual body being "grotesque." Famous people have feelings, too.

Also, what's wrong with "visual lying"? You're a man, so presumably you like attractive women. Any time a woman wears a slimming color, or red lipstick, or dyes her hair, she's "visually lying." Frankly, deodorant is a lie, but I hope many people continue to embrace olfactory dishonesty as well...don't you?

There are plenty of "unrealistic notions" in our lives -- like the notion promoted by chick flicks that the most implausible guy for a woman will ditch her (highly plausibly) and then come back at the end to get on his knees, apologize, and ask her to marry him. Take "Pretty Woman," for example. How many really rich industrialists decide to track down the hooker and marry her? Do you see or hear anybody mewling about the "unrealistic picture of human relationships" they're portraying?

As for "unrealistic notions of beauty," I'm taking a wild guess that those who succumb to an unhealthy extent of them are those with low self-esteem. What I see more of in this culture are unrealistic notions of ugly -- the notion, promoted by feminism, that looks don't matter, and shouldn't matter. Which is fine if you're dating the blind. If you're a woman who wants a boyfriend, you'd better take care of yourself, and wear clothes that reveal a waist (men like that).

I'm reminded of a woman I knew a little who once came up to me in a café and lamented, "Why don't I have a boyfriend?" I looked at her. She was dressed, as she always dressed, in big schlumpy clothes, with disheveled hair (and not in a sexy, bed-head way), looking like she was about to spend the day cleaning out the garage. "Um, you could wear a dress sometimes," I told her.

As I wrote in a column a while back, "If you want to trap a bear, don't go off into the woods with a Tupperware container of salad."

*

Don't Sweat The Details, Dudes!
Jacob Sullum writes at reason about the President's suggested approach to legislation for members of Congress:

Even as President Obama promises that the federal government will spend the $1 trillion or so contemplated in the stimulus legislation in a utterly open, totally transparent, and absolutely accountable way, he demands that members of Congress vote for the 647-page monstrosity before they can possibly have time to read and digest it. "We don't have a moment to spare," he says, eliciting praise from Honeywell CEO David Cote, who raves, "Thank God you are not a timid man."

I suspect some or many of them don't need any encouragement to skip sounding out the words, uh, reading the legislation they're voting on. After all, isn't a wet finger in the voters', or better yet, the lobbyists' direction, enough to decide which way to cast one's vote?

*

Highway Robbery
As Ronald Reagan pointed out, government is not your friend. (Well, not unless you number among your friends the likes of mafia extortionists.)

The California legislature was short on the money to renovate court buildings across the state, so they invented a new form of lotto; well, really a reverse lotto -- drive in front of a police car and hope they don't notice anything wrong with your car.

Gary Richards writes for the San Jose Mercury News:

Got a broken blinker? You'd better get it fixed.

Under a little-noted law that took effect Jan. 1, the cost of a fix-it ticket has nearly tripled, and drivers who are tardy taking care of a burned-out headlight or another mechanical problem could pay as much as $100 for an offense that a few years ago didn't cost a penny.

Lacking the funds to renovate nearly 400 court buildings across California, the state Legislature approved a boost in fix-it fines from $10 to $25 under a bill written by state Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland.

The bill also raised surcharges on regular traffic tickets by $35, parking tickets by $3 and the court cost to attend traffic school by $25.

The increase in the fine for fix-it tickets -- citations issued for a vehicular problem in need of repair -- might not seem like much, but other changes in state law have made it potentially much more expensive. Where one such ticket used to cover several violations, the new regulations make each separate violation a $25 fine. So if a cop cites a driver for having a burned-out brake light and broken mirror, the penalty jumps to $50.

Tack on other fees that can be assessed for prior tickets, night court, security and other reasons, and the total bill can easily exceed $100. And if a driver is late in taking care of the problem, you're talking a bill approaching $200.

Think about the kind of person, in general, who has a car with a broken tail light. I have a 2004 Honda Insight. The thing never has anything go wrong with it. It's people with unpredictable old clunker cars, who probably don't have much money, who are going to be socked with these fines.

That's right -- the economy's tanking and people are living on toaster leavings, but we're going to nail the poorest people on automotive technicalities. The geniuses behind this bill were smart enough to persuade people to vote for them, yet they can't see the unintended side-effects (or are just uninterested): people, at least some struggling people, are liable to get their cars impounded and lose them, thanks to this bill.

Who knows, perhaps at some point, this will lead them to an appearance in one of those sparklingly renovated court buildings.

Oh, and by the way, we can't just blame our legislaturds for all the fiscal dimwittery. California is so debt-laden it's about to break off and fall into the Pacific, yet, in the last election, voters passed numerous ginormously expensive ballot measures with reckless abandon. High-speed train from LA to San Francisco, anyone? (Aww, put it on the credit card. What's another few billion?)

LAO

*

Nobody Cares When Arabs Kill Arab Babies
Israelis try very hard to avoid killing children. Clearly, if they wanted to, they could bomb Gaza flat. But, they don't. In fact, they lament the loss of life -- even Arab and Muslim lives; it's an essential part of Judaism, the value for human life. I'm an atheist, but I can appreciate the difference -- the one Israel's critics cover their ears and shout real loud (something about Jews back into the ovens, I'm guessing) to drown out. Cleveland Indy Media Center points out the obvious:

Since the establishment of the State of Israel, hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Muslims have been butchered, most of them by Arabs and Muslims. Israel's "contribution," including all the wars and the two Intifadas has been quite small -- in proportion to Arab deaths -- yet it disproportionately fires up the media and the "human rights" establishment.

In Iraq, on average, scores of Arabs are killed, assassinated daily. Every week one reads how a Sunni blew herself up and killed 40 or 60 Shiites. Babies included. Guess what: This is not headline news. Nobody makes posters of these dead Arab babies. CNN cameramen don't get excited over this particular carnage.

Algeria: In 1992, civil war broke out. Psychopathic Islamists with machetes hacked to death 110,000 Algerian civilians. No tears flowed down the cheeks of Western "rights activists." No pictures of these dead Arabs -- babies, children, women and men -- appeared on posters in European or American streets. No marches to protest on behalf of these murdered Arabs. Maybe it would be seen as Politically Incorrect to show a non-Western culture as barbarian. Can that possibly outweigh the souls of the dead Algerians? To "rights groups" -- yes it does.

The Syrian dictatorship killed 10-20,000 civilians in the town of Hama, in 1982. No photographers were allowed of course, but there were images of the dead on the internet. Yet you never saw any of that on a "human rights" poster.

In Darfur, the jihadis are slaughtering and enslaving African Muslims. Darfuris do get some notice, but only because the PC "Save Darfur" movement bends over backwards to hide the war's cause: age-old Arab imperialism. But guess what: the hard anti-Israeli left, with its Islamist allies, defends Khartoum and calls the Save Darfur movement a Zionist plot. (A Zionist plot to cover up Arab imperialism in Africa?)

All this does not begin to account for the millions of non-Arabs and non-Muslims murdered, enslaved, subjugated and/or dispossessed by jihadis -- in this century alone. Christians in Iraq, Sudan, and Egypt murdered and enslaved. Somehow their dead children don't evoke pain in the hearts of the anti-Israel crowd.

This is a fraud: These folks are not deeply concerned about Arab deaths. Their tears flow only when Jews (fighting back) cause these deaths. It's not about human rights. It's not about dead children. It's Western guilt, now focused on Jews.

*

Dr. Thomas Frieden Wants To Be Your Mommy
Kim Severson writes in the IHT about the latest loonytunes attempt by Frieden to control what New Yorkers put in their mouths:

Frieden, the commissioner of New York City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, is waging a new campaign: to lower the amount of sodium America eats.

But don't go hiding your saltshakers. The city isn't going after the seasoning people add at the table or in the kitchen. That makes up only about 11 percent of the salt people eat, Frieden says.

His targets are packaged foods and mass-produced restaurant meals, which contribute 80 percent of the sodium in the average American diet.

When the food company executives had finished lunch, Frieden made his pitch: Over the next five years, identify the foods that are contributing the most sodium to people's diets and cut the level of salt by 25 percent. In a decade, cut it by another 25 percent. And do it in unison with your competitors.

If they refuse?

"If there's not progress in a few years, we'll have to consider other options, like legislation," he said in an interview last week.

...This war, however, is likely to be more difficult for Frieden, both practically and politically, than were his efforts to get restaurant chains to post calorie counts on menus and stop cooking with trans fat.

First, salt is harder to scrub from the food supply, and its connection to cardiovascular disease is less understood. Besides, the food industry says it's already dealing with sodium levels. And then there is the scope of Frieden's plan. He wants to get most of the major food and restaurant companies to do the same thing at the same time.

Lowering salt consumption, along with stopping smoking, are two areas in which a broad public health effort can have the most impact on the most people, Frieden said.

Of course, there's also pointing a gun at a person and tell him to jog or die.

Personally, I see salt as a vegetable. Love the stuff. I have a big shaker of sea salt that I throw liberally on everything but dessert.

But, before you start praying that I'll make it through the week, you should take a peek at a 1998 piece about salt that investigative science journalist Gary Taubes wrote for Science, republished over at junkscience.com:

After decades of intensive research, the apparent benefits of avoiding salt have only diminished. This suggests either that the true benefit has now been revealed and is indeed small, or that it is nonexistent, and researchers believing they have detected such benefits have been deluded by the confounding influences of other variables. (These might include genetic variability; socioeconomic status; obesity; level of physical exercise; intake of alcohol, fruits and vegetables, or dairy products; or any number of other factors.)

The controversy itself remains potent because even a small benefit--one clinically meaningless to any single patient--might have a major public health impact. This is a principal tenet of public health: Small effects can have important consequences over entire populations. If by eating less salt, the world's population reduced its average blood pressure by a single millimeter of mercury, says Oxford University epidemiologist Richard Peto, that would prevent several hundred thousand deaths a year: "It would do more for worldwide deaths than the abolition of breast cancer." But even that presupposes the 1-millimeter drop can be achieved by avoiding salt. "We have to be sure that 1- or 2-millimeter effect is real," says John Swales, former director of research and development for Britain's National Health Service and a clinician at the Leicester Royal Infirmary. "And we have to be sure we won't have equal and opposite harmful effects."

And a bit more on that piece, and how it led to his meticulously researched and revolutionary book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, debunking widely held dietary myths, in this interview here, by Seth Roberts. (There's more updated research and thinking on salt in the book -- which suggests that refined carbohydrates could be the real culprit behind hypertension.)

*

Hamas Is Lucky It's Israel Against Them
Time and time again, I'm stunned by the Israeli restraint -- and the response, by so many on the left, who pretend that Israel is anything but restrained. Meanwhile, what country at war picks up the phone to tell those they're about to bomb that they need to leave their home (which doubles as a rocket storage center) so they won't die in the raid? David Bernstein makes some very good points about all this on Volokh:

One thing that's clear from the recent Gaza conflict is that to many leftists, "violations of international law" is simply shorthand for "a country is engaging in military action that I don't approve of."

A case in point is a statement, via Brian Leiter, by self-styled "American Jewish progressives" (some of whom, I note, seem to assert their Jewish identity only when its useful for bashing Israel) on Gaza. The statement claims that Israel acted "with little or no consideration for human rights or the laws of war."

As usual with such statements, not a single documented violation of the laws of war is mentioned. Say what you will about the wisdom, or even morality, about the IDF's actions in Gaza, the idea that it acts "with little or no consideration for the law of war" is absurd. Not only does the IDF have strict internal rules promulgated by its version of the JAG, but it knows it has the entire international left breathing over its shoulder, looking for any violations of rules that could be exploited for propaganda purposes.

We could review for many paragraphs the various actions Israel took to limit civilian casualties, such as calling people living in Hamas weapons depots (also serving as apartment buildings) to warn them that a bombing raid was imminent, even though this also allowed the "bad guys" time to escape. And I can once again refer to the retired British army colonel who remarked that there has bee "no time in the history of warfare when an army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and the deaths of innocent people than the IDF."

But the argument against such broad indictments of Israel is even simpler. Even Israel's harshest critics claim no more than 1,400 or so deaths in Gaza, with a significant fraction of those Hamas fighters. If Israel truly "little or no consideration for human rights or the laws of war," why were the casualty figures that low? Surely Israel could have unleashed far greater devastation, while also achieving more of its military objectives. Israel could have, for example, demolished Shifra Hospital, which has underground bunkers that served as a command center for the Hamas leadership. That leadership survived the war because Israel wouldn't demolish a working hospital to get at them.

Hamas, on the other hand, is hijacking ambulances -- those on their own side. Jason Koutsoukis writes for the Sydney Morning Herald:

Mohammed Shriteh, 30, is an ambulance driver registered with and trained by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

His first day of work in the al-Quds neighbourhood was January 1, the sixth day of the war. "Mostly the war was not as fast or as chaotic as I expected," Mr Shriteh told the Herald. "We would co-ordinate with the Israelis before we pick up patients, because they have all our names, and our IDs, so they would not shoot at us."

Mr Shriteh said the more immediate threat was from Hamas, who would lure the ambulances into the heart of a battle to transport fighters to safety.

"After the first week, at night time, there was a call for a house in Jabaliya. I got to the house and there was lots of shooting and explosions all around," he said.

Because of the urgency of the call, Mr Shriteh said there was no time to arrange his movements with the IDF.

"I knew the Israelis were watching me because I could see the red laser beam in the ambulance and on me, on my body," he said.

Getting out of the ambulance and entering the house, he saw there were three Hamas fighters taking cover inside. One half of the building had already been destroyed.

"They were very scared, and very nervous ... They dropped their weapons and ordered me to get them out, to put them in the ambulance and take them away. I refused, because if the IDF sees me doing this I am finished, I cannot pick up any more wounded people.

"And then one of the fighters picked up a gun and held it to my head, to force me. I still refused, and then they allowed me to leave."

*

Killing Daddy
A woman finally gets a little something from a judge for alienating her children from their father. Tracy Tyler writes in the Toronto Star:

In a stunning and unusual family law decision, a Toronto judge has stripped a mother of custody of her three children after the woman spent more than a decade trying to alienate them from their father.

The mother's "consistent and overwhelming" campaign to brainwash the children into thinking their father was a bad person was nothing short of emotional abuse, Justice Faye McWatt of the Superior Court of Justice wrote in her decision.

The three girls, ages 9 to 14, were brought to a downtown courthouse last Friday and turned over to their father, a vascular surgeon identified only as A.L.

Their mother, a chiropodist identified as K.D., was ordered to stay away from the building during the transfer and to have her daughters' clothing and possessions sent to their father's house.

McWatt stipulated that K.D. is to have no access to the children except in conjunction with counselling, including a special intensive therapy program for children affected by "parental alienation syndrome." The mother must bear the costs.

Harold Niman, the father's lawyer, said the decision serves as a wake-up call to parents who, "for bitterness, anger or whatever reason," decide to use their children to punish their former partners.

"Maybe if they realize the courts will actually step in and do something and there is a risk of not only losing custody, but having no contact with their children, they'll think twice about it," Niman said in an interview.

...The judge said awarding A.L. sole custody was the children's only hope for having a relationship with their father, given their mother's long-running transgressions.

These include ignoring court orders, shutting the door in A.L.'s face when he came to collect the children and refusing to answer the phone when he called to say goodnight. (He was granted telephone access to say good night on Monday, Wednesday and Friday). At times, she also arranged for police to show up when her daughters had overnight visits with their father.

Eventually, K.D. cut off contact altogether, refusing to allow A.L. to see or speak with his daughters. He was reduced to shouting goodnight to them through the door of their home, often not knowing whether they were there.

"It is remarkable that A.L. has not given in to the respondent's persistence in keeping his children from him over the last fourteen years and simply gone on with his life without the children as, no doubt many other parents in the same situation would have and, indeed, have done," McWatt said.

The mother squandered several chances to change her behaviour and is unable to accept it is in her children's best interests to have a relationship with their father, the judge said.

How tragic that it took 14 years for this guy -- and these children to get justice. Maybe this judgement will set a precedent for change. Let's hope.

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Well, Here's Some Genius
Obama thinks Israel should open the borders of Gaza. Sorry I'm a bit late in posting this, but here, from the Financial Times, is a story by Daniel Dombey in Washington and Tobias Buck in Jerusalem:

President Barack Obama urged Israel on Thursday to open its borders with Gaza.

The plea came in a speech that signalled the new US administration's shift from Bush-era policy on the Middle East and the world as a whole. In a high-profile address on his second day in office, just hours after he signed an executive order to close the centre at Guantánamo Bay, Mr Obama proclaimed that the US would "actively and aggressively seek a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians" in the wake of this month's Gaza war.

"The outline for a durable ceasefire is clear: Hamas must end its rocket fire: Israel will complete the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza: the US and our partners will support a credible anti-smuggling and interdiction regime, so that Hamas cannot re-arm," the US president said.

A tad naive, don'tcha think?

The story continues:

Although Condoleezza Rice, who finished her tenure as secretary of state this week, brokered a 2005 deal to allow open border crossings to Gaza, access was often shut down, with Israel citing security concerns and Hamas launching rocket attacks. The issue is set to test the authority of the new administration as it begins to grapple with the Middle East conflict.

Before Mr Obama gave his speech, an Israeli official said there would be tough conditions for any lifting of the blockade, which he linked with the release of Gilad Shalit, a soldier held captive by Hamas since 2006.

"If the opening of the passages strengthens Hamas we will not do it," the official said.

"We will make sure that all the [humanitarian] needs of the population will be met. But we will not be able to deal with Hamas on the other side. We will not do things that give legitimacy to Hamas."

Under its ceasefire, Hamas has given Israel until Sunday to open the borders. Much of Gaza's civilian infrastructure has been destroyed during the three-week Israeli offensive and, without building materials and other supplies, there is little hope of rebuilding the water, sewage and power networks as well as private homes and key government buildings. But many foreign donors share Israel's concerns that the reconstruction efforts should not be led by Hamas, or enhance the group's legitimacy.

"Let me be clear: America is committed to Israel's security and we will always support Israel's right to defend itself against legitimate threats," Mr Obama said.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah...

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Handmade Quilt, $58, Um, Make That $3,530
Walter Olson, over at the excellent site, Overlawyered, shouts out that today is CPSIA blogging day -- a day to make blognoise (and, he hopes, incite noise in the offices of our Congressturds and Senaturds) in hopes of repealing the dumbass Consumer Product Safety Act of 2008, which mandates, well, here's an excerpt from a post from Overlawyered:

Sold as a measure to protect children from the perils of Chinese and other foreign-made toys which may contain lead paint, the law was written with good intentions. Unfortunately, good intentions sometimes produce bad consequences. While this law may never save a child, it will certainly have consequences for small businesses which produce toys, as well as other products intended primarily for children under 12.

As always, the devil is in the details, and Publius Endures has given the details careful scrutiny. Among other little details, this law may require toy manufacturers and importers to perform costly outside testing, at a cost of over $4000, on each lot of toys shipped. If the law is so interpreted by the people who draft its enabling regulations, that will simply put small manufacturers out of business, leaving the American toy market to giants such as Mattel or driving more of the business to overseas competitors who produce on a larger scale and can absorb the cost. The result, probably not intended at all by lawmakers, may be monopoly or oligopoly in the American toy market, accomplished through regulation rather than market forces.

Please contact the elected idiot who represents you (unless you're one of the rare few represented by somebody smart -- and please contact that person as well), and tell them you want them to work to repeal this disastrous act.

In a time when our economy is so far down the crapper, and people are turning to any means (toymaking, prostitution, whatever) to make ends meet -- it's hard to think of a stupider and more destructive law they could pass to "protect" the children.

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Bad News For The "All Cultures Are Equal!" Crew
The BBC reports on life in Nigeria:

Police in Nigeria are holding a goat handed to them by a vigilante group, which said it was a car thief who had used witchcraft to change shape.

A police spokesman in Kwara State has been quoted as saying that the "armed robbery suspect" would remain in custody until investigations were over.

But another police spokesman told the BBC the goat was being held in case its owner claimed it.

The belief in witchcraft and the power to change shapes is common in Nigeria.

Police reform activists have condemned the "arrest", saying it highlights the low education levels of many Nigerian police officers.

Nigeria's Vanguard newspaper has a picture of the goat and reports that police paraded it in front of journalists in the Kwara state capital Ilorin on Thursday.

But this was denied by national police spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu.

"The vigilante group arrested the goat and took it to the police, then they told the media."

The next morning journalists turned up demanding to see the goat, he said.

"But of course goats can't commit crime."

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God Is In The Details
Bill Maher on the tax-free real estate empire also known as the church, as I referred to it the other day (whoops -- actually forgot to post; will post below):

"New Rule: If churches don't have to pay taxes, they also can't call the fire department when they catch fire. Sorry, Reverend, that's one of those services that goes along with paying in. I'll use the fire department I pay for; you can pray for rain."

Okay, you can't really pick and choose who gets fire services, but should the likes of these people really get to duck taxes if the rest of us have to pay?

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Is Your Little Girl Okay With Her Little Head?
From The Onion, "Bratz Dolls May Give Young Girls Unrealistic Expectations Of Head Size" -- on BDD (Bratz Dysmorphic Disorder):

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Brigitte Gabriel Sounds The Alarm
Here's an e-mail she wrote about the threat to our lives and the Western way of life from Islam, posted on The Voice:

During this first month of the New Year 2009, we have seen some stunning developments that, considered together, should leave absolutely no doubt about the rising radical Islamic threat on our doorsteps in America.

I have been warning Americans since 2002 about this threat, and that the threat is not just confined to terrorism. This is not a "war on terror." Terror is a tactic, one of many in the arsenal of radical Islamists.

I have been declaring, to anyone who would listen, that Islamists are well on their way to subverting and transforming Europe, and they are riding that wave here to America.

I have told my personal story, of how Islamists, step by step, took over my country of Lebanon. How they used our freedoms and commitment to tolerance and multiculturalism against us to further their ultimate ends. And how they are using the same strategies and tactics against us in the West.

In just the past three weeks we have seen:

A violent Islamic protest in Britain, where an angry mob shouting "Allahu Akbar" chased - yes, chased - dozens of British policemen for blocks. You must see this video to believe it!

Pro-Hamas, anti-Israel Muslims conducting demonstrations here in America, shouting praises to Hitler for what he did to the Jews, yelling "go back to the ovens," and at times physically attacking counter-protestors.

The Amsterdam Court of Appeals ordering the prosecution of Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders because he has made statements deemed "insulting" and harmful to "the religious esteem" of Muslims.

Austrian parliamentarian Susanne Winter convicted of "incitement," because of public statements she has made, including the claim that the prophet Mohammed was a pedophile.

Muslim protest marches in Italy that ended with the protestors, in an obvious act of intimidation, conducting mass prayer vigils directly in front of Catholic places of worship.

The release of an official U.S. government report stating that Hezbollah is forming terrorist cells here in the U.S. that could become operational.

The UN continuing to move ahead with the "Durban II" conference and its document that is little more than an anti-Israel rant that calls for suppressing public "defamation" of religion - notably Islam. This has run parallel to an effort by the Organization of the Islamic Conference to get the UN Human Rights Commission to pass a resolution condemning public "defamation" of Islam.

Brigitte continues:

My friends, the handwriting is clearly on the wall. Radical Islam is on the march, and it is growing stronger and bolder with every passing day.

link me | digg | Comments (18)

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Maybe They Actually Gave Them Bubble Baths
The head of the tax-free real estate empire otherwise known as the Catholic church has welcomed a Holocaust-denying bishop back into the fold. Hugs! From CNN:

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Jewish officials in Israel and abroad are outraged that Pope Benedict XVI has decided to lift the excommunication of a British bishop who denies that Jews were killed in Nazi gas chambers.

...The church's decision to lift the excommunication comes a few days after a Swedish television aired an interview with Williamson in which the 68-year-old claimed the Nazis did not use gas chambers.

"I believe that the historical evidence is strongly against -- is hugely against -- 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler," he said in the interview, which appeared on various Web sites since its broadcast. What do you think?

"I believe there were no gas chambers," he added.

He added: "I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them by gas chambers."

Those Zyklon B canisters were just for decoration, huh?

P.S. The Jews didn't "perish," like green peppers left in the bin too long; they were mass-murdered.

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Criminally Free Speech
The Netherlands is about to prosecute one of their elected officials, the courageous Geert Wilders, who's under 24-hour guard to protect him from attack by violent Muslims -- while in danger of being jailed for 16 months and fined almost $13,000 for having the temerity to criticize Islam. Pat Condell lets the Dutch and "the multicultural mafia" have it:

A few quotes from the video, from a transcription on Jihadwatch:

"If I talked about Muslims the way their holy book talks about me, I'd be arrested for hate speech"

"You're not allowed to insult anyone's beliefs in the Netherlands, even if those beliefs insult you and everything you stand for."

"Whenever we heard the words 'human rights' in connection with Islam, we're about to be confronted with another piece of ugly opportunism that spits in the face of genuine human rights and insults everyone's intelligence."

"What kind of justice system is it where the truth is inadmissible as evidence?"

"You're being chewed up and spat out, is what's happening to you people. Look at what you're doing: you're prosecuting a man who is under twenty-four hour protection from attack by violent Muslim, yet he's the criminal for expressing an opinion. Lewis Carroll couldn't have written this one any better."

"Nobody should be compelled to respect an ideology that doesn't respect them. And Islam respects nobody. It claims dominion. Respect doesn't come into it. You submit. That's the deal."

"This is a dark hour for the Netherlands. There's no doubt about that. And it's also kind of a watershed moment for the rest of Europe. We'll all be watching now to see how this turns out. If these charges succeed, we'll know the dike has been breached, and it's the beginning of the end of justice as we know it in Europe, and the beginning of creeping Sharia, or, injustice as we know it."

"The truth is sometimes offensive. There's no doubt about that. But that doesn't make it any less true."

There's a good piece in Forbes on L'Affaire Wilders by Dutchman Diederik van Hoogstraten:

...It may turn out that Wilders' constitutional freedom of speech is only guaranteed when he makes sure not to hurt the feelings of certain minorities. The right not to be offended may well overrule the right to speak.

To be sure, it is problematic that he has called for a ban of the Quran. But his stupid idea does not condone the equally bad plan to silence him by law. The question is not, and should not be, whether Wilders is right. It does not matter whether his ideas are crude, offensive, ridiculous or brilliant (Wilders has a huge base of support in Holland).

The Wall Street Journal put it well, the day after the court order. "Limiting the Dutch debate of Islam to standards acceptable in, say, Saudi Arabia, will only shore up support for Mr. Wilders's argument that Muslim immigration is eroding traditional Dutch liberties."

The ruling was, to some, stunning in its admission of obedience to the professed offendedness of the few. But it fits into a trend. The big-mouthed politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated in 2002. The boisterous film maker Theo van Gogh was slaughtered by a Dutch-born Islamist on an Amsterdam street in 2004. The soft-spoken but clear-eyed member of Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali was endlessly threatened, lived behind bulletproof glass and was essentially driven out of the country in 2006; she ended up in the United States. Now Wilders will be prosecuted for speaking his mind.

It does not take a conspiracy theorist (or an "islamophobe") to see the pattern. All were, or still are, fervent critics of Islam. Two are dead, one fled when she could and the fourth--Wilders--lives with round-the-clock protection and the turned backs of most of his colleagues in Parliament.

It is not altogether clear whether most Dutch understand the dire predicament they will be in if they get into the habit of prosecuting critics of Islam. There is enough courage to go around. The writer and law professor Afshin Ellian, the novelists Leon de Winter and Joost Zwagerman, the columnist Nausicaa Marbe, and many others: They speak their minds honestly, often eloquently. Their critics routinely compare them to Nazis and fascists, which does not amount to a terribly strong argument, but so be it. They have thick skin; they should be able to take the heat.

It is crucial that they feel free and secure to speak their minds, regardless of the feelings of one group or another--free of the fear of prosecution for their ideas.

Is it hateful for me to say that if Muslims can't stand The Enlightenment, they should get on a plane back to the Dark Ages? They'll find them just over the pike in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and so many other Muslim countries, where women have the rights of dogs, gays and lesbians are put to death in most horrifying ways, and using Western technology to blow oneself and a lot of other people up is preached as a virtue.

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Vive (Or Rather, Avivah) La Difference
Reformed leftist Roger L. Simon flags a Jerusalem Post column by Northern Ireland-born Denis MacEoin for getting to the nut of the difference between Israel and Hamas:

Israel guarantees civil liberties to all its citizens, Jew or Arab alike, but it is dubbed "an apartheid state"; Hamas, ever the bully, kills its opponents and denies the rest the most basic rights, but we march on behalf of Hamas. The Left prefers the bully because the bully represents a finger in the face of the establishment? Almost no one on the Left has any understanding of militant Islam. Their politics is a politics of gesture, where wearing a keffiyeh is cool but understanding its symbolism is too much effort even for intellectuals.

MacEoin is right on target about a whole lot:

Hamas is a bully aided by a bigger bully, Iran. And, just as strident and threatening human bullies get away with their aggression so long as no one calls their bluff, so Hamas has been getting away with murder and torture because the UN and many states won't call its two-faced self-portrayal as the victim in the piece. In the struggle to take over Gaza from Fatah, it went on a rampage that killed hundreds of Palestinians. Even during this most recent assault, in early January, it executed Fatah members for violating their house arrest. A few weeks ago, Hamas determined to hurt yet more of its compatriots by introducing Islamic hudud punishments to the Strip, from amputations and stonings, to crucifixions and hangings.

Like all bullies, it likes to taunt its victims. It did just that for years after Israel left Gaza, firing rockets every day into towns like Sderot or Netivot. No one who has dismissed these rockets as harmless homemade toys has ever had the guts to spend a few weeks in Sderot, scurrying from shelter to shelter. And, oh yes, it also built up an arsenal (supplied by Iran) of Grad missiles that certainly aren't anybody's toys.

Like all bullies, Hamas likes to make boastful threats. Its 1988 Covenant is replete with them. It threatens to destroy the State of Israel by violence and violence alone. It says it will never accept the work of conferences or peacemakers, and only jihad will solve its problems. Meanwhile, the Palestinians see their lives drained away in a culture that embraces death and martyrdom, their children exposed to a steady diet of military training and preparation for violent death as suicide bombers.

Even if the Palestinians want peace, Hamas won't let them have it, because Hamas knows best, and jihad "is the only solution." Don't believe me, read the Covenant. It likes nothing better than killing Jews, and the bigger bully in Teheran thinks that's a damn fine thing too. No one says a word, because the UN is dominated by the Islamic states, and the Western governments know where the oil comes from, and nobody likes the Jews much anyway. The people calling for the end of Israel while they march on the streets of London and Dublin aren't all Muslims by any means.

There can be no greater indication of this boastfulness than what has happened in recent days. Having taken a heavy battering from Israel, Hamas now proclaims a "great victory," and its supporters dance in the ruined streets of Gaza, drunk on their own demagoguery. For all its bluster, Hamas, like all bullies, is a coward at heart. Watch those films of Hamas gunmen dragging screaming children along with them to act as human shields, watch how they fire from behind the little ones, knowing no Israeli soldier will fire back. And even as they put their own children's lives at risk, they shout to high heaven that the Israelis are Nazis and the Jews are child-killers. This blatant pornography spreads through the Western media, and people never once ask "what does this look like from the other side," because they are addicted to the comforting news that the Yids are baby-killers as they'd always known, that they do poison wells, that no Christian child is safe come Passover.

Too many on the left a big part of the problem, accenting their Che shirts with kuffiyas to show their solidarity with the murderers they like to dub heroes. I just mailed a letter to Bernard Henri-Lévy in France. I don't know him, but he's still a hero of sorts to the left, and thus, one of the few very slim chances of shaking some sense into them and maybe getting them to see the danger of the totalitarian system in religion's clothes known as Islam. It's a very, very slim chance, I have to admit, but we have to try whatever we can. What, if anything, do you think it'll take to wake those on the left?

To understand the civilization-wide takeover in progress, check out Jihadwatch's Robert Spencer's new book, Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs, or his older ones, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion.

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How To Make Your Customers Hate You, By Dish TV
My French TV5 will go kaput if they don't do some fiddly stuff with the antenna on my house. Unfortunately, no matter how much I insist otherwise, the guy Dish employs in Calcutta to answer their phones insists that I live in the small metal box at 171 Pier where I get my mail. I'm now on hold to talk to an Amerkin. Here's hoping...!

Why are so many companies so idiotic about their customer service, trusting it to cheap labor in Calcutta? I don't know about you, but there's a certain point at which they stupid-and-frustrating me into switching my service to their competition. In their favor, of course, is the fact that so many companies cheap out on their customer service phone reps, too.

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Wide Load
Thirty years ago, Susie Orbach published Fat Is a Feminist Issue, writes Janice Turner in the Times of London. What Turner doesn't write is that Orbach has spent 30 years missing the point -- and now appears to continue missing it with a new book, Bodies. An excerpt from Turner's piece:

Bodies, her latest work, is a timely counterblast against our harsh new visual culture, obsessed with the perfection of the physical self. "Our bodies no longer make things," she writes. "Our bodies... have become a form of work." They are not given to us by simple biology, but are something we manufacture - through the gym, fad diets or, increasingly, surgery - into an outer form which, we are led to believe, will make us feel better about ourselves.

Oh, boo hoo. I work to stay in shape physically, just as I work to stay in shape mentally. Life is work, dear. And actually, if we're counting, I spent twelve and a half hours straight today writing and thinking, but only 23 minutes on my exercise bike. Oh, the horror, the horror!

Orbach continues:

"When I wrote FIFI [her pet name for Fat Is a Feminist Issue] I was writing about people with particular body issues. Now these are so commonplace that someone who is a compulsive eater is in the normal range. There are kids who don't eat during the week, only with their boyfriends at weekends. Or diet and binge. It's become normalised." Part of the female condition? "At this moment in history, yes. Also, I'm not sure we were into perfection back then. There was just slimness as an ideal. Now there is this expectation to copy celebrities, the images are digitally enhanced, prefabricated, ubiquitous. I think the critical feature is there is no way not to be infected."

Food deprivation diets do seem to cause binging and weight gain. If you want to lose weight and get your head straightened out about how to eat and why, read Diets Don't Work, by Bob Schwartz. To see what bullshit you've been fed by the medical establishment about fat, cholesterol, heart disease, and how to eat, read Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes.

What Orbach seems to have missed is that physical appearance has always -- like, for centuries upon centuries upon centuries -- been of primary importance to women, and for very good reason. Research by David Buss and other evolutionary psychologists shows that men prioritize physical appearance in a woman (and features we find beautiful are really indicators that a woman is fertile). Men, on the other hand, are valued by women for their ability to provide, so, per a study by Townsend, women prefered an ugly guy with a Rolex to a handsome guy in a Burger King uniform.

Note that you don't often see guys in low-wage jobs like nursery school teaching (and that isn't just because men are in danger of being accused of being pedophiles if they're around children). A guy who wants a woman has got to bring home a living, and a woman who wants a man had better do the very best with what she's got, lookswise. Don't like it? Emigrate to another planet, and join the one-eyed, green-faced whateveritis race.

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A Pakistani Girl And Her Shame About The Truth About Islam
"Ashamed of Ever Being a Muslim," a letter from Komal, apparently a Pakistani girl, is up at Islamwatch:

Mr. Sina (editor FFI)

I never thought I would be writing this ever in my life. The first time I read your discussion was with some lady over the rights of women in Islam.

When I was in my 6th grade, I was unhappy at certain things that I got to know about the way women are treated in Islam. This included the property rights and divorce procedures. But never in my entire life had I known that Muslims actually used to rape prisoners of wars and this was sanctioned by the Prophet. All, in my entire life, I read in my Islamic books that Muslims treated prisoners with kindness and this and that. I don't find any sort of kindness in raping women who were captured. The only kindness was when they invaded Mecca. Maybe they did not mistreat the Meccans because it was the city in which our so called prophet was born and his relatives and the relatives of his followers were living there.

Well I do know one thing; maulvis in Pakistan tell us strange things like when we look into the mirror we should recite this; when we enter the house should say that; when we travel we should recite that dau, etc. These are the things they teach us. But, why do they hide such a BIG THING such as Muslims used to rape women captured in their raids? Yes it can only be called RAPE. How can a girl allow a person to have sex with her when they have killed her brother or father or husband? I cannot imagine myself or my mother or my sister in such a condition. It makes me sick to the stomach. You opened my eyes. I used to think so badly of the soldiers who raped women in Iraq. But the point is, are Muslims any better? They raped women when they could. Now, according to the logic of Islam, Iraq was in a state of war; therefore, based on Islamic reasoning, it was perfectly justifiable for the conquering army to raped the women.

Again based on Islamic logic, Iraq lost, so basically all the people in Iraq should become slaves of Americans including their women and children. But the thing is, only a handful of women in Iraq were raped and their rapists are prosecuted and sent to jail. Had it been the other way round and Muslims were the conquerors of a non-Muslim country, all the women would have become booty of Muslim soldiers and all of the pretty ones would have been raped.

I feel disgusted! I cannot imagine my six year old, or any six year old girl to be married to a 52 year old guy NO matter how religious that person is.

I am a woman and I don't have a "short memory," as Muhammad said. I am not "deficient in intelligence" either. I have outsmarted many guys in my life. All my life I have studied on scholarship and right now I am perusing a degree again on scholarship. Then how can our prophet say we women have short memory and deficient in intelligence? This is scientifically wrong.

Now considering that a girl is raped, where in the world can she find 4 eyewitness men to testify in her case? Rape is not a circus that people will be invited to watch. It's usually done in an isolated place where no one can see. Say a girl was raped and gets pregnant. She needs 4 witnesses to prove that she was raped and usually there isn't even one. But the proof that she had sex out of the wedlock is there in her womb. Then what will happen according to Islamic law? She can't provide any proof of rape. So she will be accused of adultery and stoned to death. Does this sound just or logical? No it doesn't, at least, to those, who have a heart and a brain.

Your conversation with that lady, Julia Roach, shook me to the core. It made me feel ashamed, sad, and mad! What have I been following all my life? They tell you only the good parts, but never these truths.

We in Pakistan never bothered to read the Quran in detail. We only knew what we were taught in our schools. The rest, we just depended on the scholars (who obviously lied to us, told us the good things, nothing about slaves and their rape was ever mentioned).

I tried to tell the things that I have learned to my family, but they have started calling me Kafir and stuff. When I was in Pakistan I used to be the same. I just wouldn't listen to anything that was against Islam. I would close my eyes and my ears. I cannot denounce Islam publicly because my parents would be ashamed of me. I do not follow it anymore; and if I get a chance anywhere, I point to the fallacies of Islam to my friends as well. If I tell them that I have denounced Islam, they will never listen to me. I want them to listen to me and think logically just the way I did.

Kind regards.

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Violence Against Men, Hah, Hah, Hah...
I can laugh at a hell of a lot, but I find this chillingly, nauseatingly awful. In fact, I don't think I've ever felt so sick seeing a commercial, and (of course) I'm not talking about the sexy part, but the ending. Here it is, a commercial for Agent Provocateur lingerie:

Imagine the outcry if they'd showed it from the other side -- say, a man punching a woman because she burned dinner. Violence against one's partner needs to be unacceptable no matter what sex your partner is.

Here's a quick story in the Times of London. And here's a column I wrote about violence against men:

If your husband tossed an ashtray at your head, do you think he'd be describing himself as "Still So Angry Inside" or "Still In Court Trying To Get The Charges Reduced"?

It doesn't take much for domestic violence against men to be taken seriously...usually, just a chalk outline where a man's body used to be. The rest of the time, people tend to shrug it off or even find it cute: "Well, well, well, she's quite the firecracker!" Granted, male abusers can do much more damage with their fists, but put a heavy object in a woman's hands, and good morning brain damage! (Just wondering...has your husband gotten the ashtray out of his skull, or does he have to hang around smoking areas with his head bent down so people have someplace to flick their ash?)

Oh, and ladies, should you be in the mood to burn a bra, please make it Agent Provocateur.

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Bigger, Badder Government
What was wrong with George Bush, by my pal Nick Gillespie, reason.tv editor, in the WSJ. In short, "Bush was a big-government disaster":

In a way that was inconceivable when he took office, Mr. Bush -- the advance man for the "ownership society," smaller and more trustworthy government, and a humble foreign policy -- increased the size and scope of the federal government to unprecedented levels. At the same time, he constantly flashed signs of secrecy, duplicity, ineffectiveness and outright incompetence.

Think for a moment about the thousands of Transportation Security Administration screeners -- newly minted government employees all -- who continue to confiscate contact-lens solution and nail clippers while, according to nearly every field test, somehow failing to notice simulated bombs in passenger luggage.
The Opinion Journal Widget

Or schoolchildren struggling under No Child Left Behind, which federalized K-12 education to an unprecedented degree with nothing to show for it other than greater spending tabs. Or the bizarrely structured Medicare prescription-drug benefit, the largest entitlement program created since LBJ. Or the simple reality that taxpayers now guarantee some $8 trillion in inscrutable loans to a financial sector that collapsed from inscrutable loans.

Such programs were not in any way foisted on Mr. Bush, the way that welfare reform had been on Bill Clinton; they were signature projects, designed to create a legacy every bit as monumental and inspiring as Laura Bush's global literacy campaign.

The most basic Bush numbers are damning. If increases in government spending matter, then Mr. Bush is worse than any president in recent history. During his first four years in office -- a period during which his party controlled Congress -- he added a whopping $345 billion (in constant dollars) to the federal budget. The only other presidential term that comes close? Mr. Bush's second term. As of November 2008, he had added at least an additional $287 billion on top of that (and the months since then will add significantly to the bill). To put that in perspective, consider that the spendthrift LBJ added a mere $223 billion in total additional outlays in his one full term.

...Mr. Bush's legacy is thus a bizarro version of Ronald Reagan's. Reagan entered office declaring that government was not the solution to our problems, it was the problem. Ironically, he demonstrated that government could do some important things right -- he helped tame inflation and masterfully drew the Cold War to a nonviolent triumph for the Free World. By contrast, Mr. Bush has massively expanded the government along with the sense that government is incompetent.

That is no small accomplishment -- and its pernicious effects will last long after Mr. Bush has moved back to Texas, and President Obama has announced that his stimulus package, originally tagged at $750 billion and already up to $825 billion, will cost $1 trillion or more. Mr. Bush has cleared the way for President Obama to intervene more and more in the economy and every other aspect of American life.

Here's Nick on the stimulus plan -- uh, as a hole:

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The Best Person For The Job
(...As long as that person isn't white or a man.) Shockingly, Secretary of Labor Robert Reich is coming out against hiring white male construction workers. He writes on his blog a blog item charmingly titled "The Stimulus: How to Create Jobs Without Them All Going to Skilled Professionals and White Male Construction Workers." An excerpt:

And if construction jobs go mainly to white males who already dominate the construction trades, many people who need jobs the most -- women, minorities, and the poor and long-term unemployed -- will be shut out.

While I'm against government stimulus packages, and for government getting out of the way of business to kick-start our economy, if our tax dollars are going for a stimulus package and I don't have a choice in the matter, I'd really like to see the hiring done based on who's the best person for the job.

And, I don't know about you, but *I* sure don't hire the person who needs the job the most, and I sure don't want to patronize businesses that do.

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Wag The Frog
Only in France would a dog be described as "clinically depressed." In this case, the dog happens to belong to former president Jacques Chirac, who was also described as being "mauled" by his dog in a story by Ian Sparks in the Daily Mail.

Okay, I'm sorry if the guy's been hurt...but I can't help but find the wording a bit...well...hilarious, since the dog happens to be...no, not some massive Rottweiler...no, not some fierce German Shepherd...but a fluffy white Maltese:

The animal, named Sumo, had become increasingly violent over the past years and was prone to making 'vicious, unprovoked attacks', Chirac's wife Bernadette said.

The former president, who ruled France for 12 years until 2007, was taken to hospital in Paris where he was treated as an outpatient and sent home, VSD magazine reported.

Mrs Chirac said: 'The dog went for him for no apparent reason.

'We were already aware the animal was unpredictable and is actually being treated with pills for depression.

'My husband was bitten quite badly, but he is certain to make a full recovery over the coming weeks.'

The former French First Lady did not reveal where on his body Chirac was bitten.

The pet, named after the Japanese form of wrestling, was a gift to the Chiracs from their grandson Martin.

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Amy On Mark Germain
I was a fan when he was Mr. KABC, and now he's doing an Internet radio show, and I just taped one with him last week. Here's the link.

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Gangsta Manilow
As somebody who lives near a bar where the yahoo customers park right near our houses and then blast their thumpa-thumpa bass into the wee hours, I want to just reach out and hug this judge. DeeDee Correll writes in the LA Times of a judge who literally makes the rude asshats face the music:

The guiding principle in Municipal Judge Paul Sacco's courtroom is an eye for an eye. Or rather, an ear for an ear.

So when teenagers land in front of him for blasting their car stereos or otherwise disturbing the peace in this small northern Colorado city, Sacco informs them that they will spend a Friday evening in his courtroom listening to music -- of his choosing.

No, they can't pay a fine instead, he tells them. So, he adds with a snicker, ever heard of Barry Manilow?

For the last decade, Sacco, 55, has administered a brand of justice somewhere between "cruel" and "unusual."

Young people in Fort Lupton know that if they're caught, they're in for a night that could begin with the "Barney" theme song, move on to an opera selection and end with Boy George's "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me."

Sacco's answer to that last question: Yes, he does.

Or rather, he wants a little payback to the scofflaws blaring their tunes without regard for their neighbors -- a vexing habit in this blue-collar community of about 8,000, said Police Chief Ron Grannis.

For a while, Sacco -- a part-time judge who also has a law practice -- issued tickets, $95 apiece, to the noise violators. But one day, as he ordered a teenager to pay a fine, he realized the kid's parents, flanking him, would probably just pay it for him.

"It just seemed I was a rubber-stamper," he said. "I hate that."

What he really wanted to do, Sacco thought, was give the kid a dose of his own medicine. And the "music immersion" sentence was born.

The concept was simple: Stick the kids in a room -- on a night they'd rather be out socializing -- and turn up the volume.

Manilow immediately came to Sacco's mind. Not because he disliked Manilow, but because he knew they would. But the playlist also features other artists, mostly selected for their ability to annoy the younger set.

I understand that prisoners had to listen to Barney at Guantanamo.

UPDATE: A commenter disputes the music/Barney claim (below -- see mlah), but while I didn't find anything on Barney (I believe I'd read about it in the past), I did find this from the FBI.

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When In The Netherlands, Do As The Saudis Do
Free speech has become dangerous speech in the Netherlands -- both because you could be murdered for it by Muslims, as Theo Van Gogh was, and because you could be prosecuted for criticizing Muslims, as the courageous Dutch PM Geert Wilders, producer of the film "Fitna," is about to be. From the WSJ, a piece on how they're going after Wilders, "Silencing Islam's Critics - A Dutch court imports Saudi blasphemy norms to Europe":

Some Muslims say they are outraged by his statements. But if freedom of speech means anything, it means the freedom of controversial speech. Consensus views need no protection.

This is exactly what Dutch prosecutors said in June when they rejected the complaints against Mr. Wilders. "That comments are hurtful and offensive for a large number of Muslims does not mean that they are punishable," the prosecutors said in a statement. "Freedom of expression fulfills an essential role in public debate in a democratic society. That means that offensive comments can be made in a political debate."

The court yesterday overruled this decision, arguing that the lawmaker should be prosecuted for "inciting hatred and discrimination" and also "for insulting Muslim worshippers because of comparisons between Islam and Nazism." This is no small victory for Islamic regimes seeking to export their censorship laws to wherever Muslims reside. But the successful integration of Muslims in Europe will require that immigrants adapt to Western norms, not vice versa. Limiting the Dutch debate of Islam to standards acceptable in, say, Saudi Arabia, will only shore up support for Mr. Wilders's argument that Muslim immigration is eroding traditional Dutch liberties.

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Amy On Ask Dr. Helen TV
Dr. Helen, who I agree with on a whole lot of issues, interviewed me a couple weeks ago. I look a little tired (they shot it the morning after my deadline days), and I was a little rusty on remembering to look at the camera instead of into space or the monitor, but I hope you'll enjoy it. Here's the link.

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Get Your Share ($78) Of The Bank Of America Overdraft Settlement
Details at Consumerist. For customers from 2000 to 2007.

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Look! Something For Everyone!
Obama gives the nod to us heathens:

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

Then there's this bit of propaganda for the terror-producing world:

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

Note to Obama: In order to have mutual respect, respect has to actually be mutual. I certainly don't respect the Muslim world -- a world that's anti-science, reportedly 80 percent illiterate, and commanded by the Quran to convert or kill the infidel (that would be most of us)...with far too many Muslims answering the call, and far too few "moderate Muslims" speaking up against them.

Moreover, these largely illiterate (and thus powerless) people will not judge their brutal dictators of anything -- as they're likely to be jailed, stoned, hung, or beheaded in response. P.S. Hope is okay when it isn't utterly unfounded.

The whole thing, in pre-inaugural form, is here. Your thoughts?

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BHL Goes To Gaza
The HuffPo published a fascinating account by BHL, as Bernard-Henri Lévy is known in France. The whole thing is worth reading, especially if you'd like to get a good sense of the difference between the Israeli mindset and that of those who'd like to run them all into the sea. (Pay special notice to the words of the Cobra helicopter pilot, Ashaf, and what he does when he spots children in the firing line.) Here's an excerpt from BHL's piece:

Yovan Diskin is the head of Shin Bet, Israel's storied and formidable Security Agency. He has, to my knowledge, never spoken. Not since the beginning of this war, at any rate. He is about forty years old. He is tall. Massive. A military man belied by jeans, tennis shoes and a t-shirt. He welcomes me at dawn in his office north of Tel Aviv, which, with its widened embrasures, looks like a bunker. "All of this for Sderot?," I started. This flood of fire, these victims, to stop the Qassam missiles in Sderot and the other cities and kibbutzes in the south of the country? "Yes, of course," he answers me, quite irritated. "There is no other State in the world that would tolerate seeing shells fall on the heads of its citizens every day." Then, as I tell him that I know this, as I tell him that, every time I go to Israel, I go to Sderot out of principle and solidarity, and as I also tell him that there were perhaps means, in negotiating, to avoid arriving at this juncture, he interrupts himself, oddly shrugs his shoulders, and, in the tone of someone about to get into technical details, continues.

"You must understand, in this case, who the members of Hamas are. We know them here, better than anyone. Sometimes I have the impression that I can know in real time, sometimes even predict, what their most minor decisions are. We have now become aware of three things." Someone brings him a cup of coffee that he swallows in one gulp. "Their strategy, which is also that of the Muslim Brothers, of whom they are scions and who, over the course of time, plan to take power in Lebanon, in Jordan, in Israel..." I signal to him that I know what he's talking about. "Anyway. Then there is the alliance with Iran, which can seem counterintuitive because of how serious contentions between the Sunnis and Shiites are, but whose entire history we have seen." The date: 1993. The theater: a council of Syrian, Saudi, West Bank, and Gazan ulema. The inspirer: the Egyptian El Khardaoui, importer of the Shiite suicide attempt strategy into Sunni terrain. "And then, finally, the essential: the network of three hundred tunnels, dug under the Egyptian border with the tacit approval of Moubarak who, every time we talked to him about it, swore that he was going to see to the problem, but who unfortunately did nothing because he was too afraid to go against his national Muslim Brothers..." We could, as Israeli pacifists do, tell ourselves that the destruction of these tunnels would have been sufficient. As is the case with me, we could gather that, this war having already exposed the existence of these tunnels to the world, and thus having put the Egyptians up against the wall, Israel could stop there and, today, cease fire. What we can't ignore is this fact -- this context: Gaza which, evacuated, is becoming not the embryo of the so-desired Palestinian State, but the advance base of a total war against the Jewish State.

Continued at the link above...

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What Better Time To Put Small, Home-Based Entrepreneurs Out Of Business!
Yes, just as people everywhere are losing their jobs and turning to homemade crafts to make ends meet. Overlawyered's Walter Olsen has a terrific piece in Forbes about the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), the ridiculous law passed mandating testing for lead and phthalates of all children's products -- even those made out of materials like organic cotton:

Barbed with penalties that include felony prison time and fines of $100,000, the law goes into effect in stages; one key deadline is Feb. 10, when it becomes unlawful to ship goods for sale that have not been tested. Eventually, new kids' goods will all have to be subjected to more stringent "third-party" testing, and it will be unlawful to give away untested inventory even for free.

...Again with relatively few exceptions, makers of these goods can't rely only on materials known to be unproblematic (natural dyed yarn, local wood) or that come from reputable local suppliers, or even ones that are certified organic.

Instead they must put a sample item from each lot of goods through testing after complete assembly, and the testing must be applied to each component. For a given hand-knitted sweater, for example, one might have to pay not just, say, $150 for the first test, but added-on charges for each component beyond the first: a button or snap, yarn of a second color, a care label, maybe a ribbon or stitching--with each color of stitching thread having to be tested separately.

Suddenly the bill is more like $1,000--and that's just to test the one style and size. The same sweater in a larger size, or with a different button or clasp, would need a new round of tests--not just on the button or clasp, but on the whole garment. The maker of a kids' telescope (with no suspected problems) was quoted a $24,000 testing estimate, on a product with only $32,000 in annual sales.

Could it get worse? Yes, it could. Contrary to some reports, thrift and secondhand stores are not exempt from the law. Although (unlike creators of new goods) they aren't obliged to test the items they stock, they are exposed to liability and fines if any goods on their shelves (or a component button, bolt, binding, etc.) are found to test above the (very low) thresholds being phased in.

...Thrift store managers, often volunteers themselves, have no way to guess whether every grommet or zipper on a kids' jacket or ink on an old jigsaw puzzle box or some plastic component of Mom's old roller skates would pass muster.

"The reality is that all this stuff will be dumped in the landfill," predicted Adele Meyer, executive director of the National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops. Among the biggest losers if that happens: poorer parents who might start having to buy kids' winter coats new at $30 rather than used at $5 or $10.

And even worse: Since the law does not exempt books, children's' sections at libraries and bookstores will, at minimum, face price hikes on newly acquired titles and, at worse, may have to rethink older holdings.

Write to your Senaturd or Congressloser to see if they might extract their heads from their intestinal area and repeal this thing. Olson writes that this piece of dimwittery passed the Senate 89 to three and the House by 424 to one, with Ron Paul the lone dissenter there.

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Skanks For The Memories
Don't miss the Advice Goddess column I just posted, about a guy who's really being sold a bill of goods by his girlfriend. The essential lines from his e-mail:

...She finally stopped calling her guy friends stuff like "my hot beef injection," but only after I threatened to walk. Am I justified in thinking her behavior shows a lack of respect for me and our relationship?

The rest, plus comments, is here.

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