Hunter Baker, writing at the American Spectator’s AmSpecBlog, relates a conversation with his boss:

I was telling my boss, Robert Sloan (former Baylor president and current president of HBU), about Michael Moore’s new film Capitalism: A Love Story.  We briefly discussed an interview of Moore by the Wall Street Journal yesterday in which Moore asserted that the auto workers should own 100% of the auto companies.  

Sloan responded, "The interviewer should have asked Moore if the crews on his films own the projects they work on for him."  That would be a nice question for the filmmaker, wouldn’t it?  

"Mr. Moore, do you pay your workers a wage to perform their functions or — consistent with your philosophy — do they own the films you make along with you?"

Any doubts as to what the answer is to that?  Yeah, me neither.

Baker asks any reporters out there to ask Moore that question.  However, any doubts as to whether the MSM will be reluctant to push that point?  Yeah, me neither.  Guess it’ll fall to Fox News or some independent conservative upstarts.

Speaking truth to power indeed.  More like gushing.

1. The missile move as an economy of force, i.e., just a shift to the East. And from the same author, danger lurks.
2. On Honduras. I have to say, I’ve seen nothing at all on this matter from the left. Is their silence a sign of ignorance or discomfort?
3. The internet and dissent.
4. The locals might not be stupid. But … this might highlight a problem (follow the aarrg link).
5. (some) Kids today.
6. Perhaps not unrelated … Teachers.
7. Medicare reform on the rocks? More here.
8. A plea to give Mr Obama some rope on Afghanistan.
9. Of right and wrong.
10. Well, there goes $800 billion we won’t get back and certainly will live to regret.
11. The inventor of exercise … really.
12. Parents are not potters, Ms Delsol suggested we are all gardeners.
13. Imagining war.
14. And nightlife in Kiev.
15. Feminism considered in the context of Buffy and Jennifer.

links, Honduras, economy, education, exercise, parenting

One of the defining differences between right and left today in the US is that the left is enamoured of the UN while the right thinks it mainly an execrable waste of time, money, and resources of which not the least is mention bandwidth on the global stage. For the most part, I don’t want to concentrate (with one exception at the end of this piece) on Mr Obama’s speech to the UN, which can be found here. Unlike his predecessor, Mr Bush, Mr Obama had nothing but nice and complementary things to say about the UN, which at the very least supports the statement made in the opening. One of the primary complaints that the right has about the UN is that it has a completely open membership. Dictatorships have equal voice with Democracies. Free societies with closed. Coercive with (mostly) non-coercive. For the left, somehow this is not a fault but a feature. For the right, as a feature, it is sort of like more like the “smell feature” the outhouse has over the water closet. Read the rest of this entry

When Joe Wilson said, "You lie!", when President Obama talked about not covering illegal aliens in the health care reform bill, he may have been both out of order and technically wrong.  But President Obama is now showing that there’s another way that Wilson was technically right.

President Obama said this week that his health care plan won’t cover illegal immigrants, but argued that’s all the more reason to legalize them and ensure they eventually do get coverage.

He also staked out a position that anyone in the country legally should be covered – a major break with the 1996 welfare reform bill, which limited most federal public assistance programs only to citizens and longtime immigrants.

"Even though I do not believe we can extend coverage to those who are here illegally, I also don’t simply believe we can simply ignore the fact that our immigration system is broken," Mr. Obama said Wednesday evening in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. "That’s why I strongly support making sure folks who are here legally have access to affordable, quality health insurance under this plan, just like everybody else.

Mr. Obama added, "If anything, this debate underscores the necessity of passing comprehensive immigration reform and resolving the issue of 12 million undocumented people living and working in this country once and for all."

Republicans said that amounts to an amnesty, calling it a backdoor effort to make sure current illegal immigrants get health care.

If the President had said that during the original speech, Wilson could have smiled broadly.  Essentially the President is saying (if you take everything he says into account), "we’re not covering illegal aliens, but we’re looking for ways to rename them something other than ‘illegal aliens’, after which they’d be covered." 

That was a bit disingenuous.  I think Wilson is owed something of an apology.

1. Right or wrong … I think is a mis-phrasing, perhaps mistake or not is better, and yet I think it was in fact a mistake. Preaching to the choir, i.e., the watchers of the other networks, is has its purpose. Reaching across to the other side, also has a purpose and deciding it’s not worth the bother … is a mistake.
2. Three on the McChrystal leak of the Afghan report here, here, and here. Oops, sorry here’s a fourth. OK, OK … a fifth.
3. Embarrassment? Hmm, I wouldn’t go that far, the recession is felt world-wide and a cost-benefit analysis might find that a census doesn’t pay … and might just as well wait until after the crises passes.
4. Friends-for-cash, late modernity strikes in Japan.
5. Somebody thinks that RFC’s constitute government regulation. Hint: they weren’t.
6. Travels related.
7. A new show for the new season … and CERN.
8. Global warming predicts and increase in hurricane frequency … oops.
9. Keeping an eye on the healthcare threats, err, bills.
10. A picture essay … and I think more than several Poles will take issue with these history lessons. Oddly enough, right now on Netflix during basement cycling sessions I’m watching Wadja’s Katyn.
11. Vote for Ott.
12. Ugly duckling no longer.
13. On abortion.
14. A reply to an atheist.
15. Mobile tech and southeast Asia.
16. Putting a finger on the failure of aid.
17. It is most definitely not OK, and I think even those who do are doing so because its transgressive.

Obama, Afghanistan, media, Orthodoxy, late modernity, art, abortion,

One of the themes in Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (of many) concerns the ability of great leaders to control the vicissitudes of fortune. In this manner, Napoleon is seen as not, as so many regarded him at the time, as a master of his fate and controller of his and many other’s destinies. But instead he was just the highest chip in the froth. That it was not his will that drove France to Empire and thereby pushing he and they willy nilly to disaster in the Russian snows (giving us Mr Minard’s completely amazing graph as well). Now Lev Tolstoy may have offered that a Higher Power determined the course of history. Alternatively in this modern era, one might instead propose that aggregate behaviour of the crowds might be the driving force.

Mr Obama is the head of our state. But he is likely less in control of events than we pretend. Now it is true that like, Mr Kerry, Mr Obama has been striving for the Presidency much of his adult life. While I find this personally distasteful ambition, I cannot project my personal animosity for the seeking for power on others. There may actually be admirable aspects to ambition even if they are a far cry from my personal makeup. Read the rest of this entry

1. Six, of course those excited about that that ignore the 512 or more cores/processors in many high end video cards.
2. A complete waste of time … surprised?
3. Bigger stadia, more … screen?
4. An offer to redefine “jury of your peers.”
5. For the econ-readers, two books reviewed by Mr Easterly. Another by Mr Bernanke examined here.
6. Fasting and the evangelical.
7. For seeing … art.
8. High school GPA is correlated with college success (as opposed to SAT/ACT test results).
9. TED.
10. ACORN and a really bad defence of the same noted. Another tidbit here too.
11. Remarking in the wake of Mr Obama’s (yet another) media blitz.
12. The title of this piece got me to me drew a wide smile.
13. The NEA scandal/admin … will that catch fire? or just smoke and smolder?
14. Draw to two opposing sides … with the fate of civilization at stake?
15. Big heads, but bigness is perceived only because their chests are so small.
16. Recalling what cruel and unusual punishments really meant.
17. Ethical monad.
18. Recalling Mr Obama’s campaign platforms. 
19. Forgetting that most of us found Plato’s regime with the philosopher kings kinda repellent.

Iran is judged today to be a up and coming mad-as-a-hatter soon-to-be nuclear regime with some short and medium range missile capabilities. Back in 2007 the Bush administration had wrangled some ABM bases in Poland with Radar in the Czech Republic which were at that time designed to knock down long range missiles, of which Iran had none, but of course Russia had (and has) plenty. Russia took umbrage to this and rightfully so, just look at a map, unless you have a much much bigger monitor than I do, you don’t see Poland or the CR on that map at all.

Mr Obama it turns out has been not well served by the conservative current events blogs … although his speeches and on this in fact do have some glaring omissions, in the light of which the conservative commentary does make more sense … but only in the light of those omissions. Here is the text from the Obama speech, although I don’t know how accurately this reflects his actual remarks or whether it has been changed to reflect better in the light of later remarks, i.e., Mr Gates this weekend). This was also released on the same day by WH to the press to accompany the speech. The disservice by the conservative press is that this is touted as a withdrawal of a program, which fails to mention that another is proposed in its place. Read the rest of this entry

Pursuant to a comment conversation I had here recently regarding Jimmy Carter’s charges of racism against anti-Obama protesters, Hans von Spakovsky writing at National Review Online just noted some of that very thing in Carter’s past.

As Laughlin McDonald, director of the ACLU’s Voting Project, relates in his book A Voting Rights Odyssey: Black Enfranchisement in Georgia, Carter’s board tried to stop the construction of a new “Elementary Negro School” in 1956. Local white citizens had complained that the school would be “too close” to a white school. As a result, “the children, both colored and white, would have to travel the same streets and roads in order to reach their respective schools.” The prospect of black and white children commingling on the streets on their way to school was apparently so horrible to Carter that he requested that the state school board stop construction of the black school until a new site could be found. The state board turned down Carter’s request because of “the staggering cost.” Carter and the rest of the Sumter County School Board then reassured parents at a meeting on October 5, 1956, that the board “would do everything in its power to minimize simultaneous traffic between white and colored students in route to and from school.”

I can’t imagine the Carter today being the same man as back then, but one wonders if because of past sins, he sees it everywhere, even where it isn’t.

And also via the tip from Instapundit, a reminder of what some have done a bit more recently due to Carter’s one-sided support of actual racists, not to mention terrorists.

ATLANTA, Jan. 11 — Fourteen of the city’s business and civic leaders resigned from the Carter Center’s advisory board on Thursday to protest former President Jimmy Carter’s recent criticisms of Israel and American Jewish political power.

Their joint letter of resignation denounced Mr. Carter’s best-selling book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” for its criticisms of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. The letter also took issue with comments Mr. Carter has made suggesting that Israel’s supporters in the United States are using their power to stifle debate on the issue.

“It seems you have turned to a world of advocacy, even malicious advocacy,” the letter said. “We can no longer endorse your strident and uncompromising position. This is not the Carter Center or the Jimmy Carter we came to respect and support.”

The 14 who resigned were members of the center’s board of councilors, a group of more than 200 local leaders who act as ambassadors and fund-raisers for the center but do not determine its policy or direct its operations.

Among the letter signers were Michael Coles, the chief executive of the Caribou Coffee Company; William B. Schwartz Jr., the ambassador to the Bahamas during Mr. Carter’s presidency; Liane Levetan, a former chief executive of DeKalb County, Ga.; and S. Stephen Selig III, who served as national finance chairman for the Carter-Mondale Presidential Committee.

Perhaps the recent op-ed by Elliot Abrams, debunking a similarly recent op-ed by Carter and pointing out Carter’s blindness in his advocacy for Hamas, actually is worth a look, regardless of your opinion of Abrams.  A more considered and thoughtful response may be in order.

Even the liberal Frank Rich manages to figure it out (though he does place the blame on other "usual suspects").

The White House was right not to second Carter’s motion and cue another “national conversation about race.” No matter how many teachable moments we have, some people won’t be taught. (Though how satisfying it would have been for Obama to dismiss Wilson, like the boorish Kanye West, as a “jackass.”) But there is a national conversation we must have right now — the one about what, in addition to race, is driving this anger and what can be done about it. We are kidding ourselves if we think it’s only about bigotry, or health care, or even Obama. The growing minority that feels disenfranchised by Washington can’t be so easily ghettoized and dismissed.

(Emphasis mine.)  Rich seems to forget (rather too quickly) that a growing majority of Americans are not in favor of ObamaCare(tm) at this point.  Nevertheless, if racism energizes just a fringe of the protesters, then a President going on about it on national TV is either overreaction or covert slander.  If, however, racism is being blamed for a significant portion of the anger, then be honest about it and come out and say it, and take the political fallout for your overt slander.

And again, the irony of Jimmy Carter complaining about any perceived racism here while lending the full weight of his influence in the Middle East almost entirely to those who spew actual racist rhetoric is astounding.

1. Open source and teaching math, I haven’t looked into it yet, but it sounds like a great idea. Not unrelated, a talk on the Internet and maths by Terry Tao.
2. The missile deal, a summary … prior to the Gates interview. A conspiracy suggested. A letter from Poland here.
3. Home grown jalapeño peppers.
4. A fast lady in red (and yellow).
5. Costs and cap/trade.
6. An atheist asks an interesting question.
7. Memory eternal … a post that aches to be read (HT: the Ochlophobist).
8. I’ve seen this noted before, and usually in the context as a “mood killer”. Hmm, any experimental evidence?
9. H1N1 and Oman.
10. If you haven’t been missing the Anabasis reading at the Chicago Boyz, you’re missing out on some fine historical analysis and discussion of one of the great works.
11. Sound-tracks for electric cars.
12. Immorality, the Bible and Science-fiction.
13. Plantinga online, I guess I bought the right book.
14. Advice for blogging as a Christian, which I’d say I’m not very good at doing.
15. The US and Syria.
16. Mr Beck and the right, one view. For myself, I’ve never seen or heard him, so I’m a bystander to all the hoopla.
17. Trying to grok the President’s rational model.

From Steve Breen.  (Click for a larger version.)

Yeah, and racists.

About a week ago, I wrote a post continuing the development of a model of creativity and intelligence, although at this model might be seen as a tad overstated). In that post, I outlined an ansatze for the semiotic scaffold that the human noetic machinery manages, bridging the gap between mechanism (network and pathway) all the way to meaning and intent. (the rest below the fold) Read the rest of this entry

Often you will find this image on car bumpers. The people presenting this image have a certain set of ideas which they would like to convey with this image. Recently I’ve been considering, taken on face value this image might mean something very different.

Examine for a moment the history of the original Icthys symbol. This was historically used as a secret sign/symbol that Christians, during persecution, could secretly signal their faith to other Christians. The fish was chosen because in Greek the word fish could be an acronym for Jesus Christ. So here is the meaning I might interpret this symbol to mean. Wiki tells us:

The use of the Ichthys symbol by early Christians. Ichthus (?????, Greek for fish) can be read as an acrostic, a word formed from the first letters of several words. It compiles to “Jesus Christ, God’s son, savior,” in ancient Greek “?????? ???????, ???? ????, ?????“, I?sous Khristos Theou Huios, S?t?r.

• Iota (i) is the first letter of I?sous (??????), Greek for Jesus.
• Chi (kh) is the first letter of Khristos (?????ó?), Greek for “Christ” or “anointed”.
• Theta (th) is the first letter of Theou (????), that means “God’s”, genitive case of ??ó?, Theos, “God”.
• Upsilon (u) is the first letter of huios (????), Greek for Son.
• Sigma (s) is the first letter of s?t?r (?????), Greek for Savior.

Historians say the twentieth century use of the ichthys motif is an adaptation based on an Early Christian symbol which included a small cross for the eye or the Greek letters “????C“.

The above symbol signifies that Jesus Christ God’s son and Saviour surrounds and encompasses our our scientific understanding of nature, as signified by Darwin here as well as the cute little feet. The feet indicate that the evolution of creatures, from sea to land and so on is surrounded and included in God’s plan. While I myself am indifferent to the ID vs not-ID debate, perhaps the ID movementmight take this symbol as their own, seeing how it describes concisely how many of them view evolution.

This story is a great antidote to the avalanche of political stories being blogged about of late. Few realize this but secret maps and other things were smuggled to Allied prisoners of war during World War II inside Monopoly sets. It’s a terrific story of ingenuity and creativity in keeping prisoners involved in the war effort. (Hat tip: Free Republic)

For fans of the game, check out Philip Orbanes terrific book Monopoly: The World’s Most Famous Game And How It Got That Way. I previously reviewed the book here.

Supposedly, George W. Bush squandered all the goodwill we got from the world as a result of the 9/11 attacks.  Enemies became friends, the uncooperative became helpful, and all was right with the world, until Bush screwed it up.  What is forgotten in all of this is that those that opposed us before 9/11 opposed us after it too, with a brief fair-weather friendship in between.  Nothing was actually squandered because nothing was actually gained, other than a brief facade that apparently many fell for.

Of course, when places like France started electing people more aligned to the Right, suddenly actual cooperation with the US was back, but this time the Left ignored it.  The narrative was already in place.  The Iraq war was "unilateral", except for the dozens of other countries helping out.  The world hates us now, except that those countries pretty much hated us before, too.  Going after terrorists, their enablers, and, oh yeah, a Ba’athist that had continually broken the terms of his cease-fire despite dozens of harshly-worded UN resolutions; that pushed the world away.

News flash; they were never really close enough to us to be pushed.  It was all an optical illusion.

But now we have a President who says he wants to mend our fences with the world, and get them to like us again.  He’s made some speeches that got huge crowds, which is all very nice.  But what is he doing to bring people back to loving the US?

This:

WARSAW, Poland – Poles and Czechs voiced deep concern Friday at President Barack Obama’s decision to scrap a Bush-era missile defense shield planned for their countries.

"Betrayal! The U.S. sold us to Russia and stabbed us in the back," the Polish tabloid Fakt declared on its front page.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski said he was concerned that Obama’s new strategy leaves Poland in a dangerous "gray zone" between Western Europe and the old Soviet sphere.

Recent events in the region have rattled nerves throughout central and eastern Europe, a region controlled by Moscow during the Cold War, including the war last summer between Russia and Georgia and ongoing efforts by Russia to regain influence in Ukraine. A Russian cutoff of gas to Ukraine last winter left many Europeans without heat.

[…]

An editorial in Hospodarske Novine, a respected pro-business Czech newspaper, said: "an ally we rely on has betrayed us, and exchanged us for its own, better relations with Russia, of which we are rightly afraid."

The move has raised fears in the two nations they are being marginalized by Washington even as a resurgent Russia leaves them longing for added American protection.

The Bush administration always said that the planned system — with a radar near Prague and interceptors in northern Poland — was meant as defense against Iran. But Poles and Czechs saw it as protection against Russia, and Moscow too considered a military installation in its backyard to be a threat.

"No Radar. Russia won," the largest Czech daily, Mlada Fronta Dnes, declared in a front-page headline.

Say what you want about Bush, but he went after those with designs on killing us.  Obama is supposedly mending fences by ticking off our allies, in order to not offend a nuclear Russia. 

Why should Russia be offended at a missile shield in eastern Europe if they really have no designs on it?  How is this, as they claim, a security threat or political provocation?  How is that an affront, especially when the International Atomic Energy Agency believes that Iran has (not "will have" but "has") the knowledge to make a nuclear bomb, which is arguably the most significant part of the process. 

But never mind allies who may need protection from a rogue state, we need to make sure Russia doesn’t get its feelings hurt.  The replacement?

Obama said the old plan was scrapped in part because the U.S. has concluded that Iran is less focused on developing the kind of long-range missiles for which the system was originally developed, making the building of an expensive new shield unnecessary.

The replacement system is to link smaller radar systems with a network of sensors and missiles that could be deployed at sea or on land. Some of the weaponry and sensors are ready now, and the rest would be developed over the next 10 years.

The Pentagon contemplates a system of perhaps 40 missiles by 2015, at two or three sites across Europe.

Because after all, 10 years is certainly not enough time for Iran to come up with a delivery system for a nuke, right?  Right? 

And this all begs a couple of questions; if Russia doesn’t like the system that was to be implemented, who’s to say that they’ll like the new one, and will Obama scrap this new idea if the Russians don’t like it? 

Way to mend those fences.