I knew unions supported the Democrats, but really; getting fired for wearing a Bush hat and sweatshirt?  Even though it’s referring to the aircraft carrier the George H. W. Bush?  That your son serves on?  Really?  That’s a sign of rabid, unthinking support of the Democrats.

Andrew Fergusson, Head of Communications at Christian Medical Fellowship, writing in Christianity Today, lays out the big difference between embryonic stem cells and the adult variety.

Ron Futrell, writing at Big Journalism:

During the discussion where Williams said he gets “nervous” when he sees people on a plane in Muslim garb (that’s what got him fired).  Williams also warned O’Reilly against blaming all Muslims for “extremists,” saying Christians shouldn’t be blamed for Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh.

Timothy McVeigh was not Christian. Love ya Juan, and sorry to hear about what happened with NPR, but Timothy McVeigh was not Christian. He was agnostic. He made the statement many times to newspapers. He also said “science is my religion.”

Political violence is an indictment against the cause that motivates it … except when Democrats do it.  If you just read liberal-leaning blogs, you haven’t heard the whole story about the Rand Paul supporter "stomping" on the MoveOn.org activist.

And finally, a scary Halloween story.  Click for a larger version.

Good morning.

1. “Pragmatism” … in a politician it seems to me pragmatism is another way of saying one’s word is not one’s bond.
2. Going down the toilet (near you coming soon?).
3. Misplacing blame.
4. Four Tea party myths held by the left analyzed from the left (HT: MP).
5. Speaking of the Tea Party … a candidate and his bike.
6. There’s a reason why a really badly edited book was on my “book of the year” list a few years back. It has a lot of important and striking ideas in it.
7. Church architecture and Romania. Romanian churches feature hand painted iconography covering the exterior of the church in the style you can see in the image shown. 
8. Really bad use of statistics.
9. Of party and politics (HT: neo-neo).
10. Of Physics envy. So … is economics a 4 (or a 5)? Do economists think they are in a 2 regime?
11. In which Mr Krugman is shown to misuse statistics as badly as the people in #8.
12. A hunger strike of which I was completely unaware. How about you?
13. The Church in India.
14. Not stopping to pee.

Good morning.

1. Virtue and Obamacare.
2. Epic aftermath.
3. Bring out the guns, pitchforks, and torches.
4. What happened to repentance?
5. Coffee grounds put to interesting uses. 
6. Judith Curry and climate.
7. The new CIA.
8. If the purpose of a organization is defined by what it does … consider the UN.
9. Now that was funny.

Jonathan Alter, in the opening line of his NY Times article last Thursday entitled "The State of Liberalism", stated this:

It’s a sign of how poorly liberals market themselves and their ideas that the word “liberal” is still in disrepute despite the election of the most genuinely liberal president that the political culture of this country will probably allow.

Chalk up anticipated failures at the ballot box to "marketing".  Right.  With such an ally in the media, the problem is marketing?

More likely, the word “liberal” is still in disrepute because of the election of the most genuinely liberal president that the political culture of this country will probably allow.  But the liberal elite in this country are completely convinced that the populace is too stupid to realize how good liberalism is, and must be drawn in with flashy marketing.

It’s insulting, and you don’t win elections by insulting the voters.

Good morning.

1. Advice to prepare for Confession.
2. Some thoughts against Obamacare.
3. What passes for “disturbing” on the left.
4. “8 Things …”  fisked.
5. Uhm, duh.
6. Not exactly helpful diet advice.
7. Meta-linking economics.
8. A job posting in the Admin.
9. Tenthers. I suspect the intersection of tenthers and liberals is low.
10. Bandwidth.

In the past I’ve tried on a number of occasions to explore hypothesis that are radically different from our (and mine) own assumptions. One of the very popular books in the collegiate circles in which I ran in my early college years (I matriculated in 1980) was Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. One of the highlights of this book are short dialogs mostly between Achilles and the Tortoise borrowed from the famous race/paradox exploring in somewhat eclectic and fascinating conversations connections about Bach, Godel, and Escher. In one of these dialogs sports replays came up as a discussion topic. There we were introduced a better type of replay … made available subjunctive TV, that is “how would that play have gone .. if instead of X, Y was the case.” If memory serves, Achilles was tried the TV with standard suggestions, like “if they had run the ball instead, or tried different personnel and so on. The Tortoise tossed some more imaginative suggestions like “How would that play have looked if it was played by intelligent life forms on/from Jupiter or if the number 13 was not prime.” Exploring radical hypothesis and following their logical consequences is, for me, a vital part of the intellectual life. Subjunctive exploration is a valuable thing, e.g., the gedankenexperiment. Read the rest of this entry

Good morning.

1. The cling of sin.
2. Obama and those running in the mid-terms.
3. Econ meta-linking. Hmm, that didn’t come out right … I think I should have written “Meta-linking economics”.
4. I first misread that as Morgan Freeman, which really would be, uhm, not quite the best.
5. Philosophy and belief in God.
6. Advert preference.
7. When reading this, it occurred to me those progressives who fear the Tea Party is racist … do they also think of it is primarily a women’s movement? And if, for a moment, they did would that change their evaluation regarding racism?
8. Inflation predicted.
9. So, facing charges. Justified or not?
10. Two Bibles.

This weekend the WSJ had an odd headline which read something like (yah, I’m too lazy to look it up verbatim), “CIA to expand secret war in Pakistan.” What do they think “secret” means in this context?

The problem with the progressive/left using “right racism and bigotry” to fix perceived racism and bigotry in society is that it enforces bad behavior (HT: here). Bigotry as a method, once accepted becomes a pattern. Is that explanation correct? Or is there another?

Good morning.

1. The anti-catholics around like to point to Pope Benedict’s Hitler youth membership, this will go unremarked, although I’d have to say it’s likely that both allegations are quite strained.
2. One problem with this post is that Mr Williams was trying to make the opposite point, i.e., that anti-Muslim (esp. American) bias is to be resisted.
3. More on that topic here.
4. Orthodoxy noted.
5. Woo hoo.
6. Liberals and their delusions.
7. Ouch.
8. A skill to learn?

Nina Totenberg is an NPR news correspondent.  She’s supposed to report the news straight and without bias.  This has not kept her from offering opinions over the years anyway.  She went so far as to wish AIDS on Jesse Helms or his grandchildren. 

So Charles Krauthammer wanted to know the difference between what she’s been doing for at least the past 15 years, and what Juan Williams did that got him fired.  Juan is, or was, an NPR news analyst, which Krauthammer argues might have less of an appearance-of-objectivity standard than a correspondent.  So he asks, what’s the line that Juan crossed?

No one can give him a straight answer, not even Totenburg herself.

NPR’s long history of liberal bias answers the question itself.  You don’t get a second look if you wish death to a Republican or his grandchildren.  But express your honest fears, even acknowledging that they are irrational, and you’re out the door. 

There should no longer be any question whatsoever of the overwhelming bias of the NPR news organization.  Intellectual honesty demands an accounting of the Juan Williams firing, after which that is the inescapable conclusion.

More links this week since I didn’t get around to it last week.

What’s keeping this recession going for so long?  Ask James Madison. Yes, that James Madison.

The 6th Circuit judge that upheld the health care reform individual mandate to buy insurance has really redefined terms in order to make his ruling.

With that reasoning, Judge Steeh thoroughly unmoors the commerce clause from its concern with actual economic activity that Congress can regulate to a more amorphous realm of “economic decisions” which apparently include the decision to NOT enter into commerce at all.

A better example of an activist judge you’re not likely to find soon.

Roger Ebert, in reviewing “Waiting for Superman”, acknowledges that the private school highlighted does better than public school, proclaiming “Our schools do not work”.  His solution?  (Wait for it…)  More money for public schools, for the ones that don’t work instead of encouraging what does work and at typically a lower cost per student.  Liberal education policies are now just talking points rather than reasoned arguments.

Remembering a sociopathic mass murderer, who is extolled by liberal students T-shirts everywhere.  (No, not Charles Manson. I’m talking about Che Guevara.)

The Rise of the (Conservative, Christian) Woman in American politics.

Juan Williams responds to the NPR sacking.  Ah, the tolerant Left in action.

And to close it out, two cartoons to make up for missing a week.  I just love Chuck Asay.  (Click for larger versions.)

Good morning.

1. A word from the Holy mountain.
2. So, if you didn’t watch the VC youtube lecture on individual mandate, something of a summary.
3. On the Mr Williams firing, with lots of links.
4. More thoughts on that here.
5. 90 TB? At home no less.
6. On religion and higher ed.
7. Better than “going for dirt”, going for irony and comedy.
8. Here’s the thing, lots of people complain about Ms O’Donnell. But those fragments I see quoted are quite reasonable in context.
9. The first new coming out that approaches the efficiency of my 2000 model. Perhaps in five or six years they’ll manage to improve on that benchmark. 
10. Talking about classified information. I think the administration’s strategy is to lie so often that credibility is completely lost. That way real secrets are safe.
11. A book noted.
12. Blasphemy just changed its name.
13. I’ll huff and puff and … well, take a look.

This song has been going through my head the past week, so now I’m sticking it in yours.  🙂

"Life in My Day"
Newsong
More Life (2003)

Good morning.

1. Stimulus irony.
2. Gitmo in the news.
3. BP’s payment and consequence.
4. Transplants and an interesting development.
5. The future of skin art?
6. A different way to look at H/S cultures. A few months ago I was considering the thesis (I still am) that H/S cultures are happier, just not wealthier, than the Western individualistic one. Perhaps the “more natural” fit with human nature is the reason why.
7. A VC threesome, on the individual mandate and Constitutional considerations, the historical origins of the separation of Church and State in US jurisprudence, and why lawyers seem to prefer technicalities to ethics.
8. Scary tales.
9. Two links to Serbia and cinema.
10. Speaking of cinema, a film everybody should see noted.
11. Heh.
12. One of the consequences of progressives insistence on ‘good racism’, is that they need to constantly maintain their artificial hierarchal victimology.
13. Brain drain, democracy and the third world.

It’s a trend that has been going on for some years now, but the latest manifestation of it is troubling the pot sellers.

Coffee shops legally selling cannabis have been a feature of Amsterdam’s streets for more than 30 years, both a magnet for younger tourists and a symbol of the Dutch brand of liberal exceptionalism.

But the fragrant haze found in the city’s 200 or so establishments could be dispersed under plans by the incoming government, which is looking to roll back the “tolerance policy” that has allowed such coffee shops to operate since 1976.

Coinciding with a tightening of laws around prostitution – another tolerated industry – the authorities’ new stance on cannabis is raising questions as to whether Dutch society is moving away from laisser-faire traditions, which have included some of the earliest gay-friendly policies in Europe and the provision of free contraception to teenage girls.

Certainly the outlook for coffee shops is bleak. Among the few policies that the three parties in the new coalition agree upon is the need to cut back on, if not entirely abolish, coffee shops. The governing agreement released last week laid out plans that will force them to become member-only clubs and shut down those located within 350 metres of schools.

This comes, as I said after years of gradual restrictions.

The new stance comes after years of gradual tightening of the rules governing cannabis sales and a 2007 ban on the selling of alcohol in the coffee shops. After proliferating in the 1980s and early 1990s, their number in the Netherlands has halved from a peak of 1,400 in 1995 to just over 700 today.

Is this a result of conservative knee-jerk reactions, pandering to their base?  No, it appears that there’s a good reason for this.

For Paul Schnabel, director of the Social and Cultural Planning Office, a state advisory board, the move reflects a growing view that the tolerance policies have not achieved their aims of controlling the ills associated with drugs and prostitution, rather than a recasting of Dutch liberalism.

“There’s a strong tendency in Dutch society to control things by allowing them. It’s always been there, a pragmatic tradition, typical of a trading nation. We look for better alternatives to problems that we know exist anyway,” he explains.

But, he adds, “Dutch society is less willing to tolerate than before. Perhaps 30 years ago we were a more easy-going society.”

Heh, a "recasting of Dutch liberalism".  That should read, "the Dutch becoming more conservative", I think.  And liberals here in the US keep insisting that this policy, controlling things by allowing them, will work here, but the society that they hold up as a model, is moving away from that.  Will we learn from them (I’m looking at you, California)? 

And what are some of these ills?

The equation that led to the policy of tolerance has changed in the past decade, as large-scale crime around both coffee shops and the legal sex trade became more visible. In particular, the absence of legal means for coffee shops to acquire the cannabis they sell has highlighted its association with organised criminality.

But, but, I thought legalizing pot would get the criminals out of the equation?  It hasn’t, and former allies are even turning against this.

But the open-minded instincts that helped foster the tolerance policies in the first place have also come to be questioned. And it is not just the far-right that is opposing coffee shops. The traditional parties of power on the centre-right, the Christian Democrats and the Liberal VVD party, have also moved against the tolerance policies they once promoted.

It’s not working there.  Why do we think it’ll work there?  Is American liberalism paying attention to the Dutch when the facts go against their policies?  Appears not.