Stones Cry Out

Good morning.

1. What are the biggest changes in the last 60 years?
2. How did Solyndra do it?
3. One child and consequence.
4. I’m guessing this isn’t a call to privatizeing that aspect of state powers to individuals or communities.
5. Drones. So, how long will it be before US law enforcement uses drones within the US borders? Less or more than 5 years?
6. New books on Solzhenitsyn.
7. Co-habitation and marriage.
8. Mutual funds examined.
9. Unfortunate news for those who dislike  Ms Palin.
10. The cure for the Ayn Randian impulse, Mr Valjean (although a common thread in both is that government sucks).
11. A development sure to excite the TSA to no end.
12. A question of violent revolution put in context. What would it take for you to support violent revolution in your country?
13. Uhm, baseball just isn’t that exciting. Sorry.

How far back does the Israel/Palestinian conflict go? Would you believe about 100 years?

Hat tip to PowerLine.

I noted this on my Facebook page, and had one friend comment that he’s through worrying about this because of the fighting by both sides. I replied that the two sides version of "fighting" are quite different; Israel defending itself vs. Arab’s attempted genocide. Given how many opportunities the Palestinians have had to get there own homeland (as noted in the video) and how often they have rejected the option and instead chose to try to exterminate the state of Israel, do you really think this would end once they got official statehood?

Given the history, I don’t, and a clear understanding of history is needed to come to a proper conclusion. Watch the video and see what I mean.

Good morning.

1. So are these straw arguments … or are there really people in the world who don’t exercise because they think its bad for you?
2. The consensus “experts” keep talking about peak oil … and keep being proven wrong.
3. Difficulties with Mr Solzhenitsyn (and language).
4. Mr Obama and the information asymmetry problem.
5. Computer metaphors come to life.
6. This is not unrelated.
7. So, if you’re not using your liver, can I, uhm, kill you for it?
8. A knotty writing problem.
9. GOP campaign ads coming out.
10. Manual labor and growing up.
11. More on those millionares not paying their share.
12. What was she saying?
13. Good whiskey and the Trinity.
14. Well, I didn’t get past “Tea party treason” … huh? What the heck is that? Belief in smaller government is treason. That’s, uhm, not exactly a “moderate voice” dude. Dumb perhaps, but not moderate.

Recently the Paul interview sparked a conversation about the limits of government to take our choices putatively for the public weal. This is, for the nonce, the status quo regarding education. How that impacts us in society is of some relevance as the progressive/liberals in our midst have the notion that this would be a good thing if moved to other spheres, like healthcare. What they fail to do is point out the downside for the ordinary person. Read the rest of this entry

Good morning, to y’all!

1. Illegal to give advice? or not?
2. Iraqi war casualty counts.
3. Taking the fifth, and is that “do themselves more harm” or do the Admin more harm, which after reprisals would ultimately do them more harm?
4. Oh, and here’s the Solyndra timeline.
5. Well, Ms Greer is a name to remember … as a complete idiot and a person whose opinion is completely useless. Sorry, kissing your children if done by mom or dad is just fine. Not doing it is more problematic.
6. The AP looks at Mr Obama’s millionaire tax claim. (and Buffet paid about a billion in taxes, not $7million … oops).
7. And about his jobs bill, which is more like his job bill.
8. I didn’t catch this on the MSM wires … did you? Bias or not?
9. A film noted.
10. Errant climate nonsense, “the sky will be full.” Heh.
11. It’s those misunderstanders of Islam?
12. You go, err glow (?), girl!
13. The Netflix business plan.

Good morning.

1. Fitness and weight loss, in a nutshell. As a side note, I’m back on the bike, commuting regularly and often not riding directly home. Yay!
2. Macro as worthless.
3. Unintended consequences.
4. What God wants, heh.
5. Control and coverage in Iran.
6. A plug by the author hosted on a blog. I’ve ordered the book. Have you?
7. Sorry, that’s a lie … it’s not the math. Most of the taxable income is in the middle and upper middle class, not the “rich”. Sorry, Mr Obama you flunked maths apparently.
8. A really really weird bike. (hint: look at the chainring).
9. Output unnoticed.
10. Once a darling, now a villain, all for doing the same thing. Odd that.
11. Speaking of villains,  is this the cause of the recession?
12. More global warming! Heh.

The Republican legislators in the Pennsylvania state government are pushing a bill that would relatively proportion their presidential electoral votes based on the results of the individual congressional district presidential votes. The (Republican) governor says he would sign such a bill. This is a bad idea.

The suggestion came up in Colorado and California in years past, and failed in both cases. The Electoral College is actually a very good way of apportioning votes, ensuring that a President has both a sufficient number of votes and also a diverse support base; broad support favored over the most support in close races. I posted a number of reasons why the Electoral College is a good idea here, with a link to the history of the EC.

As a side note, Markos Moulitsas, the "Daily Kos" himself, split his support over the Colorado and California efforts. One of them he called a "bad horror movie" and an attempt to "game the system". The other he called "brilliant" and suggested that "every state should allocate EVs in this manner". Why the difference in tone? As you can probably guess, it’s all about politics over principle. When Colorado wanted to do it, it would benefit Democrats, so he was all-in. When California wanted to do it, he had nothing but disparaging comments for anyone who even considered it. This clearly points out a pundit who a) has no appreciation for, not just history, but the status quo, and b) makes every decision based, not on what’s best for everyone, but what’s best for his political kindred.

Consider this when reading opinions. I will note that I’m always against this sort of thing, including in the guise of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Inform yourself.

Good morning.

1. Economics as a guide to car purchase.
2. Parental notification?
3. Ideology and Obamacare, perhaps that should be “trumps” not “and”.
4. Not encouraging news.
5. Noting that the progressive “Whole Constitution” movement forgot that amendment processes is actually, you know, in the Constitution.
6. U of Chicago and football, when I was there I only know 2 people whom ever when to a game (to play in the kazoo band) … and never knew anyone who went to anything like “homecoming”.
7. Somali pirates and connections.
8. A massacre … streamed?
9. More on the “letting him die” theme. Why is assumed that the patient isn’t OK with his choice?
10. Solyndra as criminal fraud?
11. The forgotten elephant in the 9/11 memorial rooms, it’s not religion … but politics.
12. Working the “smart President” theme.

I didn’t want to bury this post in a "Friday Link Wrap-up", so I’m forgoing that feature to focus on what Mark Steyn calls a "fourth trimester" abortion.

Albert Mohler brings up a recent court decision in Canada where a mother was convicted of strangling her newborn baby and tossing him over the fence into a neighbor’s yard. To compound this horror, the Canadian justice system (and I use the term "justice" very loosely) decided she would not spend any time in jail. None. Here’s how the judge justified this.

Justice Joanne Veit, whose name should now go down in legal and moral infamy, tied this woman’s act of infanticide to Canada’s lack of legal restrictions on abortion. The judge’s decision stated that “while many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support.”

She continued: “Naturally, Canadians are grieved by an infant’s death, especially at the hands of the infant’s mother, but Canadians also grieve for the mother.” She also stated that the Canadian approach is a “fair compromise of all the interests involved.”

Two juries had found Effert guilty of second-degree murder, but an appeals court had reduced her conviction to infanticide.

This is what comes from acceptance of a million abortions per year, and what comes from a judiciary far more concerned about feelings than laws. Mohler’s column notes that this slippery slope has been known to be coming for years now, but the Left has been deaf to the warnings.

The ultimate insult is that Effert may actually spend time in jail, not for killing her baby, but for throwing the lifeless body into her neighbor’s yard. Kill your child and we’ll grieve with you, but litter? That’s over the line.

I’ve heard those on the Left, including Christians, suggest that if you’re against abortion, just don’t have one. But life, even (especially) of the "least of these" is worth defending. Mohler closes by explaining why.

Mark this well — the horrific logic of this judge’s decision will not remain in Canada. Indeed, it did not even start in Canada. Those arguments are already in place in the United States. If we will not defend life in the womb, eventually the dignity of every single human life is thrown over the fence.

And why not, then, ask candidates about other personal preferences?
“If a candidate for president said he believed that space aliens dwell among us, would that affect your willingness to vote for him? Personally, I might not disqualify him out of hand; one out of three Americans believe we have had Visitors and, hey, who knows? But I would certainly want to ask a few questions. Like, where does he get his information? Does he talk to the aliens? Do they have an economic plan?”

So, is religious belief now equivalent to belief in space aliens?

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Hurricane Irene – NOT
Well, you’ve got to wonder that if they can’t get the weather correct for the next few days right, then how precise are their AGW predictions?

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An Illegal Alien hero

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And one who is not

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So, now you shouldn’t use your fingertips at ATMs

“In a research paper titled “Heat of the Moment: Characterizing the Ef?cacy of Thermal Camera-Based Attacks,” the scientist outlined how small infrared cameras and computer software can “steal” someone’s PIN.

The cameras, which can be hidden on an ATM machine, are sensitive enough to pick up trace amounts of body heat left by someone using the machine’s keypad. Once recorded, hackers could then analyze the thermal signatures using special software to determine which number keys were used in a PIN.”

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“Unfortunately, campaigning is all the President knows how to do.”

Good morning.

1. Wow, after the crackdown in Belorus, an excellent blogger who was on top and noticing the injustice in the world acts and looks like she’s been “spoken to in an unkind manner” and has completely changed. Scary.
2. Some frank medical advice.
3. Well, duh! Zombies are monsters. And, come to think of it I’ve never ever seen a zombie praying, so zombies are atheists. Lo, here’s a hypothesis. While atheists aren’t monsters perhaps monsters, on the other hand, are atheists. 😀
4. Ms Palin and the left/right synergy.
5. Wow, he’s lost the far far left. I think the remark overheard was right, if the GOP nominated Hitler … he’d beat Obama in the general election. Nobody, but nobody, is going to vote for that guy.
6. This is not unrelated.
7. This is a weird post. It starts, “Ms Bachmann is an idiot” (and for what? It seems she offered the same quality of remark that came from the President in the healthcare debate … yet oddly enough he wasn’t called an “idiot” for making those remarks.) Then … it turns out, on the substance of the remarks for which she is an idiot, the author agrees with her. Odd that.
8. Chicago style in the White House.
9. 65 billion for 2k jobs? Gosh, and some people wonder at the negative response to the latest jobs proposal.
10. A wrap-up of the Gore climate parody show.
11. What about, well, rain?
12. A economic stimulus primer.
13. Something sweet and light.
14. Some consequences of casual critical remarks of Cornell’s guest.

Two separate but somewhat related articles that are worth reading. First, Amity Shlaes reminds us of Frederic Bastiat’s Broken Windows and their application to today’s economy (hat tip: Steven Hayward). An excerpt:

In the summer of 1850, just before going to Paris, Bastiat laid out the now-famous parable. Disaster happens. A thief breaks a man’s window, or a storm does. The man has to pay the glazier to fix it. The glazier spends his money at the store. When enough windows are smashed, voila: a visible benefit, new jobs for the glass industry.

True enough, noted Bastiat. The window replacement is what is seen. What about that which is not seen? “Since our citizen has spent six francs for one thing, he will not be able to spend them for another. It is not seen that if he had not had a windowpane to replace, he would have replaced, for example, his worn-out shoes or added another book to his library.”

The same holds for a government: when it repairs windows — cleans up hurricane damage — it is not using the same money for other causes that might be more worthy, such as reducing government debt or taxes.

“What Is Seen and What is Not Seen” was how Bastiat titled his essay. The corollary “not seen” today is all the businesses that can’t be started because of taxes or regulatory and legal uncertainty. The corporate-tax cut that the president proposed would benefit those unseen businesses or individuals.

The other article is the transcript of a speech that Representative Paul Ryan gave this morning at a Constitution Day celebration in Washington. The focus of his speech was on freedom and the importance of the Rule of Law. A brief excerpt:

Usually, our defense of the Constitution is presented as a defense of America’s founding principles and values, and rightfully so. But our constitutional system is not just a collection of principles; it embodies an approach to government with profound practical implications for both our freedom and our prosperity. When that system is threatened, both freedom and prosperity suffer.

Freedom is lost by degrees, and the deepest erosions usually take place during times of economic hardship, when those who favor expanding the sphere of government, abuse a crisis to persuade free citizens that they should trade in a little of their liberty for empty promises of greater economic security.

We all remember what Benjamin Franklin said about that trade – that those who would make it deserve neither liberty nor security. But in such cases, when liberty is lost, it is our fault as champions of the Constitution, for failing to mount a sufficiently persuasive and effective defense.

Ryan goes on to demonstrate several different ways that the rule of law has been attacked over the years. This speech is by far one of the most serious and consequential political speeches I have ever read. There is no doubt in my mind that Rep. Ryan should run for President (the sooner the better).

Be sure to read both articles.

Or, how about Brian Terry?

What would you say if you found out that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives allowed firearms to be purchased illegally, in the U.S., and then also let them be transported into Mexico? And what if said firearms were then found at the scene of a firefight where U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed?

• ATF management was allowing potentially hundreds of semiautomatic firearms to be walked across the Mexican border in order to pad statistics used to further budget and power objectives.
• Mexican authorities were kept in the dark, and protests that they should be informed were overridden, first by the Phoenix ATF office, and ultimately by higher-ups in Washington, DC.
• A gun used in this operation was involved in a December 2010 incident in which a Border Patrol agent was killed.

Do you think that an anti-2nd amendment administration might have used such tactics as a back-door for instituting stricter gun-control measures in the U.S.? Do you think that the head of the BATFE knew about these operations? How about the DOJ? How about White House officials?

At a lengthy hearing on ATF’s controversial gunwalking operation today, a key ATF manager told Congress he discussed the case with a White House National Security staffer as early as September 2010.

And if the White House knew about it, then how about the prime resident of the White House?

Two final questions:  If Obama didn’t know about it, why not? If he did know about it, why approve it?

Of course, he’s already gone on record stating that he didn’t know anything about it.

Under fire for an operation that allowed smuggling of U.S. weapons across the nation’s border with Mexico, President Obama said in an interview that neither he nor Attorney General Eric Holder authorized the controversial “Operation Fast and Furious.”

…

Obama told Univision‘s Jorge Ramos that President Felipe Calderon wasn’t informed of the operation because he — the president of the United States — wasn’t informed either. When asked whether he knew of the weapon smuggling plan, Obama responded that it is “a pretty big government” with “a lot of moving parts.” (emphasis added)

Yeah. I guess it’s too much to ask the President of the United States to skip a few rounds of golf so he can pay attention to that big government he’s supposed to be leading.

One parting thought – Imagine the outcry if this was happening under the Bush administration.

Ref:  Gun Right’s Examiner

Good morning.

1. They’re pressing charges? Grrr.
2. “Officially a scandal“, what does that mean? More here.
3. As the weekend approacheth, a film is noted.
4. As the world gets worse, Academia embraces the change.
5. Speaking of gay … the dog isn’t barking.
6. Well, that if it was real, that would settle the atheist/theist debate.
7. Predictions of unanticipated consequences of Mr Obama’s bribes-to-get-a-job-for-me bill.
8. I couldn’t put my finger on what bugged me about the Obama picture in that Perry/Obama at 22 comparison. But, now I get it. This is not unrelated.
9. Attack watch.
10. This is not unrelated. How/why can the admin be that tone deaf. Creepy doesn’t begin to describe it. And no, I don’t especially “love” ya.
11. The left wing blob unconciously apes what it terms the right-wing blob.
12. This has got to be the lamest “revelation” in the history of politics. “Newsflash, elite college athletes aren’t sexually inactive (while remaining !gasp! unmarried) !” News to whom I wonder?
13. Woops.
14. Apparently “for better or worse, in sickness and in health” doesn’t include Alzheimers in Mr Robertson’s view. (Hint: That would be the wrong answer)
15. Grist for the on-going discussion on bureaucracy and schools, esp the 2nd link.
16. Healing Chalecedon?

A new study says that adult cells induced to become like embryonic stem cells ("induced pluripotent stem cells") are very nearly identical to the embryonic ones.

A study released Sunday shows embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells are almost identical.

Since human IPS cells were first produced from mouse cells in 2006 and from human cells in 2007, it has been thought they were equivalent to embryonic stem cells, which are controversial because they are derived from human embryos.

But new research, directed by Josh Coon, a UW-Madison associate professor of chemistry and biomolecular chemistry, shows the proteins in the two types of cells are almost identical.

Stem cells have the ability to develop into any of the different types of cells in the body. In many tissues they serve as a sort of internal repair system, dividing to replenish other cells.

There is really no longer any ethical or scientific reason to use embryonic stem cells. But scientists will continue to try, and to justify it ethically. Some do this by, ironically, casting moral aspersions on those of us who bring up the ethics issue. Writing at the First Things blog, Wesley Smith responds to a faculty level scientist at UC Davis who got upset at one of Smith’s articles on the ethics issue. It is amazing how tone-deaf some of these fellows can be. One imagines that if, someday, we were able to extract perfect stem cells from pine needles, they’d still insist on using embryos.