Stones Cry Out

From the rust belt, this statement was made (and apparently affirms at some level … of sophistry):

Justin and I both accepted a crucial premise that neither one of us bothered to support: that “marriage” should be a legal institution for any arrangement of people.

Well, there you go, jump that shark along with the Fonz. What might be some of the consequences of that notion:

• Kiss the inheritance tax goodbye, after all just “marry” your beneficiaries for spouses don’t pay that tax. 
• That will really help the power relationship between pimp and his flock now that he can “marry” them and really control their lives with legal machinery at his beck and call. 
• I’d bet a clever lawyer might combine marriage and employment in ways that might be serve as a good union-buster. 
• Or on the flip side, unions could “close shop” to only those in the family and get new ways to enhance their power.
• For the controlling parent, “marry” your kids to enhance your hold on their life after age 18. 

When you try to make a blanket statement that marriage should be allowed for any random arrangement of people you need to step back and consider the sorts of things which marriage allows, merging of finances, relaxation of privacy between members, and a the option for a shared corporate presence for the state. There’s going to be lots of ramifications when you decide any group can don that cloak. 

In the early years after the framers finished the Constitution, they were quite taken aback and surprised that Mr Burr formed a electoral machine in New York and almost grabbed the Presidency. They hadn’t “figured” on the consequences of their laws. Likewise it pretty clear that a decision that the legal status of marriage assigned to “any arbitrary group” of people is going to be similarly used by people lacking the preconceptions-as-constraints under which your discussion labored. 

How come when a small group of Muslims kill innocent men, women, and children (e.g., 9/11, Bali, African embassies, Spanish train, British train, etc.), we’re reminded that Islam is a religion of peace, and that the murderous acts were those of fanatics; but when a small group of Christians decide to burn the Koran, there’s nary a word of Christianity being related to peace or that such a wacko group of self-proclaimed “christians” are fanatics?

Great little comparison.

When JFK cut tax rates, IRS receipts went up.  Same for Reagan.

From a Facebook post by La Shawn Barber:

So much ink and hand-wringing over Koran-burning, yet so little over child killing. Strange, that.

If we could get Democrats this riled up over living beings, we’d have substantially fewer abortion tomorrow.  But they reserve their high dudgeon for … books. 

Well, holy books to be sure, but not all holy books.  See, it all depends on how the believers in said holy book might react.  La Shawn’s Facebook post links to her blog which adds this:

Burn an Islamic holy book, and Muslims kill in retaliation. Burn the Bible, and Christians pray for the one who lights the match and for the crowd cheering.

The planned Koran burnings are being highly, and rightly, criticized by the Left.  There are various reasons cited — Islamophobia, America’s reputation, insensitivity — but given the two different ways those believers react, it appears the Left only complains loudly when they might be hurt by those believers.  It’s more self-preservation than any pretense of religious tolerance. 

And children being killed in the name of convenience?  Well, that’s a right.

Good morning.

1. Housing.
2. The pencil.
3. A list of books.
4. Ice and that mythical industrial age 7k years ago.
5. Germany and economic recovery.
6. Remember that Discovery gunman nut? He was on the fringe of this current.
7. My somewhat snarky comment aside, apparently nobody noticed that locations in which large amounts of raw materials get processed from the earth do not become vibrant and heavily populated.
8. “Can’t afford tax cuts for the rich” alas, the tax codes put most small business owners in the “rich” category. 
9. On a prayer widely used.
10. Health care and organ farming.
11. Quran burning, here and here and here. For myself, talk of book burning reminds me of this The Master and Margarita.
12. Defending Chesterton.
13. Duh.
14. And … our the stimulus that the Democrats hath wrought. The leeches did well.

Not the folks that Obama would have you think.

All those promises and none of them came about.  Well, except for highly-unionized federal government workers.  And now there’s talk of a second stimulus.  You want a replay of this graph?  Really?

Good morning.

1. A painting.
2. When you’re a generous billionaire that anti-Semitism isn’t noticed as much.
3. Poverty and a photo-essay. 
4. 9/11 and Muslim sensibility.
5. And Park51 politics and financial shenanigans.
6. Multi-tasking at its worst.
7. The tightrope which the left will make sure no politician can every walk.
8. Grist for the public education mill. It was recently remarked that all public education needs is to improve the student teacher ratio. This contradicts that and as well, I’ll note that at the meet-and-greet at my daughter’s High School last week the list of administrators to teachers was 4 pages to 8. For every two teachers there was one administrator … it seems to me that ratio needs to be worked on too if costs are to be contained. 
9. And a teachers wish list.
10. On faith and science.

Well, this weekend the clever routines at Amazon suggested an interesting book, on which I bit and a problem of sorts arose. This book, in electronic form, was priced at that-which-must-be-obeyed level, that is to say $1. It was a “trilogy” of short books, fiction, in a genre I enjoy. Enjoy in the “guilty pleasure” sense of the title of this little essay. 

So. Do you like space opera? If so, check out the series by Mr Randolph Lalond (here’s a start in paper First Light Chronicles Omnibus or eInk First Light Chronicles Omnibus.

Thoroughly enjoyable. I’m into the continuation series … as time permits. The continuation books are a little more expensive in the eInk version … but only by a little. 

Executive Order No. 62 or… How to, at a moment’s notice, turn otherwise law abiding citizens into criminals. In North Carolina, the governor signed the executive order, declaring a State of Emergency due to the approaching Hurricane Earl. While that may sound all well and good, when combined with North Carolina General Statute 14-288.7, things can become messy. The statute makes it unlawful for one to possess or transport off their own premises, a “dangerous weapon”, during a declared state of emergency. Hence, anyone engaged in lawful possession of a firearm off their premises (such as hunters or CCW permit holders), prior to a declared emergency, would automatically be breaking the law once an emergency is declared.

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Korean shop owners had it figured out During the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Korean shop owners were left on their own to defend themselves, with whatever means they had. Lucky for them they were armed as looters roamed the streets looking for booty. Not surprisingly, after experiencing shots fired from pistols and AR-15 rifles, looters left the Korean shop owners alone. Funny how that works.

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Laser-tag makes it to the Olympics Well, not quite. Laser guns will replace air guns at the Olympics, for the modern pentathlon, beginning in 2012. Billed as the “way of the future,” organizers say that safety will no longer be a concern, and that events could be held at parks or even shopping malls! I guess the safety issue of a laser beam in one’s eye is not a concern to officials. Rumor has it that other Olympic events will be restructured, in the name of safety: the javelin throw will be done via a Wii, and the hammer throw and discus will utilize nerf technology.

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An offer he can’t refuse? If offered a 15% raise (on top of your $150,000 / year salary), 4 times the stock benefits, and a $500,000 bonus – just to stay a year more – would you refuse it, as well?

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How did he become Mr. Unpopular? Because, I think, he finally showed his true colors (please, no racist intent was meant by the use of the word “colors”).

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At first, complaints about his use of the teleprompter were laughed off by liberal comics… Now, even Matthews is tiring of Obama’s dependence on it.

President Obama said in a political speech yesterday that his opponents talk about him as if he were a dog.  Well, I want to state here that I do not think the President should be treated like a dog. However, he should take counsel from the Harry Truman quote (which most now say Truman never said): “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” Truman did have some dog issues, and probably should have had a dog.

The Obama’s do have a dog, who the President believes has star quality. Things are not going to get any friendlier in Washington the next two months; perhaps President Obama should get better acquainted with the dog, because he may need a friend. 

And as Lord Byron (not Truman) said in 1841: “Nobody need want a friend who can get a dog.”

Good morning. I hope everyone had a nice Labor Day weekend.

1. A new legal blog, a sample here.
2. Worse than heroin? Hmmm, that’s an odd point of view to say the least.
3. A word, oikophobia.
4. More on the Beck gathering, here and here.
5. That strikes me as less a problem of gender and more about manners.
6. On the values gap.
7. Freedom of speech and a martyr.
8. Church and dress.
9. A reply to Mr Krugman’s reading of WWII as stimulus. 
10. Our government right now in a nutshell.
11. One part of the financial picture.
12. And an argument against expanding government influence in, say, healthcare or well just about anything.

Good morning.

1. A book reviewed.
2. VAT considered. The bigger problem with VAT is that the Congress critters considering VAT aren’t thinking of it as a replacement but an addition.
3. A book list.
4. Clunkers. A bad idea then, worse in retrospect.
5. Oil in them thar hills.
6. What airline I wonder?
7. Beslan.
8. Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
9. Weather is not climate. Climate is not climate. 
10. The Administration and yet-another-broken-promise.
11. Another look at unemployment numbers. 
12. Prayer as image.
13. The Discovery nut as right winger meme.
14. Statistics and schools. 

He was a rabid environmentalist.  He considered babies "parasitic human infants", and wanted all "pro-birth" programs to push "stopping human birth".  He was extremely anti-war, and equated having more humans with more war.  He considered civilization "filth", and its religious roots "disgusting".

And ThinkProgress, an extremely popular liberal blog, calls out the Right over this guy, James Jay Lee, who took hostages at the Discovery Channel, because one of his eleven points refers to immigration. 

Really?  Is this what passes for intellectual honesty on the Left these days?  A guy who said Al Gore’s "An Inconvenient Truth" woke him up is a product of the Right?

None other than President of the United States Bill Clinton blamed conservative talk radio for Timothy McVeigh, and recently brought that back up in light of the Tea Party.  Conservatives against the "Ground Zero Mosque" were blamed for the stabbing of a Muslim cabbie (until it was found that it was a GZM supporter who stabbed the cabbie who was against the Mosque).  And Caleb Howe reminds us:

Lee acted irrationally. His environmental extremism was likely a function of his derangement, rather than the source of it. He latched on. He took it to the extreme, to say the least. Lee was not, by any measure that I would choose, a sane man. The story told by his brother-in-law – one of temper, erratic behavior, and irrational views – recalls Jerry Kane.

Jerry Kane, and his son Joe, killed two police officers and were killed themselves, in a shoot-out precipitated by a simple traffic stop. Jerry Kane, too, was an unstable man. His hometown mayor said of him that “You were always looking over your shoulder to make sure he wasn’t there. You never knew what he was going to do. I always thought he was an unstable individual.” Like Lee, the aftermath anecdotes painted a picture of paranoia and fear. But that didn’t stop liberal sites like Crooks and Liars from laying him at the feet of the conservative movement. Or Joseph Stack. Or Richard Poplawski. Or Byron Williams. It didn’t stop them from suggesting that Erick [Erickson] was responsible for a census worker slaying.

In fact, every time someone is shot in a lone gunman scenario, the right, and the tea parties and talk radio in particular, are virtually instantaneously blamed by the left at large for “violent” rhetoric and instigation.

Stop me, again, if you’ve heard THAT one before.

We never stop hearing from the MSNBC left how the Fox News right is stirring up violence. But when someone clearly basing his murderous intent on the idea that humans are going to destroy the world, and soon, acts on the dire prophecies of Al Gore … well suddenly you can’t blame rhetoric for crazy people.

Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann and Ed Schultz will simply not take responsibility for this guy.  I don’t think they should, but they should then not require the Right to take responsibility for the acts of other nuts.

But they will, as will Bill Clinton.  This is what passes for intellectual honesty on the Left.