The Tiger at Home

This is interesting.

“Liberals used to be the ones who argued that
sending U.S. troops abroad was a small price
to pay to stop genocide; now they argue that
genocide is a small price to pay to bring U.S.
troops home.”

Apparently, this simple statement does rile up said ‘liberals’.

But as I’ve said before, I don’t think that the statement is an accurate reflection of reality.  That’s to say, yes, it’s literally true, but what’s really going on is that ‘liberals’ are invested in opposing a deployment made during a Republican administration.  If their people were in office, the opposition would be gone with the wind for a similar operation.  Much in the same way, the isolationist and realist wings of the Republican Party and of conservatives in general get mysteriously stronger during Democratic administrations.

Just got my first invite to an old friend’s wedding (the non-City Hall kind, I mean).

It’s for me “and Guest”.  How are the social rules nowadays?  Is one supposed to scare up a date for these things?

I mean, I do know a number of female types who could serve as such, and probably one of them would be willing …  Or can I just go stag?  Does that unbalance the party?

Etiquette mavens, what say you?

Alice Cooper is a Republican. Did you know that, dear readers?

I did — from his statements in 2004, I’ve known it for a while:

Never one to avoid self-examination, Alice (aka Vincent Damon Furnier) added: “If you’re listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you’re a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we’re morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal.” (We think he meant watching C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” or maybe he meant perusing the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, but either way you get the idea.)

“Besides, when I read the list of people who are supporting Kerry, if I wasn’t already a Bush supporter, I would have immediately switched. Linda Ronstadt? Don Henley? Geez, that’s a good reason right there to vote for Bush.”

That said, I think we can say he’s a certain type:

We the people of the United States
In order to form a more perfect union
Stop pretending that you’ve never been bad

You’re never wrong and you’ve never been dirty
You’re such a saint, that ain’t the way we see you
You want to rule us with an iron hand
You change the lyrics and become Big Brother
This ain’t Russia, you ain’t my Dad or Mother (They never knew anyway)
(more…)

From an e-mail exchange with a friend:

It’s a good thing I’m coming back to Somerville soon, Benjamin. Your
emails suck. …

Mind you, as a correspondent, I have been worse than useless this
summer, myself. Even C. has only heard from me a handful of
times. Still, at least when I DO write I am neither maddeningly vague
nor offensively polite (not an oxymoron to anyone who knows you. or
the British.).

I am at one with Flea –

Do not get me started on the Geneva Conventions and the most basic principle of all human social relations, viz reciprocity: We abandon it at the risk of extinction.

Reciprocity is a bedrock element of human interactions — the Golden Rule. Not quite “Do as you unto others as you would have them do unto you”, but more “Do unto others as they have done unto you, or prepare yourself for a lifetime of unequal contributions…” ;-)

“Offensively polite”. I like it. (I also like it when my messages are received.)

I think I may take it as my tagline for a while… time to edit the Facebook profile…

Both sides do it. Just in different ways:

But the most interesting news came out of Seattle, where on Thursday local prosecutors indicted seven workers for Acorn, a union-backed activist group that last year registered more than 540,000 low-income and minority voters nationwide and deployed more than 4,000 get-out-the-vote workers. The Acorn defendants stand accused of submitting phony forms in what Secretary of State Sam Reed says is the “worst case of voter-registration fraud in the history” of the state.

The list of “voters” registered in Washington state included former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, New York Times columnists Frank Rich and Tom Friedman, actress Katie Holmes and nonexistent people with nonsensical names such as Stormi Bays and Fruto Boy. The addresses used for the fake names were local homeless shelters. Given that the state doesn’t require the showing of any identification before voting, it is entirely possible people could have illegally voted using those names.

Local officials refused to accept the registrations because they had been delivered after last year’s Oct. 7 registration deadline. Initially, Acorn officials demanded the registrations be accepted and threatened to sue King County (Seattle) officials if they were tossed out. But just after four Acorn registration workers were indicted in Kansas City, Mo., on similar charges of fraud, the group reversed its position and said the registrations should be rejected. But by then, local election workers had had a reason to carefully scrutinize the forms and uncovered the fraud. Of the 1,805 names submitted by Acorn, only nine have been confirmed as valid, and another 34 are still being investigated. The rest–over 97%–were fake.

I continue to support sensible electoral reform — requiring proper identification and/or combinations of documents not easy to forge, as in Canadian elections, along with allowing same-day registration.  This takes care of both ways that people fiddle with elections — the overly thorough purging of elections rolls is taken care of as people can vote anyway, while the fraudulent registrants are caught with the documentation requirement.  I find it shocking that the process of getting served a beer is more secure than our voting system, and I find it equally shocking that a person can lose his right to vote by an ill-timed fit of procrastination.  (Invariably, I have registered to vote on the deadline days before the elections I want to participate in…  Well, with one exception.  My 2004 presidential elections vote was cast and mailed by September 23rd, 2004.  I wanted to make sure there was no way I was going to not let my vote be counted.)

There are a few “Ivy League dating services” out there. Their existence confuses me.

Now, granted, colleges and grad schools are very good places for matching up a certain proportion of their populations — I believe that something on the order of a quarter of the alumnae of my college are married to alumni (the female set’s numbers are more significant, as it only went co-ed in 1970). So there are the few lucky ones who found lasting love during their college days, or who hooked up at Reunions or something.

But I can’t think why the rest of us would want to be reminded of our college years in our dating lives.

My own experience of college dating was that it was terribly awkward, and the majority of people didn’t have time for it.

I believe my own suite was a good sample of the over-all set of experiences — one roommate just got engaged to his college sweetheart, another was sort of dating someone during senior year, and the other two never really left the ‘platonic friend box’ that the modern woman has for a certain type of male. (At least, not for anything lasting.)

The campus conservative magazine did a survey on dating during my senior year.  (As the then-editor-in-chief of the ‘progressive’ mag, I read their stuff from cover to cover.)  The numbers were what one might have expected. The average number of (sexual?) partners for the survey answerers was six, but the median was one — most people didn’t get around, but those who did, did a lot. The average number of “first dates” respondents had gone on in the previous year was 1.5, which included (!) social events for which one had to find a date. (I was a comparative social butterfly for having taken different girls to Winter Formals and Houseparties that year.)

We were nerds, and our love-lives reflected that.

Things haven’t been great since then, but they haven’t reached the nadir that was my college dating experience.

***

Why one would want to be reminded of that time, I have no idea.

They’ve got questions?

So if there are still roughly 400,000 unemployed people in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, why aren’t more folks packing their bags? Dale Orr, managing director of Global Insight (Canada), observes that unemployment in those regions has consistently floated above the national rate since the late 1970s. But federal politicians never tackle the generous incentives that employment insurance provides to recipients, effectively encouraging them to stay put. “That is the crime here, trying to get federal politicians to pay attention to these patterns,” he says.

As this study shows, migration is in everyone’s interest. At the very least, political leaders should be looking at ways impediments to mobility can be removed.

It’s not rocket science.

Was watching the game this evening and happened to think of Dave Stewart.  What’s he up to, these days?

In the internet age, this is no longer an idle query.  He’s blogging.

It is interesting to see what he thinks about the Barry Bonds affair.

With a little shot thrown in:

With or without steroids, I’m not surprised to see the home run record fall, because overall, pitching has been horseshit since the mid-90s. Why? Expansion. You simply don’t see too many teams with three great starting pitchers anymore. Pitching got so bad in the “steroid era” that we had a bunch of ducks out there. It’s almost like it was hunting season.

Well, when you’re Dave Stewart, with World Series rings from three different teams and a 7-1 record head-to-head against Roger Clemens, you can say those sorts of things.

Need some.

You know, I could have done so, so well in a Communist society…

Say what you will about the Pat Tillman situation, one thing that the latest accounts show us is that the old saw about there being no atheists in a foxhole is just plain wrong:

It has been widely reported by the AP and others that Spc. Bryan O’Neal, who was at Tillman’s side as he was killed, told investigators that Tillman was waving his arms shouting “Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat (expletive) Tillman, damn it!” again and again.

But the latest documents give a different account from a chaplain who debriefed the entire unit days after Tillman was killed.

The chaplain said that O’Neal told him he was hugging the ground at Tillman’s side, “crying out to God, help us. And Tillman says to him, `Would you shut your (expletive) mouth? God’s not going to help you; you need to do something for yourself, you sniveling …“

He had the courage of his convictions, whatever else you might say.

Yeah.

Let’s just stop for a few minutes and wonder exactly what it is that’s being celebrated. A small group of intellectuals takes over your backward country, unleashes terror across the countryside, requisitions the only food leaving literally millions of your ancestors to die, and then sets up one of the scariest states in history. This state then proceeds to murder millions of your people on false charges of treason, sabotage, wrecking, and dill-hoarding. No sector is spared, including the entire top brass of the military.

As this is going on, it becomes clear that on the other side of the continent, a scary Austrian pervert is building up disturbing military capabilities. Keen to protect this beautiful society he’s been building in your country, your paranoid, midget Georgian leader rushes to sign a peace treaty with said Austrian pervert, allowing Europe to bear the brunt of Nazi aggression while he can go on murdering at home. In a colossal misjudgment, your midget Georgian leader fails to realize that the Austrian pervert has absolutely no intention of honoring the treaty, and is totally unprepared when your country is invaded, causing countless lives to be lost.

The war goes on. Millions die. People are killed in the most horrible ways. In the cities, people starve to death. It is one of the most gruesome periods of human history. Then, by sheer force of numbers, after millions of Russians are massacred, the tide of the war begins to turn. Your leadership is willing to sacrifice as many people as it takes, and in the end, despite the mostly inept tactics, your side comes out on top. The country is devastated; most of the men are dead or wounded. And yet, somehow, the same miserable system of government carries on in your country for another 40 years, leaving you poor, depressed and well behind the rest of the world.

In a normal country, these hideous events would certainly be cause for some serious reflection. Some sad remembrances, some commemorations of the numerous feats of bravery and the millions of sacrifices made. Some solemn wishes that even if this terrible regime somehow managed to defeat the Nazis, you’d never allow such a system to flourish again.

Ouch.

Slightly unfair to Stalin — he did try to sign a treaty with England first.  (Thank you, Neville Chamberlain.  Yet another demonstration of your sterling foreign policy judgment.)   That said, the other charges are true.  (Paranoid?  Check.  Midget?  Check.  Misjudgment?  Check.)

You know, I think that Hillary Clinton is going to be our next president. Barring, of course, a Rudy Giuliani as GOP nominee situation, which might lead a portion of pro-choice Democratic males to vote for him as the lesser of evils. (Seriously. I know a number of people like this, who are yellow dog Democrats, Obama-backers for now, who just can’t stand Hillary.)

This latest dust-up between her and Senator Obama just strengthens my sense that she is the one. Even National Review people can see it:

Conservative commentators like me have especially tended to discount her. We have argued that she’d never dare to run for Senate in New York; that if she ran, she’d be a terrible candidate; and that if she really ran for president, she would collapse under the weight of her own dullness and high negatives. Alas and alack, it is instead incontrovertible that — in her own way — she’s a talented politician who has a clear path to the Democratic presidential nomination and to the presidency. …

Obama’s theme of change in the sense of something entirely new is clearly more powerful than Hillary’s theme of change in the sense of another round in a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton cycle of the American presidency. She overcomes this thematic weakness with her strength as a candidate, the foremost of which is her — as she has put it — “responsibility gene.”
(more…)

Watch two liberal black commentators (one journalist, one academic) try to get into the mind of Clarence Thomas.

It’s amusing, because the questions they pose are — to my mind — so easily resolvable. Thomas makes his decisions based on what he sees the law to be.

This isn’t rocket science — you can see where his philosophies come from. For instance:

“Thomas found support for this ‘libertarian strain’…in the writings he started to devour around this time. Ayn Rand was an intellectual who smartly promoted her ultra-libertarian philosophy through novels. Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead featured heroic, solitary characters battling big government and excessive regulations that cramped individuality and self-expression… [The Fountainhead] became one of Thomas’s favorites; he would show the filmed adaptation to his EEOC staff—during the lunch hour, so as not to consume government time—as what one aide called ‘a sort of training film.’” …

But enough so, apparently, that Ayn Rand’s novels even played an unexpected role in Clarence Thomas’s private life—according to Clarence Thomas, A Biography. Upon first meeting Virginia Lamp, an official with the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, Thomas found they had much in common. “They also learned that they shared an appreciation for Ayn Rand.” Virginia Lamp eventually became Mr. Thomas’s wife.

I mean, all of this is right out there:

Thomas, says Scalia, “doesn’t believe in stare decisis, period.”

“If a constitutional line of authority is wrong, he would say let’s get it right,” says Scalia. “I wouldn’t do that.”

Foskett, an investigative reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, proves Scalia’s point by referring to U.S. v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549. In the 1995 decision, Thomas said the court should abandon its Depression-era test for deciding if a federal law goes beyond Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce.

He believes in doing the right thing, legally and constitutionally. In that sense, he is more principled, and more hard-core, than Antonin Scalia. (No matter what Harry Reid says.)

Update: Hey, even a Facebook group gets the point –

… They all have recognized that the Constitution should be the ultimate authority of a legislation’s constitutionality, not the conscience of the court; that just because legislation *shouldn’t* be enacted doesn’t mean it *can’t* or that it’s unconstitutional.

Which point Thomas made in his Lawrence v. Texas dissent.

Update again:  You know, it was my law school year and doing much reading of approved sources from the left — using reasoning like this piece in the Times — which helped me move to the right.

Former Estonian PM has a blog — and responds to commenters!

He appears to use WordPress.  And he loves Milton Friedman and the flat tax.  [via Wells]

Joe Trippi thinks so.

I disagree — but we won’t know till we see how the next election cycle shakes out.  My impression, though, has been that the online presences have helped the right more than they have hurt — simply by virtue of the fact that it diffuses the power of the mass media, which tend to tilt left.

In that the commanding heights of communications — elite journalism, academia — trend liberal, I think that the ‘04 trend will continue.

But I could be wrong, of course.  Fundraising numbers — heavily Democratic right now — are an interesting data point…

A quote from this rant reminded me of something.

Rudy:   The federal government sent people here from Washington to do this.  This is the stupidity they use.  They are pointy-headed stupid morons.  This is ridiculous!  This is ridiculous!

I love seeing the phrase “pointy-headed” making its way back into public discourse.

I must admit, I took great pleasure in watching Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s point-by-point demolition of Avi Lewis’s views on the United States. [via Jay Currie, who got the last word in in the comments section; links via SDA, via Hot Air]

My fave quote: “So I don’t find myself in the same luxury that you do. You grew up in freedom, and you can spit on freedom, because you don’t know what it is not to have freedom. I haven’t.“

What she said, though — it’s just as true for Canada, too. We enjoy being fashionably cynical about the rich and access to power, but if you come without a penny in your pocket, you still can get ahead, you still can end up — or your children can end up — in the highest of positions.

I don’t think that many of the privileged among us — and I certainly have been in a privileged position, myself (though it’s nothing compared to Lewis, of course) — realize just how rare that is in this world.

Go vote here:

To get you started, we turn to the immortal words of commenter LOLCait, who helpfully defined liberal arts colleges for us: “In the form it’s being used here, it’s a four-year liberal leaning, usually in a small town, college with no grad programs, that rich kids go to feel free and take peyote and wander around campus barefoot and shrieking into the night “I’m a real person!” and then graduate and abandon it all for a good job, only to relive it on screened in porches years later when they find an old joint pressed into a copy of the Stranger, so they toke it even though it’s stale and they remember a little bit but then go to bed and wake up just the same as they were the day before.”

… but I actually find it endearing when Stephane Dion fumbles around, not embarrassing at all.

That’s the $0.02 from this usually partisan Tory. (I rather suspect that the Canadian public is closer to my instincts on this one, given our continued affection for Jean Chretien…)

I can’t stand the policy tack the Liberals are now taking — definitely a push to unite the centre-left — but I think that this can be attacked on the merits of it.

Mind you, the other point, about Liberal re-writing of Canadian history — this is totally unsurprising. It’s part of why I … well, I just can’t stand the Liberal Party of Canada.

Love the comments section to this post [via Staples]:

Fun things that are a hell of a lot more important than health care, ie immediately life-threatening in their absence, but that nobody advocates reserving for a state monopoly:

“If Paul Wells wants his food before November he can just go to the United States and buy some.”

LOL.

His rule of thumb, incidentally, probably would put him among the Democrats down here:

All right, then. I’m quite sure it is possible to conceive of important things that cannot or should not be bought. Clearly you’re just the person for that task. But as a rule of thumb? An imperfect guide to a funny old world? Yeah. Sure. You bet. I actually believe markets are more efficient allocators of scarce resources than governments; that to be on the safe side it’s handy to have both markets and governments playing on the important files; and I note that most sane countries in the world act accordingly.

There. Now it’s your turn. What the hell were you trying to say? Because it came out kind of ridiculous.

I’m slightly more right-wing than most who grew up in Canada — I’m skeptical about state involvement in these sectors.  I think it tends to lead to unforeseen consequences in terms of the relationship between Man and the State (in which contest I am on the side of Man), but I did enjoy that display from Wells.

[That said, if I were a Canadian politico, however, I would not favour eliminating state funding for health care.  Why?  It's very, very difficult to de-socialize major sectors of the economy, especially when people have ordered their lives on those assurances.  And there's lots more to deal with, without getting into that issue.]