Between Linux and Windows. Well, it’s no surprise — we always knew that one was much more difficult than the other.
Monthly Archives: June 2009
A Motorcycle Dispute
Over at Winds of Change. While Marc gets the better of the argument, and I’ve been long on record that Harleys completely suck and the world would be a much better place without them, I have to admit that a bike called the Hypermotard sounds like something that someone would ride after missing the short bus.
What Did He Expect?
Marty Peretz is shocked, shocked, that Obama only sees one country to be pressured in the Middle East. But I’ll bet he didn’t vote for John McCain.
On Being A Chicken Abortionist
Some meditations. I, too, have sinned, and probably will again in the morning.
On the other hand, there’s the old saying in management seminars about dedication to a project: in a ham and eggs breakfast, the chicken was “involved,” but the hog was committed.
Comments Hygiene Note
I finally got fed up with “jack lee” today. The last-straw comment can be viewed here. He will no longer be endimmening us with his ignorance and stupidity, at least with that IP address.
Commenting here is not a right. It is a privilege, and one that he has been abusing (as he abused our intelligence) for years. No more.
“A Conspiracy of Euphemism”
Thoughts on selective self-censorship by the press:
The news reader, Nora Raum, outlined the incident and stated that the shooting appeared to have “religious motivations.” She did not name the suspect, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, or tell NPR listeners what those religious motivations might be. In other words, it could have been a radical Unitarian who gunned down the soldiers, or possibly a violent Presbyterian.
Why the shyness? Why not tell people what is actually happening in the world? We saw this a couple of weeks ago, when the press only gingerly acknowledged that the malevolent though incompetent suspects in the synagogue bombing-conspiracy case in New York were converts to Islam. How is the public served by this kind of silence?
As noted, it’s only one religion that seems to be fair game for discussion as motivation for criminal behavior.
An Absurd Ruling
At least based on this quote: “Federalism is an older and more deeply rooted tradition than is a right to carry any particular kind of weapon.”
That seems nonsensical to me. The right to self defense is fundamental in English common law, and goes back much further than federalism. I’m as big a federalist as the next guy, and more than most, but how can the First Amendment be incorporated, but not the Second? This will be going to SCOTUS.
[Update a few minutes later]
Eugene Volokh, unsurprisingly, has some thoughts, here and here:
…it’s not implausible, I think, to treat the Court’s precedents as stare decisis on the question of incorporation via the Fourteenth Amendment generally, rather than solely of incorporation via the Privileges or Immunities Clause (though I’d probably be inclined to the other position). But it seems to me that the case is not nearly as clear as the Seventh Circuit’s analysis suggests, and that the opinion’s not discussing the difference between the two Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment is a significant weakness.
As I said, the SCOTUS will almost certainly get this. And having Sotomayor won’t make any difference, since Souter would likely rule the same way as she does. It will be interesting to see what the rest of the court does.
[Update]
A thought, based on some good comments in Eugene’s second post. When self defense is outlawed, only outlaws will defend themselves.
What A Bargain
Your tax dollars at work:
According to today’s Washington Post, the company currently employs 88,000 workers in the United States. (That seems low, but that’s what the paper says.) GM has gotten $19.4 billion in loans from the U.S. government and Obama promised another $30 billion yesterday.
$49.4 billion divided by 88,000 workers comes out to $561,363.63 per worker.
Can that possibly be right? That in an effort to avoid layoffs, Uncle Sam has pursued a course more expensive than handing each worker a check for a half a million dollars?
Well, the math is correct, but it’s not right, in any sense of the word. I see some very interesting campaign ads coming out of this in 2010.
Sauce For The Gander
The people complaining about Judge Sotomayor being called a racist, seem to have selective outrage.
[Afternoon update]
Here are more examples of Judge Sotomayor’s “misspeaking”:
In the lecture, she used a former colleague, Judge Miriam Cedarbaum, as a foil. Cedarbaum believes, according to Sotomayor, “that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices.” Sotomayor endorsed this view as an aspiration, but added, “I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases.” Darn! What she meant to say — if it hadn’t gotten so garbled — is that this aspiration can be achieved, certainly in most and perhaps in all cases.
In the next sentence, she mused, “I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society.” Not again! This sentence was entirely misspoken and shouldn’t have been included in the text, since — as a straight-shooting, just-the-facts judge — Sotomayor naturally wondered no such thing.
In the very next sentence, she raised the possibility that people of different races “have basic differences in logic and reasoning.” Oh, no! In this passage, Sotomayor was badly victimized by misspeaking. An appeals-court judge flirting with the existence of Black Logic, or White Logic, or Latino Logic, is preposterous on its face. Again, in an innocent mishap, she must have poorly chosen her words by choosing to include them.
In a curious coincidence, she misspoke the same way later when she posited different judging by different races and genders might result from “inherent physiological” differences. #@$%&! Sotomayor clearly couldn’t catch a break, with her serial misspeaking obscuring her inspiring vision of a nation of laws that is no respecter of persons.
She’s just so misunderstood.
The Book Stores Didn’t Get The Memo
Many on the left predicted (usually without even reading it) that Jonah Goldberg’s book would end up remaindered shortly after publication (I even had such idiotic prophecies in my own comments section here).
Well, the new edition, in paperback (with a new afterword on the Obama phenom), came out today, and it’s #32 at Amazon
There’s an interview with the author on the new edition over at NRO:
One of the points of Liberal Fascism isn’t to simply say “I know you are but what am I?” to the Left (though that’s definitely in there), it’s to point out that because we’ve made fascism into this cartoon villain we’ve allowed truly fascistic (or if you prefer, statist or progressive) assumptions to suffuse modern life on both the right and the left. I don’t think all of this stuff is evil or even necessarily bad. Rather, I think it advances without us questioning it. I have a chapter in the book called “We’re All Fascists Now.” I wasn’t aiming that purely leftward, but inward. People need to understand that these movements didn’t arise out of a society-wide desire to be villains. It arose out of a desire, a yearning, for progress. I think that’s one of the most basic points I failed to communicate as clearly as I should have.
LOPEZ: Speaking of Liberal Fascism’s endurance, what do you make of events since the book came out, specifically the election of The One?
GOLDBERG: Well, first of all I think I have to thank Barack Obama. Here I wrote a book, working on the assumption that Hillary Clinton would be the nominee (hardly a harebrained assumption at the time), about how contemporary progressivism is a political religion with its roots in German state theory, sharing a close family resemblance to fascism. Among the anatomical and genetic similarities: cult of unity, sacralization of politics, philosophical pragmatism, corporatism, relativism, Romanticism, hero-worship, collectivism, and so on. And out of nowhere comes a guy who campaigns as a secular messiah, spouting deeply spiritualized political rhetoric, claims the Progressives as his inspiration, and proudly sees himself as carrying out FDR’s mission. I haven’t counted them, but I’d guess I’ve received a couple hundred e-mails from readers telling me how they thought the whole book was written with Obama in mind, even though I finished it before he was even ahead in the Democratic primaries.
It does seem prescient now.
[3 PM Eastern update]
The book has moved up to #30…