…is killing the skilled trades.
The entire educational establishment in this country is a disaster, from top to bottom.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
Intermittent Fasting
Is it good for you?
I’ve seen some research indicating that it can offer similar benefits to caloric restriction, in terms of life extension. I know that I do it somewhat on a regular basis. I’ll often go all day without eating, until dinner time. But it’s tough for people who can’t deal with low blood sugar.
More Critique Of The “Constitutional Law” Professor
…from Richard Epstein:
Unfortunately, Seidman has the causation reversed. The reason why the situation today is so perilous is that Congress is not strictly bound by the Constitution, just as Seidman advocates. There are currently no constitutional constraints limiting the discretion of Congress to decide what tax burden will be placed on what groups for what reasons. In fact, the only restraint on taxation is a broken-down system of public deliberation, which results in a fruitless question to find, as Seidman puts it, “a common vocabulary to express aspirations that, at the broadest level, everyone can embrace.” Otherwise, Congress is free to dispense tax favors and impose tax burdens as though there were no tomorrow.
…The older conception of public goods has been entirely rejected by all justices on the Supreme Court regardless of their political persuasion, so we have a current legal regime that is just the one Professor Seidman craves. On taxing and spending, we have a constitutional structure that is not informed by a single action or statement of James Madison or any other founder. Instead, our structure allows Congress to debate the many vexing problems of current times unhindered by constitutional principle, passing statutes whose “wisdom or fairness” is beyond the power and the competence of the courts to judge.
We need more, not less, adherence to the Madison’s Constitution. And as he notes, strictly followed, Madison’s principles would require a flat tax. A progressive one is unconstitutional.
“A Wilderness Of Dragons”
Thoughts on Peter Jackson’s latest movie, from Wretchard.
I haven’t read the Hobbit since I was a teenager. I’ve read so many mixed reviews that I haven’t decided whether or not to see it in the theater yet, though I am tempted just by the thought of the high-speed high-res film.
Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Nonlack Of Regrets
…and the sugar content of Trix. An eclectic Bleat today.
I have no recollection of the Bugs/Trix interaction. But it’s amazing in retrospect how much sugar I ate in cereal as a kid, and didn’t get fat. Though I think we were more active than a lot of kids today.
Clueless Greens
We’re betting that this news won’t dent greens’ self-confidence. They will still insist that unless they are put in charge of the entire world economy we face disaster. The sad truth is that the more power they get, the more damage they do.
They don’t care about poor people. They don’t care about people at all, except themselves.
It’s The Foreign Policy
…and yes, we are stupid (at least those of us who voted for Obama):
Since World War II, the world has survived and prospered to a remarkable degree under U.S. leadership. Nazism was defeated, followed by the downfall or reformation of equally murderous communist regimes.
Barack Obama’s deepest intention — emotionally and ideologically — is to change all that.
Forget objective reality. As Dinesh D’Souza demonstrated in his book and film, Obama’s psychological makeup — his heart — is influenced to a significant degree by a belief that America is a dangerous colonial power, that world leadership must be shared.
Yet “leading from behind” is a euphemism. There is no such leading.
Our near-certain next secretary of State, John Kerry, our only slightly less certain next secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, and our next CIA director, John Brennan, hold the same views as Obama, or are close enough to those views to be easily manipulated.
Besides the obvious expected policies, such as pushing Israel to make self-destructive concessions for a two-state solution the Palestinians have shown no evidence of wanting, this triumvirate will support Obama in undercutting numerous formerly bipartisan policies. Including, perhaps most significantly, the gutting of the defense budget.
They also will continue the administration’s bizarre Middle East policy that has resulted in the rise of Islamism everywhere from Mali to Egypt and beyond. And no matter the rhetoric we will most likely hear at confirmation hearings, Iran will get the message that serious American power is in actuality “off the table” when it comes to interdicting the mullahs’ march to nuclear weapons.
Outside of the usual Middle East hotspots, Russia and China are watching.
It’s feeling a lot like the thirties in ways other than the continuing sick economy.
[Update a couple minutes later]
…our concerns in respect of Senator Hagel aren’t about his views on the Jews. And we appreciate the fact that he served as an enlisted man in Vietnam, an experience we tend to credit (although neither is it dispositive). But we’ve been covering his antics for years, and where we’ve come out is that he’s just over his head in terms of policy. So he’s emerged as a shill for Israel’s most implacable foes. It doesn’t take a genius to comprehend what the mullahs in Iran are going to make of this nomination.
The same thing they made of Obama’s reelection. Plus this:
It looks like Mr. Hagel’s anti-Israel record is the very raison d’etre of the nomination. It looks like the nomination is about the President’s determination to block Israel from going to its own defense against a regime that, in Iran, is preparing, by its own account, an attempt to annihilate the Jewish state. Imagine what Mr. Hagel would be like if he actually did have a problem with the Jews.
Yes, imagine.
Inflation
…since the Republic was founded. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that it accelerated about the time we abandoned the Constitution.
[Update a few minutes later]
Paul Krugman, economic soopergenius.
She Did Everything Right
…and he still drove away.
It is not the government’s decision how we should defend ourselves from criminals. There is no more fundamental human right than the right to self defense.
Want To Reduce Mass Shootings?
Stop abandoning and abusing boys:
For boys, the road to successful manhood has crumbled. In many boys’ journey from a fatherless family to an almost all-female staff elementary school such as Sandy Hook, there is no constructive male role model.
Adam Lanza is reported to have gone downhill when divorce separated him from his dad. Children of divorce without enough father contact are prone to have poor social skills; to struggle with the five D’s (depression, drugs, drinking, discipline and delinquency); be suicidal; be less able to concentrate; and to be aggressive but not assertive. Perhaps most important, these boys are less empathetic.
When I mentioned after the shooting that it might have been prevented with more male teachers and school employees, it wasn’t just about whether or not they’d be better able to defend — it was also about the terrible atmosphere and war on boys in the schools, in which the mostly-female education establishment tries to make them act like girls, to the point of drugging them to change their behavior. Particularly if you have a son, it seems that more and more, sending kids to public schools is a form of child abuse.
I’m willing to bet that this issue won’t even be discussed in Biden’s post-Newtown recommendations, though. Doesn’t fit the anti-gun narrative.