Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Pack, Not Herd, Part Two

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This sort of thing is the consequence of intentionally disarming ourselves, and frightening people with nonsensical scare stories about guns:

Lt. Mitchell said that, apart from Alandis’ denial that he made any threats, investigators quickly realized that the only gun Alandis had was his cap gun.

“In this day and time, we do not take anything lightly, whether it’s a toy gun or a real weapon, for the safety of the kids and everyone involved, the safety of the school. That’s our main concern.”

Tosha Ford agrees that Alandis should not have brought the toy gun to school, and did not know that he did, but she said the reaction that unfolded was overblown, due to rumors that school children quickly spread.

“Someone heard that Alandis had a toy gun in his bookbag and said, ‘Oh, Alandis is going to bring a gun, he’s going to shoot everybody.’ He [Alandis] was wrong, he should never have taken it to school. And I told him that. And he’s being punished” at home. “But also on the other side of the coin, I think it’s a travesty what’s happened to him…. For them to say that’s he’s made terroristic threats is just ridiculous. We’ve taken it and changed what ‘terroristic threats’ was meant to be for. And with children saying that ‘he’s got a gun, he’s got a gun,’ it’s gotten blown out of proportion…. I don’t think they handled it very well. I know it’s their job, but I think they took it to the extreme.”

I had lots of cap guns when I was a kid, as did most of my friends. I thought that individual caps were too tame, though. I used to like to hit a whole roll on the sidewalk with a hammer for a much more satisfying bang.

I don’t recall whether or not I ever took one to school, but if I had, neither pupils or teachers would have been so clueless and naive as to have confused it with a real gun. And the worst penalty for doing so that I can imagine would have been confiscation by the teacher. Until the end of the school day, that is, at which point it would probably have been returned. The notion that the decision about this kid is whether or not he should be put in juvenile detention, or merely on probation, shows the insane depths of anti-gun (and with butter knives being confiscated and wielders suspended, anti-weapons-in-general) paranoia to which our society has descended.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Not In Our University

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Mary Graber writes about the academic cocoon and ongoing denial, and the disastrous and unrecognized effects on college students’ knowledge and thinking ability.

Professors use school funds to attend conventions, where they meet at “round tables” and share strategies for surreptitiously introducing “gender” — all nine by famous feminist theorist Judith Butler’s count — into discussions about Russian history or Renaissance literature. Even where core curriculums are still in place, be aware: these teachers are infusing such Marxist-inspired theories. Even schools affiliated with Christian denominations have professors who brag, “Nobody knows. I teach the way I want to” — as one did to me last weekend.

So terms like Obama’s “spreading the wealth” and “redistributing income” clang pleasantly inside a freshman’s skull, echoing such cozy nostrums as “social justice” and “sharing.”

Yet, while asking one of my students why he was voting for Obama, I learned that he was for “change.” (Full disclosure: this was after the student brought up “change” as point of comparison to another “historic” personage whose speeches we were discussing.) But no one in class knew who Bill Ayers was, who the Weathermen were, and what they did. Such evidence of ignorance, however, does not dampen their estimation of their own decision-making abilities.

As anyone who has dealt with the four-year-old who insists “I know how to do it!” understands, arrogance is inversely proportional to age. Professors who themselves are perpetually in the stage of rebellious adolescence are not likely to recognize or report their own biases on surveys. Their students don’t know enough to know what they don’t know, and how much of it their professors are keeping from them.

It’s a bubble waiting to pop. Do parents really realize what a poor value they’re getting for high college expenses?

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

A Pack, Not A Herd

5 Comments

Some sense from across the pond, on the policy foolishness of disarming the citizenry. As Mumbai showed, it only makes people helpless victims against the enemy. And in broad terms, the enemy is anyone who worships entropy and mayhem. As Alfred said in Dark Knight, “Some men just want to see the world burn.” And they will get their wish if we don’t defend ourselves against them.

Rhetoric about standing firm against terrorists aside, in Britain we have no more legal deterrent to prevent an armed assault than did the people of Mumbai, and individually we would be just as helpless as victims. The Mumbai massacre could happen in London tomorrow; but probably it could not have happened to Londoners 100 years ago.

In January 1909 two such anarchists, lately come from an attempt to blow up the president of France, tried to commit a robbery in north London, armed with automatic pistols. Edwardian Londoners, however, shot back – and the anarchists were pursued through the streets by a spontaneous hue-and-cry. The police, who could not find the key to their own gun cupboard, borrowed at least four pistols from passers-by, while other citizens armed with revolvers and shotguns preferred to use their weapons themselves to bring the assailants down.

Today we are probably more shocked at the idea of so many ordinary Londoners carrying guns in the street than we are at the idea of an armed robbery. But the world of Conan Doyle’s Dr Watson, pocketing his revolver before he walked the London streets, was real. The arming of the populace guaranteed rather than disturbed the peace.

Nineteenth-century London (and India) was much better suited for civil defense against monsters like this than the twenty-first century version.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Inflation Not A Threat

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…yet. I think that there’s a typo here, though:

Some experts argue that Fed chief Ben Bernanke is simply replacing money annihilated in our economy’s “Great Deleveraging” and that he should print even more. Retired securities lawyer Frederick Feldkamp, a Michigan native, says the Treasury’s nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac alone erased $33 billion in bank capital. The Treasury inadvertently wiped out the two mortgage giants’ preferred stock, which hundreds of banks had held as core capital, and which was considered so safe that regulations let the banks leverage that capital by as much as 50 to 1 when making loans. Feldkamp reckons that when banks wrote off the $33 billion in preferred stock, support for about $1.65 billion in debt was erased — a significant credit contraction.

I think that’s supposed to be $1.65 trillion. $1.65 billion is seat-cushion change these days…

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

“Transforming Democracy”

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John Cox, on the salivating glee with which people like Todd Gitlin and E. J. Dionne look forward to the fascist tactics that will be enabled by President Obama’s identity cult:

Gitlin becomes almost giddy with the prospects of how a cult of personality, fluent in Web dynamics, can exploit “his more than 3 million names – disproportionately young and energetic.” They “remain a political force as long as he satisfies them that, once in office, he can deliver.”

But Obama doesn’t have to “deliver” in conventional political terms in order to “satisfy” his netroots. In a “political landscape where passions outweigh ideological clarity,” as Gitlin himself puts it, Obama’s self-centered movement need only satisfy those passions. And Gitlin makes it clear that the Web technologies are ideally suited to do just that.

Obama can “deploy his supporters to muscle reforms through.” One gets the distinct impression that for Gitlin it’s the muscling even more than the reform that’s so satisfying. As president, Obama can get them to “bombard Congress with phone calls to break filibusters and [my favorite catch-all] otherwise stir them to action….”

As he asks at the end, into what are they are so eager to see democracy “transform”?

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Missing The Real Point

12 Comments

I think that this is a misdiagnosis:

How come nobody connects the following dots:

1. Massive bank problems precipitate a $700 billion federal bailout.
2. Meanwhile, private companies (including automakers) find it difficult to get banks to loan them money.
3. So those private companies go to the feds for bailouts of their own.
4. Nobody says: “The federal government won’t bail out companies that can’t get private loans. That’s why we gave the money to the banks, so the banks could make private loans. Loan money is what banks do. If you need money, go see a banker. We gave them lots of money they can loan out. Maybe they’ll loan some to you.”

Am I missing something?

An excellent point. So I put it to some auto supplier and finance sources, and this is what they say we’re missing: The federal credit bailout ain’t working.

Credit is still frozen. No banks are willing to lend. And the auto companies are still in free fall.

I don’t think that’s the problem at all. I don’t know whether credit is still “frozen” or not (there seem to be a lot of mortgage loans happening), but even if it were melted and boiling, I don’t think you’d find a sane banker who would lend these companies money, even at junk-bond rates, given the nature of their business plans and prospects. That’s why they have to go to Congress…

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

It’s A Start

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We’re finally starting to take the asteroid threat seriously enough to start dedicating new telescopes to looking for them. A hundred million dollars seems like a pretty cheap insurance policy against another Tunguska or worse, in a populated area.

Unfortunately, we’re not developing the kind of spacefaring capability we need to do something about it if we see one coming. This is one kind of change that I’d be happy to see with the incoming administration. But it remains to be seen what space policy will come out of the process.