Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Water
It is impossible for me to see this movie and be objective. The idea that a woman is not free to be whatever she chooses to be is repulsive. The trailer makes me want to fight. The gut feeling that there is something wrong here is uncontrollable. The overwhelming gut feeling is that a woman, every woman deserves better.
Monday, April 17, 2006
Old School
There is much in the current state of Conservative thinking that seems alien. Before they pass from this world I think it would be great to compile the opinions of these men and women on what happened.
There is something deeply wrong with Australians
Sunday, April 16, 2006
As much as he ticks me off…
Pat Robertson has written a defense of his ministry in the Wall Street Journal, and unfortunately it is a solid defense. As much as the Religious Right can anger me, and Robertson’s off the cuff comments baffle me, he has done extraordinary charity work and in no way could be called a bigot.
I guess we still need a little more gray splashed onto our black and white political stereotypes.
Expecting the Inevitable
This is an easy prediction to make. Every war has atrocities committed by both sides. Yes
As Americans, we train our soldiers well and expect the best. Sometimes we will still get the worst. This should not surprise us. When we decide to go to war we need to accept that it will not be a pleasant experience for anyone.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Cash
Rollins Rises
Words
Henry Rollins
In My Defense
The immigration debate is about the need to enforce laws and the need to have a cohesive society. The
The Worst Idea Ever
Exactly who is this idea good for? Well it would work great for employers that get to raise their profit margin by lowering wages. It has not worked for
A democratic society works when the principal of equality under the law is sacrosanct. It will not function when large numbers of the society’s members are considered others. Jim Crow gave us the riots of the 1960s. Cities such as
These people need to go home or get on a citizen track, for their good and ours.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Let’s sit on our Ass
I know not everyone who reads this is a Republican or a Conservative. Allow me to speculate that most of you fall on the Right somewhere, even if very close to the Center. I think we all agree that the spending, earmarking, and corruption coming out of Congress is too much. Have you done your taxes yet? How much did you have to pay someone to help you file paperwork with a supposed representative government? Oh you did your own? You overpaid.
That is freedom?
Yes, yes it is what you expect from politicians. But this is not what we should demand of our politicians.
In November, sit down, have a drink, and enjoy a fine fall day. Afterwards, out of the rubble we can build a Party worth supporting.
Fact
Perception
These protests are a tremendous mistake. The sight of hundreds of thousands of people waving the flag of a foreign country on US city streets is unnerving. If anything the lawmaker sitting on the fence was just knocked over.
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Disincentives
Someone on NPR explained that we have to legalize the illegal immigrants in this country because we cannot deport 11 million people and we cannot give them an incentive to leave. This is more evidence that NPR lacks a basic understanding of economics.
Immigrants come here, mostly, for jobs. It is not within our power to turn
The key is not the illegal immigrants. The key is their employers. They employ illegal immigrants because it is cheap and relatively risk free. The laws are rarely enforced and not very tough on the employers.
The change that should be made is to add risk. The chances of being caught employing illegal immigrants can be increased or the penalty imposed can be increased. We are not going to double our government resources in this area, although we can increase them. However, we can make it a serious criminal offensive to hire an illegal immigrant.
The law should state that all employers must have some kind of documentation of their employees’ legal status in the
The jobs for illegal immigrants would disappear overnight. Then we could get down to the business of improve our immigration system to make it much easier to get a green card. The one caveat being that the green card would be issued by US Embassies. So the illegal immigrant would have to go back to
Prices will rise, and the suburbanites might have to start cleaning their own houses. This is the trade off that we make so that this country does not have a growing underclass of people whose first action here was to break the law.
A Suggestion
For those who inclined to enjoy the occasional piece of erotica, I suggest reading JoanC’s blog Seven Inches of Sense. She archives her erotica posts at Seven Inches of Smut.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Knowledge
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
The Decline and Rise of Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk was one of the great political thinkers of the 20th century. He is seldom mentioned these days. A conservative who saw limits to the free-market and American imperialism as good things just is not in vogue.
The real problem his work presents is not placed upon his new readers. It is a problem that faces those who have already read his work. Kirk knew who the neoconservatives were 20 years ago and saw that their policies would trap us in impossible wars for democracy.
The problem is this: there is no excuse. Those of us who read Kirk 10 years ago should have known what was happening. We should have seen the current quagmire for what it is. At the moment of crisis we were enthralled by the dreams of freedom. So we failed Kirk and ourselves.
The End of the War
The letter below was sent to the Times of London. The authors are defending an academic who has been suspended for introducing evidence to his class that there are IQ differences between the races and that this difference is partially a genetic fact. The professor has been duly punished by the administration for his racism.
The evidence is growing that there are differences between different races. This is a very unfortunate thing that runs against the grain of modern Western thought. And it could create serious, and possibly, violent tendencies into multi-ethnic societies.
However, who are we if we are not seeking the truth? Do we ignore a centuries long tradition of honestly inquiring into nature for fear of political pieties? The end of this political war is coming, that is because the tradition abides. Whatever the truth is of these assertions about genetics, someone will find them. That someone will tell the people, and we may come face to face with the yet another brutal truth of human nature.
Racial IQ research
IN CLEAR violation of the tradition of academic freedom, the vice-chancellor of Leeds University has suspended Dr Frank Ellis and instituted disciplinary proceedings against him for presenting the research, published in peer-reviewed academic journals and scholarly books which demonstrates that blacks have, on average, lower IQ scores and poorer academic achievement than do whites
Much solid research also makes it more likely than not that there is a genetic contribution to this (and other) group IQ differences.
Dr Ellis, then, has done no more than restate what has been said for half century by a number of eminent psychologists and anthropologists at leading universities.
These include the late John Baker (
A number of behavioural scientists, including ourselves, have reached the same conclusion. Others have put much of this on the record. Many more agree but have been reluctant to put this on the record for fear of the kind of intimidation that Dr Ellis is receiving from the
There is an important and legitimate debate going on on intelligence and genetics, as there is on climate change and foreign policy. It is a sad day when British universities muzzle their academic staff and threaten them with dismissal for taking part in one of these controversies.
Professor Arthur Jensen
University of California
Dr Charles Murray
American
Aarhus University
Professor Linda Gottfredson
Professor (Retired)
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Mr. Kennan
From the beginning
George Kennan is one of last remaining members of the Establishment. He wrote the “Long Telegram” in 1946 which told us exactly what the Soviets were planning to do and how we should contain them. In 1999 he gave an interview which is well worth taking the time to read. The old school really did have some value.
