We just got our Federal welfare check (actually it was direct deposit, but that's not the point!) and are planning how best to use it.
I want to know: "How are you planning to spend your Federal welfare check?"
-Brad
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Christmas in April...
We just got our Federal welfare check (actually it was direct deposit, but that's not the point!) and are planning how best to use it.
I want to know: "How are you planning to spend your Federal welfare check?"
-Brad
Monday, April 27, 2009
Beauty pageants and feminism...
I found this over at Hot Air. Just add "speech suppression" to the other indictments against beauty pageants.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Satan, potholes and New York...
Last Wednesday I planned to go to the Manhattan Temple. I hadn't been to the temple in over a year (even longer for the last time I was there for something besides a wedding or youth activity) and was looking forward to the experience. Well, add this experience to all the other "Satan will do anything to keep you from going to the temple" stories you have heard (btw - they're all true!)...
At about the corner of 8th & 42nd (in Manhattan - of course) my right front tire caught the edge of a pothole and blew out. Fortunately, I had turned wide and was in the right-hand lane - so pulling to the curb was easy. I was able to change the tire in about 5 minutes. Unfortunately, the donut tire had only 15 psi of pressure (60 is the recommended psi) and I didn't have the bike pump in the trunk. I was directed to one of only 3 gas stations on the entire island (or so the guy said) and was able to inflate the donut and get back on my way.
By now I was late for the session. To make matters worse, the GPS did not know that several ramps had been closed for construction/repair. I seriously considered calling it a day and heading back to Jersey. However, I pressed forward (saints, with steadfast faith...) and made it to the temple. I was able to help in some ordinances before I had to leave. The experience was great, and I am glad I made the effort to get there.
I then drove home (again, the GPS did not know that several access points to the Lincoln Tunnel were closed - but I finally got out of New York) going no more than 60 mph due to the donut and the downpour all along the Parkway. I spent about 2 hours at the tire place. The original blow-out could not be repaired; the other front tire was showing significant uneven wear; the two rear tires were cracking on the sidewalls and wearing as well; plus both front axle shafts had torn cv boots. I just had the r/f axle replaced, so I didn't get it fixed (I'll go back to the other place and make them do it right - and at no charge!)
I now have a very vivid and personal experience of Satan's effort to keep me from the going to the temple. I also have the wonderful feeling of overcoming difficulties and doing what I know I should. I can also view the tire issue as a blessing - it was much easier for me to have been by myself when one of the tires went out than to have the entire family with me, or have my wife alone with the kids. It was also better that it blew during a low-speed turn in downtown Manhattan than going 70+ on the Parkway. I now have four new tires and know I need to get the axle cv boots fixed. Fortunately, my tax refund will cover all of that.
Amazingly, I feel quite blessed and loved right now,
Brad
At about the corner of 8th & 42nd (in Manhattan - of course) my right front tire caught the edge of a pothole and blew out. Fortunately, I had turned wide and was in the right-hand lane - so pulling to the curb was easy. I was able to change the tire in about 5 minutes. Unfortunately, the donut tire had only 15 psi of pressure (60 is the recommended psi) and I didn't have the bike pump in the trunk. I was directed to one of only 3 gas stations on the entire island (or so the guy said) and was able to inflate the donut and get back on my way.
By now I was late for the session. To make matters worse, the GPS did not know that several ramps had been closed for construction/repair. I seriously considered calling it a day and heading back to Jersey. However, I pressed forward (saints, with steadfast faith...) and made it to the temple. I was able to help in some ordinances before I had to leave. The experience was great, and I am glad I made the effort to get there.
I then drove home (again, the GPS did not know that several access points to the Lincoln Tunnel were closed - but I finally got out of New York) going no more than 60 mph due to the donut and the downpour all along the Parkway. I spent about 2 hours at the tire place. The original blow-out could not be repaired; the other front tire was showing significant uneven wear; the two rear tires were cracking on the sidewalls and wearing as well; plus both front axle shafts had torn cv boots. I just had the r/f axle replaced, so I didn't get it fixed (I'll go back to the other place and make them do it right - and at no charge!)
I now have a very vivid and personal experience of Satan's effort to keep me from the going to the temple. I also have the wonderful feeling of overcoming difficulties and doing what I know I should. I can also view the tire issue as a blessing - it was much easier for me to have been by myself when one of the tires went out than to have the entire family with me, or have my wife alone with the kids. It was also better that it blew during a low-speed turn in downtown Manhattan than going 70+ on the Parkway. I now have four new tires and know I need to get the axle cv boots fixed. Fortunately, my tax refund will cover all of that.
Amazingly, I feel quite blessed and loved right now,
Brad
Friday, April 24, 2009
Teaparties...
I brought up the depths to which some of the media anchors have lowered themselves in covering last week's "tea party" protests. I will not link to any of them due to content issues (especially David Schuster's 7th-grade-level rant.)
Well, some of my students brought up the same criticisms that many in the media and on "the left" have leveled. I pointed out the hypocrisy of both sides of the "protest is (un)patriotic" issue by contrasting the tea parties with the Iraq War protests - that's what good professors do: avoid preaching from thier own political agenda while allowing their students to provide the contrasting views. We didn't spend too long on the issue, so we didn't get to explore all the contrasting arguments for and against the legitimacy of the protests. Here's a list of criticisms commonly made of the tea parties with solid responses (via Jonah Goldberg over at National Review's Corner):
Taxes & Tyranny
I posted this in the Corner already, but it's relevant enough I figured I'd post it here too.
Amidst all of the hooplah, I've heard a lot of complaints from liberals. Here are the most frequent complaints and my responses.
1. All of this tyranny talk is overheated and idiotic.
Well, some of it surely is. But look. According to that reason video I posted below, Americans work an average of 103 days a year just to pay their taxes. If you had to work 365 days a year to pay your taxes, that would be a kind of slavery or indentured servitude, because all of your productive labor would be going to the government. You would have no resources of your own to provide for the life you wanted. Instead the government would provide you not with what you want, but what the government decides you need.
That sounds like a kind of tyranny to me.
And, I think if we had to work 364 days a year it would still be a kind of serfdom (after all, serfs were allowed a little plot of their own). Ditto 363 days, 362 days, 361 days etc. Now, at some point the difference of degree becomes a difference in kind; working one day a year to pay for the government doesn't sound oppressive to me. But it seems to me that it's hardly absurd to think that 103 days a year is too much, or to believe that if that number goes even higher, we're losing something important.
I would also add that it's sort of crazy for liberals to equate government hand-outs (positive liberty, FDR's economic bill of rights and all that) with "freedom" but to equate the desire to keep more of the money you make yourself with greed and oppression of some kind. Money does make all sorts of liberties possible (you have to pay for your megaphone and all that). But government money only pays for the "liberties" the government thinks you should have, and therefore it can determine how you exercise them. That turns liberties into privileges dispensed at the whim of the state.
2. The original tea parties were about taxation without representation, today's spending is the result of Democrats winning elections, so it's taxation with representation.
There's some fairness to this objection. But one response would be that Democrats are tripling the debt, which means that generations of Americans not yet born will be taxed to pay for spending today. That is a kind of taxation without representation.
A second, more political than philosophical objection, would be that today's spending is being achieved under false pretenses. Obama says he's spending this money to fix a crisis, but much of his spending has nothing to do with the crisis but with shopworn liberal action items. However, since Obama campaigned on many of these items, I don't think it amounts to taxation without representation. But it does seem like the sort of duplicity worth a protest or two.
3. These protests are unpatriotic astroturfing by plutocrats.
So much for "dissent is the highest form of patriotism"!
I find it sort of amazing that when groups like ANSWER, a Mos Eisley cantina of America-hating nut cases, take to the streets it's a full-flowering of democracy in action. When ACORN pays their ragamuffins to protest, or when Rainbow/PUSH shakes down businesses through racial extortion, it's the sort of direct democratic action Thomas Paine dreamed of. And when labor unions pay people to protest, it's populist. But when a bunch of independent Americans, talk show hosts and email campaigners organize hundreds of protests around the country, it's astroturfing.
4. Republicans are hypocrites for suddenly caring about deficits.
Well, maybe. But then so are liberals for suddenly not caring about deficits. (That part always gets left out.)
Moreover, I don't get it. Republicans didn't care enough about the deficit when it went up a "little" under Bush (to pay for a war), therefore they can't complain when Obama sends it through the stratosphere (to pay for socialized medicine)? How does that work? If my wife spends too much on a shopping trip, does that mean she can't complain if I lose our house on a trip to Vegas?
5. The populist anger out there is the real face of America's homegrown fascism.
Sigh. While I think Rick Perry's secession talk is idiotic and unfortunate (even accounting for Texas' unique history), I am at a loss as to how any of this stuff smacks of fascism. Even Perry is talking in the context of the federal government doing too much, taking away too much liberty, getting too involved in local communities and interfering too much with the individual.
How do I say this so people will understand? Fascism isn't a libertarian doctrine! It just isn't, never will be and it can't be cast as one. Anarchism, secessionism, extreme localism or rampant individualism may be bad, evil, wrong, stupid, selfish and all sorts of other things (though not by my lights). But they have nothing to do with a totalitarian vision of the state where individuals and institutions alike must march in step and take orders from the government.
If you think shrinking government and getting it less involved in your life is a hallmark of tyranny it is only because you are either grotesquely ignorant or because you subscribe to a statist ideology that believes the expansion of the state is the expansion of liberty.
Update: From a reader:
Jonah, you say:
Moreover, I don't get it. Republicans didn't care enough about the deficit when it went up a "little" under Bush (to pay for a war).
A LITTLE?? COME ON!!
Have a great weekend.
Me: Well, I put a "little" in quotation marks to convey the point that it wasn't literally a little. But it is a little compared to what Obama's deficits will be.
On a personal note: I remember when the national debt (all the deficits accumulated over the entire history of United States) hit $1 trillion. It was a big deal - and many people put the blame on the Reagan administration (it was actually the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives that originated and approved ALL the deficit budgets during the Reagan years.) Now the Obama administration (with another Democrat-controlled House) has increased the debt by over $1 trillion in a single year!
I hope my kids and grandkids like paying taxes,
Brad
Well, some of my students brought up the same criticisms that many in the media and on "the left" have leveled. I pointed out the hypocrisy of both sides of the "protest is (un)patriotic" issue by contrasting the tea parties with the Iraq War protests - that's what good professors do: avoid preaching from thier own political agenda while allowing their students to provide the contrasting views. We didn't spend too long on the issue, so we didn't get to explore all the contrasting arguments for and against the legitimacy of the protests. Here's a list of criticisms commonly made of the tea parties with solid responses (via Jonah Goldberg over at National Review's Corner):
Taxes & Tyranny
I posted this in the Corner already, but it's relevant enough I figured I'd post it here too.
Amidst all of the hooplah, I've heard a lot of complaints from liberals. Here are the most frequent complaints and my responses.
1. All of this tyranny talk is overheated and idiotic.
Well, some of it surely is. But look. According to that reason video I posted below, Americans work an average of 103 days a year just to pay their taxes. If you had to work 365 days a year to pay your taxes, that would be a kind of slavery or indentured servitude, because all of your productive labor would be going to the government. You would have no resources of your own to provide for the life you wanted. Instead the government would provide you not with what you want, but what the government decides you need.
That sounds like a kind of tyranny to me.
And, I think if we had to work 364 days a year it would still be a kind of serfdom (after all, serfs were allowed a little plot of their own). Ditto 363 days, 362 days, 361 days etc. Now, at some point the difference of degree becomes a difference in kind; working one day a year to pay for the government doesn't sound oppressive to me. But it seems to me that it's hardly absurd to think that 103 days a year is too much, or to believe that if that number goes even higher, we're losing something important.
I would also add that it's sort of crazy for liberals to equate government hand-outs (positive liberty, FDR's economic bill of rights and all that) with "freedom" but to equate the desire to keep more of the money you make yourself with greed and oppression of some kind. Money does make all sorts of liberties possible (you have to pay for your megaphone and all that). But government money only pays for the "liberties" the government thinks you should have, and therefore it can determine how you exercise them. That turns liberties into privileges dispensed at the whim of the state.
2. The original tea parties were about taxation without representation, today's spending is the result of Democrats winning elections, so it's taxation with representation.
There's some fairness to this objection. But one response would be that Democrats are tripling the debt, which means that generations of Americans not yet born will be taxed to pay for spending today. That is a kind of taxation without representation.
A second, more political than philosophical objection, would be that today's spending is being achieved under false pretenses. Obama says he's spending this money to fix a crisis, but much of his spending has nothing to do with the crisis but with shopworn liberal action items. However, since Obama campaigned on many of these items, I don't think it amounts to taxation without representation. But it does seem like the sort of duplicity worth a protest or two.
3. These protests are unpatriotic astroturfing by plutocrats.
So much for "dissent is the highest form of patriotism"!
I find it sort of amazing that when groups like ANSWER, a Mos Eisley cantina of America-hating nut cases, take to the streets it's a full-flowering of democracy in action. When ACORN pays their ragamuffins to protest, or when Rainbow/PUSH shakes down businesses through racial extortion, it's the sort of direct democratic action Thomas Paine dreamed of. And when labor unions pay people to protest, it's populist. But when a bunch of independent Americans, talk show hosts and email campaigners organize hundreds of protests around the country, it's astroturfing.
4. Republicans are hypocrites for suddenly caring about deficits.
Well, maybe. But then so are liberals for suddenly not caring about deficits. (That part always gets left out.)
Moreover, I don't get it. Republicans didn't care enough about the deficit when it went up a "little" under Bush (to pay for a war), therefore they can't complain when Obama sends it through the stratosphere (to pay for socialized medicine)? How does that work? If my wife spends too much on a shopping trip, does that mean she can't complain if I lose our house on a trip to Vegas?
5. The populist anger out there is the real face of America's homegrown fascism.
Sigh. While I think Rick Perry's secession talk is idiotic and unfortunate (even accounting for Texas' unique history), I am at a loss as to how any of this stuff smacks of fascism. Even Perry is talking in the context of the federal government doing too much, taking away too much liberty, getting too involved in local communities and interfering too much with the individual.
How do I say this so people will understand? Fascism isn't a libertarian doctrine! It just isn't, never will be and it can't be cast as one. Anarchism, secessionism, extreme localism or rampant individualism may be bad, evil, wrong, stupid, selfish and all sorts of other things (though not by my lights). But they have nothing to do with a totalitarian vision of the state where individuals and institutions alike must march in step and take orders from the government.
If you think shrinking government and getting it less involved in your life is a hallmark of tyranny it is only because you are either grotesquely ignorant or because you subscribe to a statist ideology that believes the expansion of the state is the expansion of liberty.
Update: From a reader:
Jonah, you say:
Moreover, I don't get it. Republicans didn't care enough about the deficit when it went up a "little" under Bush (to pay for a war).
A LITTLE?? COME ON!!
Have a great weekend.
Me: Well, I put a "little" in quotation marks to convey the point that it wasn't literally a little. But it is a little compared to what Obama's deficits will be.
On a personal note: I remember when the national debt (all the deficits accumulated over the entire history of United States) hit $1 trillion. It was a big deal - and many people put the blame on the Reagan administration (it was actually the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives that originated and approved ALL the deficit budgets during the Reagan years.) Now the Obama administration (with another Democrat-controlled House) has increased the debt by over $1 trillion in a single year!
I hope my kids and grandkids like paying taxes,
Brad
Friday, April 10, 2009
Global Warming update...
Being a big fan of David Attenborough's BBC videos, I've seen better videos on the subject of polar bears and global warming than this one...
...However, the beauty of this video is that it speaks beyond the drowning polar bears (they float by the way) to the legal implications of accepting or rejecting science. With legal implications in mind, here's the latest evidence from NASA as to what is contributing most to the melting arctic ice.
We can now add "aerosols" to DDT as products that 1960s-era environmentalists successfully banned with dire consequences.
Thank you Rachel Carson,
Brad
...However, the beauty of this video is that it speaks beyond the drowning polar bears (they float by the way) to the legal implications of accepting or rejecting science. With legal implications in mind, here's the latest evidence from NASA as to what is contributing most to the melting arctic ice.
We can now add "aerosols" to DDT as products that 1960s-era environmentalists successfully banned with dire consequences.
Thank you Rachel Carson,
Brad
Prisoners' Dilemma for real!
I teach International Relations (it's also the area in which I wrote my thesis.) The Prisoners' Dilemma provides an excellent model for explaining the behavior of countries and beginning a discussion of various IR theories. The example in the link above is adequate; however, the following game show provides a much better example which even includes some of the variations on the game - opportunity for discussion, past iterations, lack of "the shadow of the future."
In current international politics, just picture the guy as President Barack Obama and the chick as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
However, a nuked Israel is a lot worse than getting shafted out of several thousand pounds,
Brad
In current international politics, just picture the guy as President Barack Obama and the chick as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
However, a nuked Israel is a lot worse than getting shafted out of several thousand pounds,
Brad
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Spring Break finally arrives...for real...I think...
Late Tuesday night I returned from a 3-day trip to Washington, D.C. It was the annual OCC trip to the USIP (United States Institute of Peace.) 19 students and 2 professors traveled to the DC this year. We attended two 2-hour sessions at the USIP - one on Monday morning and the next on Tuesday afternoon - in which we participated in discussions about Israel/Palestine, Iraq & Civil Society, and the use of child soldiers. The rest of the time was left to enjoying the sites and cuisine of DC. I am still tired after driving 4 hours each way, staying up late each night, and walking all over the Mall and through the monuments & museums. It was nice to have a somewhat restful day today. I think the rest of the week will be more restful...
Until Easter Sunday! We had our "Spring Celebration" on March 21st (the first day of Spring) complete with chocolate eggs & bunnies, candy, and an egg hunt. That's not what will make it busy. The ward choir (I'm the choir director) is singing two selections during Sacrament Meeting. I am also the concluding speaker (I found out on Monday and haven't started preparing yet.) And did I mention that the missionaries are coming for dinner that night? Yes, we have a lot going on.
Finally, I watched the first half of the infamous "Big Love" episode last week (it originally aired on 3/15, so I caught the re-run.) Two things tell me that the writers didn't do their "mormon" homework (no, it has nothing to do with the "inside the temple" stuff; it has everything to do with the alpha-wife's mother.)
First, the mother's initial objection to alpha-wife going to the temple is that she hasn't "tithed" in months/years. No Latter-Day Saint ever uses the verb form of "tithing" (unless they are a recent convert from a church that uses that phrase - but lifetime LDS do not.) Within the Church the verb phrase is some variation of "pay tithing" not "tithe."
Second, no Latter-Day Saint parent would ever find joy in sitting in the celestial room of the temple with their child who is openly and proudly there unworthily (especially if the parent is an accessory to that fraud!)
I went to bed after that, so I don't have any other blatant errors to point out.
It looks like this post is headed for the same fate...the long minute hand is pointing to the 6 which means it's half past something. The short hour hand is pointing between the 10 and 11. That means bedtime today is at half past 10.
I know I'll never meet the Polkaroo - everyone knows the man IS the Polkaroo,
Brad
Until Easter Sunday! We had our "Spring Celebration" on March 21st (the first day of Spring) complete with chocolate eggs & bunnies, candy, and an egg hunt. That's not what will make it busy. The ward choir (I'm the choir director) is singing two selections during Sacrament Meeting. I am also the concluding speaker (I found out on Monday and haven't started preparing yet.) And did I mention that the missionaries are coming for dinner that night? Yes, we have a lot going on.
Finally, I watched the first half of the infamous "Big Love" episode last week (it originally aired on 3/15, so I caught the re-run.) Two things tell me that the writers didn't do their "mormon" homework (no, it has nothing to do with the "inside the temple" stuff; it has everything to do with the alpha-wife's mother.)
First, the mother's initial objection to alpha-wife going to the temple is that she hasn't "tithed" in months/years. No Latter-Day Saint ever uses the verb form of "tithing" (unless they are a recent convert from a church that uses that phrase - but lifetime LDS do not.) Within the Church the verb phrase is some variation of "pay tithing" not "tithe."
Second, no Latter-Day Saint parent would ever find joy in sitting in the celestial room of the temple with their child who is openly and proudly there unworthily (especially if the parent is an accessory to that fraud!)
I went to bed after that, so I don't have any other blatant errors to point out.
It looks like this post is headed for the same fate...the long minute hand is pointing to the 6 which means it's half past something. The short hour hand is pointing between the 10 and 11. That means bedtime today is at half past 10.
I know I'll never meet the Polkaroo - everyone knows the man IS the Polkaroo,
Brad
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