The Republicans have issued a Seniors’ Health Care Bill of Rights, itemizing a list of services that the government should, under all circumstances, provide to seniors. That’s right folks: meet the new Republican party, completely unmoored from anything resembling intellectual underpinnings, now bringing you a spirited defense of big government entitlements.
I saw a fantastic production of South Pacific on Broadway yesterday. Although I’m familiar with much of the music from South Pacific, it’s my first time seeing it performed. The acting was lively with a convincing lead, the storyline is very good, and the music was thoroughly enjoyable.
It was also interesting to realize that this was produced during a time when the vocabularity and details of military life were a common part of the national knowledge base. Seeing a production set in the armed services was not like peering into a foreign world, but rather like resurrecting a shared memory. This, from the closing screen, stuck with me:
They will live a long time, these men of the South Pacific. They had an American quality. They, like their victories, will be remembered as long as our generation lives. After that, like the men of the Confederacy, they will become strangers. Longer and longer shadows will obscure them, until their Guadalcanal sounds distant on the ear like Shiloh and Valley Forge.
Or so says our beloved Jesse Jackson:
The Rev. Jesse Jackson became the latest public figure to offer an opinion on the future of Michael Vick. Jackson said he wondered whether there had been collusion among N.F.L. owners to keep Vick out of the league.
…
Jackson, born in 1941, has been a civil rights activist for most of his adult life. He said that in some ways, Vick’s attempt to re-enter the N.F.L. was similar to Jackie Robinson’s entering Major League Baseball.
Although their situations were drastically different, Jackson said, the challenge was the same: Which owner would have the courage to make a controversial signing?
What bothers me isn’t that Jackson is a moron — the world is full of morons — but that people still listen to him. He is a caricature. He warrants no more attention than the homeless man on telegraph avenue raving about aliens or the fool on Fox News insisting that Obama isn’t an American citizen.
It’s times like these that I wonder if free speech isn’t so great after all, but is only worth protecting because we can’t figure out a way to regulate speech that doesn’t involve or result in terrible abuses of power.
No seriously, it’s true (via here). A new law championed by Rep. Pelosi prohibits the sale of children’s toys unless they are certified lead free. Unfortunately the requirement is retroactive, which means it applies to toys (and apparently books) already sitting on store shelves. In other words if you’re a retailer and you have a wooden toy train set made by a local craftsman in your inventory your options are 1) dispose of the perfectly good train set or 2) have the wooden set tested for lead, at considerable expense.
As the article details, the law is being interpreted as applying to all children’s books published before 1985. Even as you read this, so many wonderful volumes that should be used to bring joy to the next generation are being (quite literally) tossed into the fire.
I’m taking two courses this summer, both three units — which I understand is the equivalent of 12 units during the regular semester. On top of a work environment that has recently accelerated, the 14 hours a week in class keep me driving pretty hard.
I measure the busyness in unread magazines. A copy of the Economist open on the coffee table, barely glanced at. Two issues of the New York Times magazine headed to the recycle bin, their glossy pages still stuck together. Two more issues of the New York Times magazine sitting unread on my coffee table like waiting friends. A third issue of the New Yorker spared the fate of its NY Times cousins, violating my “only two issues” backlog rule. All of these faithful companions, waiting so patiently for me to recover my leisure time.