Random Thoughts

Until a few days ago, I was under the delusion that the civilized world unanimously recognized the rape of a 13 year old child as a crime worthy of punishment.  Then along came the overdue arrest of Roman Polanski.  Financial penalties, when avoided, compound with interest over time; apparently many seem to believe that the opposite should be true for criminal penalties, that fleeing from justice should be rewarded, at least as long as you’re rich enough and perhaps enough of a “genius.”

For those unfamiliar with the case, let’s recap:  Polanski brought a 13 year old girl in on the false pretense of a modeling shoot, he fed her champagne and Quaaludes (a barbiturate that acts as an aphrodisiac and a sedative), and then had anal intercourse with her.  And here’s what he had to say several years later:

If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!”

Was there judicial misconduct?  Maybe.  Has the victim said she forgives him?  Yes.  Does any of this matter?  No.  There is no doubt as to his guilt and he has already pled guilty.  Furthermore, victims don’t prosecute criminals:  criminals are prosecuted by the state on behalf of the people of the state, in accordance with public policy designed to advance the public good.  In this case, the law exists to protect children.

For those who are still tempted to forgive Polanski, I’d close by asking you to have a conversation with a 13 year old.  Set aside the images of sassy young teenagers you see on TV (played by actors many years older) – these are children in 7th or 8th grade, and they are not capable of intelligently making a choice in cases like this (especially when they have been drugged).

The FDA has decided to ban flavored cigarettes.  The question many are asking is does the ban cover flavored cigars too?  Here’s how the FDA handled that question:

The distinction between cigarettes and cigars has long revolved around the wrapping. Cigarettes are made of tobacco wrapped in paper, and cigars are made of tobacco wrapped in tobacco or paper constituted from tobacco. The tobacco inside the products also generally differs.

…

Dr. Deyton was asked several times if Tuesday’s ban applied to any little cigars or cigarillos. “According to the law, if something is wrapped in a tobacco leaf, that would not be considered,” he said and then stopped and added: “Hold on just a second.”

After a delay, Catherine Lorraine, a lawyer in the agency’s tobacco center, got on the call and said that if consumers believe a product is a cigarette, then the law defines it as a cigarette no matter how it is wrapped or labeled.

“We will be looking at products on an individual basis to determine if it meets that aspect of the legislation,” Ms. Lorraine said.

That’s right folks: the FDA lawyers are saying that subjective consumer impressions — and not the objective characteristics of the product — determine whether sale is legal.

It really is whiplash inducing to go from reading the Wall Street Journal as my daily paper to occasionally picking up the New York Times at the BART station.

From a Times story on Acorn:

WASHINGTON — The House voted Thursday to deny federal money to the community-organizing group Acorn after a video emerged in which employees of the group gave advice to two conservative activists posing as a prostitute and a pimp who said they wanted buy a house in Baltimore and start a brothel.

…

Bolstered by conservative media outlets, Republicans have been on a crusade against the organization for months, accusing it of improperly influencing elections and being protected by Democrats who were the beneficiaries of the group’s political activities. Matters came to a head in the past week after the Acorn workers were videotaped.

Of course, the article contains no mention of the fact that the Baltimore Acorn office continued to provide advice even after it became clear that the “pimp” was looking to house child prostitutes.

From an article on a new Marine recruiting ad:

[The ad] also makes no effort to show the emotional or mental challenges involved in being a Marine, like coping with combat stress or death.

I guess you just couldn’t resist, could you?

The piece is unnecessarily sympathetic to the Administration’s case, but it’s still encouraging to see the Times come out against their union buddies.

Folks, you can start calling me Nostradamus now.  From the NYTimes, the U. S. reaps the fruit of Obama’s short-sighted tariffs on Chinese tires:

China said it was investigating whether the U.S. is subsidizing and dumping automotive and chicken meat exports, two days after President Obama put tariffs on Chinese tires.

Global trade wars are bad — they harm everyone involved.  We’ve known this for a long time, and we had it proved in no uncertain terms during the Great Depression.  And yet here we are having fired the first shot, just like we did with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff act.

Don’t read the New York Times article in too much detail — it takes a pretty protectionist stance towards our trade imbalance with China, while ignoring economic fundamentals.  In particular it ignores that 1) trade relations aren’t simply two sided, they are like a triangle or other multi-sided flow diagram; and 2) our trade imbalance with China primarily results from our large deficit (they have to get dollars somehow to buy our t-bills, and the only way they can do that is by selling us stuff).

If you’re like me, you woke up one day and discovered that your Windows XP search function no longer worked as it used to.  When you tried to search a folder, instead your helpful file search box popping up, you saw something that asked you questions about indexing and searching the internet.  “But I don’t want to search the internet” you thought to yourself, “That’s why I’m not in a web browser.  And do I really have the time to sit here while my computer indexes itself?”

Well, here’s a link to a fine gentlemen who comes to the rescue and helps you undo Microsoft’s most unhelpful mandatory update to your computer.

President Obama, at the behest of the United Steelworkers union, will be adding a 35 percent tariff on tires imported from China.

The basic idea behind trade is that certain countries are better at certain things; international trade allows each country to specialize in what it’s best at.  Alternately — and this is what we’re choosing here — you can prop up industries where your nation is non-competitive instead of trying to spread into industries where you have a competitive advantage.

Here’s a great quote from the article:

Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who had pressed for the tariffs, also praised the decision.

He said in a statement, “If American workers and manufacturers are going to compete in the global market, they need to have a government that uses trade enforcement tools.”

Allow me to translate:  “Because American companies and workers are inherently inferior to foreign companies and foreign workers, they require a crutch from their government.”

Thanks guys!  Now not only will my tires cost more, but China will likely impose retaliatory tariffs that target an industry where we do have a competitive advantage.  Those guys, of course, don’t deserve protection because they didn’t pay their congressman enough money.

Is it acceptable to holler “YOU LIE” at the President of the United States during a joint session of Congress?  No folks, it is not.  Not shouting like a jackass at people in the middle of their speech, especially when they’re the President, is simply part of being raised properly.

There’s a significant group that has discovered you can make fistfuls of cash by marketing outrage as a from of entertainment (read: Fox “News”).  These people, for the sake of padding their bank accounts, have chosen to identify themselves as Republicans and play on some very justified conservative disillusionment.  We should not make the mistake of believing that they have they best interest of this country at heart, and we certainly should not copy their behavior and bring it to our nation’s capital.

If the current health care plan passes it will have a significant negative impact, especially in the area of health care innovation.  We should not, however, make the mistake of believing that the significant portion of the country that is passionately advocating such are proposal is doing so in anything other than good faith.

I’ll close with a quote by C. S. Lewis from Mere Christianity:

Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils.

The health care debate has been just horrible, with both sides playing to the lowest common denominator, and making all sorts of bad-faith accusations against the other side.  Megan McArdle says it quite well:

I’m sad that libertarians and conservatives are casting this as some sort of massive conspiracy of power-mad idiots, when there’s obviously a very large left-wing policy apparatus built up around health care that knows a thing or two, and virtually all of the progressives advocating this are for it because they are worried about people who can’t get basic health care.  I’m sad that liberals are casting their opposition as being mostly about racism and hatred of the poor.

In all of this, I find myself upset the most by what’s coming out of the Republican camp.  Part of that is because I think Keith Olbermann notwithstanding, there’s really no left wing equivalent to guys like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Bill O’Reily.  The bigger part, however, is because this is my team.  When the other guys act like jackasses, I think to myself “that’s why I’m not on their team.”  When major figures from the party I identify with attempt to advance their cause primarily through intellectual dishonesty, I start to get a little upset.  And worried.

This, a survey sent out by the Washington State Republican Party, pretty much sums up my point.

A survey sent out by the Washington State Republican Party.

Here’s a question to my fellow conservatives:  why is this ok?  Why do we tolerate members of our own party distributing this swill?  It’s time for a little self-policing, or the electorate will do the policing for us.  “Because we lie to your face” is not a good answer to the “why should I elect you?” question.