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.
We all know that there are Americans out there who want health insurance, but simply can’t afford it. How big is this problem? From Daylight’s Mark via McArdle comes the argument that the problem is not as big as we think:
On the 47 million people without health insurance point, that too is a statistic where there is less than meets the eye. … Of that 47 million, 14 million are already eligible for existing programs (Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, SCHIP) yet have not enrolled, 9.7 million are not citizens, 9.1 million have household incomes over $75,000 and could but choose not to purchase insurance, and somewhere between 3 and 5 million are uninsured briefly(<2 months) between jobs. That leaves about 10 million Americans who are chronically without insurance. Needless to say, extending the blanket of coverage to this group should not cost $1.5 trillion and require a wholesale overhaul of all of medicine.
The post is worth reading in its entirity for his thoughtful approach to the entire healthcare question, especially the discussion of what is a right vs an earned priviledge and the fact that Americans do, overall, pay more for health care.
Fast on the heals of President Obama’s relations-thawing trip to Russia came this startling statement from the Vice President:
The reality is the Russians are where they are. They have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years, they’re in a situation where the world is changing before them and they’re clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable.
Now don’t get me wrong: the Russians continue to be dangerous. Russia is one of the few countries in the world where officials will lie to your face, telling you stories that are demonstrably false. As the Economist pointed out a few months ago, the US looms much larger in the Russian mind than vice versa. As such, the Russians often play a zero sum game where it seems that in order for them to feel like they’ve won, you have to loose.
All that being said, President Obama has just expended considerable political capital on thawing relations with the Russians and trying to bring them on board with several initials that are in our national interest. For the Vice President to sharply undercut this hard works so quickly seems… at the very least a little strange. But then the Vice President is notorious for making, shall we say, “inopportune” remarks.
Not every truth needs to be aired publicly, especially when you’re an elected official.
I’ve been following with great interest the recent goings-on in Iran because I see it as one of the most hopeful major events in recent memory. Here we have a country whose government is the number one state sponsor of terror, whose president denies the Holocaust while vaguely threatening to unleash one on Israel, and the people of this country have finally indicated that they’ve had enough and are ready to toss the government on onto the street.
The cable networks were extremely slow to pick up this story — I guess the fall of the regime that is the No1 state sponsor of terror was simply less important than who broke up with who in Hollywood. In any case, the best reporting on this — that I can find — is being done by Andrew Sullivan. Most of the time I strongly disagree with his politics, but here he is doing a great job of aggregating information from all over to give you a picture of what’s going on.
Recently the New York Times ran a headline that said Iran Leader’s Warning Puts More Pressure on Obama (hopefully they’ve changed the headline by the time you click through). Now folks, my response to this is WTF. What can the president of the United States, a country known within Iran as The Great Satan, possibly say to make this situation better? Are we going to send in troops? No. Would Obama throwing his support behind the opposition leader destroy Mousavi and allow Khamenei and Amadinajab to paint him as an American stooge? Yes.
Image if, after Bush v. Gore, protestors has taken to the streets. Now imagine you read a French newspaper whose lead headline reads “Protests Put Pressure on Chirac to Intervene.” Wouldn’t you be thinking WTF how is this any of their business? Of course you would. And if we interject ourselves into the Iranian debate, the folks in Iran will be thinking the exact same thing.
The journalists who are bringing to the world, at risk to their own life, details of the events occuring are doing great work. They should keep up their efforts. For the government of the United States to interject itself, however, is entirely inappropriate. When it comes to someone else’s election, we are simpy not center of the world.
Traffic tickets are always irritating, especially now that they’re so expensive. For those inclined to fight their ticket, here’s an excellent free website for fighting California traffic tickets. They have a very easy to follow tutorial that gives you all the documents you need. Another good site can be found here.
I recently received a speeding ticket while heading southbound on I-5 to go to Disneyland in Anaheim. As I get time I’ll post status information on my case as well as copies of the documents I use in fighting this.
Richard Posner, a Reagan judicial appointee, writes:
My theme is the intellectual decline of conservatism, and it is notable that the policies of the new conservatism are powered largely by emotion and religion and have for the most part weak intellectual groundings. That the policies are weak in conception, have largely failed in execution, and are political flops is therefore unsurprising. The major blows to conservatism, culminating in the election and programs of Obama, have been fourfold: the failure of military force to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives; the inanity of trying to substitute will for intellect, as in the denial of global warming, the use of religious criteria in the selection of public officials, the neglect of management and expertise in government; a continued preoccupation with abortion; and fiscal incontinence in the form of massive budget deficits, the Medicare drug plan, excessive foreign borrowing, and asset-price inflation.
By the fall of 2008, the face of the Republican Party had become Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber. Conservative intellectuals had no party.
Among the various gyrations of the Republican party over the past couple of years, and the past election in particular, the populist, anti-elitism worries me the most. The task of governing is a difficult one, one that requires a level of mental acuity that much of the Republican party seems to despite. Unfortunately, the majority of unsolved problems are unsolved because they are difficult and do not easily lend themselves to simple solutions that can be explained in a 30 second rant on talk radio.
However, I do feel the need to copy Stephen Bainbridge here in noting that religious discourse is not inherently anti-intellectual. Faith provides, for many of us, an underpinning of beliefs and ideals. That does not necessary mean we are anti-intellectual. I think Posner is simply seeking an easy target in explaining the right’s anti-intellectualism. Certainly the anti-evolution movement has led to some residual distrust in conservatives of science in general, but it shouldn’t. You should be able to say “I disagree with your conclusion in this matter, but the scientific method as a whole is sound.” The more damaging anti-intellectualism has come from the conservative media populists, who in seeking to expand and amuse their viewership, have dumbed the debate down and sought to market outrage and anger as a form of entertainment.