ANOTHER ANTI-MALE STEREOTYPE EXPLODED: Checking out the competition: Women spend more time ogling other females than their male partners do. “University researchers discovered that while men stare at the faces of people in photographs and fine art paintings, women are more interested in looking at their breasts.”
Well, duh.
READER BOOK PLUG: Reader Dee Simon requests a plug for a memoir, Play Something Dancy: The Tragic Tales of a Strip Club DJ. The cover is well-designed to arouse reader interest. . . .
THE LOST ART OF HANDWRITING: Is it worth saving?
OUT: ELVIS SIGHTINGS. In: Romney Sightings.
DAVID BERNSTEIN: Whitewashing The Early 20th Century Progressives. As with Jefferson, the important thing is to rewrite history so as to justify what our political class wants to do now.
HOW BOBBY JINDAL GOT HIS MOJO BACK. “And the former Rhodes Scholar has Rick Perry to thank for it all.”
My advice to Jindal: If you want to run, consult this Texan, too. It’ll help the image.
SEEN ON FACEBOOK:
UPDATE: The truth about Costas, Belcher and guns. “Whether people like Costas like it or not the facts speak for themselves: Murder rates consistently rise when guns are banned. This is not just a US phenomenon in places such as Washington, DC and Chicago, but has been observed worldwide. When guns are banned, even in island nations such as the UK, Ireland, and Jamaica, the pattern has been the same. The problem is that gun bans disarm law-abiding good people, not criminals. With disarmed victims, crime is easier to commit.”
Costas wants you to be weaker. It makes him feel stronger. Probably compensating for something . . . .
MORE: Costas taking the Olbermann route? That didn’t work out so well for Keith.
FROM DANIEL DREZNER, a helpful Syria intelligence decoder.
GOOD IDEA: Fed up with ‘fiscal cliff’ BS? Bring on C-SPAN. “As long as the talks continue behind closed doors, none of the professional Washington politicians in either party have any incentive to stop the PR maneuvering for political advantage. They know nobody can verify who is negotiating seriously and who is just talking. The game-changer is putting the talks on C-SPAN so it will be obvious for everybody what is really happening.”
Yes. Some of that promised transparency, please? Plus: “Here’s another question worth thinking about – Why aren’t the New York Times, ABC News, the Washington Post and the rest of the major media outlets clamoring for C-SPAN cameras? Could the answer be that their coverage of the fiscal cliff negotiations also thrives on those talks happening behind closed doors?” It’s as if they’re not actually interested in telling the public what’s happening.
PAUL RAHE: The Deepest Source Of Our Troubles.
KATRINA ON THE HUDSON: In FEMA’s Coils.
IN THE MAIL: From Ryk E. Spoor, Phoenix Rising.
NOT IF THEY’RE SMART. SO YES, PROBABLY. Roger Simon: Will the GOP Let the MSM Back for the Primary Debates of 2016?
DR. HOUSING BUBBLE: Is the middle class dream an illusion for Californians? What we can learn from domestic and foreign migration patterns. “Nationwide the typical family makes around $50,000 and in California it is roughly $54,000. Yet home prices are much more expensive in the state. I think what you are seeing is really the bifurcation of the state. That is, you have a high income subsection fighting for certain cities (with no new housing development) and a growing number of lower income Californians in areas that are seeing very challenging economic times.”
Funny how you often see this sort of bifurcation in areas run by liberal Democrats who spend a lot of time talking about equality.
WHY IPHONES are no longer cool in China. “Less than two years ago, wealthy Chinese consumers loved Apple. But they are a fickle bunch, always looking for the latest cool brand to add to their collection. That used to be the sweet spot the iPhone inhabited. Now, Samsung sits there. And at the lower end, consumers are too price conscious for iPhones.”
DAVID POST: “Maybe Lincoln didn’t understand what was going on as well as Paul Finkelman now does, but I regard that as unlikely.” Having read the work of both men, I agree.
The attack on Jefferson, engaged in by those who are his intellectual and moral inferiors, is part of a project to unmoor the Constitution from the Founders. The idea is that some sort of abstract Constitution, as a brooding omnipresence in the sky, can be used to justify all sorts of projects — but only if it’s separated from what it was actually meant to do. But why should anyone defer to an abstract Constitution that turns out to just be a source of Divine Right for whatever interpretation legal scholars of a certain political persuasion choose to put on it now?
UPDATE: Prof. Stephen Clark writes:
The criticism of Jeffersonian ideals versus the reality of Monticello is ironic, isn’t it? Here are people who brush away the clash as if it were nothing: something which they would have easily resolved in Jefferson’s place. Many of these are the same people who apparently see nothing wrong with enslaving those too young to vote, or those not yet born, with a crushing debt burden bought to salve the consciences or provide for the comfort of those who would condemn Jefferson.
On the other hand, reader John Vecchione writes:
I took some umbrage at your attack on the attack on Jefferson. I have always thought that he was the original “coach and four” (limosine) liberal. As a graduate of Hamilton College I’m acutely aware there is a long, distinguished, and constitutional anti-Jefferson cabal in this country. Compare him to Washington or Marshal the Federalist slave owners of Virginia. Or even a John Randolf or George Mason. Dr. Johnson’s barb at those “bleating loudest about liberty” but owning slaves was directed right at him. Race aside, his understanding of finance, national debt and the like was the ruin of the South for 200 years.
I will say it Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine are my least favorite founders. Any one siding with the French Revolution over the guy who actually helped us in in Independece is right out in my book. The current anti-constitutionalists are precisely those who posit we should have had a French Revolution and not an American one. Jacobins all–and Jefferson too!
If the criticism of the “dead white male” founders were limited to Jefferson, this would be a stronger point.
AND IT’S CHEAP: Robert Heinlein’s Take Back Your Government is available from Baen as an eBook.
UNEXPECTEDLY: US Manufacturing Declines in November: ISM Index. “U.S. manufacturing unexpectedly contracted in November, falling to its lowest in over three years in a sign the sector may be struggling to gain traction, according to an industry report released on Monday.” Funny, there was no sign of this before the election. . . .
On the other hand, there’s this: Knoxville One Of Just Three U.S. Cities In Recovery From Recession.
HARRY REID ATTEMPTS AN inside straight for special interests.
THOUGHTS ON THE rampant discrimination in American Higher Education.
INTERESTED IN SPACE? Consider donating to Rand Simberg’s Kickstarter project. I’m down for a hundred bucks. He’s hit his goal, but he’s hoping to raise more so that he can properly publicize the project.
THE MEDIA NARRATIVE: “You dumb taxpayers have had it too easy for too long. Now cough it up!”
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