REMEMBERING when Compact Disks were the future.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on Kitchen Knives & Cutlery.

AND YOU THOUGHT THE GUY IN THE TUB WAS A WASTREL: Veterans Department Inspector-General pretty much ran the table in scathing report pointing out ways VA officials wasted tax dollars at the two “Patton parody” conferences: $16,500 for “Happy Face” videos of bureaucrats doing karaoke, $184,000 for breakfast sandwiches for bureaucrats being reimbursed for meals, $20,000 for bottles of water, and on and on and on and ….

THE NEW LEFT FASCISTS: At PJM, Robert Spencer writes:

This contempt for the freedom of speech is rapidly becoming commonplace on the Left. Washington Square News is the student newspaper of New York University, but it is editorially and financially independent from the university, and has a circulation of about 60,000 in lower Manhattan — one of the nation’s foremost epicenters of the far Left. An indication of how quickly the restriction of the freedom of speech has become a fashionable opinion among the Leftist intelligentsia at universities and elsewhere came last Wednesday, when the News ran a piece calling for restrictions on the First Amendment.

“It is difficult now to imagine a modern university intellectual saying something as simple and unequivocal as ‘I disagree with what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it,’’ Theodore Dalrymple writes. He would be more likely to think, if not actually to say out loud or in public, ‘I disagree with what you say and therefore rationalise to the death my right to suppress it.’”

Of course, in that regard, it’s not like they’re that much different than the old left fascists.

RELATED: John Hinderaker of Power Line wonders what Obama’s optics and creepy cult of personality says about his policies and the worldview of his followers.

READER KEVIN MANLEY SENDS THIS ON Ted Sturgeon and the generosity of Robert Heinlein.

Only idiots — which is to say the vast majority of the press and a smaller, but still significant number of the electorate — think that a belief in self-reliance forecloses a spirit of generosity.

Meanwhile, with the election looming, it’s worth revisiting this Heinlein quote:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

Or as some would say: “You didn’t build that.”

UPDATE: Several readers note Heinlein’s generosity to Philip K. Dick:

Several years ago, when I was ill, Heinlein offered his help, anything he could do, and we had never met; he would phone me to cheer me up and see how I was doing. He wanted to buy me an electric typewriter, God bless him—one of the few true gentlemen in this world. I don’t agree with any ideas he puts forth in his writing, but that is neither here nor there. One time when I owed the IRS a lot of money and couldn’t raise it, Heinlein loaned the money to me. I think a great deal of him and his wife; I dedicated a book to them in appreciation. Robert Heinlein is a fine-looking man, very impressive and very military in stance; you can tell he has a military background, even to the haircut. He knows I’m a flipped-out freak and still he helped me and my wife when we were in trouble. That is the best in humanity, there; that is who and what I love.

As I said, the notion that a belief in self-reliance cannot coexist with a spirit of generosity is crap. In fact, one is far less likely to find a spirit of generosity among the advocates of governmentally-required “compassion.”

STOP LYING, MR. PRESIDENT:  NJ Governor Chris Christie shocks This Week’s host George Stephanopoulos by saying that, if Christie were debating the President, he would tell him, “Stop lying, Mr. President.”  If only Mitt Romney had similar chutzpah. It’s kind of like dating:  There’s something about a bad boy unafraid to tell it like it is.  Nice guys– like Romney–don’t get any (votes, that is).

SUBJECT TO TERMINATION: Foreigners who offer rewards for killing Americans. #Reynolds2016.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Youth Misery Index Hits Record High. “The ‘Youth Misery Index’ that combines unemployment, student loan debt and national debt to determine how bad off younger voters are has reached a record high.”

HISTORY, and the obsession with “Race, Class, and Gender.” “Race and gender are, obviously, important themes in U.S. history. But are they of such importance that they should dominate to this extent the Americanist wing one of the nation’s major departments? And is Michigan fulfilling its mission of preparing future citizens by offering such a limited view of the nation’s past?”

If by “preparing,” you mean “indoctrinating,” well sure.

FEDERAL LAW? WHAT FEDERAL LAW?

SEEN ON FACEBOOK:

INSTA-CHICKEN: Reader John Andrews writes:

On 1/14/2004 you posted a recipe for cooking a whole chicken. I cooked it and remember it was excellent. Unfortunately I failed to write it down. However I tracked it down in your archives. It seemed timeless and I thought you might be interested in re-posting it again for the benefit of your newer readers.

Okay. Here it is. And here’s my recipe for Lamb & Guinness Stew.

Also, a quick recipe for Pasta with Tomato, Basil and Chevre sauce. We don’t eat a lot of pasta these days, but this one is good.

Meanwhile, I noticed this interesting recipe book. Satisfyingly humble.

A BELIEVER IN THE RED UTOPIA TO THE VERY END: British historian Eric Hobsbawm died on Sunday at age 95. As Michael Moynihan wrote last year in the Wall Street Journal, “It’s not that he didn’t know what was going on in the dank basements of the Lubyanka and on the frozen steppes of Siberia. It’s that he didn’t much care:”

One wouldn’t know it from “How to Change the World,” but Mr. Hobsbawm wasn’t always convinced that the Soviet Union, along with its puppets and imitators, was misunderstanding the essence of Marxism. He never relinquished his membership in the Communist Party, even after Moscow’s invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Indeed, he began his writing career with a co-authored pamphlet defending the indefensible Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939. “To this day,” he writes in his memoirs, “I notice myself treating the memory and tradition of the USSR with an indulgence and tenderness.” There was some ugliness in the socialist states occupied by Moscow, he admitted in 2002, but “leaving aside the victims of the Berlin Wall,” East Germany was a pleasant place to live. Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

In a now infamous 1994 interview with journalist Michael Ignatieff, the historian was asked if the murder of “15, 20 million people might have been justified” in establishing a Marxist paradise. “Yes,” Mr. Hobsbawm replied. Asked the same question the following year, he reiterated his support for the “sacrifice of millions of lives” in pursuit of a vague egalitarianism. That such comments caused surprise is itself surprising; Mr. Hobsbawm’s lifelong commitment to the Party testified to his approval of the Soviet experience, whatever its crimes. It’s not that he didn’t know what was going on in the dank basements of the Lubyanka and on the frozen steppes of Siberia. It’s that he didn’t much care.

And he’s far from alone among left-wing intellectuals in preferring the comfort of intellectual abstractions, no matter how repellant they work out in real life.

(Via The Brothers Judd.)

WHAT ROMNEY SHOULD DISCUSS IN THE DEBATE.

CHANGE: China slides faster into pensions black hole.

Guo, though, is fortunate because he also has the financial support of six children. But for younger and future generations of retirees, China’s traditional family safety net is disappearing, replaced by state-backed pension schemes tailored for a graying society.

Policy makers and economists have long been worried about the financial burden of China’s expanding patchwork of pension schemes, but those concerns have recently escalated as its rural pension scheme took off in the past three years.

The funding shortage is daunting: economists say it could blow out to a whopping $10.8 trillion in the next 20 years from $2.6 trillion in 2010, towering over China’s $3 trillion onshore savings, the biggest hoard of domestic savings in the world.

Time is not on China’s side. Its fast-maturing society and economy — thanks to a one-child policy and a rapid rise in living standards — demand better pension coverage in future.

Yet China is already straining to hold things up.

It’s not going to get easier.

SUCH A SOFTIE (ON TERRORISM, THAT IS):  Retired Navy commander J.D. Gordon has a great op-ed n the Washington Times discussing the Obama Administration’s decision to release from Gitmo Canadian terrorist Omar Khadr back to Canada. Khadr was almost 16 years old when he threw a grenade that killed Army Sargeant Christopher Speer.  Khadr pleaded guilty of war crimes and received an eight-year sentence. He’ll be eligible for parole next year.

As Gordon points out, Khadr is no ordinary Gitmo terrorist:

The latest detainee to leave, Mr. Khadr, is a Canadian citizen of Egyptian-Palestinian descent who hails from Canada’s notorious “first family of terrorism.”

His father, Ahmed Khadr, was one of Osama Bin Laden’s top financiers in Afghanistan and Pakistan, using a network of boys’ orphanages as a charity front. His brothers and sisters also grew up into al Qaeda, raised with bin Laden’s kids at an ultra-secure terrorist compound outside Kandahar prior to Sept. 11.

IT’S GETTING HARDER TO TELL: the difference between satire and reality

PICADOR STRATEGY UPDATE: Krauthammer: Obama’s Debate Weakness Is His Thin Skin.

THE DISCONTENTS OF CENTRAL PLANNING: Perhaps people shouldn’t all be encouraged to vacation the same week?  Nah.  That’s crazy talk!

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE: 2000 Deaths In Afghanistan: Some Of Us Care.

AIRCRAFT CARRIERS in space.

A NEW BLOG: Everything Questioned.

OBAMA CAMPAIGN: DON’T THROW ME IN THAT BRIAR PATCH!:  The briar patch being the first debate.  Yep, that’s right:  Obama campaign deputy manager Stephanie Cutter says, “[W]e’re coming into this debate very realistic that Mitt Romney is likely to win if he plays his cards right. If he performs and fills in those details and has that [conversation] with the American people, instead of having, you know, a punching match and just leveling insults at the President like he’s done over the past two years. If he fills in his policy details, talks in specifics about his plans for the future he could win this debate.”

Can you say “spin”?  And yeah, that’s exactly what the Obama folks  want:  A wonky Mitt Romney getting stuck in the briar patch of policy details.  My advice to Romney?  The opposite:  Come out punching– insults aren’t necessary; just facts such as:

1.  A complete inability/unwillingness to own up to the threat of the “t” word– terrorism.  And a concomitant failed Obama Doctrine foreign policy. Cite Libya/Egypt/Tunisia et al.; the failed preference to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in ordinary criminal court; refusing to label the Ft. Hood shooting an act of terrorism.

2.  A complete disconnect with the desires of the American public re: health care reform.  Obamacare does zero to reduce costs (in fact, as my recent post revealed, costs are going up) or expand the number of providers, while simultaneously forcing tens of millions of uninsured and employers to buy expensive health insurance policies they can’t afford already.  The American people don’t want this “reform”– never have, never will.  And no, Mr. President, they will not learn to like it once its devastating effects kick in beginning 2014.   The President’s “signature” legislative accomplishment is, in short, an utter disaster.

3.  A dangerous policy of downplaying the Iranian nuclear threat at the expense of Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East and one of America’s closest (and most important) allies.

4.  An utter disregard for the Constitution, as evidenced by executive orders that completely undercut the legislative branch— e.g., deciding not to deport certain young persons here illegally; gutting the work requirements of welfare reform; ignoring the testing and monitoring requirements of No Child Left Behind.

5. A completely failing economy, by any measure you prefer– jobs, GDP, median household income, deficits, downgraded credit rating, etc.  It is the worst economy virtually anyone alive can remember.  Four more years of this????

These are just a few starting talking points, of course.  I’m sure my co-bloggers and the Instapundit readers can think of many more.

FASTER PLEASE: FDA Panel Says Yes To Implanted Eye Device

IT’S ALL THOSE PEOPLE UNDER THE BUS: Wheels come off Obama’s Libya dissembling