ANOTHER READER KINDLE BOOK: From reader Ellen Leland, Devil’s Trumpet.
Archive for 2012
April 14, 2012
WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS: The Brooks Brothers Blazer Chair.
A NEW TWITTER HASHTAG: #WarOnDistractions. Sample: “In the last month while the media was pursuing Trayvon, slutgate & Wars on Women, we ran up > $100 B in debt.”
Related thoughts here.
IN THE MAIL: Pandora’s Risk: Uncertainty at the Core of Finance.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: California State University may pull cash grants to half its grad students. “Graduate students across the 23-campus system began receiving financial aid notices this week and were astonished to see that the State University Grant that takes care of tuition for low-income students was missing. In its place was the offer of a federal loan at 6.8 percent interest.”
FINANCIAL-NEWS SHENANIGANS AT THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR? I kind of think this is about slowing down the transmission of bad economic news, but then I’ve become cynical of late. On the other hand: “Delays will make it more difficult for independent analysts to understand the new data and could give White House and DOL political appointees more time to blunt the impact of the negative news resulting from the data.”
WILL SOMEONE PLEASE BUY BACK THE VILLAGE VOICE?
It needs to be saved from its disastrous involvement in the adult-services advertising business. Perhaps more importantly, it needs to be saved from the “alternative press” culture at its Phoenix-based parent company, a culture that in a vacuum is noble and out in the world is broadly successful and even journalistically sound, but which doesn’t work for the city or for the Voice. . . .
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s January 25 column, “How Pimps Use the Web to Sell Girls,” established pretty convincingly that the erotic-services advertising website owned by Village Voice Media was used to promote prostitution, and often violent and usurious forms of the practice.
Kristof’s column came late in the game: Interest groups and nonprofits that fight sex trafficking had been complaining about Backpage.com for some time. But Kristof’s column became a sort of crusade for the paper, and it had legs.
Kristof subsequently investigated the ownership of Backpage.com, and when he began asking questions of Goldman Sachs about their ownership stake in Village Voice Media, they abruptly unloaded their $30 million, 16-percent share in the company.
Goldman’s shame had chiseled away one chunk of V.V.M.’s financial security.
Well, when they got rid of Nat Hentoff and replaced him with Roy Edroso, it was obvious that the transition to a sex-trafficking service owned by Goldman Sachs was just a matter of time . . . .
STEVEN GREENHUT: California’s Public Transportation Sinkhole. “Thanks to labor unions and big-government activists, transportation has become another form of social engineering.”
TODAY ONLY: More than 60% off on select Kershaw knives.
JAMES OBERG ON North Korea’s Launch Failure.
THE HILL: Obama Puts The Bully In Bully Pulpit.
LIFE ON MARS LOOKING MORE LIKELY?
I still hope there’s no life on Mars.
UPDATE: A great quote from Ray Bradbury.
WHY THEY’RE AFRAID of Ann Romney.
UPDATE: Related thoughts from Darleen Click.
IPSOS/REUTERS POLL: MAJORITY SUPPORT DEADLY FORCE FOR SELF-DEFENSE. And 68% have a favorable view of the NRA.
BOB ZUBRIN: The Population Control Holocaust. “There is a single ideological current running through a seemingly disparate collection of noxious modern political and scientific movements, ranging from militarism, imperialism, racism, xenophobia, and radical environmentalism, to socialism, Nazism, and totalitarian communism. This is the ideology of antihumanism: the belief that the human race is a horde of vermin whose unconstrained aspirations and appetites endanger the natural order, and that tyrannical measures are necessary to constrain humanity. . . . Its most pernicious manifestation in recent decades has been the doctrine of population control, famously advocated by ecologist Paul Ehrlich, whose bestselling 1968 antihumanist tract The Population Bomb has served as the bible of neo-Malthusianism. In this book, Ehrlich warned of overpopulation and advocated that the American government adopt stringent population control measures, both domestically and for the Third World countries that received American foreign aid. (Ehrlich, it should be noted, is the mentor of and frequent collaborator with John Holdren, President Obama’s science advisor.)”
You should check out his book, Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism.
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED REPUBLICAN, CRAZED PREACHERS WOULD BE CONDEMNING INTERRACIAL SEX — AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Farrakhan Tells Blacks — Breeding With Whites Is the ‘End of Your Race.’
Also, notice how Farrakhan is displaying that Jerry Falwell/Al Gore facial-bloat syndrome.
HISTORY: San Francisco’s Antique Vibrator Museum Creates A “Buzz.”
At least we’ve moved out of the Stone Age.
JIM TREACHER: Hey, remember Rielle Hunter? “With all the talk about stay-at-home moms right now, this story seems relevant. After all, Rielle Hunter stayed at home — well, a series of secretly rented mansions — and took care of her baby while the father was out there paying the bills.”
Plus this: “Just think: If liberals and the mainstream media (PTR) had succeeded in sweeping the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter story under the rug, right now he’d have a high-level position in the Obama administration. He’d be out there accusing Republicans of waging a War on Women. But they couldn’t keep a lid on the story, even though we weren’t supposed to talk about it out of respect for his late wife, who had cancer.”
JAMES TARANTO: Isn’t it romantic? Feminism’s latest triumph: Boys are afraid of girls.
There is good reason for males (men as well as boys) to be more fearful of sex than females. Contemporary reproductive technology and law place all the burden for unwanted pregnancy on them. Between the pill and abortion, women have complete control over the reproductive process. They can avoid or end any unwanted pregnancy, and the man involved has no say in the matter. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), the U.S. Supreme Court went so far as to hold that a married woman has the constitutional right to abort her husband’s child without even telling him.
A woman’s “reproductive rights” also include the right to carry a pregnancy to term. The crucial point here is that while the decision belongs entirely to her, in the event that a child is born the law assigns financial responsibility to the male involved. That is what the boy in her study means when he worries about being “screwed for the rest of my life.” Short of sterilization, the only way for a male to be sure of avoiding this fate is to abstain from sex.
Since most people agree that teenagers should abstain from sex anyway, isn’t the trend Schalet notes a healthy one? Not necessarily. After all, if adults abstain from sex too, mankind is doomed.
This is precisely the theme of the Insta-Wife’s forthcoming book.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Tax refunds being used to pay for bankruptcy filings. “More than 200,000 money-strapped households will use their tax refunds this year to pay for bankruptcy filing and legal fees, says a new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research.”
A MODEST PROPOSAL: Sheila Bair: Fix Income Inequality With $10 Million Loans For Everyone! “Under my plan, each American household could borrow $10 million from the Fed at zero interest. The more conservative among us can take that money and buy 10-year Treasury bonds. At the current 2 percent annual interest rate, we can pocket a nice $200,000 a year to live on. The more adventuresome can buy 10-year Greek debt at 21 percent, for an annual income of $2.1 million.”
It makes as much sense as what we’re doing now, which is the point.
April 13, 2012
SHOCKINGLY, JOHN EDWARDS WASN’T INVOLVED: Staffer claims sexual harassment by NC Dem official; Party fears credibility ‘doomed.’