On this Christmas Day I come bearing the gift of Cuteness! If this little video doesn’t help put you in the Holiday Spirit, I just don’t know what can.
And just for fun for the nerdier amongst my readership, here’s a theoretical astrophysicist with the scientific background of Lillian’s story.
Merry Christmas and a wondrous New Year to all my wonderful friends and family – I’m so blessed to have you all in my life. Thank you and God bless to everyone of every political (and non-political) stripe who makes me think, who teach me new things every day, and who make life so wonderful and interesting. And thanks to all the people who have to work today – police, military folks both here and abroad, the folks at CVS who saved a Christmas dinner of mine when I ran out of butter a few years ago, and everyone else who makes America worth living in.
This is a funny little lesson on getting one’s facts straight.
Today, I noticed that Chuck Muth had written a blog post about me, one which is just a straight up, flat out, verifiable flasehood. There’s no other word for it. I understand he’s upset with me for exposing his Republican-harming unethical conduct in the past, but that’s no reason to get all libelous. When you write about politics with some angry, personal grudge, your blinders will be on and you’re going to trip over your own feet. Such was the case with Muth today.
Mitt Romney has always been my default candidate in this race. He’s acceptable, good enough, has some points about him I really like, could beat Obama, and ultimately would be a vastly better President than the current one. And his resume is full of taking economically failing institutions and slashing their waste until they’re successful and profitable again – is there a better job description for POTUS in this election?
But he’s only the default. I’m still looking. I’d like to see if we can do better. And the reason is stuff like this is:
Requiring people to have health insurance is “conservative,” GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney told MSNBC on Wednesday, but only if states do it. [***]
“Personal responsibility,” Romney said, “is more conservative in my view than something being given out for free by government.”
“There were two options in my state,” he said. “One was to continue to allow people without insurance to go to the hospital and get free care, paid for by the government, paid for by taxpayers.”
“The best idea is to let each state craft their own solution because that’s, after all, the heart of conservatism: to follow the Constitution,” he said.
Ugh. This is the problem with Romney – it’s not that he’s “too moderate,” it’s that he just doesn’t seem to have a clear or accurate sense of his own claimed philosophy.
THIS is who Kim Jong Il was. People who do this to children are evil, not "mercurial," and they do not deserve the benefit of having their own talking points repeated uncritically by western media. Shame on the AP. Shame.
PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s mercurial and enigmatic longtime leader, has died of heart failure. He was 69.
“Mercurial”? “Enigmatic”? Are you frickin’ kidding me? How about “evil”? How about “crazy”? How about “murderous” or “terrorist sponsor” or “nuclear arms dealer to the Taliban/Iran/various & sundry Baddies”?
This AP article truly is one of the most reprehensible pieces of morally relativistic garbage ever to grace the interwebs. From the article we know all about how Kim Jong Il loved cognac and cigars. We hear all about how official state media is in mourning, and people are officially crying over his death. We read nothing about the legacy of one of the most evil men ever to inhabit the planet in the last century (and he’s got some mighty accomplished company in that regard).
I understand the desire to not speak ill of the dead, or to not revel in the end of a human life. But when we can’t celebrate (yes, celebrate, damnit) the end of such a horrific figure, then we have lost a very necessary sense of perspective as a culture – a loss which has very little good to say about our own future.
Ignoring judges was never all that popular in this country, and shouldn't be now.
I missed last Thursday’s debate where Newt Gingrich and Michelle Bachmann took aim at the Supreme Court, and indeed, the Federal Judiciary generally. But since then Newt has kept at it, and his answers make me incredibly nervous.
The principle of limited government means that government must be strictly limited – even if you like what the government (or the people currently in charge) would do with unlimited power.
Additionally, any stable and free government requires predictable rules and institutions. Liberty is not safe in a state of anarchy, but neither can it exist where powerful political figures can simply create, ignore, or “interpret” laws to mean whatever happens to be convenient at the time.
To be sure, the federal courts often get accused of doing exactly this, and often those accusations are even deserved. But Newt’s “solutions” to this real problem ignore the above principles, and would in the end be much, much worse than the status quo.
I’m very excited to announce that my quiet little corner of the Blogosphere is about to get a little less quiet. A new, national site called Politics in Stereo has just launched – the idea is to have a state-by-state lineup of various local points of view, and I’m very proud to have been asked to contribute. I’m especially excited because the other contributors so far include Nevada Blogging Bigs Steve Sebelius from Slash Politics, Hugh Jackson of the Las Vegas Gleaner, the inimitable Jon Ralston of, well, the whole of Nevada media, I think (but mostly the Las Vegas Sun), and my good friend Elizabeth Crum, who (among many other projects) has just re-launched her own blog, simply and aptly named E!!.
They even gave me this sweet badge!
I don’t always agree with these folks, obviously, but then, that’s the point. As always, I believe that the forge of rigorous debate strengthens good ideas, breaks apart bad ones, and makes this a better state and a better country.
"No thanks, I have enough supporters. I don't need all you Republicans. Or conservatives. Nope, don't need you Nevadans, either. Got any more Huffington Post bloggers for me, though?"
I feel like I’ve spent a lot of time lately on this blog complaining about the politics of subtraction practiced by the more (allegedly) rightward wing of the party. But it’s worth looking at the perils of subtracting from the other side of the equation, too.
A few of my more moderate Republican friends lament that Jon Huntsman hasn’t gained more traction, because only he, they argue, can pry all those in the center away from Obama. A few have even implied that he’s the only Republican they’d vote for over Obama. A few have somberly suggested he’s the only “adult in the room.”
But Huntsman doesn’t stand a chance, especially in Nevada, and it doesn’t have anything to do with where he sits on the political spectrum. Instead it’s a self-created and unsolvable math problem – Huntsman played the politics of subtraction, and he will lose on account of it.
That's it - I'm going to change my name to Jean Claude Van Damm and hang my own shingle...
I don’t understand why the following concept is difficult to understand: If you are are working for or with a particular candidate, and then you write and publish an opinion piece lovin’ on that candidate or hatin’ on his or her opponent, you must disclose that relationship if you want to maintain any credibility whatsoever.
Chuck Muth has inserted himself in yet another Republican primary race, this time a rural Senate seat, and again he’s publishing hit pieces on one of the candidates without disclosing a past or current consulting relationship with the other candidate. (It’s been widely reported that Muth has long done consulting work for Ed Goedhart, and Muth’s Citizen Outreach CEO Dan Burdish apparently worked out of Goedhart’s office at the Legislative building in Carson City while the Assembly was in session.)
Today, of course, is the 70th Anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Last year, the Reno Gazette-Journal carried a rather odd editorial (sadly, it doesn’t appear to be archived) which I thought painted a pretty inaccurate picture of what Pearl Harbor is like today. The editorial essentially argued that the attack had been forgotten, and the Navy had all but passed Pearl Harbor by. Update: The RGJ published almost the same piece again this morning – here’s the relevant passage:
Few reminders remain of the devastation of that day in 1941. The great battleships are gone to mothballs or scrap. The bustle of the modern naval base is elsewhere. There’s little activity — just the tourists (by some accounts, as many as half are Japanese) who have come to pay their respects to those who, in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s words, died on that “date which will live in infamy.”
I wrote a response of sorts at the time, sharing some pictures that I took when I was stationed there in December 1999 with some friends and co-workers. Unfortunately I was having some technical problems with my blog at the time, so I didn’t get to post it then, but I thought it would be worth sharing here now.
To get to the memorial, you have to take a small boat. In front of the memorial above the waterline is one of the mounts for one of her aft 14 inch gun turrets. (14 inches is the bore, not the length – BIG bullets!) Pearl Harbor isn’t actually that deep – only about 45 feet – so you can still see a lot of the ship’s remains from the memorial itself. Behind the memorial is the USS Missouri, which was moored there in the late 90’s as part of the whole memorial complex.
Jon Ralston wrote a fascinating column this weekend arguing for reforms to the Legislature that were inspired in part by NPRI’s recent lawsuit arguing that state employees cannot legally serve in the State Assembly or Senate. Primary among Ralston’s complaints is the part-time nature of the Legislature itself. He argues:
But the worst and most debilitating feature of the Legislature is that it is part-time, so conflicts, whether with public or private sector employment, are guaranteed. Critics often miss just how cancerous this can be to public policymaking, not just because lawmakers have to serve two masters but because lobbyists exploit the conflicts to skew votes or sully recalcitrant lawmakers in the media.
Ralston’s solution to this is to make being a legislator a full-time job, so conflicts are eliminated.
I admit that when I first heard about this lawsuit, I had a very similar thought. Ralston isn’t wrong when he identifies the methods of corruption in our current system. And there are other things he identifies that should be supported whole heartedly, like greater transparency in political donations.
But the problem is that his primary “solution” only addresses the “hows” of graft and conflict – the reasons we have so much corruption in politics thee days in the first place are far more fundamental. [Read more →]
"I'm just a Conservative. Your modern profligate and hedonistic ways frighten and confuse me. But I do know this. A federal law that claims it has the power to make every American eat his or her broccoli - and therefore respects no limit to government power at all - is clearly Unconstitutional."
Bruce Feher shared a post today accusing the Democrats of being “The Lawyer’s Party.” That’s not necessarily wrong, and there is much to criticize in a litigious and over-regulated society. But the post goes further and attacks the profession generally. While even I appreciate a good lawyer joke (and believe me, I’ve heard them all), I think the post rather misses the mark here, and repeats a mistake Republicans have been making for years – at the expense of Conservatism itself.
The problem isn’t too many lawyers in government, it’s that there are too many LIBERAL lawyers.
Republicans ignored the critical nature of the legal system, and by extension the Judiciary, for far too long. To a large extent, they still do. And what happens when you have otherwise solid Republicans ignorant of the importance of a strong conservative judiciary? [Read more →]
Thomas Sowell has a great column on this topic that’s very worth reading, especially here in Nevada where various elections have been (quite wrongly, in my view) analyzed based on whether a candidate was “too conservative” or not.
Senator Goldwater was not crazy enough to start a nuclear war. But the way he talked sometimes made it seem as if he were. Ronald Reagan would later be elected and re-elected taking positions essentially the same as those on which Barry Goldwater lost big time. Reagan was simply a lot better at articulating his beliefs.
OK – it’s really the “Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada”. But while their acronym is catchier and far less awkward (oh, thesaurus, you totally left me hangin’), mine is much more accurate.
Criticizes attempts to clean up after themselves or others as “weak”;
Acknowledges the participants of the movement are parasites;
Calls upon the Occupiers to be MORE parasitic; and
Calls lawmakers racists (as well as “cruel” and “inhumane”!) if they didn’t vote for watering down high school graduation requirements. (Oh, wait, that was another ridiculous proclamation from PLAN. It’s hard to keep them straight.)
"You see Mr. Bond, not only did I just tell YOU my secret yet highly ridiculous and improbable evil plan before I walk away allowing you to escape, but I'm going to post it on line! Mwoohahaha!" Say - come to think of it, S.P.E.C.T.R.E. had a cool acronym, too... Hmmmm...
In a word, no. That doesn’t mean he was correct – he wasn’t. But it’s fair to contemplate how the actions of our government officials – and their stewardship of public money – affect our everyday lives.
Last week, while the Caughlin Fire(s) were still raging all over Reno, before a cause of the fire had even been determined, and while thousands of people had no idea if they’d have a kitchen to make Thanksgiving dinner in or not, Harry Reid just couldn’t resist the chance for cheap political snark on the floor of the Senate, saying,
“Mr. President, it is times such as this we understand what happens to local governments when they have to lay off people–firefighters, police officers. It has happened all over Nevada and all over this country.”
Making such a statement at such a time is insensitive and classless – even Harry Reid didn’t feel compelled to include that portion of his remarks on his website where he otherwise brags about mentioning the fire (although to be fair, it is in the video portion).
“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
– C. S. Lewis
Last week I got my copy of the University of Washington School of Law’s alumni magazine, a 66 page full color publication which asks for donations to the school, presumably so they can afford to keep sending out 66 page full color alumni magazines on a regular basis.
What always catches my attention when I get one of these, though, is my alma mater’s new mission statement:
“Leaders for the Global Common Good”
I frankly find it creepy. More than that, though, it illustrates a rather disturbing disconnect between America’s founding legal philosophy and what is taught in modern law schools. [Read more →]
To all my friends not in Reno who are worried, we’re OK and hopefully far enough from the conflagration that there’s no need to worry. For everyone else, please say a prayer for our friends and neighbors who are less lucky, and if you can, help out those who are going to need it in the next few weeks. Thanks for everyone who has already told us they’re keeping our city in their thoughts and prayers.
My last post on activist/blogger Chuck Muth’s unethical and likely illegal participation in a political campaign sparked a response from Mr. Muth that’s worth commenting on for a couple of reasons – not the least of which is the spectacle of someone incriminating themselves so profoundly. [Read more →]
