God vs. Science isn't the point

... says this WSJ editorial. Because in practice even the most hard-core atheists will often act as believers when it comes to family. And I say, Thank God:

"Remember Peter Singer? Mr. Singer is the Princeton utilitarian who accepts scientism's view that human beings are not fundamentally different from animals, just more complex. In his thinking, those who cannot reason for themselves or have lost their self-awareness have no real claim to life. Yet when Alzheimer's struck his mother, he paid for care to prolong and sustain her life. The irony is that an act that does him credit as a son must discredit him among those whose principles about life he claims to share.

"To put it another way, while we talk about the clash between God and science, in practice it often comes down to disagreements about man and morals. The boundaries are not always neat. Many Americans who are indifferent to faith will confess they find themselves challenged as they try to raise good and decent children without the religious confidence their parents had. The result may not be a return to religion but a healthy agnosticism about agnosticism itself."

[emphasis mine]

"A healthy agnosticism about agnosticism itself." I've never heard it put that way. But I like it.

Should the goverment stop throwing money into a giant hole?

"I love the money fires."

David Tabb...

... remember that name. This serial robo-marketer is clearly operating outside the law here. I myself have received more than ten unsolicited calls.

Millions of Americans have gotten the call.

"This is the second notice that the factory warranty on your vehicle is about to expire," says the recorded voice at the other end of the line. Most people hang up. The machine calls again later.

Michael Silveira decided to strike back. The 22-year-old laboratory technician, who doesn't own a car, says he was getting unsolicited sales pitches as often as twice a day on his cellphone

Millions of Americans receive calls with pitches for extended auto warranties. Lawsuits are pending but one Internet community already took matters into their own hands, Geoffrey Fowler reports.

So last week, Mr. Silveira began calling back an auto-warranty company that has become the focus of an Internet crusade. He left it voice-mail messages that contained nothing but a recording of Rick Astley's 1987 hit song "Never Gonna Give You Up."

Using phone numbers for Auto One Warranty Specialists Inc. that users posted to a Web site called Reddit.com, Mr. Silveira joined dozens of activists who have peppered the warranty company with messages including elevator music, threats and offers of rude services.

"I thought, if you get a bunch of people together, you could blow up their voice-mail boxes," says Mr. Silveira.

The recipient of their efforts is David Tabb, the 42-year-old president of Auto One, an Irvine, Calif., warranty company with 60 employees. He says Reddit users overloaded his phone lines with computerized calls, changed voice-mail greetings on his company's system, and even threatened arson. People have been conspicuously honking outside his home, he says. To cope, he redirected some of the numbers that activists had been calling.

All of this happened, he says, with no evidence that his company had done anything wrong. "Ninety percent of the people complaining about my company have never been contacted by my company," he says. He hires third-party marketing firms to call consumers -- but says he pays a premium to ensure they call only people who have opted in to receiving solicitations. Many warranty calls come from so-called "ghost" phone numbers that make it nearly impossible to determine their origin. Mr. Silveira can't be certain Auto One is behind the calls he got, but he says he came to believe it was responsible for some of them after reading the Reddit postings.

Like most vigilantes, consumers who decide to take matters into their own hands with auto-warranty touts are in legally murky waters. Leaving harassing messages could be considered a threat, and might be prosecuted by authorities in some states.

[...]

All of this happened, [David Tabb] says, with no evidence that his company had done anything wrong. "Ninety percent of the people complaining about my company have never been contacted by my company," he says. He hires third-party marketing firms to call consumers -- but says he pays a premium to ensure they call only people who have opted in to receiving solicitations.

I'm calling shenanigans on Davie here. I didn't "opt in" for anything you have to sell. What I got was unwanted calls.

Michael Totten reports from Sadr City

I was there when it was still called Saddam City. It's great to see such progress.

“I can take you to a hookah bar and chai shop,” he continued, “where we've given them a grant and they made drastic improvements to the outside. That had a great impact because it showed what U.S. forces are willing to do for Iraqis. It's a cultural and social hub of this neighborhood. Many people see what we've done for them. We didn't just make an investment with one person, the business owner. There may be hundreds of local men in the area who go to this hookah shop every week, and we made an impact with all of them.”

Built to hold a million unwanted Iraqis, Sadr City is now the most modern neighborhood of Baghdad.

Animation of the Lambs

Beer Wars Live - April 16th

A premier screening of a new documentary film followed by a live chat with craft brewers and Ben Stein? I'm all sorts of stoked!

Ice Storm 2009

We were without power for 48 hours, and were lucky/well prepared so that it was a relatively minor inconvenience. My heart goes out to those who are still without power, and even more sorrow goes out to the families who lost loved one in the storm.

I've read on several blogs this week wondering why Kentucky hasn't been thrown in President Obama's face as his Katrina, or why his weak response hasn't been demonized in the press the way Bush's response to New Orleans was. And while I can understand the frustration over the all too obvious double standards of the MSM, these bloggers seem misguided to me. Jeff Taylor at Reason, however, hits all the right notes:

The reality is that even after the emergency management reforms allegedly implemented after Hurricane Katrina, help from far-off Washington still does little in times of fast-moving crisis. This view may be heresy in the age of federal bailouts, but it is still true.

To put the ice storm response in perspective, remember that it was not until the Clinton administration that the federal government was even expected to deal with winter storms. It took Clinton's shrewd Arkansas crowd to identify the political potential of turning states and localities into federal dependents via the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and related federal disaster assets. Soon enough state and local officials were petitioning Washington for any and all weather-related expenses. The result has been millions of dollars flowing out of Washington.

[...]

Natural disasters arbitrarily bring death and destruction. They act beyond the control of mortal man and his institutions, no matter how grand and well-intentioned those institutions may be. Furthermore, the iron law of all disasters is that it is nearly impossible to get aid quickly to people in need. Two corollaries flow from this reality. One, that it is always better to evacuate potential victims than to attempt to rescue certain victims. This, of course, is precisely what did not happen in New Orleans or in the path of the ice storm. Two, given that outside help will be unreliable at best, local ad hoc relief efforts are almost always more effective.

Enter David Strange, the enterprising figure the Associated Press calls the "generator man." Strange drove the hills and hollows of backwoods Kentucky delivering and setting up generators to those without power—at a $50 to $100 mark-up over retail. Willing customers included a dialysis patient and a powerless 80-year-old woman dependent on an oxygen system. They called him a "godsend," although Strange prefers "jack of all trades" or even "hustler." To Adam Smith, he would be recognizable as an agent of the invisible hand.

FEMA is by it's own nature slow and cumbersome, local response is always faster and more effective, and private citizens can be the best help of all. Read the whole thing.

Also, it helps immensely to plan ahead for these emergencies at the individual level. Not enough Americans think about these matters in the age of flatscreens and Bu-Ray and Wii consoles and Iphones. The prepared family incurs the least hardship, and the best comprehensive disaster planning guide I've found is this five part diary at Daily Kos. It's carefully organized according to the logic that only comes after years of serious thought. I highly recommend it. (And yes, I'm linking Kos. It's that important.)

Obama: Change means outspending Bush

President Bush set a number of records in deficit spending over the last eight years: No Child Left Behind; 15 billion for AIDS relief in Africa; the first President in history to federally fund embryonic stem cell research; and the single biggest entitlement program in American history, the Medicare Prescription Bill.

Last night in Williamsburg President Obama said,

"But come on, we're not — we are not going to get relief by turning back to the very same policies that for the last eight years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin.

We can't embrace the losing formula that says only tax cuts will work for every problem we face [Damn that parsimonious Bush and his stingy Republican ways!- ed]; that ignores critical challenges like our addiction to foreign oil [Historical note: Obama is the second president to publicly call our dependence on cheap oil energy an "addiction",] or the soaring cost of health care, or falling schools and crumbling bridges and roads and levees."

What's Glenn's running joke? They told me that if I voted for McCain I'd get a third Bush term. And they were right!

Booooooo! bAD form!

The first in a new Kadnine Blog Series in which I highlight truly awful advertising gimmicks.

So, I'm working late and feeling peckish. I need a snack to tide me over till dinner so I can concentrate on the tasks thrown up before me on my computer screen. I don't want to be there after hours, but hey! Duty calls. I buy a Snickers bar from the vending machine and settle back in at my desk. On the front it reads, "SNICKERS" in the usual size and font. On the back side, it reads, "NOUGATOCITY" in the same font. Inside the wrapper is the "definition":

"Nougatocity /nu-gat-a-si-tE/ (noun). A heightened yet fleeting state of accomplishment that makes you realize how unbelievably unmotivated you normally are."

I imagine the ad execs at Mars, INC just sitting around the ol' brainstorming table asking themselves "who is our core customer base?"

And all they could come up with was self-loathing slackers with low self-esteem and no impulse control? And this was given the go ahead? Really?

Why not just go with, "SNICKERS: It Satisfies Yer never gonna lose the weight, so why bother trying?" Or, "Try our oblong lozenge of shame! Now with even more nougaty condescension!"

The upside to our downturning economy

It's pretty thin gruel, but this anti-anti-smoker will take whatever he can get:

Economic fears snuff out smoking bans

By KRISTEN WYATT
In this economy, lawmakers are more willing to let people smoke 'em if they got 'em.

As recently as last year, many states and major cities seemed ready to adopt complete indoor smoking bans. But the movement to kick all smokers outdoors has stalled as the recession worsens and lawmakers fear hurting business at bars, restaurants and casinos.

"This economy, it creates a little more sympathy for the business person. So when we say this is going to put us out of business, believe me, they're listening," said Mike Moser, executive director of the Wyoming State Liquor Association.

Twenty-three states, as well as Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, have indoor smoking bans covering bars and restaurants. No one else has adopted a ban in the early weeks of this year's legislative sessions.

In Colorado, lawmakers are considering easing the rules after they banned smoking in most bars, restaurants and casinos.

New Jersey put off a smoking ban for Atlantic City casinos after five of 11 casinos warned they could file for bankruptcy by year's end. In Virginia, a proposed statewide ban stalled this year after lawmakers expressed concern about the economy.

Moser's group opposes an indoor smoking ban that has been offered in Wyoming. After businesses raised objections, state lawmakers last month exempted bars from the legislation.

In cities that have banned smoking in bars, "it's just killing them," said Mike Reid, owner of a wine bar in Casper. Reid voluntarily banned smoking in his bar, but opposes the forced ban as president of the liquor association.

"When someone builds a business with a clientele that smokes, they should be able to go in there and smoke," Reid said.

(Via: The Anchoress)

Baffled am I

Today I'm utterly baffled by what I just saw. Standing on the back deck, smoking a cigarette, I witnessed a pickup truck drive by with a twenty-foot log strapped down to the trailer... with an out-board motor attached at the back end. I have no way of knowing if the driver is on his way for some Sunday yachting in January, or simply delivering both a log and a motor to the same destination.

I wish I'd had my camera.

Naomi Klein: Half-wit

Smart enough to recognize that the boycott is an effective measure, dumb enough not to recognize it's only effective against parties which value stability and progress:

The relevance of the South African model is that it proves [boycott] tactics can be effective when weaker measures (protests, petitions, backroom lobbying) fail. And there are deeply distressing echoes of apartheid in the occupied territories: the colour-coded IDs and travel permits, the bulldozed homes and forced displacement, the settler-only roads. Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, said the architecture of segregation he saw in the West Bank and Gaza was "infinitely worse than apartheid". That was in 2007, before Israel began its full-scale war against the open-air prison that is Gaza.

Why single out Israel when the US, Britain and other western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the strategy should be tried is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work.

[Emphasis mine]

To be clear, Klein here is advocating that our western world (a world made rich by economic trade) affect the economic destruction of a "small and trade-dependent" country whose success is based on the same model. She's not just anti-Israel, she's anti-western-civilization. That her self-loathing opinions are published at all is a testament to our tolerance of fools like her. Even in a world-wide recession, she's in no danger of losing her job by writing this. Damn but we're rich! Rich enough to support a leisure-class of critics who pine for our destruction.

(Via: Hot Air)

P.J. O'Rourke on "the failed Obama Presidency"

From The Weekly Standard:

In the language of politics there is only one translation for the phrase "hope and change," to wit, "big, fat government." Mr. Obama, if you're going to give us big, fat government, you need to be a big, fat politician. You need to be a Tip O'Neill, a Teddy Kennedy, a Richard Daley, a Bill Clinton at the very least. And you don't seem to be a big, fat anything--literally or otherwise. You seem to be .  .  . smart and organized. Like Jimmy Carter!

So we may speak without compunction of the failed Obama presidency.

Clever stuff! He's just riffing, of course. Playing with words in the way that only comes natural to a select group of talented commentators. But the words, "It's only funny because it's true," are cold consolation to a lover of limited government such as myself.

Early on in that seemingly interminable campaign of '07/'08, Obama declared war on cynicism. But P.J. is out to prove that the cynics have the upper hand in that battle.

For myself, I wish our new President well. I'm taking a wait-and-see attitude before launching my own critique, round about Jan 21st. Then it's on like Donkey Kong.

Merry Christmas!

2008: The year in stupid bans

From Reason TV

Happy Thanksgiving

UPDATE via Insty: "Every Iraqi soldier I saw this morning wished me a Happy Thanksgiving."

UPDATE: Thanksgiving dinner was a success. Menu items included a turkey and giblet gravy, homemade raspberry sorbet, broccoli casserole, mashed potatoes, spinach and artichoke dip, slow cooked green beans, and ice cream with crock pot spiced apple and bread pudding topping... all from this collection of Weight Watchers recipes. We estimate each plate at about 22 points but tasted more like 102.

Bailouts in perspective

Also from NRO, this time from Mark Hemingway:

The bailout [thus far] has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined:

- Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion

- Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion

- Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion

- S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion

- Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion

- The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)

- Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion

- Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion

- NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

The only expenditure that comes close is WWII, and even that cost less.

Some staggering numbers, to be sure. But also keep in mind the staggering wealth, the surplus we've enjoyed in recent years as compared to even a generation ago. I'm not worried about the numbers so much as I am worried about Thomas Sowell's assessment about what this "crisis" is really all about:

Amid all the political and media hysteria, national output has declined by less than one-half of one percent. In fact, it may not have declined even that much-- or at all-- when the statistics are revised later, as they very often are.

We are not talking about the Great Depression, when output dropped by one-third and unemployment soared to 25 percent.

What we are talking about is a golden political opportunity for politicians to use the current financial crisis to fundamentally change an economy that has been successful for more than two centuries, so that politicians can henceforth micro-manage all sorts of businesses and play Robin Hood, taking from those who are not likely to vote for them and transferring part of their earnings to those who will vote for them.

And that's what worries me. The raw numbers (while huge) mean nothing or almost nothing, at this point in America's fantastical record of economic success. Weathering the current credit crisis will, IMO, require record-setting expenditures of public dollars simply because we're a fantastically rich nation, and if that's what it takes takes to restore consumer confidence in capitalist America, I'm okay with that. But what will our political leaders take away as the principle lesson from this crisis? That it is better to govern lightly, and give the private sector the freedom to gain or fail, to rise or fall on its own merits? Or that it is better to take away freedoms from the private sector as a safeguard against future crises?

I hope for the former, but fear we're in for another round of the latter. Say hello to the new New Deal.

UPDATE: Case in point - "Obama Chief of Staff Hopes to Exploit the Economic Crisis to Expand the Growth of Government"

Those of us who intend to push back against our would-be government nannies have got to get invigorated now, or else we'll be swept aside by the momentum of Barack's historic win. By nature, I'm not an activist. I don't have an activist's compulsion for public demonstration. But I do intend to observe and point out my observations (both here on the Kadnine blog and in letters to my elected leaders.) It's long been my policy to listen to my elected leaders' words (and the words of their appointees) and take what they say at face value. I don't assume it's some sort of benign code to placate the base. When Obama's Chief of Staff is quoted, "... You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," because it's "an opportunity to do things you could not do before," ... believe him! Why? Here's why.

More Central Planning is always the proposed answer in every crisis. Always. It's human nature. We humans are hard-wired to want to meddle in the affairs of others (and politicians doubly so.) It takes self-awareness, education, and discipline to leave our neighbors alone. It takes instruction from those who came before us to learn that giving in to that base desire to try to run the lives of others is, in fact, a vice. It's a character flaw and not (as too many have convinced themselves,) a virtue. These deluded on both Left and Right believe their only sin is "caring too much." And that's unfortunate.

Also, I'll be watching for an epidemic of mission-creep coming down the legislative pike from the majority Democratic Congress, (aided by many Republicans who just loves them some big federal programs!) Congress critters of all brands use crises to further their pet projects. Remember how we were told draconian new drug enforcement laws were "needed" to win the War on Terror? Yeah. It was fun pushing back then, wasn't it? It worked, too. It can work again.

It's an honor

... just to have served with the likes of this Marine:

"The biggest thing to take from that day is what Marines can accomplish when they’re given the opportunity to fight," the sniper said. "A small group of Marines met a numerically superior force and embarrassed them in their own backyard. The insurgents told the townspeople [of Shewan, Afghanistan] that they were stronger than the Americans, and that day we showed them they were wrong."

[...]

"I didn’t realize how many bad guys there were until we had broken through the enemies’ lines and forced them to retreat. It was roughly 250 insurgents against 30 of us," the corporal said. "It was a good day for the Marine Corps. We killed a lot of bad guys, and none of our guys were seriously injured."

Michael Ledeen at NRO noted the story earlier today and highlights this quote from a reader:

"There are only two kinds of people that understand Marines: the Marines and the enemy. Everyone else has a secondhand opinion."
Gen. William Thornson, US Army

Best birthday wishes

... to Lee at Digital Nicotine. May he continue his always entertaining blog for many more to come.

Dick Cavett is still employed

... proving there's always a market for windbags who talk about the talk-stylings of other people who've actually, um... done stuff. Oh! And a shout out to fellow windbag Maureen Dowd is included free of charge:

The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla

Electronic devices dislike me. There is never a day when something isn’t ailing. Three out of these five implements — answering machine, fax machine, printer, phone and electric can-opener — all dropped dead on me in the past few days.

Now something has gone wrong with all three television sets. They will only get Sarah Palin.

[...]

And how much more of all that lies in our future if God points her to those open-a-crack doors she refers to? The ones she resolves to splinter and bulldoze her way through upon glimpsing the opportunities, revealed from on high.

What on earth are our underpaid teachers, laboring in the vineyards of education, supposed to tell students about the following sentence, committed by the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High and gleaned by my colleague Maureen Dowd for preservation for those who ask, “How was it she talked?”

My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars.

And, she concluded, “never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.”

It’s admittedly a rare gift to produce a paragraph in which whole clumps of words could be removed without noticeably affecting the sense, if any.

(A cynic might wonder if Wasilla High School’s English and geography departments are draped in black.)

Read the rest if you like, but you don't need to. It just goes on in this vein for another 15 paragraphs. Dick has distilled for us here the pure, concentrated contempt that the NYT (and the media in general) has for the Other.

Dick? We "get" the motivations behind those who supported Barack Obama. We also "get" Sarah Palin's appeal. It's you that can't seem to understand us. But I wouldn't presume to blame your educators, because that would just be rude.