I want to furnish an addendum to a post I made earlier, pursuant to Charles Kuffner's fine critique of it. When I made fun of the liberal use of the word Fascist, I was not trying to imply that liberals have cornered the market on name-calling. They certainly haven't, and it's one of the reasons that I can't listen to a Rush Limbaugh; all the ranting about the Feminazis distracts me from. . . well, whatever the hell his message is.
I was making fun of the use of this particular word, which is thrown around with great abandon, even though the peope who use it usually don't know what it means. I am not surprised that regimes practicing Fascist ideology are not very nice, any more than I am surprised that regimes attempting to implement Marxism-Leninism are not very nice. I find both political philosophies appalling for essentially the same reason. That does not, however, mean that I can use the word Communist, or Fascist, as interchangeable with "someone who is not very nice". Communism, and Fascism, are specific things. You can't expect me to respect, much less applaud, the willful misuse of a language I'm pretty fond of. (That being English, not invective).
Well all get carried away. I've taken the pledge not to call certain names; and I try, in general, not to call names at all unless they're meant in good fun (like my liberal friends I call Communists), or they're pretty close to accurate (like my liberal friends I call Communists*.) My readers are free to call me on it if I stray. But I reserve the right to hurl all the negative words in my lexicon at ideas I dislike.
So that's my position paper on name calling. Hope it cools the passions of my passionate emailers on both sides.
Swen Swenson, who seems to rise around the same time I do, wants to know what I'm doing searching on Guns, Babes, and Full Auto. The answer is, I'm not -- my nameless Googler simply appeared as one of my hits on my bravenet counter, to which I am, I confess, addicted.
The only word that can describe this proposal is insane. The Eurocrats have decided to tax digital content delivered from the US, requiring sellers to register and add the VAT onto everything they deliver. Good luck. Reports of the demise of internet privacy are greatly exaggerated, thanks to the arrival of new products like Triangle Boy. First they have to find the seller, then they have to prove a sale took place, and finally, they have to have some sort of arrangement to enforce the tax with the host country. . . and helloooo, Turks and Caicos!
I think -- I hope -- that the Eurocrats are fighting a losing battle to preserve their confiscatory taxation and bloated spending. But perhaps this is just the triumph of hope over experience. . .
Second of all, I want to note, in a brief rejoinder to both articles, that while Greenspan is in favor of balanced budgets and eliminating debt, his policy statements make clear that he is more in favor of smaller government. That's why he told Clinton to balance the budget -- which was not, as his liberal interpreters have claimed, a mandate to raise taxes, but a suggestion to cut spending. That is why he supported Bush's tax cut; because while in an ideal world, he would prefer to have used that money to pay down the debt, it became clear to him that Congress was going to use the money to increase entitlement spending in order to pay of key constituencies. That is why he was in favor of the tax cut; he believed that the choice was not between cutting taxes and balancing the budget, but between cutting taxes and increasing spending. Noting the spending binge our boys in Washington just went on with the terrorism and farm bills as soon as the nation took it's collective eye off the bottom line, it's hard to doubt that he was right.
Third, this is also the argument against "triggers" that end the tax cuts if the deficit dwindles, because it eviscerates the restraints on government growth imposed by the tax cuts. Have a program you like? Don't worry about it -- spend away! You'll pop a trigger, taxes will go up on people who don't vote for you anyway, and you won't even get blamed for raising taxes in order to increase that spending!
I hate deficits, but not because of some wishy-washy theory about economic growth. Deficits of the size we're talking about running are not, IMHO, going to have an appreciable effect on GDP. Deficits are bad because they allow politicians to give voters goodies now while handing the bill to their children or grandchildren. Nonetheless, if it is a choice between a small deficit, and the spending spree Congress was prepared to go on with my tax dollars, I'll take the deficit any time.
And here's why: government programs never, ever die. Jonathan Rausch's superlative book, Government's End describes why: they develop constituencies that vote on a specific program, while few programs are large enough to develop significant constituencies against them. Meanwhile, as P.J. O'Rourke describes in Parliament of Whores, the programs grow, because that is what they are designed to do. Look at the farm bill -- we killed it in the 90's and it just got record funding. The only way to stop the process is to force politicians to make actual budgetary choices by restraining their revenue.
But I digress. What I was trying to talk about was Greenspan, and everyone jumping all over him. Fourth of all, the man's been telling us we were in a bubble for years, and we didn't listen -- now we're mad he's right. It's not his fault. Yes, he pumped credit into the economy when it least needed it, thus feeding the bubble. And partly this was because he overestimated the palliative effect that the New Economy would have on inflation, but then so did the rest of us. And mostly he did it because he had to -- because the Fed was afraid that people would cause a run on the banks prior to Y2K, queuing up for money. They didn't, but he didn't have his crystal ball handy to predict it. He did a pretty good job with the information he had. Why is it that the people who made him into some sort of a God two years ago are now the most eager to pull down the idol so they can spit on it?
(Incidentally, Chait's article isn't that mean about Greenspan. I'm just tired of all the people who loved him one minute and now would like to see him burned in effigy, and the article set me off.)
It turns out that Citigroup managed to hedge its exposure to Enron, unlike every other bank that did business with them. The article suggests that the hedging instruments were somehow suspicious, because the interest rates were too low, but from what I can tell (not much), it arrives at this instrument by comparing apples to oranges: long term corporate bonds to shorter term credit-linked notes.
Interesting is what the article leaves out: that Citigroup employs Bob Rubin, who approached the administration on Enron's behalf right before the pyramid collapsed. Personally, I doubt there was anything unethical; it seems to have been good banking sense to lay of risk. Nonetheless, this non-story seems to my (admittedly jaundiced eyes) to be at least as compelling as the Bush-Enron connection. I had an earlier email on this from J. Bowen over at No More Watermelons, but forgot to post it.
Fritz Hollings thinks that we should appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Bush and Enron because. . . ummm. . . well, just because there isn't any evidence of wrongdoing doesn't mean we shouldn't have an investigation! The Washington Post delivers the appropriate smackdown.
Over on Instapundit, a lively section on the utter hypocrisy of congress in lambasting Enron when they themselves are unaccountable, practically invented shoddy accounting, and routinely vote themselves goodies they haven't earned. Which brings to mind the subject of what I found so distasteful in the Clinton Administration.
It wasn't because they were Democrats. How far apart, after all, were Gore and Bush really? The only issue I cared about in the last election was getting more strict constructionists on the Supreme Court. So while I would have voted for Bush anyway, I wouldn't have felt such visceral dislike for Gore (a desperate fear of listening to four more years of those monotonic, hectoring speeches, yes, but not dislike) if it hadn't been for the Clinton Administration's repeated insistence that rules just didn't apply to them.
I was in utter sympathy for the idea that Clinton shouldn't have to answer questions on his sex life. Until, that is, a lawyer friend pointed out that he'd signed the law that said you have to answer questions like that. Hoist on his own petard, and well he should be. As far as I was concerned, at that point he was the only one in the country who should have to answer questions like that.
When a black reporter asked Gore why, if he was so concerned about the African-American community, he didn't support vouchers, he launched into typical blather. When she followed up by asking "if vouchers are such a bad idea, how come your kids are in private school", he responded by saying, in effect, that theory is nice but he wouldn't let that get in the way of his kids' education. He arranged the Russia-Iran arms deal in direct contravention of a law he authored while he was a Senator. This is not the hypocrisy that is the tribute vice pays to virtue; this is refusal to abide by the consequences of the laws you enact. An adolescent's fantasy of how the world should work. It is to the eternal credit of the Republicans that when their leaders strayed from the strict sexual code they had set up, they bounced him faster than you could say "scandal". Politically astute, also, and possibly this is the only reason they did it. Nonetheless, it showed a willingness to publicly abide by their own standards.
I'm sure that there are Democrats out there with their own version of Republican hypocrisy; if I find it compelling, I'll yell about them too. Because, while lawmakers will always abrogate certain privileges unto themselves, it is dangerous to let them get above the law.
An Open Letter to the People Who Keep Sending me Email addressed to Jane Galt:
I want to first thank you for the warm regard you have shown me over the years. Not a morning goes by when I don't open my inbox to a flood of correspondance from well-wishers all over the globe, some in places, and at internet sites, of which I have never heard. In this dark period of my life, it is always good to know that one has dear friends striving to keep one abreast of all the latest developments in financial opportunities, nutritional supplements, and Barely Legal Teenage Girls.
Unfortunately, the flood tide of your kind, kind interest has rendered me unable to respond to each email as I would like, or even to devote sufficient time to assessing the many opportunities you have offered me. I believe that if we set a few simple ground rules for our correspondance, we will both get more out of it. I wish that I could email each of you separately, but since I am currently receiving between 50-100 of your thoughtful notes a day, I find myself unable to address each one individually. Instead I have summarized some of my key concerns:
1. I am not interested in Barely Legal Teenage Girls.
2. I do not have a penis. If I did, I would not risk it with quack remedies, even if those remedies promised to make it up to 30% larger without chemicals or vacuum pumps.
3. I do not have a home. I do not have a mortgage. In fact, I live with my parents. I am twenty-nine years old, and I'm living with Mom and Dad, complete with fights about whose turn it is to take out the garbage and Why I Haven't Given them Grandchildren. I want to thank you for providing the daily reminders of my plight which have, at each reading, re-fired my resolve to get a real job. However, until I do, I still do not have a house. You may direct any solicitations regarding mortgages, home equity lines, home repairs, or the many benefits of genuine Sears aluminum siding, to my parents, although I warn you that since they have an apartment, they will probably not be buying any aluminum siding.
4. I am not interested in Barely Legal Teenage Girls even if they have just procured their first webcam.
5. When you send me emails regarding my damaged credit, this makes me nervous. I wonder how you know about my credit, and indeed, who else has this information. I wonder if a few childish indiscretions will keep me from the home-ownership that might permit me to enjoy the home equity lines, repairs, and genuine Sears aluminum siding which you have discussed in such glowing terms. I brood. I realize you think of me as a soulless creature with little time for anything except home repairs and Barely Legal Teenage Girls, but this is not the case. I have dreams. Dreams which may never be realized if I don't shake the depression into which your repeated exhortations about my credit have plunged me. Please stop sending them until such time as I can afford a therapist and/or Prozac.
6. I understand that when you send me emails about surefire ways to make money from home, you are just trying to help me out of my current financial straits. However, as I mentioned before, home is not a place where I currently desire to spend the larger part of my day. If you have any ways to make money from, say, a comfortable hotel suite on the Riviera, I would like to get those emails instead.
7. I am 6'2 and within the normal weight range for that height. While I have heard that you can never be too rich or too thin, I fear that if I lost Up to 100 pounds in 3 months, the only job I would be able to maintain would be as an extra in an Oxfam commercial. If I have to choose between being rich and thin, I choose rich. You can always buy a better body.
8. I thank you for your attention to my education. I have read your missives with great interest. I admit to great curiosity as to how you can provide a University Diploma for $500, when mine took four years, $50,000 of student loans, and liver surgery. I regret that I am unable to utilize this service, but as you can see, I am already well supplied with both degrees, and the attendant debt. Reading about people who got their degrees for 1/100th of the price of mine fill me with a mindless rage that only lessens my predisposition to partake of either home repairs or Barely Legal Teenage Girls.
9. I'm a heterosexual woman. No matter how hot and horny they are, I just can't make myself care about the Barely Legal Teenage Girls, although they would probably make better company than my parents and my Aunt Margaret. Please do contact me if you come across any Independantly Wealthy Biathlete Physicists.
10. You may have noted in earlier items that I do not have a job. Thus, I do not pay taxes. I know that when you send me ideas on how to Pay Absolutely No Income Tax! you are just trying to get me to look on the bright side, but I find that it simply kicks off the no job. . . depression. . . no job cycle to which I referred earlier.
11. Of course, I wouldn't mind larger breasts, but I might want to use these later and frankly, I'm afraid of what your creams might do to my parents' grandchildren -- and consequently, what they might do to me. Thank you anyway.
I appreciate your taking the time to read this. As long as we keep these rules in mind, I believe we can look forward to a long, beautiful relationship.
On a lighter note, Dave Tepper thinks that the next trend in blogging, when diagramming sentences passes, will be calculating integrals. Not if I have anything to say about it, it won't -- I flunked out somewhere around Taylor Polynomials. Besides which, it seems Dave is blogging other women. I'll. . . I'll beat him about the head with an unabated ablative absolute, that's what I'll do!
Okay, I'm not ashamed to admit it -- I cried when I saw that tattered flag waving and understood, for the first time, exactly what Francis Scott Key was writing about. And I cried even harder when I saw that unbroken flag rise up the flagpole. And I thought, take that, Osama. That flag will be flying long after the world has forgotten your name.
Judging from the parade of former Winter Olympics sites, there are only about six countries capable of hosting the Winter Olympics. Is this odd, or what?
I just watched a cop sing God Bless America for the opening ceremony. God damn, I love this country. I love the constitution and the Declaration of Independance and the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation; and the guy who said "I regret that I have but one life to live for my country", and the guy who said "I Have a Dream"; and all the average people out there trying to do the best they can with what they have, and making an effort to be fairer and decenter to their enemies than any people in history have ever been; and I love the idea that you can become a nation just by having an idea. There may be better places to live at some time in the future, and better times to live in, but there is no better place or time in history, and I'm awfully glad I live here. Just. . . awfully glad.
Charles Dodgson has a magnificent piece on the utter moral bankruptcy of, among others, our favorite villains the Enron execs. It also includes an eye-opening bit on Harvard. I have only one quarrel: why the random attack on Bush at the end? (I've said it before; Democrats just love the sound of the "E" word with the "B" word, and if the polls are any evidence, it's only hurting them with the rest of the country). I reprint the entire thing, to avoid the possibility that I'm selectively quoting the bits that support my argument:
If that explanation appeals to you, then you might want to consider in that light the career of another overgrown collegian. The one whose father let Ken Lay overnight in the White House, and appointed Lay to a trusteeship on his presidential library. The one whose own presidential campaign traveled on Enron's corporate jets (you know, the ones they haven't sold yet). The present resident of the White House, George W. Bush.
Dubya's enough in tune with the general fratboy weltanshauung that he once told a female Yale graduate that "something had been lost" when the school, his own alma mater, had begun to admit women. And he certainly seems into aggressive accounting.
His political party nearly turned Arkansas upside down looking for shady deals by Clinton's former associates --- the theory apparently being that those would somehow shed light on Clinton's own character. Perhaps there was something to that...
He rode on their corporate jets. . . and? If all the presidents start getting judged on the basis of the actions of their families or friends, the Democrats are going to have some 'splainin to do. Something was lost when Yale went co-ed. Something was also gained, but it's not the same place. And it's not exactly abnormal to think that everything was better when you were twenty. The accounting link is to our favorite non-accountant, Paul Krugman. And we all know what I think about his numbers.
I'd like to call a halt to the scandal wars. This doesn't even rise to the level of the Whitewater scandal. There at least there were criminal allegations. Here, it's just "I don't like Bush and I don't like Ken Lay and look! They're friends!" I mean, come on. As a political matter, I think that the last thing Democrats would want to do is start judging a President by his friends.
I'm not always an enormous fan of John Derbyshire, but this column on capitalism and risk is really extraordinarily good. He takes a solid, common sense approach to Enron/Anderson:
Not that there isn't anything that might be done to lengthen the odds against con men. I think a few more "Chinese walls" could be established without adding to the regulatory burden. It seems crazy to me that someone on the fifth floor of a securities firm can be offering investors advice on the value of securities that someone down on the mezzanine was responsible for underwriting or bringing to market. I think it's double crazy that a firm whose employees are writing code for a company's systems can be responsible for auditing those systems. (I would have loved to be responsible for auditing my own systems! How come nobody ever asked me?) There are some clean, simple things that might be done. I'd also like to see suggestions for enforcing the Mr. Wu principle: that if your business fails, you end up personally broke. That doesn't seem to happen any more in the U.S. — not, at any rate, without the intervention of law enforcement (and not much even then).
I applaud that last bit, especially. What's so appalling is not that Enron failed -- it's that the accounting managers and mail clerks are sucking up the damage, while Ken Lay and the executives shield assets abroad. I've worked for several failed companies, and in any of the ones worth working for, our discombobulation was surpassed only by the financial ruin of the founders as they plowed everything they had into keeping the company -- and us -- alive.
He also points out, brilliantly, that you can't separate capitalism and risk. Read the whole thing, though -- it's worth it.
Charles Kuffner responds to my post on liberals who don't know the meaning of the word "Fascist" by rejoindering, first, that genocide certainly doesn't speak well for Fascism: "That sure is a ringing endorsement for fascism, I gotta say. Sorta like the old joke 'Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?' " This entirely mises the point. Genocide, or even racism, are not, contrary to popular belief, central to Fascism. They were simply coincident with Fascism. So genocide isn't to "fascism's credit" any more than what Americans did to the natives was an inevitably byproduct of Democracy.
He also points out that libertarians and conservatives are also guilty of name calling. Too true. This is why I have called for an end to the use of Taliban, Nazi, or Stalinist as descriptive terms for anyone other than members of the Taliban, the Nazi party, or adherents of Stalinist Marxism-Leninism. But again, Kuffner misses the point:
I wonder what the response would be if I said to these folks "The primary definition of 'jackboot' is 'a heavy military boot made of glossy black leather extending above the knee and worn especially during the 17th and 18th centuries'. What, specifically, do you have against jackboots?"
The conservative would at least accurately be able to identify what a jackboot is. They wouldn't stand there dumbly while they cast about for some definition of Fascist other than "Nazi" and some definition of "Nazi" other than genocidal. Most serious libertarians have a pretty good working knowledge of various political science concepts such Fascism, Socialism, Social Democracy, Communism, Imperialism, Capitalism, etc -- which is, in my judgement, not matched on the Left.
Considering hardcore libertarians as the conservative equivalent of the anti-globalisation protesters (I know right/left doesn't quite work here, but I think it's fair to say that while both are arguing for fairly radical sociopolitical change, the righties are adamant on property rights, whereas the lefties are extremely redistributive.) The righties, generally, understand the other side better than the other side understands them. So while there is name calling on both sides, the lefties seem dumber to me, because while the righties are engaging in childish exaggeration, the lefties are engaging in childish exaggeration with words they don't know the meaning of.
There is finally the matter of degree. Jackboot is not in nearly as wide currency as fascist or Nazi. Kuffner cites two conservative publications, one of which has a rhetorical style heavy on the name-calling I dislike. He neglects to mention the other sites his search brings up:
1) Sites selling or describing military gear 2) An article from Wired magazine about internet regulation 3) Sites about East Timor 4) Some name-calling tiff a university student union in Melbourne had with management. 5) Historical sites about Nazi Germany
However, repeating Kuffner's search on Merriam-Webster for fascist instead of jackboot yields the following:
Both searches top 20 hit, by my count, four name-calling pieces of the right (jackboot) or left (fascist) persuasion, at least one name-calling site from the other side, a number of historical or otherwise factual sites. However, Fascism is a major historical movement. Jackboots are a minor item of apparel. I would have expected the jackboot namecalling to outweigh fascist namecalling in sample frequency. That it doesn't indicates a much higher use of fascist to call names. So perhaps we can call it a draw.
I wasn't supporting conservative name calling. I think it's dumb. I just think it's even dumber to combine polemic with the use of words you don't understand.
An editorial in the Wall Street Journal today points out that one of the reasons that Enron employees were playing Stock Market Roulette with their 401(k)'s is that companies are afraid to offer their employees professional investment advice for fear of being sued. Now, in general, I'm a fan of the random walk theory of markets, which says, among other things, that most people are unlikely to beat the market in the long run -- most actively managed mutual funds, in fact, underperform the S&P 500 index by a considerable margin. So my esteem for professional investment advisors is, shall we say, mixed. Nonetheless, they do fulfill certain valuable functions, among which is educating investment consumers on the subject of risk.
Most investors don't have an appropriate understanding of the risk in the market. It's for damn sure that the Enron employees didn't, because no competent investment advisor would have suggested that anyone have 60% of their portfolio, plus their job, tied up in one company. A little financial planning could have gone a long way for the Enron employees -- and for anyone else who isn't diversified. But they didn't get it, because no company wanted to be liable for its employees bad luck or bad decisions.
So here's the difference between a conservative and a liberal approach. A liberal wants to make a law saying that people shouldn't be allowed to have that much of their portfolio in one company. Well, all those Microsoft millionaire secretaries might have something to say about that, but even aside from that, this protects against only one very targeted risk -- the risk that your company goes bankrupt. But a lot of employees are inappropriately underdiversified by industry. It works like this: you work for Enron, so you figure you should buy what you know, which is to say energy stocks. If the whole sector tanks, you lose your job and portfolio, a lot like what the Enron employees are going through now. The conservative solution -- take away the regulatory and legal barriers that prevent people from making good decisions -- would prevent both scenarios.
It might cause others; there are, I am sure, arguments on both sides. But I think the fundamental difference I am drawing is sound: when things go wrong, the Democrats want a law against it. Republicans are much more friendly to enabling self-organizing systems. Which is why they wanted to make it easier for consumers to get information, while the Demcrats wanted to make sure that the consumers wouldn't need any information because they couldn't make any choices.
From the excellent Random Jottings, a thought for the day (note that I don't have the thought for the day, because I'm hoping to have more than one):
Your brain comprises about 3% of your body weight and uses about 14% of your energy intake.
Keep this in mind when you hear grey-beard Chomskyites condemn America and the West for using more than their 'fair share' of the world's resources. We are the brains of the world. We are the ones creating the advances that give us the hope of eliminating the ancient ills; plague, war and famine. In fact we have eliminated them wherever Western Civilization is allowed to flourish. We didn't do it on a starvation diet.
Your brain burns calories like a bonfire. It's an extremely expensive luxury that doesn't pay off right away. (That's why high intelligence isn't usually an evolutionary option.) But the payoff, when it comes, is big. We in the West, and especially America, should be eating the biggest slice of the pie. It's part of the job. It's our responsibility.
Addendum: High technology itself is a sort of voracious brain that can only exist on top of a very large and healthy industrial body. It's the apex of a very broad pyramid; for every visionary at the top, there are thousands of burger-flippers and siding salesmen at the bottom.
Europe might take issue that all this wealth is our fair share. But they'd find it hard to deny (if they were self-honest, a dubious proposition) that we've got that much stuff because we make that much stuff. And that without our wealth, all the technological goodies they so enjoy wouldn't exist.
Over at the generally excellent What She Really Thinks, Ginger Stampley criticizes the article Dick Morris wrote for the Wall Street Journal about the Clinton Administrations' failure to address terrorism. Specifically, she disagrees with his assertion that Clinton should have signed a law requiring that driver's license expiration dates be set to expire on the same day as immigration visas for foreign nationals.
Morris is right that the system, if in place and working, might have caught Mohammed Atta. (So would a number of other ideas involving wiring together various government computer systems. A lot of people disliked them and still do.) But what he misses is who else would have been caught: foreign students and nonimmigrant workers, hundreds of thousands of whom were working, or planning to work, in information technology.
You want a powerful pro-immigration lobby, try the software industry. No development manager worth his salt will put up with the INS sending his lead programmer back to India or China because of a paperwork snafu. Mere technicalities shouldn't be allowed to get in the way of the march of the New Economy!
I spent most of my working life, pre-MBA, in the technology industry. I am heartily sympathetic to the difficulties experienced by holders of the H-1 visa. Anyone who knows me knows that I believe deeply in more open immigration laws for everyone (coupled with sharply reduced social services to minimize costs).
But we aren't arguing about how many visas we should have. What Ms. Stampley is arguing is that it was right for Clinton to eviscerate immigration enforcement to prevent criminals from being caught. Which, unless they hailed from the Cuban Worker's Paradise, is what he did. This is wrong. If the law is wrong, take it off the books. Having laws that aren't enforced weakens ones that are, by making the rule of law an arbitrary thing.
She also says that a law making the licenses co-expire with the visas would inevitably make mistakes. Certainly it would. But that is not an a priori reason for not having the law; it's a cost that must be weighed against the putative benefits. If the government can't do something because it can't guarantee that no innocent person will ever be adversely affected, it can't do anything. Which is largely fine by me -- but not, to judge from her other posts, by Ms. Stampley.
They've arrested three people in connection with the kidnapping of David Pearl. And they've arrested them in Pakistan, where we can presumably expect to find Human Rights Watch observers making sure the alleged kidnappers get three squares and a fleece-lined blindfold. They may be a little disappointed, as my impression is that the Pakistani police don't require any of those new-fangled torture warrants Alan Dershowitz keeps talking about.
Some guy just tried to hijack a plane going from Miami to Buenos Aires. The passengers and flight attendants subdued him with a fire ax. Then the passengers, whom he had tried to subdue, gave him medical attention until they reached Buenos Aires. To quote the eternal verities of the Muppet Show: "It is at times like these that I am proud to be an American Bald Eagle."
Hmmm. . . long distance flight, loaded with fuel. But it looks like they were halfway through the flight when this Uruguayan tried to storm the cockpit, which he couldn't get into because United has reinforced the doors. So maybe he just wanted to go somewhere besides Buenos Aires, or demand Equal Babes for Moody Loners, or something.
Question, though -- if this guy was acting alone, why would he think that he had a snowball's chance in hell? The entire country is primed for a "Let's Roll" moment the minute anyone even raises his voice to the stewardess. Sheila Jackson Lee, take notice.
I'm fascinated by this WaPo editorial calling for a gun ban, because it doesn't allege any actual harm has been caused by carrying a guns -- it simply assumes that the harm is obvious, without bothering to back it up with facts. The only safety incident they could come up with is that someone left a gun in a restaurant 3 years ago. Since I'm assuming that if anyone had been actually harmed by the gun carrying, they would have noted this, this amounts to saying that people shouldn't carry guns because the Washington Post doesn't like them. Well, if you're a regular reader you know what I think of that argument.
Jonah Goldberg has a terrific article on the debasement of the English language by PoMo and other academic fads. He points out that even in 1946, Orwell noted that 'Fascist' had become a catchphrase for "people I don't like". For amusement, try this parlor game I developed in college:
1) Find a liberal 2) Get him to say someone is a 'fascist' 3) Then say, "Other than one fascist's regimes penchant for genocide, what specifically do you have against fascism?"
Over 10 years, and I have yet to meet one who has any idea what Fascism actually is.
This is why you will notice that I am agitating for the total elimination of the use of 'Taliban', 'Nazi', or 'Stalinist' to describe anyone except"
a) Members of the Taliban b) Members of the Nazi party c) People who subscribe to the particular variant of Marxism-Leninism elucidated (insofar as he could be said to be lucid) by Josef Stalin.
Probably I am a violator on at least one count. But I hereby vow to go, and sin no more.
Interesting searches that bring up my site: Today's exhibit is "What kind of habitat does a virus live in?" The answer, presumably, is in a libertarian one. . .
