Category: Commentary

What I think about stuff…

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‘We Need Tectonic Changes’

Read this. Read this now.

The most basic reason why we have a debt-limit crisis now is that we have allowed the federal government to grow so far beyond its enumerated powers that we are up against artificial debt limits as virtually a last defense against its relentless growth. This is not a fiscal crisis — it is an attempt to halt the very accumulation of federal power that the Federalists promised us would never happen. It’s a constitutional crisis, and it cannot be fixed merely by holding the line on taxes and securing deep spending cuts in the short term.

What has long been clear to many constitutional scholars is now intuitively obvious to Americans of all stripes: The relentless expansion of federal power is destroying self-government at every level of society besides the national one — and with it, the self-reliance and independence that made this country great. It is difficult any longer to see what stands between us and a statist tyranny of the majority. Supporters of the balanced-budget amendment are trying to erect a shield against unrestrained federal power.

It’s about a week out of date as far as the debt crisis goes, but the message is spot-on.

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The Debt Debate

I normally hit up Anglican Curmudgeon for news about the ever-wacky Episcopal Church (which is kind of like the Russell Brand of mainstream religions). But this piece from Friday about the Great Debt Debate™ really knocks it out of the park:

Given that the House of Representatives has now sent to the Senate not one, not two, but three separate bills to deal with the current debt limit/budget impasse; and

Given that the President’s current proposed budget was a non-starter, which would have continued the year-to-year deficit at an unsustainable $1.2 trillion (with still greater deficits to come), and which even the Democrat-controlled Senate defeated by a 97-0 vote; and

Given that the Senate on their own, under Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid, has ducked their responsibilities, for which (for heavens’ sake!) we pay them each nearly $175,000.00 per year, to negotiate and pass (let alone, say, propose) a budget for the Government’s operations — for over 821 days now (translation to the common tongue: 821 days is two years, three months, and one day); and finally,

Given that the Senate just tabled the third proposal in the last four months to resolve the current crisis, laid before them by their colleagues in the House, with no counter-response whatsoever, and that they did so because both the President and Senate Democrats want a free pass until after the next election, which the Republicans are not minded to give them, at the country’s expense;

Be sure to click here and read the whole thing (assuming Congress hasn’t come up with an agreement in the ten minutes it’s taken to type up this post). Be sure to watch the long (14 minute) video at the end, which is a speech given by Senator Maro Rubio (R-Florida) on the Senate floor. I especially like his exchange with John Kerry. Because look folks, no matter what side of the spectrum you’re from, we have to do something about government spending. And Kerry just proves that he leads an insular Washington existence full of the same old ideas.

Oh, and today George Will (yes, that George Will) has an interesting piece about how the “Internet Generation” is really the “Libertarian Generation”. I don’t know if I buy it, but it’s good to see such views in the public eye.

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Friday’s Random Roundup

Here’s a couple of news stories and odd stuff I’ve found on the Internet this week:

– What is “multiculturalism”, anyway? See, I don’t mind “celebrating diversity”, so long as that celebration takes place within the framework of the majority culture. That’s why I laugh at people who complain about “them thar Mezzicans, not speakin’ the Anglish”: you could easily have said that a century ago about the Italians and the Irish. “Them thar Mezzicans” came to the US for a better life. They’ll have kids here one day. Those kids will speak Spanish at home, but English almost everywhere else. And then they’ll have kids, and those kids will speak English almost exclusively, except for a few scattered phrases here and there… just like how the grandkids of Italian immigrants speak only English, except for a few words like “paisan” or “mangia mangia”. So, needless to say, I find it downright alarming that Muslims in the UK feel empowered enough to start creating “sharia zones”, where drinking, smoking, drug taking, prostitution, gambling, music concerts, commercial banking and “free mixing between the sexes” are prohibited. How could Britain allow people with views incompatible with Western culture immigrate to the UK? Why would people who despise Western culture want to move there? Is it all well and good to accept the fruits of the British economy, but reject wholesale British culture?

– Speaking of Muslims, there’s an island in French Polynesia called Tematangi that is almost exactly opposite the globe from Mecca. Since Muslims are required to follow qibla (to face Mecca when praying), Tematangi makes it all kinds of complicated to do that.

– And speaking of “multiculturalism”, England’s local government is provided by councils, which vary in size based on the  population. In London, each borough (except for the City of London) has a council. In smaller cities, a council might be similar to an American city council. In rural areas, they might be more like a “county commission”. Anyway, the liberal area of Brighton and Hove elected England’s first Green Party council recently, and one of the first things the newly-empowered Greenies tried to do was have “Meat-Free Mondays” in the city worker’s cafeteria. It didn’t go over well.

– One more “multiculturalism” issue: liberals insist that there’s no such thing as a “liberal bias” in the mainstream media. However, it sure is interesting that the New York Times referred to Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist, as a “gun-loving,” “right-wing,” “fundamentalist Christian” who was opposed to “multiculturalism” in multiple articles online and in print. Yet, at the same time, the paper has not once referred to Nidal Malik Hasan (the Ft. Hood shooter) as a Muslim. In fact, the only hint the Times gave that Hasan might be Mulsim was that he was quoted as shouting “Allahu Akbar!” when shooting. But there’s no liberal bias, right?

– A few quick science stories: the Higgs Boson particle, one of the great mysteries of modern physics, might have been found. HIV treatment in Africa is getting so good that life expectancy is almost back to normal. And the NHS, Britian’s national health service, might have come up with a nifty way to cut waiting times: by just letting sick people die.

– And lastly, Musee Grevin in Paris just unveiled a wax statue of Brad Pitt. It’s not creepy at all.

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Yes, we’re doing this again!

I hate to do this yet again, but here we go:

Grammar Police

A cannon is a large gun, used in battles and on ships roughly between the Middle Ages and the American Civil War. Canon is a group of laws, customs and traditions. It comes from the “canon law” of the Catholic Church, but nowadays it usually refers to the accepted facts and mythology of a TV show, movie or video game, such as the “Star Trek canon”.

Dual means consisting of two parts, things or people, as in “she plays the dual roles of CEO and mother”. Duel, on the other hand, was originally a contest between two people using deadly weapons, as in “Alexander Hamilton challenged Aaron Burr to a duel”. These days, “duel” usually has a less lethal meaning, as in “the game was a duel between Peyton Manning and Tom Brady”.

To insure something is to take out a legal financial instrument against loss or damage. You probably insure your car, for example. To ensure something is to make sure that it gets done, as in to “ensure that the insurance check is in the mail”.

Continue reading “Yes, we’re doing this again!”

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Google Flops

So, yeah. Google released a limited beta of “Google+”, their answer to Facebook, this week. And some people on the Internet were creaming in their pants about it. Why?

Why is it that certain people seem to have this blind trust in Google? To these folks, Google wouldn’t ever do anything bad, ever. Not that I think Facebook is prefect by any means. But all Facebook knows about me is what I post, what my friends post, what I import onto my Wall (mainly this blog), and the relational aspects of my friends.

These are the people who scream bloody murder whenever Windows wants to phone home for updates… but the same sheeple who somehow see no problem with using Gmail, Google Talk, Google Voice, Google Apps and Google DNS. Windows just wants to see if its up to date; Google knows more about you than your wife and mother combined.

Sure, Google+ looks kind of interesting. But there’s no killer feature in it that Facebook couldn’t implement in a couple of weeks if they wanted to. For example: FB’s new video chat feature is supposed to be absolutely dead simple and kickass.

So it boils down to who has the most users. Sure, Google has far more potential users than Facebook, but Facebook owns social networking at the moment. And, despite how some people fawn all over Google, they’ve had some massive fails, too. Google Wave was supposed to replace email and instant messaging. How did that work out? Google Buzz died a quick death. And did anyone ever create a Google Profile?

At least Google+ is a product that some people might actually want, unlike…

Google Catalog (really? scanned catalogs?)

Google Video Player (just what the world needed: another proprietary video format!)

Google Checkout (“It’s like a digital Discover Card!”)

Google Answers (“We somehow lost to Yahoo! Answers?”)

Google Page Creator (“You know what we need? Our own version of Geocities!”)

Google Knol (“What’s better than one Wikipedia? TWO Wikipedias!” Too bad no one ever visited Knol.)

Dodgeball (“Wait… in May 2005 we bought a company that did exactly what Foursquare does and somehow forgot that it existed, then created Google Latitude to compete with Foursquare… which we helped develop when we gave all that money to Dennis Crowley?”)

Jaiku (“Wait… in October 2007 we bought a company that did almost exactly the same thing as Twitter and somehow forgot that it existed? Why does this keep happening?”),

Orkut (“Wait… in 2004 we bought a company that does almost exactly what Facebook does… and somehow it only ended up being popular in Brazil and India? SERIOUSLY, WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING?”)

Needless to say, I’m skeptical about Google+.

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Festive Friday Roundup!

– Those wacky Brits! I was all excited by the headline “British royalty dined on human flesh“, only to find that the actual article talks about how various human body parts were used as medicine. Mummies were ground up as powder to cure… something or the other, moss taken from dead soldier’s skulls was used to treat nosebleeds, that sort of thing. It’s an interesting article, but wasn’t quite the “Charles I feasting on leg of peasant” I’d imagined.

– You know who is pretty enough to eat? Yasmin Le Bon, who’s still got it at 46.

– Hey look! Scientists in Canada have apparently cured cancer, but no one cares! [insert “Big Pharma can’t make money off this so they’ll suppress it” conspiracy theory here.]

– And look! Farmers in China applied a “growth accelerator” called forchlorfenuron to their watermelons. Only they applied it much too late, so now much of China’s watermelon crop is exploding.

– Guess what, Americans? The Supreme Court ruled that cops don’t need a warrant to search your house! And the Indiana Supreme Court recently ruled that citizens do not have a right to resist illegal entry by the police into their homes. Wonderful. Way to overturn 800 years worth of common law, Indiana!

– Perhaps the folks in Indiana will begin pay homage to their Fearless Leaders, like Saparmurat Niyazov, president of Turkmenistan. Niyazov “had his parliament officially name him Turkmenbashi, ‘father of all Turkmens’, named streets, schools, airports, farms, and people after himself, as well as vodka, a meteorite, the country’s second largest city, and a television channel, banned the Hippocratic oath and demanded that doctors swear allegiance to him” and had a 40-foot gold statue built of himself. Nice!

– A dog in British Columbia survived a fall after being dropped from a considerable height by an eagle or some other bird of prey. It all worked out well for”Miracle May”, as she’s being called: the stray was apparently in poor health when the bird attacked her. She fell to the ground near a nursing home, and the residents took her to a shelter. When news of her story hit the media, donations poured in, and now May’s making a full recovery.

– Work in a dingy office? Use an Altoids tin to create a mini garden!

– Check out Christian Schallert’s crazy, 258 SQUARE FOOT apartment in Barcelona! It’s a bit too cramped for me, but I’ve gotta admire the guy’s ingenuity in getting that much stuff crammed in to such a small space:

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Poem No. 1

Like any other artsy, pretentious teenager, I wrote the occasional poem. Most of them were frighteningly awful. What follows is one of the least terrible of those poems.

Interestingly, it’s one of the very few poems I wrote after I’d graduated high school. It’s also perhaps the poem with the least “life is soooooo unfair” teen angst.

Basically, it’s about the relationship between me and one of my best friends, James. The first part is about a heated discussion went got into about life and dreams one night at the St. Charles Deli in Virginia Highland. The second part recalls the (drunken) night several years earlier when we first really bonded at a party at Lake Lanier. The final part is about the drunken night I wrote the first two parts (oooooh! META!).

Read it, if you dare, after the jump:

Continue reading “Poem No. 1”

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Separated at birth?

Holy crap! Until just a few minutes ago, I’d never actually seen what the members of the band The National look like. I got curious and went to YouTube, where I watched the video for “Bloodbuzz Ohio”.

Is it just me, or is lead singer Matt Berninger a dead ringer for a bearded Phil Hartman… at least in the music video??

Phil Hartmannational_01national_02

It’s not even the resemblance so much as it is the mannerisms. At one point in the video, Berninger does this little dance thing, and I could swear to God it’s Bill McNeal come back to life.

Watch the video yourself and tell me what you think:

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Just Another Random Monday

– The word of the day is velleity, which is “a wish or inclination not strong enough to lead to action.”

– Conservative? If so, The Episcopal Church hates you. From a guest commentary on their official website:

In an all-wired, let’s-go-viral world of non-information posing as information, these outliers can gain traction. In a saner era, somebody would have told Trump to go back to building unprofitable casinos. No newspaper with sense would dignify today’s bigotry with 24/7 coverage. No network claiming authority would employ people whose wild-eyed extremism makes a mockery of the Fourth Estate.

But here they are, the nutcases, parading in prime time as if they were a legitimate alternative in a deeply divided nation that is struggling with huge and vexing issues.

Thanks to Rupert Murdoch, they even have their own television network to legitimize streams of vitriol, conspiracy theories, fears, rages, and suspicion. In the brave new world of leveling-by-Internet, anybody can say anything and claim to be an authority.

Nice. This wouldn’t faze (or surprise) me in the least if it were on some TEC-affiliated site. But to see it on their official site? Shocking! And they wonder why ASA continues to decline.

– Speaking of religion and politics, an English man is facing being fired for displaying a cross in his work van… but his boss has a poster of notorious racist, homophobe and anti-Semite Che Guevara on his office wall. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others, eh?

– The Metro Design Language isn’t a computer language like Java or C++. It’s actually a set of design standards Microsoft started using in Zune and Windows Media Center and made front and center in Windows Phone. And, like it or not, it’s coming to Windows 8 and the next version of Office. Here’s a confirmed genuine screen cap of a beta version of the newest version of Outlook:

office 15

Man, that’s pretty sexay!

– Speaking of sexy, Chickipedia is the Wikipedia of hawt celebrity women. But while it’s nice to have a giant list of babes and their biographies, what truly makes the site is the “Assets” and “Vices” list at the top of each entry. They’re sometimes mundane, but often hilarious! Check out the list for Heidi Montag: “Assets: Great ass, huge set of tits, cup sized triple D’s maybe triple F’s and going for triple H’s as per her wishes when she’s ready for them. Vices: totally devoid of talent.” Or Jenny McCarthy: “Assets: funny, likes to get naked, tall. Vices: inability to use deductive reasoning, masculine face”. And Ashley Judd: “Assets: Southern sweetness, natural beauty. Vices: race car drivers, bad scripts”. It’s worth a visit.