The cost of booze is going up. Whatever you’re used to paying for your favourite tipple, prepare to pay more. The days of cheap alcohol are numbered and, apparently, it is for our own good.
In wealthy nations all over the world, momentum is building for big hikes in the cost of alcohol. The rationale is to stop us all drinking to the point where we make other people’s lives hell by vandalising property, urinating and vomiting in the street, attacking people including members of our own family, and causing death and injury by driving under the influence. In other words, the goal is to stamp out what England’s Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson last week dubbed “passive drinking” - the damage done to innocent bystanders and society in general when people drink too much.
The passive drinking concept is borrowed from “passive smoking”. It is accepted almost everywhere that damage from passive smoking is real, and measures to curb it - taxing cigarettes heavily and banning smoking in public places, for example - have wide public support. Can a similar concept be applied to alcohol? And can the problem of passive drinking become as widely accepted as passive smoking, as hoped for by the World Health Organization, which last year began drafting a global plan to tackle alcohol abuse?
Tackling passive drinking will be an interesting experiment in social engineering. According to Donaldson, the way to do it is to raise the price of alcohol and limit its availability, however much resentment this may cause among the drinking classes. Donaldson proposed that the minimum price of a unit of alcohol (about as much as in half a pint of beer or a small glass of wine) should be raised to 50 pence.
Other countries are grasping the nettle too. The Scottish government is considering imposing a minimum price of 40 pence per unit of alcohol and banning cheap drink promotions such as two-for-one offers and “women drink free all night”. Last year, Australia slapped a hefty tax on alcopops in a bid to reduce heavy drinking among teenagers. And in North America there is much discussion about banning happy hours and similar promotions.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Thursday blamed the global economic crisis on “white people with blue eyes” and said it was wrong that black and indigenous people should pay for white people’s mistakes.
Speaking in Brasília at a joint press conference with Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, Mr Lula da Silva told reporters: “This crisis was caused by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing.”
I suspect these bigoted comments will not elicit the same level of outrage that others do.
3 March 2009 >>
When Barack Obama and his allies in Congress say the current tax laws aren’t fair, they are right. They aren’t fair, but not in the way the Democrats contend.
The Tax Foundation put together a revealing report (PDF) comparing taxes paid to the dollar value of government services received.
As this chart shows, 40% of American households are working to support the other 60%. If you make $65,000 or more per year, you’re effectively a slave for the portion of the year that you spend earning the money that the government takes in taxes.
You may not realize you’re a slave, because you don’t see any shackles around your legs. But if you decide not to pay your taxes, unless you plan on being nominated for a position in the Obama administration in which case taxes seem to be optional, those shackles would become very real. Just ask Wesley Snipes.
What we have now is a tyranny of the majority. Because 60% of America benefits from the labors of the other 40%, it’s a winning electoral formula, one that Democrats exploit at every election cycle when they ramp up the class warfare rhetoric demanding that “the rich” pay their “fair share.”
What is a fair share? Is it fair when a 40% minority is robbed to benefit the 60% majority? Would be more fair if 30% of people were robbed to benefit a 70% majority?
Taxing a smaller share of higher earners even more in order to subsidize the rest of the country is not only economically unworkable, it’s morally repugnant. At what point do people get fed up and say they’re not going to put in that extra effort, those additional hours of work so that their slave masters can reap the benefits of their labor?
Saturday, February 21st @ 3:00PM
Monday, February 23rd @ 5:00PM
Tuesday, March 17th @ 9:00PM
Wednesday, March 18th @ midnight
Wednesday, March 25th @ 5:00PM
Monday, March 30th @ 2:00AM
(all times Eastern)
The Documentary Channel is available on the Dish Network as well as on some cable carriers. In addition, some public television stations simulcast the Documentary Channel during certain parts of the day.
For example, I found out after the last Documentary Channel run of Indoctrinate U that the PBS affiliate WNYE (cable channel 25 here in New York City) aired the film. WNYE carries the Documentary Channel on Monday nights and Saturday afternoons. One of the other large simulcasters is KBDI in Denver. Check your local listings against the times above for more information.
In accepting the film, the festival’s reviewers wrote:
Well-edited, good looking titles, technically pulled together well so there’s no major problems that distract you from looking at it. Content: About the problems of political correctness on college campuses today and how they often impinge on professors and students’ individual rights of expression. Great story and content with plenty of examples to draw from, mostly talking heads interviews with archival footage cut in, well-shot film that could easily play on PBS or something along those lines. A wry, hard hitting documentary about the effect of the campus culture wars on individual rights, diversity of opinion, and the life of the mind in American higher education. Very professionally made. Great subject matter, we found it very interesting.
Indoctrinate U will be shown at the festival on Tuesday, March 24th at 6:00PM at the Village East Cinema at 2nd Avenue and 12th Street.
19 February 2009 @ 9:05AM >>
More reporters than usual are going into politics and government these days, and—surprise, surprise—they usually end up serving Democrats. But of course, this has nothing at all to do with the reporters’ ideology:
In three months since Election Day, at least a half-dozen prominent journalists have taken jobs working for the federal government.
Journalists, including some of those who’ve jumped ship, say it’s better to have a solid job in government than a shaky job - or none at all - in an industry that’s fading fast.
But conservative critics answer with a question: Would journalists be making the same career choices if John McCain had beaten Barack Obama in November?
“Obama bails out more media water-carriers,” conservative blogger Michelle Malkin wrote upon hearing that the Chicago Tribune’s Jill Zuckman is taking a job with the Obama administration.
[...]
As for other reporters making similar moves, Zuckman said that she didn’t think there would be so many “if the industry were stable.”
But it isn’t, and there are.
On Tuesday, Cox’s Scott Shepard joined Sen. John Kerry’s office as a speechwriter, becoming the second journalist this year to take a job under the Massachusetts Democrat. Investigative reporter Doug Frantz is now chief investigator under the Kerry-helmed Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
A week before Zuckman announced that she’s headed for Obama’s Transportation Department, her Tribune colleague Peter Gosselin signed on as speechwriter for Obama’s treasury secretary, Tim Geithner.
In December, Jay Carney relinquished his perch as Time’s Washington bureau chief to become Vice President Joe Biden’s communications director. Warren Bass left the Washington Post’s Outlook section to write speeches and advise Dr. Susan Rice at the United Nations. Daniel W. Reilly left Politico to become communications director for Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) Linda Douglass left the National Journal for the Obama campaign back in May and is expected to become assistant secretary for public affairs in the department of Health and Human Services.
[...]
“I didn’t leave journalism easily and I’ll always think of myself as a reporter, with a notepad tucked in his back pocket and a lot of unanswered questions,” Frantz told Politico last month.
But even if Frantz views himself as a reporter, he’s no longer working for the Newhouse, Sulzberger or Chandler families. Instead, a Democratic politician signs the paychecks.
Frantz isn’t alone in downplaying the partisan aspect of his new job. Maybe it’s based on a lifetime of nonpartisan conditioning, but many of the reporters who’ve made the leap to government seem hesitant to admit that they’re no longer impartial observers.
“This is a Democratic administration; we’re obviously on that side of the aisle, but I don’t see this as a partisan job at all,” Carney told the Times a couple weeks back.
18 February 2009 @ 9:02AM >>
Islamic law is gaining ground all over the globe. It’s not just happening in places like Pakistan, where Sharia is now the law of the land in some areas, or in India, where a newspaper editor was arrested for offending Muslims.
The founder of an upstate New York TV station aimed at countering Muslim stereotypes has been arrested on suspicion of killing his wife, who was beheaded, authorities said.
Because there’s no better way to counter Muslim stereotypes than to behead someone.
CNN adds that the man, Muzzammil Hassan, has confessed to the murder of his wife, who had filed for divorce a few days earlier.
On the anniversary of the interview in which [the Archbishop of Canterbury] Dr Rowan Williams said it “seems inevitable” that some parts of sharia would be enshrined in this country’s legal code, he claimed “a number of fairly senior people” now take the same view.
He added that there is a “drift of understanding” towards what he was saying, and that the public sees the difference between letting Muslim courts decide divorces and wills, and allowing them to rule on criminal cases and impose harsh punishments.
However critics insist that family disputes must be dealt with by civil law rather than according to religious principles, and claim the Archbishop’s comments have only helped the case of extremists while making Muslim women worse off, because they do not have equal rights under Islamic law.
[...]
[I]n July [the Archibishop] was supported by Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, who was then the Lord Chief Justice, while it later emerged that five sharia courts are already operating mediation systems under the Arbitration Act, and that the Government allows Islamic tribunals to settle the custody and financial affairs of divorcing couples and send their judgements to civil courts for approval.
[...]
But Douglas Murray, the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, said: “He has started a process which is deeply dangerous, damaging to Britain and to Muslim women in Britain.
“It was a wicked move because it undermines the progressives and gives succour to the extremists.
“How does the Archbishop of Canterbury know, sitting in Lambeth Palace, that a woman in Bolton has volunteered to give up half her inheritance to her brother?”
Perhaps the creeping implementation of Sharia law explains why Geert Wilders, a Dutch Member of Parliament, is no longer allowed to even set foot in Great Britain. He was arrested on the tarmac and unceremoniously booted out of the country:
Wilders is a hate figure to Muslims in Britain and worldwide because of his 15-minute film, “Fitna,” which blames Islam itself for terrorist crimes by Muslim fanatics from the London subway bombings to the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh.
[...]
British governments have rarely used their arbitrary power to keep dangerous foreigners out of the country. Indeed, London has become known as Londonistan precisely because the Brits let Middle Eastern extremists establish and run their organizations there.
[...]
So why ban Wilders? His film may be misleading, alarmist or just plain wrong. But it merely runs images of Muslim-linked terrorism side-by-side with Koranic passages or speeches by Muslim clerics justifying such crimes. He isn’t inciting anyone to murder or riot.
You may object that “Fitna” is one-sided or the Koranic quotations are wrenched from their context. If such criticisms have merit, surely the correct response is to debate with Wilders, not ban him.
The government, however, surely considered instead the different likely responses of British Muslims and other Brits.
When the average Londoner reads in The Sun about how Abu Hamza turned the Finsbury Park mosque into a terrorist recruiting office, he doesn’t join a mob outside the mosque threatening to burn it down. He mutters that the world is going to the dogs and turns the page.
But mobs of extremist Muslims have marched through London in recent years inciting murder. And Labor peer Lord Ahmed’s alleged threat of disorder in this case - to lead 10,000 Muslims to prevent Wilders from showing his film in Parliament - was very plausible. So Wilders was kept out.
Don’t just blame the victim - punish him. In effect, the government has enforced a fatwa on “Fitma” - without, as the hapless foreign secretary admitted, even watching the 15-minute film.
All this reflects an entrenched establishment attitude that the Muslim community is highly combustible and must be appeased. And, because Muslim extremists know this to be the official view, they’re likely to keep inventing pretexts for threats and riots.
The Brits, asked to choose between multiculturalism and freedom, will choose by degrees to be unfree.
So while Wilders is not allowed in Great Britain for the crime of criticizing Islam, threatening to behead anyone who insults Islam is apparently not a crime in Britain at all.
17 February 2009 @ 8:14AM >>
The website Texas Rainmaker posted a couple of reader-submitted photos from a Borders bookstore in Dallas. Here’s a cropped version of one of them:
Apparently, this display was in the children’s section.
The photos do not appear to be manipulated and the particular store where the photos were taken was identified in the website’s post. Assuming the photos are real, I can only hope that whoever placed the Obama books in the Religion section has a highly developed sense of irony.
13 February 2009 @ 9:32AM >>
Stephen Bates at Slatesuggests a new business model for the faltering newspaper industry: declare itself a religion. Although he refers to this idea as “a modest proposal,” it is far less obviously satirical than the Jonathan Swift essay those words reference.
The media covers politics with all the objectivity of a missionary describing his faith, and they treated the election and inauguration of President Obama with the sort of dispassion you’d expect of disciples who just witnessed someone rise from the dead.
Our press has been a religion for years. They might as well admit it now so they can claim the tax breaks.
10 February 2009 @ 9:09AM >>
Being a member of the media isn’t much different from being an Obama campaign worker. The International Herald Tribunereports:
Republicans have long accused mainstream journalists of being on the payroll of President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, a common refrain of favoritism, especially from those on the losing end of an election.
But this year the accusation has a new twist: In some notable cases it has become true, with several prominent journalists now on the payrolls of Obama and Democratic congressional leaders.
An unusual number of journalists from prominent, mainstream organizations started new government jobs in January, providing new kindling to the debate over whether Obama is receiving unusually favorable treatment in the news media.
I know it’s unfair to characterize the entire media as Obama sycophants. There are still some hard-nosed journalists out there, bravely speaking truth to power. For example, there’s Judith Warner of the “All The News That’s Fit to Print” New York Times:
The other night I dreamt of Barack Obama. He was taking a shower right when I needed to get into the bathroom to shave my legs, and then he was being yelled at by my husband, Max, for smoking in the house. It was not clear whether Max was feeling protective of the president’s health or jealous because of the cigarette.
The other day a friend of mine confided that in the weeks leading up to the election, the Obamas’ apparent joy as a couple had made her just miserable. Their marriage looked so much happier than hers. Their life seemed so perfect. “I was at a place where I was tempted daily to throttle my husband,” she said. “This coincided with Michelle saying the most beautiful things about Barack. Each time I heard her speak about him I got tears in my eyes - because I felt so far away from that kind of bliss in my own life and perhaps even more, because I was so moved by her expressions of devotion to him. And unlike previous presidential couples, they are our age, have children the same age and (just imagine the stress of daily life on the campaign) by all accounts should have been fighting even more than we were.”
[...]
Many women - not too surprisingly - were dreaming about sex with the president. In these dreams, the women replaced Michelle with greater or lesser guilt or, in the case of a 62-year-old woman in North Florida, whose dream was reported to me by her daughter, found a fully above-board solution: “Michelle had divorced Barack because he had become ‘too much of a star.’ He then married my mother, who was oh so proud to be the first lady,” the daughter wrote me.
Now that the Obama presidency has transformed venerable news outlets like the New York Times into a poor imitations of Teen Beat, and with a former SportsCenter newscaster now Obama’s main cheerleader on the cable outlet of NBC News, I guess it’s not that bizarre to discover the Washington Post has transformed itself into a sports publication.
Why else, during President Obama’s press conference on the economy, would the Post’s White House reporter waste a question by asking:
What is your reaction to Alex Rodriguez’s admission that he used steroids as a member of the Texas Rangers?
I’ve seen more serious reporting from Perez Hilton.
I don’t know why news outlets still bother employing political reporters. I guess the only reason is that there are still a handful of people in Washington who need oversight. They’re called Republicans, and they ain’t gonna bash themselves.
9 February 2009 @ 8:51AM >>
According to Financial Week, Congressman Barney Frank, the Democrat who serves as the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, wants to limit executive pay of all companies:
Congress will consider legislation to extend some of the curbs on executive pay that now apply only to those banks receiving federal assistance, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said.
“There’s deeply rooted anger on the part of the average American,” the Massachusetts Democrat said at a Washington news conference today.
He said the compensation restrictions would apply to all financial institutions and might be extended to include all U.S. companies.
5 February 2009 >>
Evading taxes seems to be a prerequisite for being nominated to an Obama Administration position. Although a couple of recent nominees withdrew their names after getting caught with unpaid tax bills, one major appointee—Timothy Geithner—is now the U.S. Treasury Secretary.
Add this to names like prominent Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel—the subject of a recent Brain Terminal video—and it explains why Democrats reliably favor raising taxes: they don’t pay them in the first place.
Suckers like us, however, do have to pay taxes.
Now, a blog called Where’s the Change? has a novel idea for a little civil disobedience to express your outrage about this double standard. All U.S. currency bears the signature of the Treasury Secretary. The proposal is to overwrite Timothy Geithner’s signature on bills with the words “Tax Cheat” (or, as one commenter suggests, “Obama’s Tax Cheat”).
For high-volume disobedience, you can find a vendor and buy a customized rubber stamp. Otherwise, a thick felt-tipped pen will do the trick.
2 February 2009 @ 8:58AM >>
During the Superbowl last night, NBC News was running ads for the Today Show touting an interview with President Obama. The ads contained a revealing line saying that Obama would enjoy “home field advantage” during the interview. In other words, NBC News has finally admitting to being nothing more than Obama cheerleaders.
They are not alone.
On the night of the Inauguration, The New York Times did its part to rally the true believers by handing out buttons with its logo prominently displayed beneath the profile of the new president.
Not to be outdone, CNN is selling t-shirts with the caption, “Obama raises hand, lifts a nation.”
And the Detroit Free Press is asking you to “see Obama in yourself” and send them a picture of your face behind a half-cutout Obama mask.
Perhaps the editors of the Free Press were worried that Obama worship wasn’t quite cult-like enough.
I guess I shouldn’t be shocked. As Helen Thomas—a White House reporter since the 1950s—recently said, “I’m a liberal, I was born a liberal, I’ll be one ‘til I die, what else should a reporter be when you see so much and when we have such great privilege and access to the truth?”
No surprise. Reporters are liberal, so they’ll favor a liberal president. But given the financial state of the news industry, perhaps political reporters can be laid off for the next for years, and the media can simply re-print White House press releases.
It would save a lot of money, and the resulting press coverage wouldn’t be any different.
1 February 2009 >>
Here’s a TV report from 1981 predicting the future of newspapers. What’s interesting is how much of it misses the mark...and how much of it doesn’t.
31 January 2009 @ 10:59AM >>
Any time Democrats in Congress opposed one of President George W. Bush’s initiatives, it was taken as evidence that Bush was a divisive president.
Now we’re in an Obama administration, and our new president was unable to persuade a single Republican in the House of Representatives to support the pork-laden sham of an economic stimulus package that he wants passed.
Suddenly, it isn’t the president who’s divisive, it’s his angry opposition in Congress.
It’s nice to have the media in your corner. Probably makes governing a little easier.
30 January 2009 @ 8:21AM >>
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has started a campaign to get people to start calling fish “sea kittens.” The idea seems to be, if people think fish are as cute as kittens, they would be less likely to eat them. (Although there are some countries in which such a strategy would obviously backfire.)
On the About page of PETA’s Save the Sea Kittens site, there’s a “Sea Kitten Facts” box with a rotating list of fish factoids.
One of those items contains a gratuitous insult against President Obama:
The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto asks, “How dare PETA stereotype the first African-American president as lacking in intelligence?”
On behalf of our president, I demand that PETA retract this bigoted insult.
28 January 2009 @ 9:01AM >>The View’s Joy Behar, who considers herself a comedian, was asked by Larry King about the possibilities presented by the Age of Obama:
King: [I]s this administration going to be hard for the comics to have fun with?
Behar: Yes. And all I can say is thank you for Joe Biden, because he is going to always give us some laughs. He’ll say something crazy and out there, and it will be fun. And Sarah Palin, you know, we can always rely on her to come back and give us some material. But it is really not easy to make fun of the Obamas, because they’re really — they’re kind of really perfect, aren’t they?
Perhaps our new president really is too perfect for mockery. Obama’s disciples, however, are another story.
23 January 2009 @ 9:01AM >>
Apparently, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore are trying to do my work for me. I can’t find a better illustration of the disturbing cult-like quality among President Barack Obama’s more enthusiastic supporters than this video put together by the celebrity duo:
Movie star Susan Sarandon compared President Obama to Jesus. Broadway and film actor Alan Cumming thought of him more like Mahatma Gandhi.
“He is a community organizer like Jesus was,” Sarandon said Tuesday night on the bright blue carpet leading into the Creative Coalition’s 2009 Ball at the Harman Center for the Arts in Chinatown. “And now, we’re a community and he can organize us.”
I get why people like our new president. I understand the historical significance of his election. And there is one thing about his election that makes me very happy: it disproves the leftist slander that America is a racist, bigoted country.
But all this pledging to blindly follow and serve The Leader not only highlights the intellectual unseriousness of the pledgers, it also shows that none of these folks know enough history to understand where this sort of groupthink can lead.
19 January 2009 >>
Congressman Charles Rangel has been in the news quite a bit lately. He’s having trouble keeping up with his taxes, despite being the chairman of the committee responsible for writing the nation’s tax laws.
Video >>
The head of the Tibetan government-in-exile left the audience stunned when he said “I love President George W Bush.” He went on to add how he and the US President instantly struck a chord in their first meeting unlike politicians who take a while to develop close ties.
I think personally he is a good man who loves his family and loves his country. And I think he made the best decisions that he could at times under some very difficult circumstances.
Finally, in the Washington Post, Peter Beinart urges his fellow Democrats to acknowledge that—gasp!—President Bush may have been correct about at least one thing:
It’s no longer a close call: President Bush was right about the surge.
[...]
[President Bush’s] decision to increase America’s troop presence in late 2006 now looks like his finest hour. Given the mood in Washington and the country as a whole, it would have been far easier to do the opposite. Politically, Bush took the path of most resistance. He endured an avalanche of scorn, and now he has been vindicated. He was not only right; he was courageous.
[L]et me take this opportunity to say that of all the innumerable print and broadcast journalists who have interviewed me in the U.S. and abroad since I arrived on the scene nearly 20 years ago, Katie Couric was definitively the stupidest. As a guest on NBC’s “Today” show during my 1992 book tour, I was astounded by Couric’s small, humorless, agenda-ridden mind, still registered in that pinched, tinny monotone that makes me rush across the room to change stations whenever her banal mini-editorials blare out at 5 p.m. on the CBS radio network. And of course I would never spoil my dinner by tuning into Couric’s TV evening news show. That sallow, wizened, drum-tight, cosmetic mummification look is not an appetite enhancer outside of Manhattan or L.A. There’s many a moose in Alaska with greater charm and pizazz.—Camille Paglia
Back in the 1970s, scientists were predicting global cooling, including at least one prominent scientist who later became a global warming alarmist.
Then, in the mid-1980s, we were all told to fear “acid rain,” which was the big looming environmental disaster of the time. Funny, we don’t seem to hear about acid rain anymore.
The scare-mongers then shifted focus to “the greenhouse effect” which eventually became known as “global warming,” a term that has fallen out of favor lately because the warming predictions haven’t been coming true in recent years.
So, after some embarrassing blunders with faulty data, global warming has been re-branded as “climate change.” That way, any time there’s a change in temperature, they can claim it as evidence supporting their beliefs. (Of course, since the dawn of Earth’s history, continual change has been the only constant with respect to the climate. So, by definition, anyone predicting the climate will change is always going to be proven correct eventually.)
Now it turns out that sea ice levels have risen to the highest point since 1979, after one of the coolest years in recent memory. Pravda, a preferred news outlet of radical environmentalists during the Soviet era, is even declaring that “[t]he earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science.”
While some people now claim they knew all along that the La Ni~na ocean cycle would cause temporary cooling, during the early years of global warming alarm, I can’t recall anyone saying, “in a few years, the temperature will cool because of a well-known oceanic phenomenon.” I can’t find a single Al Gore chart predicting a temporary lowering of the temperature for the latter part of this decade. Nope, the original predictions were for temperatures to keep going up, up, up.
But if we’re now supposedly on the brink of an ice age, then maybe environmental alarmism is just like women’s fashion, and we’re once again at the beginning of the hype cycle, right where we were back in the ’70s.
14 January 2009 @ 9:12AM >>
Once Washington starts handing out the money, eventually everybody lines up:
With the financial industry, auto makers and more getting assistance from the federal government to stay afloat during the recession, the adult industry decided it would try to get something as well.
Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis and “Hustler” magazine publisher Larry Flynt have said they will petition Congress for financial aid along the lines of what the Big Three auto makers are getting.
Francis said that he and Flynt are asking for $5 billion, and that they have sent letters to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Congress and their local Congressman, Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) with the proposal. Rep. Waxman’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
With the $5 billion, they would “invest in building new means of distribution, and shoring up our distribution right now to prevent further erosion from factors like Youporn and other Internet content that has seriously affected our business over the past few years,” Francis said in an interview with FOX Business. “We will use the money wisely, and we will create more jobs.”
Francis said that if invited, he and Flynt would drive across the country in a hybrid vehicle to present their plans to Congress.
The press release noted that DVD sales and rentals for the adult industry have decreased by 22% in the past year, partially because people are turning more and more to the Internet for adult content.
“People are too depressed to be sexually active,” Flynt said in the press release. “This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex.”
Francis said he and Flynt would also be willing to discuss the possibility of the government buying equity stakes in their companies, as was done with financial firms.
“If the government would like to be a partner with Mr. Flynt and I, we’re certainly amenable to it,” he said.
As unlikely as it sounds, I wouldn’t discount the possibility of the government giving bailout money to the porn industry. After all, politicians and porn stars have a lot in common: their jobs both involve screwing people.
12 January 2009 >>
As reported by the Washington Post:
With fuel prices declining, government mandates that automakers build highly fuel-efficient cars will be no more effective than combating obesity by forcing clothing manufacturers to make only small sizes.
Attributed to Bob Lutz
Vice Chairman of Global Product Development
General Motors
Imagine a country where the government regularly checks the waistlines of citizens over age 40. Anyone deemed too fat would be required to undergo diet counseling. Those who fail to lose sufficient weight could face further “reeducation” and their communities subject to stiff fines.
Is this some nightmarish dystopia?
No, this is contemporary Japan.
The Japanese government argues that it must regulate citizens’ lifestyles because it is paying their health costs. This highlights one of the greatly underappreciated dangers of “universal healthcare.” Any government that attempts to guarantee healthcare must also control its costs. The inevitable next step will be to seek to control citizens’ health and their behavior. Hence, Americans should beware that if we adopt universal healthcare, we also risk creating a “nanny state on steroids” antithetical to core American principles.
Other countries with universal healthcare are already restricting individual freedoms in the name of controlling health costs. For example, the British government has banned some television ads for eggs on the grounds that they were promoting an unhealthy lifestyle. This is a blatant infringement of egg sellers’ rights to advertise their products.
In 2007, New Zealand banned Richie Trezise, a Welsh submarine cable specialist, from entering the country on the grounds that his obesity would “impose significant costs ... on New Zealand’s health or special education services.” Richie later lost weight and was allowed to immigrate, but his wife had trouble slimming and was kept home. Germany has mounted an aggressive anti-obesity campaign in workplaces and schools to promote dieting and exercise. Citizens who fail to cooperate are branded as “antisocial” for costing the government billions of euros in medical expenses.
Of course healthy diet and exercise are good. But these are issues of personal - not government - responsibility. So long as they don’t harm others, adults should have the right to eat and drink what they wish - and the corresponding responsibility to enjoy (or suffer) the consequences of their choices. Anyone who makes poor lifestyle choices should pay the price himself or rely on voluntary charity, not demand that the government pay for his choices.
Government attempts to regulate individual lifestyles are based on the claim that they must limit medical costs that would otherwise be a burden on “society.” But this issue can arise only in “universal healthcare” systems where taxpayers must pay for everyone’s medical expenses.
Although American healthcare is only under partial government control in the form of programs such as Medicaid and Medicare, American nanny state regulations have exploded in recent years.
Many American cities ban restaurants from selling foods with trans fats. Los Angeles has imposed a moratorium on new fast food restaurants in South L.A. Other California cities ban smoking in some private residences. California has outlawed after-school bake sales as part of a “zero tolerance” ban on selling sugar products on campus. New York Gov. David Paterson has proposed an 18 percent tax on sugary sodas and juice drinks, and state officials have not ruled out additional taxes on cheeseburgers and other foods deemed unhealthy.
These ominous trends will only accelerate if the US adopts universal healthcare.
8 January 2009 >>
Liberal political comedian Baratunde Thurston attended Washington D.C.’s prestigious Sidwell Friends School, where he often found himself as the only black student in the classroom.
Now that Barack and Michelle Obama are sending their kids to Sidwell, Thurston decided to share his experience in an open letter of advice to the incoming First Family:
Sidwell will assuredly meet the challenges of educating and providing security for the first daughters. Back in my day, Sidwell parents included three senators, the publishers of both The New York Times and Washington Post and, oh yeah, Bill and Hillary Clinton, whose pubescent progeny was two years behind me. The Roosevelts, Nixons, and Gores also sent their kids to Sidwell.
But what may prove more challenging is the burden Malia and Sasha will face, not as first daughters, but as plain ol’ black girls. They already represent the United States of America, but in a school like Sidwell, even though it may have a greater representation of minorities than in my time, they also will be expected to represent the United States of Black America, as I was.
They’ll be The Black Friend. They’ll suffer through many a white person wanting to touch their hair. (I strongly recommend Sasha and Malia avoid cornrows.) And they will likely be viewed as both exceptions to and spokespeople for their race. This means they should be prepared when fellow students and even teachers turn to them for “expertise” when the curriculum touches on anything black.
Black Sidwell students are often likely to end up being the only black kid in a classroom. When this happens, we are automatically deputized as a sort of Assistant Professor X. During a discussion of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Hurricane Katrina, or even Black Lung, all eyes swivel toward us as everyone expects us to break out our copy of The Negropedia: A Comprehensive Guide to All Black Knowledge for the Edification of White Folks. Let your daughters know this moment is coming. Drill them on black facts. Make them memorize Roots. This way, they can prepare their lesson plans in advance.
[...]
I joined Sidwell in seventh grade. My first day at school, a black student who’d attended since kindergarten pulled me aside and asked if I knew what an Oreo was. “Yeah,” I answered. “It’s a cream-filled chocolate wafer manufactured by the Nabisco Corporation since 1952, and it’s mad tasty.” He corrected me: “No, an Oreo is somebody who’s black on the outside and white on the inside.” He then pointed across the room. “See Darryl? He’s an Oreo.”
What I saw was a slightly nerdy black kid hanging out with some white friends. What I failed to see was the problem. Being nerdy was practically a prerequisite for admission, and with the small number of black kids at Sidwell, it’d be a pretty lonely life for a kid with no white friends. Besides, isn’t the point of being black at an elite prep school to collect as many white friends as possible for later use?
[...]
Be prepared to hear “I’m not racist. I voted for you!” as an excuse for such closed-mindedness, ignorance, or worse. Mark my words, this will be our era’s equivalent of “I’m not racist. I have a black friend.”
The assumption that any given individual is a natural spokesman for an entire race is a manifestation of an underlying belief that people of that race are essentially interchangeable.
It’s also the belief that leads to racial preference systems like Affirmative Action, which makes the assumption that white=privileged and black=oppressed, an equation that’s equally insulting to both races because it fails to recognize the fact that individuals are different—even individuals of the same race! (Shocking, I know.)
A lot of people would love to be as oppressed as the Obama family.
31 December 2008 >>
Just days before Barack Obama was elected president, Pepsi unveiled a new logo. According to some, the updated logo bears a striking resemblance to Obama’s campaign logo. Wonkettesaid it was “what would happen if a can of Tab had sex with Barack Obama.”
To me, the notion that Pepsi would consciously mimic the Obama logo seems like a bit of a stretch. Considering how fickle poll numbers can be, why would a major mass-market brand risk being seen as promoting a particular politician? Nobody in politics remains popular forever.
But when I left work Monday evening, I saw something that made me wonder if I my assumptions were wrong.
You see, my office is in Times Square, where advertisers are revving up for the millions of people who will see tonight’s New Year’s Eve festivities.
And directly across the street from my office, at the base of the building where a crystalline sphere counts down the final seconds of every year, Pepsi placed a sign that looked familiar:
In case your memory wasn’t jogged by the photo above, here’s a hint:
If Pepsi is invoking Obama’s campaign materials deliberately—and I have no reason to believe that they are—then maybe the folks behind it see some business sense in doing so.
Judging from the volume of painted plates and limited-edition coins being hawked on TV ads that gush about Obama’s “kind eyes and warm smile,” the Merchandising of the President-Elect might be the only growth industry left.
Here in NYC, you can’t walk a block in midtown without passing several street vendors pushing Obamawear. But maybe I’m only perceiving this avalanche of advertising and street trinkets because I’m stuck inside the New York bubble.
Could Obama’s campaign imagery help sell sugared water to a entire nation?
I’m skeptical. The United States isn’t Manhattan, and selecting a particular brand of cola isn’t usually where people make political statements.
If the new Pepsi logo was designed to evoke the Obama logo, maybe the Ad Men of Madison Avenue—unable to see outside the New York bubble themselves—simply miscalculated on something that could backfire. Or maybe they launched this redesign fully aware that they were using one of the world’s most recognizable brands as collateral in a big bet on the political fortunes of one person.
30 December 2008 @ 9:18AM >>
An Australian government body will begin removing seashells from a beach because they make the beach too uncomfortable to walk on:
The committee, responsible for managing seven kilometres of coast stretching from Rye to Sorrento, has ordered oyster shells be cleared from Blairgowrie beach in time for the summer peak season.
But the decision has provoked criticism the committee is being overly protective and bureaucratic.
Kelvin Stingel, from the Whitecliffs to Camerons Bight Foreshore Committee of Management, said residents’ complaints about the “hazardous sharp” shells had prompted the volunteer body to act.
“We haven’t had any reports of people being injured but they said that they might get injured,” Mr Stingel said. “I walked across it myself and I wouldn’t let my kids run across it, it is pretty bad.”
[...]
“I think it’s ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous,” [Sorrento resident Dr. Keith Stead] said. “If they’re going to get rid of the shells I hope they’re not going to decide to get rid of the rocks and stones as well - it would just go on and on.”
Dr Stead said if parents were worried about their children they should teach them to be careful and wear sandals.
“I think we can probably do more harm to our kids by constantly trying to wrap them in the proverbial cotton wool and keep them from all danger and not have them recognise danger when they’re by themselves,” he said.
[...]
A long-standing Sorrento resident, who did not want to be named, said the decision was “misguided, far-fetched” and reminiscent of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
“When I was a kid people were always cutting their feet on sea shells, you can’t control it,” she said. “It’s just another example of the nanny state where people no longer have to make their own decisions because they are looked after by a higher authority.”
Keith John Sampson, a student at Indiana University - Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI), was found guilty of racial harassment for reading a book about a riot that took place in 1924 between Notre Dame students and the Ku Klux Klan.
Called Notre Dame vs. The Klan, the book’s author describes it as a discussion of a historical event and a celebration of the defeat of the white supremacist terrorist group in that event.
In an odd twist, the very book that led to Sampson’s racial harassment “conviction” was carried in the school’s own library!
But that didn’t stop the IUPUI’s Affirmative Action Office from finding Sampson giulty of racial harassment.
You can watch Andrew Marcus’s coverage of this case here:
If this is the kind of story that infuriates you, check out Indoctrinate U if you haven’t already.
29 December 2008 @ 9:21AM >>
Deborah Howell, the departing ombusman of the Washington Post, reflects on her colleagues as her tenure at the paper comes to a close:
My worry is that journalists aren’t as connected to readers as they were in the days of my youth, when the city’s newspaper was the equivalent of the public square. Then, reporters tended to be folks who often hadn’t graduated from, or even attended, college, and they weren’t looking to move to bigger papers. They knew the community well, didn’t make much money and lived like everyone else, except for chasing fires and crooks.
Now journalists are highly trained, mobile and, especially in Washington, more elite. We make a lot more money, drive better cars and have nicer homes. Some of us think we’re just a little more special than some of the folks we want to buy the paper or read us online.
That’s a mistake. Readers want us to be smart and tough and for the newspaper to read that way, but they don’t want us to think we’re better than they are. We need to be worried sick when people drop their subscriptions. We need to think of ways to prevent that.
An unpleasant fact about journalists is that we can be way too defensive. We dish it out a lot better than we take it. It’s not that we have thin skin; we often act as though we have no skin and bleed at the slightest touch.
[...]
Journalists need to be tough enough to face down a mayor, a police chief or the president of the United States, but we also should be tough enough to respond to honest criticism. The worst part of my job as official internal critic hasn’t been dealing with readers, though that has been both daunting and rewarding. Taking those complaints to reporters and editors has been the biggest challenge.
The next ombudsman of the Post, Andy Alexander, will start his term on Groundhog Day, 2009.
