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The Karl Rove Quote
Interesting commentary from Instapundit, and I agree with him that this was a very well done political trick, which the dems seem to be buying, hook line and sinker. More commentary at Winds of Change.
Michael Totten brings us the quote of the week with “It’s like watching a leper challenge a hemophiliac to full contact karate.“
Some what prescient is this Andrew Sullivan column about the whole matter. Rove has done a very good job of exploiting the principal-agent problem going on with the Dems right now.
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Rapid fire Friday
- Tupac Shakur arts center opens – and so very close to me. Meanwhile the guy who created the first schools for blacks in this state can’t even get an elementary school named after him.
- Poll: In wake of Iraq war, allies prefer China to U.S. – To thine own self be true America. If all of the aid we donated both publicly and privately in the wake of the Tsunami didn’t help anything in these countries, then not much will. Immigration is a much better metric than polls anyway.
- The One Campaign – solve Extreme Poverty and Global Aids (why are they extreme and global?) via nagging and fashionable wristbands. It’s so cool, after all Bono and Angelina Jolie are for it. Brought to you by people who don’t understand the difference between stock and flow.
- Palestinian Woman Heading for Treatment at Israeli Hospital Caught Carrying Explosives – really! To Quote:
At the Shikma Prison in Israel’s Negev Desert, where the Shin Bet security service allowed Israeli TV reporters to interview her, al-Biss said she was determined to carry out a suicide attack against Israel because of its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
“My dream was to be a martyr,” she said, adding that she was recruited by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a violent offshoot of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement. “I believe in death.”
Sitting calmly across from an Israeli TV interviewer, the young woman with large brown eyes and curly dark hair pulled back in a ponytail said her decision had nothing to do with her disfigurement, which might make her less desirable as a bride.
“Don’t think that because of how I look I wanted to carry out an attack,” said al-Biss. “Since I was a little girl I wanted to carry out an attack.”
RTWT. She takes a bit of it all back, worth reading.
- The Two Blogospheres – an interesting article by Mathew Yglesias
- ScriptCenter: ATM for Drugs – much more on this later, but definitely a step in the right direction.
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Toy bought, Toy bought, Toy bought
The Olympus DC 8080 is on it’s way.
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On this day, I am again a licensed motorist!
And all it took was two days at the DMV. Oh the fun.
I go there at yesterday at 2:40 in the afternoon, and I’m five people away from being called when they close.
I get there at 1:30 today, and walk out at 4:45. The actual process took a mere 3 minutes.
As one might imagine, there was very little of interest happening. I went to the DMV at South DeKalb mall, where the only interesting things were
- The two people behind me debating the terms of a plea bargain
- A minor confrontation between a countrier than thou hipster and a guy in a bad toupee (toupee was trying to cut in line)
All in all, a waste of time.
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The Tree
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Items of the day
- Funnies one liner – John J. DiIulio for his characterization of the the Bush administration as “the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis“
- This post by the Agitator :
Better people who are well-employed decide for the urban poor that they don’t need those jobs. And that they should be shopping at more tasteful stores, anyway.
I think that maybe — just maybe — anti-Wal Mart sentiment has more to do with an aversion to the white, rural ethnology the store sometimes represents than its labor practices. We can’t have our Ethiopian restaurants and esoteric bookstores blighted by NASCAR culture.
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Public piety
I have long believed that people are hard wired to practice religion in some form, and this current article on Cnn.com “So Long to Gas Guzzler Guilt“. The article is about a company called “Terrapass” that trades in pollution credits to make up for the auto emissions of environmentalists
The company is a for-profit enterprise, but caps its profits at a maximum of 10 percent of revenues.
Those revenues so far, Arnold says, are “itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny.” The company started selling TerraPasses in November and had sold about 620 as of last week.
If you buy a TerraPass, the money will be used to purchase smog allowances on the Chicago Climate Exchange. The Climate Exchange allows polluting companies that produce less than a certain amount of airborne pollutants to sell credits to other companies that then allow them to go over the limit.
The overall limits are reduced over time making it more costly to exceed them. Organizations and companies that buy pollution credits reduce the overall supply of credits and also make it more costly for companies to exceed the limits.
and
Since car drivers are under no legal compulsion to try to compensate for their tailpipe emissions, the TerraPass will only appeal to those who feel some guilt about their driving, and want to do something about it.
Not surprisingly, few SUV drivers have been buying them. Most have gone to owners of fuel-efficient cars that produce relatively few pollutants.
That initially surprised Arnold.
“We fully expected to target SUV drivers with SUV guilt,” he said. “It just doesn’t exist”
Instead, he’s been traveling to environmental fairs pitching the idea to those who, for the most part, drive fuel efficient small cars and gas/electric hybrid vehicles.
“Environmentalists have a very conflicted relationship with their cars,” said Arnold.
As for himself, Arnold doesn’t own a car. He commutes to work by bicycle.
The need to show piety is deeply ingrained in us.
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An interesting blog find
Via Tom Palmer, comes the interesting blog Right Watch, which is dedicated to keeping an eye on the self-styled “Paleo – Libertarian” section of the American political landscape, the Paleo libs being those who identify strongly with the later thought of Murray Rothbard and (improbably) the Confederate States of America. While a small group, they do seem to speak for a somewhat larger group of anti-war right wingers.
I’ve seen these folks in print for a while, and one thing always jumps out at me. For all their pro-CSA rhetoric, they have no visible connection to the actual South. One does not see any mention of a Southern birthplace or education on their bios. Any actual tie to the South, old or new, is conspicuous by it’s absense.
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A day behind on the blogging
I’m almost caught up on the blogging, now. I went twice around Stone Mountain yesterday with Mike and Erin (happy birthday Erin!) and afterwards we had German good with Mary and Ed.
Then I fell asleep incredibly early for me (around midnight). When I woke up at 5:50 this morning I thought I’d slept through to the next night.
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Saw Batman
Eric and I saw Batman Begins on Saturday night. I have to say I recommend it highly. They stuck close with Frank Miller’s “Year One” series and portrayed Bruce Wayne as a dark, angry figure, with none of the campyness that characterized the television series. Christian Bale performs very well as Bruce Wayne and Batman, the other characters did excellent jobs as well.The Ras Al Gul character was a bit different, in the movie, he plays more of a spiritual leader (to put it nicely) in the comic book he ‘s more of a genocidal eco-terrorist. The Henri Ducard role is different as well (at least different that the Joe Hamm story I read.) Scarecrow was extremely well done, and Gary Oldman could not have done a better job.
Missing, curiously was any mention of Batman as the world’s greatest detective, though one can’t have everything.
After the movie Eric and I had dinner at the Rusty Nail, AKA the Smoking Gun (informally named after the barbecue smoker pictured below.
Of no significant import was the waving man outside of Decatur CD. I don’t mention it because of any great significance, but mostly because the photo turned out well.
And that was my Saturday. -
Shaking my faith in the role of women in society
Whenever I need to feel smugly superior I read the “Woman to Woman” feature in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, where a pretentious left-leaning woman debates a cloying right-leaning woman. Naturally I was interested in this weeks topic Should medical marijuana be legalized?
The left starts out with an irrelevant racial remark, then takes the remark back, taking up about half of her column, and then somehow using up all of her remaining space to issue a strawman attack at religion (why? Who knows), then closes with
While some argue medical marijuana can be addictive, few would contend it has the same dependency risk as the medications hospitals routinely administer for debilitating pain. Conservatives aren’t clamoring for hospitals to turn off the morphine drip for dying cancer patients because there?s a heroin problem in the world. But they want to draw a line in the sand over medical marijuana? Please. Show me the logic.
Which is to say….. Well, I’m not sure exactly. Marijuana is being treated differently than heroin, which is not the same thing as marijuana? Is that actually a reason?
And quote frankly, how can she miss the actual strong arguments in favor of legalizing medical marijuana, namely, federalism, wasted government resources, the fact that none of the “dangers” of marijuana apply to say, 60 year old cancer patients, the chilling effect this has on medical research and treatment, the loss of privacy, etc.
That was the logical cesspool that is left-leaning Diane Glass. Then she gets topped by right- leaning Shaunti Feldhahn. She leads with a personal story, then closes with
I suspect that pro-medical marijuana opinions are less about ensuring the availability of treatments unavailable anywhere else, and more about legally getting high.
When I oppose legalizing backyard marijuana, I am not being heartless toward those with chronic conditions who use it to relieve their suffering. By championing other effective, controlled options, I am trying to spare other individuals and the public health the even greater suffering from, yes, that ‘slippery slope’ that countless of us have experienced firsthand: that marijuana is not a harmless drug and its use can go terribly awry.
To answer her ad hominen attack, I support the legalization of medical marijuana, and I have no interest in getting high, legally or otherwise.
As for her closing paragraph, it so uniformly ridiculous I don’t know where to begin. None of the problems associated with marijuana as a “gateway” drug (even if you believe in that as a concept) apply to the people who would take medical marijuana.
What combination of circumstances would have to exist for her statement to be true, accurate and altruistic? You would have to have cancer patients who have no interest in selecting the best treatment for their cancer, who are utterly incapable of differentiating between treatments like Marinol (incidentally, Marinol must be swallowed and kept down for a prolonged period of time, not the easiest thing to do during chemotherapy) and smoked marijuana.
It would also have to be true that outsiders, with no specific knowledge of the medical condition in question would know more about the cancer and the patient than the patient and his/her doctor. They would also have to be more concerned about this patient than the patient himself.
It would also have to be true that the same dangers that exist with marijuana as a “gateway” drug (even if you believe in the concept) apply to a 60 year old woman with breast cancer the same way they apply to 17 year old angst ridden teenagers. And what substance doesn’t have the potential to go “terribly awry”?
This turned into quite a little rant.