So Howard Zinn Supported Stalin

It is confirmed (for any who had doubts), Howard Zinn was a communist. Really it should come as no big surprise given his "intellectual" output. Zinn was a man consumed by ideology (and a particularly violent and hate filled variant to boot.) It oozed like toxic slime over practically everything the man ever wrote, which amounted to making a mockery of the enlightenment idea of history. Zinn is to real history what Lysenko is to real biology, that is, a joke.

The Obama Administration Used Its Power To Protect A Child Rapist?

If true welcome to a new low. Did Eric Holder Free Roman Polanski?

I Write Like...

I write like
Johathan Swift

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Thanks to First Things for pointing me to this. I'm really stoked!

The Supreme Court Fails The Country

Five addled brain morons just gutted the First Amendment in the name of Political Correctness. Today the Court struck down the right of free association for citizens.

I am seething with anger.

This means war. Conservative groups on college campus need to fight and fight hard. Is there a socialist group on your campus? Great, pack their opening meetings and vote one of your own to "lead" the group. Maybe there is a gay/lesbian alliance on your campus? Great. Get every evangelical on campus to to take over that group. A muslim student association on campus? Great, get every friend of Israel, Jewish or otherwise, to take over that group.

Fuck 'em. If they want war, then give it to them.

Really this country would be a better place if Stevens, Ginsburg, Kennedy, Sotomayor, and Breyer were never born.

From the rational part of the decision (i.e. the dissent):

I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that today’s decision is a serious setback for freedom of expression in this country. Our First Amendment reflects a “profound national commitment to the principle that debate onpublic issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.” New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254, 270 (1964). Even if the United States is the only Nation that shares this commitment to the same extent, I would not change our law to conform to the international norm. I fear that the Court’s decision marks a turn in that direc-tion. Even those who find CLS’s views objectionable should be concerned about the way the group has beentreated—by Hastings, the Court of Appeals, and now thisCourt. I can only hope that this decision will turn out tobe an aberration.

I will not be holding my breath.

Forgetting 1 + 1 = 2

More brilliance in thinking! Foreclosures by Race and Ethnicity: The Demographics of a Crisis

Our new research shows that the foreclosure crisis is not over, and runaway foreclosures continue to drain hundreds of billions of dollars in wealth from families, hitting communities of color the hardest.

• An estimated 2.5 million foreclosures were completed from 2007 – 2009, and an estimated 5.7 additional ones are imminent.
• An estimated 17% of Latino homeowners and 11% of African-American homeowners have already lost their home to foreclosure or are now at imminent risk.
• The great majority of homes lost were owner occupied, as are those at imminent risk of being lost.
  

And this comes as a surprise how exactly? One of the stated goals of loosening the criteria for getting home loans (including the riskiest sub-prime mortgages) was to increase home ownership among minority groups. Those loans were always the riskiest, so it should come as no surprise that they would be hard hit by foreclosures when the economy hits a prolonged slump.

There is nothing profound in my observation; its simple common sense. Seemingly, it is a sense beyond many these days.

U.S. v. Slovenia

Fixed I'd say.

The Democrats Want Your Money: All Of It

First they started taking about "nationalizing" people's 401(k)'s, now they want to eliminate the mortgage interest deduction. From QandO:

You crank up Turbo Tax and you begin doing your taxes. About half way through, the sweat is beginning to form on your upper lip. You wonder, after all that’s been withheld during the year, how you could owe what TT says you owe at the top of the screen.

Then you get to the deduction phase and you plug in your mortgage interest deduction. Suddenly your angst disappears. The amount owed tumbles, in fact, it might even go in a positive direction. Thanks goodness.

Well, Bunky, if the President’s commission on have their way, that sweaty upper lip will be a permanent fixture for your tax preparation work day. They don’t like it, they’d rather eliminate it than any spending, and they’re talking about doing away with it:

And now that sentiment has turned against all the federal red ink — and cost-cutting is in vogue — Democrats on President Barack Obama’s financial commission are considering the wisdom of permanent tax breaks such as the mortgage deduction and corporate deferral. Calling them “tax entitlements,” senior Democratic lawmakers have argued they should be on the table for reform just like traditional entitlement programs Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid.

I can’t imagine a more unpopular thing to do for a citizenry and electorate that already feels hard pressed when it comes to taxes. And comparisons with the taxation levels in other countries really has no bearing, since it is the level of taxation the citizens of this country are willing to bear that matters. And they’ve made it plain that they feel they pay plenty in that department.

First off, Social Security and Medicare are not "entitlement" programs, they are social insurance programs, which is the reason why there is a separate FICA withholding from everyone's paycheck. Entitlements are means tested payments, while social insurance benefits are determined by the payments we make into them. To treat Social Security as if it were the government giving everyone charity is simply false. However, pro=government thugs want to dispense with such legal niceties and make everything income tax and thus make everyone beholden to the Federal government. They want power, as usual.

Which, of course, is the reason why they are turning against the idea of home ownership for average Americans as well. It used to be we valued the ability of Americans to be self-sufficient, at least as an ideal. Thomas Jefferson held up the model of the yeoman farmer, a self-sufficient individual who took care of himself and, when dire circumstance called, defended the country as a citizen soldier. An integral part of such a vision was the idea that the citizen would own property including his own home.

This ideal is, of course, a difficult one to realize universally, but the incentives in the tax code were put in place to make it more of a reality than it otherwise might have been. This is a reality which is anathema to the current "liberal" understanding which no longer believes in the abilities of average Americans to be free upstanding citizens. To the new overlords, the average American is something like a wild untamable but fundamentally weak beast which must be managed, much like a herd of bison. If people begin to believe they can and should look after themselves, well, that is the great danger for this view. It threatens everything the Democrats hold sacred. Namely power.

Adolph Green

The Stakes

First this:

As the crisis over a deadly Israeli commando raid on a vessel carrying Turkish activists continued to command the attention of top officials in Washington, Jerusalem, and Istanbul, Namik Tan, the Turkish ambassador to the United States, called Friday for engaging Hamas in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...

"For a final solution, you cannot ignore Hamas. That's what we are saying," said Ambassador Namik Tan. "This is not the first time that we are trying to bring this into the discussion. We have told this to the Israelis, to our American friends, to our international interlocutors, everyone. How could you imagine a final solution without Hamas?"

Of course a "final solution" is what Hamas is already on record as wanting. And, yes, it is the same "final solution" Germany attempted in the 1940's.

People like this dillweed, and this nitwit, are all for it.

Hugh Hewitt is right. It's getting to be about time to choose a side.

ADDING:

In case you were wondering:

I've met Namik Bey a few times, and he is smart and capable. He is absolutely fluent in English and was both the former spokesman of the Turkish foreign ministry and Turkey's ambassador in Israel. Simply put, it is hard to believe that the ambassador wasn't simply trying to provoke.

This was no accident.

Your Musical Interlude XXVII

Anatomy Of An Error, And Another Error

It begins with Matthew Yglesias noting on his blog a strange looking statistic in a Foreign Affairs piece:

This Foreign Policy article on Steig Larsson and the decline of the Swedish utopia concludes with what seems to me to be a whopper of a factual error:

If you look at the statistics, Sweden is not a particularly violent country, nor a particularly lenient one to criminals. It is in about the middle of the European averages for both figures. There were 230 homicides in Sweden in 2009, compared with 143 in Washington, D.C., which has a population a bit more than half Sweden’s size. But compare these figures to what they were in the years when Sweden looked like a utopia. In 1990, there were 120 homicides in Sweden, and 472 in Washington. There is a convergence here that doesn’t flatter Sweden.

In fact, there are 9.3 million people in Sweden and only 600,000 in Sweden. In other words, Sweden has about fifteen times the population of Washington DC and less than half the murders.

Wow, the author of the Foreign Affairs piece, Andrew Brown, got the population of Washington wrong by a factor of fifteen?!? What a maroon, right?

Well, wrong. The fact the numbers Brown presents (something over 4.65 million for DC) are so different from the actual population of the District of Columbia should have been a clue that we has citing another statistic, and, of course, that is exactly what Brown was doing. Brown used some version of the Metropolitan Statistical Area, which in 2009 was estimated at a little over 5.4 million for Washington DC. As a result Yglesias, more interested in playing "gotcha!" than doing a little thinking and research, really doesn't help us understand what is going on here.

Picking up on Yglesias, Balloon Juice manages to be even more unhelpful:

If I had written or edited this article, I would right now be deciding between suicide and a career change. I know that sounds harsh, but it’s true.

You mean such as writing something about demography without, seemingly, knowledge of a basic demographic measure (i.e. the Metropolitan Statistical Area)? Good luck with your suicide decision Mr. Balloon Juice.

Now, to be fair to Yglesias he does acknowledge his error, at least to a point. At some point after he wrote his initial posting he added:

It seems clear that the author of the piece meant to refer to the population of the overall Washington DC metropolitan area but if that's what he wants to talk about then he needs to add up the total number of murders in that area.

Gee, if it is so "clear" why didn't you mention that in your initial writing on the matter?

Now, to be sure, Brown did make an error in his piece in using the murder statistics for the city of Washington DC instead of for the MSA. From what I can tell, the F.B.I. has not released the relevant statistics for 2009 yet, so I cannot find out what the actual murder numbers should be for the Washington MSA for 2009. In 2008, the rate was 7.5 per 100,000. Using the 2009 population estimate that would give us roughly 405 murders in the DC MSA for 2009.

But let us remember, Brown's original point was that the murders numbers were converging over time. Are they?

Using the HUD USER demographic data I can see that in 1992 the murder rate in the Washington MSA was 15.7. Alright, using the MSA 1990 census data the population of the DC MSA was 4.1 million. This would make the numbers of murders for the MSA in 1990 be roughly, 644, while in 2009 there were 405. The homicide rate decreased 37%. In 1990 Sweden had a population of right around 8 million and 120 homicides were committed. In 2009 the numbers were 9.3 million and 230. This means the homicide rate increased 167%. So, the convergence is real, if not of the magnitude that Brown implies.

So, yes, Brown screwed up, but so did Yglesias.

Martini

I like to have a martini,
two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
after four I'm under my host. - Dorothy Parker

I Can't Stand It

Really? Choking warnings are sought for some foods

On a July afternoon in 2006, Patrick Hale microwaved a bag of popcorn for his two young children and sat down with them to watch television. When he got up to change the channel, he heard a strange noise behind him, and turned to see his 23-month-old daughter, Allison, turning purple and unable to breathe.

As a Marine, he was certified in CPR, but he could not dislodge the popcorn with blows to her back and finger swipes down her throat. He called 911, but it was too late: by the time Allison arrived at the hospital, her heart had stopped beating. An autopsy found that she had inhaled pieces of popcorn into her vocal cords, her bronchial tubes and a lung.

"Neither one of us knew that popcorn was unsafe," said her mother, Christie Hale of Keller, Texas.

Look, I'm sorry about the loss of this child in this freak accident, but of course popcorn is "safe." It simply isn't meant to be inhaled. Neither are grapes, mashed potatoes, chewing gum, or any other food item that children could ingest.

Here is the list of items they want to label:

...hot dogs, peanuts, carrots, boned chicken, candy, meat, popcorn, fish with bones, sunflower seeds and apples.

But, of course, these are mentioned because they are very common foods, so we would probably want to also label any foods akin to hot dogs, peanuts, carrots, boned chicken, candy, meat, popcorn, fish with bones, sunflower seeds or apples, which would basically cover all non-Jello forms of sustenance.

Though I bet, if inhaled, one could drown in Jello, so you better slap a label on that as well.

What stupidity.

"Well Done. You've Lost a Million Dollars!"

h/t The Anchoress

Does Anyone In Britain Still Read English?

The BBC has gone all breathless again: Texas schools to get controversial syllabus

Education officials in the US state of Texas have adopted new guidelines to the school curriculum which critics say will politicise teaching.

The changes include teaching that the United Nations could be a threat to American freedom, and that the Founding Fathers may not have intended a complete separation of church and state.

Critics say the changes are ideological and distort history, but proponents argue they are redressing a long-standing liberal bias in education.

OMG "Critics" don't like it? What ever shall we do?

Let's see what those evil "political" conservatives have in store for the poor unsuspecting children of Texas!

Jefferson out

Thomas Jefferson has been dropped from a list of enlightenment thinkers in the world-history curriculum, despite being one of the Founding Fathers who is credited with developing the idea that church and state should be separate.

OMG! They've taken out Jefferson! Now they won't learn about him in the World History section! Those evil conniving bastards! Where will our children learn about Jefferson!!!

What's that? They will learn about Jefferson in American History? (Taken from the Proposals for Social Science Education in High Schools):

(1) History. The student understands how constitutional government, as developed in America and expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the U.S. Constitution, has been influenced by ideas, people, and historical documents. The student is expected to:

(A) explain major political ideas in history, including the laws of nature and nature's God, unalienable rights, divine right of kings, social contract theory, and the rights of resistance to illegitimate government;

(B) identify major intellectual, philosophical, political, and religious traditions that informed the American founding, including Judeo-Christian (especially biblical law), English common law and constitutionalism, Enlightenment, and republicanism, as they address issues of liberty, rights, and responsibilities of individuals;

(C) identify the individuals whose principles of laws and government institutions informed the American founding documents, including those of Moses, William Blackstone, John Locke, and Charles de Montesquieu;

(D) identify the contributions of the political philosophies of the Founding Fathers, including John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Jay, George Mason, Roger Sherman, and James Wilson, on the development of the U.S. government;

(E) examine debates and compromises that impacted the creation of the founding documents; and

(F) identify significant individuals in the field of government and politics, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan.

So, high school students are only supposed to be able to identify the political philosophy of Jefferson, but also Jefferson the President as well. See?!?!? Evil!!!! Just look how kids in Texas will be deprived of Jefferson's many accomplishments outside of the United States, such as... um... let's see... such as... hmm.. OH! I know, such as his banging his slave while he was in France! This would be useful to fulfill the part of the proposal that calls for teachers to "explain how institutional racism is evident in American society." Conservatives have always been trying to sell that "institutional racism" angle, right?

Alright, so maybe Jefferson is still in the curriculum, but I'm sure the BBC has other reasons to know it is evil!

Students in Texas will now be taught the benefits of US free-market economics and how government taxation can harm economic progress.

OMG!! The students of Texas will be expected to know how the economy works in this country!! But... but... but... if they learn that they could become competent adults who can fend for themselves! What bias!! Who will be there to teach them the joys of sponging off of wealthier people?

Throughout social studies in Kindergarten-Grade 12, students build a foundation in history; geography; economics; government; citizenship; culture; science, technology, and society; and social studies skills. The content, as appropriate for the grade level or course, enables students to understand the importance of patriotism, function in a free enterprise society, and appreciate the basic democratic values of our state and nation...

But how will they be instructed in the beauties of neo-Marxism, if they are being brain-washed with all this "free market" and "democracy" stuff?

What's that?

(14) Social institutions. The student identifies the basic social institutions of economics and politics and explains their influence on society. The student is expected to:

(A) define and differentiate between the economic models of free enterprise and socialism and how they impact society;

And...

(18) Economics. The student understands the historic origins of contemporary economic systems. The student is expected to:

(A) identify the historic origins and characteristics of the free enterprise system, including the contributions of Adam Smith;

(B) identify the historic origins and characteristics of communism, including the influences of Karl Marx;

(C) identify the historic origins and characteristics of socialism;

Once again, this shows bias because by teaching the kids about the free market as well they might make comparisons that are unflattering to socialism!! The evil bastards!

That's all I can do. I'm literally all out of snark. This BBC story is so stupid and insipid it depleted it right quick.

ADDING:

I'll just add this in case I get some of the more dimwitted dropping by here: I teach political theory at the college level, and I assure you Jefferson is almost never discussed in a Western Political Thought course anywhere in the country. In an American Political Thought class, absolutely, but never in a class focusing on world thinkers. From a generic political theory perspective Jefferson simply isn't that important. Besides, John Locke and John Stuart Mill are far more important if you are discussing the origins of religious freedom and the importance of the freedom of individual conscience. All of this hand-wringing is the work of political hacks, and nothing more. That these hacks are masquerading as journalists is another problem for the republic. ("Oh he called the United States a 'republic'! Quick!! Get the PC police on the line! We have an unbeliever!!")