I recently came across some posts by my brother in the comments section over on NRO. The subject was the Common Core. He and I seem to agree about one thing: there is nothing, or little, actually in the math standards that are objectionable. The point-by-point details in the Common Core, of what students should learn each year, aren't that bad. Many people—even the CC’s strongest critics—admit that the CC math standards are better than what most of the states had before. I follow the arguments surrounding the Common Core's math standards fairly intensively and rarely have I seen actual nit-picking of individual standards. (Apart from the fact that they are often written in bureaucratic gobbledygook.)

The criticism I have seen hits many different notes:

1. The pacing is slow. James Milgram, one of the CC's major critics, has said that the CC puts US kids one year behind our peer countries' math curricula by 5th grade, and two years behind by the end of 7th grade. In other words, what we teach in 7th, other countries cover in 5th. And it gets worse every year.

   [ James Milgram ] For example, by the end of fifth grade the material being covered in arithmetic and algebra in the Core Standards is more than a year behind the early grade expectations in most high achieving countries. By the end of seventh grade Core Standards are roughly two years behind.

   In addition, a lead writer of the Core, Jason Zimba, has said in a public forum and on camera that the math standards are "not only not for STEM, they are also not for selective colleges." In other words, students who follow the CC pacing in math will not be prepared to get into a selective college and will not be prepared to study a STEM field if they do get in. Zimba can be seen saying this in the short movie "Building the Machine" starting at about 20:40 in.
   
   Keep in mind what this means: no student who follows the Common Core’s pacing will be prepared to major in math, science or engineering in college.
   
   When Jason ZImba was later questioned about his public statements that the CC math standards would not prepare kids for selective colleges or for STEM studies, he tried to say that he never said anything of the sort. Only when he was faced with the actual video of him saying exactly that, was he forced to address the issue. He continues to obfuscate and pretend that he didn’t really say what he clearly said.
   
   Did he misspeak? Most people who look over the standards would say that he did not; the CC math standards are minimalist and aimed at making sure that everyone has a basic level of competence. They are not aimed at the high end of the spectrum or at future math and science majors. In addition, the Common Core documentation states that it prepares kids for the level of study provided at community colleges, and not for studies at more rigorous schools.
   
   
2. This brings up a semi-related point. I recently was talking to a parent in the Santa Monica school system. She has a daughter in 6th grade who is advanced in math. She is ready to take algebra next year. However, Santa Monica's adoption of the CC has included a jettisoning of all accelerated tracks of math study. Her daughter will not be allowed to take algebra in school until 9th grade. I remember when California passed the law adopting the CC, it did so in a rigid manner. The law said that what the CC says students should be taught in 7th is what all students should taught in 7th--even if they are ready for advanced work. This eliminated the possibility of accelerated math. There was some talk about fixing this, and I know not all districts and schools have taken Santa Monica's position, but many have. Keep in mind, that in taking algebra in 9th grade, you cannot be on track to take calculus in high school--in a rigid system like this, high school calculus is not an option.
   
   Can this interpretation of the CC standards be laid at the feet of the CC? In part, yes. The Common Core does not talk at all about advanced students or allowing an advanced track with calculus as an end-point in high school. That has given schools, districts, and states an excuse to eliminate or reduce math tracking.
    
3. On the other end of the spectrum, Common Core makes no allowances for students who are not developmentally ready for the work required in the given grade-level standard. A student with special needs must be taught the grade-level standard math even if they are years behind in understanding, or even in the ability to understand the material. This is an "all students must be average" approach, which does not take into account the needs of learning disabled kids. Instead of giving those kids a curriculum which will advance them from where they are to where they can reasonably be at the end of the year, these students will be in way over their head with no chance of actually understanding the material and with little to help them catch up.
   
   For example: Students who have not mastered counting to 100 might be required by the standard to do multiplication and division. How can they possibly progress when the curriculum is so far out of their reach?
   
    
4. What is now happening, as the Common Core standardized tests are being taken in places like New York, is a massive upwelling of complaints about them. 

   Elementary school teacher Ralph Ratto the day after administering CC math exams: 
   I was angry that my students were victims in the abusive game to drive a political agenda.
   
   I lost it today. I lost a little bit of my self-esteem. I lost my faith in my party. I lost my faith in my ability to protect my students. I lost my faith in our future.
   
   I watched my students valiantly attempt math questions that most adults could not answer. These questions were wordy, and purposely confusing in a warped way to prove some point about our public education system.
   
   Historically, my students excel on standardized tests, often finishing near the top of our district and state. Today I witnessed –, no I was part of!!  – a situation in which students were forced to endure what amounted to what I would call an abusive situation.

   I can’t tell, without seeing the unpublished questions, whether he is complaining about how poorly-written these tests are, or whether they are testing math which is beyond the students’ learning. Is it simply the way they are asked to show their knowledge? Or are they being asked about things they haven’t been taught?
   
   
   Many of the complaints seem to be of the former variety: these tests are awful. That is a temporary problem, as the tests get better over time and as stupid questions and wording are removed. As I understand it, the NY exams were actually testing the tests, not the students. They were a dry run to see how well the tests worked. By the word leaking out about them, they seem to have failed in spectacular fashion.
   
   
   But, if it is a case of the students not having learned the material yet, then that might just mean that there will be an adjustment period. The new math standards are higher in many states than what was in place before, and it will take several years for the students to catch up to the standard. It should be that first graders starting out with these standards should do just fine. It’s only the older students who are being thrown in the deep end.
   
   
   The weird thing about this, is that many of the complaints against the Core are of the “it’s too slow” variety, but here, it might be too fast. Is this just because there needs to be a period of adjustment, or is the standard really too high for the average student?
   
   
5. In the only direct complaint against the actual standards I have seen, supposedly, the high school geometry standards came out of nowhere and embrace an odd view of geometry. I don't know if this is true or not, but I do know that the classic geometry of proofs and theorems and corollaries has been dying for a long time. Geometry was my favorite math class, and I loved the proofs-based course. If it has been dying for a while, it is hard to attribute that to CC.
    
6. In fact, that's true with many of the complaints against CC: what critics are complaining about isn't really the CC, but the education establishment's strange ideas of how math should be taught, and what they are and have been teaching for decades. Many of the crazy examples of homework coming home supposedly “Common Core Aligned” are not any different than what was seen prior to the adoption of the Common Core. 
   
    
7. This includes the word-heavy explanations required in K-12 math today, and the belief that if you can’t explain something in words, then you don’t really understand it. Showing your work used to be enough to show understanding: if you could show the steps you took, you already showed your understanding. Now, even simple tasks have to be explained in complete sentences.
   
   I’ve seen examples, including with our kids, of students baffled by how you explain why 5 x 6 = 30, or how you got that 3+3 = 6. My nephew, when asked to explain a simple problem this year, said: “They take something simple and make it so hard!”
   
   One of the problems with this verbal-based math is that when kids are learning basic arithmetic they have not necessarily yet developed the linguistic abilities to explain things. You can fully understand that 5 x 6 = 30, you might even picture a 5 x 6 grid of objects, you might understand that this means adding 5 to itself 6 times, and might also understand that it means adding 6 to itself 5 times; and still not be able to put that in words.
   
   As for explanations of the obvious, my favorite answer I’ve seen so far is: “my brain told me so.” At some point the language of mathematics becomes a real language and is sufficient to show understanding.  Today’s math teachers don’t seem to agree.
   
   This is especially hard on English-language learners, on kids whose brains take better to math than language, and on kids with learning/reading/writing disabilities.
   
   It used to be that non-English speaking immigrants, in particular, could get ahead through math and science. Because language skills were less important than in other studies, they could become engineers, mathematicians, programmers, etc. Today, when everything has to be verbally explained in words instead of equations, students like this have less hope of advancement.
   
   But, again, this is not necessarily to be laid at the door of the Common Core. These trends in mathematics education are long-standing and entrenched. What the Common Core adds to the problem is simply this: it locks the entire country down to this style of math education (and the accompanying documentation of the Common Core does do this, even if the individual standards do not) regardless of whether it is wise.
   
    
8. As for crappy worksheets coming home with the Common Core label, I would say that math textbooks and especially workbooks are notoriously bad. My nephew came home with a worksheet last week which had only six problems on the whole page and with a “match each problem to its answer” format—in other words, the answers were all on the page, and you just had to link up the problem with the appropriate answer. But, for one problem the actual answer was missing. This was for finding the volume of a triangular prism, and whoever wrote the worksheet forgot that when calculating the area of the triangular face you need to divide by 2:  b * h / 2 . Obviously, no one had bothered to check the worksheet for accuracy—including his teacher.
   
   Math books tend to be written by freelance writers who are working on a rushed pay-by-the-problem basis. Editors prize speed over accuracy and don’t care if the books follow a coherent, systematic progression.
   
   With the adoption of the Common Core, publishers sped to slap the label of “Common Core Aligned” on everything possible in their library, and commissioned rush-jobs of new material. Editing costs money and provides little, or no, return on publishers’ investment, so little editing took place. I don’t really see the Common Core texts and worksheets as being anything worse than what came before. It is simply that these things are now under greater scrutiny, and parents are wondering what the heck is going on.
   
    
9. "Internationally Benchmarked" and "research based" claims about the Common Core are complete fabrications. The few attempts to compare the CC standards to our international peers fall into two camps: a) comparisons done by CC partisans which show some  correlations and b) comparisons done by independent or anti-CC partisans showing no or negative correlations. Either way, the studies are few and far between and have been done *after* the standards were written.
   
   Though the CC writing process is somewhat shrouded in secrecy, it does not appear that the committees that drew up the standards did so with an eye to our international competition. In fact, there is little research done about anything in the CC or about the CC in general. A recent study, by the Brookings Institution,  showed that those students in states with a math curriculum most unlike CC did better than those states with a CC-like curriculum. The correlations were small, but the point here is that there is nothing out there which shows that CC is a superior (or even adequate) curriculum—or, conversely, that it is a bad curriculum. There is simply little out there to look at. 
   
    
10. Similarly, the claim that his was “state led” is bogus. This came out of the Gates Foundation and from a consortium of education think tanks that Gates had funded. Actual state involvement came after the fact when they were asked “hey, do you like this?” They were allowed no actual input during the writing process. So, yes, the promoters are lying about it, but that doesn’t mean the standards themselves are therefore bad.  For a rundown of how the Common Core came to be written the movie “Building the Machine” goes through it.
    
     
11. Prior to the adoption of the Common Core by 45 states, each state was on their own. At least two states, Massachusetts and California, are widely acknowledged to have had a better and more rigorous math standards before their adoption of the Common Core. Several states had to dumb down their standards to adopt the Core.
    
    In fact, in this case, the rigidity of standards was also a routine complaint. California, in particular, required algebra in 8^th grade; this despite the fact that many students were simply not ready for it. Setting the bar that high meant that many students failed and hit the wall.
    
    If anything, the argument should be made that it is not the grade level, which is largely decided by a student’s age, that is important, but what they are realistically capable of understanding given their prior learning. Common Core, like many standards before it, often does not take this into account.
    
    The problem, as I see it here, is that the methods used by many teachers, and those they are led to believe in at ed school, simply do not work: Group math projects. Homework with only a handful of problems. No drilling of math facts. “Spiraling” curriculum, which believes in going over something lightly again and again every few months in the hopes that something will eventually sink in—instead of carefully, methodically, and systematically making sure the kids learn it the first time. The constant attempts to make every aspect of math class “fun” instead of addressing those aspects which simply take focus, work, and dedication.
    
    This has nothing to do with the Common Core, and points to a deeper issue at the heart of education. Common Core, unfortunately, does nothing to negate, and often supports, these teaching methods.
    
     
12. What was the rush? The Race to the Top program required states to adopt the Common Core standards by a certain date (if they were applying for RttT grant money, which most did). The final standards were only published a month or two beforehand. There was very little time for debate and for deep assessments to be made before it got passed. Once again, however, that doesn’t address whether the standards themselves are good or bad, just that the states which adopted them had very little time to review them. The RttT initiative dangled the carrot of grant money, and states signed on without really analyzing the standards.
    
     
13. Just like anything else, the Common Core will obey the law of unintended consequences. If you ask any of the people involved in its creation, or in the government who pushed for, or who voted to adopt the Common Core, you are likely to hear some variation of the hope that this will help poor and disadvantaged kids get ahead; and moreover, that the Common Core should reduce inequality. In part, that might be true, but with a ceiling on these students’ aspirations.
    
    Because in many states the Common Core is an improvement on what existed before, those students in those states who stick to the new program should come out the other side in a better position than their predecessors.
    
    However, as I said above, the Common Core is not a selective-college or STEM-ready standard. Poor and disadvantaged students, or students with poorly educated parents, will be completely reliant on the schools to give them their math curriculum. On the other hand, students in the middle-class or better, and students with well-educated parents will get more.
    
    The family in Santa Monica that I mentioned earlier will not simply have their daughter twiddle her thumbs for the next two years until her peers catch up with her and she can finally be allowed to take algebra. The family will hire the tutors necessary to make sure that their child continues to stay on the track she is on now.
    
    There are six Kumon centers within five miles of where I’m sitting. There are two Mathnasiums in that same area. There is one Sylvan. There is one C2 center. There are many other smaller tutoring centers as well. In addition there are many people who tutor independently, including myself. We are in a middle class to upper-middle class neighborhood, and just to our east is Koreatown. All around us are parents who are not going to let their kids fall behind and who have the resources to make certain that they do not.
    
    Poor kids have no such opportunity. Those students who are stuck in schools that are eliminating math tracking in the name of the Common Core, and who will only offer a single not-STEM or selective-college-ready curriculum, will bifurcate between those getting outside help and those who can only afford to be taught at school. To some extent, this has always been true. But with more systems eliminating tracking, more students will be denied advanced study.
    
     
14. The effects on public colleges and universities should also be taken into account. As part of the push for the adoption of the Common Core, the Race to the Top initiative included a stipulation—signed onto by 45 states—that any student who completed the Common Core math curriculum in high school could not be placed in remedial math in public colleges and universities. They must be placed in non-remedial, credit-bearing classes. With current colleges often requiring 40-50% of their freshmen to take remedial math, this will require a great deal of shifting on the part of schools. This can take several paths:
    
    a) They can just put students in the intro college classes and let them crash and burn. This one is highly unlikely to happen, especially when the kids crashing and burning are likely to be disproportionately poor minorities who went to crappy high schools.
    
    b) They can dumb down the intro courses so that the students can pass. This is the most-likely scenario, and will result in the level of college math work diminishing for many.
    
    c) They can remove the requirement to take math in order to graduate, depending on the major chosen.
    
    This is actually not necessarily a bad thing. While I would say that the ability to do college algebra should be universal among college students, I would also wonder why someone majoring in social work needs to pass algebra? Or why someone majoring in early-childhood education (say preschool – third) would need to?
    
    There are many college majors and post-college careers that simply do not require math at all. Many adults will never do another algebra-style problem for the rest of their lives. Apart from showing a level of mental discipline, why is college algebra required for these studies?
    
    I know one former community college student who could not pass algebra to save her life. In the end she dropped out of school and never got her AB. I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. She went on to start a small business and is doing well—either way, she will never be called upon to do any algebra problem at any time for the rest of her life.
    
    When college algebra puts up an impenetrable barrier to students who want to study something which has nothing to do with math, and in which they can do well, why is math a requirement at all? I would think it is quite likely that the math requirement will be removed from many majors and as a general requirement for graduation. It might be replaced with something like a statistics course, which would be much more useful to more students than college algebra.
    
     
15. Some of the weakest critiques of the Common Core are about the process of its implementation and the knee-jerk reaction to nationalizing school standards.
    
    a) To some extent this is justified. As Jay P. Greene, in particular, has tried to point out, there are at least two separate federal laws which explicitly prevent the federal government from creating or trying to implement a national curriculum. Race to the Top and the Common Core violate those laws.
    

    The intent of Congress is clear: The federal government cannot mandate, direct, supervise, or control curriculum or programs of instruction.  Indeed, the legislative history of the DEOA [Department of Education Organization Act] underscores this, as does its statement of intent “to protect the rights of State and local governments . . . in the areas of educational policy” and to “not increase the authority of the Federal Government over education or diminish the responsibility for education which is reserved to the States and local school systems.” Yet…the Department is evading these prohibitions and using proxies to cement national standards and assessments that will inevitably direct the content of K-­12 curriculum, programs of instruction, and instructional materials across the nation.

    So, whether or not the CC is a good idea, it seems to be explicitly illegal according to several laws governing the Department of Education. It is reasonable to add this to the list of extra-legal legislation coming out of the current White House, and it is reasonable to object to the CC on this basis alone.
    
    b) As I’ve said above, several states had better math standards pre-CC and had to jettison them to adopt the new standards; and  previously, each state wrote their own standards (or in some cases didn’t write standards at all).
    
    This plays to the old idea that states are “little incubators” of innovation. If one state has a better program, other states are free to use it as a model and alter their own in response. Hopefully the better states serve as exemplars until another state comes along and surpasses them. With a national set of standards, experimentation and change comes to an end. We will never know where that dynamic experimentation would have led.
    
     
16. The weakest arguments of all, which I’ve seen too often, and which I think are things both my brother and I object to the most, are the “if it comes from Obama, it must be bad” mentality. A lot of the criticism starts with that idea, and searches for evidence to fit it. The standards themselves aren’t terrible, and aren’t even too bad. In some areas, they are quite good. Even if Obama’s name’s attached.
    
     
17. At the end of the day, the people instituting the new standards, and the new curricula that go with them, are the same people who have been failing our kids for decades. The same mentality dominates in schools and ed schools. (Often against anything rigorous, and in favor of all things that are “fun,” and thus will make the children happy to learn. Not all that children need to learn can be constantly “fun”—you still have to learn how to spell, and you still have to learn your math facts.)
    
    I often liken the implementation of the Common Core to the whole country throwing all its educational balls up in the air at the same time. Considering how bad the system has been, you would think that whatever gets reassembled would be an improvement; but, the same people who were in charge before are the ones now catching the balls, and they will do their utmost to try to put them right back where they were.

I think to understand Bengazi, you have to break it down into four completely different and in large part separate issues.

Issue I. Background: What we now know is that the Bengazi attack was a preplanned al Qaeda attack timed to coincide with the 11th anniversary of 9/11. Bengazi was known to be an extremely dangerous place. Ambassador Stevens had sent cables stating his fear that the security situation was highly dangerous and eroding. Both the British and the Red Cross viewed the city as too dangerous to operate in and pulled out. There is some evidence that intelligence caught wind of something being planned--the information might not have been complete enough to be actionable, but it was enough to raise the threat-level. In light of all of this, instead of increasing the security forces in Bengazi and the protection details around the embassy, and instead of following the Brits and the Red Cross and pulling US personnel out, the State Department ordered the security of the embassy handed over to local Libyan forces and removed much of the US-based protective forces. This reduced the security of the embassy and put its protection into the uncertain hands of local Libyan forces. The attack followed.

The Issue: Here, the issue is how the attack came to happen, and how the embassy was so poorly protected in the first place. Why were Ambassador Steven's warnings ignored? Why was the security so poor in a place that everyone seemed to agree was highly dangerous? Why was the embassy served up for attack on a silver platter? What in the &^$$ was the State Department thinking? And who was the highest level State Department official who as in on that bone-headed decision--a decision which got our ambassador and three others killed.

Issue II. Background: On the night of 9/11/2012, our embassy came under a prolonged attack over the course of many hours. During the lengthy battle, which ebbed and flowed and moved to a second location, no help was ordered for the embassy personnel--they were completely on their own. This despite the fact that there were forces nearby which could have been on site within a few hours.

The Issue: Why did help never come? Was sending help ever debated? If so by whom? If not, why not? Was there anyone advocating for helping? Was there someone advocating letting our embassy burn and exposing our embassy personnel to a high risk of death. Who was the highest ranking official in on that decision?

Issue III. Background: Once the embassy fell, there was the apparent coverup by the White House. Instead of admitting this was an al Qaeda operation timed to coincide with the 9/11 anniversary, they blamed a video and its maker.

The Issue: How was that decision made? Who made it? Who knew the talking points were bogus and yet went in front of the American people to push their version of the story.

As a corollary to this one is the fact that Hilary told a father of one of the fallen at Bengazi that they'd take care of it by throwing the filmmaker in jail. That on its own is a serious issue. They scapegoated the movie maker and threw him in jail to provide cover for the real story.

Issue IV. Background: For the last year and a half, the media has allowed themselves to be played by the White House. Instead of pressing for answers, they tried to suppress and ridicule anyone who actually felt that there was a real issue here. I'm sure everyone in Washington and in the Washington press corps knew exactly what had happened and knew how the White House was spinning. They weren't being fooled, they were willingly playing along.

The Issue: How corrupt is the national media? And how can democracy survive such a pet and tame news corps?

Those these four issues overlap and interlock, they each need to be considered independently and in depth.

So, LA has the worst traffic in the nation.

What the story doesn't say, is that much of it is intentional on the part of the city leaders and the department of transportation. Their thinking is:

• Cars are yucky!
• Public transport is great!
• The worse traffic gets, the more people will use public transport!
• Yay!

Twits.

Interesting article:

The whole point of paying thousands of dollars for a Louis Vuitton bag is that other people can't. If they could, the bags would instantly lose almost all value in the eyes of those who buy them. Hence, the more such things cost, the more desirable they become.

In economic terms, higher education is a positional good: It is valuable to have a college degree because other people don't have one. It is also to a significant extent a Veblen good: Sending one's children to college, and most especially a prestigious (meaning expensive) college, is a way of signaling social status via the conspicuous consumption of a luxury good.

All of this helps explain why college tuition has increased three times faster than the cost of living over the past three decades. University administrators have discovered that, to a remarkable degree, the more they charge for what they're offering, the more people will want to buy it.

What a stupid article. Referring to the release of emails from Scott Walker's time as Milwaukee County Executive (the #1 post in the county), Politico says:

No crotch shots. No mistress in Argentina. And no political vendettas featuring a bridge.

Scott Walker is one lucky guy.

Lucky? The implication is that he was just lucky that he wasn't caught with all of the call girls, p*?n, and drugs that he was so obviously doing! That's what at least half the article deals with: look at all these pols brought down by their shenanigans with the ladies. Gosh! isn't Walker lucky he wasn't caught like that! They then go on to compare him to Christie's bridge scandal before finally dealing with the only thing that is really a problem in the emails, the racist comments made by his assistants. That's it, 19 paragraphs down, after saying it was too bad Walker wasn't like those other pols, they get to the only thing that is actually a problem with the emails.

If I were the editor...

This anti-Hillary piece is from a couple of weeks ago. You can't tell me the pic that was on the front page of the New York Times Magazine was meant to be flattering.



The ground is being laid for anybody but Hillary.

I don't think Hillary is inevitable; in large part because I don't think any of Washington actually wants her. The media are already writing critical articles, and I don't think the current crop of Dems want the Clinton machine back on top. I think they have an anybody by Hillary attitude, and are just looking for anyone else who is viable--that's what they did last time, even though Obama didn't even seem viable when he threw his hat in the ring.

Here's an insider's anti-Hillary story, taking the line that she's too old to run. Notice this in a a left-leaning publication, and written by the liberal Charlie Cook.

Clinton turns 67 this October. At that age, she will likely be making her candidacy decision, and if nominated Clinton would turn 69 two weeks before the 2016 general election, notably the same age Ronald Reagan was when he was first elected in 1980. The choice to run for president is effectively a nine-year commitment: one year to run, another four years if she wins a first term—finishing up that term at age 73—and then, assuming she runs for reelection and wins, serving four more years to end a second term at 77 years of age. None of this is to say that the age issue could successfully be used against her. After all, Reagan won the presidency at the same age. But how many 67-year-olds make nine-year commitments, and what concerns have to be addressed if they do?

All I could think of when I came to this...

The problem with typewriters was that they used monospaced type—that is, every character occupied an equal amount of horizontal space. This bucked a long tradition of proportional typesetting, in which skinny characters (like I or 1) were given less space than fat ones (like W or M). Monospaced type gives you text that looks "loose" and uneven; there's a lot of white space between characters and words, so it's more difficult to spot the spaces between sentences immediately. Hence the adoption of the two-space rule—on a typewriter, an extra space after a sentence makes text easier to read. Here's the thing, though: Monospaced fonts went out in the 1970s. First electric typewriters and then computers began to offer people ways to create text using proportional fonts. Today nearly every font on your PC is proportional.

 was Dan Rather.

Wendy Davis is being thrashed for giving up her children to her ex-husband, especially for her older kid that had a different father.

How could she do such a thing!

How could any mother give up her daughter!

How could any mother give up her 23-year-old adult daughter!

Oh...wait...nevermind.

The other "child" was 17 and in her senior year of high school.

Puts quite a different spin on it that the picture I've seen of Davis with her newborn and the baby's 6-year-old big sister.

Posting this screen capture from The Rockford Files (1976) for mom.  We had this very couch in our home.  Not the foot stool though.

I went to Grinnell College in Iowa. It is a small liberal-arts college (I'd say that it is also a liberal arts college, but the school isn't really arts focused,) and these days it seems the administration there spends probably half its time crowing about how progressive they are.

That is probably why the school rarely mentions one of its most important alumni: the late John Garang. John Garang is know to his people as the father of South Sudan. He was a revolutionary fighter, leading an army into battle against the Sudanese government. In the end, he won, and South Sudan was born. Sadly, he died before independence was fully established; but on that first day of independence, the people of South Sudan unveiled a massive statue of Garang in their capitol. He's their founding father.

I'm sure Grinnell doesn't like to extol the virtues of a military hero--not kumbaya-ish enough for them--so, I've only seen one article about him in the alumni magazine, and that was long before South Sudan came into being. I am on Facebook with a 20-something fellow alum, and she had never even heard of him--and she was at Grinnell when he was still alive and winning his people's independence, and she was there when he died in 2005.

I see the same thing happening after Nelson Mandela's death; though, instead of ignoring the militant revolutionary, they are simply scrubbing that part of his life out of existence. He wasn't a man of peace, he was a fighter who had thousands of grenades with him at the time of his arrest. He wasn't going around putting daisies in rifle barrels; he was blowing things up. He had tried non-violence and decided it didn't work and couldn't work against Pretoria. He then turned to bombs and blood. He wasn't leading peaceful marches (when he tried that, the government shot at the crown and killed dozens) or penning editorials, or giving speeches; he was a fighter. That's what I admire most about him. He saw an intolerable situation and decided it was worth fighting against--with blood if necessary.

But the modern left; and, therefore, the modern media; is violence-adverse. They can't image actually celebrating a militant hero as a militant hero. That part of his life is scrubbed away. He is just another neutered black man, only acceptable when he's been made a milquetoast.

He wasn't Gandhi. He was Mandela. Honor the man for who he actually was, not a distorted, cleansed, mythologized facsimile of him.

So, the Packers are losing at the moment--what a shock. (Update: They won in the end!)

Here are my thoughts on the Democrats' misteps and what the Republicans need to do about it:

One team may fumble, but unless the other team scores during their possession, it's meaningless. Conservatives need to press the advantage, but I see the usual Republican/conservative ineptness.

It's not enough for people to see that Obamacare is failing, they need to see that any Obamacare-like plan will fail; that the failure is baked into the very idea of a big government solution.

We need to press home the point that hope for growth and prosperity is misdirected when placed in the hands of the government. If you want growth and prosperity, then you better hope for private enterprise and individuals to provide it, and for the government to stand back and let them do it.

If you want good schools and for the next generation to be educated and able, then you need to rethink how the government is providing free-but-abysmal education for all. The solution is not a top-down, regimented and regulated government solution; but a bottom-up percolation of ideas and experiments devised by individuals and individuals schools and districts.

If you want good-quality, affordable health insurance; then you shouldn't look for the government to write thousands of pages of regulations in an attempt to wish such insurance into being. People need to understand that it is the free choices of 300 million Americans that will build a strong insurance system--with each American looking for the best coverage for the best price, each choosing to enter freely into a contract with an insurance provider that meets their needs. Before Obamacare, government regulations were preventing free choice and free markets from working in the insurance market. Obamacare made it worse.

The choice the Democrats present is a false one: either you have government, or you have chaos and viciousness--it is only the government that can help, only the government that can create peace. Conservatives need to press home the point that the American people are fundamentally charitable and kind. That we seek to help those who are truly unable to help themselves; that we do want to help those who have fallen and need to rebuild their lives; but that we do not want a blank check for every whim a Congressman can dream up.

Not every problem can be solved.
Not every problem with a solution can be solved by group action.
Not every group action should be done by the government.
Not every government action should be done at the federal level.

Some things should be left to individuals, to private enterprise and charity, and to local and state governments.

The Democrats have fumbled, but the ball is still on their side of the 50-yard-line--and the referees are all in their pocket; unless we drive the ball back over to the other side of the field and really change the way Americans think about what the government should and can do, we're wasting our chance.

So the insurance companies, which are so evil that we should abolish them entirely and bring in single-payer, are actually so completely trustworthy that we can run Obamacare solely on the honor system.

Health plans will estimate how much they are owed, and submit that estimate to the government. Once the system is built, the government and insurers can reconcile the payments made with the plan data to "true up" payments, he said.

In addition, was that paragraph simply in serious need of editing, or was the phraseology actually intentional? I don't think my health plan, or any health plan, is capable of independent thought. A health plan is a contract, a series of agreed-upon words which bind the insurer and insured in a money-for-services exchange. You can print off your health plan and read it. If it suddenly came to life in my hands and engaged me in a conversation about my premiums and government subsidies, I would be more than a little freaked. On the other hand, the phrasing might have been intentional; after all, most Americans like their health plan, they'd like to keep their health plan; but those nasty, money-grubbing, insurance companies are another matter entirely. Sock it to them, I say!

An editor should have rephrased it:

Insurance companies will estimate how much they are owed, and submit that estimate to the government....

 But I think people's negative reactions to that sentence would be much stronger than the original.So, why was one phrase chosen over the other? Inadvertently?  or intentionally?

Shhhh...everything's fine...go back to sleep...

Continuing the flour/food theme:

The great gluten-free scam 

Once, pasta and bread were store cupboard staples. Now, many of us are replacing them with ‘healthier’ gluten-free foods. But are they really better for us?

... [Nutritionist Ian] Marber predicts that these voices will only grow louder. “Our attention will turn to other diet trends, but the gluten-free craze will grow and grow.” Following a gluten-free diet isn’t actively harmful, he adds. “If it makes you happy, do it!” he laughs. “By buying that expensive stuff, you’ll certainly be making someone else very happy.”

I always laugh when I see something like a box of rice or a package of deli meat labeled "gluten-free"; it's an obvious marketing appeal to idiots. The article points out that really only about 1/100 have a true gluten disease, the rest are just wishfully thinking that gluten-free will make them thinner and give them more energy.

And the idea of labeling such obviously gluten-free foods such as rice and meat is just laughable. I swear our kids already know that gluten comes from wheat, while apparently much of the buying public is clueless--despite jumping on the gluten-free bandwagon.

Marketers are just surfing the tide of the latest craze.

We eat a lot of Indian food at home, and often look up recipes online. Common ingredients include semolina and farina. Indian words for farina include sooji and rava, and it is also commonly referred to as Cream of Wheat, though this is a brand name and not exactly the same thing. Strange then that many expert Indian cooks don't seem to recognize the difference between these ingredients! I see the ingredients referred to incorrectly everywhere on the web.

 What most American cooks call semolina is not sooji. Semolina is yellow, is made from hard durum wheat, and is the primary ingredient of Italian pasta. The American word for sooji is farina. Farina is white, is made from soft wheat, and is the primary ingredient of Cream of Wheat. If you make a semolina cake with farina, the result will be mushy. And what you want for upma is not semolina, it's farina, i.e. sooji or rava. It is a difference that matters. Indian stores tend to sell both products. That's another reason why it is strange that so many experts don't seem to know the difference!

Let \(\phi(x,\mu,\sigma)\) denote the normal distribution with mean \(\mu\) and standard deviation \(\sigma\) evaluated at \(x.\) Consider the model distribution $$p(x,\mu)=(1-t)\cdot \phi(x,\mu-3t,1)+t\cdot \phi(x,\mu+3\cdot(1-t),t^2),$$ for some known, fixed, but very small \(t>0.\) Since \(t\) is small, \(p\) looks very much like a normal distribution with variance \(1\) and mean \(\mu,\) except for a tall spike around \(\mu+3.\) See the picture below. The mean of \(p\) is \(\mu.\) Note in the last term, the variance is \(t^4.\) The total mass of the spike is \(t,\) thus small, and so the cumulative distribution for \(p\) will look very much like the standard cumulative distribution for \(\phi(x,\mu,1).\)

Suppose we have a sample \(x_0,\) assumed to be from a distribution \(p\) of the form above, but of unknown mean. To repeat, \(t\) is known. Consider the hypothesis: $$H_0: \mu=x_0-3\cdot(1-t)$$ Do we reject \(H_0\)?

If \(H_0\) is true, then \( p(x_0,\mu)\approx t \cdot \phi(x_0,x_0,t^2) = 1/(t \sqrt{2\pi}),\) and this is very large, about \(1/t\) times larger than \(p(\mu,\mu).\) Indeed, \(x_0-3\cdot(1-t)\) is very close to the maximum likelihood estimate for \(\mu.\) These seem to be reasons not to reject \(H_0.\)

On the other hand, the overall mass of the spike is small, and the entire spike is well out on the tail of \(p.\) Thus it is in some sense unlikely to get an \(x_0\) out there, assuming \(H_0\) is true. Since the cumulative distribution looks very much like the normal cumulative distribution for \(\phi(x,\mu,1),\) it makes sense to apply the usual test and reject \(H_0.\)

I find that not rejecting in this case is the right thing to do, but I am not sure what others might think. I also wonder how often such a question is relevant.

 

Our kid's school has a "Smart Lab", which is a place where kids, generally in 6th-8th grade, can play with technology.

Here is a transcript-by-memory of a conversation I had with the instructor:

Me: Do any of the kids do any actual programming?

Instructor: Oh, yeah. Have you heard of Scratch?

Me: Yes. That's basically like MindStorms; you tell it to move the figure three steps this way, two steps that way. I mean actual coding.

Ins: Sure! Some kids even make webpages.

Me (trying very hard not to laugh in his face): No, I mean actual programming, like goto subroutine, if this then that.

Ins: Oh, no, not really.

Me: (Beating my head against the wall)...

What's amazing is that the technology teacher didn't even know what I meant when I said either "programming" or "coding".

Meanwhile, I asked the other kid's 8th grade computer programming teacher whether they taught any other languages than Java, and if students were taught to document their code. Answers: Other languages are offered later, in high school (the AP test is only Java, so that's the emphasis), and documenting is not stressed in the level 1 class, but in the second class they do.

My random thoughts on random events posted as a blog comment:

Suppose we have disjoint events \( (E_1,E_2,\dots,E_N),\) and corresponding probabilities for these events \( (p_1,p_2,\dots,p_N),\) where \( p_n=\mbox{Prob}(E_n)\) and \(\sum_{n=1}^N p_n=1.\) If a particular event \(E_k\) occurs, what would make us think this was in some sense "unusual" or perhaps "suspicious"? It's not enough that \(p_k\) be small, since for large \(N\), even a uniform distribution on the \(E_n\) will have \(p_k=1/N\) small. Nor is it enough that \(p_k\) be much less than \( \max_n p_n,\) since it is possible that all \(p_n\) are equal except for one event having many times larger yet still tiny probability. It's not enough if \(p_k\) is less than nearly all the other \(p_n\), because all the \(p_n\) could be very nearly equal.

What does seem to work in the cases I can think of is to choose some factor \(R \gt 1\), calculate \(\sum\{p_n: p_n \gt R p_k\}\), and see if this is close to \(1.\) To work this into a hypothesis test, we could reject the null hypothesis \(H_0\) if $$\sum\{p_n: p_n\gt R p_k\} \gt (1-1/R),$$ though the expression on the right-hand side is rather arbitrary. With this setup, what value should \(R\) be? Let \(x_0\) be a sample we have collected, and consider the standard normal and the \(p=.05\) rule, where \(\mbox{Prob}(|x_0|\gt 1.96)=0.05.\) Then \(R=3.71,\) since \(3.71\cdot \phi(1.96) = \phi(1.1),\) and \(\mbox{Prob}(|x_0|\gt 1.1)=1/3.71.\) If we wanted \(R=20,\) we would need to use a cutoff \( |x_0|\gt 3.135749,\) which corresponds to a very small standard \(p\)-value of \(0.001714.\)

Clearly, given any \(p\) cutoff, a.k.a \(\alpha\), we can find a corresponding factor \(R,\) and vice-versa. Since the \(p=.05\) rule is arbitrary, I don't see what difference it makes for the most common cases. Thus, \(p\)-value analysis seems generally ok to me in practice. My concern here is with its justification.

This must be one of the most sexist paragraphs I've read in a while (FYI, it was written by a woman):

As for education, it won’t do much good for people who aren’t motivated or disciplined enough to acquire it. These people are mainly men. We all know that low-skilled men will be our world’s biggest losers, but it’s often not lack of skills that holds them back. It’s lack of the aptitudes and attitudes required for success. These are the men who can’t stay in school, can’t apply themselves, can’t take direction or defer rewards, can’t be reliable and can’t function well in teams. “Young male hotheads who just can’t follow orders are pretty well doomed,” economist Tyler Cowen says in Average is Over, a sharp and sobering book on who will get ahead, and why.

 Let's flip the wording shall we.

As for education, it won’t do much good for people who lack the mental capacity to acquire it, or will leave the workforce to raise children, or who will take jobs away from hard-working men. These people are, of course, women. We all know that women will be our world’s biggest losers, sucking on the teat of others--whether husbands or public assistance, but it’s often not lack of skills that holds them back. It’s lack of the aptitudes and attitudes required for success. These are the women who get pregnant early, are more irrational than men, can’t apply themselves, can’t take direction or defer rewards, can’t be reliable and can’t function well in teams except when they go en masse to the bathroom. (Why did we ever give them the vote?!) “Young women who just can’t follow orders or lack a man's intelligence are pretty well doomed,” economist Wylma Bullen says in Average is XY, a sharp and sobering book on who will get ahead, and why.

When girls were falling behind in schools and weren't choosing difficult educational or career paths, at least some of the blame was placed on the society which sent them messages, discouraged them, and treated them like second class people.

Here, society is blameless. The constant denigrating of men, the constant focus on pushing girls ahead without ever telling boys that they can succeed too, the assumption that men are violent, shiftless slackers, has no culpability in this woman's eyes for the diminishing of men's prospects.

If women are behind, it's not their fault, but society's. If men are behind, it's because they're slackers.

Why are most rampage shooters male?

Simple answer: because they are more likely to have antisocial mental illness and to project it out into the world:

[ American Psychological Association ] When it comes to mental illness, the sexes are different: Women are more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety or depression, while men tend toward substance abuse or antisocial disorders, according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association. Published online in APA’s Journal of Abnormal Psychology, the study looked at the prevalence by gender of different types of common mental illnesses. The researchers also found that women with anxiety disorders are more likely to internalize emotions, which typically results in withdrawal, loneliness and depression.

Men, on the other hand, are more likely to externalize emotions, which leads to aggressive, impulsive, coercive and noncompliant behavior, according to the study.  The researchers demonstrated that it was differences in these liabilities to internalize and to externalize that accounted for gender differences in prevalence rates of many mental disorders.

I just looked at the California health insurance exchange.

Last year, I didn't make much money, and ended up spending about 40% of my income on health insurance. If I had shopped around for a different plan, I probably could have dropped that slightly.

I had been assuming that, because I made much less than $20,000 last year, and expected to make less than that this year as well, that I would receive subsidies.

Nope.

I'm not eligible.

At all.

For anything.

Even if I made $10,000 a year, I would still not be eligible.

Why? Because I am an hourly contract worker making over $40/hour. Because my hourly income is high, I'm not eligible for any subsidies, despite not make much money overall.

Guess who that screws? Who is the most-likely group of individuals who work part time for large hourly sums? High-skilled women who work part time while raising their kids. That's not quite my position, but it's close.

I will be able to buy a cheaper plan than what I have now on the exchange, but I could have probably found a lower price policy before too.

How much is the penalty for not getting insurance again? That's looking nice about now.

This one's too good not to share. 

This is science!

From Watts Up With That:

Claim: simulated satellite data back to 1860 proves global warming caused by humans

This is just nuts, sorry, I just don’t have any other words for it. 

The study took three decades of satellite data and used that to fake data going back to 1860, then used the fake data to show the alarming increase in temperature today when compared to their old, made-up data.

Via Meadia

Colleges are facing a problem they haven’t faced in nearly a decade: declining enrollment. New Census Bureau data reports that college enrollment dropped by about a half-million last year for the first time since 2006. Some of this may simply be a result of students who went to school in the late 2000s to avoid the recession finally graduating.

But college administrators are clearly worried that this may be the sign of a long-term trend. A recent survey of industry leaders found that over one-third are now concerned that they won’t be able to keep enrollments steady with tuition prices where they are now...

Mead didn't run the numbers, I did. The entire decline in enrollment can be attributed--almost perfectly--by the change in the number of men and women attending college.

Male enrollment 2011 = 9,123,000
Male enrollment 2012 = 8,602,000
Change = -521,000 / -5.7%

Female enrollment 2011 = 11,256,000
Female enrollment 2012 = 11,327,000
Change = +71,000 / +0.6%

Since overall college enrollment declined by 449,000; all but 1,000 of it can be attributed to the decline in men's enrollment.

(links for data from this page: http://www.census.gov/newsroom... )

A decline of over 5% of male enrollment should set off alarm bells, and would if the genders were reversed. The stories of schools treating men like predators abound, with men treated as guilty and needing to prove their innocence instead of the other way around. Perhaps men are getting the message that college is enemy territory and not for them.

Colleges should wake up and not turn away this cohort with their discriminatory anti-male policies.

Why do I get the feeling Snake Plisskin will be showing up any day now.

A Modest Proposal: Drop Undocumented Immigrants Into Detroit - NationalJournal.com

There were a couple of cherry tomatoes too, but Shivani ate them before I could take a picture. We got our first cucumbers about the same time last year.

.

Again, for Mom, a garden report. We had some damage from wind last night and this morning. Several branches of tomatoes fell over. I tied them up better, but am not sure if the ones that fell will survive. There is an ongoing problem with a fungal infection on the tomatoes as well, probably due to the wet weather we have had. This has affected some a lot more than others. Unfortunately, the mosquitoes have come out in force now as well, and it is making garden work most unpleasant. Still, you can see progress since the previous set of pictures.

Because she's a commoner, and he's part of the aristocracy.

Why Has Paula Deen Been Vilified, While Alec Baldwin’s Been Given a Pass? - The Daily Beast

For mom. Click to embiggen:

It is very strange to see your senior prom date from high school mentioned repeatedly on Instapundit and to think that the instapundit himself must have spent weeks thinking and writing about Greg:

SECOND AMENDMENT UPDATE: My Texas Law Review piece, How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Second Amendment: a Reply to Professor Magarian, is now up to #1 on SSRN.

Instapundit

According to Gallup 55% of people are comfortable with their tax rate...

...of course, close to 50% don't pay income taxes anyway. So, this is basically saying: 5% of people who pay income tax are comfortable with their tax rate.

Henninger: Escape From Spending Hell - WSJ.com

Key Democrats Turn on Obamacare | Via Meadia

Unfortunately, even if Democrats realize that the actual implementation of Obamacare is turning into a nightmare, they won't generalize this into the idea that any major social program which aims to fit the needs of 320,000,000 individual people is doomed to fail; and to fail either because the bureaucracy can't hold that many balls in the air at one time, or because the laws and regulations which run it are written by fallible human beings.

I missed this one back in May. It's an article looking at the federal budget if future liabilities are counted:

"Federal debt and retiree commitments equal $561,254 per household."

Real federal deficit dwarfs official tally – USATODAY.com

Fighting Obama’s Next Supreme Court Nominee - By Ed Whelan - Bench Memos - National Review Online

The next nominee will be Hilary Clinton, for two reasons 1) a quid pro quo for Bill's help with the election--my guess is that this was spelled out in advance when Bill stepped up his end of the campaign. 2) Hilary would be a pretty easy confirmation, with the only wrinkle being her side of the Bengazi problems. I don't see that as a deal-killer, though.

Republicans have been focusing today on the need to get Hispanic votes. While that is true, there is another chunk which we should also aim at. Look at these two numbers from the exit polls:

Are you?

               Total   Obama   Romney     
Hispanic        10%     71%     27%

How often do you attend religious services?

               Total   Obama   Romney     
Never           17%     62%     34%

So, Romney got 27% of the 10% of people who are Hispanic, but didn't do much better among the non-religious at 34% of the larger 17% group. If Romney had gotten 5% more of the secular vote he would have added 0.85% to his vote total. Getting 5% more of Hispanics only nets 0.5% more.

Every time Republicans talk values, every time they talk about god, even every time they end a speech with "God bless America," they are turning off a large chunk of population. If we are to go after the Hispanic vote, can we also make an effort to go after the secular vote?

Update: I worked it through with the numbers. Bottom line, a 5% shift of Hispanics would lower Obama's victory margin from 2.8 million to 1.6 million. A shift of 5% of Seculars would lower the margin from 2.8 to 0.8 mil. Doing both would have put Romney in the White House:

(Updated again to add the estimated results if both shift--assuming they are independent groups.)

National Polls, State Polls, and Democrat Turnout - By Jim Geraghty - The Campaign Spot - National Review Online

I think one big reason why so many polls have Dems out-performing 2008, is that Republicans have given up on much of the media and simply hang up on pollsters. Thus, the results are skewed towards Dems.

Althouse has a thread on the creepy video/song supporting Obama 

 
I wrote this in the comments:

I see a much larger point here that I haven't seen commented on. For a large number of Democrats, their entire rationale for voting is simply this: REPUBLICANS ARE EVIL!! therefore I must vote Democrat.

They shut off venues of Republican speech, because they don't want anyone on their side doubting the simple fact: REPUBLICANS ARE EVIL!!

For many of them--and, yes, that doesn't mean all, or even most--there is no questioning, no studying of issues or economic policies, no struggling with weighty issues. All they really needed to know to decide how to vote was that REPUBLICANS ARE EVIL!!! 'nough said.

How many on the right have had discussions with Democratic voters that went like this: on every point of policy discussion, they completely agree with the Republicans; but, when it comes to actually voting, they would never dream of voting for the GOP. After all, REPUBLICANS ARE EVIL!!!

Many of these are low-information voters, many are Democrats because their friends and family are, some are because the coolest celebrities are. These are the people caught on video this week decrying the awful things Romney has promised to do, only to find out that they were tricked, and that the evil things had already been done by Obama--most spun on a dime and made excuses for their idol. These are people where a single Lakoffian code word is enough to fully persuade them: environment! war! abortion! Obama! 99%! etc.

For a community that parodies Republicans with phrases like "epistemic closure" they are remarkably not self-aware.

That is what is truly on display in this video and song; not the misuse of children, but the mindset that the only thing that needs to be said to convince voters is: REPUBLICANS ARE EVIL!!!

Update (10/29/12): Here's an example of what I mean, not from some  low-info ditz in Times Square, but in the lead paragraph in a story in Salon magazine. Note the line after "malevolent Republican Party":

A few days ago, I participated in a debate with the legendary antiwar dissident Daniel Ellsberg on Huffington Post live on the merits of the Obama administration, and what progressives should do on Election Day. Ellsberg had written a blog post arguing that, though Obama deserves tremendous criticism, voters in swing states ought to vote for him, lest they operate as dupes for a far more malevolent Republican Party. This attitude is relatively pervasive among Democrats, and it deserves a genuine response. As the election is fast approaching, this piece is an attempt at laying out the progressive case for why one should not vote for Barack Obama for reelection, even if you are in a swing state.

 p.s. Also note how, when the author lists his Democratic and progressive bone findes, he includes working for MSNBC.

An oil company makes a profit and funnels some of that profit into R&D, or building new drilling rigs, or exploring for new productive wells--if successful, their business will grow, more jobs will be provided, and more tax revenue collected. Because it is choosing to invest the money in the business, instead of taking it in profit, that money is tax exempt. Obama calls this private investment "corporate welfare".

The government funnels taxpayer money, in the form of grants and loans, into "green" businesses--which can't convince private lenders to invest their own money, and thus must rely on taxpayers and bureaucrats instead. Many of these businesses, coincidentally, I'm sure, are headed by major Democratic party donors, who take large salaries and kick back more donations. Many of these companies promptly go broke (proving the reluctant private investors correct in their assessments.)

Obama calls this corporate welfare "investment".

Note: Just to be clear...the word "is" appeared several times in the above paragraphs. "Is," a form of the verb "to be". In the first instance above, it is used with the past participle of the transitive verb "to choose" as a passive-voice auxiliary. In the second appearance, it should be taken to mean that the subject of the clause has the qualification or characterization specified in the antecedent.

Wynn On Obama: "I'll Be Damned If I Want To Have Him Lecture Me" | RealClearPolitics

EPA Celebrates ‘Children Health Month,’ Encourages Recruiting Students for ‘Energy Patrols’ at School | CNSNews.com

Since earth is nice and brown, I'd suggest having patrol t-shirts made up in that color.

Or perhaps they need cassocks and collars?

Obama: "We don’t need to build more highways out in the suburbs."

But a bullet train in the middle of rural California is a nifty idea!!

Now, who could have guessed this?

Matt Damon's Anti-Fracking Movie Financed by Oil-Rich Arab Nation

I just sent this to a friend on Facebook, after she said she almost defriended me over my political posts

---------

I love how liberals are so quick to get mad at anyone on the other side of the aisle. Very few conservatives would have such a visceral and angry response at anything that a liberal would post. Most conservatives do not even contemplate eliminating liberals as friends simply because of their political persuasion.

As for what Romney said, he essentially and completely echoed what the Obama campaign has also said. The Obama campaign spent a great deal of money putting together the "Julia" campaign, showing how much everyone can depend on the government, and celebrating that as the goal of Obama's presidency. Obama sold that dependency as a good thing. In the ad was a woman who could easily have stood on her own, without government handouts--whether it is 9$ per month birth control or education loans which have had the massive side-effect of driving up tuitions to the point where you *have* to take out massive loans to get through college. Stepping through Obama's glorious vision:

3 years old: Head Start has proven in studies to be useless (except as babysitting); students in Head Start show no advantage within a year or two of starting school. We spend close to 10 billion on this useless program every year. So much for using science as a basis for public policy. The science and research on this is clear: Head Start may be a nice sentiment, but it is, in reality, useless.

17 years old: Race to the Top institutes a national curriculum (in violation of at least two federal laws, by the way,) which will inevitably (in my opinion) lead to lowest possible standards--the adaptation of the Common Core actually forced California and Massachusetts to *lower* their standards. As a government and political initiative, the Common Core will be written by the most politically powerful constituents. I'll give you a hint: that won't be parents and students.

18 years old: As for Pell grants, I saw a statistic just yesterday that estimated that only about 40% of recipients actually get a degree—The Pell grant program costs about 30-40 billion a year. Again, nice sentiment, bad in reality.

22 years old: Many colleges, faced with the massive increases in coverage demanded by Obamacare are eliminating their insurance requirements and cancelling their previously-offered policies, as the costs have risen (North Carolina said the costs to the students would rise 51%, from $920 for 2 semesters pre-Obamacare to $1410 post-Obamacare). Most college kids only need catastrophic coverage—such as that which would have covered "Julia's" surgery. Instead, Obamacare has demanded that even 19 year olds get comprehensive, first-dollar heath "insurance", and that they be charged at the "community rate"—in other words, they will be charged massively more than it costs to actually pay for their health care, in order for them—mostly still un- or under-employed young adults—to contribute to the health costs of older, usually wealthier people.

23 years old: I have no objection to equal pay for equal work, but the Ledbetter act wasn't actually addressing that. It was addressing the issue of how much time could elapse between the offence and a lawsuit. As for women being paid less, that's old thinking. In urban areas today, young women are out-earning their male counterparts. When you control for education, for job choices, and for time spent in the workforce, women are paid about the same as men. On the other hand, men receive fewer college degrees, fewer Master degrees, and fewer PhD's than women, and men are more likely to be in jail. Men are often discussed in the media these days as "unnecessary" to modern society, and half the commercials on TV use the stupid-guy idea to sell products. Who is in need of protection these days?

25 years old: Federal student loans are being likened to indentured servitude, as 50+ year olds find themselves still paying off their loans. Many students are snookered into taking out massive loans with little hope of actually being able to repay them. The balance between college costs and the benefits are increasingly tipping against college. Much of this is directly caused by the availability of student loans. Colleges hook students with promises of a brilliant future, don't bother to spell out the costs and the fact that student loans are not dismissible in bankruptcy court, and pocket massive amounts of money—essentially directly from the government. As long as the government pays, and the student doesn't see the true cost for years, the schools can go on hiking up their tuitions year after year after year. Luckily, more students are becoming aware that they are being defrauded and are looking at low-cost alternatives or forgoing college—and more often grad school. Law school applications tanked this year.

27 years old: Birth control costs $9 a month, and if shared with your partner, this goes down to $4.50. As for preventative care, as a young women, right out of college, these costs would be minimal, and should be paid by everyone who can afford them out of pocket. Why send your money off to an insurance company, who then take their cut, just to send it back to the health provider. Much more efficient—and it should be cheaper—to pay the provider directly. (There is no such thing as a free lunch, what you pay in premiums pays your bills.)

31 years old: Part of the decision to have a child is making sure you understand the costs. If you can't afford to have the kid, you shouldn't have it in the first place. This I know from personal experience. I would love, love, love to have a kid, but I have never even been close to being able to afford one.

37 years old: Over the last several decades spending on education has skyrocketed. There has been no increase *AT ALL* in actual student outcomes. Money does not equal results. Increasingly, education money is going to pay the pensions of retired teachers, and not into educating kids. Out here in Los Angeles, LAUSD has been on a building binge, putting up lots of spanking new, beautiful schools—the problem is: enrollment is actually dropping rapidly, and the old schools are half-empty. Literally billions of dollars is being spent on schools we don't need. Throwing money at education has never actually improved anything.

42 years old: The SBA should be abolished! If you have a good business idea, private money would be very happy to invest in it—putting their own money on the line. The SBA goes in when private money passes—in other words, when the investment is a less-good idea. Since they are only gambling with our money, and not their own, the SBA doesn't care if they are making bad investments.

65 years old: Medicare has been around for decades, and prescription drug coverage was George W's program. As for Medicare, it should—like all other government programs—be means tested. The wealthy should not take one penny away from anyone with less money than themselves, *ever*.

67 years old: The majority of young adults are more likely to believe in UFO's than in Social Security, and they are right to do so. Social Security is already spending more money than it takes in, and in a couple years, there will only be two workers paying for each Social Security recipient—there is no trust fund, no lock box, that money was spent long ago. If the system is not dramatically changed—and, again, means tested—it will not exist when we are ready to retire. You can not continue to spend more than you have and expect to keep it up. What can't go on forever, won't.

That's the "Life of Julia" and the Democrats vision for America—willing dependency at every step, instead of independent agency.

The fundamental problem Republicans have been dealing with for years--as have Democrats, only from the other side--is what to do when the clients of government outnumber the people who pay the bills. This is disastrous. When people who pay the bills are outnumbered and outvoted by people who spend the money, deficits and a Greek-style crashed economy is inevitable--it may take time to build up to the crash, but the crash will *always* happen. (I believe we are only a handful of years away from that very crash.) This has always been inherent in any democratic system, and has been warned about by political thinkers for centuries, if not millennia.

To point out that fact is not heinous. To ignore that fact is.

Demoralized as Hell, The poll the media isn't talking about edition » Datechguy's Blog

I especially like one of the charts at the bottom, which shows how much Obama is leading in various polls, charted against the Democratic party sample in the same poll. So a poll that had Obama up by 3, with a Dem advantage of +5 would appear at the point (5, 3) on the chart. Obviously, there's a strong correlation between Dem advantage and Obama advantage. With Rasmussen's party breakdown now running 37.6% / 33.3% / 29.2% (R/D/I)  that's a big deal, and makes a lot of the polls highly suspect.

Obama has millions of fake Twitter followers

I disagree with their criteria for "fake":

"Fake accounts tend to follow a lot of people but have few followers," said Rob Waller, a founder of StatusPeople. "We then combine that with a few other metrics to confirm the account is fake."

I think a lot of people sign on to Twitter for the sole reason of checking out posts by politicians, stars, musicians, etc. They aren't there to speak themselves, just to read what is being posted by others. This is especially true of politicians--where people want to see what they're saying, but aren't the politician's "friend" and will not be "liked" in return. I can easily see my 80+ year old dad signing on to Twitter for the sole reason of reading a politicians' or campaigns' feeds; but he would never write a tweet of his own, would never gather a single follower, and never go looking at anyone else's feed either.

This criteria is like saying most blog readers are bogus, because they don't have blogs themselves--there is a difference between making and consuming content. You can consume, without being a producer.

Thomas Sowell thinks we discuss sports more rationally than politics:

Sports Versus Politics

I think there is a very simple reason for this: When talking about sports, we talk about sports; when talking about politics, we talk about how people are talking about politics.

By this I mean, most political reporting is about what the two sides are saying (usually about those bastards on the other side,) and not about what they are actually proposing or have already enacted. This drives me crazy. Most reports follow a format sort of like this: Republicans say that the Democrats have raided Medicare to pay for Obamacare, Democrats say that the Republicans would gut Medicare. Missing, of course, is an actual analysis of the Republican proposals, or an evaluation of the Democratic ones. I often find myself mentally screaming that I don't care what they say, or how clever their turn of phrase was, or how good/bad their political strategy is. I want to know what are they actually doing! But the reporters never get around to such little things as that.

This is just an example from the current debate, but this happens daily, year after year. Reporters are so fixated on the game, on the horse race, on the easy reporting; that they never bother to tell people what is actually going on.

The cynic would say, they don't tell you; because they're liberals; and because, if you were to strip party identification off all of the proposals, people would usually pick the conservative ones. Better not to talk about the underlying proposals then; much better to show how mean and nasty the verbal mudslinging has gotten.

(The punctuation on the second to last sentence is seriously tricky. I'm not sure I got it right, but it took me a while just to come up with that. The proper use of semicolons is a dying art.)

Which party is more cynical? | Power Line

Mirengoff has trouble explaining McCain's pick of Palin. I think my first reaction to it, and how I explained it to my sister--who had never heard of Palin--was probably right: she was picked because she didn't have an abortion.

An incarcerated 43-year-old Milwaukee man is suspected of using a van he drove as part of a work-release program to help commit at least four burglaries of Mequon businesses on North Port Washington Road in June and July.
 
Man, on work release, accused of using jail van to commit Mequon burglaries

The Olympic tickets fiasco: Bring on the touts | The Economist

Why is it so bad to resell tickets at the price the market will bear? Because low-income people will be priced out of the market, and only the wealthy will be able to attend. So, faced with a choice between filling the stands with people who could afford expensive tickets, and having empty stands, the Olympic organizers opted for the latter.

To a leftist, it is better that we all live in poverty than for the wealthy to have any advantage. All can be equal, but only if we are equally poor.

A Creative Borrowing Boom: Poway Not Alone in High-Interest Financing - Voice of San Diego: Education

Lake Oswego Biz Owner Gets Slapped for Anti Obama Sign

Any chance this is the same Kevin Kerwin I knew as a kid? 

Vitucci's gets a write-up in the J/S:

Raising the bar - JSOnline

President Obama is popular in Washington DC:

The president is most popular in Washington DC, where his job approval rating is an astonishing 83 percent.

Wow, that's high. Still, I'm not surprised. Having returned very recently from DC, I can tell you it's a boom town. The empty storefronts you see in the towns I've lived in over the past few years are not present in DC. On the contrary, everywhere there is a feeling that businesses are doing very well. It's a heady atmosphere of wealth and growing prosperity. On street corners everywhere you can see signs advertising newly constructed homes. I think that if the rest of the nation saw how Washington is living large while the rest of the country is hurting, people would be appalled.

PJ Media » The Three Great Scams of Our Time

Quote of the day:

I have been following the ascent of Barack Obama from early in the Democratic primaries—when he surfed on a wave of clichés, bromides, plagiarisms, gaffes, promises, and outright fabrications to the nomination—up to the present moment when he began to be exposed as arguably the most disingenuous and destructive president in the history of the United States. I found it hard to believe that he had succeeded in conning the majority of his countrymen (and much of the West). True, he enjoyed the material assistance of the consensus media in what was both a massive cover-up of his dubious formative and intellectual influences and an equally massive promotional campaign. Nonetheless, how a largely unvetted nonentity with a winning manner could so effectively beguile even a dumbed-down electorate is nothing short of grotesque.

Redshirting: Holding kids back from kindergarten - CBS News

"60 Minutes" did a piece on Kindergarten redshirting. In it, they clearly illustrated the big elephant in the corner, but never overtly mentioned it: every single example they cited was of a boy being held back--not one girl.

It's very dry here in Madison:

Seriously dry conditions have developed over southern Wisconsin during June. Several stations in the south central sections of the state reported the driest June on record. Madison received only 0.31 inches of rain, breaking a 117-year record. This amount was only 7 percent of normal June rainfall. Beaver Dam (0.33 in), Ft. Atkinson (0.42 in) and Watertown (0.50 in) also experienced their lowest June rainfall totals.

I don't remember seeing anything like it. Our lawn is yellow and it crunches when I walk on it. There are tall ugly weeds popping up in the middle of lawns all over town. Our garden is doing ok. We have to water twice a day, but on the plus side the garden weeds have been easy to keep down. I hope it will end soon.

I find this story "Swiss institute finds polonium in Arafat's effects" highly unlikely:

Traces of the poisonous element polonium have been found in the belongings of late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, a Swiss institute said on Wednesday, and a television report said his widow had demanded his body be exhumed for further tests.

Arafat died at a hospital in France in 2004, after a sudden illness which baffled doctors. Many Palestinians have long suspected he was poisoned.

Darcy Christen, spokesman for the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, told Reuters on Tuesday it had found "surprisingly" high levels of polonium-210 in Arafat's belongings.

The half life of Polonium-110 is 138.4 days.  Which means that between the day he died (Arafat died on 11/11/04) and January 1, 2012, there would have been 18.5 half-lives. Which means that for every million atoms of Polonium that might have been on Arafat's belongings when he died, only 2.5 particles would have still existed at the start of the year. I don't know the lag-time between the tests and the announcement, but if they tested it after the first of June, that would have dropped to 1.2 particles per million.

Needle, meet haystack.

Happy First Birthday to my littlest sweetie-pie.

How lucky I am to be your dad!

I think Roberts' decision is well thought out and the right one. He called a tax a tax. Yes, the administration tried very hard to present the "mandate" as anything but a tax, but a tax it is. I don't see this as any new power for the Federal Government either.  If the Feds hike everyone's taxes by $700, then provide a $700 tax credit to those who buy approved health insurance, the effect is exactly the same as putting a $700 tax on not-buying insurance.  Surely the Feds have the constitutional power to do the former.

I have seen a lot of posts on conservative blogs calling the mandate "a huge tax increase on the middle class" and saying how the mandate represents a new and crushing power of the government to run every aspect of our lives.  It's nonsense.


In a characteristically fine essay, Charles Krauthammer states:

I think the “mandate is merely a tax” argument is a dodge, and a flimsy one at that. (The "tax" is obviously punitive, regulatory, and intended to compel.)

I disagree. I find Roberts' analysis convincing. Essentially, since the tax is small in relation to the cost of health insurance, it is not punitive. See here. See also here.

The supreme court today upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare, under the power of the Federal Government to tax.

I think this is a HUGE win for the president.  Folks over at Althouse's blog though are saying that it is not, that taxes are unpopular and so this will be a political negative for Obama.  Yet very few people will end up being taxed.  If you have health insurance, you won't pay the tax.  If you are one of the 50% of Americans who pay no taxes, or pay negative taxes, I'm sure you won't be paying the tax either.  No politician will go along with a "tax on poverty."  Credits and deductions will be used to negate the penalty.

Insurance rates will skyrocket. People who have no insurance now won't buy it until they get sick. They won't pay the tax either.  The cost will have to be passed on to the people who do buy insurance before they get sick, i.e. essentially the 50% who pay taxes.

Washington Inmates Banned From Making Sexy Outfits for Female Prison Guards

These people are already in jail, under guard, and can't do much of anything until ordered to do so...so why in the heck couldn't this have been dealt with using prison disciplinary procedures? Why raise the issue to the height of a law?

An article about Obama at Occidental: Self-Made Man

This article does Huell Howser wrong! The critical point to understand about Huell's involvement in the video, is the fact that Huell can spend half an hour being absolutely fascinated and engrossed by anything! Huell is a California institution. He goes around California with a camera man, heads for sites both exciting and mundane, and spends half an hour making you think even the silliest, stupidest, most boring site is simply fascinating.

I've watched him clomp through a forest so that he could stand on the actual border between California and Oregon! Wow! And by the time the half hour is over, he's made you want to go there too.

I've seen him go to a shell factory--a place where a single family harvests shells and cleans them out for sale as decorative items--and make it sound like you'd want to invite the family over for barbecue next weekend.

 Here's the summary from a full hour-long episode of his show. Because it's Huell, he really can make this special:

California's Gold #1 - California Aqueduct Special

In this special one-hour episode of California's Gold, Huell takes a look at the California Aqeuduct. Constructed in the 1930s, the Colorado River Aqueduct is considered one of the greatest engineering projects in the world - bringing water to thirsty Southern Californians across over 200 miles of barren, remote desert. Starting at Lake Havasu, we trace the route the water follows through huge pipes, tunnels, canals and pumping plants. Along the way we meet the men and women who are carrying on the proud MWD tradition of bringing water to Southern California. 

It sounds so thrilling! And yet, if you came across it on the TV and didn't keep flipping, you would actually spend an enjoyable hour--in large part because Huell is just so gosh darn fascinated by everything!

Did I mention he's  not actually from California, and does his shows in a heavy and slow Georgian drawl? I love the guy.

France is going bankrupt, it's increasingly uncompetitive, the government is too big and spends too much...but they go and do this:

French president cuts retirement age

Workers who entered employment aged 18 will be able to retire at 60 rather than 62, under the decree agreed at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday. 

 60!!

The case that started the hysteria over child abductions has now been solved, 33 years later. The Etan Patz case began the media saturation of child abductions, and, along with that theme recurring almost nightly on prime-time television, led to a distortion of reality. Despite our fears, only 115 children are kidnapped by strangers each year. The majority are returned home within a day; only 50 are murdered or are never found. To put that in perspective, you have a greater chance of being struck by lightning than your child has of being the victim in a "stereotypical" (really, atypical) kidnapping. We don't walk around with lightning rods on our heads (at least most of us do not,) but we lock our kids away, imprisoning them at home, keeping them under constant supervision, stunting their emotional and social development, all in fear of a minimal risk.

Leonore Skanazy (Free Range Kids), Etan: The End « FreeRangeKids:

Readers – As I'm sure almost all of you have heard, there has been an arrest, 33 years too late, of a man who confesses to murdering Etan Patz.

In the wake of 6-year-old Etan’s 1979 disappearance came the era we are living in to this day, the “Don’t let your child out of your sight, he could be snatched like that little boy” era. It’s an outlook reinforced daily by the media (“Up next: Children at risk!”) and the marketplace (“Buy this! Your children are at risk!”). It has been embraced by schools (“No walking allowed! Your children are at risk!”), and day care centers (“We have cameras everywhere. Your children are at risk!”), and by the law (“No letting your kids wait in the car. Your children are at risk!”). In short, the fact that we can see Etan even with our eyes closed has allowed the fascism of fear to flourish.

Knowing how he died provides cold comfort. I’m also not sure there’s any way to make a murder “meaningful.” But it does make me want to take action. For the sake of the next 33 years’ of children, I want to help our culture regain  its perspective. We remember this tragedy more than a generation later precisely because things like this do not, thank God, happen all the time. We cannot raise our children as if they do. And we can’t organize our lives around avoiding random, rare, heartbreaking events. Lisa Belkin makes this point movingly in her Huffington Post piece today.

Let me repeat the words another writer sent here a few weeks back: Fear does not prevent death. It prevents life.

Let’s not prevent it in Etan’s name anymore.

For my brother:

The part I remember most starts as at about 4:45.

Rarg

Chinese communist leaders denounce U.S. values but send children to U.S. colleges - The Washington Post

Where, if the schools have anything to say about it, they will be perfectly safe from learning anything about American values, while constantly hearing praise for the values of their Chinese masters.

She’s an Indian too | Power Line

Valerie Plame could not be reached for comment.

The PJ Tatler » BOMBSHELL: Al-Qaeda Infiltrator was Working for Brits not CIA, Cover Blown for Election Year Politics

If I had the cartooning ability, I'd redo Obama's Life of Julia like this:

Born into a wealthy family, Julia attended the best schools, including a boarding school. Being taller than average and very athletic, she excelled at sports.

She attended the all-women Smith College, where she earned a degree in English.

After graduating, she worked in advertising and news.

She left her post-college jobs to join the US spy agency. She was posted to Sri Lanka and China. She earned a meritorious service award for her work.

She met and married a fellow spy. After they both left the agency, he took a job in the foreign service in France.

Without a job of her own, Julia attending Le Cordon Bleu cooking school to learn the art of French cooking.

When she and her husband returned to the United States, she began teaching French cooking to others and co-wrote the seminal modern cookbook.

She moved from small cooking classes to television, where she created the seminal food television show.

Having become the founder of both the modern cookbook market and the televised cooking, she became an icon to foodies everywhere.

She continued to make television programs and write cookbooks all of her life.

Her kitchen is now an exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum.

She did all of this without a single government handout.

...Cherokees For Trail of Tears

Thanks to Breitbart and Legal Insurrection for this one. It's one of the funniest things to come out of politics in a long time:

Elizabeth Warren Ancestor Rounded Up Cherokees For Trail of Tears

I bet right about now Warren is hoping to be judged, not by her ancestry, but by the content of her character. Her problem is, it's her character that's under scrutiny--for having claimed such a tenuous link to Native American heritage in the first place.

EPA Official Armendariz

“You hit them as hard as you can, and you make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect there. And, companies that are smart see that, they don’t want to play that game, and they decide at that point that it’s time to clean up.”

Or, they decide at that time that business would be better in Mexico...or Brazil...or Canada... And the US is out another business and several hundred jobs.