A few years ago (2001) Debby and I were in Toronto, Canada. One of the things we did there was walk through Cabbagetown, a historic neighborhood. A few days later, when a local heard that we had been in Toronto and had visited Cabbagetown his response was “You came to Toronto and visited our slum!”
My response to him was that if Cabbagetown constituted a Canadian slum, then Canada was in very good shape indeed. Yes, the neighborhood did not seem particularly high end, but a slum it was not.
This evening on HGTV’s Property Virgin program was a young man looking for his first house in Toronto. Two of the houses he looked at were in Cabbagetown. They were both priced over $550,000.
Geez, $550,000. In the “slum”. I guess I could never afford shelter in Toronto (or maybe Cabbagetown isn’t a slum…)
Republicans were crowing about socialism and government takeovers way back in the summer of 2008, and opposing virtually every policy that the Democrats put forth from the first meeting of the 111th Congress last January — a time when Obama’s approval had been in the high 60s. At first, those messages weren’t working for them — they were particularly ineffectual, for instance, for the McCain campaign, and there were lots of stories in the spring about the number of people who identified as Republican slipping to all-time lows. But the GOP stuck by their messaging strategy, and it has allowed them to frame everything that has come thereafter in ways that are more resonant with the public.
This reminds me of the NFC Championship football game between the Saints and the Vikings. The Saints defensive game plan included an emphasis on hitting Bret Favre. They got several hits on him but failed to sack him. Still, they did not change the plan. Favre threw for 310 yards, but still the Saints worked to hit Favre. Sure enough, before the game was over, Favre rewarded them by throwing three interceptions (the stats say two because the Saints did not catch one of the balls thrown right to them).
I believe there was not much shortage of politicians who made public comments to the effect that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab should not have been treated as a criminal but as an enemy combatant. Now, I am not a lawyer, but I can not help but wonder how many of those politicians helped to pass the laws that Abdulmutallab is now charged with.
It seems to me if you do not want a person who attempts to blow up an airplane treated as a criminal, then why are you criminalizing such behavior? Oh yes. To look tough on the subject of terrorism.
“Voters, I believe in being tough on terrorists and that’s why I helped to put laws against blowing up airplanes in the federal criminal code. Also, because I am tough on terror, I do not believe that any terrorist should face those charges, but instead should be treated as an enemy combatant.”
Or something like that.
I suppose it is possible that treating Abdulmutallab as an enemy combatant still requires that there be established law to charge him with. But if that established law properly belongs in the federal criminal code, how is it differentiated from the other law that is subject to such things as Miranda rights?
This being the first time I have posted about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, I feel compelled to mention that, in the days following Christmas, many radio and tv journalists/announcers avoided pronouncing his name and simply referred to him as “the Nigerian man.” I thought that rather amusing.
Having moved to Fort Wayne, we no longer need our previous isp. We kept it for awhile so we could get the email. Yesterday I went by the Marion cable office to return the modem and settle up. I gave the woman the modem and told her to shut it off we have moved. She asked for our new address. I almost protested that they had no need for the new address, but I was lazy and gave it to her.
She told me the amount I owed and I handed over the bills while she further explained that the amount was only an estimate and that we would be sent a bill after the system finished calculating the final bill.
???
I told her (with a smile on my face) that any system that could not come up with the final bill right here and now was an ef’ed up system (that’s how I said it).
Obama reminds me of Clinton. I remember thinking that Clinton would be a liberal Reagan in that he, too, could be a “great communicator.” I thought that because he seemed to communicate with the public so well as a candidate. But once he was in office, he stopped. And the Republicans controlled the message. Soon Clinton was declaring the era of big government over.
Obama seemed to be able to communicate as a candidate and seems to not be able to do so as a President. The Republicans control the message and Obama is trying hard to sound more centric in the State of the Union address.
It is interesting that when polled about specific elements that make up (one of?) the health care reform bill, the majority of Americans are in favor of almost all of them. http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/upload/8042-T.pdf
In other words, if people understood what was in the legislation, there would be a lot more support.
You have one chance. Pass the senate health care bill.
The public does not differentiate between the house bill and the senate bill.
You already voted for the house bill.
Your republican opponent in the fall is going to pin that vote on you incessantly.
And those who support reform are not going to be all that enthusiastic because you did not pass it.
So you have the worst of both worlds: blame for the vote, and no credit for passage.
The republicans had one goal: prevent the passage of health care.
They have almost succeeded.
The only bills (of any consequence) that will pass between now and January 2011 (if not later) are bills through reconciliation. The republicans have zero incentive to cooperate with anything. Obstruction has served them very well in the polls.
Health care reform cannot be done solely through reconciliation.
Pass the senate bill and then fix what can be fixed through reconciliation.
So the Supreme Court knocked down (large?) portions of McCain/Feingold. Spending is speech and Congress will make no law etc.
Generally I am a liberal, so I guess I am supposed to be outraged that the Court did what it did.
But I am not outraged. I applaud the decision. I have felt for some time that all the regulation of campaign spending is not constitutional. Now, I did not make a mission out of trying to undo it (I do not look forward to all of the commercials), but I have long thought it made no sense.
Part of my problem with campaign finance laws goes back to a universal truth. Create a rule and there will (immediately!) be those out there looking for a way around the rule. This creates another rule, and the process continues ad nauseum. Soon (a long time ago), the regulations are so complex that it is simply too easy to break them even with the best of intentions. All of that for rules that are unconstitutional in the first place and, lets face it, did not do much to keep money out of politics as was intended.
I think anyone should be able to give as much money as he or she (or it) wants to give to any candidate desired.
The one catch I would have is that all candidates must publish who gave (with occupation) and how much.
This kind of transparency is part of the current scheme and is the one part that strikes me as effective. I have on several occasions listened to a news story on how a given candidate received a donation from a sullied donor and the candidate returned the money. This works. And the internet makes it easily doable. Post the info and the press and the bloggers will let us know if there is cause for concern.
Somehow it already feels like ancient history, but the reader perhaps remembers the hubbub surrounding the book Game Change when it was published eight days ago. Harry Reid was quoted talking about Obama’s lack of a Negro dialect. Sarah Palin is also depicted negatively in the book.
Reid’s response was to stand up and admit he said what he said. And he apologized.
Palin’s response was to simply state that the book was full of lies.
One might look at the two responses and draw conclusions about who is leadership material.
On the other hand, both of them responded in the way that their politics required of them. Politics required Reid to man up and apologize. Politics requires Palin to just declare the book to be lies. (Maybe they are lies. I don’t know).
With 63% of precincts reporting, the Republican Brown is defeating the Democrat Coakley in the Massachusetts senate race 53% to 46%. It is not looking good.
Now the Democrats are faced with the question of what to do with health care reform. Are they leaders or are they craven cowards to the political breeze.
The irony is that if the Dems listen to the lesson of Massachusetts and fail to pass health care, they will lose a lot more this fall then they will if they stand tall and pass the bill. They already voted for it.
If Coakley does indeed lose, it probably means the end of Cap and Trade. With luck the global warming deniers are correct.
John Durant is a meat eater. The New York Times has an article on his return to a caveman diet. My understanding is that the New York Times will soon require money to access content, so I will quote:
The one thing that Mr. Durant worries might spook a female guest is his most recent purchase: a three-foot-tall refrigerated meat locker that sits in a corner of his living room. That is where he keeps his organ meat and deer ribs.
Mr. Durant, 26,…is part of a small New York subculture whose members seek good health through a selective return to the habits of their Paleolithic ancestors.
Or as he and some of his friends describe themselves, they are cavemen.
The caveman lifestyle, in Mr. Durant’s interpretation, involves eating large quantities of meat and then fasting between meals to approximate the lean times that his distant ancestors faced between hunts. Vegetables and fruit are fine, but he avoids foods like bread that were unavailable before the invention of agriculture. Mr. Durant believes the human body evolved for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and his goal is to wean himself off what he sees as many millenniums of bad habits.
These urban cavemen also choose exercise routines focused on sprinting and jumping, to replicate how a prehistoric person might have fled from a mastodon.
This diet is based on our cave dwelling ancestry. Fair enough. But it ignores evolution. One of the first things I notice here is that a given organism is successful if his or her genes are passed on. Among cavemen, this would require a lifespan of thirty years maybe? Also it is my understanding that there is a pretty good body of evidence that red meat is really not good for us (but I’ve not researched this, so don’t take my word for it).
As soon as I saw the article I remembered reading something about evolution and human’s diet. It was at John Hawk’s Weblog; a post entitled You are what your ancestors ate, part 1. In this post, Professor Hawk briefly discusses “reporting on an interdisciplinary conference on recent human diet evolution”. He quotes from an article in Science*. I give you the same quote:
The agricultural revolution favored people lucky enough to have gene variants that helped them digest milk, alcohol, and starch. Those mutations therefore spread among farmers. But other populations remained more carnivorous, such as the Saami of frigid northern Norway, whose ancestors herded reindeer. Among Saami ancestors, genes to digest meat and fat efficiently were apparently favored. One gene variant, for example, makes living Saami less likely to get uric acid kidney stones—common in people who eat high-protein diets—than are people whose ancestors were vegetarian Hindus and lack this gene variant, says geneticist Mark Thomas of University College London (UCL).
In other words, there has been more than enough time for humans to adapt to an agrarian civilization.
I guess it’s possible that Mr. Durant is descended from the Saami of northern Norway.
Finally, credit where credit is due, I found the New York Times article from the discussion about it at Althouse.
* The article is by Ann Gibbons. It is unavailable without paying.