|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
|
|
|
|
|
|
Saturday, March 24, 2012 :::
This story is trivial in the grand scheme of things, but I'm surprised it hasn't received more attention:Associate Professor Stephen M. Kajiura was reviewing with his evolution class in GS 120 for a midterm when FAU student Jonatha Carr interrupted him: “How does evolution kill black people?” she asked. Kajiura attempted to explain that evolution doesn’t kill anyone.
And then, Carr became violent. Labels: crazy people
::: posted by Steven at 10:08 PM
(0) comments
Friday, October 15, 2010 :::
As a father of three children -- Cooper 9, Greer 6, and Chase 3 -- I'm faced with the dilemma of discussing with them how marijuana is as safe as aspirin when they turn 18 years old. If Proposition 19 passes, the state of California is telling me that it's okay for my children to get loaded on drugs as often as once a week or every day and all day. So says some psychotherapist. Of course, the proposition wouldn't endorse marijuana use, let alone daily use; it would just prevent the state of California from prosecuting those who use or distribute to people who are at least 21 years old. I assume self-castration is legal; if this fellow assumes that anything legal is commendable and/or is allowing his kids to think that way, I hope someone will inform him of that and hand him a pair of scissors.
While this (not long) Althouse post is most interesting for its illustration of what life was like in that Chilean mine — not as bad as Althouse or I assumed, which isn't to say good — she catches Chris Matthews making a similar error to that of the psychotherapist:If the trapped Chilean miners had subscribed to the tea party's "every-man-for-himself" philosophy, "they would have been killing each other after about two days," MSNBC host Chris Matthews said on his "Hardball" show Wednesday night.... As Althouse points out, tea partiers have not opposed cooperation, they have just called for it to be voluntary. Frankly, the big Glenn Beck rally in DC — which might not have really been a "tea party" rally, but was related — focused on building community-supportive character, and left the National Mall a lot cleaner than the labor movement did a couple of weeks ago.
Meanwhile, I'm not really a first lady watcher, so maybe she's been more strident than I know, but I see no inconsistency between encouraging people to eat better and enjoying the occasional greaseburger. I don't support giving her a pass on electioneering in a polling place; Drudge reports (that link won't last):A top Ilinois State Board of Elections official tells the DRUDGE REPORT that Mrs. Obama -- a Harvard-educated lawyer -- may have simply been ignorant of the law and thus violated it unintentionally.
"You kind of have to drop the standard for the first lady, right?" the official explained late Thursday. "I mean, she's pretty well liked and probably doesn't know what she's doing." If they brush off all unintentional violations, maybe that's okay - I assume this isn't a felony, and maybe the nominal fine only ever applies to those who persist in their noncompliance. But, having been politically active in a state with such a law (I assume most states have such laws), I can't imagine someone politically active being unaware that this is not just inappropriate, but illegal. If ignorance is going to be an adequate defense for the first lady for violating a law she should have known about, I hope the rest of us get the same deal, especially in situations in which ignorance is actually plausible.
Actually, I just skimmed through the Illinois elections law, and there doesn't seem to be any mention of a penalty for campaigning at the polling place. If the psychotherapist whom I started by quoting wanted to amend the law decriminalizing marijuana to keep possession and distribution illegal but eliminate the penalties, I'd back him up; I have nothing against the state merely taking an official position. But I still hope his kids don't grow up doing stupid things like spending all of their time on drugs or watching Chris Matthews or living on nothing but cheeseburgers and fries just because those things are legal.Labels: Chris Matthews, crazy people, Michelle Obama, tea parties
::: posted by Steven at 12:09 AM
(0) comments
Thursday, September 16, 2010 :::
Steve Chapman notes that some of the Tea Party's candidates for high office are a bit eccentric, but "[i]f a $1.4 trillion federal budget deficit represents sanity, they [the Tea Partiers] would prefer a candidate who escaped from the psych ward."
Sharon Angle (running against Harry Reid in Nevada) seems to have been less gaffe-prone than I had feared upon her nomination, but things like this also help neutralize the "crazy" issue. Reid accusing Angle of saying nutty things is like the pot accusing the kettle of speaking with a Negro dialect.
Christine O'Donnell, meanwhile, has recently lied about her results in the last election she ran in, apparently lied on her financial reports, and demonstrated signs of paranoia, but the left side of the blogosphere seems to be obsessed with her position on masturbation (she hasn't, as far as I've seen, proposed a government role). If I thought the worst dirt they could dig up was a 15-year-old video of her opposing masturbation on MTV — as Jim Geraghty notes, if anything, this was a display of courage — I'd be pretty pleased with her candidacy.Labels: crazy people
::: posted by Steven at 4:21 PM
(0) comments
Wednesday, June 02, 2010 :::
Old hotness: lead by five goals, game is called via slaughter (or "mercy") rule. New hotness: lead by five goals, other team automatically wins. This chutes-and-ladders rule seems to be based on a misconception of sportsmanship, possibly underlaid by a misconception of competition.Labels: crazy people
::: posted by dWj at 12:46 PM
(0) comments
Saturday, May 08, 2010 :::
Notwithstanding what I just posted, we do have something of a rioting class in this country. Bob Owens notes a media double-standard on the reports of political violence without mentioning the under-covered attacks at the last Republican National Convention.Labels: crazy people, media distortion
::: posted by Steven at 12:46 PM
(0) comments
Sunday, April 04, 2010 :::
Are acts of political violence especially common lately, or have they just been getting undue attention?
It could be the former, as Congress and the President did just pass a huge piece of legislation, while taunting its opponents, after large swaths of the public made it clear they were among those opponents being belittled. I obviously don't condone any of the recent violence, but I can understand that some on the right would feel like the legislators really don't care at all about their opinions and that a handful of them would react violently, and I can understand that some on the left might react to the demonization of opponents of the bill with similar actions.
But it could also be the latter, especially as some politicians are going out of their way to manufacture trouble. And most of the stories that have been drawing so much attention (the militia group may be an exception) seem less serious than the violence directed at the last Republican convention (I briefly blogged about the bomb plot last summer), a story which seemed to get very little coverage.
Much of Iowahawk's latest is made up, but he does link to quite a few real stories of violence, and not all of them are especially recent.Labels: crazy people
::: posted by Steven at 12:09 AM
(0) comments
Monday, November 30, 2009 :::
The first story I read on the Swiss banning new minarets on mosques noted in the first or second paragraph that it could hurt their relations with Muslim countries. I thought the Swiss referendum seemed like an overreaction, but I think any Muslim country that objects to the referendum that suppresses Christianity — and I'm pretty sure most of the big ones do — can put a sock in it. Mark Krikorian had a similar response to a man-in-the-street reaction from Turkey.
On a similar note, I've just noticed that I never blogged on this story about a month ago, in which White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said:You hear in this debate, you hear analogies, you hear references to, you see pictures about and depictions of individuals that are truly stunning, and you hear it all the time. People -- imagine five years ago somebody comparing health care reform to 9/11. Imagine just a few years ago had somebody walked around with images of Hitler.
Hopefully we can get back to a discussion about the issues that are important in this country that we can do so without being personally disagreeable and set up comparisons to things that were so insidious in our history that anybody in any profession or walk of life would be well advised to compare nothing to those atrocities. Yes, just imagine someone a few years ago comparing the President to Hitler.Labels: crazy people, Islam, Robert Gibbs, Switzerland
::: posted by Steven at 11:48 PM
(0) comments
Saturday, October 10, 2009 :::
I'll echo my brother's point that, while the Nobel Peace Prize committee has beclowned itself, Obama has not done so, at least in this instance. His party has, though:"The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists - the Taliban and Hamas this morning - in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize," DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse told POLITICO. I've also recently read that nominations for the prize were due on February 1. Just in case the prize didn't seem, at best, a little premature, the nomination was even more ludicrous.Labels: crazy people, DNC, Nobel Peace Prize, Obama
::: posted by Steven at 1:01 PM
(0) comments
Sunday, September 13, 2009 :::
But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy! Ann Althouse thinks that Maureen Dowd is flagging her own insanity with that statement.
I'm reminded of this column by Jonah Goldberg, responding to assertions that the Lord of the Rings movies were racist:One is tempted to ask who is the real racist here? On the one hand we have people — like me — who see horrific, flesh-eating, dull-witted creatures with jagged feral teeth, venomous mouths, pointed devilish ears, and reptilian skin, and say, "Cool, Orcs!" On the other hand we have people, like Mr. Yatt, who see the same repugnant creatures and righteously exclaim "black people!" Maybe he should spend less time vetting movies for signs of racism and more time vetting himself... Labels: crazy people, Maureen Dowd, racism
::: posted by Steven at 7:51 PM
(0) comments
Saturday, September 12, 2009 :::
There was a big Tea Party event in Washington, DC, today — some estimates put the crowd above a million, but I'm inclined to believe the hundreds of thousands estimates, which would still be pretty big.
Powerline noted CNN's attempt to mis-cover the event. Mark Hemingway rounded up some reports and pictures. Jay Nordlinger commented on the homemade signs.
Speaking of signs, Mary Katharine Ham noted how hard ThinkProgress had to stretch to identify eight "offensive" signs, so crazy people were not well represented; one of Instapundit's readers even marveled at the lack of trash afterward. On the other hand, some crazy people on the other side called in a bomb threat to the organizers yesterday.Labels: CNN, crazy people, tea parties
::: posted by Steven at 11:59 PM
(0) comments
Friday, September 11, 2009 :::
A few more links, then I'm calling it a night:- In a column about "truthers" and "birthers", Jonah Goldberg points out that the left has people at least as crazy as the right does. This column includes some quite impressive hypocrisy from left-blog FireDogLake.
- In "An Obama Speech in 13 Easy Steps", Rich Lowry points out some of Obama's more annoying habits. I'm not sure these are meant to be in order; if they are, 10 should be a lot higher, and 11 should probably be a bit higher, too.
- One of Obama's clearest-cut lies has been that everyone opposing his plan is a wholehearted supporter of the status quo. Byron York covers some of the Republican plans and the difficulty their sponsors have had getting the time of day from either the Democrats in the government or the media.
Labels: crazy people, Health Care, Obama
::: posted by Steven at 11:05 PM
(1) comments
Friday, September 04, 2009 :::
I think you'll enjoy this mostly if you like filling a barrel with fish and pulling out a gun:If Republicans and conservatives make the very legitimacy of Obama, his patriotism — even the safety of allowing little kids listen to him tell them to stay in school and think about helping their community — the issue, and link his name to Hitler and/or Nazism, precisely how do they think Democrats and the left will respond next time a GOPer is in power? How will the next Republican President be treated in terms of legitimacy and doing what he/she feels is in the best interest of the country? This taxes the imagination, but let's try - I predict wild movies alleging the President is in cahoots with foreign terrorists and domestic criminals, prominent Democrats alleging that the President conspired to kill thousands of Americans, constant linkage of the Republican President with Hitler, and an ongoing denial of his legitimacy. At a guess.
I also appreciate the comment — regarding a member of the right who may be up to three-quarters nuts — that "[i]f Cass Sunstein is a communist he is operating under deep cover." I have my differences with Sunstein, but he is, indeed, not a communist.Labels: Cass Sunstein, crazy people
::: posted by Steven at 11:43 PM
(0) comments
Kenneth Gladney has lost his position as the leading example of anti-TEA party violence:California authorities say a clash between opponents and supporters of health care reform ended with one man biting off another man's finger. Labels: crazy people
::: posted by Steven at 8:22 PM
(0) comments
Thursday, September 03, 2009 :::
A few related links:Labels: crazy people, hate, hypocrisy
::: posted by Steven at 9:58 AM
(0) comments
Wednesday, August 26, 2009 :::
VDH noticed the other day that[t]here is a reasonable worry voiced by Jonathan Chait in The New Republic about right-wing, over-the-top rhetoric, and its deleterious effects on the health-care debate, and he references inter alia Rick Perlstein for support. But the essay should become the locus classicus for the problem with all this sudden liberal angst as President Obama's polls dive.
It was Jonathan Chait himself who wrote a 2003 essay, "The Case For Bush Hatred: Mad About You" that began with the inflamatory "I hate President George W. Bush," a piece that became emblematic of a visceral furor that in those years did much to poison politics.
And Rick Perlstein? I think he was the same author of a Village Voice article about Bush sucking American democracy dry, accompanied by a creepy cartoon picture of President Bush as a hideous vampire with his bloody fangs on the exposed neck of the Statue of Liberty (on the level with much of the blood-libel pop art in the Arab world directed at Israel). A few other stories are flying below the radar screen:I remember after McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City that Bill Clinton, among others, pointed to rhetoric by (for example) Rush Limbaugh. I don't think that made sense, any more than it would make sense to blame these acts (and/or the assault of the conservative activist by SEIU members last month) on Obama's vilification of the right. So I won't blame him for that, but I can still point out the double standard.Labels: crazy people, hypocrisy
::: posted by Steven at 12:08 AM
(0) comments
Sunday, August 23, 2009 :::
The obvious, from Matt Welch: It's been a hilarious August, watching media supporters of President Obama's health care package puzzle over the obscure motivations of the noncompliant Americans rallying against it.
"Racial anxiety," guessed New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.
"Nihilism," theorized Time's Joe Klein.
"The crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy," historian Rick Perlstein proclaimed in the Washington Post.
While the commentariat's condescension is almost comical, the whole evil-or-stupid explanation misses the elephant in Obama's room: Americans of all stripes, it turns out, aren't very keen about the government barging into their lives.
An ABC/Washington Post poll from June showed people preferred "smaller government with fewer services" over "larger government with more services" by 54% to 41%, up from 50%-45% a year earlier (independents were even more pronounced, at 61%-35%). That's not the end of his argument.
I realize Obama's tenure is still young, but I've been pondering: of the last three presidencies, the one least marked by partisan rancor was probably the one with the impeachment.
Only mostly unrelated, I've come up with a slogan for the Republicans in 2010: "let's get back in the frying pan."Labels: crazy people
::: posted by Steven at 10:11 PM
(0) comments
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 :::
A Washington Post columnist seems to have missed the fact that not all nuts are conservatives. Bainbridge sets him straight without even pointing out how many Democratic politicians attended the premier of "Fahrenheit 9/11".Labels: crazy people
::: posted by Steven at 10:12 PM
(0) comments
Sunday, August 16, 2009 :::
It has been widely noted that the press has been covering recent anti-Obama protests differently from how it covered anti-Bush protests. News organizations (and, less unreasonably, opinion journalists of the left) have been suggesting that opponents of Obamacare could become violent, while ignoring Kenneth Gladney, the conservative protester in St. Louis who was assaulted by union thugs last week.
I don't know that I would call drowning out opposing views "un-American", as Pelosi and Hoyer did, but it certainly isn't right, whether it's done by conservatives, as it has occasionally been, or by union members at the encouragement of their union. Or, as I mentioned before, by left-wing college students when a conservative speaker comes to campus, the setting with which I most associate the tactic.Labels: crazy people
::: posted by Steven at 6:14 PM
(0) comments
|
|
|
|
