Yes, today is M. Simon's birthday, and I won't say which one as it just sounds too spooky (especially being that his birthday always falls on October13th, which looks like Halloweenish inverted). And I don't want to get into numerology here. One superstition at a time.

For this this special occasion, I decided to do something I hardly ever do, which was to make a YouTube video instead of writing a blog post. After consulting a very worthy and time-tested astrological text, I learned things about my co-blogger which I was at first hesitant to share, because they seem so personal in nature -- if not invasive of privacy. But the reason I decided to share them is because anyone else could have learned the same thing, armed with nothing more than his date of birth. So the more I thought it over, the more it seemed to me that it was my duty to share it with the world.

Happy Birthday!

If the video won't yet stream at this site, it's because it's still being processed.

(Link here.)

Human behavior being what it is, if we consider the sheer number of people on the planet (or even limit our considerations to the 300 million or so Americans), it should not surprise anyone that each day, a number of incidents occur which are capable of generating outrage. It used to be that local news tended to be treated as local news. If a kid got attacked by a vicious dog, beaten up by vicious thugs on the way home from school, or found himself victimized by bullies in one cruel manner or another, these things were not considered national events, and they didn't serve as fuel for the public imagination. This is not to belittle any victim of crime, but things have changed. It just so happens that if the right factors are present (certain emotional triggers), then local tragedies can be rapidly catapulted into national outrages. When that happens, the reaction tends to be along the lines of "how could this have happened in the United States?" and of course "Something must be done!" If a victim is different from his attackers (say of a different racial or sexual orientation -- or physically different, as in the case of obesity epidemic victims), if an attacking dog has the wrong genes (such as "pit bull"), then all of us in society are said to be collectively involved, and our attention is demanded one way or another. Why is that? Simply because there's an Internet to blast these events into the public imagination? At the rate ordinary tragic occurrences are becoming national outrages, pretty soon we will all be conspicuous outrage consumers. It's the "outrage of the day" phenomenon, and I have touched on it before. I make no claim to be innocent, as this blog is just as guilty of feeding upon outrage as any other outrage-fueled blog. Seriously, if it weren't for conspicuous outrage, what would there be to be conspicuously outraged about? We can't be outraged about nothing can we? Actually, we can. The epidemic of cultural nihilism itself can and probably should engender profound feelings of collective outrage. And is not apathy worse than outrage? Shouldn't we be more outraged by apathy in the face of outrage, than by outrage in the face of outrage?

What would happen if there were to emerge a cultural divide between people who care and people who don't? Political demagogues could exploit this, and already it is happening, especially when the outages involve "hot-button" issues of deep concern to single-issue-political activists. If you either don't care or can "see both sides" of, say, abortion issue or the gay marriage issue, you are likely to incur the wrath of those who have "selflessly" dedicated their lives to either combating the evil or (depending on your POV) remedying the evil. You're liable not only to be accused of apathy, but you might even be likened to the "good Germans" who stood by and did nothing while Hitler slaughtered millions and laid waste to Europe. (Oddly enough, we don't hear much about the "good Russians." Or the good Cambodians or good Rwandans.)

I'd call this entire situation outrageous, except I wouldn't want to succumb to outrage, lest I become a victim of the outrage epidemic.

Clearly, there is an outrage epidemic and clearly something must be done. But what? What sort of epidemic is it? Is there such a thing as addiction to outrage? If so, maybe the first step is admitting it. There can be no denial where it comes to outrage, because living in denial would be another outrage. But it would also be an outrage to admit that we are addicted, yet to go right on living as if being outraged is simply a fact of life. How dare we not be more outraged?

Either way, we should be more outraged. Anything less would be an outrage.

Sigh.

I should beware of the power of negative thinking. Expressing such negative thoughts about outrage could easily hamstring my efforts to tackle the outrages of the day. I have not read any news, blogs, or email, and I am still in a state of blissful unawareness of the emerging outrages of the day.

What, I should try to be more positive?

UPDATE: As M. Simon reminded me, "it's open season on Carl Paladino." Does that mean I should attack him or defend him? From what I've read, he fits the stereotype of being a loose cannon. It's tough to be honest without seeming to side with his attackers or defenders, yet as I have tried to explain, there is nothing more pathetic than not having especially strong feelings about something that everyone has strong feelings about.

Much as I wish the GOP had a better candidate (and if I had to vote in New York I'd need to be clutching my puke bag in the polls), is it OK for me to say that I just find the whole affair a little exhausting?

Hey, watch this vintage video of Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal (neither of whom I have ever been able to stand) going at it. And watch the reaction of 83 year old Janet Flanner. (I remember the show, and I loved her at the time.)

Janet Flanner I am not. But sometimes I feel like having a Janet Flanner moment.

I have been writing for the last week or so about how much I don't like Paladino in the New York Governors race. You can find the articles:

From The Beach

Wedge Issues

I think Warren Redlich is probably the best man for the job of those running. But let us be real. The odds are not in his favor this close to the election. (Yeah. Never tell me the odds.)

Which brings me to something Instapundit pointed out yesterday. Did Paladino smear our current Attorney General (who deserves it) or not?

It's open season on Carl Paladino, the homophobic, racist email-forwarding Republican candidate for governor of New York. And much to the delight of the Cuomo campaign, everyday seems to bring a new scandal. Now Paladino stands accused of using salty language about Attorney General Eric Holder, apparently telling a voter that he would say "fuck him" if he attempted to try terrorists in a Manhattan court.

OTOH I have learned from surfing the 'net that in one of Cuomo's past elections the unofficial slogan for Cuomo was "Cuomo not the homo".

You have to wonder why New York State puts up with any of these mopes?

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Union pension plans in America are falling apart. Congress has a plan to fix that.

Democrats in the Senate on Thursday held a recess hearing covering a taxpayer bailout of union pensions and a plan to seize private 401(k) plans to more "fairly" distribute taxpayer-funded pensions to everyone.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee heard from hand-picked witnesses advocating the infamous "Guaranteed Retirement Account" (GRA) authored by Theresa Guilarducci.

In a nutshell, under the GRA system government would seize private 401(k) accounts, setting up an additional 5% mandatory payroll tax to dole out a "fair" pension to everyone using that confiscated money coupled with the mandated contributions. This would, of course, be a sister government ponzi scheme working in tandem with Social Security, the primary purpose being to give big government politicians additional taxpayer funds to raid to pay for their out-of-control spending.

In February, the White House released its "Annual Report on the Middle Class" containing new regulations favored by Big Labor including a bailout of critically underfunded union pension plans through "retirement security" options.

The radical solution most favored by Big Labor is the seizure of private 401(k) plans for government disbursement -- which lets them off the hook for their collapsing retirement scheme. And, of course, the Obama administration is eager to accommodate their buddies.

Vice President Joe Biden floated the idea, called "Guaranteed Retirement Accounts" (GRAs), in the February "Middle Class" report.

Here is a report from 2008 on the topic which names some more names.

GRAs would guarantee a fixed 3 percent annual rate of return, although later in her article Ghilarducci explained that participants would not "earn a 3% real return in perpetuity." In place of tax breaks workers now receive for contributions and thus a lower tax rate, workers would receive $600 annually from the government, inflation-adjusted. For low-income workers whose annual contributions are less than $600, the government would deposit whatever amount it would take to equal the minimum $600 for all participants.

In a radio interview with Kirby Wilbur in Seattle on Oct. 27, 2008, Ghilarducci explained that her proposal doesn't eliminate the tax breaks, rather, "I'm just rearranging the tax breaks that are available now for 401(k)s and spreading -- spreading the wealth."

Well 2008 was a good year for warnings about this stuff. Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher tried to warn the 53% among us who were about to do something foolish.

Wurzelbacher said he planned to become the owner of a small plumbing business that will take in more than the $250,000 amount at which Obama plans to begin raising tax rates.

"Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" the blue-collar worker asked.

After Obama responded that it would, Wurzelbacher continued: "I've worked hard . . . I work 10 to 12 hours a day and I'm buying this company and I'm going to continue working that way. I'm getting taxed more and more while fulfilling the American Dream."

"It's not that I want to punish your success," Obama told him. "I want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success, too.

Then, Obama explained his trickle-up theory of economics.

"My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

H/T Vox Populi and I think I got the Vox link from a comment at Riehl World View. But I can't find which post right now.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I don't like being lied to, and while I have come expect it, what irritates me even more than being lied to is seeing other people being lied to. Especially in the name of "democracy."

A perfect example of the kind of stuff that just pisses me off is the way the Democrats have run their campaign against Michigan Supreme Court Justice Robert Young. (Here's his Wiki bio.) I met him, and I watched him give a short talk and answer questions in a small group setting. He is a rare breed in that he is not only a black conservative, but a black conservative who went to Harvard Law School. To the left, this makes him not merely a traitor, but a double traitor.

To my mind, this makes him a man of great courage, and whether I agree with him on each and every point is irrelevant. (I doubt there is a human being on the face of the earth with whom I agree on each and every point, myself included. Hell, I argue with myself daily right here on this blog!)

The Democrats -- per Party Chairman Mark Brewer -- have decided to ridicule Justice Young by accusing him of sleeping on the bench. That was the agreed upon "narrative" as it worked the last time they campaigned against a Republican Supreme Court justice. The trouble is that this time, they couldn't find any footage of him sleeping, so they had to invent it out of whole cloth. Or whole video. That's right; the techies who work for the Democrats have learned that if you obtain video of people, you will find that because they are human beings they will close their eyes occasionally. It is called blinking, and if you don't do it, your eyes will dry out and become injured. So, those of us who are not suffering from paralysis or brain damage will necessarily and involuntarily do it from time to time. It has nothing to do with sleep, but in the right hands, it can be made to appear that anyone is asleep.

Precisely what the Democratic Party activists did to Justice Young. Fortunately, the underlying video they used was discovered, and someone was able to painstakingly go through it frame by frame to prove that the purported "photographs" showing him sleeping were simply frames in which he momentarily blinked.

Just watch:

This could be done to any living human being and I find it beyond irritating. It's almost Orwellian.

The reason I said "almost Orwellian" is that for something to be Orwellian in the full sense of the term, the government has to be doing it. Here it isn't really the government, but a party that wants to run the government.

I will be blunt here. The people who do this sort of thing are lower than low, and I am glad their behavior at this stage is only quasi-Orwellian. So, it is not enough for me to just say that the above video constitutes good cause to vote for Bob Young in Michigan, or contribute money to the campaign to retain him on the Michigan Supreme Court.

I would go so far as to say that the tactics exemplified by the above video provide an excellent reason not only to support Justice Young, but to vote against the Democratic Party in any way, shape or form. I say this fully aware of the problems I have had (and have) with various GOP candidates, and fully aware that I may not agree with Justice Young on every issue.

The selective editing involved (which makes it look like the opposite of what occurred) reminds me of the time a video showing a Nazi crackpot being exposed and denounced at a Tea Party was edited to make it appear as if the Nazi spoke for the Tea Party.

If Republicans were caught doing the same thing, I would feel the same way. I realize there are those who think the Republicans ought to engage in similar tactics by way of retaliation, but I couldn't disagree more. Two wrongs are simply two wrongs. I think people who engage in such quasi-Orwellian behavior are unworthy of holding office, period.

If they'll do that to get elected, what do you think they'll do when they get power?

DISCLOSURE: I have donated to the campaign to retain Justice Young, and I am proud that I did.

An issue that has long fascinated me is high denomination currency. There used to be quite a bit of it in circulation, but it died out. In the late 1960s:

The Federal Reserve began taking high-denomination bills out of circulation in 1969. As of May 30, 2009, there were only 336 known $10,000 bills in circulation; 342 remaining $5,000 bills; and 165,372 $1,000 remaining bills.[2] Due to their rarity, collectors will pay considerably more than the face value of the bills to acquire them.

Highdenomination.com is all about U.S bank notes of denominations $500, $1000, $5,000 and $10,000. - These high value United States Federal Reserve Notes and Gold Certificates are out of print and prized by both collectors and investors. Unlike many other currency issues, U.S. small size high denomination notes are Federal issues. By law, they still carry legal tender status. It is specifically this legal tender status, rarity and of course high face value that offer an unparalleled draw. This desirability makes high denomination notes, arguably, the most exciting area in collectible US paper money.

In the United States, high denomination paper money dates back to 1861 (the "very beginning of U.S. Government issue") and it always included notes with face values as high as $10,000. Considering that the inflation-adjusted value of $10,000 would be $235,942.42 in today's money, that's a heck of a large bill, today. Almost a quarter of a million dollars.

So why is it that we can't obtain high-denomination notes if we want them? The highest value note is the $100.00 bill, but that was also the highest value note in 1969 when they decided to withdraw the higher-denomination notes, so I guess the government thought no one would need anything larger. But what about inflation since 1969? That hundred dollar bill would be $578.63 in today's money. So why hasn't the government at least re-introduced the $500.00 bill, just to keep up with inflation?

The answer seems to be the drug war.

Up until the mid-70s, and possibly later (I no longer recall the date), there were at least $500 and $1000 bills available to the public. They were withdrawn as part of the so-called "war on drugs"; the theory was that if large bills were unavailable, it would be more difficult to move large amounts of cash. In recent years, some people have suggested that since the change made no visible dent at all, the $100 and even the $50 should be withdrawn as well.

When was the last time that you had any need for a $100 bill or perhaps a $50 bill? Indeed, most purchases that Americans conduct over $20 are in the form of a check, wire transfer, credit or debit card. This begs the question: Who has the need for the $100 bill?The answer is clear -- the underground economy and criminal economy thrive on paper cash, especially the $100 bill.Because paper-cash transactions are non-transparent, anonymous and untraceable; paper cash has allowed criminal activity and the underground economies to thrive. In fact, the payment of choice by drug cartels and terrorist organizations is the $100 bill because it is easy to store, launder and transport.

As M. Simon keeps saying,

DRUG WAR = BIG GOVERNMENT

I understand why he put it in large caps, so I left it that way. Big government deserves to be fought in big caps.

Big Government, give us back our big bills!

MORE: Many thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post, and a warm welcome to all.

Comments invited, agree or disagree.

Watch this video. Or this one:

Needless to say the videos are Not Entirely Safe For Work.

I posted the above to illustrate a point. Beach wear. Now I could have done a bit with guys in Speedos but I'm partial to the ladies. And my point? I'm getting to that. There is a race in New York that I have been giving some attention to. And the gay punching is getting rough (Hippie punching does not work as well as it used to. I guess the hippie menace is no longer so menacing.)

Which brings me to Carl Paladino.

Carl Paladino, the volatile GOP candidate for governor of New York, refused to step back yesterday from his comments disparaging gays over the weekend, saying that children should not attend gay pride parades because they featured men in bikinis "grinding at each other and doing these gyrations.''

"I don't think that's proper; I think it's disgusting,'' Paladino told NBC's "Today.''

In appearances before Orthodox Jewish groups Sunday in Brooklyn, the Buffalo developer and Tea Party-backed candidate created an uproar by saying that children should not be "brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is acceptable.''

He also took a swipe at his opponent, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, for marching in a gay pride parade with his children.

He spoke as the state was still absorbing the news that nine young men had lured a gay man and two teenagers to a building and for hours savagely beat, tortured, and raped them with a baseball bat.

So given the choice between a society that tolerates gay guys prancing (yeah, what a cliche) in the streets or one that creates a truly vile atmosphere towards my fellow humans that makes some folks think acting out their violent fantasies towards people who are different (actively despised) is in the spirit of the age, I'm with the prancing gay guys all the way.

I'm kinda like Grant when it comes to moral panics. I don't scare worth a damn. And there are more citizens joining the unafraid ranks every day. I'm hoping that they represent enough New Yorkers to defeat Palidino. Pour encourager les autres.

Update: In case you are not comfortable voting for a Democrat and don't want to sit this one out Warren Redlich has been giving Paladino the HELL he deserves on the campaign trail.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Nate Silver over at Five-thirty-eight is clinging to hope. His latest headline reads:

Incumbents Polling Below 50 Percent Often Win Re-Election, Despite Conventional Wisdom

So I wrote him a little something to cheer him up.

Nate,

You sound like me in 2008. Every tiny spark of hope magnified into a lightning flash. Look at what is happening in AZ. A no name, no money, rocket scientist is statistically tied (latest numbers show her two points ahead) with a 4 term incumbent.

Morale keeps going up on the R side. Races that were not even on the radar become first competitive and then fugedaboutit. The fire wall is not holding. Money is not working. A word from Sarah Palin and the money starts flowing. And her endorsement is GOLD. Politically and in terms of cash. She is going to have between 20 and 50 allies in the next Congress.

In fact Palin has been our shadow President ever since she stopped being Governor. The Democrat campaign to drive her from the Governorship of Alaska has epic failed. Oh. It worked all right. It just didn't have the intended consequences. She is stronger than ever. It is an old Jedi trick I'm told.

I believe, based on the zeitgeist, that a 100 seat change is within the reach of the Rs. If you are a Democrat you have to consider that the mood of the country is murderous. If you are an old school R the mood is horrible. If you are with the rebels it is looking very good.

Yeah. I'm with the Rebel Alliance. You're welcome.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Happy Columbus Day!

As Glenn Reynolds noted earlier,

Many in the West will demonstrate their fierce originality and intellectual independence today by condemning Christopher Columbus using the same shopworn cliches they used last year.

How about "Christopher Columbus & His Crimes Against Humanity"? That seems as good a nomination as any for this year's Indigenous People's Day Award for Fierce Shopworn Originality and Intellectually Independent Cliches!

It's too bad I'm not into historical reenactment, though. Because it's always struck me that the people who talk about crimes against humanity think that some crimes against humanity are worse than others.

Hey cut it out!

MORE: As we all know, it is important not to be judgmental about gruesome scenes of torture and cannibalism:

"Then they kicked the bodies down the steps, and the Indian butchers who were waiting below cut off their arms and legs and flayed their faces, which they afterwards prepared like glove leather, with their beards on, and kept for their drunken festivals. Then they ate their flesh with a sauce of peppers and tomatoes."

Gruesome as these practices may seem, an ecological perspective and population pressure theory render the Aztec emphasis on human sacrifice acceptable as a natural and rational response to the material conditions of their existence. In Tristes Tropiques, the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss described the Aztecs as suffering from "a maniacal obsession with blood and torture." A materialist ecological approach reveals the Aztecs to be neither irrational nor mentally ill, but merely human beings who, faced with unusual survival problems, responded with unusual behavior.

Now why can't they say that about the Europeans?

UPDATE: And a very Happy Columbus Day to Glenn Reynolds, who was not only nice enough to link this post, but who is very much a native American (and a forgiving one at that).

Diversity and divisiveness strike me as close cousins. If we all came from Africa, then we are all invasive species. (I'd say "Kumbaya y'all!" or maybe even "Can't we all get along?" but I'll spare the shopworn cliches.)

Thanks for coming.

Your comments are welcome, agree or disagree.

MORE: Don't miss this.

In our age of political correctness, when did such gleeful bashing of a day held dear by Italian-Americans become so tolerable? Columbus may have been an imperfect man, but his legacy and inspirational explorer spirit is directly tied to the Italian-American immigrant experience. Belittling Columbus may elicit knowing nods on Brown's campus, but in Little Italy, it only makes you look small.

Krugman:

Here's what you need to know: The whole story is a myth. There never was a big expansion of government spending.

Reality:

That level of government spending compares unfavorably even to profligate Japan, which is at 36%.

More Krugman:

Consider, in particular, one fact that might surprise you: The total number of government workers in America has been falling, not rising, under Mr. Obama. A small increase in federal employment was swamped by sharp declines at the state and local level -- most notably, by layoffs of schoolteachers. Total government payrolls have fallen by more than 350,000 since January 2009.

This is pretty misleading, since as Fabius Maximus pointed out in January, government payrolls swelled by 326,000 from 2007 to 2009 -- while private payrolls fell by 7 million. And since Obama's Democratic congressional majority took the fiscal reins in 2006, government payrolls have galloped ahead by 575,000. As late as May 2010, there were 22,959,000 government employees, which appears to be a record high.

Krugman's unfalsifiable thesis (apparently he's been taking notes from Al Gore) is that more government spending would always make things better than whatever they are. But this argument fails for a simple reason: the marginal usefulness of government spending tends to fall pretty dramatically at higher percentages of GDP. The first 1% of GDP spent on roads, rail, and regulations have enormous marginal utility, Bridges to Nowhere and million-dollar educrat retirement packages at 45%, not so much. If government could efficiently allocate resources at any arbitrary level of GDP, countries that eliminated the private sector entirely would be leading the world in GDP instead of collapsing or instituting free market reforms.

But there is one notable nugget of wisdom in this piece: Krugman does at least manage to accurately describe his own column.

"...the usual combination of fact-free assertions and cooked numbers."

It seems the Presidential sector is in a similar condition.

Barack Obama is being politically crushed in a vise. From above, by elite opinion about his competence. From below, by mass anger and anxiety over unemployment. And it is too late for him to do anything about this predicament until after November's elections.

With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters. This view is held by Fox News pundits, executives and anchors at the major old-media outlets, reporters who cover the White House, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and governors, many Democratic business people and lawyers who raised big money for Obama in 2008, and even some members of the Administration just beyond the inner circle.

Obama did not turn out to be an orthodox liberal. He turned out to be a Communist. Community organizer? Black liberation theology? Share the wealth?

Puhleeeeeeeeeze.

Any one who didn't see this guy coming wanted to be rolled.

I prefer to think of it as "They came at us in the same old way, and, you know, we beat them in the same old way."

Instapundit has a great take on the media change:

IS THE MEDIA GIVING UP ON OBAMA? Hey, they'll go down for you, but they won't go down with you. . . .

Cross Posted at Power and Control

My friend Atlas aka Pam Geller vents at length on the story of this cartoon's non-publication in some places.

Libertarian Republican discusses a New York Times Hit piece on Atlas.

And for those among you who are looking for a cheap thrill (and thrilling it is) here is Altas in a bikini - mostly - vavoooom - oh yeah she is discussing the news of the day (2006). Brains. Beauty. Libertarian. And Jewish. What is not to like?

Come to think of it Dave's not here either

There are a lot of ways to drum up publicity for your own book, but I think throwing it at the president takes the cake.

As I just told M. Simon in an email related to his post, it's obvious that the authorities know the title, and equally obvious that they don't want ordinary people to know:

The Secret Service says it was aware of the incident when it happened.

A spokesman says the book was thrown by an "over-exuberant" individual who wanted Obama to have a copy of a book he had written.

The Secret Service says it interviewed the book thrower and deemed there was no threat - just bad judgment on his part. No arrest was made and the Service declined to give his name.

Which probably explains why the incident hasn't been much reported in the American press, so we had to learn about it via Glenn's link to the Brits.

MORE: From a local Fox News story: "There are no confirmed reports as to what was the book's title or subject matter. A Reuters photographer seems to have snapped the clearest picture of the book. And it isn't very clear at all.

Damn it, I just want to know the title!

It's hard to judge a book when you can't see its cover.

AND MORE: Many of the commenters at the WaPo writeup are speculating that the book thrower was a Tea Partier, although a few are saying the opposite.

But wait a minute! The Tea Partiers are a bunch of illiterate morons, right? So, if the book was thrown by its author, according to elementary leftist logic, he could not have been a Tea Partier.

MORE: Via a tip from a commenter here named Dennis Madden, I learned that a man (said to post Internet writings "about how 'wisdom is a fragrance of the brain' and 'why the man's sperm is tiny while the woman's egg is huge') is claiming to be the book thrower:

The man who threw a book at Obama in Philadelphia yesterday is a New York antiques dealer called Sajid Ali Khan.

From the Amazon description:

This book offers the guidance to learn exactly what is wisdom and how one can become wise. All the philosophers from the ancient times to the present have tried and failed to define wisdom beyond defining it by its attributes. Sajid has taken wisdom from the realm of philosophy and put it firmly in the realm of science. The 200 aphorisms contained here, first published as 'knols' on the web, give exact insights into the nature of the self and how it can be mastered. Lack of emotional intelligence education is a very big factor in the current world mess from economics to education and everything else in between. This book provides practical answers to many of these problems. It provides an opportunity to create a super mature society through emotional intelligence education which at the highest super mature stage is wisdom. These knollettes are remarkable for their beautiful clearness and simplicity of form. Wisdom is no longer a mystery any more and everyone can become wise.

I don't think throwing a book at the president is a very wise thing to do.

And I hope I haven't promoted the book; what happens to me is that I get curiouser and curiouser, and I can't quit until I have some sort of answer.

MORE: The picture above is a closeup from the picture circulating everywhere which shows the book as it passes the president. I think it is most likely the back of the book, as I assumed that the price sticker would normally be on the bottom, I turned the book upside down and saw what looks like the outline of a swan.

Amazon only shows the front cover (featuring a swan):

So while I could be wrong, my guess is that that's the book, and that the outline of the swan on the airborne book is part of the rear cover design.

MORE: The author denies that he threw the book at the president:

look how history is written I threw my book when the President was off the stage and I actually threw the book away from the President even though I very much wanted to get it to his attention and I know what lines I cannot cross. But it made it in the news as 'someone threw a book at the President'!

Some of my friends said that they saw it on TV and heard it on the radio. I am so grateful that America produces such great leaders. The Vice President is an original and he saved the day for me.

MORE: I find it fascinating that neither the title of the book nor the identity of the author are being reported anywhere -- despite the discussion of the event at the author's web site.

Had a conservative, Tea Party-supporting author had thrown a book at the president, and posted his version of what happened, I think the reaction would be very, very different.

MORE: Please bear in mind that I am only speculating about the title of the book, based on the shape of the swan, and the fact that the author has only one book listed for sale at Amazon, and that is the one with the swan on it.

Likewise, just because a man named "Sajid Ali Khan" has admitted he's the guy the Secret Service approached does not necessarily mean that he was. He could theoretically be making his story up.

However, I think it's worth noting that in 2008, a man with the same name wrote "An open letter to Senator Obama."

Nolan Finley (editorial page editor of The Detroit News) is warning the Republican Party about the inherently fragile (and often seemingly fickle) nature of independent voters:

The country is tilting more conservative, in reaction to the extreme liberalism in Washington, just as it leaned more liberal in 2008 in a rebuke of Bush. But there's hardly a far-right revival under way.

It's the middle that's moving, the independent voters that now decide most elections. Those voters can switch loyalties in a heartbeat, as we've seen over the past two years.

What they're looking for is a government that works for the people who pay the taxes and not for the special interests who pay the politicians. They don't want to be jerked too hard left or too hard right.

And they're sending a message this year that they don't want a government that dominates their lives and usurps their individual freedoms. They seem to be looking for a blend of fiscal conservatism and social moderation.

Republicans would do well to remember that if they're tempted to stray from attacking spending and the deficit and start dabbling in the divisive social issues.

Learning nothing from the Republican pummeling, Democrats stopped listening to voters as soon as the ballots were counted, reading their victory as a mandate to march to the left and impose one-party rule. They acted against the will of the people and ignored their aversion to massive spending and deficits.

The GOP is benefiting from the self-destruction of Democrats more than it is from the strength of their own platform.

The country remains deeply divided on social issues, but right now there is a huge wave of concern over economic issues, and over the fact that the Democrats have behaved tyrannically. They want to tell the American people what to do with their lives in so many ways that it is mind-boggling. As I keep saying, for the first time in many years, the Republicans and conservatives are sitting pretty. They are in the position to give back to people something that the authoritarian hair shirt Democrats want to take away.

So it's probably not the greatest time to be screaming about homosexual depravity or waving bloody fetus placards at people.

Let the authoritarians on the left do the screaming.

I have been meaning to write a post about wedge issues (with the usual delays and procrastinations) when commenter Fritz obliquely brought up the issue. So I went a lookin and found this. So - procrastination over.

Carl Paladino, Tea Party darling and New York Republican gubernatorial candidate, went on a shocking anti-gay rant, telling a group of Orthodox Jewish leaders that homosexuality is unacceptable.

Speaking in Brooklyn Sunday Paladino claimed that children should not be "brainwashed" into thinking that homosexuality was a "valid" or "acceptable" option.

Paladino's harsh words proved to be a stunning example of homophobia. Paladino's tone and words serve to foster and perpetuate a hostile environment for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (lgbt) people.

To start it is always wise to know what you are talking about.

A wedge issue is a social or political issue, often of a divisive or otherwise controversial nature, which splits apart or creates a "wedge" in the support base of one political group. Wedge issues can be advertised, publicly aired, and otherwise emphasized by an opposing political group, in an attempt to weaken the unity of the divided group, or to entice voters in the divided group to give their support to the opposing group. The use of wedge issues gives rise to wedge politics.

Wedge politics are the key to understanding the behavior of both candidates and voters during political campaigns. Among the voters most likely to be responsive to campaign information are those with conflicting predispositions--partisans who disagree with their party on a policy issue. For these cross-pressured partisans, campaign messages from the opposition can be persuasive if they are focused on the incongruent issue.

Currently Wisconsin is also embroiled in a culture war.

The economy has dominated the debate in the race for governor, but groups opposing abortion and supporting reproductive rights say the stark differences between the candidates mean results of the Nov. 2 election will have repercussions for years to come.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, the Democrat in the race, and Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, the Republican, have spelled out their positions over the years, and groups on both sides of the abortion divide say the distinctions are clear.

"We look at Tom Barrett as a retread of (outgoing Gov.) Jim Doyle on our issues," said Susan Armacost, legislative director of Wisconsin Right to Life.

Walker "is really out of the mainstream when it comes to basic health care for women," said Tanya Atkinson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin.

Despite these examples (and how the two races turn out and the exit polling afterward) I think this tactic will get deep sixed. Why? Well to figure out that question we have to look at why wedge issues are used. That is not to hard - it is used because there is not a dimes worth of difference between the major parties on general issues - you know - one party wants socialism hell bent for leather. The other party is not quite in such a rush. Some choice. So you need wedge issues to crank up your base and maybe gather a few votes from the other side.

The down side is that you get a culture war. Straights vs gays. Dopers vs alkys. Pro abortionists vs those who prefer a black market in abortion. And on it goes. And you know this kind of thing works. In some places at some times. And when it does the outcome is always ugly. How do I know? Because it has worked before in Germany against the Jews. In fact it seems to be happening in this country against gays. Just suicides so far. I'm not encouraged. Still. I don't think Americans will stand for this. It is not in our nature generally. Most of the time. People who push this crap are playing with fire. Why? Because there are some of us who would rather vote bankruptcy than culture war.

And with all the economic issues on the table a "Culture War" is unnecessary unless you have nothing generally different to offer. I don't care who the TEA Party darlings are, if they are culture warriors I will work against them with all my power. So - Thanks Fritz!

Because I will be God Damned if any of these bastard sons of bitches are coming after any one, because Jews will always be on that list sooner or later. Which is why I take this sort of thing personally. And why Republicans have such a hard time attracting Jews. You stupid fucks.

OK. Deep breath. Anyway I think this will end in time because unity on financial issues is the most pressing issue now and we will not have a culture to fight over unless we get our economic house in order.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Someone threw a book at Obama during a rally to raise morale among Democrats. Does any one know what the title of the book is?

Which brings us to another question about titles. This time the titles in question are the documents that prove ownership. It seems that with the slicing and dicing of mortgages clear title is rather unclear.

Evidently when people are in a hurry they make mistakes.

Bank of America is delaying foreclosures in 23 states as it examines whether it rushed the foreclosure process for thousands of homeowners without reading the documents.

The move adds the nation's largest bank to a growing list of mortgage companies whose employees signed documents in foreclosure cases without verifying the information in them.

One cause of the problem is that banks relied on one company to do all the work and they weren't up to the job. Kind of like the Democrats in Congress.

Some of the nation's largest mortgage companies used a single document processor who said he signed off on foreclosures without having read the paperwork - an admission that may open the door for homeowners across the country to challenge foreclosure proceedings.

The legal predicament compelled Ally Financial, the nation's fourth-largest home lender, to halt evictions of homeowners in 23 states this week. Now it appears hundreds of other companies, including mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, may also be affected because they use Ally to service their loans.

As head of Ally's foreclosure document processing team, 41-year-old Jeffrey Stephan was required to review cases to make sure the proceedings were legally justified and the information was accurate. He was also required to sign the documents in the presence of a notary.

In a sworn deposition, he testified that he did neither.

The reason may be the sheer volume of the documents he had to hand-sign: 10,000 a month. Stephan had been at that job for five years.

Well this may be a case where Obama did the right thing.

President Obama stepped into a growing political furor over the nation's troubled foreclosure system Thursday by vetoing a little-known bill that critics say would have made it easier to evict homeowners who missed their payments.

The decision to block the measure, which Congress passed without debate, came as members of the president's own party have urged the administration and federal regulators to more actively address the crisis over flawed foreclosures.

Meanwhile, attorneys general from about 40 states vowed to band together to investigate reports of fraudulent documents and of banks seizing property without having clear ownership of the mortgages.

At least 10 states - with Iowa and Delaware being the latest - are seeking to expand a voluntary freeze on foreclosures by some of the nation's largest mortgage lenders to include more companies and more regions. And calls have increased for a nationwide moratorium - a move that could deal a blow to the earnings of big banks and grind to a halt the sale of millions of properties in foreclosure.

In the middle of a heated election season, a growing number of politicians have been eager to weigh in on the matter - and are taking pains to rebuke the financial institutions at the core of the controversy.

And the central problem? Bankers created new "security" instruments while bypassing the safeguards meant to prevent fraud in the real estate market. Then they sliced and diced the mortgages. You could buy the income from the interest on the mortgage. Or you could buy the income stream from the repayment of capital. And probably other things I'm not even aware of (I'm an engineer - not a banker). And the income streams from many mortgages were bundled together and sold as "securities". And every time the securities changed hands the title got cloudier. And at this point it is not exactly clear who owns what.

And that is causing problems for title insurance companies.

Sales of foreclosed properties, already stalled by mounting evidence of widespread flawed documentation practices by lenders and attorneys, may hit another roadblock: New buyers might not be able to get the title insurance required for a mortgage.

New House Title, owned by a large Tampa foreclosure law firm under state investigation, this week denied coverage for a 2009 Deerfield Beach condo foreclosure that its own attorneys had handled, citing potentially defective court filings.

The New York Times last week also claimed Old Republic National Title, the fourth largest title insurer in the country, had sent a memo to its agents in some states saying the company would not cover homes foreclosed on by JPMorgan Chase until "objectionable issues have been resolved." Earlier, the company had taken the same stand on homes foreclosed by GMAC Mortgage, now owned by Ally Bank.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I didn't know it before, but thanks to Glenn I realized that today is 10/10/10.

And right now it's 10:10 p.m.

So I better get this post up quick before I turn into a pumpkin!

AFTERTHOUGHT: It came and went pretty fast. I don't think I'll ever live to see another 1010101010.

And I just wasn't quite fast enough to get the post published at 10:10 p.m. and10 seconds (10:10:10 p.m.) Give me a break, OK?

It occurred to me that next year there will be another chance for those who are into numerical repetition. Assuming the planet lasts that long, and that we survive, most of us who are here now will live to see 11/11/11. And the following year there will be a 12/12/12. But there won't be a 13/13/13, nor will there be a 14/14/14 -- so my advice is to enjoy the few remaining numerically repetitive dates of this century while you still can.

That's what one advocate says about an idea floated by Michael Savage (a man I can't stand) to impose a 20% tariff on all Chinese goods:

In his book that just came out today, "Trickle Up Poverty," Conservative talk show host Michael Savage has proposed a tariff on Chinese goods in order to restore America's manufacturing sector, specifically:

20 percent tariffs on all China made goods immediately; rising by 5 percent each year for each year China refuses to revalue their currency.

Savage calls his collection of proposals his "Manifesto for Saving America." There is a major change occurring within conservative thought.

One of Savage's proposals is to raise tariffs on China. Maybe he can call it Smoot-Hawley-Savage .

That's been tried already. When we raise tariffs on other countries, they raise tariffs against us. You can forget any exports if you raise tariffs like that.

But that goes to the merits of what he says about one subject. There is more to Savage than merely bad ideas.

It's not so much that he says things that irritate me so much as the way he says things. I would hate hearing him say something I agreed with, for the guy's voice just plain grates on my nerves, and gives me the creeps, and has since I first heard him at the young and impressionable age of 41.

At 56 I might not be young, but I'm still impressionable. Or maybe it's just that whatever the process is that causes grating things to grate on the nerves worsens with age. Grating things seem to grate more than they used to, and not only was Savage one of more grating things I have endured, he seems to have gotten even more grating. So while I'm less tolerant, he's also less tolerant -- which makes him less tolerable for me. And life is too short.

Perhaps I should ignore him in the hope that he will just go away, but I have long suspected the man was a Democratic or leftist plant of some sort, and he has been caught giving money to Democrats.

But I'm not sure that this proves he is necessarily part of some grand conspiracy to confuse and destroy the right. He might simply be doing what he does for the money. He has a personality that is unique in its ability to simultaneously enliven and stimulate his "choir," while nauseating those who aren't in the choir. Interestingly, the latter group includes people who might agree with him on the issues:

Something about Savage has always rubbed me wrong. I share his outrage at the immigration disaster, and several other issues, but I just get the willies when I listen to him.

As to why his book with its tariff advocacy is being released now in October (on the heels of an election), that might just be another coincidence.

After all, no genuine conservatives would support protective tariffs, would they?

It's the sort of thing that might encourage divisions.

MORE: It occurred to me that the call for protectionism may be Savage's way of attacking Glenn Beck (who advocates free trade, especially with China), and I learned that Savage has ridiculed Beck's eye problems:

Michael Savage attacks Glenn Beck; calls him the 'hemorrhoid with eyes', crazy, and a fraud (among other things) after Glenn announces he may be going blind.

He also predicts 'something is about to happen' to Glenn that will conveniently increase his ratings.

"I shut that guy off a long time ago. He is mentally ill."

"... they're going to have to throw a net over him eventually."

...personally I think he's a moron."

"I don't listen to or pay any attention to Savage. I think he's a nut."

"Indefensible. If somebody at the polar opposite end of the spectrum from where I stand...Nancy Pelosi, Michael Moore, etc....announced they were going blind, they would get my prayers and sympathy as basic human decency would demand."

"Savage is nuts. He lost me with his mad rants a long time ago."

"There's only one man from whom I'll take negativity and crankiness over the airwaves, and it isn't Michael Savage. Heard him once and that was all I needed."

"I really dislike savage. [...]..he is everything the left accuses conservative talk radio of being."

"...I used to think he was an entertaining nut. However as he got more and more nasty, even when there was no need to be, I got turned off big time. Now I avoid him."

"Not a Beck fan, but Weiner Nation is the biggest imbecile of them all. "

"I think he's a fake.

He's a liberal who adopted an over-the-top populist (not really conservative, or at least not a thinking conservative) persona and is GOING crazy as a result."

"Savage hurts our cause."

"Something is wrong with Savage. I dont listen to him, ever."

While there is no way to prove it, Savage's call for protectionism may very well be a politically insincere ploy, calculated simply to target Beck.

If the guy is in fact the trollish provocateur I have long suspected him to be, perhaps I shouldn't be writing about him at all.

On Friday, I flagged a quote on my daily calendar which illustrates the pitfalls of either/or thinking. It didn't seem important enough to merit a post at the time, so I set it aside. But now that I'm ready to make a stab at the post, I found my mental processes interrupted by the usual smart alecks who abound online. I was ready to cutely tag my calendar as a "dogophile" calendar (because it is one of those schmaltzy sentimental dog lover things with cute puppy pictures and daily quotes from dog-lovers), but as I knew I couldn't have been the first to make up such a word, I thought to Google it, and learned that the word has an entirely different meaning. One which would distract readers from the cuteseyness at hand, and draw me back into the endless debate over whether it is possible to logically justify tolerating certain sex practices but not others. That's simply not what this post is about, OK? Which is why I specifically refuse to deploy the word "dogophile" -- a word I hereby disclaim, denounce and utterly reject.

So here's what my calendar said on Friday:

"My dog, she looks at me sometimes with that look, and I think maybe deep down inside she must know exactly how I feel. But then maybe she just wants the food off my plate."

-- Anonymous

But being careful (for life online has taught me that if I am not careful, there are always lurking smart alecks just lying in wait to catch me at it), it did occur to me to Google the quote. After all, what if it had been said by a bad person whose identity had been airbrushed out by Anonymization? I mean, suppose Hitler had said the above about his beloved dog Blondi? The world would then be able to accuse me of helping to sentimentalize Hitler, and I'd never live it down. Indeed, perhaps I shouldn't dare to hypothesize such things. What if one of those anonymous emailers who spend their time misattributing quotes happens to be a dogophobe, and decided to put Hitler's name on the above and then spams millions of gullible people? Would it be my fault? Don't laugh; there are people out there who are so sick and twisted that if you tell them not to do something, they'll run right out and do it. Years ago I knew just such a man, and one day, back when the Cold War was still hot, I told him in no uncertain terms not to drive by the Soviet Consulate at 2790 Green Street in San Francisco, lest he irritate the spies who owned the turf around there. As we were in the neighborhood, I rationalized my cruel experiment by telling him not to come back and complain to me if he got dirty looks from the guys in trenchcoats. Boy was I right! He of course did exactly as I told him not to, and drove his highly conspicuous, wreck of an out of state car around and around, wasting the time of the surreptitious cameramen who filmed every suspicious movement, but even that wasn't enough to satisfy his desire to not heed my warnings. He actually found a parking place in the area, then got out and started walking back and forth in front of the building like a clueless asshole, wearing out the welcome he never had with the KGB, the CIA, and the NSA -- doubtless earning his place in the files they are required to keep of all suspicious persons. He told me that he could not believe how many angry dirty looks he got for his spy game walkthrough, and of course I told him that I had told him so. This was around 25 years ago, and now that the statute of limitations on Idiotic Interference With Espionage has run (my clueless friend is long-deceased, as there were other warnings he failed to heed that might have saved his life), I guess I can now admit to the world my awful crime.

I deliberately told him not to go there -- knowing full well that he would do exactly what I told him not to do simply because I told him not to do it.

Now my conscience is clean. So where was I?

Oh, the Friday dog quote. I Googled, and I found an all but identical version. Only the gender was changed:

"My dog, He looks at me sometimes with that look, and I think maybe deep down inside he must know exactly how I feel. But then maybe he just wants the food off my plate?

"I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts."

They may very well think we are nuts, but having had and raised many dogs, I know well that look that seems to say either "deep down I know exactly how you feel" or else "I want to know exactly how you feel." The mistake is in positing "maybe he just wants the food off my plate" as if there is some kind of either/or dichotomy.

Of course the dog wants the food off your plate!

That has been precisely the goal of many thousands of years of canine evolution. Where it comes to sussing out us humans, dogs are the keenest opportunists in the animal kingdom. They have made it their very business, on a genetic level, to be constant, ever-watching analysts, obsessed with our every move, as if they are in a state of always trying to hack our innermost thoughts, to figure out what it is that we want so that they can maximize the chances of their getting what they want. Sort of a win-win deal. What we humans may sentimentally perceive as "understanding our feelings" or even "love" constitute some of the most basic behavioral weapons in the canine arsenal -- the goal being to maximize their control over us. I would go so far as to agree with "Anonymous" that yes, they absolutely, even desperately, want to understand our feelings, but this should not be seen in opposition to wanting the food off our plate. Rather, the two goals are inextricably intertwined at the genetic level. They want the food off our plate so they love us, and they love us because they want the food off our plate.

It might actually be love, too. As a dog lover I certainly hope so. But that begs the question of what is love?

A topic beyond this post. Some would say that the human variety is more opportunistic -- and especially less loyal -- than the canine variety, but I'm not going to go there. I'll just leave it with two favorite dog quotes, supposedly from famous people; Harry Truman and Mark Twain.

First Truman:

"If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."

So it's a good idea to use the Twain quote as backup:

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

Sigh.

It isn't my job to be cleaning up Wiki (and I was all ready to conclude that whatever the source, the sentiments expressed are true), except I kept looking, and it just so happens that I found the very same quote, verbatim, in the Wiki entry for Pudd'nhead Wilson (Twain's 1894 novel). What's up with that? Can't Wiki accept its own authority? The book is still in print, and the entire text is online here, including the quote. And the full quote is better than I thought; believe it or not it comes from the Twain character's calendar!

CHAPTER 16

Sold Down the River

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous,
he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a
dog and a man.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

I almost feel like saying I wish the world really could go to the dogs, but that would be a schmaltzy antisocial sentiment (if it is possible to be antisocially schmaltzy).

Besides, Coco just gave me that look...

Finally, someone who actually deserves a Nobel Peace Prize gets it. The Chinese government's response accentuates the necessity.

I have to think there is a causative relationship between the government lying to the people and the people lying to each other. The reasons only liberal democracies become wealthy (aside from windfall wealth) involve a lot of trust, debate, and painful truth-accepting, which makes me wonder how soon China's long boom may suddenly crash.

The Wall Street Journal is looking at Republican chances in November and uncovers the secret Republican Strategy.

GOP strategists said the party's focus this year on fiscal issues rather than social wedges such as abortion and gay marriage has helped give centrists comfort in backing Republicans.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Hi. My name is Sarah and I'm (strongly inclined towards being) a libertarian. The last time I ate a baby for breakfast was yesterday (eggs count, right?) and I spend my days oppressing the poor and persecuting minorities (imaginary characters are minorities, right?) when I'm not off stomping on the downtrodden (how in heck could they be downtrodden if no one treads down on them? I'm just holding up the side) when I'm not committing acts of unimaginable depravity, laughing as the helpless sink into hopelessness or greedily refusing to share any of the money I earn.

Right. Now that we've disposed of the stereotype, let's get serious. At least as serious as I'm capable of being, since -- paraphrasing Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land -- laughter is what happens when a situation is too tragic to cry over.

One of the most tragic alignments of the last two centuries is the lockstep unity between the oddballs, outliers and creative minorities and the most oppressive statist regimens (or, when that choice is not available, the more oppressive of two regimens). Mind you, this alignment usually lasts only till the statists achieve their goals. The oddballs, weirdos and misfits - my people, broadly speaking - are inevitably the first ones against the wall in the regrettable and always unexpected purges needed to achieve the glorious utopian future.

A statistician I am not. Nor do I believe in predicting (much less judging) what individual will do based on which statistical group an individual is said to belong. One of the things I hate about the insurance industry is the way they translate statistical correlations into individual judgments, and a perfect example is the way an occupation or credit credit score will be used in determining the cost of something seemingly unrelated to credit -- like insurance, which ought to be based on a person's driving or health records. But because the companies are worried about the likelihood of a claim, the more marginal a person appears, the more likely he is to make a claim. I'm not denying that people with worse credit are more likely to need money and thus more likely to make ungrounded or frivolous claims, but there ought to be some other way of taking that into account. Perhaps they could penalize actual claim making with higher deductibles. OTOH, perhaps someone with financial problems actually is more likely to get into an accident. It always seems unfair when I read stories like this:

Eric Poe, chief executive officer for CURE Auto Insurance, a not-for-profit reciprocal exchange based in Princeton, N.J., that fights for fair insurance practices, says a credit score is just one of eight factors used to determine rates.

"Age, how long you've been licensed, gender, where you live, how you use your car (how many miles you drive to work or annual mileage), the car's cost, and your driving record used to be the seven things that determined rates," he says. "Unfortunately in the past decade, the largest auto insurance companies have introduced many income proxies such as credit score, your highest level of education completed, and your occupation to determine whether you are eligible to receive the lowest rates."

Poe says even if a driving record is spotless, a less than perfect credit score could lead to excessively high premiums.

"It's unfair," says Joe Goodwin. When Goodwin's job became a victim of the recession, his credit score dropped nearly 100 points. "I got behind on bills for the first time in my life." When renewal time rolled around on his home and auto insurance policies, Goodwin says his premiums jumped 27%. "I had never filed a claim and was a 20-plus year customer."

Goodwin says when he asked his insurance agent what prompted the spike in rates, he was stonewalled. "I got the runaround. It wasn't until I started shopping around and learned [from agents] that my credit score is factored into premiums that I connected the dots and realized I was being punished for my credit dropping."

Bottom line is that I see both sides here, and even though I hate being seen as a statistic, that's the name of the game in insurance.

With that in mind, I thought I would be an actuary for a day, and conduct an experiment which may seem wildly implausible to some, but which I will base on real, tangible data.

Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds (who can always be relied on to keep readers abreast of the latest developments in both academia and sexuality) linked a fascinating post by the TaxProf about Sexual Health College Rankings, based on a study by the Trojan Condom Company. Along with Glenn, I recognize that while there may be no holes in the company's products, there are definitely holes in the methodology of the study, for the simple reason that the company is in the business of marketing sex-accessories, and predictably introduced its own biases into the study. I think it's fair to conclude that the following factors (Four and Five respectively) reflect the company's own financial interests:

4. Contraceptive availability and cost

5. Condom availability and cost

So like most people who saw it, I wasn't taking the study very seriously until something very serious dawned on me.

If there is one thing the University of Michigan is deadly serious about, it's football. I realize that not all of my commenters like the Wolverines, but I have become a huge fan, especially this year as I have witnessed the emergence of a super athlete -- Denard Robinson -- who has skyrocketed to college football superstardom in just these past few weeks. I have never been much of a football fan, but there is something about seeing a superstar emerge out of seemingly nowhere that's both exciting and inspiring. He outclasses everyone else on the field, and maybe I haven't watched enough football, but I have never seen anything quite like it.

A number of sports commentators have observed that he's carrying the team, and I could go on and on with my thoughts, but they're incidental to the very serious subject at hand, which is the correlation I noticed from looking at the Trojan Sexual Health Rankings.

As many commentators have noted, Michigan has won every game so far this season. They always haggle over which college is ranked higher and for which reason. But I don't know of a single sports commentator who has bothered to check the Sexual Health rankings of the colleges, and see how they compare to football rankings. In the case of Michigan, I did just that, and I was astonished to find a 100% correlation staring me right in the face.

In terms of Sexual Health, Michigan outranks every college the Wolverines have beaten. Michigan is the fourth sexually healthiest college on the list, and if you look at every team it has beaten (UConn, Notre Dame, Massachusetts, Bowling Green, and Indiana) and then go to the Trojan's Sexual Health rankings, you will see that (except for the University of Massachusetts, which is not listed, probably because it's too uptight) Michigan outperforms them all in sexual terms.

Hey don't laugh. This is serious actuarialism!

But here's what worries me. There are two schools on this year's game roster that outrank Michigan. One is their notorious and deadly enemy Ohio State (a name which can only be spoken here in association with filthy epithets), and the other is Michigan State. Michigan State is ranked second with Ohio State ranked third.

I find this worrisome, because today is game day against Michigan State. I very much hope that the Wolverines kick the asses of the Spartans and that by so doing, they will prove my actuarial theory wrong. Because if they do, then that evil Ohio State will not be able to hide behind its Sexual Health rankings!

I'm also hopeful because I suspect there might be another element of bias which may have crept into the study, which has nothing to do with the sexual health of students, but has more to do with a similarity of logos.

If we juxtapose the Trojan logo which TaxProf displays with that of the Michigan State Spartans, the similarity simply cannot be ignored:

For a number of reasons, these logos could be used interchangeably to promote either athletics or sexual accessories. And while most of us have heard stories (often conflicting) about the sexual practices of the Spartans, the Trojans seem to have largely escaped scrutiny. A pity, really. Because according to at least one analyst, the conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans was "the world's first morality war." And the result was the imposition of marriage onto Western culture! I kid you not:

Western patriarchal authoritarian culture began with the Trojan War about 1200 BCE. Yes, that's right, the world's first morality war. Before the Trojan war marriage was not a mandatory condition. Females were free to live a life according to their own sexuality and were not the property of a man.

Then Helen of Sparta ran off with a young lover to live a life of sexual abandon in Troy. King Agamemnon of Micea (Mycenae) was Helen's brother-in-law, and he gathered a coalition together and roused their passions with speech of submission, adultery and war. This was an affront to marriage and therefore male authority, the Greeks would have nothing of the rebellious Amazon sexuality of the Trojans (Troy-ans). The armies boarded ships and waited for the wind to blow.

But the wind did not blow. Alarmed, King Agamemnon consulted the oracle of Apollo. The oracle said the king would need to sacrifice his daughter to the gods. After all, she was only a female and certainly many males would die in the Trojan war so the gods expected females to die too. King Agamemnon's wife Clytmenestra was horrified, as the practice of human sacrifice had been unknown. Despite this, Agamemnon's daughter Iphegenia obediently allowed her throat to be cut by her father. She died and the wind blew toward Troy. God had given his blessing to the morality war.

The goddess worshipping matriarchal Trojans were not a warlike people. The war in Troy went in favor of the marriage enforcers, forever altering the course of history. The legend of the sacrificed female and the victorious warriors grew and sacrificing virgins became as commonplace as a civic duty. God had given favor to the pro-marriage soldiers, and marriage was now a mandatory enforceable contract. Unmarried females were called bad names like Fates, Sirens, Amazons, Witches or Medusas.

The authoritarian propaganda machine has been so effective the Trojan war is today blamed on a beautiful woman named Helen of Troy who intentionally fomented a war for her own selfishness. Ever since the Trojan war females have been made into evil monsters, greedy, selfish and maliciously ruining men's lives. Civilization can only continue if we allow males to dictate female's sexual behavior.

And in any case, it is undeniable that the logos are as similar as they are ancient in nature. I am willing to stick my neck out here and hypothesize that the high ranking of Michigan State may reflect company bias grounded in (dare I say it?) sexual cultural hegemony!

Whether I am right can only be determined by the final results of today's game. I live very close to the Michigan Stadium complex, and as I write this, the neighborhood is alive with pregame activity. There are parties everywhere, even though it is only eleven in the morning and the game doesn't start until 3:30 p.m.

Of course, the correlation I have discovered may be no more than simple coincidence. The extent that football performance correlates with sex never seems to have been seriously studied, although there are a lot of football sex humor jokes.

However, I did find one intriguing study from 2004, which appears to show that men who participate in fantasy football leagues are more likely to think about football than sex:

The online survey of men age 22 and over showed that more than 40% of respondents rate Fantasy Football as their number one thought during the day, as compared to only 30% who say that thinking about sex still remains as their top daily thought. In terms of how much time during the day men are actually thinking about Fantasy Football, 58% of respondents say they spend from one to three hours each day thinking about it, as opposed to 48% of respondents who are thinking about sex from one to three hours a day. Even more surprising, a full 25% of respondents claim to spend from four to eight hours a day thinking about Fantasy Football; in comparison, only 12% of respondents think about sex for that amount of time during the football season.

While most people would not think of football in sexual terms, it is undeniable that there is a correlation between sex and balls. I think it's fair to say that it might be more than just a correlation, too, but a direct connection.

And the connection may be more basic and more primal than we humans realize.

During a much-too-serious comment debate over human sexuality, Veeshir left a link to a video showing some very humorous animal behavior. Of course, the poor turtle (tortoise, more specifically) didn't think it was funny at all, which is what makes it so funny from a human perspective.

Laugh all you want, but I think that provides graphic evidence -- from one of the lowest representatives of the animal kingdom -- of a connection between sex and balls. True, the object of the tortoise's sexual attention happened to be a soccer ball. But would anyone deny that he (or she) might have been just as interested if not more interested in a football? If you watch the whole video, you will surely notice the rivalry and competition that occurs once the other tortoise sees the "action." Is their behavior really all that unlike humans?

And now that I have finally plodded through to the end of my post, I can only say that I wish I had more time for more scientific rigor.

I just hope the Wolverines prove my theory wrong on the playing field!

It's time to get serious about the game.

MORE: (5:55 p.m.) If there's one thing I hate, it's being proved right when I wanted to be wrong. The score is now 31-10 in favor of Michigan State, and I don't like what the Spartans are doing.

So I thought it might be time to issue a public service message.

I still want to be wrong, and I hope the game somehow turns itself around.

AND MORE: I was right.

Oh, the pain!

What really surprises me this October is that the October surprises are coming so early in October.

The normal time for them is the Friday before the election. Certainly no more than a week before the election. You don't want to give too much time for counter battery fire.

I think the Democrats are panicked. Bad panicked. Pissing, crapping, moaning in the fetal position panicked. When the troops get disorderly it is no longer just a defeat, it is a rout. Everything they do makes it worse and they are terrified of doing nothing.

How will it all end? Republicans at 100+ House seats is looking better every day.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Commenter filbert makes an excellent point:

Early voting is, I think, coming back to bite the Democrats in the posterior . . .

He also says that now is no time to let up. Pursue, pursue, pursue......

The KAOS kiddies have figured out an Internet strategy that will help them win this election. While checking their strategy this comment caught my attention.

You do not have the choice to opt-out.

This commenter was closer to the mark:

It's petty, stupid and ineffective. In fact, it might be the opposite of effective if the other side is able to publicize that you're doing it.

H/T Judith Weiss via Facebook

Cross Posted at Power and Control

This is a reprise of an oldie but goodie with an addition or two. The oldie can be found here if you want to see exactly how much I am plagiarizing myself. (can you do that?)

In the video California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, who is a Democrat, obliquely takes a shot at the Republicans for focusing on the Culture War instead of bread and butter issues like controlling State spending. But he really opens several new orifices on Democrats.

And now. For some really old stuff brought to you by Clayton Cramer. Federalist Paper #62. And other creamy goodness. So when you are done here go there.

...great injury results from an unstable government. The want of confidence in the public councils damps every useful undertaking, the success and profit of which may depend on a continuance of existing arrangements. What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed? What farmer or manufacturer will lay himself out for the encouragement given to any particular cultivation or establishment, when he can have no assurance that his preparatory labors and advances will not render him a victim to an inconstant government? In a word, no great improvement or laudable enterprise can go forward which requires the auspices of a steady system of national policy.

Here is a nice low cost printed version of The Federalist Papers.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I think he should get a "U" too.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Power and Control

This morning Glenn Reynolds linked the Blog Prof's discussion of the race between political titan John Dingell, Obamacare sponsor and lifetime advocate of socialized medicine, and Dr. Rob Steele, a cardiologist who has had enough of what's happening and decided to run for Congress.

OK, Dingell happens to be my congressman, and FWIW, I wrote to him about Obamacare. Even though he is a longtime Democrat (he's so old that his political life in Washington literally dates back to FDR), voters in his Detroit area district are fed up with him. Quite an accomplishment if you consider that the area is about as heavily Democrat as it's possible to get. Not only is Detroit itself 96.93% Democrat, but Ann Arbor is to the left of almost anyplace but Berkeley and Cuba (and these days I'm not so sure about the "political reliability" of Cuba). The polls must be a shocker for Dingell:

A new independent poll has the dean of the U.S. House, Rep. John Dingell trailing his Republican opponent, Rob Steele, by 4 percentage points.

The automated phone survey of 300 people in the 15th Congressional District showed Steele getting 43.8% of the vote. Dingell, a Dearborn Democrat and the longest-serving member of Congress, got 39.5%. About 11% were undecided. The gap is within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 5.6 percentage points. The poll was conducted Monday.

admitted on air that ObamaCare was all about 'controlling the people:'

called local radio talk show host a terrorist for opposing ObamaCare

was Booed At Town Hall - Said Tort Reform Not Included Because "Congress Can Only Handle So Much...")

compared townhall protesters to the KKK

The Blog Prof concludes that it's"time to put Dingell in the Smithsonian where he belongs," and urges a donation to Dr. Steele. I have met Dr. Steele, and I think he would be a great congressman. I donated to his campaign, and I would urge any readers who agree with me to donate too. To see Dingell and the Dingell Dynasty being defeated by a doctor who is fed up by Obamacare and decided to run for office is true poetic justice. If socialized medicine makes you sick (as it does me) I can think of no better medicine than electing Dr. Steele.

The Blog Prof has assembled such a damning collection of videos that I would normally have just ended the post here.

However, I thought I should add a few thoughts, especially in light of a political mailer I received the other day.

Here it is:

It's "Paid for by the John B. Dingell for Congress Committee."

The grand patriarch of the ruling Dingell Dynasty seems to think that all he needs to do to get elected is run a snarky campaign against the Tea Party.

On the other side of the leaflet is a pathetic attempt to smear Dr. Steele for being wealthy. The Dingell Dynasty has indicted him for his wickedness in owning a nice house and a vintage car collection. Sorry, but that won't fly with me. In fact, it backfired big time; hence this lengthened post.

Steele is a man who worked for many years as a cardiologist in the private sector, and God knows how many lives he has saved. In this country, people who work hard and achieve success in a demanding profession like that are supposed to enjoy what is called the American Dream.

Is there something wrong with that?

Or is it more virtuous for great wealth to be obtained at the taxpayers' expense? Dingell is one of the wealthiest members of Congress, and the fortune he has amassed does not include that of his heiress wife:

Last November, The Detroit News reported that Dingell is the wealthiest member of the Michigan delegation, with a net worth of about $2.6 million, not including the assets of his heiress wife Debbie, who has been quite successful as a Washington lobbyist (often on issues under her husband's jurisdiction).

And as far as campaign cash is concerned, who is getting what from whom?

According to Open Secrets, Dingell's campaign committee and leadership PAC had raised $1,155,698 as of July 14, with 75 percent of it coming from political action committees and 24 percent coming from individuals.

Steele had raised $213,486, with none of it coming from PACs and 89 percent from individuals. (The remaining 11 percent came from Steele himself.)

John Dingell U.S. congressman (D-Mich.), and chair, House Committee on Energy and Commerce Debbie Dingell executive director for public affairs, General Motors

He's the auto industry's staunchest ally in Congress, and has consistently sidelined efforts to raise fuePeconomy standards. She was a top lobbyist for GM, and is now a senior executive at the company. He's been in the House for 51 years--nearly as long as his wife, 52, has been alive.

Regular readers know that I dislike criticizing people for being rich, and I hold no grudge against Debbie Dingell for her status as Fisher Body fortune heiress. However, fair is fair, and if the Dingells are going to attack a self-made man who earned the American Dream, I have a question for them as a taxpayer. How much money did Debbie Dingell get when she left GM last year and took a buyout? Was any of this buyout funded by the bailout? Because if any of it came from the taxpayers, I think the taxpayers have a right to know about it -- especially because it makes their smear against Dr. Steele worthy of recognition for setting a new height in political hypocrisy.

You don't have to be a conservative, a Republican, or a Tea Partier to be fed up to the point of outrage by such stuff. Lots of Democrats around here are supporting Dr. Steele. Rule by political dynasty should have gone out of style long ago, and I agree that Dingell and his Dingell dynasty belong in the Smithsonian museum. Better yet, the ash heap of history. That way the taxpayers wouldn't have to pay for the space.

UPDATE: Many thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and a warm welcome to all.

Comments welcome, agree or disagree.

I'm still mulling over the idea that I should "keep quiet on stuff like this and let them finish their self-immolation." The problem with that is that in the election coverage, so far, the media is keeping awfully quiet about the Dingells' wealth.

This video is Not Entirely Safe For Work. And it isn't just the lyrics. There are hand gestures.