Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Jimmie Bise Blasts Epic Manifesto of Youth Empowerment and Independence on Twitter

I mentioned that someone needed to curate this, and I don't see that anyone's done it, so here goes:




























































I caught Jimmie posting this manifesto midstream, but if that top tweet is any clue, it's William Jacobson who got him going: "Upworthy — or, How we are losing the internet to lowest of low information young liberals."

Jimmie's manifesto is a thing of beauty, and since I had the time to curate it, I thought, "Why in the heck not?"

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About the Uses and Abuses of Paternalism

Folks might find this interesting, for while government imposes decisions on the individual "because it's good for them" all the time, there's something extra freakish (totalitarian) to this.

From Cass Sunstein, Obama's former Czar of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, at the New York Review, "It’s For Your Own Good!":
In the United States, as in many other countries, obesity is a serious problem. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to do something about it. Influenced by many experts, he believes that soda is a contributing factor to increasing obesity rates and that large portion sizes are making the problem worse. In 2012, he proposed to ban the sale of sweetened drinks in containers larger than sixteen ounces at restaurants, delis, theaters, stadiums, and food courts. The New York City Board of Health approved the ban.

Many people were outraged by what they saw as an egregious illustration of the nanny state in action. Why shouldn’t people be allowed to choose a large bottle of Coca-Cola? The American Beverage Association responded with a vivid advertisement, depicting Mayor Bloomberg in a (scary) nanny outfit.

But self-interested industries were not the only source of ridicule. Jon Stewart is a comedian, but he was hardly amused. A representative remark from one of his commentaries: “No!…I love this idea you have of banning sodas larger than 16 ounces. It combines the draconian government overreach people love with the probable lack of results they expect.”

Many Americans abhor paternalism. They think that people should be able to go their own way, even if they end up in a ditch. When they run risks, even foolish ones, it isn’t anybody’s business that they do. In this respect, a significant strand in American culture appears to endorse the central argument of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. In his great essay, Mill insisted that as a general rule, government cannot legitimately coerce people if its only goal is to protect people from themselves. Mill contended that
the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or mental, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.
A lot of Americans agree. In recent decades, intense controversies have erupted over apparently sensible (and lifesaving) laws requiring people to buckle their seatbelts. When states require motorcyclists to wear helmets, numerous people object. The United States is facing a series of serious disputes about the boundaries of paternalism. The most obvious example is the “individual mandate” in the Affordable Care Act, upheld by the Supreme Court by a 5–4 vote, but still opposed by many critics, who seek to portray it as a form of unacceptable paternalism. There are related controversies over anti-smoking initiatives and the “food police,” allegedly responsible for recent efforts to reduce the risks associated with obesity and unhealthy eating, including nutrition guidelines for school lunches.

Mill offered a number of independent justifications for his famous harm principle, but one of his most important claims is that individuals are in the best position to know what is good for them. In Mill’s view, the problem with outsiders, including government officials, is that they lack the necessary information. Mill insists that the individual “is the person most interested in his own well-being,” and the “ordinary man or woman has means of knowledge immeasurably surpassing those that can be possessed by any one else.”

When society seeks to overrule the individual’s judgment, Mill wrote, it does so on the basis of “general presumptions,” and these “may be altogether wrong, and even if right, are as likely as not to be misapplied to individual cases.” If the goal is to ensure that people’s lives go well, Mill contends that the best solution is for public officials to allow people to find their own path. Here, then, is an enduring argument, instrumental in character, on behalf of free markets and free choice in countless situations, including those in which human beings choose to run risks that may not turn out so well.

Mill’s claim has a great deal of intuitive appeal. But is it right? That is largely an empirical question, and it cannot be adequately answered by introspection and intuition. In recent decades, some of the most important research in social science, coming from psychologists and behavioral economists, has been trying to answer it. That research is having a significant influence on public officials throughout the world. Many believe that behavioral findings are cutting away at some of the foundations of Mill’s harm principle, because they show that people make a lot of mistakes, and that those mistakes can prove extremely damaging.

For example, many of us show “present bias”: we tend to focus on today and neglect tomorrow. For some people, the future is a foreign country, populated by strangers. Many of us procrastinate and fail to take steps that would impose small short-term costs but produce large long-term gains. People may, for example, delay enrolling in a retirement plan, starting to diet or exercise, ceasing to smoke, going to the doctor, or using some valuable, cost-saving technology. Present bias can ensure serious long-term harm, including not merely economic losses but illness and premature death as well.

People also have a lot of trouble dealing with probability. In some of the most influential work in the last half-century of social science, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky showed that in assessing probabilities, human beings tend to use mental shortcuts, or “heuristics,” that generally work well, but that can also get us into trouble. An example is the “availability heuristic.” When people use it, their judgments about probability—of a terrorist attack, an environmental disaster, a hurricane, a crime—are affected by whether a recent event comes readily to mind. If an event is cognitively “available”—for example, if people have recently suffered damage from a hurricane—they might well overestimate the risk. If they can recall few or no examples of harm, they might well underestimate the risk.

A great deal of research finds that most people are unrealistically optimistic, in the sense that their own predictions about their behavior and their prospects are skewed in the optimistic direction.6 In one study, over 80 percent of drivers were found to believe that they were safer and more skillful than the median driver. Many smokers have an accurate sense of the statistical risks, but some smokers have been found to believe that they personally are less likely to face lung cancer and heart disease than the average nonsmoker. Optimism is far from the worst of human characteristics, but if people are unrealistically optimistic, they may decline to take sensible precautions against real risks. Contrary to Mill, outsiders may be in a much better position to know the probabilities than people who are making choices for themselves.

Emphasizing these and related behavioral findings, many people have been arguing for a new form of paternalism, one that preserves freedom of choice, but that also steers citizens in directions that will make their lives go better by their own lights. (Full disclosure: the behavioral economist Richard Thaler and I have argued on behalf of what we call libertarian paternalism, known less formally as “nudges.") For example, cell phones, computers, privacy agreements, mortgages, and rental car contracts come with default rules that specify what happens if people do nothing at all to protect themselves. Default rules are a classic nudge, and they matter because doing nothing is exactly what people will often do. Many employees have not signed up for 401(k) plans, even when it seems clearly in their interest to do so. A promising response, successfully increasing participation and strongly promoted by President Obama, is to establish a default rule in favor of enrollment, so that employees will benefit from retirement plans unless they opt out. In many situations, default rates have large effects on outcomes, indeed larger than significant economic incentives.

Default rules are merely one kind of “choice architecture,” a phrase that may refer to the design of grocery stores, for example, so that the fresh vegetables are prominent; the order in which items are listed on a restaurant menu; visible official warnings; public education campaigns; the layout of websites; and a range of other influences on people’s choices. Such examples suggest that mildly paternalistic approaches can use choice architecture in order to improve outcomes for large numbers of people without forcing anyone to do anything.

In the United States, behavioral findings have played an unmistakable part in recent regulations involving retirement savings, fuel economy, energy efficiency, environmental protection, health care, and obesity. In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister David Cameron has created a Behavioural Insights Team, sometimes known as the Nudge Unit, with the specific goal of incorporating an understanding of human behavior into policy initiatives. In short, behavioral economics is having a large impact all over the world, and the emphasis on human error is raising legitimate questions about the uses and limits of paternalism.
RTWT.

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Professor John Keane Interviews Julian Assange

I don't like Assange, although this is definitely out of the ordinary, at RealClearTechnology, "Julian Assange in Prison."

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Colorado Democrat Rep. Joe Salazar: Women Don't Need Guns If They 'Feel Like They’re Going to Be Raped'

From Dana Loesch, at Red State (via Instapundit):
This is the real “war on women” I’ve talked about: the progressive insistence that women disarm. Women, according to Rep. Salazar, are hysterical things which shoot indiscriminately at any and everything.
Posted by AmPowerBlog at 12:30 AM 0 comments
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Take it From Calvin Coolidge on Taxes and Spending

Following up on yesterday's post, "The Calvin Coolidge Comeback."

Here's Amity Shlaes, at WSJ, "The Coolidge Lesson on Taxes and Spending":
Only Reagan could fix this.

That's the intuitive reaction to the surge of spending and budgetary challenges in Washington today. It's hard to think of another Republican with the fortitude to push back against the outlays, to make government smaller, to lower taxes. And to show that such moves can yield prosperity.

The "only Reagan" assumption is too narrow—especially when it comes to the fiscal challenge. For while Reagan inspired and cut taxes, he did not reduce the deficit. He did not even cut the budget. But if you look back, past Dwight Eisenhower and around the curve of history, you can find a Republican who did all those things: Calvin Coolidge.

A New Englander and former Massachusetts governor, Coolidge came to Washington as vice president and moved into the White House only in 1923 after the sudden death of President Warren Harding. He later won the office himself and served until 1929. The 30th president cut the top income-tax rate to 25% (lower than the 28% of the historic Reagan cut of 1986). Coolidge reduced the national debt and balanced the budget. When he departed the White House for his home in Northampton, Mass., he left a federal budget smaller than the one he found.

Three factors gave Silent Cal the ability to cut as he did, each suggesting a governing approach that would be useful today...
Continue reading.

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Monday, February 18, 2013

Abraham Lincoln Was Gay?

When school started a couple of weeks back, I mentioned to my classes that research shows that college students have little historical grounding in our founding institutions. I also mentioned that a lot of young people don't keep up with the news, that they're not informed about current events and how politics affects them. But then in one of my classes a young man piped up about how he really loves politics, and that he'd won awards in high school for the debate team, or some such thing. In any case, I was reminded of the Ron Paul libertarians and perhaps even the more whacked Paulbots. I was talking about the Gettysburg Address last week, which is cited in my textbook's discussion about the different definitions of democracy, and the student got going about how Lincoln was a gay atheist who ran concentration camps for some group or another. I ignored the atheist part, since almost all of Lincoln's most famous addresses are deeply grounded in God and divine provenance. But that gay bit was funny and some of the other students were practically gasping. And interestingly enough, Joan Rivers mouthed the gay smear on late-night TV a couple of days ago. See NewsBusters, "Joan Rivers: 'Abe Lincoln Was Gay'."

Anyway, I looked it up the other day and found this at USA Today, "200 years later, a more complex view of Lincoln":

Abraham Lincoln
* Lincoln the homosexual: A gay man in the White House?

Some writers, such as the late sex researcher and gay rights activist C. A. Tripp (The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, 2004) have argued that Lincoln was sexually attracted to men.

Lincoln's long friendship with Joshua Speed, a young store owner in Springfield, Ill., when Lincoln arrived there at age 28 in 1837, has attracted the most attention. Lincoln, whose worldly possessions at the time fit in two saddlebags, accepted Speed's invitation to save money by sharing the double bed in the room he was renting, according to many of the biographies, including David Herbert Donald's Lincoln.

Most historians don't think they were lovers. As Donald points out, bed-sharing was not unusual at the time because of financial necessity. Many boys grew up sharing a bed with one or more brothers.

Burlingame says speculation persists about a Speed diary and letters in which he wrote explicitly about a relationship with Lincoln. Burlingame doesn't buy it; nor does Berry, who says Lincoln wasn't homosexual, but homosocial.

"He cried too much to be a man's man, but he was a guy's guy," Berry says. "He liked nothing more than to sit around the stove, telling jokes and stories."
I have Donald's, Lincoln, and reading the USA Today piece reminded me about him sharing a bed at one point. But I can see how libertarians might attack Lincoln as a homosexual, since the paleocons deride him as a tyrant already, and they might want to smear him. But progressives might think a homosexual Lincoln is flaming cool. Barack Hussein likens himself to Lincoln and has sworn in twice on the Lincoln inaugural Bible. So if Lincoln was switch hitting, leftists can argue that Obama's not the first homosexual president after all.

(And I need to check back with the student on the concentration camp part. I was overwhelmed with the homosexual allegations and attacks on Lincoln the tyrant are pretty common already. But camps? More on that later...)

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 5:30 PM 0 comments
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Al Jazeera Criticized for Lack of Independence After Arab Spring

Al Jazeera's been in the news big time since Al Gore sold his failed Current TV to the network. But also important is the proposed expansion of Al Jazeera's programming in the U.S. It's controversial, although I don't care that much because I doubt the network will do very well. More interesting is the epic hypocrisy in the news of radical feminist Naomi Wolf negotiating a deal with Al Jazeera. James Taranto has some choice words on that:
"Naomi Wolf, the author and activist, is in early-stage talks with the global news network Al Jazeera," reports Politico. In a way this makes sense: Wolf is a hysterical critic of America's antiterrorism efforts. In 2007 she published a book called "The End of America," in which she claimed that the Bush administration was taking us down the road to fascism.

Still, the first thing one thinks of upon hearing this news is the irony of a leading "third wave" (i.e., hypernarcissistic) feminist joining a pro-Islamist news network. Is she going to wear a veil? Probably not, but it turns out she doesn't mind if Muslim women do. She spelled it out in a 2008 Sydney Morning Herald article...
Continue at the link.

And there's a full report on the network at Der Spiegel, "After the Arab Spring: Al-Jazeera Losing Battle for Independence":
For over a decade, the Arab television broadcaster Al-Jazeera was widely respected for providing an independent voice from the Middle East. Recently, however, several top journalists have left, saying the station has developed a clear political agenda.

Aktham Suliman's wristwatch was always ahead. Although he lived in Berlin, it always showed him the time in Doha, the capital of the emirate of Qatar -- which is also the home of Al-Jazeera, the television news network that had been employing Suliman, born in Damascus, as a correspondent for Germany since 2002.

"Doha time was Jazeera time," he says. "It was an honor to work for this broadcaster."
One and a half years ago, Suliman, 42, re-set his watch to German time, having become disenchanted with Al-Jazeera. And it wasn't just because the broadcaster seemed less interested in reports from Europe. Rather, Suliman had the feeling that he was no longer being allowed to work as an independent journalist.

Last August, he quit his job. "Before the beginning of the Arab Spring, we were a voice for change," he says, "a platform for critics and political activists throughout the region. Now, Al-Jazeera has become a propaganda broadcaster."

Suliman is not the only one who feels bitterly disappointed. The Arab TV network has recently suffered an exodus of prominent staff members. Reporters and anchors in cities like Paris, London, Moscow, Beirut and Cairo have left Al-Jazeera, despite what are seen as luxurious working conditions in centrally located offices. And despite the fact that the network is investing an estimated $500 million (€375 million) in the US, so as to reach even more viewers on the world's largest television market -- one in which its biggest competitor, CNN, is at home.

Al-Jazeera has over 3,000 staff members and 65 correspondent offices worldwide -- and viewers in some 50 million households throughout the Arab world. But it also has a problem: More than ever before, critics contend that the broadcaster is following a clear political agenda, and not adhering to the principles of journalistic independence.

Such accusations have been leveled against Western broadcasters as well, of course. But the charge would place Al-Jazeera on a par with Fox News -- which pursues the agenda of conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch in the US -- rather than CNN.
Continue reading.

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Daisy Watts for ZOO Magazine

She's on Twitter:


And the video's here, "Daisy Watts' Peachy, Booby and Sexy Lingerie Video For ZOO Magazine in HD."

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Conservatives Not Forgiving Mark Sanford

At Twitchy, "Mark Sanford: ‘None of us go through life without mistakes’; Many conservatives not in forgiving mood."

Video at that link and at Legal Insurrection, "Just Say NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
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Executive Accused of Slapping Toddler is Fired

At ABC News, "Executive Charged With Slapping Toddler on Plane Gets Slapped With Pink Slip."

The boy's adopted and he's a beauty. The executive called him the "n-word." Are you kidding me? Ask to sit somewhere else. I would have changed seats. Sheesh.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 2:20 PM 0 comments
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Bulgaria Seeks Sanctions Against Hamas

At the Times of Israel, "Bulgarian FM to EU colleagues: Sanction Hezbollah":
Presenting evidence from Burgas bombing probe in Brussels, Nikolay Mladenov urges Europe to finally blacklist the Shiite group as a terror organization.
A senior Bulgarian official on Monday called on the European Union to adopt harsher measures against Hezbollah in light of his country’s finding that the Lebanese Shiite group was responsible for a terror attack that killed five Israelis and a local bus driver in the coastal town of Burgas last summer.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of the EU’s foreign ministers in Brussels, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov implicitly but unmistakably urged the union to designate Hezbollah a terrorist group.

Asked whether the EU should blacklist Hezbollah, he responded: ”Given the fact that we’ve already made quite firm statements about where we believe the responsibility for that attack lies, I think the answer is quite obvious.”

Mladenov was scheduled to present to the union’s Foreign Affairs Council a detailed report on the Bulgarian police investigation into the July 18 attack in the Black Sea resort town.

On February 5, Bulgaria announced that Hezbollah bombed the bus, with its investigators describing a sophisticated attack carried out by a terrorist cell that included Canadian and Australian citizens. Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said one of the suspects entered the country with a Canadian passport, and another with one from Australia. “We have well-grounded reasons to suggest that the two were members of the militant wing of Hezbollah,” Tsvetanov said.

In an op-ed in the New York Times on Monday, the US National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon urged the EU to act against Hezbollah. “Now that Bulgarian authorities have exposed Hezbollah’s global terrorist agenda, European governments must respond swiftly,” he wrote. “They must disrupt its operational networks, stop flows of financial assistance to the group, crack down on Hezbollah-linked criminal enterprises and condemn the organization’s leaders for their continued pursuit of terrorism.”
More at the link.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 2:05 PM 0 comments
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Israeli Soldier Mor Ostrovski, 20, Posts Crosshairs Photo of Palestinian Child to Instagram

Oh, great.

You know? Let's not give Mondoweiss and the rest of the left's Israel-hating anti-Semites any more, er, ammunition.

At Guardian UK, "Israeli soldier posts Instagram image of Palestinian child in crosshairs of rifle":

Simple, Free Image and File Hosting at MediaFire
An Israeli soldier has sparked outrage by posting a photograph appearing to show the back of a Palestinian boy's head in the crosshairs of his sniper rifle on a social networking site.

The context of the picture, posted on the personal Instagram site of Mor Ostrovski, 20, could not be verified but the aggressive message is clear. The minarets and Arabic architecture of the village captured in the background suggest the boy and the town are Palestinian. Ostrovski is an Israeli soldier in a sniper unit.

The Israeli military said the soldier's commanders were investigating the incident. His actions "are not in accordance with the spirit of the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] or its values", a spokesperson said.

Ostrovski, who has closed his Instagram account, told the army he did not take the picture but found it on the internet.

Breaking the Silence, an organisation of veteran Israeli combat soldiers campaigning to raise awareness about life in the West Bank, condemned the image. "This is what occupation looks like. This is what military control over a civilian population looks like," one member wrote on the group's Facebook page.

The image has been heavily criticised online. Electronic Intifada, a news site focused on Palestinian issues, described the photograph as "tasteless and dehumanising". The site published several other images from Ostrovski's Instagram page, including snaps of the soldier posing with heavy-duty guns.
These soldiers need to understand that the war over the information battlespace is right up there with the ground war against Hamas and its progressive allies. Don't be stupid. Don't give ammunition to our enemies on the left.

More stupid examples at that top link.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 1:45 PM 0 comments
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Burger King Twitter Account Hacked

Whoa, this is nasty.

At Twitchy, "Oh dear: Burger King’s Twitter account hacked; Updated."

And Sarah Rumpf comments:
I'm honestly surprised it has lasted this long this morning (over an hour so far). But hey, if companies and politicians want to keep delegating social media to 17 year old interns, then the rest of us will continue to be entertained by stories like this.
No doubt. Also at the Los Angeles Times, "Burger King's Twitter account hacked, made to look like McDonald's."

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 1:30 PM 0 comments
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#Benghazi Cover-Up: No, Progressives Couldn't Care Less That Four Americans Died

Leftists don't care about the truth, but we already knew that. I'm just reminded of how reality is distorted into a cartoon by this post on "John McCrankypants" at the loser-blog His Vorpal Sword.

And here's the clip:


Also at Reuters, "McCain claims ‘massive cover-up’ on Benghazi" (via Memeorandum).

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 1:15 PM 0 comments
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Shovel Ready

Flashback to 2009, "Shovel Ready":

Photobucket

And BCF links to my previous entry, "Shocker: L.A. Times Front-Page Story Slams Surging Insurance Premiums Caused by ObamaCare." Thanks!

More, the Rhetorican links as well, "Bucking the narrative: Prof. Douglas catches the L.A. Times Slamming Surging Insurance Premiums Caused by ObamaCare…on its front page!" Thanks!

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Shocker: L.A. Times Front-Page Story Slams Surging Insurance Premiums Caused by ObamaCare

There's really no way to sugarcoat this, although the editors tried at the front page of the hard-copy newspaper this morning ("costly at first...").

But there's no getting around things at the website, "States worry about rate shock during shift to new health law":

ObamaCare Sticker Schock
WASHINGTON — Less than a year before Americans will be required to have insurance under President Obama's healthcare law, many of its backers are growing increasingly anxious that premiums could jump, driven up by the legislation itself.

Higher premiums could undermine a core promise of the Affordable Care Act: to make basic health protections available to all Americans for the first time. Major rate increases also threaten to cause a backlash just as the law is supposed to deliver many key benefits Obama promised when he signed it in 2010.

"The single biggest issue we face now is affordability," said Jill Zorn, senior program officer at the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, a consumer advocacy group that championed the new law.

Administration officials have consistently downplayed the specter of rate increases and other disruptions as millions of Americans move into overhauled insurance markets in 2014. They cite provisions in the law that they say will hold down premiums, including new competitive markets they believe will make insurers offer competitive rates.

Exactly how high the premiums may go won't be known until later this year. But already, officials in states that support the law have sounded warnings that some people — mostly those who are young and do not receive coverage through their work — may see considerably higher prices than expected.

That is because of new requirements in the law aimed at making insurance more comprehensive and more affordable for older, sicker consumers.

Insurance regulators in California, which has enthusiastically embraced the law, cautioned the Obama administration in a recent letter about "rate and market disruption."

Oregon's insurance commissioner, another supporter of the law, said new regulations could push up premiums for young customers by as much as 30% next year. He urged administration officials to slow enactment of the new rules.

A leading advocate for consumers in their 20s, Young Invincibles, sounded a similar caution, suggesting in a letter to administration officials that additional steps may be needed to protect young people from rising premiums. Young Invincibles mobilized in 2010 to help pass the healthcare law.

And regulators in Massachusetts, which was the model for Obama's law, recently warned that although many residents and small businesses in the state "will see premium decreases next year, a significant number will see extreme premium increases."

The law does include many new protections for consumers. Even those now sounding alarms emphasize the importance of those provisions, including guaranteed coverage for Americans with preexisting medical conditions.

"For most people, this will be a dramatic improvement," Zorn said.
No it won't. Younger people are just getting reamed. And the predicted savings aren't going to materialize, because the law mandates lower premiums on those who use health services most: the elderly. Here's the key bit:
The healthcare law also includes a new tax and new fees on insurance companies that the industry says it will pass on to consumers.

The provision that will prevent insurance companies from charging older consumers more than three times what they charge young consumers has generated particular concern among regulators. In many states, insurers now can charge five times as much or more to people in their 50s and 60s.

The requirement was a top priority of the influential AARP. It is designed to make insurance more affordable to a group that often most needs insurance. But as rates come down for older people, they may increase for consumers in their 20s, regulators worry.

If that happens, young, healthy people could elect not to get health insurance and pay the small penalty in the law for not having coverage. That, in turn, would leave an older, sicker population in the insurance pool, a phenomenon that typically inflates premiums.
It sucks. People are waking up, even if it's just a little. The push for greater "equality" is destroying not only liberty, but the quality of life for millions of Americans. That's the price for voting for this f-king amateur politician soaking in communist ideology. Gawd, what a disaster for this nation.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 11:30 AM 0 comments
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The Calvin Coolidge Comeback

It's a review of Amity Shlaes' Coolidge biography, from David Resler, at Forbes, "Amity Shlaes Tells The Story of Calvin Coolidge, Another 'Forgotten Man'":

Calvin Coolidge
In her award winning book, “The Forgotten Man,” Amity Shlaes offered a refreshing alternative to conventional wisdom about the Great Depression. Her forgotten man was not Roosevelt’s man at the “bottom of the economic pyramid” but William Graham Sumner’s forgotten man whose toils toward self improvement form the foundation of economic progress. He is the quiet innovator and adventurer who ultimately foots the bill for the Progressive social agenda. We now also recognize him as the man who President Obama famously discredited during last year’s re-election campaign.

In one sense, Shlaes new book “Coolidge” represents a prequel to “The Forgotten Man.” More importantly, however, we rediscover a man who throughout his career championed the cause of Sumner’s forgotten man but whose reward for doing so was to become himself a president whom history books have also largely “forgotten.” Shlaes sees Coolidge as “a rare kind of hero: a minimalist president, an economic general of budgeting and tax cuts.” She then thoroughly and persuasively documents that judgment.

In both books, Shlaes’ captivating portrayals of her forgotten men resonate. We come to identify with Coolidge because he embodied the timeless virtues of honesty and personal responsibility to which we all aspire. We also see Coolidge as wholly a product of his time. At the time of his birth –on Independence Day 1872 in a rural Vermont town — the Industrial Revolution had not yet transformed the U.S. economy from its agrarian roots. Some three fourths of the U.S. population in 1870 lived in a rural area and the 1880 Census showed that more than 60% of the rural population lived on farms. The experiences and life lessons that would form Coolidge’s character were those shared by most other Americans of the day. My own grandparents, born that same decade on farms in Ohio, embraced those same values and not surprisingly became Coolidge Republicans. While such voters could readily identify with Coolidge, they also admired and rewarded the leadership skills that conventional historians seem to have overlooked.

Life on America’s farms and in rural villages during the final three decades of the nineteenth century demanded self-discipline, sacrifice and perseverance. Shlaes notes that Coolidge himself saw “perseverance as the key” to success. Just as perseverance defined Coolidge’s work ethic, “parsimony” in both word and deed seems to have defined his life’s mission.
Continue reading.

And at Amazon, Coolidge.

BONUS: On Twitter, Melissa Clouthier's asking "Who's your favorite president"?

PHOTO CREDIT: Wikimedia Commons.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 10:30 AM 0 comments
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Ammunition Shortages

There have been reports here and there of ammunition shortages since I reported on the Orange County gun show, "Long Lines, Ammunition Shortages at Orange County Gun Show."

But now here comes USA Today, "Gun dealers report shortages of ammunition" (via Memeorandum)":
Retailers say much of the demand is from gun owners who are stockpiling in case certain weapons are banned.

Gun shops are running low on ammunition from a run by customers fearful of potential gun-control legislation, according to gun retailers and customers.

Prices have more than doubled over past year in some shops, retailers are putting limits on the amount a customer can buy, and some common types of ammunition, such as .22-caliber long rifle shells, are hard to get.
More at the link.

And this gives me a chance to post my favorite photo from the show (here's the one showing the lines for ammunition):

Gun Show

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 7:00 AM 0 comments
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The Myth of Climate Change Consensus

At IBD, "Global Warming Consensus Looking More Like a Myth."

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The Minority Youth Unemployment Act

A must-read editorial, from the Wall Street Journal, "A higher minimum wage will hurt Obama's most loyal supporters."

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Ashley Judd for Senate?

The actress is contemplating a run against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The New York Times reports, "Kentuckians Don’t Rule Out a Star as a Potential Senator":

Ashley Judd
ASHLAND, Ky. — It would seem like a Republican fantasy: a famous actress, who has been described by her own grandmother as a Hollywood liberal, is floated as a Senate candidate in one of the country’s most conservative states, where she does not even live.

That is how Republican operatives gleefully seized on reports that the movie star Ashley Judd, who campaigned for President Obama, might challenge Mitch McConnell, the most powerful Republican in the United States Senate, when he is up for re-election next year.

“Ashley Judd — an Obama-following, radical Hollywood liberal” is how an attack ad put it, produced by a group led by the Republican strategist Karl Rove.

How serious could such a candidacy be? Plenty, it turns out.

“I would actually be surprised if she didn’t run right now,” said Representative John Yarmuth, Democrat of Kentucky. “She’s done everything a serious candidate would do.”

But even as Ms. Judd moved this week from a Republican chew toy to an increasingly likely candidate, Democrats in Kentucky fought publicly over whether she would be a viable challenger in 2014 to Mr. McConnell, or a serious liability.

Some Democratic strategists said her views were too far left of Kentucky voters, warning that she would drag down other Democrats on the state ballot.

“I say we place in peril our control of the State Legislature,” said Dale Emmons, a strategist who advised the last unsuccessful Democratic challenger to Mr. McConnell, in 2008.

He added, “Her Siamese twin will immediately be Barack Obama,” who lost Kentucky by 23 percentage points in November.

Another Kentucky-based consultant, James Cauley, said he began hearing fears from Kentucky officials last month when Ms. Judd attended the Bluegrass Ball in Washington during the inauguration, where she confirmed she was “taking a close look” at a run.

“People started saying, ‘Oh my God, she is serious,’ ” said Mr. Cauley, who managed Mr. Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign in Illinois. “One state legislator asked me to go to the White House and talk to Barack.”

Mr. Cauley demurred. He and the president are not close.
More at that top link.

And I wouldn't discount anything. Name recognition is a huge asset. Sure, Obama lost the state by double-digits, but we're in a strange era of celebrity politics. I just wouldn't discount this woman's chances.

PHOTO CREDIT: Wikimedia Commons.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 3:00 AM 0 comments
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Bill Whittle's Afterburner: 'The Shooters'

Via Theo Spark:

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 2:00 AM 0 comments
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Katie Price Slams Kelly Brook as a 'Heffer'

Well, the last time I posted on Ms. Brook I mentioned that she'd gained weight.

It turns out I wasn't imagining it.

See London's Daily Mail, "'I'm FLABbergasted at how big she is!' Katie Price labels Kelly Brook a 'heffer' in astonishing attack."

But see, "Katie who? A defiant Kelly Brook dazzles in midnight blue at pre-BAFTA dinner in first appearance since Price's 'heffer' remark."

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 1:30 AM 0 comments
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Sports Illustrated is Racist! ABC News Joins the Politically Correct Attack Mob

At NewsBusters, "ABC: Are Some Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Pictures Racist?"


PREVIOUSLY: "New Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Attacked as Racist."

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Who is David Bowie?

At the Guardian UK, "As a blockbuster exhibition, David Bowie is, gets under way at the V&A, Sean O'Hagan dissects the pop icon's influences – and reveals the ideas behind four of his key alter egos":
"From the very beginning, I always saw David as a star in the way that James Dean or Marilyn Monroe or Judy Garland were stars. He was an actor, essentially. He soaked up whatever was in the air to create his characters, then he became those characters in his songs and his performances, and even offstage. Sometimes, you'd have Ziggy Stardust in the taxi with you and you didn't know what to do with it and it was pretty powerful."
Mick "Woody" Woodmansey is recalling the heady and sometimes unsettling time when he had a brief supporting role in the making of pop history. From 1970 to 1973, he played drums in the Spiders for Mars, the band that helped David Bowie redefine what it was to be a pop star, what a pop song and a live performance could express. He was there behind his drum kit, dressed in a pink lamé top and matching trousers, when Bowie, in a multicoloured jumpsuit and red wrestling boots, sang Starman on Top of the Pops on a Thursday evening in July 1972. For a generation in waiting, the "starman" was David Bowie himself: alien, decadent and liberating.
The piece continues with a video from that performance.

Continue reading here.

I just love Bowie. He stopped touring for health reasons and I have no idea if he's planning any concerts. I can't help but thinking his new release is a swan song of some sort, although I hope not.

RELATED: At the Hollywood Reporter, "BBC to Screen Feature-Length David Bowie Doc."

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 12:30 AM 0 comments
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Sequester

At the clip, the idiot freshman Congressman Joaquín Castro blames the pending budget cuts on GOP "hostage taking." What a little progressive parrot.

And see the fear-mongering at the New York Times, "The Real Cost of Shrinking Government" (via Memeorandum):

These cuts, which will cost the economy more than one million jobs over the next two years, are the direct result of the Republican demand in 2011 to shrink the government at any cost, under threat of a default on the nation’s debt. Many Republicans say they would still prefer the sequester to replacing half the cuts with tax revenue increases. But the government spending they disdain is not an abstract concept. In a few days, the cuts will begin affecting American life and security in significant ways.
The left refuses to look in the mirror. The clip begins with a moment from the 2012 debates where Mitt Romney firmly places the politics of sequestration at the administration's doorstep. The president then denies that these cuts will happen. The world will not end, in any case, but it's not like this had to happen in the first place. The administration played hard on the fiscal cliff talks. The Dems got tax increases but said that wasn't going to be enough. They still want more spending. We're pushing toward a national debt of $17 trillion. When the left starts taking the enormous bloat of the federal government seriously perhaps we'll finally get a handle on things. But I'm not holding my breath.

Also from Pejman Yousefzadeh, at Richochet, "Some Facts about Sequestration that the New York Times Fails to Understand."

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 12:00 AM 0 comments
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Sunday, February 17, 2013

Jennifer Love Hewitt Gets in Shape!

This is the best she's looked in quite awhile, at Celebslam, "More of those 'Jennifer Love Hewitt' pics."

I love this shot.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 5:05 PM 0 comments
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Jordan Downs' Project Fatherhood

When I read Joseph Stiglitz's piece at the New York Times, "Equal Opportunity, Our National Myth," I thought, "Okay, I agree. We have these enormous problems. It might not be as bad as you say --- where's the comparative historical data for advancement, for example? --- but no doubt we have problems. But does more government expansion --- so much more --- always have to be the answer? What about helping to change the cultures of poverty that prevent social mobility?"

Then a later I read this piece at the Los Angeles Times, and thought, "Okay, if only we had more of this, a lot more?" See, "REMAKING JORDAN DOWNS: The father of all support groups":
It started in 2009 on a patch of grass outside the Jordan Downs gym. A group of ex-Crips gave haircuts and grilled hamburgers, hoping families and fathers would show up, relax and begin to talk.

"Growing up the way we did, during the time we did, a lot of the dads might as well have been in some other world," says Andre "Low Down" Christian, one of the leaders. "It's a big reason why things ended up as rough as they did here."

He tells of getting into a fight and tracking down his father for advice. His father gave him brass knuckles and a sawed-off shotgun.

"There had to be a better way of looking at being a dad," he says. "That's what we wanted people to think about."

Those initial weeks in front of the gym, five people came. The local fire station donated steaks and a barbecue. Time passed. Twenty arrived. Then 25.

John King, the Los Angeles Housing Authority official who oversees the community center, was already trying to change the culture in Jordan Downs as preparations were made to rebuild the 700-unit apartment complex. He offered his support and told the men to use his conference room.

By the summer of 2011, backed by a $50,000 grant from the nonprofit Children's Institute, the loose amalgamation of men became something more formal. Now they had a name, Project Fatherhood, and were part of a regional network of meetings the institute sponsored, focusing on men and their kids.

The Watts group has the feel of an urban barbershop: full of jokes and jealousy, grace and anger. Early on, two street toughs entered the room as the men spoke. Wearing trench coats, not saying a word, they walked around the oval of tables, suspiciously checking out the scene.

"They were wondering what exactly was going on with these older dudes," says the UCLA professor, Jorja Leap, who, assuming the toughs were carrying shotguns, followed the fathers' lead and didn't say a word. "They had to see for themselves what this meeting was about. Was it a threat to them? When they found out what we were doing, they gave their OK."

Project Fatherhood became part of the fabric of Jordan Downs. As the Wednesdays piled up, the men grew comfortable talking about their problems. They "were carrying deep troubles, questions and fears about being dads," Leap says. "Problem was, they didn't have many examples of good fathering, so they were coming up with answers from scratch."
RTWT.

But in the public community colleges, I see first hand the kind of investments the state is making in public education. I'm sure we could do more, but it all costs, and the economy can't support increasing "investment." On the other hand, when students are attending classes, they're not bringing anywhere near the needed social requisites for success in college education. And they come to us without those skills, from the K-12 system. More government spending isn't the solution to all of the problems Stiglitz identifies. But he's a big government progressive. Talking about the culture for people like that is "racist." In turn that consigns generations of Americans to poverty. Start changing the culture --- combined with making equal opportunity truly available --- and you'll see more upward mobility. We should be talking about it. From the president on down, we should be talking about it.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 4:45 PM 0 comments
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The New #CPAC Schedule is Here!

I'm not joking with "The Jerk" headline at top.

Rachel Maddow starts out her sensational report on CPAC 2013 with a Steve Martin clip. She then cherry picks a few of the more offbeat panels to highlight --- wait for it! --- just how filled with fringe freaks are the CPAC conferences.

Robert Stacy McCain had more on this propaganda earlier, "Another Controversial CPAC Scandal!™":
How long have I been covering the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)? Forever, it seems, and every year the liberal media find some reason to denounce CPAC as extreme, fringe, controversial.

From my perspective, the biggest CPAC controversy this year is that they moved it from the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in northwest D.C. — near the Adams-Morgan district and a short taxi ride from downtown — to the new Gaylord National Harbor resort, eight miles south of town in Prince George’s County, Md.

I could think of a dozen arguments against this move, and have heard only one argument in favor of it: They got a great rate.

Well, so much for my CPAC controversy. The really big controversy according to liberal Sarah Reese Jones is this:

CPAC: White Supremacists and Wayne LaPierre are Welcome, but GOProud is Banned

Students of propaganda techniques should ponder how Jones manages to suggest that Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association is somehow as controversial as “white supremacists.”

But wait a minute: Who are these “white supremacists” being welcomed at CPAC? Looking over the announced schedule, I don’t see any, unless Sarah Reese Jones is using the liberal definition of “white supremacist” as “someone who didn’t vote for Obama.”
Continue reading.

The real conspiracy is how the progressive collectivists have perverted the culture to fool a majority of Americans that the left's Marxist agenda is mainstream. But they thrive on propaganda and Maddow's show is one of the left's top propaganda outfits.

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What is 'Natural Born'?

I'm not sure why it's important, but William Jacobson feels he must respond to attacks from "birther" conspiracy-mongers. I guess these are not infrequent, as William explains, "This will be dealt with."

Read it all at the link above. The email William posts in pretty fascinating:
JACOBSON: First you display your inexcusable contempt for the law by keeping the fact of Obama’s ineligibility from your readers, for whatever discreditable reasons. Now you double down and defend and promote the candidacies of two more ineligibles, Rubio and Jindal. (The reason the Democrats have to paint Rubio and Jindal as crazies is because they know that thanks to people like you, the Republicans would actually put up an ineligible candidate.) What is wrong with you? Don’t you have any respect for the Constitution? Or for a government of laws? You enable, aid and abet lawbreakers. You are a Professor of Law and your conduct is so egregious you are an indelible stain on the profession.

Debate me, defend your conduct in any public setting. Or defend in writing your enablement of Obama and promotion of other ineligible candidates. You can’t, can you? There is no honorable defense, is there? No. You and your ilk are largely responsible for Obama’s tremendously destructive foreign and domestic policies of the past four years. Had you and your colleagues in the Conservative MSM spoken up four years ago, the Federal Courts would have removed Obama and avoided so much damage done and so much damage yet to be done.

Such lawlessness. Such dishonesty. Such cowardice.
I can't comment on Jindal et al.'s eligibility just yet, but if folks are making a natural born case against Obama then they're accepting as fact that he was born in Hawaii (which would confer automatic eligibility under the 14th Amendment) but that it takes two American parents for a child to be considered natural born (and that's apparently regardless of the same birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment). I always thought the question of Obama's birth certification by the State of Hawaii a bit fishy, and Obama hasn't helped matters by refusing to release his full authenticated birth certificate (with vital medical information, witnesses, etc.) rather than the cheap-ass computer print-out claiming "certification of live birth." (Obama is all about hiding who is he, on his academic transcripts, as another example; the left fears the truth, while the right has obsessed over it.) No matter. The courts ruled against challenges to Obama's eligibility and after awhile it gets to be a bit like Captain Ahab. In any case, William must be facing a lot of hostility because he's researching it and will post his findings for the record. A quick search turned up some information, which is interesting, no matter how you view the issues: "Birther Claims Debunked: Two Citizen Parents." What's also interesting is that this president has engendered so much hatred, so much conspiracy theorizing, that no matter how deranged it is, there's some kind of weird legitimacy to the movement in the sense that Obama really is "post-American" in his ideological outlook and Marxist orientation to the state and political culture. It's definitely a unique manifestation. It's what drives most of our polarization. The question is centrally about the meaning of being an American and living under the law and according to a traditional set of values that are exceptional. The left has abandoned that exceptionalism. The president is the standard bearer for the destruction of that decency and history. All of this was inevitable when the Democrat Party ended up nominating Obama and when the American people bought the lies and elected him. We'll be digging out from this monstrosity for decades, if we ever fully recover.

As for the citizenship thing, at this point it's moot, in any case. Barack Hussein ain't going anywhere. So I'll be interested to see what happens with Jindal and the others. Stay tuned as far as that goes.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 1:15 PM 0 comments
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'Take It Easy'

My wife and I caught Showtime's "History of the Eagles" last night. It's worth your time if you get the chance. And it was even more fun since my wife just got an invitation from the MGM Grand to see the Eagles live in Las Vegas on March 23rd. We saw the Eagles at the Honda Center in Anaheim in 2010 and Don Henley at Harrah's Rincon in 2011. But this time we'll be talking our two sons to the show.

In any case, when Travis Tritt made this video for his cover of the Eagles' "Taking It Easy," he asked the original band members to appear, and it turns out that they enjoyed being together again and decided to make their comeback. The Showtime documentary covers all of that and more. A great American band.



Posted by AmPowerBlog at 12:25 PM 0 comments
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Rand Paul on Fox News Sunday: Can Obama Kill Americans on American Soil With Drone Strikes?

A great segment with Senator Paul:


As always, it's more about the left's hypocrisy with me, although I just can't reconcile killing Awlaki's 16-year-old kid.

Also at Fox News, "Graham, Paul split on U.S. drone strikes, impact of upcoming $85B spending cuts." And more video here, "Sen. Rand Paul : I'll Decide in 2014 on a Presidential Run." Plus, at Reason, "Rand Paul: Not Running for President Except to Win, America Ready for Libertarian Republican."

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 12:00 PM 0 comments
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You Might Be a Democrat

More cartoons, via The Looking Spoon on Twitter:


Also, from Trevor Loudon, "“On the Current Marxist Revolution”."
Posted by AmPowerBlog at 11:25 AM 0 comments
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Sunday Cartoons

Via Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Econocide."

Branco Cartoon

Also at Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's Sunday Funnies," and Theo Spark, "Cartoon Roundup..."

And at Jill Stanek's, "Stanek Sunday funnies 2-17-13."

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 11:15 AM 0 comments
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Raphael Golb Created 82 Sock Puppets, Harassed Scholars Who Ignored His Father's Work, and Was Charged With 51 Counts of Identity Theft, Aggravated Harassment, Criminal Impersonation, Forgery and Unauthorized Computer Use at NYU

This is an amazing story, and especially relevant, consider the left's depraved war of lawfare and intimidation against conservatives. The dude was pissed off that scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls --- the Dead Sea Scrolls! --- were ignoring his dad's scholarly contributions so he waged a criminally-obsessed online jihad against them. Sounds familiar, I know.

See the New York Times, "Online Battle Over Sacred Scrolls, Real-World Consequences":
Between 2006 and 2009, he created more than 80 online aliases to advance his father’s views about the Dead Sea Scrolls against what he saw as a concerted effort to exclude them. Along the way, according to a jury and a panel of appellate court judges, he crossed from engaging in academic debate to committing a crime.

What he accomplished through this manner of intellectual warfare is, like the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves, a topic on which opinion is passionately diverse, with no shortage of bad blood.

“This has nothing to do with scholarly debate,” said Lawrence H. Schiffman, vice provost of Yeshiva University and a widely published authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls, who became the prime target of Mr. Golb’s online activities. “It has to do with criminal activity.

“Fraud, impersonation and harassment are criminal matters,” he continued. “This was actually designed to literally end my career.”

Mr. Golb’s father, Norman Golb, 85, a professor of Jewish History and Civilization at the University of Chicago, placed the wrong squarely on the other side. “The D.A. took a scholarly quarrel and makes a case against Raphael Golb and not against what those other people are doing, which was worse,” he said. “The vindictiveness, the anger, the ugliness, that’s O.K. because it comes from the other side.” ...

*****

In 2006 and 2007, when several American museums announced exhibits of the scrolls, Raphael Golb was incensed that his father’s theory had not been acknowledged in the shows. “They teach scorn for my father,” Mr. Golb said, accusing rival academics of “indoctrinating students in a culture of hatred.”

“This is a system where they suppress people by excluding them,” he added.

At the time, the younger Mr. Golb was researching a book about French secularism and working just enough as a real estate lawyer to pay his bills. He also received money from his parents. The Internet offered ways for him to argue his father’s case. He wouldn’t have to use his real name, which others “would simply use to smear my father,” he said. Instead, he could post under an alias — or four, five or six. He began posting comments on the museums’ Web sites, complaining that the exhibits were one-sided.

He started a blog; then another and another, each under a different name. The aliases begot other aliases, known on the Internet as sock puppets: 20, 40, 60, 80. The sock puppets debated with other posters, each time linking to other sock puppets to support their arguments, creating the impression of an army of engaged scholars espousing Norman Golb’s ideas. Using the alias Charles Gadda (from the Italian writer Carlo Emilio Gadda), Raphael Golb published articles on the citizen news Web site NowPublic and linked to them in comments and blog posts written under other aliases. The writings all championed Norman Golb as an honest scholar bucking a well-financed, self-serving conspiracy.

He acted as an online troll, stirring up controversy. “Was it appropriate for a scientific institution to allow a group of Christian academics to impose their agenda on an exhibit of ancient documents taking place under its auspices?” he asked of an exhibit at the San Diego Natural History Museum, in an Oct. 6, 2007, article. That article, he said, drew 16,000 views.

“They saw this happening and they were furious, because I was sabotaging their Internet campaign,” Raphael Golb said of the museums. His father’s rivals, he suspected, used sock puppets to answer his comments.

“It became a kind of war,” he said. “It was very ugly. But I was glad it was happening. I was like, this is great. This draws more attention to my father’s work.” To a family member he wrote, “they are faced with a dedicated, in-the-know adversary who is out to get them, and there’s simply nothing they can do about it.”

One of Mr. Golb’s targets was a graduate student named Robert R. Cargill, who created a virtual tour of Qumran for the San Diego museum.

Norman Golb posted an article on the Web site of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago complaining that the film’s script ignored his theory.

Raphael Golb went further, sending pseudonymous e-mails to Mr. Cargill’s professors at U.C.L.A.

“I said this person should be compelled to answer the published criticisms of his work at his Ph.D. defense,” Raphael Golb said. Some of the e-mail messages suggested that Mr. Cargill, who describes himself as agnostic, was a fundamentalist Christian and an anti-Semite.

Mr. Cargill, who is now 39 and an assistant professor of classics and religious studies at the University of Iowa, remembered Mr. Golb’s campaign as a frontal assault meant to thwart his career.

“Any time someone hears the name Robert Cargill, they hear, he’s anti-Semitic,” Mr. Cargill said. “Let’s say I’m applying for a job and I’m in a pool of 10 finalists. When they do background checking, they see this Cargill looks like he’s being criticized as anti-Semitic. We don’t know if it’s legitimate, but it’s safer to go with someone else.”

The e-mails kept coming. According to papers filed by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, from June 2007 to June 2009, Mr. Golb’s aliases Steve Frankel, Carlo Gadda, Don Matthews, David Kaplan, Emily Kaufman, Jesse Friedman and Robert Dworkin sent dozens of e-mails to hundreds of people at U.C.L.A., all attacking Mr. Cargill. “The volume of defendant’s alias creation,” the court papers read, “and his planning with others, speaks to the deliberate intent in conducting defendant’s operation.”

Mr. Cargill fought back. A typical e-mail message or blog post has an Internet protocol address that identifies the computer used to create it. Using simple software that identified the I.P. addresses, he traced the e-mails and blog posts of 82 aliases to the same few computers. Beneath one of Mr. Golb’s pseudonymous comments, he posted a message, using the pseudonym Raphael Joel, a combination of Mr. Golb’s first name and his brother’s. The message was: We know who you are....

*****

Raphael Golb was naked and asleep when police officers came to his apartment early on the morning of March 5, 2009, arresting him on 51 charges of identity theft, aggravated harassment, criminal impersonation, forgery and unauthorized use of the computers in an N.Y.U. library. He had been up all of the previous night writing comments or blog posts under his various aliases. The officers seized Mr. Golb’s computers and led him handcuffed from his building. Waiving his rights to a lawyer and to remain silent, Mr. Gold denied sending any bogus e-mail messages, telling the investigators that Dr. Schiffman had filed a false complaint “out of maliciousness toward my father.” He added, “I find the guy a bit nauseating, to tell the truth.”

Mr. Golb later rejected a plea deal that would have kept him out of jail.

At his trial in September 2010, Mr. Golb admitted to all of his writings, but defended his use of pseudonyms as a time-honored vehicle for criticism and debate — and a staple of Internet culture. He wasn’t trying to defraud anybody or gain anything, his lawyers argued; he just wanted his father’s views represented. If he was guilty of slander or libel, his victims could sue him in civil court.

“I’m not saying anybody here acted well,” Mr. Kuby said. “I just don’t think anybody acted criminally.”
This should be interesting to some of our friends on the right, especially Robert Stacy McCain, "Deranged Cyberstalker Bill Schmalfeldt Charged With Deranged Cyberstalking." And discussed there is Lee Stranahan, who's been quite busy of late. For example, "My Statement About Criminal Harassment Charges Against Bill Schmalfeldt." Also, "Bill Schmalfeldt’s Double Dip Harassment Part 1," and "Bill Schmalfeldt’s Creepy Obsession With Photos Of My Wife (NSFW)."

And Lee tweeted some of Schmalfeldt's deranged ravings:


And I'll tell you, I'm eternally thankful that all the Internet harassment and stalking I beat back never escalated to this level. Either way, folks should know that if you're out here standing up for decency and right, the despicable left knows no depths of viciousness, deceit and dishonor. You will fight for your life because the left will attempt to destroy you. Recall that Stranahan had to move away at one point and relocate, to protect the safety of his family. And Robert Stacy McCain did the same. It's hard out there for a righteous mofo, but remember that this Rafael Golb dude --- whether you think he's right or wrong, and I think he went overboard --- is looking at an almost certain 6 months behind bars, so be assured that when lines get crossed on the Internet --- and they do get crossed --- people go to jail.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 10:20 AM 0 comments
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As California Goes, So Goes the Nation

On unchecked immigration, that is, from Mexico and lands beyond.

At the New York Times, "California Eases Tone as Latinos Make Gains":
LOS ANGELES — A generation ago, California voters approved a ballot initiative that was seen as the most anti-immigrant law in the nation. Immigrants who had come to the country illegally would be ineligible to receive prenatal care, and their children would be barred from public schools.

But the law, which was later declared unconstitutional by the federal courts, never achieved the goal of its backers: to turn back the tide of immigrants pouring into the state. Instead, since the law was approved in 1994, the political and social reality has changed drastically across the state. Now, more California residents than ever before say that immigrants are a benefit to the state, according to public opinion polls from the Public Policy Institute of California.

As Congress begins debating an overhaul of the immigration system, many in California sense that the country is just now beginning to go through the same evolution the state experienced over the last two decades. For a generation of Republicans, Gov. Pete Wilson’s barrages on the impact of immigration in the 1990s spoke to their uneasiness with the way the state was changing. Now many California Republicans point to that as the beginning of their downfall.

Today, party leaders from both sides, and from all over the state, are calling for a softer approach and a wholesale change in federal policies.

The state’s changing attitudes are driven, in large part, by demographics. In 1990, Latinos made up 30 percent of the state’s population; they will make up 40 percent — more than any other ethnic group — by the end of this year, and 48 percent by 2050, according to projections made by the state this month. This year, for the first time, Latinos were the largest ethnic group applying to the University of California system.

Towns that just a decade ago were largely white now have Latino majorities. Latinos make up an important power base not only in urban centers like Los Angeles, but also in places that were once hostile to outsiders. There are dozens of city councils with a majority of Latino members, a Mexican-American is the mayor of Los Angeles and another is the leader of the State Assembly. Nearly all of the 15 California Republicans in Congress represent districts where at least a quarter of the residents are Latino.

“The political calculus has changed dramatically,” said Manuel Pastor, a demographer and professor of American studies at the University of Southern California. “Immigrants are an accepted part of public life here. And California is America fast-forward. What happened to our demographics between 1980 and 2000 is almost exactly what will happen to the rest of the country over the next 30 years.””
They may or may not be accepted, but they're certainly not fully assimilated. There's a lot of Latinos who barely speak English, if they do at all, especially in the ethnic enclaves where folks don't have to interact with the outside world. Victor Davis Hanson continues to be the best on this, in his book, for example, Mexifornia.

More at that top link.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 7:00 AM 0 comments
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Catholics React to Pope Benedict's Resignation

From Peggy Noonan, at the Wall Street Journal, "A Faith Unshaken but Unsettled":

It is disquieting, the resignation of the pope. "We are in uncharted territory," said a historian of the church. An old pope is leaving but staying within the walls of the Vatican, and a new one, younger and less known, will come before Easter.

In a week's conversation with faithful and believing Catholics, I detected something I've never quite heard before, and that is a deep, unshaken, even cheerful faith accompanied by a certain anxiety, even foreboding. I heard acceptance of Pope Benedict's decision coupled with an intense sympathy for what is broadly understood to be his suffering, from health problems to the necessity that his decision was a lonely one, its deepest reasoning known only to him. There was a lot of speculation that attempting to run the Vatican in the new age of technology, of leaks and indiscretions and instant responses, would have been hard on him.

So here are some things Catholics have been telling me...
RTWT.
Posted by AmPowerBlog at 4:00 AM 0 comments
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