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Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Post #5087 M: McClanahan on the Homeschool Revolution; The Bee's Guide to Exploiting Tragedy for Political Gain; Ron Paul on Biden Stuck in Afghanistan

 Quote of the Day

Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil; 
our great hope lies in developing what is good. 
Calvin Coolidge  

McClanahan on the Homeschool Revolution

The Bee's Guide to Exploiting Tragedy for Political Gain

Ron Paul on Biden Stuck in Afghanistan

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Michael Ramirez via Townhall

Musical Interlude; #1 Hits of 1972

The Chi-Lites, "Oh Girl"

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Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Post #5086 M: Stossel on College Entrance Exams ; IJ vs. Predictive Policing; Ron Paul on the War on the Second Amendment

 Quote of the Day

A champion is someone 
who gets up when he can't.
Jack Dempsey  

Stossel on College Entrance Exams 

IJ vs. Predictive Policing

Ron Paul on the War on the Second Amendment

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of AF Branco via Townhall

Musical Interlude: #1 Hits of 1972

Roberta Flack, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"

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Post #5085 Social Media Digest

 Twitter

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Monday, March 29, 2021

Post #5084 M: McClanahan on the Idea of Conservatism; Automation vs Unemployment

 Quote of the Day

It's so much easier to suggest solutions 
when you don't know too much about the problem.
Malcolm Forbes  

McClanahan on the Idea of Conservatism

Automation vs Unemployment

McClanahan on Calhoun

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Michael Ramirez via Townhall

Musical Interlude: #1 Hits of 1972

America, "A Horse With No Name"

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Post #5083 Rant of the Day: "No, Not Another internet Meme!"

 I loathe conspiracy theories, whether it's from Donald Trump on election fraud to explain his defeat (never mind he never achieved a 50+ approval rating his whole term and he was running for reelection in a year where we had a pandemic in which millions had lost jobs and/or retirement savings and thousand s had died) or the 77-centers (as I call them), where economics-challenged feminists argue a misogynist systematic bias against "fair pay" for women. I'm not going to revisit that latter argument again, when we adjust for things like voluntary overtime, choice of occupation, experience, etc. To quote Cato Institute:

The figures ... in the study break down as follows. The “raw” gender pay gap between all men and women is 28.6 percent. This falls to 9.3 percent once one controls for people being in the same level job. This falls further to 2.6 percent for the same level job at the same company, and to just 0.8 percent for the same level job at the same company with the same function....there is little to no evidence of overt company discrimination once one controls for observable factors (and beyond those here, things such as educational attainment, or years of continuous work experience). 

I personally had a cartoonishly evil jerk of a male supervisor, BB ("my 17 years of IT experience"), back in the 1980's, who was seeking to exploit an alleged pay gap, not by paying female computer programmers more but by reaping the profit from lowered costs. (We were a branch of a now defunct APL timesharing industry, sort of an archetype of today's cloud computing market (Software As a Service).) This narcissist decided to move the branch office from inside the Houston loop to near his home in the NW suburbs so he didn't have to commute; the new office would have a large room for his own female programmer operation. He bought some cheap office furniture at some auction and replaced my own office chair for some piece of junk with a broken caster. He caught me retrieving my old chair from his vacant programmer suite and fired me on the spot. To this day, I've never heard of someone else fired over office furniture. (There's more to the story but it's beyond the scope of this post.)

I personally experienced the paranoia of the wage gap conspiracy. KK, an associate (tenured) professor at UWM with an office immediately next to mine. I don't remember seeing her during my campus visit, but I knew her, above my other senior colleagues, because I had reviewed her research articles in my MIS doctoral seminars and for my major comprehensive qualifying exam. So I had considerable respect for her as a scholar before I ever met her in person.

I think she, an older single woman, took a personal interest in me, which was not mutual There are various reasons why I thought it was personal. One incident particularly stands out as odd. I had to register for some account online at UWM, and for some odd reason, instead of giving me directions, etc., she sat at my office computer, saying she herself would do it for me. I had no idea why she was motivated to do this. At some point the protocol asked for my date of birth. At this point I was uncomfortable with the conversation; it was none of her business. At the same time I didn't want to escalate an issue with a senior colleague, so I reluctantly told her. She looked at me and said, "Well, Ron, you're just a pup, aren't you?" First time I ever heard that; I took it as a reference to my being a young man. There were other things. including a time she called me to bring something from her office to her condo. I really didn't think that was a legitimate request for a colleague; I asked her to get in touch with the business school staff, but she wouldn't take no for an answer. So I channeled my inner UPS worker and dropped it off quickly.

There are other parts of the story. I was caught in the middle between 2 pairs of area (we weren't a separate department) senior profs. But the main point of bringing up KK in this essay was one day she demanded to know my salary. I have always considered compensation a privileged matter with my employer and do not discuss it with others. I suspect she was worried that in an MIS job seeker market at the time, UWM may have offered me more than she made. To be honest, I never discussed salary with any recruiter. After a stipend of a few hundred dollars a month as a graduate student fellow, I knew my standard of living would improve as a professor. I suspect I made somewhat below market (mostly from others telling me, unasked, what they were making), but that was based on anecdotal data.

KK was incensed I wouldn't respond to her "right to know", that I was "stonewalling" her. Some time later she stormed into my office, triumphantly told me what I was making, noting as a Wisconsin-paid public employee, my salary was a matter of public record. I gather she was satisfied she was making more than "the pup".

/So what sparked this rant? My old Navy buddy Bill published the following apples and oranges meme, later justifying it as as "interesting". I see it as part of the "Politics of Envy". Be clear   I am nor a LeBron James fan and in fact differ with him on political issues. But he's the most talented player on the planet. He has been the NBA Finals MVP with 3 different teams. He's been a league all-star every year of his career and has played in the finals for more than half of his career years.  Pay is not a measure of "fairness"; James draws paying fans to stadiums and draws eyeballs to televised events.


Megan Rapinoe, a soccer player, has made similar unequal pay pitches, and I'll let the guys at "Good Morning Liberty" debunk her nonsense. Personally I prefer watching paint dry than watching most women's sports. I can barely tolerate women's tennis. And the last time I checked, women's championships require 2 set wind while men's require 3, but women think it's only "fair" to get paid the same for a match win. 

Now that's fine. Just because I won't pay to attend a women's game or watch it on TV doesn't matter. What about the rest of the American audience?  The last time I checked far more fans watched an American men's team not to make a World Cup final than watch the women's team win the championship. What is Rapinoe going to do? Complain TV viewers are "sexist"?

I heard reality TV star Kylie Jenner is worth over a billion dollars. Is this 'fair"? Do I think I should make more than I've recently been paid? Yes, just like I'm convinced I was the best professor I've ever seen. But the market didn't think so because I got no offers at the time in a tough market. Yet other professors, not nearly as good or productive, kept their jobs. Am I envious or bitter? No. The market decides; I don't always agree with the market, but I don't let it determine my self-worth.

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Sunday, March 28, 2021

Post #5082 M: Robert E. Lee and "Woke Historians"

 Quote of the Day

Ever felt an angel's breath in the gentle breeze? 
A teardrop in the falling rain? 
Hear a whisper amongst the rustle of leaves? 
Or been kissed by a lone snowflake? 
Nature is an angel's favorite hiding place.
Carrie Latet 

Abbeville Institute Week in Review

Robert E. Lee and "Woke Historians"

McClanahan references this video in the episode above.

Political Humor

and

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Chip Bok via Townhall

Musical Interlude: #1 Hits of 1972

Neil Young, "Heart of Gold"

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Post #5081 J

 Shutdown Diary

Well, hopefully by the end of this week, I've have joined half of my 6 siblings among the fully vaccinated. 

I don't think the media have done a good job explaining the nature of vaccination benefits. To a certain extent they've implied it by pointing out vaccinated people still need to practice the regime of masking, social distancing and good hygiene. (See here for CDC guidance.) There are multiple reasons for that, including limited information about effectiveness against new variants and the fact that it takes at least a couple of weeks after vaccination for your body to produce sufficient antibodies. But some people who are vaccinated do get COVID-19, although just a tiny fraction. And obviously people who catch it may not realize they have it and can infect others. Basically vaccination boosts any natural ability to combat the virus and provably minimizes the risk of severe illness requiring hospitalization.. 

Now that we're a year into the pandemic media sources and other people are doing retrospectives. I remember I was in a job search at the beginning, and all my leads seem to die off without any follow-ups. On the other hand, in the weeks that followed, more employers seemed open to remote work, at least in the interim. That was a huge relief because I didn't know how the pandemic affected moving services. The stock crash decimated my retirement assets; I was nearly all in the stock market, and I worried that I might need to withdraw money to meet my living expenses in the short term. My COBRA payments alone were like a second rent payment. So I largely cashed out taking huge losses, in hindsight at exactly the wrong time and missed the bounce back. If I had an income at the time, I probably would have ridden it out. (I had looked into drawing unemployment, but there were technical issues, and no one from MD DLLR would follow-up.) It could, of course, been far worse; I was in the at risk population and could have caught the disease and been hospitalized. 

Bur probably the surface things that immediately come to mind are surface things like runs on facemasks and toilet paper. My oldest sister (about 14 months younger) had made facemasks for her daughters, and I asked her if she could make me one; I got it just before MD Gov. Hogan's mask mandate came into effect.

The toilet paper run/shortage lasted for weeks. Not to mention that stores like Walmart had airline security-type long wraparound lines at entrances and I recall having to wait in a long queue in the drizzling rain at Sam's Club as they let in maybe a dozen shoppers at a time. I remember gaps in freezer cases,  empty shelves, and quantity limits on meat purchases at Walmart, which I had never seen before. I remember feeling lucky at finding single toilet rolls on sale at Shoprite and later finding a multi-pack at Walmart, one of 2 or 3 left in stock where they normally had a few hundred packages on sale.

More recently I've become a more regular shopper at LIDL, a German-based grocery chain. (I may separately post about it in my nutrition/diet blog.) There are a number of reasons why I like the chain, a key one being ample supply of competitively-priced grass-fed/finished meats. It's hard to describe; it's almost like a treasure hunt because they'll run limited-time specials on all sorts of things, including non-grocery items. For example, one week they ran a special on breakfast blend coffee pods, like a 100-count box for $20 (take it from me, that's a good price). They also have some innovative coupon rewards. Now supermarket coupons are fairly common, but Lidl's are different. I remember the first one I got was like 15% off "select" beverages. I remember wondering what that meant: did they have a store brand called "Select"? Or did they mean certain brands or types of beverage? Did it include milk, juice, soda pop, bottled water? Which, if any, were not included? I know; I'm overthinking this. But I didn't find anything online, including any fine print on what was excluded. I think I let the coupon lapse unused.

I know: the reader must be thinking where the hell am I going with this? Toilet paper. So one of my coupons was a discount on select paper goods. So they had a good deal on the one multi-pack of store-brand multi-roll toilet paper, like $3 off. I can still recall when I couldn't find a roll on sale in the store. So I wondered, are they going to give me another discount on top of that? I know a number of discounts elsewhere will exclude items already on sale. Yup. The inner bargain hunter in me delighted in finding out they knocked off an additional $2 off my purchase. 

The latest stats from Washpo:  (Well, after several weeks of sharply lower numbers, a modest uptick across the board. Certainly we would expect to see a leveling off at some point. I had heard some states (including Maryland) had had at least some kind of rebound in COVID-19 cases. Hopefully the ongoing surge in the vaccinated will mitigate another surge such as what we're seeing in France and elsewhere, including an influx of more contagious variants. I do regret , given the mix of one- and two-dose vaccinations, we don't see an explicit tally of the partially vaccinated, because the first dose makes the biggest difference. As of a week ago, though, over 30% of adults have been partially vaccinated

In the past week in the U.S....
New daily reported cases rose 8.6% 
New daily reported deaths rose 6.2% 
Covid-related hospitalizations rose 0.3%
Among reported tests, the positivity rate was 5.1%.
The number of tests reported fell 35.7%  from the previous week.
Since Dec. 14, more than 140,180,000 doses of a covid-19 vaccine have been administered in the U.S.
More than 50,141,000 people have completed vaccination, or about 15.1% of the population.

Entertainment

Well, I had two alma maters in the "March Madness" NCAA  basketball championship tournament: Texas (MA) and UH (MBA, PhD). Texas had an early exit from the single elimination tournament (I think for the third time in a row) losing to long-seed Abilene Christian, which then got bounced out by UCLA.

As I write, the Cougars have a solid shot at making the Final Four, facing lower-seeded Oregon State tomorrow night, they came close to getting beaten by Rutgers. I haven't been able to see any of their games on my cable package; so on recent games I've had to wait for my Chrome page to refresh. I know Rutgers led for the most part late in the second half and was resigned to seeing the Cougars disappoint me again, like they did against NC State and Georgetown during the Phi Slama Jama days when I was in grad school. More or less a similar situation occurred against Syracuse where they blew a couple of big leads although they pulled away at the end.

I did watch my first WWE PPV (Fastlane) for the first time in a while as a Peacock Premium subscriber. This is supposed to be lead into the upcoming signature Wrestlemania PPV. I just don't understand the booking at all. For example, the two major titles, currently held by Lashley and Asuka, weren't defended. Now I think Charlotte Flair getting infected by COVID-19 probably affected the prospective plans to run her challenge to Asuka. But somehow Rhea Ripley, the recent Rumble runner-up, got a golden ticket without winning a single RAW match. The least they could have done is say hold a RAW women's rumble to decide a challenger. Or have Ripley in a no-title match with Asuka with a championship shot at stake. And for some reason they ran another feud match between former champ McIntyre and Sheamus. I don't even think it had a stipulation like putting up McIntyre's right to challenge Lashley at Wrestlemania or maybe reveal Sheamus had joined Lashley's Hurt Business faction. I thought they might write Lesnar into a 3-way at Mania. I now think they bring in Lesnar into the Wtestlemania match/aftermath to set up SummerSlam. 

Similarly I don't like how they've booked the Sasha Banks/Bianca Belair feud for the championship. Basically WWE paired them into a losing a women's tag team championship bid, with Sasha blaming the rookie for the loss. Oh, yeah, like I didn't see that one coming. The issue is that WWE didn't have one of the ladies turn heel. Like, say, having Banks abandon Belair during the match or swerve an attack on Belair, leaving her to the mercy of Jax and Shayna Baszler.  I don't know the setup: maybe Banks has her finisher on Jax, and Belair tags herself in to attempt the pin herself. 

Not crazy about another Owens/Zahn match. They've done that so many times in NXT and WWE in the past. I have to say, though, I love the narcissist/conspiracy theorist heel Zahn. as well as heel Roman Reigns.

I have to say almost anyone could tell they were going to book Daniel Bryan into the 3-way with Reigns and Edge. This gave them a way to book Edge into a heel. I don't think they book Bryan as the new champ. But this way they can book Edge as champ without weakening Reign's character.

The men's tag titles don't interest me. It seems mostly to book AJ Styles into a high-profile match and introduce the massive 7'3" bodyguard Omos into his wrestling debut. It still bothers me how they book an untested tag team into a championship match. It still smells like the old Dibiase/Virgil storyline where Omos eventually turns on Styles. You almost see this being telegraphed by Omos admitting his favorite WWE wrestler being (I think) Andre the Giant vs. Styles..

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Saturday, March 27, 2021

Post #5080 M: McClanahan on Why Secession?; Woods on the Minimum Wage; Drones and Innovation vs. Big Occupation

 Quote of the Day

The shell must break before the bird can fly.
Tennyson  

McClanahan on Why Secession?

Woods on the Minimum Wage

Drones and Innovation vs. Big Occupation

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Michael Ramirez via Townhall

Musical Interlude: #1 Hits of 1971

Harry Nilsson, "Without You"

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Post #5079 Commentary: Some Notes on Biden and His First Presser

 Voting

Just a reminder to readers: I have no dog in this fight; I'm not a Republican or a Democrat although I was nominally registered in both parties at some point in my adult life. I will point out on principle I see local control of elections as a primary Constitutional principle. I'm very wary of any federal intervention for any purpose beyond dealing with state-enforced discrimination denying an eligible citizen the right to vote. This doesn't mean that voting has to be user-friendly or convenient; there may be economy of scales in deploying election security, although as a proponent of usability, I am wary of Procrustean systems design for the convenience of bureaucrats.

But I'm listening the other day to Biden's first Presidential press conference, he's pushing for the partisan HR Voting Rights Act, and he's talking presumably the recent electoral reform act in Georgia; he says something like, "They want to close the polls at 5  PM; can you image John Doe getting off work and trying to vote. Come on, man!" Biden is either incompetent or deliberately misleading or both. There's no evidence I've seen mandating early shutdowns on Election Day, which Biden is clearly implying. What if I said this refers to the two WEEKEND days for EARLY VOTING? Certainly some businesses operate on weekends; according to this source, up to 1/3 of workers work on weekends. Not to mention there is an option for counties to expand hours to 7am-7pm. Over 80% work on weekdays. Not to mention many states, including Georgia, require some employer accommodations on Election Day itself depending on work schedule relative to poll hours. So you can certainly argue Georgia, with a variety of other restrictions, makes voting less convenient, certainly compared to pandemic 2020. But compared to Jim Crow type policies like poll tests, etc., these policies apply to voters across the board, not against one segment of citizens. (Maybe some will argue disparate effects, e.g., more blacks work on weekends, etc.)

Now of course the Democrats would have you think the Georgia reforms are all about Trump's alleged election fraud 'lies". Let's be clear: yes, many Republicans are concerned about fraud and unhappy with the razor-thin margin of Biden's clinching electoral win. But, for example, Georgia's GOP governor and Secretary of State stood behind Biden's win (to the point Trump wants to primary them next). This is not a referendum on Trump's election loss and crackpot conspiracies. I have not followed the nuances of the evidence motivating restrictions on drop boxes, limits to early election days, and the nature and extent of absentee ballots. But let me explain in my own experience with IT security, there is a clear focus on limiting the attack vector and the attack surface. For example, we might disable certain unused functionality which provides opportunities to mount a stealth attack. There are some intrinsic issues with mail balloting and chain of custody issues that are explicitly controlled for in election day balloting on site. There are risks, however minor or technical, of lost ballots. ballot substitution, ballot mishandling (rendering ballots unusable, etc. Election officials cannot certify the USPS handling of mail ballots. There could also be staffing issues in handling and certifying mailed ballots or extending voting hours beyond Election Day. There are other issues as well, for example, there could be late-breaking events that could change a voter's decision, an early voter may have passed away in the interim, etc. I also think that the election process should not be weaker than say providing IDs for banking transactions or at airport security.

It may be true that despite risks in making elections more voter-friendly, the incidents of fraud are rare and/or hard to defend or prove. I'll give an example from 8 years of university teaching as a graduate fellow and professor. I personally came across probably up to a dozen students who cheated on assignments or tests. I suspected many others but the universities had due process procedures and requirements of evidence. I don't know a single professor who caught as many. Did I simply draw the worst students to my class sections? Not likely. In past essays, I had caught one Asian (foreign) student who plagiarized literally every paragraph in his graduate class report; the only thing original may have been the title. The next semester DN, who had inherited my (other) DSS class, came to me with a student essay he said sounded "too professional"  I quickly realized it was from a classic group DSS paper by GD; guess who the student was? Yup. After that, I went to my other junior colleague RL and name-dropped  the student's name. RL froze at the mention, recalling he had him the prior semester. I asked if he had any samples of the guy's work. He said not unless the guy didn't pick up his paper at the end of the semester. Yup. He had given the student a B on the paper. I quickly gave the paper a glance and was immediately angry. Every single (unattributed) paragraph had been stitched together from an IEEE reading collection I had required in my systems analysis course. (I was somewhat amused he gave the IEEE authors a B.) RL was obsessed and asked to borrow my copy, clearly unhappy  that he had been duped. The senior professors accused me of trying to sabotage their foreign student program and of violating the student's "right to privacy" (in pursuing academic fraud). It's just I remember challenging this student in my office the earlier semester, and he was unrepentant, dismissing plagiarism as an American cultural bias.

The one thing common for all the students who I busted for cheating: they wanted to know how  I caught them. (I wouldn't say I have a photographic memory, but I have an unusually detailed one). It was obvious why: it wasn't because they realized the error of their ways; they just didn't want me catching them next time. 

Another example I've blogged about before from my graduate school days at UH: an MBA student for some reason had a desk in our doctoral student cubicle suite. The guy was having a problem with net present value problems; I had had the same finance professor who gave these ball-buster multiple choice exams.  He just couldn't pick up on the concept, and personally I didn't think he had a shot at the exams because these were the easier type problems; I had aced the course, but I worked my butt off. So after his first exam I asked how he did, expecting the worst. He said he made a 96 and that he had missed a question on purpose, to throw off the professor; he was done like in 10 minutes but waited another 20 minutes or so before turning in his paper to avoid suspicion. He later confessed that there was a small group of students who had a history of my professor's old exams and he had a tendency to reuse the same questions. The students in question knew they could only sell a small number of exams so the professor wouldn't realize what was happening and destroy their niche market.

I wouldn't have participated even if I had known about it; I just resented the fact it was unfair to the rest of us who had earned our A's the old-fashioned way. So I wasn't going to fink on my office mate, but I stopped my former professor in the hall one day and tipped him off about the black market in his old exams. His initial comment was dismissive: "How industrious of them!" He later asked me something to the effect, "What do you expect me to do about it?" I said something to the effect, "Why don't you have one of these geniuses go to the board and show their work in solving the problem?"  A few weeks later, he stopped me in the hall and said, "I see what you're saying... I'll be changing things."

The point I'm making is election fraud can happen without "experts" knowing about it and improving internal controls. If and when it happens, people who successfully breach security may want to exploit their know-how in future elections.

If and when election fraud occurs, it undermines American democracy. How successful will Georgia election reforms be? It's hard to tell, but they are limiting the attack surface, and that's a step in the right direction.  Personally, I didn't think voting in person was any riskier than a trip to the supermarket. I personally took advantage of the ability to vote by mail last year, but as I've trended more libertarian, I've become more sympathetic to Don Boudreaux's moral principles against voting. I voted for Jorgensen more as a protest against Trump and Biden. This didn't mean I endorsed all her views; for example, I'm pro-life.

HR 1, favored by Biden, is a dubiously constitutional grab bag of Democrat election policy preferences, including national mandates on state governments and campaign finance reforms. I oppose these things based on the principle of subsidiarity and the First Amendment right of anonymity. 

Biden is trying to posture himself as the apolitical avuncular voice of reason ("common-sense gun control" and other trite political rubbish), whose policies enjoy broad bipartisan support. He is nothing of the sort; he's a 47-year partisan professional political hack. He's still in his honeymoon phase and has gotten majority job approval that Trump never enjoyed but his overall approval is just a modest improvement over his election percentage.

Guns

Technically, Biden didn't say much on gun policy in his first presser, largely just paying lip service to his gun control campaign promises. But given recent mass murder incidents in Georgia and Colorado, he has commented recently in other contexts, underscoring policies like an assault weapon ban (and he proudly highlights his role in the Clinton-era ban) and the usual talking points of closing loopholes in universal background checks, etc. First, let me point out as a libertarian, I'm opposed to violations of the nonaggression principle, including gun violence and murder. My thoughts and prayers to the survivors and victim family members. Still, the mainstream media heavily saturates coverage, blurring the line between news and advocacy. Second, I'm far more concerned about the unintended effects of policy restrictions against the rights of people to defend themselves and other reasons to acquire firearms, whether it's for hunting, collections, deterrence or other politically correct reason. I take a dim view of other people interfering with my property rights as if my liberty is contingent on their approval. The figure I've heard is there are nearly 500 M firearms in America; you can even make your own with 3D printers. So the genie is out of the bottle on pipedreams on gun confiscation. and restrictions just push transactions into the black market. 

But more to the point, police power is reserved to the states in our federal system, and I oppose federal measures on the principle of subsidiarity. Not to mention Biden's claims of assault weapon ban effectiveness  are at best dubious  correlated with overall violent incident downtrends, not to mention assault weapons account for a tiny fraction of violence victims. Biden's feckless policies are more a politics of desperation, an Obama-like "we can't afford to do nothing". Just an observation here: "First, do no harm." And regulations harm liberty.

Immigration

Let me be clear: as a pro-immigration advocate, I prefer Biden's tone and policies, but his attempts to categorize a 60% surge in unescorted migrant children as little more than a seasonal pattern are disingenuous.

Filibuster

I do appreciate Biden's more moderate take on filibuster reform, unlike Trump who considered it a thorn in passing his agenda. Yes, the Constitution does not require the filibuster, but it has existed in theory in the Senate and/or the House since the Jefferson Administration. No, Obama is wrong in calling it a relic of the Jim Crow era, although it was used by the segregationist South to defer civil rights reform. For example, the Dems used it to fend off ObamaCare repeal. (Not a good thing, but I'm making a point.) As a libertarian-conservative, I'm for any speed bumps on overreaching federal policy.

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Friday, March 26, 2021

Post #5078 M: Woods on Social Media and Covid-19; Growing Up in Communist East Europe; Stop the American Madness in Yemen and Afghanistan

 Quote of the Day

It's never too late to become 
the person you might have been
George Elliot  

Woods on Social Media and Covid-19

Growing Up in Communist East Europe

Stop the American Madness in Yemen and Afghanistan

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Michael Ramirez via  Townhall

Musical Interlude: #1 Hits of 1972

Al Green, "Let's Stay Together"

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Thursday, March 25, 2021

Post #5077 M: Woods on the Green New Deal

 Quote of the Day

History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, 
by the prosecution of measures ill suited 
to the temper and genius of their people. 
The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, 
to the prejudice and oppression of another, 
is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. 
An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, 
is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy... 
These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies 
and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; 
whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, 
and all manner of connections, 
by which the whole state is weakened. 
Benjamin Franklin  

Political Humor

Woods on the Green New Deal

Choose  Life

Political Cartoon

Musical Interlude: #1 Hits of 1972

Don McLean, "American Pie"

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Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Post #5076 M: Biden's Funniest Home Videos; McClanahan on Twitter v Lee; What is Socialism?

 Quote of the Day

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that 
within me there lay an invincible summer.
Albert Camus  

Biden's Funniest Home Videos

McClanahan on Twitter v  Lee

What is Socialism?

Choose Life

Musical Interlude: #1 Hits of 1971

Melanie, "A Brand New Key". And that's a wrap on 1971.

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Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Post #5075 M: The Bad Idea of Banning Apps; COVID-19 Lockdowns; Woods on Ohio and COVID-19 Policy

 Quote of the Day

In work, the greatest satisfaction lies -
 the satisfaction of stretching yourself, 
using your abilities and making them expand, 
and knowing that you have accomplished something 
that could have been done only by your unique apparatus. 
This is really the center of life, 
and those who never orient themselves in this direction 
are missing more than they ever know.
Kenneth Alsop  

The Bad Idea of Banning Apps

COVID-19 Lockdowns

Woods on Ohio and COVID-19 Policy

Choose Life

Musical Interlude: #1 Hits of the 1971

Sly and the Family Stone, "Family Affair"

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Post #5074 Rant of the Day: Incivility and the Passing of Rush Limbaugh

[I started on this post about  a month back.]

I have never really listened to talk radio, I have a tag on "media conservatives" which I consider a pejorative (sometimes I also refer to the "pop conservative" classification). I'm probably more familiar with Sean Hannity when for a while I followed FNC primetime several years back  Occasionally Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin would make guest appearances on Hannity or other FNC programming. I did use to pay more attention to partisan politics in the earlier years of the blog.

To be honest, I wasn't ever really a Rush Limbaugh fan--in fact, I never listened to his daily broadcast, even once. How I came to know about Limbaugh was when I worked as a software developer contractor to ISSC, an IBM subsidiary in Irving, TX after leaving academia in a recession in the early 90's.  We could plug into FM while we worked on our computer programming assignments; I'll never forget: this soft rock/adult contemporary station I listened to was suddenly changing forma to talk or whatever, and they left the air with the most bizarre way: playing the Eagles' "Hotel California" on an endless loop. Let me tell you, as much as I love the Eagles' music, "Hotel California" loses its charm after you've heard it 33 times in a row; I didn't intend to listen to it 33 times in a row; they never announced what they were doing, and I was sure someone would change the song any minute now.  To this day, I cringe at hearing the opening notes to the song.

Now we APL programmer/analysts are a weird group of characters, and this quiet older geek mostly kept to himself, but every few minutes he would start chuckling hysterically. What the hell was he listening to? Rush Limbaugh. Now he, a pro-choice conservative, didn't always agree with Limbaugh on issues, but he always found him entertaining. Enough so that I started watching Rush's half-hour syndicated show (early evening in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area). I remember that he was battling with Madonna for #1 on the NYT bestseller with Madonna's sex book (with nude self photos). He made some sexually suggestive jokes about their positions on the chart (which I'm  sure Madonna wouldn't have been amused by; I'm sure that politically they differed. (I don't know much of her politics, but conservative women don't usually publish personal nudes, and she supported Biden's election). It was sophomoric, the kind of thing you might hear in a high school locker room. Hi program introduced me to the popular  Christmas music group Mannheim Steamroller. I don't know what his strategy was for the TV show--to expand his audience beyond his daily radio show, etc., but I still wasn't inclined to listen to his regular radio show or buy one of his books.  However, when I moved to the Chicago area in 1993 for my first DBA gig, I wasn't motivated enough to find the local station broadcasting it, and Limbaugh dropped the show in 1996. I don't think he liked the time slots he was getting, etc.

I never came to conservatism through the Joe Six Pack nationalist/populist perspective like  Rush Limbaugh. I started my conservatism through starting on my MBA at UH--and I never heard a single professor, economics or otherwise, express a single political opinion, and I was in business school. I had begun to lose my faith in Big Government;. There were things that always remained constant; I was a fiscal conservative (in fact, part of the reason I was attracted to Carter was his zero-based budgeting proposal), pro-life, pro-immigration even during my salad days. I was born an Air Force brat and worked for the Navy--but I was silently against Vietnam War and skeptical of our meddling abroad. I was the kind of conservative who watched Bill Buckley's Firing Line and read George Will's columns, who preferred the Wall Street Journal to Fox News Channel. Rush Limbaugh and I shared a common enemy: the Left. No doubt Rush would have little appreciation for my more conceptual approach as a conservative nerd of sorts. As an ally of sorts, I found him embarrassing at times: he backed NAFTA (good) but his arguments made me wince. 

An exhaustive comparison/contrast on the issues is beyond the scope of this post. There's a part of me that loves the fact that one of my favorite free market economists, the recently passed Walter Williams, was an occasional guest host. But to give a few examples, I didn't like his support for the death penalty, American interventionist policy in the Gulf Region, war on drugs, and immigration restrictions.

Perhaps I should have realized  that Rush's politically incorrect sense of humor particularly offended humorless Leftists; still, I couldn't believe the jubilation on Twitter at the news that Limbaugh had been diagnosed with late-stage cancer. It should have prepared me for the supersized uncivil reaction at his passing just a few months later. Leftists don't have a clue this kind of toxic incivility does not win friends and influence people. I may have disagreed with Rush on many things, but I respect his talent and connection with his audience and the grief experienced by family, friends and fans.

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Monday, March 22, 2021

Post #5073 M: Unions Invade Private Property; Woods/Malice on SCOTUS; McClanahan on Cleveland and the Texas Seed Bill

 Quote of the Day

It is less important to redistribute wealth than it is to redistribute opportunity.
Arthur H. Vandenberg 

Unions Invade Private Property

Woods/Malice on SCOTUS

McClanahan on Cleveland and the Texas Seed Bill

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Bob Gorrell via Townhall

Musical Interlude: #1 Hits of 1971

Isaac Hayes, "Theme From Shaft"

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Post #5072 Social Media Digest

 Twitter

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Sunday, March 21, 2021

Post #5071 M: McClanahan on Unconstitutional HR 1; COVID-19 Policies and Cancel Culture; Woods on Christianity and the Market Economy

 Quote of the Day

The system is that there is no system. 
That doesn’t mean we don’t have process.
 Apple is a very disciplined company, 
and we have great processes. 
ut that’s not what it’s about. 
Process makes you more efficient. 
But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways 
or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, 
or because they realized something that shoots holes 
in how we’ve been thinking about a problem. 
It’s ad hoc meetings of six people 
called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever 
and who wants to know what other people think of his idea. 
And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things 
to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track 
or try to do too much. 
We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, 
but it’s only by saying no 
that you can concentrate on the things 
that are really important.
Steve Jobs  

McClanahan on Unconstitutional HR 1

COVID-19 Policies and Cancel Culture

Woods on Christianity and the Market Economy

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Chip Bok via Townhall

Musical Interlude: #1 Hits of 1971

Cher, "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves"

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