Contra Mozilla

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Obamacare Explained

It occurs to me that the AT&T "It's Not Complicated" commercials make an excellent critique of the Obamacare Website:



Really, also the whole boondoggle with the premium increases:




Then there's the question of why there are fewer options under Obamcare. Is it better to have more options (e.g. to not get your old plan terminated), or the single-payer option which Obamacare is heading towards:


Even some of the "retro" commercials work:


Somebody should make a parody version of these, seriously:

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Quick Link: Winners and Losers--But Mostly, Losers

Ross Douthat on the winners and losers of Obamacare:
"The wreck of HealthCare.gov matters most of all because of what it means for the underlying workability of the policy, but it also matters in the short term because it’s preventing a pro-Obamacare coalition from coalescing among the law’s beneficiaries: Without a working interface, the upside of the reform remains invisible to a lot of people even as the downside goes out in cancellation notices and rate increases.... 
But “rate shock” seems different, because premium increases in the individual market creates a set of Obamacare losers within a group of people who weren’t obviously winners to begin with. A couple like the Harrises of Fullerton, California, for instance, making $80,000 a year and buying on the individual market in a high cost-of-living state, were already disadvantaged relative to the millions Americans who get insurance through an employer and benefit from the employer tax break; now they’ll be paying an extra $1500 a year as well (albeit, yes, perhaps for more comprehensive coverage).... 
And to dig back into the position where I do strongly disagree with Cohn’s perspective, what makes this setup potentially more perverse is that it raises rates most sharply on precisely those Americans who up until now were doing roughly what we should want more health insurance purchasers to do: Economizing, comparison shopping, avoiding paying for coverage they don’t need, and buying a level of insurance that covers them in the event of a true disaster while giving them a reason not to overspend on everyday health expenses. 
If we want health inflation to stay low and health care costs to be less of an anchor on advancement, we should want more Americans making $50,000 or $60,000 or $70,000 to spend less upfront on health insurance, rather than using regulatory pressure to induce them to spend more. And seen in that light, the potential problem with Obamacare’s regulation-driven “rate shock” isn’t that it doesn’t let everyone keep their pre-existing plans. It’s that it cancels plans, and raises rates, for people who were doing their part to keep all of our costs low."

Obamacare turns a few of the previous winners into losers, which is unfortunate enough, but worse still it turns some of the previous losers into bigger losers. Thanks to the web debacle, there just aren't that many "winners" yet under Obamacare, and in fact more people have lost insurance than gained it. Actually, more people have lost their insurance in just three states than have successfully applied for it in all 50. Worse, this may actually be a part of Obama's own plans for Obamacare, and he certainly did know that it would be likely, and it is clear that he is lying about (and trying to cover up) the effects of Obamacare. We can only hope that people remember this next November.




Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Quick Links: How Far Is Far Enough

Apparently, some city officials in a cemetery in Colorado have refused to allow the name "Jesus" to be placed on a preacher's wife's gravestone:
Adams said her mother-in-law was passionate about her Christian faith and her family. Her final wish was to have her cemetery marker engraved with the ichthys, a symbol of early Christianity. She also wanted the word ‘Jesus’ written inside the fish. 
“At first they told us it wouldn’t fit,” Adams told me. “But after we kept pushing them the cemetery director told us that it might offend somebody. They weren’t going to allow it.” 
The family was devastated and asked the cemetery director to reconsider. He refused...city officials kept telling them that people would be offended by the name of Christ.

The name of Jesus has been banned... over this woman's dead body.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Quick Link: What Am I Not Supposed to Judge

"Judge not, lest you be judged; condemn not, lest you be condemned." Yes, but what am I not supposed to judge, since elsewhere I read: "By their fruits you shall know them"? The answers might be: a person's "heart"/intentions; the state of his soul; his circumstances and struggles; or his knowledge of the sinfulness of his actions. On the other hand, the action itself must absolutely by "judged," as in evaluated: this is a good action, this is a bad action, this was a good deed, this was a vile sin. A man's "works" are his visible fruits, and we are instructed to pay at least some attention to these.

Monday, October 21, 2013

Quick Link: Why Government Spending Increases

Rod Dreher explains in a short post why the federal budget and the debt ceiling keep increasing. The answer is simple: the budget's discretionary spending can be divided into four parts, Social Security, Medicaid, Military, and Everything Else. Few people want to see cuts in the Big Three (personally, I'd like to see both SS and Medicaid (and other healthcare programs) get the axe, and am ambivalent about the military), and it seems like people over the age of 50 (read: likely voters) get especially irate whenever a suggestion is made to make any changes to either Medicaid of Social Security. A few people clamor for cuts to the military's budget, but even this doesn't seem  like a big enough bloc of people to effect change there. So, we're left with Everything Else, which is largely the part of the government which went on shut-down.

Truth in Advertising: Obamacare Hotline Edition

Apparently, the Obamacare help hotline is 1-800-318-2596, that's 1-800-F1UCKYO. And that's exactly what the helpline (and really, Obamacare) is designed to do.

That is all.

Shutdown Theater and the Politics of Inflicting the Maximum Misery

One of the miscellaneous uncompleted posts I wrote at some point. Might as well publish it now while the shutdown is still fresh in everyone's minds, even if we have more information now than we did at the time of initial writing.
 
President Obama--not the House, not even the Senate, but Obama and his administration--was apparently picking and choosing what gets closed and what stays open during the #Shutdown. So while we might blame the shutdown on the Republicans in the House (for starting it by refusing to compromise on Obamacare), or the Democrats in the Senate (for keeping it going by also refusing to compromise on much of anything), it's worth noting that Obama is the one who is deciding to make the shutdown as painful as possible. This at times is involving shutting down parks which are not even normally funded (or staffed) by the government, and perhaps doing the same to "government" services provided by third parties. And that is really the big difference between this shutdown, and the previous 17 which occurred under previous Administrations/Congresses since 1976.

I'm curious to see what, if any, impact this has on the popularity of the President, as well as both chambers of Congress [bad for both]. I ask this in the context of the president's approach--maximizing suffering for everyone during the shutdown--as a tactic for ending the shutdown.

My suspicion remains that everyone will simply continue to blame whichever party he favors less--that has been my observation so far, anyway. There are two ways to internalize this. The first is to argue that Obama wasn't picking and choosing, that his hands were tied. This was the official stance of the administration. The other is to argue that Obama was picking and choosing, and that it did in fact increase short-term suffering, but that he did so to force the Republicans' hand (which ultimately, predictably, happened). The line of reasoning is that this is a small short-term sacrifice in order to make a larger long-term gain: ostensibly, the reopening of the fraction of the government which was shut-down, but realistically a victory for bloated bureaucracy and government of gargantuan proportions.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Seven Quick Takes Friday (vol. 6)--Lots About Football


--1--
Since I've been talking about college football-related stuff anyway, here's my thoughts on the play-off for next year: it's not necessarily going to be an improvement. Sure, we move to 4 teams rather than 2, but there have been some years during which those four teams were (arguably) not the best 4 in the country. If we went based on BCS ranking, more often than not, the four picked are certainly not the best four: see, for example, 2008 when the BCS ranking would have given us Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, and Alabama but left out USC (which finished 12-1 and ranked #3), Penn State (which finished 11-2, with one loss being the blowout loss to USC in the bowl game), and Utah (finished undefeated, included a sound beating of...Alabama in the bowl game), not to mention the Texas Teach team which at that point was also part of the 3-way tie in the Big 12. Another year which stands out is 2007, in which we would have had (presumably) Ohio State, LSU, Oklahoma, and Virginia Tech, but not the West Virginia team which drubbed OU, nor the Kansas team which beat Virginia Tech in its bowl game, nor the USC team which was left out of the championship (against LSU, which most of the country wanted to see anyway) thanks to a loss to Stanford, nor the Missouri team whose two losses both came to OU but which beat Kansas, nor the Georgia team which ended up ranked second.
Unbeaten? Check. Beat several ranked opponents? Check. No unbeaten teams from power conferences? Check. Played for or split the national championship that year? No check.

One might argue that this is a relatively anomalous pair of years, but I think these would be the rule rather than the exceptions. For example, does the committee take 11-1 Oregon or the 11-2 Stanford team which beat them, or both (leaving out 11-1 Kansas State, plus 10-2 LSU/A&M/Florida/Georgia, or the Lousville Team which beat that Florida team)? Or after the 2000 season, in which Washington, Oklahoma (the eventual champion), Miami, Florida State, and Oregon State, and arguably Virginia Tech all have a strong case for playing in the play-offs.


--2--
The counter-argument is that in even these cases I named, it's better to have 4 teams than 2, and besides, there are years like 2003 and 2004 (USC-Oklahoma-LSU/Auburn). Why go to 8 teams when most years there aren't 8 "worthy teams?" Indeed, there are the occasional years like this when 4 is better than 2--but can we really claim that 6-8 would not be better than 4? In 2004, for example, we'd have both Texas and Call in the playoffs with 6. In 2007 and 2008 we'd get all of the realistic contenders. As for having "unworthy teams" make it into the mix: I'd rather a quick out in round 1 in which #1 destroys #8 * than watch as #5 gets left out, given that more often than not, #5 has as strong a case as #4 or even #'s1-3 (that 2008 USC team probably would have mauled either Florida or Oklahoma, and the Utah team of that same year did maul Alabama).
A split national championship--just like every other year before the BCS.

The problem with the BCS is that it promised us the 2 tops teams would play, but then failed to convince many fans that the two teams playing really were the top 2 (sometimes, that either team was in the top 2). Yet, everybody mostly accepts the outcome that the winner of the BCS championship game is the national champion, case closed (the sole real exception is the AP/BCS split championship between USC and LSU). Adding two more teams give the illusion of closing the case, when in fact it will tend to make more teams feel more strongly about being "left out" in a given year. In essence, it leaves us in the same place as the BCS leaves us: picking a champion the same way as before (we've just changed whose vote counts in the polls), albeit with games between the "top" 4 teams rather than 2.


*As is the BCS championship game has been close year after year. More often than not, we get games like last year's and not games like USC-Texas.

--3--
Which brings up a third take on this subject: how would I have set up a play-off? If we're going to stick to 4 teams, I would have placed the explicit requirement that only conference champions are eligible. Yes, this leaves out a handful of "worthy" teams (Texas 2008, Oregon State 2000, Oklahoma 2003...), but it is at least somewhat objective. At least we don't ever get stuck with 4 teams from 2 conferences, or worse, 3 from the same conference. The committee then decides which 4 conferences likely produce the best team.

But 4 teams is not actually my favored schedule. My actual favorite version of a play-off, and one which has I think 0% chance of ever occurring, would be a variable teams play-off. The committee is allowed to pick between 4-8 teams, with 2-3 rounds as necessary. The pairing would be as usual (1 vs 8, 2 vs 7, 3 vs 6, etc), but any unpaired team gets a by (so, if 7 teams play, # 1 gets a bye, if 6 then so does #2... and if 4, then only need 2 rounds). In a three-round playoff, the first round is hosted by the higher seeded teams.  This means that no really deserving teams get left out (#9 has a much weaker case than #5 in any given year), but also maintains the best teams in any given year. Thus, if there are four clear favorites (e.g. 2011's LSU-Alabama-Stanford-Oklahoma State), then there is no need to add in teams 5-8. On the other hand, if we have a year in which seemingly every team loses once, there is room for 8. Of course, the drawback comes in years when there are 3 clear favorites--do we play 8 teams to give no unfair advantages, or 4 because that's the minimum, and then hope that the #4 seed loses early?

--4--
Since I didn't get these off on Friday and have therefore seen a few scores, and since we're on football anyway: how about those upsets? Auburn* over A&M will make a lot of folks round these parts feel sad, but now that A&M has two losses, fans of other leagues should start to root for them to win (especially against now 6-0 Mizzou). Also, that Oregon win over Tennessee is looking better and better as the Vols dispatched South Carolina and played Georgia close. Louisville is now officially out of the mix (barring a rash of upsets--I think they get passed by 1-loss teams from any major conference). And there are a few potential BCS-busters still standing: Fresno, N. Illinois, and Houston, though Fresno hasn't kicked off as of the time of my writing this. Those who are suffering SEC-fatigue should root first for your own team, and then for Oregon, or (for the Huskies and Beavers fans) for Florida Sate/Miami/Clemson. Sorry Baylor, but I don't think you have a very good shot of winning the whole thing--though stranger things have happened.

*Speaking of which, suddenly the PAC-12 looks even strong against the SEC: Washington State lost a close one at Auburn, but is sitting second from the bottom of the Pac-12 North. Auburn is now in second in the SEC West.


--5--
Technically, as an Oregon State fan, I should be rooting against the ducks, and as a Texas fan, I should also be rooting for Baylor to lose at least one game (to UT). Actually, the game I most want to see is Oregon vs Baylor. I think that the best chance for this to happen would be either Stanford's running the table or an upset in the PAc-12 championship game, and either a 1-loss Baylor team's winning the Big 12 or two teams from power conferences' (Ohio State, Clemson/FSU/Miami, Alabama/Missouri) going undefeated to play in the national championship with an undefeated Baylor team. Suffice to say that I find the former more likely than the latter. Unfortunately, the college football gods hate the fans, so much as we want either Oregon/Alabama or Oregon/Baylor, my more cynical self suspects that we will get neither (e.g. an Oregon-FSU national championship, or FSU/Alabama with Baylor suffering two upsets, etc).


--6--
Advice to my young assistant, who has a frustrating roommate: surviving a bad roommate makes you a better person. Someday, if you get married, you will have to learn to put up with all of the annoying habits of your spouse. Your children may add a few habits of their own, and they probably won't leave you alone to do your own thing, either. Moreover, you will be a happier person for it.

--7--

Meanwhile, in Russia:

-----

Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler at her Conversion Diary blog.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Yep

A picture worth a thousand words.


And before people go crying "Photoshop, photoshop": sometimes photoshop tells a truer story.


Quick Links: On The Obamacare Website

I have two quick links on the ill-conceived ACA's website roll-out. The first is mostly a PSA of sorts: John McAfee, founder of the anti-virus software company, says that this website is "a hacker's wet dream." So maybe it's a good thing that the site doesn't work, since this might help dissuade people from entering all of their personal information onto the web for every hacker and identity thief to peruse at their leisure. The second is from Forbes, which is asking whether perhaps the websites troubles are a feature and a deliberate one at that: the crashes are to distract people from the true costs of Obamacare:
A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away.... 
The federal government’s decision to force people to apply before shopping, Weaver and Radnofsky write, “proved crucial because, before users can begin shopping for coverage, they must cross a busy digital junction in which data are swapped among separate computer systems built or run by contractors including CGI Group Inc., the healthcare.gov developer, Quality Software Services Inc., a UnitedHealth Group Inc. unit; and credit-checker Experian PLC. If any part of the web of systems fails to work properly, it could lead to a traffic jam blocking most users from the marketplace.” 
Jay Angoff, a former federal official at the agency that oversees the exchange, told the Journal that he was surprised by the decision. “People should be able to get quotes” without entering all of that information upfront... 
Think about it. It’s quite possible that much of this disaster could have been avoided if the Obama administration had been willing to be open with the public about the degree to which Obamacare escalates the cost of health insurance. If they had, then a number of the problems with the exchange’s software architecture would never have arisen. But that would require admitting that the “Affordable Care Act” was not accurately named.
To be blunt, the premium hikes are their to distract people from the true costs of Obamacare.

Sex and Religion

The title could as easily be "Sex and Irreligion," but many atheists aren't merely irreligious but rather anti-religious, not without God but rather against God. In any case, the Daily Mail has an article claiming that atheists have "better sex" than religious believers who are "plagued with guilt."

Of course, the headline is misleading (aren't they always), since the first line of the article is that "Atheists have far better sex lives than religious people who are plagued with guilt during intercourse and for weeks afterwards, researchers have found" (emphasis mine). I would think that this is a no-brainer: if you are feeling guilty while having intercourse, and then continue to feel guilty afterwards, that would tend to make the actual sex a bit less "good."


Drilling deeper into the article, we read that this comes from a study "Sex and Secularism." According to the Mail, the study found that
"But devoutly religious people rated their sex lives far lower than atheists. They also admitted to strong feelings of guilt afterwards.

Strict religions such as Mormons ranked highest on the scale of sexual guilt. Their average score was 8.19 out of 10. They were followed closely behind by Jehovah's Witness, Pentecostal, Seventh Day Adventist, and Baptist.
Catholics rated their levels of sexual guilt at 6.34 while Lutherans came slightly lower at 5.88 . In contrast, atheists and agnostics ranked at 4.71 and 4.81 respectively."

This interesting, but needs some clarification: what, exactly, is meant by having sex?
Of people raised in very religious homes, 22.5 per cent said they were shamed or ridiculed for masturbating  compared with only 5.5 percent of people brought up in the least religious homes.

Some 79.9 per cent of people raised in very religious homes said they felt guilty about a specific sexual activity or desire while 26.3 per cent of those raised in secular homes did.

Worryingly, children raised in strongly religious homes were more likely to get their sex education from pornography, as they were not confident enough to talk with their parents.

However, there was some good news for religious groups. People who had lost their belief and became atheists reported a significant improvement in sexual satisfaction.
So, apparently, the study is not just looking at sex, but rather is looking at sexual activities which various religions consider illicit or sinful. We don't know if any of this was sex within the bounds of marriage or not--a study which (if the last paragraph is indicative) is meant to promote secularism may deliberately blur the lines on issues like fornication or adultery; then again, they may not (the Mail doesn't seem to be interested in reporting this detail).
I have a few observations and comments concerning this article. First, I still stand by the question of whether it matters, in the long run, who has better sex. Back when US News and World Report had their own article stating that Catholics apparently have better sex, this was my reaction:
When a study like this is used to pitch conversion to Catholicism, it's somewhat akin to saying, "We can't know whether the Catholic Faith is true or not, we can't even know whether the Catholic Religion is good or not, but you should still join the Catholic Church because you'll likely have better sex. In other words, join the Church because it feels good!" "Because it feels good" is not sufficient grounds for making major moral decisions, and this is the very attitude against which Christianity in general (and Catholicism in particular) has to contend. This attitude is, in short, rather antithetical to a religion which claims to be followers of the Truth.... I will grant that no apologia alone can convert a person, and few can even get most people to stop and consider conversion, or even to consider simple fairness apart from conversion. But we live in an age where science is king (along with Sports and Sex), and where "Science" is invoked as a stick with which to beat the Church: namely, "The Church is against science and impedes scientific progress while supporting junk science." Therefore, when a study of dubious scientific quality is invoked as reason to convert to the Church, and when it is subsequently demolished by scientific-minded people from outside the Church, it reinforces in those peoples' minds their own chief (stated) objection to the Church.

My point, then, is that science can be an aide to (but not a cause of) evangelism, but only if done right. Studies like this might make a man stop to consider other claims of the Church--if the study is done well.
The shoe is on the other foot, and my reaction hasn't changed: this is a rather lampoon-able approach to prosylitization, whether employer by Christians or by atheists. It basically says, "believe this because it's fun, follow this because you'll feel good!" rather than "believe this because it is the truth, and follow this way of life because it is good."

My second observation is that the Daily Mail and quite probably the authors of the original study have ignored that there is quite a bit of diversity which falls under the heading of and self-identifies as "religion". Mormonism, form example, is not recognizably a Christian religion inasmuchas there claims about Who Jesus Is are not really the same as the claim of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, or traditional Protestantism. They're not even really comparable to the older schisms and heresies that survived to today and are recognizably Christian (e.g. the Copts). They do not have the concept of the Holy Trinity, which is itself so fundamental to Christianity that it is invoked during baptisms in all of these actually Christian Churches, denominations, and sects.

Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-Day Adventists are even more removed.

Now, I grant that these are theological differences rather than moral differences, but the morality comes from combining the theology with the religion's anthropology (at least in "orthodox" or "mere" Christianity). Thus, for example, in the Catholic teaching of the Theology of the Body, the marital act is a symbol of the Trinity, and hence the two become one flesh and are also open to the generation of a third [1]. There are Eastern Orthodox and Protestant variations of this same theme, but I have never heard of a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness version of the theology of the body. Given that the Jehovah's Witnesses explicitly reject the Trinity and that they also have some Gnostic leanings, I would be more surprised than not to discover that they ever develop a theology of the body.

A corollary of this observation is that the people conducting this survey probably don't distinguish between those who are active practitioners of their religion and those who are not. This distinction is often ignored by secularists, which I've always found somewhat strange. It's as if they believe that merely identifying with some religion makes one instantly be affected by every one of that religion's tenets. How these tenets get a hold of a person by merely identifying with that religion is beyond me [2].

My final observation (for now) is that this study and the Daily Mail article does pose one legitimate challenge to people of faith. To whit: "Worryingly, children raised in strongly religious homes were more likely to get their sex education from pornography, as they were not confident enough to talk with their parents." I can't speak to the experience of every religious home, but I have observed that many religious homes actually conflate Christian (including Catholic) sexual morality with prudery--which is the exact same conflation that the Daily Mail is all-too-happy to make as well.

Sexual morality then becomes a matter or self-repression, a set of rules to follow on pain of sin--and nothing more. The religion may have derived these rules from a combination of theology and anthropology, but the actual approach of the religious to the rules is often morality divorced from anthropology: call it ethics, call it rules, but it has the effect of being a list of "do this, don't do that" without any acknowledgement of the human difficulty attached to the moral law [3].

Part of the rules is apparently never trying to understand the rules. It's the law, and that's that: which has the consequence of seeming like a set of rules handed down by a demanding (and possibly capricious) God rather than being a set of rules established for our own good by a loving God. Therefore, children growing up don't turn to their parents (let alone to their pastors) with questions about sex and sexuality; which means that the turn instead to their peers, to pornography, and to Planned Parenthood for advice. Almost all of this advice will be detrimental to sexual health, to morality, and to sound sexual relationships.

The challenge, therefore, faced by parents (and to a lesser extent, by pastors, who should be there to support the parents as needed) is this: how will you instill sound moral teachings (sexual or otherwise) such that they still are able to come to you with questions and concerns? Because this article gets one thing right which needs to actually be addressed: the approach of the vast majority of Christian households to sexual morality falls well short of what our children need. It is a problem if they are turning to these "alternative sources" for learning about sex and sexuality--the advice they will receive there will undermine whatever moral standards you set for them, whether based on the Bible, the Catechism, or even simple common sense.

Parents, it is your responsibility to help form your children in the faith, your responsibility to be their primary educators. This means instilling in them a sense of morality and of virtue. Concerning sexuality, your goals should be chastity and purity of heart, not merely abstinence and avoidance. Abstinence may be a part of chastity--before and even at times during marriage--but it is not the whole.



---Footnotes---
[1] I'm not being overly precise in my terminology here, because I am writing with time constraints.

[2] Perhaps the secularists believe in a sort of magic after all.

[3] Sometimes the pendulum swings too far the other way, and the entire emphasis is on the difficulty to the point where the moral law gets discarded. This is also wrong.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Go Figure

Go figure that the day after I write a post speculating as to whom Mack Brown's replacement might be, the Longhorns would thoroughly beat down Oklahoma. I'm saved by not ever actually predicting otherwise--in the asterisk note in take number 5, I wrote "[Mack Brown's firing/resignation/retirement] is very likely even if he doesn't get blown off the field tomorrow. I think he only keeps the job at 10-3 with a close loss tomorrow or 9-4 with a win tomorrow and no more blowout losses. Since he already has 2 losses, this means that if he loses tomorrow in close fashion, he cannot lose again (including bowl game) for the remainder of the season. On the other hand, if he wins tomorrow, he can lose two more games at some point (Baylor, Tech, upset, or bowl)."

I'm actually kind of wondering if even this is too generous, though. Certainly, if the Longhorns, currently 4-2, finish 10-3 with the only additional loss coming in the Fiesta Bowl, he's probably still safe. If he loses one more along the way but then wins the bowl game, the same is true, especially if nobody finishes unbeaten in conference play for the Big 12 (he will then have technically tied as conference champions, plus a bowl win over presumably an SEC team in the Cotton Bowl). And certainly if he wins out and finishes 11-2, he'll be safe to stay here.

However, I get the impression that another 9-4 finish will be grounds for his retirement (perhaps to take over DeLoss Dodd's job ad AD). There is a segment of the fan base at Texas which has never liked him, and which was loud even during the run of 10-3 and 11-2 seasons. For one, a number of fans who remember the Major Applewhite days (as quarterback, not as coach) still hold him to blame that Texas did not win the national title or at least the Big 12 tittle in 2001--because he alternated Applewhite (the fan favorite) with Chris Simms (the big-name recruit) and thus lost the Big 12 Championship game to Colorado. Some of these fans continued to express frustration with Brown even during the 2006 season (the year after the Longhorns won it all), and the 2008-2009 seasons (for which UT's combined record was 25-2, with one of the 2 being the national championship game in which they replaced their best and most important player with their worst player). Suffice it to say that the fans themselves may not be satisfied even with 11-2.

And for that reason, I suspect that Mack Brown may decide to retire/replace Dodds at the season's end even if the Longhorns finish 10-3 or 11-2 (still not a guaranteed thing).

And as an aside, it was amusing to watch as a number of the highly touted replacement for Mack Brown struggled this last weekend. Charlie Strong won, but not in the blowout expected on Thursday night. David Shaw and my darkhorse Pat FitzGerald (of Northwestern) both lost. And Art Briles' Baylor team won but ugly, after suffering problems from...run defense.

Friday, October 11, 2013

Seven Quick Takes Friday (vol. 5): Passing Thoughts

Update: Before you read the rest of these, I'm noticing that there are a lot more people reading this post than normal, more even than normal for a 7 Quick Takes Friday post (I usually get a bump for those because an external link exists on Mrs. Fulwiler's site). Out of curiosity, what is drawing so many readers to this post in particular? Football, Star Wars, the political jokes, the complaint about academia, or random chance? Comments are open.


--1--
I worked 75 hours last week for this?
On academia: If I am good enough to work in academia, then I don't think they deserve me. This is especially true concerning the big research institutions, which largely treat the students like dirt, and in particular like the dirt which needs to be shoveled aside to reach buried treasure. The expectation, these days, seems to be that one should first get a Ph.D. and then do some postdocs, before finally fighting and clawing one's way up the academic ladder to tenure. Once upon a time, this might have made some sense, back when a Ph.D. was a 4-5 year thing and when the typical would-be professor underwent 1 2-year postdoc. Now the Ph.D.'s are (in my field) 7-8 (and even 9) years, with 2-3 postdoc lasting 2-3 years each (and in different location). It's therefore entirely possible that a person may be 40 years old before finally starting his career as a professor, after the sacrifice of very low pay and very long hours.

I typically work 14-18 hour days during my beam time, and ~10-11 hour days during "off" weeks. This supposedly continues with a postdoc, with the difference being that one's salary is now $40k/year rather than $20k/year. The alternate route is the adjunct professorship, which is every bit as bad on the salary (I don't know as much about the hours involved). It's one thing to be in a state of part-time employment, so that one can at least enjoy the extra time off (though I doubt there are many part-time workers who wouldn't rather be full-time); it's another thing entirely to be paid as if part-time, and then worked as if overtime.

--2--
My wife has started calling the worse of the two parties "Damn-ocrats," a fitting name for their party of Obama and Pelosi and Reid (or, more locally, of Wendy Davis). Thus, we seem to have a choice each year between two parties: Damnocrats and Republican'ts.

--3--
Arguably the most entertaining (if sophomoric) #shutdown theater show I've seen yet is the site urging you to drunk-dial Congress.

--4--
Art Briles (Baylor) seems to be a name I keep hearing for the next UT coach, with David Shaw (Stanford) a close second. Of course, many fans seem to think that Nick Saban would be the best choice. Well, yes, he would, but what reason does Nick Saban possibly have to come here? Some people have suggested he might do it just to prove that he can win bin at another school. I wonder if these people are forgetting that he has already proved this: he coached LSU to a national championship (albeit shared split with USC, the AP's champion) before leaving for the NFL, having mixed success there, and then going to Alabama (3 of the last 4 championships). So I'm not seeing what Saban gains from going to Texas. If anything, he might try the NFL again, but I doubt even that.


--5--
FWIW, I think that Shaw would be the best of reasonably likely choices, but that he's not likely going to leave Stanford (it is his alma mater). After that, the next best might actually be to stick it out for another season with Mack Brown in the hopes that Chip Kelly returns to coaching college football. Art Briles has done reasonably well at Baylor, and would not be a bad option (plus, would likely remove Baylor as a rival), but really wouldn't be my top choice. He's been reasonably successful, but not phenomenally so. Charlie Strong would also be an interesting choice (though I dislike his complaining about racism as a factor for his not becoming Florida's head coach--Urban Meyer wasn't exactly a failure now, was he?). And though Louisville hasn't faced an especially tough slate aside from their dismantling of Florida in the Sugar Bowl, they have been a reasonably solid team last year and continue to do well this year.

Kevin Sumlin would be interesting, but I doubt that he'll leave A&M for their rival (former rival?) and think he'll more likely get an offer from USC if Orgeron doesn't pan out (for the same reason, I actually don't think Briles is overly likely--though others disagree). Pat Fitgerald (of Northwestern) would be a decent dark horse choice (his resume is roughly comparable to Art Briles'), as would Chris Peterson (if they can convince him to leave Boise State). Mark Helfrich would be intriguing, but I suspect that he's staying with Oregon. And I can't thik of any other college head coaches that are reasonably likely to leave (e.g. the coaches at Ohio State or LSU or Michigan or Florida State, etc are probably not going to leave one "big name"/"big brand" school for another), and I am not as much up to par on the assistants. All of this assumes, of course, that Mack Brown is done for*. Perhaps DeLoss Dodd's retirement is so that Mack Brown can take over as AD, thus clearing the way for a new football coach at UT.

But will Brown be good at hiring new coaches? Perhaps, as some of his coaching picks have been good. On the other hand, I question why Dodds and Brown didn't pursue bringing back Gene Chizik as defensive coordinator.

*This is very likely even if he doesn't get blown off the field tomorrow. I think he only keeps the job at 10-3 with a close loss tomorrow or 9-4 with a win tomorrow and no more blowout losses. Since he alread has 2 losses, this means that if he loses tomorrow in close fashion, he cannot lose again (including bowl game) for the remainder of the season. On the other hand, if he wins tomorrow, he can lose two more games at some point (Baylor, Tech, upset, or bowl).

--6--
If you have not watched Star Wars, you should skip the remaining takes. There are spoilers. Neither of my assistants this semester has seen any actual Star Wars movies. The younger one said that she saw The Phantom Menace as a small child and enjoyed it, but that's as close as either have come to watching any of the actual Star Wars movies. Therefore, I have been presented with an opportunity to test out one suggested viewing order (which I'm told is called the "machete" order: spoilers alert if you haven't seen them yet), and was first suggested to me by one of my classmates at my high school reunion. The idea behind the machete order is that the story is about Luke Skwalker; George Lucas has stated that the actual story is about Anakin Skywalker, and Episodes 1-3 kind of reflect this.

The real main character in the Star Wars saga.
Briefly, the machete order chops out Episode 1 entirely (it's pretty useless, since all the characters it introduces are killed in that movie or insignificant later). Thus, the viewing order is IV (A New Hope), V (Empire Strikes Back), II (Attack of the Clones), III (Revenge of the Sith), VI (Return of the Jedi). Episodes II and III are watched as a sort of flashback/bridge between V and VI, and by watching in this order none of the surprises are given away. I don't just mean the "big" surprises and revelations about Luke Skywalker's parentage, but even the little surprises (like the identity of Yoda in episode V) are ruined by watching Episodes I-III before Episodes IV and V. On the other hand, watching episode VI last ends on a relatively high note (other than those @$$*# ewoks) and gives closure to the series. Apparently, the Machete Order works really well, strengthens Episode VI (and to a lesser extent Episode V) and even helps redeem episodes II and III.

--7--
Which brings me to dilemma number 2: when is a good time to show these movies to my kid(s)*? I would be tempted to wait until late elementary or possibly middle school age, possibly even high-school (oldest in high school, youngest in late elementary school?), which seems to be about the right age for them to really enjoy it as something other than a nice shoot-em-up adventure (in which case, no point in picking the ordering or even really skipping episode 1). On the other hand, the longer they wait, the greater the risk of it's being spoiled--either by watching one or another at a friend's house, or by catching one of a million or so pop-culture references to it (e.g. Space Balls, Tommy Boy, Robot Chicken/Family Guy spoofs, or for that matter Weird Al's "The Saga Begins"). The fact that Disney's new series (VII, VIII, and IX--couldn't they have tried for Joss Whedon or Peter Jackson or even Christopher Nolan?) will be coming out around then probably doesn't help things


*A pretty young age works out well, but knowing how kids will blab to each other when seeing a movie that some have already seen, it would be best if (and assuming that I ultimately have multiple children) the younger ones don't have it spoiled for them by the older ones. The reaction of the kids in the linked video should be everyone's reaction when tehy first see these movies.
-----

Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler at her Conversion Diary blog.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Quick Link: Remember When...

Does anybody else remember the days shortly after the election (2012) during which the heavy criticism against the Republican party was that too many of their candidates (mostly, Tea-Partiers) were too concerned about social issues? The argument ran that if we could just focus on economics issues, and perhaps on fighting against big government, the party would be popular and in power. That criticism was mostly from people billing themselves as friends of the party (nobody should care about the criticisms of the Democratic party operatives, since they aren't interested in helping the Republicans to win nor in solving any of the country's problems so long as the Democrats stay in power and the country moves ever leftward over the cliff).

During the government shutdown, the criticism is suddenly that the Republicans are too interested in financial issues, and too interested in fighting against the growth of the government. You just can't please some people.

Quick Link: Partisan Professors

A professor in Wisconsin has written and given an assignment which can't be completed during the shutdown. She claims that there's nothing partisan about this assignment (which is possible, since people will generally choose to blame whichever party they already disliked). SHe even sent a few emails about it, and made a special request concerning those emails:
She even pleads with her students at one point, asking them not to forward her e-mails to others outside the class. 
“If you want to discuss all of this, let me know and I can make an internal discussion board about it. But please don’t forward my emails to conservative blogs or list servs and I will make sure my emails explain things fully,” she wrote.

One wonders why she would need to make that request.
The e-mail I sent you all about the government shut down [sic] was not meant to be partisan, but it may have come across that way," she wrote. "It is true that I am dismayed that you cannot easily do the assignment. My opinion is that this shutdown is a bad idea.
So what did she write in this not partisan email?
“Some of the data gathering assignment will be impossible to complete until the Republican/tea party controlled House of Representatives agrees to fund the government,” University of Wisconsin La Crosse Assistant Geography Professor Rachel Slocum told students in an e-mail.
Oh yeah, nothing partisan in that, how could anybody mistake this for partisanship. Apparently, being partisan means picking a side between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Barack Obama. Of course, since Reid has basically acted as Obama's stooge during this whole thing, there's not really much of a side to pick. "Your pick: you can side with Chancellor Palpatine, or Count Duku!"







Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Noah Millman Continues to be a Hack

And I, like an Alzheimer's patient, continue to click on his articles and them skim them (no link for you, hack). I need to stop, really. I still cannot fathom why he (or, for that matter, Andrew Sullivan) are considered "conservatives." Here he is rambling on about the "weirdness" of Religion (and especially Christianity, with a specific example taken from Catholicism, despite that he is arguing again Dreher, an Eastern Orthodox Christian):
 It’s as if you explained your love for your wife in terms of evolutionary psychology; an explanation not only avoids addressing your love for her, a specific individual, it suggests that you don’t, in fact, love her, a specific individual. 
But Christianity takes the weirdness to a whole ‘nother level.... 
Dreher snarks about journalists being ignorant of the miracle of transubstantiation, but think for a moment about that miracle, and what is being asked of believers in affirming its truth. The wine and bread are not merely taken “in remembrance” of Jesus; they are supposed to literally turn into the blood and body of the man who was also God, and you are supposed to affirm that this has happened against all the evidence of one’s senses that nothing has happened at all. Isn’t the most sane response to the fact that Christians have slaughtered each other over whether or not wine was really blood and bread was really flesh some version of Brobdingnagian incredulity?... 
I’m also creeped out by people who have, as they say, drunk the Kool-aid, who affirm absurdities as a matter of “faith” and have willfully abandoned any consciousness of the absurdity of what they are affirming.

First of all, Rod Dreher is Eastern Orthodox, and thus belongs to a Church that doesn't explicitly have the concept of transubstantiation. That doctrinal development belong to the Latin West, the Catholic Church, post-schism (or perhaps I should say, the term and the exact definition came about in the west predominantly after the schism). Sure, the idea it captures is generally held by Dreher and other Orthodox, because they also believe that in communion, the bread and wine transform into the body and blood of Christ (literally). The Eastern Orthodox never really developed the philosophy behind how, exactly, this transformation comes about, but rather leave it at the level of a mystery.

Dreher uses the idea as an illustration of journalistic ignorance, and then Millman pounces on it as a way of attacking Dreher's Christianity, as if every sect explicitly accepts transubstantiation, thereby basically proving Dreher's point. If Millman's entire point is that the mysterious nature of transubstantiation is hard to understand, then fine, that is the point of a mystery, but the fact that the Christian faith has these mysteries (Luther's objection to this particular mystery aside, since there are other mysteries like the doctrine of the Trinity which are accepted by all Christians) would make the religion a bit more credible as something other than a mere human invention.


More broadly, it seems to me that the American Conservative website is more intent on combating Republicans (and especially those awful Tea-Partiers) and anything which seems a vestige of "Republican culture" than conserving anything. Religion is, apparently, one of those somethings, but so is the argument over the the debt limit, which is supposedly being driven by the Tea Party (who knew that Boehner was a member of the Tea party?). I'm surprised that they didn't retroactively claim justice Scalia as a Tea Party member in their denunciation of him (ironically written by a man named McCarthy). Their resistance to supposed ideology is admirable, but unfortunately even resistance to ideology can itself become ideological, and the American Conservative too often falls into this ideology-against-movements.

Meanwhile, here's a clue for the clueless regarding modern politics: if you are shilling for the Democratic party, you are not a conservative. Doubly true, if you are shelling for them as a regular thing, both for their cnadidates/politicians and their proposals. There is no "conservative defense of Obamacare," and no "conservative argument for raising the debt ceiling indefinitely."

A Few Good Links (vol 10): Shutdown Theater Edition

The (partial) Shutdown lingers as Democrats continue to refuse to make any compromises or concession, or to really negotiate in any way with the Republicans. Republicans, for their art, seem interested only in blocking Obamacare, (which would be a great victory if accomplished), and have done little to suggest that they will take any other concessions.

Who wins a shutdown showdown? Only time will tell.

  1. A D.C. Bartender has a novel idea for a progressive pricing system for beer.
  2. Many of the things being shutdown--while being technically "nonessential--are also completely unnecessary, meaning that there is no reason for them to shutdown. A few are even things which are not own, operated, or funded by the federal government, and many more are things which local (state, etc.) governments have offered to run during the shutdown. Some of the most ridiculous includes the fact that there are often more "enforcement agents" (federal park rangers) being placed on duty to prevent people from viewing certain attraction than would normally have been on duty to begin with.

  3. "The public may visit the World War II Memorial 24 hours a day. Rangers are on duty to answer questions from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. daily and to provide" (from the WWII memorial Website, before it was closed down).

  4. Obama's favorite golf course on federal lands will remain open. Nero fiddled while Rome burned, Obama will golf while DC is shut down. Meanwhile, the Obama Administration has been telling government employees (e.g. park rangers, etc) to make the shutdown as difficult as possible. Perhaps this is why the feds are closing down popular attractions/memorials/etc while leaving lesser-known ones open. President Obama--not the House, not even the Senate, but Obama and his administration--is apparently picking and choosing what gets closed and what stays open during the #Shutdown. So while we might blame the shutdown on the Republicans in the House (for starting it by refusing to compromise on Obamacare), or the Democrats in the Senate (for keeping it going by also refusing to compromise on much of anything), it's worth noting that Obama is the one who is deciding to make the shutdown as painful as possible. And that is really the big difference between this shutdown, and the previous 17 which occurred under previous Administrations/Congresses since 1976.
  5. Some of the more heavy-handed tactics of the Shutdown Theater are drawing comparisons to the Gestapo. Yikes!
  6. It's bad when feds (under orders from Obama's Administration) decide to not only block off parks and trails, but to block off roadside areas from which monuments (like Mount Rushmore) can be viewed or photographed.
    "Blocking access to trails and programs at South Dakota’s most popular attraction was one thing, but state officials didn’t expect Congress’ budget stalemate to shut down a view of Mount Rushmore....

    Jim Hagen, secretary of the South Dakota Department of Tourism, said the situation is hurting people from out-of-state and international visitors who are in South Dakota to visit the monument.

    “They won’t even let you pull off on the side of the road,” Hagen said. “I just don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish.”... "

    "Daugaard offered to keep Mount Rushmore open using state resources, Dusty Johnson noted. The National Park Service declined."
    I wonder if they'll close down or block off federal roads next.
  7. Surprisingly, the White House is actually having to go on the defensive, as is Harry Reid. This is good. Reid has refused to make any kind of reasonable concessions, and Obama has done his darnedest to inflict the maximum amount of suffering throughout this shutdown. Some will argue that Obama is not trying to inflict any suffering, that he's just following the rules. These people are gullible, though not surprising (he had to win election and then re-election somehow). Before Obama's press secretary took this approach, there was another set of people who argued that Obama was attempting to take actions which would compel the Republicans to act--this is a shrinking minority of people, though I may have one foot in this camp. The Third set of people, and I certainly count myself among them, note that this has all the feel of a national temper tantrum on Obama's part. There's also the fact that the government shutdown is intended to make people squeal for more government.
  8. Also, can anyone imagine the hay that the Democratic Party and their stooges in the media would make if it had been a Republican (rather than Obama's puppet Senator Reid) who said that he doesn't want to save the children with cancer? It would be headlined in the mainstream press, rather than on Fox or in the Daily Mail. The headlines would not read, for example "Come on, No. Harry Reid Doesn't Hate Kids with Cancer" if Reid were a Republican. Rather, that sound bite would be played again and again, with any context buried far down near (but not at) the bottom of the story. Whatever happened to "if it helps save just one child's life?"
  9. Much of the government continues to run during this shutdown:
    "This week’s “shutdown” of government, for example, suffers (at least for those of us curious to see it reduced to Somali levels) from the awkward fact that the overwhelming majority of the government is not shut down at all. Indeed, much of it cannot be shut down. Which is the real problem facing America. “Mandatory spending” (Social Security, Medicare, et al) is authorized in perpetuity – or, at any rate, until total societal collapse. If you throw in the interest payments on the debt, that means two-thirds of the federal budget is beyond the control of Congress’s so-called federal budget process. That’s why you’re reading government “shutdown” stories about the Panda Cam at the Washington Zoo and the first lady’s ghost-Tweeters being furloughed."
  10. Mark Steyn offers some levity with his Song of the National Park Service.
  11. It seems that there's always a lot more "moderate" Republicans than moderate Democrats. Hence, it is almost always the Republicans who compromise and cave.
  12. Meanwhile, the (leftist) "Open Borders" rally on public land (the National Mall) will be allowed to go forward during the shutdown.
  13. If we can have an open borders rally, why not a trucker rally to close down DC? Ace has already used this, but what the heck:

  14. More levity, this time from the Onion.
  15. So what has the GOP-controlled House been up to during this shutdown? They have tried and tried to restore some funding to the government, and have even passed some legislation which is unquestionably reasonable (such as laws which remove Obamacare exemptions from members of Congress, though unfortunately not from the Preseident and his staff). Hey, if it's good enough for us, it's good enough for them. Almost all of this has been blocked by the Democrat-controlled Senate (and been threatened with veto from Obama), including (incidentally) the removal of the exemptions.
  16. Speaking of Obamacare, there are apparently even long line to actually sign up for it, with very few "success" stories.And even some groups which initially supported Obamacare (e.g. unions) are protesting it now that they are getting to see what it actually contains:
    Obama has his own reasons for stalling or otherwise delaying parts of Obamacare, and for selectively exempting certain companies, parties, and people. For some reason, that privilege doesn't extend to Congress in general and the House (from which all budgets must originate as per the Constitution) in particular.
  17. The shutdown really isn't that bad (some levity). Actually, I post a lot of the "negative" aspects of it, not only to point out what a spiteful and petty little man Obama is, but also to remind myself why we would want the government to start back up again.
  18. Priests face arrest for volunteering to offer Mass (etc) to troops (and this without any compensation at all). Perhaps there is some truth to the idea that Obama is an enemy of the Church.
  19. The Senate Chaplain is none-too-thrilled about the shutdown, and in particular about the Senate's (and Obama's) part in it.

I may return to a few of these points later as time permits. I've been pretty busy lately, and don't foresee any slackening of my schedule.

Friday, October 4, 2013

The Shutdown Blame Game

A number of people seem to be under the impression that this shutdown and all its bad effects are blameable solely on the Republicans. These people need to remove their collective heads from their collective butts.

As Jonah Goldberg (and others) notes, much of the blame for the actual pain from the shutdown can be placed squarely on the shoulders of Obama. Obama is a vindictive and petty man who is looking to inflict the maximum amount of suffering in this little tantrum of his:

Shutting down the government in an effort to use a budget fight to get rid of Obamacare is not the strategy I would have recommended for the GOP. And while Republicans can be blamed for starting the shutdown, it’s increasingly apparent that President Obama and the Democrats deserve the lion’s share of blame for not only prolonging it but also making it as painful as possible. 
Obama has always had a bit of a vindictive streak when it comes to politics. I think it stems from his Manichaean view of America. There are the reasonable people — who agree with him. And there are the bitter clingers who disagree for irrational or extremist ideological reasons. 
In the 17 previous government shutdowns since 1977, presidents have worked to avoid them or lessen their impact. Obama has made no such effort out of an ideological yearning to punish his enemies, regardless of the collateral damage.

With a little bit of luck, this will all come back to bite the Democrats in general and Obama in particular in the ass. It would, in any case, if people actually paid attention to facts and not media narratives.

A More Thorough and Fair Evisceration of President I Have Not Read

Matt Walsh has written a scathing open letter to the president on his blog:
My impression of you is quite different, and it has only been solidified by your performance during this shutdown/Obamacare debate. I find you to be a very small man, Mr. President. Far from larger than life, you are petty, frivolous, pathetic; sneering and pompous but also trifling and narrow. I don’t mean to dismiss or underestimate the damage you have done to this nation — it has certainly been profound and lasting — but I want you to know that your legacy will not be one of grandeur and brilliance; it will be the legacy of a shameless, desperate bully. Both your opponents and your proponents hoist you up as a world leader with a grand vision, whether benevolent or malevolent. I, on the other hand, believe you have the vision of a temperamental two year old. You simply want to feel like you’re in control; you want to “win,” you want everybody in the room to pay attention to you, and you’ll stomp your feet and whine until you get your way. You govern like a coddled toddler; it’s inappropriate to pejoratively refer to you as a “dictator,” but only because it lends you a certain unwarranted credibility. I think you wish to be a dictator, but instead you’re just a bumbling bureaucrat; easily replaced and even more easily forgotten. You have the ethics of Genghis Khan, but the leadership skills of Michael Scott. This is why we are forced to witness the spectacle of, for instance, our president brazenly threatening to invade another nation for no reason, only to clumsily abandon the idea after being publicly spanked by Putin....

Every president has a moment that encapsulates their time in office; your moment, Mr. President, happened this week. Sure, future generations will look at you with mockery and scorn because of bigger scandals — Benghazi, the IRS targeting conservatives, Obamacare, the birth control mandate and your attacks on religious liberty, spying on journalists, arming terrorists overseas, Fast and Furious, the green energy scams, the bailouts, your support for infanticide, the billions you’ve given to the abortion industry, your cowardice in refusing to address the Gosnell murders, your reckless exploitation of the Zimmerman trial, the out of control deficit spending, your refusal to enforce immigration laws, the massive expansion of the Welfare State, the lies, the broken promises, etc — but I think, in an understated way, what you’ve done this week is a better microcosm of your entire reign.

I’m not just referring to the fact that you are peddling the lie that “Republicans” have “shutdown the government,” when, in fact, they have attempted to pass several bills that would fund the government. Mr. President, you tell these fables to the trained seals in the media and your voting base, but you know damn well that any American with a capacity for critical thought will roundly reject this absurd narrative. YOU have chosen to “shut down” the government because you have made Obamacare the ultimate priority. You have said, “Obamacare or nothing,” and then accused Republicans of being the “hostage takers.” They are holding the government hostage by trying to fund it? What a silly idea. But then, you are a silly, ridiculous president. Speaking of which, this takes us right to your defining moment: barricading memorials and monuments in a ploy to win an argument.

Comparatively insignificant when stacked up against your war crimes and constitutional infringements, but it is nonetheless an apt illustration. The Lincoln Memorial is just a giant statue. There isn’t any reason why people shouldn’t be able to look at a statue during a government shutdown. In past shutdowns, the memorials were open, with only the information centers closing down. The Lincoln Memorial has never been completely closed off from the public until now. You have decided to spend money to block and guard open-air monuments, when it would be cheaper, require less staff, and be less onerous to simply leave them be. Is this some sort of bizarre punitive measure against the American taxpayer?

Read the whole thing. He also quietly calls out the gullible toadies and yes-men who back this fraudulent excuse of a "leader." I've said time and again that I'm not a huge fan of the Republican party--and there is a shortage of good leadership from that corner, too. But the Democrats are for the most part worse, and even obviously so. And Obama takes this to a whole new level. I've tried to steer clear of writing many rants or verbal brow-beatings on this blog myself, but some men deserve this. Frankly, if the media would hold President Obama (and to a lesser extent, Senator Harry Reid) accountable for his part in all of this, he might actually be convinced to lead rather than to throw a temper-tantrum on the national stage.

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Shutdown Theater Presents: NIST

Imaginary Obama NIST spokesman: "We have no money to pay for NIST staffers to manually upload each web page on our website in realtime during the government shutdown, so we will have to suspend our website and services. Pay no attention to the server behind that curtain! The server which is displaying this 'site shutdown' message is a figment of your imagination, and does not exist. Blame it on Congress that we can't pay staffers to manually load pages to our website in realtime, and therefore have to close the whole website down...

"Also, since we do not yet have a guarantee of future money with which to have already paid for the various conferences which we have scheduled, we will have to cancel these future conferences. It's a shame that budget uncertainty for the next fiscal year prevents us from holding any conferences this week, but that's how it goes. Be sure to blame Congress for this.

"Please urge Congress to vote so that we can resume manually uploading each page to our website, and so that we can cancel those conferences which we previously scheduled and payed for."

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

TMM: Government Shut-Down

Why, exactly, is the government shut-down a bad thing?
Apparently, the NSA is considered "essential," and so it is not being shut-down. So really, the lamentable thing about this government shutdown is that it doesn't go far enough. Alternatively, that whoever decided on "essentials" didn't have the best of all priorities. If we could just get the government to stay shut down--in particular, if we could get the "non-essential" (read: bureaucratic), then maybe, just maybe, we will realize how worthless the vast majority of it is. And if the people are forced to become self-reliant for a change, maybe they will also be forced to adopt some of the other virtues which have been in disuse and decline for the last few decades.

If men regained these lost virtues, government shut-downs would not likely take-place: and they would seem far less catastrophic if/when they did. A more virtuous nation would be able to get by with a smaller government; men who obey the big rules don't need to be lead around by the little rules.

Nor, for that matter, would they need the government to support them in hard times if they had the generosity to support each other in their communities. Government interference tends to destroy this generosity, and the virtue of charity which underlies it.