Category: Uncategorized

From the Washington Times:

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan yesterday gave his clearest warning yet that housing bubbles pose dangers in some areas and are being fed by unusually low interest rasand risky lending practices that are raising the level of concern at the central bank.

In light of the “unsustainable level” of prices in some local markets, Mr. Greenspan suggested in remarks to the Joint Economic Committee that the Fed and other bank regulators soon may move to curb questionable mortgage loans by national banks.

If history is an accurate guide, you’ve got three more years to ride the cash-out wave before selling out and watching home prices crash. I find Mr. Greenspan’s comments particularly amusing, as only a year ago, he was asserting that it is impossible to identify an investment bubble while it is happening.

The lesson, as always, is that any relation between government and neo-government statements and the objectively verifiable truth is mere happenstance.

“In the heyday of liberal democracy, all roads lead to slavery,” she has warned in speeches. Society and the courts have turned away from the founders’ emphasis on personal responsibility, she has argued, toward a culture of government regulation and dependency that threatens fundamental freedoms.

“We no longer find slavery abhorrent,” she told the conservative Federalist Society a few years ago. “We embrace it.” She explained in another speech, “If we can invoke no ultimate limits on the power of government, a democracy is inevitably transformed into a kleptocracy – a license to steal, a warrant for oppression.”

To her critics, such remarks are evidence of extremism. This week, some Senate Democrats have even singled her out as the most objectionable of President Bush’s more than 200 judicial nominees, citing her criticism of affirmative action and abortion rights but most of all her sweeping denunciations of New Deal legal precedents that enabled many federal regulations and social programs – developments she has called “the triumph of our socialist revolution.”

Her friends and supporters say her views of slavery underpin her judicial philosophy. It was her study of that history, they say, combined with her evangelical Christian faith and her self-propelled rise from poverty that led her to abandon the liberal views she learned from her family.

“We discuss things like, ‘How did slavery happen?’ ” said her friend and mentor Steve Merksamer, a lawyer in Sacramento, Calif. “It comes down to the fact that she believes, as I do, that some things are, in fact, right and some things are, in fact, wrong. Segregation – even though the courts had sustained it for a hundred years – was morally indefensible and legally indefensible and yet it was the law of the land,” he said. “She brings that philosophy to her legal work.”

Now, this particular Bush appointee sounds like one that conservatives, libertarians and other genuine advocates of freedom can support. Of course, the key concept is “sounds like”, and in any case, she’s likely little more than a bone being tossed to the dogs to keep them from barking.

But it never hurts to give credit where credit is due. I wish I could do so more often.

You’re up, Difster. Sorry for the short notice. Turn it in tonight – now you know what writing a column is like, otherwise known as How To Amuse, Educate and Annoy in 30 Minutes a Day.

From NRO:

To the shock and dismay of the ACLU, Americans generally let out a big yawn at the supposed daunting threat of the USA PATRIOT Act. An ABC-Washington Post poll shows that a near filibuster proof majority of Americans (59%) favor extending the PATRIOT Act, which grants expanded investigational authority to the FBI in terrorism investigations. Though certain proposed changes were met with less enthusiasm, the poll demonstrates that most Americans get it when it comes to using every tool at our disposal to combat terrorism on American soil.

And what does a filibuster have to do with the public’s opinion? I despise this concept that people justly concerned about the government’s embrace of tactics from which the American people fought a war to free themselves simply “don’t get it”. There’s nothing like using a construction that sounds like a lame high school girl’s insult to convince everyone that you hold not only the intellectual high ground, but insight into the pulse of the nation.

The Patriot Acts, I and II, are dangerous. RICO wasn’t abused right away either, but just give it time. I guarantee that within ten years, they’ll prove to have been used against far more taxpayers than terrorists.

Who needs due process anyhow….

From MSNBC:

Three or four days a week, Darren Hiers gets lunch at a Sterling convenience store near the car dealership where he works. He grabs a chicken sandwich and a soda and heads to the checkout counter, where a little gadget scans his index finger and instantly deducts the money from his checking account. Hiers doesn’t have to pull out his wallet to buy lunch — and if it were up to him, he’d never have to write a check or swipe a credit card again.

The finger scan used at the shop in Sterling, known as a biometric payment system and made by a Herndon firm, is just starting to be installed at convenience stores and supermarket chains around the country, another step in a revolution that is turning the human body into the ultimate identification card.

Two questions… when will this become mandatory, and who will require it of the masses?

God leaves it to its inevitable fate:

A CASH crisis in the Church of England is forcing bishops to consider radical moves including cutting clergy numbers by up to a third and making worshippers meet in each other’s homes, The Times has learnt….

More than half of the Church’s 16,000 parish churches have fewer than 50 members. Average weekly attendance in 2003 was 1,187,000 compared with a figure in 1968 of 1.6 million.

I find it ironic that people are always lobbying Christian churches to loosen up and accept changing societal mores in order to become more relevant and popular. Any empirical study will show that this is precisely the way to kill a church; the Southern Baptists and other whacky fundamentalist denominations are still growing fast even as the broad-minded and progressive churches die around the world.

The world needs God, not public acceptance and self-affirmation. And yet, the very concepts of popularity, numbers and influence are almost meaningless anyhow, as the church grew from a hard core of twelve disciples to cover the entire globe. As long as there is one believer on the planet, the Word will be heard.

Bufelda wants to be sure:

“Forgive me if I misunderstand– it seems you don’t like the idea of breastfeeding in public period, covered or not.”

No, that’s correct, I don’t. Actually, it has nothing to do with breasts, it’s got more to do with the noise of the little guy or gal snorting and smacking away and the woman’s understandable distraction. You see, in addition to my dedication to refraining from public defecation, I wouldn’t check my email at the dinner table either. Although sometimes I’d almost consider murder to be able to just pull out a book and ignore the blather….

The reason I compared breastfeeding with gastroenteric distress is that in both cases, there’s only two kinds of people. Those who are discreet enough to remove themselves from the vicinity and those who can’t be bothered.

I’m somewhat curious as to what a disgusted reaction to such distress is supposed to be covering, just to take ant’s (or was it jarek’s) assertion of transference and psychological sickness a logical step further.

The whole discussion – not to mention the fervor – has been interesting since the thing that really, truly set me off wasn’t the breastfeeding, but the thoughtful sharing of grisly childbirth details during the meat course. That pretty much ended my dinner that night.

Raging Bee buzzes angrily:

And while I’m asking dumb questions, what’s so “Christian” OR “libertarian” about condemning women for feeding their children in public places? Didn’t Jesus go on a lot about forgiveness, tolerance, and helping fellow humans in need? Or did the Gospels get rewritten while I wasn’t looking?

I don’t recall condemning women for anything, as I did not imply that the rudeness implicit in asserting that you have the right to breastfeed a child anytime and anywhere was grounds for either a prison term or eternal damnation. And forgiveness requires repentance, and all I’ve heard from the anytime, anyplace crew so far is a complete disregard for the opinions of others. Nor do I consider it necessary or even the least bit appropriate to bring the Gospels into what is nothing more than a question of etiquette.

This discussion has, however, offered strong support for my personal theory that mothers of young children are the rudest human beings on the planet, if one reduces the sample in question to the sober population. I suppose this is understandable, because combining the difficulty factor inherent in accomplishing tasks while accompanied by one or more children with the maternal stress factor and the Mama Bear syndrome is bound to lead to difficulties.

But seriously, even a hardened Long Islander is more likely to apologize for running over your foot with a shopping cart than a harried mother of three.

Throw your hats in, if you like. Include URL and blog name.

Lactivists envision a Bourbon Street world:

In interviews and Internet discussions, hundreds of women recount being asked to stop nursing in public spots, including the Children’s Museum in Huntsville, Ala.; a knitting store in the East Village; a Radisson Hotel lobby in Virginia; a public bus in Los Angeles; and a city commission meeting in Miami Beach.

“It’s nothing against breast-feeding, it’s about exposing yourself for people who don’t want to see it,” said Scotty Stroup, the owner of a restaurant in Round Rock, Tex., where a nursing mother was refused service last fall.

But the new generation of lactivists compare discomfort with seeing breast-feeding in public to discomfort with seeing interracial couples or gays holding hands.

I remember being at dinner one night with a group of couples, all of whom had recently had babies. The one single guy was amazed at how all the new mothers could pick out the cry of their child, as they were sounding off regularly about every five minutes.

But he wasn’t the only one disgusted when two of the women insisted on talking about birth and breastfeeding at the dinner table. When I finally told them to knock it off, they came back with the inevitable protest: “but it’s natural!”

As the men at the table were quick to point out, so is defecation, urination and sex, but no one, least of all these two women, were likely to be inclined to think it proper were someone to begin regaling the table about the joys of the oral service they had received the night before, or in the case of Big Chilly, the magnitude of his morning excretion.

(Big Chilly does rightfully find a certain degree of fascination with regards to this matter. One morning, I made the mistake of giving into his enthusiastic blandishments to view a particularly monstrous specimen; my immediate impression was that calls to Guiness and a plumber were in order.)

I have no sympathy for the lactivists. If, as a society, we are going to decide that everything goes in public, so be it, but until that day, a visit to the ladies room is in order.