Vox Popoli

WND covers the Southern Baptists and the public schools:

“Southern Baptists have been playing the ‘ostrich with its head in the sand’ routine long enough,” Arnold said. “The time is way overdue that we acknowledge the devastating effects public school is having on the faith of our children.”

Arnold takes issue with Baptist leaders who argue that having their children in public schools is being “salt and light,” a Christian influence and witness.

But Arnold points to the denomination’s own data — the SBC Council on Family Life Report of 2002 — which says 88 percent of those Southern Baptist children after graduating from government high school are leaving the church.

I have long stated that the argument that children from Christian families should attend public school as Christian witnesses to other children is utter nonsense. In my opinion, children are not yet Christians, as they do not have the spiritual, mental or emotional maturity to make such decisions. I do not believe that a five year-old child’s profession of faith is any more meaningful than his declaration that he is going to be an astronaut.

Considering that the only non-anecdotal evidence we have strongly indicates that the anti-Christian public schools are winning converts far more effectively than these little missionaries being thrown to the spiritual lions, I don’t see how anyone should be permitted to make that argument – which, let’s face it, is almost surely made as an ex post facto rationalization than a factor in a decision – without being laughed at.

I can’t prove that the report’s statement with regards to “leaving the church” is synonymous with “leaving the faith”, but based on denominational growth statistics, one can state with assurance that these former Southern Baptists are not all becoming Methodists, Episcopalians or Lutherans.

I would vote for this man for President. In a heartbeat. I even met him once, at a Minneapolis health club before the All-Star game some years ago. It was a funny situation, as I came out of the locker room ready for an evening out on the town and happened to see him checking out my brother’s old girlfriend, a pretty model who was accompanying TPAM and I that evening. When she turned around and gave me one of her typically overenthusiastic greetings – you’d have to know her – Sir Charles mistakenly concluded that she was my girlfriend and immediately walked over to apologize.

Most guys wouldn’t have done that, let alone so effusively. We didn’t bother correcting him and it was just as well because by the time he finished, everyone within earshot was cracking up. Fortunately, someone has taken the time to collect the wit and wisdom of the man:

“Cat was fantastic but when you lose to a woman, it means you suck at something. There are two times when you know you suck at sports — when you can’t beat the women and when you can’t beat the smart kids.”

“I’m bilingual. I speak profanity and English.”

“I don’t think there’s any doubt. Anybody in their right mind knows I’m the best forward in basketball. Well, the only person comparable to me is Karl Malone, but his body is so different from mine. Even my wife loves his body, and that’s the main reason I say I’m the best. With a body like that, he is supposed to be awesome. With a body like mine, I’m supposed to be a couch potato.”

“I know we have to work a lot during the playoffs, and that’s part of working. But I look at those five months of vacation where I do nothing but play golf and go to Vegas and lay on the bench and be the big sex symbol that I am.”

“My family got all over me because they said Bush is only for the rich people. Then I reminded them, ‘Hey, I’m rich’.”

“People keep saying I’m crazy as hell, but sooner or later they’re going to realize I know what I’m talking about.”

“You should be able to go and pick out one fan a game, and just beat the hell out of him.”

Kenny Smith was going on and on about his two championship rings. He said that, in a show of appreciation for their efforts, he gave one ring to his father and the other to his brother because “they were the ones who helped me get them”. Charles: “You should have given them to Hakeem.”

“I trust the public to have a little common sense. If they’re not smart enough to have a sense of humor, they’re just stupid and I don’t worry about it.”

“Politics is too corrupt. You know how you can tell politics is corrupt? President Bush is going to raise $250 million for a job that pays $400,000. Now tell me there isn’t something wrong there.”

“If you just want to be one of the guys, then cut your salary and make what the other guys make. They don’t pay you a lot of money to blend in. There’s a reason Shaq makes $20 million a year. You can’t just blend in — you have to lead the team.”

“If you’re working at Wal-Mart and have 10 kids, quit having kids.”

“Ex-teams are like ex-wives. Deep, deep down, you know you can’t stand them.”

EJ: “Auburn is a pretty good school. To graduate from there I suppose you really need to work hard and put forth maximum effort.”
Charles: “20 pts and 10 rebounds will get you through also!”

“Today is Jimmy Hatter’s birthday — he’s the gay guy we got workin’ behind the scenes, y’all. We hire them all at TNT. We do not discriminate. We hired the pimp last year, Craig Sager, and now we got Jimmy Hatter. We got all the ethnic groups covered.”

“If push came to shove, I could lose all self-respect and become a reporter.”

On the movie Space Jam: “Obviously, my part is terrific. But Michael is the leader. It’s his movie. I think it’s going to be very funny, great entertainment for the kids. I hope everybody likes it. But, really, I don’t care because I’ve already been paid.”

On throwing an elbow at an Angolan: “Well, he might have pulled a spear on me.”

Daniel Okrent writes in the NYT:

For a man who makes his living offering strong opinions, Paul Krugman seems peculiarly reluctant to grant the same privilege to others. And for a man who leads with his chin twice a week, he acts awfully surprised when someone takes a pop at it.

Because only a fool or a supply-sider would eagerly engage in a debate on economics with Prof. Krugman, I’ll try to eschew argument and stick to facts – or, at least, the sort of statements that he himself represents as purely factual:

1. I offered him only three examples of “shaping, slicing and selectively citing” (for some reason, he’s left one out of his rebuttal) because I was at home when he began bombarding me with outraged demands for retraction and apology; I’d completed my tenure as public editor the preceding week, and did not have any files with me. When I had the chance to consult some of my reader mail later in the week, some of his greatest mis-hits immediately came to the fore. I’ll get to a few of those in point No. 5, below.

2. This was the first he heard from me on these specific issues partly because I learned early on in this job that Prof. Krugman would likely be more willing to contribute to the Frist for President campaign than to acknowledge the possibility of error. When he says he agreed “reluctantly” to one correction, he gives new meaning to the word “reluctantly”; I can’t come up with an adverb sufficient to encompass his general attitude toward substantive criticism. But I laid off for so long because I also believe that columnists are entitled by their mandate to engage in the unfair use of statistics, the misleading representation of opposing positions, and the conscious withholding of contrary data. But because they’re entitled doesn’t mean I or you have to like it, or think it’s good for the newspaper.

3. The mixing of household and establishment numbers in his 5/25/04 column: Missing from the BLS chart he cites is any number that even resembles the 140,000 new jobs each month needed to keep up with the growing population a statistic he cites in the column, and upon which he seems to have based some of his computations. To my knowledge, that number only appeared in the household survey.

4. The Polivka-Miller paper: On the substance, readers can come to their own conclusions by examining the report themselves, particularly the chart and related narrative addressing “Duration of Unemployment” on page 23 (pdf). On Prof. Krugman’s defense of his unfamiliarity with it, he’s effectively saying, “If I didn’t know about it, it must not be important.” This is a polemicist’s dodge; no self-respecting journalist would ever make such an argument.

5. Some other examples of Krugmania that popped out of my copious files:

His 1/27/04 assertion that the cost of unemployment insurance “automatically” adds to the federal deficit. This two-fer misrepresents a pair of facts: that unemployment insurance is largely borne by the states, and that major federal contributions to the states come about only because of an act of Congress, which is hardly automatic.
His 2/3/04 assertion that tax proposals offered by Democrats would help the 77 pecent of taxpayers in the 15 percent bracket or less. The most recent generally accepted figures available at the time indicated that the number was actually 64 percent.
A very recent example that nonetheless escaped my memory until Prof. Krugman generously reminded me of it in his letter: His 5/9/05 column on progressive indexing. The column itself (without the ex post facto explanation) suggestively conflates “retirement income” and “social security benefits” without sufficient explanation, but with plenty of apparent point-making.
Believe me — I could go on, as could a number of readers more sophisticated about economic matters than I am. (Among these are several who, like me, generally align themselves politically with Prof. Krugman, but feel he does himself and his cause no good when he heeds the roaring approval of his acolytes and dismisses his critics as ideologically motivated.) But I don’t want to engage in an extended debate any more than Prof. Krugman says he does. If he replies to this statement, as I imagine he will, I’ll let him have what he always insists on keeping for himself: the last word.

I hate to do this to a decent man like my successor, Barney Calame, but I’m hereby turning the Krugman beat over to him.

Whoo-pah!

A Minnesota appeals court has ruled that the presence of encryption software on a computer may be viewed as evidence of criminal intent.

Ari David Levie, who was convicted of taking illegal photographs of a nude 9-year-old girl, argued on appeal that the PGP encryption utility on his computer was irrelevant and should not have been admitted as evidence during his trial. PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy and is sold by PGP Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif.

But the Minnesota appeals court ruled 3-0 that the trial judge was correct to let that information be used when handing down a guilty verdict.

“We find that evidence of appellant’s Internet use and the existence of an encryption program on his computer was at least somewhat relevant to the state’s case against him,” Judge R.A. Randall wrote in an opinion dated May 3.

How in the name of the netherest nether being can the EXISTENCE of an encryption program be relevant to someone’s guilt or innocence of ANYTHING. WinZip has some basic encryption; if everyone is automatically guilty based on possessing that then they might as well throw the entire PC-owning community into jail en masse.

The guy may well be scum, but the question of his guilt or innocence does not disperse the Orwellian shadows being cast here. And this is not the first time Minnesota has pulled this sort of thing. Not even close.

From SwissInfo:

The Swiss People’s Party, which forced a referendum on whether Bern should join the Schengen and Dublin accords, said that there was an indirect link between the French vote and the upcoming Swiss one.

“Swiss voters must be wondering what kind of a partner the EU would make and whether one should really bind oneself legally in such a way to the EU,” said spokesman Roman Jäggi.

“One can only hope that France’s ‘no’ will open the eyes of some voters,” Jäggi added….

The Swiss foreign ministry took a different line, saying that the result was more of an “internal matter” for the EU.

It added that the French rejection would not adversely affect the prospect of Switzerland signing further bilateral accords with the EU.

Jean-Philippe Jeannerat, spokesman for the Social Democrats stressed that a Swiss referendum was vastly different to a French one. He added that in France, the recent referendum was not so much a vote on the new constitution but one on the current political establishment.

Oh, so now, after the fact, the French vote on the ratification of the constitution wasn’t a vote on the new constitution, but on the current political establishment. But isn’t that what their normal elections are called? And wasn’t the voter turnout – which concerned nothing but the new constitution – significantly higher than seen in normal elections?

The truth is that direct democracy is only tolerated by its so-called representatives so far as it supports the direction desired by the political elite. This is why I argue that democracy in the USA and in most of the Western world, is nothing more than a sophisticated con job. If democracy is actually a good thing, then presumably the more direct it is, the better. If the Will of the People is not desirable, than what can possibly serve the justification for the less than pure forms of its realization?

The Perfect Aryan Male and his 18-inch biceps showed up at our door, so for old time’s sake we hit the gym at the first opportunity. TPAM’s looking practically skeletal these days, having dropped to a mere 230, so this time we only had to borrow one gym girl to sit on top of the stack while he pressed triceps.

It’s good to be pushed by a bigger dog, though, as I managed to power through a solid bench at 300 before choking twice at 315. I thought I had it for a moment; the bar was under control and moving off my chest but I couldn’t get it past that little break point that’s about two inches up, at least not without help.

Boy, am I wiped out….

Jeff Jacoby writes of the death of a Marine:

On the morning of Nov. 15, one week into the battle for Fallujah, his [Sergeant Rafael Peralta of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines] squad had cleared three houses without incident. They approached a fourth, kicking in two locked doors simultaneously and entering both front rooms. They found them empty. Another closed door led to an adjoining room. As the other Marines spread out, wrote Kaemmerer, “Peralta, rifle in hand, tested the handle.” It wasn’t locked. He threw open the door, preparing to rush in — and three terrorists with AK-47s opened fire. He was shot multiple times in the chest and face. As he fell, severely wounded, he managed to wrench himself out of the doorway to give his fellow Marines a clear line of fire.

The gunfire was deafening. To the sound of the terrorists’ AK-47s was added the din of the Marines’ M16 rifles and Squad Automatic Weapon, a machine gun. The battle was raging, with Peralta down and bleeding heavily and the other Marines firing at the enemy in the back room, when, in Kaemmerer’s words, ”a yellow, foreign-made, oval-shaped grenade bounced into the room, rolling to a stop close to Peralta’s nearly lifeless body.”

As the other Marines tried to flee, Peralta reached for the grenade and tucked it into his gut. Seconds later, it exploded with such force that when his remains were returned to his family for burial, they were able to identify him only by the tattoo on his shoulder. His five comrades-in-arms, shielded from the worst of the blast by Peralta’s last act as a Marine, survived.

A REPORTER sent to do a story about a baby squirrel stood on the fluffy creature by mistake and killed it.

Inka Blumensaat wanted to tell how a pet cat had saved the orphaned squirrel by adopting it as her own. But the friendly rodent jumped on her leg as she filmed her report and she panicked and trampled it underfoot,breaking its neck.

Heike Reher, whose cat adopted the squirrel in Lubeck, Germany, said: “The reporter started leaping about like a mad woman. She squashed the squirrel completely. Everyone looked at the floor in horror where the little squirrel lay in a pool of blood.”

It somehow makes me think of the legacy media and its relationship to this nation’s freedom.

According to Drudge, the French come through for once:

French voters rejected the European Union’s first constitution Sunday, President Jacques Chirac said _ a stinging repudiation of his leadership and the ambitious, decades-long effort to further unite the continent.

Chirac, who urged voters to approve the charter, announced the result in a brief, televised address. He said the process of ratifying the treaty would continue in other EU countries.

“France has expressed itself democratically,” Chirac said. “It is your sovereign decision, and I take note.”

Earlier, the Interior Ministry said that with about 83 percent of the votes counted, the referendum was rejected by 57.26 percent of voters. It was supported by 42.74 percent.

They’ll be back. Like Michael Meyers, they’ll be back. Here’s hoping that they’re less successful with the constitution gambit than they were with the Nice con.

I’ll be interested to see how Danica Patrick does in the Indy 500. I hope she does well, as it will be proof that women don’t need their little lady tours, little lady leagues and little lady rules to compete with the big bad boys on an equal playing field. The fact that her light weight gives her a theoretical advantage is irrelevant; a man who goes 295 could make the same complaint about a lighter man that one sometime Indy car driver has made about her, and her smaller frame means that she is absorbing a comparatively greater amount of punishment throughout the race.

This isn’t horseracing and as long as her car weighs more than the minimum required by the rules, it’s fair.

I’ve always liked and admired women who are willing to compete fairly, regardless of the sport. Danica Patrick is the ultimate example of this sort of woman. It’s the Title IX losers who want to use government force to cut the legs out from under men in order to give women an advantage that I despise.

And don’t even get me started on the feminist cheerleaders in the national sports media; remember when they were claiming that the US women’s soccer team could beat the US men’s team a few years ago? I don’t remember them bringing up that idiocy after the men beat Euro 2004 finalists Portugal and Mexico before nearly taking down Germany in the quarterfinals of the 2002 World Cup.