Comments on politics, the culture, economics, and sports by Paul Tuns. I am editor-in-chief of "The Interim," Canada's life and family newspaper, and author of "Jean Chretien: A Legacy of Scandal" (2004) and "The Dauphin: The Truth about Justin Trudeau" (2015). I am some combination of conservative/libertarian, standing athwart history yelling "bullshit!" You can follow me on Twitter (@ptuns).

 
Newt Gingrich on the problems facing the GOP

From Newt Gingrich's interview with Freakonomics readers that I noted earlier:

"Q: To what extent, if any, do you believe that social conservatives and the so-called religious right have become a liability for the Republican Party?

A: I don’t believe social conservatives are a liability for the Republican Party. I also don’t believe that social conservatives exert any more influence on the Republican Party today than in the recent past. However, I would argue that the failure of the Republican Party in recent years to hold on to reform/good-government voters by maintaining a balanced budget, cutting spending and earmarks, tackling entitlement reform, and transforming big government into intelligent, effective, and limited government has allowed it to be defined more and more narrowly by fewer of its several constituencies. So the true liability for the Republican Party has been politicians unwilling to do the hard work of continuing the reform agenda of the Contract of America."

It isn't the Religious Right that is hurting the Republicans but rather the focus on the Religious Right by Republican leaders that is hurting the party. Republicans are forgetting that they are a coalition of several components (small government types, foreign policy hawks).

Just a note about the rest of the Q&A. What is striking about much of the interview, especially when talking about his American Solutions, is how much Gingrich sounds like Preston Manning.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:51 PM

 
The truth about the relationship between government and lobbyists

The more government you have, the more lobbyists you'll get. You know, like flies to feces. Newt Gingrich, in a wide-ranging reader-driven interview at Freakonomics from a few weeks ago, tackles the question with a little more tact:

"Q: Do you think that corporations have too much power in government, through lobbyists and monetary incentives? What should be done to correct what I see as an imbalance of power between voters and the rich/powerful?

A: There is a direct relationship between the size, influence, and power of a government and the influence of lobbyists on that government. If we are serious about limiting the ability of lobbyists to dictate government policy, we should be serious about limiting the size and scope of the government’s power. Until that happens, the wealthy and powerful will always be able to have influence through lobbying."
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:37 PM

 
Hello Five Feet of Fury readers

If you are looking for my review of Kathy Shaidle's Acoustic Ladyland, scroll down to the March 27 entry.
posted by Paul Tuns at 7:31 AM

 
Baseball is back

Great opening game in Washington tonight, where the Nationals beat the Atlanta Braves 3-2 in the ninth with a homer by 23-year-old Ryan Zimmerman. I don't care about either of these teams, but it was great to watch it even if Joe Morgan was calling the game.

I'll have my analysis of each team up by next weekend, perhaps putting one division up each day. Without finalizing everything, here is my rough predictions. They might be different once I write out finish writing the analysis, but so far this is what they look like:

AL East: Boston, New York Yankees, Toronto, Tampa, Baltimore
AL Central: Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago White Sox, Minnesota, Kansas City
AL West: Los Angeles Angels, Seattle, Oakland, Texas

AL Divisional: Red Sox beat Angels, Yankees beat Tigers
AL: Red Sox beat Yankees
MVP: Miguel Cabrera (Det)
Rookie of the Year: Joba Chamberlain (NYY)
Manager of the Year: Jim Leyland (Det)
Cy Young: Justin Verlander (Det)

NL East: New York Mets, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Washington, Florida
NL Central: Chicago Cubs, Milwaukee Brewers, Cincinnati, Houston, St. Louis, Pittsburgh
NL West: Los Angeles Dodgers, Arizona, Colorado, San Diego, San Fransisco

NL Divisional: Mets beat Brewers, Dodgers beat Cubs
NL: Mets beat Dodgers
MVP: David Wright (NYM)
Rookie of the Year: Kosuke Fukudome (Cubs) or Joey Votto (Cincinnati)
Manager of the Year: Joe Torre (LA)
Cy Young: Johann Santana (NYM)

World Series: Red Sox over Mets
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:38 PM

 
The Interim turns 25

The Interim -- Canada's pro-life and pro-family newspaper -- turned 25 in March. We are having our anniversary dinner on April 10 with guest speaker Andrea Mrozek of ProWomanProLife.org. The event is at Spirale's (Don Mills north of Eglinton) from 6-9 pm.

Andrea does great work at ProWomanProLife but has real paying gigs, currently at The Institute for Marriage and Family Canada and previously at The Western Standard. She has been widely published including in The National Post and been a guest on television and radio programs across the country. Andrea will address 'Pro Life and the Media', but it won't be the usual "the media is biased against pro-life" complaint, so it will really be worth hearing.

The dinner is $75 per ticket or $675 a plate. I'm trying to get 10 readers of this blog together so individually you will only pay $67.50 per ticket. Email me at paul_tuns@yahoo with 'Interim Dinner' in the subject line and if I get 10 of you by this Friday, we'll get a table and you'll save on the tickets. Please make a note of whether you are still interested at $75 per person if we don't get 10 people for the table.

If you can't make it and want to support The Interim -- my paying gig -- please consider calling a making a donation.

Later this week I'll post some of our special 25th anniversary coverage that appears in the April issue of The Interim.
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:47 PM

 
Just wondering

What list is longer? The things for which global warming is allegedly responsible or the things that actually do offend Muslims? Five Feet of Fury links to The Amboy Times list of things that offend Muslims (with links) that includes everything from the teaching of the Holocaust to the swirls on ice cream cones, from piglet to the Australian flag.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:00 AM

 
Total nerdom meets rap

Baby Got Stats from the Johns Hopkins Department of Biostatistics. (HT: Freakonomics blog)
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:51 AM

 
The banality of Barack

Here's something I wish I had written. From the Financial Times:

Do you have the audacity of hope? Or the urgency of now? Perhaps you feel the audacity of now and the urgency of hope; or the ferocity of what: the adverb of where; the gerund of when or the vacuity of who. Then you are ready for a new kind of politics.

What are the defining features of The New Politics? Well, for a start the new politics is good. This is important because the old politics was bad. The old politics is sterile; the new politics is vibrant. The new politics is hope; the old politics is despair. If you are the candidate, the old politics is your opponent; the new politics is you.

The new politics doesn’t do detail. But it doesn’t matter because the better you say it, the less it has to mean. The new politics is about mood and vision. It claims to confront hard truths while sticking to old remedies. It purports to seek the end to corrosive negative campaigning even as it derides and dismisses all the alternatives as the old.

The beauty of the new politics is that the less experience you have the better you are at it. You just need to be personable, articulate and uncontaminated by power.

The current king of the new politics is Barack Obama. Consider the pithy but marshmallowy soundbites that form the heart of his rhetoric. They would be be just as valid for a man trying to entice a woman into bed. Imagine the scene at the front door.

“Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

“On our first date?”

“I have the audacity of hope.”

“I have work in the morning.”

“But I’m feeling the fierce urgency of now.”

“I’m sorry, I just don’t do this kind of thing on a first date.”

“It’s time for a change.”

“We can’t.”

“Yes we can.”

This may not work on a lady’s porch but politically it gets a foot in the door. But even as it appeals to disenchanted voters it plays the most cynical trick of all. For the new politics is the same old politics tapping into an unformed desire for change.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:14 AM

 
Review of Acoustic Ladyland

There are few writers who can write about ear wax and have me finish the column. But Kathy Shaidle did. She begins the piece, "I've always suffered from superfluous ear wax." With anyone else, I would have stopped reading, but Kathy is an unusually good writer: fun and funny, poignant and sarcastic, brilliant and intelligent. I wondered where she was headed and I was confident that reading on would be rewarding and so I read about ear candling. In the column, she takes on the medical experts who say that using the ancient Inca practice of allowing smoke into the ear canal is dangerous even though their own method is to force water into it to dislodge the wax and asks: "Who to believe: ancient purveyors of human sacrifice, or the people who brought you Thalidomide?"

Kathy Shaidle is one of my favourite writers. Her blogs (Five Feet of Fury and the erstwhile Relapsed Catholic) are/were daily must-reads. Kathy is bitchy in the most wonderful way. She is sarcastic without being mean, she is vicious with a smile. If you are not familiar with her writing, here's one example from Acoustic Ladyland, an e-book collection of (mostly) her old Toronto Star columns: "I've taken to wearing a Stars and Stripes scarf. When asked about it, I explain that I use it to strangle draft dodgers." She is consistently delightful.

You want another example? After quoting from Spider Robinson's silly Globe and Mail column on denying parole to John Lennon assassin Mark David Chapman, Kathy says "Spider's past his best before date" and that "One normally has to flip through a high school yearbook to sample prose of such quality."

She offers her own bon mots but also perfect quotes from unusual sources. These latter are more varied than her topics. She covers everything from Dorothy Day to Tammy Faye (Baker), the death of John Lennon to the life of Jesus Christ, Jackie Onassis to anonymous cadavers. She quotes Atlantic Monthly essays and university historians one moment and pop songs and movies lines the next. Talking about the lying Pulitzer-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis (who fibbed about going on Freedom Marches in the South), Kathy quotes Rutgers University historian David Oshinksy who said: "Some people actually went to Mississippi -- and some people went to Mississippi in their heads." Great quote, Kathy finds, but then she adds: "You see, it all depends on what your definition of the word 'went' is."

Often she writes about herself, but in doing so speaks to some larger truth. Kathy writes a lot about her left-wing days. But in doing so, it is less biographical than exposing the culture in which she was once immersed. Of her protesting days and leaving the Left, Kathy says: "It dawned on me pretty quickly that we were too screwed up ourselves to tell society how to behave." In a column that begins about freelance writers being distracted by daytime TV, Kathy uses the plethora of courtroom reality shows with various judges (Judy to Mills Lane) to ultimately end up discussing the excuse culture and "the trendy social worker jargon that passes for politeness these days."

Topics of little interest to many readers are likely to hold your interest. Writing about cellulite, she mentions the "Four Food Groups most women have clung to since college: cigarettes, alcohol, coffee and Coke." (Not diet coke?) Later, she says: "The Apollo astronauts christened the moon's craters with poetic names like 'Sea of Tranquility'; why not do the same with yours?" She also pens a little ditty to the tune of Spiderman about cellulite that will make you laugh. What the heck was I doing reading a column about fat? Few writers could get me to do that.

Read this book and then re-read. At some point, after you have enjoyed it a few times, you can play a great game: highlight the parts which people like Warren Kinsella and other humourless people can quote out of context to prove how horrible Kathy is. There are lots of lines that most people will find funny (sometimes uncomfortably so) but that stiffs like Kinsella will consider utterly despicable. My favourite is a parenthetical question that has nothing to do with the rest of the column: "Does anyone else remember when 'date rape on campus' was still called 'drinking too much and sleeping with a loser'." And she pisses all over Lefty icon John Lennon, all in the name of exposing a simple fact: "A healthy society would welcome open discussion of our 'heroes' secret shortcomings." Can dead people file human rights complaints?

What Kathy attempts to do, to the degree that journalists can, is to excise the unhealthy parts of society by exposing their hypocrisies or toxicities. She tells of one woman who complained "The Catholic Church is obsessed with sex." This same woman, Kathy notes, went to The Vagina Monologues three times. She rips apart the silly Christians who believe in "a Jesus who's half Jim Morrison, half Mr. Rogers." In a great column, "What I Learned in Catholic School," she writes: "No matter how hungry you are, you're not, and probably never will be, 'starving'." (In the same column, Kathy has the Catholic reply to the Vagina Monologue-obsessed lady: "Sex is fun, but it isn't a toy.")

Kathy also shows a side many regular readers might not get from her blog. A deep understanding, sensitivity and compassion is on display in columns on the victims of the Empress of Ireland, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Mary Magdalene (who "was not a prostitute" we are reminded) and Tammy Faye Baker. She also demonstrates Christian humility. When she does, her writing is quite affecting. Read her columns on Ash Wednesday, watching televangelist Joyce Meyer, and The Exorcist.

Kathy has had columns in the Toronto Star, Our Sunday Visitor and elsewhere in the past but it is a shame that her byline does not grace a daily on a regular basis today. The quality of her collected columns demonstrate why she should have a regular column gig; the political incorrectness and brutal honesty of them demonstrate why she doesn't. While editors deny their readers the joy of Kathy's writing, there is no reason you should deny yourself this pleasure. Buy Acoustic Ladyland; at $12.95, even as an e-book, it is a bargain.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:04 AM

 
Best opening in a letter to the editor, ever

J. Kelly Nestruck to the Globe and Mail six years ago:

"I realize that the bulk of your readers are mortality-obsessed Boomers who upon reaching the age of 50 suddenly realized that, despite their SUVs and stock portfolios, they too will end up rotting in the ground."

(HT: Off the Fence)
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:21 PM

 
Global warming BS

As anyone who reads the more vigorous science on climate change knows, the prevailing view of the science is at odds with the politically popular view. Madhav L. Khandekar has released a paper for the Frontier Center for Public Policy which examines 70 peer-reviewed papers and concludes:

"1. The recent warming of the earth’s surface (~0.40C) is significantly influenced by human activity on ground like urbanization, land-use change etc. The warming due solely to human-added CO2 appears to be a smaller part of the total recent warming.

2. Solar variability and changes in large-scale atmospheric flow patterns in recent years have also contributed to some of the recent warming of the earth’s surface.

3. The Arctic Basin temperature changes of the last 125 years appear to be intimately linked to the Total Soar Irradiance (TSI) while showing a weak correlation with atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

4. The earth’s climate experienced Rapid Climate Change during the entire Holocene period and in particular during the last 5000 years or so. Ice core and other proxy data document mid-Holocene warming of the Arctic as well as of the Antarctic. This Holocene warming appears to be strongly linked to solar variability and not to the greenhouse gas forcing.

5. There does not appear any discernible link between Global Warming and recent increase in extreme weather events world-wide. The apparent increase in extreme weather events is more a perception than reality, this perception being created due to increased media attention and publicity of extreme weather events.

6. North Atlantic hurricanes appear to have strengthened in recent years; however typhoons and tropical cyclones in other ocean basins do not show consistent increase in strength in recent years.

7. The SLR (Sea Level Rise) of the twentieth century is influenced significantly by inter-decadal variability. The most recent study (published January 2007) shows that the sea-level change in the last fifty years were smaller than those in the early part of the twentieth century. There is no evidence of accelerated sea-level change in recent years.

8. Present state-of-the-art coupled climate models still cannot simulate many important features of major climate events like ENSO and tropical and/or Asian Monsoon at this time. The climate models do not simulate many features of convective or large-scale precipitation characteristics."
posted by Paul Tuns at 8:54 PM

 
New New York Sun website

Yuck.
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:06 AM

 
'We don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day'































Forbes has a story and slide-show of the 15 highest paid models -- which includes earnings from much more than modeling (such as licensing their names, etc). Gisele Bundchen is tops with estimated earnings last year of $33 million -- more than three times more the second model on the list, Kate Moss ($9 million), and four times the third, Heidi Klum ($8 million). That's a shame, because Moss and Klum are so much more, er, talented than the Brazilian supermodel.

The story has a short overview of the recent history of models and I found this amusing:

"But the fashion world is about nothing if not trends. And trends are cyclical. Already the editorials of Vogue are turning away from the scary skinny models of Eastern Europe towards a healthier-looking and more Americanized standard. Hilary Rhoda is probably the best example of this.

The new face of Estée Lauder grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and played lacrosse and field hockey in high school. Unlike the size zero waifs that have taken over the runway, Rhoda wears a size four or six."

Size four or six. Apparently those millions can't buy a burger.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:46 PM

 
Good Friday
























(Matthias Grunewald's Isenheim Altarpiece)


John 18:1 - 19:42

Jesus went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley
to where there was a garden,
into which he and his disciples entered.
Judas his betrayer also knew the place,
because Jesus had often met there with his disciples.
So Judas got a band of soldiers and guards
from the chief priests and the Pharisees
and went there with lanterns, torches, and weapons.
Jesus, knowing everything that was going to happen to him,
went out and said to them, “Whom are you looking for?”
They answered him, “Jesus the Nazorean.”
He said to them, “I AM.”
Judas his betrayer was also with them.
When he said to them, “I AM,"
they turned away and fell to the ground.
So he again asked them,
“Whom are you looking for?”
They said, “Jesus the Nazorean.”
Jesus answered,
“I told you that I AM.
So if you are looking for me, let these men go.”
This was to fulfill what he had said,
“I have not lost any of those you gave me.”
Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it,
struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear.
The slave’s name was Malchus.
Jesus said to Peter,
“Put your sword into its scabbard.
Shall I not drink the cup that the Father gave me?”

So the band of soldiers, the tribune, and the Jewish guards seized Jesus,
bound him, and brought him to Annas first.
He was the father-in-law of Caiaphas,
who was high priest that year.
It was Caiaphas who had counseled the Jews
that it was better that one man should die rather than the people.

Simon Peter and another disciple followed Jesus.
Now the other disciple was known to the high priest,
and he entered the courtyard of the high priest with Jesus.
But Peter stood at the gate outside.
So the other disciple, the acquaintance of the high priest,
went out and spoke to the gatekeeper and brought Peter in.
Then the maid who was the gatekeeper said to Peter,
“You are not one of this man’s disciples, are you?”
He said, “I am not.”
Now the slaves and the guards were standing around a charcoal fire
that they had made, because it was cold,
and were warming themselves.
Peter was also standing there keeping warm.

The high priest questioned Jesus
about his disciples and about his doctrine.
Jesus answered him,
“I have spoken publicly to the world.
I have always taught in a synagogue
or in the temple area where all the Jews gather,
and in secret I have said nothing. Why ask me?
Ask those who heard me what I said to them.
They know what I said.”
When he had said this,
one of the temple guards standing there struck Jesus and said,
“Is this the way you answer the high priest?”
Jesus answered him,
“If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong;
but if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?”
Then Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest.

Now Simon Peter was standing there keeping warm.
And they said to him,
“You are not one of his disciples, are you?”
He denied it and said,
“I am not.”
One of the slaves of the high priest,
a relative of the one whose ear Peter had cut off, said,
“Didn’t I see you in the garden with him?”
Again Peter denied it.
And immediately the cock crowed.

Then they brought Jesus from Caiaphas to the praetorium.
It was morning.
And they themselves did not enter the praetorium,
in order not to be defiled so that they could eat the Passover.
So Pilate came out to them and said,
“What charge do you bring against this man?”
They answered and said to him,
“If he were not a criminal,
we would not have handed him over to you.”
At this, Pilate said to them,
“Take him yourselves, and judge him according to your law.”
The Jews answered him,
“We do not have the right to execute anyone,“
in order that the word of Jesus might be fulfilled
that he said indicating the kind of death he would die.
So Pilate went back into the praetorium
and summoned Jesus and said to him,
“Are you the King of the Jews?”
Jesus answered,
“Do you say this on your own
or have others told you about me?”
Pilate answered,
“I am not a Jew, am I?
Your own nation and the chief priests handed you over to me.
What have you done?”
Jesus answered,
“My kingdom does not belong to this world.
If my kingdom did belong to this world,
my attendants would be fighting
to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.
But as it is, my kingdom is not here.”
So Pilate said to him,
“Then you are a king?”
Jesus answered,
“You say I am a king.
For this I was born and for this I came into the world,
to testify to the truth.
Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”

When he had said this,
he again went out to the Jews and said to them,
“I find no guilt in him.
But you have a custom that I release one prisoner to you at Passover.
Do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?”
They cried out again,
“Not this one but Barabbas!”
Now Barabbas was a revolutionary.

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged.
And the soldiers wove a crown out of thorns and placed it on his head,
and clothed him in a purple cloak,
and they came to him and said,
“Hail, King of the Jews!”
And they struck him repeatedly.
Once more Pilate went out and said to them,
“Look, I am bringing him out to you,
so that you may know that I find no guilt in him.”
So Jesus came out,
wearing the crown of thorns and the purple cloak.
And he said to them, “Behold, the man!”
When the chief priests and the guards saw him they cried out,
“Crucify him, crucify him!”

Pilate said to them,
“Take him yourselves and crucify him.
I find no guilt in him.”
The Jews answered,
“We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die,
because he made himself the Son of God.”
Now when Pilate heard this statement,
he became even more afraid,
and went back into the praetorium and said to Jesus,
“Where are you from?”
Jesus did not answer him.
So Pilate said to him,
“Do you not speak to me?
Do you not know that I have power to release you
and I have power to crucify you?”
Jesus answered him,
“You would have no power over me
if it had not been given to you from above.
For this reason the one who handed me over to you
has the greater sin.”
Consequently, Pilate tried to release him; but the Jews cried out,
“If you release him, you are not a Friend of Caesar.
Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.”

When Pilate heard these words he brought Jesus out
and seated him on the judge’s bench
in the place called Stone Pavement, in Hebrew, Gabbatha.
It was preparation day for Passover, and it was about noon.
And he said to the Jews,
“Behold, your king!”
They cried out,
“Take him away, take him away! Crucify him!”
Pilate said to them,
“Shall I crucify your king?”
The chief priests answered,
“We have no king but Caesar.”
Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.

So they took Jesus, and, carrying the cross himself,
he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull,
in Hebrew, Golgotha.
There they crucified him, and with him two others,
one on either side, with Jesus in the middle.
Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross.
It read,
“Jesus the Nazorean, the King of the Jews.”
Now many of the Jews read this inscription,
because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city;
and it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.
So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate,
“Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’
but that he said, ‘I am the King of the Jews’.”
Pilate answered,
“What I have written, I have written.”

When the soldiers had crucified Jesus,
they took his clothes and divided them into four shares,
a share for each soldier.
They also took his tunic, but the tunic was seamless,
woven in one piece from the top down.
So they said to one another,
“Let’s not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it will be,"
in order that the passage of Scripture might be fulfilled that says:
They divided my garments among them,
and for my vesture they cast lots.
This is what the soldiers did.
Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother
and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas,
and Mary of Magdala.
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved
he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.”
Then he said to the disciple,
“Behold, your mother.”
And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

After this, aware that everything was now finished,
in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled,
Jesus said, “I thirst.”
There was a vessel filled with common wine.
So they put a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop
and put it up to his mouth.
When Jesus had taken the wine, he said,
“It is finished.”
And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit.

Now since it was preparation day,
in order that the bodies might not remain on the cross on the sabbath,
for the sabbath day of that week was a solemn one,
the Jews asked Pilate that their legs be broken
and that they be taken down.
So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first
and then of the other one who was crucified with Jesus.
But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead,
they did not break his legs,
but one soldier thrust his lance into his side,
and immediately blood and water flowed out.
An eyewitness has testified, and his testimony is true;
he knows that he is speaking the truth,
so that you also may come to believe.
For this happened so that the Scripture passage might be fulfilled:
Not a bone of it will be broken.
And again another passage says:
They will look upon him whom they have pierced.

After this, Joseph of Arimathea,
secretly a disciple of Jesus for fear of the Jews,
asked Pilate if he could remove the body of Jesus.
And Pilate permitted it.
So he came and took his body.
Nicodemus, the one who had first come to him at night,
also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes
weighing about one hundred pounds.
They took the body of Jesus
and bound it with burial cloths along with the spices,
according to the Jewish burial custom.
Now in the place where he had been crucified there was a garden,
and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been buried.
So they laid Jesus there because of the Jewish preparation day; for the tomb was close by.
posted by Paul Tuns at 3:42 PM

 
Apropos of nothing really

Auberon Waugh on modern morals in the June 30, 1978 Public Eye:

"This is the Bishop of Winchester's new prayer to be recited after an abortion:

'Heavenly Father, You are the giver of Life and You share with us the care of the Life that is given. Into Your hands we commit in trust the developing life that we have cut short. Look in kindly judgment on the choice that we have made and assure us in all our uncertainty that Your love for us can never change.'

A moving sentiment. It might also work as a Grace to be said before any meal which includes roast suckling pig, milk lamb or petits poussins a la creme. Even as I think about this I find my mouth watering. It is an extraordinary thing that the more one eats the more one wants to eat."
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:10 PM

 
Dusty Baker, idiot

The top prospect in baseball, Cincinatti Reds CF Jay Bruce, has been sent to the minors. Seeing Reds says:

"I’m not as outraged as I expected to be. Maybe it’s because this day has been inevitable for at least a week. I still have to wonder why we traded Hamilton if not to install Bruce as the everyday center fielder."

David Pinto as Baseball Musings suggests the reason is to delay free agency by a year. Voros McCracken summarizes the reaction by video. Instead of Bruce the team will use Corey Patterson, who has a career OBP of 298 over eight seasons. Bruce had a 305 BA, 358 OBP and 567 SLG with Triple A Louisville last year, when he was named Minor League Player of the Year by both Baseball America and The Sporting News.

Of course, ultimately the responsibility for this tragic move is the organization's, not Baker's. They knew he prefers useless veterans over top prospects. They should not have let him make this decision. No doubt Bruce will be back in the majors sometime in 2008 (and thus Pinto's rationale doesn't quite work), but the Reds need some lucky breaks to go their way if they have any chance to win this year. Bruce was the better bet for a breakout season than is Patterson.
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:36 PM

 
Earth Hour every day for some people

Andrea Mrozek at ProWomanProLife:

"In other parts of the world, like El Salvador and Mexico (off the resort path) again, the flickering of a broken fluorescent bulb is more the norm than the exception.

But you know what? I support this Earth Hour so every spoiled westerner can feel and see what it’s like when the lights dim. As we congratulate ourselves for 'making a difference' over a night of organic greens, perhaps some will turn their thoughts to those parts of the world where they don’t take basics (like light) for granted.

I don’t feel guilty for having these benefits. I want the rest of the world to achieve the same. I’m not going to deny the family living in poverty in rural El Salvador plumbing and electricity so that we can keep the earth cool and dark."
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:13 AM

 
Red China's Olympics

The Washington Post has a good editorial outlining how Beijing is reneging on promises it made to the International Olympic Committee to respect human rights when it was granted the 2008 Summer Games. The Post also rightly criticizes the inaction of the global community, yet it stops short of calling for a boycott.

I am conflicted on the issue of a boycott which seems to punish the athletes of boycotting countries much more than it does Beijing. Surely there is some way to publicly criticize the ChiComms without boycotting the Olympics. Not that such criticism, even backed by the threat of a boycott, will matter because Beijing simply does not care what the rest of the world thinks and says as long the rest of the world continues to trade with it -- and that threat would never been on the table. But if Beijing is acting belligerently in Tibet, against human rights activists and in regard to journalists now, in months before the Olympics while the eyes of the world gaze upon it, they certainly believe they can get away with such actions. No doubt they will.
posted by Paul Tuns at 4:16 AM

 
Ditto what Andrea says

Andrea Mrozek has a letter to the editor in the Ottawa Citizen today on the controversy of Catholic prelates demanding that Catholic politicians be actually Catholic, noting that issue of abortion is not (strictly) a religious matter:

"Whether Archbishop Terrence Prendergast is intruding in politicians' lives or not is irrelevant to the abortion debate.

Being anti-abortion or pro-life is not exclusively a religious view. The scientific precautionary principle alone is enough to reconsider our casual views on abortion when we look at an ultrasound photograph, even as early as eight weeks gestation...

There's room to be stridently anti-abortion for all the harm it causes without jumping to polemic discourse on whether the Roman Catholic Church is intruding in the business of the state. Men and women can maintain their faith -- or the lack thereof -- and still reasonably join hands with the pro-life cause.

I welcome any atheist, agnostic, Jew, Christian, Hindu or Muslim -- you name it -- to rally around being pro-life.

We all know what the fetus is and we all know our society tacitly supports taking a life under the guise of the 'right to choose.' And if we don't already know about the harm abortion causes women, we should learn."
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:54 AM

 
A web of convenience

Warren Kinsella takes another swipe at the National Post and Macleans for standing up for free speech by implying that free speech needs to be abrogated when he links to a Washington Post graphic showing that there are nearly 900 hate groups in America. But Kinsella for all the webs of hatred he draws, cannot demonstrate that Mark Steyn quoting a imam or a concerned Christian quoting the Bible, leads to any hate crime or even the creation of hate groups. To suggest, as Kinsella has done, that Steyn's book on the clash of civilizations should be subject of human rights tribunals inquiries in order to stop bathroom graffiti is utter nonsense.

About the WaPo graphic taken from the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center: the biggest story there is that in the 1920s, there were 4 million members of the Ku Klux Klan but that today there are fewer than 6000. Sure, there are now racist skinheads and white nationalists groups (as well as black separatists), but I doubt there are 4 million members of racist groups in total. Sure 900 are a lot, but how many having mailing lists of only a few dozen (think Mel Gibson's character's newsletter in Conspiracy Theory) or a website that gets a few hits. (And how many are police or other other monitors of hatred?) How many groups have overlap members? And why so many neo-Nazi groups in liberal states such as California, Pennsylvania and New Jersey?

I am not defending these repugnantly racist groups or diminishing the harm they can do. But their existence does not mean that hate permeates America. And they certainly do not mean that free speech rights need to be squelched -- especially here in Canada. It is hardly ever the members of the racist groups that get hauled in front of human rights commissions, but rather magazines and their editors (Macleans and Kenneth Whyte, Western Standard and Ezra Levant, Catholic Insight and Fr. Alphonse de Valk), political parties and their leaders (CHP and Ron Grey) and individuals acting on their religiously informed conscience (Scott Brockie, Hugh Owens) that are targetted. It is a stetch to link their words and actions to the spraying of a swastika on a the door of the public washroom stall. When the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal said (without evidence other than a timeline coincidence which panel chair Lori G. Andreachuk admitted was 'circumstantial evidence') that Stephen Boissoin's letter to the Red Deer Advocate was linked to the beating of an area gay man, my first thought is how many bigotted thugs read the letters to the editor section of a newspaper. I don't know, but neither does the AHRT, nor were they curious enough to ask the assailant. To the Warren Kinsellas and human rights tribunals of this world, the actual link need not exist because it is all part of the web of hate. The 'web' is an alternative to evidence. All of which makes it easier to use the apparatus of the state to silence views with which one disagrees.
posted by Paul Tuns at 2:23 PM

 
A taste of Buckley

After William F. Buckley two weeks ago, I immersed myself in his writings. I've made note of a selection of some of his lines that I liked. I hope you enjoy.

"Well a lot of people who are now without money would not be without money if the tax collector were to return some of what he took away."
-- Interview with John Kenneth Galbraith, Firing Line

"Mr. Norman Thomas, on one occasion when I debated with him, said not less than three times that 17 million Americans 'were not earning a living wage.' After the third repetition of this, I was driven to ask why, under the circumstances, they weren't dead?"
-- National Review (1967)

"John Lennon is greatly talented as a musician. As a philosopher he is as interesting as Jelly Roll Morton; less so, as a matter of fact. He is interesting only to an anthologist of pieces on How I Wrecked My Own Life, and Can Help Wreck Yours."
-- Inveighing We Will Go

"America has, lately, given herself over ot the promulgation of unrealizable goals, which doom her to frustration, if not despair. Voegelin calls it the immanentization of the eschaton -- broadly speaking, consigning that which properly belongs to the end of life to the temporal order. That can lead only to grave dissatisfactions ... It is one thing to engage in great ventures in amelioration; it is another to engage in great ventures of utopianization."
-- Inveighing We Will Go

"Words. Many of us in this room live off them, if not by them. They are useful, dangerous, salvific."
-- From NR's 25th anniversary dinner, in Let Us Talk of Many Things: The Collected Speeches

"Conor Cruise O'Brien has greeted the posthumous publication of Whittaker Chambers' essays, letters and fragments as a singular opportunity to call to the attention of the literary world, or at least that part of it that reads the New York Review of Books ..."
-- The Jewelers Eye

"It is a deep and paralyzing drug, fanaticism."
-- Let us Talk of Many Things

"You cannot turn the clock back, they all say. To the extent that is true, it is an observation so overbearingly banal as to suggest idiocy on the part of the man who makes it."
-- National Review (1964)

"Chambers did in fact read Miss Rand right out of the conservative movement. He did so by pointing out that her philosophy is in fact another kind of materialism -- not the dialectical materialism of Marx, the materialism of technocracy, of the relentless self-server who lives for himself and for absolutely no one else, whose concern for others is explainable merely as an intellectualized recognition of the relationship between helping others and helping oneself."
-- Did You Ever See a Dream Walking: American Conservative Thought in the 20th Century

"All civilized men want peace. And all truly civilized men must despise pacificism ... Pacificism is a Christian heresy that springs from critical misunderstandings. Peace on earth is a plea for those conditions on earth -- love, charity, temperance -- which make peace thinkable."
-- National Review (1959)

"War is the second worst activity of mankind, the worst being acquiescence in slavery."
-- National Review (1965)

"National Review is out of place, in the sense that the United Nations and the League of Women Voters and the New York Times and Henry Steele Commager are in place."
-- "Publisher's Statement," inaugural issue (Nov. 19, 1955) of NR

"It is idle to talk about preventing the wreck of Western Civilization. It is already a wreck from within."
-- Quoted in Strictly Right: William F. Buckley and the American Conservative Movement by Linda Bridges & John R. Coyne Jr.

"I write as a consumer of Catholicism; or as one shareholder in the enterprise, always with the understanding that the Pope has all the voting stock."
-- Right Reason

"The Voice of America? Hell, the voice of humanity."
-- Right Reason

"I am obliged to confess that I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University."
-- Rumbles Left and Right

"Foreign aid is Bipartisanship's substitute for foreign policy."
-- National Review (1956)

"Socialize the individual's surplus and you socialize his spirit and creativeness; you cannot paint the Mona Lisa by assigning one dab each to a thousand painters."
-- Up from Liberalism

"At the political level, conservatives are bound together for the most part by negative response to liberalism; but altogether too much is made of that fact."
-- Up from Liberalism

"I have never composed poetry, but if I did, my very first couplet would be:
I know that I shall never see
A poem lovely as Skippy's peanut butter."
-- Right Reason

And my favourite, although I don't have the original source:

"Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views."
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:03 AM

 
Quick hits Friday

Nice comeback from new ProWomanProLife.org contributor Tanya Zaleski on feminist reaction against C-484, the Unborn Victims of Crime Act: "Joyce Hancock of the Newfoundland and Labrador Feminist Coalition makes her opinion known here. 'You can’t separate violence against women from violence against the fetus' [Hancock says]. I’m with her so far. Any violent act against the fetus hurts the woman. (I wonder if she mentions that when advising women on abortion.)"

Jay Nordlinger in today's Impromptus column observes: "Reading stories about the Beijing Olympics and protests against them, I’ve noticed something peculiar: The protests are about China’s support of Sudan, and its genocidal regime. Which is great, of course — I mean, the protests against China’s support. But there don’t seem to be protests against China’s treatment of its own citizens: the denial of rights, the torture, the “disappearing” of Falun Gong practitioners, etc."

Danielle Crittendon reports on the reaction of her builder to the Eliot Spitzer affair: "Maybe the guy's just an idiot ... An idiot who can't control his dick."

A reader of Andrew Sullivan's notes that in pornography, it is legal for a producer to pay two people to have sex, tape it, and sell it. Some point to that fact and note that it remains illegal for one person to pay another for sex. That seems absurd. It sure does. I do not quite understand why pornography is legal but prostitution is not. But those who point out the absurdity usually say, "then let's legalize prostitution." But it could also go, "So let's stop letting producers pay two people for having sex and selling the video." Just a thought.

In a new paper, economists Barry Eichengreen and Douglas A. Irwin examine "International Economic Policy: Was There a Bush Doctrine?" and find no, there was not. They say, "The Bush administration sought to advance a free trade agenda but could not avoid the use of protectionist measures at home — just like its predecessors ... These continuities reflect long-standing structures and deeply embedded interests that the administration found impossible to resist." They conclude that this is unlikely to change, leading Stephen J. Dubner to say, "This may come as a disappointment to everyone who is voting in the upcoming presidential election with hopes of wholesale changes. It’s not like the president doesn’t matter or anything like that; it’s just that — well, um, he/she ends up mattering a lot less than people might like to think." And that is a good thing, although surprising considering the heatedness of the political discourse today.

Could someone explain to me what Joe Clark means by this, about the string of PC victories in Alberta over the past four decades: "What's happened in Alberta in the last 15, 20 years is that this province is now accepted as a leader in the country, it doesn't have to fight its way in any more. What it has to do is make positive use of the access it has to opinions. We need some new institutional ways to do that." Usually he is just banal, but with "access to opinions" he has become incomprehensible.

Some baseball. Go to this Baseball Analysts story, scroll to the end, and play the video on Clayton Kershaw's curveball. Amazing.
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:55 AM

 
Quick hits

Over at the The Daily Standard, Adam J. White says, quite rightly, that Barack Obama not contending Florida and Michigan (in the first place) exposes his lack of political acumen. As I have noted on numerous occasions, time and time again Obama shows he lacks the right political instincts. Voters make like that, but it could hurt him if it leads to a major blunder (assuming blunders stick to the teflon candidate).

I hear news that Jack Kevorkian is running for Congress and all I think is that he made my job at The Interim so much more interesting for the next six months. Wonder if Robert Latimer might run for public office when he gets out of jail in a few years. I don't think you can run while on day parole.

A New York Times editorial laments the politics of immigration and includes such economic reasoning that a crackdown on illegal aliens will, "worsen wages and working conditions for all Americans, since nobody works more cheaply and takes more abuse than a terrified, desperate immigrant." But if illegals are taking jobs nobody else wants, aren't they the ones driving down wages and conditions? If there weren't illegals* employers would need to pay more or provide better conditions to get the workers they need, or face closing down. To me and most people, this would be obvious, but economic illiteracy is a precondition for writing editorials for the paper of record.

* I'm not sure how a country ensures there won't be illegal aliens without resorting to Draconian measures.
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:08 AM

 
Quick hits on Canadian politics, Spitzer, bad teachers and Hillary Ono

I'm on the road, so here are a few quick hits on things that caught my attention while purusing the web.

Gerry Nicholls has a short tract on the need for a vibrant conservative movement in Canada. On page 6, he begins to dispel the notion that Canada is a left-wing country. If you think that Canada is mostly left-leaning, then you would, like Stephen Harper and his apologist Tom Flanagan, promote glacial-speed incrementalism. But if you don't buy that Canada is largely a nation of left-wingers, you become impatient with the exceedingly slow pace of change in Ottawa under the Harper Tories. More on this later. I agree with Nicholls on the death of the Trudeau Empire, but I have to give the notion of Quality of Life Voters some thought.

In The Corner, Mark Steyn quotes someone from the Daily Kos: "Saying that Hillary has Executive Branch experience is like saying Yoko Ono was a Beatle."

Also from The Corner, The Derb presents: "Spitzenfreude — the widespread gloating over Eliot Spitzer's woes."

I could not disagree with Adam Daifallah more. He says it is unseemly to delight in the situation that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer finds himself. I'm not of the view that politicians procuring the services of hookers is a resigning offense. But considering his self-righteousness this scandal couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

The Center for Union Facts has a new website to keep an eye on teachers unions. (HT: Club for Growth blog) However, as Alex Tabarrok notes at Marginal Revolution, they might not be going about it the right way, creating the 'wrong incentives'. As USA Today reports, "The Center for Union Facts will ask parents, students and other teachers Tuesday to nominate the 'worst unionized teacher in America.' The center says it will choose 10 and offer each $10,000 to quit; 'winners' must allow the center to write about them on its website."
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:47 AM

 
The future could be worse

As awful an attorney general Eliot Spitzer was, prosecuting Wall Street with gusto, his governorship has been surprisingly centrist, holding the line on taxes and resisting Republican efforts to increase benefits on government employees. The New York Sun editorializes that if Spitzer were to resign, things might get much worse:

"As all this is sorted out Mr. Spitzer's enemies will want to pause as they rush him out the door. What comes afterward, at least in the short term, may be worse than the governor who James Cramer has described as "the most Republican Democrat I know," a governor who has held the line against both Senate Majority Leader Bruno's efforts to lavish spending on the state's healthcare workers and hospitals and against Assembly Speaker Silver's plans to levy a new income tax increase on New York tax filers earning more than $1 million a year. We have had our policy differences with Mr. Spitzer, but there have been elements of centrism in his policy agenda. Lieutenant Governor Paterson, in line to be governor if Mr. Spitzer resigns, will lack the mandate of a popular election, and Mr. Silver will have the upper hand in Albany. There is no evidence that Mr. Paterson has any of Mr. Spitzer's even mild inclination toward centrism. A Governor Paterson can be expected to set taxes and spending soaring. If there is a bright spot to this sad story, it is that it may hasten the revival of a Republican Party in New York that can offer both an issues-based and ethics-based contrast to the leadership represented by Messrs. Spitzer, Silver, and Paterson."

The New York Times, to its credit, says that Spitzer was wrong to describe this as a personal tragedy that should not detract from the bigger pictures -- his reformist agenda -- even as he considers resigning. Unfortunately, the paper's editorial still takes a potshot at Wall Street and others who have critized the intolerably self-righteous Spitzer:

"A further tragedy here, beyond the personal one of the Spitzer family and the damage he has done to the reform cause, is that Mr. Spitzer’s targets are now relishing their tormentor’s torment. Those on Wall Street who fumed at having to make their world fairer for ordinary shareholders can now chortle with satisfaction in their private enclaves. For New York Republicans, who have blocked some of the most important reforms in Albany, it is hard to imagine the private glee — especially at a moment when they are fighting desperately to hold their majority in the State Senate."

It is no doubt their opposition to corporate America and the GOP that keeps them from saying anything about his possible resignation, only suggesting that Spitzer needs to re-establish trust with New York voters. It would appear he owes them more than that. He owes them a resignation, despite the dire picture the New York Sun paints for the remaining two years of this governorship.
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:54 AM

 
Delong's advice for talking about the recession

The economy is slowing and its almost a recession, says economist Brad Delong. He advises:

"There is a natural human tendency to overreact to what is, after all, only a marginal data point, and panic.

Even so, it is now time for words like 'alrm' [sic] and phrases like 'grave concern'."
posted by Paul Tuns at 7:47 AM

 
Perfect housewarming gift

According to Lasso of Truth.
posted by Paul Tuns at 7:44 AM

 
WFB makes the cover of Newsweek

Check out the story here. Unfortunately, a major part of the storyline is that the conservative movement he united is cracking up.
posted by Paul Tuns at 7:42 AM

 
Are baseball players stupid or predictably irrational?

http://www.sabernomics.com/sabernomics/index.php/2008/03/why-do-players-take-human-growth-hormone-if-it-doesnt-work/

J.C. Bradbury at Sabernomics:

"Why Do Players Take Human Growth Hormone If It Doesn’t Work?

I hear this question quite a bit when I point out that growth hormone does not improve athletic performance. One plausible explation is that players are not well informed on the subject, given that most of their information comes from drug pushers (see Andy Pettitte’s and Chuck Knoblauch’s depositions) and the ill-informed media. But, Justin Wolfers at Freakonomics points to a new study that offers another possible explanation: the placebo effect.

A placebo is a benign substance used in medical trials to control for psychological responses to drugs. For example, a drug given to arthritis patients may cause them to feel better just because they expect to feel better, not because the drug actually worked. Similarly, players who use human growth hormone may notice themselves feeling stronger and more productive after taking a substance that is supposed to have this effect. A colleague of mine who conducts clinical trials on athletes tells me it is common for his placebo subjects to insist they are getting the real stuff.

It turns out that the placebo effect of human growth hormone could be even stronger than previously expected. New research by economist Dan Ariely finds that the placebo effect is exacerbated by the price of the drug.

A higher price can create the impression of higher value, just as a placebo pill can reduce pain.

Now researchers have combined the two effects. A $2.50 placebo, they have found, works better one that costs 10 cents.

The finding may explain the popularity of some high-cost drugs over cheaper alternatives, the authors conclude. It may also help account for patients’ reports that generic drugs are less effective than brand-name ones, though their active ingredients are identical.

Why is this relevant? Human growth hormone is very expensive relative to other performance-enhancing drugs."
posted by Paul Tuns at 7:38 AM

 
Dusty Baker is an idiot, part whatever

Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy covers the Cincinatti Reds and he reports this comment from Reds manager Dusty Baker as he ponders the top of his lineup:

"[Baker says] 'I need to know which one is the smarter hitter - which one can take and which one is a better hitter with two strikes. I have a pretty good idea already, but I have to see.'

Baker said he sometimes sits in his office staring into space, pondering and pontificating over things of this nature, 'And sometime I just sit here and nothing comes'."
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:31 PM

 
Will on Castro

Washington Post columnist George F. Will looks at both Fidel Castro's island prison and the West's leftist admirers (Norman Mailer, Oliver Stone, Jean-Paul Satre ... yawn). It is an excellent column that will make you smile and sad at the same time. Here's the conclusion that demonstrates the folly, aptly quoted, of enraptured liberals:

"In the wise man's prisons -- according to Armando Valladares's memoir of 22 years in them ('Against All Hope') -- some doors are welded shut and prisoners are fed watery soup sometimes laced with glass, or dead rats, or half a cow's intestine, rectum included, containing feces. In 2003, the wise man's pulverizing police state, always struggling to reduce Cuba's civil society to a dust of individuals, sentenced 78 democracy advocates, after one-day secret trials, to up to 28 years in those prisons. Pilgrims praising Cuban health care call to mind Pat Moynihan's acerbic observation that when travel to China was liberalized, many visitors seemed more impressed by the absence of flies than by the absence of freedom.

Castro has ruled Cuba during 10 U.S. presidencies and longer than the Soviet Union ruled Eastern Europe. The Economist has called him "a Caribbean King Lear." Raging on his island heath, with nothing to celebrate except his endurance, his creativity has come down to this: He has added a category to the taxonomy of world regimes -- government by costume party. Useful at last, the Comandante, dressed for success in his military fatigues, presides over a museum of Marxism."
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:47 AM

 
WSJ on Mike Huckabee

A Wall Street Journal editorial on Mike Huckabee's future:

"He also had a nice run with pundits who liked his attacks on business and President Bush's foreign policy. But he never was able to expand his appeal beyond religious conservatives, in part because those attacks alienated both free-marketeers and national security hawks. He was in that sense this year's version of Mr. McCain in 2000 -- a media fave who couldn't close the sale with enough GOP voters."

A McCain-like Republican darling of the media. Sounds like a recipe for a future run at the Republican presidential nomination. The paper argues that neither a future campaign or one as the GOP vice presidential nominee would be wise.
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:42 AM

 
A right to abortion, but not a right to have a child

Canadian Cynic criticizes Liberal leader Stephane Dion for being absent from the vote on C-484, a private member's bill that, if passed, would recognize the unborn child as a second victim of crime when he or she is harmed during the commission of a crime against the pregnant mother. This is common-sense legislation and it is long overdue. Nearly three-quarters of Canadians support such a law. Canadian Cynic says:

"This Bill is an insult to the intelligence of Canadians and a blatant attempt to undermine the ability of women to maintain the right to bodily self determination and personal autonomy ... Mr. Dion, while I sincerely hope this Bill is killed in committee, your inaction and abandonment of Canadian women's rights has defeated any faith I might have had for your growth as a leader."

What a strange attack on C-484. Despite the bill's explicit statement that criminal sanctions only apply when a crime is committed against the mother (and abortion is not a crime in Canada), critics continue to claim that it imperils a woman's right to choose. What C-484 does in fact do, is protect the right of women who have chosen to keep their child. Canadian Cynic complains that the bill would "undermine the ability of women to maintain the right to bodily self determination"; it is not the law, but the criminal who attacks a pregnant woman and kills her unborn child that has violated her 'bodily self-determination'. Not recognizing what the mother recognizes -- the humanity of the unborn child she has chosen to keep -- abandons women's rights.

Many of the dozen pregnant women who have killed in Canada since 2000, have been targeted specifically because they were pregnant. The child was every much a target of the assault as the mother, yet Canadian law only recognizes one victim. Feminists, especially pro-choice feminists, insist the best way to deal with this is through tougher spousal abuse laws (despite the fact that not all the assailants were husbands).

Still, it seems odd that in the extremist defense of abortion rights, the pro-choice crowd feels that it must not protect the right of women who have chosen to keep their child. They do not seem to care about that choice, betraying their self-chosen moniker and proving that the term pro-abortion is much more accurate portrayal of their views.
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:11 AM

 
Giving Reds manager Dusty Baker the tools he needs to fail

From Defensive Indifference on the news that the Cincinatti Reds have signed veteran CF Corey Patterson who will no doubt play outfield over minor league sensation Jay Bruce:

"We should have seen this coming long ago. Baker managed Corey Patterson when both were in Chicago. There’s nothing he loves more than playing veterans, except maybe familiarity and players who don’t clog the bases. Patterson is a veteran. He’s an ex-Baker-ite. Oh, and he’scoming off a season where he posted a .304 OBP.

He’s fucking perfect for Dusty. He’s fast, but he won’t give you all those pesky chances to score runs! Why the hell would you want a guy who had 80 extra-base hits in the minors last season when you could just have a replacement level player get 600 plate appearances in a completely winnable division."
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:45 AM

 
Friedman's dead, long live Friedman

J. Bradford Delong says it is time to declare Milton Friedman's economic ideas dead. But it isn't really based on anything more than a wish: "I believe that Friedman's principles do not, ultimately, deliver what they promise." Believe? Aren't economists supposed to rely on something other than belief, like, say, evidence, for their judgements? And, Delong concludes: "While movement in Friedman's direction was by and large positive over the past generation, the gains to be had from further movement in that direction are far less certain." What, though, is certain?

Delong does a nice and fair enough job summarizing Milton Friedman's core principles:

"Friedman adhered throughout his life to five basic principles: strongly anti-inflationary monetary policy; a government that understood that it was the people's agent and not a dispenser of favors and benefits; a government that kept its nose out of people's economic business; a government that kept its nose out of people's private lives; and an enthusiastic and optimistic belief in what free discussion and political democracy could do to convince people to adopt principles one through four."

He then runs through a score sheet. Ronald Reagan did the first one by default, but didn't deliver on two others. Margaret Thatcher failed to achieve another. It is unfair to throw Deng Xiaoping's combination of communism and capitalism in there because the communism part is incompatible with Friedman's belief in liberty, especially vigorous free discussion, but by doing so Delong expands Friedman's influence -- and failure.

Delong declares the past three decades the Age of Friedman, which while a compliment, is unfair to the economist. There have been politicians who have followed Friedman's ideas, or at least gave a nod to them, but his ideas have not be tried comprehensively. They have been implemented where it was possible to do so and never tried in their entirety. To falsely declare the last 30 years an Age of Friedman and then declare it over, is a tidy but dishonest way of dismissing the late economist. I hate to sound like a Marxist, but Friedmanism has never really been tried so it is unfair to saddle him with the failures and shortcomings of Reaganism, Thatcherism or Deng's hybrid of capitalism and communism.

Not surprisingly, liberal economist Yves Smith (The Naked Economist) endorses Delong's declaration that Friedman is dead, but takes a more belligerent view.
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:11 AM

 
The Derb explains the health care issue

John Derbyshire in The Corner:

"The entire problem with healthcare is that it's a risk-reward curve. How far do you want to (or: can afford to) let people go along the curve? About 95 percent of the healthcare that people need can perfectly well be supplied by nursing assistants with a couple of years' training, or Third World providers like the ones I discussed. When you climb up into the remaining five percent, you are in the zone where real doctors and expensive equipment are needed. Keep going and you enter the zone of million-dollar drugs, teams of specialists, experimental technology, and months of intensive care. A billionaire can of course travel all the way along the curve. Should the rest of us be able to? Our system is organized around the answer 'yes.' This is probably untenable. Sooner or later you're going to die. Get used to it."
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:24 PM

 
Alex Keaton's politics

In a column at nytimes.com, former Family Ties producer Gary David Goldberg, writes about what Alex P. Keaton would do in 2008. Mostly Goldberg uses the column to dump all over the Republicans -- they are incompetent, anti-science, hostage to the Religious Right, blah, blah, blah. He says Ron Paul would resonate most with the pro-small government TV character -- although I question how "limited government" Keaton was considering his idolization of Richard Nixon. Goldberg adds that Keaton, played by Michael J. Fox, would also be attracted to Mike Huckabee's proposal to scrap the IRS. But, says Goldberg, "ultimately Alex likes to win, and I think that would have kept him from fully committing to either of those guys." Keaton couldn't vote for Hillary Clinton and whether Keaton could support Barack Obama, producer admits, "I honestly don’t know." You know why? Because Alex Keaton is a TV character that existed two decades ago. He is not real. He does not get a vote. And it doesn't matter.
posted by Paul Tuns at 7:14 PM

 
Backing Kosovo independence

Martin Sieff at Human Events:

"It is hardly a conservative policy to support the establishment of an Islamist state on the European continent, turn a blind eye to the well-documented persecution of an ancient Christian community, engage in a Woodrow Wilson-style passion for nation building and follow in the footsteps of Bill Clinton. Yet that is what the United States has done by recognizing the independence of Kosovo."

I'm not entirely convinced by those argument buts the precedents are problematic. It's dangerous for the Bush adminstration to follow the Clinton administration's lead because:

"Clinton and Albright’s policy had other far-reaching consequences. They established a very novel and dangerous principle whereby long-established borders could be redrawn and long-established nations dismembered with U.S. support on the principle that a disaffected national minority in a single province refused to accept the overall rule of the state."
posted by Paul Tuns at 5:14 PM

 
Wisdom from Warren Buffet

Reuters reports:

"Warren Buffett said on Monday that he would be comfortable putting Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in charge of running a business, though not his Berkshire Hathaway Inc insurance and investment company."

And I wouldn't mind Clinton or Obama running a country, as long as it isn't the United States. I'm sure Obama could handle Angola. And would Hillary do any more damage to Haiti?
posted by Paul Tuns at 4:54 PM

 
Save the planet, eat whale

Reuters reports that according to the High North Alliance in Norway, when considering the fuel used in getting different kinds of meet, whale meat represented 4.2 lbs of greenhouse cases per 2.2 lbs of meat, compared to 15.8 lbs of GHG for beef, 6.4 lbs for pork and 4.6 lbs for chicken. Rune Froevik of the Alliance says, "Basically it turns out that the best thing you can do for the planet is to eat whale meat compared to other types of meat." Greenpeace maintains that everyone should eschew all meat.

(HT: Passport)
posted by Paul Tuns at 4:47 PM

 
Alberta -- confounding pundits by being itself

For weeks there have been stories in the Canadian media about how Albertans were getting tired of the Progressive Conservatives, that they didn't like the uninspired leadership of Ed Stelmach, and that the province is changing in part due to the influx of people from other provinces and in part due to angst about the combination of economic opportunity and environmental challenges presented by the oil sands project. Well, not quite.

In 2004, the PCs won less than 47% of the vote and captured 62 of 83 seats. The Liberals won 16 seats, the NDP four and the Alberta Alliance one. Yesterday, they won nearly 53% of the vote, an increase of about 7% despite the fact Albertans were supposedly clamouring for change and were displeased with the PC premier. That was good for an increase of 11 seats, for a total of 73. The Liberals fell to eight and the NDP to two. Usually the opposition does a little better in the provincial capital, but Stelmach delivered on his promise to put the "Ed" back into Edmonton while the Tories maintained their stranglehold on Calgary.

In other words, the pundits were completely wrong. Should we be surprised. Dogs bark, ducks quack and Albertans vote Progressive Conservative. Were they really ever likely to elect a Liberal Party that promised hard caps on emmissions, threatening the economic growth of the province?
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:40 AM

 
What the heck?
Or, do headline writers actually read the story

Washington Post headline: "Abortion, Economics Key Issues For Young Voters."

From the story, actual polling numbers:

"In the overall ranking of issues, 30 percent of the respondents said abortion is a very important issue, though it wasn't as important to them as the economy, which drew ranked highest by 67 percent of the respondents, or the the war in Iraq, which was ranked important by 64 percent of the respondents. Health care drew 46 percent of the respondents and 37 precent of respondents selected the environment as an issue of importance."

In other words, more young will vote on the economy, the war in Iraq, health care, and the environment, but abortion somehow leap-frogs those issues into the headline.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:14 PM

 
World's 25 dirtiest cities

Forbes has an excellent slide show on the 25 dirtiest cities according to the Mercer Human Resource Consulting's 2007 Health and Sanitation Rankings. The closest things to dirty cities in the developed world are Mexico City and Moscow. Otherwise, its mostly African cities (15 of 25). Wonder why? And why do so three others come from former Soviet Republics.

By contrast, Calgary is rated the cleanest of the 215 cities in the MHRC rankings.

(HT: Club for Growth blog)
posted by Paul Tuns at 5:11 PM

 
February Interim online

The February Interim is now accessible online. Our cover story is an omnibus story on the kangaroo courts aka human rights commissions, examining how they differ from real courts, why they are a threat to freedom of speech (and religion and the press and ...), and their history of anti-Christian bias. We also republished the defiant opening statement of Ezra Levant to his Alberta human rights inquisitors. And to pile on, our lead editorial criticizes the tribunals for attacking genuine human rights. Columnist Rory Leishman examines the Stephen Boissoin case in Alberta.

Other highlights from the February issue:

Coverage of C-484, a private members' bill on the unborn victims of crime.

Our coverage of the new ProWomanProLife website.

Our profile of Newfoundland pro-lifer Patrick Hanlon.

Our now dated analysis of the US primaries where the Democrats are hostage to abortion advocates while the GOP struggles with being a big tent. The take-away point is that the Republican primaries demonstrate that despite quadrennial reports of the demise of the Religious Right, it remains a force in American politics.

Our reviews of John G. West's book Darwin Day in America; How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science, Dawn Stefanowicz's Out From Under: The Impact of Homosexual Parenting and and the movie Juno.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:41 AM

 
Sex and spanking

Alex Tabarrok has a post at Marginal Revolution that examines the shoddy journalism covering a shoddy study by spanking opponent Murray Straus linking childhood spanking with sexual problems later in life. Tabarrok summarizes the study: "The basic finding is that survey responses about being spanked in childhood are correlated with verbally and physically coercing someone into having sex as an adult." That won't do because as everyone who has ever studied stats knows, "Correlation does not imply causation!" Tabarrok offers "a simple alternative explanation of the data," namely "Bad kids are spanked a lot. Bad kids turn into bad adults."
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:15 AM

 
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again

The Daily Telegraph reports that according to a poll of British school teachers, two-thirds want parents to lose their right to withdraw children from sex education classes and that a quarter of them thought children should learn about the birds and the bees at the age of seven. Furthermore, "More than 60 per cent of primary teachers and 35 per cent of secondary teachers said lessons should start as young as nine." The paper hints that one reason why the teachers want to teach about body parts, relationships and the facts of procreation is that, "The Government was accused this week of being 20 years behind its target of halving teenage pregnancies." In 2006, there were 40.4 conceptions for every 1,000 girls aged 15 to 17, whereas the government target for 2010 is 23.3.

A few thoughts.

1) That is a very specific target for conceptions. I'm not condoning teenagers having sex, but the hubris of a government that thinks it can do much about it is both humourous and tragic at the same time.

2) I don't think there is much that can be done by schools and the state to reduce teenage pregnancies, but studies show that teaching children about sex at an early age has, at best, a mixed record of discouraging the taught behaviour. If sex ed at later ages hasn't worked, the idea that a lot more at an earlier age is a social experiment not worth the risk.

3) The most important influence in teens having sex is the parents. Taking them out of the equation and possibly undermining their instruction seems the exact opposite of what needs to be done.

4) While teachers want to end opt-out rights of parents when it comes to their children being taught about sex and relationships, nowhere in the story does it mention exactly how many parents are exercising that right.
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:41 AM

 
Kinsella can't get a letter-to-editor in Macleans

Warren Kinsella explains:

"For nearly two weeks, I've been doing my level best to respond to Mark Steyn's bullshit. I wrote a number of times to Andrew Coyne and Ken Whyte, and finally received a response from a Mark Stevenson at Maclean's magazine. He suggested I write a 300 word letter which they would publish.

Right away, I wrote one, exactly 300 words long. A fact checker employed by the magazine then contacted me to ask for the sources for the quotes I attributed to Steyn (you know, like calling Chinese people "chinks"). I provided lots of sources. The fact checker and I went back and forth a few times, and then - silence.

For a week, I've been contacting them on a near-daily basis see if they would make good on their own suggestion. No reply.

What does it mean? I don't know - if I was a mean guy, I'd say Maclean's is run by a bunch of dishonest assholes. But, for now, I will withhold judgment, I guess."

A better reason was probably admitted in the first sentence when Kinsella said, "I've been doing my level best..." That explains it -- his level best isn't good enough for Canada's national news magazine.
posted by Paul Tuns at 7:49 PM

 
Libertarian blinders

Robert Tracinski, editor of The Intellectual Activist, says that the fusionism of William Buckley's National Review Conservatism is dead -- and about time, he says Tracinski says the GOP primaries prove this because John McCain, while a patriot and foreign policy hawk, will 'me-too' the Left "on environmentalism and the welfare state." Small government conservatives, Tracinski claims, have no one, adding:

"The lesson of the 2008 primary is that intellectuals on the right need to liberate themselves from William F. Buckley's legacy. They need to devote much more time and attention to the secular moral case for liberty and capitalism--which would finally allow them to stand on their own two feet ideologically, without feeling the need to be "fused" to a religious movement that has shown itself incapable of offering a foundation for these ideals."

I agree that secular arguments should be added to the plethora of conservative arguments, but I doubt the wisdom of expunging religious, moral and social conservatives from the Republican coalition. The fact is that the God and guns crowd does a lot of the actual grunt work during campaigns: their small donations help local candidates and they, not the Chamber of Commerce crowd, are the ones who go door-to-door and put up signs on their lawns and man telephone banks during the election campaign. You take away the crazy socons and religious zealots and pretty soon you lose a lot of your campaign workers and a sizable chunk of your voters. If the coalition of 1) social conservatives, moral conservatives, Religious Right, etc..., 2) pro-free market, small-government conservatives and 3) patriots and foreign policy hawks, are insufficient to win elections, what makes anyone think taking the largest part of that coalition out of the equation will result in more election victories?

There is a practical reason for fusionism: when kept apart, the various elements of conservatism are unelectable. There is a party for Robert Tracinski. It is called the Libertarian Party and they are mired in 1% support and are farther from power than Ralph Nader. Except, that is, the libertarians who work in and through the Republican Party. But party work is about coalition building, and sometimes that means putting up with people with whom you disagree a little. But Tracinski doesn't just seem to disagree with, as much as loathe, religious conservatives. That's fine, but I doubt that a socially liberal, economically conservative (pro-free market, small government, free-trading) coalition could have the political breakthrough Tracinski desires.

One other complaint. Earlier in his column, Tracinski says that the right has never offered moral reasons in defense of profit, property rights and the free market. What planet is he living on? Has he ever read Thomas Sowell or listened to Rush Limbaugh, fusionists both. Does he remember Ronald Reagan? Does he read Forbes? Or the Wall Street Journal? Is he aware of the economics departments at George Mason University and the University of Chicago? George F. Will is not a libertarian, but he has offered a secular argument in favour of limited government for more than three decades from his perch in Newsweek and the Washington Post and although he believes the right of individuals to enjoy the fruit of their own labour he does not fall into the Randian trap of conflating self-interest and greed.

But that isn't good enough. What Tracinski wants is not a defense of free markets and private property but a parroting of Ayn Rand's defense of capitalism. Considering the widespread appeal of Objectivism, I'm sure that Tracinski's restyled GOP will be politically potent.
posted by Paul Tuns at 7:10 PM

 
Women: are they smart enough to vote?

Writing in the Washington Post, Charlotte Allen says that perhaps women are dumb after all. She begins by evidencing the swooning fans among the fairer sex of the Democratic presidential candidate:

"I can't help it, but reading about such episodes of screaming, gushing and swooning makes me wonder whether women -- I should say, "we women," of course -- aren't the weaker sex after all. Or even the stupid sex, our brains permanently occluded by random emotions, psychosomatic flailings and distraction by the superficial. Women 'are only children of a larger growth,' wrote the 18th-century Earl of Chesterfield. Could he have been right?"

She asks whether this is 1964? Barack Obama: John, Paul, George and Ringo all wrapped into one.

But there is more. Hillary Clinton, the worst and 'stupidest' campaign ever. There is Grey's Anatomy, a show no man would watch unless forced by his girlfriend. There are Elizabeth Gilbert novels. Then she gets into the "several of the supposed misogynist myths about female inferiority have been proven true."

Allen concludes by urging women to accept their feminity and reality:

"The same goes for female fighter pilots, architects, tax accountants, chemical engineers, Supreme Court justices and brain surgeons. Yes, they can do their jobs and do them well, and I don't think anyone should put obstacles in their paths. I predict that over the long run, however, even with all the special mentoring and role-modeling the 21st century can provide, the number of women in these fields will always lag behind the number of men, for good reason.

So I don't understand why more women don't relax, enjoy the innate abilities most of us possess (as well as the ones fewer of us possess) and revel in the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home. (Even I, who inherited my interior-decorating skills from my Bronx Irish paternal grandmother, whose idea of upgrading the living-room sofa was to throw a blanket over it, can make a house a home.) Then we could shriek and swoon and gossip and read chick lit to our hearts' content and not mind the fact that way down deep, we are . . . kind of dim."

Dear women readers: you might be able to have a rewarding career and still raise a family. (But at what cost?) Still, no matter what else you do in life, statistically you are more likely to get into car accidents (read the whole Allen column) and swoon over Obama. Real men would never do the latter and that makes us ... a lot less dim.
posted by Paul Tuns at 8:14 AM

 
Let's hope they were only pandering

Excellent WaPo editorial on the Democratic candidates' promise to review NAFTA if elected president:

"The Democratic candidates understand that trade with the developing world has both costs and benefits, which are not evenly distributed across the United States. Two days before this week's debate, Mr. Obama said, "I don't think it's realistic for us to repeal NAFTA," because that "would actually result in more job loss . . . than job gains." Ms. Clinton awkwardly pleaded that NAFTA has benefited some parts of the country -- such as Texas. Yet the urge to win Ohio trumped, and both Democrats made a threat that, if taken seriously, can be described only as reckless. In other words, we have to hope that they were only pandering."
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:08 PM

 
The coming disappointment over Obama

Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational (which arrived in my mail box yesterday), on Barack Obama:

"So, what does this say about Obama? In my estimation one of the charms of Obama is that we know so little about him (we definitely know less about him than about Clinton), and I assume that this lack of knowledge, coupled with our tendency to fill in the missing information in an over-optimistic way is one of the reasons for the Obama love fest. It also means that we should expect a hard and disappointing awakening as we learn more about Obama and realize that he is not the super-human we now imagine him to be."

It would be better for Americans enthralled with the presumptive Democratic candidate to realize this before the November election.
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:03 PM

 
WFB's writing: where to start?

A NR symposium asks a number of respondents (friends and fans) to suggest "what they might recommend to a newcomer to WFB's writings." Good choices all, but I would recommend his collection of speeches, Let Us Talk of Many Things. Buckley was a great columnist (at least until the 1980s when the quality of his columns began to decline, probably the result of having to write 750 words thrice weekly), but he was always an excellent speaker. I have re-read this volume numerous times and I can never help but hear his voice as I read these speeches. From his Class Day Oration at Yale in 1950 to a lecture he delivered at the Heritage Foundation in 1999, there is a lot of ground, events and people covered by these speeches.

I also immensely enjoy his early collection of columns and essays but those with little sense of U.S. or world politics from the 1960s and '70s will not truly appreciate them. My three favourites are The Jewelers Eye: A Book of Irresistible Political Reflections (which covers the mid 1960s), Inveighing We Will Go (early 1970s), and A Hymnal: The Controversial Arts (the mid-1970s). The first draft of history, so to speak, with top shelf analysis and style.
posted by Paul Tuns at 4:59 PM