When Has Counting Ever Hurt Anything?

The first thing to ask about conservatives underreporting on the census is "is this really happening?" The only noise I've seen in the wingnutosphere has been to cease the reporting of race, which, as the link notes, counterproductive to conservative goals.

Folks, there's nothing wrong with doing a head count. There's nothing wrong with the government trying to figure out how many people it has, especially as the Congress and Electoral College is determine on population. There have been censuses since 1790; this isn't a progressive evil.

I can't imagine a conservative having a problem with this. Hence, my first question.

Let's Count the Sexisms, Shall We?

Susannah Breslin sounds off on the supposed digital gender divide, and in a single paragraph managed to raise a host of dubious assertions:

But what of lady bloggers? Blogging goes against their nature, Wente asserts. “Not many women are interested enough in spitting out an opinion on current events every 20 minutes.” Blogging is little more than a glorified pissing contest, she says, and women don’t do well at competitive pissing. In fact, the fairer sex is better at listening than shouting, more invested in “relationships” than fighting. Ergo, women suck at blogging.

I guess I'll just indulge my male need to piss on things, mark my territory, and such, and state quite bluntly that this barely qualifies as a mass (such thin gruel it is) of unsupported prejudice. Women aren't interested in "spitting" (note the verb) out an opinion every 20 minutes? Has she met any? Maybe around other women, the fairer sex is reticent to speak up, but ask a man, any man, whether his experience is that women can't "spit" an opinion with regularity.

Then there's the linkage of blogging with pissing, which froths with sour grapes on several levels, sweetened with the widely-shared (among women) belief that the ladies are better at listening than shouting. It's a trifecta of non-thought.

I realize that I have laid myself well open to the charge of misogyny even by saying these things, but I am continually amazed at people who write about the sexes without recognizing the basic fact that there are two of them, and each has an opinion on the other. No man of education ever assumes that his view of his own gender is shared by women. I wonder why I so rarely find women who are aware of it, or who respect it.

Oh, THAT Liberal Media...

Channel One is lame. It's on during homeroom and I usually pay no attention. But today's broadcast featured their "coverage" of the outrage against Democratic Congressmen, and a more biased account could hardly have been offered. All the victims were Democrats, all the perps, Tea Partiers. No mention of the bullet in Cantor's office, no mention of the voicemail Jean Schmidt (R-OH) received. And obviously, no mention of this.

Why can't Lefties be honest?

Good ol' Belmont...

Giving us good cheer in these happy times:

Fear is probably the last thing that needs selling. It’s already creeping like a vast shadow. The real problem now is not whether there’s something to worry about, but how to get out from under. The terrible skeins are all coming together: the accumulated fecklessness, the foreign policy misjudgements, the deception and the unkeepable promises are gathering like a terrible storm. An entire era has come to the end of a joy-ride. The bill has come due; and everyone is doing a courtesy reach-around for his empty wallet hoping that someone else can pay for what they can’t.

Enjoy the weekend.

Why We're Screwed.

China's going to blow:

Unlike Western democracies, whose central banks can pump a lot of money into the financial system but can’t force banks to lend or consumers and corporations to spend, China can achieve both at lightning speed.
The government controls the banks, so it can make them lend, and it can force state-owned enterprises (one-third of the economy) to borrow and to spend. Also, because the rule of law and human and property rights are still underdeveloped, China can spend infrastructure project money very fast – if a school is in the way of a road the government wants to build, it becomes a casualty for the greater good.
Government is horrible at allocating large amounts of capital, especially at the speed it is done in China. Political decisions (driven by the goal of full employment) are often uneconomical, and corruption and cronyism result in projects that destroy value.
To maintain high employment, China has poured money into infrastructure and real estate projects. This explains why, in 2009, new floor space doubled and residential real estate prices surged 25 percent. This also explains why the Chinese keep building new skyscrapers even though existing ones are still vacant.
The enormous stimulus has exacerbated problems that already existed, threatening to turn China into a less shiny but more drastic version of debt-riddled Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The Problem With ObamaCare

Over at Protein Wisdom, dicentra issues a pretty solid denunciation of what Pelosi's bill is and what it will accomplish:

"I Hope You Die," is not a threat.

This morning, the radio played what it described as "death threats" left  on the voicemails of various Democrat Congressman who voted for ObamaCare, especially Bart Stupak, who got played like a cheap fiddle by the President and Speaker.

Not one of them actually constituted a death threat. The worst of them was "I hope you die!", a hot-headed and uncivil thing to hear, to be sure. You could call it a "death wish" if you want, and you could call it a narrow distinction. But the reason language exists is so that distinctions can be made. And wishing that someone would drop dead, however morally lacking, is leagues away from promising to kill them, even unseriously.

What I don't understand is the media and Left clutching their fans and smelling salts as though this did not happen during the Bush Years. Politics is a sport played by the passionate. People lose their minds and shout hyperbole. Why can't we have a media that either decides it's all horrific rudeness and a threat to the republic, or it's all bold speaking-truth-to-power? Pick a standard and apply it equally.

What's the problem with that?

UPDATE: See this, this is a threat:

Cantor said "a bullet was shot through the window" of his campaign office. The incident happened Monday, Fox News has learned, the latest in a rash of apparent threats and acts of intimidation against members of Congress. Most of the threats so far have been reported by Democrats, but Cantor -- the No. 2 Republican in the House -- is one of about 10 lawmakers who has asked for increased security protection, Fox News has learned.

Matthews: Refusing to buy Health Insurance is like Refusing to Serve Blacks

Bwah?

Oh, it's all "interstate commerce." If you can make people sell products to black people, then you can make people buy health insurance.

That is so exactly what James Madison had in mind about "interstate commerce."

Waste in Baltimore City Government.

In other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

Why do I get the feeling that Parks & Rec has been laden with the city's sins?

Especially given that the city government is getting a pay raise? 

On We Blindly Stumble...

The Health care bill is a sham. It won't work. It can't work. When has the government ever reduced costs on anything? I can't imagine being one of the people who believes otherwise. They're like battered wives; oh, this time he really means it. No, he doesn't. He means to take whatever you have and that you should feel grateful for having him take it. None of your backtalk, woman. Now get the slop on the table.

In America, the scope and size of government is the issue. It's always been the issue. What else could a free people argue about, but how far their freedom goes? And now, thanks to the desire of progressives to insure equal outcomes from unequal incomes, we will watch freedom go very far away.

The Essayist #17: The Oppressor is Named.

Back when I was in college, I thought long and hard about the inherent oddities of my position: there I was, the military brat, the second of my surname to go to a university, and I was studying to become...what, exactly? A Foreign Service Agent? A perma-student? What was my productive work? Where did I belong? With my leftyish friends, embracing Derrida and Foucault, or with the kids in the College Republicans who tended to hold me at arm's length, and at any case never got drunk on Monday nights playing Diplomacy while extensively quoting Monty Python?

Twelve years, 7-8 jobs, and a long time earning my living as a teacher later, and I know what I am; precisely the term Lenin used when he arrived at Finland Station: a man of letters. An intellectual. But this discovery has not lessened the tension of my life one bit.  I am, as I was then, a rebel against my class.

But can such a class actually exist? Have not the intelligensia existed since the rise of the Sumerian scribes? Yes, and yes. And I'm not the first to say so. The Volokh Conspiracy here quotes the critical-theory journal Telos on the rise of New Class theory:

Service is Our Priority. Customers, Not So Much.

The Daily Caller, like any good wadi o'wingnuts, never misses an opportunity to compare the current congressional clusterf--- of a bill with what government health care looks like. Digging into the Daily Mail yields no information on the supposed 21 billion pounds sterling spent on "failed schemes to tackle inequality" but does yield that 487 million was spent on consultants.

But At Least They'll Have the Spotted Owl.

Nothing in this world is secure. There is no such thing as an endless supply of anything. Environmentalists know this, but routinely forget it when it comes to shackling economics to serve their ends. Behold the results (Hat tip: Insty):

"You keep using that Word. I do not think that word means what you think it means."

Now it's possible that Tom Hanks intended something other than to say our war against Japan was motivated entirely by racism and terror (at about the 3:35 mark), but frankly the segment is so fluffy that one can read anything into it (via Big Hollywood):

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Much Ado About Schools

Investigative Voice covers the kabuki about closing one school or another in Baltimore, in which two grown men argue about a term that has no business belonging in an argument about schools. Education is a process, and it will inevitably be a process with unequal outcomes. To treat it as a right is to use it as a political football, when it ought to transcend politics.

This *IS* Cable News

I don't know how I missed this -- but I did. It's the greatest thing ever:


Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere

No Gang of 14, Says Current Majority

...as the cycle of hypocrisy spins (Hat Tip: Insty)

I await E.J. Dionne's learned commentary on how we "need those guys to watch those other guys," or something.

Golly Goshers! A Person of Color!

At a Tea Party Rally!



You may say it's one lone black man, but that's still one more than MSNBC has hosting its news lineup, if you care about that sort of thing.

And Your Farts Smell Bad, Too...

The Clean Car Myth, exploded.

It Explains the Whole Anakin = Chosen One Thing.

(Hat tip: Ace)

Politics is Retarded.

Somewhere in Massachusetts a committee of like-minded citizens gathered yesterday to deal with one of the most grave issues affecting the state:

The word "retarded." (Hat tip: Jules Crittenden)

"Never saw a rich man go to jail..."

...you've never been to Baltimore, then. They guy who conspired to fix tax liens and ground rents got 18-months in the pokey and an $800,000 fine.

Now, if he'd been a connected man...

Hait & Chile, Wealth & Poverty

Economic opportunity & social justice. Funny how the latter ends up a pyramid of human skulls. (Hat Tip: Insty)

Granted, Haiti's had a dearth of any kind of justice. But even if the Haitian government was competent, it might not have made any difference:

Chile also has some of the world's strictest building codes. That makes sense for a country that straddles two massive tectonic plates. But having codes is one thing, enforcing them is another. The quality and consistency of enforcement is typically correlated to the wealth of nations. The poorer the country, the likelier people are to scrimp on rebar, or use poor quality concrete, or lie about compliance. In the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, thousands of children were buried under schools also built according to code.

The state can enforce. It cannot create, nor lift one single person from drudgery and exploitation. That requires wealth.