Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Placing Blame in All the Wrong Places

Capturing mammary flashing women on film and video has landed Joe Francis, the founder of “Girls Gone Wild,” in the proverbial hot seat.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Garance Franke-Ruta labels Mr. Francis a “cultural pollutant,” and that may very well be, but he damn well is one entreprenerial cultural pollutant, who created a business entity which simply caters to those individuals, who for reasons far beyond my comprehension, get their jollies from watching girls, mostly drunken girls, flashing their more than a handful’s a waste, mammaries.

Francis’ current travails stem from a lawsuit filed by seven of these flashers who whine that “Girls Gone Wild” filmed them when they were flashing their breasts, on spring break, while underage.

I don’t know about you, but I find this absolutely ridiculous.  Seven girls are photographed, or videoed, in public, in all likelihood liquored up, flashing their breasts, probably well aware of the fact that myriads of cameras and videos of other spring break idiots are recording their stupidity, and their lack of judgment warrants a lawsuit against Joe Francis because he’s the individual who has profited the most from the seven girls’ foolishness.

Ms. Franke-Ruta moans,

...it can transform the playful exhibitionism of young women into scarlet letters that follow them around for life.

I say, it serves them right, and provides a valuable lesson for other young women who get drunk on spring break and are “playfully exhibiting,” though unfortunately few will learn the lesson.

Naturally, Ms. Franke-Ruta proposes that a new law should be implemented raising the age of consent to 21.  This would simply be a law to protect stupid people.

Franke-Ruta’s piece, titled Age of Innocence Revisited, only got one thing right, that Joe Francis is a cultural pollutant, the rest of the piece simply scatters blame in all the wrong places.

Story link via Karen DeCoster, who has few words of her own on this subject matter worth reading.

UPDATE: Jon Swift also comments on Franke-Ruta’s piece in his post on the subject titled Raising the Minimum Age for Porn, if only for the following observation.

I also think Franke-Ruta may have found a way in which pro-abortion feminists and those opposing abortion can finally agree. If a woman is not mature enough to have control over how her body is being used in images when she is 18, how can we say she is mature enough to have control over her body in deciding to get an abortion?

Posted by John Venlet on 05/09 at 05:51 AM
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Corn Holed

What, exactly, are the benefits of ethanol?  Environmentalists, politicos, and corn growing state subsidized farmers would lead individuals to believe that ethanol production will allow the U.S. to give the Arabs and their sweet light crude the bird, and green up the environment to boot.  But, the fact is, when it comes to subsidized corn growing famers, the farmers, instead of bending individuals over the barrel, are bending them over a bushel.

For non-farmers, though, the consequences are less cheery. They get to pay for the corn twice - once through taxes to fund a 51-cent-per-gallon federal subsidy, then again at the dinner table because as more corn goes for ethanol, less is available for food and feed, boosting prices.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather see my corn on the cob, even at 3 for a buck fifty, than have my pockets picked to fund a program which is mostly a feel good illusion rather than an actual solution.

Ethanol gold rush carries costs to your table

Posted by John Venlet on 05/09 at 05:02 AM
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Headlines I Like to See

Bill Clinton pens NY Times’ crossword puzzle

Now, if only that were the only headline where we would see his name.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/09 at 04:47 AM
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Tuesday, May 08, 2007

We're Evidently All Suspected of Terrorist Acts, Now

Radley Balko does an excellent job of pointing out the abuses of police forces around the country.  One of Balko’s recent posts, titled Your “What Country Are We Living In?” Photo of the Day, and make sure you take a look at the photo at Balko’s site, is very similar to a recent story out of Pittsburgh, PA titled Police are using armored vehicles.

Supposedly these armored vehicles are being purchased by police departments in case of terrorist situations arising in cities around the country, at least that’s what the police departments tell the Department of Homeland Security when they apply for their handout of your tax dollars to purchase their armored vehicles.  But in actuality these armored vehichles are more likely to be used as an intimidation factor for common thugs, as the Pittsburgh police recently utilized their armored toy.  But the vehicles do come in handy for more mundane things, too.

But police are also putting the equipment to more routine use, such as the delivering to warrants to suspects believed to be armed.

Look for your city’s armored vehicle in the next 4th of July parade.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/08 at 11:13 AM
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Who Will Peddle the Most Outrageous Campaign Promises?

In his essay, The Politician, which H. L. Mencken gave in a lecture at the Institute of Arts and Sciences of Columbia University on January 4, 1940, Mencken had this to say about politicians.

They will all promise every man, woman and child in the country whatever he, she or it wants.  They’ll all be roving the land looking for chances to make the rich poor, to remedy the irremediable, to succor thhe unsuccorable, to unscramble the unscrambleable, to dephlogisticate the undephlogisticable.  They will all be curing warts by saying words over them, and paying off the national debt with money that no one will have to earn...The winner will be whoever promises the most with the least probability of delivering anything.

Mencken’s words immediately came to mind this morning when I read the following words uttered by Barack Obama as he stumps across the land promising the heavens to devotees and possible converts.

Obama proposed that the government pay for 10 percent of domestic automakers’ health-care costs for retired workers through 2017 if the firms plow half the savings into equipment for making more efficient cars and trucks. Obama’s campaign estimates that this would cost taxpayers roughly $7 billion over the next 10 years.

In addition, Obama proposed tax incentives for retooling auto assembly plants and the extension of tax credits for hybrid vehicles beyond the current 60,000-cars-per-manufacturer limit. His campaign put the 10-year cost of his plan at $20 billion and said it would be covered by auctioning greenhouse gas permits under a cap-and-trade program that Obama also supports.

Your vote, your soul, and your dollars bought for a promise, at the expense of your lives.

Obama Makes Push For Fuel Efficiency

Oh, and nice, green user friendly headline, too.

H. L. Mencken quote taken from my copy of A Mencken Chrestomathy, 8. Government, The Politician, pg. 168

Posted by John Venlet on 05/08 at 04:19 AM
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Monday, May 07, 2007

Equality, I Don't Think So

Though I’ve read a smattering of Kurt Vonnegut’s work over the years, I was never that taken by them that I had to delve further into his writings.  I may have to reconsider this, though, after reading Vonnegut’s short story Harrison Bergeron, which I just completed reading moments ago.

Though all men are created equal, each individual has been blessed with their own unique, or not so unique, set of talents.

Vonnegut’s story has a Handicapper General, state mandated handicaps for those with too unique of talents, and was a thoroughly enjoyable short (5 minutes max) read.

A banal hat tip to Billy J’s Banality for the enjoyment received from the story.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/07 at 04:20 PM
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Second Amendment Note

Yesterday, the New York Times published a piece, written by Adam Liptak, titled A Liberal Case for the Individual Right to Own Guns Helps Sway the Federal Judiciary. I must admit, that I was a bit surprised to see this in that paper.

There is actually only one line within Liptak’s piece, though, that drew my eye.  It appears to be attributable to Lawrence H. Tribe, Akhil Reed, and Sanford Levinson, a trio of liberal constitutional scholars.

The earlier consensus, the law professors said in interviews, reflected received wisdom and political preferences rather than a serious consideration of the amendment’s text, history and place in the structure of the Constitution.

There is nothing collective about gun ownership.  It is an individual right.

UPDATE: Christopher Orlet, writing at The American Spectator, has a few words on Adam Liptak’s piece, which I referenced above.  Orlet’s piece is titled An About-Face on Guns.

The last line from Orlet’s piece.

It is important that Americans understand the historical aspects surrounding the debate, and not rely solely on the empty wind of politicians’ soundbites.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/07 at 05:03 AM
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It Still Boils Down to Principles

In a post yesterday I titled Mortgaged Principles, I noted that the subprime mortgage meltdown had seemingly fallen below the radar of the major news media.  Well, this morning, I see that the Washington Post’s subprime radar is rotating and radiating with a piece on the subprime lending industry’s woes by David Cho titled Pressure at Mortgage Firm Led To Mass Approval of Bad Loans.

Cho’s piece, put together with interviews with various boots on the ground subprime loan grunts, does provide a wee glimpse into the front line of subprime lending, but, as Cho’s piece is titled, should we accept that the pressure to produce loans for sale in the secondary market led to the “mass approval of bad loans,” as if this was some form of mass hysteria?

Though the subprime lending industry’s woes were exacerbated by the “pressure” to produce more and more loans, the root cause of the subprime lending industry’s meltdown is the following, as written in Cho’s piece.

And a detailed inquiry into the situation at New Century and other subprime lenders suggests that in the feeding frenzy for housing loans, basic quality controls were ignored in the mortgage business, while the big Wall Street investment banks that backed these firms looked the other way.

It’s all about the principles.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/07 at 04:29 AM
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Sunday, May 06, 2007

Prisoners of Ignorance

Billy Beck has two recent posts which I’ve been contemplating the past couple of days as I rooted around in the soil surrounding my house.  The first post is titled Philosophical Detection and the second post is titled Living Defaultery.

Both of Billy’s posts bring to mind, for myself at least, what I would consider the free pass given to the evils of socialim, especially when you consider how those evils consumed innocent individuals, of many Eastern European nationalities, like so much chaff scattered to the wind, within the former Soviet Union.

In both of Billy’s posts he rightly scoffs at the notion of Anne Applebaum’s tome, Gulag, being the evident academic standard for educational purposes, rather than Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn’s first person account as put down in The Gulag Archipelago, and The Gulag Archipelago Two.

The larger question Billy’s posts should bring to mind, though, is why the evils of socialism do not resound in individual’s minds with the same clarity that the evils of facism resound, as so chillingly personified in the Holocaust?

Oh, I have a few ideas why this is so, but I think Solzhenitsyn stated quite clearly why this is so in his speech, linked by Billy, to the Havard graduating class of 1978.  Solzhenitsyn’s speech is titled A World Split Apart, and I’ve culled a few specifics from Solzhenitsyn’s speech for your own consideration, though the whole speech should be read.  Bear in mind as you read Solzhenitsyn’s speech that references to the Soviet Union can be substituted with other countries names.

Anguish about our divided world gave birth to the theory of convergence between leading Western countries and the Soviet Union. It is a soothing theory which overlooks the fact that these worlds are not at all developing into similarity; neither one can be transformed into the other without the use of violence. Besides, convergence inevitably means acceptance of the other side’s defects, too, and this is hardly desirable.

And this.

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice.

More.

It is almost universally recognized that the West shows all the world a way to successful economic development, even though in the past years it has been strongly disturbed by chaotic inflation. However, many people living in the West are dissatisfied with their own society. They despise it or accuse it of not being up to the level of maturity attained by mankind. A number of such critics turn to socialism, which is a false and dangerous current.

Don’t be a prisoner of ignorance.  Recognize that the social policies America’s politicos attempt to legislate into existence are forays into the socialist world, lack of gulags notwithstanding.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/06 at 10:05 AM
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Mortgaged Principles

The subprime mortgage market meltdown has, for the most part, dropped off the news media’s radar, faster than the ink dries on a new mortgage and note.

Senator Christopher Dodd, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, though, is on the case, heralding from his website that major players in the mortgage market have signed a “Homeownership Preservation Summit Statement of Principles.”

Mere window dressing though this statement of principles is, I will commend Dodd for the following, which was reported by the AP.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., had urged such voluntary action by mortgage lenders and other players two weeks ago when he convened a meeting of their officials and federal regulators to discuss possible solutions to the crisis gripping the market for high-risk loans. Such industry initiatives are preferable, in Dodd’s view, to any government bailout to cover mortgage loans in default.

Voluntary action IS what is required rather than the heavy hand of the state.

As for the major mortgage participants who have inclined their pens to this so called “statement of principles,” I simply must chuckle at the poltroonery of their poseur.

Gobs, and I mean GOBS, of money have been made in the subprime mortgage lending arena, often from the same high risk borrowers over and over again, well at least until their equity has been tapped dry.  This little statement of principles supposedly created by Senator Dodd out of thin air is, in actuality, merely sound business practices that the major mortgage participants should have been following from the very first day they opened their doors for business.  It’s measurably more economical.

If the major mortgage participants would not have mortgaged their principles when the great flood of subprime mortgage lending inundated the lending industry, they would not have had to gather to be schooled by Senator Dodd.

Several players in home mortgage market agree on principles for borrowers in trouble

Posted by John Venlet on 05/06 at 08:20 AM
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Friday, May 04, 2007

Off the Deep End, Absurdly So

Activists Want Chimp Declared a ‘Person’

Evidently the Europeans, Austrians in this case, have more pressing matters on their minds than the possibility of Europe declining into Eurabia.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/04 at 11:54 AM
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Eurabia, or Not?

Is Europe on the road to turning Islamic?  Some fairly knowledgeable individuals - Bernard Lewis, Bat Y’eor, George Weigel, Mark Steyn, Daniel Pipes, to name a few - have postulated that it is clearly so.

I’ve read many pieces from each of the above listed individuals, and each one has layed out some rather persuasive arguments in support of the theory of a future Eurabia.

One individual who disagrees with a the possibility of a coming Eurabia is Philip Jenkins, and he lays out his theories against a coming Eurabia in his newest tome, God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis, which is not available via Amazon.com.

Writing at FirstThings.com, Richard John Neuhaus provides a review of Jenkins arguments which is worth a read, long though it is at 5,084 words.

An excerpt from Neuhaus’ piece.

There was also the desperate economic need for workers. “The forces driving Muslim immigration were so overwhelming that there is no reason to imagine the conspiracy theory devised by Bat Y’eor and since popularized by Oriana Fallaci and others, which suggests that European elites collaborated with Arab states to create a Eurabian federation spanning the Mediterranean. Given the economic forces demanding labor and the political factors conditioning supply, it would be difficult to imagine any outcome much different from what actually occurred. In the United States, similarly, any significant relaxation of immigration laws would inevitably have drawn in millions of Mexican workers, regardless of what any government or private cabal planned or desired.” (One notes in passing that the influx of millions of illegal immigrants from Mexico is not a hypothetical about what might have happened but a massive fact on the ground.)

Neuhaus ends his piece this way, though.

At a recent dinner party with European intellectuals, I put to an influential French archbishop Daniel Pipes’ projection: Either assimilation or expulsion or Islamic takeover. That, he said, puts the possibilities much too starkly. “We hope for the first,” he said, “while we work at reducing immigration and prepare ourselves for soft Islamization.” Soft Islamization. It is a wan expression. Whether soft or hard, the prospect is that, in the not-so-distant future, someone will publish a book titled Allah’s Continent. In fact, several Muslim authors have already published books with very similar titles, anticipating the future of the Europe that was. Needless to say, and historical contingencies being as contingent as they are, I very much hope that they turn out to be wrong. As I very much wish Philip Jenkins’ God’s Continent provided better reasons for believing they are wrong.

Neuhaus’ piece is titled The Much Exaggerated Death of Europe.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/04 at 10:53 AM
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The Great Laptop Panacea Boondoggle

One of the more common laments heard emanating from the mouths of politicos is, “Why is Johnny so stupid?.” In reply to their own vacuous question you’ll typically hear the politicos, of all stripes and persuasions, reply, “Johnny is so stupid because we haven’t thrown enough money into the educational system.”

One of the more recent ways private individuals state stolen dollars have been chewed up and swallowed whole by the state run educational system, spoonful of sugar not included, has been the purchase of laptop computers for every student.  As if, magically, students will attain new scholastic highs by booting up and logging on to the internet.  But what have these wonderful toys actually accomplished in the halls of education?

“After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none,” said Mark Lawson, the school board president here in Liverpool, one of the first districts in New York State to experiment with putting technology directly into students’ hands. “The teachers were telling us when there’s a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way. It’s a distraction to the educational process.”

And this.

Yet school officials here and in several other places said laptops had been abused by students, did not fit into lesson plans, and showed little, if any, measurable effect on grades and test scores at a time of increased pressure to meet state standards.

Individual scholastic achievement will not be attained via the state brandishing another fistful of dollars, but rather through individual students applying themselves to their studies.  Hopefully in a private school setting.

Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops

Posted by John Venlet on 05/04 at 04:49 AM
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Thursday, May 03, 2007

Massachusetts Dolts

I love dogs, well most dogs.  There are some dogs which just don’t fit in.  You know the ones, those dogs whose supposed masters are not actually masters, but rather puppets on the wrong end of the leash.  You see these “masters” being pulled down the sidewalk, or, hollering up a storm for Fido to sit, stay, heel or come, commands which no matter how loudly or often are hollered, Fido simply does not comply with.

In Massachusetts, there must be a plethora of bad masters, as the following indicates.

State legislators will hold a hearing later this month on whether to outlaw pit bulls, though Walsh said lawmakers hope to look into broader issues regarding dog safety.

And this.

Meanwhile, state Rep. Martin Walsh is howling mad about dogs running wild inside moving cars and is considering filing legislation requiring drivers to buckle up their canines. “When I drive down the road and I see a dog running around the car, particularly on the lap and front seat, that’s crazy,” said the Dorchester Democrat.

Beyond bad masters, why is Massachusetts considering banning pitbulls?

“You can’t allow people to be afraid all the time,” said Avril T. Elkort, vice chairwoman of the Canton Board of Selectmen, where a new ordinance limits residents to one pit bull per household. “It was a public safety issue.”

Additionally, Massachusetts State Rep Vincent A. Pedone chimes in with these moronic words regarding pitbulls.

State Rep. Vincent Pelone (sic) said the state may consider either banning pit bulls outright or requiring owners to get training or a dangerous dog license.

“If you want to own a pit bull, which in my estimation can be the same as owning a weapon, the owner and the dog should receive training,” said the Worcester Democrat.

I think that the individuals living in Massachusetts would be better served by muzzling their supposed political representatives.  What dolts.

Pols barking for pooch crackdown

Posted by John Venlet on 05/03 at 11:23 AM
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