ampdead

10/09/07

Are we there yet?

So I'm watching the latest Republican debate, and I'm wondering why.  Maybe it's the setting.  This sort of 'debate' just doesn't allow an opportunity to be inspiring - even though each of the wannabe Presidents, I'm pretty sure, said something along the lines of, "We have to inspire people (period - stop)."  Then again, maybe it's what each of these men are saying. 

If it weren't for the crazy, Paul says some good things.  But there's that crazy part again.

McCain is running against Bush again.  The uber-maverick rides again.  Yeeaawwwwn.  He's experiencing technical difficulties as well.  Must've turned his hearing aid off.

Thompson quoted Marx.  No, really:  Help to those who need it, help from those who can give it.  Also, I think he missed his embalming appointment and ended up in Dearborn by mistake.

Romney, as people say, has a "command of the issues."  He also seems to lack any capacity to get his ideas across.  My computer has a command of issues too, but I wouldn't vote for it.  Watching a debate between Romney and, say, Hillarity would be worse than watching paint dry with intermittent screeches and hand waving.  I don't know, it's like he's too slick or something.

Giuliani had his animated moments.  He's still the guy I'd vote for over the others, but he also still seems like the candidate who doesn't really want to be there - who had this whole thing dropped unexpectedly into his lap.  I've never bought the fantasy of the unintentional leader.  You have to want to lead, and that's that.  I'm not convinced he does.  Although, his answer to London becoming the financial center of the world was spot-on.  I think I'd like to see Giuliani give a speech or a one-on-one debate.  That's probably my own personal swing issue - who I'd want to hear in an actual debate.

Who were the other candidates?

Update:  Giuliani's quip about Canadians having nowhere to go for health care if the U.S. gets government health insurance was brilliant.  Given the entirety of the debate, that's not saying much.

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10/08/07

You compromise, we lose

First I heard it on the local news the day the state government shutdown.  Then I heard it from my political science professor.  Now, thanks to Republican Michigander pointing it out, I'm reading it from Chris Ward in his Free Press editorial about the grand compromise.

Gotta love the title of that editorial:  Compromise avoided state crisis. 

Is that a joke?  Avoided a crisis?  This is a crisis.  That idiot's compromise wasn't a fix for Michigan.  New taxes on an economy screaming "Uncle!" is not the sort of compromise anyone but those with a certain viewpoint could want.  And that's the thing.  All this talk about bipartisanship and compromise and getting along, getting together, kumbyya nonsense is not the stuff change and betterment are made of

No, Rodney, we can't all just get along - every single one of us has a differing opinion.  We can alter small things in order to form consensus, but shooting yourself in the foot instead of in the head is not a rational compromise.  How can you vote for something you think is bad policy?  That makes no damned sense.

Right Michigan links to this article Crain's Detroit Business.  Moral of the story:  Expenditures will continue to out pace revenues - even as Rep. Ward congratulates himself on selling out.  Then what?  Punish business more for the state's lack of responsibility?  Punish Michigan more as long as our fearless leaders in Lansing can pat themselves on the back for coming up with asinine compromises?

It's sort of like the Christian Coalition gang refusing to vote for a Giuliani - which would be a rational compromise given the alternative and given what Giuliani has been saying.  While Giuliani himself may not be in the gang or even agree with the gang, he's committed himself to forming the means to the end the gang does agree with - namely, SCOTUS justices.  Also, given what's happened recently with Limbaugh, Medved, and O'Reilly, voting against the Republican candidate would be voting for a huge impediment on the gang getting their message out.  What do you think the Fairness Doctrine would do to, say, Catholic radio - nevermind mainstream commercial radio?

See, I'm all for compromise and getting along, getting together, singing ridiculous songs around the campfire - when it makes sense to do so.  But compromising shouldn't mean getting the opposite of what you want.


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10/05/07

Forgot about that

The Boston Globe (9/26/07):  Hsu raised big money for Clinton supporters

In other cases, Clinton helped direct Hsu's money to influential politicians who have yet to endorse her but hail from key presidential primary states.

And at least some of the $17,000 that Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan collected from Hsu and his associates in 2005 and 2006 stems from a Nov. 29, 2005, fund-raising reception for her hosted by Steven Rattner, a New York investment firm executive and major Clinton donor seen as a candidate for US Treasury secretary if Clinton wins. Granholm's office said she has not made an endorsement decision.


Someone should bring that to the party - add it to that $116 million no-bid contract to a campaign donor.


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10/04/07

Walk the walk already

I recently finished Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book, Infidel, and then comes the news she's going back to the Netherlands because the Dutch won't continue to pay to protect her and the U.S. can't because she's not a U.S. citizen.  She can't do it herself because it's too expensive.

This is absurd.  Here is a woman who is in danger of losing her life because of militant misogyny, but no one from the NOW crowd or similar is saying anything.  She's a ready-made poster-girl for women's lib, a bona fide new face for female empowerment, but the feministas are silent.  Not only is her story compelling - running away from an arranged marriage, getting herself through college in a country that was as foreign as foreign can be, elevating herself to getting elected as a member of parliament in that country - but she's an outspoken fighter as well.  The lady simply does not back down.  If there is a personification of the feminist movement, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is arguably it.

Is thinking that people take themselves and what they say seriously expecting too much?

h/t HotAir - that crazy, hateful right-wing vile machine is wondering where to donate to protect Hirsi

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Pheer meh!

First:  Background on the radio fiasco involving the Granny on WJR's Frank Beckmann show this morning (from Right Michigan).  I tuned in late - about the time Liz Boyd, the governor's spokesman, came on Beckmann's show to "clear things up."

One of the first things Lizzy said was, "I instill fear in people."  I'm sure she was joking.  Or it was satireNuance maybe.  But, given what happened on Beckmann's show, it was pretty dumb.

What happened in a nutshell:  Beckmann taped an interview the Granny.  He asked her why she went back on the extending the sales tax to services thing (video at the end).  He also asked her about a $116 million no-bid contract that went to one of her campaign donors.  Granny didn't like her answers and asked or demanded the interview be held - with threats apparently.



Look, I'll give the Granny the benefit of the doubt.  She's not lying or making stuff up.  She's incompetent.


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10/03/07

1-0-0

I'm still not a fan of the shootouts.  But the Wings won so all is good.


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College funding

I could probably go on for hours about the cost of college - not to mention the actual value of college (what you get for what you pay), but I'll save my ranting about not learning anything in class for another post.  Aside from the hassle of student aid and the know-nothings who fill the student aid office (at least where I'm taking classes at the moment) there are the endowments.

Lynne Munson of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity goes into some detail about those endowments in her U.S. Senate testimony

So here's the thing.  The state of Michigan has no money.  One of the cuts made to remedy that problem was to education - to Michigan's public universities.  The universities, of course, became hysterical.  Tuition just had to be increased.  Irvin Reid, president of Wayne State University, needed a pay raise (he's resigning next year).  The University of Michigan - Dearborn had to install foot baths.  Etc. etc. etc.

From Munson's testimony:

The University of Pittsburgh, Purdue, Michigan State, and little 1500-student Grinnell College each have endowments larger than a billion.

(P)lenty of public schools also have impressive endowment-to-student statistics. The University of Virginia and the University of Michigan bank $322,000 and $150,000 per undergraduate, respectively.


According to this list at Wikipedia MSU had an endowment of $1,483,000,000 and U of M had an endowment of $5,652,000,000 in 2006 (no information for either for 2007, but the endowments for every other university on that list with 2007 information increased).  So why the hysteria over funding cuts - especially when the state is in such dismal fiscal straits that coin-operated lockers now 'have' to be taxed?

Interesting article at CNBC from September 4, 2007:

University endowment managers may be little-known, but they invest more than $340 billion and have an uncanny knack for beating the market.

Over the last four years, endowments and foundations as a group have beaten both the S&P 500 and a mix of the S&P and the Lehman Aggregate Bond Index. Over the last 10 years, endowments worth more than $1 billion averaged returns of 11.4 percent per year compared with the S&P’s 8.3 percent.

“The endowments and foundations don't have the incentive to go public in quite the way that other investments managers do,” said Brett Hammond, chief investment strategist for TIAA-CREF. “Their job is to work behind the scenes to develop options, asset allocation alternatives that can do well for them.”

As such, these managers lead the push into alternative investments like private equity, hedge funds, real estate and natural resources, helping them earn an average one-year return rate of 10.7 percent for fiscal year 2006.


I realize endowments generally come with strings attached - the donor has earmarked his donation for some specific purpose within the university.  That doesn't make me anymore sympathetic to these hysterical institutions that peddle a product whose price far out paces inflation.

And get this (from this post at the CCAP blog):

I looked at three schools --Harvard, Yale, and the University of Virginia. At all three schools, less than four percent the average daily endowment base in the 2006-7 school year was spent. If Harvard and Yale had spent 5 percent and dedicated the increased spending to tuition reduction, they could have eliminated undergraduate tuition charges altogether --easily. If Virginia, which is a less well endowed public school, spent 5 percent and dedicated the added spending to tuition reduction for all students from families with less than $100,000 annual income, I would guessetimate that tuition could have been reduced well over $5,000 on average per student --an amount equal to about 60 percent of the in state tuition charges.


CCAP's non-blog website can be found here.

h/t Instapundit

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Yes

Republican Michigander outlines what needs to happen to yank the Granny out of office.


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Achmed the Dead Terrorist (10 minute version)



Via Libertas via Seraphic Secret via Mere Rhetoric.

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10/01/07

Eject

Michigan is officially bankrupt.

The solution?

Taxing coin-operated blood pressure testing.

We're not only looking under the cushions, we're tearing the whole damned couch apart.

I wonder if anyone noticed the record levels of revenue the federal government is taking in.  With less taxing.  Nah.

Who knows, maybe he's right.

In political ads airing this week, the Democratic Party confidently compared Granholm's tactic with Bill Clinton's politically-successful showdown with Newt Gingrich in 1995 to shutter the federal government.

But Clinton was not demanding an income tax increase in the middle of an economic recession. There is an unwritten political rule that government shutdowns hurt Republicans most. But in Michigan's current economic state, politicians asking more pain from citizens may not just be fiscally irresponsible - they might be committing mass political suicide.

I almost forgot since I don't watch football (hockey starts in three days!).  My sister told me the Lions matched last season's win total today with a rally against the Bears.  Huzzah!  Good news from Michigan.

The Tigers, however, choked in the second half of the season.

The Wings start on the 3rd.

Also, the casinos in Detroit will stay open regardless of what Lansing does or doesn't do.  But if you haven't bought your Mega Millions tickets already, you're even more out of luck.

Shame:  Representative David Agema (R) was over in Russia hunting sheep.  Sure, he had planned this trip for three years - prior to becoming a representative even.  Sure, it's a once in a lifetime experience.  Sure, he may have lost thousands of dollars if he had backed out to see the obligations his job entails.  Apparently, he's not cutout for this type of job.

Rep. David Agema stayed in session until 4 a.m. Saturday and voted three times against a proposal by Democrats to raise the state income tax before leaving on the two-week trip, said his chief of staff, Karen Spoelman. The House of Representatives worked without a resolution throughout the weekend.


That income tax increase just passed by one vote.  Lieutenant Governor Cherry threw the winning blow to tax payers.  Good one, Dave.  I hope the sheep keep you warm.

Bonus:  Interesting play on the local news.  I usually don't watch the local news, but WDIV has to be the least partisan news program I've watched in a long time.  Devin Scillian is actually asking questions from both sides (yes, that's him - journalist, children's books author, songwriter, and musician).

Whoa.  the WXYZ anchors are lamenting the possible new sales tax on various services (that blood pressure link lists them all).  By George, they get it!  Higher taxes on so-called luxury items will harm everyone.

I think I'm having delusions.


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09/27/07

My class has issues

We had to come up with things we are concerned about.  Each student came up with some issues earlier and today we narrowed those down to five for the entire class.  These are the 5 things my political science class thinks the government (any level of government - local, state, or federal) should also be concerned with - in order of importance:

1.  Ignore basic economics (free trade is bad)
2.  Create government controlled health insurance
3.  Allow for a genocide in Iraq
4.  Ignore slightly more complex economics (lower gas prices)
5.  Stricter sentencing for child predators


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Infidel

Infidel
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
2007 Free Press (Simon & Schuster)

This sort of story has always fascinated me - overcoming the odds, sticking to your guns, changing over time due to reason not circumstance.  It is, if nothing else, an inspirational story, but an immediate, poignant inspirational story given our times.  A one-woman compare and contrast between this world - the West in general - and the world Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in.

The first quote caught me because of the simplicity Theo van Gogh espoused in it while convincing Ayaan Hirsi Ali to write the screenplay that became Submission:  Part 1.  The "just do it" sort of mentality struck a nerve - especially in light of my complaints and the complaints of others regarding the attitude of Hollywood and the films they spin out.  It's also, in a nutshell, how I'm guessing Ayaan Hirsi Ali see the West.  That is, if you want something, if you want to change something then go do it, go change it - you have the ability and the capacity to do so, so just do it.  It has at its base an intrinsic optimism about people and about life - a severe contrast from the world she came from where men are treated as animals beholden to their desires so women must, therefore, be locked away.



Somehow we got onto my idea for an art exhibit on Muslim women.  Theo said, "Just do it in video.  Weite a screenplay.  Any idiot can write a screenplay.  All you have to do is write 'Exterior, Day' and 'Interior, Night.'"

At night, alone, I couldn't stop thought from coming.  Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the murder, could hear Theo pleading for his life.  "Can't we talk about this?" he asked his killer.  It was so Dutch, so sweet and innocent.  Theo must have thought there was some kind of misunderstanding that could be worked out.  he couldn't see that his killer was caught in a wholly different worldview.  nothing Theo could have said to him would have made any difference.

The DKDB was mandated to protect only royalty, diplomates, and members of parliament.  The justice minister, Piet Hein Donner, had said on the news, "We can't have on half of the population protecting the other half of the population."

People accuse me of having interiorized a feeling of racial inferiority, so thatI attack my own culture out of self-hatred because I want to be white.  This is a tiresome argument.  Tell me, is freedom then only for white people?  Is it self-love to adhere to my ancestor's traditions and mutilate my daughters?  To agree to be humiliated and powerless?  To watch passively as my countrymen abuse women and slaughter each other in pointless disputes?  When I came to a new culture, where I saw for the first time that human relations could be different, would it have been self-love to see that as a foreign cult, which Muslims are forbidden to practice?

Life is better in Europe than it is in the Muslim world because human relations are better, and one reason human relations are better is that in the West, life on earth is valued in the here and now and individuals enjoy rights and freedoms that are recognized and protected by the state.  To accept subordination and abuse because Allah willed it - that, for me, would be self-hatred.

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09/24/07

Not much to say about today

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09/23/07

Do these people pay attention?

Ahmawatchinthewell's speech at Columbia is being touted as an exercise of free speech - a way to bring controversial ideas to the attention of the American people.  No doubt 60 Minutes is thinking along the same lines.  Lame excuse since anyone who has been paying the slightest bit of attention to this crazy knows exactly what he thinks already.  And nevermind Ahmadinnerplate's singular ability as a two-bit dictator to make whatever statement he wants whenever he wants.  He has freedom of speech.  He's about the only person in Iran who may exercise that right without fear of death.

The Columbia Spectator put together the Ahmadineblog to cover this story.  This post sort of sums up what I'm thinking.  You mean you didn't know Ahmainfantasyland had his own blog?  Don't you people up there in the tower look at the BBC occasionally - like, maybe, August of 2006?

No wonder Bollinger and his ilk think the American people aren't hearing Ahmamanonamissionfromgod's message.  How did such a mental midget get to head one of the most prestigious universities in America?

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09/22/07

Just to let you know...

It's pronounced Mack-in-aw not Mack-in-ak. 'K? It's not Mack, MI either.  There is no Mack, MI.  What is this - fly-over country? Geesh.

Why Mackinac Island anyway? There's a fairly large city in the southeast part of Michigan with a fairly large event facility, you know.

I think I'd be a little more excited about this if the election were next month. I know it seems as if the election is next month, but it isn't.

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He has a point

Hog on Ice has a point - h/t Instapundit though I think Reynolds is missing the point*, and it's a bit ironic that the author of An Army of Davids is linking this.  Granted, I haven't read Reynolds' book, but I gather it's about overcoming a monolithic system - a sort of antithesis to what HOI wrote.  That is, HOI is decrying the monolith's inability to accept new talent while Reynolds' is saying the monolith is irrelevant. 

HOI's post dovetails with what I wrote here and here - and what Dirty Harry at Libertas wrote here.

I keep waiting for one of the tens-of-thousands of conservative millionaires — millionaires because of this country’s foreign policy — millionaires because of incredibly brave young men and women who fight the wars for us — millionaires because of America herself — to announce they’re ready to drop $50 million into a pro-war/pro-American film should someone only bring them a great script and director.

We bitch about Hollywood liberals but conservatives are just as guilty; maybe even more. As twisted and immoral as most liberal beliefs are at least they fight for their beliefs. Conservatives on the other hand, refuse. I’ve been reluctant to say this up to now because I was positive that at some time a principled, grateful, patriotic Hollywood insider would finally grow the guts to say “enough.” Because I was sure an outsider — a sane Mark Cuban — would finally say “enough.”

Where are you people? Believe it or not there’s a bigger moral world out there than your standing in the Hollywood community; than the cocktail parties you get invited to. At what point do you figure out that being liked by people who won’t respect you for fighting for your own principles isn’t worth it?


The thing is, in certain situations the monolith does matter.  It matters - in the vein of what Dirty Harry is talking about - because most people don't have several million dollars laying around to make a movie.  You have to work in the system, work with the monolith.  The frustration is born from the knowledge of there being people in Hollywood who agree with us, who have the ability to make statements, but lack the desire to do so.  Bruce Willis is willing to give a speech at a ball for the heroes Michael Yon portrays in his Gates of Fire report (among others), but he isn't willing to take on Goliath and tell their story in the most compelling medium Man has yet to devise.

And is anyone willing to fund that sort of project?

The other thing is, we know top-down generally does not work.  Just look at talk radio - specifically, Limbaugh's success versus Air America's dismal failures.  In fact, it's a basic principle of Conservatism - rugged individualism.  The blogosphere may have put a new sheen on that thought and the internet may be the best vehicle to see it fully realized, but the Army of Davids is not at all new.

But that doesn't leave us in a good spot - as HOI described.  We do have to realize that all of this must be passed on at some point.  The proverbial torch cannot be held by the same person forever.  We have to train and equip new bearers; otherwise, we can only settle for everything we claim to oppose.

So, Andrew Meyer may have found his meal ticket with that little stunt, but there's also Jason Mattera taking on Murtha - where will he be in five years?  Some of this is solely about initiative, but some of it is also about talent without opportunity.

*The point not being we need yet another screwball - relating Ann Coulter's antics to Andrew Meyer's; rather, we need the Old Guard to accept and foster a continuance of who they are and what they stand for instead of being (seemingly) deathly afraid of new faces.

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09/20/07

Another great idea

Redacted 2:  Sierra Leone and then Redacted 3:  Sudan

Actually, no.  There's no need to rip-off De Palma's brilliant title.  We'll Kill You If You Cry will work.

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He'll be shot

This isn't a threat, just an observation - a guess.  If Ahmadinejad makes his way to Ground Zero, someone will try to fulfill his martyrdom wish.

I wonder if that's what Ahmadinejad has in mind.

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Choose your epithets better

Big Drudge headline:  Hillary Attacks:  Calls Cheney 'Darth Vader'

Vader was ultimately a good character.  He proved it by doing violence against the Emperor.  That's sort of against the Jedi Code, but this is Lucasophy we're talking about ("Only the Sith deal in absolutes!" "The Emperor is evil!" My name is George Lucas and I can't write dialogue!).

To complete this circle, Cheney will have to throw Rove down a well as Rove is electrocuting Bush while Rice, with her teddy bear allies, are snuffing out the lives of test tube babies wearing PVC. 

This could all go horribly wrong if Cheney picks the wrong well to throw Rove down.  Is there anything in the Twelver crazy that talks about the Architect?

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09/19/07

Nature does its thing

Drudge headline:  Man Bitten After Putting Rattlesnake in Mouth.

Too bad we've thwarted natural selection.  Apparently, we've also thwarted natural rights, and Naomi Wolf ain't gonna take it no more.  Well, no.  She's going to be sitting in her cozy apartment looking down on the street as you and I stop taking it anymore.  Chickenhawk.

Meanwhile, back in the Well of Apocalypse, Ahmamissindinner wants to look down at Ground Zero.  No dice - so far.  Instead he'll be preaching to the choir at Columbia University - whose school of journalism will likely file some sort of paper on behalf of Dan Rather.  Dan Rather being their "fake but accurate" poster boy and all.  I could be wrong, but that standard won't fly in court.

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