Thursday, July 17, 2008

Conversations

Your Curmudgeon had two interesting conversations today. From the first one:

Beloved Friend: Why can't we have it all at once? Why can't we be young and healthy and wise and well to do all at the same time?
Your Curmudgeon: It wouldn't be fair.

BF: What do you mean?
YC: Well, no one wants to get old and frail, but it happens to all of us, right? So if we don't waste our youth too badly, we get a little wisdom and prosperity as compensation.

BF: Oh.

From the second one:

Telephone Solicitor: Hello, my name is Chris, and I'm with the National Republican Senatorial Committee --
Your Curmudgeon: Give me a reason to vote for a Republican this coming November.

TS: Well, without a strong Republican contingent in the Senate, the Democrats are likely to raise taxes and further impede domestic oil and gas exploration.
YC: You're aware that the current moratorium on offshore exploration expires at the end of September, aren't you?

TS: Yes, exactly --
YC: Tell you what. If President Bush vetoes the renewal of that moratorium, and Senate Republicans sustain his veto, then you can call me for a contribution. But if he doesn't, or they don't, forget my name.

TS: Well, if you feel that way, why are you a Republican?
YC: I'm not. You have my name because National Review sold it to you.

TS: [with a distinct tone of distaste] Are you a Democrat?
YC: No, I'm a Curmudgeon.

TS: Oh.

There are days the calls from telephone solicitors are the most entertaining things in your Curmudgeon's life.

Woodpushers’ Corner: Huh?

Weaker players sometimes do defeat stronger ones, but when a Russian Grandmaster loses to a mere master in only 20 moves, you have to sit up and look closely. Fran sent me this one a few days ago, and I've been puzzling over it ever since:

My first "huh?" moment. 4. Nxe5 would have threatened 5, Bxf7+ and an immediate King hunt, winning material.

White is already on the defensive, and seriously at that. Black has a superior development, will shortly afflict White with doubled f-Pawns that will remain targets throughout the game, and has caused him to misplace his Knight.

My second "huh?" moment. White removes his King from the veiled threat of the Black Rook on e8...but at the cost of making e3 into a fork square with a Black Knight ready to pounce on it! At this point, I can't see how White could save the game.

Black exploits the e3 fork square. 20...Rxe3 is threatened.

White must lose a piece no matter what he does.

The loser, Maxim Novikov, is one of Russia's International Grandmasters, and well respected among them. The winner, Vladimir Afromeev, is a 54-year-old multimillionaire in the defense industries. The tournament in which they met was by invitation only; Afromeev has yet to play in an open tournament.

Does anyone else suspect a little chicanery here? Possibly lubricated with a thick wad of ruble notes?

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

The Devolution Of Liberalism

When Americans understood words etymologically -- that is, as being semantically derived from their roots -- we understood "liberalism" to mean "the philosophy that favors freedom of thought, speech, and action." One who styled himself a "liberal" was implicitly declaring himself in favor of individual freedom in any and all matters where freedom is possible and tolerable.

Time was. Good grief, how different it was! But, sadly, it's not that way today.

In today's United States, "liberalism" now means "whatever people who call themselves 'liberals' believe." That it has nothing to do with freedom should not require substantiation beyond the pages of the national newspapers. More to the point, "liberalism" in our time is almost always utterly opposed to individual freedom. As Jonah Goldberg proves in his blockbuster Liberal Fascism, the Twenty-First Century American liberal looks to the State first for the satisfaction of every desire. Indeed, liberals refuse to attribute any negatives whatsoever to State omnipotence; their "liberalism" comes as close as anything can come to outright statolatry.

In his magnum opus The American Tradition, published in 1967, historian Clarence Carson wrote that the contemporary liberal seemed to think that as long as we could vote and express ourselves freely, there's no requirement for any greater degree of individual latitude. In other words, freedom of speech and the franchise are all we need to make us "free." Thus, even forty years ago, the liberal creed dismissed the notion of inalienable individual rights other than the vote and the right to vent one's opinions. But how did they get to that point? What propelled the devolution of liberal thought to a point that the authors of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights would fail to recognize it?

It's been a long, strange trip. Your Curmudgeon can only give a bare outline of the journey. Even at that, it will take more than one screed.

***

The first blow to "liberalism," ironically enough, came at the hands of the party with the best claim to be its defenders: the Democratic Party, the party Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and Thomas Hart Benton formed in reaction to the excesses of the Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe Administrations, with the guidance of Thomas Jefferson himself.

The wedge issue was slavery. Jackson, the head of the party and its most forceful figure, was adamant that the federal Constitution did not forbid the admission of new slave states to the Union. It is unclear whether Jackson actually condoned slavery, but he was staunch in the defense of what were then known as "states' rights," which he held to include autonomy on the slavery issue. So powerful was Jackson's opinion within the party that even with Van Buren, Benton, and most of the party's other leaders poised against him, his stance was enough to tear it asunder.

The presidents after Van Buren:

• 1841: William Henry Harrison: Whig
• 1841-1845: John Tyler: Whig
• 1845-1849: James K. Polk: Democrat
• 1849-1850: Zachary Taylor: Whig
• 1850-1853: Millard Fillmore: Whig
• 1853-1857: Franklin Pierce: Democrat
• 1857-1861: James Buchanan: Democrat
• 1861-1865: Abraham Lincoln: Republican
• 1865-1869: Andrew Johnson: Republican
• 1869-1876: Ulysses S. Grant: Republican
• 1877-1881: Rutherford B. Hayes: Republican
• 1881: James A. Garfield: Republican
• 1881-1885: Chester A. Arthur: Republican
• 1885-1889: Grover Cleveland, Democrat
• 1889-1893: Benjamin Harrison: Republican
• 1893-1897: Grover Cleveland, Democrat

...should make it fairly clear that the Democrats, who came far closer to the Revolutionary idea of individual freedom guaranteed by Constitutional constraints than the Republicans of those years, were effectively marginalized, kept too far from the levers of power to act on the pro-freedom aspects of their party agenda. The slavery issue was the reason.

The ascendancy of Grover Cleveland in 1888, last of the Jeffersonian Democrats to reach the White House, gave many Americans of those years hope that the Revolution's ideals were not yet dead. And indeed, Cleveland was true to the principles he espoused, vetoing dozens of Congressional emissions for which there was no Constitutional authority. But the rise of the Progressive / farm movement and its highly successful use of the "free silver" idea pushed the Clevelandites out of party hegemony, which passed to populist William Jennings Bryan.

Bryan and his followers could not command a following sufficient to win them national hegemony, but they could transform the Democratic Party and the meaning of "liberalism" by persuading the authentic Jeffersonians to leave the party for more congenial climes. When that had been accomplished, the transformation of the Democratic Party into a populist / statist organization, hostile to any limitations on federal power, could be completed. It culminated with the ascendancy of Woodrow Wilson to the Presidency.

Wilson wasn't the first of the completely statist liberals, but he was by far the most successful. He shared with Bryan, whom he tapped for Secretary of State, the conviction that federal power ought to be unlimited. It was under his tutelage that America saw "the fatal Amendments" -- the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth, plus the Federal Reserve Act -- that punctured the barrier that had protected the states and the citizenry from power consolidated at the federal level. It was also under Wilson's Adminstration that the United States first entered a war in which it had no national interest to be served.

Wilson and his lieutenants brooked no opposition. The president believed he had been elevated to the White House by God, a commission that carried plenipotentiary powers by the strongest of implications. He, his chief advisor Colonel Edwin House, and his Cabinet were undeterred by Constitutional proscriptions. When war came, Wilson used Lincoln's arrogation of dictatorial powers during the Civil War as precedent to ride roughshod over all dissent, even the right of free expression. In the process, he succeeded in redefining "liberalism" so far as to make it unrecognizable to Americans of earlier times.

More anon.

Monday, July 14, 2008

One Degree Higher

There aren't many sectors of the American economy entirely free of regulation. John Pugsley noted in The Alpha Strategy, written in 1980, that over forty thousand regulations apply to every hamburger served in a retail restaurant. If the number hasn't increased since then, your Curmudgeon will be very surprised.

Banking is not an unregulated industry. In fact, it's one of the most heavily regulated of all.

Today's big story concerns the financial straits of the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA or "Fannie Mae") and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC or "Freddie Mac"). In 2000 and 2001, Congress mandated a massive loosening of the criteria by which these government-created, government-managed, government-guaranteed entities were to grant loans and loan guarantees. The rationale? Helping the poor, of course. Minorities. Single parents. Residents of areas that lack "affordable housing."

The Clinton Administration, anxious to buttress its favor with the plebes, was in favor of this. The Bush Administration, more concerned with other matters, sat still for it. When the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee, anxious to reinflate the economy -- that's the word, folks; that's what a central bank does when it arbitrarily expands the currency supply -- drove the discount rate down to 1% and held it there by main force, the record low interest rate, in combination with the loosened mortgage restrictions and the invention of FNMA and FHLMC bonds for sale to private parties, blew an American housing bubble unlike anything in our history:

• We saw an incredible expansion of the banking industry, along with peripheral institutions such as mortgage brokers, packagers, and remarketers.
• We saw the birth of the sub-prime, interest-only, and negative-amortization mortgages.
• We saw no-income, no-asset mortgages proliferate.
• We saw an explosion in both realty development and realty speculation ("Flip That House," anyone?).
• We saw a nationwide increase in average real estate prices of 270% from low to high.

The short version: Many, many unwise purchases, made possible by many, many unsound loans, drove seven-years of speculative frenzy in the real estate market.

But as Baron Philippe de Rothschild said, "Trees do not grow to the sky." Bubble markets are "greater fool" markets: when there are no fools great enough to buy from the most recent crop, that crop discovers its folly in the most immediate imaginable way. They do their best to limit their losses, but losses are inevitable -- as is the collapse of the price level at which they bought into the bubble market.

Bubble markets are point-for-point analogous to pyramid schemes. No one wants to be the "greatest fool"...but ultimately, as in a game of Hearts, someone must get stuck with the Old Maid.

The real estate bubble was created by Congress. The great majority of the Representatives and Senators who engineered it are still in office. Senators Christopher Dodd (D, Conn) and Charles Schumer (D, NY) were both in the vanguard of the charge for loosened mortgage regulations. They're leading the attempt to blame the mess on the Bush Administration today.

What's wrong with this picture, Gentle Reader?

An artificially low price on money -- that is, an interest rate depressed below what the credit market would support naturally -- creates an incentive to overconsume credit. But the only thing that can hold interest rates down in a free financial market is a flood of newly created money; otherwise, the low interest rate would destroy the incentives for lenders to lend. The federal government did both these things, in the name of making mortgage credit affordable and available to the very persons now facing mortgage default from coast to coast.

With one or two self-demonstrating exceptions, our federal legislators are not stupid. Especially not the Democrats. Cheap credit was a way for them to pander to the voting blocs most susceptible to their pandering. Their current thunderings are merely the reverse face of that coin: an attempt to extract still more political capital from their machinations by shifting the blame for the financial crisis onto their ideological and political opponents. Americans didn't pay much attention at the beginning of the debacle; we were too busy finding things on which to spend our HELOC funds. In consequence, quite a lot of Americans are willing to swallow the Schumer / Dodd claims whole and uncritically.

Just as our political class has begun to openly discuss the nationalization of the health care and petrochemical industries, the bolder outriders among them are now noising about the nationalization of all banking and finance...to prevent any further collapses of major financial institutions, of course. But is there anyone in America who can't foresee the end of this line of development?

Rampant inflations have ruined many nations. Zimbabwe is undergoing one as you read this. Most of us have at least heard about the Weimar Inflation, even if we were never compelled to understand its genesis. But what about the Chinese inflation of 1947-1949, which destroyed the Chiang Kai-shek regime and paved the way for Mao Tse-tung? What about Juan Peron's inflation in 1950's Argentina? What about Uruguay's turn-of-the-Twentieth Century inflation? What about the post-Revolutionary assignat inflation of France, which gave rise to Napoleon?

Each of those inflations was a government-engineered event. Each one was founded on demands for cheap credit...some, so that the (ir)responsible government could borrow more heavily at a reduced cost; others, so the government could redistribute the wealth of the nation through the inflationary mechanism.

The United States has had several moderately serious bouts of inflation: the post-Revolutionary period, when Washington advanced too slowly in coping with the war debt; the "greenback" inflation the Lincoln Administration undertook to finance the Civil War; the Roaring Twenties inflation that culminated in the Great Depression; the Carter inflation, which drove the price of gold to $800 per Troy ounce. We recovered from each of them without losing our nation, our political system, or (much of) our confidence in ourselves and our government. Perhaps we'd have been better served if we'd suffered a genuine, Weimar-style collapse; it might have imprinted the gravity of the matter more clearly on our national psyche.

As long as our government controls the volume of our currency and awards itself the power to make or "guarantee" loans, this sort of evil will always hang over our heads. But no government has ever surrendered totalitarian authority over money and credit without the "incentive" of a violent revolution.

Torches and pitchforks, friends. Think torches and pitchforks.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Copyright Stuff?

This humble writer is hesitant to enter into a copyright fray but the related example has raised his hackles sufficiently to generate the following exception:

As a California libertarian refugee and former resident of Humboldt County, California I have occasion to frequent several of the local blogs there. One said blog is Fred's Humboldt Blog.

Fred posts almost daily and on Saturday 12 July one of his postings, as is typical of Fred, was a light hearted posting on the election process in a rural community in North Dakota. The post was copied from a subscription-generated service to which I shall not link in Colorado. The post was in block quotes and linked by Fred.

The resulting response by the original author identified as "This is True" in the comments simply boggles the mind. While the posting was a technical violation of the copy right law, Fred neither claimed authorship nor profited monitarily from it. Indeed, the posting would be construed by any sentient reader as a recommendation.

I am forced to conclude that the original author of the essay is either mentally challenged or a serious liberophobe. Unfortunately, he seems to enjoy a wider readership.

cross posted at: Fighting in the Shade™

Apologies

No Rumination today. It’s been a long, difficult, expensive day. Fetiche isn’t available to take the baton, so please forgive me / us. With luck, we’ll have something for you tomorrow.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

The Other Side of Istanbul

After Fran shocked me a bit today by recommending Wanted and Hitman (which is based on a video game series my mom wouldn’t even let me buy when I was growing up!), I thought I would shock you all a bit more and recommend a rap song from the Turkish group Nefret (translation: Hate).

Normally, I am no fan of rap.  In the United States, I think most rap is a vehicle for all sorts of vile racism and sexism.  This video (and the lyrics/my translation below), on the other hand, actually has some artistry to it.  I hope to use it to explore and bring out how Istanbullular (Turkish for natives of the city) tend to view their city, as opposed to foreigners.

(Note: using YouTube is still a little iffy in Turkey [sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t], so I can’t really see if this embedded correctly.  For those having problems, here is the original link.)

Gel gelen gördü Istanbul’un çilesini Çek çek Istanbullu olasın Dolan taşan sokaklarda binalar Hani nerede o altın olan topraklar Yalan yalan olan tek şey rüya Rüyalarda gelen tek şey ise para Şu istanbulun eşsiz boğazında [1] Ne kadar gizemli esrarengiz bir hava Güneşin batışından taa ki doğuşuna İster asya ister avrupa’da dolaş Burası bizim işte türk toprakları Bakta gör atalarının miraslarını Ne kadar acımasız olsada bu şehir Senelerdir burda katlandık bu olanlara İstanbul bizimdir bizim kalacak İstanbul’u dinliyorum gözlerim kapalı [Nakarat] x 2 Majesteleri ve ekselansları Nefret istanbul’un şahı türkçe rapin kralı İstanbul bizimdir bizim kalacak İstanbul’u dinliyorum gözlerim kapalı İstanbulda yaşamak zor evet çok zor Saf olan adama kor evet hemde çok kor Başka şehir görmeden Istanbul’u tanıyorum Rahatı ve çilesi istanbul’u dinliyorum Gözlerim kapalı bazen görmek istemiyor Gözlerimden süzülen iki damla yaş Aynada bana ağlayan istanbul’u hatırlatıyor ve Istanbul Ağlıyor Mavi marmarada o yakadan bu yakaya geçerken Bu yaka bu yakada silah sesi duymak istemem Magandanın elinde istanbul’un çığlığı arabanın kornası Artık bıktım bunları duymaktan görmekten Mavi denize akan o simsiyah pislikten Yeter artık yeter! Yeter artık yeter! Bu pisliği yapan artık sen artık sen geber [Nakarat] x 2 İskeleden uzaklaşan bir gemi Hatırlatır bana mazide kalan günlerimi Gördüğün şu mavi deniz ufkumu aydınlatır Uçup giden bir martı yitirdiklerimi Bu sokaklar kimisinin dostu oldu Kimisi de buldu aynı sokaklarda sonunu Sokak çocukları kapanmaz yara Her yer beton oldu her yer kara Nerede Sultanahmet Ortaköy Beykoz Üsküdar Emirgan Çamlıca Haliç [2] Anlatmış zamanında neyi istediğimi Kapadı gözlerini Orhan Veli [3] Uğrunda gemiler yürütüldü karada Boşuna mı yatıyor altında şüheda Hazırlamışsındır benim kara toprağımı İstanbulu dinliyorum gözlerim kapalı Majesteleri ve ekselansları Nefret istanbul’un şahı türkçe rapin kralı İstanbul bizimdir bizim kalacak İstanbul’u dinliyorum gözlerim kapalı

Come, come and see Istanbul’s trials Take a look and see the possibilities The claustrophobic streets and buildings What happened to those golden lands? The only thing that lies is dreams And the only thing they dream about is money This is in Istanbul’s incomparable straits Such an enigmatic and mysterious air When the sun sets until it rises again Whether one wanders in Asia or Europe As for here, these are Turkish lands Look and see and heritage of our ancestors Even if it is this merciless city We’ve accepted it through the years for them Istanbul is ours and ours it will remain I’m listening to Istanbul, my eyes are closed [Chorus x2] Its majesties and excellences Nefret is Istanbul’s king, the lords of Turkish rap Istanbul is ours and ours it will remain I’m listening to Istanbul, my eyes are closed Living in Istanbul is hard Yes, very hard And the man who’s pure is just blind Yes, just very blind I haven’t seen other cities, but I know Istanbul Its comforts and trials, I’m listening to Istanbul My eyes are closed Sometimes I don’t want to see 2 teardrops fall from my eyes The one’s who’s crying to me in the mirror reminds me of Istanbul And Istanbul is crying Passing from this side to that on the blue Marmara I never want to hear the gunshots Or the scream of Istanbul in the hand of those hicks Or the horn of the car I’m sick of hearing and seeing them That wretched filth that flows into the blue sea Enough is enough, enough is enough Those who make this grime, now your life ends [Chorus x2] A ship departing from the dock Reminds me of the bygone days That ocean you see lights up the horizon And the lost spring that came and went Who are the empty streets a friend to? And who found the end of the same streets? The street children aren’t even safe Everwhere’s there’s concrete, everywhere dirt Where are Sulthanahmet, Ortaköy, Beykoz, Üsküdar, Emirgan, Çamlica, Haliç? With eyes closed, Orhan Veli explained in His time what I wanted The boats are sailed from the land out to sea Is it for nothing the martyrs lie below? Let them prepare my own grave I’m listening to Istanbul, my eyes are closed Its majesties and excellences Nefret is Istanbul’s king, the lords of Turkish rap Istanbul is ours and ours it will remain I’m listening to Istanbul, my eyes are closed

Notes:
[1] The Turkish name for the Bosphorus Straits is Boğaz, literally “the throat.”
[2] These are all districts of Istanbul.
[3] A modernist Turkish poet; this song is based on one of his poems.

I got the sense from many of friends and associates who had been to Istanbul or knew others who had that this was quite a party-city.  Certainly, if you don’t spend much time here and don’t learn any Turkish, the nightlife here is pretty good, and you can get the impression of a constant party atmosphere.

But if one looks at the contemporary literature and music surrounding Istanbul, one finds on the whole that it is quite melancholy.  Orhan Pamuk, the recent Nobel laureate, writes constantly in his memoirs of the melancholy and nostalgia that constantly hang over Istanbul.  He partially attributes it to the private sorrow of many Istanbullular that their city has degenerated a great deal since its glorious heights during the Ottoman Empire.  Of course, that is a specific sentiment shared mostly by the older generation, but even in the rap song above, which of course exemplifies the tastes of the youth, you can detect a longing for the golden past of the Ottoman Empire-era Istanbul.  Furthermore, the juxtaposition of pride in the Turkishness of Istanbul with condemnation of the city’s having fallen into corruption (at least partially blamed, in this song, on the presence of uncultured outsiders [magandalar]) seems to be a common theme among much contemporary artistic portrayals of Istanbul.  Many Turks will baldly state, if you press them, that immigration of uneducated groups like the Kurds and gypsies has wrecked Istanbul.

For a long time, publicly displaying nostalgia and affection for the days of the Ottoman Empire has been frowned upon in Turkey due to the rabid nature of the Ataturkian republican nationalism.  That age seems to be ending - Arabic words banned by the government and replaced by “pure Turkish” equivalents are beginning to creep back into the language (much to my dismay, because the words of Arabic origin are typically much tougher to learn), the Ottoman Empire is starting to make a comeback in mythologizing about the Turkish people and nation, and criticism of Ataturk and his brand of republicanism is ever so tentatively creeping into the public sphere.

Some of this rather positive - there is nothing wrong in taking pride in one’s history and the past accomplishments of one’s people.  On the other hand, if negative feelings about foreigners, republicanism, and secularism continue to rise, we may witness a remarkable transformation in Turkish politics and society within our generation.  I am not predicting the re-establishment of the Ottoman Empire, but we may see a more brazenly authoritarian and aggressive state emerge to replace Ataturk’s republic (which in my mind is basically authoritarian anyway, though thankfully mostly neutral and status-quo oriented).  The opening shot of the re-arrangement of Turkish affairs may be the result of the lawsuit against the moderately Islamist AKP, should the Turkish Constitutional Court decide that the party should be banned.  This is not an unlikely result - religiously oriented parties have a history of being banned by the courts or thrown out by the military in Turkey.  But this time will the people tolerate it?

I am not so sure.

The Boiling Blood Edition

The C.S.O. will tell you: "He has his moments." Usually, the bystanders survive.

Have you noticed lately how much absolute lunacy there is around us? For a change, I'm not talking about Islam. Well, not narrowly, anyway. Quite a lot of it is people with an agenda trying to oppress, intimidate, or alarm the rest of us. As it has a purpose and a focus behind it, I think of this as "rational insanity." By comparison, the medically actionable variety is all but insignificant.

I don't watch a lot of television -- sporting events, mostly, and almost always with a book in my hands -- but I've seen a certain commercial far too frequently not to take notice: a pseudo-public-service-pitch about depression. The thrust of these spots is to get people who are having a blue day or week to see a doctor and get some palliative drug. They make no mention of what depression, one of the most frequently abused words in the English language, really is: a reduction in emotional responsiveness.

Depression is not melancholy. It is not irritability or upset. It's a temporary insusceptibility to being prodded. Calluses over one's emotional nerve clusters, if you will. Calluses grow in response to irritation; increased irritation, for instance from someone misguidedly trying to poke a depressive out of his state, only makes them thicker.

Owing to our hyper-therapeutic culture, most people have the exact wrong ideas about depression. Here are a few facts:

• Depression is not lethal.
• It has no consequences that engender increased risks to the sufferer.
• It used to be called "moodiness."
• It is always temporary, and usually brief.
• The most effective treatment for it is letting the sufferer be.
• The least effective treatment for it is nagging.
• Most important of all, it is far more often than not a rational response to being pestered or overburdened -- quite literally a survival reaction to certain kinds and amounts of stress.

Some people do understand this, for which I am grateful. Others...well, let's not go there.

If the people around you, Gentle Reader, seem more frequently non-responsive than they once were, let them be. At least for a while. We just might be trying to ride out a stressful interval...or pondering what to do about something that concerns us, but that we have no warrant to impose upon you.

But hey, I'm a conservative opinion-monger, a poor man's William F. Buckley. I'm supposed to provide you with reasons to take the avenging sword of the Vegas down from the mantel and skewer a few bad guys, just as the recognized commentators do. So in declaiming thus, am I cross-cutting my own freely chosen mission?

Not at all. I'm trying to explain why you might have recently adopted a strategy of avoidance similar to mine about some of the garbage in the news, including items such as the ones I'm about to press upon you.

***

The esteemed Dr. John Ray presents us with this bit of new Nanny-Statism in Australia:

Researchers reviewed almost 200 sausage, bread and sauce products found on supermarket shelves and found the vast majority exceed acceptable salt levels set in the UK....

"That's an incredible salt overload on its own, let alone with everything else you eat in a day," said Dr Bruce Neal, research director at The George Institute for International Health in Sydney....if people knew what they were eating and what it's doing to their health they might well think twice about it."...

"There's very clear evidence that eating more salt pushes your blood pressure up and that increases your risk of stroke and heart attack," Dr Neal said.

"You're obviously not going to fall dead as you bite into the sausage but you're going to pay for it down the track."

The study was released today as part of a national campaign to cut salt levels in food at home and in restaurants and supermarkets by 25 per cent over five years.

The Australian Food and Grocery Council has lent support to the campaign, and several big brands like Coles, Kellogg and Unilever have begun efforts to reduce salt content in products.

"The government now needs to make salt a national health priority and lead negotiations on maximum salt targets for different products," said Dr Neal, who chairs the Australian Division of World Action on Salt and Health.

The mere existence of a "World Action on Salt and Health" organization is enough to put me off my bangers and mash. What about you, Gentle Reader? Are you aware that there are branches of this organization and similar ones here in the United States? Where did you think Michael Bloomberg gets his totalitarian ideas?

It becomes ever more apparent that the greatest threat to the health and welfare of Westerners is the accumulated efforts of people trying to scare them to death.

Salt, one of the simplest of the chemicals upon which our lives depend, can indeed be eaten in excess. The consequences often include heightened blood pressure. But guess what else raises one's blood pressure to an unhealthful level? Being frightened and anxious all the time!

Too much of anything is bad for you. An adult should understand that; if he chooses not to act on the knowledge, it's his body and his affair. Early exit from this vale of tears on account of unwise diet should be regarded as a protracted form of suicide. Social Security enthusiasts and health Nazis might get exercised about it, but the rest of us have no call to be alarmed. Indeed, the rational response is to shrug and make a note that Dr. Neal ought not to be invited to judge the year's hot dog eating contest.

There are real threats, and real risks, to be dealt with each and every day. Some of those threats are animate, purposeful, and coming for you: Muslims, governments, eco-fascist pressure groups, and ex-girlfriends. Others require your collaboration: AIDS, obesity, bankruptcy, and drawing to an inside straight. Still others are marginal presences in the game of life, like a tiny square on the board that you have to roll double-6 five times in a row to land on. But pervasive fear will ruin your life; it will make you want to die, more surely than anything else but torture by dismemberment.

Lighten up. Eat a good breakfast: a solid slug of protein to sustain you through the morning, a side of carbs to get you out the door wakeful enough not to rear-end me on the expressway, and wash it down with a cup or two of brewed coffee. Say grace before and after, and thank God for each day, whatever it might bring. Shrug off the fear-mongers and live in the present moment. Remember: Good health is merely the slowest rate at which one can die. Or, as the late, deeply lamented Jim Morrison put it: No one here gets out alive.

***

Are you a fan of compulsory public education? I happen to know a few. No, I didn't seek them out; it's just that not all my friends select their friends as carefully as I select mine. And no small number of them have spoken approvingly of this outrage:

Safford Middle School has a "zero tolerance" policy that prohibits possession of all drugs, including not just alcohol and illegal intoxicants but prescription medications and over-the-counter remedies, "except those for which permission to use in school has been granted." In October 2003, acting on a tip, Vice Principal Kerry Wilson found a few 400-milligram ibuprofen pills (each equivalent to two over-the-counter tablets) and one nonprescription naproxen tablet in the pockets of a student named Marissa, who claimed Savana was her source.

Savana, an honors student with no history of disciplinary trouble or drug problems, said she didn't know anything about the pills and agreed to a search of her backpack, which turned up nothing incriminating. Wilson nevertheless instructed a female secretary to strip-search Savana under the school nurse's supervision, without even bothering to contact the girl's mother.

The secretary had Savana take off all her clothing except her underwear. Then she told her to "pull her bra out and to the side and shake it, exposing her breasts," and "pull her underwear out at the crotch and shake it, exposing her pelvic area." Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between drug warriors and child molesters.

"I was embarrassed and scared," Savana said in an affidavit, "but felt I would be in more trouble if I did not do what they asked. I held my head down so they could not see I was about to cry." She called it "the most humiliating experience I have ever had." Later, she recalled, the principal, Robert Beeman, said "he did not think the strip search was a big deal because they did not find anything."

And all for "zero tolerance!" The entire staff of that hellhole should have been stripped naked and flogged in public. If Savana had been my daughter, the school nurse and her secretary would not have survived the week. If it had meant twenty years in prison, I'd have counted it cheap to remove two child molesters from the gene pool. But what did the residents of the district do? Apparently, they took the matter to court:

Ace blogged about this case back in April; it caused quite a ruckus in the comments so I've been keeping an eye on it. Today the en banc Ninth Circuit reversed the earlier decision that got our attention. The opinion is here (PDF).

This is the one where a 13 year-old student was subjected to a strip search in the nurse's office after another student who was caught with prescription-strength ibuprofen implicated her. The search of her bag turned up nothing, but the school has a "zero tolerance policy" when it comes to drugs of any kind, so the administrators lost their minds and made her strip. And shake.

Still, it was only 6-5, so this was a close call.

Six to five. Wrap your mind around that for a moment, Gentle Reader. Five federal jurists thought a strip search of a 13 year old girl was the appropriate response to an accusation of over-the-counter drug possession by another student.

I have a few questions:

• Who elevated the five dissenters to a Circuit Court of Appeals?
• Have they read the Constitution lately? How about the laws concerning the sexual molestation of a minor?
• Would they have held the search to have been Constitutionally permissible if it had included a cavity probe?
• For the six justices in the majority: What penalty is appropriate for the myrmidons who violated Savana?
• For Eternity Road's readers: What penalty do you think will be imposed upon them?
• Do you think the school nurse and her secretary would have treated a Muslim teenager in such a fashion? If not, why not?

Parents have surrendered so much of their responsibility for their children to the State and its educracy that events such as this have grown near to commonplace. Embarrassed about our own drug usage, we refrain from teaching our children about the hazards of drug abuse. Reluctant to discipline them -- in many places, forbidden by law -- we expect government employees to wield the switch for us. Worst of all, far too many of us are too hard pressed financially to afford to take our kids out of the government's schools...in no small degree because of the school taxes we're forced to pay.

That there hasn't been a popular uprising -- nay, a pogrom -- against the government schools and their hirelings is one of the wonders of our time.

***

Allow me one more and I'll cease taxing your stomach lining for the rest of the day. This one is from Canada:

A Canadian woman who describes herself as a white nationalist lost custody of her children after sending her daughter to school twice with a swastika drawn on her arm, the CBC reported....

Child and Family Services workers were alerted after the second swastika incident at school, the CBC reported. When they arrived at the family home they found neo-Nazi symbols and flags, and proceeded to seize the kids.

The case has sparked a debate over whether the police and child welfare authorities can take children away because of their parents’ beliefs.

"I'm willing to jump through their hoops," the woman told the CBC. "If they want me to deny my beliefs, I'll tell them that, but at the same time, I'm not a traitor to my politics, my beliefs. I just want my kids back."

Whatever you might believe, Canada is not a free country. It offers not the slightest vestige of de jure freedom; the recent quasi-prosecutions of Maclean's magazine, Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn for having committed politically incorrect journalism should make that quite clear. Its only political virtue is that, as with many large countries, a determined, vigilant person can "live under the radar"...if he's willing to keep his mouth shut.

It should be obvious that your humble host, a soul-deep freedom fanatic lifelong, does not approve of Nazism. But if a parent's custodial rights to his children may be made conditional upon his adoption of an officially approved political posture, what objection can we raise to the Soviet practice of forced indoctrination of all children into the glories of Communism? What objection can we raise to the Cuban regime's treatment of Elian Gonzalez?

As far as I know, nothing like this has happened in the United States...yet. But do you think it hasn't occurred to our innumerable Child Welfare and Protection bureaucrats that they could greatly increase their scope by asserting the power to protect our kids from dangerous political ideas? Their comrades at the front of government-run classrooms do it every day! Why shouldn't the CWP's clipboard-toting thugs have the same privilege?

***

I've been muttering these past few months about how "torches-and-pitchforks time" is drawing near. It's still advancing on us. The sense that the Republic is dying, and that roughly half of its citizens are passively collaborating in its assassination, has begun to overpower me. I can't stay appropriately angry for long without suffering badly from it. I have only so much blood left in me; I can't afford to let any more of it boil off.

There are only two rational responses to such a conviction. One is to fight: to foment a revolution. I've given the idea some thought. If I were a younger, healthier man, that path would be more attractive. America stands upon a precipice. It's six-five and pick-'em that we'll leap off into the totalitarian abyss...possibly as soon as this coming January.

The alternative is to flee: as there are no better places to go, this means to retreat into anonymity and quietism, to "live under the radar" as far as possible, and to pray that I and the C.S.O. will be allowed to finish our lives without being targeted by the forces of darkness. That path doesn't seem attractive either; I'm too much the opinionated S.O.B. to endure enforced silence, even the self-enforced sort. Besides, that would do nothing for the country and the people I love.

"Dilemma" comes from Greek roots; etymologically, it means "two horns." Both those horns have been poking me for a terribly long time. My defense has been to grow a layer of callus over my pressure points: to avert my eyes and ears from upsetting news as much as possible, and to shrug off the rest before it can engage my adrenals. Which is why Fetiche and others, familiar with Fran-as-he-was, have commented on how non-responsive I'm becoming.

What, then, must we do?

Friday, July 11, 2008

Movie Recommendations

Your Curmudgeon happens to be a fan of the action genre. He's enthusiastically accompanied in this by the C.S.O., whose opinion of a movie varies directly with its body count. Nevertheless, some action movies are more than just homicide-fests. Two recent movies are particularly noteworthy in this regard.

First, we have the recent release Wanted, starring James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, and Morgan Freeman. It takes a bit of effort to swallow the premise -- an ancient cadre of super-assassins preserving Mankind from the worst villains, by selecting victims according to the dictates of a mystical loom -- but the results are worth the effort. Wanted is highly imaginative, well acted, well choreographed, and visually striking.

James McAvoy, most recently seen in Atonement, has a bright future ahead of him. His Tobey Maguire-like performance is perfect for his role as a nebbish office drone recruited into the aforementioned band of assassins. Angelina Jolie underplays her part as the laconic Fox, McAvoy's mentor and partner, beautifully. Morgan Freeman, who never seems to miss a step, pulls off the nearly impossible task of portraying a grandfatherly dispatcher of assassins, himself retired from active service...and much more than he allows himself to appear.

Even more impressive is Hitman, which has recently become available on DVD. Once again, the premise takes some effort to get down: a mystical society known only as the Organization converts lost orphans, unwanted by anyone else, into amoral contract killers, the fiercest the world has ever known, and sells their services to customers of all sorts. But once again, you'll be glad you did.

Timothy Olyphant, who was noteworthy in Live Free Or Die Hard as computer wizard and sociopath Thomas Gabriel, stars as Agent 47, the very best of all the Organization's scions, and a bravura performance it is. Nearly as striking are Dougray Scott as Mike Whittier, the Interpol agent dedicated to 47's apprehension, and the previously unheralded Olga Kurylenko, who, as Niki, the enslaved, savagely abused plaything of a Russian autocrat, is the blade that frees 47 from his chrysalis, allowing him to evolve from a clockwork engine of death into a thinking, feeling man.

Hitman's combat sequences are as meticulously choreographed and filmed as those in Wanted, but even more notable is the extraordinary depiction of the relationship that grows between 47 and Niki, at once brittle, porcupine-spiky, and arrestingly tender. This is more than an action movie; it deserves some critical attention to its excellences.

Your Curmudgeon recommends both these movies highly. Enjoy!

The Proverbial Fish in a Barrel

Background:  I receive Google News alerts by email on a few topics of interest, including work related matters, and one of them directed me to this piece by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Brendan DeMelle at the Puffington Host, er, Puffed-up Toast, excuse me, Huffington Post informing me of the fact, among others, that “...Republican operatives jump on any opportunity to challenge voter eligibility in heavily Democratic urban areas.” This is, of course, because so much vote fraud is occurring, to the benefit of Democrats in these areas, but let it pass.  These sorts of things are why I still feel a childlike delight in making silly variations on the Toast’s name.

There is so much ripe-for-ridicule material over at the Boast, in fact, that I will here simply take the headlines of the “Popular Stories” given on the sidebar of the above article and interpret them for you in brief.  Links not provided, because I believe almost all Eternity Road readers will be able to surmise the content sufficiently.  If you really want to read the whole thing, just paste the title into their search box.

Here are the Socialist Left Coast‘s “popular stories” right NOW:

Jesse Jackson Disparages Barack Obama: Caught On Tape

He didn’t just “disparage” him you fools, he fantasized about cutting his “nuts” off. Without that little fact, it would have been page D-22 stuff.  The other thing I don’t understand is that the networks and even many print publications bleeped the word “nuts” or wrote something like “n**s.” It is too a word you can say on TV; I see ads for Planter’s Honey Roasted Pean**s on the air all the time.

Max Bergmann: The Week That Should Have Ended McCain’s Presidential Hopes

Shoulda, woulda, coulda, Max.  I wrote a piece once called “The Piece That Should Have Ended Max Bergmann’s Career,” but sadly, it didn’t get picked up by the MSM and Max drivels on.

Bush’s Banned Interview: An Insight Into Insanity

Turns out that the “insanity” is that President Bush didn’t cave to an Irish reporter back in 2004 when she went into attack-dog mode over Iraq.  If he would have sobbed, hugged her and begged forgiveness from the Irish and all other oppressed peoples, then resigned, that would have been sane, I guess.

McCain Issues Top Ten Funniest Ways to Kill Iranians

Turns out to be a satirical piece by comedian Andy Borowitz.  Only problem: It’s not funny.  Even when I tried to imagine myself as a progressive after four glasses of champagne, it was still not funny.

Arianna Huffington: Karl Rove’s Contempt for the Constitution and the Public’s Right to Know

The public does not have a right to know what the President’s counselors talk about.  Congress does not have a “Constitutional” right to demand such.  In fact, I just now thought about how if so, I have a right to know what Nancy Pelosi said to Charlie Rangell about his four rent-controlled apartments yesterday in her office, or anything her staff has ever told her.  Goose, meet gander.

Senate Passes FISA Bill, Gives Telecoms Immunity

Nothing in the article about what the bill actually does, but we do learn that the Senate “bowed to President Bush’s demands” by a count of 69-28.  Soooo, we have a lame duck President with six months left in office and very low polling numbers, and a Democrat-majority Senate “bows.” The proverbial Man from Mars who read the article would be scratching his head about how, and why, but would just be left with an inflamed scalp, because the article provides no info, and I won’t be Fisking the HuffPo again, because it’s too much like shooting the proverbial fish in the proverbial barrel.