OK Go rocks! I found this band through a post on NRO’s the Corner and they are awesome. The first video is from their first album, Oh No, which is a pretty straightforward power-pop record (for an interesting story about the group’s videos and the music biz in general check out this Op-Ed NY Times piece by the lead singer). The second is from their latest effort released this year, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, which is very eclectic, very cool and completely different from the previous album. Anyway, I’ve been listening to both albums non-stop for the last two weeks. Enjoy.
Culture
Who’s To Blame?
So, Obamacare passed and it passed without any Republican votes. So who’s to blame for the miasmic mess that resulted from last night’s vote?
Republicans.
Every Republican that is sick about the time wasted on this ridiculous health care bill; who is sick about the process and dirty deals it took to get this bill passed need look no further than their mirror when looking for someone to blame. I know that everyone is saying that since the Dems passed this without any Republican votes that they own it. That is certainly true and it doesn’t take a political pro to know that there will be some Democratic heads rolling come November. But Republicans need to remember one thing when lamenting this new health care mess:
Elections have CONSEQUENCES!
Every Republican congressman and senator that went spend-crazy between 2000 and 2008 needs to look in the mirror and realize that this is their fault. They are the reason (not Bush alone) for the losses in the House and Senate in 2006 and 2008 that gave Democrats these majorities and this opportunity. Every Republican primary voter who decided that nominating a geriatric, ideologically fuzzy curmudgeon for a presidential candidate would be a good idea, needs to wake up this morning and say, “This is my fault.”
Like I said before, elections have consequences. Let’s hope this coming November that the consequences play out in our favor. If they do, and Republicans can gain a majority in the House and/or the Senate (extremely unlikely) let’s make sure that we do everything we can to get the bulk of this nonsense repealed.
Nice Taylor
I found this video over at The Fire Wire of Jason Mraz playing at the Taylor booth at the 2010 NAMM (the National Association of Music Merchants) show. I liked it so much (as you know I’m a big Taylor fan – see this post) I thought I’d share it here.
Paul Krugman – Dishonest Jerk
Paul Krugman is one of the most maddening columnists alive today. He’s an unabashed liberal, which is fine. Except that he constantly denigrates Republicans and conservatives for being deceitful, dishonest and hypocritical. The problem with his criticism is that it is a major case of the pot calling the kettle black.
The following is from a post on The Corner at NRO quoting from a James Taranto piece in the Wall Street Journal which illustrates his most recent utterance of hypocritical blather.
James Taranto has a great take-down of Dr. Krugman today. Apparently the conscience of a liberal is schizophrenic:
Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman takes note in his New York Times column of what he calls “the incredible gap that has opened up between the parties”:
Today, Democrats and Republicans live in different universes, both intellectually and morally.”What Democrats believe,” he says “is what textbook economics says”:
But that’s not how Republicans see it. Here’s what Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, had to say when defending Mr. Bunning’s position (although not joining his blockade): unemployment relief “doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.” Krugman scoffs: “To me, that’s a bizarre point of view—but then, I don’t live in Mr. Kyl’s universe.”
What does textbook economics have to say about this question? Here is a passage from a textbook called “Macroeconomics“:
Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect. . . . In other countries, particularly in Europe, benefits are more generous and last longer. The drawback to this generosity is that it reduces a worker’s incentive to quickly find a new job. Generous unemployment benefits in some European countries are widely believed to be one of the main causes of “Eurosclerosis,” the persistent high unemployment that affects a number of European countries.
So it turns out that what Krugman calls Sen. Kyl’s “bizarre point of view” is, in fact, textbook economics. The authors of that textbook are Paul Krugman and Robin Wells. Miss Wells is also known as Mrs. Paul Krugman.
As John Hinderaker points out in this post at Power Line, “…only the existence of Frank Rich prevents Krugman from being the world’s worst columnist”. My only modification would be that Thomas Friedman would also prevent Krugman from holding the title.
Ah…The Virtues of Tolerance
I always love love it when people preaching “tolerance” throw out quotes like the one below from Daniel Radcliffe (aka Harry Potter).
“I have always hated anybody who is not tolerant of gay men or lesbians or bisexuals,” he continued. “Now I am in the very fortunate position where I can actually help or do something about it.”
Yes, hatred is one of the hallmarks of the compassionate, tolerant individual.
The story the quote comes from is here. Now, what he’s supporting is actually a good thing – a group that provides a 24/7 suicide prevention hotline for the LGBT community. No one should be made to feel that ending their life is the only choice open to them. But the cognitive dissonance in statements like the one above always just drive me crazy.
The Things That People Say – NPR Edition
I was listening to NPR this morning on the way in to work.
Now your first question is probably, “Why are you, an upstanding, conservative, Texan listening to NPR?” The answer is that I have grown so used to listening to talk radio during my commutes that I find it hard listening to anything else. On a normal day I would listen to the local sports talk radio station but on the weekends they usually pipe in a Sporting News Radio feed that I have little interest in. So NPR is my fall back and I usually find it’s smug snobbery amusing.
Anyway, I’ve always been fasinated by the dumb things that people say, especially when said on TV or Radio – where you would think that people would be on their A game since they know they’re being recorded. There were two episodes that made me do an audio version of a double take.
The first was on the program “HumanKind” which is a very touchy-feely new-agey show. The guest was Rob Warden who has been an investigative journalist and now works for the Center On Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University. He dedicates his time to exonerating wrongfully convicted felons (a worthy cause, no doubt). He described all of the different cases he’s worked on in the last thirty years and then the interviewer asked what percentage of prisoners are actually innocent of the charges that put them there. Rob said that it was generally believed about 5%, but that a new study posits that it could be as high as 10%, and that he believed that 10% was probably close to the correct number. Later on in the interview he said that in all of his years covering police investigations he had never seen a competent police investigation. That’s when I did the double take. So let me get this straight Rob. In your opinion there are no police investigations in the past 20 to 30 years that have been handled compentently and yet you agree that there only 10% of the prison population that are innocent? The cognitive dissonence in those two statements is astounding. Can you really believe that there are no competent police investigations and that only 10% of the prison population is innocent at the same time…I guess if you work for Northwestern.
The second was during an NPR news segment. They had a guy on from an Information Technology think tank and he was commenting on Obama’s SOTU statements about China’s, Germany’s and India’s economic and technological growth and how those countries weren’t playing for second place. Then the president said that he would not accept second place for America (cue applause)! Well this guys says, “…I think the president is right, we should not accept being second to none and right now we are second to none…” The funniest part about it to me was that the interviewer let this guy go on saying “second to none” (he said it four or five times) without correcting him – she just left him out there flapping in the wind. I guess think tanks are scraping from the bottom of the barrell these days.
Wet-Talkers
One of my pet peeves is the phenomenon that I call the “wet-talker”. The wet-talker is someone who makes a slight smacking noise when he or she talks. Really that’s not quite accurate but it’s the best way I can describe it. Every time the wet-talker opens his mouth to speak you hear a gross, moist sound as if they have way too much saliva in their mouth.
The worst place to hear a wet-talker is on the radio and the worst wet-talkers on the radio reside at NPR. Most of their hosts are wet-talkers. Most of their guests are wet-talkers. Heck, even the people that do their advertising spots are wet-talkers (I’m exaggerating – but not by much). Surely this can’t be a hiring criterion for NPR. There can’t be a place on NPR’s broadcaster application that says “Are you a wet-talker?” Can there? Maybe it’s the microphones they use; maybe they’re so sensitive that they turn everyone into a wet-talker. Maybe wet-talking is a common condition of the snooty northeasterner, which is what NPR’s broadcast team almost exclusively consists of. I don’t know. All I know is that on most other radio stations I rarely hear wet-talkers and when I do, they’re usually guests on a talk show, not the everyday host.
Anyway, please join my crusade to stamp out wet-talking on the airwaves by writing your congressman and the FCC and asking them to ban wet-talking on all frequencies.
Thank you for your support.
Bears Join The War On Terror
This is why I love Jonah Goldberg!
An excerpt from his comments on the militant-killing bear story:
…President Obama said, “Bears are still our valued allies, but we can no longer pursue the arrogant policy of unilaterally supporting one member of the animal kingdom over another.”
Genius!
Happy Halloween!
Since it’s Halloween I thought I would post some of the things that scare me the most…
These people are running our country…oooohhhh…it gives me chills just thinking about it.
Be safe and have a happy Halloween!
My Head Just Exploded! 