Truth in advertising

Jay Nordlinger tells it as Cuba trip promoters would tell it if they were honest:

"A friend sends me this notice: The University of Michigan Alumni Association is preparing a trip to the Castros’ Cuba! Take advantage of the segregated beaches, restaurants, and hotels! (“Tourism apartheid,” some call it.) Enjoy a place where a single party rules! Where the media have only one point of view! Where dissenters are jailed and tortured! Where American aid workers are held hostage! And don’t forget the underage prostitution!

Oh, you’ll love your trip. Totalitarian Cuba is in some ways even better than Ann Arbor, which after all has a Republican party. Go Blue!"

Quick hits 4/22

Notes from my reading:

Larry Elder, from a column on big government economics:

An economics professor asked his class which of these two scenarios the students preferred. First scenario: Japan grows at an annual rate of 7 percent, and the Unites States grows at 4 percent. Second scenario: Japan and the United States both grow at 3 percent. Overwhelmingly, the students chose the second option. In other words, the students accepted their own lower domestic growth rather than allow Japan — a friendly nation — to outpace us. In exchange for "equality," they chose an otherwise lower standard of living. They, at least, acknowledged the existence — and accepted the price — of the trade-off. If people understood the damage done when government takes from A and gives to B, how many would sign on?

It is stunning and sad that these students have become so brainwashed by Marxist rhetoric that they would explicitly choose making everybody poorer for the sake of a Utopian fantasy. That is exactly the position that big government advocates advance, but at least many (most?) of them are ignorant that such a trade-off exists.

Elder recognizes this:

Collectivism is a bargain that most people — if they knew the real price tag — would reject. These trade-offs include lower productivity, diminished initiative, fewer jobs, rewarding reckless behavior and poor choices, a lower-than-otherwise standard of living, less economic freedom, greater government dependency, and fewer resources to spend on national security and to secure our borders.

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Michael Barone, from a column on increasing Wall Street regulation and its beneficiaries:

Little wonder that Goldman Sachs likes the idea. It will be able to borrow at lower cost than small competitors and will be assured that its large counterparties will qualify for government bailouts. Big firms tend to favor regulation because it insulates them from competition and protects them against loss. […]

In the 2008 campaign cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics' opensecrets.org website, Goldman Sachs personnel contributed $4.5 million to Democrats and just $1.5 million to Republicans.

Add in three other big Wall Street firms — Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup — and the total take was $12.7 million to Democrats and $6.7 million to Republicans. The image of Wall Streeters as solid Republicans is as dead as J. P. Morgan himself.

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With a (massively regressive, it should be noted) Value Added Tax push coming after the elections are safely over, it’s worth looking at their rate history elsewhere. Canada has actually lowered their VAT from the original 7% to 5%, but every other nation has later increased the rate (source: The Wall Street Journal):

Denmark 9-25%
France 13.6-19.6
Germany 10-19
Italy 12-20
Japan 3-5
Spain 12-16
Sweden 17.7-25
Switzerland 6.5-7.6
United Kingdom 8-17.5

Ahh, but maybe they reduced their income tax rates? Not so much.

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Jay Nordlinger on our tax code:

The tax code pits Americans against one another. It pits homeowners against renters, married people against unmarried people, people with children against people without children, people with children going to college against people with children going into trades — and on and on. The tax code is packed with social policy, and bias. That’s one reason I say, a pox on it.

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More Nordlinger:

I offer you good news out of Havana: “A surprisingly small crowd sweated and sang along to performances by Cuban rock, folk and salsa stars Saturday, at what the communist government billed as a politically important ‘concert for the homeland.’”

The article continued, “Organizers had said the show would be headlined by Cuba’s most famous folk singer, Silvio Rodriguez. But instead the pro-Castro government activist made fans wait for an hour in unrelenting afternoon sun before he took the stage, read a letter defending the single-party communist system — and then left without performing.”

Doesn’t that warm your heart?

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From another Nordlinger column:

President Obama has another pick coming up. If I were able to question him, I might ask something like, “When you were in the Senate, you voted against both John Roberts and Samuel Alito. You said they were qualified in traditional ways, but they were conservative — therefore, in your eyes, they were unfit to serve on the Supreme Court. By your standard, should Republican senators vote against your nominees because they’re liberal?”

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Finally, Charles Krauthammer on the fatuousness of US nuclear policy:

[T]he Washington summit was part of a larger misdirection play — Obama’s “nuclear spring.” Last week, a START treaty, redolent of precisely the kind of Cold War obsolescence Obama routinely decries. The number of warheads in Russia’s aging and decaying nuclear stockpile is an irrelevancy now that the existential U.S.-Soviet struggle is over. One major achievement of the treaty, from the point of view of Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, is that it could freeze deployment of U.S. missile defenses — thus constraining the single greatest anti-nuclear breakthrough of our time.

The left wing resistance to missile defense has never made any sense to me. I'm sure some of it was the anti-American, pro-Soviet worldview that infected the political left of the 80's, but shouldn't that silliness have been relegated to the dustbin of history as well? Is raw hatred for the US still driving opinion this issue?

Just bizarre.

A big announcement, etc.

I’ve made it clear I’m not an Obama fan, and I’m not enamored of McCain either, so even though it’s late I’ve decided to take the plunge.

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At least he’s honest. Barney Frank, in the news lately as a habitual Fannie/Freddie apologist and enabler, and thus as one of the primary villains in the mortgage crisis, lets us know that his economic ignorance is not limited to housing: "I think at this point there needs to be a focus on an immediate increase in spending and I think this is a time when deficit fear has to take a second seat . . . I believe later on there should be tax increases.”

Fire, meet gasoline.

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I can take this college basketball player off the dribble and score at will, while shutting him down so you’ll think his half of the scoreboard is broken.

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Random envirofact: US greenhouse gas emissions are falling (EPA source document linked). They were lower in 2006 than in 2005, and are expected to be lower in 2007 than in 2006 when official figures are released next spring, And it’s hard to imagine that they would not be droping in 2008, given the significant decrease in gasoline usage.

I’m not claiming any significance, as I think that solar cycles overwhelm any human contribution to climate, just throwing out a truth that will be inconvenient for the global warmist movement. Now the next time you read that US emissions are increasing, you will know the source is lying.

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Socialism 101:

Despite having some of the world's largest energy reserves, Venezuela is increasingly struggling to maintain basic electrical service, a growing challenge for leftist President Hugo Chavez.

The OPEC nation has suffered three nationwide blackouts this year, and chronic power shortages have sparked protests from the western Andean highlands to San Felix, a city of mostly poor industrial workers in the sweltering south.

[…]

The problem suggests that Chavez, with his ambitious international alliances and promises to end capitalism, risks alienating supporters by failing to focus on basic issues like electricity, trash collection and law enforcement.

As Glenn Reynolds notes, “Too much wealth-spreading, not enough wealth-creation and maintenance.”

They say that to keep trying the same failing action over and over, hoping for a different result, is an illustration of insanity. So it is with collectivist economics and their 100% historical failure rate, but you can bet that these Utopian fantasies will keep destroying lives for another century or three.

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Great story that captures the very essence of Castro (this is real, not a joke): after losing a 1962 round to his strongman, mass murderer Che Guevara, Fidel eliminated the nation’s golf courses, turning them into schools and resorts, among other things. For some reason, one nine-hole course in Havana was spared the tyrant’s wrath, but with his death, err I mean illness (wink, wink) it appears that developers will bring the sport back to the island.

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Having secured the endorsement of Hamas months ago, Obama has now added an endorsement from Iran to his column. Et tu, North Korea?

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Michael Barone reports on hate mongering as campaign rhetoric:

Here's insight into the thinking of some Democrats. In Ohio, they're attacking state Rep. Josh Mandel for having fulfilled his military obligation to serve in Iraq. As Joel Mowbray tells the story, Democrats are saying that Mandel neglected his constituents in favor of "serving George Bush." In these Democrats' view, the war in Iraq is evidently a purely partisan cause, not one sanctioned by the U.S. Congress and ordered by the U.S. president. These people want the United States to prevail only if there is a Democratic president and take delight in American defeat if the president is a Republican. I've seldom seen such a disgusting display of partisanship over country.

More random stuff

Ugh, I had forgotten how much of an ass-whipping it is to listen to Mickey Spagnola. I think I’m tired of football season before it’s started.

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Dennis Prager's sobering take on why the existential enemy we face now might be even more dangerous than those we faced in the 20th century:

"[T]here are two unique aspects to the evil emanating from the Islamic world that render this latest threat to humanity particularly difficult to overcome. One is the number of people who believe in it. This is a new phenomenon among organized evils. Far fewer people believed in Nazism or in communism than believe in Islam generally or in authoritarian Islam specifically. There are one billion Muslims in the world. If just 10 percent believe in the Islam of Hamas, the Taliban, the Sudanese regime, Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, bin Ladin, Islamic Jihad, the Finley Park Mosque in London or Hizbollah---and it is inconceivable that only one of 10 Muslims supports any of these groups' ideologies---that means a true believing enemy of at least 100 million people. Outside of Germany, how many people believed in Nazism? Outside of Japan, who believed in Japanese imperialism and militarism? And outside of universities, the arts world or Hollywood, how many people believed in Soviet-style totalitarianism? A far larger number of people believe in Islamic authoritarianism than ever believed in
Marxism. Virtually no one living in Marxist countries believed in Marxism or communism. Likewise, far fewer people believed in Nazism, an ideology confined largely to one country for less than one generation. This is one enormous difference between the radical Islamic threat to our civilization and the two previous ones."

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You often hear that Barry Bonds hit many more homers late in his career than the other home run leaders. Does it stand up to scrutiny?

1st ten years of their career:
Player A - 292 HR
Player B - 238 HR
Player C - 342 HR

Years 11 – 15 of their career:
Player A – 202 HR
Player B - 232 HR
Player C – 168 HR

Years 16 – 22
Player A – 268 Homers
Player B – 262 Homers
Player C – 235 homers

Funny how not only is it not quite obvious, indeed it’s basically impossible to tell, which is the alleged steroid user when you just look at the evidence.

A is Bonds, B is Ruth, C is Aaron

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A little more Raul Castro, from the BBC via Jay Nordlinger:

Cuba is to put more state-controlled farm land into private hands, in a move to increase the island’s lagging food production. Private farmers who do well will be able to increase their holdings by up to 99 acres (40 hectares) for a 10-year period that can be renewed. Until now, private farmers have only been able to run small areas of land...[T]his is one of President Raul Castro’s most significant reforms to date.

Imagine how much better off Cubans would be had Fidel died 50 years earlier.

Random stuff

I could not prouder to live in Dallas, but every village has its idiot. Our continual source of embarrassment is County Commissioner John Wiley Price, one of the country’s most despicable and consistent racists. His latest escapade, complaining when a fellow commissioner said that the central collections office "has become a black hole," was typical of his career, but this one made the national news. That Judge and fellow ignorant bigot Thomas Jones demanded an apology was just piling on, we were already ducking our heads in shame.

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Apparently NBC now stands for No Barack Criticism.

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According to a recent World Bank study, biofuels have forced up global food prices 75% while only negligibly reducing worldwide oil demand. Can we stop this nonsense immediately before it drives people back into poverty faster than the growth of global capitalism and trade lifts them out of it? Biofuel research and production should be strictly limited to non-food sources. Not that we'd expect greens to care about easing poverty or anything - it's antithetical to their mission.

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Was it really Raul Castro that said "Socialism means social justice and equality, but equality of rights, of opportunities, not of income. Equality is not egalitarianism."? When a Castro brother makes more economic sense than one of our own presidential candidates…should I be happy for Cubans or fearful for my own countrymen?

I think the answer is “yes.”

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Terrorist Mohammed Siddique Khan, ringleader of the 2005 London subway suicide bombers, made a farewell video to his infant daughter on which he said "I love you to bits."

I guess he wants to also see her die in an explosion some day?

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I could not agree more with this from Jay Nordlinger:

While in Japan, President Bush placed a message on a “wishing tree.” Apparently, this is an old tradition. (Is that a redundancy?) Bush’s message: “I wish for a world free from tyranny: the tyranny of hunger, disease; and free from tyrannical governments. I wish for a world in which the universal desire for liberty is realized.”

That is what I would have expected from him — and one reason I admire him so much. Most people, it seems certain, would have wished for “peace.” Bush is a man who recognizes that genuine peace comes from freedom.

And this, from the same column:

Was talking to a friend of mine back home in Michigan. Bright guy, well educated, very successful. And very much a liberal Democrat. He said we had to have Obama in November — because “we can’t have Big Oil running the government any longer.”

I ask for the millionth time: How can perfectly normal and non-crazy people believe that stuff?

I ask myself the same question of so many people in so many settings. How is it that otherwise educated people can lose (or never gain) the ability to think critically in the area of politics? Can it be as simple as university brainwashing?

There are some fascinating psychological research possibilities here, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for any such studies.

Talk to you soon, or at least sooner than last time I hope.

Coolest eBay item ever!

In case you missed it, Topps issued a single Allen and Ginter (a nineteenth century tobacco company that produced sports cards) replica card of Fidel Castro, complete with an authentic cut autograph of the mass murdering tyrant. Why Topps would do something so despicable is unclear, but what has happened to the card in question is glorious.

I first heard about it from Jay Nordlinger's column last week. Here's Jay:

I have a friend who’s a young Wall Streeter and a freedom-lover. A hobby of his is to collect baseball cards. And this is not just a hobby, but also a form of investing. [...]

[L]ast year, my friend noticed that Topps put out a Fidel Castro card. It shows him in a baseball cap, and is all cute and cuddly. My friend was disgusted at this sweetheart treatment of a murderous dictator. So what did he do? He bought the card. He didn’t want it in anyone else’s possession.

Then the question was, “What do I do with this card? Do I have some kind of ceremonial burning?” My friend decided against this — too much like book burning, and you can’t burn an idea. So he decided to deface the card and auction it — giving the proceeds to the anti-Castro, pro-freedom cause. [...]

My friend has noted on the Castro card that the man is a dictator, murderer, and tyrant. He has even noted that Oscar Elías Biscet, the imprisoned dissident, won the Presidential Medal of Freedom (from GWB, of course).

I hope that this card fetches a lot of money: drawing attention to Cubans’ suffering, shaming admirers of Castro, and helping out the Center for a Free Cuba.

Here are the pictures of the card from the eBay listing (which will expire on June 6):





Finally, here is the note accompanying the item from the auction page:

Please note that ALL proceeds for this auction are to be paid as a contribution to the Center for a Free Cuba, whose address I list below. (This portion of the auction is in compliance with eBay policy given that I have obtained written consent on this charity's letterhead, and included a scanned copy of that letter in this listing.)

As described on its website, "The Center for a Free Cuba (CFC) is an independent, non-partisan institution dedicated to promoting human rights and a transition to democracy and the rule of law on the island. Established in November 1997, the Center gathers and disseminates information about Cuba and Cubans to the media, NGOs, and the international community. The Center also assists the people of Cuba through its information outreach and humanitarian programs on the island. The Center has received a 501(c)(3) exemption from the Internal Revenue Service. Contributions to the Center are tax deductible."

To learn more about the Center for a Free Cuba, please check out their website at:

http://www.cubacenter.org/

or write to them at:

Center for a Free Cuba
1320 19th Street, NW
Suite 600
Washington, DC 20036

ALL folks interested in bidding on this item should be FULLY aware that this item -- which contains an authentic cut signature of Fidel Castro -- has been substantially modified since it was manufactured by The Topps Company. Allow me to explain.

Since card manufacturers began including cut-signature items in their offerings, some people in the hobby have speculated as to whether or not any card company would ever cross the line of good taste by offering an inappropriate -- offensive -- product (for example, a cut-signature card bearing Adolf Hitler's signature). Although Topps in general should be commended for doing a good job with regard to most of the cut-signature cards it has created the last several years, Topps has clearly vaulted over the line of common decency by creating a cut-signature card of Communist dictator Fidel Castro, one of the most notorious mass murderers in the history of the Western hemisphere.

The card is clearly an attempt to portray Fidel in a positive light -- note, for example, the baseball cap that Castro is pictured wearing on the front of the card. What is the message Topps is attempting to send? That being a mass murderer is somehow "OK" and "acceptable" so long as that person is also a... baseball fan???

To more accurate reflect the true Castro legacy, the card has been altered so that it now includes numerous words and phrases pertaining to Fidel on both the front and back of the card. For example, phrases on the front of the card now include:

* mass murderer
* Communist
* El Manbu concentration camp
* Free Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Oscar Biscet!

And, phrases on the back of the card now include:

* firing squads
* author of the Camilo-Cienfuegos forced labor plan
* violator of peaceful journalists' free-speech rights
* Remember Pedro Luis Boitel!

Also, all bidders must be aware that the corners of this card have been damaged by whacking each corner against a rather hard table several times (these damaged corners represent the damage to Cuba done by Fidel). In addition, all bidders must be aware that the sides of this card have several small cuts in them made with a knife (these cuts represent the torture -- and worse -- suffered by thousands of political prisoners during Fidel's regime).

Please note that this auction is in full compliance with eBay's Offensive Material Policy, as this auction does NOT glorify hatred, violence, racial or religious intolerance, or items that promote organizations with such views.

In fact, this auction serves as a reminder that -- despite what the lamestream media, nitwit "celebrities," and ivory-tower university ostriches would have us believe -- it was Fidel who made a career out of glorifying hatred, using violence, and stoking racial and religious intolerance.

There is NO shipping/handling fee for this auction.

Show YOUR support for the individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that every human being enjoys by bidding on this item today!

Greatest.eBay.item.ever.

Scattershooting

Scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to Clay Johnson:

Did you catch Ted Kennedy's howler in endorsing Barack Obama? Mary Jo's last chauffeur said that Obama "truly has the power to inspire and make America good again, from sea to shining sea."

Shouldn't believing that this is not merely a good, but a great, country be a bare minimum prerequisite for public office?

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James Taranto brings up a question I've also pondered:

In an age of heightened sensitivity over slurs involving race, religion, sexual orientation and so forth, why is anti-American bigotry considered socially acceptable?

Certainly slurring America is no less offensive than slurring preferred groups. But for some reason the same folks who condemn slurs against blacks, or women, or gays have no problem with, and even participate in, the slurring of blacks and women and gays, all at the same time, in the form of slurring Americans. Rank hypocrisy, that.

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Police: Crack Found in Man's Buttocks

If not, a run-in with the law is the least of his problems!

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My favorite story of this election season is that Vice President Dick Cheney and presidential candidate Barack Obama are eighth cousins.

You already suspected that Obama was just another piece of the vast Halliburton conspiracy, right?

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Kobe Bryant, closet neocon?: "I'm a soldier, man. It's not a soldier's job to question whether or not he should fight the war. You've got to go over there and fight. It's not my place."

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Who's overpaid? According to Forbes, the top 10 CEO's earned an average of $59 million in 2004, while the top 10 athletes/entertainers earned an average of $116 million the same year.

Of course it was a trick question anyway...none of them are overpaid, they are just earning what the market will bear for their services. Nothing could be more American than that.

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Idiot alert: This is from an actual letter to the editor from an actual human being to the Oregonian, whom I will not embarrass by printing his name (The paper was not so kind).

It's incredible that so few understand and are alarmed by the very high probability that humans will very soon be extinct if we don't greatly reduce the number of people depending on the planet's limited life-support systems.

The United Nations' conclusion that "only urgent global action will do" in dealing with climate change (Nov. 18) is sobering indeed. But since human activity is the primary cause, the solution is a right-in-our-face no-brainer: Reduce human activity! And do it now, with aggressive, mandatory, global birth control! [...]

Life on Earth could be truly beautiful for all living things if there weren't so many humans competing for all the good things it has to offer. [...]

There's no time left for arguing. [...]

I get that this dolt thinks that humans are so evil that the only answer is global fascism, but why birth control? Why not just cut out the middleman (err, middlewoman)? Wouldn't concentration camps and mass executions be a more efficient means of accomplishing his goal? That has worked (and is still working, in places like North Korea and Cuba) for Nazis and communists for close to a century now, how could the author not have thought of it?

Maybe he just doesn't think the problem is really that urgent.

Greatness recognized

President Bush today will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the inspirational Cuban dissident and human rights activist Oscar Biscet. As you would expect, Biscet will not be there to accept the honor, as he is stuck in the Cuban gulag for 25 years after having had the temerity to speak out against Castro's policy of infanticide. Telling the truth in Cuba is dangerous business, as you can see from Jeff Jacoby's Biscet tribute in the Boston Globe (a photographed replica of his cell is also included in the article):

"windowless and suffocating, with wretched sanitary conditions. The stench seeping from the pit in the ground that serves as a toilet is intensified by being compressed into an unventilated cell only as wide as a broom closet. . . . Biscet reportedly suffers from osteoarthritis, ulcers, and hypertension. His teeth, those that haven't fallen out, are rotted and infected."

The next time somebody starts spewing the whole Guantanamo narrative, remind them that there are countless thousands across the bay who know all about torture. The real thing, not the kind that exists only in anti-American imagination. What a blessing these prisoners would find spending even a day in such a place as the US facility in Gitmo.

National Review's Jay Nordlinger has written extensively on Biscet (and many other Cuban political prisoners, for that matter) over the years; his latest notes the sad truth that these heroes, who should be worldwide celebrities a la Nelson Mandela, are pretty much ignored by the international media in the attempt to keep the Castro mythology alive:

He is one of the bravest and most inspired of the Cuban political prisoners. He is a physician, an “Afro-Cuban,” a follower of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King. If he were a prisoner of anyone but Castro — a Communist dictator — he’d be world-famous. If he were a South African, under apartheid, he’d be on the stamps of virtually every country in the world.

Let me continue in this vein: If he were a prisoner under a right-wing dictatorship, he’d be featured on 60 Minutes every week. He’d be on the cover of Time magazine every week. College campuses would hold sit-ins. Biscet’s face would adorn posters and T-shirts. Etc., etc.

Nordlinger also correctly notes that President Bush has "huge brass ones" for doing the right thing here; were that more of our politicians had as much courage. Bush fils has gotten a lot of things wrong in his tenure, but he has also done so many things very, very right.

Keep 'em down!

A remarkable story in a Madison, WI newspaper begins:

Sister city activists and other Madisonians with ties to Cuba said today they fear the Bush administration will use the transition in power from Fidel to Raul Castro as the occasion to activate a plan to replace that nation's communist system.

Yeah, one of the things that keeps me awake at night is the "fear" that a nation's citizens might gain speech, press or other basic freedoms or have the opportunity to raise themselves out of poverty and despair.

Retired UW English prof Robert Kimbrough typifies Madison's fatuousness with this howler:

"It is disgusting. The 2004 report said, 'We pledge to help the Cuban people, and a new transition Cuban government, as you move away from the totalitarian Communist dictatorship and toward a free and representative democracy.'"

Such naked contempt for the Cuban people is disgusting. This guy, although probably young at the time, must have been absolutely crushed when Hitler committed suicide...

The affection a naive segment of the left gives to the brutal tyrant Fidel and the mass-murdering butcher Che Guevara and the credulity with which they parrot the regime's propaganda has always fascinated me in a macabre sort of way. It seems that as long as you hate America you will always find a willing audience, no matter what your crimes against humanity, we've seen it over and over throughout the last century. The phenomenon is so common that the Soviets famously had a term for them: useful idiots.

James Lileks hit the nail on the head when he said "Given the left's romance with revolution and guerrillas, it'll be only a matter of time before Hizballah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah appears on T-shirts like Che, and his merry band are lionized as the new Viet Cong. Hizballah builds schools, you know. Granted, they're schools where the biology lesson consists of sawing off the heads of infidel frogs. But they build schools!"

Remarkable bird, the Cuban Red...Beautiful plumage!

Noting that Euronews.net had a (no longer available) article headlined:

Fidel Castro "Resting" in Hospital, Says Cuban Official

James Taranto produces this bit of genius:

'E's passed on! This tyrant is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! This is an ex-tyrant!!