Real Institutional Racism

If all elite private universities enacted race-blind admissions, the percentage of Asian students would jump from 24 percent to 39 percent (similar to what they already are now at Caltech and Berkeley, two elite institutions with race-blind admissions; the former due to a belief in meritocracy, the latter due to Proposition 209).

It's a testament to just how intellectually and morally bankrupt our institutions of 'higher' 'learning' are.  John M. Keynes described them when he described his Bloomsbury friends:  "We were all immoralists".  Howzabout treating people as human beings rather than political categories?

Hangover

Why do people persist in believing politicians who claim that they can 'save' something  or 'prevent' economic reality from happening?  All avoiding pain does is save it up for later.  Here's the inevitable consequence of housing 'stimulus' manipulation.  Break it up, break it all up.  H/T Carpe Deim.

It's like a baloon: you regulate one thing and the costs pop up some where else.

But the Lawyers always win.  Our Saviors!!!!

CHANGE: Credit Card Interest Rates Much Higher. “The spread on credit card interest–the difference between the interest rate on your charges, and the Treasury benchmark rate–is the highest it’s been in 22 years. The culprit? The CARD Act, which has given banks much less flexibility in the fees they charge. Banks now have to give you 45 days notice before they raise your interest rate, and they need to give you the option of paying off the debt in order to avoid interest rate hikes.”

What are regulators for?

Instapundit observes that regulation begets chaos which begets more regulation.  No matter what happens, the government lawyers always end up on top.  Along with the private lawyers that defend against them.  It's the sweetest racket there ever was.  More here:


DID REGULATORS cause the “Flash Crash?” Plus, shocking observations: “Maybe the government shouldn’t mess with markets unless it really understands how they function and the costs of regulation. Which it usually doesn’t. Often one regulation leads to another regulation that fixes the first one, and then to another one that fixes the second one, and so on.” Of course, for regulators this isn’t a bug, but a feature — lifetime full-employment!

PJ O'Rourke - Americas Gonzo Laureate on the free market

Prof.  O'Rourke holds the Hunter S. Thompson Chair of Gonzo Literature.  He's also a libertarian in good standing.  He makes a rather mundane point in his inimitable style:
"The free market is not an ideology or a creed or something we're supposed to take on faith, it's a measurement. It's a bathroom scale. I may hate what I see when I step on the bathroom scale, but I can't pass a law saying I weigh 160 pounds. Authoritarian governments think they can pass that law—a law to change the measurement of things."

~P.J. O'Rourke quoted in today's WSJ
Click here if you don't have any Murdoch credentials.

The Ben Knoll Effect

My friend Ben Knoll has always argued that gridlock in Washington is good for us.  Here's some evidence to support his thesis.

It's the war on America that's the costly quagmire.

Cleveland couldn't recycle LeBron

And he's just one dude.  What makes them think that they can force any other kind?

Knuckleheads.

Hat tip Sam Reeves

On Cussing

Boys are the world's acknowledged experts on cussing.  If it offends, boys use it.  When I was at that stage we were moving around the world and every time we landed, my brother and I would set out to find out what was obscene so that we could use it with impunity until our parents caught on. (I know, I know, but it was a living.)

But we ran into a tricky situation in Indonesia.  Tahi (poo or 'shit') and kontol (penis or 'dick') were two words that we found immediately.  We ran around tahiing and kontoling to our hearts delight, certain of our transgression.  Then one day our pet dog tahied in a place thought inappropriate by our very respectable Javanese maid:  Ratmi.  She shouted out "aduh ada tahi!" "Darn (or ouch), there's some poo" while swatting the dog.  We were stunned.  Our respectable Ratmi had cussed.  But of course she hadn't cussed, she was merely using a language that being young hadn't produced words that had 'obscene' emotional impact.  You see Bahasa had not had a thousand years of Anglo Norman overlords to turn common nouns 'obscene'.

Bahasa (The Language) is a lingua franca that has its origins several hundred years ago.  It was developed by Dutch, Indian, and Chinese traders to communicate with the inhabitants of the over 10,000 islands in the Indonesian archipelago, each of which seemed to have its own incomprehensible tongue.  After Indonesian independence in 1948, the government standardized and adopted Bahasa as the national language.  Like Hindi, Urdu and Swahili, this 'syncretic' language overlays a rich tradition of local tongues.  One of the consequences is that Bahasa, being used primarily for commercial and external interactions has not developed the rich tradition of obscenity and invective that characterizes indigenous languages.  This was certainly the case in 1970s Jakarta where my brother and I were plotting our cussing careers.

I mention all of this to address an observation that my Pastor made in his sermon at church today.  In a sermon discussing the right and wrong ways to adapt the presentation of the Gospel to modern ears he pointed out that some Christians were advocating utilizing 'obscene' or 'cuss' words not only in everyday speech but in sermons.  This, needless to say, was not an example that he endorsed.

But should he have?  An interesting thing to do if you can pull it off is to hang out with people who speak some English as well as one of these other Lingua Francas and listen to how they use language.  When the conversation gets heated they often use Anglo Saxon obscenities to make their points in Hindi or Bahasa (or even Singlish).  Yet they don't come from cultures where those words have any emotional content.  When asked why they use one, they shrug or say because it was the best word, perhaps it is more fashionable or has more impact.  I think it's also because Anglo Saxon scatalogical phrases (shit, piss, fuck) have currency everywhere the way that the more sophisticated Anglo Norman words don't (defecate, urinate, fornicate) .  Everyone knows them and how to use them.  This was illustrated in one of the truest moments in the rather sophomoric (but hilarious) film "Stripes" when Harold Ramis is teaching an English as a foreign language class and asks the students if they know any.  One of them immediately pipes up:  "Son of bitch, shit!".

Why do the basest English words have the most global currency?  I don't know, blame it on sailors or Hollywood or even teenage boys.  But I do know that English has slipped any guide wires that used to constrain its development on its way to becoming the most ubiquitous language the world has even seen.  The result is 'proper' usage is becoming an anachronism as different cultures take the lingua franca and make it their own.  One of the more frustrating things I have experienced is to be  in conversation with three or four non-native speakers from different languages.  They are all speaking English and understand each other.  Me?  I struggle to understand them.

So what's the point of all this tahi?  Simple:  what is obscene in English is shifting.  As it becomes more and more the lingua franca that dominates world culture, it is much less useful to 'speak right' than to 'speak to communicate'.  After all uttering an 'obscene' word only becomes a sin when it offends or otherwise causes distress to a hearer (I of course exclude from this analysis those words that transgress the 3rd Commandment).  I think this is what those people that my pastor was describing were really saying.

And I think they're right.


Horrified by all of my libertarian polemics?  Here's a compilation of my non political, non economic pieces for those nights when you have insomnia.

Mayday, Mayday, Mayday II

First polls say that Rossi leads Murray in Washington by 7.

The New York Times going native during Ramadan

Ann Althouse explains the NYT cultural outreach policy:

Reading upbeat articles about the curious indigenous customs of authentic ethic brown people and their authentic, mysterious, exotic religious beliefs makes New York Times readers feel good about themselves in an abstract way, unlike those upsetting articles about terrifying armies of white American Jesus terrorists.

The new name of Captain Chaos is Hu Jintao - China on the brink

The Chinese have been on a Keynsian binge and have run policies that have bid up real estate to the point that a collapse is inevitable.  The only question is when?  And when it happens and the Chinese economy shrinks and they start cashing in our Federal debt then where will our "Elite" go for their fix?

It's hell when the "plan" relies on everything going right everywhere else.  And I'm afraid that most everyone else that runs countries has the same anarcho-fascist tendencies that our clueless leaders have.

Maybe The One can economize on greens fees and caddy tips.

Signs of Time Magazine's impending death

Time dumps on America.  You see we're all racist bigots and haters.  I sure hope their international version does well for em because hatred of one's country is not a growth industry.

H/T Pete Wehner and Commentary

Tom Sowell - the greatest economist never to win the Nobel speaks on the parallels between Ancient Rome and the US

He is pessimistic.  Identifyies our elite's current lack of cultural confidence and the inpouring of 'barbarians' who neither understand or value our culture and certainly can't maintain it as the same process by which Roman civilization was undermined and the Roman state toppled.

He's not defeatist though, he wants us to fight.  As he says "It's not over til it's over".  He has a new book called Dismantling America.

Roger Clemens and Anarcho-Tyranny

James Tobin discusses the hounding of Roger Clemens because he lied to Congress about steroid use.  He points out that the prosecutors have expended huge resources and have extorted testimony out of Mr. Clemens personal trainer by threatening long jail time unless he ratted out his boss.  He doesn't point out, however, that in civilized nations like Canada, this form of prosecutorial extortion is almost always illegal.  He also does not ask the question of why our incompetent Congressional minions were wasting their time focused on baseball steroids rather than the obvious and immense problems that they themselves have caused.

It's called Anarcho-Tyranny:  Those things that the state is responsible for, like the border and the budget and healthcare are in anarchy while the state focuses on imposing petty tyranny on things that are trivial and that it has no earthly business meddling in.

Our Federal Government:  An Anarcho-Tyranny

Bust it up, bust it all up.

If you want to know what America thinks, ask Scotty Rasmussen

And top of mind?  Only 23% believe that the Federal Government governs with the consent of the governed.

You can tell it's a volatile political year when a balding, middle-aged pollster gets a standing ovation from hundreds of state legislators after delivering the news that only 23% of the people in this country believe today's federal government has the consent of the governed.

"Americans don't want to be governed from the left or the right," Scott Rasmussen tells the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conference of 1,500 conservative and moderate legislators. "They want, like the Founding Fathers, to largely govern themselves with Washington in a supporting—but not dominant—role. The tea party movement is today's updated expression of that sentiment."

I think it's time we started taking the evil, ugly edifice that is the Feds apart and hand the money and the responsibility back to the people where it belongs.

The Federal Government is the enemy of liberty. It is our enemy.

More here.

Our Automat, Self Mocking Elites

You don't even need to mock them because they do it automatically.  Prince Charles on why God put him on this earth to save it.  Blogging fun at its very best here.

Code Pink tells Gold Star mom "your son deserved to die"

This would be the Code Pink that is a key part of the Obama and Democrat coalition.

Fred Phelps of the Westboro church runs around saying God hates fags.  Code Pink runs around saying God hates soldiers.

What exactly is the difference in bigotry?

Hat tip Instapundit

Showing id at the voting booth: 82 percent support it

Money graf:
Rasmussen reports that an overwhelming majority of likely voters (82 percent) believe all voters should show photo ID before they are allowed to vote (that includes a majority in every demographic group). Only 14 percent disagree. This is the highest level of support for photo ID since Rasmussen started polling the question in 2006.
So if 82 percent of Americans support such a common sense measure, why oppose it?  Because millions of Democrat votes would evaporate.  It seems that power is the only morality.  Now what do people call that sort of philosophy?

The Irrepressible Conrad Black

Connie Black:  out of trumped up chokey (Pat Fitzgerald, call your service) and on the One's rather prominent case regarding the Muslim world.  Suffice it to say that Mr. Black has never suffered fools gladly and this holds for our First Fool.  Money graf regarding the Ground Zero Mosque:

It is inexcusable that there is any serious thought of building a mosque near the World Trade Center site. It has nothing to do withfreedom of religion, tolerance, and so forth. It is a matter of decent respect for sensibilities. The authors of the unspeakable atrocity on that site, and other terrorist acts against civilians, espoused the faith the proposed mosque celebrates. Of course most Muslims are inoffensive. So are most Germans and Japanese and Russians; but there is no move to build cultural or recreational centers by those countries at Auschwitz, Pearl Harbor, or the Katyn Forest. This is an argument that only a degenerating society can have, and when Maureen Dowd is trying to enlist George W. Bush to this cause, we know that this is not necessarily a sick society — as the Left loved to claim in Johnson’s, and Nixon’s, and Reagan’s days — but that theNew York Times is a sicker pigeon than we thought. As for my friendly acquaintance Mayor Bloomberg, he should have saved himself $80 million, devoted 10 percent of that to electing his talented and delightful companion Diana Taylor to the Senate over the cipher who festers there now, and hastened to his philanthropies. If this mosque is built in this location, everyone in the world will see it as a sign that the U.S. has become, in the words of Richard Nixon’s prescient warning, “a pitiful, helpless giant.”