Are you going to vote for the same candidate that Ann Coulter supports?
Opened e*Trade expecting big things, but between YHOO and GOOG (and in a smaller effect EBAY up AMZN down) I'm slightly in the red today.
I was honestly prepared to be crestfallen that Barack Obama said something stupid. (Like a week or two ago when he railed against NAFTA, or like the rumor of an Obama-Edwards ticket were that rumor to become truth.) But if you're going to accuse someone of "Hispandering," shouldn't that accusation at least have some substance?
Here are the three parts of Obama's answer last night to which Kaus gives annotated objections:
"to suggest somehow that the problem that we're seeing in inner-city unemployment, for example, is attributable to immigrants, I think, is a case of scapegoating that I do not believe in, I do not subscribe to."
Take any given unemployed American -- more consistent with Obama's statement take any given unemployed inner-city American. What are the five biggest reasons why that particular American is unemployed? Lack of skills, under-education, lack of previous job experience (the "you need experience to get experience" catch-22)? Does immigration even crack the top five?
Kaus gives a link (to National Review! - no better source of unbiased empirical data was available?) indicating that immigrants push down unskilled wages. No joke! That's economics 101. And on the margin I'm sure immigration does have some effect on unemployment -- but rather less than you'd think from the hype.
"We can't have hundreds of thousands of people coming over to the United States without us having any idea who they are"
(The bold tags are in Kaus's annotation.) Benefit of doubt would be that the "without us having an idea" highlights an additional problem rather than stating the only problem. But why give benefit of doubt when you have an ax to grind and a blog to push?
"hiring folks who cannot complain about worker conditions, who aren't getting the minimum wage sometimes, or aren't getting overtime. We have to crack down on them."
Kaus complains that Obama refuses to be explicit that "hiring illegals" qua hiring illegals is part of the moral wrong here. That's a breathtaking lack of perspective. Imagine meeting a businessman in hell and asking him why he was eternally damned. Do you think it was because of slave labor conditions -- or because he hired people who didn't have their papers?
There's nothing new on the Internet. Earlier this week someone forwarded me the map of the U.S. by beverage synonym ("pop"/"soda"/"coke"). Earlier this month various libertarian bloggers rediscovered the guy who aesthetically ranked U.S. world flags. On it goes.
[Link added, text fixed. I guess that's some kind of right-of-center Freudian slip?]
Anyhow, there's a small chance you never saw Francis Heaney's (The Modern Humorist) Holy Tango of Poetry ("If poets Wrote Poems Whose Titles Were Anagrams of Their Names"). Read it all post-haste, especially Dammit, Dave, both haiku, "Yoga Alumnae," and "I Will Alarm Islamic Owls."
Dear Slate,
Even if your thesis is dead-on, there are some mental images I just don't need.
Owen Nolan and Mike Grier got into a fight today.
I sometimes listen to hockey on my way home from work, at least if the Sharks game has preempted classic rock.
I've heard of both Nolan and Grier -- but aren't they both pushing 40?
The Sharks were playing Calgary and the Flames got a power play. I rooted for the power play conversion just to see where the game was -- that is, whether the home crowd would cheer a goal. The goal came within ten seconds of the penalty, and indeed it was a Calgary crowd.
Then I realized that if it's 17:00 in the third period at 8 p.m. PST then the game is almost certainly Mountain time.
Presented without comment:
Arlo Guthrie has endorsed Ron Paul.
Maxine Waters has endorsed Hillary Clinton.
...is androgynous (probably on purpose), despite what you may have inferred the first time you saw it.
(Yesterday I took it to be a boy. Today I realized either interpretation is plausible.)
Come for the classic Genesis, stay for the 1,300+ mostly political comments.
When I want to discuss the issues of the day, the first place I turn is YouTube with its well-informed, sophisticated pundits (the commenters and the Kige Ramsey types in front of the camera).
UPDATE: Oh hey, somebody took the Disturbed cover and made a video mashup with it. Oops, no, that was the Disturbed video. It just looks like a YouTube mashup.
80-person brawl at a Chuck E Cheese in Flint.
I don't think this Slate piece was meant to be political, though I do think it's deeper (and meant to be deeper) than it positions itself (Applebaum is self-effacing here). Final sentence:
"So, cheer up next time you see a Siberian blonde dominating male attention at the far end of the table: The same mechanisms that brought her to your dinner party might one day bring you the Ukrainian doctor who cures your cancer or the Polish stockbroker who makes your fortune."
...unless enough nativist idiots decide that the assembly line jobs of 50 years ago are exactly what everyone should still be doing 50 years in the future.
Maybe "idiots" is the wrong way to convince agnostics here. Maybe everyone has a pet issue where they can't believe just how wrong some people are. I've hesitated to link to this Steven Landsburg op-ed because it's patronizing enough to make Al Gore blush, yet it's also dead right.
Remember when you cared about more than one particular issue? (Or at least when that one particular issue was something worthy, like welfare reform?)
Giving your blog over entirely to immigration is great when there's a dumb bill to be defeated. Bully to you for your role in that last year. But now... (first the good point, then the insult to everyone's intelligence):
McCain's National Finance Co-Chair appears to be Jerrold Perenchio, who made a fortune with Univision and has been a major defender of failed bilingual education policies. The longer people speak Spanish and not English, after all, the more they watch Univision., right? (link removed from original)
Fair enough.
Some behind-the-scenes evidence of what McCain really thinks about making sure that English remains the common language amid a flood of Spanish-speaking immigrants. (link in original)
That's disingenuous at best. Helpful hints:
1. Consider the difference between how you think an issue should be resolved and how important it is (if at all) that politicians actually spend time on that issue. (One analogy: in theory I'm against the death penalty. I'm also against the millions of dollars wasted on last-ditch appeals for death row inmates, under any circumstances other than someone's good-faith belief that the inmate in question is actually innocent. Those millions of dollars wasted, however, are exactly why I'm against the death penalty: The opportunity cost of all that time and money exceeds the benefit we get from the execution.)
2. Consider the bigger difference between a "common" language and an official one.
Is it philistine of me not to worship the ground (ha!) Pavement walks on?
Too many vocal tics (especially in "Cut Your Hair"), not enough vocal talent. As compositions the songs are good enough.
Is this an acquired taste I should work harder to acquire?
There are more hit songs than hit song titles, partly because there are only so many meaningful ways to string together a small number of common words.
Sometimes when two hits have the same name (but are otherwise unrelated), the lesser hit is a truly atrocious song.
"Big Girls Don't Cry" is probably the best example (hence the title of this post). If for some reason you despised the Bobby Brown song "Don't Be Cruel" then that too would qualify. (I'm indifferent to it.)
Here's another example (I didn't like the original either but goodness gracious the more recent song is bad.)
Find your own favorite example(s) of this phenomenon.
UPDATE: Through the magic of in-frame volume knobs and tabbed browsing, you can watch one and listen to the other. I think the Bush video plus Good Charlotte audio works better than the other way around. (Is that a surprising result? I can't tell.)
As seen on TV last night. I just found it here while supplies last (i.e. until Fox notices).
As transcribed just now:
pain is brown
hate is white
love is black
stab the night
kingdom of numb
closet of hurt
feelings are dumb
kisses are dirt
Violence on the streets in Britain. I blame the rampant gun culture over there.
Tony Rezko has been arrested. Yesterday the Chicago Tribune endorsed Obama (and McCain), but a John Kass column warned Obama to be forthright about the extent of his ties to Rezko.
If you see the same Google ad on this page that I do, the juxtaposition is fantastic (blogger expresses fear and loathing of a McCain-Huckabee ticket, ad is for Huckabee's presidential bid).
(I'm not very familiar with the blogger in question but here was his previous post: Some people don't use their blogs to advocate (nor inform) so much as to vent spleens.)
Progress against earmark. Yay.
Nonetheless, as far as I can tell this would be a plausible 2008 schedule, barring any mistypes or overlooks.
Look at the Grid-for-TV-Games worksheet, find your favorite team, and read across. There's a legend below the grid; basically national TV games are in cells with dark background colors, thus white text. Otherwise white, light yellow, and yellow are (all times Eastern) Sunday 1 p.m., Sunday 4:05, and Sunday 4:15 respectively.
If you're too lazy even to follow the link, in my world NBC would get:
Thursday opener: Pittsburgh at New England
1. Indianapolis at Cleveland
2. NY Giants at Philadelphia
3. Tampa Bay at Dallas
4. Indianapolis at Jacksonville
5. San Diego at Pittsburgh
6. Dallas at NY Giants
7. Chicago at Green Bay
8. nothing (World Series)
9. Jacksonville at Tenessee
10. Baltimore at Cleveland Green Bay at Minnesota*
(flex scheduling begins, last seven games tentative placeholders)
11. New England at Indianapolis
12. Seattle at Tampa Bay
13. Minnesota at Tennessee
14. Dallas at Washington
15. Detroit at Green Bay
16. New England at Seattle
17. Cleveland at Pittsburgh
*- accidentally transposed the SNF and MNF color coding that week. I'd fix it on the file available on-line but life is too short
Thanksgiving = JAX@DET (CBS), PHI@DAL (Fox), CIN@CLE (NFLN).
International games = Houston vs. Jacksonville @ London (Week 6, CBS 1p.m. Eastern), Miami vs. Buffalo at Toronto (Week 13, ESPN Monday)