Red Bits of Ephemera
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The Oscars
Perhaps I'm looking in all the wrong places, but it seems to me that there has been very little coverage in the conservative media this morning on the Oscars ... except for over at Big Hollywood.
Narry a blip at The Corner. A single article at The American Spectator. One link at Townhall.
You would think that the Oscars had become mostly irrelevant to conservatives, or something.
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Red Bits from All Over
My apologies for the light blogging. These last couple of weeks have been very busy at the Red Bits home. I did, however, want to share a few tidbits with you that stood out this week.
First, a post from Victor David Hanson over at his "Works and Days" blog, speaking in behalf of Mr. Battered American:- “And Mr. President,” the battered American would add, “When I add up my federal income tax, my state income tax, my Medicare, and my Social Security taxes, I am paying half my income to the government. Wait— far more than half my income, when I figure in my sales and property and car taxes. My accountant, when I can afford one, tells me to pay, not dodge, what I owe. And, oh, Mr. President I am so tired of all those taxes, so tired, but I am so lawful as well. And so I pay the bill, all of it. Every dime. Unlike your Treasury Secretary, who runs the IRS, I never cheat. I don’t write off my kid’s camp as a business expense—hell, I don’t even send him to camp in the first place. And unlike your cabinet nominee Mr. Daschle, I don’t have a limousine. And if I got a free one, I would think someone had to pay for it. If used it every day, why shouldn’t I pay taxes on it? And unlike your Labor Secretary nominee, I have no liens on my property, Mr. President. But if I did, I’d pay them off before you nominated me—or bow out if I didn’t.”
Over at Townhall, there is a nice article summarizing the key points of the mortgage bailout:
- Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, summed up the plan as "Nice guys finish last." Conservative columnist David Brooks echoed those sentiments in a New York Times column titled "Money for Idiots."
- Rick Santelli, a reporter for financial network CNBC, compared the government's actions to those of communist Cuba during a dramatic, televised rant Thursday from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. "The government is promoting bad behavior, America!" he said. Video of the exchange has been viewed over 1.2 million times on CNBC.com, more than any other clip in the Web site's history.
As a homeowner who was hit hard by the drop in price of our home in California last year when we had to sell it in order to move (renting it out wasn't an option because rent fell, too), I am really steamed about this one. It seems like Obama's administration thinks that it is the job of government to rescue businesses & individuals from the consequences of their poor choices--poor business models, buying more than they can afford, holding too high of a debt load, etc. It all sounds well and good on paper, but the real life results of this kind of policy making are to transfer wealth from those who scrimped and saved and sacrificed and lived & learned from their mistakes to those who--like so very many teens I know--don't think there should be any fallout from being reckless, short sighted, and ignorant of basic economic and business models. The long term consequence of these policies will be to a) anger and alienate a large swath of the electorate and to b) reduce incentive for responsible behavior that generates & preserves wealth in this country.
If you want to know how we got into this mess in the first place, Thomas Sowell, explains:
- From television specials to newspaper editorials, the media are pushing the idea that current economic problems were caused by the market and that only the government can rescue us. What was lacking in the housing market, they say, was government regulation of the market's "greed." That makes great moral melodrama, but it turns the facts upside down.
It was precisely government intervention which turned a thriving industry into a basket case.
An economist specializing in financial markets gave a glimpse of the history of housing markets when he said: "Lending money to American homebuyers had been one of the least risky and most profitable businesses a bank could engage in for nearly a century."
That was what the market was like before the government intervened. Like many government interventions, it began small and later grew.
Sowell goes on to show step-by-step the process by which the government interfered in the housing market in such a way as to give us our crisis. The MSM has really avoided this story like the plague, so if you are feeling short of data, you really should read the whole thing.
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Red Bits from All Over
Thomas Sowell has his Random Thoughts posted on NRO today. You really should read the whole article, but here is my favorite:- The adage “follow the money” will be hard to apply in the current administration, when there is so much money going in all directions that it is doubtful whether anybody can follow it.
John Fund, over at the Wall Street Journal, talks about the politicising of the US Census today.
- Anything that threatens the integrity of the Census has profound implications. Not only is it the basis for congressional redistricting, it provides the raw data by which government spending is allocated on everything from roads to schools. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also uses the Census to prepare the economic data that so much of business relies upon. "If the original numbers aren't as hard as possible, the uses they're put to get fuzzier and fuzzier," says Bruce Chapman, who was director of the Census in the 1980s.
My husband was one of the statisticians who worked on the 2000 Census. I clearly remember the hoo-ha, the hearings on C-SPAN, and the grouching of his fellow employees who just wanted to be left alone to do their job. This doesn't sound like "change I can believe in," it sounds like... well, politics as usual.
Jay D. Homick has an excellent piece on Obama's rhetorical style over at The American Spectator.
- Frankly, I think the President's statements, his general tone, have been nothing less than vile. We can prove this by imagining the alternative. Honestly, now, even if like me you are no fan of Obama, you could have been won over, at least in the short term, if he used the Reagan playbook. Say he stood up on January 20 and issued a broad appeal to the nation to come together in a commitment to a shared optimism. Yesterday's finances, yesterday's troubles, we yesterday, today can be different. This is the point -- we thought so, anyway -- of The Audacity of Hope.
- In place of this we get short-term despair and long-term sorta maybe optimism, contingent on giving his administration a trillion dollars to reward old friends and buy new ones. We must sign on to his whole agenda, and we must prostrate ourselves before his throne. On top of all that, this teacher has many preachy lessons for us backward types. We must stop our partisan bickering and narrow self-interest and parochial jingoism and patriotic chauvinism and ethnocentrism and irresponsible financial behavior. This professor ain't cool, he's cold… and a scold.
I enjoyed Kathryn Jean Lopez's quip in The Corner last night calling Obama the "Scolder in Chief." That's not too far from the truth, as far as the scolding goes, though the analogy to a parent scolding a teen is a little thin. When I scold my children, it's because I want them to do something regardless of their personal feelings about it. In fact, I often tell them "you don't have to like it." Obama, on the other hand (along with Congress) holds all the power in this situation to "do" as they see fit. The scolding is to get the rest of us to agree with them or "like it."
As for me, I still don't think that I have to "like it."
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Yet Another Example of Why Socialized Medicine is a Bad Idea for the US
I am well aware that this story--about an 8 year-old British girl who starved to death after all of her baby teeth were extracted and was refused further treatment at the local hospital--is an extreme example, but it clearly illustrates one of the biggest problems of "universal" or socialized medicine that is being pushed for by the liberals in our country. One of the ironies is that so many that push for socialized medicine insist that it's "for the children."- Sophie was discharged from the hospital in Nov. 17 but thereafter refused to eat solid food, the Times of London said. Her parents said they could get her to swallow only small amounts of yogurt and mashed fruit. The Wallers said they called the hospital on Nov. 28 but was told Sophie could not be readmitted. Instead they were told to contact a community child psychologist who had been assigned to the case, and the psychologist told them not to worry. Sophie's parents said they talked to their regular family doctor once over the phone, but no medical practitioner ever saw the child. “No one saw her after she was discharged from hospital. I told [the child psychologist] she was sucking on a watermelon, she told me that was enough for her to survive on," Janet Waller said. 'I asked her to come round and see her but she kept saying there is nothing to worry about and I'll come next week.”
"This could have easily been avoided, if we could have just gone to the hospital," Sophie's father said.
Yes--this all could have been avoided. So-called "free" health care sounds really terrific until you realize that it means that health care will be rationed. One of the Canadian friends of my parents waited over four years to have hip replacement surgery, and when she was told that because of her age she would have to wait several more (the older you are, the less of a priority you are), she came to the US and paid $40k to have the work done here.
Of course, if we go the socialized medicine route, there will no longer be a country where people can go to get around the waiting lists and the rationing. Something to think about.
- Sophie was discharged from the hospital in Nov. 17 but thereafter refused to eat solid food, the Times of London said. Her parents said they could get her to swallow only small amounts of yogurt and mashed fruit. The Wallers said they called the hospital on Nov. 28 but was told Sophie could not be readmitted. Instead they were told to contact a community child psychologist who had been assigned to the case, and the psychologist told them not to worry. Sophie's parents said they talked to their regular family doctor once over the phone, but no medical practitioner ever saw the child. “No one saw her after she was discharged from hospital. I told [the child psychologist] she was sucking on a watermelon, she told me that was enough for her to survive on," Janet Waller said. 'I asked her to come round and see her but she kept saying there is nothing to worry about and I'll come next week.”
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Salary Caps
Financial Week reported this today:- Congress will consider legislation to extend some of the curbs on executive pay that now apply only to those banks receiving federal assistance, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said.“There’s deeply rooted anger on the part of the average American,” the Massachusetts Democrat said at a Washington news conference today.He said the compensation restrictions would apply to all financial institutions and might be extended to include all U.S. companies.
Ok... so "deeply rooted anger" is now the standard for action by Congress? Americans also have deeply rooted anger against the "stimulus package," poor schools, high taxes, tax dollars going to fund anti-religious art, politicians who cheat on their taxes & their wives, folks who think their pedigree is a qualification for national office, and George Lucas. I can't recall the last time that Congress suggested that it was their job to fix any of those things.
I believe Congress can attach restrictions when our tax dollars are involved, but outside of that, it should be "hands off." "Deeply rooted anger" should not be the standard.
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Red Bits from All Over
Charles Krauthamer has a must-read summary of the current Obama mess in today's Washington post. A key bit:- And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination. It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It's not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction. It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus -- and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress's own budget office says won't be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.
Exactly so. The problem isn't exactly that Obama is doing what is par-for-the-course in liberal politics--the problem is that Obama promised to be different. I had many an otherwise conservative friend or family member vote for him because they believed the hype--the promise of "hope and change." I can't say that I'm surprised to discover that Obama is a mainstream liberal politician rather than the demi-god of the campaign season, but I am surprised at how little time it took for him to fall of the pedestal created by his followers. It's a good piece. Read the whole thing.
Along those same lines is a piece in the NYTimes--though not the front page, of course--about Japan's failed stimulus. A key bit:
- Moreover, it matters what gets built: Japan spent too much on increasingly wasteful roads and bridges, and not enough in areas like education and social services, which studies show deliver more bang for the buck than infrastructure spending. “It is not enough just to hire workers to dig holes and then fill them in again,” said Toshihiro Ihori, an economics professor at the University of Tokyo. “One lesson from Japan is that public works get the best results when they create something useful for the future.”
Yes, apparently you can have too many new roads and bridges. We should send that money to The National Endowment for the Arts and Planned Parenthood instead, in the spirit of creating "something useful for the future."
And if you've never been over to the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web page, you are in for a treat. You really should read it daily--it's a great sum up of the day's news sprinkled liberally with tongue-in-cheek humor. One favorite bit:
- The so-called stimulus bill may not do much for the economy, but it's certainly stimulating a lot of laughter, as its supporters are reduced to arguing essentially that it would be irresponsible not to waste boatloads of taxpayer money.
Yes, "irresponsible." It's a good thing we have so many mature, responsible types in Congress right now. Read the whole thing. It's a keeper.
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Balanced Budgets
I always enjoy the attempts of liberal writers to paint regular Americans as ignorant fools who are easily led and need to be told by their "betters" what to think. In the Washington Post today, E. J. Dionne trots out that old tired meme in an article about the "stimulus package." (Hat Tip: RCP). Just a sample:- Obama's network appearances were planned as a response to a wholly unanticipated development: Republicans -- short on new ideas, low on votes, and deeply unpopular in the polls -- have been winning the media wars over the president's central initiative. They have done so largely by focusing on minor bits of the stimulus that amount, as Obama said in at least two of his network interviews, to "less than 1 percent of the overall package." But Republicans have succeeded in defining the proposal by its least significant parts.
Really? This is an unanticipated development? More than half the electorate has been deeply skeptical of the various stimulus proposals since before the election. Posting specifics from the bill has only solidified the opposition in the ranks of "regular folks." And while I agree that the Republicans have been regularly short of "new ideas," it isn't exactly as though the Democrats are awash in them: the overwhelming majority of spending is going to already existing institutions or old liberal pet projects.
But the most interesting notion is that Republicans have been winning the media war by "largely focusing on minor bits." Is that so? Regular Americans are so ignorant that they are going to be won over by a few juicy tidbits trotted out by the supposedly unpopular Republicans? Perhaps the real problem is that the price tag of this spending spree is extraordinarily high and with a recession going on, more and more folks are clinging to their wallets as much as their guns & religion.
Just imagine for a moment if my two daughters took my credit card on a spending spree of their own and came back with a whopping $80, 000 bill. Now try to imagine that the little sister, who flat out opposed the whole nonsense, in complaining to me about it, happened to mention that the older sister had bought some items that were sure to make my hair stand on end the moment I found out about it. Which would be the bigger issue to me? The couple of no-nos, or the total bill that is going to set our family budget back by a considerable amount for decades?
Obama claims the amount in dispute is 1% -- and I've seen claims of between 30-60% in analysis offered by more conservative outlets like the Wall Street Journal & National Review. Regardless of the total amount of fluff, however, at a time of severe recession, we cannot afford to spend anything we don't need. In fact, we should be making cuts.
Regular Americans are responding to this stimulus package the way they do their own household budgets. When times are tight, they cut the waste. Everything goes on the table: entertainment, clothing purchase above and beyond replacement items, goodies at the supermarket, lunches out at work. Folks I talk to all over America cannot figure out why those who govern don't work out the national budget the same way.
What can you do? Call your Senators at (202) 224-3121. Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit is reporting that people calling in to the national offices are getting busy signals. (Good! Melt those phones!) Call their local offices, email, or use Twitter (find them at http://tweetcongress.org/). Locally, if you are in a position to do so, get those local & state budgets balanced.
Americans are bright, intelligent people who know intuitively that an 800 billion dollar spending spree will destroy our economy. What is needed is budget cuts and tax cuts. Only then will our economy regain its footing.
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Living in a Meritocracy
When I was a teenager growing up in Oregon, I lived in a part of town that had both rich and poor. Among the more wealthy of our acquaintance was a family who owned an athletic business. At some point I became aware that this business hired the children of friends of the owners, at well above minimum wage, to launder and fold towels, of all things. How nice was that? Children from well-to-do families whose parents can afford to pay at least part of their college education getting to work at a cushy job at above market rates--all because they know the right person.
It was not my first experience with "It's not what you know, it's who you know," but it was certainly a significant memory.
Now in fairness to the family in question, there is nothing at all unethical about hiring people you know--particularly in a job of this nature. But it can leave the impression that we do not live in the meritocracy of conservative ideals.
Today over at NRO, Rich Lowry posted an article about Tom Daschle that was quickly removed with the later news that Daschle had withdrawn his nomination. That's unfortunate, because the article references some of this conservative ideal that we live in a meritocracy. After outlining the case against Daschle, covering a wide variety of perks and privileges he was given after leaving the Senate, Lowry covers the tax fraud issues and then says:- Democrats have the votes to muscle Daschle through, but they may come to regret it. Geithner’s and Daschle’s tax sins send a corrosive message that we have a two-tiered tax system divided not between the rich and the poor, but between the politically connected and everyone else. For the insiders, failure to pay is a forgivable offense, cause for only for tut-tutting on the way to high office. Everyone else is expected to pay, and countless millions will eventually pay more in the new “responsibility era” that Obama doesn’t deign to apply to his own nominees.
I don't think Daschle should be forgiven for his tax sin so quickly, but I think he could be forgiven for thinking that we live in a two-tired system because... well, we do. On a smaller scale, we see what goes on in Washington mirrored in every single community, business, and volunteer organization in America. Oh, perhaps not to the same degree, but certainly at least the essence of favoritism exists, and it leaves a bad taste in the mouths of those effected by it.
What can we do to change things:
Start in your own backyard. If you have the opportunity to do so, try to work with people outside the small group of folks that you always go to. Give someone new an opportunity to show off their skills--at work, in a volunteer organization, and so forth. Reach out to new people in your neighborhood. Get to know them well enough that you can call on their special skills and give them a chance. Hire or select people to work with you in organizations based on what they can bring to the table rather than who they are connected to.
Resist the urge to take favors from people--or demand favors. Patting a few backs can quickly grow to out-of-control demands. All people should be willing to pay the same rates as everyone else and earn an honest wage for the work they do. Teach your children these values, as well.
It wasn't that long ago that people in America would have been ashamed to be "beholden" or "obliged" to people for accepting things they didn't earn. Now we live in a society where this is not just common, but expected. We need to get back to living in a society of hard work and integrity. It is the only way that our next generation of leaders will be more interested in giving than "getting."
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Schooling Children
I had never heard of "Whole Language" reading/writing instruction until I was in college. I grew up with a phonics based program, myself. WL was apparently introduced as a teaching method to elementary schools across the nation during the time I was in elementary school, so when I came to college, the college professors were beginning to see the results of this new method. What they saw in the late 80s gave them cause to pause.
As a sophomore, I was enrolled in the basic GE college writing class required (and hated) by all. A month into the class, I had an appointment with my professor to go over the rough draft of my term paper. "This is excellent work," he said lightly after a brief review of a few problems that needed my attention. "May I ask where you went to school?"
When I responded, he pulled a colored pin out of a box on his desk and pushed it into a place on his map next to Salem, Oregon. Curious, I asked him what he was doing. He told me that he was doing a preliminary survey for one of the professors in the education department. Professors all over campus had noticed a problem with a sizable proportion of their students and they were trying to get to the bottom of it. The problem, apparently, had to do with a new way of teaching reading and writing.
I thought no more of it until I was a senior. I was now enrolled in an intensive research and writing class for history majors. Two weeks in, I was required to swap my first paper with one of the other eight students in our class and give her feedback. The thoughts and ideas presented in her paper were excellent, but I had considerable trouble following them to a conclusion. When we met up to go over each other's papers, I asked to see her outline, hoping that it would point me to the source of the organizational problem. Her response: "What's an outline?"
Now before I go any further, I want to make it clear that this is not a Whole Language bashing entry. I studied for a secondary teaching certificate, and have done extensive reading on the theories behind WL instruction. What I have noticed, though, is that while the theories may be sound, the specific practices that I have witnessed in the instruction of my own children and the children of friends and family members have varied greatly and are usually unsound.My first word of caution, if you are the parent of a elementary aged child, would be to take proclamations of phonics programs in your child's school with a grain of salt. One school in Oregon handed me an outline of their phonics program at "parent night" that essentially listed all of the main components of the WL program with the word "phonics liberally sprinkled in. A simplified explanation of WL is that it is a reading/writing program based on the idea that children learn best when they learn naturally--in practice, almost the opposite of a rote memorization type program. In the schools our children attended, this meant that children were encourage to read and write in great quantity, but almost no direct instruction was offered.
Just a few examples:
In spelling: letters home to parents telling them not to correct their children's spelling (because it will confuse them), a spelling test every week--but no in-class instruction of any kind, and no spelling corrections on papers. In grammar: tests on grammar weekly--but once again, no in-class instruction. In reading & vocabulary: children being taught the sounds of all the letters of the alphabet but not digraphs and so forth, children being taught to guess difficult words from the illustrations, letters home to parents telling them to not teach their child to sound out words (once again, because it would confuse them), dictionaries being forbidden (because children need to learn the meanings of words in context, and dictionaries are crutches), no reading comprehension work, and my favorite--sending home lists of words children need to be taught by a parent to read before they will be allowed to move up to the next reader. In writing: piles and piles of writing samples with "sound out" spelling so atrocious that that the child who wrote it is unable to decipher it later, no corrections of any kind on the papers, no instruction in organization & outlining, no direct instruction on main ideas, hooks & transitions, reference materials, documentation, and so forth.
It took three years for my oldest son to catch up in spelling after we began working on his spelling at home. It took a year and a half to break my youngest son of the habit of guessing words (frequently they wouldn't even start with the same letter as the one I was pointing at).
Curiously, because my middle child has a speech & hearing impediment, he was given phonics instruction at school -- the DISTAR program that I grew up with was being used for special ed. students, but not everyone else. Odd, wasn't it?
What would a good program look like? It would be a program with balance: considerable direct instruction in phonics, grammar, vocabulary, reading, and writing--particularly in the younger grades, infused with a healthy dose of free reading time, creative writing, and so forth to inspire as well as provide ample opportunity to learn reading and writing skills "naturally" as well.
What is frustrating to so many parents is that by the time they realize that something is wrong, half a school year or so may have gone by--which is a considerable amount of time to be lost to poor education. Phonics based instruction is mandated on the federal level, but it is often offered only to select students in schools like ours in Oregon. The rest are getting a sub-par education that has resulted in two generations of American students who have weak spelling, grammar, and writing skills, can barely read, have little understanding of or ability to analyze what they are able to read, and so forth. Even some of the brightest students at large private colleges like the one I attended, have weak writing and communication skills. And that is a shame. It does not need to be that way.
What can we do to change things? If you are in a position to do so, run for school board, sit on textbook selection committees, and so forth. Let your concerns be made known to the school or school board. And if you are the parent of a child looking for a phonics program, order a copy of the condensed version of the nationally recognized DISTAR program from your local bookstore: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. Yes, the title is cheesy, but the book delivers. In 100 easy (15-30 minutes a day) lessons, your child will be almost at a 2nd Grade level, ready to move on to basic readers and simple picture books.
The future of our country depends on our ability to prepare the next generation, and reading & writing skills are the key to that. We need to stop being complacent and demand quality instruction for America's children.
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Red Bits from All Over
Jonah Goldberg has an excellent article today over at NRO on Democrat tax hypocrisy. A key bit:- Now, whatever the best articulation of liberal attitudes toward taxation may be, reasonable people can agree that Democrats inject a lot of moralizing, righteousness, and finger-wagging into the issue.As one leading Democrat put it: “Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter.”That Democrat was then-senator Tom Daschle in 1998. The same Tom Daschle, we’ve since learned, who failed to pay more than $100,000 in back taxes for perks he received as one of Washington’s most relentless influence-peddlers—that is, until he realized he might receive a job in the Obama administration spending the money most Americans conscientiously send to Washington.
Victor Davis Hanson posted in The Corner a summary of the impending Obama implosion. After outlining a few key points, he cuts to the chase:
- At home, Obama is becoming laughable and laying the groundwork for the greatest conservative populist reaction since the Reagan Revolution. Abroad, some really creepy people are lining up to test Obama's world view of "Bush did it/but I am the world": The North Koreans are readying their missiles; the Iranians are calling us passive, bragging on nukes and satellites; Russia is declaring missile defense is over and the Euros in real need of iffy Russian gas; Pakistanis say no more drone attacks (and then our friends the Indians say "shut up" about Kashmir and the Euros order no more "buy American").This is quite serious. I can't recall a similarly disastrous start in a half-century (far worse than Bill Clinton's initial slips). Obama immediately must lower the hope-and-change rhetoric, ignore Reid/Pelosi, drop the therapy, and accept the tragic view that the world abroad is not misunderstood but quite dangerous.
This bit (HT: Mark Hemingway) caught my eye only for its contrast to just about everything else one reads in the news these days:
- Chesley Sullenberger has a problem. He borrowed a book from the Danville Library – and it’s overdue. To complicate matters, the book was an interlibrary loan from Fresno State.
Sullenberger contacted librarians and asked for an extension on the loan and a waiver on the overdue fine. The reason? The book is in the cargo hold of the US Airways plane that made an emergency landing last month in New York’s Hudson River. Sullenberger is the pilot who made that landing. No one was seriously injured. Fresno State library officials were impressed with Sullenberger’s sense of responsibility… and waived all fines and fees, even the one for losing the book. The library’s going one step further: when the replacement book goes up on the shelf, it will have a special template in front, dedicating it to Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger. Oh, by the way. The topic of that book? Professional ethics.
Oh, that more of us had such a sense of integrity and obligation.










Red Bits of Ephemera