Jul
30
2007

URLs du Jour

2007-07-30

  • Stuart Buck has discovered the late great Richard Mitchell, and has quoted some snippets of his work here, here, here, and here. As I've said before: if you find snippets of Mitchell appealing, you can find nearly all his published work online for free at this site, set up by Mark Alexander. Here's one of my favorites:
    Words never fail. We hear them, we read them; they enter into the mind and become part of us for as long as we shall live. Who speaks reason to his fellow men bestows it upon them. Who mouths inanity disorders thought for all who listen. There must be some minimum allowable dose of inanity beyond which the mind cannot remain reasonable. Irrationality, like buried chemical waste, sooner or later must seep into all the tissues of thought.
    So: apologies for any and all inanity you find here; I hope your thoughts are disordered only temporarily.

  • Democrat control of the House has resulted in a farm bill that … is arguably worse than the farm bill passed by the Republican-controlled house back in 2002. Daniel Griswold at Cato is suitably contemptuous of the Washington Post's description of the passage as a "major achievement for the new Democratic leadership."
    It says a lot about the political culture in our nation's capital that passing a bill that basically continues more than 80 years of failed farm policy with minimal reforms is considered a major achievement.
    The bill's supporters defended it against reform using rhetoric both arrogant and dishonest. Votes were bought with—guess what?—your tax dollars and mine. Oh, and of course it's not just our tax dollars: we'll also be paying more at the grocery store as a result.

    One proposed step in the right direction was the Kind/Flake Amendment. Predictably, that failed, 117-309. (Mine own Congresscritter, Carol Shea-Porter followed her usual instinct of voting against steps in the right direction. New Hampshire's other representative, Paul Hodes, voted for it; one cheer for him.) But to make our Congress-bashing truly bipartisan, let's note that a free-marketer did the reckoning:

    … on the vote for the Kind/Flake amendment, 32% of Democrats favored reform while only 23% of Republicans did.
    Sigh. As the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band pointed out: No matter who you vote for, the Government always gets in.

  • More on Pace University hate crimes from Phil Orenstein:
    The other incidents "with racial or religious overtones" at Pace University were swastikas painted on a bathroom wall and on a Holocaust memorial event poster, the desecration of a Menorah on campus and other vicious antisemitic attacks which never rose to the level of hate crime, … [T]his demonstrates clear evidence of a double standard lurking at Pace, throughout academia and trickling down throughout the body politic where Muslims and certain identity groups get preferential treatment while others are spurned.
    Via Michelle who has lots more.

  • No, I haven't seen The Simpsons Movie yet. But I'm ready:

    [My Simpsons Avatar]

    … and you can be too.


Last Modified 2013-04-22 12:51 PM EDT