Media
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A good interview
With Markos of the Daily Kos. It seems his personal style is a lot like his writing style.
Via Althouse.
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Prediction
While taking a short break from coding I saw the article Leaders urge calm if Williams dies on CNN.com and was stuck by two thing:
- “Dies”? He is due to be executed by the state, and they use the broadest term possible. A lame and evasive headline.
- What calamity has been correctly predicted recently? There were warnings of mass anti-semitism after Mel Gibson’s movie, warning of 10,000 or more dead after Katrina, an economic recession due to high gas prices and so on. Here’s a question: what calamity have the pundits in the media correctly predicted beforehand? They seem to have enough problems predicting the past.
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Quick round up
- An article from Newsweek which has some interesting stats on American feelings on abortion.
- Saudi teacher sentenced to 750(!) lashes for blasphemy. Among other things he was charged with “defending Jews”. No one seems to have adopted him as the new Scopes.
- “Ban Asian marriages of cousins, says MP“
The report, commissioned by Ann Cryer, revealed that the Pakistani community accounted for 30 per cent of all births with recessive disorders, despite representing 3.4 per cent of the birth rate nationwide.
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“I think this should be applied to the Asian community. They must look outside the family for husbands and wives for their young people.”
It is estimated that more than 55 per cent of British Pakistanis are married to first cousins, resulting in an increasing rate of genetic defects and high rates of infant mortality. The likelihood of unrelated couples having the same variant genes that cause recessive disorders are estimated to be 100-1. Between first cousins, the odds increase to as much as one in eight.
55%!?
- This is way cool.
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Another community radio station
I’ve long listened to WRFG‘s bluegrass programming, and complained about it’s political programming, seemingly designed to irritate me. They live up to every stereotype of the hard left and it can be painful to listen to.
Then, while googling Michael Sheuer I came across the Weekend Interview Show with Mike Horton. It’s part of a shortwave network I’ve never hear of before.
Anyway, it’s an interesting thing. The host is a libertarian of the Lew Rockwell/Anti-War.com school (paleo-libertarian to take it to too fine of a point) and from what I listened to on their site Horton has mostly authors and pundits of a similar mindset.
After listening to the interviews I was left with the feeling that there are still regional differences in world outlook (American regions, I’m not sure why I came away with that).
On the whole it’s interesting how people with similar premises can come to differing conclusions and how different premises can come to similar conclusions.
Ah, my upload is done. More thoughts on this later.
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Job security inspires low standards all around
I was reading the two education related articles Schools want Beltline voice and Decatur tries to close racial gap in the AJC and was astonished by the poor quality of the writing and thinking. Nothing but one and two sentence paragraphs and no information that couldn’t be found on a press release.
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Not even wrong
In this article by Joe Conason on Salon. Conason makes so many errors it’s best just to point you to the Agitator’s take on the matter. I thought Salon was a serious publication. Oh well.
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Saturday morning rapid fire
- A good short history of the Davis Bacon act
- A longer piece about Edward R Morrow (real name Egbert Roscoe Murrow I found out) and his dealing with Joe McCarthy. Short version – McCarthy bad, but Communist threat real, and the new Clooney movie inaccurately gives credit to Morrow for a lot of other people’s work. The article is well worth reading in it’s entirety.
- A fairly brutal piece on Harriet Miers in National Review Online who correctly see that Supreme Court picks are not a zero sum game.
So, we have reason to fear, will be the case with Miers. And even if she does not become a Blackmun, her record strongly suggests she will be an OÂConnor  a split-the-difference judge. As one of her former colleagues has said of her, MiersÂs office was the Âplace where the action stopped and the hand-wringing began. If she follows that course, we will be left with a Court that retains immense and inappropriate lawmaking power but refuses to make clear laws. The rule of law is based on the making of arguments and the giving of reasons, not on sentiment or group loyalty  which is the basis on which MiersÂs defenders want us to support her.
- We live in strange times when Ann Coultier is correct in direction and degree. In her column “Does this Law Degree Make my Resume Look Fat?” she makes a strong case that against Miers.
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Similarities
I think I’m the only one to see the similarities between Barack Obama and Paris Hilton, namely they’re famous solely because commentators and not reporters talk about them.
This is a correlation of no significance mind you, it is odd though. I think I’ll create the term “Media Famous” to describe it.
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Get riled up with the AJC!
Naturally I was drawn to Cynthia Tucker and her column “So . . . illegals can work but can’t learn?”
Since 2000, Georgia’s colleges have employed a sensible policy that recognizes the academic potential of some illegal immigrants without swamping the state treasury. The Board of Regents voted to allow public colleges and universities to admit them if they pay out-of-state tuition rates. But the regents also gave each college president the latitude to waive that higher tuition for a limited number of students. That policy has worked well.
When I took a public finance class (around 1995 or so) at UGA I remember hearing that tuition covered about 20% of the actual cost of college for the average student. Out of state tuition was about two and a half times that of in-state tuition, so even if illegals are paying the out of state rate taxpayers are still picking up part of the bill. They are also displacing legal students who would otherwise be accepted. Also note how government acceptance of illegal activity doesn’t faze her at all.
She closes with
But Johnson has described employers who hire undocumented workers as only “part of the problem. If they [illegal immigrants] are here working and not using taxpayer funds, that’s not as much of a burden.” So, he said, he and his colleagues will take a close look at any proposal to crack down on hiring practices, making sure new laws don’t “impose an undue burden” on employers. After all, business executives are a reliable GOP constituency, and they fight any move to curb their access to cheap labor.
Apparently, Georgia’s official policy is this: We like illegal immigrants just fine, as long as they work for dirt and stay out of sight. They’re welcome to pay state income tax and local sales taxes, but that’s where the welcome ends.
Well, yes. You try to maximize the benefits while minimizing the price. How revolutionary. One thing to note, is that the current situation is entirely dependent upon the voluntary behavior of the illegal immigrants. Under the reign of cruel business they still don’t have to come here.
About 9 years ago I attended a Future of Freedom Foundation seminar on illegal immigration led by Jacob Hornberger (who, if memory serves was a really nice guy and a class act in general) who suggested that we let them come over to work but deny them all health, social and educational benefits. His prediction was that our kids would work for their kids.
I think that’s worth a shot. It’s certainly better than the look the other way policy we have now. It would also keep the self selection going in the right direction.
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Emo Reporting
The current trend of newscasters morphing into viewer advocates is shameful to behold. Instapundit put it very well in his latest MSNBC column.