Birthdays Today

Today's birthdays fall under the heading of political commentary.   It is Edmund Burke's birthday.   Born in 1729, Edmund Burke is the father of modern conservatism in its truest form, in which those who would govern ought to be constrained by a profound humility about the limits of their own abilities to reshape human nature and should be particularly reticent about unwinding the threads of society's time-worn fabric of traditions in exchange for visions of utopia.   Here is Burke writing in 1791 in the aftermath of the French Revolution:

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Like de Toqueville two generations later, Burke repays re-reading, even two hundred and more years later.

*

It's also Rush Limbaugh's birthday.   Vilified on the left, Limbaugh has become the spokesman for the common-sense, Middle America, small business, Main Street conservative -- men, not incidentally, like my own father, men who get agitated when they hear self-appointed elites from coastal metropolises tell them that they know better what's good for them.   The people who vilify Limbaugh don't listen to him, and likely have never listened to him, but simply take it on faith that what he says is evil and vicious.  It's not.  Limbaugh is consistently funny, humane, and wise -- you couldn't be anything else and survive for twenty plus years talking to people for three hours a day.   Rush is 59.  

Hilarious Video on Global Warming Hoax

Not sure who did this, but it's great.    

Girl Wednesday - Peggy Fleming

It's hard to overstate how big Peggy Fleming was when she won the gold medal for figure skating in the 1968 Olympics.   American pop culture was such a smaller circle then... there were only 3 TV networks, and literally everyone was watching the Winter Olympics and knew and talked about Fleming and Jean Claude-Killy, the great French skier who swept the slalom, giant slalom and downhill.   Fleming was America's sweetheart then in a way that reallly hasn't been duplicated since in sports.

A story I had forgotten:  Fleming won the only gold medal America won in the 1968 Olympics, and her gold was particularly important, because the U.S. figure skating team had essentially been wiped out in a plane crash in 1961 traveling to the World Championships.  

Reason from Reason

Here is a very good short video from Reason TV about 5 things we should keep in mind in reacting (but not over-reacting) to the Tucson tragedy:

Dick Winters

The death of Dick Winters at 92 last week was a great loss.   Winters, the leader of "Easy Company" in the 101st Airborne in World War II that was the focus of the book and miniseries Band of Brothers, was a true American hero.   His obituary his here; the excerpt below particularly touched me:

Winters talked about his view of leadership for an August 2004 article in American History Magazine:

"If you can," he wrote, "find that peace within yourself, that peace and quiet and confidence that you can pass on to others, so that they know that you are honest and you are fair and will help them, no matter what, when the chips are down."

When people asked whether he was a hero, he echoed the words of his World War II buddy, Mike Ranney: "No, but I served in a company of heroes."

"He was a good man, a very good man," Guarnere said. "I would follow him to hell and back. So would the men from E Company."

Here he is in an interview talking about the surrender of a German officer at the end of the war:




A patriot and a gentleman.  RIP.  

The King's Speech

My wife and I finally saw The King's Speech with Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter.   Excellent, excellent movie, and I now think that it will sweep the acting Oscars for Actor, Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress.   The story of King George VI (Firth) and his efforts, with the help of an uncredentialed and unorthodox speech therapist (Rush) and his loving wife (Carter as the Queen Mother), is touching, uplifting, and often hilariously funny.  (At one point, the King momentarily overcomes his stuttering by unleashing a stream of profanity that would give Lenny Bruce a run for his money.)   Best of all, it's a movie that champions values that thoughtful adults ought to champion -- honor, decency, loyalty, perseverance, bravery and, not least, friendship.   Really good stuff.

Perspective from the Girl of the Day

Claire Berlinski has a great article up about the Tucson shootings and the relative importance of another assassination -- the assassination of a Pakistani governor by a jihadist in the Pakistani Army.  On the Tucson shooting, Berlinski makes a great point about the mainstream (left) media's attempt to pin the shootings on right-wing rhetoric and, particularly, on Sarah Palin's rhetoric:

If you show me a well-constructed, longitudinal study of young schizophrenics, half of whom have been exposed to the Sarah Palin's crosshair-chart and half of whom have not, and mutatis mutandis, a statistically significant number of the second group go on to commit an act of political violence, maybe it might be worth talking about. But absent that, this is pure hysteria. 

But Berlinski is even better in pointing out that sane Americans ought to have bigger fish to fry:

Before his court appearances, the lawyers showered rose petals over the confessed killer, Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, a member of an elite police group who had been assigned to guard the governor, but who instead turned his gun on him. They have now enthusiastically taken up his defense.

That's a nuclear power. Which one of these events is really worth talking about this much? 

Berlinski is also sort of attractive for a politics wonk, so I'll kill two birds with one stone and make her my Girl of the Day too.

P.S.   Speaking of killing two birds with one stone, for somewhat personal reasons, this quote from Berlinski's article struck a nerve with me:

Surely no one doubts that the metaphors of the military--and shooting and boxing, for that matter--are part of the normal fabric of the English language, used by everyone, and that sane people know the difference between the literal and the metaphorical?

Berlinski's latest book is an essay on Margaret Thatcher called There is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters.

Quick Hits

Thomas Sowell often writes columns that assemble short aphorisms or comments on an almost random set of topics.   It would be nice to be able to get paid for doing so, but the strategy does seve a useful purpose of allowing you to catch up when you haven't been able to blog for a few days.  So here are my "Quick Hits" on recent events, offered in part because my wonderful Mother thinks I haven't blogged enough lately.

Autism and Vaccines.    The lie that autism is caused by vaccinating children has hopefully been put to rest forever by the revelation that the study that demonstrated the conclusion was the product of pure and unadulterated scientific fraud.   Literally the whole thing was made up.    But what about the children who have died all over the world because their parents decided to believe the story?   Someone needs to go to jail for a long time because of this.

Tucson Shooting.   The murder of six innocents, including a nine year-old girl, and the wounding of Representative Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, has spawned a torrent of commentary trying to connect the shooting spree to right-wing rhetoric.  But here is what we know so far:  (1)  Jared Loughner, the killer, was a severely disturbed young man, and likely a schizophrenic; and (2) if anything, his politics were leftist, not rightist.   There is literally no factual connection between Loughner's heinous deed and the political right.   The fact that mainstream media outlets like the New York Times have tried to make one simply shows that they are exactly what conservatives have always claimed -- propagandists for the left.   It's also why they are a dying industry.

December 2010 Unemployment Drops to 9.4%.   President Obama was crowing last week about the drop in the unemployment rate from 9.8% to 9.4%.   Not so fast.   Half of the number was due to people leaving the workforce (who thus don't count as unemployed, since they are no longer seeking work).   The drop could also have been due to seasonal employment for Christmas.  And 9.4% is still way above what Obama's economic advisors predicted for the result of their stimulus, as shown in the famous chart below.  

Finally, in this chart from Ace of Spades HQ, it's clear that the downturn in unemployment claims has coincided with the belief, and then the reality, that the GOP would take back Congress.  

Pigford.  The Pigford case involved supposed discrimination by the Department of Agriculture against black farmers in the South.   The government "settled" the case with the black farmers for a cool $1.15 billion.   Good so far?   Then 86,000 claimants emerged.    There are only 40,000 black farmers in the U.S.   Problem?  Not for the feds.... just keep paying out those checks and, oh, by the way, the lawyers get a third.   Disgusting.   Andrew Breitbart's site, Big Government, has been all over this one.

Abortion in NYC.   According to this report, 41% of pregnancies in New York City end in abortion.   Whatever your views on the legality of abortion -- I am pro-life -- this has to be a sickening statistic.   For blacks in NYC, the figure is over 60%.   Where are black leaders talking about this genocide?   The only one talking is the great man of the City, Archbishop Timothy Dolan.  

Birthdays Today - The Big Man!

In honor of my beautiful son, whom I have called "the Little Man" since birth, although he now towers over me, and who loves Bruce Springsteen, today is the 69th birthday of the "Big Man," Clarence Clemons. Here's his great solo on "Jungleland":

Girl Monday - Sarah Palin

Since everyone wants to blame her for the Tucson murders -- strange notions of causation these lefties have -- I thought it's time to make Sarah Palin the Girl of the Day.

When Jared Loughner turns out to be a lunatic lefty (although the emphasis in fairness has to be on the lunatic) will anyone in the left-wing media and blogosphere apologize?  

Smile of the Day

Rookie James Starks of the Packers, who rushed for 123 yards in the Pack's 21-16 playoff win over the Eagles.

Birthdays Today

It's Elvis' birthday today.  Had he lived, he would be 75 today.   Hard to believe.   There are some people who just don't seem like they ought to have ever grown old -- Marilyn Monroe would be another.  

Girl Saturday - Seahawks Cheerleader

Didn't see 41-36 Seahawks over the Saints coming.   Maybe she did. 

Girl Friday - Rosalind Russell

Rosalind Russell wasn't the greatest beauty in Hollywood, but she was a great stage and screen presence -- probably better on the stage actually, where she won a Tony Award in 1953 for the musical Wonderful Town and was even more famous for her role in Auntie Mame.   Her ratatatat dialogue with Cary Grant in the 1940 screwball comedy His Girl Friday is some of the greatest in movie history.  



Russell was also Catholic, and was married once, for 35 years, until her death in 1976.  

Smile of the Day

Michael Ramirez at Townhall is probably the best conservative political cartoonist going today.   This one really captured the moment when John Boehner took over from Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House:

Birthdays Today

It's Joan of Arc's birthday.   I have somewhat of a hard time believing that we accurately know birthdays for people six hundred years ago, but apparently we do.   She's 599 years young today.

It's also Carl Sandburg's birthday, the great American poet and biographer of Lincoln.   Poetry is essentially dead now, captured by the academy, the stuff of MFA programs and wispy assistant professors churning out their unread masterpieces so they can put another line on their resumes.   But once upon a time American poets could articulate visions of the country that became part of the collective vocabulary.   Sandburg was one of those, as in this famous passage about Chicago:

 Hog Butcher for the World,
     Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
     Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
     Stormy, husky, brawling,
     City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
     have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
     luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
     is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to
     kill again.

Everybody remembers the first part, but it's that last line that gets me now, particularly with William Daley coming to be Barack Obama's White House Chief of Staff.   They tell me you are wicked and I believe them.... They tell me you are crooked and I answer:  Yes.   Now, apparently, in America's most hallowed halls of government, it's the Chicago way, or the highway.  

***

It's also Bjorn Lomborg's birthday.  He's 45.   Lomborg's book, Cool It, is one of the more sane tracts in political economics of recent years, as it proposes cost-benefit analyses for efforts to combat global warming, and largely concludes that they aren't going to be worth it and that we have better things to spend our resources on that trying to fend off a purely speculative harm that might be hundreds of years in the future.   Good stuff.
 

Girl Thursday - Hedy LaMarr

Hedy Lamarr was a fairly big star in the 1940s, but seems almost forgotten today, and perhaps would be, except for her striking name.   (Her name was used in a joke in Blazing Saddles.)   However, her personal story is much more interesting.   Her first husband was a German industrialist actively working for the Nazis before World War II.   During their marriage, she apparently learned a great deal about the practical aspects of designing weapons.   Then, after escaping Germany and her husband, she came to Hollywood and became a star.   When WW II broke out, she wanted to do something for the war effort, and teamed with a like-minded friend to design and patent an idea for radio control of a torpedo that used "frequency hopping" spread spectrum design to randomize the signals controlling the torpedo so that they could not be intercepted by the enemy.   The design was never used in WWII, but, at least according to this article, it forms the theoretical underpinnings of secure wireless telecommunications today.   Neat!  

All that brains, and all this too:

Smile of the Day - "We're Not Interested in Compromising"

Paul Ryan has taken charge on the House Budget Committee.   Here's a transcript of an interview with Congressman Ryan on the Hugh Hewitt show.   This is the kind of talk we need from GOP leaders now:

We’re not interested in compromising so we just end up raising taxes, that’s not where we’re going. We are going to be true to our principles, unlike the last time we were in the majority. We’re not going to make that mistake again. And so my guess is we will fight this thing out over the summer on discretionary spending, and then in the fall, you’ll have some kind of a, you know, a budget fight on discretionary spending. On the big ticket items, on Medicare and Medicaid, it is difficult for me to see the President and his party, you know, all of a sudden saying you know what? You Republicans are right. Obamacare was wrong, these things are getting out of control, we want to repeal this stuff. I have a hard time believing that’s going to happen. That should nevertheless not dissuade us from defining ourselves with our actions, telling the American people who we are, what we would do differently, and then giving them a very crystal clear choice in the 2012 election. We’re not going to settle every issue in this session of Congress. There are big philosophical disagreements. Basically, it’s individualism versus collectivism, is how I would generically describe the philosophical disagreements here. And we owe it to the country to give them alternatives.

So Sad

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday as a way of limiting its ultimate exposure to lawsuits related to the priest sexual abuse scandals from decades ago.   That abuse of children by priests is a scandal is not debatable.   However, in my view there are reasons why statutes of limitation exist in the law... as time passes, memories become malleable, facts and fiction merge, witnesses die, and the truth recedes into mist like a dream.   Couple the effect of time on memory and the effect of money on motivations, and you have a toxic stew.   These are cases that should not have been brought, cases that were originally dismissed, and cases that Wisconsin's Courts of Appeal and Supreme Court ought to have thrown out.   Now, those bad legal judgments, swayed by the pressure of public outrage and the afternoon TV shock value of the claims, have caused a church that serves hundreds of thousands of Catholics in this area to go bankrupt.   It's so very sad.

There are thousands upon thousands of priests in America who serve Christ with grace, self-sacrifice, courage, honesty and decency.   The percentage of sexual abusers in the priesthood, I am confident, is lower than in other professions.   For these good priests, the scandalous behavior of a very few is another Cross to bear.   They need our prayers and our support.  

Birthdays Today

Robert Duvall, probably America's greatest living actor, was born today in 1931.   Duvall is a master of understatement, so his greatness was overlooked for much of his career while the DeNiros and Pacinos chewed the scenery.   It's hard to beat work like this in the truly great movie Tender Mercies.   But oddly, this overt-the-top moment is the scene he'll be most remembered for, from Apocalypse Now:



It's also Diane Keaton's birthday -- in 1946.   Her turn in Annie Hall is, well, it's probably the reason why my daughter is named Annie:

Girl Wednesday - Cyd Charisse

The great Cyd Charisse was the dancing partner of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire in the long dream sequence ballets in Singing in the Rain and The Band Wagon, two of the best 1950s Technicolor musicals.   Needless to say, she had great legs:

Here she is, with Astaire:

Smile of the Day

Speaks for itself.  

Birthdays Today

Very interesting birthdays today.  A very long time ago I once had a very vitriolic but characteristically nonsensical (on my part) argument with my father about who had a greater impact on history, Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein.   I knew what my father wanted me to say -- he was an engineer, so he would have believed (correctly, I might add) that Newton was greater, because his fundamental work on physics had a much greater practical application, while Einstein's work on space, time and relativity was more theoretical.   I refused to make an argument for Einstein, however, preferring, in the fashion of the Ivy League pseudo-intellectual that I was at the time, to argue that such questions of who was "greater" were illegitimate in themselves, that such distinctions were unsophisticated, or some such nonsense.   (A position not unlike the current "No Labels" impulse in politics, which presumes that not believing in anything strongly is somehow more sophisticated or intelligent.)  Anyway, I managed to single-handedly (or single-mindedly) ruin a perfectly good family dinner.

Isaac Newton was born today in 1643.

It's also Dan Quayle's 63rd birthday.   I have always thought he got a raw deal and got unfairly stigmatized as "stupid" when he was Vice President.*   That's what the liberal media does to attractive young conservatives.   As of 1992, Quayle had been a Congressman for four years, a Senator for eight years, and Vice President for four years, at a time when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Bush I administration won the first Gulf War.   In other words, he would have been spectacularly well-qualified to be President, and I can't help thinking that, had things gone differently, he might have made a good one.   But sometimes those boats sail, and there's not much you can do about it.   According to this website, Quayle is now Chairman of Global Operations for Cerberus Capital Management, a $16 billion private investment bank.   And, his son Ben Quayle has just been elected to Congress.   So maybe he's getting a bit of the last laugh.  

Finally, also born today, in 1896, was the Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen, who famously said, in talking about government spending, "a billion here, a billion there.... pretty soon you're talking about real money."   Wonder what he'd say today when the federal debt just passed $14 trillion?   The sky is falling, and Senator Dirksen is no doubt spinning in his grave. 




* The supposed stupidity of Quayle stems largely from the famous misspelling "potatoe" incident.   Here is an article that tries to set the record straight on the incident.   Alas, too late.  

Girl Tuesday - Barbara Stanwyck

Hard to believe I've neglected the great Barbara Stanwyck for this long.  

For a bonus, here she is in Frank Capra's Meet John Doe with Gary Cooper:

Smile of the Day

Just because whenever you're blue and you think you're world is coming to an end, it's good to remember:  "Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense." 

Girl Monday - Jane Russell

The 1950s look isn't really my cup of tea... I've always thought that the ideal of beauty during that era was the slightly overweight bad girl... Kim Novak in Picnic, for instance.   I much preferred the classy stars of the 1930s or 1940s.  

Anyway, Jane Russell ordinarily would have fallen (at least in my mind) into the 1950s category, but I happened on this photograph of her as a young starlet and thought it was lovely, so here she is:

Smile of the Day - Playoffs!

Great game yesterday by the Packers defense, as the Pack defeated the Bears, 10-3, at Lambeau.   Smile of the day is Packers safety, Nick Collins, with the game-clinching, last-minute interception.

And, just for fun, the famous Jim Mora "playoffs" rant:

Birthdays Today

Diane Lane turns 45 today, which makes me feel very old indeed.   I've never been quite sure why Lane didn't become a bigger star than she has been, and it doesn't make too much sense to me why she seems to be better recognized now than she was when she was younger.   One theory I have is that she was just way too beautiful, even for Hollywood.   She's probably the most beautiful actress of the past 30 years, and I don't know who would be second.   The other:  she may not be that great of an actress.   But she's really easy on the eyes.  

Girl Sunday - Katherine Hepburn

A couple of days ago, I mentioned that Meryl Streep and Katherine Hepburn were actresses whose unique careers as older actresses obscured the fact that they had been such remarkably hot tickets as young women.   (Helen Mirren would be another example.)   Anyway, it occurred to me that I've never done Hepburn as the Girl of the Day, so here she is:

Smile of the Day - Epic Fail Version

Has there been a President who fell farther faster than Barack Obama did this past year, at least in terms of the distance between expectations (messianic) and performance (incompetent)?   On the one hand, I hope that he does even worse in 2011, because we need to get him out of there in 2012 -- the President of the United States is simply too important an institution to have it ruined by the whiny amateurishness of Mr. Obama.   On the other hand, the President of the United States is simply too important an institution.... it's a very dangerous world (a nuclearizing Iran, a nuclear North Korea, an increasingly belligerant, wealthy and nuclear China, a nuclear Pakistan that could disintegrate into barbarism and jihadism), and we need Obama to do well.  

Either way, and regardless of whether we get rid of him in 2012, I am afraid we will be seeing this mug for the rest of our lives, just like we see Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.   And, of course, we'll be hearing their voices, like the soundtrack in the seventh circle of Hell.