Smile of the Day

The second best basketball player on the planet right now is not Lebron James.   It's Kevin Durant of the Oklahoma City Thunder.   He's apparently also a nice guy; no "I'm taking my talents to South Beach" press conferences, no messy divorces, no kids out of wedlock, no guns in the locker room.  Just a good Christian kid who is supremely talented at basketball.  It helps that he's 6'10" and can run and jump and shoot lights out from outside; he's just too big for small forwards to guard, too quick for power forwards.  

I say "second best" because... well, you know.   You have to beat the King to become the King.  

Krauthammer Doesn't Want His Junk Touched Either

Charles Krauthammer today pens a funny, biting piece on the controversy over the TSA's new security policies in which airline passengers must either (a) submit to a full body scan in which images of their nude body will be available for view by TSA workers; or (b) submit to a "pat-down" that can involve touching passengers' genitalia... their "junk" in the truly appalling current slang.   Here's the money quote:

This has nothing to do with safety - 95 percent of these inspections, searches, shoe removals and pat-downs are ridiculously unnecessary. The only reason we continue to do this is that people are too cowed to even question the absurd taboo against profiling - when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable and universally known. So instead of seeking out terrorists, we seek out tubes of gel in stroller pouches.

The junk man's revolt marks the point at which a docile public declares that it will tolerate only so much idiocy. Metal detector? Back-of-the-hand pat? Okay. We will swallow hard and pretend airline attackers are randomly distributed in the population.

But now you insist on a full-body scan, a fairly accurate representation of my naked image to be viewed by a total stranger? Or alternatively, the full-body pat-down, which, as the junk man correctly noted, would be sexual assault if performed by anyone else? This time you have gone too far, Big Bro'. The sleeping giant awakes.

I have struggled with where to come down on this issue.  On the one hand, I have never been too put out by the inconveniences of security during air travel.   Wait in line a little while?  So what?  That's what Blackberries are for.   Take off your shoes?  No problem; I wear slip-ons to travel.  Show I.D.?  Shit, brother, I want to show I.D. more often, say, when I'm going to vote!  And, frankly, if it was just me, I wouldn't care if somebody had a gander at my "junk" on a body scan.  I, mean, I'm reaching the age where the next few decades are going to be pretty filled with young nurses using catheters to do unspeakable acts to my person.   Life ain't all pretty, you know.   It's like the old Army saying, "Excuses are like assholes, everyone's got one."   Everyone has a body; every body gets older and nastier; in the end, no one is too pleased with the vessel God gave us, and so we trade it in for wings.

On the other hand, I have a relatively shy wife, and at least one relatively shy daughter.  (The youngest I'm not too sure about.)   And I have six relatively shy nieces ages 13 to 26.   And I have two sisters (not so shy, but still).  And I have two sisters-in-law (ranging from shy to very shy).   And I have a mother-in-law who ought to be canonized.  And I have an eighty year-old Mom.   If someone tried to touch Mom's junk, airport or no, TSA or no, terrorism threat or no, I can tell you that I'd be over the barrier in a New York second and up in somebody's grill.   Touch my junk, fine.  Touch my womenfolk, and it's on!

Look, we have 100,000 or so troops in Afghanistan, including by beloved nephew with the 101st Airborne.   They are not there by accident, are they?  No, they are there because certain kinds of people -- radical Muslims from the Middle East -- flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11, killing 3,000 Americans.   I assume they are not randomly flying Predator drones, or randomly firing artillery, or randomly shooting at Afghanis.  I assume they are very carefully targeting those individuals who are identiably our enemies.   Is it too much to ask that our government's TSA agents use the same kind of care in identifying individuals who might actually pose a threat to airlines?  

We have a government that thinks it's OK to shoot Predators at Talibanis in Pakistan -- to commit murder, to call a spade a spade -- without a trial, without presenting evidence, without reading them their rights, etc. I agree with those actions.   But the same government is somehow too principled to observe Abdul Ahmed Rahman, traveling on a Yemeni passport on a one-way ticket to Los Angeles, and make a rational decision that maybe, just maybe, they should pull him out of line and have a pointed conservation with him about where he's going and where he's been?   Instead they want us to blithely allow them to inflict indignities on our daughters and nieces and wives and sisters and mothers?   That's not just idiocy, it's hypocrisy.

Paul Ryan... Ready for the Battle?

Paul Ryan was interviewed recently on Charlie Rose.  Here is a key moment:

"We're not talking small ball anymore. This is not school uniforms or prescription drugs. This is debt crisis, the economy. Is America going to be the leader in the 21st century or not? Are we going to have what I would an opportunity society with a social safety net, or are we going to go over and become a social democracy, a cradle to grave welfare state, like a European kind of a society. And the difference in the next few years will determine what that outcome will be."

Ryan gets better and better because he's a serious reader and thinker who has studied the issues in detail, not a glib pol who mouths faculty room bromides that only sound intellectual.  (You know who I'm talking about.)   Here he's channeling the short, brilliant book by Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute, The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America's Future.   I've read it; I agree with it; it's common sense that the Regular Guys have long known.

 

Sadness or Mental Illness?

Your neighbor has lost his job.  He's struggling to find a new one.   His wife is working nights as a waitress to help make ends meet.   They've had to cut back on some things -- they've sold his fishing boat, and they're not going to go on vacation this year, and their kids maybe have to cut back on the Irish Dance lessons and the summer basketball camps.  Needless to say, things are a little tense at home.   Your buddy maybe raises his voice a little more often to his kids or his wife, or else has one too many drinks at night, or else looks a little ragged when you see him outside doing work around the house.  A little less shaving, a little less exercise, a little less attention to what he's wearing. 

In the 1930s or 1940s or 1950s, you would describe your neighbor as having a tough time, or as going through a rough patch.   You would say that your neighbor is sad or unhappy.  You might invite him over to your house for a beer, or take him to a ballgame.  You might have their family at your house for Thanksgiving dinner, with the unspoken idea being to save your neighbor from having to pay for the turkey and fixings.  You might give him the names of people you know who may be looking to hire.   You would tell him that things are going to turn around, just you wait, buddy.

In the 2010s, apparently the politically correct conclusion is that your unhappy neighbor is suffering from a mental illness, depression, and needs to seek professional treatment:

More than 45 million Americans, or 20 percent of U.S. adults, had some form of mental illness last year, and 11 million had a serious illness, U.S. government researchers reported on Thursday.

Young adults aged 18 to 25 had the highest level of mental illness at 30 percent, while those aged 50 and older had the lowest, with 13.7 percent, said the report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration or SAMHSA.

The rate, slightly higher than last year's 19.5 percent figure, reflected increasing depression, especially among the unemployed, SAMHSA, part of the National Institutes of Health, said.

"Too many Americans are not getting the help they need and opportunities to prevent and intervene early are being missed," Pamela Hyde, SAMHSA's administrator, said in a statement.

"The consequences for individuals, families and communities can be devastating. If left untreated mental illnesses can result in disability, substance abuse, suicides, lost productivity, and family discord."

The 2009 mental health survey hints at the impact of record unemployment rates, which last year hit a 25-year high as struggling employers slashed jobs to cope with a weak economy.

To me, this sort of thing does not represent an alarming health issue; it represents an alarming ideological shift in America and (probably) in Western culture generally.  We now believe that normal human emotions like sadness (when bad things happen to you or your family) are a mental illness that can be treated (by therapy? by drugs?).   The work of friends and neighbors and priests is ceded to "professionals" in the health care industry and, inevitably, to the bureaucrats in the insurance industry and (ultimately) in government.    Is it impossible to foresee the Orwellian future world where, in order to get unemployment benefits, a government bureaucrat tells the applicant that it is mandatory that he submit to psychological evaluation and treatment?

Depression is a real thing.  Schizophrenia is a real thing.  Bipolar disorder is a real thing.  But we are going to be far gone as a functioning society if we start down the road toward defining ordinary human unhappiness as a mental illness.  Far, far, gone.  

The Regular Guy Believes in Green Bean Casserole

And how!

Birthdays Today

Kind of a compare-and-contrast exercise in today's birthdays.  First, we have Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the former U.N. Ambassador and national security advisor under Reagan, born in 1926.   Kirkpatrick had a reputation for tough, hard-headed realism in foreign affairs, advocating American support for any regime, including right-wing dictatorships, so long as they were sufficiently anti-communist.   This was at a time (the early 1980s) when the long twilight struggle against the Soviet empire was still an open question.   An heroic lady.

Next we have Dick Cavett, the talk show host, born in 1936.   Cavett always seemed to me like the epitome of the smug Manhattan liberal who thought he was smarter than everyone else, even though he never did anything in his life other than talk.  Having said that, as a young writer for The Tonight Show, Cavett is credited with writing one of the funniest lines ever, the introduction to the buxom actress, Jayne Mansfield, read by Jack Paar:  "Ladies and gentlemen, here they are, Jayne Mansfield."

Cavett was good friends with Woody Allen, and often interviewed him on his show, as here:

Girl Friday - Cheryl Tiegs

The first great Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover girl, Cheryl Tiegs hit it big just about the time I started caring about girls:

Smile of the Day - The Jersey Edition

My thirteen year-old son is a very good rock guitarist for his age, and his hero of the moment is the Boss, Bruce Springsteen.  Opportune time for a Smile of the Day - Jersey Edition: 

Springsteen's latest collection of outtakes from the Darkness on the Edge of Town sessions is out, and should be very good.   A Christmas present for the boy?  Maybe, if he's been nice and not naughty.



The Regular Guy Believes in Stuffing

I mean, seriously, yum, yum, yum.  Once you start, you can't stop. 

The Regular Guy Believes in Canned Cranberries

Getting ready to tie the feed-bag on.   What is the Regular Guy thankful for?   Thanksgiving, baby.  

Huertgen Forest

Sixty-six years ago, in November of 1944, the American Army was embroiled in one of the hardest-fought and most costly battles of World War II in the Huertgen Forest on the border of Belgium and Germany.   The U.S. Army's Center of Military History has estimated that 120,000 troops, plus replacements, were committed to Hürtgen; by the end there had been 23,000 battle casualties plus 9,000 non-battle. Two divisions, the 4th Infantry and the 9th Infantry, were so badly mauled that they were withdrawn from the line to recuperate. Charles McDonald, the preeminent US Army historian and former company commander who served in the Hürtgen battle, has described it as "a misconceived and basically fruitless battle that should have been avoided."  Hemingway, who was there -- and who later memorialized the battle in his novel Across the River and Into the Trees, described the battle as "Passchendaele with tree bursts."

Lest we forget.

Charles McDonald, by the way, is author of probably the best memoir of the small unit infantry commander in World War II, called Company Commander, which is still taught at West Point.

Posner on QE2

The Federal Reserve's decision to try to stimulate the economy by essentially printing $600 billion worth of currency has drawn a lot of criticism, most of which focuses on the impact on (a) inflation (it will go up, naturally); or (b) the dollar (it will go down, helping exports, but likely sparking our overseas competitors to retaliate).   This commentary by Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit (and of the University of Chicago Law School) on the blog he writes with Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker, hits a key point that is separate from the economics of the issue:

The third and perhaps biggest objection to the program of quantitative easing is that it relaxes the pressure on our politicians to address urgent issues of economic reform. The politicians are sitting back and letting the Fed try to hoist us out of our current economic hole. The pressure to respond to the urgent need to put the health reform and financial regulatory reform programs on hold because of the debilitating uncertainty that they have injected into the business environment, and to take effective steps that will be politically painful (for they will include entitlements reform) toward increasing the rate of economic growth and reducing the rate of increase of the national debt, is being blunted. 

For too many years, the governing class has set up "blue ribbon commissions" (like the Alan Simpson-Erskine Bowles debt commission upon which I have commented here) or else looked to unelected bodies like the Federal Reserve to solve the looming economic issues that are more properly the responsibility of our President and Congress.   When the Fed can juice the economy to create a simulacrum of growth in the near-term, the politicians can go on rent-seeking for their constituencies (read: "earmarks"), and ignore the long-term problems of a dwindling stock of human capital (read: "bad educational system"), distorted business incentives (read: "too many lawyers") and runaway entitlements (read: "payoffs to the AARP voting bloc").  

The new Congress better watch out.  I think people are sick and tired of Congress kicking these cans down the road.   I think people have seen too much of this sort of thing in their own workplaces -- the accounting gimmicks that substitute for real productivity gains (analogous to the Fed), the monthly meetings of the sub-committee on workplace diversity and ergonomic work stations that spend hundreds of man-hours coming up with new and interesting reports on how we can stop wasting hundreds of man-hours (analogous to the Debt Commission).   I think they've had enough and want common sense, not hocus-pocus, and not more lawyers in more suits issuing more reports.   

The Man

Stan Musial is finally to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, after a long campaign by St. Louis Cardinals fans.   When your nickname is "The Man," you know what kind of player and person you have to be.   My dad got me a Stan Musial autographed picture when I was little; my son has it now.  A great American and the greatest Cardinal.   So great, in fact, that the second greatest Cardinal (at least for now), Albert Pujols, has asked not to be called "El Hombre" (Spanish for "The Man") because there's only one The Man in St. Louis.   Sports Illustrated had an article earlier this year on Musial that brought tears to my eyes.   "Stan Musial," his teammate Bob Gibson says, "is the nicest man I ever met in baseball."

Birthdays Today

Lyricist Johnny Mercer was born today in 1909.   His best work tells stories of mature men who have suffered a little and are still singing.   Here's Sinatra doing one of Mercer's best, "One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)":

It's also Alan Shepard's birthday, one of the original Mercury astronauts, born in 1923.   Shepard was the first American in space in the Mercury program, and then the fifth man to walk on the Moon in the Apollo program.  

Before liftoff, Shepard is reported to have prayed, "Dear Lord, please don't let me fuck up."  Later, after he landed, he told reporters what he had been thinking sitting on top of the rocket.  He said, "The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder."

One of the twenty or so best books I've ever read  is Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, about the Mercury program.
   

Girl Thursday - Megyn Kelly

Very smart gal on FoxNews, Megyn Kelly, is also very easy on the eyes:

UPDATE:

Megyn Kelly is apparently posing in this month's GQ:

Does this make me bad?



Smile(s) of the Day

Get ready, America.   It's going to be wall-to-wall Kate Middleton  and Prince William for the next few years.   Nice looking girl... they make a nice looking couple.  I can't help thinking that they'd be happier if he was a just plain Bill and she was a girl he met at college.   Hard to be normal when you're in the fishbowl of British royalty, and normal is, in my deep experience and judgment, the sine qua non of a happy life.  

Medal of Honor Redux

Looking for Staff Sergeant Sal Giunta's citation for his Medal of Honor this week, I happened across databases for the citations of all other American Medal of Honor winners.   They make for amazing and humbling reading.   Here, for instance, is the citation for Audie Murphy's Medal of Honor:

Rank and organization: Second Lieutenant, U.S. Army, Company B 1 5th Infantry, 3d Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Holtzwihr France, 26 January 1945. Entered service at: Dallas, Tex. Birth: Hunt County, near Kingston, Tex. G.O. No.. 65, 9 August 1945. Citation 2d Lt. Murphy commanded Company B, which was attacked by 6 tanks and waves of infantry. 2d Lt. Murphy ordered his men to withdraw to prepared positions in a woods, while he remained forward at his command post and continued to give fire directions to the artillery by telephone. Behind him, to his right, 1 of our tank destroyers received a direct hit and began to burn. Its crew withdrew to the woods. 2d Lt. Murphy continued to direct artillery fire which killed large numbers of the advancing enemy infantry. With the enemy tanks abreast of his position, 2d Lt. Murphy climbed on the burning tank destroyer, which was in danger of blowing up at any moment, and employed its .50 caliber machinegun against the enemy. He was alone and exposed to German fire from 3 sides, but his deadly fire killed dozens of Germans and caused their infantry attack to waver. The enemy tanks, losing infantry support, began to fall back. For an hour the Germans tried every available weapon to eliminate 2d Lt. Murphy, but he continued to hold his position and wiped out a squad which was trying to creep up unnoticed on his right flank. Germans reached as close as 10 yards, only to be mowed down by his fire. He received a leg wound, but ignored it and continued the single-handed fight until his ammunition was exhausted. He then made his way to his company, refused medical attention, and organized the company in a counterattack which forced the Germans to withdraw. His directing of artillery fire wiped out many of the enemy; he killed or wounded about 50. 2d Lt. Murphy's indomitable courage and his refusal to give an inch of ground saved his company from possible encirclement and destruction, and enabled it to hold the woods which had been the enemy's objective.

Seriously, we ought to have a Medal of Honor Day in America where schoolchildren are forced to read these things out loud.   Wow!

Why Do Liberals Hate Sarah Palin?

While I'm on the topic of Sarah Palin, Mark Belling, a Milwaukee-area talk show host, who has also subbed for Rush Limbaugh, has argued that Palin drives liberals crazy because she's attractive.   Today he discussed another theory from the New York Daily News... that Palin is too happy, and that her happiness offends liberal women, who apparently think she shouldn't be so sunny.   I think both of these make some sense -- if a liberal woman disagrees with Palin politically, it is human nature that cattiness and envy about Palin's looks, happy marriage, five kids, career success, money (now rolling in with book deals and TV deals and speaking fees), will ratchet up disagreement into something close to hatred.   But I don't think that's everything. 

My theory... the hatred for Palin emerged immediately in 2008 when it became widely known that she had given birth to a child with Down's Syndrome.   That was the key fact that was different about her.  That was the fact that was known before America had any chance to gauge the relative sunniness of her personality.  And the liberal left, and particularly liberal left women, can't bear the thought that a woman would willingly accept the responsibility for raising a Down's child and not have an abortion.  It galls them, perhaps because they must feel, on some deeper level, that she's right and they're wrong, that a society that cannot protect the most vulnerable among us isn't a good society, and that a liberalism that sanctions killing the weakest among us sacrifices its moral standing.   The unspoken truth in America is that the constituency of women who have had abortions must be in the tens of millions, and the constituency of women who have aborted a Down's child might be in the millions.   There's a lot of guilt out there, and that guilt, in my judgment, is a main source of the hatred toward Palin. 

Who could hate this picture?   I mean, really, who could hate it?

I'd also bet that Trig Palin explains a good deal of the extraordinary affection and loyalty of his mom's supporters nationwide.   If there were a poll of the parents of Down's Syndrome children -- there are more than 5,000 Down's kids born a year, maybe 50,000 or so a decade, so there must be hundreds of thousands of parents -- I'll bet Sarah Palin gets 90% support.   Unapologetic, unashamed, unconditional love is the really attractive thing about Sarah Palin. 

Sad Little People Do Sad Little Things

It's turned into a decently-sized national story that a man in Vermont, Wisconsin shot his TV with a shotgun in a rage apparently enduced by Bristol Palin (Sarah Palin's daughter) winning on Dancing With the Stars.   Some conservatives suggest that it shows that the real "hate" is on the Left.   Well, maybe.  Or maybe just a sad little man who probably drank too much and got angry at his TV.   It happens.  Not sure there is a grand conclusion to draw.  

Anyway, here's Bristol dancing: 

I can't believe that this does her mother much good politically, so it's hard to understand why it would make a loony Lefty so angry.   Anyway, here's the dude:

The words "pathetic loser" come to mind.   But let's be Christian... the guy had a bad night, and I'm pretty sure he regrets it now.   Let's hope he has a better Thanksgiving.

BankruptingAmerica Parody Video

A website I'd never heard of called BankruptingAmerica has a new video up that addresses (in a very funny way) the uncertainty American businesses face from the Obama administration on taxes, healthcare and regulations:



Very funny stuff.  Good work by these folks, and an example of how the Internet gets used by smart people to get out messages that, ten or twenty years ago, would have been impossible to find in the media.  

The issue the video addresses is actually very simple, and a matter of the most basic economics, which is really just the science of human choice in a world of uncertainty (per von Mises). People will risk uncertain outcomes in the hope of gaining rewards commensurate with the risk if the rules of the game are knowable and fixed, i.e., if they can control at least some of the uncertainty.

For instance, I will play Texas Hold-’Em even though I can’t know what my opponents have. If two Aces are on the Board and I have an Ace-Queen in the hole, I can get beat if my opponent has an Ace-King in the hole under the rules of the game, and I know that, but I will still be willing to bet, because I have a good hand.   If I lose, so be it.  But if my opponent (call him “Government Man”) has Seven-Deuce in the hole, but can redefine the rules midstream and say that sevens and deuces are wild, so he actually has four aces… well, then, knowing that he has the power to change the rules, I am going to be unwilling to bet. In fact, I might just take my money and go home.

Which is exactly what is happening right now with investors. The government reserve the right to change the rules of the game next year on taxes, health care benefits, and the environment. So why should an entrepreneur want to play the game?

Michael Ramirez

Michael Ramirez is probably the best conservative political cartoonist working today.   You can see his stuff at Investors.com, the website for Investors Business Daily.  

Birthdays Today

A gangster-themed Birthdays Today.   Today is the birthday of Lee Strasberg, the famous acting coach, born in 1901.   His most memorable actual role came late in his life as Hyman Roth, the Meyer Lansky-like Jewish Mafia overlord in maybe the greatest American movie ever made, The Godfather, Part II:

Also born today, in 1942, was Martin Scorsese, the great director of Goodfellas and Casino.   Here's Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro in Casino (language may be not safe for work):

Girl Wednesday - Ingrid Bergman

I'm shocked, schocked that I haven't gotten around to Ingrid Bergman as Girl of the Day yet.   Consider that gross dereliction of duty rectified:

My thirteen year-old son was looking over my shoulder as I was thinking about the Girl of the Day and said, "Why don't you do the girl from Casablanca?"   Indeed. 

Smile of the Day - Medal of Honor Version

Staff Sergeant Sal Giunta, the only living Medal of Honor winner from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts was honored  yesterday in a ceremony at the White House for his actions in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan.  Giunta was with the 173nd Airborne Brigade.   My nephew is a Sergeant with the 101st Airborne Division, and is on deployment in Afghanistan right now (his second tour there).

I have often commented that the mainstream media has utterly let America down during the past nine years by failing to report examples of true heroism that young American servicemen have displayed time and time again.   Giunta is just one of many heroes, but his story is clearly worth shouting from the mountaintop.

The Army has a nice webpage that gives you all you'll need to know about this great American and the battle in which he won our Nation's highest military honor.  

Congratulations, Sgt. Giunta!

Here is Sgt. Giunta's citation:

Specialist Salvatore A. Giunta distinguished himself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty in action with an armed enemy in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, on October 25, 2007. While conducting a patrol as team leader with Company B, 2d Battalion (Airborne), 503d Infantry Regiment, Specialist Giunta and his team were navigating through harsh terrain when they were ambushed by a well-armed and well-coordinated insurgent force. While under heavy enemy fire, Specialist Giunta immediately sprinted towards cover and engaged the enemy. Seeing that his squad leader had fallen and believing that he had been injured, Specialist Giunta exposed himself to withering enemy fire and raced towards his squad leader, helped him to cover, and administered medical aid. While administering first aid, enemy fire struck Specialist Giunta’s body armor and his secondary weapon. Without regard to the ongoing fire, Specialist Giunta engaged the enemy before prepping and throwing grenades, using the explosions for cover in order to conceal his position. Attempting to reach additional wounded fellow soldiers who were separated from the squad, Specialist Giunta and his team encountered a barrage of enemy fire that forced them to the ground. The team continued forward and upon reaching the wounded soldiers, Specialist Giunta realized that another soldier was still separated from the element. Specialist Giunta then advanced forward on his own initiative. As he crested the top of a hill, he observed two insurgents carrying away an American soldier. He immediately engaged the enemy, killing one and wounding the other. Upon reaching the wounded soldier, he began to provide medical aid, as his squad caught up and provided security. Specialist Giunta’s unwavering courage, selflessness, and decisive leadership while under extreme enemy fire were integral to his platoon’s ability to defeat an enemy ambush and recover a fellow American soldier from the enemy. Specialist Salvatore A. Giunta’s extraordinary heroism and selflessness above and beyond the call of duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, Company B, 2d Battalion (Airborne), 503d Infantry Regiment, and the United States Army.

All I can say is, again, thanks, and wow!

Giunta's actions are also chronicled in the great (I mean GREAT) book by Sebastian Junger, War.   Here is a moving passage:

Most firefights go by so fast that acts of bravery or cowardice are more or less spontaneous. Soldiers might live the rest of their lives regretting a decision that they don’t even remember making; they might receive a medal for doing something that was over before they even knew they were doing it. When Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Audie Murphy was asked why he took on an entire company of German infantry by himself, he replied famously, “They were killing my friends.” Wars are won or lost because of the aggregate effect of thousands of decisions like that during firefights that often last only minutes or seconds. Giunta estimates that not more than ten or fifteen seconds elapsed between the initial attack and his own counterattack. An untrained civilian would have experienced those ten or fifteen seconds as a disorienting barrage of light and noise and probably have spent most of it curled up on the ground. An entire platoon of men who react that way would undoubtedly die to the last man.
___
Giunta, on the other hand, used those fifteen seconds to assign rates and sectors of fire to his team, run to Gallardo’s assistance, assess the direction of a round that hit him in the chest, and then throw three hand grenades while assaulting an enemy position.

Ace on the Case

The great Ace of Spades blog is on the case today of the absurdity of higher education tuition and fees.   We are of like minds:

This is the sort of situation that should bother liberals -- tricking people, essentially, into taking out huge loans to buy something of dubious marginal value (that is, why not go to state school?) in order to personally enrich a small elite with a vested interest in charging ever higher and higher prices.

But of course it doesn't; their response is just to guarantee more and bigger loans, apparently not getting that it is exactly that flood of money that has inflated the cost of higher education in the first place.

Bobby Jindal Interview

Hot Air's Ed Morrissey has an interview with Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana up in which he talks about his new book.   I've seen Jindal on TV a few times now, and I'm very impressed with his intelligence and toughness.   He's a Catholic convert and a Rhodes Scholar who got in to Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School, but chose public service instead, with a specialty in healthcare policy.   I think he has an outside chance at the GOP Presidential nomination in 2012, but more likely would be a contender later, or else a VP candidate.   It seems to me somewhat sad that the GOP's best and most principled candidates are probably just a tad too young for the national ticket,  Jindal (only 39), and Wisconsin's own Congressman Paul Ryan (40).   But who knows?  

The thing that always amazes me is how, although an Indian-American (his parents immigrated from India), he has the voice of a true Louisianan.   What a great country!

More on Archbishop Dolan

It may be that the Holy Spirit moved me to make Archbishop Dolan my Smile of the Day today.  Or it may have been pure luck.  (I know which one my wife would choose.)   Anyway, this morning he was elected to head the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.  He will be a very strong and persuasive voice for conservative Catholic principles of faith, including most importantly a culture of life.   Congratulations to His Eminence, and best of luck. 

This is What Happens When You Create a Society Based on Credentials...

... rather than real achievement.   A Chronicle of Higher Education story details the substantial industry that has sprung up to write essays, papers, and even dissertations for young people trying to get college and graduate school degrees... documents that the "students" will pay for and then put their names on.   In other words, cheating has become thoroughly professionalized.   And here is the most alarming part:

I, who have no name, no opinions, and no style, have written so many papers at this point, including legal briefs, military-strategy assessments, poems, lab reports, and, yes, even papers on academic integrity, that it's hard to determine which course of study is most infested with cheating. But I'd say education is the worst. I've written papers for students in elementary-education programs, special-education majors, and ESL-training courses. I've written lesson plans for aspiring high-school teachers, and I've synthesized reports from notes that customers have taken during classroom observations. I've written essays for those studying to become school administrators, and I've completed theses for those on course to become principals. In the enormous conspiracy that is student cheating, the frontline intelligence community is infiltrated by double agents. (Future educators of America, I know who you are.)

Instapundit has frequently highlighted the "higher education bubble."   The cheating described in this story is just part of the larger lie -- that "everyone should go to college."   No.  Everyone should not go to college.   People who are below the fiftieth percentile in intelligence -- that is, who have IQs of 100 or so or below -- not only ought not be going to college, it is an incredible immoral scandal that schools take their money (most of it borrowed) and sell them degrees that they mostly won't have earned and which are effectively useless for any career for which they would be suited.   This sounds harsh?  Elitist?   Again, no.  What's a positive evil is to have upper-middle-class and upper-class college administrators and professors living very posh lifestyles based on very little productive work because they succeeded in scamming lower-class and lower-middle-class kids and their parents into borrowing a pile of money (that they'll likely never be able to pay back) in order to sell them a degree that might as well be Greek sovereign debt.   How many kids come out of college or graduate school for that matter, $100,000 or $150,000 in debt, after wasting 4-7 years that they could have used to learn a useful trade?   Do you think they would be better off having worked those years, learned how to be a master carpenter or electrician, and then take that $100,000 and open a small business?   Do you think they'd be happier?

P.S.  Oh, by the way, they have a name for what this "company" is doing.  It's called conspiracy to commit fraud, and it's a crime.  Could a good lawyer frame a RICO suit against the company as a class action on behalf of kids who don't cheat, but whose degrees are devalued because of the culture of cheating that surrounds them?   Call me.  

Birthdays Today

Good birthdays today.   First, we have George S. Kaufman, born in 1889, who with Moss Hart wrote probably the greatest American Broadway comedy, You Can't Take It with You, which was made into a Capra movie in 1938 starring Lionel Barrymore, Jimmy Stewart, and Jean Arthur.   Here's a beautiful scene where Barrymore is questioning Arthur about her love for Stewart and Barrymore remembers his love for his long-deceased wife and why he could never leave the house they lived in:



Also born today, in 1908, was Burgess Meredith, a great character actor, who younger folk will only know as the crusty old trainer in the Rocky movies.  Here he is as a younger man, starring in his first big role as the "smart" brother in 1939's classic of the Steinbeck novel, Of Mice and Men:



Finally, today is the birthday of the great jazz singer and pianist, Diana Krall, born in 1964.  Here she is, singing one of my favorites, "Fly Me to the Moon":

Man, that's good stuff.  They don't write them like that anymore, or sing them like that.

Girl Tuesday - Tuesday Weld

A minor starlet of the 1960s, but right in the wheelhouse of my burgeoning awareness of girls as a young boy, at least girls who appeared in Steve McQueen and Elvis Presley movies.   And, since it's Tuesday, it was inevitable: