Shannon Love

The Economy Will Default!

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I accidentally DVR’d the President’s speech on Sunday night. I didn’t watch the speech itself, because I don’t watch any speeches these days, but I did catch Brian Williams’s (MSNBC) intro to the speech and it was an eye opener. Here’s my transcription of the intro with Williams’s verbal emphasis bolded:

President Obama has requested air time from the television networks tonight to speak from the East Room of the White House and tell the American people that unless the debt ceiling is raised the US will suffer  incalculable damage and the economy will default. And in keeping with the back and forth nature of what has become a toxic debate in Washington, two minutes after the Presidents finish we will go to the Speaker of the House.

The “economy will default”? What the hell? And since when is the opposition response considered part of a “toxic” debate?

Note also the phrasing that turns the President’s expected assertions into statements of objective fact. He will “tell the American people that…” instead of something like, “he will make his case to the American people that…”

I can’t decide if this scares me, disgusts me or heartens me. It scares me to see how deep the major media are in the tank for the Democrats. It disgusts me that they continue to use public resources to promote their partisan agenda. However, it heartens me to see how incompetently they go about it.

“The economy will default”. Heh.

Maybe I Shouldn’t Have Insulted…

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So, my gut and my right foot have been bothering me since March-ish and over Memorial Day while visiting relatives, I stood up in the hotel and something just popped in my right foot and I said a few choice words. After a couple of weeks, the foot still hurt a bit and my stomach wouldn’t settle down so I went to the doc.

The verdict? My gall bladder was stoning up and I had broken the 3rd, 4th, and 5th metatarsals in my right foot. Crap. So, a week later I’m getting my gall bladder yanked and the foot doc says that while the 3rd metatarsal has healed, he doesn’t think the 4th or 5th will heal on their own and that I will need surgery to put pins in.

Yipee. A summer of two surgeries.

So, yesterday, my left foot began to hurt a little bit and it woke me up hurting worse this morning at 5am. By 8 o’clock it was really aching and my spouse says, “hmmm, sharp pain in joint of big toe? Sounds like a classical presentation of gout.” Unfortunately, my spouse is pretty smart.

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Feed the Body, Feed the Cancer

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[Note: If you or a loved one is currently fighting cancer, you might want to skip this post.]

Whenever I hear someone with cancer talking about fighting the disease by adopting some supposedly super-healthy diet or taking some supplement, I always wince inside because I strongly suspect they are actively harming themselves.

Our intuitive model of fighting disease comes primarily from our experience fighting infectious diseases and the degenerative diseases of aging. In the intuitive model, anything that is good for the body’s cells, tissues and systems, e.g., eating “right”, taking anti-oxidants etc, helps the body to build immune cells and to repair damage caused by infection or life’s wear and tear.

However, cancer isn’t like any other disease.

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Then What is a Driver’s License For?

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Instapundit ask: Why have driver’s licenses at all?

Driver’s licenses began in America back in, IIRC, the 1840s when drivers of large cargo wagons in urban areas were licensed, supposedly to insure that they wouldn’t let the horses and the rig get out of control and plunge thorough crowded city streets. More likely, it was a tool to create a barrier of entry to protect established cartage companies against competition. The cry “it’s for safety” is a powerful economic tool of established concerns.

Supposedly, the government requires automobile drivers to have licenses to demonstrate that they have at least minimal driving skill and understanding of traffic laws. However, I’m not sure that is really the case anymore.

Take this recent story from here in Austin, Tx:

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High-Handed Outrage at Utica

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Abraham Lincoln like to start his Cabinet meetings with a little humor to relax everyone. On  September 22, 1862 he began the Cabinet meeting by reading the following little nugget by the then popular humorist Artemus Ward (spelling in the original.)

High-Handed Outrage at Utica

In the Faul of 1856, I showed my show in Uticky, a trooly grate sitty in the State of New York.
 
The people gave me a cordyal recepshun. The press was loud in her prases.
 
1 day as I was givin a descripshun of my Beests and Snaiks in my usual flowry stile what was my skorn disgust to see a big burly feller walk up to the cage containin my wax figgers of the Lord’s Last Supper, and cease Judas Iscarrot by the feet and drag him out on the ground. He then commenced fur to pound him as hard as he cood.
 
“What under the son are you abowt?” cried I.
 
Sez he, “What did you bring this pussylanermus cuss here fur?” and he hit the wax figger another tremenjis blow on the hed.
 
Sez I, “You egrejus ass, that air’s a wax figger–a representashun of the false ‘Postle.”
 
Sez he, “That’s all very well fur you to say, but I tell you, old man, that Judas Iscarrot can’t show hisself in Utiky with impunerty by a darn site!” with which observashun he kaved in Judassis hed. The young man belonged to 1 of the first famerlies in Utiky. I sood him, and the Joory brawt in a verdick of Arson in the 3d degree.

I have no idea why this story is supposed to be so funny. That in turn tells me that I am missing an important understanding of the culture of the era and the mind of Abraham Lincoln and others of that generation.

Supposedly, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton didn’t get the joke either and grumbled about the waste of time. To placate Stanton, Lincoln hurried along to the real work of the meeting: announcing his intention to finally release the Emancipation Proclamation. Stanton didn’t think that was funny either.

I think that the trivial and/or popular works of an era tell us more about the tenor of the times than do the tiny minority of works in any era that time eventually elevates to canon.

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