FOX and Friends

I’ll be on Fox and Friends this morning (around 8.50 am) to talk about the absurd tag bans.

Think of the Children

An elementary school in Colorado Springs has banned tag on its playground after some of the children claimed — imagine this — that they were being harassed by other children. “It causes a lot of conflict on the playground,” explained Cindy Fesgen, assistant principal of the Discovery Canyon Campus school.

Finally, another school has stepped up to the plate. Rather than dealing with students as pesky individuals, admnistrators have prohibited all children from participating in a game that allows them to run around and get some exercise. Clearly, it’s time better utilized for break-out sessions on conflict resolution.

A trend, sadly. I deal with it in my book.

In Leo We Trust

A sacrilegious question, perhaps, (now that Leo’s movie is out and all) but thankfully some are still asking: Is there really scientific consensus that anthropogenic global warming is leading us towards unmitigated devastation? Via Daily Tech, a new study finds that perhaps there is no such harmony of opinion.

Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers “implicit” endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no “consensus”

As Michael Asher points out, readers should remember that the “watered-down” definition of what consensus means in this study. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the “primary” cause of warming, but it doesn’t require any belief or support for “catastrophic” global warming. Only one paper published from 2004 to February 2007 makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.

This comes on the heels of research by Stephen Schwartz of Brookhaven National Lab, which concludes Earth’s climate is only about one-third as sensitive to carbon dioxide as the IPCC assumes. Schwartz study preprint here. From Planet Gore:

Indeed, if Schwartz’s results are correct, that alone would be enough to overturn in one fell swoop the IPCC’s scientific “consensus”, the environmentalists’ climate hysteria, and the political pretext for the energy-restriction policies that have become so popular with the world’s environmental regulators, elected officials, and corporations. The question is, will anyone in the mainstream media notice?

Answer: No. Or not until Leo DiCaprio says so.

More like China

New mandated software in China aims to help teenagers jonesing for video games to quit. The government requires gaming companies to install anti-addiction software on their games to stop teens from playing too long. After a couple of hours of playing a warning will flash onto the screen telling you it’s time to get some exercise (I kid you not). And if you ignore the warning, the total points you’ve won in the past three hours will be halved. After five hours of uninterrupted play you lose all your points.

Why do I think some teenage is going figure out how to get around this?

“What I want to say is we need this for our company,” says Jackie Zhuge, spokesman for China’s biggest online gaming company, Shanda Interactive Entertainment. “It’s social responsibility we have to take.”

As the software is mandated, Shanda is doing more than being socially responsible, its going to be making a ton of money. I just wonder how long it will take from some “socially responsible” Senator to bring us similar legislation.

Passive nonsense

Andrew Stuttaford writes that “passive smoke” campaigns have “very little to do with healthcare and a great deal to do with bossiness, moral preening, and, let’s face it, neurosis.” I couldn’t agree more.

In the United States some are already basking in the state-induced bossiness. This women in Sweden got a taste.

The Environmental Court in Växjö has banned a woman from smoking in her own garden, Sydsvenkan reports. The 49-year-old single mother is enraged by the decision but says that she will obey the ruling to avoid having to pay a fine. …

The lawyer initially requested his neighbour to pay 15,000 kronor ($2,000) to compensate for his suffering, along with an additional 2,000 kronor for each time she lit a fresh cigarette. While the court did not grant him this wish, the woman is not willing to take any chances.

Wow, that would make it 40,000 bucks a pack — nearly as much as NYC cigarette prices.

In any event, delegates took meticulous notes and drew a scale diagram of the two gardens. After reviewing all the data, the court ruled most of the woman’s garden was, henceforth, smoke free.

Will it ever end?

Atlanta is now investgating whether baggy pants that reveal boxer shorts or thongs could be considered indecent under a proposed amendment. The amendment, sponsored by city councilman C.T. Martin, states that sagging pants are an “epidemic” that is becoming a “major concern” around the country.

“Little children see it and want to adopt it, thinking it’s the in thing,” Martin said Wednesday. “I don’t want young people thinking that half-dressing is the way to go. I want them to think about their future.”

With one of the highest murder rates in the nation, doesn’t Atlanta have more vital problems on its plate?

Paying kids to learn

My column today discusses the idea of providing kids with economic incentive to stay in school and improve their grades.

Roland Fryer, a young Harvard University professor who studies racial inequality in American schools, has been arguing that school systems should provide cash incentives to students to improve their grades and stay in school.

New York has bitten on the idea. As has Tucson. The USA Today editorial board has endorsed investigating such a policy further.

At first glance, even second glance, this seems like a terrible idea. Motives to learn should be pure and intrinsic. And if learning for the sake of learning doesn’t click, the correlation between education and income ought to be sufficient motivation. Won’t paying for grades inevitably lead to kids demanding money for, say, taking out the garbage?

Perhaps. But a careful look at the new pay plans suggests that in the right circumstances, they’re not so crazy after all.

Such experimentation with monetary enticement has not yet been tested in a controlled environment, so there is no way of knowing if it would work, but there is a movement afoot to find out. As I note in my column, there are plenty of people who find the idea morally repulsive. Not I.

The question, I suppose, can be framed in a different way. Are we more concerned with outcome or process? What if students lack “intrinsic motivation”? Isn’t the most important thing keeping them in school? Perhaps a love of learning will kick in later. Isn’t it at least worth a small-scale experiment to see?

Who isn’t at fault for global warming?

A technical university in Norway claims that a motorist would have to drive 13,000 kilometers in a car to emit as much CO2 as a moose does in a year through burping.

The poor old Scandinavian moose is now being blamed for climate change, with researchers in Norway claiming that a grown moose can produce 2,100 kilos of methane a year — equivalent to the CO2 output resulting from a 13,000 kilometer car journey.

My question is no longer who or what is to blame for climate change*. My question is who can I not blame? It seems easier.

*Answer: Everything and everyone except, you know, the sun.

Ron Paul, 80s TV Star

For those of you too young to remember, Morton Downey Jr. was a chain-smoking telelvision host, who presided over much mayhem — physical and intellectual — on his syndicated TV show. Liberals were often called “pabulum pukers” but the real fun lay in the violence and angry crowds.

Turns out presidential candidate Ron Paul once appeared. I love the kicker.

Man: OK, you’re solution on stopping the drug trade is, is just give up. Give up the war on drugs. I say zero tolerance, we use the military for aid, we stop it from getting in the country and we cut it off at the source. Why, why give up the moral fight?

Congressman Paul:The only thing I give up on is a tyrannical approach to solving a social and medical problem and we endorse an idea of altruism and self-responsibility. Family, friends and churches solve problems rather than saying some monolithic government is going to make you take care of yourself. It’s a preposterous notion and it never worked and it never will. The government can’t make you a better person it can’t make you follow good habits. Why don’t they put you on a diet? You’re a little overweight.

(H/T National Taxpayers Union)

World’s Strangest Laws

An article in Times UK lists some of the world’s strangest laws. “Did you know it’s illegal in France to name a pig Napoleon?” I’m a little skeptical about some of these (for instance, No. 5 below misstates the law: it’s “pet guardians” not “pet minders” — yes, my book has a important subchapter on pet nannyism) but the list is fun nonetheless.

Incidentally, I believe No. 4 is wholly reasonable.

Here’s a rundown of the American weirdness:

20. In Alabama, it is illegal for a driver to be blindfolded while driving a vehicle.

19. In Ohio, it is against state law to get a fish drunk.

18. Royal Navy ships that enter the Port of London must provide a barrel of rum to the Constable of the Tower of London.

15. In Miami, Florida, it is illegal to skateboard in a police station.

9. In Florida, unmarried women who parachute on Sundays can be jailed.

8. In Kentucky, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon more than six-feet long.

5. In Boulder, Colorado, it is illegal to kill a bird within the city limits and also to “own” a pet – the town’s citizens, legally speaking, are merely “pet minders”.

4. In Vermont, women must obtain written permission from their husbands to wear false teeth.

No way out of this one …

So David Sirota posts a defense, or more accurately a 1,600-word justification, for a liberal candidate’s crass hypocrisy*. It’s the same tired playbook partisans always use to sidestep intellectual honesty.

The excuse is boiled down to this: Edwards cares. So he’s not so bad. Mitt Romney’s worse because he changed his mind on abortion (just like Al Gore, incidentally, changed his mind on abortion. I guess it’s OK to change your mind depending on which direction the flip flops.)

Thus, Edwards’ greed is a “manufactured” scandal. I truly hope the few dozen people who support Edwards and his counterproductive ideas can do better in defending him. Let’s concede, again, for argument’s sake, all the Republican candidates are the spawn of Satan. How does that excuse Edwards? It doesn’t. He’s a hypocrite, not to mention a lightweight. I look forward to his exit from this race.

Now, let’s remember, only days earlier, the same progressive was hyping a concocted “scandal” over Republican Bob Schaffer, for which he admitted he had not a shred of proof and not a single reputable person said had any merit.

That’s quite a display of consistency. I guess activists have their own set of rules.
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*Reminder:

1. Edwards invested $15 million in a hedge fund.
2. Those tied to this hedge fund have threatened to foreclose on New Orleans home owners.
3. Hedge fund pays Edwards $500,000 as an adviser.
4. Hedge Fund executives give more than $150,000 to Edwards’ campaign.

Here’s what John Edwards had to say recently:

“While Washington turns a blind eye, irresponsible lenders are pulling a fast one on hard-working homeowners,'’ Mr. Edwards said a few days later. … It’s time to put an end to the shameful lending practices that are compromising our strength as a nation.”
– April 4, 2007, in Davenport, Iowa

“I said, ‘This is not okay that this is happening.’ I don’t know how many cases there are . . . but the right thing is to go back and fix this.”
– May 11, 2007, to the Washington Post, explaining his reaction when he found out that Green Tree had foreclosed on Katrina victims

(Cross-posted at Gang of Four.)

Two Americas: His and Ours

Populist non-candidate John Edwards has little appeal to anyone who believes in free markets. But his spectacular hypocrisy is something to behold for all of us. Today, he’s been exposed as a fraud once more.

As a presidential candidate, Democrat John Edwards has regularly attacked subprime lenders, particularly those that have filed foreclosure suits against victims of Hurricane Katrina. But as an investor, Mr. Edwards has ties to lenders foreclosing on Katrina victims.

Not just “ties.” This is about millions of dollars. I’m at a disadvantage, of course, as I’m on the wrong side of Two Americas. But here’s a rundown:

     1. Edwards invested $15 million in a hedge fund.

     2. Those tied to this hedge fund have threatened to foreclose on New Orleans home owners.

     3. Hedge fund pays Edwards $500,000 as an adviser.

     4. Hedge Fund executives give more than $150,000 to Edwards’ campaign.

Now, before we have the customary attacks on the media (can you imagine? the imperialist New York Post and Wall Street Journal broke these stories!) to defend this guy – Edwards admitted it happened, “I will not have my family’s money involved in these firms that are foreclosing on people in New Orleans,” he said while on the campaign trial in Des Moines, Iowa.

Obviously, Edwards will be forgiven. He cares. He cares about children. He hurts for the poor. His connections to this company were also reported in May. How much does he care?

Fortunately, Edwards’ faux populism doesn’t (yet) resonate in this country.

(Cross-posted at Gang of Four)

Our very own fiefdom

My column today investigates the underhanded tactics used by the Denver City Council to deny citizens the opportunity to vote on an initiative that would make possession of pot the “lowest law-enforcement priority” in the city.

Council President Michael Hancock wants the council members to vote “yes” on the initiative, though they oppose it in principle, and wait for a court to shoot it down. Denver DA, Mitch Morrissey actually counseled the council to “refuse to put it on the ballot and have (Citizens for a Safer Denver) take it to court …” In other words, to ignore the law.

It’s somewhat, I don’t know … counterintuitive to hear a district attorney advise the council to ignore the law.

As a proponent of legalization, I would strongly urge the distinguished council members to follow Hancock’s advice. We can then look forward to my incessant praise of council members for their support of marijuana legalization.

We can also look forward to watching them lose the legal battle. Then, imagine if you can, a new poll claiming that Denverites would have voted down the marijuana initiative anyway.

Ouch.

That would probably hurt.

If the Denver City Council showed as much zeal and creativity in all their endevours as they do attempting to deny citizens the right to petition, we’d be without problems.

The political question of divorce — oh, and strippers (for ratings)

My Denver Post column today comments on the “morality” question some Republican candidates will be wrestling with as they vie for the immeasurably important Evangelical vote. I spoke with a public policy expert at Focus on the Family. A gracious and super intelligent guy, who, in his own soothing way, condemned me to burn in Hades.

Perhaps I deserve it for lines like: “If you haven’t lost a couple of days to alcohol-induced blackouts, a stripper and an empty wallet, you simply haven’t lived.” But do those who have been part of a divorce or engaged in some legal hobby like, say, visiting a strip club, deserve the same fate?

“It’s part of his character, obviously. People who sit in judgment of others have a duty to be above reproach,” explains Tom Minnery, senior vice president of government and public policy for Focus on the Family - rather unsurprisingly.

If there is anyone above reproach, I believe He probably took earthly leave of us approximately 2,000 years ago.

What took me by surprise was just how immoral Focus folks view divorce. Jesus apparently, when asked if he allowed “divorce for any cause,” claimed that he ”who divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another woman commits adultery” (Matthew 19:3). A debate about how to properly apply this statement in the Baptist and Evangelical community was discussed in detail by David Instone-Brewer in Wall Street Journal a couple of months back.

One may wonder how Evangelicals explain the high divorce rates in their own community? Well, step one is to dismiss it. Here is a Focus piece on “Divorce and Cohabitation,” which works hard to reject statistics claiming that divorce rates among people who identified themselves as Christian in Southern Bible Belt states had higher divorce rates than people with no religious affiliation.

A Russell Sage Foundation study also found that evangelicals “who attend religious services weekly,” do pretty well when compared with average Americans when it comes to divorce and cohabitation. But those who are only nominally Protestant in the Bible Belt – most — do no better than the craven immoral horde in Blue States.

In a diverse nation like our, putting your finger on divorce rates is tough on many levels. Here is list of state by state divorce rates from the CDC. The stats all over the place, with little concern for geography. The District of Columbia, for instance, has a very low 2.4 divorce rate. This is likely to do more with a very low 5.1 percent marriage rate than any religious affiliation — or lack of one.

Having indulged in cohabitation I can’t say I’m very sorry or that I feel particularly immoral. As a son of divorced parents, I don’t believe mom and dad have sinned. Yet, in certain places, the divorce question will be an immense problem for a serial husband like Rudy to overcome.

(Cross-posted at Huffington Post)

There’s also good news

Radio in these parts is littered with (Lou) Dobbsian cherrypickers of negative economic news. I thought I’d write a couple of columns about some of the more promising economic and technological advancements going on: starting with nanotechnology. 

I was fascinated to learn about the intern at the Colorado Nanotech Alliance, who sat down at the local Starbucks and identified 24 uses for nanotech in the life of an average person. From our stain-resistant shirts to our super light carbon nanotube tennis rackets to our nano-improved water-repellent windshields, it’s everywhere. 

We (and by “we” I mean folks a lot smarter than I) can now manipulate atoms on a micro level. This process can give a common product incredible strength or flexibility, among many other attributes.

“The United States is leading the world in nanotech, absolutely,” says (Debbie)Woodward. “Colorado understands how important this technology is. There are huge clusters of nanotech companies here in the state - we have about 100. But what is also really important is the excellent major university and labs we have. … Because of it, Colorado consistently leads in innovation potential.”

It’d be educational if local radio hosts interviewed people like Debbie Woodward, executive director of Colorado Nanotech Alliance, once in a while, rather than yet another conspiracy monger, yammering on about the North American Union and the end of the world as we know it. More than likely, good news just doesn’t produce the kinds of ratings that scary, anger-inducing news does. Oh well.

Good news for Tom Tancredo — and us

Good news for Tom Tancredo. Not only did he come in 4th place at the useless Ames straw poll, but Colorado’s leading “progressive” author, David Sirota (who’s still in the midst of some imaginary debate with me on taxes) is a “law-and-order” liberal!*So I assume, if Sirota’s position is consistent, this means he will be calling on Colorado legislators to apprehend all illegal aliens in Colorado.** The law is the law, after all. Right? Or is it only law-and-order when we go after corporations?

Now, if conservatives are hypocrites because they only focus on one end of law enforcement, wouldn’t logic dictate that Sirota is a hypocrite for focusing only on the other end? *** & ****  Then again, perhaps together, Tancredo and Sirota can work hand in hand to create on feel-good statist police state (a mix of what DailyKossaks laughably call the center and Tancredo calls America).

Stay tuned for a distortion of everything above.

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*Co-opting conservative phraseology for your own purposes. How creative!

**The answer, may or may not, have something to do with how Republicans cause illegal immigration, because, well, all 100 million or so hate humanity and jones for Southern-style slavery. Just a guess. But still, the law is the law, right?

***As for me, I won’t “call on” anyone to do anything. Again, I only write for myself. So please, David, feel free not to stay tuned. My columns space is for more useful things: writing about ugly nudity, iPhones fundamentalists and kids forced to attend failing government schools.

****Both corporate tax shakedowns and illegal immigration raids would be rather low on my law-enforcement priority list. That doesn’t mean breaking the law is acceptable. It means we have to prioritize. So searching for terrorist cells and murders would be the sort of thing that is on the top … lapsed taxes, jaywalking, things like that, on the very bottom.

Immense Waste of Time

Join dozens of Coloradoans and listen to Socialist Muppet Jay Marvin interview David Sirota, who not only misrepresents* my positions, but rails against 35 years of economic growth, capitalism and reality.

Sirota claims that government agencies are more efficient than private industry, because, get this, government is a “small d” democratic organization. We all have a say. Geez, hundreds of millions of consumers who make decisions every minute beg to differ. The difference is called coercion. Government, necessary in certain instances, provides no choices. The free market, based on voluntary transactions, offers us almost unlimited choices. That’s why free markets have provided the greatest prosperity known to man, and Sirota’s model created East Germany.

Those are the basics. So I can’t believe this guy actually writes about economics. It would be nice if he pointed to single PhD economist who backs up any of his harebrained theories. Because debating someone who references himself as the source of fact, is not a person worth debating.

As for hypocrite Jay Marvin, he says he doesn’t care for “big business.” Who pays him? I wonder who he thinks built the building he sits in? Or the technology he uses to reach his listener? Or the food he eats? Or the medicine that may save his life one day? Or car he drives to work? (Or does he ride a bicycle?) And so on …

I suppose, unlike real journalists — whose work is vetted by editors and mistakes corrected — partisan activists like Sirota and Marvin can walk through life without ever being challenged. Though I must say, as a columnist who takes numerous positions outside the conservative mainstream, being accused of ideological “fundamentalism” by two lock-stepping lefties is certainly worth a giggle.

*By “misrepresents” I mean he “makes it up.”

(Cross-posted with Gang of Four.)

Whoops!

Are we still permitted to discuss the issue of global warming? Or have Al Gore and Robert Kennedy — members of the party of tolerance — ended all discussion with the flat-Earthers*?

In any event, a pretty significant story broke recently that’s been virtually ignored by mainstream media. NASA** has corrected its historical figures on warming temperatures. A dramatic correction that deserves, at the very least, some discussion. The warmest year on record is now 1934, not 1998, which has been incessantly pointed to as a major indicator of global warming. It’s second. Now 1921 takes third. As Daily Tech reports, “5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II.” From a superb post by Coyote Blog:

Climate scientist Michael Mann (famous for the hockey stick chart) once made the statement that the 1990’s were the warmest decade in a millennia and that “there is a 95 to 99% certainty that 1998 was the hottest year in the last one thousand years.” (By the way, Mann now denies he ever made this claim, though you can watch him say these exact words in the CBC documentary Global Warming: Doomsday Called Off). Well, it turns out, according to the NASA GISS database, that 1998 was not even the hottest year of the last century. This is because many temperatures from recent decades that appeared to show substantial warming have been revised downwards.

What are the ten warmest years on record:

1934

1998

1921

2006

1931

1999

1953

1990

1938

1939

Now, I realize this correction in itself doesn’t disprove the theory of man-made global warming, but if NASA’s numbers were corrected to trend upwards, you better believe we’d all hearing all about it.

(Understanding that my Gang of Four co-blogger David Sirota has probably not taken the time to read all the way to the previous paragraph, I eagerly await his 650,000-word missive taking down the vast, almost unimaginable, cabal of big business/conservative journalists/Oil Barons/SeriousWashingtonPeople who hate this country, hate the poor, hate the environment and want to destroy America.)

*I do my share by living in a “green” home*** — meaning, I’m sweating in the Summer, freezing in the Winter and flushing the toilet 10 times to make it work.
**NASA is not run by Grover Norquist or neoconservatives.
***Not by choice.

(Cross-posted at Gang of Four.)

Why hyphens don’t matter

My Denver Post column today discusses a new census report that claims I’m now a minority.

Now that 50.01 percent of Denver’s population is non-white, I’m finally a minority.

Frankly, not much has changed in my life. My editor is still Irish-American. My wife, she’s three-fourths Italian-American. My boss is an African-American.

A bunch of hyphenated people roam my world. My kids are so ethnically confused, in fact, I’m not sure there’s enough hyphen space to appropriately describe them.

When I asked Colorado’s official demographer why government even queries for racial and ethnic data, she, after mulling it over for a bit, could really only think of one reason: allocation of funding for government programs. As someone who’s self-identified himself as a Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander more than once, I can tell you the census numbers are “soft” data, anyway. And I assume most of us would rather be categorized by our accomplishments and beliefs than geographical area of import or color.

There’s actually a new category called “Two or More.” I asked the demographer to explain it. Could you be half Hispanic, half white? Or a fourth Hispanic and qualify?

“If you are Hispanic and white, then you would be considered white or Hispanic … If you were, however, white and black and you self-identified as white and black, you would be ‘two or more’ …”

Confusing — and completely unnecessary.

Wasn’t the United States about to crumble?

The New York Times reports today that investigators have found what may be a design flaw in the bridge that collapsed Minneapolis a week ago.

The Federal Highway Administration swiftly responded by urging all states to take extra care with how much weight they place on bridges of any design when sending construction crews to work on them. Crews were doing work on the deck of the Interstate 35W bridge here when it gave way, hurling rush-hour traffic into the Mississippi River and killing at least five people.

This, of course, if true, would also mean that the politically motivated panic attacks blaming Bush (who apparently wants bridges to fall on people) were all wrong. Really, any tragedy can now be engaged to scare the holy living hell out of Americans, followed by a call to expand bureaucracies and raise taxes. Reasonable people, I hope, will see that this tragedy had nothing to do with Clinton, Bush or, if this report is true, funding.

Then again, if you believe more taxes and more regulation and more government are the answer to virtually every problem we face — and it seems as if that is a growing default position for many people — it’s easy to see how anything can be transformed into a question of politics.

UPDATE: Sirota goes bananas. I respond. More bananas. I respond again.