FAIL

The teacher who ran my middle school chess club (yes, I have ALWAYS been a geek.) got this from a Ft. Wayne major chain's supermarket. I won't say which one, but damn:

I am at once terribly amused and saddened by this.

My Idea for a New Constitutional Amendment

Amendment XXVIII: A minimally informed Congress, being necessary to preserve liberty for its citizens, all employees of this Federal Government, elected to office, duly appointed, or otherwise hired, shall be required to take a fundamental civics class and pass an exam on the functions, powers, and limits of this government, and shall be required to retake and pass the exam on an annual basis. Failure to pass this exam at any time, refusal to adhere by said limits, and otherwise violate oaths of office requires immediate and permanent removal from office and all emoluments therefrom shall be irrevocably denied.

Of course, I'm not being serious, but stuff like this does make you wish there was some sort of minimum threshold of constitutional understanding that rule- and lawmaking government agents of this country maintained:

In what may prove to be her most controversial remarks to date, Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter on Tuesday defended Washington’s efforts to reform the American health care system by telling a talk radio caller, “The Constitution did not cover everything.”

Shea-Porter serves on the House Education and Labor Committee, one of three committees in the House with jurisdiction over health reform.

The Club For Growth had this to say:

Someone should bring to Shea-Porter's attention that things not covered in the Constitution are prohibited, not available. You know, it's that whole "enumerated powers" thing. She should brush up on the document she swore to defend by reading this. She should pay close attention to the 10th Amendment, too.

HT: Mary Katharine Ham

Mood Music Monday

Dear Liberal Friends

Tell me how ObamaCare is gonna be different here, and if the words "hope" or "change" escape your lips, I'm liable to slap you.



If greed gets me better care than this, I'll take greed, thanks.

UPDATED: I thought this video was more entertaining than anything. I shouldn't have been so snide about it, I suppose, but I think the screen shot sort of captures the un-seriousness of it. Been getting some feedback from people who think I'm thinking this is a definitive video proving how bad Canadian health care is. I think of this as a sort of Michael Moore-ish piece for our side, much less than an academic or even serious attack on universal health care.

This, I think, is much more effective in demonstrating the inefficiencies of our neighbors to the Great White North:

Dany Mercado, a leukemia patient from Kitchener, Ontario, is cancer-free after getting a bone marrow transplant at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit.

Told by Canadian doctors in 2007 he couldn't have the procedure there, Mercado's family and doctor appealed to Ontario health officials, who agreed to let him have the transplant in Detroit in January 2008.

The Karmanos Institute is one of several Detroit health facilities that care for Canadians needing services not widely available in Canada.

If you want a movie that more seriously addresses the problems with both the Canadian and, to a lesser extent, American health care systems, I can't recommend this movie enough. It's a great story about life, family, and death.

Mood Music Monday

Heard a god-awful cover of this song (not embeddable) on the way into work this morning. I submit it for MMM for no other reason than to get that morning-ruining teeny-bopper version out of my head.

Anyone know who's responsible for that garbage?

In Defense of the South

I don't really make excuses for my antipathy for a lot of "Southern Heritage." I don't like the way so many still call the Civil War the 'War of Northern Aggression;' or their use of the most offensive euphemism in history--their 'peculiar institution'; and I really can't stand the "libertarian" apologists that think the Confederacy itself was started for anything but keeping a chokehold on the liberty of others--namely, people like me and my family.

But, this is a rather fair rebuke by Michael Lind on some recent attacks on the South:

In a recent Washington Post column, Kathleen Parker quoted Ohio Sen. George Voinovich's assertion that the Republican Party is "being taken over by Southerners" to suggest that the GOP risks becoming a permanent minority party of the old Confederacy. In itself this is a legitimate point that I and many other critics of Republican conservatism have made for years. However, at Mother Jones, the blogger Kevin Drum used Parker's political argument as an excuse for all-too-typical liberal Southern-bashing. According to Drum: "There are, needless to say, plenty of individual Southern whites who are wholly admirable. But taken as a whole, Southern white culture is [redacted]. Jim Webb can pretty it up all he wants, but it's a [redacted]." Drum did the redacting on his own blog post, explaining he'd blacked out the offending text "on the advice of my frontal lobe."

Drum's creepy bigotry becomes clear when other groups are substituted: "There are, needless to say, plenty of individual blacks who are wholly admirable. But taken as a whole, black culture is [redacted]. Barack Obama can pretty it up all he wants, but it's a [redacted]." Or maybe this: "There are, needless to say, plenty of individual Jews who are wholly admirable. But taken as a whole, Jewish culture is [redacted]. The late Irving Howe can pretty it up all he wants, but it's a [redacted]."

I like the first page much better than the second page because it, as many Southern defenses in the past, devolves into a "but look at the blacks! They're crazy too!" defense. However, I share it with you because it's sentiment is right, if delivered somewhat poorly at the end with the "your blacks are as dumb as our rednecks" argumentation. (This resentment is probably because the policy preferences he highlights where blacks agree with conservatives are the exact preferences that ideologically alienate me from both blacks and conservatives. Anti-gay marriage, anti-immigration, etc.)

Anyway, never let it be said that I never said anything in defense of the South on my blog.

Where's George (Orwell)?

I don't usually dig features.

Seriously, I cringe every time I see what I have dubbed "Oprah Moments" on ESPN--some harrowing tale of some amateur or has-been professional athlete--or worse, sick and/or dying kids-- overcoming ridiculous adversity to arrive at some sort of peace in their life. If I wanted to watch stuff like this, I'd watch Lifetime. (Granted, I sit there and watch them as I wait for the second-run of the Yankees highlights that air late in the show. And, predictably, the very-much intended touching moment touches me too, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.)

So, too, would I read Reader's Digest if I wanted to read stories and articles about random happenstance "You'll never guess what happened after Timmy got the cat out of the tree" yarn.

Bah.

I have forsaken television news--save the rarity I'm home to watch the NewsHour (which I unashamedly follow on Twitter)--not only for its general lack of substance, but the choice to air some sort of feel-good filler at some point in the broadcast. Of all the stuff going on in the world, the fact that Jane Hemshaw has been cooking pies down on Main Street for 47 years doesn't rise to the level of making me give a good [gosh darn.]

So all that being said, I LOVED this piece in WaPo today. I loved it because I'm a book reader and, since coming to DC, I am enamored by decentralized autonomous happenings. Yes, I know all about the 'Where's George' dollar tracking--but this is actually spreading ideas around the globe as opposed to "I wonder where that piece of paper is."

[Christal] Groves is a member of BookCrossing, a free-book-tracking Web site where anyone can, as a brochure puts it, "share your books with the world and follow their paths forever more!" Its fans can register a book, add a brief journal entry, then place it in a public spot. The hope is that someone else will pick it up, record their find online and pass it on -- becoming a link in a long chain of serendipitous literary discoveries.

Of course, the first thing I thought of is sharing books on the ideas of liberty, though I think leaving Human Action or An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations around may be counterproductive. (You kinda have to WANT to read those to get through them. And even then, they're a challenge.) I think it would probably be best to start out with Economics in One Lesson or The Road to Serfdom--or, perhaps for the less strictly-libertarian inclined: 1984 or Animal Farm.

Anyway, I thought I'd share the feature with you before I dive back into the dreary news of skyrocketing national debt, a possible war brewing in Zimbabwe, and, worst of all, the Red Sox gaining a game back against my beloved Yankees.

Treat yourself today and pick a up a book.