Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
First as farce…then as even more farce:
Samuel Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, tells TIME he’s so outraged by GOP overspending, he’s quitting the party — and he’s the bull’s-eye of its target audience. But he also said he wouldn’t support any cuts in defense, Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid — which, along with debt payments, would put more than two-thirds of the budget off limits.
Crazy story. A young woman at Stanford who had the misfortune to be the daughter of someone who writes for the National Review lived in a co-ed room in a co-op she had chosen to live in. Predictably, the mother freaked and wrote about it in NRO, because what better way to communicate with your children than by humiliating them in front of thousands of strangers? As you would expect, the article was filled with inaccuracies. The parents also stopped paying for the daughter’s tuition (so the daughter took out a loan in order to graduate).
This got picked up by the NYT blog “The Choice”. The daughter wrote into the comments to explain her side and outline the inaccuracies in the NRO piece:
7. This conflict has very little to do with Stanford and gender-neutral housing. Is has everything to do with my parents having a hard time adjusting to the fact that I’m out of the house (I’m the oldest), I’m 3000 miles away, and *especially* that I’m a liberal agnostic while they are conservative Catholics. The NR really should have looked into this situation a little bit before publishing that article.
I can’t believe I’m having to write this in the NYT blog. This is ridiculous.
Now, of course the parents are entitled to their own beliefs about their daughter’s living arrangements. And, since it’s their money, they’re entitled to stop paying her intuition tuition if they so choose.
But why do so many conservatives view their children not as beloved family members but as tools with which to prove their own conservative bona fides? Is this style of parenting something that Edmund Burke recommended or what?
(h/t Rottenchester, who emailed this story to me)
It’s not every day that I read an editorial in a Catholic magazine that I like, but this is good:
The divisive effects of the new American sectarians have not escaped the notice of the Vatican. Their highly partisan political edge has become a matter of concern. That they never demonstrate the same high dudgeon at the compromises, unfulfilled promises and policy disagreements with Republican politicians as with Democratic ones is plain for all to see. It is time to call this one-sided denunciation by its proper name: political partisanship.
[….]Four steps are necessary for the U.S. church to escape the strengthening riptide of sectarian conflict and re-establish trust between universities and the hierarchy. First, the bishops’ discipline about speakers and awards at Catholic institutions should be narrowed to exclude from platforms and awards only those Catholics who explicitly oppose formal Catholic teaching. Second, in politics we must reaffirm the distinction between the authoritative teaching of moral principles and legitimate prudential differences in applying principles to public life. Third, all sides should return to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and Pope Paul VI that in politics there are usually several ways to attain the same goals. Finally, church leaders must promote the primacy of charity among Catholics who advocate different political options. For as the council declared, “The bonds which unite the faithful are mightier than anything which divides them” (“Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,” No. 92).
This is by Jesuits, whom I personally have a soft spot for. I’m no longer able to remember which things my grandfather said they taught him and which things Frank Pembleton said they taught him, but I know they teach people things.
Personally, I would take this editorial a step farther: if a bishop is clearly doing the work of the Republican party, his diocese should lose its tax exempt status.
(via)
Still have not heard of any confirmed cases of anyone “going Galt,” so I thought I would pick up the slack. Here is Tunch quite clearly going Galt on the couch:
Consider this your open thread.
John inspired me to check out the Reason website. I found some Big Hollywood grade stupidity:
Stages of Denial
Take pity on the left as it grapples with the tea party revolt
It’s a perfect example of wingnut writing: from the “we succeeded in pissing off the left” measure of success to a gratuitous discussion of Janeane Garofalo.
For people thinking of getting a Kindle, I can offer this advice after using version 1.0 for about a year. The more you do any of the following, the more you will like the device: read a lot, travel, skim classic reference works (e.g., Shakespeare, Democracy in America, the Origin of Species), surf the blogosphere at random moment; emphatically so if you spend time on the bus.
My pluses list goes like this:
* Public domain works are basically free. Shakespeare, Tocqueville, Machiavelli, the Federalist Papers and about ten more cost me about fourteen bucks total. Now I have them anyywhere I go.
* Unless you play music on it (for battery reasons, don’t) or you are a speed-reading champ, the memory holds as many books as you can ever want or afford.
* The rudimentary internet handles email badly, but otherwise it is great for surfing blogs and making quick purchases from Amazon. The cell-based connection does not drop as long as you stay within Sprint coverage. And it’s free.
* The legibility of the screen is great, much better than the displays on digital devices that do not use e-paper.
* The Kindle discount
The minuses:
* Although you can import PDF’s almost for free, the software chokes on unusual formatting such as figures in a scientific paper. As a professional scientist this is my single biggest beef with the device, so much so that it would be a deal killer if I had not received the Kindle as a gift. Competitive devices like the i-Rex do native PDF support but they don’t have Amazon’s generally excellent Kindle store or a free cellular internet link.
* No hard copies of your books. If Amazon or your account goes belly-up so does your library.
* Some of my favorite authors still have no Kindle edition. If anyone knows David James Duncan, Wally Broecker or (the estate of) Patrick O’Brien, let them know that they will make at least one sale.
* The page advance buttons are annoyingly easy to push no matter how you hold the device.
The version 2.0 Kindle only really addresses the last and least important of my gripes while not improving on much else as far as my needs go.
Today, however, Amazon announced an updated Kindle with a much larger screen (9.7″ rather than 6) that supports native PDF formatting. This is a huge deal that will make the Kindle vastly more useful for working scientists and anyone else who works with PDF files. If not for the steepish list price (eleven shy of $500) my v1.0 kindle would start getting nervous about unfortunate accidents.
I have too much to do, so you are on your own. Post anything relevant in the comments.
BTW- I just checked my paypal account because I was going to order something from Itunes, and I noticed that a couple of you donated and I didn’t know it until just now. Thanks for that.