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David Warren picks up on a column by Thomas Sowell.
One of my living heroes, the American journalist and economist Thomas Sowell, wrote a column a couple of days ago consisting of “random thoughts” — aphoristic remarks about things as they now are. His points ran from the generality of:
“Perhaps the scariest aspect of our times is how many people think in talking points, rather than in terms of real world consequences.”
To the specificity of:
“Barack Obama seems determined to repeat every disastrous mistake of the 1930s, at home and abroad. He has already repeated Herbert Hoover’s policy of raising taxes on high income earners, FDR’s policy of trying to micro-manage the economy, and Neville Chamberlain’s policy of seeking dialogues with hostile nations while downplaying the dangers they represent.”
Sowell is superb when apothegmatic. The value in such assertions as these — made free of the encumbering apparatus of careful qualification on which he usually depends — is that they light a dark landscape with lightning. They are the pure electric charge of insight.
I love Sowell, because he can “do” desolation without wandering into despair. Reciprocally, he can do hope — the real thing, not the rhetorical posture. A black man, from a fatherless home, raised by an aunt whom he thought was his mother, in rural then urban conditions that would excuse any man for failure, he saw through his circumstances. He dragged himself up, through a machine shop, through the Marines, eventually to great eminence in the academic world, at a time before he could trade on his race. And he continued rising, with the help of honest friends, and by ignoring vilifications. …
Camille Paglia has her column that answers letters.
… At a certain point, however, Obama will face an inescapable administrative crux. Arriving at the White House, he understandably stayed in his comfort zone by bringing old friends and allies with him — a team that had had a fabulous success in devising the hard-as-nails strategy that toppled the Clintons, like crumbling colossi, into yesterday’s news. But these comrades may not have the practical skills or broad perspective to help Obama govern. Like Shakespeare’s Prince Hal ascending the throne, Obama may have to steel his heart and banish Falstaff and the whole frat-house crew.
Obama’s staffing problems are blatant — from that bleating boy of a treasury secretary to what appears to be a total vacuum where a chief of protocol should be. There has been one needless gaffe after another — from the president’s tacky appearance on a late-night comedy show to the kitsch gifts given to the British prime minister, followed by the sweater-clad first lady’s over-familiarity with the queen and culminating in the jaw-dropping spectacle of a president of the United States bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia. Why was protest about the latter indignity confined to conservatives? The silence of the major media was a disgrace. But I attribute that embarrassing incident not to Obama’s sinister or naive appeasement of the Muslim world but to a simple if costly breakdown in basic command of protocol. …
Mark Steyn wishes to be a demographic bore.
As National Review’s in-house demography bore — oh, hang on, the self-deprecating “demography bore” shtick is getting even more boring than just boring on about demography . . . Well, okay, usually I bore on about it, as my detractors have it, in the head-for-the-hills-the-Muzzies-are-coming sense. So, just for a change, here’s the Subprime Bailout Variations of my same old demographic song.
Take a “toxic asset.” What would improve its current pitiful value? That’s easy: More demand. Less supply. An asset is only an asset as long as there’s a buyer willing to buy it. If you’ve got 50 houses and 100 would-be homeowners, that’s good for property prices. If you’ve got 100 houses and 50 would-be homeowners, that’s not so good.
Which is the situation much of the developed world is facing. A bank is a kind of demographic shorthand, by which old people with capital lend to young people with ambition and ideas. Unfortunately, the Western world is running out of young people. Japan, Germany, and Russia are already in net population decline. Fifty percent of Japanese women born in the Seventies are childless. Between 1990 and 2000, the percentage of Spanish women childless at the age of 30 almost doubled, from just over 30 percent to just shy of 60 percent. …
BO’s education secretary, Arne Duncan is caught by David Harsanyi lying about the DC voucher program killed by the dems.
… But the most “fundamentally dishonest” aspect of the affair was Duncan’s feeble argument against the program. First, he strongly intimated that since only 1 percent of children were able to “escape” (and, boy, that’s some admission) from D.C. public schools through this program, it was not worth saving.
So, you may ask, why not allow the 1 percent to turn into 2 percent or 10 percent, instead of scrapping the program? After all, only moments earlier, Duncan claimed that there was no magic reform bullet and it would take a multitude of innovations to fix education.
Then, Duncan, after thrashing the scholarship program and study, emphasized that he was opposed to “pulling kids out of a program” in which they were “learning.” Geez. If they’re learning in this program, why kill it? And if the program was insignificant, as Duncan claimed, why keep these kids in it? Are these students worse off? Or are they just inconveniencing the rich kids?
Duncan can’t be honest, of course. Not when it’s about politics and paybacks to unions who are about as interested in reforming education as teenagers are in calculus. …
Speaking of education, John Stossel examines the universal pre-K scam.
Did you go to preschool? When I was growing up, few kids did. But now there is a new movement that says every child in America should have a chance to start school before kindergarten — at taxpayer expense.
It’s part of President Obama’s massive spending plans. His “stimulus” bill includes an Early Learning Challenge Grant to encourage states to “Develop a cutting-edge plan to raise the quality of your early learning programs”. It’s a popular idea. Sixty-seven percent of Americans favor universal pre-K funded by the government. But I doubt that most Americans have thought it through.
Mia Levi has. She told me, “This whole thing is a scam.”
Levi runs six preschools. I thought she’d favor the program, since she’d collect easy money from the government.
“I don’t want to have to answer to the government,” she said. “Our programs are so far superior.” …
Jennifer Rubin on the ‘Bama Bow.
Abe Greenwald on the failures of the BO tour.
And now Barack Obama’s aid plan for Pakistan falls flat:
U.S. envoys met with Pakistani leaders on Tuesday to ensure that the $7.5 billion that President Obama plans to send their way over the next five years will be used to achieve common goals in the fight against extremism.
But according to a Pakistani newspaper, regional envoy Richard Holbrooke and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen came up empty-handed and received a “rude shock” when a proposal for joint operations against al Qaeda and Taliban forces in the volatile tribal regions was rejected.
It’s a clean sweep. Obama’s proposals have been turned down by every foreign government and international body he’s approached — from Pyongyang to Brussels, and assorted points in between. …
As you’re watching the Masters, The WSJ says try to remember how golf helps you remember.
Millions of golf enthusiasts who will watch the Masters Tournament this weekend have waxed endlessly about the game’s mystical power and its hold on the human mind. A handful of people with Alzheimer’s disease, no longer able to dress or nourish themselves without assistance, are proving them right.
A little after 9 a.m. last week, Wardell Johnston declared he wanted to be left alone. Confused and annoyed by the activities and tasks confronting him, the 87-year-old Alzheimer’s sufferer shut his door at the Silverado Senior Living home in Belmont, Calif.
Just hours later, Mr. Johnston was measuring the uphill, right-to-left break on a 12-foot putt and knocking his ball into the hole. Then the former civil engineer, who played the game regularly as a younger man, ambled over to the driving range. He grabbed a six iron and practiced chipping with the sort of easy, stress-free swing duffers half his age could learn something from.
“I quit,” he said with a cocky grin after each successful shot. Then he deftly cradled another ball with his club, moving it into position for the next stroke. “I haven’t played a lot lately,” he added. “I should, though. I’ve still got all the strokes.”
Anyone who has dealt with people suffering from mid- to late-stage Alzheimer’s knows how difficult it can be to transport someone from fear and confusion to contentment and lucidity. But at Silverado, caregivers have stumbled onto a technique that works nearly every time — a golf outing. …
Scrappleface says people are copying Obama’s bow to King Abdullah.
News Biscuit reports on Isle of Wight man who dies trying to answer his daily 3,000 pieces of spam.
… Police investigating the incident found that the last 438 messages in Mr Spriggs’s sent folder read: ‘Dear Sir, I refer to your esteemed correspondence of the 18th inst. I beg to inform you that the length and girth of my penis is adequate for the requirements of my dear wife. I therefore must regretfully decline your kind invitation. I remain, sir, your humble servant, Arthur Spriggs.’
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