Polarization

No, not the kind found on sunglasses. Another article has been written about yet another survey -- this one is the largest to date -- identifiying how very lefty are America's institutions of higher learning.

College faculties, long assumed to be a liberal bastion, lean further to the left than even the most conspiratorial conservatives might have imagined, a new study says.

By their own description, 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative, says the study being published this week. The imbalance is almost as striking in partisan terms, with 50 percent of the faculty members surveyed identifying themselves as Democrats and 11 percent as Republicans.

Nope. No, self-reinforcing bias there. Well, I guess we can all go home now...

I beat on this drum a lot because of what I and my friends experienced in university and because I want to expose the fundamental lie about diversity that lies at the heart of the enterprise.

While the schools maintain that their mission is to teach each individual to think for themselves by exposing them to the nebulous world of diversity, my experience taught me that most schools (Hampden-Sydney excepted) want to graduate diverse people, and by that they mean highly liberal people in gay, straight, brown, white and black wrappers.

Is it any wonder then that the Post also has a second, unrelated,article that partisan polarization is increasing geographically too?

They didn't make the connection, but I will: keep turning out ever more liberal people from your institutions of higher education and you will have ever more polarized individuals, families, work places, neighborhoods, states and regions.

As much as the eco-commies annoy me with their relentless pessimism and silly utopian wonderlands, I have to appreciate their sense of beauty. This is the Muir woods, just across the bay from San Francisco on an intensely beautiful day.
Bourgeois

See the afterburner? Some poor guy has to hold the fabric surrounding the flame away from it. That's another argument for a college education.
Bourgeois

From my recent trip to California's wine country and San Francisco. No one told me that a hot air balloon is a wicker basket with a small afterburner attached to it.
Bourgeois

Hizbullah, Bankruptcy and Michael Jackson

Recognizing Hizbullah as a force in Lebanese politics is a statement of the obvious. But to state as obvious, as the Washington Post Express did yesterday, that the 500k people who came out in Beirut to support Hizbullah and Syria's presence in Lebanon were there without any prodding from the Syrian intelligence services, local imams connected with such and (probably) imported thugs who intimidated people into attending the rally is to miss the obvious.

Bankruptcy
I may be one of the few Righties to find the bankruptcy law terrible, but I do. It is not that I think that people should be able to shirk their duties toward creditors, but that in reality very, very few people file bankruptcy, and of those who do, even fewer do it as a first resort. Further, credit card companies and hospitals are both responsible for some of the credit problems of their customers.

For credit card companies, it is their policy of charging late fees and crzy interest rates on deliquent accounts (accounts that, btw, are more easily cleared by not paying the credit card companies and dealing with the debt collection agencies to whom the accounts are sold once payment stops) that pushes some people into bankruptcy. Remember, credit card companies borrow money to fund their credit portfolios at rates substantially below their lending rates. Do you really think that someone with a balance of $5000 is a larger credit risk (from the point of view of capital at risk) than someone with a mortgage of $300,000? Even granting that the former debt has no collateral and the latter does, the investor has more money at risk in the latter example for a longer period of time. Yet the credit card might charge 14.99%, while the mortgage might be between 6-8%, depending on credit. Is the credit risk between the two debtors really 6% (600 basis points!)? No, not by a mile.

For hospitals, it is their policy of charging different rates to the insured and uninsured for the same procedures and the general lack of financial saavy at the payment departments that make me cold towards their "poor, poor, pitiful me" attitudes.

I doubt that bankruptcy of customers is a substantial contributing factor to the operational performance of almost all hospitals and credit card companies. Simplifying insurance reimbursement procedures would free more operating capital than pursuing deadbeats.

Michael Jackson
He didn't do it. He's weird, but that doesn't make him guilty. I changed my mind after reading that Leno called the cops on the kid well before Michael became his mark because Leno believed that the kid was on the hunt for someone famous to bilk for money. Also, after the kid's brother went on record admitting that he lied in another trial in which the family was trying to get money from a department store and that he contradicted his own account of the alleged molestations, it is hard for me to put any credence in the kid's account.

Vindication?

Is Bush Right?

In countries where President George Bush and his policies are deeply unpopular, online commentators are starting to think the unthinkable.

"Could George W. Bush Be Right?" asked Claus Christian Malzahn in the German newsweekly Der Spiegel. Essayist Guy Sorman asked last month in the Paris daily Le Figaro (by subscription), "And If Bush Was Right?" In Canada, anti-war columnist Richard Gwyn of the Toronto Star answered: "It is time to set down in type the most difficult sentence in the English language. That sentence is short and simple. It is this: Bush was right."

The tipping point came last week when Lebanon's pro-Syrian government fell. The international online media, much of which had been critical of Bush during his first term, had to acknowledge democratic developments on the American president's watch. Many commentators also cited free elections in Afghanistan last fall, Palestinian elections in early January followed by the Jan. 30 Iraq elections. Then came local elections in Saudi Arabia and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's announcement of constitutional changes allowing his opposition to challenge him electorally.

I think it's too early to write the obit on Middle Eastern autocracy, but the old man is clearly not in good health. Is Bush for the Mid-East what Reagan was for the Eastern Bloc?

Radical

More Muslims like this are needed to challenge the Orthodox interpretation of Islamic tenants. For at least a century, the West has critically engaged in this practice without losing Christianity or Judaism to godless atheism. In some communities the collective questioning and challenging of dogma led to schisms, but in other places it deepened the faith. Islam needs this activity too.

Here is what the brother of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood thinks...

In another book, "The Veil," Banna argued that head coverings were simply a continuation of tribal traditions that existed before the birth of Islam 1,400 years ago and were not mandated by the Koran.

Banna's reference to Koranic verses underscores the foundation of his approach to Islamic reform. He believes that much of the commentary attributed to the prophet Muhammad, which became the basis for Islamic teaching, known collectively as the Sunnah, was invented and even falsified in the earliest centuries of Islam by self-styled jurists. The jurists served the caliphs who ruled in the Middle East and were interested in maintaining the status quo. These teachings stray from the Koran, Banna asserts.

Taxing Consumption

This article does not explain the benefits of a consumption tax, but is worth reading to get a feel for the coming battle lines.

Why is it that Lefties can't see new possibilities with open eyes, rather than through class warfare lenses?