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November 10, 1775—November 10, 2011
Happy Birthday to the United States Marine Corps
Streamer for the Presidential Unit Citation as Carried on the USMC Battle Color
236 Years Young Today—Still Going Strong
Here’s yet another reason to go back and read George Orwell’s great essay on sport:
Bedlam erupts on Penn State campus
STATE COLLEGE - Happy Valley was in bedlam early today as angry, chanting students ran amok in a bizarre climax to an unforgettable day that ended with the unthinkable: the firing of football legend Joe Paterno.
Chanting "Joe Pa-ter-no!" and "One More Game!" students raced to the stately Old Main administration building to express their anger that the winningest coach in major-college football history was out - fallout from the child-sex scandal involving his former top assistant, Jerry Sandusky.
More than 1,000 students rioted and rallied at Old Main and on frat-house-lined Beaver Avenue. Riot cops, fire trucks and ambulances were on hand after midnight, amid reports that tear gas was being used to disperse the crowd.
Demonstrators overturned a TV news van, toppled street lights, shook stop signs and threw toilet paper. From rooftops and in the streets, they yelled "F--- Sandusky!" and "We Want JoePa!"
Bear in mind that these students, so called, are rioting over football. Even Occupy Wall Street has a more respectable list of grievences than that.
You know what I want? For colleges and universities to stop acting like sports franchises and start behaving like institutions of higher learning. At a time when the value of a college education is being devalued at a rapid rate even as college costs soar, is that really too much to ask?
Interesting story here: Migrants blamed amid Greek debt crisis
Illegal immigrants who have swamped Greece's borders are accused of exacerbating the financial crisis that now threatens to infect other eurozone nations.
The annual cost of sustaining this immigrant population—in terms of healthcare, crime and impact on legitimate businesses—is estimated at 6 billion euros, says the president of the Athens Chamber of Commerce, Constantine Michalos.
So could the eurozone crisis be curbed by cracking down on illegal immigrants? Possibly, but it’s kind of hard to envision how “European Union” and ‘border controls” go together.
Far-seeing critics warned long ago that the attempt to unify Europe would intensify rather than reduce feelings of nationalism. Now that the money has run out, their prophecy seems prescient indeed.
With last night’s egregious debate performance, Texas Governor Rick Perry put paid to the idea that he’s ready to be President of the United States. While it’s no doubt true that one’s performance in debates is not necessarily a pointer to one’s general fitness for office, Perry’s consistently poor performance has been disquieting. His inability to remember the third of the three federal agencies that he would abolish if he became president was painful to behold. This isn’t a matter of one dumb gaffe—it’s a pattern of verbal ineptitude. Too bad, because the GOP would have benefitted from the presence of a strong conservative candidate with executive political experience and a powerful stage presence. But Rick Perry just doesn’t pack the gear.
I actually don’t blame President Obama for his administration’s attempt to impose a fifteen-cent tax on fresh Christmas trees. The idea apparently originated somewhere in the depths of the Department of Agriculture. Even this White House, notable for its cluelessness, realized that the optics of the proposed tax were bad and promptly quashed it.
But still…but still… Imagine this happening on the halcyon days of the Reagan presidency. The Gipper would have crushed the Christmas tree tax under his heel like a malignant serpent. He’d have relished the opportunity to underline his oft-repeated point that government is the problem, not the solution. But Obama? He’s the champion of big government. Thus he and his people look shamefaced and embarrassed even though they’re doing the same thing.
It may or may not be fair, but I believe that growing sexual harassment scandal spells the end of Herman Cain's quest for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. It’s no longer a question of anonymous sniping—his accusers have names and faces. It’s a full-blown sex scandal now, and already it’s sapping the vitality of the candidate and his campaign.
True or not, the multiple allegations of sexual harassment and “inappropriate behavior” that have been lodged against Cain are going to give GOP primary voters pause. No matter how attractive they might find the candidate and his message, their desire to defeat Barack Obama in 2012 is stronger. Will they be willing to support a standard bearer who is being coursed at the heels by a pack of ugly sexual harassment charges? Hardly. These sexual harassment charges constitute a millstone around Herman Cain’s neck, the weight of which is bound to sink him. That the charges may not be true matters not at all.
“Life is unfair,” JFK once remarked. He never said a truer word.
One of the most pernicious myths of the modern age is the belief that altruism is morally superior to the profit motive. Perhaps the most dangerous thing about this claim is its plausibility. That altruism, selflessness, call it what you will, is superior to self-serving behavior seems obvious. And the moral arguments in favor of altruism take account of everything—except the facts of human nature. Dr. Johnson had it right when he remarked that a man is never more innocently employed than when he is in pursuit of money. How so? Because self-interest disinclines a man to meddle in the affairs of others.
For the altruist, however, his heroic selflessness constitutes a license to meddle—meddle endlessly. Human nature being what it is, altruism is usually paraded as a pretext to bully, to dominate, to dictate—and does so in a way that leaves one’s sense of moral superiority intact. People like that are, if you like, ideological altruists. Fort them, altruism is a dogma, not a virtue. And whatever miseries the altruist inflicts on his fellow human beings, it’s for their own good. Ideological altruism is the original and still the most effective self-esteem program.
Of course there are a very few people—let’s call them saints—who are genuinely altruistic in the pure, spiritual sense of the term. One thinks of Mother Theresa. But most people who profess altruism are imperfect specimens of the breed. How, for example, can a husband and father practice altruism when there are groceries to buy, tuition to pay, the mortgage is coming due and his wife is pregnant with their third child? He has more important—or at least more immediate—things on his mind than “social injustice” etc. “Charity begins at home” has become a cliché precisely because it’s inescapably true for almost everybody.
Generally speaking, therefore, the ideological altruist is a person without ties to country, home, family, friends. In place of these stand various abstractions: “society,” “minorities,” “the world community,” “the environment” and so on. Like the vegan, whose eccentric diet cuts him off from normal human society, the altruist’s profession of selflessness estranges him from individual human beings and actual human institutions. He comes to regard them merely as the objects of his care, concern and criticism.
As for the pursuit of narrow self-interest—or, to put it more precisely—the pursuit of interests limited to one’s self, one’s family and one’s locality—charity begins at home, but it doesn’t end there. Home, family, community—these things nurture the virtue of charity in a way that ideological altruism never can. You want to live for others? Live for yourself.
When Eric Holder pleads ignorance about what was going on with the Fast and Furious Mexican gun-running operation, I can almost believe him. In his time as Attorney General of the United States, Holder has shown that he’s just as dumb as a box of rocks. (Example: his attempt to get the 9/11 terrorists tried in New York City.)
The effrontery of his testimony today before the Senate Judiciary Committee was extraordinary even if one takes into account that he belongs to one of the most self-regarding administrations in the history of the Republic. “Hey, you expect me to read every frigging memo that crosses my desk?” That, if not in so many words, was his response to suggestions from senators that perhaps he ought to have been paying attention to what was going on.
But do not be concerned, America! Our chief law enforcement official has pledged “to ensure that our shared concerns about Operation Fast and Furious lead to more than headline-grabbing Washington gotcha games and cynical political point scoring.” Translation: “I’m going to do everything I can to limit the political damage stemming from Fast and Furious.”
There are growing calls for Eric Holder to resign. Personally, I hope he sticks around as a continuing embarrassment to Barack Obama.
…does it not seem that there's something wrong with American higher education when an institution like the University of Connecticut has thr audacity to charge charge tens of thousands of dollars for a master's degree in…puppetry?
I quote the following at length for reasons that the discerning reader will begin to understand about seventy-five words in:
A few years ago, Joe Therrien, a graduate of the NYC Teaching Fellows program, was working as a full-time drama teacher at a public elementary school in New York City. Frustrated by huge class sizes, sparse resources and a disorganized bureaucracy, he set off to the University of Connecticut to get an MFA in his passion—puppetry. Three years and $35,000 in student loans later, he emerged with degree in hand, and because puppeteers aren’t exactly in high demand, he went looking for work at his old school. The intervening years had been brutal to the city’s school budgets—down about 14 percent on average since 2007. A virtual hiring freeze has been in place since 2009 in most subject areas, arts included, and spending on art supplies in elementary schools crashed by 73 percent between 2006 and 2009. So even though Joe’s old principal was excited to have him back, she just couldn’t afford to hire a new full-time teacher. Instead, he’s working at his old school as a full-time “substitute”; he writes his own curriculum, holds regular classes and does everything a normal teacher does. “But sub pay is about 50 percent of a full-time salaried position,” he says, “so I’m working for half as much as I did four years ago, before grad school, and I don’t have health insurance…. It’s the best-paying job I could find.”
This heart-wringing story (courtesy of the Nation) is emblematic of the sense of entitlement—not to say narcissism—that fuels the Occupy Wall Street protests. For you guessed it: this frustrated puppeteer is now manning the barricades in New York. Consider the salient facts. (1) Mr. Therrien had a full-time job in the New York City public school system. (2) He quit his job to go to graduate school. (3) In graduate school, he pursued a master of fine arts degree in puppetry. (4) In the process, he accumulated $35,000 in student loan debt. (5) His degree is worthless in the job market. (6) He thinks his problems are all Wall Street’s fault.
The obvious conclusion: Occupy Wall Street is a movement composed of clueless idiots. If it weren’t, the comrades would have laughed the Master Puppeteer out of Zuccotti Park.
