MICHAEL YON and Herschel Smith both think it’s time to leave Afghanistan, though for different reasons. Well, you can’t fix Afghanistan without fixing Pakistan, and nobody seems to have the stomach for that. At least, nobody in charge.
TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: “Rumsfeld isn’t just the Secretary of Defense. He’s the reincarnation of Perry White, giving journalists hell for not doing their jobs.” For which they inevitably sought revenge.
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NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: After Feds In Hollywood-Allied Administration Jail Founder, Megaupload Drops Suit Against Universal.
SEVERING TIES: Political consultants quickly fire arrested man.
A Des Moines man arrested Friday on charges he attempted to illegally use the identity of Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz had campaigned for President Barack Obama during the 2008 election cycle.
In addition, Zach Edwards, 29, was employed until Friday by a local political consulting firm well connected to Iowa Democrats.
Edwards was arrested on charges alleging he fraudulently used or attempted to use the identity of Schultz, a Republican, or Schultz’s brother, Thomas, with the intent to obtain a benefit. The alleged scheme was intended to falsely implicate Secretary Schultz in perceived illegal or unethical behavior while in office, according to a news release from the Iowa Department of Public Safety.
I wonder who his lawyer is.
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DAVID BARON, CALL YOUR OFFICE (CONT’D): Extinct? Cougar sightings on the rise in eastern United States.
AT THE TOP OF THE HOUR, Amy Alkon will be talking about sex and relationships.
READER TREVOR DAHL ON KEYSTONE: “Remember just a couple of years ago when all the ‘experts’ were telling us that exploring for oil was futile because it would take at least ten years to bring it to market? Now that the oil has actually been produced in places like Alberta and North Dakota, they’re reduced to denying the construction of pipelines.”
MAYORS AGAINST ILLEGAL GUNS: Let’s put aside that “tired debate” that we lost and debate something else where we hope we can win.
How about let’s talk about the propensity for members of this group to be felons, which far exceeds the propensity for felony among people with handgun carry permits? Oh, wait . . . .
CHANGE: Controversial Killer-Flu Research Halted. “The moratorium, announced Jan. 20 in Nature and Science, is a response to public fear and alarm in the scientific community, which has split over whether the research could inadvertently lead to release of a nightmare disease.” Well, if we’re going to have a universal flu vaccine in a couple of years, why not wait just in case?
JUDGE RULES VERMONT can’t force nuclear plant shutdown.
Well, they’re going to need it: As Price Of Oil Surges, Many Shiver. “While natural gas prices have plummeted to 10-year lows, heating oil prices have been steadily rising for years and are expected to reach record levels this winter, precipitated by higher costs for crude oil and the shutdown of several crucial refineries in the Northeast and in Europe. The Energy Department projects a price of $3.79 a gallon over the next few months, more than a dollar above the winter average for the last five years. Analysts do not expect much relief in the longer term, either, because global oil prices are expected to stay high amid political instability in the Middle East and rising demand from developing countries.”
IOWA OBAMA-STAFFER IDENTITY-THEFT STORY: Bigger than the South Carolina primary? “You will recall that ACORN and other Democratic satelites organized a campaign a couple of years back to install their allies in Secretary of State offices in as many key states as possible. Such officials are responsible for enforcing – or not enforcing – state election laws. Being a Republican, Schultz represented an obstacle to the plan. Could that be why Edwards sought to, according to the Des Moines Register, falsify Schultz indentity in an effort to implicate him in a scandal that would result in his possible removal from office or defeat in the next election?” (Bumped).
BIG HOLLYWOOD: Disney CEO Iger’s pay up 12 pct to $31.4M in 2011.
IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, a very nice review of Austin Bay’s book on Kemal Ataturk.
SOUNDING A LITTLE DESPERATE HERE: If You Vote Republican, Mommy Won’t Love You Anymore.
And isn’t the way it’s phrased kinda . . . homophobic?
A BEAUTY/FASHION BLOG: Into The Gloss.
GABBY GIFFORDS to step down from Congress.
THE YEAR THE ZOMBIE jumped the shark. From the comments: “You may be sick of zombies, but they’ll always find you to be attractive and tasty. Don’t you feel loved?”
Some think it’s important to prepare. Others think you should broaden your focus.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: I Want To Get Over My Fear Of Cuddling.
TURNING THE MUSTANG RANCH into “the Ritz-Carlton of brothels.”
ELECTRIC-CAR PARKING SPOTS: Just a subsidy for the 1%? Well, that’s how “green” stuff usually turns out, isn’t it?
BILL MAHER: Yes, I’m just a yes-man for Big Entertainment. Duh. From the comments: “Maher is just siding with his Hollywood masters on this one. He’ll jump when he needs to like any good TV monkey.” Is there a bigger phony on TV?
IN THE MAIL:101 Things Every Man Should Know How to Do.
THANKS TO THE EPA, get ready for higher gas prices. “Closure of the St. Croix refinery may well effect U.S. domestic gasoline prices adversely, particularly on the East Coast. . . . A clean and healthy environment is good, but there are limits to how closely we can approach what some see as perfection. Excessive regulatory burdens are not good and the United States needs, rather quickly, to strike appropriate environmental balances while taking into account the potential difficulties and disadvantages of securing oil from unfriendly countries as well as from friendly countries subject to attack by others. Nevertheless, we continue increasingly to neglect these factors and therefore continue to fund hostile countries more handsomely than seems to be in our national enlightened self-interest. Lately, we have been galloping off in all but the right directions.”
KEYSTONE UPDATE: Congressional Research Service Report: Congress Can Require Keystone Pipeline Approval.
Capitol Hill lawmakers probably have the Constitution at their back if they require a permit for the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline that President Obama rejected days ago, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
Republicans are mulling bills that require approval of Keystone XL, which would bring oil sands crude from Alberta to Gulf Coast refineries.
The Jan. 20 CRS legal analysis notes that while the executive branch has historically handled the approval of border-crossing facilities, it doesn’t have to be that way. “[I]f Congress chose to assert its authority in the area of border crossing facilities, this would likely be considered within its Constitutionally enumerated authority to regulate foreign commerce,” the analysis states.
Republicans are highly unlikely to have enough political support to win Senate passage of bills that require a permit, let alone Obama’s signature. But the CRS analysis may buoy Republicans rallying around the bills to attack Obama’s Jan. 18 denial of TransCanada Corp.’s permit application.
This seems like a no-lose issue for the GOP.
A NEWSPAPER PROFILE of Robert Bidinotto and the success of his new novel, Hunter.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Great Minnesota Pension Scam. “If you are a current or former state employee in the state of Minnesota, watch out. Your pension depends on hot air, sketchy arithmetic, and the willingness of future taxpayers to make huge sacrifices to cover the deceit, wishful thinking and sketchy math at the heart of your pension system.” Of course, this problem isn’t limited to Minnesota. It’s endemic.
Plus this advice: “Under modern conditions, for younger workers especially plans where you make contributions matched by your employer are safer bets than defined benefit plans. In defined contribution plans, they can’t touch your money to pay pensions for older workers; in other plans they can suck you dry to keep the better connected and better organized geezers happy. Your union reps and state legislators won’t tell you about this, but it’s true: badly funded defined benefit programs will be looted to pay the oldsters in full as long as possible, and younger workers will be stiffed when the bill finally comes due.”
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SOUTH CAROLINA: Hear The Roar.
Byron York: Why Gingrich Won, Why Romney Lost.
And Howie Carr asks: “Why is Mitt ashamed of having a lot of money? If Newt, the born-again Catholic, can brush off his cheating past, how come Mitt can’t explain coherently why it’s OK to pay a 15 percent capital gains rate on money you’ve already paid the top 35 percent income tax rate on when you first earned it? This is Mitt’s problem: He comes across in these debates as a wimp. Dudley Do-Right didn’t play in South Carolina. He’s afraid of his own shadow. He’s overtrained.”
But also a cautionary note: “The Republican primary voters have this dream of a snarling Newt disemboweling Barack Obama in the debates this fall. Talk about myths. How many debates is Barack going to agree to? Two maybe, tops, and both of them will be MSNBC-style — ‘Mr. Gingrich, when did you stop beating your first ex-wife?’ Follow-up: ‘When you did you stop beating your second ex-wife?’ To the “‘Jersey Shore’ MTV crowd, Newt would come across as a fat, nasty, pasty old man. They’re not going to realize what a boob Barack is, because they’re boobs, too.”
And, from Professor Jacobson: A reader poll: Should Santorum drop out before Florida?
What primary voters like about Newt is that he fights, and that he doesn’t concede moral legitimacy to the left or to the media. Romney should have taken my hammer-and-tongs advice.
Plus, how Newt roared back. “Newt Gingrich has had the wildest ride in a primary season since Bill Clinton weathered womanizing charges in 1992.”
And here are more thoughts from Michael Walsh. “What counts is passion. The 2010 midterms proved that, but the GOP bonzes seemed embarrassed by the Tea Party’s success.”
UPDATE: On Facebook, Ray Patnaude is not so impressed with all the hoopla: “Wow, I am so totally shocked that a social con sorta won Iowa, a northeasterner won New Hampshire and a southerner won South Carolina. Look out establishment, it’s anything goes!!!!”
ANOTHER UPDATE: C-SPAN Video: Newt Gingrich responds to Romney’s charge about a weak link to the Reagan Revolution.
MICKEY KAUS addresses a constitutional crisis.
LIVING WITH a sociopath. “Despite propensities to find sociopaths enticing, there are ways to avoid them. First and foremost, listen to what they say. They can’t help brag of past bad behaviors and promise future ones. Infidelity is not shame; it is triumph. They lie incessantly. When their lies ask you to suspend disbelief, don’t. If you challenge a lie, it will predictably be covered up with an even greater lie. You really can’t change them. Don’t identify with them. Try identifying with their victims. Think about the people they hurt, the lives they’ve upset, if not ruined.”
DAVID BERNSTEIN ON Glenn Greenwald’s Double Standard On Anti-Semitism. “Obviously, Greenwald’s sensitivity to offensive language depends on whether he likes/agrees with the target. When his favored candidate, Barack Obama, was being attacked by John McCain, he was extremely quick to accuse McCain of using language designed to appeal to racist sentiment. When pro-Israel activists and politicians, a Greenwald-disfavored group, are being attacked by his anti-Israel compatriots, suddenly they are inherently immune from any hint of using anti-Semitic (a form, of course, of racism) language unless, perhaps, they are wearing swastikas and celebrating Hitler’s birthday.”
NOBODY IN HIS RIGHT MIND WOULD TAKE THIS BET: “Is there any chance that Mark Steyn won’t use the Italian captain fleeing the sinking ship as the lead metaphor in a column on EU collapse?”
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? Subculture of Americans prepares for civilization’s collapse. “We could see a cascade of higher interest rates, margin calls, stock market collapses, bank runs, currency revaluations, mass street protests, and riots. . . . The worst-case end result would be a Third World War, mass inflation, currency collapses, and long term power grid failures.”
NEWT’S VICTORY SPEECH: No More Bowing To The Saudi King. “An American president who can create a Chinese-Canadian partnership is truly a danger to this country.”
Mitt should have listened to my “hammer and tongs” advice.
UPDATE: Thoughts from Ira Stoll.
BLOG COMMENT OF THE DAY: “I remember during the last Administration when the operative MSM narrative was that Bush DOJ was ‘completely politicized.’ Now we have important DOJ officials taking the Fifth. More hope and change, I guess.”
NBC’S DATELINE will cover the Henry Granju case.
THE REAL LESSON OF SOUTH CAROLINA: “Go To Hell, ABC News.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Law School Applications Fall 15%. Number of applicants falls even more.
GALLUP: Only Jimmy Carter was less popular. Well, Jimmy didn’t benefit from the soft bigotry of hopenchange.
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SOUTH CAROLINA EXIT POLL: Ninety-seven percent are worried about the economy, 79 percent describe themselves as “very worried.”
DIRTY HOLLYWOOD: The Hill: Consumer group accuses Hollywood of ‘threatening politicians’. “Consumer group Public Knowledge on Friday accused the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and its head, former Sen. Chris Dodd, of trying to intimidate lawmakers into supporting a pair of controversial anti-piracy bills.”
SOUTH CAROLINA: Why Romney Lost.
Plus: Gingrich wins majority among married women.
Plus, Michael Patrick Leahy: Tea Party Slaps Down Mitt Romney.
MORE: Roger Simon: Will Newt Gingrich Grow Up — and Win?
MORE STILL: A female reader writes that Gingrich may not have been so hurt by ex-wife Marianne’s TV interview:
Hate to say this and don’t use my name, but I watched the interview and thought
“You bitch, he cheated on his first wife with you. What the heck did you expect?”
That may explain it.
STILL MORE: Another female reader writes: “Check the dates. Marianne, the supposed women scorned, married Newt when his star was rising (1981-his second term in Congress) and divorced him at his political nadir in 2000. If Callista is the real golddigger she’s also the one who stood by her man in his politically lean decade.”
BECAUSE IT’S ONLY SAFE TO PICK ON CHRISTIANS: University atheist society president forced to resign after cartoon of Muhammad having a drink with Jesus is posted on Facebook.
And the lesson to Christians (and other religions) is that if you want respect, make people physically afraid. But if that’s the incentive system you create — and it is absolutely the one that’s been created — don’t be surprised if people pick up on it. Because the lesson of this decade is that people respond to incentives, even perverse ones.
EGALITARIANISM: A Caveman Sentiment?
In an important way, though, envy is beyond good and evil. It is a link in the nexus of egalitarian feelings that originate in our DNA. Evolutionary fires forged these feelings over millions of years. For most of those years, after all, our forebears were grubbing around in the bushes trying to survive on a never-ending camping trip without marshmallows or coolers. So our brains evolved to survive not in climate-controlled shopping centers, but within kinship groups in unforgiving wilds. You needed your clan and your clan needed you.
Thus, the feelings that go along with that tribal interdependency—including envy—are “hardwired.” And we’ve not had enough time in civilization to rewire them. “Natural selection, the process that designed our brain,” write Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, “takes a long time to design a circuit of any complexity. The time it takes to build circuits that are suited to a given environment is so slow it is hard to even imagine—it’s like a stone being sculpted by wind-blown sand. Even relatively simple changes can take tens of thousands of years.”
Which would mean that “progressive” sentiments are really regressive sentiments, I guess.
BOOK TITLE OF THE WEEK: Becoming China’s Bitch: And Nine More Catastrophes We Must Avoid Right Now.
DISASTER PREPARATION: Putting together an emergency computer kit.
SO MUCH FOR THAT E-TEXTBOOK DEAL: Apple’s mind-bogglingly greedy and evil license agreement.
UPDATE: Reader David Rubenstein disagrees:
I have to disagree with your implication that Apple’s E-textbook deal is a bad deal for authors – and with the sentiment of the article you linked. That was my initial reaction when I originally learned the terms. But last night I watched the keynote product launch and changed my mind.
First, Apple is giving away the tool to create the e-textbooks. So they need to make money somewhere.
Second, watching how you can use the tool to create the textbook, it is clear that it is a tool for formatting rather than creation. (Though it can be used for both.) The text and images can (and should?) be created in other applications (such as Word, Pages, Keynote, etc.), then dragged and dropped into the new text book creating application for final formatting. Done this way, authors will not be precluded form selling the materials as dead tree text books, epub books, etc.
Based on this, why should Apple give the application away and then let you sell the final product elsewhere? Let others figure out ways to create quality e-textbooks on their own dime. But publishers should be smart enough to create their content in a way as to not tie it up with Apple – just the format. Now let Amazon and B&N create similar tools and launch an e-textbook arms race.
Just my two cents. And I reserve all rights to question the effectiveness of e-textbooks over the dead tree variety. Though I certainly would not have minded lugging fewer texts around with me back in the day.
Hmm.
ZACH BARBERA WRITES: “So, say Obama loses the election this fall. Wonder what his midnight pardons are going to look like? Scary…”
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IOWA: Not Just A Democrat Dirty Trick, But A Crime. “That Edwards allegedly tried to steal the Secretary of State’s identity in order to frame Schultz for ‘unethical behavior in office’ is no coincidence. Iowa Democrats, as Kevin Hall of the Iowa Republican points out, have mounted a campaign of false accusations against Schultz. . . . So on its face, Edwards’s identity theft appears to be part of a coordinated effort by the Iowa Democratic Party to bring down the Republican Secretary of State so he can be replaced with a Democrat. We hope that Edwards will get the long jail term that he deserves, but the more important question is, from whom was he taking instructions?”
More here.
UPDATE: Various readers are putting this scandal in the context of the Democrats’ Secretary Of State Project.
WHAT HAPPENED before the Big Bang?
THIS IS TERRIBLE: Terror Attacks In Kano, Nigeria Kill At Least 162. My brother lived in Kano back in the ’90s and it was a nice place then.
SOUTH CAROLINA VIDEO: An undecided voter makes his choice in Charleston.
AMY ALKON: Feminism’s Franken-man.
THE RICK SANTORUM/MCLOVIN EQUIVALENCE:
A pretty close match, but the Nigel Thornberry guy is closer.
ER, BECAUSE PEOPLE WILL THINK YOU’RE A BLOGGER? Why Not Wear Pajamas All Day?
SO SOPA IS MOSTLY DEAD, but the Feds’ raid on MegaUpload demonstrates that there are still issues. Now thousands of people have lost their personal, non-infringing files as a result of the raid. Related item here: How can the US seize a “Hong Kong site” like Megaupload?
SELECTIVE MEMORY: Prof. Joseph Campbell: ABC unaccountably excludes Bill Clinton from lineup of pols who led ‘double lives.’ “ABC News offered yesterday a risible lineup of two-timing politicians that omitted Bill Clinton, the philandering 42nd president, but included Thomas Jefferson, about whom the evidence of sexual dalliance is thin at best.”
UPDATE: Eric Boehlert rewrites history. Hell, that’s practically his job description.
PAUL RAHE: Warren Buffett and Mitt Romney.
When it comes to politics, I am given to wariness. I am inclined to suspect that the candidates are – how shall I say? – less upstanding and less principled than they at first seem, and I regret to have to report that my suspicions are usually borne out. The more I learn, alas, the less I generally find to like.
This applies to Barack Obama as much as it applies to his Republican opponents. When he has run for office he has been strangely fortunate His opponents often have “accidents.” Embarrassing divorce records, which were sealed by the court, somehow find their way into the hands of the press. You know what I mean.
All of this leads me to wonder whether, by chance, a political appointee in the Obama administration working at the IRS broke the rules, took a peek at Mitt Romney’s recent tax returns, and reported to David Axelrod or to the Great Prevaricator himself the fact that the fabulously rich former Governor of Massachusetts ordinarily paid his income tax a much lower rate than you or I do.
Do you think that I am being too suspicious? Is it an accident that the op-ed published by Warren Buffett applies so well to the prospective Republican nominee?
Were I the chair of the appropriate committee in the House of Representatives, I think that I would look into this matter. In Chicago, whence Barack Obama comes, no one would ever think a development so convenient for the incumbent executive an accident. In Chicago, there are no accidents.
It does fit Obama’s M.O. Then there’s this.
UPDATE: Reader John Etheredge writes: “Just wait until they have all of the medical records.”
MORE ON the problems with PolitiFact.
CHARLES MURRAY ON THE THE NEW AMERICAN DIVIDE. “People are starting to notice the great divide. The tea party sees the aloofness in a political elite that thinks it knows best and orders the rest of America to fall in line. The Occupy movement sees it in an economic elite that lives in mansions and flies on private jets. Each is right about an aspect of the problem, but that problem is more pervasive than either political or economic inequality. What we now face is a problem of cultural inequality. . . . We have developed a new upper class with advanced educations, often obtained at elite schools, sharing tastes and preferences that set them apart from mainstream America. At the same time, we have developed a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America’s core cultural institutions.”
This is the theme of his new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, which the Insta-Wife is reading. It’s a sort of Moynihan Report for white America, which seems to be undergoing the same sort of cultural decline that black America did in the 1960s.
MORE OF THIS ADMINISTRATION’S LOUSY ENERGY POLICY: North Dakota Stuck Using More-Costly Railroads to Move Oil. “Right now, about 25% of North Dakota’s oil travels by rail. According to the CBS News report that ‘will increase exponentially with increased oil production and the shortage of pipelines.’”
UPDATE: Reader Jack Lillywhite emails:
And who has a big stake in Burlington Northern? A guy in Omaha named Buffett.
And by having TransCanada tie its Keystone XI to the border crossing approval you can’t get a segmented line from Montana to Port Arthur, TX that the Bakken field could tie into. That is the concept. A collector system named the BakkenLink runs down to Montana from ND and ties into Keystone XI (known as MarketLink). A twofer you might say.
So, in a way it is a Win-Win for Obama – He wins his Green base and his Crony Capitalism base. Pretty clever, eh?
They win, we lose. As usual.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz Targeted for Identity Theft by Former Obama Staffer. Hmm. Here’s the story from the Des Moines Register. His bio seems to have vanished from his employer’s page though. But here it is via the Wayback Machine.
SUBVERTING THE CONSENSUS.
RACHEL ALEXANDER: An Open Letter To The Occupiers From Generation X.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Exactly 3 years in, Obama’s job approval hits lowest level yet.
Heading into reelection years, pols want to be at least at the 50% level. A new Gallup Poll just out reveals that the ex-state senator’s job approval for his third full year is 44%.
That’s down from 47% in his second year.
That’s down from 57% in his first year.
It’s also down from the 69% approval he enjoyed on Inauguration Day.
What’s amazing is that he’s doing even that well.
TUCKER MAX GOES TO THE NEXT LEVEL. Nice to see him grow. But really interesting are the reporter’s confessions of envy and resentment at the end. I think that offers a lot of psychological insight into journalism in general, these days. . . .
Somewhat related older post here.
MORT ZUCKERMAN: Barack Obama’s Mideast Miscalculation. “The White House completely miscalculated in Egypt, as it did in Gaza.”
Where’s that “smart diplomacy” we were promised?
SPACE WEATHER: Big Coronal Mass Ejection Headed Toward Earth.
SUSPICIOUS: Iranian women’s activist shot dead in Houston.
DAN RIEHL: Why I’m Backing Newt Gingrich.
TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: “ANDREW SULLIVAN has been on a crusade where Paul Krugman’s money from Enron is concerned. I’ve gotten email from some folks who say he’s over the top. I’m not sure. I think that Krugman’s money scandal is comparable to, say, a sex scandal involving Gary Bauer or Bill Bennett. Somehow, I think that a smoking-gun sex scandal involving either of those guys would get more press than Krugman’s problem, though — probably, even from Krugman. But Krugman has been attacking greed of late just as intemperately as Bauer and Bennett attack sex.”
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SOPA UPDATE: Senate Delays Vote on Piracy Bill as House Balks, Too.
Okay. But why doesn’t that NYT news story have the word “Dodd” in it? This story the NYT put up last night had “Dodd” in it. Have you noticed the role of the former Senator in the SOPA fight? He’s kind of a lobbyist (for the movie industry), except that he can’t actually be a lobbyist, because it’s illegal for a former Senator to lobby Congress in his first 2 years out of office.
Indeed.
FACT CHECK: First Obama Re-Election Ad Filled With Fibs.
HEH: Mark Levin: Tell ABC’s Ross To ‘Find Out Who Obama’s Drug Pusher Was.’ “I want to know all about Gingrich’s love life, his wife, the cheating, this and that-you want to know about Obama’s drug dealer? No. Now he doesn’t want to know who Barack Obama’s drug dealer was…and we know Obama used drugs, he said so in his book.”
I don’t think we’ve ever even heard from any of his ex-girlfriends. They must be out there somewhere. Right?
UPDATE: Somebody should try to track down this woman mentioned in Dreams.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Kevin Greene writes: “When is Brian Ross going to interview Vera Baker?” Never. I have no idea whether there’s anything to those rumors — though for a variety of reasons I think it unlikely — but even if there is, I doubt she’d ever talk. While Newt’s angry ex can expect a lot of support for her complaining, a black woman who brought down Obama’s presidency could expect near-total isolation. Won’t happen even if — as I very much doubt — there’s a story there.
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STANDING UP AGAINST BARBARISM: Free Meredith Graves.
New York City may not be full of people who believe in American Exceptionalism, but it is stuffed to the gills with people who believe in New York Exceptionalism, and it maintains a firearms-regulation regime that may be unconstitutional and certainly is far more strict than the practice of most of the rest of the country. So draconian are its laws in the matter of concealed firearms that the plain dictionary meanings of words commonly are discarded: Ms. Graves stands to be convicted of a violent felony, even though she plainly had no criminal intent, much less violent criminal intent. Likewise, a person may be charged with carrying a loaded gun even when the gun is in fact unloaded and kept in a locked carrying case, if the ammunition is kept in the same case. Under New York law, up is down, unloaded is loaded, and an innocent error is a malicious crime of violence.
Time for New York to catch up with the rest of the country and adopt sensible gun laws that do not punish innocent people for nonviolent acts.
PRESS NOT VERY INTERESTED IN COVERING Gingrich’s standing ovation for standing up against the press. Go figure.
ROGER KIMBALL: MONKEYS WITH CLUBS.
A BUNCH OF NEW PRODUCTS from this year’s SHOT Show.
HOW NOT TO report a fire at a nuclear weapons plant.
BOB OWENS HAS MORE ON THE LATEST JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SCANDALS: Recall that invoking the Fifth Amendment is only allowed to avoid self-incrimination. “Patrick J. Cunningham, chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona, is invoking his Fifth Amendment rights and declining to testify about Operation Fast and Furious in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. . . . Cunningham’s defense seeks to portray him as an innocent man caught in a conflict between the legislative and executive branches of government. He also seems to be the designated ‘fall guy’ in the Obama administration’s recent tactical shift.”
DAVID KIRKHAM’S CAMPAIGN FOR GOVERNOR OF UTAH is up and running. Looking at the photo, I can see that the CrossFit has worked for him. . .
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Hitting your Sex Occurrence Quotas.
Well, that’s one approach to maintenance sex.
UPDATE: I’m leaving out the names even though they didn’t request it. But a female reader emails:
Let me tell you, the “quickie” saved my marriage. I read about it in the book “Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus” years ago where the author explains how important the sex act is to the man and that the woman should give into the quickie.
Best…I mean BEST…sex advice I ever received!!! Long live the quickie!!
Meanwhile, a male reader writes:
While our “N” of 1 (or, more accurately, 2!) can hardly prove or disprove the authors’ thesis, I completely concur with their view, as does my wife.
We are both psychiatrists, who started out as family doctors, and have been together for 38 years, happily married for 36 of those, and have raised our four male children, all of whom turned out healthy, prosperous and well (thank God!).
We have been blessed throughout with a gloriously happy sexual relationship, where the male partner clearly “needs it” more often that the female partner, but far from creating tension or dissatisfaction, coming to grips (as it were!) with this difference has enriched the relationship, and both of us could not be happier.
We both agree that our relationship has also, as a sort of bonus, made it possible for us to help couples in our work who are having conflict in their sex lives.
I doubt that many people get divorced because they’re having sex too often.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Okay, she actually asks that I not use her name:
Yep, you helped our marriage, too. After seeing the book that you mentioned, my husband bought it for me (us?). Then, maybe six months ago, you also linked to some guy who blogged about having sex like every day of his fifteen year marriage, or something. Anyway, it hit me that his wife just never said no. So I thought, as an experiment, I’d just not say no. Not necessarily be the initiator, but never say no. I have to tell you my husband is probably the happiest man I know. I’m not exactly unhappy, either. I have come the the conclusion that women vastly, vastly underestimate the good they can do for the men they love by just saying yes.
It’s funny–you don’t blog about sex too much, but it is very effective when you do! Keep up the good work, on all fronts.
Doing my best here.
MORE:
Please withhold name, of course!
Hi Glenn,
My husband and I assume that we’ll have sex every night (he’s an early riser, so this means that if I have any project to do in the evening, I do it after we have sex and he falls asleep). That’s one of the “big rocks” in our daily jar. If a day is missed here or there, it’s ok because there is plenty of opportunity. I think it has a very positive effect on our overall well-being, and keeps a close, affectionate bond between us.Needless to say, his first wife maintained an “artificial shortage” to keep up the imagined value of sex with her. That’s hell on a man with a strong drive.
Perhaps that has something to do with her status as first wife.
STILL MORE: Related thoughts here.
