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April 24, 2005

Sunday Quickies

Yeehaw, life is getting frantic here again. It's almost May and that means PROM is looming for Siobhan as well as the buildup to graduation ceremonies. Dress shopping this weekend, plus her and her date are trying to convince enough friends to share in a limo. I made a hair appointment for her plus the same Saturday morning she takes her EPT/ELM (english placement test/entry level math) tests for SFSU. It's a sad commentary on high school education that our universities demand placement tests on incoming freshmen to see if they even can take college level english or math.

Ooo! Did I say "freshmen"? Is that pc?

Speaking of high school achievements... congrats to Sal! Read in the comments here. Hope y'all wow 'em at State!

Thanks to Saintknowitall for pointing me to the Fair Tax site. Yes, it does tax goods at the final consumption level (which really simplifies collection and tracking), but it doesn't make a distinction for goods produced domestically or those imported into this country. I want that distinction, even on goods produced by American countries abroad.

I always count on Jeff Goldstein to ask the really tough questions

I’m not saying people who eat their hot dogs with ketchup are evil, necessarily. Just that they’re likely a bit slow. And don’t have much class.
I confess then, I've raised a pretty slow/evil family. It's not only ketchup, but Heinz, that is the topping of choice (along with sweet pickle relish and chopped red onions) on BBQ'd Hebrew National dogs. Of course, we don't stoop to the real evil of mayonnaise on french fries....

Redstate.org has launched Confirm Bolton.com with an impressive array of writers. Definitely worth checking out. And also at Redstate, Pejman Yousefzadeh makes the observation in regards to the Dems demanding a supermajority to pass judicial nominees

US v Ballin is a persuasive counterweight to the pernicious and patently silly notion put out by some that certain (or perhaps all, the standard changes constantly) judicial nominees are somehow so controversial that there exists precedent demanding that they should pass some kind of supermajority barrier before being confirmed. This claim is not true in the slightest. As Ballin makes clear, "The general rule of all parliamentary bodies is that, when a quorum is present, the act of a majority of the quorum is the act of the body. This has been the rule for all time, except so far as in any given case the terms of the organic act under which the body is assembled have prescribed specific limitations." No such "specific limitations" are prescribed for some or any individuals nominated by the President to fill certain positions in the Executive or Judicial branches of government.
Y'all know, of course, never in the history of this country has the filibuster been used against appellate court nominees?

In another case of the MSM not reporting but manufacturing the "news" comes this story of the BBC planting hecklers at Conservative party campaign meeting. Makes one wonder if they, too, have some staff dedicated to forging memos. Maybe "Lucy Ramirez" hails from London? (hattip Michelle Malkin)

Jeff Harrell makes an excellent point when contemporary leaders make "apologies" for the sins of their nations past. Apologies are different from acknowledgment. I have no problems looking at the cruel and evil things that America has engaged in, from slavery to Jim Crow. But I don't know why I should find it necessary .. morally, ethically or emotionally, to apologize for it. Apologies are the province of those responsible for the acts. I've never found hairshirts particularly admirable. I recall slowly burning with anger as a junior in high school when I sat in a US History class and listened to a teacher harangue all the non-hispanic kids in class as "thieves" and "posessers of stolen property" because of our presence in Southern California which was "stolen" from Mexico. He was quite serious and even when I challenged him on his rant, he sneered and attempted to humiliate me. Of course, this was the early 70's, the time of radical ethnic identity and "the personal is the political." I bought that "rationale" as much then as I do now.

Feh.

And, to conclude this waltz around topics, let's return to the l'affaire d'Bolton where I'll let the irrepressible James Lileks have the last word:

I’m starting to suspect that the entire Senate should be abolished. Purge the lot of ‘em. Their drivel may be no less meretricious than their House counterparts, but it’s usually slathered with sanctimony about the Noble Nature of their particular chamber, how they’re the saucer into which passions are poured to cool. ... the Senate, as currently composed, seems to attract people who have that potent & fatal combination of dimness and self-regard, and when you elevate those sorts to the Great National Saucer, you get idiocies like the Bolton hearing. On one side, a charmless babbler like Joe Biden, whose instinct upon finding a bad metaphor is to attenuate it until it is three microns wide; on the other side, George Voinovich, who finally showed up for a hearing and pronounced himself Disturbed by the allegations. This is like a guy skipping class on the origins WW2 for a month then raising his hand to ask why they haven’t covered how this Hitler fellow came to power. ...

I don’t have to like Bolton, and I certainly don’t approve of his moustache, but I want someone who will stand up to the UN. And by “stand up” I don’t mean the cut-rate back-alley hooker method of leaning against a brick wall and hiking up the skirts. I mean, someone who doesn’t give the Syrian ambassador the old collegial nod in the break room or say “How’s it goin’” to the Zimbabwe attaché when you’re standing at adjoining urinals, and consider it a promising diplomatic overture.

Amen.


Posted by Darleen at April 24, 2005 08:20 AM

Comments

I disagree with you about apologies. My father, a concentration camp survivor, needed an apology from the Dutch government, who in their ethnocentric wisdom, abandoned all women and children in Indonesia because the "little Japs are not a true threat" and from the Japanese government who perpetrated the horror and torture upon him. Most of the people who victimized my family, certainly the most evil of them, are dead it. It took everyone a long time to take responsibility for their actions, the Japanese have yet to do it. It is important for governments to stand up and say what we did as a government, which represents who we are as a people, was wrong and we are sorry. Even if was centuries ago, because as you know the sins of the father are visited upon generation after generation. It helps to heal the cycle when the offender says "What I did was wrong and I am sorry." Look at the effects that slavery has had on the black population (families torn apart and sold off without a second thought, brutality, lack of education, etc...) it gets carried into the next generation as part of the family story and experiences. I wasn't in the camps, but being raised by a father who was (from age 4-8) - the things that he went through, saw, the torture..absolutely had an affect on me (there are tons of studies now about the children of survivors and how deeply they are affected by their parents' experience). Though he never ever talked about it, there were hints all my life: an occasional breakdown triggered by a seemingly inconsequential event (like the air conditioner breaking in the commuter train),all of the things I internalized became part of the fabric of who I am. It was only after a shocking and sudden severe breakdown (PTSD), a few years ago, that was triggered by a surgery gone very very bad, that our family had to deal with what we had been silently carrying for years. We were all adults, and we were stunned by power my father's experience had on all of us, even though it was never discussed.

Unless you have been wronged in such a huge and devastating way, I don't think you can know the power of an apology. The weight that that apology from the Dutch Government gave official validation, recognition, to what my father and his family went through, and that it was their fault. It was tremendously healing for my father when they acknowledged and apologized for deliberately leaving the children and women behind. By saying "Yes, I know what happened to you, I am sorry we didn't protect you and your family; it was our fault, What we did was wrong and we will never do that again." it helped my father (and his family) to move through his pain with greater ease and put him one step closer to freedom.

Posted by: Mieke at April 24, 2005 01:16 PM

I am curious why you would like a distinction between domestic and foreign products?

Also, distinquishing between domestic and foreign products would probably violate WTO in some form or fashion.

One of the nice things about the Fair Tax is that it makes American products much more competitive on the world market, probably reducing prices 20% to 30% after imbedded taxes are removed.

Thanks for the mention on your site. I have you on my blogroll by the way.
Sincerely,
Saintknowitall

Posted by: saintknowitall at April 29, 2005 07:58 AM