Libertyblog

Big Nanny Foiled

In Sodom-by-the-Sea:

It turns out San Francisco has not entirely vanquished the Happy Meal as we know it. Come Dec. 1, you can still buy the Happy Meal. But it doesn’t come with a toy. For that, you’ll have to pay an extra 10 cents.

Huh. That hardly seems to have solved the problem (though adults and children purchasing unhealthy food can at least take solace that the 10 cents is going to Ronald McDonald House charities). But it actually gets worse from here. Thanks to Supervisor Eric Mar’s much-ballyhooed new law, parents browbeaten into supplementing their preteens’ Happy Meal toy collections are now mandated to buy the Happy Meals.

Today and tomorrow mark the last days that put-upon parents can satiate their youngsters by simply throwing down $2.18 for a Happy Meal toy. But, thanks to the new law taking effect on Dec. 1, this is no longer permitted. Now, in order to have the privilege of making a 10-cent charitable donation in exchange for the toy, you must buy the Happy Meal. Hilariously, it appears Mar et al., in their desire to keep McDonald’s from selling grease and fat to kids with the lure of a toy have now actually incentivized the purchase of that grease and fat -- when, beforehand, a put-upon parent could get out cheaper and healthier with just the damn toy.

So: Ban happy meals, deprive cancer-ridden children. Your move, nanny!

Not Understanding the Concept

If many of your public sector workers go on strike and nobody notices, it’s proof your government is overstaffed. (Via Drudge.)

Utterly Disingenuous

Go five minutes into this to see everything that’s wrong with Mitt Romney, when he’s asked by Bret Baier about illegals:

MR: My view is that those people that are here illegally today should have the opportunity to register and to have their status identified and those individuals should get in line with everyone else that’s in line legally, they should not be placed ahead of the line, they should instead go at the back of the line, and they should not be allowed to stay in this country and be given permanent residency or citizenship merely because they’ve come here illegally.

BB: But isn’t that what Gingrich is saying, isn’t he saying short of citizenship? ...

MR: You know, I can’t, I can’t tell you what Speaker Gingrich is saying ...

BB: But yet you call it amnesty? ...

MR: Bret, if he’s going to do what I believe he said he was going to do for those people, who would be allowed to stay permanently and become citizens, that would be providing for them a form of amnesty, but my view is and—I’ll let him describe his view—my view is pretty straightforward: For those people who’ve come here illegally, they should have the opportunity to get in line with everybody else who wants to come into this country, but they go to the back of the line and they should be given no special pathway to citizenship or permanent residency merely because they’ve come here illegally.

At this point the Baier attacks, sensing weakness:

BB: And they do it outside of this country?

MR: Uh-They-I [deliciously hard to transcribe] Whether they apply here or whether they apply by going home—I think I’ve said in the past it makes more sense for them to go home, if we set up a system for them to apply here ...

BB: The question is what you do with the 11 million-plus people who are already here and how you handle them ...

MR: And ...

BB: ...and back in 2006, 2007, you made a point in saying “We’re not going to round them all up and send them out” ...

MR: That’s right.

BB: ... so what do you do with them?

MR: You know, there’s great interest on the part of some to talk about what we do with the 11 million. My interest is saying, “Let’s make sure that we secure the border” and we don’t do anything that talks about bringing in a new wave of those, or attracting a new wave of people into the country illegally. The right course for us is to secure the border and say nothing about amnesty, or tuition breaks to illegal aliens, or anything else that draws people into the country illegally. The right course: Secure the border, and then we can determine what’s the right way to deal with the 11 million, and to make it as clear as I possibly can, let those people apply, just like everybody else that wants to come to this country, but they have to apply at the back of the line as opposed to jumping in the front because they’ve come here illegally.

For the umpteenth time, illegals are not here to vote or serve on juries, they are here to participate in our economy as either workers, to the detriment of unemployed citizens, or welfare recipients, to the detriment of taxpayers. Letting them stay here as temporary residents while they become permanent residents and then citizens is unquestionably a “special pathway.” No amount of smooth talk and condescension can alter that.

The kicker: Despite all the hemming and hawing and double talk, a later piece on last night’s Special Report labeled Romney’s position as calling for illegals to be “expelled.”

Back at You, Professor

I’ve been waiting for this story:

A care package drive for deployed U.S. troops is receiving national notice after a professor at Suffolk University Law School criticized the operation.

Professor Michael Avery emailed his colleagues just before Veterans’ Day in response to a school-wide email soliciting donations. “I think it is shameful,” he wrote, “that it is perceived as legitimate to solicit in an academic institution for support for men and women who have gone overseas to kill other human beings.”

Avery’s email inadvertently contributed to the drive’s success, however, because its publication drew an outpouring of support for U.S. service members.

Big Government and the Higher Education Bubble

Some more about this:

Too many aspiring young museum curators can’t find jobs? The pragmatic Chinese solution is to cut public subsidies used to train museum curators. The free market solution is that only the rich would be indulgent enough to buy their kids an education that left them economically dependent on Mommy and Daddy after graduation. The progressive American solution is to seek increased public funding to build more museums.

(Via InstaPundit.)

Frank About Frank

Jonah Goldberg assesses the departing Congressman:

He’s a bully. The liberal establishment has a hard time seeing liberal bullies, I think because they see bullying as a conservative trait for some reason. It’s not. There are bullies across the ideological spectrum.

Still, that Barney Frank is a bully shouldn’t surprise anyone who subscribes to the most conventional explanations for why bullies are the way they are. Growing up a very smart gay Jewish kid with a lisp in Bayonne, New Jersey seems like a recipe for insecurity straight out of a sitcom script. It also helps to explain why Barney Frank can be so funny. He’s learned to channel his browbeating skills for political purposes, to be sure. And presumably, given his success in life he’s lost some of his insecurities. But you can still see it in the man. It’s closely tied to other character traits — arrogance, impatience, etc. But there’s still a distinct domineering, inquisitorial, nastiness to him, a bitter edge, that delights in the applause of the crowd as he torments his victims. As with all bullies, he rationalizes his behavior by telling himself that the victims deserve it and the applause is for his courage. But you can tell from that occasional smile at the discomfiture of his targets, that there’s something more primal at work.

Michael Graham takes a less psychoanalytic approach:

Barney Frank is leaving office at the end of his term. Maybe he just wants to spend more quality time with his pot-growing prostitute friends in the sub-prime lending business.

I apologize for the mean-spiritedness of that last comment. It’s particularly mean-spirited because it’s demonstrably true.

A sitting congressman re-elected after his boyfriend is busted for running a male prostitution ring out of the congressman’s condo? Amazing. Re-elected after it’s discovered another boyfriend helps run a major money-losing government agency “regulated” by the congressman’s committee? Astounding. But after a third boyfriend is busted for growing pot while you’re sitting on his front porch?

(Via InstaPundit.)

Not Just About the Benjamins

David French:

Saddest of all, Americans look at a crumbling political culture and blame ... Washington. Yet are they not the people we elected? Heck, not even the Tea Party rank and file are eager to take on Medicare and Social Security. We can’t push the illegitimacy rate over 40 percent and believe that we’re creating a productive, self-sufficient culture. No politician made millions of Americans abort millions of children, nor did politicians make us embrace no-fault divorce in our own lives or rationalize divorce for our families, friends, and neighbors. It is not Washington that compels us to wallow in our own self-love and look everywhere else for solutions to problems we’ve helped create for ourselves with profligate personal spending and impulsive, self-indulgent lifestyles. When we embrace self-love to the point where many of our fellow citizens will kill their own children, we can’t hope that political reform will bring any real hope.

Yes, I participate in politics in the hope that the next election will make things better, not worse, but I’m under no illusions about the power of politics to transform. The fiscal mess is merely a monetary representation of the moral culture we’ve created, where we draw down on the cultural capital built through the blood, sweat, tears, and — yes — virtue of previous generations and instead bestow upon our children a counterfeit legacy of self-esteem over self-sacrifice, insufferable political correctness over humility, and abject dependence over generous self-reliance.

Arguments over marginal tax rates and slowed rates of inexorable spending growth do matter in the sense that their outcome can either hasten or delay a cultural collapse that appears increasingly likely. But let’s not take our eyes off the real prize — a culture in desperate need of moral and spiritual renewal.

One Small Problem

The Dems are pointing out that Mitt Romney has taken multiple positions on some issues. But aren’t all of his positions on a given issue better than Obambi’s doctrinaire lefty position?

Ka-Boom!

Iranian military facilities may be having cybersecurity problems, physical security problems, or a combination of both.

Call Your Broker

I mentioned a brokered GOP convention a few months back as a rationale for the Paul candidacy:

The only way the [libertarian] all-for-Paul strategy plays out is if there’s an unresolved divide among the major candidates that plays out at a brokered convention; Paul could play kingmaker with his delegates. This hasn’t happened to either party in many years and the primary process is designed to avoid it.

Here’s why it’s unlikely. Warning: It involves some basic mathematics.