Category Archives: Family

Pretty, But No Picture of Conservative Courage

Ann Coulter, Conservatism, Crime, Family, Political Correctness, Racism, Republicans

The crowned queen bees of conservatism have it so easy. They say hardly anything original or gutsy. But because Boobus Americanus is so blinded by boobs of the mind and the mammary glands—these women keep their crowns.

Ann Coulter isn’t going to tackle—at least not until it’s safe—the hot white issue of feral- flash mob violence that has spread across “Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, in the upmarket area of Streeterville, in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., in Las Vegas, in St. Paul, Minn., in Philadelphia, on and on.”

That’s a partial excerpt from my upcoming WND column, “Sacrificing Kids To PC Pieties,” in which the immigrant (guess who?) does the dirty job the natives (queen bees of conservatism) won’t do (looks out for the kids).

Rather, Ms. Coulter touches on the attack against Glenn Beck and his family in New York, to drive home her recycled thesis (Democrats are bad and Republicans are good). In “Glenn Beck vs. the Mob,” Ms. Coulter, in PC fashion, promises that, “Beck and his family would have been fine at an outdoor rap concert.”

Really?

According to the Philadelphia Business Times, “100 or more teenagers who left a concert night committed a series of violent crimes.” I wonder if it was a “rap concert”?

Another picture of conservative courage is Laura Ingraham, who guest hosted for O’Reilly last tonight. As the blunt bloggers of “View from the Right” noted, “She covered the black thuggery problem without mentioning the race of the thugs or the distinct possibility that they were singling out Caucasians. That’s all, folks!”

Errant, Adulating Adults Enable Stupid Youth

America, Business, Critique, Education, Etiquette, Family, Intelligence, Outsourcing, Trade

On Facebook, Bob Murphy has presented a scenario that annoyed him:

… was at a restaurant in the Boston airport. It was very relaxed, just a few customers. My bill was for $14.85, and I paid with a $20 bill. The waiter gave me a $5 bill as change, then sauntered back to talk to the bartender. Discuss.

My take on Facebook: The young waiter probably can’t do simple math unless he closes the till, or something. The Korean young woman who mans the dry cleaners I frequent does all calculations in her head, as quick as a whip. Just as we were taught at school back in the day (I’m old, I know). Okay, be a pedant, Rob. You wanted a bill (as in an invoice). You wanted the agency to control the change you gave. But this is US youth you are dealing with. The other day, checking out at a big-box store, the same sort of simpleton insisted that the product I was purchasing (I told him the per-unit price) looked too expensive. There was no arguing with this hubristic creature. He would not check himself. He ended up shortchanging his employer to the tune of 90% of the item’s total price. I wanted to pay full price, but the young man kept shouting me down. “No, this looks too expensive to be true.” I knew this was an expensive item. He would have none of it.

Look, the adults who employ the youth adulate them, and do not wish to correct them. That’s been my experience. So let them live with the losses these pests incur.

Postscript: Meantime the Korean-owned dry cleaners I visit is making a mint, as other such establishments close down in my vicinity. The owner values every penny; he employs a sharp cookie to front his business. She’s sweet and genteel too.

The Israel-Kinect Connection

Business, Economy, Education, Family, Free Markets, Human Accomplishment, Israel, Media, Regulation, Science, Socialism, Technology

Who do you think invented Microsoft’s “Kinect,” which is in the Guinness Book of Records as the “Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device” ever? Microsoft would like to claim the credit, but it belongs to an Israeli outfit called PrimeSense.

It’s my guess—and CNN’s Zombie Zakaria might wish to investigate this—that, overall, those who invent these silly contraptions are not necessarily the same sort of people who use them obsessively. (I recently watched a boy bob up-and-down and sideways like an automaton for over an hour in front of the Kinect. Back in the day, my own, now-grown girl would have been building Lego, painting, reading, or “inventing” creative games in the yard.)

Yes, the fogies of “60 Minutes” are obsessed with kids; errant American adults cater to, and worship, but never guide, their kids. The outcome of deification without direction is that the current crop of fattened little Buddhas is not that great.

Truth be told, the hybrid, hi-tech workforce—comprised as it is of local and outsourced talent—is manned, generally, by terribly smart, much older people with advanced engineering degrees. (That’s too much like hard work which is hardly “fun.”) The truth is that the people designing gadgets for America’s (face it, dumb) kids are older and highly educated. Some are Americans; others are Asians (South more than East, but both) and Israelis. The hi-tech endeavor is thus all about the older generation—veteran techies—uniting to supply their young, twittering twits with the playthings that keep their brainwaves from flatlining.

Back to the point: Some of my readers refer to Israel’s economy as a socialistic one, a fact that could reflect a general media bias (against Israel, not socialism). Although Israel’s economy is by no means unfettered, it is not much different from Western Europe’s Third-Way, mixed economies, with a respectable per capita GDP. Warren Buffett has invested billions in Israel’s private sector, with good returns. The country’s high-tech industry has certainly been on the cutting edge for sometime.

Significant is the trend. And it is unmistakable: “Emerging markets,” as Israel is, are becoming freer, whereas America is becoming less free. The devil is in this detail.

I am affiliated with the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. Those who’re interested in tracking the effort to liberalize Israel’s economy will get a good idea by following JIMS’ remarkable work out of Jerusalem.

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For a third day in a row, my book, Into The Cannibal’s Pot, is Amazon’s #1 in the category on Social Policy. The Publisher (link here) is not charging for shipping. This is valuable for our South African readers. Kindle will be up by, I am told by the best man possible, early this week, probably tomorrow.

Green Light For ‘Lights Out’

Debt, Economy, Family, Feminism, Gender, Hollywood, Pop-Culture

It has become ALMOST impossible to watch the assorted “estrogen-oozing” action dramas and crime series inflicted on the TV viewer. The phony heroine lords it over meek meterosexuals with fussy falsettos. Men know their place. Dare-devil women run the show, which makes the show dull, because 90 pounds of botoxic, silicone-plumped flesh in stilettos can’t run very fast (in real life, and I’m a sucker for reality). And you just know that back on terra firma, the 200 pounder she’s cuffing with seeming ease would have flung her as far as the equator, or coshed her to death.

A leading man is invariably a mentalist (I don’t know what that is), a gentle doctor suffering from low-sperm count, or a buffoon (“Burn Notice”).

“Lights Out” (http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/lightsout/index.php) is a good antidote to the above fare. However, it is a sad series, and the protagonist a tragic figure—“an aging former heavyweight boxing champion who struggles to find his identity and support his wife and three daughters after retiring from the ring,” played by Holt McCallany.

Last night, Lights’ typically spoiled wife (the Lovely Catherine McCormack from “Braveheart”) begins to understand the extent of the debt they have incurred, helped in no small part by her lavish lifestyle.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with voracious consumption just as long one pays for one’s purchases. The data demonstrate that Americans, in general, don’t. Of late, consumption has tended to reflect, not an increase in real wealth but an increase in indebtedness.

Aggregate household debt in the US has a lot to do with female expectations. Steve Sailer goes as far as to call this “The Estrogen Recession.” (I’m first and foremost the enemy of the Fed, fractional reserve banking, and regulation.)

In any event, from what I’ve seen, the average American woman’s existence is every bit as voracious as this fictional character’s. The evolution of the “Theresa Leary” character ought to be instructive.