In Michigan: “people switch sides”

The New Neo Posted on by

Part of the lively discussion recently on this thread and then this one centered on the plight of Michigan Democrats who are disillusioned with what their party’s done for them lately, and who are thinking of switching to (gasp!) the Republican side in 2010.

Are they just shallow opportunists who are selling their votes to the highest bidder, as some contend? Or are they in the process of a more fundamental change, or at least the beginning of that process? Or perhaps a little bit of both?

For some it may be the first explanation, for others the second, and I have no way of knowing the proportions of voters who belong to each group. But the phenomenon seems very real, and if the following video is any indication, it’s becoming more widespread—even among African-American voters in the depressed Michigan towns suffering from 40% unemployment these days:

[Hat tip: Hot Air.]

Fun with statistics

The New Neo Posted on by

In the course of this article describing a research study on marriage, fidelity, wages, and divorce, Tracy Corrigan makes the following observation:

Munsch found that during a six-year period, an average of 3.8 per cent of male partners and 1.4 per cent of female partners admitted to cheating in any given year. So either men cheat mainly with single women, or women are economical with the truth.

The reality, given the level of divorce rates, is probably that both are prone to fibbing: in fact, I can’t help feeling that it goes with the territory. In every survey, in every country, men claim to have more ”“ often many more ”“ sexual encounters than women.

In Britain, that’s an average of 12.7 heterosexual partners over a lifetime, compared with just 6.5 for women. Except that it is logistically impossible for the average man to have more partners than the average woman.

Perhaps Corrigan is correct and people are lying. But it is hardly logistically impossible for the average man to have more partners than the average woman, with just a few people doing the lying.

I’m not even sure it’s improbable, although it might be. Corrigan is assuming a one-on-one encounter pattern. But it is certainly possible—and perhaps even likely—that a lot of the unfaithful men, or sexually active men in general, are having sex with the same women, who are each having sex with a lot of men.

In other words, there might be a pool of what we used to call loose women (not to mention the professionals known as prostitutes), who are each sleeping around with a lot of men. This may be logistically difficult, but hardly impossible. In fact, it’s the sort of thing that used to be standard in my high school long ago, and perhaps in yours—many of the sexually active boys were actually sexually active with a fairly small number of girls.

Is it really so hard to imagine that something somewhat similar might still be going on re infidelity, and could account for a certain amount of the general disparity? After all, we have adventuresses such as Christina Saunders, who aspired—and succeeded, if we are to take her word for it—in achieving a belt-notching history of sexual conquests that would make Casanova stand up and take notice (of course, who was actually the conqueror and who the conqueree is a disputable question).

If more women than men are inclined to be sexually sedate in terms of numbers, and yet there is a certain subset of women who are exceedingly active like Christina (after all, compared to men, women are physiologically capable—at least in theory—of bouncing back rather more quickly), then it all seems quite mathematically possible—that is, if that subset of extremely active women are inclined to underestimate their numbers of sexual encounters (unlike Christina, who seems to have kept count). That’s all that would be necessary for the averages to exhibit the observed skew.

Then again, maybe everybody’s lying.

[NOTE: I fully expect that readers more well-versed in math and statistics than I am may find a flaw in my argument. Go right ahead.]

Okay Julia, wassup…

The New Neo Posted on by

…with the dress?

juliadress.jpg

I kind of really really really want to know what you were thinking. Because to get away with a dress like that (which may not even be possible) a person must be very young and a model and kind of avant-garde looking and even then I don’t think it would ever, ever, ever work. The print alone adds a thousand pounds.

The Decline and Fall of California

The New Neo Posted on by

Joel Kotkin details the rise, and then the perplexing decline and fall, of the great state of California.

It turns out that Californians were the barbarians at their own gates; it was an act of self-destruction, fueled by the unforeseen (but should-have-been-foreseen) consequences of a change in the nature of “progressive” policies in the state:

During the second half of the 20th century, the state shifted from an older progressivism, which emphasized infrastructure investment and business growth, to a newer version, which views the private sector much the way the Huns viewed a city ”“ as something to be sacked and plundered. The result is two separate California realities: a lucrative one for the wealthy and for government workers, who are largely insulated from economic decline; and a grim one for the private-sector middle and working classes, who are fleeing the state.

I remember seeing the transformation myself. I lived in California for one year during the mid-70s, but from 1970 until quite recently I spent quite a bit of time there visiting friends and relatives.

Read the whole thing—and reflect on the fact that Jerry Brown is running for, and might even win, the governorship of California.

Completely unsurprising news of the day: al Megrahi celebrates the one-year anniversary of his release

The New Neo Posted on by

Yessiree, and there was a big bash planned, although Britain has warned Libya against it and Libya is apparently complying.

As for al Megrahi, he’s living in a lovely villa, and his sons have been given lucrative government jobs.

Is anyone—anyone—surprised by al Megrahi’s survival? The possible exception is Scottish first minister Alex Salmond, who makes a valiant but doomed effort to use the occasion of the anniversary to defend the transparently idiotic (and/or corrupt) decision of the Scottish government to release al Megrahi back in August of 2009:

Obviously people are going to have a range of views about the rights and wrongs of the decision … all we ask people to do is to accept it was a decision that was made in good faith following the due procedures that we have under the legislation and under the tenets of Scots law.

Is that all you ask, Mr. Salmon? I think it’s still way too much. I won’t go back and argue the case again; I did so at the time (my posts on the subject are here; scroll down, earliest ones at the bottom of the list).

But I’m with Iain Gray:

Iain Gray, the Scottish Labour leader, today said MacAskill had been “incompetent” in failing to get clear and unequivocal medical evidence that Megrahi’s death was imminent.

Reports from Tripoli claim he could now live for another seven years, although MacAskill said Megrahi was still critically and terminally ill.

Gray said: “A year ago I said this decision was wrong because the balance between justice and compassion was wrong, but a year later even that element of the decision, the medical evidence, now has very significant doubt cast on it.

I would add that, even a year ago, the medical evidence was already suspect. What’s more:

Anger over Megrahi’s continued survival has grown after it emerged that none of the four external specialists used by [prison doctor Fraser in issuing his report] had explicitly said he had three months to live.

Several said they were not consulted about the decision to release him on medical grounds.

The whole thing is a travesty. But it’s merely a symptom of what’s happened to the resolve and judgment of the western world. How al Megrahi and his family, and the government of Libya, must be chuckling at our foolishness.

Borges on books and change

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m reading this book of short essays by Jorge Luis Borges that were originally part of a lecture series he gave in Buenos Aires in 1977. Here’s a wonderful excerpt:

Emerson said that a library is a magic chamber in which there are many enchanted spirits. They wake when we call them. When the book lies unopened, it is literally, geometrically, a volume, a thing among things. When we open it, when the book surrenders itself to the reader, the aesthetic event occurs. And even for the same reader the same book changes, for we change; we are the river of Heraclitus, who said that the man of yesterday is not the man of today, who will not be the man of tomorrow. We change incessantly, and each reading of a book, each rereading, each memory of the rereading, reinvents the text. The text too is the changing river of Heraclitus.

Filling in the blanks: Obama the closet Muslim?

The New Neo Posted on by

A Pew Research poll finds that a growing number of Americans think Obama is a closet Muslim. The figure is now 18%, up from 11% in March of 2009, while the number who believe he’s a Christian has dropped from 48% to the present 34%, and 43% say they don’t know what religion he practices. What’s more, these numbers reflect a poll taken before his remarks on the 9/11 mosque controversy; my guess is that the trend has only increased since then.

And what do I think? I’m with that 43% who don’t know. I would add that I not only don’t know what religion he practices, I don’t know if he practices one—and if he does, I don’t know whether it is for show or because he believes in the tenets of that religion.

And I believe that the whole controversy is a subset of the question: who is Obama, what is he? Is he a socialist or a capitalist? Is he even an American at all, as birthers ask?

One might just as well say he’s a space alien and leave it at that. There is no other president about whom we’ve asked similar questions, because in some essential way we’ve known who they are/were. We didn’t and still don’t really know Obama, although we’re getting there, we’re getting there.

The relevance of the speculation about Obama’s true religious beliefs is that it is a subset of the speculation on his inner core and how that is expressed in his behavior as president. What are his true wishes for, and allegiance to, this country? His actions make a great many people doubt that he has the usual conventional dedication to its history and its best interests at heart, a speculation that—despite all the arguments about the wisdom of previous presidents, and disagreements with their policies—has not been seriously leveled at his predecessors.

It is leveled at Obama, however. And it’s sticking and growing because of a combination of three things about him that are unique in presidential history:

(1) His previous track record in public life was relatively short.

(2) He has kept many of the other salient facts of his life hidden, and the press has allowed him to do so.

(3) He campaigned as one thing and has governed as another—and this is not true just of a detail or two, but of his basic political stance, including how liberal or middle-of-the-road he is.

Before Obama was president, the gaps only meant something to those who sensed something wrong or who disagreed with his political persuasion. Now that he has a track record and has behaved in a way that seems to ignore both the wishes of the American public and the country’s best interests, more people have learned to distrust him; he has earned it. And now some of the unique facts of his history, (ignored by many people during the campaign) take on added significance—his childhood years in Indonesia, for example—and they lend themselves to the Muslim theory.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and blank screens were made to be filled in. Before Obama was president, he benefited from that blankness because most people were inclined to fill in his blanks with positive characteristics: smart, calm, competent. Now that his track record is so abysmal, and so at odds with his campaign persona, they are more inclined to fill in the screen with attributes that explain why he has not done right by this country.

There are Muslims who do serve this country well—for example, in the armed forces. But many of our conflicts around the globe are with Muslim countries, and of course our jihadist terrorist enemies are Muslims whose allegiance to, and interpretation of, that religion is one of the main things that drives them. The idea that Obama is a Muslim is not what explains his poor behavior as president, it is his poor behavior as president that explains the idea that Obama owes his true allegiance to someone or something else—whether it be Islam, or socialism, or communism, or internationalism, or statism, or all of the above, or any other ism that seems to fit a growing fact situation that puzzles so many Americans.

[ADDENDUM: The Anchoress has some sobering musings on what the 9/11 mosque controversy says about America.]

[ADDENDUM II: Ace reports on a tape that purports to show the 9/11 mosque Iman being not so moderate.]

Judge Walker and the evidence

The New Neo Posted on by

Ed Whelan has written another article in National Review examining Judge Walker’s behavior in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial. No one else in the press seems to be looking closely at what actually happened, how Walker ruled, and the ways in which the spokespeople (including Ted Olson, attorney for the plaintiffs) and the press have subsequently distorted what happened during the trial.

I was originally puzzled by reports indicating that the defense lawyers seemed to mount such an inadequate case, and to say shocking things to the judge such as “you don’t have to have evidence” on the subject of whether the traditional purpose of marriage is procreation, one of the contested issues in the trial. Well, it turns out that “you don’t have to have evidence” was the truncated quote to end all truncated quotes, and the defense lawyers weren’t so stupid after all.

It’s worth reading the whole article. In fact, it’s worth reading everything Whelan has written on the subject. But here’s an excerpt:

In context, it’s clear that Cooper [attorney for the proponents of Proposition 8] cited extensive evidence in the record, as well as relevant legal authorities, in support of the proposition that “responsible procreation is really at the heart of society’s interest in regulating marriage.” Indeed, the evidence that Prop 8 proponents submitted (and cited in their proposed findings of fact) in support of this heretofore obvious and noncontroversial proposition was overwhelming.

When Cooper stated “you don’t have to have evidence for this from these authorities”””Kingsley Davis and Blackstone and the other “eminent authorities” that Cooper was ready to discuss when Walker interrupted””and that the “cases themselves” “recognize this one after another,” it’s crystal-clear in context that he wasn’t contending that he hadn’t provided evidence or that he didn’t need to provide evidence or other authority. He was merely making the legally sound observation that the many cases recognizing the procreative purpose of marriage were an alternative and additional source of authority for the proposition.

But you wouldn’t know any of this from Walker’s highly distorting clip of Cooper’s statement””or from Olson’s contemptible misrepresentation of it, or the media’s mindless parroting of it.

Walker’s outrageous distortion on this point isn’t an aberration. As I will show when I have time, it’s representative of his entire modus operandi throughout his ruling.

The evidence (there’s that word again) mounts that Judge Walker’s rulings in Perry were bizarre and highly unusual. They point to the strong probability of a significant degree of judicial bias and/or incompetence. As for Olson—well, as the plaintiff’s lawyer, we really can’t expect objectivity from him. And then there’s the mainstream press; anyone who’s been paying attention should have given up long ago on expecting them to represent the situation fairly.

Scary skinny

The New Neo Posted on by

I remember model Twiggy. She was thin:

twiggy.jpg

And then Kate Moss, ditto:

katemoss.jpg

But this is getting ridiculous. And scary, too, if this woman’s body is seen as something to emulate. America’s Top Model? Perish the thought:

skinnymodel.jpg

Here’s another photo, in case you think that one’s a fluke:

skinnymodel2.jpg

Come to think of it, though, she’s not really significantly thinner than Twiggy. She’s just taller—a lot taller (6’2″ vs. Twiggy’s 5’6″). Her height gives her an exceptionally elongated look that exaggerates her exceptional thinness (correction: emaciation).

[Hat tip: Althouse.]

Great idea, Nancy

The New Neo Posted on by

Nancy Pelosi says it’s time to investigate—those who object to the 9/11 mosque, and how they might be funded and organized:

Pelosi told San Francisco’s KCBS radio that “there is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41204.html#ixzz0wyff8saL
“I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded,” she said. “How is this being ginned up?”

Scott at Powerline confesses, but he says he’s only a volunteer; no money was exchanged.

Me too—alas.

Too bad Nancy Pelosi is going to be re-elected in November. But at least we can hope that this profoundly un-American power-hungry Speaker will be divested of that position in 2011.