Empathy: The projection of one’s own feelings or emotional state onto an object.
“Empathy v. Impartiality” pretty much says it all, and you don’t really have to read Jonah Goldberg’s column with this 
title to understand the problem.
The reasoning here is a riot of dubious assumptions. Obama and Sotomayor both assume that a firsthand understanding of the plight of the poor or the African-American or the gay or the old will automatically result in justices voting a certain (liberal) way. “I would hope,” Sotomayor said in 2001, “that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” This is not only deeply offensive, it is also nonsense on stilts. Clarence Thomas understands what it is like to be poor and black better than any justice who has ever sat on the bench. How’s that working out for liberals?
It used to be that justice was blind, but the absence of vision seems to have migrated to the other branches of government.
Image by mafleen - Creative Commons
May 27th, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Law, Politics |
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It will stimulate the economy for people to go on vacation. That’s the logic of congressional Democrats who plan to introduce legislation guaranteeing workers a paid vacation.
The Paid Vacation Act is the brainchild of Alan Grayson (D-FL), whose district includes parts of the mega-vacation venue of Orlando.
How will doing nothing create wealth? That’s a question that doesn’t seem to occur to the Democrats. The answer is that it doesn’t – with one exception: It would create more wealth if the Democrats in Congress were to do nothing.
“There’s a reason why Disney World is the happiest place on Earth: The people who go there are on vacation,” said Grayson, a freshman who counts Orlando as part of his home district. “Honestly, as much as I appreciate this job and as much as I enjoy it, the best days of my life are and always have been the days I’m on vacation.”
Yes, and the best days of our lives may also be while Grayson is on vacation.
May 21st, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Commerce, Politics |
no comments
The champions for each side of the waterboarding debate have finally been chosen rather later in the game. On the side of squishy niceness is Nancy Pelosi. It now seems certain that Pelosi has never had a serious thought about national security one way or the other.
On the other side is Dick Cheney. That side has not had any vocal supporters up to now. The Bush administration ceded the field to its detractors.
Pundits are saying that Cheney is doing serious damage to the recovery prospects of Republicans, that is, the prospects of them becoming squishy and nice and unserious about national security. Those pundits are less sure what to make of Pelosi’s revisionist and opportunistic stances on the subject.
Mark Steyn demonstrates how one man’s interrogation technique is another woman’s torture, depending on when it occurs and who does it. Sen. Diane Feinstein pointed out that we were under a threat of terrorism in 2002 (or perceived that to be the case), and fear of terrorism is, like, so yesterday. That rousing defense of Pelosi illustrates the depth of principle that would animate the proposed “truth commissions.”
Indeed. In effect, the senator is saying waterboarding was acceptable in 2002, but not by 2009. The waterboarding didn’t change, but the country did. It was no longer America’s war but Bush’s war. And it was no longer a bipartisan interrogation technique that enjoyed the explicit approval of both parties’ leaderships, but a grubby Bush-Cheney-Rummy war crime.
* * *
Well, sure. It’s the Miss USA standard of political integrity: Carrie Prejean and Barack Obama have the same publicly stated views on gay marriage. But the politically correct enforcers know that Barack doesn’t mean it, so that’s okay, whereas Carrie does, so that’s a hate crime. In the torture debate, Pelosi is Obama and Dick Cheney is Carrie Prejean. Dick means it, because to him this is an issue of national security. Nancy doesn’t, because to her it’s about the shifting breezes of political viability.
May 16th, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Politics |
2 comments
I could squeeze another productive hour out of each day if the computers over at “Warranty Services” would stop calling me. But they won’t. Almost every day, I get a call telling me my car warranty is about to expire. Which car? They don’t know. When does it expire? They have no idea.
On the infrequent days that the warranty callers don’t call, the credit specialists keep the lines buzzing. “This is your second and final notice!” they say. If only that were true.
Since the calls come in on my business line, the “do not call” registry does me no good. Apparently, legislators haven’t figured out that I am just as annoyed in my office as I am at home. Does the First Amendment permit scam artists to harass you at work but not at home? I’m not aware of any such distinction.
Of course, I opt not to do business with any company that bottom-feeds with robo calls, but I occasionally get these calls from companies that I already do business with. Yes, Advanta, I’m talking about you. Complaining does no good. Here’s the response you get:
Dear Advanta Customer,
As you requested, Advanta is providing you with the following information.
We obtain mailing lists from many sources, including (among others) software registrations, promotions, magazine subscriptions, and credit reporting agencies. Unfortunately, sometimes the information we received can be inaccurate. Thank you for bringing this error to our attention.
If you would provide the phone number and the address at which the invitation was received, we would be happy to remove the information from our files.
You may also mail your request to us at:
Advanta Bank Corp.
PO Box 30715
Salt Lake City, UT 84017-0715
We appreciate the opportunity to serve you and your business needs. If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to contact our Customer Service Center. You can visit us online 24 hours a day at www.advanta.com or call us toll free at (800) 705-7255, Monday - Friday 8:00 am to 8:00 pm and Saturday 8:00 am to 5:00 pm Eastern Time.
Mac J.
Account Manager
Advanta
To which I reply:
Dear Mr. J:
You missed the point entirely. There was no error. There was an intrusion, and a very unwelcome one. You intentionally programmed a computer to call a gazillion people in the hopes that a handful of them would find it charming and that the rest would hang up before finding out which company had made the call.
Yours truly,
A Former Customer
Robo calls are a great money saver for the company. Just a few sales will pay for the system, and the computer is tireless. It never gets discouraged no matter how many people hang up on it.
The cost? Well, virtually all of the costs are pushed onto the recipient who stops what he is doing to hear for the umpteenth time, “This is your third and final notice.”
Now, Chuck Schumer of all people wants to do something about it, and I wish him success. But I could save him a lot of time. We don’t need an investigation. People (even shyster businesses) have a right to speak, but they don’t have a right to be heard, or to get you out of bed to be heard, or to make you stop your work to be heard. Chuck could introduce a bill simply outlawing robo calls as a public nuisance. The productive time saved would surely stimulate the economy.
But Chuck won’t do that, because senators also want to be heard, and there is no political mileage in simply cutting to the chase and doing the right thing. First, he has to tell us ad nauseam how concerned he is. After that, he might introduce legislation that makes it illegal for some (but not all) businesses to make robo calls.
You can be sure that somewhere in that bill there will be an exemption that allows political campaigns to make all the robo calls they want.
May 11th, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Commerce, Politics |
no comments
The new tone of civility in Washington was on sharp display at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and the president proved that he can enjoy a good laugh at someone else’s expense. Rush Limbaugh, as a public figure and icon of the right, is fair game for criticism. But the people who criticize Limbaugh as mean-spirited seem to think it perfectly acceptable – no, funny – to call him a traitor, a terriorist, and to wish him dead.
Perhaps the audience was laughing at the irony of it all.
May 11th, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Politics |
no comments
Mark Steyn describes the video that appears below:
One Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, a group wearing “BOYCOTT ISRAEL” T-shirts entered a French branch of Carrefour, the world’s largest supermarket chain, and announced themselves. They then systematically advanced down every aisle examining every product, seizing all the items made in Israel and piling them into carts to take away and destroy. Judging from the video they made, the protesters were mostly Muslim immigrants and a few French leftists. But more relevant was the passivity of everyone else in the store, both staff and shoppers, all of whom stood idly by as private property was ransacked and smashed, and many of whom when invited to comment expressed support for the destruction. “South Africa started to shake once all countries started to boycott their products,” one elderly lady customer said. “So what you’re doing, I find it good.”
Others may find Germany in the ‘30s the more instructive comparison. “It isn’t silent majorities that drive things, but vocal minorities,” the Canadian public intellectual George Jonas recently wrote. “Don’t count heads; count decibels. All entities—the United States, the Western world, the Arab street—have prevailing moods, and it’s prevailing moods that define aggregates at any given time.”
May 9th, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Politics |
no comments
Miss California’s views on same-sex marriage were first dismissed simply as the ramblings of a religious fanatic. What could be worse than having your head filled with religious mumbo-jumbo? Why, having your breasts filled with silicone, of course.
There you have it. It’s a double whammy proving that she’s just ignorant trailer trash in a designer dress.
Add to that the shocker that the Miss USA Pageant actually paid for the implants.
Is there a scandal here? Do you feel cheated and abused learning that the entertainment industry dangled a scantily clad woman before your eyes after refitting her with some artificial enhancements?
On the other hand, if we discover next week that some other contestant in the pageant is transgendered and had undergone a more radical surgical procedure, we could anticipate that the gender-irrelevance crowd would rush to his/her defense. We would see sympathetic press coverage with reporters dutifully reading the LGBT talking points:
Transgendered persons include pre-operative and post-operative transsexuals, transgenderists (persons living full-time in a gender other than their birth sex with no desire to pursue surgery); transvestites (preferred term: crossdressers, those whose gender expression occasionally differs from their birth sex); “mannish” or “passing” women, whose gender expression is masculine and who are often assumed to be lesbians, although this is not necessarily the case; “feminine” men who are often assumed to be homosexual, although they are just as often heterosexual; and intersexed persons, whose sex was arbitrarily assigned after birth and who often manifest physical characteristics, expression or identity that differs from the sex assigned without their consent.
And the sympathetic coverage would continue right up to the moment when the transgendered winner fails to support the latest political cause du jour or confesses the faith of Christ crucified.
May 2nd, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Media, Religion |
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