The first time I went to the polls on Election Day I was probably five, tagging along beside my mother. It was a brilliant November day in New Hampshire, and the polls were in a spare room of the town hall, the same room where I would go in later years for Cub Scout meetings and later still walk through on the way to help stock our town's tiny food assistance pantry. There was a larger room upstairs, where the annual Town Meeting was held and where I would someday go for Halloween parties and the soap box derby.

The University of Venus blog at Inside Higher Ed recently posted a personal reflection by a non-white female professor who has felt sexually harassed by one of her male undergraduates. This is at once shocking and entirely unsurprising.

I've posted about the housing and mortgage crisis, and the impending dangers, here and here, but there's one additional problem that I hadn't got my head around when I wrote those posts. That's the tranche problem, which is likely to lead to all kinds of perverse incentives and unforeseen difficulties.

Guess which side is winning this particular war?

Wolfrum's Word

You aren't supposed to talk about this, but the U.S. is seriously mired in Class Warfare, and has been for a long, long time. And the upper class is just plain kicking the crap out of the lower classes. Perhaps it's time to stop ignoring the raging war around us.

I didn’t have internet service at my house this week. There was nothing wrong with the service. I paid the bill and magical signals were coming through the cables hanging high up above the street. I say magical because I don’t understand the ins and outs of how I can sit down on my couch in Jakarta and communicate with people all over the world through invisible electrical impulses. What’s more, I don’t really care how it works, just that it does. And when it fails, I get the tiniest bit cranky. 

Most public debates over the mortgage and housing mess have been running aground on the false-dilemma problem, framing the a problem with several possible solutions as a choice between only two options. At least one of the options in false dilemmas is always completely moonbat crazy, and frequently they both are. The false dilemma I've been hearing these days goes like this:

"We either have to give mortgage lenders a free hand, and forget about the legal details, or just let borrowers keep their houses for free without paying anything!"

I ran across this article yesterday, or one like it:

LINCOLN, Neb. — When it comes to Barack Obama, it’s all Black and White.

A new Chronicles Poll shows that Americans overwhelming approve of President Obama’s White half, while his Black half has approval ratings that rival Sarah Palin’s.

Somewhere sort of like here …

1.

“And this abomination, this insult to Our Lord, it will continue to take us down a path of depravity and immorality that will destroy this great nation. These depraved, perverted individuals must be stopped. This behavior must be eliminated! And it can only happen with the help of God. You are his hands on Earth. You will help to stop this menace before all is lost!”

The NFL and its players have a reputation problem. It seems that every 10 minutes or so, an NFL player or former NFL player is being accused of assaulting a woman or worse. As problem’s go, it’s not a good one. But with the incredible popularity of the game, thus far things like rape and domestic abuse have barely made a dent in the game.

Who on Earth is crazy enough to burn the Koran? Until two weeks ago, my answer has always been "raging lunatics in Elizabethan drama." You know, stage characters from the age of Shakespeare, the kind of people who are prone to cutting off their own hands, biting off their tongues and spitting them on the stage, or baking their enemies in pies and serving them for dinner. The people who make Hamlet seem well-adjusted. Certainly, I didn't think of it as the kind of thing real people did.

Since David's recent blog has attracted attention from some self-described Objectivists and Libertarians, let me say a few things to those new commenters.

It's clear that you feel that all taxes are illegitimate ("stolen money"), and do not believe in any social contract (a la John Locke) by which citizens preserve the maximum freedom possible for them by delegating their personal legislative rights to a freely chosen legislative authority. In short, you don't accept taxation with representation. We can argue the point, but many of you seem quite set in your convictions.

I am kind, giving and strong. I am fair and law-abiding. I am smart and resourceful. I respect others and I do no harm. I follow the words of Jesus Christ. I am an American Boy.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

I have a few questions for you former Senator, is that how I shoud refer to you?   Can I Call you Al? Well Al, you really stepped in it, and you made me laugh hard. I always think you old guys will learn, you know, understand the public, even a little bit, but you don't do you? You old white guys are just plain out of touch with what it is to live in America as a regular person. And as much as you try, you just don't get it, do you. Will you all ever come around, will you ever get it?

Alan Simpson’s opinion of Social Security and those that accept it.

News/Politics

Pakistan Floods: The watery nightmare continues unabated.

The jury has been selected, and the trial begins this morning: the first prosecution of a Guantanamo detainee since Obama instituted his new, improved, Supreme Court-compliant military-commission system. Not at all like Bush's, except for every important detail.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/americas/and-then-there-were-7-the-jury-who-will-decide-omar-khadrs-fate/article1669446/

The inevitable talking point about Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the case overturning Proposition 8, is that it's "judicial overreach." Reason snaps together the prefabricated argument here. For the last generation at least, the allegedly "conservative" position is that judges should not be allowed to "make law" or to defy the will of the voters by ensuring justice or allowing equal protection under the law.

A judge has overturned California’s Proposition 8 as unconstitutional, because it is, and our country has moved one more step toward making marriage a universal right. Those who want marriage rights restricted will complain that this decision “undermines traditional marriage,” and in a way they’re correct. It does. And that's a good thing.