Author: Redactor

individual achievement media and media people

The Dittos Now in Order

In reporting Rush Limbaugh’s passing, yesterday, from lung cancer at age 70, the Associated Press dubbed Limbaugh a “bombastic talk radio host and voice of American conservatism.”

The latter, yes; but if you think Rush was “bombastic,” you missed the joke. Sure, he spoke of “talent on loan from God” and of “flawlessly” running the “Excellence in Broadcasting Network . . . with zero mistakes.” But bombastic means “high-sounding but with little meaning; inflated.”

Washington, D.C., in other words.

Decidedly not Rush.

Rush was both communicator and political force. When Republicans took the House in 1994 on a promise to vote on term limits, Limbaugh strongly supported the strict term limits passed by the states, challenging congressional Republicans for playing games on the issue.

Later, in 2007, Rush also gave this program a boost by reading my column, “The Two Americas,” on the air, calling it “a great way of restating the ideological arguments that exist in the country today.”

Rush stood for “the America of ever-increasing wealth, innovation, creativity. . . . The abundant work product of freedom.” And not “the politician’s America: The regulated America, the subsidized America, the earmarked America.”

Unlike so many seemingly angry shock jocks in talk radio, Mr. Limbaugh was actually nice to callers — even those who disagreed with him — and thoughtful, intelligent, and polite.

While on the hot seat speaking live for three hours each weekday to the nation’s largest radio audience (upwards of 15 million people a show) Mr. Limbaugh was one of the most transparent personalities of the age. “Dittoheads” could feel like they really knew precisely who and what they were ditto-ing.

Now, they ditto their respect. As do I.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Rush Limbaugh

national politics & policies

End in Ice?

When I was young, some folks worried about a return to Ice Age conditions. The climate alarm, in the decades since, prophesies hotter conditions, not colder.

So, with this cold snap hitting North America — ice storms from Washington State to Texas and now heading east by northeast — climate change has emerged in the back (or even front) of our minds.

It’s just not necessarily Fire we fret about. It’s Ice. (Cue recitation of the great Robert Frost poem, now.)

“The arctic air that poured into Texas resulted in a record-breaking demand for power that caused the state’s electric grid to fail,” the Weather Channel reports. “Suppliers had planned to use rolling blackouts, but the system was overwhelmed” — effecting an “estimated 75% of Texas power generation capacity.”

Millions in Mexico are also without power, because natural gas pipelines from Texas froze.

The main hit to the electric grid sure looks like it has been directly* to the distribution — if what I glean from Georgetown’s electric outage page is a good indication.

But that town went heavy into alternative forms of energy production (as has the whole of the state, along with many others). Did that investment help them when the cold came? Former Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette says the problem is that alternative energy sources are not “base load electricity” but “intermittant and sometimes unreliable.”

Just as batteries under-perform in the cold, windmills don’t turn well when covered in ice. When we really need power, energy production that flakes out is not an energy alternative at all — it’s non-energy.

And if an Ice Age does come back, we’ll need more energy, not less than were global warming to remain the trend.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The reason there was no weekend podcast from me is that my partner in podcasting was without power simply because an ice storm brought down trees on multiple power lines in his area.

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Tags climate, energy, global warming

media and media people

Should Oppressors Host the Olympics?

Post author By Redactor
Post date February 16, 2021
2 Comments on Should Oppressors Host the Olympics?

China is scheduled to host the Winter Olympics in 2022. Should it be allowed to? If allowed, should anybody go?

Cato scholar Ilya Somin argues, at Reason, for at least boycotting the event.

Why? To respond to the Chinese government’s “many egregious atrocities, including its detention of hundreds of thousands of Uighurs in concentration camps, brutal repression in Hong Kong, and much else.”

China is one of the worst violators of human rights in the world. So why let the Olympics serve as a “propaganda showcase” for the regime?

The ideal of an Olympic Games unencumbered by politics is untenable. You can’t keep the games free of politics when tyrant-hosts routinely exploit the event for political purposes while appeasers turn a blind eye.

A globally publicized boycott would make the work of the appeasers much harder.

Somin goes further, however. He argues that the International Olympic Committee should permanently prohibit oppressive governments from hosting the Olympics.

If this policy were enacted, there would be heated debates about whether Country Y or Country Z belong to the same ban-worthy category as China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and Zimbabwe.

Maybe we could use Cato’s Human Freedom Index as a guide to oppression.

How brutal is too brutal? Let’s talk, because without open argument, any decision or policy will be arbitrary and useless.

And I welcome those debates about borderline cases, just as long as the most blatantly brutal regimes can never again host the Olympics and exploit them to advance their vicious agendas.

Until then: Boycott the 2022 games in China.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags China, olympics

Thought

Fawcett & Greenwood

In this age of communication, ignorance is no longer bliss.
Lawrence Fawcett & Barry J. Greenwood, The UFO Cover-Up: What the Government Won’t Say (1984).

Thought

Wilhelm von Humboldt

The incapacity for freedom can only arise from a want of moral and intellectual power; to elevate this power is the only way to counteract this want; but to do this presupposes the exercise of that power, and this exercise presupposes the freedom which awakens spontaneous activity.
Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action (1792).

Thought

Jean-Baptiste Say

[A]re the gains of the privileged company, national gains? Undoubtedly not: for they are wholly taken from the pockets of the nation itself.

First Amendment rights social media

Tracking Big-Tech Attacks

Instagram is further restricting what users may say in direct messages, and the company will eject any user who utters hate speech. Instagram will also provide information about account holders to UK police.

But what is hate speech?

Nasty utterances that we’d all agree are hateful. Sure. But it also appears to be disagreeing with someone about “gender identity” or supporting Melania Trump. In other words, “hate speech” is whatever offends the authoritarian sensibilities of whoever operates the delete-account button at the social-media giants.

A lot of this has been happening lately.

YouTube has deleted the YouTube channel of LifeSiteNews, a Christian news outlet.

YouTube and Facebook have banned a documentary about pandemic policies called “Planet Lockdown,” and GoFundMe has cancelled a fundraising campaign for the film.

China will start accrediting reporters based on their social media histories, and it will penalize companies who employ unaccredited reporters. “Citizen journalists” (people with cell phones) will also have to be accredited.

Every day, tyrannical governments and their private-sector allies — the big-tech hall monitors now dropping all pretense of providing neutral forums — act to smother discussion and dissent on the net. In self-defense, we need to know about these anti-speech efforts. But keeping track is a big job.

Fortunately, ReclaimTheNet is doing this big job for us. Its regular e-letter (subscribe here) reprints the latest stories published on their website.

This job has to be outsourced, as far as I am concerned. Were I to report on all of it here, I wouldn’t be able to talk about anything else.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags blacklisting, cancel culture, censorship, hate speech

Thought

Egyptian scribe

A book is more effective than a carved tombstone or a permanent sepulcher. They serve as chapels and mausolea in the mind of him who proclaims their names.
Papyrus Chester Beatty IV, a Ramesside document, British Museum (10684), in “Be a Writer,” Toby Wilkinson, translator and editor, Writings from Ancient Egypt (Penguin Classics 2016). [edited for clarity in image]

Today

Scharansky Freed

On Feb. 12, 1986, Soviet human rights activist Anatoly Scharansky was released after spending eight years in Soviet prisons and labor camps. The amnesty deal was arranged at a summit meeting between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan. Scharansky had been imprisoned for his campaign to win emigration rights for Russian Jews — who had been forbidden to practice Judaism in the USSR.

On Feb. 12, 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded.

On Feb. 12, 1593, approximately 3,000 Korean defenders led by General Kwon Yul successfully repelled more than 30,000 invading Japanese forces in the Siege of Haengju.

education and schooling general freedom

The Only Choice Left?

Over the last year, we have learned that the risk to children and teachers of being infected by the COVID-19 virus while in classrooms is relatively low.

Although precautions are warranted to keep that risk as low as possible, resuming in-person classwork is feasible. Many parents therefore want their kids back in school. Especially if those kids find it hard to learn “virtually.”

But around the country, many teachers, led by adamant teachers unions, refuse to return to work. Chicago, California, West Virginia, and DC are among the cities and states having trouble getting teachers to reenter classrooms.

I encourage parents to consider teaching their kids themselves (as my wife and I have done, her mainly). Not every family can homeschool. But some who could do it just haven’t given the possibility much thought. Now would be the time to give it a little more thought.

More parents could also send their kids to private schools with the help of tax breaks or vouchers. What I mean is that if a kid costs $5,000 a year to educate at a public school, let parents have $5,000 in the form of a tax credit or voucher to send their kid to a private school that is open for business.

The politics of expanding school choice is often difficult. But if more parents start pushing, we can do this. Beleaguered parents in teacher-union-blockaded regions have a good argument: the fact that they have no other choice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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