Government Warranty?

Are those authorized in Article VIII?

Let’s leave aside the constitutional question, because we might as well. Really, there is no constitutional question, but what the constitution says has long since ceased to matter to enough people to make a difference. Limited government is dead. But it’s just embarrassing for the President of the United States to tout a product warrenty:

It is my hope that the steps I am announcing today will go a long way towards answering many of the questions people may have about the future of GM and Chrysler. But just in case there are still nagging doubts, let me say it as plainly as I can — if you buy a car from Chrysler or General Motors, you will be able to get your car serviced and repaired, just like always. Your warrantee will be safe.

In fact, it will be safer than it’s ever been. Because starting today, the United States government will stand behind your warrantee. — President Obama’s remarks on U.S. car industry, 30 March 2009

Although President Obama is now on the hook for GM’s recovery, I blame him less than the idiots in Congress, and, ahem, the voters who chose them. Granted, picking between bad and worse, we could not expect a good result, but a divided government would have been less bad than the present one-party rule by Democrats. The legislature is dominated by political hacks, and I’m not sure it matters which party (mis)rules things, as long as it’s not the same party that controls the Whitehouse.

Some of the administration’s policies are okay; some are unwise; some are revolting. The president can’t be an expert in biology, strategy, diplomacy, and business management (nor can the experienced businessman be president; Romney would have been a better man to have in office right now). Inevitably any president has to rely on advice from people he trusts. It’s hard luck the people around President Obama aren’t worthy of that trust. It would be easy enough to blame this on President Obama, and maybe I’ll succumb after a few more months. Right now, I don’t really dislike the President. I choose not to.

President Obama is way liberal. He and I disagree on some really important issues. Still I’m going to maintain he’s a decent guy trying to do good. I saw for the last eight years what rabid, irrational hate does to initially reasonable people. I’m not going to hasten my descent into dementia for the sake of hating Barack Obama.

Over-reaching

GM chief Wagoner ousted by Obama: “The chief executive of struggling US car company General Motors has been ordered to step down by US President Barack Obama.”

The BBC goes on to report “Fritz Henderson, the GM president and chief operating officer, will replace Mr Wagoner.” Of course that’s an oversimplification, likely because the Brits don’t fully understand our constitution. The federal government has no power that isn’t explicitly granted to it. Over here, the president can’t just unilaterally appoint a new head of General Motors. He needs the approval of the Senate.

Atheist preacher

At first it seems ironic that Klaas Hendrikse, an atheist, continues to preach in his church building in the Netherlands. But really, as an atheist, why would he not keep the job? It’s not like he fears any consequences, or hopes for anything better. The people in the pews on Sunday are okay with it. His superiors in the organization that employs him, the “Protestant Church in the Netherlands,” are okay with it. He’s already got the black turtleneck. And of course it’s all very nuanced. He says he believes in God, just not in God’s existence. In a stunningly original twist, he’s even written a book.

I’m generally okay with atheists (no doubt they’re relieved to know it). People who say they are atheists have at least thought seriously about it. That puts them one step ahead of the nominal Christians: those who go to church every Sunday morning because it’s what they do after they read the paper. Having read a few books and given it some thought, the atheist may continue to read and think; and inevitably, life happens. So saying one is an atheist seems to me to be the second step, and often a step in the right direction. Being an atheist happens first, and an honest atheist is a couple of steps ahead of Lewis’ apostate bishop, the “fat ghost with the cultured voice.”

At least Hendrikse felt some need to redefine the words in “I believe in one God…” (if that church recites the Credo). That beats standing up to tell a big honkin’ lie once a week. That lingering impulse to honesty is a hopeful sign. The next step for Herr Hendrikse might be a beach vacation with some good books. And a nice Aloha shirt would probably put him, and everyone else, in a better frame of mind.

Business casual

“People working in the City of London and in the Docklands financial districts have been advised to dress down — jeans and T-shirts instead of suit and tie and supermarket carrier bags instead of briefcases — to avoid becoming targets.” — Reviled London bankers the focus of demonstrations next week

More news reports:

• G20 anarchists plan wave of strikes against Canary Wharf and BT Tower
• Recession rallies G20 protesters

Are we on a slippery slope?

Well, we aren’t at the top…

“Up to 40,000 people in Utah live in polygamous families and it is a way of life that they insist is based on religious belief.
…
‘I’m not being soft on them,’ [Utah's attorney general] said. ‘But I don’t have the resources to throw them all in jail. I hope they now work through the process of changing the law if they disagree with it.’ ” — Quest to legalise polygamy in Utah

It’s 2009. There’s no basis in secular law for forbidding any number of consenting adults from doing anything at all.

Except smoke tobacco, of course. That’s just nasty.

Sheep with LEDs on their backs

Extreme Sheep LED Art – Better than crop circles. h/t

Hear the lamentation of the women

“From Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem to Andrea Dworkin and Germaine Greer on up through Susan Faludi and Naomi Wolf, feminist literature has been a remarkably consistent and uninterrupted cacophony of grievance, recrimination, and sexual discontent…

“Consider just what we have been told by the endless books on the topic over the years. If feminists married and had children, they lamented it. If they failed to marry or have children, they lamented that, too. If they worked outside the home and also tended their children, they complained about how hard that was. If they worked outside the home and didn’t tend their children, they excoriated anyone who thought they should. And running through all this literature is a more or less constant invective about the unreliability and disrespect of men.

“The signature metaphors of feminism say everything we need to know about how happy liberation has been making these women…” — The Vindication of Humanae Vitae

Telephone

My wife went downtown and got our land-line telephone disconnected the other day. The person behind her in line did the same thing, so it looks like tough times for the phone company. But since we have cell phones like everyone else, it was hard to see the point. This morning I checked, and there was no dial tone.

The monthly bills were small, for both the local telco and the long distance provider, but it saves a few dollars. Three calls out of four were wrong numbers, people asking for money, or someone I didn’t want to talk to; no reason to pay for that. A benefit I hadn’t thought about is the simplification of having two fewer vendors to deal with every month.

There’s no longer any need for the answering machine or the two telephones, so I unplugged those. They’ll go in the box with the modems, and I’ll use a few pennies less electricity. Though maybe that will be offset by the need to more frequently recharge the cell phone. Still, I could recharge it at work, make The Man pay for it. That would go well with my strategy of taking in bottles of water, putting them in the freezer in the morning, and then taking the ice home at night. But I digress.

There’s no more need to maintain the indoor wiring. More accurately, there’s no more need to put off maintaining it – and hey, procrastination wins again!

Could I make the phone company take away their wire from the curb to the house? I don’t bear them any ill will; they were as non-bad as a phone company can be; way less annoying than the cable company. Still, it might be satisfying to say, “Hey, you guys left a bunch of wire and stuff when you disconnected my phone. When are you coming to pick that up?”

UPDATE: It’s icing on the cake that I’ll no longer be paying ten bucks in taxes and fees every month.

Newspapers, et cetera

The ever-quotable Clay Shirky says during revolutions, “The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place.” From the same post:

“Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know ‘If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?’ To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.

With the old economics destroyed, organizational forms perfected for industrial production have to be replaced with structures optimized for digital data. It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem.” — Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable (emphasis mine)

Like good fiction, Shirky’s essay gives the reader space to generalize, specify, compare, and contrast. Someone could apply his thesis to economics, politics, education, or denominational Christianity in America.

“No time for nothing; no Patek Philippe”

Jacques Seguela, who is both a Frenchman and an advertising executive, says “you’re a failure if you don’t own a Rolex by the time you’re 50.”^* He’s a friend of Nicolas Sarkozy, the Rolex-wearing president of France. The French have issues with all this. I kind of like Sarkozy, so I’m assuming his Rolex is a fake.

In the era of power ties and padded shoulders, my father bought a fake Rolex. He thought it was absolutely hilarious, for reasons I never completely understood. Dad said, “What do you think of this?” as he handed me a watch.

“A Rolex? Those are pretty expensive, aren’t they?”

“Not this kind. Twenty dollars, no questions asked.”

“You got a fake Rolex? Why?”

(For reasons never entirely clear, like the one-inch cube of lead; the quart of pure glycerin; a can of Norwegian codfish ball soup; two aluminum ingots; some kind of special magnet; a watered silk waistcoat; et cetera, et cetera.)

“Look at the second hand.”

“Yeah?”

“It sweeps. This is a battery powered quartz watch. A Rolex is mechanical, driven by a spring, so it ticks.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Right, so this twenty dollar quartz watch is probably more accurate than a thousand dollar Rolex.”

“Huh; interesting commentary on, uh, human nature, I guess.”

“Doctor G______ will bust a blood vessel when he sees this. I wore it down to McDonald’s the other day and D_____ almost broke his neck trying to sneak a look. The trick is to not say anything about it; just casually let it show while you take a sip of coffee. Ah Hah Hah Hah Hah Hah! Have you read about the sumptuary laws?”

He was able to provoke two reactions: a knowing smile (“been to the city?”), or some mix of resentment, anger, and suspicion.

After he had his fun, he started lending it to his friends for their own guerrilla humor operations. At some point it stopped running, but that was no impediment to whatever they were doing. Finally the fake winding stem fell off, and the local jeweler wouldn’t fix it. I guess he wasn’t in on the joke.

^*“Si à 50 ans, on n’a pas une Rolex, on a raté sa vie.” I’m not convinced “you’re a failure” is the best translation, unless it’s an idiomatic expression or something.