John Galt Wears Skinny Jeans

Julian Sanchez recounts how he accidentally set off a Twitter meme: a hipster version of Atlas Shrugged. As seen in #HipsterShrugged:

• Who is John Galt? Oh, you probably haven’t heard of him, he’s really obscure.
• I stopped contributing to society way before “going Galt” was cool.
• Dagny Taggart: Relationship status: It’s complicated.
• Galt’s Speech really isn’t as good as his earlier work.
• I used to like the government, but that was before it got big and popular.

Advice for young couples

My wife and I recently celebrated the 6-month anniversary of our daughter’s birth. (A combination of privacy wishes and preoccupation prevented me from noting this joyful occasion on ITA at the time.) I’m convinced that nothing can fully prepare a person for the magnitude of the life change that comes with bringing a new life into the world. But I do have plenty of practical advice for prospective new parents, starting with this:

If you are planning to have kids, first you should start saving. The amount you’ll need to save will depend on the cost of living in your area, of course, but as a general rule of thumb, I would advise the following:

If one spouse is planning to stay home with the kids, then save that spouse’s entire take-home pay, plus $100-$150 per month. If you can’t afford that right now, start planning now for how you will balance your household budget after you give up one income source and pick up a major monthly expense at the same time.

If both you and your spouse plan to continue working, then save $100-$150 per month, plus day care expenses. Call around to find out how much day care costs per month in your area. (Don’t estimate based on how much someone you know is paying, or an average figure published in the media.)

Modifying your budget at least a year before your first child is born will not only give you time to adjust to one change in your lifestyle before facing the biggest lifestyle shift you’ll ever experience, it will allow you to build up a nice reserve fund which, if you hopefully don’t need it to cover unexpected medical expenses related to your child’s birth, you can use to start an education fund for the child.

Catholics, Muslims, and the Mosque

Here’s a smart read for a Saturday. Two historians address the Ground Zero Mosque issue and the plight of American Muslims today in the context of the difficult integration of Catholics into the American mainstream in the 19th and 20th centuries. Like in all historical comparisons the parallels aren’t perfect, but there’s enough similarity for their argument to be enlightening, I think.

Mr. Campaign Finance Reform

John McCain spent $21 million, or $75 per vote, to win his primary on Tuesday, 56-32 over J.D. Hayworth. In comparison, McCain spent $5 per vote in the 2008 presidential race, and $13 per vote (inflation adjusted) in his first campaign in 1982. Just sayin’.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Inception

There are many Inception trailer mashups out there, but–call me a child of the 80s–this is by far the best:

Which Sport has the best Umpires?

Remember a few months back, when an umpire’s blown call at first base cost Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game? Many people cited this as a great example of why baseball needs to adopt instant replay for more than just home runs. I disagreed, arguing that baseball’s biggest problem these days is that the games are too stinkin’ long, and instant replay will only make matters worse.

538.com points to an interesting study about major league umpires. A study by ESPN looked at every call (except balls and strikes) in every game over a two week period and found that baseball umpires are very good—only 1 blown call every 4 games, or an average of 0.2 or 0.3 blown calls a game. A 2004 study by the NFL in contrast found an average of 2.3 blown calls per game. And NBA reffing? Let’s not go there.

Cops vs. music

When my pastor returned from a medical mission trip to Vietnam with evangelist Dave Roever a few years back, he told of how he and several American veterans in his group sat together outside their hotel with an acoustic guitar and began to sing some songs–a mixture of old cowboy songs and gospel songs. Soon, a small crowd had gathered to listen to the music. Soon after that, the police showed up to disperse the crowd and issued a stern warning to the Americans not to do that again.

I thought that scene was something you’d only see in a communist nation, where the government keeps an iron grip over the populace to keep it under control. But an eerily similar act played out in Tampa on Sunday night after a Switchfoot concert. Lead singer Jon Foreman was playing songs for a small group of fans outside the concert venue, when a Tampa police officer broke up the gathering. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen such a mellow gathering broken up by a cop in such a belligerent fashion (he butts in right at the 4-minute mark in the video):

Bloomberg in Defense of Liberty

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is the epitome of a nanny-state RINO (the calorie totals I saw last weekend on the menus new Yankee Stadium are a perfect testimony), but his recent speech defending private property and religious freedom on the matter of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque is outstanding and worth reading in full. Good job sir. Here’s a brief selection:

We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors. That’s life. And it’s part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11/2001.

On that day, 3,000 people were killed because some murderous fanatics didn’t want us to enjoy the freedoms to profess our own faiths, to speak our own minds, to follow our own dreams, and to live our own lives. Of all our precious freedoms, the most important may be the freedom to worship as we wish. And it is a freedom that even here — in a city that is rooted in Dutch tolerance — was hard-won over many years.
[...]

The simple fact is, this building is private property, and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship, and the government has no right whatsoever to deny that right. And if it were tried, the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here.

This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions or favor one over another. The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan.

Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11, and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.

For that reason, I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetimes, as important a test. And it is critically important that we get it right.

On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, ‘What God do you pray to?’ (Bloomberg’s voice cracks here a little as he gets choked up.) ‘What beliefs do you hold?’

The attack was an act of war, and our first responders defended not only our city, but our country and our constitution. We do not honor their lives by denying the very constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked.

Not Quite

Newt Gingrich fancies himself to be a viable candidate for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. That of course means we’ll inevitably be treated to the frequent media profile/hit piece, like this one from Esquire, who interviewed Gingrich’s second of three wives. Nevertheless, I got a chuckle from Vanity Fair’s brief blog post on Newt’s wives (riffing on the Esquire article) which described Newt Gingrich as a “perennial Republican presidential nominee.”

Um, VF, Newt Gingrich has never been the Republican presidential nominee. Ever. Actually, he’s never officially been a candidate for president.

He only feels perennial.

The Clinton Question in Action

A couple posts down, I mentioned my “Hillary Clinton Question” for supporting or opposing executive action–”Would I support this executive action if my political opposite [Hillary Clinton] were in office?.” John Cole brought it back to my mind in his response to the Obama administration’s efforts to get more access to a person’s internet activity without a warrant. They want to add “electronic communication transactional records” to the list of items the FBI may demand without a judge’s approval. This includes “the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user’s browser history,” but apparently not the content of the e-mail itself (or so they say). Appropriately upset by the possible implications of this on privacy rights, Cole writes:

People seem to forget that a lot of the crap in the Patriot Act originally was proposed by the Clinton administration, and Republicans back then were wary of letting Democrats have that kind of power (a lot of it was also that they were just like today’s GOP and just opposed anything Clinton suggested). 9/11 changed all that. Now that both parties are essentially weak-kneed pansies who faint if someone so much as whispers the word “terrorism” anywhere near them, it is impossible to think of a situation in which any administration, Republican or Democratic, can not just say national security and get whatever they want. And, as we’ve learned, even if they don’t get what they want, they’ll do it anyway, and the next administration will just “look forward, not backwards.” Unless you’re a whistleblower.

Back to the substance of the issue- wtf is so hard about getting a damned warrant?

Heh. Limited government, except when our team is in power or when it comes to the chief executive and the war on terror.