Email round-up of interesting links on all sorts of subjects

I’ve managed to winnow my emails down substantially by getting rid of the more commercial types, and am now digging into the remaining 200+ substantive emails.  As always, I can’t resist passing many of the links on to you.  Some might be a little dated news-wise, but I think the principles are still worth passing along.

I’m sure it was headline news when it happened, but I’ve only just learned of the disrespectful way in which Obama treated Texas Governor Rick Perry when he visited that state.  What a cad!

Local food has the virtue (often) of being fresher food.  When I buy it, therefore, I buy it with my palate in mind.  It turns out, though, that the greenies have a whole different agenda when it comes to local food — it’s just that, as is often the case with the greenies, their facts may well be wrong.  Amazing how often the Left tries to transmute emotions into fact — as vain an attempt as the alchemists’ effort to change base metals into gold.

Shakespeare, of course, got there first:  “Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation!” (Othello, II.iii.262-265)  But Melissa does a pretty damn good “got there second.” As for me, I would love to get paid for honestly expressing my opinions — but part of my honesty would be to disclose that I got paid precisely because of those opinions.  I would then be a columnist like Mark Steyn or Jonah Goldberg. I’m a big advocate of full disclosure.  And if I ever felt that people suspected that money was tainting my credibility, I’d give up the money, before I’d give up my good name.

I don’t know if this will cleanse your palate or make you die of saccharine overdose, but I kind of liked it.

Lies, damn lies, and media fraud, this time about troop draw downs in Iraq.

Of course, you can stick closer to home for lies.

As you all know, I thought Avatar was one of the most stupid and boring films I’ve ever seen.  (No, Bookworm.  Don’t sugarcoat it.  Tell us what you really think.)  Is it any surprise, then, that James Cameron, who showed a sophomoric level of intelligence in Avatar, is shying away from climate change debate?

If you like Renee Ellmers (and who in North Carolina doesn’t?), you can help her out here.  The other candidates are equally wonderful, but I think Renee could use a little help in the money department.

ObamaCare will have big ripples.  Not only patients and doctors will inevitably be hurt, but so will health care brokers.  In fact, they might be in the front line.

I had almost no internet access during my two week cruise.  The one thing I could do was read the New York Times, which Holland America offered gratis.  (And you definitely get what you pay for.)  On one of the days I read it, I had the dubious pleasure of reading Charles Blow-hard as he essentially likened American Jews to traitors, who put Israel ahead of their nation.  I wasn’t the only one offended by his conspicuous blending of ambition, distraction, uglification and derision.

You know, if you look stupid, you often are stupid.

John Hawkins says important things about making a big tent that includes gays, to the extent that those gays agree with conservatives on a variety of core issues.

My liberal husband was very excited about an Elizabeth Kolbert article from the November 2009 New Yorker, because he thinks it proves that right wingers are all whacked out birthers, who can be cured only by reading “pure,” intellectual, “objective” material such as the New York Times.  I think he’s a little confused.  Here’s a little more, incidentally, on the thin veneer of impartiality that characterizes the MSM.

Government doesn’t create wealth, people create wealth.  Kim Priestap expands upon a WSJ article that makes just that point.

The stimulus succeeded — if, that is, the purpose was to stimulate unemployment and economic stagnation.

Do you need a laugh about now?

Sometimes metaphors are stronger than even their speakers realize.

In the old days, unions were a very important counterbalance to unbridled management power.  Whether you’re talking about the horrors of phossy jaw, or the terrible deaths at the terrible Triangle Shirtwaist Factor fire, or any of a hundred, or thousands, other examples of the imbalance between management and workers in the 19th and early 20th centuries, you’re thinking, “Well, unions help level that playing field, allowing for a true marketplace.”  However, those days are mostly gone, and certainly they are mostly gone in the white collar industries, which are made up of educated, articulate, mobile workers, not uneducated, even illiterate, poverty-stricken people too poor to move to greener economic pastures.  This change in economic and social dynamics has never stopped the Regressive statists, who like to litigate as if it’s 1911 all over again.

If any of you reading this are bloggers, please be very, very careful when you quote from MSM content.  The ground crawlers are out there, and they’re looking to sue.  As it is, I think there is true value in the fair use rules, which allow people to profit from their own labors.  Having said that, however, I have no respect for plaintiffs’ lawyers and their willingness to destroy people.

I’ve still got a few more emails to review but the Holland America kitchen is closed, and I’ve got to get back to mine.  I’ll have more stuff tomorrow.