Here is a video that demonstrates that Barbour’s defense of his pardons is straight from Hollywood–in a bad way.

Ignorant misunderstanding of religion and justice or
well-reasoned argument by a former governor?  You decide.

Barbour’s pardons are what you get when you believe in the “humanitarian” view of punishment. It demonstrates that if a murderer gets close to a friendly bureaucrat for a few years and convinces him that he has been rehabilitated, he will be released without regard to whether or not he has fully paid for his crimes as specified by the justice system.

C.S. Lewis warned us about the humanitarian theory of punishment in The Problem of Pain:

Some enlightened people would like to banish all conceptions of retribution or desert from their theory of punishment and place its value wholly in the deterrence of others or the reform of the criminal himself… What can be more immoral than to inflict suffering on me for the sake of deterring others if I do not deserve it..? And what can be more outrageous than to catch me and submit me to a disagreeable process of moral improvement without my consent, unless (once more) I deserve it?

Barbour in the same interview says (at 4:56)

When my grandchildren are over at the governor’s mansion, we trust them to play with and be looked out for by these people.

I think the governor forgets that when these men killed their victims, they were not at the time servants on the estate of a man who had the power to pardon them if they behaved themselves or bring down the wrath of a powerful grandfather if they did not. I dare say that Governor Barbour would not want his grandchildren to be with these men in the same vulnerable surroundings that their victims were in when these murderers killed them.

WELCOME Nice Deb readers!

I just searched for last minute gift ideas and realized that the search results are dominated by folks who don’t have your best interest in mind. So here’s my list of easy to find locally, cheap, and much appreciated last minute gift items.

Manly man gloves, for the guy who would never spend $25 on gloves.

If your man is a home owner with any kind of yard he will love these Sears Craftsmen $25 work gloves that are now selling for $16.87 in store or online–that is if he doesn’t already have them.

Yes, your wife will think you’re crazy but my daughters really found these useful.

My wife thought I was crazy but I’ve given the Walmart ball compass to my college age daughters and they have loved them. They’re easy to carry in your purse and they will make the female loved ones in your life the equal of anyone else when it comes to directions. Find them near the camping/fishing gear.

Edam Cheese, in the fancy cheese aisle.

The California State Lottery featured a series of television ads in which past winners described small, telling moments in the days after their million dollar wins. My favorite was the laid-back dude who, as the camera pans the deluxe meat and cheese aisle in his supermarket, narrates thusly: “it didn’t really hit me until the next day in the supermarket when it was like ‘Wow. I can totally afford all this cheese.’” For some reason this strikes me as the perfect everyman fantasy–to finally be able to afford all those $12/lb cheeses, gourmet mustards, and specialty pepper sauces we family men have resigned ourselves to doing without.  So go down to the nearest upscale market and buy your guy some Edam cheese. It’s under $10, will be appreciated, and shows how thoughtful you are.

Stealth “funny book by the the Narnia guy”

Stealth gift for teenagers: If your child is of a literary bent, there’s no better stealth gift than The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, available from any local bookseller. Just toss it off as “I heard this is really funny–it’s the guy who wrote the Narnia books” and hope they take the bait. It’s short, very funny for the mature reader who can keep up with some older references to WWII, rationing etc., and probably the most entertaining book on morality ever written in English.

If you’ve seen him use a Bic pen in public, buy him the Parker Jotter.

A friend, a brilliant software executive, once confided that he loses pens all the time. We compared notes one day and each of us had of course lost our beautiful graduation pens within the first year. We concluded that we are simply not suitable recipients of gift pens. Independent of each other we figured out that the cheapest decent pen around is the Parker Jotter Pen. It is the “go to” pen for the guy who can’t keep hold of a pen and doesn’t want to look like some kind of piker by whipping out a $0.29 Bic pen at a meeting. It goes for about $6 and is sold just about everywhere. If you’ve ever seen your loved one use a cheapo Bic pen in public, go buy him one of these and a 2 pack of refills. Better still, ditch the refills and just buy him two pens because he’ll lose the pen before he ever needs the refill.

Can you figure out a game you can play with this? ‘Nerf said.

Here is a gift that you can use to play a really fun game that the manufacturer will never, ever, tell you about–not in this world and in this litigious business environment.  It is the Nerf N-Strike Maverick which is described at BoysStuff.Info this way.

The Maverick is very robust and well put together. The shooting device is a simple revolver, which is both reliable and effective. Just like with a real revolver, as you cock the gun the revolver turns to line up for the next shot.

The very fun game that you can play using this gun that the manufacturer will never tell you about is a very safe and benign variation of a game that perhaps you are familiar with if you are a fan of Michael Cimino or Christopher Walken. A game that can really only be played with a rotating barrel but a game that of course we would not want to describe to anyone who is not 100% emotionally stable. The nerf variety is surprisingly intense, a tremendous amount of fun at a party, but again, you’ll never hear me, the manufacturer, or anyone responsible suggest it to a large audience.

Study Accidentally Reveals Psych Differences of Liberals and Conservatives

A study by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) shows that there are measurable psychological differences between liberals and conservatives. However, don’t expect to get a fair reporting of the results from Scientific American or even from the researchers themselves. Both have published comically contorted interpretations of the data.

Is Obama ‘12 chief Jim Messina Psychologicaly Predisposed to Liberalism?

VCU faculty Natalie Shook and Russ Clay did two studies that show that progressives and conservatives form attitudes in ways that are markedly different. Conservatives appear less willing to show a positive response to positive stimuli than liberals. Both are equally prone to associate negative stimuli with negative responses. But liberals are more likely to associate positive stimuli with a positive response. Because behavior is far more strongly influenced by the choices a person makes than by his psychological predispositions, it would be foolish to draw conclusions from this one data point. As you will read below, however, that is exactly what Scientific American and the researchers themselves did about conservatives.

The studies were charmingly simple: participants who believed they were being tested for language skills were shown both negative images (such as spiders and sewage) and positive images (such as puppies and rainbows). Following each image a Chinese character was displayed. The order of the Chinese characters was arranged so that certain characters–all unfamiliar to the non-Chinese speaking subjects–consistently followed either a positive image or a negative image. This is the “stimulus” part of the experiment.

When later asked to choose whether they liked or disliked a specific character, subjects typically disliked the characters that consistently followed negative images. This is the “response” part of the experiment.

It was no surprise to researchers that subjects had a negative response to the characters that followed a negative stimulus and a positive response to the characters that followed a positive stimulus. Also unsurprising was that the correlation between negative stimulus and negative response was stronger than the correlation between positive stimulus and positive response, as is well established in the literature.

What surprised the researchers is that liberals had a much stronger positive response to positive stimulus than conservatives. From the abstract:

Specifically, conservatives were less susceptible to conditioning with positive stimuli than liberals.

In short, those with a politically left tendency showed a stronger tendency to associate a positive visual with a positive response. This tendency to more strongly associate good responses with good stimuli was not shown by conservatives. To use a practical example, if the two groups were shown two television ads, one about a healthcare program that may destroy the most advanced healthcare system in the world, and a second that shows that the same healthcare system may increase the number of people covered and lower costs, both groups would be more strongly affected by the negative ad. However, the liberals would be more strongly affected by the positive ad than conservatives would.

Study says liberals like this campaign worker are
“…susceptible to conditioning with positive stimuli.”

More fascinating than the results however may be the effort that the authors Shook and Clay of VCU and Sarah Estes Graham and Jesse Graham of Scientific American chose to flip the study outcome on its head by emphasizing what this says about conservatives. In the abstract Shook and Clay use this fascinating paragraph to place the emphasis on conservatives:

Political conservatives were more susceptible to conditioning with negative stimuli than conditioning with positive stimuli as compared to political liberals. Specifically, conservatives were less susceptible to conditioning with positive stimuli than liberals. Conditioning with negative stimuli did not differ by political ideology.

In other words the correlation between positive stimulus and positive response was strong for liberals and the same correlation was either absent altogether or much weaker for conservatives. But Shook and Clay say this by first saying that the conservatives were more susceptible to its opposite.  You would be hard pressed to find another study abstract that more quickly contradicts itself than when Shook and Clay write that “conservatives were more susceptible to conditioning with negative stimuli…” and then 22 words later write “…conditioning with negative stimuli did not differ by political ideology.” To their credit, Shook and Clay do write plainly that “conservatives were less susceptible to conditioning.”

Graham and Graham have no such honor as it takes very careful reading of  “The Ideology of No” to learn the truth. Framing the article as a way to explain conservative opposition to raising the debt ceiling, they offer a paragraph that obfuscates the truth:

Most strikingly, both studies showed that this negativity dominance was especially true for conservative students. In other words, those on the political right showed more of a “bad is stronger than good” bias than those on the left. Surprisingly, the political difference wasn’t to be found in the negative images, which had a strong effect on everyone across the board. If you can wrap your mind around psych study jujitsu for a moment: the differences stemmed from participants’ responses to the positive images, which carried more weight with liberal students.

Did you catch that? Let me paraphrase: Conservatives were more negative dominant. But this isn’t because they were more negative. It’s because they weren’t as positive as liberals. If you can wrap your mind around the linguistic jujitsu for a moment, this is equivalent to saying “Mr. A’s nose suffered damage when it came into contact against Mr. B’s fist. Surprisingly, it was the rapid acceleration of Mr. B’s fist that accomplished this differential in speed.”

Study says liberals like those in this Organizing for America video have a
markedly stronger positive response to positive stimuli than conservatives.

If Shook and Clay had substituted The Beatles for puppies and rainbows and The Rolling Stones for spiders and sewers, they could have reported their results like this:

Political conservatives were bigger fans of the Rolling Stones than fans of the Beatles as compared to political liberals. Specifically, conservatives were less fans of the Beatles than liberals. Interest in the Rolling Stones did not differ by political ideology.

The Grahams at Scientific American could have then picked up this theme of conservative affinity for the Rolling Stones like this:

Most strikingly, both studies showed that this Rolling Stones dominance was especially true for conservative students. In other words, those on the political right showed more of a “bad-boy rocker” bias than those on the left. Surprisingly, the difference wasn’t to be found in the images of the Rolling Stones, which had a strong effect on everyone across the board. The differences stemmed from participants’ responses to the Beatles images, which were liked more by the liberal students.

Note that once you change the study to Beatles versus Stones, the contortions of logic to arrive at these conclusions are obvious. The mystery here is how, when the subject is politics, everyone can be so obtuse to these same contortions while actually writing about the psychology of bias.

This study,  like recent studies that demonstrate conservatives’ greater awareness of threats to safety and security and penchant to value the lessons learned by previous generations, appears destined to be misrepresented in the press. But if a conclusion can be drawn from the study, it is that the conservative complaint that progressives tend only to see the good outcomes from social welfare programs may have a basis in psychology. There were no politics–indeed, no humans–in this study. There were only pictures of cuddly or threatening animals mapped to unfamiliar Chinese characters. Yet with such emotionally inert input liberals were influenced more than anticipated to respond positively to a positive stimulus.

One only has to guess with what additional fervor progressives would attach their hope for a better outcome if such multipliers as personality, politics, race, and class were added to the mix. We should have compassion for the progressive who, no better or worse informed than any other player in American politics–and no less sincere–must nevertheless struggle with a psychological makeup that makes him believe more easily, hope more fervently, and in general be more strongly affected by the pitiless stimulus/response urgings buried within all of us.

** WELCOME NiceDeb readers!

** WELCOME The Minority Report readers!

One thing they do is to publicize when customers customize the plain canvas versions of the $40 canvas casual shoe with their own artwork. They post pictures of custom shoes on their web site. It is now a genuine phenomena that can be seen on campuses around the country. There is such interest that third parties will customize your Toms Shoes for you.

This interview withToms Shoes founder, Blake Mycoskie, portrays an energetic and socially conscious entrepreneur.  It is not stated that he has figured out how to sell, in this day and age,  shoes manufactured in third world nations to Americans at a high markup. Wikipedia reports that Toms Shoes are manufactured in Argentina, China, and Ethiopia.

So what does Mycoskie answer when the interviewer asks about manufacturing overseas? Of course that question never comes up. I wish it had because then Mycoskie could explain how exploiting cheap labor markets brings those markets up by providing jobs to the locals. And this in turn provides customers to the local merchants. With luck Mycoskie could explain all the benefits that manufacturing brings to a locality. And he could do it with the charm of the “I’m a Mac” guy. And thus at long last maybe some progressives will learn that business is not the enemy but the friend of poor people.

It goes without saying that if  someone who looked like Dick Cheney had done this the press wouldn’t be asking him questions like “…can you explain the driving force behind your seemingly endless energy and passion?”

To his credit, George Stephanopoulos didn’t take the “formal resolution” line at face value, and unfortunately for Haberman, without time and a like-minded editor on her side, the carefully formulated smoking-gun of the story morphs into a commonplace scrap of legalese in a termination agreement:

“there was language in the agreement of their separation from the NRA that they would not get into details…”

Unsurprisingly, this sounds like the type of termination document you would expect from the way Cain himself describes the incident. More to the point, her description to Stephanopoulos bears little resemblance to how she and her colleagues described the agreements in the original Politico piece:

“they signed agreements with the restaurant group that gave them financial payouts to leave the association. The agreements also included language that bars the women from talking about their departures.”

Notice that the word “agreement” appears in both quotes. It is a testament to the richness of the English language that Haberman within 24 hours described this document with two vastly different shades of meaning and subtle implications using the exact same word.

Unfortunately many like Allahpundit at HotAir are analyzing this like lawyers asking who knew what when and “why did it take the campaign 10 days to do that?”

There’s a much easier way to decide this. Watch Cain.  Watch Haberman. Decide.

Effective September 30, 2011, this charge will not apply in statement cycles during which one or more of the following requirements is met:

- Maintain a $5,000 combined average daily collected balance….

The delta change from $2,000 to $5,000 is impossible to determine because the former number is not mentioned. Apparently that is left for the interested student as an exercise.

But you have to have some sympathy for Mulkin. He is passing on fee increases that point directly back to the Obama administration’s rejiggering of what banks can charge merchants for ATM transactions.  The Birmingham News reports that

Banks across the country have started implementing new fees in response to a new federal regulation that will reduce the amount banks are reimbursed for debit card use from an average of 44 cents to 25 cents per transaction….

No doubt the fee-tweaker in chief believed that he was protecting the small businessman from the banker who at some point has already made enough money. But as the fee hikes illustrate, when you push down in one spot it pops up in another spot and the net result is a waste of time and overhead. Mulkin’s hints in his letter that this should really be no mystery to anyone:

Due to changes in financial regulations over the last year, BBVA Compass has been evaluating the features and pricing of our accounts and services.

BBVA Compass states it more plainly here:

Regulatory changes have had a significant impact on the way all banks do business, reducing revenues while expenses have remained steady or even grown. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult to continue to offer our customers many of the free benefits and optional features we have provided in the past.

So after wanting to chide Mulkin for the less than forthcoming letter, I’d like to offer some assistance by providing a translation into plain English what he wanted to say about this situation in his video message to customers:

What the banks wish they could tell you about all the new fees.

Update: Welcome readers of the Scott Baker’s editor’s blog at The Blaze. If you didn’t see Richard Wolffe beclown himself while trying to disrespect Sarah Palin about C.S. Lewis back in December, see it on the Blaze.

“Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is a schmuck. He is a career bureaucrat and there is nothing we can do to get him out of there until November of 2012. To add insult to injury we will owe him a pension. The President is incommunicado since last Thursday. He is not deft when it comes to economics. He can get shown the door in November of 2012 too.”

Isn’t new media wonderful? When we were kids, two incompetents could get away with it for years and the gatekeepers would protect them.  Can’t happen any more.

I know some of you may be coy and say we citizens had something to with this. But let’s look at what kind of stuff we bitter, clinging citizens have been up to. Today I can fit all the music my father ever owned and every family photograph he ever took on a $40 .mp3 player.   I can buy a used Buick Century that gets 30 MPG and will run another 60,000 miles for $4,999. I can buy a DNA test retail and learn what medical conditions I might have a predisposition for.

So doesn’t it just make all the sense in the world that our house prices have collapsed, our debt risks collapsing our economy, and we’re actually midway in the process of gutting the world’s best healthcare system?

So light your cigars boys, you did it. You spent and borrowed and borrowed and spent and acted like there was some kind of end game that made sense. And now we see that end game and we know who is responsible. Congratulations! See you in November.

p.s. Ideology has consequences. Have you seen aerial photos of the two Koreas?

There are occasional hopeful moments: we hear some particularly galling bit of rascality described by Mark Steyn, or Dick Morris, or Ann Coulter, and it heartens us–surely something will come of this? Someone will be held accountable now. Occasionally a youngish reporter with a flip cam will track down one of the big spenders on the street to ask on our behalf why he’s giving our money to corn farmers or GM or cowboy poets, and for a second we are hopeful that finally, one of these guys will have to account to us. But then nothing happens. Ignoring critics works.

But on Saturday July 30th Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions did something I don’t believe I’ve ever seen before. He made a speech in the senate that calmly and reasonably but not without some anger explained what a bunch of idiots the big spenders have been. And continue to be.

No, this isn’t talk radio, it’s the senate floor, finally.

Can this also be ignored? I rather hope not. If John Kerry were to try to use his self-perceived gravitas to try to bat down Senator Sessions like he tried to do to Marco Rubio then I would be tempted to watch that on pay-per-view.

We should not let up the pressure on congress at this point. I’ve never seen their arguments appear so weak and flimsy, and the country so angry. In my memory criticism of the type Senator Sessions is making here has never made it past the front doors of either houses. They lapped up against the walls of the institution but it held firm. But when the flood starts entering the building, I think we may be in store for some watershed moment.

Please thank and encourage Senator Sessions by e-mail or phone (202 224-4124).

A favorite of the judges that fell just short of the top 10: “Goldfish”

#10: Talking Babies.

#9: Doomed by Debt

#8: Weight

Here is another entry that just missed the top ten, a haunting yet resolve-strengthening song by Fabian Chavez.

Here are the lyrics (copied from PowerLine):

American Dream

The man on TV said my hope should lie in him
No need for faith above we are the ones we need
The blame lies solely on the rich and all their greed
I must admit
That for a moment I believed

My father told me once nothing in life is free
The begging hand leads to a life of slavery
You work your ass off boy and there’s no limit to your reach
I sure wish
I sure wish he was here with me

Well they tell me I’m oppressed
That I’m not smart enough to know what’s best
That I’m so naïve to think that there is still an American Dream
Well you may take away my rights but I will fight you every time

These hands of mine were made to work and to provide
You clear a path for me and I’ll find the way to thrive
And I am privileged to have been born an American
And I know
I know that still means something to me

Well they tell me I’m oppressed
That I’m not smart enough to know what’s best
That I’m so naïve to think that there is still an American Dream
Well you may take away my rights but I will fight you every time

I never needed you to tell me what I need
All I want is a chance to feed my family

That last line is so powerful. He doesn’t want his family to be fed. He doesn’t want food given to him for his family. He doesn’t want the right to feed his family. He doesn’t want someone to ensure that the food will be healthy or tasty. He just wants a fair shake. What is it that Washington doesn’t seem to understand about this basic human desire?

#7. Fiscal Child Abuse

#6. Pool

#5: How big is a trillion?

#3 (tied) Mock the Spending marathon

#3 (tied) Dawn of the Debt

#2 Don’t You See

Here are the lyrics:

DON’T YOU SEE?

Daddy came home
a little early today
Somethin’ bout layin off
and cuttin’ pay

Boss is makin’ changes
’cause times are tough
the dollar’s goin down,
and taxes goin’ up

Daddy says that Washington
is out of touch.
Government’s spendin’
way too much

So I thought about
what I could do
And that’s why
I’m writin’ to you….

CHORUS:

Don’t you see
Dear Uncle Sam
The more you give me
The less I have

I can’t afford
your charity
I got my freedom
Now Let me be

That’s America…
and that’s who I am
Dear Uncle Sam

VERSE 2:
Stop tryin’ to give me
what you think that I need,
I’d rather have my family
watchin’ over me

Don’t need to buy us
any medicine
I just need my daddy
workin’ again

It’s kinda complicated
for a kid that’s eight.
But here’s an answer
you’ll appreciate:

Stop spendin’ your time
overspendin’ our dime
I think everything
will work out fine!

CHORUS

BRIDGE:
gas tax
estate tax
every breath I take tax

that tax
this tax
even got a gift tax

taxes when we use the phone
taxes when we sell our home

payroll tax
income tax
you’re missing all the simple facts

CHORUS

#1, the grand prize winner. Squirrels.