Joel Kotkin on Newgeography.com writes about the nearly recession-proof nature of Washington, D. C. and its metro area. It is a city of government and the mandarin classes, and they never go out of style. But it seems to me that […]
Howard Ahmanson
Three Californias? Integrating a Couple of Recent Proposals
It has often been proposed to split California into two states. In the past, these proposals generally agreed on dividing Northern California from Southern California; the cultural differential between the two was strong in the Kennedy years. The reader may […]
Global Warming Not a Bad Thing
Robert Zubrin, in this article from National Review, takes a different approach from most conservatives on global warming, and to my view the most sensible approach. Instead of denying that global warming is happening, or insisting that human activity has […]
The Migrations of California
We have been accustomed recently to think of California as a place people migrate out of to the rest of the United States and that receives immigrants from abroad. But apparently there are levels. The Bay Area is so much […]
SAUCE FOR THE CHRISTIAN GOOSE, SAUCE FOR THE MUSLIM GANDER?
Recently it was revealed in a column by Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish liberal Muslim, that Newt Gingrich is a fan of none other than Mustafa Kemal Atatuerk. Say what? Kemal Atatuerk was one of the most radical secularists of the […]
Observations on California’s Political Geography
A recent series of political maps from PPIC, Public Policy Institute of California, provides some fascinating information. One of the maps inflates or shrinks the various regions according to population; it makes clear why the Democratic Party dominates the state, […]
Adding to my Swede jokes
To add to my collection of Swede jokes, and of Ethnic Jokes that Really Happened, I heard this story: A gentleman of Swedish ancestry was being interviewed for the post of provost at an evangelical college. He was asked, “So […]
PRIVACY, PROPERTY, AND THE POWER OF IMPOSING CONDITIONS
In this link we read that organizations are demanding disclosure of Facebook passwords as a condition of employment, or of being allowed to play on a college athletic team. Conservatives, especially of the more libertarian variety, have often displayed a […]
SLAP ‘EM AND WALK HOME – A way of promoting abstinence in our culture
I must start with a word of explanation. Lysistrata was a comic play by Aristophanes in classical Greece, in which the women, in order to stop a war they thought senseless, agreed to not sleep with their men until the […]
The Politician who Defeated Santorum
I have seen it asserted that Rick Santorum is such a loser that the people of Pennsylvania rejected him and his social agenda. Him, maybe, but before you conclude that they utterly rejected his social agenda, Gentle Readers, take a […]