Friday, July 20, 2012

Friday miscellaneous (7/20)

Since there was no post last week, this one is especially long.

Here’s a chart showing what your favorite websites say about your politics.

Justice Roberts’ healthcare decision is still making waves. Some think he has ensured its unworkability, while others point the shifting positions of the political left and right with regard to judicial restraint.

On the presidential front, Mitt Romney gave what seems to have been an excellent speech to the NAACP last week. He is also receiving full support of the NRA. In the end, though, it will all come down to the Electoral College. And Thomas Sowell explains the competing job numbers that Obama and Romney keep tossing around.

We know President Obama likes green energy. I didn’t expect to see this much recycling in his speeches and press releases though. Oh well, we shouldn’t read too much into that.

But what we are reading a lot into is President Obama’s message to business owners: “You didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Here’s my favorite analysis so far:

It's as if President Obama climbed into a tank, put on his helmet, talked about how his foray into Cambodia was seared in his memory, looked at his watch, misspelled "potato" and pardoned Richard Nixon all in the same day. . . . These defining moments take hold most devastatingly when they confirm what a large portion of the electorate already believes. Taken alone, it seems unfair that a single moment, an unguarded remark or a slip of the tongue can carry such weight. They're often dismissed as "gotcha" moments, but when voters are able to nod and say, "I knew it," these moments stick and do terrible damage. We have witnessed such a moment.

Romney, of course, seems to be taking this opportunity and running with it.

The liberal leaning Atlantic has published an article calling for China to end its one-child policy.

The book lover in me finds this picture of someone’s abandoned personal library disturbing.

Did you know that The Hobbit was published in the USSR in 1976? Here are some of the illustrations from that edition.

Book reviewer Tim Challies has written a critical review of Debbi Pearl’s book on marriage. “In place of the wisdom and the fruit of the Spirit that ought to mark a mentor, she displays a harsh and critical spirit, she offers foolish counsel, she teaches poor theology, she misuses Scripture, and she utterly misses the centrality of the gospel.” (And don’t miss part II.)

These are for anyone who ever wanted to disguise their own footprints as animal footprints.

R.C. Sproul makes the case that Christians are not released from their moral obligation to pay taxes even when those taxes are used to fund immoral practices (such as abortions).

In an ironic twist, a feminist journalist managed to get herself accused of hate speech. Her crime: helping another woman with groceries.

You’ve probably heard about the classes within American society. But have you heard about the stark class dichotomy between those who are married and those who aren’t?

Estimates vary widely, but scholars have said that changes in marriage patterns — as opposed to changes in individual earnings — may account for as much as 40 percent of the growth in certain measures of inequality. Long a nation of economic extremes, the United States is also becoming a society of family haves and family have-nots, with marriage and its rewards evermore confined to the fortunate classes.

Here are eleven ways that marketers play with our brains to get us to buy their stuff.

A Washington Post editorial makes the case that our immigration system is bifurcated between permanent residents (keep) and temporary illegals (deport). But the reality is that there is a large group of transient workers that our system would do well to accommodate.

And finally, here's how to solve defense, unemployment, and education problems all at once.


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