I got a kick out of yesterday’s front page story in the New York Times on the “unexpected” profits of Ford.  In particular this paragraph made me chuckle:

Ford, which earned $997 million in the third quarter and made money in North America for the first time since 2005, has turned itself around largely by cutting costs and introducing cars that consumers want to buy, rather than resorting to deep discounts to lure shoppers into showrooms.

What?!?  Cutting costs?  Making a product consumers want?  This is how business’ are supposed to succeed?  What about asking for handouts from taxpayers?

When Ford chose not to ask for government loans, the company was freed to continue spending on new products like its Fusion and Taurus sedans.

G.M. and Chrysler, by comparison, had to rein in much of their product development programs to conserve cash while they awaited federal aid.

A report by the Government Accountability Office released on Monday said that the federal government was unlikely to recover much of the $81 billion that was invested in G.M. and Chrysler, their suppliers and related financing companies.

Amazing.  It turns out socializing failed companies doesn’t always pay off.  Who’d have thunk it? 

Friday’s New York Times had a report on the rent-a-bike system the city of Paris has been operating since 2007. For about $1.50, a Parisian can pick up a bicycle for half an hour from any of hundreds of unmanned rental stations and return it to any other station. Like other cities with similar systems—Oslo, Stockholm, Vienna, Luxembourg, Milan—Paris is preening itself on having gotten people out of cars and onto bikes.

Alas, the people who set up what’s known as the Vélib’ system forgot that Paris is not all yuppies and tourists. Certain Parisians, for example, burn cars for sport. July 14th, Bastille Day, is a favorite day for it, and this year, despite stepped-up patrols and 240 arrests, immigrant “youths” reduced 317 cars to cinders—a new record. New Year’s Eve is another time for burnt offerings, and the national total in January was 1,147—a few percent off the all-time record but still up by eight percent.

With even just a few of these “youth” about, you can be sure that sturdy, $3,500 bicycles that you can rent with the swipe of a stolen credit card are not always going to come back. About 40 percent of the initial fleet of 20,600 bikes have been stolen and another 40 percent have been burned or busted beyond repair. Bikes are showing up in Eastern Europe and even back home in North Africa, and the company that operates Vélib’ has to fix 1,500 smashed up bikes every day.

No one even pretends not to know who is doing the smashing. Bruno Marzloff, reported to be a sociologist of transportation, concedes that most of the thieves and vandals are angry African immigrants. “It is an outcry, a form of rebellion; this violence is not gratuitous,” he says. It’s no doubt all in the spirit of that favorite graffito of the immigrant suburbs, Nique la France (Fuck France).

The Times story especially struck me because just the night before, I had been talking about bicycles with a charming lady who spends half the year in northern Montana. She told me that outside town she finds collections of unlocked bicycles at school bus stops. Children drop them off in the morning after they have ridden from home to take the bus, and their bikes will still be there when the children get off the bus to ride home in the afternoon.

Why does what works in Montana not work in Paris? Aren’t all people everywhere the same? No doubt Mr. Marzloff, sociologist of transportation, could explain it to me.

Here’s a truly scary Halloween tale told to me by a long suffering resident of America’s leading hipster landfill; Williamsburg, Brooklyn. For those unacquainted with this Mecca of pretense, let’s just say the folks there don’t wait for Halloween to act like brain-dead zombies.

So yesterday my friend was in a video store, and a little girl waltzed in dressed as an axe murderer. She was covered in fake blood, and was wearing an apron with something hanging from it. The predictably bearded hipster at the counter took a break from mentally undressing Obama to ask what was on her apron. The girl told him it was a severed hand.

The hipster’s apparently earnest reply?

“Ugh, in a vegan neighborhood?”

Is there any way we can get these emotional invalids to just secede already? How about a Civil War that forces them OUT of the Union? I say give them Long Island. They can call their new country Indignation.

Unfortunately, my friend lacked the presence of mind to chop off the hipster’s hand and give it to the young lady. Nothing says Brooklyn like a little authenticity.

Above, Steve Phillips, former ESPN analyst, is pictured with Brooke Hundley, the ESPN employee with whom he had a brief fling which resulted in her stalking him, going to his home, writing a letter to his wife, and Facebook-friending his son.

Phillips is now reportedly receiving treatment for sex addiction.

I’d always thought that “sex addiction” was mostly just a pseudo-psychological excuse for errant male behavior.

After seeing the picture above, I realized, it really must be a disease.

Disclaimer: I would never mock someone on the basis of their appearance alone. But once they’ve done something like rape a 13 year old girl (like Polanski), or stalk someone and his family, their looks become fair game.

Good news and bad news. First the bad, Tom Woods has been keeping an insane schedule for some time now. It was only a year ago that he gave me a call saying that he was going to be a bit late with a Takimag article because he was writing a book on the financial crisis. This book was, of course, Meltdown, a New York Times bestseller and sound introduction to Austrian economics which Tom wrote in a frenzied six weeks. Since then he’s been touring and lecturing with the Campaign for Liberty and has simply hit a wall. His wife has wisely ordered him to get some rest, and he’s had to cancel a couple of events, including the Mencken Club meeting. 

We definitely plan to have Tom come speak to us next year. Stepping up to pinch hit will be Steve Sailer, who’ll lecture us on Jewish liberals and how they got that way. Though we’ll all miss Tom, I’m sure Sailerholics will be happy to learn that they can get a double dose of Sailer this weekend.

The good news is that the response to the Mencken Club has been tremendous. We broke triple digits in attendance last week, and I expect a surge in registration over the next two days.

Many Takimag types—people who “think like us,” so to speak—think that they’re all alone in a world gone mad. They are not alone. And I can’t imagine a better place to meet like-minded individuals and rub shoulders with the likes of John Derbyshire, Sailer, Kevin Gutzman et al.  Get your last-minute tickets here. 

The recent brouhaha between the White House and Fox News, and subsequent comparisons between Fox and MSNBC, spurred me to quantify an impression I’d had in the past: that primetime Fox News regularly has guests with opposing viewpoints, whereas MSNBC does not.

To that end I watched both Bill O’Reilly on Fox and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC from 8 to 9PM on Monday and Tuesday evenings. (Olbermann wasn’t on Wednesday night.) I flipped back and forth to make sure I didn’t miss any guests.

My impression was confirmed.

On Monday evening, most of O’Reilly’s guests had conservative views, but he did have Juan Williams, a liberal, and also Mary Ann Marsh, a Democratic strategist. Williams generally tones himself down when on Fox, so let’s count Monday night’s tally as one and a half Democrats. On Tuesday, O’Reilly interviewed Joe Sestak and Anthony Weiner, both Democratic Congressmen. He interviewed Alan Colmes, one of Fox’s two token in-house liberals. And he had on legal expert Jennifer Smetters, who argued vigorously with O’Reilly, although she didn’t seem a political animal—though all lawyers are liberal. We’ll call that three and a half Democrats for Tuesday night.

Keith Olbermann had on exactly zero Republicans Monday night. His guests included Chuck Schumer, Ariana Huffington, Chris Hayes (the Washington editor of The Nation), Richard Wolffe, an MSNBC analyst, and author Susie Essman. Tuesday night’s lineup also featured zero Republicans. Olbermann had on Senator Wyden, Rose Ann Demoro (from the National Nurses Organizing Committee), Howard Fineman, an MSNBC analyst, and Gene Robinson, a Washington Post columnist.

This trend tends to continue, by the way, for the next hour. Sean Hannity of Fox has Democrats on (though generally not as many as O’Reilly), whereas Rachel Maddow of MSNBC has no Republicans on her show.

What does it say about a talk show host that he won’t allow any opposing viewpoints? Is he afraid to get into an argument because he knows, or at least senses, that the facts won’t back him up? Is it intellectual laziness? Is he afraid that the brittleness of his personality will be exposed by having to face an actual opponent?

Is it all of the above?

Liberals are always forever congratulating themselves on their open-mindedness. Yet one would think true open-mindedness would require at least hearing the counter argument. But neither Olbermann nor Maddow is willing to do this. (So much for “diversity.”)

This is in keeping with attitude of liberals on campus, who will often shout down conservative speakers in an effort to prevent them from getting their message across. Part of the reason for this, of course, is their fear that an audience might be swayed by their opponents’ arguments. (Conservatives on campus simply don’t do this to liberal speakers.)

In election years, candidates will often try to make it appear that their opponent is the one unwilling to debate. Fox seems to have won this battle.

Watch O’Reilly, and after a while you get the feeling that his crocodile smile exudes smugness. His driving force seems to be egotism. Watch Olbermann, and it quickly becomes apparent that he’s driven by hate, the emotion liberals love to disparage yet themselves indulge in so frequently. With Olbermann, it’s his very lifeblood. You’ll never hear him say much positive about the left; he far prefers to spend his hour insulting Republicans.

There are also undercurrents of hysteria and compulsiveness that pervade Olbermann’s presentation. He doesn’t seem able to help himself: he absolutely must sneer at every Republican he mentions. On Tuesday night alone, Obermann referred to Rick “Mad Dog” Santorum,” “Failed presidential candidate Fred Thompson,” “Lead teabaggist Dick Armey,” “apparent Adirondack expert Newt Gingrich” (who had gotten into an argument with other Republicans over whether to support the Republican or Conservative candidate in a local race), “streetwalker for the insurance industry” (in reference to a Republican who didn’t support the health bill, I didn’t catch the name), and “the torture President” (Bush).

The reference to Armey, for those unfamiliar with it, was Olbermannn’s way of twisting the Republican term “tea parties,” named after the famous Boston one which preceded the Revolutionary War, into “teabagging,” a sexual practice among gay men. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other, making this a completely gratuitous and nonsensical reference on Olbermann’s part. Had a Republican said this, he would of course have been accused of being homophobic.

When O’Reilly and Sean Hannity have Democrats on their show, they are generally polite, if argumentative. One gets the sense that this would be beyond Olbermann’s capacity.

This isn’t even an indictment of all of MSNBC. Chris Matthews, a liberal who hosts an earlier show, exudes earnestness and good will. Pat Buchanan, of all people, is a regular commentator. Unfortunately, MSNBC has reserved prime time for their most extreme voices, both of whom, especially Olbermann, are rigid to the point of brittleness.

A reader informs me that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed:

I just wanted to alert you to the Snopblocks urban legends) explanation of this… the store manager may have been a kind of Muslim-Borat naif in his celebration of a particular Islamic moveable-feast, but he apparently wasn’t trying to celebrate 9/11 as such:

* Imam Ali was not a hijacker, but a 7th century religious figure… attacked by an assassin while praying in a mosque… and died two days later, so the 21st day of Ramadan is (among the Shi’a branch) a day of special significance, a day for honoring the martyrdom of the Imam Ali.”;

* The months of the Islamic [lunar] calendar move around from year to year with respect to the Gregorian calendar. In 2009… the 21st day of Ramadan… coincidentally fell on the date of September 11;

* Store manager Imran Chunawala was stunned [by the reaction] because the holiday had nothing to do with 9/11… ‘If people thought that that’s what this was about, I apologize,” Chunawala said. “That was not what this was about. I’m clarifying once again and I seriously am sorry for any misunderstanding that this caused.”

A friend of Paul Gottfried sent Takimag this report from his last trip to the mall in Houston, Texas: 

Today I went to the Harwin Central Mall to pick up some crystals. The very first store that you come to when you walk from the lobby of the building into the shopping area had this sign posted on their door. The shop is run by Muslims. I couldn’t stay in the building, it made me so sick.

The text reads, “We will be closed on Friday, September 11, 2009, to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Ali (A.S.).” The message is repeated in Spanish. 

When I emigrated from newly post-Soviet Russia, I stayed in touch with some of my classmates. Years later, I began hearing about our mutual acquaintances, girls in their late teens and early twenties at that time, getting abortions in the half-a-dozen range. The very existence of these rumors was shocking.

The epidemic of terminating pregnancies as a form of birth control remains one of the biggest challenges to Russia’s demographic struggle. Arkady Mamontov’s new prolife film, simply called Abortion, is the latest attempt to raise awareness about this issue.  Whether the film is independent is largely irrelevant, as it premiered on state channel Rossiya during last Sunday’s popular television talk show, Special Correspondent.  The host, Maria Sittel, also seemed quite supportive of this filmmaker during the follow-up expert discussion panel.

This graphic documentary examines Russia’s private clinics, which illegally end unwanted pregnancies long after the first-trimester limit, including on-camera admissions to destroying just about fully formed babies at 22, or so, weeks.  A particularly disturbing moment involves a medical staff lecturing an undercover correspondent, pretending to be 15-weeks pregnant, regarding the ethics of her decision “to murder her baby” all the while agreeing to perform the procedure.

Mamontov is no stranger to controversy, and this documentary fits the mould: not because of its shock value per se, but, rather, the filmmaker’s bold assertion regarding one major cause of this epidemic.  He points his finger at the Western political establishment.  Not only has the United States’ and, to a lesser extent, the European Union’s foreign policy been aimed at encircling Russia in the past twenty years, he argues, but the West has been attempting to depopulate this country from the inside.

His main culprit is organizations like Planned Parenthood. Instead of “leading a ‘brave and angry’ stance with regard to people’s right to access to good sexual and reproductive health care and services”, as the IPPF website claims, this institution has been responsible for dispensing irresponsible and potentially deadly advice to unsuspecting Russian women, whom the filmmaker interviews.

Why is his country a target? Mamontov tells his viewers to read Brzezinski: it is unfair for Russia alone to access all the rich natural resources within its immense territory. This geopolitical reasoning allows the documentary to avoid a preachy pro-life tone so typical of this genre.

However, Arkady Viktorovich never had the onus of proof that these insatiable Eurasian desires exist. Rather than emphasizing Russia’s uniqueness, he should have elaborated on the civilizational discontents, as Freud would say, that drive these institutions well beyond their intended raison d’être—and not only in Russia.
But, at least shock value gets the ratings!

Regarding Nina Kouprianova’s “Motherland” piece, it has long seemed to me that most thriving civilizations have been undergirded by two tenets:

1) A recognition of something greater than itself (i.e., a God or gods)
2) A recognition of something lower than itself (the animal kingdom and natural habitat).

Most Western nations have largely forsaken both premises. They have become much more secular (adios “something greater”) and now fret more about the environment and its suitability for the local frog population than they do about having progeny of their own. Some even recommend foregoing children to ensure greater frog comfort (effectively demoting themselves to the “something lower”). 

What’s more, many Westerners see the spread of religious skepticism and the growth of environmentalism as signs of progress. What they do not seem to compute is that for all of their advances, what they are ultimately doing is progressing themselves out of existence. Naively, they appear confident that they’ve won the debate about whether one should still believe in the Divine and in man’s place atop the food chain.

Well, it all depends on how you define winning. Looking at the numbers, I wouldn’t even call these Pyrrhic victories. All that folks on Team Progress have to show for their triumph is their replacement by those sticking to the something greater/something lower model. The debates’ “winners” are simply being exchanged for people who didn’t hear the ref blow the whistle.

My instincts are to laugh at government sloganeering. Still, at the very least it is refreshing to see a campaign that equates patriotism with living for your country rather than dying for it.