Not a Potted Plant

Note: this movie was directed by the same guy who thought it would be a good idea to do a frame-by-frame remake of Psycho.

So — what new movies have you all seen lately?

From Ross Douthat:

It wasn’t so much that LaPierre’s performance made no concession whatsoever on gun restrictions or gun safety — that was to be expected. It was that he launched into a rambling diatribe against an absurdly wide array of targets, blaming everything from media sensationalism to “gun-free schools” signs to ’90s-vintage nihilism like “Natural Born Killers” for the Newtown tragedy. Then he proposed, as an alternative to the liberal heavy-handedness of gun control, something equally heavy-handed — a cop in every school, to be paid for by that right-wing old reliable, cuts to foreign aid.

Unfortunately for our country, the Bloomberg versus LaPierre contrast is basically all of American politics today. Our society is divided between an ascendant center-left that’s far too confident in its own rigor and righteousness and a conservatism that’s marched into an ideological cul-de-sac and is currently battering its head against the wall.

The entire Obama era has been shaped by this conflict, and not for the good. On issue after issue, debate after debate, there is a near-unified establishment view of what the government should do, and then a furious right-wing reaction to this consensus that offers no real policy alternative at all.

I don’t agree with the entire piece, but it broadly explains my discontent quite well. Less about the gun debate specifically, more about the larger dynamic.

Tagg Romney claims that his father Mitt never really wanted to be President anyway. Dude’s been running for President since 2006. Endured some pretty unpleasant stuff along the way. He didn’t do that because he felt obliged to.

So my bright idea was to make peanut brittle to exchange with our neighbors.

Three pounds of roasted, lightly salted peanuts, five pounds of sugar, a quart of corn syrup, a lot of boiled water, and two sticks of butter (butter was suggested in one recipe I found online) later, and the best I can say for myself is I made one batch of something that came out brittle but has a really grainy, sugary texture — and six batches of an unusable peanut taffy. What I have to show for it are sore knees from standing and stirring over the copper pot for so long and an exchange of unpleasant words with my wife motivated by a combination of frustration and disappointment as well as low blood sugar (you don’t eat this stuff while you’re making it). My attempt to make peanut butter crispy balls turned out substandard to boot. I’m quite sure the problem is that I never got the sugar syrup hot enough, except the one time, and then I must have allowed crystals to form rather than pouring out a smooth mixture. But I never quite figured out how to get there in the first place.

My pies — a chicken pie and an apple pie — turned out much better. But I am not a confectioner.

(A) I can’t have one of these things without at least a couple of links on school shootings. I thought this article explained my discomfort at using high-profile shootings like Sandy Hook as a basis for gun control. [Pacific Standard]

(B) Conor Friedersdort argues that we already had the conversation about guns and the pro-gun side won. I’ve found the notion that we haven’t had the discussion to be bizarre. It’s not a request for a first discussion, but rather a do-over. Recent events could lead to a different result, though. If they don’t here, I am pretty sure they never will. [The Atlantic]

(C) Americans support solving the budget crisis but oppose almost every option to do so. [McClatchy]

(D) The Washington Post takes the Democrats to task for losing their balance on entitlement reform, leaning much more heavily on tax increases than actual budget cuts. I believe the administration to be pretty strongly pressing their advantage and in less a compromising position. But here’s the thing: polls have suggested over and over again that Republicans will get the blame anyway. This may not seem fair, but this is what happens when the GOP loses all credibility on an issue. They dug this hole and gave Obama the advantage to press. [WaPo]

(E) BBC asks if you can be British without speaking English? This question and context of the question seems bizarre to a lot of Americans, and the fact that it does is one of our greatest strengths. As is the fact that their kids and grandkids will learn English. [BBC]

(F) The UN may be baffled, but good for President Obama and his European counterparts for walking out on efforts to turn the Internet over to the UN and ITU. [TechCrunch]

(G) A look at modern language invention and evolution. [New Yorker]

(H) Bobby Jindal’s support for making birth control OTC is actually pretty brilliant. A solid pro-freedom stance that doesn’t define freedom in terms of access rather than in terms of demanding that others provide for it. [Politico]

(I) And the marriage rate plummets. Almost forty percent of Americans view marriage as obsolete. I may disagree with conservatives on gay marriage, but it’s stuff like this that are why I am sympathetic to them on the subject of marriage more broadly. [Pew]

(J) Looking at Obama’s decision to kill Osama bin Laden. [The Atlantic]

(K) Government spending tends to increase with term limits. This is considered odd, but it took less than a few years of term limits in local government in Colosse to figure out why: Term limits breed ambition for higher office. If it’s up-or-out, you have to make a name for yourself, which is expensive. [Marginal Revolution]

(L) I have to agree with Matthew Yglesias that Obama’s assurances of sparing recreational users is pretty meaningless. First, we’ve heard this before. Second, it I always worry about selective prosecution in cases like this. [Slate]

(M) Might marijuana be a winning issue for the GOP? I dunno. It’s hard to get from here to there. Copyright law, on the other hand, is a shorter trek with little downside. Not that they care. [TNR] [EconomistsView]

(N) Oil wealth has changed the dynamics in Scandinavia. Swedes that used to look down on Norwegians (Who knew this? I did not know this.) are now having to emigrate for jobs. There are certain parallels to the United States. [Slate]

(O) What we can learn from school choice in Sweden. As with so many other things, even though this corresponds with my political preferences, I think there are limits to what a large, heterogeneous country can learn from a relatively small homogenous one. [Forbes]

(P) How does your local school district rank against the rest of the world’s? My old district does reasonably well, in the 60-something percentile in both math and reading. Which is kind of scary, for our country and the world. [The Atlantic]

(Q) Michael McLaughlin claims, but doesn’t really back up, the notion that anti-meth ads featuring the ravaged faces of drug use, are ineffective. I express skepticism because this is precisely the sort of thing that would have worked on me when I was younger. It strikes at a crucial element of my younger identity: vanity. [HuffPo]

(R) Family values failure [Marginal Revolution]: Fewer children in the United States grow up with both biological parents than in any other affluent country for which data are available. Ashley McGuire thinks the GOP needs to woo women voters due to a War on Married Women. The problem is that a lot of solutions to these outlined problems are not necessarily conservative ones [Weekly Standard].

(S) Two-state solution? Try 8-State Solution. It sounds like an intriguing idea. [Jerusalem Post]

(T) Maybe we’re not Bowling Alone. [Boston Review]

Added, From Burt:

(U) The Fifty Worst Opinion Pieces of 2012. Including many popular linkmagnets like McMegan, Sully, and the Doc’s personal favorite, James Franco.

A vendor dropped off some (promotional) gifts for attorneys and paralegals. Coffee mugs with his company’s logo and phone number, filled with candy. Everybody wins: my vendor gets to advertise to his customers, and he builds goodwill because, hey, we all like the candy and hey, it’s free!

The jelly beans, I totally dig those. I like jelly beans. No issues there.

But there were also some chocolates. Three “premium” chocolates: a Lindt milk chocolate truffle, a Ghiradelli almond-chipped square, and a Hershey’s dark chocolate square with bits of cranberry and almond.

I should have known better than to proceed as I did. The Swiss chocolate was rich and creamy and lusciously good. It made me want to eat another piece of chocolate. So I did — the Ghiradelli square was flavorful and pleasingly bittersweet. Not as good as the Lindt, but still a nice little burst of sweet. And now my inhibitions were out the window. The Hershey’s square tasted like sour wax by comparison, and even felt waxy in my mouth. By comparison, it wasn’t good at all.

So now I feel like an ingrate for not liking the gift of candy that my vendor gave me, and a snob for liking the imported, expensive chocolates instead of the regular kind, even the premium brand. Worse, I’m such a chocolate snob that I wish that there had been Belgian chocolates in the little gift mug because those are even better than Swiss chocolates. But these are gifts; before all of this started, I had no chocolate at all and some chocolate is better than no chocolate, right?

If you get mixed chocolates from someone this holiday season, Readers, take my advice. Save the best quality ones for last. Which means eat the American chocolate first.

So, we flew with little Lain across the country. We… had no idea how it would go. Last week, she spent almost every living moment either sleeping, eating, or crying. That did not bode well for our flight. Fortunately, the likelihood that Megan McArdle would be on a flight from Mormonland to Dixie. So, if she cried, we would do everything we could to keep her quiet, and we would apologetically at everyone else, but we were not going to deprive our parents a chance to meet their newborn grandchild.

Several things fell into our favor. First, we got a non-stop flight. Now, we had to drive six hours to the airport (instead of two to the airport in Summit). We got three seats together (though I was across an aisle). We had to pay for extra legroom to get the seats together, but even that was cheap and oh what a briar patch that was.

We drove down to Deseret the day before. Lain got very fussy when we crossed the Continental Divide or any major high pass. This bode ill for the flight, if she has an aversion to changes in air pressure. The drive, of course, took longer than expected as Lain declined to synchronize her restroom breaks with our stops for tank refills.

The flight went marvelously. She slept nearly the entire time. There were no explosions. Plus, there were no McMegan’s around. The airport in Deseret’s capital is – no surprise – exceedingly family friendly. They walked us through everything we had to do. They did not require the breastmilk to go through the scanner! (Not that we would have cared.) (They even let me take my way-more-than-3oz of contact solution through, after running some sort of test on it.)

The biggest hassle of the whole affair was the luggage. Three suitcases, three carry-ons, plus a baby carrier. I dropped her off at the terminal and then drove to find a parking spot and joined her later.

Next time, I think we FedEx our checked luggage.

Now that an authority figure, a world leader, an elected head of state has bit the bullet and bravely told us a frightening truth, that really sort of puts that whole “fiscal Cliffpocalypsemageddonacaust” thing in perspective. Now, you may know a little of what Prime Minister spoke of, but I needed to investigate further. My research indicates that “Triple J” is apparently an Australian radio station aimed at teenagers and young adults and “K-pop” is vapid dance music from Korea, of which Gangnam Style is the most notorious. So now you have a fairly complete picture of what the fish she’s talking about.

The Mayan calendar runs out on December 21, only three days from now, and I guess that’s pretty much going to be it. Probably not much need to put your affairs in order between now and then. Make your peace with your maker. My suggestion is to blow off work on Friday because, really, what’s your boss going to do, fire you? No, this is the reason you got all those credit cards.

So, anyway, it’s been a good run, hasn’t it? Sorry we’ll never get to Monday Trivia No. 100 or know who wins the fantasy football league after an all-upset first round of playoffs. Everything is irrelevant now. Thanks for reading, y’all, and I was wrong about that whole atheism thing, I hope I’ll catch you on the flip side.