RON BROWNSTEIN: Demography Is Not Destiny For Democrats: Redistricting and GOP dominance among white voters have offset the growing racial diversity that was supposed to give Democrats an unbeatable edge.

also John Hinderaker: Does the Democratic Party Have a Future? “Pathetic. To hear the Democrats tell it, you would think there are only 10 or 11 Republican voters in the whole country, but somehow they manage to win majorities in both houses of Congress, 31 governorships, and an overwhelming majority of legislative seats. This sort of delusional thinking is not the sign of a healthy party.”

Is there ANYTHING it can't do?

Frank Bruni's remarkably superficial New York Times column on religious liberty can best be summed up as, "Your rights end when I want something from you."  But he misses the point.  Surprised? 

The existence of a marketplace? I'm fascinated by the idea of a store operator devoted to trying to find reasons not to do business with anybody because they're all sinners and what would happen to such a store. It might make a moderately funny Saturday Night Live sketch, but Bruni provides little actual evidence anything will actually happen, because, well, we already have this religious liberty that he seems to think is some new-fangled trick by the religious right to sneak out of some imaginary obligation to bake cakes for all comers. He actually calls "religious freedom" a dog whistle to "use as a fig leaf for intolerance."

The most flippant libertarian response would be, "Yes, and your point is …?" Less flippantly, whether Bruni is willing to accept it or not, antidiscrimination laws are an imposition on a person's liberty. This is not a controversial statement, or rather it shouldn't be. Public accommodation laws require businesses to provide goods and services to people. It makes somebody do something they might not want to do. Regardless of whether the reasons are valid, the laws constitute a loss of liberty. The actual debate is whether the government has a compelling argument to create such an imposition on the public, and here's where people disagree.

Working against Bruni, the number of cases of gay couples being denied services for their weddings are small, and there's marketplace competition willing to step in. Trying to compare the problem to the widespread, systemic racial discrimination of post-segregation era (which Bruni attempts as well) looks unserious. Who's to say they won't discriminate even more? Because they aren't discriminating even more?

when I'm noodeling a post and then someone comes along and sez what I've been noodeling SO much better than I could have because I wanted to be "first."  But I'm not

With the SOTU right around the corner, and following the "free college" for everyone speech (SO, PRETTY MUCH LIKE ALL HIS OTHER BUDGETARY MATH, THEN: Obama’s math doesn’t add up on free tuition, critics say.)

the solution has been reached in five words:  I'LL GIVE YOU FREE STUFF!

Then, before anyone can say anything else, I'm a hater.  I hate poor people.  I hate whoever it was that's getting the largesse from POTUS-O.  Because he promised free stuff and if I oppose it FOR ANY REASON (including, oh, I don't know - IMPOSSABILITY!) then I'm a hater.

How long with this go on?  How long will a sufficiently large number of the elcetorate buy into this silliness?  With a tip of the hat to Ben Stien's father, anything that can't go on for ever won't.  But will this particular brand of silliness be stoppedbefore we go off the cliff.  Or has the Thelma and Louise moment been passed?

This is what passes for science on the left.

32,757 year old survey participant skews Lewandowsky paper – Defective data, demonstrably defective conclusion

and in other news there's this:  I THINK WE SHOULD CALL THIS SORT OF BOGUS RESEARCH “HATE SCHOLARSHIP.” Ashe Schow: No, we did not just learn 1 in 3 college men would rape if they could get away with it.

a roundup of sorts

THE BLASPHEMY WE NEED:

We are in a situation where my third point applies, because the kind of blasphemy that Charlie Hebdo engaged in had deadly consequences, as everyone knew it could … and that kind of blasphemy is precisely the kind that needs to be defended, because it’s the kind that clearly serves a free society’s greater good. If a large enough group of someones is willing to kill you for saying something, then it’s something that almost certainly needs to be said, because otherwise the violent have veto power over liberal civilization, and when that scenario obtains it isn’t really a liberal civilization any more. Again, liberalism doesn’t depend on everyone offending everyone else all the time, and it’s okay to prefer a society where offense for its own sake is limited rather than pervasive. But when offenses are policed by murder, that’s when we need more of them, not less, because the murderers cannot be allowed for a single moment to think that their strategy can succeed.

CLARICE FELDMAN: Je Suis Sick and Tired of Cant.

Count me in the camp with Matthew Continetti, who gives countless examples of liberal hypocrisy about free speech including the following examples:

Do liberals actually believe in the right to offend? Their attitude seems to me to be ambivalent at best. And this equivocation was apparent within hours of the attack, when news outlets censored or refused to publish the images for which the Charlie Hebdo editors were killed. Classifying satire or opinion as “hate speech” subject to regulation is not an aberration. It is commonplace.

Indeed, the outpouring of support for free speech in the aftermath of the Paris attack coincides with, and partially obscures, the degradation of speech rights in the West. Commencement last year was marked by universities revoking appearances by speakers Condoleezza Rice and Ayaan Hirsi Ali for no other reason than that mobs disagreed with the speakers’ points of view. I do not recall liberals rallying behind Condi and Hirsi Ali then.

THE WAPO IS WORRIED: Far right in Europe sees opportunity after wave of terror in France. If the people you regard as savory refuse to address obvious problems, then people that you regard as unsavory will step forward.

UPDATE: Farage: ‘We Must Stand Up For Our Judeo-Christian Culture.’ Things like that matter to voters more than they matter to elites. It’s unsurprising that, in a democracy, someone would step forward to address that.

So what's on the books for this month?  I've abandonded the Biz Fin class.  And with reduced driving the Cato class has passed as well.

I'm about half way through Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments and am into the 80's of The Federalist.  Over at Khan Academy I'm relearning my cell division biology, supply, demand and market equilibrium in Microeconomics and in Art History still wandering through intro to Western Civ.

Not sure what to take over at LifeHacker U this season.  Nothing rings my bell in the computer and tech dept.  Found this one in Econ:

University of Toronto - Behavioural Economics in Action - Professors Dilip Soman and Joonkyung Kim

In the science dept I'm torn between The Open University - In The Night Sky: Orion -and University of California, Berkeley - BVF101x: Biology for Voters -

The maths dept is suggesting three intro courses:  Algebra, Calculus and Geometry.  I can probably get that better at Khan.  

Over in Humanities I'm leaning toward National University of Singapore - Reason and Persuasion: Thinking Through Three Dialogues By Plato - University of Pennsylvania - History of the Slave South - The University of London - The Magna Carta and Its Legacy -Yale University - America's Unwritten Constitution - Professor Akhil Reed Amar

There's a jazz appreciation class over there too.  As always I'll keep you posted.

I've covered, numerous times, the series of circumstances and back room deals that led to the passing of the PPACA under questionable circumstances.  One I occasionally forget about is the Thad Stevens angle. 

In 2008, during his sixth term as a Republican senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens was indicted for failing to report a number of gifts, mostly in the form of renovations to a small house he owned. Stevens was convicted in October. Two weeks later, he lost his senate seat to Democrat Mark Begich by fewer than 4,000 votes out of more than 300,000. Nothing in history is quite certain—except this: If Stevens hadn’t been convicted, he would have won. And, had Stevens won, then, in the critical Senate vote of December 23, 2010, he would have denied Harry Reid and Senate Democrats the sixtieth vote they needed to move cloture—and enact Obamacare.

To repeat: Obamacare passed the Senate by a single vote. If Ted Stevens hadn’t been convicted, then Obamacare—certainly in its present form—would have failed.

The prosecution broke the rules—brazenly and willfully—withholding exculpatory evidence. Just months after becoming Attorney General, Eric Holder insisted on vacating Stevens’s conviction, and the prosecution’s misconduct became the subject of investigations that turned up such extensive misconduct that one of the prosecutors involved committed suicide.

In an effort to post more I'm drawing on some new source material.  So some guy did a ranking of the Mupper Movies ... The Muppets Movies, Ranked from Best to Worst... and I though, "why not!"

He only included the 8 theatrical releases - no tv movies, no holiday specials, that kinda stuff.  My list only has five because that's all I've seen.

5.  The 2011 remaike.  Because Josh Brolin.  And anti-capitalism.  Millionaires bitching about capitolism bothers me. One star.

4. Christmas Carol.  Because I'm a Scrooge.  Three stars.

3.  Great Muppet Caper.  Because I'm a sucker for heist movies.  Three and a half stars.

2.    The Muppet Movie.  Four stars.

1.  ...Take Manhattan.  Love the cameos.  Love the old school 40's feel. Four and a half stars.  

Much has been written in recent years regarding the divisiveness of the current POTUS who ran, or course, as a uniter. My friends on the left tell me that “W” was MUCH more divisive than “O” has been but to me they're putting the cart before the horse.

Was “W” divisive? Not in and of himself. It is the nature of high political office that not EVERYONE will be in agreement with all decisions. But showing respect for those “others” while making the tough choices is, imho, the essence of leadership. “W” tried to do this. IO defy any of MFOTL to find an incident of “W” demonizing the “other” in the American polity. “W”'s divisiveness stemmed, I contend, from natural differences.

Which brings us to “O”. The natural differences still exist. They have since before Washington and they will long after “O” (at least I HOPE so.) But It's different this time. The current POTUS does not view his political opponents as simply “those who disagree” or “the other side” but has reduced us, instead, to some for of tribalism. He's taken “W”'s West vs Islam us vs them and internalized it. He's the Us. And his political opponents are Them. The others. And I defy anyone short of perhaps Nixon (who was a piker) to find any president in history who exemplified this divisive tactic more.

In short – Bush's divisiveness (and I contend ALL other Prexy's) stemmed from our disagreements with him. Obama's stems from his disagreement with us.