MARRIAGE AND THE MISSING LINK
Our immediate human ancestor, Homo Ergaster, emerged 1.7 million years ago. The males of Ergaster's ancestors, Australopithicus and Habilis, were twice as large as the females - meaning they were polygamous. In species where males have a lot of competition for access to mates, the bigger the male is the greater his selective advantage. The more sex he has with as many females as he can, the more his genes get replicated. This changes with Ergaster. The males became 50% bigger than their ancestors, while the females became 70% bigger. This reduction of dimorphism signals that the greatest revolution in human society was occurring: pair-bonding. One man mating with one woman, the nuclear family as the foundation of a human community. "Pair-bonding" is what paleontologists call it. We call it marriage. Marriage - monogamous pair-bonding for mutual support and to raise children (human infants are far more helpless than those of other primates - this again starts with Ergaster) - is what made us human. Marriage is the missing link.
A LETTER TO AMERICA FROM A DODGE DEALER
My name is George C. Joseph. I am the sole owner of Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu, a family owned and operated business in Melbourne, Florida. My family bought and paid for this automobile franchise 35 years ago in 1974. I am the second generation to manage this business. We currently employ 50+ people and before the economic slowdown we employed over 70 local people. We are active in the community and the local chamber of commerce. We deal with several dozen local vendors on a day to day basis and many more during a month. All depend on our business for part of their livelihood. On Thursday, May 14, 2009 I was notified that my Dodge franchise, that we purchased, will be taken away from my family on June 9, 2009 without compensation and given to another dealer at no cost to them. HOW IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CAN THIS HAPPEN?
COMMENCEMENT 2009
[This commencement address was originally published four years ago. We rerun it annually at college graduation time. Feel quite free to send this to any recent college graduate you may know.] Mr. Chancellor, Members of the Board of Regents, Members of the Faculty, Honored Graduates, Families and Friends: It's funny that they call this ceremony a Commencement, for you've all reached the finish line: college, goodbye, we're outta here. Yet of course, "commencement" means a beginning, not an end. But one is supposed to at least start - commence - a talk such as this by saying funny things. So I'll start by talking about Clark Gable movies. If you've heard of Clark Gable at all, you know he was the biggest movie star in Hollywood a long time ago. His most famous movie was Gone With The Wind. He made a movie in 1955 called The Tall Men with Jane Russell as his girlfriend and Robert Ryan as the heavy. It's a pretty ordinary Western flick with outlaws and cowboys and Indians - and at the end, Ryan, the bad guy, and his henchmen get the drop on Gable, the good guy, and all seems lost. Suddenly, surprise, Gable outfoxes Ryan and triumphs. Gable makes his exit, and after he does, Ryan delivers a line that I want you to never forget.
IT’S THE DEMS WHO ARE LOSING POPULARITY, NOT REPUBLICANS
The analysis of the most recent Gallup Poll by Managing Editor Jeffrey M. Jones reads like a requiem for the Republican party. "GOP losses span nearly all demographic groups," said the headline on the press release May 18. "Only frequent churchgoers show no decline in support since 2001." The analysis will be fodder for those commentators who assert Republicans must radically alter course or face extinction in the Age of Obama. But the polling data Gallup released doesn't support Mr. Jones' conclusions. Exactly the same proportion of the electorate in the most recent Gallup Poll identify themselves as Republicans as identify themselves as Democrats. This represents in the space of a month a significant gain for Republicans, and a significant loss for Democrats. Why is Mr. Jones lying about his own polling results?
O’S AUTO ORDERS: MORE EXPENSIVE AND DANGEROUS TIN CANS
"It's terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It's the first car I've ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I wouldn't have to drive it any more." That's how Jeremy Clarkson, who reviews automobiles for Britain's Sunday Times, described the Honda Insight hybrid last week. If Mr. Obama -- who has seized control of the US auto industry even though he has never run a business of any kind in his life -- has his way, all Americans will be allowed to buy are cars like the Honda Insight.
HALF-FULL REPORT 05/15/09
Got to be careful today. So much to celebrate this week that it's too easy to say "The sun is over the yardarm someplace" and reach for a bottle of Wasmund's American Scotch (more about that later), rather than soberly wait for the sun to dip below the yardarm here in DC. For this is the week the Dems have started eating their own - beginning with, glory of glories, the quintessentially most vile, vicious, venal, corrupt, dishonest, hate-filled, anti-American House Democrat of them all, Speaker Pelosi Galore. After becoming such an object of ridicule that hyper-lib comedian Jon Stewart is making fun of her, she "rented a steam shovel," as TTP's Jack Kelly says, to dig her political grave at a press conference yesterday (5/14). Stick a fork in her, folks, she's done. Under the Dem bus. Roadkill. So when she resigns, which could come within days, you might recall that conversation I had with my friend in Paris two weeks ago.
THE SUCKER’S TRAIN WRECKS OF CHINA AND AMERICA
That the US markets are experiencing a Sucker's Rally is obvious to many experienced investors. That China's markets are experiencing the same may not be so obvious. Both economies are chugging down parallel tracks towards the same fate, a derailed train wreck, and for much the same reasons. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index has shot up over 50% since its low of November 4, and gained almost 6% in the last week alone. There has been a world-wide deluge of news stories about how China is recovering from recession with miraculous rapidity, and is back on track towards 8% GDP growth this year. Who knew how many folks believe in Chinese Easter Bunnies? Evidently, even more than those who claim to see Easter Bunnies frolicking on the White House lawn portending an end to our recession and 3.5% growth by year's end. There's almost no way to describe the magnitude of the train wreck Engineer Zero is heading us towards. China's is going to be nightmarish. Ours is going to be cataclysmic.
IS WASHINGTON’S GOAL POWER OR PROSPERITY?
Other things being equal, would you start a new business in a higher- or lower-tax jurisdiction, and would you prefer to live and invest in a higher- or lower-tax locale? This is not a tough question for most people, but the powers in Washington (the administration and the congressional Democrat leaders) are incensed that the American people are answering the question in a most politically incorrect way by opting out of high-tax places. Last week, the Treasury announced a whole series of proposed new laws and very complex regulations to prevent both American businesses and individual citizens from investing where they wish. So much for the promise to simplify the tax code. So much for using the recession to reignite economic growth rather than as an excuse to expand political power.
DOES OBAMA KNOW WHO HE IS FIGHTING IN “AFPAK”?
You can not win a war if you don't know who the enemy is," teaches master strategist Sun Tzu - a commonsense maxim that needs repeating as the Obama administration seeks a way out of the newly designated AfPak (Afghanistan/Pakistan) imbroglio. As the Pakistani army battles Taliban insurgents in Swat and elsewhere, the answer to the question of who exactly the Taliban is, and what is the nature of its relationship with al-Qaeda, is of key importance in judging the chances of success for the emerging Obama strategy. For even as Washington pushes Islamabad to keep the Taliban from expanding its territorial sway in the North-West Frontier Province, the administration seems to think the real solution to the Taliban problem, on both sides of the border, lies in striking an "acceptable compromise" deal with the militants. Such thinking is a dangerous combination of ignorance and naïveté.
ISRAEL’S ALLIANCES AND THE VOID OF OBAMA
Like nature, Israel's strategic relations abhor a vacuum. In the wake of the Obama administration's decision to drastically curtail the US's strategic alliance with Israel in the interest of American rapprochement with Iran and Syria, the Netanyahu government has been moving swiftly to fill the void. On Monday (5/11), with Pope Benedict XVI's arrival and with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's visit with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at Sharm e-Sheikh, two potential strategic alliances came into view. Rather than viewing with alarm Mr. Obama's clear antipathy towards Israel, Mr. Netanyahu views it as an opportunity to pursue alliances in Israel's interest without regard to the wishes of the American president.