Con de and other absurdities

I have been in Xalapa for the last couple of days and encountered an interesting change in Spanish grammar.   I was at breakfast yesterday and a friend asked for "un vaso de agua."  The waiter corrected him and said "un vaso con agua?"   Evidently there are some in Mexico that argue that the word between glass and water should be "with" not "of."

There are five meanings of the word "de" in Spanish.  De can mean pertaining to,to contain, the origin, authority, or source.   Vaso con agua does not sound right and it also does not make sense to me.  You want a glass WITH water?   If you carry the concept to its logical end you would get some odd constructions.  For example, the University that I spoke at today is called Universidad Anáhuac de Xalapa (the Anáhuac University of Xalapa) using this logic the name would hence force be changed to Universidad Anáhuac con Xalapa (the Anáhuac University with Xalapa).   The other problem of using con is also conceptual.  Often when I order Whiskey I ask for Whiskey con agua.   In most bars that either means a glass of Whiskey which is mixed with water or as WC Fields used to order it, a glass of Whiskey with a side of water (he claimed to wash his hands in).   Often to clarify, I ask for Un Whiskey, de recho, con agua.  Which means a whiskey straight up with a side car of water.   The waiter's insistence on con seems like a whole bunch of nonsense to me.

Hearing "Dutch"

Edmond Morris' Novelography of Ronald Reagan received a lot of critical reviews when it was first published, both for the style (it is written as a novel) and for the content.  A lot of Reagan fans argued that Morris was harsh on the former communicator.  Some other thought the format for the book was inappropriate.

I recently downloaded the book from Audible and listened to it on the last couple of flights.  In my mind, whether Morris' characterizations of Reagan are accurate is one of those judgment calls that I think ultimately should be left to the author.   Most of us knew Reagan only from a distance, so how one person reacted to him (even a person who did a lot of research) tells as much about the author as the person.  I was also not bothered by the narrative style - it conveyed a lot of information in a very readable (or in my case listenable) story.

My negative reaction to the book is based on a key interest.   When Reagan became president, in my opinion, he had a couple of goals.   As Morris points out some of these goals came from earlier things in his life.   The Printer of Udell's is one that some other authors have identified and it remains a powerful, if dated, book.   But among the goals were reducing the size of government, improving the tax system, re-establishing the American defense system and re-invigorating the American spirit.

Morris deals mostly, at least in the Audible presentation, with only one - the defense issue.   And there may not be much to say about reducing the size of government - which he slowed growth but did not reduce it.  There is some discussion of the spirit issue.   But his discussion of tax issues, where the President took a lead role twice (1981 and 1986) is cursory at best.   Look at other discussions of the Reagan role in both of these landmark acts.   The 1981 Act is well covered in several memoirs and the 1986 act is less well covered.  But, for example, in Showdown at Gucci Gulch, Jeffrey Birnbaum did an excellent job of showing Reagan's initial and continuing role in making the simplification of taxes work.  That would be a lot like doing a book on baseball strategy and forgetting to mention that there are nine people on the team.

Just Because You Can, Doesn't Mean You Should

On Monday I went to Chicago for a meeting and returned in the same day.   That is not an extraordinary length to travel - about 1800 miles each way.   And when I was younger I did a lot of trips like that.  

At one point when I was when I was working to build a specialized insurance carrier for higher education I flew from California to Bermuda for a meeting on a Thursday, returned to California on a Friday, and then returned to Florida on early Sunday morning for a speech Sunday night.   But that was then and this is now.

Two things have changed.  First, the air traffic system from where I live in Sacramento - in order to get an inexpensive flight - requires more than one stop.  So the trip required four flight segments.   Second, I am a bit older and that make travel a bit less fun.   I have a bit more than 2 million miles on one carrier (United) and about another million on assorted other carriers but travel is still less easy than it once was.  I left on a 6 AM flight and got back about a half hour after midnight on the return.

One thing that was great - all of my flights were on time (except the last one - which was about 40 minutes late based on a screw up of the ground crew in Denver) so I was able to have a good meeting.  But at the end of the very long day I was tuckered out.   Well today is to Xalapa but I will be there for a couple of days.

The Fair Oaks Rotary Crab Feed

This is purely local.   Last night we attended the Fair Oaks Rotary Club's annual Crab Feed.  In Northern California around this time of year there are many Crab Feeds.  The normal deal is for about $40 a group offers salad, bread, pasta and all you can eat Dungeness crab and then a dessert.   There are variations in the format but most give you mediocre pre-courses for a lot of fresh crab.   Often the group does a silent auction or raffle to raise funds at the event.

The Fair Oaks Rotary Crab was different. They had the raffles and the silent auction (which had some interesting stuff).  But the difference was the quality of the food - everything was first rate - and they added a tasty soup before the pasta.  The Rotary club here does a lot of things for the community and this is one of their big fund-raisers.  But if you are in the Sacramento area - you should check this one out.

Henry VIII Obama

In the mid-sixteenth century the King of England established an act which declared that he was the head of the church in England.   Last week's proposed regulations to implement the Health Care "reform" for religious related employers is a modern edition of this idea.

HHS proposed to mandate that if employers, including religious employers, offered a health plan they would be required to offer, as a part of the plans, services like abortion, morning after and contraceptive services as a part of the package.

In essence the HHS bureaucrats said they could interpret religious doctrine because a statutory enactment trumped a constitutional requirement for the free exercise of religion.   The determination turned the recent Hosanna Tabor decision on its head and ignored that such a pronouncement would introduce the government into making "establishment clause" judgments.

There is some talk that the Administration is trying to figure out how to step out of this mess by making the same kind of dodge they tried with former congressman Bart Stupak.   Hopefully, this bizarre ignorance of a basic constitutional principle will be yet another inducement to overturn the entire statute.

Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Planned Parenthood and Susan Komen

My wife have been listening to a book called Bloody Crimes (The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Abraham Lincoln) which describes in great detail the end of the Civil War including the events surrounding Lincoln's funeral events and the hunt for Jefferson Davis.   It goes into great detail about both sets of events.  A key point of the book is that Jefferson Davis is largely a forgotten figure today - even though he was an important member of the US Senate before the Civil War.

Oddly, the book got me to look a bit more closely at the dust up between Planned Parenthood and the Susan Komen Foundation.   Planned Parenthood began to grow significantly when I was in Washington.  At the current time about a third of its funding comes from government sources. And its operating revenues amount to about a billion dollars annually.  So it is a true public private partnership. But like some other "quasi-charities" (public broadcasting comes to mind) it has achieved almost untouchable status.  

The Komen Foundation also had (until this week) achieved the same kind of status.  But its funding stream was considerably different.   It distributes about $400 million annually to support breast cancer research including the support of exams for low income people.  According to Charity Navigator 100% of its funding comes from private sources.   But it has developed a significant level of support from corporate linkages through cause marketing.

I am not very interested in the issues which led up to this dust up or indeed in the clumsy way that Komen seemed to respond.   What intrigued me about this drama was how a story was established almost immediately that favored one side over the other.   The author of the book we just finished concludes that Davis is largely forgotten because he lost.  He goes on to suggest that political correctness has even made discussion of the ideas of Davis suspect in some circles.    While Davis' support for slavery is reprehensible in today's climate, the author points out that a good deal of Davis' argument with the north was that they were equally "racist" in their attitudes to Blacks.   Davis' writing also reflected some on the role of the Tenth Amendment in our Constitutional structure.

Orthodoxy can produce odd and curious results.   While it is clear what was gained and lost (in terms of understanding the appropriate level of government) from elevating the status of Abraham Lincoln over Jefferson Davis, it is still unclear what will be gained and lost from the controversy which seems to have come down so much on the side of Planned Parenthood.

Leviathan defined

When Hobbes wrote his opus about government he might well have had something like the new HHS proposed regulations that have generated so much controversy in the last few days.   HHS, as a part of their implementation of the new healthcare bill, will now require employers to offer health plans for their employees that fundamentally violate their religious tenets or face fines for not offering their employees healthcare.   So the health plans offered by religious charities will now be required to include provision for sterilization, morning after pills and other forms of contraception even though those issues violate Catholic doctrine.

Yesterday in one of the places where I engage in discussion on the net I posted a summary of the Bishop of Philadelphia's pastoral letter on the subject and was surprised at the responses.   First, one person on the left compared the church's reluctance to efforts to exclude people based on race.   A second person commented that if the church took any government money they should be required to live under government rules.   He went on to say that if the church got the benefit of the charitable deduction that they were taking a government subsidy.

What nonsense.   Do any of these people worry at all about the potential for crowding out charitable activity - or is their purpose to crowd out those non-governmental activities?   Have they bothered to think of the benefits of the "diversity" of options that they whine for in so many other venues?  Do they really believe that government provision of things like health care is actually better than charitable provision?

The claim that the charitable deduction is a subsidy is such a canard.  The deduction was put in place to allow individuals to make provision for things they care about - outside the government.     But if you believe government is the alpha and omega of all life - then that gentle fact is one to be ignored.