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Friday, October 15. 2010

Boot: Shift in momentum in Afghanistan

Tea Partiers love killing miners? The guy has fallen off the reality cliff.

News flash: First Lady eats burger and fries

Krauthammer on "appearances":

He is a tax-and-spend Democrat. He spent a trillion dollars � and we�re going to have to borrow or tax it � on the stimulus. He�s going to spend $2 trillion to $3 trillion on health care � we�ll borrow or tax it. Cap-and-trade is spending that you�re going to have to [tax for]. That�s [a tax-and-spend Democrat] what he is. That�s why the electorate is against him. It�s not appearances. It�s substance.

Weight of Taxation Is Heavier Than Most Know

KKK Kleagle and a Man Who Allowed Woman to Die are Icons, Witchcraft Bad

Jonah: Obama's Arrogance Starting to Get Noticed

Feed the Indians, get votes.

Prof B:

The basic problem I have with behavioral economics is that its proponents have never met a problem that could be solved without legislation or regulation. Indeed, it's practitioners seems to skew heavily towards liberal paternalism. As Josh put it, "the behavioral law and economics literature nearly uniformly applies the insights of behavioral economics to justify paternalistic intervention."

I have a father. Do not need another one. But, Prof B, watch your "it's"es.

Scott Brown endorses in MA

Barone: They ignored us

Am Thinker: Three Things Government Cannot Do:

Our federal government does not, and cannot, (1) produce products, (2) create wealth, or (3) provide jobs that pay for themselves.

The interconnectedness of these economic truths is not well-understood (especially by the political classes).

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 05:00 | Comments (9) | Trackbacks (0)

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re: tree hugger cons. I'm with you BD. I hunt, fish, camp, ride a mountain bike a lot, kayak and am teaching my son to do the same.

I believe in conservation, and smart land use policy, and managing our resources. This involves making knowledge-based choices, including some choices (like managed fisheries) that are a bit heavy handed from a libertarian standpoint (or ridiculously free-market based where that works). I'm not wedded to a statist or free market approach though; whatever works and is sustainable - conserving our resources for future use at present or increased levels - is what I prefer. I'm hardcore about it too, voted for a 75% conservative candidate who gets it rather than the 100% conservative candidate who is the equal and opposite of trendy greens. I think conservation is a critical issue in the long run; our industrialization makes it possible to squander great amounts of resources incredibly quickly.

This is very different from secular ecoreligion, which is based on superstitious nostrums like "you don't question the science."

#1 Jim on 2010-10-15 09:17 (Reply)

Re Afghan and Iraqi armed forces. Our paradigms for armed forces and good government are so different from most of the world, especially the Muslim world. Most Muslim-majority nations descend from the Ottoman Empire or other conquests. Their forms of government have been authoritarian to totalitarian, with action facilitated by cash. In the West, we call that corrupt -- but only rather recently. In those areas, it's custom and that will change slower than we would like.
The armed forces in that part of the world have never been primarily for protecting the nation's borders, as ours have been. They've been for suppressing internal movements, keeping the subjects docile and submissive. This, too, is something that can change and change pretty rapidly, but it still takes time. Illiterate people who have grown up in an authoritarian society where the family is before the tribe, the tribe before the nation, and strangers be damned -- they will learn slowly to become their people's guardians rather than their oppressors.
Deals with the Taliban? I'm leery of course. The Taliban is a name we use for a broad and loose organization. If branches of it can be pulled away and co-opted for the nascent Afghan government, I'm ready to see if that works.
All these worries apply equally to Iraq now and they would apply if Iran were going through a regime change as well.

#2 Geoff Brown on 2010-10-15 09:24 (Reply)

Conservatives as anti-environmentalists is a false meme propagated by the anti-capitalist, anti-industry left.

#3 D on 2010-10-15 10:32 (Reply)

Which is ironic because most forms of socialism, particularly the marxism that the left so adores, are dirty, wasteful, inefficient forms of industrialism. The Southern Agrarians noted this and thought that the dehumanization and industrialization of the individual was the greatest crime of marxism, rather than the redistributive element (which they didn't like a whole lot either).

#3.1 Jim on 2010-10-15 12:52 (Reply)

"But, Prof B, watch your 'it's'es."

As long as that pesky little apostrophe exists in written English, we're never going to live without these errors.

#4 JJM on 2010-10-15 13:02 (Reply)

JJM ... You've just activated one of my 'hot buttons' -- the use and misuse of the apostrophe in the English language to indicate a possessive case. Actually, there are eight [count 'em eight] possessive pronouns in English that do NOT take apostrophes: its, ours, his, hers, theirs, whose, mine and yours. Isn't that nifty? I think so. And if I were still young enough and cranky enough to go around with a correction pen in my purse, like that wonderfully dotty Englishwoman who wrote "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" and who goes around correcting signs which misuse commas, I'd probably do it. But Alas ... I'm too rickety thse days to do it, and I'd probably fall down and break a hip.

But Bird Dog, my dear, you can still carry the flag. And you do, bless you.

Marianne

#5 Marianne Matthews on 2010-10-15 13:50 (Reply)

How worrisome is habitat loss? I find it highly worrisome. There are many ways for free-market Conservatives to be Conservationists. I am just one example. There are tons of us tree-hugger and turtle-lover Cons out there.

The late Russell Kirk is an example.

Back in the 1970s, Barry Weisberg wrote some books claiming that capitalism= environmental degradation and socialism[communism]= environmental amelioration. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, and also before, the truth came out about that. Communism ruined the environment because there was no citizen dissent permitted on big projects - or on anything, for that matter.

I was an eco-freak back in the day, but IMHO many have gone too far. Cutting off irrigation water for the Central Valley in California because of the existence of some salamander is an example of going too far.

#6 Gringo on 2010-10-15 22:45 (Reply)

Gringo ... The thing I dislike most about "eco-freaks" is their automatic serene assumption that they know better than we do about how to "preserve the environment." Just chased one off my front porch last week who wanted to tell me how to help preserve the environment. I told her that we, my husband and I, had been "preserving and protecting the environment" since long before she was born.

She was very affronted. I was grinning to myself. It feels good to have abandoned political correctness.

Marianne

#7 Marianne Matthews on 2010-10-16 13:15 (Reply)

Bringing enlightenment to the poor ignorant masses is a salient theme of the libs, not just eco-freaks. Yet they don't know the half of what they think they know. A number of years ago some "activist" with a clipboard and a petition stopped me on the street- there are periodic ads in the paper for them to do this for $9/hour.

He wanted me to sign a petition for the TX legislature to pass something about wind energy. I asked him if he realized that when Bush was Governor, that the leg had already passed a similar bill. No, the petition guy said, he didn't realize it. I told him that I would sign the petition when he acquired more knowledge on the subject.

My mother did her bit for preserving and protecting the environment by keeping a compost heap, hanging out wash out to dry when there was snow on the ground and a blue sky, and by shooting a skunk caught in a live trap in the garden. All this begun years before the EPA was created.

#7.1 Gringo on 2010-10-16 17:15 (Reply)

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