Tuesday, February 13. 2007
Classical Values found this at Google. Be very very afraid! Those who remember recent political history know that this was done to Eisenhower (stupid), Goldwater (evil and stupid), Nixon (evil), Ford (stupid), Reagan (evil and stupid), and GW (evil and stupid). Gee, such a nuanced strategery.
 Another Duke rape case, but by a suspect of no ethnicity. LaShawn
Deficit falls. MSM doesn't notice. Gateway. Why I won't leave Amerikkka, even though I hate it. Moonbattery. Very transparent excuse, if you ask me: they are here for the freedom, but won't admit it. Wizbang takes a look at Bush's health care ideas, and likes them What's in a grouper? Could be an Asian Catfish The crazy Marcotte story, fully summarized by Michelle Grow your own (implants) Image: Borrowed from SDA
 Read this mention at Derbyshire about Nick Cohen's new book (discussed in the past here). Derbyshire noted that Dillow at Stumbling and Mumbling believes that the Left has plenty left to offer. Dillow accuses the Left of squandering opportunities and ideas, and of confusing statism with socialism.
Well, I enjoy reading Dillow regularly, but there is little he says with which I could agree. He is openly utopian which, for me (although I like Dillow from what I can tell) indicates a great misunderstanding of human nature, especially its "dark side," which afflicts poor, middle, and wealthy equally. Dillow's notions, like those of Labour, lead to situations such as this: 1/3 Britons now derive over 50% of their income from welfare and the dole (at Tangled Web). Extend that further? To 100%? So who is "greedy"? Indeed, who is truly greedy? Those who want to achieve, or those who want support from others? For me, that would be the utopia of a serf on an estate, or of a cow in a barn. Dillow has no faith in people, it would seem to me, to find their own paths through life, and so I feel his utopianism is basically elitist and condescending. (My view tends towards the notion that Socialism, in practice, is Feudalism in new clothes and with new excuses.) And I will answer one question posed by Mr. Dillow, who asked, "why, if a centrally planned economy is a stinking idea, should a centrally planned company be a good one?" Because: 1. Government enforces its wishes with guns and jails, and corporations do not.
2. Government planning has failed catastrophically everywhere it has been tried, and has diminished human freedom at the same time. Examples of successful business planning abound in the world: it's a lot easier to try to understand one market that to try to understand every world market in product and labor.
3. Government does not need to compete to survive, but business has to. Monopolies do not work very well: they of necessity stifle growth and innovation and rapid adaptation.
4. Government has a near-endless supply of revenue collected at the end of a gun. Businesses' revenue only comes when they make things or do things people voluntarily want.
5. Government is a sponge for power over people, and that sort of power is a zero-sum game. Corporations only want to make money, so they are relatively harmless. Wealth is not a zero-sum game.
6. Bureaucrats who plan things in government have the 180 degree wrong incentive structure, and are of famously lower quality that those in the private sector. Furthermore, no planner can be as wise as markets - and we know what happens when governments think they are smarter than markets. You drive subsidized Yugos. How many theoreticians have run a successful enterprise?
7. Government's rationality and effectiveness is distorted by political contingencies. Government planners would be instructed to keep a buggy-whip factory open to save a few jobs in somebody's district. A business would adapt, and the workers would go find something else.
8. Government planners would be risk-averse. Business is risk-savvy.
9. There are no meaningful incentives in government businesses. As they said in Poland after they threw out the socialists: "We pretended to work, and they pretended to pay us." They also said, "Now we have rich, middle, and poor. Before, we were all poor, except the government." And, lastly and most importantly, 10: Freedom. Economic freedom, risk-taking, failure, choice, etc. is so fundamental to the freely-chosen life of a free man that no bowl of lentils, no matter how tasty, should have the power to buy off part of his soul and his dignity so he can stand in a warm barn. Voluntary serfdom: Not a credit to the human spirit. Today, government builds and maintains the roads on which capitalism can drive. Give the government the steering wheel too, and they can control everything in your life. That would be a morally very bad thing even if it could be done successfully - and they would want to lock me up for having a social-psychiatric ailment like "Independence Disorder" or "Ambition Disorder.". Mr. Dillow, the need for socialist measures is done. We have enough of them: No-one freezes, no-one starves, people get the education they need, the medical treatment the government planners want them to have, and they can spend their life on the dole for a sore back if they want to. Many, many votes have thus been bought already. And this is all thanks to the transfer of money from capitalism's miracle of wealth-creation, the miracle of markets and market incentives, to the non-producing but ever-arrogant parasitic government. Yes, socialism is alive in all Western nations in hundreds of government redistribution programs, but we have had enough of it. No more required. Material needs have been met. Leave the rest - the pursuit of happiness and dignity and self-respect - to the people. No-one can confer these things of the spirit on anyone else: find out what people are capable of if not treated like imbeciles and cripples by a condescending, vote-buying government.
Monday, February 12. 2007
 Vaclav Klaus. Gotta love the guy. Why do we have such pussy-footing politicians?
Checked his bio: an economist and an academic. So I could also say "Why do we have to have such pussy academics?" A quote from the interview at Drudge: Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable and this fact scares me. The second part of the sentence should be: we also have lots of reports, studies, and books of climatologists whose conclusions are diametrally opposite. Indeed, I never measure the thickness of ice in Antarctica. I really don't know how to do it and don't plan to learn it. However, as a scientifically oriented person, I know how to read science reports about these questions, for example about ice in Antarctica. I don't have to be a climate scientist myself to read them. And inside the papers I have read, the conclusions we may see in the media simply don't appear.
and: Q: How do you explain that conservative media are skeptical while the left-wing media view the global warming as a done deal?
A: It is not quite exactly divided to the left-wingers and right-wingers. Nevertheless it's obvious that environmentalism is a new incarnation of modern leftism.
Klaus is a dangerous tennis player too. Our new hero.
The weathermen call this sort of weather map a "Yankee screamer" and a "major storm." At UMass, we used to joke "Stock up on smokes and beer." We call it "snow." Lovely stuff.
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty. Abraham Lincoln
 Rudy Giuliani rose to prominence as a US Attorney going after white collar, mainly high-visibility Wall Street "crime". No doubt this was part of his political plan (nothing wrong with that), EXCEPT that his famous prosecutions which won him the Mayoralty of NYC (which is a bigger and sharper-elbowed organization than many state governments in the US) ended in reversals after years of appeal - after ruining countless lives and careers and marriages, including some folks I knew.
His career was built on fear. When the US Attorney decides to target you, good legal advice is to get down on your knees and pray, because once they have invested some time and money in you, they will be highly motivated to find some way hurt you, no matter what. Thus, around NY, he is viewed as dangerously ruthless and calculating. Maybe fight fire with fire, and run him against the ruthlessly calculating Hillary. Nice people. His case against Michael Milken was the most famous of many. People forget that Milken never broke any existing known laws other than the law against getting rich. No, new theories, versions and extensions of law were invented for Rudy's prosecutions. Milken, a financial genius and, in my opinion, probably an honest man, spent two years in jail for nothing. And now his invention, Junk Bonds, are a major capital market, fueling all sorts of growth in our economy. Rudy is a likeable, charismatic fellow, a true conservative, and he did us all the favor of rescuing NYC from the mess it was in long before the WTC. At the time, the newspapers had been saying that NYC was ungovernable. I would vote for him against any Dem, but I do not respect him. I suspect that he has the heart of a Brooklyn thug. I still feel upset about the lives he destroyed. Maybe that's just politics, life in the big city, etc., but I'd rather not think so. He of course also deserves credit for his handling the attack on New York, but I swould have expected nothing less of him and would never imagine him going Nagin. Still, his real achievement was bringing Democratic NYC back from decay and anarchy via conservative principles, firmness, persistence, and good cheer. If you haven't been to NYC recently - go, and see what Rudy - and now Bloomberg - have accomplished. For the whole story of his Wall Street prosecution days, the Journal of Libertarian Studies has an excellent summary. (I forget how to quote from PDF files.)
 Time for another. Perhaps the discussion in the world is beginning to change to something more real and less hysterical.
Nigel Calder blames Mr. Sun. So do we. He is worried about the sun returning to normal, and chilling us. Also, Flares has a fine selection of pieces on the subject: "Deniers." The Czech President has a great interview on the subject, here. He says it straight - smart guy. Meanwhile, Moonbat enviros protest Valentine flowers. Image: A palm which has sprung up in a park in downtown Rangeley, ME this past week.
Politics rarely seems to deal in fact. It prefers sentiment and distortion, which can be manipulated. Jay Tea has a piece on Minimum Wage with which we totally agree. As we have said, it's all about the unions.
For a Lincoln tribute on his birthday, we'll defer to Powerline, where they have a good one.
 I am a pod, and I don't know how to act with people. But I found a solution. Humgbug
Let's remember: Nifong is innocent until proven guilty. Durham in Wonderland. A comment by LGF: There you have the modern Democrat Party: they want to talk with our worst enemies, and pick fights with our best friends.
Anti-whaling insanity. Tim Blair. I oppose whaling too, but come on. Segolene Royal wants more freebies for the people. Blue Crab. Why not just eliminate work entirely? Some good weather coming to Yankee land. Bring it on. Are we the only part of the country which regards what other parts of the country term "bad weather" as fun weather? Bird Dog News. World's largest hunting dog magazine, online and off.
 Try the Battleground God quiz, which intelligently tests the theological and logical consistency of your thoughts about God. Gives feedback, too. (h/t, reader)
God transcends our tests and our theology and our consistency - or lack therof but, since He gave us a brain, we may as well use the darn contraption as best we can.
To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office. P.J. O'Rourke
Sunday, February 11. 2007
 Nobody's at home on Park Avenue. Envious? You bet. Lots of houses.
Can we please let these guys off the hook? Truly ridiculous. More on Saddam-Osama links. Flopping From Yon, at Powerline: America has asked David Petraeus to walk into a burning barn and perform brain surgery on a dying patient. If it can be done, David Petraeus is our man. The odds are against him.
Something else for Canada to fear: Another Trudeau The 2006 Darwin Awards are out. (h/t, Blue Crab) Small local newspapers are making plenty of money. So are some online newspapers: Bainbridge I missed this quote from Ayatollah Khomeini, which surely stretches my sensitive, tolerant, multicultural nature: A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate. If he penetrates and the child is harmed then he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl, however would not count as one of his four permanent wives. The man will not be eligible to marry the girl's sister.
Re Giuliani, this seems right, at TownHall: So Rudy's campaign is essentially about arguing over which question voters should use as the criteria for making their decision. If he wins that argument, the question of whom to vote for starts to favor him a bit. In politics, the question is more important than the answer.
Image: a couple of Maggie's Farmers and friends at the end of grouse season. Now the trick is to stay alive until the next one.
Read Ankle Biting's depressing most recent (it is becoming a daily event) example of news distortion - this re Dem/press lies about Medicare), but he cheers you up at the end with Shane MacGowan doing Dirty Old Town. (fixed that link) And if you liked that, you can hear Fairytale of New York here. Lyrics here.
 Because recycling is stupid and ignorant. This fact is widely known, but it's heretical to say outloud. Recycling has become a sacred cow. Penn and Teller tell it like it is, as usual (h/t, LGF).
No, it's beyond stupid - it's a rip-off. Except for aluminum cans, not only is it a fraud, but it makes Iron Eyes Cody cry because recycling hurts Gaia. But people want easy ways to feel virtuous, which is "nice" but not always wise. But don't take that simple pleasure away from them, right? Even if it wastes oil to recycle? And costs them money - for nothing? Pure self-deception. But people will do anything easy to feel self-satisfaction. The only thing that benefits from recycling are the garbage companies that feed off the government subsidies. It's about the same sort of genius concept as biofuels, which require more energy to produce than they contain - and raise the price of staples in poor parts of the world, and destroy forests by subsidizing non-market-based farming in sensitive areas. But it does take money from the Middle East and from Chavez, which is good. I am going to buy a hybrid, but not to please the Greenies. I will put a bumper sticker on it: Drive a Hybrid: Take a Bomb from a Moslem. Or maybe: Screw Chavez: Drive a Hybrid. Or maybe both. To deprive these folks of income is the least I can do for the earth.
Re-posted from June, 2005 This is a lengthy (14 p), scholarly, reflective essay on the history and evolution of modern conservative thinking from the 1930s to the present. A quote from a section on marriage: The contract tradition’s reduction of human beings to autonomous individuals fosters a self-conception that destabilizes the marriage bond; the welfare state then “lubricates” exit from marriage with various substituting benefits. Love, it has been said, is the willingness to belong to another. There is really no place for such love in a world of autonomous individuals bristling with rights — the world which liberalism understands as “natural.” The popularity of a therapeutic language of “fulfillment” in contemporary America only exacerbates the weak institutional support that liberal jurisprudence provides for marriage. Traditional religious marriage ceremonies often included a prominent discussion of sacrifice, not a concept with ready appeal to autonomous individuals. Traditional conservatives tend to see marriage as entering into a status, rather than concluding a contract, and they would like to see this reflected in culture, law, and public policy. Thus, they look with approbation on movements such as Promise Keepers which work to shape popular culture in a family-friendly way. They would repeal the no-fault divorce revolution if they could — and indeed, some Catholic traditionalists would prefer the laws of marriage which prevailed until recently in several Latin American countries where divorce was effectively impossible. The experiment with “covenant marriages” is viewed as a step forward, but a very small one. Traditionalists also favor significantly shifting tax burdens from families to the single and childless. Again, Bush’s increased child tax credits are a small step forward.
A concluding quote: In the end, it is perhaps that most eccentric of American thinkers, the nineteenth-century Catholic convert Orestes Brownson, who provides us with the intellectual tools for grappling with the American experience. As Peter Augustine Lawler observes in his exceptionally valuable introduction to a new edition of The American Republic, Brownson’s teaching is that the American regime is the greatest political achievement since Rome. But it is not the city laid up in heaven. Like every achievement within the saeculum, its justice is limited and it is mortal. The sun will set too on the era of American exceptionalism. When it does, those who have placed their fondest hopes in the promises of ideological politics may feel themselves dispossessed and demoralized; but those who have hearkened to the teachings of the traditionalists may find themselves, at last, at home.
Read entire in New Pantagruel
Their video at Jawa Report. It's a good take on the ignorance of the Greenies - and the take-over of the environmental movement by the politically-motivated.
 Bob at One Cosmos says that science aspires to demystify the world, while religion aspires to remystify it. A couple of quotes:
When you have successfully demystified the world, your soul is officially dead. This is why it is a chore for me to read the words of the scientists referenced above, for these are dead men talking. It is as wearying as communist or leftist boilerplate dogma that explains everything, and therefore, nothing. It is such a ham-handed and oblivious misuse of language, that it offends the sensibility of someone with even a rudimentary acquaintance with spirit. It is also a kind of psychic "bullying," trying to push people around with coarse and blunt language that is entirely disproportionate and inappropriate to its subject -- like an illiterate boob talking about Shakespeare.
and I'm trying to think of an example that even a materialist with a blunted sensibility might understand. For many people who have successfully demystified the world, the only time they are able to unwittingly appreciate the sacred is when they are directly confronted with it in its most vivid form: death, the birth of a child, marriage, etc. Imagine being so spiritually insensate that you had the courage of your convictions and successfully drained the world of its sacred dimension. Upon the death of a loved one, you would simply put them in the garbage. After all, it's just a sack of meat. The birth of a child would be no different than termites hatching in your backyard. Marriage wouldn't exist, because there would be no recognition of the sacred dimension of male and female sexuality. Euthanasia would not just be legal, but mandatory, on grounds of common sense -- as would the abortion of youth in Asia -- as in China.
Read the whole thing. I could quibble with Bob, and argue that he blends capacity for relationships with capacity for life of the spirit, etc., but I agree with his general direction - and with his attitude and his altitude. Life in abundance: it is Christ's promise. Image: William Blake's Ascension
Saturday, February 10. 2007
Could not resist borrowing todays' Chris Muir, above. We owe him for the use, which is only fair. Meanwhile, tell your local newspaper to add Day By Day to their cartoon list. Very odd that the basis for the need for sleep has yet to be understood. But rest does help you replace old brain cells. But is it worth it, since you miss out on so much when sleeping? Al Quaida in Iraq? Surber Women prefer Mr. Average. BBC. Maybe that's my problem. Adding to blogroll, under Education: Campus Watch. Melanie Phillips, via Instapundit, in a Steyn piece at The Corner: Watch this respectful Sky News interview (via LGF) with the ranting Islamist Anjem Choudary and last night’s morally eviscerated Question Time on BBC TV to see how Britain is ever more eagerly stretching out its neck for the cultural knife.
Find the best possible candidate, instead of hoping for perfection. Powerline George Will, on the MSM, warming, and news crusading. I hope this is not new news to Will. Al Gore urged to run. Great. There are many "Anybody but Hillary" folks amongst the Dems. They dislike her, and fear her. I think she is just a mean George McGovern, in pants. The UN Report will backtrack on prior hysterical predictions. Opinion Journal The Stature Gap: Gay Patriot (h/t, Wizbang)
We were going through the cut-out record bin this weekend and found this oldie but goodie. It makes great listening while reading Pajamas Media's roundup of reax to the John Edwards decision to be faithful to those that malign the faithful while maligning the malignant maligning they faithfully malign with. Or something. 
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