Thursday, May 7. 2009
Obama is the guy who is saying that America will be the last advanced country to try all the things that have already failed in other countries.
Mark Steyn, on the radio today
Beck destroys ACORN spokesman.
Whether or not folks such as Glenn Beck or Michael Savage or Ann Coulter are your cup of tea, we all benefit from having them around to defend the perimeter of what is sayable and thinkable.
 So what? 1 in 5 homeowners underwater. Most who bought in the last few years, no doubt. Same as people who bought stocks in the last few years - or who bought cars on time. Or a new chain saw on their Home Depot credit card, for that matter.
The O's mission to bankrupt the coal biz begins. Related: James Hansen terms cap and trade The Temple of Doom.
Miss Saudi Arabia
Extremist right-wing loonies march for school choice in DC
"Rangel, of course, knows a thing or two about offshore tax shelters: He'd been operating one for years."
Are you confused yet about the stress tests?
Obama groupies: "Do these people even listen to themselves?"
Brit tax dollars at work. Also, a voice from Britain:
Given our complete lack of electoral choices, a party formed of retired Gurkhas led by Ms Lumley, standing for compulsory goat curry & promising to sort out our dumded down chav-culture with judicious use of their kukris would certainly get my unsteady tick in the box. Think of it as casting a protest vote – successive administrations have allowed once Great Britain to be overrun by just about every whinging ethnic minority load of bl**dy wogs with an open hand & a grievance you care to mention. However when it comes to those who have done nothing but loyally serve Her Majesty, the Westminster pondlife treat them with nothing but utter distain.
Blacks vs. gays. That's where identity politics will get you
Fascism revisited. It was meant to be the "third way."
From France: Dont turn America into another France (video)
Wednesday, May 6. 2009
We recently noted here that, if you gave 5 people each $100,000 to do something with, after 5 years one guy would be broke, one guy would have a million bucks, and the others somewhere in between.
It's like Jesus' parable of the talents (which of course had nothing to do with money, but with the use of gifts of the spirit.)
Readers know that I don't give a darn what other people make. I care about what I make, how I make it, and what I do with it.
Just One Minute looks at Robert Reich on income inequality. One commenter says:
Does the highly-respected Colin Powell make any sense here?
 Need one of these steps? On sale now.
To me, Global Warming was the Swine Flu of the Decade. Gullible America
"Cash for clunkers" screws the poor. Not just the poor: lots of folks out there who would never spend money on something that depreciates as fast as a new car.
Quoted at Neo's Where's the Outrage?
The fate of Chrysler and its workers pale in comparison to the wrecking ball that would be taken to economic order if bankruptcy judge Arthur Gonzalez approves the administration’s plan to give Chrysler’s secured creditors the shaft. And what prize will we-the-people get in return? A doomed third-rate car company majority owned by its militant union run by Italian management building congressionally designed “green” cars no one wants to buy financed by taxpayers into perpetuity because no private investor in their right mind will touch the company with a ten foot pole. Is this supposed to be economic policy or comic opera?
Related: More allegations of WH threats
Chavez update. Front Page
David Brooks is often out to lunch. Occasionally not. Sort-of related: How Conservatives damaged the Repubs
Feds make it difficult for banks to pay back their TARP cash
The "Green Jobs" joke
Jim Cramer is a bull. Kudlow says recession is over. So does Bernanke. All provided that the govt doesn't screw it up...
Whenever you are photographed, make sure there isn't a phone pole coming out the top of your head - or worse - in the background (h/t, Samiz):
Powerline asks "Why?" re DC school vouchers. Answer is obvious. Below, from Reason:
The Slipstream Media: A New American Network. A quote from Vanderleun's essay:
This is the first in a series of articles on how to go about building a new American media; a media composed of newspapers, television, radio, film, music, publishing, and the multi-media capabilities of the Internet; an American media open to all and founded on the five bedrock principles of “Duty, Honor, Country, Truth, God.”
When dinosaurs die large opportunities for growth bloom within the ecosystem. The death of the old media is such an opportunity. It affords a wide range of possibilities to create a new media, a media that runs to the side of the mainstream media, but ultimately supplants it by slipping by it. For now I call it, The Slipstream Media.
A pipe dream?
Tuesday, May 5. 2009
The current issue of the Digest from the National Bureau of Economic Research carries findings from Stanford University economists looking at the different economic outcomes for similarly situated Jamaica and Barbados from different macroeconomic policies pursued between 1960 to 2002.
Both had the institutional foundation from being British colonies and similar sugar and tourism-based economies, yet from 1960 to 2002 Barbados’ GDP expanded about three times faster than Jamaica’s. The current income gap in favor of Barbados is near five times larger than at independence.
Why?
Jamaica pursued extensive state intervention in the economy, nationalization, income transfers and the like, and borrowed heavily to fund growing deficits. Barbados followed a more restrained posture toward business, spending and borrowing.
Sound portentous?
 Now that Homeland Security has decided to turn against fellow Americans as the dangerous enemies - patriotic dissenters - it's time to get rid of the darn thing. We already have the FBI, and Napolitano is no J. Edgar Hoover... or is she?
Miss California is still targeted, despite the fact that her views on gay marriage were identical to Obama's stated position in the election. Palinization? That gal is cute as a button - but dangerous? And since when aren't Christians supposed to be sexy?
Michael Savage is not the most refined voice on the radio (says whatever he thinks, and is #3), but I hope he sues over this.
I am shocked. Shocked. The Taliban Lied. Who'd a thunk it? Nice folks certainly - just misunderstood. Call the social worker, Dear Officer Krupke.
Also from the Gateman, I am shocked. Shocked. 19,000 phony voter registrations. How much money in the "stimulus" went to ACORN? Was it $4 billion? That is a generous reward to a "not-for profit," "non-partisan" org.
The O is now at +1%. Heading downwards. Not everyone seems to be enchanted. My motto is "Don't follow leaders; watch yer parkin' meters."
"This is America." A tough CT Yankee: I'm not afraid of Obama
Good fun to go with your single malt, at Surber.
 The US has, I believe, the highest business and corporate taxes in the world. China has no corporate tax because they want to encourage business growth. They aren't stupid.
The Dems want to push them higher. Furthermore, they want to tax foreign biz income before it is repatriated, which discourages overseas expansion and does not make the Brits very happy.
Heck, if I were a biz, I'd just move my HQ elsewhere if I am not made to feel welcome or appreciated here. The old saying goes "A gentleman knows where he is not wanted."
Am I way off the mark when I observe that taxes on business are indirect taxes on consumers and investors? And that they reduce employment and growth?
And that, by doing so, those taxes will soon reduce the revenue that the government so greedily feeds on? Is this complicated? Isn't basic economics taught in Middle School Social Studies? Or at least in Home Ec?
Good comments below - thanks, y'all.
Good grief. Imagine if Bush...or Palin.
 The Nazis wanted to bring back wild Aurochs to Europe
As Pete Seeger would sing, "Which side are you on, boys?" Hmmm. NYT vs. the unions.
Colleges discriminate against Asians. Not a PC minority, I guess. As a friend said to me, "People assume that because I'm Chinese I'm smarter than everybody else. But I'm not."
Wise, careful and prudent financial planning - and now broke.
Favorite things at the Smithsonian - like Lewis and Clark's compass. One would hope they brought more than one.
Solipcism and the Apocalypse. Pick your favorite apocalypse. I want it to be a life-erasing storm of juicy red raspberries from the Berry Galaxy. I will die happy.
A President who hates his country?
We always knew it was a joke. Amusing from Roger S re Swine Flu:
SF remains a “Media Flu” fanned by CNN, Drudge, etc. and seems even to have infected otherwise brilliant members of the media with whom I normally agree. [So maybe it's you.-ed. Shut up. I told you I came from a medical family. Read my book. It's on my night table.]
Worth noting is what enhances this media flu: political bile.
What the heck does idealism have to do with working for the government? Claremont: ...and we're here to help you.
Bad news for the US: China decides to back off on buying our debt. I guess that means that they do not want to own us.
Two fat black lesbians?
New charges against ACORN
Not socially appropriate to criticize the O. Since when? In my (small) circles, half the folks think he's a royal jerk and half think he's going to bring us to the Promised Land of money and goodies and no work.
Related: The things you don't read about the O's first 100 days
VDH, via Blue Crab:
...it is adherence to the idea of equality of result rather than an equality of opportunity, the age-old debate that goes back to the Greeks. From Aristotle’s Politics and Plato Laws, we learn of the original dilemma: a stable city-state of roughly similar property owners, who vote as equals, and fight as comrades in the phalanx, tragically, but inevitably, soon becomes tragically unequal.
Divide the land up equally to found the polis; give everyone an similarly-size plot (klęros); and then health, luck, brains, accident, strength, ambition, character, and a myriad of other factors, some understandable, some capricious, conspire to create inequality. I agree with Aristotle; I have seen it with families and communities in which equal inheritances soon led to radically different outcomes, as one sibling on rocky ground thrives, while another in deep loam starves; one town with abundant resources goes broke, while another without natural advantages thrives.
As Aristotle saw, some lose, some expand their original homesteads, and suddenly we have Hoi beltistoi and Hoi polloi-and the rallying cry that someone’s liberty to do as he pleases means that egalitarianism of the lowest common denominator becomes impossible.
So, then, how often is a new deal needed?
Monday, May 4. 2009
"Questions from Oceania." A quote from VDH, re the Dems:
...we are in a race—a race to get the dependent constituents permanently in place and institutionalized before the proverbial (fill in the blanks) hits the fans. If he succeeds, we will end up like a Greece, France, or Belgium— weekly strikes by government workers and unions, rampant cynicism as everyone seeks to land the federal job for base salary and taxes and benefits, and then moonlights to get untaxed cash and barter for necessary goods and services, all coupled with a culture of blame at various foreign and domestic “thems” who make us so unhappy.
Final thought: without the Old US who will be blamed? Who will keep the global sea-lanes open?Who will buy the world’s exports? Who will deal with Milosevic, Saddam, the Taliban, and the other global nuts and psychopaths? Who will attract the world’s more daring and desperate?
So we end with a whimper, after all?
I want to be a toll-collector. Minimal responsibility or hassle. No heavy lifting or heavy thinking or risk, like working for a non-profit. Retire on full salary after 25 years (plus final year overtime factor) and full gummint benefits. Meanwhile, get rich and have fun writing for Maggie's on the side. Maybe a book deal, too: My Sexy Life in a Toll Booth.
 Goodbye, Columbus. Death of a holiday at Brown.
Getting those darn pesky Christians off NPR. Related: What's with this Atheism Movement? What are they for? And has nobody told them that atheism has been around forever? Most Episcopalians I have known are atheists, for heaven's sake.
A Google-killer? Will Google need a government take-over?
Good news on the fossil fuel front: 200 trillion cubic feet of gas
Kaus:
If Chrysler fails in the marketplace again two or three years from now, after billions more in government subisidies, won't that reflect badly on Obama and his "economic team"? WIll it then appear to have been better to let Chrysler go into an actual, non-prearranged, non-jawboned bankruptcy, in which it would likely have been liquidated or in which the UAW would have had to make far more substantial concessions, like workers in other bankruptcies?
VDH:
At some point, Obama must answer why waterboarding mass-murderers and beheaders like Khalid Sheik Mohammed is wrong, while executing by missile attack (no writs, habeas corpus, Miranda rights, etc.) suspected terrorists and anyone caught in their general vicinity in Waziristan — or pirates negotiating extortion — is legitimate.
AVI takes a look at the psychology of Socialism. He does not use the word "envy," but he might.
France lowers taxes to spark job growth
Let's get back to spanking. Who ever quit?
Obama is a statist, not a Commie. CATO. Statists are those who think politicians deserve to be philosopher-kings. Same as Commies.
The Jacksonian on the Constitution. One quote:
President Obama, when teaching Constitutional law, couldn't get this idea that all liberty and rights are vested in the people by Natural Law and not given to government. In an interview with WBEZ.FM in 2001 he went through his idea that the Constitution would, somehow, be made better if it took the other view: that government gets to give a few rights to people and retains the rest for itself via the concept of positive rights. Government, under that view, does not become a representative institution, but an authoritarian caretaker of the people. In wanting a Constitution that would say what government 'must do' on your behalf, he relegates that decision to government, not the people. To get something like, say, clothing to people, the government gets to decide what kind, what type and how much clothing goes to which people by its own dictates. That similarly goes for clothing. A good job. Health care for government to decide.
Postcard from the Casino de Paris, 1915, h/t Good Sh-t
Sunday, May 3. 2009
 Go shopping to save your soul.
Why students don't like school. Hmm. I liked school. Maggie's is my school, for now.
Jack Kemp's enduring legacy
How to bake a trencher. I like the idea. No dishes.
Habits and vocation. Anchoress
Is exhaustion only in your head?
Always been interested in how the government subsidized the construction of suburbs with highways. Are highways a public good?
Semi-related: Amtraking the Automakers, which begins:
The odds that the federal government will ever get its hooks out of Chrysler or General Motors are slim to none, regardless what President Obama says. Why? In one word, Amtrak.
The O took a special interest in Chrysler. And, good grief, the O reads Sullivan. He'd be far more popular if he read Maggie's daily. We might remind him about freedom.
Ingraham vs. Feldt. See, this is how it's done
The mob is still after the terrifying Sarah Palin
Demography update: Northern Europeans having more babies, Russia having fewer
People are tiring of the global warming alarmism. What next?
Media bias, charted at Will.
Related, MSM press as lap dog or pit bull? I found this amazing:
One of my clients was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under the threat that the full force of the White House Press Corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight.
More on cap and trade as nothing but a covert tax
More on capitalism and the culture wars. Dr. Sanity
Another Steyn masterpiece. A quote:
The theater of thoughtfulness is critical to the president's success. He has the knack of appearing moderate while acting radical, which is a lethal skill. The thoughtful look suckered many of my more impressionable conservative comrades last fall, when David Brooks and Christopher Buckley were cranking out gushing paeans to Obama's "first-class temperament" – temperament being to the Obamacons what Nick Jonas' hair is to a Tiger Beat reporter. But the drab reality is that the man they hail – Brooks & Buckley, I mean; not the Tiger Beat crowd – is a fantasy projection. There is no Obama The Sober Centrist, although it might make a good holiday song:
"Obama The Sober Centrist
Had a very thoughtful mien
And if you ever saw it
You would say it's peachy keen …"
Image: How Bouguereau got that picture of me in the woods in 1873 I do not know. Thanks, Berkshire guy. I will add it to the family photo album.
From Sen. Jim DeMint's WSJ op-ed on building a big tent party:
No Child Left Behind didn't win us "soccer moms," but it did cost us our credibility on locally controlled education. Medicare prescription drugs didn't win us a "permanent majority," but it cost us our credibility on entitlement reform. Every year, another Republican quality was tainted: managerial competence, fiscal discipline and personal ethics.
To win back the trust of the American people, we must be a "big tent" party. But big tents need strong poles, and the strongest pole of our party -- the organizing principle and the crucial alternative to the Democrats -- must be freedom. The federal government is too big, takes too much of our money, and makes too many of our decisions. If Republicans can't agree on that, elections are the least of our problems.
If the American people want a European-style social democracy, the Democratic Party will give it to them. We can't win a bidding war with Democrats.
Freedom will mean different things to different Republicans, but it can tether a diverse coalition to inalienable principles. Republicans can welcome a vigorous debate about legalized abortion or same-sex marriage; but we should be able to agree that social policies should be set through a democratic process, not by unelected judges. Our party benefits from national-security debates; but Republicans can start from the premise that the U.S. is an exceptional nation and force for good in history. We can argue about how to rein in the federal Leviathan; but we should agree that centralized government infringes on individual liberty and that problems are best solved by the people or the government closest to them.
Moderate and liberal Republicans who think a South Carolina conservative like me has too much influence are right! I don't want to make decisions for them. That's why I'm working to reduce Washington's grip on our lives and devolve power to the states, communities and individuals, so that Northeastern Republicans, Western Republicans, Southern Republicans, and Midwestern Republicans can define their own brands of Republicanism. It's the Democrats who want to impose a rigid, uniform agenda on all Americans. Freedom Republicanism is about choice -- in education, health care, energy and more. It's OK if those choices look different in South Carolina, Maine and California.
People who prefer dependency to freedom need to find another country. Lots of those countries out there, but they are disappearing fast. If you want a strong dose, try Cuba or Venezuela. Maybe Bolivia. Stay away from China, because they are looking for entrepreneurs.
Saturday, May 2. 2009
 Why Andy McCarthy said No to the Justice Dept (h/t, Blue Crab)
The UAW is now in the driver's seat. Kudlow is furious about the debt deal. "A shameful chapter in American history" he said this morning on the radio."It undermines the rule of law and replaces it with Chicago-style politics." A remarkable abuse of power indeed.
The etymology of military ranks
The plot to destroy private medical insurance
The man who fought the tort bar - and won. An ugly story with a happy ending.
I think the best satire is that which cuts close to some reality, but this bit cuts it very close to some peoples' reality.
David Kessler now targets Big Food. What a putz. He should worry about controlling himself, not me.
Is there still a war, or not?
Should Conservatives play hardball like the Left does?
Is there another Warren Buffett? He's the only guy I've heard of who is worth cloning.
The legal duty to rescue: Volokh
Flu: Hysteria du jour. (h/t, Right Wing Prof)
Photo: The Jack Kramer Pro-Staff was my favorite. Wish I still had it. At some point, there was so much junk around here that I threw it away in the Spring Cleaning dumpster.
Friday, May 1. 2009
If freely-entered private contracts cannot be trusted, what can be trusted? Cram-down legislation defeated.
Rush mischievously but truthfully noted today that racial profiling is an evil if practiced by cops, border agents, or airports - but is considered highly desirable in government as Obama's people seek a Left-wing female Hispanic to replace Souter.
Why not some sort of Asian? How about somebody who reveres our Constitution?
I have posted numerous times here about the role that infantile wishes and hopes can play in the lives of those who are otherwise adults. We all must have hopes and dreams, and we all must have many of them dashed to become real, serious adults.
Real serious adults know all about the futility of wishful thinking, Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny - and the free lunch.
Hoven at American Thinker has a post up about Wishful Thinking in politics. As salesmen, politicians are all about appealing or pandering to wishful thinking. He begins:
There's the old joke about an economist's plan to get out of a pit he was thrown into: "First, we assume a ladder." There has been a whole lot of assuming going on, from alternate energy to non-harsh interrogations.
Some of us (including the MSM) have entered the wondrous, enchanted Obama-Dem Dreamland where dreams come true, but some of us have kept our feet on the ground where Mean Old Mr. Reality walks around.
One whose grip on reality is, in my view, only sporadic is Mr. Krugman, who insists that cap and trade taxes in the US will save the planet. But what if they don't? What are the odds that they will? He is in Dreamland. Or maybe he just wants any excuse for more tax dollars to the Feds.
All of this reminds me of Lawn Chair Larry. Remember him? I think he violated LAX air space.
Ed. note: Re childish dreams, the history of The Internationale (h/t, Good Sh-t)
 Sex in the Middle Ages, via the NSFW cool site Cool Shit which Tiger found.
Souter? Won't make a big diff. (Does anyone doubt that he wailted until there were Dems in control?) And Specter? Is John Cornyn trying to make lemonade out of a lemon, or is he right?
See? Earth Day made a difference!
Good interview with Mark Levin (his book remains #1) by John Hawkins. h/t, Dr Helen
The SAT and its enemies. Weekly Standard
Government medical care from a nurse, at Am Thinker:
Obama's first choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Daschle, withdrew his name after his myriad tax problems came to light. But as far as I can tell, his health care reform ideas live on in the Obama administration and Democrat-majority Congress. The jewel of his plan is the Federal Health Board:
...these government experts would "help define evidence-based benefits and lower overall spending by determining which medicines, treatments, and procedures are most effective--and identifying those that do not justify their high price tags."
Ladies and gentlemen, he's talking about rationing and denying payment. But look on the bright side, America. Physicians will no longer be "burdened" by decision making. And think of all the time doctors can save when they no longer need to explain various treatment options to you or your elderly mom. Life is so much easier when you simply don't care. Ask our cool, cool President.
So get used to health care profiling. Just have your doctor fill out this form with your age, gender, diagnosis, and prognosis, and Washington will let him know what to order. It's medicine by spreadsheet. It's cold, cold healthcare.
h/t, Theo -
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The uproar about income inequality continues to baffle me. Why does relative socioeconomic status matter more than absolute socioeconomic status? If the US has the richest poor people in the world, why is the distance between them and the people at the top such a big deal?
FWIW, Gregg Easterbrook, a liberal, argued in The Progress Paradox that if you factor out immigration, the rise in income inequality disappears. He got severely criticized by the left for this analysis IIRC.
Also I don't trust government definitions of "poor." My friends whose two kids qualify for S-CHIP have a 4 (smallish) bedroom house in an expensive part of town, a car, two cell phones, high-speed internet, a nice desktop & two nice laptops, buy mostly organic groceries, spend disposable income on ebay, gardening hobbies, etc. etc. They live on one-and-a-half salaries (he works full-time, she works part-time out of the house). But they're considered to be in need of government services, apparently. So if they're counted in the numbers of "needy" Texans, no wonder the numbers are skewed.