Tuesday, December 7. 2010
I checked Google News to see what the nation’s press has to say this year on the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and throughout the Pacific. Very little. A little about how few survivors are still alive today. A little about the dedication of the renovated Memorial over the USS Arizona. A few scattered services.
What does December 7, 1941 mean today?
Mankiw wonders, and concludes:
I should note, by the way, that economists who strongly favor the extension of UI benefits, such as those who signed this letter, also tend to favor more income redistribution in general. I suspect, therefore, that the foundation of their support comes not from having weighed the specific pros and cons of UI per se, but rather from a more general desire to "spread the wealth around." That issue is, as I tell my students, more a matter of political philosophy than it is of economics.
For years, it was assumed that a rapidly growing economy could pay for added programs. The result was the careless use of government for almost anything that made a good slogan or could support a lobby. The underlying economic assumptions were overoptimistic. Now, an aging society and uncontrolled health costs will automatically expand the size of government well beyond today's tax base. Demographics mean government will become supersized unless we trim its responsibilities.
We need a new public philosophy that acknowledges these realities.
Seems like lots of folks are getting out of the wind/solar scam market
Watts: More on the Wikileaks Climate Cables - http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/04/more-on-the-wikileaks-cimate-cables/
Pushing the right to bear knives - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/us/05knives.html Some link probs today -
Government Website Promotes "3% or Less" Down
Market Power: "Ethanol on the Run"
...the Senators dryly noted, "Historically our government has helped a product compete in one of three ways: subsidize it, protect it from competition, or require its use. We understand that ethanol may be the only product receiving all three forms of support from the U.S. government at this time."
Image on top via Washington Reb
A friend iPhoned this pic from New York's Central Park on Saturday.
Monday, December 6. 2010
Here. h/t Thompson. I see no '96 Explorer there.
Via Phi Beta Cons,
Listen to this illuminating interview Peter Schiff did with a student who is $200,000 in debt for a sociology degree from Northeastern University. He gets right at the root of the problem: government-guaranteed student loans.
If advocates of capitalism want more sympathy, it’s past time to expose and shuck many so-called capitalists whose self-interest undermines capitalism.
Objectivist Richard Salsman cries for capitalism in Forbes, Where Have All The Capitalists Gone?
The collapse of socialist regimes two decades ago didn’t mean capitalism was finally being hailed for its many virtues; the historic event only merely reminded people of capitalism’s productive ability–an ability that already long-proven and long-acknowledged even by its worst enemies. Persistent animosity toward capitalism today rests on moral, not practical grounds. Unless rational self-interest is understood as the one moral code consistent with genuine humanity, and the moral estimate of capitalism thus improves, socialism will keep making comebacks, despite its deep and dark record of human misery.
All true. And, misses much.
After all the manifest advantages of capitalism are appreciated, the inclination of some who are unproductive to take from the productive is discounted, and the false bravado is revealed of some who are wealthy – protecting their own with expensive lawyers – to suggest higher taxes, there’s great and increasing unease and anger at many of the biggees of capitalism.
Continue reading "Crocodile Tears for Capitalism"
My sons and I were at the pancake breakfast last Saturday morning at Camp Pendleton paid for by Congressman Darrell Issa’s Family Foundation to gather toys and contributions for Homefront San Diego. Issa’s Family Foundation is matching all contributions. Homefront San Diego has no overhead and no payroll. Every cent of tax-deductible contributions directly benefits the lower enlisted active duty military families in the San Diego area. Just go to the Homefront site and make your contribution to those who serve.
As a former Marine Sergeant, of course I enjoyed who worked the line serving us Saturday morning, though they serve us every day.
Continue reading "Those Who Serve"
 For Christmas, Gnomeland security
High speed rail: Trains to nowhere
Presbyterians Against Israel
Lawmakers Weigh Deal to Extend Tax Cuts for All
I still find this amazing:
41% of [US] babies were born to unmarried moms in 2008. … More than half of the unmarried parents were living together at the time their child was born and 30% of them were romantically involved (but living apart).
Nanny to nix bake sales?
I didn't know this:
Foreign banks were among the biggest beneficiaries of the $3,300bn in emergency credit provided by the Federal Reserve during the crisis, according to new data on the extraordinary efforts of the US authorities to save the global financial system.
Sunday, December 5. 2010
A fairly serious essay by Prof. Bertonneau at Brussels titled A Lesson for Our Time in Three Late-Antique Narratives: Satyricon, The Golden Ass, and Confessions. One quote from this literary jeremiad:
Everyone has vices. Most people manage to overcome the worst of their viciousness. It therefore requires a mighty labor not to see the so-called explanations of vice as mere excuses – indeed, as lame excuses – for irredentism and indulgence. The claim of personal helplessness is the creed of people who like their vices and who will on no account reform themselves. These non-explanations nevertheless have wide currency, but so also do the indifferent notion that the self is a “logocentric” illusion and the relativistic opinion that to flout a stricture is morally equal to observing it. The political religions of the Twentieth Century all relied on – and indeed mandated – these views as part of the ‘correct” view of existence. Socialism generically predicates its own inevitability and it then necessarily also predicates the emptiness of individual determination or action. Radical restructuring of society comes upon us inevitably, the vanguard always argues; and restructuring is justified because there are whole classes of victims whose misery is supposedly not of their own making, but has impinged on them from an outside beyond the control of the afflicted. In its less acute form of the multicultural welfare state, socialism insists that victim-groups not only cannot help themselves but that they cannot actually be reformed and that it is the duty of everyone else, first, to refrain from any condemnation of counterproductive behaviors and, then, to subsidize the pathological consequences of those behaviors.
Read the whole thing. It's a good reminder about those three classic texts, too, which we all read before we had the age on us to really appreciate what the authors were talking about.
Non-technical education is wasted on the young, because they are too interested in questions about themselves than in the big questions. These books were not written for adolescents.
Matthew 3:1-12
3:1 In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming,
3:2 "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."
3:3 This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'"
3:4 Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.
3:5 Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan,
3:6 and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
3:7 But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
3:8 Bear fruit worthy of repentance.
3:9 Do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.
3:10 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
3:11 "I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
3:12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."
Saturday, December 4. 2010
This beauty has been working the same land in CT for 63 years.
I know people usually do not feel that they have time to click on embedded videos, but this one captures so many conversations I have had, over the years, that I have to post it.
Maine Family Robinson's Maine Politics -- A Primer. The election's over, so it's time for me to pay attention to Maine politics, I guess. One quote from the guy who is truly not a Masshole:
All the candidates for governor said they were for education and jobs. The way they said "education and jobs" sounded like they were describing a Loch Ness monster or a Sasquatch or some other creature they'd heard of, but didn't have a current home address for. Since all the candidates vehemently pronounced their love for education and jobs, no matter what question was posed to them, I figured there must be a dastardly candidate that was for unemployment and ignorance, but I couldn't find one. My wife helpfully offered to write my name in.
Ilya asks whether there is anything the Feds cannot control via Commerce
Fun vid: Andrew Klavan: Is America Satanophobic?
Some sanity: Breaking: Japan refuses to extend Kyoto treaty at Cancun
Let no crisis go to waste: Gulf oil spill could usher in new safety agency. Related, in The Atlantic, Obama's BP Oil Spill Commission Gets It Wrong
Via Insty, Megan asks Should China Rethink High Speed Rail?
Prices are really useful. But in whole large sectors of the Chinese economy, particularly the banking sector, the government sets those prices. This means huge information loss, and the concomitant possibility that there is a vast misallocation of resources.
Don't those things happen in markets? Hell yes: witness the housing bubble. On the other hand, witness East Germany. To get a really catastrophic misallocation of resources, it seems to take a government; corporations can only screw things up on an artisinal scale. For that matter, it's worth noting that our government has spent the last seven decades trying to keep the price of housing low, and that much of that intervention, such as the creation of mortgage securitization, ultimately significantly contributed to the crisis.
258
There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons —
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes —
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us —
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are —
None may teach it — Any —
’Tis the Seal Despair —
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air —
When it comes, the Landscape listens —
Shadows — hold their breath —
When it goes, ’tis like the Distance
On the look of Death —
Friday, December 3. 2010
 Beethoven's Pastoral, with Charles Hazelwood discussing. It's 1 1/2 hours. (You have to click on the "play the program" bit.
Thanks, Buddy. It's a music education, and music gets no better than this.
Here's some fun Beethoven trivia.
 I think she is a celeb, and if she runs for office, she'll be a celeb candidate. Obama was a celeb candidate, and we see how that worked out. We live in a world of non-serious, lens-lice celebs who take themselves all too seriously, and I don't like that.
Furthermore, I refuse to get all tingly about any pol. I tend not to think very highly of pols, as a class, and I tend to be suspicious of any pol's seductive talents because it is so often a substitute for substance.
It's been explained to us here that Presidential candidates are just figureheads of vast, sprawling political parties and power and money interests. The candidate is "the talent," as they say in show biz and in the sports biz. I take that into account, and I know that in our TV and YouTube age, this applies to politicians much more than it used to.
This is not to say that I do not like Sarah. I do like her, and she's clearly a colorful figure and an exciting spokesperson for many people. I'd hunt or fish with her anytime.
My thoughts are in reference to Potemra: Rumblings of Discontent — on Palin
A Ghostwritten Psychiatric Book Hints at a Much Larger Problem: The Story That Is . . . and Isn't Told in Psychiatric Textbooks
Today, Psychiatry contains two camps: The psychopharmacologist "Biological Psychiatrists," and what I can only term "Whole person" Psychiatry. I practice the latter - or try to.
What makes my life difficult is that, with the growing dominance of the Pharmacology shrinks, "best practices" become redefined in favor of medicine treatments. We do have remarkable medicines nowadays but they do not really "fix" anything and, in my experience, are widely over-used.
I will get to the DSM personality disorder flap when I get the chance. Since I think the DSM is sort of silly anyway, it's hard for me to get excited about the topic.
12 years is the average difference in age between men and women, in second marriages.
I wonder why...
Barone asks that question:
In the aftermath of the Republican disaster of 2008, some conservative writers hoped that the party could gain support from elite demographics—“the educated class,” as David Brooks calls it, meaning not so much “everyone who graduated from college” but more like “the kind of people we knew at school.” The results of the 2010 election, hugely encouraging for Republicans, indicate that the party’s gains came from almost all parts of the electorate except the elite demographic. I think it is extremely risky in a period of what I call open-field politics to make straight-line extrapolations from the results of one election to the next. But I also think that those conservatives aiming their pitch at their fellow Ivy League graduates, etc., are aiming in the wrong direction.
Does this mean that, if I wish to be respected by the elites, I should switch sides?
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Global Warming Hysteria: Stop Face Lifts to Save the Planet!