Tuesday, May 6. 2008
No Endgame, in the New Yorker: "As long as Clinton is willing to fight on simply for the sake of fighting, there really is no reason that this endless campaign has to end." Is red wine really good for you? From Charles Murray's 2006 Atlas Freedom Dinner speech: Every change in information technology gives the individual more power over his own life and more independence from centralized institutions, whether those institutions be libraries, the downtown office building, CBS, or the post office. Every change in information technology also undermines the authority of the state. Yes, in one sense the new technology gives the government more potential for keeping us all under closer surveillance than ever before. But in practice, the race between the power of the state and the power of the individual is determined by the computer geeks and nerds, and all the talent works for one side, the individual. Brilliant chip designers and programmers and hackers don’t want to work for the government. So I have no doubt that the government will try to regulate the internet, for example, and am utterly confident that spontaneous revolt in the private sector will foil those attempts in all important respects. When it comes to the action in tools, the government is on the outside looking in.
Monday, May 5. 2008
 P.J. O'Rourke's Commencement speech, with life advice
Dell vs. Apple David Warren on free speech in Canada. Barnett on the slow death of the MSM, and what it will mean (h/t Anklebiting on The Dying Media) From Samiz: Environmentalists like to claim that the politicians should pursue their agenda because that is what the public wants. So free-marketeers will be cheered by a new poll that says that 67% of British people believe that the green agenda has been hijacked as a ploy to increase taxes. 72% of Brits would be unwilling to pay more in taxes, even if used for environmental purposes.
Photo borrowed from Tim Blair in Trees worse than cars
 Exercising her right to choose, feminists get mad. Meanwhile, a woman's right to sex, in Ecuador
Steyn: "The mainline Protestant churches have long been beyond parody." See his example. Violence as a contagious disease? NYT. Vermont doesn't seem to want any power. As predicted, warmingologists change their models to accommodate the past decade without any warming, and the coming decade with cooling. Make-up for men? Sheesh. That is nauseating. Global warming models cause shark attacks. It must be the models causing this, since there's been no warming for over a decade. Like we have been saying: The Dem primaries are over. So why the charade? Iraq: NYT spinning (lying?) like crazy. However, Feith's book gets at the truth about the decisions. A "post-American world," in Newsweek. Some truth to it. One quote: At the military and political level, we still live in a unipolar world. But along every other dimension—industrial, financial, social, cultural—the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance. In terms of war and peace, economics and business, ideas and art, this will produce a landscape that is quite different from the one we have lived in until now—one defined and directed from many places and by many peoples. The post-American world is naturally an unsettling prospect for Americans, but it should not be. This will not be a world defined by the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else. It is the result of a series of positive trends that have been progressing over the last 20 years, trends that have created an international climate of unprecedented peace and prosperity.
Sunday, May 4. 2008
 NHS mess drives immigrants away in the UK. Talk about unintended consequences.
Sweden's missed opportunity. I doubt that they care very much. Their energetic and ambitious citizens leave the country, and their slacker quotient rises. Soon they will all be either Moslems or on the dole, or both. Then what? Call the UN for help? Call the USA for money and food? Taking another look at the UCC, in light of Rev. Wright who has become the UCC's poster child. A photo. Good grief Paging all men! It's time to MAN UP. h/t, Wizbang The Ice Age cometh Another note to self: Read OTB daily Car breathalizers? Give me a break. Is this creeping Prohibition? If I cannot have two or three beers at Rudy's and drive home, then this whole thing has gone too far. The Art of Folly at Yale. WaPo
Don't forget - We'll have the first episode of James Burke's history series up tonite 6 pm EDT (that is, Zulu -4 hrs). I'm sure it deserves the hype we have given it. Photo: The steeple of the church on Cuttyhunk Island
Saturday, May 3. 2008
 Krauthammer revisits Obama's race speech. Related: Obama's character at Am Thinker
Mea culpa! Everyone orders off the menu. AVI, friend, Who has original thoughts? "If there's an original thought out there, I could use one right now." The fraud of electric cars. Where do people imagine the power comes from? Hybrids, of course, are another matter: they recyle power. The horror of Boris. Thompson. We offer a heart-felt adios to old Red Ken. Bye-bye. Where's the Left when they're needed on Vietnam? Shout out to our Canadian readers: Help out News Flash! People do dumb things when intoxicated. Also, when they are sober. The Opportunity Cities in the US Note to self: Read Belmont Club daily. All views are worthy of respect and protection from defamation? Good grief. In my view, 99% of thoughts and views are worthy of disrespect and forceful defamation. Except for mine, natch. Photo: Theo thinks this is a good day to get your car cleaned. Not here, though. We are experiencing seriously alarming global cooling, and she would need a down parka today.
Friday, May 2. 2008
 We pointed out here and here that people are trying to talk down the economy and to fill people with fear for political reasons. They have done it throughout Bush's long "Goldilocks economy" (which has been stronger and healthier than Clinton's, a fact which our dishonest MSM press has tried to keep a secret), and they are doing it now. But if the credit crunch is going to cause a recession - which one might expect that it would and will - it sure isn't happening yet: Jobless rates fall.
The only jobs disappearing in numbers are those on Wall St., and populist Middle America never weeps for those good, savvy, hard-working folks. (It's as American as Apple Pie to hate the bankers - until we need one to help us start, grow, or sell a business. Then, we pretend to love 'em.)
Northwestern changes their mind on Rev. Wright's honorary degree. School choice works. Pajamas Congress will reconsider their Ethanol plans. We need to start drilling for oil - now. Related: The incoherence of Nancy Pelosi The Repubs and the press are enjoying the phony Dem horse race, but the Dem bosses are fed up with it. (Do they already know that McCain won't run hard and tough, because he doesn't need to prove he's tough?) This 8th Grader can teach the adults a thing or two Now Venezuela thinks they can run the steel industry. That govt. couldn't run a candy shop. Starbucks is in trouble. I confess that I do like their House Blend, but I just don't get the rest of that stuff they sell. What is Rachel's Law? A good idea. Compare and contrast: guns in in Nashville Rush said: The Democrat superdelegates have a problem. Obama cannot win, but they are afraid to take the nomination from him because they think the black vote won't show up in November and vote Democrat. I tell them not to worry. There's a 50-year history showing that they have done far worse — destroying the black family, for example — and blacks still vote Democrat.
Thursday, May 1. 2008
Economy slows; government hires. Is their goal to get everyone on their payroll? (Not that we aren't already working for them, for the first third of each year.) You saw this already: Bill O'Reilly terms Hillary socialist. Broder: GOP needs a new southern strategy Nice boat show in the Persian Gulf Kill the fatties? No wonder Obama is running for Pres: Smoking rooms removed from Senate Office Building Tax on fast food? I favor special taxes on Chardonnay and Brie. Does limited liability make any difference? Cowen says no. Are the collectivist trends of Western democracies reversible? No, says Mediocracy The Swiss government focuses on the really important matters - like whether your goldfish is lonely. eBay feedback: NEGATIVE: Though you did nothing wrong, I am giving you this negative feedback to teach you that the universe is arbitrary and unfair.
More of them here.
Wednesday, April 30. 2008
 What's going wrong in Basra? Civilization is happening.
How localism (as in Italy) could save Europe. Yes, save them from the EU Empire. How the Dems are screwing you at the gas pump. Important post. Global warming on vacation, say scientists. Do the models predict 30-year vacations? NYT proposes regulation of textbook prices. Mankiw notes the irony. 50% of LA job-holders were born in other countries It still could happen, and likely will - but we don't have a recession yet. Spank those kids or they could end up in jail Bet you didn't know that global warming causes AIDS. Silly you. More BBC censorship. The very notion of government media should be anathema in free societies. Need somebody to hate today? This low-life scum deserves yours. If I were a better person, I would say he needs our prayers...but I'm not that good yet. Right Wing Prof says that this NYT piece on Bio-bigotry makes him want somebody to shoot him. The NYT should have made it a companion piece to their Rev. Wright article, who is a genuine bio-bigot. I hate rats and Starlings. Sue me. Imus, who refers to Hillary Clinton as Satan, referred to Obama this morning as a pencil-neck wimp, or pansy, or something like that. Dean Barnett wonders the same thing. Pixie dust on solar, from Tom Friedman We'll all miss Red Ken, who is going down, tomorrow, with any luck. He was good for humor, though:
As if to reinforce the post below, today AOL news creates a Depression-era scare story: People selling their belongings to survive. You would think things were terrible because of tag sales. Meanwhile, economic data say no recession yet, but if people are fearful enough, the media will provoke one in time for the election. So what's the big issue, other than everybody's normal everyday challenge to build the life that suits their desires and their conscience?
Here are some clues, in the WSJ. He is not a metrosexual.
 Save the NYT! RWNH. Related, quoted from Auster:
The editors and reporters of the Times are not just “biased.” They are conscious, stone-cold, Soviet-style liars. And somehow they get away with it.
Wrigley sold to Mars Hillary's $3 billion in earmarks Dartmouth prof wants to sue her students. It's the victim/grievance culture run amok. Governments make problems worse, then demand more money to fix their unintended consequences Soak the rich isn't working this time around. Powerline "You have been had," at Am Thinker. A quote: It comes as a blow to the solar plexus to confront the fact that in urban African American communities all across America a frank racist hate-filled rhetoric is not merely condoned but actually celebrated. We white conservatives have been taught for the last generation to button our lips and never to give utterance to a racist thought. We thought that we were parties to a bargain: that if we shut up and truckled to the liberal race bullies sooner or later we would emerge from the post civil-rights era and its hypocrisies of affirmative action and diversity and we would ascend to the sunny green uplands of post-racism. Now we hear the ravings of Reverend Wright and realize that we have been had. While we were buttoning our lips and attending compulsory diversity seminars liberals were not holding up their end of the deal and neutralizing the Reverend Wrights of America and their vicious racist bile. On the contrary, liberals were pumping them up!
Photo from Bits and Pieces
Tuesday, April 29. 2008
Awful but lawful. Steep declines at the NYT. Related: Where have the smart media moguls gone? Buy your own Taser The science of doom and gloom The oil panic. Don't worry From Boundless (read whole thing): "It would be difficult to exaggerate the extent of antipathy towards the ROTC on the Left in America." Koreans heading for the Ivy League Wright's poison. Sullivan
Monday, April 28. 2008
Kimball shows how they do it.
You know, people often ask me why I write for Maggie's Farm. That's a poser, as we say on the Farm. Truth be told, the proprietor of this sorry place, Bird Dog, promised me hookers and blow if I joined the Maggie's team. So I attended the Christmas party expecting great things. It didn't work out exactly as I had planned. 
At this point, it's just plain stubbornness keeping me around. On a farm, sometimes being stubborn is all you got.
From Manly. It begins: Dear Barack Obama: I grew to like you over the last year. I've always thought of you as dangerously naive at best. Eloquent, gifted, genuine, yes. But dangerously naive at best. I couldn't vote for you -- but not because of your funny name or your lunatic pastor. I couldn't vote for you because you say we should raise taxes (even on the rich, who I'm convinced already pay too much), and because you say we should abandon Iraq (which I'm convinced would be surrendering a war we must win), and because you don't respect the Second Amendment (which I'm convinced should disqualify any politician from any office). Still, I've liked your message of unity and your ability to inspire. And, since your rise I've hunted, quite frantically, for young conservative leaders with your talent. (To my relief, I found Bobby Jindal.) And I've long said if you beat Hillary Clinton, you will have done your country a tremendous service. But anymore I'm having a harder and harder time rooting for you.
Read the whole thing.
The surrender of free speech in the face of Jihad: Bawer at City Journal And it looks as if Rev. Al has learned from them. Isn't this terrorism, of a sort? Rev. Al is another Rage Boy. "Operatic" displays of guilt and grief on the Left. Thompson Obama's character: Is it a distraction? Krauthammer The deep swimmers of the Left: Why Bill Ayers is more dangerous now Terming Obama "too extreme" is racist? The NYT says so, so it must be true. Some atheists want their own churches and ministers. Quote from NY Magazine: Many atheist sects are experimenting with building new, human-centered quasi-religious organizations, much like Ethical Culture. They aim to remove God from the church, while leaving the church, at least large parts of it, standing. But this impulse is fueling a growing schism among atheists. Many of them see churches as part of the problem. They want to throw out the baby and the bathwater—or at least they don’t see the need for the bathwater once the baby is gone.
Sunday, April 27. 2008
Bush at the Correspondent's Dinner last night: "Hillary Clinton couldn't get in because of sniper fire, and Senator Obama's at church."
 Marines deploying in Afghanistan
Attitudes of disdain. VDH McCain triangulates. Powerline. Also, McCain never saw the ad he criticized. No wonder he sounded out of touch. Greenpeace founder wants nuke power. So do I. Reverse racism in the Dem primaries. Jules Rev. Wright, in context (if you want to hear more) Duck hunting on Long island: Dec 26, 1920 Willow Creek changes direction. Interesting. (h/t, Smart Christian) A good rant about the govt and oil prices. Wizbang Not a warrior, and other thoughts about war. Comfortably dumb.
Saturday, April 26. 2008
Quoted from our old friend Marvin: Obama is also emerging as a more eloquent version of four recent Democratic presidential candidates—Mondale (1984), Dukakis (1988), Gore (2000), and Kerry (2004)—all of whom polled well early in their campaigns but faltered as they failed to understand and convey the truth that the United States is a country founded on ideals rather than tribal ethnicity or simple economic interests. That idealism moves some millionaires to vote Democratic for environmental reasons and some poor folks to vote Republican for pro-life reasons. And those voters who do put economics first often think long-term. William McKinley beat William Jennings Bryan in 1896 and 1900 because many workers cared more about opportunity for their children than maximization of current income. George McGovern in 1972 was surprised to find the working poor opposing his guaranteed income proposal because they saw themselves as upwardly mobile and wanted others to compete as well. Many academic liberals see themselves as eminently rational and others as warped or dumb. Some conservatives readily grasp the importance of worldviews because, surrounded as they are by generally hostile big media, they come to see how people look at the same facts and come to different conclusions. Many liberals aren't forced daily to think presuppositionally, so it's easy for them to view dissenters as psychologically or intellectually inferior.
Politics sucks, but Socialism doesn't quite make it in the Land of Opportunity. Almost, I am sorry to say, but not quite. You can go to other countries if that is what you want. Sweden or England. Not China. Vive la difference. Except for the slackers who want freebies, people who come here to the USA want the opportunity, not the hand-outs. If America doesn't stand for individual freedom and the opportunity to pursue your own goals and values and to stand on your own two legs, it stands for nothing at all. It works pretty well, too, if you are willing to take your lumps along with your chances. American ideals, perhaps, are not for everybody, and yet we take darn good care of those who stumble, run into bad luck, or cannot handle it. Charity, via government and via private charities. We are generous as heck here, thanks to our Christian values. Love to help folks, but do not enjoy doing so at gunpoint. That doesn't count as virtue - and taking care of our own families comes first. As it should, for adult humans. Figuring out your own path through life is the blessing of freedom.
 Darwin's garden, at the NY Botanical Garden
How McCain is dodging McCain-Feingold Oxblog's David Adesnik's life is too interesting for him to find computer time Beyond Discrimination: African American Inequality in the 21st Century TNR: Cheer up, Democrats The biofuel backlash England removed from the European map. My brave ancestors, castrated and played for suckers. Very sad to watch cultural suicide unfolding before ones' eyes. Repubs are racist? Not the ones I know. Let's start with Lincoln, and work forward towards Eisenhower. We will vote for a Conservative guy or gal - brown, black, yellow, Jewish, or Mormon - in a New York minute. A quote from Norm: Argue about when wars are necessary and when they aren't, when they are justified and when they aren't, and whether a particular war should be fought or not. But to pontificate about the meaning of war being bad, as if you really hate it and are therefore with the angels - unlike the rest of us - is a feeble ruse. War has been tested to destruction? Yes, I also wish. Unfortunately, if others decide to wage it against you, it does put you in something of a quandary.
Friday, April 25. 2008
Simon at Classical Values asks whether the demonstrations/"direct action" planned for the Denver (and Minneapolis) conventions might be a Rovian plot. This Clinton site says that the umbrella group Recreate 68 is hoping to provoke violence. Oh, man, that is so 60s. They used to say that the tactic was to provoke the cops to "expose the covert brutality of the Capitalist system." What a bunch of grandiose immature jerks: they self-satirize without realizing it. Plus they do not know that '68 was a terrible year. They should get a life. 
Thursday, April 24. 2008
 The Patton of counterinsurgency. Wkly Standard
Big-city pundits turn bitter. Will they now turn to God and guns? Banking woes are easing. CSM The coming revolution in Africa. Let's hope so The war between Murdoch and the NYT heats up Finally, scientists begin to talk about the coming Ice Age
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