Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Let this be a lesson to Pubs everywhere: exhibit some cajones and the Freedom-Haters have no choice but to cave
The MEC bows - and that's AP's term - to Boehner and reschedules his jobs prattle for Sept. 8, the opening night of the NFL season.
Race-card vulgarity - today's edition
Indianapolis is a great city with a lot of things to recommend it, but the scumbag who represents it in the House is not one of them.
There are risks inherent in clinging to a failed and delusional ideology
So that if the MEC wants to tout a California solar-panel company as the wave of the future and representative of the best of America and have the federal government prop it up with loan guarantees, there is the chance that it might go belly up and make you look like a fool and a wastrel.
Now, will the green delusion go off and quietly die?
Great Investors Business Daily editorial on the CERN experiment that demonstrated that the sun is the overhwelmingly primary influence on Earth's climate patterns.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Colin Powell has squandered any honor he ever had
He will not publicly apologize to Scooter Libby for remaining silent while standing next to the president when the president asked who leaked Valerie Plame's status to Robert Novak, knowledge which he had at the time.
They wanted decline, and they got it
Bernanke counts himself among those who still see the continuing economic malaise as unexpected. His term is "weak recovery." He ought to hang with the MEC more. He'd see that everything's right on schedule.
Consumer confidence is at its lowest point in more than two years.
Craig Steiner at Townhall likens our current juncture to that moment when the Titanic's stern shot straight up in the air and the remaining passengers on deck looked at each other during the pregnant pause, thinking, How long before the final submerging?
The FHer plan to bring America to its knees begging for its daily bowl of rice is right on track.
Consumer confidence is at its lowest point in more than two years.
Craig Steiner at Townhall likens our current juncture to that moment when the Titanic's stern shot straight up in the air and the remaining passengers on deck looked at each other during the pregnant pause, thinking, How long before the final submerging?
The FHer plan to bring America to its knees begging for its daily bowl of rice is right on track.
Great intellect, he ain't
Lots of other bloggers have linked to this, but let's go ahead and do so here as well. Jack Cashill at the American Thinker on a letter the MEC wrote to the Harvard Law Review in 1990.
The Cash for Clunkers principle applied to the jobs situation
That's what the MEC's big plan is going to have as its centerpiece, and it will have the same pathetic results.
Read the whole link and you'll see that Eric Cantor is offering something entirely different that would actually work.
Read the whole link and you'll see that Eric Cantor is offering something entirely different that would actually work.
Where in the hell does the MEC regime get off . . .
. . . issuing "guidelines" for 9/11 commemorations? And what's with this caution that any such commemorations should be sure to indicate that lots of countries have been terrorizes by "extremists"?
And then the Freedom-Haters wonder why decent human beings throw up at the mere thought of them.
And then the Freedom-Haters wonder why decent human beings throw up at the mere thought of them.
LITD's cool person of the day . . .
. . . is Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. She has put forth a bill to force major changes at the United Nations, an objective she's had in her sights since even before she became chair of the House Foreign Relations Committtee.
Monday, August 29, 2011
He digs the idea of a consumption tax (not fair tax, mind you, but a consumption tax above and beyond the income tax) and he tells doozies about the minimum wage
James Pethokoukis on Alan Kreuger, the east-coast pointy-head with no real-world experience who will succeed Austan Goolsbee as the MEC's economic advisor.
The obligatory Irene post
Yawn.
Another inconsequential hurricane that sputters and comes apart upon coming ashore.
May all the flooded roads and downed power lines get fixed quickly.
Seriously, I don't mean to sound flip, but the big story here - and even that has been covered ad nauseum elsewhere - is that our postmodern 24-hour-news-cycle reporting media have a vested interest in making anything they possibly can into the story of the century and milking it until the cows come home (couldn't resist).
Well, you might say, how are Drudge and Breitbart and even a rightie blogger such as myself exempt from the charge that they are driven by cheap zeal for the eye-popping headline?
I'll confess that even truly big-deal natural disasters and accidents such as plane crashes (that are caused by mechanical failures, as distinguished from those caused by jihadists) only hold my interest for so long. Unless there are larger trends or principles to be gleaned from them, they quickly devolve into ain't-that-awful voyeurism or, worse, excuses to wallow in feeeeeeelings. Toward the end of his CNN run, Larry King used to relish opportunities to line up guests who'd been through an ain't-that-awful experience and spend his entire hour asking them "What were you feeling when . . . "
Now, the stuff that, say, Drudge generally considers radar-worthy is of a different sort. It has an ideological charge. It is chosen for the front page because it has good guys and bad guys. It has implications for freedom, prosperity, the prospects for common sense. Statistically necessary occurences in which no human will was a factor come and go. Virtue and vision and their opposites, on the other hand, create ripple effects in our civilization for good or ill. They have ongoing impact. And the most savvy of those who bring us the real stories know they are helping us, citizens who wish to be not only informed but truly sharp and guided by core principles, to cultivate an instant sense of what such a story is likely to mean.
Back to Irene, there is that ridiculous series of photographs of the MEC holding forth at his "command center," but that is by definition a forgettable by-product of the whole episode as well.
Another inconsequential hurricane that sputters and comes apart upon coming ashore.
May all the flooded roads and downed power lines get fixed quickly.
Seriously, I don't mean to sound flip, but the big story here - and even that has been covered ad nauseum elsewhere - is that our postmodern 24-hour-news-cycle reporting media have a vested interest in making anything they possibly can into the story of the century and milking it until the cows come home (couldn't resist).
Well, you might say, how are Drudge and Breitbart and even a rightie blogger such as myself exempt from the charge that they are driven by cheap zeal for the eye-popping headline?
I'll confess that even truly big-deal natural disasters and accidents such as plane crashes (that are caused by mechanical failures, as distinguished from those caused by jihadists) only hold my interest for so long. Unless there are larger trends or principles to be gleaned from them, they quickly devolve into ain't-that-awful voyeurism or, worse, excuses to wallow in feeeeeeelings. Toward the end of his CNN run, Larry King used to relish opportunities to line up guests who'd been through an ain't-that-awful experience and spend his entire hour asking them "What were you feeling when . . . "
Now, the stuff that, say, Drudge generally considers radar-worthy is of a different sort. It has an ideological charge. It is chosen for the front page because it has good guys and bad guys. It has implications for freedom, prosperity, the prospects for common sense. Statistically necessary occurences in which no human will was a factor come and go. Virtue and vision and their opposites, on the other hand, create ripple effects in our civilization for good or ill. They have ongoing impact. And the most savvy of those who bring us the real stories know they are helping us, citizens who wish to be not only informed but truly sharp and guided by core principles, to cultivate an instant sense of what such a story is likely to mean.
Back to Irene, there is that ridiculous series of photographs of the MEC holding forth at his "command center," but that is by definition a forgettable by-product of the whole episode as well.
Shameful in the extreme
NYC mayor Bloomberg's decision to not invite any clergy or first responders to the ten-year 9/11 commemoration, that is.
The Cole Porter of economics
Did you know that the famously other-than-hetero John Maynard Keynes was married? A Russian ballerina, and apparently they had an "inventive" sex life.
Martin uses the same wood, and it's not in any trouble with the DOJ
And that wood, by the way, is procured from a Forest Stewardship Council-certified vendor. But the glaringly noteworthy fact is that the Gibson CEO contributes to Pub political candidates and the Martin CEO contributes to FHers.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Not so visible these days
Claudia Rosett at Pajamas Media asks a very good question: Where is the admired-by-Harvard-and-Vogue, cosmopolitan, fondue-making Asma al-Assad since the tanks and torture got revved up by her husband's regime?
Saturday, August 27, 2011
As a guitarist who owned a Les Paul for 25 years, I find this especially creepy
The DOJ, perhaps the most corrupt of the cabinet-level departments in the MEC regime, is breathing down the neck of the Gibson Guitar Company for extremely specious reasons.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Quick quiz: what is the glaringly obvious thing these two regimes have in common?
Per the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, since this spring, North Korea has been sending nuclear-weapon-related software - originally developed in the United States - to Iran. That's along with the ballistic missile technology we already knew about.
Now, Iran is a theocracy and North Korea is an atheist state built on a personality cult, but they sure do like to work together.
Now, Iran is a theocracy and North Korea is an atheist state built on a personality cult, but they sure do like to work together.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Day-um, girl, you sure have some expensive tastes in chill time activities
Michelle Obama has spent $10 million of our tax dollars on vacations in the past year. Top-shelf vodka, massages, Brazil, India, Spain, Hawaii, Mrtha's Vineyard. Would I be terribly behind the curve if I trotted out the Marie Antionette comparison?
Blind studies have shown that Grey Goose does not taste significantly better than Skol, babe. Since this is on my dime, could we scale back the snob appeal?
Blind studies have shown that Grey Goose does not taste significantly better than Skol, babe. Since this is on my dime, could we scale back the snob appeal?
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Sink, Comrade, sink!
You'll see these numbers elsewhere today, but they're so beautiful and glorious we just have to post 'em at LITD.
Per Gallup , the MEC's approval rating is at an all-time low of 38 percent.
Per Rasmussen, 45 percent disapprove of his job performance and 19 percent strongly approve.
Per Gallup , the MEC's approval rating is at an all-time low of 38 percent.
Per Rasmussen, 45 percent disapprove of his job performance and 19 percent strongly approve.
Why he's considered a giant
The Drifters' "On Broadway" is a timeless classic by any criterion: the overall arrangement, Phil Spector's snaky, bluesy guitar contribution, the vocals both lead and background, but Jerry Leiber's lyrics celebrate that quintessentially American quest: packing one's bag and heading to the canyons of Gotham to make it big. It's a celebration of having an unshakeable dream and the resolve to make it come true. It's poetry. It's the story of the human heart.
Jerry Leiber, R.I.P.
One half of one of the most important songwriting teams in American music. Gone at age 78. His life and career intersected with those of so many other major figures: of course, his songwriting partner, Mike Stoller, but also Lester Sill, Johnny Otis, Big Mama Thornton, Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler, Elvis Presley, The Coasters, the Drifters, George Goldner, Phil Spector. He and Stoller were key figures in the Brill Building's transition from a hub of Great American Songbook activity to the creative engine of a new era of music, informed by the beat and harmonic and melodic sensibility of R&B and rock & roll.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Saturday, August 20, 2011
The momentum continues to gather
The day after the shootings in southern Israel, the same area was subjected to a day-long rocket barrage from Gaza. Multiple injuries and building destruction. While Palestinians themselves are pleased, the operation's hallmarks would seem to merit investigation into a possible Egyptian military role.
Consider the foregoing in the broader context that includes the Assad regime shooting 20 more people - and torturing high school students it has arrested for scrawling graffiti on public walls - as well as Iran's sentencing of those two American hikers - one of whom had gone through Berkeley's "peace studies"program - and it becomes clear that the swirl of events in the Islamic world has sidelined the MEC regime every bit as much as the economic chaos in Europe and the U.S.
One can still find Kool-Aid guzzlers who fall back on the "excellent-minds-are-on-thecase" rejoinder when presented with the full scope of present developments. They are fewer in number every day, though. Most of us realize that there are no grownups, nobody who knows the first thing about actual reality, steering our ship of state.
This is the core danger of leftism. Its tenets are based not in real observation of how human beings behave and historical patterns of behavior among nation-states, but abstract constructs, principally some kind of "fairness" that has never existed in real life. So while preoccupying itself with the pursuit of its fantasies, bad people get busy realizing their aims, and good people lose their houses to rockets and stock market collapses.
What would it really and truly take to bring about an atmosphere in our society in which such notions as "peace," "diversity," "clean energy" and an "international community" were universally deemed laughable and marginal? We must concede that it sounds Herculean, but is it impossible?
We must hope not, because we are squandering our collective human capital and pretty much every other resource acting as if there was something to these concepts while the real world burns to the ground.
It's late in the day.
Consider the foregoing in the broader context that includes the Assad regime shooting 20 more people - and torturing high school students it has arrested for scrawling graffiti on public walls - as well as Iran's sentencing of those two American hikers - one of whom had gone through Berkeley's "peace studies"program - and it becomes clear that the swirl of events in the Islamic world has sidelined the MEC regime every bit as much as the economic chaos in Europe and the U.S.
One can still find Kool-Aid guzzlers who fall back on the "excellent-minds-are-on-thecase" rejoinder when presented with the full scope of present developments. They are fewer in number every day, though. Most of us realize that there are no grownups, nobody who knows the first thing about actual reality, steering our ship of state.
This is the core danger of leftism. Its tenets are based not in real observation of how human beings behave and historical patterns of behavior among nation-states, but abstract constructs, principally some kind of "fairness" that has never existed in real life. So while preoccupying itself with the pursuit of its fantasies, bad people get busy realizing their aims, and good people lose their houses to rockets and stock market collapses.
What would it really and truly take to bring about an atmosphere in our society in which such notions as "peace," "diversity," "clean energy" and an "international community" were universally deemed laughable and marginal? We must concede that it sounds Herculean, but is it impossible?
We must hope not, because we are squandering our collective human capital and pretty much every other resource acting as if there was something to these concepts while the real world burns to the ground.
It's late in the day.
This orchestrated-Balkanization business is sure keeping the MEC busy these days
He issues an executive order making "diversity and inclusion" top priority in federal hiring practices.
Has there been some kind of non-inclusion going on up until now?
Has there been some kind of non-inclusion going on up until now?
Friday, August 19, 2011
Here's a twofer for you
In one post at Gateway Pundit, the Most Equal Comrade is caught acting like he respects the constitutional parameters on his power in July, and shredding the Constitution on the very same issue today. Phony. Pro-decline Freedom-Hater. Utter disaster.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
You gotta wonder . . .
. . . if there is any connection between these two items in today's news:
Six people shot dead in southern Israel, near the Gaza border, and
the MEC explicitly demanding that Assad step down in Syria.
Six people shot dead in southern Israel, near the Gaza border, and
the MEC explicitly demanding that Assad step down in Syria.
This is getting downright surreal
So, after a stimulus, umpteen speeches on the subject and the recently concluded bus tour (concluded so he could begin his Martha's Vineyard vacation), the MEC is to unveil a "new" plan to spur job creation when he gets back to work in September. Except it's the same old crud that has ruined the economy as well as his approval numbers. Infrastructure, help with mortgages, training for jobs in fields that require gummint subsidization to even sport the facade of viability, tax breaks for companies that hire people (to do what?).
There are and, for a century or so have been, political figures in this country that lean hard left. But no one has ever been so ate up with socialist ideology that he would bring down the entire ediface of American greatness on his own head - until this two-bit grievance hustler. It's amazing to witness at the same time that's it's sad and scary.
There are and, for a century or so have been, political figures in this country that lean hard left. But no one has ever been so ate up with socialist ideology that he would bring down the entire ediface of American greatness on his own head - until this two-bit grievance hustler. It's amazing to witness at the same time that's it's sad and scary.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Can you say "Completely out of bullets?"
The other day, LITD told you about Jay Carney's loopy assertion that unemployment checks stimulate the economy. Now it's AgSec Tom Vilsack touting the power of food stamps to impart robustness to our nation's economic life. Oh, and the regime is considering a Department of Jobs.
What is valuable and why?
Jim Lacey at NRO, in a piece on the West's prospects for survival, makes the distinction between culture and civilization. He says the rich mix of the former is what has made Europe and the Americas so vibrant, but that some of these cultures sprang from civilizations antithetical to the defining characteristics of our own: property rights, free speech, the view of women as fully human, etc. He says that relativism results from a confusion of the terms "culture" and "civilization" and that, in the minds of those doing the confusing, the latter is no longer seen as worth defending.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Green is just not viable
We've seen it in the rash of biofuel, solar-panel and car-battery companies that have gone kabust. We've seen it in the evidence that every one of Spain's green jobs has cost two and a half regular jobs.
The latest example is the collapse of Seattle's green-jobs push. It's a typical pathetic tale of zealots, hustlers and paper-pushers all bumping into each other until the money runs out and then fabricating excuses for why that happened.
Grand collectivist schemes always sputter to inglorious ends.
The latest example is the collapse of Seattle's green-jobs push. It's a typical pathetic tale of zealots, hustlers and paper-pushers all bumping into each other until the money runs out and then fabricating excuses for why that happened.
Grand collectivist schemes always sputter to inglorious ends.
Well, dig that!
Rasmussen has Perry jumping out in front of Romney by double digits.
Weeding out the Reasonable Gentlemen, way before primary season. So very fine.
Weeding out the Reasonable Gentlemen, way before primary season. So very fine.
I'm feeling my way toward it, but I reserve the right to do so at my own pace, thank you
My posts on events and developments occurring in the moment are, as I expect them to be, less than exclusive. I have yet to scoop the rest of the world with a breaking story. That's fine; I write about those matters because, hopefully, I have some original observation to contribute.
What I like is when I see that fellow bloggers I respect a great deal choose to opine on a column or essay I found in the course of my daily Web perusal that really stuck to my ribs.
Such was the case with Dennis Prager's Townhall column today on the Ten Commandments and the discovery that Bookworm Room had likewise found it worthy of some remarks. In fact, she was largely motivated to write about Prager's column because she had written about the Ten Commandments herself the day before (link provided in her post). In that previous post, she had said that she and her husband, an agnostic and an atheist respectively, have always told their kids that the Commandments were the Big Rules that had to be followed to keep life from descending into chaos.
Running that whole matter of what Prager's assertion requires of the reader in terms of stating for the record what he or she is on a belief level has likewise been at the forefront of my thoughts all day today.
The "religion" field in my Facebook profile characterizes me as "leaning toward Christianity." I put that there about three years ago; it's still accurate.
I'm not an atheist for what seems to me to be an obvious reason: There's too much order in this universe and it's too fraught with meaning for it to be the result of subatomic particles bumping into each other just the right way, a la the thousand monkeys at typewriters coming up with the works of Shakespeare. And agnosticism - the notion that it doesn't matter whether there's a God or not - fails to satisfy my basic ontological quest.
But - and I was discussing this just this morning with someone with whom I regularly talk about these things - my insistence on taking my own sweet time to arrive at conclusions about the nature of reality is integral to my assertion that freedom is the most essential condition for human well-being.
I'm not looking down my nose at anyone who doesn't need the degree of convincing or revelation that I do. Yes, to me, it looks like foreclosure on a range of intricate questions such as how to define God, and how literally to take Scripture, and what to make of the undeniable parallels between Christianity and not only Judaism but Buddhism and Hinduism as well. (Never mind Islam; I'm pretty well convinced that it was a malformed ideology, rather than an actual religion, from the get-go.) But people whose intellects, integrity and good sense I respect a great deal have declared unshakeable faith with far less in the way of explanation than I'm demanding.
The recent dust-up over Michelle Bachmann's statements on record that she feels Biblically commanded to be submissive in her marriage is another example of the kind of thing that hangs me up. She's not alone. There is even a network of blogs maintained by women who are proud to be submissive.
I know, I know. The Christian view of marriage is that the man and woman become one, and the the man loves his wife like Christ loves the church, and therefore there is mutual respect, but ultimately there is no doubt that what is being asserted is that the man is the captain, the leader, the one in the family who makes the decisions to which the wife and children will defer. I like Michelle Bachmann a lot; she's one of my top three or four Pub presidential candidates. But let's be candid; she's been dancing around the theological point since it resurfaced last week.
It's the same feeling - that a sticky yet essential-to-address doctrinal point is getting the gloss-over - that I get on the matter of mercy. God's love is what makes all the church ads in the Yellow Pages. God is crazy about you. God loves you in a unique and personal way. Ah, but hang out at a Calvinist website for any length of time, and Hell and wrath and basic human depravity and the doctrine of grace alone are dealt with in hair-raising detail.
I have yet to completely move past my sense that this reeks of cosmic blackmail.
"Conservative" and "conventionally defined Christian" are not synonomous terms. For a very recent example that this is so, see Roger L. Simon's Pajamas Media post entitled "Agnostics for Perry." Or see atheist rightie S.E. Cupp's book Losing Our Religion, which posits that the left-leaning media and general culture are causing civilizational decay with their Christianity-bashing.
Ah, but once again, that position comes up short. Isn't there something disrespectful, cynical even, about saying that Christianity is necessary for societal health even if it's not true? Doesn't that reduce it to a behavioral motivator a la Skinnerian conditioning?
All the foregoing having been said, I do indeed lean toward Christianity. Any Christian out there reading this, feel free to pray for me. I'm drawn that way not because a parent, mentor, friend or author so stirred me as to shut down my insistence on satisfactory definitions for the basic terms (God, sin, revelation, mercy, etc.), but because my own expereience, observation and reflection lead me to conclude that, since we're accountable on worldly levels for what we do with our freedom, it must be so on an ultimate level. And, foible-ridden critters that we are, someone or something is going to have to cut us some slack. Not a day goes by in which all and any of us don't at least fudge the Big Rules.
What I like is when I see that fellow bloggers I respect a great deal choose to opine on a column or essay I found in the course of my daily Web perusal that really stuck to my ribs.
Such was the case with Dennis Prager's Townhall column today on the Ten Commandments and the discovery that Bookworm Room had likewise found it worthy of some remarks. In fact, she was largely motivated to write about Prager's column because she had written about the Ten Commandments herself the day before (link provided in her post). In that previous post, she had said that she and her husband, an agnostic and an atheist respectively, have always told their kids that the Commandments were the Big Rules that had to be followed to keep life from descending into chaos.
Running that whole matter of what Prager's assertion requires of the reader in terms of stating for the record what he or she is on a belief level has likewise been at the forefront of my thoughts all day today.
The "religion" field in my Facebook profile characterizes me as "leaning toward Christianity." I put that there about three years ago; it's still accurate.
I'm not an atheist for what seems to me to be an obvious reason: There's too much order in this universe and it's too fraught with meaning for it to be the result of subatomic particles bumping into each other just the right way, a la the thousand monkeys at typewriters coming up with the works of Shakespeare. And agnosticism - the notion that it doesn't matter whether there's a God or not - fails to satisfy my basic ontological quest.
But - and I was discussing this just this morning with someone with whom I regularly talk about these things - my insistence on taking my own sweet time to arrive at conclusions about the nature of reality is integral to my assertion that freedom is the most essential condition for human well-being.
I'm not looking down my nose at anyone who doesn't need the degree of convincing or revelation that I do. Yes, to me, it looks like foreclosure on a range of intricate questions such as how to define God, and how literally to take Scripture, and what to make of the undeniable parallels between Christianity and not only Judaism but Buddhism and Hinduism as well. (Never mind Islam; I'm pretty well convinced that it was a malformed ideology, rather than an actual religion, from the get-go.) But people whose intellects, integrity and good sense I respect a great deal have declared unshakeable faith with far less in the way of explanation than I'm demanding.
The recent dust-up over Michelle Bachmann's statements on record that she feels Biblically commanded to be submissive in her marriage is another example of the kind of thing that hangs me up. She's not alone. There is even a network of blogs maintained by women who are proud to be submissive.
I know, I know. The Christian view of marriage is that the man and woman become one, and the the man loves his wife like Christ loves the church, and therefore there is mutual respect, but ultimately there is no doubt that what is being asserted is that the man is the captain, the leader, the one in the family who makes the decisions to which the wife and children will defer. I like Michelle Bachmann a lot; she's one of my top three or four Pub presidential candidates. But let's be candid; she's been dancing around the theological point since it resurfaced last week.
It's the same feeling - that a sticky yet essential-to-address doctrinal point is getting the gloss-over - that I get on the matter of mercy. God's love is what makes all the church ads in the Yellow Pages. God is crazy about you. God loves you in a unique and personal way. Ah, but hang out at a Calvinist website for any length of time, and Hell and wrath and basic human depravity and the doctrine of grace alone are dealt with in hair-raising detail.
I have yet to completely move past my sense that this reeks of cosmic blackmail.
"Conservative" and "conventionally defined Christian" are not synonomous terms. For a very recent example that this is so, see Roger L. Simon's Pajamas Media post entitled "Agnostics for Perry." Or see atheist rightie S.E. Cupp's book Losing Our Religion, which posits that the left-leaning media and general culture are causing civilizational decay with their Christianity-bashing.
Ah, but once again, that position comes up short. Isn't there something disrespectful, cynical even, about saying that Christianity is necessary for societal health even if it's not true? Doesn't that reduce it to a behavioral motivator a la Skinnerian conditioning?
All the foregoing having been said, I do indeed lean toward Christianity. Any Christian out there reading this, feel free to pray for me. I'm drawn that way not because a parent, mentor, friend or author so stirred me as to shut down my insistence on satisfactory definitions for the basic terms (God, sin, revelation, mercy, etc.), but because my own expereience, observation and reflection lead me to conclude that, since we're accountable on worldly levels for what we do with our freedom, it must be so on an ultimate level. And, foible-ridden critters that we are, someone or something is going to have to cut us some slack. Not a day goes by in which all and any of us don't at least fudge the Big Rules.
When you need somebody to give Paul Krugman a proper smackdown . . .
. . . Kevin Williamson's the man. The real skinny on the Texas economy.
Monday, August 15, 2011
If you're going to really and truly remake America into a third-rate socialist backwater, you'd at least better be able to deliver the goods to keep the FHers from turning on you
It seems that one result of the MEC's unpleasant week last week is a gathering consensus - encompassing left as well as right - that he doesn't cope so well with having unpleasant weeks.
Colbert King of the WaPo offers a what-is-this-guy-thinking assessment of the Martha's Vineyard vacation.
Per Gallup, his popularity has sunk below 40 percent.
His poll numbers have even gone underwater in ultrablue New York.
Platitudes and snark ain't gonna cut it anymore, but it looks like he has no other kinds of arrows in his quiver.
The Age of the Lightworker is over.
Colbert King of the WaPo offers a what-is-this-guy-thinking assessment of the Martha's Vineyard vacation.
Per Gallup, his popularity has sunk below 40 percent.
His poll numbers have even gone underwater in ultrablue New York.
Platitudes and snark ain't gonna cut it anymore, but it looks like he has no other kinds of arrows in his quiver.
The Age of the Lightworker is over.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Saturday, August 13, 2011
It's supremely important to keep the judicial branch separate, coequal to the other two, and non-activist - today's edition
Another federal judge thwarts another of the regime's encroachments on the Constitution, freedom and prosperity, this one having to do with Congressional review, oil drilling and federal lands.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Why we call them Freedom-Haters - today's edition
HT to Gateway Pundit for two of today's latest ecroachments by the totalitarian regime onto American life:
The MEC has signed the second fuel-efficiency mandate in a month, this one for long-haul rigs, work trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles, greatly increasing the cost of those products.
And, in another transportation-related move, this one affecting the agricultural sector, the federal leviathan wants to make tractor drivers get licenses and keep logs.
The MEC has signed the second fuel-efficiency mandate in a month, this one for long-haul rigs, work trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles, greatly increasing the cost of those products.
And, in another transportation-related move, this one affecting the agricultural sector, the federal leviathan wants to make tractor drivers get licenses and keep logs.
It's on purpose - today's edition
Per a new Gallup poll, small business confidence in America has utterly collapsed.
Per a new Bloomberg poll, consumer confidence is at a three-decade low.
Per a new Bloomberg poll, consumer confidence is at a three-decade low.
Ames, Iowa's moment as epicenter
The debate offered a few fireworks, but no real surprises. I'd love to see the least desirable - Paul, Huntsmann, Romney, in that order - weeded out so that the far more desirable second tier could really commence the shaking-out process.
Paul is so spot on regarding free-market economics and the proper scope and function of the federal government, but his wacky idea that there is some kind of toxic "militarism" of which the American character must be cured brands him an odd uncle from the get-go. (Is his son Rand on that page? I think he has been somewhat mum on the issue in order to have the flexibility to forge his own political path.)
Huntsmann can talk a good game, but he's on record as having way too many decidedly un-conservative positions to be a serious player.
One has to expect that the two Minnesotans would go at each other. One cringes at the sad necessity of it, because they are both fine people with strong rightie creds, and we don't need bitterness to breed in our ranks.
Cain and Santorum? Likewise marvelous righties, and we should hope administrative positions await them in 2013.
Of course, Rick Perry is coming to town to announce tomorrow. Opinions vary on this, but count me among those who think it's a shrewd move. This is an great time for yet another excellent candidate to shake up a status quo before it's fully established.
And then Barracuda's bus tour rolls into Ames this weekend as well. Again, arguments can be made that she's still ratcheting up the suspense, as well as that her mojo is on the wane and she'd best resign herself to a king / queen - maker role. To those familiar with my general absolutism, this may come as a surprise, but I blow hot and cold on this one. I see the validity of both perspectives.
Paul is so spot on regarding free-market economics and the proper scope and function of the federal government, but his wacky idea that there is some kind of toxic "militarism" of which the American character must be cured brands him an odd uncle from the get-go. (Is his son Rand on that page? I think he has been somewhat mum on the issue in order to have the flexibility to forge his own political path.)
Huntsmann can talk a good game, but he's on record as having way too many decidedly un-conservative positions to be a serious player.
One has to expect that the two Minnesotans would go at each other. One cringes at the sad necessity of it, because they are both fine people with strong rightie creds, and we don't need bitterness to breed in our ranks.
Cain and Santorum? Likewise marvelous righties, and we should hope administrative positions await them in 2013.
Of course, Rick Perry is coming to town to announce tomorrow. Opinions vary on this, but count me among those who think it's a shrewd move. This is an great time for yet another excellent candidate to shake up a status quo before it's fully established.
And then Barracuda's bus tour rolls into Ames this weekend as well. Again, arguments can be made that she's still ratcheting up the suspense, as well as that her mojo is on the wane and she'd best resign herself to a king / queen - maker role. To those familiar with my general absolutism, this may come as a surprise, but I blow hot and cold on this one. I see the validity of both perspectives.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Turns out Jay Carney is as koo-koo as San Fran Nan
Says unemployment checks creat jobs. Even sniffs at Laura Meckler of the Wall Street Journal for challenging him on it, calling it "entrance-exam" self evident.
Hoo, boy. We are up to our eyeballs in trouble.
Hoo, boy. We are up to our eyeballs in trouble.
Well, let's hope so
Secret talks between the State Department and the Taliban have broken down.
What the hell were we ever doing talking to people who lure a NATO helicopter into a trap and kill dozens of our troops?
What the hell were we ever doing talking to people who lure a NATO helicopter into a trap and kill dozens of our troops?
Not that he's any different ideologically from the rest of the FHers, but the perception is growing that he just ain't got the political chops
The London Telegraph's D.C. correspondent is hearing rumblings from FHer party operatives that there's some regret that the H-word Creature was not the choice in 08.
The MEC's fundamental weakness in on full display for the entire world.
The MEC's fundamental weakness in on full display for the entire world.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Your hard-earned tax dollars - going to pay the doctor bills of criminals
The socialist takeover of American health care passed last year is being interpreted to include a provision that will set up health centers that won't check the immigration status of those who walk into them for treatment.
That pesky truism that the money has to come from somewhere
German chancellor Merkel is getting resistance from her own Christian Democratic party along the lines of "That's about enough asking this country to keep bailing out the Mediterranean failures."
The question, as always, is whether government has any business making any particular groups of people's lives easier at the expense of the general tax-paying populace
This BBC exchange between Labor MP Harriet Harman and Education Secretary Michael Gove has as its immediate topic the causes of Britain's riots, but it is an excellent illustration of the general stark contrast between the leftist and conservative visions of the relationship between government and individual freedom and accountability.
HT: Commentary
HT: Commentary
Will someone please explain . . .
. . . .what the hell pro-CAFE standards, pro-Sarbanes-Oxley, pro-TARP, pro-minimum wage, pro-public broadcasting Fred Upton is doing on this "super-committee" that the debt-ceiling deal sets up?
It's moments like this that make me really wonder if John Boehner doesn't have at least a slight case of Kool-Aid poisoning.
It's moments like this that make me really wonder if John Boehner doesn't have at least a slight case of Kool-Aid poisoning.
Light in Wisconsin
The Freedom-Haters' attempt to recall enough Pubs to take over the state Senate - just for doing what voters elected those Pub senators to do, namely, bring fiscal sanity to the government - has failed. A sound and glorious victory for the good guys.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Back home in Iraq after 3 years in Iran
Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, that is. And he has a few things to say.
This is the kind of harbinger I'm talking about
The mayor of Philadelphia announces a curfew for thoser under 18 on Fridays and Saturdays of 9 PM. A draconian measure? Of course. But what degree of civil deterioration would prompt him to take it?
Al! Dude! Take a chill pill, big guy!
Al "Lower!" Gore gets awfully frustrated during remarks at an Aspen conference that folks are no longer buying his urgent-need-to-address-climate-change hooey.
The MEC, MIA
The Lightworker-in-Chief cancels an appearance at a Virginia trucking company where he had planned to crow about totalitarian imposition of new fuel mandates, and Jay Carney has also cancelled the midday press briefing.
UPDATE: He's joining Pentagon officials to go to Dover Air Force Base for the return of the bodies of the troops killed in the Taliban trap of a NATO helicopter.
Still doesn't explain Carney's cancellation, though.
UPDATE: He's joining Pentagon officials to go to Dover Air Force Base for the return of the bodies of the troops killed in the Taliban trap of a NATO helicopter.
Still doesn't explain Carney's cancellation, though.
Britain ablaze
16,000 police officers on duty in London. Riots of an unprecedented scale in several major cities.
Is anybody clear on what the causes are of this, beyond the specific shooting incident that started it three days ago?
Is anybody clear on what the causes are of this, beyond the specific shooting incident that started it three days ago?
The end of the Era of the Chin-Rubbing Pointy-Head
Victor Davis Hanson at NRO says that while this may be the most unstable time in America we've ever seen, he finds it exciting, because the reign of the effete, east-coast academic / journalist / financial wonk / politician / foundation head who jets around to conferences and has a revolving-door career among the above institutions, all the while spouting leftist class-envy rhetoric, is coming to a close.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Just unreal
The Most Equal Comrade waits three days after the S&P downgrade, then holds up the world media for an hour, and then basically phones it in. A bit of cockiness ("No matter what some agency says . . . "), a touch of whining about the W era ("[Our debt and defict were a problem] the day I took office"), a passing reference to his continued zeal for seizing successful Americans' assets at gunpoint ("balanced approach") and some finger-wagging at Congress.
The Dow is down 350 points as of this writing (3:35 PM). S&P has also downgraded Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
You have to hand one thing to him: he really does embrace the vision that has driven his entire career. He really does hate basic human freedom and think America has been too big for its britches and needs to be taken down a notch. He really does desire a grand leveling of all humankind, a world of "fairness" where ambition and individual vision are discouraged and the state tells the cattle-like masses what is not only important but sacred.
And you have to concede the aggressiveness with which he's pursued that ambition. Look at the progress he has made toward it in two and a half years.
In a very chilling sense, he's not a phony at all; he's the real deal.
The Dow is down 350 points as of this writing (3:35 PM). S&P has also downgraded Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
You have to hand one thing to him: he really does embrace the vision that has driven his entire career. He really does hate basic human freedom and think America has been too big for its britches and needs to be taken down a notch. He really does desire a grand leveling of all humankind, a world of "fairness" where ambition and individual vision are discouraged and the state tells the cattle-like masses what is not only important but sacred.
And you have to concede the aggressiveness with which he's pursued that ambition. Look at the progress he has made toward it in two and a half years.
In a very chilling sense, he's not a phony at all; he's the real deal.
Others are observing the same confluence of events
I think lots of opinion bloggers probably wonder, upon posting longer essays that attempt to tie together several cultural and economic phenomena and the layers of their implication, whether they did so with the cohesiveness for which they were striving. Sometimes it takes running across the work of a seasoned master to see that you were on the right track.
Such was the case when I came upon this American Interest piece by Walter Russell Mead called "American Tinderbox." He deftly ties together the recent uptick in urban violence, government insolvency, and the leftist push for societal "fairness" that has insunuated itself into public policy over the last 50 years.
In case my recent posts touching on these matters left anyone with points of confusion, Mead will certainly clear them up.
Such was the case when I came upon this American Interest piece by Walter Russell Mead called "American Tinderbox." He deftly ties together the recent uptick in urban violence, government insolvency, and the leftist push for societal "fairness" that has insunuated itself into public policy over the last 50 years.
In case my recent posts touching on these matters left anyone with points of confusion, Mead will certainly clear them up.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
A terrrible occurrence in a very dark place
NATO helicopter crash in Afghanistan. Dozens of US personnel killed.
It appears that the Taliban shot it down. Our State Department has been talking to the Taliban.
It appears that the Taliban shot it down. Our State Department has been talking to the Taliban.
Nothing like the objective truth to put false narratives out of their misery
Potluck demonstrates, with OMB numbers, that the W-era tax cuts were bringing down the deficit and the debt until the Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac-originated financial crisis of 2008 occurred.
For a clean-energy summit, this is giving off an awfully nasty stench
The putrid odor of freedom-hatred wafts off the plans for a clean energy summit later this month in Las Vegas. It's an all-star line-up of pro-decline-and-tyranny bigwigs: Harry Reid, John Podesta, Steven Chu (of the paint-all-the-world's-roofs-white proposal), Jerry Brown, etc.
There should be some humdinger papers presented at this confab.
There should be some humdinger papers presented at this confab.
That nasty rattle in the West's coughing spasm
And so the mobs that have swarmed Athens, Greece, Madison, Wisconsin and other points in time and space where the reality that there is no Santa Claus has come to the fore has now come to the streets of Tel Aviv. Signs and shouts demanding "affordable housing" and "social justice." And - this is rich - a reduction in the sales tax.
I'm not encouraged about the prospects of sufficient collective will to make sense to stave off a general train wreck of the West.
Wonks can continue to find little signs of light in yield curves or corporate profits, but it's clear, from reading news items like the above as well as absolutely nonsensical Facebook posts or even remarks I hear in conversation, that there is probably no longer a critical mass of real adults in the overall West that understands that the money has to come from somewhere.
I'm not encouraged about the prospects of sufficient collective will to make sense to stave off a general train wreck of the West.
Wonks can continue to find little signs of light in yield curves or corporate profits, but it's clear, from reading news items like the above as well as absolutely nonsensical Facebook posts or even remarks I hear in conversation, that there is probably no longer a critical mass of real adults in the overall West that understands that the money has to come from somewhere.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Portrait of a delusional and irreparably damaged Freedom-Hater
The Most Equal Comrade, the Lightworker-in-Chief, he who will quell the rise of oceans, eight hours before S&P downgraded the U.S. credit rating.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Enough of that; let's kick off the weekend
From their early-50s TV show, Les Paul and Mary Ford - "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise"
The fruits of squandered freedom
China's official Xinhau news agency wagged a stern figure at America and Europe for "eating May's grain in April."
To have to take this - because it's accurate - from a corrupt and Communist, yet economically robust, Asian nation does not speak well about the economic or spiritual health of the West.
To have to take this - because it's accurate - from a corrupt and Communist, yet economically robust, Asian nation does not speak well about the economic or spiritual health of the West.
A trend emerges
Clearly racially motivated mob violence - not in some gritty urban setting, mind you, but at the Wisconsin State Fair.
I'm not sure how one would go about setting up definitions of specific types of incidents or assaults so as to get a statistical handle on the matter, but this has definitely been a year for random spontaneous outbursts of mass barbarity. There was the recent trouble outside the Cleveland venue where George Clinton and Parliament - Funkadelic were headlining a "unity concert." There was the July situation in Peoria in which some yay-hoos were setting off fireworks in a housing project. When the police moved in to see what the hell was going on, the perps turned the fireworks on the cops. Over Independence Day weekend, there were four separate shooting incidents in downtown Indianapolis, one near the upscale and traditionally serene Canal Walk. Milwaukee saw a spate of looting and fighting around this time. Chicago has been plagued with public-transportation train cars being set upon by gangs. There was the May shutting down of a northern Alabama water park due to mass fights among teenagers - mostly girls. There have been several high-profile beatings in fast-food restaurants around the nation.
Most of these instances had a racial angle to them, but I'll tell you what, I'm going to address this in a colorblind fashion. There is no doubt an ample supply of activists - community organizers and other such bottom-feeding scum - that would tell me it's impossible to do so. I beg to differ. Any kind of racial implication is merely an excuse to try to impart meaning where there is none.
What the sum total of these occurrences indicate is a palpable breakdown of general public order.
None of the matters I've written about since the launch of LITD (or elsewhere, such as my newspaper column, my occasional pieces for other sites, or my old blog, Bent Notes) are occurring in a vacuum. The utter denial of what is really going on economically in this country and Europe, the cultural rot that has taken over television and popular music, the class envy and America-hatred foisted on generations of college students (and, indeed, high school students) over the past four decades, and such evidence of the deterioration of decorum and civility as the increasing prevalence of litter and road rage, are all of a piece.
You can't fray the fabric of civilization without a general anxiety permeating society as a result. People don't feel okay anymore, for myriad reasons.
When I teach rock and roll history at our local community college, about the third week into the semester, I post trailers for 1950s turbulent-youth movies - The Wild One, Rebel Without a Cause, Blackboard Jungle, High School Confidential, Cry Baby Killer - at the site for the course. It's clear, when one takes them all in in one sitting, that the Hollywood suits had found the perfect marketing ploy for this influx of adolescents with unprecedented spending cash in their pockets: cinematic congratulation of their distinctness as a generation, the complextity and barely contained animal innocence of their furious and frightened souls. And the popular-culture machine has been telling every generation of teenagers (a word that only entered our lexicon in the early 1940s) since how special it was, and how its stormy cauldron of pent-up feelings needed to be catered to and understood, how it really had more to teach the tradition-steeped elders than vice-versa.
Not only is this how we do entertainment now; it's also how we do politics, witness the freely spewed infglammatory rhetoric such as the labeling of the Tea party movement as a force of terrorism by no less a luminary than the vice president, or the drawn-out camp-out on the floor of the rotunda of the (once again) Wisconsin capital by union thugs screaming for their goodies even when they and everybody else knew the state was running a budget deficit.
As I write, the stock market roller-coasters over and under the positive line as traders madly try to get a split-second sense of what to do with investment dollars before the closing bell rings in the weekend. There is no long-term take on anything.
My father - he of the belief that table manners and proper grammar were sacrosanct -used to do his best to impress upon me the fragile nature of Western civilization, how, for all the stone edifices that housed its hallowed institutions, it ultimately hangs by a gossamer thread.
The thread is stretched as thin as it will go. An orderly life that makes sense is not guaranteed - for your offspring in two decades, or for you and me next month.
It's late in the day.
I'm not sure how one would go about setting up definitions of specific types of incidents or assaults so as to get a statistical handle on the matter, but this has definitely been a year for random spontaneous outbursts of mass barbarity. There was the recent trouble outside the Cleveland venue where George Clinton and Parliament - Funkadelic were headlining a "unity concert." There was the July situation in Peoria in which some yay-hoos were setting off fireworks in a housing project. When the police moved in to see what the hell was going on, the perps turned the fireworks on the cops. Over Independence Day weekend, there were four separate shooting incidents in downtown Indianapolis, one near the upscale and traditionally serene Canal Walk. Milwaukee saw a spate of looting and fighting around this time. Chicago has been plagued with public-transportation train cars being set upon by gangs. There was the May shutting down of a northern Alabama water park due to mass fights among teenagers - mostly girls. There have been several high-profile beatings in fast-food restaurants around the nation.
Most of these instances had a racial angle to them, but I'll tell you what, I'm going to address this in a colorblind fashion. There is no doubt an ample supply of activists - community organizers and other such bottom-feeding scum - that would tell me it's impossible to do so. I beg to differ. Any kind of racial implication is merely an excuse to try to impart meaning where there is none.
What the sum total of these occurrences indicate is a palpable breakdown of general public order.
None of the matters I've written about since the launch of LITD (or elsewhere, such as my newspaper column, my occasional pieces for other sites, or my old blog, Bent Notes) are occurring in a vacuum. The utter denial of what is really going on economically in this country and Europe, the cultural rot that has taken over television and popular music, the class envy and America-hatred foisted on generations of college students (and, indeed, high school students) over the past four decades, and such evidence of the deterioration of decorum and civility as the increasing prevalence of litter and road rage, are all of a piece.
You can't fray the fabric of civilization without a general anxiety permeating society as a result. People don't feel okay anymore, for myriad reasons.
When I teach rock and roll history at our local community college, about the third week into the semester, I post trailers for 1950s turbulent-youth movies - The Wild One, Rebel Without a Cause, Blackboard Jungle, High School Confidential, Cry Baby Killer - at the site for the course. It's clear, when one takes them all in in one sitting, that the Hollywood suits had found the perfect marketing ploy for this influx of adolescents with unprecedented spending cash in their pockets: cinematic congratulation of their distinctness as a generation, the complextity and barely contained animal innocence of their furious and frightened souls. And the popular-culture machine has been telling every generation of teenagers (a word that only entered our lexicon in the early 1940s) since how special it was, and how its stormy cauldron of pent-up feelings needed to be catered to and understood, how it really had more to teach the tradition-steeped elders than vice-versa.
Not only is this how we do entertainment now; it's also how we do politics, witness the freely spewed infglammatory rhetoric such as the labeling of the Tea party movement as a force of terrorism by no less a luminary than the vice president, or the drawn-out camp-out on the floor of the rotunda of the (once again) Wisconsin capital by union thugs screaming for their goodies even when they and everybody else knew the state was running a budget deficit.
As I write, the stock market roller-coasters over and under the positive line as traders madly try to get a split-second sense of what to do with investment dollars before the closing bell rings in the weekend. There is no long-term take on anything.
My father - he of the belief that table manners and proper grammar were sacrosanct -used to do his best to impress upon me the fragile nature of Western civilization, how, for all the stone edifices that housed its hallowed institutions, it ultimately hangs by a gossamer thread.
The thread is stretched as thin as it will go. An orderly life that makes sense is not guaranteed - for your offspring in two decades, or for you and me next month.
It's late in the day.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Could you bring things to a juncture like this unintentionally?
Something occurs to me as I review the last few posts and otherwise ponder the day's news, particularly that of a financial nature. And maybe this is a round-to-the-backdoor way of addressing the matter of whether the Most Equal Comrade and FHers in general are proponents of planned American / Western decline.
It occurs to me that, at this point, you cannot still be a devoted fan of this president unless you wish to see this country turned into something other than what it has been for 235 years.
If you are still into the MEC the way you were two, three, four years ago, you cannot talk about whether or not he is a "failure" in the same sense as the rest of the ideological spectrum does. Of course, he's a failure in the normal-people sense of the word. If you, say, show up at one of these not-really-campaign-stops-at-least-when-anybody's-asking-whether-they're-on-the-taxpayer-dime and wave a banner and clamor for a microsecond of face time, you have a radical vision of what this nation ought to be.
There is no way back to anything like an America we recognize until this bunch is so marginalized that its impact on votes on legislation, judicial decisions, and executive-agency regulations is as good as nil.
It occurs to me that, at this point, you cannot still be a devoted fan of this president unless you wish to see this country turned into something other than what it has been for 235 years.
If you are still into the MEC the way you were two, three, four years ago, you cannot talk about whether or not he is a "failure" in the same sense as the rest of the ideological spectrum does. Of course, he's a failure in the normal-people sense of the word. If you, say, show up at one of these not-really-campaign-stops-at-least-when-anybody's-asking-whether-they're-on-the-taxpayer-dime and wave a banner and clamor for a microsecond of face time, you have a radical vision of what this nation ought to be.
There is no way back to anything like an America we recognize until this bunch is so marginalized that its impact on votes on legislation, judicial decisions, and executive-agency regulations is as good as nil.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
This is rich in irony indeed
New SecDef Leon Panetta warns those in his department - and Congress - that the government's real debt and deficit problem isn't really addressed - really addressed, not made the subject of a drama-queen reality show - the new agreement's triggers will kick in and security-imperiling cuts to defense will be enacted.
Panetta has long been a prominent member of the Freedom-Hater party, and he usually toes the line. I've always had the sense, though, that underneath the FHer dogma that. for career reasons or whatever, he has had to express fealty to, he had at least a lick of sense and a shred of humanity. So here he is, caught between what the party line which, due to the high stakes involved, he must adhere (spend and tax away, exhaust the system's resources, diminish America's standing in the world) and the real threat to a nation full of real, live human beings that that party line poses.
At the moment at least, he's taking the admirable path.
Panetta has long been a prominent member of the Freedom-Hater party, and he usually toes the line. I've always had the sense, though, that underneath the FHer dogma that. for career reasons or whatever, he has had to express fealty to, he had at least a lick of sense and a shred of humanity. So here he is, caught between what the party line which, due to the high stakes involved, he must adhere (spend and tax away, exhaust the system's resources, diminish America's standing in the world) and the real threat to a nation full of real, live human beings that that party line poses.
At the moment at least, he's taking the admirable path.
Hey, you over there drawing a breath, have you filed the proper paperwork to be doing that?
Two items I''ve run across today about how licensing is one way the leviathan state makes sure we don't get any fancy ideas about that freedom stuff. Sister Toldjah informs us about a 4-year-old Iowa girl whose lemonade stand was shut down, and Walter Williams, in his Townhall column today, cites a panoply of instances in which those with ambition but modest resources were denied the chance to ply a simple trade.
Our enemies are not disparate
They work in concert. They form a network - even if some are Sunni and some are Shiite.
Because where freedom, my mouth and my belly intersect, it gets personal
I think this blog is going to be a great resource. The focus is the MEC regime's policy encroachments into the field of food, with interesting reportage on the First Family's own culinary forays and how they are or are not consistent with their exhortations, initiatives, gentle extortions and attempts at fiat.
Since I launched LITD yesterday, we've already looked at the new fuel efficiency standards being imposed on car and truck makers. No doubt we'll be covering the attempt to preserve the normal-people light bulb in the face of the Freedom-Hater Frente's campaign to shove those curly-Q mercury-laden units of tepid illumination down our throats.
But, food, now, that's where Daddy definitely draws the line in the sand. Food's place in my life is sublime. It infuses the human experience with meaning on levels too numerous to count. I host a food-and-dining radio show on our local news-talk station, on which I offer recipes, talk about herb gardening, wine and restaurants, and, you may have surmised, get on the occasional soapbox when a food-news item has cultural implications. I post photos of meals I've prepared on Facebook. I have a running household-menu-planning section of my mind that functions concurrent to my other thought processes.
So totalitarian measures like mandated nutritional-value signs in restaurants, or leaning on supermarket chains to put stores in "underserved" "food deserts," or spending stimulus money on eat-your-broccoli posters in day-care centers, gall me in particularly astringent ways.
Thus, I'm gratified to see this excellent site to which I'll no doubt refer frequently.
Since I launched LITD yesterday, we've already looked at the new fuel efficiency standards being imposed on car and truck makers. No doubt we'll be covering the attempt to preserve the normal-people light bulb in the face of the Freedom-Hater Frente's campaign to shove those curly-Q mercury-laden units of tepid illumination down our throats.
But, food, now, that's where Daddy definitely draws the line in the sand. Food's place in my life is sublime. It infuses the human experience with meaning on levels too numerous to count. I host a food-and-dining radio show on our local news-talk station, on which I offer recipes, talk about herb gardening, wine and restaurants, and, you may have surmised, get on the occasional soapbox when a food-news item has cultural implications. I post photos of meals I've prepared on Facebook. I have a running household-menu-planning section of my mind that functions concurrent to my other thought processes.
So totalitarian measures like mandated nutritional-value signs in restaurants, or leaning on supermarket chains to put stores in "underserved" "food deserts," or spending stimulus money on eat-your-broccoli posters in day-care centers, gall me in particularly astringent ways.
Thus, I'm gratified to see this excellent site to which I'll no doubt refer frequently.
Oh, sheesh
No sooner do we get the non-solution to our national insolvency signed by the Most Equal Comrade, he and his fellow architects of decline - and their appeasers among the Reasonable Gentlemen - start pushing the "infrastructure bank" idea again.
When everybody has a cash-flow problem, who is the true sugar daddy?
Even though the focus has, particularly for us Americans, been on the slugfest surrounding US insolvency (let's be candid here), noises emanating from across the Atlantic about how Spain and Italy were joining Greece and Portugal as sinking ships among the fleet known as the EU were becoming more frequent.
Now it's having the effect of holistic decay on the continent that gave us Western civilization. In a stinging bit of irony, India is going to contribute $2 billion to Europe's leading-edge economic failures.
Are there sufficient bright spots anywhere in the world's economic picture to mitigate the theme of deterioration that is clearly emerging?
All of which takes me back to that first of my economic laws: The money has to come from somewhere.
I sometimes think that the plethora of too-wonkish-by-half schemes and charts and graphs for a given state, nation or continent to climb out of its debt morass is deliberately designed to make everyone's eyes glaze over, so that the observer's intellect is short circuited and he, in his mental exhaustion, decides to believe that the IMF or the Tooth Fairy has a magic solution.
Numbers really aren't so abstract. Wealth that is floating around in bond, stock and commodities markets, or sequestered in corporate retained-earnings accounts, or being digested and eliminated by welfare states for spreading on the parched soils of their populaces, originated in some nexus of raw material and human ingenuity. That's the only incubator in which wealth is ever brought forth.
Perhaps a general collapse would clear the field and make possible the kind of micro-entrepreneurship celebrated by Hernando de Soto, unburdened by licensing, byzantine credit arrangements and other bureaucratic hooha.
If that kind of convulsion and catharsis can be averted, though, I think it's universally agreed that that's a good thing. Personally, I'd like to exist free of interruptions to my food and energy supply.
I don't think some degree of a smack upside the head can be avoided, though. Too many in positions to craft and implement policy in this world still don't understand a basic truism that this freelance writer and jazz guitarist who never took an economics course in college (much to the consternation of my econ-major father) formulated based on observation and experience.
The money has to come from somewhere.
Now it's having the effect of holistic decay on the continent that gave us Western civilization. In a stinging bit of irony, India is going to contribute $2 billion to Europe's leading-edge economic failures.
Are there sufficient bright spots anywhere in the world's economic picture to mitigate the theme of deterioration that is clearly emerging?
All of which takes me back to that first of my economic laws: The money has to come from somewhere.
I sometimes think that the plethora of too-wonkish-by-half schemes and charts and graphs for a given state, nation or continent to climb out of its debt morass is deliberately designed to make everyone's eyes glaze over, so that the observer's intellect is short circuited and he, in his mental exhaustion, decides to believe that the IMF or the Tooth Fairy has a magic solution.
Numbers really aren't so abstract. Wealth that is floating around in bond, stock and commodities markets, or sequestered in corporate retained-earnings accounts, or being digested and eliminated by welfare states for spreading on the parched soils of their populaces, originated in some nexus of raw material and human ingenuity. That's the only incubator in which wealth is ever brought forth.
Perhaps a general collapse would clear the field and make possible the kind of micro-entrepreneurship celebrated by Hernando de Soto, unburdened by licensing, byzantine credit arrangements and other bureaucratic hooha.
If that kind of convulsion and catharsis can be averted, though, I think it's universally agreed that that's a good thing. Personally, I'd like to exist free of interruptions to my food and energy supply.
I don't think some degree of a smack upside the head can be avoided, though. Too many in positions to craft and implement policy in this world still don't understand a basic truism that this freelance writer and jazz guitarist who never took an economics course in college (much to the consternation of my econ-major father) formulated based on observation and experience.
The money has to come from somewhere.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Yes, the fact that it's one more assault on the economy's attempts to revive from flatline status . . .
. . . is of considerable importance, but the new fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks that the MEC and the comandantes of his junta are imposing by fiat are, let us not forget, foremost an assault on liberty. Where does the leviathan state get off telling privately owned organizations how to make their products?
When the Most Equal Comrade uses the phrases "balanced approach" and "chip in" . . .
. . . you know he's still determined t o find a way to seize more of successful Americans' assets at gunpoint, even though Congress took that idea off the table in the last fortnight's tempest in a teapot.
Back in the fray
My blog of five-plus years, Bent Notes, disappeared without a trace a few weeks ago. Just plain was no longer there. No code, no nothing. I won't consume your time with the attempts to find out what happened. I still think it was some weird Wordpress malfunction. Hacking is a possibility, I suppose, but BN was a fifth-tier outlet of political, cultural and economic opinion at best. I can't imagine someone taking the time to fool with it, given the bigger fish to fry in the blogosphere.
It was frustrating and sad to lose a half-decade's body of work, some of which was quite good if I do say so myself, but life goes on.
Does it ever. Our nation has become, over the summer, a pillowcase full of cats, mostly over the national debt and deficit. Record-setting temperatures haven't helped. Iran is still on track to have a nuclear arsenal. Cairo's Tahrir Square fills with those enamored of sharia and jihad, serving notice that secular pragmatism is not Egypt's future. Libya's rebels turn on each other, as do the NATO members backing them. Western civilization's cultural vitality is on life support. Stock markets are down all over the world as I write.
So it was time to get back to chiming in on it all.
Now I have to rebuild my blogroll and figure out matters of appearance and function.
Do check in often, and watch a brand-new player get its sea legs.
It was frustrating and sad to lose a half-decade's body of work, some of which was quite good if I do say so myself, but life goes on.
Does it ever. Our nation has become, over the summer, a pillowcase full of cats, mostly over the national debt and deficit. Record-setting temperatures haven't helped. Iran is still on track to have a nuclear arsenal. Cairo's Tahrir Square fills with those enamored of sharia and jihad, serving notice that secular pragmatism is not Egypt's future. Libya's rebels turn on each other, as do the NATO members backing them. Western civilization's cultural vitality is on life support. Stock markets are down all over the world as I write.
So it was time to get back to chiming in on it all.
Now I have to rebuild my blogroll and figure out matters of appearance and function.
Do check in often, and watch a brand-new player get its sea legs.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)