GUNS, A BETTER INVESTMENT THAN GOLD? “This is the pattern I saw at work in Yugoslavia and the Caucasus twenty years ago as ethnic groups geared up to butcher their neighbors and drive them from their homes; I will never forget the night a Georgian poet asked me how much guns cost on the Istanbul black market; he was arming himself against what he called the ‘Abkhazian menace.’ I made a note to myself at that time: when poets buy guns, tourist season is over. They are buying them now in Damascus; something wicked this way comes.”
Archive for 2011
November 26, 2011
BLACK FRIDAY DEALS on headphones and earbuds.
TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: Spotting phony news film.
“Pakistan Tells U.S. to ‘Vacate’ Air Base as Border Strike Inflames Tensions.”
“… Islamabad had already ordered the country’s border crossings into Afghanistan closed, blocking off NATO supply lines, after the strike.”MEANWHILE: “Obama and family take in basketball game, chat with Bill Murray.” He did comment on current events, noting that the tentative deal to end the NBA lockout seems to be “a good deal.”
The country’s in the very best of hands.
A.C.O.R.N. FOUNDER: Tea partiers out-organized Occupy Wall Street.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D); Along Mexican border, US ranchers say they live in fear.
HEATHER MACDONALD: Pepper-Spraying Taxpayers: The College “Diversity” Boondoggle. “In the wake of Peppergate, it looks like two other Big Lies are quickly forming: the campus as gulag and unscrupulous banks as the source of burdensome student debt. The first new conceit will soon evaporate of its own patent insubstantiality. But the push for wholesale debt forgiveness and even easier taxpayer funding of tuition will have staying power and will simply inflate the campus diversity bureaucracy further.”
SPENGLER: Looting the Egyptian Currency: Democracy in Action. “The ugly denouement of the so-called Egyptian Spring is visible in the collapse of Egypt’s stock exchange (down 11% in the first three days of this week) and the impending collapse of the Egyptian pound, as residents and foreigners flee to hard currency. A unique sort of brutality characterizes Egypt’s currency crisis: banks cannot meet the demand for currency because it is impossible transport bank notes. Mobs hijack the armored cars, as Al Ahram reported today. . . . Now, that’s something new and nasty under the sun. I’ve observed first-hand the collapse of national currencies in Peru, Nicaragua, Russia and other blighted countries, but a breakdown of the rule of law to the point that banks cannot transport currency is something new.”
#OCCUPYFAIL: “The Occupiers have made the Democrats look bad, that is obvious. The more interesting question is, why? Because they say what other Democrats actually think, and act in ways that other Democrats approve of but are afraid to emulate.”
WALTER HUDSON: The Twilight saga is just porn for women. “Pornography imagines that women exist for the sole purpose of satisfying men. The women in porn are not only willing, but eager. They are depicted as if satisfying a man is the means by which their own life is sustained. This is without the slightest pretense, explanation, or justification. The unconditional nature of the attraction is essential to the fantasy. So it is in Twilight, only with the roles reversed. Edward Cullen and Jacob Black adore Bella, not due to any apparent merit, but simply because she is there.”
RETAIL SUPPORT BRIGADE SITREP: Black Friday sales up 7 percent over 2010. Some people worried that it had become a “hollow army,” but these magnificent troops rose to the occasion one more time.
THE NON-GREEN JOBS BOOM: “Forget ‘clean energy.’ Oil and gas are boosting U.S. employment. . . . The ironies here are richer than the shale deposits in North Dakota’s Bakken formation. While Washington has tried to force-feed renewable energy with tens of billions in special subsidies, oil and gas production has boomed thanks to private investment. And while renewable technology breakthroughs never seem to arrive, horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have revolutionized oil and gas extraction—with no Energy Department loan guarantees needed. The oil and gas rush has led to a jobs boom. North Dakota has the nation’s lowest jobless rate, at 3.5%, and the state now has some 200 rigs pumping 440,000 barrels of oil a day, four times the amount in 2006. The state reports more than 16,000 current job openings, and places like Williston have become meccas for workers seeking jobs that often pay more than $100,000 a year.”
Yeah, but these are mostly jobs for burly men. Those are disfavored by this administration.
UPDATE: Walter Russell Mead: The Forgotten Look of Prosperity. “The New York Times editorial page is doing its level best to kill any chance of American recovery and prosperity by crusading against anything anywhere that might help our energy woes, but sometimes its news pages inadvertently remind us that prosperity and energy development are closely connected. . . . This is what economic growth looks like. It is sudden, disruptive, often inconvenient. It messes with the status quo. New stuff gets built and not all of it looks like the Cloisters. All kinds of rough and hungry men flock to it; they sometimes misbehave. They spit on the ground, say unpleasant things about women, and generally fail to meet the behavioral standards of the Upper West Side. Decline is so much more decorous.”
KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: Stringing Up Gibson Guitar.
On a sweltering day in August, federal agents raided the Tennessee factories of the storied Gibson Guitar Corp. The suggestion was that Gibson had violated the Lacey Act—a federal law designed to protect wildlife—by importing certain India ebony. The company has vehemently denied that suggestion and has yet to be charged. It is instead living in a state of harassed legal limbo.
Which, let’s be clear, is exactly what its persecutors had planned all along. The untold story of Gibson is this: It was set up.
Most of the press coverage has implied that the company is the unfortunate victim of a well-meaning, if complicated, law. Stories note, in passing, that the Lacey Act was “expanded” in 2008, and that this has had “unintended consequences.” Given Washington’s reputation for ill-considered bills, this might make sense.
Only not in this case. The story here is about how a toxic alliance of ideological activists and trade protectionists deliberately set about creating a vague law, one designed to make an example out of companies (like Gibson) and thus chill imports—even legal ones.
So move your factories offshore. That’s clearly the signal they’re sending. Jobs for Americans? Not such a priority.
NORTH DAKOTA’S OIL BOOM: Oil Rigs Bring Camps of Men to the Prairie. “Confronted with the unusual problem of too many unfilled jobs and not enough empty beds to accommodate the new arrivals, North Dakota embraced the camps — typically made of low-slung, modular dormitory-style buildings — as the imperfect solution to keeping workers rested and oil flowing. . . . A few years ago, when the oil boom was in its infancy, these long-shrinking communities were doing anything to encourage development. Now the state population is growing, money is pouring into communities and the unemployment rate remains by far the lowest in the nation, even though more job seekers arrive every day.”
Meanwhile, in New York State, they’re begging to be allowed to drill for gas.
TECHNOLOGY: iTunes flaw allowed spying on dissidents.
THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING: Cornell Professor Falls For Plastic-Turkey Hoax.
HOUSE PRICES: It’s probably nothing.
WHY CRIMINAL DEFENDANTS should be thankful for Justice Scalia.
MORE BAGSHOT ROW THAN BAG END, BUT STILL: This hobbit house is an honest-to-goodness man-sized home. Not only does it fit a family of four, but it cost just over $4,650 to build.