THE RON PAUL PORTFOLIO: ”This portfolio is a half-step away from a cellar-full of canned goods and nine-millimeter rounds.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Especially lately.
Archive for 2011
December 22, 2011
TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: The big legislative failures of 2001 are the bills that passed: “The farm bill (pork), the airline subsidy bill (pork), and the antiterrorism bill (bureaucratic wishlists largely unrelated to actual antiterrorism). In the words of Bob Dole, ‘sometimes a little gridlock is a good thing.’ Here’s to more in 2002.”
AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals in Sporting Goods.
HAPPY SOLSTICE!
THE ANCHORESS finds love.
THE REPRISE OF EUROPEAN ANTISEMITISM:
For many Germans, the EU is deemed vital to ensure that their own country never again repeats the horrors of the past. That was presumably what lay behind Chancellor Merkel’s remark, when the euro started to implode, that it was imperative for the EU to be saved because without it there would again be war in Europe.
This was indeed the foundational vision of the EU (and its predecessor body) in the wake of World War Two – that to ensure the peace in Europe, Germany had to be tied down like Gulliver in Lilliput, and the best way of doing this was to bind it into Europe by indissoluble economic and political ties.
It was a noble vision; but it was fundamentally flawed, I would suggest, for three main reasons. First, the erosion of national self-government inescapably involved in the EU project does not enshrine democracy but results instead in rather less of it. Second, as the euro implosion has so graphically demonstrated, trying to fashion one supranational entity out of disparate nations is intrinsically incoherent and ultimately self-destructive.
And third, the EU has done nothing to diminish the Judeophobia which led to the Holocaust in Europe. Indeed, the obsessional malice towards Israel has provided cover for a resurgence of the oldest hatred within the graveyard of European Jewry. As Giulio Meotti reports, Jews are being expelled from academia across Europe.
My worries about the EU continue to come to fruition, alas.
MERRY CHRISTMAS in Pereiraville.
PROGRESS: NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design. “”The NY Times has an article about the U.S. NRC commission approval of the design of Westinghouse’s AP1000 reactor for the U.S., clearing the way for two American utilities to continue the construction of projects in South Carolina and Georgia. The last time a nuclear power plant in the US entered service was 1996.”
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: Obama is achieving his goal of higher energy costs.
WHERE’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WHEN WE NEED IT? “Fascist Zombies” From Hungary Threaten EU. “We already have 1930s style economic problems in much of Europe; is fascism next? If the current Hungarian government gets its way, maybe so. The government of Hungary, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz Party, is pushing the country away from democracy and toward authoritarian nationalist rule with anti-Semitic undertones. A draconian media law severely restricts free speech, cultural leaders like the head of a prominent theater have been dropped in favor of extremists and openly anti-Semitic friends of the Party, and a new constitution going into effect on January 1 threatens to slash the power of the independent Constitutional Court and the central bank. Oh, and the economy is headed off the cliff.”
ARE “ALL SEASON” TIRES really good enough for the snow?
INSTAVISION: My Mark Rippetoe Interview is now on YouTube. We talk about the new edition of his book, Starting Strength, about workouts, and answer InstaPundit reader questions.
Check out his website at StartingStrength.com, too.
RADLEY BALKO ON the “school-to-prison pipeline.” Have we reached the point where it’s parental malpractice to enroll your kids in public school?
HAVEL, KAFKA, AND US: “So he came from the wrong sort of family, didn’t have the credentials to ensure literary or intellectual success, and was singled out for punishment and repression by a very nasty regime. Yet he was one of a handful of people who changed the world by fighting totalitarian Communism and then, having defeated it, inspired his people to rejoin the Western world, embrace capitalism, and support democratic dissidents everywhere.”
SOME PEOPLE MISS THE NAZIS, TOO. Remember, some still miss the Soviet empire.
ED MORRISSEY: Is Obama Betting On Another Iffy Company? “What happens when crony capitalism isn’t enough?”
IN RUSSIA, a lost generation of science. “For the past decade, Russia has been pouring money into scientific research, trying to make up for the collapse of the 1990s, but innovation is losing out to exhaustion, corruption and cronyism. . . . the result has been like a great deal else in this country: expensive, flashy and largely hollow. Shot through with back-scratching and favoritism, the government’s science program has tripled its spending in the past 10 years — and achieved very little.” Hmm.
AN ICONIC MOMENT: Obama At Store Register: “Let’s See If My Credit Card Still Works.” Video at the link.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: The Evidence Exam at Harvard Law That Requires No Evidence to Pass.
THE BLESSING AND CURSE of being a Millennial.
IPADS AND THE EMBARRASSMENT FACTOR.