WOW, WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? Many baby boomers don’t plan to leave their children an inheritance. “Unlike previous generations, some baby boomers believe they’ve already given their children enough, and they plan to spend the money they’ve saved on themselves.”
Archive for 2011
September 7, 2011
SURVIVAL OF THE HORNIEST: It Wasn’t Just Neanderthals: Ancient Humans Had Sex with Other Hominids. “A new paper published by Michael Hammer from the University of Arizona, however, provides evidence that homo sapiens not only interbred with Neanderthals in Eurasia, they also had sex with several species of our ancestors across the African continent. And they did it often.”
Plus this: “It’s only fully modern humans who start this thing of venturing out on the ocean where you don’t see land. Part of that is technology, of course; you have to have ships to do it. But there is also, I like to think or say, some madness there. You know? How many people must have sailed out and vanished on the Pacific before you found Easter Island? I mean, it’s ridiculous. And why do you do that?” The answer, obviously, is to get exotically laid. . . .
Related: How Our Brains Got Big And Our Penises Lost Their Spines. Which seems like a win for everyone!
AT AMAZON, Markdowns In Toys & Games. And other stuff.
ONE REASON WHY THOSE KEYNESIAN STIMULI AREN’T WORKING: They’re Not Keynesian. “Whalen isn’t simply dumping on Keynesianism, he’s bent on pointing out that even its latter-day adherents are straying far from their master’s theory. And in this, he’s surely correct. As Allen Meltzer has argued, Keynes was against the very sort of large structural deficits that characterize contemporary federal budgets and policy, believing instead that deficits should be ‘temporary and self-liquidating.’ And Keynes believed that any sort of counter-cyclical spending by government should be directed toward increasing private investment, not simply spending current and future tax dollars on public works projects. Or, to put it another way: If the federal government had a strong track record of responsible spending, it would mean one thing if it went into hock for a short period of time to goose the economy (again, whether this would work is open to question). It means something totally different when a government that spent all of the 21st century piling on debt and new, long-term entitlement programs responds to an economic downturn first by creating yet another gargantuan entitlement (Obamacare) and taking on even more debt in the here-and-now.”
BATTERIES AND HYDROGEN FUEL CELLS for canal-boat power.
ADVICE FOR GUN-CONTROLLERS: Tip of the Day: A Gun is Not a Penis. And frankly, if you’re constantly confusing the two it makes your enthusiasm for banning guns look a little . . . Freudian.
GUITARIST, ANTHROPOLOGIST, AND GENERALLY COOL GUY: A profile of Hector Qirko.
FLIP, MEET FLOP: Now Obama Wants To Extend Tax Breaks For Corporate Jet Owners? He was for them, then he was against them, then I’m guessing he and Warren Buffett had a little chat, and now he’s for them again.
UPDATE: Reader David Torrente emails: “I personally think that Oprah ‘It’s great to have a private jet’ Winfrey whispered in his ear.” Well, possibly.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Under the Bus: A Pack of Pouting Greens. “As green leaders choke on their locally sourced, organic heirloom vegetables in impotent rage and ponder writing really, really angry letters to NPR, it is interesting to reflect on the political dead end into which they have been driven. Two years ago they thought they were on the verge of sweeping global climate treaty that would enshrine their pet climate change remedies into international law. Wrong: the treaty process collapsed of its own weight into the most embarrassing international fiasco since the Kellogg Briand Pact outlawed war. . . . The United States and the world need a strong and intelligent environmental movement. We won’t get one until and unless the press stops flattering and indulging the pack of incompetents who currently lead it.”
MEGAN MCARDLE: “Congress has given the Post Office two incompatible mandates. It is to make money like a business . . . but it is not to have any of the freedom that businesses have to, say, close branch offices, cut its delivery area, or change delivery schedules. This is, to put it mildly, lunatic.”
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Profiles of the Jobless: The ‘Mad As Hell’ Millennial Generation.
CHANGE: Small Businesses Are More Pessimistic Than Ever. With reason.
ON SALE, TODAY ONLY: Dexter: Seasons One-Five on DVD and Blu-ray. I’ve never watched that, but my friend Doug Weinstein loves it.
WASHINGTON POST FACT CHECK: OBAMA LIED ABOUT TAXES. “Obama’s claim of having passed the ‘biggest middle-class tax cut in history’ is ridiculous.”
The press has become noticeably less deferential of late. I wonder why?
UPDATE: Reader Peggy Heath writes:
Does it seem to you that the MSM press became less deferential at roughly the same time? My sense is that someone (was it WaPo?) stuck their toe in the water, wasn’t hit by a comic-strip ZOT lightning bolt, and criticism momentum has been building since. And that it started before The Vacation, but they’ve been piling on since, to the extent they could be said to be piling on, that is weakly.
Perhaps it’s concomitant with the comparisons to Nixon, which died down quickly but may have stung. Could be Fast and Furious/Gunwalker. The MSM may be realizing these guys are dumb enough to get into real trouble.
Yeah, it does seem to have hit all at once. Meanwhile, Don Surber reflects on Obama’s loss of support.
STEVEN CROWDER’S GAS PAINS.
RICHARD EPSTEIN: Why are Democrats serving up a smorgasbord of job-killing policies? “Who cares if jobs are gained the public sector when so many will be lost in the private sector?” Er, public-sector unions?
Plus this: “It is a testimony to the resourcefulness of the American economy that the unemployment figures are not more dismal than they are. That said, this nation will not be able to get off the road to economic perdition unless it junks both parts of the Obama administration’s economic policy—its futile macroeconomic programs and its mindless labor market restrictions. Let us hope that President Obama takes these harsh realities into account when he makes his own job proposals later this week. But after reviewing his uninspired Labor Day remarks, we shouldn’t count on it.”
GOING BLACK: EPA’s Rules May Force Power Failures.
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Obama’s Recovery A Flop Of Historical Proportions.
JOHN HAWKINS interviews Lee Doren about his new book, Please Enroll Responsibly: Avoiding Indoctrination at College. It’s a 99-cent Kindle book, so it ought to do well.
DAVID FREDDOSO: So where’s all that “civility” talk now?
MICHAEL GRAHAM ON the Democrats’ uncivil discourse. “From now until November 2012, you’re going to hear political smears and rhetoric so violent it would get banned from an al-Qaeda Web site. And it’s all going to come straight from Hope And Change Central: the White House.”
Related: Let Jimmy Hoffa Know You Won’t Be Intimidated – Buy an SOB Tea-Shirt. Heh.
UPDATE: Post: Next, A Kneecapping?
When Jimmy Hoffa threatens to take you out, should you be worried?
Damned straight, even if the Hoffa hurling the threat is only the son of the notorious Teamster Union thug who disappeared in 1975, presumably to sleep with the fishes for eternity.
Jimmy Jr. runs the Teamsters now, and in Detroit on Monday he loudly declared war on Republicans: “President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these sons of bitches out.”
And not to the old ballgame, either.
Under the leadership of Hoffa the Elder, the Teamsters were synonymous with union corruption and organized crime. And so industrious was onetime US Attorney General Bobby Kennedy in trying to clean up the union that Teamsters actually cheered when Kennedy was murdered by Sirhan Sirhan in 1968.
How fascinating that then-Sen. Barack Obama — whom many Democrats saw as the second coming of RFK — won the Teamsters’ endorsement in 2008 by supporting an end to strict federal anti-corruption oversight of the union.
Indeed.
Related: Top 5 Union Work Controversies. Including this one: “Firefighters Not Allowed to Save Drowning Man On Memorial Day.”