BRUCE KESLER: Gaza Thanksgiving Lesson.
Related thoughts here.
Archive for 2012
November 22, 2012
READER BOOK PLUG: Reader George Scoville recommends Just Let Me Walk Away: An American Combat Helicopter Pilot In Vietnam. Here’s the website.
DOMESTIC TERRORISM UPDATE: Animal Rights Activist Pleads Guilty in Wayne State Case. “An animal rights activist, Camille Marino, has pleaded guilty to trespass and unlawful posting of a message with aggravating circumstances, The Detroit Free Press reported. Marino was arrested in May when she chained herself to the doors of the library at Wayne State University. She had been posting messages online in which she said that a Wayne State researcher who works with animals — whom she named, listing his home and office addresses and phone numbers — should be tortured.”
UPDATE: A reader emails: “This animal rights extremist also harassed 3 scientists at the University of Florida. I am one of them. These are very sad people. They feel harassment of scientists and their families is legitimate ‘direct democracy’ or something like that. How they help animals is a mystery to me and others. A Steve Best at the University of Texas El Paso is the main cheerleader of these groups, but he has had to get a personal protection order against Marino himself when she started threatening him! He cannot take it! Rather fun to watch the cannibals eat each other.”
APHORISMS FOR ANARCHISTS. “Alternately insightful, inciteful, and insulting, Scott makes an idiosyncratically intellectual case that technocratic elites aren’t to be trusted, and insubordination is a virtue to be cherished. Needless to say, Scott is the Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale.”
James C. Scott is also the author of the excellent Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes To Improve The Human Condition Have Failed. I just downloaded a copy of his Two Cheers for Anarchism to my Kindle.
KURT SCHLICHTER reviews Jake Tapper’s new book, The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor. “You need to read it.”
WELL, I guess my secret’s out.
UPDATE: Reader Joe Jackson writes: “I was less surprised by the turkey wrapped bacon than by the assertion that the Reynold’s household had ‘kitchen staff’.”
Kitchen staff? That would be, er, me. Though my daughter made potato salad and deviled eggs, and my niece made magnificent guacamole.
IN THE MAIL: The Amazon Legion.
#GREENFAIL: Hunting Unicorns In The Sahara. “Even if funding were plentiful, geopolitical problems make the plan seem like a pipe dream. Libya can barely govern itself, northern Mali is under the control of terrorists, and the rest of North Africa doesn’t look ready to protect vast swathes of solar panel-covered desert. Europe has its own problems too, of course, and constructing an ‘ultramodern’ renewable energy grid doesn’t seem to be on the top of its to-do list. Like other green initiatives, Desertec sounds good on paper and excites the imagination of progressive renewable energy scientists and politicians, but reality—whether political or financial—makes it nearly impossible. For the foreseeable future, the Saharan sun won’t be captured to power toaster ovens in Europe.”
WHEN THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE MEETS OBAMACARE: Surprise: PA College Slashes Instructors’ Hours to Avoid Obamacare. Best quote: “It’s kind of a double whammy for us because we are facing a legal requirement [under the new law] to get health care and if the college is reducing our hours, we don’t have the money to pay for it.” Getting it fast and hard. . . .
DISASTER RECOVERY IN BLOOMBERG’S NEW YORK: NYC sends health teams to post-Sandy food handouts, rubbing some wrong way.
“It’s just a little ridiculous. The inspector came up and asked if we were wearing hairnets. I told him, ‘We have helmets. This is a disaster area,’” Eustace told FoxNews.com. “Then he asked is we had gloves and thermometers [for food]. I said, “Yeah, we have rectal and oral. Which one do you want?’ He wasn’t amused.”
Eustace says that the Health Department worker then checked off a list of violations at the relief tent, including not having an HVAC system and fire extinguisher.
Because tents need those. I admire the spirit of mockery this inspired, however. Bloomberg’s New York needs more of that.
AT AMAZON, it’s the Holiday Toy List. With fresh “lightning deals” appearing throughout the day.
Also, today only: 50% Off Yamaha RX-V671 7.1-Channel Network AV Receiver, $299.95.
“AS GOD IS MY WITNESS, I THOUGHT TURKEYS COULD FLY!”
HOW A FAILED COMMUNE GAVE US WHAT IS NOW THANKSGIVING. “It’s wrong to say that America was founded by capitalists. In fact, America was founded by socialists who had the humility to learn from their initial mistakes and embrace freedom.”
SCENES FROM a Berlin menu.
NOEMIE EMERY ON THE HOUSING CRASH:
Twice, Bush tried to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and twice Democrats (Obama included) moved in to stop him. Especially culpable were Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. Dodd claimed that the institutions were “fundamentally strong,” and Frank said he wanted to “roll the dice a little bit more in his situation” rather than impose stricter regulation on Fannie and Freddie. He did roll those dice, and they came up snake eyes at the end of the Bush years. The same could have just as easily happened in the Gore or Kerry administrations, had they existed, and it would not have been due to their policies, either. It was due to bad sense, bad judgment, greed and a lot of misguided good will.
Bush didn’t create the conditions that led to the crash; he inherited them from Bill Clinton, and a large cast of thousands all played their own parts. Republican policies had no role in the crash; and the Democrats’ policies would have had no role, either.
This was not a case of free markets run wild; it was a case of government policy distorting the markets by removing their built-in restraints. This case has been made by a handful of columnists and two serious books — “Reckless Endangerment” by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner, and “Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac” by Oonagh McDonald — but not yet by the silent and clueless Republican Party. How many more times must it lose till it does?
Plus, a mention of “Reynolds’ Law.”
ON BOARD the USS Michael Murphy.
AND WITHOUT A CARBON TAX: U.S. Leads World In Carbon Emissions Reductions.
Over the past six years, the United States has reduced its carbon emissions more than any other nation in the world.
Efforts to curb so-called man-made climate change had little or nothing to do with it. Government mandated “green” energy didn’t cause the reductions. Neither did environmentalist pressure. And the U.S. did not go along with the Kyoto Protocol to radically cut CO2 emissions. Instead, the drop came about through market forces and technological advances, according to a report from the International Energy Agency.
Breakthroughs in how natural gas is extracted from underground shale formations were the key factors that led to the reductions, the report said. Natural gas has a low carbon footprint and is widely available in the United States. As a result, entrepreneurs are flocking to extract it from new areas.
“It’s good news and good news doesn’t get reported as much,” John Griffin, executive director of Associated Petroleum Industries of Michigan, said of the lack of reporting about the CO2 reductions. “The mainstream media doesn’t want to report these kinds of things.”
Rep. Chuck Moss, R-Birmingham, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said he was unaware of the extent of the fall-off in carbon emissions.
“You know when I found out we’ve reduced our carbon emissions more than any other country?” Rep. Moss said. “It was when you just told me. So, maybe that says something about how many people even know about it.”
If only we had some sort of . . . I don’t know . . . commercial institution dedicated to telling people interesting stuff that they don’t know. Sounds like a viable business plan to me!
November 21, 2012
I’M PRETTY SURE THE SCOTS-IRISH VERSION OF THIS STORY WOULD END “So then I went in, and the sumbitch at the door will be politer, next time. If he lives.” It would be a lot shorter, too.
STATIST THUGS AND THE ROCKS THEY CRAWL OUT FROM UNDER: “Regardless of the age, the culture, or the social conditions, there is ALWAYS a percentage of the general populace that embraces the totalitarian dynamic. There is always someone in our neighborhood, in our workplace, and within our family that finds vindication or advantage in supporting the state, even if the state has turned viciously criminal. They are not only useful idiots; they are conscious participants in the process of pacification and enslavement of their own society. They understand their role perfectly, and they enjoy what they do.”
If you punish the first few who appear, the others are more likely to stay under their rocks.
I TALK ABOUT SECESSION on KMOX radio.