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Archive for 2012
April 5, 2012
PREDICTING THE FUTURE, BACK IN THE EIGHTIES: The Deficit Trials, 2017. Looking less fictional now. . . .
TOP LIBERTARIAN SCIENCE FICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
Vernor Vinge’s The Children of the Sky.
Delia Sherman’s The Freedom Maze.
Thomas James and Carl Carlsson, In The Shadow of Ares.
Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One.
Ken MacLeod’s The Restoration Game.
Terry Pratchett’s Snuff.
AMERICA’S BERLIN WALL: Owe The IRS? Bill Would Suspend Passport Rights For Delinquent Taxpayers. Tar. Feathers.
Reader Jim McCrory writes: “Would this mean Warren Buffett would have to stay home?”
UPDATE: A reader emails: “Or Geithner. Or the 40+ white house staffers that owe back taxes. Might make Obama’s international travel cheaper though…” I think it’s down to 36 White House staffers, but yeah.
ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader reminds me of this post from last year on FATCA, which I had forgotten writing: “Cynics might suggest that this is the beginning of capital controls designed to keep American capital in America, or at least in positions where it will be more easily confiscatable by the government during an Argentine-style financial collapse and response. That may be paranoid, but on the other hand the cynics have had a pretty good track record lately. And, of course, simply by provoking such fears measures like this will almost certainly prove counterproductive.”
So I’m prescient, but forgetful, I guess . . .
SO IF THE REPUBLICAN BUDGET IS, AS OBAMA SAYS, “SOCIAL DARWINISM,” then does that mean that Obama’s approach is some sort of Social Creationism?
Because I’m not seeing any evidence of an Intelligent Design there. . . .
Alternate tagline: They told me if I voted Republican, we’d see rampant anti-Darwinism in the White House, and they were right!
SOMEBODY ASK OBAMA HOW HE FEELS ABOUT THE COURTS OVERTURNING this democratically passed law.
UPDATE: No cover from PolitiFact: Obama Twice Wrong On Supreme Court.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Stephen Presser: Obama should know better on Supreme Court’s role. Actually, I think he does.
MORE: John Fund: President Petulant. Key quote: “Obama’s inner community organizer seems to be winning out over the law professor.”
THIS IS ONLY NEWS TO PEOPLE WHO DON’T BUY THEIR OWN GROCERIES: Food inflation seen back on the table as prices rise. I do most of our grocery shopping, and frankly I’m not super-careful about prices, but even I have been shocked by how much more things cost. Maybe it’s time for strategic shopping. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that this, along with skyrocketing gas prices, is why the White House would rather have people talk about hoodies and birth control.
UPDATE: Reader Greg Beairsto writes:
Not only are food prices suffering from inflation, the actual amount of food in the various packages is suffering from deflation. The standard 5lb bag of sugar from C&H is now 4lbs. Buy a pack of fun size candy bars and they rattle around in the packaging. Ounces and pounds are now missing from lots of different packaged foods. Any way it happens, the price per ounce is going up on just about everything.
We’ve also noticed a decline in serving sizes, particularly at ice-cream places. Smaller scoops for the same price . . .
SHELBY STEELE: The Exploitation of Trayvon Martin. “The absurdity of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites. . . . Trayvon’s sad fate clearly sent a quiver of perverse happiness all across America’s civil rights establishment, and throughout the mainstream media as well. His death was vindication of the ‘poetic truth’ that these establishments live by.”
AT AMAZON, IT’S THE SPRING OUTLET EVENT.
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#NARRATIVEFAIL: Politico: Bay State Not Buying “War On Women.” “Brown’s continued strength in Massachusetts should alarm Democrats banking on demonizing those on the right as complicit in a ‘war on women.’. . . Even more troublingly for Warren and Democrats who see this war-on-women rhetoric as the path to victory, the mandate debate appears to have given more of a boost to Brown than to Warren.”
A NICE PASSOVER GIFT FOR AMERICAN JEWS: Release The Khalidi Tape. “What, indeed, is the LA Times hiding?”
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): “9.1 %: That’s the unemployment rate for young college graduates in 2010, the highest annual rate on record, says The Institute for College Access & Success.”
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: A Crisis Of Civilization.
As I’ve been writing about the crisis of the blue social model, I’ve mostly focused on its consequences for North American and European societies. Canada, the US and the countries of western and central Europe are the places where the blue model has become most solidly entrenched and fully developed, and in the first instance the decline of that social model is registering most forcefully in their political and cultural lives.
That process has a long way to run; the creative destruction of the world of big blue is going to be causing social and economic crises for years and even decades to come. But we won’t grasp the immense importance and the urgency of what’s happening in the west until we fully take on board the importance of the decay of the blue model for global politics. . . .
We, the Europeans and the Japanese can probably handle a generation of wandering. Life would be poorer and nastier than it needs to be, politics would get pretty poisonous and Europe’s problems with some of its immigrants might get deeply ugly, but this might just mean the degradation of social life and the impoverishment of democracy rather than chaos, violence and the rise of new ideologies and movements based on fanaticism and hate.
I’m not nearly as sure that the rest of the world would be as calm or as stable if the blue model continues to rot but we don’t make the move to the next step.
Read the whole thing.
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Obama real happy to set new ethics rules for others. “President Obama, boss of 36 White House aides who are nearly $1 million behind in their federal income taxes, has signed the STOCK Act, new congressional ethics legislation.” Now that’s a stinging lede. . . .
THE COMPLETE HARRY POTTER COLLECTION is now available on Kindle.
“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Canada: After Keystone, We’d Rather Sell Oil to China. “What Harper is saying is that Canada could make more money by creating a market for its oil rather than selling all of it solely to the US. In other words, the cost of Canadian oil will go up as the US is forced to compete with China.”
UPDATE: Related: Obama Regulations Hand a Strategic Mining Monopoly to . . . China. On rare-earth minerals.
Plus: Solyndra vs. Keystone: A Tale of Two Energy-Project Reviews. “Got that? A speculative ‘green’ energy project that in retrospect, once the rest of us saw the details, was obviously going to be a business disaster, and ended up costing the taxpayers over half a billion dollars, was approved after a ‘one-day review.’ Yet the president demanded that Keystone, a project with certain and vast energy output, be delayed for many more months so that it could be ‘adequately reviewed,’ despite the fact that it had already had years of review. And as a result our energy prices will now rise in the future, with no way of returning to the status quo. Just as the president told us he wanted them to when he ran four years ago.”
Plus: “One wonders what administration defenders are thinking as they watch this ongoing trainwreck. We know what they’re saying, but what are they thinking?”
MORE: Reader Ari Mendelson writes: “They called Dan Quayle stupid because he couldn’t spell ‘potato.’ Well, the effects of Dan Quayle’s stupidity, such as it was, could be cured in two seconds with a computer spell checker. Obama’s stupidity with the Keystone Pipeline? Not quite so easy to correct, now, is it?” I’m not sure Obama’s actions can be characterized as stupid. I think he knows what he’s doing.
MORE STILL: Prof. Stephen Clark writes:
All of these moves are consistent with a desire to see the domestic price of commodities rise. This is consistent with a belief that to do so makes alternative energy sources economically competitive (I’m not saying this makes economic sense) in the belief that we are entering a time of ever scarcer resources; and is also consistent with a desire to mitigate America’s relative strategic strength. If your overarching goal is to limit the ability of the US to act independently, then this combination of acts with others is not an anomaly nor is it the product of strategic oversight or blunder. This leads to several questions: Does the administration believe we are entering an era of ever scarcer resources and that their acts will force us to adapt before the real crunch hits? (This would indicate a belief that assumes a consensus that doesn’t exist.) What does the administration and its representatives think is the proper role for the US in the international system? How much independence should the US enjoy and is the ability to act independently seen as the potential for greater good or greater harm for the international system at large? Whose vision informs the president’s choices in these matters – and among those living what have they to say in response to these questions?
I think the time has passed for looking at these policies and acts as the product of incompetence or lack of coordination, and rather to ask what policy goals do they serve? These things should be openly discussed and laid out as part of the process leading to November’s decision.
Indeed.
REUTERS: White House in damage control over Obama Supreme Court remarks. “The White House was forced on the defensive on Wednesday as it sought to explain controversial remarks President Barack Obama made earlier in the week about the Supreme Court’s review of his signature healthcare reform law.”
Related: Former Obama Student: Obama’s Ignorance of Constitution Embarrassing.
NOT TOO HAPPY WITH OBAMA’S ENERGY POLICY: Mine union boss: Coal industry could suffer same fate as bin Laden. “The Navy SEALs shot Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan and Lisa Jackson shot us in Washington.”
HARVEY SILVERGLATE: Misconduct Hearings on Campus Are Rotten and Have to Change.
IS BARACK OBAMA’S ANGER TOTALLY OWNING HIM? “Seems to me he’s having a hard time hiding his anger. And the angrier he gets, the more he struggles. Any creature trapped in a net knows that flailing about only further ensnares. No-Drama Obama needs to chill; if he can’t relax, he’s toast.”
He hasn’t had a lot of practice dealing with criticism and frustration. And — judging by the whole constellation of actions coming out of his operation — they know something I don’t that’s got them genuinely nervous.
A while back, I speculated that the GOP should employ a picador strategy to get Obama to lose his cool, but apparently that wasn’t even necessary, as he had a lot less cool than I thought.
CLEANUP CREW: Larry Tribe comes out to tell us that Obama “didn’t say what he meant” about the Supreme Court. Oh, I think he did.
Plus, from the comments: “Uh, Professor Tribe, he said exactly what he meant, and it so disturbed you that you are busily trying to persuade Americans that the leader of their country says things he doesn’t mean.”
Plus, remembering what Tribe said about Anthony Kennedy.
GOOD NEWS: Good news: Obama’s illegal immigrant uncle is getting his driver’s license back.
In Massachusetts, it helps to have the right connections.