Archive for 2018
December 9, 2018
WEIRD THAT THIS ISN’T GETTING MORE ATTENTION: US Ends Its Reliance On Foreign Oil For The First Time In 75 Years.
MAYBE THEY’RE NOT AS SMART OR BENEVOLENT AS THEY THINK OR CLAIM: The Smart Technocats And Benevolent Dictators Always Fail.
Have you heard of Bill Easterly? He is an economics professor at NYU. He wrote a book, The Tyranny of Experts. I’d suggest that you read it. It seems as though everyone is quoting from Hillbilly Elegy these days and I think I’d rather see them pick up the ethos of this book and put it into practice.
Top down solutions to big problems don’t work. In fact, when it comes to stamping out poverty, the top down solution becomes an excuse for technocrats, bureaucrats, the smart people, the elites and “benevolent dictators” to keep trampling upon the poor all the while making themselves feel good and important. They enrich themselves as well.
Easterly prefers free markets.
So do I.
ET ÇA VA ENCORE! France’s ‘yellow vests’ clash with police in Paris.
I DISAGREE ON THE IDEA THE LEFT IS ABOUT INNOVATION AND ALSO ON THE IDEA WE NEED A LEFT THAT IS MOSTLY COMMUNIST. THAT SAID, SHE’S RIGHT ON THE OTHER STUFF: Ten Signs Your Movement Is Evil.
December 8, 2018
AT AMAZON, save on Bestselling Jewelry.
ANDREW SULLIVAN: America’s New Religions. “Our modern world tries extremely hard to protect us from the sort of existential moments experienced by Mill and Russell. Netflix, air-conditioning, sex apps, Alexa, kale, Pilates, Spotify, Twitter … they’re all designed to create a world in which we rarely get a second to confront ultimate meaning — until a tragedy occurs, a death happens, or a diagnosis strikes. Unlike any humans before us, we take those who are much closer to death than we are and sequester them in nursing homes, where they cannot remind us of our own fate in our daily lives. And if you pressed, say, the liberal elites to explain what they really believe in — and you have to look at what they do most fervently — you discover, in John Gray’s mordant view of Mill, that they do, in fact, have ‘an orthodoxy — the belief in improvement that is the unthinking faith of people who think they have no religion.’ . . . And so the young adherents of the Great Awokening exhibit the zeal of the Great Awakening. Like early modern Christians, they punish heresy by banishing sinners from society or coercing them to public demonstrations of shame, and provide an avenue for redemption in the form of a thorough public confession of sin. ‘Social justice’ theory requires the admission of white privilege in ways that are strikingly like the admission of original sin. A Christian is born again; an activist gets woke. To the belief in human progress unfolding through history — itself a remnant of Christian eschatology — it adds the Leninist twist of a cadre of heroes who jump-start the revolution.”
AT AMAZON, Holiday Deals of the Day.
JULIETTE OCHIENG: Secret Weapon. A good chance to see if the “undernews” pans out.
OPEN THREAD: Because we care.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Woman arrested ‘after sitting on man’s face when he refused to perform sex act.’ “It is said a naked Parrino chased down the man in the house before finally cornering him. Police allege she then pushed him to the ground, sat on top of him, and shoved her private area in to his face, demanding he perform a sex act on her.”
“THE HILLS ARE ALIVE…WITH THE SOUND OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: Nazi props were temporarily declared verboten in LaGuardia High School’s production of the Third Reich-set classic ‘The Sound of Music’ prior to the show’s Thursday night opening. The principal at the elite ‘Fame’ school, Lisa Mars, ordered Nazi flags and symbols removed from the stage set of the beloved tale of the Von Trapp family, who fled the Nazis from their native Austria as Adolf Hitler took power, students told the Daily News.”
Wow, wait until they cover The Producers…
FAKE NEWS. PINK FLOYD GOT THERE FIRST IN 1973: China launches pioneering mission to far side of moon.
HOW THE PRINCIPAL STOLE CHRISTMAS: “Principal Jennifer Sinclair of Manchester Elementary School in Elkhorn, Neb., figured the best way to accomplish this goal was to issue an edict in the name of being ‘inclusive and culturally sensitive.’ According to USA Today, Sinclair ‘banned Christmas-related items – including candy canes, reindeer and the traditional Christmas colors red and green.’”
Grinch-like SJWs ruin everything.
PEAK GRAUNIAD REACHED: Lower voting age to six to tackle bias against young, says academic.
In the summer of 2016, around the same time as Kaepernick began his protests, an attempted coup against the Turkish government sparked a crackdown on dissenting voices by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Kanter is a longtime critic of the regime and a supporter of US-based Fetullah Gulen, who Erdogan blamed for the coup. And so he became a target.
The New York Knicks player had his Turkish passport revoked, and Erdogan issued a warrant for his arrest. Kanter’s father even had to disown him in a bid to safeguard their family.
Despite playing for a popular NBA team, the 26-year-old cannot find a sponsor. This is because, he says, sportswear companies are wary of damaging their commercial prospects in Turkey. And in an interview with Vice Sports last month, he singled out (you guessed it) Nike as one of those companies:
‘I talked to Nike and they said “we want to give Enes a contract, but if we give him one [the Turkish government] will shut down every store in Turkey, so we cannot”… I’m an NBA player with no shoe deal. No endorsement deal. And I play in New York!’
It seems that Kanter sacrificed everything for something he believed in, and yet Nike was nowhere to be found.
Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it.
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Dick’s May Have To Close Stores Due To Anti-Gun Decisions. “I’d say, ‘Who cares?’ but the truth is, I do. Schadenfreude is a kind of caring, right?”
THIS IS A BIG DEAL IF IT WORKS OUT: Twenty Month Payback for Tesla 100-MW Utility Scale Battery Storage System.
OH, THAT WAR ON CHRISTMAS: Progressive scolds are obsessed with destroying our holiday classics.
AND TODAY THE ROLE OF PAULINE KAEL WILL BE PLAYED BY ANDREA MITCHELL:
What I undervalued about Donald Trump in the primaries is that I had never watched “The Apprentice.” I had never watched reality TV. I did not know that he had millions and millions of fans out there. I didn’t know that that base existed. I thought he was not a serious candidate. I did not know that the single most important and visited tourist attraction in all of New York City were people taking selfies in front of Trump Tower. I always thought it was the Statue of Liberty, or the Empire State Building, or 30 Rock.
Meanwhile, fellow Chuck Todd, who works alongside Brian Williams and Al Sharpton (and Andrea Mitchell) is complaining of gaslighting:
“I knew the gaslighting was out there. I knew it was every day,” Todd said. “But I think there was part of me in my head assumed people were discerning it out, knew the BS from the non-BS. So, I think what my sort of shock to the system was just sort of how gullible a big chunk of the country was to this and gullible because maybe they want to be gullible.”
Todd, the Democratic operative with a byline, began his career in politics as a Democratic operative for former Sen. Tom Harkin, who also knows a thing or two about gaslighting.
(Classical reference in headline.)
