October 6, 2017
QotD
Comes from a brilliant column by Matthew Continetti on the media meltdown and how Trump burns this at both ends.
What passes for news today is speculation and advocacy, wishful thinking and self-fashioning, mindless jabber and affirmations of virtue, removed from objective reality and common sense.It's a wide-ranging column with many an excellent point.
Donald Trump changed [journalists hiding their ideology and political bias], of course. He is so unusual a figure, and his behavior so outlandish, that his rise precipitated a crisis in a profession already decimated by the collapse of print circulation and advertising dollars. The forces that brought Trump to power are alien to the experience of the men and women who populate newsrooms, his supporters unlike their colleagues, friends, and neighbors, his agenda anathema to the catechism of social liberalism, his career and business empire complex and murky and sensational.
This is a runner up for QotD, IMO:
Can't say I was shocked when Schieffer's finding [20% of journalists live in LA, DC or NYC] passed barely noticed, the consciences of the press untroubled by the fact that their experiences and backgrounds are so unlike the majority of the public whose interest they presume to uphold.Thorough and well written, worth reading the whole thing.
Very well worth the read in full -- thanks!
I'll even add another honorable mention:
Journalists are trapped in a condition of perpetual outrage, seizing on every rumor of discontent and disagreement, reflexively denouncing Trump's every utterance and action, unable to distinguish between genuinely unusual behavior (the firing of Comey, the tenure of Anthony Scaramucci, the "fine people on both sides" quip after Charlottesville) and the elements of Trump's personality and program that voters have already, so to speak, "priced in."
Word. Posted by: jk at October 6, 2017 6:23 PM
Truly a great piece. Brother nb beat Insty to the punch. He linked to this article late last night with the longest Instapundit except in the history of the blog.
I added a link to this a comment on Facebook yesterday as well. Somebody asked "How come this Trump opponent always ends up defending him?" I said "Here's how."
And I woke up thinking about "priced in." If you recall the 2016 General Election, the Democrats and sympathetic PACs talked about Trump's treatment of the disabled NYTimes reporter in more than half the commercials. I don't know that it was his finest hour, but I remember thinking that everybody knows this story. The 11th mention is not going to switch a vote. But they were so certain it was a dealbreaker, they couldn't stop. They did not understand "priced in" and still do not.
And, as the article explains, that's not the only thing the "elite" "experts" in journalism don't understand.
Posted by: johngalt at October 9, 2017 3:52 PMOctober 3, 2017
Quote of the Day
Who would have guessed that when America cleaved, the left would get the National Football League and the right would get uncontested custody of science? -- Heather Heying
Excellent observation. But I'll take it further and suggest that, eventually, the same thing will happen to the left's custody of the NFL as has now happened to its one time so-called custody of science. Something I like to call "reality can't be faked for long."
Posted by: johngalt at October 3, 2017 3:07 PMThe linked article is short, and very important to read in full. Here.
Posted by: johngalt at October 4, 2017 2:51 PMSeptember 29, 2017
Not For more than a day or two Longer
Interesting that National Review is having the same internecine argument as we. But I will give my pal, Jonah, QOTD for a portion of his response:
Surely, we can think of a thousand opinions that we believe to be correct. We, after all, are in the opinion business. To paraphrase Paul Newman in the Road to Perdition, "There are only opiners in this room!" But I bet we could go through that list of correct opinions and identify a very large number of them that it would be best for the president to stay quiet about.
Consider Goldberg's main point: "Trump made the problem worse."
Trump made the problem more visible, the discussion of it louder and more impassioned, the number of players kneeling and pundits talking about it multiply, and yes, made people who were already mad at Trump more mad, but who says any of this is "worse?"
If the net result is that the natural cycle of yet one more social crisis is resolved faster, or at least made to progress further, faster, isn't that "better?"
I can't get past the notion that people who don't like Trump's style will never approve of Trump's tactics. No matter what.
Some people never liked Dirty Harry either, but he always got the bad guy.
Posted by: johngalt at September 29, 2017 3:46 PMHafta side with JK on this one: Trump took a simple problem, and exploded it all over the NFL, and perhaps beyond. "Should be fired!" is too much from the bully side of the pulpit.
He's supposed to be first and foremost, a leader. If he'd stopped with 'don't disrespect the flag', he would have kept that mantle. Now, lots of players (and owners) who don't disrespect the flag are being aligned with those who do. (the Kaepernick sleeze, who DOES disrespect all that is good and true ... when he is able to put out a cogent thought)
Posted by: nanobrewer at September 29, 2017 8:59 PMDoes anyone but me make any allowance for the fact that Trump's statements came at a political rally, and not from behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office? It wasn't exactly the bully pulpit.
I understand that we bourgeois types prefer a certain decorum, but the boys in the hood have more respect for a man who keeps it real.
Posted by: johngalt at September 29, 2017 11:36 PMI thought the "should be fired!" crack was a tweet. If not, he's still allowing his words to be twisted by virtue of his carelessness.
I do not think anymore that these tweets are proving he's 'crazy like a fox.'
Posted by: nanobrewer at October 1, 2017 12:56 AMMy work here is done.
Posted by: jk at October 2, 2017 11:31 AMSeptember 25, 2017
Quote of the Day
Laugh to keep from crying, as President Trump and his opponents have ruined the NFL. Jim Geraghty documents Rex Ryan's changing position from Trump supporter to being "p***** off" (that's NRO speak; I believe Coach may have said it without the asterisks.) At least the long-time Jets fan was able to close with humor:
Let's face it, this is not the first time Rex Ryan selected a particular person for a high-stakes job and found himself deeply disappointed with the results
Still need to read the linked article but I don't think Trump has ruined the NFL, he's just pointing out that it has been ruined. Perhaps they will change the way the do business to better please their customers, rather than their business partners in the media.
Posted by: johngalt at September 26, 2017 1:18 PMSeptember 20, 2017
Quote of the Day
"You deserve all the finest things in the world," a young Homer Simpson once wrote to his beloved Marge, "and although I can give them to you, they will be repossessed." Senator Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All Act of 2017 (MFA) makes similarly sweeping promises while relegating financing to a Post-It note, affixed to our national refrigerator: "To do: design and implement the single largest tax increase in human history."To his credit, Homer Simpson understood where his generosity would lead. -- Robert Graboys
Two words: Wealth Tax.
Posted by: johngalt at September 20, 2017 5:04 PMAnd three back: "Damn straight, Skippy!"
Posted by: jk at September 20, 2017 7:13 PMAugust 10, 2017
Quote of the Day
Mr. Damore is an embarrassment to the company's strategy of appeasing the diversity furies with tokenism, perfectly acceptable to Google's critics as long as it affirms their insistence that any and all disparities arise from discrimination and victimization. -- Holman Jenkins
July 31, 2017
Quote of the Day
It's not Lord Ridley, but it is Ridleyesque:
Consider this: In 1900, 1% of American women giving birth died in labor. Today, the five-year mortality rate for localized breast cancer is 1.2%. Being pregnant 100 years ago was almost as dangerous as having breast cancer is today. -- Morgen Housel
July 27, 2017
Quote of the Day
Now, forgive the interjection, but that one sentence actually features a pleonasm within a pleonasm, which is a truly rare feat of windbaggery. My hearing ears started to bleed at the redundancy of "listening audience," but the whole eight-word phrase from "tell" to "audience" means nothing more than "say." Bravo! -- Don Boudreaux
In fairness, her writing* means far more than merely the verb "say." It means "say in such a way that they then may believe it to be true, along with any similarly deluded persons within the range of their spoken or written word who choose to actually pay attention to said words."
Now, much as I philosophically reject the premises of Ms. MacLean, I can't sit still while she is accused of prosaic inefficiency when she used a mere 8 words to convey what I then expressed the essence of using thirty-eight.
* The passage at issue is: "tell themselves and those in their listening audience..."
Posted by: johngalt at July 27, 2017 4:13 PMJuly 24, 2017
All Hail Freeman
"Too many Americans are struggling with a rigged economy," Ms. Pelosi wrote on Twitter this morning. But she probably hasn't met too many of them at today's event. If an economist had to pick the one place in America that has benefitted most from a rigged economy, it would probably be Virginia's 10th congressional district. It includes both a significant number of government employees and a heavy concentration of the lobbyists who are paid to influence them. -- James Freeman, "Down Home Democrats
"Too many Americans are struggling with a rigged economy." Wasn't that an early Trump Tweet?
Posted by: johngalt at July 24, 2017 6:46 PMFDR's New Deal, Truman's Square Deal, Schumer's Better Deal. They had one idea, and a bad one at that, and they repackage it as needed.
Posted by: jk at July 25, 2017 9:56 AMIt may be a bad idea, but it has become a part of our governing principles - in the form of FDR's "Second Bill of Rights." While this "Economic" bill of rights was never ratified in any way, but merely the central element of a speech by the then President, it became the moral authority upon which the New Deal was founded and has not been refuted or discredited in a material way to this day.
Last night at Flatirons Liberty on the Rocks we heard passionate and eloquent arguments in favor of privatizing or bringing market competition to all functions of government. But that seems an utter impossibility if we cannot first unseat the misguided notion that every man is entitled to economic support from his neighbors.
Posted by: johngalt at July 25, 2017 12:50 PMYes, four guys arguing over what kind of government they can't have. At least the beer was good!
Thanks to everybody who showed up!
-- My remarks (as written, any reseblence to what I stammered out is purely coincidental!)
-- Justin's (He's a good and disciplined orator -- this matches my memory pretty well. And, he's got a photo.)
Posted by: jk at July 25, 2017 2:32 PM"My challenge is this: Every time you advocate that government provide a certain good or service, replace the word government in your mind with the word monopoly. Then try to think of economic reasons why a monopoly would provide that particular thing better."
The first and best answer is national defense. A nation's army should be a monopoly. For economic reasons, and much more. First, don't divide your forces. Second, don't have more than one chain of command. Third, don't have more than one commander-in-chief.
But I'm stuck in past and present thinking. Much of what government does CAN be done competitively. And should. Let's start with health care - Obamacare and Cruzcare should exist side by side, with consumers FREE to CHOOSE between them. May the best plan win.
Posted by: johngalt at July 25, 2017 3:19 PMJuly 20, 2017
Otequay of the Ayday
Alyene Singer at the Heritage Foundation estimates that [Obamacare individual mandate] subsidies will cost taxpayers $100 billion a year, up until 2023. In typical big government fashion, the grand barrage of mandates and subsidies and taxes and penalties is fashioned so that only the "smartest people in the room "...left-wing professors from MIT or Harvard or Stanford, can really master all the details of the plan. But if you oppose it, you are not just opposed to healthcare...you're opposing the interests of humanity.In the end it's the classic case of government robbing Peter to pay Paul…and in this case "Peter" is the millennials. You know... the demographic group responsible for putting Obama into office, both in 2008 and 2012. As an article in Politico notes, "Mitt Romney would have cruised to the White House had he managed to split the youth vote with Barack Obama." In 2012, Obama won this demographic by a whopping 37 points, 67% to 30%.
Why would he turn around and stab them in the back? Particularly when today's youth are often in the stranglehold of massive student loan debt even before they begin to build wealth?
Because he knew he could get away with it.
Millennials are big on style and short on substance. At high schools and college campuses and hipster bars around the country, supporting Barack Obama was seen as the epitome of cool. But ask these young scholars and urban professionals to sum up the provisions of ObamaCare in 60 seconds. The results would likely be disappointing.
Young people want to be seen as progressive and open-minded and tolerant and caring. Precious few are interested in the Constitutional foundation of this country, or in learning about the way that big government socialist collectivists like Barack Obama trample on that foundation.
Obama Stabbed Millennials in the Back with Healthcare
By: David Unsworth
Tyler Cowen has produced some amazing work on the morality of time. We are stealing wealth from future Earthlings when we impede growth.
This example is more direct, but one of my favorites was the assertion that climate rules would cost "only" 1% growth of GDP. I don't know what Einstein thought this up, but 1% sounds small. Yet you have stolen half the wealth of the person born in 72 years.
How do you fix this? You need to have these young people thing rationally and methodically. I can see that if they take a class from Tyler Cowen. From Nancy McLean? Not so much.
Posted by: jk at July 21, 2017 10:15 AM"One percent growth of GDP" does sound small, but since current annual GDP growth is two to three percent, it destroys roughly 50% of GDP growth. Is it just me, or does that sound large?
Posted by: johngalt at July 21, 2017 10:59 AMWell, if you're going to use math.....
July 17, 2017
Quote of the Day
"But to be always worrying about the gap between me and someone else, I think it's the road to unhappiness at the individual level and the road to tyranny at the national level." -- Russ Roberts [~36:50]
July 12, 2017
Quote of the Day
I do think that something should have been done. But not this something. What we should have done is created a system that focused on protecting people from the risk we know they face -- catastrophic medical bills -- and that sought to preserve the best of the American system rather than the worst -- that is, to preserve our endless talent for innovation through markets rather than our decidedly lesser talent for creating and managing massive regulatory bureaucracies. -- Megan McArdleChanneling Remy: "What would you do, just let people die?"
July 10, 2017
Quote of the Day
The strange fact is that if an economist (or anyone else) ever insisted that the imperfect realities of actual government operations be compared only with imagined ideal markets -- and then policy decisions be made on the basis of the outcomes of these comparisons -- that person would correctly be ridiculed as an unscientific ideologue. And yet when the comparisons are reversed -- when the imperfect realities of actual markets are compared to imagined ideal government operations -- few people outside of the public-choice school blink an eye. And then when public-choice scholars blink their eyes at such misleading comparisons, they are accused of being ideological hacks! Quite stunning, really. -- Don Boudreaux
There must be a stronger word that also means "hypocrisy."
Posted by: johngalt at July 11, 2017 3:30 PMHeh. There are many it turns out. But the most appropriate one in this case is, I think, "phoniness."
Posted by: johngalt at July 11, 2017 3:34 PMJuly 9, 2017
Quote of the Day
Nancy MacLean's Democracy in Chains is a piñata of sloppiness and deceit: every time you whack it, more mangled quotes, factual errors, and misrepresented sources spill out. -- Daniel Bier c/o Don Boudreaux
UPDATE: Great Catp Podcast with Duke's Michael Munger:
June 29, 2017
QotD
Has to go down in TS history as attributed to a Senate Joint Resolution, from Tennessee of all places!
So you get the full impact quickly (love to make a meme from this) note the opening paragraph: "Whereas, California has passed legislation banning state sponsored travel to Tennessee and certain other states..." QotD is
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we urge the other forty-eight states to refrain from imposing their unfounded moral judgment on their sister states as California has done in order to prevent escalating foolishness
and runner up is these next 3:
Whereas, Tennessee is pleasantly surprised that California will not be sending its economic development teams to Tennessee to recruit our businesses, but we can still send our teams to recruit their businesses; andWhereas, Tennessee is puzzled why California thinks it is a good idea to prohibit its state colleges and universities from participating in athletic competition in Tennessee (March Madness comes to Memphis this year via the South Regional), Kansas, Mississippi, and North Carolina; and
Whereas, this type of ban, the result of legitimate disagreements about government policy, is neither persuasive nor productive for either party and will lead to economic warfare among states, as one sovereign entity attempts to tell an equally sovereign entity how to conduct its affairs by restricting travel thereto
June 28, 2017
Quote of the Day
But the next time you are tempted to indulge in that sort of intellectual laziness, consider that a lot of poor people in Seattle are going to have trouble paying their rents or feeding their children because policymakers who did not want to face the economic facts allowed themselves to be led astray by Professor Krugman, a first-rate economist who devolved into a second-rate newspaper columnist, who lent the considerable prestige of his Nobel prize to a policy proposal many of his fellow progressive economists knew to be defective even as they refused to criticize it in public. The poor people in Seattle know that there is no such thing as a free lunch. If only the economists did, too. -- Kevin WilliamsonHonorable mention, from the same article:
When Economics 101 tells you something you don't want to hear, the thing to do is commission a study.I woke to a "let's face the right is just evil" post on FB. If I can find it, I'll link. "If people have to be told that poor kids should eat and that health care is more important than tax cuts for the wealthy, yadda yadda." I rolled my eyes and scrolled, but I might try responding with a link to this piece if I can find it. Slow day today.
UPDATE: Found it. Tl;dr: "People who disagree with me are evil and want children to starve. I cannot possibly have a civil dialogue with those who don't care." I don't know, it's a slow day but not perhaps that slow.
UPDATE II: Fools rush in, I posted a link.
Williamson and his ilk [including, I should add, yours truly] would do well to withhold judgment until the final wage hike takes effect. The mandatory minimum wage [read: price below which free trade is illegal] is not yet high enough to have the desired effect of balancing every worker's budget. */sarcasm*.
As for the "people will die" from Obamacare repeal [as if that's what the current Senate bill even does] I would like to remind our friends on the collectivist side of the aisle that refusing to treat people who can't pay hasn't happened in this country since before most of them were born - 1986, when the EMTALA required every hospital that receives Medicare payments to provide emergency care until the patient is stabilized or consents to leave. And this law, which puts care ahead of the property rights of doctors, hospitals and taxpayers, was brought to us by, President Ronald Reagan. Another heartless Republican.
Posted by: johngalt at June 28, 2017 11:05 AMI couldn't comment on the article but if I could, I would say:
You are obviously blessed with the very best of good intentions, young Ms. Chadwick, but I wonder if you are either old or wise enough to know where the road inexorably leads, that is paved with good intentions?Posted by: johngalt at June 28, 2017 11:11 AM
Clicking through on a link in the Williamson piece led to this very interesting page at the website of Environmental Progress dot org.
Hey Mikey, I like it!
Posted by: johngalt at June 28, 2017 4:30 PMI didn't see the letter, or was that meme-menage supposed to be it? If so, it gives vague all new meaning...
Posted by: nanobrewer at June 28, 2017 11:52 PMJune 23, 2017
Quote of the Day
If the Democrats were smart, they'd give [Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi] a gold watch and some eye drops and get rid of her. -- Jonah Goldberg (All Hail!)
UPDATE: Honorable mention, from the same G-File, ending his "Wonder Woman" review:
Last, and crucially, what the Hell was an armadillo doing in Themyscira?
June 13, 2017
Quote of the Day
Just once it would be nice if [Jared] Bernstein and the other class warriors he runs with would explain how individual achievement that leads to wealth harms those who aren't rich. What he would find were he to replace emotion with rationality is that in capitalist societies, people generally get rich by virtue of producing abundance for everyone. In short, we need more inequality, not less, if the goal is to improve the living standards of those who presently earn less. -- John Tamny
Go try telling that to James Hodgkinson.
https://www.facebook.com/jthodgkinson/posts/10211681535417842
Posted by: johngalt at June 14, 2017 11:14 AMWell, with 93 million a day, your odds are not good.
Posted by: jk at June 14, 2017 1:41 PMJune 8, 2017
Quote of the Day
In the absence of evidence of wrongdoing, Mr. Comey treated the gathered lawmakers to a lengthy description of the atmospherics of his conversations with Mr. Trump. The Senate panel heard about Mr. Trump's "body language" and about awkward silences. There were trust issues. Lawmakers also learned of Mr. Comey's deep desire not to be alone with the President. There appears to be some useful material here for a movie on the Lifetime cable channel but it's not clear this investigation has anywhere to go. -- James Freeman BOTW
Otequay of the Day
Cheap energy fuels the economy and Americans don't want that to change. By withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, Trump sided with the majority of Americans, according to the very same polls his opponents use to condemn him.Anneke E. Green
RCP Contributor
June 08, 2017
June 2, 2017
Quote of the Day
[Environmentalists] fume that the status quo is one of worsening circumstances, but moving so slowly and gradually that most people can ignore it. By the time the crisis is really visible, it will be too late; the only way to mitigate the problem at that point will be drastic, unpopular action and widespread sacrifice. They believe that whatever pain they're proposing now, it's exponentially milder than the pain that awaits us if we do nothing.Perhaps we should have a little sympathy. When they talk like this, they sound a lot like us conservatives when we talk about the ticking time bomb of our entitlement programs and the need for reform. -- Jim Geraghty [subscribe]
It's certainly moving slowly and gradually enough that we can delay implementation until India and China (and every other industrialized nation) agrees to hamstring its economy to the same extent as the U.S. is being asked (and FormerPOTUS signed us up for.)
Posted by: johngalt at June 2, 2017 10:55 AMJune 1, 2017
Quote of the Day
And so President Obama came home from the Paris meetings to the acclaim of all the right people. He alone had made the responsible choice on behalf of the entire country: every business, every worker, every consumer, every single person living within these borders who uses some measure of this thing we call energy. He would be our master and commander, ruling on our behalf, fresh off cocktail parties in Paris where the best and brightest -- armed with briefcases full of government-funded science -- decided to give the Industrial Revolution its final comeuppance. -- Jeffrey Tucker @ FEE
May 30, 2017
Quote of the Day
Mr. Trump should decline [signing on to the Paris climate accord] if he wants to fulfill his campaign promises to lift the U.S. economy. Mrs. Merkel's embrace of green-energy dogmas has done enormous harm to the German economy. She reacted to the Fukushima meltdown by phasing out nuclear power, and her government has force-fed hundreds of billions of dollars into solar and wind power that have raised energy costs. As Der Spiegel once put it, electricity is now a "luxury good" in Germany. -- WSJ Ed Page
It would seem that WSJ joining the ranks of climate "deniers" is big news. Don't they understand that "climate change is undeniable?" And "climate action is unstoppable?"
When did Breitbart acquire the WSJ?
Posted by: johngalt at May 31, 2017 6:24 PMAt the risk of missing a touch of sarcasm, I'd point out that the WSJ News Pages are most certainly all-in for the risks of man-made climate change. The Editorial board, however, deserves awards for decades of reasonable skepticism. They've published a gooberload of guest editorials from Richard Lindzen of MIT, John Christy of UAH, and Bjorn Lomborg.
Posted by: jk at June 1, 2017 2:49 PMFair enough. And I willfully conjoined the two wings of that newsprint bird-of-prey. And they earn this disapprobation from me for being tools of the pre-Trump status quo once referred to as "RINO" or "Establishment." That they, and even the likes of Mitch McConnell, now endorse exiting the deal is evidence, to me at least, of their redeemability.
Posted by: johngalt at June 1, 2017 3:27 PMBut it's not a function of time. I assure you you will find consistent and stern opposition to the Paris Agreement. The differences I see between you and the Ed Page are issue by issue, not last administration versus this.
On a lighter note, I was thinking about prey-bird-wings today -- which I fairly-or-not ascribe to you and Mr. Pat Buchannan. My own biological brother was passionately commenting on an "Anonymous" meme with Guy Fawkes and "both parties are bought by the same Corporations" yadda-yadda. It was "a lie, repeated so often that it is thought true" and "the reason we got Trump."
Pragmatism -- maybe we are related after all.
Posted by: jk at June 1, 2017 3:42 PMMay 22, 2017
Otequay of the Ayday
"If you choose the path of terror your life will be empty, your life will be short, and your soul will be condemned."
President Donald Trump in Saudi Arabia
I didn't get to read or listen to the whole speech, but I'd say it was as nuanced... as Gen'l Patton. Hear hear!
Posted by: nanobrewer at May 23, 2017 11:57 PMThis was one of the important reasons I supported Trump for President - because he would identify Islamism as immoral, since it violates the individual human right to life.
It's interesting that you judge it as not being nuanced. As I heard and read various parts of it I concluded that he was essentially stating what was known as, for a fleeting moment, the "Bush Doctrine." But using more words and making it impossible to dismiss as "Islamo-phobic."
Ponder that, blog brothers and sisters - President Donald Trump's anti-terror policy is a nuanced version of Dubya's. Who'd a thunk?
Posted by: johngalt at May 25, 2017 5:07 PMMay 19, 2017
Quote of the Day
Pope Francis isn't known as someone who holds back in the face of what he regards as gross injustices. On issues like refugees, immigration, poverty and the environment, Francis speaks forcibly and uses vivid language in doing so.Yet despite the daily violence being inflicted on protestors in Venezuela, a steadily increasing death-toll, an explosion of crime, rampant corruption, galloping inflation, the naked politicization of the judiciary, and the disappearance of basic food and medical supplies, the first Latin American pope's comments about the crisis tearing apart an overwhelming Catholic Latin American country have been curiously restrained. -- Ryan McMaken @ Mises Institute: Why the Left Refuses to Talk About Venezuela
May 12, 2017
Quote of the Day
I've lived in the Washington area since 1993, other than those years in Turkey. The subway/light-rail Metro system used to be the one smooth-running feature of an otherwise dysfunctional city. Well, now the mayor no longer uses crack (as far as we know), real estate is way more expensive, and the restaurants are better, but the Metro is perpetually delayed and unreliable. -- Jim Geraghty
April 28, 2017
All Hail Jonah
There's nothing wrong with a newly elected president trying to translate his mandate into legislation or otherwise spending his political capital when it’s at its highest. Nevertheless, there is an unpleasant cult of action implicit in the First 100 Days that I've never liked. After all, that was why FDR proposed it in the first place. He wanted to tell everyone to back off and let him have a free hand in his "bold, persistent experimentation." That's not really how our system is supposed to work. Presidents shouldn't be able to say, "Hold my beer while I fundamentally transform America on my own." -- Jonah GoldbergUPDATE: Honorable mention:
In short, he's doing better than I thought he would. But this is a remarkably low bar. It's not quite like saying that Greta is the "sexiest East German weightlifter alive" or "this is the most exciting show on C-SPAN" but it's not that far off. Still, I hope there are many more pleasant surprises in the days to come. We only have one president at a time, and so there's really no choice but to hope he continues to learn on the job and that his team of Sherpas can help him with the climb.Can't argue with a word of that.
UPDATE: link
April 26, 2017
Quote of the Day
Mr. Perez of course is all about 2018. And if he wants his party to get back in power perhaps he could seek advice from Bernie Sanders on adopting more moderate views. -- James Freeman (all hail!)
April 25, 2017
Quote of the Day
Immigration restrictions also threaten the liberty and property rights of Americans. Most obviously, they curtail American citizens' freedom to associate with immigrants. Jim Crow segregation laws restricted the freedom of association of whites as well as African-Americans. Similarly, immigration restrictions curtail the freedom of natives as well as immigrants. In both cases, laws that classify people based on conditions of birth dictate where they are allowed to live and work and who they can interact with... -- Ilya Somin
Woo hoo, no more visas!
Posted by: johngalt at April 25, 2017 6:59 PMQuote of the Day
Just how harmful is ill-informed talking-head blather on television? I can't help but wonder if it adds to public skepticism and distrust of "elites" or scoffing about "so-called experts." Of course, actual experts are indeed actual experts. But our country has a lot of people who aren't experts, but who play them on TV. -- Jim Geraghty [subscribe]
April 19, 2017
Quote of the Day
Now that tax day has passed, I must thank you, my fellow federal taxpayers. You all are the wind beneath my solar panels.Pardon me for mixing energy metaphors, but it's only appropriate that I express appreciation for the generous subsidy you provided for the 28-panel, four-array, 8,540-watt photovoltaic system I installed on my metal roof last year. Thanks to the investment tax credit, I slashed my 2016 federal tax bill by $7,758. -- Robert Bryce [WSJ Guest Editorial] [Review Corner]
April 17, 2017
Quote of the Day
And Mr. Perez is backing up his radical rhetoric by touring with Sen. Sanders, an avowed socialist who seems to be finding a permanent home in the Democratic Party--at least when he's not staying in one of his other homes. -- James Freeman BOTW
Otequay of the Ayday
An extended QOTD today.
"Washington is built to destroy Republican presidents and right now the road to victory runs right through Steve Bannon's office.Giving him up won't change the hostility to the president. It won't make the forces arrayed against him suddenly support enforcement of immigration laws or an America First national security policy. It won't make them give up on crony capitalism or the administrative state. And Jared and Ivanka won't get the Camelot coverage they're being promised.
And those making the promises? Their lips drip honey and their speech is smoother than oil, but in the end they are bitter as wormwood and their path leads to destruction. The more likely scenario is that if those calling for Bannon's head get it they will target the Kushners next. That's because the battle isn't Bannon v. Kushner as some in the press would have us believe, it's Washington v. Trump."
-Chris Buskirk at American Greatness.
I guess we'll have to rely on the President's deep devotion to his foundational principles, then.
But seriously, folks, I think he has lost on both sides of this. Bringing him in, he was exposed to harsh criticism from moderates. Now, throwing him under the bus, he's alienating both true believers and loyalists.
Did you see "Our Margaret's" rather kind take? Does Steve Bannon Have Something to Offer?
Posted by: jk at April 17, 2017 5:54 PMMarch 24, 2017
Quote of the Day
To be clear, your humble correspondent would be happy if the House Freedom Caucus were in charge of writing the repeal-and-replace bill. But its members have now been handed a final offer from a president who can believably present himself as uninterested in the details of health care policy. Even his most angry critics in the media would likely concede that he has credibility when he says he doesn't feel like spending any more time discussing mandated health benefits. -- James Freeman
March 22, 2017
Otequay of the Ayday
The Free Speech Movement, led by a fiery Italian-American, Mario Savio, erupted at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964, the year I entered college. It was a cardinal moment for my generation. The anti-establishment stance of the Free Speech Movement represented the authentic populist revolution of the 1960s, which resisted encroachments of authority by a repressive elite. How is it possible that today's academic Left has supported rather than protested campus speech codes as well as the grotesque surveillance and over-regulation of student life? American colleges have abandoned their educational mission and become government colonies, ruled by officious bureaucrats enforcing federal dictates. This despotic imperialism has no place in a modern democracy. An enlightened feminism, animated by a courageous code of personal responsibility, can only be built upon a wary alliance of strong women and strong men.
-Camile Paglia in 'Women Aren't Free Until Speech Is'
Loves me some Camille Paglia
Posted by: jk at March 22, 2017 3:43 PMMe too. I'll check out the Tyler Cowen interview soon. Meanwhile, if you click through my link and read her short piece on free speech you'll find this other notable quote:
"We are plunged once again into an ethical chaos where intolerance masquerades as tolerance and where individual liberty is crushed by the tyranny of the group.The premier principles of my new book, Free Women, Free Men, are free thought and free speech—open, mobile, and unconstrained by either liberal or conservative ideology."
My mental working title for the post was "Camile Paglia - Objectivist." An obvious overgeneralization, but the parallel to Rand's two "mystics" are inescapable: Conservative ideology being the Mystics of Spirit and liberal ideology being the Mystics of Muscle.
Posted by: johngalt at March 22, 2017 4:55 PMAn Objectivist Theology Professor. I can sell that.
Posted by: jk at March 22, 2017 6:51 PMHeh™: Insty links to the same piece with the comment "I mean, if women were free, who would listen to feminists?"
Posted by: jk at March 23, 2017 10:31 AMTheology professor? Paglia? non! Art and literature.
Posted by: johngalt at March 24, 2017 4:32 PMCorrected I stand. I misremembered that false factoid from her dust-up with the Dawkins-Hitchens wing.
Posted by: jk at March 27, 2017 9:54 AMMarch 16, 2017
Quote of the Day
Americans' voluntary contributions to arts organizations ("arts/culture/humanities" institutions reaped $17 billion in 2015) dwarf the NEA's subventions, which would be replaced if those who actually use the organizations -- many of them supported by state- and local-government arts councils -- are as enthusiastic about them as they claim to be. The idea that the arts will wither away if the NEA goes away is risible. Distilled to its essence, the argument for the NEA is: Art is a Good Thing, therefore a government subsidy for it is a Good Deed. To appreciate the non sequitur, substitute "macaroni and cheese" for "art."-- George Will
You mean, a fundamental human right, like Big Bird?
Hey if art is a fundamental human right, I'm pretty sure my vaulting is an art. And there's a beautiful Oldenburg yearling colt up in Canada and hes only 11K. Pretty sure we NEED that colt. :-)
Posted by: dagny at March 17, 2017 3:47 PMHeh, and four or five more like him no doubt.
Need.
"Need" is much different in the eye of the holder than the eye of the want-er.
Posted by: johngalt at March 17, 2017 3:50 PMI found an article that found the salaries of the NPR folks we're so used to hearing (even me, who stopped listening to NPR ages ago).
Steve Inskeep: $355k base
Michelle Norris: $265k
Robert Siegel: $322 in 2010-2011.
Cry me a river over budget cuts, just don't get the shoes wet! I'll post that to FB when their "number" hits the news which will be no-doubt faithfully parroted by my liberal friends.
Posted by: nanobrewer at March 17, 2017 4:39 PMSeriously? Those are like POTUS level salaries. (Or mayors of small California towns.) What gives?
Posted by: johngalt at March 18, 2017 5:22 PMFebruary 15, 2017
Quote of the Day
My colleague David French makes the case that former general and CIA director David Petraeus should not replace Michael Flynn or return to government at all.He doesn't cite the fact that Petraeus's musical favorites include Loreena McKennitt, Enya, and Sarah McLachlan. Because those tastes don't make him wimpy. They make Loreena McKennitt, Enya, and Sarah McLachlan badass. -- Jim Geraghty [subscribe]
February 14, 2017
Quote of the Day
Competence is not a requirement. One small example from the Education Department: a just-released federal analysis of a signature Obama initiative to improve failing public schools reports almost zero gain from the $7 billion spent. Yet we're to believe that Mrs. DeVos is the unqualified one here? -- Bill McGurn WSJ Ed Page
Or that the exact date, post election, on which General Flynn had a phone call with the Russian is a matter of such national security importance as to warrant an Independent Counsel investigation.
Posted by: johngalt at February 15, 2017 3:45 PMFebruary 13, 2017
QotD
I seem to have little time these days for real readin' & writin'... got this thru FB of all places!
the opposition [to DeVos] basically reflected the present Democratic Party at its worst: unstinting in defense of bureaucracy and its employees, more excited about causes dear to the upper middle class than the interests of the poor, and always girding for the battle with the Real Enemy, religious conservatives, no matter what the moment actually demands.
The real kicker... the source is the NYT!
(hat tip to: Friends of Best of the Web group on FB)
February 7, 2017
Otequay of the Ayday
Public education edition:
In some ways, DeVos' appointment is more important than even that of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.Arguably, by freeing the public schools and pushing educational decision-making away from the nation's capital and the union halls and down to the district and parental level, she could have a much bigger potential social and cultural impact than almost anything one person on the high court might do.
This is especially true for poor and minority kids, who stand the most to gain from school choice. Those poor and minority kids are now tied to union-run, failed inner-city schools. Imagine the possibilities if, for the first time, they and their parents can choose success instead of failure. That's a revolution.
Economist Thomas Sowell on Tuesday called DeVos' nomination and the coming education battle an "opportunity ... that may not come again in this generation." He's exactly right.
Well, jg has his IBD, and I have my Denver Post??? Whaaaaa?
For more than 20 years DeVos has pushed for greater choice in education, including public charter schools and vouchers for private schools, and for more accountability. Colorado of course has been a leader in charter school development for two decades, with more than 12 percent of students now attending such schools. In Denver, some charters boast among the best records in the state at elevating test scores of impoverished students.Posted by: Jk at February 8, 2017 3:08 AM
It will be good to have such a forceful advocate for charters -- her husband actually founded one -- leading the Education Department.
Well, blow me down! DP Editorial Board supports her, and a reform agenda: sell the stocks, Martha!!
Posted by: nanobrewer at February 8, 2017 8:53 AMIndeed -- they weaseled it up a bit, but I am impressed.
Posted by: jk at February 8, 2017 10:45 AMQOTD
PM Theresa May delivers a smackdown on the ever odious Jeremy Corbyn (English for Harry Reid):
That's what Labour has to offer this country. Less protection for British citizens, less prosperous, less safe.
He can lead a protest. I'm leading a country.
February 4, 2017
QotD? VOte for the best!
First, the serious stuff:
This escalation of {eastern Ukraine} violence must stop. - UN Ambassador Nikki Haley
Instead of being thankful to the United States for these agreements, Iran is now feeling emboldened. As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice.- National Security Advisor Michael Flynn (OK, this is 2 days old)
OZ Professor Steve Kates (real Australian)
That Trump now thinks of [Aussie PM] Malcolm as a flea-weight no-account fool only means he has the same assessment of the PM as the rest of us.
Now for some fun: the fake newschnado, the best part of Trumpism, IMO, is a gift that is cranking out the humor ...some the best kind, right from the unwashed mouths of us plebes on main street.
From the comments page at PL (various threads):
{seeing Schumer's tearful laments} Winning is such fun. I had forgotten how much fun it can be.
[Robert] Reich is schilling for the fourth Reich
they haven't been the "mainstream media" for a long time. They are the Fake News Media, or the Walking Dead Media might even be more accurate.
I'm just warming up,
Utah’s venerable Orrin Hatch engineered a rule change to overcome the Democrats’ [no show] maneuver in his committee. He even provided the quote of the week in response to the FOX News anchor who asked him what the Democrats’ temporary disappearance says. Senator Hatch drily commented:
“It says they’re a bunch of juvenile idiots is what it says.”
But I think this one may get the prize; Paul Mirengoff takes a break from scoffing at Trump to look east:
From a PL article on the screwy twists taking place with a new 3rd party candidate Emmanuel Macron joining the fray for France:
I guess he wants to make France great again. It’s been a while.
The Aussie professor gets my vote for number 1 QOTD. "...flea-weight no-account fool..."
We could benefit from such erudite ad hominem in this hemisphere as well. It would be an improvement in civility.
Posted by: johngalt at February 6, 2017 5:35 PMFebruary 1, 2017
Otequay of the Ayday
Blog brother jk has the Wall Street Journal. I have Investors Business Daily:
Even Trump's executive order on visas and refugees is far from an overreach. At its core, it temporarily halts - it does not ban - travel from seven countries identified in a 2015 law as highly terror prone. The reason is to give relevant agencies 90 days to make sure policies in place are effective at keeping terrorists out. His decision to halt refugees from Syria is right in line with previous presidential limits on refugees imposed in the name of national security.We are hardly advocating that Trump follow in Obama's footsteps. We vigorously opposed Obama's executive overreach and will do the same if Trump tries to exceed the limits to his authority. The Constitution's divisions of power are there for a reason.
But it has been amusing to watch Democrats and the media - who encouraged Obama's overreaches - lose their minds over the prospect of Obama's pen and phone in Trump's hand.
January 26, 2017
Quote of the Day
The United States has the best public schools in the world. The top public high schools send nearly all their graduates on to college, and many to the most selective colleges. Faculty and parents are dedicated to the educational task, and most students graduate with college credit already in hand. The quality of these schools supports high housing prices within the district, generating property-tax revenues to fund the schools. Even a whiff of weak school performance will draw the ire not only of parents but of every homeowner with something to lose. It's a positive feedback loop.We also have the worst public schools in the developed world. In 1,200 American high schools, a third or more of the students don't graduate. In 2013, 66 percent of U.S. fourth graders and 64 percent of eighth graders could not read at their grade level, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) reading test. In 2013 the United States spent more per student than all OECD countries except Austria, Luxembourg, Norway, and Switzerland -- yet our educational outcomes have hovered around 20th place among OECD's 34 (now 35) nations. Our worst high schools are essentially prisons with poor security and lots of overhead. -- Dan Currell National Review
I haven't read the linked article yet but I wonder if we can see a Venn diagram of the best/worst schools overlaying Republican/Democrat mayors and city councils?
Usually these things are correlated with median income levels, but I see that as another symptom of the same cause - bad government.
Posted by: johngalt at January 26, 2017 4:21 PMNo doubt you're correct. The affluent in the areas dominated by bad schools can buy their way into tony private schools.
What fries my rice is that this is the root cause of inequality. All the same people who wish to "fix" inequality with hyper-progressive taxation represent a good Venn-match with the people protesting Sec.-nominee Betsy DeVos's rescuing the poor kids in the second paragraph.
Posted by: jk at January 26, 2017 5:03 PMJanuary 22, 2017
QOTD
Terrific!
I’m a libertarian. I’ve been surrounded by people who don’t agree with me for as long as I can remember and it has never occurred to me to isolate myself from everyone because of our political differences. Certainly not to assault them. Nor am I filled with anxiety by the thought that people who work in my home might have different political views than mine. To me, you’re all a bunch of fascists. But I’ve somehow learned to live with you.
watching people unravel over this election has been instructive. The - yes, I’m going to say it - bigotry of many on the left, in their caricaturing of Trump supporters, has never before been so blatant. Nor has the jaw-dropping, mass-hypnosis level of selective partisan-driven outrage. I understand that a lot of people are worried, upset, even frightened over the prospect of a Trump presidency. Good. They should be. But they should have been worried eight years ago, or at the very least, four years ago.
He goes on to mark the low points of the last 8 years, especially the end of the 4th Ammendment
Did I mention he - and all future presidents - now has the legal right to kill anyone on the planet, including American citizens, with no conviction, no charges, no semblance of due process at all. Did I mention that?- Bretigne Shaffer
I tripped over that somewhere as well -- cannot remember where. Thanks for posting.
I have vowed not to question my pussy-hatted friends about their big march yesterday. It brought them much joy. But, high on the list of "**** I don't understand" is "...and everything was just fine for you until 1/20/2017?"
Posted by: jk at January 22, 2017 1:12 PMJanuary 20, 2017
Otequay of the Ayday - Presidential Inaugural Edition
We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world, but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example. We will shine for everyone to follow. We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones, and unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth. At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other. When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice. - President Trump's Inaugural Address
Here's my money quote:
Today's ceremony, however, has very special meaning. Because today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another, or from one party to another -- but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American People.Posted by: nanobrewer at January 21, 2017 12:11 AM
Anybody know how long it was? I'd like to compare it to Obam-UH's inaugural. I did verify this: he said "I" only thrice.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/20/politics/trump-inaugural-address/index.html
Posted by: nanobrewer at January 21, 2017 12:14 AMI heard it timed at twenty minutes, then later someone said it was only sixteen.
You're right to point out that he said "I" only three times. He said "we" however, 45 times.
I find this particularly significant because commentator Mara Liasson, on NPR before the speech, suggested that we listen for this detail because Trump was all about "I" during the campaign. She probably heard me yelling at her through the radio, "Did you ever notice how much the sitting president talks about himself? The Narcissist in Chief?"
Posted by: johngalt at January 21, 2017 12:07 PMJanuary 17, 2017
Quote of the Day
ADDENDA: You might think the Clintons would keep the Clinton Global Initiative going for another year, just to dispel the perception that it was a backdoor way for wealthy foreign citizens and foreign governments to buy access and goodwill. You would be wrong. -- Jim Geraghty
My dad made another observation: Closing the foundation allows any and all records to be destroyed - something that the New York State Attorney General has loudly and publicly prevented in the case of the Trump Foundation.
Posted by: johngalt at January 17, 2017 2:25 PMSuddenly, nobody cares about AIDS, or children's education, or Haiti, or earthquake relief. What was it James Carville shouted "People are going to die!"
Shame the Clintons will allow all this heartache and misery to proceed unabated because she lost a silly election.
Posted by: jk at January 17, 2017 4:04 PMJanuary 16, 2017
Otequay of the Ayday
Look, I don't care if the Trump fan-bots rail against me, Trump is an unreliable chap, to put it mildly. He doesn't know what he doesn't know and he throws away his promises too easily and a lot of his instincts are leftist in the worst way. Everything he's done so far could be scuttled on the rock of his personality.But that hasn't happened yet and every day is another day. And today, after eight years of a dishonest, undemocratic, anti-American scold in the White House, I am feeling gleeful. Almost pretty. Okay, gleeful.
Andrew Klavan - 'My Strange Trumpian Glee'
Quote of the Day
Meanwhile, in a nine-page questionnaire to Ben Carson, who is being sent to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Elizabeth Warren wanted to learn what the doctor thought about "C0 2 and other greenhouse gas emissions," because extreme weather like flooding poses "a significant risk to public housing.""What other actions will you take to adapt to or prevent climate change while you are HUD Secretary?" Ms. Warren wondered. Maybe Dr. Carson's tenure will be the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and the planet began to heal. -- WSJ Ed Page
I thought that moment had already, famously, occurred - in 1998.
Posted by: johngalt at January 16, 2017 4:04 PMAnd as President Obama leaves office, the crises of extreme weather and sea level rise are also well under control.
Posted by: johngalt at January 16, 2017 4:06 PMJanuary 11, 2017
Quote of the Day
Well, yes, celebrities are stupid about policy, often breathtakingly so. On the other hand, so is everyone else. You want to hear some really stupid ideas about policy? Grab a group of whip-smart financial wizards, or neurosurgeons, or nuclear physicists, and sit them down for a nice dinner to debate some policy outside their profession. You will find that they are pretty much just as stupid as anyone else, because policy is not about smart. I mean, smart helps. But policy is fundamentally about domain knowledge, and that knowledge is acquired only by spending a great deal of time thinking about a pretty small set of problems. Funnily enough, this is also how one gets good at finance, or neurosurgery, or nuclear physics. -- Megan McArdle
January 5, 2017
Quote of the Day
Part of a superb explanation of the WSJ Editor's comments on Trump which launched a thousand memes...
Immediately, my remarks were followed by another fit of Trump-induced pearl-clutching among the journalistic elite. Dan Rather, a former television newsman of some renown, weighed in to call the remarks "deeply disturbing." I will confess to feeling a little burst of pride at being instructed in reporting ethics by Mr. Rather. It feels a little like being lectured on the virtues of abstinence by Keith Richards. -- Gerard Baker
January 4, 2017
Quote of the Day
It is growth from exchange-tested betterment, not compelled or voluntary charity, that solves the problem of poverty. ...Which do we want, a small one-time (though envy-and-anger-satisfying) extraction from the rich, or a free society of betterment, one that lifts up the poor by gigantic amounts? We had better focus directly on the equality that we actually want and can achieve, which is equality of social dignity and equality before the law. Liberal equality, as against the socialist equality of enforced redistribution, eliminates the worst of poverty. ...To borrow from the heroes of my youth, Marx and Engels: Working people of all countries unite! You have nothing to lose but stagnation! Demand exchange-tested betterment in a liberal society. Some dare call it capitalism. -- Deirdre McCloskeyVia an excellent FEE post from Dan Mitchell
And some dare say that extraction from the rich is more fair.
Posted by: johngalt at January 4, 2017 12:18 PMDecember 24, 2016
Quote of the Day
Renowned for his optimism! I hope you're right, Larry.
Hard-nosed investment manager Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates and a non-political guy, expects the Trump years to be as transformational as the Reagan-Thatcher years. Mr. Dalio says the Trump era could "ignite animal spirits" and "shift the environment from one that makes profit-makers villains with limited power to one that makes them heroes with significant power." -- Larry Kudlow
I have seen glimpses of businessman bravado, like this one, that make me wish to predict, in all seriousness, that this will be the Atlas Shrugged presidency.
Don't make me eat those words, Donald.
Posted by: johngalt at December 26, 2016 1:11 PMNovember 22, 2016
Otequay of the Ayday
While I do not think we should legitimize the remarkable fear those on the Left profess, I do suppose I can understand why they are afraid. In a way, it is even rational. The Left expects the Right to do to them what the Left's political philosophy would demand the Left do to the Right: hunt down any dissenting voices and silence or hurt them.
David Danford in The Federalist - Here's Why Progressives Lose Their Minds When They Lose Elections
They do not understand the Right's view of government and what the founders of America had in mind. The founders understood that government could only provide limited justice. This could then be used to enable the individual pursuit of happiness in a free country. As Washington put it, the object of our politics is "the benign influence of the good laws of a free government."In other words, the goal is to make the rule of law and the power of government as gentle and as unobtrusive as possible. Errors in politics, then, are deviations from being benign and are themselves fairly harmless. If the system of government you live under is limited, then you can take a breath when things do not go your way and continue to have a conversation and hope that next time you might win.
The end of all of this is to say that what you are seeing is the logical result of incoherent, utopian progressive political thought. Our society is full of those confused about the purpose of American government, and something changed with this election.
Before, there were two conceptions of justice competing under the surface, but only one knew that it had to destroy the other. Now, the other one has realized it has to fight to exist, and fighting it is. Until one wins out, this war of ideas will continue, the Left will embrace hysterics, and political correctness will reemerge.
August 31, 2016
Quote of the Day
The West now has a comparable chasm between daily life and the media, but it goes in the opposite direction. Daily life is wonderful: Unless you actively hunt for outliers, you're surrounded by well-fed, healthy, safe, comfortable people enjoying a cornucopia of amusement. The media, however, uses the vastness of the world to show us non-stop terror, hate, fear, brutality, and poverty -- not just in the Third World, but right here at home. -- Bryan Caplan, Animal Farm in Reverse
July 28, 2016
Otequay of the Ayday
For Americans to think that it is progress to move from the Founders' revolutionary achievement - a nation of free citizens, endowed with natural rights, living under laws that they themselves have made, pursuing their own vision of happiness in their own way and free to develop as fully as they can whatever talent or genius lies within them - to a regime in which individuals derive such rights as they have from a government superior to them is contemptible. How is a return to subjection an advance on freedom?
Myron Magnet in 'Why are Voters So Angry?' that nb linked yesterday.
July 7, 2016
Quote of the Day
Why do we stand for this?Comey has argued that somehow there is such a legal chasm between extreme recklessness and gross negligence that the feds cannot bridge it. That is not an argument for him to make. That is for a jury to decide after a judge instructs the jury about what Comey fails to understand: There is not a dime's worth of difference between these two standards. Extreme recklessness is gross negligence. -- Andrew Napolitano
Comey tried to make the case today that the Federal statute lacks a mens rea standard, and is therefore invalid, in his opinion. I must have missed the part after that where he said that he'd immediately be filing papers to undo the prosecution of the Kristian Saucier.
What he did - or attempted to do - is prosecutorial nullification. He disagreed with the standard of the black letter of the law, so he chose to substitute his own sensibilities in its place. If that were his consistent practice in cases that didn't involve a defendant named Clinton, it would be believable. Pathetic, but believable.
I'm guessing that his real motivation was to not commit suicide or have some amazing tragedy not befall him or his loved ones before the end of the week.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at July 7, 2016 2:08 PMUh huh. Vince Foster could not be reached for comment.
Posted by: jk at July 7, 2016 4:50 PMignorantia legis neminem excusat
The rationale of the doctrine is that if ignorance were an excuse, a person charged with criminal offenses or a subject of a civil lawsuit would merely claim that he or she is unaware of the law in question to avoid liability, even if that person really does know what the law in question is.
Or, compel some third party to so claim on her behalf.
It does seem that, like her husband, Hillary should have been tried and found guilty and then, perhaps, only been nominally sentenced:
In the criminal law, although ignorance may not clear a defendant of guilt, it can be a consideration in sentencing, particularly where the law is unclear or the defendant sought advice from law enforcement or regulatory officials.
And of more general philosophical interest, to me at least:
"There is a true law, right reason, agreeable to nature, known to all men, constant and eternal, which calls to duty by its precepts, deters from evil by its prohibition. This law cannot be departed from without guilt. Nor is there one law at Rome and another at Athens, one thing now and another afterward; but the same law, unchanging and eternal, binds all races of man and all times."-Cicero, 'De republica'
But nobody studies or reads the classics any more. How many millenials do you suppose have even heard the name "Cicero?"
Posted by: johngalt at July 9, 2016 10:47 AMJune 30, 2016
All Hail Harsanyi!
Moreover, it's not like [AG Loretta Lynch and President Bill CLinton] randomly bumped into each other at the grocery store or while picking up dry-cleaning. People don’t have a lot of "impromptu meetings" on private jets sitting on the tarmacs at airports. As KNXV ABC 15 television reported, Clinton heard Lynch was en route to that airport, sought her out, and waited there for her arrival. Maybe it was just dumb luck that this happened only a day before the Benghazi Report was released by congress, or a few days after the Associated Press published another 165 pages of e-mails Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent via her unsanctioned and unsecure private e-mail server and did not want anyone to see. Or perhaps, as his wife's stories are becoming increasingly impossible to believe, Bill felt the need to say a few words to the Attorney General overseeing the criminal investigations of his wife? Whatever the case, the appearance of a conflict of interest or loss of impartiality is clearly present. -- David HarsanyiLikely a "whole thing read;" even Democrats noticed.
June 24, 2016
Otequay of the Ayday
In our present climate, it is customary for cosmopolitan sorts to accuse anybody who dissents from the European project of being an unreconstructed "nationalist." Insofar as this describes the dissenters' desire to return power to their own parliament and to ensure that their vote matters as much as it should, it is an accurate term. Outside of that, however, it is a slur, and a damnable one at that. George Orwell contended that the difference between patriotism and nationalism was that patriotism involved "devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people," while nationalism "is inseparable from the desire for power." By this definition at least, Britain's decision to extricate itself from the EU was patriotic, not nationalistic. Indeed, if there is any group within the debate that seeks to impose "a particular way of life . . . on other people," it is the one that wants ever-closer integration into Europe, and, eventually, a federal super-state.
- Charles C.W. Cooke, 'The Brexit Vote Was Just the Beginning.'
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/437082/brexit-uk-eu-referendum-vote-beginning
June 16, 2016
Otequay of the Ayday
In the fantasyland of modern progressive politics, if a boy identifies as a girl, then he's a girl. But if a gay Muslim registered Democrat identifies as a martyr for the Islamic State, he's still a Republican.
The Federalist's Sean Davis - The New York Times Can't Figure Out the Orlando Terrorist's Motive
June 13, 2016
Quote of the Day
Not surprisingly, strong emotional reactions to a recent tragedy exacerbate these and other biases, and make us even less objective in our thinking than we would be otherwise. If your reaction to the Orlando attack is a strong emotional feeling that it reinforces whatever you previously believed about terrorism, radical Islamism, gun control, or immigration, there is a strong chance that you are engaging in confirmation bias rather than objectively considering the evidence. That does not mean your reaction is automatically wrong. But it does mean you should not have too much confidence in its reliability as a guide to policy. -- Ilya SominA-freaking-men.
June 1, 2016
Quote of the Day
This blog's problem? Not enough Lileks lately. Mandatory composting comes to Minneapolis:
Except . . . I don't know what they do with lawn waste. We have new bins now for composting, which suggests the old lawn waste is probably fed to a compactor, turned into incredibly dense cubes, shipped to China and thrown down a bottomless well. I don't know. As for the composting bin, so far we've composted exactly Zero Molecules, because I don't have a bin under the sink to dump my Organics. There isn't any room for the bin. In a recent work meeting when the subject came up, a co-worker said she had a pail on the counter where the organics went, and I was incredulous: you have a bucket of rotten vegetables on your counter?I am from a different country. I'd say different age, but we're contemporaries. I am from the land where the growling grinding teeth in the hole of the sink reduce everything to fluid and hasten it along to the treatment plant, because we are not living in huts on the edge of a field and sharpening sticks in case the sabre-toothed tigers come at night, again. Save the pepper cores! They can be mixed with out filth and heaped around the gourds!
Always thought the future would be a bit more elegant than that.
Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll @ Insty
May 12, 2016
Otequay of the Ayday
If anything, the hypocritical boycotting of Trump by the Ryans, Bushes, and Roves enhances Trump's crossover appeal with independents and working-class Dems. The more that he is hated down at the GOP yacht club, the more he appears as a regular guy in the eyes of voters. Meanwhile, the Tea Party Republicans interpret the boycotting as a sign that Trump is too politically incorrect for the effete GOP elite and cleave to him even more tightly.In the end, such resistance may prove a political boon to Trump and complicate Hillary's customary anti-Republican demagoguery.
- George Neumayr, 'The Narrow Door to the GOP's Big Tent'
May 8, 2016
Quote of the Day
Or consider it a partial Review Corner. Deirdre McCloskey has closed her trilogy with an (750 page) exclamation point. It is too good to read quickly and far too important and comprehensive to summarize. I'll share some quotes along the way and some effusive, fatuous praise at the end. This section compares Adam Smith, Jane Austen, and Benjamin Franklin.
In Smith's time, and now again in the regulatory state, few believed that a masterless society would be possible. The haunting fear by governing elites supported by worried citizens stirred up by an antitrade clerisy was then, as it still is, that ordinary people will do bad things if left alone. Unless overawed by the threat of state violence in police or planning or regulation, ordinary people, especially the lower classes, will spurn priests, stop paying their rents and taxes, not save enough for old age, kill each other, not buy enough insurance, speak against the government, appear with hair uncovered, refuse military service, drink to excess, commit unnatural acts, use naughty words, chew gum, smoke marihuana--committing in sum, as Bill Murray put it in Ghost Busters, "human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria." -- Deirdre McCloskey
May 6, 2016
Quote of the Day
Trigger warning: Watching an ’85 K-Car screeching through slalom cones and looking like it could tip at any moment is not for the faint of heart.-- Ed Driscoll
Quote of the Day
Maybe it should be a verb: To be Guccifered. Though maybe, in Hillary Clinton's case, it would be better phrased as a crime. As in: "They got her on a Guccifer." -- Kim Strasel
I'm wondering if Guccifer would be found in my Roget's, as a synonym for "petard."
Posted by: Keith Arnold at May 6, 2016 12:33 PMMay 4, 2016
Otequay of the Ayday
Trump proved that many of the party's moderates and establishmentarians hate the thought of a True Conservative nominee even more than they fear handing the nomination to a proto-fascist grotesque with zero political experience and poor impulse control. That goes for the prominent politicians who refused to endorse Cruz, the prominent donors who sat on their hands once the field narrowed and all the moderate-Republican voters in blue states who turned out to be #NeverCruz first and #NeverTrump less so or even not at all. -Ross Douthat
April 19, 2016
Quote of the Day
Humans have been using euphemisms ever since Adam first "knew" Eve. -- David Harsanyi
Are you sure this isn't it? LOL Thanks for the link, Harsanyi is great.
"For most, progressive taxation is imbued with a moral imperative. So when you fail to pay an imaginary tax that doesn't exist but Democrats believe should, you are by default engaged in fraud and immorality. "
Honorable mention, Terri, honorable mention.
I did mean to say that the whole piece was very good. I fear my beloved Harsanyi sometimes writes down to the clickbait Federalist. But this one is completely up to spec.
Posted by: jk at April 19, 2016 1:40 PMApril 15, 2016
Likeability.
Cruz knows he's got a likability problem. He may not be the guy you want to have a beer with but he'll drive you home, he's said in various forms, which is not a terrible line. -- Matthew Cooper, Newsweek
April 14, 2016
Otequay of the Ayday
Mr. Trump's newfound class was on display this week, in reaction to Saturday's state GOP convention in Colorado. Lacking almost any organization, Team Trump was smoked. Sen. Ted Cruz took all 34 delegates. In response, Mr. Trump tweeted, "The people of Colorado had their vote taken away from them" and warned, "This will not be allowed!"
Actually, it will be. The state Republican executive committee voted unanimously last August to select delegates through a convention, not a primary or caucus. Mr. Trump, running initially as a lark, failed to organize in states like Colorado. Now he demands that the rules be changed because he didn't prepare and lost.
-Karl Rove in Vanity Will Be The Donald's Undoing
April 11, 2016
Quote of the Day
My first reaction to this news was "Um, wut?" CEI has long denied humans' role in global warming, and I have fairly substantial disagreements with CEI on the issue. However, when last I checked, it was not a criminal matter to disagree with me. It's a pity, I grant you, but there it is; the law's the law. -- Megan McArdleMy first reaction was "The Virgin Islands has an Attorney General?"
April 8, 2016
Quote of the Day
All Hail Jonah! You'll have to find it or subscribe to read about VP Biden farting at the arms-control summit...
4. One fun consequence of all this is that Bill very well could turn out to be a liability for Hillary, which would be kind of hilarious given that Hillary would be just another left-wing activist lawyer were it not for her husband. She rode her Arkansas mule all of the way to the White House gates only to see the sign reading, "No Mules Allowed." -- Jonah Goldberg
March 11, 2016
Quote of the day
from Gary Kasparov's article published by The Daily beast (excellent article, but the flash pop-ups are awful) of all places! Of course, the publishers had to splash up a contrary video of voters hemming, hawing and how Iowa Dems were much more socialist.
"It's capitalism that brought billions of people out of poverty in the 20th century. It's socialism that enslaved them and impoverished them. Of course Senator Sanders does not want to turn America into a totalitarian state like the one I grew up in. But it's a valuable example of the inevitable failure of a state-run economy and distribution system. (Check in on Venezuela for a more recent example.) Once you give power to the government it is nearly impossible to get it back, and it will be used in ways you cannot expect."
He notes two other interstings
1. My [FB} post on the nature of socialism was 113 words long, a quick response to critics of a cartoon I had posted ... A week later and it has over 3,000 comments, 57,000 shares, and a 9.3 million reach that is in the category usually reserved for photos of pop stars and kitten videos.and
I often talk about the need to restore a vision of America as a positive force in the world, a force for liberty and peace. The essential complement to this is having big positive dreams at home as well, of restoring America's belief in ambition and risk, of innovation and exploration, of free markets and free people.He's a TS'er... we need to let him know!
"He's a TS'er... we need to let him know!"
Kasparov is definitely one of us. There's something about Russian-born intellectuals (Kasparov, Rand, Sharansky) who've tasted both Russian Communism and western freedom that must foster a real appreciation for the latter. I wonder what causes this.
Off topic, but I've got to ask: Mark Sanchez? Really???
Posted by: Keith Arnold at March 11, 2016 4:34 PMBronco football is NEVER EVER off topic at ThreeSources. That said, I have not heard that one until just now. I was calm and moderately positive to the suggestion of RGIII, Colin Kaepernick, and was even warming to a warmed over Tebow. Sanchez is not "on my color wheel."
Posted by: jk at March 11, 2016 5:08 PMWell, it's a done deal. The trade's been made:
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/14951086/denver-broncos-trade-quarterback-mark-sanchez
Congratulations, brother!
Posted by: Keith Arnold at March 11, 2016 5:17 PMLoved that article, nb, and thrilled that you blogged it. The title is not to be missed, and answers brother keith's pregnant question as well: "Hey Bernie, Don't Lecture Me About Socialism. I Lived Through It." My favorite of Kasparov's lines were these:
My goal was to remind people that Americans talking about socialism in the 21st century was a luxury paid for by the successes of capitalism in the 20th. And that while inequality is a huge problem, the best way to increase everyone's share of pie is to make the pie bigger, not to dismantle the bakery.
As for Mark Sanchez, my thumb points up.
- He is an experienced NFL starter, including six postseason starts, with roughly the same completion percentage as Andrew Luck with a comparable number of attempts.
- Denver does not need a Dan Marino to plug into the proven system that our aging hall of famer leveraged into a career-closing Super Bowl win. We need a game manager who can complete passes (sorry Tim). I think Mark can put up career highs in wins starting for this Broncos team, and even repeat the Super Bowl feat.
- And if you're still not convinced of his value as, at bare minimum, a capable 2nd stringer, word is that the 49ers were interested too. Denver struck first, trading a conditional 2017 7th round pick to get him from the Eagles before he was released.
Posted by: johngalt at March 11, 2016 6:08 PMAnd I read it right here -- ThreeSources, your one-stop shop for sports news and monotonous din of Trump coverage!
Posted by: jk at March 11, 2016 7:14 PMMarch 10, 2016
Otequay of the Ayday
The real mystery isn't why the neocons would return to the Democratic Party if the GOP were to nominate a skeptic of foreign intervention. Given the profound tensions on the right between the statist neoconservatives, and the small-government movement conservatives, the wonder is that they stayed in the GOP so long.If the neoconservatives do bolt the GOP, a new conservative foreign policy might congeal around prudence, self-reliance and restraint. And if the neocons seek to fasten themselves once again to the GOP in four or eight years, after having helped elevate Hillary Clinton to the presidency, no one should be surprised if Republicans aren't anxious to let them back in.
-Cato's Christopher Preble in 'Marco Rubio: The Neocon's Last Stand?'
February 26, 2016
Otequay of the Ayday
Without action, Americans' anger will not subside. Most Americans face a narrower set of options today than in past years, and reforming higher education will help rekindle economic mobility. Entrepreneurs, universities, and other organizations must work to create new lifelong learning opportunities. We need more information on the different links between fields of study, employment earnings and, just as importantly, skills. Most of all, we need public and private leaders who appeal to aspiration rather than anger, and can inspire Americans to a new era of education.
- Ross Baird and Dane Stangler, 'Why Are Americans Angry? Maybe Education's Doing the Opposite of What We Think'
February 22, 2016
Otequay of the Ayday
How many more primaries will it take to get this through our heads? Combine the numbers, and we get significant support for outsider candidates: 67 percent in Iowa (Cruz, Trump, Ben Carson, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina); 54 percent in New Hampshire; and 62 percent in South Carolina.Why then should people compromise and vote for someone who stands athwart that movement? [Rubio] Why not support the candidate [Cruz] who understands that impulse and also has the conservative values and experience to fight the real enemy: the Democratic Party and its goal to dismantle the American Republic?
-D.C. McAllister in Rubio Needs to Move Aside for Cruz, not Vice Versa
We are bound by an imperceptible tie, you and me. Gravitational waves? More like quantum entanglement -- as soon as I come to a position, I usually find you to be full-on against it.
I came to the realization yesterday that I was all in for Senator Rubio. He had a nice interview with Chris Wallace on FOXNews Sunday (To be fair, so did Mr, Trump.)
-- Sen. Rubio is young and likable -- a great contrast to either fossil coming out of the DNC this year.
-- Down deep, I think he has good ideas on immigration. He is sublimating those to get the nomination, but c'est la guerre.
-- His tenure as Florida's Speaker of the House impressed many. I find that better executive qualification than being one of 100 senators.
-- He can play in the establishment pool, but -- and I am sorry short memory folks -- he was a new wave Tea Party candidate in 2010 against Gov. Crist.
He has attracted endorsements from Republicans I do like, including Rep. Trey Gowdy, Gov. Nikki Haley, and Sen. Jeff Flake. A Facebook post in a group said "Trey Gowdy is dead to me now!" Gotta love that unity. But that's a good and diverse group.
Posted by: jk at February 22, 2016 3:48 PM
And despite endorsements from South Carolina's governor, Senator and most popular Congressman, Rubio could only tie for second place.
Posted by: johngalt at February 23, 2016 12:49 PMRE: "Fossils."
"I promise not to make my opponent's youth and inexperience an issue in this campaign. - R. Reagan"
Posted by: johngalt at February 23, 2016 12:53 PMFebruary 1, 2016
Quote of the Day
"The current administration has resurrected Nixon's weaponization of the bureaucracies against its opponents," says [Senator Ben] Sasse. "And I don't have great hope that a guy who brags, 'If someone screws you, screw them back,' is going to return to the rule of law." -- Kim Strassel
I hear they have closed the gun show Google loophole that allows non-subscribers to read WSJ, but this is a section of a serious and damning litany of abuses of government power and litigiousness by Mr. Trump.
UPDATE: An early version misattributed this to James Taranto.ThreeSources regrets the error.
#Like
Thank you, Google loophole!
I particularly like that Sasse issued "a statement announcing that he would campaign with Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and other "constitutional candidates." He's not siding with one candidate or another, just with a particular principle.
Posted by: johngalt at February 1, 2016 5:32 PMJanuary 29, 2016
Quote of the Day
Our Margaret.
Surely it means something that Mr. Obama spent eight years insisting he was not a socialist, and Bernie Sanders is rising while saying he is one. -- Peggy Noonan
January 26, 2016
Otequay of the Day
Once again from Ace of Spades, in the article excerpted heavily in the previous post:
We are Americans, damn it. We are supposed to be unruly. We are supposed to be rebellious.God did not make us to stand patiently in queues and politely clap for our leaders no matter how distant, corrupt, and dismissive.
That's why he made Canadians.
January 25, 2016
Quote of the Day
If Davos and Aspen were states, [Mayor Michael] Bloomberg would easily carry their six electoral votes. -- James Taranto (all hail)
January 24, 2016
Quote of the Day
"Just e-mail it," Clinton snapped, to which Sullivan replied: "Trust me, I share your exasperation. But until ops converts it to the unclassified e-mail system, there is no physical way for me to e-mail it." NY Post
January 22, 2016
Quote of the Day
"I just feel bad for the people who got here at five,"
Trust me. Just this once. Trust me.
Those Damned Speculators!
Daniel Bier @ FEE suggests supply and demand might control oil prices, contra Trump & Sanders:
Fortunately, when he wrote that in 2012, Sen. Bernie Sanders was ahead of the game, having never read anything about supply and demand at all. Unencumbered by basic economics, he was able to see that Big Oil "gouging" and Wall Street "speculators" were to blame.Remarkably, right around the time of the fracking revolution, the price of oil and gas started tumbling. I guess Wall Street's heart grew three sizes that day.
January 21, 2016
Quote of the Day
Just cannot quit SciBabe:
"In the meantime, you are looking for a farmer who raises beef in a way you can support and you have so far visited 14 ranches in the tri-state area. You have burned 476 gallons of gas driving your 17-mpg SUV around to interview farmers but, sadly, have yet to find a ranch where the cattle feed exclusively on organic homegrown kale."
January 20, 2016
Quote of the Day
The lovely bride and I watched Atlas Shrugged Part II last night (she watched Part I while I was workin' for the man). No, they're not cinematographic masterpieces but I'm surprised how derided they are. I still enjoy watching them.
But this is not Review Corner, damnit, this is a blog post! And Holman Jenkins has a brilliant editorial in the WSJ Ed Page today: "Bad Day for the Wal-Mart Americans." Straight out of a Rand novel, Jenkins juxtaposes the greedy progressives in the District of Columbia's insatiable thirst to impede Walmart's business model with the same bloodsuckers' tumult when proposed stores are cancelled.
To the politicians who serve as gatekeepers to opportunity, which first requires erecting obstacles to opportunity, the company has become unfit for citizenship in their republic of rent-seeking. "I'm blood mad," Mayor Muriel E. Bowser told a news conference. "This is devastating and disrespectful to the residents of the East End of the District of Columbia," former Mayor Vincent Gray told the Washington Post.The proverbial Martian would wonder why politicians are surprised by a shortage of jobs for their constituents, when they continually promote policies that drive jobs away.
The whole piece is awesome on stilts.
Nice article. Excellent points on Trump, Cruz, and Obama.
Enjoyed the props for Atlas Shrugged Part II. I like to tell Randians who deride those films, "They are the best film adaptations of Atlas Shrugged ever made."
Posted by: johngalt at January 20, 2016 6:16 PMMy link ("has") was too small, sorry.
Posted by: jk at January 20, 2016 7:15 PMPlease let me try this again.
[Seems if you navigate there from a google search (this link) you get the full "behind the pay wall" version. I thought it was a different link, so I skipped the google search step in my previous attempt.]
Posted by: johngalt at January 20, 2016 7:35 PMThat is an interesting end-around the WSJ firewall... has Google swung another deal like has been alleged in Germany and sweden*?
The best quote is
Donald Trump is not right that our politicians are stupid or incompetent. They are very competent at being politicians.
* [Merkel's Gov't] concluded an agreement with Facebook, Google, and Twitter to censor German “hate speech†about migrants on social media So the next time a "Taharrush gamea" event occurs, the victims will be accused of hate speech unless they blame white men.
Posted by: nanobrewer at January 21, 2016 1:17 PMJanuary 15, 2016
Quote of the Day
Our Margaret. To be fair, I am cherry-picking a great anti-Sec. Clinton quote out of a column which generally celebrates Republican Establishmentarianism. But she can string words together...
Democrats who like her all say the same thing: She's having trouble because she's not really good at campaigning. That's true as far as it goes. She is especially poor at the podium, where, when she wants to emphasize an applause line, her voice becomes loud, flat and harassing to the ear. She lately reminds me of the landlady yelling up the stairs that your kids left their bikes in the hall again. Literally that's how it sounds: "And we won't let them roll back the progress we've made. Your kids left their bikes in the hall." -- Peggy Noonan
January 14, 2016
State of the Presidency
This comment from PowerLine reader deserves a nod for QOTD:
There is no failure so spectacular that Obama would not tout it as a success.
I didn't watch SotU (I don't have TV), but did get some major schadenfreude from the Comments section in the PowerLine article;
I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt2. It was more in touch with reality
The one propaganda tool Obama mastered was to lie with absolute malice.
I complained that I had no cable until I met a man who had no TV...
I watched it and it was truly surreal. Syria was listed as an achievement as was the Iran deal, even though they held ten sailors and two ships of ours as he was taking his victory lap.
Posted by: jk at January 15, 2016 11:09 AMFor me it was a non-stop "are you kidding?" The legitimate explanations for all of his misplaced blame were fairly obvious, to me.
Posted by: johngalt at January 15, 2016 4:57 PMOtequay of the Ayday
Trump supporters apparently don't believe that Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street, or Republican party grandees offer many antidotes to Obamaism. Republicans who play by the Marquess of Queensberry rules don't seem to have the belly to deal with the $10 trillion in additional debt accumulated during the Obama administration; out-of-control entitlement spending; chaos in the Middle East; the empowerment of the Islamic State, Iran, Russia, and China; the deterioration of racial relations; and political correctness gone wild.
Professor VDH is of course correct and I think we have all pretty well admitted to most of that around here.
Where his authority weakens for me is that he is the doyen of intellectual nativists on immigration. It is easy for me to break off with Ann Coulter or Laura Ingraham or Sen. Jeff Sessions (Nat. - AL), but I must admit it gives me pause to think orthogonally from VDH.
Painful, but I do it. When you agree with Trump on immigration, a lot of his other positions are easy to accept or agree with When you start as I do opposite him on immigration only to hear a blanket 45% tariff on all Chinese goods would be swell, it becomes much harder to ignore his dangerous side.
Posted by: jk at January 14, 2016 4:27 PMI believe VDH would be an open borders guy if our current system of government didn't, for example, excuse lawlessness on the part of illegal immigrants simply because they are illegal immigrants. In the rush to grant "sanctuary" from prosecution for immigration lawlessness they gloss over all but the most serious of every other crime.
And VDH sees the effects of this in the Golden State every day.
Before we can "fix our broken immigration system" we must first fix our broken everything else.
Posted by: johngalt at January 14, 2016 6:17 PMI know it is informed by his experiences in Cali -- excuse me, "Mexifornia" -- but I'm going to push back.
Hansen attributes all the problems of progressivism in California to immigrants. His stories are heartbreaking, but California has a governance problem more than an immigration problem. Fix the other things what's busted in the Golden State and immigration will work itself out.
Posted by: jk at January 14, 2016 6:28 PMHmm, I must have read a different article. I didn't see the estimable VDH say much about immigration here (in the past, his most memorable moment was mentioning at least two of his daughters have married into immigrant families from "el sur").
Here, he's mostly noting the power of the Donald, who - in one of his most shiny moments helped the GOP ticket more than all his billions ever could.
In about a day, Trump wrecked Hillary Clinton’s planned “war on women†talking points that had helped to win the election for Obama in 2012.
Agreed in general with JG's comment that "we must first fix our broken everything else" but feel compelled to pose this thought:
Does allowing a continued crush of illegals / faux-amnesters make this problem better or worse? For now, where the beltway is in a crush to route away our money from roads and defense to sensitivity classes for muslims and ESL for those from the south, I can think of no better time to slow down immigration to a trickle. We can always pick it up later.
For those genuinely interested in saving lives of those threatened by nefarious forces, then by any analysis ME Christians (and Yazidiz and Kurds), L.American indigenous types (e.g., Aztecs) and untouchables from the asian continent must be at the front of the line.
Posted by: nanobrewer at January 14, 2016 9:09 PM... and with the recent, high-profile shootings, it is a good time to stop firearm sales. We can always pick them up later.
.. with the recent terror attacks, we should allow unlimited, warrantless wiretaps. We can always restore the Fourth Amendment down the road.
I can continue if you'd like. Policy is good or bad -- fending off opposition with "it's temporary" got us the mohair subsidy in WWI and innumerable "temporary tax increases" ever since.
Professor Hansen wrote an entire book opposing immigration. I don't think I'm pulling a rabbit out a hat. I'm a fan of his and have read dozens of columns of his asking for greater border enforcement.
My comment described a natural alliance between Trump supporters and immigration restrictionists. If you're with him on that it is easier to forgive positions of his with which you disagree. If you're not with him on the beautiful Trump wall of our southern border, it is much harder.
Posted by: jk at January 15, 2016 11:03 AMJanuary 13, 2016
Quote of the Day
He said he wouldn't give a laundry list and instead just sort of dumped laundry on the table. -- Nick Gillespie
January 7, 2016
Quote of the Day
All Hail! James sees a clear path toward Trump vs. Sanders
"Sexual history" and "sex life" are two more for the euphemism file. But maybe this is a shrewd approach for Sanders to take. After all, he's trying to win over supporters of Mrs. Clinton, who are instinctively inclined to defend her. By leaving the attacks to others, he remains an acceptable alternative should they yield to their own misgivings. That means he doesn't control his destiny, but then neither did the Pittsburgh Steelers as of noon Sunday.-- James Taranto
But barring a third-party deus ex machina, a Trump vs. Sanders contest would necessarily elect the “unelectable.†It would be as if Barry Goldwater faced George McGovern in the 1968 election. We have no idea what the result would be, except that it would be impossible.
Did somebody say third party?
Posted by: johngalt at January 7, 2016 6:18 PMIf I can address you and Terri in same comment, my new dream is an 1824, four-way with a GOP nominee (Cruz, Rubio, jeb!), and a disgruntled Trump, and a Democrat (Clinton, Sanders), and Jim Webb. Trump could even be the GOP nominee in this scenario with a more establishment party figure running independent.
It might get settled in the House (like 1820) or somebody might pull of an electoral majority. But it would be a good time.
Posted by: jk at January 7, 2016 6:41 PMMea maxima culpa! An early version of this comment said 1820, the uncontested "Era of Good Feelings" election, rather than the 1824, "Corrupt Bargain and vicious slander of Rachel Jackson" election. Three Sources regrets the error.
Posted by: jk at January 7, 2016 7:17 PMJanuary 6, 2016
Otequay of the Ayday
It is an outrage to claim that Donald Trump's support constitutes mob rule. Trump has not incited violence or any dilution or disrespect for democratic principles, and mob rule has never been described by a serious writer before as being the espousal of uncorrupted capitalism.- Conrad M Black in Trump's Populism Is Not Mob Rule at NRO.
Dan Henninger wrote today that Trump isn't leading in the polls, a popular revolt against 25 years of Political Correctness is leading in the polls. Trump merely happens to be the loudest and most frequent voice for this revolt. Ben Carson was the first, but Trump knows more about marketing.
Last night my heroine told Sean Hannity [4:56] "When I tell voters that it's time, citizens, to take our country back, and a professional politician isn't gonna be able to do it, and a guy who's a celebrity but has no plan isn't gonna do it either, they're listening."
Well, I hope her "plan" includes better marketing for her version of the PC Revolt.
Posted by: johngalt at January 7, 2016 3:24 PM@Terri: I am warming up to The Donald. I shan't say "Can not be tolerated," but I am presently undecided. (Hop up a few posts for my dream four-way race scenario. It nearly destroyed this great nation in 1824, whaddaya say we try it again?)
The question is less "can I vote for Trump?" The question is [melodrama alert!] "do I want to stay with a party that would nominate him?" All my libertarian and public-choice-theorist friends laugh at my quaint belief in advancing liberty through the ballot box and the the GOP. If my party nominates Mister Trump, I do not know if it remains my party.
Posted by: jk at January 7, 2016 6:46 PMBrother jk, I wonder if it might offer you any consolation at all to replace the words "Donald Trump" with "Political Correctness Revolutionary?"
Politics is a strange realm, wherein necessary medicine is often packaged in distasteful vessels.
I found another interesting opinion piece on the present maelstrom. Being better informed on Presidential history, perhaps you'll get more out of it than I did.
Posted by: johngalt at January 7, 2016 7:22 PMGreat article. It happens that I loves me some "Mudcat." He used to be a regular fixture on cable news but I don't think the Democratic party can abide by his existence. I surely feel for the few non-loonies remaining in the party. Hell, on a good day, I might vote for Jim Webb; he was very good in that first debate.
Replacing Trump with an abstract instantiation of his good points? That might work. And it's not like his current principles will last any longer than his old ones.
Posted by: jk at January 7, 2016 7:32 PMSmoot-Hawley rides again.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at January 8, 2016 9:34 AMDecember 23, 2015
Quote of the Day
Cruz opposes legalization of marijuana. I have two teenage daughters. I worry about them. And marijuana is a drug that makes teenage boys drive slow. -- PJ O'Rourke
December 21, 2015
Quote of the Day
What are the motives for violence? ... There are ideologies, such as those of militant religions, nationalism, Nazism, and Communism, that justify vast outlays of violence by a Utopian cost-benefit analysis: If your belief system holds out the hope of a world that will be infinitely good forever, how much violence are you entitled to perpetrate in pursuit of this infinitely perfect world?Well, as much as much as you want, and you're always ahead of the game. The benefits always outweigh the costs.
Moreover, imagine that there are people who hear about your scheme for a perfect world and just don't get with the program. They might oppose you in bringing heaven to Earth. How evil are they? They're the only thing standing in the way of an infinitely good world. Well, you do the math.-- Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature [Review Corner]
A powerful quote on a topic of immense import. It reminds me of these...
"If you want to make an omelet, you've gotta break a few eggs." -Josef Stalin via Walter Duranty
"Boko Haram sincerely believes that girls are better off enslaved than educated." -Ayaan Hirsi Ali
"Recycling and conservation and switching to renewable energy sources must be done at any cost, because it is good for the earth." -Hood Robin
Posted by: johngalt at December 23, 2015 4:07 PM
December 17, 2015
Quote of the Day
By now, illegal immigration is to the GOP what global warming is to the Democrats: the all-purpose bugaboo that is supposed to explain nearly every problem and whose redress must be part of every solution. But immigration policy is not foreign policy, much less a counterterrorism strategy. And there are probably larger pools of would-be jihadists in Montreal and Vancouver than in Monterrey or Veracruz. Shouldn't Mr. Cruz call for a wall from Quebec to British Columbia? -- Bret Stephens WSJ
December 9, 2015
Quote of the Day
To reach this developing world level of CO2 emissions, Mr. Sanders would: impose an unspecified carbon tax; ban all offshore drilling and fossil-fuel leases on federal lands; stop "dirty pipeline" projects; ban natural gas and oil exports; force states to ban fracking; ban mountaintop coal mining; impose a new fuel-efficiency standard of 65 miles per gallon by 2025; spend "massive" federal dollars on subsidies for wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels, home-efficiency programs and energy storage; federally underwrite electric-car charging stations, high-speed passenger and cargo rail, a smart grid, and clean-energy job training; shut down the nuclear industry; and provide "clean energy funding" to the rest of the world.Mr. Sanders doesn't include the cost of all this, for obvious political reasons, yet give him points for honesty. -- WSJ Ed Page
Yes we can!
Really.
President Obama was a piker, with too little imagination.
Posted by: johngalt at December 9, 2015 11:58 AMDecember 3, 2015
Quote of the Day
If you are Mark Zuckerberg and have $45 billion, it is easy to live a lavish lifestyle with only 1% of it.What would be hard--and admirable--would be for Zuckerberg to stand up in a meaningful way for freedom, in any area or every area, particularly for the billions who lack it most.
Imagine if Mark Zuckerberg, in the face of the recent massacre of Parisians by jihadists bent on enslaving the world to Islamic law, condemned jihadism as a threat to freedom and civilization.
Imagine if Mark Zuckerberg, in the face of an ongoing summit in Paris to outlaw the use of the vast majority of affordable, reliable energy, condemned the environmentalist leaders who oppose energy from fossil fuel, nuclear and hydroelectric sources as a threat to freedom and prosperity.
Imagine if Mark Zuckerberg, in the face of his fellow billionaires condescendingly giving the impoverished world handouts instead of support for freedom movements, created an initiative to promote political-economic freedom around the world. -- Alex Epstein
December 2, 2015
Quote of the Day
We, the Students of Hamilton College, demand the end of the inevitable tokenization of all marginalized bodies at Hamilton College. Hamilton College cannot continue to overwhelmingly perpetuate narratives that center whiteness, able-bodied individuals, colonization, heteronormativity, and cisnormativity. The faculty, administration, staff, and student body at Hamilton College almost ubiquitously encompass a single population that continues the exclusion of historically underrepresented communities. -- We the Students of Hamilton College (via PowerLine)Hat-tip: Elizabeth Price Foley @ Insty
November 30, 2015
Quote of the Day
This is insane on both sides. Anti-abortion people who have accused Black Lives Matter of inciting violence against cops (tragically a lot of overlap with these two groups because most people decide their politics based on partisanship, not principles) should consider how they feel being blamed for a murder because of the rhetoric they deploy about an issue they deeply care about and whether that kind of blame makes any more sense when they're on the accusatory and not receiving end of it.Similarly, people sympathetic to Black Lives Matter who have spent this weekend blaming all pro-lifers, or all Christians, or whatever broader cohort, for inciting violence against Planned Parenthood (also, tragically, a lot of overlap) should consider how substantively similar their arguments and attempts to blame an entire political movement for the actions of one murderer are to the arguments anti-Black Lives Matter people use to blame that entire movement for the actions of one murderer. -- Ed Krayewski @ Reason
Honorable mention:
On the other hand, Colorado Springs isn’t the first time the left has blamed a terroristic act on a video. -- James Taranto
November 17, 2015
Quote of the Day
Hat tip PowerLine, but it should be everywhere by now:
What I'm not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning or whatever other slogans they come up with that has no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American people and to protect the people in the region who are getting killed and to protect our allies and people like France. I'm too busy for that.They? Too busy???
Hugh Hewitt tried to cover this presser, and yet I heard this eloquent trial lawyer, steeped in the world of rhetoric and politics absolutely give up trying to parse the massive, arrogant incoherence of the unbelievably shrinking imPOTUS. 13 months to go!
Yeah, but...
I think the President makes perfect sense when you consider him as a product of the faculty lounge. They do not believe in "winning" wars; they're above all that or whatever.
I am not saying that's correct or in any way a good way to choose a C-in-C. But I don't find him inscrutable. He's like every damn academic I've ever met, and many of their students. Everything he does makes perfect sense when you say "Oh yeah, faculty lounge."
Posted by: jk at November 17, 2015 10:22 AMPretty much 100% agreed, save that you're giving him a bit too much credit: he's a USELESS lounge lizard, and an irascible, arrogant one with middling intellect.
So, now that we've established what they're NOT into, what is he INTO?
Posted by: nanobrewer at November 17, 2015 12:36 PMProgressive politics. Centralizing control. Transformative stuff.
Perhaps we should consider ourselves lucky he is historically incurious. He could pull a Wilson and wrap his policies in a bellicose war message.
Posted by: jk at November 17, 2015 1:18 PMExcellent, excellent point, jk. That would be worse. MUCH worse.
There is, too, some benefit in the other western nations learning to stand on their own hind legs.
And this notion of Russia allied with France against totalitarian zealots in the Mideast desert is not displeasing. It's almost like that well known Sci-fi plot where Earth is attacked by aliens and all the warring nations of the planet join forces to fight for their right to exist.
Posted by: johngalt at November 17, 2015 2:37 PMwrap his policies in a bellicose war messageYou haven't been paying attention, and he's been somewhat sub rosa about how he couches these things. He has apparently out'n out threatened major business figures with phrases like "I'm the one standing between you and the pitchforks," and the actions of the DOJ and IRS are about as warlike as a do-nothing/know-nothing coward like him will ever get. Pugnacious more than bellicose, perhaps, with the true mobster's approach: never let them see the blackjack, nor a drop of blood....
Aulinsky - the original community organizer, IIRC - is alive and his war is on, my friends, it's on, and HRC is also a devotee. Well, was, before she became a corrupt, drunken and bitter cuckold.
I wonder that JG hasn't seen this yet peeping at his kids yet with various inculcations (1%, DAWG, white privilege) in the schools. I'm on the lookout, myself.
Posted by: nanobrewer at November 18, 2015 10:53 AMNovember 3, 2015
Quote of the Day
Because error is evergreen, the economics of Santa Claus still wins votes.
As we go to press, one candidate in the Democratic presidential race calls himself a socialist while another smiles and calls herself progressive.
Happy 60th birthday, National Review
So every other week in print, and daily online, National Review will try to sort it all out — and to have a good laugh, and to honor beauty and poetry when we find them. Why not be in good spirits, when we enjoy the support of our readers, the freedom in America to do what we do, and the grace of God for both?
November 2, 2015
Quote of the Day
Lifting WSJ's "Notable & Quotable." Forgive me, Rupert!
I make a distinction between intellectuals and people of intellectual achievement. . .An intellectual feeds on indignation and really can't get by without it. The perfect example is Noam Chomsky. When Chomsky was merely the most exciting and most looked-to and, in many ways, the most profound linguist in this country if not the world, he was never spoken of as an American intellectual. Here was a man of intellectual achievement. He was not considered an intellectual until he denounced the war in Vietnam, which he knew nothing about. Then he became one of America's leading intellectuals. He remains one until this day, which finally has led to my definition of an intellectual: An intellectual is a person who is knowledgeable in one field but speaks out only in others. -- Tom Wolfe.
William "Socialism is needed to combat Climate Change" Gates could not be reached for comment...
Is Michael Mann not then an "intellectual?"
I believe my definition of an intellectual is more accurate: "An intellectual is a person who is an expert at finding excuses for telling other people what to do."
Posted by: johngalt at November 3, 2015 12:35 PMI've always liked Wolfe's commentaries.... I'll have to read _Bonfire someday (unless someone with many titles on his reader can suggest a better title).
I do like his take: I've looked at this same problem from Boorstin's point of view, typically, but that's back when those of intellectual achievement stuck to their guns and still employed a bit of humility. I guess in the age of celebrity and 24/7 media barrage, even the intellectual has felt the need to "up" his game/image/status!
"The hero was distinguished by his achievement; the celebrity by his image or trademark. The hero created himself; the celebrity is created by the media. The hero was a big man; the celebrity is a big name." -- Daniel J. Boorstin
Posted by: nanobrewer at November 3, 2015 1:03 PMWolfe's statement supports the argument from authority fallacy, suggesting that one should not speak out in fields other than those where his expertise is relevant.
Posted by: johngalt at November 3, 2015 2:09 PMBonfire is great as is "I Am Charlotte Simmons." Before I abandoned Conservatism, t'was included on my list of the (exactly) five conservative novels of all time.
I'm going to defend the quote by highlighting the term "only." The intellectuals chided use their authority by expecting t to transfer into every field.
Posted by: jk at November 3, 2015 3:12 PMOctober 29, 2015
And now for a bit of fun
First, a QOTD from an unlikely source, who said of HRC
But Libya was the country where she was the midwife to chaosI would add a small qualification that "Libya" is not necessary. An old WSJ article I can't find anymore referred to them as the "Clinton whirlwind" which sucks up oxygen and money and spits out broken people... published perhaps right after Chris Stevens' untimely death.
This article from Fox very well highlights and summarizes the WHY? question about Libya (she, BHO and some congressfolks broke the law with U.S. arms in violation of the embargo to arm rebels whom she hoped would run the new government). Ah-hah, THAT's what the consulate, ambassador's mission & CIA annex were doing in Benghazi... That is the truth Gowdy needs to pursue, even if it embarrasses some GOPers.
Now for the fun. HILLARITY is fun!! We know, because she says so.
Perhaps it would be helpful for me to provide an example of a fun thing I do. I take part in levity. I enjoy jokes, which are fun. When the occasion presents itself, I have been known to make jokes of my own, thereby creating fun for those around me.
The gist of this post is not pure levity, since the topic so dire, but I had to laugh out loud at Dowd's still sharp snark-sense (poor grammar actually helps!) cutting with an Occam swipe... Midwife to Chaos.... if only she hated HRC more than she hates Republicans... Hat tip to Judge Napolitano's very strong Fox News column.
Finally, at long last, I learn the explanation for Hillary Clinton's role in the public sphere. She's an entertainer!
Posted by: johngalt at October 29, 2015 1:17 PMOctober 22, 2015
Quote of the Day
In the run-up to the 2015 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11, rich countries and development organizations are scrambling to join the fashionable ranks of "climate aid" donors. This effectively means telling the world's worst-off people, suffering from tuberculosis, malaria or malnutrition, that what they really need isn’t medicine, mosquito nets or micronutrients, but a solar panel. It is terrible news. -- HOSS Bjorn Lomborg, WSJ Guest Editorial
October 17, 2015
All Hail Jonah!
Jonah Goldberg suggests that Sec. CLinton's debate opponents were not "Rocky III Killers."
I mean good gawd, Lincoln Chafee? He's less a presidential candidate and more a cautionary tale of what happens to WASP genes when you drench them in scotch, ink residue from old issues of Mother Jones, and bong resin.
Ooh, ooh, can I play?
Lincoln Chafee's principal accomplishment in politics is to make President Obama resemble Dirty Harry by comparison. Chafee literally puts the "empty" in "empty chair."
Posted by: johngalt at October 19, 2015 11:39 AMOctober 14, 2015
Quote of the Day
From a decent article on the Middle East meltdown in the American Interest, which gently pontificates with MSM's best lambent lighting, on how bad things are always Unexpected when a Democrat is found to be at the teller.
President Obama may be the high school principal and Putin nothing more than a juvenile delinquent, but the school walls are covered with graffiti, the principal is being mocked as a loser by both teachers and students, his car has been egged, and he’s got a “Kick Me” sign taped to his back.
The forces of chaos are on the move, Obama is mugging (and prevaricating, like he was on 60 Minutes) and the media are casting about to equivocate (tactically, making smoke so smoking guns can't be found until after the election). In related news, establishment media are citing HRC as the winner of the first Democrat debate, though Byron York isn't so sure.
On top of the MSM's attempt to inflate Obama's increasingly pathetic narrative that he terms leadership (and with credit, some pushback from a normally pushover 60 Minutes)
that [Russia and Iran] had to [send troops to Syria] is not an indication of strength, it’s an indication that their strategy did not workfrom "leading from behind" to it's latest iteration "deconflicting." Left unsaid is how Obama wouldn't recognize a strategy if someone put the Marshall Plan in his golf cart seat.
Academia has already begun airing out theories to help the Anti-Americaness of Obama seem normal, cool and even, well, intelligent
What neither the Iranians and especially the Russians seem to be taking sufficiently into account is that a commitment to prop up the Assad regime can easily become costly, futile, and counterproductively dangerous
I don't want to mix topics, but York's article on the Bern crowd made me worried about the Millennial buy-in on DAWG ... so let me propose a runner up for QotD:
a weekend from Hell for President Obama’s Middle East policy. Yet the President seems undismayed; he has resolved to stay the course. This is the most unsettling news of all.
"Obama wouldn't recognize a strategy if someone put the Marshall Plan in his golf cart seat."
Awesomeness.
In fairness to POTUS though, he would probably recognize it if it also appeared in a Cloward and Piven book.
Posted by: johngalt at October 14, 2015 3:02 PMOctober 12, 2015
Quote of the Day
From the comments section of a City Journal article by Scott Johnson on the new movie "Truth."
Why the blather of Rather? Where's the contrite to Cronkite? Another medium tedium.
with an entry for Miss Congeniality, noting Mr. Rather's comments in a NYT panel that convened to shill for the movie :
If Rathergate's mistakes were "within the normal range of journalistic bungle" then they've just agreed that virtually all of journalism is bunk. Is that what they mean to say?
September 29, 2015
Otequay of the Ayday
"If you want moral credit for caring about the poor, when, oh when, do you ever have to take responsibility for what happens to the poor when leftists take over?"-Mona Charen, Redistribution: The Unconquerable Delusion
September 28, 2015
All Hail Taranto!
Quote of the Day
Jack Kemp shook things up--but with dramatic ideas about policy, not by pitting outsiders against insiders. The Republican establishment resented the gall of a backbencher's butting into tax policy. Democrats hated tax-cutting, even though Kemp kept reminding them that President John F. Kennedy first proposed lowering the top rate to 70% from 90%. Special interests were furious when Kemp proposed reducing their tax breaks. He once wrote Reagan's deficit-hawk budget director, David Stockman, demanding to know why Mr. Stockman wanted to raise taxes on working people and cut food stamps, Medicaid and Head Start, but keep subsidies and tax breaks in place for Boeing, Exxon and Gulf Oil. -- WSJ Ed Page
September 9, 2015
Quote of the Day
Germane to current discussions -- all hail!
The political reality is that the real GOP problem isn't John Boehner or Mitch McConnell. It's James Madison, who designed a government of checks and balances that is hard to overcome without the White House. GOP leaders have made mistakes in the Obama era, but the party simply doesn't have the votes to pass most of its preferred policy outcomes, much less to override a Democratic President. -- WSJ Ed Page
Mea culpa. The first post attributed this to James Taranto. ThreeSources regrets the error.
I read a comment on PowerLine that speaks to this thread
if they don't have the votes for a measure, they move on to the next...
(and further paraphrasing):
McConnel & Boehner are [deal makers] who quite often have a go-along2get-along philosophy. These days, the reigning philosophy in DC is bigger government will eventually solve problems (by assimilation, if nothing else), and let's just stand, Buckley-like, athwart shouting "stop!" yet wispering 'as long as it doesn't upset things too much...'
To this mindset, Carly and Cruz are the revolutionaries.... vive la revolucion!
Posted by: nanobrewer at September 10, 2015 4:03 PMAnd here is Steven Hayward noting in his PowerLine column:
Republican majority in Congress does not mean there is a conservative majority
Noting some GOP accomplishments, and quoting Charles Howard McIlwain’s Constitutionalism Ancient and Modern:
A constitutional government will always be a weak government when compared with an arbitrary one. There will be many desirable things, as well as undesirable, which are easy for a despotism but impossible elsewhere. Constitutionalism suffers from the defects inherent in its own merits.Posted by: nanobrewer at September 10, 2015 4:16 PM
September 8, 2015
Quote of the Day
That last phrase is a tell. Have you noticed journalists never need to tell you "there is overwhelming scientific evidence" when there actually is? -- James Taranto
September 1, 2015
Quote of the Day
Italy is far more sophisticated and clever, that is, than the hot-headed Greeks. Syriza is a party of naifs who made the mistake of attacking Germany and Brussels head-on. Italy is savvier than that: it knows how to say "yes" and look busy while doing little or nothing. Italy has a long history of using that strategy. The Goths conquered Rome and did a lot of damage--but they didn't change Italy much. German emperors strutted through the halls of Italy's palaces and issued decrees to both princes and popes--and Italy kept on being Italian all the same. -- The American InterestHat-tip: Insty
Fascinating. Apparently, part of America's problem is that our bureaucrats have a little too much German in them. They aren't so much incompetent as they are too efficient.
Posted by: johngalt at September 1, 2015 3:02 PMI think it was Friedman who said something like 'thank god government is as inefficient as it is, or we'd all be slaves.'
Posted by: nanobrewer at September 1, 2015 11:44 PMI'm willing to admit I could live with less efficient government bureaucrats.
Posted by: johngalt at September 2, 2015 3:27 PMAugust 31, 2015
Quote of the Day
We're deep into the "YOLO" stage of this presidency. -- Jim GeraghtyFrom his Morning Jolt newsletter [subscribe], today titled "Obama: Hey, I'm Going to Start Renaming Stuff, Just Because I Can"
Dave Burge (Iowahawk) posts a reaction that should hit home with Colorado residents:
1. Out: Mount McKinley; in: Mount Denali 2. Out: Animas River; in: Obama River pic.twitter.com/BxWZHSke92
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) August 31, 2015
Posted by: Keith Arnold at August 31, 2015 12:29 PMYessssssss!
Posted by: jk at August 31, 2015 12:55 PMAugust 17, 2015
Quote of the Day
We're lending money we don't have, to kids who will never be able to pay it back, for jobs that no longer exist. -- Mike Rowe
August 13, 2015
Quote of the Day
ADDENDA: Trump's the frontrunner, China's blowing up, the Jets quarterback gets knocked out by his own teammate over a $600 debt, and some couple in Mississippi planned on joining ISIS on their honeymoon. This is the kind of week where a sharknado would feel normal. -- Jim Geraghty [subscribe]
HELP WANTED: experienced quarterback, able to adapt quickly to playbook. Prefer candidate who does not run into the tailbones of their own offensive linemen. Serious candidates only; send resume and combine results to New York Jets.
Tim Tebow has already left town and says he's not coming back. This could be the last chance for JaMarcus Russell and Ryan Leaf.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at August 13, 2015 12:38 PMThey've a capable starter in Ryan Fitzpatrick, currently second on the depth chart. A more accurate passer than Geno, it seems to me that the 6th round rookie linebacker who broke Smith's jaw did the team a favor.
And even the Jets aren't incompetent enough to not recognize that. It's why I'm willing to bet they orchestrated the "accident" as a way to eventually put an end to football activities in the region for a long time to come.
What's that sound?
WHUP-WHUP-WHUP-WHUP
Posted by: johngalt at August 13, 2015 1:08 PMAugust 12, 2015
QOTD II
But "Trump's 21% standing as an independent becomes a little less impressive when you consider that Deez Nuts also polls at 7% as an independent, which sort of suggests that might be the floor for a third party candidate." (Deez Nuts, an Australian hard-core punk band, presumably would not meet the constitutional eligibility requirements to serve as president.) -- James Taranto (Hail)
Quote of the Day
Even for a Clinton, this is all very low and unseemly. Worse than that, it has jeopardized national security. Hillary has no explanation or valid defense. This should be "game over" for her presidential campaign. Her entourage of advisers and toadies should now focus on hiring an adept criminal-defense team. -- Buck Sexton, National Review
Front-runner? Poll: Sanders surges ahead of Clinton in NH
Posted by: jk at August 12, 2015 3:07 PMI just saw a BERNIE - 2016 bumper sticker on a car in my (Boulder, CO) office parking lot.
Hillary - The country is so "ready for" her they embrace the first left-leaning alternative who comes along.
Posted by: johngalt at August 12, 2015 3:16 PMPeter Suderman begins the thankless task of cataloging her untruths.
Posted by: jk at August 12, 2015 4:20 PMI saw a Bernie 2016 bumper sticker last week in Lafayette. It was on a Subaru Outback (cue shocked face).
Posted by: jk at August 12, 2015 4:36 PMVermont's Jay Parini says of "Bernie,"
As president, he would take his agenda to the country and without flinching. And he might just convince Americans to support legislation that would actually benefit them in the long run and even in the short run.
What's not to like? Benefit all Americans in the long AND the short run. Well, except for the top 2 percent. And maybe a few "special interests." Like gun owners, doctors and patients, investors, and anyone who uses energy for heat or transportation. But everyone else will be PUMPED!
Posted by: johngalt at August 12, 2015 4:48 PM#feelthebern
Posted by: jk at August 12, 2015 6:15 PMAugust 3, 2015
Quote of the Day
PJ Gets into the spirit of the "Huck-a-Whack:"
I'm a Christian too. Maybe I'm not a hard-shell Baptist ordained minister dog-in-the-manger-at-Bethlehem Christian like you are. But I think you could use a refresher course in Christianity."Whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council," said our Lord. "Raca" and "council" are Aramaic for "playing the Hitler card" and "New Hampshire primary." -- P.J. O'Rourke
August 1, 2015
Quote of the Day
As Tyler Durden explains at ZeroHedge.com, policies imposed from Washington must shoulder a big part of the blame for [Puerto Rican insolvency]: the wizards on the Potomac encouraged debt and deficit spending, priced hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans out of entry-level jobs with a punishing minimum wage, taxed and regulated commerce and investment to a crawl, and showered the island with debilitating welfare. The place would be a showcase of government-induced prosperity except for one sticking point: government. -- Lawrence Reed
Even Raul and Fidel could not have screwed the place up this bad, this fast.
Posted by: johngalt at August 1, 2015 10:33 AMMy favorite quote is:
academia back in the United States (where failure is celebrated as long as you worship the state and have good intentionsPosted by: nanobrewer at August 1, 2015 12:15 PM
July 29, 2015
Quote of the Day
Gut-wrenching to pick one - The Read Thing Whole!
I think [Jon] Stewart's show demonstrated the decline and vacuity of contemporary comedy. I cannot stand that smug, snarky, superior tone. I hated the fact that young people were getting their news through that filter of sophomoric snark. Comedy, to me, is one of the major modern genres, and the big influences on my generation were Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl. Then Joan Rivers had an enormous impact on me--she's one of my major role models. It's the old caustic, confrontational style of Jewish comedy. It was Jewish comedians who turned stand-up from the old gag-meister shtick of vaudeville into a biting analysis of current social issues, and they really pushed the envelope. Lenny Bruce used stand-up to produce gasps and silence from the audience. And that's my standard--a comedy of personal risk. And by that standard, I'm sorry, but Jon Stewart is not a major figure. He's certainly a highly successful T.V. personality, but I think he has debased political discourse. I find nothing incisive in his work. As for his influence, if he helped produce the hackneyed polarization of moral liberals versus evil conservatives, then he's partly at fault for the political stalemate in the United States. -- Camille Paglia
There's a political stalemate in the United States? Oddly enough, Leviathan government seems to keep lumbering along regardless.
I hold Stewart at fault for something far worse than "political stalemate." He contributes to something one might call 'political eugenics.'
Posted by: johngalt at July 30, 2015 2:37 PMI wonder if my blog brother reads "stalemate" and equates it with "gridlock" (blessed, blessed, gridlock!)
I do not know whether stalemate is the right word. But Stewart is all about the "We're smart, but those stupid bumpkins that watch FOX News are evil and stupid and have bad hygiene practices." I'm rather tired of that and I cannot think of many who have contributed more to that (well, there is that POTUS fellow...)
She even dares to defend the Eeevil FOX News right after.
I must also leave a nice word for a deeply flawed hero of mine. Christopher Hitchens practiced that evangelistic atheism which I find off-putting, and I suspect Paglia is correct that his too-cool-for-God books were under-researched.
But one must bifurcate between those and a corpus which includes his deeply courageous and lively journalism and thoughtful historical commentary. I never read a word of his atheism books (and I am an atheist), but he wrote several great books and was honest enough to take on his left against President Clinton and militant Islamism.
A few pouty, adolescent indulgences can be forgiven.
If "I don't demonize Fox News" counts as defending it, then yes she did. But it was only in response to the interviewer's statement:
And that he [Jon Stewart] did the work of critiquing and fact-checking Fox and others on the right who helped create this debased media culture?
Esqueeze me?! Myopic much?
Posted by: johngalt at July 30, 2015 3:18 PMGame. Set. Match: jk.
Again, your quote is from the Salondotcom question. Allow me to provide a little more context on Professor Paglia's answer:
I don't demonize Fox News. At what point will liberals wake up to realize the stranglehold that they had on the media for so long? They controlled the major newspapers and weekly newsmagazines and T.V. networks. It's no coincidence that all of the great liberal forums have been slowly fading. They once had such incredible power.
Where I come from, that's purdy good for a gay, atheist, art professor.
Posted by: jk at July 30, 2015 4:11 PM
Grading on that curve, you are correct. I just thought it was a long way from, "You know, the stuff they report is factually correct, even if you don't like to hear it."
Posted by: johngalt at July 30, 2015 5:15 PMI took that as the subtext. Had she said it aloud, all of Stewart's fans' heads would have exploded --I abhor violence.
Posted by: jk at July 31, 2015 9:52 AMJuly 27, 2015
Quote of the Day
I don't usually hand out dedications on QOTD, but Brother Bryan heads off to GMU tomorrow to start his Economics PhD (say goodbye at Liberty On The Rocks -- Flatirons tonight!). Bryan Caplan compiles statistics on PhD completion -- and I got a kick out of this digression:
Of course, if you're contemplating a Ph.D. in economics, you won't be satisfied with simple bivariate results. What happens if you regress completion probabilities on a wide range of traits? The results are extremely messy.
Safe travels, brah!
July 24, 2015
Quote of the Day
I think there is exactly one politician who has never let me down. Sen. Phil Gramm (HOSS TX) has an awesome editorial in the WSJ today on Dodd-Frank:
Dodd-Frank's Volcker rule prohibits proprietary trading by banks. And yet, despite years of delay and hundreds of pages of new rules, no one knows what the rule requires--not even Paul Volcker.
Honorable mention:
Most criticism of Dodd-Frank focuses on its massive regulatory burden, but its most costly and dangerous effects are the uncertainty and arbitrary power it has created by the destruction of the rule of law. This shackles economic growth but more important, it imperils our freedom.
July 21, 2015
Quote of the Day
Ed Driscoll on "Trigger Warnings:"
Ray Bradbury was just slightly off -- no reason to burn books, when society is too afraid to even open them.
Did you intend for this post to segue the one above it?
No reason to have a variety of political candidates when society is too afraid to even hear them.Posted by: johngalt at July 21, 2015 3:22 PM
It's a free country, and I applaud Mr. Trump's decision to run. I said the same thing about Gov. Jeb Bush.
I am disappointed in his fans (like the Grateful Dead). Unlike the Dead, I expect he will flame out soon (perhaps on l'affaire McCain?) and I wish for it to happen sooner rather than later.
Why? That's what I don't get. Why do you wish for Trump to flame out ASAP but not, say, Jeb? I love that Trump afflicts the politically comfortable. I hope he stays around long enough for his fellow candidates to catch whatever disease of directness has metastasized within him.
Posted by: johngalt at July 21, 2015 4:21 PMI think everything he says is wrong. He has no core principles and does not promote liberty. He favors single payer medicine, is cool with eminent domain -- he has actually used it -- and calls Republican George Bush "the worst President we've ever had."
While he spouts, serious candidates are failing to get exposure. And he is damaging the Republican brand (which doesn't need much help in being trashed).
I won't cry when Gov. Jeb Bush backs out, either. But in the meantime, we can have a serious talk about Common Core, Immigration policy, and some serious and successful tax reform in Florida. What substantive item is added to the debate courtesy of Mr. Trump? I liked his arming the recruiters and military bases, but that's a broken clock being right.
Posted by: jk at July 21, 2015 4:53 PMWhat substantive item is added to the debate courtesy of Mr. Trump? There are a few here. (Three outta four ain't bad. And the fourth has, at least, the right outcome in mind - eliminate government debt and lower the tax burden to promote economic growth.)
Not campaignin'. Not lobbyin'. Just being an Ombudsman.
Posted by: johngalt at July 22, 2015 3:21 PMJuly 8, 2015
Hail Kevin!
TS'ers who know my family name probably hadn't guessed that my Yia-Yia and Papu emigrated from Athens to Virginia in the 1930's. I may be half-greek, but I'm all American, and can appreciate a bit of schadenfreude, after they've defaulted again which gets any sympathy lost for those that may have voted against EUnification.
The title says it all: The Greeks Invented Mathematics, and Now It’s Bankrupting Them.
In the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, Greek leaders lied to bond investors and the bosses at the European Union, claiming that they were complying with EU restrictions on the size of government deficits and national debt. In reality, the Greeks had been scheming with their bankers — notably Goldman Sachs — to keep excess debt off the books. Financial crisis or not, that book-cooking was always going to be revealed: Greece maintained an excessively liberal pension system (Greeks could retire after 35 years of work at 80 percent of their working income; for Germans, it’s 45 years and 46 percent)
The only thing I can think to say is: Math is Hard. :-0
Did not know that -- I hope you'll make a special trip to an ATM in solidarity of your people.
Agree on Williamson. I wandered away from NR but they have a good stable.
It is as though the Muses came to an agreement: In the here and now, mankind is subject to rhetoric, but mathematics gets the final say. In Athens, in San Juan, in Detroit, in Sacramento, in Springfield, and, soon enough, in Washington, Mathematics is arousing herself from her torpor, and she is cranky as hell.
Posted by: jk at July 9, 2015 9:32 AM
June 23, 2015
Quote of the Day
In some ways the conflict is not new. After all, it was a cleric, the Rev. Thomas Malthus, who gave his name to a zero-sum view of life that saw men and women breeding to their own destruction. In sharp contrast, the first economist, Adam Smith, wrote that to complain about population growth was to lament "over the necessary effect and cause of the greatest public prosperity."-- William McGurn at the WSJ Journal, finding a contradiction in Laudato Si': if the economy is static and zero-sum as is consistent with the encyclical, contraception and abortion would be moral choices for the existing population.
June 15, 2015
Quote of the Day
Obama, in an interview with Fast Company today: "You will have a more user-friendly government, a more responsive government. A government that can work with individuals on individual problems in a more tailored way, because the technology facilitates that the same way it increasingly does for private-sector companies."Well, the Russians and Chinese certainly think it's user-friendly! -- Jim Geraghty [subscribe]
June 12, 2015
All Hail Jonah!
Dog lover Jonah Goldberg waited an appropriate time after the death of Cosmo (I think it is written in some Jewish text) to welcome another canine into the family. Where Cosmo was the basic, friendly, "good dog," Zoë has been more challenging and his G-File newsletter [subscribe] has included regular updates. I enjoyed today's:
My wife and daughter took Zoë and both cats (the good cat and my wife's cat) to the vet. Zoë in good shape. She now weighs 60 pounds (quite a difference from when she almost wasted away from parvo) and has tested negative for all the bad things. Except, she did test positive for the anti-bodies for Lyme disease (which doesn't necessarily mean she has Lyme disease). The vet wants to do a follow-up test to make sure she's okay. But they want us to collect a urine sample. This seems as easy as getting sample of Vladimir Putin's back hair.
June 4, 2015
Quote of the Day
It's a diverse array of old, white, Marxists. -- Insty
June 1, 2015
Quote of the Day
Man, do I miss Larry Kudlow's show. Used to see Don Luskin about once a week.
Now the question is whether U.S. frackers can adapt to the lower prices they created. Fracking blossomed following the trough of the Great Recession, when oil prices were, on average and adjusted for inflation, the highest in history--even higher than in the 1970s. It was an ideal price environment for entrepreneurs to perform some very expensive experiments, ultimately learning how to drill holes two miles under a frozen prairie, turn the wellbore 90 degrees, drill out another mile or two, then hydraulically force a designer cocktail of water, sand and secret sauce down the hole to liberate petroleum molecules trapped since dinosaurs strode the earth. -- Don Luskin and Michael Warren
UPDATE: I stopped excerpting too soon:
The nimblest and smartest competitors have worked relentlessly to increase their productivity. Leading-edge operators report that they can produce more profitably today at a price of $65 a barrel than they could at $95 a barrel three years ago. Where can they be profitable three years hence--$40 a barrel? $30? The oil patch today is afire with the same technological imperative and competitive mission that has powered the U.S. electronics revolution--think Moore's Law--to dash headlong down the learning curve, crushing costs and prices and making up for it in volume.
May 28, 2015
Quote of the Day
"The collegiate idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.""Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes." -- P.J. O'Rourke
c/o Lawrence Reed
On a related tangent, this came to mind last evening:
"Don't hate on Republicans so much - You'll probably be one when you grow up."
Posted by: johngalt at May 28, 2015 4:48 PMMay 27, 2015
Quote of the Day
"It has everything one would want for a wedding," al-Homsi said of Raqqa--a riverside provincial capital that in the 18 months since IS took control has seen militants beheading opponents and stoning alleged adulteresses in public. Gunmen at checkpoints scrutinize passers-by for signs of anything they see as a violation of Shariah, or Islamic law, as slight as a hint of hair gel. In the homes of some of the IS commanders in the city are women and girls from the Yazidi religious sect, abducted in Iraq and now kept as sex slaves. -- APHat-tip: James Taranto
Here we go again - a patriarchal system dictating who may and may not marry... and who may and may not be legally enslaved for sex.
Posted by: johngalt at May 27, 2015 3:54 PMMay 20, 2015
Quote of the Day
Back in the day, [Sid] Blumenthal was a respected (read: well-connected and establishment) journalist attached to outlets such as The New Republic, where he got his start. Despite a twee exterior and generally prissy demeanor that made Tony Randall seem like the Brawny Paper Towel pitchman in comparison, Blumenthal's nastiness and willingness to fling shit like a howler monkey in heat earned him the sobriquet "Sid Vicious," because, well, you know there's really not much difference between a New Republic and New Yorker kind of guy and the junk-addicted, homicidal bassist for the Sex Pistols, amirite. -- Nick GillespieHonorable mention (same piece):
As The New York Times reports, Blumenthal remained a trusted adviser to Clinton when she was secretary of state, despite not really knowing what the hell he was talking about.
May 7, 2015
Quote of the Day
All Hail
The Atlantic's Peter Beinart had a piece yesterday titled "Don't Underestimate Bernie Sanders," in which he argues that Sanders could be the next Jerry Brown, Pat Buchanan, Howard Dean or Ron Paul. (The analogies, respectively, are to 1992, 1996, 2004 and 2012.) In other words, he could be another flash-in-the-pan loser, as opposed to one with no flash (cf, for instance, Tom Harkin, Dick Lugar, Joe Lieberman or Rick Perry). -- James Taranto
I'd be most pleased if he was the next Ralph Nader (ref. 2000).
Posted by: nanobrewer at May 8, 2015 10:50 AMMay 5, 2015
Quote of the Day
Jim Geraghty looks at the events in Garland, TX and wonders whether "we have invented jihadist flypaper?"
Think about it. These guys had to know the event would be guarded. These guys had to know that the event is going on in Texas, meaning that a lot of attendees and passers-by would be armed. Heck it's Texas. Everybody's armed. The former governor, Rick Perry, shot a coyote while jogging. -- Jim Geraghty
May 4, 2015
Quote of the Day
Heartening too has been the press reaction to Chipotle. Mother Jones pointed out that "GMOs are totally safe," while Gizmodo.com pronounced the company's position "some anti-Science pandering bull-expletive." An L.A. Times op-ed by two scientists stated, "More than two decades of research indicate that GMOs are not only safe for humans and the environment, but also contribute to global sustainability and poverty alleviation."If anyone of note congratulated Chipotle for its stance, we haven't heard it--and that’s a revelation in itself. Chipotle is not really on a crusade for healthier eating but trying to sell more burritos. Expect the company to shut up for a while. -- Holman Jenkins
April 28, 2015
Quote of the Day
Several readers wrote me to object that the mendacity I ascribed to Mrs. Clinton applied equally to Republicans.Maybe. But what was striking about these critics is that none of them bothered to rebut the point that Mrs. Clinton is a habitual liar who treats truthfulness in politics the way a calorie-counting diner might treat hollandaise sauce on steak: to be kept strictly on the side or dribbled on in measured doses. -- Bret Stephens, WSJ Ed Page
April 27, 2015
Otequay of the Ayday
In all the years I've been in politics, I'm not sure I've shaken a single socialist out of the "you conservatives hate poor people" shtick. The only way to answer, I've found, is to say: "Yup, you're right: we want to turn them into rich people."-British Member of Parliament Dan Hannan, writing in "Why Conservatives Have More Empathy Than Liberals."
April 24, 2015
More Huzzah's for Jonah
The Clintons are like the Tudors of the Ozarks.
via his NR column
Plenty of great stuff, including the moniker: The Clinton-Industrial Complex
All Hail Jonah!
Doin' the ThreeSources Internet seguen' that other Americans won't do:
I recently watched Christopher Nolan's Insterstellar for the first time. I liked it, despite its gratuitous lack of nudity. Relativity plays a big part in the story (spoiler alert). Matthew McConaughey is dazed and confused by the fact what takes just a few minutes on some far-flung planet translates into months or years back home.I made a similar discovery when I drunkenly ate a past-date spicy Jamaican beef patty at a 7-11 in October of 1995. Even though I was only a few hundred yards from my bathroom, it felt like it took years to get there.
Quote of the Day
At least the United Nations' then-top climate scientist, Rajendra Pachauri, acknowledged--however inadvertently--the faith-based nature of climate-change rhetoric when he resigned amid scandal in February. In a farewell letter, he said that "the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma." -- Lamar Smith (R - TX)
All too honest. But then, the U.N. is about "dialog" and "problem solving" and has nothing to do with religion, right? Well, it seems the U.N. has a rather strong interest in religion.
Now, what does any of this have to do with the UN attacking religion?The UN has a love/hate relationship with religion. They refer to them as FBOs – faith-based organizations.
Posted by: johngalt at April 24, 2015 12:27 PM
Finally, the latest accusation is that more than 70% of the NGOs and FBOs working with the UN are 'Christian.' Now Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Jewish organizations are pressuring the UN to correct what they perceive as a bias toward Christian programs.Posted by: johngalt at April 24, 2015 2:24 PM
April 20, 2015
Quote of the Day
Tim Tebow to Sign with Eagles after Wandering in Desert for 40 Days -- Jim GeraghtyI told blog brother AlexC on Facebook that the upside was that he'd get to see me in an Iggles T-Shirt.
I still believe he is better than at least one of the 32 starting QBs in the league. It's hard to see him being competitive in Philly though. He might be in camp just to put competitive pressure on the rest of the corps. (That's pronounced "cohr" Mr. President.)
Posted by: johngalt at April 20, 2015 2:50 PMApril 15, 2015
Quote of the Day
Our Margaret:
I'm off the next two weeks finishing a book, and I can already tell you this is a terrible time to be away from the scene. Hillary Clinton's announcement followed by her dark-windowed SUV journey into deepest darkest America was the most inept, phony, shallow, slickily-slick and meaningless launch of a presidential candidacy I have ever seen. We have come to quite a pass when the Clintons can't even do the show business of politics well. -- Peggy Noonan
April 10, 2015
Quote of the Day
But what happens when Machiavelli's Prince reads and employs "Rules for Radicals"? In 2009 President Obama's friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett was asked on CNN about media bias, particularly at Fox News, and she responded: "What the administration has said very clearly is that we're going to speak truth to power." I remember thinking: "Wait a minute, you’re the White House. You are the power." -- Pete Peterson
April 8, 2015
Quote of the Day
[Ted] Nugent has been known to make a controversial comment or two during [NRA]conventions, which some corners of the media inevitably demand major Republican figures either endorse or renounce. I, for one, am always shocked that a guy like Nugent would make a comment that might bother some sensitive folks; he always seemed like such a quiet, taciturn, shy fellow.
-- Jim Geraghty [subscribe]
April 2, 2015
Quote of the Day
The bad news, for those of us on the suddenly victorious side of the gay marriage debate, is that too many people are acting like sore winners, not merely content with the revolutionary step of removing state discrimination against same-sex couples in the legal recognition of marriage, but seeking to use state power to punish anyone who refuses to lend their business services to wedding ceremonies they find objectionable. That's not persuasion, that's force, and force tends to be the anti-persuasion among those who are on the receiving end of it. -- Matt Welch Reason.com
March 18, 2015
Quote of the Day
Contrary to what pundits and skeptics and newspapers projected, Bibi and his Likud did not take a savage beating, but rather trounced the opposition. There should be no doubt at this stage just how corrupt media coverage of this election, which captured headlines around the world, was. Someone started drinking the anti-Bibi Kool-Aid and everyone else sipped along. Everyone, that is, except for Israeli voters. -- Micah Halpern NY Observer
Thoughts:
(1) It's jarring to see someone other than an American president in the role of "the Leader of the Free World."
(2) Given the SCOAMF's barenaked attempt at interfering with - or at the very least, actively attempting to influence - the free election of another country, particularly that of a country which has been historically one of our stronger allies, and particularly against a man who has done his level best to be pro-American under adverse circumstances, it is a pleasure to see how badly Obama failed in this regard. President Reverse Midas Touch strikes again; this doesn't bode well for his March Madness picks.
(2a) Speaking of which, I've saved a copy of Preezy Narcissus' March Madness picks, and am looking forward to pointing and laughing. Since I don't pay attention to roundball, please remind me on April 7 to do my critique.
(3) Bibi Netanyahu knows in his heart that America and Americans stand with Israel, and the placeholder at 1600 Pennsylvania is an aberration. Assuming there isn't a Middle Eastern apocalypse between now and 1/21/2017, he knows it will get better. That being said, don't rule out a Middle Eastern apocalypse in the near future, and it will have Obama's fingerprints all over it, just like the Arab Spring did. Feature, not bug.
(4) It is not the legitimate role of one nation's government to meddle in another nation's process of freely choosing its leaders. I'm not a supporter of "regime change" in any of its popular forms. I recognize the right of Durkadurkastan to choose its leaders by any means its citizens are content with. America can say after the fact that he is a friend, an ally, or an enemy, and act accordingly. When you elect me President, that is the foreign policy you'll get.
(4a) By the above I mean that we act as a nation based on whether the new foreign leader is a friend, an ally, or an enemy of America, not of the personal whims of the guy in charge. "I can't work with this guy" is the personal preference of a narcissist, not the foreign policy of a grown-up Administration.
(5) And yes, it's sweet to see the Obama Stenographic Pool, otherwise known as the leftist media, choking on the results of Israel's election. This morning, I made my non-Starbucks coffee with the delicious tears of the press. It went down smooth.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at March 18, 2015 12:27 PMI would not purport to add to your thoughtful comment, but I told the lovely bride this morning that we win so few we must surely savor them.
I should be rational and appreciate firstly the reinstatement of PM Netanyahu's firm anti-Islamofascist leadership. But I cannot help that the joy is eclipsed by the failure of the Administration's (shameful, I think) tactics to influence it. And media failure? What is a Sundae with no cherry on top?
Re: (4) above-
"Legitimacy" requires objectivity, which implies reciprocity. No other nation has a role in the selection of America's leader(s) either. Durkadurkastan has the right to say after the fact that he is an enemy, and act accordingly. Just as in (3) above, however, DDstan's leaders must recognize any extant difference between a people and their "leaders" as Bibi has done so skillfully; and as America once aspired to with Iran, before American voters elected President "Burn This Mother F---er Down." Ever since his fateful inauguration, the whole world has been catching fire. (1:30) Where is the Paw Patrol?!
Posted by: johngalt at March 18, 2015 2:35 PMMarch 16, 2015
Quote of the Day
Hillary is a Lovecraftian monster, the Cthulhu of American politics who sleeps dreaming of victory, but she will never be president. You can take that to the bank, the same too-big-to-fail bank that probably paid her $250,000 for a 10 minute speech about income inequality. -- Kurt SchlichterI don't know that this is true. I am starting to suspect it is.
But I could not call myself a friend to Brother Keith if I did not share it.
And last, the truth can be told - those hideous pantsuits don't hide her cankles, they hide her tentacles.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Hillarhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn...
Posted by: Keith Arnold at March 16, 2015 11:45 PMI have to agree; she cannot win the "likeability" contest no matter what wrings out of the GOP machine and I think the American public are finally sick & tired of hearing things from Manhattan Media that are so far removed from their normal experience. Their praise is sure to be incredibly tepid (but she cares), as will WH support, and "voter fatigue" on the donkey side will be at astronomic heights if SHE declares soon, and manages to dodge any relevant interviews or debates (which is becoming ever more likely). At this point, WJC has already spent all his domestic political capital.
She will not generate anywhere near the buzz that BHO did, and the press barely dragged him over the line in 2014, in big part b/c Romney/Ryan refused to "get dirty."
Certainly, the GOP will benefit from a fresh face that understands modern media. There's antoher spot Ms.CanBarelyUseASingleDevice will fail massively. While we can't take the CO-GOP caucus lesson too broadly, I really think that the rule of "It takes a Carter to get a Reagan" will hold true and America will elect an unsung (yes, even in today's 24/7 over-reported environment) constitutional hero once again.
March 11, 2015
All Hail Jonah!
As ever:
Hillary has only two comfort zones: deep in a bunker or high on a pedestal. Drag her out of the former or knock her off the latter and she's at sea.
March 9, 2015
Quote of the Day
The Democrats' response to Herself's trouble has taken three main forms: 1) What she did wasn't technically illegal, says David Brock and other slavish Clinton retainers, even hauling out that old Al Gore classic, "no controlling legal authority"; 2) What about Scott Walker, huh? say the Democratic-party operators, pointing out that as a county executive Walker also used a private email system -- and, to be honest, Walker's response to the terrorist assault on Milwaukee County's consulate in Benghazi has never been explained to my satisfaction; -- Kevin Williamson
March 6, 2015
Quote of the Day
Perhaps "All Hail Kim!"
The Clinton camp has spent this week explaining that none of this was untoward, that no laws were broken, and that she's being transparent.Were you just awakening from a 40-year coma and still a bit fuzzy, this might strike you as remotely plausible. For everyone else who has lived through the Bill and Hill years, this email caper is pure Clinton. -- Kimberly Strassel WSJ Ed Page
Honorable mention (same article): "The Clintons thrive in gray areas."
And they have more than fifty shades.
Posted by: johngalt at March 6, 2015 11:17 AMMarch 4, 2015
Quote of the Day
It saddens me to say this, but I no longer believe that the government should mandate health care. It's not because I've abandoned the basic principles behind health care reform. Quite the contrary. But a great idea, is just an idea, if you can't execute. And the government has proven time and time again, it can't execute. So I'm over it until someone figures it out. -- Former PPACAo2010 supporter Melissa KleinRandy T. Simmons, call your office!
February 27, 2015
Quote of the Day
This is especially true in disputes between the political branches; the judiciary thus provides the ultimate safeguard of the separation of powers. Or, as Justice Robert Jackson put it in the famous Youngstown case of 1952 that rebuked President Truman's unilateral seizure of steel mills: "With all its defects, delays and inconveniences, men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations. Such institutions may be destined to pass away. But it is the duty of the Court to be last, not first, to give them up." -- Ilya SominNon-paywall link.
February 25, 2015
Otequay of the Ayday
"When 'witch hunts' are deemed legitimate in the context of popular causes, we will have fully turned science into just another arena for the exercise of power politics," Pielke wrote. "The result is a big loss for both science and politics."
University of Colorado climate scientist Roger Pielke, on the news that Arizona U.S. Representative Raul Grijalva (D-Hypocrisy) has targeted him for congressional investigation into corporate funding of global warming research.
Rep. Raul Grijalva (D- Ariz.), the ranking member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, sent requests to seven universities asking for detailed records on the funding sources for affiliated researchers who have opposed the scientific consensus on man-made global warming. Grijalva cited concerns over possible conflicts of interest involving scientists who have sought to influence the public debate on climate.
But these researchers, Pielke at least, are producing and citing peer reviewed papers that are published in the respected scientific journals. Does Rep. Grijalva suggest that the source of the funding might taint that established, objective process? If so he should also send a memo to his boss in the White House asking for a complete accounting of all of the federal money that has been spent on investigating climate. After all, nobody has a greater conflict of interest regarding climate taxes, regulations, mandates, etcetera, etcetera than does the federal government.
February 24, 2015
Quote of the Day
(So did Balz or Costa tell Walker "Obama has frequently spoken publicly about his Christian faith"? When either one said that, were they thinking of Obama's 2008 declaration to Rick Warren at Saddleback Church that "I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God's in the mix"? Because all that seemingly devout profession of faith was, we now know, BS . . . told to a pastor . . . in a church. So the notion that some of Obama's public comments about his faith might really be vote-chasing showmanship and spin really isn't the most unthinkable conclusion, fellas.) -- Jim Geraghty [subscribe]
There’s the belief, certainly in some quarters, that people haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior that they’re going to hell....
I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell.
I can’t imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity.
That’s just not part of my religious makeup.
State Senator Barack Obama, March 2004
I'm neither a Biblical scholar nor a theologian of any type, but my understanding of Christianity is that acceptance of Christ as the path to salvation isn't just something that's believed in some quarters, it's actually the central tenet of the faith. It seems that once Obama conceded that the one thing that makes Christians Christians wasn't part of his religious makeup, it was safe to assume his claims of being a Christian were about as credible as most other things he's said when trying to convince people to vote for him.
Posted by: AndyN at February 24, 2015 6:05 PMWell, don't expect me to sit idly while you troglodytes trash the President's spirituality! I'm certainly not having Dana Milbank write a hateful column about me.
Posted by: jk at February 24, 2015 6:09 PMWe'd better make that five-fifths AndyN, since the President's Christian pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, said that God would "damn America." In church.
Posted by: johngalt at February 24, 2015 6:34 PMI'm with (cough, cough, hack) Obama here.
Grace alone gets you that salvation. It's free.
Christians choose the acceptance of Christ as the way for them.
February 23, 2015
Quote of the Day
As with everything about [President Obama], there's no there there, just a series of convenient projections on fog, like the monster in a Scooby Doo episode. -- Insty
February 20, 2015
Quote of the Day
It isn't about getting a job. They have a job: waging jihad. -- Peggy Noonan
February 17, 2015
Quote of the Day
So it was that, hours after the U.S. confirmed the murder of Kayla Jean Mueller at the hands of Islamic State, Mr. Obama filmed a short video for BuzzFeed, striking poses in a mirror, donning aviator shades, filming himself with a selfie stick and otherwise inhabiting a role that a chaster version of Miley Cyrus might have played had Hannah Montana been stuck in the White House after a sleepover with the Obama girls. -- Bret Stephens WSJ Ed Page
February 12, 2015
Quote of the Day
I would add that I don't think you'll ever hear an atheist say, "He can't be a true atheist if he did this." -- The Friendly Atheist, hailing Harsanyi
Well sure, contemporary atheists do not by and large commit atrocities, but what about the atheist crusades throughout history? Let's not get on a high horse, atheists.
Posted by: johngalt at February 12, 2015 3:29 PMFebruary 10, 2015
Quote of the Day
Speaking of Obama, [Monday] he presented a $4 trillion budget that he says would help the middle class. And then the middle class said, "You know what, how about just giving us $4 trillion? That will help us. We will figure it out. We'll figure out what to do with it." -- Jimmy Fallon
Yeah, but he had to take the four trillion from us first, and it spends an expensive night in Washington first. Better idea: how about just letting us keep the damb four trillion in the first place?
Posted by: Keith Arnold at February 10, 2015 7:08 PMFebruary 9, 2015
Quote of the Day
Whether you're an elderly couple in mid-Wales who have just had 20 per cent knocked off the value of your retirement cottage by the new wind farm on the hill opposite, or you're a tribesman in the South East Asian jungle whose virgin forest home has been trashed to make way for a palm oil plantation to grow eco-friendly biofuels, or you're a scientist in New Zealand who has been hounded out of your job because your research doesn't fit the "global warming" narrative, or you're a science teacher in Ohio who is obliged, whether you like it or not, to lecture your charges on the dread perils of climate change, or you're a Republican senatorial candidate who has been targeted as a "denier" in a green attack dog campaign financed by Tom Steyer, you're all victims of the same global scam: a scam perpetrated by a tiny handful of individuals whose junk statistical manipulation of the global climate records have transformed routine weather patterns into the world's biggest and most influential ever science scare story. -- James DelingpoleVery uncomfortable with the word "scam." It implies a mens rea that I suspect does not exist for most of the warmies -- but I love the enumeration -- though far from complete -- of the costs.
If by "warmies" you mean your FB friends who are down for Gaia, nature and cute furry creatures then I'll agree with you but Delingpole called out "a tiny handful of individuals" who manipulated global climate record statistics. Our friends, FB and otherwise, who have chosen to place their complete and Absolute faith in those manipulated statistics, are mere foot soldiers in the movement. (Or, to the extent they advocate theft from their neighbor in the name of this "hoax", they are budding National Socialists.)
Posted by: johngalt at February 9, 2015 3:16 PMAgreed with JG's emphasis on the "tiny handful" b/c they are profiting from this, as well as being part of the Big Lie.
To add to enumeration, I just found this bit in my records when attempting edification to one of my (very smart, and well meaning) friends who'd become a useful idiot: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/world/africa/in-scramble-for-land-oxfam-says-ugandans-were-pushed-out.html?_r=4&ref=world&
Oxfam report of poor farmers thrown off their land - with violence, in many cases - so friends of Gore can get carbon credits.
Dr. Mann lied. People died.
Posted by: jk at February 9, 2015 3:43 PMThat's my flippant way to admit you're right. The few who corrupted data had mens rea.
My reflexive rejection is directed at Senator Inhofe (HOAX OK) who provides a too plump target for the Jon Stewart crowd by calling the whole thing a hoax.
Posted by: jk at February 9, 2015 4:57 PMNot the whole thing, just the whole "man caused" thing. Speaking of Stewart, have you heard he's being considered to replace Brian Williams?
Posted by: johngalt at February 11, 2015 3:01 PMFebruary 6, 2015
Quote of the Day
I have read this tweet several times now and cannot help being amazed. Clinton not only omits her own flirtation in 2008 with anti-vaccine politics, she also breaks the unstated rule of limiting oneself to a single hashtag per tweet. And she is, less surprisingly, remarkably condescending and clichéd--blue skies, spherical earths, it's all about the children. Gag me. -- Matthew ContinettiYou don't have to read the whole thing, but ThreeSources is not responsible for your lack of mirth.
February 5, 2015
Quote of the Day
Maybe it's time for the Republicans to tell the Obama Democrats that if they want to own the issue of promising to bring the American people federal government goodness, they can have it. The Republicans should claim as their own what's left, which is to say the entire private sector.In six years, the Obama Democrats have abandoned any belief in the idea that the private sector is the primary cause of American prosperity. Instead, they seem to see the private sector as a kind of tax sump-pump, a dumb machine whose only purpose is tax flow. -- Dan Henninger
An idea so crazy -- it just might work!
It DOES work - every time it's tried.
Posted by: johngalt at February 5, 2015 12:51 PMFebruary 2, 2015
Quote of the Day
Daniel Foster comments on the C. Christie quotes in reference to vaccinations, with this most memorable:
[T]his is the next two years. New York Times reporters following around GOP aspirants with gotcha questions designed to make them look like yokels and kooks. . . .There's not much we can do to stop it, but we don't have to actively encourage it, do we?
Yes, I declare a moratorium on the tactic of fratricide. Let the Left with it's POTUS posterchild (shoot, I can't double emphasize a compound word!) digging it deeper everyday, have this tantrum.
I feel like I walked in on this movie in the middle (but casting Will Ferrell as the guv was a great move.)
Reason has panties severely creased, but I'm not expecting smootchies for Gov. Christie from that quarter.
I'm interested in promoting vaccinations and limiting GOP fratricide. But who are the GOP complainers who want mandatory forced vaccinations? I follow all kinds of crazy and I confess that I have not seen much of that.
Reason magazine did a symposium on whether forced vax was a valid state power: even they were all over the map. I don't see what is objectionable in Christie's comment.
As one who has cooled -- substantially -- on the Governor's being the GOP standard bearer, the problem I see is not his excessive libertarianism. Am I missing something?
We vaccinated our kids; you should too. Am I going to kick your door down at 3AM with jackbooted nurses? Not likely.
Is that not a decent GOP response? Posted by: jk at February 2, 2015 4:53 PM
Judge Napolitano had the right answer on this last night with Megan Kelly - "Vaccinations are a state law issue. There is no federal role in whether they are compulsory." Or sentiment to that effect.
And dagny had an even better answer, which I'll relate above where it is a better fit.
Posted by: johngalt at February 3, 2015 12:51 PMFoster's column, too, found little to be concerned with in the big guy's comments. I don't recall anywhere that CC argued that the FED needed to be running (or deciding)... he just mentioned it, as I believe is true, too, as a legitimate space for government action.
The press did get their "Macaca" moment (remember a promising aspirant GOP governor from VA?), or so they thought with Sen. Paul....
Posted by: nanobrewer at February 4, 2015 11:35 PMJanuary 30, 2015
Quote of the Day
The first clue that the Taliban Five would attempt to assist the Taliban once released from Guantanamo Bay is the fact that they’re called the Taliban Five. -- Jim Geraghty [subscribe]
Let's be precise here: The "Taliban armed-insurgency Five."
That is all.
Posted by: johngalt at January 30, 2015 3:15 PMWell, I wouldn't want to be hasty and suggest that the Taliban is a terrorist group.
Posted by: jk at January 30, 2015 5:51 PMJanuary 22, 2015
Quote of the Day
Obama's policy proposals were small stuff. More tax cuts for child care -- but discrimination against stay-at-home moms and taxes on 529 college savings accounts. Paid sick leave. Equal pay for women -- on the books already for 52 years. A minimum wage increase. He's all for infrastructure but, in deference to rich donors, will veto the Keystone XL pipeline. -- Michael BaroneCoulda saved you 68 minutes.
Yes, Barone coulda saved me 68 minutes, but if I hadn't watched (or read ThreeSources) I still wouldn't have known that the leader of the House Republicans wore a RINO necktie during the SOTU.
Posted by: johngalt at January 22, 2015 2:33 PMThe Speaker had his colors done by a professional. Some are Autumns, some are Winters -- Rep. Boehner was a "Dystopian Post-apocalyptic Summer" and the purple tie was right off the wheel.
Posted by: jk at January 22, 2015 3:20 PMGlad I missed it, but I have friends in low places who shared the thumbnail versions.
I've long complained about the applause, especially the standing ovations ("Comrade, I think you are not enthusiastic enough in your applause..."). Someone apparently shared that feeling of mine: http://bit.ly/1BiuxuR
Posted by: Keith Arnold at January 22, 2015 4:27 PMJanuary 21, 2015
Quote of the Day
"The Federal Government didn't give us schools and colleges; the President didn't build that." (~2:16) -- Neal McCluskey Associate Director, Center for Educational Reform, Cato
Silly libertarians, President Obama doesn't want business growth, he wants job growth. Stay on topic, would ya?
(5:15) In response to last year's SOTU line "America must move off, a permanent war footing" Gene Healy asks, "When, exactly?"
(6:50) "There's no government in the world that can stop geology."
But they didn't even mention my personal favorite:
"Of course, nothing helps families make ends meet like higher wages. That's why this Congress still needs to pass a law that makes sure a woman is paid the same as a man for doing the same work. Really. It's 2015. It's time," Mr. Obama said during the speech.
But I thought gender paycheck fairness was what the Billy Bedwetter law was all about? In 2009.
Posted by: johngalt at January 21, 2015 3:35 PMOptimist! He wants neither - he wants dependency growth. He only needs enough job growth to form a tax base for the permanent dependency class. Obama is no different than LBJ in that regard, with the expectation that the new dependent class "will vote Democrat for the next two hundred years."
Posted by: Keith Arnold at January 21, 2015 3:58 PMJanuary 20, 2015
Quote of the Day
But [Vanderbilt Law Professor Carol] Swain's speech must be curtailed, [Vanderbilt Student Farishtay] Yamin said: "What I'm really trying to show her is that she can't continue to say these kinds of things on a campus that's so liberal and diverse and tolerant." -- The College FixHat-tip: Insty
UPDATE: Homorable mention (same article):
Yamin's confusion continued as she said her goal was to show campus officials "that students don't tolerate hate speech, even though it's protected under academic freedom, that we don't allow that on this campus."
"Tolerant. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Posted by: Keith Arnold at January 20, 2015 12:24 PMunprecedented?
Posted by: dagny at January 20, 2015 1:02 PMInconceivable!
Posted by: Keith Arnold at January 20, 2015 1:03 PMSpeechless.
Posted by: johngalt at January 20, 2015 2:53 PMShut up, she explained...
Posted by: jk at January 20, 2015 3:41 PMJanuary 19, 2015
Quote of the Day
Reports that 2014 was the "hottest" year on record feed the insatiable appetite the public has for definitive, alarming headlines. It doesn't matter that even in the thermometer record, 2014 wasn't the warmest within the margin of error. Who wants to bother with "margin of error?" Journalists went into journalism so they wouldn't have to deal with such technical mumbo-jumbo. -- Real Live Climate Scientist Dr. Roy Spencer
I'm hoping that the new Senate chairman of the subcommittee overseeing NASA will correct some of the "mission creep" we've seen recently, and less of their futzing with climate hysteria.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at January 20, 2015 10:16 AMYou mean the "Anti-Science-Troglodyte-Senator Ted Cruz" whom the Republicans have elevated to a position where his bad ideas can be truly dangerous? Yes, I heard something about that on Facebook. A few times.
I don't care what he does. Just watching the Jon Stewart crowd melt down is worth it.
Posted by: jk at January 20, 2015 10:41 AMThat man says he wants to resume manned space flight with American equipment, and he values private efforts in that regard (hello, SpaceX!). He also wants to take us to Mars. I may have to rewrite the history of the future to acknowledge President Cruz' contributions in achieving that goal.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at January 20, 2015 12:20 PM"Journalists went into journalism so they wouldn't have to deal with such technical mumbo-jumbo."
And how:
Deflated footballs or not, the Patriots were the better team Sunday, the Colts by nearly 200 yards and dominating both sides of the ball for the majority of the game. It would be a huge stretch to suggest the final score was a product of a football that may have weighed slightly less than usual.
I thought this was an unfortunate conflation of two issues, until I heard a radio news report...
"NFL rules require the official game ball to weigh between twelve and a half and thirteen and a half pounds per square inch."Posted by: johngalt at January 20, 2015 2:43 PM
Lessee... Answers.com tells me the surface area of a football is about 189 square inches... supposed to "weight 12.5 to 13.5 pounds per square inch"... so the football is supposed to weigh between 2,362.5 and 2,551.5 pounds, not counting the weight of the air inside it.
I have a new-found appreciation for the men who throw that ball, the men who catch it, and the men who carry it. Sounds like we need Thor at QB, and The Incredible Hulk at wide receiver.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at January 20, 2015 3:13 PM"...not counting the weight of the air inside it." HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Yer killin' me.
Posted by: johngalt at January 20, 2015 5:28 PMTweet of the Day
No one is as happy as they seem on Facebook, as depressed as they seem on Twitter, or as employed as they seem on LinkedIn. -@Rayke #DLD15
— Bill Gross (@Bill_Gross) January 18, 2015January 16, 2015
Quote of the Day II
Smarter terrorists would leave Congress alone. So far, it's done more to hurt America than they have. . . . -- All Hail Insty
Quote of the Day
Stealing the WSJ's Notable & Quotable:
Changing analogies somewhat: just as a Toyota Yaris cannot be made as valuable to car buyers as is the more luxurious Toyota Avalon by a government diktat demanding that Yarises sell at prices no lower than the price of Avalons--just as such a diktat simply ensures that sellers of such low-end cars find no buyers--a low-skilled worker cannot be made as valuable to labor buyers as is a higher-skilled worker by a government diktat demanding that hours of low-skilled work sell at wages no lower than the wage of higher-skilled workers. Such a diktat simply ensures that sellers of such low-skilled work find no buyers. -- Don Boudreaux
January 13, 2015
Quote of the Day
Here's the good news, Republicans. Mitt Romney is running to save the party from nominating Jeb Bush, and Jeb Bush is running to save the party from nominating Mitt Romney. It's as if O. Henry moved into political coverage. -- Jim Geraghty [subscribe]
Bonus content:
"It can't be bargained with, it doesn't feel remorse or fear, and it absolutely will not stop, ever." pic.twitter.com/Kxq72sCtnI
— jimgeraghty (@jimgeraghty) January 9, 2015January 12, 2015
Quote of the Day
It is no small thing for the king of Jordan, a direct descendent of the Prophet Mohammed, to march in a rally prompted by the murders of people who mocked Islam as well as of innocent Jews -- all of whom were killed by Islamic extremists.The United States, which considers itself to be the most important nation in the world, was not represented in this march -- arguably one of the most important public demonstrations in Europe in the last generation -- except by U.S. Ambassador Jane Hartley, who may have been a few rows back. I didn’t see her. Even Russia sent Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
I say this as an American -- not as a journalist, not as a representative of CNN -- but as an American: I was ashamed. -- Jake Tapper
This president famously embarked on a worldwide "apology tour" to, ostensibly, atone for the arrogant belligerence of previous American administrations. The next president must be prepared for a similar demonstration, to apologize for his predecessor's effete detachment.
{Many whom I know would have stated this far less delicately.)
Posted by: johngalt at January 12, 2015 1:47 PMJanuary 9, 2015
Quote of the Day II
Mr. Reid this week again accused the former Republican minority of "gratuitous obstruction and wanton filibustering," and vowed such tactics would not "be a hallmark of a Democratic minority." He then proceeded to unleash all the obstruction and filibustering in Christendom to slow Mr. McConnell's first priority: authorization of the Keystone XL pipeline. -- Kim Strassel
... which will be obstructed by the obstructionist Preznit SCOAMF's veto, should the two houses of Congress have the temerity to pass...
Posted by: Keith Arnold at January 9, 2015 1:49 PMQuote of the Day
It is time for us to break, once and for all, with the Leninist reasoning that has been served up for so long by the useful idiots of a radical Islam immersed in the sociology of poverty and frustration. And most of all it is the moment, now or never, for a calm resolve among all believers in democracy to look evil in the face without losing ourselves in the catastrophic measures of a state of emergency. France can and must erect dikes--but not the walls of a besieged fortress. -- Bernard-Henri L&eacure;vy#JeSuisCharlie
Like. Cannot like enough.
Given that this statesman is determined to halt the progression of the Islamification for France, allow me to offer up this alternative hashtag:
#JeSuisCharlieMartel
Posted by: Keith Arnold at January 9, 2015 1:18 PMI loved the quote. Elsewhere in the piece, Monsieur veers into "we have to be careful not to overreact." Perhaps it is that famous Continental nuance to which I am unaccustomed.
But the fulsome stand against "lets give them more stately benefits" was stirring.
Posted by: jk at January 9, 2015 4:22 PMHmmm, "Leninist." Who else fits that description?
(Ever notice the resemblance to Ward Churchill? Maybe she really is 1/128th native American!)
Posted by: johngalt at January 9, 2015 4:30 PMHigh Cheekbones.
Posted by: jk at January 9, 2015 4:33 PMJanuary 6, 2015
Quote of the Day
Germane to my role as Boehner Apologist?
It is noteworthy that we seem to tolerate a level of dishonesty in politicians that we would not tolerate at work or with our friends. Why is this? Do we choose to support candidates because they are saying what we wish was true even though at some level we know it is not true?Allison, John A. (2014-10-31). The Leadership Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why the Future of Business Depends on the Return to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (Kindle Locations 945-947). McGraw-Hill Education. Kindle Edition.
Expect a glowing Review Corner soon.
January 2, 2015
Quote of the Day
Missed this:
Prior to last night's Monday Night Football game featuring the Denver Broncos versus the Cincinnati Bengals, Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young, now an ESPN analyst, was asked how Denver quarterback Peyton Manning would deal with the disguises posed by the Bengals defense."Watch for Peyton to speak to the nation, as the president of the United States would speak to the nation tonight," the former San Francisco great began. "And tell them, 'I am the dictator! I am the one who's going to take care of everything.'" -- TPNN (Tea Party News Network)
Here is a link but the page is full of some creepy HTML. Do not click unless your virus protection is up to date.
UPDATE: Looking for another source, it seems to have been well covered by conservative, alternative news sources and some sports blogs. I'm surprised this would not make FOX, MSNBC or HuffPo.
December 29, 2014
Quote of the Day
[Sen. Elizabeth] Warren's accusation of the "system" being "rigged" against the average person is repeated with a staccato and cadence worthy of Dustin Hoffman's character in the movie "Rain Man." -- William Jacobson
December 23, 2014
Quote of the Day
Fracking has now upended energy markets, pummeled petrodictators, confounded OPEC, forged deeper North American economic ties, slashed U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions to their lowest level since 1995, and sunk a nail into the coffin of most renewable-energy schemes (though there will be no slaying that zombie, as our future historian would also know).Fracking is one industry. In time, the advantages it has given the U.S. will fade as the technology is more widely disseminated. Then it will be on to the next thing. Which, it is safe to say, will also be of American origin and design.
Here, then, is the larger lesson our future historian will draw for her students: Innovation depends less on developing specific ideas than it does on creating broad spaces. Autocracies can always cultivate their chess champions, piano prodigies and nuclear engineers; they can always mobilize their top 1% to accomplish some task. The autocrats' quandary is what to do with the remaining 99%. They have no real answer, other than to administer, dictate and repress. -- Bret Stephens, WSJ Ed Page
December 22, 2014
Quote of the Day
Our first big stimulus fell flat, leaving Keynesians to argue that the recession would have been worse otherwise. George Washington's doctors probably argued that if they hadn't bled him, he would have died faster. -- John H. Cochrane, WSJ Ed PageUPDATE: Honorable mention (same column):
By Keynesian logic, fraud is good; thieves have notoriously high marginal propensities to consume.
December 19, 2014
Quote of the Day II
We can argue about such things. But such arguments are a privilege -- and an obligation -- of free people. We get to decide where the public good takes precedence over the private. We get to debate the trade-offs between order and liberty, virtue and freedom. Us. Not them.This is particularly true when the "them" in question is a crapulent pajama-wearing psychopathic dictator who starves his own people while cramming caviar down his gullet. When the Pillsbury Doughboy from Hell tries to tell us what kind of movies we can make or see, the only honorable response is "Go f**k yourself." -- Jonah Golberg [subscribe]
I can go "all-in" defending our rights to watch a terrible movie, but I do not want to look foolish when this is all exposed as a product of the SONY Pictures' PR Department.
I saw this morning that a patriot group is planning on airdropping thousands of DVDs of "The Interview" into North Korea as a counteraction. I don't know if they realize their plan won't work; viewing a DVD requires electricity.
It seems to me North Korean paranoia has just raised the bar. Your national defense is pretty shaky if you feel threatened by a Seth Rogen movie.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at December 20, 2014 12:09 PMI fear they'll try to eat them, Keith.
Posted by: Jk at December 20, 2014 10:54 PMQuote of the Day
"Ce qu'il y a de redoubtable dans la realite de la vie, ce n'est pas la juxtaposition du bien et du mal: c'est leur interpenetration, c'est leur mutuelle incorporation, leur nourriture mutuelle, et parfois leur étrange, leur mysterieuse parente." (What is formidable in the reality of life is not the juxtaposition of good and evil; rather it is their interpenetration, their mutual incorporation, their mutual sustenance, and sometimes their strange and mysterious kinship.) -- Charles Pégue quoted in Charles Taylor A Secular Age ©2007 p750
December 15, 2014
Otequay of the Ayday
"An understanding that altruism can produce great evil as well as good is crucial to the defense of human freedom and dignity."
-James Taranto, in last year's essay on Pathological Altruism
December 9, 2014
Karl Popper Quote of the Day
I get these on Facebook. Amid my news feed stream of memes and two, five word sentence jokes, the Karl Popper quote stands out as a dense, impermeable paragraph. Most are pretty good, but yesterday's summed up a lot of my thoughts:
"We can never return to the alleged innocence and beauty of the closed society. Our dream of heaven cannot be realized on earth. Once we begin to rely upon our reason, and to use our powers of criticism, once we feel the call of personal responsibilities, and with it, the responsibility of helping to advance knowledge, we cannot return to a state of implicit submission to tribal magic. For those who have eaten of the tree of knowledge, paradise is lost. The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, the more surely do we arrive at the Inquisition, at the Secret Police, and at a romanticized gangsterism. Beginning with the suppression of reason and truth, we must end with the most brutal and violent destruction of all that is human. There is no return to a harmonious state of nature. If we turn back, then we must go the whole way -- we must return to the beasts.It is an issue which we must face squarely, hard though it may be for us to do so. If we dream of a return to our childhood, if we are tempted to rely on others and so be happy, if we shrink from the task of carrying our cross, the cross of humaneness, of reason, of responsibility, if we lose courage and flinch from the strain, then we must try to fortify ourselves with a clear understanding of the simple decision before us. We can return to the beasts. But if we wish to remain human, then there is only one way, the way into the open society. We must go on into the unknown, the uncertain and insecure, using what reason we may have to plan as well as we can for both security and freedom." -- Karl Popper, "The Open Society and Its Enemies".
Okay, you can breathe out now.
November 21, 2014
Plain Old Quote of the Day
By the power of greyskull, this is ridiculous. This guy is supposed to be a lawyer. The question of his authority to do X is independent of what Congress does. The executive branch may not write laws. You could look it up. Let’s imagine China pulls a Pearl Harbor and sinks the Seventh Fleet. On the merits, the U.S. should declare war. Those merits do not entitle the Gary, Indiana Department of Motor Vehicles to usurp Congress's authority and declare war unilaterally. -- Jonah Goldberg [Subscribe]
Help me out here. I'm not slow, per se, but I am literal-minded.
If Congress declares war and the Executive does not wage it, the states may not? Same for invasion by immigrants?
Posted by: johngalt at November 21, 2014 7:02 PMNovember 19, 2014
Quote of the Day
Air Force records show that Barack Obama charged the taxpayers $1,539,402.10 for his Labor Day travels for "fundraising, personal business, and politicking." As Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton put it, "This Labor Day back-and-forth shows President Obama seems to confuse Air Force One with Uber." -- Roger Kimball
Otequay of the Ayday
Capt. Quick was last seen leaving his mother's home on the way to his girlfriend and their newborn. He was not last seen assaulting a storeowner and taking products. Yet, we know nothing of 45-year-old Capt. Kevin Quick. Apparently, Quick's crime was being a white man in America and not considered a victim -- just someone who got what he deserved at the hands of society's victims, young black men, gang members who have been badly treated and denied social justice.
Allen West on black attackers charged in murder of white officer.
November 18, 2014
Quote of the Day
Harvard's policy was written by people who think sexual assault is so heinous a crime that even innocence is not a defense. -- Alan DershowitzHat-tip: Glenn Reynolds
UPDATE: I had mistakenly attributed the quote to Prof. Reynolds. ThreeSources apologizes for the error.
November 14, 2014
Quote of the Day
"But this Court does not revise legislation . . . just because the text as written creates an apparent anomaly as to some subject it does not address. Truth be told, such anomalies often arise from statutes, if for no other reason than that Congress typically legislates by parts -- addressing one thing without examining all others that might merit comparable treatment. Rejecting a similar argument that a statutory anomaly made "not a whit of sense," we explained in one recent case that "Congress wrote the statute it wrote" -- meaning, a statute going so far and no further. . .This Court has no roving license, in even ordinary cases of statutory interpretation, to disregard clear language simply on the view that . . . Congress "must have intended" something broader. -- Justice Elena Kagen in Michigan v. Bay Mills Indian Community
John Jordan wonders if she will feel the same hearing King v. Burwell.
Snap. A very large tea leaf there.
But it raises a question under my tinfoil cranial adornment: If the CEO of a minor winery can find this morsel in a SCOTUS opinion so soon after King v. Burwell was granted certiorari, why could none of the GOP king's men find the Gruber (not MacGruder) tapes before the election?
Posted by: johngalt at November 14, 2014 4:18 PM(Magruder.)
Posted by: johngalt at November 14, 2014 4:19 PMNovember 12, 2014
Quote of the Day II
Bring it on, H8Rs, but Ithink this might be more important than Sen. Cruz's legislative proposals.
The best mechanism we have for working through our differences and arriving at a durable consensus is the Senate. An executive order can't do it. The fiat of a nine-person court can't do it. A raucous and precarious partisan majority in the House can't do it. The only institution that can make stable and enduring laws is the only one we have in which all 50 states are represented equally, and where every single senator therefore has a say in the laws we pass here If America is to meet the challenges we face, he concluded, we will need the Senate the Founders in their wisdom intended, not the hollow shell of the Senate we have today. -- Presumptive Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R KY)
Dang! Almost HOSS-worthy. BUT, actions are more expensive than talk. Or something.
Posted by: johngalt at November 12, 2014 1:17 PMSerious and tough question: should the 114th reinstate the supermajority rules that Sen. Reid abolished? I am leaning toward yes, reinstate the Republic.
Posted by: jk at November 12, 2014 1:22 PMIt's an easy question in my mind. It's the same one faced by one General George Washington, when he was offered the chance to be the King of the United States.
Posted by: johngalt at November 12, 2014 1:53 PMNovember 11, 2014
Quote of the Day
The WSJ Ed Page on "Net Neutrality:"
These rules weren't at the cutting edge of innovation even in the 1930s. As former FCC attorney Randolph May notes, this regulatory framework was written into the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 to oversee monopoly railroads. The Communications Act drafters then copied the 1887 law, replaced the references to railroads and clarified that the new regulations would apply to telephones as well as telegraphs. Eighty years later Mr. Obama has decided, in his market wisdom, that these rules should apply to the Internet.
BONUS UPDATE (same column):
Like the telephone companies of old, broadband providers would be required to "file a tariff" at the commission, meaning they would submit mountains of paperwork and ask the government to approve the prices they intend to charge for services. The bureaucrats would then consider whether the prices are fair. FCC bureaucrats would also hold sway over plans to expand or build digital networks. Under such conditions, who would invest to build the next generation of broadband technologies?
If only they looked to 1887 for tax rates.
Posted by: jk at November 11, 2014 11:53 AMYou have something against the 19th century? That's where the left gets its ideas for transportation and energy too.
Posted by: johngalt at November 11, 2014 4:14 PMThis article seems to be a main source of the argument that, because of his Tweet that "Net Neutrality is Obamacare for the internet," Senator Ted Cruz is "the world's stupidest, most bewildering whack job..." Problem is, he was repeating what the WSJ called it.
"The Wall Street Journal is the world's stupidest, most bewildering whack job..."
Posted by: johngalt at November 11, 2014 7:26 PMI did get exposed to some intemperate language on Facebook directed toward the Junior Senator from the great state of Texas.
I'm not exactly a "no labels" guy, but it is too bad that an issue deserving of nuance is thrust into partisan camps. I'm willing to blame my buddy George Takei. He came out full throttle (see what I did there?) for it, sprinkling a full screen paean among his funny nerd jokes and gay rights offerings.
That and the President have placed all the good thinking people and SJWs (I had to look that up yesterday -- it's Social Justice Warrior for the other slow kids) onto one side.
I might fault Sen. Cruz for adding more heat than light to the argument. ObamaCare for the Internet is a bon bon mot, but it is not a good description.
The real issue is that this has failed legislatively in GOP and Democrat controlled Congresses. Along comes President Pen-and-a-phone to resuscitate some New Deal regulations and apply them to the freest, most Hayekian thing this world has ever encountered.
Holman Jenkins at the WSJ is ready to double down:
You have our solemn assurance that Mr. Obama doesn't know any more about net neutrality than slogans he could have picked up listening to Jon Stewart. Oh, and that it polls well with his "base." This is not policy making: He has no idea what incentives guide the behavior of broadband carriers, or how regulation might affect the ability of intelligent networks to deliver a growing and potentially infinite variety of services in the future over a common digital network.
Hard to argue, though I would have included some name-calling. Posted by: jk at November 12, 2014 10:29 AM
Sure... ad hominem is FUN! I tried to pick a FB argument with Dave Perry (no, not Berry) editor of the Aurora Sentinel, but no bites. My last comment: "Government never met a problem it couldn't make worse. This is no exception." still stands unchallenged, 16h later.
Posted by: johngalt at November 12, 2014 12:24 PMNovember 7, 2014
Quote of the Day II
Imagine [Ezra] Klein explaining the Super Bowl: "1) The Broncos lost. . . . 2) The night had few bright spots for the Broncos. . . . 5) Hillary Clinton is arguably also a winner here." -- James Taranto
Quote of the Day
Or, All Hail Jonah! The greatest G-File Newsletter of all time was sent today. Find it in your inbox, spam filter, or ask me to forward a copy. He explains the modern Democratic Party with an allusion to The Brady Bunch. I. Am. In. Awe.
Selling your soul (for personal gain or glory, at least) only really makes sense if you don't realize you're selling it. In a properly functioning market where players have perfect information, the commodity market on souls is pretty moribund. That's what makes "Adios, Johnny Bravo" so allegorical. Greg Brady recognized that he was being asked to sell his soul. -- Jonah Goldberg
November 6, 2014
Quote of the Day
For tonight, it's enough to say that what we've just watched unfold does not fit easily into the models that many pundits have been using to analyze American politics these last few years -- models which allowed for a good Republican performance this year (it being an unrepresentative midterm and all) but did not allow for anything quite this good, this sweeping, this geographically-comprehensive. Seen in this light, these results are an implicit rebuke to an entire "past is prologue" school of political analysis and strategy, which looks at existing trends and assumes that they can only continue, watches winning strategies and assumes they can be perpetually repeated, projects demographic patterns forward and then passes judgment on today's politicians from the vantage point of a still-hypothetical 2035. -- Russ Douthat(Whole piece is pretty good...)
November 5, 2014
Quote of the Day
Had to lift this from James Taranto:
Two things were clear long before the votes were counted on Tuesday night: President Obama would face a Congress with more Republicans for his final two years in office, and the results would be seen as a repudiation of his leadership. But that was not the way Mr. Obama saw it. The electoral map was stacked against him, he argued, making Democrats underdogs from the start. And his own party kept him off the trail, meaning he never really got the chance to make his case. "You're in the Final Four," as one aide put it, "and you’re on the bench with a walking boot and you don't get to play." . . . Sagging in the polls and unwelcome in most competitive races across the country, Mr. Obama bristled as the last campaign that would influence his presidency played out while he sat largely on the sidelines. He privately complained that it should not be a judgment on him.”-- Peter Baker, New York Times, Nov. 5
Apparently, however, the president did campaign for one candidate: Illinois Governor Pat Quinn.
On the bright side, the First Lady's husband probably didn't mangle the candidate's last name... or mistake what office he was running for.
Posted by: johngalt at November 6, 2014 6:12 PMNovember 3, 2014
Quote of the Day
Or "All Hail Insty:"
KIND OF A METAPHOR FOR AN ENTIRE PRESIDENCY, REALLY: One Day in an Elevator With Obama, Then Out of a Job.Plus: "He said one of the Secret Service agents had told him that it was remarkable that Mr. Obama had talked to him, considering it had taken the president two years to acknowledge the agent. . . . Now unemployed, he looks back with sadness on the day he met the president." So do we all. -- Prof. Glenn Reynolds
Uh, if you're an ex-con and you're job requires you to carry a weapon, try not to become the subject of a national news story?
"Nuze u kin uze."
Posted by: johngalt at November 3, 2014 4:28 PMOctober 31, 2014
Quote of the Day
Obama fatigue is setting in. Indeed, I've gone from Obama fatigue through full-on Obama Epstein-Barr to end-stage Obama narcolepsy. I hear him talking, or hear some MSNBC-type rhapsodizing about how misunderstood he is, and I start dozing off like a truck driver who took the drowsy-formula Nyquil by mistake. "Gotta stay awake! This is my job!" But then 20 seconds later, Jonathan Alter starts telling me how misunderstood the president is, and suddenly orange traffic cones are bouncing off my truck's grill as I somnolently drift into a highway work zone. -- Jonah Goldberg [Subscribe]Honorable mention (same source):
I want to congratulate the National Review Institute for an absolutely fantastic event this week in New York. We had the first annual William F. Buckley Prize dinner and it was a smashing success. I would also like to congratulate the inaugural winner of the Buckley Prize, my friend and hero Charles Krauthammer, who gave a splendid talk. I particularly enjoyed his 15-minute extemporaneous rap, though I could have used fewer F-bombs.
October 28, 2014
Quote of the Day
Salon doesn't score such honors with any frequency, but even I cannot fail to recognize sagacity:
"I am so pleased to be here with your senior senator, the passionate champion for working people and middle-class families, Elizabeth Warren!" [Secretary Hillary] Clinton roared. "I love watching Elizabeth, you know, give it to those who deserve to get it," she added. And who might "those who deserve to get it" be? Clinton, whose family foundation has collected up to half a million dollars from Goldman Sachs and whom many Wall Street Republicans are already prepared to support in 2016, didn't elaborate. . . . -- Luke Brinker
Hat-tip: James "All Hail" Taranto
October 22, 2014
Quote of the Day
Most of these laws are not preventing the overwhelming majority of folks who don't vote from voting, Most people do have an ID. Most people do have a driver's license. Most people can get to the polls. It may not be as convenient it may be a little more difficult. -- President Obama during an interview with Rev. Al Sharpton.
I agree with Barack Obama. Again!
Posted by: johngalt at October 22, 2014 5:10 PMBut Colorado's Democratic-controlled legislature clearly does not agree.
Posted by: johngalt at October 22, 2014 5:29 PMSuch a shame that he has no way of stopping the DoJ from suing states to try to overturn voter ID laws. Maybe that skinny blonde dancing monkey was right, it's too bad we can't give the President all the power that he needs.
Posted by: AndyN at October 23, 2014 11:40 AMPaltrow - Kutchner 2016!!!
Posted by: jk at October 23, 2014 12:40 PMOctober 15, 2014
Quote of the Day
In doing so, [Ezra] Klein has neatly illustrated just how dangerously capricious and supple the Progressive Hierarchy of Pieties really is. I daresay that it is rather easy to be a "liberal" when liberalism lines up nicely with the prevailing sentiments of one's social cohorts. But it is much, much harder when it does not. Genuine "liberals" -- those in the tradition of John Locke and Adam Smith, and not of Herbert Croly or Rachel Maddow -- do not forsake timeless principle for last night's orthodoxy because, for them, due process is as important today as it was at the time of Magna Carta. Ezra Klein, by contrast, appears to be something of a weathervane. Forced to choose between the universal principles of the Enlightenment and the transient pressure of this year's moral panic, he plumped squarely for the latter. For shame. -- Charles C W Cooke
Ahh, yes, the "pure principle" that intoxicated females, the oppressed class du jour, are the nation's most valuable asset. So much so that they shall be granted the power of incarcerating males who have the audacity not to be interested in them while sober... or for whatever other damn reason their mercenary little hearts desire.
Or, as he puts it somewhat eerily later on, "ugly problems don’t always have pretty solutions."
That must be in the Declaration of Independence, 'cause I sure don't recognize it from any Article or Amendment of the Constitution. Pol Pot, call your office.
Posted by: johngalt at October 15, 2014 6:13 PMTwo Americas: (Il)liberals lament date rape, even in cases that are "genuinely unclear and maybe even unfair" while Joe Six Pack is treated to the tale of his birth.
Hubbada hubbada.
Posted by: johngalt at October 15, 2014 6:29 PMDo we get $5 for every post into which I can leverage prohibition?
Reason suggests: How to Solve the Campus Rape Crisis: Lower the Drinking Age
What does the drinking age have to do with campus rape? Much. Most college undergraduates are under 21 and therefore unable to legally drink. And yet heavy alcohol consumption on the part of one or both students is a significant factor in nearly all sexual assault allegations. That's because the current drinking age doesn't actually stop teens from drinking. It merely changes where, and how much, they drink.
People who reach their 21st birthday may enjoy the right to drink casually: out in the open, during the day, at bars and restaurants, or anywhere else. But underage students who want to drink must take their chances in less socially regulated environments, like a friend of a friend's dorm room, the basement of an older student's house, or a fraternity party. Fraternities, in particular, offer dangerous drinking scenes for the underaged.
Posted by: jk at October 15, 2014 6:44 PM
On lowering the drinking age, we can call agree. It makes no sense that our 18 year old youth have all the legal responsibilities of adults, can be trusted to administered sophisticated weaponry, make split-second life-and-death decisions with said weaponry, yet can't be trusted with a beer.
Counter point, however, is that The Refugee's college days were spent when 3.2 beer was legal at age 18. Fact: you can get plenty drunk on 3.2 beer and binge drinking was every bit as rampant then as it is today. The Refugee's fraternity threw some spectacular parties. Hawaiian Night and Purple Passion were particularly popular. Luckily, we all woke up to tell the tale.
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at October 16, 2014 12:54 AMKumbaya.
Posted by: jk at October 16, 2014 4:20 PMOctober 9, 2014
Quote of the Day
Last night, after two fundraisers in New York, Barack Obama settled down for a quiet, up-to-$32,000-per-plate dinner at the home of (I am not making this up) a billionaire property tycoon named (still not making this up) Rich Richman, but only after he sent a massive fundraising email to potential Democratic donors, labeling the Republicans as the "party of billionaires." -- Emily ZanottiHat-tip: Jim Geraghty's Morning Jolt
October 8, 2014
Quote of the Day
Look, I didn't call Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) [0%] "Mark Uterus:" the debate moderator last night did. -- Moe Lane.[...]
PS: This is, by the way, not a distraction from the larger issues of the campaign: it is a larger issue of the campaign. Cory Gardner is attempting to run on the economy and jobs. Mark Uterus can't do that, because his record on both is awful: so he is instead attempting to run on... well. Mark Udall deserves all the scorn that he might get.UPDATE: The 0% is Senator Uterus's "Heritage Action Scorecard" score.
October 1, 2014
Quote of the Day
I mean, if a Native American came along and said, "I'd really like you to rename the team, because I don't want my ancestors, friends and neighbors associated in any way with that many turnovers and an inability to play defense" . . . that's the kind of request you would have to respect. -- Jim Geraghty
The government wouldn't be able to bitch about the offensive naming of a sports team in DC if the Washington Senators were still around. You want to talk about a label that no self-respecting athlete would want to wear...
Posted by: Keith Arnold at October 1, 2014 12:48 PMThey don't need to change the team name, just the team logo.
Posted by: johngalt at October 1, 2014 2:14 PMI thought for Hispanic Heritage Month in the NFL, the could be the Brownskins. Just a few weeks.
Posted by: jk at October 1, 2014 2:52 PMPlease, no specific racial overtones! How about simply, "Swarthyskins?"
Posted by: johngalt at October 1, 2014 3:06 PMIt's now October. They'll all be wearing pink for the next month anyway, won't they?
Posted by: Keith Arnold at October 1, 2014 7:04 PMSeptember 26, 2014
Quote of the Day
What I am saying is that the constant crisis-mongering outstrips the scope of the problem by orders of magnitude. And, more to the point, it's deliberate. This is the great irony. When I say:"The U.S. has made enormous environmental progress."
Or:
"Sexism and racism are smaller problems than at any time in American history."
Or:
"Capitalism helps poor people more than socialism does."
Or:
"The best way to feed a bear a marshmallow isn’t by putting your hands behind your back and holding the marshmallow between your lips.". . . the response from the left is that I am merely trying to protect the vested interests of The Man and His League of Extraordinary Meat-Eating Oligarchs. But, when alarmists insist the Earth will burn like an ant under a magnifying glass if we don't ban the internal-combustion engine by this Thursday at noon, it's merely "speaking truth to power." I mean it's not like anybody is making any money off of global warming. It's not like there’s any privilege that comes with being a climate activist. It's not like big corporations would ever think to take advantage of the issue. Nor would government bureaucrats ever use climate hysteria as an excuse to expand their own power. -- Jonah Goldberg [subscribe]
LMAO @ LEMEO!
Posted by: johngalt at September 26, 2014 7:02 PMSeptember 25, 2014
Quote of the Day
Happy Birthday, Bill of Rights!
It's difficult to imagine today's Congress thinking up--nevermind passing--anything so profound as what Madison wrote in those ten amendments. But then, the experience of the Founding Fathers was far different from that of today's legislators. By most accounts, Madison, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and other colonists had grown up as happy British subjects. Yet the Founding Fathers would later cast off colonial rule by planning and then engaging in open revolt against Britain. They formed an entirely new country, and established a new form of government. -- Baylen Linnekin
September 24, 2014
Quote of the Day
Neil deGrasse Tyson is Carl Sagan 2.0, down to the fact that he's been cast as the host in a reboot of Sagan's "Cosmos" miniseries. As usual, though, the copy loses some quality from the original. It’s as if they took Sagan and decided to decrease the earnest thoughtfulness while increasing the preening vanity and smug condescension. -- Robert Tracinski
September 23, 2014
Quote of the Day
It would be interesting and fun -- but somewhat in the realm of metaphysics -- to ask why the U.N. Climate Summit 2014 is denying the science as reported by IPCC -- Benjamin Zycher
Excellent article; I've been wanting documentation on the (constant) changes in the IPCC's forecast of 'just how bad IS it (gonna be)?'
I guess that will still go down as an exercise to the budding blogger. All I could find here was:
"IPCC predictions of temperature increases per decade relative to the 1980-1999 and 1986-2005 periods, respectively. In the fourth assessment report, the range of predicted temperature increases is 0.11 to 0.64 degrees Celsius per decade; in the fifth assessment report (2013, p. 11-52), the range is 0.10 to 0.23 degrees C per decade."
Posted by: nanobrewer at September 24, 2014 12:18 AMI look forward to reading your report, nb. (Or should I call you "Bud?")
One guy who could feed that project pretty well is Chip Knappenberger who covers the climate change beat for Cato.
He does a good job with both the changing IPCC reports and the discrepancies between the actual predictions in the body of the report, supported by data and research as compared to the "Executive Summary" which journalists and politicians quote.
Posted by: jk at September 24, 2014 10:00 AMSeptember 22, 2014
Quote of the Day
"When the people speak up and when the people march, the politicians will follow," shouted Danny Kennedy, activist and founder of the solar company Sungevity in a pep talk before the March. -- Ronald BaileyHonorable mention:
An overflowing garbage bin on Central Park West indicated that some marchers were not so averse to commerce as to forego quaffing designer coffees before setting off to march against capitalism. -- Ronald Bailey (same article)
September 18, 2014
Quote of the Day
Linked with general approbation by my biological brother:
What is upsetting is that while many in the media and many of us are ready to crucify Adrian Peterson for his actions we give others a pass. Adrian Peterson will not ever put a ‘whipping’ on his kid like that again. The millions of Americans that have had no ill-effects from corporal punishment are just fine.Politicians that vote against Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are child abusers. Politicians that vote against a livable wage, a minimum wage are child abusers. Politicians that vote against healthcare for the caretaker of children are child abusers.
And the people who support, vote for, and blog favorably about those abusers...
UPDATE: asked directly about this quote, I was told "You're right, John Kranz, the term "child abusers" is out of line"
Hold those self-disownment papers, Jeeves. I'm going to think about this awhile...
Posted by: jk at September 18, 2014 3:31 PM"Abuse." Not used just for beating and berating anymore!
Let me know when the next edition of the Prog-Democrat dictionary is available on Kindle.
Posted by: johngalt at September 18, 2014 3:54 PMSeptember 15, 2014
Quote of the Day
All Hail.
He's a better speechwriter than his speechwriters, a better political director than his political director, and to hear President Obama tell it--or, to be precise, to hear the New York Times retell others' retelling of Obama's telling it--he's a better terrorist than the terrorists: -- James Taranto
He's always the smartest man in the room. Don't believe me? Just ask him.
Posted by: johngalt at September 15, 2014 3:48 PMSeptember 12, 2014
Otequay of the Ayday
Historically speaking, though, would it have been better for humanity to avoid an "Age of Pollution" and wallow in a miserable pre-Industrial Age, where poverty, death, disease and violence, were far more prevalent in our short miserable lives? Or would we have chosen global warming? I think the latter. And I think we'd do it again.
All-hail Harsanyi - 'Global Warming was Worth it'
Plus a bonus - Harsanyi's reductive graph of the history of the world:
Hail! (Aand if you get in an impish mood, share that with dagny's FB-interlocutor on inequality. This McCloskeyesque graph makes my point better than the S&P500 charts I posted.)
Posted by: jk at September 12, 2014 3:32 PMSeptember 11, 2014
Otequay of the Ayday
"But the sad thing about this is, even if both Roberts and Perdue lose, expect the establishment to learn nothing from the experience. Despite a lengthy history of long-term incumbent Republicans getting tossed out on their ears in red state general elections due to corruption and disconnection from their home state, they will still insist loudly and publicly that the safest path to more Republican seats is to continue electing the seasoned guy and the incumbent. It's up to voters and donors to stop buying this obviously false argument."
From They Told Me If I Voted for the Establishment, This Would Not Happen by Leon H. Wolf.
September 9, 2014
Quote of the Day
Daniel Akst at the WSJ thinks he's Review Corner -- talking on Richard Branson's "The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership."
Still, leadership can be learned to some extent, and Mr. Branson's breezy volume touches on some important topics, even if it does at one point quote Willie Horton --rather than Willie Sutton --on the reason for robbing banks: "because thatss where the money is." (Fans of the Detroit Tigers and Michael Dukakis will each remember a different Willie Horton, but neither man should be confused with the famous bank robber.)
September 4, 2014
QOTD
Well, actually yesterday.
Biden says we'll follow ISIS to the gates of hell? We won't even follow them across the Syrian border!
- Col. Ralph Peters on Fox News' Kelly File
One of my friends has already commented that "follow to the gates of Hell" is a statement of allegiance and devotion -- as in, "I'd follow my sergeant to the gates of Hell in battle."
"Pursue to the gates of Hell," or "bomb them to Hell" might have been what he meant to say. Or, perhaps Slow Joe Biden has accidentally let slip his true feelings.
Either way, another Bidenism.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at September 4, 2014 3:59 PMOne is also left to wonder if Biden knows that his boss might consider this "a strategy" i.e. "Sorry Joe, we don't have one of those yet."
Posted by: johngalt at September 4, 2014 6:57 PMAugust 26, 2014
Quote of the Day
As Justice Clarence Thomas correctly pointed out in dissent, "[T]he'logical' assurance that a 'temporary restriction... merely causes a diminution in value,'... is cold comfort to the property owners in this case or any other. After all, 'in the long run we are all dead.'"24 This observation is not hyperbole; writing shortly after [Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc., v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency] was decided, one legal scholar noted, "Of the 700 or so ordinary people who started on this journey, 55 have since died."25Levy, Robert; William Mellor (2009-12-01). The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom (p. 179). Cato Institute. Kindle Edition.
August 25, 2014
Quote of the Day
The Perfesser is feeling a bit hawkish...
I'm thinking that a useful paradigm for dealing with ISIS is, what would Gen. Curtis LeMay do if he were serving under President Andrew Jackson? But I could be mistaken. -- Glenn Reynolds
I'll see that and raise: what would General "Black Jack" Pershing do if he were serving under Winston Churchill?
Posted by: Keith Arnold at August 25, 2014 1:04 PMWhat would Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin E. Dempsey do if he were serving under Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes instead of President Obama?
Posted by: johngalt at August 25, 2014 5:16 PMAugust 21, 2014
Quote of the Day
MoDo -- that's got to be a first. But she is disenchanted.
His circle keeps getting more inner. He golfs with aides and jocks, and he spent his one evening back in Washington from Martha's Vineyard at a nearly five-hour dinner at the home of a nutritional adviser and former White House assistant chef, Sam Kass . . .The extraordinary candidate turns out to be the most ordinary of men, frittering away precious time on the links. Unlike L.B.J., who devoured problems as though he were being chased by demons, Obama's main galvanizing impulse was to get himself elected.
Almost everything else -- from an all-out push on gun control after the Newtown massacre to going to see firsthand the Hispanic children thronging at the border to using his special status to defuse racial tensions in Ferguson -- just seems like too much trouble.The Constitution was premised on a system full of factions and polarization. If you're a fastidious pol who deigns to heal and deal only in a holistic, romantic, unified utopia, the Oval Office is the wrong job for you. The sad part is that this is an ugly, confusing and frightening time at home and abroad, and the country needs its president to illuminate and lead, not sink into some petulant expression of his aloofness, where he regards himself as a party of his own and a victim of petty, needy, bickering egomaniacs. -- Maureen Dowd
Hat-tip: Jim Geraghty
August 18, 2014
Quote of the Day
I think this pairs nicely with RAH's "bad luck" quote. It introduced a Chapter in Matt Ridley's "Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters"
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune -- often the surfeit of our own behaviour, -- we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion ... an admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star. -- William Shakespeare, King Lear
August 12, 2014
Quote of the Day
Now Ron Fournier wonders if Americans would rally behind Obama after another 9/11 the way we rallied behind Bush, and I think the answer is no -- because Obama has spent his entire time in office flicking boogers at half the country. -- Glenn ReynoldsThe Perfesser is commenting on a Megan McArdle piece which says something I thought from January 20, 2009: Sec. Clinton would have made a far better president.
I'm going to be the bad guy and go a step further: I do not believe that Americans would rally behind Obama after another 9/11 like they did with Bush, because most Americans I know, including some who voted for Obama and in the main agree with him (yes, hard as it is to believe, I do have some friends in that part of the political spectrum that I haven't already completely alienated), because they understand something that is a critical difference.
When 9/11 happened on Bush's watch, it happened because the terrorists were fanatics that hate The Great Satan that is America. We were friends with Israel, we were (in their misguided fantasies) corrupting the Islamic Middle East with our imperialist Western ways, and all that rigamarole.
If another 9/11 happens, and this one on Obama's watch, people understand that it will be because we have emboldened the bad actors. Every decision we've made in the Middle East had been the wrong one - regime change in Egypt, Qaddafi in Libya, our role in Afghanistan, the pullout from Iraq, our stance in Syria, et cetera, ad nauseum, ad infinitum, amen.
Obama has weakened this nation, and the bad actors know it. To them, we are not seen as compromising or placating; to them, we are seen as vulnerable to attack. We lack will in our national leadership, our borders are more porous than ever, and we're doing nothing about it.
There is a very small but very strident cabal of people in this country who think that 9/11 was Bush's fault: inside job, fire doesn't melt steel, the Jews were forewarned, yada yada yada. If another attack happens now, a very large group of reasonable-minded people will already know that Obama had a hand in making it happen, and they will be right. Those people will rally together for the nation, but in doing so they will make Obama own it.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at August 12, 2014 12:33 PMEchoing that -- and our Facebook persiflage where I once again pushed "Deepak Lal libertarianism," Judge Richard Epstein has an interesting piece: Pax Americana is Dead.
The second issue Friedman never addressed is the deterioration in world peace that has happened since President Obama became president. No one can claim that Iraq was at peace when George W. Bush left office, but the violence had been curbed. Since Obama has taken over, relative tranquility yielded to factional squabbling, followed by vicious aggression that caught the President woefully off guard. Iraq is not alone. The number of hotspots in the world -- including Gaza, Syria, Libya, Nigeria, Ukraine and the China Sea -- is increasing. The President wrings his hands over how difficult it has become to find credible allies in the world to address these problems without ever asking why no one trusts him. So he resolves to hold back on the use of American force overseas. Armed with that certainty, every tin pot dictator and terrorist group thinks it has an open field in which to run.
The President's blunders remind us that we need Pax Americana in international affairs. If the United States maintains a large military force and is prepared to use it, the threat of American force could snuff out a large number of troublemakers and help decent people organize their own affairs. It was this policy that made NATO such a success in the immediate post-war years. It will also allow the United States to use force effectively when needed. But once our commander-in-chief neutralizes America's military might, weaker but more determined nations and groups know that they have a free hand to follow their own aggressive agendas. Worse still, this passive policy invites new thugs like Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to propel themselves into regional prominence.
Posted by: jk at August 12, 2014 1:00 PM
In order to rally behind him, wouldn't he have to be in the lead? Waiting.
Posted by: johngalt at August 12, 2014 6:50 PMAugust 6, 2014
Quote of the Day
All Hail! David Harsanyi is not too impressed with Jonathan Alter's "Loyalty Oaths" and President Obama's "Economic Patriotism."
Clearly I'm not the rock-ribbed patriot Alter is, because I hope corporations continue to use inversion to avoid taxation until DC is forced to pass reform that completely eliminates corporate taxes that unnecessarily burden consumers. Multinational corporations do not exist to be tax collectors. Now, if a person was going to get into the economic patriotism game, he might point out that rent-seeking companies that subsist on government subsidies and use their political connections in Washington as a cudgel against competition, are engaged in something far more un-American. And you can imagine the unholy cronyism that's likely to erupt once the executive branch begins deciding which companies deserved to be rewarded for their patriotism.
Hat-tip: Insty
August 5, 2014
Quote of the Day
There’s no reason the nation of Africa cannot and should not join the ranks of the world's most prosperous nations in the near term, in the decades ahead. There is simply no reason. -- VP Joe BidenVideo (and a lot of annoying popups) at the link. Hat-tip: Insty.
July 28, 2014
Quote of the Day
Jonathan Cohn, ObamaCare's cheerleader at the New Republic, quoted Mr. Gruber on Friday as saying his remark "was just a mistake" and he didn't recall why he made it. We can think of a reason: It was the truth. Liberals feared some states wouldn't set up exchanges, so they deliberately wrote incentives into the law so the states would do so. This was the conventional liberal wisdom until this year when it suddenly became legally and politically inconvenient for the Administration to admit it. -- WSJ Ed PageUPDATE: The WSJ's "Notable & Quotable" today is my "All Hail Harsanyi" from last week. Saved you $240. You're welcome.
July 23, 2014
Quote of the Day
"It's Virtually Impossible to Be a Successful Modern President" declares the headline of a blog post by the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza. The post has drawn a great deal of ridicule, but to our mind most of the critics fail to appreciate just how feeble an effort it is. Our aim is to correct that. -- James Taranto
ah, I've missed Taranto, and do have time now that he's behind the WSJ firewall. Do they have an electronic-only subscription rate?
Posted by: nanobrewer at July 25, 2014 1:38 AMYes but. They have really goosed it up this year. There's a fan club of sorts on Facebook and many complained when he went behind Rupert's wall.
I thought "you bunch of whiners -- it's, like, $89 for the best newspaper in the known universe." Then my credit card bill came in it's more, like $240. Ow.
Yet I think I will stay with it -- if you chose not to, let me know anytime you'd like me to email a story.
Posted by: jk at July 25, 2014 10:13 AMAh yes, welcome to the "introductory rate until you stop checking your credit card statement for the auto-renewal price" sales gimmick.
Posted by: johngalt at July 27, 2014 11:43 AMYee-ow! I thought there was an OnLine subscription for something like $14/mo.? When I get a little freer, I'll take the free trial and report back...
I do have more time now that I'm not reading Hail-Taranto!
Posted by: nanobrewer at July 28, 2014 12:39 AMYou got it, jg. In fairness, I have subscribed for more than 15 years and the digital only was $89 - $99 per year until now. It is not quite the Comcast - HBO plan.
Posted by: jk at July 28, 2014 9:48 AMJuly 19, 2014
Quote of the Day
The 2014 midterm elections are shaping up to be similar to the wave elections of 1994 and 2010, particularly with an unpopular President and an unpopular piece of major legislation that will serve as a referendum on the sitting President. . . . A difficult political climate coupled with the rising unpopularity of President Obama could affect the Democratic brand as a whole and hurt Senator Warner.What right wing wackos are putting out this nonsense? Oh:
The Virginia Progress PAC, a Democratic committee supporting Senator Mark Warner, issued a list of talking points for potential donors that laid out the challenge the Obama albatross represents for Democrats this fall -- John Fund
July 16, 2014
Quote of the Day
Michael Walsh responds to Rolling Stone's amazingly stupid even for them Five Most Dangerous Guns."
The Five Most Dangerous Dogs:· Big dogs
· Little dogs
· Medium Sized Dogs
· Male Dogs
· Female Dogs
July 15, 2014
Quote of the Day
Twenty years after the phrase entered the American lexicon, "Soccer Mom" retains its power as hurtful speech. -- PJ O'Rourke
Mothers In Love with Fracking?
There's a terrorist outfit in the Philippines called the Moro Islamic Liberation Front - and I'm not making this up, but they have got to have the most unfortunate acronym in the history of revolutionaries and separatists. It cracks me up every time I see them mentioned in a newspaper.
Literally.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at July 16, 2014 1:10 PMYes, I kid you not - Mothers In Love with Fracking." A good article, worthy of whole thing read the, but scroll to the bottom for the relevant content.
Posted by: johngalt at July 16, 2014 1:49 PMThe T-Shirt model in jg's linked piece is the Centennial State's beloved Amy Oliver. Oliver is an energy analyst for the Independence Institute and is married to Weld County Sheriff John Cooke. Cooke lead opposition Sheriffs against Colorado's unconstitutional gun laws that was joined by 52 urban, rural, Democratic and Republican Sheriffs.
Posted by: jk at July 16, 2014 1:57 PMAnd also a talk show host. But still a mother!
Posted by: johngalt at July 16, 2014 2:41 PMI'm going to forgo the obvious reference to Ms. Oliver being a MILF, out of civility and not merely because her husband is who he is. Instead, I'll merely say I followed the link, read the article, and am not surprised at the behavior of know-nothing peckerheads who call themselves "Earth Guardians." I can't claim they're the only people I've seen this week that would benefit from some rough treatment with a taser and a firehose (I am in California, after all...), but they're definitely high. On the list, I mean.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at July 16, 2014 3:15 PMWe've missed you, KA.
Posted by: johngalt at July 16, 2014 3:26 PMJuly 9, 2014
Quote of the Day
Gotta sting a bit.
A true revolution would be a new breed of climate activist who admitted what they didn't know and toned down their absurd pretense that they're going to ban or seriously curb fossil fuel by fiat. If they were smart, they would put all their effort into winning government funding for battery research. But there are reasons, quite apart from lack of imagination, which is the nicest explanation of Mr. Steyer's shrill imposture, that this doesn't happen.Our political system is adept at making use of people like Mr. Steyer. Democrats will gladly spend his $100 million, then go back to their real environmental business, which is green cronyism. Happily Mr. Steyer's fate won't be that of the Hemingway character [in "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber"] --who finally got to prove his merit while accidentally being shot in the head by his wife. But like Al Gore before him, Mr. Steyer will be able to say of his impact on the climate debate: I softened up the public to be milked for green handouts that did nothing for climate change. -- Homan Jenkins
I'm going to have a hard time taking a guy seriously if he thinks that Francis Macomber was shot accidentally.
Posted by: AndyN at July 9, 2014 4:37 PM"But how is one to know about an American?"
Posted by: jk at July 9, 2014 5:00 PMJuly 7, 2014
Quote of the Day II
Finally getting to Jonah's awesome-on-stilts-so-far review of "Capital in the Twenty-First Century."
Piketty's occasional concessions to uncertainty about his most dire predictions illustrate one reason he shouldn’t be considered an orthodox Marxist. He has no grand Hegelian theory of the ineluctable progression of History with a capital H. But who needs dialectical materialism when you have algebra? -- Jonah Goldberg
UPDATE (Honorable Mention):
Still, if one takes all these critiques into account, one must conclude that what its supporters have hailed as an irrefutable mathematical prophecy might have to be downgraded by everyone else into the well-informed hunch from a left-leaning French economist--a significant drop in confidence level, as the statisticians might say.
UPDATE II: Blog Brother Bryan points out that GMU's Don Boudreax's review is very good as well.
Quote of the Day
Still, Simpson-Mazzoli welcomed more people as citizens during a time of divided government. The president, Ronald Reagan, and the Senate were Republican, the House Democratic--the inverse of today's Washington. But this was "Morning in America," and Reagan's favorite words were "growth" and "opportunity." Mr. Obama is presiding over a fifth year of 2% growth, with his favorite words being "inequality," "us" and "them." -- L. Gordon Crovitz, WSJ Ed Page
July 5, 2014
Quote of the Day
I do like Megan McArdle. She has a great column on the ensuing Hobby Lobby boycott (pointing out that about zero of the boycotters shop there in the first place). I enjoyed the close:
It's perfectly sane to tilt at windmills -- as long as you don’t expect to unseat the windmills and win the tournament. -- Megan McArdle
Hat-tip: Insty
June 27, 2014
Quote of the Day
Our Margaret reviews Sec. Clinton's book tour:
Now she's Mom--mature, settled, with a throaty laugh and a thickening middle. Or grandma. After six years of presidential leadership from a lithe, supple, snotty older brother, Mom will seem an improvement. -- Peggy Noonan
Seriously? Peggy Noonan after her disastrous Obama vote will look to Clinton as an improvement. What is wrong with her? (Peggy)
Posted by: Terri at June 27, 2014 2:39 PMHardly a ringing endorsement...
Let the record show that I supported then-Sen. Clinton in 2008. "strategic" GOP friends suggested I should register D and vote for then-also-Sen. Obama, Because he would be so easy to beat. How's that Hopey-Changey working out for you?
I can damn with faint praise too: I think she would be much better than the current occupant -- but I hope we do not have to find out. Jonah Goldberg says in today's G-File that he would prefer Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D - Wahoo) to Sec. Clinton. Not gonna join him there.
Posted by: jk at June 27, 2014 3:01 PMJune 24, 2014
Vindication of the day
Nixon said in a May 1974 interview with a supporter that if he had followed the liberal policies that he thought the media preferred, "Watergate would have been a blip."The media noted that most of the reporting turned out to be accurate and the competitive nature of the media guaranteed massive coverage of the political scandal.
From the Watergate Scandal Wikipedia page.
Quote of the Day
Even better, Justice Scalia's [majority opinion in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA] explicitly defends the structure of the Constitution. Blessing the EPA's tailoring rule would be "a severe blow to the Constitution's separation of powers" where Congress enacts laws and the President enforces them, he writes. This remedial civics lesson ought to be unnecessary but with the Obama crowd it's essential. "We are not willing to stand on the dock and wave goodbye as EPA embarks on this multiyear voyage of discovery" that ignores the will of Congress, Justice Scalia writes. -- WSJ Ed Page
June 23, 2014
Quote of the Day
The thing about dogs eating homework is, it could actually happen. This can't. -- Kyle Smith, NYPostPart of a great column: imagine if Goldman Sachs had tried this defense... Hat-tip: Insty.
June 19, 2014
QOTD III
We're agnostic in the Indian symbol debate, though we've never understood why the critics think fans and athletes want their team names to represent something other than strength, courage or pride. If names were meant to convey dislike--of, say, Vikings, Yankees or the Irish--then Redskins owner Dan Snyder would have converted to the Washington Harry Reids years ago. -- WSJ Ed Page
Quote of the Day II
It's a Two-Quote Kinda day. Jonah has some fun with the President's penchant for straw man arguments:
Scour the Internet until your fingers bleed, and you won’t find a single person who has denied that Bowe Bergdahl is someone's child. -- Jonah Goldberg
Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat...
Barack Obama created Darrell Issa. -- Dan Henninger
June 18, 2014
All Hail Insty!
June 17, 2014
Otequay of the Ayday
The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom. -Plato
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/plato_2.html#8puyA1pRkPdO2XYP.99
June 12, 2014
Otequay of the Ayday
And if the 11 million illegals who live here obey the law, pay taxes, learn English, and understand the Constitution, they deserve legal status. Citizenship is an issue way down the road. And yes, we must include border security, where unfortunately Obama's lax policies have contributed to the calamitous surge in illegal-immigrant children. But temporary visas or work permits should be part of a sensible reform package. The E-Verify system can work.So, Mr. Brat, as a free-market economist, surely you know there's no reason why all this cannot be done.
Hopefully you will come to believe that sensible immigration reform is pro-growth and pro-GOP.
Larry Kudlow, 'David Brat, Right on Free-Market Economics'
(Quoting Kudlow on CIR, so's jk don't have toooooooo.)
Millions pay withholding on fake SSNs for which they can never get refunds or claim any benefits. This is something of a windfall to the treasury which is never computed in opponents' balance sheets. They also pay sales taxes, property taxes through rent, and any local fees. Not to say that zero are not using services for which they do not pay, but the balance is at the very least a lot more nuanced.
The line sounds great, Andy -- the orderly queue is the centerpiece of civilization and order. But in the case of immigration, it is an absolute fantasy. There is no line -- there are some with connections who hope to emigrate and there are a few with family already here that can hope for some unification.
But those who just want to live here, whether a newly minted PhD in Engineering from Stanford or a good worker who would like a shot at the better life -- which my immigrant have friends have received -- have no hope. One can fill out a form, but there is no line, there is no wait list where a name will come up someday. There's an H1-B system that fills its annual quota in a couple days.
These people could be starting exciting new business, providing the labor for others to start or grow one -- or just be legal taxpayers and customers. It strikes me as a pretty good deal.
1.2 million pay witholding on ITIN's, which probably do allow refunds and benefits.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_Taxpayer_Identification_Number
Posted by: johngalt at June 13, 2014 10:57 PMJK - I'm aware that a lot of criminals, both foreign and domestic, use fake SSNs. I also don't deny that taxes automatically withheld from them may be a net financial gain for the government. However, if part of Kudlow's criteria are that foreigners who entered the country illegally deserve legal status because they pay taxes and obey all our other laws besides the ones they broke entering the country, acknowledging that a lot of them pay taxes by falsifying government documents isn't much of an argument against my original point. People who aren't legally allowed to be in the country can't both obey the law and pay taxes unless they're entirely dependent on someone else for their upkeep.
As for there being no line for immigrants wanting to come here legally - that H1B quota is a line. Is the permitted length of that line too short? Perhaps. I'm more than willing to entertain the possibility that we should be encouraging more legal immigration. That doesn't change my opinion that the criminals who are here now shouldn't be given priority treatment over people who've been waiting to come here legally all along. Those people also could be starting new businesses, providing labor for others to do so, or just be legal taxpayers and customers. And I'm inclined to believe they'll be less likely to violate our other laws than people who have a history of doing so.
Posted by: AndyN at June 14, 2014 8:53 PMAny body else had their tax return held up?
this:
https://sa.www4.irs.gov/irfof/lang/en/irfofgetstatus.jsp
isn't helping....
Andy is right.
Increase the amount of visa's available.
That is not only the short term, but the long term solution to this problem.
I don't get why it isn't the 1st thing on the agenda. Perhaps equal to confirming we're going to work on being serious about a border or stop any talk of amnesty which just invites illegal activity.
Clearly, my work here is not done. <wink />
I know I go on about immigration, but after Facebook threads it is enriching to discuss with people guided by reason and appreciative of liberty.
The H1-B has elements of a line but no continuity. If there are 300 this year and I am number 301, that gives me no leg up next year; the line forms anew. That is a multi-winner lottery and not a line.
But I accept, to Terri's point and Andy's, that it could be expanded to create a line. I am all for that. But it will not happen.
There are those who oppose any increase in immigration for a variety of reasons. Some see zero-sum economics and believe every immigrant taking a job leaves one fewer job for US citizens (cf., South Park). Unions see a shift away from Union labor. Some have baser motives.
Even with a plurality remaining, neither would legislators on either side "give this away." This most popular chip is held hostage by the right to enact more security and on the left to get a path to citizenship. You can't give the abolitionists Missouri and then discuss Kansas.
If the H1B is fixed, we still have all the same messes. More Doctors around to treat everybody, which is nice, but there is a demand for low wage labor and a supply of it separated by a very narrow river. On that front, I most definitely hold my position that this "line" we keep hearing of is a fiction. There is zero legal path for a Mexican or Central American who would like to come here, work hard, pay his taxes, and establish a better life.
I am a law and order guy. It gets me kicked out of a lot of Libertarian events -- even the ones with a cash bar. If there were a legal path, I'd happily get tough on those who chose not to use it. As there is none, I'm sympathetic to those who make my life better and theirs, at great cost and jeopardy to themselves.
Posted by: jk at June 15, 2014 11:17 AMQuote of the Day
First, I apparently wasn't perceived by some people as a "serious" candidate. Given the fact that I was the only candidate in the race with an entire platform based on child poverty, mass incarceration, income disparity, diminishing civil liberties, domestic surveillance, student loan debt, corporatization and rule by oligarchy, passing a Green New Deal, and a Constitutional Amendment to rid corporations of the rights of personhood, I'm a little stymied as to what makes a person "serious" enough to pass muster with the so-called "serious" people who make such judgments. Indeed, mine was the only top tier candidacy that actually did make a serious critique of the political status quo.-- Marianne WilliamsonHat-tip: A Facebook friend who says "Imagine a world where the politicians thought like this.... Maybe one day."
June 10, 2014
Quote of the Day
Put down your Kleenexes, Sec, Clinton did not have it perhaps quite so bad as she averred...
Leaving aside for a brief moment how utterly farcical it is to use "struggle" and "houses" in the same sentence, the notion that the Clintons were presented in their post-presidency with anything other than a license to print money is unyielding in its abject hilarity. By 2001, Bill Clinton had made $200,000 per annum for eight years while paying nothing toward his housing or upkeep, and, in addition to the extraordinarily lucrative speaking gigs that American ex-presidents are now to expect, he had a lifetime of pensions and benefits to look forward to. (David Graham points out that, in the last 14 years, he has received nearly $16 million from the government.) By the end of the year in which he left office, the couple had made $16 million and enjoyed between $5 and $30 million in assets. By 2004, they had $50 million to their names. And by 2014, Clinton had become the highest-earning former president in America's history, with net assets of nearly $200 million. Being smart sorts, the couple knew full well that this was coming, which is why in 1999, with their apparently destructive legal bills still racking up, they bought a $6 million house in Chappaqua, N.Y., so that Hillary could legally run for the Senate. One suspects that if the Clintons had been genuinely worried that their legal fights might bankrupt them, they would not have done this, nor would friend Terry McAuliffe have agreed to loan them $1.3 million toward its purchase. -- Charlie Cooke
Hat-tip Jim Geraghty
UPDATE: In spite of the lengthy excerpt, whole thing the please read -- it is an impressive takedown of the Clintons which might come in handy over the next couple of years.
UPDATE II: Thanks, Facebook!
I'm not the world's largest Clinton fan, yet I find something to criticize in the above quote.
I will start by admitting I don't know exactly what Hillary said and I did not whole thing the please read so I may be way off base here...
BUT I have a problem with the argument that so and so could not possibly be struggling because they make X amount of dollars and have X dollars in assets. The Clintons income and asset numbers sound very large to me but I am certain the jg and dagny income and asset numbers would sound very large to some people as well.
I still feel entitled to complain that the economy sucks and my dollar doesn't go as far anymore. If you are in debt and struggling to pay bills, it feels bad no matter where on the income scale you fall.
As I do not believe that those lower on the income scale have a claim to what I have worked for, I therefore do not believe I get to tell those higher on the scale what their status should be.
The question of whether the Clintons actually, "earned," what they have is a different question and whole other matter. I would wish they hadn't collected an additional 16 million of taxpayer dollars but as JK noted in another post, that amount is in the noise range for governments.
Posted by: dagny at June 10, 2014 6:47 PMI do not think that we should engage in class envy against the Clintons -- even though it world be positively fruit juicy to turn that tactic back on those who claimed that Gov. Romney was somehow "too rich" to be president.
But I'm not sure I'll join on your -- or Sec. Clinton's -- right to whine. Yes, you possess it but said person on lower rung has a more absolute right to laugh at you for doing so. And her ability to make five time the median annual income for an hour's gabbing at some cronies justifies some good eye-rolling.
If you are missing any context it's that she trotted out this tear-jerk to defend herself against Diane Sawyer's questions about $200K speaking fees. Had she taken the dagny approach and said "Diane, I was awesome -- they should've tipped me and washed my car" then I'd be in. But this is because she is embarrassed to be in the class she's in.
She also complains about the taxes. My sympathy chip is perhaps not completely soldered in today.
A very enjoyable article! Not only does it reveal Empress Hillary's empty wardrobe, it suggests an erudite replacement acronym for 'ROFLMAO' with the phrase "unyielding in its abject hilarity." UAH? UIIAH?
Dagny's defense of the wealthy from attack for being wealthy is worthy, but not in the case of government royalty like Bill and Hillary Clinton, who lived rent and mortgage free in state and federal mansions for a couple of decades. However, what I found most interesting was HRH HRC's reference to taxes:
Her husband, she told Sawyer, "had to make double the money because of, obviously, taxes."
"Because of, obviously, taxes." Is she suggesting that, prior to leaving government service, their incomes were not taxable? I find no support for that reality, so what did she mean? "Double the money" compared to what?
But leaving aside the obvious issue that "yes, Ms. Clinton, so does every working American" she was caught by Ms. Sawyer's inopportune question, which revealed the obvious parallel between "astronomical speaking fees" and "obscene profits" - the former being Sawyer's characterization of her and her husband's *ahem* "earnings" and the later being HRH HRC's characterization of any profit earned by anyone who is not a contributor to her campaign. Marie Antoinette comes to mind.
I do feel a twinge of sympathy for HRH however since, if she has parroted class-warfare egalitarian rhetoric long enough to convince herself it is morally justified, the cognitive dissonance must genuinely keep her awake at night. (Ready for 3am phone calls, perhaps.)
Posted by: johngalt at June 11, 2014 3:15 PMThe Refugee saw some of clips and it seemed to be HRH attempting to say, "I feel your pain." Unfortunately for her, it came off very hollow. Trying to imply that she and Bill were just a paycheck away from homelessness as they left the White House just doesn't pass the laugh test.
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at June 11, 2014 4:26 PMJune 9, 2014
Otequay of the Ayday
"Recoveries make a CHOICE......and our recovery was CHOOSING to stay away."
- From the newly released Graphic Edition of Amity Shlaes' 'The Forgotten Man.'
June 6, 2014
Quote of the Day
Jonah Goldberg points out [subscribe] that the White House's Hacks can't even do Hackery right:
In the old days, there was an unwritten rule of politics: Don't put the president next to a guy who looks like he just emerged out of spider-hole with Mullah Omar. But these are more relaxed and tolerant times. Still, in the Washington of yore, the president's advance team would at least go over with the president's guests what they might say when standing alongside the leader of the free world. You know just to make sure everyone is on the same page. But that's hard to do when the page is written in ... Pashto!
June 5, 2014
Quote of the Day
"We have to quit putting out fires," said one Democratic senator, who asked not to be named in talking candidly about internal party views of the White House. -- NYTimes (via Taranto)
June 4, 2014
Quote of the Day
I'm sure conservatives can find [CIA Director Leon] Panetta decisions they disagree with, but let's face it: In a national security team that included or includes the likes of Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Tommy Vietor, he looks like George S. Patton. -- Jim Geraghty [subscribe]
I would pay dearly to see one of our present day press gaggles question George S. Patton. How many of them do you suppose he could reduce to tears?
Posted by: