Jul 23 2008
Thomas Sowell continues his previous discussion of how the government is the primary cause of our current financial issues.
We don’t look to arsonists to help put out fires but we do look to politicians to help solve financial crises that they played a major role in creating.
How did the government help create the current financial mess? Let me count the ways.
Continue reading “When there’s a financial crisis, look to the government as the cause, part 2”
Jul 23 2008
Jerry Pournelle (the wikipedia article linked here gives short shrift to Pournelle’s science and engineering background) has some thoughts on the dangers of trying to ban the teaching of Intelligent Design in the schools, and he starts with the background of public education and goes from there.
What is the purpose of public schools? One looks in vain for guidance in the Constitution of the US, or in the early constitutions of most states. Education didn’t become a right until well after the Civil War, and didn’t become a federal right until fairly recently.
Continue reading “Jerry Pournelle on education, Intelligent Design, etc.”
Jul 22 2008
A fine bit of satire at A Vote for Barack Obama is a Vote for Jesus : Jesus Manifesto. It’s all pretty funny; here’s a sample.
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A vote for Barack Obama is a vote for Jesus…not that I agree with everything he stands for. I mean, I am an independent sort of thinker. I am firmly convinced that God is neither a republican or a democrat. But Barack Obama transcends such distinctions. He flies high over such petty concerns on shimmering gossamer wings. Golden light emanates from his perfect form. His smiling eyes looking down upon me with a look that pierces my soul! I get lost in his smile, and long for one of his chiseled arms to hold me close while the other smites a damning blow to poverty and oppression.
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I encourage you to vote for Obama too. I’m not saying that voting for McCain would be a sin. Nor am I saying that it would be a horrible, disgusting sin for you to not vote at all. But I am saying that to vote for Obama is to vote for Jesus. And to NOT vote for Obama would mean that you don’t love Jesus, the poor, or your own mother. To NOT vote for Jesus would be to render Jesus’ life and message meaningless. That’s all I’m saying.
Jesus… and Robin Hood ethics. I like it. It reminds me of all those scriptures of Jesus and his posse holding up rich people on the road and taking their money at sword point and giving it to poor people. Robbin’ in da ‘hood, but all for a good cause. Of course, later on in, oh, the 32nd chapter of Matthew, we read about Jesus getting the ear of King Herod, and getting him to have the soldiers take the money from the rich and give it to the poor. All perfectly legal. Same difference, and saves Jesus and his posse from having to do it themselves.
Personally, I’m encouraging all twenty and thirty somethings to vote for Obama, since that will selfishly be best for me… he’ll make sure they pay for my retirement and medical care, even though I’ll have more money than them at the time.
The way I see it, I win either way. McCain gets elected, in which case things are better for my children, and their children… or Obama gets elected, and things are better for me. Who knows: maybe I”ll decide to pass along some of the largesse from you and your kiddies to MY kiddies, if I’m feeling extra generous at the time.
Can’t beat that.
hat tip: Aly at Addison Road
Jul 22 2008
Gypsy girls’ corpses on beach in Italy fail to put off sunbathers
Questions about the attitude of Italians to their Roma minority were again being asked yesterday after photographs were published of sunbathers continuing as normal with a day at the beach despite the bodies of two Gypsy girls who had drowned being laid out on the sand nearby.
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“But the knot of curious onlookers that formed around the girls’ bodies dissolved as [swiftly] as it had formed,” the newspaper Corriere della Sera reported. “Few left the beach or abandoned their sunbathing. When the police from the mortuary arrived an hour later with coffins, the two girls were carried away on the shoulders [of the officers] between bathers stretched out in the sun.”
La Repubblica also expressed astonishment at the behaviour of those present. “While the lifeless bodies of the girls were still on the sand, there were those who carried on sunbathing or having lunch just a few metres away,” it reported.
Corriere recalled that this was not the first time people had decided a death was no reason to give up their day at the beach. In August 1997, sunbathers carried on as normal after a man drowned near Trieste.
But the fact that the two victims on this occasion were Roma added an extra twist to the affair.
Italy is gripped by anti-Gypsy feeling. Since coming to office in May, Silvio Berlusconi’s rightwing government has appointed three special commissioners to deal with the Roma in each of Italy’s three biggest cities – Naples, Milan and Rome. It has also ordered the fingerprinting of the country’s Gypsy population, including minors, who make up more than half of the estimated 150,000 Roma in Italy.
The European commission has asked the Italian government for more details on the census, and this month the European parliament approved a motion condemning it as an act of discrimination banned by the European convention of human rights. Berlusconi last week told the commission president, José Manuel Barroso, that the information was being collected to ensure Gypsy children went to school.
Jul 22 2008
Charles Krauthammer skillfully deconstructs Obama’s desire to give a speech at an historic site.
Barack Obama wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate.
He figures it would be a nice backdrop. The supporting cast — a cheering audience and a few fainting frauleins — would be a picturesque way to bolster his foreign policy credentials.
Maybe if Obama wrote a nice concerto or something. Until then, I suggest he schedule his next speech at a Bridge to Nowhere(there are several), a more fitting analogy to his current resume. Read the whole article.
UPDATE: Reader email..
Reagan appeared at the Brandenburg Gate because it was symbolic of the challenge he was issuing to the leaders of the opposition to freedom. Since the major leaders of the most vociferous opposition to freedom in the modern world are Islamic, maybe he needs to deliver a speech in Mecca or Medina… Oh, wait, he can’t go there without becoming a Muslim (unclean infidel that he is). Maybe he could stand outside the city gates and say, “Prince Faisal, tear down this wall!”
Jul 21 2008
David Evans, consultant and scientist with the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005, says no evidence of carbon dioxide based greenhouse effect
since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
Continue reading “Yet another major scientist defects from the global warming religion”
Jul 21 2008
Thomas Sowell on the financial markets meltdown: here’s a taste, but read it all
It was government intervention in the financial markets, which is now supposed to save the situation, that created the problem in the first place.
Laws and regulations pressured lending institutions to lend to people that they were not lending to, given the economic realities. The Community Reinvestment Act forced them to lend in places where they did not want to send their money, and where neither they nor the politicians wanted to walk.
Now that this whole situation has blown up in everybody’s face, the government intervention that brought on this disaster in is supposed to save the day.
Sowell is not the first person to make this observation, though his very prominent voice is a strong confirmation.
Jul 21 2008
A former Israeli special forces officer has hard advice for parents whose children in Israel are vulnerable to kidnapping by Islamic terrorists. It is quite unimaginable for most of us to consider such a thing in advance, and what we would do about it. Yet, this is the reality faced by parents in Israel, exacerbated by the recent trade of live terrorists from Israeli prisons for dead bodies of Israeli victims.
I am writing this as a parent that has 100% of my children, at high risk, of being victims of a kidnapping.
We must remember, Israel has never received any of our children back alive, from a kidnapping.
We must also face certain hard to face facts, our children if grabbed will be subject to torture and mutilation that would have made Mengele proud.
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….. think about the kidnapping of your child now, face the pain and make a plan that will keep your dignity.
You really need to read the whole thing to understand the realities. There is truly not a moral equivalence between the Israelis and Hamas/Hizbullah, regardless of the pretensions and posturing of the Left.
Jul 20 2008
John McCain to NAACP: It’s Time for School Choice
John McCain told the NAACP this morning that after decades of broken promises by the nation’s public school systems it is time to give all parents an easy choice of public and private schools. He is right, so long as he doesn’t propose a private school choice program at the national level.
At the link are some excellent comments about proper limits for federal involvement in a school choice program.
Nationally, blacks want school choice. Obama, as usual, is trying to have it both ways. Don’t expect a clear statement on the issue from him, given that his primary constituency, blacks, wants school choice, but his primary enabling constituency, the teachers union, does not. Actually, expect several clear statements from him, just don’t expect them to agree, and expect his campaign surrogates to spin in various directions, depending on who they’re talking to.
Jul 20 2008
A likely error by the White House
The White House this afternoon accidentally sent to its extensive distribution list a Reuters story headlined “Iraqi PM backs Obama troop exit plan – magazine.”
The story relayed how Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told the German magazine Der Spiegel that “he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months … ‘U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes,'” the prime minister said.
All of which leads to overheated rhetoric at the Daily Kos as if this is a major faux pas of a panicked administration.
My take: The WH was obviously freaking out after the announcement that al-Maliki supports Obama’s plan, and of course was planning to email this around internally get some some advice from advisers and get their talking points together. This also ensures additional coverage of this issue. The Obama camp of course has already pounced on this:
But those wizards at the Huffington Post have figured out the deep conspiracy behind it all
The White House says it was an accident and the story was only intended for its “internal distribution list.” At first blush that sounds believable. After all, a story saying that the Iraqi government wants us gone certainly goes against the message Bush pushes at home about a long term presence, so it would seem to be a foolish mistake. Plus, every second term presidency is down to the “C” team in the final year because the better people have bailed.
What if it wasn’t an accident?
What if it was on purpose, a Machiavellian/Rovian method to the madness? The definitive book “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” is a primer on tricks like this.
This is part of the usual cognitive dissonance on the left: Bush is clueless, except when he’s engaging in a brilliant multi-layered conspiracy. It seems Bush Derangement Syndrome is still in full flower on the Left…. leaving me wondering what they’ll do with their time and energy when Bush has left office. Maybe they can get together and reminisce about the good old days.
