Mid August overflow

A few things I've run across that are too long to fit on Twitter, which has all but killed my blogging:

James Taranto: “Times have changed. In the 1930s, government was small. Expanding it massively in order to solve problems might or might not have been a good idea, but there's no denying it was innovative. Today government is sclerotic. Those who believe more government is the solution to America's problems are at best unthinking reactionaries. The Tea Partiers, having clearly identified this problem, are today's true progressives (to employ the term in its literal rather than ideological sense).”

I have long made variations on this same theme, especially with regard to Social Security.

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More Taranto: “Obama's failure is the failure of the liberal elite, and that is why their ressentiment has reached such intensity. Their ideas, such as they are, are being put to a real-world test and found severely wanting. As a result, their authority is collapsing. And if there is one thing they know deep in their bones, it is that they are entitled to that authority. They lash out, desperately and pathetically, because they have nothing to offer but fear and anger.”

Watching leftists try to explain away the failure of their policy ideas has served as a bit of dark comedy, but it hardly takes away the sting of having to live under said policies.

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Jack Kelly: “Boiled to its essence, Progressivism is the belief that government knows best. More specifically, that government in the hands of such wise and public spirited people as Progressives imagine themselves to be knows better how to run businesses than do the men and women who own them; knows better what's good for ordinary people than the people do themselves….

The failure of their policies to improve the lives of most Americans didn't trouble Progressives much, because their focus changed. What was good for teacher unions became more important than what was good for students. What was good for public employee unions became more important than whether bureaucracies were serving the public well. To Progressive politicians, the votes of minorities became more important than their economic well being.”

I think this is exactly right: trying to argue specific policy ideas with them based on the results they produce is fruitless, because they do not care what the outcome of policies are. What is important to them is feeling like you are doing something good, and more importantly being able to convince interest groups that you mean them well. Feelings vs results is the “Mars and Venus” aspect of so much political discussion in this country, why neither side even understands the other.

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Richard Miniter: "Obama is not the new FDR, but the new Gorbachev: a man forced to preside over the demise of a political system he desperately wants to save,"
Indeed, the line has been going around about how ironic it would be if Obama is the guy who finally discredits socialism (don’t hold your breath, that people still believe in it today shows that it is more religion than reasoned worldview).

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Jay Nordlinger: “Question: If a state votes for lions of early-’70s liberalism, Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer, over such forward thinkers as Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina — not to mention those challengers’ entrepreneurial credentials — doesn’t the state kind of deserve what it gets?”

Indeed it does, Jay.

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The dishonesty of Chris Matthews knows no bounds. He correctly quoted a 1987 Reagan speech:

"Congress consistently brings the government to the edge of default. ... This brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest rates would skyrocket, instability would occur in financial markets, and the federal deficit would soar. The United States has a special responsibility to itself and the world to meet its obligations."

Without quoting the rest of the passage, making clear the meaning:

"For those who say more taxes will solve our deficit problem, they are wrong. Every time Congress increases taxes, the deficit does not decrease, spending increases. It's time for a clear and consistent policy to reduce the federal budget deficit. ... You don't need more taxes to balance the budget. Congress needs the discipline to stop spending more, and that can be done with the passage of a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. ... But I ... will not permit Congress to dismantle our national defense, to jeopardize arms reduction or to increase your taxes. I am determined that will not happen."

Until next time...

Quick hits 4/28

Some notables from my recent reading:

Mark Steyn on the fatuousness of our current nuclear weapons policy:

By the way, that’s another example of the self-indulgent irrelevance of Obama. The mound of corpses being piled up around the world today is not from high-tech nuclear states but from low-tech psycho states. It’s not that Britain has nukes and poor old Sudan has to make do with machetes. It’s that the machete crowd is willing to kill on an industrial scale and the high-tech guys can’t figure out a way to stop them. Perhaps for his next pointless yakfest the president might consider a machete nonproliferation initiative.

Nuclear technology cannot be un-invented. All you can do, as President Reagan understood when few others did, is invent something that will render it, if not yet obsolete, at least less lethal. Until that moment, what makes the difference is not the technology but the regime.

Indeed it is. You would think, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the knee jerk anti-nuke movement would have faded away, but now they’ve moved into positions of actual policy influence…scary.

A little more:

[T]here’s no correlation between peace and the number of weapons — except insofar as states with only a few nukes are more likely to use them than states with gazillions: If you’ve only got a dozen, you’re under more pressure to let ’em fly before they’re taken out by incoming. So the principle underpinning Obama’s Seventies-retro nuke summit — that the size of a civilized state’s stockpile adds to the global threat — is not just false but dangerously delusional. Likewise, the urge to forswear nuclear innovation. It would be greatly to the advantage of civilization if responsible powers were to develop new forms of limited, highly targeted, bunker-busting nukes.

Spot on.

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Jeff Jacoby on the outcry over Spirit Airlines lowering ticket prices while making excess carry-on luggage an a la carte charge:

[I]f Schumer grieves so deeply about travelers being "nickeled and dimed" when they fly, why has he never gone after the US ticket tax, which adds 7.5 percent to the price of every domestic flight? Or the $16.50 the federal government charges for each international departure and arrival? Or the $17 in customs and inspection fees paid by passengers flying into US airports from abroad? Or the "passenger facilities charges" (up to $18 per round-trip)? Or the "US Security Service Fee" ($2.50 per departure)? Or the "domestic segment fee" ($3.70 per flight segment)? The government's unremitting "nickeling and diming"of airline passengers doesn't trouble the sleep of New York's senior senator. Only when a private firm acts does he toss and turn in anguish.

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Jack Kelly on President Bush (43)’s missed opportunity to clean up the CIA:

[I]n the gravest mistake of his presidency, George W. Bush didn't clean house. He just threw money at the existing structure, which made a bad situation worse.

"In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Congress gave the CIA more than $3 billion to increase its deep cover capabilities overseas," Ishmael said. "The CIA was not able to field a single additional effective deep cover case officer overseas. The money was swallowed up into higher pay packages, expensive boondoggles, the enrichment of contracting companies run by former CIA employees, and the expansion of CIA offices within the United States."

As usually happens with government spending…

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It’s sad when the people who show up to protest a Nazi rally end up being worse people than the actual Nazis:

A bare-chested middle-aged man with Nazi insignias tattooed on his chest and back walked into a crowd of hundreds of counter-protesters gathered near 1st and Spring streets.

Surrounded, the man mockingly bobbed his head to the rhythm of demonstrators chanting "Nazi scum." About a dozen protesters suddenly began pelting the man with punches and kicks. He fell and was struck on the back with the wooden handle of a protester's sign, which snapped in two. Police eventually reached the man and pulled him from the melee, as blood poured from the back of his neck.

Another man was rushed by a mob on Spring Street. He was punched in the face and kicked for about 20 seconds before police made it to the scene. After that beating was broken up, the man began running south on Spring Street, only to be chased down by a protester and slugged in the face. He collapsed and his face slammed to the curb as protesters began pummeling him again.

The bloodied man was then escorted away by police. Both victims were treated and released, police said.

His sign, unclear in its intended meaning, read "Christianity=Paganism=Heathen$" with an arrow pointing at a swastika.

"Gosh, I think he just didn't have a clear message. I don't even think he was a Nazi," said one man, looking at the broken pieces of the sign left behind.

It turns out that some protests are violent (see also the anti-Arizona immigration law protests), it’s just that Tea Parties are not among them.

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James Taranto notes a delicious story of a government assault on freedom gone awry:

Southern California has suffered a "sudden increase of water main breaks that damaged numerous homes, businesses and streets." KCBS-TV reports that the problem was caused by the "conservation"--i.e., rationing--efforts of Los Angeles' Department of Water and Power:

DWP customers were restricted to watering their lawns on Mondays and Thursdays only, which caused everybody to water their lawns basically at the same time. As a result, water pressure dropped, and the pipes were submitted to more cycles of water pressure.

In other words, the maximum water pressure did not change, but the minimum did, and this cyclic pressure created fatigue on corroded pipes.

We got a kick out of the headlines on the KCBS Web site, though. The main headline reads, "DWP's Water Rationing Blamed for Water Main Breaks." But here's the subheadline: "Report: Water Main Breaks Were Mainly Fault of Public."

Stupid public. They should have known better than to follow the DWP's idiotic rules.

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More Taranto, catching a global warmist being honest:

[From an article in Der Spiegel]:

German climatologist Hans von Storch now wants to see an independent institution recalculate the temperature curve, and he even suggests that the skeptics be involved in the project. He points out, however, that processing the data will take several years.

"There is no other way to regain the trust that has been lost," he says, "even if I'm certain that the new curve will not look significantly different from the old one."

And if it does? "That would definitely be the worst-case scenario for climatology. We would have to start all over again."

That's a revealing quote, isn't it? These climate guys have been insisting we're all doomed, and if it turns out they're wrong, that's the worst-case scenario for them.

Quick hits 4/22

Notes from my reading:

Larry Elder, from a column on big government economics:

An economics professor asked his class which of these two scenarios the students preferred. First scenario: Japan grows at an annual rate of 7 percent, and the Unites States grows at 4 percent. Second scenario: Japan and the United States both grow at 3 percent. Overwhelmingly, the students chose the second option. In other words, the students accepted their own lower domestic growth rather than allow Japan — a friendly nation — to outpace us. In exchange for "equality," they chose an otherwise lower standard of living. They, at least, acknowledged the existence — and accepted the price — of the trade-off. If people understood the damage done when government takes from A and gives to B, how many would sign on?

It is stunning and sad that these students have become so brainwashed by Marxist rhetoric that they would explicitly choose making everybody poorer for the sake of a Utopian fantasy. That is exactly the position that big government advocates advance, but at least many (most?) of them are ignorant that such a trade-off exists.

Elder recognizes this:

Collectivism is a bargain that most people — if they knew the real price tag — would reject. These trade-offs include lower productivity, diminished initiative, fewer jobs, rewarding reckless behavior and poor choices, a lower-than-otherwise standard of living, less economic freedom, greater government dependency, and fewer resources to spend on national security and to secure our borders.

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Michael Barone, from a column on increasing Wall Street regulation and its beneficiaries:

Little wonder that Goldman Sachs likes the idea. It will be able to borrow at lower cost than small competitors and will be assured that its large counterparties will qualify for government bailouts. Big firms tend to favor regulation because it insulates them from competition and protects them against loss. […]

In the 2008 campaign cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics' opensecrets.org website, Goldman Sachs personnel contributed $4.5 million to Democrats and just $1.5 million to Republicans.

Add in three other big Wall Street firms — Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup — and the total take was $12.7 million to Democrats and $6.7 million to Republicans. The image of Wall Streeters as solid Republicans is as dead as J. P. Morgan himself.

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With a (massively regressive, it should be noted) Value Added Tax push coming after the elections are safely over, it’s worth looking at their rate history elsewhere. Canada has actually lowered their VAT from the original 7% to 5%, but every other nation has later increased the rate (source: The Wall Street Journal):

Denmark 9-25%
France 13.6-19.6
Germany 10-19
Italy 12-20
Japan 3-5
Spain 12-16
Sweden 17.7-25
Switzerland 6.5-7.6
United Kingdom 8-17.5

Ahh, but maybe they reduced their income tax rates? Not so much.

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Jay Nordlinger on our tax code:

The tax code pits Americans against one another. It pits homeowners against renters, married people against unmarried people, people with children against people without children, people with children going to college against people with children going into trades — and on and on. The tax code is packed with social policy, and bias. That’s one reason I say, a pox on it.

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More Nordlinger:

I offer you good news out of Havana: “A surprisingly small crowd sweated and sang along to performances by Cuban rock, folk and salsa stars Saturday, at what the communist government billed as a politically important ‘concert for the homeland.’”

The article continued, “Organizers had said the show would be headlined by Cuba’s most famous folk singer, Silvio Rodriguez. But instead the pro-Castro government activist made fans wait for an hour in unrelenting afternoon sun before he took the stage, read a letter defending the single-party communist system — and then left without performing.”

Doesn’t that warm your heart?

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From another Nordlinger column:

President Obama has another pick coming up. If I were able to question him, I might ask something like, “When you were in the Senate, you voted against both John Roberts and Samuel Alito. You said they were qualified in traditional ways, but they were conservative — therefore, in your eyes, they were unfit to serve on the Supreme Court. By your standard, should Republican senators vote against your nominees because they’re liberal?”

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Finally, Charles Krauthammer on the fatuousness of US nuclear policy:

[T]he Washington summit was part of a larger misdirection play — Obama’s “nuclear spring.” Last week, a START treaty, redolent of precisely the kind of Cold War obsolescence Obama routinely decries. The number of warheads in Russia’s aging and decaying nuclear stockpile is an irrelevancy now that the existential U.S.-Soviet struggle is over. One major achievement of the treaty, from the point of view of Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, is that it could freeze deployment of U.S. missile defenses — thus constraining the single greatest anti-nuclear breakthrough of our time.

The left wing resistance to missile defense has never made any sense to me. I'm sure some of it was the anti-American, pro-Soviet worldview that infected the political left of the 80's, but shouldn't that silliness have been relegated to the dustbin of history as well? Is raw hatred for the US still driving opinion this issue?

Just bizarre.

Quick hits 4/20

Some things i ran across in my reading:

James Taranto, on why the left needs racism:

The political left claims to love racial diversity, but it bitterly opposes such diversity on the political right. This is an obvious matter of political self-interest: Since 1964, blacks have voted overwhelmingly Democratic. If Republicans were able to attract black votes, the result would be catastrophic for the Democratic Party. […]

To keep blacks voting Democratic, it is necessary for the party and its supporters to keep alive the idea that racism is prevalent in America and to portray the Republican Party (as well as independent challengers to the Democrats, such as the tea-party movement) as racist. The election of Barack Obama made nonsense of the idea that America remains a racist country and thereby necessitated an intensifying of attacks on the opposition as racist.

Walter Williams, concluding a superb piece on the destructive effects of minimum wage laws: “Tragically, minimum wages have the unquestioned support of good-hearted, well-meaning people with little understanding who become the useful idiots of charlatans, quacks and racists.”

Via Jay Nordlinger, this Benjamin Netanyahu quote is chilling and sad: “Iran’s leaders are barreling toward developing a nuclear weapon, and openly declaring their desire to destroy Israel. In the face of these repeated pledges to remove the Jewish state from the earth, we encounter in the best case a limp reaction, and even that is fading. We do not hear the necessary rejection, no harsh denunciation, no outcry. The world is carrying on as usual, and there are those who direct their fire at us, at Israel.”

Also via JN, a great Bill Buckley quote: “When you wished long life to Fidel Castro, were you wishing a short life to his prisoners?” Unwittingly or not, yes you were.

Regulation, government and big business

Love this analogy from Dooley Womack:

"I’ve always thought that regulatory risk is a lot like having Tony Soprano for a business partner. The U.S. government, our stand-in for Mr. Soprano in this analogy, may not have interests that are directly congruent with that of the business owner (as David Scatino found out in season 2 of The Sopranos), but there’s no better ally to have if you want to discourage competition."

Quick hits 12/19

More links and tweets that have caught my eye, with a bit of commentary:

Telling sentence: “The majorities opposing Obama on the Guantanamo issue are even larger than those that oppose him on national health care.”

Some encouraging medical news.

The green mind at work: Prince Charles used up seven months’ worth of the average British person’s “carbon footprint” yesterday flying to Copenhagen on an executive jet to make a speech on climate change.

Oklahoma City’s Wednesday night shoes

John Stossel: “Someone will ration health care. In America, insurance companies usually do it. In most of the rest of the world, governments do. Costs skyrocket under both systems. Its time we tried the third option: let individuals use their own money to buy health care.”

John Hinderaker: “Don't fall for the pretense that the international ‘green’ movement is about anything other than anti-free enterprise and anti-American ideology.”

Robert Heinlein: “Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.”

How many people remember that Obama, during his campaign, promised a net spending cut?

There are still 14 days left, but I’m declaring this the photo caption of the year.

And this the bookstore display of the year.

When the directions say “Roll it on over the head” this is NOT what it means.

Climate change: nature’s way.

Tiger and PC in domestic violence

Why does an attempt to transfer the right to make medical decisions from the people to government surprise anybody? Did you expect a Chicago machine politician to show an enthusiasm for civil liberties?

Foreign Object Damage asks: “Does it concern anyone else that anger is the only emotion that President Obama has displayed in public over the last month?” What, did you think he wasn’t really part of the Angry Left?

Thogocracy update: Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla) wants to imprison a local critic. This idiot exemplifies the police-state mindset.

John Stossel on the matter: “Bullies like Congressman Grayson illustrate the danger of government power; government is the only entity that can legally use force. That makes government a fearsome master. It can use force to take our money, and homes, and our freedom.”

From @Jeff_Jacoby: Ex-soldier finds a gun, turns it into the police, & is promptly arrested for possessing a firearm. Beyond Orwellian.

Happiest state ranking, Texas a disappointing 16th (Austin must be dragging us down).

Ridiculous photo caption editorializing.

Tweets from the wild Mavs-Rockets game I attended:
From STEIN_LINE_HQ: Brace yourself: Mavs found pieces from two Landry teeth embedded in gash in Dirk's right elbow
From STEIN_LINE_HQ: Landry taken straight to hospital. Mavs needed 30 minutes to clean up Dirk's elbow just to get ready for X-rays.
From @kpelton: This Houston-Dallas game will not go down as a monument to quality NBA officiating.
From @MFollowill: Hearing stories the process of picking the teeth of dirk's elbow was quite gruesome. Didn't know if it was his bone or Landry's teeth. Wow!

Quick hits 12/15

Some short notes, links and thoughts:

John Hinderaker repeats what I have been stressing: “Having the far left in control of both the executive and legislative branches is a terrible thing, but on the plus side, it is clarifying: people actually have to think about where they stand on the big issue of freedom vs. socialism. Or, in other words, freedom vs. slavery.”

John Edwards: not only a sleazebag, but a common criminal.

Some who live on confiscated money hypocritically do not allow their own to be confiscated.

Ann Althouse: “The strategy for avoiding the label ‘death panel’ is: present the treatments as deadly. Voila: life panels! Now, here’s your blue pill.”

Al Gore busted lying...again.

Big Hollywood: “What’s the Difference Between the Mafia and a Hollywood Leftist? …the Mafia doesn’t go after your family.”

Incompetence update: more uninvited guests get to Obama. This is scary, at some point they won’t be quite so friendly if this continues.

Worst restaurant names ever

Calling Obama a socialist seems a bit overheated, but it does hold up to scrutiny; this is a president who has sought to restructure about 35% of the economy from the top down: health care (17% of GDP), energy (9.8%), and financial services (8%). Socialism is a Utopian fantasy of the academic class, and most of his administration is staffed with academics, so this is not exactly a surprising development.

Always remember: If you don't know who the mark is, you are the mark.

How cool is this?

Stem cell fact: Restrictions on embryonic stem cell research originated with Congress, which, each year since in 1996, has forbidden the use of federal financing for any experiment in which a human embryo is destroyed. What, you thought it was George W. Bush?

Charles Krauthammer:

Forget for a moment the economic effects of severe carbon chastity. There’s the matter of constitutional decency. If you want to revolutionize society — as will drastic carbon regulation and taxation in an energy economy that is 85 percent carbon-based — you do it through Congress reflecting popular will. Not by administrative fiat of EPA bureaucrats.

Congress should not just resist this executive overreaching, but trump it: Amend existing clean-air laws and restore their original intent by excluding CO2 from EPA control and reserving that power for Congress and future legislation.

Do it now. Do it soon. Because Big Brother isn’t lurking in CIA cloak. He’s knocking on your door, smiling under an EPA cap.

Gaming the CBO numbers.

It didn’t take long for people to long for the competence of the second Bush administration, did it?

Martin Kramer makes the superb point that there is really no difference between Bush’s infamous “Bring ‘em on” challenge and Obama’s America deprecation in that each is “effectively an open invitation to America’s adversaries, and even its allies, to elude, evade, defy and confront the United States”.

He also correctly notes that “Middle Eastern states bend in response to displays of power, although as soon as they perceive weakness, they snap back to default position.”

Quick hits 12/14

John Stossel on Harry Reid: “Accusing someone of being a racist is typically a last desperate measure when someone has lost an argument.” Undeniably true.

Dr. Melissa Clouthier demonstrates that Reid had it exactly backward: “Those who fight the health care legislation fear being owned. They fear that every personal decision from cradle to grave will be manipulated by a nameless, faceless bureaucrat in Washington D.C. They fear easily accessible files, not unlike the IRS, where a government employee can know every private piece of information about the citizen’s life. They fear health care decisions made for financial expedience. In short, those who fight against this health care bill, don’t want to be owned by the government...Harry Reid is all about ownership… the government owns and the taxpayer is enslaved.”

I have used the taxation as slavery comparison before myself, and will again.

Why do people fall under the spell of hyped-up scare mongering like global warmism? Don Surber hits the nail on the head: “a lot of it is a need for religion among irreligious people. The idea of man's sins causing punishment by nature is nearly universal in history...From the ancient Greeks - not exactly a primitive people - to the modern Australian aborigines, the tribes of men share in common a desire to connect their behavior to natural phenomenon.”

Epic win indeed!

Jonathan Abrams on the challenge that is the triangle.

Lest you think that it was only Washington driving the (largely government created) housing crisis.

John Hinderaker busts Obama pretending that “the world recognized” driving Saddam out of Kuwait was a just cause. In fact, the American and international left were bitterly opposed to Bush the Elder on this and Senate Democrats voted 45-10 (including the current VP) to block it.

That said, he may not be lying here, as he has proven to be ignorant of (even recent) history on so many occasions. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and call it ignorance.

Democrats are twice as likely as Republicans to say that they've seen a ghost and more than twice as likely to believe in astrology. Democrats are also more than twice as likely to have consulted a fortune teller.

Kim Strassel points out that the EPA’s attempt to blackmail Congress into passing some form of Cap and Tax is a boon for the legislators; they can call the bluff and avoid the wrath of the voters and leave the administration to own it.

The AP assigns 11 “fact checkers” to Palin’s book, 5 to Climategate. Remember when it was a straight news organization?

Is the 3D TV screen at the Death Star the dumbest idea ever? Because, you know, you’re there, if you want a 3D image WATCH THE GAME.

The Senate health care bill amendment to limit attorney contingency fees on medical malpractice failed by a 66-32 vote. That is conclusive proof that the pro “reform” side has no interest whatsoever in controlling medical costs. A primary goal of these various bills is to transfer wealth from doctors and patients to trial lawyers, as a political favor.

Classic dumb criminal story

Ed Morrissey: “Who could have warned us that a man who served seven years in the state legislature and three years in the Senate would not have been prepared for the toughest executive position in the Free World? We did. Repeatedly. So did John McCain, and for that matter, so did Hillary Clinton.”

Least surprising news ever: “New research by Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong at the University of Toronto levels an even graver charge: that virtuous shopping can actually lead to immoral behavior. In their study (described in a paper now in press at Psychological Science), subjects who made simulated eco-friendly purchases ended up less likely to exhibit altruism in a laboratory game and more likely to cheat and steal.”

East Anglia CRU is stepping up their hiding of climate data. These people are as crooked as an old catcher’s fingers.

This is what astroturf looks like

Quick hits 12/10

John Stossel on global warmism: “With millions dying from malnutrition, poor hygiene, and malaria, the world’s poobah’s want to spend trillions on a theoretical problem.”

From @gordonkeith: I can't believe Tiger was betrayed by a reality TV chick. They usually are very private and discreet.

Copenhagen hypocrisy: "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfill the demand…We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."

The Wall Street Journal on what government can do to help create jobs: “If Congress won't reduce taxes, the best stimulus now would be for Congress to stop scaring private job creators by promising to help them. Just do nothing at all.”

Some may find the Obama/Democrat attempt to reduce charitable giving via taxation to be counterintuitive, they being the supposed party that cares about the downtrodden. But in fact it is perfectly consistent with their vision, which is to advance government as the distributor of goodies. Private charity, seen as good thing to most of us, is seen as a competitor to be crushed by those of the statist mindset.

More from @gordonkeith: I would say that I am the Tiger Woods of sexting, but I guess he is now.

Thomas Sowell: “What does ‘economic justice’ mean, except that you want something that someone else produced, without having to produce anything yourself in return?”

Along the same line: “Since this is an era when many people are concerned about ‘fairness’ and ‘social justice,’ what is your “fair share” of what someone else has worked for?”

More Sowell: “Here is a math problem for you: Assume that the legislation establishing government control of medical care is passed and that it ‘brings down the cost of medical care.’ You pay $500 a year less for your medical care, but the new costs put on employers is passed on to consumers, so that you pay $300 a year more for groceries and $200 a year more for gasoline, while the new mandates put on insurance companies raise your premiums by $300 a year, how much money have you saved?”

And one more: “Government pressures on mortgage lenders to accept less than the full amount they are owed may win votes for politicians, since there are far more borrowers than lenders. But how much future lending can be expected when the lenders know that politicians are ready to intervene at any time to prevent them from getting their money back?”

James Taranto:
Q: How many climate scientists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. There's a consensus that it's going to change, so they've decided to keep us in the dark.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB10001424052748703499404574557583017194444.html

The (British) NHS Cancer Plan has a cut-off age of 70, meaning half of those diagnosed with cancer are ineligible for treatment. See how government health care works?

Stuff Hipsters Hate

Quick hits 12/9

Some notable links, quotes and tweets:

I’m loving this idea.

Why Switzerland Has The Lowest Crime Rate In The World

Deceiver.com: “Taking a private jet to a conference on stopping global warming is a bit like traveling in a sedan chair carried by indentured servants to a summit on stopping human trafficking.”

Wow! From @djturtleface: The Grizzlies drafted a player older then their average team age this year. Bet that's a record.

Bailout, Stimulus II, Government Spending: Still Totally Unpopular

Fascism update from @Jeff_Jacoby: Global warming alarmists want the U of Wisconsin to revoke the PhD of Pat Michaels, a notable climate skeptic. http://bit.ly/5N38s9

From @BrianFDonahue via @mkhammer: Who would have ever predicted this? Obama administration predicts $30B loss on auto bailout http://bit.ly/7GUHQn

This kind of shows the triviality of the gay “marriage” debate, doesn’t it? THE issue for gays is defeating radical Islam, the rest pales.

Occupational Licensing Abuse in Texas

Dems considering a lower Medicare age requirement? Great plan for a program that is already $37 trillion underfunded with the age as it is.

John Stossel: “Hidden taxes are more pernicious because they disguise what we pay for government. We blame merchants, not our legislators, for the high price of gasoline, liquor, cigarettes and phone calls, but the money goes to the political thieves.”

Walter Willaims: "Politicians are worse than thieves. At least when thieves take your money, they don't expect you to thank them for it."

Interesting (and obvious) observation from an Indian UN delegate: “It is morally wrong for us to agree to reduce (emissions) when 40% of Indians do not have access to electricity.”

Nice illustration of the global warming mindset, a Der Spiegel piece by Christian Schwagerl: “If the rest of the world were to follow the US example in their in their approach to fossil fuels, the oceans would not only heat up, but would probably begin to boil.”

So much of the global warmist movement is about pure envy, jealousy over the success of the US and its people and a desire for us to commit economic suicide so that our people would be forced to live as Europeans do, instead of the lifestyles that we have earned.

The effort to sell health care reform as the solution to our problems is meant for politically uninformed and unsophisticated voters. One thing the last few months has shown us is that the more people learn about the issues, the more likely they are to reject an increased government role.

Vaclav Klaus, a man who knows a little bit about tyranny: "The biggest source of dangers for freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity at the end of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century ceased to be socialism, but it is now an ambitious, very arrogant, and almost unscrupulous ideology of a political movement . . . of environmentalism."

Quick hits 12/8

Some quick tweets and links that have caught my eye:

I do have to give Obama credit for his sense of humor, in making light of the stimulus job fudging fiasco by following his ceremonial Thanksgiving turkey pardon with “All told, I believe it’s fair to say that we have saved or created four turkeys.”

AARP *opposes* the McCain amendment to block any Medicare benefit reductions, with the explanation "The legislation does not reduce any guaranteed Medicare benefits." They don’t even pretend to care more about seniors than they do about Democrats anymore, do they?

Not that that should be construed as me disagreeing with Medicare cuts, but I would like to see them as standalone policy, not as part of increasing government’s role in medical care. The growth of government’s role is one of the primary forces that has distorted the market and gotten us into this inflationary spiral.

From @forumbluegold: RE: Artest and Hennessy. I'm very glad all the stupid s&$#% I did at 19 doesn't end up in magazines. (Amen to that!)

Charles Johnson completes his transformation from right wing extremist to raving moonbat. I’m guessing he went from being a Phillies fan to being a Yankees fan this year as well.

Health care bill gives states incentives to drop out of Medicaid.

A roundup of Tiger Woods jokes.

Don’t know the source of this quote, but it’s money: “You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

Stimulus math.

Another thing government should not be doing.

House of cards tumbling: Australia ditches cap and trade in Climategate's aftermath

Culture of Corruption update.

Your stimulus dollars at work.

Some quick hits

A lot of the short quotes or links I used to post here now go to my Twitter feed, since it takes so much less effort.

James Taranto: “Why did Obama win the Nobel Peace Prize? Because he pandered to the prejudices of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.”

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JammieWearingFool on the terrorist plot against a GOP congressman: “I blame MSNBC, CNN, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the leftwing blogosphere for fostering this climate of hate against Republicans.”

Consistent standards… no fair!

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Why didn’t Pinch Sulzberger get a cabinet position?

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Jules Crittenden: "It's a sad state of affairs when a Frenchman mocks an American president and you have to go with the Frog."

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Durable goods orders, housing sales dropped in August. Direct result of Cash for Clunkers diverting money from one kind of purchase to another? Probably, every time government incentivizes one kind of behavior it’s at the expense of another.

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“I can recall no other major American speech in which the narcissism of a leader has been quite so pronounced.” In the Washington Post, mind you, on Obama's UN debacle.

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The Empire State Building was illuminated red and yellow for a week, celebrating China's 60 years of communist rule. Really? What a disgusting gesture, celebrating that soul crushing death cult.

The gift that keeps on giving

I'm talking, of course, about John Kerry, who has the hat.

His latest gem: "Let me emphasize something very strongly as we begin this discussion. The United States has already this year alone achieved a 6% reduction in emissions simply because of the downturn in the economy, so we are effectively saying we need to go another 14%."

So the consort/Senator doesn't really have a problem with the recession, indeed, he would like to see it deepen into a permanent depression. No wonder he has been a staunch supporter of the "Stimulus", a massive new energy tax and a government takeover of the health care industry, measures which are steps in that direction.

Fallout of the minimum wage rate hike

From an NYT report:

"According to today’s job report [...] The teenage unemployment rate, however, is at 25.5 percent, its highest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping track of such data in 1948."

Wonder how many reporters will draw the (should be) obvious connection with the July increase in the minimum wage?

Global warming update

Parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin under a frost warning...in August. "[R]esidents there should consider protecting their sensitive plants."

Hey, I've got an idea: let's drive hundreds of millions worldwide into poverty with draconian, economy-crushing carbon emission mandates!

Government 101

Erik Voorhees: "the value of the dollar remained extremely stable for 150 years, the Fed was created in order to ’stabilize the value of the dollar,’ and the result has been a 95% devaluation of the dollar in less than 100 years following its creation.”

Imagine that!

Your tax dollars at work

The idiotic Cash for Clunkers program ends today. Big media has been portraying it as a smashing success because it had burned through its money faster than expected and ended up with a budget triple what was originally planned, in that Bizarro World where confiscating and spending more taxpayer money than expected and doing it faster than expected is a good thing.

In reality, it is the perfect illustration of how government "works."

This is a program whose goal was to help the environment by replacing lower mileage vehicles with higher mileage vehicles.

What did it actually do? Rewarded drivers who had bought low mileage vehicles in the past, penalized drivers who had purchased high mileage vehicles in the past, paid many participants to buy SUVs such as Hummer H3's and Suburbans, encouraged participants to drive more in the future, and make it for the lower middle class and poor to buy cars.

How could it have done all of those things? Lets take them one at a time.

* Rewarded drivers who had bought low mileage vehicles in the past: the entire program is based on trading in older vehicles that get low gas mileage. By definition, the people who are eligible to take advantage of it are those whom the green movement would see as traitors to the planet, those who had been driving (or owned and had driven in the past) gas guzzlers.

* Penalized drivers who had bought high mileage vehicles in the past: the program is being financed by taxpayer money. In particular, taxpayers who do not take advantage of the program. A group which is disproportionately comprised of...people who had been driving (or owned and had driven in the past) high mileage vehicles. This group that greens would see as responsible stewards of the planet is hardest hit by this tax burden.

* Paid participants to buy SUVs: the rules of the program are that if you have a vehicle on the trade-in list you may buy a new vehicle as long as it gets one more MPG than the one you give up, as long as the new one gets 15 MPG combined. This definition allows for government payments toward the purchase of a number of SUVs and full size pickups, including the Hummer H3 and the Chevy Suburban.

* Encourages participants to drive more in the future: There is one immutable law of driving: the more it costs, the less people will drive, and vice versa. Thus when gas prices rise, people drive less, and when prices drop they drive more.

Similarly a driver with a gas guzzler will attempt to limit his miles, and anybody replacing one with a vehicle that gets better mileage will drive more, a lot more if the difference is significant. To be able to drive more is the primary motivation for getting a high mileage vehicle to start with; no need to worry so much about things like car pooling and unnecessary trips if it costs less to drive.

* Hurts the poor: Not surprising that a green program would hurt the poor, that's the inevitable result of trying to slow or stop economic growth, which is the ultimate goal of environmentalism in general. So it is with this one.

The "clunkers" that the government receives in trade via this program are to be destroyed, the idea being to get them off the road. The problem is that such older, low-cost vehicles are exactly the kind that are bought by people of limited means. These poor and lower middle class citizens will now be faced with a decreased supply of affordable used cars, and thus higher prices. The end result will be that the poor eventually be faced with the choice of getting poorer or not having a car.

This is not much different from other attempts at social engineering; it is well-documented that welfare has driven millions into poverty and made sure that millions more stayed there, and it is equally well-documented that raising the minimum wage hurts unskilled workers, to name two prominent examples.

And that is the very essence of government programs. They seldom solve or even make dents in the problems they are intended to address, and they inevitably create new problems which lead to...more government programs, and the cycle continues. And we lose a little bit more of our freedom with each one.

UPDATE 8/24: Gene Mierzejewski hits on another one I somehow missed: destroying the clunkers is pure destruction of wealth, given how many of them are still useful. As I note above, this is essentially the destruction of wealth of the poor.

UPDATE 8/24: And, of course, there is the distinct possibility that dealers will not get reimbursed at all, raising the price of all cars for everybody and destroying jobs at car dealerships and their suppliers.

Common sense

Nah, not if government is involved. George Mason economist Russ Roberts poses what would be an easy question for anybody but a politician:

Imagine you’re a member of Congress. You’re a fan of the Cash for Clunkers program. You discover that the $1 billion that Congress budgeted for the program has been spent in FOUR DAYS. The program is now out of money. What do you do?

A. Realize that $4500 per clunker was too big a subsidy and that you can achieve the same effects with a much smaller amount.

B. Worry that maybe there is some fraud in the program and that some of the cash isn’t going to clunkers

C. Increase the budget by $2 billion

The correct answer for clunkheads is C, of course. That’s the wise choice when you are spending other people’s money. What fun that must be!

Bad day for unskilled workers

The minimum wage increases for the third straight year today, this time to $7.25. It has now risen 41% from the $5.15 level in effect on July 23, 2007.

What does this mean? The same thing it means when you raise the price of anything else arbitrarily: a decrease in demand. Unskilled labor has an intrinsic value, that value being whatever level businesses are willing to voluntarily pay before deciding that the cost outweighs the benefit, at which point they will no longer pay it.

Of course, those businesses that employ minimum wage workers will pay the new wage, that's not what I mean. What I mean is that they will not just raise their unskilled labor cost by 41% in two years.

What they will do is cut the number of minimum wage hours they pay at the new level. For some, this will mean eliminating minimum wage jobs. For others, this will mean cutting full time workers to part time, with the added benefit of cutting, uhh, benefits. Part timers can be employed without having to provide perks such as medical benefits, paid vacations and the like.

The key thing to understand is that you cannot just arbitrarily force unskilled workers to make more money by government fiat. If you could do so without negative consequences, why not raise the minimum wage to $20.00 and make them middle class? Or why not $100.00 and make them rich?

Because, of course, you would cut the number of minimum wage workers to near zero and zero, respectively. Wages are the mechanism by which scarce resources, in which case this unskilled labor, are allocated among competing consumers, in this case employers.

Any attempt to artificially overprice these resources can only result in increased supply and decreased demand of said resource. Since the resource in this case is unskilled labor, that is who will get hurt by this ham-fisted government intervention in the market.

But the good news is that politicians and elites in journalism and academia will get to pat themselves on the back for their compassion, no matter who gets hurt as a result.

Quick hits

Some things I've run across, with limited commentary, combined to avoid a bunch of really short posts:

Thomas Donlan: “Once a government gets the idea that it can control the economy, or at least smooth off the rough edges of the business cycle, there's trouble ahead."

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Bizarre statement by Obama in a speech in Africa: "No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top".

He’s correct, but what on earth is he talking about? In this country the government skims off about double that, and the president is trying to GROW the government.

What a hypocrite.

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What a difference a few years makes. Under Bush, we famously had jobless recovery for a while. Under Obama, we have job-loss recovery.

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Dick Morris: “Obama’s health care proposal is, in effect, the repeal of the Medicare program as we know it. The elderly will go from being the group with the most access to free medical care to the one with the least access.”

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John Roberts echoes my own beliefs on “empathy” and the role of a judge in this quote from his confirmation hearing in 2005: “If the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy's going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy's going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution.”

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Indiana governor Mitch Daniels refers to Obama’s domestic programs as “shock and awe statism.” Perfect.

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President Bush (43) gets too much abuse from some quarters and too much of a pass from others, but one thing that we should not forget: the man did more for the people of Africa than anybody who has ever lived.

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Dems unintentionally let us in on how they really feel about Cap and Tax with the unemployment provision that provides 70% of your salary (in addition to any other standard unemployment benefits) is you lose your job because of the bill. That’s a clear admission that they realize it will destroy a lot of jobs.

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Mark Steyn: "Both the secular Big Government progressives and the political Islam recoil from the concept of the citizen, of the free individual entrusted to operate within his own societal space, assume his responsibilities, and exploit his potential."

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More Steyn, on what our future may look like with a government health care takeover: "Under Britain's National Health Service, for example, smokers in Manchester have been denied treatment for heart disease, and the obese in Suffolk are refused hip and knee replacements. Patricia Hewitt, the British Health Secretary, says that it's appropriate to decline treatment on the basis of 'lifestyle choices.' Smokers and the obese may look at their gay neighbor having unprotected sex with multiple partners, and wonder why his 'lifestyle choices' get a pass while theirs don't. But that's the point: Tyranny is always whimsical."