It is amusing to see someone get excited about an IRS refund. He dances around and shouts, “I got $2,000! Partyyyyyy!!!”
Hey, you really screwed the government, huh?
Shmuck. The IRS loves to “give” you that money. Every refund represents a happy sheep.
It’s the First Law of Parasites: Don’t kill the host. That refund check is emotional fuel that keeps the producer working while the government bleeds him drop after drop, month after month…
1. The Objective Standard reviews the week every weekend.
2. “The prose, like the author, belongs in hell.” P.J. O’Rourke has fun with the Chinese Tiger Mother’s book.
3. Andrew McCarthy asks two good questions:
First, why should we give a damn about the Afghan people? And second, why are we sacrificing American blood and American treasure to build an Islamist post-nation that hates America?
Peter Wehner says we should give a damn because we are all made in God’s image. Although the word never comes up, this is a dispute between two conservatives about altruism.
4. I love the look on this bird’s face.
5. Check out Rational Public Radio. These guys are good.
6. Islamic infiltration. When will we get serious?
Downsizinggovernment.org stunned this blogger with how much useless government can be cut — while Congress is haggling over less than 1%. Let’s see how much I can find to cut in less than an hour. This is, of course, an exercise in fantasy; somehow politicians don’t think like you and me.
1. Ron Pisaturo compares two scenes in the Atlas Shrugged movie to the book. He shows how small changes can turn dialogue from romantic to naturalistic. This is a must-read for fiction writers.
2. Onkar Ghate reveals what is wrong with environmentalism. (Like everything.) This is the stuff you only get from Objectivists.
3. Barry Rubin writes that Hamas is moving toward war with Israel.
Hamas can fire an advanced anti-tank rocket because the Egyptian revolution has ended a regime that acted in its own interest to block most arms shipments to Hamas. The Egypt-Gaza border is now open. Terrorists and superior weapons are flooding into Gaza.
4. Marian Wright Edelman gives us the leftist case against budget cuts, and leaves no liberal cliche behind. You see, the Republicans want to rob from poor children in order to give money to corporations. You knew that, right? Her argument is economically ignorant but full of moral indignation — and that’s all she needs to flummox conservatives.
5. Yaron Brook on Capitalism Without Guilt, with a good Q&A session.
6. Vasko Kohlmayer is not impressed with Paul Ryan’s budget plan. Amy Peikoff wants cuts now, not over a 10-year period.
2. When Newt Gingrich jumps on the religion bandwagon, does it mean that a longtime power seeker senses the way things are going in America?
There is one line in Obama’s speech on Monday justifying military action in Libya that stands out, amongst a lot of illogic and contradictions, as the real reason:
…I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.
The prospect of emotionally wrenching pictures of suffering was too much for the President. Obama is not worried about logical arguments, but the emotionalist thinkers who look at pictures out of context and ask, “Why didn’t we do something?”
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Some have wondered what the Obama Doctrine is. I believe Bryan Preston at Pajamas Tatler has found it. Obama made this statement in El Salvador:
And that’s why building this international coalition has been so important because it means that the United States is not bearing all the cost. It means that we have confidence that we are not going in alone, and it is our military that is being volunteered by others to carry out missions that are important not only to us, but are important internationally. And we will accomplish that in a relatively short period of time.
(Emphasis Preston’s)
The Obama Doctrine restated in plain spoken clarity (which politicians never come near) is: America will not assert its national self-interest, but if other countries want to volunteer us to sacrifice for the rest of the world, we will be glad to serve.
(HT: Contentions)
At Cato Unbound, C. Bradley Thompson is in the middle of an unfair fight. He is defending the thesis of his book, “Neoconservatism: An Obituary” against multiple opponents, in a series of essays — and encountering no actual intellectual opposition (if “actuality” here is measured by reference to “dealing with ideas”) from the defender of neoconservatism. I can almost see Thompson wandering the intellectual battlefield wielding his book like Connor McLeod with his sword, asking “Why won’t they fight me?”
I walked into a diner yesterday with $20. After a seafood dinner, coffee, tax and tip, I walked out with $1. 10 years ago I think the same dinner would have cost in the $10 range.
I remember when I was young scraping by for three or four days on $5 until I got paid. Granted, I was eating cheap stuff, but now I would shudder at having to live even one day on just $5. (Remember those books with titles like “Europe On $5 a Day”?)
Peter Ferrara looks at the grim outlook on inflation and more. If he is right, our national survival is at stake.
Here is a tape of leftists discussing their goal to take down the capitalist system and redistribute wealth. At the end a speaker mentions Cloward and Piven’s idea of creating “ungovernability” — so the left does take their ideas seriously, and it’s not just right-wing hysteria to say so.
Elan Journo argues that intervention in Libya is not in U.S. national interest.
David Horowitz is no longer a Neo-Conservative.
Michael Hurd on Obama’s little war.
Actors talk about what it’s like not to be a leftist in show business.
In my last post, I defended the idea of unions by re-asserting the fundamentality of the right to bargain individually, versus the derivative “right” to bargain collectively. The error involved is a hierarchy error, an exceedingly common epistemological corruption born of the inability to think in terms of principles.
Described in that manner, it seems rather academic and not really all that big of a deal, does it? Today, I will tie together the ideas presented in that post with those I wrote about in “The Road to Hell“, to present a textbook demonstration of ideological causality in action — how ideas flow from concept to action in the real world, of how “good intentions” lead people to a hell they may in all sincerity have not intended, and defines in what manner such people remain responsible for that outcome.
I thought 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand by Scott McConnell might be tedious. How many times can you read that Frank O’Connor didn’t say much? (About 100 times.) The book turned out to be fascinating. I could not put it down.
Never let a good crisis go to waste, right? With thousands dead and a staggering loss of wealth in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami, the left sees an opportunity to create hysteria over nuclear power. Lots of misery? Oh, boy — let’s use it to score political points! Gus Van Horn posts with plenty of thought-provoking links.
Barry Rubin argues that Obama is bringing disaster to the Middle East and US interests.
Michael Hurd explains Charlie Sheen.
Evan Sayet looks at how leftists portray themselves in movies and TV. I think the explanation is that the left accepts the mind-body dichotomy, which is as old as Plato. The moral ideal is altruism, they believe, but in the reality of the flawed world we live in, everyone is petty and selfish. Comics like Larry David understand that there is more comedy in cynicism than in the left’s moral ideal.
If you like Classic Rock, Gary Moore gets quite a tone on “Red House.”
This piece in the New York Times about pharmaceutical companies is depressing. Government intervention is destroying the drug industry. And it will only get worse:
The new law also contains a major threat to drug industry profits in a little-known section that would allow centralized price-setting. Beginning in 2015, an independent board appointed by the president could lower prices across the board in Medicare unless Congress acted each year to overrule it. Medicare pays more than 20 percent of the nation’s retail drug bills.
Peter Wehner looks at two recent statements of leftist economic principles from Michael Moore and Robert Reich that are remarkably honest and revealing.
I had more respect for George Carlin before I read his autobiography, Last Words, than after. The more you get to know about the man, the less you like him.
He was irrational all his life. As a youth he was a juvenile delinquent. He had the bad luck to go to a progressive elementary school, which he calls wonderful, one of the first to experiment with John Dewey’s ideas. He started a lifelong pot habit as a child. He dropped out after ninth grade. He was kicked out of the Air Force. He and his wife were alcoholics in an abusive relationship (until, to their credit, they got sober with the help of AA). A great deal of his wealth was snorted up his nose. He evaded his financial affairs and ended up in 20 years of trouble with the IRS.
And he was perhaps the greatest stand-up comedian of all time. Go figure! He started back in the 1960′s wearing a suit and tie and doing very funny bits like the Indian Sergeant and Al Sleet the hippie weatherman.
This is incredible. Colonel Daffy has decided, according to this report in Time, that if he goes down, he’s taking Libya with him.
The recent events in Wisconsin have brought about a sudden full-court press by the Left against Republican governor Scott Walker and his plan to rein in the state’s public sector unions. This action is noteworthy in that it shows the same subtle desperation pattern we see deployed against certain other threats to the Left, Ayn Rand and the Tea Parties being two current and ongoing examples.
The particular pattern and degree of hyperbolic demonization, MSU (making sh#t up) and disregard of basic principles of conduct presented in both examples and in Wisconsin represents a “tell”, an indication that the Left is particularly spooked about something, something that they believe can do a great amount of damage to them and their causes. Particularly noteworthy in this respect is that they are doing this so soon after their failed Tucson “civility” gambit — too soon for the memory of that particular bad-faith action to have faded from the mainstream memory. Evidently, in their political calculation, they consider that particular damage to be worth it in comparison to whatever it is that has them scared in Wisconsin. As well, there is the sharpening of anti-union sentiment across the country.
This seems odd, doesn’t it? Why would the Left risk turning national sentiment further against one of their purported pillars — unions? In the pursuit of what goal are they sacrificing unions per se, in favor of just the public ones?
To find the answer, one must begin by examining one of the key premises underlying unionism as the Left sees it: the notion of the “right” to bargain collectively. Is there such a thing as the right to collective bargaining? The answer is: yes, and no.
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After the shooting in Tucson, the MSM speculated without evidence that the shooter was motivated by the extremist rhetoric of the right. So now that the media have called for a new tone of civility, everyone is nice and polite, right? Not quite:
I’ve attacked Hugh Hewitt many times over the years for being a Republican homer. I’m happy to give him credit now for leading the charge against the House Republicans for failing so far to cut the budget or cut government in any meaningful way.
House Republicans lost the first round of the messaging battle over the budget last week with a lame attempt to cut less than $40 billion against the Pledge to America’s goal of at least $100 billion, but then President Obama forfeited round two with an absurd budget that elicited a genuine bipartisan reaction of scorn for his fecklessness.
Proving themselves equal to the challenge of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, the new GOP majority promptly proceeded to block what looked like a clean attempt to defund Obamacare sponsored by Representative Steve King of Iowa and then followed with a series of failed amendments to cut spending featuring numerous senior Republicans voting to defend appropriations for, among other programs, the Legal Services Corporation.
Alex Epstein finds something better than Punxsutawney Phil to celebrate today:
Most of us do not take much note when February 2 passes–and if we do, it’s just in reference to Groundhog Day. But February 2nd marks something much more important than a mythical, weather-forecasting rodent. It is the birthday of the late, great author and philosopher Ayn Rand, the woman who gave us “Atlas Shrugged” (1957), one of the most influential works of the 20th century.
Although “Atlas Shrugged” is a must read for everyone, it is particularly the case for anyone in the business world. If you ask any hundred successful businessmen chosen at random to name the book that has most inspired them, you will undoubtedly hear “Atlas Shrugged” repeated over and over. Why?
Because, in the form of a thrilling novel with inspiring heroes, “Atlas Shrugged” does something no other book has ever done: it presents the pursuit of profit, the essence of business, as a profoundly moral activity.
