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Area: WoT Operations    WoT Background    Non-WoT        Politix   
'Somalia link' as lethal Uganda blasts target World Cup
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Page 6: Politix
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Economy
The disintegration of the welfare state
Democracies produced Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, fulfilling the expectation of Socrates and Machiavelli that democracies end in tyranny. Now democracies are fulfilling the complementary expectation of Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman that democracies end in bankruptcy. Put a democracy in charge of the Sahara, Mr. Friedman once said, and sand itself will become scarce.
Before Mr. Friedman, the same was said about Communists. Mr. Friedman had other queer ideas involving auditing, for which we are now paying.
Democracies are indeed profligate trustees -- or have been for the past 30 or 40 years. Mr. Friedman's primary fret, though, was the tendency of democracy to centralize political and economic power in the same hands. Most critiques of democracy reflect this elemental distrust. "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb," Benjamin Franklin reputedly said, "voting on what to have for lunch."
The quote reputedly continues, "Liberty is an armed lamb disputing the issue." But those who know more than I say Mr. Franklin never said any such thing. Nonetheless, it is because of the tendency for all governments to become rapacious when not checked that our Founding Fathers insisted America be a democratic republic with an armed citizenry, the various arms of government set to check and balance one another. This may be why our national indebtedness has not until recently been as great as Italy's... or Britain's.
Democratic self-deprecation isn't quite as funny as it once was. Mobs have already taken to the venerable, iconic streets of European states, notably among them Greece, birthplace of Athenian democracy. It's apparently easier to give wealth away than it is to take it back. Democracy assembled the welfare state peaceably enough. Can democracy dismantle it as peaceably? No, it can't. The mobs are not finished.
And yet, they seem to be making peaceable progress in Britain... and in Spain, whose government announced they will not be like Greece, apparently the ultimate insult to Spanish pride. The recent meeting in Toronto revealed that only President Obama's America would continue to spend to stimulate the nation's economy; the rest planned to retrench.
In a disturbing analysis titled Democracy, Debt and Disorder, prophetically published early in 2008, two Italian economists assert that Italian governments have accumulated so much debt that it's essentially impossible to avert the disintegration of the country's social contract. Giuseppe Eusepi and Luisa Giuriato, of Sapienza University in Rome, do not specify violent insurrection as a consequence. They do specify an end to Italy's welfare state -- and to the "disorder" that will arise when government divides the spoils.

Profs. Eusepi and Giuriato studied Italy's history of public debt across 150 years -- since the country became a unified state in 1861. They found that successive governments commonly resorted to significant debt but that they never came close to the country's current dependency on debt, year after year, to fund current expenditures.

In 1861, for example, Italy's public debt stood at 35.8 per cent of GDP. At the end of the Second World War, it stood at 40 per cent. In 1970, it was at 50 per cent. Italy's debt now stands at 120 per cent of GDP, equivalent to Greece's debt. The country must soon choose between its welfare commitments and its interest payments. The two professors say it can't afford both.

At the end of the First World War, Italy's debt hit 160 per cent of GDP -- an extraordinary indebtedness. Ironically, it was the Fascists, who seized power in 1922, who dealt with it. Profs. Eusepi and Giuriato credit the country's first Fascist finance minister for cutting government expenditures in half in six years and for reducing public debt to 50 per cent of GDP. "The idea of [extreme] deficit and debt accumulation," they say, "was simply culturally unacceptable at the time."

This is an intriguing observation, suggesting that the accumulation of debt in affluent democracies reflects a cultural adaptation -- in which public debt funds la dolce vita -- as much as it reflects political ideology or novel economic theory. Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, governments abandoned the old virtues. Profs. Eusepi and Giuriato describe the fiscal excesses that followed as "a public indebtedness saturnalia."

Nevertheless, the professors blame Keynesian theory, too: "The adoption of Keynesian analysis provided politicians with a rationale for borrowing money to buy votes." In 1961, public spending took 27.6 per cent of GDP. In 1971, it took 34.8 per cent and, in 1994, 121.1 per cent. The irony, the economists say, is that Italians could have afforded all of the largesse that flowed to them from the state -- if only they had paid for them.

In fact, though, much of Italy's debt purchased benefits that weren't necessary. It paid for early retirement of public-sector workers, for example, and provided these pensioners with incomes much higher than private-sector workers. Now, with revenues falling and costs rising, Italy can avert insolvency only by adopting a constitutional prohibition of deficits, the economists say. This stringent assignment is Mission: Impossible.

Incidentally, Capital Economics -- the international consultancy company -- said in a research note last week that Italy will find it hard to avert bankruptcy. "Italy's public finances are a time bomb waiting to explode," the company said. "We believe that it might take a decade or more of falling wages for Italy to restore its full competitiveness."

Democracies have made people more dependent on the state than any humanitarian necessity required. For Italy, and for other democracies, the worst is surely yet to come. Already, hundreds of thousands of middle-class people have thronged the streets of Paris and Rome, of Milan and Sarajevo, of Reykjavik and Bucharest (where demonstrators stormed the presidential palace, an insurgent act that evokes the spectre of revolution). The World Socialists' website proclaims an age of rage ahead -- and chillingly quotes British historian Simon Schama: "You can smell the sulphur in the air."
No doubt Professor Schama was writing about the French Revolution, a favourite topic of his. If so, the implication is that when the mob rules, all previous government debt will be abjured... not exactly what the current mob is going for.
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 07/12/2010 15:13 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Tyranny usually fallows bankruptcy.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 07/12/2010 16:31 Comments || Top||

#2  Bankrupcy usually follows socialist policies.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 07/12/2010 17:37 Comments || Top||

#3  Who'd have thought that rewarding the feckless and paying for it by fining and punishing the prudent wouldn't work?
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 07/12/2010 17:39 Comments || Top||


Europe
Berlin Pushing For European Bankruptcy Framework With Provision For State Sovereignty Give Up
Posted by: tipper || 07/12/2010 11:18 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Revenge for WWII! Coming to theater near you: 4th Reich! An this time, they may really pull it off!
Posted by: twobyfour || 07/12/2010 13:59 Comments || Top||

#2  It is probably not a good sign when the German leader starts a statement with "You little nations...", concerning German management over their mismanagement.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 07/12/2010 17:30 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Politix
Video - "Obama Most Radical US President ever" states prestigious Harvard Phd
Dr. Richard L. Rubinstein, author of "Jihad and Genocide", Harvard Phd, Yale fellow, "Distinguished Professor of the Year", and Harvard Phd, states that president Obama's intention is to "correct the historical mistake of the creation of the state of Israel." Dr. Rubenstein states that president Obama due to his family heritage is extremely pro Muslim - to the point of "wanting to see the destruction of Israel."
Posted by: Besoeker || 07/12/2010 18:36 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:


Hillary 2012?
Bernard Goldberg

I'm climbing out on a limb. I'm jumping the canyon on a motorcycle without a parachute. I'm walking the tightrope without a net. I'm out of clichés. So here goes:

I know the next presidential election is more than two years off, and all sorts of things can happen between now and then. But I am predicting right here, right now, that Hillary Clinton will run for president in 2012 -- yes 2012 -- challenging President Obama for their party's nomination.

If it's occurring to millions of Americans who voted for Obama, it must be occurring to Hillary Clinton too: The magic is gone. Barack Obama can't walk on water no matter how hard his fans in the media tried to turn him into the messiah. And that hope and change thing? Well, it isn't working out the way it was supposed to, either....

If things don't improve, independents, who switch back and forth from one party to another all the time, will have no trouble abandoning President Obama next time around. But white liberals would never forsake America's first black president -- at least not to vote for some other Democrat who looks like Walter Mondale or Michael Dukakis or Al Gore or John Kerry. But Hillary gives them the opportunity to assuage their white liberal guilt -- and -- bonus! -- make history all over again. They can drop the black guy and vote for someone they hope will be the first woman president of the United States and still hang on to their precious liberal credentials.

You think Hillary hasn't figured that one out, either?...
Posted by: Mike || 07/12/2010 09:59 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  But Hillary gives them the opportunity to assuage their white liberal guilt -- and -- bonus! -- make history all over again. They can drop the black guy and vote for someone they hope will be the first woman president of the United States and still hang on to their precious liberal credentials.
You think Hillary hasn't figured that one out, either?...


In my opinion, Hillary (and Slick Willie) and those few liberals with buyers remorse have their collective knickers in a twist waiting for 2012.
Posted by: WolfDog || 07/12/2010 11:07 Comments || Top||

#2  I'll crawl over broken glass to vote for her in the Florida Democratic Primary.

(Hiya Commodore!)
Posted by: Shipman || 07/12/2010 11:17 Comments || Top||

#3  ...Oh, HELL yes, this is going to happen. Over the weekend, FoxNews ran a great story about a documentary that claims to show how President Obama's team - using 'aggressive tactics' no different from ANY Chicago election in the last 150 years or so - stole the 08' Democratic nomination from Hillary. I looked at the wife and said, "This is the opening shot in Hillary's 2012 campaign."

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski || 07/12/2010 12:15 Comments || Top||

#4  I guess now we know who's gonna be the Ross Perot of 2012.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain || 07/12/2010 12:55 Comments || Top||

#5  I suspect Hillary is going to wait and see how the 2010 elections go. If it is a bloodbath for Democrats she will probably set up her exploratory committee the next day.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 07/12/2010 16:10 Comments || Top||

#6  Watch Massachusetts.

Governor Deval Patrick's entire political rise there has been a test bed for the Obama rise to the Presidency. Slogan for slogan, tactic for tactic, things were tried there first, and if they worked (which they largely did) they were used at the national level in the Obama machine.


Right now, the Democrats in MA have run a fiscally conservative Dem named Tim Cahill as an "independent". Instead of taking votes from Deval Patrick, they have all come from independents who would have voted for the Republican Charlie Baker. In a manner which is completely dishonest and cynical, Cahill denies he is doing this to get Patrick reelected, when it's patently obvious he is doing exactly that.

If this trick works in MA, and Deval Patrick gets back in in November, it's a dead cinch that this will be done at the national level, either with Hillary Clinton or Jim Webb.
Posted by: no mo uro || 07/12/2010 16:21 Comments || Top||

#7  Which is what Ross Perot did in 1992, supposedly in exchange for EDS getting the MIS contract for the national health care Hillary was going to pass after the election.

I'm not really sure I care much for the fiction that Hillary is some sort of moderate or semi-conservative. She voted for all of this mess just the same as the Teleprompter Jesus did. IF she has any substantive policy differences with him, I haven't heard them from her lips yet. And she's done lots of incompetence during her stay at State; Reset Button, anyone?
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain || 07/12/2010 16:33 Comments || Top||

#8  Happy, happy. Joy, joy.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 07/12/2010 16:35 Comments || Top||

#9  She'll name Barry Soetoro her Vice Presidential running mate, capturing the obvious voting segments, and we'll be faced with 4 more years of this insanity. Grizzly bear Cat fight coming!
Posted by: Besoeker || 07/12/2010 18:50 Comments || Top||

#10  AHHHHhahahah...choke, coughcoughcough, gasp!
Posted by: Skidmark || 07/12/2010 23:50 Comments || Top||


Democrat Secretaries of State Project Ready To Steal Close 2012 Elections
After the Bush Kerry 2004 election, ” the idea for the Secretary of State Project (SOSP) germinated when the group’s Democrat founders blamed Kerry’s defeat on then Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who had ruled that Ohio would not count provisional ballots of properly registered voters if they had been submitted at the wrong precinct,” according to the discoverthenetworks.org web site.

If any election carries a margin of victory less than 120,000, the SOSP swings into action. Still angry over the 2000 Bush win when Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris was in charge of the ballot recount fracas, Democrats gathered relatively small amounts of funding momentum and targeted Secretary of State races in Michigan, Ohio, Colorado, New Mexico, Minnesota, Nevada, and Iowa, according to discoverthenetworks.org. All those Democrats won except in Colorado and Michigan.

“The U.S, Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ultimately upheld Blackwell’s decision,” and the U.S. Supreme Court decided for the Bush 2000 win. This same website stresses that “very few Americans realize the importance of the SoSP duties.”

It is this very stealth that wealthy fund raisers such as Democracy Alliance members George Soros and Rob Stein and other Progressives are using to take control of our electoral process.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 07/12/2010 00:00 || Comments || Link || [4 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Everyone knows Democrats cheat. Nothing new here. Nobody expects anything less.
Posted by: crosspatch || 07/12/2010 2:23 Comments || Top||

#2  Well, sure, but it's for our own good, you know!
Posted by: Bobby || 07/12/2010 5:50 Comments || Top||

#3  When they cheat, bust their @sses every chance you get.
Posted by: Kofi Flomp3256 || 07/12/2010 9:39 Comments || Top||

#4  #3 When they cheat, bust their @sses every chance you get.
Posted by: Kofi Flomp3256 2010-07-12 09:39


Kofi, that would turn into a 30 hour a day, 400 days a year job.
Posted by: WolfDog || 07/12/2010 11:12 Comments || Top||

#5  Roll up those sleeves and do it.
Posted by: wr || 07/12/2010 16:04 Comments || Top||

#6  In most States the number of outright fraudulent votes is, as I recall from a pretty thorough analysis of close elections (like MN in 2008, Washington State in 2004), probably below 5000 or so (somewhat higher in CA, IL). However, the not quite fraud (e.g., activists holding 'mark your ballot' seminars with senior facilities) may add another 5000 in some States.

In States with bloated voting rolls that haven't been purged in many years, the potential fraud is about double or triple.

However, this still doesn't get anywhere near 100k.

Posted by: lord garth || 07/12/2010 16:07 Comments || Top||

#7  Measures should be on the ballots in all states making Voter Fraud a felony with minimum sentence of ten years. Election fraud should not be just the actual vote, but messing with the voter rolls to include false names or knowingly including duplicate names or enrolling in more than one state.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 07/12/2010 17:59 Comments || Top||

#8  If they pull this off they better be ready to dodge tar, feathers or buckshot.
Posted by: Hellfish || 07/12/2010 18:29 Comments || Top||

#9  When O ran I said if he won he would be in for two terms. If the Republicans sit on their hands then we may have a repeat. The odds that O gets elected are in his favor. Yes, and more damage to this country as well when especially when the Rinos cave.
Posted by: Dale || 07/12/2010 19:21 Comments || Top||

#10  2010 is not just important for Congress, but the statehouses as well. The new census data will create new district lines for the 2012 election. If the national Donks drag down the state Donks, its a whole new ball game.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 07/12/2010 21:44 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
Law enforcers clueless despite presence of clues
Although the phenomenon of suicide bombing is considered 'unbeatable' across the globe, law enforcers of various countries are adopting new ways and taking precautionary measures to decrease the possibility of suicide bombings.

Similarly, law enforcement agencies across the world do not only keep changing their security arrangements, but also monitor and amend them, sometimes on an hourly basis, in case they get any intelligence report about any future attacks. What our law enforcement agencies are doing in Pakistan is not only 'amusing and amazing' among law enforcement agencies of other countries, but it sometimes attracts ridicule and disrespect.

Perhaps the hierarchies concerned are intentionally overlooking the aforementioned points for several years now. Even one of the most horrible acts of terrorism, the attack at the Data Darbar, failed to change the status quo and only managed to turn the masses' fear into aggression. The recent attack on Data Darbar not only exposed the poor strategies and security measures adopted by the Lahore police, but also raised several questions about the level of irresponsibility among our law enforcers.

All the authorities concerned have admitted that law enforcement agencies had been provided reports of possible attacks in Lahore, especially on shrines. Even the Interior Ministry had informed the provincial authorities about an expected attack.

In this scenario, the question arises why the provincial hierarchy did not take any precautionary step in the light of these reports? Why did the Lahore police hierarchy not do anything additional to avoid such a horrible incident?

The provincial hierarchy answered these questions a few days after the attack in the form of the transfer of some cops, due to which everyone has assumed that these cops were responsible for this attack. Professor Nazir Ahmed, the deputy secretary Majlis-e-Amal Auqaf, has raised a question as to who had ordered that the door of the darbar be opened, which had remained closed for several months. No one has answered this question yet.

Similarly, another question is why the walkthrough gates, installed at the entrance of the Data Darbar, were switched off on the day of the attack. This question too remains unanswered.

There are several other examples where law enforcement agencies had received intelligence reports about expected terror attacks, but did nothing to try and prevent them.

Even with regards to the attack on the building of the Police Emergency 15, law enforcement agencies in the provincial capital had intelligence reports about the attack, but did not take any measures to try and stop it.

Interestingly, the report about a possible attack on shrines was published in a section of the media one day before the incident.

Similarly, on January 22, 2009, the Crime Investigation Department (CID) Punjab had accurately warned the Punjab government about a plan to target the Sri Lankan cricket team during its visit to Pakistan. The CID, while referring to a source, said the terrorist attack would be carried out by the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), specifically at the time when the Sri Lankan team would be traveling between the hotel in which they were staying and the stadium. At that time, Inspector General of Police Malik Muhammad Iqbal had also shared this information with the authorities concerned.

Interestingly, even after the aforementioned report, the Lahore police did not take any special measures for securing the Sri Lankan cricket team.

Amazingly, all these incidents have so far failed to convince the Lahore police that it needs to change its ways of fighting terrorism and that it should pay some importance to the intelligence reports it receives before these attacks actually take place, a fact made obvious in the aftermath of the attack on the Data Darbar.

The provincial hierarchy has once again adopted its previous strategy of changing faces to calm down the public. In 2007, immediately after the killing of Additional Advocate General Arif Bhinder, the hierarchy transferred several officers and officials of the Lahore police department, including the then CCPO. Similarly, after the attack on the Sri Lankan team, the hierarchy transferred several senior cops, which is the set pattern as it was again seen after the Data Darbar attack.

This raises several questions including whether the high ups were trying to convey the message that cops had done something fishy due to which they were being punished? If yes, then why did the high-ups take such a lenient attitude and chose to only transfer them? All such questions are answerable if our rulers, our destiny makers, wish to answer them.
Posted by: Fred || 07/12/2010 00:00 || Comments || Link || [4 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan


Science & Technology
The Climategate Whitewash Continues
Last November there was a world-wide outcry when a trove of emails were released suggesting some of the world's leading climate scientists engaged in professional misconduct, data manipulation and jiggering of both the scientific literature and climatic data to paint what scientist Keith Briffa called "a nice, tidy story" of climate history. The scandal became known as Climategate.

Now a supposedly independent review of the evidence says, in effect, "nothing to see here." Last week "The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review," commissioned and paid for by the University of East Anglia, exonerated the University of East Anglia. The review committee was chaired by Sir Muir Russell, former vice chancellor at the University of Glasgow.

Mr. Russell took pains to present his committee, which consisted of four other academics, as independent. He told the Times of London that "Given the nature of the allegations it is right that someone who has no links to either the university or the climate science community looks at the evidence and makes recommendations based on what they find."
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 07/12/2010 15:39 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  That's how business is done in Academia---the only reason for the scandal around climategate is because it impacted the world outside academia in a major way.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 07/12/2010 16:26 Comments || Top||


The Case Against Air Conditioning
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 07/12/2010 15:22 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Dear Stan, drop dead.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 07/12/2010 16:27 Comments || Top||

#2  Sigh. I wanna see this maroon do without AC, on a scorching-summer day for more than a couple of days and nights. I'm sorry, but the misery of Washington in summer with out AC was legendary. I live in San Antonio now, in a modern house, which could have been better-designed to keep cool naturally, with better cross-ventilation and higher ceilings. I minimize use of the AC as much as possible, but doing entirely without it for me - and for many others would be just one long misery.
What is it with these people? Do they all live in temperate places and have no notion of how sweaty and nasty and HOT it can be in places like South Texas?
Posted by: Sgt.Mom || 07/12/2010 16:31 Comments || Top||

#3  Best of all, Washington's biggest business -- government -- is transformed. In 1978, 50 years after air conditioning was installed in Congress, New York Times columnist Russell Baker noted that, pre-A.C., Congress was forced to adjourn to avoid Washington's torturous summers, and "the nation enjoyed a respite from the promulgation of more laws, the depredations of lobbyists, the hatching of new schemes for Federal expansion and, of course, the cost of maintaining a government running at full blast."

Summarizes the problem. They used to get the budget and department funding bills out before 1 July. The addition of a/c validates to a degree the old saying - idle hands are the devil's play things. They had to 'look' busy and did so creating a managerial monster. Ban it all within the Beltway.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 07/12/2010 16:31 Comments || Top||

#4  Blurred vision, halucinations are sure signs of dehydration and overheating.

Lunatic isn't quite the right word; solatic maybe?
Posted by: swksvolFF || 07/12/2010 16:57 Comments || Top||

#5  Maybe instead of going after grandma in her top floor apartment, brave Stan could go after Hollywood's massive consumption of AC...though viewership of CSPAN may go up as people watch congresscritter's with their makeup and cosmetics pull a slow motion Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Posted by: swksvolFF || 07/12/2010 17:00 Comments || Top||

#6  I want Stan followed around by some media watchdog. And the minute he goes into some air conditioned venue, I want his Kumbaya ass beaten to a pulp.
Posted by: tu3031 || 07/12/2010 17:07 Comments || Top||

#7  In AZ, talk of taking away a/c is regarded as the modern version of horse thievery. Even the gentle people of Scottsdale would consider stringing them up.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 07/12/2010 17:23 Comments || Top||

#8  Wonder how the health care system would handle a France style die-off of elderly due to the heat and lack of AC. Probably not very well.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 07/12/2010 17:38 Comments || Top||

#9  Of course, if we had enough nuclear plants we'd have clean abundant power and wouldn't have to digress into the third world.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 07/12/2010 17:39 Comments || Top||

#10  They can have my A/C when they can pry it from my cold, dead hands.

Besides, with the Gerbil Worming and all, it is now a necessity.
Posted by: gorb || 07/12/2010 18:40 Comments || Top||

#11  Don't they use swamp coolers in Arizona? Those use very little electricity.

I lived very close to the equator for a couple years WITHOUT air conditioning. You get used to the heat after a while. Believe it or not Folks, breaking a sweat will NOT kill you.

Wimps who start to whine about the "heat" anytime an indoor temperature tops 75 degrees are really annoying. A thermostat set at 65 degrees inside an office building is refrigeration, not air conditioning.
Posted by: Scooter McGruder || 07/12/2010 18:58 Comments || Top||

#12  AMEN GORB! When the temperature breaks 95, I am cranking on the AC.
Posted by: Cyber Sarge || 07/12/2010 18:59 Comments || Top||

#13  I keep my house around 82 or 83 in the summer (when I'm home - higher when I'm gone), NOT because I'm some kind of enviro-nut, but because I have to pay the electric bill. But when it's 95 & 95 (95 degrees and 95% humidity), it's pretty hard to function without A/C.

Tell ya' what, Stan - you get the bozos in the White House and Congress to set a "good" example by giving up A/C. Then maybe we can talk.

(I grew up without A/C - hot summers sucked.)
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 07/12/2010 20:21 Comments || Top||

#14  Don't they use swamp coolers in Arizona? Those use very little electricity.

Yes, but don't they use water? There's not a lot of that in the near-desert Arizona environs, I should think.
Posted by: trailing wife || 07/12/2010 20:33 Comments || Top||

#15  Set that White House air conditioner on a -65 below zero and keep it there.
Posted by: Besoeker || 07/12/2010 20:35 Comments || Top||

#16  Swamp cooler dont work all that well here in AZ. It is just too hot and dry. I bought one and all it did was make the garage humid. They work great Sept through April, but come summer, not so well. Of course the guy at Home Depot tried to tell me before I bought it.
Posted by: 49 Pan || 07/12/2010 22:45 Comments || Top||

#17  My first house (what we could afford at the time) in Vegas, in the summer, had a defunct a/c unit. The pool held water though, and the blender was marvy!

So afternoons, after work, on those 120 degree days, I hit the air mattress with a pitcher of margaritas on my belly.

Not a bad spin.
Posted by: Skidmark || 07/12/2010 23:47 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
"...the experts don’t know as much as they think they do."
Jonah Goldberg, National Review

According to New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman in his mega-best-selling book Hot, Flat, and Crowded, China banned plastic bags a few years ago. “Bam! Just like that — 1.3 billion people, theoretically, will stop using thin plastic bags,” he gushed. “Millions of barrels of petroleum will be saved, and mountains of garbage avoided.”

China’s got us beat, suggests Friedman, because its leaders aren’t hung up on democracy, checks and balances, or any of the other dusty old impediments found in the American system. Friedman has proclaimed his envy for China’s authoritarian system countless times. It’s why he titled one of the chapters in his book “China for a Day.” The idea — he calls it his “fantasy” — is that if we could just be China for a day, the experts could impose by diktat what they cannot win through democratic debate.

If only the Founding Fathers had included an annual “Tyranny Day” in the Constitution. Every 364 days America could debate and scheme, pitting faction against faction, government branch against government branch, and on the 365th day the Supreme Soviet of the United States could simply “do things that are tough” and shove ten pounds of policy awesomeness into democracy’s five-pound bag.

Now, just for the record, China hasn’t banned plastic bags. Just ask anybody who’s been to China recently. But what a strange thing to sell your soul for. What was it Thomas More said — “It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world . . . but to ban plastic bags”?...

But it’s also worth noting that Friedman is hardly alone. He may stretch his argument to the point of parody, but he shares a widespread view that the “experts” have all the answers and the “system” is holding them back.

Such arguments are as old as they are dangerous. And they are arrogant beyond description. People like Friedman automatically assume that their preferred policies are so obviously right, so objectively enlightened, that there’s no need to debate them or vote on them.

Such arguments are usually deployed to avoid valid criticisms, not because there are none. Indeed, the Obama White House virtually lives by such claims. All of the experts agreed that their stimulus would work, that Obama’s version of health-care reform was both necessary and popular, and that weaning the U.S. from fossil fuels would create “green jobs.” The evidence on all of these fronts is mixed or weak, yet the president constantly insists that he doesn’t want to hear from people who disagree with him on these issues because all the facts are in.

Such arrogance is dangerous. The literature on the unintended consequences of policies crafted by experts is at least as old as the field of economics. Frédéric Bastiat, the great 19th-century economist, noted all that separated the good economist from the bad is the ability to appreciate the possibility of the unforeseen. Nobel Prize–winning economist Friedrich Hayek demonstrated that healthy economies couldn’t be controlled by experts, because the experts will always have a “knowledge problem.” They can never know all of the variables and never fully predict how their theories will play out in reality.

Right now, Congress is debating a financial-reform bill that simply commands that regulators predict when an unforeseen crisis will occur. This is like demanding that regulators know when stocks will go up or down. If they knew that, they wouldn’t be regulators — they’d be billionaires.

But forget all that. Let’s get back to those evil plastic bags. A new study from the University of Arizona reveals that reusable shopping bags, the enlightened replacement for plastic ones, are breeding grounds for E. coli and other dangerous bacteria. Roughly 50 percent of the bags inspected were found to contain dangerous, potentially lethal, bacteria.

No, this doesn’t mean we should abandon reusable bags, let alone ban them on next year’s Tyranny Day. People can clean the bags and solve the problem. That’s a hassle, to be sure. But that’s the point. There’s always going to be a downside to even the best policies, because the experts don’t know as much as they think they do. Sometimes, they don’t even know they’re not experts at all.
Posted by: Mike || 07/12/2010 10:03 || Comments || Link || [9 views] Top|| File under:

#1  There’s always going to be a downside to even the best policies, because the experts don’t know as much as they think they do. Sometimes, they don’t even know they’re not experts at all.

These last two sentences say it all.
Posted by: WolfDog || 07/12/2010 10:55 Comments || Top||

#2  Gulag for the Day, yep, that's the answer.
Posted by: Hammerhead || 07/12/2010 11:28 Comments || Top||

#3  Lookup Dunning Kruger.

I've come to the conclusion that Socialistic thought is a form of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 07/12/2010 12:11 Comments || Top||

#4 

Socialistic thought is a form of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.


I have come to that exact conclusion myself. How interesting. I also see some aspects of borderline personality disorder in the people who are the most loyal followers of socialism but don't themselves lead.

But we have to keep in mind that narcissism is a sort of scale and we all have different degrees of narcissistic behavior and we all show some borderline tendencies. Socialists just can't stand the idea of someone thinking "outside the box" because to them the box is everything.
Posted by: crosspatch || 07/12/2010 14:40 Comments || Top||

#5  It is nihilism to the end degree. These people think that Stalin could be better than lenin, and Fidel could be better than stalin, and mao could have been better than castro, but in America, obama could make it work here. It fails 34 times, give it another shot.

This is not a mental disorder so to speak, it is a fundamental lack of understanding of human nature, and insanity.

To force My Family and myself to live under this draconian foolishness is criminal and comes nothing short of never being forgiven - that goes for all of you aholes in the democrat parthy. Move to europe. I have had it with all of you.
Move to venezuela, move to greece, move to north korea, move to china, move to canada, I don't give a damn, but leave me alone. Get the bean counting out of my life right now.

Government is the problem- always. And those pagans that worship it. Cesar cannot grant you salvation, and at this point, I doubt Cesar has any left to "dispense".

Only two types of people vote democrat: Those in on the take, or the stupid. Thats the bottom line. There are no mansions in Heaven for those that enslave an entire mansion by using lust for power, Coveting,. stealing, and bearing false witness.

You get horns.
Posted by: newc || 07/12/2010 21:10 Comments || Top||

#6  If ever in all of human history appeared to be the enthusiastic and blatant willful disrespect of others and the law since Sodom and Gomorrah, this is it.
America sold out to the dumbest tribe, and they shall lead it straight into hell.
Not too many Promised lands beyond this one.
Posted by: newc || 07/12/2010 21:26 Comments || Top||



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