Wow. But not surprising. The ATF and the Obama administration, via Fast & Furious, supplied drug lord El Chapo with .50 cal weaponry. Zombie ships ply the ocean in hopes of paying just the interest, not the principle, on shipowners’ debt. One more place all that central bank bubble capital has been going for the last eight years. Right analysis? But completely crazy proposed solution to global bubbles. With state legislatures in session, it’s become political silly season. Most of the goofy new bills will never pass, so you can stop sending me alarming emails about junk that might not…
Category: Cultural insanity
Commentariat member Dana got me reading Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe. It’s short, lively, and even if it’s not totally satisfying in describing how the Irish did the saving, it’s full of smack-upside-the-head insights.
The best material is on Rome’s collapse. (The first chapter was so persuasive it darned near made me feel sorry for tax collectors.) Before I return the book to the library, I want to post a couple of paragraphs. In the first, Cahill is mostly quoting from Kenneth Clark’s Civilization (spelling Americanized).
So. Are you going to watch the state-of-the-union addy tonight? (Or, depending on when you read this post, did you watch it?) I can’t remember the last SOTU address I watched, and that’s not just because I don’t “do” TV. Watching politicians give speeches — especially “important” speeches — is as savory as watching circus geeks bite the heads off live chickens. And much less entertaining. I’m sorta-kinda guessing the speech won’t have a big audience of BHM/Living Freedom readers. Still, you’ve probably heard that Big O plans to leave a seat empty so that … oh, all the ghosts…
It should be no surprise to anyone hereabouts, but even as Microsoft pretends to have been converted to the privacy gospel, it steals your disk-encryption keys. If you have v*ted in the last 15 years, you are screwed. (H/T MJR) You may think this absurd, insecure database of v*ters is no big deal, but the implications are pretty catastrophic. And nobody knows who compiled or owns this giant mess? Fedgov, anyone? The war on Asian-American academic success. Repeat violators of HIPAA privacy provisions pay little consequence. Which is totally unsurprising because HIPAA was always more of a privacy-violation enabler than…
The five “best” drug scares of 2015. This year’s weirdest science stories. Fourteen — maybe 15 — ways to avoid the Obamacare tax. (Per A.G. in comments.) Thirteen things credit card companies know about you that might make you cringe. Well, thank heaven it wasn’t “gun violence.” Another Darwin Award nominee, courtesy of absorption in mobile device. How embarrassing to die of pure stupid. But hey — at least it wasn’t “gun violence”! In praise of Glock. Ross Douthat on cracks in the liberal order. Not meaning “liberal” as in that thing that “progressives” don’t want to be called these…
Whatever you think (or whether you think) of Caitlyn Jenner, this is good. Seems Caitlyn refuses to toe the politically correct line on victimology. Meet the lobbyists who represent the world’s worst dictators to Your Representatives in Washington. I failed to acknowledge two very big historic dates earlier this week. First, the ratification of the Bill of Rights. Second, the Boston Tea Party. Here’s an interesting retrospective on the tea party. (Amusing how the Brahmins downplayed it.) And here’s an eyewitness account. You, too can evade the no-fly list. (Well, maybe. I’m sure this wouldn’t work for international flights where…
A social-justice pecksniff explains that there’s nothing wrong with suppressing free speech and erasing history. It’s just a way of achieving a better future. Meanwhile, both members of the formerly well-regarded Couple Christakis have now fled Yale because they can’t work in such an environment. Kevin of The Smallest Minority takes all of three lines to explain weapons of war You already know the USPS has been photographing the outside of all your mail (“security,” of course). Now they’re offering to email you the photos. As a service. (H/T ML) The answer to terror: tougher (armed) citizens, not bigger government.…
Enjoy. As long as you can do so without oppressing anyone, creating an unsafe space, or generally behaving in a racist, sexist, or speciesist manner. (H/T ML)
Americans aren’t as politically polarized as pols and the MSM would have us imagine. Among other things we’re united in distrusting the government. (H/T PT) Turn in your standard-capacity magazines orders L.A. gov. Then … crickets … Not one. Not a single one. The president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University says he’s not running a day care. And George Will asks: American higher education — higher than what, exactly? The push to ban cash grows louder as currencies race for the bottom. One difference in this article: it lists various ways people might (and will) dodge the coming cash bans. Not…
When it finally dawns on the social-justice pecksniffs just how many things in every culture are “appropriated” from some other culture, they’re gonna be in a world of hurt. Randall Munroe gives Time an interview as only the creator of xkcd could give it. (H/T jed in comments) “Who turned my blue state red?” Talk about blowback. That’s blowback. Odd couple: Black Lives Matter and Bloomberg. Half of me hopes he takes those officious overreacting officials for every dime — and thinks it’s too bad any judgment won’t come out of their own pockets. The other half of me is…