Nicki demands: stop trying to shove a false Trump-Clinton dichotomy down my throat! And Charles Murray might agree. Illegal gun marketing? Oh pleeeaase, writes Bear Bussjaeger over at TZP. Couric didn’t just go “the Full Rather.” She went way beyond Rather. Her second feeble apology doesn’t change that. Out with ya, Katie! Begone! “How America Lost its Mojo.” Its geographic and economic mobility mojo, that is. And related: the housing market horror story ain’t over yet. Hm. Too bad this gutsy seven-year-old didn’t have a firearm. OTOH, this man didn’t do too bad without one.
Category: Government
Government evils — but I repeat myself
Jim Bovard writes in Reason on the high price of security theater. Then he went on C-Span to talk about it, too. Which takes us to Richard Rahn’s “Kill the regulatory parasite.” Oh, Katie, Katie, Katie. You went the full Rather. You should never go the full Rather. And at least he didn’t make phony-baloney excuses. A recent study says that the threshhold-based blood tests used by states to determine whether legal pot users are impaired or not aren’t based in sound science. This wild-and-crazy pro-pot-user claim comes from those mad radicals at … the American Automobile Association. AAA. John…
It was the premise of the Politico article that drew me in. It was the claim that politics of 2030 would be shaped by the ghastly presidential election of 2016. There would be big changes to come.
Given the tumult of the times, I don’t doubt that one bit. The contest between The Hillary and The Donald, and all the odd and shifting v*ter alignments and policy preferences around it, is bound to reverberate into the future. It’s something I’ve thought a lot about. I wondered if others were coming to similar conclusions. So I read.
And read. It’s quite a long article.
You don’t say! “The TSA is failing spectacularly at cybersecurity.” You don’t say! “The economy is running on monetary fumes.” You don’t say! Doctors are overscreening for cancer. You don’t say! Fed prosecutors need ethics lessons. Um … maybe. But those lines at Disneyland generally don’t kill you. If that’s all enough to drive you to drink, here’s a 5,000-year-old beer recipe. Not to mention evidence that beer may have helped kickstart civilization. Why the very poor have become poorer. While technically only a book review, this is jam-packed with interesting data and thoughts. But occasionally good news strikes. Terry…
The barefoot one didn’t manage to freeze Mama. Reading this article, I’m not sure whether Colton Harris-Moore is a naive young kid or a crass hustler who’s going to head right straight for trouble again when they release him from prison this summer. “This Bud’s for you, America.” Another one to read mainly because it’s by George Will, who writes like a barbed angel. The whole business with Budweiser’s temporary name change is as pathetic as it is cynical. Why are house prices soaring across this Great Land of Budweiser? One guess. When headlines lie: “American Airlines is fed up…
Be patient, citizens! That is an order! Your government is hard at work protecting you. (I do rather wonder what those TSA lines snaking up and down escalators look like. Or worse, feel like to stand in, especially if you’re stuck at the top or bottom where the stairs disappear. But not enough to want to go to an airport to see for myself.) Speaking of gummint “protection,” be glad you didn’t run into this employee of the Federal Protective Service. Whoo. gutsy woman! Militias going mainstream? So sez The Guardian with a surprising minimum of tsking about it. But…
This Looney Toon of a presidential election takes me back, gods forbid, to elections past.
It takes me to Nixon-Humphrey, the previous absolute-worst political pairing in my lifetime. Before that, I was political, but only because my mom was political and I took after her. All Democrats were good, all Republicans were Eeeeevil, and John Kennedy was the best Democrat of all because he was handsome and a Democrat and he came to our town campaigning and I almost got to touch him. Life was simple.
I was still too young to v*te when the major parties threw up Nixon and Humphrey. But it was the first time I knew something was rotten on both sides. And Mom’s adoration for the tubby hack from Minnesota merely made me wonder what she’d been smoking (or rather, not smoking, since the smoking people of 1968 were as horrified by Hubie the Mediocre as they were by Milhaus the Whining Retread).
I think I may have even declared my intention to leave the country — years ahead of Alec Baldwin and his ilk, but just as insincerely. The fact that I was too young to get a passport excuses me, right? And shortly after that, there were Libertarians and retreaters (the name back then for prepper-survivalists) and cool non-political newsletters from the heady combo of Rothbard and Hess, and many other things besides politics-as-usual to put hopes in.
But this utterly hope-less election of 2016 — with its likely pairing of two megalomaniacs who use government for incessant personal gain and whose “principles” are light enough to blow wherever the next breeze takes them — also takes me back to the one-and-only national election where I felt an actual stirring of hope.
The High Price of Socialized Medicine:
A History of Government Meddling in American Health Care,
And How a Free Market Would Solve Our Problems
By Dr. James W. Brook
302 pages
I owe Dr. Jim an apology. It must be two months now since he sent me a copy of his book for review. I meant to get on it right away. But you know, I just could not bring myself to pick up and read that book.
It’s not that there was anything wrong with it. On the contrary, at a glance it was obviously a solid, professional piece of work. I already knew Dr. Jim, an occasional Commentariat participant, writes clearly with an amazingly light touch given the subject matter. The book is lucid, well laid-out, and easy on the eye.
I just could not force myself to endure a rehash of the hash that politicians are making of what was once (and in some ways still is) the best medical system on the planet.
Once I belatedly opened the cover, I realized I had nothing to dread.
I’ll be doing a little extra blogging this week because I’ve been doing physical labor (drywalling) and need a break from it. Also because … Panama Papers. I hadn’t heard of the scandal until Monday when jc2k linked to it in comments. By then it was already 24 hours old (ancient in Internet Time) and had been thoroughly clucked over by all the usual suspects. The collective bottom line seems not only to be, “OMG, gov-o-crats are hiding ill-gotten gains offshore!” (this is a shock to anybody?) but, “Offshore privacy should be done away with!” Um … yeah. Hasn’t offshore…
Sorrys in advance for being unable to remember now where I got some of these links. I’ve been saving them up for a while. So thanks to The Usual Suspects. 🙂 Wanna set up a pot business? Become a nun. Chase Bank holds funds and reports customer to the feds for paying his dog walker. Joel got to this one first, but it’s too pure-and-simply wonderful not to re-blog: the mystery of the squatter in the woods who came and left with no trace. Ghostery to the max! But this … once again takes “small-space living” to crazy extremes. Only…