{"id":1712,"date":"2010-06-24T04:12:30","date_gmt":"2010-06-24T11:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=1712"},"modified":"2010-06-24T04:12:30","modified_gmt":"2010-06-24T11:12:30","slug":"thursday-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/24\/thursday-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"Thursday thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/source\/2010\/06\/22\/bp-magazine-discovers-a-bright-side-to-the-oil-spill\/\" target=\"_blank\">Perfect example<\/a> of the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Parable_of_the_broken_window\" target=\"_blank\">broken-window fallacy<\/a>. Not to mention public relations idiocy. Yes &#8212; the Gulf oil spill is <i>good<\/i> for you!\n<li>Every person who ever takes a government office should have this tattooed on his or her forehead. Backwards so it&#8217;s readable in the mirror every morning: &#8220;Truth never damages a cause that is just.&#8221; &#8212; Gandhi (and <a href=\"http:\/\/wikileaks.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Wikileaks<\/a>)\n<li>You remember that &#8220;ending welfare as we know it&#8221; thingie back in 1996? <a href=\"http:\/\/static.businessinsider.com\/image\/4c20b4817f8b9a6b39100000-590-\/image.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Uh. Well &#8230; not quite.<\/a>. (That chart is from a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/research\/reports\/2010\/06\/federal%20spending%20by%20the%20numbers%202010\" target=\"_blank\">June 1 Heritage Foundation report<\/a>, which contains many other &#8220;fedgov by the numbers&#8221; charts guaranteed not to make your day.)\n<li>And <a href=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/c\/ce\/Fy2010_spending_by_category.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">here&#8217;s one more<\/a>. If you&#8217;re wondering why political efforts to &#8220;cut spending except of course for Social Security and Medicare and the Pentagon and &#8230; etc.&#8221; are doomed, now you know. Of course, you smart readers already did know. But maybe you could show one of those silly people who actually believes that government will ever &#8230; er, cut government.\n<li>Claiming the first-time homebuyer tax credit &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/1295-prisoners-claimed-the-first-time-homebuyer-tax-credit-2010-6\" target=\"_blank\">from your prison cell!<\/a> Gawd, dontcha just <i>love<\/i> the American spirit of enterprise?\n<li>But enough, enough, enough of the bad news. This week also brought us <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/we-are-what-we-choose-2010-6\" target=\"_blank\">the only commencement address in the entire known-and-unknown history of mankind that wasn&#8217;t just a cartload of horsepucky<\/a>. Something to think about. Words to live by.\n<li>And if life gets you down, if the news is too awful, if even the effort of being cheerful seems too much and you contemplate staying in bed all day with the covers pulled over your head (because the alternative is going to work and finally doing what the little voices under your <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eclectech.co.uk\/mindcontrol.php\" target=\"_blank\">tinfoil hat<\/a> have been telling you to do), there&#8217;s always <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailypuppy.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Daily Puppy<\/a> to put life in perspective.\n<li>Oh. And look at this. Thanks to Dave and Toban in a recent comments section, we have the <a href=\"http:\/\/groups.google.com\/group\/paleo-libertarian\/\" target=\"_blank\">paleo-libertarian discussion group<\/a> (founded by Toban) and an LRC.com article  (written by Toban) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/orig11\/wiebe1.1.1.html\" target=\"_blank\">explaining the paleo-libertarian connection<\/a>. That&#8217;s the paleo (nutrition) libertarian connection, as opposed to (or perhaps alongside of) the hyphenless paleo(political)libertarians. Gets complicated, doesn&#8217;t it?\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Perfect example of the broken-window fallacy. Not to mention public relations idiocy. Yes &#8212; the Gulf oil spill is good for you! Every person who ever takes a government office should have this tattooed on his or her forehead. Backwards so it&#8217;s readable in the mirror every morning: &#8220;Truth never damages a cause that is just.&#8221; &#8212; Gandhi (and Wikileaks) You remember that &#8220;ending welfare as we know it&#8221; thingie back in 1996? Uh. Well &#8230; not quite.. (That chart is from a June 1 Heritage Foundation report, which contains many other &#8220;fedgov by the numbers&#8221; charts guaranteed not to&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/24\/thursday-thoughts\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Thursday thoughts<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,18,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-mind-and-spirit","category-miscellaneous","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}