Monday, November 25, 2013

Monday's Child

1.  Why worry about fracking?  Ethanol policies have been far more destructive, and no one complains about THOSE.

2.  This is interesting, I suppose.  But neither Heinlein nor Calhoun were libertarians.  Not even close.  (Though The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is plausibly a libertarian novel).  As for Calhoun...um...no.

3.  Dr. Warren has a new idea:  Give away more money.  Wait, that's actually not a new idea.  Never mind.

4.  Mean girls.  It's biological.

5.  Never punt, and never kick off.

MOREMOREMOREMORE....



6.  Goodness.  Now I agree with Dr. Stiglitz?  What is the world coming to?

7.  This is cute, and makes one feel better about the world.

8.  A fascinating answer to the problem of uninsured folks showing up at hospitals.

9.  Whoever thought of this must have been USING mushrooms.

10.  Nursery rhymes, happy little nursery rhymes.  And that's just in England.  In Germany?  Yikes.

11.  World's most (and least) honest cities.  The "lost wallet" test.

12.  Not the Onion.  Though it should be.  Turkeys Gone (Not) Wild.

13.  Calling someone a Nazi means you've lost the argument.  Unless the Nazis really, really DID do what you are talking about.  Crystal Meth?  Really?  Of course, now we do it "better":  Wakey-wakey!

14.  This....and then this.  I'm pretty neutral here.  But you can't park in bike lanes, folks.  Maybe there shouldn't BE a bike lane.  But you can't park in one.

15.  Cost-benefit analysis of the drug war...

16.  Come the Revolution, you'll love tolerance....or else.

17.  LeBron's "Best Movies of 2013," with the proviso that if they were made in 2011, but he saw them this year, they count.

18.  Great Headlines:   "Bomb Squad Says Suspicious Item Was Burrito."  I don't see why people think that's so funny.  As Angus knows, in the wrong hands (e.g., mine) a burrito can be a delayed bomb.

19.  Corporate Welfare is DOUBLE What We Spend on "Social" Welfare.  Why?  Because Bastiat was right: "When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating."

20.  As Winston Churchill is said to have quipped, "We have already established what you are, madame.  We are just negotiating a price."  Apparently not unusual.  Women find sexual imagery much more acceptable if somebody is paying big money.

21.  For the person who has everything:  buy them Jesus's toenails, on eBay.

22.  Dynamic steering.  Yep, this IS dynamic steering.

23.  If you don't like it, don't buy it.  It's a bit much to insist that Unca Sam forces everyone to act as if they shared your views.  That's called "religion."

24.  It's obvious I have always wanted this, but didn't know it.

25.  It's become such a meme (or trope, which is a meme that smokes Gauloises and has a lit. degree) that  I don't even have to link to the video.  Just the premise is enough:  Hitler receives notice that his insurace has been cancelled because of ACA.  (If you want to watch)

26.  Zombies walk the earth, and join law firms.

27. This is nonsense.  One word:  "Biden."  Compared to Gassy Joe, Barry is a mover and shaker.

28.  Scott Adams lets his libertarian flag fly a little.  Sad and insightful.

29.  I don't want her, you can have her, she's too fat for Plan B.  (Don't blame me, it's a polka)

30.  Terrific find from Angus:  50 Shades of Chavez.  Emilio P will certainly to see all of these, seein's how he's such a fanboy.






6 comments:

AD said...

#6 - I hope you don't agree with him much more beyond the uncontroversial idea that our Ag policy is jacked up. Only farmers, Ag businesses, and the politicians getting the former two's votes and money like the status quo.

On food stamps, he's way off. Even with the 5% "cuts" (which are just a return to normalcy partly caused by Obama steering money away from the poor to his wife's anti-obesity program), families are getting a LOT of money each month. I have a family of 5 in an expensive state. We eat pretty well and spend $450 a month on groceries. With the cuts, a family of 4 gets at least $630 a month. It's been higher in other reports. I have friends who used food stamps while going to school. Try as they might, they literally could not spend all of the money each month.

And then there's his rosy version of the history of Ag subsidies. "Oh the golden days, when corporate welfare really did help the poor and when politicians weren't motivated by re-election interests and never did anything shady!! Oh, how I long for those magical days from a bygone era!!!"

Give me a break.

The one plus side is that his presentation should win over liberals who are still worried about helping out the family farmer through subsidies.

John Covil said...

From the (low-scoring) London part of the lost-wallet list:

Ursula Smist, 35, who is originally from Poland, retrieved our wallet and handed it over to her boss. "If you find money, you can't assume it belongs to a rich man," her manager said. "It might be the last bit of money a mother has to feed her family."

Frightening (but somewhat common) moral calculus there.

AD said...

#10 - some of the German tales weren't so bad:

In "Die Geschichte von den schwarzen Buben" (The Story of the Black Boys), Saint Nicholas catches three boys teasing a dark-skinned boy. To teach them a lesson, he dips the three boys in black ink, to make them even darker-skinned than the boy they'd teased.

Jeff R. said...

Heinlein was no doctrinaire libertarian, sure, but he struck me as having a rather liberal (in the classic sense) disposition. And Calhoun's defense of federalism is still as applicable today as it was 200 years ago, despite the awfulness of the antebellum south he was defending.

Basically, you don't have to be a _________ in order to further _________ or inspire ________s. Edmund Burke was a damned Whig, of course.

John Thacker said...

Actually McCain complained about Ethanol when running for President against Obama. Even said so in Iowa during the primary. But nobody votes for somebody just because he's against ethanol-- plenty of farmers vote for the pro-ethanol guy, though.

JWO said...

Corporate Welfare is DOUBLE What We Spend on "Social" Welfare.

It is all the same. It is all sold to voters as helping the poor. Food subsidies are sold to keep poor farmers out of poverty and to keep food affordable to the poor. SS is to keep poor people from starving in retirement. Medicare is to keep poor people from dying of curable disease in old age and to keep them from starving when the hospital bills arrive. Other corporate welfare is to keep jobs for would be poor people. Government schools are justified because the poor would not be able to afford schooling for their children and that includes k-12 and state universities and colleges.

It is all the same. Corporate welfare is just regular welfare just even less efficient.