1. Holy fiscal smoke and mirrors, Batman! The US is actually in a spot of trouble. It's not that our taxes are too high (they aren't). It's not that our discretionary spending is too high (it may be, but that's not the problem). We are going to take it in the shorts unless we (1) get a lot more young immigrants with jobs, or (2) reform entitlements right away. As CATO puts it: Deep Doo-Doo.
2. The folks with their boxes all wadded up about GM food are just useful innocents for a cynical corporate play that's about protecting profits. Stop doing that.
3. Firstie Club! A nice Jon Stewart story.
4. That's not price-gouging, that's sustainable pricing! And why it should be legal....
5. Who is racist?
More after the jump...
6. Causes of death, 20th Century...
7. Nice twist on the "light bulb joke," academic historian edition.
8. Chris Zorn quite rightly expects that I will be interested in this. Gotta have it.
9. Should you put your golf handicap on your resume? If you are a lawyer, yes, unless it's over 25. (I guess they figure if you can't lie about that, you'll never be a good lawyer, anyway...)
10. I can't tell "good" wine from anything else. Can anyone?
11. U.S. vs. Democracy! And democracy is not winning.
12. The article is good. The comments, however, are priceless. NSFW, unless you work in law enforcement, in which case you have already seen it. The article, I mean.
13. Cuba Libre-alizing? Or just another head fake? (Oh, and a Cuba Libre is this)
14. Will autarky save the biodiversity of the Galapagos?
15. This may be the best hour you'll spend this week. Angola Prison Rodeo: The whole film. If you want just to see the famous "Poker" game, just click ahead to about 39:15. The next few minutes after that point are extraordinary.
16. I tend to want to laugh about this, and in fact some parts of it are funny. The first paragraph is a hilarious comment on my home state (as M.K. notes, hoping now to visit soon). But the story is also serious, sad, and interesting.
17. Who is responsible for the train wreck? The folks who oppose pipelines. The oil is going to be shipped, one way or the other. Trains are MUCH more dangerous to the environment than pipelines. I have thought for some time the decision to block the pipeline was a train wreck. But I had thought that was just a metaphor, ya know?
18. There is only one child who should be exempt from all the rules. And every rich father has that child.
19. Apparently, to be an "economist," you just have to believe some bunch of claptrap. And the NYTimes will interview you.
20. As far as I can tell, this is actually a serious site. A remarkably self-important site, in fact.
21. As my friend @mattzwolinski notes: "It looks just like Earth! Except it's a 1000 degrees C and rains glass. Sideways."
22. Just too good to be true. Not the Onion: Russian Space Program!
23. Marc Bellemare on quinoa: Like shining a flashlight in a big dark room.
24. Libertarian war over the Civil War. In WaPo.
25. $24,000 per phone line subsidy. That's quite a subsidy!
26. When do you have to pay interns? A: Always. But then they aren't really interns, are they?
27. First thing let's do, is kill all the pilots. This is pretty bad. (It was read as if it were serious, though when you look again you see that it is just racist ways of using Asian-sounding names as a joke about people dying). "Sum Ting Wong!" Nice. At least the station managed to figure out that it was a mistake...much later.
28. Settle....SETTLE! There is no bee-pocalypse. You people are falling into the "if the state does nothing, nothing will be done!" trap.
29. It's gotta be the variance. No reason to expect that there are decreasing returns to "skill." If anything, the returns to actual skills are greater than ever. What has happened is that universities have made it possible for people to get degrees in which those people learn nothing, and just get tens of thousands of (borrowed) dollars hoovered out of their pockets.
Headlines:
1. Deputies: Vandalism suspect wore Spider-Man undies
2. This is a really great headline. I'm not going to reproduce the headline (it's NSFW), but it's a great headline.
3. Athens Woman Stiffed by Male Stripper....
4. Man Cuts Off Own Penis, Blames Lousy Beer...
2. The folks with their boxes all wadded up about GM food are just useful innocents for a cynical corporate play that's about protecting profits. Stop doing that.
3. Firstie Club! A nice Jon Stewart story.
4. That's not price-gouging, that's sustainable pricing! And why it should be legal....
5. Who is racist?
More after the jump...
6. Causes of death, 20th Century...
7. Nice twist on the "light bulb joke," academic historian edition.
8. Chris Zorn quite rightly expects that I will be interested in this. Gotta have it.
9. Should you put your golf handicap on your resume? If you are a lawyer, yes, unless it's over 25. (I guess they figure if you can't lie about that, you'll never be a good lawyer, anyway...)
10. I can't tell "good" wine from anything else. Can anyone?
11. U.S. vs. Democracy! And democracy is not winning.
12. The article is good. The comments, however, are priceless. NSFW, unless you work in law enforcement, in which case you have already seen it. The article, I mean.
13. Cuba Libre-alizing? Or just another head fake? (Oh, and a Cuba Libre is this)
14. Will autarky save the biodiversity of the Galapagos?
15. This may be the best hour you'll spend this week. Angola Prison Rodeo: The whole film. If you want just to see the famous "Poker" game, just click ahead to about 39:15. The next few minutes after that point are extraordinary.
16. I tend to want to laugh about this, and in fact some parts of it are funny. The first paragraph is a hilarious comment on my home state (as M.K. notes, hoping now to visit soon). But the story is also serious, sad, and interesting.
17. Who is responsible for the train wreck? The folks who oppose pipelines. The oil is going to be shipped, one way or the other. Trains are MUCH more dangerous to the environment than pipelines. I have thought for some time the decision to block the pipeline was a train wreck. But I had thought that was just a metaphor, ya know?
18. There is only one child who should be exempt from all the rules. And every rich father has that child.
19. Apparently, to be an "economist," you just have to believe some bunch of claptrap. And the NYTimes will interview you.
20. As far as I can tell, this is actually a serious site. A remarkably self-important site, in fact.
21. As my friend @mattzwolinski notes: "It looks just like Earth! Except it's a 1000 degrees C and rains glass. Sideways."
22. Just too good to be true. Not the Onion: Russian Space Program!
23. Marc Bellemare on quinoa: Like shining a flashlight in a big dark room.
24. Libertarian war over the Civil War. In WaPo.
25. $24,000 per phone line subsidy. That's quite a subsidy!
26. When do you have to pay interns? A: Always. But then they aren't really interns, are they?
27. First thing let's do, is kill all the pilots. This is pretty bad. (It was read as if it were serious, though when you look again you see that it is just racist ways of using Asian-sounding names as a joke about people dying). "Sum Ting Wong!" Nice. At least the station managed to figure out that it was a mistake...much later.
28. Settle....SETTLE! There is no bee-pocalypse. You people are falling into the "if the state does nothing, nothing will be done!" trap.
29. It's gotta be the variance. No reason to expect that there are decreasing returns to "skill." If anything, the returns to actual skills are greater than ever. What has happened is that universities have made it possible for people to get degrees in which those people learn nothing, and just get tens of thousands of (borrowed) dollars hoovered out of their pockets.
Headlines:
1. Deputies: Vandalism suspect wore Spider-Man undies
2. This is a really great headline. I'm not going to reproduce the headline (it's NSFW), but it's a great headline.
3. Athens Woman Stiffed by Male Stripper....
4. Man Cuts Off Own Penis, Blames Lousy Beer...
4 comments:
The idiom is actually useful idiot, though I understand why you may prefer the Von Mises usage.
"Useful idiot" is an ahistorical, fabricated, red-baiting quote wrongly attributed to Lenin, who never said it. The ACTUAL idiom is "useful innocents." No libertarian, anywhere, anytime, should say or allow to be said "useful idiot" without protesting.
11. U.S. vs. Democracy! And democracy is not winning.
This doesn't bother me so much. Democracy is not, nor has it ever been, the end goal. You as a libertarian should be aware of that. Personal liberty was and still is the goal. Democracy, which the US thankfully does not have, can be just as tyrannical and out of control as any other form of government.
I would accept a theocracy if I thought it would preserve liberty better. As the framers wisely set up, a republic of limited powers, seems to be the best form of government that preserves individual liberty.
Unfortunately, the rally cry of democracy, and its attendant mob mentality, has been worming its way into Western culture as the end goal. This is having terrible consequences.
My son is almost two, and has used many different brands of diapers. He pulls and tugs at them, colors on them with paint and markers, stretches them over his head (when they are clean), puts them around his legs and runs through the house, play on the playground with just the diaper on. And through all of that, they still work.
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