URLs du Jour

2021-09-12

  • Money Printer Go Brrr. Via Power Line's post: Weimar? It’s Us.

    Leave it to "House Ed & Labor Republicans" to not identify the speaker in that clip. It's not "House Democrats", but it's a guy with a lot of power: Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY), a powerful argument for Congressional term limits all on his own. He's in his eighth term. He is Chairman of the House Budget Committee.

    Is this 13-second clip out of context? Hey, maybe. I can't find the original complete video. But there's a 51-second clip posted by @HouseBudgetDems here and it's not much better in terms of fiscal sanity. ("We have to stop thinking about the money, which we can create plenty of…")

    Technically, he's right, I suppose, assuming that when he says "We", he means "the Federal Government". As long as it can apply ink to paper, and exempts itself from counterfeiting laws, it can keep paying its debts with the increasingly worthless product of that process.

    If by "We", you mean "American citizens", well… yeah, we can definitely go bankrupt.

    And lest we forget, it's not as if the Trump-era GOP has a good record (from 2016):

    “People said I want to go and buy debt and default on debt, and I mean, these people are crazy. This is the United States government,” Trump told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “New Day.” “First of all, you never have to default because you print the money, I hate to tell you, OK?”

    OK, Donald.

    I swear I will vote for the craziest person on the ballot next year as long as he or she simply promises to vote for cutting spending.


  • Are these words small enough for Biden to understand? Early Friday evening, Biden claimed his new vaccine mandates were "not about freedom or personal choice." Nick Gillespie dissents: No, Biden, This Is About Freedom and Personal Choice.

    Contra Biden, everything is always (or should be) about freedom and personal choice. That libertarian sentiment defines America's ethos and can't simply be written out of the script because it gets in the way of what this or any other president wants. There are legitimate moments when rights can be abrogated due to actual existential threats, but this is certainly not one of them.

    As Jeffrey A. Singer, a surgeon and senior fellow for the Cato Institute, has noted, COVID-19 has a "0.2 percent fatality rate among people not living in institutions." Fully 80 percent of deaths have occurred among people over 65 and just 358 children under the age of 17 had died of the disease as of July 29, 2021. We are not talking about smallpox, which affected all populations and had a fatality rate of 30 percent. COVID, argues Singer, "will not be eradicated" and will become a small-scale, endemic problem that should be minimized by targeted interventions to protect the most vulnerable. From a public health perspective, it should not become the casus belli for a radical restructuring of society and a massive expansion of presidential (or governmental) powers.

    Well, we'll see if it "works".


  • Worst form of government, except for… Michael Huemer breaks down the arguments pro and con: I Can’t Believe this Is the Best We Can Do, but … Democracy.

    Some people overappreciate democracy – they think it’s a great idea, that it legitimates actions that would otherwise be rights-violations, that it works better than the market, that there’s nothing wrong with it that can’t be fixed by “more democracy”. I cannot sympathize with this view. The idea of a mob imposing its will on the minority never inspired in me that great reverence that it seems to inspire for others.

    But also, some people underappreciate democracy – they think it’s total crap, that voters can’t be trusted to tie their own shoes, that there’s no point in trying to preserve democracy or to improve it.

    So I thought I would give my take on democracy. The right view is in between the extremes: Democracy has serious flaws that are inherent in the system and not fixable; nevertheless, it is much better than anything else people have come up with, other than of course anarcho-capitalism.

    I don't know what an anarcho-capitalist system would look like, or if it would be stable. I wouldn't mind being a guinea pig.


  • Hey, kids! What time is it? Lynn Uzell has the answer in her Real Clear Politics article: It's Time to Acknowledge Anti-White Racism.

    As any student of George Orwell knows, no authoritarian government can ever gain complete control unless it commandeers people’s thinking through the manipulation of language. Thus, the dystopian powers in “1984” deliberately turned the meaning of words upside-down in a process known as double-think.

    The same process is happening today with the words used to discuss racism. In true Orwellian fashion, Ibram X. Kendi (pictured) insists that the only way to fight racism is to embrace racial discrimination in perpetuity. This “anti-racism,” as he calls it, is as likely to stamp out genuine racism as Orwell’s Ministry of Truth was apt to stamp out falsehoods.

    In order to understand what is going on, we must call to mind the traditional definition of racism: the stereotyping, denigrating, marginalizing, or excluding of persons on the basis of race. Look up any definition of racism prior to the racial awokening taking place in the last decade, and it will be: 1) race neutral; and 2) involve some act of free will—relating to word, deed, or belief.

    The definition of racism has undergone a radical change in a short time. According to the new eighth-grade curriculum for the Albemarle County (Va.) School District, racism now means: “The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.”

    It's much the same at Portsmouth Public Library which proudly published its Anti-Racism Zine awhile back. Its "Glossary" definition?

    Racism - unjust or prejudicial treatment based on racial stereotyping (conscious or unconscious, active or passive) that is backed by institutional power. "A marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces & normalizes racial inequalities." -- Ibram X. Kendi

    Yes, Kendi embraces the circular definition fallacy. It's usually not so obvious, but there you are.

    Apparently there's no longer any word for people who simply hate other people based on their skin color.