Saturday, September 28, 2013

Not THAT Kind of Guy

Now, in what way is this remotely true? Don't get me wrong, I think McAuliffe's answer is basically right. And for all I know he won't pressure the Redskins to change their name. But is that because he's the sort of guy who doesn't tell businesses what they should do? Or is it because he's the sort of guy who says what audiences want to hear about their beloved football franchise? If the question was about businesses that refuse to comply with Obamacare's requirement to pay for birth control, would he still be the sort of guy who doesn't think politicians should be telling businesses what to do? Is he for no environmental regulations? Against all zoning? Is he now against civil-rights laws that tell business who. they must serve, hire, etc.?
I support some of those laws and I'm dead-set against others, but I'm not the issue here and I'm not the guy running for governor promising to never tell "businesses" what to do. The man made millions off his connections to government, exploiting government's ability to tell businesses what to do. At the heart of his various greentech boondoggles was the idea that he and his partners could get rich(er) off the opportunities created when government tells businesses what to do. Terry McAuliffe coming out as an opponent of politicians telling businesses what to do is like the pope coming out against priests forgiving sins and giving communion.

Here he is on his own website pandering on the issue of equal pay for women. We can have an argument about the merits of those arguments and the often bogus statistics behind them another time, but let's assume he's sincere that he will do everything he can to "close the gap." Uh, how does he intend to do that without telling businesses what they should do with their businesses?

Oh, and since he up and made me visit his unctuous website, let me make one last related point to this whole liberals are libertarian thing. These are the first words on the issues page for "women" on his website: "I strongly believe that women should be able to make their own healthcare decisions without interference from Washington or Richmond."
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/359572/terry-mcauliffe-redskins-and-big-lies-liberalism-jonah-goldberg

The lying liars and political but blushless lies they tell!  If they were not willing to say what's required, whatever is required, they'd be former politicians or wannabe politicians.  

Friday, September 27, 2013

Live and Let Comply with Our Demands

Uh, sorry to tell you, but you are "they." Outside of a Law and Order script - or an equally implausible MSNBC diatribe about who ruined Detroit - conservatives have as much influence on big-city liberalism as the Knights of Malta do.

Seriously, who else do people think are behind efforts to ban big sodas or sue hairdressers for charging women more than men? Who harasses little kids for making toy guns out of sticks, Pop Tarts, or their own fingers? Who wants to regulate the air you breathe, the food you eat, and the beverages you drink? Who wants to control your thermostat? Take your guns? Your cigarettes? Heck, your candy cigarettes? Who's in favor of speech codes on campuses and "hate crime" laws everywhere? Who's in favor of free speech when it comes to taxpayer-subsidized "art" and pornography (so long as you use a condom, if liberals get their way) but then bang their spoons on their high chairs for strict regulations when it comes to political speech? Who loves meddling, finger-wagging billionaires like Michael Bloomberg when they use state power and taxpayer money to herd, bully, and nudge people but thinks billionaires like the Koch brothers who want to shrink government are the root of all tyranny?
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/358147/myth-live-and-let-live-liberalism-jonah-goldberg

I like to remind my "liberal (really progressive)" friends they are believers in coercion - they think if they can get enough people like themselves into office to make up enough rules they can force us all to dance to their tune .... for our own good. Most are surprised to confront that conclusion.

The author's conclusion:
Social liberalism - better understood as progressivism - is a worldview that seeks to use the state to support its preferred values and culture. That isn't libertarianism. Support for abortion rights does not make you a libertarian; it makes you someone who wants very lax regulations on abortion for ideological reasons. Which is why socially liberal bureaucrats in D.C. want to make you wait 24 hours to get a tattoo of a baby on your arm, but there's no waiting to have an abortion.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Let It Die

German Chancellor Otto von Bismark's creation of a social insurance system in the 19th century spread through Europe. After the devastation of World War I, few questioned its need. In the U.S., Franklin Roosevelt's Social Security system was seen as an antidote to the Depression. The public's three-decade support for the idea allowed Lyndon Johnson to pass the Medicare and Medicaid entitlements even in the absence of an economic crisis.

Going back at least to the Breaux-Thomas Medicare Commission in 1999, endless learned bodies have warned that the U.S. entitlement scheme of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is financially unsupportable. Of Medicare, Rep. Bill Thomas said at the time, "One of the biggest problems is that the government tries to administer 10,000 prices in 3,000 counties, and it gets it wrong most of the time." But change never comes.

Medicaid is the worst medicine in the United States. It grinds on. Doctors in droves are withdrawing from Medicare. No matter. It all lives on.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304526204579097443230322758.html?mod=hp_opinion

Will's conclusion - let Obamacare die and take the mess that is medicare/medicaid with it.

Friday, September 20, 2013

The Lying Liars and the Hate Lies They Tell


There's only one problem. Shepard, according to Jiminez, was not killed because he was gay. His murderers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, attempted the "gay panic" defense in court -- suggesting that Shepard had come onto them and provoked them into murderous rage. But that wasn't true. Jiminez, who is gay, reports that Shepard dealt methamphetamine, and that one of his murderers was a sex partner. Even gay-journalistic icon Andrew Sullivan has endorsed Jiminez's work.
But the left cannot let its mythology go. And so The Matthew Shepard Foundation released a statement decrying Jiminez's book: "Attempts now to rewrite the story of this hate crime appear to be based on untrustworthy sources, factual errors, rumors and innuendo rather than the actual evidence gathered by law enforcement and presented in a court of law. We do not respond to innuendo, rumor or conspiracy theories. Instead, we recommit ourselves to honoring Matthew's memory, and refuse to be intimidated by those who seek to tarnish it."
http://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2013/09/19/matthew-shepard-trayvon-martin-and-the-power-of-leftist-myth-n1704035
These facts, if true as reported in this book I have not read, highlight an approach that is both perverse and easily recognizable.  I've never met anyone who would kill someone for being gay or for being black.  The talk about hate is the talk about a percentage of the population that is small, poor, and un-influential.  This is not a widespread and significant problem, as evidenced by the apparent fact that the supposed poster child for this "national" problem was killed by gay people in a dope deal, and there's not been a documented incident since - correct me if I'm wrong, I mean I'm sure there's some homicidal maniac who's killed a gay person somewhere, but most of the murders in the nation result from domestic violence and intoxication mixed in the same deadly brew that's been killing people since beer was invented, and/or the drug war's gift to our nation of a violent underculture fighting for drug dealing turf.  
But we can't talk about the unintended consequence of the drug war, while we can make up fantasy about dead drug dealers who were gay ....

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Classic Quote, Maraboli

"Life doesn't get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient."
- Steve Maraboli

Monday, September 16, 2013

AGW & IPCC

"The London Telegraph wrote Sunday that a leaked IPCC report "has led some scientists to claim that the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century."

"And why not? As the Telegraph has noted, "There has been a 60% increase in the amount of ocean covered with ice compared to this time last year, the equivalent of almost a million square miles."

"Yes, that's right. The dire predictions of an iceless Arctic made in 2007 were wrong, just as the fearful projections of an increase in global-warming-caused disastrous storms have also been off the mark in a missed-by-the-width-of-the-universe sort of way.

"Whether Earth cools or not is a question that won't be answered until a few more years or decades pass.

"But this we do know: Earth has not warmed in at least 16 years, maybe more. Data from Britain's Met Office, that nation's arbiter of all things climate, shows global temperatures have been flat since the late 1990s."

Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/090913-670352-arctic-ice-increases-million-square-miles-by-60.htm#ixzz2eaXYlPct

How long do you think it will be before the cooling will lead the IPCC to say they were just dead wrong?

Classic Quote, Van Gogh

"If you hear a voice within you say, 'You cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced" - Vincent Van Gogh

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Interesting "Journalism"

Interesting editorial disguised as reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/04/business/economy/business-losing-clout-in-a-gop-moving-right.html?_r=1&

How 1980s this is, isn't it clear that Obama and the dems are just as much in the tank for corporate interests as is the GOP? The issue isn't who the partisans are, the issue is that power corrupts.  Consider the big piles of money Obamacare funnels into insurance and drug companies, for example.

Pointing a Finger at a Useful Idiot

"Indeed, going back to President Obama's much-vaunted $787 billion government spending "stimulus" in 2009, Samuelson didn't even bother to question whether the extraction of $787 billion from a limping economy in order to redistribute it might be an unwise move. He didn't given his belief that reduced government spending is "precisely the wrong" step "in a severe slump." Samuelson's problem with the alleged "stimulus" back then was that it was mostly "a political exercise." Ok, by that funny logic, how is government spending whereby money is taken from one set of hands and placed in the hands of others ever not "a political exercise"?"
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2013/09/04/scared_american_workers_can_thank_confused_economists_100594.html

Monday, September 2, 2013

You Should Be Afraid, Because We Said So

Great article, if you like fiction.  I'll save you the time you might waste reading this - "Scientists don't know what is happening or why, but they are still very sure you should be afraid."
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/01/climate-change-warm-words-cool-waters

These people have done themselves a great disservice by over-exagerating what they say they know, what they can know, and what the stakes are. But they are more than happy to keep on providing reasons why governments should take control of even more of our lives and efforts than they currently do.  They are, in short, lying assholes, in the technical description.