We are seeing a political singularity – the leftwards slide that has been under way since 1710 or so is going faster and faster. Many people have already commented on the ludicrous absurdity of calling 1% cuts in a budget that rose 27% in three years, “drasticâ€. Supposedly this makes the Tea Party not merely conservative, but “ultra conservativeâ€. If the tea party is ultra conservative, what then would we …
Theocracy
All Most theocratic religions are officially anti theocratic, in the sense that supposedly people believe in the official religion because it is simply the truth, not because of state sponsorship, and if anyone doubts the truth, they are supposedly seeking the power that rightly belongs to those who preach what is simply the truth, so it is those horrid heretics that are the theocrats. Thus the well paid wise progressive …
Laffer curve
If the government taxes 0% of GDP, it will not get any money. If it attempts to tax 100% of GDP it will not get any money either, since there will be no above ground wealth. So somewhere between 0% and 100% is the tax that maximizes revenue. Genghis Kahn and Raffles believed that the tax that maximizes revenue is quite low, close to 0%. Today’s politician’s believe it is …
“Deep Cutsâ€
Harry Reid, leader of the RepublicanDemocratic party in the Senate, attacks the Republican party because some far right extremists want to make “deep cuts†in government spending Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) accused Tea Party lawmakers of destroying budget negotiations “We’ve tried to wait patiently for them … but our patience and the American people’s patience is wearing very thin,” “Tea Party Republicans are scrapping all the progress we …
The coming collapse
Under the old US constitution, around 2000 or so, in order for the bureaucrats to spend money on something the house of representatives, the senate, and the president, had to agreed to spend money. Thus in order to do stuff, politicians had to pass a budget, and bureaucrats had to spend within that budget. Passing the budget was power, and politicians were eager to work on the budget, each one …
Losing the war with Islam
FilmLadd gives a pre mortem on our defeat: On September 20th, 2001, President Bush gave a speech to a Joint Session of Congress after the attacks on 9/11 to rally the nation and steel its citizens for the days of strife to come. A few hours after the speech I received a call from a friend in military intelligence. The first words out of his mouth? “We lost.”
Radiation levels normal and falling at Fukushima nuke reactor
NPR, usually the first to panic about evil nuclear energy, is reporting some very undramatic numbers from the Fukushima reactor Radiation inside the plant is arguably dangerous, but radiation at the plants main gate is 0.647 milliserverts per hour. By comparison, when you take a flight, you get about 0.04 milliserverts per hour from cosmic rays, so standing at the main gate is fifteen times worse than flying. So someone …
How the middle eastern revolutions are working out.
Bryan Caplan wanted people to go on record predicting the future of Egypt before the future becomes apparent. My prediction has come true
Reactor disaster
The television is full of panic stricken horror about the supposedly horrible horrible horrible horrible nuclear disaster in Japan. This disaster looks like being worse than three mile island, but not nearly as bad as Chernobyl. How many died as a result of Chernobyl? Sixty people died.  Pretty similar compared to coal mining disasters, of which there are many each year, killing in total world wide thousands of people every …
More astroturf
Your taxes at work – the government stages protests demanding more government. The “One Nation Working Together Rally†got lots of ridicule because all the protesters had professionally made mass produced signs. So these protesters as they stream out of their taxpayer paid for buses are handed professionally made mass produced signs that are made to look like home made signs. thanks to Sharp Elbows, via Lonely Conservative and Moonbattery …