I see it regularly claimed that financial crisis reflected de-regulation. I was mighty puzzled. Deregulation? Has not Basel been a spectacular landslide of regulation, with massive apocalyptic government takeover of the financial system, with government deciding who shall be winners and who shall be losers, with government allocating lending to favored groups and away from disfavored groups? Eventually I discovered that this “deregulation†was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Bill, also known as …
Bryan Caplan’s challenge
if Egypt gets democracy, will suffer war and economic disaster, both of which will be blamed on Jews. Democracy with universal franchise does not work. It works worse with Muslims. No Muslim should be allowed to vote anywhere, especially in countries with substantial numbers of Muslims
The decline of civilization reflected in fantasy novels
Black gate observes the replacement of heroes by anti heroes, and the replacement of morality by anti morality: Thus we can be confident that the murderous, blaspheming anti-hero who rapes and tortures children will never utter a racist thought, be disgusted by homosexuality, or express skepticism about any religious stand-in for Judaism or Islam. … Abercrombie and others cannot rightly be accused of amorality nor can they correctly be portrayed …
$1,200 billion increase cut by $60 billion
From the fact that the deficit is $1,600 billion, and that the “right†triumphantly announces that it has cut spending by 60 billion, which “cut†will somehow fail to prevent the deficit from growing rapidly, I predict collapse in a decade or two – armed conflict between elements of the government, or between the government and the people, or, very likely, both. I have been making a similar prediction, for the same decade, since 1994, and events seem to be proceeding on schedule.
Lara Logan and the media rules
Caroline Glick analyzes the coverage: Identity politics revolve around the narrative of victimization. For adherents to identity politics, the victim is not a person, but a member of a privileged victim group. That is, the status of victimhood is not determined by facts, but by membership in an identity group. Stories about victims are not dictated by facts. Victim stories are tailored to fit the victim. Facts, values and individual …
No friends to the right
No enemies to the left, no friends to the right Left wing journalist Nir Rosen ridicules Lara Logan’s rape. Seems that because Nir Rosen is even further left than she is, the stupid slut deserved to get raped. “Lara Logan had to outdo Anderson. Where was her buddy McCrystal.†That she is supposedly a buddy of the insufficiently left wing McCrystal is a suggestion that she is insufficiently left wing.
Democracy in action
Lara Logan, CBS chief foreign correspondent was beaten and gang raped by a mob of 200 enthusiastic pro democracy protestors chanting “Jew, Jew†There is an effort to blame Mubarak for this, but if the goons of a US ally had done this, if the goons of a man who accepted peace with the west had done this, the mainstream media would be covering this with headlines the size of …
Democracy in Tunisia
The promised democracy in Egypt is an infection from an outbreak of democracy in Tunisia. Yet strangely, Tunisia has fallen off the headlines. How is democracy working out in Tunisia, you might ask? Wonder no longer! Thousands of Tunisians have also arrived by boat to the Italian island of Lampedusa prompted Italy to declare a humanitarian state of emergency and ask the European Union for 100 million euros in aid …
The Wallison dissent
Steve Sailor, is as always great reading, and he issues some comments that on the Wallison dissent that everyone who wants to understand the financial crisis should pay attention to. Peter Wallison tells us Profit had nothing to do with the motivations of these firms; they were responding to government direction. Rather than direction, they were responding to government pressure and persuasion. Basel gave government not so much the power …
The new Egypt
Earlier I argued that no Muslims should be allowed to vote anywhere in the world, least of all in Muslim majority countries. Brutally honest has some interesting survey results on what the Egyptian majority will vote for: • 84% favor the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim faith. Now 84% is an interesting number, considering that something like ten or fifteen percent of Egyptians are Christians (the number …