If Hobsbawm had been an unrepentant Nazi, I doubt he’d be getting so many tributes. Strange how that works out.
– Samizdata commenter ‘Vinegar Joe’
|
|||||
|
These are the facts. George W Bush left behind a set of books that were not so much unbalanced as vertiginous. At the end of 2008, US debt was $9.9 trillion, or 69.7 per cent of GDP, and the ballooning deficit was $683 billion. Since then, all the key indicators have worsened markedly. By the end of this year, gross debt is forecast to reach $16.3 trillion (the number to which Letterman was alluding), more than 100 per cent of GDP, or a rise of two thirds under Obama. The annual deficit is close to $1.5 trillion, 10 per cent of GDP. Worse still, according to official forecasts, US debt is on course to hit $20 trillion by 2016. September 24th, 2012 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
 David Leigh thinks that broadband needs to be taxed to keep him in his job at The Guardian:
In case you do not know (and why should you in this age of a multiplicity of news sources?), The Guardian is a very pro-statist dead tree newspaper. I was going to explain what I thought of this notion but I will instead just quote the first commenter I saw who replied, someone calling themselves ‘romandavid’:
Quite. Moreover I have looked over some articles by David Leigh and it is unclear where this ‘great journalism’ is that so desperately needs protection. It is bad enough we have to pay for the crap on the BBC whether we watch it or not. September 23rd, 2012 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
As a young and naive man, I “knew” what was right and voted accordingly. As I grew older and more sophisticated, I discovered such things as tactical voting and a perceived duty to support the election of the least-worst option with the best chance of victory, regardless of how slim the differences might be. Now, middle-aged and faced with the consequences of those decades of “enlightened pragmatism”, I once again find myself voting my conscience, while turning a deaf ear to the blandishments of the machine. I have a vague notion that this sounds like some Buddhist proverb, or something. – Samizdata commenter ‘the other rob’, who seems to be on a roll lately. September 20th, 2012 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Romney is no Thatcher – in truth, he’s far from it. It made sense for the unemployed back then to vote Thatcher because she offered an alternative to the headlong rush to destruction. Sadly, Romney may be correct – what sense would it make for today’s unemployed to vote for a marginally slower slide into the abyss? – Samizdata commenter ‘the other rob’ September 19th, 2012 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
And I have to say it’s a little unseemly for our government to officially take a position on a YouTube video, even one that sparked an international crisis. It’s even more unseemly that our government is taking the same position on that film as the people who just killed our ambassador in Benghazi. – the indispensable Michael Totten September 17th, 2012 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
Well, contrary to my title it actually does matter a damn who wins the US election, even if policy-wise they are largely fungible.
I want Barack ObamaCare to win, or more accurately, I want Mitt RomneyCare to lose so that the Tea Party have a better chance of completely and utterly destroying the Republican establishment that decided to run a jackanapes like Romney. The objective I would like to see is that the Republican party either collapses completely to make room for something else or actually reinvents itself to make it worth voting for (also fine by me). Romney is what happens when the Stupid Party (USA Branch) realise they only have to be ever so slightly less evil than the Evil Party (USA Branch) in order to get your vote.  September 10th, 2012 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
“I don’t think there are any Liberal Democrats who have anything other than admiration for Ken and the way he works.” – an ‘aide to Mr. Clegg‘. Can you think of anything more damning? September 4th, 2012 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
On July 1 next year, Croatia becomes the 28th member of the European Union, and under the terms of the Treaty of Maastricht this new, proud sovereign state – not yet two decades old – must accept the entire corpus of EU law; and she must place her neck in the noose of the single currency. Unlike Britain or Denmark, the Croats have no opt-out. They are now legally obliged to give up the kuna for the euro, and I say, don’t do it, folks. It is not only a mistake. To submit to the euro would be a stunning refusal to learn the grim lessons of recent Balkan history Blimey, I can hardly believe I just quoted Mr. Toad. But whilst I share BJ’s sentiments on this, knowing Croatia reasonably well, I suspect there was less opposition to this than one might have expected due to the indigenous Croatian political class being such a dismal collection of pond scum and turds who floated to the top. I think the average Croatian could not see how shifting power away from these wankers could possibly make things worse. And of course they are entirely wrong on that score, as they will eventually discover. September 3rd, 2012 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
This whole notion of loyalty to one’s country really has no meaning whatsoever, since countries always change, just as do people who live in them. The only loyalty worth anything is that to one’s values and principles. – commenter Alisa August 13th, 2012 | 44 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is an article by David V. Johnson, which is an interview with American leftist Martha Nussbaum, during which she conflates ‘respect’ with ‘tolerance’ and that is a telling category error. Nussbaum at least accepts (I sense rather grudgingly) that many ‘bad’ views must be accepted within civil society but… Am I willing to tolerate Muslims? Certainly… at least the ones who will reciprocate and tolerate an atheist like me. And those who will not? Well no, I will not tolerate them either. For much the same reason I will happily tolerate any communist or socialist who wants to go live on a kibbutz, because I do not have to join them. And fascist socialists who want to live in judenfrei whites-only retreats on private property in the back of beyond somewhere, well knock yourself out guys, the farther away you are from me, well, lets just say it is a win-win for all concerned. However the ones who wish to impose their oppressive views on me via the state? The ones whose views move them to do politics (which is what we call the struggle to control and use the means of collective coercion)? No, they will not tolerate me so I will reciprocate and try to use the force of the state, or whatever other means are available, to suppress them too. Tolerating those who will not tolerate you is more correctly know as “cowardice”. But that is it. Tolerance. That is all that anyone can expect, provided they reciprocate it. Never respect. Do I have ‘equal respect’ for Islam? Or socialism in all its ‘left’ and ‘right’ forms? Or racism? Hell no. I do not respect them at all as I do not respect any religion or any intrusive collectivist political order. But I will tolerate adherents of things I think are wrong if they tolerate me, which means not imposing their wishes on me by force. Several contributors to this blog are religious and I respect them, because they earned it, and their religious views do not require them to impose their beliefs on me by force. Tolerance. Oh and another annoying thing in this article is the use of the term ‘liberalism’ to mean the exact opposite of the term as understood by classical liberals. July 17th, 2012 | 45 comments - (Comments are closed)
Ed West wrote a short but odd article about The Shard in the Telegraph:
It says nothing whatsoever. And I suspect Ed West cannot glean the future from tea leaves either. Why does he persist in looking for meaning where there is none? That he sees it as a “middle finger” says nothing about the Shard but it tells us quite a lot about Ed West. Strangely for a self-styled “patriot”, he uses many Americanisms, such as the middle finger as his rude gesture of choice rather than the English ‘mighty forks’… …and when he says “kids” he means children rather than baby goats, also an Americanism… He is however very English in his use of defensive self-deprecation. And he sees the success of others as somehow diminishing himself and in that way at least he is really very English indeed (he presumably holds with the fixed quantity of wealth fallacy)… but as he seems motived by envy, perhaps describing himself as a sexual inadequate was not ‘defensive self-deprecation’ after all. July 6th, 2012 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||