URLs du Jour

2017-06-10

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Proverbs 25:20 is yet another simile:

20 Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day,
    or like vinegar poured on a wound,
    is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.

So… don't sing to sad people? I'm not even sure that's good advice. I don't want to go against the Good Book, but people should at least check out this Lifehack article: 9 Ways Music Can Cure Depression, Drug Addiction and Stop Suicide.

Maybe not Leonard Cohen though.

■ I liked Jim Geraghty's Morning Jolt newsletter yesterday, and thanks to NRO, you can read it here: What We Learned from Comey Thursday. Yes, there was good news for Trump fans: Comey didn't support a lot of the Democrat/MSM's hopeful theories about malfeasance. But:

Despite all this, Thursday wasn’t a good day for President Trump. Comey painted an ugly portrait of the president as flagrantly and shamelessly dishonest, oblivious to traditional limits on presidential power, obsessed with personal loyalty to him, having no regard for the independence of law enforcement and the justice system, petty, micromanaging, erratic, mercurial, and vindictive. This description of Trump is undoubtedly shocking to all of the Americans who were in comas for the entirety of the 2016 election.

"At least he's not Hillary." Set that to a catchy tune and (see above) sing it to people laden with a heavy heart when they contemplate the future of the country.

■ The other NR newsletter is Jonah Goldberg's G-File, and you can read yesterday's edition right here: Comey, Master of Memos. It's funny, albeit way too heavy on the Game of Thrones analogies. But this point on "whataboutism" holds:

Whataboutism is fine if you want to point out double standards. But the trick is to hold onto your standards while you do it. It is otherworldly to celebrate how Donald Trump doesn’t play by the rules while at the same denouncing anyone who doesn’t play by the rules in response. As I’ve written before, when the president of the United States ignores “democratic norms,” it is naïve to expect that everyone else will abide by them. And it is grotesquely hypocritical to defend Trump’s disdain for the rules while demonizing others for far lesser transgressions.

Good advice. Hope I can follow it.

■ Shikha Dalmia saw it coming (slightly) before the UK election: Playing Tax Collector for the Welfare State Didn't Win British Tories Voters.

Plenty of people love government welfare when it seems like someone else will pay for their benefits. The problem with that, as Margaret Thatcher famously pointed out, is that eventually you run out of other people's money. And when that happens, the state goes after your money – because a government that is powerful enough to give you everything you want is also powerful enough to take away everything you've got.

I know: as someone pointed out recently, we fought a war a couple of centuries back so that we wouldn't have to care too much about what happens in Old Blighty. Think of it as a cautionary tale.

■ My LFOD Google Alert was triggered by a Free Keene article: NH Governor Signs Bill Protecting Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency From Regulation!

On Friday, New Hampshire’s new governor Chris Sununu signed a bill, HB 436, which makes NH the first state to explicitly protect cryptocurrency like Bitcoin from regulation!

This undid previous legislation which treated Bitcoin businesses as "money transmitters", like Western Union.

Free Keene is enthusiastic, naturally enough. (You probably noticed the exclamation points.) If you'd like poorly-concealed contempt, on the other hand, the Concord Monitor's "Granite Geek", David Brooks, will provide: NH banking commission can’t regulate bitcoin currency exchanges.

New Hampshire is one of the most bitcoin-happy states in the country on a per capita basis, thanks largely to the libertarian, all-government-is-bad group called the Free State Project. The group (seduced, like so many have been, by our “Live Free or Die” state motto) created the much-publicized goal of luring 20,000 “like-minded” folks to New Hampshire and using them to remake the state government. It’s having an effect; if nothing else, two of our 400 state representatives now list themselves as Libertarians rather than Republicans or Democrats.

… and it goes on like that for a while. The comments to David's post are adequate rebuttal.


Last Modified 2024-01-26 6:36 AM EDT