URLs du Jour

2017-06-18

Hope all you dads out there are having as good a Fathers Day as I am. (Got a new Red Sox cap! Woo!)

■ We move to a new Proverbial chapter today, and there's a two-verse combo. Proverbs 24:1-2:

1 Do not envy the wicked,
     do not desire their company;
2 for their hearts plot violence,
     and their lips talk about making trouble.

Good advice, I guess. Assuming you were tempted to envy the wicked, or desire their company. Don't do that.

■ If you were not tempted to click over to @JonahNRO's latest by yesterday's excerpt, here's another from later in the G-File on the Alexandria shooter:

When you believe — as James Hodgkinson clearly did — that all of our problems can be solved by flicking a few switches in the Oval Office, it’s a short trip to believing that those who stand in the way are willfully evil enemies bent on barring the way to salvation. That belief won’t turn everyone into a murderer, but it shouldn’t be that shocking that it would turn someone into one.

A point I've made myself, but not as well.

■ Bjorn Lomborg writes in the WSJ on The Charade of the Paris Treaty.

Environmentalists were aghast when President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate treaty, with some declaring that the very survival of our civilization was at stake. But is the Paris accord really all that stands between the planet and the worst of climate change? Certainly not.

This is not to deny that President Trump’s announcement was problematic. He failed to acknowledge that global warming is real and wrongly claimed that China and India are the “world’s leading polluters.” (China and the U.S. are the largest emitters of carbon dioxide, and the U.S. is the biggest per capita.) It was far-fetched for him to suggest that the treaty will be “renegotiated.” Worse, the White House now has no response to climate change.

Lomborg urges increased research into low-carbon energy sources, and (sensibly) points out that once such sources become economically viable, the entire world will rush to them, making the regulatory/taxation framework activists desperately want pointless and (almost certainly) counterproductive.

■ A very good article from print Reason from John V.C. Nye: Your Neighbor's Fancy Car Should Make You Feel Better About Income Inequality.

Today while I was out running errands in my 5-year-old Honda Accord, I passed a Tesla. If I were a different kind of guy, seeing Elon Musk's latest creation whisk past me as I trundled along in my middleclassmobile might have inspired a sense of personal envy, or even some worry about the social implications of inequality in America.

But I'm an economist. And let's face it: In practical terms, the difference between a $200,000 Tesla and my last car, a beat-up minivan worth $2,000 at trade-in, is not all that large. They're both safe forms of transportation that get you from point A to point B and, given legal limits and the reality of suburban traffic, most of the time they're driven at roughly the same speeds.

Nye helps explain why the "progressive" harping on inequality gets so little traction among normal people.

■ An interesting article from Dana, posting at Patterico: Two Female Experts On Islam Dismissed By Female Democrat Senators. The experts were Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Asra Nomani. And the senators were…

It’s telling that four female Democratic senators, all of whom publicly proclaim their ardent support of women’s rights, demonstrated that their support is limited to only a certain kind of women. Senators Maggie Hassan (NH), Claire McCaskill (MO), Heidi Heitkamp (ND) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) were not terribly interested in what two female experts had to say or the unique first-hand perspectives they provided. Female senators, one assumes, that, along with New Republic’s Sarah Jones, still retain fully intact genitalia. Ironically, these same senators instead turned to the two male witnesses that were also testifying at the hearing. It’s humorous to see a group of staunch feminists ignore two fellow feminists in favor of the men in the room…

Yup. For all the fawning about New Hampshire's all-female Congressional delegation, it's kind of ironic too.

(And I'm pretty sure this is the first time we've referenced our state's junior Senator's lady parts. Hopefully the last.)