URLs du Jour

2018-10-16

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  • Skip, the original Granite Grokster, has a good catch on the guy angling to become my next CongressCritter/Toothache: Chris Pappas – Spoken like a true Collectivist! He’s not grooving to “Live Free or Die”. He reproduces an article from the Hippo Press (a free throwaway paper distributed in central/southern NH) from 2005, in which Pappas argued for …

    Why should we be proud of our state botto of 'Live Free or Die' if it compels state government to let the absolute freedom of a few compromise the well being of the rest?

    … well, it doesn't really matter what particular policy he's arguing for, does it? Once you buy into the notion that individual rights can, indeed must, be trampled underfoot when some imaginary "common good" is to be imposed by politicians, you've pretty much given the whole game away.

    Pappas's conclusion:

    In New Hampshire, we have transformed the revolutionary catch phrase of General Stark into a pithy political slogan used to defeat good public policies that could help create a freer, more forward-looking state. We should let our politically charged motto slip into the night like the Old Man and pick a new mantra that calls each of us to do better by each other, not just ourselves.

    "Will no one rid me of this turbulent motto?"


  • At Reason, Eric Boehm provides the news: It's Official: 2018 Federal Deficit Largest Since 2012.

    That this latest increase in the deficit happened during a period when Republicans had full control of the federal government reveals that they were never very serious about balancing the budget. Even now, they refuse to recognize the problem. Democrats, meanwhile, are promising to spend even more on entitlements, if and when they return to power.

    According to the Treasury Department press release (which is, of course, full of happy-face spin), between FY2017 and FY2018, government receipts were up by a hair, $3.315 Trillion to 3.329 Trillion, a 0.4% increase. But outlays ballooned from $3.981 Trillion to $4.108 Trillion, up by a solid 3.2%.


  • And yet, as Kevin D. Williamson reminds us: The World Keeps Not Ending.

    We were not supposed to have made it this far.

    George Orwell saw night descending on us in 1984. Orwell was, on paper, a radical, but in his heart he was an old-fashioned English liberal. He dreamed of socialism but feared socialists. He feared them because he knew them. I was in the sixth grade in 1984, but I remember the magazine covers and pundit panels, and the insistence that though we had not arrived at dystopia on Orwell’s schedule, that eternal jackboot was sure to find our face soon enough. Tom Wolfe joked that “the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe,” which wasn’t quite right: There’s Saudi Arabia, and China, and Burma . . .

    But not here. And, increasingly, not there, either. As our friends at HumanProgress.Org remind us (to little thanks — nobody is less popular than an optimist) the world has in fact become more democratic and more liberal since 1984, rather than more autocratic and more illiberal. Orwell was the better writer and the more profound thinker, but Aldous Huxley was the better prophet.

    [Amazon Link]
    (paid link)
    Fine, but between you and me I found the guy who wrote The End Is Near and It's Going to be Awesome a tad more convincing.


  • John Hinderaker of Power Line expounds on Why Elizabeth Warren’s Lies Are Good For America. Shortest post ever? No!

    Paul and Scott have joined in the general hilarity over Elizabeth Warren’s disclosure that she might be something like 1/1,000 Native American. (Then again, she might not be. There is so little Native American DNA in the database that several Latin American countries, including Mexico, are used as proxies. Warren may have a better claim to being Hispanic than Indian.) It turns out that Warren likely has less Native American blood than the average white American. Not to mention the wag who noted that she has more bourbon in her blood than Warren has Indian. But Warren doggedly sticks to the one-drop rule that her Democratic forbears promulgated in the antebellum South. Good for her!

    Here’s the point: Warren’s defense of her claim to being Native American is good for America. Because if Warren is an Indian, then so are most of the rest of us. And most of us are also African-American or Hispanic. If everyone is an Indian, then no one is an Indian. This logic is fatal to the whole corrupt affirmative action enterprise.

    If you go back far enough (as I've said repeatedly, and tiresomely, in the past) we're all African-American.

    But Senator Warren joins a long line of Democrats pushing for the one-drop rule.


  • But in all the hoopla about Senator Warren, the good news about another prominent pol seems to have been buried. Fortunately, the Babylon Bee noticed: Hillary Clinton Releases DNA Test Results Proving She's Only Half Lizard Person.

    Shortly after Elizabeth Warren released a DNA test that may or may not show that she is 1/1024th Native American, failed presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton showed the results of a recent DNA test that conclusively proved she is only 50% Reptilian.

     The test, conducted by a renowned DNA expert, showed that only 50% of her blood comes from reptilian humanoids from space bent on destroying humanity. Many Washington insiders had claimed she was 100% reptile, but these claims are now known to be a hoax.

    Thank goodness!


Last Modified 2024-01-24 3:32 PM EDT