Tweeting Financial Armageddon with Iowahawk

The always brilliant Iowahawk tweets the number of calamities that will befall us if the debt limit isn't raised. This one is just too horrible to contemplate:

Cowboy poetry utterly lacking in metre.

Even Sesame Street won't be immune:

Sesame Street descends into Mad Maxian anarchy; Oscar the Grouch fashions shivs out the letter J and the number 4

Read the whole thing.

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Liberalism: A Luxury We Can't Afford

That's the title of a post by John Hinderaker over at Power Line this morning and here is how he sums up Liberalism:

Liberalism is a sort of parasite that feeds on the wealth that free enterprise creates. Liberalism exists for two reasons: 1) to stuff the pocketbooks of those who have learned to live at the taxpayers’ expense, and 2) to feed the moral vanity of those who can’t resist meddling in other peoples’ lives. When times are good, the economy can drag a fair amount of liberalism along behind it. But when times are hard, liberalism is a luxury we can’t afford.

(H/T MBG)

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Read the whole thing.

Who's Afraid of Private Industry?

Over at Power Line, John Hinderaker asks "Who's Afraid of Private Industry?" and makes some good points about who  we should really be afraid of:

Many liberals think that the primary purpose of government is to protect them from private industry. I have never understood that. History suggests that it is governments that should be viewed warily, not private enterprise. When has the electric company ever hauled people out of their beds, lined them up against a wall and shot them? When has an automobile manufacturer ever asserted the right to appropriate big chunks of anyone’s income, whether they like it or not? Companies just compete for my business. They supply me with things I enjoy and need, and, with rare exceptions, I like them.

The government, on the other hand, takes close to half of my income by force, drives up the cost of everything I buy with indirect taxes and needless regulations, complicates what should be easy transactions, and will surely do worse the moment we all stop paying attention. So I count on private companies to help protect me against government.

 

He's exactly right. There's more. Read the whole thing.

Disturbing Thoughts on the Possible Consequences of a US Debt Downgrade

Glenn Reynolds excerpted and linked to a post by Kevin D. Williamson over at National Review Online talking about the repercussions of a rating agency downgrade of US Treasury debt. It isn't a pretty picture but another Instapundit reader has some even more disturbing thoughts to share in an update to Glenn's orignal post. Here is part of it:

Here’s the position I think we may be in. We’ve been negotiating with the President and The Democrats in Congress on the assumption that they’re sane. It’s okay to play hardball with these guys because eventually, whether they like it or not, reality insists upon itself and they have to cave. It’s a painful process so you expect some tantrum throwing and caterwauling, but eventually they HAVE to accept reality. Except if they’re not sane. If they want five apples and there’s only two plus two but they CAN’T ACCEPT that two plus two equals four. Orwell wasn’t just writing a parable about the eventual end point of IngSoc. He was describing what human psychology can drive Ministers to inflict upon the populace for the sake of “justice”. I’m worried they’ll pull the trigger on default as just one more “political” step in the march towards freedom from want or whatever other principle they’re operating under. They’re playing this game as if they could win, as if taxes in a downturn are a good idea with benign consequences. As if debt equivalent to GDP is survivable for the world’s anchor economy/currency, let alone sustainable.

And so maybe, just maybe, Republican strategy (what little there is of it) has badly misread the opposition. Obama tried to add 400 billion in taxes to a deal he had already agreed with Boehner at the last minute. Boehner walks out cause Obama is negotiating in bad faith and has been all along, but what if Obama is actually incapable of good faith negotiation? I think right now that it’s actually possible we won’t see a deal at all. Because the Republicans are looking at the math and at reality and saying “Okay, Democrat demands can’t be serious because they can’t possibly work” and Democrats are looking at politics and how it works and saying “We don’t have to give in cause that’s not how you win these things. You pin it on the other guy politically and then reap the political dividends.”

Read the whole thing.

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What Do You Get When Capital Is Absent? One Word: Haiti

Jeffrey Tucker at the Ludwig von Mises Institute examines why commerce and trade alone are not sufficient by themselves to create wealth using Haiti as an example. Both are necessary conditions and both occur there, so why isn't Haiti prosperous? It is the lack of capital which he defines as an institution. Capital is goods, not goods to be consumed but to be used in the production of other goods for consumption. It is a near certainty in Haiti that any capital anyone begins to accumulate will be systematically looted by the government. It's a very insightful article and you should definitely read the whole thing but here is the conclusion: 

Now, to be sure, there are plenty of Americans who are firmly convinced that we would all be better off if we grew our own food, bought only locally, kept firms small, eschewed modern conveniences like home appliances, went back to using only natural products, expropriated wealthy savers, harassed the capitalistic class until it felt itself unwelcome and vanished. This paradise has a name, and it is Haiti.

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Advice on How to Handle Friendships With Liberals

Belladonna Rogers has an advice column over at Pajamas Media on how to deal with liberals entitled "The Unbearable Smugness of Liberals: A Guide for the Perplexed." She has some great advice for a conservative reader living in the deep, deep blue territory of San Francisco. It's all good but this advice for conservative women stands out, and I'd say it applies almost equally well to men:

(8) Many conservative women, in particular, encounter liberal men in social settings who become uncontrollably loud and abusive when a conservative woman fails to nod pleasantly and express respectful agreement with his political views. When this happens, remain as cool as you can. Hold your ground. Let the liberal become apoplectic while you calmly say, “I disagree with your characterization” or “I don’t share your contempt,” “I don’t accept your premises,” or “I see things differently.”

You be the rational one, while the liberal is driven around the bend not only by your views and your knowledgeable statement of facts, but also by your composure and your refusal to be bullied.

Don’t be surprised or stunned into silence or submission when this happens. And it will happen. Expect it. Trust me.

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Read the whole thing.

The Failure of Al Gore - Part Three

Walter Russell Mead has a third essay up about the failure of Al Gore and the Climate Change movement, "Singing the Climate Blues." Mead attributes Gore's failure mainly to his worldview, which is stuck somewhere in the past and his inability, like many of his ilk, to see the world as it is and adapt.  A sample:

The trouble and even the tragedy of Al Gore is that he comes at the tail end of this tradition; he is a living example of what you get when a worldview outlives its time. He presses the old buttons and turns the old cranks, but the machine isn’t running any more. The priests dance around the altar, the priestess chews the sacred herbs, but the god no longer speaks. Like President Obama watching a universal healthcare program that he thought would secure his place in history turn into an electoral albatross and a policy meltdown, Al Gore thought that in the climate issue he had picked a winning horse. Judging from his Rolling Stone essay he has no idea why the climate movement failed, and no clue at all about how he could re-think the issue.

Read the whole thing, of course. Links to parts one and two are here.

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Walking Into Mordor With Bill Whittle

Bill Whittle's latest Firewall video is up.......



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The Global Warming Counterargument...

....from Ray spencer and Bill Whittle.



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Andrew Klavan Has a Question for the Ages

Why do black people vote for Democrats?



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The Scourge of the ATM Machine

Brought to you by Mary Katharine Ham.....



(via Instapundit)

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