Wednesday, November 26 (Updated)

• Whenever I hear the word "art" I rack a shell into my shotgun:

  Liberal culture... hasn't produced any high art because it doesn't want to, doesn't know how to, and doesn't believe in it. What started out as an individual revolt against exhausted traditions... became enshrined as a Permanent Revolution against the crusty old bothersome past, the same big hunk of history that summed up the innumerable failures of the West, at least as the grave penseurs defined them. If we are the enlightened ones, then it stands to reason that the culture of the Dark Ages must reflect the sexism, imperialism, fascism, classism, and other myriad isms that stained the globe. But they'll still go see a traveling exhibit of old Masters, and they'll still pile in the halls to hear Beethoven, because those are still the gold standards for Taste, and Taste has long been their favorite, and most self-flattering, virtue." - LILEKS, (James) @ screedblog "I know what I like, too"

• The Volokh Conspiracy on Hillary Clinton and the Emoluments Clause: "The plain language of the Emoluments Clause would thus appear to bar her appointment ... if the Constitution is taken seriously (which it more than occasionally isn't on these matters, of course)."

• Cobb: It all looks good on paper.

  We are in the wedding planning stage of American presidential politics. The race to the engagement is over and the date for the big day the inauguration is set. Everybody is looking forward to a gymnastic honeymoon. Well, mostly everybody. Why? Because of all of the people who have accepted invitations. On Volker, on Summers, on Geithner, on Blitzen. It looks like all are ready to dash away and circumnavigate the globe at supraluminal speeds bringing economic gifts back to all of us in Whoville before it turns to Hooverville.

• How The Shield ends. (Spoiler Alert): 'Shield' creator explains Vic Mackey’s fate --The Live Feed

• Welcome to your dirty mind: "Then Maggie promptly hopped on Sunny's back and humped her with vim and vigor. Sunny tried to roll her off while flinging her head backwards and their teeth crashed together so hard that they both yelped. They didn't look at each other for the rest of the night. And still there was no pork" -Rachel Lucas, "Then bad things happened."

• Ted Koppel Opts Out of Contract with Discovery; Meet the Press Speculation Begins | The New York Observer

• England's new plan for "happiness:"

  If you walk to work and at work, eat soy and local eggs, live in a burrow with a roomie, use no electricity and do not ever consume alcohol or tobacco or elective pharmaceuticals, and you are only likely to fly in an airplane once a year and holiday by mass transit, then you can expect to find contentment.

• Andy notes: "Groups and organizations with the word "Freedom" in their titles are not likely to be interested in yours."

• "The simple solution to the economic problem

  is what General Lucius Clay and Konrad Adenaur brought off in the occupation (of a country devastated by war). They announced a suspension of all regulations and restrictions. If you wanted to hire someone and that someone wanted to work, go for it. (I oversimplify, of course.) The result was the German Economic Miracle. Of course that won't be tried. If you give people freedom, some will offer pitifully small wages and some will accept them, the media will find them (some of those cases may well be set up by both parties just so the media can find them) and the sob stories will flow." -- Jerry Pournelle

• Missile defense faw down, we go boom: Hoover Institution - Policy Review - The Need for Missile Defense "Ten years ago, there were only six nuclear-weapons states. Today there are nine members of the once-exclusive nuclear-weapons club, with Iran perhaps knocking at the door. Twenty-five years ago, nine countries had ballistic missiles. Today there are 28 countries with ballistic missile arsenals of varying capability."

• BrothersJudd Blog: WE ARE ALL DESIGNISTS NOW: "As with Richard Dawkins and his "selfish genes," they've abandoned the argument that there is no design in favor of a quarrel over who or what does the designing."

• Oz Conservative: The failure of liberal modernity: four proofs

  4. Emigration If liberal modernity really was such a success story, then why are so many native citizens emigrating from the most advanced liberal countries. For instance, in 2006 over 130,000 people left Holland; in 2007, 207,000 left Britain.

• 
  Obama Urges Congress to “Spend like there’s no tomorrow, because if you don’t, THERE MAY NOT BE A TOMORROW.” In response to the very utterance of the world’s favorite bureaucrat, stock prices surged in yet another record-setting rally—an undeniably positive sign that experts say signals an end to the economic crisis for the seventeenth time in the past six months.

• How expensive was that again?

  The bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined: Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion • Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion • Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion • S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion • Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion • The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est) • Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion • Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion • NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion. TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

  That is $686 billion less than the cost of the credit crisis thus far. -- Big Bailouts, Bigger Bucks | The Big Picture

• To reduce unemployment encourage non-citizens to go home: Steve Sailer: Will Jobs In Obama’s Infrastructure Boondoggle Be Reserved For Americans—As In FDR’s WPA "What you likely won’t hear from Obama, however, is that if you pay an American to fill potholes, he’ll spend the money in America, where other Americans will then spend it some more. If you pay a Mexican, however, he’ll send a lot of the money back to Mexico."

• The word is: Africa.

  "Was your first thought “the biggest repository of untapped potential in the world”? No? Did it have anything to do with untapped potential I’m afraid potential was not the first concept that fired my synapses. It was somewhere down the list, after pirates, cholera, Barack Obama’s bigamist father, genocide, and civilizational decay." -- Kwame Einstein by Evan McLaren

Posted by Vanderleun at November 25, 2008 7:09 PM