A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.
P.J. O'Rourke
Image of the Day
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| An Actual Michelle Obama School Lunch in Oklahoma |
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| Via John Mcelligott |
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| Via Being Classically Liberal |
NB: Shane Killian has several outstanding scatterplots of economic freedom on Flickr.
Best Ebola Line of the Day
(Re: Obama and Ebola SWAT Teams) "Great, the government is getting involved, now we are all going to die" Nick Rasmussen on Bastiat Institute FB Thread
Oops! SWAT Team Hits Elderly Woman's Home By Mistake...
Bush, WMD's, WikiLeaks, and the New York Times
First, let me state in advance nothing that I'm saying here is an exoneration of Bush 43's misguided foreign policy failure to open Pandora's box of sectarian rivalries competing for political control enabled by deposing Saddam Hussein. I don't think Iraq posed a serious military threat to the US, and I thought the intervention actually destablized the region in favor of Iran, not a US ally. At the same time, I don't like hearing some of the strident talking points from Ron Paul and the hypocritical antiwar left which has been MIA while Obama has been supersizing Bush's interventionist errors. As much as I think Bush's foreign policy was a conceptually muddled mess and indefensible, I don't believe in this reactionary victimization of Saddam Hussein; he was a war criminal and a nasty piece of work. Do I regret that he earned an early trip to hell? No. Was it worth sacrificing a boatland of American blood and treasure? No.
Let's be clear: did Hussein have the know-all and/or production capacity for chemical, even nuclear weapons? Yes. Did that justify an invasion? No. There are other nations on earth that stock terrible weapons. And let's recall at least initially Hussein celebrated the 9/11 attacks. We know that in the decade proceeding the first Gulf War, Iraq had an ambitious WMD program and in fact had used chemical agents against Kurdish civilians and against Iranian soldiers. Hussein's explanation for kicking out UN inspectors before destruction of known chemical/other stockpiles in the 1990's was bluffing Iran as a deterrent from a potential Iranian attack to annex southern Iraq. The idea that Hussein kicked out inspectors so it could destroy its own stockpiles in secret really never made sense, however; he had much to gain in the form of lifted economic sanctions to let the international community verify their destruction, and no doubt if and when the UN inspectors had completed their work and had left the country, there's little doubt that Hussein could have resumed his programs and replenished his stockpiles. Destroying his stockpiles in secret while getting no quid pro quo for doing so? Not a chance.
Actually, part of the mystery of what happened to said old stockpiles was one of the more interesting revelations from WikiLeaks. The recent Gray Lady expose of how the Bush Administration had come across nerve gas and other chemical agents during the invasion/occupation in Iraq doesn't really explain why up to a couple of dozen soldiers and police affected by older weapon agents wasn't revealed to counterbalance the embarrassing talk point that there were no WMD's found, which undermined a key rationale for the mission; some possible explanations were that the nature and extent of the weapons weren't significant enough to validate earlier explanations or rationalizations for the need to take military action (e.g., an active ongoing WMD program), that some of the weapons utilized western technology which would have been potentially embarrassing, and some of the reports would not have dovetailed with earlier statements of no weapons found or, say, may have revealed that American soldiers weren't being adequately protected from relevant risks in operations.
This is an important issue now because if the Americans and Iraqis did not adequately uncover and destroy lethal (although likely degraded) supplies, and they came under control of ISIS...
Facebook Corner
(Libertarianism.org). NEW TODAY: What policy should libertarians favor on immigration? http://www.libertarianism.org/columns/libertarian-argument-open-borders?utm_content=buffercec10&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
What do you expect from this type of thread than xenophobes raising the same old same old bullshit excuse of Milton Friedman that no credible free-market economist accepts: we need to eliminate the welfare state before stopping to shoot our economy in the foot with lose-lose restrictive immigration policy? The same hypocrites who wouldn't think twice about crossing the state border to feed their family somehow think they have a right to deny the same opportunity to others, have the right to tell businesses who they can or can't hire, stand in the way of family reunification. We had the highest economic growth in our country's history before economic illiterate populists started scapegoating hard-working immigrants starting in the 1920's. They worship corrupt laws and the self-serving political whores that create them.
Thing is...when we had that economic growth? We had open borders...
So how much of my money is Paco and his kids entitled to and why?
Not sure as to the first commenter's point, yes, for the large part, the economic growth was enabled by open borders and virtually unrestricted immigration (with some ugly racist exceptions). My own nineteenth century ancestors immigrated from Quebec province. The point is that our economic growth has since been artificially suppressed by artitrary restrictions on the flows of materials, labor resources, etc. The first step back to a robust economy is to stop the insanity of shooting oneself in the foot.
To the second troll: Paco and his kids pay their own way and in the process make your own dollar stretch further. Next time, you see Paco, you might buy him dinner to thank him for his part in expanding the tax base and helping to contribute to your standard of living.
Proposals
Romney Tells an Obama Joke
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Steve Breen via Townhall |
Linda Ronstadt, "The Tracks of My Tears"
