| Courtesy of newyearevewallpapers.com |
Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess.
They always run out of other people's money.
Margaret Thatcher
Tweet of the Day
"If science could cross breed a jellyfish with a parrot, it could create academic administrators." - Thomas Sowell http://t.co/NASIWLSO0s
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) January 1, 2015
Image of the Day
Kanye West (featuring Paul McCartney on keyboards), "Only One"
This is the first time I've featured a West tune in the blog. It's a song from his late, proud mother's perspective; I believe 'Nori' in the ending chorus is a reference to West's infant daughter. Everyone deserves an angel mother in his life. Of course, Paul himself referenced his late mother in "Let It Be".
New Year Resolutions?
Like most people, I need to work on a more consistent diet and exercise regimen in order to lose some weight. But I have to admit my patience and professionalism have been tested by rude sniper ideological trolls and inane propaganda talking points. I have also provided tediously detailed, long-winded responses to pithy strident posts; I have found myself using phrases like "economically illiterate" repetitively. I recently embedded some practical suggestions from FEE basically suggesting that a more positive tone in dealing with adversarial trolls is more conducive to a successful outcome. I have already mentioned that I found myself spending too much time in Facebook group threads; I've already started dropping some groups. There's part of me which wants to hit back at trolls twice as hard to make them think twice before trolling a libertarian group again; moreover, I seriously doubt that these trolls are looking for an honest debate on the issues. I included a sample exchange of my modified approach in a Cato Institute thread, where I found my comment derisively attacked by a couple of neocon trolls.
A Couple of Notes From Stockman's Contra Corner
I haven't made changes to my blogroll in a while, but probably the one newer blog I've paid attention to over the past year is Stockman's. There are a couple of guest posts which have grabbed my attention:
- "The Interview", North Korea and/or Sony hackers? I have, of course, dealt with computer security issues, particularly in the professional ranks; I'm not necessarily a specialist, but some work assignments required security certification, and almost any assignment over the past 10 years required completion of security training courses. I don't like to engage in speculation in the blog, but the idea that North Korea was behind the sophisticated attack always seemed somewhat far-fetched; it's not that I couldn't see NK being upset over the plot of killing off Dear Leader, but it always seemed a little far-fetched that a fairly isolationist regime would have the nature and extent of insider contacts and the knowledge of Sony's internal environment to have pulled this off. I don't rule anything out, including NK outsourcing the job to a motivated hacker group, but the nature and extent of some of the revelations--embarrassing emails about actors, etc., really didn't serve a NK purpose; one can't rule it out, e.g., NK could have been sending a message to other companies over projects involving Dear Leader. But by Ockham's razor, we can more readily see someone with a fairly intricate understanding of Sony's architecture and disgruntled (say, by his or her recent termination) wanting to get his pound of flesh in revenge. What's embarrassing is the FBI's conclusion that this was a NK operation. This piece notes that Norse Security reportedly has found a link between a laid-off 10-year Sony IT female worker and known malware hackers; this lead was supposedly brought to the FBI's attention, but they seem determined to stick with their original diagnosis of NK culpability.
Global Cooling Watch: 33% Of North Sea Oil & Gas Drillers Face Bankruptcy. When the price of oil drops by a sharp 40% or more, it may seem like Christmas come early to drivers, truckers, airlines and others, but many smaller players in certain shale plays which are heavily leveraged (i.e., loans) to finance months-long or longer operations are currently losing money for each barrel they produce. I expect over the next few months you will see some buyouts and/or bankruptcies (barring an unlikely sharp reversal)--and I don't know who is holding the loans and/or how well they've been hedged, but we could see some spillover effects in the financial sector. This piece is not referring to shale plays, but offshore plays in the maturing North Sea fields are similarly high cost/risk. Sooner or later, Western oil producers will pull some capacity off the market, which should result in some price recovery, but probably too little, too late for many of the players. Now, of course, lower energy prices could help spark a recovery in a sluggish global economy and thus enable an organic increase in demand, but I think we can expect some pain across the energy sector over the coming months. This is not universally bad news; less money for energy can be spent elsewhere, saved or invested. But energy prices correlate to global growth, and the difficulty in oil finding a bottom suggests a weak global economy. It goes without saying that alternative energy as a substitute for fossil fuels is also hurt by plunging prices.
(Cato Institute). "Some Ukrainians may imagine that NATO would protect them from Vladimir Putin. But if the consequence was a full-blown war, as is likely, it would be a disaster for Ukraine."
A NATO presence on the Russian border would be destabilizing and unduly provocative; the potential costs and risks far outweigh the benefits of an expanded NATO. It is important that Europeans take the lead in international stability on the continent and not pay undue deference to divisive and risky Washington's policy preferences. we need to stop the irresponsible confrontational, adversarial policies, which will not result in Russian capitulation but dangerously escalate tensions. Ukrainian leaders must deal with the reality of Russia at its borders and must realize that there is little stomach in the West to respond militarily in response to the consequences of dysfunctional Ukrainian policy. We need to tone down the rhetoric and cease and desist economic aggression.
"A NATO presence on the Russian border would be destabilizing and unduly provocative" Silly, uninformed comment. Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia are all NATO countries, and all already border Russia. Plus, we now cannot ally with any countries because other bullying countries might not like it? Spineless.
Talk about uninformed opinion; different context and circumstances. We know there is a high Russian minority living in Ukraine. It's not a question of "spine", but reality. NATO is in no position to defend Ukraine in the event of war.
(Reason). Deference to elected majorities was a Progressive ideal long before modern conservatives picked up the baton.
"Sides"? What "sides"?
Tyranny of the majority vs. individual liberty. As the article points out, the individual right to contract was enforced under the 14th amendment, e.g., the right of a baker to work beyond a legislated cap of hours. Just as Bork didn't find a right to be left alone on purchasing birth control, earlier liberal justices hadn't found a right to contract under the Bill of Rights. In other words, instead of government being seen as an authority with enumerated powers, the Bill of Rights became read as a set of enumerated exceptions to government hegemony. So conservative justices, who should have backed an expansive view of individual and state rights, instead adopted the same reasoning to deny asserted individual rights, e.g., privacy, which they saw as judicial activism. The article also finds that certain liberal judges were furious that hard-fought majority deference had been abandoned in, e.g., the Brown decision, overruling the Kansas public policy.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Michael Ramirez via Townhall |
Glen Campbell, "I Knew Jesus (Before He Was a Star)"
