This is what the past decades have wrought. The federal student loan program has been an unmitigated disaster for almost everyone, except (so far) the university administrators.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
The Emails And The Clinton Foundation
It’s not two separate scandals, it’s one big hairy one. It makes perfect sense that if she was soliciting foreign funds while secretary of state, she’d not want to do it from a government email account. And those are likely among the ones she hasn’t turned over (among others).
Much of the Clinton criminality in the nineties was similarly intertwined.
[Update a while later]
Huma Abedin, Hillary’s unindicted email co-conspirator.
Iowa And Ethanol
To me, ethanol epitomizes the dysfunction of our national politics. It’s an awful policy, raising the price of both fuel and food, which hits the poor hardest, while damaging engines and stealing from the taxpayer. Everyone knows it but, because, by historical circumstance, Iowa is so politically prominent in presidential politics, too few are willing to say it (I’ll grant that Huckabee and Santorum may actually be economically ignorant enough to think it’s a good idea). So good for Cruz.
I wonder if there’s any possibility of a class-action suit against it, from both fuel consumers and food consumers? If not, there should be. It could fix a lot of awful welth-transfer laws.
A Bad Iran Deal
Hey, I’m old enough to remember when the administration used to say that no deal was better than that.
To be honest, though, I don’t think they ever really believed it. They’ve always been desperate for a deal, and are getting more so as the clock ticks. And the Iranians know it. I’ve never seen a worse negotiator than Barack Obama.
Global Warming
It might be real, but the Left’s “solutions” to it are a fantasy.
Our Valley Forge
Sarah Hoyt says don’t get wobbly (but she uses a few more words than that).
The Anglosphere
Are Germany and France joining it?
I don’t think this is right:
America is actually moving away from Europe politically and culturally, becoming more like Latin America in character and more concerned with east Asia. Increasingly Britain may have less in common with the United States, let alone Commonwealth countries like India, and more in common with English-speaking Germany – and even France where English proficiency is finally catching up.
If we’re “becoming more like Latin America in character,” it’s because we have people in power who seem happy for us to become a banana republic. Most of America remains more in the Anglosphere than the UK itself, which is becoming more European. It’s not just about language.
Immortality
No, Newsweek, that’s not what Silicon Valley billionaires are seeking. They’re seeking indefinite lifespan. Immortality, if achievable, could/would be a curse. People just want to live as long as they want to live.
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, read it all the way through. The last graf shows a huge failure of imagination:
Perhaps the most worrying question that arises with the prospect of having millions (and even billions) of multi-centenarians running around on Earth is whether the planet can support this kind of growth. Current projections suggest that the world’s population will rise from 7 billion today to about 9 billion in 2050—at which point it will more or less level out. And abundant concerns have already been raised about what all these billions of people will do for work, not to mention where they will get safe drinking water and the food necessary to live healthily. But those forecasts don’t consider the possibility that we’ll stop dying. If we do, the next generation of innovative health-tech entrepreneurs will face perhaps an even greater challenge: redesigning the planet to accommodate its massive population of Humans 2.0.
Planet? Where we’re going, we don’t need “planets.”
Emulsifiers
More evidence that the crap we’ve been putting in processed food (in part) to avoid fat is what’s making us fat. What a disaster.
Star Trek Heresy
Matthew Continetti does not love Spock.
Last week, I tweeted that I was going to write a post about how Obama is not Spock like, but to the degrees that he is, I agree that it’s Spock’s most annoying traits.
[Afternoon update]
The gauntlet has been thrown:
Continetti just glosses over the sacrifice at the Battle of the Mutara Nebula, I assume because he knows it demolishes his case. What about the personal loss at the betrayal of Valeris? What about the hurtful but necessary decision — directly enforced by Spock — to let Edith Keeler die? How I hated him for that! But look, who among us wouldn’t let Hitler dominate the world in exchange for a lifetime of sweet sweet loving from young Joan Collins? Anyone? No one? Just me?
Heh.