A long rant from a “progressive.”
Category Archives: Political Commentary
California Rocket Taxes
If this is true, it’s good news for Kodiak. Dave Masten seems to think it’s overblown, though.
Trump’s Knowledge
George Will says he doesn’t even know what knowledge is:
As president-elect, Trump did not know the pedigree and importance of the “one China” policy. About such things he can be, if he is willing to be, tutored. It is, however, too late to rectify this defect: He lacks what T. S. Eliot called a sense “not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence.” His fathomless lack of interest in America’s path to the present and his limitless gullibility leave him susceptible to being blown about by gusts of factoids that cling like lint to a disorderly mind.
The problem is that he thinks he has “a very good brain.” This is Dunning-Krugerish.
But I’m still relieved that she lost.
Calorie Counting
It’s junk science, and these menu rules based on it are insane, and probably impossible to follow.
In related news, studies showing the dangers of replacing saturated fat with vegetable oils were apparently buried for a long time.
An Artificial Kidney
Available within two years? If so, this will save a lot of lives, and perhaps end the need for waiting for donors (which, unlike other organs, could be solved by simply letting the market work).
“The Check Didn’t Come”
A couple years ago, we had to evict a renter in Florida. She was a con artist, and it was a PITA, because she had a law degree.
Kevin Williamson has a sadder story about evictions, with broader societal connotations. It’s (as usual) a beautiful piece of writing.
The Nye Quadrant
An interesting discussion and link roundup from Judith Curry.
That Time Of Year Again
It’s Victims Of Communism Day, 2017:
This year is a particularly important time to remember the victims of Communism because of the approaching one hundredth anniversary of the October Revolution – Bolshevik takeover of Russia. The Soviet Union was not the most oppressive communist regime. It probably did not match the even more thoroughgoing totalitarianism of the Khmer Rouge and North Korea. Nor did it kill the most people – a record held by Mao Zedong the Chinese communists. But the Soviet experiment was the principal model for all the later communist states, and it is hard to imagine communists seizing control of so much of the world without it. In addition to the significant material aid that the Soviets provided to communists in other nations, the communist seizure of power in Russia also greatly boosted the ideology’s prospects elsewhere.
Meanwhile…
Hearing that there are people in black clothes and masks in downtown LA protesting against fascism.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) May 1, 2017
The White House Correspondents Dinner
We’ve been in the final throes of getting bathroom cabinets installed this weekend (and frustrated at our inability to get one of the drawer fronts to align with the others) but if you want a good report on the self-regarding event sans the president, Byron York has it for you.
I was kind of amused at the relief of some of the participants that Hollywood also declined to show up.
Hilarious “Cruelty”
Behold the leftist angst over having a barbecue in proximity to a fake hunger strike.