You know it’s getting bad when people like Peter Beinart notice it.
I’ve lost all fear of the accusation, myself. I think it’s losing its political juice, because it’s hard to take it seriously any more, coming from these racist hypocrites.
The Federal Code
The Founders would never have imagined such an expansion of federal police powers and crimes. Most of it is probably unconstitutional, under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. Time to resurrect them.
NASA’s Latest Ambitious Plans
To send a man where many men (and women) have gone before:
The complex and dangerous three-day mission, dubbed “Chariot I,” is expected to pass through six states and include two brief transfers in Atlanta and Louisville in both directions, at a reported total cost of $360 dollars plus taxes and fees.
“For almost as long as our nation has existed, man has gazed upon a map of the eastern United States and dreamed of traveling to Cleveland, the largest metropolitan area in Ohio,” NASA administrator Charles F. Bolden, Jr. said at a press conference announcing the agency’s first major initiative since the discontinuation of the space shuttle program. “Until now, the immense physical and psychological risks involved in any manned mission had put that dream sadly out of reach.”
They’d never be able to do it that cheaply, unless they use Greyhound. As Clark Lindsey notes:
Of course, this mission cannot be carried out with a commercial bus but only with NASA’s $20B SBS (Senate Bus System). NASA has many studies to confirm this.
Though somehow, we never actually see their results.
Self-Driving Cars
How soon will they come, and what are the liability issues?
These are sorts of things that will be a drag on flying cars as well.
The End Is Near
…and it’s going to be awesome:
…government-dominated systems are inherently defective. Not because the people who run them aren’t smart and well-intentioned — though they are by no means universally smart and well-intentioned — but because it is the nature of political institutions to be insulated from the information-feedback that characterizes marketplace activity.
Simply put, when Coca-Cola introduces New Coke or McDonald’s introduces the McGratin Croquette (shrimp, mashed potatoes and deep-fried macaroni) and hordes of people don’t show up to buy them, those products go away, and if a company makes enough such unwanted products, it goes away, too. But if you live in The Bronx and your local elementary school is terrible, it does not go bankrupt, and you probably don’t have even 20 other options, though there are 900 kinds of shampoo on the shelves. There are many good ways to invest 12% of your income for retirement, but that’s harder to do when you first have to put 12% into a bad investment, Social Security.
The decline or dismantling of these programs will prevent us from pouring a great deal of good money into bad investments. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and related entitlements make up the largest part of federal spending; combine those with national defense and interest on the debt, and you are talking about nearly the entire federal budget — about 81%, with the rest of it comprising that piddling non-defense discretionary spending that President Obama goes on about.
But where we’re not going to be putting our money is not nearly as important as where we are going to be putting it: into productive enterprises, into the creation of actual goods and services in the real economy.
Here’s the new book
Duck And Cover
It’s not just a relic of the Cold War. Every teacher and schoolkid should be taught this. For that matter, every workplace as well.
Benghazi
Special Forces were told not to go there.:
According to excerpts released Monday, Hicks told investigators that SOCAFRICA commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were on their way to board a C-130 from Tripoli for Benghazi prior to an attack on a second U.S. compound “when [Col. Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, ‘you can’t go now, you don’t have the authority to go now.’ And so they missed the flight … They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”
CNN is on the case, finally, too, but of course, it’s Jake Tapper. I wonder what Candy Crowley thinks?
The rest of the media is finally starting to at least attempt to catch up with Fox, though they remain far behind.
Colbert’s Sister
She’s kind of like the health care bill–you have to elect her to find out what’s in her.
Goebbel Warming
When people who accuse other people of being “deniers” burn books.
Muskets
Sorry, gun grabbers, but it’s an historically ignorant argument.
That’s probably why Piers Morgan uses is.
And amusingly, as Cooke points out, the implications of this argument is that it would justify civilians having select-fire weapons, since that’s what the military has.