Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The World’s Greatest Philanthropist

29 Comments

…was Steve Jobs.

The part of the piece that most struck me was this:

A 2006 Wired article on Jobs, “Great Wealth Does Not Make a Great Man,” reported that even though his wealth was estimated at $3.3 billion, Jobs’s name did not appear on Giving USA’s list of gifts of $5 million or more for the previous four years, nor on another that list showing gifts of $1 million or more. (The article acknowledged that he could have been giving anonymously.)

The article took a cheap shot: “Jobs can’t even get behind causes that would seem to carry deep personal meaning…he is a cancer survivor. But unlike [Lance] Armstrong, Jobs has so far done little publicly to raise money or awareness for the disease.” It went on, “…he’s nothing more than a greedy capitalist who’s amassed an obscene fortune. It’s shameful…[Bill] Gates is much more deserving of Jobs’ rock star exaltation. In the same way, I admire Bono over Mick Jagger, and John Lennon over Elvis, because they spoke up about things bigger than their own celebrity.” Yes, but in part their own celebrity was connected to the things they spoke up about.

Emphasis mine.

Really? Is there an adult on the planet, or at least in this country, who is unaware of cancer? Really? Does their awareness really need to be raised? Will the elevation of their “awareness” somehow magically result in less cancer?

This kind of “journalism” isn’t just stupid, it is insipid.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Think Things Can’t Get Worse?

14 Comments

Think again. As long as the people who put these economically ruinous policies in place remain in power, they’re likely to.

[Update a couple minutes later]

How government spending impoverished us all. I think that the GDP is indeed a very flawed way of assessing the state of health of the economy. If we had a better measure, the notion that WW II ended the Great Depression wouldn’t make much sense at all. It simply set the stage for the recovery in the late forties, once we returned to sane economic policies after fifteen years.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

The Iranian Assassination Attempt

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Just demonstrates once again that our fearless leaders are clueless about Islam:

The Iranian government was making a statement, one it continues to make, and one which the Obama administration is incapable of hearing: the Iranian government does not perceive international law or any Western-based institutional system as legitimate. This is the same statement that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the underwear bomber, made when he pleaded guilty in a Detroit court of attempting to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight. Abdulmutallab claimed that he was not guilty under Islamic law, and was only pleading guilty because he was in an American courtroom governed by American law.

This was the mindset of Yasser Arafat, when in the wake of having signed the Oslo accords, he hastened to tell Arab audiences — in Arabic — that he had in actuality signed the Peace of Mecca, the peace Mohammed signed with the Koresh tribe.

Weeks ago, the Egyptian government withheld protection of the Israeli embassy from a bloodthirsty mob until President Obama himself directly intervened with the Egyptians. Prior to that moment, the Egyptian government was perfectly content to ignore its legal obligation to protect a foreign embassy, even when it meant the embassy personnel would be slaughtered.

The authentic voice of the Arab Spring is not seen in the MSM hype or the Obama administration depiction of democracy breaking out in Tahrir Square, but in the rape of journalist Lara Logan. The charade of the Arab Spring is revealed in the brain-splattered head of a Coptic Christian, who was one of dozens of Christians purposely crushed by military vehicles as they repeatedly sped through the crowd mauling demonstrators.

The Christians are protesting the burning of churches, a conflagration unleashed with the rise of Egypt’s Arab Spring and the ascension of the Muslim Brotherhood. The face of the Arab Spring, so lauded by this administration and the MSM, is revealed in pictures of rank and file soldiers joining with the Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood, who were brutally attacking the Christian demonstrators that the soldiers were supposed to protect.

In another indulgence of fatuous behavior, President Obama asked both sides to exercise restraint.

As I said, it’s like the idiot principal who suspends both the bully and the bullied for “fighting.”

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

October 14th

3 Comments

A day that should live in infamy:

Hank Paulson’s bloodless banking coup demonstrated that a nearly all-powerful government which believes it is untouchable can and will do anything once it gins up enough of a crisis atmosphere. Paulson’s putsch gave cover to the long list of heavy-handed actions which have followed during the Obama administration, from arbitrarily changing the pecking order in bankruptcy, to preventing nonunion manufacturing plants from opening, to defying direct court orders, to Dodd-Frank’s attempt to permanently keep the government in banks’ boardrooms — and much, much more.

This, too, is what fascism looks like.

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