Change is good!

Except when it isn’t, y’know...

EVE:  Say, Adam, have you ever thought about making a few changes?

ADAM:  Changes?  What do you mean?

EVE: You know, change.  Making things different; better.

ADAM: What could be better?  We have plenty to eat and drink, a fair climate all the year round, beautiful things that fill the eye at every turn.  Kind of like Palm Beach without the humidity and the Kennedys.

RTWT.

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Cuban memories

From former Australian Labor minister Barry Cohen:

Via: Pickles’s comment at Blair’s Place.

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Satellite shoot-down

...Missile shield opponents have had a litany of defeatist talking points about the program since its inception as the Strategic Defense Initiative under Reagan:

1. Missile defense technology is unproven. It can never work. We suck.
2. OK, OK, even if you get it to "work" the "tests" are highly scripted. We always know the what, when, where, and how of every attempted shot. Scientific method? Shut up, scripter.
3. Oh and by the way, until you can prove it "works," we're not going to fully fund it. Figure that one out, rocket scientist.
4. So you somehow got it "working" with no "money" ---- big deal, doesn't matter. The threat is minimal, therefore the need to mitigate it isn't worth those billions. You're building a 21st century Maginot Line.

Each point has been thoroughly trashed with this emergency defensive operation. Geopolitical bonus points for proving our defensive capabilities to North Korea, Iran and others. Even more bonus points for giving China the finger when it comes to our new, ancillary anti-satellite prowess.

Read the whole thing.

And in the comments, this:

...We solved all these problems back in the 1960s and 1970s; and then deployed a functioning ABM system called SAFEGUARD.

Which was then killed after ONE day of operation by Ted Kennedy and Congressional Democrats who defunded it.

Thanks a bunch, fatso.

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Bring out your hair shirts

Will Wilkinson writes about why deciding the “things that we don’t need” is best left to individual choice...

...Most critics of consumption don't take it as far as Diogenes.^[1]  But if you're going to take it anywhere, you've got to draw a line and say why pants and bowls go on one side of it, and iPhones and a 20-ounce soy milk mochaccino go on another.

But why suppose there's one line?  Different people have different aspirations and plans. They have different frames of reference for adequacy and excess.  What each of us needs depends on what we are trying to make of our lives.

Of course, moralizers of all stripes, from officious environmentalists to religious fundamentalists, have strong ideas about what we really need.  But the fact that you think you know what's best for me doesn't mean I don't really need my nose hair trimmer or my stuffed armadillo. I have my reasons.

...and the “moralizers of all stripes” reply:

...At the macro level too many Americans live in poverty and extreme insecurity.  They suffer from inadequate “materialism” by greedy businesses, indifferent citizens, and plutocratic politicians.  At the micro level too many families are being hurt by fraud and misleading consumerism, inadequate financial literacy, and a false belief that “more” is always better. - Eric

Ah yes, all those poor,^[2] beaten-down, illiterate, falsely-believing Americans.. just waiting for the enlightened to rescue them!  (Hey, Mr. Enlightened, how much of your after-tax income do you spend to directly assist the poor?^[3] If it’s not 20%, shame on you.  If it’s less than 10%, then STFU.)

The more stuff we consume, the less money there is to provide basic food, shelter and medicine to people who cannot provide for themselves. - Michael Ostrom

The old zero-sum fallacy makes its appearance, and it's only the third comment.

...Modern agriculture has contained some amazing scientific successes, but monocultures have taxed the environment in unprecedented ways, led to blander-tasting food, and (if you care) led us to treat our farm animals in pretty harsh ways...

- The suburbs are boring and not very sustainable as they help foster global warming. Everyone is realizing this, at least the first part.

- Scientific food products like Twinkies and Cheez Whiz, delicious though they often are, are screwing with our notion of food in ways we haven’t logically come to terms with. Is it unsustainable? I don’t know. - mk

So it's all about aesthetics?  The Horror of the Unenlightened, sitting in their boring suburbs, watching television while snarfing down Twinkies and Cheez Whiz!  (Except when they’re mistreating farm animals or shopping at Wal-Mart.)  Ick!

[To other commenters] What did the “common good” ever do to you? Why so unhappy? - Michael Ostrom, again

The problem, Michael, is whenever somebody brings up the “common good” it invariably turns out to be all about them getting their jollies by telling me how to live my life,  frequently with the force of the state behind them.

It might be marginally less-irritating if these folks would just admit that they really don’t like other people very much and that while they would be much happier if the (aesthetically-unpleasing) part of mankind simply disappeared, in the meantime they’ll settle for exhibiting their superiority by making rules for everyone else.  But that would require them to realize that, when it comes to their loudly-espoused beliefs having real effect on their personal lives, they’re a bunch of posers.  Not gonna hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

But I will head out to lunch... and buy a triple cheeseburger.

-----
^[1] “...who extolled the unencumbered life of the lowly dog...  One day, Diogenes smashed his only possession, a wooden bowl, after seeing a peasant boy drink from his cupped hands.” (Wilkinson, again)
^[2] Relatively speaking, of course.  In the same thread, another commenter evokes the “impoverished yet happy people like those in Magdalena, Guatemala.”  (And in the next paragraph he quotes Anton Chekhov.)
^[3] Meaning direct contributions to food banks, shelters, The Salvation Army, and the like.  Not the $500 you spent to attend the last fund-raiser.  And donations to NGOs that spend most of their resources on whining to the media and government about how bad poverty is don't count, either.

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Clipfile: February 21, 2008

“Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy.” - John Derbyshire

more...

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Anybody know where Al is?

A raging snow storm that blanketed most of Greece over the weekend also continued into the early morning hours on Monday, plunging the country into sub-zero temperatures. Public transport buses were at a standstill on Monday in the wider Athens area, while ships remained in ports, public services remained closed, and schools and courthouses in the more severely-stricken prefectures were also closed. - ANA/MPA

Reference: Gore Effect

Via: IP

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Are we sure that his name's not Dr. EVIL?

Barack Obama’s weirdly Messianic campaign could conceivably turn out to be useful in the War on Terror.  Why not start a rumor that he’s the Twelfth Imam?  That should freak out Ahmadinejad and his millennarian terrorist buddies.  How better to be a ‘Hidden’ Imam than to arrange to be born in Hawaii, insist that you are not a Muslim, and run for presidency of the Great Satan?  An imam can’t get much more hidden than that. - “Psychological Warfare”

I like the way this guy thinks.

LATER:  C.G. Hill points out that the rumors are already being denied.

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This is *not* the do-over I'd had in mind

Eleanor Clift predicts “Al Gore on the second ballot.”


Previously.

Via: IP

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Scary Sunday reading

He’s a gold bug, who’s selling hyperinflation, but he makes an important point:

In effect, what this caller was asking was how and when did they change the way they measure the rate of inflation?  On a first hand basis he was experiencing inflation in his personal life with rising food and energy costs.  There was a major disconnect between what he experienced in real life on a day-to-day basis and what he was told in published inflation reports.  The host of the show and the financial reporter from the Times had no answers. - Financial Sense “Stormwatch,” June 24, 2005

That was written 2½ years ago (and read the whole thing).  Now read this, from “MaxedOutMama,” from October:

It is true that weak sales for items like clothing, shoes and electronics will cause price cutting for those items in stores, and push the net inflation for consumers who can afford those items down.  But everyone must eat and everyone consumes energy in one form or another, and the ability for the supply chain to absorb such costs without passing them along to the consumer is diminishing rapidly.  These costs are going to continue eroding consumer spending power.  As you move down the income echelon, the pain gets extreme.

It's going to be a long, cold winter for tens of millions of households, and instead of blathering on about giveaways attractive to the upper middle class, politicians should be discussing food stamps and energy assistance programs.

The winter hasn't been all that cold around here (yet!), but I’m still anticipating a several-hundred-dollar increase in heating costs.  So don’t tell me my personal inflation is any 3.6%.

Via: Daily Pundit.

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The greater crime

Melanie Phillips asks:

I wonder which is the greater of my crimes — to be ‘conservative’ or to be Jewish?

Answer:  Call yourself “neoconservative.”  That’ll make it a 2-for-one.


(sort of) RELATED:  MP linked Iowahawk's “Archbishop of Canterbury Tale.”  British reaction in the comments.

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