Asymptosis: Always Approaching

Month: March 2008

  • Why is the militia clause there at all?

    Eugene Volokh continues the legal obfuscation for gun rights. The question that I've never found an answer to: If the Second Amendment's right to bear arms has nothing to do with a well-regulated militia, why is the militia clause there at all? They could have simply written, "The right of the people to keep and…

  • Sullivan’s Surprised??

    Link: The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan. But I have come to believe that large swathes of today’s conservative movement truly are hateful. He calls it a "revelation" for him. He’s surprised. I’m stunned. Assignment: compare and contrast: Rush Limbaugh. Sean Hannity. Anne Coulter. Jon Stewart. Stephen Colbert. Al Franken.   Related posts: Extreme…

  • Andrew Sullivan on Obama

    Here. This is a candidate who does not merely speak as a Christian. He acts like a Christian. Related posts: Best Line of the Week Why nominating Clinton would be a Very Bad Thing Wall Street Journal Endorses Obama Hillary: It’s Over. Obama: It’s McCain, Stupid. Ignore Hillary. Will the Right Kill the Republicans? Ask…

  • Pelosi: “It’s Over.”

    Well, she didn’t quite say it. But what she said said it. I’ve been banging my spoon on the highchair about this for weeks, and I’m happy to say that Nancy Pelosi finally came out and agreed with me. "If the votes of the superdelegates overturn what’s happened in the elections, it would be harmful…

  • Hillary: It’s Over. Obama: It’s McCain, Stupid. Ignore Hillary.

    I actually mean no disrespect to my preferred candidate, or to Hillary, neither of whom who is anything like stupid. Just misquoting Carville. 1. As Mark Schmitt points out,  there’s no way Hillary will get a lead in the popular vote. (Andrew Sullivan: “The logic behind this seems inescapable to me.”) 2. As I pointed…

  • The Real Delegate Count: Ignoring the Super(fluous) Delegates

    It may seem amazing with all the analysis out there, but I had to assemble these basic facts on non-super delegates myself. Assumptions/sources: Pledged delegates will decide it. Superdelegates won’t override because it would cause a nuclear meltdown. (Nightmare scenario: Clinton wins some even-vaguely-construable semblance of the popular vote, somehow assembled from some combination of…

  • McCain’s Economic Advisor: More Taxes?

    A CNN Money article on the candidates’ advisors quotes McCain’s economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin saying (as I read it) that we’re really going to have to raise taxes: The country’s "current fiscal policy is unsustainable, as even draconian restraint in the annual spending on defense and nondefense programs are insufficient to guarantee that the current…

  • Does Inequality Result in Prosperity?

    Lane Kenworthy lays out yet again the stunning rise in inequality in America since 1950, and especially during the period since the early eighties when supply-side economic thinking took effect. Meanwhile Greg Mankiw is presenting more don’t-worry-be-happy data. Supply-siders will tell you that we need to embrace or least tolerate this inequality, because it’s necessary…

  • Hillary: The “one-woman solution to the Republican’s problems”

    The Economist says it plain and simple, yet again, in their article on McCain: If Democrats were to deprive Mr McCain of the chance of running against Hillary Clinton, that would be the cruellest blow. Mrs Clinton would be a one-woman solution to the Republicans’ problems, a guarantee that money will flow into the party’s…

  • WSJ: Obama, like Reagan, “changes the trajectory”

    Barack Obama caught all sorts of grief from small-minded lefties when he said that Reagan “changed the trajectory” of America, and that Clinton didn’t. That was actually a serious understatement. When Clinton announced in his 1994 State of the Union that "the era of big government is over" (and then repeated it later in the…

  • How can you tell if a politician is lying?

    Megan McArdle: Answer:  his lips are moving. And what’s the difference between a politician and a policy advisor? The policy advisor knows when he’s lying. Related posts: Paying More Taxes (again…) Nature: Good? The Reality-Based Community: Why I want to pay higher taxes The Long Decline in Equities Weimar, Zimbabwe, Here We Come

  • Lane Kenworthy’s Big Idea

    Attributing the robust state of modern economies to the “free” market is like saying that Arabian stallions, champion Rottweilers, and freshly-picked sweet corn are the result of mutation. Would you and your family rather live with a wolf, or Good Dog Carl? That’s the thought I come away with after reading Lane Kenworthy‘s chapter on…