Month: March 2011

  • The Coming GOP Spectacle: “a freak show of stupendous proportions”

    Emphasis mine: I just want to say that I am so looking forward to the Republican primary campaign this cycle. It looks like Michele Bachmann is going to run, Palin might run, Newt Gingrich is probably going to run, Jim DeMint seems like he might run, and I suppose Ron Paul will run again too. This…

  • Gingrich: We’re becoming a secular atheist country dominated by radical Islamists

    I kid you not. “I have two grandchildren — Maggie is 11, Robert is 9,” Gingrich said at Cornerstone Church here. “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated…

  • “You Deserve It” Part 243

    John, born in 1973, decided to get married, buy a house, and start a family in 2003. James, born in 1976, decided to get married, buy a house, and start a family in 2006. In 2009, both John and James were laid off. Both were offered jobs in another state. John sold his house at…

  • Age, Wisdom, Sagacity, Common Sense, and Republicanism

    My friend Steve is, I think, claiming that wisdom and common sense (he seems to be implying that they’re the same thing) and likelihood of voting Republican all increase together with age. Which putatively explains the two graphs he posts: It’s funny that he doesn’t show the other graph from his source, showing the Dem space…

  • Clear-Eyed Sowellian “Realists” Hyperventilating. Again. Some More.

    What is surprising — what continually surprises me, even as cynical as Ive gotten — is how seriously polluters are taken in each successive episode of air pollution regulation. By now the script is numbingly predictable: industry commissions rigged studies showing that compliance will threaten power reliability and jack up costs; independent reports show otherwise;…

  • Intolerable Socialism

    Best line of the week (with a couple of elisions by moi): Any effort to reduce government spending on health care … is intolerable socialism, and any effort to increase government spending on health care … is also intolerable socialism. via Yglesias » Making Sense of the Rationing Switcheroo. Related posts: The Problem with “Socialism”…

  • If You Regulate Us, We Won’t Provide Liquidity!

    Providing Liquidity: The evolution of the SOES bandits in the 1990’s into DATEK, ISLD, NSDQ, and finally Big HFT firms who run ahead of your orders. You bid $21.04, six of them bid $21.05 and take stock up to $21.18. This automated sludge is now somehow Providing Liquidity, because it has been repeated often enough.…

  • “Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

    Unfortunately the first statement is no longer true. Dwight David Eisenhower in a letter to his brother, 1954. But to attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are…

  • Too Big to Fail? Wall Street and Main Street: How Big Are They?

    Crossposted at Angry Bear. People are forever talking about banks that are too big to fail. But you rarely hear about the larger issue: The financial industry is too big to fail. (Click for larger graphic.) Note that “Main Street” here includes government expenditures — 20% of the total. Remove those, and Wall Street money flow…