Straight talk from Richard A Epstein:
Alas, the financial rot started in the underlying home-mortgage market, with the government decision to subsidize home mortgages generally through low interest rates, and compounds the problem by offering special Fannie and Freddie guarantees at the low end of the market. . . .
Accordingly, we recognize that the specter of bank runs, illiquidity and credit freezes might justify some regulation. In dealing with the current crisis, we have to accept some role for the Federal Reserve as a lender of last resort under our current institutional arrangements. But we are equally adamant that bad regulation can wreck credit markets. And we insist that governments must mend their lending habits to reduce the odds of credit trains going off the rails yet again. We also strenuously oppose using the credit crisis as a lever for introducing all sorts of senseless gimmicks to disrupt labor and product markets.
Amen.
Let me set the record straight: I don’t think McCain or Obama is worthy of holding the office. They’re either side of a rotting apple.
I subscribe to no political party. They, too, are either side of a rotting apple.
I simply want less government in my life. No one knows what’s best for me except me.
If a candidate can look me in the eyes and promise me that, hell, I might just become a US citizen so I can vote.
The LA Times’ Jonah Goldberg rightly claims, “There is no new thing under the sun.”
Wilson, Roosevelt and now Obama—all their ideas sprung forth from the work of John Dewey, the most important liberal philosopher of the 20th century. Dewey held that “natural rights and natural liberties exist only in the kingdom of mythological social zoology,” and that “organized social control” via a “socialized economy” was the only means to create “free” individuals. Dewey proposed that statism be taught as a kind of civic religion in our schools so that Americans could be raised to see the government as the solution to all of our problems. . . .
[From a] just-unearthed 2001 interview with Obama on Chicago public radio . . . Obama offered an eloquent indictment of the Warren court for not being radical enough. While the court rightly gave blacks traditional rights, argued Obama, the “tragedy” was that “the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth.” Unfortunately, according to Obama, “it didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers and the Constitution.”
All men are created equal. And there ends our similarities. Any attempt to stretch that equality from the cradle to the grave will fail.
As mentioned here before, Formula One honchos Bernie Ecclestone (F1’s commercial rights holder) and Max Mosley (the president of the FIA) are madly trying to destroy the sport with the introduction of a standard engine for all cars.
Yesterday, two teams (finally) responded:
Two of the biggest teams in Formula One [Ferrari and Toyota] fired broadsides across the bows of the FIA yesterday, giving warning that they may quit the sport if the governing body continues to press ahead with its plan for standard engines. . . .
“The Ferrari board of directors expressed strong concerns regarding plans to standardise engines as it felt that such a move would detract from the entire raison d’être of a sport, a raison d’être based principally on competition and technological development,” the company said in a statement.
It’s high time the remainder of the F1 teams make similar statements.
Lest we forget the words of Victor Hugo:
Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education.
I love writing . . . nothing beats your story taking an unexpected turn before your eyes, a character appearing out of the blue.
I don’t understand writing fiction from an outline. Where’s the surprise, the compulsion to discover? It all sounds so, well, academic.
No, no, no:
GM spokesman Greg Martin acknowledged Monday that automakers are interested in getting help from the federal government.
“We have been in contact with a variety of federal officials for some time during this extraordinary and difficult economic period,” said Martin, who is the automaker’s Washington-based spokesman.
Martin declined to elaborate on the discussions. “We have said publicly that we believe the federal government should consider all of the tools available to it—some recently enacted—to support industries that are in distress and that are essential to the U.S. economy.”
You deserve no sympathy for predominately making shite cars.
. . . [T]he worst thing was the overwhelming sense from everything you touched that it had been built by someone who was being deliberately stupid or who was four years old. Life inside that bag of crap plastic gave me some idea of what it might be like to be a boiled sweet.