Just fantastic…thanks for uploading this, Jessica.
More. Than. Perfect.
Sobering articles like this make me wonder if I made a mistake in pulling the lever for Barack Obama. In the grand scheme of things, I think I made the right decision, but still…I’m sharing some quotes that Reason.com’s Nick Gillespie acquired from several economists regarding the president’s stimulus plan:
“The creation of new bureaucratic and regulatory structures, restrictions on creation of liquidity. The genius of the American system, for all its flaws, has been that we can mobilize lots of liquidity quickly. Silicon Valley exists because you could sit down, make a pitch, and get $10 million that afternoon. If we start governing finance like we govern universities, or city councils, we are going to lose that. Having committees, and a bunch of forms to sign off on, and stamps…Hernando de Soto wrote about systems like this. They strangle business, investment, and growth.”
“First, like all fiscal stimulus packages in the past, the current one will not impact the economy at the right time for the intended stimulus effect, due to the inevitable problems of long lags. Much of the intended expansionary fiscal effects won’t happen until next year and even 2011, and it’s likely the economy will have recovered sufficiently by then so that the fiscal stimulus will be unnecessary and might actually be destabilizing. Second, the fiscal stimulus has to be paid for eventually in the form of higher taxes, which will have a negative economic effect in the future, i.e., the ‘fiscal child abuse’ effect. That is, any positive short-term effects of this stimulus package will be more than offset by future negative effects in the form of reduced future economic growth, decreased investments, and lower incomes.”
“At less than full employment the Keynesian stuff works. So the minority of the quickie expenditures will ‘put people back to work’—until we return to almost-full employment, which will happen pretty quickly in the recovery. At that point the stimulus will merely crowd out private investment. In the short run people might get more cheerful too, always a good thing. But in two years the recession will be over. And the myth will grow up—rather similar to the ones about FDR and war expenditure—that Obama did it. Essentially, Obama will get credit for the self-adjusting character of the economy. I reckon we should start preparing that other face of Mount Rushmore.”
“Borrowing money to raise government spending will work, I suppose. But the cost to future generations is enormous. I am amazed by the hypocrisy of both sides. John McCain calls the stimulus ‘intergenerational theft.’ Well, he’s right, but he came late to this wisdom. The Republicans have been just pouring out new deficit spending since 2002. And then Obama says he doesn’t want to do tired old ideas and failed economics. But he is doing exactly what the Republicans did: huge deficit-financed spending on largely useless or irrelevant programs designed to reward political friends. The only thing that’s different is the identity of the ‘friends.’ Some of the spending may increase measured GDP slightly for 2009. But the price is increased inflationary pressures in 2010 and the squandering of the birthright of our children for decades.”
“No. The market economy has an underappreciated but amazing ability to correct and reverse economic imbalances and problems on its own, and that economic self-correcting resiliency works best in the absence of government interference.”
“For the economy in general, doing nothing is vastly preferable to doing the stimulus package, but doing nothing is not a political option; indeed, it would be political suicide. Which shows that only by adopting economically destructive policies can politicians survive. Do you see something wrong in this picture? Given the dominant ideology and the political institutions that now exist, economically rational public policy is incompatible with political viability. Having hit bottom, the politicians can only do one thing: keep digging. If Hell is down there, they’ll reach it, sooner or later.”
And so on. Those are just a few snippets. The entire article is worth your time, though. The intergenerational theft and fiscal child abuse observations are very troubling to me, although most of the comments made me wince.
I share conservatives’ contempt for celebrities.
And whenever celebrities start whining about politics, my contempt goes into overdrive.
However, there is a threshold that celebrities cross whereupon my contempt turns into full-blown amusement.
That is now the case with Sean Penn and Janeane Garofalo. Both have reached the point where their soundbites are of this caliber:
“Man, it pisses me off that the U.S. is always hatin’ on Ahmadinejad. Dude rocks; he’s doing his best.”
Take Penn’s recent remarks about Hugo Chavez, one of the grand blowhards of Global Dystopian Theater. I challenge you not to laugh:
“I know President Chavez well. Whether or not one agrees with all his policies, what is certainly true of Chavez is that he is a warm and friendly man with a robust sense of humor…”
Penn’s comments are featured as part of a Huffington Post blog entry (no surprise there). But what’s interesting is that the Post’s critics are no longer just angry, naysaying Republicans. Nowadays, even left-leaning men of science are attacking the HuffPo. Read the brilliant astronomer Phil Plait‘s take on the Huffington Post’s recent and inexcusable promotion of anti-vaccine propaganda:
“I am embarrassed I ever wrote anything for HuffPo, which is now a cesspool of misleading misinformation.”
Garofalo, like a hackneyed comedian who keeps a Word document of bad jokes archived for repeated use, cannot stop using the term Stockholm Syndrome. Nor can she stop talking about neuroscience. She is basically a psychology undergrad from Madison or Berkeley running amok — she genuinely seems to think her feeble understanding of science and human psychology is of use to the public.
Call me crazy, but that IS funny. Janeane, you still got it, girl!
Not sure why it took me so long to stumble upon this.
It’s P.Z. Meyers‘ description of a fairly acerbic Christopher Hitchens speech in Madison, Wis. (my old stomping grounds, btw) at an event hosted by the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Strangely enough, the contents of Meyers’ post mirror the recent back and forth between Valued Milk and I on this site. Meyers’ portrayal of Hitchens is an unflattering one, and he describes the audience as “stunned into silence” by Hitchens’ diatribe.
One note, though, before proceeding. As a former Madisonian, allow me to add some context to what type of audience you’re typically going to find in Madison, the Berkeley of the Midwest. A brief anecdote should help elucidate matters. Many years ago, one of my old Madison bands was doing a sound check at a place called Club de Wash. Our singer/guitarist Ben, ever the sardonic urbanite scum, was sporting a fur boa. Well, some girl walked into the bar, and, lo and behold, her delicate sensibilities were so shattered by the dead beast around Ben’s neck that…she stormed out of the club…sobbing. Others ran out to console her. My time in Madison showed me that this kind of self-serving display wasn’t an isolated incident.
One more anecdote before proceeding. For the sake of context.
I was at an African hand-drumming clinic in Madison once, and, oddly enough, a rumble broke out as two long-time neighborhood percussion nemeses started beating the shit out of each other. With djembes. A white hippie lady was on the threshold of sobbing. She yelped: “We’ve got to save our neighborhood! We’ve got to stop this violence!” or something such. She was framing a simple grudge match between two idiots as a snapshot of America’s fractured urban landscape.
So you get the point. Even at a Madison event for “free-thinkers” with such speakers as Christopher Hitchens, you’ll get unconventional minds and atheists, sure. But hyper-leftist atheists for the most part, and most of them unable to bear the thought of Hitchens, likely drunk on Scotch, discussing the art of war.
So without further ado, some excerpts from Meyers’ account of the night.
“(Hitchens) told us what the most serious threat to the West was (and you know this line already): it was Islam. Then he accused the audience of being soft on Islam, of being the kind of vague atheists who refuse to see the threat for what it was, a clash of civilizations, and of being too weak to do what was necessary, which was to spill blood to defeat the enemy. Along the way he told us who his choice for president was right now — Rudy Giuliani — and that Obama was a fool, Clinton was a pandering closet fundamentalist, and that he was less than thrilled about all the support among the FFRF for the Democratic party. We cannot afford to allow the Iranian theocracy to arm itself with nuclear weapons (something I entirely sympathize with), and that the only solution is to go in there with bombs and marines and blow it all up. The way to win the war is to kill so many Moslems that they begin to question whether they can bear the mounting casualties.”
I don’t doubt that Hitchens said all of this, but part of me thinks Hitchens knew exactly who his audience was (see illuminating anecdotes above) and took no small pleasure in tormenting them. (The comment about Obama offers a hint — Hitchens later endorsed Obama in 2008.)
More:
“(Hitchens) was asked (in the Q&A) to consider the possibility that bombing and killing was only going to accomplish an increase in the number of people opposing us. Hitchens accused the questioner of being incredibly stupid (the question was not well-phrased, I’ll agree, but it was clear what he meant), and said that it was obvious that every Moslem you kill means there is one less Moslem to fight you … which is only true if you assume that every Moslem already wants to kill Americans and is armed and willing to do so. I think that what is obvious is that most Moslems are primarily interested in living a life of contentment with their families and their work, and that an America committed to slaughter is a tactic that will only convince more of them to join in opposition to us.”
Now, I like P.Z. and his blog, and I agree that most Muslims are probably interested in work and family. (Although, in my previous Islam-related post, I got caught up in the fervor of guerrilla blogging and didn’t fully acknowledge this possibility.) However, I’m personally troubled that these family and work-oriented Muslims haven’t come out, in massive numbers, to denounce and denigrate their brethren who commit acts of terror. I want to see Muslim coalitions against terrorism; Muslim demonstrations with powerful anti-jihadist overtones; Muslim speeches on national television showing the sadness and frustration every-day Muslims feel when the more radical among them beheads someone or blows up a nail-bomb. Where is the outrage in the Muslim community? Maybe I’m just not looking hard enough. Maybe I don’t know enough Muslims. It’s true I only have one Muslim friend, and he’s more acquaintance than friend (ironically, his family stopped by for a visit as I finished typing these very words). I do have liberal Christian friends who are embarrassed and appalled by the actions of fundamentalist Christians. And I see liberal Christians on television and hear them on talk radio denouncing the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells of the world. I see few factions in the Muslim world that are appalled by extreme Islam. Or, again, perhaps I’m not looking hard enough.
But why should I have to look hard? Anti-jihadist Muslims should be household names; instantly recognizable commentators, thinkers, scholars and entertainers who want to be good ambassadors for Islam; who want to show us that Islam is more than a sexist death cult. Where are these voices? Their silence can possibly be interpreted as sympathy; quiet solidarity even. Or maybe they’re just scared shitless. Maybe they’re indifferent. I don’t think any of those possibilities are good. Do you?
