Oh, yeeeeeeah, like we couldn't see this coming. But apparently some Californians didn't. Time to pay up, suckers. Gullibility and stupidity are expensive, yo.
Plus there's this precious little comment:
Although recent criticism of the healthcare law has focused on website glitches and early enrollment snags, experts say sharp price increases for individual policies have the greatest potential to erode public support for President Obama's signature legislation.
You don't say!
Of course the shutdown is a cynical political sideshow. (But let's not forget who's culpable here, OK?) Niall Ferguson has the grim reminder that the real problem is unsustainable debt. Today's quote of the day comes from it:
"Only a fantasist can seriously believe 'this is not a crisis.'"
Unfortunately, the current political "leadership" is full of fantasists, fabulists, and willful deniers of reality.
The Russian "deal" is a fiasco. This related point is obvious, but it still needs saying:
We cannot imagine a worse signal to send to Iran as it continues its push for a nuclear weapon.
Naw, really?
The always-readable View From Taiwan blog notes this thought by a Sina Weibo user:
“Taiwan is a place where the people call the shots. National leaders there must make decisions that reflect the values of individuals in society, rather than simply corrupting and oppressing vulnerable groups. In Taiwan they’ve protected Chinese culture, human rights and freedom of speech. ... Why in the world would the Taiwanese people ever want to return to the motherland? The Chinese Dream is actually in Taiwan.”
Good ideas, including (a) tossing out ponderous standard textbooks, and (b) focusing on clarity, clarity, clarity.
Here's the question being undertaken by two recent scholarly books:
Modern anthropological research may be settling the great debate between the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes and the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Was the state of nature a “war of every man against every man” in which life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” as Hobbes wrote? Or did “savages” live in utopian bliss, thanks to “the tranquility of their passions and their ignorance of vice,” as Rousseau believed?
Nothing is so obvious that you don't have to spell it out:
If you push legislation on a social issue with arguments that are demonstrably wrong (as in “provably non-factual”), obviously ignorant, and deliberately deceptive, how are people supposed to believe that your arguments are factual, informed, and objective in any other policy debate?
If you think it’s no big deal to get your facts wrong, be ignorant about the issue at hand, and intentionally deceive people into voting your way when it comes to gun control, why should the fence-sitters and the opposition believe that you don’t play loose with the facts when it comes to climate change, energy policy, social justice, economic policies, or any of the other items on the progressive agenda? How can you be surprised when your efforts on, say, climate change are met with suspicion and outright hostility from the other side, and they accuse you of misrepresenting the data to push an agenda? After all, you’ve already set a precedent for that.
This is why I don't take "serious" newspapers seriously. Besides, here is a quotable observation: "It’s difficult to take the Times' copious critiques of Catholicism and religion in general seriously when it is as illiterate as this on the most fundamental of Christian doctrines." Well, DUH.
Why should you care what a bestselling sci-fi author has to say about guns? Because he was also a firearms instructor and competition shooter who has worked with law enforcement and knows more about guns than your average talking head on the news. Read this, please, if you haven't already. Here is a piece of it:
Gun Free Zones are hunting preserves for innocent people. Period.
Think about it. You are a violent, homicidal madman, looking to make a statement and hoping to go from disaffected loser to most famous person in the world. The best way to accomplish your goals is to kill a whole bunch of people. So where’s the best place to go shoot all these people? Obviously, it is someplace where nobody can shoot back.
In all honesty I have no respect for anybody who believes Gun Free Zones actually work. You are going to commit several hundred felonies, up to and including mass murder, and you are going to refrain because there is a sign? That No Guns Allowed sign is not a cross that wards off vampires. It is wishful thinking, and really pathetic wishful thinking at that.
On another day I might blog about how I personally think that most efforts at gun control are actually and ultimately efforts at people control, but you pretty much can anticipate what I'd say, right? As for arguments that nobody should own firearms except the police ... Just stop and think about that for a minute. Do proponents of this realize that they're basically arguing in favor not only of more crime but also a potential police state? What happens if and when it gets corrupted and nasty and starts to abuse power and stomp on your civil liberties? Anyway, it's too late tonight to talk much more about a complicated issue and meditations on self-defense (not only as a right but also even as a responsibility), so I'm just going to sign off with this and one of my favorite lines from Firefly. You know the one, darlings. Oh, you know.
As depressing as it is unsurprising:
... the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11 should have been a red flag to all who believe this president has invented a successful new model for U.S. leadership. Far from being an aberration, Benghazi was a toxic byproduct of the light footprint approach — and very likely the first in a series of boomerangs.
You don't say! The entire piece looks at other such "red flags." Remember, Libya's supposed to be the "success story" of Obama's approach to foreign policy. Frankly, I'm pessimistic about foreign policy in Obama's second term and getting more pessimistic all the time.
WELL, DUH.
So just how many years did it take you to realize that the one-child policy and its ramifications, from gendercide to forced abortions to corrupt adoptions, are gross human rights violations that are also, by the way, wreaking havoc with society?
To which headline I say ... WELL, DUH! What the hell did you think was going to happen? While we're at this, let me once more bang my drum about the horrifying human cost of this entire enterprise, including forced abortions on unwilling women, the selling of babies ...
Surprise! As a British friend of mine recently told me, "I don't know why everyone loves the NHS. It's dreadful."
It ain't pretty, people. In the end, the worst of it may be this:
"It’s as axiomatic in statecraft as in physics: Nature abhors a vacuum. Islamists rush in to fill the space and declare their ascendancy. America’s friends are bereft, confused, paralyzed."
Well, DUH! What did you think was going to happen? It's not only the disarray of American influence under a leadership that is seemingly made of as much mendacity as naivete and incompetence and wishful defiance of reality. (Some of the policy decisions and whatnot seem as if they sprang straight from a particularly silly chapter of high school Model UN.) It's not only the willful sidelining of Israel in the face of Iran's nuclear ambition. It's the seemingly blithe abandonment of the most vulnerable of all, the liberals and reformers in those wretched countries that are burning up the news outlets right now. We've proven ourselves craven to our enemies, treacherous to our natural friends, and squishy to the core. It's all as dishonorable as it is immoral and self-destructive, and it is going to cost even more lives than it has already.
Here it is, kids:
The Arab uprisings have overthrown tyrants in Egypt and Libya, but the populations and lawmakers have yet to grasp that democracy is not only about free elections but creating free societies.
You don't say!
Well, this seemed pretty painfully obvious, but nothing is so obvious that it doesn't need to be said:
Whatever fault one wants to ascribe to Obama’s predecessor, and whatever excuses the president can dream up, what is now beyond any reasonable dispute is that Obama has no clue how to fix things. That is not a political judgment; it’s an empirical one.
Barack Obama may be well-intentioned. He may be a fine father. He may have an excellent jump shot. And he may be a first-rate community organizer. But as president, he is simply — and by now almost undeniably — overmatched by events. By Obama’s own standards – by what he said and by what he promised — he is a failure.
So just who didn't know this? The New York Times seems to be breathlessly reporting something everybody knows:
As Iran starts a critical round of talks over its nuclear program, its negotiating team may be less interested in reaching a comprehensive settlement than in buying time and establishing the legitimacy of its enrichment program, Iranian officials and analysts said.
That is because though Iran finds itself under increased financial pressure from tightening sanctions, officials here argue that their fundamental approach has essentially worked. In continually pushing forward the nuclear activities — increasing enrichment and building a bunker mountain enrichment facility — Iran has in effect forced the West to accept a program it insists is for peaceful purposes. Iranians say their carefully crafted policy has helped move the goal posts in their favor by making enrichment a reality that the West has been unable to stop — and may now be willing, however grudgingly, to accept.
Well, duh.
