John Hawkins talks to Thomas Sowell about Economic Facts and Fallacies.
And here, a somewhat less… academic presentation of related issues.
Facts and Fallacies
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 5, 2008
Posted in Gelt, Politics and Poker | Leave a Comment »
Holocaustism
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 5, 2008
David Kelsey rails on, quite justifiably, about the latest manifestations of Holocaust – as – Judaism.
Talk about a desecration — coming, and going.
Posted in Faith and Works, Heart and spirit | Leave a Comment »
What’s all this about Google and Yahoo! and Microsoft?
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 4, 2008
I’m surprised that even Kara Swisher has missed this. The bloggers are going nuts, once again, over the email that a Google lawyer sent to Microsoft regarding Microsoft’s proposed purchase of Yahoo.Here’s what’s really going on:
Read it to find out what’s really going on, and to understand something about some very big pieces of the Internet business.
Posted in Gelt, Stragety | 1 Comment »
Oh my. The Giants!
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 3, 2008
People are screaming on my block in New Jersey, just a few miles from Giants Stadium. Screaming.
I was driving home from Acme with some orange juice and, okay, I checked my BlackBerry one more time to see if the Giants could do the impossible… and they had.
And they did.
And if you don’t see the human interest story — the plain-vanilla, gets-no-respect coach… the overshadowed younger-brother quarterback… the team of no-names picked for a .500 season and perhaps one playoff round right up through the late fall — then you have no heart.
Posted in Americana, Heart and spirit | 2 Comments »
McCain and conservativism
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 2, 2008
Randall Hoven wrestles with the issue of how conservative McCain is as a Senator:
Senator John McCain’s lifetime rating of 82.3% from the American Conservative Union is often that he is conservative. Here is a closer look at that 82.3 rating. First, a rating of 82.3 is not really that high. It puts Senator McCain in 39th place among senators serving in 2006, the latest year for which the ACU has its ratings posted online. For that most recent year in particular, McCain scored only 65, putting him in 47th place for that year. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE), for example, scored 64 and 75, respectively, in 2006
He demonstrates that McCain is actually on the liberal side among Republicans, despite his seemingly high ACU rating, which explains of course why the media love him. He concludes thus, however:
On the other hand, Senator Clinton (D-NY) has a lifetime ACU rating of 9 and Senator Obama (D-IL) has a rating of 8.
Not much the cheer about here.
Well, here’s something a little large, and a little more significant, to not cheer about — but something that conservatives must understand if they don’t want to relegated to a fringe: The electorate is not all that conservative. We will not win the Presidency with a strong conservative candidate. You can’t deduce anything from Ronald Reagan. There was one Ronald Reagan. If another one emerges, we’ll know (some of us were not fooled).
And if you think that you (we) will “teach the nation a lesson,” a la Jimmy Carter, by not supporting the GOP candidate and letting a liberal run the country for four — or eight — years and appoint judges and commissioners, and sign legislation, and take control of the national political dialogue during that time… good luck. See you at the People’s Reeducation Center and Tax Labor Farm. We can plan the next revolution with the other zeks.
But if you want to win, and have any shot at having any of your ideas reign, and to make incremental progress in government, policy and the popular imagination — then you have to realize that politics is now. And act accordingly.
Posted in Politics and Poker, Stragety | 13 Comments »
Null set
Posted by Ron Coleman on January 31, 2008
Is jury nullification a responsible formula for policymaking?
I don’t think so!
Posted in Lex scripta, Sisyphus | 2 Comments »
I love pans!
Posted by Ron Coleman on January 31, 2008
Not the cooking kind. The “cooked” kind!
This was the worst movie I’ve ever seen, so bad that I hesitate to label it a “movie” and thus reflect shame upon the entire medium of film.
Well, that should make you want to read the rest of the review, no?! It does for me!
Posted in Ars Longa | 1 Comment »
Tell Jack how you really feel
Posted by Ron Coleman on January 30, 2008
Blogs from CNN.com — dateline, January 29th:
FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:He hasn’t won anything yet, and his showing in some cases has been dismal. But John Edwards is showing no signs of getting out the race. Maybe he doesn’t have anything else to do. His campaign says that Edwards will stay in it until the Democratic Party convention, and they’re hopeful that we can still win it.
Democrat John Edwards bowed out of the race for the White House on Wednesday, saying it was time to step aside “so that history can blaze its path” in a campaign now left to Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. “With our convictions and a little backbone we will take back the White House in November,” said Edwards, ending his second campaign in a hurricane-ravaged section of New Orleans where he began it more than a year ago.
Maybe Jack should spent less time on feelings, actually.
Posted in Medialites, Politics and Poker | 5 Comments »
The disposable Jews
Posted by Ron Coleman on January 30, 2008
To me Rudy Giuliani was about salvation from the New York that David Dinkins allowed to happen — the New York typified by the pogrom in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, and which drove my family out of the City.
How ironic, then, on the day that sees the sun rise on the end of his campaign for President, that Jews — politically unpopular, or at least awkward — in Crown Heights are once again “in season,” and New York’s nominally Jewish mayor and the rest of the liberal establishment once again could not care less. As David Kelsey says,
If Jews were being attacked by skinheads or Muslims in Brookyln, you would be hearing a lot more about it. But strangely, when it comes to black on Chassidic violence, the J-blogosphere is suddenly quiet outside of Crown Heights/Chabad community members. No hippies….no Zionists…no hipsters.
It doesn’t help that, religiously and ideologically, the particular hasidim in Crown Heights have made themselves largely loathsome to many. But it hardly matters. Nor is it surprising, for the same Upper West Side Jews who do not care now are the ones who overwhelmingly in shockingly high numbers voted to keep Dinkins in office after Crown Heights, rather than vote for law and order as personified by the “fascist” Giuliani. They are the heirs of the don’t-make-waves Jews who sat silently in this country during the Holocaust. This is no Holocaust, but it is shameful nonetheless.
Posted in Americana, Faith and Works, Oppression, Past is prologue | 10 Comments »
Yes, the weather is still miserable in New York.
Posted by Ron Coleman on January 30, 2008
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I have never thought, not for a second, that “life is a but a dream.” There’s nothing dreamy about it to me. I can tell the furshlugginer difference! But I like what Poe says here, and I wish the last two lines of this half-stanza had been the first two, so that he would conclude with the same sentiment J.K. Rowling does when, in the seventh Harry Potter book, Harry has a dialogue with the dead Professor Dumbledore. It is profoundly resolving — almost too good, Harry believes, to be true. And, after all, his mentor is dead.
Haryry asks him, then, is this moment real? Or is it all in his head? To which Dumbledore replies — of course it is all in your head, Harry. But that does not mean it isn’t real.
UPDATE: The sun is out! And it’s not just in my head. (In fact it’s still rather dusky in there.)
Posted in Heart and spirit | 4 Comments »
