Month: July 2012
Daily potpourri 7/20/12 – TGIF edition
Daily Potpourri 7/19/12
Daily Potpourri 7/18/12
Daily Potpourri 7/17/12
- Paradigmatic case for discrimination?
- Toyota Solution.
- Guilty pleasure.
- Fastball shreds the Constitution
- Seduced and abandoned.
Hypothetical: Guy Philanderer from your Church walks into your restaurant with Bimbette The Pole Dancer, his girlfriend, hanging on his arm. Guy’s divorce isn’t final yet, but Guy says Bimbette’s his soulmate, that his wife was a youthful indiscretion, and that he’s checked with God, who’s cool with all this. The kids will be just fine. They’re better off without all the tension in the house.
That’s what he tells everyone about the situation. Guy’s pretty wealthy, by the way, and for some reason Pastor Billy Bob hasn’t yet gotten around to telling Guy he’s persona non grata until he repents.
May you “discriminate” against Guy and Bimbette? Mustn’t you discriminate?
Does that conclusion change if Guy comes in with “Fabio” on his arm, making the same “soulmate” and “God’s cool with this” argument?
Just askin’.
From Toyota, the greenest car ever. (HT Mercatornet.com)
(For my credulous friends who breathlessly pass along nonsense, be it noted that the car is not real. The Onion is satire/humor.)
My standing advice, linked below, disses television, but if I happen to notice that one’s coming up on ESPN or something, I’m a sucker for strongman competitions. Here’s your chance to grab a little guilty pleasure without touching that remote. (HT The Browser)
[O]f late come rumblings from the most august newspaper in the land that certain questions concerning LIBOR-fixing among American bank officials might soon be entertained in a federal courtroom. But isn’t it a fact that the US Department of Justice has its hands full – not to mention its dockets – with cases of alleged performance-doping by star athletes? Just think: all that effort (and expense!) at repeated prosecutions and Roger Clemens remains at large! His fastball might yet shred the constitution and dishonor all the combined sacrifices of our men in uniform in countless heroic wars.
IMHO, that’s all about Kunstler that’s worth reading this week, but here’s the link if you want to judge for yourself.
It’s an interesting thought that the health insurance industry – which went into the tank for Obamacare upon the promise of “a requirement to buy coverage backed with a penalty for violators” – now finds itself with no mandate and a nominal tax for those caught going bare, and thus may turn en masse for repeal.
I suppose it’s too much to hope that they’d destroy their seducer now that they’re abandoned.
* * * * *
Doubling down on dumb
National Review’s Jonah Goldberg has written another liberal-baiting book, The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas. The American Conservative’s Scott Galupo reviewed it a few weeks ago and revisited it today.
What I get from today’s piece is a reminder that movement conservatism is no less riddled with clichés than is liberalism.
I can’t tell a heckuva lot of difference between Republican and Democrat policies day-to-day, political rhetoric aside, on matters of business. Both are beholden to Wall Street. Neither has anything worthwhile to say about the bizarre and ominous development of “finance” ceasing to be a utility for real industry and having become a very, very lucrative (however temporarily) and major industry in it own right.
This fabulous industry brings us wonders like this, in connection with which which Scott McConnell comments:
I remember a time when financiers who talked about themselves in such language would have been laughed at — yes, even in the Hamptons. There was a Wall Street, and people who worked there made good money. But Americans’ admiration went to the people who actually created tangible goods or developed innovative products. Talent, drive, dedication were admired, and there was no big brief for a leveling equality. No one thought that Henry Ford (before my time, actually) contributed no more to the common good than the average assembly line worker. But neither did anyone believe in the absurdity that financiers –the lubricants perhaps of a successful economy–were synonymous with the engine itself.
When it comes to economics, in short, the Republicans are doubling down on dumb, at least rhetorically. I have to consider the possibility that they mean it, unlikely as that is in politics.
Understand: from religious freedom to liberal groin pieties (Obama’s support for abortion, gay marriage and his refusal even to defend DOMA being notable) and probably several less important things, I’ve got huge issues with Obama. It is unlikely that the Republicans could disgust me enough into voting for him.
But don’t try to sell me the “voting for anyone but Romney is voting for Obama” crap. I didn’t vote for him in the primary and you can’t foist him on me now and tell me I’ve got to vote for him. Just watch me.
Or rather (the secret ballot not yet having been abolished by some Orwellian “Patriot Act”) just guess how I’ve voted as I leave the polls, green at the gills at the nauseating choice between the two top dogs.
* * * * *
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 