If Ron Paul is no threat to the Republican establishment, why are they so afraid to even MENTION him?
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VPFL 2011
If you want to join the White Buffalo, Nate, defending champion Clay, and me in the upcoming VPFL season, let me know now….
Lest you think we jest
I’ve noticed that there is considerably more public discussion of how WWII, and not the New Deal, brought the USA out of the Great Depression. However, there is still some confusion as it wasn’t the war spending itself that did the trick, but rather the breaking of the windows of the rest of the planet’s industrial infrastructure. See RGD and Vox’s Broken Window Theory, Revised, which states that Bastiat’s Broken Window is no fallacy, so long as you break all the windows in the next town over as well as the legs of its glaziers.
So, barring any flattening of an alien planet and the subsequent development of interstellar trade, Paul Krugman’s fantasy of preparing for an alien space war is unlikely to lead to economic recovery:
PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: Think about World War II, right? That was actually negative social product spending, and yet it brought us out.
I mean, probably because you want to put these things together, if we say, “Look, we could use some inflation.” Ken and I are both saying that, which is, of course, anathema to a lot of people in Washington but is, in fact, what fhe basic logic says.
It’s very hard to get inflation in a depressed economy. But if you had a program of government spending plus an expansionary policy by the Fed, you could get that. So, if you think about using all of these things together, you could accomplish, you know, a great deal.
If we discovered that, you know, space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months. And then if we discovered, oops, we made a mistake, there aren’t any aliens, we’d be better –
ROGOFF: And we need Orson Welles, is what you’re saying.
KRUGMAN: No, there was a “Twilight Zone” episode like this in which scientists fake an alien threat in order to achieve world peace. Well, this time, we don’t need it, we need it in order to get some fiscal stimulus.
The amazing thing isn’t the fluid way Paul Krugman moves from one fantasy to the next – remember, his inspiration for becoming an economist was Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels – but that he does so while remaining convinced that he is the only serious economic realist in the debate. The guy is seriously strange, and at this point, I’m not entirely sure he’s even sane.
Unless, of course, that stealthy Death Star is coming our way!
But I thought they were people!
The mortgage banks are doing their best to escape liability for their large-scale mortgage fraud:
They’ve trotted out Kathryn Wylde, the President of the Partnership for New York City, to attack Eric Schneiderman for his intervention in the Bank of America settlement with investors over mortgage backed securities. Wylde is going to bat for BofA as well as the Bank of New York Mellon, the trustee for the MBS in the settlement. And she is actually arguing that Schneiderman, by defending the rights of investors and seeking the truth on out and out securitization fraud, is threatening the existence of the financial sector in New York City. No, really.
Tanks in the streets and cats living with dogs if the state governments don’t look the other way when the banks commit fraud. That’s certainly a new one. Interesting to see that they’re having to pull it out on a regular basis, isn’t it?
Mailvox: a report from Iowa
Farmer Tom attended the straw poll and managed to upset a presidential candidate in the process:
On the candidates. Had a short, rather contentious visit, with Rick Santourum in the parking lot on the way into the event. True story. He asked for my vote, I told him only when he got down on his knees and apologized for supporting Arlyn Spinchter. He refused, and tried to defend his actions by claiming that Spinchter allowed Bush to put two “conservative” justices on the SCOTUS. I countered with, “Do you really believe that Toomey would have lost?” To which he suggested only Spinchter could have gotten Roberts and Alito confirmed. I told him that I didn’t consider Bush a conservative, and I do not think helping a flaming liberal, baby killer lover, to be reelected to to the US Senate was a benefit to the cause of “life” which he claims to support. I walked away irritated, and he was visibly aggravated. He asked, I gave him my opinion. And I’m quite sure he did not appreciate it.
Saw a bunch of my Ron Paul supporting friends. I was there in 2007 when all of us supporting Ron Paul fit in a tent that would hold a couple of hundred people. He got 1305 votes that year, out of 14,302 votes cast. This year there were Paulistia’s everywhere. After being there about an hour, it was clear that either Paul or Bachmunn would win the vote. Both of them overwhelmed the rest of the candidates there with their supporters. Visually, it was a toss up who had the most supporters.
It would appear the Dread Ilk are prone to causing disturbances in the Force no matter where they go. And that is a downright laudable response to a mainstream politician. Be polite, but forthright. In a republic, politician’s posteriors are for kicking, not kissing.
It also sounds as if Ron Paul’s supporters should relax a little and be pleased with his second-place finish. Bachmann clearly made a strong showing and any potential shenanigans must have been minimal. Politics have always been dirty and you have to win big to prevent the establishment from cheating. I also tend to doubt that the Republican establishment was inclined to cheat in favor of Bachmann; they don’t like her much better than they like Paul, albeit for different reasons.
WND column
“Corporations are people, my friend. Of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?”
– Mitt Romney
It is no wonder that Mitt Romney thinks corporations are wonderful. Corporations have provided him with most of the $18.4 million he has raised for his 2012 campaign for president, which is more than the nine other Republican candidates combined. Seventy percent of the contributions to the Romney campaign are the maximum $2,500, 10 times more than the seven percent of the maximum contributions to his chief rival for the party nomination, Michele Bachmann.
To Mitt Romney, corporations are not only people, they are his best friends.
Um, that’s no planet….
First economists, then biologists. Do I really have to explain the obvious to astrophysicists too?
An alien world blacker than coal, the darkest planet known, has been discovered in the galaxy. The world in question is a giant the size of Jupiter known as TrES-2b. NASA’s Kepler spacecraft detected it lurking around the yellow sun-like star GSC 03549-02811 some 750 light years away in the direction of the constellation Draco. The researchers found this gas giant reflects less than 1 percent of the sunlight falling on it, making it darker than any planet or moon seen up to now.
“It’s just ridiculous how dark this planet is, how alien it is compared to anything we have in our solar system,” study lead-author David Kipping, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told SPACE.com. “It’s darker than the blackest lump of coal, than dark acrylic paint you might paint with. It’s bizarre how this huge planet became so absorbent of all the light that hits it.”
It’s not ridiculous or bizarre, it’s absorbing light BECAUSE IT’S A GIANT ALIEN SPACE STATION WITH GALACTIC STEALTH TECHNOLOGY, you overeducated morons! Now, hurry up and figure out the only thing about it that really matters… is it heading this way?
The 50 best SF/F books and/or series
After much discussion of NPR’s 100 greatest science fiction and fantasy works, I was moved to construct my own list of what I consider to be the top 50. As with all such lists this is somewhat arbitrary, nevertheless it should be taken as the complete, definitive, and conclusive final word on the matter. I see no purpose in honoring innovation for innovation’s sake when others have subsequently done it better, for example, John Polidori’s The Vampyre and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein have both been long surpassed as examples of their type, whereas the same is not true for Tolkien’s oft-imitated The Lord of the Rings or Orwell’s Animal Farm. In some cases, I have chosen to highlight a single book, Dune, for example, whereas in others I have chosen to judge a series as a whole. Night Watch is easily the best of Terry Pratchett’s books, but it cannot be judged fairly in isolation as one has to have a fuller understanding of Ankh-Morpork to fully appreciate the novel. I have paid zero attention to book sales or authorial reputation, I have read all of the books on the list, and I have tended to rate genuinely amusing books more highly than others might due to the additional degree of difficulty involved.
I further note that if you happen to disagree with the reverence shown to Mr. Ray Bradbury, you are clearly inhuman, possess no soul, and should consider returning to your home planet. If you have not read or heard of Tanith Lee, people should throw rocks at you on the street until you rectify the error. On the other hand, if you have not read Hesse, that is understandable since he’s not traditionally considered a genre author. But do yourself a favor and read the book anyhow. And yes, Edgar Allen Poe should by rights be on here somewhere near the top, but the metric is books and/or series, not authors and/or short stories.
1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Dune, Frank Herbert
3. Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury
4. The Chronicles of Narnia, CS Lewis
5. The Glass Bead Game, Hermann Hesse
6. Watership Down, Richard Adams
7. The Dark is Rising, Susan Cooper
8. The Secret Books of Paradys, Tanith Lee
9. The Sprawl Trilogy, William Gibson
10. The Cthulhu Mythos, HP Lovecraft
Read the rest of the list at the Black Gate.
Don’t be casting no dispersions
The good ship Herman Cain has had an amusing run, but it should sink in today’s Iowa straw poll . And why wouldn’t he cast dispersions on Captain Underoos’s religion anyway? If I was a Republican candidate, I would totally demand that Mitt Romney show everyone his underwear. Does anyone remember how he answered CNN’s important “boxers or briefs” question?
The sad thing is that the Republican candidates simply don’t understand America. Ron Paul could have sewn up the nomination early if he’d simply answered “thong, baby, thong”.
1. Michele Bachmann 4,823 votes
2. Ron Paul 4,671
3. Tim Pawlenty 2,293
4. Rick Santorum 1,657
5. Herman Cain 1,465
6. Rick Perry 718 write-in votes
7. Mitt Romney 567
8. Newt Gingrich 385
9. Jon Huntsman 69
10. Thad McCotter 35
This effectively ends the Pawlenty campaign, unless he’s running for vice-president. It should also end the Romney campaign, but it won’t yet since he’s got all that money to spend. Paul will be ignored by the media unless he can manage to win something outright; pity he has moved in the wrong direction on immigration at precisely the wrong time.
Bachmann becomes the “Huckabee” candidate that the Establishment will throw to the social conservatives if necessary, but Perry becomes the de facto replacement for Romney as the chosen candidate. Cain will stay in as a sideshow, this really isn’t a bad showing for him. Santorum, Gingrich, Huntsman and McCotter all look pretty irrelevant now, not that some of them didn’t before.
UPDATE – Bingo: “Tim Pawlenty told supporters in a conference call this morning that he would be leaving the presidential race. “We needed a boost from Ames that didn’t happen,” he said, according to CNN.”
You CANNOT be serious!
The NPR readership’s top 100 SF/F novels:
1. The Lord of the Rings
2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
3. Ender’s Game
4. Dune
5. A Song of Fire and Ice
6. 1984
7. Fahrenheit 451
8. The Foundation trilogy
9. Brave New World
10. American Gods
It’s a reasonable start, as you can list the top ten without having to bother mentioning the authors. But which one of these is not like the others? Neil Gaiman is good, but American Gods does not merit inclusion at that level. And either Dandelion Wine or The Illustrated Man should be in Fahrenheit 451‘s place. I think A Song of Fire and Ice is also overrated, especially in light of the way the series has declined over the last two books. Top 100 yes, top 10, no way. So is Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; it’s top 50 material, not top 10. I quite like Douglas Adams, but I don’t see how anyone can possibly argue that Hitchhiker’s is better, in any way except that it is funnier, than Watership Down. In fact, I don’t even consider Hitchhiker’s to be Douglas Adams’s best work; his Dirk Gently novels are much superior.
The astonishing omissions, not from the top 10, but from the entire list, are The Chronicles of Narnia – absolute top 10, if not top 5 – Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising and Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain. Piers Anthony’s Xanth is far too low, and while Terry Pratchett shows up twice with two Discworld novels – why, when every other series is listed by series – the best Discworld novel by far is Night Watch. And no Lovecraft? Madness. No Silverberg? A little more explicable, but still. No Guy Gavriel Kay? Understandable, but still a serious omission. It was good to see Zelazny there, but I would rank his Lord of Light higher than Amber.
It was interesting to see both the Harry Potter and Twilight series missing from the list. I very much agree with leaving them off it, but I was still surprised they weren’t there. I was, however, mystified to see Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera on the list while The Dresden Files was omitted. I enjoyed the former, but there is no question that the latter is the better series. And how does The Silmarillion make the list while The Hobbit doesn’t? And finally, there is no way Robert Jordan’s ghastly The Wheel of Time series should be on the list at all, much less ranked at #12.