March 25, 2012

Smart Diplomacy and Reset Buttons

According to Instapundit, Canada and Australia are decoupling from the US and making contingency plans for our collapse. Reynolds:
No organization can survive corruption and ineptitude at the top forever. And we’ve had the worse political class in American history for a while now, though its rottenness has really accelerated lately.
If the collapse happens, they deserve to be hunted down and brought to trial. Hunted down from wherever they flee using, if necessary, what remains of our armed forces.

I'm not surprised:
Last year I remarked:
Will the world's financial traffic reroute around America the way the Internet routes around censorship? My guess is that we're not at that point yet, but if it happens it will happen faster than people expect.
Perhaps the global economy too, at some point? Not that we are imminently becoming a backwater--but if it happens, it could happen faster than people expect: for example, our global competitors might sign trade agreements with partners we spurn out of protectionism.
Dismayed, yes. Surprised, no.

Addendum 20120404 (HT: Instapundit): The USA is blocking Canada's entrance to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Why? Who benefits?

Harvard Sex Week

In some professions people can be thirty or older when their training is complete. I don't urge them to be celibate until then.

Nevertheless, it strikes me that there is something profoundly amiss with the hook-up and friends-with-benefits cultures. I can't find words; the Gods of the Copybook Headings could express my unease better than I can.

The Left likes to package indoctrination as information or education: "teach-ins", for example. I don't flat-out assert that Harvard Sex week is postmodern indoctrination, but the suspicion strikes me as reasonable.

The foregoing will be submitted as a comment to Legal Insurrection's post on Harvard Sex Week.

March 21, 2012

Mitt Romney ?= Robert S. McNamara

Seems more that way every day.

March 19, 2012

Forbidden: the I-Word

Whose side is Reuters neutral on?
Bond prices decline as investors favor risky assets

...(Reuters) - U.S. Treasuries prices fell on Monday, with longer-dated debt yields touching 4-1/2 month highs, as investors further pared bond holdings on signs of an improving U.S. economy and some stabilization of Europe's debt troubles.
There's another reason bond prices fall. Reuters doesn't mention it---doesn't even use the word---, but Fox does: inflation.

I have noticed inflation while shopping for food and gas. IMO the Democrats and their MSM allies do not want such perceptions, including concern about stagflation, to crystallize into a national issue.

March 10, 2012

Reform in Russia

Under the democratic decent Yeltsin, Russia collapsed into thuggery and chaos.

I hope that the latest reform efforts succeed, but the operative word is 'hope'.

March 4, 2012

Gilding a Lily

Attributed to William F. Buckley: The trouble with socialism is socialism. The trouble with capitalism is capitalists.

My variant: The trouble with liberalism is liberalism. The trouble with conservatism is conservatives. Ditto for libertarians.