It’s A F***ing Cartoon….
Thanks, Jon!
Monthly Archives: July 2008
One Thing That obama May Not Be Changing…
….ongoing increases in the defense budget.
As Henley, who is not a mean old man, says: this is not change we can believe in.
Who Wants To Be “led?”
Mark Brady asks:
…presidential hopeful Barack Obama yesterday explained his foreign policy. He called for “America — once again — to lead”, to be “ready to engage the world”, “to lead the world anew.”
Does it ever occur to the Columbia-and-Harvard-educated Barack Obama that perhaps the world does not want to be “led” by the United States?
I’m sure it has no more occurred to him than to the current occupant, to mccain or to any of the previous presidents.
Nor has it probably occurred to him that most of us, we the people, don’t want to be “led” either. At least not by fiat.
Rather, be a good government*: do your basic job of dealing with perps who use force or fraud to get their way; deliver a judicial system that provides timely services and response times; and leave the rest of us to our lives, our liberty and our pursuit of happiness.
And, as far as leadership goes: set a good example and if you can be persuasive enough perhaps you will generate a consensus to complete certain activities. Otherwise, go away.
*Possible oxymoron acknowledged.
Economists Weep With Joy Over the Discovery of the Cause of Inflation
Here is the headline:
Apple Licensing May Contribute to Inflation
and here is the meat:
If it seems prices of the latest iPod and iPhone accessories are rising, you may have Apple’s licensing department to thank, according to a story in Popular Mechanics. Though the company is typically reticent to discuss the details of arrangements such as the one that allows some electronics manufacturers to place a “Made for iPod” designation on their products, managers and decision makers for both retailers and manufacturers indicate Apple’s licensing fees and specially made chips that allow gadgets to work with Apple gear can add 10% or more to the price consumers pay for an item.
Yep, licensing agreements may indeed drive up the price of these accessories.
But, contribute to inflation? Naw, not unless these accessories are part of your price index and people actually bought them at the higher prices while also buying the rest of the goods in the index at the same or higher quantities and prices.
Which would mean that people had more money than they had before which suggests that the real cause of the inflation was most likely an increase in the money supply.
All of which is to say that I thought that headline was really broken.
NB: The headline in the Popular Mechanics article linked in the above quote is much more accurate:
How the “Apple Tax” Boosts Prices on iPod & iPhone Accessories
An Early Retirement Wish for bush..
From Spencer Ackerman:
Through his blindness, his incompetence, his pathetic smallness in the face of a very big enemy, Bush was the greatest gift bin Laden could have asked for. May Bush’s last years come in a CIA black site somewhere in eastern Europe, never to be acknowledged to the Red Cross, nor to Laura, to Jenna and Barbara or his grandchildren. And may his only companion in that hideous nightmare of his own creation be his cellmate, Usama bin Laden. Because today, they have lost and we have won.
I’m torn.
While they are truly deserving of each other, complete isolation might be better. Together they will have too much opportunity to enjoy camaraderie and rehash their great achievements of the first decade of the twentieth century.
.