RedStateEclectic

Jack Cafferty, Ron Paul and Broken Government

CNN aired a special by Jack Cafferty titled Broken Government last week. I heard several good reviews and planned to watch the entire show when it was re-aired Saturday, but it was bumped for coverage of the disaster in Chile.  Somebody grabbed the Ron Paul segment and posted it on YouTube, so I'll have to make do with this if I can't find the whole show on CNN on a later date.

Seriously - how did we ever live without the internet?

Hardly Anyone Around

Any idea what I am on about here?

Das Traumfinale endete mit einem Traumergebnis für Kanada. Mit 3:2 n.V. (1:0;1:1;0:1;1:0) gewannen die Gastgeber in einer körperbetonten aber nicht hart geführten Partie mit wenig Strafzeiten gegen die USA. Damit konnten sich die Kanadier bei diesen olympischen Spielen die 14. Goldmedaille sichern und zog [sic, grammatical error, so much for German "top notch" journalism, G.T.] mit acht Eishockey-Olympiasiegen mit Russland gleich.

The source.

PS

I expected the eventual loser to win, while in terms of sympathies I was close to neutral on the final outcome. The match made me more and more partial to the idea that the final winner become the final winner.

Bravo to the team from that country whose name in Hessian dialect sounds like "No One There," "No One Around" ("Kana da" - "Keiner da"), suggestive of a territory rather sparsely populated.

The Paper Soldier

Further to Sand Drawing:

The Russians (strictly speaking the Soviets) used to be the Taliban, the Al Khaida of yesterday, the Saddam Hussein regime of WMD, the Iranian imbeciles bent on nuking Israel and the US - vicious to the bone, an apocalyptic threat of inconceivable power and consequence.

Such are the stories the paper soldiers are being told, so as to always remain happy to oblige and - as the Russian song below says - burn up, revealing a heat value of not even a penny.

Song Nr. 2 here offers a top quality version of Bulat Okudzhava's The Paper Soldier; below the (not so smooth, but rather faithful) translation (from a Russian pen, it would appear), see a very poor clip from Soviet times:

Once there lived a soldier-boy,

quite brave, one can't be braver,
but he was merely a toy
for he was made of paper.
He wished to alter everything,
and be the whole world's helper,
but he was a puppet on a string,

a soldier made of paper.

He'd bravely go through fire and smoke,
he'd die for you. No vapour.
But he was just a laughing-stock,
a soldier made of paper.
You would mistrust him and deny
your secrets and your favour.
Why should you do it, really, why?
'cause he was made of paper.
He dreads the fire? Not at all!
One day he cut a caper
and died for nothing; after all,

he was a piece of paper.

(More attempts at translating the song are to be found in the comments to the clip at YouTube.)

Also, see our post Bulat Okudzhava - The Roaring War Pursues Us Like a Plight.

Schemes and Spectres

From an assortment of wallpapers:

London's always worth a trip:

Now, look overhead and spot our planet:

Meanwhile, on my way from London ...

... to Stambul ... like always I have ...

... the right currency on me:

Econbrowser: What Drives Media Slant

Interesting statistics and chart posted over at Econbrowser that quotes University of Chicago professors Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro on their study of newspapers and media slant.

Below is one of the charts.  The vertical axis is the "amount" of slant and the horizontal axis is the liberal to conservative slant where liberal is anything "left" of 3 and conservative is anything "right" of 3.

Seeing the Omaha Wierd Herald on the upper-right of the chart does make sense to me.  It leans to the right, but is probably "more slanted" than only "more conservative".  That may not make a lot of sense, but think of it as being slightly conservative and just loudly so.

You can read more here where you can see the ownership and readership impacts on this slant.  The study shows that newspapers tend to want to sell more newspapers so they reflect their readership.  Looking at our own OWH, I'd agree with that.

###

The Misesian Vision

by Lew Rockwell:

[…] No longer is the idea of a state-planned society seen as frightening. What scares people more today is the prospect of a society without a plan, which is to say a society of freedom. But here is the key difference between authority in everyday life — such as that exercised by a parent or a teacher or a pastor or a boss — and the power of the state: the state's edicts are always and everywhere enforced at the point of a gun.

"It begins in a seemingly small error, a banality. But, with the state, what begins in banality ends in bloodshed."

It is interesting how little we think about that reality — one virtually never hears that truth stated so plainly in a college classroom, for example — but it is the core reality. Everything done by the state is ultimately done by means of aggression, which is to say violence or the threat of violence against the innocent. The total state is really nothing but the continued extension of these statist means throughout every nook and cranny of economic and social life. Thus does the paranoia, megalomania, and fanaticism of the rulers become deadly dangerous to everyone.

It begins in a seemingly small error, a banality. But, with the state, what begins in banality ends in bloodshed.

Let me give another example of the banality of evil. Several decades ago, some crackpots had the idea that mankind's use of fossil fuels had a warming effect on the weather. Environmentalists were pretty fired up by the notion. So were many politicians. Economists were largely tongue-tied because they had long ago conceded that there are some public goods that the market can't handle; surely the weather is one of them.

Enough years go by, and what do you have? Politicians from all over the world — every last one of them a huckster of some sort, only pretending to represent his nation — gathering in a posh resort in Europe to tax the world and plan its weather down to precise temperatures half a century from now.

In the entire history of mankind, there has not been a more preposterous spectacle than this.

I don't know if it is tragedy or farce that the meeting on global warming came to an end with the politicians racing home to deal with snowstorms and record cold temperatures.

I draw attention to this absurdity to make a more general point. What seems to have escaped the current generation is the notion that was once called freedom.

The video.

The transcript.

Gary Johnson: The Real Deal

I just got back from attending former NM governor Gary Johnson's final stop to promote his Our America Initiative. The event was at the Michigan Republican Liberty Caucus state convention in Novi, MI. Aside from really high attendance for a state convention (a sign of the times, perhaps?) and over eight RLC candidates Johnson gave a really good speech. More of an off the cuff sort of thing but he explained how he was successful as a governor and someone who just entered politics as a neophyte.

As a sign of the times within the liberty ranks, he got his biggest applause with saying we spend 43% more than we should (because that's the amount of debt required for the current budget) and questioning our currency situation and considering a move to a commodity based system.

Frankly, if you support Ron Paul you should really get behind Gary Johnson. His advantages as a candidate are that he has executive experience, he's young, engaging, and doesn't have the GOP hostility baggage that plagues Ron Paul. It will be interesting to see what Johnson decides to do. I could certainly see Paul happily offer his blessings to Johnson and hand off the torch.

Sand Drawing

Since Georg has gone all artistic-eclectic on us, here’s a neat little thing I stumbled on today. 

From the YouTube description:

Kseniya Simonova is a Ukrainian artist who just won Ukraine's version of "America's Got Talent." She uses a giant light box, dramatic music, imagination and "sand painting" skills to interpret Germany's invasion and occupation of Ukraine during WWII.

My Idea of Dancing ...

... when standard dances do not impose themselves upon a body.

Click on the links to see 'em hopping here and here.

Best Hiding Is in Plain Sight

Sometimes the best place to hide something is in plain sight.

Gizmodo explains:

Instead of hiding dust-ball-hunting spaghetti cable monsters behind furniture, I've decided to embrace chaos and transform it.