Saturday, May 15, 2004

The Commons: Immobilizing the Poor

Iain Murray has done it again. With several coconspirators he has put together "The Commons" - I'll let him describe it here. The tagline is "Promoting environmental quality and human dignity and prosperity through markets and property rights".

The blog is so new that you can read it all in a short time, and I'd recommend that - just hit the archives for May 2004.

Or maybe check out The Commons: Immobilizing the Poor. Would you buy a car for every poor person in town if you could do it in place of and for lesser cost than building a local transit system? Odds are you'd at least marvel at how expensive this would be as a minimum, but you'd have to admit that it addressed the transit needs of those most in need of it.

But Denver rail proponents objected for other reasons. Just read it....

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Monday, May 10, 2004

Artists AWOL?

Can we get rid of these smiling pictures and videos of Osama Bin Laden? Even the WSJ does it in the article cited below. Godwin be damned - did our newspapers ever publish flattering pictures of Adolf Hitler?

Too bad Doctor Seuss is gone. He did a great job with Hitler - too bad we'll never see his take on OBL.

And where's our Charlie Chaplin as in "The Great Dictator"?

Sounds good, but...

I dislike Jimmy Carter. I like Victor Davis Hanson. So it pains me to suggest that JC might have come up with a better solution than VDH proposes here.

VDH says JC should have declared war on Iran back in 1979. At the time the Cold War was alive and such a thing would not have been so straightforward - Hanson himself acknowledges that the Soviets were behind Arab terrorists. We also did not have the sophisticated logistics and weapons we have today. So it would have been extremely difficult to carry out the threat at best even under competent leadership in the White House. (Then again, it's amazing how fast the hostages were released once Ronald Reagan got to the White House).

And that's leaving aside the fact that our economy was weaker at the time. People complain about the costs now - imagine taking it out of a much smaller economy.

And we now know how things turned out. Back then it wasn't clear that Khomeini's gang would having staying power.

OTOH sometime in the same year the Russians launched their invasion of Afghanistan. We lived to see it bleed the Russians white militarily and economically, and the jihadis may be correct in saying they brought the USSR down. They certainly contributed to it.

So I'm thinking that Jimmy Carter actually did something that worked out right. But being JC, it could only have happened because he screwed up at screwing up.

What have they done to my Blogger?

I woke up this morning to do a quick post and what do I see? They've finagled with Blogger. It even does its own comments now. More here.

Sunday, May 09, 2004

The difference a mother makes

You've probably never heard of Fulton, IL. It's right where US 30, (aka the Lincoln Highway) crosses the Mississippi River, across from Clinton, IA and 20-odd miles upriver from the Quad Cities.

Fulton is small, but it has character. Leave something in one place long enough and it'll wind up with a tulip on it, because Fulton is about as Dutch as it gets on this side of the Atlantic. Since 1974 they've been celebrating Dutch Days in early May.

But arguably the most famous "Dutch" from Fulton wasn't Dutch at all. It was Jack "Dutch" Reagan and his wife Nelle, the parents of Ronald Reagan.

Jack Reagan had problems with alcohol and moved the family many times as he attempted to make a living. As noted here, it was mother Nelle who made Ronald Reagan the man he would become, even down to the elocution lessons which served him well later as a broadcaster, actor and public speaker.

Nelle Reagan died senile in 1962. What a shame - she may never have known that her son had become governor of California, much less popular successful two-term President of the US.

The article about her closes with "Mothers, take heart. Yours is a tough business; the deck is stacked against you. Nelle Reagan, too, faced trials. Yet, she persevered—and left a mark on history."

My mother faced some trials of her own. Thanks Mom. I'll never be President, but I'll always be a better man than I would have been without you.

Cage rattling

I think I've published something like this before, but it wasn't an election year then. Anyway...

1) All political parties seek to enlarge their constituencies.
2) The Democrats are the party of the poor.
3) Ergo, the Democrats want to make more of us poor. John Kerry's wife and Ted Kennedy's family have theirs, Jack, and they need servants like you.

4) The Republicans are the party of the rich
5) Ergo, the Republicans want to make more of us rich. How else can you afford to buy Bush's buddies' baseball tickets and oil?

Now really - what more do you need to know?

Just because...

George Washington's Rules of Civility

Broken eggs

A short history by war crimes by Stephen Green.