Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.
According to the much sneered at, and much feared, Mayan Apocalypse, tomorrow marks the end of the world. I’m inclined to believe this is true. I don’t, however, expect the earth to explode into a giant ball of cosmic dust or some plague rivaling the Black Death. What I do
Continue readingNothing in this morning’s news, or in my own life for that matter, is moving me sufficiently to justify a full post on a single subject or idea. I did find some interesting things online, though, that I’d like to share with you. Also, I always appreciate it when you
Continue readingIn the endless parade of images that my liberal friends feel compelled to put on Facebook, this was my favorite for the day: I honestly cannot understand a mindset that says the world popularity is the metric Americans should use for electing their president. Certainly a president who is conversant
Continue readingYesterday, I wrote that, given the Arab propensity for warfare, it doesn’t seem as if peace in the Middle East is likely any time soon. Today, I looked over a post I wrote last summer while in Greece, and concluded that Germany would be foolish to throw good German money
Continue readingYesterday, I wrote about European fairy tales versus American fairy tales. Of the former, I said: That’s the theme in the majority of fairy tales that originated in the old world: be good, be passive, and some deus ex machina figure, usually magical, will come and rescue you. Passivity is
Continue readingAmericans, especially Leftist Americans, will invariably assure you that Europeans are more civilized than Americans are. When pressed for details, they’ll cite art, music, architecture, skinny French women, and gun control. By those standards, I have to agree that the Europeans are indeed more civilized. I’ll go even further: when
Continue readingThis article that just appeared in Bloomberg.com, regarding Stockton-writ-California-writ-USA-writ-large’s pending bankruptcy, is just so absolutely jaw-dropping crazy…uh, no, wait….it isn’t really so crazy after all. Never mind. If Stockton Is Broke, Why Isn’t San Diego?: Steven Greenhut http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-02/if-stockton-is-broke-then-why-isn-t-san-diego-steven-greenhut.html Here’s the money take-away: referencing the fact that, for the past 20
Continue readingI’m planning a trip this summer to Japan, a country about which I know nothing. Actually that’s an overstatement. I know some things: it’s beautiful, historic, and clean (I love that part), and comes complete with great food and well-mannered people. But that’s all I know. Toji Pagoda I don’t
Continue readingThis is an exercise in pure speculation. I invite all here to bring their own notions to the table. An old friend of mine visited me last Saturday to catch up on things. We walked my dog and began a long conversation that ended later in my backyard over coffee
Continue readingFor years at this blog (and others) when we’ve written about Europe’s problems, we’ve focused primarily, not on the economy, but on those Muslim immigrants. One of the things that we talked about a lot was the fact that these same Muslim immigrants subsisted largely on public benefits. This little
Continue readingIs our democracy germinating the seeds of its own destruction? Alexis de Toqueville warned, “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” That day has come. It is not yet gone. Democracy in ancient Athens lasted about 250
Continue readingOne of my all-time favorite economic historians is Harvard’s Niall Ferguson, who does a very good job dissecting the transatlantic political and economic cultures with characteristic British clarity in erudition. He’s not perfect, however: witness his bad judgment in affixing his name to a worn-out political rag like Newsweek. But, I
Continue readingAs we settle into the Obama Depression era, one thing that I and others have noticed is that many of the very youth that voted enthusiastically for Obama are the ones already feeling the consequence of his policies: they are unemployed. As one of my college-age kids put it, “our
Continue readingForgive my long opening discourse. I need to set the stage. Most Americans don’t know much about Belgium and Flanders. It’s a shame. For a quick summary, Flanders is the region that stretches from Belgium’s northern border with the Netherlands, west to the English Channel and into northern France (including
Continue readingBookworm recently asked, “is Europe trying to save itself?” To that question, I can only offer anecdotal evidence from family and business visits made to France and Belgium this summer, shortly after the Greece-precipitated financial crisis. Europe (witness the EU) is an uber-bureacracy. For centuries, Europe’s forms of governance have
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