Since the last few posts have been, essentially, about the economy and the pending stimulus bill I thought that I’d share this recent article from Newsweek.
Thomas and Meacham are arguing that because of Bush practices and predicted Obama ones the United States is starting to look more and more like Europe (I doubt this but we’ll see).
All of this is unfolding in an economy that can no longer be understood, even in passing, as the Great Society vs. the Gipper. Whether we like it or not—or even whether many people have thought much about it or not—the numbers clearly suggest that we are headed in a more European direction. A decade ago U.S. government spending was 34.3 percent of GDP, compared with 48.2 percent in the euro zone—a roughly 14-point gap, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In 2010 U.S. spending is expected to be 39.9 percent of GDP, compared with 47.1 percent in the euro zone—a gap of less than 8 points. As entitlement spending rises over the next decade, we will become even more French.
What this is truly pointing at is that since Reagan, and if you really want to all the back to Nixon, the Republican party has been spouting the party line but spending like Democrats (although, I assume many of you knew this already). It’s interesting to actually here a columnist, media of any kind really, finally come out and say that Bush was somewhat socialist in his policies and promoted big government over little.
Personally, this is an article, among many, that allows me to shove it down the throats of those who blame deregulation on the current economic collapse. I blame it on an increase in regulation in certain sectors (banking, realty, etc.) and the what the article above calls:
Much of that economic growth was real, but for the past five years or so, it has borne a suspicious resemblance to Bernie Madoff’s stock fund. Americans have been living high on borrowed money (the savings rate dropped from 7.6 percent in 1992 to less than zero in 2005) while financiers built castles in the air.
Or irresponsible spending by Americans during an economic high.
I’m not arguing that one has to disagree or agree with this article but I think that for the current arguments that are being made in this country about the economy, big government, and socialism that this short piece happens to have some very cogent points that you don’t see in the mainstream media very often.
Posted in Media, National, Politics, World | Comments Off on According to Newsweek America is turning French
A university in Taiwan has begun offering courses in everyone’s favorite subject: Porn! The class calls on students to analyze porn and the impact it has on it viewers. Maybe you would think there would be some concern over the exploitation of women, but you would be wrong. The biggest worry heard from the class was best put by one anonymous student:
“I am really worried my parents will see the score report when it is mailed home. I won’t know what to say if I get a high score. However if I fail the course, I can speak to my parents and suggest that maybe I should watch more porn.”
Other news worth reporting; I am currently working on my transfer application to a university in Taiwan.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reminds us why civil liberties and academic freedom are important:
Saudi authorities have released Matrouk al-Faleh, a political scientist and one of Saudi Arabia’s leading human-rights activists, after holding him without charge for nearly eight months, CNN reports.
It remains unclear why Mr. al-Faleh was released or even why the Saudi secret police arrested him in the first place, on May 19 in his office at Riyadh’s King Saud University.
The arrest came shortly after Mr. al-Faleh publicly criticized the harsh and overcrowded conditions that two of his clients were facing in prison. Both men were fellow human-rights activists who had been found guilty of “incitement to protest” after supporting a demonstration outside the prison.
A lot of time on this blog and elsewhere is spent criticizing the leftist-leanings of academia, but I will never argue against the right of professors, even those with whom I disagree vehemently, to voice their own opinions. In fact, I will take the inconvenience of a blathering sociology professor over a state-run goon-squad any day.
I just got an email informing me that the Oregon Commentator has once again been chosen as one of ten finalists in the America’s Future Foundation College Blogger Contest. Last year we had the pleasure of being chosen as a finalist, and we took second place. The official list of finalists hasn’t been announced yet, but the judges this year are:
On an aside, I’m reminded of when we first found out we were in the contest last year. Someone asked, “What do you think our odds of actually winning are?” to which then Managing Editor Jake Speicher deadpanned, “I’d say about one in 10.”
In case you thought it was just the ASUO who were complete idiots:
Students at an Ottawa university are pulling out of a Canada-wide fundraiser that provides close to $1 million a year for cystic fibrosis research and treatment, arguing that the disease “has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men” — something experts say is untrue.
[…]
The student council motion stated that orientation week “strives to be inclusive” and “all orientees and volunteers should feel like their fundraising efforts will serve their diverse communities.”
I have trouble believing this is real and not some sort of bad parable constructed by an Ayn Rand zombie.
Just when you thought the enemies of the free market couldn’t possibly get any more crass in their efforts to make piles of money selling communist chic garbage to complete idiots comes the Che Guevara candle! Yes! For only $75.00 (!), you too can buy a piece of revolutionary ambiance:
In a hotel of Havana, sizzling under the stubborn sun of the Revolution, fierce overtones of leather and tobacco meddle with waxy silence of wood. Breaking out of the cool dimness, sly grimaces emerge, framed by the smoke of cigars and the barrels of guns.
I’m not entirely sure what “the waxy silence of wood” and “sly grimaces” are supposed to smell like, but I’m sure it’s fucking awful.
I guess the complaints of Che’s offspring have gone thus far unheeded.
The ambitious comic rendering of Das Kapital is designed to parcel the complex economic theories of Marx’s hefty original in a format which Japanese adore digesting their information from; it will also be compressed into a size that can be slipped discretely into a Chanel evening bag…
What kind of communist totes a Chanel evening bag?
A couple of days ago, the Ol’ Dirty Emerald ran a huge front page story reporting the horrifying truth that (brace yourself) some scientists don’t think global warming is man-made. It even included a provocative headline, “A global farce?”
Needless to say, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I even have it on good authority that one of the ODE’s delivery boys was fired after refusing to distribute the offending issue. And then came this priceless letter to the editor by a young Mr. Tim Reams:
When Ms. Hoffman and Ms. Chase seek journalism careers after graduation, I hope they will show the courage of their convictions and proudly sport this example of their work to potential employers. Time will tell how the world will view this kind of a story, written at the end of 2008. My guess, though, is that such work will be lumped, if it isn’t already, with those that hung on to such theories as “tobacco doesn’t cause cancer,” “the Holocaust never happened,” and “some races are intellectually superior to others.” I find the denial of human-caused global warming just as offensive.
So if denying anthropogenic global warming is the ethical equivalent of denying the Holocaust, that means those who cause global warming are the same as … NAZIS! Oh, Godwin, you win again!
Oregon Commentator operatives are currently in the process of infiltrating major political and economic centers across the globe. Sudsy has already been spotted in China and Washington, D.C. Our latest dispatch comes from agent Matt Perreault, who was cool enough to take the time to upload a video of himself and Sudsy O’Sullivan hanging out at the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul:
I am also reasonably confident we will soon be receiving intel from operatives stationed in Kazan and other key locales around Russia. The Conspiracy(tm) continues!
The point here is simple: Trust no one who declares an end to a system as complex and successful as capitalism, or who sees the current crisis as the long-awaited fulfillment of Marx’s voodoo economics.
[…]
[C]apitalism, globalization, and the free market aren’t going anywhere. Yes, unemployment is still only 6 percent—it will most certainly rise—and the stock market isn’t quite in full collapse, but is suffering from periodic seizures. And indeed, we are most certainly heading towards a severe recession. But capitalism is durable, and has sustained itself in far worse situations. So ignore the disaster socialists: They are, after all, only taking advantage of the current crisis to try a little shock therapy of their own.
It’s no secret that I’m not a huge fan of Vladimir Putin. Nevertheless, when I see something like this, it makes me wish we had a leader in this country who wasn’t afraid to make judo DVDs:
A montage on Russian television of the white-robed prime minister body-slamming opponents accompanied the release of the video, “Let’s Learn Judo With Vladimir Putin,” in Mr. Putin’s hometown, St. Petersburg, on Tuesday.
…
The video is part of a growing media library highlighting Mr. Putin’s masculinity that includes episodes of Mr. Putin, a former K.G.B. agent, bare-chested on a fishing expedition and in flight in a fighter jet. No cameras were rolling when Mr. Putin was said to have tranquilized the tiger as it stalked the journalists who had accompanied the prime minister and some scientists on a scientific expedition to Russia’s Far East in late August.
George Bush clearing brush on his ranch just doesn’t stack up very well against all that, does it?
Just a quick update to a story posted here back in August. At that time, Random House refused to publish a potentially controversial novel about the life Aisha, wife of Muslim figurehead Mohammad. Random House dropped the book due to concerns voiced by an American academic who recommended that the novel not be published because of the potential to offend Muslims and instigate violence.
I wrote at the time:
I just think it’s a sad testament to how culturally spineless we in the West have become, essentially letting thugs with knives, bombs, and AK-47’s dictate what will be published and what will not. It’s espeicially disgusting that a member of the academy would rather prevent a book from being published than to write a critique of it after the novel had come out, especially since said academic would almost certainly never stand for a similar treatment of her own work.
I’m gratified to see that the novel has finally been published in the United States by Beaufort Books. Unfortunately, the British publisher, Gibson Square Books has been the target of arson and as a result may not end up releasing the book in the U.K. after all. Both publishers should both be applauded for ignoring the “advice” of academics more concerned with avoiding offense than with protecting free speech and standing up to violent religious nihilists. In a free society, publishers should never have to be concerned about violent retaliation for publishing “offensive” literature.
For all I know, The Jewel of Medina could be the worst book ever penned, full of slander and lies about Mohammad; it doesn’t matter. As Eric Kampmann, president of Beaufort said, “[I]t was better for everybody… to let the conversation switch from a conversation about terrorists and fearful publishers to a conversation about the merits of the book itself.”
That sounds about right. If The Jewel of Medina is crap, then critics will savage it. If it’s full of lies about Mohammad, then knowledgeable Muslims can educate people about what’s wrong with it. If it turns out to be a modern classic, then people will go buy it. What’s important is that they have the opportunity.
