For anyone who has been missing my blogging, I have been actively twittering lately, so follow me on there as @paxdickinson if you so desire.

Person A has not one single ounce of racial animus in his heart. He creates a cartoon that has a monkey in it, not realizing for one second that someone may think that a monkey in a cartoon is a secret code for black people. Not being a racist, the thought doesn’t even cross his mind.

Person B is a stereotypical racist bastard. He comes up with the same cartoon, since it’s based on a recent news incident, but makes an immediate connection between monkeys and black people, because he’s a fucking racist. Knowing he’ll get shit for it, he doesn’t publish the cartoon, but comes up with a different one without any monkeys.

Person A is now declared the new Don Imus. Person B has dodged this bullet.

In other words, not risking being seen as a racist requires constantly keeping in mind the stereotype that black people are often compared to monkeys by racists. If you don’t immediately make a connection between black people and monkeys, because you aren’t a racist, you run the risk of inadvertently printing something that will result in people accusing you of being a racist.

Actual racists don’t run this risk, because they immediately do think of black people when they think of monkeys, which is what we’re all apparently supposed to do so we don’t make a mistake and have people think we’re racist.

And Attorney General Eric Holder thinks we don’t talk about race because we’re “a nation of cowards“? Seems like we’re just sensible.

Thanks to Best of the Web for this analogy.

Congress will consider legislation to extend some of the curbs on executive pay that now apply only to those banks receiving federal assistance, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said.

“There’s deeply rooted anger on the part of the average American,” the Massachusetts Democrat said at a Washington news conference today.

He said the compensation restrictions would apply to all financial institutions and might be extended to include all U.S. companies.

Yes, you read that right. He’s talking about a national maximum wage. If you don’t understand why this is a bad thing, I implore you to read Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, now freely available on the web.

Note that if you want to excuse her gaffe as “mis-speaking” you have to be on record as giving George W. Bush the exact same benefit of the doubt, or you are a partisan hypocrite..

Political analysts frequently consider what it means to be a libertarian. In fact, in 1997, Charles Murray published a short book entitled “What It Means to Be a Libertarian” that does an excellent job of presenting the core principles of libertarian political philosophy. But almost no one ever discusses what it feels like to be a libertarian. How does it actually feel to be someone who holds the principles described in Murray’s book?

I’ll tell you. It feels bad. Being a libertarian means living with a level of frustration that is nearly beyond human endurance. It means being subject to unending scorn and derision despite being inevitably proven correct by events. How does it feel to be a libertarian? Imagine what the internal life of Cassandra must have been and you will have a pretty good idea.

Imagine spending two decades warning that government policy is leading to a major economic collapse, and then, when the collapse comes, watching the world conclude that markets do not work.

Imagine continually explaining that markets function because they have a built in corrective mechanism; that periodic contractions are necessary to weed out unproductive ventures; that continually loosening credit to avoid such corrections just puts off the day of reckoning and inevitably leads to a larger recession; that this is precisely what the government did during the 1920’s that led to the great depression; and then, when the recession hits, seeing it offered as proof of the failure of laissez-faire capitalism.

(more…)

The scariest graph you will ever see.

Live Free or Drown, a Wired article about seasteading. I’m really into the Seasteading concept, even before I read this article and learned that the Patri Friedman behind the project is the son of David Friedman, noted anarcho-capitalist, and the grandson of Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman, both of whom are huge personal heroes of mine. I need to write a nice big blog entry about Seasteading, but this article is a nice intro to the subject.

Timothy F. Geithner was sworn in as secretary of the Treasury on Monday evening, confirmed by a Senate majority that concluded that his experience in government and finance outweighed concerns about recent disclosures of some $34,000 in past tax delinquencies.

Don’t allow this to lead you to believe that you would be treated the same if you committed the same “crime”.* Do as we say, not as we do.

This reminds me of Obama’s admitted past drug use. He admits to smoking weed and snorting coke in his younger days. Presumably he doesn’t think that it would have led to a better outcome for him to have been incarcerated for that behavior, but he’s totally fine with jailing anyone who gets caught doing the exact thing he admits to doing.

Hypocrisy, thy middle name is Hussein.

* Personally, I believe that tax evasion is akin to telling a mugger you only have $20 while hiding the rest of your money in your shoe. It’s a lie, but you’re lying to a thief. Legally it may be a crime, but morally it clearly isn’t.

“We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.”

Barack Obama
On US troops in Afghanistan
August 14, 2007

…doing another.

Hours after US missiles killed 22 people in Fata, President Barack Obama convened a meeting of his top national security advisers and endorsed the decision to continue drone strikes into Pakistan…

Although US and Pakistani officials insist that the missiles targeted Al Qaeda and Taliban suspects, many civilians were also killed in the attacks, making it harder for the country’s shaky government to win support for its decision to join the US-led war against terror.

Oh wait, I understand. His original complaint wasn’t that we were “air-raiding villages and killing civilians”, it’s that we were “JUST air-raiding villages and killing civilians”. As in, we should be doing other things, as well as continuing the “air-raiding villages and killing civilians”.

My mistake. Probably a lot of people who voted for him thought he meant something different, too.

Speak to me, O Muse, of this resourceful man
who strides so boldly upon the golden shrine of Potomac,
Between Ionic plywood columns, to the kleig light altar.
Fair Obamacles, favored of the gods, ascends to Olympus
Amidst lusty tributes and the strumming lyres of Media;
Their mounted skyboxes echo with the singing of his name
While Olbermos and Mattheus in their greasy togas wrassle
For first honor of basking in their hero’s reflected glory.
Who is this man, so bronzed in countenance,
So skilled of TelePrompter, clean and articulate
whose ears like a stately urn’s protrude?
So now, daughter of Zeus, tell us his story.
And just the Cliff Notes if you don’t mind,
We don’t have all day.