I would imagine that to practice the Socratic Method, a man must possess a curious mind and be less of an egotist, attributes the intellectually incurious Mr. O’Reilly lacks.
In any case, “the Shangri-La of Socratic disinterest” is a wonderful turn of phrase.
Update: I see we’ve been visited by one of the many fans of the big-government, interventionist neoconservative Bill O’Reilly. Did I miss that lot! This from “DUMB AND DIRTY NEOCON ARTISTS”:
Like any leftist, neocons support the meddlesome expansion of the “Managerial State” at home. Somewhat at odds with many liberals, the neocons want to take the same intrusive crusade abroad. This is what defines Bush’s neoconservative administration: social engineering both at home and abroad.
I would imagine that to practice the Socratic Method, a man must possess a curious mind and be less of an egotist, attributes the intellectually incurious Mr. O’Reilly lacks.
In any case, “the Shangri-La of Socratic disinterest” is a wonderful turn of phrase.
Update: I see we’ve been visited by one of the many fans of the big-government, interventionist neoconservative Bill O’Reilly. Did I miss that lot! This from “DUMB AND DIRTY NEOCON ARTISTS”:
Like any leftist, neocons support the meddlesome expansion of the “Managerial State” at home. Somewhat at odds with many liberals, the neocons want to take the same intrusive crusade abroad. This is what defines Bush’s neoconservative administration: social engineering both at home and abroad.
Bibi Netanyahu’s excoriating address to the UN is being described as “Churchillian.” I doubt Bibi matched the master, but the address was factual, solemn, dignified and to the point (excerpted and YouTubed below).
So too is Canada to be commended. Foreign minister Lawrence Cannon walked out while A-Jad, the Iranian Majnun, delivered his rant. (A-Jad is short for Ahmadinejad. First name: Mahmoud. Residence: Iran. Occupation: dictator.) The Canada of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has a good record with respect to Israel.
Said Canada’s Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon: “The prime minister of Canada indicated earlier today that the outrageous statements by Iran’s president, denying, of course, a holocaust, casting terrible aspersions against the state of Israel, the complete violation for human rights … as we’ve seen Iran over the course of the last several years, complete disregard for United Nations Security Council resolutions, prompted us quite clearly to not be in the same room with the Iranians while the president was making his speech.”
Details are sketchy, but the US seems to have lingered a little too long in the assembly. I can’t find information on who stayed tuned to the fulminating A-Jad and who left. [Any one?]
Over to Bibi: “Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries.
But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency?
A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state.
What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations!”… [A mockery of the Charter, perhaps, but true to the record of the institution.]
GOVERNMENT IS. “The government will have to hire some 600,000 people during the four years of President Obama’s term. That would bump up the current workforce by a third,” reports MSNBC.
The New York Times informs that, “While the private sector has shed 6.9 million jobs since the beginning of the recession, state and local governments have expanded their payrolls and added 110,000 jobs, according to a report issued Thursday by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government.”
It then adds a stupendously silly afterthought:
“Government jobs are always more stable than private sector jobs during downturns, but their ability to weather the current deep recession startled Donald J. Boyd, the senior fellow at the institute who wrote the report.”
[SNIP]
Government jobs come into being by political fiat, not by market forces or necessity. Political will is what sustains them; it is state force that accounts for their stability and longevity. This is why these jobs, so to speak, “write” their own conditions of employment.
“Government job creation schemes are predicated on government taxing, borrowing or inflating the money supply—activities that reduce capital available to the private sector. Such programs are politically popular because they are visible. However, for every job ‘created’ by government, an unidentifiable job will be destroyed in the private sector.”
It’s a zero-sum game: The parasite is sucking the lifeblood of the host. The larger he gets, the weaker the host grows.
The growth of government, of course, means that many more leaches will be implementing onerous rules and regulations that make it even harder for the struggling private economy to recover.
Still, the Times is perplexed at “the disparity between the public and private sector job market.”
Update I: “CANADA’S private sector added 49,200 workers in August, the first time they have hired more than fired since September,”reports the AP.
Of greater interest is the fact that, “while the U.S. has seen 81 banks fail in 2009 alone, Canada has not experienced the failure of any major financial institution. There has been no crippling mortgage meltdown or banking crisis north of the border, where the financial sector is dominated by five large banks.”
Update II (Sept. 5): MILTON FRIEDMAN (Via Roy B.) on the fallacy of government as an agent of wealth creation and on needing production—goods and services—not spending:
Update III (Sept. Eighth): SWITZERLAND HAS “knocked the United States off the position as the world’s most competitive economy” (via Reuters & Drudge).
The U.S. as the world’s largest economy lost last year’s strong lead, slipping to number two for the first time since the introduction of the index in its current form in 2004.
The study also factors in a survey among business leaders, assessing for example the government’s efficiency or the flexibility of the labor market. …
The WEF applauded Switzerland for its capacity to innovate, sophisticated business culture, effective public services, excellent infrastructure and well-functioning goods markets.
If to go by the report, the depression is some kind of swine flu, which randomly infects some, but not other, banks. However, American banks were leveraged like no other financial institutions in the world. (I’m not including Zimbabwe’s banks, although maybe I should, given how close the US is to Tanzania with respect to the soundness of its banks: “In the assessment of banks’ soundness, the Alpine country still ranked 44th. U.S. banks fell to 108 — right behind Tanzania — and British banks to 126 in the ranking, now topped by Canada’s banks.”)
Wait until the insurance industry collapses because of an Obama decree against “discrimination” based on health status. This is the very definition of insurance. Remove the costs of risk taking and you remove the incentives to avoid risks. Doesn’t Dipstick associate this incentive structure with his oft-repeated objective: inculcating healthy habits in the population? Moreover, unless the industry can charge premiums based on risk, it becomes a non-profit. Remove profit from the insurance equation, and the industry will be on its way to croaking.
