Steve Jobs (1955–2011)

America, Business, Capitalism, Celebrity, Ethics, Human Accomplishment, Morality, Pop-Culture, Technology

Ryan McMaken at Mises.org eulogizes Steve Jobs:

Steve Jobs, one of the most important entrepreneurs and innovators of both the 20th and 21st centuries, has died. Will he receive the sort of veneration reserved to politicians when they die? That’s unlikely, although Steve Jobs typically did more good for humanity every day before lunch time than any politician has ever done in his whole life.
Jobs should be considered a great American icon in the same way that Michelangelo is associated with Italy or Mozart with Austria.
When foreigners walk into “American-themed” gift shops in America, they should be greeted with commemorative plates bearing Jobs’s face.
Unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen since we have to honor great humanitarians like nuker-in-chief Harry Truman instead.
And of course, Jobs did great things for all humans, and not just Americans.

Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs.

APPLE–Remembering Steve Jobs: “… Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built…”

Playboy before “The Girls Next Door”. Via LewRockwell.com, here is the definitive Playboy interview with Steven Jobs.

Not Doing a Palin

Elections, Ethics, Federalism, Politics, Republicans, Sarah Palin

Gov. Chris Christie, aka “The Incredible Hulk,” has certainly struck a pose—and it is in opposition to the one Sarah Palin struck when she gave up the governorship of Alaska midterm in order to frolic on the national stage.

For Christie to have joined the presidential lineup without completing his term as the governor of New Jersey would have amounted to doing a Palin.

As for a country obsessed with Gov. Christie and his non-existent presidential plans: It reminds me of a toddler chasing a parent, screaming, “Pick me up, daddy, pick me up. Kiss better, kiss better.”

America’s New Sweetart

America, Ann Coulter, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Foreign Policy, Justice

@AnnCoulter has a few tart tweets about Amanda Knox’s exoneration.

The noxious Knox had been convicted of murdering her British roommate based on O.J.-like evidence, which was overturned after the American’s family and their PR machine invaded Italy.

• “Amanda Knox not guilty, Casey Anthony rolls eyes, says; ‘we’ll, duh…'”
• “Amanda Knox begins search for real killer.”
• “Former OJ jurors on Mediterranean cruise, Amanda Knox not guilty… coincidence?”

Percolating Euroskepticism

Debt, Economy, EU, Europe, Foreign Policy, Nationhood, Political Philosophy, States' Rights

Last month I warned that European “politicians had better beware: Ordinary Germans have come to realize that adding an overarching tier of tyrants—the EU—to their own government has benefited them as a second hangman enhances the health of a condemned man.”

Mainstream media is catching on:

“…there has been a colossal misunderstanding,” writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of The Telegraph, “around the world of what has just has happened in Germany. The significance of yesterday’s vote by the Bundestag to make the EU’s €440bn rescue fund (EFSF) more flexible is not that the outcome was a ‘Yes'”.

This assent was a foregone conclusion, given the backing of the opposition Social Democrats and Greens. In any case, the vote merely ratifies the EU deal reached more than two months ago – itself too little, too late, rendered largely worthless by very fast-moving events.
The significance is entirely the opposite. The furious debate over the erosion of German fiscal sovereignty and democracy – as well as the escalating costs of the EU rescue machinery – has made it absolutely clear that the Bundestag will not prop up the ruins of monetary union for much longer.

Left and right, American statists want to believe that work-horse Europeans (Germans, for instance) support the Eurozone and the wider European Union (EU). As I ventured in “Euro-Bondage & the Next Tier of Tyrants,” it is but a matter of time before patriotic Euroskeptics, to whom our press makes only veiled mention, reject the absurd claim that the EU colossus would or could advance their interests.

Fans of freedom, and hence of nullification and secession, should watch the developments in Germany with great interest. That country’s government and high court have flouted the people’s sovereignty for too long. A change is a coming…