Spyral Notebook

Another WIBDI Moment

2010-02-28T17:30:00.003-05:00

Imagine the howls of derision if Bush had said this...

Maybe if he had said it in "Austrian" it would have been more clear.

Nice Hair

2010-02-08T18:39:00.002-05:00

Quote of the Day

2010-02-08T00:46:00.001-05:00

Reagan wins: DC shut down on his birthday….

Fun Instapundit Headline

2010-02-02T23:17:00.000-05:00

RAHM EMANUEL COMPARES DEMOCRATS TO RETARDED PEOPLE, then apologizes to retarded people.

What the iPad May Be About

2010-01-29T19:44:00.000-05:00

The iPad, then, is a transition to a future when, in Apple's mind, multitouch is so good that we no longer need anything but a screen. Whether that's an appealing place for you or something that sounds dreadful, Apple obviously has a vision of the future for which they're smartly and methodically laying groundwork. And once the text input problem is solved (hyper-accurate handwriting or speech recognition, perhaps?), you can bet that's the future we'll have.

A Word from the Old Pro

2009-09-15T18:53:00.003-04:00

“This is a five-spiral crash, boys.”

Bush speaks... sort of. Through the words of a staffer, anyway. But he pretty much gets it all right. The McCain candidacy was a mess from day one. How he got as far as he did, I will never know.

Sue Lloyd

2009-09-10T20:35:00.000-04:00

Tom Tom for iPhone

2009-08-23T22:20:00.001-04:00

Death of a Salesman

2009-08-22T21:40:00.002-04:00

Being president isn't easy. A candidate can get away with speeches that are glib and vague. A president can't. "It's easy to sell ice cream," says Don Stewart, the spokesman for Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. "It's hard to sell rum raisin ice cream." Obama's problem is he hasn't learned the difference.

Do You Wanna Date My Avatar

2009-08-22T01:46:00.000-04:00

There's an App for That!

2009-08-14T23:43:00.000-04:00

Simone Signoret

2009-08-14T23:04:00.002-04:00

The Singularity Film

2009-08-13T20:53:00.000-04:00

Paula Prentiss

2009-06-16T21:29:00.002-04:00

The New Green Zone

2009-06-12T09:15:00.001-04:00

"They want the freedom to have union leaders speak for them and the opportunity to pursue wealth regardless of the corporate balance sheet," he said. "They want the kind of safety and security that comes from knowing you'll always have a job, despite the ongoing threat posed by the fickle consumer."

In the Loop

2009-06-10T23:38:00.002-04:00

Watch the last five seconds of this trailer for the what is surely the best line of the movie.

Ya.... Me Too!

2009-06-10T23:22:00.001-04:00

"Sarah Palin should send her husband Todd on the show instead.
I'd watch that."

Senta Berger

2009-06-09T21:16:00.003-04:00

A Must Read from VDH

2009-06-07T10:56:00.000-04:00

In short, Obama reminds me a little of myself–at 26.

Hockey Sticks (Real and Imagined)

2009-06-07T08:52:00.004-04:00

It looks like the Democrats finally found a hockey stick graph that works.

Unlike the completely discredited Global Warming graph that was supposed to show a HUGE increase in global temperatures, this one depicts the HUGE increase in unemployment since Obama accomplished his ginormous transfer of wealth from the private to the public sector.

What a surprise.

OK, so let's be honest. Is all this unemployment due directly to Obama's policies? No. We are on our way out of a very deep recession. Unemployment would naturally rise at this point in the recovery.

(Remember the screaming MSM "jobless recovery" headlines for months during the recovery of 2003? Don't expect to see anything like that now, but you get the point. Ed: Wanna play WIBDI?)

Second question. Did the "Stimulus Package" create the 3 Million jobs Obama claimed it would and help shield us from our unemployment pain? Of course not.

Transferring wealth from the private sector to the public sector creates unemployment (see Europe). Only liberal politicians think otherwise. And they have, shall we say, an incentive to believe the wholly discredited fiscal spending clap trap of Keynsian economics.

Hell, even if government spending could get into the system quickly enough to impact unemployment (which, of course it cannot), the Obama spending package targets politically sensitive sectors of the economy, not ones suffering high unemployment rates.

It's a bit silly to think that truck company dispatchers are suddenly going to become solar panel engineers at "green" manufacturing boutiques. Or lawn care "specialists" are going to easily transfer their skills to eco-transport companies. Apparently that's a level of detail our compassionate leaders didn't consider when ramming a $700 Billion spending bill through congress in what, a week? (Which, of course, none of them even read!)

Democrats, being politicians first and economists, well never, can hardly understand the signals they have sent the business community. Obamacrats sit in their plush offices contemplating macro indicators and wondering why, after pouring massive liquidity into the economy, investment hasn't taken off.

The reason, of course, is that business people know that inflation is on the way and that it will undermine the value of any investments made today. The impact of the "Stimulus Package" was immediate, all right. It made business fearful of adding new capacity.

The wonderful thing about capitalism is that the rules never change. If you try to manage the economy using methods that don't fit the rule set, it comes around behind you and takes a big bite out of your butt.

For instance, if you borrow massively in a single (simple) -minded effort to move a politically sensitive unemployment number, the economy reacts with an expectation of inflation which stifles investment and creates higher unemployment. In policy circles, this is known as the Law of Unintended Consequences.

In other circles (mine, for instance), it is known as the "No Shit Rule of Basic Economics".

The Key Question

2009-06-01T23:42:00.004-04:00

"Suppose the deal announced today were the only possible pre-packaged bankruptcy, and your choice was to take it or allow GM to liquidate now. What would you do?"

Liquidate.

But read the whole (long) thing if you want to understand what was actually announced today.

Plus, this... as in "here we go again, just like the Chrysler deal, wrecking 150 years of bankruptcy law" (since one William C. Bullit set its foundation in law).

"The deal is unfair to unsecured creditors, because they get a worse deal than someone standing behind them in line (the UAW’s VEBA). It has nothing to do with who those parties are (labor vs. creditors). It is about the importance of maintaining a stable and predictable set of rules to govern the capital structure of a firm, and the value that stability creates for firms’ ability to raise capital. All these arguments boil down to the cardinal rule of waiting in line for the kindergarten bus: it’s not fair to cut in line. If that rule is broken too often, chaos ensues."

Cars Get the O'Rourke Treatment (QOTD)

2009-05-31T09:23:00.002-04:00

But cars didn’t shape our existence; cars let us escape with our lives. We’re way the heck out here in Valley Bottom Heights and Trout Antler Estates because we were at war with the cities. We fought rotten public schools, idiot municipal bureaucracies, corrupt political machines, rampant criminality and the pointy-headed busybodies. Cars gave us our dragoons and hussars, lent us speed and mobility, let us scout the terrain and probe the enemy’s lines. And thanks to our cars, when we lost the cities we weren’t forced to surrender, we were able to retreat.

Unlike, for instance, our counterparts in Brussels. It now becomes more and more clear why the car is the enemy.

Whack-a-Mole

2009-05-29T20:34:00.004-04:00

“In Spain that’s 100% legal.”

It's rough being the RIAA these days. You knock one cool service down and another pops up in its place a week later. Worse than that, the new site works even better.

One guy in his living room can do what the nets take months to accomplish with sites like Hulu. It's tough being in the entertainment distribution business these days.

Update: But just to be fair, the new Hulu desktop software is pretty cool. If you have your computer linked up to a Hi-def monitor (... of course), it snaps open quickly and works better (IMHO) than most of the standard internet TV programs (listening Microsoft?). Video quality is OK, but not as good as the standard .avi file or streaming HiDef (like MLB). So... torrents still rule.

Yes, of course...

2009-05-29T17:17:00.003-04:00

... Cornyn is correct. Calling people racists is bad manners and mostly pretty stupid.

But I have two questions.

First, why is it always OK for Democrats to call Republicans racist, but warrants a headline from CNN when it happens in reverse? In my estimation Republicans are more color blind in their policies than Democrats, which would lead one to believe that they are less apt to account for race in their decision making (as would be "racist").

Second, do you think CNN would interview a Democrat politician if another Democrat called a Republican a "racist"? Of course not. There wouldn't be room for anything else on their web site (OK, I exaggerate. But it felt good writing it.)

Some of the least racist, most color blind institutions in America are dominated by conservatives. Like the US military. Like corporate America. Like the South, for that matter.

The places that account for race for admission and advancement are more often than not dominated by liberals... academia and government, for instance.

The media twist on issues of race is positively Kafkaesque. What is, is not. And what is not, is.

So please, spare me the faux outrage at Rush and Newt. I'll start worrying about punishing those two fat white guys when my liberal friends stop calling me a racist because I support low taxes!

Nothing More Need Be Said

2009-05-28T08:24:00.002-04:00