Let The Joyous News Be Spread!

While I wasn't looking I accumulated over a million page views. Woo hoo!

During this time Megan McArdle has managed to fail up to spectacular heights and accumulate a tidy little fortune. I would not say my business model has been a successful one but it has amused me from time to time.

Liar

Megan McArdle said this:

 Like a lot of journalists, I get hung up on that pesky issue of "truth." Truth is our job. All we have is the public trust, and every time someone fails to do the work of vetting stories, the whole profession suffers.

Isn't that a precious bit of bullshit? Nothing happens when pundits lie unless the powers-that-be want to get rid of them anyway. They move on to the next place of employment or are given a raise or a better job.

Megan McArdle, In Short

Megan "Koch-head" McArdle: Scott Walker is the victim of a heinous injustice and "There are worse things than campaign finance violations."

McArdle utterly ignores the prosecution's side of the case and of course does not mention the rampant judicial conflict of interest. She ignores all of Walker's history in Wisconsin and peddles National Review talking points. One day she will be run over by an Uber driverless car which failed to recognize her as human.

David Brooks, Liar

David Brooks is my name
America my nation.
Fantasy is my dwelling place
Reverie my destination.


David Brooks is a liar. It is both his job and his inclination. It is the only way he can be one of the elite, in every sense.  He lives in the Fantasy Island in his head where rich people can grant his wishes. But there was always a catch on the island: be careful what you wish for because you have no idea what will the fantasy will cost you. Brooks has lied so deeply and for so long and with such fervor that he now believes his lies and can no longer tell reality from fantasy. He is deeply and utterly confused by the cognitive dissonance and he would really like all y'all to just shut up and stop trying to force reality into his fantasy.

Brooks can't keep out everything, however. The times, they are a-changing,  just as they did in the 1960s. The era of white privilege is under attack by interlopers who don't belong in Brooks' America. Sure, the white rich still control the country but Brooks is not one of them; he is merely a well-paid servant, the butler who answers the door and keeps out the riff-raff, serves the wine in a silver bucket, and supervises the lesser servants.  The rich don't mind making little sacrifices to appease the peasants and keep the peace because people like David Brooks are the ones who will actually do the sacrificing.

Brooks know this. Servants understand their master' needs quite well; that is how they keep their jobs--anticipate the needs of their master and carry them out before the master has to ask. But now the rich need something that Brooks can't give them. He can't diffuse Black anger or undercut the power of mass action. He cannot force his fantasy on these Others' reality. 

Brooks' job is to whitewash economic exploitation of the masses. Because he is not especially intelligent he uses the same method as everyone else to control other people: morality. But White (Judeo-)Christian authority will not achieve the rich's goals. They need a minority to give them moral authority over minorites.

They need Ta-Nehisi Coates, who does not want to lead a movement or tear down the power structure. Like Obama, he wants to join it. He does not speak violently; he can be reasoned with and he is careful to protect his career. Brooks sees the writing on the wall and it terrifies him.

So he lies his fool head off.

Listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates While White  

Brooks is not listening; he is lecturing.

Dear Ta-Nehisi Coates,  

The last year has been an education for white people.

This last year scared me to death.

There has been a depth, power and richness to the African-American conversation about Ferguson, Baltimore, Charleston and the other killings that has been humbling and instructive.

The conversations about the above utterly bypassed me and made me look useless. That frightens and angers me.

Your new book, “Between the World and Me,” is a great and searing contribution to this public education.

I have to say this so I can tear you down later.

It is a mind-altering account of the black male experience.

My mind was not altered but it made an impression on me; is this the future? Will I no longer be of any use?

Every conscientious American should read it.  

When you read Coates remember my disapproval. That is what counts.

There is a pervasive physicality to your memoir — the elemental vulnerability of living in a black body in America.

Black people are so... physical. And there is no way I can exploit their experience to my own benefit!

Outside African-American nightclubs, you write, “black people controlled nothing, least of all the fate of their bodies, which could be commandeered by the police; which could be erased by the guns, which were so profligate; which could be raped, beaten, jailed.” 

Written as a letter to your son, you talk about the effects of pervasive fear. “When I was your age the only people I knew were black and all of them were powerfully, adamantly, dangerously afraid.” 

But the disturbing challenge of your book is your rejection of the American dream.

My job is to sell the American Dream. My job is in jeopardy!

My ancestors chose to come here. For them, America was the antidote to the crushing restrictiveness of European life, to the pogroms. For them, the American dream was an uplifting spiritual creed that offered dignity, the chance to rise. 

Nothing is more conducive to social advancement than being a Jew in the 1800s.

 

Your ancestors came in chains. In your book the dream of the comfortable suburban life is a “fairy tale.” For you, slavery is the original American sin, from which there is no redemption. America is Egypt without the possibility of the Exodus. African-American men are caught in a crushing logic, determined by the past, from which there is no escape. 

You write to your son, “Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body — it is heritage.” The innocent world of the dream is actually built on the broken bodies of those kept down below. 

If there were no black bodies to oppress, the affluent Dreamers “would have to determine how to build their suburbs on something other than human bones, how to angle their jails toward something other than a human stockyard, how to erect a democracy independent of cannibalism.” 

Look at how angry he is, White America!  He blames you and your ancestors and your culture--the greatest in the world--for his people's exploitation!

Your definition of “white” is complicated.

Your definition is "white" is wrong.

But you write “ ‘White America’ is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies. Sometimes this power is direct (lynching), and sometimes it is insidious (redlining).” In what is bound to be the most quoted passage from the book, you write that you watched the smoldering towers of 9/11 with a cold heart. At the time you felt the police and firefighters who died “were menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could — with no justification — shatter my body.” 

You obviously do not mean that literally today (sometimes in your phrasing you seem determined to be misunderstood).

You are an angry Black male, the third most frightening thing in the universe after Muslims and pretty young white women. You have a belligerent chip on your shoulder. You are a liar; you do not mean what you say.

You are illustrating the perspective born of the rage “that burned in me then, animates me now, and will likely leave me on fire for the rest of my days.” 

I read this all like a slap and a revelation.

I felt insulted. How dare you call my superiority exploitation?  But the publication of this slap was a revelation. Am I still relevant? Is my job really in jeopardy?

I suppose the first obligation is to sit with it, to make sure the testimony is respected and sinks in.

I guess I have to listen to you. It's part of my highly paid job as Inspector Of Public Morals.

But I have to ask, Am I displaying my privilege if I disagree?

Am I going to be attacked by the Twitter mob if I try to attack to protect my job? They are legion; I am merely one servant.

Is my job just to respect your experience and accept your conclusions?

What do I do here? I'm totally lost. Do I listen? Attack? Pretend to understand? Just give you my Moral Authority badge and give up?

Does a white person have standing to respond?

Am I passé?

If I do have standing, I find the causation between the legacy of lynching and some guy’s decision to commit a crime inadequate to the complexity of most individual choices.

Okay. Gear up, soldier. This isn't our first rodeo. Let's pull out the same arguments that have served me well for decades.

I think you distort American history.

Oooh, good one! I studied history, I can pretend to pull this off.

This country, like each person in it, is a mixture of glory and shame. 

We are all sinners. That always works!

There’s a Lincoln for every Jefferson Davis and a Harlem Children’s Zone for every K.K.K. — and usually vastly more than one.

It doesn't make any sense but my readers have been so thoroughly trained in "both sides do it" that they won't even notice.

Violence is embedded in America, but it is not close to the totality of America. 

For me. For you, who cares?

In your anger at the tone of innocence some people adopt to describe the American dream, you reject the dream itself as flimflam.

Yeah, innocence is good. We're not venal, we're innocent. We ain't no delinquents, we're misunderstood. Deep down inside of us is good!

Damn, where is my West Side Story album? Did the ex get it? Sigh. 1960 was a great year.

But a dream sullied is not a lie.

Sure it is but that dream is my bread-and-butter. Without it I would be Lou Grant instead of David Fucking Brooks.

The American dream of equal opportunity, social mobility and ever more perfect democracy cherishes the future more than the past.

See, if you sell hope and dreams you don't have to actually change the present. It works great.

It abandons old wrongs and transcends old sins for the sake of a better tomorrow. 

You can drag it out forever. It's a Freidman Unit!

This dream is a secular faith that has unified people across every known divide.

Dream, dreams will keep us together. Think of me babe, whenever some sweet talking Coates comes along, singing a song. Hear with my words and you wont hear a sound!

Damn, I'm good.

I bet she took my Captain and Tennille album too.

Ahem, I mean that a divided house will not stand and a falling house won't pay my bills.

It has unleashed ennobling energies and mobilized heroic social reform movements.

Your dreams give you noble energy to be heroes. Social progress comes from believing that America is fair and good, not from anger and riots and protests. Sounds good (::fistpump::), and it'll undercut Coates' authority.

By dissolving the dream under the acid of an excessive realism, you trap generations in the past and destroy the guiding star that points to a better future. 

Reality destroys fantasy. Fantasy made me rich. Reality is destroying me. Exterminate the Doctor Coates! Exterminate!

Maybe you will find my reactions irksome. Maybe the right white response is just silence for a change. In any case, you’ve filled my ears unforgettably.

Maybe I shouldn't say anything. If I ignore him maybe he'll just go away. In either case I pretended to listen and what else does he want from me? My job?

Shit, man. He wants my job and he might get it.

Down The Memory Hole

Candy-ass coward Megan McArdle appears to be blocking my latest comments to her most recent post. I say "appears" because after this complaint they might reappear; McArdle is careful to note when one of her commenters accuses her of blocking and responds that she is not. She did not block everything; she left two comments up and now her commentariat are free to attack but I am not able to defend myself.

Now McArdle has posted in comments and my comment is still gone so I know my comment being "held for moderation" was erased.

This is the offending comment:

SgtFraggleRock susanoftexas • 10 minutes ago

Perhaps victims of rape should report the crime to police and not a college administrator.
The fact that so many of their cherished "victims" have been liars doesn't seem to have fazed those wanting to use college kangaroo courts to punish accused rapists instead of actual courts, where the charge belongs.

 

 

• in this conversation

⬇ Drag and drop your images here to upload them.

susanoftexas SgtFraggleRock • 3 minutes ago Hold on, this is waiting to be approved by Bloomberg View. 

• I agree--the schools should have no say in the matter. Report to the police and let the court system do its job.
  But I don't know who wants a university to handle a rape case rather than a court. The problems arose when schools tried to suppress reporting to the police, getting themselves involved in a legal case to make the school look better. If they stayed out the situations would be much cleaner. Schools usually don't like to see their on-campus rape numbers reported.
  As for your accusation that "many" "cherished victims" are liars, I assume you have statistics for that sweeping statement? According to the FBI, "Only about 2% of all rape and related sex charges are determined to be false, the same percentage as for other felonies (FBI)."
  Do you have some secret knowledge the FBI doesn't have?

The commenters go on to tell me that rape belongs in the courts. They'll never know I agree with them.

Too bad for McArdle that she can't block the entire world. It's the only way she'll be able to avoid criticism for her ineptitude and dishonesty.

Thrilling Update!: A comment of mine was published!

A Member In Good Standing

A little bit of Megan McArdle while I work on Ayn Rand:

You don't have to be right or even intelligent to get on tv and the radio. You just have to be a member of the club. (TM driftglass). From Planet Money:

[Jacob] GOLDSTEIN: We called up really smart people. And they had actually, like, really interesting, really little ideas. One of them is how to get people to lie less. Another one is a way to take the edge off in your personal life when things are going badly.

...

[David] KESTENBAUM: Which brings us to our last tweak. This tweak is useful exactly at moments like that, when your plan to fix the tax forms doesn't work, when your plan to change the legal forms doesn't work.
GOLDSTEIN: Really in general, when anything doesn't go your way.
KESTENBAUM: That's what this tweak is for.
GOLDSTEIN: It comes from Megan McArdle. She's a columnist at Bloomberg View. And we're going to call her tweak, bet against yourself.
KESTENBAUM: Megan discovered the genius of betting against yourself back when she was in business school. She and her classmates were out at a bar. They were waiting to hear if they were going to get job offers from the places they'd interned at.
MEGAN MCARDLE: I'm out with a bunch of friends. And we've now been talking about the fact that we are not going to get - we might not get our jobs.
GOLDSTEIN: How are you feeling at that moment?
MCARDLE: Extremely anxious (laughter).
KESTENBAUM: Someone came up with the idea of creating a pool. Everyone would put in 50 bucks. And if you do not get a job offer, you get the money in the pool. If multiple people don't get jobs, those people will split the pool. It's not like the winner gets it. The loser gets it.
GOLDSTEIN: There's a technical term for betting against yourself. It's called a hedge. And McArdle says hedging is great. She says everybody should do it in all kinds of settings. Bet against yourself - not a lot, just enough to take the edge off.
MCARDLE: Then, when something bad happens, you've got that little psychological backstop, you know, like, I won money. Everyone loves winning money.
KESTENBAUM: If you're a sports fan and there's a really big game coming up, she says bet against your own team. You can do this with all kinds of stuff, she says, even really personal stuff.
GOLDSTEIN: Find a friend. They will bet on you. You can bet against yourself.
MCARDLE: One example is if you are - if you're going to propose to your girlfriend. You're not quite sure she's going to say yes. That would be an excellent time.
GOLDSTEIN: (Laughter) You are making a bet, before you propose...
MCARDLE: Yes.
GOLDSTEIN: That your girlfriend is going to say no, is going to reject you. That's your advice.
MCARDLE: Yes (laughter). That is something you could do, yes.
GOLDSTEIN: Who - who would do this? Like, what kind of person, at this key moment in life, would bet against themselves? It makes sense. But it feels wrong, right? It feels wrong for, like, the super fan to be voting against their team. I mean, why do you think that is? Why do you think it feels wrong?
MCARDLE: Human beings, if you think about how we evolve - right? - we evolve in these small groups. And one of the biggest things that these small groups worry about is loyalty.
GOLDSTEIN: We as human beings are sort of built to be loyal. And betting against yourself or betting against your team is disloyal.
MCARDLE: Exactly.
GOLDSTEIN: Megan says there are times when you should not bet against yourself. You know, for example, if you're a professional athlete, do not bet against your team. That's against the law. If you're actually married, do not bet against your marriage. It screws up the incentives.
KESTENBAUM: But if you are, say, in graduate school and worried that you might not get that job offer, that is a great time to bet against yourself. It worked for her, sadly.
MCARDLE: I did not get a job offer from the place where I'd interned.
KESTENBAUM: But she did get the money from the pool.
MCARDLE: I got enough money to take myself to a pretty nice dinner. And it did - it really - it was funny how much that lessened the sting because now, instead of just thinking, oh, this is terrible; I didn't get a job offer, I had something nice to think about at the moment when I needed it most.
GOLDSTEIN: So tweaks are hard to make happen. The status quo is really powerful. But one good thing about this tweak, about betting against yourself, you don't need an act of Congress. You don't need some big company to do anything. This tweak, it's on you.
KESTENBAUM: Jacob, I like this tweak. I'm not going to do it.
GOLDSTEIN: No, there's no way. I'm not going to do it either (laughter).

Her ideas were dumb but let's pay her to give them anyway because she's super smart.

Coming Soon: The Next Exciting Installment Of Atlas Shrugged!

Our next thrilling installment will discuss the emotional genesis of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and as a  prelude let us look at one man's emotional reaction to Rand's magnum opus. Vice agreed to print a most unfortunate declaration of affection for the book and contempt for liberals by an unsuccessful public gadfly named Milo Yiannopoulos. (No link because Milo is a twit.) Mr. Yiannopoulos never achieved the greatness he aimed for but such technical details did not deter him from taking his self-anointed position as Ubermensch anyway.

Now we know what Vice the magazine is named after: Vanity.

Your David Brooksian pundit would say that vanity is ego, but more often it is compensation for feelings of inadequacy. A man who feels inadequate boasts of his accomplishments, hoping to convince others that he is what he is not. Whether Donald Trump, Ayn Rand or all the little Randians, they are driven by their neediness to grab what they were never given.

Liberals are constantly begging for more female authors and female lead characters in literature, but one woman author and philosopher remains stubbornly absent from progressive reading lists. Her name is Ayn Rand, and she is responsible for a theory called objectivism, which holds that reality exists independently of consciousness and that rational self-interest is the proper moral purpose of life.

Quality is its own reward, Milo. Rand would sit you down on a chair in her living room and rip you from stem to stern, expecting her collective to applaud when she paused. Superior people don't whine about the lice and scum's reading habits.

Of all the tiresomely self-satisfied rituals played out regularly in the liberal blogosphere, competitive Rand-hating is among the most fatuous and infuriating. But why do the chattering classes hate her so much? I sense that the reasons given—her alleged psychopathy, selfishness, lack of literary talent, and hypocrisy, among others—are much less compelling than the real motivations driving their criticisms.

Actually, those reasons are exactly why people ignore Ayn Rand, putting aside the fact that most people have no idea who she was. But Milo 's senses have determined that liberals are tiresome, self-satisfied, fatuous, and infuriating. His proof is their hatred of Rand. Take that! But he also promises to reveal the real motivation driving them, which is, along with raindrops on roses, one of my very favorite things.

What follows is eight paragraphs describing a lost play (Ideal) that even Rand rejected as poor. Surely our revelation is coming up....

Rand's critics, often humourless literalists, will find plenty in Ideal to gnaw on: There's the classically Randian was-it-rape-or-wasn't-it sex scene and a blisteringly heartless remark after a death that will have fans sniggering and detractors drumming up all the manufactured fury they can muster. And, yes, Rand's writing can be a bit... much.   

So far Rand's critics are correct by Milo's own admittance.

But profound, existential loneliness, coupled with a Buffy the Vampire Slayer–esque sense of ordained personal greatness is why so many cheerleaders for capitalism relate to Rand's lead characters, from Gonda to the Fountainhead's Dominique Francon.  

Ah, starved ego and tortured soul, we meet again. Rand was mostly ignored by her father and heavily criticized and unwanted by her mother.  Withdrawn by nature, intelligent but dogmatic, starved for affirmation, the boy Randian develops "a sense of ordained personal greatness" to compensate. Thus Ross Douthat seeks transcendence via a cushy job at the Times, David Brooks seeks importance from sitting as close to the .01% as he can before they sidle away, and Megan McArdle seeks belonging from corporations as if they truly are a person and might offer a 10-carat diamond ring any minute now.

Shoshana Knapp, an associate professor of English at Virginia Tech, said that these two characters are "to some extent reflections of Ayn Rand herself... Ayn Rand said that Dominique was herself in a bad mood." This is perhaps why Rand's literary agent, Alan Collins, said Ideal was a novel that only she could have written: In 1946, he wrote to Rand, "Had I come on a copy of this play in the midst of the Fiji Islands I would have had no doubt as to the authorship, as the writing, theme, and conception of the characters are uniquely yours."  

"Then I would have burnt it by throwing it on a luau fire, giving it an honest use for the first time ever."

 

Critics never pass up the opportunity to be cruel about Rand fans. "Rand's fan club has always been filled out not by committed literary critics but by insecure sulkers," the New Republic wrote. Given how many books Rand has sold, though, that's an awful lot of sulky people. 

I hear Ted Cruz sold a lot of books too, no matter what that commie New York Times says.

The insecure sulker goes on to say:

  

Let's be honest, though, Randroids are idiosyncratic, to put it mildly. In fact, and I say this with love, objectivists are the most thin-skinned fandom in existence. The vaguest hint of implied criticism of their grande dame is enough to trigger endless tweetstorms, crossly worded blog posts, and YouTube commentary. Seriously: Bitcoin-obsessed cryptoanalysts, Directioners and even the Beyhive have nothing on these guys. 

He admits they are volatile, vindictive, grossly insecure, and verbose.

There's just one problem with all the preening and posturing this author is subjected to: In order to sneer at Rand, you have to read her.

Poor Milo is constantly subjected to preening and posturing and sneering. About Ayn Rand, of course. Not Milo himself. Milo does not notice he is in the process of preening and posturing and sneering about liberals because Milo is too busy preening. And posturing. And sneering.

I am also still waiting for our explanation of why liberals really hate Atlas Shrugged. Is it because they didn't read it and are too shy to explain? The suspense is killing me.

That's why you'll sometimes see ridiculous social media spectacles of angsty liberal bloggers and overwrought students burning copies of the Fountainhead.

No, you won't, because it doesn't happen. The only reason a college student would burn The Fountainhead is if he ran out of rolling papers. (joke stolen from source whose name escapes me)

That's it? That's the great psychological revelation? McArdle's old "you didn't understand me because you didn't read me?"

I hope Vox didn't pay too much for this article. It reads like it was dictated to his teddy bear after a night of cocktails and self-pity. "Thatcher, you have no idea of the kind of day I just went through....."

And just how many Vox bloggers have made it all the way through Atlas Shrugged ?

Poor Milo realizes that no matter how many times he taunts the cool kids they are never going to invite him to a party in the woods so he must goad his co-workers into responding.

The next time someone is rude about that novel in your earshot, ask him to name a single character besides John Galt and you'll see what I mean.

Perhaps the next time you are seated next to a liberal at a dinner party, or while riding a bus.

Yes, Milo is a nasty piece of work and we are very grateful to learn more about the kind of people who adore Ayn Rand. We already knew but confirmation is always appreciated.

McMonster

See, there's the planet and all the people on it. The planet has stuff on it that can be sold. The people can make things or buy things. (The people should not expect to do both; that would decrease profit.) All that stuff-an entire world, the entirety of humanity--belong to the rich. Because the rich own everything and everyone they also have the right to dispose of the planet and its people as they please.

Think of the aliens in, well, every movie ever. They come to Planet Earth, convert its atmosphere to their liking, suck up all its resources, consume the people, and when the planet is depleted and the people no longer of use it moves on to the next planet.

But instead of sticking a cigar in Will Smith's mouth, handing him a plane and an unconventionally attractive genius co-pilot, and bidding him to go with God and kill every last planet-raping, people-eating monster, some humans watch aliens on reality tv so they can admire the aliens' wealth and power and appetites. They buy books about how to become a better and more successful monster. And some of them even gather together in rhapsodic harmony to imagine what it would be like to be monster, and share tales of all the monstrous things they do to be just like the aliens.

Which brings us back to McMegan McArdle, McMonster.

If Africa wants to get rich, a good place to start is probably the garment trade.

Hmmm. Would Africa get rich if it got into the garment trade? Well, Africa is a country continent, so probably not. Maybe some people might get rich but they will be Africans who are already rich and a bunch of global billionaires.

Historically, the path to wealth for nations has run through manufacturing. Manufacturing gives you a way to quickly move a lot of people from low-productivity farming to higher-productivity jobs without requiring that they pick up lots of new skills first. And the garment industry fits the bill admirably; it does not not require lots of expensive infrastructure or a skilled population that can supply and maintain fancy machines, and it does use lots of low-skilled labor. Once you get people through the factory gates, their higher productivity and earnings will support improvements in infrastructure, education and services, that can fuel further growth. Eventually, one hopes that your country will get too rich to support much garment manufacturing, because workers will be able to command wages too high for low-margin, hypercompetitive garment factories. Then the workers move into higher-wage jobs, the factories move to a lower-wage locale, and everyone enjoys a higher income through the magic of Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage.

Now we are getting to the point where I must spend a lot of time looking up statistics that McArdle doesn't even think to question, time more pleasantly spent commenting at alicublog or communing with the cats, raccoons, mice, rats, and opossums that scamper through my back yard like it's Penn Station and they have a train to catch. Does manufacturing enrich countries like China? In a way.

The discussion highlights the uneven distribution of wealth that persists amid China’s rapid economic growth. China has the world’s most billionaires after the US, according to a report by Wealth-X and UBS. At the same time, 18 provinces have downgraded their expectations for per capita disposable income this year, and overall measures of inequality in China only improved a smidgeon last year, according to government statistics. Bloggers found that even higher-range Chinese salaries don’t fare very well in the global league tables. The average salary for public-sector workers is around 60% higher than the equivalent in the private sector, but is still only 60% of the global average. Using CNN’s tool, Chinese media plugged in government figures for the country’s “high income” bracket of urban disposable income (link in Chinese)—and discovered that the closest equivalent is a taxi driver in South Africa.

Once global manufacturing leaves Asia for Africa those low-paid Chinese will have a small problem. We all know what happens when manufacturing leaves a country; the poor can't find work and now they no longer live on a farm. How will the poor educate their children now? Chinese schools are state and parent funded. Without a large pool of consumers, how will the higher-paid Chinese stay employed?

Over the last few decades, we've seen the dazzling effects of this as economies moved up the value chain from simple products to fancy ones. There was a time in America when "Made in Japan" was a standard joke denoting cheap schlock, but the Japanese had the last laugh, as they leveraged their tchotchke dominance into a global manufacturing juggernaut that started competing to make our cars and televisions. Japan, in turn, shed its low-skill jobs to neighbors like South Korea and China. And now China is getting rich enough that other countries are luring away some of the lower-skilled work. But normally, we think about that work going to Vietnam or Bangladesh, not Africa. That may be starting to change; the Wall Street Journal notes that "Ethiopia was recently identified as a top sourcing destination by apparel companies, according to McKinsey & Co., which surveyed executives responsible for procuring $70 billion of goods annually — the first time an African country was mentioned alongside Bangladesh, Vietnam and Myanmar." With Asia getting richer, global corporations are looking farther afield. A garment worker in China, the Journal says, gets anywhere from $150 to $300 a month; that same worker in Ethiopia makes only $21. Those those kinds of wage differentials are quite enticing, as Americans have learned by watching manufacturing jobs move abroad.

Again we are told that "now China is getting rich." The rich who own factories are getting richer but remember, the humans don't own China, the rich aliens do. The humans are fodder. McArdle goes on to say that lack of infrastructure, violence and corruption would be impediments on Africa's journey to richness.

That said, there are still a lot of hurdles to overcome. African manufacturing is currently a blip on the radar compared to China, and it will take a long time to see the kind of revolution we've seen elsewhere. Catch-up growth takes quite a while to take off. There's a lot standing between Africa and that goal, such as some basic infrastructure; it doesn't matter how low your wages are if there aren't any good roads to get your products to port, or if there are no good ports.

That's what the taxpayer is for!

Armed conflict is obviously another. Corruption usually makes this list as well, and at a certain level -- say, where Iraq was a few years ago -- it seems clear that it's going to choke off growth. But I doubt you need Swedish levels of corruption control to get economic growth, either. Corruption is a huge civic issue, but quite a lot of Asian countries have managed quite a lot of growth without anything like the corruption control and "good government" that I used to assume would naturally boost a country's economic prospects. So I've gone back to loving good government for its own beautiful self, rather than its economic benefits. Economically, I'm much more interested in whether you have reliable electric power and somewhere nearby that a container ship can dock.

In this paragraph McArdle links to two of her lying posts in support of her alien masters. The Iraq post blamed the lack of a post-invasion government on Iraqi corruption and regulation, ignoring the CPA altogether. The article on corruption claims that political corruption is necessary to ease legislative gridlock. Obviously China does not have a problem with corruption. They don't need no stinkin' regulations.  Executions suffice when China does have a problem with corruption. If McArdle wants to imply we should execute the Koch brothers for manslaughter I agree wholeheartedly.

The remaining question is, of course, whether we should be rooting for profit-seeking global corporations to take manufacturing jobs to Africa if they will pay such pitifully low wages. You'll probably not be surprised to hear that my unequivocal answer is "yes." Just consider what the alternatives must be if people are willing to slave in a factory for $21 a month. So moving jobs to Ethiopia, or elsewhere in Africa, does good for dreadfully impoverished people.

Yes. Just consider how much better it would be for Africans to work like slaves.

She actually said "slave."

I could go on and might do just that but really, is there any more to be said? This statement should end her career for all time but I've said that so often I ought to make a macro.

Of course this is not about Black or White or Asian. It's about power, the power to see the world and mankind itself as a commodity up for grabs.

It's amazing that proper journalists don't get rid of McArdle to protect their own marketability. They work in the same circles and she is devaluing their brand. One would think self-preservation would kick in if not ethics.

Megan McArdle: Stupid Cupid Strikes Again!

You know how everyone says that Megan McArdle is always wrong? That's because she's always wrong. From Greg Sargent:

* REPUBLICANS COOLING ON OBAMACARE REPEAL: Politico reports that Senate Republicans are increasingly cool to using “reconciliation” to force a simple majority vote to repeal Obamacare. Naturally, this is angering conservatives. But:

Members up for reelection in 2016, and some Republicans from purple states, are leery of launching a repeal without offering any sort of replacement. They’re reluctant to take away Obamacare subsidies for the lower-income and middle class without providing an alternative path to health coverage.

Wait, what? Obamacare repeal could be politically problematic for vulnerable Senate Republicans? Isn’t the law supposed to be a sure political winner in every conceivable way for the GOP?

As the posts below this one show, McArdle became incoherent in her anger at the passage of Obamacare. Due to the "tyranny of the majority," also known as elections, Republicans would be stuck with an "entitlement" that would be difficult to take away. "The reason entitlements are hard to repeal is that the Republicans care about getting re-elected," McArdle said. Yet she also seemed to think that the Republicans could take away the infinitely more deeply entrenched social safety net.

 Republicans and other opponents of the bill did their job on this; they persuaded the country that they didn't want this bill.  And that mattered basically not at all.  If you don't find that terrifying, let me suggest that you are a Democrat who has not yet contemplated what Republicans might do under similar circumstances.  Farewell, Social Security!  Au revoir, Medicare!

  In other words, McArdle vented her spleen in rage with the usual inaccurate, inept results. It would take far, far, far too long to relate every wrong prediction but let's look at one more.

Despite expiring patents on blockbuster drugs and a wave of new regulation from the Affordable Care Act that will cost drug makers, the pharmaceutical industry will reap between “$10 billion and $35 billion in additional profits over the next decade,” a new analysis shows. 

The health law, which will bring millions of uninsured Americans health benefits beginning in January 2014, will be a critical boon to pharmaceutical industry balance sheets, increasing revenue by one-third by the end of the decade, according to a new report from research and consulting firm GlobalData of London. That means the U.S. pharmaceutical industry’s market value will mushroom by 33 percent to $476 billion in 2020 from $359 billion last year.

As you all very well know, McArdle's basis for her Obamacare hysteria is her lies about drug company statistics and her belief that Obamacare will destroy drug companies for all time. McArdle's capacity for stupidity and cupidity are infinite; fortunately her ineptitude is more amusing than dangerous. For now.

The Selfish Prig At Play

David Brooks, we call you out to let you know that James O. Freedman reaches out from the grave to tell you to have a nice hot cup of shut the f*ck up.

 I have always been very impatient of processes and institutions which said that their purpose was to put every man in the way of developing his character. My advice is: Do not think about your character. If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.

How To Win At Blogging Without Really Trying

It's finally happened: We have reached peak Megan McArdle. Her posts are now so choc-a-block with inaccuracy, lies, misunderstandings, and ignorance that it takes far too long to find, research and correct them. McArdle wins.

Take her Greek posts. They are based on her misinterpretation of what others say, wingnut conventional wisdom, biased sources, and sometimes gross error. Not only do you have to correct McArdle, to do the job properly you also have to correct all her sources. Before you know it you have spent two hours reading source material (which is more than McArdle does)  and still have more errors to correct. She has achieved the wingnut brass ring: she is so wrong so often in so much volume that she can get away with saying almost anything.

The Authoritarian Parent's Lament

It's click-bait of the very best kind:

Conservative Parents, Left-Wing Children By Dennis "The Menace" Prager  

Schools see it as their job to make kids reject their parents’ conservative values.  

There is a phenomenon that is rarely commented on, although it’s as common as it is significant. For at least two generations, countless conservative parents have seen their adult children reject their core values.

I wonder why on earth nobody ever talks about liberal academia brainwashing conservatives.

I have met these parents throughout America. I have spoken with them in person and on my radio show. Many have confided to me — usually with a resigned sadness — that one or more of their children has adopted left-wing social, moral, and political beliefs.

Wait a second. Let's say I'm a conservative woman. I was told to have a lot of children so the Muslims wouldn't out-populate "us." Now you're telling me it could have been for nothing and the first time the kids are let out of the compound they'll reject me Jesus??

A particularly dramatic recent example was a pastor who told me that he has three sons, all of whom have earned doctorates — from Stanford, Oxford, and Fordham. What parent wouldn’t be proud of such achievements by his or her children?

An authoritarian parent whose only wish is to force his child to reinforce all of his own choices by making the same choices.

But the tone of his voice suggested more irony than pride. They are all leftists, he added wistfully.  

“How do you get along?” I asked.  

“We still talk,” he responded.

The sons must be as wise as they are intelligent to maintain a relationship with a man who probably is more concerned with their souls than with their actual lives.

Needless to say, I was glad to hear that. But as the father of two sons, I readily admit that if they became leftists, while I would, of course, always love them, I would be deeply saddened. Parents, on the left or the right, religious or secular, want to pass on their core values to their children.

Imagine if they were gay. But that's a choice, right? And therefore it is not the parents' fault if their child is gay; they did not pass it down through their blood, even if their gay child has a couple of gay relatives. And although the child chose to be gay, the parents did not do anything to turn the child gay because everyone knows parents have no effect on their children's minds.

Oddly enough, only liberals have an effect on children's minds. Liberal media, peers, teachers, professors, courts, churches. They all turn people liberal through their devious, deviant ways. But conservative values are weak.  Impotent. They melt away like the summer rain when the harsh light of the liberal sun comes out to play.

In the end liberals are just like conservatives, they want to brainwash their children into accepting their parents' beliefs as well. Conservative is the default mode, a liberal is just a person who is too egotistical to do what he is told.

Prager explains that it's the job of a parent to pass on his values. It is not his job to teach his child how to think for himself or make his own independent choices.

So it is sad when a parent who believes, for example, in the American trinity of “Liberty,” “In God We Trust,” and “E Pluribus Unum” has a child who believes that equality trumps liberty, that a secular America is preferable to a God-centered one, and that multiculturalism should replace the unifying American identity.

God forbid that our children believe, "Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto Me."

It is sad when a pastor or any other parent who believes that the only gender-based definition of marriage that has ever existed — husband and wife — has a child who regards the parent as a bigot for holding on to that definition.

It's a lot sadder when parents teach their children to be bigots.

It is sad when a parent who believes that America has always been, in Lincoln’s famous words, “the last best hope of earth” has a child who believes that America has always been little more than an imperialist, racist, and xenophobic nation.

There's nothing sadder than seeing your child learn something outside of Jesus' Guide To The History Of The World.

That this happens so often raises the obvious question: Why?

When a kid finds out you lied to them your entire life about everything in the entire world, shit happens.

There are two reasons. One is that most parents with traditional American and Judeo-Christian values have not thought it necessary to articulate these values to their children on a regular basis. They have assumed that there is no need to because society at large holds those values, or it did so throughout much of American history. Villages do indeed raise children. And when the village shares parents’ values, the parents don’t have to do the difficult work of inculcating these values. But the village — American society — has radically changed.

Didn't the Village radically change two generations ago? Are conservatives just now noticing this? Of course not.

Which brings us to the second reason. Virtually every institution outside the home has been captured by people with left-wing values: specifically the media (television and movies) and the schools (first the universities and now high schools). In the 1960s and 1970s, American parents were blindsided. Their children came home from college with values that thoroughly opposed those of their parents.

The parents wanted their sons to fight as they had fought. The kids saw Vietnam on tv and refused. The parents wanted their daughter to get married and have children. The daughters wanted to use the brains they had been training and refused. The pastors were growing rich and powerful with their huge tv audiences and generous politicians and wanted the young people to join and vote for the right. The young people refused.

And the parents had no idea how to counteract this. Moreover, even if they did, after just one year at the left-wing seminaries we still call universities, it was often too late. As one of the founders of progressivism in America, Woodrow Wilson, who was president of Princeton University before he became president of the United States, said in a speech in 1914, “I have often said that the use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible.” Eighty-eight years later, the president of Dartmouth College, James O. Freedman, echoed Wilson: “The purpose of a college education is to question your father’s values,” he told the graduating seniors of Dartmouth College.

It is worth seeing that quote in context, since of course Prager tries to twist it to his own end.

I am interested in Young Men's Christian Association for various reasons. First of all, because it is an association of young men. I have had a good deal to do with young men in my time, and I have formed an impression of them which I believe to be contrary to the general impression. They are generally thought to be arch radicals. As a matter of fact, they are the most conservative people I have ever dealt with. Go to a college community and try to change the least custom of that little world and find how the conservatives will rush at you. Moreover, young men are embarrassed by having inherited their father’s opinions. I have often said that the use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible. I do not say that with the least disrespect for the fathers; but every man who is old enough to have a son in college is old enough to have become very seriously immersed in some particular business and is almost certain to have caught the point of view of that particular business. And it is very useful to his son to be taken out of that narrow circle, conducted to some high place where he may see the general map of the world and of the interests of mankind, and there shown how big the world is and how much of it his father may happen to have forgotten. It would be worth while for men, middle-aged and old, to detach them selves more frequently from the things that command their daily attention and to think of the sweeping tides of humanity.  

Therefore I am interested in this association, because it is intended to bring young men together before any crust has formed over them, before they have been hardened to any particular occupation, before they have caught an inveterate point of view; while they still have a searchlight that they can swing and see what it reveals of all the circumstances of the hidden world. 

I am the more interested in it because it is an association of young men who are Christians. I wonder if we attach sufficient importance to Christianity as a mere instrumentality in the life of mankind. For one, I am not fond of thinking of Christianity as the means of saving individual souls. I have always been very impatient of processes and institutions which said that their purpose was to put every man in the way of developing his character. My advice is: Do not think about your character. If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig. The only way your powers can become great is by exerting them outside the circle of your own narrow, special, selfish interests. And that is the reason of Christianity. Christ came into the world to save others, not to save himself; and no man is a true Christian who does not think constantly of how he can lift his brother, how he can assist his friend, how he can enlighten mankind, how he can make virtue the rule of conduct in the circle in which he lives. An association merely of young men might be an association that had its energies put forth in every direction, but an association of Christian young men is an association meant to put its shoulders under the world and lift it, so that other men may feel that they have companions in bearing the weight and heat of the day; that other men may know that there are those who care for them, who would go into places of difficulty and danger to rescue them, who regard them selves as their brother’s keeper.

Prager is as honest as he is bright.

Even now, too few conservative parents realize how radical — and effective — the university agenda is. They are proud that their child has been accepted to whatever college he or she attends, not realizing that, values-wise, they are actually playing Russian roulette, except that only one chamber in the gun is not loaded with a bullet. And then the child comes home, often after only a year at college, a different person, values-wise, from the one whom the naïve parent so proudly sent off just a year earlier.

Educated instead of ignorant. Questioning instead of blindly believing. Accepting instead of vilifying. The horror!

What to do? I will answer that in a future column. But the first thing to do is to realize what is happening. There are too many sad conservative parents.

There are too many authoritarian parents.

The Tears Of A Clown

Once again Sad Kitty puts lace hankie to eye and sobs over the incivility of the those who force more affordable healthcare down the innocent throat of ACA-hating America. Someone said that someone else said something mean about something, and naturally liberals are to blame.

But I'll pause to point out a cultural and political implication of this ruling and the drama leading up to it. Some supporters of the law declared that they were going to take their ball and go home if the Supreme Court didn't agree with their interpretation of the statute. These people wasted their time: With a 6-3 ruling, the call was not so close that the posturing pushed it over. But these people did have one effect. They eroded something in civic life that we can't afford to lose. By pretending that the Supreme Court and the rule of law were at risk in this ruling, they strained the already frayed fabric of civil society.

Do you remember the hissy fit McArdle threw when Obamacare passed into law? I sure do.

Regardless of what you think about health care, tomorrow we wake up in a different political world.

Parties have passed legislation before that wasn't broadly publicly supported.  But the only substantial instances I can think of in America are budget bills and TARP--bills that the congressmen were basically forced to by emergencies in the markets.

One cannot help but admire Nancy Pelosi's skill as a legislator.  But it's also pretty worrying.  Are we now in a world where there is absolutely no recourse to the tyranny of the majority?  Republicans and other opponents of the bill did their job on this; they persuaded the country that they didn't want this bill.  And that mattered basically not at all.  If you don't find that terrifying, let me suggest that you are a Democrat who has not yet contemplated what Republicans might do under similar circumstances.  Farewell, Social Security!  Au revoir, Medicare!  The reason entitlements are hard to repeal is that the Republicans care about getting re-elected.  If they didn't--if they were willing to undertake this sort of suicide mission--then the legislative lock-in you're counting on wouldn't exist.  

Oh, wait--suddenly it doesn't seem quite fair that Republicans could just ignore the will of their constituents that way, does it?  Yet I guarantee you that there are a lot of GOP members out there tonight who think that they should get at least one free "Screw You" vote to balance out what the Democrats just did. 

If the GOP takes the legislative innovations of the Democrats and decides to use them, please don't complain that it's not fair.  Someone could get seriously hurt, laughing that hard.

Such incivility will strain the already frayed fabric of civil society!

But I hope they don't.  What I hope is that the Democrats take a beating at the ballot boxand rethink their contempt for those mouth-breathing illiterates in the electorate.  I hope Obama gets his wish to be a one-term president who passed health care.  Not because I think I will like his opponent--I very much doubt that I will support much of anything Obama's opponent says.  But because politicians shouldn't feel that the best route to electoral success is to lie to the voters, and then ignore them. 

We're not a parliamentary democracy, and we don't have the mechanisms, like votes of no confidence, that parliamentary democracies use to provide a check on their politicians.  The check that we have is that politicians care what the voters think.  If that slips away, America's already quite toxic politics will become poisonous.

Democrats are ignoring what the Republicans want! Why don't Democratic politicians understand that they won't get Republican votes if they don't do what the Republicans want? If Democrats don't give in to the Republicans, politics will become even more toxic.

Obviously, yes, I was upset yesterday.  I'm glad that this could bring so much joy to peoples' hearts, and of course to know that for many people, the happiest part of passing health care reform seems to have been knowing that it made people like me unhappy.  The people wondering why I was so upset should contemplate that first, I think you people just screwed up both our health care system, and our fiscal system (even further), and that if I'm right, that's not really funny.

Liberals ruined everything by democratically electing Obama and utterly ignoring the wishes of conservatives to elect the guy with all the car, kids, horses and gutted companies. Liberals endangered the nation by forcing conservatives to accept Obamacare. God alone knows what might follow when one part of the nation is so overbearing as to fulfill a campaign promise (in a fashion). The delicate fabric of the space-time continuum might be rent by the abrasive, abusive liberals' jackboots forcing corporate reform. (Of a fashion.)

Obviously, there are places and times when a nation's political institutions are so corrupt and compromised that a patriotic citizen is duty bound to try to destroy them rather than let them continue to operate as they are. But that place is not the America of 2015, and the time is not "when I am afraid that the court will disagree with me about one clause of a program I think is really important." Your country needs a functioning Supreme Court, and the civic support that legitimizes it, more than it needs any government program, including Obamacare.

This is something that liberals will become well aware of tomorrow or Monday, when the court is expected to rule in favor of a broad constitutional right to marriage, including for same-sex couples. I'm a libertarian, so as you'd expect, I find that agreeable.

That's news to us. The last time McArdle talked about gay marriage in length she was sure it would ruin marriage somehow, just as sure as she is that Obamacare will ruin the economy and kill millions somehow.

On the other hand, as a matter of constitutional theory, I expect the ruling to be a weak outgrowth of the absurd "emanations and penumbras" seeping out of all the sexual liberty cases of the 1960s, for which I can find little actual basis in either the text or intent of the constitution.

Legal scholar McMegan studied the constitution and decided that privacy was nothing but a hippy-dippy tantrum. Are we supposed to believe that McArdle poured over the Constitution, consulted cases law, and formed an educated opinion?

In other words, I think it will probably be a bad ruling for a good cause, which is why conservatives who sincerely believe this to be a bad cause will have a right to be mad.

Liberals threaten the legitimacy of the Supreme Court when they are mad about cases. Conservatives have the right to be mad about cases. It's funny how no matter what, conservatives are the legitimate ones and liberals are illegitimate.

What they should not do is to go into the sort of shameful tantrum we've seen from liberals on the subject of King, where they declare that a ruling against them would be a naked abuse of partisan political power by which the court has thoroughly invalidated any claim it ever had to political legitimacy. The losing side will always be displeased, but let's keep some perspective: Bush v. Gore should not cost the court its standing. Neither should Citizens United. A case like King v. Burwell should certainly not.

What liberals? I might as well talk about conservatives who whore for the Koches. I can actually provide sources for that accusation.

We are politically fragile right now, and yet neither side is going away. As we discovered in 1861, at the national scale, there's no such thing as a tidy no-fault divorce.

Dad wanted to keep slaves but Mom didn't so Dad left Mom and threatened to kill her if he didn't get his own way. When Mom warned him that a divided family will not stand he carried out his threat and tried to kill her. Now Dad wants to quit paying child support because Mom "didn't build that" and is threatening to take away the kids' health insurance to punish Mom. But the Attorney General garnished Dad's wages for child support and now he is angry. McArdle says he has every right to be angry, for his side of the issue was utterly ignored.

That's why the more divided we get, the more vitally important it is to have common institutions that both sides agree to abide with, however much it may chafe at certain moments. Yet instead of recognizing that, we are increasingly trying to destroy those institutions whenever it seems to offer temporary political advantage. However much you dislike the behavior of Congress, or the Supreme Court, or the president, you would like it even less if they really did lose political legitimacy. Because it wouldn't just be you who threw off the shackles of custom and civic restraint and disregarded rulings you disliked. Those villains on the other side would do the same.

Unable to crow over a victory, McArdle contents herself with concern-trolling liberals to death. You'd better not cross us or we'll get you back. Unfortunately for McArdle some of the nation does not have her playground mentality and is not engaged in a permanent game of King Of The Hill, pushing off the smaller people to claim everything for herself. McArdle realizes that it would look bad to show anger at her inability to snatch healthcare from the hands of the poor

I'm perfectly satisfied with the ruling the court got, and how they arrived at it. The court is doing fine. But the last six months have certainly cast doubt on the political legitimacy of our public debate.

 

Cheer up McArdle. You may have lost America but you still have Ross Douthat and Rod Dreher.

Good News For The Palin Clan

Bristol Palin is expecting a Happy Event and the glowing mother to be is happily sharing the news with the world. She begins with an ultrasound picture of little Blessing and my, isn't that baby a big one. That's no bun in her oven, it's a loaf of bread.

But it's not just fetus  pictures and squee. The little mother has something to say to her doting admirers as well.

So here are the things you should all get straight before you continue to mock me, judge me, and talk about me. 

 

That birth announcement to Mom must have been rough.

None of us are perfect.

 

You have to be perfect to keep from having an unplanned pregnancy.

I made a mistake, but it’s not the mistake all these giddy a$$holes have loved to assume.

 

I see this is not a Nancy French Palin assignment but the words of the little mother herself.

This pregnancy was actually planned.

Everyone knows I wanted more kids, to have a bigger family.  Believing I was heading that way, I got ahead of myself. Things didn’t go as planned, but life keeps going. Life moves on. 

 

I wanted to marry a military hero--Mom isn't getting any younger and the screaming about money is getting louder--and decided to take the bull by the horns, so to speak. After I become blessed by God's grace the bull didn't put the ring in his nose like he was supposed to do and busted out of the corral gate, running as fast as his legs could carry him, straight up the hills and into Freedom.

RELATED: BIG NEWS

 

But I do not regret this baby. This baby is not a disappointment, and I cannot wait to be a mom times two. Tripp is going to make the best big brother!!

(Tripp--who was left in a limousine at age five while Mommy drank and brawled at a birthday party, is probably going to feel even more neglected. )

Let’s get another thing straight, because I can’t tolerate all the talk on this subject. I have never been paid as an “abstinence spokesperson.” I was employed by the great people at The Candies Foundation.

(Bristol is a straight-talkin' no-bullshtting kinda gal and don't you forget it.)

From their site:

The Candie’s Foundation is a non-profit organization that works to shape the way the youth in America think about the devastating consequences of teen pregnancy and parenthood. We are an operating foundation that develops and runs communication campaigns to raise awareness about our cause. Each year millions of teens are exposed to The Foundation’s message, which encourages them to delay pregnancy and shows the realities of teen parenthood. Our approach is unique: all of our ads feature celebrities that teens can relate to and speaks to them directly using their own language. We go beyond raising awareness; our goal is to influence teen culture.

In other words, they are a teen pregnancy prevention non-profit and I worked for them when I was 18 and 19 — when I could share first hand the challenges of being a teen mother.  Here’s one of my PSAs: [snipped video]

I wasn't a teen abstinence spokesman. I just spoke about abstaining from sex when you are a teen.

I know you remember me most from when Mom ran for Vice President. However, I’m not 17 anymore, I am 24. I’ve been employed at the same doctor’s office for over six years now; I own a home; I have a well-rounded, beautiful son.

I'm no longer a teen unwed mother, I'm an adult unwed mother.

(I need to get a job in a doctor's office. I had no idea it paid so well.)

Bless his heart, how her son must suffer from not having a two-parent family which as well all know is the only way to prevent her son from becoming a vandal or brawler or drinker or fornicator.

Here’s what I have spoken out about. Life.

RELATED: A PREGNANCY UPDATE
 

On this blog and at a few pro-life events.

 

I am so pro-life that I plan on making as many lives as I can. Accidentally on purpose!

When I realized I was pregnant, I knew I would be completely crucified.

You know who else was completely crucified? Jesus! Now Bristol is just like Jesus and therefore much holier than before! And like Mary she was an unwed mother-to-be! If she became a carpenter she could hit the Holy Family Trifecta!

But I never even thought of aborting this child, NO MATTER WHAT THE CIRCUMSTANCE.

So no matter how bad I am I will never be as bad a liberal. Remember that when I get pregnant for the third and fourth times. And forget all that stuff about how pre-marital sex is a sin and is destroying civilization, at least until I am being paid to say it.

(Sorry to the ghouls at Gawker, who said this baby is an argument FOR abortion. Not happening.)

(Gawker ghouls will no doubt be crestfallen that they can't force Bristol to obey their family planning whims, which is more than we can say for Bristol. And they will no doubt be delighted to learn they are annoying Bristol, who unaccountably runs to the internet to see what it is saying about her. Hint: nothing flattering.)

I am pregnant. This is not the ideal situation, but life is important even if it’s not in the most absolute ideal circumstance. This is more confirmation on what I’ve always stood for. I’ve always been pro-life and I am standing for life now.

::unfurls flag, hits "play" on boombox and blares Star Spangled Banner, breast-feeds Tripp while twirling a baton::

Deal with it.

That'll get the wingnut welfare rolling! She hopes! The abstinence bucks may be gone but the anti-abortion folks are sure the pony up and help her support her increasing girth lifestyle family.

A Pearl Of Great Price: The Wit And Wisdom Of Megan McArdle

A quick recap of a week of McArdle wisdom, proving that there is nothing you cannot say or publish when you are backed by billionaires:

Clinton Support Has Nowhere To Go But Down: As people get to know the Republican candidates better Clinton is bound to become less popular, which will make Democrats panic when they realize she is all they have.

McArdle does not discuss the actual candidates, probably because they show up in the media quite often as they scuttle state governments,  do the can-can while auditioning for billionaires' largess, or voice heartfelt support for child molesters and conceal evidence against attempted statutory rape.


U.S. Can't Import The Scandinavian Model: The US cannot have a strong safety net because its productivity depends on innovation and innovation depends on inequality as an incentive. Countries with a strong social net are free riders on American innovation.

This was the same argument she gave us to explain why we could not have Obamacare. No doubt it is equally reality-based.

"Primates Of Park Avenue," Stranger Than Fiction: It's incredible that journalists embellish and lie.

Money quote:

Martin says she telescoped certain events to protect the privacy of friends and family. Does this matter? Yes, for a few reasons. The first is a stubborn journalist's ethic that the minor details have to be right too, not just "the big picture." Writing my own nonfiction book, I agonizingly went back and fact checked over and over again to try to make it as accurate as possible. Where I was telling a story that even I couldn't possibly verify -- because, say, it involved a casual conversation at a bar that happened 10 years ago -- I made that clear, and didn't embroider with detail that would have made it more vivid. We try to get the little details right because otherwise, how will anyone trust the big picture?

Yes, she of the hypothetical statistics and African-American on a bus who sounded suspiciously like an Ayn Rand character wants us to know how meticulous and correct she is, how honest and thorough. We know she's lying but there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.  McArdle will always have the last laugh and the money to enjoy it.

 Would The Poor Prefer Cash Over Medicaid?: Do you think it might be a good idea to get rid of Medicaid and give out cash instead? What if someone wanted to buy a prom dress instead of medicine for a strep throat? Wouldn't it be paternalism to deny them that choice? Do people even know what is best for them? We could argue either way.

Nobody knows anything ever, so get rid of Medicaid.

 Paying Off Student Loans Is Hard. Do It Anyway: I paid off my student loans (because I am terrified of a bad credit rating which I see as a sign of personal worth) and by god you will too.

That one is self-explanatory.

If Apple Blocks Ads, Who Would Notice?: Sigh. Journalism is doomed.

This is easy for her to admit because she knows she is not a journalist and will always have a job.

Friday Food Post: Sous Vide With Some Bite To It:
The sous vide makes perfect meat. Here is how you compensate for the unpleasant texture and flavor.
Most of the food I eat comes from the freezer.
Here is a list of my favorite cookbooks.

It seems that the sous vide and Thermomix were more trouble than they were worth, and they were worth thousands.

Short Cuts

Sometimes, if you take the first and last paragraphs of a Megan McArdle post and eliminate the rest not only will you save time and sanity, you will get a clear message: nobody knows anything. It's like a Mad Magazine back page with blather instead of boobs.

How much should we pay for cancer drugs?
...

But the broader answer is that we are probably not going to find a perfect answer. We often talk about the purpose of research as being "finding a cure for cancer" -- but we rarely ask if that wouldn't create problems of its own.

Either way you have learned nothing and come out of her post more confused than when you went in.  McArdle thinks "journalism" means giving her opinion, not investigating and reporting.

The Release of Flatus by the Cerebellum As Emitted By Megan McArdle

Shorter Megan McArdle: Workers are to blame for poor working conditions.

Money quote:

[As] employees, we want to have maximum freedom to take better jobs, to withhold our labor until we get a better deal, or to take time off for stuff we think is important, while enjoying maximum income stability. As customers, however, we want folks who will work cheaply with no commitments and yet show up reliably, which is why we hate the cable company so much. The institutions that intermediate these two desires are employers: governments and companies. 

...  

Because we have these intermediaries standing between us and the other side, transforming the trades into something more suited to our tastes, it's easy to generate contradictory demands as voters, ones that ratchet up that risk because we ask officials to guard our interests as consumers as well as our interests as workers.

I think she's getting stupider. She quotes Arnold Kling and Tyler Cowen, blathers on at random for a while, and then it's cocktail hour. Bottoms up!

The Long Con Of Rod Dreher

The percentage of Christians in the US has dropped 7.8%, from 78.4% to 70.6% and Rod Dreher cries Apocalypse Now!

Look at those numbers. We are staring at the face of a European-style collapse within a couple of generations. If you think the children being born now to religiously observant Millennial parents are, on the whole, going to be more pious than their parents’ generation, you are whistling past the graveyard. Once this decline gets going, it’s very hard to stop. 

Again and again: these are not normal times. We can’t be about business as usual. The future of Christianity in America will be Benedictine — as in Benedict Option — or it won’t be at all.

Moore and Stetzer are mostly right. This is a winnowing-out of nominal Christians, and it could make the church stronger. The down side of this is that a post-Christian culture can and will slide into an anti-Christian culture, one that will not content itself to let us be weirdoes off by ourselves, but will actively attempt to suppress us. I am certain this will happen. It may be good for us, ultimately, but I cannot say that I’m looking forward to watching institutions be torn apart.

The number of people who were unaffiliated with religion rose 6.7%. Fascism is bound to follow.

Not long ago, a senior figure engaged in legal strategy on religious freedom issues told me that we cannot disengage from court fights and politics, because we have no choice but to keep fighting to protect ourselves. But we should not be under any illusions about the prospect of any kind of solid or lasting victory, nor should we deceive ourselves by thinking that winning lawsuits and elections is any kind of alternative to doing the hard, long, necessary work of building a strong, resilient Christian culture.

We must live a Christian life while persecuting gays. It's not all fun and games, you know.

I have called the showdown in Indiana over RFRA an “apocalypse,” not in the “end of the world” sense, but in the original Greek sense of an “unveiling.” The reason it was so shocking to many religious conservatives is because it showed us how things really are in this country — specifically, that religious liberty is far more imperiled than we previously believed. It’s not so much that people weighed religious liberty against gay rights claims and found them wanting; it’s that people didn’t seem to weigh them at all. It was naturally assumed, and assumed with great moral indignation, that of course religious people are entitled to no consideration in the face of anti-discrimination claims. Patrick Deneen can read the signs of the times, and sees that neither Republicans nor Democrats can be counted on to value the principle religious liberty when it opposes what the mob, including the mob in the boardroom, wants[.]

Christianity is going to cost us something in the near future, and for the foreseeable future. This can be the seed of a greater faith, and I hope it is. But I also hope that Christians don’t underestimate the difficulty of the road ahead. As I keep saying, these are not normal times, and things we have always been able to take for granted are going to erode badly, even disappear. Prepare.

How is Rod Dreher preparing for the coming annihilation of the Christians? He is retreating to his happy place, the Benedict Option. This Benedict Option is a little vague, it seems to entail a kind of retreat into a strong religious community. Surely that would make the pogroms easier to carry out but Rod was not clear.

Finally Dreher described what he meant by finding a more Godly way to wait out existence until he is carried off by the wings of an angel.

Our friends arrived tonight after eight hours on the road, and we served dinner, had beer and wine, then retired to the living room for coffee, tea, and long conversation about life, about church, about books, about God. This is part of the Benedict Option for us. Of course you don’t have to be any sort of lay Benedictine to be hospitable; all good people are hospitable. My point is simply that this kind of hospitality is not something we do in spite of our Christianity; it’s something we do because of the kind of Christians we are. I am basically a Byzantine hobbit who lives by a Christianity that both fasts and feasts, and that sings psalms, and says the knots on a prayer rope, and lights candles, and makes prostrations during Lent, and on and on.  

It’s a life that is vivid and joyful, with the sacramental worship of Jesus Christ at its center. Not as an add-on, but at its center. That’s what I mean too by the Benedict Option.

The Benedict Option has a predecessor, the Crunchy Con movement. You might notice a pattern in Dreher's description of the Crunchy lifestyle.

When Matthew came along, we didn't often have the opportunity or the money to go to restaurants, so we spent many a weekend night cooking dinners for friends at home. Out of sheer curiosity and the pleasure of discovery, we learned about cheese and wine, and began spending some of the happiest evenings of our lives in the basement living room of our little apartment on the Brooklyn waterfront, laughing and talking politics, religion, books, movies, travel, and everything under the sun amid steaming platters of garlicky roasts, tureens of peppery remoulade, crisp-crusted frittatas, tangy giambottas, napoleons of beefsteak tomatoes and basil from our own patio garden, and bottle after bottle of robust Italian and Spanish wine. For us, family, friends, and feasting was pretty much what the good life was all about. The food we prepared with such enjoyment and care was, at bottom, an expression of love for our companions, and our long suppers an occasion for communion.

Rod, a true Louisiana son, loves his food and alcohol, don't you cher?

But let's go further back.

 By that time I was between my freshman and sophomore semesters at LSU in Baton Rouge, and was home working a summer gig at the nuclear plant. There was no place I wanted to be less than stuck in Starhill. So I checked out. I'd come home from my nine-to-five job, make myself a tall glass of Tanqueray gin, grapefruit juice, and soda, and retire to my room to drink, read Hemingway, listen to ska, and marinate in self-doubt. To the rest of my family I looked like a self-centered, uppity layabout. There was no doubt some truth to that, but it was also the case that I was confused and drifting. 

And further still.

Fishing was our family's thing, and Paw's pond was our family's place. Though I was no fan of the outdoors, I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it.

But I would also be lying if I said I wouldn't rather have been in city, at the movies, or better ye, at a bookstore. I loved science fiction, and novels, and books about space, and comics from Richie Rich to Archie to the Green Lantern. And best of all, there was Mad magazine, with its smarty-pants humor, and its snappy Yiddishisms. Nobody around here talked like that. I wanted to be where people talked like that.

In college, he finally was.

One evening [his sister Ruth] shared a table in the cafeteria with my best friend Paul and me. Paul, a political theory major, and I, minoring in philosophy and political science, loved to talk about big ideas. That evening we got off on something about Nietzsche and the death of God. Ruthie listened patiently, but finally lost her cool. She told us she thought that we the "stupidest bunch of you-know-what" that she had ever heard....  

She wouldn't listen to anything either of us had to say in defense of philosophy or philosophizing. At the time I thought Ruthie's prickly anti-intellectualism was funny.

Rod Dreher wants nothing more in this life than to be able to afford a comfortable upper middle class lifestyle doing what he does best: pseudo-intellectual moralizing and gay-bashing. It doesn't matter what he actually says; anything that will sell a book will do. He sold the Catholic Church and then he sold liberal conservatism and when that quickly exhausted he sold the Benedict Option. He'll keep on making up new philosophies and contemplating his navel at enormous length as long as there is a buck to be made or a gay to bash.

And if he has to whip up an Apocalypse to get his luxury and ease that's a small price for someone else to pay so he can live like a Southern Gentleman.