September 2010
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Monthly Archives: September 2010

“The Reality Is That ‘Green Energy’ Actually Causes the Economy to Contract”

September 30, 2010

by Mike Gray At The Freeman, William Anderson tells us about a whole new economic sector that depends on failure: Keynesians and semi-socialists claim that “clean energy” will create jobs and net economic growth. From Al Gore to the New York Times, “green energy” is almost religious in scope, as advocates claim that not only will it give us better air and weather, but it also will be a fundamental building block of economic recovery. To speak out against this is tantamount to treason in some quarters . . . . . . . . As Robert Bryce notes in his eye-opening book, Gusher of Lies, much of what proponents claim about these “new technologies” not only is untrue but will remain untrue because of the first and second laws of thermodynamics: The laws of science stand in the way of these projects ever becoming profitable on their own, and Congress cannot repeal either economic or scientific laws.

CBS’s ‘$#*! My Dad Says’ Nicely Transcends Gimmick Origin

September 30, 2010

By S. T. Karnick

CBS’s ‘$#*! My Dad Says’ Nicely Transcends Gimmick Origin

Sure, the new CBS sitcom $#*! My Dad Says is based on a very thin gimmick: a snarky but funny and very popular Twitter feed by previously unknown writer Justin Halpern. And sure, William Shatner plays a parody of his recent TV persona, as the weird blowhard named in the show’s title. And sure, sitcoms populated with quirky characters are a dime a dozen. But Shatner is a really talented comic actor, and he and the producers have given the show and its main characters a good deal more depth than one might have any right to expect. The concept turns out to have some potential for interesting situations reminiscent of real-life problems most people encounter. The story is laid out in a simple and direct manner in the pilot, but festooned with plenty of comical one-liners. A young, unemployed man and his cantankerous, hard-nosed father attempt to reconnect after years apart because of a divorce. The son barely knows the father, but he shows up on his doorstep anyway because he has nowhere else to go, having been laid off from his job. He is in fact rather afraid of the old man, for good reason, as the latter

Books That You Might Find of Interest

September 30, 2010

By Mike Gray

by Mike Gray Poor Lenin’s Almanac: Perverse Leftist Proverbs for Modern Life Mark Musser’s review at Accuracy in Media: Bruce Walker does a masterful job exposing the corrupt Marxist leftovers from the 1800’s that is currently rotting America from the inside out as many leftist ideals have subtly and slowly replaced our Judeo-Christian heritage. Using a satirical method that rivals Juvenal’s satire of the debauched Roman Empire, Mr. Walker distills for us in common language the rotten fruits of communistic ideology. This political burlesque is not only revealed by the title, but continues throughout the entirety of the book. Each short chapter is satirically labeled to encapsulate 52 vices of Marxist ideology that are currently wreaking havoc on the political and moral fabric of our society. Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism Shawn Ritenour’s review on MisesDaily: Washington’s stunning economic power grabs — healthcare centralization, Keynesian fiscal stimulus, and Federal Reserve bailouts — are creating an unintended consequence: an increasing demand for freedom literature. Exhibit A would have to be F. A. Hayek’s 66-year-old Road to Serfdom recently hitting number one for all books on Amazon.com. Those desiring an even deeper education in the ideas of liberty are well advised

Henry Hazlitt on the Gold Standard

September 30, 2010

By Mike Gray

by Mike Gray The supply of gold is governed by nature; it is not, like the supply of paper money, subject merely to the schemes of demagogues or the whims of politicians. Nobody ever thinks he has quite enough money. Once the idea is accepted that money is something whose supply is determined simply by the printing press, it becomes impossible for the politicians in power to resist the constant demands for further inflation. — Henry Hazlitt In a 2004 article in The Freeman Online, Jude Blanchette summarized economist Hazlitt’s views on unwise banking practices and the value of money: Hazlitt was well known for his views on monetary theory and specifically his advocacy of a gold standard. In its final, polished form, his case for the gold standard was profound and persuasive. What’s more, the clarity and precision of his work made the subject accessible to the intelligent public. Nobody seems to believe Jefferson when he asserts that “paper is poverty.” The days of the “almighty dollar” are over, thanks to decades of self-inflicted monetary destruction. A few of Henry Hazlitt’s books: Man vs. the Welfare State — Time Will Run Back (a novel) — The Inflation Crisis, and

Response to National Drift Requires Understanding of Fundamental Principles

September 30, 2010

By S. T. Karnick

Response to National Drift Requires Understanding of Fundamental Principles

There are some false dichotomies in Thomas Friedman’s New York Times column denigrating what he calls the Tea Kettle movement (such as that diagnosing symptoms somehow makes it impossible to offer policies, that popularity makes a movement automatically suspect, etc.), but he does get a couple of things very right: the description of what kind of presidential and congressional leadership is needed today, the point that real decisions about spending cuts have to be made if the current public dissatisfaction with government is to have any policy relevance (although he actually denies this as a possibility), and above all, what America’s competitive advantage is: “our ability to attract, develop and unleash creative talent. That means men and women who invent, build and sell more goods and services that make people’s lives more productive, healthy, comfortable, secure and entertained than any other country.” Of course Friedman, like today’s elites in general, tends to think that nothing happens except what’s reported in his own dreadful newspaper, so he claims that the Tea Party people were content with the Bush years of spending hikes. That is a falsehood, at the very least in the important sense that he is making an unfounded positive

Tony Curtis Defined the Limits of the Hustler Persona

September 30, 2010

By S. T. Karnick

Tony Curtis Defined the Limits of the Hustler Persona

The late Tony Curtis, who died yesterday at the age of 85, was once one of the most popular and celebrated actors in Hollywood. Unfortunately, the same things that made him a star drove his career into the doldrums in his later years. Curtis had some acting talent, but his popularity and box office appeal were really based on his rather prissy handsomeness, a quality that elevated several other actors to stardom at the same time: Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Paul Newman, Rock Hudson, Warren Beatty, etc. Curtis gave some appealing performances and conveyed a good deal of personal charm on-screen. Once his looks faded, as they must for all, he could not find a persona that would work for him as a middle-aged and then an elderly man. The hustling scammer type was a good character for him in his early years, and it made his career, but he wanted to play the hero. It was not to be. Curtis just didn’t have the seriousness and evident strength of character that are required to make audiences like a person as an antihero (as, for example, Marlon Brando, Clint Eastwood, and Dennis Hopper did). There was a certain slightness to

NBC’s ‘Undercovers’ Is Appealingly True to Formula

September 29, 2010

By S. T. Karnick

NBC’s ‘Undercovers’ Is Appealingly True to Formula

As the fourth-rated broadcast TV network, NBC has made plenty of mistakes during the past few years, under now-ousted CEO Jeff Zucker. These failures actually arose from NBC’s longtime corporate culture and mission, which have been in place since the 1950s: an emphasis on specials and spectacular ideas as opposed to creating solid entertainment. It was NBC’s ambitions, inherited from the innovative TV programmer Sylvester “Pat” Weaver in the 1950s, that led to expensive, high-concept shows such as Kings, Heroes, The Event, and the like (note the high-flown titles of these series). Even last season’s Tonight Show debacle can be seen as part of this trend, an attempt at innovation and specialness on the cheap. This approach has failed at least as often as it has succeeded—NBC’s ratings were seldom spectacular under Weaver; CBS tended to rule the roost then, as today. In fact NBC’s greatest success in the post-Weaver years was the Brandon Tartikoff era, when the former ABC program exec wedded the network’s typical ambition and thirst for innovation with a smart quest for personable actors and entertaining concepts. With Zucker now on the way out and Jeff Gaspin installed as board chairman, NBC appears to be trying

“By Their Creator” — Why Does the President Have a Problem with That?

September 28, 2010

By Mike Gray

“By Their Creator” — Why Does the President Have a Problem with That?

by Mike Gray Terrence P. Jeffrey, at CNSNews.com, notes that our president stumbles with increasing frequency over a simple phrase from a foundational American document—even bilingually: Just seven days after he sparked controversy by omitting the word “Creator” when he closely paraphrased the passage from the Declaration of Independence that says all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,” President Barack Obama again omitted the Creator when speaking about the “inalienable rights” that “everybody is endowed with.” . . . . Speaking at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s Annual Awards Gala on Sept. 15, Obama had left out the word “Creator” when otherwise virtually quoting from the Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” Obama said at that event, “that all men are created equal, endowed with certain inalienable rights: life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That’s what makes us unique.” Not surprisingly, radio personality Rush Limbaugh weighed in on this: Now, Obama was using a teleprompter here. It’s interesting. On Wednesday, he leaves the Creator as the source of our rights out of his quote of the Declaration of Independence. Yesterday heads over to church, eight o’clock in the morning, takes

‘Bureaucracy’ — A Classic Book That’s As Timely As Ever

September 28, 2010

By Mike Gray

‘Bureaucracy’ — A Classic Book That’s As Timely As Ever

by Mike Gray The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. — Ludwig von Mises On MisesDaily, Marcia Sielaff reviews Mises’s classic critique of FDR’s New Deal—and, by extension, BHO’s New New Deal—Bureaucracy (1944): One by one, Mises discusses and dispatches the pillars of progressive dogma: government spending can create jobs for the unemployed; the service motive is better than the profit motive; government choices are superior to individual choices; the Constitution is an unnecessary impediment to the welfare state. And this observation by Mises seems truer now than when he made it seven decades ago: America is faced with a phenomenon that the framers of the Constitution did not foresee and could not foresee: the

Nothing ‘Retro’ About ‘Hawaii Five-0′ Reboot

September 27, 2010

By S. T. Karnick

Nothing ‘Retro’ About ‘Hawaii Five-0′ Reboot

Although CBS’-TVs new cop show Hawaii Five-0 is a reboot of a highly popular 1970s CBS series that entered the poplar lexicon (with police departments across the nation being popularly referred to as Five-O), there’s nothing old-fashioned about the current version. Whether you consider that a good thing or bad will depend on whether you still enjoy the conventions of contemporary action-oriented cop shows: Breakdowns of authority, corruption in the police department, government unable to protect its own, let alone the public—check. A non-nonsense team leader who even argues with state’s governor and orders her around, which she accepts without objection—check. A big action scene on a regular schedule, in this case once every ten minutes of screen time—check. Glamorous or otherwise interesting locale—check and double-check. The police cutting corners in the interests of justice. A team of police officers with a past of personal tragedies and/or cute personality quirks—check. There’s nothing retro about the show, and the main characters are all common contemporary types. There’s the stolid but tormented team leader; the sharp-tongued second-in-command who’s struggling to stay connected to his young daughter after a messy divorce; the ethnic male who knows the details of the local crime scene,

Dealing with the “Cosmic Authority Problem”

September 27, 2010

By Mike Gray

Dealing with the “Cosmic Authority Problem”

by Mike Gray Materialist philosophy is neither new nor scientific, but one of the most ancient superstitious beliefs in the world. The ancient version held that matter has always existed and everything that exists consists of matter. According to the modern version, invisible dead-matter spontaneously generated itself from nothing, and then by way of evolution magically produced everything else. To believe this is to believe that the nothingness within the magician’s hat spontaneously generated the bunny. — Linda Kimball So who’s running the show, God or Nature? At RenewAmerica, Linda Kimball looks at the Gnostic underpinnings of today’s prevailing natural philosophy: Historically, Gnostics have always been notorious God-haters to the extent of consigning Him to hell. The early Church Fathers called them the “lawless ones,” as they were idolizers of their own minds, rebels against all authority, immoralists, hedonists, and builders of alternative realities (utopian fantasies) requiring the death of God, for the heart of Gnosticism is “man is god.” While the infamous Tower of Babel was history’s first Gnostic project, the Soviet Union and Socialist Germany are modern versions. In his book Science, Politics, & Gnosticism, esteemed political philosopher Eric Voegelin (1901-85) identifies progressivism, positivism, Hegelianism, Marxism, and the

“One of the Most Intrusive Technologies Conceivable”

September 27, 2010

By Mike Gray

“One of the Most Intrusive Technologies Conceivable”

by Mike Gray Andy Greenberg, at Forbes.com, recently reported on “scanner vans” that “allow drive-by snooping”: Privacy-conscious travelers may cringe to think of the full-body scanners finding their way into dozens of airport checkpoints around the country. Most likely aren’t aware that the same technology, capable of seeing through walls and clothes, has also been rolling out on U.S. streets. American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Mass., has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter X-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles or cargo containers to snoop into their contents. And while the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the company says law enforcement agencies have also been using them domestically, deploying the roving scanners to search for vehicle-based roadside bombs in American cities. “This product is now the largest-selling cargo and vehicle inspection system ever,” says Joseph Reiss, AS&E’s vice president of marketing. You might never look at a delivery van the same way again.

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Monthly Archives: September 2010

“The Reality Is That ‘Green Energy’ Actually Causes the Economy to Contract”

CBS’s ‘$#*! My Dad Says’ Nicely Transcends Gimmick Origin

Books That You Might Find of Interest

Henry Hazlitt on the Gold Standard

Response to National Drift Requires Understanding of Fundamental Principles

Tony Curtis Defined the Limits of the Hustler Persona

NBC’s ‘Undercovers’ Is Appealingly True to Formula

“By Their Creator” — Why Does the President Have a Problem with That?

‘Bureaucracy’ — A Classic Book That’s As Timely As Ever

Nothing ‘Retro’ About ‘Hawaii Five-0′ Reboot

Dealing with the “Cosmic Authority Problem”

“One of the Most Intrusive Technologies Conceivable”

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