Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

After you’ve turned citizens into junkies, with government as the pusher, it’s very hard to turn them back again, and even harder to get them to quit (if you’ll forgive the expression) cold turkey. It’s all but impossible in the present Continental political culture. Europe has a psychological investment in longer holidays: the fact that they spell national suicide is less important than that they distinguish Europe from the less enlightened Americans.

Mark Steyn - 12-27-04

Baby Boomer comeuppance; Richard Berry; American Thinker; Crash of 2008

American Thinker has posted an essay detailing how the baby boomer values led to the crash we have experienced over the past few years (most sharply in the past few weeks):

We are seeing in the Wall Street implosion the inevitable result of the Boomer Elite outlook and the behavior it spawned. Storied investment banks were being run on 40 to 1 leverage. Fancy new securities were designed and widely disseminated whose terms are opaque even to highly knowledgeable and experienced hands. Mortgage securitization techniques were developed which, our bettors assured us, would magically spread risk and thus stabilize the financial system. However, simultaneously with these brilliant innovations, lenders were being forced -- by Boomer Elite congressmen with an aching love of the poor and oppressed unique to themselves -- to loan to uncreditworthy borrowers at subprime rates and without adequate documentation. These loans, packaged into securities together with standard, performing loans, rendered unknowable the value of the securities, leading to mandatory write downs and drastic capital impairment or outright insolvency for many very large firms. Given the high degree of integration of the international financial system, critical destabilization was the real result of this confluence of Master of the Universe genius and Boomer Elite turpitude.

The next time you hear or see:

• a TV program extol the virtues of the 60's generation and how they stopped the war in Vietnam;
• a speaker refer to Vietnam as the "crucible of a generation";
• 60's music referred to as idealistic and the catalyst for peace and love, etc.;
• John Lennon referred to as the voice (or the conscience or whatever) of a generation;
• commercials or news accounts celebrating the empowerment of the baby boomers as they grow older;
• any other whitewash of the generation that has done so much damage;

click on this American Thinker article and remember the price we pay for our indulgence in this 40 year fantasy.

Spengler; Asia Times; Kung Fu Panda; the end of slacker culture

"Spengler's" column in Asia Times should be regular required reading for all of you. This week, Spengler writes of the slacker culture in America end predicts said culture's demise. He ties in everything from the Kung Fu Panda movie to current trends in unemployment and the banking collapse:

Two events on June 6 might denote the death of the "slacker" as an American cultural archetype. . . .

-----------------

America might be the first country in recorded history whose culture celebrates not only indolence but also the sheer absence of ability. Byronic loafing is the birthright of genius, but slacking has become the entitlement of every young American.

Kung Fu Panda - symbol of a dying culture?



----------------

It is hard to think of a comparable case in social history: a country borrows from foreigners to lend money to its young people to spend four years binge-drinking at a university that pretends to prepare them for the world.

------------------

So-called home equity loans, or second mortgages on homes, are the cause of the crash of US bank stock prices during the past few weeks. The well is dry. That leaves the youngsters in the lurch, which is precisely where most of them deserve to be.

A profound sense of panic appears to have gripped American youth, which might explain why so many of them are seeking a messiah in Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barak Obama. But there isn't much that Obama or anyone else, for that matter, can do to help the slackers.

-----------------------
While Spengler's outlook is grim, I would be relieved if the only consequences for the western world are those outlined in Spengler's article. Read it all.

John Hinckley - mentally ill or merely a "progressive"?

"Mr. Hinckley believes himself entitled to a life of leisure and shows significant signs of stress when he is not given his way."

Motion filed by U.S. Attorneys - June 4, 2008 - United States v. Hinckley (related to Hinckley's attempts to obtain increased forloughs).

He sounds like a typical Democrat voter.

----------------------------------
update

Daily Scoff

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter [John McCain]

Unluckily for McCain, snowstorms in Michigan suppressed the turnout among Democratic "Independents" who planned to screw up the Republican primary by voting for our worst candidate. Democrats are notoriously unreliable voters in bad weather. Instead of putting on galoshes and going to the polls, they sit on their porches waiting for FEMA to rescue them.

Ann Coulter - 1-16-08

Quote of the day - Joe Sobran [Bill Clinton, Joseph Stalin, C.S. Lewis]

INSIGHT OF THE CENTURY: I often think that in our
time the Devil has finally gotten his act together.
After dabbling with huge wars and monstrous tyrannies --
very successful but short-lived in their violence -- he
has found a stabler long-term strategy: the more
peaceful tyranny of the appetites in a mass society,
catered to by mediocre rulers like Bill Clinton. In C.S.
Lewis's classic The Screwtape Letters, the senior devil
counsels his younger colleague that for purposes of
damnation, murder may be no better than playing cards,
if cards will do the trick. From that point of view,
Stalin may be no better than Clinton.

Joe Sobran - December 1999

C.S. Lewis

Quote of the day - Thomas Sowell

Military conscription is long gone. But taxpayers are still being conscripted to play Santa Claus.

Thomas Sowell

Quote of the day - Thomas Sowell [tooth fairy]

You may scoff at the Tooth Fairy if you like. But the Tooth Fairy's approach has gotten more politicians elected than any economist's analysis.

Thomas Sowell

tooth fairy

Quote of the day - Dick Morris

Hillary realizes, as Bill once told me, that any government entitlement for poor people can be easily repealed since they lack political power and practical voting strength. But middle class entitlements, once granted, last forever - see Social Security and Medicare and rent control in New York City.

So Hillary will pioneer entitlements and grants for middle class families, making them at once dependent on government aid, winning their political gratitude, and giving them a stake in benefit programs that also help the poor.

She will bring us much closer to the Swedish, French, and German model where everybody gets a check from the government, regardless of their wealth or income, making it impossible to criticize the program.

Dick Morris