Politics: October 2007 Archives
"On its first weekend, the film did a whopping 10 grand at the box office in 7 theatres. That works out to about $1500 per theater, not enough to cover a single screening fee.
"How surprising. Who wouldn't want to sit through two hours watching an old man dodge questions about plagiarism, his book's extreme anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian bias, his illogical equation of Israel with South African apartheid, and his repeat offenses of snuggling with anti-American tinpots? Who wouldn't want to see the self-righteous man who helped usher in the Iranian mullahcracy hug his Nobel and chastise the president who is having to clean up the mess that Carter left for all of his successors?"
Macleans.ca: Mark Steyn: The 'cold civil war' in the U.S.
"Life is good, food is plentiful, there are a million and one distractions. In advanced democracies, politics is not everything, and we get on with our lives. In a sense, we outsource politics to those who want it most and participate albeit fitfully in whatever parameters of discourse emerge." (Via Alarming News.)
Townhall.com: Amanda Carpenter: Earmark War on the Senate Floor
Okla. Sen. Tom Coburn and his allies defeated flower-power pork barrel spending, eliminating an earmark for a Woodstock Festival museum, but they fell short in trying to eliminate spending on U. S. Rep. Charles Rangel's Federally-funded monument to himself.
Notes from the Lounge: Libertarian Liberalism
Quote of the day: "What libertarians would like to see, in effect, is a government too restrained to be worth the trouble of buying."
Later in the same piece: "The reason so much of what the state does is either direct or indirect corporate welfare is that almost nobody is going to have the time or inclination to monitor each of a thousand little programs that impose a small (because diffuse) cost and provide a concentrated benefit to a small set of firms. But if the starting point were relative laissez-faire, deviations from that benchmark would stand out more prominently as aberrant. That would lighten the demands on public attention and action, making it easier to check corporate rent-seeking."
