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NRO – Mark Steyn: Potemkin Parliament Washington’s governing systems are in a bad way. Pull quote: “If only we could get American conservatives to be as fiscally responsible as Canadian liberals.” Read the whole thing. Then you can cheer yourself up with a big long article I tweeted last night on suicidal people jumping off [...]

Categories: Politics

Yeah! Finally! wait but why – Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy (I like this post’s style. It’s sort of Hyperbole and a Half meets Quora.) So yes, now that you’ve gone away and read the whole thing, I agree with all of it, and read the whole thing, except: • I think it’s overstating [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

So I listened to Jamie Oliver’s appearance on BBC’s Woman’s Hour last week, which is about 22 minutes long, it’s the first segment, and it’s very interesting, especially this bit towards the end: JO: This recession is NOT going like everyone says, I can tell you that. Jane Garvey: What do you base that on? [...]

Categories: Food

So this is very good, and although it’s long (although, not as long as I thought it would be; I was reading it this morning on my phone and emailed it to myself to finish later because I thought I was less than halfway but it turned out I had one paragraph left and the [...]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

The Telegraph – IMF sees 140m jobs shortage in ageing China as ‘Lewis Point’ hits China’s vast reserve of cheap workers in the hinterland is vanishing at a vertiginous pace. We can now discern more or less when the catch-up growth miracle will sputter out. Another seven years or so – enough to bouy global [...]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

NRO – Mark Steyn: The Edge of the Abyss The default setting of American society is ever more liberal and statist. In the weeks ahead, Democrats and Republicans will reach a triumphant “bipartisan” deal to avert the fiscal cliff through some artful bookkeeping mechanism that postpones Taxmageddon for another year, or six months, or three, [...]

Categories: Politics

Headline, The Times of London: Wall Street alarm as Obama faces gridlock Um, didn’t you endorse him?

Categories: Politics

This (the Monday before Election Day (even if it’s more like Election Month; in America, even Election Day never ends)) has to be my least favourite day of any year. The stomach acid builds as, even though one’s been blithely ignoring everything as much as possible to avoid losing one’s mind, the candidates get on [...]

Categories: Politics

Hoooo-boy: NRO – Mark Steyn: President of the Future Unfortunately the rest of us have to live in Obama’s present. In the America over which Barack Obama has the tedious chore of actually presiding, second-quarter GDP growth was revised down from 1.7 percent to 1.3 percent — or, in layman’s terms, from “barely detectable” to [...]

Categories: Politics

National Post – Conrad Black: Canada’s front-row seat for the American disaster And now, in an astounding demonstration of national fecklessness, a failed president is running slightly ahead in the polls of a challenger who has a real CV, unlike recent presidents, but who is so politically oafish and plastic, he makes Elmer Fudd seem [...]

Categories: Politics

Telegraph – Harry Mount: Architectural beauty – and private home ownership – relieve poverty There’s a show on BBC 2 called “Secret History of our Streets” which sounds amazing: Caledonian Road is near where I was brought up – and the programme illustrates really well how architectural beauty, and private ownership, relieved the poverty of [...]

Categories: History

A typically lugubrious VDH on the current situation everywhere on everything: PJM – The Liberal Super Nova, by Victor Davis Hanson Read the whole thing since he’s always hard to distill down and quote. One comment is that he’s always saying the End is Night, but nothing changes. But then he is a historian and [...]

Categories: Politics

Sigh, etc: NRO – Contraception Misdirection A universal birth-control mandate is a curious priority for a dying republic. By Mark Steyn

Categories: Politics

Mark Steyn: [A]fter almost every one of these debates we at NR and elsewhere say “ABC lost. Big time.” and “Big loser: ABC News” – or CNN or MSNBC or whoever it is. And then ten days later (or, in this case, the following morning) there they all are again acquiescing in some condescending media [...]

Categories: Politics

I’m not sure what I think about this: The Guardian – It is not inevitable that the EU – or democracy – will survive this mess Europe may well muddle through with technocrats and tighter straitjackets, but the rule of the people must be guarded, by Simon Jenkins

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs