Noun

1. A political regime, having totalitarian aspirations, ideologically based on centralized government, government control of business, repression of criticism or opposition, a leader cult and exalting the state and/or religion above individual rights. Originally only applied (usually capitalized) to Benito Mussolini’s Italy.


2. By vague analogy, any system of strong autocracy or oligarchy usually to the extent of bending and breaking the law, race-baiting and violence against largely unarmed populations.

Economic progress depends upon a trinity of individual prerogatives: pursuit of self-interest, division of labor, and freedom of trade.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the pursuit of self-interest. That was Smith’s best insight. To a twenty-first-century reader this hardly sounds like news. Or, rather, it sounds like everything that’s in the news. These days, altruism itself is proclaimed at the top of the altruist’s lungs. Certainly it’s of interest to the self to be a celebrity. Bob Geldof has found a way to remain one. But for most of history, wisdom, beliefs, and mores demanded subjugation of ego, bridling of aspiration, and sacrifice of self (and, per Abraham with Isaac, of family members, if you could catch them).

This meekness, like Adam Smith’s production, had an end and purpose. Most people enjoyed no control over their material circumstances or even-if they were slaves or serfs-their material persons. In the doghouse of ancient and medieval existence, asceticism made us feel less like dogs.

In the chapter “Of the Wages of Labour,” in book 1 of The Wealth of Nations, Smith remarked in a tone approaching modern irony, “Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage or as an inconveniency to the society?”

The answer is division of labor. It was an obvious answer-except to most of the scholars who had theorized about economics prior to Adam Smith. Division of labor has existed since mankind has.

The little fellow with the big ideas chips the spear points. The courageous oaf spears the mammoth. And the artistic type does a lovely cave painting of it all. One person makes a thing, and another person makes another thing, and everyone wants everything.

Hence trade. Trade may be theoretically good, or self-sufficiency may be theoretically better, but to even think about such theories is a waste of that intermittently useful specialization, thought. Trade is a fact.

Adam Smith saw that all trades, when freely conducted, are mutually beneficial by definition. A person with this got that, which he wanted more, from a person who wanted this more than that. It may have been a stupid trade. Viewing a cave painting cannot be worth three hundred pounds of mammoth ham. The mutuality may be lopsided. A starving artist gorges himself for months while a courageous oaf of a new art patron stands bemused in the Grotte de Lascaux. And what about that wily spear point chipper? He doubtless took his mammoth slice. But they didn’t ask us. It’s none of our business.

By P. J. O’ROURKE

Read full article >>>

Fawning “Inconvenient Truth Teller” article inside paints him as a sort of goof savant … a bit like Chauncey Gardiner of “Being There,” he’s been in Washington DC his entire life, everyone likes him, and suddenly they think he’s a genius. The three-decade gaffe-and-reverse record requires some acrobatics, though. The Newsweek scribblers clearly like his go-lite, wack-a-mole strategy though they are big enough to admit at the end that people who actually know what they are talking about say it won’t work. It’s not exactly the Joe Biden embed that I wished out loud NYT’s Dexter Filkins would do as a counterbalance to his McChyrstal piece earlier this week,* but close.

[...] Some administration officials, led by Biden, appear to hope that American forces can rely more on counterterrorism operations—attacks by Predator drones and small elite units on terrorist hiding places—to hold Afghanistan together and defeat Al Qaeda. But critics call this “splitting the baby” and say it’ll never work. As a senior civilian Pentagon official points out, “No one has more experience with counterterrorism than McChrystal,” who ran black ops in Iraq and Afghanistan for five years. “If there was an easier, better way, he’d be pushing for it,” says this official, who would not be quoted discussing internal deliberations. [...]

Anyway, I don’t know if there was a publicity-grabbing hoax plotted, or if an opportunity was seized on the fly, or if it all innocently happened the way Balloon Dad says it did. But whatever happened yesterday, I have a sneaking suspicion the flying Jiffy Pop balloon was not originally conceived, built and being tested as an innovative commuting vehicle.

It’s not for nothing Shepard Smith and everyone else was comparing that thing to a UFO yesterday. Maybe, like the Richard Dreyfuss character in ”Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Richard Heene was just strangely compelled to make his experimental 3DLAV commuting device look like a traditional Roswell-inspired flying saucer hoax. There is some evidence to suggest Heene has experienced a close encounter of … some kind. But there is nothing about the 3DLAV … seating, controls … to suggest it is designed for low-altitude manned flight, or atmospheric research for that matter, and there’s a lot about it that looks more like an off-the-shelf extraterrestial photo prop. At this point I don’t want to leap to a UFO hoax genesis to this thing, which after all clearly ended up following a different, very human-oriented storyline. Published reports in any case indicate Heene firmly believes humans are descended from aliens. Which doesn’t suggest “hoax” as much as “totally wacked.”

Read more >>>

Unique architecture suffering from neglect

Permanent exhibition faces closure

Vasarely began a degree in medicine in Budapest before abandoning his studies to pursue his passion for art. He went on to design the official spiral-shaped logo of the Munich Olympic games

Since the artist’s death in Paris in 1997, his estate has been mired in successive controversies dubbed the Vasarely affair (‘l’affaire Vasarely’) and now the new Vasarely affair (‘la nouvelle affaire Vasarely’) by the French press

Relatives have made various attempts to acquire personal possession of his art-works. Vasarely’s step-mother was arrested for theft in Chicago in 2008 after she was caught moving hundreds of Vasarely’s works from one clandestine storage space to another

(These types of security checks operate in the background: they don’t require you, for instance, to reenter your user name and password.)

Many web applications also “sanitize” data posted by their subscribers: if a friend posts something to your social-network page, the application probably won’t show you the post without inspecting it for malicious code.

Raj Rajaratnam will appear in court later on today (Friday).

Raj Rajaratnam will face both civil and criminal charges. He will face hefty fines and most likely jail time.

Raj Rajaratnam Charged With Insider Trading

The committee’s Democrats simply failed to appear. Republican staffers say they caught them on tape leaving by a back door at 2:35.

By: David Freddoso
Commentary Staff Writer
10/15/09

Let’s play a hypothetical game.

Let us assume that Gutierrez’s bill passes, and he achieves his major goal of a general amnesty. The 12 million aliens currently residing in the country illegally suddenly find themselves free to stay, become card-carrying members of the Democratic Party, and live happily ever after.

What happens to the next person who steals across the border?

History has shown us that, after an amnesty, the rate of illegal border crossings increases. After the last amnesty bill in 1986, the US experienced a flood of new illegal aliens crossing the border. In the twenty-year period between 1985 and 2005, the number of illegal residents soared from an estimated 2-3 million to about 11 million. It is only human nature that, upon hearing of an amnesty, people would, predictably, risk all to come to the US by any means and simply wait out their chance in the hopes of catching the next one.

The question then arises: are we really solving the problem by granting another amnesty only to find ourselves in the same situation twenty years from now?

by Claude Cartaginese

October 13, 2009: President Obama was called up to show off his dance moves with Mexican pop singer Thalia at Tuesday’s Fiesta Latina event at the White House.Thalia - Fiesta Latina en la Casa Blanca - Grande Final da Festa