Let it Burn

Over at Ace of Spades there is a post by Drewm that advocates "Letting it burn".

After 2010 I had some hope that we might be able to turn this massive welfare state around. The full implementation of ObamaCare means that isn’t going to happen. At least not absent a total collapse of our fiscal house of cards.
Let It Burn isn’t an option, it’s an eventuality. The questions are will we be complicit in it any longer and do we want to delay it? I say no. Let the liberals own it. Very few things are made better by delaying the day of inevitable reckoning.  The sooner it burns, the sooner we can try and rebuild.

I agree with that sentiment, much better that it all collapses while i am still young enough to work another 25 years rather than have it all come down in 2025 and I'll just have a couple years to work and save up for cat food.   Here's what I posted as a comment over there:

I think we need to expand the scale of let it burn to: let it burn - worldwide.  It's too expensive to be the world's policeman, and the fire department, and trying to rebuild countries after we blow them up.

I find myself sliding towards being an isolationist as the only moral choice.  we can go and try to save other people, but 4 years later we lose an election and all is undone leaving people exposed to reprisals.  It's much better and moral to have done nothing, than to incite people to revolt and then not support them.

Problems in the balkans, sorry we are the friends of liberty everywhere, but only pay for our own.  Madman in Iran threatening us with nukes?  here, nuclear fire for you is very cost effective.

unfortunately starving the beast includes the defense budget, we need to choose what we really need.  Then cut back our foreign policy to match.  We can't afford a very moral precision defense policy where we invade a country and try not to hurt anyone, then rebuild the country under fire.  It didn't work and we can't afford to repeat it.

It probably doesn't matter, we'll continue to wiggle through problems until the fit hits the shan, then the consequences will happen.   The ironic thing will be it will come out much worse for places like Iran just because we can't afford to be nice.

Homesick

The instapundit links to some twits spouting off on twitter that if Romney wins they are going to leave
the country.  Good.  Go.

I've been hearing that for 10 years:  "If Bush fights an illegal war then I'll go to Canada" or if Bush gets reelected I'll move to Canada".   But they never seem to go. ( " You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately ... In the name of God, go!")

 Meanwhile when I tried to move back home a couple of years ago the chief twit shut down the oilfield for a year, no job for Joe there.  Thankfully they gave me a job here, but I do get homesick sometimes when I get to see two politicos on TV and one of them is frothing like a mad dog.  It makes me miss Louisiana.

Cautiously hopeful

It's  funny watching the liberal media in a panic about how the president performed in the debate last week.  I'm hoping that their astonishment will continue, then after the election I can post the picture of Cartman drinking the tears of his opponent, Romney will win and the Senate will flip Republican and it will be a new morning in America.

I do realize that it is just as likely that I'll be disappointed.  Romney's point about the 47% might be mildly offensive to some people but it is true, the president has a large percentage of the population on his side no matter what he does or says, and he just needs to convince an additional 4% in several swing states and he'll win.

That will be bad, but there is no way of knowing if that will be the worst possible outcome.  It might be already too late to stop the Titanic of the world economy from hitting the iceberg, and having Obama at the helm when it happens will discredit the big government idea forever.

Oh well, we'll soon see.  Perhaps the Saints can come back from 1-4 to go 10-6 and win the superbowl in New Orleans, and Mitt Romney can win the presidency and take just the right actions to stop the coming economic apocalypse from happening.  But if the Saints don't win and Romney loses it won't be the end of the world, it will just feel like it.

Ritholz, comments and asshats

Barry Ritholz reposted an attack on Megan Mcardle that I just didn't get. I posted a comment that didn't agree with him and a followup comment was replaced by a link to the comment policy...eg don't be an asshat.   http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/09/fisking-mcardle/

So here's that followup post:

 maybe there is some other article with clear evidence than the one you are pointing to, but just reading through point by point, I don't see any evidence of anything, just supposition
: -first point: weird attack on her father, and she went to an expensive school (is she a sleeper agent paid by the koch's for 30 years?)
-she changed in college from liberal to conservative (like most of us. you mean unicorns don't make rainbows?)
-a link to her old blog, a months worth of posts. huh? -she was rejected from the foreign service, meaning she didn't get the job that all liberal arts students want. -she made an unfunny comment during 2003 about war protesters (haven't we all)
-she was trained by some sinister organization in journalism (IHS @ george mason university) -she wrote articles against dodd frank (I wish everyone had and that crap wasn't passed) a bloomberg article starts off saying koch is against it, ooh, sinister, but a better summary was buried:
"A provision in the bill known as the “end-user exemption” is of particular concern to industry groups representing Koch, Lockheed Martin Corp. and Caterpillar Inc. The rule would exempt companies that use derivatives to hedge their risks in commodities, currencies and interest rates from posting margin, or a deposit against default, on over-the-counter trades." so now Caterpillar is evil too?
 -then several points that you could argue either side. eg I'd agree that putting large inheritance taxes just makes wealthy people hide their money. -she was against things that would 'improve voters lives ...like obamacare' . me too. and most americans too -
 -"In February 2009, McArdle led a propaganda campaign in her Atlantic blog to discredit investigative journalism exposing the first Tea Party protest in February 2009 as an Astroturf campaign backed by the Koch brothers and FreedomWorks. " There's no source for any of this. Is the tea party astroturf? who says? half of my facebook friends are in the tea party.

 -her fiancee works for freedom works. so what. -she wrote an article attacking a book about a writer that went bankrupt. read the comments in that link, it is more enlightening
 - she married her husband. is where he works a conflict of interest?
 - a crappy anecdote about meeting a black man who approves of gentrification....and?
 -attacking a ny times article that is huffy about formaldehyde, the koch's apparently love formaldehyde, but only since 2005 when they bought Georgia Pacific. is that causality?

 If you are going to accuse someone of conflict of interest shouldn't you have something, like, evidence? her marriage and where her husband works are both on her wikipedia page, that seems like disclosure. If there is something else, i don't see it from the links provided.

we got to let them go.

I finally got to see Clint Eastwood's speech to the RNC. A scary speech, I thought that maybe he was drunk, the way his hair was combed back in a weird way with a weird stuttering delivery. Someone on pajamas media suggested he was acting, doing the part of Mr Smith goes to washington. Since it's been 30 years since I've seen that movie, watching it with my parents on WTBS, I googled around for some pictures or video and it was clear that was what he was doing. His hair is combed back like Smith's and he was speaking more like Dirty Harry doing George Baiey (M..M...M...Mary, M...M...Make my day). A really funny performance, they can cut it up into 30 commercials.

Get ready for voting

If you are an expat and you want to vote, here is the place to go and register: http://www.fvap.gov/ Important Dates for UOCAVA citizens: General Election: 11/06/2012 Register by: 10/09/2012 Request ballot by: 10/30/2012 Ballot Return from Within U.S.: 7pm, 11/06/2012 Ballot Return from Outside U.S.: 11/12/2012* The more people vote, the better the outcome will be. When Obama get's sent back to Chicago we don't want anyone to say 'he wuz robbed'. Go vote, and let the better man win.

Safe cracker

Frustrating morning running around the airport in DF. an early
flight and a late beer meant I only slept a few hours before being
rudely snatched from the arms of sleep by the crazy annoying alarm
on my cell phone. I got ready and almost walked out the door forgetting
my passport in the safe, walked back into the room and entered the
wrong code,bonk, then the code I was sure was right, bonk, then a
variation on the right code, bonk, then the right code again, bonk.
The LED flashed "slep" and blinked off.

Fuck. I was on the verge of being late for the flight so I called the
front desk, no answer, ana de llaves, no answer, gerente. nada.
Ran the 200 yards to the front desk; "estoy (gasp) en (gasp) hab. (gasp)
veinte-tres zero cuatro (gasp)". blank look from the girl wrapped
in two coats and two scarves because the lobby of the NH hotel is
the coldest place in mexico. two more guesses at my room number
and then finally the girl lights up, says she'll send the guy right
away. 15 minutes later, the guy shows up to unclog a toilet, no magic
safe cracking box. fuck, now I'm actually late for the flight, he leaves
and comes back 10 minutes later with a box, the safe pops open and we
jog to the front desk.

I had a ticket, so I just dropped my bag at the AM counter and the girl
said 'they are boarding, hay que correr'. A nice lady in a wheelchair
helped me cut most of the security line, through security with just a quick
explanation of what a kindle is, "libro, no es un ipad" since they are
making people with ipads take them out and put them in another tray,
and I jogged to the gate where I was third to the last to board the bus.

After all that running and huffing the plane turned around went back to
the ramp because the pilot's seatbelt was broken. I could have slept half
an hour more.