Modest Man Rides Again . . .
and again, and again, and again, and again, and . . . . "Since occupying the White House, Barack Obama has hosted fifteen town-hall meetings; appeared in more than 800 images on the White House Flickr photo-stream; and held four prime-time press conferences, the same number held by George W. Bush in his entire presidency. He's sent a video message to the people of Iran. He's given an address in Cairo that was translated into fourteen languages. He's sat on Jay Leno's couch, where he riffed about the supreme strangeness of having his own motorcade (“You know, we've got the ambulance and then the caboose and then the dogsled”), and he's walked Brian Williams through the White House, where he introduced the anchor to Bo the dog. Two weeks ago, when he made a controversial comment at a press conference (that the Cambridge police had “acted stupidly” toward Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.), he followed up with yet another press appearance in the White House briefing room–and an exclusive interview on Nightline. And that was before he sat down for a well-publicized beer with Gates and the offending officer ”¦ Such are the president's media habits. It's gotten to the point where one expects to see and hear from him every day."
Of course, the writer for New York Magazine, with its predilection for the cultural left, goes on to praise the proliferation and justifies it by reference to the new media landscape. The writer might be right, but I suspect Obama's ceaseless publicity is just another example of his self-infatuation and hubris. "Too much? How can the American people get too much of me? Come on!"
It's the Cost, Stupid
One of the better op-eds on the health care reform specter. By Charles Krauthammer, this is from the introduction:
In the 48 hours of June 15-16, President Obama lost the health-care debate. First, a letter from the Congressional Budget Office to Sen. Edward Kennedy reported that his health committee's reform bill would add $1 trillion in debt over the next decade. Then the CBO reported that the other Senate bill, being written by the Finance Committee, would add $1.6 trillion. The central contradiction of Obamacare was fatally exposed: From his first address to Congress, Obama insisted on the dire need for restructuring the health-care system because out-of-control costs were bankrupting the Treasury and wrecking the U.S. economy -- yet the Democrats' plans would make the problem worse.
Get Rich or No?
When I first started reading Lew Rockwell, I read Gary North with squinted eyes. I always thought he was "out there," at least a little bit. I've concluded, though, that all the people at Lew Rockwell are a little "out there." I'm glad they are. If I want to read inliers, I'll stick with the NYT, WSJ, and WP . . . and never have to reconsider my conventional presumptions and modes of thinking.
But Gary North has begun to impress me. He seems like he has genuine wisdom, which he often backs up with concrete examples and figures. His piece yesterday, How To Get Rich . . . and Why, is a great example of what I'm talking about.
Black Swan Jumps the Pond
Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote an open letter to David Cameron. It's pretty good. It's practically a 900-word summary of his bestseller. One sample:
Be careful, too, of the so-called science of economics. Economists have been no better in their predictions than cab drivers. We have an "expert" problem, in which the expert provides you with misplaced confidence, but no information. Because we think, correctly, that the dermatologist, the baker, the chemist are true experts (they know more about their respective subjects than the rest of us), we swallow the canard that the economists at the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve are also experts, without checking their record. This reliance on faux experts is, for the most part, what got us here. Now it is continuing with the build-up of government deficit and an increased reliance on flimsy forecasts by the Obama administration.
