Thursday
Thursday Miscellany
Seen at Zero Hedge: "The price of a Big Mac is in Zurich is now so high (at $17.19) that a minimum wage employee in Minneapolis, Minnesota, would have to work for nearly 4-hours in order to afford it. This is what stability looks like to Ben Bernanke."
[caption id="attachment_20660" align="alignnone" width="193" caption="Ran across this great B-movie pic at Wikipedia yesterday"]
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Rise of the Pauls
Are Americans serious about getting the country back into fiscal sanity? The answer is Paul-Cubed. Pat Buchanan explains: "Imagine this scenario: Rep. Ron Paul is speaker of the House, Sen. Rand Paul is majority leader, and Rep. Paul Ryan is president of the United States. Does anyone doubt this trio would restore the U.S credit rating in a New York minute? Every sacred cow in the federal pasture, from food stamps to foreign aid, would be hanging in the meat locker." Link.
The Lane
I'm frequenting Catholic Lane more and more. Every time I go there, I find something striking, like this piece yesterday about economics . . . and this line in particular: "Modern neoclassical economics draws influence dating back to René Descartes. According to Dr. Robert Nelson's review of Economics of Good and Evil: The Quest for Economic Meaning from Gilgamesh to Wall Street by Tomas Sedlack, Cartesian thought encouraged a belief that mathematical equations are equivalent to religious truths." I've been reading a ton of economics over the past three years. This is the first time anybody drew the Doubtful One into the discussion. Rothbard pulled in a bunch of sources, but I don't think Descartes is even mentioned.
Drinking Corner
I received the following in an email:
In 1952, Armon M. Sweat, Jr., a member of the Texas House of Representatives, was asked about his position on whiskey. What follows is his exact answer (taken from the Political Archives of Texas):
If you mean whiskey, the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean that evil drink that topples Christian men and women from the pinnacles of righteous and gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, shame, despair, helplessness, and hopelessness, then, my friend, I am opposed to it with every fiber of my being.
However, if by whiskey you mean the lubricant of conversation, the philosophic juice, the elixir of life, the liquid that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer, the stimulating sip that puts a little spring in the step of an elderly gentleman on a frosty morning; if you mean that drink that enables man to magnify his joy, and to forget life's great tragedies and heartbreaks and sorrow; if you mean that drink the sale of which pours into Texas treasuries untold millions of dollars each year, that provides tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitifully aged and infirm, to build the finest highways, hospitals, universities, and community colleges in this nation, then my friend, I am absolutely, unequivocally in favor of it.
This is my position, and as always, I refuse to compromise on matters of principle.
I couldn't verify the legitimacy of the quote. Here's a brief discussion thread at Snopes. I don't know whether the congressman said those things, but the second paragraph dovetails with the social message of The Adventures of Beer Man.
