“ Mr. Obama looked to be the man-on-a-white-horse — on the exhaustion of Reagan-Bush Jesus-Republicanism — but he’s coming off more like Philippe Égalité (Louis Philippe Joseph d’Orléans, duc d’Orléans) in 1793, with perhaps Newt Gingrich waiting offstage to become Robespierre in 2012 — and some obscure US Army captain now toiling in Kirkuk slated to become the American Napoleon of 2015. As you’ve surely heard a thousand times now, history doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes. The enormities of Wall Street today are a little like those of the French Ancien Régime at Versailles.
“ It will be interesting to see, for instance, if there is any uproar over the evolving story of Goldman Sachs’s latest raid on the US Treasury, after booking billions in taxpayer-funded payouts funneled through AIG, based on double-hedged credit default swaps. Such magic tricks are understandably hard to follow, but a dozen-or-so federal attorneys with a middling background in differential calculus might suss out the trail that leads from Ben Bernanke’s work station to Lloyd Blankfein’s cappuccino machine.
“ The Spurs said tests showed Ginobili had an increased narrow edema and stress fracture in his right distal fibula.
“ Coming together to share resources is the basic premise of Smith’s vision for the cul-de-sac commune. Hoping to learn what kinds of tools she should design to help facilitate sharing, Smith listened to Scott Vineberg, who lives in the commune, and his progressive-thinking neighbors as they brainstormed ways to go off the grid together, raise chickens and manage their stress levels.
It’s 2009 already, right?
This is depressing, and still true.
Scroll down for the goodness.
\033 octal char (think of a PDP‐11)
OK, I’m thinking of it. Now what?
Marcus Jordan, son of the Bulls’ six-time champion, scored a game-high 19 points to lead Chicago Whitney Young to a 69-66 victory over Waukegan in the Illinois Class 4A championship Saturday.
Somehow the building culture that created the original New Orleans must be reinstated. The hurdle of drawings, permitting, contractors, inspections – the professionalism of it all – eliminates grassroots ‘bottom up’ rebuilding. Somehow there must be a process whereupon people can build simple, functional houses for themselves, either by themselves, or by barter with professionals. There must be free house designs that can be built in small stages, and that do not require an architect, complicated permits, or inspections. There must be common sense technical standards. Without this, there will be the pall of debt for everyone. And debt in the Caribbean doesn’t mean owing money, it means destroying a culture that arises from lower costs and leisure. To start, I would recommend an experimental “opt-out zone.” Create areas where one “contracts out” of the current American system, which consists of the nanny-state raising standards so expensive and complicated that only the nanny-state can provide affordable housing. The state thus creates a problem and then offers the only solution. However it may sound, this proposal is not so odd. Until recently, this was the way that built America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. For three centuries Americans built for themselves. They built well enough – so long as it was theirs. Individual responsibility could be trusted.
