Tanstaafl Obama and Tesla...

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

One of the risks of tabbed browsing, is that you'll find yourself with Talk Politics, the Oatmeal's ode to Nicola Tesla, The Technium, CNN.com, and some random Survivalist, Fitness, Sci-Fi Fandom, and Libertarian blogs all open in the same window and start to draw connections.

So the Survivalists and Libertarians are all in a tizzy about Obama's "You didn't build that" comment.

Now Examined in context, it’s pretty clear what the president was trying to say. It’s a re-hash of Elizabeth Warren's “there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own” speech. Like Ms. Warren, Obama was making the argument that “wealthy, successful Americans” should pay a higher tax rate because they didn’t get to where they are without a lot of help from society. Now I suspect that several members of this forum have already stopped reading and rushed to the comments section to point that the line right before “you didn’t build that” was about roads and bridges – making it pretty clear that it was infrastructure the president was referring to, not businesses but no matter.

What matters is Tesla (or rather the internet's perception of him)
( Read more... )

(no subject)

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

I'd been ignoring the thing going around the past week or so about Obama's silly statement. But then I saw an excerpt from Atlas Shrugged (which I've never read, btw) which countered it perfectly. And since no one else seems to have posted on the topic, one way or the other, I guess it's time to cover it.

( Not that this is a long topic, but why not cut it )

(Don't) try this at home

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Surely, Latvia isn't accustomed to such great attention. The tiny Baltic country of 2 million that many would find difficulty spotting on the map, is suddenly in the thoughts and mouths of all economists who insist on having the last word in the debate on the Euro crisis. And the Baltic model is among the fave examples of the EU and IMF envoys, whenever they decide to wag a finger at Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy, preaching that severe austerity does work and there's a bright future lying beyond all the pain.

( We're to talk about austerity now, aren't we? )