Tooth Fairy Heralds Dollar’s Demise

My daughter is bouncing up and down with excitement.  This afternoon she lost another baby tooth (her third to date) and she knows that the tooth fairy will visit her tonight and leave her some money.  I remember the feeling.  As a kid, whenever I lost a tooth I could look forward to finding a shiny [...]

Peter Griffin, Enemy of the State

Hugo Chavez has carried out a multi-pronged attack on the liberties of the Venezuelan people ever since he became “president.”  This attack includes (but is not limited to) the nationalization of large swaths of the economy, confiscation of private property, price controls, currency controls and various other restrictions on trade, socialist indoctrination in schools, a [...]

The Return of the Idiot

I just finished reading The Return of the Idiot (El Regreso del Idiota), by Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Carlos Alberto Montaner, and Alvaro Vargas Llosa.  This book is the 2007 follow-up to Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot (El Manual del Perfecto Idiota Latinoamericano) written six years earlier.  The two volumes examine the reasons for [...]

Lagniappe – July 2009

National People’s Radio – I’ve been listening to NPR a lot lately, and I realized that they’ve really only got one story.  Someone somewhere depends on some government program, and that government program is underfunded.  That’s it.  That’s the only thing happening in this country on any given day according to NPR.  You’d think that, [...]

Caritas In Veritate

President Obama met with Pope Benedict XVI last week at the Vatican.  During the meeting, the Pope provided the president with a copy of his new encyclical letter, Caritas In Veritate.  Most of the press coverage has focused on the pro-life elements of the treatise and the obvious disagreements between the Church and President Obama [...]

Inflation and the War Machine

A few weeks ago I drove down to Houston to attend the Mises Circle.  It’s an annual seminar put on by the Mises Institute, and the topic this year was inflation.  It was a really good event, and the audio and video is available on Mises.org for anyone who’s interested. 
 
One of the speakers was [...]

Ernesto “Che” Guevara, R.I.P. (Rebelde, Imbécil, Pendejo)

The Washington Times reports that actor Benicio del Toro left an interview abruptly when questioned about his role in the new Steven Soderbergh film, Che.  Pues, Benicio, conoces el dicho, ¿no?  If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the lead role in a disgusting hagiography of a scumbag mass murderer. 
 
I heard Benicio [...]

Conversations Overheard Overseas

I just wrapped up a two-week visit to Helsinki. As I was eating dinner in the hotel restaurant one night, I overheard another American businessman having a conversation with some European counterparts. (Just so you know, it wasn’t so much eavesdropping as it was not being able to drown out a very loud voice in [...]

Choosing the Form of the Destructor

Barack Obama’s press corps groupies are all atwitter these days as they follow him breathlessly on his around-the-world journey to discover where Iraq is. On the Republican side, talk show hosts like Sean Hannity are working desperately to convince the voters (and themselves) that McCain really is a conservative deep down, where it matters, most [...]

War Powers Act – The Sequel

A “blue-ribbon panel” led by former Secretaries of State James Baker and Warren Christopher has recommended that the War Powers Act be replaced by a more “effective” resolution. According to these Constitutional experts, the problem with the existing War Powers Act is that it has been largely ignored over the years. The way [...]