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Barackalypse Now

August 9, 2011 By Gene Veith

As the stock market dives 634 more points over the United States government getting downgraded by Standard & Poors, President Obama is looking more vulnerable than ever. Even some of his African American supporters—who are suffering most from unemployment—are getting disillusioned with him. In addition to our economic woes are our foreign policy failures, including setbacks in the continuing wars in Afghanistan and Libya. People are speaking of Barackalypse or Obamageddon. I thought he was a shoo-in for re-election, but… Read more

America’s credit score

August 8, 2011 By Gene Veith

202 Comments

Standard & Poor’s downrated US bonds from AAA to AA+, the first time we have been rated so low. That is a purely financial assessment. But factors include our impotent government, our inability to raise revenue, and our vast and increasing national debt. How humiliating. Just how doomed are we? How can we become a first world nation again? Read more

At sea

August 5, 2011 By Gene Veith

4 Comments

On the cruise just entering Glacier Bay. We just saw some whales. What luxury this ship offers. I’m sure my ancestors never got above the orlop deck with the bilge water and the ballast. But this is a dream. Internet connection is very slow and–as one of you commenters helpfully and correctly informed us–VERY EXPENSIVE (75 cents a minute!). Plus, the carefree existence here keeps us insulated from all the bad news of the outside world. So I don’t have… Read more

Another economic collapse?

August 5, 2011 By Gene Veith

42 Comments

The stock market has nosedived 500 points and the economic indicators appear to be disastrous. This, right after the debt ceiling agreement that supposedly allows the government to stay solvent by borrowing money while also cutting more than $2 trillion in government spending. Could it be that Keynesian economics is right, that the government keeps the economy going through its spending and that cutting expenditures during a recession is exactly the wrong way to produce economic growth? Or are the… Read more

Marketing & consumer tastes

August 5, 2011 By Gene Veith

42 Comments

Economics columnist Steven Pearlstein goes off on how super-thick clam chowder has replaced the thinner, more authentic version that is much tastier. In doing so, he makes some point about how markets actually work: not so much by fulfilling a consumer preference but by getting consumers to change their preferences. As when research showed that Americans like weak coffee, whereupon Starbucks–going in the opposite direction–taught Americans to like strong coffee. My search for a decent bowl of clam chowder got… Read more

The inevitability of libertarianism

August 4, 2011 By Gene Veith

96 Comments

George Will reviews The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch. They argue that, what with our new technology and all, libertarianism will inevitably become the dominant political and economic ideology: “Confirmation bias” is the propensity to believe news that confirms our beliefs. Gillespie and Welch say that “existence bias” disposes us to believe that things that exist always will. The authors say that the most ossified, sclerotic sectors… Read more

Schism in Lutheran charities

August 4, 2011 By Gene Veith

128 Comments

The Associated Press has a good and remarkably objective story on how the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) is stopping its co-operation with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in military chaplaincy and charity work. From journalist Rachel Zoll: The latest casualty of the long-running Protestant conflicts over the Bible and homosexuality is a massive network of social service agencies that work in areas ranging from adoption to disaster relief. The theologically conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod announced this week… Read more

Alaska report

August 3, 2011 By Gene Veith

4 Comments

As I said we’d be, we are in Alaska. This land is vast. This one state is a fifth the size of all of the others put together. It’s not only the northernmost state and the westernmost state, it is the easternmost state, since some of the Aleutian islands stretch into the Eastern hemisphere. And much of this land is virtually inaccessible. If you look at a road atlas of Alaska, you will see one red highway like an artery… Read more

9.5 Theses on the Emergent Church

August 3, 2011 By Gene Veith

136 Comments

In the tradition of someone else, Wheaton professor David Milliner has posted 9.5 Theses against the Emergent Church (that variety of the church growth movement that tries to be postmodernist). Here are some of them: 1. I’ll say it again: He who marries the spirit of the age will soon become a widower. Do those who married postmodernity realize their spouse is in a nursing home? 1.5 Christians who cater their theology to accommodate deconstruction are comparable to sub-rate CCM… Read more

Satan sandwich with a side of Satan fries

August 3, 2011 By Gene Veith

68 Comments

The debt compromise had two groups of people who are normally polar opposites agreeing with each other at long last. The measure was opposed by both those who are really conservative and those who are really liberal. Here is what the latter are saying (lover of colorful metaphors that I am, I have to salute the imagery of “Satan sandwich”): Dispirited liberals fumed Monday over the deal to raise the debt ceiling that would cut deeply across the government,… Read more