Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Apparently the man who tried to blow up Times Square is a Pakistani immigrant, rather than one of those violent Tea Party activists as so many of us initially suspected. Who could have known?
Wait. Do we know for a fact that he isn’t also a Tea Party activist? All responsible journalists must look into this possibility at once.
The latest flap concerning Muslim extremists getting bent out of shape over a South Park episode, and how the network censored images of the prophet, is a case of history repeating itself.
A previous ep from 2006 supposedly depicted Mohammad, until the network excised all images of that particular worthy. They even went so far as to bleep out every utterance of his name. All done in the fear that, unless appeased, intolerant practitioners of the Religion of Peace would indulge in an orgy of bloodshed and fire.
I wrote Comedy Central at the time, taking them to task for their shameless act of cowardice. I received a well spoken, thoughtfully composed reply that explained the concerns of the network.
Per Lex’s request, on this, the day America laid siege to Boston, MA, interrupting the otherworldly disputations of many a Brahmin:
Noted American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick once observed:
The ultimate in paranoia is not when everyone is against you but when everything is against you. Instead of “My boss is plotting against me,” it would be “My boss’s phone is plotting against me.”
My boss’s phone is rather nondescript. It’s color is a few shades darker than full oppression gray. It whimpers with the soul draining anonymity of the standard corporate VoIP phone design. It has a gray LCD, gray buttons with obscure functions, and an incomprehensible gray user manual.
It frequently finds itself on sales calls.
If it was a person, it would have no face.
My boss’s phone lacks the personality of the door from Ubik
The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.”
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.”
“I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.”
In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
“You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug.
From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door.
“I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out.
Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.”
Of course the motives of doors are usually open and shut. The hang ups of boss’s phones are more cryptic:
I don’t typically wade into politics with my posts, but I just can’t help myself. The other day I was driving around in a town to be unnamed and stumbled upon the building you see in the picture below.
It looks like a typical warehouse that you would find in any of a million industrial parks in the United States.
But upon further investigation I found something quite different. This is the warehouse that the left uses to store it’s papier mache heads, sign making materials and other props for protest marches. Upon sniffing around it for a bit, I noticed that is was packed to the brim. It looked to me as they had contracted with a local lumberyard to supply the wood for their signage.
All humor aside, does the left not think that we haven’t noticed a certain…well…silence over Obama’s policies? It is OK for Obama to not only not decrease troop levels, but increase them as he is doing in Afghanistan? Why isn’t Gitmo closed? What the hell, even Iraq even has troops there that represent the Great Satan ™ as of now. I know because I am still sending care packages to them (unlike ANY of the protesters who claim they support the troops).
So just exactly what am I to think of the left? That these wars are OK as long as the President and Congress have a D by their names? Puhleeeze.
Instead of poll-driven “solutions,” let’s talk about real health-care reform: market-oriented, patient-centered, and result-driven. As the Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon and others have argued, such policies include giving all individuals the same tax benefits received by those who get coverage through their employers; providing Medicare recipients with vouchers that allow them to purchase their own coverage; reforming tort laws to potentially save billions each year in wasteful spending; and changing costly state regulations to allow people to buy insurance across state lines. Rather than another top-down government plan, let’s give Americans control over their own health care.
Democrats have never seriously considered such ideas, instead rushing through their own controversial proposals. After all, they don’t need Republicans to sign on: Democrats control the House, the Senate and the presidency. But if passed, the Democrats’ proposals will significantly alter a large sector of our economy. They will not improve our health care. They will not save us money. And, despite what the president says, they will not “provide more stability and security to every American.”
Nicely done. A solid critique of Obama and the Democrats which ends with some proposals to do it another way.
(Anybody read anything by this guy, Cannon?)
More like this, please, Gov. Palin.