Sorry Noah Smith: There isn't just one way to boost GDP growth

Smith says we need more immigration to solve our low growth problem. There is an alternative. Have more children of our own.

Noah Smith, here:

"Gross domestic product is simply the product of output per person and the number of people. The more people in your country, the higher the output. That's why China, whose output per person is only about a quarter of the U.S.'s, is now the largest economy on the planet. It just has more bodies."

The open borders libertarians

Noah Smith for Bloomberg, here:

"Exactly this sort of open borders immigration policy has received enthusiastic support from a dedicated core of libertarian economists, notably Bryan Caplan of George Mason University. These economists believe in relaxed immigration rules not because they want higher GDP growth, but because of principle -- they view national borders themselves as an unacceptable form of government intervention in the economy. The open borders crusaders are so zealous that moderate supporters of increased immigration, such as tech entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa, are often the targets of their ire. University of Chicago economist John Cochrane has also voiced support for the open borders idea." 

Democrat General Wesley Clark wants to put radicalized Muslims in camps: And you thought deportation of illegal aliens was impractical

From the story here:

"It's a sad choice, but if people choose ISIS, they should be treated as spies or enemy combatants – or both. I’m frustrated with the argument that sedition is free speech because there is a role for government to step in to prevent a dissenter from becoming an active shooter, or worse.

"Any implication that I support racial profiling or interning people based on their ethnicity or heritage is dead wrong. I’m for separating people who have made dangerous decisions from the rest of society.

"The US has the obligation to protect our own population from terrorists. And ‎if the domestic terrorist threat grows due to ISIS, we must act responsibly and promptly."

Manhattan Democrat says parks are for everyone, except Donald Trump!

Seen here:

"Our parks are for everyone," the Manhattan Democrat [Mark Levine] said. "Trump's continued ownership of parks concessions runs directly contrary to that spirit."

Obama State Department stonewalls everybody on FOIA requests

Story here. No mention that this is the State Department's long record of behavior under Hillary Clinton, let alone under her successor John F. Kerry, who served in Viet Nam.

At least the judge is as pissed as he can be.

I guess they are too busy over there at State securing Obama's legacy, and covering up Benghazi:

Trump surges to Numero Uno in latest Real Clear Politics polling average

Donald Trump channels Al Franken on John McCain?

Al Franken, quoted here in 2000:

"I doubt I could cross the line and vote Republican. I have tremendous respect for McCain but I don’t buy the war hero thing. Anybody can be captured. I thought the idea was to capture them. As far as I’m concerned he sat out the war."

The Wall Street Journal opines that some demagogues are worse than others

Here:

'But America has rarely lacked for demagogues willing to exploit public discontents. William Jennings Bryan won three Democratic presidential nominations running against eastern elites. In 1948 Henry Wallace ran as a Soviet sympathizer while Strom Thurmond won 39 electoral votes running as a segregationist. Either one would have been a disaster as President.'

"Either one"?

Demagoguery in defense of progressivism is no vice, apparently.

Trump pummels McCain in USA Today op-ed for calling fellow Americans crazies

McCain has a long history of dishing out "crazy" and is finally getting some blowback

Here:

'John McCain has called his own constituents who want a secure border “crazies.”  No one in the news media or the establishment, including the Republican National Committee, criticized the senator for those comments. ... McCain the politician has failed the state of Arizona and the country. ... He would rather protect the Iraqi border than Arizona’s.'

There's much more, at the link.

When it comes to mavericks, John McCain meets his match in Donald Trump

Video here.

Why capitalism, communism, socialism and fascism etc. turn out to be culs-de-sac

Seen here:

'Mao famously speculated on the nature of contradictions in a 1937 essay: “The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the fundamental law of nature and of society.”'

EuroGroup deal forced on Greece "akin to dragging a collapsed marathon runner back to the race"

From Giles Wilkes' review of Yanis Varoufakis' The Global Minotaur, here.

If anyone knows a thing or two about firing up the crazies, it's John McCain

"[Trump] fired up the crazies".

The liberal projectionist, quoted here.

The Grauniad strikes again: 3 week bank closure cost the Greeks . . . just 3 Euros!

Seen here.

Hillary Clinton just loves the Dr. Mengeles and their founder, the racist Margaret Sanger

Accepting the Sanger Award in 2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hillary Clinton, quoted here:

As much as Planned Parenthood loves Hillary, Hillary’s an even bigger fan of Margaret Sanger, the racist eugenicist founder of the organization. Clinton specifically honored Sanger at a 2009 Planned Parenthood event in Houston.

“I admire Margaret Sanger enormously,” Clinton told the event’s attendees. “Her courage, her tenacity, her vision.”

Margaret Sanger, quoted here, who wanted to sterilize those "unfit" to reproduce, in the opinion of the State and its experts:

"Like the advocates of Birth Control, the eugenists, for instance, are seeking to assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit. ... We who advocate Birth Control, on the other hand, lay all our emphasis upon stopping not only the reproduction of the unfit but upon stopping all reproduction when there is not economic means of providing proper care for those who are born in health. ... These are gongenital feeble-mindedness; schizophrenia, circular insanity; heredity epilepsy; hereditary chorea (Huntington’s)’ hereditary blindness or deafness; grave hereditary bodily deformity and chronic alcoholism. Surely everyone will agree that the children of parents so afflicted are no contribution to the nation for even if they do not inherit these defects they are children of parents so handicapped that life will give them little, owing to their necessarily bad environment."

The face of one of Planned Parenthood's many Dr. Mengeles

Story and video here at CNN showing that Planned Parenthood has a thriving "business" trafficking in the organs of aborted babies, which they take care to preserve intact by killing the babies in just such a way that the desired organs are not damaged. The CNN stuffed skirt who presents the story seems most concerned about absolving the organization of the doing this for money. Hey, otherwise, killing the babies, well, that's up to a woman to decide if it's wrong.

"Never again" the Jews insist, year upon year.

Donald Trump rises to Number Two spot in RCP average for GOP presidential nomination

Hillary's latest whopper: "I called for cracking down on subprime mortgages"

Yea, the ones who under her husband exploded in number by over 800% between 1993 and 1998.

From the story here:

"I was alarmed by this gathering storm and called for addressing the risks of derivatives, cracking down on subprime mortgages and improving financial oversight," she added.

Someone gets to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: On the weekend Schauble was a devil, but now he's a misunderstood genius!

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard erupted on Twitter on the weekend when Schauble leaked the Grexit memo in Brussels:

Now Schauble is a misunderstood genius who had it right all along:

'Wolfgang Schauble is one of the very few figures who has behaved honourably in this latest chapter. ... [H]e is entirely right to argue that a velvet divorce and an orderly exit from the euro for five years would be a “better way” for Greece, as he did on Germany radio this morning. ... Mr Schauble has been pushing for Grexit since 2012, and probably earlier. He genuinely thinks it would better for all concerned. When he floated his plan, he meant it. ... Even if [Merkel] was irritated by the Schauble paper – and her skirmishes with the irascible finance minister are legendary – she appears to have latched on to it as a useful negotiating ploy. The trick worked. It terrified Mr Tsipras into submission. ... Mr Schauble’s original and honourable intentions have been entirely misunderstood. The world’s verdict is that Germany's benign and enlightened statecraft in Europe over the past 60 years has given way to Bild Zeitung reflexes, the hegemony of crude populism. One can only feel sympathy for German diplomats who must clean up the mess and explain how this tangle of conflicting agendas spun escaped control.'

Mario Draghi: ECB is Greece's biggest depositor

There's real power, and then there's just power

Seen here this morning:

"We now have a total exposure of €130bn to Greece, that makes us the biggest depositor."

That's actually more than was on deposit at the end of May: 129.9 billion EUR. Deposits are down 108 billion EUR since September 2009, about 45%, squirreled away in other banks outside Greece, and under mattresses at home, which makes it a little risky to leave, say to protest in the streets. Europe has played Greece like a fiddle.