•I enjoyed both Cloud
Atlas and Skyfall, though the
latter’s nicely-done opening-credits music sequence reminded me that the
previous Bond movie started with one of Jack White’s biggest
mistakes – and a side effect was that we never heard the song Shirley Bassey
recorded for Quantum of Solace, which
would have been #4 for the aged Ms. Bassey, and that’d be kinda cool.
The year’s cinematic espionage isn’t over for me, though –
now to see Argo and, next month, Zero Dark Thirty, about spies fighting
Iranians and bin Laden, respectively.
•That reminds me: this week brings both Veteran’s Day and
Islamic New Year, so tonight is the perfect time to join us at Muchmore’s (tonight
at 9:30 at 2 Havemeyer St. near the Bedford Ave. stop in Williamsburg) for a multi-faction DIONYSIUM panel reacting to
the election: Occupy participant Karanja “Speshul K” Gacuca
(privately favoring Obama), Maine GOP
senatorial candidate’s daughter Tricia Summers, Lawyers for Obama co-founder Vijay Dewan, and Libertarian Party writer for Gary Johnson Jeremy Kareken.
•I will mainly just be moderating, though it is tempting to
weigh in and note how badly we need
education in economics to prevent disasters like Obama (or, for example,
Bush) from happening. These
are just a few obscure Twitter users, but see how they take potential
layoffs caused by Obamacare as a sign that the businesses involved are simply slackers and shirkers – rather than
economic agents striving always to make as much money as they can under adverse
conditions. This is Soviet thinking, and
I no longer think it likely to lead to non-Soviet ends.
In short: if economic regulations have consequences,
liberals say: shoot the messenger,
not the regulators. No longer profitable
for you to keep hiring people? You
should do it anyway. You thought you
went into business because there was the chance to profit? Nope, your new job is to keep doing what you
do even when it’s not worth it to you, to keep up appearances and make Obama
look good. Your employees don’t come in
to work out of charity, but you should keep striving to come up with ways to
cope with increasingly burdensome regulations just out of a sense of public
duty. There isn’t much hope for this
country until far more people learn basic econ.
I’m reminded that a purported “comedienne” who unfriended me
has been exulting for days online about how Obama being reelected means evil
Republicans being justly harmed and means cultural and economic bigotry taking a hit and – as if
responding to price signals is another version of hating gay people. (Moved your business to another state so you
could survive the tax burden and expand instead of contract? Want well-run private schools instead of
badly-run government ones? You must hate the poor, you monster. Liberals have the obviously-best policies,
after all, so it can’t be that you honestly disagree with them.)
I admit that I (far more plausibly yet far more reluctantly)
do worry that by trying to treat leftists
civilly in the decades during which I’ve lived among them in the Northeast, I’ve
contributed to the harm these people do instead of enlightening them – but I by
contrast will keep at it instead of cutting them off. Cut them off and I might accomplish nothing
at all.
•In fact, I’ll surely talk to a leftist or two when I give my own reactions to the election (and to tonight’s Dionysium panel) on the Web show Rew and Who?
And you can watch me doing so here
or live and in person (say hello) this Friday at 5:15 Eastern at Branded Saloon
(at 603 Vanderbilt Ave. at the corner of Bergen Ave. in Brooklyn, near the B,
Q, and C). Clips will likely be posted
later here.
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