The Economist gets the thumbs up for the best line of the week. In an editorial titled “Damned,” the magazine laments the possible loss of DSK’s ideas because of his fall from grace. “They are more important [than him,” the editorial says. And why? Well among other things, he stood to become the first Socialist Party candidate to win the presidency of France since François Mitterrand ate Ortolan Bunting.
That’s important because DSK apparently knows something his party doesn’t (bolding mine):
The danger now, as Socialist alternatives line up, is that the party sloughs off its modernising aspirations and reverts to type. Unlike parties of the left in Britain or Germany, France’s Socialists have yet to digest the sour reality that wealth needs to be created before it can be distributed. Their draft manifesto includes a jaw-dropping pledge to reverse France’s minimum retirement age, which has only just been raised from 60 years to 62. The Socialists’ reflex is to tell the French that they need to be “protected” and “sheltered”. However, the French cannot for ever defy the laws of economics and protect themselves with costly benefits that only pile up huge public debts for future generations. France’s tragedy is that Mr Strauss-Kahn, who understood that, misunderstood so much else.
Go here to read the actual press release. Simply amazing that a politician would let something like that see the light of day.
Campaign Rhetoric, Dumb Statements, Economics, Government, Health Care, Presidential Politics, Taxes, The Media, Videos
| 
Colbert Report, Meet the Press, Newt Gingrich
The talking heads have had nothing good to say about Mitt Romney lately, and especially since his healthcare speech in Michigan last week. Are his backers not paying attention? What do they see that the talking heads don’t?
So what does a 51 foot-high floodgate in Japan have to do with our $14.377 trillion dollar debt? Do I really have to explain?
The more important question is who is going to step up and be our Mayor Kotaku Wamura? There’s a surfeit of poseurs. Who’s the real thing?
But this guy is richer than you are and apparently has the facts to back up his braggadocio. Oh, and better hair.
And he seems to have bigger things in mind than himself. A quote from the Jornal do Brasil story (translation mine):
Minha missão é mostrar a jovens brasileiros que eles podem se orgulhar do que estão produzindo. Alguém tem que mostrar que é possível. [My mission is to demonstrate to young Brazilians that they can be proud of what they’re producing. Someone has to show (them) what is possible.]
Greenpeace activists mark the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl with a puff of orange smoke in front of BNDES, Brazil’s development bank, to get it to suspend financing of the Angra 3 nuclear plant.
All the coal miners who’ve died in mining accidents were unavailable for comment.
As I say below, this time Brazil’s resurgence is for real. So does Walter Russell Mead, with lots of qualifiers. His analysis is obviously much more in depth than mine–I based mine largely on a YouTube video, for heck’s sake. An interesting read.
Brazil, BRIC, China, Commodities, Economics, Education, Energy, Foreign Policy, Government, Inflation
| Commodities, Walter Russell Mead
Constitution, Economics, Government, Law, Liberty, Presidential Politics
| Boeing, bs, labor, NLRB, Obama, union
Hey, I have an idea!
Let’s bring back the good old incandescent light bulb.
We knew this, didn’t we? And we were already upset about burning out our last incandescent light bulb, weren’t we? There ought to be a law of (obvious) unintended consequences.
Comments (0) 
Themocracy