Stable Genius Liberal

Obama Outperforms Reagan on Jobs, Growth and Investing

Regression toward the mean is the likely explantation. The slowness of the recovery may be due to lack of targeted stimulus but everything else looks like normal growth.

Why is “libertarian” Uber sponsoring San Francisco’s giant police militarization conference?

Given Peter Thiel’s involvement with defense and domestic policing contractor Palantir and now Uber’s support of police militarization, we’re getting a clearer picture of where Valley libertarians stand on the issue. The government is bad… and police militarization is a threat to our liberty. Buuuuuuut, the warrior cop’s money is as good as anyone’s. Business is business.

Pretty much.

Twenty-Two Percent of the World’s Power Now Comes from Renewable Sources

Wind, solar, and other clean energy sources “continued to grow strongly, reaching almost 22 percent of the global mix,” according to the IEA, “compared with 21 percent in 2012 and 18 percent in 2007.”

The stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. The carbon age is ending and the fossil fuel industry is going to fight it as hard as they can.

Obama dishonors the US Presidential office by wearing a tan suit

Obama said that he only wears blue or grey suits so as to avoid having to make yet another decision during his hectic schedule. But now it seems he has changed his mind, and picking a suit is important enough to endanger our nation’s well-being.

Are fashion crimes are impeachable offenses?

Ayn Rand’s Capitalist Paradise Is Now a Greedy Land-Grabbing Shitstorm

In other words, Galt’s Gulch Chile sounds exactly like the sort of plan you would expect from a a bunch of fans of a crotchety old millionairess who wrote a book called The Virtue of Selfishness.

Not surprised. The only question left is will they blame this on gubmint or will they claim they weren’t true Objectivists?

Some Self-Described Libertarians Can’t Distinguish Libertarian from Communist or Unitarian

Pew says it could find no larger than a 5% cluster that sorta kinda adheres to what we’re told “libertarianism” is a about. But even that group’s coherence is shaky. There are obviously a lot of ways to ask questions and crunch numbers, but I’d say Pew has at the very least cast some massive doubt on all that “libertarian moment” polling from Reason.

For the most part, libertarians are just republicans under the age of 30.

Rand Paul Calls Hillary Clinton ‘A War Hawk’

For those playing at home, there are two wings of the GOP. One that claims the Dems are War Mongers and another that claims they are Gutless Surrender Monkeys.

The Kübler-Ross model

My friends on the right who are complaining about those black mothers saying my kids didn’t do nothing should take a moment to read about the Kübler-Ross model of grief. Those mothers are not clueless idiots unaware of the child’s actions. They are not monsters who care not about the victims of their child. They are in grief and acting exactly how the model suggests they would act.

Tax Burden in U.S. Not as Heavy as It Looks, Report Says

We’ve been told repeatedly that the United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world — 35 percent — which is higher than the nominal tax rates in places like Ireland (12.5 percent), Britain (21 percent) and the Netherlands (25 percent) and the 24.1 percent average rate of all countries that are part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

All of that’s true, but Professor Kleinbard contends that most United States multinational companies don’t pay anywhere near 35 percent. Companies paid, on average, 12.6 percent,

Cutting those rates will not get companies to bring more money into the US economy. They would still keep the money were it could be moved more easily. And that is in commonwealth nations that can easily do business with London banks.

News from 1096 AD: Pope discusses military force against Middle Eastern caliphate

During the Middle Ages, between 1096 and 1272 AD, popes also endorsed the use of Western military action to destroy Middle Eastern caliphates. Those were known as the crusades; there were nine, which means that this would be number 10.

Well that can’t be good.