Vouchermania

Another view (from the world's most attractive semi-literate Christ-o-blogger) on the absolute necessity of vouchers if the minds & souls of the poor "kids" whose parents can't keep them repressed in this hideously smutty society are to be saved.

Our public schools are no longer safe havens from those who gladly give little girls hormonal pills. Expect this practice to come into your schools. Be vigilant and prepared to stop it.

[...]

Many Americans are beginning to understand that it is no longer wise to send your children to public schools. It is best that you sacrifice and do without the tiniest of luxuries so that you can send your child to a parochial school. Many private schools have private donors to help pay for your children's education.

Home schooling is a fastest growing phenomenon. Every child is entitled to a public education. However, public education is not entitled to every child. Many parents are willing to take their kids away from the harmful influence of liberal infiltrated, public educational system.

Also mentioned was the Utah pro-voucher referendum, which was defeated earlier this month. Oh, pesky democracy!

Sex education in public school is a ruse. Our youths are inundated with different sexual life style choices and not being taught the proper restrains concerning their own bodies.

There was a time when the whole of our population protected family values and understood right from wrong. Our public schools were a reflection of the times. Good moral values were of no debate. Our children were protected. That is no longer the case.

Alright, alright, Ms. McArdle's voucher fetishization isn't (openly) based on this sort of foolishness, but if nothing else we need a distraction from the financial holocaust that isn't going to happen.

Bouffant adds (1658 EDT): Not to mention a respite from the racial holocaust we're not helping to bring about.

Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow in Financial Holocausts

In an undated & untimed update, we are treated to this announcement:

Update In calmer consideration, that was too flip. But the financial holocaust that was widely feared has not come to pass, and is looking less likely to occur with each passing day.

Perhaps MM was sat down & given a lecture on flippancy, esp. as concerns "serious" financial matters. (Like financial "holocausts.") Or, she may have read something on the subject (it could happen):

Policy makers at the Federal Reserve are growing increasingly alarmed about the problem, which is an outgrowth of the woes of the housing and mortgage industries.

Granted, the NYT may be a little daunting (or taunting) for an English major from Penn but there are sources at a more appropriate level:

"That light at the end of the housing-meltdown tunnel appears to be an oncoming train," says Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors. "With so many choices and so few buyers, the median sales price is cratering."

Mmmm, colorful metaphors. Yum. Not like that confusing old "flat earth" thing. What's up w/ that, anyway?

Self-parody

thy name is Megan.

On a side note, why on earth is anyone using this dreadful "flat earth" metaphor? It makes absolutely no sense. If the earth were a flat plane, would it actually be any less far from Osaka to Los Angeles? Indeed, it would seem to me that a flat earth would make things farther from each other, since presumably, it would mean unrolling the surface of the globe. That would put some two points on the earth that are currently next to each other literally a whole world away.

But what if, like, it's, like, a moebius strip? Those are pretty much flat. We could fold the planet and make intercontinental travel a breeze. Wouldn't that help free trade?

Unnecessary Taunting, Offense, 15 Yards

Taunting? One must assume that the lock was rendered useless by the theft, & was probably crummy to begin w/. Why should the "free-lance socialist" take it w/ him/her? Just so Megatron wouldn't feel "taunted?" And is it possible this wasn't a "free-lancer" at all? What if it was a socialist sleeper cell?

Need I remind any one that property is theft?

I remember something about how large (at least in comparison to her NYC crib) MM's D. C. apartment is. Couldn't she have kept the bicycle inside? Wouldn't that be the "moral choice?"

Further taunting (& just plain cheap shotting):

11:00pm - 12:00am, TLC
World's Tallest Woman
A profile of 7-foot, 8-inch Yao Defen, a 37-year-old Chinese woman whose height is a due to a benign brain tumor pressing on her pituitary gland [.] TVPG (CC)

Brain tumor, you say?

P. S.: While I did steal from Megan today (by going to get a food stamp card) I was in West Los Angeles, not the District of Columbia. So don't try to lay this one on me, copper!

Megan Madlibs

The following is composed of bits of what Megan wrote tonight put together at my whim.

Critics of the pharmaceutical industry often claim the deliberate taunting seems highly unnecessary, while gazing, in quiet admiration, at the new full-sized freelance socialist.
Should we take our ball and go home? What good are the bases doing us?
The answer is, no one knows, exactly, it seems we forgot to train our replacement.
I simply ran out of train metaphors while writing for the Economist.

This means something.

As I was just saying

Megan is fond of pointing out the flaws of others without reflecting on what they say about herself, often in ironic ways.
In the comments to Gavin's already referenced post J-- points out a great example of Megan in action. First, a short post, titled Insult to injury:

Some freelance socialist not only stole my bike from in front of my house, but left the lock. The deliberate taunting seems highly unnecessary.

Then, when questioned on what makes this act of theft socialism, Megan answers,

Guys, if I can't make fun of a political philosophy which is now subscribed to by, at a first approximation, no one, then what can I poke fun at?

But yes, I think nationalization of private property without compensation is theft.

Granted, I am in academia, but I know more socialists than I do libertarians. And I know far more Muslims than I do Mormons.
Oy.

At least trees aren't cut down to have her words printed on them

There's a disturbing tendency to think that every problem is the result of inadequate regulation. In fact, America's bank industry is, as Tyler Cowen points out, one of the most heavily regulated in the world. And not every problem can be solved by better regulation--some things simply can't be regulated without causing bigger problems than they solve. There is no perfect regulatory state that will allow us all to live in a serene economic paradise, and the sooner we stop looking for one, the more effective our regulatory state will actually be.

This comes at the end of a post questioning what seems to be an established fact that defaults on subprime loans are having a bad effect on our economy. I don't know enough about the issue to know whether to take issue with Megan on it. What she says doesn't sound right to me, as 15% of any market is a significant chunk, but I have to admit my limits.
But the bit about regulation I can take issue with, because Megan's inner closeted Hayekian is showing. One of the many obnoxious things Megan does is to try and cloak her arguments with altruistic or pragmatic concerns. Megan isn't ideologically opposed to public schools, she's worried about the kids.
In looking for further regulations to match the new realities of our banking industry we're just dreaming of an impossible utopia, and Megan wants to save us all from the angst of seeking and failing. Why worry our pretty little heads when they're just going to find new ways around those regulations eventually? Let's everyone stop fooling ourselves and relax a little. Once you learn to love the regulations you're with, happiness will follow. There may be some bumps in the road, some account holders' savings lost, but isn't love worth it? Megan just wants us all to be happy, that's all.

Dammit

Gavin beat me to it, but I have to add that underlying this quotation

No one would ever do anything if they realized how much they suck.

is a common enough theme I should probably have included it in the categories of Megan's posts earlier. She likes pointing out the human flaws in others, but never seems to extend those recognitions inwards. If Megan were her own worst critic she'd still be unqualified for her position, but she'd be far less odious. She'd also undercut what we do here severely, not that it'll happen.

Kitchen Porn

"It seems to me that my hand is on fire. Could
my readers please summon a fire lorry?"

Condensed McArdle:

The crushing poverty I witnessed in Southeast Asia haunts me still, so you really ought to spend $1325 on kitchen accessories at Amazon, which, were it a man, I would gladly be rogered by.

Jon Benjamin for Pope

is a title which has nothing to do with anything, but there's a huge helping of pain to come, so why not start with a happy thought.
Megan wrote a loooooooooong post extending points about a book. Having not read the book, I won't venture an opinion, or finish reading her post, not when there's worse to come.
Real libertarians didn't:

. . . support the war. This is the emerging meme, mostly, interestingly, among people who are not themselves libertarians. Stand by for my post tomorrow: real progressives won't vote for Hilary Clinton.

Megan would never try to explain why progressives seem to support resigned to Hillary. Or link to an example of what she's on about.

The central problem that libertarians sort of tried to grapple with, and then gave up in favor of shouting with each other, is how to reconcile respect for sovereignty with libertarian contempt for the state--particularly in states like Iraq, where respect for human liberty was nonexistant. The libertarian literature on non-intervention as a principle in the face of vicious states has always struck me as inherently unsatisfying, and particularly, far to [sic] heavily reliant on positing previous US interventions as the primary cause of, well, everything bad in the world.

I'll leave it to my cobloggers, if either feels any need, to see why Megan was cheerleading for war back in the innocent days of 2002, the safe money is on WMD, 9/11, and NYC all being mentioned quite frequently. Megan claiming humanitarian concerns is to laugh, in a sad, pitying way.

A real non-interventionist has to accept that the United States should not have entered into World War II. Yes, Japan attacked us, but they did so because we were encroaching on their sphere of influence. Had we actually kept the navy within our territory, Japan would never have attacked, and we would never have entered World War II. And no, I'm not convinced by arguments that our intervention in WWI brought about WWII; our role, other than urging France and Britain to mitigate their vengeance, was fairly minor. Moreover, since we're not starting from some blank, non-interventionist slate now, this is not a compelling argument against entering into World War II at the time of World War II.[Emphasis in original]

That's one of those bits I just can't add to. Let's back up a little and admire the mess.

If you are not willing to posit that Americans should stay home even when millions are being senselessly slaughtered, then you end up in sticky pragmatic arguments about the possibilities of inherently untrustworthy state power to counteract even more noxious state power, and how much in the way of cost we can reasonably be expected to bear in order to advance liberty. I don't think there's an inherently libertarian answer to those questions. Libertarians should be inherently more suspicious of the American government's ability to make things better than other groups--but by the same token, it seems to me that they should be inherently more suspicious of repulsive states such as the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.

I just don't understand where she gets the "left" part of left libertarian. Maybe she thinks pot should be legal, if only so hippies and Mexicans will stop getting so much of the profit it generates. In any case, I'm too not quite sober and definitely not a libertarian to respond to this poopy, so here's a random Binkley shot as an ending.