I think we’ve found the secret of Paul Krugman you know. No, really, an excellent little piece in the New Yorker gives us what we need to analyze the great man. Yes, he is indeed a great man but like all of us he has his flaws and this piece gives us the necessary clues to them. Actually, what it is: he doesn’t understand politics. A fairly brave statement about someone who is one of the leading commentators upon politics in our day, who has worked inside the belly of the beast, and one who is clearly and obviously vastly more … 
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Joseph Stack, frustrated American, flew his airplane into an Austin, Texas, office building. He was one of the 79 percent of Americans who have given up on “their” government. The latest Rasmussen Poll indicates that the vast majority of Americans are convinced that “their” government is totally unresponsive to them, their concerns, and their needs. Rasmussen found that only 21 percent of the American population agrees that the U.S. government has the consent of the governed, and that 21 percent is comprised of the political class itself and liberals. Rasmussen concludes that the gap between the American population and the politicians … 
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“This is our country, our land, and our lifestyle. If you are not happy—then Leave.” At last a politician in possession of testicles and a backbone. By definition then, not possibly a British parliamentarian. The words were recently uttered by Australian PM Kevin Rudd, a Labour leader no less, who declared in uncompromising fashion that he was tired of worrying whether his nation offended some particular culture or individual and that it was the immigrant and not Australia which needed to adapt. Take it or leave it, he bluntly stated. All hail to Rudd. For what the Australian has grasped—unlike his … 
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Serbs, Bolivians, bankers, neo-Nazis, and terrorists from invented African republics: Hollywood has been attacked by them all. In Europe, the baddies have always been more thoroughly white and solidly Western. But Muslims, anyone? In the eight years that the West has been fighting its war on Islamic terror, a war that has thrown up enough drama, enough Oscar-winning, hook-waving evil for a good few summers of cinematic carnage, there hasn’t been one movie—not a single one—that has featured an unequivocal, irredeemable Islamic wretch. How so? They’re not exactly hard to find. On this point, the arts establishment tend to disagree. Film … 
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Imagine that you are a young fellow who likes being the center of attention as you spin around in the air. How would you choose among Olympic sports? The Winter and Summer Games offer events whose varying conceptions of masculinity are so encoded in their apparel that American twelve-year-olds can develop an accurate gut feel for what they would be getting themselves into. The sportswear of Olympic events range from Fabulosity Uber Alles (figure skating) to revealingly narcissistic (diving) to trimly functional (gymnastics) to overtly Lebowskian (halfpipe snowboarding). To a man from Mars, figure skating and the halfpipe wouldn’t seem all … 
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My Feb. 16 column, “A Country of Serfs Ruled By Oligarchs,” received confirmation from high places on the very day it appeared. Popular Indiana Democratic U.S. Senator Evan Bayh announced that he was quitting the Senate. Yahoo News gave this account: “In an interview on MSNBC this morning, newly retiring Sen. Evan Bayh declared the American political system ‘dysfunctional,’ riddled with ‘brain-dead partisanship’ and permanent campaigning. Flatly denying any possibility that he’d seek the presidency or any other higher office, Bayh argued that the American people needed to deliver a ‘shock’ to Congress by voting incumbents out in mass and replacing … 
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It’s hardly rare for social climbers on one side of the Atlantic to claim connections with part of the elite on the other side. We had in the UK just recently some no name from flyover country insisting that he was a Rockefeller. Managed to keep that one going for a decade or so. However, things don’t always work out that well which is what interests me in this report about a model and party girl in Manhattan called Kashmir Snowdon-Jones. No, not what she’s alleged to have done, rather, what the background is alleged to be: Kashmir, currently represented by … 
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Bravo Goldman Sachs. You’ve done it again. As in the U.S. subprime crisis,  this house of ill repute created a deal which helped the Greeks obscure billions in debt from the budget overseers, then charged the Greeks hundreds of millions of Euros for helping them hide the debts.  Classic Goldman Sachs policy, says the great economist Taki, the house of shame having been and being as I write the poster boy for banks behaving badly—exploiting whatever the situation, or rules that it helped to write. The man who led the Goldman Sachs team which helped Greece lie and cheat for so … 
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The Anarchists in Vancouver are not happy about the Winter Olympics being held there and recently marched through town smashing windows, covering their faces, and yelling about everything from capitalism to the seal hunt to indigenous land. Some of their beefs are valid. The Olympics is a big waste of taxpayers’ money and in a city where one junkie dies every day, the local government could afford to be focusing on more serious problems. However, when reading the “manifestos” of today’s anarchists, one thing becomes abundantly clear, they hate capitalism more than they hate government. I grew up going to anarchist … 
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The media has headlined good economic news: fourth quarter GDP growth of 5.7 percent (“the recession is over”), Jan retail sales up, productivity up in 4th quarter, the dollar is gaining strength. Is any of it true? What does it mean? The 5.7 percent growth figure is a guesstimate made in advance of the release of the U.S. trade deficit statistic. It assumed that the U.S. trade deficit would show an improvement. When the trade deficit was released a few days later, it showed a deterioration, knocking the 5.7 percent growth figure down to 4.6 percent. Much of the remaining GDP … 
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