This is the way Australia plays the race card… [update 2]

“God damn you if the only two words you can find to put together when
talking about people who leave their homelands to seek a better life for
themselves and their families are ‘illegal aliens.’”
- James Kilbourne

What does an Australian Prime Minister do when she’s in desperate electoral straits?  Bingo! She pulls out John Howard’s “attack the boat people” card—a “flood” of 1500 souls trying to “pour” into a country of 20 million—in an attempt to nullify the third of three pressing Australian electoral issues. Imperator Fish gets it right:

“You know it's election year in Australia when politicians over there start beating up on asylum seekers.”

And on this one she’s looking for John Key’s help.  On that, I’m with the No Right Turn blog:

We should have no part of Australia's racist "Pacific Solution".

This is not an issue of Australia being “flooded” with hordes of refugees it can’t handle. The simple numbers themselves show that to be untrue. This is simply the way that Australia plays the race card—something it still unfortunately does too well.

And Key saying we’ve “got skin in the game” because “all of the intelligence advice that I have been getting as Prime Minister indicates we will be having boats coming to New Zealand”?  Then Prime Minister, you need to be getting better intelligence.  This is simply your own fantasy.

UPDATE 1: Quote added at the top.

UPDATE 2:  In the comments, Dinther says, “The libertarian views on immigration I find difficult to accept…I would love to hear more how libertarians justify this stance.”

I’m happy to point him to more, because more there certainly is. So much it would surely have been hard to miss round here--hard to miss all my previous posts on Immigration, including my original 2005 Cue Card on Immigration; and hard to miss all the bagfuls of stuff I’ve linked to before that are “must” reading if you want to get your head around letting the wretched refuse of those teeming shores breathe free.

• Immigration plus Welfare State equals Police State - George Reisman
• Who's milking who? - illegal aliens pay more in taxes than they impose in costs - Shikha Dalmia
• Fighting terrorism requires legalizing immigration - James Valliant
• The solution to 'illegal immigration' - Harry Binswanger
• Immigration Quotas vs. Individual Rights: The Moral and Practical Case for Open Immigration - Harry Binswanger
• America's Real "Assimilation" Dilemma – Robert Tracinski
• Bloodstains on the Refugee Red Carpet – Peter Cresswell
• Welfare State Leaves Boat-People to Die – Peter Cresswell
• The Inhumane Immigration Policy of our Welfare State – Julian Pistorius
• Open immigration, Si! Open borders, No! - Sixth Column
• Stand in Line . . . and Wait! – Not PC
• Immigration and Individual Rights – Craig Biddle
• The New Colossus (1883) - US Department of State

“I want an iPhone4”

Not just funny, but it shows that you can make videos just by plugging in some text.  (And is it just me, or don’t those heads looks like breasts?)

[Sent in by reader Julian D.]

Complementary Therapies for Cancer

It sometimes seems there are more quack therapies for cancer treatments than there are cancer patients.  Dr Shaun Holt, one of the good guys, talks to a talking head about his new book Complementary Therapies for Cancer that examines all the quackery, and discovers some useful complementary therapies.

Robin Bain

I didn’t see last night’s doco on Robin Bain—the one that has David Bain’s lawyer “absolutely disgusted”—so I can’t really comment about what was said, but if you did see it what did you think?

The only comment I’d make is that the Bain murders are a rare example of a “binary” case, one in which the guilty party can only be one of either Party X or Party Y, and therefore proving the guilt or innocence of one has a reciprocal impact on the other.

Vanity Fair’s ‘Top 22’ most important works of architecture since 1980

Vanity Fair magazine asked 52 of the worlds “starchitects” (.e., folk who design expensive boxes that look good in magazines and treatises) to select the five most important buildings, bridges, or monuments constructed since 1980 and the greatest work of architecture thus far in the 21st century.

What they came up with instead was 132 pieces of starchitecture (i.e., expensive boxes that looks good in magazines and treatises), of which these are their top 22. [Hat tip Archinect]

Surprising news from the survey?
Nothing at all by the best architect to to have emerged in recent years, Santiago Calatrava.

Most unsurprising news from the survey? 
Only these four structures out of all the twenty-two are worth a damn.

 Millau Viaduct, France, Michel Virlogeux & Norman Foster

Lloyds of London, Richard Rogers

Vietnam War Memorial, Washington, D.C., Maya Lin

Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, Hong Kong, Norman Foster

And the very best news from the whole survey? 
According to Vanity Fair writer Matt Tymaur in his interview with Charlie Rose, “Po-Mo is dead.”

Well, thank Galt for small mercies.

So what happened to all those ‘green shoots,’ fellers? [update 3]

The recovery has stalled. 

Obvious enough to anyone actually on the ground trying to do business, this news would be a surprise only to a mainstream economist, or to anyone who listens to one. Like NZIER’s Principal Economist Shamubeel Eaqub, for example, who is surprised to have to announce that, “The recovery may be stalling. The outlook is still fragile.”

No kidding.

But just imagine how all the mainstream economists must feel. Every economy in the world followed their advice and threw trillions of stimulus dollars against the wall, hoping that some of it would stick--and the result worldwide may be summarised in NZIER’s assessment of NZ’s last quarter: “The recovery may be stalling. The outlook is still fragile.”

So why are the mainstreamers (and those who take their advice) so surprised? Because, according to their lights, throwing out all those trillions to “increase aggregate demand” must have had some effect.  And of course, they’re right, it did.  It lit up some fireworks for a while, but at the cost of delaying any real recovery.

“The problems are not over [summarises Jim Rogers]. If you pump lots of money into an economy, it looks better but essentially it’s artificial. We are going to see more problems in the US over the next year or two.”

Nobel Prize winner and stimulus loon Paul Krugman reckons however that the problem is not too much stimulus, but too little. If we’re going to raise world demand properly, says this modern reincarnation of the Great Idiot Keynes, then Obama and The Fed (and, by extension, everyone else in the G-20 and beyond) needs to be thinking—not about austerity packages—but in terms of trillions of dollars more stimulus. If we’re going to successfully “raise demand,” then the world’s governments needs higher deficits, he says, not lower.

That he says this in the face of the near bankruptcy of several European governments for running the very deficits he applauds should tell you one thing about his favourite nostrum: that it’s really the height of irresponsibility.

But what it won’t tell you is why he wants governments to be so irresponsible.

The answer to that, however, is very simple. At least, I’ll try to make it simple. The reason he wants to boost government spending is because he thinks that will boost demand; and by boosting demand he thinks we can all boost GDP. It’s a simple idea, but it’s wrong as hell. (“If you pump lots of money into an economy, it looks better but essentially it’s artificial.”)

Let me explain why.

Imagine a very simplified economy consisting of only you and your one-hundred closest friends. An economy based on beer. (I told you it would be simple.) Twenty of you grow the hops and barley. The next twenty brew it into beer. The next twenty package it and sell it. The next twenty are your partners, who like to stay home and drink. And the next twenty work for the government, and they like to use their parliamentary credit cards to buy your beer out of the mini-bar.

So there’s your basic economy. 80 people devoted to making and drinking beer, and 20 devoted to getting the hell in their way. (Oh, did I mention that the first sixty get the pleasure of paying the credit card bill for the annoying bastards consuming the mini-bar?)

Now in the way of conventional economics, the formula for GDP has been cunningly contrived to measure only what the drinkers do, and not what the other sixty get up to. Here’s the formula for GDP (which has here been given the title of ‘Baloney.’)

C is Consumption, i.e., all the drinking done by all your twenty drinking partners.

G is Government, i.e., all the drinking done by all the twenty grey ones from the mini-bar.

And I … now that’s “Investment.”  And that’s a bit trickier, because it’s not total investment but only nett investment. Essentially this figure measures the difference between the six-packs of beer we sixty producers pay out to get things done, and the six-packs of beer we get back when we do things for others. So (to oversimplify a great deal) if our profit is ten percent, then only the work of six of us are measured in the GDP/Baloney figure.

If that sounds ridiculous, it’s because it is—yet that’s how ridiculous the GDP delusion is. It doesn’t measure production, it measures consumption. Rather than measure economic activity, what it does is bury the bulk of economic activity (i.e., the production of those other fifty-five folk) under this contrived figure of I, and then it contrives to ignore all fifty-five.  (As a measure of just how much it ignores, US GDP in 2006 was $13.4 trillion, whereas total business spending was $31 trillion, meaning businesses were spending $4.30 for every $1 spent on personal consumption. Policy-makers take note.)

It’s by this utterly contrived means then that alleged economists like Mr Krugman can talk about “raising GDP” through the “stimulus” of shopping subsidies (or as his mentor Keynes did, by the “stimulus” of building pyramids)—it’s because all that GDP really measures is what gets spent in the shops, and not hardly at all what goes on in the mines, factories and warehouses that makes all that spending possible.

And it’s the homage paid to this ridiculous economic equation that allows him to get away with it, and is so economically destructive--as you’ll see when we take another look at our simplified economy in recovery mode.

Let’s imagine our simplified consumers have all just had a party. A big blow-out. A boom. And now it’s the morning after. (What a bust.) There’s still hops a’pickin’ and still beer a-brewin’ in the vats, but your packaging and production cycle has got a bit out of whack, and the livers of your drinking partners are all feeling a bit tender.  Demand has gone down (and they’re starting to beg for the invention of some basic pain-killers), but in a short time production will be back on track and things ticking along again.

Then along comes Mr Krugman, and all he sees is calamity!  “Look!” he cries.  “Your “C” is way down. And your GDP/Baloney/Spending figure is flat! We’ve got to boost demand!”  And of course, he’s right. It is.  But it wouldn’t be right simply to print drinking vouchers so the twenty parliamentarians can raise “G” at the mini-bar, while ignoring the sixty producers who were trying to get things back on track, and whose production would have to pay for it (but whose total production has been “netted out,” i.e., minimised, in that figure for “I”.

Because their spending has to be paid for.  That demand must come from production. And if you start “stimulating” the economy simply by overstocking the mini-bar, without ever getting anything back for it, then you’ll wake up one day soon and find you’ve got no more six-packs set aside to pay for more hops and more barley. Which means no more beer at all.

And just because that bogus GDP equation allows alleged economists like Paul Krugman to ignore that, it doesn’t mean that you should.

Because as the great economist Ludwig Von Mises used to say, it’s not just the next generation who pays for deficits, it’s this one.  And the way we pay is by having our resources diverted today from all the good productive activity that the GDP equation ignores, into all the unproductive consumption that it picks up.

Which helps explain why the Paul Krugmans of this world (and their sophistic, simplistic equations) have helped make the recovery less likely, rather than more.

So to end this wee post, here’s economist Bob Murphy’s tribute to his favourite Keynesian moron, Paul Krugman (sung very badly to the tune of The Buckinghams’s Susan).

UPDATE 1: More good, related reading at The Cobden Centre: “Short sharp shock –'the Irish Route' or Keynesian Malaise?”

UPDATE 2: I’ve rewritten an old Q&A (from January ‘09) to help explain the point:

Stimulus: Because all economies have performance issues

Q: What is the point of running deficits?
A: Because it’s demand that drives an economy, and we have to keep demand up to keep the economy going.  So when consumer demand drops, the government has to pick up the slack. That’s it’s job.

Q: By borrowing?
A: By borrowing, by printing money, by any way you can do it.

Q: But aren’t most business-to-business payments paid for out of real savings, not faked up demand?
A: Well, yes…but we can try to fool them for a while.

Q: For how long?
A: Long enough. Another three years if we need to.

Q: Until we turn into Greece?
A: Um…

Q: So does borrowing or printing money bring any new resources into existence?
A:  Well, no. In the first case it transfers existing resources, and in the second it just dilutes existing savings. But it does create new demand.

Q: But doesn’t your demand have to be paid for with real resources?
A: Well …

Q: So what you’re relying on is using your new bits of paper to redistribute existing resources in ways the original owners wouldn’t have otherwise agreed to.
A: They need to spend!!

Q: And at the same time you’re denuding the existing pool of real savings.
A: They need to stop saving and start spending!!  We need to run deficits to make up for the money that savers have withdrawn from the economy by their hoarding. 

Q: But how can you say savings are being hoarded when most business-to-business payments are paid for out of real savings?
A: Well…

Q: How is running deficits going to rebuild that shattered pool of real savings?
A: Um…

Q. Okay, let’s move on. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money the government distributes to some taxpayers to boost demand, and stimulate economic activity.

Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.

Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. Only a smidgen.

Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a High definition TV set or a new computer, thus stimulating the economy.

Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?
A. Um.

Q: Well, how on earth does it stimulate the one whose taxpayers are paying to be stimulated?
A: It's all about the "multiplier."

Q: The "multiplier"?
A: Yes, the "multiplier." Every dollar the government "injects" into the economy creates an even larger increase in national output -- a multiple up to one-and-a-half times the original spend-up. The money the government is giving away goes to retailers, which then goes to producers, which then goes to other producers and so on. The net result of the spend-up, as the theory goes, will be new jobs and an overall increase in the nation's income.

Q: So the government is giving me back a smidgen of my own money, and this smidgen is multiplied several times to create a "stimulus?
A. You've got it.

Q: And it keeps prices up?
A: We hope so.

Q: But don't the prices  that producers pay need to fall in a recession to get real production going again?
A: Well, yes.

Q: And it's not even backed by real demand, is it?
A: Well, no.

Q: So how long can such an artificial stimulus last, then?
A: Um, the theory is that it's only temporary at best.

Q: But you’ve been advocating running deficits and printing shopping subsidies to fix the economy now for nearly three years!
A: They haven’t been over-spending enough!!

Q: Well, what sort of stimulus would it have created if you hadn’t taken it off me, abd I'd been able to keep that money myself, and either spend it or save it?
A: Well . . .

Q: Or if producers had been able to keep their own money?
A: Um . . .

Q: So it would be fair to argue that "not only does the increase in government outlays not raise overall output by a positive multiple; but, on the contrary, [it actually] leads to the weakening in the process of wealth generation in general.”
A: But . . .

Q: And this is the whole theory? This is all you economists can come up with?
A: Well, that's about it, yes.

Q: So it's a bit like when "a carnival magician produces a quarter from behind a child's ear," isn't it. "The 'magic' of the multiplier is mere illusion."
A: Hush your mouth. People are listening.

Q: No answer?
A: Sorry, we're a bit busy right now shovelling money out the door.

* * * * Stimulus: Because all economies have performance issues * * * *

 

UPDATE 3: Economic historian Niall Ferguson talks “austerity” vs “stimulus” (and Paul Krugman)—making an important point about what so-called austerity really has to mean…

DOWN TO THE DOCTOR'S: A Glimmer of Hope From Europe

Libertarianz leader Richard McGrath ransacks the newspapers for stories and headlines on issues affecting our freedom.

This week: A Glimmer of Hope From Europe

Over the past week or two, there have been some tantalising news items on the UK Daily Telegraph website:

• “Nick Clegg calls on public to help scrap bad laws” – In a shock move, British deputy PM Nick Clegg uses the F-word – freedom – as he proposes an ‘initiative intended to shift power away from the state to the people’. He says: 
      “It is not for Government to tell people ‘how to live their lives’ … civil liberties should
      be restored and laws stifling businesses abandoned.”
  Good heavens. Has he taken leave of his senses? But wait, there’s more:
      “We are asking the people of Britain to tell us how you want to see your freedom
       restored. We are calling for your ideas on how to protect our hard-won liberties
      and repeal unnecessary laws. And we want to know how best to scale back
      excessive regulation that denies businesses the space to innovate.”
  And he continues:
      “It is a radically different approach. One based on trust. Because it isn’t up
      to government to tell people how to live their lives.”
  He wants people to focus not on what they think the taxpayer owes them, not on what they think the government should expropriate from the mouth of labour on their behalf, but on
      “…laws that have eroded civil liberties; regulations that stifle the way charities
      and businesses work; laws that are not required and which are likely to see
      law-abiding citizens criminalised.”
  What has this man been smoking?! Mr Clegg added:
      “The Labour government developed a dangerous reflex when faced with a problem
      and just passed more laws.”
  Indeed it did.
      “Over the last decade, thousands of new rules and regulations have amassed on
      the statute book. And it is our liberty that has paid the price. Under the cover
      of pretending to act in our best interest, the state has crept further and further
      into people’s homes and their private lives. That intrusion is disempowering. It needs
      to change.”
  Those are powerful, subversive sentiments, worthy of those who once made Britain a bastion of individual liberty and limited government. Bravo, Mr Clegg!
• “Ministers to slash pay-offs for public servants” – This British coalition government is threatening to outdo Margaret Thatcher! They want state sector budget cuts of around 40 per cent. And they want to disconnect hundreds of thousands of parasitic civil servants from the taxpayer teat. They want to scale back redundancy payouts for these bloated bloodsuckers to a few months’ or even a few weeks’ worth of wages. Not the current SIX YEARS’ SALARY that some of these public servants have been handed in the past when levered out of their warm and comfortable Whitehall cocoons. The capping of severance pay will put an end to the ridiculous situation where two Treasury ‘mandarins’ walked off with a million pounds of other people’s money between them upon dismissal. I foresee a rapidly approaching showdown with militant Marxist trade unions which should be interesting to view from the sidelines; I just hope Cameron and Clegg have the stomach for a fight.
• “Another chapter in the unending saga of shameless rorting of the system by Labour Party thieves” - This time the star of the show is 73 year old Frank Cook, former MP for Stockton North, who claimed twice for items purchased in the United States but which apparently were to be used in his electorate office. Yeah right. Also claimed for a refund of council tax on two homes – taxes I would wager he’s happy for the rest of his fellow Britons to have to pay. The bastard knew full well he was only allowed to claim for council taxes on one home. What a hypocritical bottom-feeding windbag. The miserable prick even claimed for a five-pound donation made at a church service to commemorate the Battle of Britain, the tight-arsed skinflint. Have these people no shame, no sense of humility, no insight into their utter insignificance in contrast to those who actually create value and wealth? Sadly, it seems not; instead they share an overwhelming sense of self-importance and an unquenchable need for aggrandizement at the expense of working people. Pleasing, then, to see this maggot got a pitiful 1,577 votes when he stood as an independent at the recent UK election – fewer than the BNP candidate. Little wonder. The British people are sick to the back teeth of hearing about the rampant abuses of power perpetrated by vermin such as Mr Cook during Labour’s time in government. Revenge must have been sweet for the beleaguered voters of Stockton North.
• “Twin brother of dead Polish president concedes defeat in election” – How admirable that a majority of Poles had the sense to reject sentimentality and pass over the remaining Kaczynski twin in favour of Bronislaw Komorowski as Polish head of state. That Mr Komorowski is a man of courage speaks for itself - a dissident during the days of totalitarian communist rule, he was thrown into an Eastern bloc prison for his beliefs. He now joins prime minister Donald Tusk in attempting to do what other European governments need to do – slash public spending and privatise industries and government departments. Best wishes to him and to the people of Poland.

When the people fear the government, there is tyranny - when the government
fear the people, there is liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson

Free(ish) trade for thee, but not for me

Yesterday Prime Minister John Key did two things. 

The first thing he did was to meet up with South Korean officials to promote a free trade deal with New Zealand—part of a two-week tour of Asia to promote free trade.

The second thing he did was to endorse a bid by government department Landcorp to buy the 16 Crafar farms—a bid that doesn’t begin to match the level of the bid already made by a Chinese organisation, but that is clearly designed nonetheless to work in harmony with another government department, the Overseas Investment Office, to derail it.

Quite how he squares those two things in his own mind, you’d probably have to ask him. But like Alice’s Red Queen, he obviously has no problem with thinking two contradictory things before breakfast.

“It is not strength, but art, obtains the prize…” – Alexander Pope

A loving father restrains the heat of a son with sage advice before a sporting contest…

“My son! though youthful ardour fire thy breast,
The gods have loved thee, and with arts have bless’d:
Neptune and Jove on thee conferr’d the skill
Swift round the goal to turn the flying wheel.
To guide thy conduct little precept needs:
But slow, and pasty their vigour, are my steeds.
Fear not thy rivals, though for swiftness known;
Compare those rivals judgement and thy own:
It is not strength, but art, obtains the prize,
And to be swift is less than to be wise…”

An excerpt from Alexander Pope’s translation of Homer’s Iliad.
[You can read much of it online at Google Books.]

“New measures controlling the way supermarkets operate may be on the way”

While Americans were celebrating their Declaration Independence yesterday—celebrating that ringing declaration of the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness--here in New Zealand we were instead being told by Minister Power-Lust what time we must be in bed, and by Newstalk ZB that “new measures controlling the way supermarkets operate may be on the way, after allegations they are ripping off consumers and producers.” [Hat tip Mark Hubbard]

Further evidence that if anything is the inspiration for today’s parliamentarians it is not Thomas Jefferson’s America, but Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.

For Chavez offers the latest lesson that if you think the private owners of supermarkets are ripping you off, just wait until the supermarkets are controlled by the government.  Chavez himself took umbrage recently at the way supermarkets operate after allegations they were “ripping off” consumers and producers. He slapped price controls on food, he opened “cheap” state-run supermarkets—and the result of his officious meddling has been as predictable:

Mountains of rotting food found at a government warehouse, soaring prices and soldiers raiding wholesalers accused of hoarding…”

I say the result is predictable, and it is—for as George Reisman explains, the inevitable result of all price controls is always shortages, and the natural political outcome of all shortages is almost always to increase the controls, and eventually to send in the guns.  The first is the inevitable result of trying to buck the reality that is price signals; the second is the inevitable consequence of the first: price controls inevitably beget either collapse, or socialism (which amounts to the same thing).  George Reisman has the lesson:

The effect of the combination of inflation and price and wage controls is shortages, that is, a situation in which the quantities of goods people attempt to buy exceed the quantities available for sale.
    “Shortages, in turn, result in economic chaos. It's not only that consumers who show up in stores early in the day are in a position to buy up all the stocks of goods and leave customers who arrive later, with nothing — a situation to which governments typically respond by imposing rationing. Shortages result in chaos throughout the economic system. They introduce randomness in the distribution of supplies between geographical areas, in the allocation of a factor of production among its different products, in the allocation of labor and capital among the different branches of the economic system.
    “In the face of the combination of price controls and shortages, the effect of a decrease in the supply of an item is not, as it would be in a free market, to raise its price and increase its profitability, thereby operating to stop the decrease in supply, or reverse it if it has gone too far. Price control prohibits the rise in price and thus the increase in profitability. At the same time, the shortages caused by price controls prevent increases in supply from reducing price and profitability. When there is a shortage, the effect of an increase in supply is merely a reduction in the severity of the shortage. Only when the shortage is totally eliminated does an increase in supply necessitate a decrease in price and bring about a decrease in profitability.
    “As a result, the combination of price controls and shortages makes possible random movements of supply without any effect on price and profitability. In this situation, the production of the most trivial and unimportant goods, even pet rocks, can be expanded at the expense of the production of the most urgently needed and important goods, such as life-saving medicines, with no effect on the price or profitability of either good. Price controls would prevent the production of the medicines from becoming more profitable as their supply decreased, while a shortage even of pet rocks prevented their production from becoming less profitable as their supply increased.
    “As Ludwig Von Mises showed, to cope with such unintended effects of its price controls, the government must either abolish the price controls or add further measures, namely, precisely the control over what is produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it is distributed, which I referred to earlier. The combination of price controls with this further set of controls constitutes the de facto socialization of the economic system. For it means that the government then exercises all of the substantive powers of ownership…
    “Of course, socialism does not end the chaos caused by the destruction of the price system. It perpetuates it. And if it is introduced without the prior existence of price controls, its effect is to inaugurate that very chaos. This is because socialism is not actually a positive economic system. It is merely the negation of capitalism and its price system. As such, the essential nature of socialism is one and the same as the economic chaos resulting from the destruction of the price system by price and wage controls.”

May I politely suggest that the lesson provide by Professor Reisman, for which Mr Chavez provides the latest example, prompt those promoting “new measures” controlling the way NZ’s supermarkets operate to reconsider, and those considering their “new measures” to politely tell them to go to hell.

Never mind our liberty, feel the Power-lust [update 2]

On the weekend in which Thomas Jefferson’s declaration of the rights of man is rightly celebrated elsewhere, here in New Zealand Simon Power-Lust feels the power of the Nanny State flowing through him:

Mr Power said he had recently driven through Auckland early in the morning.
“What I saw on the streets of Auckland, on corner bars and the like, at half past four in the morning – no good can come of that,” he said.

I have some advice for Mr Power.  If you don’t like what you see out on the street and in the corner bars of the city at 4:30 in the morning--you know … people enjoying themselves, having fun, paying their own way, pursuing their own happiness—then just stay the fuck home in Palmerston North.

What sort of pin-headed power-luster sees a city full of people out enjoying themselves, and whose first thought is “BAN IT!”?  Answer: Another lemon-sucking unbridled wowser with not even an original idea of his own.

Why does this pin-headed politician wish to use the bad behaviour of a few to impose his own schtick on all the rest of us?

Why does he think it’s his business to tell us how we’re all going to spend our evenings?

He goes out after dark and discovers, shock horror, that people like drinking!

Simon, you pinhead, if you don’t like it then just stay home.  Because what those people are doing after dark is none of your damn business.

UPDATE 1: Some other useful and somewhat related commentary around the traps:

DIM POST: “This is yet another issue which would have the National Party screaming itself senseless with outrage if Labour suggested it: ‘Nanny state passing laws on bedtime for New Zealanders!’”

Brendan O’Neill at SPIKED cracks open “a bottle of unhealthy fizzy stuff and celebrates the possible passing [in the UK] of an irritating political era” of “celebrity-fronted, dodgy science-fuelled, fear-injected authoritarianism.” Says Eric Crampton (In ‘Repudiating Jamie Oliver’) “I do wish that National here would be paying a bit more attention to the direction of change in the UK.”

UPDATE 2: NO RIGHT TURN, ‘Illiberal authoritarian wowsers’:

“…the government is going to impose a nationwide closing time, and try and dictate when people drink.  This is simply illiberal, authoritarian wowserism. As I said when the report was released, it is none of the government's business when people party.”

Michael Mikee Earley :

“National assault on gigs begins... “

Motivational posters: The Founding Fathers edition

Title and posters shamelessly stolen from We Stand Firm and The Art of Manliness, where you can find several more:

 

Happy July 4th!

With bailouts to failures, subsidies to things that shouldn’t be and rampant attacks all round on freedom and capitalism, it would be hard to call the year so far a good one for America's founding fathers—or for the freedom and liberty they sought to cement into the America they founded.

Yet with Supreme Court decisions affirming (first) the constitutional right to self-defence, and then (second) annulling the government's power to arbitrarily slap moratoria on business, and the the rise of tea parties in which at least some of those involved understand the moral arguments behind the constitutional republic the founding fathers created (and who understand that it was a constitutional republic they created, not a democracy) it can’t be said that things are beyond hope altogether. Which is as important to us, in New Zealand, as it is important to them, in the States.

Because however much New Zealanders might like to ignore it, the events that Independence Day celebrate are as important to us down here as they to those up there.  July 4 isn’t just a day to celebrate American independence, but our own as well.

What do I mean?  Why does it matter to us down here at the bottom of the South Pacific that a bunch of gentlemen over two-hundred and thirty years ago pledged their "lives, fortunes and sacred honour" to constitute the first government in history dedicated to the task of protecting individual rights -- as expressed in Thomas Jefferson's magnificent Declaration of Independence, the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? 

Why should that matter to us?  As Michael Berliner explains, "Jefferson and Washington fought a war for the principle of independence, meaning the moral right of an individual to live his own life as he sees fit."  The principle of independence for which they fought is universal. 

The United States of America was the first and still the only country on earth to be founded upon the specific idea that human life and human liberty are sacred.  Upon the idea that individual rights be held sacred. July 4th is (still)that day when freedom's anthem is heard around the world!

Despite its occasional breaches in upholding the principle of human rights and human liberty consistently, it is nonetheless for this that we all celebrate (or should celebrate) Independence Day. That for the first time in human history a country was founded on the idea of human rights and human liberty; upon the notion that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are sacred; upon the intention to constrain government to act only in defence of those rights.

This was not just a unique event in human history, it also worked like all hell for nearly a century-and-a-half; it worked because protecting those rights gave individuals the moral space, the freedom, within which to act and to flourish. It was not just that this made America and the world freer and more prosperous (which it did); it was not just that this protection for liberty gave a platform to criticise and remedy the breaches of the principle (which it did, most notoriously the regarding of some human beings as the property of others); it is also the profoundly important illustration that a country founded upon reason, individualism and freedom works. That liberty is moral. That liberty is right.

In that very important sense, The Declaration of Independence that Americans celebrate today was made on behalf of every human being on this earth. And the attacks on it, and on the ideas upon which it relied in in its founding, are attacks on the liberty of every human being on earth. (In this sense it is also, surely, no accident that the greatest presidential attacks on liberty since Franklin Roosevelt have come about at the hands of an erstwhile constitutional scholar.)

Said Thomas Jefferson in the last letter he was to write, reflecting fifty years later on the Declaration of Independence and the July 4 celebrations that commemorate its signing:

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

Amen. And let those thoughts be heard around the world! For as one commentator said on this day last year, July 4th is not just a National Day for Americans because the Declaration of Independence really is "freedom's anthem heard around the world":

Whenever you hear news of people fighting for democracy, pause and give thanks for the Declaration of Independence. I am thankful every day that by blind luck I was born in this country. I want the whole world to have the comforts and the opportunities that have so enriched my life. When they tear down a wall in Berlin, when an oppressed group is granted a right in Latin America, when a business is allowed to exist in China, a protest is allowed in a former Soviet satellite, a woman attends a school in Afghanistan or a purple forefinger is raised in Iraq, I think to myself, “the world may not know all the lyrics, but they are definitely singing our song.”

And he's right. America's creation was the great political achievement of the Enlightenment: the full political implementation of the concept of individual rights, with a government constrained to protect them. [What are individual rights, and why do they need the protection of government?  Ayn Rand explains.  What specifically was the nature of the government the American founding fathers tried to erect?  Ayn Rand explains that too.]

With the exception of just a few words, the words could hardly be bettered today (although some of us have tried):

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness...

A wonderful, wonderful anthem to freedom that rings down through the years. If only the real meaning of those words could be heard and understood. As David Mayer says:

To really celebrate Independence Day, Americans must rededicate themselves to the principles of 1776, and particularly to the absolute importance of individual rights – not the pseudo-rights imagined by proponents of the welfare state, but the genuine rights (properly understood) of individuals to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We must also rededicate ourselves to the Declaration’s standard for the legitimacy of government – a government that is limited to the safeguarding of these rights, not to their destruction – and, with this, an acceptance of the principle that outside this sphere of legitimacy, individuals have the freedom (and the responsibility) of governing themselves.

If Americans are to use this day to re-dedicate themselves to the principles of 1776 as Mayer invites, then non-Americans might use it to take up Thomas Jefferson's challenge "to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded [us] to bind [ourselves], and to assume the blessings and security of self-government."

Human liberty is the most sacred thing in the universe, and today is the pre-eminent day in which to celebrate it, and to salute the authors of America's Declaration of Independence.

To America's heroic founders, I salute you!

NB:  Some final July 4 snippets for you:

• For the very best version of Star Spangled Banner to play over a martini or your Sam Adams, I recommend Licia Albanese's spontaneous combustion at a Mario Lanza ball a few years ago.  Fortunately, Lindsay Perigo was on hand to record the eighty-year-old drowning out the young tenor who was supposed to be taking centre stage.  Imagine the scene, click on this link, turn your speakers up to eleven, and just bask in the magnificence!

FRIDAY MORNING RAMBLE: The “going wrong with confidence” edition

From the G-20’s 20-2- ability to go exactly wrong, to Gen. David Petraeus’s hope things don’t keep going wrong, to the new Australian PM’s desperate attempt not to go quite so wrong, to New Zealand’s announced intent this week to go completely wrong--it’s been a very, very interesting week for all sorts of interesting reasons.
So let’s take a ramble round the net and see what good people have been saying about it all…

• “Obama’s letter to the G20 a few weeks ago imploring Western leaders not to embark on austerity measures to rein in their expanding budget deficits but instead to continue stimulating their economies has been the starting gun to an immense battle between the forces of rational economic management and Keynesian claptrap.
  “This is a battle full of misinformation and one needs to remain on their toes to see through the fog.”
  The Keynesian Illusion – Murray Dawes, MONEY MORNING AUSTRALIA
• The G-20 met, and saw that the world was rooted—and pledged thereat to stabilize public debts by 2016?
  Stabilize public debts by 2016? By then, the US and other major economies “will have more government debt than GDP. It is bound to be too late for many of them.
  “And even this modest goal presumes that economies are able to grow faster than their debt – in real terms. When you get debt equal to 100% of GDP, you’re over a barrel. If interest rates were to return to the double digit levels of the ’70s—and they could—it could cost more than 10% of GDP just to pay the interest.
  ”The recovery won’t work…”
  G20 Meddlers At It Again  - Bill Bonner, DAILY RECKONING
• If you’ve liked what you’ve heard about European governments cutting their coats according to their dwindling cloth, about talk of “austerity” in their government budgets, perhaps you’ve been under some illusion as to what they mean by “austerity.”
  Austerity, European Style – Doug Reich, THE RATIONAL CAPITALIST
• ”Deficit Hawks” at the G-20?  Yes, they really are intellectually dishonest.
  ”At Casey Research, we like to focus on facts. Unfortunately, when it comes to government deficits (which beget debt), the facts aren't pretty. They show that the country is already sliding towards financial collapse that will ultimately result in a hyperinflation not dissimilar to the Weimar Republic.
  ”Even the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecasts that the U.S. government will accumulate total deficits in excess of $6 trillion over the next decade. But we think it will be much worse than that….”
  Deficit Hawks at the G-20? – Chris Wood, DOUG CASEY’S DAILY DISPATCH
• PS: Bye, Bye! G20 summit drops 'climate-friendly' energy pledge -- 'Went through document with vacuum cleaner to remove any reference to clean energy'…

"If Gov't spending created wealth
then Greece would be a superpower!"
-@JonathanHoenig

• Please consider Krugman’s article ‘The Third Depression.’
             “We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably
          look more         like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great
          Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions
          of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.
              “And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. “
  I completely agree with those statements.
  How Policy Errors Cause Depressions (and how "in isolation" some things Krugman says make sense) – MISH’S GLOBAL ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
• In the now much-quoted  Paul Krugman column, our generation’s second coming of Keynes shows just how thoroughly he embraces what Ludwig von Mises called the “Inflationist View of History” by espousing the ridiculous notion that the late 19th century, a time of unprecedented economic growth, was dominated by a “Long Depression.” If only what is in store from us were similar to the economic growth of the late 19th century!
  Krugman and the “Long Depression” Myth - Grayson Lilburne, MISES ECONOMICS BLOG
• The key fallacy embedded in Keynesian economics is the idea that government spending adds to an economy’s health. In reality, the opposite is true. So let’s bury that GDP equation baloney and get back to work.
  C + I + G = Baloney – Phiipp Bagus, MISES ECONOMICS DAILY
• “As with inflation, there is a great confusion as to what deflation is. The people who steadfastly insist that inflation is raising prices are consistent in insisting the deflation is falling prices. This is why, time and time again, since the 1930s, they insist that prices need to be kept at least level when the economy hits a bad spot. They hold this position in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary... Maintaining price levels has resulted in some of the most insane actions that we have seen in the free world…”
  Deflation – KRAZY ECONOMY
• “The current economic path of the United States, some argue, is unsustainable. Americans understand this, yet many have been misled into believing that economics is hopelessly complex and the country would be at sea without a paddle if the government weren't around to sort through the mess.”
  In their new book How an Economy Grows & Why it Crashes, Peter and Andrew Schiff “seek to provide readers with a "basic tool kit for cutting through the economic clutter" by sharing a revised and updated version of ‘The Fish Story’ that their father, Irwin A. Schiff, presented in the well-known illustrated book ‘How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn't.’"
  Cutting through economic clutter  - WASHINGTON TIME'S
  How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes – GOOGLE BOOKS
• “The fact that there is no apparent end to this crisis gives rise to the question, ‘How much longer might it actually last?’
  ”The accurate answer is that no one can know… for the simple reason that the market is so heavily skewed by government interference. In other words, no one can say what hijinks they’ll get up to next or what the consequences of those hijinks will be.
  “That said, the signs that the end of the crisis is approaching will be unmistakable in that it will coincide with the government capitulating in such a way that makes it clear it will no longer squander the nation’s future in the failed attempt to spend, tax, and regulate the crisis away. Given that none of those standard ‘tools’ of government make things better – quite the opposite – makes the capitulation assured.
  “But when? I have some thoughts on the timing…”
  Monster Money Printing – David Galland, CASEY’S DAILY DISPATCH
• I said it here already at NOT PC: we have no choice about having a recession, the only choice was how long recovery would take. All the world’s  stimulus has merely ensured that what could have taken ten months may now take ten years—and leave multi-generational debt to pay for the failed stimulunacy.  Yet as the US irrevocably enters the double-dip recession, they’re already talking about not just Quantitative Easing (i.e., printing shitloads of money) but Super-Quantitative Easing (i.e., printing so much money you could wallpaper the Grand Canyon with it).
  USA enters the double dip – Sean Corrigan, COBDEN CENTRE
  RBS tells clients to prepare for 'monster' money-printing by the Federal Reserve - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, TELEGRAPH
  
• The Cobden Centre (add them to your blogroll) recommend that in reference to Sean Corrigan’s piece linked above on the problems that Ben Bernanke is facing, you may want to refresh your background to this story by watching this nicely produced YouTube video first broadcast seven months ago, featuring Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, and Marc Faber:
  
  
• New Aussie PM Julia Gillard will be announcing this morning, Friday, at 10am NZ time, what she will be doing about the Kevin Rudd/Wayne Swan Resource Super Profits Tax, and how she will attempt to solve her budget problems if she cans it. How will she square the circle? And will she even try?
  What is the Future of the Resource Super Profits Tax under Prime Minister Gillard? – Dr Alex Cowie, MONEY MORNING AUSTRALIA
  [UPDATE: Gillard cuts a deal. Super-theft only applies to iron ore and coal; theft capped at 30%; company tax cuts halved. 
  News of the tax changes saw the value of BHP Billiton rise by $600 million. Rio Tinto is up by $1.2 billion.
  TIM BLAIR: “If you want to change the tax,” we were told, “you have to change the government.” In fact, all we needed to do was scare them.]
• Australia’s Catallaxy Files blog is happy at its now-recognised role in overturning some of the major spin of the Rudd government, and ipso facto Rudd himself.
  The power of blogging: Henry edition – CATALLAXY FILE
• Meanwhile…
  Thanks to Tax Competition, Corporate Tax Rates Continue to Fall in Europe – Cato @Liberty
• The Afghan War—what was it for again? “We must dramatically reduce expectations for Afghanistan,” says Michael Yon in recommending this article. “It's not suddenly going to wake up from its prehistoric slumber.”
  Taliban rule out negotiations with Nato – BBC
• Joe Maurone summarises the latest rounds in the Great Objectivist Mosque debate:
  The Mosque Debate Continues: (Paul) Hsieh and (Amy) Peikoff – OBJECTIVISH
• Time for a reality check on the historical successes of Islam: the error “is in attributing to ‘Islam’  the accomplishments of the Arab world of a thousand years ago. The [error] couldn't be more wrong. It was Arabs qua Aristotelians and not Arabs qua Islamists who are responsible for the accomplishments…”
  The United States Of America And Islam Have Nothing Fundamental In Common – Andy Clarkson, CAPITALISM MAGAZINE

“’The great struggle [is] between the...radicals of all faiths and the
moderates of all faiths.’ No, the fundamental
struggle is between faith and reason.”
- Ari Armstrong

• Back to Auckland (how’s that for a non-segue?) Proximity to political power the size of a great city obviously leads to delusions of adequacy.
  First Len Brown, now John Banks – INQUIRING MIND
• And the contiguity of these three events makes you think that proximity to political power the size of a small country leads to megalomaniacal delusions of entitle-itis:
  1. The price of power, petrol and car licences start going up from yesterday as the emissions trading (ETS) scheme cuts in and ACC levies increase hit.
  (Yesterday's) price rises - and the others still to come – NBR
  2.  “It just gets worse. ETS, GST increases, ACC increases, and today they slip in another increase in alcohol excise taxes. Even I had no idea that 70% of the price of my whisky nightcap goes to the National Socialists.”
  Yet more tax increases driving me away from drink ... – Mark Hubbard, SOLO [UPDATE: and yet more taxes on pleasure…]
  3. Meanwhile, MPs are up for a 10% pay hike…
  10% salary rise sought for MPs‎ – OTAGO DAILY TIMES
• Contrast that with what British MPs did back in March:
   Ministers to turn down MPs' pay rise | Reuters
• And in an historic move, British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is asking people to submit ideas about which UK laws need to be scrapped. He has already set up a website for contributions called "Your Freedom"
  Which laws should we scrap? – Marcus Bachler, SOLO
• Meanwhile, Tony Blair is receiving a medal.  For services to liberty.
  Tony Blair is given a medal for his support for "liberty" – CENTRE-RIGHT
• And Labour finance spokesman David Cunliffe is still flying a kite to allow NZ’s Reserve Bank to let rip with inflationary stimulunacy  here.
  The Naked Economist: Part 1 – David Cunliffe, RED ALERT
  The Naked Economist: Part 2 – David Cunliffe, RED ALERT
• Perhaps we here in NZ need a good dose of cabinet ministers from the underground punk scene, which Iceland now enjoys. Couldn’t really do worse, could they?
  Best Party campaign material – DIM POST

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it
exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and
applying the wrong remedy.
~Ernest Benn

• Sad news: Christopher Hitchens diagnosed with esophageal cancer
  Christopher Hitchens' Cancer: Author Undergoing Chemotherapy For Esophageal Cancer – HUFFINGTON POST
• As tribute to man who will hopefully be with us some time, here’s Olivia’s  favourite Hitch interview:
  
• Stop with the BP-bashing already, says engineer Matthew Novak. “ I want to illustrate that while BP is being bashed for the company-wide effort to contain its recent spill in the Gulf of Mexico (amidst cries for government to "DO SOMETHING!"), the spill is so difficult to deal with precisely because of government intervention in the marketplace.”
  Bashing BP — When We Should Be Bashing the Corporatist State – Matthew J. Novak, MISES ECONOMICS BLOG
• President Obama spoke this morning at American University on the need for comprehensive immigration reform, calling for “comprehensive reform” while neglecting to advocate the expansion of legal immigration in the future through a temporary or guest worker program for low-skilled immigrants, “the necessary “third leg” of immigration reform.”
  But as Daniel Griswold at CATO has pointed out plenty of times, without accommodation for the ongoing labor needs of our country, any reform would repeat the failures of the past…
    President Obama’s Incomplete Speech on Immigration – Daniel Griswold, Cato Institute
• Read this.  Go on, read this. Alexander Marriott has a lengthy but superb post on immigration, especially good on the situation at the Mexican Border.
  Immigration: A Problem in Need of Principled Application – ALEXANDER MARRIOTT’S WIT &WISDOM
• “There seem to be a lot of young people who sing the praises of anarchy…
  ”Last weekend Toronto got to see what anarchy really breeds. It’s not peace, it’s not freedom, it is brutal, mindless violence and destruction. It is the law of the pack, and as an individual you are one with the pack or you are its prey.”
  The Face of Anarchy – UNCOMMON SENSE
• Ari Armstrong looks at the resurgence of Atlas Shrugged and the various controversies surrounding it.
  Americans Look to Big Ideas of Liberty: Resurgence of Ayn Rand – FREE COLORADO
• On a related note, when Glenn Beck attempted to get deep with Atlas he more than met expectations by failing to get beyond the shallows, and sticking with his conservative, concrete-bound ways instead.
  Glenn Beck Gives Birth To An Ant – Andy Clarkson, CHARLOTTE CAPITALIST
• You’ve had all you can hear about ClimateGate? Then come on in JudithGate. Yes, she’s cute isn’t she, but the IPCC relied on one person—her--citing her own work to deny all solar influence in global warming
  Judithgate: IPCC relied on one solar physicist – Lubos Motl, REFERENCE FRAME
  http://bit.ly/alPfbY IPCC Relied on a Single Scientist to Deny Solar Influence – HEARTLAND INSTITUTE
• Confused by them all? Here’s an abridged list of all the various  '-gates' in climate science—from AmazonGate to HimalayaGate to YamalGate--for your future essential  reference. Gate Blowup! Come On In Gate Lovers! – CLIMATE NEWS

• Penn State clears Michael Mann in Climate-gate probe (Full 19 page report here.) Reaction: 'It has been designed as a whitewash...To admit that Dr. Mann is a conman now would be extremely embarrassing for Penn State. But the scandal will not be contained no matter how many whitewash reports are issued. The evidence of manipulation of data is too obvious and too strong' [hat tip Climate Depot]
  Penn State clears Michael Mann in Climate-gate probe – WASHINGTON POST

• And “A bombshell from the [Con man] Lord Oxburgh's Climategate 'inquiry': Oxburgh: The 'science was not the subject of our study.” Climate Audit's Mcintyre mocks: 'Why would anyone have expected that science would be the subject of study of the Science Appraisal Panel?'
  Oxburgh and the Jones Admission – CLIMATE AUDIT 

• Oh, Julia Gillard gives her first interview as PM.  Naturally, it involves John Clarke.
  
  
• And this was ‘her’ last as Deputy PM:
  
  
• If you think the 2010 FIBA Soccer World Cup is whacky, and it is, you haven't seen anything yet! Check out this story about the 1994 Shell Caribbean Cup showing how the delights of perverse incentives ended up with both teams trying to score own goals. 
  Says the Samizdata blog, “Read the whole thing. Really, read the whole thing. It's a classic of perverse incentives, showing how the wrong kind of rules can cause everyone to want to do badly. It's about much more than football, in other words.”
  Soccer Shennanigans – KIDS PREFER CHEESE
• I’ll bet you didn’t know that your favourite blogger Lindsay Mitchell also has her own art blog, and by “her own” I mean her own art. 
  See, she’s multi-talented: that’s one of her incredible pastels on the right!
  LINDSAY MITCHELL, Artist
• Young mum Kelly Elmore has a handy helpful guide to a host of children’s books including maths, history, science, and good fiction.
  What Livy and I Have Been Reading – REEPICHEEP’S CORACLE
• Obseration looks outward, Introspection looks inward. One of the most important ways by which we get to know ourselves is introspection. “Ultimately, just as with all knowledge, the reason to seek introspective knowledge is to guide action, but the first purpose is to gain knowledge.”
  Introspection as a Cognitive Tool – SHEA’S BLOG
• Who knew that one of the best ways to lose weight would be philosophical—checking your premises. “I have been re-evaluating my premises about eating and health,” says Rational Jenn, and “I've lost 30 pounds so far this year! :o)"
  Checking Premises, Part 2 – RATIONAL JENN
• Sarah from the Summer Aesthete reviews the film Bright Star, an intensely romantic and tragic film about the 19th century English poet, John Keats, and his love, Fanny Brawne, although she didn’t see much of it. Too much time spent sobbing!
  Bright Star (movie review) – SUMMER AESTHETE
• Lindsay Perigo posted this clip by pianist Freddie Kempf, the chap responsible for a magical musical weekend in Auckland’s Town Hall a couple of weeks ago.  Magnificent!
  Music Gem of the Day: Fabulous Freddy! – Lindsay Perigo, SOLO
  
• And conductor Antonio Pappano, Music Director at the Royal Opera House, has begun  "a journey through the most thrilling art form of all"—Italian Opera, beginning with Claudio Monteverdi. (Keep up with these at SOLO, where Perigo is posting and discussing them all.)
  Here’s Part One:
  
  And finally, here’s a young chap called Chris Botti playing the Rogers & Hart classic, ‘My Funny Valentine.’  Apparently, as of June 2009, Botti has released twelve solo albums, his latest being  "Chris Botti in Boston.”  Twelve. Who knew!? 
  For added interest, see if you can work out whether his version owes more to Miles Davis or to Chet Baker, or to Chris Botti.

Thanks for reading.
Enjoy your weekend.
PC