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Assorted links
1. The puzzle of the missing heroin
2. Falling real estate prices in China
3. Nouriel Roubini's apartment
5. Christopher Buckley gets fatwahed
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 15, 2008 at 12:38 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
Christopher Buckley calls Bush a conservative. I'm not sure I like that characterization.
1) Bush has increased government medical spending in the largest amounts in about 30 years
2) The Bush administration has increased government spending and debt to absurd levels.
3) Bush has increased the power of the federal government particularly the presidency.
None of these things are very conservative. Bush was definitely a social conservative, but fiscally he may have as well been a Democrat.
Posted by: Jorge Landivar at Oct 15, 2008 12:45:58 PM
5. "Christopher Buckley calls Bush a conservative" It's useful to the dialectic.
Less cynically, liberals see government spending the way fish see water, so all they notice is the social bits.
3. I'm all for giving people their props, but why was Ron Paul all over the news on his own dime before the crisis and Roubini on display after it?
Posted by: Andrew at Oct 15, 2008 12:51:09 PM
With regard to Buckley the younger:
This seems a little complaining that the train is on the wrong track and then getting off at the next
station and standing in front of it to me.
Posted by: Superheater at Oct 15, 2008 12:59:45 PM
Hasn't heroin usage been determined by detecting trace amounts on currency?
Posted by: ogmb at Oct 15, 2008 1:36:31 PM
Bush was definitely a social conservative, but fiscally he may have as well been a Democrat.
Absurdity threat level RED.
Posted by: ogmb at Oct 15, 2008 1:50:05 PM
Buckley is coalescing aroung other elites. Birds of a feather....
Posted by: jorod at Oct 15, 2008 2:21:45 PM
Amazing, and his point is proven with every comment.
Republicans are right goddammit and anyone who disagrees with the groupthink must therefore be wrong.
That's okay, wingnuts. Darwin will take care of your kind eventually.
Posted by: meter at Oct 15, 2008 3:41:24 PM
#1 "there is considerable stockpiling of narcotics by Afghan criminal networks in order to control prices"
OPIEC?
Are you saying that a vote for Obama is a vote against groupthink?
Buckley also calls Joe Lieberman a liberal democrat, and goes on to say
"...I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case."
He could have used the same statement, as have many, to join the real party of change, Libertarian. And our change is pure gold.
Posted by: Andrew at Oct 15, 2008 4:23:29 PM
I look forward to watching to an interview of Dr. Roubini discussing the grim prospect of the economy from his apartment!
Posted by: Yan Li at Oct 15, 2008 4:45:43 PM
They say that there is a groupie for every male endeavor. Hmmmm.... worth a shot?
Ahem. We're doomed. Doomed I tell you! Doomed! My apartment's right over there, ladies. Ladies?
Posted by: at Oct 15, 2008 6:15:03 PM
Missing heroin potentially being stockpiled sounds like heroin distributors responding to legislative uncertainty. There are big movements now in certain circles in the US and Britain to use aerial spraying and a troop surge, both of which could severely disturb the poppy crop.
Posted by: Alex at Oct 15, 2008 7:51:29 PM
the heroin article is really interesting. i think it's probably stockpiling for the reasons Alex pointed out, but also, the article seems to imply it is staying in the middle east/CIS? doubt it. there's got to be serious issues with the quality of the data they used too. i don't know if that goes without saying.
ogmb- i think that's cocaine. right? heroin is generally injected, not sniffed through dollar bills. i saw someone sniff it one time and she had to get an adrenaline shot in her chest. oh wait. that was a movie.
Posted by: pants at Oct 16, 2008 12:13:35 AM
Hamid Karzai had close personal contact with CIA Director William Casey and George H. W. Bush, who was Vice President of the United States.He is the US backed Afghan president, he and his family have been the premier heroin family in the mid east for decades. Maybe someone should ask Bush what he thinks they will do with the stockpile. Do they need more CIA planes to ship the drugs?
Posted by: Gabe at Oct 16, 2008 10:25:49 AM
The guys who estimate how much heroin is being produced in parts of afghanistan where US inspectors can't travel without large armed escorts, say that there's a whole lot of extra heroin. But nobody can find it. Prices are high and it isn't leaving afghanistan. Nobody can find it anywhere. So they conclude that their estimates are correct and somebody is stockpiling giant quantities of heroin.
It could be true. But occam's razor suggests a simpler explanation.
Posted by: J Thomas at Oct 16, 2008 7:54:57 PM
Buckley wasn't fired. NR editor Rich Lowry explains at http://snipurl.com/4hmth.
Posted by: Michael Greenspan at Oct 18, 2008 10:12:13 PM
