Quote Of The Day

From the (lamentably-furloughed) Diplomad:

The excuses for [Venezuela’s] collapse are numerous, and you can find them in the standard swampy media. My favorite is, of course, that Venezuela was done in by the “collapse” of oil prices: a stupid, lazy lie. According to OPEC data, the average price of a barrel of oil in 1999, the year Chavez took power, was $17.44; the price of oil today is over $68. Only in prog world can that be a collapse. Furthermore, at no time since 1999, has oil gone below the price it was in 1999. During the entire Chavez-Maduro disaster, oil stayed well above the 1999 price.

Of course, the fact that stupid people like Oliver Stone and Sean Penn as well as the evil, self-styled “democratic socialists” like Corbyn and The Bern love this style of government should be proof enough that the whole idea sucks, but there you have it.

Quote Of The Day

Speaking of mandatory minimum-wage foolishness:

“Even in a robust economy such as we’re currently enjoying, the laws of supply and demand can’t be overridden. Restaurants still exist in a highly competitive environment and their profit margins remain generally low. A sudden increase in labor costs hits their bottom line immediately so they begin reducing the workforce and/or cutting back on hours for their servers and back of the house workers.
“The state is unable to artificially mandate prosperity without the free market responding to correct for the imbalance. That’s a lesson too many state and municipal governments seem painfully slow to learn.” — Jazz Shaw, via Insty.

Quote Of The Day

From Sarah Vine:

“The boss of Amazon’s UK operations claims that Britain will descend into ‘civil unrest’ if we leave the EU without a deal.
“Clearly, the prospect of not being able to position the company’s headquarters in a nice cosy tax haven while taking advantage of free trade to destroy the High Street is starting to get to the poor chap.”

She’s not altogether wrong.

Quote Of The Day

Over at PJMedia, John Hawkins (who seems to have been appointed List Master there) has compiled a list of “Best Thomas Sowell Quotes“.

All of them are good.  My favorite, because I’m a.) an historian and b.) conservative, is this one:

“For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before.”

Yup.  The quote goes perfectly with Cicero’s immortal words:

“Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever. For what is the time of a man, except it be interwoven with that memory of ancient things of a superior age?”

Call it a twofer.

Good Question

From some smart guy:

“How is it that if you arrive at JFK Airport without a passport, you are sent back to your place of origin, whereas if you cross the Rio Grande River without a passport, you are not sent back?”

Because shut up, you rayciss Nazi.