Author: smartistone

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” –Philip K. Dick That’s where we are today – a willful denial of reality by the left, in particular the commenters on various liberals sites encompassing a collective delusion that we can close the achievement gap with costlier schools or that IQ… Continue reading Education and Reality

From The American Conservative: Our Collective Hatred of Ignorance In the smartist era, the value or importance of intelligence has never been greater. Yet at the same time, the consequences of naivete and ignorance can be grave. Look how Rick Perry, a three-term governor of America’s second largest economy, was decollated by the punditry after… Continue reading Ignorance, The 2008 Financial Problem, and the Limitations of Knowledge

Is America following a trajectory of decline like The Roman Empire? Glen W. Bowersock has remarked, “we have been obsessed with the fall: it has been valued as an archetype for every perceived decline, and, hence, as a symbol for our own fears.” That seems to describe the left’s thinking. They want to believe America… Continue reading The Nordic Ticking Time Bomb

Radio Derb 5/31/2014 Derb’s erudition and clever one-liners cannot salvage what otherwise tends to be a slow and boring podcast. The problem with the topical news format is the news is either boring or has already been covered in every conceivable angle by other pundits by the time Derb gets to it. While Derb can… Continue reading Leave the Ivy League Grads Alone

U.S. economy shrank at 1% annual pace in 1Q Daniel Gross, correctly, disabuses the fear of a double dip recession Economic data is, by in large, worthless in terms of investing and forecasting. It’s backward looking and tells you nothing about future data. If you base your investing decisions on economic data, you will sell… Continue reading Weak GDP? No Problem

This stock market is incapable of going lower. This bull market may last for 20 years without a single 20% correction – a possibility given the endless liquidity, technological progress, blowout profits & earnings, globalization and the usual factors that have shown no signs of slowing. Additionally, this is the second greatest bull market in… Continue reading A Huge Bull Market

The Fly Writes: For the better part of 5 years now, the stock market has been rising, fueled by Federal Reserve asset purchases AND corporate profits. Our largest corporations have performed coups abroad, taken over whole cities, established governments, without firing a single shot. From my vantage point, from any vantage point, I’d say there… Continue reading Ignore the News and Keep Buying Stocks on the Dips

From Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Reparations article: Reparations—by which I mean the full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences—is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely Isn’t that the function of MLK day, the Civil Rights Act, and black history month? Furthermore, black people get monetary reparations through record entitlement spending and government… Continue reading Racial Matters

From The American Conservative: The Tricky Politics of Fighting Crony Capitalism For a website with the title Conservative, it sure seems to advocate a lot of liberal positions on issues ranging from domestic spying, foreign policy and crony capitalism. Liberalism is a bigger threat than crony capitalism. One could make the argument that crony capitalism,… Continue reading The Daily View: Crony Capitalism, Fallacy of Composition, and Compromise