David P. Goldman

Apparently the Cargo Cult meme already hit the Web before my last post, via the American Thinker, picked up by the Daily Kos as well.In fact, I first used the term in January 2008 after Obama’s surprise victory in the South Carolina primary:If Reagan offered “voodoo economics”, as . . . . Continue Reading »

Apropos of not knowing how squished they are:Attendees at the Conservative Political Action Committee annual conference chose Ron Paul (R.-Texas) as their favorite candidate in the CPAC straw poll. That’s not a vote: it’s a tantrum. Ron Paul is an idiot, on a good day. The vote bespeaks . . . . Continue Reading »

Like the New Guinea primitives who built straw airfields after the departure of American forces to bring “cargo” down from the heavens, Americans wait for the business cycle to turn. They will wait a long time. The Obama administration is administrating the economic equivalent of . . . . Continue Reading »

Today comes news that 20 percent of Americans are unemployed or underemployed, according to a Gallup Poll that queried ten times the number of households involved in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Household Survey. According to BLS numbers, 16 percent of Americans are unemployed or . . . . Continue Reading »

Apropos of Jody’s post earlier today: On Feb. 12, I posted this item at my “Inner Workings” blog at Asia Times and on the Spengler blog at First Things : Although Greece is an EC member, its finances and political system have the character of a banana republic. EC membership, . . . . Continue Reading »

The Daily Telegraph reports on a breakthrough in brain science:For decades critics of modern classical music have been derided as philistines for failing to grasp the subtleties of the chaotic sounding compositions, but there may now be an explanation for why many audiences find them so . . . . Continue Reading »

It’s a bit more complicated, Rusty . On what grounds should we defend Yiddish? I agree that there are excellent reasons, but let us dig into your point a bit more. Why did Jews speak Yiddish in the nineteenth century (when it was generally referred to as “Teutsch”), that is, the . . . . Continue Reading »

Tablet Magazine asked me for a profile of Stratfor’s George Friedman, the great impresario of private intelligence; it appears in today’s issue. I haven’t had so much fun, as the Continental Op said, since the hogs ate my kid brother.Here’s the conclusion:Stratfor’s . . . . Continue Reading »

High levels of unemployment may last indefinitely. A number of economists (including this writer) have been warning about permanent joblessness, and the idea is now seeping into popular magazines. More than 8 million American jobs were lost since 2007, based on the most recent revision of the overall job count of U.S. establishments… . Continue Reading »

Expanding on Jody’s thought , there are four issues that are raised by Prof. Wisse’s comments: Prof. Wisse surely has a case that Yiddish deserves academic study, but whether the most important expressions of Jewish writers appeared in Yiddish rather than German, or for that matter Hebrew, is . . . . Continue Reading »