Overnight Open Thread (3-3-2014)

I just exhaustedly made it back to my hotel room so I guess you know where I'm going with this excuse....

Mind the Gap: Why Income Differences Don't Matter

An absolutely excellent essay on why the left's complaints about income inequality are really based on cloudy thinking and basic fallacies and a whole lot of emoting. I'd excerpt the whole thing but laziness and fair use laws but mostly laziness prevent me.

Like chess or painting or writing novels, making money is a very specialized skill. But for some reason we treat this skill differently. No one complains when a few people surpass all the rest at playing chess or writing novels, but when a few people make more money than the rest, we get editorials saying this is wrong.

Why? The pattern of variation seems no different than for any other skill. What causes people to react so strongly when the skill is making money?

I think there are three reasons we treat making money as different: the misleading model of wealth we learn as children; the disreputable way in which, till recently, most fortunes were accumulated; and the worry that great variations in income are somehow bad for society. As far as I can tell, the first is mistaken, the second outdated, and the third empirically false. Could it be that, in a modern democracy, variation in income is actually a sign of health?

Quote of the Day: Shockingly Russians Are Interested in Russia's Interests

And will pursue them as far as they can get away with i.e. the Krauthammer explains Political Reality 101:

Remember the speech he gave at the U.N. when he started his administration? He said no nation can or should dominate another. I mean, there's not a 12-year-old in the world who believes that. And he said the alignment of nations rooted in the cleavages of the long ago Cold War make no sense in this interconnected world.

As our Secretary of State said today, or yesterday, after all this, this is a 19th century action in a 21st century world. As if what he means his actions where governments pursue expansion, territory domination, no longer exist in this century, as if that hasn't been a constant in all of human history since Hannibal.

They imagine the world as a new interconnected world where climate change is the biggest threat and they are shocked that the Russians actually are interested in territory.

No matter how '19th century' acting in your own self-interest is.

Apropos that warm water port, a liberal asked me "Why is Putin doing this?"  My response aside from the obvious "because he can," was "because he wants a warm water port."  The liberal sneered at me that this isn't the 19th century anymore.  I suspect that he hadn't read that Lurch er . . . Kerry said exactly the same thing.  Instead, this is just a default Leftist sneer.  In fact, as I noted above, a warm water port is an excellent thing for the Russians and Putin knows it.  He is therefore following State Craft Rule 101:  act in your own self-interest.  As Tom Rogan explains, no airy-fairy theory in the world will override this number one rule of governance.

The Guns of the Russia's Non-Invasion Invasion

And why are all the Russian soldiers wearing masks?

Glenn Greenwald Condemns Internet Deception

Ah such sweet, sweet irony and sublime lack of self-awareness.

Why the Stupid Think They're Smart

The Yahoo AoSHQ group. Bla bla bla.

And my twitter thang.

Tonight's post brought to you by the ultimate selfie:

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posted by Maetenloch at 10:48 PM

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