Shaun Kenney

Argentina is struggling with a crisis of it’s own — no spare change :

Why the shortage? Argentina’s central bank blames it on “speculators,” meaning everyone from ordinary citizens, who stockpile coins, to Maco, the private cash-transport company (think of Brinks) that repackages change gathered from bus companies to resell at an 8% premium. But those explanations ring false. “Black marketeering” would not exist if coins were easy to get in the first place. After all, Argentines could just as easily hoard razor blades or matchbooks. Yet there’s no shortage of those. What’s so special about coins?

The answer is that coins are supplied by the government alone. “Put the federal government in charge of the Sahara desert,” Milton Friedman said, “and in five years there’d be a sand shortage.” If Argentina wants to end the coin shortage, it ought to give up its monopoly.

Crazy? Not if history is the guide. Over two centuries ago, Great Britain faced a coin shortage more severe than Argentina’s — so severe that it threatened to stop British industrialization in its tracks. People struggled to get coins for everyday use. The average worker was lucky to make 10 shillings a week, while the smallest banknotes were for 10 times as much. So the coin shortage even prevented factories from paying wages.

The article goes into the history of private firms issuing their own coinage or script as a solution. Hard to imagine this sort of crisis in an era of digital money, though.

The Jerusalem Post highlights the Israeli government’s incursion into the Gaza strip, most notably reflecting on the lengthy amount of time Olmert took to make the call to invade and Barak’s measured expectations:

And after eight years in which the home front, untenably, became the southern front line, on Saturday night the IDF was finally ordered to assert its obligation: to fight a vicious enemy and to safeguard the people of Israel.

For Israelis, and for all those who recognize the threat to freedom everywhere posed by the death-cult Islamist extremism of which Hamas is only a part, it now remains to hope that the IDF’s actions in the coming days restore peace to the South, and restore the tranquility that all civilians have the right to expect.

Barak’s tone has been quite different than the tone of Israeli leaders during the 2006 invasion of Southern Lebanon. In contrast, while Barak has been neasured, the IDF has been wildly successful on the ground thus far.

War is an extension of politics, and what was not achieved at the negotiating table (if Hamas dared to actually sit with the Israelis) will now be concluded by force of arms.

The families of Sderot, having lived under the terror of Hamas rockets without the concern or sympathy of the world press for years, will at least sleep easier knowing the battle has been carried elsewhere.

UPDATE: Just to show you what the Israelis in Sderot were living through:

Look at those, and compare the reaction of the press and so-called humanitarian organizations to the Gaza incursion today with the months and months of terror inflicted by Hamas on southern Israel.

UPDATE x2:  Or perhaps, it’s not Hamas after all… but the al-Asqa Martyr Brigades seeking to destablize Hamas?

(h/t to the UK Guardian)

Another former governor blogs… this time former Governor Doug Wilder over at Wilder Visions .

OUTSTANDING! Welcome to the blogosphere, Governor!

Patrick Ruffini has the solution for what ails the party.

Guess what? They’re all logistics, folks:

Face it, Barack Obama’s web team did not beat John McCain. John McCain (and the GOP baggage he carried) beat John McCain. If McCain and Obama had swapped their web development teams, Obama still would have won.

Consider that you are constructing a building. While the building can’t be built without the right tools for the job, it takes a lot more than tools (even neat hypothetical power tools like the “rightroots”) to get the job done.

It takes people, and lots of them. Carpenters, plumbers, electricians, delivery drivers, equipment operators, investors, supervisors — and someone in charge to make key decisions and direct the operations. Without people to operate the tools, the tools themselves are relatively worthless.

It takes architectural drawings and blueprints. Without a coherent plan which everyone can follow, the result will be a disaster. The Republican Party could build a socially conservative and fiscally liberal house. Alternately, the GOP could decide to build a socially tolerant but fiscally conservative house, or even a socially liberal and fiscally liberal house. However, fiscally conservative fixures built upon a socially conservative foundation only lasted a generation or so. It might be time to rethink the concept of fusionism.

It should also be noted that if the leaders provide reasonable plans but immediately deviate from them, the workers will quickly lose confidence in their bosses. It doesn’t matter whether it is a project manager substituting a lower grade steel or a congressman voting for an increasingly bloated federal budget.

Eventually the workers are either going to stay home or find work on a liberal or libertarian project.

It takes a winning plan. It takes people willing to work together to develop the plan. It takes leaders — but many of them will emerge from those developing plans or working to make the plan reach fruition. Then we can start purchasing tools. Otherwise, we are putting the cart in front of the horse.

I’ll stop there. The rest follows as a long digression about nuts-and-bolts campaigning, but mostly on substance and much on getting away from style, echoing many of my comments about the Virginia Republican Party earlier in December.

“Voce di donna o d’angelo” from the opera La Gioconda. It was the best way I could think of kicking off the last week of 2008.

To Pink Floyd’s “The Great Gig in the Sky”:

That is particularly awesome.

The 8th District GOP takes up the call for new media integration and is blogging at Red NoVA

. Excellent start!

Every year since the extended version of the trilogy came out, my family and I manage to watch “The Lord of the Rings” over a three day period over Christmas.

Not a bad deal, especially if your are a Tolkien fan. I won’t bore you with any of the details, the Catholic references, the moralistic prose or how much better the book really is than the movie (if that can be imagined).

The short version is that as a family, we’ll sit down and enjoy about three hours of collective story-telling an evening. I probably enjoy that more than anything else over Christmas, with the exception of a Sunrise Mass.

So argues Steve Chapman:

The best part of inflation is that it avoids the need for the government to embrace vast spending initiatives and micromanage capitalist enterprises it is not equipped to run. And unlike government programs, inflation doesn’t last forever.

One of the historic evils of inflation is that by reducing the value of debt, it rewards borrowers while punishing lenders. But this time, both sides may gain from a rising consumer price index — borrowers because their properties will be worth more than they owe, and lenders because their customers will find it easier to meet their obligations.

Once inflation has performed its useful role, it will have to be tamed. But the Fed has a lot of experience doing that. What it doesn’t have is experience bringing the economy out of a deep recession or a depression.

An interesting theory, though such a solution would absolutely destroy the value of the dollar overseas. Deflationary pressures would encourage savings, reduce the cost of many items, and force firms to innovate better products and methods.

Inflationary pressures allow the same mediocre system to persist.

Of course, the real elephant in the room — a vast reduction of government spending — hasn’t even been discussed much less contemplated.

Might not be the best titled post in the world, but take about five minutes of your time and watch how a single good example can make a difference:

Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller fame) is probably the hardest of the hard core when it comes to atheism. That he was this visibly moved tells me a lot, not just about the character of the man proselytizing, but also about Jillette’s character as well.

Now this was the effect of just one good example. Imagine if it were hundreds? And do you and I live our faith in this way?

In my brief experience in this world, I have discovered atheists to have just a devout “search for God” as some of the holiest of men and women I’ve met. Rarely do I meet the “lazy atheist” (more properly termed an agnostic) who just doesn’t believe in at least the idea of a higher being. I have found more often than not that otherwise well-intentioned yet rigid individuals will present their faith in terms of fanaticism, which has more to do with coercion than anything else.

I think this video is quite awesome. That Jillette had the courage and intellectual honesty to post his reflections is pretty amazing unto itself. Let’s hope it leads somewhere interesting.

(h/t to The Anchoress)