Aren Cambre's Blog

Nestle makes a “limited edition” dark chocolate chip and mint chip mixture for Christmas. Here it is, next to a normal bag:

Regular bag on top, mint on bottom

Visual queues say they’re the same except for the mixture of mint chips.

Nope! Compare bag sizes:

• Regular bag: 12 oz
  
• Mint bag: 10 oz
  

Chocolate chip cookie recipes need 12 oz bags. Even Nestle’s own toll house cookies recipe needs 12 oz!

I wish Nestle could have made the size difference more clear. How many recipes get turned upside down when the cook discovers that Nestle shorted him 17%?

CNN promoted the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA on its home page this morning. This is a snap of the page:

Look at the bottom of the bright green sign:

revcom.us is “Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA”. Check out their Wikipedia page; they’re borderline treasonous.

Thanks, CNN!

It’s good conservative policy to oppose pay restrictions, including maximum or minimum wage laws.

But some conservatives also object to TARP salary caps. They are clinging to positions without considering context.

TARP is welfare for terribly-run firms. (I still maintain that chapter 7-style liquidations would have been better in the long run.) These firms got to the precipice of disaster because of incompetent leadership.

What will bad leaders do with cheap taxpayer cash? Line their pockets! What should bad leaders really get? Drastic pay cuts.

So what’s wrong with this salary cap? Nothing. If you got TARP funds, you have to live by reasonable restrictions. If you don’t like these restrictions, then raise capital and pay back the funds.

I am a conservative. I don’t like TARP, but I support its salary caps.

David Nalle, Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus, wrote this in 2008:

The content of the Texas Republican Platform is a telling reflection of how divided the party is and how potentially destructive the most extreme factions are. Yet consideration of political realities renders much of what’s in the platform essentially irrelevant. Most of these extreme positions absolutely cannot make it to the national platform, and local politicians who want to get elected are going to have to ignore many of these resolutions, no matter what provisions are in the platform to try to force them to comply with it. For most Republicans with any political involvement at all, this platform is going to get stuffed in a drawer while they pretend it doesn’t exist. It’s ridiculously indulgent of counterproductive extremism and an embarrassment to a party which wants to have any kind of meaningful political future.

He’s right. Review Better Platform for specific examples of the flawed platform.