Wednesday, December 31. 2008
 How does he know? And what exactly is he really saying about them, then? Furthermore, what about him? Does he have a dirty mind, and find God's splendid artistry prurient?
Aussie MP/Reverend wants topless beaches banned out of sensitivity to Moslem men. Sheesh. Australia has lots of other beaches to go to, if they want to swim or surf. Or they can do as I do, which is to keep my eyes discreetly down when visiting topless beaches...admiring my pedicure. How about banning burkhas for the happiness of the non-Moslem men? Funny thing is, I know a couple of Moslem men. They might be the exceptions, but they seem to appreciate females quite a bit. Photo: From a naked surfing contest in Australia.
Photo is one of several from a commenter to Free Republic's Obama's silence on Gaza angers Arabs. It is A.N.S.W.E.R. people, it appears. Useful idiots, for whom Israel is always in the wrong. But what the US has to do with this is beyond me. My view is that Hamas deliberately provokes Israel into responding, for their own political purposes. Their pathetic political purposes, it seems to me, are to maintain a privileged victim status, to deflect attention from their failures to create a decent society by scapegoating Israel, to collect $ from other countries - and to stay in power. No wonder the Arab countries dislike and distrust the Palis to the extent that they refuse to take them as refugees. 
 The Hollywood Che Cult. A sadistic, totalitarian murderer and rapist. But it was all "for the people." There are apparently no limits to what you can do "for the people." Stalin had many American apologists too.
Why the 1918 Influenza was so bad. Obama will ration your medical care. Or try to, anyway. He'll deflect criticism by using Daschle as point man. Daschle will take the bullets, same as Hillary did. Related: The NHS death that shocked Britain Residential architecture: Never do this China reduces taxes to deal with slowdown. China has become more realistic, and less ideological, than the American Dem party. The WaPo and the amateur rockets. Would they object if the Palis lobbed some of them into their building? Yesterday we focused on the astonishing failures of New Jersey. Today, the flight from New York State Some folks are enjoying this recession Europe to the US: "Here, wear this millstone around your neck." Where are the real men? Armed and Dangerous (h/t, Vanderleun) One quote: One of the things this culture badly needs is a set of manhood ordeals. Unlike the tribal societies of the past, we’re too various for one size to fit all — but to reliably turn boys into men (or, to put it in more fashionable terms, to help them become mature and inner-directed) you need to put them under stress in a way that, except for the small percentage that go through military boot camps, we basically don’t any more.
Photo: Not only do I not particularly enjoy champagne or any other white wine, I do not enjoy New Year's Eve either. Never did. Always seemed like a time for phony, forced jollity (like that dumb dropping ball thing) and, as much as I enjoy a cocktail, I dread hangovers which have the power to steal a whole day of my precious time.
Tuesday, December 30. 2008
Bruce Kesler sends this post:
What does CNN cite for this? Groups, mostly of young Arabs, numbering several hundred to several thousand having street demonstrations in the following countries: England, Germany, Denmark, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Iran, the Sadrist neighborhood in Baghdad, Iraq, and even in Israel. Ironically, and tellingly, none interviewed saw any reason to protest Hamas terror rockets and mortar barrages into Israel. This is what CNN calls the world! Or, is this CNN’s market that it caters to?
 The Dutch Left rethinks "tolerance." (h/t, Insty) A quote:
"The multi-cultis just aren't making the running anymore. It's a brave step towards a new normalcy in this country. "
Given enough time, Reality always wins in the end.
Writing tips, plus "Happy Holidays" Volokh Earnestly-wrung hands. Jules Can the UAW survive? 25 unbelievable pictures. (h/t, Retriever) How porn shaped the web. Related: How amateurs are taking over the online porn biz. Napa Valley, China Do the Palis want anything except to kill Jews? Saving Lehman would have saved everybody a lot of grief. Bad call? We'd like to see a lot more people do this sort of conservation thing with their land. The necessary service government agencies provide Sounds kinda creepy-gay: “The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games.”
More on the sad, slow death of Detroit
Monday, December 29. 2008
We think this toon is about 15 years old, or more: 
 Sent an email to our occasional guest poster Nathan in Jerusalem with the Sultan Knish review of Defiance. His reply:
good review. will see movie. great review of it by adam gopnik in the New Yorker. And Daniel Craig! How cool can that be? We are at the edge of war here; my neighborhood blocked off last eve bec of rock throwing; missiles reaching ashkeolon (one killed - an arab). I will write more, but it's a bit eery, as I continue to go about my work and life.
N Update: Israeli ground troops and tanks enter Gaza.
 I looked through our ABC Carpet link and found the rug in the photo. A Caucasian Kazak, my favorite "brand." Readers, buy it for me! It would add beauty to my life.
Malthus, Scrooge, and others. Lionel Tiger on bonobos and utopia What the heck is this "ranked choice voting" all about? Most embarassing global warming claims of 2008 Cigarettes are sublime. Too true. Harold Pinter hated us. Quoted at Big Lizards: The U.N. General Assembly split over the issue of gay rights on Thursday after a European-drafted statement calling for decriminalization of homosexuality prompted an Arab-backed one opposing it. Diplomats said a joint statement initiated by France and the Netherlands gathered 66 signatures in the 192-nation assembly after it was read out by Argentina at a plenary session. A rival statement, read out by Syria, gathered some 60.
The State is our shepherd Jeb Bush? Why not? Why we need newspapers. Surber. I agree. Just the facts, please. A final look at Barack, The Magic Negro From New England Repub: Obama isn’t going to put gas in your car nor pay your rent. As for Gov Patrick, he thinks you’re good for one thing, more taxes, and Barney Frank doesn’t like you. Now compete with Jose for the lawn mowing job.
From Andy McCarthy: The question is whether the Palestinian people are educable. Which brings me back to the first point: the Palestinians voted to put in power — i.e., vest with the power of a quasi-sovereign government — a terrorist organization which thinks legitimate governing consists of bringing about the annihilation of its sovereign neighbor and, meantime, targeting the said neighbor's civilian population with bombing attacks. When you do that, you make yourself a target. There are worse things than war — like Hamas. They have to be defeated, just like al Qaeda had to be defeated in Iraq.
Sowell, via Betsy: Detroit and Michigan have followed classic liberal policies of treating businesses as prey, rather than as assets. They have helped kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. So have the unions. So have managements that have gone along to get along.
Toyota, Honda and other foreign automakers are not heading for Detroit, even though there are lots of experienced automobile workers there. They are avoiding the rust belts and the policies that have made those places rust belts.
A bailout of Detroit's Big Three would be only the latest in the postponements of reality.
George Bush, The Great Liberator. I'm down with that. Good man, lousy pol. Quoted at American Digest: President-Elect Man-Child: The man-child projects a simultaneous sense of not being comfortable in his own skin and perpetually on display to others. He's twitchy, approval-seeking, and doesn't know when to shut up. He's never been tested to anywhere near the limits of his physical or moral courage, and deep within himself he knows that because of this he is weak. Unproven. Not really a man. And it shows in a lot of little ways - posture, gaze patterns, that sort of thing. He'll overreact to small challenges and freeze or crumble under big ones. - Armed and Dangerous ? Blog Archive ? Where the men are
Reality will grow him up, as it does with all of us. He has had a charmed life thus far, in many ways.
Sunday, December 28. 2008
 Resist the urge to trash your husbands.
Global warming is caused by computers. Amazon's best year ever Computer ownership, by country. I don't see China on the list. Africa needs God "On the sick" in Britain. It pays to be fat or an addict in the UK. Cool, dude. How would this story be reported if it had been the other way around? Now they can say it: Bush has advanced health care Fashionable scientific illiteracy Hooking up update If not appointed, I won't run Can you give Wikipedia a hand? A wonderful site, but it doesn't make $. Like Maggie's. Teddy Roosevelt, Socialist? The top political scandals of 2008. AVI A Pomo Christmas Story: S,C&A Taliban fighting for freedom Sarah was a member of the wrong party: Palin vs. Caroline. Also, More on Palin Bad, kennedy Good. Also, she doesn't sound too bright or aware. I know plenty of heavyweight folks who need an easy job more than she does. Indeed, all reporting these days is partisan-motivated. See Barak's fancy vacation in Hawaii.  Michelle:
Fit Republican president = Selfish, indulgent, creepy fascist. Fit Democratic president = Disciplined, health-conscious Adonis role model.
J Post: Since the cease-fire went into effect in Gaza in June, Hamas used the lull in action to fortify its military posts in the Gaza Strip and to dig tunnel systems as well as underground bunkers for its forces. IDF estimates put the length of the tunnels at over 50 kilometers.
Related, from VDH: Certain deranged reactions are now anticlimactic—a local water main bursts and so we blame Bush for diverting resources away from infrastructure; an arctic freeze or a summer tornado alike evokes Bush and his wayward attitude toward global warming. In the same vein, Hamas blankets Israel for days with rockets and the Europeans are silent until Israel responds with force—only to be blamed for inordinate aggression—the subtext being both that the militarily capable party is to be condemned for being,well, too militarily capable, and that those who can field and deploy terrorists, or aid those who will, against Western targets are deserving of some sort of exemption.
Related: Hamas got what it wanted. No doubt. Does public spending stimulate? Why banks are a special case. Megan. I agree with that. Samuel Huntington, RIP: Huntington, who graduated from Yale College at age 18 and who was teaching at Harvard by age 23, was best known for his views on the clash of civilizations. He argued that in a post-Cold War world, violent conflict would come not from ideological friction between nation states, but from cultural and religious differences among the world's major civilizations. Huntington, who was the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard, identified these major civilizations as Western (including the United States and Europe), Latin American, Islamic, African, Orthodox (with Russia as a core state), Hindu, Japanese, and "Sinic" (including China, Korea, and Vietnam). "My argument remains," he said in a 2007 interview with Islamica Magazine, "that cultural identities, antagonisms and affiliations will not only play a role, but play a major role in relations between states."
Saturday, December 27. 2008
Quoted from Steyn: “Sales plunged across most categories on shrinking consumer spending.”
Hey, that’s great news, isn’t it? After all, everyone knows Americans consume too much. What was it that then Senator Obama said on the subject? “We can’t just keep driving our SUVs, eating whatever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of whether we live in the tundra or the desert and keep consuming 25 percent of the world’s resources with just 4 percent of the world’s population, and expect the rest of the world to say you just go ahead, we’ll be fine.”
And boy, we took the great man’s words to heart. SUV sales have nosedived, and 72 is no longer your home’s thermostat setting but its current value expressed as a percentage of what you paid for it. If I understand then Senator Obama’s logic, in a just world Americans would be 4 percent of the population and consume a fair and reasonable 4 percent of the world’s resources. And in these last few months we’ve made an excellent start toward that blessed utopia: Americans are driving smaller cars, buying smaller homes, giving smaller Christmas presents.
And yet, strangely, President-Elect Obama doesn’t seem terribly happy about the Obamafication of the American economy. He’s proposing some 5.7 bazillion dollar “stimulus” package or whatever it is now to “stimulate” it back into its bad old ways.
Some people are impossible to please.
 2008 Media Research Center Awards for moonbat media
Kwanzaa is really over. I heard jokes about it at the beginning, but not even a joke for years now, which is proof that it is irrelevent. An Iditerod without dogs. Good grief. Anything without dogs is a drag. The final proof of climate change: Q&O Brit Hume: retiring, but not gone What happened to muni swaps. Caveat emptor. I am not guilty. So why should I pay for these messes? Obama's "job fetish." Reason Via Gene Expressions: We examined the effect of an image of a pair of eyes on contributions to an honesty box used to collect money for drinks in a university coffee room. People paid nearly three times as much for their drinks when eyes were displayed rather than a control image. This finding provides the first evidence from a naturalistic setting of the importance of cues of being watched, and hence reputational concerns, on human cooperative behaviour.
Liberal Joel Stein admits he doesn't love America. That explains a lot. He seems to like Sweden, partly for their sexual "freedom." So leave, Joel, and get your recreational sex! Sweden happily accepts immigrants, but they seem to prefer Moslems. Sweden and Moslems: Perfect Together. Not meant as a joke: Indulgences in San Francisco. Who expects to make $ from this scam? Jimmy Carter did the hope and change schtick too. Am Thinker Corporate welfare, institutionalized. At Marg Rev: I believe that moving more assets under government guarantees is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing.
The Bernie Madoff I knew. Detroit Update. Where the sirens never sleep. Yet another corrupt Dem to add to the list? Gov. Richardson
Friday, December 26. 2008
I hope you had a merry holiday. I finally saw Borat - Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Hilariously un-PC and insensitive, and therefore highly recommended. Now, back to work.  Christmas in Baghdad. Photo from the piece at Gateway
Harvard's endowment likely lost much more than they are saying. University greed is the problem. What's with the double-counting? I don't get it. Handel's Messiah: I thought I saw the face of God. The alarmists are becoming increasingly shrill. Maybe they are worried that we quit listening, and have begun to mock and satirize them. Dang it, we want warmening - for the children. Coyote on the wind power scam and the green jobs myth. A year of scary, trumped-up myths about smoking and obesity. Spiked. Sounds like people don't like to feel pushed around by the government they pay for. AVI on Special Education. From everything I've read about education, "special" or otherwise, neither $, nor computers, nor fancy buildings make any difference at all. "More Science in journalism school, please." Surber. My impression is that journalists understand science about as well as they understand economics. Speaking of science, Politicizing Science at Powerline. Steyn on Subprime Education, ... in America, so-called "expanding opportunities for college" is an obvious crock to absolve high schools of their failure to educate.
with a h/t to Viking who also quoted Professor X thus: There seems, as is often the case in colleges, to be a huge gulf between academia and reality. No one is thinking about the larger implications, let alone the morality, of admitting so many students to classes they cannot possibly pass. The colleges and the students and I are bobbing up and down in a great wave of societal forces-social optimism on a large scale, the sense of college as both a universal right and a need, financial necessity on the part of the colleges and the students alike, the desire to maintain high academic standards while admitting marginal students-that have coalesced into a mini-tsunami of difficulty. No one has drawn up the flowchart and seen that, although more-widespread college admission is a bonanza for the colleges and nice for the students and makes the entire United States of America feel rather pleased with itself, there is one point of irreconcilable conflict in the system, and that is the moment when the adjunct instructor, who by the nature of his job teaches the worst students, must ink the F on that first writing assignment. Rape or love? Sounds like love to me. What's the latest on Sen. Dodd? And why do Libs always get a free pass on their sleaziness? Jonah critiques the New Republic's critique of Liberal Fascism Well put, by Rick Moran: Our economic situation is dire – and being made more so by mortgaging our future so that politicians can be seen to be “doing something about the problem.”
Wednesday, December 24. 2008
Wanted to squeeze these links in before I begin my Christmas shopping. Maybe I will just pickpocket somebody's wallet and head for the jewelry store with their American Express card so I can finish up before church at 5. Heck, everybody I know would appreciate trinkets like Cartier watches or some diamonds. Somebody needs to remind me to take the day off on Christmas Eve next year. We'll only have pre-posted stuff 'til Friday.  Microwave oven Christmas song.
Why Santa wears red and other Christmas facts. Grinch du jour The Afghanistan slog, and the glorification of the Taliban. Jules What a joke: Objecting to Rick Warren. He's the Billy Graham of our time. What a joke: Merry Christmas from Ahmadinejad. I'm sure it will be da bomb. What a joke. Caroline Kennedy: "I have, you know, quite a lot to learn, but I feel like I bring a lot with me, as well," she said. "This is a time when nobody can afford to sit out. And I hope that I have something to offer."
Ah, the smell of noblesse oblige in the afternoon. I don't want no noblesse oblige from nobody. She wants to do the "job" for me! I'd rather see any one of 30 bloggers I know in the job. And they've all done more with their lives, too. Theo would of course be my first pick for the seat and he would enjoy it the most because Senators are chick magnets in the Georgetown pubs - but he's a Brit. Related, via Insty: JOURNALISM: Times City Room Will Not Mention Caroline Kennedy’s Special Friendship With Pinch Sulzberger.
Maybe that explains where the "Schlossberg" in her name went to. From Eurotrash to Lefty propagandist. Nice evolution. Related: Resistance to Caroline grows. No, I do not dislike the lady. Why would I? I am sure she and Pinch make a charming couple. I just think this political family stuff is ridiculous: how many generations before somebody gets a real job and learns about real life and about how business works? Same for Bush Jr, although he did pay his dues in the private sector.
Excellent, in the WSJ. Final quote: Politics is in charge -- in a way that makes a lost decade of subpar prosperity more likely than not. Happy Holidays.
 Let's begin with Scrooge.
Tierney at the NYT doesn't think much of O's science advisor. Sounds like a phony resume. More on Holdren here. (h/t, Insty) Reisman rips another O appointee - Larry Summers Huffington satirizes herself. (h/t, Jonah) The stimulus plan: $1 billion for Las Vegas roads. Since when is that a Federal issue? Talk about entitlement: Caroline not only refuses questions, she refuses to open her books. The arrogance and condescension aren't going over too well. But Uncle Teddy wants it. Teasing vs. bullying Expanding executive power? Who's complaining? Powerline. I am complaining. "We don't predict, we project." Ignore the weather: it's Apocalypse Later. The Apocalypse is always later. Related, at Flopping (this is amazing): “Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective, and being honest.” –Stephen Schneider Lead Author of reports for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
And that, my friends, is exactly why we file our climate posts in the Politics category instead of our Natural History category. Photo: The Renaissance Christmas tree at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
Tuesday, December 23. 2008
Hugh Hewitt is wrong about this. He seems to want the government (ie, us) to somehow subsidize a renewal of the unhealthy and artificial housing bubble. Perhaps people don't see the bubble as having been a government-created market distortion, but instead see the bursting of the bubble as the problem? Let's let the market determine housing values - as it is doing.
Do the Hokey Pokey and go to jail in Scotland. Well, it is a dangerous song. Sex in the Middle School stairwell? Dang, I grew up too early. There is no hangover cure. Teen morality today. Chavez: Stop buying what you want The death of Deep Throat and the crisis of journalism. Stratfor. The case that Woodward and Bernstein were Felt's tools. I didn't know Bison had beef cattle genes. If they interbreed, does that mean they're races of the same species? (h/t, Jungle Trader) My Republican Party was the town party girl. Am Thinker  From News You Can Lose in The New Yorker:
Newspaper readership has been slowly dropping for decades—as a percentage of the population, newspapers have about half as many subscribers as they did four decades ago—but the Internet helped turn that slow puncture into a blowout. Papers now seem to be the equivalent of the railroads at the start of the twentieth century—a once-great business eclipsed by a new technology. In a famous 1960 article called “Marketing Myopia,” Theodore Levitt held up the railroads as a quintessential example of companies’ inability to adapt to changing circumstances. Levitt argued that a focus on products rather than on customers led the companies to misunderstand their core business. Had the bosses realized that they were in the transportation business, rather than the railroad business, they could have moved into trucking and air transport, rather than letting other companies dominate. By extension, many argue that if newspapers had understood they were in the information business, rather than the print business, they would have adapted more quickly and more successfully to the Net.
The above was linked at a Buzzmachine piece about the decline of newspapers, Downbeat. Nyquist, with a parade of stupidities. One quote: The president indirectly proposes that the government knows better than the market. He is saying that the government knows how to save the market, namely, by violating the market. By way of analogy, this amounts to advocating promiscuity as a means for preserving virginity. It would be laughable if it weren’t so serious. “We’re in a huge recession,” said Bush, “but I don’t want to make it even worse.” But President Bush has made it worse by throwing good money after bad, by redistributing the market’s losses, pronouncing in favor of moral hazard, and by making massive decisions for the market. What comes next is hyperinflation. According to a senior economist at Decision Economics, quoted in an AFP news story titled “Fed cuts rate to virtually zero, will expand stimulus moves,” the government is “pulling every lever and pulling them hard. They are going to print money until they get a reaction from the economy.” Well, the reaction has begun. The good faith and credit of the United States is over. Who is going to loan money to a government determined to inflate? Consider the parade of stupidities we’ve seen since the crisis began in September: the bailout of Wall Street, the bailout of the banking system, and now the bailout of Detroit. This is what the president means when he says, “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.” So the solution is to spend trillions to save trillions. But nothing is saved!
White House rightly slams the NYT for attempting to blame Bush for the housing bubble. Related: Quoted at Belmont: ...in an attempt to increase home ownership, particularly by minorities and the less affluent, virtually every branch of the government undertook an attack on underwriting standards starting in the early 1990s. Regulators, academic specialists, GSEs, and housing activists universally praised the decline in mortgage-underwriting standards as an “innovation” in mortgage lending. This weakening of underwriting standards succeeded in increasing home ownership and also the price of housing, helping to lead to a housing price bubble. The price bubble, along with relaxed lending standards, allowed speculators to purchase homes without putting their own money at risk.
Sowell reminds us once again about the facts on the Great Depression. People love the comforting myth that government helped. Myth or scam? Green jobs, at Coyote LaShawn wants this book: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex and Feminism Photo via Theo, who knows how to celebrate Christmas
Monday, December 22. 2008
Sarbanes-Oxley, stock options, etc. WSJ. An important article for anybody who wants to create or produce anything. I have no doubt that the Washington power elite wants to keep us all poor and stupid. And dependant upon them. Their problem is that we are smarter than they are. We the people know how to make stuff happen, and all they do is take our stuff to try to get relected to their phony, no-heavy-lifting sinecures with their amazing benefits. "Don't follow leaders, watch your parking meters." I have always been impressed by doers and makers, but never impressed by political "leaders." Not even once. Including Reagan, who I liked very much.
 From recent news reports: 11,700 years ago, at the close of the last ice age, a time when fully modern humans inhabited most of the globe, Greenland experienced a 22-degree temperature spike in a matter of years. That's the equivalent of changing from New York's climate to Miami's, and on a human timescale.
Meanwhile, climate alarmists eagerly embraced the news that 55 million years ago, Greenland and barren Arctic islands such as Spitzbergen enjoyed year-round temperatures of 74 F - equivalent to West Palm Beach - pointing to it as evidence of the dangers of high CO2 levels. There's only one problem: at that time, temperatures in the tropics were the same or even slightly cooler than today, making for a balmy, paradise-like world devoid of freezing or baking temperatures. At the time, parts of what is now Colombia had an annual average as low as 78 f or less, meaning that CO2 is unlikely to have been the warming agent at work (at the time, CO2 was at approximately 3,500 ppm, vs. 380 ppm today. Mammals apparently flourished like never before or since in this climate). Scientists guess at changing air circulation patterns and ocean currents to explain these phenomena, but the fact is we simply have no idea what was responsible.
 Those are today's temps via Surber.
Skeptical about the warming crisis? Then sign the Big List for posterity. Posterity will thank you.
 Wizbang:
The unspoken truth is that if Charlie Rangel was a white, conservative Republican his Democrat colleagues and the usual suspects in the media would not be satisfied with his resignation from Ways and Means, nor his apology. They would demand his prosecution for alleged felonies.
Britain has lost the stomach for a fight. The emotion of "elevation" Walter Dellinger: The juicy bits of the Constitution (h/t Joe Carter) Obama's pair of Lysenkos 100% of top world terrorists are Presbyterians The ongoing battle for Minnesota. WSJ Dr. Bob on assisted suicide The housing bubble, from Cafe Hayek: There are four factors that helped drive up the price of real estate in the United States and create the housing bubble: The GSEs (Fannie and Freddie), the Community Reinvestment Act, expansionary monetary policy starting in 2001, and the 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act that for the first time let people avoid capital gains on home price appreciation without having to rollover the gains into a bigger house.
On addiction, via Dr X: The problem is that the very concept of addiction is controversial and philosophically problematic, touching on great questions of free will, emotion, and even spirituality. Most of this is beyond the scope of this post (and, it must be said, beyond the scope of this amateur philosopher), but it seems safe to say that addictions are never entirely chosen nor entirely determined. They always hover somewhere in between, and it's hard to get one's mind around that (sort of like the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics on a psychological level, perhaps...
Image is this year's Christmas Card from our friend, artist Elissa Gore
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