Thursday, April 15. 2010
 We do not want to dwell on the Tea Party subject, but this is cute (h/t, NRO).
Note the cheerful and friendly demeanor, the unabashed patriotism, the good grooming, and the absence of a Che t-shirt: she is the New Wholesome Cool - and the Vanguard of the Revolution!
She needs a bio, though. I can easily come up with one, but I won't.
Not Your Grandpa's Britain Department: "Mr. Davey said he's better off unemployed than working." Hey, there's the spirit to build a new Jerusalem!
h/t, William Blake:
Let’s get to the bottom line: Those claiming that their industry is too big to fail are those who are failures, failing in their basic responsibilities to plan, manage and innovate, most often accompanied by rewarding themselves with high pay and perks.
In the 1980’s, many large corporations were acquired by vulture capitalists, broken up and otherwise disposed of. Yes, hundreds of billions of dollars were sometimes wasted on acquisitions that proved worthless, except to the wheelers-and-dealers’ fees, although in far more cases reorganized leaner and meaner competitors emerged. American industries, and those who wanted to keep their jobs, were forced to adapt if they wanted to remain viable. The American economy prospered anew. Many millions of employees were dislocated, struggled, but American unemployment was at new lows as new opportunities were created.
Those lessons, like most, need to be relearned anew with each generation.
Continue reading "Too Big To Fail: Tea Party Savior"
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.
Frederic Bastiat
It's the tragedy of the commons. It doesn't look good for the whales.
But what about Whale Farming? Like they do at Sea World.
 Image of a Japanese breakfast (that is canned coffee, BTW) from Flares
Truly the I'm Not Dead Yet post of the day.
Iowahawk wants a pic of your worst wheels.
Regarding your gross old toenails
Why do colleges care about extracurricular activities?
The Puritan Left and life's little pleasures. Related: Banning corn syrup in NY?
Gotta laugh at Gordon Brown:
“A lot of things that the BBC does are incredibly creative and quite risky. But this is a necessary means of us being a creative society. I want to safeguard the independence of the BBC and I think the licence fee is the means by which you do it."
Sarah Palin kills moose miners. Eats them too, no doubt.
John Stossel has a blog.
More people have been killed by Oregon's windmills than died at Three Mile Island
Two subsidies: Ethanol and unconventional natural gas
Rasmussen:
Twenty-four percent (24%) of U.S. voters now say they consider themselves a part of the Tea Party movement, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. That’s an eight-point increase from 16% a month ago.
Europe's VAT Lessons: Rates start low and increase, while income tax rates stay high.
Ed Koch begins:
I weep as I witness outrageous verbal attacks on Israel. What makes these verbal assaults and distortions all the more painful is that they are being orchestrated by President Obama.
Currier and Ives' The Trout Pool. The guy is fishing for Brookies. That's all there were in the East, back then. Browns are a European import, and Rainbows are an import from the Western US.
Wednesday, April 14. 2010
 Info about it via Jules in Beantown.
I think it's just great for people to take the trouble to show up and express themselves. The folks are getting flak from the MSM, if not scurrilous and dishonest attacks and attempted sabotages, which must be a tell that these demonstrations/protests mean something real. As Palin always says, you know you're near the target when you start getting the heavy flak.
There was a fair amount of hate expressed - by the haters of the Tea Party.
The message of the Tea Partiers to the gummint, I think, is "You guys have done enough damage. Leave us alone to run our own lives." Hewitt is along the same lines.
Some protests are good, it seems, and some are bad. Back in the day, anti-war protests were good places to pick up "revolutionary" granola gals with no morals. When I consider how six batty old Code Pink ladies used to show up and get non-stop front page coverage about their "moral authority," and compare it to the MSM coverage of the thousands of women that show up for these Tea events across the country, I just have to smile.
It is so predictable.
Editorial, Washington Examiner, 4-14:
Barely 15 percent of all construction-industry workers in the United States are union members, while the remaining 85 percent are nonunion, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. So why has President Obama signed Executive Order 13502 directing federal agencies taking bids for government construction projects to accept only those from contractors who agree in advance to a project labor agreement that requires a union work force? Obama's new order applies to all federal construction projects with price tags of $25 million or more, and it means all such contracts will only be awarded to companies with unionized work forces.
By eliminating the vast majority of potential bidders on federal construction projects, Obama guarantees two things. First, the projects will cost taxpayers more because union labor is always more expensive. And with mandated PLAs, the cost premium for union contractors will be even greater because fewer bidders always means less competition and higher prices. Second, by guaranteeing unions a bigger stream of federal contracts, Obama is making sure that Big Labor, already among the Democrats' biggest sources of campaign cash, will have even more money to hand out for the 2010 and 2012 elections. You scratch our back with taxpayers dollars gleaned through PLA-based federal construction jobs, and we'll scratch your back with campaign contributions. That's the way it works in Obama's business-as-usual Washington. It's also known in some quarters as "the Chicago Way."
"The Obama administration's policy is a slap in the face to the vast majority of construction workers who have chosen not to unionize," said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation."Qualified nonunion contractors whose workers have opted against unionization will be locked out from large-scale construction projects. The true purpose of so-called project labor agreements is simple: To impose unwanted union boss control on workers from the top down."
Another factor helps explain Obama's willingness to sign an executive order that will put millions more tax dollars in union coffers. Mix points out that unions under PLAs typically exact agreements that include requiring contractors to make payments to union pension funds. This is an increasingly urgent issue, as the Washington Examiner's Mark Hemingway has recently detailed in these pages. According to Labor Department filings, the average union pension has only enough money on hand to cover 62 percent of the benefits it has promised to union members. Pension plans with 80 percent funding are considered "endangered" by federal auditors, while those with less than 65 percent funding are put on the "critical" list. With this latest executive order, it's clear that Obama intends to give unions on the critical list a massive dose of federal tax dollars to cure what ails them.
We like TigerHawk's site, but I have two complaints about him which he will no doubt take to heart.
1. He needs to post more often. It is selfish not to.
2. He needs to learn the names and habits of the critters and birds and bugs and plants that he likes to post. He seems like a guy with curiosity - so why not learn them? It isn't rocket science for a Princeton guy, and it's fun to know what you're looking at. For example, he recently posted some very nice photos of butterflies in Virginia. These are Tiger Swallowtails on a Pink Lilac:
Stolen from Chicago Boyz:
"There is one aspect of the change in moral values brought about by the advance of collectivism which at the present time provides special food for thought. It is that the virtues which are held less and less in esteem and which consequently become rarer are precisely those on which the British people justly prided themselves and in which they were generally agreed to excel. The virtues possessed by Anglo-Saxons in a higher degree than most other people, excepting only a few of the smaller nations, like the Swiss and the Dutch, were independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsibility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity, noninterference with one’s neighbor and tolerance of the different and queer, respect for custom and tradition, and a healthy suspicion of power and authority."
F.A. Hayek, Road to Serfdom.
 A shout-out to our Prez: Quit embarrassing me, you big pussy. And I even do like Burger King. But how come foreign leaders don't bow to Obama? And who is Chief of Protocol? Mrs. Earthworm?
AVI is re-reading Screwtape. He feels convicted in every chapter. But I feel convicted on every page - so I win!
The best teachers aren't trained to teach. All the fancy private schools know that.
How TV-watching can alter your view of reality: Cultivation Theory
The Roosevelt Mythtique
Some violence is OK - if it's from the Religion of Peace...
Angela Merkel - More American than the O
The shift of unions towards big government
MRC Special Report: How the Media Have Dismissed and Disparaged the Tea Party Movement
How propaganda works today: Volokh. Kopel responds earnestly, as if truth mattered in that game.
Speaking of propaganda, Krugman does it again
How much money do Profs make these days?
Tea Party founders were small government radicals
Palin Derangement Syndrome in Boston. It's not about Palin: same thing would and will happen to any Conservative who rises to prominence.
Why taxing the rich won't work in New Jersey anymore. Related video: Christie is Reagan with a Jersey edge. A few quotes from the big guy via the Hot Air link:
The children will be the ones to suffer from your education cuts. “The real question is, who’s for the kids, and who’s for their raises? This isn’t about the kids. Let’s dispense with that portion of the argument. Don’t let them tell you that ever again while they are reaching into your pockets.”…
Budget cuts are unfair. “The special interests have already begun to scream their favorite word—which, coincidentally, is my 9-year-old son’s favorite word when we are making him do something he knows is right but does not want to do—’unfair.’ . . . One state retiree, 49 years old, paid, over the course of his entire career, a total of $124,000 towards his retirement pension and health benefits. What will we pay him? $3.3 million in pension payments over his life, and nearly $500,000 for health care benefits—a total of $3.8 million on a $120,000 investment. Is that fair?”…
Isn’t your talk of ’stopping the tax madness’ just another ‘Read My Lips’ promise? “[Mine is] much better than ‘Read my lips.’ I’m sorry, it’s just much better. Much stronger. . . . It’s gonna be how my governorship will rise or fall. I’m not signing a tax increase.”
Fred Singer: Climategate Whitewash
Robin of Berkeley's apology letter to America
Neptunus on his taxes:
Having recently completed my taxes for 2009 – and receiving rather a nasty shock at the bottom line – I can only hope to be less productive in 2019 than I am now.
Very soon now – if I am not there already - I simply won’t be able to afford to succeed.
NYT says it now: It's about rationing care
Money from wind: It's the subsidy that will make you rich. I believe that is termed rent-seeking.
Cheerful graph from Willisms:
Tuesday, April 13. 2010
 Gagdad Bob's Great God Almighty, I'm Free at Last! Now, Who Stole My Chains?! connected with a topic on which I have been reflecting lately, namely, how avidly people sometimes cling to symptoms and pathologies and, indeed, can feel lost without them.
In my field of work, we have to be careful with such things, following the lines of "If you break it, you own it," and "Primum non nocere."
Also, "Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Or, as I usually phrase it, "the good-enough."
I was much affected by Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom when I was in college.
People vary in how much freedom they can handle, whether from internal or external chains. I prefer the chains I deliberately select for myself.
Does a baggie with water and a penny in it keep flies away? Snopes has the answer.
And to make matters worse, try finding this federal tax on a receipt.
I would be in favor of replacing the federal income tax with a VAT, however.
Addendum: Excellent policy piece on VAT
 Like you, I always stay up with the latest trends in file backup technology. Heck, who doesn't?
Pictured: Who doesn't.
To be completely honest, you never did have much of an excuse when you lost those super-important files during that computer melt-down a while back and had lazily neglected to back them up. Oh, you made a big bid for sympathy, all right, but we just laughed and sneered. There have always been zillions of backup programs around, and they've always been real easy to use. No, you really had no excuse at all.
And now, sadly, with cheap terabyte drives available, you'll have even less.
To take it through the timeline, first we backed up our precious files to floppy disk. Then came hard drives, so we used a variety of backup programs that would 'sync' two folders together, copying the new files in the first folder over to the backup folder.
Then came CD blanks, then DVD blanks, so that became the medium of choice for a decade. Their permanency and ease of storage made the media very attractive.
But even it had its flaws, like having to divide things up so they'd fit on a disc, and the time and hassle of the burning process, itself.
But the biggest problem was simply the size limitation. I have about 200 gigs total, spread across two drives and nine partitions, so that's about 45 to 50 discs if I wanted to back up the works. Yikes.
But now, with the recent advent of inexpensive monster-sized (terabyte) hard drives, the rules change once again. Given how much easier it is to click on a single button in SyncToy and back up the whole enchilada, this is clearly the way to go.
If you're wondering about price, I picked up one of the Seagate drives used in this test at BestBuy the other day for $75 on sale. Hook it in as a spare drive, download the free SyncToy and you're good to go.
And the next time a computer glitch eats those super-important files, you'll be the one who's laughing last.
Continue reading "Doc's Computin' Tips: Back-up time"
h/t Theo
Jeff Goldstein posted a serious essay, “The Descent of Liberalism”. One quote:
A CNN poll conducted in February found that 56 percent of those questioned think the federal government has “become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.” The social reformer inspires in many Americans today the same dread he once inspired in John Stuart Mill, who in 1855 wrote that almost “all the projects of the social reformers in these days are really liberticide — Comte particularly so.” Such projects, Mill predicted, would lead to “a despotism of society over the individual, surpassing anything contemplated in the political ideal of the most rigid disciplinarian among the ancient philosophers,” and stood “as a monumental warning to thinkers on society and politics, of what happens when once men lose sight in their speculations, of the value of Liberty and Individuality.”
Liberals dismiss such fears as mere right-wing hysteria.
 More bowing to dictators. I think it's more than a twitch and I think it's more than a submissive character trait. What do our readers think?
Says Ledeen:
It’s worse than you thought, Victor. It’s not confusion at all. It’s a campaign to cut America down to size.
Insane: Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again
More insanity: Unlearning whiteness. He includes this quote:
To ignore race is to be more racist than to acknowledge race. I call it neo-racism.
Then call me a neo-racist. Call me anything you want. I don't care. Sticks and stones...
Wilkinson: Do Libertarians Have Anything Interesting to Say to Liberals?
Phil Jones is unraveling
Surber: "Here’s an idea: Let FedEx and UPS take over the post office."
The cynical politics of immigration
More cynical politics: Incentives Not to Work - Larry Summers v. Senate Democrats on jobless benefits.
VDH: The Ongoing Melodrama of Victims and Oppressors. A quote:
...the president seems to fail to acknowledge that there are plenty of actions an individual can take to avoid becoming part of that growing crowd of "less fortunate." Instead, in Obama's world, there exists a simple zero-sum melodrama of victims and oppressors.
Bad times in South Africa. Do they want to be Zimbabwe?
The hatred never ends: Hateful East Coast Leftists Attack Sarah Palin Before Her Boston Rally… Media Silent
WaPo: We Haven't Seen Any Evidence of Tea Party Racism Yet, But Hang Tight While We Investigate
Cookbook medical care coming to the US?
Prof B: Swapping their Birthright of Freedom for an iPad
Monday, April 12. 2010
 Anchoress: The Celibacy Lecture. I say, if you want perfection, look to God for it, not to clergy or any other mortal souls.
So generous: Washington will spend $31,406 per household this year. Where's my check?
Tom Smith:
I like women. I wouldn't want to do without them. But if I were making the case for men without women, I would find Maureen Dowd very useful. Glib, self-satisfied, and neither as smart nor as good looking as she thinks, she makes a long fishing trip with nothing but the guys and a case of scotch a pretty inviting prospect.
Bob Geldof: Buffoon. He thought Africans were so pathetic that they needed mediocre Western rock musicians to "help" them.
A reporter attended a workshop for community organizers. Apparently there are a lot of people with way too much time on their hands and very little contact with the real world...
The sexism in Vet schools is approaching the crisis point. Or do girls just "love animals" more than guys? Why do you want to be a Vet? "I love animals." Sheesh. So be a farmer. Or get a rescue dog. What the world needs now is more hot babe dentists..."Why do you want to be a dentist?" "I love teeth."
All Criticism of Obama Is Racist ... Again. I love that placard.
PC Pinheads Want to Ban the Word 'Obese' So As Not to Offend Fat Kids. Did Michele O get the memo? Is Pinch a poofter? Love that word.
First, go out and catch yourself some fat trout. Then try this recipe at Cooks.com. This was dinner last night, with winter squash and mashed parsnips with garlic, and a bottle of Chalk Hill Chardonnay:
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