Tuesday, August 31. 2010
Guy made a foolish mistake. He should have stayed home, down under, where the people live upside-down.
I think the prosecutors are reaching, but that is what prosecutors do in the US. Big cases are their scorecards, and the heck with justice, fairness, or reasonableness. Beware of ambitious prosecutors.
(Note: I do not play online poker, but I have been known to play a game or two with friends. The stock market is the real online gambling, imo. It is legal.)
 Neo: Skilled workers wanted
VDH: The Sources of American Anger - Barack Obama, the great healer, is proving to be the most divisive president since Richard Nixon.
Sowell: ObamaCare’s Deadly Consequences
Headline: Glenn Beck is a poo-poo head
GOP Takes Unprecedented 10-Point Lead on Generic Ballot. But Volokh wonders: Repub win good for Obama's career?
Althouse thinks about our Kesler piece, and the meaning of life. And AVI thinks about regrets in life. The longer you live, the more regrets you accumulate.
George Will: Major Gaps in Education Achievement Between Whites, Blacks
Now, from the Educational Testing Service, comes a report about "The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped," written by Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley. It examines the "startling" fact that most of the progress in closing the gap in reading and mathematics occurred in the 1970s and '80s. This means "progress generally halted for those born around the mid-1960s, a time when landmark legislative victories heralded an end to racial discrimination."
Hmmm. As I recall, anti-discrimination is not the only thing that was happening then.
Barack Obama's plan to nationalize the fishing industry
Isn't it sexist (and racist) to say that cutting the size of government is sexist and racist? I mean, isn't it biased and demeaning to people of gender and color to assume that they must be dependent on others?
“It Was Certainly a Dry Run”: Two Muslims Arrested in Amsterdam After Flight from Chicago
Monday, August 30. 2010
1. The WaPo is sad because the EU is failing in its collectivist goals.
It does not sadden me, because I view the EU as just one more misbegotten attempt to create a European empire. The Romans started it, and people have been trying ever since, whether with armies or with ink. This motley crew will never see eye to eye.
2. The Aussie election is still up in the air. Hey, you upside-down folks - we do care.
From Mead on The Greening of Godzilla:
...on issues the public follows closely, the scientific consensus keeps changing. Margarine was introduced as the healthy alternative to butter; now experts tell us that the transfats in many types of margarine are the worst things you can eat. Should you eat no fat or the right fat? All carbs, no carbs or good carbs? How much vitamin E should you take? How much sun should you get? How much fish oil should you swallow? How should you divide your time between aerobic and non-aerobic exercise? On these and many other subjects, expert opinion keeps changing. Perhaps the current consensus will last; quite possibly, it won’t — but the experts can’t tell you what will happen.
Nobody trusts experts to be right, except those with no scientific education at all. Furthermore, real experts are humble about things.
I mean totally. Look at this: Waiting for Mr. Obama. They must inhabit a separate reality:
Two doofuses:
Cannibalism is for nutrition. But what about flavor?
Friends Disagree Lots
Cubbing in Virginia
On Fermat's Last Theorem:
..there is Andrew Wiles, the frail knight who for seven lonely years pursues the proof that has ensorcelled him since childhood. He announces the proof to the world, is featured on the front page of the New York Times and in People Magazine, he has the respect and admiration of his colleagues and then he discovers the proof is wrong. He works another year trying to fix it but every time he patches one area another fault line opens up. Even speaking of it now you can see and hear his utter despair. It is not too much to imagine that he was on the verge of a breakdown.
Theo: Completely honest first date
WSJ Editorial on the Democrats’ Attack on For-Profit Colleges
Death by Power Point
It was an old-fashioned tent revival meeting
Hewitt: Where The GOP Goes Next: The Need for Speed
Hurricane Katrina and the race card: 5 years later
Via Protein:
Touring American campuses in the mid-1970s, Norman Macrae of The Economist was shocked “to hear so many supposedly left-wing young Americans who still thought they were expressing an entirely new and progressive philosophy as they mouthed the same prejudices as Trollope’s 19th century Tory squires: attacking any further expansion of industry and commerce as impossibly vulgar, because ecologically unfair to their pheasants and wild ducks.”
Neither the failure of the environmental apocalypse to arrive nor the steady improvement in environmental conditions over the last 40 years has dampened the ardor of those eager to make hair shirts for others to wear.
WSJ: The Death of Conservatism Was Greatly Exaggerated
WSJ: Spreading Hayek, Spurning Keynes
Prepare for war between taxpayers and public employee unions
Blair: The latest green $ scam
Vanderleun: Tolerance Does Not Require Approval
Frank Rich’s Tea Party Lies
Commentary: He Really Doesn’t Want to Be Commander In Chief
Image on top, h/t Moonbattery. We juxtaposed before Drudge, but after Moonbattery.
Sunday, August 29. 2010
MLK was a life-long Republican. The Dems hijacked him and twisted his message. I do not know how they did that, but I do know why they did that.
Also, The Media's Racist
I see nothing post-racial happening these days. I wish I could say I did. I see more racism charges flying around than I have seen in 30 years. Readers know that I am sick of the topic of race, and hate the concept. Your character, culture, and manner of living, on the other hand, are of interest to me...assuming I have any interest in you at all. I am of the Imus view of people: "What do you bring to the table? Ya got sumthin today, or ya got nuthin?"
 Hooters and fat waitresses. But lots of guys like Rubenesque figures, don't they? (Venus at a Mirror, c. 1614)
Did anybody see this movie? Enemy at the Gates.
Are Standardized Tests Biased Against Students Who Don't Give A Shit?
AVI ponders confessing the sins of others
Surber on Beck's rally.
Related: Make Believe Media: WaPo Claims Al Sharpton Brings Thousands to DC
Chris Matthews: Who Stole America? What???
Was Benjamin Whorf partly right? Does Your Language Shape How You Think?
Has Gov Schwartzenegger found his inner Christie? Too late. The guy was all hat, no cattle and no cojones.
Blair home number nine. What's that all about? Ans: Lefties love money.
At NRO:
In addition to a big stimulus program, Obama ran on the idea of heaping new taxes on upper-income taxpayers, including those small businesses that he says (correctly) are critical to the recovery. Congress did nothing. And so as 2011 creeps over the horizon, so too does a massive tax hike on middle-class families, upper-income workers, small businesses, savers, family farms, and on and on. Having done nothing about this tax cut for the last nearly two years, all these prospective tax-hike victims can only assume that Congress intends to hit them with the full tax hike from allowing the 2001 and 2003 tax relief to expire.
The tax hike itself is bad enough, falling as it will on a stuttering economy. But the bigger issue is still confidence.
USA Today trying to figure out how to survive
Rick Moran: The O is American enough
Shut down the federal Dept of Education. It's not a federal responsibility, duty, or power - whatever the Bushes thought.
American Muslim leaders are not instilling confidence
Has the MSM lost confrol of the Leftist narrative?
Tax fuel to be green. Then raise taxes to help the fuel-poor so they can use more fuel. It all makes perfect sense.
Saturday, August 28. 2010
The Borderline Sociopathic Book for Boys. Example #1:
Ride a bicycle without a helmet. You heard me. And no spandex spangled with lavender and chrome yellow blotches and French words. You'll wear canvas shoes, too. You will not have anything with you that people with helmets refer to as "hydration." Eventually, you can get a blast of rubber-tasting hot water from a garden hose.
More on books: Van der Leun's 330 Word Guide to Writing Book Proposals. I wish I had read that before I wrote my book.
Guarding Your Heart in Marriage
Legal Ins: And These People Want To Run Your Health Care / Update - And Your Kids' Education. With another wonderfully common-sense Christie vid. The guy is a genius.
Steve Forbes on Obama: “He Thinks He Will Change America From a Greedy Nation to a Quiet Socialist Nation That Knows Its Place in the World” (Video)
David Brooks says we should be more like Germany
Am Thinker: President Obama's Compulsive Appeasement Disorder
J Post: Back to basics on Israel’s security
Friday, August 27. 2010
I just updated my will and trust and, with heavy heart, cut out what was a significant bequest to my alma mater, Brooklyn College.
What caused the disinheritance is that all incoming freshmen and transfer students are given a copy of a book to read, and no other, to create their “common experience.” This same book is one of the readings in their required English course. The author is a radical pro-Palestinian professor there.
When I attended in the 1960s, Brooklyn College – then rated one of the tops in the country -- was, like most campuses, quite liberal. But, there was no official policy to inculcate students with a political viewpoint. Now there is. That is unacceptable.
Continue reading "I Just Disinherited My Alma Mater"
When govt tries to go into business: Burlington Telecom
Statisticians take on warmists
Not tonight dear, we're married
Rove: Honey, I Shrunk My Approval Ratings
To be "intellectual" today requires knowledge of science and technology.
Krauthammer: The last refuge of a liberal:
Now we know why the country has become "ungovernable," last year's excuse for the Democrats' failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?
From Belmont:
Although there are still some who believe that President Obama’s Keynesian cures will work, the counter-thesis may be that the supposed “cures” are in fact the cause of the disease. That the attempts to create European-style “rights” enforced by Euro-scaled bureaucracies on a Federal tax revenue base has created a bureaucratic monster in Washington sustained principally by borrowed money.
Is Michelle O pregnant?
Dino:
Fixing the economy is a hard slog, but it’s not rocket science. But if you’ve chosen advisors who know nothing about the business of America, as Obama has……well, it’s just too depressing to think about.
More evidence that Head Start does nothing
"The government is pushing these food poisoning events because they want to over-regulate."
Lowry: How the Democrats lost the middle:
Since 1992, according to Gallup, ideological opinion has been roughly constant: Self-described moderates have been 40 percent or a little lower; conservatives in the high 30s (although they've spiked to 42 lately); liberals in the high-teens to low-20s.
Both sides need the center, but especially liberals. It'd be rank foolishness to try to govern on the strength of only one-in-five people. But such has been the Obama-Pelosi project -- with unsurprising results.
Thursday, August 26. 2010
 From Viking's post (I agree):
It's long been my position that Social Security was meant to help elderly workers who could no longer do the labor of the Depression era. We're not a nation of ditch diggers and washwomen anymore. The government has set up a system where (with today's life expectancies) we subsidize a third of a lifetime in retirement.
Yes, it is crazy. Retirement should be by economic choice, or for the disabled. It is crazy for the young to subsidize the golf of the grey folks like me who have more wisdom and experience to contribute to the workplace than the dopey kids.
Nothing against golf, mind you. Nothing against sitting on the beach reading and smoking, either. There is a time for every purpose under heaven.
Home ownership vs. renting. Coyote.
Deep thinking:
Global warming is real, it’s caused by human activity that goes straight back to the capitalist energy markets they worship, and it is really bad. None of these things are up for debate with sensible, reality-based people.
A Physics major, no doubt.
Do Cougars exist?
Via SDA:
"Tourism chiefs in Serbia are hoping their annual testicle cooking competition will do for the region what whisky did for Scotland."
Serbian cuisine, the envy of the world. Chow down, Feminazis.
Ace: Obama Administration To UN- Sorry That America Is So Awful. In Fairness, We Inherited This Lousy Country But Are Working On Remaking It
When is a speech code not a speech code? When it’s a “code of ethics.”
Obamacare: Dems’ Fatal Conceit?
Mankiw on Nantucket house prices. Did this study make his summer vacation tax-deductible?
Ebay, Adobe, EA Games Leaving California For Utah Over Confiscatory Tax Rate
Only in New York: Taxing a Cut … of your morning bagel. Just put the shmear on top of my uncut bagel.
Why Nerds Like Games. Games are stories.
New Republic: Moderate Muslims Are Not the Answer
ACORN flies under the radar
This is dumb: E-Cigarettes Spark New Smoking War. This is the safest smoke that exists. What's the big deal? Nicotine is harmless.
Fake tea party candidates
Taxes: The Left and its delusions
The Professional Left vs. the Amateur Right
Via Insty:
REASON TV: Wheat, Weed, and ObamaCare: How the Commerce Clause Made Congress All-Powerful.
Author of Obamacare did not read it. If it's too long and complicated to read, then...
Michelle: Obama’s Beltway Chainsaw Massacre
Wednesday, August 25. 2010
Economy Caught in Depression, Not Recession. Government-created, in my view. We need a Reagan recovery, not an Obama economic swamp.
Tuesday, August 24. 2010
Surber:
In issue after issue — from drilling for oil to the Bush tax cuts to the stimulus and the bailouts — Washington is out of step with the American public.
Ain't that the truth?
Via Patriot Post Humor:
I recently submitted a building permit application for a new house.
It was going to be 100 ft. tall and 400 ft. wide with 9 gun turrets at various heights and windows all over the place and a loud outside entertainment sound system. It would have had parking for 200 cars and I was going to paint it snot green with pink trim.
The City Council told me to forget about it.
So, I sent the application in again, but this time I called it a Mosque.
Work starts on Monday.
From the CT Post:
The first major feature of Obamacare is being launched, high-risk health insurance pools, which cover citizens previously denied insurance due to prior conditions.
Congratulations, Republicans!
Yes, Republicans, because expansion of high-risk health insurance pools was the central element of the GOP's common-sense alternative to the grandiosity of Obamacare, aka the Affordable Care Act (ACA)...
Monday, August 23. 2010
Health insurance agents are the canary in the mine of ObamaCare.
Having been a heavily credentialed health and other benefits broker for the past two decades, and working on the corporate buyer side of the relationship for 15-years before that, I will say – strongly – we have been worth it. I described why and how in this earlier post, “In Defense of Health Insurance Agents, and You.”
A health insurance agent is required to complete initial and regular formal training courses in the subject (including ethics), pass initial and periodic tests, and are screened by their state and by insurance companies for criminal or personal conduct (including declaring bankruptcy) that may negatively affect their reliability to be licensed to provide agent services. In addition, through professional associations, through insurer education programs, through self-study, and through competitive pressures, health agents stay current on the latest laws and offerings from various insurers. Furthermore, almost all health insurance agents are independent businesses or work for independent agencies, not beholden to the insurers but to their customers. Importantly, individuals, small and larger businesses have priorities more important and pressing than becoming experts in health insurance or its interactions with other laws or aspects of their primary concerns, and heavily depend upon qualified, trusted health insurance agents. Lastly, many health insurance agents have extensive credentials and experience….
But, the unfolding of ObamaCare raises the question of whether health insurance brokers will continue to be of value, or able to be.
Continue reading "Are Health Insurance Agents Worth It? The Canaries In ObamaCare Mine"
Sunday, August 22. 2010
 No (real) links today. Here are a few from my own site that might be of interest:
— My tribute to the TV show House MD
— If you were a big, big fan of the original 'Shrek' movie, you might like this
— If you play a musical instrument, or want to hear your MP3s as you've never heard them before, check this out
— Three very cool remote-controlled airplanes here
— For a perfect example of the typical rude, coarse, base, vile, mentally-degenerative claptrap that I wouldn't dare port over to Maggie's, try this
— Ditto
— If you ever had any interest in the Flowbee haircutting device (the one that attaches to the vacuum cleaner), check this out
— Someone in the comments mentioned that great comeback from GM to Bill Gates a few years ago. It's here. Another cruel Bill Gates story here.
Well, I'd like to continue, but I have a tough HTML coding problem I need to sink my teeth into.
Saturday, August 21. 2010
 Regular News
Well, it's been a couple of days since we had any of that good old-fashioned Maggie's Farm-style California bashin', so let's git right to it!
Pictured: average California highway after the daily earthquake
How bad is it in California?
How bad are the budget problems in California?
Besides foreclosures, California faces bad mosquito season
California's bad chemistry
California's bad karma
California's 'bad girls' now have triple the nation's fat rate
Wow, this schadenfreude stuff is great! And let me give you folks a little search engine tip: You type in the words "california bad", you hit the jackpot!
Turning our attention to Dr. Mercury's prestigious "Most Insipid Article of the Week" award, it wasn't even close:
Star Wars fans ask NASA to build a hyperdrive
Seriously.
Uh, that's why it's filed under 'Science Fiction', fellas.
Because even a...
Trip to Mars Would Turn Astronauts Into Weaklings
This does raise one, probably naive, question, however. What about that big "rotating drum" idea, as portrayed in '2010' and other space flicks, where centrifugal force creates an artificial gravity. Does centrifugal force not work in space? Sorry for my ignorance, but we didn't do any space projects in shop class and my parents couldn't afford to send me to space camp.
Unbelievable! A murder takes place on live camera, everyone knows who the likely suspect is, and the police do... nothing?
Eagle Gang Allegedly Kills Sibling on Web Cam
Officials have not said conclusively what happened, but all signs point to murder. Based on their notes, the likely suspect is the biggest and most aggressive of the Eagles, although there are no plans at this time to press charges.
What a disgrace!
So, time to flip on my headline time machine. I'll set it to grab a New York Times article ten years in the future. Let's hope it's some good news this time!
BRZZATZHTKTZZT!!
Breaking: Radioactive Boars on the rise in Germany, climate change to blame
Just Rewards Dept.
A week ago I linked to an article about a news corporation called Stephens Media that had hired a hit man to go after bloggers quoting articles from their newspapers and sue them for copyright infringement. Hey, anything to make a buck, right?
Under the heading "turnabout's fair play", here's a site that offers a Firefox "boycott" add-on that bars the browser from going to any Stephens Media site. There's also info for Chrome in the comments, and IE can do it, although (as I recall) it's a painful site-by-site process, whereas the other two can use the pasted list of sites. Kudos to you guys.
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