Maggie's Farm

Mankiw wonders, and concludes:

I should note, by the way, that economists who strongly favor the extension of UI benefits, such as those who signed this letter, also tend to favor more income redistribution in general.  I suspect, therefore, that the foundation of their support comes not from having weighed the specific pros and cons of UI per se, but rather from a more general desire to "spread the wealth around."  That issue is, as I tell my students, more a matter of political philosophy than it is of economics.

I know people usually do not feel that they have time to click on embedded videos, but this one captures so many conversations I have had, over the years, that I have to post it.

Barone asks that question:

In the aftermath of the Republican disaster of 2008, some conservative writers hoped that the party could gain support from elite demographics—“the educated class,” as David Brooks calls it, meaning not so much “everyone who graduated from college” but more like “the kind of people we knew at school.” The results of the 2010 election, hugely encouraging for Republicans, indicate that the party’s gains came from almost all parts of the electorate except the elite demographic. I think it is extremely risky in a period of what I call open-field politics to make straight-line extrapolations from the results of one election to the next. But I also think that those conservatives aiming their pitch at their fellow Ivy League graduates, etc., are aiming in the wrong direction.

Does this mean that, if I wish to be respected by the elites, I should switch sides?

Using arsenic. Well, it still must have DNA of some sort, I think, or some comparable sort of replicatory mechanism. This may be a bigger deal, or a smaller deal, than I think. A smaller deal, most likely, but still quite interesting from a biochem standpoint.

I did take a year of Biochem in college. Stupid not to, unles ignorance is your academic pursuit. (I used to want to be an informed journalist who understood math and science and statistics and real life, etc. Quit that field for business a while ago, as our readers know. They were fun guys and gals, but they didn't know squat about life, much less algebra. I work much harder, now, and learn more. Less time for Maggie's right now. These days, working in journalism is like working in non-profits - minimal challenge and accountability in a sickening atmosphere of self-congratulatory virtue with a political edge, while trying to collect money from people who make it and do real things in the world. Been there, done that. Glad I escaped that strange, insular world.)

h/t, Insty - who should be working today instead of blogging.

If you tax something, you get less of it.

If you subsidize something, you get more of it - even if the costs exceed the benefits

Re one of our men in uniform: It’s All Your Fault… Wikileaker Bradley Manning Only Released the 250,000+ Documents Because He Was Teased For Being Gay (Video).

Everybody gets teased. If teasing makes you go postal, how are you with real bullets, soldier?

Our schools are teaching our fragile young'uns that teasing is harrassment. All I can say is that, if you can't take teasing, harsh criticism, and harassment, you can't take real life.

Only if you don't count the coal you are burning to power up the batteries. In reality, these "green" scam cars are worse for mileage than diesel.

Somebody here posted that some greenie told them that electricity was clean, and came from the wall. I picture lots of mice in the walls on treadmills, powering generators. But even those mice have to be fed.

I posted  the nifty story about Stuxnet this morning. Now it turned out that maybe the scientist in Iran who was assassinated was their Stuxnet expert.

This is getting as good as John Le Carre. Where can I buy the movie rights to this fun story? I am thinking Russell Crowe as something. The head of Mossad or something. A cameo for Johnny Depp as the motorcycle assassin. 

But who for the love interest?

The O'Quiz, via Tiger.

I didn't know who BB was. My score tells me that I waste entirely too much time on trivial ephemera, such as quizzes like this.

Wirehaired Pointing Griffon, relatively rare in the US but an excellent, sturdy hunting breed. They look quite a bit like the Spinone.

I have hunted with them several times. Close hunters, they do not run around like maniacs and they do not tire. All they do is find the birds - and grumble if you miss them.

Photo: For your list for Santa, the Pfeifer-Zeliska .600 Nitro Express Handgun. Very handy if your home is invaded by some Cape Buffalo.

We're adding a new link to our roll: The Iconoclast.

Finally added the shooter to our roll. Mostly Politics. Didn't mean to overlook them.

Not for the blogroll, but I need this info: Pick-up Artist Forum. Especially the Social Shyness and Anxiety section. Thought I was the only guy with that little hang-up. I am the sort of guy that girls have to figure out how to pick up.

Buy three, get one free at Thorlos Socks. They are the Official Maggie's Farm casual and outdoor socks.

We also added The Last Psychiatrist to our list this week. He is the author of posts like How Not to Meet Women, and A Generational Pathology: Narcissism Is Not Grandiosity. We're an eclectic website. Eclectic is a euphemism for not knowing what we are doing.

Here's a book any guy would like for Christmas: Hemingway's Guns: The Sporting Arms of Ernest Hemingway

James Kibbie put his performances of all of Bach's organ works online, for free downloading. Nice of him to do that.

Taranto: Donkey Turkeys: They explain the election: You're stupid and Obama's right-wing

Jacoby: No subsidy for NPR, Taxpayer money is wasted on a biased institution that should stand on its own

A good Friedman bit for Thanksgiving: The Free Lunch Myth (h/t Moonbattery):

VDH is funny, especially the parts about Warren Buffet - and the North Koreans: Reflections On An Ailing Society

Michelle: The no-grope list. Big Sis is on the list! I am not.

Another once-virtuous non-profit hijacked by moonbats: SPLC Demonizes Supporters of Traditional Marriage

Rick Moran makes sense about AGW. Me? I am not a denier. As I have noted in the past, I am an enthusiastic supporter of global warming in any form and from any cause. Scientists inform us that earthquakes happen when Gaia shivers from cold, and makes volcanoes to warm her toes. I want Gaia to be warm and comfy.

Is this for real? Michaelangelo Hid an Image of the Human Brain on the Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

What's wrong with insider trading? h/t, Prof B. I think it should be legal in the US, as it is in many other countries. It adds pricing information to markets rapidly and efficiently. I don't want to hear Kindergarten talk about "not fair." Traders are not in Kindergarten, and they know it. And forget the mythical "little guy." There is no little guy trading stocks, bonds, or commodities and options. If they are, they are amateur gamblers and fools who will rapidly have their ass handed to them, insider trading or not.

Why Israel's airports don't need to touch your junk

Evanston is going to crush those white kids, however they have to do it. I guess they never heard Martin Luther King speak about color-blindness and content of character.

Modern parenting and paranoid parents. Protect the precious ones from all boo-boos and tears.

Ireland: It's the spending, not the taxes

Pierogies for Thanksgiving? We have them with our family on Thanksgiving to remember our Polish and German immigrant ancestors who were smart enough to wait to come here until things were set up a little better than what those crazy Pilgrims found - and we also eat Pierogies because we like them. Delicious.

People are talking about it.

I think he'd make the O look like a pencil-neck high school kid. Which of those two guys would you want playing Center on your team?

What do you think?

At Spiked. Indeed, a voice crying out in the wilderness of PC insanity and censorship. One quote:

Lukianoff says it is a consequence of the broader academic culture that students find themselves in today – an academic culture which instead of highly prizing combative debate and the unfettered freedom to scuffle over ideas and knowledge increasingly demonises such things as potentially hurtful and damaging. An academic culture, in short, which is destroying its own raison d’être – to foster thought, discussion, enlightenment – through its acceptance of the idea that actually, after all, words and ideas can be quite dangerous and thus should be subject to policing.

Ground Zero Mosque Applies for Federal Grant Money ... From 9/11 Redevelopment Fund

VDH: The world we read of increasingly does not resemble the world we see about us.

Trende: The unraveling of the Obama electoral coalition

We need Congress to do this? New bill supports efforts to get kids outdoors, fight obesity

I guess I am a genius too. I drinks a bit, and me stays up late.

Science says it, so it must be true.

Related to our morning links comments about exposing the totalitaranism of the Left, read Vanden Heuvel: Send Hither a Swarm of Bureaucrats.

Vanden Heuvel's advice is yet more dreary evidence that the left's desire to transform America into some socialist paradise takes precedent over democratic processes.  Day by day, thanks to twits like Vanden Heuvel, the left reveals its decidedly undemocratic character.

There is just something so wrong about this pic (from Drudge). It seems too gay, for one thing. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Our proposal for the TSA mess is to hire studly young men to grope the women, and hot young babes to grope the men.

Complaints would disappear. People might even line up for more thorough checks in the back room. Of course, they would have to revise those dorky pseudo-cop uniforms. They aren't cops - they are toll-collectors.

Related: Government: offensive, intrusive, expensive and ineffective all at once?

Those LED crank flashlights got me thinking about regular LED lightbulbs. They're expensive, but last almost forever - and they don't burn out, just slowly fade in intensity.

Here's the scoop on them.

Seems like a good choice for sockets that are impossible to reach. Has anybody tried them?

At NewsBusters.

In a sense, Krugman is right, and Palin was wrong to demagogue the issue. Why should Medicare (meaning us young folks) pick up the tab for elective, extra, and/or ineffective or marginally effective treatments? If people want those, they can pay for them, themselves. It is still legal, in America, to pay your doctor for his services.  

Problem is that God rarely gives deep wisdom to expert panels.