Maggie's Farm

Daschle urges the O to drop public "option". People want more choices (which is good), but are fearful of being locked into a gummint bureaucracy.

People aren't stupid. As we posted earlier today, It's not about you. They just want you to have to come to them, hat in hand.

US public wary of deficit, economic intervention. Rightly so. Only fools trust a government. Related: 100 Stimulus projects to really piss you off. You earned this money, friends. Has anybody thanked for it you, lately?

Via Never Yet Melted:

The danger liberalism poses to the American experiment comes from its disposition to deplete rather than replenish the capital required for self-government. Entitlement programs overextend not only financial but political capital. They proffer new “rights,” goad people to demand and expand those rights aggressively, and disdain truth in advertising about the nature or scope of the new debts and obligations those rights will engender. The experiment in self-government requires the cultivation, against the grain of a democratic age, of the virtues of self-reliance, patience, sacrifice, and restraint.

Iran, welcome to the intertubes. The revolution will be twitterized. Related: State Dept appreciates Iranian debate

Join a union, and get tax-free med insurance. Like a free toaster? We Maggie's Farm slaves need a union now. Fellow slaves, when did we last get paid?

Hey, Conservatives. Time to connect with your inner Visigoth.

Drunk pedophiles in Canadian government? It hasn't been disproven.

Lots of smart people are bearish.  Morgan Stanley's Roach certainly is. Kudlow, much as I enjoy him, is a perennially sunny optimist by nature, so you almost have to discount him.

AmeriCorps scandal update. Michelle

Autistics quicker at problem solving. h/t, Marg Rev

Mr. Free Market with an alternative to the no-stab knife

Is it all about shoes? Pointing out the dangers of socialism simply won't sway liberals in the health care debate.

The first female President. From Sissy:

Muscular prose reflects muscular thinking (Churchill, Reagan, GW). Flabby prose reflects flabby thinking (Chamberlain, Carter, Obama). Never use one metaphorically-charged noun or active verb when a string of colorless nouns and passive verbs will do.

We're with Frank J of IMHO, who twitters "If you wanted someone to speak forcefully on Iran, you should have elected a president with testicles."

 "The people of Iran will not forgive Barack Obama for siding with the evil regime." More at Gateway. Plus the American  kid who is trying to save Iran

Signs of recession: All You Can Sex flat rate

Putin warns the O about increasing corporate taxes. America is the world's driving economic force, so the rest of the world needs our spending back.

Will Feds refuse to bail out California?

Related: The "Public Option" is the Son of Medicaid. Henninger. He also explains why state legistators have become irrelevant, often corrupt clowns: they have nothing to do because most spending is mandated leaving them little room for their own fun spending of your money.

Related: Stan Greenberg on Why Health Care could fail again

Why would anybody go into medicine if the government is going to make your decisions for you on a cost basis, if you are essentially on the government payroll and compensated on a money-losing basis (after overhead, Medicaid is a money-loser for doctors and Medicare pays them for office work at clerical rates), and yet you remain entirely vulnerable to lawsuits for every outcome?

The Liberal solution is always more government. Hubris and power-seeking are their problems. Their shame is their distrust in the peoples' ability to run their own lives: maybe some cannot or will not, but I do not like to be governed as if I were the lowest common denominator.

Is anything anybody does "Interstate commerce"? Montana and guns

How competition, not regulation, could transform American medicine.

Why the Dreamliner, Boeing's cool new plastic airplane, is two years late

Semi-related: This is a good time to be the market for an airplane. I wish. But I am an oppressed wage slave (wage + bonus slave) of the Capitalist System and thus will not get my own personal G4 until Obama gives me one. Still waiting.

Will global cooling damage Al Gore's cred?

The WaPo wants you to bail out California. Who's gonna bail me out?

Ralph Peters:

...the strongest response Obama can muster to the blood in Tehran's streets is: "I am deeply troubled by the violence that I've been seeing on television." How bold, how manly, how inspiring . . .

Geert Wilders' June 14 speech about preventing the Islamization of Europe. h/t, Theo

Walpin update at Insty

A new church: The Anglican Church in North America. Hmmm. If, unlike the Brit Anglicans, they seek faith in God and want to save souls, good on 'em.

Via Am Digest at Belmont Club, Home, sweet home:

 Communism was never about crafting a Worker's Paradise; it was always about creating a place of unlimited power for those who craved it: not the toiler's Home, but the second rate intellectual's. 

Rebecca Bynum asks whether Islam is a religion. One quote:

...you’re right to be wary of the strength of religion. Religion is the most powerful force in human affairs, bar none. Ideology alone doesn’t come close. Religion is the prime mover because religion forms the basis of a shared worldview. From this basic worldview grows culture and from culture societal structures are formed and the final fruits of this process are political systems. Our culture, social affairs and politics are ultimately anchored in morality and morality is anchored in the basic world view derived from religion.

Religion answers the primal question, what is the nature of reality? Do we inhabit a benevolent universe, a malevolent universe, or an indifferent universe? This is not trivial question and its answer determines the basis of all human interaction.

Productive Californians are leaving in droves to the Dust Bowl. Photo from link.

I like these trails, but why does the government have to do it? Volunteers would do this.

Cool English gates, with  boner bonus

When milliseconds really matter

Credit card regulation. If you don't like your credit cards, get rid of them. They can compete, and we are capable of making our own decisions.

The sun would roast us if the earth didn't have tricks to radiate heat

The O's mega-trillion take-over won't do much for "the uninsured." Thus proving, once again, that those uninsured are just pawns in a bigger political power game.

More later. Very busy today with a cool new biz proposal I dreamed up.

Urban coyotes. h/t, Jungleman

AVI's theory on not hitting squirrels with your car

Walpin gives the inside story. It's an ugly story. Imagine if Bush...aw, why do I keep saying that?

Hayek: Why I am not a Conservative. h/t, Neptunus

Men are now on the wrong side of the degree gap at every stage of education

Immigrants from redistributionist countries vote for redistributionists

The realities of college education: Four years of propaganda, partying, and buying a mostly worthless degree.

Conservatism thrives. All it needs are compelling leaders. Related: The Gallup poll.  Related: Is Sarah the threat?

The Boston Globe is on sale.

Minimum wages do cause unemployment.

The public plan would be the only plan. Related: the CBO will have something to say about it. I'm beginning to think that the Admin bit off more than they can chew. Related from Dick Morris: The O's issues are crumbling. Related from Samuelson: Naive, hypocritical, and dishonest, Related from Yuval Levin and Kristol: Defeat Obamacare.

Also related: the Indian Health Service as a model

The $787 billion mistake

Chris Dodd's wife, via Insty

Fancy a cuppa?

How the Uighurs got to Bermuda

Kucinich tells Ken Lewis how to run a bank

The O as the Great Leveler. So why would anybody work hard?

Boarded-up palaces in Detroit

Anarchy in Rotterdam

Imagine if these were Repubs. Also, the Walpin story at Powerline and more at Wash Times

Perhaps it's time to apply even stronger adjectives to N Korea

Moonbat thinking from Monbiot

The road to single-payer begins with public option deception. The goal is to eliminate choice.

Bill Maher to Obama: Get off TV and start socializing the country, darn it. US Chamber of Commerce to O: Stop ruining our country

Ezra Levant, CTV, and the censors

Why do they hate her? Via Protein

Biden on the Stimulus: We guessed wrong. That's a lie. It was pure political payoff.

CBS: Ahmadinejad is George Bush? WTH? Related: Pre-election polls showed Ahmad. with strong majority

Union Jack banned at Heathrow

Photo: Pres. Bush jumps from 10,000 feet for his 85th Birthday. His comment: "I don't feel a day over 84"

Have you seen Wolfram Alpha? http://www.wolframalpha.com/

The 2009 Zagat Fast Food Ratings

Somebody is getting pissed off. VDH with Just Make Stuff Up: President Obama’s war on the truth.

What the heck constitutes an actionable hostile work environment?

Ain't Socialism great? Chavez to shut down another critical TV station

The Animal Rescue Site needs your help  http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=3

Why Philip Morris backed the tobacco bill. (h/t, Tiger) Regulations always work for somebody. Yes, Obama still smokes.

Yes, it is a political scandal. Americorps. Imagine if Bush had...

Also at Dino: Health care and the youth vote

Why is the gay Bishop worring about this instead of worrying about saving souls?

Urge ya to at least listen to the first part of Prof. Plimer

Afghanistan isn't a nation. It's a place. Neptunus

California:  In spite of having the highest taxes in the nation, the state is broke.

Good example of how to lie with graphs

Canada's ObamaCare precedent. It's not for me.

Why bands like to perform on carpets

Frum is not thrilled with Mark Levin's book

Many students should give community college a try. There's a lot more to life than 4-year college.

Bulldozing shrinking cities. Sounds like a good idea to me. Start with the suburbs and the malls.

From Insty:

ELISABETH EAVES: Stop Worrying and Enjoy the Recession! Yeah, a recession can be nice if you’ve got steady income. And, of course, a recession under President Obama is surely a good thing for America and Americans! Under Bush it would have been a disaster of Steinbeckian proportions, but under Obama it’s a “purifying fire!”

Lefties like their spankings. No Pasaran

Why the Supremes should and probably will strike down Chicago's gun ban

Ace: More evidence that President Obama is everything the left accused George W. Bush
of being, but wasn't.

What if the Bush family tried this?

Uighurs to Bermuda. Sheesh.

Dino on the O's self-obsession:

Let’s see. Aloof, charismatic, obsessed with power, “absolutely certain” that he has a special personal destiny. This can’t end well. No, this can’t end well at all.

You do not want to know yourself

Repubs should adopt a strict paygo

How ACORN intends to use the US Census

WUWT looks back at his first weather station inspiration

How to save $: Let the boomers die

Villainous, on how I became a Conservative. One quote:

Over the years I noticed that rescuing friends from serial disasters of their own creation didn't encourage them to make smarter decisions. If anything, my interventions skewed the risk/reward calculation we use to select the best course from a range of alternatives. By stepping in and helping each time friends chose poorly, I made it harder for them to learn from their mistakes. They continued to do predictably self destructive things and then look for someone more responsible to bail them out.

Over time I realized I couldn't keep substituting my judgment for theirs. The natural world punishes bad decisions. This natural feedback mechanism helps us distinguish what works from what doesn't. But I was subverting the learning process; unintentionally rewarding bad decisions and encouraging more of the same. With the best of intentions, I had produced the worst of results.

And so I became a conservative. I embraced the idea that people make the most efficient and productive choices when they base their decisions on the way the world does work, not the way they wish it would work. I came to believe subjectivity, empathy, and tribalism make extremely poor foundations for building a society or governing one's personal conduct because they elevate subjective feelings over objective experience and morality. I learned to separate my personal feelings and loyalty from notions of right and wrong, responsible and irresponsible. I learned that even though I often chafed at them, rules are not always bad.

Herbal "medicines, at Insty:

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: $2.5 billion spent on “alternative medicine,” no cures. “Ten years ago the government set out to test herbal and other alternative health remedies to find the ones that work. After spending $2.5 billion, the disappointing answer seems to be that almost none of them do.” How did this happen?

he center was handed a flawed mission, many scientists say.

Congress created it after several powerful members claimed health benefits from their own use of alternative medicine and persuaded others that this enormously popular field needed more study. The new center was given $50 million in 1999 (its budget was $122 million last year) and ordered to research unconventional therapies and nostrums that Americans were using to see which ones had merit.

That is opposite how other National Institutes of Health agencies work, where scientific evidence or at least plausibility is required to justify studies, and treatments go into wide use after there is evidence they work - not before.

I can’t wait until Congress is in charge of all health care. Who knows better what’s good for you than “several powerful members” of Congress . . . .

On reading difficult books. Chronicle. Somebody's got to do it.

The morally superior continent of righteous indignation.

Basking Sharks in Cornwall. Cool underwater.

What is courage?

The latest on those fancy spies for Cuba.

Can this be said? Sub-Saharan African IQs. I tend to doubt it's true, but what do I know? Or maybe it's the Flynn Effect.

Financial crises can arise from extreme bad luck. Indeed.

What you should know about CPR. Video

Tornado passed over their car this week. Video

Rush: Free speech is in danger. Is it true that the US is the only nation with free speech?

Yes, it is shaping up to be the year without a summer. Global warming does that. The Japanese aren't worried. They will play the game, but they don't mean it. It's all a big joke, but it is not funny that the earth is cooling.

Dems double down on medical care. Politico

Is the O America's first Muslim President? Kinda sorta, yes.

Rove: Dowd is twisted, deranged. Nothing that a studly Republican boyfriend couldn't cure.

Update on the California Meltdown. Good grief. They are like little children.

McArdle: Nobody really cares about the deficit. But markets do care.

Vanderleun's proposals for a new foreign policy approach

A dreamer at the helm: Nyquist

Photo from a Memphis Burger King

Keith Hennessey on Understanding the House Dems' health care bill.

VDH: I no longer believe....

Photo is Pvt. Long. Did he die in battle?

One more reason to teach your dog the command "Drop it"

Cheerful news: Colombia - A nation Reborn

How's that Porkulus working out for ya?

Related: NYT blames Bush for the growing deficits. Liars. Related, via Front Page:

By current CBO’s estimates Obama’s deficits will add some $10 trillion to our national debt in the next decade, nearly doubling it. This number, however, will also be revised upwards once the new deficit figures are factored in. Dreary as these figures are, things are likely to be worse. This is because the CBO calculations do not take into account the costs of some of the president’s most ambitious programs such as health care reform. Providing universal health insurance would effectively create the most far-reaching entitlement program in American history. The administration puts its cost at some $1.2 trillion over the next decade. Most experts, however, dismiss this figure as grossly understated. It is only enough to look at the exploding costs of Social Security and other entitlements to see how profoundly unrealistic the administration’s numbers are. But even if we take Obama’s estimate at face value, the resulting national debt would by 2019 stand at more than twice the level he inherited when he took the oath of office. 

Related, via Viking:

All together now - Megan McArdle has a great post explaining how a government health care program largely depends on getting young, healthy workers to subsidize less-healthy participants.  Also, the bureaucracy will be mind-blowing.

A glimpse at the Real America

LAT shows some consistency on rights

Crumbling municipal finance. Watch out for your munis: they are not guaranteed.

Video: Jon Voight at the Repub fundraiser

Why oil prices rise despite a recession

Inflation and higher interest rates on the way. WSJ

Ditto, Jammie:

I'm sick and tired of the government telling me what to eat, when to eat it and what's good or bad for me. I can figure this out on my own. I take care of my body, am in excellent shape for my age and am 25 pounds less than when I graduated high school. While I enjoy some fatty foods and alcohol in moderation, I know what I can handle and pay attention to my doctors.

I don't need a government spending program to monitor my diet. Stay out of my business!

Warfare: It is For the common good

Could British Christians Be Sued for Having Crucifixes in Their Home? h/t, Anchoress

A little birdie told Sissy that the GOP is back. But is Newt running for Pres?

Conservatives beware, lest you drive moderates to extremism. Huh?

Local Math Wars. h/t, RW Prof. My view? Just make 'em learn to use it. Even geniuses don't necessarily understand the depths of math, much less the rug rats.

I thought Hartford would be on the list, but I guess there's nobody left to rob there. Top 15 crime cities in the US. Note absence of NYC.

Cruel and unfunny, Dave. She visited NYC to raise $ for autism, for heaven's sake.

Tax tall people. Mankiw

Even some in the media are getting nauseated by Obamamania in the press

John Quincy Adams, at Anchoress.  Remarkable to me that we have a photo of him, in old age. Young country we have here.

Guy started spying during Carter, but they blame Bush anyway. Just one more greedy, money-hungry Leftist.

I cannot believe the Brits take this sort of thing lying down. What's the matter with them? How did our bold ancestors become so limp? Is it the food? They are becoming an embarassment to their descendents by behaving as if they have no penises.

Why doesn't she just admit that she enjoyed it? They raped me respectfully. There are none so blind...

Jobs "saved or created"? Pure BS, and everybody except the press knows it.

Obama to American businesses: Drop dead. A quote:

... last week, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer came to Washington to announce what Microsoft would do if Obama’s multinational tax policy is enacted.

“It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said, “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S.” If Microsoft, perhaps our most competitive company, has to abandon the U.S. in order to continue to thrive, who exactly is going to stay?

At issue is Obama’s policy to end the deferral of multinational taxation.

The U.S. now has about the highest combined corporate tax rate, second only to Japan among industrialized countries. That rate is so high that U.S. firms have an enormous disadvantage versus competitors. The average corporate tax rate for the major developed countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2008 was about 27 percent, more than 10 percentage points lower than the U.S. rate.

How Sociology majors destroy the world. SDA

Newt: The O has already failed. But he is so groovy.

How do you decide which minorities get affirmative action, and which do not? Betsy

China wants US debt in yuan, not dollars. Stupid they are not.

Very cool econo-graphs

The O graciously noted that the Americans on D-Day "did not behave dishonorably." WTH?

Does GM=Amtrak? We love Amtrak, but we dislike those subsidies.

Thinking vs doing in medicine. DB's Medical Rants

Who says we can't deport the illegals? Apparently we can when we want to.

Flunking history in Cairo: Almost every advance he attributed to the Muslims in his big speech should be credited to someone else.

But the whole purpose was to butter them up, I suppose.

From Dick Morris: Here comes medical rationing:

Now that the cameras have been put away and the media is no longer watching, their secret emerges: They are going to cut medical costs by cutting medical care. Right now, they cite four targets. They plan to:

1. Cut diagnostic imaging tests like MRIs and CAT scans.
2. Reduce the use of antibiotics.
3. Perform fewer Caesarean sections.
4. Cut care for management of chronic back pain

These decisions will not be medical but financial. They will not be based on a doctor’s opinion of what his or her patient needs, but a bureaucrat’s and an accountant s opinion of what the new health care system can afford.

Related: Obama's health care cost illusion. WSJ

Related: If you can save 30%, why not start with Medicare?

Related: Obamacare is like RomneyCare - sign up or get fined. Ace

Related: Neoneo suspects that they don't believe a word they are saying about costs, and I agree with that.

My opinion? I think much of medical "wasted spending" is to avoid lawsuits. "Please tell the jury, Doctor, why you didn't bother to get an MRI for Mrs. Jones' heachaches?" "Please tell the jury, Doctor, why you decided to do this when some recent studies show bla bla bla."  In the end, "wasteful medical spending" is always the spending on somebody else - not on yourself.

Image on right via Driscoll's Newsweek meets Muggeridge's Law

From space biz to govt: Get out of our way

By far, America's best-selling vehicle

No sign of housing recovery yet

The effects of the proposed Weather Tax. Just the most recent excuse for another tax on the American economy to expand government's dominion over our lives. Governments are power-sponges, and I do not know why. Perhaps it's about their job security, since they probably can't do anything else.

Why would they blame Harvard for this? Sheesh. All Harvard did was to give her the chance of a lifetime, and she acted like a normal teenaged idiot.

Like we predicted: Stimulus Bill officially a failure. But not really, since its real purpose was election pay-off.

Related: George Will gets it -

The administration is determined to prop up GM as a jobs program for the UAW and Midwestern states rich in electoral votes. This frenzy will intensify as the administration's decisions deepen the debacle.

Propaganda or Economics? Elizabeth Warren and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad, Utterly Misleading Bankruptcy Study

The Kennedy bill would force employers to pay for medical insurance. More on the Dems' medical care plans, and how they want to pay for it (we will pay for it, of course). Their plan is to subsidize this "insurance" with tax dollars in order to drive private insurors out of business, and to reimburse docs and dentists and hospitals at Medicare rates - which will drive them out of business. I would term this a very aggressive Socialist plan to politicize medical care and to place medical care completely in the hands of the government, with their expert, cost-conscious panels deciding what you can do based on the data du jour and cost-effectiveness. By the way, this is "insurance" in name only - it's supposed to pay all of your medical expenses. That ain't insurance - it's an entitlement.

Anchoress:

Even Vanity Fair understands that the press is nothing to the man they love, but a bunch of useful idiots.

VDH via SISU:

In short, Obama reminds me a little of myself — at 26. I had left the farm for 9 years to get a BA in classics, PhD in classical philology, and live in Athens for two years of archaeological study — all on scholarships … I had forgotten much of the culture of the farm where I spent years 1-18.

Then after the requisite degrees I left academia, and returned to farm 180 acres with my brother and cousin — and sadly was quickly disabused of the world of the faculty lounge.

Cornell West's prophetic public intellectualism

Via the IMF: Where Does the Public Sector End and the Private Sector Begin?;

Summary: The boundary between the public and private sectors can be defined on the basis of ownership of institutional units. Nonmarket government-owned entities and corporations that are owned or controlled by government units belong to the public sector. “Economic ownership” is more important than majority ownership. Joint ventures, public-private partnerships, and social insurance funds (including for public employees) can be unambiguously allocated to the public or private sector on the basis of international public sector accounting standards. Boundary problems within the public sector are just as acute as those between the public and private sectors, mainly because of ambiguities in distinguishing “market” from “nonmarket” activities.

From Peter Robinson at Forbes:

The man who cried "Doom" - James Hansen. Also, Freeman Dyson takes on the climate establishment

Related: Scientists line up in DC to combat alarmism:

...the fiery madness is fueled by a number of complicit and self-serving groups.  First and foremost, the thousands of scientists that depend upon government grants to fund their climatology research, which would disappear should they fail to find either a human connection to or some new negative impact of climate change.  Then there are the environmental organizations that depend upon sounding the alarm to keep the donation coffers full.  And the journalists who see a “free ride” to nab front-page newspaper positions by echoing the alarmists.  And the Capitalists who see, well – capital, prompting huge corporations to jump on board to exploit renewable energy subsidies and R&D grants from the federal government.  Meanwhile, politicians see a great opportunity to posture about “knowing something about science” and to appear concerned for the long term and about public health and environment.  And that, explained Heartland’s president and CEO, is what we’re up against in battling the bad-legislation-breeding hysteria.

The O is getting a pass on the economy:

Double standard? Today's 9.4% unemployment rate "fueled hopes" that the economy was recovering, but 4.6% unemployment rates during the Bush administration were characterized as "job growth slowing to a crawl." 

Related: Hinderaker via The Corner:

The only smiling statue in the Rotunda

Matthew Lesko does Free Government Money

Enhanced interrogation saved lives.

A lobbying frenzy re cap & trade

Upper image: A Wigwam (technically a Tepee) Village in Horse Cave, KY (story here, via Thompson)
Lower image: Stolen from Am Digest, where there are many good things

Today is Canada's Tax Freedom Day

Viking:

The big one – The Corner: "On Tuesday, President Obama sent a letter to Senators Kennedy and Baucus outlining what kind of bill he wants and will support. And what he wants is a government takeover of American health-care, plain and simple." This will be the largest expansion of entitlements since Medicare and Obama doesn't have the slightest idea how to pay for it.

Extra - More on the health reform cramdown at Patterico.

Related: Fools rush in

Can there be Peace Through Weakness?

Pols as loan brokers. Driscoll

AOL reporter fired for reporting the obnoxious Playboy news

Major O supporter threatens to move jobs overseas

Goldman: Oil to $85

The Left loves diversity, except in ideas:

...the leftist bon mot “respect diversity” is but a twisted joke. The radical’s concept of diversity is limited to encountering someone of a different sex or hue who feels exactly the same way about politics as they do.

To the left there is no such thing as a loyal opposition. Any contact with conservatives must be avoided. We are morally unclean and they fear contamination via exposure to our speech.

Their malignant mindset poses serious obstacles for those who work alongside them. Political correctness and the sanctimoniousness of Democrats have made interactions with them a truly nauseating experience.

In Chicago, there’s no getting around all the pseudo-liberals. Despite dwelling in a city and state rendered broke and dysfunctional by a corrupt Democratic Party machine, statists remain as ubiquitous as broken glass on the sidewalk.

The same can be said about New York City, a place in whose environs Harry Stein, a contributing editor at City Journal, has lived the majority of his life. Perhaps a desire to commemorate his fellow sufferers is what caused him to pen his latest book, I Can’t Believe I’m Sitting Next to a Republican: A Survival Guide for Conservatives Marooned Among the Angry, Smug, and Terminally Self-Righteous.

Lefty: Maybe it's OK to hate f- Michelle Malkin. Good grief. The hatred is unbelievable.

Vanderleun on prayer.

50,000' thunderheads! The possible last 14 minutes of the Air France flight

Benefit spending is soaring. Who's supposed to pay for that? Little ol' me?

What did you expect? Congress is already running GM, for its own advantage

The teacher's unions strike back against school reform. Crickets chirping, as we used to say.

No relationship between CO2 and climate warming.

How the Admin controls the WH press

The domestic cat is no more "natural" than a cow in a field. Why wildlife-lovers hate house cats:

How Hillsdale College beat Harvard. Related: Jules on Gen. Petraeus at Harvard. I though Jules' family padlocked his computer...

The O visits the Arabs. He really buttered them up. However, via Classical,

The president's error is in attributing "Islam" to the accomplishments of the Arab world of a thousand years ago. The president couldn't be more wrong.

It was Arabs qua Aristotelians and not Arabs qua Islamists who are responsible for the accomplishments described by the president.

Boob bait for the burkhas?

Also, what's with the moral equivalence between the Holocaust and the Palis? "on the other hand..." That isn't buttering them up - it's bending over, dude.

Related: Is the O our first female President?

The Maggie's Farm fun-loving and amoral fact-checking and bookkeeping staff invite you to play the ancient traditional New England festive Springtime game called Name That Tractor:

How deeply will the O grovel? Related: Romney roasts the O's posture of apology

How GM lost its way. Ingrassia Related: Brooks on The Quagmire Ahead

The Dems are the Party of Hate. Driscoll

I survived two years of Teach for America. Sex in the stairwells

How Brit hospitals try to keep their stats good

David Warren: We Canadians are stupid

Massive estimates of death are in vogue for Copenhagen

Kasich will run for Ohio gov. Good.

Not a peep from the O on the murdered soldier. Palin knows better

We told you Geithner was funny

How to discuss issues with Lefties. AVI

I had the same thought: Is this murder, or not?

Vast Right Wing Conspiracy posted a remarkable Memorial Day piece

The bloodthirsty Presbyterians are back at it

 The GM bailout only delays the inevitable

California: The lunacy of the process argument. One quote:

The thing that absolutely drives me up the wall about the argument that California's biggest problem is a process problem -- the two-thirds rule to adopt budgets and raises taxes -- instead of an inability to live within its means is that the process argument implies that California has been governed in a starve-the-beast mode. In other words, that minority Republicans in the Legislature have managed to keep taxes absurdly and unrealistically low.

Instead, the truth, of course, is that California has the highest gas and sales tax; the highest- or second-highest income tax; and the highest corporate tax rates in the West. Our property taxes are about average nationally, thanks to Prop. 13.

How can anyone look at this picture and make the starve-the-beast argument? How come no one ever points this out on the news pages of the L.A. Times or Sac Bee?

It's not a tendentious, impossible-to-document claim. It's a simple fact: Whatever the barriers are to higher taxes, California has still indisputably ended up with high taxes.

Photo of cute toes from Theo -

No wonder Liberals hate charter schools so much.

How wrong is Paul Krugman? As we have asserted many times, the guy has become little more than a partisan propagandist.

Why the EPA gives a darn about hydraulic fracturing is beyond me. Unless they simply want to restrict domestic energy supplies...and raise the price.

The vast mammalian, especially ungulate, migrations are almost extinct now. It's a damn shame. Man is a terrible steward of this earth. h/t, Jungleman

The new Under Secretary of Naivete. Sheesh. She needs to grow up.

The myth of "a Muslim world." Asia Times

For our hard-earned billions, what do we get from GM? Bupkus. Even Nader thinks it's nuts. And the kid they put in charge has no biz experience, when what is called for is an expert analyst of distressed manufacturing assets.

Samuelson on The Obama Infatuation. Of course the press hasn't reported on their own sexual fantasies. Why would they report on them when they can simply enact them with virtual oral and anal sexual activities?

Your family owes the Feds $668,000. How ya gonna pay it?

VDH tries to tackle the labyrinth of race

Bruno flying in to the MTV awards:

Mr. Sun remains on vacation. It has been pleasantly cool.

At best, government economic stimulus is just a sugar high

LAPD High. Run by the cops. Sounds good to me. I never met a cop who assumed honesty, and that seems about right, statistically speaking.

Why are Conservatives so mean? That Andrew Klavan link is superb and right to the point.

Who is going to want to buy a Chrysler or GM car now? Chrysler is now Italian, and GM is Government Motors, from the folks who brought you the DMV and the post office.

This harsh detention has to stop. Gitmo inmates get free laptops

Our friend Jules bids us summertime blog adieu with many Brit Civil War links. (I will betcha the wife and kids padlocked his machine and threw the key into Boston harbor.)

Practicing medicine in MA. One quote:

She said, “I calculated that every time I have a Medicaid patient, it’s like handing them a $20 bill when they leave;”

Where are the serious men?

..foreigners have gone from owning $1.3 trillion (of US debt) at the beginning of the decade to now owning $3.3 trillion of such securities — a $2 trillion increase. More important and interesting than that, of the $2.8 trillion in net new issuances of Treasury securities during this decade, foreigners have bought $2.0 of the $2.8 trillion, a stunning 71%. (China alone appears to have bought over one third of the total of foreign purchases.) Who will purchase the debt to fund the upcoming $10 trillion in deficits is anyone’s guess, as the bond market seems to have figured out.

Put it another way. The US government is grossly negligent in creating the conditions that necessitate America’s importing up to 70% of its oil, making the country dependent on countries that are strategic adversaries. Now we also import 70% of the financing of the US government’s budget deficits, again making America dependent on potential adversaries or enemies. This can’t end well. Where are the serious men to address these strategic vulnerabilities?

 The greedy, entitled American children all have their hands out for freebies. One quote:

Epiphanies are a dime a dozen among congressional Democrats as they discover urgent new reasons to experience the almost erotic pleasure of commandeering other people's money. For example, freshman Rep. Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat whose district includes Disney World, was recently there and was inspired.

The world, he realized, would be a sweeter place if Congress mandated that all companies with 100 or more employees provide a week of paid vacation to those who work at least 25 hours a week. After three years, they would be entitled to two weeks, and companies with more than 50 employees would have to start providing a paid vacation week. Grayson would not mandate that paid vacations be spent at Disney World. With the welfare state approaching insolvency and businesses sagging, this is an odd time to augment Americans' entitlement mentality. But the travel and tourism industries think that Grayson's idea is neat.

No slobbering press in the UK:

The White House press corps is now completely supine, utterly shameless in its groveling cowardice. Stalin himself couldn't have wished for a more slobbering press corps. Rather than mailing them nice little Lipton tea bags, millions of sane Americans might consider sending air sickness bags to our Reigning Media. 

But not, thank haven, across the broad Atlantic. There free speech and even laughter are still alive, among the well-lubricated scribblers of Fleet Street. The journos of Britain show little respect for American Presidents regardless of race, creed or color. They laugh hysterically at all of them. Not that it takes much imagination.

The Telegraph has done the awesome, and called Michelle's wardrobe "frumpy." 

Time to re-post this video on the Americans without any medical insurance -

Did you need the lyrics for the Pancho and Lefty YouTube we posted yesterday? Here they are.

The oxytocin receptor and prosocial behavior. It would be interesting to see whether bloggers are low in these receptors.

The shot that changed Germany. It should be a big story in Germany - and in all of Europe.

Wilkinson on Sotomayor: People going crazy on cue

The Hugging Crisis in our schools.

Are we ready for Men's Studies yet?

Iron Laws of political economics, including:

There is no form of market failure, however egregious, which is not eventually made worse by the political interventions intended to fix it.

Maybe we should get rid of all of those terrible crosses at Arlington, too. Meanwhile in Euroland, French author faces jail for offending Islam. They are trying to re-live the Dark Ages. Thus far in the US, still no laws against offending religions.

California pols refuse to explain why their state needs hysterical spending growth

How did Socialist Nazy Germany pay for their Social Security programs?

Insty:

PEOPLE TEND TO REBEL AGAINST EXCESS NANNYING, EVEN WHEN THE NANNIES ARE RIGHT: Healthy Lifestyles On Decline In United States. Then, of course, there’s the way the advice tends to change over time.

From Gaghdad Bob (h/t Dr. Sanity's Leftism Aims Low)

Liberty is not a built in -- much less universal -- value, and I think you can see how this is a major part of understanding the motivations -- or shall we say, the deep structure -- of leftism. Classical liberals wonder why leftists don't value freedom, but they shouldn't.

Rather, the question is why we do value it, because it is an obvious aberration in the human race. Most humans value security over liberty, predictability over change, conformity over individuality, and authority over self-rule. So when we see that leftists hate freedom and progress but love authority and comformity, we shouldn't be the least bit surprised, for it is true of most rank-and-foul humans. Political correctness, statism, micromanagement of our lives -- these are all the natural consequences of a dread of liberty.

To finish up with Prager's thought, he noted that it was God who wanted humans to have freedom, not humans. For the vast majority of human beings, liberty is not a particularly important value, much less the most important one. They would just as soon barter it away for security, as they have done in western Europe.

Can you spot the billionaire? From Boudreaux:

Nora ____ e-mailed me earlier today; she was terse: "How do you sleep at night justifying policys [sic] that make incomes more unequal???"

My first response is to say "grow up."  As long as Mr. Smith earns his income rather than steals it, Mr. Jones ought not care.  Envy is an ugly sentiment, and becomes ghastly and dangerous whenever it is manifested in government policies.

But my more measured response is here.

Your Wall of Bacon brekky above brought to you by Mr. Free Market. Too bad he doesn't deliver, because I could go for some blood sausage, bacon, and runny eggs right about now.

Judicial empathy for whom?

Sotomayor is a racist. neoneo. Could be, but it's the "right kind of racism."

Sotomayor's "struggle." Private schools all the way. Nice.

More evidence on the politics of the Chrysler dealerships

There is only one current head of state who served in uniform in WW2

ACORN, Soros, and the Census

Check out some things you may have missed at the new, improved NAS site

Do you know who the Ladies of Arlington are?

The world is run by crazy people.

When a pol has nothing to lose. Betsy on Dr. Tom Coburn

Please do not peruse these Tuesday morning links until you have caught up on our posts over the past few days, as I just have done on my return from the sea to hard reality (drove a boat up from Cape May to Rhode Island with a few stops for gas and beer - including one at good old City Island for fried clams and another at Northport for more fried clams and fried oysters). The posts are jam-packed with inneresting stuff.

Poster above from Atlas' collection of fine old posters yesterday.

Photos of peoples' refrigerators. h/t, Neato. Sheesh. It's more private than photos of their genitalia. Too revealing and embarassing.

Brit public rebels against EU taxes and control. Yo, Cousins. Been there, done that. We can tell you how, but it involves firearms...

Quit lamb and beer to save the planet. Sure, OK. But not right now. Later, maybe, if I lose my taste for these things.

"It's a thumbsucker's playpen" now. Kaus

Wind farm kills Taiwanese goats. Pinwheels or goats: it's your choice.

Frank Lloyd Wright Legos. You cannot hate Legos. h/t, Marg. Rev

Korea, Iran, etc. Must be time for more diplomacy.

The UN speaks, and people listen. Are we nuts?

Millionaires flee Maryland

Pols love to present Straw Men, but the O specializes in them.

Libs wonder how they lost on guns and Gitmo. Welcome to America, where we are not quite a dictatorship yet.

What lady would not want to be a MILF, despite the crudeness of the appellation? And what red-blooded male has not a filthy mind? To my eyes, MILFs are a dime a dozen around my neighborhood. Photo borrowed stolen  from Tiger's piece:

When things get too hot in the kitchen, pols run away. Pelosi picked China for her Memorial Day weekend. Nice. Hope they taught her something about Capitalism.

Dr. X on the Irish abuse scandal

Media still lying abut the Swift Boat Vets

Armed and Dangerous says it better than we usually do, re California:

The politics of the modern redistributionist state is founded on the assumption that politicians can buy votes by promising voters ever more munificent entitlements - from federal deposit insurance against bank failures to government-subsidized medical care - with the money for these things always somehow being painlessly extracted from somebody else.

Once voters have agreed to forget that every single dollar of tax revenue is extracted from the productive economy by threat of force (including corporate taxes, which are then passed along as higher prices), there is no incentive for any politically favored interest group to do anything but eat subsidies as fast as it can, before all those less deserving other interest groups get a snout in. The demand for entitlements, income transfers, and subsidies will, accordingly, rise without limit. And why not, when “somebody else” is paying?

For this con game to continue working on the suckers voters who buy it, there always has to be a “somebody else” from which more money can be painlessly extracted. It’s “the rich” or “corporations” or (when governments borrow money against future tax revenues) ourselves in the future.

But what happens when there is no “somebody else” left?

Related, The NYT gets California completely wrong - Driscoll. They are right on the Dem talking points but wrong on the facts.

Two dish washers carry their towels home after a hard day discussing uranium:

I will be boating to celebrate summer's global warming, and out of intertube range for a few days. Will burn many gallons of gas to help prevent global cooling. Life is short, but I want to do what I can to help.

Leaving these links for you landlubbers:

Re the California tax vote (h/t, Surber)

According to the Tax Foundation, officials in Sacramento have been on a wild spending spree since 2000, the last time California’s budget was balanced without borrowing or resorting to one-time accounting gimmicks. Between 2003 (when Schwarzenegger took office) and 2007, state spending ballooned 31 percent – far beyond inflation (12 percent) and population growth (5 percent). Californians have seen this train wreck coming for many months.

Why should I pay California's bills? I have my own problems and, frankly, I don't give a damn. Related, at Betsy.

Time to clip up those credit cards and go to cash.

BA is still cool, and everybody speaks English.

Knife death good; gun death bad. I prefer my killing when I use a baseball bat. The skull crunch is so satisfying.

Unions are fraudulent children. They want money and goodies without responsibility. UAW doesn't want Chrysler stock. How could they complain? Who would they negotiate with? How would they sell their unwanted products? Thus the lameness of modern unionization is exposed for what it is.

A spy reacts to Pelosi's attack on the CIA

A serious book critiquing multiculturalism. (h/t, Gay Patriot)

Even the Germans refuse those Gitmo scum. Where's the terrible Swine Flu when you need it?

Guaranteed: you will be deeply disappointed in Obamacare...if it ever happens.

Max Borders: How can Conservatives compete with Free Stuff? TCS

Related, from Villainous:

Read my lips: I'm not asking for national health coverage. I don't want it. So don't tax my "risky lifestyle choices" to pay for something that's going to break the federal piggy bank as a back door means of giving the Nanny State carte blanche to tell me how to run my life.

I stopped smoking when I was 14. Idiocy like this just makes me want to start up again.

I suggest Merit Menthol Lights. They won't kill ya, but they are pleasant enough. But, of course, there is nothing sexier than a gal smoking a ceegar.

Pubs figger out how to get around the UK pub smoking bans. Haha.

Jesse Jackson Jr. - a chip off the old block. Chicago loves their con men.

Netanyahu: Not impressed by Obama.

The New New Deal, at RCP:

If you believe President Barack Obama, he's working overtime to save American capitalism.

"I strongly believe in a free-market system," he told reporters in London, "and...in America, at least, people don't resent the rich; they want to be rich. And that's good." The market, he declared, "is the most effective mechanism for creating wealth...that history has ever known."

GOP identification increasing - but you wouldn't know it.

The O admin and the NYT not on the same page - for once. Must have gotten their wires crossed.

Released Gitmo jihadists and their recidivism: Report suppressed

Good piece on newspapers at Driscoll, who quotes:

Which would you say was more responsible for the death of American newspapering? The “descent into tabloidization”? Or the dreary monarchical deference of American liberalism’s insipid J-school courtiers? The king rode in the park. He was riding his videographer in the shrubbery, but you don’t need to know that.

I do not want Susan Gill protecting my home and family. The blogger notes:

Let us for a moment look past her sincere ignorance and the fact that there have been precisely two murders documented with legally-owned machine guns since 1934, that children are already barred from purchasing all manner of firearms, that "harmonious living" never stopped a hardened criminal, and that criminals should not circumscribe your freedoms. We'll look past all that to focus on what all too many outside of her moonbeams-and-unicorns world view also misunderstand about what our nation is, and the role firearms were intended to play.

The climate-industrial complex. What it is. Related: Sociologists ask "Where's my global warming $?"

Defining defamation down: The UN is insane.

Also insane:

SHOCKING NEWS: This Just In: U.S. Obesity “Epidemic” Due Solely to Overeating! “So the implied solution seems to be that food industry must be forced to make their products tasteless and unattractive.”

A good dose of poverty ought to solve that crisis easily, especially if everybody quits their credit cards.

Light rail: pretty idea, but not practical. We never should have gotten rid of the trolley cars, which every town in the USA had until the 1950s - when the gummint began subsidizing buses and put the trolleys out of business.

I am tired of reading about Narcissism at Dr. Sanity and Shrinkwrapped, but I must admit that the topic is relevant to our decadent, spoiled, entitled "Gimme" society. As Shrinkwrapped says:

The Utopianism inherent in Socialism appeals to those who feel that life is unfair and that it should be more fair.  What child hasn't, at one time or another, uttered that immortal phrase that so many parents have so much troubling resisting, "Its not fair!"  By the time the youngster begins to support him or herself, in modern Western cultures usually by the age of 30 or 40 (pardon the mild hyperbole, though there are efforts afoot to increase that age to never) they begin to recognize that the world is, in fact, not fair.  The Universe does not care if you are a good person or a bad person (leaving religion out of the mix) but only whether or not you can support yourself and those who depend upon you.  Modern liberal capitalist states have become so incredibly wealthy over the last century that we can now afford to support a growing dependency cohort which naturally evokes the infantile wish among the dependent to be treated more fairly, ie, that to each according to his needs should be the rule.  The upshot is that there is an inherent tension in our society between those who pay and those who are dependent.  This can and does create cognitive dissonance among those who have incorporated the ethos of Socialist compassion without spending time and energy understanding the far greater moral imperative of personal responsibility and freedom (tow inextricable values.)

The last century's grand experiments in Communism and Socialism led to the impoverishment of millions, authoritarian and totalitarian rule and the deaths of millions.  History has rendered its verdict and Communism and Socialism have failed.  This has led to a crisis for the Left.

Yeah. The crisis is what do you do after you crush all of the producers? Where does the money and wealth come from? The sky?