Thursday, May 21. 2009
 Why is everybody always shooting at Joe Biden?
Krauthammer is Obama's most effective critic
Good news: gun control on shelf
Car crazy. A quote:
We wish these folks luck "working together" with the Obama auto-design team. One thing seems certain by 2016: Taxpayers will be paying Detroit to make the cars Americans don't want, and then they will pay again either through (trust us) a gas tax or with a purchase subsidy. Even the French must think we're nuts.
Would somebody please explain to me how electric cars reduce fossil fuel use? Since, thanks to the enviro-nazis who block nuclear power, our electricity comes mostly from coal...
Insty:
REASON TV: All The President’s Newsmen: Should Obama Bail Out the Press? Why not? They’ve done it for him already, and he no doubt figures he’ll need their services again. . . .
Related: Dems seek rescue of minority newspapers
Via Theo:
'It doesn't matter if the planet is cooling and plants need it to live. We still have to ban carbon dioxide.' - Henry Waxman
"Ban carbon dioxide"?
Via Mr. Free market: Why I drink.
Rush resigns leadership of GOP; hands reins to Colin Powell
The report on the Irish Catholic gulag. This is beyond shameful.
MIT: We're all gonna die. Despite 10 years of global cooling, computers insist on apocalypse. Doesn't direct observation trump computer modeling? I guess not. How come nobody is paranoid about Hal living in those MIT computers?
Wednesday, May 20. 2009
 Pay your credit card on time - and suffer anyway. John at Powerline asks Who is subsidizing whom? Since when is a credit card a right? It's a loan.
The people spoke: California must cut budget. Schwartzenegger went to DC to say "We need help." Help yourself, tough guy. Don't be a pussy-man. From the link:
Schwarzenegger joined with liberal Democrats and the California Teachers Assn., the group that helped defeat a 2005 ballot package championed by the governor. Foes of Proposition 1A, meanwhile, included several unions, which didn't like the effect spending limits could have on the state workers they represent, and anti-tax groups that hated its extension of tax increases.
The Gaia Dogma coming to a school near you. Grammar, math and chem are so annoying anyway.
The NYT-ACORN story is still untold. More from Kaus on the game-changer question
Gummint to hand GM to the unions. Brilliant. That means the gummint forced me to buy GM debt - something I never would have done. Thanks, geniuses. And yes, I do know that it's a political union pay-off. Chevy, I hardly knew ye. Chevy - and GM - is DOA.
Happiness is being old, male, and Republican. Sorry, gals. h/t, Neptunus
What does Russia want? It wants its own interests. Duh. Hudson Inst
Should the unemployed go back to school? No. It's a dumb idea.
Signaling and conspicuous consumption. Overcoming Bias
Biden needs just two things - a speech-writer, and somebody to deliver the speeches. Sheesh
Via Protein:
In a recent interview with Trina Hoaks, the atheist blogger for the Examiner.com website, Dawkins described religious believers as follows: “They feel uneducated, which they are; often rather stupid, which they are; inferior, which they are; and paranoid about pointy-headed intellectuals from the East Coast looking down on them, which, with some justification, they do.”
Yep, that pretty much sums me up. How did he know me that well?
Tuesday, May 19. 2009
Via Mr. Free Market, Why kids yell:
How they sell Buicks in China
The UK wants to monitor your energy use. As we always say, 1984 was not a government handbook. Related: Brit schools to ban regular neckties. Too dangerous.
Missing link: A lemur-monkey. Cool.
Related, at Insty:
STATE OF SURVEILLANCE: Ross Clark’s The Road to Big Brother gets a very positive review in the Wall Street Journal. I wrote the introduction, and I think it’s an important book.
Did you read about that "green house" in Michigan that froze? They should have tried an igloo.
When violence works. AVI
Allstate refuses to take the bait.
Race in Jamaica. Strange.
How come the Dems never run real men for national office? Am Thinker
How ya gonna pay those grad school debts? Especially for medical school, if the gummint wants to control your income...
"Well-heeled class warriors." Thompson
Blaming the banks for helping him? Megan McA
Notre Dame is unofficially in the pro-abortion camp
Monday, May 18. 2009
 Invasion of the Lionfish (photo). Sheesh. But they are highly edible.
The Alinsky explanation for the O and the Dem agenda. Dino
The humiliations of the modern Dad. Dr. Helen. Lucky Glenn.
Moslems call for Jihad in NYC. No wonder they have a lousy reputation. Did these jerks ever hear of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington?
Europe's recession much worse than ours has been.
Pelosi. For the good of the Party, the MSM ignores another giant story.
Dems splintering on national security.
Repub cage match: Crist vs. Rubio
An end to the War on Drugs. I say End it. It's a quagmire. All the War on Drugs has done over 30 years is to make them more expensive, requiring more expensive crime.
The Marsh Arabs are back home, and they are taking over. Good to see those marshes restored, too. A major world ecological spot, like the Everglades. I read that Ducks Unlimited consulted or assisted in the restoration.
How the wamingists are dealing with "slight" global cooling.
Nice butt. Looks like a bottom to me, too. Man, that stimulus package worked great.
Bush's gutsiness on Social Security. He had nothing to gain.
Jerks in Santa Monica
There's a plan for Pakistan. Cool.
Travesty. Obama at Notre Dame
More on the NYT-ACORN-Obama story
Washington cannot meet the Cheerios standard. Michelle
VDH: President Palin's first 100 days
AP buys into another staged Pali photo
From 2008: The campus rape myth
Saturday, May 16. 2009
 From TARP to Command and Control. Kudlow
The odd spiritualism of Arthur Conan Doyle
Liberal fantasyland: Hoven at Am Thinker
Newt on Pelosi. Harsh. CIA bites back.
Related: Reality arrives to the Dems. They are supposed to be running the country. They are supposed to grow up now.
Tortured logic re waterboarding. Waterboarding is just fine with me, but I can swim 1 1/2 laps underwater no problem. Not sure how many Jihadists are strong swimmers, but I do not care.
Saving the planet one private jet at a time.
Gun control as "reproductive justice"? I'm confused.
Do you want to know the cost of free government medical care? Related: Obama's health care fraud.
Tort law update: Bite-mark experts. Good grief.
AVI: Same Sex Marriage 2
Tom Hanks: We fudged the facts in Angels and Demons. Of course they did.
Via Insty:
HALF SIGMA: It’s cheaper to own a car than to use mass transit. Conclusion: “A walkable neighborhood, or an entirely walkable city like Manhattan, is a luxury good for rich people (a luxury good that I personally have been willing to pay for) and not an affordable alternative for regular middle class people, and especially not for regular middle class people with children.”
Five reasons political correctness must die. Moonbattery. We're doing our best to defeat it here at Maggie's.
Secular-Socialist Societies Suck out Your Soul. Indeed they do. Who would want to be a European - except for the cool welfare you get just for hanging out?
I noticed it too. Where's Hillary?
From LGF:
California’s going out of business! Everything must go! Unbelievable deals available on San Quentin State Prison, the L.A. Coliseum, and the Orange County Fairgrounds! Don’t miss this once in a lifetime opportunity!
Interesting phenomenon that the USA is becoming more pro-life.
Chrysler and the rule of law.
Any excuse will do: Recession drives women to drink and gambling. Why not wild random sex too? I'm game.
In his debt: Maj. Hutchinson
Yuan set to "usurp" US dollar
Cutting off our nose to spite our face. Trade wars in recession. Stupid as can be.
The O is blowing $100 billion. Like it's his money to blow.
On health care fallacies, quoted at Outside the Beltway:
I’m seeing nascent signs of a new (but actually old) fallacy, namely that since health care costs can (will?) crush the budget, we don’t have to worry so much about other expenditures. The mental story runs something like this: “if we don’t cure health care cost inflation, it doesn’t matter; if we do cure health care cost inflation, we can afford it.” That’s exactly the kind of false mental framing that behavioral economics identifies as irrational in other settings.
Photo: The girl next door, via Theo.
Friday, May 15. 2009
Cool submarine above via Theo
Most ridiculous story of the year, thus far: Obama warns about federal spending
Shows her true colors: Pelosi now claims CIA lied to her. She is a pol sleaze just like her dad was. Rove: Pelosi an accomplice to torture. Powerline: Can Pelosi survive?
Edward Steichen and Vogue magazine. A darn good photog.
The cocaine in Spain...
Gun-loving, private-jet emitting Oprah now destroying the rain forest dwellers. Let them eat cake.
More on that crazy Intel case. Maybe businesses are supposed to fail to get any understanding.
Take a few photos and knock the damn thing down.
Your kid is fat. Good grief. What the heck is the matter with being fat (altho that kid isn't)?
Prof B on the O's dismantling of capitalism
Those who do not worry about climate change are equivalent to slave traders. I want climate change, so what does that make me equivalent to? Stalin?
A quote from Mediocracy:
...turning to Hollywood for insights into the nature of reality is surely a sign that an academic discipline has declined. It may indeed be a symbol of capitulation: “we now admit** that we have metamorphosed into such a bunch of nonsense generators that we can offer less insight than a popular movie”.
One more reason to argue that Oxford Forum is the only genuine university in Britain today. We may not be able to do much, starved of support as we are, but one thing is certain: we would not stoop to doing media studies and passing it off as academic philosophy.
Is there a health care, ie sickness-care, consensus? Doubtful.
Thursday, May 14. 2009
Beowulf, and when poetry mattered
Of course it does. Global warming causes swine flu. Yes, the earth has a fever - and it's contagious.
Admission: We do want to re-program your kids. Related, from 2008: Obama and Ayers pushed radicalism on schools.
Norway's socialist/totalitarian system The peasants like it.
Megan: Medicare is going to bankrupt us...which is why we need universal health care?
Insty:
MICHAEL BARONE: Obama offers security at the expense of liberty. Hey, isn’t that what they said about George W. Bush? Though at least Bush delivered on the security part. Obama, so far, not so much.
Judicial empathy and a recipe for lawlessness. Paul at Powerline
Quoted at Dr. Sanity on denial of evil:
At the heart of the denial that afflicts people like Ignatius is fear. They are afraid to believe that there are people in the world who embrace evil over good and death over life. Like many people in denial, Ignatius finds it far more comforting to believe that everyone is just like him -- basically well intentioned and occasionally misguided. However, Ignatius is wrong -- just as wrong as wrong can be -- and the whole of human history stands as witness to his error.
The Arctic is going to melt - any day now. Well, pretty soon. Related: Dems fully aware of economic havoc global warming legislation would cause. They want the havoc.
Everything about entitlement costs. Fun with charts at Q&O
Health care Trojan Horse. Coyote:
I have warned for years about government health care being a Trojan horse for government micro-management of personal behaviors. If government is paying the health care bills, then anything individual action or choice that can conceivably be linked to health are open to regulation.
VDH begins:
Today’s Americans inherited the wealthiest nation in history — but only because earlier generations learned how to feed, fuel, finance and defend themselves in ways unrivaled elsewhere.
Lately we have forgotten that and instead seem to expect others to do for us what we used to do ourselves.
Bill Ayers basking in his new notoriety. It begins:
There he was, Bill Ayers himself, sitting in a Marriott conference room waiting to partake in a session of the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). The former Weatherman, "unapologetic" (his own word) fugitive from justice, and hot potato of the far left whose acquaintance with Barack Obama in Chicago during the 1990s and unrepentant boasting about Weatherman bombings at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol in the 1970s, prompted the Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to accuse Obama of "palling around with terrorists"--and the University of Nebraska to cancel a planned speech by Ayers last October.
No matter: Plenty of other colleges have been happy to have Ayers at their podia in light of his Obama connection and the attention-getting frisson of notoriety that he brings with him wherever he goes. Ayers is now a "distinguished" professor in the education school at the University of Illinois-Chicago and the author of numerous manifestoes and memoirs (his most recent, coauthored with his equally radical wife, Bernardine Dohrn, a law professor at Northwestern University, is Race Course: Against White Supremacy)...
Who pays for employer-provided medical insurance? You, the employee, pay for it. It comes out of your wages. That is why you can make a case that its cost is a taxable wage-equivalent. Quoted in a fine piece on third-party medical insurance at Hennessey:
Employees ultimately pay for the health insurance that they get through their employer, no matter who writes the check to the insurance company. The view that we can get employers to shoulder the cost of providing health insurance stems from the misconception that employers pay for benefits out of a reservoir of profits. Regardless of a firm’s profits, valued benefits are paid primarily out of workers wages. While workers may not even be aware of the cost of their total health premium, employers make hiring and salary decisions based on the total cost of employment, including both wages and benefits such as health insurance, maternity leave, disability and retirement benefits. They provide health insurance not out of generosity of spirit, but as a way to attract workers – just like wages. When the cost of benefits rises, wages fall (or rise more slowly than they would have otherwise), leaving workers bearing the cost of their benefits in the form of lower wages.
Wednesday, May 13. 2009
 Our p-rn-loving ancestors (h/t, Jungleman). It cracks me up that the anthropologists always talk about "fertility icons" and "fertility rites." Didn't it ever occur to them that our ancestors were enjoying p-orn and sexual fantasies and fun activities as much as we do? How different is it from the Theo Bedtime Totty anthropologically pictured on the right (as part of our Maggie's Fertility Rites Studies Project)?
Cranky when hungry. Beware of armed bulemics.
Moderate President wants to set industry salaries. How about setting lawyers' salaries?
Related: Sleaziest tort case I've ever seen. Import Tort
Related: Auto biz expert O cuts auto biz ad budget. The less a person knows, the more they think they know.
Malawi. I'd love to visit. Also h/t Jungleman
Divorce, Iranian-style
The Luxury City vs. The Middle Class. It begins:
Ellen Moncure and Joe Wong first met in school and then fell in love while living in the same dorm at the College of William and Mary. After graduation, they got married and, in 1999, moved to Washington, D.C., where they worked amid a large community of single and childless people.
Like many in their late 20s, the couple began to seek something other than exciting careers and late-night outings with friends. “D.C. was terrific,” Moncure recalled over lunch near her office in lower Manhattan. It was an extension of college. But after a while, you want to get to a different ‘place.’”
The ‘place’ Ellen and Joe looked for was not just a physical location but something less tangible: a sense of community and a neighborhood to raise their hoped-for children. Although they considered suburban locations, as most families do, ultimately they chose the Ditmas Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, where Joe had grown up.
There is no room in this country for differences of opinion
Via Insty:
How ya gonna fill that $90 billion hole to buy medical insurance for people who won't get it themselves?
Taliban now targeting Pakistan, removing heads like we eat ice cream cones. It's fun for them. A different culture.
Are all "quiet" people creeps? "They kept to themselves." I like quiet people.
We live in an ugly world, and would like a little more beauty. Hear, hear.
 Intel: the punishment for success
The most Liberal states are the least free
Shades of Herod. Sweden's new abortion rules. This is very advanced and progressive.
Sipp:
It's the seventies again, baby. You wished it on yourself, but now we're all going to get it, good and hard. Been there, done that, got the straightjacket. Trust me, you're not going to like it.
People are scared to run against Harry Reid
Prof Deneen: How campuses became dysfunctional
Hot news: Pols always lie about the costs.
The empty symbolism of hate crime legislation
Tiger:
...your health, and therefore virtually every choice you make in life regardless of its triviality, becomes a problem that justifies government intervention. For example.
Maybe some good news for the fish. h/t Insty
People don't know what a trillion is
Barney Frank wants to rescue muni bonds. Good grief.
WA offers biz tax cuts for newspapers. Which means the taxpayer subsidizes the paper they do not want to buy but which the gummint wishes to exist. But hey, why not a tax cut for me, too?
Tuesday, May 12. 2009
Bad all over:
Toon above from SC&A
Is Conservatism over? I doubt it.
How Obama's Socialism works. Dick Morris
The problems with an aggressive anti-trust policy. Mankiw
Oprah loves her jet and her guns. But she hates guns and oil. Go figure. I never watched her, even once. I have a day job.
GM plans to leave Detroit
How is the Porkulus working out? Michelle. Related, at Powerline: How is Obamanomics doing?
Why does the US subsidize the defence of Europe? And Canada? Wilkinson
A tax on soda pop for health care? Brilliant!
Via Lucianne:
Republican strategists have a problem. The scale of what President Barack Obama proposes to do to the American economy is so enormous, so far-reaching and so potentially disastrous that the opposition party is having a hard time describing it.
Did you read Tiger's bit on the coming taxes on all of us? Good piece. A commenter notes:
Did we ever think we would see the day where China has lower taxes than the US? Where China and VietNam are better practitioners of free-market capitalism than the US?
Related: Healthcare numbers don't add up. Of course they don't. Related: Government is broke but keeps on spending.
Related: Medical insurance and autism
Catlin Arctic Project teaches us that the Arctic is cold and icy
Comments from this morning's links:
 Health-conscious Brits ban library steps. Not satire. What's the point of being healthy if you can't read the book?
Now it's 1.85 trillion
Awaiting the California Rebellion
Bring back ROTC
Something awful is being done to you. Tiger
Letter of Amends from a Recovering Liberal
Chris Dodd's sinking ship. It's about time.
The quietly rusting Dem advantage. h/t, Insty
Obama laughs at notion of Limbaugh's death. Why? Isn't debate healthy for America?
Is it a good idea to go directly to college after high school? Probably not, unless you are a dedicated scholar.
I doubt that it is guaranteed that Obamacare will pass, but nobody tells us the details. Here are some thoughts: How Obamacare will affect your doctor. Tiger wonders whether there will be liability caps. Our Dr. Bliss offered a few modest proposals a couple of weeks ago. Also, a look at Canada's system.
Photo of confused college grad via Right Wing Prof
Monday, May 11. 2009
When statism fails, blame the private sector
The real history of Mother's Day (thanks, reader)
Dolphin Stadium becomes Landshark Stadium. It is impossible not to enjoy Jimmy Buffett.
Repub mean-spiritedness alert
The Producers comes to Berlin. Gotta love it.
Rich Obama supporters realize he is a class warrior
Slobbering over Michelle O. Get a room.
Kudlow discusses gangster government with Tom Lauria
Quoted at Driscoll:
All The President’s Men solidified this idea of journalism that “makes a difference” in the heads of a generation of journalists. It not only encouraged a lot of what is called “Pulitzer bait” — the five-part series — but it generally attracted to the business a lot of liberal do-gooders who thought of themselves as superior to their readers.
Last year, there was a certain news story that caused Ace of Spades to erupt in fury: “Stop telling me what to think!” (I wish I could find that post, because it was good.) Nobody wants to do the straight-ahead Joe Friday “just-the-facts-ma’am” news story, because there is no prestige in that kind of basic reporting.
From a piece at Hot Air (h/t, Conservatism Today):
Republican politicians often forget that conservatism is an argument, while liberalism is a promise. The conservative champions both the moral and practical superiority of liberty and individualism. The liberal promises tangible rewards in exchange for votes. The conservative argument will never be over, because any free-market system will always include a certain population who fare poorly. No matter how small that population is, or how much the overall wealth of society eases the burden of their poverty, they will always be extremely receptive to the seduction of collective politics: You’re not responsible for your lot in life. You were cheated. The wealth of others is unfair. Give us the “freedom” that wasn’t doing you any good anyway, and we will sharpen it into a weapon against those who took advantage of you. Give us your undying support, and you’ll never have to worry about feeling confused, guilty, or inadequate again. Voting for the Democrat ticket will fully discharge your moral and intellectual duty as a citizen - we’ll take it from there. In fact, we’ve got ACORN representatives standing by to fill that ballot out for you. You have a “right” to housing, a job, health care, a college education, easy credit, and a host of other benefits, and the liberal promises to provide all of these things, while making nameless rich people pick up the tab.
Friday, May 8. 2009
Paddling is not abuse. It's correction. Fatherly and teacherly paddling probably kept a lot of people out of jail over the years.
Political tactics: Chris Dodd
All Federalists will find this fact deeply depressing. That means that the Feds own them.
Via Tiger: Countries that use their banking systems this way don't get good results.
Powerline:
Isn't there something in the Constitution that says a Supreme Court justice can't be a pathetic whiner?
Weather updates - 1. Illegal weather. 2. Government as a source of "rational climate and energy policy"? Ya gotta be kidding. 3. From Watts:
Albert Einstein once said, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” Einstein’s words express a foundational principle of science intoned by the logician Karl Popper: Falsifiability. In order to verify a hypothesis there must be a test by which it can be proved false. A thousand observations may appear to verify a hypothesis, but one critical failure could result in its demise. The history of science is littered with such examples.
A hypothesis that cannot be falsified by empirical observations, is not science.
Academic fraud in college: Your kids' grades
UK's tax rate to 61%.
The Holier Than Thou effect
The origin of life as ordinary chemistry. American Scientist
Human nature and economics. Dr. Sanity
Shareholder maximization. If a biz doesn't want that, count me out as an investor.
Penn and Teller on the neuropsychology of magic
Are the Repubs really dead in the Northeast?
Music as torture? They are actually serious.
Would it be so (via Phi Beta Cons):
University of San Diego Law School professor Gail Heriot blogs on a recent conference at CUNY entitled "Understanding and Combating Contemporary Shifts to the Right."
Thursday, May 7. 2009
 So what? 1 in 5 homeowners underwater. Most who bought in the last few years, no doubt. Same as people who bought stocks in the last few years - or who bought cars on time. Or a new chain saw on their Home Depot credit card, for that matter.
The O's mission to bankrupt the coal biz begins. Related: James Hansen terms cap and trade The Temple of Doom.
Miss Saudi Arabia
Extremist right-wing loonies march for school choice in DC
"Rangel, of course, knows a thing or two about offshore tax shelters: He'd been operating one for years."
Are you confused yet about the stress tests?
Obama groupies: "Do these people even listen to themselves?"
Brit tax dollars at work. Also, a voice from Britain:
Given our complete lack of electoral choices, a party formed of retired Gurkhas led by Ms Lumley, standing for compulsory goat curry & promising to sort out our dumded down chav-culture with judicious use of their kukris would certainly get my unsteady tick in the box. Think of it as casting a protest vote – successive administrations have allowed once Great Britain to be overrun by just about every whinging ethnic minority load of bl**dy wogs with an open hand & a grievance you care to mention. However when it comes to those who have done nothing but loyally serve Her Majesty, the Westminster pondlife treat them with nothing but utter distain.
Blacks vs. gays. That's where identity politics will get you
Fascism revisited. It was meant to be the "third way."
From France: Dont turn America into another France (video)
Wednesday, May 6. 2009
We recently noted here that, if you gave 5 people each $100,000 to do something with, after 5 years one guy would be broke, one guy would have a million bucks, and the others somewhere in between.
It's like Jesus' parable of the talents (which of course had nothing to do with money, but with the use of gifts of the spirit.)
Readers know that I don't give a darn what other people make. I care about what I make, how I make it, and what I do with it.
Just One Minute looks at Robert Reich on income inequality. One commenter says:
 Need one of these steps? On sale now.
To me, Global Warming was the Swine Flu of the Decade. Gullible America
"Cash for clunkers" screws the poor. Not just the poor: lots of folks out there who would never spend money on something that depreciates as fast as a new car.
Quoted at Neo's Where's the Outrage?
The fate of Chrysler and its workers pale in comparison to the wrecking ball that would be taken to economic order if bankruptcy judge Arthur Gonzalez approves the administration’s plan to give Chrysler’s secured creditors the shaft. And what prize will we-the-people get in return? A doomed third-rate car company majority owned by its militant union run by Italian management building congressionally designed “green” cars no one wants to buy financed by taxpayers into perpetuity because no private investor in their right mind will touch the company with a ten foot pole. Is this supposed to be economic policy or comic opera?
Related: More allegations of WH threats
Chavez update. Front Page
David Brooks is often out to lunch. Occasionally not. Sort-of related: How Conservatives damaged the Repubs
Feds make it difficult for banks to pay back their TARP cash
The "Green Jobs" joke
Jim Cramer is a bull. Kudlow says recession is over. So does Bernanke. All provided that the govt doesn't screw it up...
Whenever you are photographed, make sure there isn't a phone pole coming out the top of your head - or worse - in the background (h/t, Samiz):
Powerline asks "Why?" re DC school vouchers. Answer is obvious. Below, from Reason:
Tuesday, May 5. 2009
 The Nazis wanted to bring back wild Aurochs to Europe
As Pete Seeger would sing, "Which side are you on, boys?" Hmmm. NYT vs. the unions.
Colleges discriminate against Asians. Not a PC minority, I guess. As a friend said to me, "People assume that because I'm Chinese I'm smarter than everybody else. But I'm not."
Wise, careful and prudent financial planning - and now broke.
Favorite things at the Smithsonian - like Lewis and Clark's compass. One would hope they brought more than one.
Solipcism and the Apocalypse. Pick your favorite apocalypse. I want it to be a life-erasing storm of juicy red raspberries from the Berry Galaxy. I will die happy.
A President who hates his country?
We always knew it was a joke. Amusing from Roger S re Swine Flu:
SF remains a “Media Flu” fanned by CNN, Drudge, etc. and seems even to have infected otherwise brilliant members of the media with whom I normally agree. [So maybe it's you.-ed. Shut up. I told you I came from a medical family. Read my book. It's on my night table.]
Worth noting is what enhances this media flu: political bile.
What the heck does idealism have to do with working for the government? Claremont: ...and we're here to help you.
Bad news for the US: China decides to back off on buying our debt. I guess that means that they do not want to own us.
Two fat black lesbians?
New charges against ACORN
Not socially appropriate to criticize the O. Since when? In my (small) circles, half the folks think he's a royal jerk and half think he's going to bring us to the Promised Land of money and goodies and no work.
Related: The things you don't read about the O's first 100 days
VDH, via Blue Crab:
...it is adherence to the idea of equality of result rather than an equality of opportunity, the age-old debate that goes back to the Greeks. From Aristotle’s Politics and Plato Laws, we learn of the original dilemma: a stable city-state of roughly similar property owners, who vote as equals, and fight as comrades in the phalanx, tragically, but inevitably, soon becomes tragically unequal.
Divide the land up equally to found the polis; give everyone an similarly-size plot (klęros); and then health, luck, brains, accident, strength, ambition, character, and a myriad of other factors, some understandable, some capricious, conspire to create inequality. I agree with Aristotle; I have seen it with families and communities in which equal inheritances soon led to radically different outcomes, as one sibling on rocky ground thrives, while another in deep loam starves; one town with abundant resources goes broke, while another without natural advantages thrives.
As Aristotle saw, some lose, some expand their original homesteads, and suddenly we have Hoi beltistoi and Hoi polloi-and the rallying cry that someone’s liberty to do as he pleases means that egalitarianism of the lowest common denominator becomes impossible.
So, then, how often is a new deal needed?
Monday, May 4. 2009
"Questions from Oceania." A quote from VDH, re the Dems:
...we are in a race—a race to get the dependent constituents permanently in place and institutionalized before the proverbial (fill in the blanks) hits the fans. If he succeeds, we will end up like a Greece, France, or Belgium— weekly strikes by government workers and unions, rampant cynicism as everyone seeks to land the federal job for base salary and taxes and benefits, and then moonlights to get untaxed cash and barter for necessary goods and services, all coupled with a culture of blame at various foreign and domestic “thems” who make us so unhappy.
Final thought: without the Old US who will be blamed? Who will keep the global sea-lanes open?Who will buy the world’s exports? Who will deal with Milosevic, Saddam, the Taliban, and the other global nuts and psychopaths? Who will attract the world’s more daring and desperate?
So we end with a whimper, after all?
I want to be a toll-collector. Minimal responsibility or hassle. No heavy lifting or heavy thinking or risk, like working for a non-profit. Retire on full salary after 25 years (plus final year overtime factor) and full gummint benefits. Meanwhile, get rich and have fun writing for Maggie's on the side. Maybe a book deal, too: My Sexy Life in a Toll Booth.
 Goodbye, Columbus. Death of a holiday at Brown.
Getting those darn pesky Christians off NPR. Related: What's with this Atheism Movement? What are they for? And has nobody told them that atheism has been around forever? Most Episcopalians I have known are atheists, for heaven's sake.
A Google-killer? Will Google need a government take-over?
Good news on the fossil fuel front: 200 trillion cubic feet of gas
Kaus:
If Chrysler fails in the marketplace again two or three years from now, after billions more in government subisidies, won't that reflect badly on Obama and his "economic team"? WIll it then appear to have been better to let Chrysler go into an actual, non-prearranged, non-jawboned bankruptcy, in which it would likely have been liquidated or in which the UAW would have had to make far more substantial concessions, like workers in other bankruptcies?
VDH:
At some point, Obama must answer why waterboarding mass-murderers and beheaders like Khalid Sheik Mohammed is wrong, while executing by missile attack (no writs, habeas corpus, Miranda rights, etc.) suspected terrorists and anyone caught in their general vicinity in Waziristan — or pirates negotiating extortion — is legitimate.
AVI takes a look at the psychology of Socialism. He does not use the word "envy," but he might.
France lowers taxes to spark job growth
Let's get back to spanking. Who ever quit?
Obama is a statist, not a Commie. CATO. Statists are those who think politicians deserve to be philosopher-kings. Same as Commies.
The Jacksonian on the Constitution. One quote:
President Obama, when teaching Constitutional law, couldn't get this idea that all liberty and rights are vested in the people by Natural Law and not given to government. In an interview with WBEZ.FM in 2001 he went through his idea that the Constitution would, somehow, be made better if it took the other view: that government gets to give a few rights to people and retains the rest for itself via the concept of positive rights. Government, under that view, does not become a representative institution, but an authoritarian caretaker of the people. In wanting a Constitution that would say what government 'must do' on your behalf, he relegates that decision to government, not the people. To get something like, say, clothing to people, the government gets to decide what kind, what type and how much clothing goes to which people by its own dictates. That similarly goes for clothing. A good job. Health care for government to decide.
Postcard from the Casino de Paris, 1915, h/t Good Sh-t
Sunday, May 3. 2009
 Go shopping to save your soul.
Why students don't like school. Hmm. I liked school. Maggie's is my school, for now.
Jack Kemp's enduring legacy
How to bake a trencher. I like the idea. No dishes.
Habits and vocation. Anchoress
Is exhaustion only in your head?
Always been interested in how the government subsidized the construction of suburbs with highways. Are highways a public good?
Semi-related: Amtraking the Automakers, which begins:
The odds that the federal government will ever get its hooks out of Chrysler or General Motors are slim to none, regardless what President Obama says. Why? In one word, Amtrak.
The O took a special interest in Chrysler. And, good grief, the O reads Sullivan. He'd be far more popular if he read Maggie's daily. We might remind him about freedom.
Ingraham vs. Feldt. See, this is how it's done
The mob is still after the terrifying Sarah Palin
Demography update: Northern Europeans having more babies, Russia having fewer
People are tiring of the global warming alarmism. What next?
Media bias, charted at Will.
Related, MSM press as lap dog or pit bull? I found this amazing:
One of my clients was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under the threat that the full force of the White House Press Corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight.
More on cap and trade as nothing but a covert tax
More on capitalism and the culture wars. Dr. Sanity
Another Steyn masterpiece. A quote:
The theater of thoughtfulness is critical to the president's success. He has the knack of appearing moderate while acting radical, which is a lethal skill. The thoughtful look suckered many of my more impressionable conservative comrades last fall, when David Brooks and Christopher Buckley were cranking out gushing paeans to Obama's "first-class temperament" – temperament being to the Obamacons what Nick Jonas' hair is to a Tiger Beat reporter. But the drab reality is that the man they hail – Brooks & Buckley, I mean; not the Tiger Beat crowd – is a fantasy projection. There is no Obama The Sober Centrist, although it might make a good holiday song:
"Obama The Sober Centrist
Had a very thoughtful mien
And if you ever saw it
You would say it's peachy keen …"
Image: How Bouguereau got that picture of me in the woods in 1873 I do not know. Thanks, Berkshire guy. I will add it to the family photo album.
Saturday, May 2. 2009
A re-post for the beginning of boating season up here -
 Since it's boating season up here, I thought I'd do a little study of the US Yacht Ensign for today. This flag's use originated in 1847 when the Commodore of the New York Yacht Club proposed using it to identify private (ie non-commercial) yachts in US waters.
The law permitting the Yacht Ensign's use as a substitute for the National Ensign (American flag) was repealed in 1980. However, boaters love the Yacht Ensign and, in good American spirit, defy the regulation and continue to fly it. It just looks better on a boat.
A few details gleaned from various places:
- The size of the flag should be based on the length of the boat, feet to inches, so that a 32' boat should fly the closest-sized ensign, which is 36". Otherwise, it looks stupid.
- The 50 star national flag or the yacht ensign should only be flown in two places: either on a flagstaff on the stern or on the leech of the mainsail. It should not be flown from the spreader. Only the yacht club burgee and, most importantly, the courtesy flag of a visited nation are to be flown from the spreader.
- What's the story on the "fouled anchor" naval and nautical logo? After all, a fouled anchor is a nautical abomination - it will cause your anchor to drag. Naval Uniform History says:
The foul anchor as a naval insignia got its start as the seal of the Lord Howard of Effingham. He was the Lord Admiral of England at the time of the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. During this period the personal seal of a great officer of state was adopted as the seal of his office. The fouled anchor still remains the official seal of the Lord High Admiral of Great Britain. When this office became part of the present Board of Admiralty, the seal was retained - on buttons, official seals, and cap badges. The Navy's adoption of this symbol and many other customs can be directly attributed to the influence of British Naval tradition. The fouled anchor is among them.
Friday, May 1. 2009
Sex in the Middle Ages, via the NSFW cool site Cool Shit which Tiger found.
Souter? Won't make a big diff. (Does anyone doubt that he wailted until there were Dems in control?) And Specter? Is John Cornyn trying to make lemonade out of a lemon, or is he right?
See? Earth Day made a difference!
Good interview with Mark Levin (his book remains #1) by John Hawkins. h/t, Dr Helen
The SAT and its enemies. Weekly Standard
Government medical care from a nurse, at Am Thinker:
Obama's first choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Daschle, withdrew his name after his myriad tax problems came to light. But as far as I can tell, his health care reform ideas live on in the Obama administration and Democrat-majority Congress. The jewel of his plan is the Federal Health Board:
...these government experts would "help define evidence-based benefits and lower overall spending by determining which medicines, treatments, and procedures are most effective--and identifying those that do not justify their high price tags."
Ladies and gentlemen, he's talking about rationing and denying payment. But look on the bright side, America. Physicians will no longer be "burdened" by decision making. And think of all the time doctors can save when they no longer need to explain various treatment options to you or your elderly mom. Life is so much easier when you simply don't care. Ask our cool, cool President.
So get used to health care profiling. Just have your doctor fill out this form with your age, gender, diagnosis, and prognosis, and Washington will let him know what to order. It's medicine by spreadsheet. It's cold, cold healthcare.
|
The uproar about income inequality continues to baffle me. Why does relative socioeconomic status matter more than absolute socioeconomic status? If the US has the richest poor people in the world, why is the distance between them and the people at the top such a big deal?
FWIW, Gregg Easterbrook, a liberal, argued in The Progress Paradox that if you factor out immigration, the rise in income inequality disappears. He got severely criticized by the left for this analysis IIRC.
Also I don't trust government definitions of "poor." My friends whose two kids qualify for S-CHIP have a 4 (smallish) bedroom house in an expensive part of town, a car, two cell phones, high-speed internet, a nice desktop & two nice laptops, buy mostly organic groceries, spend disposable income on ebay, gardening hobbies, etc. etc. They live on one-and-a-half salaries (he works full-time, she works part-time out of the house). But they're considered to be in need of government services, apparently. So if they're counted in the numbers of "needy" Texans, no wonder the numbers are skewed.