Maggie's Farm

More good stuff later, busy today. No recession in my biz. Counter-cyclical is good.

Reality check: Your career in IT

Why major in Econ? Mankiw

Brave TV. Ex-Jihadists talk about why.

Did the dinosaurs die out quickly?

The Oprahfication of Obama. I never saw Oprah. What exactly does she do?

Remembering Fr. Neuhaus. Acton Inst.

Back to a spending orgy. Michelle

Good luck demonizing John Kasich. We love the guy. Demonization is the new political tool.

From Rick Moran:

On my radio show last night, Rich Baehr of the American Thinker pointed out that in the last decade we have freed Muslims from persecution and tyranny in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Praytell why is it the United States who should be coming hat in hand to the Muslim world? What more could we possibly do to prove our “respect?” Time for the moderate Muslims to stand up and start reciprocating. That is the true way forward with US-Muslim relations.

From Barone on Obama's speech:

...when Obama says, "We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth," he's not far away from plugging the multicultural idea, more prevalent in Western Europe than here in America, that every culture has the same moral worth—except maybe ours, which is worse. That's a very dangerous and wrongheaded way of thinking. And it's directly contrary to the way our first black president—and our first Catholic one—won their elections. Kennedy excelled and Obama excels at speaking the English language. The civic culture they mastered was our Anglo-Protestant culture, despite the fact that one went to a Catholic church and the other's father was a citizen of Kenya (and not, I think, as people tend to say, an immigrant: I presume he was in the United States on a student visa, and we know that he went home to Kenya and participated in politics there). Kennedy and Obama won because they did not fit the negative stereotypes of their ethnic groups, just as Margaret Thatcher won in Britain not because she was warm and cuddly but because she was the Iron Lady. Kennedy seemed more like an English lord than an Irish pol (one of his sisters was engaged to the marquis of Hartington), and Obama seemed more like a law professor than a ghetto protester.

Photo: The Englishman's place, this week. Love the pic. But where's all the snow?

Everybody has his or her own critique of Obama's speech. I thought it was OK. Why is this such a big deal? The guy got a promotion. I had collected a bunch of interesting comments about it, but it's really not important so I decided not to link them.

Horowitz on conservatives and the inauguration

Kenyans waiting for their free stuff. Me too.

GM: We're still dying. NYT: We're still dying. They had to go to a loan shark? Also, the banks are bankrupt. There isn't enough money in the world to rescue all these dying things.

Wonderful Thank You George Bush photos.

Who is this obnoxious a-hole? Oh, he's Obama's Chief of Staff, putting away childish things.

Stimulus = pork.

Want influence in the new Admin? Be George Soros.

Ace's honeymoon is over. Well, when I heard that white and right thing I said things outloud that I cannot post at Maggie's.

On Obama's first day, he calls for repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. First things first, right?

Obama channeling Fred Astaire?

Also not drinking the Kool Aid.

Non-political: parents of autistic kids try anything. Sadly, they are easy prey for quacks and mountebanks.

Orangutans threatened by Green Movement (h/t Jungleman). Orangs are almost people, aren't they? Without clothing, haircuts, etc.? See our photo of a well-groomed female Orang lounging at the beach.

The Great College Hoax. (h/t, Dr. Helen)

How is your fastball reaction time? (h/t, Theo)

If movie posters were honest (h/t, Wall St. Fighter)

Checklists for everything. I could not live without them. Especially my travel checklists. Without them, I'd end up at the beach without my flip-flops, in the woods without camera and ammo, in Italy without walking shoes, and in Nantucket without my red shorts.

Good luck to the new Pres, and all the best to George Bush with our thanks for taking on a thankless job (photo from Anchoress). These people are only human...and, for better or worse, there happen to be three equal branches of the federal government. It's a bully pulpit, though, if one knows how to use it. GW didn't know how, or didn't care to. Celebrity was not his goal.

The death or re-birth of the financial supermarket/ Or will all of the banks end up nationalized?

A proposal to make newspapers non-profits.

What Obama brings to Conservatives.

Good essay: Kristol on Our next War Pres

Reminder to the orgasmic MSM: Half the country voted for the other guy.

McCain's campaign was pitiful. Like Dole, I think he was told from the start that he had no chance, so just go out there and be a good sport.

From the unions, a deafening silence on climate. Related: Climate update at Gateway

What is affordable housing? Sowell

Hamas torturing Fatah. That is true torture.

Florida: The Fool's Golden State. Vanderleun

A guy who is clearly not optimistic about Obama.

A grim milestone indeed. Government jobs in the US pass manufacturing jobs (h/t, Insty):

 Who is supposed to make the money and profits to pay for all of those salaries, benefits, and pensions?

I have never enjoyed inaugurations, whether I voted for the guy or not. They have always seemed too much like coronations to me, neither fitting the role nor the country. We build 'em up to superhuman size...and then we tear 'em down. Our founders rightly feared that human nature would try to turn Presidents into kings. Yes, it is kinda cool that we elected a young black guy, but just to say that is not only racist but also rather adolescent.

Blame Bernie Madoff's parents

Two thirds of African-Americans believe King's vision has been fullfilled.

From The Day the Newspaper Died in The New Yorker:

Soon after Jefferson came to power, he, like Adams, developed doubts about the unbounded liberty of the press. Printers, Jefferson complained, just days after his election, “live by the zeal they can kindle, and the schisms they can create.” In his second Inaugural Address, Jefferson ranted against printers who had assaulted him with “the artillery of the press,” warning that he had given some thought to prosecuting them. During his beleaguered second term, Jefferson suggested that newspapers ought to be divided into four sections: Truths, Probabilities, Possibilities, and Lies. What Jefferson wanted for the nation under his governance was a “union of opinion.” But that, of course, can never be the aspiration of a democracy—a point that newspapers have been very good at making over the two centuries since.

A critical view of Bush's tenure, at Reason

Wanted: More Nazis

From Mark Levey Leave the New Deal in the history books:

By 1939 Roosevelt's own Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, had realized that the New Deal economic policies had failed. "We have tried spending money," Morgenthau wrote in his diary. "We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. . . . After eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . . And an enormous debt to boot!"

The problem was that neither Roosevelt nor President Herbert Hoover before him grasped the essential nature of the crisis, which was not the stock-market crash, but global deflation. At the end of the roaring '20s, an overhang of intergovernmental war debt from World War I, coupled with falling commodity prices and a currency crisis, had started the decline. Weak credit structures and European banks hurt by wartime inflation worsened it. When the Austrian Creditanstalt Bank failed, it ignited a global banking crisis that slashed across the international financial system cutting down everything in its path. Deflation went into full howl.

The same perils are now confronting President-elect Barack Obama, as the risk of deflation casts a long shadow over the economy. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson have been correctly focused on shoring up financial institutions to prevent a collapse of the financial system, and stave off a severe decline in the general price level. If that were to occur, the unspoken fear has been that the U.S. and global economy could go into a deflationary death spiral that would cause the collapse of the international financial system.

From Karlgaard in Forbes: A Failure of Morals not Capitalism:

Many people do blame capitalism for bringing us to this low moment in the economy. Do they have a point?

They do if capitalism, as they define it, is devoid of any underlying morality. True enough, it is hard to see any underlying morality when one surveys the present carnage caused by liar loans, shady banks, duplicitous politicians, Ponzi schemers and regulators angling for Wall Street jobs.

This weekend, I caught a BBC radio program on the meltdown in “The City”--London’s financial district. The program quoted many young Brit bankers who said morality was a barrier to personal success in The City. Better to have the sociopath gene if one wants to become a billionaire.

Whole thing here.

Hot women cheat on their husbands. Dog bites man.

Chavez changes his tune, begs for US oil bids.

The Inaugu-palooza

Thank you, President Bush. Anchoress

The Islamic way of war. Middle East Forum

Joe Who?

Reason #1343 to screw the UN

Moral inversion: Che = Batman

Who can improve schools - parents or bureaucrats? Bureaucrats will only protect their own interests. That's their primary job.

In favor of de-skilling. From Stumbling:

Rather than raises people’s skills to fill demanding jobs, why don’t we cut the demands of those jobs? Deskilling is cheaper than education.

Makes sense to me. I ain't overly eddicated, but I does OK wit my wits and from the School of Hard Knocks which taught me to always come back stronger and smarter when the mean old world knocks me down.

Here's what the "smart" stimulus will include. I earned that money. Related: The ethics of taxation.

Boortz:

Since when does the IRS acknowledge the concept of an "innocent mistake?"

From Nyquist:

According to President Bush, “We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”

The president’s statement is logically correct, but strategically nonsensical. While the “expansion of freedom” is desirable for America, it is prohibitively costly and beyond our capabilities. It antagonizes every despot on the planet, and causes them to join with our enemies.

From AVI:

...Jesus must be made into the Original Gandhi. Rubbish. Christian pacifism is a high calling, and it might be asked of any of us. But it is not the only calling, and not the highest.

From Luskin:

Conservatives may rightly object to all this government meddling in private markets on general principle. But the more salient objection is that government has botched it. The attempts to deal with failures at Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Washington Mutual, and Wachovia were not rescues or bailouts at all—they were wipeouts, seemingly intended more to punish than to rescue. They were government takings of private property for public use—seizures of shareholder wealth in troubled firms in the name of saving the system—without the just compensation promised in the Fifth Amendment and often beyond the legal authority of the government agencies involved.

Editor: As always, I (and our other contribs) added to this NJ post. I just got an email from a BD pup that she could see the airplane in the Hudson from her window on the West Side of Manhattan. That pilot is a hero. You have to admire those nerves of steel and the quick thinking. That was a 3-4 minute flight. I want that pilot Sully on my next flight.

Since it's going to be as cold as heck everywhere this week and weekend, our group decided that we'd rather freeze skiing at Sugarloaf than freeze with the annoying NYC and Fairfield County crowds in the annoying and tedious Vermont lift lines.

There are excellent last-minute MLK weekend deals, thanks to the lousy economy.

Looks like the weather will be invigorating - around or below 0 (F) all weekend. But I've skiied at -10. The trick is to keep moving, and to try to resist the temptation to lick anything metal.

And to not overdress for the temp. If you do, you'll sweat too much coming down, and the sweat will freeze to you on the lifts. Best to stay cold. After all, it is winter - and the earth is cooling fast.

This is an 8-hour drive for me from NYC. Sugarloaf is up in the Rangely area where I have happily hunted and fished in the past. I'm leaving now, back Sunday night. Will leave some pre-posts for our Editor's kind consideration.

An anti-love drug? Brilliant concept. It would eliminate a lot of human misery, frustration, and despair. But it would destroy the music industry.

Raccoon for dinner? Why not? Times are tough, right? Personally, I prefer possum. Possum tastes like chicken, coon tastes like bear.

Dems who hate US taxes. Funny, we now have the new head of the Treasury and the Chairman of Ways and Means, each of whom have been refusing to pay their income taxes. Things must be looking up.

TED spread says TARP is working.

Q&O: End the war on drugs

Why spending stimulus is needed. Becker-Posner. Tiger agrees.

A meaningful tax favor for the semi-rich: A patch for the AMT. I'd guess that the AMT has been hitting Congressmen. It hit me last year because I rent and have no mortgage deduction. In fact, I have zero debt.

About a really big electric motor

How to evaluate gummint health proposals. Coyote

In the new surveillance societies, why can't we watch back at the watchers? Glenn Reynolds

Wrong, Megan. As with his taxes, it's a question of whether Geitner, certainly an impressive fellow, is interested on obeying the law. He forgot.

State pension losses approach a trillion

Science is rational: scientists are not. Gene Expression

For a mere $495, the spiritual vibes of your water can be improved

Obama cult update. What if they did this with Pres. Bush? h/t, Ace

Why stimulus spending doesn't work

Good traders had high pre-natal testosterone.

China's web users approach 300 million. And not one of them reads Maggie's Farm.

Did you realize that McCain won 29 states and Obama 19? Plus map and other stats.

Staid, cautious John at Powerline:

Alarmists, of course, say that the current cooling is just an instance of natural weather variation that doesn't disprove their theory. The problem is that, for them, nothing disproves their theory. No matter how resolutely the Earth's climate refuses to conform to their models, they ignore the evidence and cling to their theory. This isn't science, it's a combination of faith and politics.

The global warming theory has been around for quite a while. I first learned about it in 1970. But the theory was hatched during a cold period in the Earth's climate, so it initially went nowhere. Instead, the alarmists spent the 1970s warning us that the next Ice Age was imminent. It was only when the climate fortuitously started to get warmer that the global warming theory began to get traction. If it now becomes clear to everyone that the climate is cooling, not warming, government proposals to destroy advanced economies in a bizarre war on carbon--a trace ingredient in the atmosphere that is necessary for life on earth--will be non-starters.

Photo: Not far from Palm Beach, yesterday. (Theo)

Eating lettuce is selfish? All eating is selfish, isn't it?

More on Carol Browner's socialism.

2.5 million pounds for this Woman's Studies student's virginity. Watch some Sheikh from Dubai buy it.

Embracing the Sacred: Orthodox Catholic

From AVI: Did Steven Pinker lie? Part 1 and Part 2

College affordability: A wolf in sheep's clothing

More on the voluntary human extinction movement. Why don't they set an example?

Back so soon? Chrysler wants more $. So do I. They ain't stupid - Chrysler is owned by a hedge fund. Related: GM CEO must be out of his mind.

From Wizbang, who has some good historical market graphs:

...the United States has suffered five periods between 1920 and today where the value of the stock market dropped greater than 40% -- 1929 to 1932, 1937, 1973 to 1974, 1987, and 2008. Both of the market drops during the 1930's were either worsened or directly caused by misdirected government intervention.

Department of Government Stupidity: You have to recycle paper but burn biomass. What's the difference? Also, When government runs something... eg High-Def.

Not your ancestors' England. Gateway. Good grief. They have a civil war now.

A new circus comes to town. PJ O'Rourke. h/t, Jules

Hillary intervened at least 6 times to protect husband's donors. Am I surprised? I am only surprised they only found 6 thus far. Dem sleaze = Dog bites man. No front page story there.

How do you know when you're in San Francisco? Photo via the Pro-Hamas Victory rally in SF:

Photo on right from Denver. Denver?

Jonah with the New Deal Re-revisited, plus a nifty video: NRO

Climate Change Warning: 30 below (F). Going to be cold as hell in the Northeast this week, and I am planning to be skiing in VT this weekend now that hunting is like totally over.

I'm gonna try to nullify my life. It's about addictions.

Supremes to hear reverse discrimination case

The Extinction Theory of Scientific Progress.

Relativism: Paving the Road to Radicalism. Like we always say.

Cool blog: Language Log. Found via Volokh

A new flight from California?

One for the record book. Feds admit error after destroying a guy's life for years - David Stockman. Usually they can at least find that you picked your nose in public in 1997, and send you up the river for a few years. Besides private jets, money can also get you effective lawyers - and justice.

Russell Kirk, quoted at Bainbridge on utopianism:

Ideology, I venture to remind you, is political fanaticism: at best it is the substitution of slogans for real political thought. Ideology animates, in George Orwell’s phrase, “the streamlined men who think in slogans and talk in bullets.”

I think any version of utopianism is psychotically delusional, but I'd love to give life a try with gummint's boot off my neck. At the least, I'd like to be able to light up a Cuban in a pub, and I'd be willing to let them pick my pocket a little bit for their vote-buying schemes.

How did we miss this story? Prize farmer run over by dog tractor driver. We let our dogs drive all of our vee-hickles, and this sort of thing hardly ever happens.

CO2 Fairytales. Am Thinker

Failcare in MA. Surber. More from Rick Moran.

Story with a moral: The pirates

Fr. Neuhaus' study:

There was a colossal sound system, for he loved music, especially Bach; there were bookcases containing the Lutheran Book of Worship, from which he and the ecumenical Community of Christ in the City, with whom he lived, prayed vespers every evening, before and after his reception into the Catholic Church; and there were ample supplies of bourbon and cigars, both of which Richard regarded as essential complements to the ongoing, boisterous conversation that was his intellectual and spiritual lifeblood.

To heck with yourself and your family. Sacrifice for the greater good. 

Further thoughts on our Open Letter re business careers, from Tiger.

Joe the Plumber's new career

Campaigning isn't governing. Pajamas. Related: From each group that supported Obama, an agenda

Dump Dodd? Fine, but it's not possible to elect a Conservative in CT. Or is it?

WSJ: Palestinian demographics and the fighting culture:

If we seriously want to avoid another generation of war in Gaza, we must have the courage to tell the Gazans that they will have to start looking after their children themselves, without UNRWA's help. This would force Palestinians to focus on building an economy instead of freeing them up to wage war. Of course, every baby lured into the world by our money up to now would still have our assistance.

Golda Meir famously said something like "We will have peace when the Palestinians care more about their kids than they do about killing Jews."

Yes, I did have a good hunt yesterday. Thanks for asking. Grouse. Got two, missed two. Passed on shooting one in a Birch tree. Passed on a Woodcock in a swamp because I could not remember whether they were still in season. I was right to pass on that tempting bird. Tired legs from tramping through the snow all day.

Iraq politics. Sounds like normal.

We all want longer, healthier lives but it's going to cost us. WaPo. One quote:

We are on a collision course between our wish to live longer, healthier lives and our capacity to pay for that wish. Whether we can somehow avoid the collision is perhaps the most important domestic issue of this century. From now on, health care costs will be up there with globalization, terrorism and climate change as a force shaping our world.

Let's fry up some fresh Sea Kittens. Perfect for those good folks who like to eat pussies.

JC Phillips: My New Year's resolution is to make more soup. Mine too.

The MLA is so mad at David Horowitz that they could spit. Idiots. See, unlike Bill Ayers, David had second thoughts about The Revolution. h/t, Viking

The vacuity of contemporary art.

Kudlow on Obama's tax cuts. The Repubs fear Obama's tax-cutting ideas. But Pelosi wants to punish the earners. She's a paleo. In my view, gummint cannot spend to prosperity. It's no different from living high off your home equity.

Fourth quarter GDP coming on Jan 30. What if it isn't terribly bad?

Chutzpah is right. We need to legalize illegals to save our economy. Um, what?

Insty:

WELL, IF YOU ASK ME, free markets are “social justice.”

Ayn Rand warned us about this stuff.

LA: "Put Jews in the ovens." This refrain is going around. It's an old song, and one of the ugliest.

Good point at Neoneo about Obama's negativity.

h/t, Theo:

It must be a depression. Unemployment figures now reach Clinton Administration levels.

I know that the world economy is in a slump, but I have learned to be suspicious of fear-mongering. It's usually a cover for a power grab.

A sand expert

Spending too much? Bad. Saving too much? Bad. It's true: people are not buying stuff. But I am. Some rugs, a standing lamp, and a new Colt in December. Somebody's got to keep the economy moving. I need a sofa too. Everything is on sale these days.

Why party boss Soros wants Norm Coleman out.

How we know that they know that they are lying

A new world economic order? Who are they kidding?

The highest crane operator in the world. In Dubai. of course.

Nepotism Nation

Big government never needs justification.

Neoneo loves Sanjay

More on the health care Trojan Horse. Coyote

The Generational Theft Act. Michelle

Porn biz wants a bailout too.

How Bush tried to rein in Fanny and Freddie.Rove

Chesler: “The non-Muslim world must have no illusions.”

Jimmy Carter’s defensive tunnels

Kennedy vs. Palin: Driscoll. Related: Palin strikes back

A little ME history. Tiger

How will people handle the end of The New York times?

Via No Left Turns, from Dick Morris:

So it is both fair and sensible to give the poor a tax break and to draw the bulk of federal revenues from the rich. But to exempt the bottom half - a majority of the voters - from paying any taxes and to award them refund checks instead would dangerously alter the fundamental balance of national politics. For the economically well off, it could effectively become taxation without representation - which, as the founders of our nation warned, leads to tyranny.

London busses: There’s no God, so have some fun Via Mr. Free Market:

Dang link problems and spacing problems have me needing a few cold Morettis. 

Homeland Security's records of your travel. Creepy.

Take two aspirin and call your Congressman in the morning

Vicar: Crucifix too scarey. What? Sacrificial love?

Record snows. Where's the warming we've been waiting for?

Rebuilding the GOP, one internet user at a time. But we aren't Repubs - we're Conservatives.

Owl Wars in the Pacific Northwest. Some want to kill the Barred Owls. However, the two species are essentially different races of the same big bird.

I thought they decided to reduce their fossil fuel consumption anyway. So what's the problem?

Bush designates more vast marine sanctuaries. Thanks, W.

Politics, Chicago-style

Half of economists believe the New Deal worsened the Depression

From Nyquist on Strategic Reality 101:

I believe there is a societal motive behind our culture’s marginalization of “enmity,” and it should be discussed; but first let us give an example of enmity’s marginalization. As America has been targeted by Islamic forces, America’s political establishment refuses to see Islam as an enemy. In fact, today’s Western culture adroitly fends off the notion that traditional Islam signifies universal submission to the will of Allah. Regardless of the fact that nominal Muslims readily coexist with Westerners, the teachings of Islam are unequivocal. The only reason Europe is not under Islamic law today, is because Europe’s military power surpassed that of Islam in the sixteenth century. This point is lost on nearly everyone, and shows the extent to which enmity has been marginalized in the West.

Man, am I busy and frazzled at work now that the holiday season is over. My posting will be frazzled too.

Remembering a Maggie's favorite President: Vermont's Silent Cal (fixed)

Remembering Edward Aloysius Murphy

Pelosi opens war against House Repubs. Gateway. Besides the thuggishness, it's a bad idea for many reasons.

Related, VDH via NRO on Who will police the police?:

If it was true that when the Republicans enjoyed majorities in the House and Senate and ran the White House, there was no one to object when they overspent, grew the government, and ran up the debt, who now will police the Democratic police in matters of corruption?

Rep. Rangel oversees (on Ways and Means) U.S. tax policy, but is himself a tax offender, among other, far greater charges and allegations about his behavior and character. Sen. Dodd simply cannot tell the truth about his cut-rate, quid pro quo mortgage deals. His actions and the Barney Frank-Franklin Raines exchange are metaphors for the entire subprime mortgage crisis. It would take a genealogist to sort out all the tribal ties, inside pay-offs, and pay-for-play deals involved in the selling of Obama's Senate seat; meanwhile, we await the tapes of Jesse Jackson Jr., Rahm Emanuel, and co. Al Franken simply relied on Minnesota Democratic officials to keep counting until they came up with the right result. On matters of nepotism, entitlement, and insider favoritism, Democratic egalitarians will probably anoint Caroline Kennedy as senator from New York. Bill Richardson didn't even try to pull off being secretary of commerce. Nowhere is there anyone on the Democratic side to decry the culture of corruption as in the days of Duke Cunningham and Ted Stevens.

Crickets chirping, as they used to say.

A reader sent in this hunting photo from Saturday. That is clearly an old, raggedy CT apple orchard, so I can assume he was hunting grouse. Nice spot.

Dinosaurs grew feathers before they became birds.

Bailout Bonds. Get 'em while they're fresh.

Our blog friend Prof Deneen at Georgetown is going on indefinite blog sabbatical. And I don't blame him. If I could clone my inner dog self to handle this job, I'd do the same thing.

A friend of mine loves the new Garrison Keilor book. It's about aging.

The Lib love affair with Castro

Why Clinton as Sec of State? Paglia

How the UN funds Pali Jihad

The Obama team needs to continue following Tiger's advice

Re the seven things nobody tells you about marriage

Carville: Watch for a Dem streak of scandals

All that talk about "peak oil" has disappeared

Steyn (via Driscoll)

What was it that then Senator Obama said on the subject? "We can't just keep driving our SUVs, eating whatever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of whether we live in the tundra or the desert and keep consuming 25 percent of the world's resources with just 4 percent of the world's population, and expect the rest of the world to say you just go ahead, we'll be fine."

And boy, we took the great man's words to heart. SUV sales have nosedived, and 72 is no longer your home's thermostat setting but its current value expressed as a percentage of what you paid for it. If I understand then Senator Obama's logic, in a just world Americans would be 4 percent of the population and consume a fair and reasonable 4 percent of the world's resources. And in these last few months we've made an excellent start toward that blessed utopia: Americans are driving smaller cars, buying smaller homes, giving smaller Christmas presents.

And yet, strangely, President-Elect Obama doesn't seem terribly happy about the Obamafication of the American economy. He's proposing some 5.7 bazillion dollar "stimulus" package or whatever it is now to "stimulate" it back into its bad old ways.

I agree with Gateway: These kids must want jobs.

Alternative buildings and cities, from the 60s.

EU denounces carbon offset scams projects

The cost of hollow virtuousness: Taxpayers pay for UK's mountain of recycling. Isn't it called "garbage" for a reason?

Does Israel really want a victory? Related, via SC&A at Shrinkwrapped from March: Has Israel lost the will to live?

Rangel update (h/t, Insty). Yes, Rangel is an expert in ways and means.

Branford Marsalis:

What I've learned from my students is that students today are completely full of sh*t.

More Burris Fun 'n Games. Politics is one disgusting game.

Two camps on climate in the new admin: Crazy, and crazier. Related, from Junk Science:

Obama energy/environment 'czar' is an offical with Socialist International - That's right comrades... Carol Browner is a member of Socialist International's Commission for a Sustainable World Society. Check out SI's principles -- including, "it is imperative to establish a genuinely new international economic order."

Just one more totalitarian bureaucrat who thinks she is smarter than me. She is not. She just likes power more than I do.

Reader at Rug Rag made us aware of this talk by Barry O'Connell at the Textile Museum, Washington DC, on Caucasian rugs. We like old Caucasian rugs. The videos are an education, but more about the history of the Causasus region than about the rugs.

The intro here, and the rest of the series is on our continuation page below.