Monday, October 7. 2013
Opt-Out of Common Core? Great! - But Let's Opt-Out of All Government Programs
I am reflexively skeptical about anything titled "common," and I do not know what the federal government is doing by getting involved in local education. What I do know is that many people would opt out of many government things if given free choice.
For one hot example, how many would like to opt out of Obamacare? Who wants all of that "insurance coverage"? It's not even really insurance anyway. It covers hangnails, the flu, birth control pills and even pregnancy (why should I pay for your pregnancy if I don't want to? It's elective, and none of my business). It's a pre-paid communal medical treatment plan, and I want nothing to do with it.
 I don't mind being called a Redskin. It's a matter of family pride to have a little savage redskin blood.
In fact, I suspect most people of Indian heritage are happy to have athletic teams named after their redskin ancestors. Most of my ancestors are New England puritans. Nobody would name a team after them, would they?
Why not? It's because the Indian brand is cool, and Jonathan Edwards' brand and Cotton Mather's brand isn't.
Sunday, October 6. 2013
 But then they had to backtrack: Kentucky Marketplace: ‘WARNING: No Explicit or Implicit Expectation of Privacy’
Also interesting: China employs more than 2 million people… just to monitor the Internet
Is government power benign, malevolent, or neither? I tend to think that concentrated power is dangerous, regardless of its intentions or of whether it is elected or not. Those who pursue power tend to want more. People like Colbert King see nothing but benevolence. He thinks I am a bad sort of rebel (maybe I am a rebel in opposition to either slavery or serfdom) and doesn't even consider the case for freedom or the dangers of power.
Dan Greenberg gets it:
We confront the Great Solvers of the Human Problem who are determined to rearrange everyone to their liking. They began by controlling everything that people did. Now, they have moved on to controlling what people don't do. If you live, if you breathe, if you stir, move your muscles, track moving objects with your eyes, then there are obligations imposed on you.
ObamaCare is one of the final declarations that there is no opting out. Even if you don't drive, own a home, own a business, own a dog, or do one of the infinite things that bring you into mandatory contact with the apparatus of your government, you are committed to a task from maturity to death. Your mission is to obtain health insurance, and, in a system in which you become the ward of the government as soon as you taste air, it is the price that you pay for being alive.
In a free country, you are not obligated to do things simply for the privilege of breathing oxygen north of the Rio Grande and south of Niagara Falls.
Some people seem content with being subjects of a potent parental State which they trust will be filled with wisdom and care. Some (the aspiring adults, in my view) do not. There is a division there. It seems partly psychological. Old John Dean recently commented somewhere that he had become a Dem because Conservatives were the authoritarian party. I think he has it backwards, but he always did.
Nixon was a neo-Liberal. Goldwater was a good guy, as I read my recent history, a Don Quixote or a voice crying in the wilderness.
Saturday, October 5. 2013
Friday, October 4. 2013
Not exactly. It's complicated.
The article has a good summary of the history of elite college discrimination.
Icecap: Time to jail the climate scamsters
Via Powerline, on the IPCC:
Their misrepresentation of data is ridiculous. In Fig. 1, the IPCC report purports to show warming of 0.5°C (0.9°F) since 1980, yet surface temperature measurements indicate no warming over the past 17 years (Fig. 2) and satellite temperature data shows the August 2013 temperature only 0.12°C (0.21°F) above the 1908 temperature (Spencer, 2013). IPCC shows a decadal warming of 0.6°C (1°F) since 1980 but the temperature over the past decade has actually cooled, not warmed…
Thursday, October 3. 2013
 Mead says goodbye to his Mom
Can government properly "recognize... fundamental differences" between males and females?
I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table.
Waxman: Why should I read it?
Sultan: The sun sets on Washington DC
The ‘Washington Monument’ sequester strategy
Microsoft investors push for chairman Gates to step down
Coyote: What Is Wrong With Health Care, Though My Diagnosis is Opposite of the Left's
Illegal Drugs Are Cheaper and More Pure Than Ever
Remember the Permanent Panhandler? Gotham’s next mayor could dismantle 20 years of progress in establishing public order.
One Cosmos: Real Socialism is the Only Remedy for Socialist Fantasies
The Real Big Winner of the Arab Spring
In truth, the Obama administration and satraps like Andrew
Sullivan have been a lot kinder toward terrorists than they are toward
Republicans.
Waxman on 10,535 Pages of Obamacare Regs: ‘Is It Important That I Read It?’
October 2, 2013 - 4:08 PM
Rep. Henry Waxman (D.-Calif.) (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
(CNSNews.com) – When asked by CNSNews.com whether he had read all
10,535 pages of final Obamacare regulations that have so far been
published in the Federal Register, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.)
asked in return whether it was "important" the he read them, dismissed
the inquiry as a "propaganda question," and did not ultimately anwer.
CNSNews.com: "What I was going to ask you is if you've read those [10,535 pages] of regulations."
Waxman said: “Have you read them?”
CNSNews.com: "No. Have you read them?"
Waxman said: “Is it important that I read it?”
- See more at:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/waxman-10535-pages-obamacare-regs-it-important-i-read-it#sthash.GvW1C8YG.dpuf
Waxman on 10,535 Pages of Obamacare Regs: ‘Is It Important That I Read It?’
October 2, 2013 - 4:08 PM
Rep. Henry Waxman (D.-Calif.) (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
(CNSNews.com) – When asked by CNSNews.com whether he had read all
10,535 pages of final Obamacare regulations that have so far been
published in the Federal Register, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.)
asked in return whether it was "important" the he read them, dismissed
the inquiry as a "propaganda question," and did not ultimately anwer.
CNSNews.com: "What I was going to ask you is if you've read those [10,535 pages] of regulations."
Waxman said: “Have you read them?”
CNSNews.com: "No. Have you read them?"
Waxman said: “Is it important that I read it?”
- See more at:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/waxman-10535-pages-obamacare-regs-it-important-i-read-it#sthash.GvW1C8YG.dpuf
Waxman
on 10,535 Pages of Obamacare Regs: ‘Is It Important That I Read It?’ -
See more at:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/waxman-10535-pages-obamacare-regs-it-important-i-read-it#sthash.GvW1C8YG.dpuf
Waxman
on 10,535 Pages of Obamacare Regs: ‘Is It Important That I Read It?’ -
See more at:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/waxman-10535-pages-obamacare-regs-it-important-i-read-it#sthash.GvW1C8YG.dpu
Waxman
on 10,535 Pages of Obamacare Regs: ‘Is It Important That I Read It?’ -
See more at:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/waxman-10535-pages-obamacare-regs-it-important-i-read-it#sthash.GvW1C8YG.dpuf
Wednesday, October 2. 2013
I've read a few articles like this and I still don't get it.
Dartmouth Will Spend $3.6 Million on Special Gay & Lesbian Housing
Good grief. I can imagine Animal House 2.0, but I do not want to.
Five Eye-Popping Naked-Student Traditions at American Colleges
Republicans made me lose my car keys
How to nap
14 Embarrassing Sex Questions – Answered!
Here Comes the Spoils Society
Should hairbraiders have to build a barber college, become barbering instructors to teach hairbraiding?
In the future, most people will live in a total surveillance state – and some of us might even like it
Escaping 'Government' Schools
The current crisis, at its heart, is about greed and the human lust for authority over other humans.
Indian baby farms
AVI thought we might like this quote
Indian baby farms
Indian baby farms
Tuesday, October 1. 2013
Possibly not, but he's very good at selling books. He seems likeable enough, though.
Monday, September 30. 2013
Sunday, September 29. 2013
Upper Manhattan Residents Say Skunks Are Stinking Up Neighborhood
Skunks are cute, adaptable little critters (weasel family), but their only real predator is the Great Horned Owl. My family never had a dog who didn't get skunked once, or a dog who never got slapped by a Porkie. The hard but non-fatal lessons of life.
As a country bumpkin from Minnesota, I wanted to be a tough New Yorker, but people told me I was just "too nice"
Shall We Call Bill de Blasio a Socialist?
Bill de Blasio and the Jews of New York
A movie to see if you haven't: Margin Call. It's on Netflix. It's a New York movie.
Saturday, September 28. 2013
Friday, September 27. 2013
 Image via Moonbattery
Schools Are Not Parents - Children in Virginia Beach are suspended from school for playing with an airsoft gun at home.
VDH: The Late, Great Middle Class - It’s never been harder to find a decent job making something real.
25 Reasons College Is Not At All Like Real Life
What Happens When Stores Let Customers Return Whatever They Want?
Daniel Henninger: Let ObamaCare Collapse - Congress can't kill the entitlement state. Only the American people can.
Detroit Spent Billions Extra on Pensions
Now Revealed by Stripper: Booker’s Twitter Messages
A Deep Look Into The Shady World Of The Private Prison Industry
Are you ready for some “ObamaCare”!?
Campus Feminism. Is it forever?
Verbal SAT Scores Plunge To Fresh Record Low
Walsh: A political turning point?
Any party that cannot successfully sell freedom and personal liberty doesn’t deserve power. The trick will be to explain — by word and deed — that the Democrats’ Manichean choice (Big Brother or the orphanage) is a false one, that less can be more, and that the restoration of a Republic of self-reliant citizens will benefit all Americans — not simply the government class and its clients.
At One Cosmos' Socialism Would Be Easy If Not for F*cking Creativity (h/t Am. Digest, which has lots of diverting material):
Science, strictly speaking, explains everything but creativity. Not only that, but in its reductionist mania, it generally attempts to explain the creative via the uncreative, the intelligent via the mindless, freedom via necessity, and the living via the lifeless. It just waves a magic wand over the ontological discontinuities and pretends this is an explanation.
I noticed this yesterday while thumbing through a recent Scientific American in the orthopedist's office. No matter what subject they touched -- the Big Bang, the origin of life, the intersection of ideology and science -- every author had the same adolescent tone of smug superiority to go along with their dull absence of style and their one-dimensional shallowness of thought.
Harsanyi: The Bogus Case for “Compromise” - Conviction is not a political liability
Look at the picture of this new trash can. It really is funny...
So is this: Brown University to sponsor Naked Week:
"The Facebook event page, also indicates that the six-day program will include a clothed event called “Stripping Privilege: Undressing the Isms” on Wednesday which will include discussion on “power, privilege, race, class, gender, ability, and other isms how they intersect with nudity, body image, nudity in relation to (de)sexuality, etc.”"
Rigid Campus Feminism: Is It Forever?
Thursday, September 26. 2013
Wednesday, September 25. 2013
Via Theo
Tuesday, September 24. 2013
Welcome, fellow and fellowess fans of NCIS. Tonight's the night we say goodbye to everybody's favorite ex-Mossad assassin and adorable NCIS agent, Ziva David. The goodbye story will continue into next week, and then this wonderful chapter will come to a close.
For those of you who missed the breaking story a few months ago, you can get caught up to date here. My full series of NCIS posts is here.
We shall continue below the fold.
Continue reading "NCIS: Tonight's the night"
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Image via 
Rachel Lucas: 
