Monday, September 14. 2015
 Like many really dumb ideas, this one started in San Francisco. In 2007, San Francisco banned disposable plastic grocery bags.
Basic science quiz
Personal trainers sweat as Washington, D.C., readies new rules
The Weariness of the Whiners - The cult of the whining victim is now ubiquitous.
The Fainting Couch at Columbia - A new 'sexual-respect initiative' puts another stake into the heart of academic seriousness.
Boy, 13, Charged With Assault After Kissing Girl on a Dare
NY Times: Climate Deniers Have “an intellectual stance that is uncomfortably close to Hitler’s”
Whites, as it happens, are even more “underrepresented” at Berkeley than blacks.
The Redistribution Fallacy - The federal government knows how to support a welfare state. It does not know how to transfer money from the rich to the poor.
The more I learn, the more I am convinced that 9 out of 10 "experts" are just making shit up.
Poor nations want U.S. to pay reparations for extreme weather
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Migration Crisis and Europe’s Crippling Doubts.
Europe is going to run out of altruism long before it runs out of refugees.
Germany Closes Border to Migrant Masses After 13,000 Flood into Munich in One Day
75% of them are young males
Sunday, September 13. 2015
 - Took a drive yesterday to Long Island City (part of Queens, NYC).
Long Island City (L.I.C.) is the westernmost residential and commercial neighborhood of the New York City borough of Queens. L.I.C. is noted for its rapid and ongoing residential growth and gentrification, its waterfront parks, and its thriving arts community.[1] L.I.C. has among the highest concentration of art galleries, art institutions, and studio space of any neighborhood in New York City.
Went there to see a one-act play festival at The Secret Theater. Golly, LIC is changing. High-rises everywhere under construction. We had supper at a superb tiny French bistro, LIC Market. Everybody who works there is French. You can park on the street in LIC, no problem. As a daughter says, a gritty mix of industrial, residential, and business: Real NYC.
We meandered through Astoria while en route. Got a little lost. I have never been to Astoria. It is one of the most pleasant, middle-class, and remarkably multi-cultural places I have seen. Of all things, a large Maltese population too- over 20,000. Who'da thunk it? But if you think about it, there is little to do in Malta.
It's not too far from where the big game - Jokevitch vs. Federer - is today. I can't miss that.
- Out-of-towners like us are always more familiar with Manhattan, with its totalitarian arithmetical road grid. Here is something wonderful, probably worth a trip from anywhere: Picasso, Completely Himself in 3 Dimensions. It's on my to-do list. We never miss major Picasso shows, because his craft and imagination blows my mind.
- Something else fun: Immersive (aka Interactive) theater in NYC. I have heard reports about how much fun it is. A friend had his daughter's Sweet 16th party for 25 gals at one of the scavenger hunt "plays," and a couple of people told me about the MacBeth one.
- At my point in life, a visit to NYC is always good for a dose of hyper-stimulation and amazement in the works of man but I am always happy to return to my quiet more pastoral home where the loudest noise is a cricket. If I won the Powerball, though, I think I'd buy a brownstone (with working fireplaces) in the West Village in a flash. I need both. Prosperous people in NYC belong to elite clubs as private retreats, and have dachas in the country too. I could handle that.
My lovely daughters live as if they owned NYC despite living on a shoestring. Fearless, undaunted, resourceful and adventurous, they just take daily bites of that apple as so many young people need to, and shoot for the stars. No bourgeois instincts, it seems - like their Mom. All the same, they do love to come home sometimes for love, free food, and to hit some tennis balls like the prepster kids they are.
Saturday, September 12. 2015
Friday, September 11. 2015
Mass multicultural immigration is a highly disruptive, if not destructive, event to an established, stable culture. These things used to be called invasions because, even without force of arms, the power of masses of unwanted people can be difficult to resist (see Mexico/US).
Regular people know that mass immigration will assimilate with difficulty, even if they want to. Regular people know that they will not value or respect their history, their legacies, their traditions, as they do. This is why regular people do not welcome mass multicultural invasions.
For us ordinary people, it's much more about preserving a culture and a neighborhood than it is about economics.
Noonan: The Migrants and the Elites - A humanitarian crisis threatens the future of Western institutions.
Predictably, Thomas Picketty: In migrants crisis, Europe must follow Germany’s lead
Wise thoughts re Noonan from Fernandez: Prediction From the Grave
The Unlearned Lessons of 9/11:
... the centuries-long belief that all peoples everywhere are embryonic Westerners should have been shattered by the slaughter in Manhattan and at the Pentagon. The attacks were a horrifically graphic reminder that our core ideals––human rights, sex equality, tolerance of difference, peaceful coexistence, personal and political freedom, material prosperity, the separation of church and state, free speech, and consensual government founded on law––were historical anomalies rather than the destiny of all humanity.
Homeless by Choice' in New York
“Snow White and Her Seven Friends”
News about the lady's orgasm
They recommend that women masturbate more
Don’t Expect Health Benefits from NYC’s New Salt Law
Ridiculous
The Female Psychopath
The more inept you are, the smarter you think you are
There is ... day by day in America, a growing tolerance of intolerance.
I am tolerant of intolerance, which makes me piously tolerant across the board
The 2016 election is essentially about whether America will remain a country.
Dem Activists to Release “We’re All Mexicans” Song to Combat Donald Trump
This guy loves Hillary
Donald Trump is irreverent and amusing
A vulgar individual too
In Case You Thought The Chinese Know What They're Doing
The metastasizing migrant catastrophe is not the result of famine or drought or disease; It is man-made and should have been prevented
Questions About the Hegira to Germany
New Poll Shows Why Palestinians Have No Interest in Peace
Fred Reed: Why They Hate Us
The rest of the world is not a 51st State
Thursday, September 10. 2015
Wednesday, September 9. 2015
EMPLOYER COSTS FOR EMPLOYEE COMPENSATION – JUNE 2015
Private industry employers spent an average of $31.39 per hour worked for employee compensation in
June 2015, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Wages and salaries averaged $21.82 per
hour worked and accounted for 69.5 percent of these costs, while benefits averaged $9.56 and accounted
for the remaining 30.5 percent. Total compensation costs for state and local government workers
averaged $44.22 per hour worked in June 2015. Total compensation costs for civilian workers, which
include private industry and state and local government workers, averaged $33.19 per hour worked in
June 2015.
Employees of Federal Contractors to Get Paid Sick Leave
" 'Contractors should take note that this requirement
does not take effect immediately and is not self-implementing. It takes effect
in 2017 and only after the Department of Labor issues rules,' [said Shlomo Katz,
a government contracts lawyer at Brown Rudnick].... 'The executive order
requires covered contractors to provide sick leave in addition to vacation and
other fringe benefits already required by the Service Contract Act and Davis
Bacon Act,' Katz added. 'Some will argue that the President is exceeding his
authority by mandating sick leave because Congress has already legislated via
those two laws (SCA and Davis-Bacon) that government contractors provide
'prevailing' fringe benefits to workers, and there is no indication that the
President has done any studies to determine that sick leave is a "prevailing"
fringe benefit.' " (Bloomberg BNA)
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just reported that President Obama has already effectively raised the minimum wage. How so? The Obamacare employer mandate requires employers that do not provide “qualifying” health benefits to pay a steep penalty. Few minimum-wage employers provide Obamacare-compliant health coverage. So the penalty adds to their cost of hiring—and thus reduces employment. As the CBO puts it: [S]ome employers will respond to the penalty by hiring fewer people at or just above the minimum wage—an effect that would be similar to the impact of raising the minimum wage for those companies’ employees. Congressional Budget Office Increasing the minimum wage would have two principal effects on low-wage workers. Most of them would receive higher pay that would increase their family’s income, and some of those families would see their income rise above the federal poverty threshold. But some jobs for low-wage workers would probably be eliminated, the income of most workers who became jobless would fall substantially, and the share of low-wage workers who were employed would probably fall slightly.
Tuesday, September 8. 2015
Monday, September 7. 2015
 Photo is a recent one of your Editor laboring on the farm, even on Labor Day. There is no rest for the weary.
Easy Peach Tart
Your cat doesn’t love you: science
Stranded on Liberia's lab chimp islands
Do Computers Die Of Old Age?
Protesters march against Sacramento County supervisors vote that marijuana crops are waste of water
Purified wastewater triggers release of arsenic within aquifer, study finds
Like No-Fault Divorce, Gay Marriage Will Change Our Relationships Culture
Higher Learning at an All-Time Low
Why I quit teaching
Plunging SAT Scores Show Failure Of Federal Control
Washington Supreme Court rules charter schools are unconstitutional
Blue Staters Fleeing High-Tax Hells for Low-Tax Red States
Re Steyn: A Disgrace to the Profession
Vox and Dunning-Kruger
Pat Moynihan was right — but Bill Bratton’s still wrong
Immigrant to Mexico Calls Out Jorge Ramos on His Immigration Hypocrisy
Judge upholds controversial Arizona immigration law
Immigrant
to Mexico Calls Out Jorge Ramos on His Immigration Hypocrisy - See more
at: http://moonbattery.com/?p=62682#sthash.rRzt0RoO.dpuf
Something Rotten in the State of Britain - Review: Roger Scruton, ‘The Disappeared’
Hillary Is Totally Sorry You’re “Confused” About Her Email Scandal
Hillary Clinton: Invalid:
If I were to approach a person on the street and list off traits like "doesn’t drive," "needs food prepared," "needs help with the remote control," "needs people to bring her beverages," "has trouble remembering things,” and "doesn't pay her own bills" about someone anonymously, he wouldn’t think I was referring to a current presidential front-runner in the year 2015. He would think I was referring to his poor nana, whom he had to place in a home because she wouldn’t stop yelling at the lamp and was at risk of accidentally microwaving her dentures.
‘Hillary’ replaces ‘Jesus’ in campaign rally song
Nine Signs of the Impending American Collapse - The unmistakable signs of a disaster from which we would all suffer, the fall of the once-greatest nation on earth, have left me “shaken.”
Western Civilization: The Final Frontier?
The refugee crisis Europe helped bring on itself
Remember This Guy’ Pic: Last Year With ISIS, This Year A ‘Refugee’…
THOUSANDS of Jihadists Have Infiltrated Europe
US Policy Towards The Middle East - The Old Potomac Two Step
Obama’s Syria achievement
Saturday, September 5. 2015
Friday, September 4. 2015
 Image to celebrate Labor Day weekend, which seems to begin today
What Is America’s Worst Restaurant Chain?
F*ck Your Rules: Why I’ve Decided I’m Going to Have Fun All The Time (h/t Insty)
MSNBC to Expand Morning Joe One More Hour
Watched the show once, at the gym. Not bad.
Environmental Waste - Tom Steyer’s $1 billion “green-jobs” initiative is a bust.
Ted Cruz talks sense on climate
‘Water Shortages Are Manmade’ Economist Says - The answer to drought: let prices rise.
The Importance of Intellectual Property Protection to the U.S. Economy
Glenn Reynolds: Ordinary Americans lead the way on racial healing
America needs no racial healing. I have never seen or experienced any racial problems in my life, except those ginned up for election seasons.
Poverty Among Whites Demands Philanthropy's Attention - Four in 10 poor Americans are white
Do they want "help"?
How much smokier can a gun get?
A guy with bad hair calls the MSM political reporters to a press conference...
Hillary’s Campaign Has Already Begun to Derail
Hillary May Just Be Dumb
From Bush is a “very low-energy kind of guy”:
One of the many reasons people detest Boehner and McConnell is this very same thing: lack of energy. They must have done something to get to their present positions—something rather Machiavellian, I’d imagine. But it certainly doesn’t come across in anything that would give people the impression that they will fight for them. They don’t just fail to walk the walk, they fail to talk the talk.
Europe sells the hangman's rope - again
Okamoto condoms: objects of desire for Chinese tourists in Japan
Iran Commander: We’re Getting Prepared to Overthrow Israel
Kafka in Caracas
Netanyahu and AIPAC: Right to Fight
Thursday, September 3. 2015
 A recommended book: The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals
A good magazine: Yankee Magazine
Parents Frivolously Sue School over Nonexistent Wi-Fi Sickness. Why Are Courts Actually Giving Them a Chance?
Judge In California Delivers Uber’s Worst Nightmare
There's Nothing Mysterious About the Market - The mystery is why we keep letting government get in the way.
The insufferable return of radical chic
Obama Prophesies Climate Nightmare: Famine, Floods, Fire, Fumes and Fighting
Bill O’Reilly Tells Jorge Ramos He’s Not a Reporter “You’re an Activist”
The exhausting Mrs. Clinton
Donald Trump and the Weak Man’s Vanity
Obama’s Threats Unlikely To Stop Cyber Attacks
Marx Materializes at the Border - The migrants overwhelming Europe force the socialists to confront the global mess they created.
Continental Drift: Europe at a Crossroads:
It speaks of the helplessness of a man in the street, who feels he has no control over the policies made in Brussels, Frankfurt, and Strasbourg, not to speak of Washington, and whose political power, enshrined in his vote, has been devalued to the point of irrelevance. It speaks of the frustration of the blue-collar workers, whose jobs have been taken over by foreigners from other parts of Europe and whose unemployment insurance and social benefits must be shared with foreigners from outside Europe. The influx of immigrants makes it more difficult to find a job in times of crisis and keeps the wages low in times of growth. It is thus easy to blame the unemployment and stagnant wages on them, although the root causes may lie elsewhere.
The Work versus Welfare Trade-Off: Europe
Beijing at the Corner of Desperation and Panic
Survey: 2/3 of Natsec Pros Give Iran Deal Thumbs Down
Iran: Assessment of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action: Strategic Consequences for U.S. National Security
Russia Puts Boots on the Ground in Syria
What We Owe the Syrian Boy in the Surf
The Truth About Congressional Pro-Israel Theater
Wednesday, September 2. 2015
Tuesday, September 1. 2015
Saturday, August 29. 2015
 Is the Fed Necessary?
No
Trial Lawyers Get Rich, Plaintiffs Get Coupons
I once got a check for $1.64 from one of those
Brownie: Stop Blaming Me for Hurricane Katrina
Scapegoated
Why the other Republicans can’t push Trump off-screen
A vivid character is why. Obama was a vivid character too. Trump is like Teddy Roosevelt.
Indian sisters told they will be repeatedly gang-raped as punishment for their brother's crime
Your daily challenge to test your multicultural sensitivity and tolerance
Gloucester update: Libertarians and Heroin
Has the War on Drugs ever worked in the US?
Uber Shows How To Break Crony Capitalism
I love Uber. It's the limo service for regular people.
Friday, August 28. 2015
It is expected to be a model regulatory system for the whole country: In the nation’s capital, a new business to regulate: D.C.’s personal trainers
Like so many regulations (manicurists? barbers?), I understand that part of the impetus comes from protection of existing guilds, but why can't government just leave people alone to pursue their honest trades?
Thursday, August 27. 2015
No double moon in 2015, or ever
I love New York, even though it’s trying to kill me
The Sidewalk Shed, a Ubiquitous New York Eyesore, Gets a Makeover
Bottom Story of the Day: Lion Kills Man
Gay black guy kills 2 happy white people
Bottom Story of the Day: Lion Kills Man
"On its own terms, the logic of the same-sex marriage movement inexorably
leads to the embrace of polyamory and, even, the removal of legal
sanctions against incestuous marriages."
Is America one country?
Well, you can say it was assembled and held together by wars - not voluntarily
Donald Trump Gets Earful in Spanish as Latino Outlets Air Disdain
Houston’s Proposed Bathroom Ordinance for Transgenders ‘Endangers Women and Girls,’ Group Says
Forget Criminals, Police Now Fear Activists and the Media
Community-Based Chaos - The de Blasio administration has all the wrong answers on the homeless mentally ill.
Illinois Towns Drowning in Pension Debt From Hundreds of Funds
Public pension shocker: Shutting a pension plan actually costs taxpayers money
The Economic Effects of Adopting the Corporate Tax Rates of the OECD, the UK, and Canada
How to put some teeth into the nuclear deal with Iran
Shortsighted on Cuba
Wednesday, August 26. 2015
 Global Warming Killed 30% Of Moose, Is Preventing Bears From Hibernating?
New England has moose coming out of our ears
Stockholm Environment Institute: Carbon credits undercut climate change action
Call off the bee-pocalypse: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high
How Much Yiddish Do You Know?
If you live in NYC for a while, you pick up quite a bit of Yiddish slang
The kids are not all right: The bleak future of the millennial generation
Obama voters
McArdle: You Can't Time the Market
Sure can. Buy low, sell high.
China government buying stocks to prop markets
Brilliant plan - if you have no real markets
Right Move for the Fed Is Hike in Interest Rates So Markets Come Alive
Homeland Security Raids Rentboy.com - DHS "will use its unique authorities to disrupt and dismantle" gay escort sites, says special investigator.
Homeland Security? What a joke. Protecting me from gay prostitutes? Expensive joke.
Hitler has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life.
New CMP video: StemExpress CEO says Planned Parenthood is “a volume institution”
So, Lois Lerner Had a Second Secret Email, Using the Name "Toby
Miles," With Which She Conducted Official, But Secret, IRS Business
How many criminals in Washington?
Our hyperactive, grasping federal government has inserted its wasteful, probing fingers into just about everything these days.
Economic Freedom in America Is Declining Mostly Because of Creeping
Protectionism and the Loss of Rule of Law and Property Rights
TNR: What If Stalin Had Computers? A new book contemplates the end of capitalism (again)—it's a nice story, but a terrible plan
Gee, if only...
The Very Real Economic Costs of Birthright Citizenship
Anchor Baby Delivered Every 93 Seconds
How I Became a Social Conservative by Default - I didn't become a social conservative, social conservatism came toward me.
HOW TO SPOT A CULTURAL LIBERTARIAN
Caitlyn Jenner Halloween Costume Sparks Internet Outrage: ‘Disgraceful,’ ‘Transphobic’
What is so special about trannies? Aren't they sort of strange?
Al Sharpton Reacts to the Concept That Working Harder Produces More Wealth
Hillary vs. Biden Would Get Ugly Fast
Give Up Already: Almost Half Of Americans Say Hillary Should Halt Presidential Campaign
Ben Carson: #BlackLivesMatter misfire
Why does the only black presidential candidate insist the US is post-racial?
Because it is
"A newspaper that wasn’t emotionally invested in peddling racial narratives would have seen another story here..."
Salon: Bernie Sanders is wrong about the Koch brothers: They’re even more dangerous than he thinks
Voters Can’t Stand Hillary
Greenfield: Mohammed Was a Pig
Al
Sharpton Reacts to the Concept That Working Harder Produces More Wealth
- See more at: http://moonbattery.com/?p=62266#sthash.1Zw0TiA2.dpuf
Tuesday, August 25. 2015
Economic liberty, free speech spook the American left
It's the inner totalitarianism of the worldwide Left. There is always an excuse to control and oppress the people, and to take their money. For the Greater Good, of course.
Shark jumps out of water chasing seal off Cape Cod
Food fetishists: Orthorexia
This is correct: China stock market panic shows what happens when stimulants wear off
Same in the US, altho China is more obvious about its attempts to control markets. In the US, ZIRP and QE were errors in the beginning, and led to a bubble stock market which needs a meaningful correction, a high colonic enema. Central banks distort markets, distort reality.
That's why Summers is wrong: The Fed looks set to make a dangerous mistake
Rates should have inched up years ago
Manufacturing Job Loss in the US
The Long Rise of the Secular Faith - The threat to religious liberty has its roots in a progressivist faith that has been steadily gaining momentum in America for at least a century and a half.
Is it time to regulate personal trainers?
Good grief. Let's regulate everybody and every thing. Zero freedom.
Times Square is packed because people like to go see the spectacle — topless ladies, Elmos, and all.
It's a circus
Crazy Like a Visionary - Elon Musk’s remarkable career reminds us that individuals matter.
Is it time to regulate personal trainers?
Vivid Example of Uber's Creative Destruction of New York Cab Business
Congressmen Push for Food Freedom, Drink Unregulated Raw Milk
Sipp:
Nobody understands that you have to be able to do it first. You can't deconstruct a goddamned thing until you can do it, and if you could do it, you wouldn't get the urge to deconstruct it. Frank Gehry can't design a proper two-holer so he designs giant monstrosities to hide the fact.
Politics is the same. You will never elect anyone to take the government apart. Once you know how to work it well enough to get in charge of it, you don't want to wreck it. You want to lord over it and add to it. No one wants the bulldozed empty lot where a Post Office once stood to be named after them. Humans don't work that way.
Atheists Warn Football Coaches and Chaplains Not to ´Instill Christianity in Vulnerable Young Men´
The Tragedy of “College for All”
The education mess is a lot like the health care mess
University of Maryland scholar: Ban the ‘Southern belle’
Boys being sophomorically-incorrect
Democrat Utopia Is Coming to a City Near You
Dem Rep.: Scott Walker ‘Tightening the Noose, Literally, Around African-Americans’
White House Throws Hillary Under the Bus=> Says Picking Biden Was Obama’s Best Decision Ever
An ominous precedent for Hillary Clinton
Via Ace:
Blasphemy laws are ridiculous, outdated, historical anachronisms. But what's interesting is, in Britain, for example, we no longer have blasphemy laws - that was seen as being a great step forward... - but what they did was introduce hate speech laws instead.
So we...no longer have old-fashioned religious blasphemy laws, we have a kind of secular blasphemy laws: there are new [rules] you are allowed not to break, there are new groups you are not allowed not to offend ...and in many ways, more insidious and pervasive than blasphemy ever was - which was a dead law on the statute books for most of the last 100 years.
-- Mick Hume of Spiked!
Obama Gets Low Marks for His Handling of Iran
Monday, August 24. 2015
Glad my kids don't go here. It's unfortunate that this is in my home state of NJ. It's unfortunate this is the prevailing viewpoint at many universities. I am not aware of any notifications like this at Syracuse, or Miami (OH), where my boys are. However, I know this pattern of thinking is common at both schools.
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Image via 
Photo: My entry wall yesterday morning. I asked him to come back on Thanksgiving.
Are We Shifting to 
Get Grillin’! Common Grilling Mistakes & How to Avoid Them
Image stolen from 