Wednesday, April 10. 2013
Powerline: The Philosopher king for the nanny state
If we the people need coercive paternalism because we're too dumb to pick our own food, then surely we are too dumb to be allowed to select our governmental representation. Therefore, I propose myself as Philosopher King. Why not me? I did study Plato in college. He invented an ideal, all-wise and altruistic totalitarianism. First thing I would do in the job would be to eliminate the position and fire myself, which is what my philosophy would require.
Well, that's what I would do if I did not happen to enjoy the power and perqs too much...
Point is, I think Bowdoin Prof. Sarah Conly is insane in the (probably) non-clinical sense. After all, is she exempt from bad choices herself? Who are the ubermenschen? Professors? God forbid.
Via Captain Capitalism's My Amazing Awesome Super Intelligent Friends, a big-time Millennial whine: My friends and I are in career purgatory:
By and large, my friends and my friends’ friends are all intelligent, educated, gregarious, and creative. They’re insightful and thoughtful. They’re critical and ambitious. So why do so many employers put them in positions that don’t take full advantage of what they’ve got to offer?
and
I’ve thought seriously about changing my LinkedIn profile blurb to something like, “My career goal is to gain a position that energizes, excites, challenges, and values me, so that I can continue to develop my skills and talents, and grow as a person.” I wonder if that would catch anyone’s eye?
Kate, we're all special, aren't we? But I think you're a little too special for my shop. Trust me, anybody who read that would gag.
Related, if you control for the obvious variables (hours worked, education, experience, etc), young childless women make more money than young childless men. So there is a wage gap, but it's not what people say it is.
 Image via Acculturated
Sidwell Friends School gets a juicy scandal
From London to Edinburgh in double the time of a stagecoach - in electric car
Girls and women who have Asperger’s syndrome
Obama, Plan B, Fear of Promiscuity, Sex and the Single Teen
The mysterious epidemic of worker disabilty
Gun policy and law enforcement: Survey Results
What Does Obama Think He’s Doing On Guns?
Bendectin, and silicone boobs
Watergate redux: Mitch McConnell seeks FBI investigation
Wash U. in St. Louis earns FIRE’s “Speech Code of the Month” Dishonor
When, if ever, is it right to use recent horrific crimes to push for political changes you wanted anyway?
Gabby Giffords and husband own firearms
Sultan:
Conservatism never wins. It loses. It comes to be associated with slick empty men and women who smile a lot and lie a lot. And that in the long run is far more devastating than the occasional senate candidate who says something horrible or idiotic. Candidates like Mitt Romney are more damaging than a hundred Todd Akins because they fix the image of a soulless party that cares about nothing and no one.
It is better to have the public think that the Republican Party stands for horrible and divisive things than to think that it stands for nothing. There are people who will vote for horrible things... but who will vote for nothing except in opposition to the something that the other party is selling?
The Navy's new Laser Gun
Tuesday, April 9. 2013
 The World-Changing Margaret Thatcher - Not since Catherine the Great has there been a woman of such consequence.
Annette Funicello, RIP
CURL: Obama’s 1 percent lifestyle hits a nerve
More like the .00001% - how many of the 1% have two custom Boeing 747s, plus the Marine 1 chopper, on 24-hour call for work or pleasure? Did you know this:
As a security measure, Marine One always flies in a group with identical helicopters, sometimes as many as five. One helicopter carries the President, while the others serve as decoys. Upon take-off these helicopters begin to shift in formation to obscure the location of the President.
NWS predicts active hurricane season
It's generator-buying time
Elites Close Ranks Around Ivy League Intermarriage
American Elites Fleeing Big Cities for the Heartland
Well, they still seem to go to New York first to try to earn their stripes
The twisted ‘logic’ of diversity
The NBA gets an A+ for diversity
Boston's taxicab mess – and the oligopoly behind it
‘Billions and Billions and Billions’: Biden Has No Comment on Fisker Failure
Amazon tax an Illinois disaster
Toxic Government by Democrats: Baltimore
Williams: Minority View: Why is Black Unemployment so High?
Thanks to technology, Americans spend dramatically less on food than they did 3 decades ago
More Than 101 Million Working Age Americans Do Not Have A Job
Wasted, unproductive lives, with a burden of shame especially for men. It's heartbreaking. I blame Bush.
Public Sector Unions Reeling In Wisconsin
Free choice is good.
US Passes Saudi Arabia In Oil Production
What will happen to Europe? It seems almost certain that it will gradually descend into a sort of third-world debacle -- or, rather, much of California or most of Detroit today.
Monday, April 8. 2013
King of Fearmongers, and masters of direct-mail marketing.
 Photo: Dunkin Donuts wedding cake (via Laughing Squid)
Princeton gals: It's about class, not feminism
Medicate Your Children to Guarantee Compliance
Should the Modern Man Be Taking Testosterone? Testosterone deficiency is exceedingly less common than
marketing campaigns and "you only think you feel fine" culture would
have us believe.
Fascinating Documentary About Kasparov vs. Deep Blue
MSNBC — All your children are belong to us
"The Meritocracy As We Know It Mostly Works To Perpetuate the Existing Upper Class"
Getting a liberal arts PhD will turn you into a train wreck
Teamsters Face Pension Meltdown
Kentucky’s Runaway Pensions - Nonprofit groups have been living well off the taxpayer, too.
Democrats Starting to Worry about ObamaCare
Here Comes Obama's Raid On YOUR Retirement
War on Poverty: Despite the $15 trillion U.S. taxpayers have spent since the war on
poverty’s inception, poverty in America is largely unchanged.
Delingpole: An English class for trolls, professional offence-takers and climate activists
Jobs Report? What Jobs Report? Hey Look, Gay Marriage!
We are, however, thrilled that we don’t have a Republican in the White House, because if we did, the press would be incessantly yammering about this bad news until we were all sick of it. As it is, they are likely to say as little as possible about what appears to be a massive failure of economic policy and go back to covering the really important issues, like gay marriage.
If a Republican president got very busy on social issues at a time of economic stagnation and disappointment, there would be earnest hand-wringing of the “What’s Wrong with Kansas” variety about how American rubes were being diverted from their true economic interests by the skillful manipulation of emotionally charged social issues and identity politics. This would be taken as a sign of the cynicism of the ruling party and the clueless credulity of the hypnotized voters.
Sunday, April 7. 2013
Photo of somebody's camera bag - not mine. I don't have a camera bag because I mostly use little pocket cameras.
Prayers for the Warren family
Marriage and money
Find a Man Today, Graduate Tomorrow - "Susan Patton told young women to look for a mate in college. Liberals went crazy. My mom said the same thing."
They used to be called dormitories: 250 sq. ft. micro apartments in NYC
Discovery Of A 17th Century Spanish Shipwreck Yields Awesome Treasure
One culture must always win:
“When we make everything safe enough, nothing bad will happen, to anyone, ever again.”
The story of the prosecution of Amanda Knox
U.S. Army Lists Christianity, Catholicism, Judaism and “Islamophobia” as forms of “Religious Extremism”
Johns Hopkins’s and Planned Parenthood’s troubling extremism
Rockets From Gaza; Folly From the UN
Saturday, April 6. 2013
 Target apologizes for "Manatee Grey"
Nightmares drove NJ man to admit 1990 killing (h/t neoneo)
Identifying the Right “Depreciation” Tax Policy: The Most Boring – but Important – Article You Will Read Today
Freeman Dyson speaks out about climate science, and fudge
Everybody knows that Big Oil pays Dyson to utter this nonsense
AGW: The End of an Illusion
Lowest Labor Force Participation Rate Since 1979
It keeps getting worse
Dying Monopolies – The Post Office
Catholic Gonzaga University won’t allow Catholic students to form Catholic group
Most Democrats now believe ObamaCare won’t help and may hurt them
MF Global Trustee's Report Blasts Obama Bundler Jon Corzine
Shouldn't Crozine be in jail by now?
From Corrupt Pols Running America’s Biggest Nanny State:
In New York, the government has its finger in every pie, and politics is full of hypocritical blue swill about helping the poor and the needy. New York has a government that wants to do what it shouldn’t do, that can’t do what it ought to do, and that has been hijacked by a criminal class of political hacks. This is what blue model decline looks like.
Why Is North Korea Our Problem?
The gussying up of (Hillary) Clinton’s standing is one of the silliest political exercises of our time.
Smartest woman in the world. Went to Wellesley, after all. Fancy chick college, studied Alinsky.
Good growth in the Mexican economy
But it's illegal for Americans to emigrate to Mexico. Mexico does not permit immigration, but they may change their mind if they have too many jobs that Mexicans won't do.
The US Navy's Rail Gun
Hinderaker on entitlement reform:
That’s what the Left has come to: a reactionary force, determined to uphold an unjust status quo against even the slightest reform. Champions of the wealthiest segment of American society, out to screw the young. But it is hard to see a successful endgame: the entitlements simply cannot be sustained in anything like their present form. That is a mathematical proposition, not a political one.
Stats via Ace:
All rifles (that includes the AR-15) were involved in fewer homicides in 2011 than blunt objects, fists and knives.
1.5X more homicides were committed with blunt objects.
2.2X more homicides were committed with fists.
5.2X more homicides were committed with knives.
It's definitely time for a national fist registry
Thursday, April 4. 2013
It's from Peter Hitchens: How I am partly to blame for Mass Immigration.
Our friend AVI put up a comment here yesterday to the effect that Leftist forces are far more interested in undermining Western culture than they give a damn about the pawns they use.
From "Tyler Durden" on blaming the euro:
There are very few limits to what you can do to people in the modern interpretation of democracy. A version where only majority rule is required, but where there is no longer a respect for personal negative rights – as we know them from the American Constitution.
The easiest target will always be wealthy people, or even just working people and savers who did the right thing all their lives. As the bloated welfare states begin to collapse under their irresponsible promises, their crumbling value systems and their unsustainable demographics, it will be easy to convince more than 50 percent of voters that confiscating and stealing other people's money is OK for the greater good. Boston Consulting Group calculated that 28 percent of ALL private wealth is needed to meet just existing debts – not future obligations , mind you – and the money can only come from one place… Your pockets. Beware.
A lot of things have gone wrong over the past few years, but the seeds were planted many years ago. In the form of pressure for more people having the “right” to own their properties, even if they did not fulfill the traditional mortgage criteria – hence subprime. In the form of enormous “entitlements” to not just poor, but also middle-class people in the welfare states – hence ballooning deficits and debt. In the form of a Euro, a grand, political project with no practical foundation – hence crisis after crisis, with the dominoes stretching far into the distance.
For sure, a lot of financial institutions took advantage of the hands they were dealt. They are not without guilt and responsibility for the current mess. But the real problems lie not in people trying to take advantage of whatever conditions they operate under. The real problem lies in the framework that is created by politicians, preventing free markets to deal with excesses in the way capitalism always does.
Horowitz: This Is Columbia University
The Benefits of Moving Back Home
ObamaCare in Trouble? Exchange provision delayed, as lawmakers push to repeal another
Even Joe Klein: Obamacare Incompetence
Again? Government pushes banks to make subprime loans
Unbelievable!… Obama Is Pushing Risky Subprime Auto Loans, Too
Father Of Newtown Victim: 'I Applaud' The NRA's Proposals
For millions of Americans, “disability” isn’t just a medical diagnosis, it’s also a state of mind — a state of mind we subsidize, sustain, and encourage.
George Will:
Twenty-five years ago, President Reagan, paraphrasing Education Secretary William Bennett, said: “If you serve a child a rotten hamburger in America, federal, state and local agencies will investigate you, summon you, close you down, whatever. But if you provide a child with a rotten education, nothing happens, except that you’re liable to be given more money to do it with.”
It's Not Easy Being Green - As climate change worsens, the internal strains in the environmentalist movement are starting to show.
Good grief. These people are not living in reality.
VDH: Krugman’s California Dreaming - He sees a renaissance attributable to the decline of the state’s Republican party.
Wednesday, April 3. 2013
February, March, April and May are my busiest times of the year at work. No time to think except in the shower. No time for thoughtful posts. One must make hay while the sun shines.
More gun news: Connecticut Customers Rush to Store to Purchase Guns, Ammo
You betcha. Got a good load of .22 LR and a large load of 20 and 12 ga ammo yesterday. That's me: insane. 'Insane' crowds as customers flood Connecticut gun stores before vote
Piers Morgan has armed security. And I read that Jim Carrey has an armed bodyguard whenever in public. Since I am cheap and not wealthy, I have to be my own bodyguard. If armed protection is OK for the President and Piers Morgan, it's OK for me.
BTW, Drudge is truly fun today
Tuesday, April 2. 2013
I can't say I am too thrilled with what the Dem-ruled Connecticut legislature is about to do with firearms. I like to try my best to be law-abiding, but I do not know how many firearms we have around the place any more than I know how many hammers we have. Some are antiques, workable probably and oiled, but not fired for 30 years. Some are probably in closets and drawers we have never opened and in dark corners of the attics which we have never explored.
This place has been inhabited by firearm owners, country men, since 1823. As far as I know, not one of them every shot anybody, even if they deserved it.
My late father-in-law's farm, on which we now blissfully reside in commuting distance to Hartford, always had handguns (old .45 revolvers) in the drawer in the tack room of the barn (in case a horse needed shooting - broken leg, terminal colic, etc) and a .410 leaning on the barn wall for pigeons, Copperheads, and rattlers. He liked pigeon stew, and plenty of them lived in the barn before we tightened it up. (I liked the squab better.)
When he lived here, there was no crime at all. He was a big shot insurance fellow, and a gentleman farmer just as I aspire to be. Math genius actuary-turned executive, but farm-raised. Family tradition. Family farm, now. Third generation here, if we can keep it with the taxes which insist on taxing us as if we were a 60-acre housing development (they term that "taxable at best use". What is "best use"?). Otherwise, some developer will fill it with McMansions on 1/4-acre lots with no woodchucks, no horses, no goat, no meadows, no snakes, no barn pigeons, no barns, no barn cats, and no firearms. Safe and sterile.
Like most states with some creepy urban zones, most firearm crime is done by career crims and sociopathic and drug gangs, but I do not see our wise legislature attending to that at all. There are no dainty female suburban votes in that.
Connecticut's Gun Control: A Rush To Pass Laws That Couldn't Have Prevented Tragedy
It is so much easier to take on the law-abiding than the crims, because evil can never be legislated away. See Three Felonies a Day
Meet the new climate deniers
Fiendish Turtle Smuggler Tried to Steal Over 10% of an Entire Species
A Brief History of Applause
10 Things I hate about LA
Pregnant "man" and his divorce case
A.D.H.D. Seen in 11% of U.S. Children as Diagnoses Rise
The Bible vs. the Heart - The human heart alone is a terribly flawed guide to social policy.
When Men Forsake God, Tyranny Always Follows
“Why so many jobs are crappy"
Is Disability the New Welfare?
“Unfit for Work: The Startling Rise of Disability in America”
The Obamas live the 1 percent life
Connecticut lawmakers clamp down on guns
The Bigotry attitude: Inequality for All:
Bigotry is too prized a resource to just watch it drain away in some communal pool of brotherhood and sisterhood. The only thing to do is to find ways to dam it up and create national parks of bigotry that will allow future generations of civil rights warriors to rough it by camping out under the burning crosses while admiring themselves for their artificial courage in defense of a manufactured cause.
Monday, April 1. 2013
KC Johnson: A College with Strange Sex Misconduct Hearings ('No' Means 'No,' and 'Yes' Can Mean 'No' Too)
If I were a horny college student today, I think I'd feel more comfortable chasing the townie girls. But that runs up against this advice: Princeton mom: Women have a 'shelf life'. Why that article got so much attention is beyond me, because every gal knows it even if they decide to wait a while.
Warmist claims Anthropogenic Global Warming causes more polar ice. The pirate doesn't call it "HotColdWetDry" for nothing. (h/t, reader)
Indeed, it explains everything, and few theories have this sort of power to explain everything that happens outdoors - after the fact.
Saturday, March 30. 2013
MORE FREE STUFF– FOR DEADBEATS!
As she asks, "Does doing the “right thing” even matter anymore, or does it just make you a doofus?"
Friday, March 29. 2013
Scott Turow on Amazon/Goodreads: This is how modern monopolies can be built.
Smart move by Amazon. A heck of a lot more people read Goodreads than read the NYT Book Review or, God knows, the NY Review of Books or The London Review of Books. I do enjoy the intelligence of the London Review.
People still love books but, with the appealing Teaching Company DVDs, it's tough for me to do more than a book per week.
I am just back from my assigned 1- hour Good Friday vigil at church (4-5 AM). So quiet, peaceful, serious, in semi-darkness (but with an almost -full moon shining in the windows) with the black-draped cross. I imagined being one of those who kept him company during his execution. I prayed for the souls of all of those I care about, and I prayed that his death would indeed redeem my sinful nature and my flawed soul. Lay it all at the foot of the cross, Pastor advises.
"Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living."
They bought it for $3 at a yard sale
Excellent investment, but I would not have even noticed it. Those people have a good eye for junk.
A review of gun safes.
I just keep mine locked in a bedroom closet. That meets the legal requirement here. But, since I have a carry permit, can I carry at night?
New York State: Least free state in the US
Freedom in the 50 states, but mostly in the red states?
Hunters Begin Boycotting Colorado
What the heck happened to Colorado?
But why does marriage require a license?
It does not, really. There is "common law marriage."
15 Year Old Wisconsin Conservative Meets Bullying From Teachers
If Obama Really Wanted to Reduce Gun Crimes He’d Focus on the Inner City… But He Won’t Because It’s Too Obvious
The culture war was never a fair fight
Sunstein sees government officials as an enlightened “guardian class” ...
We can't even be trusted to feed ourselves anymore. Who anointed these guardians? Aren't they just lowly politicos - a widely-disrespected class of people in America?
Cuban tourism: Castro Cash Cow Gets Fatter than Ever
Do they go there for the whores or for the Poverty Porn?
Media Ignores Lavish Obama Vacations, Slammed Bush for Mountain Biking
Teachers’ Unions Don’t Empower Teachers
A Steyn rant: The end of free speech in Canada
Here's Hate Speech for you: I hate those Canadian court Thought Police jerks. So crucify me.
The Truth about Bob Woodward - and Nixon
Seduction: Tell them how special and smart they are
The Wisdom of Dan Quayle
America’s “Daddy Party” Needs To Grow Up
Let's cool it with the marriage wars
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Tell youngsters the truth: 
Image stolen from 
good dog warning sign 
Bruce Walker: 