Friday, May 13. 2016
 Horse Sex: How the Winners Do It
Sucks to be the teaser horse
Four neuromyths that are still prevalent in schools – debunked
New York’s airports need to evict the TSA
Please. They are obnoxious, bullying idiots.
‘Weiner’ Covers a Political Campaign Set on Self-Destruct
Is There Hope for Hartford? Connecticut’s capital city teeters on the edge of bankruptcy.
Bill Nye Is A Huckster
Teacher To Be Prosecuted For Calling Mohammed Child Molester
Women at Harvard Protest New Single-Sex Club Policy
Harvard against free association?
Everyone I don't like is Hitler
The Confessions of Congressman X
Lost Your Health Insurance? Obama's team is Laughing at You
Stockman: Trumped! Why It Happened And What Comes Next
Trump presidency would revive neutered Congress, restore power to the people
It has taken Trump for “inclusive” Republicans to become exclusive.
Danish minister to 'Sharia' troublemakers: 'Get a job'
Denmark, where every year is a "gap year"
Kudos for Flemming Rose
MAYOR OF LONDON THREATENS TRUMP: Let Muslims in or they will attack America!
Worst argument I ever heard. "Submit or die" does not work for Americans.
Southeast Asia heats up –again!
Nicolás Maduro promises to use new powers to rescue Venezuelan economy
Let no crisis go to waste. Especially self-created crises.
Thursday, May 12. 2016
That is the title of the piece by VDH
Wednesday, May 11. 2016
 Jane Austen’s Ivory Cage - What lies beneath the surface of the grand estates and courtly balls
NYC: 25 great places for afternoon tea
Uncovering ancient Ashkenaz – the birthplace of Yiddish speakers
Eurovision Song Contest 2016 - Recap of ALL Songs!
Great Lakes Go from ‘Climate Change-Induced’ Low Water Levels to Record Highs in 3 Years
Climate change can do anything. It's magic.
Family with stock pond beats EPA in Clean Water Act overreach
Cognoscendancy: Tyranny of the Talkers:
Rarely has so much changed within a lifetime. Yesterday’s outré and outcast recast as inquisitors; great nations in demographic collapse; primal human practices like marriage, veritable specie constants, condemned as iniquitous and beyond rational defence, and most surprisingly, all happening peaceably, with little alteration in surface political forms. No wonder elders scratch their heads, as do those few historically literate young. This essay proposes to settle their confusions by revealing the deepest drivers of these astonishing and revolutionary changes...
How US academia became an authoritarian petri dish
The University of Oregon’s Thought Police Investigate Students for Saying Anything
Can I term them fascist, totalitarian, contemptible, evil Nazi a-holes?
Millikin U. allegedly threatens frats with sanctions for face-painting
Offends the Celts?
There's no such thing as a non-controversial commencement speaker.
Milo quotes spark ‘homophobia’ scare at UC Irvine
Academe is Overrun by Liberals. Here’s Why that Should Disturb You.
The FDA’s New E-Cigarette Rules Hand Big Tobacco A Big Win
Uber: Austin decides it isn’t as hip as Provo.
A book: Equal Is Unfair: America's Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality
When the White House Lies to the Media, and Laughs Doing It
Obama: Crime Created by ‘System,’ Successful People ‘Just Lucky,’ ‘Wasn’t Nothin’ You Did’
Chris Matthews: Democrats Care About Issues Americans Do Not
Clueless Republicans Don't Realize It's the Democrats Who Have the Problem
What Democratic Landslide? A group of new polls released Tuesday shows a surprisingly close race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Trump supporters are wealthier and better educated than the average American, even when adjusted for ethnicity.
ELDERLY SOCIALIST CANDIDATE CONFUSED BY HOW GOVERNMENT LEGISLATION HARMS SMALL BUSINESS
Hillary Clinton is unraveling quickly
Kissinger: 'Extrication is not a strategy'
Trump's Foreign Policy: A View from Israel
Tuesday, May 10. 2016
This is smart: Reform Week Part II/ Politics is the art of the possible. Trump should read that.
Trump has positioned himself brilliantly, as practical and mostly non-ideological. That's why he will win in November, for better or worse. Crazy like a fox.
 A school that cares: Success Academy’s been awesome for our special-needs son
Scripps: The Most Racist College in America
Fat activist: 'exercise and diets are constructs'
Meet the puritans who think sex is bad for women.
The Puritans had nothing against sex
Legal fun: Who owns the right of way for The High Line?
" Based on queer-feminist, postcolonial and race critical theory, this thesis offers an analysis of how gendered and sexualised formations come into being on the salsa scene. "
At first I thought she was discussing the condiment
Letter From San Francisco - The Many Ages of Adulthood in the Nanny State. Once again, the city’s supervisors want to give 16 and 17 year olds the vote.
One organism, one vote
Canadian Court Commands Father to Treat His Daughter as a Boy
Captain America’s ‘heterosexual virility’ lamented by Vanity Fair
Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
Milton Friedman, Adam Smith, and Other People’s Money
Edward Larson on the Constitution’s “general contractor,” George Washington
From The Nation: Note to Exxon: Lying About Climate Change Isn’t Free Speech—It’s Fraud
Obama White House showed ‘bad faith’ in global-warming case, judge rules
You Stupid Citizens Are Dragging Down Obama’s Awesome Economy By Not Spending
The Obama Administration Provokes a Legal Crisis — the War against North Carolina
On the Veneration of Politicians: No one can save you
Remember when Mitt Romney called for a raise in the minimum wage?
Emails From Hillary Clinton’s IT Director at State Department Appear to Be Missing
Conservative Author and Humorist P.J. O'Rourke Endorses Hillary
Trump’s turn right started a long time ago
Trump: This Is the Republican Party, It’s Not Called the Conservative Party
The Republican Party Died Long Before Trump
DONALD TRUMP UNLOADS ON CNN After Cuomo Opens Interview with Attack
The real cost of bailing out Puerto Rico
US Army Has Fewest Active-Duty Soldiers Since 1940, Report Says
ISIS Burns Christian Girl To Death, Her Last Words Were ‘Forgive Them’
With the Peshmerga on the Front Lines Against ISIS
Saturday, May 7. 2016
 China bans 'erotic' banana-eating live streams
Why the Rent vs. Buy Debate Is Completely Pointless
Bob Dylan-Inspired Drama Is in the Works
Vegan Green Weenie of the Year
Ice Age Europe: More Dramatic Than You Thought
No One Has A Right To A Bathroom - If
the Obama administration is going to demand toilets be open to all
comers, the McDonald’s in Chinatown has some ‘splaining to do.
A Luxurious Adventure Vacation in a Place You’d Never Expect - Israel’s Negev Desert isn’t just home to Ramon Crater, a spectacular, otherworldly playground for biking and hiking, but it’s also where you’ll find one of the country’s most pampering resorts
Cult Of Climastrology Worried About Trump Killing Paris Agreement
Health Insurers’ Shift More Costs To Taxpayers In Obamacare Exchanges
THE RACIST TREES OF OUR NATIONAL PARKS - Trees are America’s newest racist symbol.
Remove the trees!
Trouble ahead, via Drudge:
+160,000 jobs in April...
Fewest in 7 Months...
94,044,000 not participating...
BUT 25,460,000 Foreigners Working...
Economic growth slows sharply...
Civil Rights Commissioner: Cutting Sentences Increases Black-On-Black Crime
Comrades: Islamism and the Left
5 Critical Questions Undecided Conservatives Must Ask Trump
Why?
Trump Derangement Syndrome at work: After Trump, Conservatives Must Continue to Explore Their Options
Sheesh. The party members picked the guy. Deal with it. Tantrums are not mature. I expect better from McCarthy. Cruz would have lost in a landslide.
MAN NOBODY VOTED FOR ANNOUNCES WHO HE WON’T VOTE FOR
Reports of the demise of the Republican Party are premature.
Hard-core conservatives do not own the Repub Party. It's a big tent.
Food shows and politics:
For the last three decades, at least, it has been a closed system with no real competition. Both sides debated how much socialism and cultural Marxism they would inflict on the country. The Left would open the debate at 10 and the Right would offer 5 and they would settle in between. That’s how we went from telling AIDS jokes to jailing Christian bakers in the blink of eye. There was never a competition.
Israel Shares Anti-Tunnel Tech With U.S.
Germany Offers Taxpayer Funded “Flirt Workshops” for Migrant Men
That is clearly a brilliant approach, but seems to violate multicultural values. These people do not flirt.
Vietnam War 50th Commemoration, The Journey Home video
Immigration: The Failure of the Swedish Establishment
The Art of the Military Deal
The Arab Implosion Continues
As it will for generations
Friday, May 6. 2016
Mayor Giuliani cleaned Times Square of the crime and a lot of the porn, but left the gritty, raucous, random parts intact. Good choice.
Times Square is the colorful, crowded, tacky, lively tourist center of the city and the heart of the Broadway theater district. NYC is not Florence - a small antique town. Times Square will never be the Piazza del Duomo, thank goodness.
John Tierny (with whom I often agree) has another vision: Reimagining Times Square. He is being a party-pooper.
To locate microaggressions, you would need a microscope and more than a touch of paranoia.
However, I think it is barking up the wrong tree to try to psychoanalyze this grievance-collection and grievance-manufacturing by the most privileged and indulged kids in the world. No reasonably balanced person reacts to such non-events. It is a fad, like hula-hoops. Faux outrage, microaggressions, and hate hoaxes are all the rage on campus this year. One might almost imagine that the ignorant kids have nothing to study. What it's really all about is cry-bullying, a manipulative power tactic which only works on spineless women and beta males.
Those are the same administrators who will buy their 3 year-olds Cocoa Puffs at the supermarket when they cry. Same stunt, same result. Too many spineless people out there who are afraid of saying "Shut up and grow up" the way normal people would do. Or, in the campus case, "Shut up and get back to your differential equations."
 Widespread Mental Illness Taking Over America, One Bathroom at a Time
Why are bathrooms the target? Strange.
The Obama Justice Department’s Insane Attack on North Carolina
DOJ also obsessed with bathrooms
Here's Who's Controlling the Bathroom Debate
This is so bizarre
New York’s “Food Desert” Myth. The city council wants to preserve upstate farmland to counter an imaginary shortage.
Government farms? Brilliant
Driverless cars and robots are ahead of schedule
Vaping Will Soon Be Banned In Many Public Places In California…
Why? Just for the sake of controlling people? That ain't smoke. It is water vapor.
Big Green is big business.
Feds appear to be removing website posts claiming glaciers will be melted from Glacier National Park by 2030
Driverless cars and robots are ahead of schedule
Fresh scandal for Mayor de Blasio — and bad news for the taxpayers
The Reagan Coalition Is Dead. What’s Next For Conservatism?
The One Thing That More Government Money Will Definitely Do Is Fail To Fix The Problem
White House admits it played us for fools to sell Iran deal
Dem Pollsters Push Clinton Messaging Shift in Secret Memo
FLASHBACK: On June 19, 2015 Ann Coulter Predicted Trump Would Win – And the Liberal Audience Laughed
Trump Won Largely on the Strength of Opposition to Open Borders and Amnesty
Donald Trump’s policy plans are real, detailed — and great
Kimball, with whom I almost always agree, just doesn't like the aroma
Roger, do you like Hillary's aroma? Scratch and sniff. She'd give her ankles for Trump's crowds.
The Left's 2016 Plan: Defining Trump so damningly that Clinton will look comparatively angelic
I’m not ready to endorse Trump, says Paul Ryan; I’m not ready to support Ryan’s agenda, says Trump
Touche. Funny. I guess I am stuck with The Donald, for better or worse. Just wish he would read the Constitution and some other things, including Maggie's Farm website.
Noonan: Trump Was a Spark, Not the Fire - The establishments, both media and conservative, failed to anticipate how they’d be consumed:
The Democratic base has become more liberal—we all know this part—but in a way the Republican base has, too. Or rather it is certainly busy updating what conservative means. The past few months, in state after state, one thing kept jumping out at me in primary exit polls. Democrats consistently characterize themselves as more liberal than in 2008, a big liberal year. This week in Indiana, 68% of Democratic voters called themselves liberal or very liberal. In 2008 that number was 39%. That’s a huge increase.
Very good points, but the Repub party has rarely been thoroughly Conservative in ideology
Can Trump Beat Hillary? Why the presumptive Republican presidential nominee may defy the conventional wisdom once again.
The “passions” we see seething through a Trump rally are the anger at elites of both parties who for years now have talked down to the people, dismissed their legitimate concerns, and sneered at their ignorance, even as they pander to privileged minorities or appease the Democrats. They see criticism of Trump, whether intended or not, as criticism of themselves, yet another patronizing dismissal of their grievances. The backlash against political correctness that Trump has brilliantly exploited is the obvious focus of this anger at politicians who are supposed to be on their side, but who always find excuses to cede the high ground to the other side. Why else would the Senate confirm Loretta Lynch as Attorney General, especially after she told the Judiciary Committee that she viewed Obama’s unconstitutional amnesties as “legal”? Was it because she was eminently qualified, or because she is a black woman?
Some will dispute these assertions as misleading or false, but whether they are true or not is irrelevant. Politics is about perception. How else did a cipher like Barack Obama get elected twice? In 2008 he was perceived to be a racial healer, the smartest president ever, a “no red state, no blue state” unifier, and a brilliant orator. None of these perceptions turned out to be remotely true. The second time it was partly because 81% of voters perceived him to “care about people like me,” while only 18% felt the same about Mitt Romney, one of the most fundamentally decent and kind men ever to run for president. Trump seems to get that perceptions and passions come first, and policy can be figured out later. To a greater or lesser degree, this has pretty much been true in all presidential elections. Trump has simply discarded the decorum that camouflages the truth about political sausage-making.
Britain faces migrant chaos: New ´summer of discontent´ as thousands plot to storm border
EU Plans $290,000 Per Person Fine on Countries Refusing “Fair Share” of Refugees; Case For Brexit Crystallized
The Empire has been overreaching since it began. Rebellion will occur.
License To Steal: Italy’s Highest Court Rules “Theft Not A Crime If Hungry”
Most people feel food urges two or three times daily. Let's hope they do not apply this to sexual urges too.
Thursday, May 5. 2016
George Will Is A Haughty Dipshit: (h/t SDA)
George Will should have been left unemployed and starving ages ago. Newspapers are dying off and people despise the media more than they have ever despised the media—which is saying a lot—and yet here fucking George Will remains, along with the Noonans and Friedmans and Brookses of the world, gainfully employed despite being a worthless, fart-sniffing boob. Try as the world might, we can’t seem to rid ourselves of idiot columnists who make $300,000 just to sit down and invent political trends from looking out the fucking parlor window.....I don’t get how these people have retained any credibility.
It was that old Law of (Unintended?) Consequences: What Democrat voters and political leaders refuse to believe
Well, they do believe it but only Moynihan was willing to say it out loud. The real goal was achieved: Generations of Dem voters hooked on dependency, uselessness, and hopelessness. Of course, that applies not only to African-Americans. There are far more white than black people in that category.
However, there were no dysfunctional black urban ghettos before Johnson's Great Society eliminated poverty and hopelessness.
 Image via Theo
A Brief History of Drowning - Drowning
has been a common cause of death since the Middle Ages. How do we
prevent it when humans were likely never meant to swim?
New administration rule would permit thousands of eagle deaths at wind farms
Sacrifices for the weather gods
Elementary School Cancels Father-Daughter Dance Over Lack of 'Inclusion'
The FDA has 121 pages of rules about what to feed kids
Get reading, lunch ladies
HuffPo: Legal Gun Owners Can’t Shoot Violent Attackers In Self-Defense Because It Denies Them A Fair Trial…
OUR FEDERAL HOUSING VOUCHER PROGRAM: The Poverty Creator
Jason Riley Is the Latest Conservative to Be Disinvited from a College Campus
Blackballed
Music Classes Targeted for Pro-Perversion Brainwashing
Principal Bans Girls' Tackle Football Game, Suggests Bobbing for Apples Instead
90% Of American Households Have Lower Real Net Worth Today Than In 1970s
Hayward: Liberals Having Second Thoughts
This is How Democrats Will Absolutely Destroy Donald Trump if He’s the Nominee
Anti-Trump Groups Spent $75.7 Million on 64,000 Negative Ads to Take Down Trump – It Wasn’t Enough
Dick Morris on Trump: 'A Unique Chapter in American Politics'
Krauthammer: GOP ‘Being Led By a Non-Conservative,’ As of Now, ‘I Don’t Think I’d Be Capable of Voting for Donald Trump’
Van Jones Admits Dems Need Minorities to Remain Poor and Resentful
Clinton Campaign Made Payments To Hard Drive And Document Destruction Company
Reynolds: Entrenched political elites will sacrifice anything to retain power, including their own country.
What Went Wrong with Cruz? Cruz.
Good message, wrong messenger
Trump, election, and immigration:
Trump is the warning shot. He’s the food riots before the revolution. He’s the stack of letters to the editor in protest over some issue. People do not go from happy to bloody revolt overnight. It’s a process and the early stages are warnings, at least they should be viewed as warnings. If the people in Washington insist on flooding the country with helot labor, despite what’s happening in the election, the people are going to insist on building scaffolds in Washington. The Trump phenomenon is the warning.
Trump and foreign policy
How difficult was it to run America’s foreign policy during an era of virtually unquestioned dominance? Why—with so many advantages—have our elites produced so many failed policies? And why do they feel no shame? No matter how many individual positions he changes, Mr. Trump will never satisfy the architects of these massive mistakes or, for that matter, their ardent supporters on editorial boards and television screens. To be clear, it is entirely appropriate to criticize Mr. Trump’s views or, for that matter, his temper. Both have long been important components in our electoral politics. What is not appropriate is to attempt to shut down public discussion of critical national issues.
Yet this is exactly what some seek to do.
Defining U.S. National Interests: The Argument Continues
This
is How Democrats Will Absolutely Destroy Donald Trump if He’s the
Nominee - See more at:
https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/05/this-is-how-democrats-will-absolutely-destroy-donald-trump#sthash.Swnlod14.dpuf
Britain To Take In Syrian Refugees From Other European Nations That Don’t Want Them…
Why Russia Resents Us
The Holocaust Without Jews
These Are The Two Reasons Refugees Are Flooding Into Germany
Wednesday, May 4. 2016
 Toon via Theo
Survey: 34% of Bay area residents want to leave
New York’s last remaining soda fountain signs
Scenes From the First American Shopping Mall, Filmed in 1956
Guru–the most important free market movie ever made?
Guru–the
most important free market movie ever made? - See more at:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/05/guru.html#sthash.YrGwG2Cp.dpuf
Wilderness Worship - Back to Neander
Should the Semicolon follow the diastole, the trigon, the interpunct, and the diple?
Michael Bloomberg: Why Safe Spaces Are Terrible Mistakes
The Cumulative Cost of Regulations
I'm calling it: Social networking is over
The return of pseudo-science - The global warming industry lashes out in defense of its funding
Don't Let Government Stifle the next Tech Revolution
Standardized Test Discontent Spreads Across the Nation
Standardized
Test Discontent Spreads Across the Nation - See more at:
http://educationblog.ncpa.org/standardized-test-discontent-spreads-across-the-nation/#sthash.bcJ9FteQ.dpuf
Grand Jury Indicts Three Black Students Who Made Up Hoax of a Racist
Attack Against Them; They Were Actually The Ones Beating Someone Up
(While Throwing Racial Epithets)
The Campus Hate Crime Hoax Epidemic
Activists: Park Ranger Uniforms ‘threaten’ Latinos, Too Similar to Border Patrol - Group asks feds to consider “cultural implications of existing agency uniforms, offices, signage, and other facilities”
Winning ‘Draw Mohammed’ Picture Goes Up On eBay
Harvard 'Experts': Islamophobia Everywhere!
Dem AG Targets 90 Conservative Groups in Climate Change Racketeering Suit
Fighting Political Correctness in the Age of Trump - Republicans must stand up to political correctness or lose.
"Money In Politics," Hillary, And The McDonnell Prosecution
Chelsea Clinton’s speaking fee: $65,000.
David Brooks should stay in his little bourgeois strata
Memo to George Will, David Brooks and others: Stop being stupid on Trump:
I know many of those who voted for Trump, and they are by no means stupid, irrational, racist or anti-democratic. They are frustrated with politics as usual and they are taking their constitutional rights seriously by voting for change.
Second, Trump says what many of us have come to believe is true: that the Iraq War was a tragic mistake that shouldn’t be replicated. He was the only candidate to be so explicit in his denunciation, and I think it helped him with a big chunk of voters.
Third, he has a clear message on the economy that resonates: The middle class is getting screwed because the political class is looking out for their interests rather than for the broader interests of the American people. From being open to increasing taxes on the very wealthy to expressing concerns about trade deals to promising to protect Social Security, Trump is stating clearly that he will change the direction of the American economy.
I am not of the opinion that a Trump candidacy will do long-lasting damage to the party or the country. I guess that’s why I am not part of the conservative intelligentsia.
"I Don't Know How To Explain It" - Confused Clinton Can't Explain Own Comments To Coal-Miner
When I met Bill Clinton and the first time we were together
Get Ready for the Biggest Media Assault You've Ever Seen—Aimed Squarely at Trump
Who is the Host, and Who is the Guest? A Muslim owner of a grocery store in France assigns different shopping days for men and women.
Trouble In Paradise? ISIS Recruiting In The Caribbean
China Needs a Foreign Policy which Makes Friends
An ugly war, seen through the lens of the Vietnamese
Iraq: Washington is in fact groping into a new full-fledged conflict in the Middle East without proper planning and preparation.
Neutering U.S. combat air forces
Tuesday, May 3. 2016
The central tenet of Libertarianism is freedom. It is the right to choose. Not just choose 'stuff' while shopping, but everything. Where to live, who you associate with, who you do business with, who you work for or who works for you, and what you want to do with your life. While it is often contrasted with Socialism and Communism, this commentator points out there is a third thread which is often overlooked, but cuts across the philosophical spectrum - bureaucratic centralism. It's my belief that Conservatives are essentially libertarians (small "l") who like having, or believing in, the direction that centralized government can provide. Which is why Libertarians, more often than not, are lumped in with Republicans. In my recent past, I've learned to distrust and, whenever possible, avoid anything government claims to provide, or that people believe it should provide. If I could avoid, or it was practical to avoid, all things the government provides, I would. Unfortunately I don't have that freedom, since it's been taken either by vote or by bureaucratic diktat.
 Cruising the Davis Strait
Catching a Flight? Budget Hours, Not Minutes, for Security
Why Italian merry widows perk up after husbands die
Blood-red Trevi fountain a wake-up call on Christian persecution
No commencement speaker will mention this – the huge ‘gender college degree gap’ favoring women
Undergrad links to Obama’s comments about students being ‘coddled,’ gets ripped by peers
" The employee also referred to one of the students as a man, even though
that student had informed the employee that they identify as gender
neutral."
Heterodox: Freethinking profs – fed up with peers’ blind devotion to leftist tenets – launch their own website
SIU students to hold strike against austerity, racism
Small Acts of Cowardice Are Destroying Our Culture
...how culture wars are lost: through the slow accumulation of individually defensible but collectively unjustifiable decisions not to resist. It’s the decision that objecting during diversity training simply isn’t worth the hassle. It’s the decision not to say anything when you see a colleague or fellow student facing persecution because of their beliefs. It’s a life habit of always taking the path of least resistance, keeping your head down, and doing your best to preserve your own family and career. The small fights don’t matter anyway, right?
I recently spoke to a mid-level executive at a major corporation who had been forced to sit through mandatory “inclusivity” training. The topic was transgender rights, and the trainer proceeded to spout far-left ideology as fact, going so far as to label all who disagreed with the notion that a man can become a woman “transphobic.” I asked if anyone objected to any part of the training, and the response was immediate. “Are you crazy? No one wants to deal with HR.”
Who Speaks for the Working Class? Economic concerns increasingly unite moderate-income whites and blacks.
CNN's Jeff Zucker on the Network's Increasing Ratings: "We May Have Been A Little Too Liberal In the Past"
Why Aren’t We Having a National Conversation About Leftist Violence?
The myth of free trade
...trade is a good thing, but only when it is a net positive to the American people as a whole. Deals that allow plutocrats to shift their costs to the public so they can privatize profits are not good deals. Trump pointing that out does not make him a protectionist. It makes him a realist. It’s the innumerate phonies, clutching their copies of Atlas Shrugged, desperately trying to shut off these debates, who are divorced from reality. Trade, like all pubic policy, is about trade-offs. Those trade-offs are debated in a healthy society.
Mexico Is Sending Us Colonists, Not Immigrants
Off the reservatio
Sanders applauds supporter who tells billionaire class to 'f--- off’
Monday, May 2. 2016
I'm not a blue-collar worker, but I had blue-collar jobs in my younger days. There is a meme floating around right now suggesting people who oppose the minimum wage increases (as I do) are amoral people who believe low income workers 'deserve' what they earn. Many good blue-collar jobs pay pretty well and just require hard work and the desire to do it. The minimum wage really applies to the lowest end of the blue-collar funnel, low-skilled and entry-level labor. And I don't feel even low-skilled or entry-level workers 'deserve' anything, anymore than I 'deserve' something or a blue-collar worker 'deserves' something. We work because we've come to an agreement on a wage and we're comfortable with between ourselves and our employer. Comfortable with does not mean we think it's optimal, perfect, or what we want. It means we feel we can do the job for that sum.
But Mike Rowe points out another key part of the jobs equation. Jobs don't come to us. We have to go to them. If my best job option is going to be in San Francisco or Chicago, rather than here in NYC, then I should be prepared to go to it. If I don't, I really have no complaints about whatever job I wind up with, because I took what's available within the limitations I set for myself. The US has always been a mobile nation. Mobile as in able to move both physically and economically. People move up and down the wealth and income ladder, but they have also transport themselves to where the jobs are. It's been that way for years. After all, that's part of what Manifest Destiny was all about - following opportunity. It's why Horace Greeley supposedly said "Go West, young man." Today it may be better stated as "Go Weld, young man."
Sunday, May 1. 2016
From Mikhail Fridman's As Global Instability Spreads, the "Indigo" Economy Rises:
We are entering a disruptive era driven by extraordinary levels of human creativity. A new generation of curious, strong-willed and talented individuals is unhindered by convention or the past. This new “Indigo” generation is now shaping tomorrow’s economy and creating national wealth. I use the term Indigo because it has been used to refer to children with special or unusual abilities. This is an era where abnormally talented individuals and entities are now able to realize new levels of human potential and economic achievement.
...
This new Indigo era undermines the hypothesis that depletion of natural resources is imminent. The innovative potential of developed countries has allowed people to find alternatives to any such shortage. This does not mean that the world no longer requires natural resources. But it eliminates the real or imagined shortage of those resources and deprives commodity exporters of what have been super profits. Oil and gas was the last bastion of these bottlenecks and it too has crumbled, thanks to Indigo economies. The main source of national wealth is not the resource rent but the social infrastructure that allows every person to realize his or her intellectual and creative potential. It is for this reason that Exxon, once the world’s largest company, has been overtaken by Apple and Google. This represents a paradigm shift in which creative, non-linear thinking and random ideas are turned into new scalable services in a short space of time.
Saturday, April 30. 2016
The proportion of Americans who participate in philanthropic activities—70 percent—is higher than the number who vote.
American people get together to do things, to make good things happen. Professional organizers not required. Good things happen organically.
Friday, April 29. 2016
Immigrant mobs get violent with Trump audience.
This does not help their cause, whatever their cause is.
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Image stolen from Ace 
Eagles